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The shameful killing of Ruth Ellis : how the Daily Mirror reported on the last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom

Ruth Ellis achieved was the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom. Convicted of the murder of her lover, David Blakely, Ruth Ellis was hanged on 13 July 1955 at HMP Holloway, London. Writing in the Daily Mirror, Cassandra looked at the grotesque spectacle that shamed a nation:

Ruth Ellis

Spotter: @greenwood100

Posted: 15th, July 2020 | In: News, Tabloids | Comment


Who wants to buy a fake helicopter made by criminals in Moldova?

Fake helicopters

On a helicopter flight to a North Sea oil rig I noticed that fellow travellers had their hands pressed on their harnesses’ quick release buttons pretty much throughout the journey. Experienced rough necks let the less experienced passengers sit in the middle seats. The clear message was that helicopter travel is dangerous and you plan your escape route before boarding. So how do you feel about flying in a counterfeit helicopter made in Modolva by criminals?

The Moldovan General Prosecutor’s Office says it located a camouflaged factory allegedly manufacturing fake ‘copters. The 10 machines were discovered “in various states of assembly” east of Moldova’s capital Chișinău and close to the border with the breakaway region of Transnistria.

Who were the customers for the Russian Ka-26 fakes is not yet known. But you know that tank / warship / submarine you bought? Best check the guarantee.

Spotter: Point.md

Posted: 15th, July 2020 | In: News, Strange But True | Comment


CNN obituary to Jack Charlton is US soccerball wrong

RIP Jackie Charlton. Stalwart of the mighty Leeds United, a World Cup winner with England in 1966, leader of the raucous Green Army when he took the Republic of Ireland into Italia ’90, defying the odds and making a country believe that maybe – just maybe – they could do it, and all-round good bloke. He gave many people a lot of joy. So how to pay tribute to the ‘Big Giraffe’?

Virtually all the newspaper front pages lead with a picture of ‘Our Jackie’. “Forever a hero,”says the Sunday Telegraph. And for millions of us who love football he was. Americans love football too. Well, the marketing says they do. This is how CNN hails the great player and manager:

Jack Charlton CNN fail

If only there was something out there, some kind of electronic database, perhaps, where a US researcher could working for the news station of record could find out what the figure dominating the headlines did.

Posted: 12th, July 2020 | In: Back pages, Key Posts, News, Sports | Comment


Madeleine McCann: unnamed sources and news without end

For a few weeks this year Madeleine McCann was high on the news agenda. Amid stories of thousands killed by Covid-19, desperate calls for help from Hong Kong and global protests against the killing for a black man by American police, we read that progress had been made in the hunt of the world’s most recognisable missing person. German prosecutors went on the record. They remain convinced they have their man, the convicted paedophile they believe kidnapped and murdered Madeleine McCann. Weeks on since the story broke, Christian Brueckner, the suspect, remains innocent of all claims. No smoking gun has been found. No evidence. No body. This morning the Sunday Mirror leads with a story about the Madeleine McCann investigation. What’s new? Nothing.

The media story is about the child’s parents, as it has been since 2007. The “exclusive” front-page news is that Gerry and Kate McCann face “fresh agony” as police searched three wells in Portugal, close to where the suspect in the case lived. We know of their pain through “a family source” who tells of the McCanns’ “prolonged agony” and how they retain “a glimmer of hope” their daughter is alive 13 years after she disappeared. They “cling to hope she’s alive”.

Plus ca change. This is no-news journalism, a scoop that makes Sunday newspaper readers hanker for the days of kiss ‘n’ tell and stories with an end.

The “family source” tells us: “It is a period of prolonged agony. They have still absolutely no idea what evidence police have to suggest Madeleine is dead. They are not being told what police believe happened to her. We feel desperately sorry for them as they’ve endured so much pain and angst for 13 years.”

You can unpack that if you must. The Mirror thinks ‘Our Maddie’ continues to sell papers. The story’s framing tells us nothing. We can wonder why the source is unnamed?; why feelings are the lead news story?; and if making the parents the central plank of the “exclusive” serves no useful purpose other than to give people who continue to eye the innocent McCanns with suspicion something to gossip about and wonder if PR is ever news?

We read:

Clarence Mitchell, a former publicist for Madeleine’s parents, both 52, said: “Kate and Gerry want answers more than anyone. But while the Metropolitan Police are still treating Madeleine’s disappearance as a missing person, rather than a murder inquiry, it gives them a glimmer of hope that she could still be alive. They continue to hope until there is incontrovertible evidence which proves she is dead. They are being kept informed every step of the way.”

And there it is. The hunt for evidence continues. There is no evidence Madeleine McCann is dead. There is no evidence any crime befell her. The Germans say they have “concrete evidence” she was murdered. But the only fact they can prove is that in May 2007 an innocent child vanished. The legalities are that everyone is innocent of any possible crime under proven otherwise.

Posted: 12th, July 2020 | In: Madeleine McCann, News | Comment


Theybie baby: Non-binary trans parent raises child as gender non-specific

In the Guardian a story on a women who seems to have endured a tricky time growing up. The story is: a person’s gender can be whatever they want it to be; whatever feels right to them. The sex part is more defined, right? Meet parent Kori and their child Searyl, a theybie, a new word that means raising a child as neither a boy nor a girl. Says Kori:

“I’m not saying they are a girl, or they are a boy, or they are non-binary and therefore it has to be like this. My approach has been: ‘I don’t know.’ I don’t know who they’re going to be or what’s going to be important to them. What’s important to me is that I hold all of the space so that they can figure out who they are with the full menu.”

Talk and listen to your children, right? Raise them as best you see fit. Love is the key, everything else plays second fiddle to love.

“You parent based on who you are and what you believe in the world. What I believe in the world has led me to a place where of course my kid would have full autonomy of gender.”

The backstory comes in the first paragraph:

Long before becoming pregnant, Kori Doty knew exactly how they were going to raise their child.

When Doty was born in the picturesque seaside city of Victoria, British Columbia, in the 1980s, a doctor assigned them as female, but the label didn’t fit. “When I was born, a guess was made [about my gender] because nobody knew better than to do that. And that guess was incorrect,” says Doty, who now identifies as non-binary trans – meaning they are neither a man nor a woman, and that their identity does not correspond with their birth sex. “It caused some amount of complication, upset and harm in my life.”

So when Doty gave birth in November 2016, they were determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Why not have fun with gender? The sex is something other…

Posted: 10th, July 2020 | In: News | Comment


BBC will lock up you granny and other over 75s unless they pay the licence fee tax

Because no-one under the age of 70 watches the BBC, the State broadcaster will end free TV licences for most over-75s. More than three millions households will be fined and deemed criminals unless they pay the £157.50 fee from 1 August. You can escape the tax if someone in your household receives the Pension Credit benefit. The all-encompassing, local-newspapers thrashing BBC website quotes the BBC as saying this is “the fairest decision”. The Government calls it “deeply frustrating”. Teenagers says, “BB.. what?”

