Category Archives: Right wing

The ‘left’ that hates Livingstone

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“It’s as if the last 25 years had never happened. For the past week we’ve been back in the days of Margaret Thatcher’s war on Red Ken and the Greater London Council. Every morning, the media have brought new revelations of the horrors at City Hall and Ken Livingstone’s manifest unfitness to be re-elected mayor of London. Just as in the time of the GLC, Livingstone is denounced for consorting with dangerous leftists and terrorist apologists. Only the details have changed: for lesbian workers’ cooperatives, read the Arab women’s network, and for Sinn Féin and the Irish community, substitute Islamist groups and London’s Muslims….

“The trigger for this retro onslaught was Tuesday’s almost comically slanted Channel 4 Dispatches programme on Livingstone, presented by the New Statesman‘s Martin Bright, who wrote that he felt it his ‘duty to warn the London electorate that a vote for Livingstone is a vote for a bully and a coward who is not worthy to lead this great city of ours’….

“What has given this latest assault on Livingstone a special edge is that the people driving it trade as being on the left: Bright as a representative of Britain’s main centre-left political weekly and Nick Cohen, who has more openly lined up behind Johnson, as an Observer columnist. In reality, both writers share a broadly neoconservative agenda on Islamism and the ‘war on terror’ … and that is the central issue that has turned them and their allies against Livingstone. Bright wrote a pamphlet for the rightwing thinktank Policy Exchange attacking government dialogue with Islamists, warmly praised by the leading US neocon Richard Perle. Cohen famously declared after meeting Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz for drinks at the Mayfair nightclub Annabel’s: ‘I was in the presence of a politician committed to extending human freedom’.”

Seumas Milne in the Guardian, 24 January 2008

For another comment on the Bright-Cohen campaign against Ken, see here.

Martin Amis slams Islamism, scorns appeasers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Martin Amis (2)“When it comes to world affairs, most contemporary British authors suffer from a bad case of group thinking these days. Less predictable is Martin Amis, who spurns the warm-slippered conventions of the U.K. literati. His independent streak is again on display in ‘The Second Plane’,’ a new collection of essays, reviews and short stories, most of them about terrorism.

“One oddity about our age of terror is how enthusiastically godless European leftists have rallied to the defense of Islam. Amis is more consistent. Though he has turned from atheism to agnosticism, his distrust of religion remains unabated. Since it’s now impermissible to disparage individual faiths, he writes, let us disparage all of them.

“Amis does reserve a special derision for Islamism, saying its adherents view indiscriminate killing as ‘a divine delight’. Islam may not be bent on murder, but Islamism is, he says. That makes him an Islamismophobe, not an Islamophobe – if the word phobia even applies. A phobia is an irrational fear, he points out, and ‘it is not irrational to fear something that says it wants to kill you’.”

George Walden writes at Bloomberg, 24 January 2008

Florida Attorney General requires employees to watch anti-Muslim propoganda

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Muslim Public Affairs Council today sent a letter to Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, who serves as a campaign adviser to Rudy Giuliani, calling on him to cease subjecting his employees to blatantly anti-Muslim propaganda.

Last week, MPAC learned that McCollum sent an email to his employees requiring them to attend one of three screenings of a controversial video called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” in the State Senate Building. In the email, McCollum says the screening is intended to help employees “better understand the threat that we face as a nation and society”.

McCollum is a former member of Congress (1981-2001) who served on the Republican Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare for the US Congress. The Task Force was first in issuing papers on the clash of civilization and promoting an anti-Muslim agenda in the US Congress.

“Obsession”, a 60-minute tirade of cherry picked inflammatory statements from foreign individuals interspersed with “analysis” from controversial American figures including self-proclaimed terrorism expert Steve Emerson, has been widely discredited since its release in 2006.

As Attorney General, McCollum is tasked with ensuring the rule of law in the State of Florida. It is concerning, then, that the very office that victims of hate crimes would turn to for legal aid and justice, is leading its employees to make decisions based upon bias and fear.

The American Muslim, 24 January 2008

Bright’s fright night

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bright’s fright night

Martin Bright’s feeble TV hatchet job on London Mayor Ken Livingstone may have missed its target, but it speaks volumes for the pro-war ‘left’, writes ANDREW MURRAY.

Morning Star, 23 January 2008

THE most remarkable moment in this week’s partisan hatchet job on London Mayor Ken Livingstone on Channel 4 was not in fact about the mayor at all.

It was the moment when reporter Martin Bright, in the course of a segment about Venezuela, dismissed the Chavez regime in terms straight from the Bush State Department handbook – allied to Iran, associated with cocaine-smuggling guerillas and accused of human rights abuses.

With that passing phrase, Bright managed to align himself with the global neocon agenda on the Middle East and Latin America as well as the matter ostensibly in hand.

