Sadiq Khan, the Muslim Labour MP, dominates the BBC news agenda this morning. Press reports suggest that Khan’s conversation with his constituent (and long time friend) Babar Ahmad, were recorded twice in Milton Keynes’s Woodhill Prison. The US is seeking to extradite Ahmad on suspicion of raising funds for the Taliban. The BBC fans a palpable sense of outrage that a Member of Parliament could have his conversations bugged. Personally, I would be outraged if Khan’s conversations with an alleged Taliban fund-raiser were not bugged! Surely the safety of our fellow citizens is the primary concern here, not the tender sensitivites of Khan or any other MP?
The BBC then turns to… another Muslim MP for a reaction and bang on cue Khalid Mahmood, MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, declares that this bugging sends out a difficult message, not just for Muslim people but for British people. (I don’t think so, the only “difficulties” remain with those who deny that a section of Muslims in Britain constitute a real and present danger to their fellow citizens) In Beeb world, the decision by anti-terrorist officers to bug Khan or indeed any other MP who seeks the release of this alleged terror-enabler Ahmad is always going to be wrong. Notice how they choose to only seek comment from a person that they know will fail to endorse the decision by our anti-terrorist police. Where’s the balance?
Islam is always going to be the offended party through the Beeb prism – as this previous report on Khan’s activities demonstrates. One year on from 7/7 Khan was declaring how “disappointed” many Muslims (ie he and his pals) were at the failure of government to engage “more constructively” with them. At the time, one year from that savage Jihad attack on our capital city, I was disappointed that more of those behind the plot had not been arrested. But hey, victimhood is not always reserved for victims, sometimes aggressors can have it bestowed upon them by a craven and gutless media which fails to understand the dangers that face our country from Islam and instead shills for the ROP.
X: you really are a moron. I was listening to Nick clegg (OK I need to take the pills) on Talksport with James Whale and some halfwit rang in and asked Clegg why he didn’t do a citizens arrest on Blair for crimes against humanity.
Clegg realised he was talking ot a total moron and the guy turned out to be an even bigger moron when he adnitted to being a McLabour supporter and voted Blair back in in 2005. Clegg asked him WHy he’d voted Blair back in. The prat totally waffled and tried to pass the buck. This is typical of socialists, they blame everyone except themselves.
Take immigration. Why do we have so many extremists in our Country? Because McLabour thought it was a good way to suck up to the Muslim voter, but now McLabour are blaming everyone elese except themselves for the mess we are in in our “multi cultural” society where a ride on a tube train might be your last.
This is typical of Socialists like YOU X:
We are only in Iraq (and every bloody where else) because of McLabour. Blair seemd to like invading Counties, funny it’s something socialists/communists enjoy.
A favoured technique of the Stalin regime was never to question the srguments put forward by those brave souls who opposed that tyranny, but instead to simply question their motives. Seems like “x” follows in that perverse tradition.
Just to make it clear that I am not a member of the BNP. I am a Christian and make no apologies for it. Last time I checked, this country was still nominally Christian.
As for Islam, it strikes me as less a religion and more a pathology. Off the top of my head, I can think of thousands of reasons to support this view, starting on 9/11. The BBC indulges the ROP and this, amongst many other issues, needs highlighted. But do not despair Beeboids, bias at the BBC is such a target rich environment that it provides a wide panorama for those who care to look.
FWIW, I do not work for the BBC, and (until recently) have agreed with 90% of the posts on here. I am neither anti nor pro Islam, what I AM against is the bigoted crackpot views that are now being aired on this blog by David Vance, who in the past has characterised Islam as an “evil religion” and now seeks to promote the view that all Muslims are terrorists bent on Jihad. I am mystified why Ed has handed the microphone to someone whose views probably have more in common with Jade Goody than 90% of the readers of this site, so that he can turn it into his own little race-hate vehicle.
Martin – completely agree.
