Kylee Dibble - Man Convicted

At his second trial after the jury failed to reach a verdict on the first one (the defendant said he left in the early hours and someone else must have come in, killed her, smashed her piggy-bank for its contents and set fire to the place), smackhead Nicky Robinson has been convicted of the Kylee Dibble murder.

"the blood of the Romans"

Decent of Bilal Abdulla to identify us with the mighty empire of two thousand years back.

The draft will continues: "God has blessed us the ability to lick the blood of the Romans (a reference to westerners] as you have done before us in the past."

The court heard Abdulla went on to rail against "the Kingdom of Evil".

He is alleged to have written: "It destroyed our caliphate, tore apart our unity, defamed and distorted our religion and stabbed us in the heart the day it established that infernal state in our Palestine."

The court was told that, in a reference to conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, he wrote: "Their soldiers kill the young and old. They do not discriminate between men and women, so why should we? If the policy of their army is to kill women and children, then only a similar policy would deter them."

"These people do not care about what is happening in our land as they are all busy with alcoholic drinking and with their intimate friends…these people can only be awakened by the sound of booby traps and the Mujahideen hailing 'God is great'."

Hmmm. "These people do not care about what is happening in our land".

In separate letters, he praised Islamist fighters in Iraq and called on the Muslim community in Britain to "leave this land of unbelievers and atheism before losing your religion".

That's the thing, old chap. Most of "these people" do not care about what's happening in their land, either. I can't help thinking his advice to British Muslims is too pessimistic. Hang on in there, be fruitful and multiply - and you may well find that the mountain does come to Mohammed.

I Don't Know ...

Either the New Wave of British Nazism (NWOBN - © Laban Tall 2008) is as incompetent as the New Wave of British Jihad (NWOBJ - © Laban Tall 2007), or there's something funny going on.

If you were in possession of timers, weedkiller, firelighters and tennis balls in connection with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism, and travelling on the train, would you really take time out to be abusive to a railway servant, resulting in your arrest and discovery ? It makes you wonder if someone knew about him all along.

He is accused on five counts of recording or possessing information or documents likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism. The documents allegedly include notebooks, a folder containing drawings and handwritten notes, the WAFFEN SS UK Members Handbook, and a book entitled Counter Bomb.

The Waffen SS UK Members Handbook ? I'm not sure the Waffen SS was a membership organisation, let alone one with a British branch. I thought you had to be invited.

I wonder what he was doing in Suffolk ? Perhaps, as a loyal member of the Waffen SS (isn't that treasonable ?) he was planning an attack on the birthplace of British radar at Bawdsey, where the Post Óffice carried out the pioneering work in the 30s. Someone ought to tell him he's a bit late.

Once is happenstance ...

... twice is coincidence

... three times is enemy action.

Samizdata note what appears to be a concerted move by the government towards restricting bloggers.

Some Discharged Fireworks On The Curate's Path

It's literally enough to make a cat laugh :

The new codes of practice for owners of dogs, cats and horses, just released for consultation, are part of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 to prevent cruelty. The guidance says that breaching the three codes will not in itself be a crime, but it could prove to be the deciding factor in whether an individual is found guilty in court of a pet welfare offence – which carries a maximum jail sentence of six months or a fine of up to £20,000. Opposition policiticans criticised the "over the top" rules that "take people for fools".

However, Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, said the new laws afford animals "greater protection than ever before". Launching the eight-week consultation, Mr Benn said: "These three new codes of practice will outline the responsibilities of owners under the Act and give practical advice on how to fulfil them. This means no one will be able to claim ignorance as an excuse for mistreating any animal."

The guidelines cover the environment for animals, diet, the company they enjoy, ensuring they exhibit normal behaviour patterns, as well as health and welfare issues.

The code of practice for dogs advises against taking a dog for a walk during the hottest part of the day or feeding it less than an hour before vigorous exercise in order to avoid "bloating". Owners should groom dogs with long hair at least once a day and all dogs should have teeth cleaned with dog chews or canine toothpaste as part of routine care.

