Part : Ken Livingstone's opening speech
A series of unofficial video clips of the "World Civilization or Clash of Civilizations?" conference has gone up on YouTube.
I'll be trying to add pointers to some highlights and lowlights on the clips as soon as I can. You can see how accurate Jonathan Hoffman's account which I posted was here.
For starters, listen to Ken circa 5:40 minutes into his clip attempting to use John Stuart Mill to justify his version of multiculturalism. It's another example of Ken not understanding his own propaganda, since it appears to be at odds with his own practice of promoting and giving taxpayer-paid platforms to individuals and groups who militantly advocate the suppression of the individual liberty which Mill proclaims.
For those of you who want to dip into the whole thing, here are the clips, which are being updated during the day with the great transcripts being provided by Vicktorya and the folks at 910group.com who have done a really brilliant job bringing this extraordinary stuff to the public. Meanwhile, the Mayor's office is still sitting on the official videos and transcripts which were made at our expense as London taxpayers.
Part 2: More of Ken Livingstone's opening speech
Part 3: Daniel Pipes' introduction
Part 4: Daniel Pipes' speech, continued
Money quote:
The Mayor defines multiculturalism as ‘the right to pursue different cultural values subject only to the restriction that they should not interfere with the similar rights of others.” And he argues as you just heard, that it works. That London is a successful city, and I won’t dispute his specifics, but I do see the multicultural impulse breeding disaster by ignoring a dangerous and growing presence of radical Islam in London.One evocative sign of this danger, is that your citizens in your country have become a threat for the rest of the world. In 2003, Home Secretary David Blunkett presented a dossier to the special immigration appeals commission, in which he “admits that Britain was a safe haven for supporters of worldwide terrorism”, and in which he said that “Britain remains a significant base for supporting terrorism.” And indeed, “British-based terrorists have carried out operations in at least 15 countries. Going from east to west, (inaudible), Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Algeria, Morocco, Russia, France, Spain, and the United States
Part 5: Salma Yaqoob, Respect Councillor and Stop the War activist, seconding Livingstone
Part 6: Douglas Murray seconds Daniel Pipes. His ironic thanks to Ken Livingstone for mounting the conference at London taxpayers' expense is right at the start. There's a burst of applause for his call for opposition to militant jihadism and totalitarianism at 1:16 and repeated bursts of applause at his filleting of "it's all the west's fault" arguments at 2:13 to 4:15.
Money quotes
Mr. Livingstone has so far this morning explained how the Cold War was our fault (laughter), and I would stress that there’s another similar re-write of history from Ms Yacoob here, there are all the problems of the world, all the problems of the jihad, all the problems of the violence come down to us, have to do with the Iraq War, have to do with Afghanistan. You’ve heard it a million times. It is not new stuff. But I would stress to you that if that argument were true and if we take it seriously for a moment and we should, if that argument were true, it doesn’t explain quite a lot of things. In other words, as well as being in a fundamental way, I believe, racist, i.e. the people who are doing the acts are not responsible. They don’t even have culpability. They can’t even make choices. They can’t even screw up unless it is our fault. (applause). Now apart from all that it is also simply historically inept.
If it is our fault, ladies and gentlemen, and perhaps Ms Yacoob and Mr Livingstone could answer this, if all the problems of the jihad are our fault, why are currently and have been for a long time, muslims slaughtering Hindus in India (applause), why are they murdering Buddhists in Indonesia and Thailand? Why are they murdering Animists in the South of Sudan? (applause) (inaudible) Is that a result of the Iraq war? Are we going to lay that one at the fascist junta of Bush and Blair as well?
.......
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I would stress that this could have been said by anyone at any time, but I should stress something about the people we are speaking with this morning because we have seen this before. There is form from Messrs. Livingstone and Yacoob on this one. In the last three decades two different groups of people have tried to murder and have murdered in large numbers the people of this city. They have nothing in common – Irish Republican extremists and Islamist extremists. They have almost nothing in common, aims or anything else. One of the few things they have do have in common is both have found an apologist in Ken Livingstone. (applause) In those day when he was on the army council and planning the murder of people in this city just as then he invited Adams and McGuiness once they were on the army council to Britain, so today he invites people like Mr. Al Quadawi and I would stress, ladies and gentlemen that he will say that he somehow took part in the peace process. He did not. Nobody believes that the IRA came to the table for any reason other than the fact that they were defeated, operationally incapable. That is how we defeated them. Not by inviting them to tea, not by rolling out red carpets, that is how.
Now he could have today invited as his co-debater, a moderate. He could have invited someone from the moderate, secularist muslim association in France. Muslim women, Neither Whore nor Submissives, a wonderful organization. He could have done that. Or someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Wafa Sultan. But instead he invited Ms Yacoob. Ms Yacoob, a spokesman for the Birmingham Central Mosque and for the head of that mosque Mohammad Naseem who believes that 7/7 wasn’t carried out by muslims and so on. We could say that, we could mention the fact that her political career as such started when she acted as the defender of the Yemeni Seven, the group of terrorists including Abu Hamza’s sons who were out there with the brother also involved in the campaign, and I would also point out on this one that she is also a member of Respect Party, a party so far beyond the pale of traditional political discourse. And neither does she or her party stand on the side of the moderates. Her party has called for the successive of the insurgency in Iraq, the murder of the people of Iraq that we should be supporting . She and her party, her line on this, her party’s line on this is that the insurgency should survive. That is elevating the extremists and threatening and elevating the murder of the moderates, and ladies and gentlemen we should not be on that side, we should not be on that side in Iraq and we should not be on that side here
Part 7: Questions from the floor, first section.
Part 8: Questions from the floor, second part. Note the enthusiastic applause for the questioner who asks why, if Ken Livingstone supports multiculturalism, he holds the conference on a day when no observant orthodox Jew can attend it. Jonathan Hoffman reminds Livingstone that he said that Israel should never have been created at 5:30.
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