David Cameron's Immigration Speech

Tonight's post will be brief, for not a great deal needs to be said with respect to David Cameron's speech on immigration other than: remember that local elections are two weeks' away.

Cameron talks about reducing mass immigration to the "tens of thousands" per annum rather than hundreds of thousands. Such a level is still far too high, and yet the open border Lib Dem fanatics, such as Vince Cable, even shrilly object to this less-than-impressive 'promise', deploying their totalitarian stigmatising gutter language: "extremist"! For a Lib Dem, it is deemed to be 'extremist' if you are anything other than fanatically in favour of open borders.

Cameron will not halt mass immigration. Moreover, he would not wish to do so, for he is in favour of it. Remember, in the past few days he has excoriated Oxford University for having too few black students (using completely false statistics), doled out hundreds of millions of pounds in aid to Pakistan, and continued upon his tragi-farcical meddling in Libya. What relationship does any of this bear to our national interest or to the well-being of the people of this country? None. Cameron's posturing over immigration is of precisely the same nature as his posturing over multiculturalism: it is deployed with the intent of generating positive headlines in the Tory press, whilst his administration continues to implement policies favouring mass immigration and multiculturalism. Cameron might consider that he has to personally atone for some imperial ‘sins’ of his family, but leave us plebs out of it Dave. Whilst his ancestors were busy amassing massive fortunes, my forebears were being impoverished by the enclosure acts. Where’s your apology and payback to us Dave?

Durotrigan is taking a break from blogging until later in the month, and wishes all readers an enjoyable Easter.

Explosion in Minsk Metro

According to Izvestiia, an explosion has occurred at the Minsk Metro station of Oktiabr'skaia. It took place during the rush hour and is reported has having caused seven fatalities. A further 35 people have been injured. President Lukashenko has called the emergency services into action to deal with the situation, but who or what was behind the blast has yet to be declared or ascertained. Belarus has not hitherto experienced Islamist extremism, but it is unclear what possible motive any other group could have for targeting Belarussian commuters. This blast comes a little over a year after the March suicide bombings on the Moscow Metro carried out by Chechen 'black widows'. Belarus of course has no Muslim population to speak of, but Lukashenko has very close and warm ties with Russia, and as such, may have incurred the ire of Islamists from the Caucasus.

A later report in Nezavisimaia gazeta claims that there were possibly two explosions, and that 50 people are now thought to have been wounded. Novaia gazeta states that the explosion(s) occurred at 18:00 local time. This is the first such act of terrorism to hit the Minsk Metro, although a bomb detonated at an independence day celebration on the night of 3rd - 4th July 2008 which injured 46 people. Police at the time were looking for a dark-complexioned man, but nobody was apprehended for the crime and no motive has ever been established. By 23:18 Moscow time the number of casualties had been upwardly revised to 11 dead and around 100 wounded. Lukashenko was also reported as speculating that there could be a link between today's explosion and that of 3 July 2008, and as having set up an investigative group to examine the evidence for such a connection.

Life News Russia cites a revised figure of 80 people wounded. Video footage from the scene of the explosion is displayed below:



Return here for updates as they become available.

“You have made a great personal contribution to Russian statehood.”

Thus ran the written greeting from Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to Ramzan Kadyrov as he was officially inaugurated into his second five-year term as Chechen President last week reports Izvestiia. These were warm words indeed from Medvedev, but they paled in comparison to Putin’s gushing message which was relayed via Aleksandr Gennad’evich: “I think, considering such services to the Fatherland, that these five years should last for fifty years!” This brought forth a storm of applause from the hall.

In this phrase, one discerns Putin’s attitude towards democracy: it’s useful for providing a rubberstamp for authoritarianism, but otherwise rather troublesome. Kadyrov may be an Islamist, but he’s one of Moscow’s Islamists, so the Russian political elite is willing to let him run his writ in Chechnya providing that he keeps his Islamising tendencies within the boundaries of the autonomous republic. There was an implicit nod towards the importance of Islam in Chechnya by one of the official representatives sent by Moscow – Aleksandr Khloponin – who stated: “We in the Caucasus have a saying: there is nothing more precious than faith.” Given the state of this part of the world, this was a sad but accurate observation, although I am sure that Khloponin did not intend it to be interpreted in such a fashion.

