Ich bin ein Schauspieler

A Dan Quayle moment in Berlin

Vote for the top 100 UK Political blogs

Decide the Top 100 UK Political Blogs

Total Politics http://www.totalpolitics.com/ is publishing the 2008-9 Guide to Political Blogging in the UK. As with last year this will list the Top 100 UK Political Blogs.

Please note, although I am listed (pleasingly amongst the non-aligned blogs) I am not asking you to vote for me, I don't know if this blog counts as “political”, or if it has been around long enough to deserve a vote. However, there are many great Nationalist blogs within the UK, many of which appear in the right hand column of this blog, and it would be great to get some of them into the list instead of the usual media friendly dross.

If you are a Nationalist or merely enjoy reading Nationalist blogs, or blogs which argue against the current multi cultural, politically correct, orthodoxy please do vote for them to get them into the list and thus draw them to the attention of a wider potential readership, and wouldn't it be great to piss off those who seek to marginalise us. There are many blogs which have a lot to say, but who are denied a chance to get their message across, because they do not say what the establishment think they should. It would be nice to change that.

If you wish to vote, simply email your Top Ten political blogs (ranked from 1 to 10) to the following address toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com If you have a blog, why not encourage your readers to do the same, it is a way to get our voices heard.

Total Politics will compile the Top 100 from those that you send in. Just order them from 1 to 10. Your top blog gets 10 points and your tenth gets 1 point.

The deadline for submitting your Top 10 is Friday August 15th. Please type Top 10 in the subject line. Once all the entries are in a lucky dip draw will take place and the winner will be sent £100 worth of political books!

The rules are:
1. Please only vote once
2. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents are eligible or based on UK politics are eligible
3. Votes must be cast before Friday 15 August
4. Blogs chosen must be listed in the Total Politics Blog Directory
5. You must send a list of TEN blogs, ranked. Any entry containing fewer than ten blogs will not count.
6. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.

The right verdict but a bad result

There is always a certain pleasure to be gained in seeing an individual, even a rich and influential one, winning against some of the more the prurient and dishonest elements within the tabloid press, and I am delighted to note that Motor Sport boss Max Mosley has won his court case against the News of the World. who have been found to have invaded his privacy without just cause. The fig leaf with which the Sunday rag attempted to cover the nakedness of its hypocrisy, the claim that Mosley's sex games had a "Nazi" theme, has been blown away by the judge who declared it the lie it clearly was.

Irrespective of what some may think of sadomasochistic games, when the participants are consenting adults they are of interest only to those adult participants. Therefore, I congratulate Max Mosley for standing up to the unpleasant people, who attempted to bring him down, and for whom I would have more respect for had they openly admitted that they exposed his private sex life for no better reason than that the more prurient thrills they give their readers, the more newspapers they sell.

Let us hope that, even though his reputation has been permanently damaged, Mosley can now be given the necessary privacy to rebuild his his private life.

However, pleased as I may be to see someone triumph against the more scummy end of the press, we should not underestimate the damage which this verdict has inflicted upon legitimate investigative journalism.

There may be no legitimate public interest in consensual S&M games, however there may well be very legitimate public interest in other forms of private behavior on the part of public figures, and this judgement will inevitably discourage legitimate journalism, which is why the News of the World should be condemned in no uncertain terms. The judgement in this case was inevitable, because it was the right verdict in these circumstances, however, it is the circumstances which should never have occurred.

With so much genuine news being suppressed and distorted, the fact that a British newspaper is prepared to sell its soul for the sake of exposing trivia should depress us all.

Our news media, once respected across the globe, is now a disgrace, castrated by political correctness at one end yet beset by a cruel form of salaciousness at the other. Whatever the News of the World may claim, they had no justification for what they did, their story was nothing more than vindictive and nasty gutter journalism, written for no reason other than to fill their pages with descriptions of kinky sex.

When Moseley called them on it, they attempted to brazen it out, but they failed, and in the process what is left of of an honourable free press suffered further damage.

Mogadishu on our streets - an update

Back in May I wrote an article entitled Mogadishu on our Streets which, like a number of my postings, focused on the disproportionate level of violent crime committed by black teenagers.

Proof of what I was saying, and what most people know to be true, appeared in the Daily Mail this week when they published details from a confidential Scotland Yard Report which showed that black youths are suspected of more than half of knife crime among children in London.

