jeudi 27 août 2009

Relapse

News that the 'recovery' is an illusion got relegated pretty quick.

vendredi 21 août 2009

Is the Guardian a secret admirer of the BNP?

"Two people have been charged with leaking the names and details of the entire British National party membership.
The list, which identified thousands of people linked to the far-right party, was posted on the web in November 2008. Information included addresses and other contact information such as mobile phone numbers and the names and ages of children in a family membership.
Dyfed-Powys police said a 27-year-old man and 30-year-old woman were charged under the Data Protection Act after a joint investigation with the Information Commissioner's Office. The pair lived in the Nottingham area at the time of the leak.
The fallout included the outing of police, lawyers, teachers and church figures as BNP members, with some complaining the leak exposed them to the risk of dismissal or disciplinary action. Some included on the list, which ran to 13,000 names, complained they had been mistakenly included after only asking for information on the party. Others said they were no longer members.
In one entry of a woman believed to be a serving police officer from Wirral was the note "Discretion required re employment concerns – police officer", along with the names and ages of her children.
The BNP leader, Nick Griffin, claimed at the time to know the identity of a person who had leaked the information, calling them a hardline senior employee who disagreed with the direction of the party and left the party in 2007. The party called in the police and obtained a high court injunction to stop the list being published but was forced to admit it was relying on the Human Rights Act, which it opposes, to protect members' privacy.
The party said the leak was "malevolent and spiteful" but the list was not up to date and only included names of members up to 2007.
The BNP goes to considerable lengths to conceal the identities of members, including dividing lists between different people and encrypting and password-protecting email attachments.
The two people charged are due to appear in Nottingham magistrates court on 1 September."

It's not just me - this report is too sympathetic to the boneheads. Take the bit about the list not being up to date. It's as if the writer wants to illict feelings of sympathy for the goons on the list. It's been like a lot of other reports from the paper that treat the organisation as if it deserves being treated seriously.

mardi 4 août 2009

BNP give them a name

Should we call BNP members 'scum' 'boneheads' and '[fill in your own insult here]'? On the whole we at REL think that "Yes you should." and not only that. You should also dream up further insulting descriptions lest one forget that you are dealing with (in however an abstract and remote way) the absolute pits of the political universe.
Over at the Tomb, Lenin highlights a piece in the increasingly wobbly Guardian that ends with a quote from a BNP goat fucker, at the end of the article, that gives the impression that the left is somehow responsible for the increase in right wing violence against anti-fascists. One must be clear, the only way to deal with nazism is by total brute force. Alas, working class people turn fascist as well since our political culture is so corrupt. You can reach out and try to turn them away, but face it, they are part of a violent extremist tradition with its roots on the glass strewn streets of 1920's and 30's Germany. If they raise their shrunken heads, then they must be treated as legitmate targets. They have to be crushed with bats, sticks and whatever comes to hand - it's pointless to try to be an anti-fascist and a pacifist.
Thankfully, the BNP are merely a tic crawling over the surface of things and there are far more important things to worry about. Buggering No-mark Party. They'll perish.

UK values

The Home Office is pondering the idea that immigrants (not 'ex-pats' as retiree Brits living abroad call themsleves) who protest against the war or at homecoming parades of soldiers should face visa and passport penalties. The specific UK value here, presumably, being the unqualified and open ended support for 'Our Boys' in far away butchery of foreign nationals.
One does not even have to resort to the 'slippery slope thin end of the wedge' type argument here - this is straight forward police state tactics. In the name of spreading democracy abroad 'we' must supress it at home.
In the context of the BNP getting a broader press, this idea (one that for the Tories does not go far enough...) will give the nazis confidence that their ideas are becoming mainstream, thus a further pox on this dying government for dredging this putrid idea into the daylight.