Category Archives: The Far Left

If you can’t stand behind our troops Salma Yaqoob, get in front of them

By Guest | Published: February 5, 2011

This is a guest post by Mr Happy

What I’ve never understood about zealous left-wingers is their hatred for the military. Maybe they think the military has a massive influence on foreign policy or maybe they just hate our brave men and women and their heroic efforts in the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t know.

But I do know that Salma Yaqoob’s snub of, military hero, Matt Croucher was perhaps the most tasteless action of a far-left politician in some time.

Mr Croucher was awarded the George Cross after he threw himself on a grenade to protect his colleagues. The man is an essay in bravery. His brave actions almost certainly saved his colleagues from injury or death, yet he amazingly survived the attack himself.

He was invited to the Council chambers of Birmingham Council, completely as a non-political actor. He was, rightly, awarded with a standing ovation from spectators and council members except Miss Yaqoob and her fellow hack, Mohammed Ishtiaq.

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Also posted in Afghan war | 5 Comments

Heroin

By avicenna | Published: January 31, 2011

The very wonderful Mona Eltahawy has written an important piece on the (imminent?) Egyptian Revolution, which you can read here. In there is a passage that could be controversial:

Meanwhile, the uprisings are curing the Arab world of an opiate, the obsession with Israel. For years, successive Arab dictators have tried to keep discontent at bay by distracting people with the Israeli-Arab conflict. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in 2009 increased global sympathy for Palestinians. Mubarak faced the issue of both guarding the border of Gaza, helping Israel enforce its siege, and continuing to use the conflict as a distraction. Enough with dictators hijacking sympathy for Palestinians and enough with putting our lives on hold for that conflict.

I don’t see the British “liberal left” or advocates of British Muslim identity politics weaning themselves off that particular “distraction” anytime soon.

Also posted in Islamism, Israel/Palestine | Leave a comment

A Dummy’s Guide to Lambertism

By Ziryab | Published: October 23, 2010

This is a cross-post by Amjad Khan

Over the last few years, entry level Islamist organisations, certain sections of the far-left, and a handful of academics and policy wonks have been advocating a theory, now commonly referred to as ‘Lambertism’, named after it’s most vocal proponent, Robert Lambert. This theory essentially advocates governments building closer ties with non-violent Islamist groups and hard-core Wahabis in an effort to defeat violent Islamist extremists. In essence, let’s work with non-violent extremists to defeat violent extremists. Advocates of this approach would argue that non-violent extremists are best placed to deal with violent extremists. In this article I hope to explore some of the implications of this approach and the motivations behind some of those advocating it.

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Also posted in Islamism, UK Politics | 2 Comments

Is this the “counter-Enlightenment”?

By bananabrain | Published: August 6, 2010

i’ve not posted for a while, mostly because of pressure of work, but there are a number of things which are currently causing me to more or less lose sleep.

recently, i gave up posting on pickled politics, partly because of the level of personal animosity i was facing, but mostly just in frustration at my apparent inability to get my point across. now, i suppose i have nobody very much to blame for that apart from myself, but i’ve never felt that was a problem before now. now, i think i’m starting to work out what it is that is bothering me; certainly, it’s not about the denizens of one blog, or even the blogosphere, or even the media. it’s not any one set of views, not any one person, but a set of trends, a collective movement i sense in wider society.

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Also posted in Anti Fascism, Anti Muslim bigotry, Antisemitism, Blogosphere, Christian Evangelical Nutters, Civil Rights, Democracy, Entryism, European Fascism, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Religion, Human Rights, Identity Politics, Interfaith, Islamism, Jewish Extremism, Moral relativism, Multiculturalism, Obscurantism, Sectarianism, Secularism, The Regressive Left, UK Politics | 37 Comments

Support Gheyret Niyaz

By Faisal | Published: July 25, 2010

Here’s a story of Islamophobia and brutal state-oppression of Muslims.

The intellectual, Gheyret Niyaz, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for endangering state security, a vague charge that is often used by officials to lock up people they deem political threats. The sentence was especially severe given that Mr. Niyaz was not accused of taking part in the ethnic rioting. Other Chinese intellectuals have recently been slapped with the same sentence: Last December, Liu Xiaobo, a main author of a pro-democracy manifesto called Charter 08, was also sentenced to 15 years.

Mr. Niyaz, 51, holds what are considered moderate political views — he has not, for example, advocated for Xinjiang independence, a position held by some Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people that is the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang. Many of them resent the policies of the Chinese government, which is dominated by ethnic Han, saying that those policies are diluting the Uighur culture and leading to their economic disenfranchisement.

