Author Archives: Ian Hare

Money For Nothing – And The Trick’s No Fee

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When Britain lost the War of American Independence in 1783, we nonchalantly withdrew, safe in the knowledge that the fledgling nation had taken on board our delights of fighting a Civil War, and subjugating and exterminating the indigenous people.

Meanwhile, Britain returned to its attempt to turn every schoolroom world map a lurid shade of pink as the British Empire expanded by wont of deciding we knew far better than the cultures of vast swathes of Africa and Asia.

From such unlikely beginnings, our special relationship with the USA has grown and grown. We were never so glad to see our former foes fight alongside us in The Great War, and there can be no doubt that the influx of tens of thousands of American troops turned the tide of a muddy, bloody stalemate.

And, while late to the party again in World War II, American forces once more helped to bring an end to six years of devastating conflict. Meanwhile, GIs (Overpaid, Oversexed, Over Here) brought nylons, gum, jazz and chocolate to a beleaguered and grey England, while getting brides – and surprise children – in return.

Glossing over our penchant for gambolling playfully at America’s feet in gratitude and thus embroiling ourselves in two unwinnable guerrilla conflicts in the Middle East, our tradition of cultural exchange continues to this day.

They gave us Elvis Presley, we gave them the Stones and Beatles. They gave us Hollywood glamour and Marilyn Monroe, we gave them Carry On and Ricky Gervais.

Not forgetting that Halloween barely existed as an event in Britain when I was a kid. The first trick-or-treater I ever heard knock on the door was around 1983.

Faced with one of the local children proclaiming ‘trick or treat’ on the doorstep, my puzzled mum replied: “Trick!” There was a brief, equally baffled pause before the child went to find someone more clued-up.

And though I’ve been a long time out of High School, I don’t recall any talk of Prom Nights in Britain until around the late 90s. The UK didn’t go in for that sort of thing, probably because the film ‘Carrie’ scared the shit out of everyone in 1976.

Suffice to say, my last day at school consisted of a myriad of shirt signings, revenge on those who had royally pissed you off during the year and hasty fumblings with girls who had suddenly become more romantic and attractive as the parting of the ways beckoned.

I digress.

Something else we’ve learned from America is how to sue.

The USA is the most litigious country on the planet. Frankly, you can get sued in America at the drop of the hat, particularly if that hat then trips someone up. And now, we’ve cottoned on to making a fast buck in the same way.

Students, the unemployed or unemployed students who, between watching Jeremy Kyle’s show about British pond life and David Dickinson’s mahogany features on The Real Deal, are no doubt familiar with those ‘no win, no fee’ adverts from legal types.

They tend to show various idiots who have fallen off ladders, tripped over lethal plastic box-ties, or swallowed a pint of weed killer in a misguided attempt to eradicate their own gene-pool, and are now holding fat cheques after successfully blaming someone else for their own incompetence – albeit not quite as fat after the victorious lawyers have taken their mammoth commission.

Trouble is, it’s really no joke. Councils now spend tens of thousands of pounds on compensation every year, ranging from people falling over pavements, being grazed by falling tree branches, hitting heads on low signs and, in the case of a landmark ruling against Hounslow Council, a £100,000 payout to a couple with learning disabilities, who were subjected to abuse by their neighbours.

Regardless of the rights or wrongs of the latter judgement, it doesn’t take a mathematician to realise that if people weren’t suing the council for tumbling over uneven pathways, there might be more money available to get them fixed.

Meanwhile, a number of councils have realised it’s cheaper and easier to fell mature trees rather than put up with the fiddly business of keeping them maintained and so cure the problem of possible conker-shaped bruising.

Speaking of cures, doctors and hospitals now routinely take out malpractice insurance in the event of a legal challenge. Not that loved ones shouldn’t have the right to compensation when something has gone wrong, but there’s something definitely amiss when a man sues the NHS for allowing him to get to 70st.

As Barbara Ellen sagely pointed out in The Observer: “I’m confused. Did his GP say to him, ‘yeah, you look great at 50st, just keep eating”? As he ballooned to the point where it became a military operation to get him to hospital, were nurses feeding him fry-ups? Well, no. Paul Mason is now 37st, thanks to gastric surgery performed by the NHS.”

