Terror in Westminster

A sufficient amount of time has passed since the terror attack in Westminster for me to feel confident about sharing my thoughts.

The facts are that a fifty-two year old Muslim man with a known history of violence drove a car onto the pavement while crossing Westminster bridge, deliberately ploughing into numerous pedestrians.  He then got out of his car in the precincts of the Houses of Parliament, and stabbed a policeman before being shot by another policeman.

The attacker – identified as Khalid Masood - died of his injuries, but by this point had killed four people and injured around forty others.

Unsurprisingly, the Prime Minister has publicly stated that Islam is not to blame.  It is also not surprising that she did not blame her own failings.  Prior to becoming Prime Minister last year, she served for six years as Home Secretary, and I have no problem in describing her as the worst Home Secretary this country has ever had.  Masood might not have perpetrated this attack had he been imprisoned for some of his previous acts of violence, yet we live in a society in which far too many violent criminals escape with non-custodial sentences - assuming that they are even prosecuted in the first place.

It is also not surprising that Mrs May has not blamed the belligerent policies of successive British governments.  She happily served in the government of the warmonger David Cameron.

The Mayor of London has received a lot of criticism for saying that terror attacks are part and parcel of living in a large city.  There are in fact around twenty cities in the world with a larger population than London, plus another fifteen or so of similar size.  How many of those cities experience anything like what happened in Westminster?

It appears that Londoners are now living their lives very much as before, and proudly so.  This is important, because terrorism normally affects us in two ways.  First, the incident itself causes death and injury and destruction; second, the aftermath is that everyday life is to some extent disrupted as a consequence.  In fact sometimes the disruption is the only consequence.  The Provisional IRA used to explode bombs in central London, but then they experimented with planting bombs at railway stations and then informing the police by telephone.  The station would then be closed, and the bomb would be located and made safe.  No one would be killed or injured, but the disruption to the rail services served as the triumph of the terrorists.

It is reported that a leading media figure has spoken sneeringly of the dead attacker, and has referred to London as the city that stood up to the Luftwaffe, but the comparison is naive.  The Luftwaffe sent aeroplanes which could be identified and shot down, and which were not easily replaced.  Masood’s deadly rampage may not have been as devastating as a Luftwaffe bombing raid, but it was achieved with very little in the way of resources.  Quite simply, almost any car in Britain could be used tomorrow as a murder weapon.

There is of course a link to immigration, and I cannot resist quoting Richard Littlejohn on this subject:

The politicians have opened the floodgates to mass immigration without insisting on integration.

They pretend every culture, no matter how medieval and barbaric, is worthy of equal respect.

This is the same Richard Littlejohn who to my knowledge has never once made a positive comment about any political party which seeks to end immigration, or about any political party which seeks to put pressure on immigrants to integrate with the wider community.  (If I am wrong about this, please leave a comment.)

The United Kingdom continues to wage war against Islamic countries, and is currently doing so under the pretence of fighting ISIS.  The downside is that ISIS has a fifth column operating in this country, and the next ISIS-inspired terror attack could happen tomorrow.  A Muslim man (or woman) driving a car could easily mount the kerb, and where will you be when that happens?

I find it astonishing that so many police officers in this country are happy to persecute anti-establishment politicians.  I have long since lost count of the number of incidents I have come across where members of anti-establishment political parties have been arrested or mistreated by the police without good reason - including the instance of a parliamentary candidate who was removed from a hustings by police because a Labour councillor did not want him there.

I do not blame anti-establishment politicians for the murder of PC Keith Palmer.  Does anyone?

Update: it is now being claimed that Masood was not linked to ISIS.  Even if no formal link can be established, then this does not eliminate the possibility that Masood saw himself as striking a blow for ISIS.

A tale of two immigrants

I had planned today to write about Donald Trump, but that can wait.  Two news items have caught my eye, both concerning immigrant women.  Sanaa Shahid is a lawyer who has lived in Scotland all of her life.  Irene Clennel is currently being held in a detention centre in Scotland awaiting removal back to her native Singapore.

Mrs Shahid has made the news because she filmed a man called Alexander MacKinnon – also a lawyer – abusing her on a train, and telling her in particular that she should not be in the country.  He subsequently admitted a racially aggravated public order offence, and was made to pay a fine and other costs totalling just over £1400.  The comments on the website of The Daily Mail display little sympathy for him.

