Harry’s Place

Her fellow Demo-tankers read her “reply” to Nick Cohen?

I’d resign in shame too.

Don’t tell us that the response to Nick Cohen was her final act as Director of Demos? Tragic.

Surely its not true that Demos gave money to the British Muslim Initiative.
A quick bit of research shows that BMI Ltd has never filed accounts, and uses as its office the home address of Mohammed Sawalha, named by the BBC as a Hamas fugitive organiser.

BRITISH MUSLIM INITIATIVE LIMITED
*****
##### STRAND
LONDON
NW9 5QJ
Company No. 05703363

Accounting Reference Date: 28/02
Last Accounts Made Up To: (NO ACCOUNTS FILED)
Next Accounts Due: 09/12/2007 OVERDUE
Last Return Made Up To: 09/02/2007
Next Return Due: 08/03/2008 OVERDUE

Tim, BMI is a Limited Company not a charity, so its accounts would not necessarily reveal sources of income.

Could it be done from the other end, and check Demos’ accounts?

That presumes Sawalha is suddenly going to start filing them.
Nothing would show up yet anyway, but would you give cheques to a company thats never filed and a quick google shows is run by a man named as a Hamas fugitive.
Surely Demos won’t have been that silly.

The Global Village at IslamExpo will include the embassies from countries like Sudan, Indonesia, Syria, Iran, Malaysia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The Sudanese Govt is represented.
Wonder who they paid their cheque to.

What is it with Demos and directors?

Mrs Pangloss’s niece went to Islam Expo over the weekend. Picked up a couple of nice headscarves cheap. Skipped the talks.

Even a grizzled old cynical sod like me can see that HP *are* making a difference.

Shame it won’t be enough in the end.

But big kudos anyway.

This libel action threat is turning into a boomerangs and dominos spectacular! Did someone say tipping point?

Catheine Fieschi’s explanation for her resignation from Demos is now on the New Statesman’s website:

http://www.newstatesman.com/middle-east/2008/07/less-demos-unpleasant-scarily

Not so much an explanation, rather a wail of despair?

I’ve passionately loved my time at Demos and working with some of the brightest and most dynamic people one could wish for as colleagues. But the hard lesson is that, no matter who’s in an organisation, organisations seldom love you back as much as you love them. They are strangely, in this respect, less than the sum of their parts. And so it’s time to move on. Let’s be honest, two sets of feelings dominate. On the one hand, the thrill and anticipation of being able to focus more exclusively on the issues that matter to me. On the other, a darker brew of jealousy and protectiveness.
I wish Demos nothing but the absolute best, but a sense of après moi, le déluge has a certain appeal when you’ve been slugging your guts out for a couple of years. Does harbouring a secret longing for an inept successor, possibly unpleasant, maybe even scarily unattractive, make me a terrible person? Well, this is only a measure of my attachment to the place. And in any case, I have a feeling this is not to be - Demos deserves the best and the clean slate it needs to thrive. (I’ve wrestled my evil twin Skippy to the floor now, can’t you tell?)

What?!?

Clarity please, did she resign before or after that post?

She says she resigned on Monday.

But she also says she attended a Demos event on Tuesday.

On Monday. And apparently they ran out of cash recently, staff not paid.

That Catherine Fieschi is rather attractive. I wonder if she would like to go on a date now she has a little more time on her hands?

On second thoughts she does seem to be a bit of a bunny boiler.

Well I must say I’m enjoying all this immensely. Get down skippy.

That New Statesman farewell is incredible. Narcissistic and determinedly trivial.

‘That New Statesman farewell is incredible. Narcissistic and determinedly trivial.’

She doesn’t even mention what she thinks of Nandos!

And folks wonder why conservatives have no faith in liberals to protect them from the extremists. Fieschi sounds like an LGF parody of a liberal. Only she isn’t. You can’t make this stuff up.

The thing is, Fieschi is basically one of the good guys. Seriously.