So, thanks to all this ‘fall down, get rich’ culture, we now live in a Health & Safety wonderland, where school trips are cancelled because of fears of litigation, packets of peanuts come with the disclaimer ‘warning, contains nuts’ and cards for two-year-old toddlers state ‘not suitable for children under 36 months’.

I would go on, but I’ve inadvertently crushed my fingers with the iMac after rooting around for a stray crisp. Now all I have to do is find the name of a good lawyer and Apple’s arse is mine.

Image: Chris Sharp / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=584

The Bear Atrocities – Hugged to Hunted

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If asked to name a favourite childhood toy, the chances are that most people would come up with the teddy bear.

Generations of children have found comfort with a fuzzy companion to make the night hours just that little less scary, or by listening wide-eyed to a tale where bears are warm, furry and have adventures of their own.

The world famous Steiff company have been making teddy bears since 1902, while a search on Amazon for ‘bear’ in children’s books brings up a little less than 35,000 entries.

‘My Friend Bear’, ‘Can’t You Sleep Little Bear’, ‘Bear Snores On’ are just some of the titles, along with ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury.

The synopsis reads: “Follow the family’s excitement as they wade through the grass, splash through the river and squelch through the mud in search of the bear. What a surprise awaits in the cave on the other side of the dark forest.”

The best-selling, award-winning book has a somewhat ironic title considering that roughly 500,000 black bear hunting licenses are issued each year in the US with almost 82,000 registered hunters in Canada.

Meanwhile, the larger grizzly bear is listed as ‘threatened’ in the US and ‘endangered’ in parts of Canada.

According to experts at BestHuntingAdvice, the reasons behind hunting are frequently given as a way of keeping the bear population down, or to remove a predatory bear, but the truth is simple. Many North Americans hunt bears for sheer enjoyment, and the numerous websites and magazines devoted to weaponry and the best hunting spots cater for a voracious appetite.

While it’s true to say that a bear can carry a considerable threat to a hunter, bears rarely launch an unprovoked attack on people. Just 31 people have been killed in North America by bears since 2000, and 23 in the 1990s.

Critics would also argue just how much ‘sport’ can be obtained from shooting an unaware animal, going about its daily business, from a safe distance through a telescopic lens.

No figures seem to be available for the number of bears killed in North America during 2010, but as a snapshot, a six-day bear hunt in New Jersey last month resulted in 589 kills, 17.3% of the estimated bear population.

But as well as being ingrained in some sections of the American psyche, hunting big game is big business.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s most recent National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation from 2006 showed that 12.5 million people hunted within the United States on 220 million days, spending $22.9 billion. An estimated 10.7 million hunters pursued big game, such as bears, deer and elk, on 164 million days.

Eastern Europe has also found that bears offer the opportunity to make big money.

Rich foreigners are willing to pay $9000 for the privilege of shooting bears in Romania and Russia, drastically reducing the number of animals.

Some estimates put the brown bear population in Romania as a little more than 4000, a 50% reduction since the fall of Communism. Slovakia may have as little as 400 bears left.

And outside of hunting, bear-baiting is still rife in Pakistan, while in Japan, bears are kept in concrete ‘parks’ and forced to beg for food in the name of public entertainment. Meanwhile, bear bile and bear body parts are much sought after in traditional Chinese medicine, with the bears farmed under deplorable conditions in South Korea and China itself.

Bears were hunted to extinction in the UK around 1000AD. One thousand years later, much of the adult world seems hell-bent on continuing to persecute a much-loved childhood friend.

A Bug’s Life – Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ set to emerge on big screen

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One of the great works of world literature that, surprisingly, has never made it to the big screen is Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, the story of travelling salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes up one morning to find himself transformed in his bed into a repulsive and verminous insect-like creature of human proportions.

Finally, nearly a century after it was written, Metamorphosis is being brought to cinema screens for the first time by London-based Attractive Features.

The film stars Maureen Lipman as the Mother, Robert Pugh as the Father, Laura Rees as the Sister and Chris New as Gregor Samsa.

Written in a three-week burst at the end of 1912, Kafka’s amazing novella has caught the imagination of generations of readers since its publication in 1915.

What started out as an intensely personal expression of self-doubt, self-disgust, despair, desperation and isolation, touched a universal chord – with Kafka’s private themes seen as symbolising the far wider political and social struggles of minority religions, cultures and movements.