Mrs Clennel came to Britain in 1988, and a couple of years later married a British man.  They are still married, and have a home in County Durham.  Together they have two children and a granddaughter.  So far as I am aware she has never committed any crime.  The Daily Mail report does not explain on what basis she has been denied any further stay in this country, but quotes a government official as saying that all applications to remain are considered on their individual merits.  The comments are overwhelmingly supportive of her.

The deal is this.  If you are an ordinary person then it appears that you cannot legally tell an immigrant that they should not be in the country.  However if you are the evil government then you are allowed to tell an immigrant that they should not be in the country, and you can also enforce their removal.

An academic view of races

I cannot resist the temptation to return to the issue of race.  I am responding to an essay I recently found on the internet.  The quotes are in blue text, and I respond in black text.

The worst error in the history of science was undoubtedly classifying humans into the different races.

Rather than stray into a lengthy digression, I will merely observe that there are many errors in the history of science which could be classified as the worst.  Also, the fact that the author uses the term the different races suggests to me that he secretly accepts that races do in fact exist.

... race theory ... has wreaked untold misery and been used to justify barbaric acts of colonialism, slavery and even genocide. Even today it's still used to explain social inequality, and continues to inspire the rise of the far right across the globe.

Was race theory used to justify the millions of murders committed by the armed forces of the United Kingdom and the USA over the past hundred years or so?  I merely ask.

The human races were invented by anthropologists like Johann Friedrich Blumenbach back in the 18th century ...

This is utter garbage.  Anthropologists may have identified the concept of races, but races themselves were never invented.  They exist as a fact of science.

As an aside, I have recently found out that the word race derives from the medieval Italian word razza, and that it can be used to mean a breeding stock of animals.  The different races we see in the world today are basically different breeding stocks.  They have tended in the past to be determined largely be geography, but even in present day multiracial societies they can be determined by culture.  For example, fewer than ten percent of marriages in Britain today are inter-racial.

From the very beginning, the arbitrary and subjective nature of categories was widely acknowledged.

This is misleading.  It may well be true that there are some situations where racial definitions become blurred, but there are also many situations where the classification of animals into species and subspecies become blurred.  Does it follow that scientists who indulge in such classification are charlatans?

Most of the time races were justified on the grounds of cultural or language differences between groups of people rather than biological ones.

Even if this is true, it proves nothing.

Their existence was taken as a given right up until the 20th century when anthropologists were busy writing about races as a biological explanation for differences in psychology, including intelligence, and educational and socioeconomic outcomes between groups of people.

While the author does not want us to believe in races, he nevertheless acknowledges that there are different groups of people, and that they can differ in terms of intelligence and socioeconomic outcomes.  Maybe he’ll be telling us next that they can also differ in terms of propensity to criminal acts.

But buried within the survey results were some troubling findings like that anthropologists from privileged groups — in the US context 'white' males and females — were more likely to accept race as valid than non-privileged groups.

The author now accepts that white people exist as a group, and also as a privileged group.  Notice also that he does not explain what he means by privilege in this context.

These privileged scientists represent 75 per cent of the anthropologists surveyed. Their power and influence reaches right across the field. They are the main people determining what research is done, who gets funding ...

The author appears to hint at the possibility that access to funding in the academic world may not always be decided strictly on the basis of merit, but rather on the basis of adherence to an accepted point of view.  That does not surprise me in the slightest.

Related previous posts include:
Is there really just one race?
Are you a racist?

The post-referendum political landscape

In the short space of time since the Brexit referendum, not a great deal seems to have changed in the realm of British politics.  David Cameron is no longer Prime Minister, but we still have a Conservative government.  Labour remains in opposition, with Jeremy Corbyn still at the helm.

Looking ahead, however, a lot could change.  Once Britain has left the EU, we will no longer be bound by the dictates of the European Union or its agencies.  We will still be bound by the dictates of the European Court of Human Rights, however, as that is an agency of the Council of Europe - an organisation which Britain has not yet voted to leave.

Another important point to note is that Britain will no longer have MEPs once Brexit has been achieved.  There will be no more European Parliament elections, as a result of which there will be one fewer set of elections conducted under a system of proportional representation.

It is possible that UKIP will cease to exist following Brexit, but I don't expect many people will be upset.  For example UKIP councillors can easily defect to another party, and thereby probably improve their chances of re-election.

Immigration will remain a big issue as there is no reason to think that Theresa May will limit immigration merely because it is easier for her to do so.  I therefore expect at least one anti-immigration party to enjoy some prominence in the year ahead, although not nearly enough to make a difference.

