A Small Postette

At Biased BBC.

Absolute War

Back - but suffering bloggers block. Apologies. But a week in a somewhat rainy Gower did give me the time to get through Chris Bellamy's Absolute War - the story of the Eastern Front before and during WW2, including stuff which came from Russian and other formerly Soviet archives after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Three things stood out :

a) the German declaration of war has been considered to be - certainly by me - nowt but a smokescreen to cover their aggression.

the Government of the Reich declares, therefore, that the Soviet Government, contrary to the obligations it assumed,

1) has not only continued, but even intensified its attempts to undermine Germany and Europe;

2) has adopted a more and more anti-German foreign policy;

3) has concentrated all its forces in readiness at the German border. Thereby the Soviet Government has broken its treaties with Germany and is about to attack Germany from the rear, in its struggle for life. The Führer has therefore ordered the German Armed Forces to oppose this threat with all the means at their disposal.

Well, they would say that, wouldn't they ? But it turns out that there was some truth in it - at least as far as the Red Army was concerned. Their forces were concentrated on the German border - as some Soviet diplomats admitted. Defensively, they'd have been better off pulled back - but they were deployed for offence. Bellamy explores the (previously unknown to me) thesis of Viktor Suvurov, who argues that Stalin's long-term strategic intention was to attack Germany after both sides in a Germany/GB and France war had worn each other down - precisely the strategy that he feared Britain adopting vis a vis the Nazi-Soviet conflict.

Whether or not that was the strategy, it must have come as a nasty shock to Stalin when France collapsed, and huge German land forces were almost idle on the continent. The Red Army was still weakened from the purges of the late 30s, and was simply not ready to attack Germany with any hope of success, although they had been quietly mobilising an extra 800,000 men since April 1941 and developing new offensive weapons (the Red Army had been doubled in manpower since September 1939). Stalin may have wanted to attack Germany in 1942, as Constantin Pleshakov argues, and with no alternative defensive plans prepared have been left with no option but to combine hurried preparations for a pre-emptive strike (Zhukov's plan of May 15, 1941) with increasingly desperate attempts to placate Germany and buy the time Soviet Russia so desperately needed.

b) Hitler didn't have a huge amount to teach Stalin about persecution of ethnic minorities. While he didn't build any gas chambers, the Gulag and transportation to places like Siberia did a pretty good job of killing millions.The list of expulsions is pretty impressive - from Cossacks and Tartars to Finns, Koreans, Chinese, Germans and more exotic, little-known groups like the Kalmyk, Hamshenis and Basmachi. In the wide open spaces of the Soviet Union minorities deemed unreliable or dangerous could simply be rounded up and deported to remote or undeveloped areas - with, it must be said, a high incidental death rate. We know what a German Stalin was capable of in the relatively confined spaces of Germany - great hatred, little lebensraum - might a Jewish Autonomous Republic still have been created under a Russian Hitler ? Unlikely, but I suppose possible.

Bellamy's book has a map - which unfortunately doesn't scan well - of the deportations, and a detailed one of the Caucasian ones which also doesn't scan. Here's a modern map - you can see why the area's still a bit of a hot-bed today.

Ethnic groups all over the place. I can't understand why Stalin didn't just celebrate the diversity, as we would in say London. The Chechens fought the Soviets from 1940-44, so you can see why the Russians aren't too keen on them even today.

The consequences of the deportations - and of encouraging the movement of 'reliable' ethnic Russians into border areas such as the Baltic states - are still with us today. While many of the deportees (excepting the Germans and Koreans - fascinating stuff here at Far Outliers) have returned post-Stalin or later (some deportations were still happening as late as 1970), a lot of the Russians who moved remain.



c) it's not as if I didn't know, but the sheer nastiness of the whole thing - on both sides - depresses anew. Not a gentleman's war. Here's General Kielmansegg on June 23rd.

"the next day we found all the (missing German) personnel shot, that is murdered, and atrociously mutilated. Eyes had been put out, genitals cut off, and other cruelties inflicted. This was our first such experience, but not the last. On the evening (after) these first two days I said to my general 'Sir, this will be a very different war from the one in Poland and France'".

UPDATE - there's another depressing note. I'd known about Maclean, Philby and the rest of the Cambridge Five for ages. But it's when you read the history and put that betrayal into context that the enormity of it becomes apparent. Truman and Churchill tell Stalin at Potsdam about new weapons with enormous destructive potential, and Stalin shows little interest. They wonder if he's grasped what they're telling him. But Stalin knows about it already. Donald MacLean's been keeping him informed for the last three years. Pity they didn't hang him.

Laban Is At The Seaside ...

Hoping for better weather and a few waves in the land of laver bread. Golf clubs packed for the kids (I keep telling them it's an old man's game), surfboard for foolish overweight fiftysomething papa (they keep telling me it's a young man's game and I think they're right), a hefty historical tome to get through of an evening - what more could one want ? And I'm bringing down a PC for my 81-year old aunt, who's just getting broadband !



Blogging will therefore be even lighter than recently.

Savile Town - the Way We Were

I found this on what appears to be a family history website, and thought it worth preserving. Savile Town is now "perhaps most famous for its role in the British Muslim community. The area is "some 97-100% Muslim".

From a local Dewsbury paper. I'm not sure what the reference to 'boiler tapping' refers to - ah ! found it. To stop the mills, employees would 'tap' i.e. drain the boilers which powered them. Some fascinating stuff here and in Disraeli's Sybil.

"Every engine was stopped, the plug was driven out of every boiler, every fire was extinguished, every man was turned out. The decree went forth that labour was to cease until the Charter was the law of the land: the mine and the mill, the foundry and the loom-shop were until that consummation to be idle ..."