Indeed in one three month period between 1st April and 30 June 2008 more than twice as many black youths (124) were either accused or had action taken against them for knife crime than whites (60) whereas in the same period whites were almost four times as likely to be the victims as blacks (222 next to 61)

Given that black people apparently make up 11% of the population of London compared to whites who make up 70%, I think any mathematicians amongst you will confirm that this means that blacks are 13 times more likely to commit knife crime than whites are.

I am being conservative here, if the figures reflected the overall population demographic of Britain the difference would be around 90 times.

As the news stories tumble in, the apologists for multi-culturalism can no longer claim that black youths are being disproportionately prosecuted by the police, as those claims no longer stack up.

The evidence of what is happening to this country is becoming clearer by the day, and just imagine what would happen if those in power do manage to achieve the uncontrolled levels of immigration they so dearly crave.

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Hat Tim Ancient Brit and Brighton Rock at the Green Arrow Forum

A balanced account?

Whilst the western media crow with glee over the capture of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic in Belgrade this week and we look forward to the inevitable circus which will ensue. it is worth remembering that there are two sides to every story. No war was ever fought by one army alone, and it is seldom the case that one side has exclusive claim to victimhood and the other to guilt, certainly that was not the case in the Balkans during the 1990's.

After one evening's news coverage, it has become obvious how the mainstream media intend to play this, Channel 4, for instance, would surely be challenged to find more opportunities to use the term "Muslim victim" than they did in a single report last night.

I would not seek for one minute to deny horrors such as the massacre at Srebrenica, however, unlike the media we should not pretend Serbia was alone in such acts or that atrocities were not committed by the Bosnian Muslims, or indeed later by Muslims in Kosovo.

For those seeking some respite from the relentlessly one sided accounts you will be reading in mainstream media may wish to read this one sided account from the other side of the fence, which might help maintain some level of balance in advance of the carnival which will surely follow. Be assured you will not get much balance from the news media.

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hat tip Chronicles

One law for them?

Apparently two Britons, Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle, who have been convicted at Leeds Crown Court of publishing race-hate articles on the internet, have skipped bail and flown to America, where they have claimed political asylum.

Given that the first amendment of the US constitution guarantees the right of free speech, such a prosecution would technically be impossible in America, so one might expect the US authorities to view this claim sympathetically. However, in reality, the chances of Sheppard and Whittle receiving a sympathetic hearing in America are remote irrespective of the merits of their claims.

Since the fall of the Berlin wall, very few, if any, white Europeans have benefited from Asylum legislation either here or in the States. Some might argue that most European countries no longer have oppressive governments so their citizens do not qualify for asylum. Others would question that assertion, and in any event how can these two men be considered guilty of anything other than a thought crime and the false belief that the right of free speech existed in Britain?.

These two men have a valid claim for asylum. Indeed it could be argued that the first amendment of the US constitution, was written specifically to protect people like Mr Sheppard and Mr Whittle, however, I suspect that the modern day reality is that they are the wrong colour to benefit from it's protection. I may be being pessimistic but I suspect that the most likely outcome from this case will be that their claim will be rejected and they will be swiftly shipped back to the UK to face sentencing. If so, that will be a shameful day for America, as it will signify the abandonment of any pretence to a belief in Universal civil rights, and expose their Asylum laws as offering protection only for a preferred non white minority. (as many a white South African may soon learn, should their worst fears become reality and they find themselves in need of a safe haven)

Whether or not America shames itself, this case has already shamed Britain, which is exposed again as a land where if you think, say or write something which the state does not approve of you can be subject to a show trial and get sent to prison.

In modern day Britain, telling the truth is no defence against hate crime charges.

The 1976 race relations act is a piece of legislation, amongst others, of which the worst totalitarian state could be proud, because it had the effect of enshrining in law the fact an opinion can be illegal, and that telling the truth can be a criminal act, if it is the wrong truth.

Britain calls itself a free country, however, it is many years since it was any such thing.

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Some of Sheppard and Whittle's writing remains available on their website heretical.com, so you can judge for yourselves, they certainly express views I do not agree with, but that is the way with free speech. Free speech and the right to hold an opinion however offensive, are essential to a free society, it is in totalitarian states that these things are suppressed.

An issue of credibility

A number of my fellow Internet commentators (bloggers) write interesting and passionate articles about what they perceive to be a Zionist threat. I am not one of them. Indeed , apart from having some issues over Israeli foreign policy (albeit not as many as you might think), matters of animal welfare, some concerns over the level of influence Jews have over the media, and the Jewish lobby have over the US government, I certainly would not consider myself to be anti Semitic.

In fact, I view most Jewish people as allies, who are even more under threat from radical Islam as we are, but more prepared than many of us are to acknowledge and address the problem. I also admire the Jewish state's refusal to have any truck with mixed marriage.

