was Hilary Benn also referring to fascism at the British Establishment's heart?

There’s no denying the power with which Hilary Benn wrapped up his Syrian war speech, summarising why Britain should go to war and at the same time reminding his Labour colleagues that they are the inheritors of a proud tradition of facing down fascists.

But was the Shadow Foreign Secretary also referring to fascism elsewhere apart from Syria? I ask because the man whom the coda seemed to be directed against most, Jeremy Corbyn, took the position of Labour leader after an election in which there was no defined electorate, which would seem to be the sine qua non of any democratic process. Instead, you paid your three quid and you got your vote, leading to a satire-transcending farce in which even a journalist’s pet cat was sent a voting paper.

Significantly, a large number of Conservative party members voted for Corbyn, with the Daily Telegraph leading the charge in a strategy they claimed would "destroy the Labour Party", in a move that many Telegraph readers found a step too far, one writing:

Isn’t anyone feeling just a little queasy at a mainstream newspaper calling for a democratic election to be undermined and compromised?

I believe that the Telegraph, the Tories’ in-house paper, was lying about its motives. One key characteristic of the 2015 General Election was how similar the three main party leaders sounded (before the Lib Dems’ parliamentary collapse): in particular, on the subjects of open-door immigration and integration, David Cameron, Ed Milliband and Nick Clegg each became a Nigel Farage mini-me.

Suddenly, Miliband having fallen on his sword, Jeremy Corbyn comes out of the political outback to win the Labour Party leadership, his job to show the faithful that there really is a difference between the Labour Party and the Tories, in an “election” that both of these parties, Parliament’s biggest, participated. In order to keep the Labour party faithful on-board, it was imperative for them to believe that Corbyn represented a different sort of politics, and it was imperative to get the Conservative party faithful behind him to mitigate the effect of labour democrats upon the election. This, I believe, was the Telegraph’s true intention.

The Labour Party leadership election was an example, I believe, of the political cartel in action. This is a system whereby which party is in power takes second place to the “right people” the chosen few from the three main parties, being re-elected. Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s adviser during the PM's first term, took this even further in the Sunday Times and referred to our system as “a democracy in name only, operating on behalf of a tiny elite who are in power no matter the electoral outcome”.

So when Hilary Benn referred to the Labour Party’s tradition of facing down fascists, I have to wonder whether he is referring to the expropriation of the democratic process by figures on both his benches and those opposite. If he is, I hope he’s prepared to seek out friends among democrats of all political shades, as he’ll need them.

Gerry Dorrian

Resources Read Hilary Benn's closing remarks at Hansard (begins on column 486)

Ned the cat votes Corbyn for Labour leader – but llama family misses out - Aisha Gani, The Guardian, 21 August 2015

Why the Telegraph's call for Tory votes for Jeremy Corbyn will backfire - Roy Greenslade, The Guardian, 16 July 2015 (original Telegraph article: How you can helo Jeremy Corbyn win - and destroy the Labour Party, 15 July 2015, article attributed to "Telegraph Comment Desk")

near and far Jihad: a question for Western leaders

In the Daily Mail, Robin Harris makes an impressive case for robust action on the Caliphate proclaimed by Islamic State, now massacring thousands in Iraq and Syria, and condemns Western leaders for being "catastrophically naïve" in their analyses of the turmoil in Muslim countries.

I can’t argue with that, but I feel I must in turn suggest that Mr Harris is naïve in suggesting the Caliphate poses problems only for countries with a majority Muslim population.

As early as 2009, Jihadis have split their struggle into that against the far enemy – or far Jihad – which is America and the West, and near Jihad against Israel and all local administrations that fail to unqualifiedly call for its destruction.

Far Jihad is well-ensconced in the West, with anybody proposing counter-Jihad (literally action against jihad) condemned by organisations such as Hope not Hate as fascists, racists, and generally “far-right”, which has no fixed beaning but refers to anybody whose views they disagree with.

Jihadis like Anjem Choudary have openly called for a Caliphate for years, and this is key to understanding their mindset. The Caliphate can be proclaimed at any time in any country by any jihadi.

Counterjihad military action must therefore also take two parts: far counterjihad against genocide and, crucially, supporting Israel, whose attacks by Hamas were a diversion tactic to blind liberal Western media to Islamic State atrocities; and near counterjihad, including robust action on hate-preachers like Choudary and real policing of protests against established Western traditions such as free speech.

Far and near Jihad are now coming together, as shown by a recent open recruiting drive by Islamic State's predecessor ISIS in Cardiff. The question I pose Western leaders is: do you act now to protect your many loyal citizens of all backgrounds, including moderate Muslims, or must you be swept away to protect our children?