She may have had the wool pulled over her eyes by the Conficts Forum/Leiken lot: but she’s mostly been ok.

This is an explanation of her resignation? Can we stop the crude commenting on her appearance and get on with discussing what she has to say (and what she doesn’t say)? I suggest anyone who feels like making comments on her personal appearance does so on condition they include a link to an unretouched current photograph of themselves, and invite other readers to comment on how the writer compares with their preferred ideals of beauty. Or not.

Dr Fieschi comes across in her posts on HP and now in the New Statesman as either incredibly muddled or too overcome by this latest fiasco at the organization from which she’s just resigned as Director to present a straightforward coherent analysis of what happened.

Instead, she just keeps slinging disparaging comments about those who opposed Demos’ involvement with IslamExpo as, variously, right-wing, hysterical and, of course, “blind to complexities”.

All this, as she tells us, is in a context in which she declares herself to be feeling a mixture of thrills, anticipation, jealousy and protectiveness about a position in which she was presumably paid a very handsome salary, a good part of which must have come from a socking great grant from the DCSF (or, as it used to be called, the Department of Education and Science)–our taxes.

The thing is, Fieschi is basically one of the good guys. Seriously.

She may have had the wool pulled over her eyes by the Conficts Forum/Leiken lot: but she’s mostly been ok.

Sorry David, but Greg is absolutely right. Fieschi is, like most leftists (I refuse to call her a liberal since leftists have hijacked that term from its true J.S. Mill meaning), a muddle-headed cultural relativist and a defender of irrationality who confuses wishful thinking with reality. Like Gene, for example, she thinks good intentions and platitudes along the lines of “why can’t we all be nice to each other!” are substitutes for achievement.

And I’m being kind to her.

Where I think you don’t fall into this category is that you have a working bullshit detector, despite your atavistic urges to be nice to people who don’t deserve it.

BTW you should really do a piece on the new Theocrats that have infiltrated leftist institutions and exploited their penchant for wooly thinking (e.g. Anthony Bailey et el) into defending irrationality.

Dr Fieschi comes across in her posts on HP and now in the New Statesman as either incredibly muddled or too overcome by this latest fiasco at the organization from which she’s just resigned as Director to present a straightforward coherent analysis of what happened.

Isn’t the standard term “tired and emotional”?

That Catherine Fieschi is rather attractive

I guess any wry quips about pearl necklace would be gratuitously offensive and invoke Davit T’s scorn, so I will pre-emptively desist.

The thing is, Fieschi is basically one of the good guys. Seriously.

Yes, but there’s a past history of Islamists (and fascists) eating good guys for breakfast. It’s time they wised up.

I can’t believe that this woman is supposed to have some sort of political consciousness!! Or, maybe I can. Seriously though, is it any wonder that all sorts of crazy ideas are gaing ground in society, when people or organisations like Demos are supposed to be defending some sort of tradtion? Anyway, as a New labour think-tank they won’t last beyond the trouncing that New Labour gets at the next election. Even if Labour hangs on, I don’t think they’ll encourage this sort of flim-flam any more, they will just be naekedly right-wing.

“My evil twin Skippy” is a Doonesbury reference, methinks. (He was G.H. Bush’s twin in fact). How random.

It’s all very Bel Littlejohn, isn’t it?

Sorry, David. She may not advocate intorence/violence, and be quite shocked when it occurs, but she comes over as even more of an idiot than Rowan Williams. And damn well deserves Skippy remarks.

In ‘Emotional confusion ’ an article of breathtaking Sunday colour supplement lightweight psychobabble; one of the total of five articles that Catherine Fieschi produced at demos during her reign; she argued;

‘The left appears to be confused about the place of emotion in modern politics

Separating “good” left-wing emotion from “bad” populist emotion feels like cheating–do we simply distinguish on the grounds of what cause the emotion is serving?

The bolder step, surely, is to tackle the disabling distinction between emotion and reason itself.

