Verbal

I'll let you into a little secret. The leak from Mossack Fonseca happened over a year ago. The vast amount of material, including four million emails, had to be analysed - which was done by over 400 journalists assembled by the consortium of investigative journalists. One of the largest groups of journalists was from the BBC. So this is every bit a BBC-led story as a Guardian one, and they'll run with it, while giving plenty of air time to the denials, etc. Given the vast amount of data, don't expect the revelations to dry up any time soon.

No, he's not. He was asked by Sky News today whether he had benefited personally from the offshore company his dad owned. He did not answer the question. It's reasonable therefore to conclude that he did benefit. For the leader of this country to campaign - apparently - against tax evasion and industrial-scale avoidance, only to have benefited from it in the first place, is some breathtaking hypocrisy. So if he continues to duck the question - and so long as it remains unanswered he'll be asked it again and again - he has no way out. Incidentally, what 'EU privacy law' enables Cameron to hide his tax affairs from the public? Can you name the Act? He is a public servant and if his private affairs (such as tax evasion) infringe on his public life they are not protected by any right to or privilege of secrecy.

You're confused. There is a distinction between positive discrimination and diversity policies. Positive discrimination is illegal in this country. Not that you'd think so. While it is just as illegal to discriminate in favour of, say, a young black woman as it is a middle-aged white man, the latter, in vast disproportion, occupy the commanding positions in banks, companies and government departments. And that's quite aside from salary discrimination in favour of white men. Diversity and equality policies, including the 2010 Equality Act, aim to combat that positive discrimination - which is a good thing, wouldn't you say?

The article is nonsensical on its definition of Deobandism though. It is certainly not "a highly orthodox spiritual version of Islam." It is explicitly hostile to the spiritualist traditions in mainstream Sufism (the latter which is actually the dominant form of the religion in Pakistan). It's a slightly watered down version of Wahhabism, and was a direct Islamist reaction to the 1857 uprising against the British which finally put paid to the Mughal empire. One thing the article does get right is this: There is most certainly a Corbynist attitude that Islamism can be included as among liberation ideologies against the imperialist West (and therefore all Muslims as natural allies with this) - which is the mirror image of the extreme-right racists' garbage that Muslims are synonymous with Islamism. As I've said many times, it's liberal Islam in all its forms that needs defending - and both the far-left's and the far-right's feeble-minded equivalences merely wave on the extremists. This makes dubious and gullible individuals like Sour Mash as much cheerleaders for Islamic extremism as any Corbynista.

The motives behind the Lahore attacks are much more complex than knee-jerk reactionaries like Moore would allow. If he knew who 'the Christians' in Pakistan actually were, he'd see there's more to this than some stupid liberal-elite/BBC conspiracy theory about obscuring 'hatred of Christianity'. The vast majority of Christians in Pakistan come from families who were, pre-Partition, 'untouchables' or Dalits - the lowest, poorest and most despised caste in the Indian social hierarchy. That stigma persists in all kinds of ways: these people variously are enslaved (in 'bonded labour' in the Sindh and Punjabi brick kilns, mostly); are the victims of organ trafficking (many in bonded labour are promised freedom from slavery if they donate a kidney - then are not paid); are the victims of false 'blasphemy' charges which are in fact land-grabs by greedy neighbours; and are forced to live, at enormous cost, in slums (some of the highest priced real estate square footage in the country is in these slums). In Lahore, the Christian slum is right in the urban heart of the city. The two Christian slums in Islamabad are a bit more set apart but still pretty central. If there were simply the victims of religious hatred they wouldn't be there - it would be far too dangerous. In fact, they're there because they are both the most exploited social group in the country, and the most necessary (many are employed to keep the cities clean - one of the worst jobs possible, but essential to the functioning of cities with desperately weak infrastructures). The attacks on Christians in a children's funfair, of all places, indicates contempt just as much for these people's social position as for their religious beliefs. And in any case, the Islamists' real target is the Pakistani government - they want to discredit the state's ability to be a state, and what better, cost-free way of doing it is there than bombing women and children of a social group no one cares about?

