…doesn’t mean the Beeb has to agree. This “story” is bogus. President Bush, after all, was not slow to declare a state of emergency along the Gulf Coast. Mayor Nagin’s reaction to this “news” is laughable and hypocritical but the Beeb is happy to serve us New Orleans sludge.
Update: DFH, one of our B-BBC commenterati has two very helpful posts here and here. Auntie can’t get away with what she once did.
PJ
Well as far as I can see your options are either to do something to convince sufficient others to agree with you and elect a government along your lines, or to live with it (or to emigrate).
Or are you suggesting that the majority of the electorate who presumably voted for parties with policies against your views should f**k off instead?
linked to above:
http://www.praguepost.com/P03/2006/Art/0302/news2.php
interesting. i wonder how long it will be before the cameraman has to go into hiding, along with 24×7 security protection.
more curiously – why has nobody done the same in the UK?
archduke,
Because the media are terrified of the Islamonutters. Much easier to close your eyes and keep repeating ‘religion of peace’.
Rottweiller Puppy,yet again, tears chunks out of a BBC “report” from Iran, giving it a thoroughly good fisking
http://rottypup.com/?p=548#more-548
RB
Pete. As far as I’m concerned anyone who wants to claim that another nation has a better quality of life than Britain but hasn’t made every possible effort to leave is a complete hypocrite.
Although I believe that the quality of life is probably better in the US than in Great Britain I did not actually say that. If we’re going to reply, let’s reply to something said. I note, by the way, that your letter to all those muslims and other Johnny Foreigners who don’t like our ways, the one inviting them to Foxtrot Oscar, seems to have been lost in the post.
Presumably your respect for the history and tradition of Britain doesn’t encompass Parliamentary democracy, otherwise you’d be attempting to convince people of the rightness of your arguments and get a government elected accordingly …
My respect for Parliamentary democracy stems from the fact that it is merely one aspect of the rule of law. Parliamentary democracy has unarguably been a tool to implement the so-called will of the majority when that will happens to coincide will the interests of the governing faction. When you next hear a Minister (erroniously) invoke the will of the majority as the reason why the government had the Hunting Act shoved through Parliament you must ask yourself when capital punishment will be restored and all legislation regarding our membership of the EU will be repealed. These, after all, are the will of the majority. If you don’t want to ask these questions then regard yourself as full of humbug, like the politicians.
As for attempting to convince others of the rightness of arguments and get a government elected accordingly oh per-lease. Who asked me if I wanted 1.6 million muslims plus a few million other immigrants here? Who asked me if I want the government to confiscate £500 billion of taxpayers’ money this year? Who asked if Gordon Brown should have destroyed the world’s best funded private pensions industry? Who asked me if I wanted the cultural revolution that has been imposed on us over 50 years? Where was this much vaunted ‘respect for minorities’ and ‘differences’ and ‘diversity’ when this government cut off Parliament and imposed the Hunting Act on us, eh? Fucking nowhere, that’s where they were. When THEY are being asked to show THEY’RE tolerance and respect it all goes out the window. “You’ll fucking march to the beat of our drum, you white, racist, throwback hunters” is what we were told. “We’ll fucking legislate you into history!” Well screw them, their values and Parliamentary democracy.
Here Here!
in any case you wont have democracy in the UK for much longer.
Where is the outrage from the likes of Liberty? I’d say Tony’s version of Adolf’s Enabling Law is a far more immediate threat to our liberty than keeping a few nutters in Belmarsh without trial.
grimer -> Tony Blair has always clearly stated that he wont stand “at the next election”.
which gets him off the hook if the next election is “postponed” due to an “emergency” -the definition of which is entirely at the discretion of ministers, rather than parliament, as
laid out in the Civil Contingencies Bill.
This situation really does have all the makings to the Third Reich. All we need is for the Houses of Parliament to be burned down/blown up/destroyed by a plane and we can move into a ‘state of emergency’ with Tony at the healm.
John Simpson – “No reason for optimism in Iraq” – moan , moan, doom and gloom, moan moan moan…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4778380.stm
Looks like he needs to pay a visit to Kurdistan so
into a ‘state of emergency’ with Tony at the helm
It won’t be Tony……..someone else yes………….but Tony will be toppled first…………I sometimes wonder why they keep so many of our troops abroad, probably frightened they might turn their rifles inward
Where is the outrage from the likes of Liberty? I’d say Tony’s version of Adolf’s Enabling Law
so Panorama goes on about de Menezes and his short Tube journey instead………..as if the IPCA wasn’t already on the job……….
