http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labour/7333420/Islamic-radicals-infiltrate-the-Labour-Party.html
A Labour minister says his party has been infiltrated by a fundamentalist Muslim group that wants to create an “Islamic social and political order” in Britain.
By Andrew Gilligan
Published: 10:00PM GMT 27 Feb 2010
The Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) — which believes in jihad and sharia law, and wants to turn Britain and Europe into an Islamic state — has placed sympathisers in elected office and claims, correctly, to be able to achieve “mass mobilisation” of voters.
Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Jim Fitzpatrick, the Environment Minister, said the IFE had become, in effect, a secret party within Labour and other political parties.
“They are acting almost as an entryist organisation, placing people within the political parties, recruiting members to those political parties, trying to get individuals selected and elected so they can exercise political influence and power, whether it’s at local government level or national level,” he said.
“They are completely at odds with Labour’s programme, with our support for secularism.”
Mr Fitzpatrick, the MP for Poplar and Canning Town, said the IFE had infiltrated and “corrupted” his party in east London in the same way that the far-Left Militant Tendency did in the 1980s. Leaked Labour lists show a 110 per cent rise in party membership in one constituency in two years.
In a six-month investigation by this newspaper and Channel 4’s Dispatches, involving weeks of covert filming by the programme’s reporters:
* IFE activists boasted to the undercover reporters that they had already “consolidated … a lot of influence and power” over Tower Hamlets, a London borough council with a £1 billion budget.
* We have established that the group and its allies were awarded more than £10 million of taxpayers’ money, much of it from government funds designed to “prevent violent extremism”.
* IFE leaders were recorded expressing opposition to democracy, support for sharia law or mocking black people. The IFE organised meetings with extremists, including Taliban allies, a man named by the US government as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and a man under investigation by the FBI for his links to the September 11 attacks.
* Moderate Muslims in London told how the IFE and its allies were enforcing their hardline views on the rest of the local community, curbing behaviour they deemed “un-Islamic”. The owner of a dating agency received a threatening email from an IFE activist, warning her to close it.
* George Galloway, a London MP, admitted in recordings obtained by this newspaper that his surprise victory in the 2005 election owed more to the IFE “than it would be wise – for them – for me to say, adding that they played a “decisive role” in his triumph at the polls.
Mr Galloway now says they were one of many groups which supported his anti-war stance and had never sought to influence him.
The IFE has particularly close links to Tower Hamlets council. Seven serving and former councillors said Lutfur Rahman, the current council leader, gained his post with the group’s help.
Some said they were canvassed by a senior IFE official on his behalf. After Mr Rahman was elected, a man with close links to the group, Lutfur Ali, was appointed assistant chief executive of the council with responsibility for grant funding.
This was despite a chequered employment record, a misleading CV and a negative report from the headhunters appointed to consider the candidates. The council’s white chief executive was subsequently forced from his post.
Since Mr Rahman became leader, more council grants have been paid to a number of organisations which our investigation established are closely linked to the IFE.
Funding for other, secular groups was ended or cut. In the borough’s well-known Brick Lane area, council funds were switched from a largely secular heritage trail to a highly controversial “hijab sculpture”, angering many residents who accused the council of “religious triumphalism”.
Schools in Tower Hamlets are told by the council should close for the Muslim festival of Eid, even where most of their pupils are not Muslim.
Mr Rahman refused to deny that an IFE activist had canvassed councillors on his behalf. He said: “There are various people across Tower Hamlets who get excited, who get involved.”
He would not comment on concerns about infiltration, saying they were “party matters”. He said: “If you look at our flagship policies, like investing £20 million to tackle overcrowding, you can see that we are working for everyone.”
The IFE said it did not seek to influence the council and had not lobbied for Mr Rahman. “If anything, existing members of the Labour Party have joined the IFE, rather than the other way round,” it said.
The group insisted it was not a fundamentalist or extremist organisation and did not support violence.
Cognitive Dissidence, The mechanism of warfare and subversion for intellectual revolutionaries.
Sunday, 28 February 2010
Dual Citizenship = Dual Loyalty
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook02252010.html
Do You Have to be Jewish to Report on Israel for the New York Times?
Ethan Bronner and Conflicts of Interest
By JONATHAN COOK
A recent assignment of mine covering Israel’s presumed links to the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh provoked some more thoughts about the New York Times reporter Ethan Bronner. He is the Jerusalem bureau chief who has been at the centre of a controversy since it was revealed last month that his son is serving in the Israeli army. Despite mounting pressure to replace Bronner, the NYT’s editors have so far refused to consider that he might be facing a conflict of interest or that it would be wiser to post him elsewhere.
Last week, when suspicion for the assassination in Dubai started to fall on the Mossad, a newspaper editor emailed to ask if I could ring up my “Israeli security contacts” for fresh leads. It was a reminder that Western correspondents in Israel are expected to have such contacts. The point was underlined later the same day when I spoke with a leftwing Israeli academic to get his take on Mabhouh’s killing. I had turned to this Ashkenazi professor because he counts many veterans of the security services as friends. At the end of the interview, I asked him if he had any suggestions for people in the security services I might speak with. He replied: “Talk to Eitan Bronner. He has excellent contacts.” Naively, I asked how I could reach this expert on the veiled world of the Israeli security establishment. Was he employed at the professor’s university? “No, ring the New York Times bureau,” he responded increduously. Oh, that “Eitan”!
A more interesting question than whether Bronner is now facing a conflict of interest over his son serving in the Israeli army is whether the NYT reporter was facing such a conflict long before the latest revelations surfaced (See Alison Weir, The NYT's Ethan Bronner's Conflict With Impartiality.) Could it be that it is actually incumbent on Bronner, as the NYT’s bureau chief, to have such a conflict of interest?
Consider this. The NYT has form when it comes to turning a blind eye to reporters with conflicts of interest in Israel -- aside, I mean, from the issue of the reporters’ ethnic identification or nationality. For example, I am reminded of a recent predecessor of Bronner’s at the Jerusalem bureau -- an Israeli Jew -- who managed to do regular service in the Israeli army reserves even while he was covering the second intifada. I am pretty sure his bosses knew of this but, as with Bronner, did not think there were grounds for taking action.
Shortly after I wrote an earlier piece on Bronner, pointing out that most Western coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict is shaped by Jewish and Israeli journalists, and that Palestinian voices are almost entirely excluded, a Jerusalem-based bureau chief asked to meet. Over a coffee he congratulated me, adding: “I’d be fired if I wrote something like that.”
This reporter, who, unlike me, spends lots of time with the main press corps in Jerusalem, then made some interesting points. He wishes to remain anonymous but has agreed to my passing on his observations. He calls Bronner’s situation “the rule, not the exception”, adding: “I can think of a dozen foreign bureau chiefs, responsible for covering both Israel and the Palestinians, who have served in the Israeli army, and another dozen who like Bronner have kids in the Israeli army.”
He added that it is very common to hear Western reporters boasting to one another about their “Zionist” credentials, their service in the Israeli army or the loyal service of their children. “Comments like that are very common at Foreign Press Association gatherings [in Israel] among the senior, agenda-setting, elite journalists.”
My informant is highly critical of what is going on among the Jerusalem press corps, even though he admits the same charges could be levelled against him. “I'm Jewish, married to an Israeli and like almost all Western journalists live in Jewish West Jerusalem. In my free time I hang out in cafes and bars with Jewish Israelis chatting in Hebrew. For the Jewish sabbath and Jewish holidays I often get together with a bunch of Western journalists. While it would be convenient to think otherwise, there is no question that this deep personal integration into Israeli society informs our overall understanding and coverage of the place in a way quite different from a journalist who lived in Ramallah or Gaza and whose personal life was more embedded in Palestinian society.”
And now he gets to the crunch: “The degree to which Bronner's personal life, like that of most lead journalists here, is integrated into Israeli society, makes him an excellent candidate to cover Israeli political life, cultural shifts and intellectual life. The problem is that Bronner is also expected to be his paper's lead voice on Palestinian political life, cultural shifts and intellectual life, all in a society he has almost no connection to, deep knowledge of or even the ability to directly communicate with … The presumption that this is possible is neither fair to Bronner nor to his readers, and it's really a shame that Western media executives don't see the value in an Arabic-speaking bureau chief living in Ramallah and setting the agenda for the news coming out of the Palestinian territories.”
All true. But I think there is a deeper lesson from the Bronner affair. Editors who prefer to appoint Jews and Israelis to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are probably making a rational choice in news terms -- even if they would never dare admit their reasoning. The media assign someone to the Jerusalem bureau because they want as much access as possible to the inner sanctums of power in a self-declared Jewish state. They believe – and they are right – that doors open if their reporter is a Jew, or better still an Israeli Jew, who has proved his or her commitment to Israel by marrying an Israeli, by serving in the army or having a child in the army, and by speaking fluent Hebrew, a language all but useless outside this small state.
Yes, Ethan Bronner is “the rule”, as my informant notes, because any other kind of journalist -- the goyim, as many Israelis dismiss non-Jews -- will only ever be able to scratch at the surface of Israel’s military-political-industrial edifice. The Bronners have access to power, they can talk to the officials who matter, because those same officials trust that high-powered Jewish and Israeli reporters belong in the Israeli consensus. They may be critical of the occupation, but they can be trusted to pull their punches. If they ever failed to do so, they would be ejected from the inner sanctum and a paper like the NYT would be forced to replace them with someone more cooperative.
When in later years, these Jerusalem bureau chiefs retire from the field of battle and are promoted to the rank of armchair general back at media HQ – when they become a Thomas Friedman paid to pontificate regularly on the conflict -- they can be trusted to talk to those same high-placed officials, explaining their viewpoint and defending it. That is why you will not read anything in the NYT questioning the idea that Israel is a democratic state or see coverage suggesting that Israel is acting in bad faith in the peace process.
I do not want here to suggest there is anything unique about this relationship of almost utter dependence. To a degree, this is how most specialists in the mainstream media operate. Think of the local crime reporter. How effective would he be (and it is invariably a he) if he alienated the senior police officers who provide the inside information he needs for his regular supply of stories? Might he not prefer to turn a blind eye to a scoop revealing that one of his main informants is taking bribes, if publishing such a story would lose him his “access” and his posting? This is a simple cost-benefit analysis made both by the reporter and the editors who assign him that almost always favours the powerful over the weak, the interests of the journalist over the reader.
And so it is with Israel. Like the crime reporter, our Jerusalem bureau chief needs his “access” more than he needs the occasional scoop that would sabotage his relationship with official sources. But more so than the crime reporter, many of these bureau chiefs also identify with Israel and its goals because they have an Israeli spouse and children. They not only live on one side of a bitter national conflict but actively participate in defending that side through service in its military.
This is a conflict of interest of the highest order. It is also the reason why they are there in the first place.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
http://www.counterpunch.org/weir02262010.html
Media Reporting on Israel
All in the Family
By ALISON WEIR
Recent exposés revealing that Ethan Bronner, the New York Times' Israel-Palestine bureau chief, has a son in the Israeli military have caused a storm of controversy that continues to swirl and generate further revelations. (See my piece for CounterPunch, The NYT's Ethan Bronner's Conflict With Impartiality.)
Many people find such a sign of family partisanship in an editor covering a foreign conflict troubling – especially given the Times’ record of Israel-centric journalism.
Times management at first refused to confirm Bronner’s situation, then refused to comment on it. Finally, public outcry forced Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt to confront the problem in a February 7th column.
After bending over backwards to praise the institution that employs him, Hoyt ultimately opined that Bronner should be re-assigned to a different sphere of reporting to avoid the “appearance” of bias. Times Editor Bill Keller declined to do so, however, instead writing a column calling Bronner’s connections to Israel valuable because they “supply a measure of sophistication about Israel and its adversaries that someone with no connections would lack.”
If such “sophistication” is valuable, the Times’ espoused commitment to the “impartiality and neutrality of the company's newsrooms” would seem to require it to have a balancing editor equally sophisticated about Palestine and its adversary, but Keller did not address that.
Bronner is far from alone
As it turns out, Bronner’s ties to the Israeli military are not the rarity one might expect.
• A previous Times bureau chief, Joel Greenberg, before he was bureau chief but after he was already publishing in the Times from Israel, actually served in the Israeli army.
• Media pundit and Atlantic staffer Jeffrey Goldberg also served in the Israeli military; it's unclear when, how, or even if his military service ended.
• Richard Chesnoff, who has been covering Mideast events for more than 40 years, had a son serving in the Israeli military while Chesnoff covered Israel as US News & World Report's senior foreign correspondent.
• NPR's Linda Gradstein’s husband was an Israeli sniper and may still be in the Israeli reserves. NPR refuses to disclose whether Gradstein herself is also an Israeli citizen, as are her children and husband.
• Mitch Weinstock, national editor for the San Diego Union-Tribune, served in the Israeli military.
• The New York Times’ other correspondent from the region, Isabel Kershner, is an Israeli citizen. Israel has universal compulsory military service, which suggests that Kershner herself and/or family members may have military connections. The Times refuses to answer questions about whether she and/or family members have served or are currently serving in the Israeli military. Is it possible that Times Foreign Editor Susan Chira herself has such connections? The Times refuses to answer.
• Many Associated Press writers and editors are Israeli citizens or have Israeli families. AP will not reveal how many of the journalists in its control bureau for the region currently serve in the Israeli military, how many have served in the past, and how many have family members with this connection.
