More sowing and reaping

A union activist was branded a racist for producing a leaflet with an image of the Three Wise Monkeys proverb.

Onay Kasab, secretary of Greenwich Unison, is one of four branch officers facing a disciplinary hearing after handing out the pamphlet at last June's conference for the union, which represents more than a million public sector workers.

The four say the leaflet used the image of the "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" monkeys to lampoon the committee for removing important issues from the agenda. But union bosses said the image was a "racist" slur aimed at one black committee member.

Mr Kasab, 40, from Bexley, said: "It's upsetting that I am accused of racism by my own union. We felt it was an apt image to illustrate our point that the committee were refusing to listen to members' concerns over issues such as the funding of the Labour Party, the election of full time officials and control over strike action.

"But in the conference hall the Unison president denounced it as racist and when we went to respond the microphone was switched off. We have been gagged and subjected to a witch hunt."

Now, up until this point I had some sympathy for Kasab, trade union activist though he may be. After all, the Three Wise Monkeys is well known imagery, devoid of any racial connotations, and there appears to be nothing indicating any racist intent or content in the leaflet in question. Rather, the Unison bosses just seem to be adopting the traditional leftist strategy of silencing an opponent by invoking the demonic chimera "racism".

But my sympathy rapidly diminished to the point of non-existence, when I read the next paragraph. For Kasab continued:

"I have dedicated a lot of my life to representing Unison members in Greenwich from all backgrounds. I led a 13-week strike against the civil service over the employment of a senior BNP activist. I am Turkish-Cypriot and have faced racism so to be accused of being something I despise is terrible."

It really does take a special kind of hypocrisy to be able to complain that one is the subject of a witch hunt, and then in the next breath to boast of having led a witch hunt against someone else. And a witch hunt which, if successful, would have had far more serious consequences for its victim (who would have lost his livelihood) than the alleged witch hunt against Kasab will have for him.

The three other members under investigation are Glenn Kelly, secretary of Bromley Unison, Suzanne Muna, secretary of the Housing Corporation Unison branch, and Brian Debus, chairman of Hackney Unison. All are also in the Socialist Party. Matthew Waterfall, who is not a member of the Socialist Party, was investigated but not charged.

"The fact they cleared Mr Waterfall shows that this is motivated by the New Labour supporters in Unison against the Socialist Party," said Mr Kasab.

Again, Kasab's hypocrisy is evident. He resents the fact that he may perhaps be being hounded out of his trade union because of his involvement with a far-left political party. However, he also believes that membership of a "far-right" political party should not only disqualify one from union membership, but that it should also disqualify one from the right to earn a living, full stop. Certainly, it is hard to put any other construction on his attempt to have the unidentified "senior BNP activist" dismissed.
Sadly for Kasab, hypocrites do not make very suitable objects of sympathy. Kasab has made his bed - he has willingly helped to create a situation in which "anti-racist" witch hunts are the order of the day, and in which people deemed "racist" can safely be subjected to inferior treatment - and now the time has come for him to lie in it.

Plus ca change...

So, Red Ken is gone. And in his place we have a left-liberal who fawns over Muslims, favours an amnesty for illegal immigrants, and declared in his victory speech that London "brings the world together in one city". I'm truly delighted to see the back of Livingstone, but forgive me if I don't break out the champagne just yet.

On the plus side, the BNP's mayoral candidate Richard Barnbrook has been elected a member of the London Assembly. That should be one in the eye for the leftists in all three big parties. The Times informs us that "anti-facist [sic] and gay rights groups have called for protests in the capital in light of the win". There's something rather ironic, is there not, in self-proclaimed "anti-fascists" protesting against the result of a free and democratic election?

Alan Bennett: Chippy little fascist

I read that the writer Alan Bennett has called on the government to ban independent schools. Speaking to Radio 4's Today programme, he explained that his opposition to such institutions began in 1951, when, at the age of seventeen, he attended an entrance exam at Cambridge:

It was the first time I ever came across boys from public school. They were so confident. We were timid grammar school boys but they were very much at ease.

They hogged the bread and slurped the soup - things were very much still rationed in those days.

They were just louts, but I also realised that they had been better taught than I had. I thought that was unfair when I was 17, and that view has never changed.

So, to sum up, Oiky Bennett had a chip on his shoulder as an unpolished teenager, and the passage of more than half a century has failed to remove it. I suppose that this might be mildly interesting to a psychologist, but it's not exactly a very sound or rational basis for policymaking.