JULY 29, 1911
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MARRIED FIFTY YEARS
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SAVILE TOWN COUPLE'S CAREER
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THE DAUGHTER OF A CHARTIST

On July 25th, 1861, fifty years ago last Tuesday, Mr. and Mrs. Rawson Preston, of Wharfe Street, Savile Town, were made man and wife. Since that time they have travelled many rough roads together, but have been spared to share a calm and peaceful old age, and now can look back upon the past with few regrets. Our representative interviewed the old couple, if such they can be called, on Thursday, and was impressed by the youthfulness they displayed--by Mrs. Preston especially, for she was able to enter into an animated conversation, which was altogether interesting and amusing, without showing the least signs of fatigue.
In answer to the first question as to where they were married, Mrs. Preston proceeded to air what was evidently a long-standing grievance. She and her husband went through a ceremony at the age of 19, at the Dewsbury Parish Church, but the same ceremony sufficed for the marriage of two other couples at the same time, and this did not seem to her to be quite in order. Asked the name of the clergyman who officiated, Mrs. Preston made reply, "Oh, we didn't bother about ministers; we were satisfied with each other. I believe they called him Allbutt, but I'm not sure." Mrs. Preston did not forget to add that she was no lover of the Church of England, and further conversation revealed the fact that experience of early girlhood had created this feeling of bitterness.
A native of Earlsheaton, Mrs. Preston, whose maiden name was Sarah Hirst, attended for a while the Church Sunday School. The vicar's wife, however, to quote Mrs. Preston's own words, used "to put on airs", and would not allow the girls to attend church with either flowers or feathers in their hats; in fact, if she noticed any such form of feminine adornment she would promptly remove it. They were expected to curtsey to the lady as she passed them in the street, and this Mrs. Preston refused to do. She left the Church school, and afterwards attended Ebenezer up to the time of her marriage.

A WOMAN OF GRIT

It did not take long for one to discover that Mrs. Preston was a woman with plenty of determination and grit which has doubtless stood her in good steed, during the course of many trying years. When it is stated that Mr. and Mrs. Preston have had fourteen children, eleven of whom are living (six daughters and five sons), it will be gathered that life for them has not been a bed of roses: though they have now the satisfaction of knowing that the members of their family have all done well and are blessed, like their parents, with the best of health.
Mrs. Preston was born with her father's blood in her veins. He was Mr. Joseph Hirst, a land-loom weaver and an old Chartist, who when "boiler tapping" operations were in progress, had to be hidden away for a fortnight. Mr. Hirst lived until he was close upon eighty. He was a Radical of the sternest type, and his views are as zealously advocated by his daughter, who has been Mr. Preston's helpmate for the past fifty years. Mrs. Preston informed our representative that she was still an ardent reader of "Reynolds" and added that she would like to see a few more in the Cabinet, "like Lloyd George". "Asquith", she said, "was all right", but she wished he had a little more of Lloyd George about him. Yet, at the same time, she does not hold any brief for the Suffragette.
Mr. Preston was born at Staincliffe, and for nearly twenty years worked at Eastfield Mills, Dewsbury, as a weaver and tenter. For the past forty years he has been in the greengrocery business, which, our representative gathered, was started originally through Mrs. Preston's initiative at a time when there were may mouths to fill, and the means to finding the wherewithal considerably limited.

STARTED WITH SIXPENCE

"We started," Mrs. Preston explained, "with the proverbial sixpence. I sent my eldest lad, who was then between six and seven years of age, to buy sixpennyworth of oranges, and these he afterwards disposed of at a profit, and by the end of the day returned home with a basket of oranges and some coppers to spare." Owing to Mr. Preston's employment being uncertain, all manner of means had to be adopted to obtain food. Mrs. Preston baked cakes for her lads to hawk, along with the oranges, and gradually the business developed, and is still carried on by the old couple.
All Mr. and Mrs. Preston's children are married, and three sons and one daughter are now well settled in Canada. Six years ago, Mrs. Preston paid a visit to Canada, and explained her reason for going there in the following words: "My husband said it was a wilderness where no one could live. I wanted to know whether my lads could live there, so I went to see, and found it a grand place."
Mrs. Preston remained six weeks, and returned home to fetch her husband, but he was not to be persuaded to leave the old country. His good wife is still anxious that they should settle there, and a few months back had arranged to "sell up", but when it came to a question of having to part with their old horse Robin - described by Mrs. Preston as a "Lloyd George" --having been bought from a Welsh drover at Lee Fair, their hearts failed them, and, consequently, they are still at Savile Town.

ALL TEETOTALERS

After carrying on business in Savile Town for some years, Mr. and Mrs. Preston took a farm at Kirkheaton, and later occupied Waste Farm, Hopton, but had to leave there when their sons left for Canada. They then resided in Ravensthorpe for several years, but were ordered away from there two years ago when Mr. Preston had a slight seizure. Both are exceedingly proud of the fact that they have reared a healthy brood, without the aid of doctors, and especially are they proud to know that all their children are teetotalers. Mr. and Mrs. Preston both signed the pledge some thirty years ago, and are regular attenders at the Dewsbury Temperance Hall, where the golden wedding celebrations are to take place today (Saturday). They have never had a doctor to see either of them--except when Mr. Preston was taken ill at Ravensthorpe--"They have all been butchers' and bakers' bills at our house," Mrs. Preston facetiously remarked. The magnitude of these bills may be gauged from the fact that when flour was 16lb. to the stone, Mrs. Preston had to bake four stones of flour every week, at 3s. a stone, and they could have done with more if funds would have allowed.
Asked for the total number of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, Mrs. Preston replied that they were "sixty all told" up to last September, when a grandson was drowned in Canada, and a granddaughter had also died, leaving two children.
Mr. and Mrs, Preston's eldest son is a tuner, working at Glen Williams, near Toronto, for a concern of which the late Mayor of Batley (Alderman Stubley) was president. Another son has a homestead about a hundred miles from Winnipeg, and one holds a good position on the railway. Other members of the family reside locally.
Asked whether any of their offspring who have settled across the water would be present at Saturday's celebrations, Mrs. Preston humourously replied, "We have sent word to them to engage a flying machine for the day."

