Majorityrights News > Category: Military Matters

Netanyahu: Border Wall Saved Israel as a “Jewish State”

New Observer, 8 Mar 2019:

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu touted the success of Israel’s security barrier on its border with Egypt Thursday, calling the fence a “phenomenal” success, arguing its construction “saved” the Jewish nature of the state of Israel by preventing non-Jewish immigration into that country.

According to a report on the Israeli Arutz Sheva news service, Netanyahu toured the Israel-Egypt border Thursday, and met with southern front army commanders, who provided updates regarding Israel’s security situation in the area.

Netanyahu called Israel’s security fence on the border with Egypt a “phenomenal” success in stopping illegal immigration into Israel from eastern Africa.

“I was just updated now by officers in the field, here along the Sinai frontier. This fence saved the State of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state.

“This fence has been a phenomenal success. It completely stopped the hundreds of thousands of African infiltrators, as well as the entry of terrorists into Israel from the Sinai. Zero. That is a huge success, and I would say, one even of international dimensions–no other state has had this kind of success.”

“Of course this saved the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”

Israel built the barrier on the border with Sinai from 2010 to 2013, following a massive wave of illegal immigration from east Africa into Israel, via Sinai.

Following modifications to the fence in 2014, illegal immigration plummeted, falling from an average of roughly 10,000 a year to just over a dozen in 2016, with zero illegal entries in 2017.

“Ex-Mercenary CEO Erik Prince Admits To Trump Tower Meet With Don Jr., Saudi Emissary”

9 Mar 2019: Erik Prince, former head of mercenary business Blackwater, revealed in a bombshell interview Friday that he attended a meeting in Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. and a representative of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to discuss “Iran policy” during the presidential campaign.

The interview marked the first time Prince has publicly acknowledged such a meeting. Prince said in congressional testimony in 2017 that he had no “official” or “unofficial” role in the campaign — other than a “yard sign” and writing “papers” — according to the transcript of his testimony before the House intelligence committee. Nor did he mention the meeting in his testimony, according to transcripts.

The New York Times reported last year that Prince organized the 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump’s eldest son and Lebanese-American businessman George Nader. Nader revealed at the meeting that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia wanted to aid Trump in his bid for the presidency, according to the newspaper.

The meeting also reportedly included now-top White House aide Stephen Miller and Israeli social media expert Joel Zamel.

The August meeting is yet another secret huddle with a representative of foreign governments that may have provided illegal international aid to sway the American election. Just months earlier Donald Jr. and the president’s son-in-law and now senior White House aide Jared Kushner met at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer connected to the Kremlin.

Prince, brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, acknowledged the meeting in an on-camera interview on Al Jazeera’s “Head to Head” aired Friday (above).

Asked by host Mehdi Hasan why he didn’t reveal the meeting in his congressional testimony, Prince insisted he had. When his actual response was read back to him, he suggested the transcript was “wrong,” drawing titters from the interview audience.

He later also insisted that “not all of the discussion that day was transcribed.”

Head to Head@AJHeadtoHead
Erik Prince responds that the U.S. Congress “got the transcript wrong”  when asked why he didn’t tell the House Intel Committee about an Aug 2016 meeting he attended at Trump Tower.  @Mehdirhasan goes ‘head to head’ with Erik Prince NOW @AJEnglish.

9:25 PM - Mar 8, 2019

A lawyer for Trump’s son confirmed to the Times after its story that “prior to the 2016 election, Donald Trump Jr. recalls a meeting with Erik Prince, George Nader and another individual who may be Joel Zamel.”

The Trump administration later harshly cracked down on Iran, terminating American participation in the international nuclear pact with the nation over the strenuous objections of Europe and Iran — and pleasing the Saudis and gulf allies.

The existence of the Trump Tower meeting — and what may have been discussed or promised — raises questions about the president’s confounding lack of action against Saudi Arabia after the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which American intelligence officials determined was ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Kushner met with the crown prince and other officials in Saudi Arabia earlier this week. Against all protocol, American embassy staffers told The Daily Beast that they were shut out of meetings and were not provided details of what had been discussed. The private huddles followed revelations that the president ordered Kushner to be given top-level security clearance over the objections of the FBI.

