The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
The point is that if a hundred thousand people go on a march and 200 of them are carrying Death to the Jews banners and your 99,800 salt of the earth we despair of violence hug a hoodie mates are marching shoulder to shoulder with them then that propagates the message of those 200.
Which is why decent people, when organising their marches, exclude the scumbags. Rather carefully. See the Stop The War marches, for example.
I was going to say the Anti-Brexit marches were a good example of that, then I remembered they had Alastair Campbell speak at them....
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
I would be surprised if most people going along were anti-Semitic, but they are prepared to march in the company of people who are and who have called for the destruction of Israel and the killing of all Jews.
Wait till you hear who was willing to serve in a shadow cabinet for several years with an *alleged* antisemite, and star speaker at the march of the guilty by association.
And it is entirely right that he is held accountable for that. People can then judge his response to see if they buy it.
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
We don't know what the contemporary reaction of Nazis was to the massacres of men, women and children they undertook daily - not only in concentration camps, but everywhere they had control - over a number of years, because they weren't recorded on smartphones. We do know that they kept on happening on an industrial scale and we do have survivors' testimony of the relish with which the barbarity was often inflicted.
Indeed - at the point of actual murder, there was a great deal of evident sadism.
At a higher level, the Nazis tried to coverup what they were doing.
Actually there’s plenty of evidence of personal Nazi reactions to the final solution. Witness testimony, officers complaints, the survivors who saw it
The Nazis went to great lengths to make the killings as impersonal as possible so as to limit the psychological damage to regular soldiers. This is one explicit reason they went for the whole gas chamber thing - which actually weren’t any more efficient than killing huge numbers of people with firing squads
Eg Auschwitz at its peak killed 14,000 daily. One firing squad Aktion - like that at Kamanets Podolskiy - killed 20.000 in a day, I believe
But the gas chambers depersonalised everything and made it an industrial process. Removing the soldiers from the hideous mess
Nonetheless there were outright lunatic sadists in the Nazi ranks who clearly enjoyed the horror and slaughter. But they are remembered BECAUSE they were fairly unusual
Local militias, like Ustase, or RONA, generally carried out the killings with relish, often adding torture and rape to the process. Ditto SS Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, which was mainly comprised of the scum of Germany's prison population, together with the some of the scum of Ukraine and the Baltic States.
OTOH, it's clear that many of the Einsatzgruppen, and Reserve Police Battalions, principally German soldiers and civilians on secondment, became alcoholic wrecks, once they started massacring women and children, and German Jews, deported to the East. Almost no one objected to killing adult male Eastern Jews, but they could see the women and children, and German Jews, as human beings like themselves.
Throughout WW2, there were people serving the Nazis who were actually, much worse than they were.
Yes that’s fair
I do think the outright psycho sadists were outliers - eg Dirlewanger
Same with the Khmer Rouge
Probably same everywhere
The most unsettling are the calmly psychotic bureaucrats. Like Comrade Duch who ran the Khmer Rouge torture garden. In another life he’d have been an anonymous accountant
Most unsettling is the willingness of the "ordinary men" to just follow orders. And that histories of other genocides suggests that as being not at all unusual,
This is a really disturbing book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Browning#Ordinary_Men ...As presented in the study, the men of Unit 101 were not ardent Nazis but ordinary middle-aged men of working class background from Hamburg, who had been drafted but found to be ineligible for regular military duty. After their return to occupied Poland in June 1942, the men were ordered to terrorize Jews in the ghettos during Operation Reinhard and carry out massacres of Polish Jews (men, women, and children) in the towns of Józefów and Łomazy. In other cases, they were ordered to kill a certain number of Jews in a town or area, usually helped by Trawnikis. The commander of the unit once gave his men the choice of opting out if they found it too hard, but fewer than 12 men did so in a battalion of 500. Browning provides evidence to support the notion that not all of the men were hateful antisemites. He includes the testimony of men who said that they begged to be released from the task and to be placed elsewhere. In one instance, two fathers claimed that they could not kill children and so asked to be given other work. Browning also tells of a man who demanded his release, obtained it, and was promoted once he had returned to Germany...
Whatever happened to the law that the Guardian's of this world were claiming if passed supposedly gave the power to the plod to shut down any protests that were a bit loud and shouty?
I think that law doesn't apply in advance. It allows police to ban a protest and order a crowd to disperse, if they think it's too loud/disruptive/annoying. But not to ban it in advance, I think.
One thing I didn't realise is that there are now heavy fines available for anyone on a protest who deviates from the agreed route.
And yet they couldn't apply it to the bloke shouting for Jihad down a microphone....
I don't think that's right. I think they chose not to apply it.
Also worth remembering the Colston statue protest in Bristol. Often the police choose not to intervene at the time of a protest, but gather evidence and arrest people at 5am over the days following. It's a much lower risk strategy for them than wading in and trying to arrest people in the middle of a large crowd.
It's standard procedure - rather than creating a riot and a bit of martyrdom, the police film them, then arrest them in the attic room they live in at their mum's house.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
Then go on another march. You are swelling the numbers of those anti-semites, anti-westerners so if one of them has a banner saying kill the Jews you are in effect giving credentials, by your presence and those around you, to that view. You are helping to say this is not a minority what me guv view, this is a view, because we are marching shoulder to shoulder, that we all agree on.
I have zero doubt that you are not an anti-semite but I really do wonder why such avowed non-anti-semites feel it necessary on a point of principle to march side by side with outright anti-semites.
Hyperbole. Anybody who has a banner saying Kill the Jews should be arrested forthwith. Obviously.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
I would be surprised if most people going along were anti-Semitic, but they are prepared to march in the company of people who are and who have called for the destruction of Israel and the killing of all Jews.
Wait till you hear who was willing to serve in a shadow cabinet for several years with an *alleged* antisemite, and star speaker at the march of the guilty by association.
And it is entirely right that he is held accountable for that. People can then judge his response to see if they buy it.
Not a big fan of Sir Kir Royale “second vote” Starmer, however I think he has done a good job of purging Labour of quite a lot of anti semitism. There is still plenty left, but he has put in the hours at a difficult task
If I have any hopes for Prime Minister Starmer and the coming Labour government, it relies on this. They will work hard and boringly at dull or unpleasant things, and they will see them through. Tedious but necessary jobs might just be accomplished
So Sunak's underlings have made it known that he has "full confidence" in Braverman.
And meanwhile: Neil Basu, the former head of the UK's counter-terrorism police, said Mrs Braverman's comments were "tantamount to effectively trying to direct the police". Speaking on the BBC's Today Podcast, Mr Basu said the UK was "in danger of turning the police into an arm of the state directed by politicians". He said he would describe what is happening "as potentially the end of operational independence of policing unless people start to speak out". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67376996
Interesting times.
Basu is right. But my fear is that that bridge was burned long ago.
Under Blair.
Sadly yes. Though one might also look at the Miners Strike to see political direction of the police coming to the fore.
There was an element in the Miners Strike of payback for what went before. The Battle of Orgreave saw both sides wanting a ruck. For the police, it was a grudge match for the Battle of Saltley Gate in 1972.
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
We don't know what the contemporary reaction of Nazis was to the massacres of men, women and children they undertook daily - not only in concentration camps, but everywhere they had control - over a number of years, because they weren't recorded on smartphones. We do know that they kept on happening on an industrial scale and we do have survivors' testimony of the relish with which the barbarity was often inflicted.
Indeed - at the point of actual murder, there was a great deal of evident sadism.
At a higher level, the Nazis tried to coverup what they were doing.
Actually there’s plenty of evidence of personal Nazi reactions to the final solution. Witness testimony, officers complaints, the survivors who saw it
The Nazis went to great lengths to make the killings as impersonal as possible so as to limit the psychological damage to regular soldiers. This is one explicit reason they went for the whole gas chamber thing - which actually weren’t any more efficient than killing huge numbers of people with firing squads
Eg Auschwitz at its peak killed 14,000 daily. One firing squad Aktion - like that at Kamanets Podolskiy - killed 20.000 in a day, I believe
But the gas chambers depersonalised everything and made it an industrial process. Removing the soldiers from the hideous mess
Nonetheless there were outright lunatic sadists in the Nazi ranks who clearly enjoyed the horror and slaughter. But they are remembered BECAUSE they were fairly unusual
Local militias, like Ustase, or RONA, generally carried out the killings with relish, often adding torture and rape to the process. Ditto SS Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, which was mainly comprised of the scum of Germany's prison population, together with the some of the scum of Ukraine and the Baltic States.
OTOH, it's clear that many of the Einsatzgruppen, and Reserve Police Battalions, principally German soldiers and civilians on secondment, became alcoholic wrecks, once they started massacring women and children, and German Jews, deported to the East. Almost no one objected to killing adult male Eastern Jews, but they could see the women and children, and German Jews, as human beings like themselves.
Throughout WW2, there were people serving the Nazis who were actually, much worse than they were.
Yes that’s fair
I do think the outright psycho sadists were outliers - eg Dirlewanger
Same with the Khmer Rouge
Probably same everywhere
The most unsettling are the calmly psychotic bureaucrats. Like Comrade Duch who ran the Khmer Rouge torture garden. In another life he’d have been an anonymous accountant
Most unsettling is the willingness of the "ordinary men" to just follow orders. And that histories of other genocides suggests that as being not at all unusual,
This is a really disturbing book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Browning#Ordinary_Men ...As presented in the study, the men of Unit 101 were not ardent Nazis but ordinary middle-aged men of working class background from Hamburg, who had been drafted but found to be ineligible for regular military duty. After their return to occupied Poland in June 1942, the men were ordered to terrorize Jews in the ghettos during Operation Reinhard and carry out massacres of Polish Jews (men, women, and children) in the towns of Józefów and Łomazy. In other cases, they were ordered to kill a certain number of Jews in a town or area, usually helped by Trawnikis. The commander of the unit once gave his men the choice of opting out if they found it too hard, but fewer than 12 men did so in a battalion of 500. Browning provides evidence to support the notion that not all of the men were hateful antisemites. He includes the testimony of men who said that they begged to be released from the task and to be placed elsewhere. In one instance, two fathers claimed that they could not kill children and so asked to be given other work. Browning also tells of a man who demanded his release, obtained it, and was promoted once he had returned to Germany...
The whole "I'd be shot if I hadn't thing" turned out to be more "I might get transferred to the Russian front if I didn't".
Plenty of people said no or resisted Nazi stuff. The Nazi theory was that everyone would "occasionally backslide" to humanity and decency. It was those that made a habit of it that got arrested in the middle of the night etc.
Well done to Farage for seeing someone face an actual consequence for trying to screw him. I assume she can get by without the money, but it's still far more punishing than having to leave a job. The ex-boss of NatWest, Dame Alison Rose, will lose out on £7.6m after she admitted to discussing the closure of Nigel Farage's bank account.
Dame Alison will receive her £2.4m fixed pay package, but will not benefit from share awards and bonuses she had previously been entitled to.
On the whole Braverman row, the line that seems to be taken by Neil Basu - and seemingly backed by many of his former colleagues - is that politicians have no right to criticise or questions the actions taken by the Police. In his world, he seems to believe the Police have full independence, including to ignore those who have been democratically elected.
Seems to me that is a far greater danger and threat to this country than what Braverman says.
Politicians pass the laws that the police police. Otherwise the police are meant to operate free of political interference. But here you have the Home Secretary interfering. She's trying to bully them into locking up people she disagrees with. Well she isn't, she's just gallery playing for her leadership campaign, but you know what I mean.
What she is saying - according to the headlines - is that she thinks the Police are operating double standards.
I personally don't see what is the major fuss. She is expressing a view. She has not said she will fire any commanding officer who disagrees with what she says nor that she has the right to override the Police. The Police may disagree with her comments and complain she is undermining the institution but, if you accept that logic, politicians must back the Police wholeheartedly 100% of the time. I know @Cyclefree for one would disagree with that line.
On the whole Braverman row, the line that seems to be taken by Neil Basu - and seemingly backed by many of his former colleagues - is that politicians have no right to criticise or questions the actions taken by the Police. In his world, he seems to believe the Police have full independence, including to ignore those who have been democratically elected.
Seems to me that is a far greater danger and threat to this country than what Braverman says.
Politicians pass the laws that the police police. Otherwise the police are meant to operate free of political interference. But here you have the Home Secretary interfering. She's trying to bully them into locking up people she disagrees with. Well she isn't, she's just gallery playing for her leadership campaign, but you know what I mean.
What she is saying - according to the headlines - is that she thinks the Police are operating double standards.
I personally don't see what is the major fuss. She is expressing a view. She has not said she will fire any commanding officer who disagrees with what she says nor that she has the right to override the Police. The Police may disagree with her comments and complain she is undermining the institution but, if you accept that logic, politicians must back the Police wholeheartedly 100% of the time. I know @Cyclefree for one would disagree with that line.
Yes, it’s hyperbolic nonsense
We can all see that the police operate double standards. You can get arrested for tweeting something allegedly transphobic or saying a copper looks like a lesbian nan, but stand outside the Israeli embassy calling for “jihad! Jihad! Jihad!” and suddenly “jihad” is a “complex nuanced word with multiple meanings” so no one will get arrested
I mean: fuck off. It’s arrant hypocrisy and total double standards and Braverman is right. On this point
On the whole Braverman row, the line that seems to be taken by Neil Basu - and seemingly backed by many of his former colleagues - is that politicians have no right to criticise or questions the actions taken by the Police. In his world, he seems to believe the Police have full independence, including to ignore those who have been democratically elected.
Seems to me that is a far greater danger and threat to this country than what Braverman says.
Politicians pass the laws that the police police. Otherwise the police are meant to operate free of political interference. But here you have the Home Secretary interfering. She's trying to bully them into locking up people she disagrees with. Well she isn't, she's just gallery playing for her leadership campaign, but you know what I mean.
What she is saying - according to the headlines - is that she thinks the Police are operating double standards.
I personally don't see what is the major fuss. She is expressing a view. She has not said she will fire any commanding officer who disagrees with what she says nor that she has the right to override the Police. The Police may disagree with her comments and complain she is undermining the institution but, if you accept that logic, politicians must back the Police wholeheartedly 100% of the time. I know @Cyclefree for one would disagree with that line.
There's no fuss in you or I expressing a view, but she's the Home Secretary. She cannot express a view separate to her role. She can say she won't fire any commanding officer etc., but it clearly creates an expectation on the police.
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
We don't know what the contemporary reaction of Nazis was to the massacres of men, women and children they undertook daily - not only in concentration camps, but everywhere they had control - over a number of years, because they weren't recorded on smartphones. We do know that they kept on happening on an industrial scale and we do have survivors' testimony of the relish with which the barbarity was often inflicted.
Indeed - at the point of actual murder, there was a great deal of evident sadism.
At a higher level, the Nazis tried to coverup what they were doing.
Actually there’s plenty of evidence of personal Nazi reactions to the final solution. Witness testimony, officers complaints, the survivors who saw it
The Nazis went to great lengths to make the killings as impersonal as possible so as to limit the psychological damage to regular soldiers. This is one explicit reason they went for the whole gas chamber thing - which actually weren’t any more efficient than killing huge numbers of people with firing squads
Eg Auschwitz at its peak killed 14,000 daily. One firing squad Aktion - like that at Kamanets Podolskiy - killed 20.000 in a day, I believe
But the gas chambers depersonalised everything and made it an industrial process. Removing the soldiers from the hideous mess
Nonetheless there were outright lunatic sadists in the Nazi ranks who clearly enjoyed the horror and slaughter. But they are remembered BECAUSE they were fairly unusual
The massacres were not just confined to the concentration camps. There was clearly a great deal of pleasure taken with the one that occurred in that French village that marks the start of the World at War documentary series. As the narration to that makes it clear, it was just one of tens of thousands.
Wasn’t that carried out by conscripts from Alsace, recently “taken back” by Germany.?
No. It was carried out by the Das Reich SS Panzer Division which had spent much of the war on the Eastern Front. There were afew conscripts from the Alsace amongst them but the officers planning and directing the massacres both at Oradour sur Glane and Thulle were German. Indeed it was one of the Alsace SS members who hid a couple of kids and who later testified about he massacre.
Thanks. Also to Sunil. I knew someone here would be well-informed.
