The Gulag Gets Closer .....

From the Guardian.

David Winnick, a member of the Commons home affairs select committee, said only somebody who was "psychotic" would question anti-discrimination laws.

Whether or not you support the UKs race relations legislation, it's worrying when MPs consider that dissent equates to mental illness. Perhaps we shall see a Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry (which routinely found Soviet dissidents to be insane) established in the UK. All for our own good, you understand.

After all, it's already well known that the more you deny racism, the more likely you are to be an 'unconscious or unwitting' racist. As the Labour leader in the Lords, Williams of Mostyn, said on April 15, 1999, after the publication of the Lawrence report :

"I have often said--I do not apologise for repeating it--that very often the most dangerous person in our society is the person who says, "I haven't a racist bone in my body". Such people are dangerous because they believe it; they are dangerous because they are extremely nice people; and they are dangerous because they do not know what they do not know."

Thoughtcrime, anyone ?

Pakistan v India

Pakistan levelled the series on Tuesday in another thriller. India 244-9 today - looks good for Pakistan. Live coverage - BBC Asian Network.

Mo wonder MW reception is poor though. It's only on MW in these areas, otherwise you'll need Digital Radio or satellite.

East Midlands: 837 24 Hours
West Midlands: 1458 and 828 24 Hours
Derbyshire: 1116 7pm-12.30am Mon-Thurs,
9pm-12.30am Fri,
6pm-12.00am Sat-Sun
Peterborough/North Cambridgeshire: 1449 24 hours
West Yorkshire (Leeds/Bradford): 774 4pm-12.30am Mon-Fri,
7pm-12.00am Saturday
Lancashire (Blackburn and Preston): 855 6pm-12.30am Mon-Fri,
6pm-8pm Saturday
Beds Bucks and Herts: 630 and 1161 9pm Mon/Tue/Wed and 7.00pm Thurs-Fri
Sheffield: 1035 4pm-5am Mon-Fri

Tour Schedule

One Day Internationals
13 March - 1st ODI, Karachi
India beat Pakistan by 5 runs.

16 March - 2nd ODI Rawalpindi
Pakistan beat India by 12 runs.

19 March - 3rd ODI, Peshawar
Pakistan beat India by 4 wickets.

21 March - 4th ODI, Lahore

24 March 5th ODI, Lahore

Test Matches
28 March-1 April 1st Test, Multan
5-9 April 2nd Test, Lahore
13-17 April 3rd Test, Rawalpindi


UPDATE - another Pakistan win despite fine bowling by the magnificently named Irfan Pathan.

Waiter ? Could I Change This Knife Please ?

From BBC News:

More than 100 Islamists have invaded a restaurant in Bahrain and threatened diners with knives, say witnesses. The youths stormed La Terrasse restaurant near the capital, Manama, on Wednesday night because it was serving alcohol, the owner said.

Customers said one diner managed to grab hold of a knife and he stabbed one of the youths with it.

The youth is critically ill.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Bernard Cantat, the standard bearer for a generation of French idealists, awaits a verdict on charges of killing his girlfriend, admired for her moving portrayals of sensual, highly strung and often vulnerable women, in a jealous rage after she received an affectionate text message from her former husband and father of two of her children.

Ah, those free-spirited idealists ! Those unconventional rebels against bourgeois values ! The trouble is that the ideas of the Sixties are now the values of most of us. The great Dalrymple speaks thus :

Take but their elevated status as celebrities away, and Trintignant and Cantat were the typical underclass couple of whom I encounter at least one daily in my medical practice, year in, year out. Since the sexual revolution of the sixties, in fact, insensate jealousy of the kind that leads to death in Vilnius hotel rooms has become not morbid or pathological, but perfectly normal, at least in the statistical sense. There has—in Britain at least—been an upsurge in violence between the sexes, by no means all of it committed by men against women.

A few weeks ago, for example, I had a medical student attached to me. The first patient whom we saw together was a young man brought to the hospital by the police with the blood of his girlfriend, whom he had just stabbed to death, still on his shoes. She had taunted him, he said, about his inferior performance as a lover compared with her last such, one of many, whom she had then telephoned to ask him to come and “sex her up” because he—the murderer—was not up to it. A man conditioned to believe by an over-sexualized culture that sexual performance was the only real measure of a human being, he resorted to the kitchen knife and stabbed her not once, not twice, but thrice. Thereafter, he had called the police and taken the pills, rather like Cantat. I looked at my medical student as the patient told his story: an intelligent, sheltered young man (as young men ought to be), he learned more about human nature in that ten minutes than in all the rest of his life put together. He aged, or perhaps I should say matured, visibly as he listened. And in the afternoon, we saw a man who had strangled his girlfriend in her parents’ house, also in an access of jealousy. Not for the student any longer the shallow pieties of the sexual revolution.