Furthermore, I would like to make it clear that I am not an Holocaust denier, the war ended a quarter of a century before I was born and I do not know enough about the subject to question the official line.

However, at times like this, when I read news articles regarding attempts to track down the latest so called Nazi Dr Death, Aribert Heim, who is allegedly still alive at the age of 94 and hiding in Patagonia, I can see why those who do challenge the accepted version of history find it so easy to cast doubt on the credibility of so much which is claimed.

In the case of Dr Heim for instance, otherwise grown up newspapers print without a hint of irony, or, at least, healthy scepticism, that he “injected gasoline into conscious patients” or that when “a fit 18-year-old Jewish man was sent to Heim for treatment of a foot inflammation. Instead of treating the prisoner's foot, Heim anaesthetised him,” (for a change) “cut him open, castrated him, removed one kidney and dismembered the other. The victim's head was cut off and the flesh boiled off so that Heim could keep it on display.”

Other accounts have it that Heim decorated his surgery with various dismembered body parts, and again we hear from eye witnesses who claim that "Of all the camp doctors in Mauthausen, Dr Heim was the most horrible." which is of course, just what they said about the last Dr Death, and the one before him.

Such allegations are at best untested, although, some of us might be tempted to use the term “load of old bollocks”. Yet, almost two decades after the official admission that the Nazis did not make lampshades out of human skin or soap out of human tissue, our leading national newspapers continue to print these claims with a straight face.

Just recently the liberal news media reacted with shock and horror at revelations that the much repeated story of the little Jewish girl who, after single handedly killing a German soldier, survived the war by living with a pack of wolves, actually didn't happen out side the mind of the author. At which point one was tempted to scream “Oh get real, surely you never really believed it was true!”

War is a nasty business and World War II, was a particularly unpleasant one. As to the Nazis, there were some particularly unpleasant individuals who did some very unpleasant things. Surly the truth was bad enough without the need for fairy tales, and some of the more ludicrous claims being made undermine the great and genuine suffering which did take place, because they defy credibility.

It is time that those who are seeking to prosecute a 94 year old man for crimes almost seventy years old, should admit their true motives. In addition to any genuine desire to punish a great crime, there is a cathartic need for revenge which the passage of time does not always mellow. More than that, however, there are huge benefits to be gained for any group from reminding the world of their victim status.

The black community in America seldom miss the opportunity of reminding their white countrymen of days of slavery, as that tree now offers some succulent fruit to those who never experienced the life of a slave. More recently, the racially motivated reopening of unsolved cold Civil Rights era crimes, at the behest of NAACP and the SPLC certainly has the comfortable effect of disguising the truth about modern day race crimes.

Likewise, the unquestioned suffering of huge numbers of Jews in the 1940's carries many benefits for Israel and the wider Jewish community, not only in terms of the billions paid in compensation, but also the free ticket which the status of victim tends to offer. Anyone who suggests that Israel and the Jewish lobby of today, would have the power they do over so many governments, especially the US, if the Holocaust had never happened is surely deluding himself.

Who can blame them, if it requires the periodic prosecution of a few frail old men to remind the world of the source of that power, and occasionally mitigate against current events, I guess it must be worth it.

However, surely People can find means of reaffirming their victimhood, without resorting to the sorts of blood thirsty fantasies which Quentin Tarantino would struggle to make up.

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Equal measure

I have little time for Lillian Ladele the Islington Council registrar who refused to perform civil ceremonies for same sex couples on religious grounds, and who earlier this month, rather ironically, had her claim that she being discriminated against upheld by an employment tribunal. Like everyone else, Ms. Ladele is fully entitled to her views and her religion, what she does not have a moral right to do is take a salary whilst refusing to do her job, or at least those parts of her job which she doesn't like.

On the subject of homosexuality, which is currently a hot topic for the Anglican church, I take the view that we should remember what Christ said about it, which was precisely nothing. Surely if it was such a big deal he would have touched on it at some point.

With the multiple horrors currently facing mankind, the fact that religious leaders from across the planet consider that the subject of premier importance to them should be what people do in bed, is the true obscenity, and a perversion of the Christian message.

I am aware that many will not agree with me, however, it is worth noting that, like Lillian Ladele, the majority of those who are most strongly opposed to gays, and who are the first to quote scripture in support of their views, are African or of African origin. It is of course nothing new that people who claim to be the victims of prejudice are frequently only too willing to discriminate against groups whom they dislike, so this should not come as a surprise.