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Resources

ROBIN HARRIS: Our leaders are in denial about this Islamic revolution because it exposes their own naivety - Daily Mail, August 11 2014

Why Jihad went global -Jim Miles, The Palestine Chronicle, 2009

Counter-Jihad report - Jim Lowles, Hope Not Hate, August 2012

Anjem Choudary: Steps to an Islamic Caliphate - The Clarion Project, April 2012

10,000 Muslims Protest Against Free Speech at Google in UK - Gerard Direct, October 2012

Thousands rally in UK to demand end to anti-Islam speeches - Murtaza Ali Shah, The International News (Pakistan), April 2013

'Infidels must wear red collars and shave heads': 'Nazi' vision of Muslim Britain from Imam who ran 'Isis' barbecue in Cardiff park - Abul Taher and Nick North, Daily Mail, June 2014

'That's my boy!': Shocking photograph of a SEVEN-YEAR-OLD Australian boy brandishing the head of a Syrian soldier - and his jihadist father who took it - Emily Crane, Louise Cheer, Daily Mail, August 11 2014

Israel and why Westphalia matters

In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia ended the 30 years' war by esconcing Cardinal Richelieu’s principle of raison d’état – justifying Catholic France’s alliances with Protestant powers to prevent absorption into the Holy Roman Empire – as the defining principle of the nation state.

Under raison d’état each state was free to run its legal internal affairs as it wanted, for example responding to pressures for universal suffrage at its own speed.

When Tony Blair was elected in 1997, he trumpeted a post-Westphalian settlement which would see Britain not only buy into the European Union’s supra-national agenda like never before, but participate in wars to spread neo-conservative values to Afghanistan and Iraq in what former US Deputy Defence Secretary Robert Ellsworth called "salvation without representation".

In Israel’s Gaza campaign, we’re seeing a demonstrably democratically-elected government take on Hamas, a group banned in many countries for its links to terrorism. It is in a sense a campaign against the crisis-hit post-Westphalian movement, where

it is the "internal" boundaries that create problems. Security, defence of privilege, identity, recognition and cultural traditions…are now altered, uncertain, liquid. They are no longer reliable.

Egypt’s sponsoring of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is also a classic Westphalian move: Egypt is one of the states that have banned Hamas. If Palestinian terrorists (by no means all Palestinians) were to catastrophically weaken Israel, the terrorists’ first move would be to announce themselves part of the soi-disant caliphate proclaimed by Jihadis in Iraq and Syria.

This is also a supra-national power, but far removed from the multilateral transfer of rules with the EU as template dreamt of by Blairites. It is an attempt to rebuild the Ottoman Empire, and as such the next stop would be Egypt, therefrom the rest of Arab Africa.

Israel is certainly fighting for survival, but it is now at the centre of the fight for the nation-state system. All of us who value freedom need to realise that freedom lives or dies with Israel.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Resources

Imposing Our 'Values' by Force - Robert F. Ellsworth and Dimitri K. Simes

A Crisis Of The State? The End Of The Post-Westphalian Model - Carlo Bordoni

The EU as a Multilateral Rule Exporter: The Global Transfer of European Rules via International Organizations - Mathieu Rousselin

comparisons between Hamas and Nazis aren't made lightly

During the Second World War, the British visited a lot of attrition on Germany and on Germans for a very good reason: it was them or us.

The Israeli Foreign Minister harked back to this time when he delivered a message to his counterpart here, Stephen Hammond, on the conflict in Gaza:

[Foreign Minister Avigdor] Liberman told Secretary Hammond that Israel expects special understanding on the part of the British. During one of the most difficult but greatest hours of Great Britain, when London was bombed during World War II, we learned from Churchill that even if the price is blood, sweat and tears, a nation that wants to survive must fight for its freedom.

Any comparison between Hamas and the Nazis is neither done lightly nor without justification. In November 2013, the Palestinian university in Jerusalem, Al Quds, made international news when it hosted a Nazi-themed rally; six months earlier – shortly before the murder of Gunner Lee Rigby – the Swastika was spotted flying over the town of Beit Omar.

This is what the Israelis are facing: a war that is basically a continuation of the one we faced from 1939-1945; a war that is not about land or money or power but the very existence of the Jewish people. Those brave Palestinians who realise and reject this know the risks they run: recently jihadis murdered 25 peace activists and blamed it on Israel even as Palestinian rockets, by accident or design, fall upon Palestinians.

As genocide is prosecuted in Syria and Iraq, our prone media prioritise manufactured outrage at recycled pictures and promote the BDS agenda. The original Nazis were more honest in their evil when they verbalised their version of BDS: kauf nicht bei Juden – don’t buy from Jews. As jihadis and their useful idiots shout and fly Palestinian flags over council buildings, please spare a thought about where the Swastika and kauf nicht bei Juden were headed from the start. There's been no change in plan.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Flight MH17 decisions: wait till vested interests stop shouting

The outrage [shooting down of MH17 over Ukraine] immediately raised questions over why commercial flights were using a region where attacks on aircraft have been rife.

These words from the Telegraph form the most succinct explanation, I think, as to why Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 came to grief in such a terrible tragedy. The article says, earlier, that "aviation safety authorities in the United States and Europe warned pilots in April about potential risks flying in or near Ukraine airspace". The paper now reports other Asian airlines "had already abandoned [flying over Ukraine] months ago because of security concerns".

