Monday, May 04, 2009 

Just one fucking thing after another.

Back Brown or boost BNP, says Kinnock. You really would have thought that a former Labour leader would know that the one thing you do not do is tell people that you have to back someone otherwise someone worse will triumph, not only because it's the politics of desperation and an intellectually bankrupt scare tactic, but because most people when told what to do, especially by those in authority, will be even more likely to do the opposite.

Almost equally ludicrous is today's Guardian leader on the government's connected woes, which calls Hazel Blears an "authentic Labour voice". She's about as authentic a Labour voice as Nick Griffin is. It doesn't read like a typical Graun leader, giving the impression that someone's filling in over the bank holiday weekend, and filling in exceptionally badly. It says that Stephen Byers, Charles Clarke, David Blunkett and Hazel Blears are not part of an "undifferentiated Blairite plot", and they probably aren't. They are however, with the possible exception of Clarke, who cooled on Blair after he sacked, either ardent or moderate Blairites, and Blears is quite possibly the summation of everything wrong with New Labour. That she now also seems to consider herself as the voice of New Labour's conscience and feels the need to stick the knife in, as that is clearly what her Observer article yesterday did, also seems to suggest that she is becoming even more certain of herself and her eminent greatness.

Blears, sadly, has a majority of almost 8,000, meaning her seat is likely to remain safe, although the way things are going who knows what sort of carnage might occur this time next year. Then again, even if she was culled, she'd doubtless be replaced with an equally loathsome Tory. Sometimes politics feels a bit like history as described by Alan Bennett: it's just one fucking thing after another.

I was also intending to post on the Daily Mail's latest HUMAN RIGHTS OUTRAGE, namely that lawyers are daring to appeal against someone's conviction, but Mr Vowl has beaten me to it, so I shall direct you there instead.

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5/04/2009 09:36:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 

Let's not have horrible double standards, shall we?

Exciting as it is having a list of British National Party members available at our fingertips, no one, perhaps with the exception of the serving police officer, who might well have already left the group, should lose their job as a result of being a member of a completely legal if highly unpleasant political party.

We ought to bear in mind what we would be saying and thinking if instead of a list of BNP members, it had in fact been a comprehensive list of convicted paedophiles that had been leaked. While most of us would probably have looked at it, just as we have the BNP list, we would be disgusted and deeply worried at the prospect and potential of vigilantes taking the law into their own hands. The chances, it has to be said, of mobs converging on the doorsteps of individual members of the party are rather low, but some are already reporting emails and abuse over the telephone. Amusing as it might be that Nick Griffin and Richard Barnbrook might be getting some sort of comeuppance for their rabble-rousing over the years against vulnerable communities by having their personal phone numbers exposed, what is not amusing is elderly individuals completely harmless to anyone but who have unreconstructed political views receiving the same treatment.

Similarly unacceptable is the Guardian publishing Google Maps, or at least the original one directly pinpointing where some live. Would they be doing the same were this a list of paedophiles? Very doubtful. It doesn't matter that no personal actual information is being disclosed, or that's it not detailed enough to pinpoint any particular individual, although a lone member in a town/village is clearly visible, it's still not the sort of depth we ought to descend to. Only slightly less objectionable is the "heat" map now up, which tells us precisley nothing really that we didn't already know: the BNP's major strongholds, outside Barking and Dagenham, are above the Midlands. The numbers in Wales are the only slight surprise.

The other thing this is doing, apart from severely embarrassing the party's leadership, is giving them the kind of press attention and media access which they can usually only dream of. Instead of being disastrous for them, if they get a sympathy vote (difficult to imagine I realise), and they're already playing on this being down to their imminent success at the polls, not the disgruntled worker, then it may have the opposite effect on the party's fortunes. Less members yes, but more anonymous donations potentially also. Whilst the one thing we should be doing is taking on the BNP in debate, we shouldn't allow this to turn into them getting a free-run, which is what it looks like becoming. All the more reason to shut this down now and instead target the party's policies rather than its actual membership.

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11/19/2008 04:11:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, November 18, 2008 

BNP paralysis.

