Majorityrights News > Category: European culture

News.com.au, “Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko accidentally ‘orders’ workers to strip naked at work”, 28 June 2016:

       
Office workers in Belarus uploaded this image to social media after they went nude. Picture: Instagram/ssnnooppooyy

PEOPLE have been posting pictures and videos of themselves naked and scantily-clad at work — in tribute to their president’s slip of the tongue.

It comes after President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, 61, mixed up his words during a speech on new technology.

       

“Innovations, IT-technologies, privatisation — it is all clear. We’ve conquered all of them. But everything is very simply, one should get undressed and work,” he said.

       

People in Belarus took part in the “undress and work” trend after their president had an unfortunate slip of the tongue. Picture: CEN/AustralscopeSource:australscope

The president had actually wanted to tell people to “develop themselves” — however the phrase sounds very similar to “get undressed” in Russian.

What many described as a “Freudian slip” instantly went viral online and triggered a saucy flashmob event on social media.

       
Dozens posted pictures of themselves at work including naked and semi-naked businessmen and women at their desks.

       
A female assistant in an electronics store posted a picture of herself with only a keyboard protecting her modesty.

Other images included a bikini-clad brunette chopping wood with an axe, a rock band posing naked but for their instruments, and a young and rather nicely tanned woman gardening in nothing but tiny shorts.

Tattoo artists, radio hosts, journalists and even construction workers were soon stripping off at work to join in the fun.

All of the participants of the flashmob posted their photos online, with the hash tag #getnakedandgotowork, where they instantly went viral.

       

Belarus is a landlocked country bordered by Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

Russian is the main language, spoken by 72 per cent of the population, while Belarusian, the official first language, is spoken by fewer than 12 per cent.

Related Marjorityrights Story: Belarusian Nationalism, A White Nationalism

The Times, ‘MP’s dying words: ‘I can’t get up, my pain is too much’’, 18 Jun 2016:

Jo Cox’s last words as she lay dying were to tell her assistant that she could not get up because “my pain is too much”.

In a dramatic account of the MP’s final moments, Gulham Maniyar described how his daughter Fazila Aswat, who worked as Mrs Cox’s assistant, cradled her in her arms as she lay covered in blood.

That was the scene of the attack, an attack not just on one MP, but on the institution of parliamentary democracy itself. I open with that quote for context, to remind everyone of the gravity of what we are actually talking about here.

The Occidental Observer has an article called ‘The selective compassion of Jo Cox’, by Francis Carr Begbie, in which he, and I assume the editors at Occidental Observer share his view since they didn’t dissent from it, comes out and trashes the reputation of Jo Cox and tries to style as almost the worst thing that ever happened to the United Kingdom.

It’s truly astonishing to see the amount of hatred being directed toward an MP who was tragically assassinated by a crazed gunman, a woman who most of these writers were unaware of the existence of before she was killed, and who stood on the right wing of the Labour Party. She had also only held her seat in Batley and Spen for one year.

Mind reading and time travelling

The range of criticisms directed against the deceased is pretty wide. For example, Begbie accuses Cox of not caring about the white members of her constituency, because she didn’t comment on the Muslim rape epidemic when it had reached her town. Begbie writes, “of all the subjects she enjoyed sounding off on, this world-famous crisis affecting the poorest Whites on her doorstep was not one of them”. What was she supposed to say? How do they know what she was or wasn’t thinking about?

Jo Cox became the MP for Batley and Spen in May 2015, everything that preceded her taking that seat could not possibly be attributed to her, yet somehow ethno-nationalist sites across the internet have transformed her into the symbol of everything that is ‘wrong’ with Batley and Spen. That district became more demographically South Asian in 1950 because British businesses decided that they wanted South Asian workers from Gujarat, Punjab, and Kashmir to migrate to West Yorkshire to desperately protect the already-in-fact doomed textile industry which Britain had been maintaining with the use of protectionist policies since the 1880s.

Jo Cox showing up in 2015, cannot possibly be blamed for making the best of the constituency that the bourgeoisie themselves had given her. This makes no sense. It makes no sense at all.