For make no mistake, the travesty of journalism that was the Dispatches programme reveals two things above all. First, getting Livingstone out of office is now priority number one for the warmongering, Muslim-bashing neocon “left.” Second, they are now prepared to openly embrace even the reactionary Toryism of Boris Johnson in order to further this end.

One of only two people can be elected mayor this year – Livingstone or Johnson. And Bright, seconded by his soulmate Nick Cohen in The Observer, has effectively come out for a Johnson victory, so great is his venom against anything even approximating to an authentic socialist left.

That was made abundantly clear in the Evening Standard, in which Bright hyperventilated on his personal mission to see the mayor driven out of office.

“I feel it is my duty,” he intoned with a pomposity worthy of a higher office than political reporter on a small-circulation weekly, “to warn the London electorate that a vote for Livingstone is a vote for a bully and a coward who is not worthy to lead this great city of ours.”

Bright himself has form working to the agenda of the global right. He teamed up with the Policy Exchange, which is run by charter neocon and former Daily Telegraph chief leader-writer Dean Godson, to produce a pamphlet telling Britain’s Muslims how they should behave.

This venture earned him a public commendation from Richard Perle, the leading imperial strategist for the Reagan and Bush administrations and one of the chief boosters of the Iraq war in Washington. The Policy Exchange has since been accused of fraudulent research in a subsequent Muslim-baiting television programme.

Research was not an issue for “BoJo” Bright. When the shadow secretary of state for business and enterprise Alan Duncan popped up in the programme in the guise of a “former oil trader” to bear expert witness on Venezuela, we knew that we were not really in the realm of Woodward and Bernstein but in the party political broadcast zone.

A similar incidence of “research-light” was the risible interview with Marc Wadsworth, a former anti-racist activist who sensationally announced that some of Livingstone’s advisers were affiliated to the “Communist Fourth International based in Moscow.” Did no-one bother poor “Bright” with the news that the Communist International and the Fourth International were two entirely different and bitterly opposed bodies and that the latter has never ever been based in Moscow, a famously inhospitable location for Trotskyists?

As for the attack on “Socialist Action,” surely John Ross, Redmond O’Neill and the rest can, after eight years, be judged on their contribution to the running of London rather than their membership of any particular political group. This is simply McCarthyism at a puerile Daily Express level, an attempt to scare the Tories of Orpington and High Barnet into getting to the polls in May before the Soviet comes to town.

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Britain’s Muslims are too extreme

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain's Muslims are too extremeMosques in Britain are spreading a dangerous brand of extremism that would be outlawed in Iraq – says the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq.

The “shocking indictment” came from Dr Barham Salih, who said he was appalled by the level of fundamentalism he found taking root here.

After visiting mosques in Lancashire, Dr Salih said: “I am not surprised that you British are facing so many problems with extremists after what I saw in those mosques in Blackburn. What I saw would not be allowed in Iraq – it would be illegal.”

Last night his comments re-ignited the debate on terror within the UK and led to a call for a tougher approach towards mosques. Intelligence expert Professor Anthony Glees warned: “This needs to be taken very seriously but the Government is turning a blind eye to it, which I believe is a grave mistake. It should be banned. The Government has to make it clear that there are some things that are simply not negotiable. This is one of them.”

It was during talks in Baghdad that Dr Salih made his shocking revelations to Shadow Culture Minister Tobias Ellwood. “I do not believe these comments can be dismissed out of hand. He went in the mosques and said literature he saw would be illegal. He was quite clear,” said Mr Ellwood. He added: “Is it not time that we took a much tougher approach to what is happening in the 1,300 mosques that we have in the UK?”

Muslim leaders in Blackburn dismissed the claims as “rubbish” last night but the town has had high-level links to terror in the past and been targeted by preachers of hate.

Daily Express, 23 January 2008

See also the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Star. And in an editorial headed “Labour too soft on evil” the Star comments:

“Mosques in Britain are filled with more hate for the West than those in Iraq. That’s the alarming verdict of Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Dr Barham Salih. He was shocked by what he discovered on a visit to Blackburn – home of Justice Secretary Jack Straw. “What I saw could not be allowed in Iraq – it would be illegal, ” he said.

“Muslim extremists in the UK have been able to distribute propaganda literature and videos as well as making bloodthirsty speeches. They have sent followers to al-Qaida training camps to prepare for jihad. And they inspired four Brits to become suicide bombers and kill 52 innocent people in London.

“Labour has adopted a softly, softly approach to the growth of Islamic extremism in Britain – taking years to clamp down on dangerous figures like Abu Hamza. As a result of this feeble approach – as Dr Salih found out – the extremists have gained in strength.“

Britain is a Christian country says minister

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A new “tool kit” for universities issued today by Bill Rammell, the Universities Minister, advises universities to draw up a national watch list of guest speakers who should be banned from speaking on campus. It also suggests that universities consider setting up multi-faith chaplaincies instead of separate prayer rooms for different faiths, to promote integration and prevent pockets of extremists forming.