BBC Chairman and pensioner Sir David Clementi (born 25 February 1949; salary £450,000 a year plus perks) says the decision had “not been easy”. Which is, of course, bunkum. If the head of the corporation can’t find a reason to keep the organisation at the heart of people’s lives – and charging them makes them relevant – what’s his purpose? And then what of all those BBC jobs. Would he sacrifice them for the greater good? Sir David says the BBC is “under severe financial pressure”. The corporation must survive. And you must pay for it to do so.

So how is your dosh spent by the humungous BBC?

Did you watch much BBC telly? EastEnders, much? Newsnight? Is there any other news website you pay £1 a month to read – or else? Do you pay for radio? Listen to the World Service at all. Watch the BBC news? Or do you surf the web for free radio from Brazil, Japan or Florida, watch the less biased ITV News and binge on Netflix boxsets?

The BBC does a lot of terrific work. The 13 Minutes to the Moon podcast is worth paying for. Sport on the radio is excellent. Local radio can be very good. And.. Well, yeah. The BBC does radio really well. TV – meh. The Internet – you can get the same elsewhere. So why not make the BBC a subscription service? But – no – the BBC just says we should all pay for for it to do whatever it wants to do. We must pay for all of it bit just the bits we like. So you pay for EastEnders, 6 Music and documentaries on Charlemagne and his legacy, Why should we pay a tax in order to provide something of minority interest? Did anyone at the BBC think to ask what their customers over the age of 75 want?

Posted: 9th, July 2020 | In: Money, News | Comment


Wigan Athletic: a victim of Premier League greed

Away from the greed and vanity of the absurdly hyped Premier League lies the EFL. It’s in the news because Championship club Wigan Athletic have gone into administration. EFL chairman Rick Parry, the former Liverpool and Premier League chief executive, says Wigan’s plight is “the “tremendous shock”. It is? Well, it is to the Wigan players and staff who knew nothing of the disaster until the very new owners said they’d had enough.

Wigan Athletic changed Hong Kong-based owners a month ago. The new owners, Next Leader Fund, have put the club into administration. The club have been duly handed a 12-point deduction, which could see them relegated. The owners say they injected “more than £40m” into Wigan’s coffers. After taking control, Au Yeung said he was “excited to join the Wigan Athletic family”.

So who is to blame? The Guardian notes:

The EFL’s test and takeover process involves determining that a new owner has the money to buy a club and support it financially for at least the remainder of the season and the whole of the following season. However less than a month later and a week since Au Yeung was announced as the majority owner, the club has appointed the administrators Gerald Krasner, Paul Stanley and Dean Watson of the insolvency practitioner Begbies Traynor.

Rod Liddle tells Times readers:

Rick Parry, the EFL chairman, was secretly recorded by a Wigan fan darkly suggesting that the decision to put the club into administration may have had something to do with a very big bet placed in the Philippines on Wigan being relegated this season. The apparent implication being that the prospect of Wigan going down would be somewhat enhanced, if not ensured, by the mandatory 12-point deduction for going into administration. All rather hard cheese on the manager, Paul Cook, who had hauled his side out of the danger zone and into comparative safety since February (thus, of course, lengthening the odds for their relegation).

So much for the theories. Parry has been talking with the BBC:

Rick Parry: “It was a tremendous shock – a bolt from the blue.

“Normally if a club is facing administration you get warning signs. Generally they don’t pay HMRC, they don’t pay the players, there are problems with creditors and it happens gradually.

“It is really unprecedented for an owner [Au Yeung Wai Kay, the head of Next Leader Fund that took ownership] to put his own club into administration, literally overnight. It is completely unprecedented for an owner who has only just acquired the club for £40m to put his prized asset straight into administration and therefore destroy its value to him.

“It makes absolutely no sense to us – it’s a real mystery, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

Roan: Does the EFL need to take some responsibility?

Parry: “He passed the tests. You can criticise them and say they need to be beefed up, but he did pass the test. He wasn’t a complete newcomer because there had been a transition from the previous owner, who had been there two years.

“The previous owner had been putting something like £24m in, and had secured Wigan in the Championship. He introduced the new owner, there had been partnerships, it had evolved. This isn’t somebody who appeared from nowhere.

“Our test, bluntly, is limited, it’s an objective test, there are limited grounds to turn down an owner. It is a test that, by definition, the more foreign owners you have the more difficult it is to apply because of the amount of information that is available.”

Roan: Was the EFL lax in the application of the rules?

Parry: “No – he passed the test, albeit it self-certifications and he provided the assurances. What none of our rules can legislate for is an owner changing his mind.”

Roan: Does this all show that the ownership rules need to be tightened?

Parry: “It’s no use just talking about owners’ and directors’ tests as if that is going to solve all of the problems. You really need to go back to why did we end up with Chinese owners in the lower reaches of the Championship in the first place?

Can we follow the money?

“We need to make our clubs sustainable – we shouldn’t be relying on random foreign owners.”

Roan: Is coronavirus a plausible excuse?

Parry: “If he said it in February, then it would be plausible. What I don’t get is given we are coming out of the crisis and heading towards playing again, why would you buy a club in June and then put it in administration at the end of the crisis? That’s the bit that doesn’t quite stack up.”

It all stacks up. English football is a bubble pumped up by marketing guff that attempts to make gambling an essential part of the match day experience, and foreign investment by people for whom the sport is a property-based business. The Premier League is run on greed. When the bubble bursts, more clubs will go to the wall.

A few more bits:

In a Hong Kong stock exchange document setting out its reasons for selling, IEC [International Entertainment Corporation] cited the “unsatisfactory financial performance” of the club, due to the punishing economics of the Championship, and also mentioned the suspension of football because of the coronavirus pandemic and the impact of Brexit. It said Brexit “could have material long-term impact on the economy and the future growth of the UK which may damage investors’ confidence in the UK and also reduce local consumer spending, which could further deteriorate the performance of the [club]”.

Since buying the club the company said it sustained increases in players’ wages to £17.5m, from £10m in 2017-18, and sustained a £9m loss for the 13 months to 30 June last year.

Read it all: Wigan Athletic: EFL chairman Rick Parry says English football has been ‘disrespected’

Posted: 9th, July 2020 | In: News, Sports | Comment


Rishi Sunak offers half-price last suppers

Rishi Sunak has taken a second job as a waiter. There’s the chancellor on the front pages serving meals in a London branch of Wagamama. “Sunak serves up £30bn rescue,” says the Times. That’s the figure for Government spending on coronavirus support (it outstrips last year’s health budget) and not the revised bill for side orders of pickles, PPE or his family’s bank balance.

No mask for Rishi as he serves up a plates of swill, just a smart tie and name badge and a broad beam for the cameras. “Come dine with me,” says the Telegraph.