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Stockholm Syndrome - St Austell

A couple who came "under siege" from youths who vandalised their property and held rowdy parties on their land have solved the problem by building a £500,000 golf course to give them something to do. Retired hoteliers Andrew and Mary Flint have endured more than 20 years of anti-social behaviour from bored teenagers who trespassed on their 11-acre estate. They were subjected to verbal abuse when the gangs gathered on their land and around a farm near their home, drinking, stealing and damaging property. So, when the farm came up for sale, the Flints decided to buy it and turn the 20 acres of land into a nine-hole pitch and putt golf course. Mr Flint, 65, and his 76-year-old wife say the course acts as a barrier to keep troublemakers away, and gives local children something do.

More than 20 years. You get far less for murder. I'm amazed they look in such good nick. I'd either have died myself or killed someone. They must be saints.

And what of the local police ? What were they doing over 20-odd years ? I know that if they arrested the courts might not convict - and if they did, they'd only get told by a magistrate not to be naughty. You have to try very hard to get a meaningful punishment. If only the couple hadn't been white !

But all the same ...

Police in St Austell have welcomed the course and said it will help reduce anti-social problems. A spokesman said: "The area of Boscundle has suffered problems with groups of youths gathering in certain areas. There is little in the way of resources and public transport and any new youth-based activities will help. In a rural area such as this one of the issues we have is teenagers who have a lack of proper facilities. A golf course like this is a very welcome amenity and will undoubtedly help reduce crime."

The triumph of the sociologists is almost complete. Crime is caused by a lack of 'something to do'. Now I know that the Devil finds work for idle hands - but that's an argument against idleness, not for the provision of entertainment.

Acquit Syed Zaidi !

The mills of UK law sure do grind slowly. I blogged last year on the UK's Ashura processions and the associated flagellation with knives, or zanjeer. One of Eduardo Martino's photographs was of a young boy, head streaming with blood after cutting himself to show religious devotion. In January Syed Mustafa Zaidi was charged with "child cruelty" - I wonder exactly what the charge is ? - and now he's in court.

Participants at the men-only event take it in turns, in small groups, to flog themselves, while the crowd around them chant the name of Husayn, a central figure in the Shia faith whose death they are commemorating. The film played to the court also showed the 13-year-old boy, who Zaidi is accused of forcing, flogging himself with the zanjeer zani.

Prosecutors said the 15-year-old boy, who is not seen in the film but was allegedly forced to take part in the ceremony, suffered multiple lacerations to his back and shoulders, including a wound measuring up to a centimetre long. Andrew Nuttall, prosecutor, said Mr Zaidi also harmed himself in the film. "This devout man used considerable force upon himself, clearly causing injuries, and causing others present to fear for his safety to such an extent that they started to intervene and calm him down," he said.

Mr Nuttall said Mr Zaidi then went on to encourage the 15-year-old boy to flog himself and gave him "no choice" about participating in the ceremony. He said Mr Zaidi took the arm of the 13-year-old boy, took off his T-shirt so he was bare-chested and put the zanjeer zani in his hand and told him to flog himself.

The court heard how Mr Zaidi had attended a meeting at the community centre two days before the ceremony, where it was made plain that children under the age of 16 should not participate. Mr Zaidi denies forcing the boys to participate and claims they had requested to take part.

Mr Nuttall said: "The prosecution say the defendant ignored the advice given to him that this practice was not allowed for children under 16 years of age." He said Zaidi forced the boys to participate in a ceremony "clearly designed to cause self harm". Mr Nuttall added: "This was not only against their own will but in any event is not allowed by law."

I'll just say this again. While I disapprove of cutting yourself or anyone else with knives, unless there is evidence that these children were forced into what they did - which the prosecution alleges but seems to have no proof for - the law should get its fat nose out of it. There is an enormous difference between encouraging and forcing someone. The advice about under-16s was exactly that - advice - and as such is irrelevant.

(However there's one possibility - that the children were Mr Zaidi's sons - which wouldn't be reported, and in which case there is a greater chance that encouragement could have the force of an order. Nonetheless I can't see putting Dad up in court serves any useful purpose. A quiet word from an officer, with the backing of the local religious leader, should really be enough.)

NWOBJ - Junior Section

If the New Wave of British Jihad (© Laban Tall 2007) has an epicentre, it must surely be Dewsbury, although Brum might run it close.

A West Yorkshire schoolboy who possessed a guide to making napalm on his computer and notes on martyrdom under his bed today became Britain's youngest convicted terrorist. Hammaad Munshi, whose grandfather is a leading Islamic scholar, was 16 and taking his GCSEs when he was arrested.

Munshi, now 18, was convicted of making a record of information likely to be useful in terrorism following a three-month trial at Blackfriars crown court in London. He was cleared of one possession offence. The judge, Timothy Pontius, remanded Munshi in custody until sentencing at the Old Bailey on September 19 when, Pontius warned, it was "inevitable" that he would be jailed. The Crown Prosecution Service said Munshi, of Greenwood Street, Saville Town, Dewsbury, was the youngest person to be convicted under the Terrorism Act.

Hmm. Evidently Saville Town. But ... what happened to this chap, in court last year ? or is it the same person, and if so, what's happened to the saltpetre under the bed ?

A British teenager who is accused of plotting to blow up members of the British National Party appeared in court today. The 17-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court in London to face two charges under the Terrorism Act 2000.

It is alleged that he had in his possession a copy of the "Anarchists' Cookbook", containing instructions about how to make home-made explosives. The charges are that he was in possession of material for terrorist purposes in October last year and that he collected or had information useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism. The teenager, who is a British national but has dual nationality with Pakistan, stood in the dock wearing a baggy, blue hooded top. He said nothing other than to confirm his name and date of birth, before prosecuting counsel Piers Arnold outlined the evidence before Judge Daphne Wickham. He was arrested at an address in the Dewsbury area of West Yorkshire on Monday and taken to London this morning.
Judge Wickham ruled that the offences were not within the remit of the magistrates court and set a date for a committal hearing on October 25th.

There were two arrests - the second one being a young man from Ravensthorpe, who according to reports at the time had chemicals under his bed.

The story hit the papers last year then vanished - no reports on any convictions.