Jessica Harbour doesn't like Dalrymple's 'smarm posing as pity'. Emmanuelle Richard also comments.

Sometimes I Wonder

If I'm getting too wound up by the bad things I see on the streets, read of in my local paper, hear on the BBC. Am I becoming obsessive, consumed with bitterness and hatred ? Am I cracking up ?

Then I read A L Kennedy. There's always someone worse off than you.

Oh Dear ...

Driving home, listening to Eddie Mair (a Radio 5 person if ever there was, Nikki Campbell sans offensiveness), interviewing a Spanish liberal leftist, who spoke of the 'illegal war' in Iraq and how the best path was to address the injustices and grievances which were the root cause of terror, rather than taking up arms, which would only create more terrorists and make more people hate us.

Some Spanish Fisk-equivalent, I thought. They've been all over the BBC since last Sunday.

"And that was Jose-Angel Cantarememba, shortly to become the new Spanish Foreign Minister".

Ay Caramba !

I Can't Believe This ....

BBC Today programme, 8.35.

"In the aftermath of the Madrid bombings, we discuss the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist."

"We" being Leila Khaled, Palestinian hijacker and hostage-taker, and Danny Morrison, Sinn Fein/IRA publicity head (and the man who has the last word on what happens to republican 'informers').

Words fail me. RealAudio link here.

If The Victim Hadn't Been White ....

Would this be a racist murder ?

UPDATE - It's certainly a mystery to the BBC.

UPDATE 18/3/04 - The Scotsman has more. And the Guardian has wise words from Labour MSP Gordon Jackson. "Every area, particularly in a city, has young men getting into bother from time to time." He's right of course. In Gloucester the council have a regular van runnng to collect the bodies of abducted schoolboys. Just a bit of 'bother' Kriss Donald got into. Nae worries. The Indie, like the Guardian and the BBC, is worried by the potential for damage to race relations rather than the hideous murder of a young boy, but a local resident doesn't agree.

James Boyd, a neighbour of the dead teenager, said: "Whenever a white guy hits an Asian kid, it's a racial incident. But when Asian kids attack us, it is passed off as a gang fight".

Got it in one.

A Triumph for Democracy ?

The Arab press give differing views, none of which are very comfortable, about the message of Madrid.

Jordan's semi-official al-Rai said in a commentary Tuesday that the fall of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in elections was "a political and moral victory for the Iraqi people, and for all people who suffered and will suffer from to the American arsenal."

The United Arab Emirates' al-Khaleej Times said in its editorial that "it took a tragedy of unthinkable proportions for the people of Spain to awaken to the poor judgment of retiring Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar." The English-language pro-government daily said that by aligning itself with the American administration's policies, Aznar's conservative government distanced itself from its European neighbors and drew the "wrath of the masterminds of Thursday's synchronized bombings in Madrid."

The London-based al-Hayat daily also ran a commentary on the outcome of the Spanish elections, saying they constituted a "loss to President Bush's administration." The Saudi-owned paper, however, asked whether al-Qaida network, if proven that it was behind the Madrid train attacks, had any impact on the results of the Spanish polls. It asked if that would "encourage transferring the experiment to move the war to the streets of countries that are allied with the U.S. in occupying Iraq or the war on terror." The Arabic-language paper asked if that meant the results would encourage bringing down the British and Italian governments by adopting the same method of terror attacks.

Return Of The Domino Theory

In this Norwegian blog entry by Bjorn Staerk, quoting a document harvested from a trawl of Islamic websites.

"What we found was a 42 page strategy document, where an anonymous author discusses what strategy to use to force the coalition lead by the US out of Iraq, says researcher Thomas Hegghammer. .. It concludes that one should go for a domino effect, where one first pressures one country to pull out, so the others may follow. The author points to Spain as that country in the coalition which it would be most convenient to attack. "

"To make the Spanish government pull out of Iraq, the Muslim resistance forces must direct blows against the Spanish forces, and these must be joined by information about the situation in Iraq .. one must take maximum advantage of the approaching election in Spain in March next year .. we expect the Spanish government won't withstand more than two, maximum three, such attacks, because of pressure from public opinion. If they nevertheless should remain in Iraq, their continued presence will become an important issue for the Socialist Party."

Hat-tip to Anthony Cox.

I know nothing about ETAs modus operandi, but I can't get over the fact that the explosive used in the Madrid attacks appears to have been sourced in Spain, and has been used extensively in the past, though not in recent bombings, by ETA. How would AQ get hold of it ? Some dissident 'Real ETA' faction ?

