Con Coughlin coughing into his cornflakes

Poor old Con Coughlin must be coughing into his Christmas cornflakes this morning. Following instructions from his FCO and MoD masters, poor old Con has being doing his best to talk-up a war with Russia all year. No incident was too trivial to be mis-interpreted, no pretext too minor for Con to rattle his lightsabre on the Telegraph's Defence desk. And all year all the poor sod's earned for his pains is laughter, mockery and regular pillorying in blogs such as this. And now his own paper mocks his efforts; former Moscow Ambassador Tony Brenton writes

"Russia is not a threat to the West. Our defence expenditure is ten times, and our economy 20 times, Russia’s. Putin is ruthless but not stupid – he will not take on those odds. Current western policy towards Russia has failed. Sanctions have cemented popular support for Putin even as the Russian economy resumes growth. The Russians are winning in Syria, and show no sign of letting go in Ukraine. Meanwhile there are important things we should be working on together. Islamic extremism is a much greater threat to both of us than we are to each other. The British government has been among the most vociferous hawks on Russia. Time for us to be more British; lower the volume, and think harder about where our real interests lie."

Amen to that. Peace and fellowship between our Christian lands, and love to all men except the buggers trying to kill us. Have a wonderful Christmas all and thanks for another superlative year - your comments are a joy, and inspire me each day.  

Post-Brexit status of EU prisoners?

Nothing too taxing for the holiday period, but looking at the most recent parliamentary prison stats document a couple of things struck me -

• We currently hold about 2,900 prisoners from EU countries - almost a thousand from Poland alone. Will they be included in a Brexit right of residence deal?
• Christians form 50% of the prison population but 60% of the general population while Muslims form 15% of the prison population but only 4% of the General population over 15. Does this prove Christians are better people than Muslims? (Athiests are only marginally over-represented in prison)

On a serious note, younger people are becoming progressively less likely to offend, which suggests the crim bulge may be just that - a moving, ageing crim bulge - and as it works its way through and the drunks, bottlers, tea leaves and  assorted ne'er-do-wells just become too old to be serious offenders our prison population will fall. So perhaps no need for panic - those born before 1976 just seem to be more criminal. 

When will we cut the head from this Saudi terror serpent?

What do virtually all US and European Islamist terror attacks since 9/11 have in common? Easy, isn't it. Not only is anti-western terrorism almost exclusively a Sunni Muslim occupation, but it comes from one single branch of radical Salafist / Wahhabi / Deobandi Islamism. And this originates in Saudi Arabia, is funded, promoted and exported by Saudi Arabia and is nurtured, protected and shielded by Western greed for Saudi blood money. 

Europe's governments, and particularly Germany's government already know this. German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel told us so last year; "Wahhabi mosques are financed all over the world by Saudi Arabia. In Germany, many dangerous Islamists come from these communities" he told Bild am Sonntag. Austria recently passed a special law to ban foreign funding of mosques and imams - so far the only EU country to do so. Turkey's carpet-chewing dictator Erdogan was bitter in his reaction - the Turkish government directly employed and supplied 60 radical Sunni imams to Austrian mosques, all of whom would be deported and replaced with native-grown ones. And the Saudi patrons of terror are banned from any funding of Islamist organisations. Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz defended the pragmatic new law, which only applies to Islamic funding, from accusations of discrimination; "The influence of foreign countries is a problem we only have in the Muslim community. We do not have this problem in the other religious communities" he shrugged.

The perpetrator of yesterday's Berlin outrage has tentatively been identified as Pakistani / Afghan. No doubt he is a Sunni, and no doubt from one of the Salafist branches. The only other question is whether he was radicalised by a Saudi-funded mosque serving the 25,000 strong migrant camp in which he was located. But I fear neither the BBC nor others of the #fakenews tendency will tell us.

So. We all know the Islamists have been planning Christmas attacks in Europe, ISIS and al nusra / al queda and the other Saudi terror arms have been encouraging their sleepers to commit such acts and now it's happened why should we be surprised? Europe including the UK still allows the Saudi serpent to spread its poison venom across our continent. When will we have the sense to strike the head from this terror serpent?

Update
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Adjacent to the Tempelhof camp is the Salafist-funded Ibrahim al-Khalil Mosque. According to Wikipedia, the Moroccan imam has a history of recruiting to Syrian terrorist groups and inciting Islamist violence ...