She only just got there

No article is complete at the Occidental Observer without some kind anti-feminist insinuation, and so Begbie strangely includes this line, “Her constituency seat had been represented by local White men for decades so an all-female shortlist had to be imposed on the local party to ensure an acceptable candidate could be given this plum.” What complete nonsense! No mention at all is made of the fact that the constituency was redrawn multiple times and only came into existence in its present form in 1997. Neither is any mention made of the fact that the ‘local white man’ who held that seat was none other than Mike Wood who held that seat from 1997 to 2015. Mike Wood literally presided over every single development that the Occidental Observer complains about, including the gerrymandering and creation of the constituency called ‘Batley and Spen’, yet no mention is made of this man’s existence! He is merely glossed over as a ‘local white man’, as though that somehow makes everything okay.

Mike Wood presides over Batley and Spen for 18 years, is blamed for nothing. Jo Cox runs it for 13 months, gets shot by some idiot, and suddenly the Occidental Observer has magically discovered that everything is the fault of Jo Cox. Truly breathtaking. Fucking incredible. Maybe Jo Cox is a time traveller, she time travelled to 1997, and to 1950, perhaps?

Middle-Eastern migrant strategy

Begbie also writes of Jo Cox, that “she was also calculating enough to help more dubious causes, as when she lent her name to a government minister who was lobbying for Britain to begin bombing in Syria”.

What is dubious about this? Nothing. Begbie is referring to the letter which Cox wrote in a Guardian article on 11 Oct 2015, co-written with Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell, in which she places the rescuing of civilians at the centre of the parliamentary debate, and advocates for the creation of safe zones inside Syria so that the migrant influx can be stemmed.

Yes, you read that correctly. I will quote her directly. Here:

The Guardian / Jo Cox MP, ‘British forces could help achieve an ethical solution in Syria’, 11 Oct 2015 (emphasis added):

[...]

Some may think that a military component has no place in an ethical response to Syria. We completely disagree. It is not ethical to wish away the barrel bombs from the Syrian government when you have the capacity to stop them. The deaths and fear generated by these indiscriminate air attacks are the main drivers of the refugee crisis in Europe. Nor is it ethical to watch when villages are overrun by Isis fighters who make sex slaves of children and slaughter their fellow Muslims, when we have the capability to hold them back.

What is critical in advancing any military component is that the protection of civilians must be at the centre of the mission. This objective becomes ever more imperative in the light of Russia’s bombing in recent days. We need a military component that protects civilians as a necessary prerequisite to any future UN or internationally provided safe havens. The creation of safe havens inside Syria would eventually offer sanctuary from both the actions of Assad and Isis, as we cannot focus on Isis without an equal focus on Assad. They would save lives, reduce radicalisation and help to slow down the refugee exodus.

The approach of focusing on civilian protection will also make a political solution more likely. Preventing the regime from killing civilians, and signalling intent to Russia, is far more likely to compel the regime to the negotiating table than anything currently being done or mooted. Of course, a military approach by itself won’t work, nor will any of the other components. Only through an integrated strategy with the protection of civilians at its core can we rescue something from this crisis.

[...]

I invite anyone to tell me what precisely is wrong with that. No one can tell me what is wrong with that, because there’s nothing wrong with it. Some may ask, “But isn’t her mention of Assad a problem?” In actual practice, no. Only actions against ISIL could have had efficiacy since we know Russia’s presence in the theatre had already made it impossible for the west to directly attack the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the first place. The way I’ve highlighted bold text in that quotation is entirely deliberate.

Allowing all of the refugees to be contained within safe zones inside Syria and Iraq, would prevent migrants of all kinds—whether they are fleeing from the SAA or from ISIL—from actually feeling the need to cross to Europe, seriuosly reducing the scale of the crisis and accomplishing an objective that people concerned about migration ought to have been able to agree with.