• Similarly, many TV correspondents such as Martin Fletcher have been Israeli citizens and/or have Israeli families. Do they have family connections to the Israeli military?
• Time Magazine's bureau chief several years ago became an Israeli citizen after he had assumed his post. Does he have relatives in the military?
• CNN's Wolf Blitzer, while not an Israeli citizen, was based in Israel for many years, wrote a book whitewashing Israeli spying on the US, and used to work for the Israel lobby in the US. None of this is divulged to CNN viewers.
Tikkun's editor Michael Lerner has a son who served in the Israeli military. While Lerner has been a strong critic of many Israeli policies, in an interview with Jewish Week, Lerner explains:
“Having a son in the Israeli army was a manifestation of my love for Israel, and I assume that having a son in the Israeli army is a manifestation of Bronner’s love of Israel."
Lerner goes on to make a fundamental point:
"...there is a difference in my emotional and spiritual connection to these two sides [Israelis and Palestinians]. On the one side is my family; on the other side are decent human beings. I want to support human beings all over the planet but I have a special connection to my family. I don’t deny it.”
For a great many of the reporters and editors determining what Americans learn about Israel-Palestine, Israel is family.
Jonathan Cook, a British journalist based in Nazareth, writes of a recent meeting with a Jerusalem based bureau chief, who explained: “… Bronner’s situation is ‘the rule, not the exception. I can think of a dozen foreign bureau chiefs, responsible for covering both Israel and the Palestinians, who have served in the Israeli army, and another dozen who like Bronner have kids in the Israeli army.”
Cooks writes that the bureau chief explained: “It is common to hear Western reporters boasting to one another about their Zionist credentials, their service in the Israeli army or the loyal service of their children.”
Apparently, intimate ties to Israel are among the many open secrets in the region that are hidden from the American public. If, as the news media insist, these ties present no problem or even, as the Times’ Keller insists, enhance the journalists’ work, why do the news agencies consistently refuse to admit them?
The reason is not complicated.
While Israel may be family for these journalists and editors, for the vast majority of Americans, Israel is a foreign country. In survey after survey, Americans say they don’t wish to “take sides” on this conflict. In other words, the American public wants full, unfiltered, unslanted coverage.
Quite likely the news media refuse to answer questions about their journalists’ affiliations because they suspect, accurately, that the public would be displeased to learn that the reporters and editors charged with supplying news on a foreign nation and conflict are, in fact, partisans.
While Keller claims that the New York Times is covering this conflict “even-handedly,” studies indicate otherwise:
* The Times covers international reports documenting Israeli human rights abuses at a rate 19 times lower than it reports on the far smaller number of international reports documenting Palestinian human rights abuses.
* The Times covers Israeli children’s deaths at rates seven times greater than they cover Palestinian children’s deaths, even though there are vastly more of the latter and they occurred first.
* The Times fails to inform its readers that Israel’s Jewish-only colonies on confiscated Palestinian Christian and Muslim land are illegal; that its collective punishment of 1.5 million men, women, and children in Gaza is not only cruel and ruthless, it is also illegal; and that its use of American weaponry is routinely in violation of American laws.
* The Times covers the one Israeli (a soldier) held by Palestinians at a rate incalculably higher than it reports on the Palestinian men, women, and children – the vast majority civilians – imprisoned by Israel (currently over 7,000).
• The Times neglects to report that hundreds of Israel’s captives have never even been charged with a crime and that those who have were tried in Israeli military courts under an array of bizarre military statutes that make even the planting of onions without a permit a criminal offense – a legal system, if one can call it that, that changes at the whim of the current military governor ruling over a subject population; a system in which parents are without power to protect their children.
* The Times fails to inform its readers that 40 percent of Palestinian males have been imprisoned by Israel, a statistic that normally would be considered highly newsworthy, but that Bronner, Kershner, and Chira apparently feel is unimportant to report.
Americans, whose elected representatives give Israel uniquely gargantuan sums of our tax money (a situation also not covered by the media), want and need all the facts, not just those that Israel’s family members decree reportable.
We’re not getting them.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew and a board member of the Council for the National Interest (CNI). For more information on Ethan Bronner and his upcoming speaking tour on college campuses, join IAK’S email list. Alison can be reached at contact@ifa
Do You Have to be Jewish to Report on Israel for the New York Times?
Ethan Bronner and Conflicts of Interest
By JONATHAN COOK
A recent assignment of mine covering Israel’s presumed links to the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh provoked some more thoughts about the New York Times reporter Ethan Bronner. He is the Jerusalem bureau chief who has been at the centre of a controversy since it was revealed last month that his son is serving in the Israeli army. Despite mounting pressure to replace Bronner, the NYT’s editors have so far refused to consider that he might be facing a conflict of interest or that it would be wiser to post him elsewhere.
Last week, when suspicion for the assassination in Dubai started to fall on the Mossad, a newspaper editor emailed to ask if I could ring up my “Israeli security contacts” for fresh leads. It was a reminder that Western correspondents in Israel are expected to have such contacts. The point was underlined later the same day when I spoke with a leftwing Israeli academic to get his take on Mabhouh’s killing. I had turned to this Ashkenazi professor because he counts many veterans of the security services as friends. At the end of the interview, I asked him if he had any suggestions for people in the security services I might speak with. He replied: “Talk to Eitan Bronner. He has excellent contacts.” Naively, I asked how I could reach this expert on the veiled world of the Israeli security establishment. Was he employed at the professor’s university? “No, ring the New York Times bureau,” he responded increduously. Oh, that “Eitan”!
A more interesting question than whether Bronner is now facing a conflict of interest over his son serving in the Israeli army is whether the NYT reporter was facing such a conflict long before the latest revelations surfaced (See Alison Weir, The NYT's Ethan Bronner's Conflict With Impartiality.) Could it be that it is actually incumbent on Bronner, as the NYT’s bureau chief, to have such a conflict of interest?
Consider this. The NYT has form when it comes to turning a blind eye to reporters with conflicts of interest in Israel -- aside, I mean, from the issue of the reporters’ ethnic identification or nationality. For example, I am reminded of a recent predecessor of Bronner’s at the Jerusalem bureau -- an Israeli Jew -- who managed to do regular service in the Israeli army reserves even while he was covering the second intifada. I am pretty sure his bosses knew of this but, as with Bronner, did not think there were grounds for taking action.
Shortly after I wrote an earlier piece on Bronner, pointing out that most Western coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict is shaped by Jewish and Israeli journalists, and that Palestinian voices are almost entirely excluded, a Jerusalem-based bureau chief asked to meet. Over a coffee he congratulated me, adding: “I’d be fired if I wrote something like that.”
This reporter, who, unlike me, spends lots of time with the main press corps in Jerusalem, then made some interesting points. He wishes to remain anonymous but has agreed to my passing on his observations. He calls Bronner’s situation “the rule, not the exception”, adding: “I can think of a dozen foreign bureau chiefs, responsible for covering both Israel and the Palestinians, who have served in the Israeli army, and another dozen who like Bronner have kids in the Israeli army.”
He added that it is very common to hear Western reporters boasting to one another about their “Zionist” credentials, their service in the Israeli army or the loyal service of their children. “Comments like that are very common at Foreign Press Association gatherings [in Israel] among the senior, agenda-setting, elite journalists.”
My informant is highly critical of what is going on among the Jerusalem press corps, even though he admits the same charges could be levelled against him. “I'm Jewish, married to an Israeli and like almost all Western journalists live in Jewish West Jerusalem. In my free time I hang out in cafes and bars with Jewish Israelis chatting in Hebrew. For the Jewish sabbath and Jewish holidays I often get together with a bunch of Western journalists. While it would be convenient to think otherwise, there is no question that this deep personal integration into Israeli society informs our overall understanding and coverage of the place in a way quite different from a journalist who lived in Ramallah or Gaza and whose personal life was more embedded in Palestinian society.”
And now he gets to the crunch: “The degree to which Bronner's personal life, like that of most lead journalists here, is integrated into Israeli society, makes him an excellent candidate to cover Israeli political life, cultural shifts and intellectual life. The problem is that Bronner is also expected to be his paper's lead voice on Palestinian political life, cultural shifts and intellectual life, all in a society he has almost no connection to, deep knowledge of or even the ability to directly communicate with … The presumption that this is possible is neither fair to Bronner nor to his readers, and it's really a shame that Western media executives don't see the value in an Arabic-speaking bureau chief living in Ramallah and setting the agenda for the news coming out of the Palestinian territories.”
All true. But I think there is a deeper lesson from the Bronner affair. Editors who prefer to appoint Jews and Israelis to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are probably making a rational choice in news terms -- even if they would never dare admit their reasoning. The media assign someone to the Jerusalem bureau because they want as much access as possible to the inner sanctums of power in a self-declared Jewish state. They believe – and they are right – that doors open if their reporter is a Jew, or better still an Israeli Jew, who has proved his or her commitment to Israel by marrying an Israeli, by serving in the army or having a child in the army, and by speaking fluent Hebrew, a language all but useless outside this small state.
Yes, Ethan Bronner is “the rule”, as my informant notes, because any other kind of journalist -- the goyim, as many Israelis dismiss non-Jews -- will only ever be able to scratch at the surface of Israel’s military-political-industrial edifice. The Bronners have access to power, they can talk to the officials who matter, because those same officials trust that high-powered Jewish and Israeli reporters belong in the Israeli consensus. They may be critical of the occupation, but they can be trusted to pull their punches. If they ever failed to do so, they would be ejected from the inner sanctum and a paper like the NYT would be forced to replace them with someone more cooperative.
When in later years, these Jerusalem bureau chiefs retire from the field of battle and are promoted to the rank of armchair general back at media HQ – when they become a Thomas Friedman paid to pontificate regularly on the conflict -- they can be trusted to talk to those same high-placed officials, explaining their viewpoint and defending it. That is why you will not read anything in the NYT questioning the idea that Israel is a democratic state or see coverage suggesting that Israel is acting in bad faith in the peace process.
I do not want here to suggest there is anything unique about this relationship of almost utter dependence. To a degree, this is how most specialists in the mainstream media operate. Think of the local crime reporter. How effective would he be (and it is invariably a he) if he alienated the senior police officers who provide the inside information he needs for his regular supply of stories? Might he not prefer to turn a blind eye to a scoop revealing that one of his main informants is taking bribes, if publishing such a story would lose him his “access” and his posting? This is a simple cost-benefit analysis made both by the reporter and the editors who assign him that almost always favours the powerful over the weak, the interests of the journalist over the reader.
And so it is with Israel. Like the crime reporter, our Jerusalem bureau chief needs his “access” more than he needs the occasional scoop that would sabotage his relationship with official sources. But more so than the crime reporter, many of these bureau chiefs also identify with Israel and its goals because they have an Israeli spouse and children. They not only live on one side of a bitter national conflict but actively participate in defending that side through service in its military.
This is a conflict of interest of the highest order. It is also the reason why they are there in the first place.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
http://www.counterpunch.org/weir02262010.html
Media Reporting on Israel
All in the Family
By ALISON WEIR
Recent exposés revealing that Ethan Bronner, the New York Times' Israel-Palestine bureau chief, has a son in the Israeli military have caused a storm of controversy that continues to swirl and generate further revelations. (See my piece for CounterPunch, The NYT's Ethan Bronner's Conflict With Impartiality.)
Many people find such a sign of family partisanship in an editor covering a foreign conflict troubling – especially given the Times’ record of Israel-centric journalism.
Times management at first refused to confirm Bronner’s situation, then refused to comment on it. Finally, public outcry forced Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt to confront the problem in a February 7th column.
After bending over backwards to praise the institution that employs him, Hoyt ultimately opined that Bronner should be re-assigned to a different sphere of reporting to avoid the “appearance” of bias. Times Editor Bill Keller declined to do so, however, instead writing a column calling Bronner’s connections to Israel valuable because they “supply a measure of sophistication about Israel and its adversaries that someone with no connections would lack.”
If such “sophistication” is valuable, the Times’ espoused commitment to the “impartiality and neutrality of the company's newsrooms” would seem to require it to have a balancing editor equally sophisticated about Palestine and its adversary, but Keller did not address that.
Bronner is far from alone
As it turns out, Bronner’s ties to the Israeli military are not the rarity one might expect.
• A previous Times bureau chief, Joel Greenberg, before he was bureau chief but after he was already publishing in the Times from Israel, actually served in the Israeli army.
• Media pundit and Atlantic staffer Jeffrey Goldberg also served in the Israeli military; it's unclear when, how, or even if his military service ended.
• Richard Chesnoff, who has been covering Mideast events for more than 40 years, had a son serving in the Israeli military while Chesnoff covered Israel as US News & World Report's senior foreign correspondent.
• NPR's Linda Gradstein’s husband was an Israeli sniper and may still be in the Israeli reserves. NPR refuses to disclose whether Gradstein herself is also an Israeli citizen, as are her children and husband.
• Mitch Weinstock, national editor for the San Diego Union-Tribune, served in the Israeli military.
• The New York Times’ other correspondent from the region, Isabel Kershner, is an Israeli citizen. Israel has universal compulsory military service, which suggests that Kershner herself and/or family members may have military connections. The Times refuses to answer questions about whether she and/or family members have served or are currently serving in the Israeli military. Is it possible that Times Foreign Editor Susan Chira herself has such connections? The Times refuses to answer.
• Many Associated Press writers and editors are Israeli citizens or have Israeli families. AP will not reveal how many of the journalists in its control bureau for the region currently serve in the Israeli military, how many have served in the past, and how many have family members with this connection.