Hasan also challenged Prince’s description of Iraqis in his memoir as “barbarians.” Prince responded that he had no problem calling terrorists barbarians. But Hasan pointed out Prince’s team had not been sent to “liberate” terrorists but Iraqi civilians.

Mehdi Hasan@mehdirhasan

I asked Blackwater founder Erik Prince about calling Iraqis “barbarians” and about the murder & manslaughter that happened on his watch in Iraq.

You should really listen to his replies. (Watch the whole @AJHeadtoHead with him this Friday on @AJEnglish)

Blackwater employees opened fire in a crowded square in Baghdad in 2007, killing 17 Iraqi civilians and seriously wounding 20 others. Three guards were convicted in 2014 of 14 manslaughter charges, and another of murder in an American court.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

Nation Revisited # 149 March 2019, by Bill Baillie:

Cameron’s Chaos

Dave Cameron has gone off to write his memoirs, leaving our country in a state of chaos. He was one of the worst prime ministers in British history. He picked a fight with the EU to appease the right wing of the Tory Party, but he got nowhere with Brussels so he called a referendum. ‘The People’, led by the popular press and pissed-off by ten years of austerity, voted to leave the EU, but there was no plan for such a decision and after years of argument we are due to leave the EU on 31st March unless Brexit is delayed or abandoned.

Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg predict a Brexit boom but the Governor of the Bank of England is less optimistic, and to add to the confusion the our withdrawal is led by Theresa May who voted to remain in the EU.

Leaving the EU is a momentous decision but whatever happens, we will still have an unbalanced economy, a divided society, a housing crisis, a staggering national debt, cash-strapped armed forces, a National Health Service dependant on foreign labour, and an educational system that impoverishes students. None of these problems will be helped by Brexit, they all require the sort of political action that our politicians are incapable of delivering.

Impossible Dreams?

Fascism today is just a political insult but in 1922 it was a populist revolution that swept Benito Mussolini to power in Italy. At first, the regime was content to govern but by the time of the Italian Social Republic, it had developed a full range of progressive policies; a guaranteed minimum wage,, workers’ partnership, free education, and social security from the cradle to the grave. These ideals were enshrined in the constitution of the RSI. Unfortunately, by then it was too late.

The post-war Labour government introduced the National Health Service but by the time of the Korean War, it dropped some services to save money. That’s why opticians, chiropodists, and most dentists are outside of the system. The present Tory government loudly proclaims its support for the NHS but suspicions remain that they want to sell it off to the private health care providers and insurance companies. At present, the NHS is protected by legislation but the Tory desire for a trade deal with the United States could open the door to American competition.

The Welfare State costs money that the Tories would rather spend on royal weddings, aircraft carriers and nuclear missiles. But the rise in homelessness and the use of food banks is a national disgrace. The main parties have acknowledged the problem but at the moment they are preoccupied with Brexit. Perhaps the splits now tearing the old parties apart are the start of a realignment of politics. We can only hope so because social justice is not an impossible dream.

Donald Trump equates health care with Communism. He thinks that everybody should pay for their own doctors. But the sick and the unemployed can’t afford expensive medical insurance. As fair-minded Europeans, we must reject Trump’s selfishness and defend our NHS.

Oil

It is fashionable to criticise the banks but the oil companies are just as bad. In his autobiography, ‘Pantaraxia’, Nubar Gulbenkian tells how his oil billionaire father took him to lunch in New York while he was on holiday. The first day they were treated royally, and as they left the restaurant Calouste told his son, “I’ve got a million dollars in that bank.” The second day was just as good and as they left daddy told him that he had a million dollars in that bank. And so it went on with all the major American banks. On the last day, after a sumptuous lunch his father said nothing, so Nulbar asked him: “how much have you got in their bank daddy?”, he replied: “not a cent, I owe them a million dollars.”
 

