london mayor attacks israeli, western policies.
The London Mayor must be a moonbat conspiracy theorist nutter as well !
eh Yak,LA,Ypres,Oil ??
////////////////////////////////////////////
London Mayor Attacks Israeli, Western Policies By Patrick Goodenough CNSNews.com International Editor July 21, 2005
(CNSNews.com) - Less than two weeks after Muslim terrorists killed more than 50 people in London, the city's left-wing mayor has caused a storm by blaming terrorism on decades of Western Mideast policies, and he appeared to express an understanding for Palestinian suicide bombers.
If Britons had shared Palestinians' experiences, they too might have resorted to suicide attacks, Ken Livingstone told BBC radio.
"If you have been under foreign occupation, and denied the right to vote, denied the right to run your own affairs, often denied the right to work, for three generations, I suspect if it had happened here in England, we would have produced a lot of suicide bombers ourselves," he said.
Livingstone also stated: "I do not support any suicide bombing. I don't actually ever recall supporting an act of violence."
"I don't just denounce the suicide bombers. I denounce those governments that use indiscriminate slaughter to advance their foreign policy - as we've occasionally seen with the Israeli government bombing areas from which a terrorist group will have come."
A maverick member of Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor Party and an opponent of the Iraq war, the mayor was critical of Guantanamo Bay and what he called Western "double standards."
And he argued that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was a creation of the Americans.
Asked what he blamed for the rise of Islamist radicalism and terrorism, Livingstone replied: "I think we have just had 80 years of Western intervention in predominantly Arab lands because of the Western need for oil. We have propped up unsavory governments, we have overthrown ones that we didn't consider sympathetic.
"I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s the Americans recruited and trained Osama bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs and sent him off to kill the Russians in Afghanistan and they didn't give any thought to the fact that once he'd done that, he might turn on his creators."
At an earlier London press conference, Livingstone also appeared to voice understanding for Palestinian suicide terrorists.
He accused Israel of "horrendous things which border on crimes against humanity," saying it had "indiscriminately slaughtered men, women and children in the West Bank and Gaza for decades."
"Given that the Palestinians don't have jet planes, don't have tanks, they only have their bodies to use as weapons," he was quoted as saying. In that unfair balance, that is what people use."
Livingstone also said he did not distinguish between members of the Likud - one of Israel's two largest political parties - and the Hamas terrorist group.
"The Likud and Hamas members are two sides of the same coin," he charged. "They need each other in order to attract support.""
Livingstone called the press conference amid reports that a controversial Egyptian cleric, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, would be visiting Britain next month at his invitation.
Livingstone, who has backed Qaradawi in the past, again defended the cleric, describing him as a "leading progressive Muslim" who had condemned the London bombings.
Qaradawi has voiced support for Palestinian suicide bombings, calling them justifiable "martyrdom operations." The British government is currently looking at ways to deport, or block entry to, clerics who preach violence.
Britain's main Islamic umbrella body, the Muslim Council of Britain, accused conservative media of trying to smear the reputation of figures like Qaradawi and Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, in a bid to prevent them from visiting the country.
Both men have been prevented in the past from entering the United States.
Livingstone's comments drew strong and widespread reactions, and at least one Conservative politician, Ann Widdecombe, called for his resignation.
"It is outrageous that the same mayor who rightfully condemned the suicide bombing in London as 'perverted faith,' defends those who, under the same extremist banner, kill Israelis," Israel's ambassador to Britain Zvi Heifetz said in a statement.
"To equate a mainstream political party in a democratic state, Israel, with a group that has been labeled terrorist by the European Union, and which advocates the destruction of Israel and its replacement by an Islamic state, is simply beyond comprehension," said American Jewish Committee executive director David Harris.
He said Livingstone seemed "incapable of removing his ideological blinders and seeing things as they are, not as he fancies them to be."
Blair's spokesman said at a Downing Street press briefing that the prime minister and the mayor "have different views of the world and that remains the case."
