Harry’s Place

I am sure that the HP reader, Richard Farnos, will enlighten us on the goings-on in the SLP and this decline into crude third worldism?

Richard is somewhat of an expert on the SLP and its internal workings.

I do hope that Richard will share his insights into the matter.

Moazzam Begg; was he ever a jihadist, though??????

No, he was merely an aid worker, who ran an Islamist bookshop, collected night vision goggles and a bulletproof vests, freely admitted providing financial support to jihadists, and travelled to Chechenya, Bosnia and Afghanistan just to see what they were like.

Let’s not forget Chandan was a prominant member of the “Che-Leila Youth Brigades”, and met with Islamic Jihad the day after they killed 17 people in a suicide bomb on a bus.

He ran for NUS President in 2003 on the “Students Against the War on Terror” slate - this was a slate who all withdraw, but he didn’t turn up do wasn’t able to withdraw.

You too kind Modernity, it has been getting on 10 years since I was a member of the SLP. Indeed I was expelled for reason that were never explained.

Let’s not forget Chandan was a prominant member of the “Che-Leila Youth Brigades”

There is something to admire in a group adopts the name of the world’s most famous plane hijacker after 9/11.

whoaa Mr.T, I was only asking…

Erm, surely to listen to extremists, and learn how respond to them, you have to, well, listen to them.

Organizations like the Conflicts Forum are important and honourable (and don’t have “a patina of respectability”: what they stand for is eminently honourable) precisely because (and dare I say it, like Ken Livingstone with Sinn Fein in the early 1980s) dare to reach out to those that more illiberal and narrow types (who like nothing more than the image of their own reflection, thinking that staring at mirror versions of themselves makes them so tolerant and right) regard as beyond the pale.

More power to the elbow of the likes of the Conflicts Forum: the involvement of the man from the Alliance Party (note to non-UK readers: non-sectarian Northern Ireland party, not the SDP-Liberals) is a clear sign of their wisdom

What’s still more awful is that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with that ideal, genuinely on fire, just as in his days of youth and innocence. Yes, man is broad, too broad, indeed. I’d have him narrower

and travelled to Chechenya, Bosnia and Afghanistan just to see what they were like.

But I thought the struggle in Bosnia wasn’t at all jihadist in nature, and was instead about resisting the evil Serbs and their evil nationalism.

Naw, he couldn’t have been in Bosnia because the innocent Bosnian Muslims were engaged in a just war of defense against imperialist Serbian aggressions.

Surely you’re mistaken.

@ Venichka…get your flak jacket on…

I don’t think anyone has ever denied that there Jihadi groups present in BiH. (Not least as the official arms embargo meant that assistance against the “srpski zlocini” in the mountains, oh so bravely aiming their missiles on the unarmed civilians below them, had to come wherever was prepared to provide it).

No-one in their right mind has claimed that the Armiya BiH (or the regime of the then Republic of BiH, and subsequent Federation of BiH) were Islamist (let alone Jihadi) in inspiration or motive, howevre.

Ven

I’d agree.

However, the more I look at the CF, the more I think that their purpose is not to listen to jihadist movements to work out what makes them tick.

Rather, their purpose is:

- to help them to build links with the far Left; and then

- to teach them how to play the media and the UK political machine: i.e. by disguising their message, or presenting it in a more ‘palatable’ form.

I’ve read their stuff quite widely. There might be a bit of “give”: possibly what we get from this sort of outreach is an ‘in’ with the likes of Tamimi who knows how to wear a suit and a tie and who (most of the time) can talk without ululating.
The “take” - that is, what Hamas and Hizbollah get out of it - is that Alistair Crooke teach them how to soft soap their message, and get themselves invited onto Newsnight, and generally taken seriously.

In other words, they teach Islamists to dissemble their true nature.

Seriously Ven - you can see the difference between “getting to know our enemy” and “helping our enemy”?

Richard F

Indeed I was expelled for reason that were never explained.

Was it to do with your “bourgeois diversionism”?

On Ken Livingstone and the IRA

I know you love him, Ven. But, dare I say it, Ken Livingstone’s love affair with Sinn Fein wasn’t anything to do with “stopping the violence, man”. He just comes from the part of the far Left which gets a hard on at the thought of brutal men with big guns taking on The State and smashing it.

I have not read a single account of how we made peace in NI that suggests that Ken Livingstone was a pivotal figure, still less a person whose unilateral overtures had any effect on the conflict at all.

By contrast, putting half the IRA on the British Government payroll, and then offering the other half ministerial posts and pensions, seems to have worked incredibly well. So far.

I don’t think anyone has ever denied that there Jihadi groups present in BiH. (Not least as the official arms embargo meant that assistance against the “srpski zlocini” in the mountains, oh so bravely aiming their missiles on the unarmed civilians below them, had to come wherever was prepared to provide it).

Ah, I see.

Murderous jihadists are always murderous jihadists except when they’re operating in The Balkans.

One question; are all of them still there, or did they voluntarily repatriate themselves to Pakistan and the Mideast?

