Censoring election broadcasts

Readers may be familiar with the name of Alan Craig, the Christian Peoples Alliance councillor in Newham, who has been leading the opposition to the creation of the East London mega mosque. Mr Craig is also standing for the Christian Choice in Thursday's London mayoral election. Last Wednesday, the Christian Choice released their election broadcast for the mayoral and London Assembly elections. The broadcast, which can be seen here, contains a brief mention of the mega mosque, and refers to Alan Craig's opposition to it.

However, Mr Craig today launched legal action against the BBC and ITV, claiming that they had forced him to edit the broadcast to remove criticisms of Tablighi Jamaat, the Islamic organisation behind the building of the mega mosque. In the first version of his broadcast, Mr Craig described the group as "separatist". This term proved unacceptable to the broadcasters, who ordered him to substitute the word "controversial", which he did, under protest. Subsequently, however, ITV decided that even this mild description was intolerable, and insisted that the appellation be applied only to the mega mosque, and not to the group building it. Ironically, Mr Craig was even prevented from using the hackneyed phrase "moderate Muslims", in reference to those Muslims who have opposed the mega mosque, because it was felt that this could imply that Tablighi Jamaat was not "moderate". The fact that all the evidence suggests that the group is both separatist and extremist, and that it is, in consequence, undeniably controversial, did not deter the BBC and ITV from censoring anything that could remotely resemble a criticism of the organisation.

But even if one does not agree with Mr Craig's views on Tablighi Jamaat, it is still unreasonable to censor his broadcast. As Andrea Minichiello Williams, director of the Christian Legal Centre, put it "providing that the content of an election broadcast is within the law, the BBC and ITV should enable the electorate to hear the unedited views of candidates and allow them to make up their own minds as to whether they agree or not". In censoring the Christian Choice election broadcast, the BBC and ITV have restricted the ability of a candidate to put his views to the public, have prevented the public from developing the fullest possible knowledge of a candidate, and have thus sought to undermine democracy.

Hat-tip: English Rose

The morally bankrupt left

The deputy leader of the party that has ruled this country for nearly eleven years was answering questions from readers of the Independent on Monday. Along the line, this interesting little nugget arose:

David Newton, Edinburgh: Fidel Castro: hero of the left, or dangerous authoritarian dictator?

Harriet Harman: Hero of the left – but time for Cuba to move on.

She's right, of course: plenty on the left do regard Old Uncle Fidel as a hero. And arguably, David Newton was creating a false dichotomy: being a "dangerous authoritarian dictator" is no bar to being hero-worshipped by the left. Indeed, some might say that it was a necessary qualification.

But since Harman is a proud member of the (far) left, one assumes that she was proclaiming Castro to be one of her heroes. Now, how long do you think any vaguely right-wing contemporary politician would last, proclaiming his admiration for, say, General Franco? Indeed, just think how quickly Nigel Hastilow's career was killed off after he expressed agreement with Enoch Powell, a man who, so far as I am aware, was not responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 people. Among those who weighed in against Hastilow was one Harriet Harman, who said that his comments demonstrated that the Tories were "the same old nasty party". If admirers of Powell are "nasty" what, I wonder, are admirers of Castro? Is there a word strong enough to describe them?

Of course, unlike Nigel Hastilow, Harriet Harman won't lose her job over her admiration for Castro, because the media, which launched a witch hunt against Hastilow, is largely ignoring this. Only the Times and the Spectator's Coffee House blog have devoted any real attention to Harman's comments, although the Daily Mail did mention them, very briefly, in passing. The BBC, which happily stoked the flames for the burning of the heretic Hastilow, makes no mention of this. Quelle surprise!

Harman's remarks expose the utter moral bankruptcy, and complete hypocrisy, that is the hallmark of the modern left. As Pete Moore of ATW, to whom I owe a hat-tip for this story, puts it "no matter how low your opinion of them, they'll always demonstrate that it wasn't low enough". Damn right!

Update: It seems that Harman is not alone in her admiration for Castro. Via CentreRight, I see that sixty-nine other MPs have signed an Early Day Motion tabled by obscure Labour backbencher Colin Burgon, which states that "this House commends the achievements of Fidel Castro".