• Similarly, many TV correspondents such as Martin Fletcher have been Israeli citizens and/or have Israeli families. Do they have family connections to the Israeli military?
• Time Magazine's bureau chief several years ago became an Israeli citizen after he had assumed his post. Does he have relatives in the military?
• CNN's Wolf Blitzer, while not an Israeli citizen, was based in Israel for many years, wrote a book whitewashing Israeli spying on the US, and used to work for the Israel lobby in the US. None of this is divulged to CNN viewers.
Tikkun's editor Michael Lerner has a son who served in the Israeli military. While Lerner has been a strong critic of many Israeli policies, in an interview with Jewish Week, Lerner explains:
“Having a son in the Israeli army was a manifestation of my love for Israel, and I assume that having a son in the Israeli army is a manifestation of Bronner’s love of Israel."
Lerner goes on to make a fundamental point:
"...there is a difference in my emotional and spiritual connection to these two sides [Israelis and Palestinians]. On the one side is my family; on the other side are decent human beings. I want to support human beings all over the planet but I have a special connection to my family. I don’t deny it.”
For a great many of the reporters and editors determining what Americans learn about Israel-Palestine, Israel is family.
Jonathan Cook, a British journalist based in Nazareth, writes of a recent meeting with a Jerusalem based bureau chief, who explained: “… Bronner’s situation is ‘the rule, not the exception. I can think of a dozen foreign bureau chiefs, responsible for covering both Israel and the Palestinians, who have served in the Israeli army, and another dozen who like Bronner have kids in the Israeli army.”
Cooks writes that the bureau chief explained: “It is common to hear Western reporters boasting to one another about their Zionist credentials, their service in the Israeli army or the loyal service of their children.”
Apparently, intimate ties to Israel are among the many open secrets in the region that are hidden from the American public. If, as the news media insist, these ties present no problem or even, as the Times’ Keller insists, enhance the journalists’ work, why do the news agencies consistently refuse to admit them?
The reason is not complicated.
While Israel may be family for these journalists and editors, for the vast majority of Americans, Israel is a foreign country. In survey after survey, Americans say they don’t wish to “take sides” on this conflict. In other words, the American public wants full, unfiltered, unslanted coverage.
Quite likely the news media refuse to answer questions about their journalists’ affiliations because they suspect, accurately, that the public would be displeased to learn that the reporters and editors charged with supplying news on a foreign nation and conflict are, in fact, partisans.
While Keller claims that the New York Times is covering this conflict “even-handedly,” studies indicate otherwise:
* The Times covers international reports documenting Israeli human rights abuses at a rate 19 times lower than it reports on the far smaller number of international reports documenting Palestinian human rights abuses.
* The Times covers Israeli children’s deaths at rates seven times greater than they cover Palestinian children’s deaths, even though there are vastly more of the latter and they occurred first.
* The Times fails to inform its readers that Israel’s Jewish-only colonies on confiscated Palestinian Christian and Muslim land are illegal; that its collective punishment of 1.5 million men, women, and children in Gaza is not only cruel and ruthless, it is also illegal; and that its use of American weaponry is routinely in violation of American laws.
* The Times covers the one Israeli (a soldier) held by Palestinians at a rate incalculably higher than it reports on the Palestinian men, women, and children – the vast majority civilians – imprisoned by Israel (currently over 7,000).
• The Times neglects to report that hundreds of Israel’s captives have never even been charged with a crime and that those who have were tried in Israeli military courts under an array of bizarre military statutes that make even the planting of onions without a permit a criminal offense – a legal system, if one can call it that, that changes at the whim of the current military governor ruling over a subject population; a system in which parents are without power to protect their children.
* The Times fails to inform its readers that 40 percent of Palestinian males have been imprisoned by Israel, a statistic that normally would be considered highly newsworthy, but that Bronner, Kershner, and Chira apparently feel is unimportant to report.
Americans, whose elected representatives give Israel uniquely gargantuan sums of our tax money (a situation also not covered by the media), want and need all the facts, not just those that Israel’s family members decree reportable.
We’re not getting them.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew and a board member of the Council for the National Interest (CNI). For more information on Ethan Bronner and his upcoming speaking tour on college campuses, join IAK’S email list. Alison can be reached at contact@ifa
Jewish Race Attack
Saturday, 27 February 2010
Zionists Versus Dhimmi's
The prosecution of Gert Wilders reveals the inner struggle in the power structures of societies in Europe.
We see a war between the Zionist camp versus the Dhimmi camp - Gert Wilders is one of the most feted pro-Zionist politicians in Europe.
He visits Israel often and is regarded as a strong supporter of Israel.
Yet he is being prosecuted by the White Liberal Dhimmi's of the Politically Correct Liberal Fascist State, for speech crimes.
Whilst the Zionists dominate the media, the White Liberal Dhimmi's dominate academia, public institutions and instutions like the BBC.
Neither one of these two factions serves THE BRITISH NATION OR THE BRITISH PEOPLE.
Zionism serves the interests of Israel, White Dhimmi Liberals serve the interests of Islamism.
Both of them are treasonous.
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15581202
The Dutch government falls
Wild things
The far right promises to do disturbingly well on June 9th
Feb 25th 2010 | THE HAGUE | From The Economist print edition
GOVERNMENT crises in the Netherlands tend to be played out with little international publicity. But when the Dutch coalition cabinet fell on February 20th it was done messily and in public—and the ripples were felt as far away as Afghanistan, drawing the world’s attention.
The Labour Party quit the government because it could not agree with the Christian Democrats to extend the service of 2,000 Dutch troops in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province (see article). In its early days in 2007 the cabinet agreed to a withdrawal in 2010. Labour insisted on sticking to this despite a written request from NATO for an extension under a changed mandate. Parliamentary debate turned rancorous, with accusations of bad faith hurled around on live television. There was more than a hint of personal irritation between Wouter Bos, the Labour leader, and Jan Peter Balkenende, the Christian Democratic prime minister.
Labour’s decision was guided in part by political calculations. With its popularity plummeting, the party may have hoped that blowing up a government over the unpopular Afghan commitment would play well with voters. Its ratings duly rose this week. But polls suggest that, after a new election on June 9th, Labour may be only the fifth-biggest party in a parliament dominated by the right and the liberals.
In truth, the established parties have been struggling ever since the late Pim Fortuyn exploded on to the scene in 2002. Support for the biggest far-right party today, Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party, has shot up in recent months. According to polls, if the election were held now, it would be the second-largest party, just two seats short of the Christian Democrats.
Mr Wilders is best known for his virulent anti-Islamic rhetoric. But his party has been broadening its policies. Mr Wilders not only champions limits on immigration, especially from Muslim countries, but also promises to cut red tape for small businesses, reduce taxes and improve care for the elderly. He wants a halt to European Union enlargement, including a flat no to Turkish entry. He is also opposed to the Dutch deployment in Uruzgan.
Mr Wilders casts a long shadow over Dutch politics. The other parties detest him personally, but have been courting his voters. Several prominent Labour politicians have issued a call to all parties not to allow Mr Wilders to influence the next government. But this could backfire. Labour’s own immigration policy is moving towards that of Mr Wilders. Calls for a cordon sanitaire may not go down well with the 10% of voters who are foreign-born.
The polls suggest that post-election coalition-building will be tricky. At present they indicate that no three parties will be able to command a majority. This points either to a large, fractious coalition or to a minority government. Neither promises stability. Many believe that Mr Wilders will call the shots even if his party is excluded from the cabinet.
The local elections on March 3rd will give a first hint of the parties’ strengths. Mr Wilders’s party is running only in two municipalities, partly because of a lack of experienced candidates. But that may not stop it doing well in June.
We see a war between the Zionist camp versus the Dhimmi camp - Gert Wilders is one of the most feted pro-Zionist politicians in Europe.
He visits Israel often and is regarded as a strong supporter of Israel.
Yet he is being prosecuted by the White Liberal Dhimmi's of the Politically Correct Liberal Fascist State, for speech crimes.
Whilst the Zionists dominate the media, the White Liberal Dhimmi's dominate academia, public institutions and instutions like the BBC.
Neither one of these two factions serves THE BRITISH NATION OR THE BRITISH PEOPLE.
Zionism serves the interests of Israel, White Dhimmi Liberals serve the interests of Islamism.
Both of them are treasonous.
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15581202
The Dutch government falls
Wild things
The far right promises to do disturbingly well on June 9th
Feb 25th 2010 | THE HAGUE | From The Economist print edition
GOVERNMENT crises in the Netherlands tend to be played out with little international publicity. But when the Dutch coalition cabinet fell on February 20th it was done messily and in public—and the ripples were felt as far away as Afghanistan, drawing the world’s attention.
The Labour Party quit the government because it could not agree with the Christian Democrats to extend the service of 2,000 Dutch troops in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province (see article). In its early days in 2007 the cabinet agreed to a withdrawal in 2010. Labour insisted on sticking to this despite a written request from NATO for an extension under a changed mandate. Parliamentary debate turned rancorous, with accusations of bad faith hurled around on live television. There was more than a hint of personal irritation between Wouter Bos, the Labour leader, and Jan Peter Balkenende, the Christian Democratic prime minister.
Labour’s decision was guided in part by political calculations. With its popularity plummeting, the party may have hoped that blowing up a government over the unpopular Afghan commitment would play well with voters. Its ratings duly rose this week. But polls suggest that, after a new election on June 9th, Labour may be only the fifth-biggest party in a parliament dominated by the right and the liberals.
In truth, the established parties have been struggling ever since the late Pim Fortuyn exploded on to the scene in 2002. Support for the biggest far-right party today, Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party, has shot up in recent months. According to polls, if the election were held now, it would be the second-largest party, just two seats short of the Christian Democrats.
Mr Wilders is best known for his virulent anti-Islamic rhetoric. But his party has been broadening its policies. Mr Wilders not only champions limits on immigration, especially from Muslim countries, but also promises to cut red tape for small businesses, reduce taxes and improve care for the elderly. He wants a halt to European Union enlargement, including a flat no to Turkish entry. He is also opposed to the Dutch deployment in Uruzgan.
Mr Wilders casts a long shadow over Dutch politics. The other parties detest him personally, but have been courting his voters. Several prominent Labour politicians have issued a call to all parties not to allow Mr Wilders to influence the next government. But this could backfire. Labour’s own immigration policy is moving towards that of Mr Wilders. Calls for a cordon sanitaire may not go down well with the 10% of voters who are foreign-born.
The polls suggest that post-election coalition-building will be tricky. At present they indicate that no three parties will be able to command a majority. This points either to a large, fractious coalition or to a minority government. Neither promises stability. Many believe that Mr Wilders will call the shots even if his party is excluded from the cabinet.
The local elections on March 3rd will give a first hint of the parties’ strengths. Mr Wilders’s party is running only in two municipalities, partly because of a lack of experienced candidates. But that may not stop it doing well in June.
Thursday, 25 February 2010
Middle Class Gay Rights and The White Underclass
Another aspect of the Nationalist Class War that needs to be fought against the Political Class is against the Middle Class Gay Mafia, the extremists in the gay rights legal and lobby groups that demand society conform to their demands, rather than they conform to the majority.
Here we see Gordon Brown surrender yet again to the Middle Class Gay Mafia voting block - and yet again we see nothing mentioned about him defending the rights of the White Working Class and the White Patriotic Middle Class who are under attack from both New Labour and Camerons Conservatives, white disabled people, the white elderly people who are dying in their tens of thousands of cold and poverty, white single parents or white families.
Yet again the Equality Agenda is revealed to be hatred of the White, heterosexual British majority.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23809669-gordon-brown-pledges-to-stand-with-gay-people-until-justice-is-achieved.do
Gordon Brown pledges to stand with gay people until 'justice is achieved'
25.02.10
Gordon Brown pledged to stand with gay people until "justice was achieved".
The prime minister said progress had been made because the Government had "fought together" with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual community.
Speaking at a reception at 10 Downing Street last night, he promised not to give up on the campaign.
"We reaffirm our commitment, my commitment, the commitment of the Government to standing with you all until the full range of gay rights are achieved," he said.
"When we started as a Government on this journey, people said the dreams that we had together were impossible."
Mr Brown singled out steps taken in the last decade, including lifting the ban on lesbians and gay men serving in the armed forces, allowing same sex couples to have civil partnerships and to adopt.
He said: "We did all these things and more because we stood and fought together.
"Let me promise you I will not give up on the fight for justice until justice is achieved.
"The road to equality is always long and it's always hard and it's always tough.
"But as long as Harriet (Harman) and I and other ministers are able to work with you, I promise you that nobody ever need walk the road to equality alone."
The reception was hosted by the Prime Minister and his wife Sarah to celebrate LGBT history month.
A number of members of the armed forces attended, in honour of the 10-year anniversary of the ban being lifted, along with celebrities including comedian Paul O'Grady, actor Antony Cotton and Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel Horwood.
Asked about the significance of an invitation to an event at Number 10 for gay people, O'Grady said: "I was standing having a shave earlier and I thought Oscar Wilde would be turning in his grave.
"It would never have happened. Even 20 years ago it was unthinkable. It shows you what great steps have been made."
Cotton, who plays Sean Tully in Coronation Street, said: "It's an important and very special event for us.
"We are very lucky in this country in some ways because we finally have the right to get married and to live equal lives.
"But unfortunately in other countries there are people who are killed for being who they are. That's unacceptable, so the fight continues."
