Alex Salmond has pledged to establish Scotland's first state Islamic school should he be First Minister come May.

The article also contains a remarkable turnaround in Conservative policy towards faith schools.

Comments

[joe90]

As ever Ted,
well put -
- just re-state my argument, but add your own personal feelings - what a Cold War historian you are.

I don't suppose you have any arguments or even evidence to contradict me - I suppose that would be asking too much of someone who is too busy reading royal biographies to bother about the real world.

Just for instance Ted,
The UK government is about to try to re-new its 'indepedent trident nuclear deterrent' -
- of what possible iuse has Trident been, since it was bought on the back of Scottish oil revenue?

As you know Ted or don't,
wherever you find oil, you find large sums of petro-dollars being exchanged bewteen western arms manufacturers and those with the oil profits
ie The House of Frauds recent purchase of Eurofighters

All completely useless but very, very expensive weapon systems for threats that don't and never will exist - the ultimate in conspicious consumption and purchase of white elephants that no society can ever need, want or ever be able to use in nay meaningful way.

It's that, or the government is going to have to spend the money on little luxuries such as proper policing, schools, teachers, hospitals, local councils etc - all that boring stuff that the domestic populations of Britian and America really care about. Obviously, what the domestic population want or need is never a high government priority when compared to the needs and wants of the investors and shareholders of Wall St and the City in London.

'The Cold War':- system of military economic Keynesianism where the state intervenes in the economy on behalf of the rich and powerful, sometimes referred to as the welfare state for the rich.

Sorry to encumber you with facts about the real world Ted - better get back to The Daily Mal's offering today on Diana, another royal picture exclusive no doubt.

[Ted]

Joe, I'll be frank, and when I say frank I mean brutally so, you're a bampot. Your reply bears no relation to the subject in hand and has no relevance whatsoever with the Cold War. You're mental. You're aff yer heid. You're a loony. You're the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Your mother and father werer probably related. You have a chromosome missing. You lick windows on buses. You live in a bubble untroubled by facts or reality. Keep rockin'.

[joe90]

Sorry Ted,
when you said you'd be frank,
I thought you meant you'd be george,
my mistake.

That's what I like about you Ted,
no intellectual content to worry about - I like my brainwashed simpletons that way.

[Ted]

So, Joseph, the Soviet invasions of Hungary, Czechslovakia and Afghanistan, its subjugation by military force of East Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania, its military partitioning of a major European city, its military and financial support to Communist regimes in North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and Cambodia, its battles with China, its instigation of proxy wars in Africa and South America, to name just a few Soviet-inspired incidents - all of these were 'defensive' measures and do not constitute proof that the Cold War was a reality rather than a figment of etc, etc media figures.

I can only conclude Joseph than you are indeed an apologist for totalitarianism, a mental spastic that should have been flushed down the toilet at birth.

[joe90]

You've lost me again Ted,
where is the threat to the US and western interests in - I can't seem to see them?

I never said the Soviet Union didn't have its own empire, where have I said that?

I actually did say it was occupying other countries - I was quite explicit about it. I even said why it was doing that, in order to create an outer ring of satellite countries to act as a buffer against any outside threat of an invasion and to keep Russia itself away from as much harm as possible.

Russia's catastrophic experience at the hands of nazi germany in WWII makes this policy very understandable indeed, extremely rational in fact. Why you see it as threatening and hostile is due to your western brainwashing Ted. Don't worry, I'm on hand to try to de-programme you and try to help you towards seeing reality as it actually is.

The Soviet Union rarely strayed from its own extremely limited sphere of interest and when it did it was neither a very helpful ally or a reliable one.

for instance,
Egypt abandoned the Soviets because of Moscow's hot and cold support and the hilariously mis-named 'Cuban Missile Crisis' showed any potential Soviet ally or friend how much the Soviets could be relied upon in any crisis with the US ie not at all.

The only anomaly in the recitation of your brainwashed catalogue of non-knowledge is of course, Afghanistan, when the USSR came unstuck - but the CIA creating and funding Al Quaeda is a different story altogether.

As for the US,
it intervened and destroyed independent developments the world over since WWII. These independents developments were always refered to as 'communist aggression' whether they happened to be or not. Reality doesn't matter when it comes to western propaganda.

You would call them 'communists' if you wanted to attack a country for not obeying its orders. Just like today, you call them 'islamic militants', or some sort of tosh like that, if you want to interfere in somebody else's country.

For instance,
Vietnam tried to develop itself independent of either the US or USSR or even China. In fact, Vietnam and China were mortal enemies for quite some consoderable time.
The US invaded South Vietnam to stop it joining with North Vietnam. That's right the US attacked and invaded South Vietnam. Just like Iraq today the excuse wa that the US was saving the natives for democracy. The first thing it did in order to save the natives of South Vietnam for democracy was to bomn them all to pieces.

for instance,
the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia,
they had the full support of the US for years. They originated in the illegal but not so 'secret bombing campaigns' of Prez Nixon of Cambodia. So not only did US war crimes create the Khmer Rouge but the US supported them when the Vietnamese government crossed the border into south east Cambaia to help bring the Khmer Rouge genocide to an end. The US disapproved and gave their full backing to the Cambodian genocide and those carrying it out simply because the Vietnamese through the illegal US occupiers out of Vietnam.

