| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Armed Police swarming around Virgin Active area. | |
| Posted by: | Jeremy Parkinson | |
| Date/Time: | 30/11/22 09:29:00 |
| The 'so what' Ed is that workers in the business park have become sucked in to the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran. These two countries are engaged in a number of proxy conflicts already across the Middle East in which thousands of people are dying. From the Iranian government perspective the Saudi owned television station is a weapon in this conflict and if so it is proving to be a very effective one. They would make a case that striking against it would not be a terrorist act as this is a state vs state conflict. Nobody is suggesting that the workers in the development are not protected so your bringing up of the Rushdie case suggests you haven't really grasped what the problem is here. Obviously the taxpayer will need to foot the bill for what is going on here although other costs such as the cancellation of Christmas events will fall on companies within the development. We have found ourselves in this situation because our foreign policy is based on the assumption that the Saudis are less bad than the Iranians. Therefore we tolerate their propaganda operations on our soil whereas we have closed the Iranian Press TV operation and we would never accept an Iranian owned TV station producing programming for a Saudi audience encouraging them to over throw the Crown Prince. What may need to change is that the licensing of these stations should now forbid the use of this country for a base for propaganda as a weapon of war. Fine if domestic opposition groups want to broadcast channels critical of their own government but not if one state is using the media to undermine another state as a weapon of war. If we were hosting Saudi artillery in Chiswick Business Park that was pointed at Tehran we would accept that we had wilfully exposed ourself to extra risk. What is happening that we are hosting a weapon that could be far more deadly to the regime than any big gun. |