Archive for the 'Politics' Category

Brown Man’s Burden?

Sunday, December 17th, 2006

Ali Eteraz is “severely hurt” by Western Muslim attitudes to Iraqi insurgency. Best let him explain his pain himself, from a post entitled Western Muslim Opinion On The War in Iraq:
I have to say, I am severely hurt by what Islam has become in Iraq. In fact, to say that this blatant murdering of civilians […]

The Three Conceits

Sunday, December 10th, 2006

From the newly re-commerced (”giving it away for free”) New Statesman comes Ziauddin Sardar’s polemical lambast of three celebrated British writers: Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan. Sardar gets so excercised about the domination these writers purportedly hold over the British literary landscape that he gives them a dodgy neologism (”Blitcons”) because “the vanguard […]

A New Agenda

Thursday, November 23rd, 2006

This week saw the launch of the New Generation Network project. Sunny Hundal and his team of likeminded individuals have used Comment is Free to springboard the project manifesto and a personal statement on the ideas behind the project. The sentiment and concept of this welcome movement is encapsulated in this passage by Sunny:
In calling […]

MPAC Funded Irving

Monday, November 20th, 2006

The Observer has delivered, it likes to think, a scoop: The prominent (read - ‘on the telly often’) Islamist Asghar Bukhari, founder of MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Committe AKA mpacUK), and high-profile Media-endorsed “Muslim spokesman” has admitted donating money to David Irving, Holocaust revisionist and convicted historian.
MPAC identifies itself as part of the British […]

Polar Reversal 2006

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

A polar reversal in British politics, seen only once a generation, has come upon us. Labour now firmly occupies the right wing and the Conservatives are sheepishly wading into the left. And the Daily Mail (yes, the Daily Mail), actually comes up with a superb editorial from Peter Osborne which wraps the whole situation up.
It […]

The Human Cost

Thursday, October 12th, 2006

In Iraq, as with other conflicts, civilians bear the consequences of warfare. In the Vietnam war, 3 million civilians died; in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, conflict has been responsible for 3ยท8 million deaths; and an estimated 200 000 of a total population of 800 000 died in conflict in East Timor. Recent estimates […]

The Dangers of Blasphemy

Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

Theo Hobson, a man who wears a formidable mustache, comments on a religious/political quandrary on CiF: How can Britain assert secular liberal values against the threat of Islamic extremism when it isn’t a secular state itself. The point of Hobson’s article, which he goes on to make rather well, is that in order to remove […]

Torture? What Torture?

Monday, September 25th, 2006

Mash has written a long, edgy and brilliant post on the Bush administration’s record on kidnap, torture, kangaroo courts, trumped up charges and, amongst other things, secret prisons whilst at the same time expecting the strict imposition of the Geneva Conventions from other governments.
The Bush Administration has always committed or justified detention without charge and […]

Muslim is the new Black

Sunday, September 24th, 2006

On Thursday the Home Secretary John Reid visits Leytonstone (in east London) to deliver a speech at a Muslim outreach program. He gets heckled by an “angry and maladroit” Muslim man who then gets bustled out. For the rest of the day all I see on the major news networks (BBC, ITN, SKY etc) is […]

18 Doughty Street

Saturday, September 23rd, 2006

The 18 Doughty Street project launches an internet based TV channel on the 10th October which hopes to bring, according to the blog, alternative news and current affairs from a group of private individuals and bloggers. This is a Conservative initiative and Conservative bloggers such as Iain Dale is bigging it up:
This channel is all […]

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