David T of Harry’s Place is being sued by George Galloway and one of Mr. Galloway’s collegues, Kevin Ovenden. They are demanding £50,000 for a comment left on another blog. The comment he made wasn’t nice or correct, but as Richard Bartholomew put it:

The legal threat seems to me to be badly conceived. I’m sure that Galloway and Overden are against the anti-Jewish hadith in Hamas Covenant, but while it’s there anyone who meets a Hamas governmental official risks being tarnished by association. Blame Hamas for that. And of course it’s annoying when a political opponent extrapolates a supposedly logical chain from one’s activities or position to the conclusion that in some deeper “objective” sense one is in fact supporting something else, but that’s life and to be allowed to do it is essential to public debate.

A lot of people have a lot of criticisms to make of David T and Harry’s Place. Fine. However, it is irrelevant in this context. The comment was clearly a joke, and should in no way be the cause of a libel action. Bloggers are only able to operate because of a modicum of freedom of speech, and for every frivolous libel action we fail to stand against, our future as bloggers becomes that bit grimmer.

In the midst of the current hysteria surrounding the internet and children, and given the tragic murder of Ashleigh Hall; the Mail obviously thought it would be a good time to tap into the fear of thousands of ‘predators’ posing online. Facebook in particular has come under attack as unfortunately it was the site where Ashleigh Hall first met her killer.

Dr Aisha Gill in the comments highlights a 2007 speech by Gita Sahgal entitled: Negotiating Scylla and Charybdis – Human rights and terrorism. It is a good, no nonsense summary of the impact of both terrorism and counter-terrorism on human rights:

Yet states counter-terrorism measures do little to defend and protect people’s customary pleasures or their fundamental right to freedom of expression. Instead, they negotiate away the rights of women and ignore the threat to religious minorities. Many governments in pursuing both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ counter-terrorism, play off one form of religion to control another that they deem to be more dangerous to their current interests. It is a cynical game and it is ultimately self-defeating. Governments, including Western governments have done much to promote organisations as their allies against terrorism against whom there are serious allegations of human rights abuses, which could amount to crimes against humanity. These they have termed ‘moderate Muslim’ groups.

It’s another reminder of why we need organisations like Amnesty and people like Gita Sahgal. The world isn’t overburdened with people and groups who are willing to stand up and document human-rights abuses. Gita Sahgal had some legitimate criticisms to make of Amnesty, but it doesn’t mean that Amnesty is somehow morally bankrupt either. Too many of us felt it necessary to pick sides, including me, which then caused collateral damage to the very causes that both Amnesty and Gita fight for (by shifting attention away from them). Fortunately I was disabused of that need to pick sides by a very wise woman. Amnesty should reinstate Gita, and both should be left to get on with what they do best: championing the rights of the weakest in the world.

The recent guilty verdict for the so-called ‘militant atheist’ Harry Taylor is deeply troubling. Mr Taylor was convicted of the offence of ‘Religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress’, which carries up to a seven year jail term. His crime was to leave cartoons mocking religions and religious people in the airport’s multifaith room. The cartoons included:

One of a priest with a young girl kneeling in front of him and the words: “No, no my child, blow is just a figure of speech”. Another picture depicted the Pope with a condom on his finger, while a further page showed A Dangerous Book For Boys with reference to the Qur’an.

The cartoons included one taken from Danish images of a suicide bomber and another showed a pig excreting sausages labelled “Qur’an”.

All pretty unpleasant. But the most that should have happened was a fine for littering and a ‘don’t come back here again’. To make it an offence is not only wrong, but, unsurprisingly, sets a precedent for future cases. Religion is a personal thing. I don’t go out of my way to mock people’s religious beliefs, but believe that people should be free to do so. People mock my beliefs about, say, the EU, which is fine. It is a point of view, not a child: it doesn’t need protecting. Religion and faith is no different.

