Wednesday 26 August 2009

STAMP out the lies of 1ST Class Sh*t Stirrers

They're at it again.

Well-established by now as the official 'anti-Muslim' Party of Britain the BNP wish us all to know that those Muslims (including the Welsh ones) - they're not us you know, they don't share our values, they hate our way of life and their insensitivity knows no limits.

Remember Luton back in March, when less than 20 utter morons, remnants of the proscribed Al-Muhajiroon group, hurled abuse at members of the Royal Anglian Regiment returning from Afghanistan? That disgraceful display has become iconic imagery of the supposed 'Muslim' attitude towards our soldiers. The plot to kidnap and behead a British soldier in Birmingham is another such example, but of course it is rarely mentioned that the intended victim was himself a Muslim. The BNP keep making reference to those events in Luton as if that repugnant behaviour was representative of Muslims in the UK. They would like us to believe that Muslims can't differentiate between the politicians who sent our troops into these disastrous wars and the soldiers themselves.

My grandfather served in the Navy in the Second World War and I have always worn my poppy in remembrance of my own family's personal sacrifices. My attitude and the attitude of those Muslims I have spoken to at length on this subject is that provided that our soldiers act honourably, treat civilians and unarmed prisoners humanely and do not descend into the kind of depravity witnessed at Abu Ghraib by the US troops, then when they return they should not be exposed to the kind of abuse they received in Luton. My personal view is these extremists should never have been allowed to protest there in the first place, the potential damage to community cohesion was obvious and indeed the Muslim community of Luton suffered a lot because of this one despicable act by 0.067% of the local Muslim population (that's assuming all those extremists were even local). If they were genuine anti-war protestors they should have been outside Downing Street or Westminster. Of course, what was hardly mentioned was that after Friday prayers hundreds of Muslim men surrounded these same yobs when the police wouldn't move them along as they set up a stall in the town.

The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX7Oh7YJMGo (you can fast forward to 2:13 to see the handful of extremists get surrounded by hundreds of local Muslim men who poured out of the mosque demanding that the police move them out of Luton).

Muslim communities across the UK are constantly standing up to, marginalising and disrupting the activities of these tiny fringe elements that are every bit as odious as their Far Right counterparts. Most of it goes unseen or unreported but we are as committed to challenging extremists who claim to be acting on our behalf in the same way that the mainstream society are committed to challenging the BNP, the EDL and the dross of society we call football hooligans, masquerading as 'patriots'.

So how are the BNP trying to develop the 'British Muslims hate our troops' narrative in Wales?

Hat Tip to Morgan Hen for picking this up:

http://morgan-hen.blogspot.com/2009/08/ely-bread-riots-sequel-or-is-bnp-trying.html

This is the statement on the matter by the Post Office in question:

"There is absolutely no truth in the allegation made to the British National Party that the Post Office in Wilson Road, Ely, Cardiff will not accept parcels for British troops in Afghanistan.

It should not be repeated and we reserve the right to pursue legal action against any person or body repeating the allegation and call for its removal from any website or other publication.

The Wilson Road Post Office has always accepted and continues to accept such parcels. Indeed the Wilson Road shops including the Post Office recently held a 'Heroes Collection' for British troops.

The allegation is false and malicious and related to a separate dispute with a customer. As a result that customer is not welcome at these premises but our services can be accessed by someone else on her behalf if they so wish."

Statement Ends.

Of course a party that were caught out using non-British citizens claiming to be BNP voters in recent election material would never intentionally mislead the public would they?

Thursday 20 August 2009

What the papers say...

I woke up this morning to find a friend had sent me, and about 300 other people (you should have Bcc'd their addresses mate they won't be happy), a link to an article reminding us of a joke, which has passed through the system more times than water in London passes through other human bodies before you get to drink it. Every so often another Muslim thinks they've come across it for the first time and it finds its way into our inboxes yet again. There have been many versions of it but this is the one I remember.

A man attending an open air festival in the US sees a dog attacking a child - one of the really vicious breeds (the dog, not the child). He wrestles the dog to the ground, gets a stick inside the dog's collar and keeps twisting till he chokes it. The dog dies. The child who escapes with only some minor injuries, is taken away in an ambulance. Onlookers applaud the man's actions.
A reporter covering the festival witnesses the brave intervention and rushes up to the man to get some details off him promising that the story will make the front page in his paper with the headline: 'Local Man saves child from Mad Dog'.
"Oh I'm not from around here, I'm just visiting", the man says.
"Ok then", says the reporter, "how about: 'All American hero saves child from Hell Hound'?"
"I picked up this accent attending the American International school in my home city, actually I'm on holiday from overseas", says the man.
"No problem, how about: 'Foreign hero saves child from dog attack'?", suggests the reporter.
"Well if you want to be specific I'm visiting from Kuwait actually".
"That's in the Middle East right?"