Sunak says the State will pay half the cost of a meal out for everyone. This will support the hospitality industry. The paper’ says Sunak “shows his backbone” with a bold statement. It is, of course, the “Rishi Dishi”, a twist on Dishi Rishi, the nickname the chancellor earned before coronavirus and the Government’s lack of preparedness kiboshed fiscal spending plans.

The upshot is that dinners will get a 50% discount off their restaurant bill during August. The meal deal means you can get up to £10 off per head if you eat out from Monday to Wednesday. Alcohol is not included, so liquid lunchers are not part of the deal. Also included is that if in going out to eat in the middle of a pandemic you get ill, the Government will off you food, bed and toilet facilities in a hospital (beds permitting).

Posted: 9th, July 2020 | In: News, Politicians | Comment


Lockdown studies: Japanese aquariums’ flowchart of the sex lives of penguins

penguin love flowchart

Like many of you, I too have been creating flowcharts of the wildlife I see around me. Charts on the lives of daddy longlegs, house flies and silverfish have been compiled in A4 pads for future generations to study. If like two aquariums in Japan you have more exotic household guests, you can do as they have and publish flowcharts that track the relationships of their penguins.

Penguins, the way they waddle around and protect their eggs, are often thought of as cute, cuddly and romantic. But those who observe them for extended periods know they have a dark side. Two aquariums in Japan, Kyoto Aquarium and Sumida Aquarium, keep obsessive tabs on their penguins and maintain an updated flowchart that visualizes all their penguin drama.

As Kyoto-based researcher Oliver Jia points out, penguin drama can include serious crushes and heartbreaks but also adultery and egg-stealing. And these Japanese aquariums have it all charted in a flowchart that can be studied for hours.

Spotter: @pomeranian99

Posted: 8th, July 2020 | In: News, Strange But True | Comment


Former Labour MP guilty of child porn offence

To Ipswich Crown Court, where Labour MP Eric Joyce, 59, has admitted making an indecent ‘Category A’ image of a child. Joyce was Labour MP for Falkirk between 2000 and 2012. He was Labour shadow minister for Northern Ireland. He left the party to serve as an independent. Joyce was also major in the British Army. He will be sentenced next month.

Pretty much every report includes the same phrase from the presiding judge. The story has broken over the newswires, so the shared phrasing and quotes are to be expected. (Although the news is not yet on The Times website; Mr Joyce is an a relationship with a Times columnist). Judge Emma Peters said that the single 51-second movie, found on a device, “depicts a number of children. Some are quite young, one is said to be 12 months old. Clearly a category A movie.”

How can this be editorialised? So much has been written about alleged child abuse in high places that many publications could be tempted to throw all manner of allegations into the blender and restart old conspiracy theories. Let’s hope not. Let’s stick to the facts:

She [Judge Peter] said Joyce, who appeared at court in person, “says he accesses it via an email which he says was a spam email”.

“At the time he was drinking heavily and he has now undergone work with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation and a psychotherapist,” the judge said.

She ordered that a report be prepared before Joyce is sentenced on August 7.

Judge Peters warned the former shadow minister, of Worlingworth, Suffolk, that the offence crosses the custody threshold.

“It’s going to be a question of whether it’s immediate or suspended,” she said.

“You will be required to sign paperwork today acknowledging that you are immediately on the sex offenders register,” she said.

The Lucy Faithfull Foundation says of itself:

The Lucy Faithfull Foundation is the only UK-wide child protection charity dedicated solely to preventing child sexual abuse. We work closely with frontline workers and professionals such as police officers, social workers and education staff to ensure children are as safe as they can be.

More to follow on the man who in the past has been nicked for drink driving, abusing an airport worker and assaulting four fellow politicians in a House of Commons bar.

Posted: 7th, July 2020 | In: News | Comment


Madeleine McCann: Christian Brueckner facts exposed

Maddie MCcann

Madeleine McCann: an at-a-glance look at reporting on the missing child.

The media continues to look at Christian Brueckner, which given his status as a prisoner of the German state is a news beat light easy on shoe leather.

The Star kicks things off by telling readers that the man suspected of kidnapping and murdering Madeleine McCann once live next to a British policeman in Portugal. Do you know your next door neighbour? Do you know what they’re up, if they have a criminal record for child abuse or work for an organisation some see as institutionally racist?

The insight into life on Brueckner’s street comes via Austrian couple Oliver and Karin Stenard. They tell a telly show in Portugal that they employed Brueckner as a handyman. He lived opposite them with his girlfriend. “The next door neighbour at the time’s an English policeman,” the Star quotes one saying. “He’s working for Scotland Yard.” The Sun watches the same show. The Sun presents its review of the show as an “exclusive”.

What of this copper? Was he sent to Portugal to watch the suspect? That seems unlikely because he is said to have already owned the property in 2007 when Brueckner was there and Madeleine McCann vanished. “Scotland Yard detective who lived next door to Madeleine McCann suspect in the Algarve ‘is working with police to find her’,” says the Mail. Now he is or then he was? The Mail adds:

The British police officer owns a house next door to a property where the German paedophile worked following the youngster’s disappearance, the drifter’s former Algarve bosses say.

We’re then told the suspect allegely exposed himself to children:

…angry parents revealed he had escaped trial in the Algarve despite exposing himself to four young children in a playground while he was on the run from German police for a separate sex crime. One of the parents fought back tears in an interview last night as she admitted: ‘If he had snatched one of the children and put them in his van, we might never have seen them again.’

He didn’t snatch the woman’s child. And as far as the evidence goes we do not know if he has ever snatched a child. “Madeleine McCann suspect ‘could have snatched another child’, say parents of young girl he allegedly exposed himself to.” says the Telegraph. Well, he could have. And then again, he might not have. As for snatching “another child”, well, police have yet to charge him snatching any child.

Nelia Bras, mum of one of the youngsters Brueckner allegedly pleasured himself in front of, added: ‘My daughter was eight at the time. He spoke to her in English and asked her, ‘What’s your name?’

‘It’s very traumatic knowing that someone who’s been linked to so many cases and is perhaps a very dangerous man was so close to my little girl and spoke to her and could have snatched her or any other child who was there.’

And then the speculation is cranked up.

“Christian Brueckner was living in the house in Foral when Madeleine McCann disappeared,” says Karin Stenard. “Foral is a big area and there was no-one around at the time. I say he killed her and there was a lot of space to bury her. I think her body may be buried there and I told the police that.”

The report below the TV show on Portuguese broadcaster RT’s website tells us (via Google Translate):

Germany knew that Christian Bruckner had been a pedophile since 1994, found him twice in Portugal and never associated him with the disappearance of Madeleine Mccann. Nor do the Portuguese authorities, although they have extradited him twice for sexual crimes against children. The first in 1999, the second in 2017.

For 22 years, this man lived among us and traveled without any motorhome control in Europe, benefiting from the free movement guaranteed since the Schengen agreement.