But they all worship Hitler, don't they?

One thing of which I was, until yesterday, unaware, was that Michael Barnbrook, the man who made the formal complaint about that corrupt lowlife Derek Conway, which led to Conway's eventual downfall, is a BNP member. I discovered this after reading a blog post by the veteran Guardian journalist Michael White, who briefly discussed Mr Barnbrook's political activities, before adding that:

...the media, raised on the two-party model of politics, isn't very comfortable with small parties of either left or right at a time when major party loyalties have been unravelling for years. The Greens, for instance, are permanently frustrated by their inability to get attention to match their voting strength in some places.

Admittedly, they're not very good at the mechanics of politics, all that debate about ''principal spokesman'' - not leaders, for instance. Ukip messed up its own chances at some sort of breakthrough at Tory expense during the Kilroy-Silk fiasco in 2004 and afterwards. The BNP and the sectarian left often give the impression of being more interested in internal feuds, and purges too.

But many of their voters are just normal, frustrated people who don't feel heard, aren't they? Former Inspector Barnbrook may well be one of them.

Well, it's certainly an improvement on "people who support the BNP are without exception racist scum". Perhaps the MSM is actually beginning to realise that large numbers of perfectly decent people (who are clearly not Nazis) have concerns about the direction this country is heading in, and that those concerns are going unaddressed by any of the three main parties.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail has an article on the campaign by BNP member Donna Bailey to be elected onto the parish council of the Sussex village of Upper Beeding (population: 3,798). Aside from the "shocking" revelation that Ms Bailey has peach walls, rather than swastikas, in her living room, the following quote from parish councillor Simon Birnstingl was particularly amusing:

You give the BNP a toehold in a place like this today - and what happens tomorrow?

Today, Upper Beeding. Tomorrow - THE WORLD!!

Police confirm Lionheart arrest claim

It seems that the news of Lionheart's impending arrest has made the MSM. Well, alright, it's only the Bedfordshire on Sunday local paper. Still, it's better than nothing.

The full article can be read here, although most of it simply seems to have been regurgitated from Lionheart's own posts on the matter. But there is one interesting piece of information, right at the end of the piece:

A spokesman for Bedfordshire Police said: "We are aware of this particular internet site and we are taking action."

This would appear to be the first confirmation of Lionheart's story by the police. Some bloggers and commenters have expressed scepticism, to one degree or another, about the veracity of Lionheart's claim that he was facing arrest, on the grounds that it was uncorroborated. I myself was only prepared to accept his story provisionally, pending confirmation from an impartial source. Well, the fact that the police spokesman admitted that "action" is to be taken over Lionheart's blog constitutes that confirmation. As does the Bedfordshire on Sunday report, in fact.

Hat-tip: Lionheart

John Payne's attackers sentenced

The three Pakistanis convicted of the racist attempted murder of John Payne have each been sentenced to eighteen years in jail. It's not the most they could have received (attempted murder carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment), and they won't serve all of it, but it's not negligible either.

Startlingly, the BBC has now got around to covering the story, and has accorded it a prominent place on the front page of the BBC News website, having hitherto utterly failed to mention it at all. Can we now expect the rest of the MSM, which has almost completely failed to report this story, to now follow suit and finally give it at least some of the attention it merits?

Latest ATW Post

I have written a new post at ATW, entitled "The Racist Crimes you won't hear about on the BBC". In essence, it's a revised and expanded version of yesterday's post about the racist attempted murder of John Payne, with particular reference to the role of the media in general, and the BBC in particular, in suppressing the news of racist crimes against whites.

Racist thugs convicted

An update on the racially-motivated attempted murder mentioned en passant in this post - specifically, a verdict in the case:

Three Asian racists were convicted at the Old Bailey today of shattering a man's skull because he was white.

Sodrul Islam, 23, Delwar Hussain, 21, and Mamoon Hussain, 20, were found guilty of attempted murder for the attack on John Payne, 33.