Obviously the conflict should not even be happening. But it is happening and so selecting a solution that does not involve trying to house all the Arabs inside Europe, made her stance significantly better than the ridiculous mainstream stance of ‘just open the borders and absorb all migrants forever’.

This general pattern is similar to the idea that Anthony Zinni suggested.

I’ll quote Anthony Zinni:

TIME, ‘U.S. Military Plan For Looming ISIS Offensive Takes Shape’, 26 Feb 2015 (emphasis added):

There’s only one way to take land, and that’s with well-trained ground forces. That’s why retired Marine general Anthony Zinni thinks the time is right for Obama to acknowledge reality and tell the nation he is sending 10,000 American troops into the fight. Zinni ran the U.S. military in the Middle East and Persian Gulf regions as chief of U.S. Central Command from 1997 to 2000, and still has business dealings in the region. He’s just back from a trip to Cairo, and he says he’s hearing a growing willingness among regional powers to put troops on the ground to fight ISIS—so long as the U.S. is alongside them.

Rumbles from Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates all suggest those nations are willing to fight on the ground. “I think this is all designed to try to push the United States to put something on the ground,” Zinni said Feb. 23. “If we put a couple of brigades in, I think you’d get five or six regional countries. And I think you could twist the arms of the French, the Belgians and maybe even the Brits.”

Two U.S. brigades, with their supporting personnel, would total about 10,000 troops. Zinni says the nations in the region are not coordinating their efforts in an effort to lure the U.S. into the fight on the ground. “But they’re getting scared, and have gotten angry at ISIS’s atrocious behavior and they’re willing to step up,” he says. “It would have to be a whole set of bilateral relationships, and we would have to pull it together.

The U.S. would have to act as the catalyst to make this happen, says Zinni, who was an early advocate of sending U.S. ground troops into the fight. “There’s an opportunity now to put a small piece in terms of ground forces in there, and get a lot more from these countries, and be the glue that puts it together,” he says. “There is no unifying structure and no single entity out there that can bring this all together—it has to be the United States,” Zinni insists.

But what about Obama’s pledge to keep U.S. combat boots out of the fight? “They have a moment here and it’ll blow by if they’re not careful,” he says. Obama “could always say that the situation on the ground has changed, and the willingness of the Arabs to stand up to this gives us this moment,” says Zinni, showing why he’s a better general than a politician.

What Zinni was describing there, is very close to ‘Seek, Destroy, Clear, Hold’, a strategy currently being employed in Operation Zarb-e-Azb by the Pakistani Army with relative success.

It stems the flow of migrants because by holding the zones that have been cleared and rebuilding infrastructure on the fly, it prevents migrants from making dangerous trips to flee the violence, since obviously they could just stay in the location that they are in and receive assistance and protection around the clock.

The political problem is that selling ‘SDCH’ to whiny white western liberal populations is next to impossible, and that’s where MPs like Jo Cox are incredibly useful. She could provide the political and ‘humanitarian’ argument which constituents needed to hear, that the defence sector was unable to convincingly enunciate. I shouldn’t have to be explaining this, but what Jo Cox’s feelings about entirely hypothetical refugees in the United Kingdom were, didn’t frankly matter, given that the part of her plan that takes precedence in terms of the order of battle is that she supported the creation of safe zones in Syria.

No one would have to worry about whether she is or is not going to cuddle and appease Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the United Kingdom, if those migrants had never arrived due to the creation of safe zones in Syria. This is basic logic.

When you’ve been around white liberals and experienced them for long enough, you learn to accept that there are some aspects of their psyche which are biased toward indiscriminate kindness, and this is a bias that is not going to be changed by anyone’s words, but if they are willing to help find common sense solutions to problems then it is fine to link up with them in order to scrape out some limited gains in a bad situation.

What is treason anyway?

Jo Cox was among the best that you could expect from the Labour Party. It would be unreasonable to expect anything greater than what she had offered.

This is why I never had a big problem with Jo Cox, beyond the obvious fact that she’s a liberal. I was deeply saddened the day that she died.

Jo Cox is not ‘a traitor’.