It is almost a truism of politics that you do not need to win power in order to exert an influence, and this is certainly true of UKIP.  It is no secret that David Cameron promised a referendum in order to stem the flow of support from his party to UKIP.

On immigration however it is a different matter.  In 2009, the British National Party had two MEPs, a London assembly member, and around one hundred councillors.  So far as I can make out, the only response to this from the establishment was to set up a parliamentary committee which did not achieve anything and was probably never intended to.

Related previous posts include:
Who murdered Jo Cox?
The power of the people

Theresa May: accessory to murder

Having voted for Britain to leave the EU, I was naturally pleased that the outcome of the referendum was a majority leave vote.  I was confident that the EU would collapse in due course, and that the referendum vote would therefore serve either to accelerate or to delay an inevitable process.

Nevertheless I am not optimistic.  Freed from its European shackles, the United Kingdom can now restrict immigration from other European countries.  Unfortunately we cannot expect a government led by Theresa May to take immigration seriously.

Theresa May served as Home Secretary for the whole of the six years that David Cameron was Prime Minister.  As such she was accountable for government policy on both crime and immigration.  A pledge to cut immigration to just tens of thousands each year never came close to being realised, but police budgets were cut, and criminals are the winners - notably fraudsters.  Frauds reported to the police very rarely result in a prosecution, even where substantial evidence is provided.

It is also inconceivable that Theresa May had no input into the faked murder of Labour MP Jo Cox.

As I write, a young woman has recently been murdered in Sheffield, which I'm sorry to say does not surprise me one bit.  Given that the worst Home Secretary in British history is now our Prime Minister, we must not expect the homicide rate to fall any time soon.

Related previous posts include:
A sense of the inevitable
Who murdered Jo Cox?
Tories pretend to be tough on crime ... again

Does the EU maintain peace?

As I write there is less than one week to go before Britain votes on whether or not to remain in the European Union.  Many years ago I read a profile of a man called Madron Seligman who at the time was a Member of the European Parliament for the evil Conservative Party.  He was also a close friend of Ted Heath, who was the Prime Minister who took Britain into what is now the European Union.

Seligman recounted how he and Heath had holidayed in Europe shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War.  They knew that war was imminent, and felt that something should be done to prevent the outbreak of another such war.  To cut a long story short, the European Union was viewed by many people as a way to ensure that there would never again be a war in Europe.  In addition, Germany passed a law banning any political party from associating itself with Hitler's regime.

I decided many years ago that the whole idea of the European Union preventing another war was absolute nonsense.  One of the main effects of the EU has been to undermine national identity.  This has had the effect of increasing what might be termed nationalist sentiment in many of the EU's member states.  This has been confirmed by a recent study by the University of Leipzig, which reports the following:

• One third of people in Germany think the country is dangerously overpopulated by foreigners.
• More than twenty percent think that Germany needs a single strong party which embodies the national community as a whole.
• Twelve percent believe that Germans are by nature superior to other people.
• Ten percent want Germany to be led by a fuhrer - the title adopted by Hitler while serving as both the president and chancellor of Germany.

None of the above implies that anyone in Germany wants another war in Europe - or does it?  I hope not, but I have been wrong before.

Related previous posts include:
Britain First and the fiction of a free country

Crime in schools

Much as I dislike David Cameron, I believe in giving credit where it is due.  Since he took office there have been numerous reports in the press about school pupils being punished for what might often seem to be minor infringements of their school's uniform policy.

My argument has been that classroom discipline is important, and that any attempt to improve discipline has to be considered favourably.  Neverthless it is now reported that the level of crime in Britain's schools is on the rise, with over fifteen hundred sexual assaults in one year. 

It is also reported that schools are dealing with unruly pupils by suspending them - sometimes repeatedly.  Teachers as well as pupils are being assaulted and in some cases seriously injured.  This may lead some of us to wonder how bad the situation has to become before schools move beyond suspension as a form of punishment.

What is not reported is the extent to which immigration is a factor in the school violence equation.  It is however reported that nearly forty thousand immigrant children are starting school this year.  Let's hope they all wear the correct school uniform.

Related previous posts include:
School uniforms: think before complaining

What is a patriot?

Jeremy Corbyn has received a lot of negative press coverage this past week, and in particular a lot of people are questioning his patriotism.  This is related partly to his being a pacifist, and partly to his failure to sing the national anthem at a service to commemorate the Battle of Britain.