Gita Sahgal appeared on NPR Radio’s All Things Considered last Saturday (27/02/10) where Guy Raz gave her a good run for her money. Widney Brown, Senior Director for International Law and Policy AI, was interviewed after Sahgal and explained how essential it is that Amnesty continues to work with Moazzam Begg. Brown also explained that an independent person is reviewing Sahgal’s suspension. Audio and transcript available at the link above.

Sahgal was asked for specific evidence of anything Begg has ‘said or advocated for specifically that would suggest he supports violent jihadism’. The answer given was the usual actions and words of other Cageprisoner members, specifically Asim Qureshi whose words on BBC Newshour are misinterpreted by Sahgal.

Raz went on to say:

But Begg has never said any of these things, I’m wondering if this is just guilt by association. This is someone who has publically said he created a girls school in Afghanistan, he worked to bring to light the abuses of the Taliban in Afghanistan when he was living there as a volunteer.

Sahgal then answers by talking about Begg’s autobiography and her condemnation of Begg because of the titles of the books he sold in his bookshop. This ‘evidence’ obviously makes him a violent jihadi. I just checked on Amazon and they don’t currently stock Defense of the Muslim Lands but they do stock Mein Kampf in several different versions including the ‘official Nazi translation’. Guess that’s them fucked then – the evil fascists should obviously be sent straight to the ghost prisons of Afghanistan!

A couple of weeks ago the Observer reported:

There is little connection between the use of stop and search powers by the Metropolitan police and reductions in knife crime, according to new figures analysed by a leading criminologist.

Professor Marian Fitzgerald says that in the case of one London borough – Southwark – a huge expansion in the use of “section 60″ stop and search powers has actually been accompanied by an increase in knife crime. The section 60 powers under the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act allow the police to search anyone without needing to have grounds for suspicion in a designated area at a specific time where they believe there is threat of serious violence.

In other words the correlation between stop-and-search and reducing knife crime wasn’t clear at all. And this was only reported in the Guardian and the BBC.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) have criticised Britain’s ‘fast track’ asylum system, which has left many victims of human rights abuses unable to present their claims properly:

The 69-page report, “Fast-Tracked Unfairness: Detention and Denial of Women Asylum Seekers in the UK” documents how women asylum seekers with complex claims are being routed into a system designed for much simpler claims. The women are held in detention largely for the UK’s administrative convenience, have very little time to prepare a legal case, and have only a few days to appeal if refused. But the claims often involve such sensitive and difficult issues as sexual violence, female genital mutilation, trafficking, and domestic abuse. There is little time for lawyers or other representatives to build the trust with their clients needed for them to explain their claims or to obtain medical or other evidence needed to verify them.

No asylum system will never be perfect, and will always be open to abuses. There will be people who get sent back who shouldn’t be, and people allowed to stay who don’t really deserve it. But clearly the system isn’t working. There should be more time and help available to these women to present their cases:

Once routed into the fast track, women with complex cases have far too little time to prepare their case, obtain medical or other expert opinions, and establish the credibility of their claims. This is especially true in cases involving rape or abuse, where women may only be able to come forward with relevant information late in the process, or not at all, because they may be traumatized by their experience, frightened by the procedure, or simply embarrassed to tell an official.

Placing women in detention exacerbates the problems. Some of the women have no access to female interpreters, case workers, or medical staff.

HRW have suggested two steps to improve the situation:

# In the suitability guidance note for routing into this system, add complex gender-related persecution claims, such as sexual violence and domestic violence, to the list of “claims unlikely to be accepted into fast track.”

# Clarify the criteria for routing a person through fast track, including the factors that would enable a “quick” decision on a claim.

Seems sensible to me.

Amnesty International, that evil dastardly organisation that doesn’t care for feminists, have just sent out an altert about a Zimbabwean trade unionist under threat. Please help if you can. On the other hand, if you’re going to write asking why they hadn’t mentioned Zimbabwe more times in the last 6 weeks, don’t bother.

… this is one long-running vendetta. This time he attacked “Amnesty International’s disgraceful performance” because it dared to oppose Guantanamo Bay then. They were soooo nasty to Alberto Gonzales. What has that guy ever done wrong?