The prime motivating force behind Bennett's opposition to public schools, and, I suspect, behind the opposition of a great many people to public schools, or grammar schools, or faith schools, or private healthcare for that matter, is envy, plain and simple. It is pure tall poppy syndrome, the desire to cut down anyone who is any way "privileged", not because their "privilege" actually does any tangible harm to anyone else, but simply because they are "privileged".
It is true that many state schools offer an education that is markedly poorer than that available at most public schools (although there are also many good comprehensives, and many appallingly bad minor public schools). But the weakness of many state schools is not caused by the existence of public schools, and closing down public schools will not actually improve the education of one state-educated child.

Rather, Alan Bennett, and other antiquated class warriors, would, if allowed to put their ridiculous ideas into practice, do considerable harm to the education of millions of children. Indeed, it appears that harming the education of the 615,000 children who are currently privately-educated is the primary, if not the sole, purpose behind attacks on fee-paying schools. After all, Alan Bennett wants to force those 615,000 children to move from public schools, which he believes offer a superior education, to state schools, which he says offer an inferior one. If this is not indicative of a desire to harm their education, then I don't know what is!
But if public schools really were abolished, then that would also harm the education of children who are already being educated in state schools. The cost and logistics of transferring an extra 615,000 children into the state sector would be enormous, and would strain the resources of many state schools, which are often already overstretched, beyond breaking point. How would this improve the education of any child?

The way to improve overall standards of education is not to attack those schools which are actually functioning well. That may perhaps be the path to ensuring that everyone has an equal education, but it would only be an equally bad one. If we want to ensure that as many children as possible have a good education - even if the exact quality varies from school to school - then the answer is to improve the state education system. Reintroducing grammar schools (which, lest we forget, were sufficiently effective that they allowed a working class boy like Alan Bennett to get into Cambridge, possibly in place of the bread-hogging toffs who left such a lasting impression upon him) would be a good start.

Of course, the other point that stands to be made is that, as the chief executive of the Independent Schools Council pointed out, it would be a gross infringement of parents' rights for the government to begin dictating precisely how and where they should educate their children. That Bennett seems prepared to totally disregard this is simply another indicator of the almost fascistic authoritarianism of many socialists, who, it seems, regard children as the property of the state, to be dealt with solely as the state wishes. I suppose that we should at least be grateful to him for demonstrating this, and also the extent to which socialism is so often little more than rationalised resentment.

Fascists at the Oxford Union!

I regret to inform readers that, this evening, a number of fascists succeeded in forcing their way into the Oxford Union, where they attempted to prevent two British citizens - one of them the leader of a well-known democratic political party - from taking part in, irony of ironies, a debate about the limits of free speech. The fascist activists jumped over a wall into the courtyard of the Oxford Union building, before barging into the debating chamber itself. Thankfully, their bid to prevent the debate going ahead was unsuccessful, and both Nick Griffin and David Irving proceeded to express their views freely and without let or hindrance, albeit in two separate rooms. One Oxford undergraduate described the debate as "very balanced" and added that "both sides did really well".

However, while they were unsuccesful in their attempt to prevent the debate from going ahead, the behaviour of these far-leftists is just the latest in a string of incidents which have demonstrated that it is the far-left which today poses the greatest threat to free speech in Britain, and in Europe as a whole. In the past few months alone we have had:

A petition organised by left-wing students at Oxford University, calling for the sacking of the university's Professor David Coleman, for working with the think-tank MigrationWatch (at least Prof Coleman managed to keep his job, unlike Dr Frank Ellis, driven out of his post at Leeds University by the far-left in July 2006).

The use of violence to prevent supporters of the Swiss People's Party from rallying in Geneva.

The attempted murder of SIOE activists in Denmark, and threats of violence made against SIOE demonstrators in this country.

Schoolmaster Mark Walker suspended from his job for being a member of the BNP.

A vicious attack on peaceful BNP members campaigning in Barnsley.

The hounding of a Nobel Prize winner, including calls for his prosecution under "anti-racism" legislation, and his ultimate dismissal from his job, for expressing a politically-incorrect viewpoint.

Needless to say, the far-left was responsible for all these incidents. And I doubt that the list I have produced is even remotely close to being definitive. But when did you last hear of right-wingers hounding leftists out of their jobs, or of right-wing "extremists" physically attacking leftists? I can't recall a single case of either! And yet the Unite Against Fascism thugs, and the useful idiots from the student body at Oxford, who they brought along with them, want us to believe that it is the BNP who are the real threat to democracy. Well, I'll believe that when I see the BNP sending thugs to attack campaigners from rival parties, or invading the Oxford Union to prevent those they dislike from speaking. Until then, forgive me if I believe that the people who actually do those things are the somewhat greater threat.