Mr Brown spoke of the "debt of gratitude" owed to British service personnel as he addressed the guests.
Leading Logs Lee Fadden, 26, based at HMS Nelson in Portsmouth, said: "I feel very proud. I think it's a landmark - to be at No 10 celebrating LGBT history. It's only going to help make things more equal."
Mr Brown also congratulated a policeman on his civil partnership a fortnight ago - which came four months after he was injured in a homophobic attack.
Pc James Downey-Parkes, 22, was off duty when he was assaulted during a night out in Liverpool city centre in October, suffering multiple skull fractures and fracturing his cheekbone and eye socket.
Pc Downey-Parkes said he and 21-year-old Tom, a healthcare assistant, were "shocked" when they found out the prime minister would mention them.
"I feel over the moon to be here," he said. "I never thought I would be at an event like this."
Here we see Gordon Brown surrender yet again to the Middle Class Gay Mafia voting block - and yet again we see nothing mentioned about him defending the rights of the White Working Class and the White Patriotic Middle Class who are under attack from both New Labour and Camerons Conservatives, white disabled people, the white elderly people who are dying in their tens of thousands of cold and poverty, white single parents or white families.
Yet again the Equality Agenda is revealed to be hatred of the White, heterosexual British majority.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23809669-gordon-brown-pledges-to-stand-with-gay-people-until-justice-is-achieved.do
Gordon Brown pledges to stand with gay people until 'justice is achieved'
25.02.10
Gordon Brown pledged to stand with gay people until "justice was achieved".
The prime minister said progress had been made because the Government had "fought together" with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual community.
Speaking at a reception at 10 Downing Street last night, he promised not to give up on the campaign.
"We reaffirm our commitment, my commitment, the commitment of the Government to standing with you all until the full range of gay rights are achieved," he said.
"When we started as a Government on this journey, people said the dreams that we had together were impossible."
Mr Brown singled out steps taken in the last decade, including lifting the ban on lesbians and gay men serving in the armed forces, allowing same sex couples to have civil partnerships and to adopt.
He said: "We did all these things and more because we stood and fought together.
"Let me promise you I will not give up on the fight for justice until justice is achieved.
"The road to equality is always long and it's always hard and it's always tough.
"But as long as Harriet (Harman) and I and other ministers are able to work with you, I promise you that nobody ever need walk the road to equality alone."
The reception was hosted by the Prime Minister and his wife Sarah to celebrate LGBT history month.
A number of members of the armed forces attended, in honour of the 10-year anniversary of the ban being lifted, along with celebrities including comedian Paul O'Grady, actor Antony Cotton and Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel Horwood.
Asked about the significance of an invitation to an event at Number 10 for gay people, O'Grady said: "I was standing having a shave earlier and I thought Oscar Wilde would be turning in his grave.
"It would never have happened. Even 20 years ago it was unthinkable. It shows you what great steps have been made."
Cotton, who plays Sean Tully in Coronation Street, said: "It's an important and very special event for us.
"We are very lucky in this country in some ways because we finally have the right to get married and to live equal lives.
"But unfortunately in other countries there are people who are killed for being who they are. That's unacceptable, so the fight continues."
Mr Brown spoke of the "debt of gratitude" owed to British service personnel as he addressed the guests.
Leading Logs Lee Fadden, 26, based at HMS Nelson in Portsmouth, said: "I feel very proud. I think it's a landmark - to be at No 10 celebrating LGBT history. It's only going to help make things more equal."
Mr Brown also congratulated a policeman on his civil partnership a fortnight ago - which came four months after he was injured in a homophobic attack.
Pc James Downey-Parkes, 22, was off duty when he was assaulted during a night out in Liverpool city centre in October, suffering multiple skull fractures and fracturing his cheekbone and eye socket.
Pc Downey-Parkes said he and 21-year-old Tom, a healthcare assistant, were "shocked" when they found out the prime minister would mention them.
"I feel over the moon to be here," he said. "I never thought I would be at an event like this."
Kaletsky and the Global Corporate Fascist State
The same cabal of economic halfwits that caused the financial crisis now demand an end to democracy.
The same politicians that passed idiot laws to appease and gain the support of the economist halfwits are the enemies of the people and democracy.
They run democracy for their benefit and the benefit of their masters in the media and money markets.
Read Kaltskys comments here about how the wishes of the people must be subservient to the interests and demands of the idiot economists and the idiot politicians - the same muppets that dragged us into the crisis.
The statement from Kaltesky below is the basis of the global corporate fascist state system where national governments serve the interests of the international corporations and not their own people.
NATIONALIST CLASS WAR NOW !
The politicians must serve the people, not the interests of the global corporations.
We must wage Nationalist Class War against the international bankers, international corporate media, the supra-national institutions that serve the global corporate fascist system and the lackeys of the internal elite within our nation, and Re-Nationalise our nations, politics, media and economic system.
SMASH THE GLOBAL CORPORATE FASCIST SYSTEM, THE CORPORATE MEDIA AND ITS POLITICAL PIGS !
We demand a democracy where the people have the power, not a parliament that serves the EU, US or the international corporations
Oh the arrogance of these fools ;
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article7039987.ece
To make matters much worse, both sides claim to be acting out of profound democratic convictions, because their positions are supported by opinion polls. A clear majority of US voters oppose significant tax increases that affect middle-income households, and these are the only ones that could significantly improve the budgetary outlook. An equally clear majority rejects any reduction in government spending on health and pension “entitlements”, which are the only cuts that could conceivably save enough to prevent government insolvency if big tax increases are permanently ruled out. And just to confirm the Alice in Wonderland character of US politics at present, another clear majority believes that the budget deficit is the gravest problem facing America and must be eliminated at once.
This contradictory polling brings us to the most alarming feature of all in politics today, not only in America but in most democratic countries: the way that cheap, ubiquitous and statistically accurate opinion polling has begun to subvert representative democracies and turn them into direct democracies, in which the views of “the voters” are considered more politically legitimate than those of the representatives they elect.
In Britain and Europe, this shift has been clearest in military issues. Media commentators regularly assert, for example, that government decisions to send extra troops to Afghanistan are illegitimate because opinion polls show that a majority of voters oppose this war.
The dangers of direct democracy have been obvious to political thinkers since Plato and Aristotle. Most obvious is the absence of any mechanism to ensure consistency between majority decisions. Opinion polls will always show big majorities for lower taxes, higher public spending and balanced budgets. But polls will never say how these demands can be reconciled.
The same politicians that passed idiot laws to appease and gain the support of the economist halfwits are the enemies of the people and democracy.
They run democracy for their benefit and the benefit of their masters in the media and money markets.
Read Kaltskys comments here about how the wishes of the people must be subservient to the interests and demands of the idiot economists and the idiot politicians - the same muppets that dragged us into the crisis.
The statement from Kaltesky below is the basis of the global corporate fascist state system where national governments serve the interests of the international corporations and not their own people.
NATIONALIST CLASS WAR NOW !
The politicians must serve the people, not the interests of the global corporations.
We must wage Nationalist Class War against the international bankers, international corporate media, the supra-national institutions that serve the global corporate fascist system and the lackeys of the internal elite within our nation, and Re-Nationalise our nations, politics, media and economic system.
SMASH THE GLOBAL CORPORATE FASCIST SYSTEM, THE CORPORATE MEDIA AND ITS POLITICAL PIGS !
We demand a democracy where the people have the power, not a parliament that serves the EU, US or the international corporations
Oh the arrogance of these fools ;
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article7039987.ece
To make matters much worse, both sides claim to be acting out of profound democratic convictions, because their positions are supported by opinion polls. A clear majority of US voters oppose significant tax increases that affect middle-income households, and these are the only ones that could significantly improve the budgetary outlook. An equally clear majority rejects any reduction in government spending on health and pension “entitlements”, which are the only cuts that could conceivably save enough to prevent government insolvency if big tax increases are permanently ruled out. And just to confirm the Alice in Wonderland character of US politics at present, another clear majority believes that the budget deficit is the gravest problem facing America and must be eliminated at once.
This contradictory polling brings us to the most alarming feature of all in politics today, not only in America but in most democratic countries: the way that cheap, ubiquitous and statistically accurate opinion polling has begun to subvert representative democracies and turn them into direct democracies, in which the views of “the voters” are considered more politically legitimate than those of the representatives they elect.
In Britain and Europe, this shift has been clearest in military issues. Media commentators regularly assert, for example, that government decisions to send extra troops to Afghanistan are illegitimate because opinion polls show that a majority of voters oppose this war.
The dangers of direct democracy have been obvious to political thinkers since Plato and Aristotle. Most obvious is the absence of any mechanism to ensure consistency between majority decisions. Opinion polls will always show big majorities for lower taxes, higher public spending and balanced budgets. But polls will never say how these demands can be reconciled.
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
BNP Nationalists Support British Bikers
Image - We need Brotherhood between British Bikers. White Unity. No more Brother Wars.
IMAGE - Easy Rider - living the dream. You wont be able to live like this under Islamist domination nor under the domination of liberal Dhimmi's.
Many Nationalists like myself inside the BNP support British Bikers and Bikers clubs.
We see the bikers as the one of the last of the free patriots in the UK who live an outlaw lifestyle outside the corrupt system.
This video shows how many BNP members support Bikers.
I live in a village which has one of the largest Biker clubs in the country.
The Bikers in my village have never caused us any problems, and in fact have helped turn some wayward youngsters into disciplined young men.
I support the British Bikers.
The day White British bikers stop fighting each other and instead fight the common enemy is the day the bikers become a real force in British society.
Watch the video and see why British Bikers should support the BNP.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sYAVHKB6Tk&feature=player_embedded#
Read the Jackal Manifesto for bikers here ;
n the past I’ve been criticized for posting translated articles about the Danish chapter of Hells Angels. My reports of what’s happening in Denmark have been construed as support for Hells Angels — especially my assertion that the motorcycle gang is doing what virtually no other organized group in Denmark is willing to do, namely stand up vigorously against the systematic violence of immigrant gangs against ethnic Danish people.
As I have said before, these accounts are descriptive, and not normative. Regardless of whom I support or what I think should be done, this is what is actually happening. The government, the police, and the security services have failed the Danish people, but nature abhors a vacuum, and motorcycle outlaws are riding in to fill the gap.
Two years ago El Inglés wrote a piece of speculative fiction about the Danish Civil War, in which he predicted the emergence of a militia recruited from ordinary Danes to resist the increasing violence of immigrants in Danish society. With the reality unfolding before us now, it appears that the focus of resistance is in fact going to start with groups like Hells Angels, who are willing to meet violence with violence.
It’s unfortunate that things have come to this pass: the civil authorities are unable to assure ordinary citizens of their safety, so alternative means of doing the same job are being devised.
Earlier today I posted TB’s translation of an article about the “Jackal Manifesto” by the Hells Angels. Henrik Ræder Clausen has kindly translated the entire document from the HA website. As Henrik noted, it’s a much more honest and lucid account of the current situation in Denmark than can be found in any of the mainstream media.
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2009/06/jackal-manifesto.html
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http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/article899073.ece
76 Bandidos bikers in Berlin are said to be joining the Hells Angels, Danish bikers have done the same.
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Berlin’s infamous Bandidos bikers have left their international organisation and are now seeking membership of their rival Hells Angels, according to the Danish National Investigation Centre (NEC) that has received information from its German counterparts.
According to the report on P1, it is the second time in recent months that the European Bandidos President Jim Tinndahn of Denmark has had to see members move to the Hells Angels.
Several weeks ago, six senior Bandidos members in Aalborg chose to switch and throw off their sombreros to don angels’ wings.
The German authorities say that the 76 Bandidos defectors have already been seen in public in Hells Angels attire with the local Hells Angels president and that although their membership has not yet been confirmed, the former Bandidos bikers have already removed all of the group’s symbols from their clubhouse in northern Berlin.
“I cannot definitively say how many bikers have left the Bandidos, but we are aware of the situation and following it closely both in Aalborg and Berlin,” says NEC chief Deputy Chief Superintendant Kim Kliver who declined to answer whether there was a connection between the cases in Aalborg and Berlin.
Aalborg
There have been internal conflicts between Bandidos factions in Northern Jutland for some time and although the precise reason for disagreements between the Bandidos factions remains unclear, there are suggestions that there have been major differences on the issue of cooperation with immigrant gangs.
“Our picture is that the young local Bandidos members would like to cooperate with immigrant gangs, while the older members reject the idea. The older members were voted down and that was probably the final straw in the decision to leave,” says Karsten Kristensen of the Aalborg Police, who leads a special biker monitoring group.
HA Luxembourg
In Denmark, the Hells Angels cannot immediately take in Bandidos members as a result of a 1997 no poaching rule under a peace pact that followed a biker war.
But according to DR Nyheder’s information, the Hells Angels is attempting to bypass the no poaching rule by enlisting former Bandidos members in Hells Angels Luxembourg, as the pact only refers to the Nordic region.
“Yes we have run into the same information that the six have been enrolled in Hells Angels Luxembourg in order to maintain the old peace pact,” says Kristensen.
Edited by Julian Isherwood
Evan Davis = BBC Wanker
I am not going to respond to that BBC wanker Evan Davis show on TV tonight slagging off British workers for not agreeing to be slaves for the corporations, suffice to say that the BBC and the idiot Evans are once again trying to peddle their pro-immigration, pro-capitalist rubbish on the BBC (as usual).