Burckner was last extradited in 2017, after being caught in the act of committing a crime that today qualifies as sexual abuse against four Portuguese children, all of them girls under the age of 14.

Despite the flagrant crime in a playground in São Bartolomeu de Messines, this crime by Brukner against Portuguese children was never prosecuted and remains unpunished.

Allegedly.

Posted: 5th, July 2020 | In: Madeleine McCann, News | Comment


Madeleine McCann: monsters, psychopaths and Christian B

What news of Madeleine McCann, the innocent child famous for being missing since May 2007? The Mail kicks off today’s round-up of news and in the main no news of Madeleine McCann with the line: “The lawyer for Madeleine McCann’s kidnap and murder suspect Christian Brueckner has insisted his client is ‘no psychopathic monster’.” Fair dos? But is he a murderer?

We know Brueckner is a paedophile and a rapist. But did he kidnap Madeleine McCann and murder her, as German authorities suspect he did? He is no monster says his brief. He is a man. Good. They’re easier to spot and punish. And what do we mean when we label someone a psychopath? Do we mean a predator lacking in all empathy? If we do, do we assume that they can be cured. Do they see them as victims of biology or nurture?

The American Psychological Association says psychopathy is characterized by “exploitation of others, deceitfulness, impulsivity, aggressiveness . . . [and] accompanied by lack of guilt, remorse and empathy.”

In 2017, research by New York-based psychologist Paul Babiak’s suggested up to 4% of business leaders in the US could be psychopaths. A study of supply chain managers found between 3% and 21% had clinically significant psychopathy, compared to 1% of the general population.

And they can pull. “Psychopathic men are really good at pretending to display what women are attracted to,” says Kristopher Brazil, one of two researchers at Brock University in Canada who led a study into why women love a psychopath. “They’re really good at putting on this mask, and making themselves look attractive… You exude a larger-than-life presence, and give off an impression of greatness.”

The Mail broadens its position, relaying the words of Brueckner’s suit:

Friedrich Fulscher described the 43-year-old serial paedophile as a ‘friendly conversationist’.

He went on to claim: ‘The prosecutor’s office seems to have shot at our client and is now trying to correct their lack of evidence by any means possible.

‘I experience him as a very calm and friendly interlocutor, and the atmosphere between us has always been very pleasant.’

The suspect’s innocent must be presumed. And as for the suspect coming across as decent bloke, well, if all paedophiles and rapists were easily identifiable the judiciary would have a far simpler time of things.

Fulscher was talking about his client to Germany’s RTL. The IBT notes:

This account of Brückner’s demeanor follows other reports that have surfaced in recent months about his behavior behind the scenes. Not only did a former roommate state that he had once been “obsessed with the dark web,” but others claimed that he had once “freaked out” when McCann’s name was mentioned.

And..? Not much. Such are the facts.

Posted: 3rd, July 2020 | In: Madeleine McCann, News | Comment


Prince Andrew: some of my friends might be child abusers

The media term for Ghislaine Maxwell is “British socialite”. Even when the elite are nicked for their alleged parts in heinous crimes we doff the cap and present them as something above the norm. A socialite translates as someone who likes to mess about and have fun whilst being stinking rich. Do the same whilst poor and you might be called a party animal, piss-head or shameless. Maxwell is the ‘British socialite’ accused of helping her former lover, the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, abuse of minors. It’s alleged she helped to recruit and groom victims known to be underage. Ghislaine Maxwell has denied any wrongdoing.

The Daily Mirror, the paper Maxwell’s dad used to own, leads with that familiar photo of one of Epstein and Maxwell’s pals with his arm about the then teenage Virginia Roberts, now Virginia Roberts Giuffre. She says Epstein abused her and made her have sex with another of their social circle, the ‘British socialite’ Prince Andrew. Virginia Roberts Giuffre claims she was trafficked to London and forced to have sex with the duke in Ms Maxwell’s Belgravia home. Like Maxwell, Randy Andy has denied any wrongdoing. Prince Andrew also says he was too honourable to break off his friendship with a convicted paedo who put him up whenever he was in New York.

The media is excited. How we enjoy seeing the high and mighty taken down. Papers are as aroused as a toff in a harem of desperate young women. But let’s stick to the facts. Everyone is innocent until proven otherwise.

The Times says the Duke of York has been drawn further into the Jeffrey Epstein story. The Telegraph says Prince Andrew is in the crosshairsThe Guardian says Andrew must be feeling the pressure. Audrey Strauss, acting US attorney for the southern district of New York, says to Andrew, hey, “come and talk to us”. God bless America, where even a pampered prince can be RSVP-ed. “We would like to have the benefit of his statement,” says Strauss, “our doors remain open and we would welcome him coming in and giving us an opportunity to hear his statement.”

Andrew ‘s people say he’s cooperating fully. But it can be hard to see the Prince through the ranks of lawyers and PR handlers surrounding him. Does the US Department of Justice want to question the toff in person, under oath, in a magistrates’ court? Will Andrew do that? Has he anywhere to stay for the night in NYC now that Epstein is dead? Problems mount for the Queen’s favourite son.

Posted: 3rd, July 2020 | In: Key Posts, News, Royal Family | Comment


Hong Kong : 3m residents invited to live in UK; Brexit not racist after all

“Crowds defy crackdown” says the Guardian. “COURAGE,” declares the message on a protestor’s T-shirt. His eyes, stinging from tea gas, are closed. Around him are three police officers in marks, goggles and helmets, their faces impassive.

But there is hope. Three million Hong Kong residents are eligible to work and live in the UK. “Escape to the UK” says the i. Well, you can if the Chinese let you. And what’s to say theta they will?

Hong Kong was once a British colony. In 1842, China ceded Hong Kong island to Britain after the First Opium War. In 1898,China leased the New Territories together with 235 islands to Britain for 99 years.

In 1997, it became a special admin area for China, functioning under the rule of “one country, two systems” – unlike mainland China, Hong Kong enjoys a high degree of autonomy and democratic economic and social systems. The contract securing those rights last until 2047.

Hong Kong law

But China is making plans. It’s playing a long game. They’s introduced a nw law. Under the new law, inciting hatred of China’s central government and Hong Kong’s regional government are offences. You are a criminal if you protest against the Chinese government. You cannot speak freely. You cannot think freely.

Posted: 2nd, July 2020 | In: News, Politicians | Comment


Madeline McCann: on a crime stroll with the revolting Christian Brueckner

Madeleine McCann: a look at reporting on the missing child.

The Mirror says Christian Brueckner, the man suspected of murdering Madeleine McCann, “‘made [a] all from ‘same place” where she vanished about an hour later”. He did? Well, so it is “claimed”. And why is ‘same place’ in inverted commas? The teaser is more precise – sort of: “Paedophile Christian Brueckner allegedly used a mobile phone outside the Ocean Club about an hour before Madeleine McCann disappeared from her family’s holiday flat at the same complex in May 2007.”