I consider myself to be a patriot, by which I mean that I care deeply about my country.  Being a patriot is not the same as being a monarchist.  Jeremy Corbyn is a republican, but that does not make him not a patriot.  I can understand that someone of a republican persuasion may not want to sing the British national anthem.

To be fair, a lot of people who are not republicans also dislike the British national anthem.

Another issue of contention is that Jeremy Corbyn does not want Britain to maintain its non-existent stock of nuclear weapons. He has also opposed British involvement in various illegal foreign wars, and has even called for Britain to leave NATO.

Being a patriot is not the same as being an apologist for war.  If anything it is the opposite.  I will not vote to send British troops into illegal foreign wars, partly because I respect the right of every country on earth to determine its own affairs.  The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is a murderous organisation which interferes in the affairs of other countries.  (On reflection, that seems to be rather a silly thing to write, given that it appears to imply that NATO is itself a country, which it is not.)

At least one political commentator has compared Jeremy Corbyn with George Lansbury, who led the Labour Party from 1932 until his resignation in 1935.  Lansbury was a pacifist who believed that world peace could be achieved through nation's disarming rather than rearming - a point of view I find hard to take seriously.

But of course Lansbury was a communist, and so presumably wanted the forces of the Soviet Union to be able to invade Britain without encountering any military opposition.

If you are a patriot, then you love your country.  If you love something, then presumably you seek to protect it.  I want my country to maintain a high level of military capability so as to discourage other countries from going to war against us.  That is not the same as saying that I support war.  I support the defence of my homeland, and not the wanton destruction of other countries.

There is however little point in maintaining our armed forces if we are just going to sit back while immigrants take over our country.  I understand that, but Jeremy Corbyn appears not to.  On that basis, he comes across to me as no more of a patriot than David Cameron.

Related previous posts include:
A reasoned approach to war

Communism in the USA: Charleston

On 17 June this year, thirteen people gathered in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, for a Bible study class.  So far as I can make out, all were black except for a young white man.  Eventually he pulled a gun and began killing people.  He preceded his shooting spree with the words: I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go.

Nine people were killed, and a young man called Dylann Storm Roof has since been arrested.  He is a white supremacist who loves the Confederate flag and related emblems.  He is also a known drug user.

At least one national newspaper has described this as a hate crime, and at least one has published an essay by a well-known communist idiot calling for gun control in the USA.  By contrast, the murder of at least three people in Graz, Austria, by a man driving a speeding car has not yet been described as a hate crime, and I am not aware that any communist idiot is calling for car control in Austria.

I think it is fair to point out that in almost any country in the world, the number of people killed by guns in a typical year will be smaller than the number of people killed by cars.

It is also reported today that a woman and her four children are fighting for their lives in hospital after being hit by a speeding car in Handsworth, Birmingham.

But to return to Charleston: the USA has had lax gun controls for as long as anyone can remember, whereas many people are old enough to remember a time when violent crime in the USA was far lower than it is today.  Since then there has been an increase in the availability of illegal drugs in the USA, and also an increase in the black population.

Dylann Storm Roof was angry about white girls being raped by black men, and let me tell you about two true stories in the USA.

In 2006, three young white men - students at Duke University in North Carolina - were arrested for raping a black woman.  This was widely described as a hate crime.  The men denied rape, but it was not until a year later that all charges against them were dropped.  The police and district attorney had deliberately failed to follow correct procedures, and a subsequent lawsuit by the three men was only partially successful.

In 2008, a 16yo white girl in Texas was gang-raped.  One of her attackers was a black teen called Rakheem Bolton, who attended the same school as her, and who was a keen sportsman.  Not only did he avoid prison for his crime, but his victim - a high school cheerleader - was kicked off the cheerleading squad for refusing to take part in a cheer for the scumbag who had raped her.

If the people of the USA want to put an end to killing sprees like the one in Charleston, then they should elect a federal government which will legislate for the death penalty as the only punishment for convicted drug dealers.  As for black men who rape white girls, they should be punished at least as severely as white men who are convicted of rape.

Another point worthy of consideration is that the black civil rights movement is calling for the Confederate States flag to be removed from outside the state capitol.  The flag is part of the history of the state, but a lot of people want it removed - apparently because it is seen as a symbol of white supremacy.

Would anyone want the flag removed if it were seen as a symbol of non-white supremacy?

Related previous posts include:
Immigration and crime: a response to Eric Schlosser
The death penalty - who dies?
The death of Peaches Geldof: another liberal triumph