The comments on the article below reveal everything that needs to be said.
But this one sentence says it all ;
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7038352.ece
" Take the Greenvale potato-packing plant near Wisbech, for example. Like many large employers these days, it substantially fills the shopfloor with non-Brits who do the back-breaking routine work. Twelve- hour shifts, with two fifteen-minute breaks and a half-hour lunch. "
What sort of system have we created where any workers, let alone BRITISH workers have to work in conditions like this.
Its a return to the conditions of the Industrial Revolution and the workhouses.
Coming from an over paid BBC ponce who is paid half a million a year to talk bollocks on the BBC this is cynical, sickening arrogant bollocks.
A good programme for the BBC to make would be to get overpaid BBC wankers like Evan Davis and get them to work in those factory conditions for a couple of months, instead of them being treated like a bunch of overpaid ponces with a load of BBC flunkies doing everything for them.
They would be dead in a month.
Evan Davis needs to be dragged into the real world.
The BBC needs to be dragged into the real world.
Evan Davis is a national disgrace.
The comments on the article below reveal everything that needs to be said.
But this one sentence says it all ;
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7038352.ece
" Take the Greenvale potato-packing plant near Wisbech, for example. Like many large employers these days, it substantially fills the shopfloor with non-Brits who do the back-breaking routine work. Twelve- hour shifts, with two fifteen-minute breaks and a half-hour lunch. "
What sort of system have we created where any workers, let alone BRITISH workers have to work in conditions like this.
Its a return to the conditions of the Industrial Revolution and the workhouses.
Coming from an over paid BBC ponce who is paid half a million a year to talk bollocks on the BBC this is cynical, sickening arrogant bollocks.
A good programme for the BBC to make would be to get overpaid BBC wankers like Evan Davis and get them to work in those factory conditions for a couple of months, instead of them being treated like a bunch of overpaid ponces with a load of BBC flunkies doing everything for them.
They would be dead in a month.
Evan Davis needs to be dragged into the real world.
The BBC needs to be dragged into the real world.
Evan Davis is a national disgrace.
Thanks Mossad
This is why Zionism cannot be tolerated in Britain.
These bungling idiots used REAL British passports obtained by one of their Zionist lackeys from the UK passport Office - and it was probably sanctioned or supported by the British government.
The Israelis have placed at risk not just the people whose identities they have stolen but all British citizens in the Middle East, who will now be suspected as possible Mossad hit men.
So much for Israel being a friend of Britain.
The Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel must be banned.
They are the agents of an hostile foreign power.
Loyalty to Zionism is treason to Britain.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7039272.ece
The alleged Mossad hit squad that killed a Hamas leader in Dubai used at least 12 fake British passports, it was revealed today.
Dubai police today identified 15 new suspects over the attack at a luxury hotel and warned that the country would never allow outsiders "to settle scores on its territory".
An official statement gave six new British names, as well as the names of three more Irish passport-holders, three French and three Australian. All the new suspects are thought to have been using faked passports after a massive identity theft operation.
Police have now named 26 suspects in the January 19 assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a founder of the armed wing of Hamas and key contact for the supply of arms from Iran. In addition to the twelve Britons there are now six Irish, four French, three Australians and one German. Six of the suspects are women.
Times Archive, 1973: British protest over false passports
Britain protested to the Israeli Government yesterday over the supply of falsified British passports to agents during their attacks in Beirut
* Israel fears UN censure move led by Britain
* Israeli agents kill guerilla leaders in Lebanon
Related Links
* Son of Hamas founder was spy for Israel
* More Irish passports linked to Dubai murder
* Two more Britons caught up in Hamas hit
The six Britons were named as Philip Carr, Gabriella Barney, Stephen Drake, Mark Sklar, Daniel Schnur and Roy Cannon.
Police also said today they had tracked down the credit cards used by 14 of the suspects while they were in the Gulf emirate. The cards were all issued by MetaBank of the United States.
The assassination has been widely blamed on the Israeli spy service Mossad and prompted a chorus of complaints from Europe - although Israel has refused to confirm any involvement.
Flight details released today through the Dubai Government suggested that members of the hit squad flew into Dubai under their faked identities as early as March last year — suggesting an extraordinarily complex plot.
At one point last year no fewer than nine of the suspects were in Dubai at the same time, flying in from November 6-8 and leaving between November 8 and November 10. It is not yet clear why they were there at that point.
Detectives have been trawling through thousands of hours of CCTV footage, piecing together the hit squad's movements as they closed in on their target. A team from the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency is in Dubai, helping with the investigation, and a SOCA spokesman in London said that the latest documents also appeared to be fraudulent.
"We're working to identify the locations of the individuals and we will be in contact with them as soon as possible," the spokesman added. The six people whose identities were stolen were encouraged to contact their nearest British consulate, if abroad, or a Passport Office if they are living in Britain.
In a strongly worded statement, Dubai police declared that the security of the country's people, residents and visitors was "a red line that should not be crossed".
It added: "The United Arab Emirates will never tolerate the violation of its sovereignty or allow external forces to settle scores on its territory, no matter what their ideology is."
Investigators have also been piecing together the assassins' finances. Documents obtained by The Times today showed that apart from the fourteen MetaBank credit cards, the assassins also used one credit card issued by the Nationwide Building Society and two by the UK provider IDT Finance.
The alleged ringleader, who was using a fake French passport under the name Peter Elvinger, used a credit card issued by DZ Bank of Frankfurt.
Another bogus 'race' employment tribunal claim
Image - con artist.
Oh what a surprise, another bogus race claim withdrawn from the tribunals.
Yawn.
The greed and arrogance of the Ethnic Middle Class is such that they will take advantage of positive discrimination plans to get a job and then when they are caught out ( like Dodgy Dez the copper ) they then scweeeeaaaammm wwaacccciiiissm !
until they get a pay out.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1253460/ITV-news-presenter-Lisa-Aziz-quits-apologises-slurs-colleagues.html
ITV news presenter Lisa Aziz quits after withdrawing slurs on colleagues
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:57 PM on 24th February 2010
* Comments (13)
* Add to My Stories
Lisa Aziz
Apologised: News presenter Lisa Aziz
Presenter Lisa Aziz is leaving ITV for 'personal reasons', it was announced today.
The news presenter has also withdrawn and apologised for a series of allegations she made against ITV colleagues.
Aziz was alleged to have made claims of race, sex and age discrimination at a forthcoming industrial tribunal.
She was suspended from her position as presenter of ITV West news programme West Country Tonight last July over claims that she had fiddled her expenses.
Her departure after four years at the channel was announced in a statement this afternoon, which said Aziz 'has decided to leave the company for personal reasons'.
She said: 'I have enjoyed my time with ITV, but over the last few months I realise I made serious and damaging allegations against my Bristol colleagues and ITV managers.
'The allegations were made whilst I was very angry and unwell. I now withdraw all the allegations and wish to continue to develop my career.
'I leave ITV knowing that my time at ITV has been amongst the most fulfilling of my career in television and I have the highest regard for the quality of journalism produced there.'
Aziz, Britain's first Asian national news presenter, joined ITV in 2006 after 10 years at Sky.
A spokesman for ITV said today: 'Lisa has made a significant contribution to our team. We have now resolved all of the outstanding issues and we wish Lisa success in the future.'
Enlarge Lisa Aziz
Star role: Aziz was one of the main presenters on Sky news before she jumped ship for ITV
It is understood that a meeting was called at the ITV West newsroom this morning at which an apology from the presenter was read out.
It is believed the letter explained to colleagues she was withdrawing her allegations and apologised to both ITV and the individual ITV managers about whom she had made claims.
Her letter said she would be making no further comment about the matter.
ITV previously said it had investigated Aziz's claims and they were 'baseless'.
When Ms Aziz made her original complaint last November, a close friend told of the pressure she was under
She said: 'Lisa is overwhelmed with stress over how she has been treated. She never had her expenses claims questioned before and if they had a problem with any receipts she would have paid it back in a second.
Enlarge Lisa Aziz
Aziz with her then TV-am colleague Lorraine Kelly
'Instead they ambushed her with a few claims amounting to less than £200. She feels as if she has faced a campaign to be forced out.
'She has a good relationship with the local Muslim community as that was where she began her career but for a news editor to imply that she had "terror contacts" made her furious.
'It wouldn't happen to a white colleague or a male colleague, so there is an ageism and sexism issue as well as the racism. She has been off air for a month and ITV has replaced her with two blonde, blue-eyed presenters in their thirties. That says it all.'
While she was at Sky, Aziz she first met the then Sarah Macaulay, now Sarah Brown.
They shared the same charitable interests – children, women and community relations – and a deep friendship developed. Even as Sarah began to date the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, the relationship flourished.
It has been played out against a backdrop of 11 and 10 Downing Street, Chequers and the family’s private home in Kirkcaldy, Fife.
'They are very jolly, generous and informal hosts,' Aziz told a Mail on Sunday reporter in January.
'More than once I’ve had a gin and tonic too many and Gordon has escorted me down in the Downing Street lift and had his official car run me to the end of the road.
'If I pop in for a kitchen-table coffee, Sarah might say something like, "Let's peep into the fridge and finish off the canapes from last night’s reception.'
'My children Jacob and Leah go to parties at their Downing Street flat and it’s wonderful to see those historic rooms packed with children making a huge hullabaloo and enjoying a magician or a puppeteer. At Chequers, they throw pool parties for the little ones. They are very grounded, hands-on parents.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1253460/ITV-news-presenter-Lisa-Aziz-quits-apologises-slurs-colleagues.html#ixzz0gTPz6OhK
Race And Culture Are Linked - the death of multi-culturalism begins
Science is undergoing a revolution.
DNA testing has revealed that races exist.
Now science is revealing that race and culture are linked.
This has devastating implications for multi-culturalism.
Multi-culturalism is based on ' The Plastic Human Theory' that races do not exist as defined genetic blocks and that culture is not ingrained within our genes, and therefore human beings can be fitted into any nation on the planet and integrate and assimilate into that nation and culture.
But the article below reveals that race is directly linked to culture.
This is the beginning of the end of multi-culturalism.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/233778
By now, it should come as no surprise when scientists discover yet another case of experience changing the brain. From the sensory information we absorb to the movements we make, our lives leave footprints on the bumps and fissures of our cortex, so much so that experiences can alter "hard-wired" brain structures. Through rehab, stroke patients can coax a region of the motor cortex on the opposite side of the damaged region to pinch-hit, restoring lost mobility; volunteers who are blindfolded for just five days can reprogram their visual cortex to process sound and touch.
SUBSCRIBE Click Here to subscribe to NEWSWEEK and save up to 85% >>
Still, scientists have been surprised at how deeply culture—the language we speak, the values we absorb—shapes the brain, and are rethinking findings derived from studies of Westerners. To take one recent example, a region behind the forehead called the medial prefrontal cortex supposedly represents the self: it is active when we ("we" being the Americans in the study) think of our own identity and traits. But with Chinese volunteers, the results were strikingly different. The "me" circuit hummed not only when they thought whether a particular adjective described themselves, but also when they considered whether it described their mother. The Westerners showed no such overlap between self and mom. Depending whether one lives in a culture that views the self as autonomous and unique or as connected to and part of a larger whole, this neural circuit takes on quite different functions.
GALLERY
A Day in the Life
A Marine severely wounded in Iraq, and his family, fight for his recovery
"Cultural neuroscience," as this new field is called, is about discovering such differences. Some of the findings, as with the "me/mom" circuit, buttress longstanding notions of cultural differences. For instance, it is a cultural cliché that Westerners focus on individual objects while East Asians pay attention to context and background (another manifestation of the individualism-collectivism split). Sure enough, when shown complex, busy scenes, Asian-Americans and non-Asian--Americans recruited different brain regions. The Asians showed more activity in areas that process figure-ground relations—holistic context—while the Americans showed more activity in regions that recognize objects.
Psychologist Nalini Ambady of Tufts found something similar when she and colleagues showed drawings of people in a submissive pose (head down, shoulders hunched) or a dominant one (arms crossed, face forward) to Japanese and Americans. The brain's dopamine-fueled reward circuit became most active at the sight of the stance—dominant for Americans, submissive for Japanese—that each volunteer's culture most values, they reported in 2009. This raises an obvious chicken-and-egg question, but the smart money is on culture shaping the brain, not vice versa.
Cultural neuroscience wouldn't be making waves if it found neurobiological bases only for well-known cultural differences. It is also uncovering the unexpected. For instance, a 2006 study found that native Chinese speakers use a different region of the brain to do simple arithmetic (3 + 4) or decide which number is larger than native English speakers do, even though both use Arabic numerals. The Chinese use the circuits that process visual and spatial information and plan movements (the latter may be related to the use of the abacus). But English speakers use language circuits. It is as if the West conceives numbers as just words, but the East imbues them with symbolic, spatial freight. (Insert cliché about Asian math geniuses.) "One would think that neural processes involving basic mathematical computations are universal," says Ambady, but they "seem to be culture-specific."
Not to be the skunk at this party, but I think it's important to ask whether neuroscience reveals anything more than we already know from, say, anthropology. For instance, it's well known that East Asian cultures prize the collective over the individual, and that Americans do the opposite. Does identifying brain correlates of those values offer any extra insight? After all, it's not as if anyone thought those values are the result of something in the liver.
