History Debunked Asks if Black lives Matter to Black People

It’s a provocative, controversial question to be sure, but it does need to be asked. In this video History Debunked’s Simon Webb raises it in connection with the shooting of Black activist Sasha Johnson. Johnson was shot a month ago by a Black gang while dancing the night away at a party in Peckham. According to the police officer in charge of the investigation, none of the thirty people, who were present at the shooting have offered any evidence. It seems that Black lives only matter when the killer is White. When this occurs, the slogan ‘White silence is violence’ is trotted out to castigate any White that doesn’t condemn the killing or offer evidence. But when it comes to Black on Black violence, Blacks cover it up. Hence the various claims made after the shooting that a White supremacist was responsible as demonstrated in Diane Abbott’s noxious tweet about it. But the four men accused of the shooting – Prince Dickson, Cameron Derigg, Troy Reed and Demontay Brown, are all Black. There’s a certain irony that they were caught because of Stop and Search, which Sasha Johnson condemned as racist against young Black men. The cops stopped one during such a search, he ran away, was arrested, and so led them to the others. But the thirty people at the party aren’t giving evidence because of a belief in the Black community that it’s wrong to cooperate with the police. Any Black person who does is a Judas. But more Black lives are lost to Black gangs than to White racists, and if Blacks really want to stop Black people being killed, then they should tell their boyfriends and sons not to stab and shoot other Black men. As for the 30 people at the party, their silence really is violence. By not coming forward to give evidence against Johnson’s shooters, they are all complicit in her shooting.

A few years ago, Black on Black violence really was an issue that was being discussed in the mainstream media. This was in the 1990s or early 2000s. There was even an edition of the Ali G show in which Sasha Baron Cohen’s wigger alter ego did a mock interview with the senior police officer supposedly about Black on Black violence. G was particularly interested in the weapons that ‘brothers were using against brothers’. The police chief had brought along a selection of knives, swords and other weapons that had been taken from Black gang members. Then Cohen decided to turn the interview into farce, and started drooling over how cool these weapons were, to the obvious horror of the policeman. The fact that even Ali G was discussing the subject showed very clearly that it was definitely not a taboo subject. But now it’s vanished. The Black Lives Matter movement is only concerned with Black lives if their taken by Whites. And its fair to say that many Black are very unhappy about this.

One Black Conservative American youtuber last year put up a long video about why many Black Americans hated Black Lives Matter. This consisted of clips of Black people, including business people as well as ordinary peeps, stating very clearly that in their experience, all the abuse and violence had come from other Blacks, not Whites. This included a man, who’d been physically threatened as well as people, who’d seen their shops and businesses trashed by the rioters.

There is indeed a widespread, deep distrust of the police amongst the Black community in both America and Britain. It’s doubtless due to the real racism Blacks have experienced at the hands of White cops. Since the race riots in Britain of 1981/2 there have been efforts to recruit more Black and ethnic minority officer into the police as a way of countering this. Cressida Dick, the Met’s police chief, has announced that she wishes to recruit a further 20,000 police officer. To Alex Belfield’s horror, she is also trying to change the law to give preference to Black applicants. She’s almost certainly doing this, or wants to do it, because of the long-standing campaign to get more Blacks into the rozzers as a way of gaining the community’s trust.

As for the reluctance of the people at the party to give evidence against the shooters, my guess is that there are other factors at work quite apart from simple racial solidarity. It’s been suggested that it was a gang shooting, and they accused were really trying to kill Johnson’s partner. Johnson was simply unlucky enough to get in the way. In this case, the silence of the other partygoers probably is due to fear for their lives. A Black resident of Bristol’s St. Paul’s area said much the same after the riots of 1981/2. She was on the side of the police against the rioters, as she wrote in an article in the Bristol Evening Post that the area was being terrorised by criminal gangs, and people were afraid of speaking out against them.