Debtors without collateral are written off but those with assets are treated as valued customers. And its the same with countries. Venezuela is bankrupt and its people are starving but they are sitting on one of the world’s biggest oilfields. It’s only a matter of time before a consortium of banks and oil companies takes over the country. Venezuela tried to install a socialist system under Hugo Chavez but the experiment was ruined by the collapse of oil prices.

But Venezuela is not the first state to be taken over by the oil companies. Britain controlled Iran through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and when prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh (pictured) tried to nationalise it in 1953 he was ousted in a coup mounted by the CIA. The Shah was installed as a Western puppet but when he showed signs of independence in 1979, he was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini who had been given refuge by France. Currently, Iran is being strangled by American sanctions.

President Trump has reneged on his agreement to lift sanctions against Iran in return for them scrapping nuclear weapons. Iran is no threat to the US but her armed forces are engaged in Syria and Yemen.

Calouste Gulbenkian was known as Mr Ten Percent because creamed-off 10% of all the oil traded in the British Empire. Today, more countries are producing oil and Britain and America no longer dominate the market. Oil will run out one day but the producers are already investing in alternative energy. People all over the world think that their fates are decided by the illiterate crosses they put on ballot papers, but the important decisions are made in the boardrooms of the big oil corporations.

Oil dominates the economies of the Western nations and influences their foreign policies. Russia is accused of being too authoritarian and aggressive but her real crime is to be a major oil producer. 

Jimmy Miller

I first met my friend Jimmy Miller in 1983 when I moved back to South London. He was living in a council flat awarded to him by Lambeth Council. But a highly organised gang of middle-class squatters was occupying all the vacant flats in the area and forcing out the working-class tenants. They only wanted their own kind to be housed. Jimmy was having none of that and he defended himself vigorously, only to be arrested and evicted for his bravery.

Jimmy was born in Liverpool in the Thirties. I don’t know exactly how old he was but he was older than me. He served in the Royal Corps of Signals and he took part in the defence of Kuwait in 1961. General Qasim of Iraq massed his forces on the Kuwaiti border ready to invade The British rushed 7,000 troops to Kuwait and broadcast bogus messages indicating a massive military build-up. Qasim fell for the deception and promptly withdrew his forces.

After the army Jimmy worked as a painter at the giant Cammell Laird shipyard. There he was elected as a shop steward representing the painters. Most of the union officials were communists who put up posters of Marx and Lenin on their office walls. Not to be outdone Jimmy put up a poster of Adolf Hitler and defied anyone to touch it.

After leaving Liverpool, he worked all over the country renovating Woolworth’s stores and eventually got a job as a maintenance man at Bon Marche in Brixton. For all his National Socialist convictions Jimmy got on well with the West Indian community. He always used to say that its the politicians who are to blame not the immigrants.

He moved back to Liverpool when he retired but he always sent me a Christmas card and a calendar. He was suffering from Parkinson’s and his handwriting grew more erratic each year, but this year his package did not arrive at all and I guess that he has passed away.

Jimmy Miller was a brave, intelligent, and generous man. He was raised as a Catholic but in later life, he was attracted to the Salvation Army. And that’s how I picture him, to the words of the anthem, “Onward Christian Soldiers marching on to war.”

Assassination

Government agents and terrorists regularly kill each other. Recent murders by the Russians and the Saudis have been roundly condemned by the West but we have a long and distinguished history of political assassination. Britain’s most famous hit happened on 4th June 1942 when two Special Operations Executive officers, Josef Cabcik and Jan Kubis, shot dead Richard Heydrich the Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. Nazi reprisals were expected but the British government did not know that the town of Lidice would be destroyed together with thousands of civilians.

The Nazi reaction was as cruel as the British treatment of dissidents in India. In April 1919, following days of rioting in which four Europeans were killed, Brig Gen Dyer (pictured) ordered his men to open fire on an unarmed crowd of protesters, 379 were killed and 1,200 wounded. The Amritsar atrocity was more mass murder than assassination but it showed the world who was in charge of India; at least, for the next thirty years.