And the gift to the Tories that keeps on giving... Now Corbyn has been outed as having voted against banning Al Qaeda from the UK just six months before 9/11. Naturally, Diane Abbott and John McDonnell voted with him. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/12207392/Labour-grandee-criticises-Jeremy-Corbyn-for-voting-against-Al-Qaeda-ban-before-911.html He could hardly claim ignorance of their murderous violence. His vote came after the Al Qaeda attacks on the USS Cole and the embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

Interesting fact from Gus O'Donnell (former chief secretary to Blair) in the Guardian today. The only country to vote to leave the EU so far has been Greenland, which has the population of Croydon, and whose economy is all about fish. It took Greenlanders and the EU not two years, as allowed by the Lisbon Treaty, but three. Just to deal with fish and a few people. Add that to the fact that Canada, the great 'model' for Brexiters like BoJo, STILL doesn't have a treaty with the EU after seven years of negotiation. Canada has only about half the population of the UK and already has a huge trading partner on its doorstep. This whole treaty thing is not something Brexiters are very good at. Maybe, instead of adopting their silly Pollyanna stance, they might actually address how the UK will struggle on in the decade or so that it is outside agreed treaties with its largest trading partner, and as individual EU states and companies take advantage of Brexit by snapping up market share of UK companies presently trading in the EU.

For the same reasons, I'd suggest, that people joined the Manson family or Jonestown. The appeal of ISIS for local fighters is intimately related to the politics of the Sunni triangle and the spill-over into Syria. For western terrorist recruits - many of whom are converts (which is a category wrongly ignored) - it's something else entirely. The appeal is not so much the promise of an afterlife but the heavily promoted End of Times guff that accompanies any death cult. And for some reason, historically death cults have been particularly appealing to recruits middle class or comfortably off, quite stable families. (You'll notice the absence of Palestinians - the most downtrodden of all Arab peoples - from these Jihadist groups.) Western jihadists also tend to be committed conspiracy theorists, with all the gullibility that goes with such a simplistic, controlling-agency, mindset. It is a mindset that is closed and absolutist - a perfect fit for ISIS. This is why I think you get a pattern of thought among a certain sort of far-leftist which feels strikingly similar to those of western ISIS recruits. It explains widespread Jew-hating among Corbynists, for example, as well as deflecting arguments about how Brussels/Boston/Lee Rigby/9-11 are all 'false flag' operations.

A little known corollary of Godwin's law is known as the fallacist's fallacy. This states that just because an argument contains a fallacy it must therefore inevitably come to the incorrect conclusion. Both the law and the fallacy are in overdrive on this thread.

We don't know the motive for the attack, and the case is sub judice, so it might be an idea to await the outcome rather than break the law in a breathless rush to judgement. What we do know is that the shopkeeper is an Ahmadi. I worked with an Ahmadi in Pakistan not so long ago, and she and her family hd to keep their religious affiliation a very closely guarded secret, otherwise their lives were seriously at risk. Ahmadis, who are liberal in the religious and social beliefs, are regarded as apostates by extremists - non-believers - and are routinely targeted once their identity is known. As I said earlier, it's actually not a bad idea to defend liberal Islam, which was one a majority in many Mnuslim countries but is now under threat.

I stand corrected. Our problem is that ever since the Bitter Lake agreement, the West has essentially stood aside while Wahhabism wrought havoc in the Muslim world, and now here.