Ambady thinks cultural neuro-science does advance understanding. Take the me/mom finding, which, she argues, "attests to the strength of the overlap between self and [people close to you] in collectivistic cultures and the separation in individualistic cultures. It is important to push the analysis to the level of the brain." Especially when it shows how fundamental cultural differences are—so fundamental, perhaps, that "universal" notions such as human rights, democracy, and the like may be no such thing.
© 2010
DNA testing has revealed that races exist.
Now science is revealing that race and culture are linked.
This has devastating implications for multi-culturalism.
Multi-culturalism is based on ' The Plastic Human Theory' that races do not exist as defined genetic blocks and that culture is not ingrained within our genes, and therefore human beings can be fitted into any nation on the planet and integrate and assimilate into that nation and culture.
But the article below reveals that race is directly linked to culture.
This is the beginning of the end of multi-culturalism.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/233778
By now, it should come as no surprise when scientists discover yet another case of experience changing the brain. From the sensory information we absorb to the movements we make, our lives leave footprints on the bumps and fissures of our cortex, so much so that experiences can alter "hard-wired" brain structures. Through rehab, stroke patients can coax a region of the motor cortex on the opposite side of the damaged region to pinch-hit, restoring lost mobility; volunteers who are blindfolded for just five days can reprogram their visual cortex to process sound and touch.
SUBSCRIBE Click Here to subscribe to NEWSWEEK and save up to 85% >>
Still, scientists have been surprised at how deeply culture—the language we speak, the values we absorb—shapes the brain, and are rethinking findings derived from studies of Westerners. To take one recent example, a region behind the forehead called the medial prefrontal cortex supposedly represents the self: it is active when we ("we" being the Americans in the study) think of our own identity and traits. But with Chinese volunteers, the results were strikingly different. The "me" circuit hummed not only when they thought whether a particular adjective described themselves, but also when they considered whether it described their mother. The Westerners showed no such overlap between self and mom. Depending whether one lives in a culture that views the self as autonomous and unique or as connected to and part of a larger whole, this neural circuit takes on quite different functions.
GALLERY
A Day in the Life
A Marine severely wounded in Iraq, and his family, fight for his recovery
"Cultural neuroscience," as this new field is called, is about discovering such differences. Some of the findings, as with the "me/mom" circuit, buttress longstanding notions of cultural differences. For instance, it is a cultural cliché that Westerners focus on individual objects while East Asians pay attention to context and background (another manifestation of the individualism-collectivism split). Sure enough, when shown complex, busy scenes, Asian-Americans and non-Asian--Americans recruited different brain regions. The Asians showed more activity in areas that process figure-ground relations—holistic context—while the Americans showed more activity in regions that recognize objects.
Psychologist Nalini Ambady of Tufts found something similar when she and colleagues showed drawings of people in a submissive pose (head down, shoulders hunched) or a dominant one (arms crossed, face forward) to Japanese and Americans. The brain's dopamine-fueled reward circuit became most active at the sight of the stance—dominant for Americans, submissive for Japanese—that each volunteer's culture most values, they reported in 2009. This raises an obvious chicken-and-egg question, but the smart money is on culture shaping the brain, not vice versa.
Cultural neuroscience wouldn't be making waves if it found neurobiological bases only for well-known cultural differences. It is also uncovering the unexpected. For instance, a 2006 study found that native Chinese speakers use a different region of the brain to do simple arithmetic (3 + 4) or decide which number is larger than native English speakers do, even though both use Arabic numerals. The Chinese use the circuits that process visual and spatial information and plan movements (the latter may be related to the use of the abacus). But English speakers use language circuits. It is as if the West conceives numbers as just words, but the East imbues them with symbolic, spatial freight. (Insert cliché about Asian math geniuses.) "One would think that neural processes involving basic mathematical computations are universal," says Ambady, but they "seem to be culture-specific."
Not to be the skunk at this party, but I think it's important to ask whether neuroscience reveals anything more than we already know from, say, anthropology. For instance, it's well known that East Asian cultures prize the collective over the individual, and that Americans do the opposite. Does identifying brain correlates of those values offer any extra insight? After all, it's not as if anyone thought those values are the result of something in the liver.
Ambady thinks cultural neuro-science does advance understanding. Take the me/mom finding, which, she argues, "attests to the strength of the overlap between self and [people close to you] in collectivistic cultures and the separation in individualistic cultures. It is important to push the analysis to the level of the brain." Especially when it shows how fundamental cultural differences are—so fundamental, perhaps, that "universal" notions such as human rights, democracy, and the like may be no such thing.
© 2010
Melanie Phillips, Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel - all support the compulsory deportation of immigrants in Israel
The Conservative Friends of Israel, the Labour Friends of Israel and the British government all support Israel, therefore they all support the compulsory deportation of legal and illegal immigrants from Israel.
So why do they attack the BNP as 'racist'.
One law for Israel, another law for the rest of the world.
One law for Zionists, another law for non-Zionists.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8524723.stm
By Katya Adler
BBC News, Jerusalem
Five little girls giggle and scream with delight as they chase each other round the playground, their pigtails flying as they run.
The girls' parents come from the Philippines, Thailand and Sudan but they sing, shout and chat together in Hebrew.
Like her friends, bright-eyed, eight-year-old Noah Mae was born in Israel. This is her home, she says.
I've come to meet her at a community centre run by the Israeli Scouts movement in southern Tel Aviv.
She proudly shows me her schoolbook, where she got top marks for her Hebrew writing and spelling.
Here parents might come from the Philippines but she feels truly Israeli. Hebrew is the language she dreams in, she tells me.
Pressure groups
But Israel's government now wants Noah Mae to leave. Here it's illegal for migrant workers to have children.
Hundreds of families face expulsion from Israel this summer. More than 1,000 children, including Noah Mae, expect to be deported at the end of their school year.
Noah Mae with mother Emily
'Mama,' she said to me, 'I am Israeli. I was born here and I will stay here.'
Emily Cabradilla
Mother of Noah Mae
Noah May's mother, Emily Cabradilla, together with a number of Israeli pressure groups, is trying to fight the government's plan to include the children in a crackdown on illegal immigrants.
She said it broke her heart when she heard the news. "Noah Mae has never been to the Philippines. How can I tell her she's going home? She hardly speaks a word of Tagalog.
"She says she won't leave Israel. 'Mama,' she said to me, 'I am Israeli. I was born here and I will stay here.'"
But laws in Israel make it extremely hard for people to stay, to become citizens, if they are not Jewish.
Right from its birth, Israel called itself the Jewish State. This is a country built for and built by immigrants from all over the world but with a key common factor - a Jewish heritage.
According to Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, controlling immigration is largely about preserving Israel's Jewish character.
His government intends to deport all illegal immigrants by 2013 and also to drastically reduce the number of legal foreign workers in Israel.
In the face of some public opposition to the government's policy, Israel's Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Eli Yishai, accused Israelis of being hypocritical and sanctimonious. "Don't they [the foreign workers] threaten the Zionist project of the State of Israel?" he asked.
Mr Yishai caused an outcry in the autumn when he accused migrant workers of bringing with them "a profusion of diseases: hepatitis, measles, tuberculosis, Aids and drug (addiction)".
And the plan to deport the children proved so controversial the government has delayed it from last summer until the end of the 2010 school year.
'Like a stranger'
A new immigration police force - the Oz Unit - now patrols Israel's streets as part of the government crackdown. We accompanied a team of policemen around the old central bus station in southern Tel Aviv.
The teeming, narrow pedestrian alleys here reveal a social world rarely seen in Israel. Here Chinese men sell cigarettes and children's clothes, Sudanese refugees hawk CDs and DVDs while Philippine and Thai women share a joke on a street corner.
Israel increased the number of work permits it issued to South East Asian workers in particular after the start of the second Palestinian uprising.
Israeli police check immigrant ID cards in Tel Aviv
Many Tel Aviv migrant workers look uncomfortable as the police approach
They've taken the place of Palestinian workers; Israel's government severely restricts their permits and presence in Israel for security reasons, it says.
Everyone here looks uncomfortable as the police approach.
Commander Igal Ben Ami says he doesn't enjoy deporting people who have made friends and have a life here but he says he has to follow orders.
"Look around this part of town," he says, listing to me dozens of nationalities who hang out here, especially at night.
"This is an Israeli street, a Jewish street, but I feel the stranger here."
Mr Netanyahu says Israel will always open its doors to refugees from war-stricken countries but will not let thousands of foreign workers "flood the country".
History of persecution
While his government speaks of the need to expel non-Jewish migrant workers and their children born here, it sponsors organisations that encourage Jewish people from all over the world to move to Israel.
Mark Rosenberg,Nefesh B'Nefesh
Especially in the shadow of the Holocaust, many Jews chose to come and live here
Mark Rosenberg
Nefesh B'Nefesh
Israel insists this has nothing at all to do with racism. Most here feel having a Jewish state is important considering the Jewish people's long history of persecution.
Mark Rosenberg works for Nefesh B'Nefesh, a group that encourages Jews to move to Israel.
He explains that Israel offers citizenship to anyone with a Jewish grandparent, because under the Nazis anyone with a Jewish grandparent was eligible to be murdered in the gas chambers.
"Especially in the shadow of the Holocaust, many Jews chose to come and live here - 85% of the country is Jewish. The idea is that this nation is a homeland where Jews can be free."
But the children of foreign workers in Israel say they know no other home. Israeli governments used to turn a blind eye but no longer.
'Punished'
Young Israeli campaigner Rotem Ilan heads the Children of Israel organisation.
She says children like Noah Mae are being punished for a crime they didn't commit.
The fact that they were born in Israel is Israel's responsibility, she insists.
It allowed the children's parents to come here.
Her organisation is one of a number of NGOs organising protests against the children's deportation.
"For 20 years Israeli governments have turned a blind eye to these children. They are now part of the fabric of this country. They go to school here. They celebrate the same holidays as us. If there is something we [Jews] have learned from our history is that you must not, you cannot deport children."
Israel's government did not respond to our requests for an interview.
Noah Mae and her friends hope politicians may yet change their minds and let them stay.
And how will she feel if they don't?
"Bad," she said sadly. "I love Israel."
So why do they attack the BNP as 'racist'.
One law for Israel, another law for the rest of the world.
One law for Zionists, another law for non-Zionists.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8524723.stm
By Katya Adler
BBC News, Jerusalem
Five little girls giggle and scream with delight as they chase each other round the playground, their pigtails flying as they run.
The girls' parents come from the Philippines, Thailand and Sudan but they sing, shout and chat together in Hebrew.
Like her friends, bright-eyed, eight-year-old Noah Mae was born in Israel. This is her home, she says.
I've come to meet her at a community centre run by the Israeli Scouts movement in southern Tel Aviv.
She proudly shows me her schoolbook, where she got top marks for her Hebrew writing and spelling.
Here parents might come from the Philippines but she feels truly Israeli. Hebrew is the language she dreams in, she tells me.
Pressure groups
But Israel's government now wants Noah Mae to leave. Here it's illegal for migrant workers to have children.
Hundreds of families face expulsion from Israel this summer. More than 1,000 children, including Noah Mae, expect to be deported at the end of their school year.
Noah Mae with mother Emily
'Mama,' she said to me, 'I am Israeli. I was born here and I will stay here.'
Emily Cabradilla
Mother of Noah Mae
Noah May's mother, Emily Cabradilla, together with a number of Israeli pressure groups, is trying to fight the government's plan to include the children in a crackdown on illegal immigrants.
She said it broke her heart when she heard the news. "Noah Mae has never been to the Philippines. How can I tell her she's going home? She hardly speaks a word of Tagalog.
"She says she won't leave Israel. 'Mama,' she said to me, 'I am Israeli. I was born here and I will stay here.'"
But laws in Israel make it extremely hard for people to stay, to become citizens, if they are not Jewish.
Right from its birth, Israel called itself the Jewish State. This is a country built for and built by immigrants from all over the world but with a key common factor - a Jewish heritage.
According to Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, controlling immigration is largely about preserving Israel's Jewish character.
His government intends to deport all illegal immigrants by 2013 and also to drastically reduce the number of legal foreign workers in Israel.
In the face of some public opposition to the government's policy, Israel's Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Eli Yishai, accused Israelis of being hypocritical and sanctimonious. "Don't they [the foreign workers] threaten the Zionist project of the State of Israel?" he asked.
Mr Yishai caused an outcry in the autumn when he accused migrant workers of bringing with them "a profusion of diseases: hepatitis, measles, tuberculosis, Aids and drug (addiction)".
And the plan to deport the children proved so controversial the government has delayed it from last summer until the end of the 2010 school year.
'Like a stranger'
A new immigration police force - the Oz Unit - now patrols Israel's streets as part of the government crackdown. We accompanied a team of policemen around the old central bus station in southern Tel Aviv.
The teeming, narrow pedestrian alleys here reveal a social world rarely seen in Israel. Here Chinese men sell cigarettes and children's clothes, Sudanese refugees hawk CDs and DVDs while Philippine and Thai women share a joke on a street corner.
Israel increased the number of work permits it issued to South East Asian workers in particular after the start of the second Palestinian uprising.
Israeli police check immigrant ID cards in Tel Aviv
Many Tel Aviv migrant workers look uncomfortable as the police approach
They've taken the place of Palestinian workers; Israel's government severely restricts their permits and presence in Israel for security reasons, it says.
Everyone here looks uncomfortable as the police approach.
Commander Igal Ben Ami says he doesn't enjoy deporting people who have made friends and have a life here but he says he has to follow orders.
"Look around this part of town," he says, listing to me dozens of nationalities who hang out here, especially at night.
