The rhetorical question in the title was Frank McAveety’s reaction to these and other ridiculous comments made by the SNP’s John Mason:Once we start implying other countries are second rate because they have a different opinion from us, we are surely being racist. The attacks on Councillor Hanif can easily be construed as attacks on Pakistan itself and on Pakistan's right to order its internal affairs as it sees fit. I would have expected that way of thinking in the colonial era, but I am disappointed to hear it in 2008.So Taliban-era Afghanistan was “first rate”, was it? Cambodia in the late 1970s? Pakistan’s FATA region at present? Presumably Mason would brand me “racist” and “colonial” for thinking not.
Shaukat Butt described Mason’s comments as “ridiculous and wrong”. Mohammad Sarwar noted that the issue was “nothing to do with colonialism”. Perhaps Mason thinks they’re racist too.
Meanwhile, the purported text of Councillor Hanif’s daughter’s somewhat disturbing letter to Alex Salmond has been released into the wild. Salmond reportedly denies having received or read it.
Mason is on "Planet of the Grassroots Nat".
As you know SU, this is the sort of twaddle which gets posted hundreds of times a day on the comments pages of the newspapers - not just the Hootsmon and Weegie, the Grauniad and Torygraph get it too.
And the more attention this sort of thing gets, the better for all of us.
"His comments that it was acceptable for other countries to have guns freely available and that those countries should not be challenged was quest-ioned by Labour MSP Frank McAveety and Tory justice spokesman Bill Aitken."
Err...so lets all challenge the rights of Americans to bear arms then?
Conan
Whatever your opinion of the “right to bear arms” (and the fact that I just put it in inverted commas should serve to indicate my own) the manufacture and sale of weapons in the USA is subject to strict regulation. Not so in Pakistan’s FATA or tribal region. There’s no comparison.
Noor Hanif’s letter says that their father took them to Durra, which she describes as being in the “lawless area” and says that she has read that it is “the world’s largest illegal gun market”.
Durra is in the FATA, near the Afghan border. The literacy rate in the FATA is 17%. Only one in thirty girls receives education. Each doctor serves 7,700 citizens. Only 43% of people have access to clean drinking water.
Terrorists operate with virtual impunity and the production of illegal replica weapons is the main source of income in and around Durra. Knocked up in a totally unregulated environment, in some cases by children, Durra reportedly serves jihadist and other militias, as well as the local citizenry. You can watch a Times of Pakistan film about the Durra arms bazaar at this link.
John Mason says that if we are “implying other countries are second rate because they have a different opinion from us, we are surely being racist”. But do you call the scenario which I outlined above “first rate”? I certainly don’t – and it’s in no way “racist” or “colonial” to do so. Mason’s argument is moral relativism at its very worst.
So Hanif's "crime" is firing a gun in Pakistan, rather than, say...Alaska?
Just google "gunsmith" and "Texas" and see how many handmade copies, sorry "clones" are being made there alone.
Why do you have to try and reduce everything to a trite soundbite? No, that's not what I'm saying. Not at all!
It is a violation of US federal law to manufacture an undocumented AK-47 clone. There's no comparion with what goes on at Durra, where with no questions asked you can buy anything and everything from a handgun to a rocket launcher - and that should indicate something of the intended customer base.
And apparently the test firing of live weapons in the streets and market areas of Durra is an everyday occurrence. You certainly wouldn't find that in downtown Houston!
Trite?
Heh.
Well, Laconic is what I aim for.
Reams of statistics do not float my particular boat.
Do you really believe that there are no fully automatic weapons in private hands in the USA?
And the purveyors of these weapons target the KKK?
Eh? Have you even read the letter?
I have AM2.
Hanif sounds like a nasty character.
But we were not talking about his familial failures.
Shooting a gun in Pakistan isn't a crime, even if the shooter is a ****
There’s so much more to it than that, Conan. The nature of the arms market where they allegedly went, the ages of the kids, the alleged coercion, and a lot more besides – some of which appeared in the Daily Record.
I’m not going to elaborate lest it provokes a lawyer-induced headache! You’ve read the letter!
SU,
The letter does seem rather... overblown? I'm certainly no defender of SNP members, but it does seem a little far-fetched, and it should probably be remembered that it was written by a child.
But yes, agree with you re: Mason's comments.