The age is right. I may be wrong, but I reckon Mr Munshi is the same guy. How many more teenagers in Dewsbury have been charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 ? I'd like to hope it was only one more, but if anyone knows different please tell me.

The bit about wanting to kill BNP members also vanished from the stories - the BBC replaced it within a few hours and the police actually rang the BNP to deny the story. Shades of the disappearing rocket launchers in the Robert Cottage trial.

The press stories were pretty confusing anyway - the original BBC story had two boys from Dewsbury, one of whom wanted to blow up BNP members, the Dewsbury Reporter had two boys, one thought to be, and the other definitely, from Ravensthorpe, same for the Yorkshire Post with the information that the material was saltpetre.

Hmm. While Savile Town isn't far from Ravensthorpe, you couldn't mix them up. But if Mr Munshi (I think the name is Hindi for a clerk or scribe), "Britain's youngest terrorist", isn't our man, what happened to the two Ravensthorpe Ravers ?

"The Notorious Johnson Family"

I mentioned Gloucestershire's most well-known band of vagabonds and villains in this post a few years back. Now they've gone down for 49 years. Between five of them. Another judge - Christopher Critchlow - with a good line in ironic humour.

Judge Christopher Critchlow, sentencing the gang for the country house raids, told them the way they had mocked police was "indicative of your attitude to the law".

He said: "Cases of this gravity must attract heavy sentences because of the deliberate criminality, organisation and sophistication of their planning and the effect on the occupants. This must be one of the most serious examples of conspiracy to burgle ever to come before the court, considering the amounts involved. Little of the property has been recovered and is no doubt well hidden in the countryside or passed on for disposal. You have no respect for people's property or the law so I have no alternative but to impose severe sentences."

Four or five years (remember to cut the sentence in half) for £60m robberies ? His Honour is having a laugh. For ten million quid I'd do five years in Dartmoor.

I see they've left Glarcestershire for Cleeve Prior on the Worcestershire-Warwickshire borders, somewhere twixt Evesham and Bidford-on-Avon. Should feel at home there. A few years back Cleeve Prior was home to a gang of those helpful chaps who knock on old ladies' doors to tell them about the loose slates that they can fix for them - a story that ends with old ladies being driven to the cashpoint on multiple ocasions to have their building society accounts emptied as the work that needs doing mysteriously escalates. When they were nailed one of the lads had over £400,000 in a building society, which had dwindled to about 100K by the time the courts got their hands on it. When I open a bank account I need a letter from a bishop and my firstborn as security. How come all the money-laundering regulations seem to bypass these people ? Are they scared of being accused of discrimination if they raise an eyebrow at cash-only caravan dwellers ?

THE Johnson’s (Ricky, Albi and Richard) who sound like an American pop group but were actually a travelling band of gipsy thieves, liked to look on themselves as some kind of 21st century Robin Hoods robbing from the rich. Except they never gave to the poor. Not unless it was to themselves anyway.

From their base on a travellers’ permanent site in south Worcestershire, they travelled all across southern England stealing from the homes of the rich and famous. “I feel I have the right to rob the lords, sirs and the ladies,” family patriarch Ricky Johnson once told the TV cameras. “I have to feed my children and if no one is helping me achieve my goal I feel I have that right.”

How much the Johnsons actually made from the proceeds of their raids, estimated in a court this week to be a staggering £80 million, is open to question. As one visitor to their home on the park at Cleeve Prior, near Evesham, said: “It’s not as though they live rich. There’s no sign of a Bentley round the back.”

That certainly figures. According to my extensive contacts in the Gloucestershire criminal underworld, artworks from Paddy McNally's manor, the frames hastily repainted, were being sold by one of the matriarchs at knock-down prices at the Cheltenham Racecourse car-boot within months of the raid.

No School Discipline Problems

Here.

Georgia - the Blogroll of Shame

When the trouble in South Ossetia broke out, a title for a blog post floated into my mind - for about a femtosecond, before I dismissed it as hopelessly unoriginal, cliched, and above all irrelevant.

Other bloggers weren't so fussy.

There are literally thousands of bloggers who decided that "Georgia On My Mind" was a really cool post title (for those who wonder why, it's an old Ray Charles song in which he sees "in peaceful dreams" the road back to the Land of Peaches. Not terribly apposite for the Caucasian unpleasantness).

So I'll just give a dishonourable shout to those you can find on UK Poliblogs.

Shuffle forward, with eyes on the floor :

Samizdata

Paul Anderson

The Englishman ! I am truly shocked ...

Perspective

There is another famous - and much more relevant - song about Georgia - a song of war between two states which had been one, of avenging columns leaving smoke and flames to mark their track, the deliberate destruction of infrastructure as they went - but no UK blogger used "Marching Through Georgia".

At least anti-American Brit lefty blogger Devizes Melting Pot (sic) linked to this post by anti-American American lefty Chris Floyd. And a fair few US bloggers used it.


Stop ! I found one Brit blog using it - the hitherto unknown to me - or to anyone else - New Worker Features - which may or may not be the official blog of the New Communist Party of Britain. Kudos to said blogger, who'e'er s/he be. The NCP is an organisation of which I know nothing, apart from their terrifyingly efficient, Stalinist car-parking franchise. The full story is here. To an old lefty like myself it soundeth highly familiar.

Like the rest of the British communist movement the NCP from the beginning had to deal with what they saw as ultra-leftism and right-wing deviation. All were defeated at Congresses over the years and many were expelled for factionalism.

New Worker Features is currently getting 12 hits a day. Spread the rightish love and drop by.


UPDATE - what's so appealing about NWF ? The classic blogger template !

Summer Floodwaters From The Curate's Brook

More a collection of links, really - stuff I just haven't found the time to blog about :

This story is one of a number in the last couple of years about Muslim prison gangs. Wasn't someone killed by Muslims in Frankland in the last year or so ?

Prison authorities have compiled an action plan for dealing with a kidnap plot involving radicalised Muslim convicts inside Britain's jails. The dossier has been compiled in the past few months following rising tension in the prison system. Intelligence gathered from Britain's eight top-security prisons indicate that specific threats to kidnap and decapitate an officer first emerged at Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire six months ago. However, a senior prison source said that the risk went beyond one jail.

