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“This morning, our country woke to news of another terrorist attack on the streets of our capital city: the second this month and every bit as sickening as those which have come before.
“It was an attack that once again targeted the ordinary and the innocent going about their daily lives – this time British Muslims as they left a Mosque having broken their fast and prayed together at this sacred time of year.
“Today we come together - as we have done before – to condemn this act and to state once again that hatred and evil of this kind will never succeed.
“The Government’s Emergency Committee, COBRA, has just met and I can set out what we know about what happened, and the steps that we are taking to respond.
“Just after twenty-past midnight, the Metropolitan Police received reports that a van had been driven into a crowd of people on Seven Sisters Road in Finsbury Park.
“Officers were in the immediate vicinity as the attack unfolded and responded within one minute.
“Police declared it a terrorist incident within eight minutes.
“One man was pronounced dead at the scene; eight injured were taken to three separate hospitals; while two were treated at the scene for more minor injuries.
“The driver of the van - a white man aged 48 - was bravely detained by members of the public at the scene and then arrested by police.
“The early assessment by the police is that the attacker acted alone.
“Our thoughts and prayers this morning are with the family and friends of the man who died and those who were injured.
“On behalf of the people of London – and the whole country – I want to thank the police and the emergency services once again for responding as they always do with great professionalism and courage.
“Extra police resources have already been deployed to reassure communities, and the police will continue to assess the security needs of Mosques and provide any additional resources needed, especially during this final week before Eid Al-Fitr, a particularly important time for the whole Muslim community.
“This was an attack on Muslims near their place of worship. And like all terrorism, in whatever form, it shares the same fundamental goal.
“It seeks to drive us apart; and to break the precious bonds of solidarity and citizenship that we share in this country.
“We will not let this happen.
“When I stood here for the first time as Prime Minister last Summer I spoke about our precious belief in the Union – not just the bond between the four nations of the United Kingdom – but the bond between all our citizens, every one of us, whoever we are and wherever we are from.
“At the heart of that bond is a belief in the fundamental freedoms and liberties that we all cherish; the freedom of speech; the freedom to live how we choose and yes, the freedom to practice religion in peace.
“This morning we have seen a sickening attempt to destroy those freedoms; and to break those bonds of citizenship that define our United Kingdom.
“It is a reminder that terrorism, extremism and hatred take many forms; and our determination to tackle them must be the same whoever is responsible.
“As I said here two weeks ago, there has been far too much tolerance of extremism in our country over many years – and that means extremism of any kind, including Islamophobia.
“That is why this Government will act to stamp out extremist and hateful ideology – both across society and on the internet, so it is denied a safe space to grow.
“It is why we will be reviewing our Counter-Terrorism strategy and ensuring that police and security services have the powers they need.
“And it is why we will establish a new Commission for Countering Extremism as a statutory body to help fight hatred and extremism in the same way as we have fought racism – because this extremism is every bit as insidious and destructive to our values and our way of life and we will stop at nothing to defeat it.
“Today’s attack falls at a difficult time in the life of this city, following on from the attack on London Bridge two weeks ago – and of course the unimaginable tragedy of Grenfell Tower last week, on which I will chair another meeting of Ministers and officials later today.
“But what we have seen throughout – whether in the heroism of the ordinary citizens who fought off the attackers at London Bridge; the unbreakable resolve of the residents in Kensington; or this morning the spirit of the community that apprehended this attacker – is that this is an extraordinary city of extraordinary people.
“It is home to a multitude of communities that together make London one of the greatest cities on earth.
“Diverse, welcoming, vibrant, compassionate, confident and determined never to give in to hate.
“These are the values that define this city.
“These are the values that define this country.
“These are the values that this government will uphold.
Jerusalem Post, “5 reasons why some UK Jews support Labour, despite antisemitism charges”, 4 June 2017:
Relations between British Jewry and the country’s Labour Party, which used to be their political home, appear to be at a historic lowpoint.
Ahead of the June 8 general elections in the United Kingdom, a Jewish Chronicle poll from last week put support for the center-left party — which has seen repeated scandals involving antisemitic rhetoric in recent months — at 13 percent, compared to 77 percent support for the Conservative Party.