When I started writing first about the Amnesty / Gita Sahgal / Moazzam Begg controversy I said that many of those taking up Gita Sahgal’s cause were people who actually had an agenda against Amnesty International. As yet she hasn’t even distanced herself from these fruitloops.

Evidence of this is further highlighted in today’s Sunday Times with a statement by Salman Rushdie. This is of course the same newspaper that blatantly misrepresented what Amnesty’s Asia director Sam Zarifi had to say to try and present it as another split.

Salman Rushdie was naturally a big supporter of the Iraq war externally driven regime change in Iraq and ideologically in the same camp as Cohen, Hitchens et al. The man who once said: “The only just cause for a war with Iraq is to liberate its population” – how’s that piece of advice working out for you?

Anyway, Rushdie’s blatant attempt to undermine Amnesty Int is so over-the-top that his mate Norm Geras distance himself from Rushdie’s agenda by saying: “Rushdie wrong about Amnesty“. Oh dear.

Meanwhile, a letter in today’s Observer lays out the contradictions that go to the heart of Nick Cohen’s facile approach to human rights:

Nick Cohen writes of his latest bogeyman, Amnesty International, that while they were “once the most principled defenders of human rights”, they have now “collaborated” with (ie defended) Moazzam Begg. He wonders what will happen when they realise that “the Islamists they embrace aren’t nice metrosexuals who support women’s rights”, and then hopes they will remember that “promoting human rights is a hard and often thankless task that has to be done regardless of the consequences”.

I’m baffled as to how this incoherent sneering is supposed to translate into a criticism of AI. If the organisation is to stick to its principles, as Cohen urges, then it has to oppose any transgression. Cohen manages to trumpet the fundamental value of universal and unconditional human rights, then point out the difficulties of consistently upholding these rights by using AI and Begg’s case as an example, then chastise AI for doing so (or is it not doing so?).

Update: Earwigca makes an excellent point:

I wonder if Rushdie was “suffering from a kind of moral bankruptcy” when he signed the petition in support of Polanski? You know, the man who raped a 14 year old then did a runner for decades.

Unbelievable hypocrisy.

Update 2: What next? The Chinese criticising Amnesty for being too nice to Muslims?

Nobody wants potentially vulnerable people (whether children, those with disabilities, etc.) to be put at risk. Nor does anyone want to be the person who allowed those people to be put at risk. Which is why the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) regime is so insidious. No government will ever be able to prune it much, for fear of a tabloid storm if someone subsequently suffered as a result (“PM let paedos work with children”- that sort of thing).

Yet it does need to be curbed. The rigorous nature of the system means that more and more people are not bothering to offer their services, whether on a part time of temporary basis. It is an expensive hassle. One friend of mine has undergone four CRB checks in the last one and a half years, despite his first one which was enhanced, so could have been transferred over to his other roles. Another friend was unemployed for three months while he waited for his to come through. And they were two of the lucky ones, with hundreds of people incorrectly being branded criminals by the CRB.

Now the ISA (which has a wider remit than the CRB) is poised to take this totalitarian (and it is totalitarian) regime one step further with new rules that would allow people to be banned from working with vulnerable people even if they have never done anything wrong:

Workers judged to be lonely and to have a chaotic home life could be barred from working with vulnerable people, even though there is no evidence that they pose a risk, according to guidelines from the Government’s new vetting agency. Decisions about staff will be taken by officials who have never met them, based on details passed on by their employers…

A common accusation levelled at Amnesty Int over the Moazzam Begg saga has been that even if they weren’t choosing to endorse all this views – Amnesty is somehow complicit anyway because it does this only for Islamists.

That “white liberal guilt” card is played by Nick Cohen et al so many times that it’s a wonder no one has coded a Nick Cohen column generator program yet.

Anyway, let’s take a little trip down memory lane shall we?

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher angrily criticized Amnesty International yesterday for requesting details of what it called a possible “extrajudicial execution” by the military of three unarmed Irish Republican Army members last month.

She called the human-rights organization’s request “utterly disgraceful” and added, “I hope Amnesty has as much concern for the more than 2,000 persons murdered by the IRA since 1969.”