Flying round the internet much like the identity of Baby P's abusers is now also the full membership list for the last year at least of the British National Party (not being linked to here for exactly the same reasons). Schadenfreude is rather understandably the dish of the day, and when it contains not just the home phone number of a certain N. Griffin but also the mobile phone number of one of his (activist) offspring, it looks like being a rather embarrassing few days for the party, which had otherwise been gearing itself up for a renewed fight in next year's European elections, as well as producing such cutting edge documents as "racism cuts both ways".

More pertinently, it's probably going to result in a good few people losing their jobs, although a quick look down the list suggests that there's just the one police officer currently an actual member of the party, although the number of teachers listed is far greater. The police is the one organisation I think where vigilance of members of extremist political parties is justified, although some will doubtless also not be best pleased by having fascists teaching their children.

Typically, as it often is with groups on both the far-left and far-right, this information has not been leaked as a result of the party being infiltrated either by a journalist, like the Guardian managed towards the end of 2006 which resulted in the fact that the ballerina Simone Clarke was a member coming to light (she's listed this time round too, although having split with her Chinese-Cuban partner and now married/engaged to Richard Barnbrook that's hardly surprising) or by the police or security services, but rather by a disgruntled former employee/member, of which the BNP has many. The real point is that many for obvious reasons want to keep their membership of such organisations secret, and not just necessarily because of the hassle they would receive at work were their political predilections to become known. As a result, this has the potential to severely damage the BNP - after all, why would you join a party which can't stop such information from entering the public domain? While it's far too early to suggest that this might be the nail in its coffin, it's surely the kind of blow which is bound to lead even more splits, and the further fragmentation of the far-right in this country, which can only be a good thing.

P.S. The comments on the NorthWestNationalists blog are just too good to miss.

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11/18/2008 11:57:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, November 26, 2007 

The fear of freedom of speech.

There's something truly depressing about witnessing the massive hoo-hah over Nick Griffin and David Irving being invited to address the Oxford Union, especially when much of the noise is being made by those supposedly on the left. One is a discredited and ignorant politician; the other is a discredited and prejudiced historian who has in the past offered something towards the historical debate, whilst also grossly exaggerating that which he has submitted. There ought to be very little that either could offer up that could convince a child, let alone a debating society of students.

Instead then we have according to the Guardian the usual braindead anti-fascists, the same ones no doubt that protested outside the National Theatre back in January over the "BNP ballerina" gatecrashing the event and making their opinions heard. There's the usual nonsense about fears for the safety of students, when it seems if anything that the protesters and media presence will impose more on those wanting to go out than any BNP thugs.

The whole situation only highlights the hypocrisy at the very centre of the "no platform" orthodoxy. Both Griffin and Irving claim to be stifled by political correctness and those who deny them the opportunity to put their views across; the solution to which is to do the very thing that they most want. The BNP and Holocaust deniers feed off their victim and outsider status, making their message to those it does appeal to only more attractive, and their fundamental supporters only more embittered and angry. If their views were truly beyond the pale it would be more palatable, yet Griffin's racism is far toned down from that which previously fired the National Front, even if the foot-soldiers are still as knuckle-dragging and Hitler obsessed as ever, while Irving admits the Holocaust happened but like many others of a similar ilk disputes the figures. Both of their positions are eminently spurious, and also easy to attack and defeat through open argument. Even if the Oxford Union's reasons are publicity seeking and looking for controversy for the sake of it, to take on their views ought to be one of the obligations of any generally democratic society.

My admiration for Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP who unlike others has said he will stand up and debate both then only grows, especially after his demolition of the scientific illiteracy of Nadine Dorries and the faith-based prejudices of those who gave evidence to the parliamentary committee on abortion. Trevor Phillips, on the other hand, who for a head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has said some questionable things himself, bizarrely invokes those who died for freedom of speech while suggesting that they didn't do so for the sake of a "silly parlour game", as though debating two prominent figures, even if controversial ones was somehow akin to playing charades.

The most obvious question which arises is: what on earth are they so scared of? Anyone would think that Griffin and Irving's oratory and rhetoric was so revelatory and convincing that those who so much as heard it would be straight off to Germany to buy some jackboots. The opposite is nearer the truth. At best, the majority of the anti-fascist left and their no platform ideology are doing the far-right's work for them, while at worst they're evoking the McCarthyism of 50s in America in their virulence in denying fascists any speaking engagements, and in some cases even work. You could almost accept it if the far-right were in a position of strength: yet even in an age of unprecedented immigration their incompetence once in council seats shines through, and although the vagaries of the electoral system count against them as it does the far left, they can't so much as come near winning a single seat in parliament. Compared to movements in mainland Europe, the BNP is a grim rump of true believers.

