Harry’s Place

can anyone enlighten me, what is Bob Pitts’ JOB?

what function is he officially paid for at City Hall?

anyone know? no speculation please :)

I must say I’m really surprised that Mayor Boris hasn’t kicked him out. After all he seems to be kicking out a few of Livingstone’s placemen and women and political appointees. Surely doing politics of this sort is the kind of sackable offence for a public ’servant’ like Pitt?

Unless, of course, Boris is in full agreeent with the reactionaries !

GW

most of whose leaders were never Muslims in the first place.

What does Bob mean by that?

In the meantime Pitt is having a pop at DavidT.

http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/islamophobia-watch/2008/11/16/inayat-bunglawala-ally-of-al-muhajiroun.html

I’d have thought Mr Pitt is a bit right wing even for Boris.

“most of whose leaders were never Muslims in the first place.”

Unlike Martin Sullivan, of course.

More from the nihilist’s nihilist:

http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/islamophobia-watch/2008/11/16/inayat-bunglawala-ally-of-al-muhajiroun.html

I must say I’m really surprised that Mayor Boris hasn’t kicked him out.

We don’t operate a ’spoils’ system in the civil service of this country, and I’m pleased about that. It would have been outrageous for Pitt to go, simply because he supported Livingstone.

Neither should it be a bar on Pitt serving in the civil service, that he produces a pro-Muslim Brotherhood blog. Only senior civil servants should be barred from engaging in politics, and even then, only in the party politics of this country: not the Middle East or South Asia.

There might be a conflict, if Pitt’s duties involved - say - outreach work to cultural minority groups. I really don’t know what he does at the GLA. But even then, he should simply move to another post in the administration, which wouldn’t give rise to conflict.

I do agree that it is outrageous to attack some very brave people, and specifically try to get UNISON to blackball them.

However, the proper response to that is for unions not to support his political activism.

I wonder what would become of a BNP supporter at the GLA who started claiming people were or were not “proper Muslims”

Oh, just read Pitt’s latest piece!

He really is a cretin, isn’t he?

I love the way that his KILLER argument is some bloke who thinks I should be sued for libel by Anjum Choudrhy, for pointing out that he’s running a banned pro-terrorist organisation! Seriously, that’s his best argument.

Nothing to say, of course, about Bungle’s open racism and his record of support for Osama Bin Laden.

You see, this is one of the reasons we’ve been so lucky in our enemies. I actually couldn’t wish for better opponents. Their military wing consists of doctors who crash their cars and then pour petrol on themselves, and their ideological wing is constituted by Bungle and Pitt.

Long may they continue!

So when did you change your mind about the Israeli Law of Return, David?

1. Reading Aristotle, I realised that losses could be compensated in a manner other than restitution.

2. I only signed it because a schoolfriend of mine who was in the CPB asked me to. It took me a few years to realise that the extreme Left were, well, basically lunatics.

3. I had a think about the likely outcome of the aims that I had signed up to support, and decided that an all out genocidal war between Jews and Muslims would, on balance, be a stupid idea.

In some ways, though, I’m pleased that Bob Pitt at least bothers to participate in politics: albeit in a way which is not always to my taste.

I mean, we do live in a fairly apathetic culture. It is nice that somebody at least cares enough to say what he thinks.

And, you know, this wouldn’t be any fun if there weren’t people to argue against.

This is typical of some Muslims’ denial when it comes to apostates. This particular ex-muslim http://www.youtube.com/user/discussislam, who has now disbaled comments on his videos because of the deluge of negative responses he got, has people still denying that he was ever a Muslim despite actual video evidence of having taught at Islamia School London. The more rational of apostasy-deniers will resort to arguing that no apostate was ever a ‘true’ Muslim to begin with.

The CEMB is not perfect, but its existence is vital for breaking the debilitating taboos that exist in Muslim communities.

Is Pitt a Muslim? Is he a convert? If not, what motivate this odd man’s particular obsession?

Hooray, John Little’s back.

So when did you change your mind about the Israeli Law of Return, David?

Possibly when he grew up and got a bit wiser?

Obvious if you think about it.

Hooray, John Little’s back: Who he?

Yeah who is John Little?

“As we’ve already pointed out, the Council of Ex-Muslims is a complete fraud. It’s a front organisation for the Worker Communist Party of Iran, an ultra-left sect most of whose leaders were never Muslims in the first place. It’s just an excuse for the WPI to indulge in their obsessive and destructive propaganda against Islam.”

