Totalitarian Impulse Within the Scottish Government

In response to criticism of the proposed law on bigotry, the Scottish government revealed its totalitarian impulses.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman last night defended the legislation.

She said: "Racism, bigotry and sectarianism have no place in Scotland, and those who perpetrate such behaviour will be punished through the full force of the law. These new laws will send out a clear message that there is no place for bigots in a modern-day Scotland.

"If approved, anyone who peddles sectarian hatred - in any football stadium in Scotland, on the way to or from a game, or hiding behind a computer screen - could now face up to five years in jail."

Source: Scotsman
The phrase "have no place in Scotland" is uniquely expressive of the totalitarian impulse that lies behind this and much other do-gooder legislation. It's not that the Scottish government is alone in this. Many western governments now use similar language routinely and rarely find themselves challenged for it. But they should be.

With the sole exception of immigration policy and the problems that result from it, the idea that a government should decide what does or doesn't have a place in the country is fundamentally sinister. It is not the role of a government to attempt to alter the moral sensibility of its people.

If there are racists in Scotland, then racism has its place in Scotland. If there are morris dancers in Scotland, then morris dancing has its place in Scotland. If there are people who worship Adolf Hitler as some kind of demonic god in Scotland, then Hitler worship has its place in Scotland. It is the people who should decide what does or doesn't have a place in Scotland, not the government.

The notion of regulating a state of mind is also creepily totalitarian. To attempt to do this, or even to talk as if you were doing this, is to create actual or apparent thought crimes. All that a government can legitimately do is prohibit actions, not states of mind. Even if the racist action of denying someone a job on racist grounds, say, is made illegal, racism itself is not. Extending the rhetoric from the action to the state of mind delegitimises and dehumanises a section of the Scottish population. Of course this is the intent. But it is an anti-democratic, totalitarian intent.

Hate Crime Law Timetable Pushed Back

After preposterously claiming that waving the Scottish or British flags, singing Rule Britannia or the Flower of Scotland or making the sign of the cross could be a criminal offence, the SNP has now postponed the introduction of their proposed new hate crime legislation.

Opposition MSPs, both Old Firm clubs and the Church of Scotland had all opposed the speed at which the new laws were being pushed through parliament.

Alex Salmond announced today at First Minister's questions that the legislation would not be in place for the start of the football season in July and would instead be delayed for six months.

The Scottish Parliament's justice committee had expressed concern over the speed with which the bill was to go through.

Source

Scottish Government Preparing Indoctrination Programme for Children

There is an unbelievable article cum interview in the Times today featuring a so-called expert who says we need to brainwash children:

The twin scourges of sectarianism and addiction are closely linked and should be explained to children as young as ten, according to a world expert on conflict resolution.

Ministers have given a cautious welcome to the call, from Mary Sharpe, an international advocate, for school pupils in Scotland to be taught about the dangers of sectarianism, as well as about the risks of drink and drugs. The two, she believes, are closely linked.

Ms Sharpe has recently returned to Scotland after researching the radicalisation of young Muslims for Nato. She wants to set up a centre for conflict resolution in Edinburgh which, she hopes, will be able to help the fight against sectarianism.

Sure. She wants to set up a Centre for Conflict Resolution that will no doubt cost the Scottish taxpayer a few million a year.

She believes that sectarianism in Scotland is inextricably bound up with the nation’s problems with addictions — particularly with alcohol — and she is adamant that both addiction and conflict resolution have to be in the curriculum if Scotland is to become a tolerant country.

A spokesman for the First Minister, who will publish a Bill to tackle sectarianism next week, said that Ms Sharpe appeared to have a lot to offer the debate. “We would be very keen to take this farther and see what she has to say,” he said.

Meanwhile, Wee Eck gets ready to "criminalise online postings of religious hatred".

Alex Salmond has made the battle against sectarianism the immediate priority for his new administration and its first piece of legislation will be the anti-sectarianism Bill, which is due to be tabled before parliament later this week.

The Bill is expected to increase the maximum jail term for sectarian hate crimes from six months to five years, criminalise online postings of religious hatred and outlaw displays of sectarianism at football matches.

From all the hysteria about sectarianism, you would think there had been pitched battles in which hundreds of people had died. What in fact happened was that four players were sent off in an entertaining, rough-and-tumble football match. But these people have nothing better to do than invent imaginary solutions to problems that barely exist. And in this case their proposed remedy is far worse than the disease it is supposed to cure.

Ms Sharpe said she was delighted that Mr Salmond had identified the key importance of the link between addiction and sectarianism in his attempts to tackle the issue and she said she hoped that the election of the new SNP administration would provide an opportunity to take this work farther. “I am excited by the change in climate in Scotland and the willingness there now is for the country to face up to its demons,” she said.

...

She added that the only way the root causes of these issues could be tackled properly was to change the school curriculum and teach children about addiction and sectarianism from the age of ten. “We have to get into the schools."

"We have to get into the schools"! Creepy. This is like something out of the Soviet Union or Mao's China, and there is virtually no resistance to it. No one in public life is willing to draw attention to the dangers of ideologising education, of governments being allowed to indoctrinate children.

“We have to teach the teachers so they can make the children aware of what is happening and then they can influence their parents,” she said.

So not only do they want to brainwash the children; they want to use them as propaganda change agents to influence their parents. We are in George Orwell territory here.

