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

Is there really just one race?

We often hear it said that there is only one race: the human race.  Other people assert that there are many races.  Which is correct?

First, it is reasonable to point out that people who maintain that there is only one race are almost always hypocrites.  With very few exceptions if any, they are the same people who support a multiracial society in which people of all races are expected to mix together harmoniously.  Quite how this is possible if there is only one race is never explained.

Second, no word in the English language is confined to just one meaning.  Therefore just because a word has one accepted definition does not justify us in regarding other definitions as spurious.

The meaning of any word can be deduced from the context in which it is used.  Therefore when we talk about the human race, then we are presumably talking about the human species.  When we talk about races, we are talking about different ethnic groups.  These groups are founded upon shared ancestry and on shared racial characteristics.

On the one hand, I am inclined to argue that both of these definitions are equally valid; but then it occurs to me that the people who talk about the human race never seem to talk about the canine race or the feline race.  Until they do, I will feel justified in concluding that their talk of the human race is foolish.  There are many races, and I for one am proud to be a member of the white race.

Related previous posts include:
The church of England, race, and paedophiles

This item on Western Spring is also of interest.

The murder of Jeremy Corbyn

As I write, Jeremy Corbyn has recently been announced as the new leader of the Labour Party.  His victory was decisive.

Many people have argued that he is unfit to lead Britain, but consider some facts.  Many MPs on both sides of the house have lined their pockets at the public expense to a quite shameful extent, whereas Jeremy Corbyn has practised more restraint than most.

Also, Prime Minister David Cameron - like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown before him - is obsessed with Britain taking part in illegal foreign wars, regardless of the cost in human life and in taxpayers' money.  By contrast, Jeremy Corbyn has for many years been fairly steadfast in his opposition to foreign wars.  If Britain were to stay out of illegal wars, then it could save us many billions of pounds, and yet I don't see the Conservative front bench urging restraint in this particular area.

Criticism of Jeremy Corbyn often revolves around his welcoming attitude to asylum seekers, but it is fair to point out that the Conservative Party also supports open door immigration.  Also, the huge levels of migration currently being experienced in Europe have a lot to do with the illegal wars which Jeremy Corbyn professes to oppose, and also to the free movement rules of the European Union.  It is worth noting that Jeremy Corbyn claims that he voted no to Britain's membership of what has become the European Union in the referendum of 1975.

And so to the question of murder.  Recent opinion polls show the Conservatives ahead of Labour by a margin which is not huge, but nevertheless impressive for a party in government.  At the moment therefore it does not appear likely that Jeremy Corbyn will be our next Prime Minister.

Nevertheless, public opinion can shift, and support for Labour may increase in the next few years.  However I cannot see Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister, as I feel confident that he would be murdered if he ever looked set to lead his party to victory in a general election.

Not content with being opposed to war, he has also hinted at the possibility of Tony Blair being prosecuted as a war criminal.  Tony Blair has many rich friends, and I can easily envisage one of them hiring an assassin to dispose of Jeremy Corbyn rather than let him become Prime Minister.  Also, David Cameron must be worried that he too might be prosecuted as a war criminal under a government led by Jeremy Corbyn, and it would be very easy for him to arrange for the security services to have him murdered.

To make matters clear, I do not support the Labour Party.  Nevertheless I do not condone the murder of politicians by people who want their evil friends to avoid justice for their crimes.

Update: at least two former leaders of the Labour Party have died while serving as Leader of the Opposition.  Hugh Gaitskell died in January 1963 aged 56, and John Smith died in May 1994 aged aged 55.

It has often been suggested that Gaitskell was murdered, possibly by agents of the Soviet Union who wanted someone else to lead the Labour Party.  I am not aware that anyone has ever claimed that John Smith was murdered.

A triple murder in Syria

The front pages of the national press today are dominated by the murder of three Muslim men in Syria.  They were killed by a missile fired from a drone which was remotely guided by RAF personnel in England.

I have no problem in saying that these killings were an act of murder.  David Cameron has described the killings as an act of self-defence, but this does not make sense. These men were in Syria, and were not in a position to attack the United Kingdom - or are we to believe that they too had access to missile-laden drones?

While the Prime Minister maintains that the killings were lawful, he currently refuses to publish the exact legal advice which he received, and it is reported that the relatives of the murdered men - two of whom were British nationals - can now be expected to seek legal remedies against the British government.

It is true that Article 51 of the United Nations Charter permits acts of self defence, but that I hope I am correct in assuming that this refers to situations where one country is clearly attacked by another.  I find it curious however that no one ever uses Article 51 to argue for the British government sinking any Spanish military vessel which dares to enter British waters off Gibraltar.

It is however fair to point out that the United Nations is an unelected body, which is not the same as saying that its dictates should be ignored.

I have previously written extensively about the murder of Lee Rigby.  Two Muslim men killed a British soldier on the streets of London, and were then shot - although not fatally - by police marksmen.  They were then arrested and put on trial, were conviced of murder, and were sent to prison.