As the old adage goes,
if a campesino peasant in Uncle Sam's Backyard (as the US chamber of horrors of Central and South America are sometimes referred to) fell asleep and woke up in communist occupied Poland they would think they'd woken up in paradise.

sorry to mire you once again in the real world Ted

You've still to explain the vast network of US bases that span the world and the vast gargantuan US military budget (which is bigger than the next 10 national military budgets put together) Ted - what has that got do with defending America, with only 5% of the world's population?

[joe90]

Now that there is no more horrible nasty old Soviet Union waiting to take us over if we're not careful,
why has the US military budget vastly increased, in real terms, since the Cold War ended Ted?

Why are there more US bases than ever?

Why are there more US invasions than ever?

What are all those huge piles of dead bodies doing littering up West Asia, where all the world's largest oil reserves are?

ps
supporting a communist regime in Cuba - nice one!

Cuba - a country that has been subjected to the longest terrorist campaign in history by the US, and it is the Cubans who are the problem!

Apart from the fact the Cuban regime has over 90% approval of its own people - but then again, what do they know -
- after all, they only have to look at all the other countries that surround them to find evidence of Uncle Sam's benificent patronage
ie death squad democracies,
poverty, squalor and misery beyond imagination

The US is threatening to bring democracy to Cuba - poor Cuba, what has it ever done to merit America's attention - except, of course, not following the orders of the Great White Father in his House in Washington.

Cubans only need to look at Afghanistan and Iraq to know what their community will look like (again) when Uncle Sam re-introduces its death squad-torture chamber democracy.

Luckily there is already a torture chamber set up in Cuba, but its American. The Cubans got rid of the rest of the yankee concentration camps in the Revolution.

[John Palubiski]

And you've already admitted the 4th Crusade attacked the Christians of the region when they took over and sacked Constantinople.

Yes they did; it took place in 1204.

The reasons for it are quite simple.

The crusaders had no desire to return to the Middle East; the place was such a backward, poverty-stricken shit-hole that there simply wasn't anything to loot.

Islam took what had for centuries been the most enlightened and prosperous places on the globe and turned them into worthless backwaters.

That old Mohamadean magic!

The sack of Constaninople, then, isn't so much a scathing indictment of the crusaders as it is a statement about Islam's complete inability to generate wealth or even the semblance of civil society.

[joe90]

You don't half talk a load rubbish,
your list of errors and omissions, found amongst the usual floatsom of garbage that orginates from your direction, are unbelievable

Previously you had stated -
The Muslims in and around Jerusalem had purposely and maliciously desecrated and detroyed centuries-old Christian shrines thus provoking Europe into defending these holy sites.

But now you are saying -
The crusaders had no desire to return to the Middle East; the place was such a backward, poverty-stricken shit-hole that there simply wasn't anything to loot.

- so,
not only weren't the Muslims the ones doing the desecration of the christian sites, which you accused them of and the reason you gave for the crusades,
but it was the crusaders themselves who were doing the desecrating of eastern christianity once they reached the east!

- and er,
you seem to have forgotten all about the existence of actual Crusaders states of the Holy Lands and the east, mr moronski -
- not only did Crusaders want to go to the Holy Lands, but there were already Crusader Kingdoms up and running, and lots and lots of Crusaders already living there and had been for some time.

And usually a new Crusade was composed of folk who had never been on crusade never mind having ever visited the Holy Lands themselves.

Remind me again pinheadski, what was a crusade supposed to be about - an opportunity for a violent raiding, robbing and raping party or something with some defined religious purpose in mind?

And for someone that claim he knows about history, you can't even recall your own recent history never mind anybody elses -

[John Palubiski]

Those crusader states had been largely abandonned by the early 13th century. The region was so poor that they were no longer worth defending.

Think of the modern day Middle East minus any and all petroleum resources and you'd have some idea of the poverty.

There was nothing left in the Middle East by then as the Arabo/Muslim world had sunk into a torpor from which it still hasn't emerged.

In 1204, thus, Constantinople was considered a much more prestigious target.

And besides the pyschological shock of the 1st crusade had ensured that Christian pilgrims were no langer harassed and their shrines no longer desecrated.

[joe90]

In 1204, thus, Constantinople was considered a much more prestigious target.

- a target for what?

The Fourth Crusade was intended for The Holy Lands and the Crusader States -
- there were crusaders still in the Holy Lands, so you're original assumption that crusaders wanted nothing to do with the Holy Lands is a load of nonsense
- still its interesting what you can mostly just copy straight from wikipedia's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusader_States>Crusader states
- without acknowledging your source

Why would the Pope, the head of a religious organisation and congregation, consider changing the destination his Fourth Crusade - when did he do this, at what stage and why?

Why go to all the trouble of organising a crusade, when the western aristocratic warlords could just mount a hostile expedition to Constantinople without needing to involve the Pope or anyone else?

There were crusades, after the Fouth Crusade, to the Holy Lands - why was this so, if crusaders were no longer interested in their religious duties and more interested in pillaging, looting and raping?