Harry’s Place

What’s with the commas all over the place David?

Could barely read the bloody thing.

A modest reminder: the most extreme screeching on that very black day for British democracy - the antisemitic ranting aka the Commons ‘debate’ on the fabricated Jenin ‘massacre’ - came from Salmond. He has form.

With the impending financial meltdown which Bathtub is so studiously ignoring, you’d have thought commas would be rationed.

I assume Fabiani’s office will now approve a welcome-home party for Trident crews, or fund Scottish Friends of Israel. No doubt.

Off topic: Thanks to David T for organising and David Rosenberg for leading HP’s “Battle of Cable Street” walk yesterday - I certainly learned a lot.

Those who came (and others) may be interested in JEECS which does a great job in preserving the heritage of the Jewish East End

http://www.jeecs.org.uk

A more robust approach from UK Parliament’s new minister for race relations, rejecting a current role for sharia courts, and comparing them unfavourably to Batei Din (Beth Din, pl.) on terms laying him open in some quarters (not mine) to a charge of Islamophobia. (just as its possible to have antisemitic Jews, no doubt Muslim Sadiq Khan could be Islamaphobic. Or an Uncle Tom, no doubt.)
(To avoid rehashing old ground, before commenting please note all the previous discussions on the subject at HP, including the comparison with Batei Din in particular.)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4926612.ece

Alec Salmond and Scotland….fuck off. Just fuck off. Don’t like the UK? Fine. We don’t like you and the rest of your ungrateful parasites either. Fuck off to your unproductive grease-filled socialist wasteland and take the chips on your shoulder the size of Ben Nevis with you. And take that one-eyed cunt McBean as well with you.

And when you come back in a few years after fucking everything up, begging for re-admittance to the UK after turning Scotland into an even bigger shithole than it currently is…fuck off again.

I’ll be glad when the school holidays are over.

So let’s get this right - the English taxpayer funds the rescue of both RBS and HBOS and transfers billions in addition to the Scottish economy, in order that Alex Salmond can support antisemitic murderous terrorists?

Morgoth - why did you hold back?

Morgoth,
Didn’t your mama teach you any manners, boy?
What about your oldman, didn’t you clip you behind the ears iand reminded not to use F words in the presence of your elders?

On a serious note, I think it’s about time you grow up, don’t you think? You can make your point without proving to all what a terrible job your mama did in your bringing-up.

Morgoth’s pa was like David T(rimble)’s gramps - gunfire through the door at any rellie with southern accents. And it’s Ale*x* Fish-heid. Sheesh!

Jeremy, Scots taxpayers are helping. Your point stands, though.

Morgot: seconded, with bells and whistles on.

Morgoth, I meant.

What’s with the commas all over the place David?

The commas seem to mark pauses in speech (rather than digressions or sequences).

Don’t tell me you’ve never done that. ;-)

Jeremy, Scots taxpayers are helping.

As the scots are net recipients of government largesse, they are not helping.

Throughout the piece refer is made to Mr. Salmond ‘giving’ the money in question. How does he, Salmond ‘give’ money to anything? Surely the Scottish parliament needs to scrutinise and discuss any payments made on behalf of the Scottish people. Or have I misunderstood? Mr. Salmond is giving some of his own money to this festival? I am afraid a lot of this giving has gone on in the past, itself a feature of guilty liberal sentiment. But by this date someone astute as Mr. Salmond should have read the papers and drawn back from open handed endorsements – for what else is one to conclude? – for fringe groups at best and undesirables at worst.

I see already, and by the ninth posting, this thread has decaded into personal abuse and point scoring. One way to avoid mud slinging is not to throw any oneself.

Larkers,

I love your euphemism ‘open handed endorsements’ - there is another term for that, or indeed 2: one starts with the second letter of the alphabet, one with the third. Indeed, there is one that starts with ‘a’ - abusing his power. Not that one would ever associate that kind of thing with this most honest, non-slimy person.

My guess is that the SNP is supporting this venture because they know that it is a Hamas/MB front: not despite it.

In 1992/3 the transfer to Scotland from taxpayers in the rest of the UK amounted to nearly 2% of GDP. Presumably it’s over 2% now.

Mr. Duncan: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the current annual value of net transfer payments made to Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Lang: The Government collect revenue on a United Kingdom basis. In 1992-93, the latest year for which data are available, the revenue raised in Scotland through the four main sources of income tax, national insurance contributions, VAT and local government revenues formed approximately 8.3 per cent. of the United Kingdom total. The Government estimate that in the same year Scotland’s share of identifiable Government expenditure was 10 per cent. of the United Kingdom total. That figure excludes expenditure incurred on behalf of the United Kingdom as a whole, or which cannot readily be identified as incurred on behalf of particular countries.

Morgoth, Scots like me have been confronting the full irrational bigotry which the SNP represent on a personal basis long before the current English nationalist reaction to post-devolution Scottish nationalism began. Lumping us in with Salmond’s hypocritical stupidity will steadily eliminate your principal allies against him and his ilk.

In this instance, however, the SNP’s idiocy has been paralleled by the idiocy of the Westminster government and their previous uncritical acceptance of extremist muslim ‘community leaders’ in the rest of the UK. This is a universal problem with blinkered lefties, and is not specific to Scotland or the SNP (sadly).