Relations between British Jewry and the country’s Labour Party, which used to be their political home, appear to be at a historic lowpoint.
Ahead of the June 8 general elections in the United Kingdom, a Jewish Chronicle poll from last week put support for the center-left party — which has seen repeated scandals involving antisemitic rhetoric in recent months — at 13 percent, compared to 77 percent support for the Conservative Party.
Despite the dismal results for Labour among the British Jewish community, that’s up from 8.5 percent in a similar poll from last month.
By comparison, 35 percent of the general population supports Labour and 44 percent of Britons said they would vote Conservative in a June 1 poll commissioned by The Independent.
The Jewish vote is of little consequence in electoral terms — Jews are a minority of 300,000 people in Great Britain — but it is widely seen as proof of the change that has gripped Labour since Jeremy Corbyn won the party’s 2015 leadership election. Corbyn is a far-left politician with pro-Palestinian sympathies who, critics say, has failed to address hate speech against Jews by his supporters.
Yet some prominent Jews, including Labour lawmakers Ruth Smeeth and Luciana Berger, remain loyal to the party under Corbyn — who was accused of being soft on antisemitism last year by an inter-parliamentary committee of inquiry on the problem.
For example, Corbyn did not kick out former London Mayor Ken Linvingstone, who was merely suspended for repeatedly suggesting that Adolf Hitler was in cahoots with Zionists. And then there was the suspension, readmission and re-suspension of Labour activist Jackie Walker, who said Jews led the slave trade and, later, said that there was no reason to offer special protection to Jewish schools. (Corbyn has refused to kick her out of the party as well, and she remains a member.)
Throughout these and other scandals, some Jews have remained loyal to Labour. Here are five reasons why.
1. Singled out for criticism?
Some of Corbyn’s supporters, including Jewish ones, believe Labour is being singled out for criticism on antisemitism, which they say occurs on the fringes of all political parties — including the ruling Conservative Party.
A case in point is Michael Segalov, the News Editor at Huck Magazine, a publication about art and politics.
“Since Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, unsupportive MPs, campaigning groups and journalists have been desperate to paint him and the movement who support him as antisemitic fanatics, despite knowing it’s really not the case,” Segalov, who is Jewish, wrote in September in a column published by The Independent.
Labour is certainly not the only British party with senior members who employ vitriol against Jews and Israel.
David Ward, a lawmaker for the Liberal Democrats party, was sacked last month for expressing a desire to see rockets hitting Tel Aviv and accusing “the Jews” of “inflicting atrocities on Palestinians”.
But the Liberal Democrats have taken “strong and decisive action” against such politicians, Leslie Bergman, the London-based former president of the European Union for Progressive Judaism, told JTA.
“It is irrefutable that Corbyn has not taken the decisive action that a party in a Democratic Western country would take when there is manifest antisemitism in its ranks,” he added.
2. This goes a long way back
The Jewish Labour Movement, a group within the party, was registered officially in 1920 — 20 years after the party’s establishment. It was the first non-Christian minority group within Labour, according to Christine Collette and Stephen Bird, the authors of the 2000 book “Jews, Labour and the Left, 1918–48.”
Once the party of choice for Jews, including impoverished immigrants from Eastern Europe, it lost some ground to the Conservative Party as Labour adopted an increasingly critical attitude towards Israel — part of a larger shift in the West of sympathy toward Israel from the center-left parties to ones on the right.
But in 2010, when the party was headed by Ed Miliband, who is Jewish, Labour was still slightly ahead of the Conservative Party among Jewish voters (31 percent to 30 percent), according to a poll.
3. Jewish values
Even Labour’s Jewish critics concede its mission aligns better with Jewish values than the policies favored by the Conservative Party, with its repeated cuts to welfare budgets and free-market economics.
Bergman, who does not support Labour under Corbyn because he believes Corbyn has failed to address hate speech in the party’s ranks, said he “can understand” Jews who vote for the party despite its problems. They “view Labour as more conscious of social issues, the need to support the less privileged in society. And that is a Jewish value,” Bergman said.