Training dogs should be done through "positive reinforcement" rather than punishment that can lead to behavioural problems in the future. Owners can spot signs of stress such as barking excessively, urinating indoors or yawning when not tired.

Is there any part of our lives these people don't want to regulate ? I'll be 'barking excessively' if I read many more stories like the above.

The de-Christianisation of Britain continues ...

Plans to end the dominance of the Anglican faith at the daily opening of Parliament and have multi-faith prayers modelled on BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day are to be considered by the House of Lords' procedure committee.

The change could lead to a rotational approach to daily prayers, where different faiths are represented on a particular day, in theway the Today programme gives a voice to different religions throughout the week.

Lord Brabazon of Tara, the chairman of the committee, is to look at a number of ideas being drafted by the Sikh peer Lord Rana and other peers. Under current arrangements, all sittings in both Houses begin with prayers which follow the Christian faith, a tradition which began in the middle of the 16th century.

Bonita Meyersfeld, an adviser to Lord Rana, said the crossbench peer had gathered support for a number of proposals, one of which was a system based on Thought for the Day. The idea is supported by the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Roberts of Llandudno, a Methodist minister. Attendance at morning prayers is voluntary but members of the public are excluded.

Aaargh ! Woof ! Woof !

Afterthoughts ...

Wasn't Obama's victory speech terrific ? As were the gracious words of John McCain. Obama hit all the right buttons, real lump in the throat stuff.

In fact, the last victory speech which had such an effect on me was delivered in the early hours of May 2nd, 1997.

One or two commenters, noting the voter intimidation in Philadelphia, implied that the US was on a South African trajectory.

I think not. I haven't the figures to hand, but as I recall the black percentage of the US population is actually falling, due to high rates of abortion (one black baby in three) and Hispanic immigration. If anything, demography implies that US politics may become more Mexican.

The Mexican Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino, an ally of President Felipe Calderon, died last night when a small plane he was travelling in crashed into evening rush hour traffic in Mexico City. The reason for the crash was not clear but a civil aviation disaster expert told Reuters that sabotage could not be ruled out, along with other possible causes like engine failure.

Calderon, who is waging a high-stakes war on Mexico's powerful drug cartels, mourned the loss of a close aide and friend who had worked with him for years.

Steve Sailer's new Obama book, currently free as a pdf, (link possibly non-work friendly) goes into some detail about the Reverend Wright's church and its theology. But there's a much longer essay on the same subject by Stanley Kurtz here. Quite entertaining stuff - James Cone and the Rev Wright hate white liberals just as much as they hate white conservatives :

Indeed, one of the most striking features of Black Theology and Black Power is its strident attack on white liberals. According to Cone, "when white do-gooders are confronted with the style of Black Power, realizing that black people really place them in the same category with the George Wallaces, they react defensively, saying, 'It's not my fault' or 'I am not responsible.'" But Cone insists that white, liberal do-gooders are every bit as responsible as the most dyed-in-the-wool segregationists. Well before it became a cliche, Cone boldly set forth the argument for institutional racism--the notion that "racism is so embedded in the heart of American society that few, if any, whites can free themselves from it."

The liberal's favorite question, says Cone, is "What can I do?" He replies that, short of turning radical and putting their lives on the line behind a potentially violent revolution, liberals can do nothing. The real liberal question to blacks, says Cone, is "What can I do and still receive the same privileges as other whites and--this is the key--be liked by Negroes?" Again, he answers, "Nothing."

Ironic really. White do-gooders are all over the shop at present telling the world how Obama transcends race and what a great unifier he is. This is the stuff Obama listened to for twenty years, before discovering how awful it was around the same time the media discovered it.

