bigotry

“Is It Because They Is White?” Part Umpty-something.

Australasia, bigotry, Bloody Lawyers, Race, War on Terror
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I don’t know about you, but i would really like to know why this man wasn’t charged and tried with terrorist offences’ let alone banged up indefinitely or put under a Control Order, as so many others have been:

Former BNP candidate is jailed

A former British National Party candidate who amassed a stash of explosive chemicals in anticipation of a future civil war has been jailed for two-and-a-half years.

Robert Cottage, 49, was cleared after two trials of conspiracy to cause explosions but earlier pleaded guilty to possession of the chemicals.

Police discovered a huge stockpile of chemicals and food at his home in Colne, Lancashire last September.

Officers mounted the operation after Cottage’s wife told a social worker she was concerned about the substances and her husband’s belief that immigrants were swamping Britain.

He feared the country was on the brink of civil war.

He appeared at Manchester’s Crown Square Court to be sentenced in relation to the charge of possession.

Cottage’s barrister Alistair Webster QC said his client accepted he had bought the potassium nitrate and sulphur planning to manufacture gunpowder, but said this would only be used to create “thunder flash” style bangers to scare off intruders.

Sentencing Cottage, Mrs Justice Swift said Cottage’s actions had been “criminal and potentially dangerous”.

She added a pre-sentence report said Cottage held “over valued ideas” but said there was a low risk of him committing further offences.

She said: “It is important to understand that Cottage’s intention was that if he ever had to use the thunder flashes it was only for the purpose of deterrents. 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.”

Oh well that’s all right then, since he was paranoid. Every paranoid should be able to stockpile explosive, if it makes them feel more secure. He’s a low risk, they say, only a danger to non-whites; so what’s our problem?

Apparently it’s OK to be a virulent racist and plan explosions, but innocently pass on a sim card with some credit on it to a relative and you get banged up and then deported, your life and career ruined for ever.

Strange Times Indeed…

bigotry, New Labour, UK elections, Women
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…when ir’s the Tories that are making the anti-racist noises.

Hazel Blears, evil dwarf, New Labour careerist to beat all careerists and candidate for the deputy leadership, has been, like Gordon Brown last week, making dog-whistle noises to BNP voters:

Labour chairman Hazel Blears was accused of stereotyping immigrants today after suggesting that the public associated them with anti-social behaviour.

The deputy Labour leadership hopeful expressed concern that people in her Salford constituency were “worried” about changes in the community.

“We have got areas in Salford where private landlords are letting properties with 10 and 12 people in there,” she said.

“Now, the community doesn’t object to the people – they object to the exploitation and the fact that that leads to people being on the street drinking, anti-social behaviour.

“They don’t object to the people being there, but they object if they are undercutting wages and not getting the national minimum wage and they are not abiding by health and safety, so you have got to enforce the law.”

What I object to is underqualified midgets ith the compassion of a rabid stoat aspiring to political leadership via nastiness, racism and botox.

But never fear, Tory shadow Home Secretary David Davis was on Blears like white on rice:

Her comments, in an interview with the Independent on Sunday, prompted Shadow Home Secretary David Davis to blame her for the public’s concerns.

“It is wholly irresponsible for Ministers of the Crown to stereotype any group in society,” he said.

“If anybody is responsible for the concerns about immigration – on housing, education or indeed community relations – it is a Government that, while Hazel Blears was a Home Office Minister, allowed 600,000 immigrants to enter the country in one year.”

Well, quite.

It really has come to something when it’s the Conservatives you have to rely on to protect us against government ministers’ politically expedient racism.

You Shall Know Them By The Company They Keep

Abortion, bigotry, Civil liberties, Democratic (in)action, Health, Religion, Sexuality, UK politics, Wingnuts, Women
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[UPDATE: Ann Winterton’s bill was defeated yesterday, but there’s two more coming right along behind. This is not over by a long chalk.]

The Catholic church in Britain, buoyed up by the rise of the religio-fascist Pope Ratzo, the presence of some prominent Catholics in the UK giovernment and the huge influx of Catholic migrants, is getting way too big for its boots: it’s threatening, the 70 Catholic MP’s who don’t toe the church’s anti-abortion line with excommunication (though they insist not, that’s effectively what it is) and worse, should they even so much as abstain from voting on new legislation tightening abortion rules. Catholic MPs include Ruth Kelly, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, and John Reid, the Home Secretary. The head of LifeLeague, James Dyson, said the pressure group would “out” Catholic MPs who took communion and abstained on abortion measures.Aiding them in this profoundly undemocratic exercise are some of the most rabid rightwing nutjobs British politics can produce.

The leader of Scotland’s Roman Catholics yesterday questioned whether politicians who backed abortion should remain full members of the church, and also compared Scotland’s abortion rate to “two Dunblane massacres a day”. In a sermon marking the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act, Cardinal Keith O’Brien attacked both the practice of abortion and pro-choice members of the Scottish parliament.

[…]

“I think it’s far beyond time that the present Abortion Act of 40 years ago was re-examined,” he said. “We are killing, in our country, the equivalent of a classroom of kids every single day. Can you imagine that? Two Dunblane massacres a day in our country going on and on. And when’s it going to stop?”

The Dunblane reference was just gratuitously unpleasant and ill behoved a cleric – but it proves that this is about poitics and power, not conscience. That a priest would commit such an offence to common decency as to use a tragedy and parents’ grief to make a political point says he is a political, not a spiritual man. But then the anti-abortion movement has never been spiritual or about the sanctity of life but about the subjugation of women – and that goes double for the Catholic church.

British Catholics are in an invidious position. Allegiance to the Pope is required for Catholics as a matter of doctrine and this allegiance extends to the Vatican, it’s cardinals and all of their doctrinal instructions. Those instructions are infallible as they come from God directly, Catholics are told: the church’s position is that temporal powers are are strictly limited by God and God’s instructions trump the state’s. The Pope speaks directly to God, ergo the Pope’s instructions trump the state’s because abortion is considered a spiritual, not a temporal matter.

However, I suspect that should anyone else from any other religion give their primary allegiance to another city-state and its leader ahead of their own nation and compatriots they’d be called traitors, with prominent Catholics like Ruth Kelly in the forefront of the name-calling, especially so if they were Moslem.

The church can obsfuscate about liege lords and loyalty as much as they want, but their own statements of doctrine say it’s so.

This puts many British Catholics in a very delicate and ambiguous position: their loyalty has been constantly historically suspect and this has more than once resulted in bigotry and violence, so much so that the church has had to become an underground, secret, and dare we say it, even a terrorist organisation at times. This state of affairs has formed the basis of much of the long history of anti-Catholic bigotry in England but we had begun to get over it, at least until the ascendance of Ratso to the papal throne and the subsequent empowerment of the worst of the right wing of the church.

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On Second Thoughts…

bigotry, Religion, US politics, Wingnuts
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Maybe it would’ve been better for Jerry Falwell not to have died just yet, just as the fascistic theocracy he tried to create starts falling apart (but let’s not get too optimistic, there’s nearly 2 years to go yet). It would’ve been wholly satisfying to have seen him get his just deserts in life, publicly disgraced and shamed for the misery he caused by his ‘religion’ and his lust for power. But no, he escaped.

Damn. That’s the trouble with atheism. There’s no afterlife to wish torment on someone in.

It almost tempts me to become Christian for an hour just for the purpose. There’s a lot of hellfire and torment you can pray for in an hour, as Falwell himself proved.

UPDATE: Huh. There’s a surprise. Fellow-fundies are rushing to disassociate themselves from Falwell already.

Wonder what goodies he had on them all when he was alive?