Tom Mair is the real traitor here, and if the death penalty were not unfortunately abolished in the United Kingdom, I would hope that Mair would end up being hung from the gallows until dead. Mair has probably done more to assist our enemies than anyone else in recent years. Perhaps Mair will end up being inexplicably and mysteriously hung from the side of his bedpost using his own clothes knotted into a noose, but I can only hope. Hey, it happens sometimes, at times the CCTV in prisons just suddenly stops working for no apparent reason.

In overview, ethno-nationalists need to get more politically savvy, and stop running to defend every mentally ill white male who makes grief-stricken faces after committing some absurd, stupid, and horrific crime. Tom Mair was not a victim of anything, if he didn’t like the fact that all the South Asian Muslims had been concentrated into one area of that West Yorkshire constituency, he should have exercised some patience and self-control, thanked the stars that self-segregation had occurred and moved to one of the white areas of the constituency instead. He was not being forced to integrate with them, and Jo Cox had only just arrived in the constituency in May 2015 and had literally done nothing to him.

Tom Mair is stupid. This is not even 57-dimensional chess. It’s simple 2-dimensional chess. But he was a fucking idiot consumed by his own sense of entitlement and lack of strategic thinking. He is stupid, he is subhuman trash. And he is condemned.

Excellent article and comments at TOO about the politics and circles of Jo Cox and her husband.

The article casts evergreen light on the nefarious power structure and imminions* of the British political class well beyond doubts as to how the Cox murder would impact the Brexit vote, now that the vote has transpired.

Some pearls from the article and comments:

“Hers was the typical smooth career path of the modern political cog.”

Her political way was paved by becoming a water carrier for wives of the liberal political class. She imbibed and voiced its concerns - i.e., for the plight of anybody** but White native British. To the point where she ignored the rape of British girls that was going on under her nose - crimes being prosecuted, in fact, the day she died. Despite the obvious contradiction of Islam and her liberal politics, she would not say “boo” to Islam because her lucrative political career depended upon support of Muslims in her constituency.

Her husband was in complete alignment with her liberal political madness. He openly discussed ways to pander to those young people, at least those who have not yet been disabused of the PC kool-aid, as a group to counteract growing “national populist anti-immigration sentiment.”

He was such a political apparatchik that on the day that his wife was murdered, he was preoccupied with lambasting the leave campaign as opposed to attending to normal protocols of family bereavement.

Just the kind of tag-team that would flush ordinary White men down the toilet. She the gate keeper to make sure that their voice and concerns were blocked and never to be addressed; only letting through and empowering liberal “alpha males” like Brandon, who would complete the act of flushing normal White men down the toilet.

Both were lavishly rewarded for betraying normal British people.

Now that we have a bead on the patterns underpinning Jo and Brandon Cox’s insane liberalism, it begs the question of who Tommy Mair was in response to theirs and their society’s insanity? Should we dismiss him as merely crazy? Should we shy away from the fact that he had political and native nationalist motivations because his manifestation was of dubious tact?

Or is it occasion to look at silenced voices behind the reaction?

* It was too tempting to not go with what started out as a typo to the word “minion” here.

** Excepting, perhaps, if they interfered with Jewish interests..

DM, “Rapist who ‘took away childhood and innocence’ of girl, aged 11, is jailed for 15 years” 3 April 2016:

Mohammed Amin, 27, seduced his victim by throwing notes through her bedroom window, a court heard.
 
  Mohammed Amin cried when the judge sentenced him

A rapist who lied about his age and took away the “childhood and innocence” of his 11-year-old victim has been jailed for fifteen years.

Mohammed Amin, 27, seduced her by throwing notes through her bedroom window, the court heard.

He was sentenced at Cardiff Crown Court on Friday after pleading guilty to raping the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

The court heard how Amin was jailed for six months last year for sexual activity with the same girl but this was on the basis he had kissed her and had inappropriately contacted her on Facebook , Wales Online reported .

The truth was he had coerced his victim, who was aged 11 and 12 at the time of abuse, into a sexual relationship which lasted around 18 months, the court heard.

