O/T Nelson Mandela dead?

Good trenchant column in the Torygraph yesterday by Charles Moore yesterday. Read on....


"It is less than a month since Drummer Lee Rigby was murdered in Woolwich, yet already the incident feels half-forgotten. In terms of the legal process, all is well. Two men have been charged. There will be a trial. No doubt justice will be done. But I have a sense that the horror felt at the crime is slipping away.
The media, notably the BBC, quickly changed the subject. After a day or two focusing on the crime itself, the reports switched to anxiety about the “Islamophobic backlash”. According to Tell Mamma, an organisation paid large sums by the Government to monitor anti-Muslim acts, “the horrendous events in Woolwich brought it [Islamophobia] to the fore”. Tell Mamma spoke of a “cycle of violence” against Muslims.
Yet the only serious violence was against a British soldier, who was dead. In The Sunday Telegraph, Andrew Gilligan brilliantly exposed the Tell Mamma statistics – most of them referred merely to nasty remarks on the web rather than actual attacks, many were not verified, no reported attack had required medical attention, and so on. Yet the “backlash” argument has sailed on, with people shaking their heads gravely about the need to “reassure” Muslims. Tell Mamma equates “hate inspired by al-Qaeda” with the “thuggery and hate of the EDL [the English Defence League]”.
A trap is set here, inviting those of us who reject such statements, to defend the EDL. I do not. While not, in its stated ideology, a racist organisation like the BNP, the EDL has an air of menace. It must feel particularly unpleasant for Muslims when its supporters hit the streets. But the EDL is merely reactive. It does not – officially at least – support violence. It is the instinctive reaction of elements of an indigenous working class which rightly perceives itself marginalised by authority, whereas Muslim groups are subsidised and excused by it. Four days ago, six Muslim men were sentenced at the Old Bailey for a plot to blow up an EDL rally. The news was received quietly, though it was a horrifying enterprise. No one spoke of “white-phobia”. Imagine the hugely greater coverage if the story had been the other way round.
All journalists experience this disparity. If we attack the EDL for being racist, fascist and pro-violence, we can do so with impunity, although we are not being strictly accurate. If we make similar remarks about Islamist organisations, we will be accused of being racist ourselves. “Human rights” will be thrown at us. We shall also – this has happened to me more than once – be subject to “lawfare”, a blizzard of solicitors’ letters claiming damages for usually imagined libels. Many powerful people in the Civil Service, local government, politics and the police, far from backing up our attacks on extremism, will tut-tut at our “provocative” comments.

Much more important – from the point of view of the general public – you frequently find that Muslim groups like Tell Mamma get taxpayers’ money (though, in its case, this is now coming to an end). You discover that leading figures of respectable officialdom share conference platforms with dubious groups. You learn that Muslim charities with blatantly political aims and Islamist links have been let off lightly by the Charity Commission. And you notice that many bigwigs in Muslim groups are decorated with public honours. Fiyaz Mughal, for example, who runs Tell Mamma, has an OBE. Obviously it would be half-laughable, half-disgusting, if activists of the EDL were indulged in this way; yet they are, in fact, less extreme than some of those Muslims who are.
More than two years ago, David Cameron delivered an important speech in Munich when he emphasised that Islamist terrorism arises from the poisoning of young minds. He said that extremism does not have to be violent for it to be dangerous. If it stirs up hate and spreads lies, it rolls the pitch for violent action. He wanted the Government’s counter-terrorism Prevent programme reviewed in this light.
The results were initially good. Grants were cut and people were denied access. But there was too little follow-through within government, Civil Service or police. Although consistently tough himself, Mr Cameron has not persuaded others to be the same. Seeking a sop for Lady Warsi, whom he wanted to demote from the Tory chairmanship, he made her the “minister for faith and communities” without thinking of its consequences for his Munich agenda. This strange job, which gave her a foothold in two government departments, has made her a spokesman on these issues. Yet Lady Warsi is very slow to condemn Muslim sectarianism and has appeared on the platform of FOSIS, the federation of Muslim students which has repeatedly given house room to extremism. Five subsequently convicted terrorists have held office in Muslim student societies in British universities, yet the university authorities usually disclaim any responsibility.
Malcolm Grant is the president of University College London, whose student Islamic society was run by the “Underpants Bomber”, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He resists the suggestion that he should prevent such extremism on his premises. Now, as well as UCL, Prof Grant manages to be chairman of NHS England. I predict a peerage very shortly, or at least a knighthood. I also predict that preachers of deadly hate will continue to operate easily in our universities under the banner of academic freedom. FOSIS encourages “community cohesion”, according to a universities spokesman.
I come back to the killing of Lee Rigby. This act of blatant, total barbarism on an English street in broad daylight shocked every decent person, but not quite enough. Almost as shocking as the bestial cruelty was the brazenness. When you saw young men with blood-soaked arms standing there and talking about what they said they had done, you knew that they would be arrested. But that was not as much comfort as it should have been. You also sensed that they had little fear: they felt that they almost had permission to act as they had done from a society too weak to make such an act unthinkable. They were, unfortunately, right to think that way.
In Britain today, extremists intuit that organised society is at a disadvantage to them. They understand that what makes them feel strong – the power of obnoxious ideas – is exactly what the authorities do not want to investigate and attack.
It is worrying, for example, that MI5 has a “behavioural sciences unit” to try to understand the psychology and anthropology of young terrorists, but no comparable unit studying ideology alone. It actually states on its website that the threat of subversion in Britain is “now [since the end of the Cold War] considered to be negligible”, and so it no longer investigates it. Intelligence agencies think in terms of state power, and they know that subversion by enemy states is not happening now. They have not adjusted to the new reality – subversion that goes way beyond states, the capture of hearts and minds by evil.
This weekend, Nelson Mandela is gravely ill. When he was a boy, his teacher – whose name was Wellington – replaced his African first name with that of a British hero: he called him Nelson. It stuck. Anti-imperialist though he is, Mandela was educated with a profound respect for the British culture of parliamentary democracy. It became, in many respects, his model for a multiracial South Africa. It arose from good beliefs inculcated early in life. In our own country today, almost the opposite happens. In our state schools, in mosques, on the internet, in university gatherings, many young people are taught to detest the freedom in which they live. Just as surely as good teaching, bad teaching has its power. We refuse even to face it, let alone to stop it."