It's ignorant ********. The Muslim populations of Belgium, France and the UK are minuscule compared with many other countries that do not have a terrorist problem with long-settled Muslim populations. There are almost 200 million Muslims in India for example, yet the extremist attacks there come from the outside (most famously from Pakistan in the Mumbai atrocity). If you were to apply the Telegraph's logic, India would have almost ten times the number of major terrorist attacks or threats as in the UK. The problem of extremism is ultimately the export of Wahhabi ideology - a violent, misogynistic invention that postdates the emergence of Islam by over a thousand years - and its destruction of what had become a very diverse religion, deeply woven into Western culture. (Try reading Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads for a real perspective-changing understand of how embedded our supposedly 'clashing' civilisations really are). The problem now began only as recently as 1979, when French paratroopers had to remove violent Salafists from the Grand Mosque in Mecca. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan less than a month after the end of the siege, and the Saudis decided to export Wahhabism as a means of self-protection from further attacks. Everything that's happened since has spiralled from that. Salafism in the West is overlaid with clans - among inter-married Mirpuris with the 7/7 bombers; clans largely from the Rif mountains of Morocco in the Belgian and French attacks. Salafism is the ideology, and clan membership a recruiting tool. A better understanding of the terrorist production line is certainly needed, and the article is right to say that blaming the West fundamentally misunderstands that production line. But the reality is we'd be better off - all of us - if we actually defended liberal Islam (Sufism, Ahmadism, Ismailism, etc., as well as the majority of moderate Sunni Muslims), rather than standing by as it is crushed by extremists. (Travelling through Afghanistan today, you'd never know that it was once a haven for Sufi Islam - the principal reason why Kabul was the final destination of the hippy trail up until the early 70s. Sufism, once the dominant form of Islam in Afghanistan is now all but dead.)

You really have become a weird little conspiracy theorist. It's a perfectly practical thing to say that we're leaving Europe because the consequences of a no vote will be much more widely felt than in the Brexiteers' fanciful idea of an empowered Westminster with everything else carrying on swimmingly. I'm puzzled by your paranoia. So could you explain how our EU membership has affected you personally?

‘Racists’ is just fine. It’s some kind of irony that we’re having this discussion on the day a white European has been sentenced to forty years in jail for ordering the genocidal murder of Muslims. Here’s another way to look at our very own Saintsweb pet racists. When ISIS attacks western cities, its explicit intent is not to conquer the West but to create divisions between Muslims and others in those cities. ISIS does this because it actually wants alienated and cornered Muslim communities in those cities, because, by ISIS' logic, they become a recruitment source. One half of the bargain is delivered by ISIS themselves, in ever more outrageous attacks on civilians. The other side of the bargain is delivered by the saps who start yelling about ISIS attacks being the result of ‘Muslim immigration’ - blaming a 'mass' of people for the actions of a very few. So as small and irrelevant as they are as racists, our pets are yet (a little) more the witless, manipulated agents of ISIS, doing the terrorists’ bidding for them, dancing to ISIS’ tune. They must be so proud.

I wonder who Brexit is actually for. Should the vote be to leave, the SNP have already declared their intention to demand independence, and with their electoral presence now there's precious little that could stop them. Wales and Northern Ireland are also substantial beneficiaries of EU funding arrangements, including the ERDF, and are likely to vote heavily to remain. So Brexit is really Eexit, as the vote to leave will precipitate a constitutional crisis with the Scots walking off. The Little Englanders on here will end up being just that.

As clearly your skin crawls in the presence of black and Asian faces, I'd recommend you don't open this link - a very limited list of prominent Muslims in the UK alone. You can deduce their 'benefit' to the UK from their titles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_Muslims There are plenty of other lists, plenty of other names, plenty of other benefits. Your question is really beneath contempt.

Well it had better not be the economy and jobs because on those subjects Brexiters are coming across as blathering idiots. Boris's lauded 'Canada' model is the best offer so far of a future outside the EU - and that's pathetic. CETA, the EU/Canada trade agreement, is now in its seventh year of negotiation and is still no closer to a conclusion. This would be disastrous for Canada were it not for the fact that the vast bulk of its trade is actually across its border with the US. Not that NAFTA has been a breeze, as a small player with a much larger trading partner. Trade with the US is conducted within the NAFTA agreement, under which 98% of all foreign investment were for foreign takeovers.

If you wish that you should be deeply ashamed of yourself.

The Palestinians are a defeated people whose defeats deepen with every year that passes. The Israelis have their hands full with their own extremists, in the settler movement especially. Not the Palestinians.

