The Gods Did Not Save Commander Ali Dizaei

It would not have happened in Baltimore.  Commander Ali Dizaei has been convicted of perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Naughty Po-Po.

An Appeal for Common Sense over Lunchgate

As Joan McAlpine gets indigestion from the media hoo-ha over Lunchgate, I am inclined to agree.  It is quite unedifying to watch the media fall on Salmond like wild-animals onto a giraffe, looking for lunch.

This is Scotland.  It’s should be Dinnergate.

Caithness Jobs in Doubt

As reported in Drapers Online, where anything which happens in the drapery and haberdashery world is reported, Ethel Austin has gone into administration. In September 2009, the company re-opened the the former Woolworths stores in Thurso and Wick following that company’s failure earlier in the year.

This is the second time in two years the company has gone into administration, with MK One buying it within a month of the previous occassion. Yet, according to administrators, job losses may result:

MCR partners Geoff Bouchier, David Whitehouse and Philip Duffy were appointed joint administrators today and said that they could not rule out store closures and redundancies.

Bouchier said: “The joint administrators are trading the companies in administration in the short term with a view to finding a purchaser for the businesses as a going concern. In the current economic climate there are no guarantees that purchasers will be found. We are reviewing the financial position of the companies and are at this stage, unable to rule out store closures and redundancies.

Scottish-Islamic Foundation Should Be Politicized Only By the SNP

THIS IS A GUEST POST BY DHAIBHIDH C MHAC DHUIHDHLHEIGH OF THE LENINIST VANGUARD (DRUMNADROCHIT CHAPTER).

Greetings all.  Our Brother, Osama Saeed has a truly inspiring response to the toxic attack dogs of the neo-con, Zionist, Imperialist conspiracy which has been unleashed against him.

I write this article in a personal capacity, as much of the criticism surrounding the Scottish-Islamic Foundation are to do with my political life, even though SIF has always maintained a strict non-party political line, and no one can demonstrate otherwise.

Reports recently about SIF have been headlined about me as an SNP candidate even though this has absolutely nothing to do with the SIF. Candidates in all parties hold down sensitive jobs in the public and charitable sectors and are not subjected to this unfair blurring of lines.

From day one SIF has been hounded by the Labour Party. The reasons for this are obvious. I am in with a great chance of being the next MP for Glasgow Central, and thereby sweeping the Sarwar family, great benefactors of Scottish Labour, out of office.

Mohammad Sarwar is not just a normal MP to Labour. He got the party £300,000 for the last Scottish election campaign. He continues to fund, directly and indirectly, a number of candidates and the national party itself. Labour will as a result make sure he is looked after.

In the initial phases, Sarwar’s ally Frank McAveety MSP was getting in about SIF. His register of interests shows he was given money for his last election campaign by Sarwar’s Muslim Friends of Labour organisation. Labour’s point man on this then seemed to suddenly switch. An unholy number of parliamentary questions have been tabled about SIF, in a scenario perhaps not quite ‘cash for questions’, but morally dubious nonetheless.

The pressure put on the Scottish government about SIF has been unparalleled for any similar small organisation. It’s come not just from Labour, but from rightwing elements, but often with the two feeding from each other. 55 others were funded in the same stream as SIF, including some working with Muslims, but I doubt readers can name another one or what they do for the money. Any organisation, when examined under a cynical microscope, can have fun poked at it. I’ve seen enough in the last few years in this sector to know that.

Audit Scotland investigated SIF’s funding and clearly and definitively concluded that correct processes and procedures were followed. £200,000 was awarded by the Scottish Government in 2008 to organise a festival of Muslim culture in order to bring communities together. The total budget needed was greater than this, but it proved difficult to raise it due to the economic crisis that had broken out. The plans were therefore streamlined and retimetabled. A lot of organisations have commented to me that they would have just blown the money on any old thing anyway. Instead, we were prudent, wanted to do the job properly, and asked for the £128,000 that wasn’t spent so far in developing the project to be reprofiled into this year.