The Freudians, Expressionists, Absurdists, Avant-Gardists, Existentialists, Marxists and Zionists all claimed him as their representative and spokesman.

Yet, apart from the various short films, animated versions and films loosely based on Kafka’s story, there have been only three airings of Metamorphosis on television over the years – a German production in 1975 (Die Verwandlung), a Swedish version in 1976 (Förvandlingen), and the 1987 television version by the BBC of Steven Berkoff’s brilliant theatre adaptation (The Metamorphosis) originally staged in 1969.

Director Chris Swanton said: “My overriding approach was to get the film as close to the original story as I could,” while Attractive Features added: “It is a difficult, even prohibitive undertaking to turn such an iconic and much-loved story into a feature film, but that is not good enough reason to shy away from the challenge.”

Filmed at Halliford Studios in Shepperton, the film is currently in post-production and will be doing the rounds at various film festivals later this year as the company hopes to secure the release deal that their weighty endeavour so richly deserves.

In the meantime, the teaser trailer can be seen on the film’s own website: www.metamorphosisthemovie.com.

Text reproduced and adapted from the Metamorphosis Facebook page and film website by kind permission of director Chris Swanton.

Turn on, Log in, Drop out – Internet Addiction Disorder

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An addiction for the 21st century is causing increasing numbers of desperate parents to seek help for their teenage children.

Internet Addiction Disorder, or IAD, is now as much of a real addiction as drugs and alcohol, according to the renowned Priory Clinic in Roehampton, south west London.

The disorder can lead to mood swings, compulsive lying, loss of interest in studies and a breakdown in real-life relationships, as surfers spend time using and abusing chatrooms, multi-user games such as EverQuest, and social networking sites like Facebook.

Speaking back in 2008, Richard Renson, then Addiction Therapist at The Priory, said: “In some families, money can be tight. Both parents work and children often come back home alone and go straight on to the computer. It becomes a routine and that routine becomes very hard to break.

“It’s lack of communication with another solid human being. Some people say when they’re gaming online, they’ve got thousands of friends, but it’s not communication and emotional involvement. It’s avoidance behaviour.

“One of the hardest things to manage is our emotional world and if you’ve not got any role models and are only using computer-based information, it’s not going to be solid, concrete or useful.”

Two years on, there are currently no statistics outlining the number of UK addicts, but with Facebook and Twitter usage continuing to amass large numbers of followers, the problem is increasing.

Mr Renson estimated at the time that as many as 20 per cent of Priory patients were chronically affected by internet and computer-based addiction.

However, critics argue potential sufferers only use the internet as a medium to fuel other cravings and that internet addiction itself is not a true condition.

Mr Renson firmly believed this was not the case: “There’s more and more evidence to show that it is,” he said.

“We can sensationalise it, but any action a human being takes that is detrimental to their well-being, and seems a repetition, can be classed as an addiction.”

He added: “Evidence also shows there are ‘hot-spots’ in the brain that remain when somebody stops using the computer. It’s exactly the same as when using a substance.”

An addict, speaking to The Times in March, said: “The social thing was something I always had trouble with. It was a lot easier to socialise and make friends online than it was in real life.”

However, treatment is not as simple as stopping use. Instead, it can be a slow and difficult process, requiring considerable after-care.

The key, according to Mr Renson, is tackling the underlying problems that lead to the compulsion.

“If you start off with abstaining from that substance or behaviour, you get to the bottom of how you feel,’ he said. “You can learn how to manage the emotions you probably thought were too hard to manage initially.

“When you’re not intoxicated, inebriated or doing something that avoids feeling, you can start to make sense of it and see that it isn’t so tough.

“But abstinence is quite a tall order. When you take away a behaviour that people have seen as addictive, it can be quite troublesome. People relapse unless you’ve got a support network around you.”

The cure though, can be prohibitively expensive. It costs approximately £20,000 for a 28-day programme at The Priory, although medical insurance may cover certain cases.

“It may sound like quite a lot of money,” said Mr Renson. “But you can’t put a price on a person’s quality of life. If you can give somebody back their life, it’s money well spent.

“We’re doing quite a lot of education around general compulsive behaviour and addictions,” he added.