As I've said, it's nowhere on the ISIS agenda to destroy the West. We have nothing they want that we can negotiate with. (And they don't use the word Infidel - that's a Christian invention!) But if your argument is correct, that more Western responses breeds more ISIS 'retaliation', then there's the inconvenient case of Israel. Israel is most certainly (to use bin Laden's terminology) the 'near enemy'. And it resorts to military violence at the mere suggestion of an incoming handmade missile. But Israel is absolutely not seen by Salafists as 'weak', in the way they see the West is weak. Can you think of any successful attacks, or even attempts at attacks, conducted by ISIS on Israel? There are none, and Israel's military strengths and willingness to strike are genuinely feared in a way that the West simply is not. No, it doesn't 'stop the killings' in the broader sense, but it makes Tel Aviv a rather safer place to stand and wait for a plane than Brussels. As I say, it's inconvenient for all those (like me) who take the optimistic view that less violence, in general, will produce less violence.

So it was all bull**** after all. Not a good day for numbskull conspiracy 'theorists' and pitchfork wielders on here (or no longer here). Or Tom Watson. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/21/last-living-suspect-harvey-proctor-vip-paedophile-ring-inquiry-will-face-no-charges

It's not fear, it's Russian roulette. The perspective of a safely retired southern-counties softie isn't representative of working-age people in the country, and you have absolutely no way of knowing whether the 'electorate is getting fed up' - you just made that up to suit your self-cosseted 'world' view. And if you think people won't at least make a calculation about job security, well good luck with that. You haven't posted a single credible Brexit 'estimate on the financial benefits of leaving'. All you've done is spam this thread ludicrously by posting a 400-page (!) report waffling on about this and that treaty - and you evidently hadn't read it, or didn't have the will to live through reading it, because you posted those 400 pages without a single comment. As I have said repeatedly, if only the Brexit campaign had better quality advocates on here, capable of mustering an argument and some evidence, instead of the whiners screaming "Project Fear" whenever something that disturbs their 'kipper equilibrium comes along. You say the Brexit campaign isn't only for 'kippers like you, that it's broader in some way. I'm sure it is, but would the non-kippers (and my manners require that I add: BNP) please step up and give a reasoned argument for leaving?

Another report form 'kipper Tender and his ilk to not look at. PricewaterhouseCoopers have estimated that the cost of Brexit could be as high as £100bn, with a million jobs lost. The PwC report was commissioned by the CBI, which Trotskyist Tender and his ilk will naturally denounce as capitalist lackeys. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/21/brexit-could-cost-100bn-and-nearly-1m-jobs-cbi-warns

I do apologise. I now realise that by referring frequently to closet 'kippers I'm unintentionally excluding you. In future it's be closet 'kippers and closet BNP. Thank you for the opportunity to put things right.

Now this is just another example of what I mean with the 'kippers on here. Your post makes absolutely no sense unless interpreted as some weird conspiracy theory, and I suggest you go and read my quoted post again. It's a 'kipper meme on here to jump to some bizarre conclusion not supported by facts or anything anyone else actually says. Let me try again to help you out: I was saying that the vote is much more complex than that people who vote to remain are all happy with how EU institutions work. It's part of an epically stupid argument, over-reached by 'kippers, who say that anyone who's thinking of voting to remain must in some way be barnstorming enthusiasts for the way the EU is presently constituted. Very few, if any, are - actually I've not encountered a single one. So with that in mind, I ask for the umpteenth time on this thread, would someone please articulate a coherent, well-evidenced case for Brexit without resorting to knee-jerk 'kipper garbage? That means offering up some economic analysis from independent or even committed experts that actually models the effect of leaving the EU. Is it really beyond the far-right clan on here to find and articulate such arguments? Think of the prize: there are plenty of people in the remain camp, including me, who would consider voting to leave if there were some credible economic expertise offered by the Brexit campaign. But as things stand, all we get - certainly on here - are the banalities of a narrow set of 'kipper prejudices. Try harder.