Kadyrov’s address was short, but included the words “We will pay, as we have done formerly, special attention to the development of civil society.” What manner of civil society does Kadyrov have in mind? The behaviour of his law-enforcement agents in targeting women for not wearing headscarves (even if they’re not Muslim) does not fill me with hope that this “special attention” will make the lives of people in Chechnya better than hitherto. It is likely to propel them backwards socially, towards social norms informed and governed by Shariah. Interestingly, Izvestiia reporter Nataliia Alekseeva notes that Kadyrov did not employ the word ‘Russia’ once in his inauguration speech, which should strike one as odd for an individual lauded for having “made a great personal contribution to Russian statehood.”

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov (photo - AP)

EDL Blackpool Demo 14 May

The EDL will be holding a full demo in Blackpool on 14 May to demand that the Charlene Downes case be reopened. This has been prompted by revelations this week connected to the paedophile grooming of 60 English girls by ‘non-white’ males (generally a euphemism for Muslims in such contexts, but we shall have to wait and see whether this is the case) working in eleven Blackpool takeaways, and to the £250,000 of taxpayers’ money paid in compensation to the alleged killers of Charlene Downes.

Casuals United have already held three demos demanding justice for the family of Charlene Downes, and yesterday held a flash mob demo outside of the Mr Beanz takeaway, the shop owned by those formerly arrested for the suspected murder of the Blackpool girl. The Casuals United blog reports:

Sixty Casuals and locals held a flash demo outside Mr Beanz takeaway in Blackpool today demanding justice for the family of Charlene Downes.

The paedophiles inside the shop laughed and even disrupted the minutes silence that was held in Charlene’s memory. They are so sure they have gotten away with it, and all the other children they regularly groom and abuse without fear of arrest. Scum. Justice is gonna catch up with you, one way or another, that is guaranteed.

This latest protest has attracted next to no media attention, just a short report in the online Blackpool Gazette which promises to provide something more substantial (and probably more damning) on Monday. However, at least this brief report can be commended for its neutral matter-of-fact tone, an extract of which is reproduced below:

The protest started with a minute-long silence and then lasted for an hour.

A spokeswoman for Lancashire Constabulary said: “No arrests were made during the protest as it passed without incident. 

“A small number of protesters stayed in the area and we increased the police presence in the town centre accordingly.”

The Casuals can only be commended for their persistence in keeping the Charlene Downes case in the public eye. As for the forthcoming EDL demo, which is anticipated will be a far larger-scale affair than any that have hitherto taken place, the organisers have wisely issued a set of demands outlining the reasons it is being held and inviting the police to address them. As the EDL leadership make clear, they have no interest in overstretching the resources of Lancashire Constabulary and placing an additional burden upon the pockets of local residents. The perfectly reasonable set of demands are listed on the Casuals United blog as follows:

The EDL demands that immediate action is taken by our government and police forces and requests the following:

The CPS immediately re-open the investigation into the disappearance of Charlene Downes.
The police publicise the 11 “honeypots” in question, revoke their trading licenses and close them down.

The government agree to open an investigation into pedophile grooming gangs throughout the UK.

Should these requests fail to be adhered to the English Defence league will be holding a demonstration in Blackpool on 14th May 2011, and will return regularly until our wishes are met.

We realise that we are stretching the budget of Lancashire Constabulary by announcing a demonstration in their region again. But if you have quarter of a million to give out to murderers then you can afford to police our right to protest against this gross miscarriage of justice. The ball is now in your court. Do what the great British people expect of you and uphold the law without being scared of being called racists. Show us proof that this is being done and we will cancel the demonstration.

Let’s hope that the police act upon this list of demands and implement them ahead of 14 May. Otherwise, good luck to the EDL and the Casuals in running an effective, popular and peaceful demo in Blackpool next month.

Wiltshire and the ‘Storm from the East’: Henry Webster’s Story

Wiltshire: home to Stonehenge, Avebury and Salisbury. A county replete with beauty and memory, possessed of a quintessentially English bucolic air, in which one may feel at ease and at a far remove from the troubles of the world. The past and the present intermingle here, and our footsteps interweave with those of our long-distant and nameless forebears, as the song of the skylark sweetly trills overhead, just as it did at a time before the writing of history began, and men toiled to create the mystery of Solsbury Hill. Here, between the Cotswolds and Salisbury Plain, overlooked by the immemorial path of the Ridgeway, lies a place perhaps not endowed with beauty, but inhabited nonetheless by good honest Wiltshire folk: the village of Wroughton.

