Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Busy ...

... alas, too much work. But not enough work is worse.

This is, while not totally surprising, still food for thought :

The CIA is now running its own agent networks on an unprecedented scale in the British Pakistani community. A British security source told me that somewhere between 40 and 60 per cent of CIA activity designed to prevent a new terrorist spectacular on American soil is now directed at targets in the UK ...

A former CIA officer who still does freelance work for the agency, said: ‘Britain is an Islamist swamp. You don’t want to have to spend time spying on your friends.’

As far as our closest ally is concerned, Britain is not part of the problem, Britain is the problem. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and Middle East expert on the NSC for three presidents, who has just been appointed to head Barack Obama’s overhaul of Afghan strategy, told me: ‘The 800,000 or so British citizens of Pakistani origin are regarded by the American intelligence community as perhaps the single biggest threat environment that they have to worry about.’

The Economist was only the other day bemoaning that the new Brit 'Hearts and Minds' strategy wasn't doing the biz.

You don’t have to support the Iraq war or Israeli aggression to know that governments need to be free to make decisions in the national interest without trimming their sails to avoid annoying potential homegrown terrorists. But the quest to prevent a new atrocity has become the secret driving force of British foreign policy. The reason is the debilitating fear of what would happen if British militants succeeded in an attack overseas. David Miliband’s trip to India after Mumbai was a diplomatic disaster. Imagine how much worse it would have been had British extremists, as was originally feared, been behind the attacks. British India policy now would be a protracted effort to placate and apologise.

I've already pointed out that we are approaching the stage where one community may be able to wield a veto over certain aspects of foreign policy. But not quite yet :


Muslim extremists shouted abuse at British soldiers during a home-coming march by the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment. A group of around 20 men in traditional Islamic dress held up banners and placards that read: "Anglian Soldiers Butchers of Basra", "Anglian Soldiers Criminals, Murderers Terrorists" and "Baby killers".

As the battalion, which is nicknamed The Poachers, reached Luton Town Hall the small group shouted and yelled "Terrorists" and "Anglian Soliders Go to Hell." The protestors then had to be protected by police as angry supporters of the soldiers turned on them shouting: "Scum" and "No surrender to the Taliban."

As the parade finished in St George's Square in front of the Duke of Gloucester, Colonel-in-chief for the regiment, the Lord Lieutenant of Bedfordshire, Sam Whitbread, a General Sir John McColl KCB and the Mayor of Luton, Councillor Lakhbir Singh, police had to force the protestors into a small area reserved for them by the town's Arndale Shopping Centre.



Elsewhere, a commenter called Amnesty2009 posts as follows in the Guardian :
I am a retired UK Immigration officer, I experienced four amnesties under various guises during my time with the Immigration Service. Each one acted as a powerful magnet to illegal entrants. My colleagues and I spent long hours engaged in the demoralising activity of endorsing travel documents of immigration offenders with leave to remain after they had succeded in circumventing the legitimate border controls imposed by Parliament.

Most of these offenders obtained this leave with the assistance of legal aid, advice agencies funded partly or entirely from public funds or from charitable sources within the UK that arguably should have devoted their resources to legitimate UK needs.

The UK does not need any more primary immigration.It does need to adopt a genuinely firm and fair border control. The new UKBA and the policies it is espousing will not protect employment for the British people or control the influx of persons likely to harm society.

It is disappointing that UKBA current management, now mainly people who have very limited experience of how border control really operates, will always offer a "success story" mantra when the reality is a state of close to collapse almost all the time.

An amnesty will without doubt encourage the extreme right, I believe this would be a most damaging move at this time.

and (responding to "there has never been an amnesty on illegals. There have been a variety of concessions e.g. if your child is still under 18 and has lived here for more than 7 years (that one has now gone). Most of what he/she refers to as "amnesties" have been very real humanitarian decisions")

The concessions to which you refer were never called amnesties but the had the same effect. The first was for the old style "clandestine" illegals in the 70's. Those who had "come up the beach". I spent a lot of time interviewing people who claimed to have done just this thing "years ago" and founf a great number to have been recent arrivals, visitors from Asia and Africa in the pre visa days who had come specifically to take part in the "amnesty".

Later were the "family reunion exercises" where one member of a household would present to an Immigration Office to declare that he now had an extended family in his home country that needed to join him in the UK. Not infreqently these individuals were found to have returned to the land from which they had fled in order to maje arrangements for these relatives to join them.

There have also been concessions for the "unremovable", those who will not cooperate with the redocumentation process and cannot thus be removed to their country of origin. I have personally encountered a great many Albanians who, after gaining settlement in the UK, travel to Albania with impunity. Some even obtain Albanian passports from their Embassy and apply to have the residence stamp transferred from their refugee travel document into the previously unobtainable Albann national document.

