I Don't Fear Real Terrorists, Just Smart Ones

With its finger ever on the pulse of European news, the BBC Ten tonight reported the arrest in September(!) of a German convert to Islam on terror charges. But this was no ordinary arrest in the psyche of the War On Terror, because Fritz Gelowicz was the quarterback for the Ulm Barracudas. Between the home-grown element and the embracing of that quintessentially American sport, everyone appears to be thoroughly shocked.

I wish I was.

As a student with some peripheral involvement in student politics, I knew many people who spent their weekends trotting off to Fairford, Faslane or Fylingdales to chain themselves to a man in a plastic whale costume. This struck me as an awful lot of effort to get onto an American base, because I had a way into one anyway.

The Menwith Hill Patriots are one of the most successful baseball teams in Britain, which is perhaps unsurprising given that they are made up of American servicemen at the listening station there and thus might be considered to have an advantage. More importantly, their home field is ever so slightly at RAF Menwith Hill itself;

So I'm not in the least shocked that Islamist militants might be trying to get into American sports. If anything, I'm surprised it's taken them so long...