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
We don't know what the contemporary reaction of Nazis was to the massacres of men, women and children they undertook daily - not only in concentration camps, but everywhere they had control - over a number of years, because they weren't recorded on smartphones. We do know that they kept on happening on an industrial scale and we do have survivors' testimony of the relish with which the barbarity was often inflicted.
Indeed - at the point of actual murder, there was a great deal of evident sadism.
At a higher level, the Nazis tried to coverup what they were doing.
Actually there’s plenty of evidence of personal Nazi reactions to the final solution. Witness testimony,
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
Murray has gone a bit off the deep end in his recent media interviews. Normally he "wins" arguments by remaining calm, albeit can be very smug, condescending etc. The Ben Shapiro approach.
However, he has definitely overstepped the mark, repeatedly saying if the UK government doesn't kick out a number of Iranian and Hamas leaders who live in the UK, he will a) give out their addresses and b) will take personal legal action...the issue being of course they have British citizenship and guessing have been very careful about not breaking the law.
Giving out addresses to all and sundry of such individuals I imagine would get yourself in legal trouble. And of course we don't actually know why a former Iranian leader is here, it could be that the British system has let somebody who really should be undesirable live here, or is there some sort of intelligence quid pro quo going on....same as Sailisbury Novachok target.
I've long had him down as a racist tbh - a smooth one who can deceive with his civilized manner and turn of a sentence. Sounds like the 'underlying' has bubbled through on this occasion.
You think everyone is a racist waiting to be uncovered. You sniff them out. You’re the Witchfinder General of racism, and you just need to throw everyone in Hampstead ponds to see if they if they float in the waters of your sanctimonious self regard, and you know your suspicions will be vindicated
You would absolutely have worked for the Nazis if they’d ever invaded Britain. You’d have done it in a cool punctilious accountant’s manner as you typed the names of the passengers on the next sleeper train to Eastern Europe
Is this the same leon as the one randomly casting absurd aspersions around race this morning?
Oh God, what was he saying this morning?
It is the same Leon who was moaning that you can't say "coloured people" any more the other day, and who repeatedly insists there are significant genetic differences between different "races".
Mmm ... this group are particularly clever, that group are prone to violence, these people originated from that place, those people from that other place, here’s a table of IQs by ethnic group, ‘lol’ at woke scientists desperately pretending that this ancient white hunter-gatherer tribe he's been reading about weren’t the bees knees compared to the African ones. Etc etc etc.
I did all that this morning? Gosh, I was busy
Well if you want to be blithe about it. Thing is, you're an enthralling character with all your travels and your drinking and your sexual conquests but I have noticed something a bit 'off' with you when it comes to the topic of race.
Like, you’re ‘antiwoke’ to a degree verging on deranged and this in itself is not unusual. Many on the right of politics are like that. Eg on here there’s Casino Royale, famously. Could anybody be in more of a lather about ‘woke’ than he is? Not really.
But there’s a difference between you and (eg) him. The reason he (CR) can’t stand ‘woke’ is he thinks it makes everything about race, which is counterproductive and racist in itself. I think it’s a bad take myself but there’s no question he’s sincere. You call tell he is because other than in discussions about ‘woke’ he never mentions race. He doesn’t think it’s a factor in anything, and if it is it shouldn’t be, so you don’t find him banging on about it. Same with lots of other antiwokies.
You otoh fulminate about woke yet are noticeably *interested* in race as a differentiator of people. I gave just a few of many many examples. You are fascinated by race and all things racial. So that's an interesting juxta to me. Antiwoke to the point of high colour and frothing yet counterintuitively combined with a keen interest in race as a driver of human history, all the way from year dot to the world we live in today. By all means try and explain this to me if you wish (although you don't have to).
On the whole Braverman row, the line that seems to be taken by Neil Basu - and seemingly backed by many of his former colleagues - is that politicians have no right to criticise or questions the actions taken by the Police. In his world, he seems to believe the Police have full independence, including to ignore those who have been democratically elected.
Seems to me that is a far greater danger and threat to this country than what Braverman says.
Politicians pass the laws that the police police. Otherwise the police are meant to operate free of political interference. But here you have the Home Secretary interfering. She's trying to bully them into locking up people she disagrees with. Well she isn't, she's just gallery playing for her leadership campaign, but you know what I mean.
What she is saying - according to the headlines - is that she thinks the Police are operating double standards.
I personally don't see what is the major fuss. She is expressing a view. She has not said she will fire any commanding officer who disagrees with what she says nor that she has the right to override the Police. The Police may disagree with her comments and complain she is undermining the institution but, if you accept that logic, politicians must back the Police wholeheartedly 100% of the time. I know @Cyclefree for one would disagree with that line.
Yes, it’s hyperbolic nonsense
We can all see that the police operate double standards. You can get arrested for tweeting something allegedly transphobic or saying a copper looks like a lesbian nan, but stand outside the Israeli embassy calling for “jihad! Jihad! Jihad!” and suddenly “jihad” is a “complex nuanced word with multiple meanings” so no one will get arrested
I mean: fuck off. It’s arrant hypocrisy and total double standards and Braverman is right. On this point
In which case what she should be complaining about is police arresting people when they shouldn't, rather than not arresting people when she thinks they should.
Given that PB has spent the past month or so discussing which of several sides/individuals should have their "speech" (defined as their words, texts, tweets, imagery, flags or participation in or support of marches) suppressed or circumscribed, I would say it's quite comprehensively f****d
On the whole Braverman row, the line that seems to be taken by Neil Basu - and seemingly backed by many of his former colleagues - is that politicians have no right to criticise or questions the actions taken by the Police. In his world, he seems to believe the Police have full independence, including to ignore those who have been democratically elected.
Seems to me that is a far greater danger and threat to this country than what Braverman says.
Politicians pass the laws that the police police. Otherwise the police are meant to operate free of political interference. But here you have the Home Secretary interfering. She's trying to bully them into locking up people she disagrees with. Well she isn't, she's just gallery playing for her leadership campaign, but you know what I mean.
What she is saying - according to the headlines - is that she thinks the Police are operating double standards.
I personally don't see what is the major fuss. She is expressing a view. She has not said she will fire any commanding officer who disagrees with what she says nor that she has the right to override the Police. The Police may disagree with her comments and complain she is undermining the institution but, if you accept that logic, politicians must back the Police wholeheartedly 100% of the time. I know @Cyclefree for one would disagree with that line.
The police whine about "Political Interference" all the time. Such as when Sir Iain Fucking Blair got binned for saying that randomly shooting people for being a bit brown was Just One Of Those Things That Happens.
So Sunak's underlings have made it known that he has "full confidence" in Braverman.
And meanwhile: Neil Basu, the former head of the UK's counter-terrorism police, said Mrs Braverman's comments were "tantamount to effectively trying to direct the police". Speaking on the BBC's Today Podcast, Mr Basu said the UK was "in danger of turning the police into an arm of the state directed by politicians". He said he would describe what is happening "as potentially the end of operational independence of policing unless people start to speak out". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67376996
Interesting times.
Basu is right. But my fear is that that bridge was burned long ago.
Under Blair.
Sadly yes. Though one might also look at the Miners Strike to see political direction of the police coming to the fore.
There was an element in the Miners Strike of payback for what went before. The Battle of Orgreave saw both sides wanting a ruck. For the police, it was a grudge match for the Battle of Saltley Gate in 1972.
A friend of mine was an mining engineer in South Yorkshire.
He was beaten up on the way to work and had his bike thrown in the river.
He and other managerial staff had to arm themselves with iron bars and stand in a corridor (and I quote) 'so they could only come at us one at a time'.
All he was doing by working was preventing the mine from falling out of service. It was eventually closed but not as early as it would have if he hadn't been there.
The police were necessary. Did they need to charge the mob with horses? Arguable. But they did not start the violence.
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
We don't know what the contemporary reaction of Nazis was to the massacres of men, women and children they undertook daily - not only in concentration camps, but everywhere they had control - over a number of years, because they weren't recorded on smartphones. We do know that they kept on happening on an industrial scale and we do have survivors' testimony of the relish with which the barbarity was often inflicted.
Indeed - at the point of actual murder, there was a great deal of evident sadism.
At a higher level, the Nazis tried to coverup what they were doing.
Actually there’s plenty of evidence of personal Nazi reactions to the final solution. Witness testimony,
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
Murray has gone a bit off the deep end in his recent media interviews. Normally he "wins" arguments by remaining calm, albeit can be very smug, condescending etc. The Ben Shapiro approach.
However, he has definitely overstepped the mark, repeatedly saying if the UK government doesn't kick out a number of Iranian and Hamas leaders who live in the UK, he will a) give out their addresses and b) will take personal legal action...the issue being of course they have British citizenship and guessing have been very careful about not breaking the law.
Giving out addresses to all and sundry of such individuals I imagine would get yourself in legal trouble. And of course we don't actually know why a former Iranian leader is here, it could be that the British system has let somebody who really should be undesirable live here, or is there some sort of intelligence quid pro quo going on....same as Sailisbury Novachok target.
I've long had him down as a racist tbh - a smooth one who can deceive with his civilized manner and turn of a sentence. Sounds like the 'underlying' has bubbled through on this occasion.
You think everyone is a racist waiting to be uncovered. You sniff them out. You’re the Witchfinder General of racism, and you just need to throw everyone in Hampstead ponds to see if they if they float in the waters of your sanctimonious self regard, and you know your suspicions will be vindicated
You would absolutely have worked for the Nazis if they’d ever invaded Britain. You’d have done it in a cool punctilious accountant’s manner as you typed the names of the passengers on the next sleeper train to Eastern Europe
Is this the same leon as the one randomly casting absurd aspersions around race this morning?
Oh God, what was he saying this morning?
It is the same Leon who was moaning that you can't say "coloured people" any more the other day, and who repeatedly insists there are significant genetic differences between different "races".
Mmm ... this group are particularly clever, that group are prone to violence, these people originated from that place, those people from that other place, here’s a table of IQs by ethnic group, ‘lol’ at woke scientists desperately pretending that this ancient white hunter-gatherer tribe he's been reading about weren’t the bees knees compared to the African ones. Etc etc etc.
I did all that this morning? Gosh, I was busy
Well if you want to be blithe about it. Thing is, you're an enthralling character with all your travels and your drinking and your sexual conquests but I have noticed something a bit 'off' with you when it comes to the topic of race.
Like, you’re ‘antiwoke’ to a degree verging on deranged and this in itself is not unusual. Many on the right of politics are like that. Eg on here there’s Casino Royale, famously. Could anybody be in more of a lather about ‘woke’ than he is? Not really.
But there’s a difference between you and (eg) him. The reason he (CR) can’t stand ‘woke’ is he thinks it makes everything about race, which is counterproductive and racist in itself. I think it’s a bad take myself but there’s no question he’s sincere. You call tell he is because other than in discussions about ‘woke’ he never mentions race. He doesn’t think it’s a factor in anything, and if it is it shouldn’t be, so you don’t find him banging on about it. Same with lots of other antiwokies.
You otoh fulminate about woke yet are noticeably *interested* in race as a differentiator of people. I gave just a few of many many examples. You are fascinated by race and all things racial. So that's an interesting combination to me. Antiwoke to the point of high colour and frothing yet counterintuitively combined with a keen interest in race as a driver of human history, all the way from year dot to the world we live in today. By all means try and explain this to me if you wish (although you don't have to).
Just keep “sniffing out” the evil racists, @kinabalu. It’s what you’re good at. A vocation. And you know you’re good at it, which is even more satisfying
As I say, in previous moral climates you’d have been good - in a self congratulatory way - at sniffing out secret gays, or clandestine Jews, or Hollywood communists, or stealthy Freemasons, or actual witches. It is exactly the same mindset - you can somehow subconsciously tell when someone is “a bit off”. Go for it
On the whole Braverman row, the line that seems to be taken by Neil Basu - and seemingly backed by many of his former colleagues - is that politicians have no right to criticise or questions the actions taken by the Police. In his world, he seems to believe the Police have full independence, including to ignore those who have been democratically elected.
Seems to me that is a far greater danger and threat to this country than what Braverman says.
There was a time when the Police swore allegience to the Queen (or King) not to the transient Government of the day. Same with the armed forces. I don't know if that is still the case but it should be. And it has always been the case that the police are held to be operationally independent of politicians. That is an important safety check on executive power.
Yet when we had the news about allegations about the Met ignoring or not punishing appropriately allegations against serving officers in the Met, nobody seemed then to be too concerned about interfering with the Police's operational independence.
Friday afternoon. Leave work at 7pm. Emails have to be out by 5pm. Stress, stress, stress. Only Pertwee, UNIT and a bureaucratic Man from the Ministry can save me now. Two hours. That's four episodes. Hello, "Claws of Axos".
Man from Ministry is being a bureaucratic twit. Underestimated Science Guy is helping Pertwee. Pertwee is being his patronising best. Jo is wonderful. Strike Command is being called in (it has a functioning RAF, so it's science fiction). Master is trying to double-cross the aliens. The special effects are... of the time. They've just described a cyclotron. Music is proper plinky-plinky. Happy time has arrived.
16:48pm
Extra: "What about the Doctor and Jo?"
The Master: "They won't survive the blast" (moves to press Big Switch)
Brigadier: "No" (stays his hand)
The Master (dramatic zoom to close-up): "Either we destroy Axos or Axos destroys the world! Which is it to be, Brigadier?"
(Big Switch is thrown. Jo screams. Titles, end music. Breeee-yowww, dum-ti-dum..)
16:50pm
I send the email replies off. Ten minutes to spare. Stress. I wee on it and send it home crying to its mother.
Friday afternoon. Leave work at 7pm. Emails have to be out by 5pm. Stress, stress, stress. Only Pertwee, UNIT and a bureaucratic Man from the Ministry can save me now. Two hours. That's four episodes. Hello, "Claws of Axos".
Man from Ministry is being a bureaucratic twit. Underestimated Science Guy is helping Pertwee. Pertwee is being his patronising best. Jo is wonderful. Strike Command is being called in (it has a functioning RAF, so it's science fiction). Master is trying to double-cross the aliens. The special effects are... of the time. They've just described a cyclotron. Music is proper plinky-plinky. Happy time has arrived.
16:48pm
Extra: "What about the Doctor and Jo?"
The Master: "They won't survive the blast" (moves to press Big Switch)
Brigadier: "No" (stays his hand)
The Master (dramatic zoom to close-up): "Either we destroy Axos or Axos destroys the world! Which is it to be, Brigadier?"
(Big Switch is thrown. Jo screams. Titles, end music. Breeee-yowww, dum-ti-dum..)
16:50pm
I send the email replies off. Ten minutes to spare. Stress. I wee on it and send it home crying to its mother.
I'm part way through S6 at the moment. "Oh my giddy aunt."
On the whole Braverman row, the line that seems to be taken by Neil Basu - and seemingly backed by many of his former colleagues - is that politicians have no right to criticise or questions the actions taken by the Police. In his world, he seems to believe the Police have full independence, including to ignore those who have been democratically elected.
Seems to me that is a far greater danger and threat to this country than what Braverman says.
There was a time when the Police swore allegience to the Queen (or King) not to the transient Government of the day. Same with the armed forces. I don't know if that is still the case but it should be. And it has always been the case that the police are held to be operationally independent of politicians. That is an important safety check on executive power.
Yet when we had the news about allegations about the Met ignoring or not punishing appropriately allegations against serving officers in the Met, nobody seemed then to be too concerned about interfering with the Police's operational independence.
Or when the police managed to get Freddy "Worlds Most Incompetent Pathologist" Patel* to do the autopsy on Ian Tomlinson. That was Police Opertaional Independence?
*Medical students had jokes about him and his ability to declare that *everything* was natural causes.
On the whole Braverman row, the line that seems to be taken by Neil Basu - and seemingly backed by many of his former colleagues - is that politicians have no right to criticise or questions the actions taken by the Police. In his world, he seems to believe the Police have full independence, including to ignore those who have been democratically elected.
Seems to me that is a far greater danger and threat to this country than what Braverman says.
Politicians pass the laws that the police police. Otherwise the police are meant to operate free of political interference. But here you have the Home Secretary interfering. She's trying to bully them into locking up people she disagrees with. Well she isn't, she's just gallery playing for her leadership campaign, but you know what I mean.