This comment was posted by ‘rupewawa‘ in another thread and I thought it was spot on, so I’m re-posting it as a fresh blog-post. Hope the author doesn’t mind.

————-
I’m a fan of WLUML, SBS and WAF however I think their statements are misguided. Gita Sahgal is indeed a respected human rights activist but I think she has got it very wrong here.

To take a quote from their statement above:

Gita Sahgal’s concerns are about Amnesty International’s association with fundamentalist groups that have claimed to support the Taliban and promote ideas of the Islamic Right…
(my emphasis)

I said yesterday that many of those loudly pushing the Amnesty / Moazzam Begg story are doing merely so to malign Amnesty’s name. For them Gita Sahgal is just the latest excuse to push pre-prepared narratives.

Right on cue, here is Melanie Phillips:

The true intolerant, illiberal, unjust face of the ‘human rights’ industry has been on graphic display in recent days in the case of Gita Sahgal.
…
The point is that her real crime has been to expose the extraordinary sympathy by white ‘liberals’, committed to ‘human rights’, for Islamic jihadists — who are committed to the extinction of human rights. This love-in by white ‘liberals’ for theocratic totalitarianism is then further reflected by the totalitarian manner in which they themselves deal with anyone who opposes them.

Ergo, Amnesty are also committed to the extinction of human rights.
And what might be the reason for Mel Phillips’ ire?

When pondering the extraordinary obsession with Israel by the ‘human rights’ industry and the way in which it ignores real human rights abuses in the third world…

Well that was a surprise wasn’t it? Damn those people at Amnesty for not publishing a statement about Congo in the last 6 weeks! Also, apparently, it is Amnesty and HRW that are to blame for why the world hasn’t heard much about Congo over the last decade. Nothing at all to do with the media industry and prominent newspapers that Mel Phillips writes for. The Daily Mail and Spectator are of course known for their unparalleled humanitarian coverage of atrocities around the world.

To put it another way, Amnesty is living in the make-believe world of a phoney war, where it thinks that liberals are free to form alliances with defenders of clerical fascists who want to do everything in their power to suppress liberals, most notably liberal-minded Muslims.

Oh wait – that was Nick Cohen – sounding exactly the same. The agenda here is so blatant that you’ll forgive me for being so gung-ho about cheering them on.

And to make an obvious point: this doesn’t mean I’m hating on Gita Sahgal. I’ve had the utmost respect for WAF and SBS from day one. I just don’t agree with them here, and don’t want to get sucked into Nick Cohen and Mel Phillips’ agenda. But I expect such a nuanced position will be hard for some to understand.

Also, Louise is spot on.

If this The Independent now, as a newspaper supposedly holding up liberal ideals, then bring on bloody Rod Liddle – it can’t get worse.

Bruce Anderson starts off by saying:

Torture is revolting. A man can retain his human dignity in front of a firing squad or on the scaffold: not in a torture chamber. Torturers set out to break their victim: to take a human being and reduce him to a whimpering wreck. In so doing, they defile themselves and their society.

There is bound to be a ‘but’ here because Anderson is the resident war-mongering neo-con, employed by (supposed) liberal-left newspapers who like to think they should be balanced. Here’s his argument:

We and the Americans have long-established methods of intelligence co-operation, which are now even more important than they were in the Cold War. It also makes sense to work with other threatened nations, such as Pakistan, where a brave political elite is bearing a disproportionate burden, and receiving few thanks for doing so.
…
Before 9/11, in front of some serious lawyers, I once argued that if there were a ticking bomb, the Government would not only have a right to use torture. It would have a duty to use torture.
…
After much agonising, I have come to the conclusion that there is only one answer to Sydney’s question. Torture the wife and children. It is a disgusting idea. It is almost a tragedy that we even have to discuss it, let alone think of acting upon it. But there is nothing to be gained from refusing to face facts, in the way that the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuburger, did last week.
…
There is a threat not only to individual lives, which is of minor importance, but to our way of life and our civilisation. Torture is revolting, but we cannot substitute aesthetics for thought.