When the paper gets published the headline reads: "Muslim Terrorist kills American family pet".

It reminded me of one year when I subscribed to the online version of a local paper, when I was working in a large English city with a sizable Muslim minority. Just as an experiment, with nothing particularly scientific about it, I decided to check it each day for 12 months, searching for key words to see if I could find one single story where Muslims were portrayed in a positive light. Just when I thought I had completely lucked out, I finally found a reference to a story on 'wonderful Arabians'.

It was about horses.

Tuesday 18 August 2009

MECCAnopsis: Under New Management?

I will be starting a new job in the next few weeks and it is one which will require me to be politically neutral. Given that this blog (although the content is not always related to Plaid) is clearly a Plaid Cymru supporting blog I am concerned that I may compromise myself unintentionally. Others before have come to a sticky end and I want to hopefully avoid their fate. I will continue to post until my start date, after which I will be handing the blogsite over to a close friend who can just as accurately be described as 'Cymro o Fwslim, Gwnaed yng Nghymru, Brodorol i Ewrop'. I have been lobbying him about this since I first became aware that new job and old blog might conflict and thankfully he has agreed to pick up where I leave off. Hopefully he will actually be able to post more frequently than I have done.

There is so much in the news I want to comment on but I simply don't have the time. I wanted to do a post on 'Bath time with Burkhas and Blackmail in the Bedroom' on a couple of topical pieces from France and Afghanistan but it looks like they are already old news. I suspect from September I will have even less time for blogging not simply due to work. Anyway, I and the new MC share enough in common (mor debyg a dwy bysen) for me to be comfortable that the site will be in safe hands.

I have enjoyed reading a diverse range of blogs over the last five months and I do not want to lose contact completely with the Welsh Blogosphere. I have considered starting up my own personal blog where I would have to assiduously avoid 'having a go' at other political parties but rather concentrate on the social and cultural life of Wales through 'Muslim-tinted' spectacles.

Anyway, I haven't gone yet, just warning that future posts may contradict earlier ones - and now you'll know why.

Monday 17 August 2009

Beggars being choosers

Back from collecting the missus from Cardiff train station. What! He lets her out of the house, you say? Don't worry she's always within 600 feet of me. Marvellous things, ankle tags. The war on terror has not been without its handy little by-products.

Anyway, while she was waiting for me to arrive, two homeless fellows (a bit the worse for drink), were doing the rounds with the commuters, asking everyone for money. Everyone of course except Mrs Meccanopsis - well she wears a scarf you know. I suppose in some people's minds that is the equivalent of a T-shirt saying 'Approach me and I'll kill you'. It wasn't a racial thing though; they approached a Chinese couple apparently... once they had exhausted the other 20 bystanders. Their loss, because as a couple we always give to Big Issue sellers and though these people are not in the same category exactly, we don't have hearts of stone.

You really know that you are the personae non gratae of society when even the beggars won't ask you for money.

Friday 14 August 2009

It's (a way of) Life, Jim...but not as you know it


Minister and wife walk out of Muslim wedding!

Does this really deserve to make the front page of a national newspaper? Does it really?

I mean, some bloke and his wife go to a wedding, can't sit together, and then leave. What is the definition of a 'slow news day'? Ok, so it's newsworthy because Jim Fitzpatrick is another Labour minister mocking his Muslim constituents who probably voted for him. No good deed deserves to go unpunished I suppose. But I suspect the main reason 'Muslims getting married according to Muslim tradition' makes headline news in a right-leaning paper is because it is another opportunity to scare the pants off people regarding the 'Islamification of [insert Western nation here]'. I would have thought that a wedding (not the registered aspect of the marriage) is a private matter not a state matter, but clearly the danger it poses to our way of life must not be underestimated - particularly by the paranoid or delusional.

Of course the signs have been with us for years (how did we fail to spot what was in plain sight all along?). Their plans for creeping Islamification are ingenious (you can read all about it in the 'Protocols of the Elders of Mecca'). Somehow they have made it fashionable for a full face veil (albeit gauze-like material) to be part of the bride's dress in a traditional 'white wedding', and they have even managed to brainwash generations of young men and women in this country into having gender segregation at stag nights and hen parties (don't let the alcohol and strippers fool you, these Muslims are tricksy my precious).

