UK Telegraph vs. The Washington Post on roots of jihad

Post lifted from Jihad Watch

The Unalienable Right blog (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist) makes an important point by comparing a story from the Washington Post to one from the Telegraph:

From the Washington Post:

Young Muslim Rage Takes Root in Britain, Unemployment, Foreign Policy Fuel Extremism

"...Britain has become an incubator for violent Islamic extremism, fueled by disenchantment at home and growing rage about events abroad, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." .... In one of Europe's largest Muslim communities, young men face a lack of jobs, poor educational achievement and discrimination in a highly class-oriented culture. Prime Minister Tony Blair is the most outspoken ally of President Bush, and their policies in Iraq and Afghanistan are seen by many Muslims as aimed at Islam.

But from the UK Telegraph, contrast the article headlined "University students at centre of terror plots":

The recruitment of Muslim students at British universities to take part in terrorist attacks is at the heart of the alleged plot to blow up passenger jets, it is feared. A dossier of extremist Islamic literature has been uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph on the campus of a north London university, one of whose students has suspected links to the alleged terrorist attack. Waheed Zaman, 22, a bio-chemistry student and the president of the Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University, was one of 24 people arrested last week. Material found at two portable buildings used by the society includes documents advocating jihad and a pamphlet on how to deal with approaches from the security services....

Extremist Muslim groups had been detected at more than 20 institutions, both former polytechnics and long-established universities, over the past 15 years, Prof Glees said.... According to security sources, "several" of the 23 people still in custody over the alleged plot last week are suspected of links to universities, appearing to confirm growing fears that campuses are providing Britain's biggest security threat.

So which is it? Are they poor and uneducated, or relatively well-off university students? As the Unalienable Right blog goes on to point out, the Post is simply repeating the old poverty-causes-jihad myth, and if the facts are otherwise, so much the worse for the facts.

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PLUSH HEAD OFFICES FOR PROGRAM DESIGNED TO HELP THE POOR

Across the country, the neighborhood offices of the Legal Services Corp. - where one out of every two poor Americans is turned down for help because the agency lacks resources - are a far cry from the federal program's headquarters. Documents obtained by The Associated Press detail the luxuries that executives of Legal Services have given themselves with federal money - from $14 "Death by Chocolate" desserts to $400 chauffeured rides to locations within cab distance of their offices.

"I don't think that's right," Taylor said, as he walked from the program's inner city legal clinic in the nation's capital, covering his head with a towel to protect himself from the searing summer heat. "They're depriving some others that really need it and that's not good. ... It's supposed to be about the people."

The government-funded corporation boasts a spacious headquarters in Washington's swank Georgetown district - with views of the Potomac River and a rent significantly higher than other tenants in the same building. And board members wrote themselves a policy that doubled the amount they could claim for meals compared with their staff.

Legal Services is a nonprofit corporation run with federal money that was created by Congress to provide legal help in civil matters for Americans who can't afford their own lawyers. It funds neighborhood clinics across the country where lawyers provide such help. Three congressional committees have questioned the program's spending as has the corporation's own internal watchdog. The chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee is threatening to withhold future money if the corporation doesn't trim its extravagance. "It's waste and abuse," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, citing the board's doubling of the meal money as an example. "At 200 percent, it seems to me what we would call in Iowa living high off the hog." ...

The scrutiny of Legal Services' spending comes as the corporation says it doesn't have enough resources to meet many poor clients' needs. Legal Services' own study found last October that for every client who receives service, one applicant is turned away because there are not enough resources to help. Since that study counted only those who contacted the program for assistance, the corporation said it likely underestimated the unmet need.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Illegal immigrant crime: "Iowa's United States Congressman Steve King told a crowd in Des Moines in June, "Illegal aliens cause the death of 25 American citizens every day...13 by drunken driving and 12 by stabbings or gun fire." That daily figure adds up to 9,125 deaths annually caused primarily by illegal alien Mexicans residing in America. Mike Rosen, radio talk show host in Denver, said it wasn't significant when you consider our country of 300 million. A listener corrected him, "It's not significant unless it's your father or family member who gets killed." ... What can be done to stop it? First, lay the blame directly on the shoulders of President George Walker Bush. Any man worth his salt after 9/11 would have sent troops to the borders and closed them to illegal entry on 9/12. For crying out loud! Three thousand innocent people died that day-specifically because of non immigration enforcement!"

No escaping it: "The number of immigrants living in American households rose 16 percent over the last five years, fueled largely by recent arrivals from Mexico, according to fresh data released by the Census Bureau. And increasingly, immigrants are bypassing the traditional gateway states like California and New York and settling directly in parts of the country that until recently saw little immigrant activity -- regions like the Upper Midwest, New England and the Rocky Mountain States."

Bungling British bureaucracy again: "Police are investigating how a 12-year-old boy with neither a passport nor a boarding pass was able to walk on to an international flight at Gatwick at a time when security staff were supposed to be on high alert. The child, who had run away from a care home, boarded a plane bound for Portugal early on Monday, even though security had been raised amid fears of a terrorist attack".

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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