General politics discussion thread

[Joe_the_Lion]

So you agree that your 'response' to Kenny wasn't actually adressing any points he'd made, you were simply following on from his reasonable point with your own imaginings of what would happen.

 

Thats right Joe.

 

You win the argument. Do you want a shiny badge?

 

 

Yep.And once you've finished shining it you can turn it sideways...............................

[David]

Yep.And once you've finished shining it you can turn it sideways...............................

 

Good darts Joseph.

[bobbins]

Nick Griffin is a lunatic racist scumbag. He deserves a far greater degree of aggressive questioning because his policies, attitudes, public statements, aims and goals are either inhuman, wrong or both.

 

Fantastic idea. We will likely follow up that "aggressive questioning" that is reserved only for him by having various members of the crowd shout & jeer when he speaks.

 

The result will be a television show featuring the presenters, fellow guests and crowd all heckling one man.

 

I'm sure that will show him up for the "lunatic racist scumbag" that he is, and will definately make sure that the public don't feel any kind of sympathy for him or his party.

I agree. It runs the risk of turning into a circus and that is no way of intelligently bringing down his policies and ideals. Intelligent and impartial debate would better serve destroying the man and the party.

FFS has everyone got me on ignore?

[David]

FFS has everyone got me on ignore?

 

Of course not lad.

 

We are reading what you post, it's just that some of us are choosing to dismiss it totally.

[bobbins]

FFS has everyone got me on ignore?

 

Of course not lad.

 

We are reading what you post, it's just that some of us are choosing to dismiss it totally.

...based on your desire to vent fury at an incident that not only hasn't happened yet, but is 99% certain to never happen. Carry on twatty.

[David]

...based on your desire to vent fury at an incident that not only hasn't happened yet, but is 99% certain to never happen. Carry on twatty.

 

Take it easy mate. I'm not "venting fury" at anything. I seriously couldn't give a fuck if some Romanian nutcase smuggled a gun into the venue and shot Griffin right in the skull.

 

I've said before that I find the BNP, and the media/left wing circus that follows them to be interesting.

[hemme]

...based on your desire to vent fury at an incident that not only hasn't happened yet, but is 99% certain to never happen. Carry on twatty.

 

Take it easy mate. I'm not "venting fury" at anything. I seriously couldn't give a fuck if some Romanian nutcase smuggled a gun into the venue and shot Griffin right in the skull.

 

I've said before that I find the BNP, and the media/left wing circus that follows them to be interesting.

 

^ A Racist!

 

Ahhh nah jusy fuckin' with you, I mean all fucking about aside, we need to tackle immigration, we do, needs sorting out, thats not being racist, it's being sensible.

Fuck the BNP, they don't speak for the normal, average British bloke, but the top parties need to sort their shit out to stop these fuckheads getting support on something people feel strongly about.

 

Innit?

[Vito]

Dimbles: "The BNP are opposed to same sex marriages"

Griffin: "No we're not opposed to same sex marriages"

Dimbles: "Well on your website it says you are"

Griffin: "It doesn't say that on our website at all"

Dimbles "Yes it does because I'm quoting directly from it now"

Griffin "..................Yes it does say that on our website but...."

(Studio guest off camera tries to stifle her laughter).

This is exactly the reason why undesirables like the BNP should get TV time.

[Dynamite Duane]

I take it's the party conferences next week? The year before last I popped along the Labour one in Bournemouth. Didn't get in the main thing but mooched around and went to a fringe event where I saw good ol' Red Ken

[Kenny McBride]

Nick Griffin is a lunatic racist scumbag. He deserves a far greater degree of aggressive questioning because his policies, attitudes, public statements, aims and goals are either inhuman, wrong or both.

 

Fantastic idea. We will likely follow up that "aggressive questioning" that is reserved only for him by having various members of the crowd shout & jeer when he speaks.

 

The result will be a television show featuring the presenters, fellow guests and crowd all heckling one man.

 

I'm sure that will show him up for the "lunatic racist scumbag" that he is, and will definately make sure that the public don't feel any kind of sympathy for him or his party.

I agree. It runs the risk of turning into a circus and that is no way of intelligently bringing down his policies and ideals. Intelligent and impartial debate would better serve destroying the man and the party.

FFS has everyone got me on ignore?

 

Who said that?

[Chest Rockwell]

The dude who threw his shoe at Bush has been released. Here's the speech he gave.. I've not seen this reported on any mainstream news as yet, so I thought I'd put this in here as a bit of an FYI.

 

Good speech... Watching back the incident after reading this, Bush's little smirk as he dodges the shoe is pretty sickening in the context of this speech..