When we consider that nearly the whole of Wright's original congregation left, that other active members departed, and that Wright's radicalism made relations in the United Church of Christ rocky, Barack Obama's decision to stay appears all the more striking. Indeed, Blow the Trumpet in Zion is filled with attempts by Cone's followers to come to grips with their rejection by the broader black community. Nearly every sermon Wright preaches, as well as his now-infamous bulletins and church magazines, is filled with his radicalism, and it's therefore impossible not to conclude that Obama was broadly attracted to Wright's politics.

The good news (in the sense that his racial identification at least isn't driven by religious fervour, a powerful force) is that Obama seems to have been more attracted to the pro-black/anti-white bit than the religious bit. A/c/t his own testimony, the young radical was advised that his "organising" work would meet with more response from church leaders if he 'belonged' to a church - and he chose Wright's. His interviews with Revds Phillips and Wright don't exactly sound like those of a devoted Christian, more like those of an ambitious agnostic :

“Nothing’s harder than reaching young brothers like yourself,” he said. “They worry about looking soft. They worry about what their buddies are gonna say about ’em. They tell themselves church is a woman’s thing-that it’s a sign of weakness for a man to admit that he’s got spiritual needs."

The reverend looked up at me then, a look that made me nervous. I decided to shift the conversation to more familiar ground ...

Nonetheless, the guy's a bright cookie. As Sailer says, he possesses one of the finest minds of any US politician. I watch events with interest.

Oh, and I see various predictions that other countries will give the new kid in the playground a push or two didn't take long to come true.

Russia will deploy short-range missiles near Poland to counter U.S. military plans in Eastern Europe, President Dmitry Medvedev warned Wednesday, setting a combative tone that clashed with global goodwill over Barack Obama's election.

In his first state of the nation speech, Medvedev blamed Washington for the war in Georgia and the world financial crisis and suggested it was up to Washington to mend badly damaged ties.

Medvedev also proposed increasing the Russian presidential term to six years from four — a change that could deepen Western concern over democracy in Russia and play into the hands of his mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has not ruled out a return to the Kremlin.

Extending the presidential term could mean a possible 12 more years in the top office for the popular Putin.

Finished ...

the Obama book. Most interesting. Highly recommended, especially as he's probably going to be the Big Man by tomorrow.

Like Tony Blair, to his admirers he's the blank slate that you can project pretty much any dream onto. As with Mr Blair, we shall see. Can he be worse domestically than TB was in the UK ?

I'm pretty sanguine about / resigned to the result, although you never can tell - and a good thing too, as happy November days like this one come but rarely.

Dalrymple - and Bromsgrove !

Bromsgrove recently hit the headlines when the (Conservative) council ordered an allotment-holder who'd been targeted by thieves to remove the barbed-wire he'd erected to protect his plants and tools - in case someone hurt themselves on it.

"With regard to the barbed wire, when this is identified on site, we are obliged to request its removal or remove it on health and safety grounds to the general public, as this is a liability issue. This is a requirement enforced by our health and safety department."

The great Dalrymple - whose old stamping ground of Cape Hill wasn't so very far from Marlbrook - is not amused.

"part of her culture"

If these allegations are true - and the court's found in her favour - chalk up another great success for the social worker's default multicultural setting - "cringe".

Rashana is now 33 years old and lives in London. She grew up in Oldham with her mother, father and three brothers.

When admitted to hospital at three weeks old, she had suffered what was described as a non-accidental head injury. Social services recognised she was at risk, and placed her on the Child Protection Register.

But at the age of 14 months she was back in hospital suffering from malnutrition. Her hospital notes from this visit contain the words "baby had no visitors".

Over the years she was in and out of hospital with injuries, mainly inflicted by her mother.

There are laws against that sort of thing. Pity they don't get enforced for everyone.

Rashana was beaten throughout her childhood, threatened with a knife and, in her words "bounced off the walls". "I can remember coming home from school and I'd be scared to see what I was going to get when I got home, why I was going to get beaten up tonight," she said. It was a 15 minute walk home from school but if she didn't get home in 10 minutes she was beaten.

