Am back in Edinburgh and speaking at a Yes Scotland meeting on Friday 24 May at the Columcille Centre, 2 Newbattle Terrace, Edinburgh at 7pm.
This is my first entry as a speaker into the referendum campaign, and I am excited – and nervous – about it. I have of course given quite literally hundreds of speeches, on every continent, in the last nine years. I have spoken before official committees of the Council of Europe, European Parliament, Arab League, UK Parliament and Scottish Parliament. I have spoken at a great many of the world’s most prestigious universities. I have spoken to crowds in the tens of thousands.
That has been almost all on the subject of universal human rights, international legality and peace, about which I am so passionate I abandoned a well-paid career to serve those causes. At the Columcille Centre on Friday my audience will not be remotely the largest, or most intimidating, or most potentially hostile, I have ever faced. But I will be speaking in the cause of the freedom of my own nation. That brings a lump to my throat and butterflies to my stomach. And so it damn well ought.
“Nobody knew the M25 was paid for with Scottish oil ”
Right, because it’s a Well Known Fact that Scottish oil is the government’s sole source of income and that nobody south of the border ever pays any taxes.
I suppose you think Scottish oil paid for the Channel Tunnel as well.
If Scotland goes what will put the Great in Great Britain
Sad, but the Union could enhance all concerned but sadly its not to be at present.
Good luck Craig. Great Scotland!
Anyone whom attempts to equate Barcelona to Glasgow is a Numpty… But we do try.. Those of us close to nature Do not regard Glasgow as the richest region…And as For the wee Street Foot ball wizards..yip we had
Brianfujisan
‘The terrorists in suits’. Like an unsolved rubrick cube, the MSM propaganda has coloured our own UK terrorism as back-page sport and religion as state pomp. How could these Muslims be so off-message? So radicalised. So unrepresentative. So unreligious. As to get worked up about what the UK does abroad in Muslim countries. When everybody knows all we do is just sport and pomp, including the snorty stompy Dame Neville-Jones who embodies the MSM myth that UK foreign policy is entirely innocent?
Guano…I hate what my boy does in his chosen profession.. And the family fotos Shock me even more,,Toddlers in army garb….But i have sat and listened to him .i know he is NOT a killer of poeple…..But the Cnts that send them… Guano am weary with this..Sorry
BrianFujisan
‘Those of us close to nature Do not regard Glasgow as the richest region’
I thought there was a rich diversity of microbes at least.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/legionnaires-outbreak-ten-new-cases-1128665
BrianFujisan
Sorry to be offensive. The military is a very honourable profession. As usual it was the BBC getting up my nose by wheeling out a list of people to condemn this attack from their very high horses and down their very long noses. Allah is in charge of all things, including death and life.
Best of luck. The dribbling skinny teetotaller in the front row wearing a union jack will be Fred. Give him my regards…
Good luck with your speech, Craig. I am now a supporter of total independence for Scotland. Among other indications, the news of a soldier being hacked to death by Muslims in broad daylight in London is a sign that the UK has now turned to shit, especially England, and doomed to a violent demise with civil conflict. Only independence will save Scotland from flushing down the toilet.
As the UK converts to Islam, as it surely is and whether people like it or not, violent incidents like this will increase and eventually lead to a catastrophic major conflict, if not civil war. No doubt people will pour scorn on this prediction as if the UK never saw Catholic vs Protestant conflict and current Christian vs Muslim conflicts in other countries are too far away to be relevant. The simple fact is that no country has ever peacefully transformed to Islam and the UK will be no different.
I wonder what excuses apologists of Islam will make for this incident. And do they think that British soldiers will not react badly?
Out with the old, In with the new
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10062745/Christianity-declining-50pc-faster-than-thought-as-one-in-10-under-25s-is-a-Muslim.html
Vote YES for an Independent Scotland
@Jemand: “The simple fact is that no country has ever peacefully transformed to Islam and the UK will be no different. ”
Indonesia.