Lumping us in with Salmond’s hypocritical stupidity will steadily eliminate your principal allies against him and his ilk.

Fine. You’re welcome to claim political asylum here in England.

“I see already, and by the ninth posting, this thread has decaded into …” Larkers.

I see that, having been up much of the night writing for a post to my own blog, my spelling as truly decayed. Apologies for lowering the standard chaps and chapettes.

Having lived in Scotland and been taught Scottish history by Scots who reject the nationalist framework, I am with Gavin on this.

David T: “My guess is that the SNP is supporting this venture because they know that it is a Hamas/MB front: not despite it.”

David, what’s your basis for this speculation?

Osama Saeed, Tim?

I do think that politicians have stumbled into contact with MB front organisations in the past.

You have to be particularly clueless to do that now: particularly as the Osama Saeed/MAB/MB link is very clear.

Hamas is regarded, by many on the Left - and indeed on the centre and right - as a comparatively moderate national liberation movement, and the MB as our best chance of defeating Al Qaeda.

Morgoth, bizarrely I will actually be relocating to England shortly as I have done several times previously, but I want to return to a Scotland which is run according to more constructive British principles than the pervasive Anglophobic bigotry which the SNP exploit. Previous history suggests the SNP’s current electoral success will decline as their value as an anti-Labour protest vote declines. Feeding the bigots with the emotive response they crave will only delay the return of sanity.

There is also the thought that Scotland will become the world centre for Islamic Finance, and that Osama Saeed will help Scotland get this business. Saeed is some sort of mortgage advisor, I think, but is nevertheless assumed to have excellent contacts/knowledge in this area.

The other factor is Iran. Hamas is a client of Iran (notwithstanding Qaradawi’s anti-shiite sectarianism). The SNP have been very pally with the Iranians, and have had them over for tea. The great attraction of all this to the Iranians is that Iran has significant national minorities - possibly more of them than ethnic persians. Iran thinks that the uk is fomenting regionalism in Iran. Therefore, they think that by palling up with the SNP, they’re striking back in kind.

Hmmm… I’m still not sure that it follows that the SNP are doing this because it’s a Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood front. Islamic finance would suggest other motives, and the Iranian connection doesn’t particularly relate to the Muslim Brotherhood. That many on the left see Hamas as a national liberation movement doesn’t necessarily show that the SNP does.

I mean, you may be right that the SNP or its leadership supports Hamas, and I certainly agree that they must be well aware of who Saeed is and what he stands for. Much as I dislike the SNP, I don’t see the evidence that it has supported the Scottish Islamic Foundation because of its links to the MB, rather than despite those links. Perhaps it simply thinks it will get Muslim votes this way.

The SNP are trying to engage with Muslim opinion, what’s wrong with that? We don’t all share a xenophobic blinkered view of the world where ‘Britain knows best’ you know.

Whether the UK/Israel likes it or not Hamas are the elected Government in Palestine. That a palestinian pro-independence activist is linked in some fashion to Hamas is no great shock and I can’t imagine it will unduly concern the SNP.

It doesn’t mean the SNP support Hamas or Muslim extremism (the SNP are a middle left democratic party so it is a bit different) it just means that they want to make sure that they hear honest political opinions from Muslims living in Scotland.

The SNP? Who cares after today?

Like the Tories, it used to campaign vigorously against nationalisation, seeing it as the transfer of control over Scottish industries from Scotland to London. It then went through a phase (as I recall, under the same Leader as at present) of calling for the renationalisation of this and that in an independent Scotland, together with the repeal of the entire corpus of anti-trade union legislation, but no one really took any of that seriously, certainly not based on the sorts of places where the SNP did not just well, but better and better, during the same period. Everyone has always known that an independent Scotland could not begin to afford to nationalise anything at all.

Now, however, the allegedly all-conquering, agenda-setting SNP has not only parked its one permanent, and defining, principle in some referendum to be held at the End of Time, but has been vigorously cheerleading for the nationalisation of HBOS and the Royal Bank of Scotland. By, of course, the Government of the United Kingdom. An “independent” Scotland in which the banks are owned by the British Government, anyone?

And now, that nationalisation has happened, more or less in one case, beyond doubt in the other. Not only national sovereignty, but also the United Kingdom as such, have been significantly secured today.

The Bank of Scotland, 1695’s definitive break with usury and entry into modern economics, the last institution to have been created by the old Scottish Parliament and to survive down to the present day, the pioneer of overdrafts and bank notes, is today effectively under the control of the British Government.

So too is its great historic rival, the Hanoverian Royal Bank of Scotland, set up to counteract the Bank of Scotland’s Jacobitism, a rivalry which long extended to hording each other’s notes in order to turn up with them, annually, at each others headquarters, there to demand, as “the bearer”, to be paid “on demand the sum” stated on each of them.

The circumstances giving rise to the Union of 1707 have effectively arisen again, and have been addressed in pretty much exactly the same way. Much the same people in Scotland overreached themselves, and that for the very same reason (the desire to be world players), so they have had to be rescued from London, itself acting under the direction of London-based Scots, but with everything that being rescued entails in terms of future control.