By contrast, the Muslim men who were killed by the RAF drone had not been convicted of any crime.  They were sentenced to death without any trial.

I have yet to hear anyone explain the difference between Muslim men killing a British soldier in London and British soldiers killing Muslims in far-off countries.

If the killing of these three men was legal, then logically it must also be legal for the British government to kill anyone anywhere at any time - including you right now.

Related previous posts include:
Hear the words of a killer - and learn
Woolwich: more bad press coverage

Was there ever a black holocaust?

The Black Holocaust Museum was founded in 1988 in the city of Milwaukee, in the American state of Wisconsin.  Financial difficulties forced it to close in 2008, but it has since been relaunched as a website.

The late James Cameron - who founded the museum - was sometimes told by sceptics that there never was a black holocaust.  It is nevertheless true that around five thousand black people were murdered in the USA in lynchings by white people, and Cameron knew this only too well as he survived a lynching in the city of Marion in 1930.  He is widely reported to have been the only survivor of a lynching in the USA.

The holocaust was not confined to lynchings, however.  Huge numbers of Africans - the museum estimates at least ten million - were taken as slaves to North America.  Many of them died in the horrendous conditions of the slave ships, and many more died as the result of being forced to work long hours on plantations.

In short, yes there was a black holocaust.

Nevertheless, I feel obliged to point out certain facts.  First, the victims of lynchings were not always morally innocent.  James Cameron for example took part in an attack on a white boy and his girlfriend, in which the white boy was fatally injured.  Cameron's two accomplices were hanged by a lynch mob before they could be brought to trial, and Cameron was spared the same fate only because his involvement in the attack was limited.

I have no problem with the fact that Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were hanged for the murder of Claude Deeter, except that they should have been given a fair trial first.

The treatment of black slaves in North America was cruel, but in many cases the perpetrators were Jews or free blacks.  Slave takers were usually black, and slave traders and slave ship captains were often Jews.  In the USA, Jewish families and free black families were more likely to own slaves than white gentile families.  Nevertheless I cannot find any mention of these facts on the museum website.  If anyone else can, please leave a comment.

It is also fair to point out that it was not only slaves who were worked to death prior to the abolition of slavery, and neither was it only black people.  White people in Britain and elsewhere often had to work hard for very long hours, and often in unsanitary conditions.  Life expectancy was low, and those who did live a long time often had to watch their children die of preventable diseases.

There was indeed a black holocaust, but by the same logic there was also a white holocaust - but one which as yet has no museum.

Related previous posts include:
Racism at the movies
The Jews are afraid, but what about the rest of us?
A very British holocaust 

The denial of Stalin's holocaust

Patriots are often labelled in the national press as holocaust deniers, meaning that they do not believe that Hitler's National Socialist regime murdered six million Jews in the period from 1942 to 1945. It is implied that anyone who objects to their country being changed for the worse by open door immigration is a denier, and also that denial is necessarily wrong.

I know from my own experience that many people in the patriotic community do indeed recognise that Hitler's holocaust of the Jews never took place, but maybe that is because they have at least a modicum of regard for logic and for the truth.  The implication that holocaust deniers are necessarily bad people, however, is one that I has yet to be adequately explained.

If I've got it right, there are seventeen countries in the world where it is illegal to question the German holocaust, with imprisonment being among the forms of punishment for violation.  Examples of prosecutions arising from these laws include the case of the French politician who was fined over one million francs for saying that the holocaust was a mere detail in the history of World War II - which does not sound to me like denial.  Another example is the case of the German historian who was prosecuted and fined for questioning the whereabouts of a door.

These prosecutions strike me as cruel and oppressive, but not at all surprising in countries run by communists or their fellow travellers.

The British servicemen who fought to overthrow Hitler were on the same side as Stalin, and were in effect fighting to keep Stalin in power.  It is widely held that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions of people - mostly in Ukraine - in the early 1930s.  This event is known as the holodomor, and took the form of an enforced starvation.

I have recently come across an essay on the internet which argues that the holodomor never happened.  My reaction was to read it.  I could have declined to read it, on the grounds that the author was clearly a wicked person, but I am not a communist.

The essay writer argued among other things that a photograph of starving children which has been used as evidence of the holodomor is in fact nothing of the sort.  He maintains that the photograph was taken not during the holodomor, but rather during a period of natural famine in the 1920s.

I have a question.  How many natural famines have taken place in western Europe in the past hundred years?  Does anyone know?

It is true that there have been times in the past hundred years when large numbers of people in western Europe have been hungry, but so far as I am aware these tended to be the consequence of periods of war or of particularly poor government.

I remember when the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s.  People from Ukraine were able to visit relatives in Britain, and there were incidents reported of Ukrainians bursting into tears in supermarkets because there was so much food on the shelves.  Their homeland is a fertile country, but under communist rule food was always in short supply.

Hunger and starvation have long been weapons favoured by communists, and it is no surprise that there are many people relying on food banks in both Britain and Greece.

Related previous posts include:
The holocaust continues ...
The Jews are afraid, but what about the rest of us?
The politics of The Hunger Games