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This is what i read. ok?
Not OK. Put down your Spectator, read the entire effing document and edify yourself for once in your life you silly twat.
(Apologies mods…my last reply to an absolute numbskull)
This is what i read. ok?
Not OK
Well if its not ok to read and quote from one significant line within the document then i am certainly not going to read the document right through…
Apologies for the insults yesterday Clivex. I’m a bit hot headed at times. As much as you come across as a person I have absoloutly NOTHING in common with, your entitled to your opinions however much I disagree with them.
Clearly any attempt to communicate with you on these matters is an utter waste of time, so I’ll leave you to dwell in your considerable ignorance, imo.
The only opinion i have expressed is that the poll gives a positive indictaion but at the same time, i cannot help thinking that there are very contradictory messages.
Surely admiration for china and saudi is not exactly in tune with a strong desire for democracy?
the message i get from that is that some admire these countries because they are "not western" rather than for any acheivements in the human rights sense. Thats fine, but hardly clear thinking IMO
From the Sunday Telegraph:-
A man with close links to Islamic fundamentalism and the backing of prominent racists could this week be elected as the executive mayor of a council, with almost total control over its £1 billion budget.
Lutfur Rahman was sacked by the Labour Party last month as its candidate for mayor of Tower Hamlets amid deep concerns about his links with a Muslim supremacist group, the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), and a number of powerful local businessmen.
Mr Rahman also signed up entire families of “sham” paper Labour members – some of whom do not even support the party – to win nomination as Labour’s candidate.
Mr Rahman is now running as an independent and his supporters say he is “hopeful” of victory.
“Things look very good,” said one of his major business backers, Shiraj Haque, a millionaire restaurateur.
Labour sources said the contest between Mr Rahman and their new candidate, Helal Abbas, was “extremely close” and would depend on turnout in Thursday’s election.
Unlike a conventional leader, a directly-elected mayor has almost complete power over a council’s finances and cannot be controlled, checked or sacked by councillors.
Tower Hamlets moved from a conventional leader system to a mayoralty this year as a result of a campaign spearheaded by the IFE.
In secret filming earlier this year, Abu Talha, an IFE activist, told an undercover reporter for The Sunday Telegraph and Channel 4’s Dispatches: “The mayor is going to have a lot more control. That’s why we need to get someone, one of our brothers, in there. Which we will do.”
The law says that if 5 per cent of the electorate petition a council, it must hold a referendum on changing to a mayoral system.
Earlier this year another prominent IFE activist, Abjol Miah, organised such a petition.
A total of 99.3 per cent of the signatures were Asian names, in a borough which is only a third Asian.
Council officers found that almost half were “invalid”, with entire pages of names and addresses written in the same handwriting and around 5,000 not even appearing on the electoral register.
Nonetheless, enough of the signatures were ruled to be valid.
The mayoral referendum was granted and passed in May after an intensive campaign involving the IFE, Mr Haque and others who have now emerged as backers of Mr Rahman.
The literature advocating a “yes” vote in the referendum campaign used an identical logo and typeface to some of Mr Rahman’s leaflets in the mayoral campaign.
Defeat in strongly-Labour Tower Hamlets would be a humiliation for the party’s new leader, Ed Miliband, in what is his first electoral test. However, it would also raise even more serious concerns about radical Islam’s political power in the UK.
According to one of its own leaflets, the IFE – based at the hardline East London Mosque in Tower Hamlets – wants to change the “very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed … from ignorance to Islam.”
The group is accused by one of the area’s Labour MPs, Jim Fitzpatrick, of infiltrating and “corrupting” his party in a way similar to the Militant Tendency in the 1980s.
Mr Rahman, a former council leader, was removed from that post by his fellow councillors in May after The Sunday Telegraph and Dispatches exposed how he had achieved the position with the help of the IFE.
Six serving and former Labour councillors told us they had been threatened by a senior IFE official that the group would mobilise its supporters against them if they did not choose Mr Rahman as their leader.
Mr Rahman confirmed that the IFE official had helped run his leadership campaign, though he denied that any threats were made to councillors on his behalf.
In the secret filming, the IFE activist, Mr Miah, told the undercover reporter: “We’ve consolidated ourselves now. We’ve got a lot of influence and power in the council – councillors, politicians.”
During Mr Rahman’s two years as council leader, Tower Hamlets channelled millions of pounds of public money to front organisations run by the IFE.
The borough’s public libraries stocked large quantities of extremist literature, including taped sermons by the spiritual leader of the 9/11 hijackers, Anwar al-Awlaki. An anti-gay preacher was hosted in the council chamber.
Lutfur Ali, a man with close links to the IFE, was appointed as the council’s assistant chief executive, despite headhunters saying he was unqualified for the job.
Mr Ali was also removed after this newspaper’s investigation, but he was present at Mr Rahman’s campaign launch and is expected to return to the Town Hall should Mr Rahman be elected.
During the campaign, Mr Rahman’s supporters have targeted the Bangladeshi community electorate with a blitz of tens of thousands of leaflets falsely claiming that their Labour rival, Mr Abbas, is a “racist”, a “wife-beater”, and a bankrupt.
One leaflet delivered door-to-door on Friday falsely claimed that Mr Abbas had “obnoxiously” insulted the imam of Mecca, “initiated a physical attack” against his political opponents and was guilty of “racist TV slurs”.
“It is a hugely well-financed operation and is making a real impact in the Bangladeshi community,” said one Labour councillor. “In a low-turnout election, it could make the difference between victory and defeat.”
Mr Rahman, who insists he is paying for his entire campaign out of his own pocket, says he is the victim of “racism” and “unfairness” by the Labour Party.
“I won the vote of the membership. The imposition of Cllr Abbas in my place is an insult to the democratic process,” he said.
Mr Rahman said that if elected he would “work to bring together our diverse communities”. However, one of his leading supporters, Wais Islam, a former Tower Hamlets councillor, recently posted anti-Semitic insults about a local journalist on his Facebook page, though he later apologised for them.
Another prominent Tower Hamlets racist, Abul Hussain – expelled from George Galloway’s Respect party for making anti-Semitic remarks – has organised campaign meetings on Mr Rahman’s behalf.
Mr Abbas said: “If I am elected I will ensure that no one is favoured or disadvantaged because they’re my cronies. My campaign is not funded by people wanting [council] contracts – it’s funded by the Labour Party.”
Rushanara Ali, the Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, said Mr Abbas’s victory was vital to “stand up for the values of freedom, of transparency, of the correct use of public money”.
She said: “The stakes are so high. We do not want the people of Tower Hamlets, and especially the Bangladeshi community which I am so proud to be a part of, to be known to this country for the wrong reasons.”
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