Throughout the Northern Ireland Troubles, IRA terrorists were shot by Protestant paramilitaries on information supplied by MI5. Sometimes the government acted in the other direction. Lenny Murphy, the Protestant terrorists known as the Shankhill Butcher, was killed because he had become an embarrassment. 

Our fictitious national hero, James Bond has a licence to kill. Commander Bond 007 was an invention but his creator, Ian Fleming, was a British agent who understood how these things are done.

Our American allies shot dead Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011. American Special Forces killed him and dumped his body in the sea. His death was announced by President Obama who welcomed the death of the leader of Al-Qaeda.

It seems that bumping off political opponents is not necessarily a crime. When we kill our enemies we are fulfilling the will of the people, but when authoritarian foreign governments kill their opponents they are acting like savages.The truth is that all governments conduct under-cover operations and no individual government has the right to give lectures on good behaviour.

Mosley on Race, from “Union” May 1948

When Oswald Mosley wrote this article in 1948 it would have been possible to send back recently-arrived West Indian workers. Today things are different. We can enforce our rules of entry and deport foreign criminals but a mass round up of immigrants is out of the question.

Race is the first reality of European Unity. This unique stock of men in Europe has, in fact, produced the culture, the values and the achievements of the West. This race, in their family of Europe, has produced most things that matter on this globe. This achievement has been the result of their character, which in turn was the result of their race.

Horses go further and faster than donkeys because they are horses and not donkeys. We cannot avoid the basic facts of nature, even if we would. Nor can we drown them beneath a verbiage of words. If we are to build then surely we must build on real foundations, and I know that we do.

Therefore, I affirm the fact that the first reality and rock foundation of European Union is Race! Who are our nearest kindred? The answer is the German people. The British and the Germans are the most closely related of all European peoples. The Northern French also belong to this close circle of Race or Family and were united with the Germans under Charlemagne.

Near in blood to us, and the Germans, are the whole Northern block of Sweden, Norway and Denmark. A related stock is also the great family of the Latin nations, whose culture has adorned the illuminated pages of European history.

You cannot deny nature; you cannot create in defiance of reality.

An Alternative View - Bernard Franklyn

Since the early 1950s, every aspect of our once great country has been destroyed. Only old age pensioners in their seventies, like myself, are aware of the changes that have been made. When we are gone there will be no one left to explain what we have lost to the younger generation. I feel that we need to urge OAP’s to become vocal, but that is hard work. Still, I am going to urge more of my generation to explain the situation to their children and grandchildren. My daughter and her husband both work but are unable to keep up with the bills. In the 1950s wives didn’t work, the families were able to survive and pay all the bills on the husband’s wage. In the 1950s and ‘60s, virtually everyone could afford a mortgage so long as you were a regular saver. In 1958 a terraced house in the suburbs of London would have sold for £10,000; today it would be £500,000. The house would not be worth any more, that is how our fraudulent governments have reduced the value of money by just creating it out of thin air. Parliament is run by our enemies and has been throughout my life. The time is long overdue to find our own BRITISH candidates who have the knowledge and skills to run the country. You need no qualifications to or knowledge a prime or cabinet minister. You only have to be subservient to political Mafia that really rules our country, nay the world.

The people of Europe have no control over the EU. It is an ever growing nightmare with even more power over its people than the Soviet Union had. If the public had elected the National Front in the 1960s we wouldn’t have joined the EEC which became the EU, we could have saved what was left of our manufacturing industry, we wouldn’t have allowed the standard of education to be lowered through the introduction of the comprehensive system, there would have been no mass immigration programme, anti-British Jews wouldn’t have been appointed to the senior positions of the judiciary, proper sentencing of murderers and criminals would have continued, the drug problem would not have escalated like it has, there would be no national debt as we would have created interest free banking which the EU would never allow.