Having some difficulty understanding why those who promote the magical virtues of competition are so anxious to avoid any between Scotland and The Rest. Scottish independence hould be right up their street. What the SNP is proposing is effectively a management buyout, enterprise rewarded, remaining shareholders have a bigger stake. Add to which, UKGov.plc becomes leaner and fitter, and as it has never, never, oh no, been dependent on oilfields north of Berwick, it will be free to pump up a property bubble and restore its status as central to the bank fraud and tax evasion universe.
Pink gins all round!
Jemnd..They are reacting badly..on my facebook its so ugly…i keep telling you all how somtimes alone one feels …Bit Like Tony on his bad day.
I am wondering what moves young Afro-Caribbeans to convert to Islam, when their grandparents (post Windrush) were pretty devout Christians. Could it be a sense of exclusion and alienation? Of belonging to no effective community? Or is it just the cool thing to do these days? I really would like to know.
Craig; I’m sure all will go well.
Having attended a local YES meeting it was well attended and they even had to bring in more chairs which I believe is a common occurrence at these meetings as the YES campaign has a great if not vocal following.
I look forward to seeing your speech on this website or YouTube; it’s a shame I will not be there.
Scotland has the chance to create a new form of democracy based on sound Scottish principles, Scandinavian type services and a fairer society for all Scots whether born or settled here.
The machinations of the BBC and the MSM are being circumvented by blogs, websites and Bitter together and UK Governments own stupidity in always playing the “Too Wee, Too Small and Too stupid card.
Scotland can vote YES for a better society.
@Tom Kennedy – “Indonesia”
Bullshit. Indonesia is my backyard. Violence against non-Muslims is not some modern phenomenon in the wake of 20th century American imperialism. It’s a standard practice.
Indonesia’s peaceful ongoing transformation –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Indonesian_beheadings_of_Christian_girls
Jemand: you said, as a “fact” that “no country has ever peacefully transformed to Islam” and yet the evidence is that that is exactly what happened in Indonesia, by far the largest Muslim country in the world. Islam was spread by traders, not by an invading army.
Sorry, but your bias is showing.
Jemand
‘The simple fact is that no country has ever peacefully transformed to Islam and the UK will be no different.’
You talk as if Islam is new to the UK. The UK powers that be who well understood the truth of Islam as early as the 15th Century, because all knowledge was being transferred from Islam to Europe at that time, savagely repressed that truth.
It is not a violent proposition to say that there is no God other than God, and that Muhammad SAW is the messenger of God for our time. The violence is perpetrated by the successors to those powers that be, six centuries later, droning individuals, igniting sectarian divisions, carpet bombing the innocent instead of persecuting individual believers as they first did in order to contain the true message of Islam.
I do not know ethnic origin of those who killed a soldier yesterday. But I believe that the cultural origin in the voice recordings was Caribbean African, possibly spoken by someone of a different ethnic origin . This means that the violence of the UK’s colonial past is, like Northern Ireland, never going to be laid to rest through social tweaking. It needs to be openly recognised that the Slave Trade and the British Raj in India were a joint Zionist European exercise in the equivalent of droning, dividing and carpet bombing, of then.
The motive was wealth and the destruction of Islam. Don’t try to lay the blame for yesterday’s violence at the door of the Islam, however much you do not like Islam. You have more brain.
Tom Kennedy, am I really biased? Or am I aware of the truth regarding the intrinsically violent nature of Islam?
The fact is Indonesia didn’t even exist before the Dutch colonised the archipelago in the 17thC and independence was won in 1945. The spread of Islam, of course, began long before the arrival of the Dutch but was facilitated by their aggregation of the archipelago as a contiguous political entity. You might naively think that Muslim traders arrived and were cheerfully received by non-Muslims as a new flavour of chewing-gum only to curiously (without any explanation) dominate centuries later as the most favoured religion, but I know differently.