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Also posted in Anti Muslim bigotry | 3 Comments

Has beens and wanabees

By Guest | Published: May 30, 2010

This is a cross-post by Terry Fitzpatrick

There is an air of desperation about the announcement of a conference at The Camden Centre next Saturday the 5th of June. Announcements in the Morning Star and on Socialist Unity meant that the omens were not good and the line up of those speaking confirms that.

Islamophobia has, it seems, become the new Anti Semitism and anyone who criticises the more extreme elements of Islam who want to impose a caliphate, reduce women to the status of second class citizens and murder gays and apostates is routinely regarded as the modern day equivalent of a member of the Waffen SS, at least as far as the assortment of Trots, Stalinists and Islamofascists who will be gathering at Kings Cross next weekend are concerned.

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Also posted in Islamism | 1 Comment

Respect No More

By Effendi | Published: May 15, 2010

The ship of fools that is the RESPECT Party could be sinking if not sunk. Following its abysmal performance in last week’s elections comes news that its financier and chairman of the Tower Hamlets branch, Azmal Hussain, has resigned.

A local chairman and a financier of the Respect Party has told BBC London he is to resign and stop funding it. Azmal Hussain, chair of Tower Hamlets branch of the party in east London, said: “If anyone wants to continue, let them, but I am not involved.”

When asked about the future of his party, Mr Hussain said: ”For me it is over.”

“I will resign and will stop funding the party. Not a single penny.”

Happier days at the 'Salma and George Show'

Some unanswered questions linger in the wreckage of the failed experiment. Amongst them, what now for the coalition of the Far Left and a strand of British Islamic identity politics?

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Also posted in Islamism, UK Politics | Leave a comment

George Galloway: Expect More Lies

By Guest | Published: April 27, 2010

This is cross-post by Terry Glavin:

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Fiction: Reported in the Globe and Mail: “I didn’t give any money to Hamas, I gave it to the ministry of health in Gaza to pay for the salaries of the doctors and nurses who hadn’t been paid. By the way, we’re talking about 20 odd thousand pounds, not millions. It’s a symbolic donation. I gave it to the ministry of health in Gaza and I’m proud to have done so.”

Fact: By Galloway’s own admission, broadcast on several Arab television stations: “I, now, here, on behalf of myself, my sister Yvonne Ridley, and the two Respect councillors – Muhammad Ishtiaq and Naim Khan – are giving three cars and 25,000 pounds in cash to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Here is the money. This is not charity. This is politics.” Not charity, but politics. Not to “doctors and nurses who hadn’t been paid,” but to the Hamas gangster “Prime Minister” Ismail Haniyeh who, in fact, is not and was not the Prime Minister of Palestine.

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Also posted in Islamism, Israel/Palestine | Leave a comment

Defend David T

By Guest | Published: March 19, 2010

This is a cross-post by Rumbold

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David T of Harry’s Place is being sued by George Galloway and one of Mr. Galloway’s collegues, Kevin Ovenden. They are demanding £50,000 for a comment left on another blog. The comment he made wasn’t nice or correct, but as Richard Bartholomew put it:

The legal threat seems to me to be badly conceived. I’m sure that Galloway and Overden are against the anti-Jewish hadith in Hamas Covenant, but while it’s there anyone who meets a Hamas governmental official risks being tarnished by association. Blame Hamas for that. And of course it’s annoying when a political opponent extrapolates a supposedly logical chain from one’s activities or position to the conclusion that in some deeper “objective” sense one is in fact supporting something else, but that’s life and to be allowed to do it is essential to public debate.

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Also posted in Lawfare | 19 Comments

Liberal Confusion

By Faisal | Published: March 12, 2010

Terry Eagleton is interviewed by the Culture Editor of the New Statesman. Asked about his very public spat with Martin Amis two years ago, Eagleton replies:

I’m interested in the way a whole stratum of the liberal literati (Rushdie, to some extent Ian McEwan, A C Grayling, obviously Amis and Hitchens) – the very people you’d have expected to be guardians of the liberal flame of tolerance and understanding – have, at the very first assault, rushed into these caricatured postures driven by panic. I’m very struck by how those who are making ugly, illiberal, supremacist noises about the superiority of the west are precisely the sort of literary and liberal characters from whom you’d expect more imagination, openness and sensitivity.

Norm defeathers and skins that turkey most elegantly:

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Also posted in Moral relativism | 4 Comments

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