Britain was extremely successful at managing its own affairs long before the EU was thought of. We will manage again, so long as we have a government that doesn’t want to keep us tied to the United States, Israel and the EU. If you are not sure, watch RT news on channel 234 and see how often these three work in instantaneous harmony whenever they want to do something diabolical.

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Nation Revisited

All articles are by Bill Baillie unless otherwise stated. The opinions of guest writers are entirely their own. This blog is protected by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19: “We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share ideas with other people.

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Lega and Five Star ties to Russia invokes a specter that haunts Kaczyński

Euractive, “Trans-Europe Express – Friends won’t be friends” 22 Feb 2019:

By Gerardo Fortuna with Alexandra Brzozowski
   
First official projections of seats in the new European Parliament have shown two right-wing ruling parties, Italy’s Lega and Poland’s PiS, as the second and third-biggest single party in the next Parliament, but the highly anticipated ‘Italo-Polish axis’ doesn’t seem to pan out.

Earlier this week (18 February), the European Parliament released the first survey on what the next European chamber could look like, based on a cross-section of national polls ahead of the European elections in May.

Updated projections will be presented to the public in the coming weeks, but at the current stage, the most significant starting point for analysis is that Matteo Salvini and Jarosław Kaczyński appear to be two top dogs ahead the election night.

Lega and PiS are expected to win 27 and 22 seats, respectively, becoming the second and the third-biggest party within the hemicycle. The first, as usual, will be Germany’s conservative CDU.

A pact between the two right-wing parties is looking more and more lucrative for both and initial contact was already made by Salvini himself, who flew to Warsaw in January to meet Kaczyński, who essentially leads PiS from the background, without being its formal chairman, and test the waters for a possible Eurosceptic alliance.

During the visit, Salvini hailed a new ‘Italo-Polish axis’ to replace the dominant French-German one, sparking a “European spring”. At the time, this looked like the beginning of a political earthquake but, as it turns out, the Warsaw talks seemed more like a one-time thing.

There was no follow up in the weeks after and the settlement of an Italo-Polish axis now seems to be dead in the water, or at least postponed for after the elections.

There’s a red flag that shows that the parties have come to a standstill. In Poland, Salvini was asked if he was thinking about running for the European elections together with his current government’s ally in Italy, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. He said that there was no need to run together with them and some observers noted that it was because, with Kaczyński, Salvini wouldn’t need Di Maio.

But according to the Italian press, this week Lega proposed Five Star Movement to join them, even in a political group within the European Parliament, but got nyiet as an answer.

If Lega is considering getting someone else on board, distances with the European conservatives on certain topics – above all Russia –  are turning out to be unbridgeable.

At the current stage, conservatives need Salvini to replace the Tories, rather than the other way around, as good performance is expected also for Le Pen’s Rassemblement National.

Background:

“The League, for example, has regularly protested European Union sanctions against Russia. In March 2017, League chief Matteo Salvini even signed a cooperation agreement with United Russia.”

“Evidence of the 5 Star Movement’s friendly ties with Russia is also abundant. Both former Vice President Joe Biden and Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have identified 5 Star as a conduit for Russian electoral interference, e.g. in Italy’s December 2016.”

The Hill, “Putin is the real winner of the Italian elections”, 3 March 2018:

READ MORE...

ALT-RIGHT LIES: THE DRESDEN MYTH

What the Alt-Right literally believes

by Colin Liddell, 13 Feb 2019:

One of the myths commonly trotted out on the Alt-Right at this time of year is the Dresden Myth.

According to this meme, trope, narrative, or whatever you want to call it, the bombing of Dresden on and around the 13th of February, 1945, was one of the most horrendous war crimes ever. Indeed, it was so bad that it stands right up there with the Holocaust—which, of course, many in the Alt-Right deny—and the atom bombing of the Japanese as some kind of ultimate and delegitimising evil.

Of course it was bad, but in war all sorts of terrible things happen as a matter of course. So, using Dresden in this way is rather a hard sell. The normies just don’t get it. To them it’s just one more example of a bombing raid, hardly a rare occurrence in WWII.