The abuse came to light after the girl confided in a member of staff at her school.

Prosecutor Ieuan Bennett said the girl was interviewed by police and said she and Amin had become “boyfriend and girlfriend”.

He added: “It appears the defendant realised the relationship was inappropriate because he told her not to tell anybody else about the it as he might go to prison.

“She explained they would sometimes go in his car to Cardiff Bay for a day out and she would go to his flat almost every day.

“It seems the kissing started almost on the first day of them becoming friends.

“He wrote her notes and threw them up through her bedroom window. One said ‘Will you go out with me?’.”

Amin initially lied about his age, saying he was 22-years-old, but later admitted to being 26-years-old.

The girl told him she was 14 but she later admitted to being 11-years-old early on in the relationship.

She said Amin’s response was: “I don’t care”.

When asked by police why she didn’t tell them sooner about the more serious accusations, the girl said she didn’t want Amin to go to jail but over time she had come to realise the effect the relationship had had on her.

  Chinese laundry commercial washing away the fraud of anti-racism

A Chinese ban on interracial marriage is largely a step in the right direction, but it is troubling that the rule would not extend to men for a few reasons: they have a disproportionate male population which, like black women, tend to be shunned in interracial partner selection. Similar as with Muslims, this frustrated excess male population can create an explosive effect in interaction with other populations.

From a European man’s perspective, the Chinese situation is complicated, since it can relate to the Chinese banning of interracial marriage - to blacks in particular, recognizing that in terms of feminine qualities and those sublimated qualities necessary to create a reasonable and sufficiently complex civilization, that blacks are not offering anything near sufficient exchange.

East Asian Tribune, 8 June 2016:

China Bans Interracial Marriages For Females; No Plans To Restrict Men

The Supreme People’s Court of China today passed legislation that will ban Chinese women from marrying non-Chinese men, with the law coming into effect at the beginning of 2018. The policy had been fiercely debated for a number of months before it finally won approval from the required number of legislators earlier today. Civil rights groups in China have condemned the restriction, pointing out that it discriminates against women by still permitting males to enter into interracial marriages.

“We strongly urge the People’s Court to reconsider this new law, and repeal the legislation before it comes into force.” A small group of protesters staged a rally outside the courthouse in central Beijing today, but were soon dispersed by authorities. Following decades of the one-child policy, China is now faced with a shocking gender imbalance – for every girl below the age of 18 in China, there are now three boys. “The law was introduced in order to promote social harmony,” commented one of the People’s Courts legislators. “We need to ensure there are enough Chinese women available for marriage; otherwise there is a high probability of increased levels of rape and other violence.” One of the more controversial aspects of the new law is the fact that Chinese men are not banned from marrying women of other races. “Because we have such a shortage of women in China, we need to make sure Chinese men have as many opportunities as possible to find a bride.”

The news comes as a positive to matchmaking businesses that introduce prospective brides from neighboring countries, such as Vietnam and Thailand, to Chinese men. “I had feared that they might also ban men from interracial marriage,” commented the owner of a successful matchmaking business in China’s Fujian Province. “Thankfully common sense has prevailed, although by banning Chinese women from marrying foreigners, my business will have more competition.” Meanwhile, industry groups representing ESL teachers in China have also criticized the new policy. “The majority of teachers are male, and most end up wedding local women,” said a spokesperson for a chain of English-teaching cram schools in Shanghai. “If our teachers are banned from marrying Chinese girls, they may not stay in the country as long, and we risk losing talented staff.”

European men might see a bit more legitimacy obtaining to intermarriage with more civilized peoples - viz., Asians - casting it more in terms of the accountability necessary to sustain important qualities and quantities of native populations. However, while broaching European group delimitation with blacks, Jews and probably Arabs would entail prohibition in any number, broaching an accountable number and quality with any group would entail exclusion from citizenship. Nevertheless, Europeans are not primarily accountable to bear excesses and imbalances in Asian populations - the Asians are.