When she was assigned a social worker as a teenager she claims she was told the actions of her family was "part of her culture" and to "put up with it".

At 16 she told a teacher she thought she was pregnant and then revealed that she had been raped by her older brother since the age of 13. Rashana was not pregnant but insisted on being taken into care. Although her brother was given a caution for incest she was pressured into going back home by social services.

She claims social services officials were afraid of being called racist, and told her: "You're Asian, you shouldn't be in a care home."

Now to be fair, the right-on social worker who can find no evil in non-whites is becoming a bit of a cliche - remember the woman who ascribed the late Victoria Climbie's evident fear of her homicidal aunt to the 'respect for elders' so common in 'Caribbean culture' (she was African). But I'm not sure it's quite mainstream enough to be a standard part of the legal team's armoury in such cases - anyone know ? I shall go on the assumption that she's telling the truth.

A Few Bags of Leaves In The Curate's Yard

Pacifist Spain is rapidly expanding its arms sales.

Aged feminista Erica Jong predicts the second American Civil War, blood on the streets and no improvement in Jane Fonda's backache should Obama lose.

Noooooooooooooo !

UK troops may be deployed to Congo as a last resort to end conflict, the government has warned.

The European Union may have to send troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo if the existing United Nations force needs to be bolstered and peace talks fail, Britain’s Africa Minister Lord Malloch-Brown said today.

“We have certainly got to have it as an option which is developed and on the table if we need it,” he said.

So we're already overstretched and underkitted in our (IMHO foolish) attempt to make Afghanistan a democracy, and he wants to stretch the armed forces just a bit more, in the basket case of basket cases. Send the Belgians ! Or hire some mercenaries - Gordon must have a few billion lying around now he's abandoned spending limits.

Jack Straw talks the talk and frightens the Chick Yogs of this world (Justin seems a decent chap and writes well, but he insists on taking populist ministerial pronouncements seriously, despite 11 years of contrary evidence) brilliantly.

The public expect the justice system "to punish those who have broken the law", he will say, adding that it is time "to go back to the sort of plain English we all understand". He will suggest that some of the language around how to deal with offenders has been hijacked by the criminal justice lobby, which is concerned with phrases like the "criminogenic needs of offenders". Government policy should "recognise that being a victim of crime is one of the most traumatic things an individual, their family and their community can face", he will say.
"Offenders must take responsibility for their choice to commit crime, they must be held to account for their actions, and challenged to make a better choice in the future."

We're yet to see any evidence of him walking the walk, and IMHO the wait will be long and barren.

The training courses run by Juniper Training sound interesting. I presume the company exist purely to service Gordon's New Deal (aka attach themselves firmly to the stream of taxpayer revenue associated therewith) :

As part of the session, jobseekers were given a questionnaire, set by Juniper Training in Tamworth, Staffordshire, in a bid to boost their self-esteem. However, Mr Lightwood was left astounded after one of the questions asked if he ever "found it difficult to perform adequately or without embarrassment when involved in sex". The organisers defended the question, arguing that an applicant's skills in the bedroom were linked to their abilities in the workplace.

Hmm. Looks like the personal's not just political - it's economic too.

"I asked the woman who was running the session why on earth she needed to know about my sex life. She told me that if you're not performing well in bed it can affect how you do at work".

Vas vs Woollas.

Mr Vaz, chairman of the home affairs select committee, voiced unhappiness at Mr Woolas's comments during a visit to India where he told business people there that contrary to the minister's remarks there would be no cap on the number of people allowed to migrate to the United Kingdom. He is quoted on several Indian news websites as saying: "There is a wrong perception that the new system will cap the number of migrants, but that's totally untrue." According to the Economic Times of India, Mr Vaz said that the number of skilled migrants entering the UK under the new points based system brought in by Labour would now actually increase.