 

 

Link

 

My Flower to Bush, the Occupier: The Story of My Shoe

By MUTADHAR al-ZAIDI

 

Mutadhar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi who threw his shoe at George Bush gave this

speech on his recent release:

 

In the name of God, the most gracious and most merciful. Here I am, free.

But my country is still a prisoner of war.

 

Firstly, I give my thanks and my regards to everyone who stood beside me,

whether inside my country, in the Islamic world, in the free world. There

has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it,

and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act.

 

But, simply, I answer: What compelled me to confront is the injustice that

befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by

putting it under its boot.

 

And how it wanted to crush the skulls of (the homeland's) sons under its

boots, whether sheikhs, women, children or men. And during the past few

years, more than a million martyrs fell by the bullets of the occupation and

the country is now filled with more than 5 million orphans, a million widows

and hundreds of thousands of maimed. And many millions of homeless because

of displacement inside and outside the country.

 

We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and

the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And

the Shiite would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would

celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ, may peace be upon him.

And despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than 10

years, for more than a decade.

 

Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. Until

we were invaded by the illusion of liberation that some had. (The

occupation) divided one brother from another, one neighbor from another, and

the son from his uncle. It turned our homes into never-ending funeral tents.

And our graveyards spread into parks and roadsides. It is a plague. It is

the occupation that is killing us, that is violating the houses of worship

and the sanctity of our homes and that is throwing thousands daily into

makeshift prisons.

 

I am not a hero, and I admit that. But I have a point of view and I have a

stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated. And to see my Baghdad

burned. And my people being killed. Thousands of tragic pictures remained in

my head, and this weighs on me every day and pushes me toward the righteous

path, the path of confrontation, the path of rejecting injustice, deceit and

duplicity. It deprived me of a good night's sleep.

 

Dozens, no, hundreds, of images of massacres that would turn the hair of a

newborn white used to bring tears to my eyes and wound me. The scandal of

Abu Ghraib. The massacre of Fallujah, Najaf, Haditha, Sadr City, Basra,

Diyala, Mosul, Tal Afar, and every inch of our wounded land. In the past

years, I traveled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain

of the victims, and hear with my own ears the screams of the bereaved and

the orphans. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I

was powerless.

 

And as soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily

tragedies of the Iraqis, and while I washed away the remains of the debris

of the ruined Iraqi houses, or the traces of the blood of victims that

stained my clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our

victims, a pledge of vengeance.

 

The opportunity came, and I took it.

 

I took it out of loyalty to every drop of innocent blood that has been shed

through the occupation or because of it, every scream of a bereaved mother,

every moan of an orphan, the sorrow of a rape victim, the teardrop of an

orphan.

 

I say to those who reproach me: Do you know how many broken homes that shoe

that I threw had entered because of the occupation? How many times it had

trodden over the blood of innocent victims? And how many times it had

entered homes in which free Iraqi women and their sanctity had been

violated? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were

violated.

 

When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, Bush, I wanted to express

my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his

killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country,

and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.

 

After six years of humiliation, of indignity, of killing and violations of

sanctity, and desecration of houses of worship, the killer comes, boasting,

bragging about victory and democracy. He came to say goodbye to his victims

and wanted flowers in response.

 

Put simply, that was my flower to the occupier, and to all who are in league

with him, whether by spreading lies or taking action, before the occupation

or after.

 

I wanted to defend the honor of my profession and suppressed patriotism on

the day the country was violated and its high honor lost. Some say: Why

didn't he ask Bush an embarrassing question at the press conference, to

shame him? And now I will answer you, journalists. How can I ask Bush when

we were ordered to ask no questions before the press conference began, but

only to cover the event. It was prohibited for any person to question Bush.

 

And in regard to professionalism: The professionalism mourned by some under

the auspices of the occupation should not have a voice louder than the voice

of patriotism. And if patriotism were to speak out, then professionalism

should be allied with it.

 

I take this opportunity: If I have wronged journalism without intention,

because of the professional embarrassment I caused the establishment, I wish

to apologize to you for any embarrassment I may have caused those

establishments. All that I meant to do was express with a living conscience

the feelings of a citizen who sees his homeland desecrated every day.

 

History mentions many stories where professionalism was also compromised at

the hands of American policymakers, whether in the assassination attempt

against Fidel Castro by booby-trapping a TV camera that CIA agents posing as

journalists from Cuban TV were carrying, or what they did in the Iraqi war

by deceiving the general public about what was happening. And there are many

other examples that I won't get into here.

 

But what I would like to call your attention to is that these suspicious

agencies -- the American intelligence and its other agencies and those that

follow them -- will not spare any effort to track me down (because I am) a

rebel opposed to their occupation. They will try to kill me or neutralize

me, and I call the attention of those who are close to me to the traps that

these agencies will set up to capture or kill me in various ways,

physically, socially or professionally.