"This is an Israeli street, a Jewish street, but I feel the stranger here."
Mr Netanyahu says Israel will always open its doors to refugees from war-stricken countries but will not let thousands of foreign workers "flood the country".
History of persecution
While his government speaks of the need to expel non-Jewish migrant workers and their children born here, it sponsors organisations that encourage Jewish people from all over the world to move to Israel.
Mark Rosenberg,Nefesh B'Nefesh
Especially in the shadow of the Holocaust, many Jews chose to come and live here
Mark Rosenberg
Nefesh B'Nefesh
Israel insists this has nothing at all to do with racism. Most here feel having a Jewish state is important considering the Jewish people's long history of persecution.
Mark Rosenberg works for Nefesh B'Nefesh, a group that encourages Jews to move to Israel.
He explains that Israel offers citizenship to anyone with a Jewish grandparent, because under the Nazis anyone with a Jewish grandparent was eligible to be murdered in the gas chambers.
"Especially in the shadow of the Holocaust, many Jews chose to come and live here - 85% of the country is Jewish. The idea is that this nation is a homeland where Jews can be free."
But the children of foreign workers in Israel say they know no other home. Israeli governments used to turn a blind eye but no longer.
'Punished'
Young Israeli campaigner Rotem Ilan heads the Children of Israel organisation.
She says children like Noah Mae are being punished for a crime they didn't commit.
The fact that they were born in Israel is Israel's responsibility, she insists.
It allowed the children's parents to come here.
Her organisation is one of a number of NGOs organising protests against the children's deportation.
"For 20 years Israeli governments have turned a blind eye to these children. They are now part of the fabric of this country. They go to school here. They celebrate the same holidays as us. If there is something we [Jews] have learned from our history is that you must not, you cannot deport children."
Israel's government did not respond to our requests for an interview.
Noah Mae and her friends hope politicians may yet change their minds and let them stay.
And how will she feel if they don't?
"Bad," she said sadly. "I love Israel."
" Keep England White " said Winston Churchill
Below are a few of my favourite Winston Churchill quotes ;
As for Churchill these are some of the things he said and crikey, he sure did have a fantastic way with words didnt he !
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill ;
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
* The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899), Volume II pp. 248-250
2) The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks constitutes a national and race danger which is impossible to exaggerate. I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed before another year has passed.
* (Home Secretary) Churchill to Prime Minister Asquith on compulsory sterilization of ‘the feeble-minded and insane’; cited, as follows (excerpted from longer note) : It is worth noting that eugenics was not a fringe movement of obscure scientists but often led and supported, in Britain and America, by some of the most prominent public figures of the day, across the political divide, such as Julian Huxley, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, John Maynard Keynes and Theodore Roosevelt. Indeed, none other than Winston Churchill, whilst Home Secretary in 1910, made the following observation: [text of quote] (quoted in Jones, 1994: 9)., in ‘Race’, sport, and British society (2001), Carrington & McDonald, Routledge, Introduction, Note 4, p. 20 ISBN 0415246296
3) I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can't help it — I enjoy every second of it.
* A letter to a friend (1916)
4) I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gases: gases can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected... We cannot, in any circumstances acquiesce to the non-utilisation of any weapons which are available to procure a speedy termination of the disorder which prevails on the frontier.
* Statement as president of the Air Council, War Office Departmental Minute (1919-05-12); Churchill Papers 16/16, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.
5) There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews, it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd) or of Krassin or Radek -- all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing.
*
o "Zionism versus Bolshevism", Illustrated Sunday Herald (February 1920)
6) If I had been an Italian, I am sure I would have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.
* To Benito Mussolini in a press conference in Rome (January 1927), as quoted in Churchill : A Life (1992) by Martin Gilbert
7) It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer of the type well-known in the East, now posing as a fakir, striding half naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.
* Comment on Gandhi's meeting with the Viceroy of India, addressing the Council of the West Essex Unionist Association (23 February 1931); as quoted in "Mr Churchill on India" in The Times (24 February 1931)
8) One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.
* "Hitler and His Choice", The Strand Magazine (November 1935)
9) * I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.
o To the Palestine Royal Commission (1937)
10) * I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.
o In conversation to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India. This quotation is widely cited as written in "a letter to Leo Amery" (e.g., in "Jolly Good Fellows and Their Nasty Ways" by Vinay Lal in Times of India (15 January 2007)) but it is actually attributed to Churchill as a remark, in an entry for September 1942 in Leo Amery : Diaries (1988), edited John Barnes and David Nicholson, p. 832:
During my talk with Winston he burst out with: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."
11) One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once 'The Unnecessary War'.
* The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948)
and my favourite
12) "Keep England White" is a good slogan.
* On Commonwealth immigration, recorded in Harold Macmillan's diary entry for 1955-01-20 (Peter Catterall (ed.), The Macmillan Diaries: The Cabinet
Years, 1950-57 (Macmillan, 2003), p. 382)
13) I think it is the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice.
* To Sir Ian Gilmour on Commonwealth immigration to England in 1955 (Gilmour, Inside Right (Hutchinson, 1977), p. 134)
14) We see the crude and corrupt beginnings of a higher civilization blotted out by the ferocious uprising of the native tribes. Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders' hearth.
* On the sack of Verulamium (St. Albans) by Queen Boadicea
15) Like other systems in decay, the Roman Empire continued to function for several generations after its vitality was sapped. For nearly a hundred years our Island was one of the scenes of conflict between a dying civilization and lusty, famishing barbarism.
* On the last years of Roman Britain; Vol I; The Birth of Britain
16) Civilisation had been restored to the Island. But now the political fabric which nurtured it was about to be overthrown. Hitherto strong men armed had kept the house. Now a child, a weakling, a vacillator, a faithless, feckless creature, succeeded to the warriour throne.
* On Ethelred the Unready Vol I; The Birth of Britain
As for Churchill these are some of the things he said and crikey, he sure did have a fantastic way with words didnt he !
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill ;
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
* The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899), Volume II pp. 248-250
2) The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks constitutes a national and race danger which is impossible to exaggerate. I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed before another year has passed.
* (Home Secretary) Churchill to Prime Minister Asquith on compulsory sterilization of ‘the feeble-minded and insane’; cited, as follows (excerpted from longer note) : It is worth noting that eugenics was not a fringe movement of obscure scientists but often led and supported, in Britain and America, by some of the most prominent public figures of the day, across the political divide, such as Julian Huxley, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, John Maynard Keynes and Theodore Roosevelt. Indeed, none other than Winston Churchill, whilst Home Secretary in 1910, made the following observation: [text of quote] (quoted in Jones, 1994: 9)., in ‘Race’, sport, and British society (2001), Carrington & McDonald, Routledge, Introduction, Note 4, p. 20 ISBN 0415246296
3) I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can't help it — I enjoy every second of it.
* A letter to a friend (1916)
4) I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gases: gases can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected... We cannot, in any circumstances acquiesce to the non-utilisation of any weapons which are available to procure a speedy termination of the disorder which prevails on the frontier.
* Statement as president of the Air Council, War Office Departmental Minute (1919-05-12); Churchill Papers 16/16, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.
5) There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews, it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd) or of Krassin or Radek -- all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing.
*
o "Zionism versus Bolshevism", Illustrated Sunday Herald (February 1920)
6) If I had been an Italian, I am sure I would have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.
* To Benito Mussolini in a press conference in Rome (January 1927), as quoted in Churchill : A Life (1992) by Martin Gilbert
7) It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer of the type well-known in the East, now posing as a fakir, striding half naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.
* Comment on Gandhi's meeting with the Viceroy of India, addressing the Council of the West Essex Unionist Association (23 February 1931); as quoted in "Mr Churchill on India" in The Times (24 February 1931)
8) One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.
* "Hitler and His Choice", The Strand Magazine (November 1935)
9) * I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.
o To the Palestine Royal Commission (1937)
10) * I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.
o In conversation to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India. This quotation is widely cited as written in "a letter to Leo Amery" (e.g., in "Jolly Good Fellows and Their Nasty Ways" by Vinay Lal in Times of India (15 January 2007)) but it is actually attributed to Churchill as a remark, in an entry for September 1942 in Leo Amery : Diaries (1988), edited John Barnes and David Nicholson, p. 832:
During my talk with Winston he burst out with: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."
11) One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once 'The Unnecessary War'.
* The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948)
and my favourite
12) "Keep England White" is a good slogan.
* On Commonwealth immigration, recorded in Harold Macmillan's diary entry for 1955-01-20 (Peter Catterall (ed.), The Macmillan Diaries: The Cabinet
Years, 1950-57 (Macmillan, 2003), p. 382)
13) I think it is the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice.
* To Sir Ian Gilmour on Commonwealth immigration to England in 1955 (Gilmour, Inside Right (Hutchinson, 1977), p. 134)
14) We see the crude and corrupt beginnings of a higher civilization blotted out by the ferocious uprising of the native tribes. Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders' hearth.
* On the sack of Verulamium (St. Albans) by Queen Boadicea
15) Like other systems in decay, the Roman Empire continued to function for several generations after its vitality was sapped. For nearly a hundred years our Island was one of the scenes of conflict between a dying civilization and lusty, famishing barbarism.
* On the last years of Roman Britain; Vol I; The Birth of Britain
16) Civilisation had been restored to the Island. But now the political fabric which nurtured it was about to be overthrown. Hitherto strong men armed had kept the house. Now a child, a weakling, a vacillator, a faithless, feckless creature, succeeded to the warriour throne.
* On Ethelred the Unready Vol I; The Birth of Britain
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Labour Destroys the White Middle Class
The race war against indigenous whites continues - this plan is to drive the white middle class into poverty by ensuring their wealth is seized by the government when they die and then passed onto the new ethnic middle class rather than their children inheriting the wealth of their parents.
Dont say you werent warned.
http://express.co.uk/posts/view/159716/Now-the-dead-must-pay-council-tax
NOW THE DEAD MUST PAY COUNCIL TAX
Gordon Brown's pay-as-you-die tax bombshell could force people to give up their home on their death
Monday February 22,2010
By Martyn Brown
Comment Speech Bubble Have your say(60)
GORDON Brown will clobber the elderly with a savage pay-as-you-die tax bombshell that could force people to give up their home on their death, it can be revealed today.
Millions of householders will be encouraged to sign away their estate to foot the bill for soaring council tax demands.
Under the scheme ratepayers can defer inflation-busting council tax payments until they die.
Town hall chiefs will then be able claw back the cash, with interest, from the value of their estate. Over 20 years, for a couple with a typical home, that could amount to more than £73,000.
For those also facing Inheritance Tax and Labour’s proposed death tax to fund its planned National Care Service, the levy could almost wipe out any inheritance parents were hoping to leave their children.
But critics last night warned that Mr Brown’s latest tax could force struggling couples into giving up their homes to fend off the bailiffs. The Tories said it puts pensioners under pressure to sign up to pay taxes from their estate because their ever-decreasing pension funds leave them unable to meet rises in council tax introduced by Labour.
Caroline Spelman, the Conservative Shadow Secretary of State for Local Government, said last night: “Gordon Brown has been caught red-handed at planning a barrage of tax rises on pensioners. He has already deprived the elderly of security in retirement through his pension tax hikes. Now he wants a death tax for social care and a pay-as-you-die levy on council tax."
“People who have saved and worked hard all their lives deserve dignity and respect, but Gordon Brown only wants to tax middle Britain from cradle to grave. Conservatives will scrap Labour’s tax hike plans, take more families out of unfair inheritance tax, and freeze council tax to help struggling families and pensioners.”
SEARCH UK NEWS for:
Campaigners said raiding estates may prevent people from saving and urged Labour to shelve the plans. The Institute of Revenues Rating & Valuation has warned of a “perception that the ratepayers and their offspring are being robbed of their birthright”.
Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers’ Alliance said: “The only certain things in life are said to be death and taxes, now the Government is doing its utmost to add a third – death taxes. Ministers and local authorities should focus more on cutting council tax, rather than whacking people even harder.”
Ministers sneaked through new rules before Christmas which allow Britain’s 11million pensioners to put off their council tax bills, using their homes as security. The scheme is to be rolled out first in Northern Ireland after the Rates (Amendment) Act (Northern Ireland) 2009 received the Royal Assent late last year.
The law says that eligibility will be subject to the person being an owner occupier aged 60 or over. Instead of struggling to pay on a pension, the elderly would be able to put off payments until they or their spouse died or they sold their property.
A charge could be placed on the home, putting the town hall in second place to recoup cash after the taxman has taken his 40 per cent inheritance tax on all homes worth more than £325,000. Under Labour, council tax bills have more than doubled, now averaging £726 more than in 1997.
It also emerged last week that Labour has been polling on plans to slap a 10 per cent tax on homes to fund costly social care reforms. The revelation comes as the row over Labour’s death tax escalated.
Health Secretary Andy Burnham hosted a conference with care charities on Friday. The Conservatives, who plan to fund elderly care with a one-off £8,000 payment into an insurance scheme, boycotted the meeting.
In a letter to Mr Brown, Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “The public have a right to know – do you intend to pursue a compulsory insurance levy or not?”
The Department for Communities and Local Government was unavailable for comment.