Keith Vaz represents Leicester. Some interesting comments about how multiculturalism has panned out there in this CiF piece on the late great Orient and Baggies winger (but not exactly an icon of black history) Laurie Cunningham.

UPDATE - a Leicester correspondent writes :

I thought I'd set you straight about what the Guardian commenters said about my home town.

Mostly, the comments were really overwrought, and not a fair representation of Leicester. To pick off a couple of the accusations:

Race riots? Hardly - the odd scuffle maybe, but no more than that on a regular or mass basis. I've lived here for most of my life, and aside from a bit of trouble in the 1980s, not a lot that I'm aware of.

Night time in the city unwelcome to a white male with a shaved head? I go into town most Fridays or Satursdays and never felt unwelcome as a white guy... In fact, like many 'diverse' cities, the centre gets dominated by white people socially, with a few areas dominated by Hindu Asians - but even there, you'd seem more out-of-place than threatened.

The reason why I figured it was worth mentioning - aside from the fact that I continue to have a love of the old place - is that the Guardian commenters portrayed a rather cliched picture of multicultural city life which (1) while sometimes true, isn't always so - and is therefore easy enough for multiculturalists to bat away, and (2) ignores a more important point, that the alternatives are not constrained to either Oldham/Bradford barely-concealed hostility or Notting Hill melting pot "Rainbow Nation", because there's a third alternative, which Leicester represents - mutual indifference.

On one level, what city of 300,000 people is? But ethnicity does matter in seeing the divides. An interesting example is the continuing dominance of white people in running the city; equally, a Saturday afternoon at the Walkers Stadium (football) or at Welford Road (rugby) remains more white than the melting pot notion would suggest - primarily down to different levels of interest, and the same applies in reverse to the Diwali celebrations. The only points of contact tend to be economic - work and shopping - but I somehow doubt that community reduced to a partnership of consumption and production is really any longer worthy of the name.

The major source of ethnic tension to have emerged in recent times is the continued arrival of new, poor migrants - especially the Somalis. Most of Leicester's earlier migrants were either early Pakistani or middle-period Indian and Ugandan Asians (all aspiring middle class), and so tend to be pretty well established and with quite a wealthy element too - and that includes many Muslims, in direct contrast to the situation as I understand it in Bradford, etc. But they seem to resent new immigration far more than the white population does - there is reportedly no small amount of resistance to the Somalis from their co-religionists from Pakistan. That's another important dimension of Leicester's situation compard to the Bradford/Oldham scenario - its claim to diversity isn't just a cover for polarisation, its ethnic composition actually is quite complex. The upside of this is that it limits more open conflict (nobody's that dominant), but the downside is that the resentments often remain, diminishing solidarity.

As for the white population - well, as noted, some have left, and my guess is that the 2011 census will tell a continuation of that story. A number of old industrial villages have become major suburbs over the past 15 years. Among some of those people, and among many that remain in the city, there is a certain angst about the city's trajectory, but one that's under the surface - people don't like to proclaim it for fear of being labelled a racist. But the feeling of dislocation is there... And one thing that adds to that sense of dislocation is the sense that the city is now only ever mentioned (and certainly celebrated) nationally for its ethnic diversity - in that manner where, at times, one might be forgiven for thinking that the city could achieve its true potential only when the white people leave.

I'll finish on a positive note - in my experience, because of this background, many Leicester people have a far more relaxed attitude to race than I find in most places. By this, I certainly don't mean the equal opps multiculti types who seem to dominate the supposed authorities - they're the most uptight race-obsessives going, and they've spawned quite an industry. But most people aren't don't live in that world, and most of them aren't bigots either - and they find a way to rub along, and often very successfully - and this includes an acknowledgement of their differences, and even the funnier side of them. Some hope there about the possibilities of coming together. But all this tends to be between indigenous white people and the established Asian population - and certainly not the more recent arrivals (including Poles), who have arrived in a very different time, and are not encouraged either to integrate or even to compromise with the city's ways much at all.

