Category Archives: The Far Left

The cynical stupidity of Bob Pitt

By Guest | Published: December 7, 2011

This is a guest post by Amjad Khan

In a recent piece for the New Statesman, Quilliam’s Maajid Nawaz made the point that government should bypass Islamist front groups such as MAB, IFE and the MCB when engaging with Muslims. Rather Muslims should seek representation through their elected politicians, just like all other citizens, and Islamist inspired organisations should not be allowed to monopolise Muslim representation. Quite a straight forward argument you may think, who could possibly be upset with a challenge to anti-democratic means to representation and extremism?

Welcome to the world of Bob Pitt. Bob is an ageing and outmoded far-left blogger who has developed a reputation for making mind-bending and logic-stretching arguments in order to contort reality to his fit his cynical far-left worldview. In Bob’s world, Islamophobia is not a societal scourge to be challenged, but rather something to be exploited and manipulated for short-term political point scoring. His website www.Islamaphobiawatch.com’ is less about Islamophobia and more about attacking his political opponents, many of whom are Muslim.

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Also posted in Islamism | 4 Responses

SpinWatch Retracts Support for Bob Lambert

By Effendi | Published: November 4, 2011

SpinWatch, which is run by Professor David Miller of Strathclyde University, has a disgraceful record of attacks on Muslim liberals who oppose terrorist attacks. Furthermore, Miller’s site presented the views of the prominent neo-Nazi academic Kevin MacDonald, to explain the political behaviour of Jews.

Last week SpinWatch gave Bob Lambert space on their website to apologise for his “former” career as a Police spy. But that was then. It now transpires that SpinWatch has retracted its support for Lambert in a new statement. The reasons for their abrupt turnaround are these:

The delay of the publication coincided with the publication of the SpinWatch open letter and a comment piece by Lambert himself. This was followed by a flurry of stories in the Guardian featuring further details about his infiltration and the damage done by the 18 month relationship he pursued as part of his cover (for an overview see the Lewis and Evans’ Undercover blog).

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Also posted in Lobby Groups, Police Spying | 2 Responses

SpinWatch Supports the work of Bob Lambert, the Police Spy and Lobbyist

By Effendi | Published: October 24, 2011

On David Miller’s SpinWatch site is an open letter to spy master Bob Lambert, soliciting him with an opportunity to clear his name in the face of recent “allegations”.

Miller opens the letter with some boilerplate text about being firmly opposed to “the infiltration of activist groups by the forces of the state, corporations and the private security industry”:

Spinwatch has – from the very beginning in 2004 – been involved in investigating the infiltration of activist groups by the forces of the state, corporations and the private security industry.  One of the earliest cases we examined was the infiltration of London Greenpeace, with which you have reportedly been associated. Since then we have done extended work on the infiltration of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (The Threat Response Spy Files) and most recently on the 2010/11 case of police spy Mark Kennedy. We have done this work in close collaboration with the activists who have been infiltrated, destabilized and betrayed. Spinwatch stands in solidarity with the infiltrated.

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Also posted in Crime, Farce | 1 Response

On Drone Strikes

By Effendi | Published: October 23, 2011

In Pakistan, drone strikes have killed hundreds of non-combatant civilians. This means many more victims than have been previously reported, including the deaths of 168 children. The deaths of these non-combatant civilians should be challenged by every sensible person.

The responsibility is on the US and Pakistan governments, together, to try and reduce the numbers of these deaths; a point made by Christopher Rogers of CIVIC:

In a recent study by the Campaign for Innocent Victims of Conflict (CIVIC), report author Christopher Rogers said: “It’s almost certain that US drone strikes are causing more civilian casualties than the US has thus far admitted”.

He told Channel 4 News “faulty intelligence” could be leading to civilian deaths.

He said: “In our research… in a number of instances there was no doubt that faulty ‘intel’ was to blame – hitting a pro-government peace committee member’s house, for instance. In other cases, though victims stated that militants were indeed killed in the strike, non-combatant civilians were hit collaterally. i.e. a militant car passing by a house that collapsed from the blast.”

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Also posted in Islamism | Leave a comment

Toronto Al-Quds Day: Another Jew HateFest

By Effendi | Published: September 2, 2011

This is essential viewing. It is a distillation of the wholly reprehensible phenomenon of Jew-hatred dressed up as legitimate criticism of Israel. Criticism of Israel is fair game, but accusing it of “sucking the blood of the people of the world” is undiluted Jew hatred, not political critique.

Here Tarek Fatah is interviewed by Brian Lilley on Sun TV, a Canadian tv channel, on the Al-Quds rally held in Queens Park in Toronto which was little more than a racist hatefest, where President Obama was referred to as “this Black man in the White House” and there was talk of raising an Islamic Army to wipe out Israel.

The same phenomenon is happening in the UK. Politicians such as Ken Livingstone will kowtow to Islamic Jew hatred propagated by “representive” Islamist political groups because it will win them a handful of votes from their South Asian constituents.