“You’ll fucking march to the beat of our drum, you white, racist, throwback hunters” is what we were told
If you want your dog to sit you tell him in terms he understands……………as they say “if the cap fits….”
If you ignore them they won’t say it
TV channels test net broadcasts
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4780274.stm
“The BBC hopes it will be the first step towards allowing all UK broadband users watch its channels on their computers as easily as they do on TV.”
Did anyone ask if I want this? Now the BBC can extort money out of me because I have a PC & broadband connection.
This is an absolute outrage. What other company can set up shop in your street and DEMAND you pay them????
Jupiter growing another red spot
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4781730.stm
Just posted on BBC News website. This ‘news’ is about a week old as posted here on this blog last week. This is what your bloated £3Billion broadcaster gives you – regurgitated week old press releases.
Scrap the BBC – NOW!
Pete, I confirm that if Muslims openly state that they don’t like British customs and laws and would rather be somewhere else then in my opinion they should f**k off to that somewhere else post haste.
I can appreciate the differences between British Parliamentary democracy and the straight will of the majority. I suspect the latter would leave us bankrupt within a week, but that’s beside the point.
Without a written constitution the government has the power to call a referenda on any issue it chooses. It also has the power to revoke the foxhunting ban and disband the BBC. Should it be prepared to accept the diplomatic or military consequences it has the power to resign from the EU, dump all Muslims on a boat in the sea or take pot shots at the White House. All it needs is a mandate provided under Britain’s current democratic system.
If you don’t like that then passionate though you may be whilst spouting off in awe inspiringly self righteous fashion in the echo chamber of the blogosphere, I’d be interested to know exactly what you plan to do about it.
Another good (D)HYS at the moment on the immigration points system and some comments that don’t fit the bbc view.
Bomb victim vicar leaves parish
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/4778400.stm
Any special BBC Q&A 5-live phone-in or cuddle with Andrew Marr treatment for this girl aka Mozamm Begg style?
No chance. She is not a terrorist, therefore is of no interest to the BBC.
Iran demands nuclear compensation
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4782930.stm
Compensation?
The US will quite rightly probably tell Iran to f*ck off. The EU3 will likely ask “ok, how much do you want?”
BBC glorification of terrorists continue: Here’s a look at the cuddly old taliban terrorists:
In pictures: Taleban shrine
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4740872.stm
Ritter
“Did anyone ask if I want this? Now the BBC can extort money out of me because I have a PC & broadband connection.”
You may be interested to know that I have just looked at the HYS main page, clicked on one of the topics and I was offered a BBC speed-test to see if my computer is suitable to receive the internet broadcasts. I suspect that I will soon be receiving a fee demand for a licence (which I don’t require because I haven’t got a TV at this location).
RB
Now your making sense. I have been for weeks telling people what to DO about it . I dont know if anyone has been listening, but that wont stop me trying. Canvas the opinion of you local Conservative MP or candidate. Tell them what you think, and then tell them again. If not or also organise legel civil disobedience, and protest marches. This is nearly impossible, as all legal protest marches are organised by socialist affiliated bodies. Good luck.
If this site has any purpose at all, it should be to orchestrate and organise nationwide resistance against this outrageous proposed tax on personal computers. Gordon’s got his cold white hand deep enough in my pocket as it is.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1508650,00.html
I wonder what the Tessa Jowells (corrupt or incompetant?) white paper on broadcasting will say about extorting money from PC owners.
Maybe all that BBC research/spending on duplicating free market image broadcasting software was to allow them to sell a BBC subsciption?
Slightly OT but what isn’t?
I wonder if the BBC will carry anything like this report from yesterday’s LA Times(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-britbombs6mar06,1,79705.story?track=rss&ctrack=1&cset=true)
“In the eight months since Hussain and three other suicide bombers killed 52 people on the transport system here [London] July 7, police have reconstructed parts of the plot in minute detail. They have found that the multiple attack was cheap as well as simple. It cost less than $5,000, said Det. Supt. Peter Wickstead, the chief of an anti-terrorism finance investigation unit, at a recent conference here.
But anti-terrorism officials say the investigations of the bombings and failed follow-up attacks on July 21 have been slow and difficult. Not only are extremist networks murky and fragmented, but investigators also have run into resistance and radicalization on the street: In a recent poll of British Muslims, almost a quarter of respondents said they felt some sympathy with the motives of the subway bombers.
“The absence of hard data on 7/7 is striking,” Shamit Saggar, a political science professor at the University of Sussex, said at the conference at the Royal United Services Institute think tank. “The only way we can explain that is as a significant circle of tacit support existing in that community.””
