Trooper Thompson refers to this ‘terrorism’ story from the peculiar Infowars.com which says that
…FBI informants were the key figures behind the operation and that the accused, six foreign-born Muslims, were merely bungling patsies.
I am always reminded by all of the present ‘terrorism’ business (for business it undoubtedly is) of Tom Sharpe’s Riotous Assembly, which is about what Hunter Thompson would have called ‘an outback nazi law enforcement agency’ in the unreformed South Africa, which plants an agent provocateur in what it believes to be a terrorist organisation, with a view to inducing that body to commit a terrorist act so blatant and atrocious that they will all be hanged.
Of course it emerges with an elegant inevitability (plot spoiler follows) that every single member of the ‘terrorist’ organisation is a police agent of some kind, and that there never were any real terrorists at all.
Hegel allegedly said ‘We learn from history that nobody ever learns from history.’ Of course Sharpe’s novel is not history. Would things be any different if it were?
* Just read the damn book, willya?
I just found your blog and will definitely be back. Nice work. Thank you. I’m going to add a link on my blog at
http://www.foodhere.wordpress.com
If you visit the site and are horrified by the content let me know and I will cut you free.
Riotous Assembly is one of my favourite Tom Sharpe books. Though Ancestral Vices is up there too.
All the best. Ram
Thank you, Ram. I have created a link category for your blog, it is called ‘Independent Thought’.
My favourite Sharpe book is ‘The Throwback’; I find its hero to be a character to whom I can relate.