And a look at this woman's bio makes it even more disturbing. She has deep-level connections to the power structures of the EU.

She practiced law for fifteen years in Scotland and in Brussels at the EC Commission where she developed her knowledge and experience of cross-cultural legal, political and business practice. In Brussels, she also trained as a jounalist in a specialist communications unit with senior operators from the BBC and the Financial Times for the then EC Commissioner for Science and Education, Edith Cresson, former Prime Minister of France. She was a speech-writer for several EC Commissioners and spoke on behalf of the EC Commission at conferences and seminars worldwide.

Sinister New Proposals to Criminalise Opinion on Religious Issues in Scotland

Scotland takes a step closer to becoming a Soviet-style republic. The Daily Record today has revealed sinister new proposals to restrict free speech on religious issues in Scotland.

Crown lawyers have briefed ministers on plans to go after the "keyboard warriors" who spout hatred in online fans' forums.

And the law chiefs are considering a dramatic rise in the maximum jail term for such crimes, which currently stands at just six months.

Under the proposals, offenders who make death threats online or incite religious hatred would face jury trials and maximum five-year sentences.

Of course this is billed as being designed to tackle sectarian hatred between Catholics and Protestants supporting rival football teams. That is sinister in itself. Some of the venom between Celtic and Rangers supporters may be unsavoury, but they have a right to express it. Criminalising an opinion is always sinister. But, of course, once this legislation is introduced, I have no doubt it will be extended to cover "islamophobia" too.

So the islamisation of Scotland and Europe will continue, and those who try to warn about it may face prosecution simply for stating their opinions or citing politically inconvenient facts. And what we have seen with the various hate speech prosecutions around Europe of people like Geert Wilders, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff and Lars Hedegaard, is that the truth is no defence. It does not matter how well-grounded in fact their opinions are. It is illegal to utter such truths, they are told.

Muslim Successfully Destroys Police Officer's Career But Wants More

Last year police officer Gavin Ross was convicted of "a race hate" crime and fined £500 for jocularly calling Sergeant Amar Shakoor, his Muslim colleague, "a fucking Muslim bastard" after the Muslim had made a joke about him.

Today, the Herald reports, the police officer was allowed to keep his job but forfeited a pay rise he would otherwise have received. His career has been destroyed. Even if he has kept his job, he will be denied promotion in future based on what has happened. But the Muslim "victim" isn't happy:

Mr Shakoor, who is chairman of the Scottish Muslim Police Association, said: “He has been dealt with leniently. People who have committed similar offences got the sack.

“The force is supposed to have a zero-tolerance attitude policy towards racism, islamophobia, sexism and homophobia, and they should stand by that. This decision does not instill confidence among minority officers or the community at large.”

Nor are his fellow Muslim agitators. The news is said to have "reverberated around Glasgow’s Muslim communities yesterday." One of the Muslim infiltrators within the SNP even pitched in:

Humaz Yousaf, a list candidate for the SNP in May’s Holyrood elections, said: “Strathclyde Police enjoys a good reputation of engagement with the Muslim community.

“There tends to be a policy of zero-tolerance for racial, homophobic or any other type of prejudice.

“Therefore, it seems unusual such a lenient punishment has been meted out in this instance and it would be a shame if this had a detrimental effect on Muslim community relations, which Strathclyde Police have built up so effectively.”

Notice how the Muslim gloats about how dominant politically correct thinking is within Strathclyde Police. We saw evidence of that recently when the first priority of the Chief Superintendent whose officers had just arrested a dangerous Muslim terrorist who had plotted to murder non-Muslims was to reassure ... the Muslims. Ironically, indeed, the "race hate crime" between the two police officers occurred while they were attending a "diversity training course". It is shocking that at a time of straitened public finances, taxpayer money is being wasted on this folly.

There are also other issues to be considered here. Islam is not a race. So why was Gavin Ross convicted of "behaving in a racially-aggravated manner" for calling him a "Muslim bastard"? This "bracket creep" that we see in the extension of the concept of race is simply not acceptable. In the run-up to the war in Iraq, a protester was charged with a race-related crime for holding up an anti-American banner. Islam is an ideology people choose to embrace. It is not a fact of birth. We must be free to robustly critique ideologies like Marxism, Nazism or Islam.

A second issue here is the disproportionality. A man has been convicted of a crime for jokingly calling someone else a name. Almost every male in Glasgow will have been called a "fucking Fenian bastard" or a "fucking Proddie bastard" at one time or another, and often not in a spirit of jest. This is sectarian abuse - no different from what happened to the Muslim. "Fenian" or "Proddie" are references to religion just as "Muslim" is. Yet those other instances do not result in prosecutions.

Only when you call a Muslim a name do you get prosecuted. So, it seems, Muslims have a special protected status, higher than the rest of us. This, indeed, represents the de facto establishment of the conditions of sharia law and the status of dhimmitude in which the non-Muslim dhimmis live under Muslim rule, yet are forced to accept an array of conditions giving them second-class status, including a prohibition on cursing Muslims.

Should all of the "Fenian" and "Proddie" name-calling result in prosecutions too to create balance? Of course not. It would be impractical and a vast waste of public resources. People should grow up and learn to accept the little blows life deals them instead of nurturing a sense of narcisstic victimhood - something the Muslims seem to be world champions in.