Veering way off-topic…
I think this story goes beyond surveillance issues. The most interesting aspects are (a) the government’s claim to have known nothing about the bugging of Sadiq Khan and (b) Gordon Brown’s claim not to have received the Shadow Home Secretary’s letter, which referenced the monitoring of Babar Ahmad/Khan.
The BBC article has been revised throughout the day: in the original, David Davis claimed to have written to the PM, but the Downing Street rapid rebuttal unit denied having seen such a letter.
The Beeb article was subsequently revised and the wording changed: thusly, Davis merely “warned” the PM.
However, the article has been re-drafted and the letter has materialised once again. Indeed, the BBC website now reproduces Davis’ letter in full:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7225257.stm
So what happened to this letter?
Clearly, someone has been leaking in order to embarrass the government. The police may have been indulging in some freelance surveillance work or the order to bug Khan came from higher up in the political food-chain.
But government ministers have been popping up all day to deny any involvement, while the PM claims to know nothing about the bugging or Davis’ letter; the police are making no comment.
I sense that someone is being economical with la vérité. This could seriously blow up in Brown’s face – which would be a Good Thing, naturally.
x: “Martin – completely agree.”
He started his comment by calling you a moron.
here’s the version history
http://www.newssniffer.co.uk/articles/94229/diff/6/7
David Vance, it’s true, though, that you don’t do your argument any favours by refusing to distinguish between those trying to establish a theocracy in the West and Muslims generally.
I have a question. What is a “moderate Muslim?”
Someone who accept living in a liberal democracy and the rights of women to be free to choose and that homosexuals have a right to live? Oh and that people have a right to speak out against all religions?
I just wonder how many Muslims would agree with the above? I’m betting not a majority.
x [10:04 pm]
Thanks for the link. I checked Newssniffer earlier today and couldn’t find the version of the article to which I refer above.
I found the edit by searching “David Davis bugging” (ooerr, matron) on Google earlier and the results brought up the same article, with amendments: the original, with the ‘letter’ reference; and a later piece, which talked of Davis merely ‘warning’ Brown.
I should have taken a screenshot though it turned out to be a fairly insignificant edit by the BBC because the Davis letter is now in the public domain.
Anyhoos, I still think this is going to cause a big political stink, not because of the surveillance issues, but because there are all manner of questions about who authorised what and when, who knew about what and when, and so on.
bugging needs to be authorised by the Justice secretary
Martin – in fact many or indeed most Muslims are “moderates” in the way that you describe. But you wouldn’t know it by listening to the mainstream media. Which is probably where David Vance has been going wrong.
Yes, it’s just the one’s that strap on explosives and murder our fellow British citizens, that hijack commercial aircraft and fly them at 00mph into office blocks, that plant bombs on trains in Madrid, that use mentally handicapped people as human bombs, that kidnap journalists and decapitate them and video it that we need to be a tad wary about. But you wouldn’t know it by listening to the mainstream media, which is where all sad little Stalinists go wrong.
Just noticed that the BBC is now implying that America could be to blame for this bugging! How much longer before we hear that GWB authorised it personally?
David Vance: Yes I heard that STUPID blonde bint on the BBC say that as well. Where is there proof of that?
Notice that the BBC are defending McBean over the fact that David Davis sent a letter to him?
It is not possible for the Americans ot bug a British prison without the agreement of the British state.
The twats at the BBC having been watching too many episodes of Spooks.
Just how long do we have to put up with this bollocks from the BBC?
There in NO evidence that this bugging has taken place, it’s an allergation in a newspaper.
Funny that the BBC wet thier knickers over this story but ignore others (like McLabour sleaze)
X: Well numerous polls have shown that a significant minority of Muslims either would support or do support extremists.
Add in that forced marriage (supported by the BBC) and Sharia Law, including honour killings are very common in the UK. Oh and the article that Muslim Police officers are failing in their duty to protect Muslim women that come to them for help.
I don’t know what the real figure is, but I’d put money on it being well under 50% that are moderates by my description.
Not that the BBC would ever tell us if it was.