(D)HYS thread on the vicar with the daughter killed by terrorists:
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&threadID=1242&edition=2&ttl=20060307164736&#paginator
Lots of “off-message” comments & recommendations — to al-Beeb’s no-doubt grave disappointment, no one is saying that the vicar must learn to love terrorists as much as they obviously do.
simo,
GMTA (great minds think alike)!
My personal favorite from above:
Lets not blame shift here. The people at fault for this mans death are the islamic terrorists, their preachers and their sympathisers. They forget that as westerners we need no knowledge of islam, it’s irrelevant to us. If somethings unislamic it’s not a problem and it’s not something you need to be bombing and murdering for. Of course she cant forgive them, have they repented their following of this wicked medieval cult.
Steve, London
Steve from London — your comment is going, going, going. . .
here’s the la times story that umbongo refers to above.
frightening stuff.
I appeal to the sensible people out there, to get a grip. Things have been worse than this, in my lifetime. There is hope, but only if you people under the age of 40 start to understand again how British democracy in practise works. In the current British Conservative Party you have got what you deserve. Use it or lose it.
Umbongo
That means 75% do not have simpathies, with them. This is good news. Why dont we hear more from them. I think the BBC does not wish us to hear from them. This not only increases our fears, it increases the normal Muslims fears as well. Why they would want to do this, has everything to do with power and money. What else can it possibly have anything to do with? How this increases the BBCs and New Labours, I think I will let you lot think about.
If the BBC cant manage to put a middle of the road Tory viewpoint on display any time in the last 35 years. How do you think moderate democratic conservative Muslims feel? Tottaly isolated and marginalised, just like us.
Umbongo
“The only way we can explain that is as a significant circle of tacit support existing in that community.””
Thanks for the link. I’m not surprised, in fact it’s wholly expected. I must have been out the day someone called to ask me if I wanted 1.6 million adherents of a barbaric belief system allowed into the country.
Gary Powell
You’re preaching to the converted.
I consider myself to be the most middle of the road Tory that ever exsisted. I have never heard my viewpoint ever expressed on the BBC ever on any issue. Why?
The BBC would have you believe that I am a dangerous far right loony. Any British person that disagrees with “BBC Thought” is that, so I am in very large and good company.
If “left wing” means radical, then we need a more left wing Tory goverment. They can start by getting rid of the BBC. If it means more state laws and controls, then we nead a far right wing one. Just to get us in the middle again. If that does not make any sense to you, get out a dictionary, and stop listening to the BBC.
Pete London
I understand your point. I am preaching thats for sure. But I am not preaching to you. I am trying to put it into simple words, so that ordinary people might see the wood for all the trees. Most people I am sure that read this site never make comments. If any of them have got the critism I have got over my grammer and spelling from some of you lot, they would only contribute once only anyway. In order for propergander to work, you not only have to communicate it, you have to say it again and again and again.
Check it out: a recent article by Barnabas Fund’s Patrick Sookhedo on plans to implement Islamic sharia in Britain has been taken down by the Telegraph “for legal reasons.”
http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2006/03/iht-islam-plans-to-take-over-england.html
What might be those “legal reasons”, I wonder? Knock on the door from the British police who are so obsessed with not ruffling any feelings in the “plumbing” community?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4777586.stm
The BBC finally reports on the deomlition of the last synagogue in Tajikistan.
And, no, the report does not mention the fact that the country is 90 per cent Muslim. It does not mention the M or the I words at all.
That should be ‘demolition’, not ‘deomlition’.
legal reasons? huh?
legal reasons? huh?
Didn’t you know? Section 56.02.01 of the British penal code, “Saying Mean Things About Plumbers, Even If It’s True”. Right under the Gay Horses Statute.
taol -> that is yet another example of the BBC failing in its duty, according to its charter, to inform the public.
instead, i have to turn to the internet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Tajikistan
The article was by Alisdair Palmer from interviews with Patrick Sookhdeo:
It was Google-cached. Here it is:
‘The day is coming when British Muslims form a state within a state’
By Alasdair Palmer
(Filed: 19/02/2006)
For the past two weeks, Patrick Sookhdeo has been canvassing the opinions of Muslim clerics in Britain on the row over the cartoons featuring images of Mohammed that were first published in Denmark and then reprinted in several other European countries.
“They think they have won the debate,” he says with a sigh. “They believe that the British Government has capitulated to them, because it feared the consequences if it did not.
Dr Patrick Sookhdeo
“The cartoons, you see, have not been published in this country, and the Government has been very critical of those countries in which they were published. To many of the Islamic clerics, that’s a clear victory.