What then, you ask, could cause me to write of such a place here? What should so intrude as to break this vision? This idyll? Well, I am afraid, that it is a phenomenon more commonly associated in our minds with urban England and its sorry decline: the ‘Storm from the East’. This too, has reached Wroughton, as Henry Webster and his family are all too aware. It now joins that sad roster of towns, the names of which we associate with the near universal blight of our age: Blackburn, Burnley and Bradford, to name but a few.

Henry Webster is both an unlucky, yet very lucky, young man, for he bears the imprint of a hammer in his head. The blow struck one inch deep, and his vision shattered into stars, as his Mohammedan assailants attacked him from behind, knocking him to the ground, where he lay to be kicked and beaten by a gang of Muslim cowards some thirteen strong. Yet he lived, and he now speaks of his ordeal, and the permanent physical damage done to him by these bragging bullies.

For two years, this young man and his family have lived with the consequences of this attack. For two years, his mother – Liz Webster - has struggled for a public enquiry into this assault. What then, has this crime yielded by way of public comment and justice? Tragically little, I am afraid. The formulaic state-endorsed prose of the Ridgeway School website welcome message gives a hint as to how Henry’s ordeal has been treated:

The Ridgeway School offers a vibrant learning community with much pace and challenge; pupils do well in examinations and national tests and we strive to do ever better.

‘Vibrant’? What does this ‘vibrant’ signify? We know that Dewsbury is ‘vibrant’, as are Birmingham, Tower Hamlets and Derby. Oh, how I wish that this little corner of the West Country were not ‘vibrant’, for this word is a veritable curse. I would much prefer it to be officially classed as ‘dull’, for then we would know that the spiritual successors of the Saracens would not have made their way to one of the last remaining outposts of true England. As if it were not bad enough that Henry Webster almost lost his life to this Muslim mob, the character of the headmaster of the Ridgeway School has been weighed in the balance and found to be most wanting.

Steve Colledge was confronted by concerned parents the day after the attack upon Henry Webster, but he offered no support for the victim or his family. Neither did he offer an explanation, thereby underscoring his adherence to the state official ideology of politically correct multiculturalism, under which minorities are so often exempted from the criticism that they so richly deserve.

The motivation for the vicious assault upon Henry Webster was clearly based upon the ethno-confessional group solidarity of his assailants, which allowed them to function as a unit. As can be seen from the video report below, those who unleashed the violence were happy to let this be known by stating after the beating “That’s what you call Paki bashing” and “All the gora [whites] in year 11 want a fight”. However, the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) refused to recognise that there was a racial or religious motivation at play in this attack. The double standards of the CPS are simply astounding. It would seem that for this body, we English alone are capable of ‘racist’ crimes, and that barbarians such as those who almost killed a fifteen-year-old English boy, can do no wrong on this score.

We have seen in repeated cases how the police, the media and mainstream politicians have attempted to cover up systematic Muslim paedophilia, and how the family of Charlene Downes has been grossly let down by the legal system. What this suggests to me is that our establishment is indeed ‘institutionally racist’, and that this inherent racism is clearly directed against a particular section of our population: the English.

 

Blackpool: 60 underage White Girls abused by ‘Non-white adult Males’

The reports connected to this scandal are somewhat coy, but you dear reader, being aware of the sexual preferences of followers of a certain ‘religion’ (more correctly described as a totalitarian political ideology), will be able to put two and two together and figure out why the police and the media aren’t letting on to the confessional affiliation of the abusers. Why else would the reports mention systematic paedophile abuse of ethnic English girls in towns such as Blackburn and Burnley? We know why: for the same reason that paedophiles from a certain background in Derby, Rotherham and Keighley (to name but a few other instances) preyed on underage English girls. Is the public really so stupid as not to realise that the near deification of a seventh-century paedophile warlord whose name is all-too-well-known, lies at the root of this phenomenon? If you remove the practitioners of this paedophile creed, you remove the problem.

The abused girls were all aged between 13 and 15, belonging to precisely the same age group as Charlene Downes, whom it is alleged was raped, murdered and then served up as kebab meat to unsuspecting customers on the Blackpool seafront.