Up to 30 Asians set upon the victim and his friends for drinking in a pub on the Clichy estate in Stepney, which the gang considered to be their turf.

They shouted insults including "white honkies" at the five people who dared to walk through.

Mr Payne was then felled with a machete and the gang repeatedly punched and kicked him as he lay helpless on the ground.

The gang continued as Mr Payne's sobbing girlfriend tried to shield him.

He suffered a severe fracture of his head and bone fragments penetrated his brain.

Surgeons at the Royal London Hospital battled to save him.

He continues to require constant medication and suffers severe epilepsy, nightmares and flashbacks.

The three defendants, from Stepney, will be sentenced in the New Year.

Still not a single word about the case on al-Beeb's website. Indeed, the Daily Mail appears to be the only news source of any description to report the conviction. Oddly enough, I find it difficult to imagine that we would be witnessing this almost total media blackout had the mob of murderous thugs been white, and their victim Pakistani. Oh well - c'est la vie...

Hat-tip: Pub Philosopher

Journalistic Integrity

Did you see that the Independent has been caught reproducing a foreign office press release almost verbatim on pages two and three of last Thursday's edition? The press release, which concerned the new EU (not a) constitution, was published under the grand heading of "10 Myths about the EU treaty", and consisted of an attempt to disprove certain (often justified) criticisms that have been directed at the "reform treaty".

The story was first broken by Neil O'Brien at the Spectator's Coffee House blog, although I first became aware of it via Guido Fawkes (who has also written a follow-up post here, regarding the response of the Independent's editor Simon Kelner). I'd recommend reading these links to get the full story. In the meantime, I actually have very little to say about this. After all, what can I add, which is not immediately apparent from the facts?

Racial Stereotyping for Dummies

Lesson 1: Racial stereotyping is wrong and bad.

Lesson 2: The "boorish" white working class are the exception to this rule. They may be stereotyped and vilified at will.

Blood on their hands?

A young Indian immigrant is stabbed to death at a bus stop in what police describe as a "racial attack". Subsequently, an unemployed 19 year old thug is charged with the murder; he today pleaded not guilty, and will go on trial in November.

So, why haven't we heard more about this? Why hasn't the story of the crime been plastered all over the MSM? Why has the BBC hidden the story away in a remote bit of the 'England' section?

An answer suggests itself when one looks at the defendant's name: Kamuzu Monroe. Now, I can't imagine that there are many white men named Kamuzu. And the few newspaper reports on this racist murder seem unusually coy about mentioning Monroe's own race. Whereas if the defendant in such cases is white, that fact normally seems to get mentioned in every other sentence. Finally, via the Crimes against British Sikhs blog, I find that Monroe is, indeed, black.

This murder would be no more or less vile if it had been carried out by whites. But you can bet whatever you like that it would have got a lot more publicity. Because, in the narrative favoured by the MSM, not only can whites never be victims of racism (hence the suppression of the news of the murders of Kriss Donald, Charlene Downes, et al), but only whites can ever be racist (hence the deafening silence that has greeted this murder, and also, in an example of Pakistani-on-black crime, the murder of Isaiah Young-Sam). Now, to me, this sounds rather like, to use a stock phrase of the liberal-left, "demonising an entire community". Not very responsible of them, is it? Indeed, given that it is apparently the case that most blacks and Asians convicted of racist crime against whites attempt to justify their crimes on the basis that they are getting revenge for all the supposed evils that the racist whites have inflicted upon them, is it unrealistic to suggest that the MSM has blood on its hands?

More Common Sense on Immigration

Responding to Lord Carey's recent comments, Sir Max Hastings, who I would generally consider something of a wet Cameronite, writes more common sense on immigration, in the Daily Mail:

By the Government's own projections, immigrants will account for 83 per cent of our future population growth, and will require us to build more than 200 houses a day for the next 20 years to provide them with roofs.

Most native Britons fiercely resist and resent the influx, and feel betrayed by the entire political class which is allowing it to happen.

The Government professes to believe in restricting entry, but refuses to enforce effective controls. It is unnecessary to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that many Labour ministers and MPs simply do not mind.

