Megrahi welcomed home

Despite what we wrote yesterday, when we were favourable concerning the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, we were as disturbed as anyone else to see him receive a hero's welcome when he arrived back in his homeland of Libya.

Megrahi received a hero's welcome upon his return to Libya. In the bottom right can be seen one of the many Scottish flags waved by those who greeted him - where the hell do you buy Scottish flags in Libya?

Right now, many Muslims unfortunate enough to live in those nations where the population must depend of state-controlled media for their news and information will view anything that appears to show Muslims "getting one over the Yanks" in a good light - many of those who greeted him on the tarmac yesterday would not claim to support Megrahi's actions which resulted in 270 deaths.

Do they even realise this is what he has done? Or could it be the case that Gaddafi's regime - which in recent years has decided to pretend it's friendly towards the west (and being the oil-whores we are, we believe them) - has not been entirely truthful when saying how many people died that night in 1988? Could it be that Megrahi's case has been subject to political spin, calculated to make the Libyan people see him as a political prisoner and a hero in Islam's struggle against the Great and Little Satans? After all, if you as a leader can get the population so riled up about something they become obsessed with it, they'll ignore whatever injustices are being committed closer to home (hmm - could that be why the main parties have chosen to neglect British concerns over immigration, perhaps? Maybe immigrants provide a convenient scapegoat for the public to blame everything on, rather than starting to realise the reason our country is in such a state is because of the gross negligance and incompetance of its leaders). For a man like Gaddafi, with the shocking human rights abuses that go on in his country, there'd be definite advantages in that. Is he really our friend? The UK and US governments would be wise to be very wary indeed in their dealings with Gaddafi.

Either way, we're just happy to see that the Scottish Government has the balls to run Scotland in the way that they see fit, rather than bending over backwards to do whatever Uncle Sam demands, like the UK Government show such willingness to do.

One thing though - it was noticeable that quite a few people amongst the crowd that turned out to welcome Megrahi home were flying the Saltire, the national flag of Scotland. What we want to know is, where the hell did they get them from? These were not flags made out a stick, a sheet of A4 and the kids' felt-tip pens; they were proper, professionally-made, correctly-hued cloth ones. Were they imported from Uganda, once Idi Amin lost his presidency in 1979 and his collection of Scottish stuff was sold off, then stored until the right moment? Is there a compnay that keeps a careful eye on the news and fills a fast container ship with whichever flags are about to be in the news and heads for the relevant nation at a high rate of knots - and if so, were they behind the inexplicably large numbers of Danish flags that were burned in the Middle East following the publication of satirical cartoons depicting Allah by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper? Or is there, bizarrely, a shop down some backstreet in Tripoli that sells Saltires? In the latter case, some businessman who has previously suffered what must be among the lowest sales figures ever recorded by any company is going to retire as a very rich man fairly soon.

Lockerbie bomber to be released

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, who was jailed for life in 2001 after being found guilty of the 1988 atrocity in which an aircraft was blown up and 270 people killed, is to be released from prison on compassionate grounds after courts heard that he has three months to live.

Acid Rabbi probably ought to apologise for the gross stereotyping in this image. But we're not going to.

The US government has opposed his release every step of the way, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally urging the Scottish Justice Secretary to keep him in jail. However, it seems that those politicians who choose to remain in Scotland rather than hoofing it down to the bright lights of London have backbones of their own, are prepared to stand up to the Americans and make their own decisions about what happens in their own nation, unlike Blair (born in Edinburgh) and Brown (Glasgow) who are more than happy to let them walk all over us and demand extradition of British citizens virtually on a whim. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said, "Our interest is justice, and our interest is the commitment that we made to the families that we would find the perpetrator of this terrorism act...He was brought to trial. He had a fair trial. He was convicted. He's serving his time. And we think he should stay in jail," adding that there are "compelling reasons" why he should do so.