The news is alleged. And the source is an entertainment TV show in Germany:

Rudi Cerne, the host of Aktenzeichen XY… Ungelöst (Case number XY… Unsolved), told Focus: “The call came from the same place where the little girl was last seen alive. I get the impression something important is happening now.”

Rudi gets the impression… More after the ads… Stay tuned… Cerne shared his thoughts in a trailer for tomorrow night’s TV programme. “The only thing I can say at the moment is that this also includes the telephone number of the Portuguese prepaid card that was called from the German suspect’s cellphone,” he says. “Not even an hour before Maddie disappeared. The call also came from the same place where the little girl was last seen alive, in Praia da Luz in the Algarve.” Lest you mistake the toothsome, tanned TV host for a detective, he then note: “I’m not an investigator.”

In another of its myriad stories on the missing child, the Mirror announces: “Madeleine McCann suspect had rape case bungled by police two years before she vanished – Christian Brueckner, 43, could have been jailed for the brutal rape of a US woman in 2005 – almost 18 months before Madeleine McCann was taken – but blunders by Portuguese police kept him free until 2017.”

In December 2019, Brueckner was convicted of rape. He is appealing the conviction. Says the Mirror:

A rope, hair and some clothes from a house where Brueckner, 43, raped an American woman in 2005 didn’t get tested for DNA, leaving him at large until 2017 when he was caught.

The villa the rape took place in is a 10-minute stroll from the Praia da Luz apartment where Madeleine, who was three at the time, vanished in May 2007.

What other heinous crimes took place in the area in 2005, when the American woman was raped, are not said. As for that crime scene being a “stroll” from the place where Madeleine McCann vanished from, well, she vanished in May 2007. You can walk slowly.

Maddie McCann

The Mail repeats the story, observing that the suspect could have been caught two years BEFORE the innocent child went missing. In which case… if he did do it, she would not have gone missing. We’re told:

The 2005 rape case inquiry was abandoned five months after the horrific attack, while neither a red T-shirt stuffed in the victim’s mouth nor a nylon rope used to tie her hands together were DNA tested, according to The Sun

Over to the Sun, then:

Maddie suspect rape..

After her disappearance Portuguese police failed to seal off the McCann family holiday apartment for almost 24 hours.

It led to a crime scene contamination by up to 50 people. Cleaners washed bed sheets and ash from officers’ cigarettes was found in evidence samples. The 2005 rape inquiry was abandoned after just five months.

Is there a source for new that Portuguese police made a hash to the rape case?

Official documents show Carlos Farinha, then Director of the Judicial Police’s Forensic Science Laboratory, wrote in a letter dated November 28, 2009: “We have learned by telephone that the examination is no longer necessary. We are therefore cancelling the tests and returning the material sent to us for analysis.”

Adding:

German prosecutors are now convinced the mistakes made by Portuguese police in the 2005 rape case left child sex offender Christian B free to snatch Madeleine.

They might be convinced. But they don’t have any evidence to charge the depraved criminal.

Posted: 1st, July 2020 | In: Madeleine McCann, News, Tabloids | Comment


New York Times regrets the error: British people freed from Covid-19 lockdown did not flock to swamps in the heatwave

The New York Times regrets the error. The paper has issued a correction to an article in which it stated that when released from Covid-19 induced lockdown, albeit partially, the British flocked to swamps.

New York Times error UK

They did, of course, flock to Bournemouth – which they left in a condition many swamps enthusiasts would consider unfit for human habitation.

Spotter: @t_wainwright

Posted: 30th, June 2020 | In: News | Comment


Mercedes Petronas paints F1 cars black and joins anti-racist bandwagon – also hails an anti-Semite

Next F1 season will feature Mercedes cars painted black. This is “a signal of their commitment to greater diversity and inclusion in motorsport”. This does not mean everyone driving a black car is on the side of angels, nor that white van man is a racist sod. It’s all about changing the colour to fit the mood. Mercedes racing cars are usually silver. Mercedes said the Black Lives Matter movement had “shone a searching light on how much we need new measures and actions in the fight against racism”. So a black car will show how Mercedes is not racist and is anti-racist.

This is the board at Mercedes:

Mercedes black lives matters

The Mercedes board is white but the racing team has one high-profile black employee: F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton. He says driving in a black car is an “important statement we are willing to change and improve as a business”. Mercedes F1 team says “just 3% of our workforce identify as belonging to minority ethnic groups and only 12% of our employees are women. This lack of diversity shows that we need to find new approaches to attract talent from many areas of society we do not currently reach.”

Come, come. The talent is already attracted. Is he saying that less blacks, Kurds, Jews, gypsies and Turks want to work for a company that celebrates speed and spends the best part of the year travelling the planet in search of it? If he is, he’s talking rot. The barrier is in the hiring and opportunity, not the application.

Mercedes F1 team principal Toto Wolff adds: “Racism and discrimination have no place in our society, our sport or our team: this is a core belief at Mercedes. But having the right beliefs and the right mindset isn’t enough if we remain silent. We wish to use our voice and our global platform to speak up for respect and equality, and the Silver Arrow will race in black for the entire 2020 season to show our commitment to greater diversity within our team and our sport. We will not shy away from our weaknesses in this area, nor from the progress we must still make; our livery is our public pledge to take positive action.”

All well-intentioned and commendable, I’m sure. But until the faces making the decisions and owning the capital change, everything else risks looking like a marketing exercise.

Note: The F1 team is named Mercedes Petronas. Petronas says it is “the custodian of Malaysia’s national oil and gas resources”. It is wholly owned by the Government of Malaysia. Mahathir bin Mohamad served as the Prime Minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003 and 2018 to 2020. He is a member of the Parliament of Malaysia for the Langkawi constituency in the state of Kedah. He is, by his own definition, “proud to be labeled antisemitic” and who told the Cambridge Union: “I had some Jewish friends, very good friends. They are not like the other Jews, that’s why they are my friends.” He said a Jewish cabal “ruled the world”.

In his 1970 book The Malay Dilemma, he described Jews as being “not merely hook-nosed, but understand[ing] money instinctively,” sentiments he repeated in a BBC interview last year, when he also questioned the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Here he is being hailed by Petronas.

Petronas Jews

Dr Mahathir, Malaysia’s longest serving prime minister, took on an advisory role at Petronas after stepping down in 2003.

Dear Mercedes. You’ve got a lot of work to do…

Posted: 29th, June 2020 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment


Coroanvirus: Parents threatened with fines for if children miss school

Says limp and custard Education Secretary Gavin Williamson: “Unless there’s a good reason for absence… we’d be imposing fines on families.” Fail to ensure your children are in school from next September and face a fine.

Given that children of toffs and the middle-classes are well equipped for school and all the extra-curricular activities that goes with it (and cost a bomb), the fined are most likely to be the less well off who can least afford to pay.