 

And at the time that the Iraqi prime minister came out on satellite channels

to say that he didn't sleep until he had checked in on my safety, and that I

had found a bed and a blanket, even as he spoke I was being tortured with

the most horrific methods: electric shocks, getting hit with cables, getting

hit with metal rods, and all this in the backyard of the place where the

press conference was held. And the conference was still going on and I could

hear the voices of the people in it. And maybe they, too, could hear my

screams and moans.

 

In the morning, I was left in the cold of winter, tied up after they soaked

me in water at dawn. And I apologize for Mr. Maliki for keeping the truth

from the people. I will speak later, giving names of the people who were

involved in torturing me, and some of them were high-ranking officials in

the government and in the army.

 

I didn't do this so my name would enter history or for material gains. All I

wanted was to defend my country, and that is a legitimate cause confirmed by

international laws and divine rights. I wanted to defend a country, an

ancient civilization that has been desecrated, and I am sure that history --

especially in America -- will state how the American occupation was able to

subjugate Iraq and Iraqis, until its submission.

 

They will boast about the deceit and the means they used in order to gain

their objective. It is not strange, not much different from what happened to

the Native Americans at the hands of colonialists. Here I say to them (the

occupiers) and to all who follow their steps, and all those who support them

and spoke up for their cause: Never.

 

Because we are a people who would rather die than face humiliation.

 

And, lastly, I say that I am independent. I am not a member of any

politicalparty, something that was said during torture -- one time that I'm

far-right, another that I'm a leftist. I am independent of any political

party, and my future efforts will be in civil service to my people and to

any who need it, without waging any political wars, as some said that I

would.

My efforts will be toward providing care for widows and orphans, and all

those whose lives were damaged by the occupation. I pray for mercy upon the

souls of the martyrs who fell in wounded Iraq, and for shame upon those who

occupied Iraq and everyone who assisted them in their abominable acts. And I

pray for peace upon those who are in their graves, and those who are

oppressed with the chains of imprisonment. And peace be upon you who are

patient and looking to God for release.

 

And to my beloved country I say: If the night of injustice is prolonged, it

will not stop the rising of a sun and it will be the sun of freedom.

 

One last word. I say to the government: It is a trust that I carry from my

fellow detainees. They said, 'Muntadhar, if you get out, tell of our plight

to the omnipotent powers' -- I know that only God is omnipotent and I pray

to Him -- 'remind them that there are dozens, hundreds, of victims rotting

in prisons because of an informant's word.'

 

They have been there for years, they have not been charged or tried.

 

They've only been snatched up from the streets and put into these prisons.

And now, in front of you, and in the presence of God, I hope they can hear

me or see me. I have now made good on my promise of reminding the government

and the officials and the politicians to look into what's happening inside

the prisons. The injustice that's caused by the delay in the judicial

system.

 

Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you

 

The translation is by McClatchys special correspondent, Sahar Issa.

Edited September 17, 2009 by Chest Rockwell

[David]

Anyone seen the carry-on that is The English Defence League?

 

There was an article in the Guardian about it a few days ago;

 

The rise of the English Defence League, whose protests against Islamism have sparked violent city centre clashes, has been chaotic but rapid.

 

Three months ago, no one had heard of the EDL. But the organisation has risen to prominence in a spate of civil unrest in which far-right activists, football hooligans and known racists have fought running battles with Asian youths. The leadership insists they are not racist and just want to "peacefully protest against militant Islam".

 

Yet at EDL events, skinheads have raised Nazi salutes and other EDL supporters have chanted racist slogans such as "I hate Pakis more than you". One protest in Luton in May ended with scores of people attacking Asian businesses, smashing cars and threatening passersby.

 

Insiders have talked of plans to enlist football fans to march for the cause on the basis that "you need an army for a war".

 

With the organisation's confidence growing and plans for rallies in Leeds, Manchester and tomorrow in Trafalgar Square, concerned police chiefs and government ministers are asking what the English Defence League is, and what it wants.

 

It appears to have a hardcore of fewer than 200 in "divisions" in Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds and Luton. But those ranks are swelled by rightwing groups including gangs related to football clubs. Last night close to 500 had said they were considering attending the protest in London.

 

Its roots are modest, according to its self-proclaimed leader, a 28-year-old carpenter from Luton who goes by the pseudonym Tommy Robinson. He said the germ of the EDL was evident growing up in the Bedfordshire town.

 

"Everyone mixes until the age of 13 or 14 and then it stops and there are Asian dinner tables at school," he said. "I don't know what it is. Maybe their parents don't want them to mix."