Most primary school teachers have been women - and that's probably true even going back to Victorian days. It wouldn't be so bad that only one primary teacher in 50 is male - if so many boys didn't have a male role model / authority figure in their lives.

"The secret state that steals our children" - Camilla Cavendish on the family courts - a must-read. One family's story here. More here.

Rasputin's real views on homosexuality and Christianity revealed - it wasn't exactly a secret now, was it ? Like John Humphrys, Mary Ann Sieghart wishes he'd have the courage of his convictions.

Ross is posting some good stuff at the moment ... and Marko Attila Hoare - where did he get that name ? - is worth reading on the ex-Soviet Empire, even if you don't agree with everything.

Who's been stabbed or shot recently ? Public Perception has the stories.

They've got your phone calls. Now they want your email and browsing habits. Not just MI5/6, who one tends to assume already has that sort of thing. Your local council, health authority, etc. Surprise surprise, it's driven by an EU directive.

And for details of all such things, EU Referendum - in terms of adding to one's knowledge, it has to be the best Brit politics site on the Web. Also highly informative - the Yorkshire Ranter - he may be a lefty, but he knows an awful lot about technology, particularly the military stuff. A rattling good read.


So, he left her flat at 6 am, leaving - according to his testimony, the deceased still alive and well.

Her body was found two days later. I can see that, were she still alive, she might not have spotted him pinching her mobile and Oyster card, which he used on his way home. They're the kind of things you can slip into a pocket. But how in God's name, if they are alive, do you steal someone's DVD player and Freeview box without them noticing, leaving the flat with "a big bag" ?

You do have to wonder if the jury was made up of people who don't like pre-op transexuals like poor Kellie Telesford. Alleged illegal immigrant Shanniel Hyatt is very fortunate that the full weight of British law didn't descend on him. Had he been found guilty, he might have ended up doing two whole years for manslaughter !

She Always Did Like To Shock

"I believe, literally, in the God of the Old Testament, whom I understand as the Lord of the Jews and the Protestants. "

Julie Burchill comes out ... as a Church of England Christian.

US Census Bureau Details

The report is here :

"By 2023, minorities will comprise more than half of all children" - they're more than half of all babies born in London now - and nearly a quarter of primary school children in England.

The Future Starts Here

White people of European descent will no longer make up a majority of the US population by the year 2042 - eight years sooner than previous estimates. The big change is among Hispanics and Asians, whose numbers are expected to double by the middle of the century to form 30% and 9% of the population. It is projected that black people will account for 15%, a small increase.

The US Census Bureau's latest projections are based on birth, death and current immigration rates. According to the bureau's statistics, ethnic and racial minorities will become the majority by 2042 and account for 54% of the population by 2050.

I'm not terribly hung up on the whiteness, or the genetic inheritance. By a tragic accident of history most Europeans, who have hitherto made up the majority of US immigrants, have been white. It's not their fault.

America has been taking in immigrants and turning them into Americans for two hundred years. But starting - where else ? - in the 1970s, the idea of the melting pot, of integration, became unfashionable. The idea of maintaining and celebrating difference - for the recent arrivals, anyway - became increasingly acceptable. Sounds familiar ?

"In the current immigration wave, something markedly different is happening here in the middle of the great American "melting pot."

Not only are the demographics of the United States changing in profound and unprecedented ways, but so too are the very notions of assimilation and the melting pot that have been articles of faith in the American self-image for generations. E Pluribus Unum (From Many, One) remains the national motto, but there no longer seems to be a consensus about what that should mean.

There is a sense that, especially as immigrant populations reach a critical mass in many communities, it is no longer the melting pot that is transforming them, but they who are transforming American society.

...

In fact, the very concept of assimilation is being called into question as never before. Some sociologists argue that the melting pot often means little more than "Anglo conformity" and that assimilation is not always a positive experience – for either society or the immigrants themselves. And with today's emphasis on diversity and ethnicity, it has become easier than ever for immigrants to avoid the melting pot entirely. Even the metaphor itself is changing, having fallen out of fashion completely with many immigration advocacy and ethnic groups. They prefer such terms as the "salad bowl" and the "mosaic," metaphors that convey more of a sense of separateness in describing this nation of immigrants."

Hmm. Isn't the "salad bowl" what they've got in Kenya ? Or Bosnia - before the ingredients shook themselves apart ? Or South Ossetia ?

Not that I can quite see how the BBC can separate "whites" and "Hispanics" anyway. While Diego has traditionally been somewhat swarthier than his sherry-swilling, beef-eating cousins, the difference isn't massive as far as melanin's concerned.

Culturally there ARE some differences. Like their Spanish relatives, the Mexicans went in for bloodshed on a fairly hefty scale - indeed you can't but wonder if the persecutions which triggered the Cristero War didn't inspire the slaughter of the faithful during the Spanish Civil War, only a few years later. Indeed, the whole history of Latin America isn't a terribly inspiring one, although some would put that down to the baleful influence of US foreign policy.

There's also the small matter of large chunks of the SW United States being originally Mexican territory. The lovely church we attended at San Luis Obispo last year was founded by the Spanish in 1772. Some Mexicans are calling the repopulation of Texas, California and Arizona la Reconquista. There's mucho talk of "Aztlan" and even "La Raza" - these chaps don't seem to have been told that race doesn't exist.

Like the UK, the US is importing large numbers of people from a very different culture without attempting to integrate them. (Even 20 years back people were moving out of California into Washington State because they didn't like the scale of Hispanic immigration into California, and I was reading complaints in the Seattle press about the influx of Californians. The Californians complaining about Hispanic immigration were of course racist bigots, while the Washingtonians complaining about Californians were concerned citizens seeking to maintain the unique character of their state) .

Just as in the UK, this importation is supported by the major parties of both left (who see more voters) and capitalist right (who see cheap labour). George Bush's amnesty plan for up to 12 million illegal immigrants was torpedoed by his grass-roots supporters - but the plan was championed by his business supporters.