“For better or for worse, The Priory has a reputation for treating the rich and the famous, but we have a social conscience.

“We want people to experience the world and the beauties of it. You can’t do that if you’re sitting at a computer.”

Heathrow's Third Runway: The Battle for Sipson.

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When the Labour government finally dragged its heels from 10 Downing Street in May, one of the most contentious environmental issues of its time appeared to go with it.

Prime Minister David Cameron had barely crossed the threshold in place of the departing Brown, before the coalition government promised it would scrap plans for Heathrow’s third runway – an environmental battlefield in a war that had raged for almost a decade.

The defeated British Airports Authority (BAA) announced it was withdrawing its application soon after.

For the residents of Sipson and Harmondsworth – two villages in west London that lay directly in the path of the proposed project – it was a victory long in the making.

Six months on, it would be expected that any visitor to Sipson would encounter a community bubbling with renewed enthusiasm and vibrancy after losing the dark shadow hanging over their everyday lives.

Instead, it comes as a shock to find the polar opposite. From the jaws of defeat, BAA may yet win an unlikely victory.

A potted history of the conflict reveals the Labour Government first considered building a third runway in 2002. A flawed consultation document eventually followed in 2007, which became the catalyst for heavy-hitters Greenpeace to get directly involved in the campaign to stop Heathrow expansion.

Greenpeace’s Anna Jones reflected on the mood at the time: “The public consultation didn’t allow people to say ‘no, we don’t want it’, but instead said, ‘if we‘re going to build it, how should we build it?’ she recalls.

“The public opposition then really began to develop and it was around that time that we had the idea of Airplot.”

Pulling in a cross-section of political figures, celebrities and environmentalists, Greenpeace trumped the Government’s highly controversial green-lighting of the project in January 2009, by revealing their own purchase of a field directly in the runway’s proposed path.

Christened Airplot, the site soon became a focus for resistance to the runway, both directly and indirectly, with Greenpeace offering the opportunity for people to become beneficial owners of the site.

“In the first week, it was crazy and amazing,” says Jones. “A thousand people an hour were signing up to become owners at one point. And I think it really gave people hope and something concrete to do to stand in the way of the plans.”

Residents too, welcomed Airplot with open arms.

“We wrote to every single person in the village letting them know we were there,” she adds. ”Everyone was very supportive.

“There were some people who were feeling trapped by the blight situation and some who felt they just wanted to give up. But all the work the action groups and Airplot did, really boosted the morale of the local community and made them feel even stronger.”

Also joining the fray were activists Transition Heathrow.

The group swooped on a local derelict market garden site in March 2010 during the height of the fight against the runway and were determined to stay.

After removing 30 tonnes of rubbish and surviving an early court battle by the landowner to remove them, they have transformed the area into Grow Heathrow, which has become a community hub in a short space of time, visited by a number of Sipson’s home owners every day.

Transition Heathrow’s spokesman, Paddy Reynolds, explains: “We wanted to start something in the village that would capture some of the radical energy roused by the third runway campaign.

“They wanted tarmac and planes, and we wanted a sustainable, grass roots level, democratic community, that can look after itself in the face of local and global challenges.

“However, we didn’t want to just storm in,” he explains. “We knew a lot of people in the area through the campaign and spoke to everyone we knew about this site.”

“It had been used by an outfit that got evicted by the council. It was very unpopular, because there were noise abatement orders, illegal scrapping of cars and a lot of rubbish dumped, with people going in and out all the time.

“So we thought, ‘this is a very anti-social site, let’s make it very social. We’ll occupy it, clean it up and turn it into a community market garden’.

“It’s one of the last standing of these old market garden greenhouses, so it’s symbolic.”

Since March, the site has altered beyond recognition, becoming a genuine window into Heathrow’s past as prime arable land.

Airplot too, continues to grow – with a thriving orchard and returning wildlife – and with Greenpeace’s presence in the area now much reduced, Anna Jones believes the village is enjoying some quiet time.

“I think everyone’s very happy now just to be able to live their lives and breathe – which they haven’t been able to do for so many years,” she suggests.

“That’s fair enough when you’ve been at the centre of controversy for so long.”

But the truth appears to be much less rosy.