And why? Remember, oh Scotland, that while there is the Union, neither the Bank of Scotland nor the Royal Bank of Scotland will ever go bust, just as you will always have a National Health Service, old age pensions, and all the rest of it. Effective central government control of the Bank of Scotland, and outright central government ownership of the Royal Bank of Scotland, are very clear reminders of that.

More than that, they are constitutional safeguards of it, from today an integral part of the constitutional settlement that is the United Kingdom, a settlement now significantly stronger, safer and more secure than it was even yesterday.

So what is the SNP for? What on earth is the point of it?

It is no longer worth worrying about in the least.

But pretty much all the polls show that most Muslims in the UK - and Scotland - being south asian and not arab, do not believe that the Muslim Brotherhood speaks for them. So, if the SNP wants to ‘engage with Muslim opinion’, Hamas/MB are not the vehicle through which to do it.

If the Scottish wanted to engage with English opinion, you wouldn’t recommend giving grants to the BNP would you?

Seven years ago, nobody really knew the lay of the land with Islamist groups operating in the UK. Now we do.

Back in 2001, it was possible to say “The Muslim Brotherhood? Who are they”? Now it isn’t.

Does the SNP support “Hamas or Muslim extremism”? Who knows. As you’ve suggested, their position is most likely to be that they don’t regard Hamas are particularly extreme:

“Hamas are the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and a national liberation movement, just like us, only with more explosions”

That said, there’s a world of difference between

(A) “engaging” with Hamas in Gaza (i.e. negotiating with it, offering to give it some benefit in return for not murdering people, offering to give it benefits without preconditions, etc.); and

(B) Giving a Hamas/MB activist hundreds of thousands of pounds to set up an organisation which is designed to be the main Scottish point of contact for Scottish Muslims.

What precisely is the argument for giving so much money to Hamas/MB, when Scottish Muslims are not members or supporters of this organisation?

Whether the UK/Israel likes it or not Hamas are the elected Government in Palestine

Where does one even start with this bizarre statement?
You seem to think that ‘Palestine’ is an existing country with a proper government. It is not.
Hamas is not a normal party in the sense that the LibDems, say, are a normal party: they are a terrorist organisation openly committed to destroying Israel and to a genocide of the Jews. Anyone who condemns the BNP is … ahemm … behaving strangely in not condemning Hamas as an ueber-BNP to the nth power.
Hamas was not elected democratically: it conducted a campaign of murder to grab power. To regard them as a ‘legitimately elected government’ is planet zog stuff.

Maybe the SNP are hoping to sell lots of Scotch whisky in Gaza.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they already did. I am reliably informed that it sells healthily in Iran.

The 1707 parallel had struck me, too.

God damn it, Darien was to be our colony! Our’s, I tell you! We’re much nicer rapacious colonial mass-murders than the English!

(I saw someone on The Herald site opining that the settlement of Morgoth’s lot in Ireland was a choice between the next white-slave ship or being forced to help lay the seeds for 300 years of sectarianism. I fuck you not.)

haha.

I would be very very sad if Scottish people decided they wanted to be in a separate country. It would be nice to be fellow EU citizens, but I would really miss you.

I don’t want you to fuck off.

In 2006 Osama Saeed urged Dundee Muslims not to co-operate with Tayside special branch officers.

In fact, he called for Muslims to be “stronger in our defiance” towards community contact officers, appealing to the record of the Prophet.

As the news emerged, he tried to wriggle out:

“To claim that I advocated non-co-operation from the police is ridiculous,” he said. “The word non-co-operation is not there (in my speech) at all.”

Unfortunately for Mr Saeed, his speech was actually recorded by The Courier.

This event alone should have been enough to make it plain that funding an Islamist propaganda project of Osama Saeed is amazingly bad policy.

The Labour candidate for Glasgow Central would be even more inept if he didn’t run that speech alongside images of Glasgow Airport.

The police side of the Dundee story is here.

“Surely it would be double standards to urge others not to speak to us whilst communicating with us themselves?”

Heh heh.

Frankly, I think Mr Saeed has wasted more than enough police time by now.

But he still wants a fight.

Angry division is his mission in life.

He should be ignored by Scottish politicians, not funded.

Surely it would be double standards to urge others not to speak to us whilst communicating with us themselves?

Nah. Setting himself up as the community gatekeeper. Perfectly rational. Has anyone mentioned suicide-bombings?

Yes, precisely, he wants to be the gatekeeper. No one should be so stupid as to help him in that task.

Nice one, SNP.

The progenitor of my individual surname benefitted very nicely with a very nice plot of land in 1745.

That is, I don’t like jacobite jihadis.

I would be very very sad if Scottish people decided they wanted to be in a separate country. It would be nice to be fellow EU citizens

They are a different nation, they are perfectly entitled to live in their own separate country.

I see that you still believe in the massive fairytale, aka huge scam, called the EU.

I’m with Gavin and Larkers. Every time I read an article which essentially says, “Fuck off you whingeing Jocks,” I wince as I don’t want the Union broken up and I detest the cod Braveheart crap mythology that fuels the desire to have it broken up. I once went to a festival called “A Day for Scotland” and it was like being at Nuremberg. My English boyfriend kept his gob shut all day.

