The Pedo Terrorists (and if you believe that you'll believe anything)

How bloody silly can you get? When the story of al-Qa'eda working with paedophiles on the Internet was first "leaked" to The Times last year I was tempted scoff, except that it seemed so ludicrous, and so obviously a piece of Government propaganda that I didn't even bother. I mean, after all, who in his right mind would believe this sort of rubbish?

Well, the Times report was actually put together by four different people, which rather makes one imagine they came up with late one night in the pub. The alternative possibility, which is more sinister, is that this was a genuine kite the Times was trying to fly. On whose behalf? Take a wild guess! (The [London] Times, for those that don't know, is a British 'paper that always supports the Government of the day, irrespective of whichever political party is in power.) Hilariously (or disturbingly) it's now been picked up by another of the Labour Government's poodles The Daily Mirror.

One of the team behind the Times piece was Richard Owen. One of the two names at the top of the Mirror report is Nick Owen. Coincidence? It's possible, I suppose. But is it more likely than that there are Muslim terrorists out there in cyber-space trying to avoid the attention of the online fuzz... by pretending to be paedophiles?

The funniest thing about the Times report is the it specifically excludes the possibility that they're not pretending. The Italian "anti-terror magistrate" Stefano Dambruoso has the money-quote.

I would exclude the idea that they have paedophile tendencies. The most you can attribute to them is a relationship between men and women different from that of us Westerners, in which — as in many parts of the Arab world — wives are often very young girls of 11, 12 or 13 who because of family negotiations are given in marriage to men much older than them. But that is not paedophilia, it is a question of Arab culture.

Riiight!

Can we can back to you on that one?