Dont say you werent warned.
http://express.co.uk/posts/view/159716/Now-the-dead-must-pay-council-tax
NOW THE DEAD MUST PAY COUNCIL TAX
Gordon Brown's pay-as-you-die tax bombshell could force people to give up their home on their death
Monday February 22,2010
By Martyn Brown
Comment Speech Bubble Have your say(60)
GORDON Brown will clobber the elderly with a savage pay-as-you-die tax bombshell that could force people to give up their home on their death, it can be revealed today.
Millions of householders will be encouraged to sign away their estate to foot the bill for soaring council tax demands.
Under the scheme ratepayers can defer inflation-busting council tax payments until they die.
Town hall chiefs will then be able claw back the cash, with interest, from the value of their estate. Over 20 years, for a couple with a typical home, that could amount to more than £73,000.
For those also facing Inheritance Tax and Labour’s proposed death tax to fund its planned National Care Service, the levy could almost wipe out any inheritance parents were hoping to leave their children.
But critics last night warned that Mr Brown’s latest tax could force struggling couples into giving up their homes to fend off the bailiffs. The Tories said it puts pensioners under pressure to sign up to pay taxes from their estate because their ever-decreasing pension funds leave them unable to meet rises in council tax introduced by Labour.
Caroline Spelman, the Conservative Shadow Secretary of State for Local Government, said last night: “Gordon Brown has been caught red-handed at planning a barrage of tax rises on pensioners. He has already deprived the elderly of security in retirement through his pension tax hikes. Now he wants a death tax for social care and a pay-as-you-die levy on council tax."
“People who have saved and worked hard all their lives deserve dignity and respect, but Gordon Brown only wants to tax middle Britain from cradle to grave. Conservatives will scrap Labour’s tax hike plans, take more families out of unfair inheritance tax, and freeze council tax to help struggling families and pensioners.”
SEARCH UK NEWS for:
Campaigners said raiding estates may prevent people from saving and urged Labour to shelve the plans. The Institute of Revenues Rating & Valuation has warned of a “perception that the ratepayers and their offspring are being robbed of their birthright”.
Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers’ Alliance said: “The only certain things in life are said to be death and taxes, now the Government is doing its utmost to add a third – death taxes. Ministers and local authorities should focus more on cutting council tax, rather than whacking people even harder.”
Ministers sneaked through new rules before Christmas which allow Britain’s 11million pensioners to put off their council tax bills, using their homes as security. The scheme is to be rolled out first in Northern Ireland after the Rates (Amendment) Act (Northern Ireland) 2009 received the Royal Assent late last year.
The law says that eligibility will be subject to the person being an owner occupier aged 60 or over. Instead of struggling to pay on a pension, the elderly would be able to put off payments until they or their spouse died or they sold their property.
A charge could be placed on the home, putting the town hall in second place to recoup cash after the taxman has taken his 40 per cent inheritance tax on all homes worth more than £325,000. Under Labour, council tax bills have more than doubled, now averaging £726 more than in 1997.
It also emerged last week that Labour has been polling on plans to slap a 10 per cent tax on homes to fund costly social care reforms. The revelation comes as the row over Labour’s death tax escalated.
Health Secretary Andy Burnham hosted a conference with care charities on Friday. The Conservatives, who plan to fund elderly care with a one-off £8,000 payment into an insurance scheme, boycotted the meeting.
In a letter to Mr Brown, Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “The public have a right to know – do you intend to pursue a compulsory insurance levy or not?”
The Department for Communities and Local Government was unavailable for comment.
Enrichment News Roundup
Waltham Forest Council has today pledged better support to members of the gay community, after a study revealed they suffer harassment at the hands of local ethnic minorities.
The announcement came as the authority published a new report, which claims many LGBT residents deliberately modified their public behaviour to avoid the threat of harassment or personal attack from black and Muslim communities.
http://news.pinkpaper.com/NewsStory.aspx?id=2456
These images show three British Muslims allegedly preparing for 'holy war' after forming a group named 'The Blackburn Resistance.'
One of the trio claimed they filmed the homemade movie from which the pictures are taken in the back garden of a house in the Lancashire town as a 'bit of fun.'
But all were arrested after claims they had become 'intoxicated by the evil of terrorism' and were imitating Al Qaeda propaganda in a training programme.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1253226/Three-British-Muslims-intoxicated-terrorism-pictured-planning-jihad.html#ixzz0gOCMWNJ1
The NF Challenge
Sunny Hundal - How The Media Help The BNP
Image - Sunny Hundal of The Guardian and Pickled Politics. He could only have got his job through affirmative action plans as he is a talentless hack.
His head also resembles a hairy testicle.
I will analyse a few points from the article below - but if you read the comments section of the online article you will read that Sunny says in response to someones statement that 'It isn't "far right" to want to preserve the existence of one's people'
Sunny replies with the comment ;
' Why isn't it? You're saying to me that trying to maintain racial differences isn't racist? '
Thats all you need to know about Sunny.
If you do not breed with a member of another race, and thereby accelerate the destruction of your own unique racial identity, then you are racist.
What a total twat Sunny is.
This sick, poisonous and warped 'definition of racism' comes straight from Sunny's deranged little mind.
Perhaps we should all be held down and raped / sperm drained so as to accelerate the process eh Sunny.
I dare you Sunny to go to any country in the world, from Pakistan to Russia, and say that to the people of that country and call them all racists for not misceginating their own people out of existence - they will call you more than a total twat, they will probably beat you to death as well you lunatic.
Note that even Andrew Gilligan took the piss out of the group that sunny is launching for peddling lies about Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time that Sunny said lead to the death of two gay men from homophobic attacks.
The first gay man who was killed died a MONTH BEFORE Nick Griffin appeared on Question Time.
The other gay man did not die.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100026946/is-there-a-moral-difference-between-nazis-and-communists/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/andrew-gilligan/7220004/The-BNP-will-dig-its-own-grave-far-better-than-Peter-Hain.html
If Sunny is unable to even get the most basic facts such as those right - then he and his group are a total joke.
Yes Sunny, you are an embarassment to journalism.
When Sunny and his collection of sad media whores like Yasmin Brown and the terrorism supporter Peter Hain peddle such obvious bollocks, only a total mug would take anything that Sunny said seriously.
Sunny is a racist.
Not only does he deny the very existence of the indigenous British people ( which is defined as a 'Holocaust By Default' as if we do not exist then we can be exterminated at will and it is not a crime against humanity ) he is also a racist in that anyone who is indigenous British must be called a Nazi and denied the right to campaign in British politics.
My comments to sunnys article below are preceded by ######## and in brackets.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/23/media-bnp-push-agenda
There was a brilliant column by Johann Hari a few years ago about his experience of appearing on a Sky News programme hosted by newspaper columnist Richard Littlejohn. Having admitted he didn't know how much an asylum seeker got in benefits, Littlejohn screeched at Hari: "It's people like you who help the BNP!"
Now, you could be forgiven for thinking that the election of two MEPs would bring the BNP under closer scrutiny since last year. Surely the media glare would expose its nasty underbelly? The party's deputy leader, Simon Darby, doesn't seem to think so:
"Dealing with the press on a daily basis it is hard not to develop a healthy disrespect for the people who quite rightly can be blamed for the state this country is in today. However, certainly over the last year I am not the only one here at BNP Towers that has noticed a distinct thaw in the attitude towards us from some aspects of the media."
The problem here is that while newspaper columnists and reporters keep stating they hate the BNP and all it stands for, they nevertheless keep promoting narratives that harden BNP support. Here is a short list I prepared earlier.
Blaming racism on immigrants
A common media theory is more immigration leads to a breakdown of social cohesion and hence more racism. If we want to stop racism then we must stop immigration, apparently. This assumes that people naturally hate those of other races or cultures – which isn't true. We don't have moral panics about Americans, Europeans or Chinese people coming here because there's no threat assumed from them. People don't naturally hate the other but are afraid if they think the immigrants represent a threat to their way of life.
There are different kinds of threats, of course, which may not even be to do with difference. Sometimes completely different cultures are tolerated as long as people "do their own thing". My point is that examples countering this myth are numerous. Social cohesion doesn't need to automatically break down but it sometimes does need to be managed if flashpoints take place (which could happen even in a racially homogenous country – for instance mods and rockers). However, I prefer a stronger sense of Britishness.
###### ( social cohesion of Britain broke down because Teddy boys and mods had a FEW punch ups in Margate in the 50's and 1960's. Oh right. Unreal. What a knob)
Blaming racism on minorities
You know the answer to this one – are Jews to blame for antisemitism? I think not.
######## ( Many people think that the actions and behaviour of many individual Jews over history, from Marx to Madoff, bear a lot of responsibility for provoking anti-semitism including many Jews from Gilad Atzmon to Norman Finkelstein to Noam Chomsky and Yoav Shamir. This is just Sunnys way of trying to blame British society for anti-semitism as well as blaming British society for Islamaphobia, rather than Islamists and Muslims being responsible for generating Islamaphobia or the actions of some individual Jews for generating Anti-semitism in society.
So Sunny has to defend the actions of Jewish criminals, extremists, crooks etc whose individual actions assist in the promotion of negative stereotypes about Jews because if he didnt then he would have to concede that Islamists and Muslims themselves are largely responsible for negative perceptions of Islamists and Muslims amongst non-Muslims. Especially those dead, maimed or limbless non-Muslims who have been blown up by Muslims and Islamist terrorists)
This trick is usually directed towards long-settled ethnic minorities and used to hold them responsible for problems as a whole. But rather than blame them directly, these days the vague punch-bag of "multiculturalism" is used instead. There is the strong insinuation for example that all black Londoners are to blame for knife crime (which has fallen hugely incidentally)
####### ( Another lie from Sunny, as we all know that the Black Christian church going people from the Commonwealth who live in London are not a problem in relation to knife crime. They spend their time in church praising Jesus not stabbing people. The idea there is just one set of 'black Londoners' is racist rubbish. West Indians hate Africans, Somalis etc. Sunny you are an idiot. )
, or "their culture" is to blame. That inevitably leads some to call them "savages". And because minorities are then labelled as backward or uncivilised, it becomes easy to blame them for hating them. After all, the mythical "race relations industry" is also commonly blamed for all the evils of the world, as is the funding of cultural festivals (I've dealt with this one in more detail here).
##########( would be that the same race relations industry that you exploited sunny in order to get your job on The Guardian, as you sure didnt get there for your talents as a writer or as a proponent of truth and facts did you sunny )
Overplaying BNP gains, underplaying Greens
Come election time, every media outlet is anxious to see how much the BNP vote will expand by. But despite the Nick Griffin on Question Time drama and two new MEPs, the BNP's electoral support remains woefully small at around 2%. In contrast, more successful parties such as the Greens are ignored by the media, because they're not seen as "dangerous". This always overplays the BNP presence in people's minds and gives the impression it has become a widely successful party.
######### ( Oh yeah, the Greens are ignored. What planet is he from )
Playing down impact of BNP victories
Racial and religiously motivated crime usually rises following election of BNP councillors, research has shown. And yet this fact is rarely highlighted.
######## ( The best one yet. If you follow the link on the article it reveals that the 'research' was done by The Guardian and Hope Not Hate. So we can all trust their research cant we. Then lets look at the figures. In 8 out of 29 wards hate crimes rose after a BNP councillor was elected - but the research doesnt reveal WHAT RACE the people were who were victims of that race crime. It is a fact that the election of a BNP councillor means whites then report race crimes when before they didnt. So the figures are related to whites reporting more crimes against them and also race crimes that are ethnic minority on ethnic minority. But the figures also reveal that in 11 wards RACE CRIMES DROP AFTER THE ELECTION OF A BNP COUNCILLOR. Which kinda fucks up totally sunnys bullshit thesis doesnt it. The article also quotes a police officer saying of the rise in race crimes in Solihull that " Detective Chief Inspector Sharon Goosen said: "None of the offences reported in the area since 2006 can be directly attributed to an elected member or political organisation."
So sunny was talking total shit. AGAIN ! )
But people who vote BNP aren't racist are they?
If you want to vote BNP and think people of different cultures and races are scary, why not just say so? Every modern interview with a BNP voter is prefaced with: "I vote BNP, not because I'm racist but ... ", which inevitably leads to a diatribe on why immigrants are leading the country into hell in a handcart. It has been repeatedly pointed out, even in most tabloids and broadsheets, that the BNP is a racist party. It is tearing itself over the issue right now. Surely it should be obvious to most what it stands for by now?
####### ( the BNP 'tearing itself' - ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha )
Debate on immigration is being suppressed
Probably the oldest trick in the book. The rightwing press talks about immigration every day. And yet commentators on the right maintain with a straight face that the debate on immigration is being suppressed. What they actually mean is: those immigrants who don't agree with us are all bad.
Let's be clear: Britain is now a multiracial and multicultural country. This means more mixing, which in turn means that racism can never become as socially acceptable as it was in the 70s and 80s. But people's attitudes are way ahead of many journalists – who are still happy to push their bigoted agenda. That is what keeps the BNP's agenda alive, and it needs to be exposed.
######### ( So journalists should not criticise Jews and Muslims, the government should force people to marry people from other races, the teddy boys nearly destroyed British social cohesion in the 1950's and the BNP have a time machine that enables them to travel back in time and kill gays - sunny you are the world smallest cockend. You even look like a cock you mug. )
• Sunny Hundal is speaking at the launch of Expose the BNP: media workers and students opposed to racism and fascism on Tuesday 23 February at 7pm at the Amnesty International Human Rights Action Centre, 17-25 New Inn Yard, London EC2A 3EA. Other speakers include: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Mehdi Hasan, Peter Hain and Michelle Stanistreet