What she is saying - according to the headlines - is that she thinks the Police are operating double standards.
I personally don't see what is the major fuss. She is expressing a view. She has not said she will fire any commanding officer who disagrees with what she says nor that she has the right to override the Police. The Police may disagree with her comments and complain she is undermining the institution but, if you accept that logic, politicians must back the Police wholeheartedly 100% of the time. I know @Cyclefree for one would disagree with that line.
Yes, it’s hyperbolic nonsense
We can all see that the police operate double standards. You can get arrested for tweeting something allegedly transphobic or saying a copper looks like a lesbian nan, but stand outside the Israeli embassy calling for “jihad! Jihad! Jihad!” and suddenly “jihad” is a “complex nuanced word with multiple meanings” so no one will get arrested
I mean: fuck off. It’s arrant hypocrisy and total double standards and Braverman is right. On this point
In which case what she should be complaining about is police arresting people when they shouldn't, rather than not arresting people when she thinks they should.
I’ve read the Times piece - which kicked off all this - and all I can see is her questioning the perceived double standards
On the whole Braverman row, the line that seems to be taken by Neil Basu - and seemingly backed by many of his former colleagues - is that politicians have no right to criticise or questions the actions taken by the Police. In his world, he seems to believe the Police have full independence, including to ignore those who have been democratically elected.
Seems to me that is a far greater danger and threat to this country than what Braverman says.
Politicians pass the laws that the police police. Otherwise the police are meant to operate free of political interference. But here you have the Home Secretary interfering. She's trying to bully them into locking up people she disagrees with. Well she isn't, she's just gallery playing for her leadership campaign, but you know what I mean.
What she is saying - according to the headlines - is that she thinks the Police are operating double standards.
I personally don't see what is the major fuss. She is expressing a view. She has not said she will fire any commanding officer who disagrees with what she says nor that she has the right to override the Police. The Police may disagree with her comments and complain she is undermining the institution but, if you accept that logic, politicians must back the Police wholeheartedly 100% of the time. I know @Cyclefree for one would disagree with that line.
She's the Home Secretary, is why. If it were (eg) some backbencher there wouldn't be a fuss. So to say she shouldn't be behaving like this in no way maps logically to saying the Police must always be backed to the hilt by politicians.
Washington Post (via Seattle Times) - Suspicious letters sent to elections offices in at least five states
Authorities in at least five states were Thursday night investigating suspicious letters mailed to election offices. The letters, at least one of which contained fentanyl, forced evacuations and in some cases temporarily disrupted ballot counting after Tuesday’s elections.
Secretaries of state in Nevada, California, Washington, Georgia and Oregon all confirmed that election offices in their states had received the letters and said law enforcement, including the FBI, is investigating the matter. . . .
At a news conference Thursday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) confirmed that his office was alerted Wednesday to a letter containing fentanyl that was sent to election offices in Fulton County [Atlanta], Ga.
Raffensperger, who lost his son to a fentanyl overdose five years ago, called the incident “domestic terrorism.” . . .
Both Raffensperger and Fulton County have been the subject of former President Donald Trump’s ire in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. Raffensperger refused Trump’s demand to “find” enough votes in the state to overturn his defeat. And Trump faces federal charges brought in Fulton County alleging he participated in a criminal conspiracy to illegally overturn his 2020 loss. . . .
The envelope’s contents in at least one instance included a page that said “END ELECTIONS NOW” along with images of a progress Pride flag, a pentagram and an anti-fascist symbol. The message also warned the recipient to “STOP GIVING POWER TO THE RIGHT THAT THEY DON’T HAVE,” saying, “WE ARE IN CHARGE NOW AND THERE IS NO MORE NEED FOR THEM.”
Authorities have not named any suspects, and while the symbols in the letter are associated with left-leaning politics, the political leanings of the sender or senders remain unclear.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber (D) confirmed Thursday that two suspicious envelopes on their way to election facilities in Los Angeles and San Francisco were intercepted by the U.S. Postal Service.
The Nevada secretary of state’s office also said in a statement Thursday that “federal authorities alerted Nevada authorities of suspicious letters addressed to elections . . .”
The Washington secretary of state’s office said in a news release that envelopes containing “unknown powdery substances” were received by elections offices in King [Seattle], Pierce [Tacoma], Skagit [Mount Vernon] and Spokane [Ditto] counties. Elections workers in each county evacuated their offices. . . .
In Oregon, the secretary of state’s office confirmed that Lane [Eugene] County received a suspicious letter Wednesday. . . .
SSI - IMHO the lefty messages are rightwing disinformation, similar to Putinist agents splashing antisemitic graffiti about and letting Hamas/Arabs/Muslims take the rap.
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
We don't know what the contemporary reaction of Nazis was to the massacres of men, women and children they undertook daily - not only in concentration camps, but everywhere they had control - over a number of years, because they weren't recorded on smartphones. We do know that they kept on happening on an industrial scale and we do have survivors' testimony of the relish with which the barbarity was often inflicted.
Indeed - at the point of actual murder, there was a great deal of evident sadism.
At a higher level, the Nazis tried to coverup what they were doing.
Actually there’s plenty of evidence of personal Nazi reactions to the final solution. Witness testimony, officers complaints, the survivors who saw it
The Nazis went to great lengths to make the killings as impersonal as possible so as to limit the psychological damage to regular soldiers. This is one explicit reason they went for the whole gas chamber thing - which actually weren’t any more efficient than killing huge numbers of people with firing squads
Eg Auschwitz at its peak killed 14,000 daily. One firing squad Aktion - like that at Kamanets Podolskiy - killed 20.000 in a day, I believe
But the gas chambers depersonalised everything and made it an industrial process. Removing the soldiers from the hideous mess
Nonetheless there were outright lunatic sadists in the Nazi ranks who clearly enjoyed the horror and slaughter. But they are remembered BECAUSE they were fairly unusual
Local militias, like Ustase, or RONA, generally carried out the killings with relish, often adding torture and rape to the process. Ditto SS Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, which was mainly comprised of the scum of Germany's prison population, together with the some of the scum of Ukraine and the Baltic States.
OTOH, it's clear that many of the Einsatzgruppen, and Reserve Police Battalions, principally German soldiers and civilians on secondment, became alcoholic wrecks, once they started massacring women and children, and German Jews, deported to the East. Almost no one objected to killing adult male Eastern Jews, but they could see the women and children, and German Jews, as human beings like themselves.
Throughout WW2, there were people serving the Nazis who were actually, much worse than they were.
Yes that’s fair
I do think the outright psycho sadists were outliers - eg Dirlewanger
Same with the Khmer Rouge
Probably same everywhere
The most unsettling are the calmly psychotic bureaucrats. Like Comrade Duch who ran the Khmer Rouge torture garden. In another life he’d have been an anonymous accountant
Most unsettling is the willingness of the "ordinary men" to just follow orders. And that histories of other genocides suggests that as being not at all unusual,
This is a really disturbing book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Browning#Ordinary_Men ...As presented in the study, the men of Unit 101 were not ardent Nazis but ordinary middle-aged men of working class background from Hamburg, who had been drafted but found to be ineligible for regular military duty. After their return to occupied Poland in June 1942, the men were ordered to terrorize Jews in the ghettos during Operation Reinhard and carry out massacres of Polish Jews (men, women, and children) in the towns of Józefów and Łomazy. In other cases, they were ordered to kill a certain number of Jews in a town or area, usually helped by Trawnikis. The commander of the unit once gave his men the choice of opting out if they found it too hard, but fewer than 12 men did so in a battalion of 500. Browning provides evidence to support the notion that not all of the men were hateful antisemites. He includes the testimony of men who said that they begged to be released from the task and to be placed elsewhere. In one instance, two fathers claimed that they could not kill children and so asked to be given other work. Browning also tells of a man who demanded his release, obtained it, and was promoted once he had returned to Germany...
Group loyalty kicks in. People who might privately loathe the idea of killing women and children, don't want to let down their comrades, or be seen as weak, by refusing.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
The point is that if a hundred thousand people go on a march and 200 of them are carrying Death to the Jews banners and your 99,800 salt of the earth we despair of violence hug a hoodie mates are marching shoulder to shoulder with them then that propagates the message of those 200.
So if I attend a game at Wembley and 200 people engage in racist chanting while the other 99,800 watch on in disapproval I should assume I'm guilty of propagating the message of the 200 and stop attending football matches?
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
Then go on another march. You are swelling the numbers of those anti-semites, anti-westerners so if one of them has a banner saying kill the Jews you are in effect giving credentials, by your presence and those around you, to that view. You are helping to say this is not a minority what me guv view, this is a view, because we are marching shoulder to shoulder, that we all agree on.
I have zero doubt that you are not an anti-semite but I really do wonder why such avowed non-anti-semites feel it necessary on a point of principle to march side by side with outright anti-semites.
Hyperbole. Anybody who has a banner saying Kill the Jews should be arrested forthwith. Obviously.
They carry banners and say things that you, as a useful idiot, don't understand but mean the same thing. And I note you are avoiding the main point I made. You are enabling them. People enabled Corbyn who in turn enabled anti-semitism and now they are doing so again. Perhaps you also or your mates.
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
We don't know what the contemporary reaction of Nazis was to the massacres of men, women and children they undertook daily - not only in concentration camps, but everywhere they had control - over a number of years, because they weren't recorded on smartphones. We do know that they kept on happening on an industrial scale and we do have survivors' testimony of the relish with which the barbarity was often inflicted.
Indeed - at the point of actual murder, there was a great deal of evident sadism.
At a higher level, the Nazis tried to coverup what they were doing.
Actually there’s plenty of evidence of personal Nazi reactions to the final solution. Witness testimony, officers complaints, the survivors who saw it
The Nazis went to great lengths to make the killings as impersonal as possible so as to limit the psychological damage to regular soldiers. This is one explicit reason they went for the whole gas chamber thing - which actually weren’t any more efficient than killing huge numbers of people with firing squads
Eg Auschwitz at its peak killed 14,000 daily. One firing squad Aktion - like that at Kamanets Podolskiy - killed 20.000 in a day, I believe
But the gas chambers depersonalised everything and made it an industrial process. Removing the soldiers from the hideous mess
Nonetheless there were outright lunatic sadists in the Nazi ranks who clearly enjoyed the horror and slaughter. But they are remembered BECAUSE they were fairly unusual
Local militias, like Ustase, or RONA, generally carried out the killings with relish, often adding torture and rape to the process. Ditto SS Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, which was mainly comprised of the scum of Germany's prison population, together with the some of the scum of Ukraine and the Baltic States.
OTOH, it's clear that many of the Einsatzgruppen, and Reserve Police Battalions, principally German soldiers and civilians on secondment, became alcoholic wrecks, once they started massacring women and children, and German Jews, deported to the East. Almost no one objected to killing adult male Eastern Jews, but they could see the women and children, and German Jews, as human beings like themselves.
Throughout WW2, there were people serving the Nazis who were actually, much worse than they were.
Yes that’s fair
I do think the outright psycho sadists were outliers - eg Dirlewanger
Same with the Khmer Rouge
Probably same everywhere
The most unsettling are the calmly psychotic bureaucrats. Like Comrade Duch who ran the Khmer Rouge torture garden. In another life he’d have been an anonymous accountant
Most unsettling is the willingness of the "ordinary men" to just follow orders. And that histories of other genocides suggests that as being not at all unusual,
This is a really disturbing book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Browning#Ordinary_Men ...As presented in the study, the men of Unit 101 were not ardent Nazis but ordinary middle-aged men of working class background from Hamburg, who had been drafted but found to be ineligible for regular military duty. After their return to occupied Poland in June 1942, the men were ordered to terrorize Jews in the ghettos during Operation Reinhard and carry out massacres of Polish Jews (men, women, and children) in the towns of Józefów and Łomazy. In other cases, they were ordered to kill a certain number of Jews in a town or area, usually helped by Trawnikis. The commander of the unit once gave his men the choice of opting out if they found it too hard, but fewer than 12 men did so in a battalion of 500. Browning provides evidence to support the notion that not all of the men were hateful antisemites. He includes the testimony of men who said that they begged to be released from the task and to be placed elsewhere. In one instance, two fathers claimed that they could not kill children and so asked to be given other work. Browning also tells of a man who demanded his release, obtained it, and was promoted once he had returned to Germany...
Group loyalty kicks in. People who might privately loathe the idea of killing women and children, don't want to let down their comrades, or be seen as weak, by refusing.
Plus also the Nazis were pretty successful at dehumanising Jews. It is much easier to kill a human - even a child - if you have been indoctrinated to see them as nearer to animals
This is one of the most depressing facts of the Gaza conflict. Elements on both sides have dehumanised the other. They regard each other as lower than human, thereby justifying barbaric cruelty
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
Ironically, I will be on the march (but not chanting or shouting). As a journo for the knappers gazette I want to see it for myself. Get the feeling of the marchers and see who they are
I went on one of the big BLM marches and it was absolutely revelatory. It made me realise how much the media tells outright lies (on all sides)
The media is CHAT-GPT. It hallucinates. It produces falsities in a very convincing manner. And as you say, from all sides.
I realised this when I noticed how wrong the media were on issues that I knew well. Checking with several other people, they said the same thing but about different issues that they knew well.
I think it is the insatiable demand for content that drives this in most cases. Not bad intentions. The journalists, under time pressure, do what CHAT-GPT does. They research on the internet and then create an attention grabbing convincing story. And we lap it up.
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
We don't know what the contemporary reaction of Nazis was to the massacres of men, women and children they undertook daily - not only in concentration camps, but everywhere they had control - over a number of years, because they weren't recorded on smartphones. We do know that they kept on happening on an industrial scale and we do have survivors' testimony of the relish with which the barbarity was often inflicted.
Indeed - at the point of actual murder, there was a great deal of evident sadism.
At a higher level, the Nazis tried to coverup what they were doing.
Actually there’s plenty of evidence of personal Nazi reactions to the final solution. Witness testimony,
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
Murray has gone a bit off the deep end in his recent media interviews. Normally he "wins" arguments by remaining calm, albeit can be very smug, condescending etc. The Ben Shapiro approach.
However, he has definitely overstepped the mark, repeatedly saying if the UK government doesn't kick out a number of Iranian and Hamas leaders who live in the UK, he will a) give out their addresses and b) will take personal legal action...the issue being of course they have British citizenship and guessing have been very careful about not breaking the law.
Giving out addresses to all and sundry of such individuals I imagine would get yourself in legal trouble. And of course we don't actually know why a former Iranian leader is here, it could be that the British system has let somebody who really should be undesirable live here, or is there some sort of intelligence quid pro quo going on....same as Sailisbury Novachok target.
I've long had him down as a racist tbh - a smooth one who can deceive with his civilized manner and turn of a sentence. Sounds like the 'underlying' has bubbled through on this occasion.
You think everyone is a racist waiting to be uncovered. You sniff them out. You’re the Witchfinder General of racism, and you just need to throw everyone in Hampstead ponds to see if they if they float in the waters of your sanctimonious self regard, and you know your suspicions will be vindicated
You would absolutely have worked for the Nazis if they’d ever invaded Britain. You’d have done it in a cool punctilious accountant’s manner as you typed the names of the passengers on the next sleeper train to Eastern Europe
Is this the same leon as the one randomly casting absurd aspersions around race this morning?
Oh God, what was he saying this morning?
It is the same Leon who was moaning that you can't say "coloured people" any more the other day, and who repeatedly insists there are significant genetic differences between different "races".
Mmm ... this group are particularly clever, that group are prone to violence, these people originated from that place, those people from that other place, here’s a table of IQs by ethnic group, ‘lol’ at woke scientists desperately pretending that this ancient white hunter-gatherer tribe he's been reading about weren’t the bees knees compared to the African ones. Etc etc etc.
I did all that this morning? Gosh, I was busy
Well if you want to be blithe about it. Thing is, you're an enthralling character with all your travels and your drinking and your sexual conquests but I have noticed something a bit 'off' with you when it comes to the topic of race.
Like, you’re ‘antiwoke’ to a degree verging on deranged and this in itself is not unusual. Many on the right of politics are like that. Eg on here there’s Casino Royale, famously. Could anybody be in more of a lather about ‘woke’ than he is? Not really.