Anonymous: Yes, and the only neocons/westerners you need to worry about are the ones who invade sovereign nations without justification (unless you count theft of oil supplies as a justification) other than their fabricated “sexed up” dossiers – ironically the very affair that got the BBC into so much hot water, and IMO the main reason why the BBC’s bias has now swung so firmly in the other (pro new labour) direction post-Hutton.
Mr Annon, you are wrong, bugging only needs to be authorised by the Justice Secretary, if it is carried out by the intelligence services. Authorisation of bugging in the course of criminal investigations can be carried out by Chief Constables.
Martin – there are a great many shades of grey between moderate and extremist, and the true picture is not captured by the media. There’s plenty of media (and public!) support for the view that all Muslims are terrorists, and those views do not need any assistance in their proliferation, which is why I find it disappointing that they are being aired on this blog which, up until DV’s appearance, I had very much enjoyed!
To elaborate:
“Modern liberal democracies are run by people who wouldn’t hesitate to create an authoritarian police state (such as bugging MPs)”
Modern Liberal Democracies are concerned with protecting peoples rights. Such as freedom of religion. This requires an authoritarian state to:
A. Prevent people from formulating and ideas and actions that could lead to criticism of Islam, which could lead to anti-immigration sentiment: a breach of freedom of religion.
B. Fight the illiberal aspects of Islam whilst expecting the adherants of Islam to behave in a liberal non-Islamic way.
The conflict is insoluble. This is what ‘uman rights lead to.
I’ll be repeat posting this for the next 2 hours.
X,
Really glad to disappoint you then! Please be assured that the BBC will not get a pass in ANY area that I detect. Now be a good little dhimmi and stop your dismal dirge.
Hooray for racism! Why not go the whole hog and make reference to “towelheads” or even “sand-ni**ers” in your next post!
Why would I resort to such low language when it is best left to be the vocabulary of the deranged left?
what part of islam is not a race do you not understand.
To elaborate:
“Modern liberal democracies are run by people who wouldn’t hesitate to create an authoritarian police state (such as bugging MPs)”
Modern Liberal Democracies are concerned with protecting peoples rights. Such as freedom of religion. This requires an authoritarian state to:
A. Prevent people from formulating and ideas and actions that could lead to criticism of Islam, which could lead to anti-immigration sentiment: a breach of freedom of religion.
B. Fight the illiberal aspects of Islam whilst expecting the adherants of Islam to behave in a liberal non-Islamic way.
The conflict is insoluble. This is what ‘uman rights lead to.
Anyone who abhors racism is now automatically a member of “the deranged left” are they?
gaz, check again
although its been 10 years since i done my law degree so a cleaner can probably give consent for bugging now
I suspect x is a troller.
“How much longer before we hear that GWB authorised it personally?”
Time for Bush’s poodle Gordon Brown yet?
X: Not all Muslims are terrorists. My question was about Muslims who accept the western values of the country they make their home in. Far too many Muslims appear to give tacid support for terrorist acts here in the UK.
I’d point out to you X: that 9/11, the first attack on the WTC and the embassy bombings (and the attack on the USS Cole) all took place before the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Something the BBC fails to mention time and again.
As for the BBC, the BBC is only interested at the end of the day in the survival of the BBC. Arse licking McLabour is in THEIR best interests for that and they know it.
Just listened to an interesting interview on Talksprot with James Whale, Nigel Fararge (UKIP) and good old Lembit Opik. They were discussing the issue of Europe.
Fararge quite rightly commented that the actions of one Tory MP appear to have diverted the whole media away from this debate which has been going on at Westminster.
Now, which media orgainsation has been making the most of this story? Yes the BBC. Why? To help smokescreen the fact that that fat coward McBean has sold us down the river, lied to us (over a referrendum) and hasn’t got the balls to admit it.
We know the BBC has stirred it up, they’ve totally ignored the Lisbon treaty at Westminster.
See what X does, he hides behind racism. Many people find racism abhorant for a simple reason. The colour of somones skin is outside of their control. It is an inherited characteristic that the individual has no control over.
Religon is quite different, and so is culture.