But there’s also a marked hostility amongst Black anti-racist activists to media reporting of Black on Black violence. Remember the murder of Demilola Taylor? He was a 12 year old Black lad, who was stabbed by a gang on his way home from school, finally bleeding to death in the stairwell of the block of flats where he lived. A vile, horrific murder that shocked the nation and was extensively reported in the press. I’ve mentioned before the many vile attitudes held by the Black and Asian Studies Association that thoroughly disgusted me when I read their wretched newsletter. One of the worst was their accusation that the Beeb was being ‘racist’ for reporting it. In issue 32/33 of their newsletter they complained about its reporting and stated that the media should instead have carried stories about all the Blacks murdered by Whites. They were showing their prejudices here. They’d obviously concluded that Taylor was murdered by a Black gang, but their ethnicity hadn’t been mentioned on the national news and it was later revealed that it was made up of people of different races. It’s an attitude based, no doubt, on the extensive reporting of Black criminality by the right-wing press, which certainly was racially biased. I’ve no doubt that the Black activists, who oppose the reporting of Black on Black assault and murder do so from a genuine belief that this somehow supports anti-Black racism and ‘negative stereotypes’ of Black people.

But most of the Black people stabbed and shot are attacked by other Blacks. And I’ve no doubt that there are many British Blacks, like those in America, who would like this to become an issue. They want their neighbourhoods to be safe, and to be able to raise families and run businesses without fear of being robbed, looted or murdered by anyone, whether White supremacists or Black criminals.

It’s just Black Lives Matter and similar organisations, like the Black and Asian Studies Association, who want to silence any discussion of Black on Black violence.

And their determination to silence its reporting is both an indictment and makes them complicit in the killings they ignore.

Sasha Johnson’s attackers Were Four Black Men, Claim Police

According to Sky News, the police have said that the attackers who shot BLM activist and Taking The Initiative party founder Sasha Johnson were four Black men. The Sky report states

Met Police Commander Alison Heydari appealed to the public for information on the shooting, saying “four black males in dark clothing” fired a gun during a party in Peckham.

“From our enquiries so far, we have established that Sasha had been at a party at a house on Consort Road in Peckham early on Sunday morning,” Cdr Heydari said.

“Around 3am a group of four black males dressed in dark coloured clothing entered the garden of the property and discharged a firearm.

“We are aware of Sasha’s involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK and I understand the concern this will cause to some communities – however, I wish to stress that at this time there is nothing to suggest Sasha was the victim of a targeted attack.”

The rozzers also deny that they are aware of any credible death threats against her. This has been rejected by her party, which has reasonably asked how they can say that without talking to her and that the fact that she was shot in the head makes those threats very credible.

See: Black equal rights activist shot by group of four men at party, police say (msn.com)

I realise that some of the great commenters on this blog will be somewhat sceptical that Johnson’s attackers were not White racists, given the way long shadow of the Stephen Laurence murder. However, I think that it’s all too possible that her assassins were Black. There is, unfortunately, a violent gang culture in many deprived Black communities, and these people will try to kill someone for the most trivial reason. A few years ago some idiot tried to shoot a White DJ, who played rap music for Radio 1. He’d clearly annoyed someone, and not everyone was a fan. I’ve heard people, who listened to him describe him as an idiot and other, more colourful terms. But stupidity and inanity don’t justify attempted murder.

Johnson was a volatile person, who apparently suffered from bipolar disorder. She also seems to have made a few personal enemies. One of the videos I posted about her yesterday came from a former friend, Michelle Francis, who had some very radical racial views herself. Francis says in another video, also about some spat or other with Johnson, that she (Francis) believes in racial segregation. She makes all manner of personal accusations against Johnson, including the claim that she never paid the workers in her restaurant.

I am also aware that there are criminals, who try to infiltrate political parties right across the spectrum in order to gain a false legitimacy and increase the scope of their activities. The attempt to set up a false BLM party by anonymous individuals seems to me to be an attempt by some seriously shady people to cash in on the name and prestige of the real BLM movement. For all I know – and this is just speculation – Johnson could have been targeted for assassination because she blocked such attempts at criminal infiltration.

Whatever the motive, I do not support this attempt on her or indeed anyone’s life, and wish her a speedy recovery.