There's more to this story than either/or, I'm sure. It was only a month ago that two ETA people were arrested heading for Madrid in a truck with 1,000 lbs of explosive. Has there been collaboration ?

Unthinkable, you may think. But the IRA collaborated with the Nazis during WWII (and de Valera, to Ireland's eternal shame, was still sending Hitler birthday greetings in April 1945).

Maybe 'Spain's difficulty is the Basques opportunity'.

PS - interesting analysis at this Irish libertarian blog.

UPDATE - Times commentary on the 'Al Quaeda election', giving a slightly chilling list of US allies with elections coming up. And Tim Hames considers the results 'a landslide win for Bin Laden'.

UPDATE2 - so, however unwillingly, does Natalie Solent. who also has an excellent post on the decline in physics teaching.

Perfectly Legal

Two morality tales about culture and the free market. Some libertarians believe that a free market and enforceable contracts are all that's needed for virtue to triumph. I have never agreed.

Peter Hitchens has spoken of police who enforce the letter of a beaureaucratic law rather than the spirit of an agreed moral code. Adam Smith believed that free markets were, and should be, underpinned by Christian morality. Let's have a look at these two business deals and see what you think.

It was the late 1980s, and Mrs Thatcher's government had passed legislation enabling council tenants to buy their homes at a hefty discount to the market price. The longer you'd been a tenant, the greater the discount. Our hero, a young Tory MP who had made a million from oil trading by the time he was thirty, was living in a block of Westminster flats, some of which were still council owned. Like his elderly and impecunious neighbour's. So a deal was struck. The MP would put up the money for his neighbour to buy the freehold at a huge discount to the open market price. The elderly man would live rent-free for the rest of his life, and on his death the Tory MP would become the owner of a very desirable bit of property.

At the time (I was then a Labour Party member) I considered the transaction despicable. I still do. Remember, he was an MP for a government who had passed the legislation with the express intention of enabling poorer people to become homeowners, not to further enrich millionaires. But, in a phrase we were destined to hear more and more in the ensuing years, he had 'done nothing illegal'. Today the MP is a Tory Front Bench spokesman.


Move forward fifteen years or so. The pension transfer scandal (where clients were mis-sold personal pensions or wrongly advised to leave company schemes) has been on the public radar for a long time now.

Some firms of Independent Financial Advisers (IFAs) have closed or gone into liquidation, and so are unable to compensate the victims of mis-selling.

To help such people the Government regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), have set up a scheme called the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), funded by a levy on existing IFA firms, which will enable the investors to be compensated.

There was until recently a firm of IFAs called Berry Birch and Noble Financial Services, owned by a holding company called Berkeley Berry Birch (BBB). The directors of the holding company looked at the outstanding compensation liabilities of BBN, and obviously didn't like what they saw.

So a decision was taken to
a) transfer the IFA salesforce from Berry Birch and Noble Financial Services to the previously dormant company Berry Birch and Noble Financial Planning, also owned by BBB.
b) Put Berry Birch and Noble Financial Services into liquidation
c) At which point the outstanding pension transfer liabilities would fall onto the Financial Services Compensation Scheme rather then remaining within BBB.

All perfectly legal. But, as the firm's (retired) founder Derek Berry said, 'The stigma will make the firm's name stink'. And so it should. Would you trust these people with your money ?

BBB are publicly quoted. According to the trade paper Money Marketing (from which this story is taken), shareholders include Clerical Medical, Norwich Union, Friends Provident, Scottish Widows and Standard Life. Some of your money is probably invested with BBB. Should it be ?

Victory for Murder

Whether or not the Madrid bombings turn out to have been the work of Islamic terrorists, the results of the Spanish elections will undoubtedly be seen by Al Quaeda as a sign that Western democracies don't have the stomach for the fight. If 10 bombs produce a 10% change in voting, why not try this tactic elsewhere - say on a Coalition-supporting country with elections coming up in June ?

The BBC, Guardian and Mirror are salivating over the Socialist victory. Even were the Spanish Socialists the best possible government for Spain domestically, globally this result is bad news.

Harry, the Gangster and Cuthbertson are all perturbed.

I'm surprised - always thought of Spaniards as proverbially brave under fire.

Meanwhile back in Blighty the Tipton Taleban are given big air, and more is revealed about the non-existence of our immigration and asylum 'system'.

Interesting Guardian survey, showing that Muslim support for Labour has fallen from 75% to 38%. Of the lost 37%, 26% has gone to the Lib Dems and 11% to the Tories. And 13% ('a small minority') would support further terrorist attacks on the US. I'm assuming few of those will be Tories.