Regarding concerns, an International Civil Aviation Organisation website document ostensibly praises Ukrainian Air Traffic Controllers for picking up English language skills, but then expresses concern that:

Learning language is a long and costing business…[and] Lack of resources does not allow to invite native speaking teachers and instructors to train aviation personnel, to purchase necessary equipment for…training, to organize recurrent training of teachers, instructors, raters and examiners abroad.

Considering airline fuel is expensive, and the Malaysian government was found in investigations into the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 to be a major shareholder in the debt-stricken airline, and one can understand their pilots being pressured to fly over Ukraine.

Ultimately, did Putin order the plane shot down? I don’t know, but the picture gets more complex the more you examine it. And I wonder how long conspiracy-theory sites will take to notice that the US, the UK and the EU could all do with attention taken off their internal affairs, or even that it might not be beyond the abilities of Jihadis to down the flight and blame it on an Israeli attention-diversion exercise?

I have my own theory – that it’s always better to wait for vested interests to stop shouting before making decisions with long-lasting consequences.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Resources

Air operators belatedly avoid Ukraine war zone - Tom Whitehead, Nick Collins and Martin Whitehead, Daily Telegraph, 17 July 2014

Asian airlines stopped flying over Ukraine months ago - AFP, Daily Telegraph, 18 July 2014

Challenges in implementing Language Proficiency Requirements in Ukraine - International Civil Aviation Authority; statement made on p12 of pdf. 2003 mentioned in document, but date of its publication not apparent

UKIP and the anti-democracy machine: a message from the police to the real fascists?

The anti-UKIP machine reveals itself as an anti-democracy machine more every day.

The most alarming development is the spread of so-called "anti-fascist" groups gathered around the "Unite Against Fascism" banner, for example Hope Not Hate, SLATUKIP, etc. Their devotees remain a tiny minority, but what is most worrying is that while such organisations were once hard-left bodies allied to the fringes of the Labour Party, they are now in receipt of patronage and members from across the political cartel of Britain’s three main Westminster parties, whose electoral closed-shop UKIP threatens.

These groups are telling new members that UKIP are "fascists", then ensuring they are exposed to propaganda saying "the only good fascist is a dead fascist". We know this from former members who joined up in the first place because they thought UKIP was unpalatable, but found the violence-orientated approach they found themselves expected to adopt far more sinister.

The leading cliques within the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour parties need to be given a message that if one UKIP candidate, member or supporter is hurt or even killed then the reverberations will go right up the greasy pole and will find them.

Perhaps a preliminary message has already been given.

When Cambridge police visited Michael Abberton, who tweeted a satirical list of UKIP "policies", their bosses doubtlessly knew that the tweet was arguably within the ambit of free speech, and even if it weren’t the anarchic nature of the Internet made a successful prosecution almost impossible. But the message was delivered: regardless of what individual officers think of UKIP, police will not stand by and allow its members to be targeted by anti-democratic thugs who themselves are the real fascists.

I hope UKIP is maintaining a database of members who have been threatened or otherwise targeted. We cannot let fascists steal our democratic birthright.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

neo-fascism and neo-corporatism: The Emergence of the Cartel Party - 300 words, January 2014

Wrong for police to visit Cambridge man Michael Abberton for tweeting list of UKIP 'policies', admits Chief Constable Simon Parr - Cambridge News, 13 May 2014

is the Kenya mutiny symptomatic of wider unrest?

The sit-down strike by soldiers of the 1st Battalion (Yorkshire Regiment) was a very British mutiny. I suppose in a sense Corporal Anthony Brown was lucky to be merely thrown out of the Army: after the 1917 Étaples Mutiny, Cpl Jesse Robart Short was executed for calling an officer a “bugger”.

The present action, taken during the Askari Thunder exercise in Kenya, also stemmed from the actions of people in charge: two commanders – who haven’t had their names plastered all over the press like the enlisted men – got drunk the night before a forced march and were found after the exercise sleeping off their hangover.

Incidents like this never spontaneously erupt; the discontent is usually slow-burning, with a possibly small incident turning into a flashpoint, the straw that broke the camel’s back.

It’s also impossible to ignore what’s going on around at the same time. We have the trial of one of Gunner Lee Rigby’s killers, who has been heaping praise on the nursing and medical care he has received, treatment he ensured Gunner Lee would not live to benefit from.

And of course there’s Marine A (Sgt Alexander Blackman), who was sent to Afghanistan to engage with terrorists in irregular warfare, and is facing 10 years in prison for doing precisely that.

There is an inequality inherent in any functional system, without which systems tend to collapse – but that itself can lead to system collapse when the inequality gap is unbridgeable.

This happened literally in the Étaples mutiny, when the officers appropriated billets in the posh resort across the bridge and left troops to fester on the wrong side of the river. If what happened in Kenya is symptomatic of a wider dislocation between officers and enlisted soldiers, perhaps the veteran Fusiliers’ march on London was but the politest of warning shots.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Resources

Afghanistan veterans jailed for parade ground sit-in protest over "muppet" officers - The Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Court-martial of Cpl Jesse Robart Short - National Archives

Lee Rigby murder trial: 'I’m a soldier just like Drummer Rigby... I killed him because this is war’ - Tom Whitehead, Daily Telegraph, 9 December 2013

Sgt Alexander Blackman: Marine backed by 60,000 people over killing of Taliban insurgent - Daily Mirror, 8 December 2013

Breaking: 100,000 people (the threshold that should trigger Parliamentary time for a topic) support Sgt Alexander Blackman - Daily Mail, 11 December 2013

Click to sign the HM Government e-petition to free Sgt Alexander Blackman (Marine A) - at time of writing 37,691 signatures

Veteran Fusiliers to march on London - ITV news, October 2012

the acid test: will Lee Rigby's murderers be treated the same as Mohammed Saleem's murderer?