If I wanted this kind of balance I’d read the bible of wingnut neo-conservatism – FrontPage Magazine. I thought that kind of crap was only limited to the US, but now we’re getting it here.

On Sunday, in the Observer, Nick Cohen was having a go at judges for the Binyam Mohammad ruling:

Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, added a further complication when he said that the Mohamed ruling provided a propaganda victory for our enemies. And I am sure he was right.

Nick Cohen has earlier justified torture under certain circumstances.

Now all Bruce Anderson needs to do is condemn Amnesty for not upholding human rights and the circle would be complete.

[hat-tip @Naomimc]

Gita Sahgal, a senior figure in Amnesty International, was suspended by that organisation following comments made by her to the Sunday Times. This concerned Amnesty’s continued support for Mozzam Begg and his Cage Prisoners’ group, a controversial organisation which Ms. Sahgal felt should be treated with caution. Here’s what she had to say on the matter:

The Yorkshire Evening Post reported last week:

POLICE have arrested a bus driver who allegedly called a woman passenger a Muslim terrorist and asked her if she had put a bomb on his bus. An investigation was launched by First Buses in Leeds after Turkish-born Hatice McGraffin, 29, claimed a driver made the inflammatory remarks as she boarded her bus on Thursday morning.
…
Mrs McGraffin, 29, from Otley, who is married to Englishman Ian, said the incident had left her horrified and devastated. Cafe worker Mrs McGraffin claimed he said: “You are an Islamic terrorist – you have put a bomb on the bus’. I asked people on the bus ‘are you listening to this’ but they ignored me.

“I am not even a practicing Muslim and I am married to an Englishman. I got off the bus and went to work but I couldn’t work. I was crying so much and my hands were shaking, I had to go home.”

Bizarrely enough, none of the national newspapers thought this story merited any attention. Imagine if the religions were reversed however.

contribution by Sarah Ismail

Kay Gilderdale, the mother of Lynn Gilderdale, 31, who lived with severe ME for 17 years, has been found not guilty of her daughter’s murder. In December 2008, Mrs Gilderdale helped to end Lynn’s life by handing her daughter two syringes of morphine, which Miss Gilderdale injected into herself.

When Mrs Gilderdale felt that the morphine had not achieved Miss Gilderdale’s aim of ending her own life, she crushed some tablets and gave them to her daughter through the feeding tube Miss Gilderdale used because she was unable to swallow.

On her personal blog, reprinted in the Times yesterday, Lynn Gilderdale wrote:

I really, really, really want to die and have had enough of being so sick and in so much pain every second of everyday and, basically, one serious health crisis after another. I am tired, so very, very tired and I just don’t think I can keep hanging on for that elusive illness-free existence.

Mum regularly goes through everything with me. I never waver, I just become more and more sure as time passes. I have always stated that if I was unable to make a decision myself the power goes jointly to my parents. I trust them implicitly with my life and death. I know they won’t do the selfish thing in keeping me here purely for themselves.

Last week, Frances Inglis was found guilty of the murder of her son, Thomas, 22, who became brain damaged in 2007. In November 2008, she went to his room at his care home and injected him with heroin.

guest post by Shaaz Mahboob of British Muslims for Secular Democracy

Discrimination of any form is considered unacceptable is all civilised societies. The burqa or the niqab does just that. It allows one person to remain anonymous during face-to-face communication, thus depriving the right of the other to reciprocate whilst registering the changes in facial expressions, which is vital in such communication, in conjunction to voice that is used for everyday communication.
Whether in public offices, educational institutions or out on the streets, the disadvantage to those who are required to deal with women covered under a niqab or burqa is immense.

Furthermore, to all the men out there, it is insulting since it implies that every man on the street would somehow get aroused by the sight of a woman’s face and in therefore to protect these women, they must be put behind a suffocating layer of thick clothing.

This might be true for certain societies where men rarely get a glimpse of women’s faces or skin altogether, and any such sight might awaken their natural instincts.