They told us in 1997 that they intended to bring about "an irreversible change in the nature of British society". Wholesale immigration contributes mightily to this process, as few newcomers vote Tory.

The use of immigrants - who are more likely to support leftist parties - to effect social change is far from being an exclusively British phenomenon. In Belgium, for example, socialist parties have rushed to give voting rights to immigrants, in order to halt the rise of the right-wing Vlaams Belang.

To return to Sir Max's article, he continues:

While almost all emigrants are, of course, professed Christians, a huge number of those who come in are Muslims.

And there's the rub. Since so many have no desire to adopt the values and customs of our society, their presence has drastically altered the appearance and character of Britain's inner cities.

Lord Carey said on Sunday that he hopes Gordon Brown "will not forget the importance of Christian identity at the heart of being a part of the United Kingdom". It seems fanciful to suppose that his wish will be fulfilled.

The point which so much of the political elite seem unable to grasp is just this: that the main problem with immigration is the unwanted social change it is bringing to this country. They believe that people are only concerned about pressures on housing, or on the job market, and so, on the rare occasions when they deign to address this vital issue at all, they only talk about those things. And of course, jobs and housing are important concerns. But the most obvious, and simultaneously the least talked about, aspect of immigration for most people is that large parts of Britain are beginning to seem like a foreign country to the native population.

Actually, when I say "the least talked about", I am perhaps wrong. After all, the political elite are quite happy to praise "multiculturalism" when it suits them, or to tell us how "wonderful" it is that the country is being transformed. What they won't acknowledge is that most people, without being fascists or racists, object to multiculturalism, and that they rather like their own way of life, and don't want to see Britain transformed. Perhaps the politicians should consider this point, and respond accordingly, by stopping the immigration that is wreaking this destructive transformation. Forgive me, though, if I don't hold my breath.

Racist White Devils

The execrable Big Brother again hit the headlines this week, as a white retard called a black retard "nigger", and was promptly expelled from the Big Brother House, to the satisfaction of the Commission for Vilifying White People (or "Commission for Racial Equality", as it is officially known), Keith Vaz, and other pillars of society. No doubt the sheer excitement is driving Hannah Clarkson insane with pleasure.

The not overly bright Emily Parr is not, perhaps, having such a fun time, however. In this post-modern age, when upsetting a non-white is the cardinal sin, the gutter press has been enjoying the opportunity to enter into a bit of character assassination, with The Sun revealing that as a child she behaved in a mildly disrespectful manner on a school trip to Auschwitz. So she must be a Nazi, and we can only thank God and Trevor Phillips that she was evicted before she remembered to launch a campaign of mass genocide!

But, of course, as with so many other supposedly racist incidents, this has been over-hyped to its death, and then brought back to life and hyped to death again by the MSM and the race relations industry. A rare note of common sense has been sounded by Allison Pearson, who, writing in the Daily Mail, pointed out that Miss Parr and her supposed victim had been getting on fine until the incident occurred, and that Miss Parr's only crime was to think that she could get away with using a word that blacks use on an everyday basis. Indeed, Ms Pearson goes so far as to suggest that Miss Parr is the real victim of racism in this case, since she has been punished for using a word which, had she been black, would have passed without comment.

This may well be the case. Certainly there are double standards at play here, and not just in respect of the word 'nigger'. No, even if one accepts that white people should not, in any circumstances, address blacks by that title, there is still massive anti-white discrimination going on here. I refer to the fact that while whites can never use abusive terms like 'nigger' towards blacks, blacks can, and do, use comparable terms when addressing or referring to whites. For example, during Celebrity Big Brother, Jermaine Jackson referred to Jade Goody and her family as "white trash". A racist term if ever I heard one, and yet there was no outcry about that, and he was not evicted from the house.
This is not a one-off. How long would a white musician's career last if he made a habit of calling black people "black devils", or called for them to be killed, or openly espoused racist ideologies regarding blacks? About thirty seconds, at the most. And yet black rappers such as Public Enemy and Ice Cube have for years been busily complaining about "white devils", calling for the killing of whites, and espousing the very racist (albeit hilarious) Nation of Islam ideology that whites were somehow "grafted" from blacks by an evil scientist, without any repercussions. Indeed, so far from being criticised for their racist views, they have been feted by the supposed anti-racists of the liberal-left, and I'd bet good money that if, through some miracle, Ice Cube or Public Enemy were dropped by the record labels for their racist lyrics, then the "anti-racists" would be crying "racism" until their voices were hoarse.