                               
        Lets not be inconvenienced by native French unions and syndicates, we need to support the “French” football team!

The Telegraph, “French government labels strikers ‘irresponsible’ over threats to Euro 2016”, 3 June 2016:

The French government yesterday condemned pilots and rail workers as “irresponsible” for refusing to call off strikes that threaten to disrupt the Euro 2016 football championship.

Train services have been halved by an open-ended rail strike that began on Tuesday. 

Dozens of flights were cancelled this week after a stoppage by French air traffic controllers although most of them called off plans to to extend industrial action through the weekend.

The Socialist government said no one would understand why Air France pilots were planning a four-day strike over pay to start on June 11, the day after the tournament kicks off. 

“This is irresponsible,” said the transport minister, Alain Vidalies. 

He said the Socialist government had made concessions to avert more action by air traffic controllers and had also met many of the demands of rail workers.

“It’s time to acknowledge the progress that’s been made and get back to work,” he told RTL radio.

The hardline CGT union has spearheaded a wave of strikes and industrial unrest in the past few months over planned labour reforms to make hiring and firing easier. Other more moderate unions have accepted the reforms, which the government has in any case watered down after weeks of street protests, many of which have ended in violence.

The prime minister, Manuel Valls, said the CGT was waging an increasingly lonely war.

“If we gave into the CGT, a union which is in the minority even if I respect its history and struggle, it would no longer be possible to reform France,” he said.

Fuel shortages at petrol stations have eased after riot police forcibly removed pickets from most blockaded refineries and fuel depots, but another protest has shut down several large waste treatment facilities around Paris, raising the prospect of rubbish piling up.

Editor’s note: Bill’s viewpoint is his own and represents an alternative perspective for your consideration.

European Outlook # 30, June 2016:

Us and Them - by Bill Baillie

After the Second World War the class system in the UK began to break down. In 1970 Edward Heath, the son of a builder and a pupil of the local grammar school, became prime minister. He was followed by a succession of middle class people who made it to the top; Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher, and John Major. It seemed that things were changing for the better but now, under Dave Cameron, we have gone back to being ruled by upper class millionaires who know nothing about ordinary people.

       
        Oswald Mosley

Some aristocrats had a social conscience. Oswald Mosley was tipped to be prime minister but he resigned from the Labour Government in 1931 when it refused to adopt his proposals to cure unemployment. Harold Macmillan, like Mosley, had fought in the trenches of the First World War and understood working people. But Dave Cameron and his chums have no such affinity. They’ve been forced to drop changes to tax credits, disability benefits, and academy schools because of their ignorance of public opinion. They tried to go too far too soon.

The class system was eroded by generations of social engineering but the aristocracy survived taxation and death duties and has now been reinforced with pop stars, footballers, pornographers, drug dealers, financiers and property speculators.

In days of old our lords and masters were expected to raise regiments and lead us into battle but the present lot are under no such obligation. They still have their private armies but nowadays the pikes and muskets of their hired thugs have been replaced with the smartphones and tablets of their sharp-suited accountants and lawyers.

The recent Panama disclosures confirm that we are not “all in this together”. Working people have to pay their taxes but the rich hide their money in overseas accounts. Our society is profoundly unequal and getting worse.

        Major Tim Peake
       
        Photo European Space Agency

Helen Sharman became the first British astronaut when she served aboard the Soviet Mir Space Station in 1991. NASA astronaut Michael Foale was born in Britain, but Major Tim Peake is the first Briton to serve on the International Space Station as a European Space Agency astronaut. He is due to return to Earth on June 18.

We have long been at the forefront of scientific achievement but we can’t afford an independent space program and it’s vital that we contribute to the ESA and pan-European projects such as Airbus and Eurofighter - all of which would be threatened by our withdrawal from Europe.

A long list of British inventions have been sold to America for want of development capital. We pioneered television, radar, the jet engine, vertical take-off aircraft and many other scientific achievements only to see them sent abroad. We spent so much money on the Blue Streak rocket program that we were forced to abandon it and buy American missiles; first Skybolt, then Polaris and now Trident.