Much recent research in psychology, neuroscience and philosophy exposes the duality as artificial and allows us to understand emotion as intrinsic to rational thought, and thus fundamental to political and ethical judgment.

Psychologists argue that we arrive at an emotional state only after we have weighed up–sometimes very fast–a number of
ideas and thoughts.

Writers such as George Marcus, who draw on brain research, go even further and argue that emotional states are what allow us to extract crucial information at lightning speed (much faster than conscious thought)–and it is this information we need to make sense of different situations.

This first emotional step is the necessary condition for elaborating a
strategy and then acting on it.’

I think this gives us a clue to the identity and purpose of ‘Skippy’ her mutant muse who lets her think at lightning speed and extract crucial information.

Unfortunately so absorbed has she become in her ‘before the mirror’ Manichean struggle with her Marsupial totem alter ego that she spends so much time wrestling the spite filled creature and its vengeful wishes to the floor that she failed to tell us just what he helped her learn, at lightning speed, at IslamExpo.

I hope Skippy remains with her (as the idea of them separating is psychiatrically worrying), however I am sceptical as to the general applicability of this anthropomorphised animal ‘other self’ as a reliable and reproducible research model.

My best friend at school produced a photocopied Doctor Who fanzine called Demnos.

But that was a reference to the Masque of Mandragora, and was an evil cult, not a pro-democracy think tank.

The thing is, Fieschi is basically one of the good guys. Seriously.

Yes, but there’s a past history of Islamists (and fascists) eating good guys for breakfast. It’s time they wised up.

Yes, Neil D, but let’s not forget that the true masters of this particular eating habit were the inventors of the “fellow traveller” and “useful idiot” concepts– the Soviet Communist Party (and its marxist “democratic”/”peace” fronts and successors in the UK).

This thread is even more bizarre than PMQs - vat on suncream anyone? self-laudatory planted questions, punch and judy, etc.

Now we have marsupial avatars posing as placental doubles - will the real Catherine Fieschi please wiggle her pouch?

Is that an outpouching of your uterus in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?

Incidentally, Milne is now claiming over at CiF that the QF is government-funded.

Don’t think it is.

However - and here’s the irony - Milne and his Hamas/BMI chums are absolutely frantic for government funds, and take any they can get their hands on.

Milne: a Stalinist who prefers fascists to liberals.

David, I was in the audience. I took Lieken’s comment to be over the idiocy of some of the comments from the floor - such as the delightful young chap who said “the Islamist threat IS a myth! Why aren’t we talking about the real threat - the Zionist threat!?” Some people clapped him, although some people clapped everything - even amusingly enough - in different lecture when I told them they shouldn’t sue Harry’s Place!

Don’t think it is.

He’s claiming that “In fact, only yesterday, Maajid Nawaz, who is a co-director with Ed Husain, gave a briefing at the Guardian and stated that the foundation is now taking government funding.”

Incidentally, Milne is now claiming over at CiF that the QF is government-funded.

Milne’s last effort on Cif saw the moderator deleting about 80 of the 170 comments, before comments were closed.

Let’s see if he fares any better today.

Leftist think tanks are toast.

And they are toast because they’ve neither the courage nor the convictions to champion left-wing ideas and concepts, a persuit that can sometimes call for a great deal of bravery.

Radical Islamists have succeeded in portraying themsleves as leftist/progressive, when, as we all know, they are actually to the right of the Far Right.

What are the consequences for left-wingers, true leftists, when dealing with such an inverted situation.

Well, a left wing think-tank would necessarily have to sound *Far right* owing to the fact radical Islamists only understand, respond to and respect, blunt language.

The roles of reversed, the murderous bearded aggressors play victim and drape themselves, in a most parasitic manner, in the mantle of the progressive narrative.

That dishonest abuse of language can only be challenged and defeated by brandishing a throughly blunt terminology when referring, even in the smallest ways, to the Brotherhood, Wahabbis etc.