Murderous jihadists are always murderous jihadists except when they’re operating in The Balkans.

Err, I don’t think anyone said that, or even implied that.

Of course don’t let that stop you launching into another apologia for Serb nationalist aggression.

Yeah, do you mind?

Can we not turn this into another thread about Bosnia. Given that this isn’t what this thread is about?

JP thinks that had it not been for the Serbs all of Europe would have been “third worldists” by now (and its only a matter of time before we become Fanon’s children/Osama’s friends anyway because of things like the sixties!

How on earth anybody can think Ken Livingstone “gets a hard-on” about men with guns is quite beyond me (but I guess mythology will call me a “Ken-lover” as well even though the argument was always that if you had found someone reasonable to replace him as Labour candidate in good time I would certainly have supported them but I wasn’t going along with any conspiracy to make Boris Mayor.)

Probably David T, I was nonimally the “acting convenor” of the LGBT section, although it never met. The National Committee refused to give me the branch secretaries so that I could find members and like wise they refused to give the secretaries my details. Finally when Scargill made his deal with an extremely homophobic Stalinist sect, whose name I forget, I was a bit of embarrasment.

Can we not turn this into another thread about Bosnia. Given that this isn’t what this thread is about?

My apologies for the interference.

You are making a very important point about these groups, so I’ll clam-up, listen and maybe learn something.

Thanks John P

Richard

That sounds pretty disgraceful of them!

Graham

You surely must have noticed that there is a section of the far Left that finds something irresistable about armed groups of partisans? Chandan is one of them. I’d suggest that Ken Livingstone is the semi-respectable end of that spectrum.

One reason why they supported these people can be found in the fact that they didn’t support _all_ foreign tyrants. They didn’t support those who were treated to the favours of western realpolitik. But they did have a hardon for those who got the favours from the soviets and china. They simply switched off their morals and followed the party line: what is good for Russia is right, what is good for Britain/US is wrong.

oh, sorry, posted the above comment in the wrong place. If I can’t figure out the right button to press, what insights can I offer to the world?

That’s right, none. I’m sad now.

Counterpunch is far right? in what universe? We can talk about left/right convergence, but they’re clearly on the Left. I’m uncertain how one could get the impression that they’re far-right

Really? They seem to publish articles by supporters of Zundel, the Nazi Holocaust denier

http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2005/02/27/counterpunch.php

Normally, I’d associate that with the far Right

I am absolutely certain that there is a section of the far left who think that guns r fab and equally certain that one look at Ken Livingstone’s speech on the day of the London bombings would be enough to show him not among them.

What I remember from that speech is that he stressed that the attack was aimed at “ordinary, working-class Londoners”, rather than “the mighty and the powerful”.

I freely acknowledge that Ken now opposes attacks on ordinary working class people.

Ah yes - we are going to have the “Royal Family uses the tube too” argument again aren’t we?

Ah yes - we are going to have the “Royal Family uses the tube too” argument again aren’t we?

Livingstone lost the election, Graham.

Time to move on.

God, you just don’t give up, do you?

God, you just don’t give up, do you?

Nope we are like Ken in 1983 us…

We are not really talking about the election anyway JP. I didn’t realise Ken Livingstone had been airbrushed out of history!

I wouldn’t call Counterpunch a far-right site, because they aren’t. I also wouldn’t call Counterpunch a left-wing site, because it isn’t that either.

It’s an anti-Western/anti-”Imperialist” site for anyone, more or less, who’s happy to go along with that. Some of its contributors are far-right, some are far-left, plenty are US Conservatives.

Graham - Ken who, now?

Here he is, explaining all about “Islam and National Liberation” to the Sinn Fein youth wing.

I can imagine that went down well with the famously devout* Chuckle Brother Jnr.

* dangles the name “Fr. Ryan” in from of Ven and J.P. like a red rag to a bull

I vaguely remember Chandan’s name and face from my student days - wasn’t he on the union at Sussex whilst doing all this “Che-Leila” stuff? I certainly remember the organisation; they’d march in a little group under whichever “really cool” group’s flag they could think of, or else under their own Leila Khaled ones. One imagines they’re all “consultants” like Sukant now.

I seem to remember reading a ‘where are they now article’ about Leila Khaled recently in which she disavowed the use of plane hi-jacking. She also lives in wicked, infidel Paris and not nice Palestine.

She’s a member of the PFLP, not Islamic Jihad. Whatever one thinks of her politics, I doubt whether or not one is an “infidel” comes into it.

“In other words, they teach Islamists to dissemble their true nature”

Britain is at war. Wouldn’t British citizens doing this sort of consulting with suspected enemies be treason?

Why not take all Muslims in Britian and put them in internment camps like we did here in North America with the Japanese in WWII??? ;)

Laila Khaled is actually on the lecture circuit. She had a smash hit in Cape Town (where I live) a year or so ago, packing the venue with members of the local Muslim community (a large one). Her line is rather different now.

And her line now is… ?

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