Even when the Alt-Right exaggerate the casualty figures and throw in some colourful details about low flying bombers machine gunning fleeing civilians, etc., the reaction is still pretty much “meh.”

This doubtlessly has something to do with the fact that the Germans were pioneers in the mass bombing of civilian centres themselves. Here’s a screenshot of an interactive bomb map of London from the Blitz.

Go to the site and check it out for yourself.

So, everybody bombed someone. So what?

But this is where the second part of the myth kicks in. In order to make you care about this particular bombing, we are told that the war was already over when Dresden was bombed, so that, unlike Warsaw in 1939, Rotterdam in 1940, and London, the bombing of Dresden was not a “normal” act of war, but instead just an act of gratuitous cruelty and sadism.

Here is a typical anonymous comment from a Facebook group putting forward this point of view:

Dresden was a civilian massacre. Call it what it is man, the war was OVER….germany’s infrastructure was finished a year before Dresden was torched. Germany’s rail system was bombed to shit, they had no resources and the army was done.

Yes, indeed, if the war was truly over by February 1945, that would make Dresden somewhat worse. Although, it could also be argued that even if the war was “effectively over” it would have been quite hard for people to just shrug off years of war conditioning and start acting normally as rational, humane beings in the flick of a switch.

But was the war effectively over as is claimed?

Of course, in the sense that Germany could no longer win against the massive forces arrayed against it, or even achieve some kind of negotiated peace, the war was definitely over. But in terms of brutal fighting and high casualties for both sides, it was still very much an ongoing affair.

This can be proved simply by looking at data—y’know that old-fashioned way of resolving arguments and variant viewpoints.

First here is a map of the military situation in the middle of February 1945. As you can see, the Nazis still control almost all of Germany and large areas of other countries. Millions of men were still under arms, and the Western allies had yet to cross the Rhine.

Now, in case someone thinks this is just a big map of nothing, and that the millions of German soldiers under arms were just wandering aimlessly around looking for someone nice to surrender to, let’s look at the monthly casualty figures just for the US Army. The figures for the Soviet army, if they were available and reliable, would probably paint and even more convincing picture that the war was still very much at its peak.

Starting from June 1944, when the D-Day landings took place, here are the month-by-month casualty figures of the US Army in Europe (including the Army Air Corps). These figures come from the Department of the Army’s final report on “Army Battle Casualties and Nonbattle Deaths in World War II (7th December 1941 - 31st December 1946). A copy of that report is online here.

Note, casualties include killed and wounded at roughly the proportion of three wounded to one killed.

        1944
        June 49,061
        July 61,454
        August 49,458
        September 54,937
        October 47,725
        November 65,918
        December 80,994

        1945
        January 70,560
        February 43,603
        March 56,282
        April 49,706
        May 2,201
        June 82

As we can see from these figures, US Army casualties were at their highest in December 1944 and January 1945, the months preceding the bombing of Dresden, which occurred in the middle of February. In those months the Western allies had received a nasty shock with a surprise German offensive in the Ardennes (The Battle of the Bulge), when German forces threatened, albeit briefly, to break through to the Channel again.

Also note that US casualties were higher in March and April 1945 than they were in June 1944, the month of the famous D-Day landings and subsequent battles in Normandy, when German forces were at their peak in opposition to American forces. This is so counter-intuitive to what most people know about the war that it needs emphasising: In both the months following Dresden, German military efforts against the Americans were more intense and took a higher toll than they did in June 1944.

The idea that Germany was “militarily finished” when the Dresden bombings happened is thus clearly absurd.

So why does the lying Alt-Right push this retarded myth? The most obvious answer is that they want to evoke sympathy for Nazi Germany. But this raises a further question: Why do they want to evoke sympathy for Nazi Germany?

Knee-jerk hatred of Jews is the obvious answer, but another possible and highly nefarious possibility is that they want to attach White identitarianism, White nationalism, and European self-determination to what is an extremely toxic brand in order to poison it.