The murder of Mohammed Saleem while he was walking home from his mosque in Birmingham was a callous, cowardly act.

So was the murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich.

Every crime is individual. But there is one equivalence between the murders of Lee Rigby and Mohammed Saleem. Mohammed Saleem’s murderer, Pavlo Lapshyn, hated non-whites. Lee rigby’s murderers, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, hated non-Muslims.

It’s been said Lapshyn is a racist because of his hatred of non-whites, and I have some sympathy for this, especially when I read of the grief of his victim’s family, who say "He did not do anything to deserve this - other than be a Muslim". However, if you ascribe differences between groups of people to culture, not colour, it soon becomes clear that "white" is no more a race than "non-white". And "Muslim", indicating adherence to a religion as diverse as any other, is no more a race than "non-Muslim".

So why is it that news of Pavlo Lapshyn’s trial was – rightly – all over the mainstream media while Adebolajo’s and Adebowale’s is conspicuous by its absence?

The media blackout of the Somalis’ trial is so deep our increasingly prone press is not even commenting on the blackout’s existence. This must only fuel rumours asserting our masters and their media lapdogs have acceded to the view that "Muslim [jihadi] blood is superior to infidel blood".

That being said, the blackout is not the most important issue. Pavlo Lapshyn was sentenced to life imprisonment with a tariff of 40 years for his repulsive act. Will Adebolajo and Adebowale receive a similar term for their equally repulsive act, caught on multiple cameras? If they aren’t, surely it would be naïve of the government not to expect those effectively declared as being of lesser worth to react accordingly?

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Resources

HM Government e-petition: lift the Lee Rigby media blackout

Pavlo Lapshyn's 90 days of terror - bbc.co.uk

Mohammed Saleem stabbing: Man admits murder and mosque blasts

"Muslim blood is superior to infidel blood" - Raymond Ibrahim, The Commentator, 19 November 2013

Mosque bomber Pavlo Lapshyn given life for murder - bbc.co.uk

Cabaret

It’s been so long since I’ve seen Cabaret I was really glad BBC1 scheduled it tonight.

I hadn’t left school the last time I saw it. I liked my school, but the history curriculum at the time was abysmal and appears not to have recovered over the decades. So it’s only at this end of a long journey of self-education that I felt able to appreciate the compelling and devastating fable of Germany’s descent into madness.

Michael York plays an overeducated twit who thinks the power of his middle-class contempt will wither the forces of darkness gathered under the swastika, and in this he captures Europe’s mood during the Weimar Republic perfectly. He plays opposite Lisa Minelli, whose talents necessitated changes in the script – in the Broadway original Sally Bowles couldn’t sing.

Joel Grey’s Joker-like emcee (left) captures both the cosmopolitan freedom that made 1931 Berlin the citadel the Nazis had to capture, and, as the film moves on, the amoral accommodation with the Nazis that was effected by not just the West in general but also that portion of the German elite that realised that the Nazis wouldn’t be pacified after they’d finished with the communists. And, of course, as we see throughout, with the Jews.

In a sense the Nazis stall rage on, through the Final Solution. Post-Nuremberg this was resurrected by Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who’d moved to Berlin 1941 to advise Hitler on the Holocaust and, incredibly, avoided capture as a war criminal. From his new base in Egypt he continued preaching hatred, and many of his followers walked antisemitism right back into Europe.

So it’s fitting that Cabaret ends ambivalently: in the minds of modern Nazis, the last act in their pursuit of Jews – and of every Western freedom – is yet to play out.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Popper's theses on gov't (3): democracy confers no benefit on citizens

Democracy as such cannot confer any benefits upon the citizen and it should not be expected to do so. In fact democracy can do nothing – only the citizens of the democracy can act (including, of course, those citizens who comprise the government). Democracy provides no more than a framework within which the citizens may act in a more or less organised and coherent way.

This may seem a strange thing for the person who wrote The Open Society and its Enemies during World War II to say. However, in that work, Popper presages Winston Churchill’s bon mot that "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried".

Churchill was speaking after the electorate gave him "the order of the boot" in 1945 and might be forgiven for a dash of rancour, but he identified a key element of democracy: all its stakeholders must be prepared to accept outcomes they disagree with.

An occasional plebiscite is no panacea for our problems. For example, immigration still besets the UK despite a party traditionally tough on immigration leading the Coalition. In fact nearly all politicians fail to act as citizens of a democratic nation, regardless of whether they agree with what the bulk of the people demand.