“Namazie” means “prayerful”. “Maryam” is Arabic for Mary, who is recognised in Islam as being the mother of a prophet by immaculate conception. So of course she comes from a Muslim background and she has chosen to reject Islam. That’s her right. It’s also her right to criticise Islam, in her mind from a Communist perspective. I find her - like many Communists - to be shrill and dogmatic, but nothing approaching Bob Pitt.

I personally know one senior Iranian cleric who would defend her right to choose her own faith and reject Islam. He is now living in political asylum in the UK for his beliefs (he also thinks aggressive jihad and theocracy are un-Islamic). Does Bob Pitt assume he is a better scholar of Islam than this man? Or does is he simply a stooge of Islamic extremism?

this is one of the reasons we’ve been so lucky in our enemies. I actually couldn’t wish for better opponents.

You’re not wrong. I only just read that Mark Elf piece that repeatedly called you a liar for calling someone who linked to David Duke’s site ‘a David Duke fan’.

It doesn’t take much imagination to think what Mark and his pal Bob Pitt would be saying about Harry’s place if it approvingly linked to articles on the BNP website. Jesus.

Yeah who is John Little?

Voila!

Is Pitt a Muslim? Is he a convert? If not, what motivate this odd man’s particular obsession?

No, he’s not. His reasons are well set out here, in an article in which - ironically - he called Ian Donovan (now of Galloway-RESPECT) a racist for failing to support Islamist movements, which he saw as the vanguard of anti-imperialism.

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/06/12/back-in-tha-day-donovan-v-pitt/

In other words, Pitt’s concern for Muslims extends principally to Islamists, who he values only instrumentally.

In fact, by encouraging Islamism in this country, he does everybody who lives here a great disservice. He encourages anger and fear in Muslims, by falsely representing any criticism of Islamist groups as an attack on Muslims generally. He encourages anger and fear among ordinary people, who see what the Islamist groups say and do. Can you imagine what people think about Muslims, when Bunglawala is held up as their representative? I mean, this is a man who even most Islamists hate! Where do you think I got his iEngage/’Blackstone” plans from!!

Someone like Sackcloth will be able to fill in details, but Pitt’s slandering of dissidents reminds me strongly of those Cold War era peace-activists, such as Cynthia Roberts, who systematically rubbished Soviet dissidents and worse, i.e. disgusting people.

We don’t operate a ’spoils’ system in the civil service of this country, and I’m pleased about that. It would have been outrageous for Pitt to go, simply because he supported Livingstone.

Neither should it be a bar on Pitt serving in the civil service, that he produces a pro-Muslim Brotherhood blog. Only senior civil servants should be barred from engaging in politics, and even then, only in the party politics of this country: not the Middle East or South Asia.

There might be a conflict, if Pitt’s duties involved - say - outreach work to cultural minority groups. I really don’t know what he does at the GLA. But even then, he should simply move to another post in the administration, which wouldn’t give rise to conflict.

-he could have a problem getting higher level security clearances based on some of his views/publications which would effectively prevent him from reaching particularly high level civil service positions.

David:

“Neither should it be a bar on Pitt serving in the civil service, that he produces a pro-Muslim Brotherhood blog. ”

Well I tend to agree with that. There should be no “litmus test”. His blog is part of his private life.

But the other side of that coin, is that a schoolteacher who is a BNP party member should not be hounded from his profession either.

So perhaps we think again….

Does anyone have access to a GLA telephpne directory? Maybe that could tell us what his official job title is?

Mrs Ben

Is Pitt a Muslim? Is he a convert? If not, what motivate this odd man’s particular obsession?

Having read the link to Pitt’s comments a while back it seems to be this.

Islamists = Anti-Imperialists = anti-USA = Good.

Maybe he gets invited to all expenses paid Islamists meetings with great curry on the menu. Maybe he’s found a group of people who like him and give him the strokes he doesn’t get elsewhere.

David T @ 17 November 2008, 9:33 pm

“We don’t operate a ’spoils’ system in the civil service of this country, and I’m pleased about that. ”

Agreed, except that people who work at City Hall are not Civil Servants! Each organisation in the GLA family (TfL, Fire Brigade, Met Police, LDA & the GLA itself) is a separate employer, carrying forward its historic conditions of service (and Trade Union recognition). Those people who work for the Met Police, but are not Police Officers, are on Civil Service conditions for those historical reasons as are employees of the London Development Agency.

I know someone who used to work at City Hall in a sensitive Policy job. No longer doing that job, but another in line with this person’s Professional qualifications.