This is also one of the main reasons that Berger, a 36-year-old Labour lawmaker from Liverpool, who has come under pressure from the Jewish community to leave the party, has decided to stay, she told The Jewish Chronicle last week.
“On every level the Conservatives have failed because of the savage cuts they have dished out,” said Berger, an advocate of mental health issues who has cut short her maternity leave to campaign for Labour ahead of the election.
4. Not big on Israel? Not a problem!
Though they generally support Israel’s right to exist, British Jews are growing uneasy over its settlement policy and perceived occupation of Palestinian land – issues that are also key to criticism of Israel within Labour.
In a 2015 poll conducted among 1,131 Jewish respondents by the dovish Jewish Yachad group, 47 percent of respondents said the Israeli government was “constantly creating obstacles to avoid engaging in the peace process.” Three quarters of participants in that poll agreed that “the expansion of settlements on the West Bank is a major obstacle to peace,” and two thirds reported having a “sense of despair” whenever new expansion is approved.
Indeed, a Jewish anti-Israel lawmaker, the late Gerald Kaufman, who died in February, was among the Labour politicians accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric. In 2015 he was recorded saying that the British government had become more pro-Israel in recent years due to “Jewish money, Jewish donations to the Conservative Party.”
5. It’s a local thing
In the United Kingdom, which is a parliamentary democracy, voters elect a local representative from their constituency to represent them in parliament.
Some Jewish voters who may be uneasy about Corbyn are happy to vote for another Labour Party member whom they do trust.
This certainly applies to Linda Grant, a Jewish Labour volunteer from London who said that, while she believes Corbyn is not the right man to lead Labour, she nonetheless plans to vote for a party candidate who she says has an impeccable record on fighting antisemitism.
“If I was a few streets away, in Islington North, Corbyn’s constituency, I can’t say how I would vote. Probably not Labour,” Grant wrote in a column that appeared last week in the Chronicle. “But I will have no difficulty voting for Catherine West and delivering even more leaflets on her behalf.”
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 03 June 2017 07:46.
Keith Preston (((John K. Press)))) and Robert Stark Andy Nowicki
We’ve had a couple of talks with Pilleater recently, talks which have stalled for the time being. Pilleater is starting a podcast/platform called Radio Asian-Aryan - Be warned that he is mixing with a highly dubious crowd and point of view.
I would like to warn our audience against the Regnery circus game that the Stark tent presides over - a tent where Pilleater gained entry into the “alt-right” - an integral part of their game is: Anything to bury MR’s platform of the White Left / Left Nationalism.
To date, the go-to guys for The Regnery Circus in that burying effort have been Keith Preston and Andy Nowicki, and that remains the case as evidenced by this first episode of Pilleater’s “Asian Aryanism” - Andy Nowicki is the first guest (coincidence?). Andy is a natural “Alt Liter” (Jew friendly paleoconservative, promoting a Judeo-Christian order on the order of (((John K. Press’s))) prescription). Andy is basically in the mold of so many struggling writers turned Alt-liter as it provides a niche for one who is willing to suck Jewish cock in order to keep a career afloat (He tells himself he is being well balanced).
Keith Preston (who doesn’t speak here, but posts the audio and supports the project of subverting the White Left/Left Nationalism) is a reactionary of a different kind - against his right wing upbringing and into anarcho-liberalism to sustain his career (read, need to be Jew-friendly) - as such, his position is also convenient for the Regnery circus as a go-to-guy to subvert MR’s White-Left / Left Nationalist platform (he constantly does this - it is his angle).
Stark, always Jewish friendly, has provided the basic forum of an entryist tent of Jews into the Alt-Right, while depicting “The Left” as the enemy or the “Right/Left” dichotomy as phony or non existent; and The White Left as non-existent..
They’ve been trying to bury the White Left with “Alt-left” - i.e., with a more liberal, Jew friendly, Jewish participatory kind of alt-right.
They are also trying to subvert Left Nationalist alliance between Whites and Asians by grooming Pilleater’s “Asian Aryanism” - a more liberal, slightly more friendly-to-Asians and friendly-to-mixing platform than the alt-right.