Those individuals and groups who have exercised their right and their duty to "act in a more or less organised and coherent way" concerning immigration and national identity have been damned by the unelected Establishment, which tolerates only views it agrees with, as fascist and racist (add any derogatory "ism" of your choice). Elected politicians of all political hues, with depressingly few honourable exceptions, collude with and even contribute to the smearing.

Is this merely democracy delivering results we disagree with? Well, with most of our rules coming from Brussels and merely being ratified (as opposed to voted upon) by the European Parliament before incorporation into our law, there’s minimal democracy happening. If we can expect no benefits to arise from the mere fact that our government is democratically elected, what can we expect in democracy’s absence save more of what has always accompanied contempt for common folk, witness the Peasants’ Revolt, the English Civil War and the Regency Riots?

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

This series:

Popper's theses on gov't (1): state a necessary evil

Popper's theses on gov't (2): democratic government can be got rid of without bloodshed

Popper's theses on gov't (3): democracy confers no benefit on citizens

Popper's theses on gov't (4): we're not democrats because the majority is always right

Popper's theses on gov't (5): institutions are insufficient without traditions

Popper's theses on gov't (6): Utopia is an impossibility

Popper's theses on gov't (7) - liberalism is evolutionary, not revolutionary

Tom Clancy RIP

Much of the comment upon Tom Clancy’s sad death seems to centre around, as the Telegraph puts it, his "gung-ho techno-military thrillers".

However, my own favourite among his thrillers was The Sum of All Fears, which tells the very human story of his serial hero, Jack Ryan, slipping into depression and alcohol addiction as his dream of a lasting peace in the Middle East is sabotaged by extemist Palestinian elements. (That the villains in the film were neo-Nazis shows the extent to which Hollywood, once having slavered at Hitler’s door, now protects his successors.) Clancy is often criticised for his "two-dimensional" characters and seems to hit back in this book with the character of Marvin Russell, a Native American psychopath – a swipe at shibboleths? – who is killed precisely because he is two-dimensional: in the words of his executioner, "there was something missing in this man".

Executive Orders, featuring Ryan as president, starts with a devastating 50-page character study of one of the few people qualified to do politics: one who didn’t want the job.

The death of an artist at the height of his powers guarantees his next work’s sales. Command Authority is expected to be a not-to-veiled analysis of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s past in the Cold War; a war which, he observed through his works chronicling its endplay and aftermath, elevated many but left many more broken.

It’s not clear that Clancy’s departure must needs be that of Jack Ryan and his "dark side" John Clark, but it’s difficult to see who could handle the characters with equal skill. In any case, one of Clancy’s quotes on writing comes back to me as his home country, with its federal government shut down, slides from tragedy into farce: “the difference between real life and fiction is that fiction has to make sense”.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Popper's theses on gov't (1): state a necessary evil

(1)The state is a necessary evil; its powers are not to be multiplied beyond what is necessary.

It sounds libertarian, but is actually the first of Karl Popper’s "liberal principles" concerning the state in his 1956 essay Public Opinion and Liberal Principles, which is in his 1963 collection Conjectures and Refutations. Since modern democracy owes its existence to the (small-l) liberal melting-pot of Enlightenment thought, I’ve called them his Principles of Government.

Popper’s first principle is a sociological reworking of Occam’s Razor, often rendered as "do not multiply entities unnecessarily". The state has steadily accrued functions since the eve of the First World War when, AJP Taylor noted, "a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman…The state intervened to prevent the citizens from eating adulterated foods or contracting certain infectious diseases."

Arguments perennially rage over state roles such as landlord, healthcare provider and surrogate parent. What I think Popper was thinking of with this principle, however, is the criminalisation of dissent by the state, the prime examples of which in our time were provided by fascist governments such as those of Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany.

Until, that is, 2005, when an incident in Britain highlighted the state’s sinister take on dissent when Walter Wolfgang – tellingly, an escapee from the Nazis – was manhandled from the Labour Party Conference and charged under terrorism legislation by police for shouting "rubbish!" when then Home Secretary Jack Straw was speaking.

Now you are apparently a "fascist" if you voice misgivings on certain matters that are dear to the massive unelected establishment surrounding government, to the extent that you can have children taken from you if you support UKIP or the English Defence League, with "anti-fascist" rhetoric spreading to the badger cull and climate issues.

Time, it seems, to robustly prune the state before our prisons hold not criminals but dissidents and our town squares echo to jackboots stamping.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

This series:

Popper's theses on gov't (1): state a necessary evil

Popper's theses on gov't (2): democratic government can be got rid of without bloodshed

Popper's theses on gov't (3): democracy confers no benefit on citizens

Popper's theses on gov't (4): we're not democrats because the majority is always right

Popper's theses on gov't (5): institutions are insufficient without traditions

Popper's theses on gov't (6): Utopia is an impossibility

Popper's theses on gov't (7) - liberalism is evolutionary, not revolutionary

Resources

Conjectures and Refutations - 300 words

Occam’s Razor - math.ucr.edu

Ken Minogue: resisted the relentless march of state control - Peter Oborne, telegraph.co.uk - contains AJP Taylor quote

[Walter] Wolfgang highlights deeper disquiet - bbc.co.uk

Taking Liberties - channel4.com

UKIP couple have foster children removed from care - bbc.co.uk

Why try to take baby from EDL mother but not from ‘terrorists’? - express.co.uk

Cameron must think hard about any Syria intervention

David Cameron is right to be 'sickened' by images of gassed children in Syria; and we’d be right to ask questions about his humanity if he weren’t affected.

