Oh, that British humour.

A columnist with the 72-year-old U.K. Labour magazine Tribune -- incidentally in the shaky midst of being sold -- ponders the implications of President-elect Barack Obama's Christmas message and predicts possible widespread retributions.

Chris Proctor writes:

Our great English king and crusader, the Lionhearted Richard, felt the need to explain to the heathens that he was strict as well as fair. Accordingly, one morning in Al Ayadiyeh in 1191, he fetched out 3,000 odd prisoners, all bound with ropes, and had his chaps run swords and lances through the lot of them.
...
OK. I know it's late in the day to start criticising King Dick. I just worry in case Barack Obama gets to hear about it. Why? Because in his Christmas message, the President-elect said he intended to end the "war on terror" where it started. This worries me. He could think it's us. Suppose Obama considers murdering innocent citizens in pursuit of political and religious gain to be terrorism? Because that's what the king of England was up to in the 12th century.

Supposing, Proctor says, Obama decides to bomb the U.K for a litany of ill deeds over the years? Or maybe he'll bomb the U.S. -- for Vietnam, for example. Or:

[S]ome tactics used against the native Indians were pretty close to terrorism, unless we discount burning sleeping villages, the 188 Wiyot Indians murdered in Humboldt Country or that time in Marias when 173 Piegan Indians were killed?

Read the whole curious piece .