Media laps up Muslims Against Crusades stunt
You may have heard of the professional extremist Muslim agitator Anjem Choudhary.
Over the years he has set up various front-groups such as Al-Muhajiroun, Al-Ghuraaba and Islam4UK.
The latest one is called Muslims Against Crusades.
These were the same people who threatened to march in Wootton Basset against British soldiers, throwing the entire media go into a frenzy, before backing out at the last minute.
Yesterday they organised another stunt. They called up various media outlets and told them that they would be burning Red Poppies.
You can probably guess what happens next: once again the media has gone into a frenzy of outrage.
Is there any other group of 40 extremists who are given so much publicity? I can’t think of one.
All they have to do is issue a press release and there’s a media scrum.
And of course, there’s the resulting outrage against all British Muslims.
Someone set up a page on Facebook Page yesterday titled: ‘Let’s show these poppy burning bastards how many people want them deported‘ (it seems to have been taken down now) – with about a quarter of a million people joining within hours.
The way the media laps up this minuscule group of publicity-hungry idiots is beyond absurd.
‘Gay porn’: an apology
I’ve decided to take down the story of the Conservative councillor under investigation for pornographic images, posted on LC Wednesday night.
Contrary to popular opinion, I do care what a lot of our regular and loyal readers have to say (Cath Elliott, Dawn Foster, Ellie Mae, Sugar The Pill et al expressed a lot of anger) and I think an explanation is in order.
Unity has contributed to LC since it was launched three years ago and is one of the very few who has direct publishing privileges to the site. He published it and accepts the wording was an error of judgement. I have been reading Unity’s stuff for over five years and know he would the last person to be intentionally homophobic. To me that is beyond dispute.
I was at an event last night and got back around midnight, after which I posted a glib comment saying people were taking it the wrong way.
I edited the post to take out what some objected to, and posted an apology to our Twitter account early in the morning yesterday.
On reflection I think many were right to say the subject itself was more the style of Guido Fawkes than Libcon.
We frequently publish opposing views on here and many of them don’t reflect my own. My job as editor is to try and reflect left-wing views even if others don’t like them.
But I am responsible if someone posts an article construed (rightly or wrongly) as bigoted or it doesn’t fit into the editorial.
I should have made the call to take it down last night when I got back, and for that I apologise.
The Occupation of Milbank: what the press missed
contribution by Arthur Baker
Marching along Milbank the word went round: “that’s Tory HQ!” soon, hundereds of protesters rushed towards the building.
It was completely undefended, and it took the protesters all of about 15 seconds to break through into the lobby. A minute later, a few police tried to block the doors to stop anyone getting in or out but to little avail. They were hugely outnumbered, and their raised batons did little to stop protesters.
Some once inside simply walked upstairs, went through a fire exit and onto the roof, others entered offices and smashed windows from inside, whilst others sprayed graffiti, smashed up the lobby, and generally caused trouble.
continue reading… »
#TwitterJokeTrial defendant found guilty!
David Allen Green has already posted this on Twitter, but here’s the Guardian story:
The man convicted of ‘menace’ for threatening to blow up an airport in a Twitter joke has lost his appeal.
Paul Chambers, a 27-year-old accountant whose online courtship with another tweeter led to the “foolish prank”, had hoped that a crown court would dismiss his conviction and £1,000 fine without a full hearing.
But Judge Jacqueline Davies instead handed down a devastating finding at Doncaster which dismissed Chambers’ appeal on every count. After reading out his Tweet – “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” – she found it contained menace and that Chambers must have known that it might be taken seriously.
Chambers, who lost his financial manager’s job after his arrest in January, sent the message to a contact called Crazycolours, a young woman from Northern Ireland who was among 650 people who regularly followed his 140-character tweets.
Completely absurd.
If you want to help fund their appeal, here is the link.
Reactions on Twitter:
My battery is dying. We are gutted. It’s not the fine, this is stopping Paul getting a job and has ruined his life. #twitterjoketrial
@pauljchambers My offer still stands. Whatever they fine you, I’ll pay x #twitterjoketrial
Perhaps all the people angry at the #twitterjoketrial can take an interest in rape victim sent to jail? http://bit.ly/cr3pJP
Struggling to understand how the CPS found a case about a joke and airport, but didn’t regarding Ian Tomlinson? #TwitterJokeTrial
Were he alive, assume JGBallard would be due in dock for his menacing 1968 shortstory ‘Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan’ #twitterjoketrial
No offence everyone, but I think this is all preaching to the converted. We need to take our anger tonight’s outlets. #twitterjoketrial
The Elephant in IDS’s Room
Watching Iain Duncan Smith doing the morning sofa circuit today, perhaps the most striking thing about his pitch for universal credits that ‘make work pay’ is the bland acceptance of his reponse when asked the $64,000 question – where are all the jobs going to come from?
The market, according to IDS, will provide, a mantra that been blindly repeated by politicians of all parties for the last thirty years even in the face of concrete evidence that, for many people in Britain, the market has actually failed to do anything of the sort.
To illustrate just one of the problems that politicians have been steadfastly ignoring for the last 30 years, let’s look at some of that evidence… continue reading… »
The trouble with student vanguardism
Some of the kids bricking the plate glass windows at Tory HQ yesterday will be the sons and daughters of those of us who engaged in similar argy-bargy in the miners’ strike and the campaign against the poll tax. The small minority of extremists – as we liked to be known in those days, of course – are back in town.