It is a cliche, but Voltaire's famous quote, which he naturally never actually wrote or said, sums up the attitude that ought to taken to almost all figures as long as they're not advocating imminent violence: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." The cowardice displayed by those who pulled out of tonight, and those stopping the event from going ahead, even if highly principled, makes a mockery of a sentiment that should be at the centre of our stance on freedom of speech.

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11/26/2007 09:33:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, August 07, 2007 

Stating the obvious.

From today's Grauniad letters page:

Facebook should immediately terminate all BNP-related pages and groups from its site, which is used by millions of young people of all backgrounds (Firms pull Facebook ads, August 3). The pages are in clear breach of the Facebook users' terms and conditions, as they contain racist and Islamophobic material. We welcome the action by Vodafone, First Direct and other advertisers which pulled their advertising from Facebook.
Gemma Tumelty
National Union of Students
Denis Fernando
Unite Against Fascism
Milena Buyum
National Assembly Against Racism
Lee Billingham
Love Music Hate Racism

Christ, the BNP page contains racist and Islamophobic material? There I was thinking that it would be promoting how all of us can live together in harmony without resorting to basing our prejudices on the colour of each other's skin. Whatever next? cumfiesta.com celebrating the unique festival where participants compete to see who can ejaculate the most, rather than showcasing this week's video where another naive, misguided teenager gets paid for debasing both herself and those who've paid to watch it? goatse.cz giving advice on what to do if you suffer an anal prolapse rather than just presenting a photograph of a man demonstrating exactly what happens?

Has it ever possibly occurred to the idiots in charge of these decent if at times counter-productive groups that the very fact that the British National Party has such material on its Facebook page is likely to make those who visit it without much knowledge of the party come to their own conclusions? They'd rather reach straight for the ban hammer instead of exposing that information for what it is, a pack of knuckle-dragging lies. The not getting it just doesn't seem to end.

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8/07/2007 07:48:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, August 03, 2007 

The Facebook fascists and those adverts.

Reading the news stories about major firms pulling their advertising from Facebook because it happens to appear on the British National Party's profile, just as it does on everyone else's, I was instantly reminded of Oliver Burkeman's amusing piece on silly season stories in yesterday's Grauniad:

August 18

New website is latest online sensation

A brightly coloured new website has become enormously popular with teenagers because it allows them to perform a fairly mundane aspect of their lives - such as discussing music, or shouting abuse at others - via the internet. The website has 230 million members in Britain alone, but some critics are worried that it could be used by bad people. It was designed by some Americans, and is estimated to be worth approximately £1bn. Celebrity members include David Miliband.


It really is a complete non-story and a typical overreaction by advertising firms/companies scared shitless that somehow the fact that their annoying banner ads appear on a profile advocating a legitimate if despicable political party will make the average idiot browsing Facebook think that they support them. It's condescending and ignorant by all measures - assuming that you can't work out that the ads are across the site rather than on just one page, and imbecilic on the behalf of the companies themselves - surely they realised that like on all of these sites that dip into the nether region of hell which is the human psyche, there are some profiles that are bound to be offensive or distasteful to some individual somewhere?

In fact, to be fair to them, it isn't entirely their fault. This is one of the only regions where the allegations of political correctness could possibly be considered plausible, based on the activities of a good number of the organisations opposed to the likes of the BNP. Rather than wanting to engage, challenge them and expose their lies, they instead try to institute a sort of boycott, denying them the right to both speak and be heard, in some cases almost pretending that they don't even exist. This is just the sort of contempt for the "average" person that the BNP loves to focus on; like some of those who support the actions of the takfiri jihadis, they thrive on a sense of false victimhood, claiming their right to freedom of expression is being denied by the liberal elite. It's complete and utter nonsense, as reading almost any tabloid will quickly expose you to just the sort of hate and misinformation which the BNP preaches, but it also has a ring of truth to it. The perfect example of how not to go about tackling the BNP was made by those who decided to protest outside the theatre where the "BNP ballerina" Simone Clarke performed back in January, when she hadn't done anything whatsoever to promote the party other than defending herself in an interview after she was exposed as a member. Shouting empty slogans against a misguided woman's political beliefs was little short of cowardly, not to say counter-productive.