Whereas in Western societies, especially within the French society, this rationale does not hold much weight since members of the public are exposed to significant display of the skin of the opposite sex, which perhaps renders them immune to any such mental state where they would readily pounce on a woman upon seeing her uncovered face.

You’ll remember that a year ago UKIP leader Lord Pearson invited over Geert Wilders to show his “film” Fitna because he wanted to start a debate about extremism. Or so he claimed anyway. When Wilders was banned there was a lot of huffing and puffing by UKIP acolytes about free speech and free expression being restricted in the UK.

For example, see the Telegraph blogger Ed West, who at the time also said, “Wilders is not ‘far-Right’ by any reasonable standard – he is a classical liberal who thinks immigration has gone way too far”

Classically liberal eh? Geert Wilders also came up with a 10-point plan to save the west, which included measures like: encouraging voluntary repatriation; have every member of a non-Western minority sign a legally binding contract of assimilation; stop building new mosques; getting rid of the current weak leaders, etc.

So either I misunderstand what it means to be ‘classically liberal’ or Ed West is talking complete horse-shit. Perhaps Tim Worstall can clarify since he’s not only a UKIP comms director but also claims to be ‘classically liberal’.

Anyway, the point is that recently the former head of UKIP Nigel Farage called for the ‘burqa’ to be banned. No one listens to Farage anyway: it was a classic tactic of trying to get some media attention since he is fighting a very difficult seat in Buckingham. The guy wants some publicity so he tried a classic UKIP dog-whistle.

When asked about this policy, Lord Pearson claimed: “the burqa ban is a ban for freedom”. A ban for freedom! Haha! Either these people give ‘classic liberals’ a bad name or they are complete fuckwits.

Anyway, Ed West from UKIP Telegraph now says: ‘Don’t ban the burka. Ban liberals instead’ – how very tolerant of freedom of expression. It seems UKIP only believe in free speech when it applies to criticising or demonising Muslims, not otherwise.

Six years after using the Patriot Act to revoke the visa of a prominent Muslim academic, the United States State Department reversed itself and said Wednesday that it would no longer bar the scholar from entering the United States.
…
Civil rights campaigners have long argued that the two cases were particularly blatant examples of how the Bush administration used the Patriot Act as a way to bar people whose political views were at odds with its own.

– New York Times reports. Good move by Obama.

I fear that Hari Kunzru is making the exact same mistake as Catherine Bennett (though his point is made much better) that we’re going after Rod Liddle’s speech by campaigning against him being editor of the Indy.

I respond:

Catherine Bennett made the same accusations, and I replied to her here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/jan/19/twitter-mob-rules-people-power

Being liberal doesn’t mean you can’t campaign against or for anything. No one is taking Rod Liddle’s free speech away – he still blogs away at Spectator and writes for the Sunday Times.

If they want to legitimise and help such an obnoxious misogynist and racist – that’s their problem: I don’t buy them.

But to say that liberals (I’m a left liberal, the name of the site is meant to be ironic) cannot campaign or criticise anyone because it somehow takes away their freedom of speech isn’t an argument. I’m not like the Chinese authorities. I’m not calling for him to be imprisoned.

This is like saying Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League marches shouldn’t have happened because they restricted the right of the BNP and National Front to say what they want.

To which Hari responds with:

@ Sunny – I don’t think you’re answering my point at all. I’m not saying the same thing as Catherine Bennett. I’m asking you to think about the limits of campaigning. When does legitimate campaigning become something else? I’m not saying you’re the Chinese government. It’s a silly comparison. I also don’t buy the RaR analogy. Rod Liddle is an individual, not an ideology (afaik). You’ve already won the point about Liddle’s unsuitability to edit the Indie – this is very much in the public domain. What’s the end/purpose of your campaign now? How ‘non grata’ do you want his persona? I’m not saying you can’t campaign or criticise.