For instance, one should never ask: “What would be the treatment of homosexuals under a Muslim Brotherhood gov’t?”

Instead, one smiles, and in a mild voice, addresses the likes of Altikriti thus: “What, in your expert opinion, is the best way to execute homosexuals?”

All questions should be framed in a way that assumes, a priori, the radical Islamist you’re addressing is a primitive savage, because that’s exactly what radical, fascist Islamists are.

Sometimes thinking ‘ugly’ and talking ‘ugly’ are actually the proper moral things to do and are not, in any way, even remotely related to prejudice or bigotry.

And as for Ms (z?) Catherine Fieschi? Well, she can sip tea and suck her thumb because she’s damned lucky the Islamists didn’t swallow her whole.

Nick South Africa: I think it is permissible to allude to the pearl necklace as this is legimate semiotics, not sexist lookism. I note she also has pearl stud earrings, not dangly earrings, which may be a clue as to why she didn’t fit in and was edged out.

I would love to see a proper Islam Exhibition in London, with all strands of Islam participating, both locally and internationally. There could be stands from Islamic Governments, with displays on their health services, educational services, transport and road systems etc. Dubai could tout for holidaymakers, Egypt could offer tis wares, Nigeria could have a display on safeguarding African wildlife or something. It could be a real vibrant show, not some sterile, confected publicity show for internal political consumption. If the islamacists want to gain political credibility in Europe they must show what they have done for their people in the places where they do hold power. It would also be wonderful to have all the different schools of Islam united in one place. They wouldn#t need to have these setpiece debates that are prejudged before they even begin. No-one is interested in them. I suppose the only value of this pale event is that the organisers can say that they organised it. A few weeks ago my daughter who is learning Spanish at school was taken on a theatre trip to see ‘Peter Pan- El Musicale’, a Spanish musical that closed after two weeks and was (by AngloAmerican standards) dire. The producer was quoted in the paper as saying that it didn’t matter that it had been laughed out of town in London, the very fact that they could go back to Spain and say ‘As seen in Shaftesbury Avenue, London’, would ensure that it ran forever.

Ami,
This is what NickSA had in mind I think
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_necklace_%28sexuality%29

How would commentators respond if the director of Demos had been male, in lieu of pearl necklaces, sssphincter beads with a long-drawn out phut-phut-phut? Just wondering.

If the Milnes and Fieschis would actually accord David T, Nick Cohen and others the same respect that they show to Hamas, then perhaps we could all be engaging in meaningful dialogue, debate & “research” rather than infantile name calling and straw man nonsense.

Jeweller: Um. Yes. That would be sexist. In my innocence, I only had in mind connotations of Tatler.

ami

I forgot you are thhe unacknowledged discoverer of the short hair and dangly earings quotient, she has neither its true.

To add some confirmatory suggestions to your thesis.

Why did she address her criticcs as ‘the Liberal intelligentsia’ not pro-war islamophobic neocons and former leftists?

Clearly she is suffering from an identity crisis as her confessions of her internecine struggle with Skippy reveal.

‘pearl necklace’ is a semiotically loaded term in heterosexual sexulaity rather than being simply sexist.

(gender discrimination i.e. sexism is always being conflated with heterosexual sex and sexual attraction, rather Victorian really).

In fact there is a ritual inversion that takes place in heterosexual erotica (porn) where the power of the Upper class Woman portrayed as ‘posh totty’ is first eroticised (her glamour, pearls, fur, grand piano, stately home etc) though seen as tantalisingly unreachable, before she is ‘taken’ (willingly or not) by a lower class male portrayed as a ‘bit of rough’ and left naked and exposed with a new ‘pearl necklace’.

See Hustler magazine the locus classicus on this form.

On the other hand the use of the ‘pearl necklace’ in Gay male porn is far more subersive of heterosexual norms by its subtle mocking camp.

Role rigidity is undermined democratically and reciprocally as the ‘Butch Top’ may well get to wear the necklace.

