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| Fifth Column |
| An Upside-Down World: The British far left makes common cause with Muslim reactionaries. |
| 2007-02-25 |
| by Nick Cohen, Wall Street Journal The other day Ken Livingstone, the mayor of my hometown of London, organized a conference on Islam and the West. It was a carefully rigged affair in which handpicked speaker after handpicked speaker stood up and announced that the democracies were to blame for the tidal wave of murder sweeping the world. To provide a spurious air of balance, the organizers invited a few people who dissented from the line of the Muslim Brotherhood and its British allies. Agnès Poirier, a French feminist, was one of them, but she pulled out because although there were no special facilities for Christians, Hindus and Jews, Mr. Livingstone had provided separate prayer rooms for Muslim men and Muslim women. She wanted to know: Does Ken Livingstone's idea of multiculturalism acknowledge and condone segregation? It clearly does, but what made this vignette of ethnic politics in a European city worth noting is that commentators for the BBC and nearly every newspaper here describe Mr. Livingstone as one of the most left-wing politicians in British public life. Hardly any of them notice the weirdness of an apparent socialist pandering to a reactionary strain of Islam, pushing its arguments and accepting its dictates. Mr. Livingstone's not alone. . . . Read the whole thing. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #4 FREEREPUBLIC/CNN [TV] > 2000 Terrorists-Cells planning strikes agz Britain. *OTOH, does NOT count 2-4000 reportedly set up for same in CANADA??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-02-25 23:11 |
| #3 Until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, British and French communists were engaged in active sabotage of the French and British war efforts. Only after the start of the German Eastern Front effort and Stalin's call for a united war effort, did the communists stop wrecking equipment and sabotaging vehicles used for transport. Hitler and Stalin had their pact, and the communists were busy aiding the fascists everywhere until the two dictators had their falling out. |
| Posted by: Shieldwolf 2007-02-25 18:53 |
| #2 It is perfectly logio: who allied with Hitler? Right wingers Chrchile and (by eueropens standards) Roosevelt? No; It wss Stalin and european communists had no qualms in sabotaging the armies of their conuntries in order to help Stalin's ally. Far left and far right are not 180 degrees apart but 360 degrees apart. |
| Posted by: JFM 2007-02-25 11:21 |
| #1 One of the author's points is that the fall of communism actually empowered the left because they didn't need to defend anything. The rest of this is stuff we've heard many times. |
| Posted by: mhw 2007-02-25 10:49 |