The Alt-Left is Poison
...Pilleater adds “Adventure-kid” (a black) to his co-host entourage…
Radio Asian-Aryan Episode 1: Andy Nowicki
by Keith Preston • Left and Right
New Observer, ” Germany Spent €20 Billion on Invasion in 2016”, 24 May 2017:
The German government in 2016 provided €9.3 billion euros ($10.4 billion) to its sixteen states for assisting nonwhite invaders pretending to be refugees and a further €11 billion euros on welfare handouts in Third World countries in failed efforts to halt the flow.
The figures are from a federal government report approved and published by Chancellor Merkel’s cabinet on Wednesday.
A total of €5.5 billion was spent on invaders who were seeking asylum and were not yet recognized by the state. The funds spent within Germany also went towards an “integration package” that cost €2 billion, while €400 million was spent on shelter for “asylum seekers” and €350 million on “unaccompanied minors.”
The state of North Rhine-Westphalia received the most funding (€1.2 billion), followed by Bavaria (€860 million) and Baden-Württemberg (€728 million)
The Federal Ministry of Finance announced that €11 billion were spent directly on “additional measures to fight the causes of forced migration and displacement.”
These measures include welfare and handouts in African states, none of which has made the slightest impact on halting the sub-Saharan invasion of Europe.
In fact, if anything, it has speeded up the invasion, as the Africans see for themselves that the Europeans apparently have an endless flow of cash they can throw about—and white-provided cell phone technology allows them to tell their families back home how well they are living once in Europe.
While stories like this have been pushed under the rug, for that we have to thank those who’ve pushed and those who have accepted a definition of the “left” as liberal internationalism opposed to unionized defense of natives - especially of the working class. The Sikh community warned would-be coalitions about Muslim grooming but there was no White Left to hear them and take them up in coalition-building. However, now that the Jewish controlled Right points out these stories in compassion to Whites, it’s ok to pay attention to them.
The actress stars in a gripping new drama about the Rochdale abuse scandal Credit: Jeff Gilbert
DT, “Lesley Sharp: ‘What happened to the girls in Rochdale is never far from my mind”, 15 May 2017:
Lesley Sharp still remembers how she felt when she read about the widespread scandal of teenage girls being sexually abused in Rochdale. “I felt desperately sad, because it’s a real shock in the 21st century, where we’re fortunate to live in amazing country like the UK, that there are areas where young women feel so desperate about what their future should be,” says the 57-year-old actress quietly.
47 children are thought to have been groomed and sexually exploited by men in Rochdale between 2005 to 2008 and ignored by authorities. “I remember finding that shocking,” says Sharp. “I was just perplexed and horrified by the idea that these girls had initially been treated as somehow deserving of what had been meted out to them. I don’t think just because this case came to the fore that this situation has gone away. I think it’s still out there.”
Sharp’s passion about ending child sexual exploitation in the UK is ongoing - she has been a Barnados ambassador for several years - but it is also reflected in her latest role. Anonymising the victims, BBC One’s drama, Three Girls, depicts the real-life abuse of teenage girls in Rochdale. Sharp plays Detective Constable Margaret Oliver, the police officer who was so appalled by the way the force handled the girls’ cases that she eventually resigned.
“France has already condemned boycotting Israel, and I have no intention of changing this position.” - Emmanuel Macron
TheTower, “Party of French President Macron Boots Anti-Israel Candidate Over Anti-Semitic Tweets”, 15 May 2017:
The party of newly installed French President Emmanuel Macron expelled a candidate for a parliamentary seat on Friday over anti-Semitic comments he made on social media, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.
En Marche removed Christian Gerin, a journalist, from its ticket for next month’s legislative elections after tweets he made were publicized by LICRA, a watchdog that exposes anti-Semitism and racism.
The tweets in question were posted between 2013 and last year. One tweet by Gerin asked, “When will there be a separation between CRIF and state?” CRIF is an umbrella organization representing the Jews of France. Its opponents say that CRIF wields too much influence in France.