Update: Another point to bear in mind regarding last night's debate, is that some of the demonstrators outside the Oxford Union were reported to be chanting the words "Kill Tryl" (Oxford Union president, Luke Tryl). So, aside from attempts to physically prevent the debate from taking place, some of the anti-free speech mob were also calling for a student to be murdered, because he gave a platform to people they don't like. As Nick Griffin said in the course of the debate, had these "anti-fascists" lived in Germany seventy years ago, "they would have made splendid Nazis".

Update (2): Meanwhile, Gates of Vienna has a translation of a newspaper article by the Danish MP Søren Krarup, on the subject of "Violence from the Left", which makes similar points to those I have made above, and gives yet more examples of this severely under-reported phenomenon.

SIOE attack update

It appears increasingly evident that the murderous attack on four SIOE activists attending a rally in Copenhagen last Sunday was indeed the work of the far-left. The Danish blogger Kimporator has found a post on an anarchist forum, in which the writer brags about the attack, in the following terms:

Lately there have been a tendency that people believes everything that they read on nazi-pages, latest SIAD’s lie that knives were used against them last Sunday. Anders Gravers, his wife and their wannabe-bodyguards [among those attacked was a 74 year-old woman: was she a "wannabe-bodyguard"? - FR] got their well deserved (and plentiful) beatings, but naturally knives weren’t used! Don’t believe everything that you read on the net, especially not when it is on nazi-pages!!

This comment, together with the rest of Kimporator's post, was translated from Danish into English by the English-language Danish blogger, Zonka.

Regarding the content of the anarchist's remarks: they clearly indicate an affinity with the attackers. Furthermore, they imply that the writer has personal knowledge of the circumstances of the crime. Thus, he claims to know which weapons were, and which were not, used in the course of the assault. I think that it is therefore reasonable to infer that these anarchists are claiming responsibility.

Regarding the denial that knives were used, I would say, first, that I would tend to be rather hesitant to believe the words of anyone who regards beating elderly women about the head with iron bars (something that they have not denied, but have rather boasted about) as evidence of their heroic resistance to fascism. Secondly, I agree with Zonka, when he says:

I don’t really care whether they used knives or “just” iron rods their assault was an attempted murder on political opponents… and even had they “only” used their fists it would be just as despicable, showing only their own fascist leanings.

And that, really, is the crux of the matter. Whatever the precise details of the attack (and, as I indicated above, I regard SIOE's account as much more believable), the fact remains that these extremist thugs have absolutely no qualms about using force to intimidate and silence political opponents. And yet they have the temerity to accuse SIOE (who have never initiated violent attacks against anyone) of being the Nazis in all this!

Hat-tip: The Midnight Sun

Murderous assault on SIOE activists

Earlier today I attended the SIOE demo in London. I shall write more about this tomorrow, but at this point I will say that, despite the apparent threats of violence emanating from certain quarters, the demonstration passed off peacefully.

Regrettably, the same cannot be said for a SIOE demonstration held in Copenhagen last Sunday, the 21st October. On that day, the Danish organiser of SIOE, Anders Gravers, his partner, and two other SIOE activists (one of them a seventy-four year old woman) were subjected to a vicious, sustained, and murderous attack by a gang of thugs. As Mr Gravers' car, in which they were all travelling to Sunday's demo, pulled into a car park in Copenhagen, it was surrounded by a gang of men brandishing iron bars. They proceeded to smash the windows of the car, attempted to haul Mr Gravers from the vehicle, and beat him and his passengers with the iron bars. Mr Gravers sort to defend himself with the best makeshift weapon that he could lay his hands on - a fire extinguisher - and in the struggle one of his assailants attempted to stab him in the chest with a knife. Had Mr Gravers not been wearing a stab proof vest, it is probable that he would have been killed. The thugs also attempted to stab one of Mr Gravers' colleagues, before beating a retreat. Full details of the assault, as well as some quite graphic images of the injuries sustained by the SIOE activists during the course of the attack, can be found at SIOE's website here, and I would strongly recommend having a read. So far as anything is known about the attackers, it is believed that they were members of the pan-European extreme-left group Antifascist Action, rather than Muslims.