Alec - I have heard a Scots guy explaining that Scotland didn’t have much to do with the British empire. So that’s why half the kids in my New Zealand school were called Macdonald or McGregor!

This story came about because some concerned citizens requested FOI on Saeed’s communication with the Scottish Government and leaked details to the press. There is more to come.

Scottish people (and a good many SNP members and supporters) do not support Salmond on this, trust me, and are just waking up to the kind of character Salmond is.

Investigative journalism in Scotland is in poor shape but Eddie Barnes at Scotland on Sunday has been doing his level best to get the word out.

Don’t give up on Scotland. We all need each other right now.

Well I too would be sad to see Scotland go. Call me a Gavinite.

Nor, in this case, can London moan much, sleazy as the SNP has been.

Ministers were withdrawn from IslamExpo on these grounds, according to Hazel Blears:

“It was clear that because of the views of some of the organisers, and because of the nature of some of the exhibitors, this was an event that no minister should attend – organisers like Anas Altikriti, who believes in boycotting Holocaust Memorial Day.”

The odious views of a number of the “Global Peace and Unity” conference speakers have been documented here and elsewhere. How are they any better than those of the IslamExpo crew?

After all, at GPU08 the speakers include Muhammad Abdul Bari of the MCB, HMD boycotters in chief amongst British Islamists.

Yet Stephen Timms and Sadiq Khan are still on the GPU08 programme. Why?

Aye, KB. Where did the Macpherson Range in Australia get its name? Or providing any kids Benji may have with Macpherson Park to play and have fun in? Was either of the James McPhersons born in Kingussie?

And, just why does Scotland have this big ex-pat group, with pipe-bands anywhere and everywhere?

a Scots guy explaining that Scotland didn’t have much to do with the British empire

Oh God I’ve just lost a whole set of genes to convulsive bitter laughter.

This surname mapping site (1881 and 1998 data) is fun:

http://www.nationaltrustnames.org.uk/Surnames.aspx

Has Salmond thought about the Scottish internet filter yet? Will you lot need some samizdata?

Anyway, the southwest could use some Trident bases. Go on, make England’s day!

I saw a very good Palestinian pipe band, at the Lorient festival last year.

I really would be sad to see Scotland leave the UK. If any regional minority wants to break away, then it should, and there should be no hard feelings. But, although I am slightly embarrassed to admit it, one of the important ways I think of myself is as a citizen of a nation with a history intertwinned with those of the other nations that came together to form it. I like being part of a nation that stretches from Cornwall to the Orkneys. It really does matter.

Yes, we’d still be part of a nice European Union, and I doubt whether there would be any fewer Scots in England as a result of it. And sure, we might end up with a little more money. But I think we would have lost a little something of the greatness of Britain.

Yeah, I know it is all false consciousness etc., but that doesn’t make it any less powerful.

I feel similarly, although admittedly less passionately, about Czechoslovakia. I mean, The Czech Republic sounds a bit shonky, and I can’t tell Slovakia apart from Slovenia.

I said this to a Slovakian (or Slovenian) girl in a bar, and she slapped me.

There’s more on Osama Saeed here and on various other personnel here.

There is, as was said above, much more of this story still to come out. The FOI documents (in PDF format) are here: 758(1), 758(2), 758(3), 758(4), 758(5), 759, 760(1), 760(2), 760(3), 760(4), 760(5), 760(6), 761(1), 761(2) and 825.

Oi!

The Czech Republic sounds a bit shonky, and I can’t tell Slovakia apart from Slovenia. I said this to a Slovakian (or Slovenian) girl in a bar, and she slapped me.

Slovakian girls tend to have very long legs, if that’s any help. They also respond favourably to you knowing the difference between their country and Slovenia, but you probably figured that out already.

The Czech Republic should change its name back to Bohemia. I think that Czech and Bohemian are one and the same in Czech.

There’s more on Osama Saeed here and on various other personnel here.

There is, as was said above, much more of this story still to come out. The FOI documents (PDF format) are here: 758(1), 758(2), 758(3), 758(4), 758(5), 759, 760(1), 760(2), 760(3), 760(4), 760(5), 760(6), 761(1), 761(2) and 825.

There is also Moravia. The Czechs and the Slovaks are different peoples. Czechoslovakia was about as much a natural entity as Yugoslovia - or many of the countries in Africa created one afternoon by British administrators drawing random lines on maps. Or Trans-Jordan.

one of the important ways I think of myself is as a citizen of a nation with a history intertwinned with those of the other nations that came together to form it

Yes, like the Welsh, who voluntarily decided to join the English in a partnership of equals, right?

The Czechs and the Slovaks are different peoples.

A lot closer than Bukarian Jews and Ashkenazy, to name but one.

Yes, like the Welsh, who voluntarily decided to join the English in a partnership of equals, right?

Many hundreds of years ago. Certainly longer than Mandate Arabs and Jews.

A lot closer than Bukarian Jews and Ashkenazy, to name but one

Untrue. Bukharians and Ashkenazi Jews share a profound, ancient culture and a language. They understand themselves as belonging to the same nation.