The question is - what will America be like by 2042 ? Will it be less like America, and more like Mexico ? The answer has implications for us.

Matthew Syed - He's At It Again

Mr Syed is either obsessive or lazy.

This time last year the former international table-tennis player and failed Labour candidate was using his Times column to attack one Jon Entine, American author of a book about why black athletes dominate sport - well, some sports, anyway. Laban gave it a bit of a shoeing on the grounds that he was attacking Entine for things he hadn't actually said.

One year on and he's substantially repeated the same article - again in the Times.

August 2007

The men’s 100m at the World Athletics Championships in Japan this month will be won by a black athlete. This is not so much a prediction as a statement of fact.

August 2008

Pundits are sharply divided as to the outcome. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that the winner will be black.

August 2007

There is a natural conclusion to be drawn from all this: blacks have an inbuilt superiority over whites when it comes to sprinting. Many scientists and writers have made this claim, to the fury of equal rights campaigners who fear that any acknowledgement of natural differences between the races might usher in a new wave of racism.

August 2008

What conclusion should we draw from all this? That blacks have a genetic advantage over whites when it comes to sprinting? It would seem a natural inference except for a nagging voice giving warning about the consequences. If we were to acknowledge systematic genetic differences between the races, where would it lead us? To the conclusion that the superior performance by whites in education is genetic? These are deep waters indeed.

I must confess that I thought it was Chinese and other Asians who had superior performance in education - certainly in Britain. No matter.

August 2007

The prototypical argument for black athletic superiority can be found in Taboo: Why Blacks Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk about it by Jon Entine. Entine’s central assertion is that it is not blacks as a whole that are good at sprinting but rather a subset who can trace their origins to western African coastal states. Indeed, he makes the point that “no white, Asian or East African runner has broken 10 seconds in the 100m” (my italics).

August 2008

The most famous argument for the reality of black genetic superiority is to be found in Jon Entine's Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It. Entine's principal argument is not that all blacks are gifted at sprinting, but rather those that can trace their ancestry to West African coastal states. Indeed, Entine makes the point that “no white, Asian or East African has broken ten seconds in the 100 metres”.

And so on and so forth - the Kenyan distance runners, the pygmies and their unique ability to cope with low ceilings, a morph from "the problem for the “racial scientist” is his yearning to generalise" to "Entine's error lies in his compulsion to generalise". Indeed there's only one new piece of evidence for Mr Syed's theory, if it can be dignified as such, that race doesn't exist except in the minds of white men.

It is surprising that Entine fails to spot his error when he goes on to discuss the success of the Pacific Islands in producing rugby and American football stars. He seems to think this supports his argument that blacks have a genetic superiority at such sports because they have been “bred to run”. It actually does the reverse: there are few populations more genetically distinct from sub-Saharan Africans than Pacific Islanders.

It's lazy, lazy, lazy. If you google "taboo jon entine", this Kenan Malik piece pops up at #1. I hope he's getting reprint rights.

Entine points out that a cluster of South Pacific Islands, such as Samoa and Fiji, have in recent years produced an extraordinary number of American football and Australian rugby players. Such islanders, Entine argues, 'tend to be large and explosively fast', implying that their success somehow gives credence to his 'blacks are bred to run' thesis. In fact it does the opposite: genetically there are few populations in the world more different from sub-Saharan Africans than Pacific Islanders.

My conclusion of last year still stands.

"Mr Syed seems to be afraid of anyone saying that there are any differences between anyone at all. "

"Now we see the violence inherent in the system"

I don't pretend to be a student of Caucasian politics and strategy ... a few impressions of the current unpleasantness in Georgia :

a) you might think it's all about oil

Local police recorded 51 strikes. "I have no doubt they wanted to target the pipeline, there is nothing else here," said Giorgi Abrahamisvili, a policeman who witnessed the attack. "It was terribly intense, the smell of cordite spread everywhere. I had to abandon my car and hide in a ditch but the jets weren't interested in other targets."

BP operates the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which transports one per cent of the world's oil needs, or one million barrels a day from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean. A spokesman played down the impact of the strike, pointing out that pumping was suspended last week because of a terrorist attack in Turkey. "At the moment the pipeline is not running at any capacity, because there was a fire," the spokesman said. Georgia is a crucial link in a three country energy corridor vital to Western Europe's oil and gas supply. The £2 billion pipeline is the only major conduit for Central Asian resources not under Russian control.

b) but South Ossetia and Georgia were in conflict long before :

On March 15, 1918, the Ossetian peasants rose in rebellion and managed to hold off an offensive by a Georgian People’s Guard punitive detachment commanded by an ethnic Ossetian officer, Kosta Kaziev. The fighting culminated in the town of Tskhinvali which was raided by the rebels on March 19, 1918. Tskhinvali’s Georgian population was massacred and the town was looted. The People’s Guard regained the control of Tskhinvali on March 22.

On May 8, 1920, the Ossetians declared a Soviet republic in the Roki area on the Russian-Georgian border. A Bolshevik force from Vladikavkaz crossed into Georgia and helped the local rebels to defeat a Georgian force in the Java district. The rebellious areas were effectively incorporated into Soviet Russia. However, Lenin’s desire to keep peace with Georgia at that time and eventual military failures of the rebels forced the Bolsheviks to distance themselves from the Ossetian struggle. The Georgian People’s Guard under Valiko Jugheli crashed the revolt with great violence. The insurgents were defeated in a series of hard-fought battles. Several villages were burned down and some 3,000 to 7,000 were killed during the hostilities. About 20,000 Ossetians were forced to seek refuge in Soviet Russia.

c) A Fistful of Euros has - or had - some bloggers on the ground in Georgia.

d) I must confess I can't quite see the driver behind the push for surrounding Russia with NATO members. NATO was set up as a mutual defence pact aimed squarely at the old Soviet Union. While Turkey, on the borders of Asia, has been a member since 1950, the alliance was, as its name (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) implies, created to defend the democracies of Western Europe and to keep open the sea and air lanes between Europe and the USA. Georgia is a very long way from the Atlantic coast.