Despite the severity of this attack, Mr Gravers flew to London to attend today's protest. I must say that it is something of a salutary experience to find oneself in the presence of a man who, just five days before, literally came within an inch of being murdered on account of his political views. The implications of the attack also give one pause for thought. First, it is simply shocking to think of this kind of anti-democratic, fascistic, thuggery taking place in 21st century Europe. Secondly, it is a reminder of the risks which some, if not all, of those who actively challenge Islam, and its far-left allies, are running. This incident could very easily have ended with the deaths of one, or indeed, all, of the SIOE activists who were attacked, and, from the actions of the attackers, it appears likely that they actually intended to kill Anders Gravers, at least. It should also be remembered that this attempted murder comes almost three years to the day after the actual murder of the anti-Islamist Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, by the jihadist Mohammed Bouyeri. Of course, the fact that people like Mr Gravers and his colleagues are prepared to take such risks in order to resist the very real threat that Islam poses to Europe should simply spur the rest of us on to work harder to support the same cause. If Mr Gravers is prepared to put his life on the line, then it surely behoves all of us to at least do something to attempt to defeat the kind of people who attacked the Danish activists last Sunday.

Victory for the fascists

I see that James Watson has resigned from his position as Chancellor of New York's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, following the recent controversy generated by his remarks about the link between race and intelligence. It is reasonable to assume that the outcry raised by certain elements has been instrumental in inducing Dr Watson to resign his position. As such, this can be chalked up as a victory for the anti-free speech fascists.

Because, as I wrote here, that is what many, if not most, of those who have attacked Dr Watson are: fascists. They are people who have hounded a renowned scientist out of his job, not because he was incompetent, but because he expressed views that they deemed to have gone, in the words of the director of the Science Museum, "beyond the point of acceptable debate". They have stifled debate on a scientific issue, and attempted to intimidate scientists and lay people alike into not raising or discussing the issue, solely because they deem discussion of this issue to be "offensive". As I have asked before, what word, other than 'fascist', is adequate to describe such people?

I would also point out that this is a very significant victory for the fascists. After all, this goes far beyond the case of Frank Ellis, where the fascists merely brought about the "early retirement" (i.e. sacking) of an average university lecturer, Here, they have caused a Nobel laureate, no less, to lose his job. The message now goes out, that no one is safe from the machinations of the race hustlers. Today is a black day for all supporters of free speech.

Gathering the kindling: thoughts on the fascism of "liberals"

I see that the Wicked Dr Watson has now been suspended from his job as director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, as a result of his heretical comments on race and intelligence. He has also been banned from the Bristol Festival of Ideas, where he was due to give a talk next Wednesday. According to the festival's organiser Andrew Kelly, "James Watson's opinions were unacceptably provocative". Interesting, isn't it, that we now live in a society in which people talk openly about the need to silence "unacceptable" opinions? Meanwhile, I'm wondering how long it's going to be before the liberal lynch mob does what it clearly wants to do, and burns Watson at the stake...

Of course, to call these people liberals is perhaps somewhat misleading. After all, whatever else liberalism stands for, the word does imply a belief in the importance of individual liberty. And it is patently obvious that people who attempt to impose limits of acceptability upon freedom of conscience and freedom of speech, who have people removed from their jobs for transgressing those limits, and who seek to make the expression of opinions inimical to their own illegal, are not in any sense advocates of liberty. What they are is unclear. There are many words that might describe them - some of which are rather colourful - but the most accurate that I can think of is 'fascist'. So far as I can see, the people who are hounding Dr Watson today, the people who hounded Frank Ellis out of his job last year, and the people who, in the future, will no doubt hound many others for expressing the same opinions as Watson and Ellis, or for expressing other views that they dislike, are nothing other than fascists. Certainly they are deeply evil.

It is to be hoped that Dr Watson will not lose his job over this. As I understand it, America has laws designed to protect the right of citizens to express their opinions, without the threat of punishment, legal or extra-legal, hanging over their heads - surely these should operate in Watson's favour. But, whatever happens, I hope that this whole sorry business will cause at least some people in Britain to wake up and smell the proverbial coffee: to see to what extent freedom of speech and conscience has been eroded in this country, and to see the extent to which those we call liberals, are more commonly deeply authoritarian, and utterly opposed to liberty.

Update: The white-hating racists at BLINK, satisfied that Watson now appears likely to lose his job for his thought crime, have demanded that he also return his Nobel Prize as a mark of his contrition. Not because he did not earn it, but simply because these scum wish to extract as much blood money as they can from the wicked heretic - to bring him down to his knees in supplication before them - and because they wish to do all they can to intimidate anyone else who might harbour any politically incorrect thoughts into suppressing them. After all, if they can bring down a Nobel Prize-winner, who else is safe from their evil machinations? One wonders whether, should Dr Watson inexplicably refuse to return the honour, they will seek to have him stripped of it? As I said, these people are fascists, plain and simple.