They know that people who are attracted to these healthy forms of self-determination are likely to be more open-minded about history and less inclined to believe establishment narratives. Thus they are more likely to be taken in by blatant lies like the Dresden Myth. If that is the intention, then it is clearly an evil one, designed to keep nationalism on its knees as a pathetic victim identity and confined to a Nazi ghetto.

UK: More than Half under 18s in Jail Nonwhite, Quarter are Muslim

New Observer, 29 Jan 2019:

A photograph taken inside the prison at HMP Feltham “Young Offenders Institute,” during an abortive attempt to teach the inmates “entrepeneurship” skills.

More than half of all the under 18s currently in jail in Britain are nonwhite, and a quarter are Muslim, despite nonwhites allegedly only making up 13 percent of the population, new official figures from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons has revealed.

According to the report titled “Children in Custody 2017–18 An analysis of 12–18-year-olds’ perceptions of their experiences in secure training centres and young offender institutions,” more than half the under-18s held in young offender institutions in 2017–18 were from a “black or minority ethnic background” (BME).

This figure is a three percent increase on the previous year, when it stood at 48 percent. The figure has been growing steadily ever since the HM Inspectorate of Prisons began carrying out the analysis in 2001—a figure which is perfectly explicable by the growth in the nonwhite population.

6.5164_HMIP_Children-in-Custody-2017-18_A4_v3

The report’s key findings include:

In relation to [secure training centers] STCs, our survey findings during 2017–18 show that:

– 42% of all children in STCs identified as being from a black or other minority ethnic background;

– 8% of children identified as female;

– one in eight (13%) children identified as Muslim;

– the proportion who said they were from a Gypsy, Romany or Traveller background was 11%, which compares with estimates of 0.01% in the population as a whole;

In relation to [young offender institutions] YOIs, our survey findings during 2017–18 show that:

– over half (51%) of boys identified as being from a black or minority ethnic background, the highest rate recorded through our surveys in the secure estate;

– the proportion of boys who had experienced local authority care was 39%;

– nearly a quarter (23%) of boys identified as Muslim;

– almost one-fifth (19%) of boys reported having a disability;

– fewer than one boy in 10 (6%) identified themselves as being from a Gypsy, Romany or Traveller background.

In addition, half of the “children” (50%) “reported that they had been physically restrained in their establishment”—in other words, were so violent that they could not be left unshackled.

It took no time at all for whites to be blamed—as usual—for the nonwhite crime statistics. A report in the Daily Mail quoted black Member of Parliament David Lammy as saying that “We are not only failing to make progress to address these racial inequalities; things are getting significantly worse. From childhood right through to courts and adult prisons, our justice system entrenches and exacerbates the divides in our society.”

In other words, it is not the nonwhites’ fault that they commit more crime, but rather it is the “fault” of white society in general. This is the standard excuse use whenever statistics show that nonwhites commit more crime than whites: it is never their fault that they get arrested more, it is always “racist police,”; and it is never their fault that they get sent to prison in larger numbers, it is always the “racist judicial system.”

This is the same sort of logic that claims that nonwhites do poorly academically because of “racist teachers”—and similar excuses heard ad infinitum all over Europe, America, and Australia.

This endless “blame whitey” is, of course, founded on the essential problem of race-denial by the liberal establishment. Until that issue is resolved, and race is acknowledged as a biological reality and is taken into account in the structuring of states, the current situation will continue.

Donald Trump is President of The United States because he vowed to overturn the Iran Deal for Israel. Overturning the deal was not in the interest of most of the world, except for Israel, Saudi Arabia and The Russian Federation. By contrast, the rest of the world was served by the deal in its business resource interests and more - while the focus on commerce and modernization served not only practical and humanitarian ends but also contributed to a gradual process of liberalizing Iran away from Islam.

Britain, France and Germany are taking steps in their rational interests to skirt the sanctions:

Skirting U.S. sanctions, Europeans launch trade mechanism for Iran

PARIS/BERLIN (Reuters), 31 Jan 2019: France, Germany and Britain have set up a mechanism for non-dollar trade with Iran to avert U.S. sanctions, although diplomats acknowledge it is unlikely to free up the big transactions that Tehran says it needs to keep a nuclear deal afloat.