Here then, was Emily Parr's mistake: she expected to be given treatment equal to that which blacks commonly receive. Indeed, not even that, since her words were clearly not motivated by hatred, so much as by stupidity, and, which is much the same thing, by a desire to embrace black culture. What she did not realise, however, is that there are two groups in society: designated victim groups, and designated oppressor groups. Blacks, being in the former category, can do no wrong, and whites, being in the latter category, had better keep their mouths shut, lest they have an uncomfortably close view of the next witch burning.

Update: I have posted a rather more concise variation on this post over at ATW.

How to win a Journalist of the Year Award, in 3 easy steps

1. Become a BBC reporter, spouting pro-terrorist propaganda for a living.

2. Get kidnapped by the same terrorists that you thought were your friends.

3. Sit back and wait for your award.

Note: For best results, attempt to keep your head and body from becoming separated. Otherwise, your award may be a posthumous one.

"Within a couple of generations, Islam will be in control in Europe"

Hats off to the writer Ruth Dudley Edwards. Writing in the Daily Mail today, she addresses many of the issues that the MSM routinely runs scared of - demographics, immigration, the true nature of Islamic societies, the evils of cultural relativism - before concluding that all these factors taken together mean that Islam may well come to be dominant in Europe:

I'm one of those old-fashioned immigrants to this country who feels passionately grateful, is proudly British (as well as Irish - having been born in Dublin), and believes that immigrants have more duties than rights.

And, further, that one of those is to adjust to British society rather than expecting it to adjust to them.

However, one aspect of contemporary British society which I refuse to adjust to is its weakness in the face of the enemy within.

In my many conversations with like-minded people about the threat that radical Islam poses to the British way of life - and, indeed, to European civilisation - we frequently end by despairingly agreeing that the West seems intent on committing political and cultural suicide.

When we look starkly at the demographic statistics, the wimpishness of our Establishment in the face of the threat, the perversions perpetrated by political correctness and our own passivity, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that within a couple of generations, Islam will be in control in Europe.

And before anyone says that there would be nothing wrong if this happened, since the vast majority of Muslims are tolerant people who would not dream of interfering with our way of life, it's necessary to point out that in Muslim countries, it's usually the radicals and extremist mullahs - who regard tolerance as a vice - who make the running.

Exactly. This is a point that a lot of people don't understand. In Islamic countries, it seems to be invariably the case that the very worst dregs of society are the ones who end up in control. Although, I think that Ms Dudley Edwards tends to overstate the tolerance of the average Muslim, in any event. The 40% who support the imposition of Sharia law are not a "tiny minority of extremists (TM)".

The danger of ending up like those poor, despotic and medieval Islamic states in which millions live miserably is a prospect that Christians, Hindus, moderate Muslims and non-believers should be uniting to prevent. But the truth is that we are doing little to stop it.

Consider first at a few chilling statistics. Europeans are failing to reproduce. Just to keep the population steady, you need 2.1 live births per woman.

However, in 2005, the European average was 1.38. In Ireland it was 1.9, France 1.89, Germany 1.35 and Italy 1.23. Britain scored in the middle of this range with 1.6, but that was because - like France - we have a large Muslim population with a high birth rate. Indeed, Muslims are outbreeding non-Muslims throughout Europe.

"Just look at the development within Europe," said a triumphant Norwegian imam a few months ago, "where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children. Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours."

Of course, anyone who actually reads good blogs on a regular basis will have seen all these statistics before, and will not be surprised by any of it. However, there will be hundreds of thousands of people reading this article in the Daily Mail today who will have had no idea of the scale of the problems we face. Hopefully, at least some of them will begin to wake up after seeing this. And, I have to say, that this must be about the most forthright article on this vitally important subject that I can recall seeing in the MSM. So, while its contents may be bad news, its mere existence is very good news.