Mr Rammell was adamant that Muslim students – particularly those coming from overseas – did not have the right to demand special treatment from British universities. “Britain technically is a Christian country with many secular features. It’s those two things. It’s not anything else. If you expect that you would have the same response to your faith needs in Britain as would happen within a Muslim or Islamic country, [you] would be disappointed,” he said.

His comments follow fears that some Islamic societies and prayer rooms in universities had become no-go areas for the authorities, where extremists may be free to preach hatred and violence to vulnerable students.

Times, 22 January 2008

See also “Extremists turn attention to Muslim women” in the Daily Telegraph and “Extremists are ‘grooming’ female students, security officials warn” in the Daily Mail.

Don’t vote for Ken says Bright

Posted on by Bob Pitt

martin_brightMartin (“I could think of nothing worse than to support Boris Johnson”) Bright has now come off the fence. A mere four days ago he was suggesting that voters should do no more than reconsider voting for Ken Livingstone in the London Mayoral election in May. Yet in today’s issue of the Tory rag the Evening Standard (or the Evening Boris, as it has recently become known) Bright tells his readers:

“I now believe Ken Livingstone is a disgrace to his office and not fit to be Mayor of London. Any Londoner with a progressive bone in his or her body should not consider voting for him in the forthcoming mayoral elections.”

At least this has the merit of consistency. And it’s entirely in line with Bright’s argument that the “left” (a term he laughably applies to himself and the likes of Nick Cohen) should form an alliance with the anti-Muslim right – hence his association with the right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange.

Give it another four days and no doubt we’ll see Bright officially signed up to Boris Johnson’s election campaign.

Postscript:  The exposure of Livingstone’s leftist allies at City Hall is a bit old hat, by the way, having been accomplished successfully several years ago.

Islamofascism’s ill political wind

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The unfolding presidential elections are laying bare what the real dangers are in the new American condition…. Religious intolerance marks one candidate debate after another – a sweeping denigration of Islam. And it is going to backfire.

“The code word ‘Islamofascism’ has become a staple of rhetoric. It braces the talk not only of pundits, but of all the major Republican candidates – from the tough guy at one end, Rudy Giuliani, who lambastes Democrats for not using the word or its equivalent, to the ‘nice’ candidate at the other end, Mike Huckabee, who defines Islamofascism as ‘the greatest threat this country [has] ever faced’.

“The pairing of ‘Islam’ and ‘fascism’ has no parallel in characterizations of extremisms tied to other religions, although the defining movements of fascism were linked to Catholicism – indirectly under Benito Mussolini in Italy, explicitly under Francisco Franco in Spain.

“… there is a broad conviction, especially among many conservative American Christians, that the inner logic of Islam and fascism go together. Political candidates appeal to those Christians by defining the ambition of Islamofascists in language that makes prior threats from, say, Hitler or Stalin seem benign. The point is that there is a deep religious prejudice at work, and when politicians adopt its code, they make it worse.”

James Carroll in the Boston Globe, 21 January 2008

US hard right backs Nazir-Ali

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“When others in his church and nation are often blinded by multiculturalism and rigid political correctness, the Church of England’s ethnically Pakistani Bishop of Rochester often speaks boldly…. Extreme secularists in both Britain and the U.S. naturally prefer to ignore the Jewish and Christian origins of their cultures and democracies. Their extreme version of multiculturalism, while ostensibly intended to protect the dignity of various cultures, instead denigrates Western culture and religion, while enthroning cultures that are hostile to Western democracy. Mainline Protestant clerics, presiding over emptied churches, often enthusiastically endorse this trend. But at least one Church of England bishop of Pakistani origins is warning against the swelling dangers.”

Mark D. Tooley at Front Page Magazine, 21 January 2008

Another paranoid anti-Muslim rant from Mad Mel

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Once again, Britain’s ‘moderate’ Muslim community is upping the ante against the British society in which it resides. The Sunday Telegraph reports that senior Muslims are pushing to integrate sharia law into English law. Dr Suhaib Hasan who, we learn, has been presiding over sharia courts in Britain for more than 25 years, is anxious to dispel any idea that sharia means flogging, stoning or amputations. Good grief no, perish the thought apparently it’s ‘only’ about family law.

“Uh huh. But as Baroness Cox points out in this story, sharia family law is utterly inimical to English law and British values, based as it is on the subjugation of women and the negation of individual freedom….

“And to back up his whole sinister proposal, he makes the utterly false analogy with Jewish religious law…. This is rubbish….

“It is very important that people understand that the pressure to sharia-ise Britain is far more dangerous even than terrorism because – see the government’s embrace of ‘sharia finance’ – its implications simply aren’t understood and it is likely therefore to be accepted. Salami-slice by salami slice, this is how British society will be dismembered.”

Meanie Phillips’s Spectator blog, 20 January 2008