Verbal

They do not 'attract' the BNP. The EDL is run by the BNP. The EDL is a BNP front, nothing more. And given his 'FaceBook' invitation, The OP of this thread may have something to saying about the following. From The Times, 10 August 2009: "Paul Ray, who claims to be one of the founding members of the League, says that the group has been taken over by a cabal of extremists including Chris Renton, whose name appears on the list of BNP members leaked last year." Renton , from Weston-super-Mare, does indeed appear on the BNP membership list leaked last year. He is the BNP's 'internet guy'. And it was Renton who designed the EDL's website. At the forefront of the EDL violence in Birmingham in August was what the Times (15 August 2009) identified as the Casuals United, 'a small army of shirt-sleeved, middle-aged men with beer bellies.' The Times goes on: 'The members of Casuals United are largely former football hooligans drawn from the terraces.' And here, as far this thread in particular is concerned, is the worst piece of information: 'The Casuals make full use of modern communications, using social networking websites, notably Facebook, where there are about 40 branches, many of which declare allegiance to various football clubs.' Friends of yours, bigtone?

BTF is a he with an 's' on the front. Otherwise you got everything right. And + another 1.

Covert - by which I mean information is passed anonymously but directly to the police. And then binned. By what twisted logic do you get from a warning being given to a warning not being given?

Way to go, Mr dot, with missing the point I was making! To reiterate, are people really so pea-brained as to commit a mirror image of the offence caused by the Luton Loonies? That is, to stigmatise, victimise, intimidate and assault people in a fit of irrational rage. Do you really think that the Asians who found themselves in the midst of an assault aimed at them were suicide bombers? do you really think they - by the colour of the skin or their religious beliefs - were somehow complicit? No. Which gets to the heart of this. People on here complain long and loud when they think they're getting tarnished with the 'racist' label. But the reality is they're aligning themselves - or even like bigtoe, actively seeking recruits - with an organisation that revels in a desire to intimidate Asians. That is racist. Period. And let's be clear about what the EDL are NOT doing. If you or they or anyone else is so incensed by the actions of the Luton loonies, then take your protests to them directly. They and their organisation has been well publicised. They are not in hiding. But the EDL won't. Because they're not only racist thugs. They are cowards. It's so much easier to intimidate middle-aged Asian women visiting their mosque or out shopping. And it serves the EDL's purpose better. They are racist agent provocateurs who want to create their own rivers of blood as a recruiting sergeant for the BNP and other cretins even further to the right. This is not about a small, peaceful but objectionable demo months and months ago. It's about fooling people like you into signing up, at least in principle, to a sustained campaign of intimidation and violence against innocent people. As to your comment about the government unwilling to pass laws - are your freaking SERIOUS? Britain has one of the most draconian anti-terror laws in the western world. These laws are so extensive, and so extensively misused that there's a backlog of cases at the European Court - and not from the 'usual suspects'. If you followed the recent court cases against the plane bombers, you'd have noticed that juries have repeatedly failed to convict on what seem like open-and-shut cases against the idiots. Why? Because the anti-terror laws are not extensive enough? Because the juries are packed with Asian sympathisers? Hardly. No, the simple answer is that in Britain, uniquely in the Western world, surveillance evidence from the intelligence services is not admissible in court. It's an utterly absurd situation, and is letting dangerous people back on to the streets. But this ban on wire-tap evidence is not the doing of a Labour government - or any other shade. It's the result of specific pressure from the intelligence services themselves, who want to keep their cloak of secrecy as all-encompassing as possible. It drives everyone crazy - not least the Americans, and other European states, who routinely use wire-tap evidence to secure convictions. If you want to talk about people actively engaged in warning the authorities about terrorist plots, then you should say a HUGE thank you to those Asian community leaders, family and acquaintances who increasingly are shopping suspcious and dangerous individuals to the authorities. Sometimes, as in 7/7, these covert warnings to the authorities have been completely ignored by the police, but subsequently acknowledged. So if you're tempted to man the barricades against innocent Asians outside a mosque, or if like bigtoe you're itching to burn it down, might I suggest instead you take a nice box of Ambala sweets, and say thank you. Nicely.

So are we going shifts then? Rabid racists in the morning, loony lefties at night?

Damn those Asians! You know, the funny thing about you, bigtoe, is that you exhibit EXACTLY the same kind of noodleheaded rage as the Luton loonies - so uncontrollable you appear to be ready to top yourself. For the Luton loonies, all the British carry the collective guilt for the actions of the baby-murdering soldiers. For you and your racist pals, all Asians/Pakistanis/Bangladeshis (exterminate as appropriate) carry the collective guilt for the actions of a tiny handful of death-cult idiots. Do you not see the teeny weeny irony?

Them? Who's 'them'? I assume you're talking about the League of Extraordinary Racists.

On sale in P*mpey too? Impressive.

Ooh this is great. I think we've got a liberal lefty tree-hugging groove going on here. Far (right) out!!!!

Just to clarify then, the EDL are racist thugs. Glad we got that worked out.

It is about race, regardless of the ethnic identity of particular individuals. The EDL is racist and the Salafists are racists. (Richard Reid, the shoe bomber is not white, by the way). The EDL are racist agent provocateurs trying to create their own rivers of blood and the Salafists are actually disgustingly contemptuous of whites. Who are the 'some on here' that you talk about? The usual straw men? And you're wrong about the far right playing into the hands of Salafists - they both need each other in this particular fight, and they both know it. Both know that violence on the streets is a recruiting sergeant. The victims are the people caught in the middle of it. Because of the chosen battlegrounds, almost all of them are Asian. Can you really be happy with that?