I hope people on this blogg wont be cowered by an attempt to extend the definition.
anyone remember operation tinkerbell in the early 80s when willy whitelaw was home secretary
im sure u will be suprised
Any police chief constable can apply for an intercept warrant….
To elaborate:
“Modern liberal democracies are run by people who wouldn’t hesitate to create an authoritarian police state (such as bugging MPs)”
Modern Liberal Democracies are concerned with protecting peoples rights. Such as freedom of religion. This requires an authoritarian state to:
A. Prevent people from formulating and ideas and actions that could lead to criticism of Islam, which could lead to anti-immigration sentiment: a breach of freedom of religion.
B. Fight the illiberal aspects of Islam whilst expecting the adherants of Islam to behave in a liberal non-Islamic way.
The conflict is insoluble. This is what ‘uman rights lead to.
W wrote;
” but no mention here of the 1 million+ the US/UK have killed in Iraq these past few years…”
Are you trying to tell me, that more people have been killed in Iraq since 2003, than British or American forces lost during WW2? let be serious here if you are going to ape the BBC line that millions have died you have to provide something more than conjecture. As for facts seen as you love google have a butchers at how many soldiers died in WW2 that were either British or American. 1 million dead indeed what next from your pen.
That the folks on this board are slating Islam.
gaz, but i dont think a police constable would be alowed to bug an MP, esp Mr Straws whip
letters going missing warning of bugs as well….stinks of the government
x just keeps trotting out the party line.Seen it all before,the fake cameraderie,”I’m one of you but”,the bogus statistics,the constant hacking away at negative points.
Why don’t they send these pillocks for retraining?
The 1 million dead figure is from the most recent Lancet study, projected to today.
AFAIK, covert operations in criminal investigations are approved and overseen by the Office of Surveillance Commissioners, not the Justice Secretary or chief constables.
x:
Anyone who abhors racism is now automatically a member of “the deranged left” are they?
x | 03.02.08 – 11:45 pm |
I’m an atheist and a liberal (although not a Leftoid). No religion gets a free pass, certainly not Islam as of today.
Racism has nothing to do with it.
To say that being anti-Islamist equals being a racist, is like saying “Anti-Marxism” = racism towards the Slavs (since a large chunk of communist countries were Slavic)
Or “anti-Fascism” being anti-German/Italian.
Racism is a term that should be used to condemn bigotry towards people that cannot opt out – i.e. they are targeted because of who they are, not because of what they choose to do, like the Jihadis.
If I chose to murder, whatever my skin color is, doesn’t make everyone who wants to put me in jail a racist.
If I am targeted because of my skin color, or because of my very small ears or some other criteria that I have no control of — that is racism.
Bugging someone because they choosing to finance Taliban is very different from being targeted because of ones skin color.
Every religion had extremist at some point in history, it seems that Islam is having their day today.
All the babble about Crusader atrocities centuries ago is important for the Western society’s norms, but is irrelevant to the question at hand – the fact that elements within Islam are violent today.
Besides, just go to the Balkans and visit entire towers made of human skulls that the adherents of RoP built there over the centuries.
So even historically, no one is clean.
IMHO, most of the boost Islamists got today is because of two reasons:
1. Huge $$$ influx from oil – extraction of oil doesn’t demand a highly developed (tech) society, so medieval mullahs don’t have an economic incentive to change
2. Western medicine + high birth rates. People in the Middle East were dying in huge numbers of disease (small pox, plague, wars) until the past 30 years when Western medical advances changed that birth/death ratio.
Feminism and other societal changes in a high-tech society bring down the birth rates, as survivability rises. Cooperation within the society increases. Every life becomes important! Not so in Middle East. They are flooded with money and products of western medical research.
It is if you like a breach of Star-Trek “prime directive”. They are given technology without first reaching warp-drive capability and the social changes a highly developed cooperative society brings.
So, maybe Bush has a religious reasoning to say that “They don’t cherish human life like we do”, but he is right never the less.
The price of human life is inversly proportional to the number of children per family.