Today’s revelations arise from a copy of an unpublished report obtained by the Times, which revealed the scale of this crime in Blackpool, but as the Times hides behind an internet paywall, what is written here is gleaned from secondary sources such as the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and the BBC.

The pattern of sexual abuse of all of these 60 girls was very similar. The Telegraph states:

An unpublished police report identified 11 takeaway shops in the town centre which were being used as "honeypots" where the non-white men preyed on young white victims, who were given food, alcohol and cigarettes in return for sex.

The report said: "Young people were being groomed and sexually assaulted both inside and outside of premises by a number of takeaway owners and workers.”

Earlier this year a Home Office inquiry was launched amid reports of a similar trend of crime across the north of England and the Midlands involving gangs of mainly Muslim men and young girls.

This is no mere coincidence. Islam is a misogynist and imperialistic creed that sees our underage girls as legitimate booty to be ‘enjoyed’ and exploited with no sense of guilt or responsibility on the part of the men who perpetrate this crime. It is about time that we were able to publicly state that Islam is directly responsible for this paedophilia, and that Islam is not welcome in this country. Our children should certainly not be taught that Islam is ‘just like any other religion’ or ‘worthy of respect’, for it is neither of these things. Our children should be taught to despise Islam for the backward and hateful ideology that it is. Whatever you do, do not let your children anywhere near Muslim takeaways, restaurants or taxis. Keep them well away and teach them to avoid Muslims, but warn them also not to tell this to teachers, otherwise they’ll get them into trouble, as after all, most of the members of our teaching profession now act like Stasi snitches. This is the only way that you can keep your children safe.

Not all paedophiles are Muslims of course, but what distinguishes us non-Muslims from Muslims, is the fact that we revile paedophilia and despise those who practise it, whereas Muslims support them, because their prophet Mohammed was himself a paedophile. Since I placed my ‘Quiz for Muslims’ on this site, not one Muslim has answered the questions. Not one of them has condemned Mohammed’s paedophilia, which tells you all that you need to know about their attitude towards it. I can only draw the inference that they condone it. Indeed, amongst their men, they appear very happy to support it, providing that it is targeting our girls; our innocent non-Muslim girls.

According to the Daily Mail, ‘A former senior officer with Lancashire police told The Times the report was hushed up because of fears about 'upsetting community cohesion'.’ ‘Community cohesion? What ‘community cohesion’? I don’t see any ‘community cohesion’. What I see instead is a failure of politicians, the media, schools and the police force to open their eyes and recognise and name the problem of systematic paedophilia amongst the Muslim colonies that they have allowed to grow in our country. These colonies and the people who comprise them, never have been and never will be part of our community. They are no more part of our nation than a cancer is part of somebody’s ailing body. As such, they need to be excised and removed, otherwise the problem remains.

Either render Islam inert through encouraging mass apostasy, or physically remove its followers. These are the only ways in which this cancer can be destroyed. If our political class and their agents do not do this, then they are letting us know that they are prepared for this routine paedophilia to continue for the sake of purchasing the Muslim bloc vote. After all, has not Cameron just given Pakistan £650 million in aid? For what? From whom? By whose consent? The answers: to purchase Muslim votes using our money and without our consent.

Curse you Cameron! We shall not forget this. Curse also the haughty privileged Oxbridge media prima donna Anna Botting of Sky News, who saw it fit (according to the Casuals United blog) to laugh at the death of Charlene Downes last night. These individuals hate the English working class. Never forget anyone who slanders our people, and treats them with contempt. Can you imagine her getting away with laughing at the disappearance and presumed brutal murder of a member of an ethnic minority or a Muslim? Of course you can’t! She never would. We are treated as scum in our own country. This has to stop, and we must make it known that we will not stand for this sort of behaviour and attitude any longer. Those who would think themselves our masters and mistresses, should be but our agents to do our bidding. If they do not change their ways, and represent us and our interests, instead of those who seek to usurp our indigenous birthright, what right have they to continue to govern? None!

The EDL continue to support the Downes family in seeking justice in connection with the disappearance of their daughter Charlene. Let us hope that those responsible are eventually identified and sentenced.