However, Lillian Ladele and those African bishops who use the bible is support of their views on gays, conveniently forget that a mere two hundred years ago, or less in the case of America, passages from the good book were used in a similar manner in support of slavery.

I don't intend to venture further into the issue of gay rights, it is a contentious one, in respect of which, strong and genuine views are held on both sides. However, I suspect that it is fair to say that my views on the matter are likely to be closer to those of the panel who adjudicated over Ms Ladele's tribunal than many.

Therefore I think it is legitimate to ponder on the chances that we would have seen the same result had a white person claimed the right to discriminate against a minority on religious grounds.
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On the road to war

The recent pantomime at the United Nations, where Russia and China vetoed attempts to impose sanctions and an arms embargo of the monstrous Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, not only shows what a farce the august institution has become, but also how flawed is the argument of those, including some dear friends of mine, who condemn the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan of account of the fact that they do not comply with international law.

They may be correct in what they say, but it does not follow that those who allegedly breached international law were the real villains.

The true value of International law, or lack thereof, is exposed by the Russian Foreign ministry which said in a statement that sanctions "would have created a dangerous precedent, leading to interference in countries' internal affairs" which would be "a gross violation of the UN's Charter".

Of course those most opposed to the possibility of the international community interfering with their internal affairs are those with the most to fear from it. One can dress those clauses which prohibit the international community from such “interference” up in pretty words such as “sovereignty” and “independence”, but they have led directly to the deaths of countless millions and to the fact that almost half the world's population live lives of poverty and oppression subject to the whim of a tiny group of cruel and fabulously rich dictators.

The law protects the law abiding from home invasions, but if our neighbour is killing his children we expect the police to go in. However, were we to apply the UN's standards to such an event, the neighbour would be immune from prosecution provided he murdered them in his own garden.

For the main part international law results from a contorted series of compromises, where good intentions became drowned by the self serving demands of unpleasant despots who refused to sign up to anything which might put at risk their right to torture, kill and suppress their own people in their own garden.

Even where International law does have value, it requires the diplomatic skills of Machiavelli and usually considerable amounts of bribery to get the self same group of despots to impose it. As we have seen, even then, it is seldom successful.

Hence it behoves us not, at least in moral terms, to allow the final judgement on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to rest on whether or not they are in technical breach of international law.

Beyond making that argument, this article will not include any links or sources, as it does not seek to prove a point, but rather to express opinion on recent events, in respect of which I know many people hold passionate and quite legitimate views, not all of which are entirely the opposite to mine.

I entirely respect the views which do not accord with my own, and, further, would go so far as to acknowledge that, unlike most of my writings, in this one matter, my views, are based on opinion rather than research, and that history will determine whether I am right or wrong.

The matters in question, made more topical by George Bush’s recent visit to Britain, and the increasing number of deaths in combat, are the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. We all have our own views as to whether fighting those wars were the right thing to do and, I will surprise many of my friends, and probably appal others when I say that I think they probably were the right thing to do, or, at least, in the long run they were probably inevitable.

In saying this, I am not ignoring the carnage we have seen in Iraq over the last five years, or indeed the loss of life in Afghanistan, not least amongst our valiant troops. However, the bloodshed is the work of our enemies, and, as I have said here before, the fact that deeply evil men oppose what we do, does not mean that what we do is wrong.

I will not quibble over that description, and if anyone chooses to question the categorisation of those who torture young men to death with electric drills, or strap bombs to toddlers and the mentally disabled, as “deeply evil”, they would do well to examine their judgement rather than my language.

Those who claim that these conflicts are “recruiting sergeants” for terrorism, may be correct, but they are only one of many such sergeants, cartoons, headscarfs and papal musings seem to have the same effect. It is not hard to recruit for war when so many of the potential combatants are so keen for a fight

We do not face freedom fighters in Baghdad or indeed Helmand, but bloodthirsty fanatics who revel in slaughter, they existed before the current conflict and would have been have existed even if there if there had never been a conflict and as the bodies in the streets of Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and New York proved, we would have to face them some time.

Despite what many of our allies at the UN or in Europe may tell us, the way to deal with a serial killer is not to hide under the bed and hope he will kill someone else, because he will eventually come looking for you.

The murderous maniacs shooting at our troops and slaughtering men, women and children raised no concerns when Saddam and the Taliban were oppressing their brethren and, certainly in the case of Saddam, murdering them in their hundreds of thousands. (The corpses in the old regime’s prisons were no less dead than those now littering the streets, and were almost certainly no less numerous.)