Having locked everyone indoors for months, shut schools and told people they can get takeaway food, go on protests and hang out in the parks but kept schools shut to all but children of key workers, the Government now says get back to school or else. And the ‘or else’ is money – it’s always about the money.

If children have leaned anything during the past three months it is that the adults don’t know what they’re doing.

Posted: 29th, June 2020 | In: News | Comment


Reading attack: Khairi Saadallah charged with murder

Khairi Saadallah has been charged with the murders of James Furlong, 36, David Wails, 49, and Joe Ritchie-Bennett, 39, on 20 June. It’s alleged that Mr Saadallah stabbed the three men to death in Forbury Gardens, Reading. Police have called the attack a terrorist incident. The Crown Prosecution Service says: “The Crown Prosecution Service has today authorised Counter Terrorism Policing South East to charge Khairi Saadallah, 25, with three counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder.” So how is it being reported? A man has been charged so reporting guidelines are firm. The CPS adds:

“Criminal proceedings against Mr Saadallah are now active and he has a right to a fair trial. It is extremely important that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.”

The BBC says the attack has been linked to terrorism but fails to mention to which ideology the alleged terrorist might adhere. We know that Saadallah arrived in the UK from Libya in 2012 and was granted asylum in 2018. We also know MI5 suspected he could be thinking of travelling overseas to commit acts of terrorism. The attack was declared as a terrorism incident by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dean Haydon, senior national co-ordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing. But we are not told why he did so.

The BBC tells of a candlelit vigil to the killed. It quotes the Lord Lieutenant of Berkshire, James Puxley. “Who knows what they would have achieved in life had they lived to an old age,” he says. “Doubtless they would have achieved many good things that the community is now deprived of benefiting from.” We also hear from Martin Cooper, chief executive of Reading Pride, a local councillor and the family of one of the victims (all three victims were gay). Not one voice expresses any sense of anger to what the Sun’s headline calls a “bloodbath”.

The Guardian calls it a “knife attack”, which it was, of course. There is no mention of terror in its report. We do hear that two MPs lit candles. And Thames Valley police chief constable John Campbell said the victims were “cared for and comforted by my officers and others who came to help them in in their final moments”. He says Reading should take “pride” in how it had responded. It was a “coming together of a diverse community, joined by the bond of humanity and a shared sense of injustice”. To say nothing of terrorism. Which the report does not. Like the victims, Saadallah also lived in Reading.

As we continue to search for motive, or even speculation as to why he might have done it, the Times tell readers that Saadallah volunteered at a church before “converting” to Christianity. We’re told: “His sister said he was motivated by a wish to ‘marry a British girl’.” We are not told what religion or belief he converted from.

Mr Saadallah, who was referred to the government’s Prevent counter-extremism programme, is understood to have suffered from mental health problems. However, Stewart Johnston, operations manager for the church, said he had not picked up any indications of this.

Mr Saadallah volunteered from June to September 2018 while living in a hostel. “It was unclear that he had any sort of faith,” Mr Johnston said. “He would be stacking chairs, putting chairs out, helping in the kitchen, that sort of thing.”

And:

Friends have said that he drank and smoked cannabis, and showed no Islamist leanings. One said she did not believe he had chosen Christianity for a woman. “I never heard that,” she said. “He converted because he wanted to change his life and get away from the life he was forced to live in his home country.”

Islamism? Is that why the police have linked the alleged murders to terrorism? Why does the Times mention Islamism in its report if the police and CPS have not?

The Mail leads its coverage by telling readers: “Police investigating Reading terror attack charge Libyan refugee, 25, with three counts of murder and three of attempted murder.”

Saadallah

Is the suspect’s refugee status relevant? The Mail presents it as key part of the story. There it is in the headline. The paper mentions that the suspect is a refugee one more time in the story. Is that fair? Is it inviting its readers to guess and form an assumption?

Posted: 28th, June 2020 | In: News | Comment


Madeleine McCann: Christian Bruckner will never be ‘free’, Wolters is missing evidence and Maddie link to Rochdale pub

Madeleine McCann: an at-a-glance look at news of the missing child.

Christian Brueckner could be out of prison next week, says the NY Post. The convicted peadophile and rapist suspected to murdering the missing child has applied for parole having served two-thirds of a sentence for drugs.

In the Sun we hear from an unnamed source “close to the German investigation”. “If the superior court decides to free him then it will severely impact the case,” says someone. “He could vanish and then we will not be able to put him on trial. We are fighting for him to be kept in court.”

How likely is it that if he is released from prison the man suspected of killing the child who has obsessed media for over a decade will vanish and not be closely watched by a million reporters, police, members of the public and bounty hunters keen to get their hands on the scoop and the reward money? And there’s the matter of his conviction for rape.

Christian Brueckner was pinched in 2018 on a warrant issued for a drugs offence in 2011.

But he was subsequently put on trial and convicted of raping a 72-year-old American woman at her villa in Praia da Luz in 2005. He was sentenced to seven years in December. But because he is appealing against the rape conviction, under German law the sentence is yet to be imposed.

So he will walk “free”? No. He won’t.

Maddie McCann

The Mirror looks at the child’s parents, as ever it has done. “Madeleine McCann parents face more pain as police say suspect could escape justice.” This headline pivots on your concept of justice. The teaser nails its:

“German authorities are convinced paedophile Christian Brueckner killer Maddie but prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters sais the investigation ‘could be stopped if we fail to find the missing evidence'”

In the dash to scream “no news” first, the Mirror makes two typos in one line. But worse than that is the interpretation of what justice is and if you can achieve it without evidence. German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters tells German newspaper Braunschweig Zeitung: “You have to be realistic that the investigation may not lead to a charge for the murder of Madeleine. It could be stopped if we fail to find the missing evidence. But we are still convinced of the guilt of the accused and hope for further promising investigative approaches.”

May. Could. If. Missing evidence. The German prosecutors case looks watertight, in the same way a sieve makes a good lifeboat.

The Metro chips in with: “Madeleine McCann suspect might not be charged despite ‘concrete evidence’ of murder.” When “concrete evidence” is couched in inverted commas it’s not all that concrete. Says Wolters: “I am currently unable to predict the outcome of our investigation but we are still convinced of the guilt of the accused and hope for further promising investigative approaches.” But is there to convince a judge and jury?

Is the suspect about to walk free, then? Wolters explains: “Of course, it is always good to know where a suspect is to be able to access them if necessary. And, of course, detention always offers a certain guarantee that the detainee will not commit any further crimes.”

And on it goes. But wait. The Manchester Evening News has news!

Maddie McCann parents

“Lawyer who represented Madeleine McCann parents wants to turn village pub into nursery.” In Rochdale.

Such are the facts.