“It’s confirmation of what they believe to be a familiar pattern: if spokesmen for British Muslims threaten what they call ‘adverse consequences’ – violence to the rest of us – then the British Government will cave in. I think it is a very dangerous precedent.”
Dr Sookhdeo adds that he believes that “in a decade, you will see parts of English cities which are controlled by Muslim clerics and which follow, not the common law, but aspects of Muslim sharia law.
“It is already starting to happen – and unless the Government changes the way it treats the so-called leaders of the Islamic community, it will continue.”
For someone with such strong and uncompromising views, Dr Sookhdeo is a surprisingly gentle and easy-going man. He speaks with authority on Islam, as it was his first faith: he was brought up as a Muslim in Guyana, the only English colony in South America, and attended a madrassa there.
“But Islamic instruction was very different in the 1950s, when I was at school,” he says. “There was no talk of suicide bombing or indeed of violence of any kind. Islam was very peaceful.”
Dr Sookhdeo’s family emigrated to England when he was 10. In his early twenties, when he was at university, he converted to Christianity. “I had simply seen it as the white man’s religion, the religion of the colonialists and the oppressors – in a very similar way, in fact, to the way that many Muslims see Christianity today.
” Leaving Islam was not easy. According to the literal interpretation of the Koran, the punishment for apostasy is death – and it actually is punished by death in some Middle Eastern states. “It wasn’t quite like that here,” he says, “although it was traumatic in some ways.”
Dr Sookhdeo continued to study Islam, doing a PhD at London University on the religion. He is currently director of the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity. He also advises the Army on security issues related to Islam.
Several years ago, Dr Sookhdeo insisted that the next wave of radical Islam in Britain would involve suicide bombings in this country. His prediction was depressingly confirmed on 7/7 last year.
So his claim that, in the next decade, the Muslim community in Britain will not be integrated into mainstream British society, but will isolate itself to a much greater extent, carries weight behind it. Dr Sookhdeo has proved his prescience.
“The Government, and Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, are fundamentally deluded about the nature of Islam,” he insists. “Tony Blair unintentionally revealed his ignorance when he said, in an effort to conciliate Muslims, that he had ‘read through the Koran twice’ and that he kept it by his bedside.
“He thought he was saying something which showed how seriously he took Islam. But most Muslims thought it was a joke, if not an insult. Because, of course, every Muslim knows that you cannot read the Koran through from cover to cover and understand it.
The chapters are not written to be read in that way. Indeed, after the first chapter, the chapters of the Koran are ordered according to their length, not according to their content or chronology: the longest chapters are first, the shorter ones are at the end.
“You need to know which passage was revealed at what period and in what time in order to be able to understand it – you cannot simply read it from beginning to end and expect to learn anything at all.
“That is one reason why it takes so long to be able to read and understand the Koran: the meaning of any part of it depends on a knowledge of its context – a context that is not in the Koran itself.”
The Prime Minister’s ignorance of Islam, Dr Sookhdeo contends, is of a piece with his unsuccessful attempts to conciliate it. And it does indeed seem as if the Government’s policy towards radical Islam is based on the hope that if it makes concessions to its leaders, they will reciprocate and relations between fundamentalist Muslims and Tony Blair’s Government will then turn into something resembling an ecumenical prayer meeting.
Dr Sookhdeo nods in vigorous agreement with that. “Yes – and it is a very big mistake. Look at what happened in the 1990s. The security services knew about Abu Hamza and the preachers like him. They knew that London was becoming the centre for Islamic terrorists. The police knew. The Government knew. Yet nothing was done.
“The whole approach towards Muslim militants was based on appeasement. 7/7 proved that that approach does not work – yet it is still being followed. For example, there is a book, The Noble Koran: a New Rendering of its Meaning in English, which is openly available in Muslim bookshops.
“It calls for the killing of Jews and Christians, and it sets out a strategy for killing the infidels and for warfare against them. The Government has done nothing whatever to interfere with the sale of that book.
“Why not? Government ministers have promised to punish religious hatred, to criminalise the glorification of terrorism, yet they do nothing about this book, which blatantly does both.”
Perhaps the explanation is just that they do not take it seriously. “I fear that is exactly the problem,” says Dr Sookhdeo. “The trouble is that Tony Blair and other ministers see Islam through the prism of their own secular outlook.
They simply do not realise how seriously Muslims take their religion. Islamic clerics regard themselves as locked in mortal combat with secularism.
“For example, one of the fundamental notions of a secular society is the moral importance of freedom, of individual choice. But in Islam, choice is not allowable: there cannot be free choice about whether to choose or reject any of the fundamental aspects of the religion, because they are all divinely ordained. God has laid down the law, and man must obey.