Steve Sailer on Obama

I've not blogged much about Obama/McCain - mainly because I didn't know much about Obama and what I knew about McCain I wasn't too keen on.

I see a nice-looking chap, good talker, comes over well in the Blair/Cameron style. I don't see much, if anything, in the way of policy. He was against the Iraq war, but that's the past. He accepts that the surge has been a success. I don't think it'll be a disaster for America if he wins, although I'm prepared to be proved wrong. I'm somewhat uneasy that he seems to have a hung out a good deal with people who hate their country - in fact is married to one. But the responsibilities of office have a way of concentrating the mind. With John McCain, you know what you'll get - strong policy abroad coupled with mass immigration at home. Obama's more of a cypher.

Like the BBC and all good lefties, I expect race and racism to play a large part in the election. It's just that I see the racism as mostly coming from white liberals. For black voters, look at the latest figures :

"White" voters (I don't know where Hispanics end up) 44% Obama, 44% McCain
"Black" voters 91% Obama, 1% McCain.

Bush got 8% of the black vote in 2000. Admittedly you'd expect Republican ratings to fall among black voters as they have among whites. But a fall from 8 to 1 ? Hmm.

I digress. And I know nowt about Obama.

The good news is that Steve Sailer, an American writer who treads those dangerous boards where race, culture, economics and genetics meet (he's been described as "a leading promoter of racist pseudoscience" by a "progressive media watchdog group", FWTW - I wrote of him "IQ, genetics, racial differences, racial preferences (i.e. things that would be called racist if a white person did them), all sorts of things you're not supposed to talk about. But no swivel-eyed loon he."), has written a book about him. Well, it's (from what I've read - I'm on page 79 out of 265) half biography, half book review/exegesis of Obama's 1995 book Dreams From My Father : A Story of Race and Inheritance.

And it's unputdownable - or as uputdownable as a pdf can be.

You can download it here. The host site (VDARE.com) may not be work-friendly, given that a/c/t Wikipedia the site has been described as a 'hate site'.

But I've linked to a couple of Sailer pieces before. No hater he - a well-read chap with a neat sense of humour and an interest in other cultures. I don't agree with everything he writes, but he's worth reading. And this is riveting stuff.

I'll precis the beast as much as a man can who's only read a quarter of it. Obamas USP to people who take politics seriously is/was that he transcended race. I remember reading - and agreeing with - a sober post at Booker Rising a year or two back, to the effect that at last we had a black politician whose skin colour wasn't the most important thing about him. That he could be a politician just like any other was the victory. Alas for premature hopes !

Because that's not what Obama thinks. To him, personally, his race is exceedingly important - hence the subtitle of the book.

Remarkably, much of Obama’s campaign image—the transcender of race, the redeemed Christian, the bipartisan moderate, etc.—is debunked in Obama’s own 1995 memoir. Obama’s potential Achilles heel has always been that he has
such a gift for self-expression combined with so much introspective self-absorption that he can't help revealing himself to the few who invest the effort to read carefully his polished and subtle (but fussy and enervating) prose.

I won't go on, except to say that Obama's mother comes across as a very modern type, reminding me of one or two girls I knew at university - white, bright middle-class girl for whom blackness is somehow more authentic - more real - than anything else around her. In her son's words :

I felt as if I were being given a window into her heart, the unreflective heart of her youth. I suddenly realized that the depiction of childlike blacks I was now seeing
on the screen, the reverse image of Conrad‘s dark savages, was what my mother had carried with her to Hawaii all those years before, a reflection of the simple fantasies that had been forbidden to a white middle-class girl from Kansas, the
promise of another life: warm, sensual, exotic, different.

Her son's politics seem to be far more a product of her teaching than anything from Obama's absent father. But enough of this posting already. I need to get back to the book. Read. Enjoy.