( Cross-posted at the New Crusaders)

More Journalistic Standards

As a follow-up to my previous post, about the anti-Semitic actions of the National Union of Journalists, I find this story, now two days old, in which we see one of the nation's best known journalists upholding the high standards that all members of that profession aspire to:

Channel 4 apologised to police yesterday after Jon Snow, the presenter, wrongly accused an officer who arrested a black motorist of being racist. Snow made the comment when Channel 4 News covered the story of Olufemi Ijebuode, who was arrested in Bournemouth last year and concluded the item by stating “racism in Dorset there”.

Mr Ijebuode went to Channel 4 with footage from the officer’s car, alleging racism. But yesterday the Independent Police Complaints Commission cleared the police officer and criticised Snow and the channel for its coverage.

Ian Bynoe, an IPCC commissioner, said that most witnesses had not corroborated Mr Ijebuode’s account of what happened and that Channel 4 had shown only edited clips of the 12-minute footage.

Ah, yes. Wonderful Channel 4 News. The programme whose reporting was accurately described as "reading out The Guardian" by Jeremy Clarkson on 'Have I Got News For You" yesterday.

Ijebuode actually has a blog, here. A quick perusal shows that he is a professional whiner, who makes it his business to see racism everywhere, and who appears to have something of a grudge against the police. Take these comments, from March 2006:

...spare a thought for black and so-called "ethnic minority" communities in Dorset, and those of us living at the sharp end of an overwhelmingly white and racist police force; those of us who reject that token Uncle Tom Negro they wheel out as evidence of "diversity", and those of us who eat oppression and drink injustice on a daily basis, because the power of the state is abused and corrupted to protect racists, criminals and terrorists.

The man is clearly bordering on insanity. Aside from his extreme paranoia, he's a pan-African nationalist who quotes approvingly from, among other dubious and disreputable individuals, the convicted murderer Mumia Abu Jamal, hates white people, and also hates Christianity, as an evil white religion. Probably he has quite a lot in common with Jon Snow.

But seriously, I found all this out from a few minutes on his blog. Surely Channel 4, with all their vast resources could have discovered this too? Bloggers are often attacked by the MSM for inaccuracy, but it would surely take quite a lot to equal the kind of incompetence shown by a branch of the MSM which reproduces the lies of an anti-white racist bigot as objective truth, simply because his lies serve as the means to promote their politically-correct leftist ends.

Journalistic Impartiality

Trade union conferences are so much fun. A parade of moonbattery of many and varied kinds. Last week the National Union of Teachers was whining about "racism", now the National Union of Journalists has produced a variation on the same theme. By which I mean, that they have voted for an anti-Semitic boycott of the state of Israel:

Britian's National Union of Journalists has voted at its annual meeting for a boycott of Israeli goods as part of a protest against the Second Lebanon War, the British daily Guardian reported on its Web site Friday evening.

The vote was carried 66 to 54 - a result that met with mixed responses from the NJU [sic] delegates present.

The motion came during a series of motions on international affairs and read: "This ADM [annual delegate meeting] calls for a boycott of Israeli goods similar to those boycotts in the struggles against apartheid South Africa led by trade unions and the TUC [Trades Union Congress] to demand sanctions be imposed on Israel by the British government and the United Nations."

(Hat-tip: LGF)

How can we trust anything journalists say about the situation in the Middle East, knowing that they have voted for this appallingly biased motion (which, incidentally, made no reference to the regular attacks perpetrated against Israel by the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah)? The short answer is, we can't. The problem is that many people will never read about this motion, and will continue to believe what they're told by the media.

The NUJ is of course not renowned for its impartiality. It has, for example, a longstanding grudge against a certain legal political party. Can anyone guess which one? I'll give you a hint: it's not the Lib Dems.

Still, this motion is yet another example of the appalling state of the MSM. It also illustrates, I think, the importance of the blogosphere, in providing a genuine voice for the millions of people (fascist, bigoted scum that they are) who are not left-liberal moonbats and dhimmis.