Projects get delayed all the time – folk in the Scottish Parliament building of all places should know that. Just last week it was reported that government IT projects had lost in the region of a cool £26BILLION (where are the parliamentary questions? Where are the Freedom of Information requests?). SIF is nowhere near this territory though and didn’t ask for any new money. I think the green light to finish the festival would have been given had it not been for the hatred that would have poured forward if it had. SIF has instead had to be nimble and resourceful in reconfiguring the plans where others would have given up.

So if anyone is to blame for the delays to the bold things SIF wanted to do, Labour should look at themselves. It is nonsensical to create an environment where an organisation cannot get funding, and then criticise the consequences. How are SIF meant to deliver a Middle East trade expo and a cultural festival with no staff resource on it, and no way to pay for venues, publicity and the rest? No organisation in the country would be expected to do that.

Despite working under considerable strain, the young people involved in SIF have carried on as best they can, and are firmly an important part of the Scottish landscape. A cultural festival will go ahead. Since its launch a short 18 months ago, SIF has campaigned against forced marriage, distributed food amongst Glasgow’s needy, set up a PhD with Strathclyde University, exposed the man that threatened to blow up Glasgow Central Mosque, condemned vandalism by young Muslims against a synagogue in Edinburgh, and seen its young people even win awards for their contribution in the mainstream of society. The organisation brought together the country, including all political parties, with the Scotland United initiative when the far-right SDL was formed – 3,000 people from all walks joined it including trade unions, churches and the EHRC.

The latter, with Nazis astonishingly on Scottish streets against Muslims, underlined the need for bridge building activities and action against Islamophobia that SIF brought forward. It’s not ever reported, but Labour recognised this themselves when they agreed in principle to fund the Islamic festival before leaving office in 2007. It’s just a shame political opportunism later took over.

Gosh, wow, I mean wow, inspiring, like.  Brother Osama is quite right to point out that his organization should not be politicized for any purpose (other than promoting him, the SNP PPC for Glasgow Central).  I cannot fail to disagree more with his germane observation that it had spent a mere £72,000 of the allocated £400,000 with no discernible result, comparing to many billions lost on Government IT schemes.

I was making just such an argument when the Police attempted to book me for speeding.  Why were they not out catching real criminals?

Brother Osama lists many inspiring achievements of the SIF, such as blogging about a washed-out loonie, and not asking for more state money when any fule nose it would have been forthcoming.  I felt the shame of the SIF when it, instead, felt the leading to ask for Ramadan donations.

Fuck You Amnesty International

Gita Sahgal and Aisha Shaheed (of Women Living Under Muslim Laws). Copyright unknown.

As reported in today’s Sunday Times, the Head of the Gender Unit at Amnesty International’s secretariat, Gita Sahgal spoke of the decision by the UK chapter of AI to partner with Moazzam Begg and Cageprisoners.

In an email sent to Amnesty’s top bosses, she suggests the charity has mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his “jihadi” group, Cageprisoners, out of fear of being branded racist and Islamophobic.

Sahgal describes Begg as “Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban”. He has championed the rights of jailed Al-Qaeda members and hate preachers, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the alleged spiritual mentor of the Christmas Day Detroit plane bomber.

[...]

“As a former Guantanamo detainee it was legitimate to hear his experiences, but as a supporter of the Taliban it was absolutely wrong to legitimise him as a partner,” Sahgal told The Sunday Times.

An official press-release by AI stated that human rights are for all, and even supporters of violent jihad have the right to be officially endorsed by AI.

A statement from Sahgal reveals that – presumably for violating confidentiality agreements – she has been suspended by AI:

This morning the Sunday Times published an article about Amnesty International’s association with groups that support the Taliban and promote Islamic Right ideas. In that article, I was quoted as raising concerns about Amnesty’s very high profile associations with Guantanamo-detainee Moazzam Begg. I felt that Amnesty International was risking its reputation by associating itself with Begg, who heads an organization, Cageprisoners, that actively promotes Islamic Right ideas and individuals.

Within a few hours of the article being published, Amnesty had suspended me from my job.

The female pudenda is a beautiful and versatile object. What to call AI?