Gerin characterized former Prime Minister Manuel Valls as “virulently Zionist, racist and an Islamophobe.” He also advocated for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
LICRA, which is one of the oldest civil rights organizations in France, characterized Gerins’ tweets as having “clear anti-Semitic connotations.”
A spokesman for En Marche, Laurence Haim, confirmed that Gerin was suspended over the tweets.
As interior minster and later prime minister in the previous Socialist government, Valls was vocal in expressing his opposition to anti-Semitism. In 2014, he said, “Criticism of Israel that is based on anti-Zionism — that’s anti-Semitism today, this is the refuge of those who do not accept the State of Israel.”
A year later he said in a Paris synagogue that the fight against anti-Semitism in France “must be renewed.”
Macron also denounced boycotts of Israel during his campaign, deeming them anti-Semitic, The Jerusalem Post reported.
“The role of France is to conduct an independent and balanced policy that would guarantee a dialogue by all sides and the construction of peace,” Macron said as he visited Lebanon in January. “France has already condemned boycotting Israel, and I have no intention of changing this position.”
The Court of Cassation, France’s highest court, ruled in October 2015 that the BDS campaign is a form of hate speech.
Known as the Lioness of Italy for its resistance to the Austrian army in 1849 during the First War of Italian Independence, is the city of Brescia blindly building its own funeral pyre as it takes in thousands of African migrants on a daily basis? It has been argued by liberals and many Catholics that the city is a model of integration and that Italian “conviviality” can succeed where Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism and French assimilationism have failed.1 Indeed, Brescia supposedly offers a third way: “interculturality” involving face-to-face “dialogue” between different cultures.2 What this actually means in practice is difficult to decipher. In any case, such claims are dangerously optimistic and utopian, to say the least.
History
Before considering the current wave of (state aided) migration let us take a very brief look at the origins of the city and its experience during another period of large scale of migration: the Völkerwanderung. We will see that during and after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Germanic tribes settled in and around Brescia, as they did in many other parts of Italy, but that these warriors and their families were ultimately assimilated into the Roman population. It could be said that Brescia conquered its conquerors. But what of the current migrants? As one former mayor put it, Brescia is in effect a “frontier city.” Can Africans and other non-Europeans arriving in such huge numbers also be assimilated? And, assuming for the sake of argument that they can be, how long will the process take and at what cost?
The Roman historian Livy wrote that Brescia, or Brixia as it was then called in Latin, had been the chief settlement of the Cenomanian Gauls who crossed the Alps and established themselves in Italy north of the River Po,3 which is thought to have been inhabited by the Ligurians, possibly a pre-Indo European population. In the period before and after the Second Punic War (218/201 BC), the Roman Republic defeated the Celtic tribes south of the River Po and founded colonies in the area. The Cenomanian Gauls north of the Po for their part were defeated in 197 BC and Romanisation gradually ensued. In 27 BC, Octavian Augustus granted Brixia, now a significant urban centre, the status of colonia civica augusta.
As the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century and in the centuries that followed, Brescia frequently found itself centre stage of the Völkerwanderung. In 402 AD the city was ravaged by the Ostrogoths under Alaric and in 451 it was besieged and sacked by Attila the Hun. In 496 Odoacer, the general who had deposed the last Roman Emperor in the West, Romulus August, was defeated and killed by the Ostrogoths under Theoderic who styled himself “King of the Goths and Romans.” The Ostrogoths finally succumbed to a resurgent Byzantine Empire and Brescia fell in 562. But Brescia remained in Byzantine hands for just six years when another Germanic tribe, the Lombards, invaded Italy almost unopposed and established a Kingdom that lasted until the Frankish conquest of 774. As least as far as Brescia was concerned the barbarian incursions and migrations had now largely come to an end. What is striking about these arrivals is the ultimate assimilation of these conquering Germanic populations into the Roman population. The Lombards gradually abandoned their social customs and clothing and the use of their Germanic tongue was replaced by the neo-Latin vernacular of the local population.