There are genuine refugees out there but there are a great many foreign nationals in the UK who have outragously abused the asylum system and a great many intelligent people who have facilitated their devious acquisition of residence in the UK. It is to the great shame of the legal profession how many solicitors have obstructed the work of my former employers over the years. I am glad I am no longer responsible for trying to do the right thing for the British people as it is desperately depressing seeing the failure of the control again and again.

and

I believe employers do hold an important key here. If they are concientious in their pre hire checks then the pull on inward migration will be greatly reduced. Nothing will stop the black market but there are a limited number of areas where this is a major factor. The Chinese criminals will always find work for the luckless individuals that have been trafficked for example.

If employers really do check the status of job applicants then the huge number of Brazilians for example will have less incentive to come here.

The EU problem is probably too difficult to resolve, Romania and Bulgaria were not ready to join and it is arguable that the Baltic states were on the edge of economic effectiveness. We have received huge numbers of Romanians who do not have jobs to come to, the Police are well aware of the increase in crime engendered by these individuals, I know of Romanian interpreters who are making a huge amount of money in the Met police area.

We are currently obliged to accept all EU nationals and the restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians are in name only. When I was still working (2007) we had no instructions to treat these nationals any differently from the rest of the EU. We can do something about the non EU illegal workers but Home Office has no stomach for the fight. Senior managers would rather spend money on two new uniforms in two years than provide sufficient detention and escort capability to enable my former colleagues to effect the removal of failed asylum seekers and illegal entrants. These offenders are frequently "bailed" and then abscond.

and

You are indeed correct to say that amnesty results in rapid advancement to citizenship. I again draw on 21 years experience on the border control to observe that many UK passport holders of non UK origin encountered speak very little English yet have acquired British citizenship ,following asylum, claims , after only four or five years.

Prior to my last job at Heathrow I worked in the Croydon office of the then IND, there was then a requirement for applicants to demonstrate a knowledge of the English language prior to naturalisation. I don't believe this has ever been adhered to or that it ever will.


Finally - this cracking polemic, on knife crime, Jade Tweed, and one or two related matters, from Martin Kelly. Agree with every word (as so often).








18 comments:

Homophobic Horse said...

A significant BNP victory will be a disaster long in the making, not only because a party like the BNP has got people voting for it, but also in the establishment's reaction to the BNP which will prove the most ominous of all, and will probably introduce the most dangerous domestic state of affairs in Britain in centuries. It can all be attributed to too much immigration.

Martin said...

Thanks, Laban.

Anonymous said...

Many thanks Laban for highlighting the comments of Amnesty2009 on a typically infuriating CiF thread. The expressions of infantile leftism from 'Covenant'on the same thread have to be seen to be believed, such is their smug fatuousness.
BTW you're spot on in praising Martin Kelly's latest post, he's really on a roll at the moment.

Anonymous said...

Guardian readers only just voted in favour of the amnesty though, 52/48, and I would have expected more. The CIA statement is astonishing - 20 years ago it would have been inconceivable.

Anonymous said...

You must be mistaken about the Muslim protestors Laban.I watched BBC Breakfast news this morning and they never mentioned a "protest" once.

Anonymous said...

It is very easy to stop illegal immigration. Say no amnesty ever - you will be deported one day. Even if we have to wait for you to be ill and in hospital.
And if your own country doesn´t take you back we will put you in a camp in the Ukraine until they change their mind.

It sounds harsh but otherwise we will stop being an independent country.

Anonymous said...

We may find the opinions objectionable but we must protect their rights to free speech.

Anonymous said...

I was also an employee of the Immigration Service which has now morphed into UKBA. What this person says is a 100% accurate. Managers who have never worked on the controls get promoted beyond their level of competence. Decisions are made by people in Croydon who are clueless.

Albanians with indefinite leave to remain because they feared persecution in Albania and yet they had stamps in their passports frm Durres in Albania. Same goes for Iraqis et al. Nigerians who overstayed and are rewarded with a British passport. When we were still able to turn back East Europeans we kept tens of thousands of undesirables out of the country. The Roma got around this by claiming asylum and were rewarded with council houses and benefits. Now they come by the bus load every night. Who can blame them when our benefits system is geared to giving them everything they want?

The Home Office is a pathetic joke and the bleeding heart bastards who allowed this situation to flourish should be flogged naked through the streets. I genuinely fear for the future.

Anonymous said...

The Roma got around this by claiming asylum

A group we should absolutely not under any circumstance allow to gain a foothold here - oops too late!

Edwin Greenwood said...

What I found interesting about the Luton episode was the reaction of the natives, as caught on this YouTube posting. The police themselves say they were taken by surprise. Presumably they were expecting the natives to mutter disapprovingly at the time and moan about it later in the pub. Instead they turned on the Muslim protesters and chased them away. Had the police not been in place to separate the two groups somebody would quite possibly have been hurt or even killed.