Discounts for Muslims cause Disquiet in Tatarstan

“Special price. Special price for you my friend.” Have you ever heard these words before? I have, and the man uttering them never bothered sending me a quote for building work (I think that he was alarmed by some of the titles on my bookshelf) which is just as well, for behind the innocent English-sounding name of his company, it turned out to be an all-Muslim operation so they wouldn’t have got a penny out of me anyway. Well, in Kazan, the capital of the Russian republic of Tatarstan, it would appear that the offer of a “special price. Special price for you my friend” is being made good. Providing that is, you are a Muslim.

The recent appearance of an advertisement offering discounts on goods and services to Muslims only has caused some disquiet in the city. This scandalous de facto cash incentive for people to proclaim themselves Muslims was brought to light by a correspondent for Rossiia Regnum, who discovered this phenomenon in Kazan’s ‘Halal Guide’, which is a directory aimed at promoting Muslim businesses in the city. The advertisement for discounts for Muslim customers had been placed in the guide by the Falida Muslim Centre (see picture below), and included discounts for dental treatment and motorists.

The reporter followed this up by calling the dental clinic in question, but representatives of the management refused to discuss the discounts. Such a discount, according to another professional dentist named Vasilii Ivanov, suggests that the dentist in question had broken the Russian equivalent of the Hippocratic oath:

“Such a distinction between patients is absolutely unacceptable for a doctor. In my opinion, this is in no way better than the situation would be if the cost of services was differentiated in accordance with a person’s skin colour. All doctors in our country take the Doctor’s Oath of the Russian Federation, in the text of which are these words: “Be always ready to offer medical assistance to the sick . . ., to act exclusively in their interests irrespective of sex, race, ethnicity, language, origins, wealth and social position, place of residence, relationship to religion, convictions, membership of social organisations and such other circumstances.””

Quite clearly therefore, favouring Muslims over other patients is in violation of this ethical code.

Yana Amelina, an academic specialist based at the Kazan Centre for Regional and Ethno-religious Research states that such discounts are also in direct contravention of the Russian Federation’s secular Constitution, and that dividing people upon the basis of confessional belonging is likely to exacerbate tensions between Muslims and others.

So, why are such discounts being offered? Evidently, it is seen as making good business sense, although in the case of one particular dental practice this effort to lure Muslim customers through the door may have backfired somewhat. Islam is ‘reviving’ in Tatarstan, and a significant strand, as previously documented here, is militant and violent. Offering discounts to Muslims appears to be a mechanism via which perhaps people with only a lax Muslim heritage can be made to more actively self-identify as Muslims, which accounts for the willingness of the Falida Muslim Centre to host such an advertisement. Thus opens up another front for Dawah in Tatarstan. If you're a kafir like me, make sure that you don't get toothache when visiting Kazan.

Lampedusa Church burned by North African Migrants

The Voice of Russia reports that 36 so-called North African ‘refugees’ (i.e. Muslim economic migrants) on the island of Lampedusa repaid a parish priest for his kindness by setting light to his church. Prior to this ungracious act of arson, they had been accommodated in it. Why are any of these people allowed into European nations? Shouldn’t our armed forces be protecting us from them, instead of helping them to land in EU member states?

Photo: EPA

Malta too is pleading for help, because of the wave of migrants from North Africa arriving on its shores. Unfortunately, this is a crisis which will only grow worse, and the impact upon European societies will be highly negative. There is only one answer to this problem: send each and every one of them back. Only in this way, will we eventually ensure that no more come. The video below (H/T Tundra Tabloids) is a subtitled Bulgarian news report on the incident.

My Brother the Islamist: the Tears of a loving Mother

In watching BBC3’s ‘My Brother the Islamist’ this evening, I was deeply moved. Not by the story of the filmmaker getting back in touch with his Islamist convert brother and trying to understand his motivations, but by the love of a mother for her son. For most of us, the Dorset town of Weymouth will forever hold happy associations, and what we saw this evening will not, thankfully, displace those positive sentiments. Such a place, idyllic as it is, and largely removed from those negative changes that have so blighted urban England in recent decades, has not, so it seems, managed to insulate itself entirely from the malign influence of Islam.

Robb Leech made this film largely in an attempt to try and comprehend what it was that had motivated his half brother – Rich – to convert to Islam and join with Anjem Choudary’s band of anti-English anti-rationalist Islamist malcontents. The fact that the two had grown up together in what appeared to be a happy and conventional middle-class background in an English seaside town, gives lie to the claims that jihadists are motivated to attack our society because of relative deprivation and ‘racism’: what was driving Rich – now the self-styled Salahuddin – to hate his family and his country was one thing and one thing only: the poisonous ideology of Islam.