Many hundreds of years ago. Certainly longer than Mandate Arabs and Jews

Irrelevant. The Welsh were conquered by the English.

A lot closer than Bukarian Jews and Ashkenazy, to name but one.

Much as the Egyptians, and half the Sudanese, are not Arabs.

However, try telling them them that.

We don’t like you and the rest of your ungrateful parasites either. Fuck off to your unproductive grease-filled socialist wasteland and take the chips on your shoulder the size of Ben Nevis with you. And take that one-eyed cunt McBean as well with you.

Why are racist pricks like Mogorth allowed to post on a supposedly leftwing blog unedited? Now imagine how a Muslim might feel reading the average thread on this space.

KB Player: come away - you’re wasting your time using rational argument with these little Englanders. Enoch Powell in drag these bastards.

I don’t think there’s much enthusiasm in England for Scotland going its own way, is there? Apart from blowhards?

Yes, if it wants to, Scotland should, much as it will upset sentimental people.

But sticking together just might be better for all concerned. Think of the fun we have provoking each other so often – wouldn’t you miss it?!?

A “Scottish” approach to Hamas-friendly British Islamism, which snubs London’s slow-but-slightly-better-at-the-moment learning, carries particular dangers that are not very funny. I hope it does not develop any further.

Oh, and if the Union goes, what happens to “British” identity? As an immigrant not fond of picking national sides at home in the Kingdom, I’m rather fond of it.

Shuggy

Why do you judge this thread by those who we do not delete, rather than by those with whom you agree?

On DSTFW, they delete constantly but leave up some of the most unpleasant ranting by one of the proprietors of the blog.

Hahaha. Morgoth is racist for his rant against the Scots? I do believe he is white too. But all is fair game in the sectarian war, eh, Shuggy? Will is an utter cunt. David T and fellow HP bloggers, deserve immense respect for allowing virtually ALL a voice, bar the actual racist fucks.

Freedom of Speech (bar the loonies)

David T and fellow HP bloggers, deserve immense respect for allowing virtually ALL a voice, bar the actual racist fucks.

Ah, but here’s where you’re wrong. Morgorth is an actual racist fuck - yet he is allowed to deposit his filth with impunity. The only other Scots on this thread are of the self-loathing variety. I see no-one, other than myself, disagreeing with his racist bile. The thread is not incidental to the piece, it is an instrinsic element of it.

On DSTFW, they delete constantly but leave up some of the most unpleasant ranting by one of the proprietors of the blog.

Unpleasantness - this is a matter of taste. But I defy you to identify even one occasion where the ‘unpleasantness’ of racism has been tolerated in our comments boxes. Not so here - under the cover of free speech, Mogorth is allowed to spew venom at anyone who isn’t English. Do we need a reminder? Perhaps we do:

We don’t like you and the rest of your ungrateful parasites either. Fuck off to your unproductive grease-filled socialist wasteland and take the chips on your shoulder the size of Ben Nevis with you. And take that one-eyed cunt McBean as well with you.

And when you come back in a few years after fucking everything up, begging for re-admittance to the UK after turning Scotland into an even bigger shithole than it currently is…fuck off again.

You tolerate these fucknuts? I repeat: now imagine how a Muslim might feel reading the average thread in the place where freedom means saying what people don’t want to hear. It is a perversion of the Orwell quote to somehow assume that it is part of your duty to provide a platform for the vicious and the insane. Yet this is what you’re doing here. By doing so you piss on freedom of speech - you degrade it by tolerating such morons.

The Shetlanders and Orkneyers, would be better off seeking re-union with the filthy rich Norwegians who literally throw money at anything!

Shuggy, good of you to post an example of classic Scots nationalist inclusive toleration; but I’m afraid my refusal to accept a national identity constructed upon the basis of nationalist bigotry does not make me ’self-loathing’. It just means I reject that notion of Scottishness. You may not like that; but I’m afraid that’s just tough.

Meanwhile you have entirely missed the point that I have been disagreeing with Morgoth apparently because my grounds for disagreement differ from yours. I suggest you read the postings involved more closely before jumping to conclusions which confirm your prejudices.

Shuggy’s response to Morgoth appears to confirm my assertions about how getting sucked into competitive nationalist antagonisms simply polarizes the debate and reinforces the problem. If nothing else I hope this demonstrates that the ‘whining-Jock-New-Labour-mafia’ response to Scots nationalism does not help deal with the problem.

You might be on to something there Shuggy.

This supposedly ‘left-wing blog’ — which allows the racist Morgoth and the Kahanist Oxfordian to spew their hate — has, in a period when Britain and Europe’s urbanised population has been a few short weeks away from no cash in the ATMs and no credit to pay for non-existent food on empty supermarket shelves, not managed even a tepid critique of capitalism, instead continuing to focus on the ‘enemy within’ — Muslims and anyone else who can be classified as ‘Other’. A random sample reveals resolute support for McCain/Palin. Palin opponents characterised as ‘immoral’. Preference for the BNP over antifascists. An appeal to ‘pray for the soul’ of a dead nazi. And, in some sort of delusional haze, patting themselves on the back for going on a tour of Cable Street.