But Cameron needs think hard about any response that requires British boots on the ground, something he has previously said he opposes, especially as both government and rebel forces are suspected of using gas against each other. If this is proven, then we will be joining forces with people not averse to using weapons of mass destruction regardless of which side we intervene on behalf of.

We also, unfortunately, need to remember the part of the world we’re talking about. The moment Western forces step onto Syrian soil, again regardless of whose side they are on, loud protests about "crusaders" and "colonialists" will soon turn to further acts of terrorism against the West.

I’m sorry that children are suffering in Syria. At the same time, I have to ask, what are other Muslim countries in the region – which isn’t short of Muslim countries – doing about it? Why does the situation require Westerners, whose intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq has been denounced throughout the Umma?

Pictures of suffering children can be very emotive. Such pictures kicked off the process that culminated in Band Aid and Live Aid – and the monies raised enabled Ethiopia’s Haile Maryam Mengistu to oppress his people, children included, for much longer than he might have done otherwise.

I also must accuse Mr Cameron of hypocrisy. Victims of Muslim child-abusers in the UK must struggle for each and every morsel of justice from the Establishment, with statutory bodies such as Social Services making things all the more difficult for them. If Cameron should prioritise foreign children over British ones, how can he hope to triumph in a fair General Election?

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

chivalry, betrayal and the Peasants' Revolt's relevance

BBC Four’s series on the Hundred Year’s War, Chivalry and Betrayal, is a quality documentary. Simultaneously, it displays the BBC’s inability to portray anything remotely connected with class-based tension without imposing its own agenda.

Presenter Jenina Ramirez' points were lucid and well-argued. I agree with her that the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt was one of the landmark battles of the 14th century, pitting the might (and perceived divine right) of the rulers against the rage of the ruled. And the ruled, particularly serfs, were in uproar at the imposition of new taxes for foreign wars at a time when the taxpayer base had shrunk considerably.

I sighed warily when Ramirez defined the Revolt as class war: while possibly a valid assumption, this phrase indicates that the BBC is entering fetishistic Marxist recontextualisation mode. Sure enough, Professor Caroline Brown of Royal Holloway University of London appeared to inform us that the rulers’ surprise that ordinary people could communicate and organise, including by letter, was redolent of the West’s consternation upon learning on 9/11 that people it had disregarded were actually quite sophisticated.

The Peasants’ Revolt was a civil war triggererd by excessive inequality. It was not a pan-national terror campaign, and to compare it to one is an astounding expropriation of working people’s history.

More than this: to compare the Revolt to 9/11 is a tactic to distract us from the mounting inequalities under which we’ve been labouring since 1997. True, we all reap the benefits of an affluent society, which cannot be created without some inequality; but paying for ill-thought-out wars and EU membership plus public sector waste on top of an open-doors immigration system is unsustainable, and the house of cards is shaking even now.

The Peasants’ Revolt is far more relevant to contemporary British life than the BBC, for all its cod-proletarian rhetoric, would have its licence-payers believe.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Resources

Chivalry and Betrayal: Breaking the Bonds - BBC i-player - section on Peasants' Revolt starts 23:08

Chivalry and Betrayal webpage

Janina Ramirez' blog on Chivalry and Betrayal at bbc.co.uk

Money Week: The End of Britain

fetish and phobia: time to be shocked a bit more

There appears to have been a cult of Islam, a fetishisation of the religion by non-members, for some time. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first occurrence of the word "Islamophobia" in 1926 in the Journal of Thelological Studies, indicating the author regards it as preventing fair comment on Islam. The second quote, from the International Journal of Middle East Studies, is similar: "a non-Muslim…is compelled, under penalty of being accused of Islamophobia, to admire the Koran in its totality."

Little wonder, then, that even constructive criticism of practices undertaken by Muslims is handled with kid gloves. Witness BBC Radio 4’s long-term Born in Bradford project, in which health-workers investigate why Bradford’s Pakistani community, who comprise 20% of its population and have 50% of its babies, bear children with genetic disorders. It’s not rocket science – as any student of the Habsburgs' decline knows – but one doctor told of resistance at the highest levels to offending Pakistanis by campaigning on the dangers of marrying relatives as close as first cousins.

Therefore I admire Charles Moore, Telegraph commentator and former editor, for his candour in berating the British establishment and populace for being shocked "not quite enough" at Lee Rigby’s murder. His honesty is courageous and astounding:

If we attack the EDL for being racist, fascist and pro-violence, we can do so with impunity, although we are not being strictly accurate. If we make similar remarks about Islamist organisations, we will be accused of being racist ourselves.

He writes of us having an "air of menace", but that’s mild compared to the Mail and the Sun, whose comment sometimes might be cut-and-pasted from ours, but whose reportage labels us thugs.