At the time of the documentary’s inception, Rich was a recent Muslim convert who had moved to London two years earlier, and converted to Islam only six months before filming began. Since moving away and converting, Rich had come to hate and denounce everything that his family and native society stand for. Strangely, in the short period that he had lived in London, he had lost all trace of a Dorset or conventional English accent, and had acquired instead the peculiar pretentious lilt of the East London (Bangladeshi?) Muslim. This was not touched upon in the documentary, but I suspect that he was not always possessed of such a manner of speaking. He had come to fall in with Anjem Choudary’s jihadist group, which had recently rebranded itself as ‘Muslims Against Crusades’, and had taken part in two provocative demonstrations in 2010: one in Barking, and the other outside of the American Embassy in London. At the age of 27, Rich, now the self-styled Salahuddin, had become an advocate of global jihad and would only speak to his brother and allow the documentary to be made for the sake of Dawah. The fact that he would only shake hands with his brother using the hand that he used to clean his backside was something which, not unnaturally, caused his brother a degree of angry irritation.

It must be hugely upsetting for Rich’s parents to have seen their son undergo what appears to be a mental breakdown, and to have experienced his purposeful estrangement from them. He seems however, to be a lost cause. Worryingly, a seemingly likeable Weymouth lad named Ben, a mere 17 years old, had allowed something rather more sinister than death metal or the latest youth subculture to take a hold on his tractable young mind, for he had instead chosen to convert to Islam. This is the aspect of the documentary that I found the most worrying, for it seemed as if Robb Leech had actively introduced Ben to his elder brother, taking him to London to meet and stay with members of Muslims Against Crusades. As a consequence, Ben became less likeable as the programme progressed, as it became evident that this change of milieu served to solidify and intensify his sense of estrangement from English culture and his mother, whilst strongly reinforcing his self-identification as a Muslim; so much so, that he had his foreskin removed at the East London Mosque. Perhaps Robb Leech hadn’t given this introduction much thought at the time, but I do not think that this was an ethical thing to have done with an evidently highly impressionable teenager.

Ben’s mother – Maggie – struck me as a loving, supportive and very worried mother. Her upset was palpable, and as her son spoke in front of her, repeatedly stating his belief in the superiority of the Islamic doctrine of hate and misogyny, tears welled up in her eyes. As her tears flowed, so too did mine. How must she feel? How would you feel, if one of your children embraced the evil of Islam and turned against you? Every word he said must have smarted and stung. Evidently not wanting to lose him, and deep down hoping that one day he will grow out of this highly damaging and negative phase, she did her best to put a brave face on the situation. Maggie, I hope for your sake and for everyone else’s, that your Ben awakens from this nightmare soon, and comes to see what he has gone through as an uncharacteristic aberration, rather than continuing in his current vein and doing something dangerously stupid.

Why is this happening in our society? Islam has no place here. The fault lies with the education system and the mass media which indoctrinate our children into ethnic self-hatred, whilst elevating other peoples and cultures above our own, and deeming it only permissible to say positive things (i.e. lies) about Islam. Why is Islam finding converts? Because our political class cares not for the well-being of the indigenous people of this country and allows Islam to flourish. Our elite would sooner treat with sordid Saudis for petrodollar kickbacks and agree to their funding the Islamisation of England through mosques, madrassahs and ‘interfaith’ (sic) dialogue, than preserve our culture, way of life and identity. This was evident in last night’s documentary, which showed the police allowing Muslims Against Crusades to practise Dawah on the streets of Weymouth, whilst arresting a local man for voicing his objection. Why should they have the right to spread their lies and hate upon our streets and thereby seek to undermine us and deceive our people, whereas we are subject to arrest for so-called ‘hate speech’ or ‘religious hatred’ if we object to this? They are the agents of hate and our self-declared enemies, and as such, we should seek to make it known to them that they are unwelcome and should leave. Show them the slightest kindness or weakness, and they’ll mercilessly exploit it.

The fact that our media and our mainstream politicians continue to defend Islam and enable its spread provides reason enough to share the tears of a loving mother. It is now up to the EDL, to help wipe those tears away.