 

Someone tell him his account has been hacked by a very young person who is posting simplistic nonsense.

 

He/she has an apt username.

 

Unfortunately the left wing types won't have the attention span to read all that. In any case they don't want to read anything which doesn't agree with their view of the world where all people are good, tolerant human beings except the awful, racist British. Makes you wonder why so many of them want to live here amongst us intolerant racists. Can't be the benefits, or so we are told, as they all just want to come here to work and claim nothing.

 

Silly ****.

 

I don't see this thread staying open for much longer...




Also, lou roll, stop acting like a 5 year old.

 

Mandela and his band of merry men were South Africa's equivalent of the IRA, only more barbaric.

Moron.

 

I'm currently teaching about Mandela as part of an RE topic at school. He may have indeed been involved with a violent group before his imprisonment, though were those advocating Apartheid any better? It should in no way overshadow the work he has done in fighting institutional racism and inequality and his attempts to foster racial reconciliation.

 

Sorry if this simplifies it, but wasn't the Black struggle against the Oppression by the SA government supported by certain Western European Governments somewhat comparable to the opposite sort of thing happening against White farmers etc in Zimbabwe under the control of Mugabe, and we have certain parts of the media/general population who are aghast that the latter is happening but were quite happy with the former. We could even take it back to what happened in America and look at what happened in the Rosa Parks incident and afterwards.

What made me particularly ashamed to be British was while watching Free Speech (where Tommy Robinson of the EDL was allowed a chance to shout his views over what other people were trying to say) and there was a lady who happens to wear a shawl around her head and she stated that in the 2 years of living in this country no one had ever sat near her on the bus.

Yes, I might be considered a leftie liberal but I believe in fair treatment for all, but those two muslims who murdered the soldier are not right in the head which also goes for the white idiot who murdered 2 police women last year and race might be brought into it to further a point by certain sections of society but murder is murder no matter who did it to who and in what form

 

So the ends justify the means in order to achieve your desired goals? Hitler and Stalin could have used that argument.

Can you tell us what Nelson Mandela, admirable as his motives might have been, if not his methods, has to do with RE?

 

Surely you can oppose something without blowing up innocent people? I'm not saying Apartheid was a good thing, but blowing people up is just savage.

Mandela was responsible for the deaths of a lot of people, he's no better than Osama Bin Laden.

 

Funny how many people who say sport pays no part in politics were in favour of cutting of sporting ties with SA but were happy for us to deal with the USSR, China, Argentina and other places on both ends of the political spectrum.

 

As was mentioned earlier .... if the German's had taken over the UK how long would it be before the "freedom fighters" become "terrorists"?

In that sense I have a certain sympathy with the IRA. Maybe the problem is about some of their methods but this kind of struggle always gets out of hand.

It took 9/11 for the USA to change their view of "terrorists" or the "cuddly" IRA.

Should the USA go round the world stopping despicable behaviour or just stand back and let them get on with it and let Russia, Iran and China exert influence?

UN can only deal with relatively easy to deal with situations.

I wonder whether these issues will ever be dealt with properly.

 

Its ok if you're only blowing up the people who you don't agree with!

 

So what? Who gives a **** if some numpty with a cloth on her noggin gets lonely on the bus

You are a 'leftie liberal', though some might use the term 'clueless prick' instead.

Pointing out crimes committed by white people as evidence that it's not a black or Muslim race issue is ridiculous. Britain is a white country. Having our own lunatics does not mean we should invite other breeds of nutjob into our nation. One man carrying out a revenge attack on the police is a different kettle of fish to hacking a soldier to death whilst screaming 'Allahu Akbar!' Race is irrelevant in the first instance, but patently NOT in the second.

You're clearly one of those white, middle-class forty-somethings who have little to no contact with 'minorities', who says **** like 'black people are overrepresented in prisons' and it's sooooo unfair...

 

So can you tell us what your contact with minorities is Erik?? It must have been tough the only white boy in the black ghetto that is Beverley!! Please enlighten us.

 

Wombat, number 1 you are wrong about my age, not sure if you are correct about class, secondly wasn't one of the "nutjob"s born in this country who did that crime to the soldier. Also if you want to go down the race line - as was pointed on on Free Sppech on BBC3, the grooming cases in places like Rochdale, Oxford etc are always the race comes into it, but when white celebs (not going to mention them - but we all know of at least 10) are charged, erm the race isn't, so any right-thinking person (or clueless prick in your world) can see that maybe there is a little bit of balance missing.

And btw i think prisons are overcrowded anyway (I await your enlightened comment Wombat)

 

Hang on, you're right. I've never ventured beyond the town borders and so never seen one of those brown folk.

 

I've heard www.yorkshirewildlifepark.com/‎ is a good day out. Maybe you should experience for yourself?

 

Aye, thank you. That's not a bad suggestion.

I like the look of 'Adopt An Animal'. I might adopt a giraffe