So I’d like to throw him a friendly challenge: do his honesty and courage extend to publishing interviews with EDL members?

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Resources

Woolwich outrage: we are too weak to face up to the extremism in our midst - Charles Moore, Telegraph

Born in Bradford page on bbc.co.uk

Born in Bradford NHS page

Born in Bradford page at Bradford University

The Habsburg Lip - msu.edu

don't dismiss Anonymous, their hands are dripping with blood

Reading about the Peasant’s Revolt, in which society flew apart under punitive taxation to pay for cronyism and wars, what struck me was how much historians’ access to events of June 1381 is hampered not by distance, but the deliberate muddling of contemporaneous records.

In the age of mass media you don’t need to torch the Savoy to make a point. Considering that in 1955 Rosa Parkes (right) needed only not to rise from her seat to start a cultural revolution that’s still rolling, the fecundity of Gunner Lee Rigby’s martyred blood becomes comprehensible.

You wouldn’t think it to look at the mainstream media, though; press gagging orders seem to be doing the same job Revolt chronicler Thomas Walsingham achieved with misinformation. How else to explain the silence on how the Metropolitan Police forced an unrelated Sikh protest (about Professor Bhullar) between an EDL protest and the UAF counter-protest?

So I don’t believe "hacktivists" Anonymous’ entry is a coincidence. Styling themselves as hidden masters, they say that they’ll target the EDL for trying to segregate Muslims. I wonder if reactionary Establishment forces have brought them in to erase online mentions of our policy of peaceful protest in pursuit of multiculturalism and integration?

Just look at the logo at the end of their message to the EDL:

Anonymous and its partners, Lulszec and Wikileaks, are dripping in blood through their manipulation of Arab Spring conflicts. The death-tolls in just two countries affected are 70,000 in Syria, 30,000 in Libya.

Anonymous live by Stalin’s dictum that "one death is a tragedy, one million a statistic". But I hope anybody opposing us who finds a hit-list (because that’s what Anonymous are talking about) in their hand ponders the words of another era's revolutionary, Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken", then researches us while materials are still available.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Resources

Sitting Down: the story of Rosa Parks

Sikhs protest for Prof Bhullar, crossfire cleared up by the EDL:

Who Is Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar? - India Real Time

Anonymous' Message to EDL:

Syria death toll probably at 70,000, U.N. human rights official says - CNN

Libya death toll hits 30,000" - Mirror

"our minds and consciousness consumed by current scenes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya" - AnonNews - Everything Anonymous

Click for a review of The Peasants' Revolt: England's Failed Revolution on amazon.co.uk

EDL Newcastle demo: RIP Drummer Lee Rigby

The Mail, never slow to heap abuse on the EDL, merely carried a muted statement that the Newcastle demo on Saturday 25 May had "passed off without major incident".

The police were great. Many are ex-military, and looked as angry as us. It was also great to see veterans proudly displaying their medals among the 1,500-2000 protesters, and there were several serving Forces members present – for obvious reasons.

What grated was that during a minute's silence for Drummer Rigby, all the so-called Unite Against Fascism round the corner could do was chant "Nazi scum, off our streets". I don’t know why I expected more; people who defend the ideology that killed Drummer Rigby will sink to anything.

Tommy Robinson extemporised an impassioned speech in which he was careful to warn us that we must discern the difference between Muslims and Islam, reminding us that Muslims serve in our armed forces. In the run-up to the demo, which has been planned for months, Tommy has received many death-threats on Twitter; the ones I’ve seen threatened to decapitate his family.

Kev Carroll recited a poem about Lee’s death; by the end he was weeping and so were many of us. An activist from our LGBT division told how Jihadists in East London were now boasting, after a campaign of violence and intimidation with the blessing and assistance of the UAF, that it was a "gay-free area". So much for diversity, then.

Every single speaker exhorted us to respect Lee’s memory by ensuring that the demo didn’t turn violent. It didn’t, thank God. We are all angry, and our task now is to take our anger to the ballot-box at the next general election and, if our political classes aren’t getting domestic terrorism sorted using measures already on the statute-book, vote accordingly.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

View more Newcastle demo pics on Flickr

In Memoriam: Drummer Lee Rigby - Poems Noticed

Bud, Britain's bravest police horse, returns to duty after being punched by football thug - Daiy Mail

EDL Dewsbury bombers: not warriors but pawns

BBC Radio Two news, on one occasion only, carried a reaction from a Muslim "community leader" to the guilty pleas of the would-be Dewsbury bombers:

If this had gone ahead, then I think we could have seen a serious massacre – lots of people could have been injured, possibly killed as well, with no discrimination. There could have been younger people, older people, black, white, Asian, etc. Anybody could have been affected by that.

I’ve a sneaking suspicion the soundbite was pulled because somebody realised it was substantially similar to a denunciation of the plot made by our own Tony Curtis at the Bristol demo in July 2012. Curtis added that the bomb could have killed not only so-called "antifascists", but also police officers when the terrorists’ car, impounded for not having insurance, was being driven to the station.

