London Cops Cope With Woolwich Savagery--By Silencing Some of Its Online Critics

Can't have anyone saying anything nasty about certain problematic aspects of an inherently peaceful faith. That would be, you know, mean and hateful:

Police have reported several arrests since Wednesday. Benjamin Flatters, 22, from Lincoln, was arrested on Thursday after complaints were made to Lincolnshire police about comments made on Twitter that were allegedly of a racisut (sic) or anti-religious nature. 

A second man was visited by officers and warned about his activity on social media, according to the police. 

The charge comes after two men in Bristol were arrested and released on bail for making alleged offensive comments on Twitter about the murder. A 23-year-old and a 22-year-old, both from Bristol, were held under the Public Order Act on suspicion of inciting racial or religious hatred. 

Detective Inspector Ed Yaxley of Avon and Somerset police said: "These comments were directed against a section of our community. Comments such as these are completely unacceptable and only cause more harm to our community in Bristol."

Flatters made "anti-religious" comments? Doesn't Richard Dawkins, for one, do that all the time? I don't see the coppers slapping the cuffs on him. ;)

As for so-called unacceptable comments causing more harm--when a couple of homegrown jihadis disembowel a young drummer boy in broad daylight in a London neighbourhood, isn't it natural--and healthy--for people to vent about it? What's "completely unacceptable" isn't the natural venting. It's authorities' attitude to it--that all will be well if only, post-butchery, we can all get back to page 2 in the "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" songbook.

Oh, and slaughter in the name of Islam's sky deity: that's completely unacceptable, too.

Update: Steyn says:

Not a lot of Muslims want to go to the trouble of chopping your head off, but when so many Western leaders have so little rattling around up there, they don’t have to. And, as we know from the sob-sister Tsarnaev profiles, most of these excitable lads are perfectly affable, or at least no more than mildly alienated, until the day they set a hundred cars alight, or blow up a school boy, or decapitate some guy. And, if you’re lucky, it’s not you they behead, or your kid they kill, or even your Honda Civic they light up. And so life goes on, and it’s all so “mundane,” in Simon Jenkins’s word, that you barely notice when the Jewish school shuts up, and the gay bar, and the uncovered women no longer take a stroll too late in the day, and the publishing house that gets sent the manuscript for the next Satanic Verses decides it’s not worth the trouble. . . . But don’t worry, they’ll never defeat our “free speech” and our “way of life.”

In other words: worry. Worry like crazy. Worry, because if you don't "free speech" and "our way of life" are a goner.