"Mr al-Megrahi did not show his victims any comfort or compassion," says Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, "They were not allowed to return to the bosom of their families to see out their lives, let alone their dying days. No compassion was shown by him to them. But that alone is not a reason for us to deny compassion to him and his family in his final days." Mr. MasAskill, it seems, is that rare thing - a politician who understands that revenge has no place in justice and that in showing compassion and mercy we make ourselves better human beings than those who do not. One of the reasons we invaded Iraq - assuming it was not in fact because we need their oil - was to rid that nation's people of a tyrant who carried out public execution on a vast scale. By hanging Saddam, and then showing the horrific footage on television, in the eyes of many Iraqis we made ourselves look little better than him - perhaps England and the USA could learn a valuable lesson from the Scottish and realise that if the people of Iraq and Afghanistan are to accept democracy, we democrats need show compassion in our ways so that they're aware of democracy's advantages. Right now, all they can see is that one load of vicious, torturing tyrants have been replaced by another load of vicious, torturing tyrants that differ from the old ones only in that they're foreign.

Mr. MacAskill added, "Compassion and mercy are about upholding the beliefs the we seek to live by, remaining true to our values as a people - no matter the severity of the provocation or the atrocity perpetrated. For these reasons and these reasons alone, it is my decision that Mr Mr Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, convicted in 2001 for the Lockerbie bombing, now terminally ill with prostate cancer, be released on compassionate grounds and be allowed to return to Libya to die." Libyan Megrahi will be flown by a specially chartered plane to Tripoli today, following a decision that he cannot remain in Scotland for security reasons.

Now - isn't it a pity that Glasgow-born Asperger's Syndrome sufferer Gary McKinnon was living in England when he naively hacked NASA and Pentagon computers while looking for information on UFOs and later e-mailed them alerting them to the weak spots in their security? Had his case have been dealt with by the Scottish government and legal system, he might not now been facing the extradition that doctors fear is likely to lead to his suicide.

Scots Police lead UK forces in recruiting ethnic minorities

Police forces throughout the United Kingdom are still desperately trying to improve the public's perception of them in the wake of an enquiry that found they were riddled with what it referred to as "institutional racism" after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a young black man in London. In an effort to alleviate such accusations, they have been actively attempting to recruit members from ethnic minorities with varying degrees of success. One force that has been particularly proactive is that of Strathclyde in Scotland, where officers from non-British white backgrounds now make up almost 30% of the entire membership.

"Here at the Strathclyde Police, we realise that it is in both our own and the public's interests that we represent a cross-section of Scotland's vibrant, modern, multicultural society," says Chief Superintendent Bruce Robertson, "and as such we welcome applicants from any ethnic background." So successful has the policy been that Robertson's force now has black, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh and - uniquely amongst British police forces - even Jedi officers, the latter being especially welcome after the 2001 Census revealed that 2.6% of Strathclyde's population are followers of the monastic, non-theistic religion that has its roots in the Old Republic.

"It hae been oor experience tha' Jedi make excellent polis officers," Robertson says. "They hae a long tradition of piss-kipping and battling against whit they call the Dark Side - which seems tae include criminals, holligans and the like. Basically, all we hae tae dae is persuade them tae wield a truncheon in place of a lightsabre, stick a helmet on their heads and they're ready tae gae. Historically, they have also adhered tae a strict hierarchical system of rank, which means they fit right in with oor ain system."

However, Jedi officers have not been accepted by all members of the public. Acid Rabbi spoke to one citizen who is not so keen. "Noo, I don't want tae come across as a racist," said the man, who wishes to remain anonymous, "and I hae naething against the Jedi personally - I mean, they seem tae be a law-abiding and peaceful bunch, and thanks tae them the cornershops are open till 11 of a nicht which can be very useful; but I dae think Scoatish police officers should be Scoatish, and should speak proper Scoats. A lot of people hae difficulty in understanding the Jedi's accents. We have one of them who patrols round my area and none of us can really follow whit he's saying, which was never a problem when we had PC McPatel before he got transferred tae Edinburgh."

"Good for Jedi is employment in police force," Constable Yoda, who has been a member of Strathclyde Police for two years, told Acid Rabbi. "Hard-working and honest are Jedi. No longer living a long time ago in far, far away galaxy, some of noble Jedi order have Glasgow as their home now chosen. Right it is that we take active part in organisation and protection of society."