Category Archives: Your View

This is a cross-post by Shiraz Maher from the StandPoint blog

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Oh dear, it really hasn’t been a good week for the Guardian.

On Monday Comment is Free invited Gerry Adams to pontificate about – would you believe it – the killing of civilians. Yes, really. Since when did the Guardian recognise Gerry Adams as the moral arbiter on informers and leaks?

On Tuesday they published an outrageous piece which – even by their standards – plumbs new depths. Norman Geras noted the ‘miserable evasion’ of Priyamvada Gopal who trivialises the ordeal suffered by Aisha, the Afghan woman featured on the front cover of Time magazine. After fleeing an abusive marriage the Taliban tracked her down and ordered that her ears and nose were cut off as punishment. It is a haunting image; the mania of millenarianism.

This is a guest-post by Chris Blackburn

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With the current impetuous on finding some sort of anti-thesis to war in Afghanistan and elsewhere. There has been a whole host of buzzwords and maxims coming from the media and international community of talking heads.

We all agree that since 9/11 there has been one strategic blunder after the other: from the war in Iraq to illegal renditions of terrorist suspects to Guantanamo Bay. It is clear that war is failing to help meet our strategic objectives, people are growing disillusioned, but there is an alternative answer to what is becoming the fashionable in-phrase within the conflict averse diplomatic community and apologists of radical Islamism which is less war war, more jaw jaw.

This is a guest post by Shiraz Maher

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Professor David Miller, who operates the SpinWatch, SpinProfiles and Neocon Europe websites, has responded to a piece by my colleague Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens. At best, Miller’s answers are evasive and inadequate.

In the comments section of Alexander’s article, Miller writes:

Meleagrou-Hitchens argues that his profile should not appear on our website Powerbase, because he did not want to feature on a site which in the past ‘published’ the work of racist academic Kevin MacDonald.

Meleagrou-Hitchens well knows that – to our regret – one of our researchers did quote MacDonald on one of our sister sites – as opposed to ‘publishing’ anything by MacDonald.

This could be seen as misdirection by Miller. The difference between ‘quoting’ and ‘reproducing’ would be the terms in which the selected material of MacDonald was represented on the website. As it was, MacDonald’s views were reproduced, at length, and without challenge, on Neocon Europe. The passages appeared in terms which not only seemed to approve of – but also approbated – MacDonald’s views. The Spittoon points out:

This is a crosspost by Shiraz Maher

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My colleague and comrade Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens has today explained why he wanted his profile removed from the SpinProfileswebsite operated by Professor David Miller of Strathclyde University.

Hitch the younger was characteristically generous in his response, omitting the wider questions relating to David Miller’s websites and views. I am honour-bound to raise these in defence of a trusty friend.

Miller operates SpinProfiles along with a number of other websites which include SpinWatch and Neocon Europe. The first of these websites came to attention after Alexander requested that his profile be removed from it.

SpinProfiles describes itself as an:

encyclopedia of people, issues, and groups shaping the public agenda that is being written collaboratively on this website. It catalogues descriptions and details of PR firms, activist groups and government agencies as well as the criticisms that are made of these groups from different perspectives.

This is a cross-post by Shiraz Maher from Standpoint Magazine.

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The Sunday Telegraph is full of stories about the Islamic Forum of Europe’s (IFE) growing influence in East London. It says the group has effectively infiltrated the local Labour Party and brought extraordinary pressure to bear on the local council, Tower Hamlets, where a number of the IFE’s members and supporters have been installed in key positions.

Undercover filming captured, Abjol Miah, an IFE activist and Tower Hamlets councillor, telling reporters:

“We’ve consolidated ourselves now. We’ve got a lot of influence and power in the council, councillors, politicians.”

Abu Talha, an IFE member, was also filmed saying:

“Our brothers have gone into positions of influence, council positions.”

The IFE has, of course, flatly denied all the allegations.

That makes Inayat Bunglawala’s email (sent today at 1830) to members of the Islamic Society of Britain and Young Muslims group on Yahoo particularly interesting.

This is a guest post by the Foxy French Neocon

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For most of us, the holidays are a time for rest and relaxation; a time to recuperate and enjoy the company of family and friends.

What has any of this got to do with Neocon Europe? Well, regular readers of this blog will know that last year we shone a spotlight on the racist and antisemitic writings of both Muhammad Idrees Ahmad and his boss Professor David Miller. Together they run Neocon Europe which has, inter alia, published a list of ‘racial characteristics’ about ‘Jewish intellectual movements’.

That’s the kind of attitude that ultimately led the Nazi’s to their Lebensunwertes Leben doctrine.

So then, back to the festive period – and just look at how Idrees spent Christmas eve, Christmas day and boxing day.