Media reports, not to mention the organisers, happily put the blame on a ‘breakaway contingent of hotheads’. There are some lovely photos on the Torygraph website of suitably menacing hoodies brandishing stolen cricket bats, accompanied by quotes threatening to smash up more buildings and cussin’ out SWSS for being too wussy.
Despite being physically weedy, somewhat short-sighted, and an absolute liability in a punch-up, I was once a student hothead, too. You only need a couple of hundred of us and – let the state be in no illusions about this! – we are more than capable of organising civil disobedience. So long as it doesn’t clash with our seminars, you understand.
So it was that I participated in a sit-down protest outside South Africa House, purposely instigated and organised by a man who remains prominent on the far left to this day. We were the ones who got nicked when things got a bit heavy, while he stood several hundred yards away, barking orders down one of those early mobile phones.
I don’t suppose that what I did that day materially hastened the downfall of apartheid, or indeed had any particular impact beyond pissing off a lot of motorists as we brought gridlock to the streets around Trafalgar Square. But hey, it made me feel good about myself.
I also know that it isn’t always the troublemakers that kick off the trouble. If you want to be pedantic about it, the violence outside Fortress Wapping in February 1986 was triggered by ‘missiles’ being thrown at the police. We are not talking ICBMs here; in this connection, the word chiefly denotes the sticks used to carry placards.
The reality was that the cops had come tooled up and were looking for a scrap, and seized on an something that could reasonably have been expected as a pretext to wade into the crowd on horseback and knock seven shades out of the picketers.
As a retired rioter myself, I am in no position to be censorious. But the test of any tactic is its contribution to the desired political outcome. Stopping the coalition’s plans for mass unemployment and the end of the welfare state as we know it will require more than barging into the offices of the Conservative Party and trashing a few PCs.
It will require mass mobilisations not just of 50,000 people, but 500,000 and more, backed up with industrial action involving millions of organised workers in refusing to implement the cuts. Those of us arguing for such a strategy are starting from a position of weakness.
The leadership of both the trade unions and the Labour Party – and as far as I can make out, every other significant organisation in civil society – accepts the need for the cuts in principle, and quibble only over the details.
Violence of the type that occurred at Millbank yesterday – however emotionally satisfying for the participants – will not make it easier to make that case.
Remembrance Day and pacifism
contribution by Elizannie
Every year I go through the ‘Should I buy/wear a poppy? Will it honour the dead or glorify war?’ debate in my mind. I have ranged through buying red poppies and wearing/not wearing them, buying white poppies and wearing/not wearing them, buying white and red poppies and wearing both.
This year there have been debates in the media about when is an appropriate time to start wearing poppies [red] and whether those on TV are wearing them just because they have been told to.
Enough!
continue reading… »
Diane Abbott speaks out against Woolas
Labour MP Diane Abbott yesterday spoke out strongly in support of Harriet Harman and against Phil Woolas.
In a comment posted in response to an article by Dan Hodges at the Guardian, she said:
Dan Hodges is so anxious to defend Phil Woolas that he is missing the point. Phil is not a martyr, or a scapegoat or anybody’s fall guy. He has been convicted of lying about his election opponent’s character. And Phil has certainly enjoyed due process. No fewer than two high court judges deliberated over his case at length. Precisely because they were two high court judges there is no right of appeal.
The judicial review that Woolas is seeking is NOT the same as a right of appeal and relates to the process not the finding of fact. Unlike Dan I believe that, if this judicial finding discourages parliamentary candidates from attacking their opponent’s character (as opposed to their policies), that will be a good thing. Nor does Dan recognise that although he (as a Westminster insider) may be blase about politicians lying, the public hates the idea and will welcome any judicial check on it.
It is perfectly possible to be sympathetic to Woolas and his family but still accept that Harriet Harman was right in the stand that she took.
The courts did not take into account the nature of the campaign Woolas was waging.http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/gallery/2010/nov/05/phil-woolas-campaign-literature But the email trail disclosed to the court reveals that the leaflets were not the product of an over-enthusiastic volunteer. The were part of a conscious strategy to enrage white voters and frighten them into voting Labour.
Is that a responsible path for an experienced MP to go down in a town that had already experienced race riots? And even if the courts did not (and could not) take that aspect into account; it weighs with many of us.
The loyalty of Phil Woolas’s friends does them credit. But they need to try and see this how the public does. The Labour Party should never get involved in the politics of racial division. And although lying about your opponents (both inside and outside the party) may be commonplace to Dan, it is a way of doing politics that the public loathes and the party should be moving away from.
Well said Diane.
The student protests were only the beginning of a tidal wave
If you absorb the media today, the only story to report from yesterday is that “riots” took place and Tory staffers were bravely dealing with the German Luftwaffe some students prone to throwing things with “the Blitz spirit“.
Tories and Libdems might look at the papers and rejoice, but they would be wise to think twice. That generation of student’s isn’t going to forget this betrayal easily and in five years time they’ll be ready to punish both parties.
As I said earlier – there are reasons why the Tories failed to win an outright majority at the election, and much of that relates to the negative connotations it built up in the past. I’m glad they’re once again playing to the “nasty party” stereotype.
continue reading… »
Clegg regrets signing tuition fees pledge
Nick Clegg today told ITV’s Daybreak programme that he “should have been more careful” about signing the pre-election pledge opposing any increase in tuition fees.
File that under ‘No Shit Sherlock’ news.
He said he thought at the time he could have put it into practice.
But, apparently, compromises had to be made as part of the coalition deal.
He added the planned changes were better than the existing regime and would help generations of “poor bright kids” go to university.
This time he really means that, honestly.
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