“anonymous autonomist”

As you know, the fuss between DSTFW and us started when you became convinced that a Jew baiting neo Nazi poster - who we couldn’t ban because they had a mobile IP address - was a senior activist in the BNP. You repeatedly published his name. Graham and Wardy followed the blog policy of preventing the ‘outing’ of commenters who chose to remain anonymous. You and Will ended up in a swearing match with them. Will demanded that I sack Graham and Wardy. I was in France, and didn’t read my emails until I got back, by which stage, the emails were hysterical and increasingly aggressive.

In fact, the racist troll was NOT the senior BNP activist you thought he was. You got it wrong.

Nevertheless, for the past three years, we’ve had increasingly shrill and unpleasant attacks on us, collectively and personally. For the first few years, they just took the form of you and Will swearing at Graham and Wardy: which you kept up until they were basically chased away from this site. Well done you. Then you started attacking Harry, who wasn’t even involved in this site at the time. Great.

All this time, I have been nothing but courteous and pleasant to you. I have never objected in print to your behaviour. I’ve never even explained that this entire vendetta is the result of you being prevented from ‘outing’ a poster who you mistakenly thought was the Membership Officer of the BNP!

Now, I appreciate that having expressed this opinion publicly, I’m going to get the full ‘nutter’ treatment from you. Oh well. I get it from Atzmon and his neo Nazi pals, Elf, Clark and the Milosevic groupies, a fugitive Hamas commander, and Lady Renouf.

I repeat: now imagine how a Muslim might feel reading the average thread in the place where freedom means saying what people don’t want to hear

What you are saying is that you would allow posters the freedom to say what people don’t want to hear - provided that you have the power to delete those you disagree with. The classic fascist position.

It just means I reject that notion of Scottishness

You can reject it personally, sure, but you can’t reject it on behalf of the Scottish nation as a whole.

the Kahanist Oxfordian

Dumb beyond words.

And, as I’ve mentioned before, you can cut it down too.

The reason there are so many exile Scots spread throughout the former British Empire is because of the Highland Clearances and alsothe law of primogeniture, where the eldest son took everything. Is Morgoth serious? I always assumed he was teasing other people.

A random sample reveals resolute support for McCain/Palin. Palin opponents characterised as ‘immoral’. Preference for the BNP over antifascists. An appeal to ‘pray for the soul’ of a dead nazi.

That’d be a random sample of some commenters, who were argued against by the editorial writers of the blog. If you’re upset by those comments, then presumably the alternative you’re looking for is that they be deleted from the blog. Personally I feel that this blog would be the lesser were it to implement such a censorship policy.

Nearly Oxfordian, my personal rejection of Scottish nationalism as practiced by the SNP is at least still reflected by a majority of the Scots electorate. It would be good to see us getting a fraction of attention the SNP and their acolytes get when concepts of Scottish national identity are discussed.

Sue R, the Highland clearances affected agricultural communities in the Highlands and West Coast who were a minority of the Scots population of the time, although you won’t hear that from the accepted nationalist mythology. Economic migrancy and not political/national antagonisms were the real reason for Scots emigration in the past two centuries.

Perhaps HP should adopt DSTW’s comments policy of editing and deleting the remarks of anyone who doesn’t comply fully with their line, and then abusing them. Then we’re bound to get the kind of lively debates here that you have over there, where anything other than “Comments(0)” lets you know that Will and his lackeys are congratulating themselves in their increasingly vicious echo chamber.

Incidentally, I was banned here (briefly) for falsely attributing comments to Will, on a thread where Will had commented. The thread immediately became filled with personal attacks on him. Someone, presumably David T, quickly removed all the abuse directed at Will. I believe Will’s response, not long after, was to publish David T’s work e-mail address.

Shuggy, loyalty is generally a good thing, but it can be misguided. In the comments boxes at DSTW you and the rest of the site’s contributors come across like Will’s sycophantic hyenas, egging on his ever nastier comments. You’ve been wallowing in the gutter for some time and you are tainted by association, but I expect it would be hard to leave now, knowing the abuse such treachery would bring you.

I’m remaining anonymous because I would otherwise inevitably be subject to personal abuse at your site.

It would be good to see us getting a fraction of attention the SNP and their acolytes get when concepts of Scottish national identity are discussed

Then do something about it. Attention is what organised groups get: if your concept enjoys enough support among Scots, then organise people around it.

Nearly Oxfordian, moderate people in liberal democracies do not generally feel under threat or the need to promote a moderate agenda because they constitute the majority.

Therefore they do not form pressure groups because they simply exist as a majority and have no agenda beyond the liberal democratic majoritarian consensus.

If polemicists for narrow selfish reasons, including intellectual laziness, cannot be arsed finding out majoritarian views, or seek mischeviously to misrepresent them, then it is those polemicists who are the problem, not the ’silent majority’.

The majority of Scots (65%) do NOT want an end to the Anglo-Scottish union. This is not for narrow selfish reasons (as little Englanders would like to suggest) but because they feel a broad British affiliation, and because they are cautious by nature and are suspicious of what it would entail for the UK.

Support for independence in Scotland has remained stable for the last 40 years at around 30% despite the wavering fortunes of the SNP.

Support for independence has actually gone DOWN since the SNP became a minority government in May 2007.