Related at Majorityrights: Iran protest, organic grievances real, but tactless Trump endorsement abets reactionary entrenchment

Poland, Hungary and France: A Common Cause

By Antoni Trzmiel.

Visigrad Post, Jan 2019:

Poland – We publish here the translation of Antoni Trzmiel’s editorial about the partnership we started with them.

The dorzeczy.pl website, belonging to the Polish weekly Do Rzeczy, has begun cooperation with the Visegrád Post and with the French independent Web channel TV Libertés.

Let us reclaim our own story!

Journalists from these media were in Poland during the days of national celebration of our regained independence. They were preparing a TV documentary for their viewers. Their perspective is not our perspective. But while it may not be rosy, their narrative differs vastly from the infamous description of “thousands of fascists, neo-Nazis and white supremacists marching 300 km from Auschwitz”.

These were the words of a prominent European politician, Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the Liberal group in the European Parliament. They show how much we have to do to stop such statements being made, including – as was the case here – during a debate on the rule of law in Poland. There is just one way to make this happen, and it is not by prohibiting such lies in Polish law, as such a law could not be enforced abroad anyway. Indeed it is not only Poles that should be outraged, but above all those who vote for the people making such ludicrous claims: French, Dutch, Slovakians, Czechs, Hungarians, Greeks, etc. But for this to happen, first they need to know when their representatives are telling them gross lies.

Conversations with my fellow journalists shed light on many bad things that are happening in their countries, which one would not necessarily notice when travelling there on holiday or for work. This is especially true in the field of freedom of expression. We will be writing about such matters on dorzeczy.pl.

Was it worthwhile for David to fight Goliath?

We have decided to cooperate on a permanent basis. Let’s be honest: from a business point of view, this will bring no benefit. Translations, travel and the time spent are all quite significant costs for independent media, which are low-budget non-profit entities. But we believe that if our journalists prepare more materials about the situation in Poland, there is a chance that in some of the media they know and trust, the Hungarians, Belgians and French will get a different picture than the one reflected by the liberal newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.

For the time being, there is a huge imbalance in forces, resources, and decades of cooperation. They are tied by common interests, while we share our opposition to the current situation (even though much separates us). True, it is a struggle of David against Goliath. However, cheered by that biblical story, we believe in the victory of truth. Let us be frank: there is a long way to go. But, as the Chinese say, a journey begins with a single step.

On November 11 we took that first step

In our case it consisted of three interviews conducted for our media on the eve of November 11. They were published simultaneously on dorzeczy.pl, visegradpost.com and http://www.tvlibertes.com on the following days.

Our journalist Karol Gac spoke with deputy prime minister Jarosław Gowin. Olivier Bault, a writing editor of Do Rzeczy and correspondent of French alternative media in Poland, questioned the Deputy Speaker of the Sejm Ryszard Terlecki, as well as MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski.

Thus, Polish readers and viewers had the opportunity to hear what these politicians wanted to tell people from other countries. This is important. After all, it has become clear lately that they are not heard often enough abroad, given that representatives of foreign voters proved able to compel those who represent a majority of Polish voters to change the law [as was the case with the retirement age of judges sitting in the Polish Supreme Court and Higher Administrative Court].

Our journalists too will regularly prepare materials for what we are confident will be a growing number of partners. At the same time, we will publish materials prepared by our partners on dorzeczy.pl. It is indeed not a normal situation that we know more about Bollywood or Hollywood stars than about the real life of Slovaks or the French. And, as the above examples show, this has a real impact on our own lives.

Antoni Trzmiel is a journalist working for Polish public television (TVP) and is also the head of dorzeczy.pl, the website of the Polish conservative weekly news magazine Do Rzeczy.

Opinion piece originally published in Polish on the Do Rzeczy website. Translated to English by Olivier Bault.