Posted: 27th, June 2020 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann, News, Tabloids | Comment


Bournemouth invaded: 500,000 litterbugs trash Covid 19 risks; disabled people forced into roads; police ignore pavement parking

To Bournemouth, Dorset. There was “Chaos on the beaches” says the i. A major incident was declared at Bournemouth beach due to overcrowding and gridlocked roads. It was very busy. Mobbed.

The Mirror and Express lead with Bournemouth beach. Their sister title, the Star, looks at the rubbish and blames “drunken louts” for the dirt and mess left on the sand. But that’s not right. There were plenty of empty beer cans and wine bottles left on the sand, and lots of broken glass on the promenade. There were turds in burger boxes and plastic buckets. There were syringes in the park above Westcliff. There were nappies left in hedges, bags full of rubbish dumped by the kerb, disposable barbecues – with wire trays – all over the shop, broken chair and inflatables left on the beach, and thousands of empty plastic bottles for water and non-alcoholic juices pretty much everywhere. Most people did aim at the bins. But they are full. And what cannot fit inside them is left by it.

The mess was not fuelled by alcohol alone. Seagulls play their part. A lack of facilities, too. You go to the beach but no cafes are open. Toilets are few and far between. Hotels and guest houses are shut.

And the police? Well, one police car drove past scores of vehicles parked on the pavement and drove away. Police did not get out their car. People in wheelchairs and pushing prams were forced to walk in the roads. The police were notable by the ineffectiveness and absence. Some drivers did get parking fines pinned to their car windscreens. As one told me: “It’s only £30-odd quid between four of us.”

Bournemouth Beach coronavirus

Posted: 26th, June 2020 | In: News | Comment


Sacked Rebecca-Long Bailey – another victim of the Jewish conspiracy to defeat anti-semitism and racism

Rebecca-Long Bailey, the Labour MP who scored Jeremy Corbyn 10/10 for his leadership, has been sacked from the shadow cabinet. And you can thank the Jews for getting shot of her. I can reveal that there really is a Jewish conspiracy. Come closer. The plan is that Jews expose anti-Semites and pray to our brutal God that they get a sound re-education. Keir Starmer’s Labour Party says Long-Bailey gave a big thumbs up to an article that “contained an antisemitic conspiracy theory”. An article, you’d wager, that appeared in some far-Left outlet published on the outer reaches of the web. No. This was a story in the mainstream Independent.

The title of the article is the not pithy: “Maxine Peake: ‘People who couldn’t vote Labour because of Corbyn? They voted Tory as far as I’m concerned’.” After the snootiness, Peake, an actress, looks at the alleged murder of George Floyd at the hands US police. We read:

“Systemic racism is a global issue,” she adds. “The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.”

Can it be that Mossad and those pesky Jews killed George Floyd? And why Israel and not another nation to have hosted US cops? Nietzsche told us that anti-Semitism is used by people hoping “someone must be to blame for the fact that I do not feel well”. Jews are “scapegoats for every possible public and private misfortune”. Labour lost. George Floyd was killed. Make the link…

In a correction to its story, the Indy notes: “Our article also implied that this training could have included neck kneeling tactics.” Oh? “There has been no suggestion that this training involved the tactics referred to in the article.” So who suggested it did? The Indy’s correction contains no time stamp so it might look as if it’s no correction at all and might have been there all along. In the Indy’s original version of the article, Peake’s comments included a link to an Amnesty International article that talked about US police departments training in Israel. Peake didn’t put it there. The Indy did. That link was later removed. The revised article fails to mention the presence of any link.

And so to the politician, a leading MP in a party under investigation for institutional anti-Semitism who saw an interview with someone she admires and retweeted it with high praise. “Maxine Peake is an absolute diamond,” said the now former Shadow Education Secretary. The Indy’s nastiness and Peake’s factoid should be more widely read. Peake later said that stuff about secret Jews training US police to kill blacks by kneeling on their necks was “inaccurate” .

Labour MP Stella Creasy tweeted that the interview was “textbook casual antisemitism”, adding that “being antiracist means countering, not indulging, such tropes”.

Should Long-Bailey get another go at education she can help pick which textbooks the youth read. “I think secondary school education should include a module on conspiracy theories,” tweets writer Matthew Sweet. “How to spot them, how to resist the way they seduce with simple explanations for complex phenomena and their appeal to prejudice and confirmation bias.”

Says Long-Bailey:

“I retweeted Maxine Peake’s article because of her significant achievements and because the thrust of her argument is to stay in the Labour Party. It wasn’t intended to be an endorsement of all aspects of the article.”

Jeremy Corbyn likes some bits of an anti-Semitic mural. Long-Bailey likes some bits of apparently anti-Semitic articles. You can read Mein Kampf and admire the writer’s use of grammar.

John McDonnell, who was shadow chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn, was critical of the decision to sack his ally, saying: “Throughout discussion of anti-Semitism it’s always been said criticism of practices of Israeli state is not anti-Semitic. I don’t believe therefore that this article is or Rebecca Long-Bailey should’ve been sacked. I stand in solidarity with her.” What about if the criticism is based on a falsehood? What if linking an alleged racially-driven murder in the US to a training programme run by secret Jews in a foreign land is a bit iffy?

The sane might think it indecent to debate the pros and cons of the Indy giving space to such things, adding police brutality in Minneapolis to the list of evils and ills that Israel is uniquely responsible for. The journalist wrote it. The sub-editors fact-checked it. The editor approved it. They all thought it fine. The Indy published the interviewee’s views uncontested. Labour List, the website funded by Unite the Union and UNISON, wants to see if Peake has a point. Says Labour List:

‘A 2016 Amnesty USA article states that law enforcement officials in Baltimore, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York and other places “have all traveled to Israel for training”.’

So what? So nothing. It just’s there, dangled like low-hanging fruit for readers to lick and sniff, to sense and find meaning in the sickly scent.

But facts, what of them? George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is not known if Minnesota sent a secret cohort of police to Israel to learn how to murder black men by kneeling on their necks. But until we see evidence to the contrary, we should keep open minds. And if the Indy wants it, I can press f9 on the keyboard and bang out 500 words about how the world’s only Jewish state did it and is behind everything else that spoiled your day.

Posted: 25th, June 2020 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment


Marx Must Fall! Highgate statue to racist must be torn down

Marx statue vandalised

Statues are coming down across the country. Oriel College, Oxford, is readying to remove a statue to colonialist Cecil Rhodes. In Bristol, a statue to slave trader Edward Colston was rolled into Bristol Harbour. A statue to slaveholder Robert Milligan has been removed from view in London. Statue of racists are coming down all across America. So is it time to get rid of Karl Marx statues, including the huge headstone that sits atop his grave in London’s Highgate cemetery?

In 2019, the words “doctrine of hate” and “architect of genocide” were painted on the Marx Highgate cemetery memorial. One onlooker was quoted in the Guardian: ““I wouldn’t like to say who or why someone did it but it was clearly someone very critical of Marx and that part of history. I am just surprised that somebody in 2019 feels they need to and do something like that.” No contrary view was quoted.