The Tory Party has sold its soul to McDonnell Douglas, the makers of Trident, but thousands of British jobs depend on our participation in joint European aerospace projects. Mjr. Peake’s brave contribution to scientific research is the living proof of our commitment to Europe.

Spies and Traitors

Patriotic parties have always been infiltrated with spies and traitors. The pre-war movements collaborated with the State until it turned on them in 1940. They have been more careful since the war but according to Joe Owens the police have informers in all of them.

Bernard O’Mahoney states in his book Hateland that anti-fascist groups have no trouble recruiting discontented nationalists. So it’s likely that the police and the anti-fascists have got every group covered.

A meeting of the Communist Party in America during the fifties was famously abandoned when it was realized that everybody there was a government agent. And a recent case against the NDP in Germany was thrown out when those accused of promoting racial hatred were unmasked as security policeman.

Ray Hill was an active nationalist who split British Movement in 1982. He stood as the BNP candidate for Leicester in the 1983 general election where he got 469 votes. But in his 1988 book The Other Face of Terror he boasted of his career as an agent provocateur and general nuisance.

British nationalist leaders are routinely accused of being enemy agents, especially when their parties collapse following disappointing election results. Some of them might be guilty but we should remember that Adolf Hitler was assigned to military intelligence when he joined the German Workers’ Party - the rest, as they say, is history.

What Can We Do?

British nationalist candidates did badly at local elections throughout the country. They didn’t beat the record set by Commander Bill Boaks who got 5 votes standing as an Air, Road, Public Safety, White Resident in the March 1982 Glasgow Hillhead by-election; but they came close and they will now have to reconsider their tactics and policies.

Mosley’s Union Movement in the fifties and sixties and the National Front in the seventies were forced to use marches and demonstrations because they were refused access to meeting halls and denied press coverage. But street politics has had its day and modern methods of communication are called for.

       
                        Union Movement marching along Dalston High Street in 1952

READ MORE...

Reuters, “Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Microsoft back EU hate speech rules,” 31 May 2016:

By Julia Fioretti and Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS - Facebook (FB.O), Twitter (TWTR.N), Google’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube and Microsoft (MSFT.O) on Tuesday agreed to an EU code of conduct to tackle online hate speech within 24 hours in Europe.

EU governments have been trying in recent months to get social platforms to crack down on rising online racism following the refugee crisis and terror attacks, with some even threatening action against the companies.

As part of the pledge agreed with the European Commission, the web giants will review the majority of valid requests for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to the content if necessary.

They will also strengthen their cooperation with civil society organizations who help flag hateful content when it goes online and promote “counter-narratives” to hate speech.

“The recent terror attacks have reminded us of the urgent need to address illegal online hate speech. Social media is unfortunately one of the tools that terrorist groups use to radicalize young people,” EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said.

Germany got Google, Facebook and Twitter to agree to delete hate speech from their websites within 24 hours last year and even launched an investigation into the European head of Facebook over its alleged failure to remove racist hate speech.

“There’s no place for hate speech on Facebook,” said Monika Bickert, Head of Global Policy Management at Facebook.

“With a global community of 1.6 billion people we work hard to balance giving people the power to express themselves whilst ensuring we provide a respectful environment.”

The code of conduct is largely a continuation of efforts that the companies already take to counter hate speech on their websites, such as developing tools for people to report hateful content and training staff to handle such requests.

Twitter has suspended over 125,000 accounts since the middle of 2015 for threatening or promoting terror acts, primarily related to Islamic State.

The United States has undertaken similar efforts to entice the cooperation of tech companies in combating online radicalization, focusing on promoting “counter-narratives” to extremist content.

EU ministers had called for cooperation with tech companies to be stepped up after the Brussels attacks in March.

Jewish lobbyists, frequently the target of hate speech, welcomed the code of conduct.

     
“This is a historic agreement that couldn’t arrive at a better time,” said Dr. Moshe Kantor, President, European Jewish Congress.