To be fair, Brett, I think most people are familiar with Mr Pitt’s tired old ruse, and I’m not sure anyone took him very seriously in the first place. Also, the WCP’s seemingly implacable idealism is a beacon of light, whether against the duplicitous attacks of poisonous wormtongues like Mr Pitt or the hysterical serio-comical laughter of, say, the decentopedists, all whistling in the dark.

But it is another example of Eurocentrism-bordering-on-racism among today’s much-degraded Western left.

I thought he’d gone a bit quiet about what’s doing. What Next? (his journal) seems to have expired from the print realm, and only gets a bi-annual edition these days. So I naturally assumed something was afoot. MY own assumption was he would be working, like many other Islamophiles, and knee-benders for tyrants, for the Iranian state media.

Now we know: he’s Boris’s Main-Man for contract with the Islamicists.

Don’t forget that Sirrah Pitt was a member of the WRP, which trained him in such techniques.

As one of the first people denounced on his site can I say: Hats off to Pitt!

John Little

Yeah who is John Little?

Luv the hat John Little.

David T is always at his most annoying when he does his “Now I’m going to say something a little bit unexpected just to prove I’m open-minded” routine.

Pitt is an extremist - the mirror image of a BNP supporter. He has used his work email to slander anti-Islamists. He should be disciplined.

I gather he is now working as an assistant to a Labour MLA, Murad Qureshi. So we can be in no doubt about Qureshi’s own dubious credenials.

Is it possible that, when slandering Iranian dissidents, Bob Pitt is only doing his job for Murad Qureshi?

I can’t believe that he could be, because Qureshi appears to be an outspoken opponent of precisely the politics that Pitt promotes:

http://deshivoice.blogspot.com/2007/12/war-crime-seminar-in-london.html

But on the other hand:

http://www.london.gov.uk/mqt/public/question.do?id=23992

So he’s a little bit oooooh and a little bit aaaaah?

Murad Qureshi has recently been participating in the superbly unnecessary campaign to save the former BBC sports ground in Motspur Park, because “we all know how important it is for everyone to have access to leisure and sports facilities”. Except it’s completely surrounded by other sports grounds. You can’t move for them in Motspur Park. Other than the threatening and unpleasant Earl Beatty Tavern there’s naff all else to do other than go to bloody sports grounds.

Opposition to Policy Exchange’s attack on the Global Peace & Unity event is hardly a sign of extremist views. Unless, of course, you categorise Nick Clegg as an extremist. But then, David T probably does.

In fact, though, at the conference we showed a film called ‘Fitna Remade’ by Reza Moradi which is a criticism of Wilders’ film, Fitna, the Movie, and his virulently anti-immigrant and racist perspective

I detest Bob Pitt, but I’m not such a big fan of Maryam Namazie either.

The thing is you can’t really attack islamism from a leftist perspective and make progress. The Left is too screwed up, is populated by too many flakes, is hamstrung by political correctness and more often than not acts as an enabler for radical Islam.

Maryam cites the courage so necessary to battle islamists, and she is quite correct.

Why then should she criticise a politician who was duly elected, whose life is constantly threatened, who is under guard 24/7, who is the bane of Holland’s compliant, complacent and ‘collaborative’ elites and who is actually doing something concreteto roll back the islamist advance?

Maryam, in contrast, holds a conference.

Maryam doesn’t see the importance of Wilders and in a knee-jerk opinion simply dismisses him as *anti-immigrant* and *racist*, and in doing so our Little Miss Secularist finds herself sitting squarely in the lap of Bob Pitt himself.

If her communist sympathies render brave ‘right-wingers’ like G. Wilders distasteful, unpalatable and unwelcome, then I can can only assume that those sympathies trump even Ms Namazie’s desire to defeat islamism and to promote secularism

Discussing immigration, and in particular Muslims immigration is NOT racist and it isn’t racist because the radicals rolled in on waves of muslim immigration. They embedded themselves in it, and did so with no objections from the ‘moderates’ and they are now embedded in Muslim communities across Europe.

Maryam wants to battle radical Islammists, but in a series of counterproductive and maladroit gestures has declared any critical discussion of muslims and immigration, the very thing needed and indeed the raison d’être of Wilders film, as off limits, as racist.

Is Maryam of the opinion, as are all islamists, that only Muslims can criticise Islamism despite claims to the contrary?

I’m with Geert Wilders. He’s commonly referred to as ‘right-wing’, but in actuality he’s doing the job The Left should have been doing years ago.

He’s battling the misgyny, the homophobia, the anti-semitism and the anti-kuffur racism that the new face of fascism, a slightly darker face this time, now presents.