Russia thinks that NATO expansion is aimed squarely at surrounding and isolating her. Speaking without much knowledge, it certainly looks that way. Anyone know what's going on, if this is in fact true, and if so why ? After all, there's another former Communist state that's both expanding economically (and by extension, in military capability) at an unprecedented rate - a state that is also starting to project its power on a global scale. What's so dangerous about Russia ?

There is, IMHO, an inherent problem with expanding an organisation like the EU or NATO beyond what might be said to be its 'natural' borders. As long as you're using air power to zap an opponent without retaliatory capability - as in Kosovo and Serbia - no worries. Except for the people being hit. But when your opponent has the ability to give you a hard time, and you need to put boots on the ground, then questions about Pomeranian grenadiers become relevant. Although we may not have liked it, it was probably generally accepted that had Red Army tanks rolled across the North German plain or into Italy, we would fight. I'm not at all sure how people would feel about fighting for Latvia or Lithuania, who are already NATO members. Who in Western Europe, let alone America, is going to fight for Belarus or the Ukraine ?

e) it wasn't as if you couldn't see it coming. April 2008 :

Officials from Georgia are embarking on a major diplomatic offensive in Europe, fearing that Russia will do everything possible to destabilize the country before NATO membership talks can begin in December. David Bakradze, the Georgian foreign minister, who met Friday with his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said his country was becoming caught in a bitter struggle between the West and Russia as it tried to anchor its political and security institutions solidly in Euro-Atlantic organizations and rid itself of Russian influence.

At stake in the coming months, Bakradze said, is whether the West will bow to Russian pressure and possibly trigger a domino effect or stand firm until Moscow backs down. "If you draw lines and give Russia a free hand here, it will never work," Bakradze said in an interview with the International Herald Tribune. "If Russia is given a free hand, it will extend to other parts of Europe. Russia thinks it still has the right to interfere. But we say to the Europeans, if there is any appeasement towards Russia over the way it deals with us, it will have repercussions for other countries."

f) from the same IHT piece, the baneful influence of the Kosovo settlement :

Germany, in particular, strongly opposed offering Georgia the fast track. In interviews at the time, Steinmeier said Moscow had already had a hard enough time accepting the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, whose unity Russia had supported.

Kosovo has had two repercussions. The dismemberment of a chunk of Serbian territory at NATO and EU behest - if not gunpoint - has both cheesed off Russia and given her a blueprint for intervention in South Ossetia and Abhkazia. After all, like Kosovo, the two territories contain lots of people who wish to leave the parent state, a minority of (if you like) loyalists, and a history of bad blood and ethnic strife. Russia can claim to be protecting the majority Ossetian community against the Georgians, just as KFOR protected the majority Kosovo Albanians against the Serbs.

g) so far the US /EU offers of NATO membership have given Georgia the great benefit of Russian invasion, and given the US/EU the great benefit of the third largest coalition force in Iraq - 2,000 men - being withdrawn. While the game is not yet played out, we can say that so far the process hasn't done much for either party - or their relationship. Is America going to do anything ?

In recent years, Bush has lavished praise on Georgia — and the so-called Rose Revolution that brought Mikheil Saakashvili to power — as a model of democracy-building. The feeling was mutual: when Bush visited Tbilisi in 2005, the authorities estimated that 150,000 people showed up to see him. He famously climbed up on a platform and wiggled his hips to loud Georgian folk music.

Those exuberant days seemed very distant around Gori on Sunday, as people fled, leaving behind corn fields and apple orchards. A group of men tried mightily to push a truck with a blown-out tire, but it got stuck on the road, and they finally abandoned it ...

The grimmest among the Georgians were the soldiers, haggard, unshaven and swinging their Kalashnikovs. A group of them had piled onto a flatbed truck, crowding on in such numbers that some were sitting on the roof, their feet dangling over the windshield. One, who gave his name as Major Georgi, spoke with anger.

"Write exactly what I say," he said. "Over the past few years, I lived in a democratic society. I was happy. And now America and the European Union are spitting on us."

h) I don't see Russia as a major long-term imperial power as long as her demography is still pretty disastrous. While the number of births is rising, the number of early deaths is more than keeping pace - and those Russian citizens who ARE having babies tend to be, like the Chechens and Ingush, Muslims near the periphery of Russian territory - perhaps more of a problem than a solution to Moscow. Russians still abort more children than they give birth to each year. Furthermore, the culture of many educated Russians is becoming more ... individualistic ? European ? - well, whatever makes psychology students get purple hair and a stud in the chin. What I think we may well see are attempts to gather more ethnic Russians back into the Russian State. I'd be nervous if I lived in an ex-Soviet state with a large ethnic Russian minority - and there are a few of those.

i) where are the anti-war left ? I don't see them here in any numbers. Or here. Or here. Or here. Looks like those Georgians shouldn't have cheered for Bush so wildly.

Swampy Don't Surf ....

Nightjack - an environmental protester in his youth - on the Kingsnorth Climate Camp protesters :

Swampy is basically Middle Class with a smattering of intellectuals and minor gentry trying to p*** off mater and pater ... Swampy and his mates have more cameras per head than the paparazzi pack following Amy Winehouse ... Never, ever engage Swampy in debate. It’s like dealing with a troll. Swampy has a world view that only family, age and a job has a chance of moving. Swampy or someone near him is likely recording whatever you say. The 50 reasonable words used as warning will never come to public light but when after 2 minutes of trying nicely you say “Look just **** Off”, Swampy has his jackpot recording of personal police oppression.

The Guardian :

Other equipment seized since the camp began on Thursday included bolt croppers, climbing ropes and padded suits, which police said suggested that protesters were intending to break into the power station.

Isabelle Michel, another camper, said demonstrators had not made any secret of the fact that they intended to take direct action at the power plant. "This in no way justifies the way the police are treating the camp," she said. "It is disgraceful to suggest that the campers have criminal intent.