But there’s a difference between you and (eg) him. The reason he (CR) can’t stand ‘woke’ is he thinks it makes everything about race, which is counterproductive and racist in itself. I think it’s a bad take myself but there’s no question he’s sincere. You call tell he is because other than in discussions about ‘woke’ he never mentions race. He doesn’t think it’s a factor in anything, and if it is it shouldn’t be, so you don’t find him banging on about it. Same with lots of other antiwokies.
You otoh fulminate about woke yet are noticeably *interested* in race as a differentiator of people. I gave just a few of many many examples. You are fascinated by race and all things racial. So that's an interesting combination to me. Antiwoke to the point of high colour and frothing yet counterintuitively combined with a keen interest in race as a driver of human history, all the way from year dot to the world we live in today. By all means try and explain this to me if you wish (although you don't have to).
Just keep “sniffing out” the evil racists, @kinabalu. It’s what you’re good at. A vocation. And you know you’re good at it, which is even more satisfying
As I say, in previous moral climates you’d have been good - in a self congratulatory way - at sniffing out secret gays, or clandestine Jews, or Hollywood communists, or stealthy Freemasons, or actual witches. It is exactly the same mindset - you can somehow subconsciously tell when someone is “a bit off”. Go for it
That's rather you, I'd say - although only when it's antisemitism.
Anyway I can see you don't wish to do any self-audit in response to my observations right now. Fair enough. It's Friday night. We can always come back to it.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
The point is that if a hundred thousand people go on a march and 200 of them are carrying Death to the Jews banners and your 99,800 salt of the earth we despair of violence hug a hoodie mates are marching shoulder to shoulder with them then that propagates the message of those 200.
So if I attend a game at Wembley and 200 people engage in racist chanting while the other 99,800 watch on in disapproval I should assume I'm guilty of propagating the message of the 200 and stop attending football matches?
Chalk and apples. The premise of the march is anti-Israel. It's very being is to voice anger at a country. A Jewish country. The premise of the game at Wembley is to see England scrape a lucky draw against Moldova.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
The point is that if a hundred thousand people go on a march and 200 of them are carrying Death to the Jews banners and your 99,800 salt of the earth we despair of violence hug a hoodie mates are marching shoulder to shoulder with them then that propagates the message of those 200.
So if I attend a game at Wembley and 200 people engage in racist chanting while the other 99,800 watch on in disapproval I should assume I'm guilty of propagating the message of the 200 and stop attending football matches?
The assumption of (partial) collective guilt from such things, is why many people are so concerned to stamp out racism in football support.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
Then go on another march. You are swelling the numbers of those anti-semites, anti-westerners so if one of them has a banner saying kill the Jews you are in effect giving credentials, by your presence and those around you, to that view. You are helping to say this is not a minority what me guv view, this is a view, because we are marching shoulder to shoulder, that we all agree on.
I have zero doubt that you are not an anti-semite but I really do wonder why such avowed non-anti-semites feel it necessary on a point of principle to march side by side with outright anti-semites.
Hyperbole. Anybody who has a banner saying Kill the Jews should be arrested forthwith. Obviously.
They carry banners and say things that you, as a useful idiot, don't understand but mean the same thing. And I note you are avoiding the main point I made. You are enabling them. People enabled Corbyn who in turn enabled anti-semitism and now they are doing so again. Perhaps you also or your mates.
On balance, I'd rather be a useful idiot than a useless idiot - though it's a close call.
I knew I'd regret posting anything on this subject, and so it transpires.
On the whole Braverman row, the line that seems to be taken by Neil Basu - and seemingly backed by many of his former colleagues - is that politicians have no right to criticise or questions the actions taken by the Police. In his world, he seems to believe the Police have full independence, including to ignore those who have been democratically elected.
Seems to me that is a far greater danger and threat to this country than what Braverman says.
There was a time when the Police swore allegience to the Queen (or King) not to the transient Government of the day. Same with the armed forces. I don't know if that is still the case but it should be. And it has always been the case that the police are held to be operationally independent of politicians. That is an important safety check on executive power.
Yet when we had the news about allegations about the Met ignoring or not punishing appropriately allegations against serving officers in the Met, nobody seemed then to be too concerned about interfering with the Police's operational independence.
Operational independence doesn't mean a blank cheque to break the law. But when deciding whether or not to ban a march, the operational assessment is by law a matter for the police. In this case, the Home Secretary appears to be trying to second guess that decision before the event.
By all means criticise the police for the way they do their job - but if you're Home Secretary, you actually have powers to address what you see as deficiencies in police leadership. Performative bollocks in the pages of the national press aren't a good substitute for that.
On the whole Braverman row, the line that seems to be taken by Neil Basu - and seemingly backed by many of his former colleagues - is that politicians have no right to criticise or questions the actions taken by the Police. In his world, he seems to believe the Police have full independence, including to ignore those who have been democratically elected.
Seems to me that is a far greater danger and threat to this country than what Braverman says.
There was a time when the Police swore allegience to the Queen (or King) not to the transient Government of the day. Same with the armed forces. I don't know if that is still the case but it should be. And it has always been the case that the police are held to be operationally independent of politicians. That is an important safety check on executive power.
Yet when we had the news about allegations about the Met ignoring or not punishing appropriately allegations against serving officers in the Met, nobody seemed then to be too concerned about interfering with the Police's operational independence.
Operational independence doesn't mean a blank cheque to break the law. But when deciding whether or not to ban a march, the operational assessment is by law a matter for the police. In this case, the Home Secretary appears to be trying to second guess that decision before the event.
By all means criticise the police for the way they do their job - but if you're Home Secretary, you actually have powers to address what you see as deficiencies in police leadership. Performative bollocks in the pages of the national press aren't a good substitute for that.
And performative bollocks that was not cleared by No. 10 is even worse.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
The point is that if a hundred thousand people go on a march and 200 of them are carrying Death to the Jews banners and your 99,800 salt of the earth we despair of violence hug a hoodie mates are marching shoulder to shoulder with them then that propagates the message of those 200.
So if I attend a game at Wembley and 200 people engage in racist chanting while the other 99,800 watch on in disapproval I should assume I'm guilty of propagating the message of the 200 and stop attending football matches?
A better analogy is if you keep going to Millwall games in the 80/90/2000s....and particularly if you choose to sit with the "ultras".
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
The point is that if a hundred thousand people go on a march and 200 of them are carrying Death to the Jews banners and your 99,800 salt of the earth we despair of violence hug a hoodie mates are marching shoulder to shoulder with them then that propagates the message of those 200.
So if I attend a game at Wembley and 200 people engage in racist chanting while the other 99,800 watch on in disapproval I should assume I'm guilty of propagating the message of the 200 and stop attending football matches?
The assumption of (partial) collective guilt from such things, is why many people are so concerned to stamp out racism in football support.
Speaking of collective punishment:
Palestinian death toll in Gaza now exceeds 11,000 (including 4,500 children).
So Sunak's underlings have made it known that he has "full confidence" in Braverman.
And meanwhile: Neil Basu, the former head of the UK's counter-terrorism police, said Mrs Braverman's comments were "tantamount to effectively trying to direct the police". Speaking on the BBC's Today Podcast, Mr Basu said the UK was "in danger of turning the police into an arm of the state directed by politicians". He said he would describe what is happening "as potentially the end of operational independence of policing unless people start to speak out". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67376996
Interesting times.
Do you have your flag all ready to go for tomorrow. Big day. Good luck.
Maybe you should think about marching yourself, if you give a toss about "traditional British values"?
If you could let me know what traditional British values are I will be able to work out whether I should give a toss about them.
Sad.
So give me a couple of traditional British values so I can begin to form a view on them.
Pounds. Ounces. Pence. Stones. A pennyweight. A pint. A gill. A peck. Two shillings and a guinea.
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
We don't know what the contemporary reaction of Nazis was to the massacres of men, women and children they undertook daily - not only in concentration camps, but everywhere they had control - over a number of years, because they weren't recorded on smartphones. We do know that they kept on happening on an industrial scale and we do have survivors' testimony of the relish with which the barbarity was often inflicted.
Indeed - at the point of actual murder, there was a great deal of evident sadism.
At a higher level, the Nazis tried to coverup what they were doing.
Actually there’s plenty of evidence of personal Nazi reactions to the final solution. Witness testimony,
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
Murray has gone a bit off the deep end in his recent media interviews. Normally he "wins" arguments by remaining calm, albeit can be very smug, condescending etc. The Ben Shapiro approach.
However, he has definitely overstepped the mark, repeatedly saying if the UK government doesn't kick out a number of Iranian and Hamas leaders who live in the UK, he will a) give out their addresses and b) will take personal legal action...the issue being of course they have British citizenship and guessing have been very careful about not breaking the law.
Giving out addresses to all and sundry of such individuals I imagine would get yourself in legal trouble. And of course we don't actually know why a former Iranian leader is here, it could be that the British system has let somebody who really should be undesirable live here, or is there some sort of intelligence quid pro quo going on....same as Sailisbury Novachok target.
I've long had him down as a racist tbh - a smooth one who can deceive with his civilized manner and turn of a sentence. Sounds like the 'underlying' has bubbled through on this occasion.
You think everyone is a racist waiting to be uncovered. You sniff them out. You’re the Witchfinder General of racism, and you just need to throw everyone in Hampstead ponds to see if they if they float in the waters of your sanctimonious self regard, and you know your suspicions will be vindicated
You would absolutely have worked for the Nazis if they’d ever invaded Britain. You’d have done it in a cool punctilious accountant’s manner as you typed the names of the passengers on the next sleeper train to Eastern Europe
Is this the same leon as the one randomly casting absurd aspersions around race this morning?
Oh God, what was he saying this morning?
It is the same Leon who was moaning that you can't say "coloured people" any more the other day, and who repeatedly insists there are significant genetic differences between different "races".
Mmm ... this group are particularly clever, that group are prone to violence, these people originated from that place, those people from that other place, here’s a table of IQs by ethnic group, ‘lol’ at woke scientists desperately pretending that this ancient white hunter-gatherer tribe he's been reading about weren’t the bees knees compared to the African ones. Etc etc etc.
I did all that this morning? Gosh, I was busy
Well if you want to be blithe about it. Thing is, you're an enthralling character with all your travels and your drinking and your sexual conquests but I have noticed something a bit 'off' with you when it comes to the topic of race.
Like, you’re ‘antiwoke’ to a degree verging on deranged and this in itself is not unusual. Many on the right of politics are like that. Eg on here there’s Casino Royale, famously. Could anybody be in more of a lather about ‘woke’ than he is? Not really.
But there’s a difference between you and (eg) him. The reason he (CR) can’t stand ‘woke’ is he thinks it makes everything about race, which is counterproductive and racist in itself. I think it’s a bad take myself but there’s no question he’s sincere. You call tell he is because other than in discussions about ‘woke’ he never mentions race. He doesn’t think it’s a factor in anything, and if it is it shouldn’t be, so you don’t find him banging on about it. Same with lots of other antiwokies.
You otoh fulminate about woke yet are noticeably *interested* in race as a differentiator of people. I gave just a few of many many examples. You are fascinated by race and all things racial. So that's an interesting combination to me. Antiwoke to the point of high colour and frothing yet counterintuitively combined with a keen interest in race as a driver of human history, all the way from year dot to the world we live in today. By all means try and explain this to me if you wish (although you don't have to).
Just keep “sniffing out” the evil racists, @kinabalu. It’s what you’re good at. A vocation. And you know you’re good at it, which is even more satisfying
As I say, in previous moral climates you’d have been good - in a self congratulatory way - at sniffing out secret gays, or clandestine Jews, or Hollywood communists, or stealthy Freemasons, or actual witches. It is exactly the same mindset - you can somehow subconsciously tell when someone is “a bit off”. Go for it
That's rather you, I'd say - although only when it's antisemitism.
Anyway I can see you don't wish to do any self-audit in response to my observations right now. Fair enough. It's Friday night. We can always come back to it.
Who else do you think is “a bit off”?
I’m fascinated by your skill. Apparently a humble retired accountant who never travels further than Bruges - and yet gifted with a sixth sense, like a kind of wise woman, or a Dominican Inquisitor, or a gestapo Jew-finder tapping walls in voided ghettoes, listening for the tell tale echo of secret rooms
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
The point is that if a hundred thousand people go on a march and 200 of them are carrying Death to the Jews banners and your 99,800 salt of the earth we despair of violence hug a hoodie mates are marching shoulder to shoulder with them then that propagates the message of those 200.
Which is why decent people, when organising their marches, exclude the scumbags. Rather carefully. See the Stop The War marches, for example.
I was at the 2003 STW march and I am pretty sure that there were a number of folk there that wouldn't get past the PB antisemitism witchfinders general. In fact the whole of the STW coalition is a SWP front if I recall correctly. Much as I loathe trots it didn't bother me in the slightest because the Iraq War was bullshit and it needed saying. The fact is that the Israelis have killed somewhere north of 10k Palestinians including 5k kids and there are people who think that that's not on and want to protest about it. Just because some other people are wrong uns doesn't invalidate their legitimate rights to peaceful protest. Watching the "free speech" massive frothing about this is fucking hilarious though so please carry on.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
The point is that if a hundred thousand people go on a march and 200 of them are carrying Death to the Jews banners and your 99,800 salt of the earth we despair of violence hug a hoodie mates are marching shoulder to shoulder with them then that propagates the message of those 200.
So if I attend a game at Wembley and 200 people engage in racist chanting while the other 99,800 watch on in disapproval I should assume I'm guilty of propagating the message of the 200 and stop attending football matches?
The assumption of (partial) collective guilt from such things, is why many people are so concerned to stamp out racism in football support.
Speaking of collective punishment:
Palestinian death toll in Gaza now exceeds 11,000 (including 4,500 children).
It seems to have slowed down significantly in recent days. I don't mean that as in "yay, no problem the killing's slowed down so go Israel", but it is a notable deceleration from extremely high early numbers and I assume relates to either a new ground-based phase in the war, or perhaps the fact most civilians have now been able to get out of harm's way.
The scale of fatalities in the first couple of weeks remains, assuming the numbers are broadly accurate, hard to fathom. It clearly came about from civilians being in proximity to IDF targets and not able to flee. The moral debate is then about whether this was because of indiscriminate bombing, or the deliberate use and trapping by Hamas of civilians as human shields. Or a mixture of both.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
Ironically, I will be on the march (but not chanting or shouting). As a journo for the knappers gazette I want to see it for myself. Get the feeling of the marchers and see who they are
I went on one of the big BLM marches and it was absolutely revelatory. It made me realise how much the media tells outright lies (on all sides)
The media is CHAT-GPT. It hallucinates. It produces falsities in a very convincing manner. And as you say, from all sides.
I realised this when I noticed how wrong the media were on issues that I knew well. Checking with several other people, they said the same thing but about different issues that they knew well.
I think it is the insatiable demand for content that drives this in most cases. Not bad intentions. The journalists, under time pressure, do what CHAT-GPT does. They research on the internet and then create an attention grabbing convincing story. And we lap it up.
The BLM thing was incredible, tho. The lies were outrageous. One day I will write about it
Friday afternoon. Leave work at 7pm. Emails have to be out by 5pm. Stress, stress, stress. Only Pertwee, UNIT and a bureaucratic Man from the Ministry can save me now. Two hours. That's four episodes. Hello, "Claws of Axos".
Man from Ministry is being a bureaucratic twit. Underestimated Science Guy is helping Pertwee. Pertwee is being his patronising best. Jo is wonderful. Strike Command is being called in (it has a functioning RAF, so it's science fiction). Master is trying to double-cross the aliens. The special effects are... of the time. They've just described a cyclotron. Music is proper plinky-plinky. Happy time has arrived.
16:48pm
Extra: "What about the Doctor and Jo?"
The Master: "They won't survive the blast" (moves to press Big Switch)
Brigadier: "No" (stays his hand)
The Master (dramatic zoom to close-up): "Either we destroy Axos or Axos destroys the world! Which is it to be, Brigadier?"
(Big Switch is thrown. Jo screams. Titles, end music. Breeee-yowww, dum-ti-dum..)
16:50pm
I send the email replies off. Ten minutes to spare. Stress. I wee on it and send it home crying to its mother.