Advertisers and companies are notoriously fickle when it comes to any possibility that their precious little brand might be affected by a controversy, and Vodafone may have a point when they say they don't want to support any political party, but it's still grandstanding over something incredibly petty. If I could be bothered enough to sign up to Facebook, I could probably find profiles representing things far more potentially offensive than a racist political party in a matter of minutes, doubtless with the same adverts appearing on those pages as on those of the profiles of middle class young people and aging politicos desperate to get down with the kids that infest the site.

In any case, do people really still browse the internet without an ad blocker? The other day mine stopped working for some reason and the sheer offensiveness of the deluge of ads which swamp you upon visiting almost any site is enough to make you want to extract your own teeth with a pair of rusty pliers than have to put up with them for more than a matter of seconds. If you're using Firefox and don't have an adblocking extension, go and install Adblock Plus and then subscribe to the EasyList and EasyElement filter sets, and you'll be unlikely to see the vast majority of ads ever again.

As for the British National Party, doubtless they'll again be delighted with getting yet more publicity because their views are regarded as beyond the pale. They indeed are, but you don't fight back against them by acting as if everyone who thinks they might have a point is an idiot. The more people think they are being victimised purely because of their political views, the more they'll be able to recruit from the similarly disaffected.

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8/03/2007 07:04:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, July 31, 2007 

Bomb bomb UK!

After two trials, with the juries in both cases failing to reach a verdict, Robert Cottage has finally been sentenced after he pleaded guilty to possessing explosives. A collection of explosive chemicals which were, according to the initial police statement, the largest haul they'd ever seized from a house. Oh, and did I mention that Cottage, by his own admission, had ordered and stored these chemicals because he believed a race war was imminent due to immigration? Rather than using them to make the sort of bombs that explode and slam white hot pieces of shrapnel into those unlucky enough to be in the vicinity's bodies, severing limbs, decapitating heads and generally causing a nuisance, Cottage instead planned to use his chemicals to create bangers which would cause flashes, and scare off any of the rampaging brown/black/Polish people running about looting. Or at least that's what his lawyers argued. Given that the prosecution, according to Postman Patel, admitted that only a "squib" could be produced from his stockpile, he may well be telling the truth. In an age in which innocent brothers get shot and smeared for looking a bit dodgy and possibly having bombs which spray out poison though, it all looks a little like double standards.

The judge, probably more because he pleaded guilty than anything else, took Cottage at his word. I quote:

"I am satisfied it was Cottage's views on how he put it 'the evils of uncontrolled immigration' would lead to civil war which would be imminent and inevitable.

"I accept the intention was to hold these chemicals until the outbreak of civil unrest. That was a criminal and potentially dangerous act.

In other words, he was certainly not the next David Copeland. Remember that. Would it be too cynical to think that if Cottage had brown skin and was called Mohammad that the judge might not have accepted his excuse? Or indeed, that the media coverage of the initial raid and the trials might have been slightly up the news agenda?

Cottage was sentenced to two and a half years, which is probably about right. As he's already spent 10 months in custody, he may only have to serve another 6 or so months. Tom on BlairWatch goes through how long some other terrorists without any equipment are currently spending at Her Majesty's Pleasure, which again just might put this case into some sort of perspective. Gathering explosive material and planning for a civil war it seems is also less of an offence than spending an afternoon with other ignorant goons shouting stupid, inflammatory slogans. Welcome then to modern Britain.

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7/31/2007 07:23:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, May 24, 2007 

Racist scum act like racist scum.

Both Bob Piper and Ministry of Truth cover the typical sort of behaviour that can be expected of BNP councillors - Simon Smith and Carl Butler, both on Sandwell council, walked out of the meeting when the new mayor, Gurcharan Singh Sidhu, a British citizen for 44 years and a councillor for twenty, was elected, on the spurious grounds that the Magna Carta bans "foreigners" from public office. Nothing to do with Sidhu having brown skin and being a Sikh, then.

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5/24/2007 07:36:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, May 21, 2007 

How to legitimise the BNP.

