6 Comments

1. 

   Curly on October 13, 2009 at 9:38 pm

   That was a bit cruel on Hannan then wasn’t it Ellee.

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2. 

   electro-kevin on October 13, 2009 at 11:33 pm

   I don’t suppose any of those chaps could be mistaken for a Queen, could they ?

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3. 

   Murray Newlands on October 13, 2009 at 11:43 pm

   Not sure about this idea, paying cards with faces on them reminds me of the Gulf War.

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4. 

   Ellee on October 14, 2009 at 5:15 am

   Curly, yes, but I guess it is tongue in cheek. You have to have thick skin to be a politician.

   Kevin, no comment! But I get your drift.

   Murray, I think you mean the Iraq war. I have a pack of those cards too with Saddam Hussein and his henchmen.

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5. 

   Philipa on October 14, 2009 at 1:35 pm

   I saw a post on Kaminski:

   Let us wait and see what becomes of the good research made by Edward McMillan-Scott, the former Conservative MEP who was sacked for kicking up a stink about the European Conservatives and Reformist’s murky leader, Polish MEP Michal Kamiński.

   KamiÅ„ski has constantly denied having a neo-nazi past, but McMillan-Scott has taken to digging deep KamiÅ„ski’s historical omissions. He notes that on the inaugural meeting, taking place 24th June, a tip-off warned “I hope no MEP in the new group has had links with extremist movements like Poland’s National Revival [NOP – a neo-Nazi group].” Well it seems that at 18.34, on the 15th of July, KamiÅ„ski himself had undone a change referring to the National Revival made by wikipedia user 21stCenturyBuoy, who interestingly has been spotlighted as a sock puppet – internet jargon for one who uses an online identity used for purposes of deception within an online community – by another wikipedia editor.

   The omission Kamiński made about himself on his wikipedia can be found here, and reads;

   Michal Tomasz KamiÅ„ski […] Former member of National Revival of Poland, far right, nationalist political party

   Getting his fingers burnt, Kamiński said that he was a NOP member only as a schoolchild, something he is very proud of, owing to the fact that it was an anti-communist organisation, not yet anti-semitic or Nazi. But the Telegraph also did their homework. They were contacted by a Marek Wojciechowski, spokesperson for NOP who told them that Kamiński was indeed a member of the NOP party, though he was in the party from about 1989 to 1991 (making him a member from the ages of 17 through to 20).

   Further details of Kamiński’s dubious past from that same article note that

   In the 1990s Mr Kaminski … then joined a hard Right party called the Christian National Union […] In 2001, Mr Kaminski was alleged, by the US-based Anti-Defamation League and others, to have mobilised the local population in the north-eastern Polish town of Jedwabne against a commemoration of a wartime pogrom against Jewish people

   which, incidentally, he does not deny, but has replied that he is still “in favour of punishing those who committed crimes against Jews.” It’s hard to imagine a more incongruous position, unless the rounding up and burning of hundreds of Jews does not constitute a crime for Kamiński – which I suppose it didn’t in Nazi occupied Poland, circa 1941, could this be what Kamiński means?

   It is hard not to smell a rat when one considers that Kamiński has also said that “being “pro-Israeli” does not necessarily mean that someone is incapable of holding antisemitic views.”

   Today, Kamiński, a man who has tried, and failed, to revise the past – like the Nazi’s have tried, and still try, to do with the holocaust – spoke at a Conservative Fringe event, he is not met with too much protest by the rank-and-file of the party, providing he keeps praising Thatcher and the free-market, and respected Labour MPs with interests in anti-Semitism are quite happy to believe he is not (now, at least) an anti-Semite, but there is something very curious about a man who has gone to so many lengths to keep his gloomy history quiet.

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6. 

   Bystander on October 14, 2009 at 3:35 pm

   Murray – Definitely not!

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