The “anti-semitism” witch-hunt that accused so many human rights advocates for supporting Palestine, has weirdly come to a dead halt when confronted with an actual anti-semite. Thomas Mair has been judged competent to be charged by two doctors, yet the right throughout both new and old media still hide behind his mental illness as an excuse to avoid the issues of right wing terrorism. As a bipolar person, I find a great deal of the comment around mental health deeply insulting.
Let me avoid hypocrisy. I do not think Thomas Mair should be charged with terrorism because I do not think anybody should be charged with terrorism. I have held that the law-making orgy of new “terrorist” offences was legally unnecessary and purely political propaganda. Murder and conspiracy to murder always were perfectly adequate offences and that is what terrorists ought to be charged with. Murder is the same sordid murder whatever the motive, and to have terrorist murder as a separate offence imbues it with a nobility it does not deserve.
But now terrorism has been created as a separate offence, the blatant discrimination in non-application of terrorist charges to right wing terrorists is indefensible.
Mair is not an isolated case. Ryan McGee – who built a nail bomb to attack Muslims – and Pavlo Lapshyn – who murdered a Muslim and bombed mosques – were not charged with terrorism either. Mair, McGee and Lapshyn would all, beyond any possible shadow of a doubt, have been charged with terrorism if they were Muslims. The decision is made by the Crown Prosecution Service, which has also recently decided that Tony Blair, Jack Straw, John Scarlett, Mark Allen et all will not stand trial for extraordinary rendition and complicity in torture, despite overwhelming evidence presented by the Metropolitan Police, including my own.
There is a dark cloud of Islamophobia hanging over the Crown Prosecution Service. Given the totality of these decisions, there has to be.
If Mair has been found fit to plead it indicates he was not mentally ill at the time of (allegedly) committing the offence.
I would not be surprised though that he runs a defence of ‘necessity.’ That might by itself OTOH suggest ongoing mental health issues but running a trial would certainly get publicity. If a trial runs an application might be made at some point for a stay of proceedings (not sure UK has that in the same form we have down under) due to wide publicity and whatever prejudicial comment may emanate in the media.
I for one absolutely agree, there was no need for all these “terrorism” offences – the UK or Australia – there was nothing wrong with good old fashioned conspiracy and murder/attempted murder etc. What that regime does is allow politicians around the world to say like Preznit Bush that non state actors have started a “war” when the only difference is that some misuse religion to claim more credibility, as a political act than common murderers engaged in criminality. They are all common murderers (allegedly as the case may be)
Terrorism offences however have a traditional ignorance of reality, a traditional right bias with only Muslim perpetrators ever being able to commit them.
Alex Neil, former SNP Cabinet Secretary for planning accepted nearly £3,000 in donations towards his election expenses, almost a quarter of his budget, from a company connected to fracking. The company, Hydracrat Ltd., who drill test bore holes, gave him just under the £500 limit for declaring expenses and five members of the family which owns it gave just under £500 each.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14566316.SNP_planning_minister_took_cash_from_pro_fracking_drilling_company/
Petition Cancel the planned referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the EU.
According to the BBC (as at the 26th February 2016) 444 MPs of (almost) all parties have declared their support for Britain staying a member of the European Union on the basis of the reform package negotiated by the Prime Minister, David Cameron.
▼More details
Constituting more than 68% of the votes in the House of Commons, this represents a rare and overwhelming cross-party Parliamentary majority. If it is the settled will of such a large majority in the House of Commons, Parliament should now rise to the occasion and assert the very sovereignty Brexit campaigners claim it has lost. Parliament should ratify the agreement reached by the Government with the European Union and confirm Britain’s membership of the European Union on that basis.
Sign this petition
39,891 signatures
Can anyone tell me,
is this Petition with the blessing of the Liberal Democrat party?
One of the charms of the Liberal Democrats is that they allow their members to pursue ideas, stupid (as is in this case) and very occasionally otherwise, without approval or sanction by the Party.
