Nick Cohen
Cohen and others, the likes of David Aaronovitch and the Harry's Place blog, called all criticism of the Iraq War "anti-Semitic" every day for several years.
You know, the war that stopped the East End Bangladeshis, among so very many other people, from simply voting Labour.
The original legislation on "spiritual influence" related and relates only to what Irish Protestants thought (and English atheists think) that Irish Catholics believed.
No properly formed Catholic ever could have believed that he would go to hell if he had not voted as directed by the bishop or by the parish priest, or even by the Pope.
And Islam, especially the Sunnism to which Bangladeshis and Pakistanis overwhelmingly adhere, is a great deal less hierarchical than Catholicism.
If the Labour candidates do not win Brent Central, Finchley and Golders Green, Hampstead and Kilburn, Harrow East, Harrow West, Hendon, Hornsey and Wood Green, and Hove, then they should put in petitions to the Electoral Court, and I trust that they would, although I hope and expect that there will be no such need.
For, if they won before that Court, as Labour and against the power of the State of Israel, then this law really would be repealed.
And they would still have won.
16:35, Just deleted over on Comment is Free:
How astonishingly far to the Right the supporters of the Iraq War have moved in the years since. That is a recurring problem in people with Marxist backgrounds. As they move rightwards for the larger fees and what have you, they do not know when to stop.
Rahman is a crook, and that should have been enough. But no, Cohen endorses a judge who holds that liberal Anglican bishops can say what they like because they went to public school, and because in any case their mildly leftish economic and their fairly conservative social views are the opposite of their only possible readers', so they are never going to influence anybody.
But everyone, including themselves, has to be protected from the credulous Pakis of today, as surely as from the credulous Paddies of old. So says the judge, and so says Nick Cohen.
The ban on "undue spiritual influence" is like the former ban on "the promotion of homosexuality". That was a prohibition of something that was in any case impossible. This ought to be recognised as being a prohibition of something that is in any case impossible.
No prosecution was ever brought under Section 28, and no one much noticed when it went away. In fact, its time on the Statute Book coincided with an almost total change in the general attitude to homosexuality, and not in Section 28's direction. It was a dead letter from the start.
This, however, is something else. No action had been brought under it since the century before last. But it is back now. Cheered on by a man who thinks of himself as a leader of the liberal Left, in the pages of what regards itself as the senior print organ of liberalism and liberality in, at least, the English-speaking world.
Cohen and others, the likes of David Aaronovitch and the Harry's Place blog, called all criticism of the Iraq War "anti-Semitic" every day for several years.
You know, the war that stopped the East End Bangladeshis, among so very many other people, from simply voting Labour.
The original legislation on "spiritual influence" related and relates only to what Irish Protestants thought (and English atheists think) that Irish Catholics believed.
No properly formed Catholic ever could have believed that he would go to hell if he had not voted as directed by the bishop or by the parish priest, or even by the Pope.
And Islam, especially the Sunnism to which Bangladeshis and Pakistanis overwhelmingly adhere, is a great deal less hierarchical than Catholicism.
If the Labour candidates do not win Brent Central, Finchley and Golders Green, Hampstead and Kilburn, Harrow East, Harrow West, Hendon, Hornsey and Wood Green, and Hove, then they should put in petitions to the Electoral Court, and I trust that they would, although I hope and expect that there will be no such need.
For, if they won before that Court, as Labour and against the power of the State of Israel, then this law really would be repealed.
And they would still have won.
16:35, Just deleted over on Comment is Free:
How astonishingly far to the Right the supporters of the Iraq War have moved in the years since. That is a recurring problem in people with Marxist backgrounds. As they move rightwards for the larger fees and what have you, they do not know when to stop.
Rahman is a crook, and that should have been enough. But no, Cohen endorses a judge who holds that liberal Anglican bishops can say what they like because they went to public school, and because in any case their mildly leftish economic and their fairly conservative social views are the opposite of their only possible readers', so they are never going to influence anybody.
But everyone, including themselves, has to be protected from the credulous Pakis of today, as surely as from the credulous Paddies of old. So says the judge, and so says Nick Cohen.
The ban on "undue spiritual influence" is like the former ban on "the promotion of homosexuality". That was a prohibition of something that was in any case impossible. This ought to be recognised as being a prohibition of something that is in any case impossible.
No prosecution was ever brought under Section 28, and no one much noticed when it went away. In fact, its time on the Statute Book coincided with an almost total change in the general attitude to homosexuality, and not in Section 28's direction. It was a dead letter from the start.
This, however, is something else. No action had been brought under it since the century before last. But it is back now. Cheered on by a man who thinks of himself as a leader of the liberal Left, in the pages of what regards itself as the senior print organ of liberalism and liberality in, at least, the English-speaking world.
As you know, The Guardian moderators, for some unaccountable reason, took offence at your reply to me on their site and deleted, so I thought that as you had taken the trouble to write it, it would be polite to reproduce it here.
ReplyDeleteDavid Lindsay comments - "No, you are the obvious racist here. You are cancer. And I write as one whose father died of cancer. If you have children, then they have been bred purely in order to commit acts of racist violence, and they are incapable of any other act whatever. Whatever they do, simply by the fact that they do it, is ipso facto another imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, another assassination of Martin Luther King, another murder of Stephen Lawrence."
Please don't thank me. You are most welcome.
And so are you. I am very proud of that one. Very proud indeed.
DeleteDon't mess with me, sensitive soul that you obviously are. Just don't. Ask Damian Thompson, who still has his little tantrums about a few less than sufficiently deferential tweets years ago.
On topic, please.
For shame, Sir! For shame! The very suggestion that Mr. Lindsay might not have italicised ipso facto.
DeleteThat one is a corker even by your standards, Mr. L. You are one of the sharpest wordsmiths of your generation and a vital soldier in the fight against the forces of evil and entitlement. They don't like it up 'em.
Sorry, off topic, I know.
Entitlement. Spot on, Not used to being stood up to. Don't try that with me.
DeleteI notice you have been calling yourself a buttress and not a pillar of Labour on Twitter in conversation with fellow buttress Billy Bragg. But you have a legitimate grievance when you were not allowed back in the party while Ken Livingstone can campaign for Lutfur Rahman and Nick Cohen can campaign for Boris Johnson both against official Labour candidates.
ReplyDeleteYour comment under the Graun editorial on this is absolutely spot on.
ReplyDeleteYou are very kind.
DeleteYou didn't learn your politics out of a textbook, you are a real man of the world, I so wish you were in Parliament.
ReplyDelete