Some detest the EDL. That’s their right. We were in Dewsbury peacefully exercising our democratic right to protest not against Muslims but against Sharia and Jihad. These are in the news as seldom before, with a boy beaten by Palestinian "modesty police" for an "un-Islamic" hairstyle and Saudi Arabia’s first campaign (right) against the entrenched problem – justifiable by Sharia – of domestic violence.

The Dewsbury Six might style themselves warriors with their nail-bomb-carrying rocket, but in reality they are pawns near the bottom of the Jihadist food-chain. Their puppet-masters intended the atrocity to turn public opinion against Muslims so as to make younger co-religionists feel categorised and alienated, and therefore easier to radicalise.

As Henry Kissinger points out in Diplomacy, a government needs to defeat terrorists every time, while terrorists only need to get successful once. It is reassuring to know that 7/7-sized terror plots are being foiled every year, but the BBC asks a disturbing question about the Dewsbury bomb-plot: did police miss it?

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Resources

Speeches from the Bristol 2012 rally Tony Curtis' is the second clip down. He speaks on the indiscriminatory effect of the Dewsbury bomb from 2:25-3:00

Steve Wright in the Afternoon, 30/4/13 news-clip featuring community leader on indiscriminatory effect of bomb, 2:01:30-2:02:14 - listen again until 6 May 2013

Terrorism plot size of 7/7 attacks 'foiled every year' - bbc.co.uk 21/4/13

EDL bomb plot: did the police miss it? - bbc.co.uk 30/4/13

Boston bomb grafitti: a smear campaign backfires?

It started with a story in the Cambridge News saying both the city’s Green Dragon pub and Greene King brewery had issued a statement saying that the English Defence League was no longer welcome to hold meetings there. The reaction was probably not that hoped for – even opponents of the EDL voiced dismay that self-acclaimed "anti-fascists" now demand everybody hand them a statement of political and sociological beliefs before going for a pint.

But much worse was to come. On April 14 a terrorist bomb ripped through the Boston marathon. Press disinformation started immediately, with the media stating it was Patriots’ Day, implying the perpetrators would be admirers of America’s founding fathers (patriots) dismayed at the directions their country is taking. As Whiteout Press points out, Patriots’ Day is April 19.

On the tails of this disinformation, graffiti appeared at Cambridge’s mosque site: "For the murderous scum bags. What were you thinking? Hitler tried terror and failed as will you".

Except, Cambridge EDL has disowned the graffiti. We do not oppose peace-loving Muslims but Jihad and Sharia, and we express that opposition on demos and in blogs: not graffiti.

According to Big Brother Watch, Cambridge City Council spent over £4.9 million on CCTV between 2007-2011. Mill Road is a main artery. Where are the photos of people drawing graffiti on this highly-contested site?

As it turns out, the Boston bombers were Jihadis, and if this was an "antifascist" smear-campaign, it smears all Cambridge Muslims as Jihidis, as well as spitting on the people of Boston.

And where are the denunciations of the EDL on the Greene King website and Green Dragon site? Why have news outlets of all political shades ignored this story?

Surely the Cambridge News owes its readers an answer to this question: how thoroughly has it researched these two stories?

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

With thoughts and prayers for the fallen and wounded of Boston.

Resources

Greene King in warning over EDL meetings at Cambridge pub - Cambridge News

Anger at vandal attack on mosque site after Boston bombs - Cambridge News

Greene King website

Green Dragon (Chesterton, Cambridge) webpage

Big Brother Watch: The Price of Privacy - identifies Cambridge City Council as 7th highest spender in UK on CCTV

the n-word: is Sajjid Karim's real target democracy?

Did UKIP leader Nigel Farage mention the n-word in a 2005 conversation? I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But I'm sure many of us await proof from Sajjid Karim MEP, who made the allegation on Facebook.

Then again, racist comedian Frankie Boyle was not only alleged to have said the n-word, but broadcast it to the nation in his Tramadol Nights and was awarded telephone-money compensation for being called a racist because of his defence that he is an "anti-racist". Confused? Join the club.

So why is an eight-year-old allegation being recycled now? I think we need to look no further than March’s national conference of the so-called Unite Against Fascism, which the Huffington Post summed up with its headline "UKIP must not be allowed to influence politics and immigration."

I add the emphasis to identify UAF’s real target: not UKIP, but democracy. In a democratic society, we vote for who we think can best run the country, city, region or village, and - crucially - we recognise that other people have the right to vote for candidates we disapprove of.

This comes on the heels of the controversy over Paolo di Canio’s appointment as manager of Sunderland. Having played for Celtic, Sheffield Wednesday, West Ham and Charlton Athletic and managed Swindon with no fuss, former miners are being agitated because he may hold views that middle-class socialists who so detest blue-collar culture disagree with.

Karim’s Facebook message to UKIP sounds like a UAF declaration of intent: "Bring it on Farage - we're ready for you in the north west". Must we be prepared to defend ourselves and others at the ballot-box if we look like we might practice what Karim and the UAF stormtroopers consider the wrong sort of democracy?

Gerry Dorrian
300 words