African and Asian Invaders
National Geography and Academics call them the “New Italians”
It is estimated that less than 3% of those who cross the Mediterranean are actually fully-fledged refugees. In Brescia the situation is even worse with around 72% of the arrivals classified as illegals. And these figures refer to 2016 only. Few clandestini are ever deported and most drift into the black economy, try to reach northern Europe or end up in the criminal underworld. A truly monstrous situation has arisen which amounts to failure by the state to fulfill its fundamental duty of upholding the rule of law and defend its citizens. A whole industry has now grown up around migrants: lawyers, think tanks, hotel owners, landlords and liberal/catholic cooperatives providing accommodation for them. The costs are enormous. According to one report, in 2016 the system of “accoglienza” (welcoming) was costing the province of Brescia around 2 million Euro a month!
The phenomenon of migration from Africa began in the late 1980’s but, to be fair, the much-maligned Berlusconi actually managed to get the situation under a degree of control thanks to his relations with Libya. Then came the chaos caused by the overthrow of Gaddafi and the civil war, the ousting of Berlusconi and a series of “technocrat” and liberal governments appointed by President Napolitano, a former communist who in 1956 backed the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Key figures in government circles are known globalists with connections to refugee organisations. Laura Boldrini, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, is a former spokesperson for the UNHCR in Rome and was editor of its magazine Rifiugiati (Refugees).
Now, in addition to this onslaught from Africa, Brescia already has a non-European population that makes up around 13% of its roughly 200,000 inhabitants, the biggest groups being North Africans, West Africans and South Asians.5 This is the one of highest in percentage terms in Italy and the real figure is without doubt higher because of illegal immigration and the figures do not include foreigners naturalised as Italian citizens. The vast majority are unskilled workers and their dependents. Foreigners suffer a disproportionately high rate of unemployment and it goes without saying that they make up the bulk of the prison population. The member of the Lombard Regional Council in charge of Security, Civil Protection and Immigration called Brescia “the capital of foreign crime” in Northern Italy.6 Brescia too has had its fair share of terror plots, foreign fighters and Islamists.
Political Climate
Italian opinion now reflects the divisions we see over much of the Western World between the globalist metropolitan establishment on the one side and “provincials” and defenders of the nation state on the other. Much of the media, academia, big business, the professions, the church, the school system and polite society generally are politically correct and anti-populist. The courts too have taken controversial decisions. In a town near Brescia recently, a member of Lega Nord, the northern separatist party critical of mass immigration, was fined for writing that certain cooperatives “profit from the traffic in illegal immigrants.” The judge held that the statement was “discriminatory” as asylum seekers are given temporary leave to stay in the country and technically are not in Italy illegally!8 As public anger over the situation rises (see below) such cases are likely to mushroom in future. Comparisons have been drawn with medieval heresy trials as a nervous establishment seeks to criminalise beliefs contrary to prevailing liberal orthodoxy.
Africans demanding that Italians live up to the ideals of Freedom and Democracy first nurtured in Africa
However, when pressed on the issue one finds that even people within these milieus will privately express deep concern, especially about Islam. There may be self-censorship as well because opposition to mass immigration is considered provincial and low status. A survey of ten European countries conducted by Chatham House (hardly an evil populist hotbed) suggested that over half the population of those countries wanted a ban on Muslim immigration. The survey suggested that 69% of Italians have an unfavourable view of Muslims. Fortunately, two national newspapers Il Giornale and Libero Quotidiano and websites such as Tutti i Crimini degli Immigrati (All the Crimes of the Immigrants) do not hesitate to cover immigration related issues.
The liberal and liberal elements in the Catholic church in Italy have a curious belief they can succeed where so many others have failed. In autumn 2015 the liberal newspaper La Repubblica ran an article claiming that a school in downtown Brescia where the children are entirely foreign is an example of how Brescia is a “model” and that integration “works here.”
Yet the journalist goes on to say that one reason that the school population is almost entirely non-Italian, and indeed largely non-European, is that Italian parents no longer send their children there because of the concentration of foreigners. Indeed, at times the teachers have to “educate” not only the kids but also the parents who hold regressive social attitudes in relation to activities such as mixed swimming classes. Even the journalist admits that sometimes it is “they,” i.e. the foreigners, who create problems, citing a Nigerian parent who said that boys must be served by girls.