I’m saying that beyond a certain point, mass campaigns have a chilling effect on free speech. Is this the case with Liddle? Possibly not – as you say he’s robust, and has plenty of media outlets and allies. But it’s something that needs to be thought about if you care about freedom. Would you be more circumspect if he was weaker or less well-known? You’re in the trenches right now (judging by an fb post you made today) and I wonder if your exhiliration at breaking the Millwall stuff is overtaking a sense of proportion. How do you respond, for example, to my charge that this is potentially damaging to your own politics – beyond a certain point isn’t this trivial? Doesn’t it risk delegitimising the more important stuff you campaign about?

Frankly I don’t really care if criticising Rod Liddle means there is less casual racism and misogyny in public life – I’d welcome that, thanks. Is the fact there is now much less overt anti-semitism in public life a bad thing?

The purpose of the campaign is to say that Rod Liddle’s views go against those of the Indy’s principles and it’s readers. He is a troll and is only being considered because Simon Kelner thinks what the Indy really needs is someone who can make it talked about.

But that won’t bring it loyal readers and it will only herald the demise of Britain’s only other left-liberal newspaper. I don’t see that as a good thing. Hence the campaign. That’s how citizens roll.

This airy-fairy liberal thinking that if we’re nasty to poor old Wod Widdle then it’s going to make life difficult for others is frankly horse-shit. In the US, Colour of Change ran a campaign against Glenn Beck for his on-air racism. Was freedom of speech in the US curtailed?

Sorry, I’m not buying this argument at all. Sarah Ditum covered this quite well too – this liberal intelligentsia penchant for mixing up criticism and campaigning with censorship really should be ignored.

contribution by Bobby Smith

Much newsprint has been used up on the cartoon like figure of Amjed Choudhury – arguably the most recognisable British Muslim in the UK – at least since Captain Hook was imprisoned – and certainly the one they love to hate.

Oh what ‘fun’ it was as person after person, organisation after organisation queued up to put the proverbial steel toe-capped boot into him – thus proving their integrationist and ‘moderate’ credentials – organisations such as the Muslim Public Affairs Committee.

Although a view of the forum section of their website would show views more in keeping with the ‘radical’ Choudhury than those of Florence Nightingale!

What, though, are we scared about? Yes, I accept Choudhury and his like are dangerous to young minds, all too readily brainwashed by his twisted ideology, but I like to think the majority of the population possess the brain cells to see past his schoolboy ranting.

In addition to their somewhat one-dimensional outlook on life I am afraid they are also somewhat behind the times, as the Cockney Rejects, back in 1979, beat them to it with their East End Oi! anthem ‘Police Car’ – a song that contained the immortal line “Freedom? There ain’t no fucking freedom“.

Got this email from a US university professor today:

Dear Mr.Hundal

I have just read your article on “Note to Neocons: Universities Don’t Create
Extremists’. As a university professor,m I am in complete agreement, This view is an example of the anti-intellectual attitude that is damaging our democratic society whereby expressing views differing from the norm is considered radical and unpatriotic.

Perhaps a university education would benefit those holding these . I suspect they may arise from a feeling of inferiority that they try to compensate by diminishing the status of those having these differing views.

Thank you for you offering

Brilliant.

This a guest post by the Drive-by Snowballer

Since the Christmas Day attempted attack on an airliner bound for Detroit, no voice has been more vocal in support of profiling passengers than that of Khalid Mahmood MP. In a cringe-worthy display, he appeared on Monday night’s Newsnight against Maajid Nawaz of Quilliam to defend profiling.

Khalid’s performance starts off inauspiciously. His opening gambit is to argue that extremist recruiters themselves profile targets for radicalisation. [08:35]

They target people, they specifically look at people. They look at the weakness of the people, they draw them into that and then they suck ‘em off… [incomprehensible].

Without descending into puerility and delving into his rather strange closing remark (do radicalisers really “suck off” their recruits?), this is still a remarkably rubbish argument. If terrorist recruiters are able to focus their radicalising efforts then they are just as able to make sure that they are focusing on people whose ethnicity, age and gender would suggest that they are less likely to match the “profile” of a terrorist. To profile is to institutionalise security services always being a step behind terrorists’ recruitment efforts.