I'm part way through S6 at the moment. "Oh my giddy aunt."
Is "Jo screams" anything on "Sarah Jane Smith screams"?
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
We don't know what the contemporary reaction of Nazis was to the massacres of men, women and children they undertook daily - not only in concentration camps, but everywhere they had control - over a number of years, because they weren't recorded on smartphones. We do know that they kept on happening on an industrial scale and we do have survivors' testimony of the relish with which the barbarity was often inflicted.
Indeed - at the point of actual murder, there was a great deal of evident sadism.
At a higher level, the Nazis tried to coverup what they were doing.
Actually there’s plenty of evidence of personal Nazi reactions to the final solution. Witness testimony,
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
Murray has gone a bit off the deep end in his recent media interviews. Normally he "wins" arguments by remaining calm, albeit can be very smug, condescending etc. The Ben Shapiro approach.
However, he has definitely overstepped the mark, repeatedly saying if the UK government doesn't kick out a number of Iranian and Hamas leaders who live in the UK, he will a) give out their addresses and b) will take personal legal action...the issue being of course they have British citizenship and guessing have been very careful about not breaking the law.
Giving out addresses to all and sundry of such individuals I imagine would get yourself in legal trouble. And of course we don't actually know why a former Iranian leader is here, it could be that the British system has let somebody who really should be undesirable live here, or is there some sort of intelligence quid pro quo going on....same as Sailisbury Novachok target.
I've long had him down as a racist tbh - a smooth one who can deceive with his civilized manner and turn of a sentence. Sounds like the 'underlying' has bubbled through on this occasion.
You think everyone is a racist waiting to be uncovered. You sniff them out. You’re the Witchfinder General of racism, and you just need to throw everyone in Hampstead ponds to see if they if they float in the waters of your sanctimonious self regard, and you know your suspicions will be vindicated
You would absolutely have worked for the Nazis if they’d ever invaded Britain. You’d have done it in a cool punctilious accountant’s manner as you typed the names of the passengers on the next sleeper train to Eastern Europe
Is this the same leon as the one randomly casting absurd aspersions around race this morning?
Oh God, what was he saying this morning?
It is the same Leon who was moaning that you can't say "coloured people" any more the other day, and who repeatedly insists there are significant genetic differences between different "races".
Mmm ... this group are particularly clever, that group are prone to violence, these people originated from that place, those people from that other place, here’s a table of IQs by ethnic group, ‘lol’ at woke scientists desperately pretending that this ancient white hunter-gatherer tribe he's been reading about weren’t the bees knees compared to the African ones. Etc etc etc.
I did all that this morning? Gosh, I was busy
Well if you want to be blithe about it. Thing is, you're an enthralling character with all your travels and your drinking and your sexual conquests but I have noticed something a bit 'off' with you when it comes to the topic of race.
Like, you’re ‘antiwoke’ to a degree verging on deranged and this in itself is not unusual. Many on the right of politics are like that. Eg on here there’s Casino Royale, famously. Could anybody be in more of a lather about ‘woke’ than he is? Not really.
But there’s a difference between you and (eg) him. The reason he (CR) can’t stand ‘woke’ is he thinks it makes everything about race, which is counterproductive and racist in itself. I think it’s a bad take myself but there’s no question he’s sincere. You call tell he is because other than in discussions about ‘woke’ he never mentions race. He doesn’t think it’s a factor in anything, and if it is it shouldn’t be, so you don’t find him banging on about it. Same with lots of other antiwokies.
You otoh fulminate about woke yet are noticeably *interested* in race as a differentiator of people. I gave just a few of many many examples. You are fascinated by race and all things racial. So that's an interesting combination to me. Antiwoke to the point of high colour and frothing yet counterintuitively combined with a keen interest in race as a driver of human history, all the way from year dot to the world we live in today. By all means try and explain this to me if you wish (although you don't have to).
Just keep “sniffing out” the evil racists, @kinabalu. It’s what you’re good at. A vocation. And you know you’re good at it, which is even more satisfying
As I say, in previous moral climates you’d have been good - in a self congratulatory way - at sniffing out secret gays, or clandestine Jews, or Hollywood communists, or stealthy Freemasons, or actual witches. It is exactly the same mindset - you can somehow subconsciously tell when someone is “a bit off”. Go for it
That's rather you, I'd say - although only when it's antisemitism.
Anyway I can see you don't wish to do any self-audit in response to my observations right now. Fair enough. It's Friday night. We can always come back to it.
Well if you insist I thought we'd done this but if you are asking again I will gladly help.
This virulent racist spotting of yours comes down to your uncertain place in society. Northern boy made good, ended up in the City, Hampstead, wealth beyond compare with where you came from. This puts you in limbo as you are out of your depth in the more sophisticated discussions of race, class, wealth of your current environment including on PB.
Because what you left behind what might have been, who knows, racism, sexism, whatnot, you are now virulently overcompensating. Sniffing out racism here, social injustice there, but you are not quite sure how it all works because you come from a simpler milieu.
This, sadly, renders your analysis worthless on these matters and the supercilious, superior tone you adopt is simply amusing. You are trying too hard because none of it comes naturally.
Apart from on Trump, where I think you are great, and you are my go-to source of common sense on transgender issues where again you speak perhaps the most sense on the board.
But for goodness sake don't let that stop you commenting in particular your arch response to this very post which I look forward to. Or not, if you can't be bothered. But I think you can.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
The point is that if a hundred thousand people go on a march and 200 of them are carrying Death to the Jews banners and your 99,800 salt of the earth we despair of violence hug a hoodie mates are marching shoulder to shoulder with them then that propagates the message of those 200.
So if I attend a game at Wembley and 200 people engage in racist chanting while the other 99,800 watch on in disapproval I should assume I'm guilty of propagating the message of the 200 and stop attending football matches?
Chalk and apples. The premise of the march is anti-Israel. It's very being is to voice anger at a country. A Jewish country. The premise of the game at Wembley is to see England scrape a lucky draw against Moldova.
The comparison is that neither activity is illegal - but the actions of some of the individuals taking part might well be (or almost certainly will be).
It's not for the police to make moral judgments - but it certainly is their job to enforce the law.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
Then go on another march. You are swelling the numbers of those anti-semites, anti-westerners so if one of them has a banner saying kill the Jews you are in effect giving credentials, by your presence and those around you, to that view. You are helping to say this is not a minority what me guv view, this is a view, because we are marching shoulder to shoulder, that we all agree on.
I have zero doubt that you are not an anti-semite but I really do wonder why such avowed non-anti-semites feel it necessary on a point of principle to march side by side with outright anti-semites.
Hyperbole. Anybody who has a banner saying Kill the Jews should be arrested forthwith. Obviously.
They carry banners and say things that you, as a useful idiot, don't understand but mean the same thing. And I note you are avoiding the main point I made. You are enabling them. People enabled Corbyn who in turn enabled anti-semitism and now they are doing so again. Perhaps you also or your mates.
On balance, I'd rather be a useful idiot than a useless idiot - though it's a close call.
I knew I'd regret posting anything on this subject, and so it transpires.
Yeah it's a minefield. Useless idiot has a lot going for it but you seem intelligent enough to understand that if you are marching shoulder to shoulder with racists (in their cause, not incidentally eg at Wembley) then people will draw their own conclusions.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
Ironically, I will be on the march (but not chanting or shouting). As a journo for the knappers gazette I want to see it for myself. Get the feeling of the marchers and see who they are
I went on one of the big BLM marches and it was absolutely revelatory. It made me realise how much the media tells outright lies (on all sides)
The media is CHAT-GPT. It hallucinates. It produces falsities in a very convincing manner. And as you say, from all sides.
I realised this when I noticed how wrong the media were on issues that I knew well. Checking with several other people, they said the same thing but about different issues that they knew well.
I think it is the insatiable demand for content that drives this in most cases. Not bad intentions. The journalists, under time pressure, do what CHAT-GPT does. They research on the internet and then create an attention grabbing convincing story. And we lap it up.
The BLM thing was incredible, tho. The lies were outrageous. One day I will write about it
The key fact is that more people died in the BLM riots and demonstrations than the number of people who died in the original incident.
So Sunak's underlings have made it known that he has "full confidence" in Braverman.
And meanwhile: Neil Basu, the former head of the UK's counter-terrorism police, said Mrs Braverman's comments were "tantamount to effectively trying to direct the police". Speaking on the BBC's Today Podcast, Mr Basu said the UK was "in danger of turning the police into an arm of the state directed by politicians". He said he would describe what is happening "as potentially the end of operational independence of policing unless people start to speak out". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67376996
Interesting times.
Do you have your flag all ready to go for tomorrow. Big day. Good luck.
Maybe you should think about marching yourself, if you give a toss about "traditional British values"?
If you could let me know what traditional British values are I will be able to work out whether I should give a toss about them.
Sad.
So give me a couple of traditional British values so I can begin to form a view on them.
Pounds. Ounces. Pence. Stones. A pennyweight. A pint. A gill. A peck. Two shillings and a guinea.
There you: traditional British values.
@Chris is marching to save the guinea? Is he planning a trip to Tattersalls for the horses in training sales soon?
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
We don't know what the contemporary reaction of Nazis was to the massacres of men, women and children they undertook daily - not only in concentration camps, but everywhere they had control - over a number of years, because they weren't recorded on smartphones. We do know that they kept on happening on an industrial scale and we do have survivors' testimony of the relish with which the barbarity was often inflicted.
Indeed - at the point of actual murder, there was a great deal of evident sadism.
At a higher level, the Nazis tried to coverup what they were doing.
Actually there’s plenty of evidence of personal Nazi reactions to the final solution. Witness testimony,
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
Murray has gone a bit off the deep end in his recent media interviews. Normally he "wins" arguments by remaining calm, albeit can be very smug, condescending etc. The Ben Shapiro approach.
However, he has definitely overstepped the mark, repeatedly saying if the UK government doesn't kick out a number of Iranian and Hamas leaders who live in the UK, he will a) give out their addresses and b) will take personal legal action...the issue being of course they have British citizenship and guessing have been very careful about not breaking the law.
Giving out addresses to all and sundry of such individuals I imagine would get yourself in legal trouble. And of course we don't actually know why a former Iranian leader is here, it could be that the British system has let somebody who really should be undesirable live here, or is there some sort of intelligence quid pro quo going on....same as Sailisbury Novachok target.
I've long had him down as a racist tbh - a smooth one who can deceive with his civilized manner and turn of a sentence. Sounds like the 'underlying' has bubbled through on this occasion.
You think everyone is a racist waiting to be uncovered. You sniff them out. You’re the Witchfinder General of racism, and you just need to throw everyone in Hampstead ponds to see if they if they float in the waters of your sanctimonious self regard, and you know your suspicions will be vindicated
You would absolutely have worked for the Nazis if they’d ever invaded Britain. You’d have done it in a cool punctilious accountant’s manner as you typed the names of the passengers on the next sleeper train to Eastern Europe
Is this the same leon as the one randomly casting absurd aspersions around race this morning?
Oh God, what was he saying this morning?
It is the same Leon who was moaning that you can't say "coloured people" any more the other day, and who repeatedly insists there are significant genetic differences between different "races".
Mmm ... this group are particularly clever, that group are prone to violence, these people originated from that place, those people from that other place, here’s a table of IQs by ethnic group, ‘lol’ at woke scientists desperately pretending that this ancient white hunter-gatherer tribe he's been reading about weren’t the bees knees compared to the African ones. Etc etc etc.
I did all that this morning? Gosh, I was busy
Well if you want to be blithe about it. Thing is, you're an enthralling character with all your travels and your drinking and your sexual conquests but I have noticed something a bit 'off' with you when it comes to the topic of race.
Like, you’re ‘antiwoke’ to a degree verging on deranged and this in itself is not unusual. Many on the right of politics are like that. Eg on here there’s Casino Royale, famously. Could anybody be in more of a lather about ‘woke’ than he is? Not really.
But there’s a difference between you and (eg) him. The reason he (CR) can’t stand ‘woke’ is he thinks it makes everything about race, which is counterproductive and racist in itself. I think it’s a bad take myself but there’s no question he’s sincere. You call tell he is because other than in discussions about ‘woke’ he never mentions race. He doesn’t think it’s a factor in anything, and if it is it shouldn’t be, so you don’t find him banging on about it. Same with lots of other antiwokies.
You otoh fulminate about woke yet are noticeably *interested* in race as a differentiator of people. I gave just a few of many many examples. You are fascinated by race and all things racial. So that's an interesting combination to me. Antiwoke to the point of high colour and frothing yet counterintuitively combined with a keen interest in race as a driver of human history, all the way from year dot to the world we live in today. By all means try and explain this to me if you wish (although you don't have to).
Just keep “sniffing out” the evil racists, @kinabalu. It’s what you’re good at. A vocation. And you know you’re good at it, which is even more satisfying
As I say, in previous moral climates you’d have been good - in a self congratulatory way - at sniffing out secret gays, or clandestine Jews, or Hollywood communists, or stealthy Freemasons, or actual witches. It is exactly the same mindset - you can somehow subconsciously tell when someone is “a bit off”. Go for it
That's rather you, I'd say - although only when it's antisemitism.
Anyway I can see you don't wish to do any self-audit in response to my observations right now. Fair enough. It's Friday night. We can always come back to it.
Who else do you think is “a bit off”?
I’m fascinated by your skill. Apparently a humble retired accountant who never travels further than Bruges - and yet gifted with a sixth sense, like a kind of wise woman, or a Dominican Inquisitor, or a gestapo Jew-finder tapping walls in voided ghettoes, listening for the tell tale echo of secret rooms
Or the child-catcher in CCBB. No, look, I get it. When sussed you seek to deflect and obscure and distract like your fallen hero BJ. And I'll return a compliment. You're good at it. Just as good as I am at the sussing. We're quite a pair, aren't we.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
The point is that if a hundred thousand people go on a march and 200 of them are carrying Death to the Jews banners and your 99,800 salt of the earth we despair of violence hug a hoodie mates are marching shoulder to shoulder with them then that propagates the message of those 200.
Which is why decent people, when organising their marches, exclude the scumbags. Rather carefully. See the Stop The War marches, for example.
I was at the 2003 STW march and I am pretty sure that there were a number of folk there that wouldn't get past the PB antisemitism witchfinders general. In fact the whole of the STW coalition is a SWP front if I recall correctly. Much as I loathe trots it didn't bother me in the slightest because the Iraq War was bullshit and it needed saying. The fact is that the Israelis have killed somewhere north of 10k Palestinians including 5k kids and there are people who think that that's not on and want to protest about it. Just because some other people are wrong uns doesn't invalidate their legitimate rights to peaceful protest. Watching the "free speech" massive frothing about this is fucking hilarious though so please carry on.
Point of order: I don’t think a single person on PB wants these marches to be banned
If PB has any overall bias it is genuinely towards free speech (apart from the worst Wokesters) - we are, on the whole, a democratic and mildly libertarian bunch
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
The point is that if a hundred thousand people go on a march and 200 of them are carrying Death to the Jews banners and your 99,800 salt of the earth we despair of violence hug a hoodie mates are marching shoulder to shoulder with them then that propagates the message of those 200.
Which is why decent people, when organising their marches, exclude the scumbags. Rather carefully. See the Stop The War marches, for example.
I was at the 2003 STW march and I am pretty sure that there were a number of folk there that wouldn't get past the PB antisemitism witchfinders general. In fact the whole of the STW coalition is a SWP front if I recall correctly. Much as I loathe trots it didn't bother me in the slightest because the Iraq War was bullshit and it needed saying. The fact is that the Israelis have killed somewhere north of 10k Palestinians including 5k kids and there are people who think that that's not on and want to protest about it. Just because some other people are wrong uns doesn't invalidate their legitimate rights to peaceful protest. Watching the "free speech" massive frothing about this is fucking hilarious though so please carry on.
The SWP are a sad bunch - with the nasty cult element within their ranks (See Comrade Delta). The STW (Iraq) marches went off peacefully, precisely because they excluded some far nastier types than the SWP.
It's how it rolls - if you try and exclude people from your match, their message doesn't get overlaid on yours. If you let them come along, then you will run the risk that their message gets taken as your message.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
If you go on a march organised by….