Alex Salmond Seeks Kudos for (Eventually) Behaving Properly

As Mr Eugenides discusses the metaphorical bathyscape from which to peer out in wonderment at the depths of human stupidity displayed by Jim Devine, Fish-heid McMoonface and the Sturgeon realize it may not be popular to flog dinner-dates for SNP funds.

It emerged last week that Alex Salmond and Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon had each sold lunch dates at a party event in Glasgow.

The SNP has now said Mr Salmond also auctioned a further three lunches.

Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray accused Mr Salmond of “systematic abuse” of his position.

They have both insisted no parliamentary rules were broken.

Have they learned nothing from the within-the-letter-but-not-spirit of the rules over the Westminster expenses scandal?

The Weaker Sex Serving Afghanistan

One woman who definitely does not need protection, and one who sadly did.

Cpl. Stephanie Lanning from Clinton, Arkansas (operating from 293rd Military Police Company out of Fort Stewart, Georgia), speaks to an Afghan man in Kandahar City on an information gathering mission.

Lanning showing delighted Afghan girls a woman acting as an equal with men.

Gayle Williams, Christian pacifist assassinated by the Taleban in October 2008.  Working with Serve Afghanistan, she had been walking to work with disabled children in Kabul when shot dead by a motorcyclist for the ‘crime’ of “preaching Christianity”.

Contrast with a bunch of downwardly mobile middle-class nobodies whose demonstration of their pacifism is limited to the security of British streets.

(Image copyright: those of Lanning, Kirsty Wigglesworth, AP; Gayle Williams, unattributed.)

A Bunch of Fannies in Culpeper County, Virginia

Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post reports that Culpeper County Public Schools in Virginia has pulled an edition of The Diary of Anne Frank. Not because they were antisemitic twunks, but because they were prudish twunks who reacted in horror at passages such as this:

There are little folds of skin all over the place, you can hardly find it. The little hole underneath is so terribly small that I simply can’t imagine how a man can get in there, let alone how a whole baby can get out!

Yes, that is correct: horror at a 14 year old girl’s awareness that she had a vagina and knew what it did and, worst of all, presumably had put her fingers down there.

What next? Attempting to ban a book about two male penguins taking care of an egg?

The most challenged book of 2009, according to the ALA, was “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, based on a true story about two male penguins who care for an orphaned egg. Sounds truly subversive to me.

Oh, wait.

(HAT TIP – Scepacabra.)

Overdosing on Homeopathic Remedies

I would not say that homeopathic remedies are wholly bogus, because I have no doubt that their proponents believe passionately in their effectiveness. Then again, even if a treatment for woodworm was promoted in which cats were to be doused with kerosene and used as fire-frisbees, I would not excuse any proponents if they believed passionately in their effectiveness.

So, I was satisfied to see the 1023 Campaign challenge Boots for its policy to stock homeopathic ‘remedies’ by purchasing large quantities and consuming them there and then, with no ill-effects.

The Society of Homeopaths called it a “stunt”.

Well, of course it was.  Surely you have a media department which advized you on the credibility your sincerely believed-in treatments would get from being stocked by Boots?

An attempt to drink the kool-aid in Southampton can be seen here:

I wonder if Boots will now stock faith-healing crystals.

(HAT TIP – Richard Wilson.)

Public Sector Employee Declines a Bonus

FIFE POLICE’S Chief Constable Norma Graham has confirmed that she will turn down her bonus, given the ongoing furore over public sector bonuses.

A UK-wide bonus scheme for all chief police officers was introduced back in 2004, with salary grades reduced with a view to the difference being accommodated through performance-related bonus.

With public anger continuing to boil over about bonuses, both in the public and private sectors, Mrs Graham has confirmed that she feels it is not right to seek a bonus.

She said, “My personal view is that the bonus culture does not sit comfortably with public sector organisations and in this difficult climate I have made it known that I will not be seeking a bonus.

“Fife Constabulary is a successful force that, in working with others, has achieved year-on-year reductions in crime and disorder and is focused on tackling the issues that matter most to local people.

“As chief constable my ambition is to take policing closer to the communities of Fife and my performance will be measured on the delivery of the policing plan, a key priority of which is the force-wide rollout of the community engagement model.”