SNP Direct Public Money to Hamas Front
The row over the SNP controlled Scottish Government’s £215,000 grant to the Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood front group, the Scottish Islamic Foundation, rumbles on.
It is now absolutely crystal clear that Alex Salmond’s administration is gifting of large sums of public money to a group that is the British franchise of Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood. They will use this money to promote to Scottish Muslims the ideology of that group. Only a lunatic would think the spread of that particular form of Islamism in Scotland would be anything but a disaster for all Scottish people, Muslim or not.
It was pretty well known that Osama “Caliphate Now” Saeed is a Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood supporter. Originally, the Scottish representative of the Muslim Association of Britain, the British Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood franchise, he has now set up what is clearly yet another local franchise of this clerical fascist terrorist organisation.
It has now emerged that the grant was made, after a meeting with Mohammed Sawalha.
Alex Salmond agreed to hand over £215,000 for an Islamic festival in Scotland following a meeting with a former military commander of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
Documents obtained by The Sunday Times reveal Salmond approved the grant following the meeting between culture minister Linda Fabiani and Mohammed Sawalha, who is alleged to have directed terror operations in the West Bank.
The meeting, in January, was also attended by Osama Saeed, founder of the Scottish Islamic Foundation (SIF) and an SNP activist who is expected to contest the Glasgow Central seat at the next Westminster election. Sawalha was invited to take part in the meeting to discuss the funding of IslamFest in Glasgow next year.
The event, being organised by the SIF, is modelled on London’s IslamExpo, run by Sawalha. IslamExpo was boycotted by UK ministers earlier this year because of its links to Hamas.
The £215,000 Scottish government grant for the Islamic festival was given to the SIF, which has so far received £415,000 of taxpayers’ money. Sawalha, president of the British Muslim Initiative, was named in US court documents as a leading militant in the early 1990s “in charge of Hamas terrorist operations within the West Bank”.
The documents alleged he met two “conspirators” accused of laundering millions of dollars to finance the group’s activities. In 2006, the BBC’s Panorama accused him of directing funds to Hamas’s armed wing.
Sawalha, you’ll recall, is the man who has threatened to sue me for defamation over what his lawyers described as a “malicious translation”.
Sawalha is described on the Muslim Brotherhood’s own website as “the manager of the political committee of the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain.
He has never questioned Panorama’s description of him as a fugitive Hamas commander. How could he? So, of course, when asked whether he was indeed a Hamas activist, he could not deny it:
Asked if he denied his involvement with Hamas, Sawalha said: “I am supporting the Palestinian cause. This is not something I am ashamed of. I’ve been here 17 years. I’m working in this country for good relations between Muslims and non-Muslims.”
Yeah. I think we’ve seen what Hamas’ idea of “good relations” looks like in practice.
In fact, the only person who appears to be agnostic about the nature of the group that Scotland is chucking cash at, is the culture minister, Linda Fabiani:
A spokesman for Fabiani added: “It would be inappropriate to have routine matters determined by unproven allegations against any individual who has not been questioned in this country for any wrongdoing.”
Handing over nearly a quarter of a million pounds to a terrorist front group should not be a ‘routine matter’.
Hat tip: Alec Macpherson
Comments
| 13 October 2008, 12:09 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 12:33 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 12:43 pm |
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
| 13 October 2008, 12:44 pm |
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
| 13 October 2008, 12:55 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 12:59 pm |
I’ll be glad when the school holidays are over.
| 13 October 2008, 1:05 pm |
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?
| 13 October 2008, 1:06 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 1:14 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 1:19 pm |
Morgot: seconded, with bells and whistles on.
| 13 October 2008, 1:19 pm |
Morgoth, I meant.
| 13 October 2008, 1:20 pm |
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. ;-)
| 13 October 2008, 1:24 pm |
Jeremy, Scots taxpayers are helping.
As the scots are net recipients of government largesse, they are not helping.
| 13 October 2008, 1:24 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 1:31 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 1:34 pm |
My guess is that the SNP is supporting this venture because they know that it is a Hamas/MB front: not despite it.
| 13 October 2008, 1:39 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 2:02 pm |
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).
| 13 October 2008, 2:34 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 2:39 pm |
“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.
| 13 October 2008, 2:45 pm |
Having lived in Scotland and been taught Scottish history by Scots who reject the nationalist framework, I am with Gavin on this.
| 13 October 2008, 3:05 pm |
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?
| 13 October 2008, 3:08 pm |
Osama Saeed, Tim?
| 13 October 2008, 3:29 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 4:12 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 4:13 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 4:42 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 4:58 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 5:01 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 5:21 pm |
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?
| 13 October 2008, 5:26 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 5:32 pm |
Maybe the SNP are hoping to sell lots of Scotch whisky in Gaza.
| 13 October 2008, 5:45 pm |
I wouldn’t be surprised if they already did. I am reliably informed that it sells healthily in Iran.
| 13 October 2008, 7:13 pm |
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.)
| 13 October 2008, 7:20 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 7:34 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 8:10 pm |
The Labour candidate for Glasgow Central would be even more inept if he didn’t run that speech alongside images of Glasgow Airport.
| 13 October 2008, 8:20 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 8:23 pm |
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?
| 13 October 2008, 8:24 pm |
Yes, precisely, he wants to be the gatekeeper. No one should be so stupid as to help him in that task.
Nice one, SNP.
| 13 October 2008, 8:26 pm |
The progenitor of my individual surname benefitted very nicely with a very nice plot of land in 1745.
| 13 October 2008, 8:27 pm |
That is, I don’t like jacobite jihadis.
| 13 October 2008, 8:41 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 8:57 pm |
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!
| 13 October 2008, 9:01 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 9:04 pm |
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?
| 13 October 2008, 9:17 pm |
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?
| 13 October 2008, 9:42 pm |
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!
| 13 October 2008, 9:49 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 9:51 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 9:56 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 10:03 pm |
Oi!
| 13 October 2008, 10:16 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 10:17 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 10:51 pm |
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?
| 13 October 2008, 10:56 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 10:59 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 11:07 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 11:16 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 11:22 pm |
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.
| 13 October 2008, 11:34 pm |
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.
| 14 October 2008, 1:05 am |
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)
| 14 October 2008, 1:48 am |
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.
| 14 October 2008, 3:24 am |
The Shetlanders and Orkneyers, would be better off seeking re-union with the filthy rich Norwegians who literally throw money at anything!
| 14 October 2008, 8:34 am |
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.
| 14 October 2008, 8:36 am |
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.


What’s with the commas all over the place David?
Could barely read the bloody thing.