The British National Party must be delighted with Margaret Hodge. Last year she helped the party to one of its biggest successes in its history, grabbing 11 seats on the Barking and Dagenham council (all in Barking, which seems appropriate) after she said they were going to make a major breakthrough - and surprise, surprise, they did, once the media had predictably descended into the area. The party even thanked her personally after their victory, with Richard Barnbrook, the BNP London spokesman commenting that if he'd given her a million pounds he couldn't have asked her to do more.

Yesterday, for reasons known only to herself, she was at it again. In a lecturing Observer article titled "To my fellow immigrants", as Hodge herself was born in Egypt to Jewish parents who were German refugees, she has a go at debating the merits and downsides of migration. Almost inevitably, she stumbled straight into the trap of legitimising one of the BNP's most popular myths: that migrant families are being put before those who have lived here for generations.

We prioritise the needs of an individual migrant family over the entitlement others feel they have. So a recently arrived family with four or five children living in a damp and overcrowded, privately rented flat with the children suffering from asthma will usually get priority over a family with less housing need who have lived in the area for three generations and are stuck at home with the grandparents.

This is to an extent true. Those whose needs are considered greatest are put towards the top of the list for council homes in Barking and Dagenham, in a somewhat recent change from the previous scheme by the council. When it actually comes down to this being put into practice however, as the figures produced by Downing Street when questioned about it show, only 1% of lettings in 2005-06 went to foreign nationals, amounting to around 1,100 homes in a year.

The damage though is already done. As Hodge should well know, the media and the BNP both love to pounce on any potential playing of the race card, and when a minister says something along the lines of immigrants are getting all the bloody houses and this has got to be stopped, however crude an extrapolation of her article that is, it's the proverbial manna from heaven. The item on tonight's Ten O'Clock News couldn't have provided a better piece of propaganda for the party, as the hack interviewed a Polish migrant who could hardly speak English who was eager to get on the council waiting list, then a long time resident in the same circumstances who claimed that he'd on the list for 11 years who'd been informed it was all down to the immigrants by the BNP councillor, followed by Richard Barnbrook, allowed a completely free ride to preach the BNP's usual invective of mistruths. The facts that asylum seekers have no access to council housing and that foreign migrants have very limited access to benefits, with only a tiny number claiming them, as was previously revealed, were strangely absent.

The other point, as has been made, is that New Labour has been utterly woeful at providing new council homes in the first place. With the right to buy being promoted just as much as it was under the Tories, the stock simply hasn't been replaced, leaving families to fight over an ever dwindling amount of places. It's therefore of little surprise that desperate times have called for the desperate measure of instituting whose need is the greatest rather than who has been on the list the longest; as with most grievances, legitimate or otherwise, this is then picked up on and blown out of all proportion for political ends.

Hence the Tory spokesman Damian Green jumping at the chance to say how the Tories would impose an annual limit on migrants, even though it has very little to nothing to do with the housing shortage experienced especially in the south, for which his party shares a decent amount of blame for helping start in the first place. We can expect the press to jump at the opportunity to do the same thing: when Jack Straw made his comments on the veil, within days the Express was screaming to ban it and the Sun was printing lies about non-existent Muslim yobs damaging the homes of soldiers.

As Nancy Kelly of the Refugee Council said, the way to tackle the BNP is not to take their lead. Giving them the opportunity to say I told you so without pointing out their lies, making clear how their councillors fail miserably and that their "solution" is mainly to send 'em all back isn't just stupid, it's suicidal, but it seems that Margaret Hodge has already realised that her political career is at an end, or if it isn't, it should be.

Related posts:
Lenin's Tomb - Labour's racist housing argument
Blood & Treasure - Village wisdom
Pickled Politics - Margaret Hodge’s disgusting duplicity

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5/21/2007 11:12:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, May 03, 2007 

So who the hell do I vote for? Labour it seems...

As I expected, I ended up biting my lip and voting for the local Labour candidate. Yes, I realise that I'm a horrible monster, a hypocrite and that I should be lined up against the wall and shot.

Somewhat related, there's a decent debate on CiF regarding the fortunes of the BNP, with posts by both Daniel Davies and Peter Tatchell.