The centrepiece of the village, the listed, 400-year-old King William IV pub became an unofficial meeting place during the fight for survival, but a Friday lunchtime visit gives the impression that all is not well.

Close to 1pm, the pub is empty. A passer-by drops in for a quick pint and eventually three or four residents drift in. The mood is not optimistic.

Landlord Shaun Walters, after leaving Sipson in 1996, returned to the uncertainty in 2006.

“All that time, it’s been ‘is it or is it not coming’, but certainly in the last four years, it’s been more in the public eye.

“For me, it’s been a nightmare, business-wise. I’ve sold my house today, but when the guy came round to sign off everything, he said there are 32 houses unoccupied, all bought through BAA’s Bond Scheme. Some have been empty for four months, so I’ve lost revenue.

“For the businesses left in the village, it’s just devastation,” he adds. “I can see me being out of business after Christmas.”

And the government-approved Property Market Support Bond Scheme has proved to be BAA’s ace in the pack.

With buyers shunning a potentially doomed village, BAA offered residents a way out with the scheme, buying their properties at 2002 prices.

The coalition’s stance has since led BAA to limit residents to a deadline of June 22 to opt in, but a caveat in their letter advisees residents to continue to register their interest, in case of a future planning application.

And the inescapable irony is that, since the election, many residents have taken up the offer.

The legacy is rows of empty houses, while others are rented on short-term lets to migrant workers who have no stake in the long-term future of the community.

“I think a lot of people had had enough over the last couple of years and just wanted to go,” offers Walters.

“They wanted to go and live the dream somewhere else, and never have the heartache and grief of waking up in the morning, and thinking is it or isn’t it going to happen?

“But the big change is that it’s no longer a community. I don’t know a third of the people in this village now.”

One resident, speaking anonymously, agreed. “It’s dying from the inside,” she said. “I’ve sold my house to BAA. My neighbours have gone. Nobody wants to be here anymore.”

Transition Heathrow’s Reynolds is also well aware of the malaise that is creeping across Sipson.

“The Bond Scheme is self-perpetuating and causes more blight,” he says. “People who have been stuck in their houses for ten years have suddenly been given a small window of opportunity where they can sell at a good market rate at a time when the market’s crashing.

“It’s ‘take it or leave it’ and if you leave it, you might not get a better offer ever again.

“It’s meant that a lot of people have left en masse and that’s not good for any village. It’s especially unhealthy for the power dynamics, because BAA now own a lot of property here.

“The loss of long term residents is not helpful for the general well-being of Sipson. Families who know the history of this village is what binds this place together. That’s been lost.”

And most telling is that a number of people directly involved in the campaign have taken the opportunity to go.

Linda McCutcheon, the former chair of the Harmondsworth and Sipson Residents Association, is perhaps the biggest loss to the area.

“I knew Linda really well,” says Reynolds. “She was tireless in her support of us and anyone opposing the campaign.

“She was also on the committee for the No Third Runway Action Group (NoTRAG) which closed recently, but she’s moved out to enjoy her retirement.

“The previous chair of the residents association had family losses directly related to worsening health and stress caused by campaigning.

“Some of them sacrificed their retirement years, while some of them literally sacrificed their health – and ultimately their lives.

“Fair play to Linda. She deserves it, but the combination of circumstances means that it feels like a big change at the moment and we don’t know how that’ll develop.”

Despite coalition assurances that the third runway is dead in the water, leading Labour figures and business figures are still in favour.

Anna Jones agrees that political circumstances can change, but remains quietly cautious.

“I hope that’s it,” she says. “We will fight tooth and nail if it comes back onto the table because we know it’s a completely bonkers plan.

“If you were to let this go ahead, BAA wouldn’t rule out a sixth and seventh terminal and that’s just ridiculous.

“You can’t just continue to grow and grow and pollute, and take people’s homes away.

“But what we’ve seen with this most recent plan is that now society is mobilised. It knows how to come together and fight together in a united way. That’s why we won and that’s why we’ll continue to win.

“I think we’ve actually turned a corner now and I really don’t believe it’ll go ahead.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the people who live on the airport’s doorstep are more pessimistic.

“I think they’ll get it in the end,” says Shaun Walters. “The third runway will come and this’ll be flattened. No doubt about it.

“There’s been too much money invested. When they were doing Terminal Five, the workmen who came in here said they’d seen plans for Terminal Six and Terminal Seven.