Why?

Because Scots are quite capable, as any other citizens of the UK, of voting tactically in order to check the balances of the political system and to secure better government.

Scottish Labour are inept and the SNP have gained votes because the Scottish electorate wished to send them a message. This message is: ‘must do better’.

It does NOT reflect a sudden rise in support for independence that the SNP now forms a minority administration.

Salmond wishes to provoke quarrels with England in order to fan this 30% support into something greater.

Sensible Scots like Gavin and myself refuse to play ball as to sensible Englishmen like DavidT. There is too much at stake.

Nearly Oxfordian, devorgilla has handily answered very effectively on my behalf. By all means dance to Salmond’s tune if you want, just take note of what this involves; continuing to discount Scots like me who vote for liberal, democratic unionist parties and who have substantial personal experience of directly confronting Anglophobic bigotry (including receiving threats and even violence) is counter-productive. And if you want me to continue ‘doing something about it’ on that score, then try reciprocating by confronting anti-Scottish bigotry when you encounter it in England.

Meanwhile, to return to the particular issue, I can say as a Dundee resident that habibi is right on the money - the apparent lack of significant local response to media coverage of the true nature of the SNP-islamist relationship is shameful. Maybe Saeed needs to be photographed teaching his kids to use a Kalashnikov in Pakistan to get the point home.

Shuggy – I’m very happy to be a fellow citizen of David T and some of the other people who comment here. There are some in this thread though who evidently think their ignorant bigotry and school kids level abuse is humorous teasing and/or trenchant truth-telling. I don’t like sharing a thread or a nationality with those people, in fact I don’t like sharing a universe with them and I wish they would disappear. My way with them is to ignore them, and I wish other people would as well, instead of rising to their putrescent bait.

” Oh, and if the Union goes, what happens to “British” identity? As an immigrant not fond of picking national sides at home in the Kingdom, I’m rather fond of it.” I feel the same. “British” is a good formal and political identity, “English” and “Scottish” and “Welsh” and their sub-sets like “Yorkshire” and “West Coast” and “Highlands” are cultural identities, and should be able to co-exist within the same island.

Gavin, Devorgilla – good stuff.

If polemicists for narrow selfish reasons, including intellectual laziness, cannot be arsed finding out majoritarian views, or seek mischeviously to misrepresent them, then it is those polemicists who are the problem, not the ’silent majority’.

The silent majority is always part of the problem if it refuses to speak up, thus becoming complicit in the antics of the polemicists (and demagogues, tyrants etc) whom it refuses to stand up to. This is true, for example, in Dundee (this is not a dig at Gavin!), where the council promoted antisemitic policies for years (and maybe still does - I have taken my eye off the ball in that regard).

I hardly dance to Salmond’s tune, a man I deeply despise. I simply believe that there seem to be plenty of Scots who want independence. Most such movements started with smaller percentages of the relevant populations than this one seems to be.

Well Oxfordian, THIS Scot is doing their damndest to get Scotland to wake up and rouse the silent majority. Take it from me!

I have leaked a number of documents to the Scottish press in recent months, accessed via FOI. I would like to think my efforts are bearing some fruit as now I see (at last!) a trickle of articles mentioning some of what I have uncovered. I would like to think I had the support and blessing of concerned citizens south of the Tweed.

As Gavin says, the media is a huge problem, north of the border as well as south.

I believe there have been substantial cutbacks in newspaper staff and one of our major dailies, The Herald, is parochial beyond a joke.

We struggle to get a critical voice out - but struggle we do. Be assured.

BTW, aren’t blogs like HP springing up because the MSM is so crap?

Take your mask off, Hak. Well done David.

SHUGGY

The only other Scots on this thread are of the self-loathing variety.

I see Gavin has already posted, but I beg your pardon? Even if I didn’t consistently object to Morgoth’s anti-Scots and anti-Muslim haverings, I beg your pardon?

Way to go to demonstrate your credentials.

As for the Clearances, they’re commonly considered to have started in Srathy, Sutherland, with the sale of land by John Mackay (English name?) to Edinburgh-based lawyer, William Honeyman. His father was Orcadian and his mother was one of the myriad Mackays from Strathy.

Maybe Shuggy will call him a Harki.

It was pretty well known that Osama “Caliphate Now” Saeed is a Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood supporter.

Actually, I’d class Mr ‘Saeed’ as an enslaved Hindu/Buddhist.

‘Saeed’ is merely his slave name.

It’s the South Asian equivalent of the Afro-American ‘Williams’ or ‘Johnson’…with the difference, of course, that African Americans are aware of who they really are and of where they actually come from.

When your identity, your history and your heritage are so mutilated and so disfigured, is it any wonder you’d pant for attention from your Arabo-Muslim masters by doing the gruntwork for what is essentially an Arabo-supremacist organisation?

In the various arab gulf states muslim labourers from South Asia are treated with the utmost contempt because of their skin-colour; they are virtual slaves, and the fact most have been Muslim for centuries changes nothing.

White, non-Muslim Westerners, on the other hand, are embraced immediately and made to feel welcome.

Perhaps someone should take Mr ‘Saeed’ aside and explain that no amount of arabic prayers or pilgrimages, and that no amount of India-hatred or Jew-hatred will ever turn him into an Arab.