No, relax, it's not you. Mike's talking about Sundance Beast.

"Our" (by which I presume you mean white) tolerance is way, way overrated. As a regular traveller to South Asia and Middle East I'm regularly embarrassed at the hospitality, courtesy, food, shelter and transport freely offered by people who barely know me from Adam. The only people in the UK who are as welcoming are my Pakistani and Iraqi acquaintances. And I wonder when people will tire of regurgitating a protest by 20-odd irritants all those months ago - and using it to discredit an entire community?

FYI, I am not Abu Hamza.

They were thrown in Manchester, delldays. If you're asking if I personally find the original Luton protest 'acceptable', no, of course, not. It was juvenile, attention-seeking and worse. It's the kind of mentality that is but a small step away from being tempted into strapping on a suicide belt. They were wide-eyed fanatics who were saying '**** you' as much to their community elders as to the soldiers. And it wasn't that they were expressing opinions so much as trying to stamp on the graves of the soldiers' dead comrades, in order to impress, in a weird kind of homo-erotic way, their 'sheikh', OBL. Was it racist? Debatable, but I'd allow that description. In any case, I don't know of a single Muslim, other than the idiots involved in that very small demo, who has expressed support for them. And as I say, I am not aware of ANY of these now well-known individuals being targeted by EDL protests. Instead they've gone for the easy prey of Asians on the street. It's racist intimidation, nothing more, nothing less.

I'm sorry, I really shouldn't have, but I must admit I laughed.

They're not exercising free speech, my sinkable friend. They're exercising their right to lob bricks and steel bars and try to start a fight. They are racist agent provocateurs, attempting to stoke street wars and to create the impression of racial chaos. They are not targetting 'extremists' but people who happen to have brown skin. If I'm wrong about this, then no doubt you could point me in the direction of a single extremist who has been targetted by these neanderthals. The paradox of this is that these assaults drive the Asian community inwards, and the prospects of their 'shopping' the dangerous cultists will actually diminish at precisely the time that such reporting to the police has been on the increase (As in the case of the Bristol bomber for example).

And who do you think was the most active in protesting against these individuals? Other Muslims in Luton. Community leaders and others queued up that day and afterwards to denounce them. I suppose that shouldn't excempt them from the intimidation and missiles of the 'EDL'. To repeat - the EDL are racist agent provocateurs. They aim their 'protests' squarely at people who happen to be brown-skinned. For this, some on here seem to have taken some vengeful glee.

Not in this case. The EDL exists to intimidate Asians. Period. That's not an exercise of free speech. One of the problems with this whole thread is that people on here - none of whom I presume is Asian - has a single clue about how the Asian community, and particularly Muslims, feel about the death cultists who kill and maim. Let me tell you. They feel much more strongly about it than you. Why? Not least because they are the victims. What is happening in the West is a sideshow - for OBL and Zawahiri it's just a place to commit 'spectaculars', as a means of raising recruits and cash. Their real goal is the yoking of Islam to an extremist Wahhabi version of the religion that's actually been practised by a tiny minority of Muaslims over a very, very short space of time. And let's be clear what Wahhabism is. Wahhab was a 17th century zealot who suddenly stoned to death a village woman in the desert of what's now Western Saudi Arabia. The villagers were stunned - and expelled him immediately. He eventually found refuge with a small-time sheikh called Saud. They entered into a pact, and their violent followers grabbed Mecca and Medina. So hostile were they to even the founders of the religion that, in 1802, Wahhab's followers desecrated the graves of Mohammad's family members and destroyed sacred sites where Mohammad's life had unfolded. Fortunately, the descendants of these lunatics were deposed from Mecca and Medina by the Ottomans. Of course, they were reinstated with the help of Lawrence of Arabia (!!!), and as a result of the 1915 Anglo-Saudi Pact. All at precisely the time that oil was discovered under their feet. The vast wealth was used partly to prosyletize extreme Wahhabism and export it across the Arabian Pensinsula, into South Asia, and beyond. Pre-existing variants of Islam - especially the highly peaceable and mystical Sufism, which had its powers base in India (Pakistan) and Afghanistan - were to be destroyed. Which they certainly were in Afghanistan, for example. As this battle for the soul of the religion has worn on, the victims, overwhelmingly, are Muslims, from Iraq to Pakistan. Muslims, by far, have the most to lose from the Wahhabi extremists - and the majority who haven't been intimidated or branwashed at the insidious Saudi-funded Maddrasses utterly detest these poisonous cultists. The point is - they need our support, not bricks aimed at their heads. But hey, if their skin is brown and they're outside a mosque, then they're fair game.

I still don't see how lobbing bricks at Asians is an exercise of free speech - and how it's not racist.

Delldays, my point is not that we shouldn't be concerned about any kind of extremism - or to put it more exactly, any kind of murderous death cult like the Salafists who buy into OBL's psychotic bullsh*t. My point is that the EDL is nothing more or less than a rallying call to racist thugs to intimidate and lob bricks at Asians. That's not the 'media', it's not 'branding', that's just how it is.

I wonder if you could try again, and this time make some sense. Who among the people being demonstrated against is a threat to you? Are you certain - or crazy enough - to believe that this organization is anything other than an agitating band of racist thugs? How does this 'brainwashing' work exactly then? Anti-semitism is okay? Hatred of all Muslims is okay? One sided? No - just calling it what it is.

Who said I was talking about you? Strange.

Don't knock it. The thread provides the useful function of herding up the few sheep-like, hardcore racists on this site in one handy place.

Tut, tut, ESB. The correct Latin is ad nauseum.