My own view, somewhat predictably, is split between the two. Davies is right that we shouldn't overstate the BNP's success or otherwise today, but neither should we be complacent about it. Wherever the BNP are standing, they need to be challenged, even if they don't have any chance of winning. Tatchell is right in that the BNP are developing their own spin merchants, re-branding themselves as the acceptable face of the "indigenous" people of Britain, who are being downtrodden by political correctness and pandering to the "ethnics". Incidentally, this is almost the exact same message being preached on a daily basis by the right-wing tabloids, who scream and bleat when this is pointed out to them.

Davies is also correct though in pointing out that the BNP's real foot-soldiers, the hardcore, are weirdos, who believe that the Holocaust never happened, that Hitler and Jesus Christ are comparable and that 9/11 was an inside job. It's also true that the vast majority of them are absolutely hopeless councillors, who in some cases can't even work how to vote correctly.

Tatchell's point that low turnout helps the fascists though is the most apt. If the BNP are standing where you are, then for God's sake go and vote, even if it means plumping for a Tory and a kitten dies as a result. The slogan from the last French election summed it up best: better a crook than a fascist. The next step is to start countering the propaganda from the tabloids which is helping fuel the BNP, but that's for other posts...

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5/03/2007 07:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, February 14, 2007 

Guido and that Grauniad report.

For those of you who are intrigued about the two decades old Guardian story about the blogger Guido Fawkes' alleged dalliance with the BNP when he was a student, then you can read it in full here.

I'm linking to the article in question purely because this blog was previously similarly gagged, as others have been now, when I republished photographs of the News of the World journalist Mazher Mahmood that were already in the public domain. The difference between then and now is that Guido was one of the other blogs that received the same injunction; this time it's Guido that's threatening to send in the lawyers.

I make no comment on the story, and as I previously mentioned, I feel it is wholly unfair and potentially counter-productive to make an issue out of what an individual's politics were when they were a student. I do however think that Guido's behaviour smacks of hypocrisy, and that those who want to read what other blogs have only been allowed to talk about rather than republish should be able to. I was not involved in the setting up of the blog that republishes it, and only found it from reading another blog, one that has only been involved in the periphery of the whole "blog war".

If Guido wishes to provide me with the retraction which he states he has, then I will also be more than happy to reproduce it here, or reconsider my linking to the article.

Update: Guido has since provided me with the letter from David Rose, which in my mind closes this whole issue. I still feel that those who want to read the article should be able to, so the link will remain, but they should do so with the knowledge that David Rose later wrote to Guido and made clear that he had changed his mind about Guido's motives in contacting the BNP. It does not amount to a retraction from the newspaper, but it does as a personal one from the journalist himself. This makes me wonder why Guido has made such an issue out of a story which doesn't have any legs, but that is up to him.

Related posts:
Chicken Yoghurt - The last laugh
Big Stick Small Carrot - Freedom of Information
Ministry of Truth - Knives and Fawkes

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2/14/2007 05:25:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, February 13, 2007 

Comparing and contrasting the ex-BNP bomber and the Koyairs.

In one of those more happy, not conspiratorial coincidences, the release of the second IPCC report in the police raid on the home of the Koyair brothers and their neighbours (PDF) has nicely complimented the guilty plea of Robert Cottage, a former BNP member, who has pleaded guilty to the possession of explosives.

When police raided his house on 28 September 2006 they discovered 21 types of chemicals which, when combined, could form explosives.

Miss Blackwell said they also uncovered a document called the Anarchy Cookbook, which detailed how to make different types of bombs.

Ball bearings - which the prosecution claim could be used as shrapnel for explosive devices - were also found, along with four air pistols.

After interviewing Mr Cottage, detectives raided Mr Jackson's home on 1 October and found a bow and arrow and two nuclear protection suits.


Up until now, the mass media has been almost silent on this discovery, which at the time was referred to by the local media, around the only part of the fourth estate apart from blogs that reported on the raid, as the biggest ever seizure of bomb-making materials from one home in the country.

Before we get into denouncing the double standards of media, knowing full well if it had been Muslims who had been found with such material instead of two white men that it may well have led the news agenda for a couple of days, Rachel makes a number of good points based on her own digging into the story. It simply seems that it passed the media by - if they had known about from the beginning, they would have made something of it. As it happened, the police also initially played down the raids, so it seems only the local media took any interest, and didn't pass it on to their colleagues in the national press.