 

Those separate tables are magnified in Luton today where a large part of the Muslim population lives in a network of streets around the main mosque in Bury Park. The town has had an unhappy connection with Islamist terrorism ever since four suicide bombers set off from there to attack London's transport system and kill 52 people on 7 July 2005.

 

Before that, there were tensions when a radical Muslim group protested in the town centre after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Those feelings reached boiling point this March, when a small group of Muslim antiwar protesters held up placards at the homecoming of the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment which read "Butchers of Basra" and "Anglian soldiers go to hell".

 

"The group that protested against the soldiers had been in the town centre since 2001," said Robinson. "In 2004 we held our own protest when we held a banner up saying 'Ban the Luton Taliban'.

 

"We were groups of friends and family, people who had gone to school with each other. We decided they could not be in the town centre again."

 

Only a handful of Muslim protesters disrupted the Anglians' homecoming parade, and they were drawn from an small extremist group that had already been ostracised by the mainstream Muslim community. However, it was enough for Robinson and others to set up a group called United People of Luton, and look across the country for support.

 

"We realised we didn't just want them off the streets of Luton, we wanted them off the streets of Britain," said Robinson.

 

Using Facebook, they forged links with a Birmingham-based group called British Citizens Against Muslim Extremists and quickly realised there was potential for a national organisation. "When we saw Birmingham's demonstration they were using the same slogans as us: 'We want our country back', 'Terrorists off the streets', 'Extremists out', 'Rule Britannia'. From there the EDL was set up."

 

Chief superintendent Mark Turner, of Bedfordshire police, said the group's aims were "really quite ill-defined".

 

That stems from the different interests that have rallied to a cause, which itself was named after the Welsh Defence League, set up by Jeff Marsh, a former football hooligan and convicted criminal.

 

The movement has been so fragmented that Robinson set up a website to drum up interest in March, while Chris Renton, listed as an "activist" on the BNP's leaked membership list, set up another EDL site. Paul Ray, another far-right activist from Dunstable, near Luton, broadcast video polemics on YouTube.

 

Ray's broadcasts on his Spirit of St George internet channel include his claim that a "very, very high proportion of the Muslim population is an Islamic extremist" and his description of Luton's Muslim community as "an al-Qaida enclave".

 

According to Robinson, none of these activities were co-ordinated.

 

By Ray's own account published on his Lionheart blog on the eve of the 8 August clashes in Birmingham: "The English Defence League that was originally built over many months and eventually set up by myself and others, was hijacked over the last couple of weeks leading up to tomorrow by a bunch of 'pirates' led by Chris Renton."

 

Around the same time, Trevor Kelway, a Portsmouth-based EDL supporter, became a spokesman for the organisation. In statements and phone interviews, Kelway pushed the line that the EDL was a peaceful, non-racist organisation, even promising that the last Birmingham protest would be "a great day out for all concerned".

 

When the day arrived EDL supporters were involved in running battles and police made 90 arrests.

 

Sharon Rowe, assistant chief constable of West Midlands, said the force had tried "everything they could" to liaise with the EDL before the demonstration but had been largely ignored. "If the EDL come back to this city I've got more of an evidence case and intelligence to therefore arrest them a lot earlier, to prevent a breach of the peace."

 

Fringe groups are rife in the world of the EDL, many of them have been established for far longer, and their beliefs often appear contradictory.

 

Davy Cooling, 26, a driver from Luton who helps run the EDL, admits to attending BNP events when he was younger, although he said he is not a member of the party.

 

"A few years ago I attended two or three meetings of the BNP in Luton, but I do not agree with their policy of banning black and other ethnic minoirity groups from membership. It doesn't matter what religion or race you are. Everyone is welcome to the EDL."

 

What does unite the group is a willingness to fight, said Robinson. "We feel that only people with that mentality will go [to demonstrate]," he said. "That's why it's all lads. Your upper class people won't stand there and get attacked, through fear.

 

"I am from the mentality that I am not going to back down. It started with what they did to the soldiers, but after that it has been about the two-sided treatment our community get compared to what the Muslim community get from the police and the council. The police hit us with batons and come at them with kid gloves."

 

This is not a version of events recognised by Bedfordshire police's Mark Turner: "We've had a series of marches where we have seen damage to property, we have seen people being assaulted, we have seen the odd racist attack

[thebigbalbowski]

The EDL are just a harmless bunch of football fans.

[David]

The EDL are just a harmless bunch of football fans.

 

How so?

 

[Dynamite Duane]

I took a wander down to the Lib Dem conference today to have a look at the fringe events and what not. Got into the climate conference hotel just as it was all over and Nick Clegg's speech started in the BIC. Saw it on telly chatting to an dear about the climate and stuff over a coffee and fair trade cookie