A suggestion

I have been thinking about terrorism, for obvious reasons. In the good old days (as they now seem) we knew what the terrorists wanted. They were basically market capitalists like we were, and they wished to effect a mutually beneficial exchange: Release those 100 convicted murderers freedom fighters, and we will release these 10 hostages.

The current generation of terrorists is different. They don't appear to want anything other than to be left alone to torture and kill each other worship Allah.

All righty, if that's what they want, let's give it to them.

Let's leave the Arab world alone.

We will send them no more of our depraved, decadent and corrupting culture. But that's just the start.

We will also send them no more food, nor seed, nor fertilizer, nor clothes, nor tools, nor building materials, nor medicine, nor hospital equipment, nor agricultural equipment, nor irrigation projects, nor power generators - and especially no more cars, trucks, airplanes, or the spare parts for them. And definitely no more bullets.

We will send them no more information: close down the internet backbone connections, cut the telephone lines, reprogram the communications satellites, recall all the advisors and experts and UN commissions. We will forbid Médicins sans frontieres and their ilk from visiting.

We will send them no more money: cancel the development aid, suspend the charity donations, and send no emergency relief. They can clean up after the next earthquake (or tsunami) by themselves, in the proper Islamic way.

We will start weaning ourselves away from oil, with the intention of not importing another drop after say 2025. (I hope none of my readers is surprised to hear that the world's supply of oil is finite and running out? There will come a time in the very near future when we must do without oil. Would we not be better advised to start working towards this well-known physical fact now, in a time and manner of our choosing, rather than letting it develop into a crisis?)

Congratulations, Arab world: you are now alone. Good luck.

[Update: the former Labour MP David Clark writes in the Guardian on the subject of who the terrorists are, and what they want: Indeed it is a mistake even to regard al-Qaida as an organisation in the traditional sense of the term. At most it is now little more than an idea, fusing ideology with operational method, both of which can be accessed freely via the internet. It is quite meaningless to talk about destroying the "terrorist infrastructure", unless we propose to carpet bomb Microsoft. We have entered the era of do-it-yourself terrorism. Mind you, the idea of carpet-bombing Microsoft does have a certain appeal...]



These are the flowers on my desk this weekend: thistles. They were by far the pretttiest and most interesting flowers on the market-stall this morning.