Also posted in Antisemitism | 6 Responses

apparently we’re all robert spencer now, according to the weasels at “spinwatch”

By bananabrain | Published: August 24, 2011

we at the spittoon have for some time been a target for the not-very-impressive “spinwatch” site, which appears to be the hobby-horse of strathclyde university’s answer to bob pitt, dr david miller. dr miller, we hardly need remind you, appears to think that spittoon authors are without exception rabid “neo-cons”, by which he appears to mean some sort of catch-all imperialism of liberal democracy imposed by force of arms on the bucolic, picaresque and entirely pacifist natives of the middle-east and south asia. as if this wasn’t bad (or inaccurate) enough, we are also supposed to be apostles of islamophobia; apparently it isn’t clear enough to someone who is supposed to be an academic that what we oppose is the virulent political ideology known as islamism – as well as other forms of religious and political extremism; jewish, christian, atheist, muslim, ethnicity-based – we are equal-opportunity anti-extremists, or we certainly try to be.

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Also posted in Activism, Anti Muslim bigotry, Blogosphere, Dodgy Policy Wonks, Education, European Fascism, Far Right Extremism, Homophobia, Identity Politics, Islamism, Moral relativism, Nutters, Racism, The Left, The Regressive Left | 20 Responses

the big society, riots and “spiral dynamics”

By bananabrain | Published: August 15, 2011

obviously, a great deal has been written about the riots to date and a great deal of predictable outpouring has also taken place. what i wanted to offer to this debate is, however, along more behavioural lines.

i have for some time been aware of the powerful analytical frameworks for bio-psycho-social systems developed by the american psychologist dr clare graves and systematised for practical application by don beck and chris cowan in the excellent book “spiral dynamics” (i’m not affiliated with anyone concerned, incidentally). at the risk of sounding like somewhat of a “fanboy”, as i believe it is called on teh interwebs, i am convinced it constitutes an important piece of intellectual real estate for the understanding of complex socio-political systems, particularly in behavioural terms.

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Also posted in Activism, Blogosphere, Civil Rights, Communalism, Crime, Democracy, Education, Ethics, Exegesis, Human Rights, Identity Politics, Media, Misc, Moral relativism, Multiculturalism, Political Correctnes gone mad!, Politics, The Left, The Regressive Left, UK Politics | Leave a comment

Anders Breivik and Christianist Nationalism

By Effendi | Published: July 26, 2011

Hours before Anders B Breivik, dressed in police uniform, prowled Utoeya, calmly massacring teenagers, he posted a 1,500-word “manifesto” online which he titled a European declaration of independence. In amongst the anti-Muslim screed, of which it is redolent, is this appalling insight into his murderous plan:

I’m pretty sure I will pray to God as I’m rushing through my city, guns blazing, with 100 armed system protectors pursuing me with the intention to stop and/or kill. I know there is a 80%+ chance I am going to die during the operation as I have no intention to surrender to them until I have completed all three primary objectives AND the bonus mission. When I initiate (providing I haven’t been apprehended before then), there is a 70% chance that I will complete the first objective, 40% for the second, 20% for the third and less than 5% chance that I will be able to complete the bonus mission. It is likely that I will pray to God for strength at one point during that operation, as I think most people in that situation would….If praying will act as an additional mental boost/soothing it is the pragmatical thing to do. I guess I will find out… If there is a God I will be allowed to enter heaven as all other martyrs for the Church in the past.

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Also posted in Anti Fascism, Anti Muslim bigotry, Terrorism | 1 Response

Garbage in, Galloway out

By Abdul Hamid al Manchesteri | Published: March 15, 2011

The video of Galloway is self explanatory. What is more difficult to swallow is the absolutely amoral hypocrisy of British Islamism’s only representative Member of Parliament.

h/t: Potkin

Also posted in Islamism | 5 Responses

David Miller of SpinWatch Spins More Lies

By Effendi | Published: March 15, 2011

A shoddy piece of smear-mongering against The Spittoon perpetrated by Professor David Miller of the University of Strathclyde has recently come to our attention:

It has also exposed The Spittoon, a McCarthyite operation run by members of Centre for Social Cohesion in collaboration, for a while at least, with members of the government funded Quilliam Foundation.[25] This expose was not well-received by the interests behind The Spittoon. The website first tried to intimidate the Powerbase researcher who had made the discovery with threatening emails, followed by a smear campaign, which was coordinated with an allied attack blog, Harry’s Place.[26] Shortly afterwards a similar smear campaign was also directed against the founder of Powerbase. Several neoconservative operators have also tried to use legal threats to shut Powerbase down. In June 2010, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens of the Centre for Social Cohesion, a frequent contributor to The Spittoon, successfully pressured Powerbase’s British domain name registrar to temporarily shut down the website.

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Also posted in Anti Muslim bigotry, Antisemitism | 7 Responses

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