“the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And where you know, beforehand, that it will be “officially addressed by Jeremy Corbyn”…
Then yes I fear you will have to suffer legitimate suspicions of anti-Semitism
Thanks: as I predicted.
In all seriousness, what do you expect? Doesn’t the list of organisers and speakers give you any pause at all?
No. In all seriousness, does your frequent anti-Islamic bile give you any pause at all?
A march officially organised by anti Semites and officially addressed by anti Semites and you don’t even hesitate to join it for a second. You don’t have a scintilla of doubt
That’s not great
Well actually no, my marching days are over, so I'm not going. But I know quite a few people who are. Guess what they have in common?
They despair of the horrendous violence perpetrated by Hamas. They despair of the horrendous scale of the retaliation by the Israeli state. They want peace - an end to violence on all sides. They take the view that long-term peace must include a free Israel and a free Palestine.
Of course there will be a minority who wish the end of Israel. But they're not typical. They don't include Jeremy Corbyn, even.
The point is that if a hundred thousand people go on a march and 200 of them are carrying Death to the Jews banners and your 99,800 salt of the earth we despair of violence hug a hoodie mates are marching shoulder to shoulder with them then that propagates the message of those 200.
So if I attend a game at Wembley and 200 people engage in racist chanting while the other 99,800 watch on in disapproval I should assume I'm guilty of propagating the message of the 200 and stop attending football matches?
Chalk and apples. The premise of the march is anti-Israel. It's very being is to voice anger at a country. A Jewish country. The premise of the game at Wembley is to see England scrape a lucky draw against Moldova.
The comparison is that neither activity is illegal - but the actions of some of the individuals taking part might well be (or almost certainly will be).
It's not for the police to make moral judgments - but it certainly is their job to enforce the law.
Absolutely. Going to see England at Wembley or marching for Gaza are both perfectly legal. But the better comparison is if @Northern_Al met up with whichever English footie firm is in the ascendency right now and went to confront the Modovian Ultras after the game.
So Sunak's underlings have made it known that he has "full confidence" in Braverman.
And meanwhile: Neil Basu, the former head of the UK's counter-terrorism police, said Mrs Braverman's comments were "tantamount to effectively trying to direct the police". Speaking on the BBC's Today Podcast, Mr Basu said the UK was "in danger of turning the police into an arm of the state directed by politicians". He said he would describe what is happening "as potentially the end of operational independence of policing unless people start to speak out". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67376996
Interesting times.
Do you have your flag all ready to go for tomorrow. Big day. Good luck.
Maybe you should think about marching yourself, if you give a toss about "traditional British values"?
If you could let me know what traditional British values are I will be able to work out whether I should give a toss about them.
Sad.
So give me a couple of traditional British values so I can begin to form a view on them.
Pounds. Ounces. Pence. Stones. A pennyweight. A pint. A gill. A peck. Two shillings and a guinea.
There you: traditional British values.
In further celebration & recognition of the "values" of the British Empire in its heyday -
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
If you go on one of those marches you are, at best, a useful idiot for Hamas. You have also chosen to ignore Jewish people who say that they are profoundly upset and scared by them. You should be prepared to be judged on that basis.
What is noticeable (and rather depressing) in all the discussion about the marches this weekend is that very few are thinking about their effect on Jews here, the impact it might have, the fear it might cause. They don't seem to matter. No other group would be so ignored.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
Friday afternoon. Leave work at 7pm. Emails have to be out by 5pm. Stress, stress, stress. Only Pertwee, UNIT and a bureaucratic Man from the Ministry can save me now. Two hours. That's four episodes. Hello, "Claws of Axos".
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
Then go on another march. You are swelling the numbers of those anti-semites, anti-westerners so if one of them has a banner saying kill the Jews you are in effect giving credentials, by your presence and those around you, to that view. You are helping to say this is not a minority what me guv view, this is a view, because we are marching shoulder to shoulder, that we all agree on.
I have zero doubt that you are not an anti-semite but I really do wonder why such avowed non-anti-semites feel it necessary on a point of principle to march side by side with outright anti-semites.
Hyperbole. Anybody who has a banner saying Kill the Jews should be arrested forthwith. Obviously.
They carry banners and say things that you, as a useful idiot, don't understand but mean the same thing. And I note you are avoiding the main point I made. You are enabling them. People enabled Corbyn who in turn enabled anti-semitism and now they are doing so again. Perhaps you also or your mates.
So, the issue I have with this is this:
If I carry a banner saying, "I support Israel", does that mean I am agreeing with Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich? Or Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir? Both of whom seem pretty keen on "From the River to the Sea", only with the Palestinians removed rather than the Jews.
I think the majority of people - and I'd include myself in this - think Israel has the right to go into Gaza to recover its hostages, and to remove the threat from Hamas. At the same time, it's possible to deplore the behaviour of the current Israeli government towards the Palestinians in the West Bank, and those (who are government ministers) who seem to be pretty keen on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the area.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
I am reminded of the friend, who when in France, went on an anti-McDonalds march. And practically ran away when he saw the number of Blood & Soil types involved.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
If you go on one of those marches you are, at best, a useful idiot for Hamas. You have also chosen to ignore Jewish people who say that they are profoundly upset and scared by them. You should be prepared to be judged on that basis.
What is noticeable (and rather depressing) in all the discussion about the marches this weekend is that very few are thinking about their effect on Jews here, the impact it might have, the fear it might cause. They don't seem to matter. No other group would be so ignored.
That’s really not true. I’ve spent the last hour emphasising the overt or covert anti Semitism of the march organisers and speakers
As have others on the site today
That’s an explicit acknowledgment of the effect on British Jews
The sad thing is that the people of Gaza deserve a march in their defence. They are dying in their thousands. But the worst people are involved in that defence
So Sunak's underlings have made it known that he has "full confidence" in Braverman.
And meanwhile: Neil Basu, the former head of the UK's counter-terrorism police, said Mrs Braverman's comments were "tantamount to effectively trying to direct the police". Speaking on the BBC's Today Podcast, Mr Basu said the UK was "in danger of turning the police into an arm of the state directed by politicians". He said he would describe what is happening "as potentially the end of operational independence of policing unless people start to speak out". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67376996
Interesting times.
Interesting indeed. No politician has ever tried this before. It’s rather unique.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
Surely the whole point of Waitrose is that there is no queue?
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
No, it was an attempt at a very British coup. Genteel and well spoken - but still an attempt to overturn a legal vote
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
We don't know what the contemporary reaction of Nazis was to the massacres of men, women and children they undertook daily - not only in concentration camps, but everywhere they had control - over a number of years, because they weren't recorded on smartphones. We do know that they kept on happening on an industrial scale and we do have survivors' testimony of the relish with which the barbarity was often inflicted.
Indeed - at the point of actual murder, there was a great deal of evident sadism.
At a higher level, the Nazis tried to coverup what they were doing.
Actually there’s plenty of evidence of personal Nazi reactions to the final solution. Witness testimony,
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
Murray has gone a bit off the deep end in his recent media interviews. Normally he "wins" arguments by remaining calm, albeit can be very smug, condescending etc. The Ben Shapiro approach.
However, he has definitely overstepped the mark, repeatedly saying if the UK government doesn't kick out a number of Iranian and Hamas leaders who live in the UK, he will a) give out their addresses and b) will take personal legal action...the issue being of course they have British citizenship and guessing have been very careful about not breaking the law.
Giving out addresses to all and sundry of such individuals I imagine would get yourself in legal trouble. And of course we don't actually know why a former Iranian leader is here, it could be that the British system has let somebody who really should be undesirable live here, or is there some sort of intelligence quid pro quo going on....same as Sailisbury Novachok target.
I've long had him down as a racist tbh - a smooth one who can deceive with his civilized manner and turn of a sentence. Sounds like the 'underlying' has bubbled through on this occasion.
You think everyone is a racist waiting to be uncovered. You sniff them out. You’re the Witchfinder General of racism, and you just need to throw everyone in Hampstead ponds to see if they if they float in the waters of your sanctimonious self regard, and you know your suspicions will be vindicated
You would absolutely have worked for the Nazis if they’d ever invaded Britain. You’d have done it in a cool punctilious accountant’s manner as you typed the names of the passengers on the next sleeper train to Eastern Europe
Is this the same leon as the one randomly casting absurd aspersions around race this morning?
Oh God, what was he saying this morning?
It is the same Leon who was moaning that you can't say "coloured people" any more the other day, and who repeatedly insists there are significant genetic differences between different "races".
Mmm ... this group are particularly clever, that group are prone to violence, these people originated from that place, those people from that other place, here’s a table of IQs by ethnic group, ‘lol’ at woke scientists desperately pretending that this ancient white hunter-gatherer tribe he's been reading about weren’t the bees knees compared to the African ones. Etc etc etc.
I did all that this morning? Gosh, I was busy
Well if you want to be blithe about it. Thing is, you're an enthralling character with all your travels and your drinking and your sexual conquests but I have noticed something a bit 'off' with you when it comes to the topic of race.
Like, you’re ‘antiwoke’ to a degree verging on deranged and this in itself is not unusual. Many on the right of politics are like that. Eg on here there’s Casino Royale, famously. Could anybody be in more of a lather about ‘woke’ than he is? Not really.
But there’s a difference between you and (eg) him. The reason he (CR) can’t stand ‘woke’ is he thinks it makes everything about race, which is counterproductive and racist in itself. I think it’s a bad take myself but there’s no question he’s sincere. You call tell he is because other than in discussions about ‘woke’ he never mentions race. He doesn’t think it’s a factor in anything, and if it is it shouldn’t be, so you don’t find him banging on about it. Same with lots of other antiwokies.
You otoh fulminate about woke yet are noticeably *interested* in race as a differentiator of people. I gave just a few of many many examples. You are fascinated by race and all things racial. So that's an interesting combination to me. Antiwoke to the point of high colour and frothing yet counterintuitively combined with a keen interest in race as a driver of human history, all the way from year dot to the world we live in today. By all means try and explain this to me if you wish (although you don't have to).
Just keep “sniffing out” the evil racists, @kinabalu. It’s what you’re good at. A vocation. And you know you’re good at it, which is even more satisfying
As I say, in previous moral climates you’d have been good - in a self congratulatory way - at sniffing out secret gays, or clandestine Jews, or Hollywood communists, or stealthy Freemasons, or actual witches. It is exactly the same mindset - you can somehow subconsciously tell when someone is “a bit off”. Go for it
That's rather you, I'd say - although only when it's antisemitism.
Anyway I can see you don't wish to do any self-audit in response to my observations right now. Fair enough. It's Friday night. We can always come back to it.
Well if you insist I thought we'd done this but if you are asking again I will gladly help.
This virulent racist spotting of yours comes down to your uncertain place in society. Northern boy made good, ended up in the City, Hampstead, wealth beyond compare with where you came from. This puts you in limbo as you are out of your depth in the more sophisticated discussions of race, class, wealth of your current environment including on PB.
Because what you left behind what might have been, who knows, racism, sexism, whatnot, you are now virulently overcompensating. Sniffing out racism here, social injustice there, but you are not quite sure how it all works because you come from a simpler milieu.
This, sadly, renders your analysis worthless on these matters and the supercilious, superior tone you adopt is simply amusing. You are trying too hard because none of it comes naturally.
Apart from on Trump, where I think you are great, and you are my go-to source of common sense on transgender issues where again you speak perhaps the most sense on the board.
But for goodness sake don't let that stop you commenting in particular your arch response to this very post which I look forward to. Or not, if you can't be bothered. But I think you can.
I hope you won't be billing me for that hackneyed old tripe.
Although I will gladly take the compliment bit. If that's right that you gain enjoyment and enlightenment from my Trump and Trans posts (far more of the former than the latter these days as you've no doubt noticed) then I take real pleasure in knowing that and it's kind of you to tell me.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Hence 2019.
Imagine if they had succeeded in overturning the Brexit vote? Without ever enacting it? It doesn’t bear thinking about
Who would ever have voted again?
It would have been utterly catastrophic and likely have ended in violence. Thank god Boris won and got it done. British democracy lives on
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
No, it was an attempt at a very British coup. Genteel and well spoken - but still an attempt to overturn a legal vote
We frequently over turn legal votes with other legal votes. They keep doing it at that big, Pugin styled building by the river Thames. And the people, themselves, keep voting for stuff (the bastards).
It's almost as if people think they have the right to change their minds, and to try and change other peoples minds. Or some sick shit like that.
So Sunak's underlings have made it known that he has "full confidence" in Braverman.
And meanwhile: Neil Basu, the former head of the UK's counter-terrorism police, said Mrs Braverman's comments were "tantamount to effectively trying to direct the police". Speaking on the BBC's Today Podcast, Mr Basu said the UK was "in danger of turning the police into an arm of the state directed by politicians". He said he would describe what is happening "as potentially the end of operational independence of policing unless people start to speak out". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67376996
Interesting times.
Do you have your flag all ready to go for tomorrow. Big day. Good luck.
Maybe you should think about marching yourself, if you give a toss about "traditional British values"?
If you could let me know what traditional British values are I will be able to work out whether I should give a toss about them.
Sad.
So give me a couple of traditional British values so I can begin to form a view on them.
Pounds. Ounces. Pence. Stones. A pennyweight. A pint. A gill. A peck. Two shillings and a guinea.
There you: traditional British values.
In further celebration & recognition of the "values" of the British Empire in its heyday -
How many farthings to a crore?
I'm convinced that if we hadn't decimalized our money in the 70s, that it would be impossible to do it today (see our continued use of Miles, Inches, Feet etc).
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
The Gaza march on Saturday is expecting “hundreds of thousands”. It is organised by
“The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War and CND.”
And it will be addressed by - amongst others - Jeremy Corbyn
So if you go on that march you are knowingly attending a march organised by anti-Semites and quasi-Islamists, which will be addressed by a man so anti-Semitic he was expelled from the Labour Party
That really is quite something
One good point I have heard Douglas Murray make is if you go on a march and you witness people shouting River to the Sea constantly, calling for Jihad or interfada, signs with keep the streets clean of Jews....once you can say well there are some dodgy people on this march, by week 4, you know the sort of people who are organising this, who will be attending, you can't claim ignorance.
It is why the big ecofascists marches have died off, people realised that they might well agree with general premise that we should do more about combatting climate change, but actually XR etc are Marxists who want to overthrow the state, not put up a few more windmills.
Also the student fees ones, soon as there was violence that was it, people went I don't want to be associated with coked up privileged wankers swinging on the Cenotaph and smashing up the wrong building that they thought was Tory HQ.
A general rule of thumb is that any march where you see prominent displays of SWP banners and placards is a march you should not be on.
I don't agree with you on this. In my political life over the last 50 years, SWP outriders have tried (unsuccessfully) to appropriate/hijack every march/protest I've ever been involved with. That includes anti-apartheid, poll tax demos, Anti-Nazi league and so on. Most demonstrators just ignore, or laugh at, the SWP. It's not as if it's helped the SWP cause much.
And the same applies to the pro-Palestinian marches. Most of the people on them have no time for the SWP, nor for the minority who indulge in anti-semitic rhetoric. But I know for most on here that's an inconvenient fact to propose, and so I expect to be lambasted as anti-semitic myself. Whatever.
Then go on another march. You are swelling the numbers of those anti-semites, anti-westerners so if one of them has a banner saying kill the Jews you are in effect giving credentials, by your presence and those around you, to that view. You are helping to say this is not a minority what me guv view, this is a view, because we are marching shoulder to shoulder, that we all agree on.
I have zero doubt that you are not an anti-semite but I really do wonder why such avowed non-anti-semites feel it necessary on a point of principle to march side by side with outright anti-semites.
Hyperbole. Anybody who has a banner saying Kill the Jews should be arrested forthwith. Obviously.
They carry banners and say things that you, as a useful idiot, don't understand but mean the same thing. And I note you are avoiding the main point I made. You are enabling them. People enabled Corbyn who in turn enabled anti-semitism and now they are doing so again. Perhaps you also or your mates.
So, the issue I have with this is this:
If I carry a banner saying, "I support Israel", does that mean I am agreeing with Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich? Or Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir? Both of whom seem pretty keen on "From the River to the Sea", only with the Palestinians removed rather than the Jews.