Let me see, 13% of 1.6 million - that makes 208,000 terrorism supporters living in the UK. Compared to, say, 400,000 Muslim Tory supporters. Thank heavens its only a small minority.

Mirror, Mirror

The Mirror is at it again. Never mind the 200 dead in Madrid - the first seven pages of the Sunday Mirror are given over to the Tipton Taleban's version of events in Guantanamo.

You'd think Tina Weaver would have learned from the Daily Mirror's sales plunge this time last year, when the paper remained anti-war while our troops were fighting. They obviously didn't teach Kipling at Piers Morgan's public school.

For it's 'Tommy this' and 'Tommy that' and 'Chuck 'im out, the brute !'
Yet it's 'Saviour Of 'Is Country' when the guns begin to shoot

You can see why Guantanamo revelations might add sales at the Observer or Indie - and indeed while the Sunday Indie has Madrid as the main story, the Observer gives its front page to the Tipton detainees. The story speaks to the core demographic of self-hating white liberals, a most numerous and influential class. Yet the average Mirror reader won't give a flying one about the Tipton Three, and those who do have a view are much more likely to think they should have stayed locked up. Mirror Group Newspapers are taking on the aspect of a gigantic vanity publisher.

The People have the headline Mirror readers would really rather see -

PETER AND JORDAN - THE FIRST SNOG

Letters To The Times

Dear Sir,

On Saturday 13th March I read the first Independent article suggesting that 'The pro-US policy has already appeared to place Spaniards in jeopardy' - with its unstated but implied corollary that it's safer not to annoy mass-murdering theocratic fascists in case they hate us even more.

Is this a record ?

Yours etc.

Speaking Truth To Power

Radio 5 on Friday morning.

'Nikki' Campbell - '... and of course, ETA have had links with the IRA'

Frank Gardner (BBC Security Correspondent) - 'That's right - in fact Gerry Adams said in a speech - not that Gerry Adams is IRA, but Sinn Fein do have contacts with them ...'

With a Security Correspondent like that, who needs enemy propaganda outlets ? If he can't tell the truth about Gerry Adams, can he tell the truth about anything ?

BBC Disses The English Again

England cricket follower ? Looking for live BBC radio coverage of the Windies series today ?

Forget it. They weren't prepared to go head to head with Talk Sport for the rights.

Of 'Asian Heritage' ? Failed Tebbit's cricket test ? Ball by ball coverage of Pakistan v India ?

No worries. Live coverage as I type, on the BBC Asian Network. Pakistan are chasing 350 and it's going to be close, though India have the edge.


Still, it's nice for an oppressed minority, subject to all kinds of violence and abuse from the majority population, living in a land where the State religion automatically discriminates against them, to have something like this to celebrate.

I'm not talking about British Asians of course - I mean Pakistani Christians.

Devout Catholic Yousuf Youhana's brilliant 73 from 69 balls (including four sixes) is the highlight of coverage so far. Must get back for the finish.

PS - Latif's blog is worth a read.

UPDATE - India won a nailbiter by six runs. As a cricket lover I shall be listening to the whole series, but in what other country would the national broadcaster devote such time to meeting the needs of people who support a foreign rather than the national team ?

Those Caring Social Workers

I never fail to be amazed at our punitive criminal justice system. Just because you beat someone to death in an unprovoked attack doesn't mean you should necessarily go to jail, does it ? Especially when you were only fifteen at the time. A fine, probation or community service should surely be sufficient.

After all, he looks like a nice boy.



Yet when social workers included these in a range of suggested sentencing options, fuddy-duddy old High Court judge Lord Hardie spat the dummy.

"He said that for a social worker to consider the options of fines, community service or probation was absurd.
The only sentence available for murder, he insisted, was life imprisonment."

To think we pay taxes for a judge like that when we could spend the money on social workers !

They're Back !

The Tipton Taleban return. Initial reports are that their first question on arriving at Northolt was 'Can you tell me the time of the next flight to Baghdad ?'.

Littlejohn doesn't seem too chuffed, but all right-thinking people will be delighted that these innocents, so cruelly snatched from their backpacking holidays, are out of the clutches of the Great Satan. Allahu Akhbar, as Terry Waite would say.

UPDATE - The Sun has the sort of details you won't find in the Guardian - like the convictions for violence of two of the three Tipton boys. Good to see they released the web designer (Jamad al Harish ne Ron Fiddler) though ...

What has the world come to when you can find real news in the Sun ?