Spoof news website Babylon Bee quips: “Looking to protect their statues and other municipal monuments, cities and towns across the country have begun disguising their statues as Karl Marx. City councils all over are ordering Karl Marx wigs and putting them on Teddy Roosevelt, George Washington, Christopher Columbus, and other statues.”

Marx was a champion of the masses and the oppressed, say some. Other says he was a hardcore anti-semite who called for “the emancipation of mankind from Judaism” and fed the 2,000-year-old prejudice that Jews were all about the money and behind every ill, writing, “Money is the jealous god of Israel.” As Jonathan Freedland notes:

The historical explanation for this enduring linking of Jews and money is that Jews were pushed into financial roles by a church that barred Christians from, say, lending money for interest, and barred Jews from doing much else, such as owning and farming land. As Anthony Julius – whose Trials of the Diaspora is the definitive history of English antisemitism – puts it, in a feudal society in which Jews could be neither peasants nor lords, there was “no other niche” available. But psychological explanations also suggest themselves, starting with the notion that Christian society was able to split off that aspect of itself it regarded as sinful – its pursuit of wealth and profit – and project it instead on to a hated other: the Jew.

Bob Seely adds:

…Karl Marx’s conspiratorial view of the world is at the rotten root of both hard Left and Right. Marx helped provide the intellectual base for both the Holocaust of the Jews…

In his 1843 essay, The Jewish Question, Marx, whose father converted from Judaism to Protestantism, equated emancipation from capitalism and Judaism as being one and the same. “Money is the jealous god of Israel” Marx wrote. “The god of the Jews has become secularised and has become the god of the world.” He jumbled together hostility to private property and capitalism, and his personal hatred of Jews as self-interested, rootless and enablers of secret control, updating miserable medieval tropes for the modern world. Once society succeeded in the preconditions of Capital, “the Jew will have become impossible [Marx’s italics],” perhaps the most profound example of bastardised pseudo-science in modern political history.

Frederick Engels addressed Marx’s racism in a letter date April 19, 1890:

…you might not be doing more harm than good with your anti-Semitism is something I would ask you to consider. For anti-Semitism betokens a retarded culture…

In North America not a single Jew is to be found among the millionaires whose wealth can, in some cases, scarcely be expressed in terms of our paltry marks, gulden or francs and, by comparison with these Americans, the Rothschilds are veritable paupers. And even in England, Rothschild is a man of modest means when set, for example, against the Duke of Westminster. Even in our own Rhineland from which, with the help of the French, we drove the aristocracy 95 years ago and where we have established modern industry, one may look in vain for Jews.

Hence anti-Semitism is merely the reaction of declining medieval social strata against a modern society consisting essentially of capitalists and wage-labourers, so that all it serves are reactionary ends under a purportedly socialist cloak; it is a degenerate form of feudal socialism and we can have nothing to do with that. The very fact of its existence in a region is proof that there is not yet enough capital there. Capital and wage-labour are today indivisible. The stronger capital and hence the wage-earning class becomes, the closer will be the demise of capitalist domination. So what I would wish for us Germans, amongst whom I also count the Viennese, is that the capitalist economy should develop at a truly spanking pace rather than slowly decline into stagnation.

In addition, the anti-Semite presents the facts in an entirely false light. He doesn’t even know the Jews he decries, otherwise he would be aware that, thanks to anti-Semitism in eastern Europe, and to the Spanish Inquisition in Turkey, there are here in England and in America thousands upon thousands of Jewish proletarians; and it is precisely, these Jewish workers who are the worst exploited and the most poverty-stricken. In England during the past twelve months we have had three strikes by Jewish workers. Are we then expected to engage in anti-Semitism in our struggle against capital?

Nietzsche noted that anti-Semitism was used by people hoping “someone must be to blame for the fact that I do not feel well”. Jews were “scapegoats for every possible public and private misfortune”.

Let’s get the racists and chop down statues to them. Marx must fall! Right?

Posted: 25th, June 2020 | In: Key Posts, News | Comment


Arsenal balls: The Bernd Leno miracle

Remember when Bernd Leno, the Arsenal goalkeeper, suffered a “horror injury (Mail) in a match with Brighton? So horrible was the injury that the Sun told us that BT Sport refused to show it in a replay.

Leno the sun
X-Rated Horror!

As I pointed out, Arsenal fans are made of sterner stuff than those BT softies and could watch the gore fest on their club’s family friendly official website.

Leno injury
Will Leno walk again?!

As the world prayed for Leno, the Sun looked at five goalies Arsenal could sign to cover for Leno should be be out for year with what could be cruciate knee ligament damage.

And then prayers were answered. It turns out that Leno had merely sprained his knee. He will walk again! There will medical journals telling of Leno’s knee. Religionist will will point to Bernd ‘Lazarus’ Leno as evidence of god’s love.

Amen.

Posted: 23rd, June 2020 | In: Arsenal, News, Sports | Comment


Posh Nigerian Dillibe Onyeama was too black for Eton College

Nigerian Dillibe Onyeama was the first black person to obtain a school-leaving certificate from EtonCollege, graduating in 1969. He arrived in January 1965, aged 14, his name put on the recruitment list at birth by his father, an eminent Oxford-educated Nigerian judge.

Onyeama became persona non grata to the school for toffs when he wrote a book about the racism he experienced there. The school’s great and good asked him such questions as: “Why are you black?”, “How many maggots are there in your hair?” and “Does your mother wear a bone in her nose?” He writes: ““I swung a powerful right-hander at his chin… He dropped to the floor like an inert sack and lay there crying. The happy faces of his friends distorted with shock, and next they were shouting at me with disapproval.”

As a black person, the for vocal and blinkered members of the jeunesse dorée expected him to be sporty but mentally negligible. He scored 7 O’Levels, was decent at games but never did play rugger for England. He says that “colour prejudice was the most outstanding feature of my experiences.”

How this differed from treatment meted tout to black children at other British schools in the 1960s is moot. It was far from abnormal. But Eton is for the elite, land-owning class. These people set the rules at their private clubs and family dos. To date, 20 British prime ministers have attended the school, as did Princes William and Harry, the latter moving on from his days as recreational Nazi who once referred to a mate as “Paki” to marry mixed-race American Meghan Markle.

The school’s current head, Simon Henderson, has apologised for the sins of the past and says he’d like Mr Onyeama to return “to make it clear that he will always be welcome at Eton. We must all speak out and commit to doing better – permanently – and I am determined that we seize this moment as a catalyst for real and sustained change for the better.” Mr Onyeama says the apology “compels the recognition that prejudice on the grounds of colour or race dehumanises its victims in a way that ordinary forms of prejudice do not”.

Posted: 23rd, June 2020 | In: News | Comment