The one thing that grates though is the fact that the police seem to have accepted that Cottage was not planning a terrorist attack, and only charged them under the ancient (1883) Explosive Substances Act. Cottage's claim that he believed civil war was coming, a belief similar to those held by extreme-right survivalist militias in the United States, and that he was keeping explosives ready for it, shouldn't be allowed to wash. You can't imagine Islamist extremists getting away with such an excuse in court, nor would the tabloids allow them to.

At least in the case of Cottage and his friend David Jackson, justice seems likely to be done. When it comes to the Koyair brothers, their family and their neighbours, they will go on waiting. While today's second IPCC report is not a whitewash, and is far more critical of the police operation in Forest Gate than Scotland Yard are admitting, as Martin Kettle points out, it still leaves a good few questions. The main one surrounds the intelligence that triggered the raid in the first place. The report says (image because the report doesn't allow text copying for some reason):


As the intelligence has only been provided on a confidential basis, unless it happens to be leaked, it seems we're destined to never know for sure just exactly what the police were expecting to find other than a "highly dangerous explosive device" or a "remote-controlled chemical bomb". The media reports at the time were similarly unsure of what it was the police were looking for. The Daily Mail and Times suggested it was a suicide vest that would also have sprayed out poison, the Sunday Express screamed "ANTHRAX TERROR BOMB HUNT", while the News of the Screws, in the same story that wrongly claimed that one of the brothers had shot the other, reported that it was an "explosive device designed to spray out deadly cyanide".

If the police had been willing to be truly open, they would have released the intelligence in full, with any details which could have identified the source censored. Instead we have to take the IPCC's word for it that the intelligence was both believable and so troubling that it necessitated a raid that was brutal in its execution. It's also worth considering this initial Grauniad report that suggested there had been two months of surveillance before the raid -- how in two months did they not realise that this was an ordinary family with nothing to hide who have since been treated abysmally?

There are also contradictions between the evidence given by the officer identified as hitting Hanif, one of the residents of the adjacent house to the one owned by the Koyair family, and his own account of what happened. Hanif contends that he was hit with the butt of the officer's gun as soon as the police entered the room where he had been sleeping -- the officer maintains that Hanif was failing to comply with directions, and he was afraid he was reaching for something under his bed. The officer in any case falls back on the excuse that he was operating in the face of "extreme threat", even though this was a raid carried out in the early hours of the morning, where all the occupants of both houses had been asleep until the police entered, and that he was operating in the property that was raided only because it was believed that both were connected. While the house was owned by the Koyair family, there was no way to gain access to one from inside the other.

The report does mention the leaking and coverage of the raid, but as commenting on such things is outside its remit, doesn't draw any conclusions. It would have been nice for the IPCC to investigate where the leaking came from, but that seems to have been too much to expect. Instead, we have to draw our conclusions, and judging by the way the Murdoch press in particular set out to "get" the Koyair brothers, suggesting that one of them had a criminal record when he did not, that they had a suspiciously large amount money in cash, even though the family had explained they had it because of their religious belief in not using bank accounts which accrue interest, and then finally, and most damagingly, that one of the brother's computers and phones' had child pornography on. When the CPS failed to prosecute and it emerged there were a lot of questions over just how the pornography appeared on the devices, the Sun still persisted, with an officer telling it that "the images were there and a jury should have decided how they get there".

No one disputes that if there is a clear case of public safety being threatened, then such disruptive and potentially personally destructive raids have to take place regardless of such concerns. However, as the report sets out, the police made little to no allowances for the intelligence being incorrect, and the officers acted throughout almost as if they were above the law. The way in which the media were leaked such defamatory and completely inaccurate information shows the contempt in which the men were treated. They were guilty until proved innocent, and it seems that the police were so determined to find something to use against them that they may have even turned to planting child pornography, something which cannot be proved, but in the circumstances of the operation cannot be easily dismissed as being laughable or conspiratorial.

One can only hope that the recommendations of the report are taken on board. That the events of the last couple of weeks seem to have repeated history, only this time with the Home Office coming under suspicion for the leaking, and with a number of the men accused of terrorism being charged, certainly doesn't inspire confidence in either the police or government to restrain themselves when dealing with such sensitive operations.