‘Islamic clerics do not believe in a society in which Islam is one religion among others in a society ruled by basically non-religious laws. They believe it must be the dominant religion – and it is their aim to achieve this.
“That is why they do not believe in integration. In 1980, the Islamic Council of Europe laid out their strategy for the future – and the fundamental rule was never dilute your presence. That is to say, do not integrate.
“Rather, concentrate Muslim presence in a particular area until you are a majority in that area, so that the institutions of the local community come to reflect Islamic structures. The education system will be Islamic, the shops will serve only halal food, there will be no advertisements showing naked or semi-naked women, and so on.”
That plan, says Dr Sookhdeo, is being followed in Britain. “That is why you are seeing areas which are now almost totally Muslim. The next step will be pushing the Government to recognise sharia law for Muslim communities – which will be backed up by the claim that it is “racist” or “Islamophobic” or “violating the rights of Muslims” to deny them sharia law.
“There’s already a Sharia Law Council for the UK. The Government has already started making concessions: it has changed the law so that there are sharia-compliant mortgages and sharia pensions.
“Some Muslims are now pressing to be allowed four wives: they say it is part of their religion. They claim that not being allowed four wives is a denial of their religious liberty. There are Muslim men in Britain who marry and divorce three women, then marry a fourth time – and stay married, in sharia law, to all four.
“The more fundamentalist clerics think that it is only a matter of time before they will persuade the Government to concede on the issue of sharia law. Given the Government’s record of capitulating, you can see why they believe that.”
Dr Sookhdeo’s vision of a relentless battle between secular and Islamic Britain seems hard to reconcile with the co-operation that seems to mark the vast majority of the interactions between the two communities.
“Well, it isn’t me who says Islam is at war with secularisation,” he says. “That’s how Islamic clerics describe the situation.”
But isn’t it true that most Muslims who live in theocratic states want to get out of them as quickly as possible and live in a secular country such as Britain or America? And that most Muslims who come to Britain adopt the values of a liberal, democratic, tolerant society, rather than insisting on the inflexible rules of their religion?
“You have to distinguish between ordinary Muslims and their self-appointed leaders,” explains Dr Sookhdeo. “I agree that the best hope for our collective future is that the majority of Muslims who have grown up here have accepted the secular nature of the British state and society, the division between religion and politics, and the importance of allowing people to choose freely how they will live.
“But that is not how most of the clerics talk. And, more significantly, it is not how the ‘community leaders’ whom the Government has decided represent the Muslim commun
Well done for posting the interview, Susan. I look forward to hearing more from Mr Sookhdeo on al-beeb…..
I think it is just as likely that the Telegraph has bowed to threats about that powerful indeed explosive article – playing safe.
Bomb victim vicar leaves parish
Well Ritter I don’t understand her at all. Theologically she can forgive when they repent………….I don’t see a bunch of assorted body parts repenting.
Does repentance exist in Islam of any flavour ?
Well slap my thigh with a wet haddock and call me Cyril….I go away for one day and the post count expands by 300! Gis a chance tae catch up wi’ you all!
I wouldn’t be too hard on the Telegraph at the moment if its a bit sensitive about “legal” reasons for anythinbg – they’ve just coughed up £150,000 + costs to the MP for Bethnal Greeen & Bow.
Should be “it’s”
Susan
Here is another blunt article from last year by the same author. It is chilling. He describes what REALLY happened in Muslim communities after the London bombings. And then shows conclusively that the mantra “Islam means peace” used by Bush and Blair and the media is a total lie, 1400 years out of date. And he points out that in the Koran terror is seen as a crucial weapon in cowing others into submission.
A courageous and authoritative writer. He knows whereof he speaks, a far more truthful guide than the lying spokesmen we see on the BBC all the time, and far more truthful than all the useful idiots in journalistic, editorial and research positions on all the BBC channels.
The BBC employs hundreds of Muslims in relatively senior positions. Not one of them has spoken the truth about Islam to camera or to the microphone in the way this writer does. The BBC gives us a sanitised version which is a maggot-riddled lie.
The BBC spreads scare stories about bird flu as a threat that might visit us. But it covers up the real threat right here amongst us. It cost a few thousand to organise the 7/7 bombings, and the police are getting very little help in the communities where the bombers came from. Ranks have closed – because WE are the enemy.
http://www.barnabasfund.org/77response.htm
Purely out of interest does anyone know a Muslim coal miner in this country, you know, a hewer of coal underground, or maybe a farmer? looking after animals and mucking out?
I know there is one black farmer at least because he was in the Times.