Well, call me naive, but it sounds like criminal intent to me. I suppose they'd say it was for the Greater Good :

On Saturday August 9th, the climate camp will go beyond talk and culminate in a spectacular mass action to shut down Kingsnorth. Permanently!

Labour 'descending into chaos" ?

I don't know. Maybe.

Stephen Byers, a former minister, said Mr Brown's policies were more appropriate for "a Sunday afternoon stroll" than for scaling the mountain facing Labour before the next general election, expected in 2010. Mr Byers, a close ally of Tony Blair, former prime minister, said: "We must come forward with bold and ambitious policies." They could include giving cash to tenants in social housing to buy private homes in an effort to revive Britain's moribund housing market, he said.

I think they'll have a job to dig up many bold and ambitious policies. Because their idea of a bold and ambitious policy is to spend lots of money on something, and then stand up in Parliament and reel off the sums of money. Whether the money has done any good or not doesn't seem to matter. The spend is the deed.

"A billion pounds to prevent truancy, which hasn't prevented it !"

And they've run out of money. Now they're frantically trying to think of something that sound good and costs nowt. But they've never had to think like that before. I'm not sure they can do it.

A Russian Patriot

(Bernhard Frye/The Associated Press. Pinched from the International Herald Tribune site)

"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts"

The great man is gone. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has died aged 89.

I wrote about my favourite book of his, "August 1914", here.

"At a time like this, ensign, party political differences are just ripples on the water."

"Then what differences mean anything at all ?"

"The difference between decency and swinishness, ensign !".

I would have been interested to know what he thought of Putin's Russia. We know he detested Yeltsin's kleptocracy - but while Putin is undoubtedly a Russian patriot, would he have approved of his brand of gangster crony capitalism, where you can be as great a villain as you like as long as you don't interfere with what are seen as State interests ?

According to the massive IHT obituary (and what a good news site that is - I find I'm using it more and more these days) :

Solzhenitsyn was heir to a morally focused and often prophetic Russian literary tradition, and he looked the part. With his stern visage, lofty brow and full, Old Testament beard, he recalled Tolstoy while suggesting a modern-day Jeremiah, denouncing the evils of the Kremlin and later the mores of the West. He returned to Russia and deplored what he considered its spiritual decline, but in the last years of his life he embraced President Vladimir Putin as a restorer of Russia's greatness.

I can understand that. "Our" capitalists - if indeed any British capitalists can be said to be "ours" any more - would mostly sell their grandmothers for a few million more. Judging by the kicking BP are getting - predicted two years ago here - and I don't approve, btw - "their" capitalists have a different agenda.

His rare public appearances could turn into hectoring jeremiads. Delivering the commencement address at Harvard in 1978, he called the country of his sanctuary spiritually weak and mired in vulgar materialism. Americans, he said, speaking in Russian through a translator, were cowardly. Few were willing to die for their ideals, he said. He condemned both the United States government and American society for its "hasty" capitulation in Vietnam. And he criticized the country's music as intolerable and attacked its unfettered press, accusing it of violations of privacy.

Many in the West did not know what to make of the man. He was perceived as a great writer and hero who had defied the Russian authorities. Yet he seemed willing to lash out at everyone else as well — democrats, secularists, capitalists, liberals and consumers.

That's true (the lashing out - not the references to America) .

In October 1994, Solzhenitsyn addressed Russia's Parliament. His complaints and condemnations had not abated. "This is not a democracy, but an oligarchy," he declared. "Rule by the few." He spoke for an hour, and when he finished, there was only a smattering of applause.

Well that was true too. But he was a marginal figure in his own country - his TV show flopped. Like a heroic-scale Peter Hitchens, his words, steeped as they were in the past, meant little to a generation unaware of their heritage. Ah - here we are :

In 2007, he accepted a State Prize from then-President Putin — after refusing, on principle, similar prizes from Gorbachev and from Yeltsin. Putin, he said in the Der Spiegel interview, "inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible — a slow and gradual restoration."

To do what was possible. I see what he meant.

(Update - the Times has the facsimile page of his 1976 speech "A Warning to the Western World")

"It’s our home, but we feel like moving away"

"About 20 years ago, this tiny Caribbean twin island state was a nation where you could feel relatively safe"

Aye. And about 40 years ago you could say the same of this island.

"Regardless of the criminal's place of birth is, they should be punished severely. I long for the day when capital punishment would be put in place. The police force and the defence force are going to have to step it up. The good book says, “He who kills shall be killed.” Some of these bad men walking the streets of Antigua and Barbuda need to learn a lesson. They’re destroying our society"

Antiguans on the people deported by the US and UK :

“Each year the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada deport thousands of people convicted of various crimes to their countries of citizenship in the Caribbean. There is a widely held belief in the Caribbean that recent crime troubles can be tied directly to the activities of deportees who have learnt criminal behaviour in the developed countries,” said a report issued last year by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Latin America and Caribbean region of the World Bank.

The Antiguan government says almost 300 have been returned to the island in the past 10 years. A few were from Britain, but the majority came from the United States. “They are sending back these violent guys. Some left here as babies; they come back as criminals after their graduation from American prison,” said Andy Liburd, editor of the Antigua Sun newspaper. “These people don’t know anyone; they don’t know our culture. Most don’t have family here or if they do, say, have an aunt here she doesn’t want to take them in because of their criminality. Crime is entirely out of control.”

It's one of my pet themes that, where immigration is associated with increased crime, it's not the first generation immigrants who turn out to be bad boys, unless they come from an already dodgy culture like that of Kosovo or Somalia. It's those (a minority, but a significant one in some cultures) who grow up in the new culture (or in our case, and probably in the case of the great American cities, in the lack of culture) who present a problem to the natives. Some of those people then cause a problem 'back a yard' when we kick them out.

She said that Antiguans did not know how to cope with the extreme violence of those who are essentially foreigners ..

The working class natives of London, Birmingham, Manchester face the same issues.

“We’d never seen such ‘bad-mindedness’. It’s beyond control. It’s our home, but we feel like moving away.”