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2/13/2007 07:15:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, November 11, 2006 

One man's racist, another man's freedom fighter...

Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, aryanised.


Nick Griffin is a cunt.

Right, that's the ad hominem attack out of the way. Nick Griffin's acquittal yesterday on charges of inciting racial hatred was the entirely right decision by the jury at Leeds Crown Court. While Griffin is a vicious, distasteful jumped-up little racist, his remarks, especially when taken in the context of his speech as a whole, were not inciting hatred, nor were they particularly even that offensive, especially when compared to the benchmark set by the vast majority of BNP supporters who post on forums such as Stormfront. His description of Islam as a wicked, vicious faith is sadly a view that is becoming mainstream, helped on its way by the constant rantings of the mad Melanie Philips' of this world. As for Britain being a "multi-racial hell hole", that is again his opinion, a completely wrong one, but one that should never be criminalised.

More offensive and gratuitous than Griffin's comments were those by his partner in crime on the night on which he was being filmed by a undercover BBC journalist. Mark Collett, a former student at Leeds University, described asylum seekers as "cockroaches", but said that he hated this country's politicians more because they let them come in. He then ended his reactionary oratory by saying "let's show these ethnics the door in 2004." Again though, while describing those seeking shelter here from torture, death and repression as "cockroaches" is the politics of the sewer, it should not be illegal, nor should it be regarded as inciting racial hatred. His closing remarks are closer to that definition, and could potentially be regarded as a call to violence, but again this would have to be comprehensively proved, which the prosecution failed to do.

I find it sickening that I actually agree with the British National Party, but they are entirely right in calling the two trials a huge waste of taxpayer's money. It was enough in the first place that the BBC exposed the BNP for what it is: a degenerate, racist party of political opportunists, ex-criminals and skinheads, that despite its slick new PR and spin is still teetering on the edge of fascism. There was no reason at all for Nick Griffin and Collett to be put on trial, potentially martyring them in the process for speaking out against the imagined "politically correct" consensus, let alone for them to be prosecuted twice. All it has achieved, as Griffin has stated, is an increase in publicity for them. Whether it's true that they've had an increase in membership and donations is more questionable, as some have been suggestingthat the party could actually be close to bankruptcy.

Even more pathetic has been the response of New Labour to the failure to convict Griffin. Seemingly ignoring the jury's decision, Lord Falconer somehow convinced himself that speaking twaddle such as this was necessary:
What is being said to young Muslim people in this country is that we as a country are anti-Islam, and we have got to demonstrate without compromising freedom that we are not."

According to Falconer then, we have to restrict free speech in order to not compromise freedom. Can he honestly believe such stupidity, or are Labour trying to make up for their own Muslim bashing of late by now changing sides once again?

Some have naturally compared Griffin's acquittal with the conviction of Mizanur Rahman, one of those who took part in the Danish cartoons protest organised by al-Ghruaba in February, who said that soldiers should be brought back from Iraq in body bags, as well as calling for terrorist attacks against Europe. The difference is, as many have been pointing out on the Comment is Free thread, that Rahman openly called for violence. Neither Griffin or Collett did that. While Rahman may have apologised, as we all know, it's incredibly easy to regret something once you've been caught. Whether he genuinely does or not is another matter. As someone also remarks, Rahman might not be a terrorist, but he is an idiot. Griffin and Collett on the other hand, are not idiots. They know exactly what they're doing, and they frame their speeches so that they don't breach any of our highly restrictive laws.

Rather than coming up with yet more new laws, Labour should realise that they are as just as much of the problem as they are the solution. Reid's bullshitting over brainwashing, the constant linking of Muslims with terrorism and the demands that Muslims as a whole denounce the terrorism committed by 4 of those who professed to follow Islam have all been constants over the last few months. This is playing purely into the BNP's hands. Their shift towards attacking Muslims, while peppering their rhetoric with SWP-type working-class solidarity is already working in some areas. If Labour is to compete with this, it has to expose their arguments as false, opportunistic and deeply unpleasant. At the moment they are failing, and their own political bankruptcy is showing. Making their speeches illegal would only increase their totally false sense of grievance, to steal a statement of Blair's.

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11/11/2006 07:47:00 PM | | | links to this post

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