“They’ve had investment offers to build it in the Thames Estuary, but they don’t want to know. They want it here.

“If they’re willing to go through cemeteries, with people still being buried, they want it at all costs.

“At the end of the day, they’ll get all the houses and it’ll be a dead-end village.

Harmondsworth resident, John Power agrees. “They need it. It will happen.

“It’s just a matter of time. It’s all money, jobs, jobs, jobs and people lose their homes because of jobs.”

In the meantime, Transition Heathrow face a microcosm of the bigger picture, as they look to their own future in Sipson.

“We want to secure the site long term, ideally by coming to some agreement. We’ve put in an offer to buy the land, or potentially we may rent it.

“Failing that, we will resist all efforts to get rid of us without any kind of reasonable negotiations.

“We’re confident, and even if we lose, we want to make so much publicity in losing that we set an example not only for this area, but lots of other land-based projects in the communities around Britain.

“It’s a time to hold on tight really, because the shit’s going to hit the fan.”

And that may be a crude, but apt, metaphor for the future of Sipson.

“The Third Runway won’t happen,” says Reynolds emphatically. “The aviation industry is not strong.

“If they had built it, it would have been a complete white elephant.”

“But I think there’ll be renewed applications in a couple of years or less, or with a new government and then it’ll start off again.

“It led to an unprecedented campaign that was like an Iraq-type situation for Gordon Brown. It became a national and international issue.

“It’ll be like a civil war.”

Unfortunately, despite Reynolds’ and Jones’ willingness and readiness to resume the fight, the low morale and BAA’s expanding property portfolio suggests it could be too late for Sipson.

Their enemy are already within the walls.

Al-Qaeda – the New Christians by Ian Hare.

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Human memory is a fragile thing. Experiences of a lifetime shimmer and blur with the passing of the years. Embellished and edited, sometimes fiction can completely replace fact, even in our limited span.

So why is it that roughly a third of the world’s population place their faith and actively worship on the basis on a 2000-year-old adventure story? Especially one that has been rewritten countless times to suit the individual author’s needs.

The Bible. Missionaries have sought to drive its message of the one God into the ‘savages’ of the world, believing that their own centuries-old ways of worshipping were pagan, only fit to be trampled and discarded to make way for the Truth.

Given the message of Brotherhood, wars have been fought, lost and won over its words. And even the Christian churches have been split into factions over the interpretations contained within its pages.

It’s difficult to understand why this is. The Old Testament reads like the collection of Brothers Grimm style folk tales it is, handed down over countless generations. And the New Testament? Either the greatest edit – or PR spin job – there’s ever been.

There’s no reason to doubt the existence of a carpenter’s son named Jesus. In the context of the Roman Empire, it’s plausible to imagine the rise of a charismatic, eloquent speaker, capable of inspiring and influencing a great following.

Given the growing threat to their governance in the Middle East, it’s equally credible that Pontius Pilate, perceiving the growing discord, authorised the crucifixion of the man to snuff out the threat of uprising.

So begins 2000 years of Chinese Whispers.

Whether by accident or by the design of dedicated disciples – allied to constant retelling or rewrites – the story of the life and death of Jesus has taken on mythical proportions.

It’s understandable why the great executed leader could not be allowed to die along with his dream. What better way to keep the fire alive with a convenient resurrection, explained away by elevating the status of the man to nothing less than the Son of God?

Interesting then, that churches have continuously glossed over Joseph and embraced Mary’s virgin birth, courtesy of the Holy Spirit.

Frankly, it’s difficult to think of another anthology with so many contradictions, plot holes and loose ends.

The truth is that extraordinary men can ignite a fervour and passion in ordinary people. The simple, but unpalatable truth to many Christians is that while Jesus Christ was such a man, he was just a man.

Two millennia on, Tony Blair and George Bush reportedly prayed to God together before launching their crusade as the War on Terror.

Meanwhile, a man called Osama Bin Laden continues to fan the flames of revolution in thousands in the Middle East, with the Western powers cast in the role of Rome.

One can only condemn the atrocities committed in Bin Laden’s name, but if these events had happened 2000 years ago, with the distortion of time, it’s ironic that Al-Qaeda may well now be the new Christians.