Germany: Abortion opponents jailed

Paul Belien at the Brussels Journal has the deeply disturbing story of Pastor Johannes Lerle, a German Lutheran cleric who was last week sentenced to a year's imprisonment for the crime of Volksverhetzung - inciting the people. He apparently did this by denying that the Holocaust took place.

Now, I think that the criminalisation of holocaust denial in countries such as Germany and Austria is ridiculous in itself, and is on something of a par with the laws in Turkey which have resulted in people facing jail for talking about the Armenian genocide. However, the case of Herr Lerle is particularly ridiculous because he did not, in fact, deny the Holocaust. Rather, he compared the annual killing by abortion of 150,000 unborn children to the Holocaust. This statement can in no way be seen as a denial of the Holocaust; indeed, it holds up the Holocaust as the yardstick of evil, against which all other evil may be measured. What has in fact happened is that Herr Lerle has gone to prison for opposing abortion.

This is not the first time Herr Lerle has gone to jail for challenging the abortionists. He had previously served eight months jail-time for describing abortionists as "professional killers". Another German pro-life activist was jailed for describing abortion as "unjust", on the grounds that non-lawyers would interpret 'unjust' as meaning 'illegal', and that therefore she was, in common parlance, wrongly accusing abortionists of breaking the law. It seems that the German courts rely on logic that would shame a ten year old in order to silence the enemies of the state.

I will refrain from further comment on this at this moment: suffice to say that if anyone denies that the above cases are deeply unjust, and indicative of a high level of totalitarianism, then they probably have something severely wrong with their moral compass. I would strongly urge readers to go over to Paul Belien's article, and read the whole of it, in which you will find many more examples of the suppression of the free speech of those who oppose the agenda of the liberal-left, across Europe.

Bath University stifles free speech

A while back, Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, was invited to speak at Bath University. Now, following protests from the usual bunch of trade unionists, students' union hacks, extreme leftists, and assorted other soap-dodgers, the event has been cancelled by the university:

In a statement [the university's vice-chancellor and secretary] said they had taken into account the views of staff and students about the meeting and the university's belief in freedom of speech.

They said: "In addition, some staff and students have registered with us their serious concerns for their safety if this event proceeds, as well as fears of disruption to examinations given the likely scale of protests on the day.

"These considerations do need to be balanced against the need to hear and challenge a variety of opinions in an institution committed to high quality learning and research. Freedom of speech is a principle to be highly cherished by academic institutions.

"The university has, however, now learned that a very large number of protesters intend to arrive on campus. This creates the likelihood of substantial public order problems and real possibility of disruption of the essential activities of the university community, making it impractical for the university to allow the event to go ahead."

What we have here is yet another example of the power that the far-left wields in our universities, and which they use to stifle the free speech of all who oppose them, often in alliance with Muslims. The Cambridge Motoons case would be an obviously comparable case, as would that of the German academic Dr Matthias Kuentzel, banned from giving a lecture at Leeds University after Muslim students threatened to get violent. The hounding of Dr Frank Ellis from his job, also at Leeds, was a particularly revolting instance of leftist opposition to free speech, although the fascists have thankfully failed in their machinations against Oxford's Professor David Coleman.

In at least two of the above cases, the left-Islamic axis used the threat of violence in order to get their way. It appears from Bath University's statement that fears of violence from the anti-Griffin demonstrators influenced their decision to cancel the event. One assumes that they had realistic grounds for their fears.

The deeply disturbing willingness of the left and of Muslims to use force to silence opposition is not a peculiarly British phenomenon. American universities have had similar problems, and talks from anti-Jihadi commentators are often greeted with violent protests, or cancelled outright through fear of violence. Jewish student groups suffer regular intimidation from Muslims and far-leftists.

What is also disturbing is the sheer hypocrisy shown. People like Mr Griffin, or Dr Kuentzel, are banned from speaking at universities, because their views are non-PC. And yet at the same time George Galloway can speak freely (warning: offensive link) in whatever institution he wishes. And as for the kind of people that Muslim student groups routinely let in: well, suffice it to say that Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) a known terrorist supporter, is a favourite of university Islamic societies.

Bath University's decision is to be regretted, but it is not surprising. Sadly, unscrupulous elements have learnt that those who shout the loudest are often listened to, particularly if the unspoken threat of violence is left hanging in the air. This appears to be what has happened here. And it will happen at some other august institution of learning before long.

Hat-tip: The Green Arrow