It’s too late for that, in my view. It should not be cancelled. I agree that it should never have been organised in the first place and it was organised only to placate the Tory Right-wing and stop them joining UKIP; in other words, it does organised to pander to the Far Right for the purposes of ensuring Tory vistoyr in last year’s General Election and onwards. But now, four days from polling day, it would be gross infringment of democracy to cancel it and actually would do a disservice to the memory of the MP who was killed.
It shouldn’t have been allowed in the first place, but it shouldn’t be cancelled. That would be an infringement of democracy!
By the way, do you check under your bed at night for “Far Right”, and your other bogeymen, the “White Supremacists”. You seem to go on about them an awful lot.
“You seem to go on about them an awful lot.” Anon1
In truth, they bore me. I feel sorry for them, actually. But I do “go on about them” when their actions warrant being gone on about.
For example, I “go on about them” when one of them allegedly stabs, kicks and shoots a democratically elected politician to death on an English high street.
In case it had escaped your notice, I also “go on about” clerical fascists” when their noxious actions demand such comment.
In short, I despise Nazis of all kinds.
Suhayl Saadi is one of the better regular contributors on this often tortured comments thread, and his comment above is one that I think (as do many other well informed individuals), is almost certainly correct. His comments certainly did not invite such a gratuitous, idiotic, puerile comment in reply.
In the current context, the term Islamophobia is incorrect; it should be projection of hatred of Islamic people. The difference: one can be fearful of something, and not aim to destroy it; projecting hatred, on the other hand, aims to harm the object of hatred. One can fear mosquitoes, and not swat them; but hatred of mosquitoes suggests ample spraying of insecticide.
Paul “Islamophobia” is a soft term to portray the hatred of Muslims and Islam, that is in tradition of Orwellian two minutes hate that is being promoted by the various interested parties; the neo; liberals/conservatives, zionists et al. That envisage a religious/cultural war to replace the old cold war that was the source of revenue for the duration of the twentieth century to keep the super rich enjoying the dividends from the arms industry recycling the tax dollars/pounds/dinars.
The fact that open hatred of Muslims has been so matter of factly tolerated on this blog and elsewhere, and is a prevalent and tolerated hatred as in evidence in the various comments sections of the various media that is going without being challenged by anyone. In contrast the slightest hint of insult albeit perceived as denoted by Node to a certain other group is immediately met with sanctions/deletion and cries of antisemi…… by the resident agents assigned to this board to keep it on the “straight and narrow” as the agents have gone on record to point out. Fact that it is admirable to see such an observance of propriety, and correct decorum alas it is only a selected and very narrow observance without much notice to hate that is being poured on all things Islamic and Muslims.
In fact the messages that are being published here and elsewhere are very much on the same lines of the classic hatred of certain other religion and its’ adherents circa 1930. Thus in another eighty years time probably the hatred against Muslims will be considered unacceptable. Meanwhile it is tolerated and accepted even in such blogs as this.
The Calif of Turkey is revising his Islamist ideas
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36567872
Turkey’s president has signalled that he intends to revive plans to redevelop a central Istanbul park which sparked large anti-government protests in 2013.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Gezi Park was an issue “where we need to be courageous”.
Plans envisaged rebuilding an old barracks and erecting other structures on the rare central green space.
Several people were killed and thousands injured in the protests which began in May 2013.
What started as demonstrations against urban redevelopment turned into a wider expression of anger against the policies of the government under Mr Erdogan, the then prime minister.
The excessive use of force by riot police escalated tensions.
‘Historic structure’
“If we want to preserve our history we must rebuild this historic structure, we will rebuild it,” he said in a speech in Istanbul, quoted by AFP news agency.
He was referring to the Ottoman-era barracks that used to stand in Gezi Park.
For some Turks, the proposed reconstruction of the barracks has symbolic significance. Some accounts say it was at the barracks that a failed mutiny by Islamic-minded soldiers was initiated in 1909.
The barracks were demolished in 1940, and attempts to rebuild them are seen by opponents to have the ring of Islamism.