I think the majority of people - and I'd include myself in this - think Israel has the right to go into Gaza to recover its hostages, and to remove the threat from Hamas. At the same time, it's possible to deplore the behaviour of the current Israeli government towards the Palestinians in the West Bank, and those (who are government ministers) who seem to be pretty keen on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the area.
Don't disagree at all. The West Bank settlement activity should be curtailed and reversed imo. Just like in Gaza in 2005.
If you support Israel then yes you absolutely do have to take some responsibility for the West Bank settlements. Responsibility is the wrong word. You or I don't have any input into what Israel does but if you carry that banner then you are agreeing with government policy.
I think we can exclude those two Israeli politicians because when I was a member of the Conservative Party there were still the Bill Cashes and other loons but that isn't the government. The West Bank is the government.
I think the term "ethnic cleansing" is half right and half wrong btw. Half right because they are getting rid of non-Jews because they believe that the land is Jewish. Half wrong because the Israeli government isn't enacting a wholesale policy of ridding the West Bank of Arabs. Or that would have happened.
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
We don't know what the contemporary reaction of Nazis was to the massacres of men, women and children they undertook daily - not only in concentration camps, but everywhere they had control - over a number of years, because they weren't recorded on smartphones. We do know that they kept on happening on an industrial scale and we do have survivors' testimony of the relish with which the barbarity was often inflicted.
Indeed - at the point of actual murder, there was a great deal of evident sadism.
At a higher level, the Nazis tried to coverup what they were doing.
Actually there’s plenty of evidence of personal Nazi reactions to the final solution. Witness testimony,
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
Murray has gone a bit off the deep end in his recent media interviews. Normally he "wins" arguments by remaining calm, albeit can be very smug, condescending etc. The Ben Shapiro approach.
However, he has definitely overstepped the mark, repeatedly saying if the UK government doesn't kick out a number of Iranian and Hamas leaders who live in the UK, he will a) give out their addresses and b) will take personal legal action...the issue being of course they have British citizenship and guessing have been very careful about not breaking the law.
Giving out addresses to all and sundry of such individuals I imagine would get yourself in legal trouble. And of course we don't actually know why a former Iranian leader is here, it could be that the British system has let somebody who really should be undesirable live here, or is there some sort of intelligence quid pro quo going on....same as Sailisbury Novachok target.
I've long had him down as a racist tbh - a smooth one who can deceive with his civilized manner and turn of a sentence. Sounds like the 'underlying' has bubbled through on this occasion.
You think everyone is a racist waiting to be uncovered. You sniff them out. You’re the Witchfinder General of racism, and you just need to throw everyone in Hampstead ponds to see if they if they float in the waters of your sanctimonious self regard, and you know your suspicions will be vindicated
You would absolutely have worked for the Nazis if they’d ever invaded Britain. You’d have done it in a cool punctilious accountant’s manner as you typed the names of the passengers on the next sleeper train to Eastern Europe
Is this the same leon as the one randomly casting absurd aspersions around race this morning?
Oh God, what was he saying this morning?
It is the same Leon who was moaning that you can't say "coloured people" any more the other day, and who repeatedly insists there are significant genetic differences between different "races".
Mmm ... this group are particularly clever, that group are prone to violence, these people originated from that place, those people from that other place, here’s a table of IQs by ethnic group, ‘lol’ at woke scientists desperately pretending that this ancient white hunter-gatherer tribe he's been reading about weren’t the bees knees compared to the African ones. Etc etc etc.
I did all that this morning? Gosh, I was busy
Well if you want to be blithe about it. Thing is, you're an enthralling character with all your travels and your drinking and your sexual conquests but I have noticed something a bit 'off' with you when it comes to the topic of race.
Like, you’re ‘antiwoke’ to a degree verging on deranged and this in itself is not unusual. Many on the right of politics are like that. Eg on here there’s Casino Royale, famously. Could anybody be in more of a lather about ‘woke’ than he is? Not really.
But there’s a difference between you and (eg) him. The reason he (CR) can’t stand ‘woke’ is he thinks it makes everything about race, which is counterproductive and racist in itself. I think it’s a bad take myself but there’s no question he’s sincere. You call tell he is because other than in discussions about ‘woke’ he never mentions race. He doesn’t think it’s a factor in anything, and if it is it shouldn’t be, so you don’t find him banging on about it. Same with lots of other antiwokies.
You otoh fulminate about woke yet are noticeably *interested* in race as a differentiator of people. I gave just a few of many many examples. You are fascinated by race and all things racial. So that's an interesting combination to me. Antiwoke to the point of high colour and frothing yet counterintuitively combined with a keen interest in race as a driver of human history, all the way from year dot to the world we live in today. By all means try and explain this to me if you wish (although you don't have to).
Just keep “sniffing out” the evil racists, @kinabalu. It’s what you’re good at. A vocation. And you know you’re good at it, which is even more satisfying
As I say, in previous moral climates you’d have been good - in a self congratulatory way - at sniffing out secret gays, or clandestine Jews, or Hollywood communists, or stealthy Freemasons, or actual witches. It is exactly the same mindset - you can somehow subconsciously tell when someone is “a bit off”. Go for it
That's rather you, I'd say - although only when it's antisemitism.
Anyway I can see you don't wish to do any self-audit in response to my observations right now. Fair enough. It's Friday night. We can always come back to it.
Who else do you think is “a bit off”?
I’m fascinated by your skill. Apparently a humble retired accountant who never travels further than Bruges - and yet gifted with a sixth sense, like a kind of wise woman, or a Dominican Inquisitor, or a gestapo Jew-finder tapping walls in voided ghettoes, listening for the tell tale echo of secret rooms
He told me I was a West Ham supporting, Ray Winston fan so many times I almost agreed with him after my 20th denial!
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
No, it was an attempt at a very British coup. Genteel and well spoken - but still an attempt to overturn a legal vote
Proposing a second "deal or no deal" referendum once the terms of the Brexit deal were known was hardly overthrowing democracy.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Hence 2019.
Imagine if they had succeeded in overturning the Brexit vote? Without ever enacting it? It doesn’t bear thinking about
Who would ever have voted again?
It would have been utterly catastrophic and likely have ended in violence. Thank god Boris won and got it done. British democracy lives on
Shows what a forgiving bunch the British electorate are, they’re about to make the chief referendum denier PM
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
We don't know what the contemporary reaction of Nazis was to the massacres of men, women and children they undertook daily - not only in concentration camps, but everywhere they had control - over a number of years, because they weren't recorded on smartphones. We do know that they kept on happening on an industrial scale and we do have survivors' testimony of the relish with which the barbarity was often inflicted.
Indeed - at the point of actual murder, there was a great deal of evident sadism.
At a higher level, the Nazis tried to coverup what they were doing.
Actually there’s plenty of evidence of personal Nazi reactions to the final solution. Witness testimony,
We’ve now moved from the ‘as bad as Nazis’ to the ‘worse than Nazis’ stage.
I’ll guess that everyone calling Douglas Murray a racist, hasn’t actually listened to his full interview with Dave Rubin.
Also, on the narrow point, Murray is right
Very few Nazis exulted in their brutal murder of Jews. For many it was an appalling task (hence the gas chambers run by Ukrainian guards, so the Nazis could avoid the worst personal experiences). For others it was a dull, messy necessity. Like running a slaughterhouse
There were nonetheless some psychos who loved it but they were rare
On the contrary most of the Hamas militants DO seem to have exulted in their appalling crimes
If Murray has, however, come right out and said October 7 was “worse than the Holocaust” then that is foolish hyperbole
Murray has gone a bit off the deep end in his recent media interviews. Normally he "wins" arguments by remaining calm, albeit can be very smug, condescending etc. The Ben Shapiro approach.
However, he has definitely overstepped the mark, repeatedly saying if the UK government doesn't kick out a number of Iranian and Hamas leaders who live in the UK, he will a) give out their addresses and b) will take personal legal action...the issue being of course they have British citizenship and guessing have been very careful about not breaking the law.
Giving out addresses to all and sundry of such individuals I imagine would get yourself in legal trouble. And of course we don't actually know why a former Iranian leader is here, it could be that the British system has let somebody who really should be undesirable live here, or is there some sort of intelligence quid pro quo going on....same as Sailisbury Novachok target.
I've long had him down as a racist tbh - a smooth one who can deceive with his civilized manner and turn of a sentence. Sounds like the 'underlying' has bubbled through on this occasion.
You think everyone is a racist waiting to be uncovered. You sniff them out. You’re the Witchfinder General of racism, and you just need to throw everyone in Hampstead ponds to see if they if they float in the waters of your sanctimonious self regard, and you know your suspicions will be vindicated
You would absolutely have worked for the Nazis if they’d ever invaded Britain. You’d have done it in a cool punctilious accountant’s manner as you typed the names of the passengers on the next sleeper train to Eastern Europe
Is this the same leon as the one randomly casting absurd aspersions around race this morning?
Oh God, what was he saying this morning?
It is the same Leon who was moaning that you can't say "coloured people" any more the other day, and who repeatedly insists there are significant genetic differences between different "races".
Mmm ... this group are particularly clever, that group are prone to violence, these people originated from that place, those people from that other place, here’s a table of IQs by ethnic group, ‘lol’ at woke scientists desperately pretending that this ancient white hunter-gatherer tribe he's been reading about weren’t the bees knees compared to the African ones. Etc etc etc.
I did all that this morning? Gosh, I was busy
Well if you want to be blithe about it. Thing is, you're an enthralling character with all your travels and your drinking and your sexual conquests but I have noticed something a bit 'off' with you when it comes to the topic of race.
Like, you’re ‘antiwoke’ to a degree verging on deranged and this in itself is not unusual. Many on the right of politics are like that. Eg on here there’s Casino Royale, famously. Could anybody be in more of a lather about ‘woke’ than he is? Not really.
But there’s a difference between you and (eg) him. The reason he (CR) can’t stand ‘woke’ is he thinks it makes everything about race, which is counterproductive and racist in itself. I think it’s a bad take myself but there’s no question he’s sincere. You call tell he is because other than in discussions about ‘woke’ he never mentions race. He doesn’t think it’s a factor in anything, and if it is it shouldn’t be, so you don’t find him banging on about it. Same with lots of other antiwokies.
You otoh fulminate about woke yet are noticeably *interested* in race as a differentiator of people. I gave just a few of many many examples. You are fascinated by race and all things racial. So that's an interesting combination to me. Antiwoke to the point of high colour and frothing yet counterintuitively combined with a keen interest in race as a driver of human history, all the way from year dot to the world we live in today. By all means try and explain this to me if you wish (although you don't have to).
Just keep “sniffing out” the evil racists, @kinabalu. It’s what you’re good at. A vocation. And you know you’re good at it, which is even more satisfying
As I say, in previous moral climates you’d have been good - in a self congratulatory way - at sniffing out secret gays, or clandestine Jews, or Hollywood communists, or stealthy Freemasons, or actual witches. It is exactly the same mindset - you can somehow subconsciously tell when someone is “a bit off”. Go for it
That's rather you, I'd say - although only when it's antisemitism.
Anyway I can see you don't wish to do any self-audit in response to my observations right now. Fair enough. It's Friday night. We can always come back to it.
Well if you insist I thought we'd done this but if you are asking again I will gladly help.
This virulent racist spotting of yours comes down to your uncertain place in society. Northern boy made good, ended up in the City, Hampstead, wealth beyond compare with where you came from. This puts you in limbo as you are out of your depth in the more sophisticated discussions of race, class, wealth of your current environment including on PB.
Because what you left behind what might have been, who knows, racism, sexism, whatnot, you are now virulently overcompensating. Sniffing out racism here, social injustice there, but you are not quite sure how it all works because you come from a simpler milieu.
This, sadly, renders your analysis worthless on these matters and the supercilious, superior tone you adopt is simply amusing. You are trying too hard because none of it comes naturally.
Apart from on Trump, where I think you are great, and you are my go-to source of common sense on transgender issues where again you speak perhaps the most sense on the board.
But for goodness sake don't let that stop you commenting in particular your arch response to this very post which I look forward to. Or not, if you can't be bothered. But I think you can.
I hope you won't be billing me for that hackneyed old tripe.
Although I will gladly take the compliment bit. If that's right that you gain enjoyment and enlightenment from my Trump and Trans posts (far more of the former than the latter these days as you've no doubt noticed) then I take real pleasure in knowing that and it's kind of you to tell me.
It's not old tripe and you know it's not. And it is pretty obvious.
But yes absolutely you are a super-valued poster, not just on those two issues of course, just that sometimes it is useful for all of us (even moi if you can believe that) to have the curtain pulled back on ourselves to remind us who we really are.
Edit: and no charge, save for a swift half in a lovely little bar I know not so far from you that you may not be aware of.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Hence 2019.
Imagine if they had succeeded in overturning the Brexit vote? Without ever enacting it? It doesn’t bear thinking about
Who would ever have voted again?
It would have been utterly catastrophic and likely have ended in violence. Thank god Boris won and got it done. British democracy lives on
If it had been overturned it would have been after a vote - either an election or a referendum. The right thing to do, in hindsight (but Cameron was too short sighted to think beyond the Brexit vote) would have been to plan for 2 referendums from the outset, one on the principle and a second on the specifics of the deal. That's how the Swiss would have run it.
Seventy-five minutes before I leave to catch my train. Hmm. Need a two-parter. Have already done "Black Orchid". Thinks. Baker T, Sarah-Jane, Harry Sullivan. The Sontaran Experiment.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Bollocks.
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
The man's likeness to Jamiroquai was the most surreal part of the whole thing.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
PB pedantry, the band is Jamiroquai, the (annoyingly talented) twat in the hat in the band is Jason “Jay” Kay.
Nigel Farage can only lead the 'Nigel Farage party'. If he is in charge it becomes his project alone. There would be no 'party line', but simply the infallible word of the Leader, however controversial and however ill-thought through. If he were in a cabinet or shadow cabinet he would be incapable or collective responsibility. The Conservative Party would have to be devoid of any other big personalities for such an arrangement to work and even then it would be precarious. Farage works for fairly narrow, single-issue campaigns but not for a broad manifesto of government.
Conservatives can probably safely entertain the notion of him being a member of, perhaps even campaigner for, their party but if they hope to be large enough to be a potential governing party then Farage as leader is simply not the answer.
Each to their own, but another analogy, Nick Griffin and Tommy Robinson were involved in organising and speaking at marches over grooming gangs. Were they right about the gangs, basically yes, am I going anywhere near a march which them involved, absolutely not...as I believe their underlying motivates aren't limited to making sure the authorities actually take action to prosecute the grooming gangs....was everybody attended those were hardcore BNP / EDL racists, no, many I am sure were genuinely people who had been failed by the system, knew somebody who had or were very concerned about this lack of action.
One of the pleasant things about the anti-Brexit marches (aka "scoundrels betraying the will of the people" aka "the Waitrose queue") was the lack of extreme types of either right or left. There was no STW or SWP, and no Tommy Robinsons, even by way of counter-protest.
I dunno. Calling for a democratic vote that the government explicitly promised to honour to be overturned, because posh people didn’t like the result, seems intrinsically quite extreme to me
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Hence 2019.
Imagine if they had succeeded in overturning the Brexit vote? Without ever enacting it? It doesn’t bear thinking about
Who would ever have voted again?
It would have been utterly catastrophic and likely have ended in violence. Thank god Boris won and got it done. British democracy lives on
If it had been overturned it would have been after a vote - either an election or a referendum. The right thing to do, in hindsight (but Cameron was too short sighted to think beyond the Brexit vote) would have been to plan for 2 referendums from the outset, one on the principle and a second on the specifics of the deal. That's how the Swiss would have run it.
Perhaps. But the wrong thing to do is to have a referendum which the PM says is binding, then when you lose it (a) claim it was only advisory, then (b) agitate for another go by refusing to vote for any deal agreed with the EU
Friday afternoon. Leave work at 7pm. Emails have to be out by 5pm. Stress, stress, stress. Only Pertwee, UNIT and a bureaucratic Man from the Ministry can save me now. Two hours. That's four episodes. Hello, "Claws of Axos".
Man from Ministry is being a bureaucratic twit. Underestimated Science Guy is helping Pertwee. Pertwee is being his patronising best. Jo is wonderful. Strike Command is being called in (it has a functioning RAF, so it's science fiction). Master is trying to double-cross the aliens. The special effects are... of the time. They've just described a cyclotron. Music is proper plinky-plinky. Happy time has arrived.