The Devil will always fight more ferociously where he is at the greatest risk, but that is no reason not to fight him.

As to the “reasons” for war, many claim, for instance, that we went war in Iraq on the basis of a lie, but, for all their faults, to accuse Bush and Blair of knowing their claims were false is surely to attribute to them the power of knowing better than every security service in the world, including, the Russians, Germans and French, who all believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding, at the very least stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. Even that opportunist old poseur Hans Blix was stunned when none were found, albeit he swiftly regained his composure and began performing for the crowds.

It is certainly fair to accuse Tony Blair of overselling what, most honest observers accept, he genuinely believed to be true. However, is that really more morally reprehensible than those, who whilst sharing that same genuine belief, still blocked UN action to protect the cosy oil deals they had in place with one of the world's most evil tyrants and mass murderers?. It is often claimed that the war in Iraq was a war for oil, it is less often admitted how much oil influenced certain “Non” and "Njet"votes in the UN.

Furthermore, it may be very comfortable for those who opposed the invasion of Iraq to buy the “there were no WDMs” claim as gospel truth, when they are so ready to insist that everything else is a lie. However, given that sufficient chemical or biological agents to wipe out all life in half of Western Europe, can be stored in a cupboard, and created in a space not much larger than a school chemistry lab, combined with the porous nature of the Iraq / Syria boarder, some might be less willing to be so reassured. Furthermore, I find the total lack of any investigative journalism into anything which contradicts the official line somewhat suspicious. However, given that in this instance the official line fits the story the press want to tell, it may be some years before the full truth is told.

That said, whatever the reason for going to war, it would never have been necessary had the international community been prepared to take collective action against the mass murder, genocide indeed, of thousands (according to some claims hundreds of thousands) of Iraqi civilians, perpetrated by the sovereign government of Iraq for almost three decades. If International law does not allow that, then the fault lies with International law, not with those who breach it .

In the absence of UN action, there would have come a point where the west would have had to have confronted Saddam Hussein, a truth now much glossed over, is the fact that he was a source of even greater regional instability than even Iran, Syria and Hezbollah are today, and would continue to be were he still around. To say that we were somehow morally prevented from confronting him, because we once treated him as an ally, is like preventing a woman from accusing a man of rape if she once dated him.

With regard to Afghanistan, it is a lot more of a stretch to call that conflict illegal or without point. Even if we ignore the murderous actions of the Taliban, how many thousands of lives could have been saved if the world had not turned a blind eye to the terrorist training camps which had been operating there for years before the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam bombings let alone 09/11.

Those camps existed in part as a threat against the West and they were where acts of aggression were planned and prepared for. Young men were being trained in Jihad there,and still are in Pakistan, because a significant section of radical Islam has declared war upon us, and they did so long before a shot was fired in either Iraq or Afghanistan and they would still be at war with us even if none had been.

If, as many claim, and as I am coming to believe, the forces of radical Islam are intent upon our destruction, then Iraq and Afghanistan are but two battles in a war we would eventually have to fight, to quibble over their status in terms of the vaudeville act which accompanies most UN resolutions is to ignore their inevitability.

We could well lose those battles, disastrous as that might be, but that does not mean we were wrong to fight them. We are not the aggressors in this war, however much we may be portrayed as such.

Only a fool wants war, but if anyone truly believes that if we had not gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, radical imams would not right now be calling for Jihad against us and that there message would be met by any less fervent ears, then they would be enjoying a false sense of security, and ignoring history.

The clouds of conflict have been gathering for over twenty years (some would say fourteen hundred) and we ignore them at our peril.

The mistake the West has made is not in fighting foreign wars, but in ignoring the, so far relatively bloodless, invasion closer to home, which could make the outcome of those other conflicts irrelevant, because whatever you think about our current battles, if I am right the clash of ideologies has only just begun, and there is far worse to come.

These ideologies have clashed before, with terrible results, and when they do again we should not depend on the UN or the rules of international law to protect us.

Why South Africa Sucks Has a New Home

As many of my readers will know the Why South Africa Sucks blog has disappeared again, however, I can let you know that all the posts are backed up, and the blog has a new home, which can be found by clicking here.

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The territory and what goes with is

I wonder when politicians (including mayors) are going to figure out what has been quite obvious to the rest of us for some time. They can please SearchLite and their bosses in Common Purpose, and appoint more members of the ethnic minority community into positions of power and influence, or they can have an administration which will not be beset with allegations of electoral fraud, past sexual and financial misconduct, and corruption. They will never achieve both!

We become more like a third world Banana Republic by the day!