-- Are the UAF necessary? Is it good that they are there because they send out a message to ordinary Muslims that people would not stand by if anyone tried any fascist activity, or do they encourage the EDL?
Good question, I remember when my parents returned to the UK in the 70's seeing a BBC news article about ordinary citizens grouping together in some ghetto areas to defend immigrant homes from people like the National Front who were attacking their homes at night. Many of the volunteers were martial artists - the police were around but called in only when violence had started.
I don't see the UAF movement as a direct descendent of those volunteers in the 70's but some of the sentiment among some members may be the same. There are other groups too - ANTIFA for one and to a large extent you have to wonder whether there are elements who simply want some aggro.
Just as deliberate however is the EDL choosing areas with large immigrant populations for their protests, equally is the high incidence of attacks on ethnic minorities in places where people like the EDL and the BNP have marched. I suppose at a human level, some people don't want to sit by until some horrendous attack has happened on an immigrant but would rather protest or stop the attacks happening.
Why don't the EDL march in Wooton Basset for instance? Why don't they march in areas with few if any migrants?
Had a look at your mark humphreys link... was interested to read about celebrities responses and who he claimed as part of this evil one-eyed monster and surprised to read Desmond Tutu there.
Tutu's credentials for being part of the "modern left" (won't bother to put all your rubbish in but you know the stuff you spout about the "evil reds")?
Mark Humphreys link said:
On the day after Christmas, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Anglican Primate of South Africa and holder of the Nobel Peace Prize, standing before the memorial at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to the millions of Jews murdered by Hitler, prayed for the murderers and sermonized the descendants of their victims. "We pray for those who made it happen, help us to forgive them and help us so that we in our turn will not make others suffer" (New York Times, 27 December 1989). This, he said, was his "message" to the Israeli children and grandchildren of the dead.
Moral obtuseness, mean spite, and monstrous arrogance do not make for sound ethics and theology. Neither Tutu nor the Israelis he lectured can "forgive" the Nazi murderers. Representatives of an injured group are not licensed (even by the most unctuous of preachers) to forgive on behalf of the whole group. In fact, forgiveness issues from God alone. The forgiveness Tutu offers the Nazis is truly pitiless because it forgets the victims, blurs over suffering, and drowns the past.
So a Christian, acting in the way his messiah (Jesus Christ) asked followers to act i.e. forgive those who betray / wound / hurt us - is somehow left wing...
The link given for whatever Desmond Tutu is supposed to have said that enraged our modern "Redwatch" righties could be this -
Desmond Tutu speech in London
In essence, he talks about how the goodwill shown to the US after 9/11 has largely around the world become deep mistrust and hostility. Hmm, anything to do with the lies that took us into Iraq and left Afghanistan (where Osama Bin Laden was supposed to be) alone to fester and the world ignored the pile up bodies of Western troops.
Or could the good archbishop have angered our Redwatch buddies by saying this?
"forgive but don't retaliate"
Was Jesus a leftie? Is Tutu only doing what the leader of the faith he is part of has asked of him? Hmmm.. doesn't take much to be a "leftie" it seems. Anyone to the left of Hitler must be a communist I think.
:lol: