Wikipedia - The Memory Hole

Gone - Gavin Hopley, Christopher Yates, Charlene Downes, Mary-Ann Leneghan, Richard Whelan. Was Ross Parker there before ?

Charlene Downes entry was deleted by a chap called Srikeit, an Indian national who discovered Wikipedia in January and became an administrator in July. I have to admire his self-confidence in feeling able to chop an item on an English murder - I'm sure I wouldn't feel myself competent to pronounce on murder cases in India.

How long can Kriss Donald's entry survive ? Or Isiah Young-Sam's ?

I don't think we have to worry yet about Anthony Walker. But don't tell them about the Zebra Killings.




(Hat-tip and stolen logo - the Dumb One)

"Most Racist Murder Victims Are White"

Slowly, the MSM (always excepting the BBC of course), are waking to the possibility that racism may not be a disease only affecting people with white skin.

Sean O'Neill in today's Times.

A Home Office report reveals that of the 22 homicides classified as racially motivated between 2001-04, the majority of victims (12 cases) were white.

When you consider that a non-white killer practically has to sign a confession of racism witnessed by a bishop, a magistrate and a GP before the police or courts will accept it, those figures are remarkable. Christopher Yates' attackers weren't racist, were they ? After all, a white judge has said so.

The similarities between the two murder cases (of Anthony Walker and Christopher Yates - LT), and the differences in their outcomes, has left the Yates family feeling that it has been treated unequally. “I understand what Mrs Walker and her family are going through. We are going through exactly the same thing,” Rose Yates, Mr Yates’s mother, told The Times.

“But it appears to me that we have experienced a different measure of justice than they have experienced.”


O'Neill's report considers the possibility that the gentrification of East London is leading to attacks on whites 'moving into Bengali neighbourhoods'. I'm pretty sure we used to call such people racist thugs - when they were white, that is. It also mentions Kriss Donald, Ross Parker, and the almost unknown Gavin Hopley, a lad who got lost in Oldham after a night out (he was not from Oldham) and was killed when he looked for a taxi in the wrong area of town.

Killer (le mot juste) quote :

The Commission for Racial Equality, asked about anti-white racism, said that there was little, if any, research on the issue. The London Borough of Barking & Dagenham, where Mr Yates lived, said its community cohesion unit did not want to comment.

UPDATE - compare the police and local authority response to the murders of Johnny Delaney and Peter Stone.

Soggy Puddles From The Curate's Paddock

Broadband still bust - seems to be the router or cabling rather than the connection, so I'll be at Gloucester Screwfix (that well known networking supplies store) for some patch cables come 8 am tomorrow.

As a result I haven't browsed the Web much and am out of touch with what's going on, having only BBC news to listen to - most of which has been seemingly devoted to the Anthony Walker verdict. The contrast between the coverage and that given to Kriss Donald (see this First Post piece) is so infuriating that I have to keep reminding myself that Anthony Walker was a decent guy, foully killed by evil men, that his family are better Christians by far than I am (I'd be happy for the killers to be executed whereas his mum's forgiving them) - and that it isn't the Walkers' fault that the BBC don't cover white victims the same way - or even black victims who aren't killed by whites. Isiah Young-Sam was a young black Christian killed in a racist attack - but we didn't get live coverage of his memorial service. The wrong guys killed him.

Incidentally I note the murder weapon (ice-axe) had been stolen by our Scally killers from a mountain shop in Snowdonia, in line with the great Scouse tradition in which the A55 is full of Transits taking heroin in one direction and returning with antiques and garden statuary in the other.



Elsewhere ... Fiona Pinto flags up an interesting event.

On December 6, at 6.30 in Committee Room 11, in the Palace of Westminster, Gianna Jessen, a young American woman who survived saline abortion at 7 plus months, and now campaigns against abortion, will be the guest speaker at an event hosted by Mr Joe Benton MP, on behalf of our own new campaign Alive and Kicking (of which CORE is a member).

Gianna will be running the London Marathon next April for S.O.S ;a charity which supports children born with cerebral palsy. Gianna herself suffers from this condition as a result of her traumatic and premature birth.

The day before (Monday 5th December), get down to the LSE if you're in London.


The Big Debate
National Security vs. Political Expression: Where do we draw the line?
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
6.30pm 5th December, 2005
Room D602

ALL WELCOME!!!

Chair
Professor Lord Robert Skidelsky, Baron of Tilton (Warwick)

Panellists
Peter Hitchens (Mail on Sunday)
Brendan O'Neill (Deputy Editor, spiked)
Alasdair Palmer (Public Policy Editor, Sunday Telegraph)

There is no doubt a line must be drawn since a shift too far in either direction imperils the other position; however the precise position is clearly a matter of contention.

Prime Minister Blair's first 'whipped-vote' defeat in the Commons on Bill 55 - The Terrorism Bill 2005 (despite the support of The Sun Newspaper) highlighted a deep and divisive faultline in British politics about how to deal with an entirely new security paradigm.

With the gruesome and horrific London bombings of 7/7 fresh in our hearts and minds the nature of the threat must be addressed so that together we may plot the way forward.

Some questions are procedural (i.e. what rights should a potential terrorist have, 28 days or 90?) but others go far deeper into the collective British psyche. Should support for resistance movements be criminalized? Should non-violent political parties be banned? Is habeas corpus dispensable? Shoot-to-kill? Does it truly matter that we will have to impinge on the right to protest to save lives? What should be the role of the judiciary in this new environment? Does Western civilisation face an existential threat from Al-Qaida cells or is that assessment overblown? Have British Muslims integrated?

These are in addition to more pivotal philosophical questions. How central is the right to political expression in a secular, liberal democracy? Do the needs of the many outweigh the rights of the few? What is it we truly value: life or liberty? Does there really have to be a trade-off between the two?

As the War on Terror continues to escalate from Bagram to Bali, Grozny to Gaza City, Tashkent to Tal Afar, once again the LSE SU Comparative Ideologies Society takes on the complex issues and tackles the tougher questions. Join us…

Sounds like a belter and I hope a few people will be blogging it.



I can't believe the naivety of the Christian 'Peace Activists' who thought Iraq was a good place to hang out in. Having spent their time campaigning for the release of detainees in Iraq, they are now detainees in Iraq themselves. "Committed to reducing violence by getting in the way" is their motto. They must be thanking their lucky stars that they're not in Nazi Bush's Gulag but in the hands of the struggling and oppressed Iraqi people.

The only cheerful thing about this whole sorry story is that the 'resistance' don't seem to be that media-savvy, if the desire to kill Westerners is greater than their need for good publicity from useful idiots. Nothing like attacking people who are on your side.

Interesting story on the Belgian bomber oin the Guardian. I thought only the Sun wrote about immigrants claiming benefits and driving expensive cars.

Three years ago she married Hissam Goris who took his new wife to Morocco, though they were careful to return home so they would not lose unemployment benefits. The couple eventually settled in in the rundown area around the Gare du Midi in Brussels where many Muslims live.

Muriel's parents spoke of the cultural gulf which strained relations on the rare occasions that their daughter was driven to their house by her husband in his Mercedes.

Stereotyping or what ?

The BBC - Still Institutionally Racist

The BBC must be feeling sensitive about criticism of the remarkable contrast between their coverage of murders where the perpetrators are white and those where the perpetrators are black or Asian.

Alright, so the murder, and trial of the killers of Christopher Yates received no national news coverage. just one local BBC story before the verdict, while the ongoing trial of the Anthony Walker accused is the subject of daily national news updates.

But someone's conscience must be pricking a bit. The BBC News website has decided to take a detailed look at the case. The conclusion ? The killers were acting like white people.

"Three young men get very drunk, shout racist abuse, assault a waiter in a curry house and get involved in a series of brawls, climaxing with an attack on a innocent man who crosses their path.

It sounds like an all too familiar night of violence of the type which blights many city centres in Britain.

Except that the victim, 30-year-old graduate Christopher Yates, was white."

How very odd. For the BBC is a stronghold of what Marian Fitzgerald calls "the Seventies model of racist behaviour, which meant all racism involved the white community" - so how can non-whites be racist ?

The BBC analysis appears to be that these chaps have gone native, with the inevitable unhappy results.

"Maqsood, Bashir and Zulfiqar eschewed their parents' religion and culture - although they paid lip service to it - and chose instead to imitate their white English peers with binge drinking, sex and consumerism."

One mustn't be too critical. It's progress that the piece even appears at all. The BBC have a mental narrative in which half the globe is still pink and England is covered with 'No dogs, blacks or Irish' signs. Strangely, it's they who are having difficulty coming to terms with a multracial, multicultural society. If anyone there ever looks at the Home Office figures (table 3.6) which show that in inter-racial murders white people are much more likely to be victim than perpetrator, they probably put it down to poverty or the legacy of colonialism.

It's not deliberate - it's rooted in their culture. It's "unwtting and unconscious" as someone once said.

"Us" Killing "Them" vs "Them" Killing "Them"

When Muslims are killed by non-Muslims, Muslim organisations protest.

When Muslims kill Muslims, as in Sudan or Iraq, the same organisations stay silent.

When a white person in Britain kills a black or Asian person, it's headline news - especially if the victim is a decent, upstanding member of the community. As I wrote a while back "the only times you hear in the media about a black kid with good grades and school attendance is when his poor mother's asked to come and identify the body. Stephen, Damilola, Kieran".

You could add poor Anthony Walker to that list. But some good, decent black kids don't even make the BBC local news.

Imagine a couple of black girls sitting in a parked car, when it's surrounded by a gang of white youths. One of the girls gets out to remonstrate and is stabbed to death.

It would be all over the news. There'd be protests and vigils. BBC News 24 would show the memorial service live, as it did for Anthony Walker.

Ruth Okechukwu, aged 18, was killed last Sunday and the story has sunk without trace.

Pastor's daughter Ruth Okechukwu, 18, was murdered after being repeatedly knifed in a 'cold-blooded' gang attack. She suffered wounds to the wrist, hand, throat and fatally to the heart.

Ruth and a friend were sitting in a parked car in Peckham when it was surrounded by a gang of six or seven youths. She is believed to have been stabbed when she got out to remonstrate with the youths.

A 16 year youth has been arrested and is being intervened by detectives at a south London police station.

Walker, Donald, Parker

The BBC have defended the different amount of coverage given to the murders of Anthony Walker and Richard Whelan - a difference they acknowledge.

The BBC has given a lot of national coverage to the murder of Anthony Walker, the 18-year-old boy killed with an axe in Merseyside last Friday.

It made the One, Six and Ten O'Clock News bulletins; there were constant live updates on News 24; and it led the UK index of the BBC News website.

The other murder, however, that of 28-year-old Richard Whelan, stabbed to death on a London bus, failed to make any of the national television bulletins, even in the immediate aftermath.

The reason ?

" ... in fact the two murders are very different. As far as I know, from reading the Press Association wires, listening to the police and reading newspaper coverage, the police are not suggesting there was any racial motive in the killing of Richard Whelan."

Hang on. As Dumb Jon points out, this is a £3bn organisation and its news editor gets her stories from other people.

But in the Anthony Walker case ? "It is this racial element to the crime that makes it different."

Ah - of course. Had Richard Whelan been killed in a racist attack, he'd have got the full One, Six and Ten o'clock treatment, wouldn't he. Just like Kriss Donald did. Not.

I wrote to the BBC Newswatch website as follows - we'll see if there's a reply. Don't wait up.

In responding to the concerns of licence fee payers over the vast difference in coverage between the Anthony Walker and Richard Whelan murders, Amanda Farnsworth says "It is this racial element to the crime that makes it different."

Could Amanda Farnsworth please then explain why the racist murders of 15 year old Kriss Donald in Glasgow and 17-year old Ross Parker in Peterborough never "made the One, Six and Ten O'Clock News bulletins; there were constant live updates on News 24; and it led the UK index of the BBC News website".

Both murders might have been considered exceptionally newsworthy even apart from the racist nature of the attacks - Kriss Donald's because of the vile nature of the assault (the story is not a pleasant read) and Ross Parkers because he was killed 10 days after 9/11 - at a time when the BBC was featuring heavily the dangers of attacks by native Brits on Muslims.

Ross Parker never existed as far as BBC radio and TV news was concerned. The sentencing of Kriss Donald's killers was reported on the PM programme and Today, but nothing was reported until the trial - a stark contrast to the Anthony Walker coverage.

Are there any other differences between the Anthony Walker and Kriss Donald cases which might cause the BBC to give one story big air and the other the oubliette ?

I'm sure there is. Just can't quite put my finger on it. Any ideas ?

Updated Google News Counts

Richard Whelan - 37 stories.

Anthony Walker - 518 stories.

Those Murders - Google News Counts

Richard Whelan - 20 stories.

Anthony Walker - 347 stories.

Racist Murder and White Liberal Guilt

On Friday 18 year old Anthony Walker was murdered in Liverpool, in an disgusting and unprovoked racist attack like the ones that killed 15 year old Kriss Donald and 17 year old Ross Parker.

The murder of Anthony Walker was the main or second item on BBC Radio Four News all Saturday. It was the second item on BBC Television news last night, after the terrorist arrests. High profile coverage continued this morning.

The murders of Kriss Donald and Ross Parker didn't ever make BBC Radio or television news. I'm an avid Radio Four listener and I've never heard Ross Parker's name. The Today programme had one report on the trial of Kriss Donald's murderers and the trial was also mentioned on the PM programme.

The Kriss Donald killing was notable for the horrific and premeditated nature of the attack, the Ross Parker murder because it occurred 10 days after September 11th, when the BBC, Guardian and Independent had all antennae alert for a 'backlash' by Native Brits against innocent Muslims. A racist murder of a Native Brit by Muslims ? Sorry - I can't hear you. On the day Ross Parker was killed this is what the BBC were reporting.

It could perhaps be argued that the remarkable disproportion between the coverage of racist murders where the victim is white (minimal coverage) and non-white (major coverage extending in some cases over years) reflects the severity of the problem. Perhaps black and Asian people are being murdered much more often than white.

The Home Office figures (table 3.6) don't seem to bear this out. Over three years 2001-2004 there were 38 homicides of blacks, 28 of Asians, and 22 of 'other' where the principal suspect was white. For blacks the figures were 87 homicides of whites, 12 of Asians, 11 'other', for Asians 37 homicides of whites, 7 of blacks and 6 of 'other', for 'other' 29 homicides of whites, 4 balck, one Asian.

This kind of data is notoriously difficult to analyse, because of the geographical distribution of ethnic groups. For example, if 95% of the white population lived in areas where they never saw a black or Asian person, it would be unfair to conclude that zero racist murder in those areas equalled zero propensity to racist murder.

But what they can show is conclusively is that in all murders which could POTENTIALLY be racist, white people are over-represented in the victim class and correspondingly under-represented in the 'principal suspect' class. You would never know that if you listened to the BBC.

UPDATE - Who else but the Pub Philosopher also comments. And I'd just like to say that I've no objection to the amount of air that the Anthony Walker case is getting. I'd just like to see all all murders getting that kind of coverage - even if the victim's white. Long ago, when murders were half or a third of todays levels, the BBC reported them all on national news. It would be interesting to know when and by whom the decision was taken to stop this.