Indonesia, primer –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indonesia
“.. the process of Islamisation .. was, and remains to this day, a continuous process in Indonesia.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_of_Islam_in_Indonesia
Peaceful Islam in Indonesia –
http://www.smh.com.au/world/indonesia-shrugs-at-rising-religious-violence-report-20130228-2f7pp.html
OT
OT
From a Window in Nicosia.
As I look out across the hills,
The lovely scenery often stills
My thoughts when they should chance to roam
across the seas back to my home.
The houses white and trees so green,
Make such a picture that once seen,
The darkest clouds are chased away
And skys are blue instead of grey.
The hours pass, the colours change,
And as the sun descends, the range
takes on a lovely purple hue,
Once more I say “Can I be blue”
When darkness falls I cannot see
The scene which was so grand to me,
I worry not but go to sleep,
Knowing well that it will keep.
I wake, “tis the dawn where can I be?
Ah. Now it all comes back to me,
I see those hills and know that I`ll
be happy whilst on Cyprus Isle.
PS. I wrote the above whilst looking from my billet window on Cyprus, last September.
Hope you like It.
Arthur. (Died, Libya, 2nd World war.)
The EDL mob are spitting out the words ‘This is policitical Islam’. Their website is horrible. Mosques in the area were attacked last night.
http://englishdefenceleague.org/edl-news
Jemand: “the news of a soldier being hacked to death by Muslims in broad daylight in London is a sign that the UK has now turned to shit”
It will have ‘turned to shit’ when it becomes broadly acceptable to make cheap political capital out of a tragedy.
This from a friend:
“Here’s a list of violent killings, all on British streets, in the past 13 years. They include: being punched to death, stabbed to death, thrown down stairs, run over by a car, set alight in a car, throat slashed, stamped to death, hit repeatedly with a chair leg, and – in one particularly brutal case – being chased and murdered by an axe to the head (which remained embedded in the head when the body was found). These attacks were fully intended to cause others to feel something akin to terror. But as the victims were all of African, Asian, Arab or Caribbean descent, they aren’t terrorist attacks, there won’t ever be an emergency Cobra meeting, and white people won’t ever have to feel guilty for the actions of their lunatic and murderous compatriots” http://www.irr.org.uk/news/deaths-with-a-known-or-suspected-racial-element-2000-onwards/
Deaths with a (known or suspected) racial element 2000 onwards | Institute of Race Relations
http://www.irr.org.uk
Jemand
‘Or am I aware of the truth regarding the intrinsically violent nature of Islam?’
Yes, a decade and a half of UK violence on the Muslims was just Sport. The propaganda no more than football match cheering.
Guano,
No ‘old’ religion is “new” to the UK, however crossing social-political milestones can be new and, I’m sure you will be pleased to know, Islam is breaking “new” ground in terms of demographics and political influence.
My prediction is that Islam will continue its current trajectory of expansion in the UK until it meets resistance. At some point, the establishment will implement obstructions and deploy resources to defend against encroachment into powerful institutions, including the police, military and intelligent services. The UK head of state, HM Liz II, is also head of the Church of England, so British Muslims are ruled by a Christian – they cannot be happy or indifferent to this fact. The establishment are not going to agreeably entertain any variation to this arrangement and a majority Muslim electorate will not tolerate resistance to its democratic demands for change. I think you can look forward to a big rise in popular republicanism over the next few decades. Perhaps Charles or William will be the last British monarch.
I am originally from Central Asia. Islam came to Central Asia peacefully. People accepted Islam because of it’s ideas of fairness and calls for honesty and respect. The soviets though had given image to the spread of Islam as a violent and war based empire. I am not talking about military movement of Babur to India which was in the 15th century and purely was based on moving home since he was supressed at home by rivals. I am talking about 8th century, when for short period of time entire region became muslim and by the 9-10th century it was a centre of Islamic knowledge and culture.
To blame Islam for atrocities committed by lunatics would be an idiotic action. It is the same as to blame Christianity for actions of Hitler, since he always wore a cross and claimed to be true Christian.
My prediction is that Islam will continue its current trajectory of expansion…etc, etc.