‘Someone like Sackcloth will be able to fill in details, but Pitt’s slandering of dissidents reminds me strongly of those Cold War era peace-activists, such as Cynthia Roberts, who systematically rubbished Soviet dissidents and worse, i.e. disgusting people.’

I can’t really speak about that, but it still makes my blood boil when I hear bien pensants sneer about Iraqi exiles - not with reference to Ahmed Chalabi, but when talking about ordinary people who suffered from Saddam’s barbarity.

I understand that Mr Seymour decided to smear Kanan Makiya in his ‘Liberal Defense (sic) of Murder’. I think there’s something rather nauseating about a pampered student who has grown fat of the system he ostensibly attacks having a pop at someone who has been on the receiving end of real, unadulterated tyranny. Furthermore - unlike Seymour - Makiya can actually write.

Hello Bob!!!

I would regard his as extremely poorly briefed. He appears to have been persuaded to attack the people who pointed out that Qadhi is a vicious religious bigot and Holocaust denier.

PEx’s inclusion of a link to the scum of “SANE” was an egregious error. That doesn’t mean, however, that the participants in GPU were any less racists, terrorism supporters, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, or holocaust deniers.

I wonder who might have briefed him so badly.

Actually, I now know.

Not to worry. We won’t let Clegg cock up like this again.

Hilarious - no sooner do I point out David T’s immoral triangulating tendency and up he pops to slag off Policy Exchange.

And, once again, he does so without checking his facts.

David - why not drop an email to PX and find out the truth about the Clegg incident?

David T Hi,

Your article did very well at CIF.

Over 500 posts.

Closed now but it didnt die naturally. It was lively BUT they still cut it off. No doubt, if you ask, Georgina will tell you about the ‘3 day rule’ which is only extended for articles written by a different mind set to yours.

If you get my meaning.

For all rational CIF posters, I say thank you for the article.

David - why not drop an email to PX and find out the truth about the Clegg incident?

I do know what happened. I also looked at the SANE site and although it was apparently that they were from the political right, the true level of their nuttiness involved a some digging around. I’d never use SANE’s investigation as a source, because I can only sensibly use left of centre material. Right of centre groups are subject to such limitations.

The Clegg incident was the result of two things. First of all, PEx is broadly aligned with the Cameroonians, which makes them fair game for other political parties wanting to score a quick hit. Secondly, they were nicely carved out by those aligned with the GPU clique: a kind of counter-Policy Exchange, if you’d like.

I’m sorry my post has closed. It seems to have been popular

575 on closure.

Bungle only managed 85 on closure. (Cry - moan).

It isn’t a popularity contest, you know.

“I can only sensibly use left of centre material. Right of centre groups are subject to such limitations.”

Care to elaborate on this rather bizarre statement?

It isn’t a popularity contest, you know.

I know that David.

The point is that Bungle must be seething.

Over and out.

Because right wingers want to do things like close their borders entirely to immigration, don’t generally have a particular interest in solidarity with people because they’re persecuted, are reasonably likely to accept the Islamist=Islam argument and so on.

So a right wing anti-Islamist group will (for example) want to close the doors to all Muslim immigration, including refugees, and liberals who are Muslims.

By contrast, I don’t.

So, by that logic, if a reputable centre right organisation like, say, the Institute for Economic Affairs or Civitas produced research showing that some high street banks were encouraging customers with Muslim-sounding names to take out sharia-compliant mortgages, you would ignore such information because of its source.

It would depend on whether they were also suggesting that any Muslim who practiced what they took to be “his religion” be tried for treason: which is what SANE suggested.

Wouldn’t it?

Because that’s fucking nuts.

SANE are indeed nuts - but a recording made by a nut is still valid.

A recording made by a nut is valid, certainly.

I just wouldn’t want knowingly to be associated with a nut - that’s the problem.

So a right wing anti-Islamist group will (for example) want to close the doors to all Muslim immigration, including refugees, and liberals who are Muslims.

But the more we act as an overflow valve for muslim dissidents, liberals and reformers, the more the Islamic world sinks into fundamentalism. The tyrants, dictators and clerical fascists running the majority of islamic nations maintain their power partly due to the fact that any reform from within is virtually impossible seeings the dearth of domestic dissidents and liberals. How on earth can any reforms come about if there are no reformers on the ground?

I don’t see the point of accepting large numbers of immigrants from a religion and a culture that has such difficulty integrating. Many second generation muslims are less integrated and more radicalised than their parents, express virtually no interest in the surrounding secular socoiety, and in doing so prove beyond a doubt that a significant proportion of the adherents of this ideology are very, VERY poor candidates for immigration.

That’s not a hateful statement, that’s a fair and honest observation