And there's always the danger these weddings pose to community cohesion...hang on a minute isn't this story about some non-Muslims who were invited to one of the most private and happiest of family occasions by some anti-cohesion Muslims? I couldn't think of a better way to demonstrate my desire for separation from my fellow citizens who do not share my colour or faith than to invite them into the company of my nearest and dearest and ply them with free food and drink.

I have been to Muslim weddings throughout the whole of my adult life and only on one occasion did the male and female guests NOT sit separately. But even with this segregation, I observed that non-Muslim guests where always allowed to sit together. At my own brother's wedding his non-Muslim mates brought along their girlfriends and they all sat on the same table. You may not agree with it, you may find this type of segregation odd, but it's the way these events are organised. Not every Muslim family does it this way, the vast majority do, and you either go along knowing what to expect and sit through it respectfully, and enjoy the same gender company whilst being fussed over as a guest or respectfully decline the invitation in the first place. I am under no illusion about the freely available alcohol that will be present at the weddings of non-Muslim friends and relatives that I get invited to. I don't drink but it doesn't prevent me going. I would consider it rude not to attend without a valid reason, an extenuating circumstance, not to. I take my hat off if I visit a church and I cover my head if I visit a synagogue - no big deal. Why do some people find it so difficult to spend an hour or so experiencing another person's way of celebrating marriage?

The minister later told his local newspaper: "It's a disappointment. We are trying to build social cohesion in a community but this is not the way forward." Quite.

Nothing says "trying to build social cohesion" like Hissy Fitz showing a bit of bad manners and making a young couple's wedding day memorable in the national press for all the wrong reasons.

Tuesday 11 August 2009

A Persecuted Religious Minority

No religious minority has a monopoly on persecution.

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/2509

This month's obscene attack on defenceless Christians in Pakistan requires nothing less than swift justice to prevent the repetition of such barbarity. Failure to see the guilty punished for this crime will embolden other vicious thugs across the country that share the perpetrators' warped understanding of Islam and further erode the confidence of the Christian minority in the willingness of the authorities to defend them. Minorities of any kind in a society are always vulnerable and it is the duty of the State to ensure all its citizens have the right to live unmolested.

These 8 victims (nearly all women and children), racially, ethnically however you want to look at it, the same as their persecutors; their families no doubt existing in Pakistan since the country was founded and possibly before even the idea of 'Pakistan' came to be. The very same religious minorities represented by white portion of the flag of Pakistan.

Next week a charity dinner will be held in Cardiff to raise money for the Swat Valley refugees, amongst the ticket purchasing guests will be Welsh Christians. I hope while we remember the dispossessed of Swat that at least one of the speakers will use the occasion to condemn the inexcusable mob violence and re-assure our Christian guests that this 'Muslim' mob did not carry out this horrific attack because they were Muslims, but because they do not know how to be.

Tuesday 4 August 2009

Historical Amnesia on a T-shirt

I just came across the Cymru X blog http://cymru-x.blogspot.com/2009/08/bnp-history-fail.html on how the BNP just don't do 'history' very well. We know that some of their high profile members have previously put forth some appalling revisionist views on more recent European history in relation to the Holocaust. Clearly, the further back they delve into Europe's past (even the history of the British Isles) they only demonstrate just how weak they are in the subject.

As Welsh nationalists, like our Scottish cousins, we find it ludicrous that Unionists should try to appropriate heroes from our history (Owain Glyndwr and William Wallace) who as we all know were famous for leading the struggle for the independence of our nations. But let's not let history get in the way of a bit of merchandising. Needless to say, they won't be getting any orders from Welsh or Scottish nationalists to boost their coffers.

How did Cymru X come across this 'news' item? Well they must have been on the BNP site again; yet another visitor adding to all this 'traffic' that the BNP no doubt assume translates as 'support'. I must admit I am also one of the many thousands of anti-racist and anti-Nazis that also visit the BNP site on a regular basis, inadvertently boosting their visitor stats and artificially giving them a false sense of 'popularity'.

Anyway the T-shirts are good news. As they can only be bought through the BNP's Excalibur site we will know where the wearer got it from, and since their members and activists have tried to hide themselves by adopting a new public image and blend in with the rest of society its become harder to spot them. Usually we have to wait until they open their mouths but now we can just wait for someone to put one of these t-shirts on to advertise who he/she is.

Oh and given that most people see the BNP as the ugly side of English Nationalism (one can only hope that true English patriots eclipse them and rehabilitate the image of English Nationalism in the future) it must be annoying for their Anglo-Saxon support base that they choose to bring out the English T-shirt last. And when they do, who do they use for the iconic image?

St. George:
Someone who was definitely neither 'British by Birth' nor 'English by the Grace of God'.

Hope the recall of stock won't put them out of pocket.