No, that’s Jean-Marie le Pen’s prediction. And probably Pat Buchanan’s. Certainly Nigel Farrage’s and Nick Griffin’s.* Credit where credit is due, eh?
Though given that the most marginalised are the readiest converts, and that the current
regimegovernment is alienating and marginalising as many of our citizens as possible, I am sure that the fascists have a point.*Lovable Christian Nick off on one here-
http://metro.co.uk/2013/01/30/bnp-leader-nick-griffin-sell-your-scrap-metal-and-eat-roadkill-3375395/
From Guano, ‘this means that the violence of the UK’s colonial past is, like Northern Ireland, never going to be laid to rest through social tweaking. It needs to be openly recognised that the Slave Trade and the British Raj in India were a joint Zionist European exercise in the equivalent of droning, dividing and carpet bombing, of then.’
Good lord almighty, even when discussing the role of Islam in the UK an individual on this blog manages to drag zionism into the debate. It would be annoying if it was not so tragic. Also you are wrong about Northern Ireland. The role which colonialism played in the origins of that conflict is now of little consequence north or south of the border. What is the major dividing issue is religion mixed with social class. So ‘social tweaking’ is exactly what is needed in Northern Ireland.
The brutal murder in Woolwich yesterday was just that, murder. Cetain people on this thread will seek to justify those evil actions becuase of the UK’s supposed evil actions abroad. That is wrong. What is needed is for people to come together to decry the actions of radicals, be them Muslim or the downtrodden working class racists of the EDL.
And no I am not in the paid employment of the American, British or Israeli governments. I have not been ordered to derail the thread, I am expressing my opinion so do not resort to the usual barrage of abuse directed at anyone who does not agree with the prevailing sentiment of this blog.
“violent incidents like this will increase and eventually lead to a catastrophic major conflict, if not civil war…”
Who were the gangs in balaclavas fighting the police on the streets of Woolwich? Well?
“..a minuscule percentage of terrorist attacks in Europe were committed by Muslims. In 2009 and 2010, there were a grand total of 543 terrorist attacks, of which only 4 were committed by Muslims. This means that only 0.7% of terrorist attacks–again, less than 1%–were committed by Muslims.
Meanwhile, in that same time frame, separatist groups in Europe committed 397 terrorist attacks, or 73% of terrorist attacks overall. In other words, separatist groups committed 99.2 times (almost 100 times) more terrorist attacks than Muslims.”
http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/11/updated-europol-data-less-than-1-of-terrorist-attacks-by-muslims/
Technicolour, once again you are trying to disconnect violence from political evolution. Let me ask you this – would the Nazis, Bolsheviks or Mao’s communists have ‘achieved’ what they did without violence?
The violence you describe is of your common unfriendly neighbourhood psychopath and has little or no political consequence and therefore relevance here. The murder of this soldier is the normal behaviour of a minority of young males who are readily available and respondent to programming for politically motivated violence. They are autonomous drones, filled with ideas (in this case, the teachings of the Qurran interpreted by Muslim intellectuals for contemporary relevance) and set loose to do the hard work that must be done to ensure a gloriously divine victory. In the old days, they would have been British soldiers sent off to do the good work of British Imperialism. And in older days, they were the savages that invaded villages to spread the realm of warlords. Oh, how people forget our heritage.
To deny the fact that Islam is inherently violent is like denying that young males are inherently predisposed to carry out that violence. Totally foolish.
Andrew K
No it was not murder. Or if it was, then droning is murder, false-flag bombs are murder, carpet bombing innocent people is murder.
You declared war on us. But it was in your minds a one-way war in which only innocent Muslims got killed. Your war. Your victim. Your tombstone in St Paul’s Cathedral to commemorate the your own violence and aggression.
Jon Pelfrey
22 May, 2013 – 10:59 pm
“Just saw the news regarding the hacking of the soldier in London. One of yours who did the hacking, Craig? I’m wondering if we’ll have one less commenter here.”
An explanation for this comment would be in order don’t you think?