Liberals and immigrants protest against Italian “racists” in Brescia, 2010
We are told that time, patience and resources are required. But here we are speaking about relatively new arrivals. Other countries now face the failed integration of many adult second and third generation Muslims turning to traditionalism, fundamentalism and even terrorism. It is surely complacent to argue that such problems can be avoided by time, patience and resources. Is it not more realistic to admit a basic incompatibility of cultures? Italian progressives who pride themselves on their cosmopolitanism and openness actually seem to live in a national, or in the case of Brescia, provincial bubble, complacent in their belief that when it comes to integrating immigrants Italians do it better. They seem to have learned little or nothing from the experiences of other countries.
So far the Italian state so far has had no official policy of multiculturalism and does not engage in practices such as affirmative action. It is rare to find members of ethnic minorities working for the state as mass immigration is, compared to most other countries, a relatively recent phenomenon. Further, the country also enjoys relatively restrictive citizenship laws which also tends to exclude individuals of foreign origin from working for the state and voting in elections. The country has therefore also escaped the sort of scandals seen for example in UK where there have been cases of electoral fraud in South Asian communities in London10 and reports of a disproportionate number of misconduct proceedings against ethnic minority police officers.
That said, the Italian education system in particular suffers from liberal bias. History textbooks, for example, are heavily influenced by multiculturalist thinking, provide a vulgar Marxist interpretation of colonialism, push cultural relativism and fail to conduct any analysis of crimes committed by communist regimes. Classroom tasks and activities with a pro-immigration bias are commonplace.
But will Italy go down the same path as some other Western countries and loosen its nationality laws, introduce diversity quotas in the state and, in effect, discriminate against its indigenous population? Will its liberals also play the identity politics card and seek to buy support from enfranchised Africans and Asians? Or will Italy learn from mistakes of other countries now enjoying the bloody harvest of mass immigration that went too fast and too deep? Some of the things we see do not augur well as liberalism in Italy is slavishly enamoured with what it sees as more “advanced” multicultural societies.
There are, however, signs of resistance at a popular level. In August 2015 villagers in Collio near Brescia protested the arrival of migrants and in November 2016 200 residents of the town of Montichiari also near Brescia staged a week long protested outside a former barracks that was being transformed into a refuge centre for hundreds of asylum seekers. The rejection of the left’s referendum proposals and the downfall of Matteo Renzi in December 2016 was arguably in part due the government’s open door migrant policy.
One Sicilian Public Prosecutor has raised questions about possible connections between people traffickers and NGOs operating in the Mediterranean and even went so far as to say that some NGOs might have “interests in the manoeuvres of international speculation.” But without evidence and without the resources to conduct further enquiries the Prosecutor has said that the investigation has suffered a setback. It was reported in the Italian press that on 3 May 2017 Prime Minister Gentiloni held a meeting with wealthy liberal philanthropist George Soros, a man who reportedly funds NGOs operating off the Libyan coast, to discuss “investments in Italy.”
We shall see whether the prosecutor gets his resources. Until the next general election, expected to be held in 2018, and until perhaps we see a thorough going transformation of the political culture and collapse of liberal consensus, we can expect migrant numbers to swell still further as Brescia, like the West generally, continues to build its own funeral pyre.
The impending failure of the Iran deal is being disingenuously blamed on the very moderate Iranians that ethno-nationalists would hope to empower in and of the deal - that failure being blamed on them, as opposed to who actually deserves the blame: primarily the Trump administration and its friends.
Daily Telegraph, “Iran presidential candidates lay blame for ‘failed’ nuclear deal on reformer Rouhani”, 13 May 2017:
President Hassan Rouhani faced accusations of a failed nuclear deal which has not benefitted the Iranian people, during the final televised debate with his rivals before the country’s presidential election next week.
The vote is being seen as largely a referendum on reformer Mr Rouhani’s outreach to the rest of the world following a landmark accord with global powers, which ended sanctions but bitterly divided the country.
The president is believed to be the frontrunner in the May 19 election but the failure of the 2015 accord to bring economic gains for the public has brought an opening that his main competitors, powerful conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi and hardline Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, have sought to exploit.