This is not the British way. These seem to be "ordinary people", not gangs of thugs looking for a spot of bovver. I wonder if the worm is finally turning.

The authorities are warning of civil unrest arising from the economic downturn. (Some cynics say this is largely a ploy to justify yet more draconian public-order powers. May be they are right.) But I do wonder whether such disorder, when it arises, will reflect dissatisfactions rather broader than a failing economy.

Anonymous said...

'The Home Office is a pathetic joke'.

Given that Clare Short, Diane Abbot and the Blessed Shami Chakrabarti all worked there at some point as 'graduate high fliers' I've always taken that as given.

The final confirmation for me came in 2006 when I put in a Freedom of Information request in the aftermath of the Dzumbira case. (The Zimbabwean immigrant who worked at Lunar House who was found to be approving applications from his countrymen to stay here- in return for a consideration of course). It was reported at the time that over 120 Home Office staff were dismissed for misconduct on similar grounds at around the same time as Mr Dzumbira. I asked the Home Office if they could clarify the citizenship status of those so dismissed (Commonwealth citizens can work anywhere in the Home civil service if they wish to). They said in response that the information I requested (about the passports held by their own employees!) was not recorded !

It has always struck me as fitting that their main admin centre in SE England is called 'Lunar House'

Anonymous said...

Has anyone you seen the Yazzmonster's take in The Evening Standard on these Muslim nutters?

They are just 'desparodoes', 'boors' and of course the real victims are Muslim schoolkids who will suffer schoolyard abuse tomorrow.

Anonymous said...

How could the police allow the Islamofascists to spew their hatred without intervening? If that wasn't a blatant Public Order offence then I don't know what is. Instead of protecting them they should have locked up the lot of them. I imagine it was orders from above from bosses terrified that we might be showing bias in our own country against those who wish to destroy our way of life.

Anonymous said...

real victims are Muslim schoolkids who will suffer schoolyard abuse tomorrow.

Really? And how victimised are muslim kids exactly?

Its a bit like the old joke headline - Muslims fear backlash after tomorrow's train bombing.

I remember in the days following 9/11, the MSM (as I dont think we called it then) desperately searching for hate crimes against Muslims in the US and UK. All they could find was the mistaken shooting of a Sikh somewhere in America.

Im not sure if this lack of victimisation of Muslims is a touching sign of white tolerance or a sad sign of our emasculation. After all we are going to have to expel them from our territories sooner or later.

Edwin Greenwood said...

...in the days following 9/11, the MSM ... desperately searching for hate crimes against Muslims...

The only incident remotely approaching a hate crime that I recall from 9/11 was against me. I was making may way through London's finance district towards Cannon Street station that afternoon when an agitated young in a business suit shouted across the street that he was going to kill me. Fortunately his companion calmed him down.

At the time I sported a full beard. Not particularly Islamic in appearance, more your Captain Birdseye/Harold Shipman, but the young man was clearly so distraught that he was on autopilot and simply linked "Beard => Muslim => Suicide Bomber". Unnerving at the time but I could hardly hold it against him. I expect he had colleagues and friends who had just died in the twin towers. Perhaps he had even been talking to them on the phone, saying his goodbyes and powerless to help as they awaited their fate. What on earth do you say in such a situation?

Other than that and reports of one or two South Asians in East London packing their bags and fleeing pre-emptively to the Subcontinent, I don't recall much in the way of Muzzie-bashing after 9/11.

One might have expected more of a backlash to the events of 7/7, which were decidedly closer to home. On the morning of 7 July 2005, I arrived in London at about 09:30, just as the transport closedown began to kick in but before there was any real information about what was going on. People were advised to go home and did so, calmly.

I repaired later to a pub in Woolwich to watch developments on the rolling news channel. Drinkers were engrossed and disgusted by developments, but there was no shouting and screaming, nor did we all rush off down the Plumstead road to torch the Woolwich Central Mosque.

Despite the triumphalist claims in some Islamist media that London would be brought to a halt as the kaffirs cowered terrified in their dens, the following day everybody went back to work, bitching about the disruption to the tube services. Sensible Muslims kept their heads down for a while but I don't recall any major bother.

Phlegmatic buggers the British and not easily provoked. And yet I keep find myself thinking of Kipling's poem "The Beginnings".

Blognor Regis said...

Thanks for the You Tube clip EG. I've been incredibly pessimistic about our country going right down the tubes all week - Peter Hitchens's Sunday column echoes what I've been thinking.

It's a bit sad though that the only response that could be mustered was "f-off" and "Engerland". Shame they couldn't have burst into God Save the Queen or, even better given the circumstances, 'The Lincolnshire Poacher.'

Anonymous said...

Forget Peter bloody Hitchens

EX-Trot

Backstabber hack

Fully in favour of the Israeli ethno state, but a good little civic nationalist here
Beware the false flag stooge

Support the Resistance

http://isupporttheresistance.blogspot.com/

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