That is why Hamas doesn’t have a problem to push women and children towards the Egyptian guards, or why Al-Qaeda considers people with Down syndrome subhumans.
To elaborate:
“Modern liberal democracies are run by people who wouldn’t hesitate to create an authoritarian police state (such as bugging MPs)”
Modern Liberal Democracies are concerned with protecting peoples rights. Such as freedom of religion. This requires an authoritarian state to:
A. Prevent people from formulating and ideas and actions that could lead to criticism of Islam, which could lead to anti-immigration sentiment: a breach of freedom of religion.
B. Fight the illiberal aspects of Islam whilst expecting the adherants of Islam to behave in a liberal non-Islamic way.
The conflict is insoluble. This is what ‘uman rights lead to.
x:
The 1 million dead figure is from the most recent Lancet study, projected to today.
x | 04.02.08 – 12:37 am |
Believe whatever Soros funded propaganda you want – at your own peril of course (distortion of reality always distorts one’s decision making process)
Lancet’s credibility as a serious peer reviewed Journal was tarnished forever:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119984087808076475.html?mod=Letters
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3177653.ece
x:
Anonymous: Yes, and the only neocons/westerners you need to worry about are the ones who invade sovereign nations without justification (unless you count theft of oil supplies as a justification)
Well if you slow down with your mindless mantras, you would realise that whoever controls oil, controls $2 trillion/year of cash to spend.
If a large proportion of that money goes to mullahs we are doomed. If you think Iranian govt is passing it down to their people you are in some serious delusional state.
So securing the oil reserves which translate into money to fund terrorism is of strategic importance. Just like fire bombing Ruhr (industrial / metal ore area in Germany) was in WW2.
So no X, it is not theft – it is preventing the enemy from getting their hands on $$$ to fund their activity.
If you observe carefully the financial reports from Iraq you will discover that, today, much more oil money is reaching Iraqi people than ever before. Much less is reaching all sorts of thugs and mullahs. Hence their oil-theft propaganda, which Leftoids like yourself are gulping without salt.
X wrote;
“The 1 million dead figure is from the most recent Lancet study, projected to today.”
No they didn’t, that John Hopkins survey given an airing on the lancet quoted 654,965 (which is nearer ½ than 1 million)as a figure of people who may have died. However in order to get to that figure the 11 member team in 30 days interviewed 1,849 households and came up with 142 deaths. That figure of 142 was extrapolated to 654965.
Now I don’t know about you but I have read that report. Did you know that it included people who died of old age? People who died from accidents, infants who died during child birth and even 1 person who was killed by Saddam secret police. Now I’m not so stupid as to deny that the death rate is somewhat high in Iraq. But pray tell what has religious bigots strapping PE to down syndrome women and setting them off in a packed civilian market got to do with either America or Britain? Because the BBC, Lancet or the MCB say so. As I said before I find it highly suspect that 1 million people have died in Iraq. (And I think 1 death is too many) after 4 years when during either World War 1 or 2 Britain and America lost far less and the figures on a daily count on a world wide basis would have been heavier than anything that has come out of Iraq. And that wasn’t an insurgent asymmetrical that was a full scale symmetrical shin dig which had the industries of the whole world geared to killing. Oh and by the way have a look at how many people died during the 8 years of full scale war between Iraq and Iran. Approximately 1 million dead and that war had Iranian human waves. Please note, if you wish to band facts and figures on this board. Sad gits like myself will check them.
As if on cue on my comment above (Western medical advances vs. society that doesn’t have the incentive to change):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/03/nislam403.xml
Martin
Your 11.50 post was spot on. The Beeb will be squealing legal and ethical concerns on the bugging over the next week while not having voiced a single one on our nation being sold out to the Eu by their new Lab f**k buddies and Euro finacier-masters.
Ne BBC logo shilling for the EU
Not all Muslims employ the terrorism strategy.
A Muslim cannot accept western values without stopping being a Muslim.
We naively expect Muslims to practice their religion without acting on it.