In the wake of the 2013 unrest Turkey’s top administrative court blocked the redevelopment but last year it reversed its decision, following an appeal by the municipality of Istanbul, AFP reports.
We remember:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pATTupWIE1I
I will personally involve myself in this blatant attempt to ‘rebuild’ the Ottoman military barracks in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. Green Gezi Park should in my opinion take in just one memorial to the genocide of Ottoman Armenians in 1915, period.
Turkish border guards have shot dead at least eight Syrians, including four children, who were trying to cross into Turkey
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-36570890
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_meurtre_du_13_juin_2016_%C3%A0_Magnanville
The double murder of 13 June 2016 Magnanville is a jihadist terrorist attack to a couple of officials from the Ministry of the Interior (the police officer and one administrative officer), perpetrated at home June 13, 2016 in the town of Magnanville, in Yvelines, France. They were killed by stabbing.
Larossi Abballa, an Islamist radical claiming themselves of the Islamic State is shot by police.
The couple’s son, aged three and a half years, was found unharmed and in shock by the police.
Nine years ago in the same area of France a senior policeman Christian Marshall
was knifed to death in his home, one usable DNA sample was discovered
but no one ever got charged.
Istanbul is not the only city whose fabric is under threat by a near dictator and his oligarch friends
http://www.maps-moscow.com/eng/
Having visited Moscow recently I know this is a real issue, although the churches are being well looked after, a lot of other fine old buildings have now gone in a very short time – the Moscow Heritage at Crisis Report on the attached link which is in English provides a lot of the details. Strangely enough the Lubyanka looks as pristine as ever – although Detsky Mir nearby has been gutted and now includes a branch of Hamleys.
It is now official. Britain has now crawled into the same dung-hole that is occupied by America. Neither country is any longer a “shining light” to humanity. How sad.
The anti-establishment Five Star Movement has made big gains in Italy, winning mayoral races in Rome and Turin, early results show.
Virginia Raggi will become Rome’s first female leader, in a victory seen as a blow to Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and his centre-left Democratic Party (PD).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36569410
That should make the hated E.U. sit up and take notice,
the people are revolting against the status quo
So much for that theory Craig :
http://gu.com/p/4m5fy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Michael Steven Sandford, who is British, had been trying to kill Donald Trump “for about a year”, court papers say.
http://news.sky.com/story/1714946/brit-arrested-at-rally-wanted-to-shoot-trump
This seems like a proper attempt, all be it by a lone wolf nutter.
FBI now backpedals and releases COMPLETE transcripts of Orlando shooter Omar Mateen’s 911 call in which he says ‘Peace be upon the prophet… I did the shootings’ – hours after redacting references to Islam and 9/11
//www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3650799/Peace-prophet-did-shootings-FBI-releases-complete-transcripts-Orlando-shooter-Omar-Mateen-s-911-calls-scrubs-references-Islam-9-11.html#ixzz4CC6vYtNW
Much of what Mateen said was redacted, with the FBI making the decision to leave out all references to Islam, 9/11 and any of the groups that the shooter pledged his allegiance to during the attack, which left 49 dead. References to ‘Allah’ were also replaced with ‘God’ throughout.
After facing criticism from Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan who called the selective editing ‘preposterous’, the DoJ and FBI decided to release the complete transcript some hours later.
In a joint statement from DoJ and the FBI, it said the change of heart was down to the redacted transcript ‘causing unnecessary distraction” from the work of law enforcement authorities.
‘We also did not want to provide the killer or terrorist organizations with a publicity platform for hateful propaganda,” the statement added.
So does that mean it was more about Islam
than about same sex hatred?
Whereas “only Muslims are terrorists” is now the official line, a “and far-right too” is added to promote other policy objectives, and is invariably “true” because the attacks are mostly false flag, in which people may or may not die.
In an attempt to derail Brexit we have “a far-right attack”, as a “Muslim attack” would probably have the opposite effect, but the signs of false flag are there in the alleged murder of Jo Cox MP, which seems just too convenient with a ready to roll narrative but unconvincing visual evidence to substantiate media reports.