And by the way, this twinning of nationalist movements and Muslim Brotherhood front organisations is common. Nationalism is an opening, a chink in the armor into which islamists can insert their agenda.

And John P is a lunatic, before the rest of us are accused of supporting him.

I’m remaining anonymous because I would otherwise inevitably be subject to personal abuse at your site.

Too late for me.

Shuggy:-

“Self-loathing”? I’ve seen some reasonable and sensible arguments from the Scots against independence on this thread but nothing I could identify as “self-loathing.” Are you going to start using terms like “house Jock” or “Uncle Tom” (which would be “John Brown” after Queen Victoria’s Scots servant)?

I thought you were pro-Union – I’m sure I’ve seen and commented on posts on your blog that were anti-Nat, pro Union.

It’s an interesting point though if persons of south Asian racial stock are STILL regarded as inferiors in the Gulf states.

Had Salmond thought of this before sending his ’special envoy’? I doubt it.

In 1916 T E Lawrence writes of the antipathy of Arabs for Indians (though they didn’t mind Africans).

In the 1920s Marmaduke Picthall, the translator of the Quran, and an English convert to Islam, had a devil of a time trying to persuade Al Azhar university in Cairo’s Islamic worthies of accepting his translation and his credentials as a scholar - not so much because he was a white English convert, but because his ‘training’ in Islam was in British India.

In an unusually critical tone, Picthall writes to his wife of the extreme antique conservatism of the Al Azhar (Arab) scholars, who were still considering Arabs as ‘the patrons’ as though they were still in the time of Harun Al Rashid. He describes his attempts to persuade these scholars that there was authentic Islamic scholarship in India too, as worthy and as competant as any of that at Al Azhar…

I agree with JP, and by no means only because idiots who disagree with him think that this makes him a ‘lunatic’.

Fair enough, devorgilla.

Yes, KB, I thought that. Then it’s just occurred to me that it’s only really pro-Labour posts I’ve seen from him, which ain’t necessarily the same.

“It’s an interesting point though if persons of south Asian racial stock are STILL regarded as inferiors in the Gulf states.”

According to Ed Husain, they are.

I’d forgotten about that, KB. Thanks. Well, it just goes to PROVE that Alex Salmond is totally clueless and out of his depth in sending Osama Saeed to feel out contacts in Qatar.

According to FOI, IslamFest needs another £1 million to run. The £215k of public money is just start up. The rest has to be raised by the Scottish Islamic Foundation, but Salmond was keen that the IslamExpo team (Sawalha et al) be used for their expertise in seeking out funders.

A friend whose family is Pakistani went on Haj, and he and his aged aunt were physically thrown out of a lift by a couple of local saudi guys.

Was that because they were SE Asian or didn’t have documentation to show they were related?

Devorgilla, I’ve emailed you on what I assume is your address.

Last June the Scottish Islamic Foundation held a weekend event called “Explaining Islam”. It was billed as “A unique weekend residential equipping Scottish Muslims with knowledge and skills needed to clarify the basics of their way of life and increase understanding between communities.”

Training was provided by Fadel Soliman of Egypt.

This is what Mr Soliman thinks of a certain community in the United States, according to an al Ahram article he has re-published on his own web site (!):

”My personal view is that Israelis are in complete control of US foreign policy through their lobby in the US”

SIF promotes anti-Semites. It’s that simple. For how long will Scotland continue to help pay its way?

They are also anti-Christian, and invited Christophobic polemicists like Shabir Ally and Kemal Badawi to their Weaving the Tartan event (August 2007), along with the repulsive Mick Napier of Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign.

Now he IS an anti-semite!

In August this year he disrupted the Jerusalem Quartet during a performance at the Edinburgh Festival on account of their being presumed members of the ‘Jewish lobby’ I suppose.

These young lads are part of Daniel Baremboim’s East-West Divan Orchestra, for pity’s sake!

Now, to be fair, Lady Balliol, was it not John Wight who rabbited on about the Jewish lobby and supremacy? Napier prefers to describe unarmed seminary mid-teen students as being in loathing of Gentiles.

DaveT, did your friend and his aunt have any idea why?

T E Lawrence was perplexed as well. From Picthall I picked up that they didn’t regard Indians are real Muslims, too Hindu possibly?

Habibi?

And John P is a lunatic, before the rest of us are accused of supporting him.

Read some history, Alec. I’m not a lunatic at all, it’s just that fact is stranger than fiction.

Despite Islam’s claims of race neutrality, the whole enterprise is charactersied by a racial hierarchy with Arabs and Persians at the top, and with Blacks and South Asians at the bottom.

The Muslim Brotherhood, according to its official manifesto, would not allow non-muslims or women to hold top office. Although they’d never say as much, The Brotherhood would never have Blacks or South Asians in top office either.

Osama Saeed may think he’s doing the lord’s work, but he’s merely stumping for a form of racial supremacism in an organisation that always posits The Arab as top dog.

The mere fact wealthy Arabs use expendible 5 and 6 year old South Asian boys as camel-jockeys in races so dangerous they can be killed, speaks volumes about Islam’s racial divide.