Plastic Gangster

Has a couple of interesting posts - one on the dreadful Jon Snow, and a link to this story on Iraq. I must say that these Shi'ite clerics do have a few ideas on how to deal with the social issues of our time. I can see why Pilger and Co. are so supportive of them.

"Saddam Hussein had two advantages over the coalition: In his time, anyone who took drugs was executed, and anyone with AIDS was burned."

I confess I only link to the Snow story because the Gangster appears to be a fan of Frank Zappa's "Apostrophe".

Bloggers Against Fascism

Debate at Harry's and Peter Cuthbertson's.

Two points

Firstly, what do we mean by fascism ? Is it a state of things where telling the truth can be a criminal offence, or where the State takes it upon itself to decide what truth is ? Is it a state of affairs where free speech is suppressed by the organs of the State ? Is it where thought crime exists in law ? Or where senior members of the Government meet at the House of Lords to be advised by someone who believes that supporters of some political parties should be beaten up in the street ?

If so it appears to have arrived early, with a caring liberal face. Yet not a dog barks on the Left, with the notable exception of Peter Tatchell. "Liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don't want to hear", says the admirable Harry's Place. Yet the case of Harry Hammond passed him by totally, as it's passed by Amnesty International and Liberty. The days of 'I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it' are long gone. It's a very bad portent when 'freedom of speech' becomes 'freedom of speech for some but not others'. The infrastructure is being built.

Secondly, the culture war waged over the last thirty years by the Left (I dissociate Old Labour from this - this is a phenomenon with its genesis in student politics) has objectively created conditions which make a form of fascism much more likely. The celebrated decline of deference cuts more than one way. Society is much less gentle, more violent, than it was fifty years ago. Political allegiance is much less deep-rooted, more volatile, than it was. Our children are being taught to identify themselves as members of a particular ethnic group (my older children were given a form at school to fill in) rather than as Britons. There is enormous cynicism about politics and a culture which demands instant gratification. Ancient institutions which have served to preserve liberty over centuries have been emasculated or abolished. It's possible that given such a cultural background, national self-confidence (something we currently don't have) could take unpleasant forms.

Though at the heart of the BNP are some very nasty ideas (I keep coming back to this document) I don't see a big BNP vote as directly bringing fascism nearer, though it may help tilt the cultural balance of forces a little in that direction. What it will do is unleash a long-overdue debate on the Left. If their website is any guide, the average BNP member/supporter is from 'the old school' - a remnant of the culture which the left are attacking. A typical example was the charming elderly BNP councillor who told Radio 5 that her most admired person was Nelson Mandela. These people just aren't natural fascists, unless you consider the England of Attlee or Harold Wilson was fascist. Elderly Englishmen and women - the Middle England of the Daily Mail - don't do fascism. For younger surfers, fascism isn't not being allowed to marry your gay partner in church, or being cold-shouldered at the PTA. It's being beaten in the street, sacked from your job, having your windows smashed or your property torched. Middle England ain't big on any of that.

A big BNP vote (and I'll be surprised if we don't see a couple of Euro-MPs elected) won't be a vote for fascism in the minds of their voters, any more than the million Stop the War marchers were supporters of Saddam or the SWP. It'll be a gigantic 'Not In My Name !' aimed at the mainstream political parties, who will need to look again at the vast swathe of political terrritory they've vacated and left to the BNP.

For those who read their history, fascism was always about youth. Currently the nearest thing to a fascist youth movement is the area where animal rights, anti-globalisation and environmentalism meet. The kind of people who will hit an elderly hunt follower in the face with a hammer, surround a house containing terrified children and smash all the windows, burn foreign-owned property (if it's American owned, that is), publish lists of enemies to be dealt with, or wear 'Hurry up and Die, Queen Mother' t-shirts. These movements all belong to the cultural Left.

I see no sign at all of any similar youth movement on the Right. When the coolest kids in school self-identify as nationalists, when their bands are in the charts and girls wear 'My Boyfriend Is An Englishman' shirts - that'll be where the kind of fascism the Left disapproves of begins.

So if you want to prevent fascism, stop creating the objective conditions for it. And roll back the existing manifestations.

It won't happen of course. We will continue down the broad and pleasant path, eyes wide shut, until the rough beast finally arrives, in whatever form, and we wonder like children what's gone wrong. In my worst visions my sons are on the streets, trying to stop people being attacked because of their race (and in danger of attack themselves), while in a thousand council offices ex-liberal careerists are hastily applying for the new Anglicisation Policy Co-ordinator posts ("under the Race Relations Act 2016, this post is only open to those of Anglo-Saxon cultural heritage") and the UN is wondering whether troops should be sent in.

Have a nice day.