Media Reaction to EDL Blackburn Protest: implicit and explicit Messages

On this occasion I thought that it would be of interest for some readers to provide a quick roundup of mainstream media coverage of yesterday’s EDL protest and UAF counterdemonstration. As, thankfully, there was little violence in Blackburn, most of the press seems not to have bothered with running a story in its wake, with the notable exceptions of the Daily Mail and the Daily Star. If any of the mainstream papers possess a readership likely to sympathise with at least some aspects of the EDL’s cause, it is these two, so the manner in which they report EDL demonstrations is particularly salient.

Although there is not time to cover all reports, I have chosen what I consider to be the most significant on a national level – the BBC website, Daily Mail and Daily Star – combined with two local papers – the Lancashire Evening Post and Pendle Today – as well as the Socialist Worker online, to span the compass of conventional news sources that most people are likely to encounter. Radio and television however fall beyond the purview of this piece. I decided to examine the SWP’s reporting of the day, for it after all, is the animating intelligence behind the UAF; what it has to say on this matter is thus of particular pertinence, for it allows us a glimpse into the alternative worldview of the EDL’s most rabid opponents, and the manner in which this is processed and operationalised as mobilising propaganda for its counterdemonstrations.

In reading any report, it is of course important to note the nuances of phraseology, the juxtaposition of information to imply certain things or suggest associations where none may exist, and the general tenor given to articles by their headlines. What I present here will be my own general impressions synthesised from having read and digested all of the aforementioned sources, but for the sake of comparison, I thought that it might be useful to introduce what I shall term a ‘demonising buzzword tally’, which will enable us to assess the degree of bias or objectivity in each of the reports. However, simply counting the number of demonising buzzwords doesn’t tell us everything, as articles vary considerably in length and the words may cluster around certain instances of activity. So, with that caveat, I shall proceed.

Negative buzzwords commonly employed by the media in relation to the EDL include ‘racist’, ‘far-right’ and ‘extremist’. Likewise, even if such reports were to be stripped of this language, they would still display a general bias through their uncritical reporting of the UAF and the routine regurgitation of what its representatives claim to be ‘the truth’ about ‘the racist EDL’. Indeed, simply by referring to the UAF as ‘anti-fascist protesters’, this implies that whatever or whoever it is protesting against must by definition therefore be ‘fascists’ or ‘fascistic’. This is a very clever ploy.

Taking the headlines first of all, in order of descending objectivity they are:

• Protest passes off peacefully (Pendle Today)
• Arrests following town protests (Lancashire Evening Post)
• Arrests in Blackburn as EDL and opponents protest (BBC)
• Fisticuffs in EDL Demo Chaos (Daily Star)
• Mosques support anti-racist demo in Blackburn (Socialist Worker Online)
• Shaming the St George's Cross: Vile EDL thugs in 2,000-strong hate protest wear flag-coloured burkas to confront Muslims (Daily Mail)

Interestingly, it is the Daily Mail and Daily Star which carry the most negative headlines about the demonstration and which single out the EDL for condemnation without any reference to the UAF. This should be seen as significant, for both papers, as mentioned earlier, possess readerships that can to a certain extent be considered as potentially sympathetic to the EDL. Only a few weeks ago, the Daily Star had a brief flirtation with the EDL during which it ran a succession of stories which were either neutrally worded or inclined slightly in favour of the protest group. The furore surrounding that phase however appears to have precipitated an editorial volte-face, and the Star has now gone into full attack mode against the street movement.

Likewise, the fact that the Mail has turned the full weight of its guns on the EDL (a decision unpopular with the majority of its readers if the associated comments section is anything to go by) suggests that this is actually a recognition of the EDL’s growing strength, and that our political masters in Whitehall have given the paper a nudge and instructed it to take a certain editorial line in an effort to take the wind out of the sails of public support. The Star article contained two uses of demonising terms: ‘thugs’ and ‘far-right’, whereas the tally for the Mail was rather higher with six words/terms overall: ‘vile’, ‘thugs’, ‘far-right’, ‘extremists’, ‘hate protest’ and ‘sinister’.