16:48pm
Extra: "What about the Doctor and Jo?"
The Master: "They won't survive the blast" (moves to press Big Switch)
Brigadier: "No" (stays his hand)
The Master (dramatic zoom to close-up): "Either we destroy Axos or Axos destroys the world! Which is it to be, Brigadier?"
(Big Switch is thrown. Jo screams. Titles, end music. Breeee-yowww, dum-ti-dum..)
16:50pm
I send the email replies off. Ten minutes to spare. Stress. I wee on it and send it home crying to its mother.
I'm part way through S6 at the moment. "Oh my giddy aunt."
Time warrior and the colourised Invasion of the Dinosaurs part 1 for me today.
Seventy-five minutes before I leave to catch my train. Hmm. Need a two-parter. Have already done "Black Orchid". Thinks. Baker T, Sarah-Jane, Harry Sullivan. The Sontaran Experiment.
Comments
And that histories of other genocides suggests that as being not at all unusual,
This is a really disturbing book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Browning#Ordinary_Men
...As presented in the study, the men of Unit 101 were not ardent Nazis but ordinary middle-aged men of working class background from Hamburg, who had been drafted but found to be ineligible for regular military duty. After their return to occupied Poland in June 1942, the men were ordered to terrorize Jews in the ghettos during Operation Reinhard and carry out massacres of Polish Jews (men, women, and children) in the towns of Józefów and Łomazy. In other cases, they were ordered to kill a certain number of Jews in a town or area, usually helped by Trawnikis. The commander of the unit once gave his men the choice of opting out if they found it too hard, but fewer than 12 men did so in a battalion of 500.
Browning provides evidence to support the notion that not all of the men were hateful antisemites. He includes the testimony of men who said that they begged to be released from the task and to be placed elsewhere. In one instance, two fathers claimed that they could not kill children and so asked to be given other work. Browning also tells of a man who demanded his release, obtained it, and was promoted once he had returned to Germany...
But what about Context?
{/sarcasm}
If I have any hopes for Prime Minister Starmer and the coming Labour government, it relies on this. They will work hard and boringly at dull or unpleasant things, and they will see them through. Tedious but necessary jobs might just be accomplished
The Tories seem largely incapable even of that
Plenty of people said no or resisted Nazi stuff. The Nazi theory was that everyone would "occasionally backslide" to humanity and decency. It was those that made a habit of it that got arrested in the middle of the night etc.
The ex-boss of NatWest, Dame Alison Rose, will lose out on £7.6m after she admitted to discussing the closure of Nigel Farage's bank account.
Dame Alison will receive her £2.4m fixed pay package, but will not benefit from share awards and bonuses she had previously been entitled to.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67377140
I personally don't see what is the major fuss. She is expressing a view. She has not said she will fire any commanding officer who disagrees with what she says nor that she has the right to override the Police. The Police may disagree with her comments and complain she is undermining the institution but, if you accept that logic, politicians must back the Police wholeheartedly 100% of the time. I know @Cyclefree for one would disagree with that line.
I really want 64gb but at that point you are over £4000
And there is £100 difference between the 96GB M3 Max with 30-core GPU. and 64GB M3 Max with 40-core GPU.
Problem is until I start using it I don't know which one would be better for my use case (coding with AI processing of documents)..
We can all see that the police operate double standards. You can get arrested for tweeting something allegedly transphobic or saying a copper looks like a lesbian nan, but stand outside the Israeli embassy calling for “jihad! Jihad! Jihad!”
and suddenly “jihad” is a “complex nuanced word with multiple meanings” so no one will get arrested
I mean: fuck off. It’s arrant hypocrisy and total double standards and Braverman is right. On this point
Should keep: 22% (Con 2019 voters: 48%)
Should sack: 49% (Con 2019 voters: 31%)
Don't know: 29% (Con 2019 voters: 21%)
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1722995360547717503
https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/all/why-mustjews-watch-their-backs-as-london-mobs-cheer-4yZAP0kooJPNm2duxrcfsG
Like, you’re ‘antiwoke’ to a degree verging on deranged and this in itself is not unusual. Many on the right of politics are like that. Eg on here there’s Casino Royale, famously. Could anybody be in more of a lather about ‘woke’ than he is? Not really.
But there’s a difference between you and (eg) him. The reason he (CR) can’t stand ‘woke’ is he thinks it makes everything about race, which is counterproductive and racist in itself. I think it’s a bad take myself but there’s no question he’s sincere. You call tell he is because other than in discussions about ‘woke’ he never mentions race. He doesn’t think it’s a factor in anything, and if it is it shouldn’t be, so you don’t find him banging on about it. Same with lots of other antiwokies.
You otoh fulminate about woke yet are noticeably *interested* in race as a differentiator of people. I gave just a few of many many examples. You are fascinated by race and all things racial. So that's an interesting juxta to me. Antiwoke to the point of high colour and frothing yet counterintuitively combined with a keen interest in race as a driver of human history, all the way from year dot to the world we live in today. By all means try and explain this to me if you wish (although you don't have to).
He was beaten up on the way to work and had his bike thrown in the river.
He and other managerial staff had to arm themselves with iron bars and stand in a corridor (and I quote) 'so they could only come at us one at a time'.
All he was doing by working was preventing the mine from falling out of service. It was eventually closed but not as early as it would have if he hadn't been there.
The police were necessary. Did they need to charge the mob with horses? Arguable. But they did not start the violence.
Remember also that someone had a lump of concrete dropped on their car just for trying to do their job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_David_Wilkie
As I say, in previous moral climates you’d have been good - in a self congratulatory way - at sniffing out secret gays, or clandestine Jews, or Hollywood communists, or stealthy Freemasons, or actual witches. It is exactly the same mindset - you can somehow subconsciously tell when someone is “a bit off”. Go for it
- Extra: "What about the Doctor and Jo?"
- The Master: "They won't survive the blast" (moves to press Big Switch)
- Brigadier: "No" (stays his hand)
- The Master (dramatic zoom to close-up): "Either we destroy Axos or Axos destroys the world! Which is it to be, Brigadier?"
- (Big Switch is thrown. Jo screams. Titles, end music. Breeee-yowww, dum-ti-dum..)
16:50pm*Medical students had jokes about him and his ability to declare that *everything* was natural causes.
Authorities in at least five states were Thursday night investigating suspicious letters mailed to election offices. The letters, at least one of which contained fentanyl, forced evacuations and in some cases temporarily disrupted ballot counting after Tuesday’s elections.
Secretaries of state in Nevada, California, Washington, Georgia and Oregon all confirmed that election offices in their states had received the letters and said law enforcement, including the FBI, is investigating the matter. . . .
At a news conference Thursday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) confirmed that his office was alerted Wednesday to a letter containing fentanyl that was sent to election offices in Fulton County [Atlanta], Ga.
Raffensperger, who lost his son to a fentanyl overdose five years ago, called the incident “domestic terrorism.” . . .
Both Raffensperger and Fulton County have been the subject of former President Donald Trump’s ire in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. Raffensperger refused Trump’s demand to “find” enough votes in the state to overturn his defeat. And Trump faces federal charges brought in Fulton County alleging he participated in a criminal conspiracy to illegally overturn his 2020 loss. . . .
The envelope’s contents in at least one instance included a page that said “END ELECTIONS NOW” along with images of a progress Pride flag, a pentagram and an anti-fascist symbol. The message also warned the recipient to “STOP GIVING POWER TO THE RIGHT THAT THEY DON’T HAVE,” saying, “WE ARE IN CHARGE NOW AND THERE IS NO MORE NEED FOR THEM.”
Authorities have not named any suspects, and while the symbols in the letter are associated with left-leaning politics, the political leanings of the sender or senders remain unclear.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber (D) confirmed Thursday that two suspicious envelopes on their way to election facilities in Los Angeles and San Francisco were intercepted by the U.S. Postal Service.
The Nevada secretary of state’s office also said in a statement Thursday that “federal authorities alerted Nevada authorities of suspicious letters addressed to elections . . .”
The Washington secretary of state’s office said in a news release that envelopes containing “unknown powdery substances” were received by elections offices in King [Seattle], Pierce [Tacoma], Skagit [Mount Vernon] and Spokane [Ditto] counties. Elections workers in each county evacuated their offices. . . .
In Oregon, the secretary of state’s office confirmed that Lane [Eugene] County received a suspicious letter Wednesday. . . .
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/suspicious-letters-sent-to-elections-offices-in-at-least-five-states/
SSI - IMHO the lefty messages are rightwing disinformation, similar to Putinist agents splashing antisemitic graffiti about and letting Hamas/Arabs/Muslims take the rap.
This is one of the most depressing facts of the Gaza conflict. Elements on both sides have dehumanised the other. They regard each other as
lower than human, thereby justifying barbaric cruelty
I realised this when I noticed how wrong the media were on issues that I knew well. Checking with several other people, they said the same thing but about different issues that they knew well.
I think it is the insatiable demand for content that drives this in most cases. Not bad intentions. The journalists, under time pressure, do what CHAT-GPT does.
They research on the internet and then create an attention grabbing convincing story. And we lap it up.
Anyway I can see you don't wish to do any self-audit in response to my observations right now. Fair enough. It's Friday night. We can always come back to it.
I knew I'd regret posting anything on this subject, and so it transpires.
But when deciding whether or not to ban a march, the operational assessment is by law a matter for the police.
In this case, the Home Secretary appears to be trying to second guess that decision before the event.
By all means criticise the police for the way they do their job - but if you're Home Secretary, you actually have powers to address what you see as deficiencies in police leadership. Performative bollocks in the pages of the national press aren't a good substitute for that.
Palestinian death toll in Gaza now exceeds 11,000 (including 4,500 children).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Israel–Hamas_war
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-67382388
Pence. Stones.
A pennyweight.
A pint. A gill. A peck.
Two shillings and a guinea.
There you: traditional British values.
I’m fascinated by your skill. Apparently a humble
retired accountant who never travels further than Bruges - and yet gifted with a sixth sense, like a kind of wise woman, or a Dominican Inquisitor, or a gestapo Jew-finder tapping walls in voided ghettoes, listening for the tell tale echo of secret rooms
The fact is that the Israelis have killed somewhere north of 10k Palestinians including 5k kids and there are people who think that that's not on and want to protest about it. Just because some other people are wrong uns doesn't invalidate their legitimate rights to peaceful protest. Watching the "free speech" massive frothing about this is fucking hilarious though so please carry on.
The scale of fatalities in the first couple of weeks remains, assuming the numbers are broadly accurate, hard to fathom. It clearly came about from civilians being in proximity to IDF targets and not able to flee. The moral debate is then about whether this was because of indiscriminate bombing, or the deliberate use and trapping by Hamas of civilians as human shields. Or a mixture of both.
You live and learn.
That's two excellent exemplars of fuck around/find out today.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67377140
The only one who could outmatch SJS in that department would be Fay Wray.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwawiQLsPe0
This virulent racist spotting of yours comes down to your uncertain place in society. Northern boy made good, ended up in the City, Hampstead, wealth beyond compare with where you came from. This puts you in limbo as you are out of your depth in the more sophisticated discussions of race, class, wealth of your current environment including on PB.
Because what you left behind what might have been, who knows, racism, sexism, whatnot, you are now virulently overcompensating. Sniffing out racism here, social injustice there, but you are not quite sure how it all works because you come from a simpler milieu.
This, sadly, renders your analysis worthless on these matters and the supercilious, superior tone you adopt is simply amusing. You are trying too hard because none of it comes naturally.
Apart from on Trump, where I think you are great, and you are my go-to source of common sense on transgender issues where again you speak perhaps the most sense on the board.
But for goodness sake don't let that stop you commenting in particular your arch response to this very post which I look forward to. Or not, if you can't be bothered. But I think you can.
It's not for the police to make moral judgments - but it certainly is their job to enforce the law.
If PB has any overall bias it is genuinely towards free speech (apart from the worst Wokesters) - we are, on the whole, a democratic and mildly libertarian bunch
If I have missed a march-banner, I apologise
It's how it rolls - if you try and exclude people from your match, their message doesn't get overlaid on yours. If you let them come along, then you will run the risk that their message gets taken as your message.
Indeed on a par with January 6 in Washington. An attempt to cancel democracy
Actually I know the answer. Yes, the Americans of course.
How many farthings to a crore?
Having an organised non-violent demonstration is not an attempt to cancel democracy.
Cancelling democracy involves things like getting an idiot with a silly tassel on his hat to fire a gun in to the ceiling of the Spanish Parliament.
Or an armed, violent, militant Jamiroquai tribute act to invading the premises when you are trying to chose a President - with the avowed intention of killing the people voting against your favourite
If I carry a banner saying, "I support Israel", does that mean I am agreeing with Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich? Or Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir? Both of whom seem pretty keen on "From the River to the Sea", only with the Palestinians removed rather than the Jews.
I think the majority of people - and I'd include myself in this - think Israel has the right to go into Gaza to recover its hostages, and to remove the threat from Hamas. At the same time, it's possible to deplore the behaviour of the current Israeli government towards the Palestinians in the West Bank, and those (who are government ministers) who seem to be pretty keen on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the area.
As have others on the site today
That’s an explicit acknowledgment of the effect on British Jews
The sad thing is that the people of Gaza deserve a march in their defence. They are dying in their thousands. But the worst people are involved in that defence
https://inews.co.uk/news/robert-jenrick-stops-charity-asylum-seekers-clothes-legal-help-migrant-centres-2743912
If you come for the queen we will stand in the way, say party rightwingers"
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/suella-braverman-home-secretary-sacked-tories-times-article-scrlcrdq7
Although I will gladly take the compliment bit. If that's right that you gain enjoyment and enlightenment from my Trump and Trans posts (far more of the former than the latter these days as you've no doubt noticed) then I take real pleasure in knowing that and it's kind of you to tell me.
Who would ever have voted again?
It would have been utterly catastrophic and likely have ended in violence. Thank god Boris won and got it done. British democracy lives on
It's almost as if people think they have the right to change their minds, and to try and change other peoples minds. Or some sick shit like that.
As for Brexit, do I sometimes wonder about the rights and wrongs of pushing for a second referendum? Yes, occasionally. But then I remember a. it was a narrow vote in the first place, b. Brexiteers themselves had proposed 2 referendums as an option before the first vote, c. it wasn't exactly turning out how it had been promised in the first referendum, and crucially d. nobody was proposing to drop Brexit without either a referendum or a general election. In the end it came down to a general election, the ultimate expression of the will of the people. And get Brexit done won, for better or worse.
If you support Israel then yes you absolutely do have to take some responsibility for the West Bank settlements. Responsibility is the wrong word. You or I don't have any input into what Israel does but if you carry that banner then you are agreeing with government policy.
I think we can exclude those two Israeli politicians because when I was a member of the Conservative Party there were still the Bill Cashes and other loons but that isn't the government. The West Bank is the government.
I think the term "ethnic cleansing" is half right and half wrong btw. Half right because they are getting rid of non-Jews because they believe that the land is Jewish. Half wrong because the Israeli government isn't enacting a wholesale policy of ridding the West Bank of Arabs. Or that would have happened.
Winston fan so many times I almost agreed with
him after my 20th denial!
I’m sure I don’t know what he was trying to imply
But yes absolutely you are a super-valued poster, not just on those two issues of course, just that sometimes it is useful for all of us (even moi if you can believe that) to have the curtain pulled back on ourselves to remind us who we really are.
Edit: and no charge, save for a swift half in a lovely little bar I know not so far from you that you may not be aware of.
The right thing to do, in hindsight (but Cameron was too short sighted to think beyond the Brexit vote) would have been to plan for 2 referendums from the outset, one on the principle and a second on the specifics of the deal. That's how the Swiss would have run it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00vd5bt/doctor-who-19631996-season-12-the-sontaran-experiment-part-1
Conservatives can probably safely entertain the notion of him being a member of, perhaps even campaigner for, their party but if they hope to be large enough to be a potential governing party then Farage as leader is simply not the answer.
(a) claim it was only advisory, then
(b) agitate for another go by refusing to vote for any deal agreed with the EU