See ‘Raging Stallions’ productions for coverage of these themes.

P.S. Demos any chance I can get a research grant to cover my continuing research in this area (its what I do research) primary source mterials can be quite expensive although I have made many necessary sacrifices already to continue my research a stipend would certainly help.

Sorry, not sphincter, should have been *anal* beads - usually soft to the touch, plastic or silicon, attached to a string like pearls, and gently pulled out, from either a male or female anus, orgasm optional.

David T wrote:

“The thing is, Fieschi is basically one of the good guys. Seriously.”

Then perhaps Dr.Fieschi might try acting like it, rather than demonstrating such contempt, as she did in her reply to fairly tame criticism.

But I suspect her criticism was slightly more honest than most politicos, who probably find blogs annoying because they can’t duck the issues that are raised.

Dr.Fieschi was at least candid about her contempt for “small people”

David T, I wouldn’t worry about her too much, she’ll probably find some nice quiet NGO or quango to exercise her talents in and be paid a pretty packet too.

Judy’s analysis of things is good.

(I’ve wrestled my evil twin Skippy to the floor now, can’t you tell?)

Even I know that you don’t say that sort of thing in a serious statement to a grown-up publication.

What’s that? Oh. Skippy says he knows that as well.

mettaculture: sigh. Things were so much simpler in my day. As a young grad doing a stint in JHB magistrate’s court, I was given the task of sorting through a box of photographs for the Pornography court. How do I tell which are pornographic, I asked. “If you can see pubic hair they are pornographic,” my mentor instructed.

Popbitch say:

>> Don’t panic, I’m Islamic <<
From double glazing to laserquest

Labour and Conservative MPs were banned from
attending last weekend’s IslamExpo for some
spurious Islamophobic reasons. Popbitch
attended and this is the sort of disgraceful
extremism we encountered:

* bouncy castle
* laserquest (queue was too long so sadly
we gave up)
* double glazing - special offers
* great range of baby t-shirts, including
“Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic” and “Allah’s
Small Soldier”
* mens t shirts in bright orange with the
slogan “My mate got sent to Camp X-Ray
and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”
* Rabbis v Imams v Priests five-a-side
football. (The Imams won 4-0)

Allah’s Small Soldier

I know its supposed to be funny and all, but given some of the film coming out of Gaza it doesn’t seem that funny to me.

My mate Darren could beat Skippy in a fight any day.

Metta: Yr post gave me weak stims.

MarkG

If the Milnes and Fieschis would actually accord David T, Nick Cohen and others the same respect that they show to Hamas, then perhaps we could all be engaging in meaningful dialogue, debate & “research” rather than infantile name calling and straw man nonsense.

I’m afraid that Demos is only impressed by people who threaten to kill them.

“…maybe even scarily unattractive…”

She obviously thinks she’s a babe. I didn’t realise it was a qualification for the job. What a narcissist. Who on earth needs these self-appointed, self-important organisations anyway?

Who doesn’t think they’re a babe.

I do.

David T

were you on high holborn the other night with two racquets over your arm, or was it another dashing babe in an impeccably tailored business suit?

I don’t know what weak stims are, and after the last piece of info, I don’t want to know. So I will just say I found mettaculture’s analysis of 12.13pm supremely witty.

David T - “The thing is, Fieschi is basically one of the good guys. Seriously.”

Any number of well meaning people have visited totalitarian countries and have had the wool pulled over their eyes. The truth is I can respect a fantatic up to a point. Even as I oppose them. They are willing to suffer for what they believe in. I have no time or sympathy for the fatuous idiot who cannot, or will not, see the radicals for what they are. I assume it is just a form of moral cowardice and a belief that if they pull the blanket over their heads, the boogy man will go away.

In fact I’d say that people like CF are the real problem. Once people accept that there’s a problem something can be done. But as long as there are Useful Idiots acting to protect the radicals, there is no clear way forward.