The headlines from the local press, although seemingly bland, likewise provide the critical reader with some key information: don’t upset the locals as this could lose us readers. There is thus an unwillingness to write overly disparaging pieces about the EDL, which is interesting, as it is suggestive of significant local support. Moving onto the ‘demonising buzzword tally’ for a moment, there are no such words in the Lancashire Evening Post article, and only one ‘far-right’ in the Pendle Today piece. Almost as neutral as these local reports was the one produced by the BBC website, which is a surprise, for previously it has provided some very unbalanced coverage of EDL protests which has made liberal use of demonising terminology. On this occasion however, its report has been commendably balanced and contained no demonising buzzwords. It’s not often that I say this, but on this occasion: well done BBC!

Lastly, we move to the Socialist Worker Online, and it doesn’t fail to disappoint in its generous usage of demonising buzzwords which are liberally employed throughout the length of the piece. It thus yields up the following impressive tally of stigmatising terms in referring to the EDL: 

• Racist/racists – 8 
• Racism – 1 
• Fascism – 1 
• Scum – 1  

Morevoer, just to sledgehammer the message home that they’re ‘fighting racism’ because you might not have caught on to their subtle allusions to it in the text, they also pepper the article with four instances of ‘anti-racist’ and ‘anti-racists’. It is a risibly poor piece of journalism, and could have been written by a revolutionary Marxist random text generator. I would certainly encourage you to read their article though, as it does give a wonderful insight into the curious minds of our opponents and the alternative reality within which they operate.

EDL Blackburn Demo: Farcical UAF Video

Not only did the Blackburn EDL demo go well yesterday, but it also yielded up some unintentional comic gems on the part of the UAF counterdemonstrators. They have already provided us with one of the most ludicrous photographic images of the year to date, but now they have decided to give us an equally absurd companion piece in the form of the video below. Quite why they uploaded this onto Youtube is frankly a mystery, as its content cannot be termed anything other than acutely embarrassing.

Whereas the footage itself is visually dull (a group of people milling around looking utterly disinterested in the agitator’s chants (I believe Aussies call such a person a “spruiker”)), it is worth watching in full, as it reveals not only the UAF’s lack of popular appeal, but also its leadership’s complete absence of understanding of the ‘culturally diverse’ constituency that it purports to represent and defend. Why else, for example, would the spruiker be chanting “We are black, white, Asians we are Jews. We are black, white, Asians we are Jews!” at a demonstration allegedly defending Muslims? Given the latter’s typical attitude towards Jews, the spruiker could not have hit a more discordant note had he been addressing a gathering in a Munich bierkeller in 1933.

Despite the spruiker’s injunctions for the small crowd to join in, there was a distinct lack of response: no unified chanting, stomping of feet or clapping of hands. Nothing. Another risibly inappropriate chant ran:

“We are white, we are white, together we are dynamite. We are black, together we are dynamite. We are black, we are white, together we are dynamite.”

This man evidently doesn’t have an ironic bone in his body. Who would choose an explosive reference like that when trying to appeal to Muslims? If anyone else had done so, I’m sure that it would have been deemed at the very least inappropriate.

Most hollow of all ran the chant:

“There are many, many more of us than you! There are many, many more of us than you!”

The UAF demonstrators were outnumbered more than four to one by the EDL. EDL supporters have nothing to worry about, as the UAF has revealed itself to be a spent and irrelevant force. The UAF is an artificial construct lacking popular resonance propped up by vast union and public subsidies. Watch and cringe:

Amusing UAF Picture from EDL Blackburn Protest

The absurdity of the following picture from the UAF website cannot but fail to raise a smile. I'm sure that the creature in this mobile tent really possesses oceans of tolerance for 'diversity', other viewpoints and alternative sexual orientations. The irony of this UAF Grim Reaper/ninja hybrid Islamo-fascist (scythe traded in for a placard today sporting a slogan denouncing 'fascism') protesting against 'intolerance' at today's counterdemonstration against the EDL in Blackburn is priceless. If this picture had been taken yesterday, I would have written it off as an April Fool's joke, but it was taken today! Did our forefathers fight World Wars I and II to enable hostile colonising ingrates such as this object to take our country from us? Of course they didn't! They must be turning in their graves. Further unintentional amusement can be derived from a UAF video here.

And now ladies and gentlemen, for you enjoyment and delectation, I present Afghanistan's hottest female act - the Burka Band - singing their biggest hit 'Burka Blue'!