Frances Barber Joins Rachel Riley and Tracy Ann Oberman in Raving Anti-Corbyn Paranoia

I’ve blogged several times before about how the visceral, personal hatred of Jeremy Corbyn by Countdown numbers woman Rachel Riley and ‘jobbing’ actor Tracy Ann Oberman seems to be driving them towards the abyss of sheer madness. Oberman seemed to believe a few months ago that the Labour leader was personally stalking her. Because he showed up at a Manchester theatre in which she was performing. His presence had nothing to do with her. He’s a patron of the theatre, had been personally involved in setting up and was there to see the show. Now Frances Barber, another Z-list celeb with a deep hatred of the Labour leader appears to be joining them on their journey towards the funny farm.

Yesterday an Islamist terrorist started attacking people with a knife around Fishmongers’ Hall in London. Tragically, he killed two people with a knife before London’s finest turned up and shot and killed him. The murderer had been imprisoned on terrorism charges, but had been paroled and released. He had absolutely no connection with the Labour leader whatsoever, but Barber decided he had to because, as everyone knows, because the Tories and anti-Semitism smear merchants have told them, Corbyn is a friend of terrorists.

Corbyn, as well as Boris Johnson and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick had all praised the actions and extreme courage of the public. But despite this praise for the victims of the attack, Barber tweeted out

People died.  Innocent men & women going to work were stabbed by a terrorist. Jeremy Corbyn is on their side. I fucking hate him.

When somebody pointed out that this was quite a leap of logic, she replied

How fabulous! I leapt he’s a total shithead.

When someone else told her that she may have been deceived by a fake tweet going around, she said that she had no interest in it, and that Corbyn was a ‘terrorist sympathizer’. At this point, someone suggested that she needed help, at which point, as Zelo Street says, ‘the paranoia set in’. She accused that tweeter of having been sent by Aaron Bastani, whom she decided to call ‘Bastardi’. Back to the fake tweet, she denied ever seeing it and declared that Corbyn had ‘loved terrorists all his god damn life’ and was ‘a vile anti-British Communist’.

She then went back to claiming that all her detractors had been set on her by Bastani, declaring

Bastardi has released his demons . Nasty upsetting. Who needs it. But I’m ok.

Which was followed by

This is the way politics is conducted now? Pillory the enemy. Hateful . It’s why after 40 years I left this poison.

By this time the peeps on Twitter were wondering about Barber’s mental health. Responding to Kate, a woman obviously concerned for Frances’ sanity, she tweeted

“Kate thinks I’m mentally ill because I don’t adore Corbyn. Hahahaha”.

Another person, Ian Fraser, decided that she was just deranged. So Barber declared he was ‘a journeyman’.

And then it was back to blaming Bastani for all the peeps coming to tell her that she was wrong, or plain nuts.

Asshole Bastardi has sent all you little ants. Honestly guys it’s too tragic.

When someone suggested that Barber should stop typing, ’cause it was gone midnight, she replied

Bastardi is now so desperate he is pretending fake worrying about The Grand Masters life. Oh my days.

Covering this little interchange, Zelo Street concluded

‘Frances Barber would blame Corbyn and Bastani if her train was late. Sad, really.’

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/11/frances-barbers-london-bridge-meltdown.html

Looking at her weird accusations and her personal hatred of Corbyn and Aaron Bastani, it’s hard not to agree with two of the commenters to that article. One, who was anonymous, posted

The woman is either seriously ill or shouldn’t mix a keyboard with The Curse Of John Barleycorn.

‘Jonathan’ concurred, saying

The likes of Frances Barber like other the other minor slebs Rachel Riley & Tracey Ann Oberman, are either seriously suffering from a delusional disorder or more likely been at the sauce or possibly both.

And according to ‘Mark’, somebody had briefly amended her Wiki page so that it read that she ‘was an anti-Islamic Zionist with a Corbyn fixation who does some acting, when she’s sober enough.’

I got the impression that Barber is part of the circle around Oberman and Riley, who have swallowed the toxic nonsense that Corbyn is anti-Semitic and that British society is now so full of Jew-hatred, that it’s like Nazi Germany c. 1937. This is the exact opposite of what’s happening. There are no brown-shirted hordes marching through the streets chanting anti-Semitic slogans. Nobody is burning books or proposing any kind of anti-Semitic legislation. Nobody wants Jewish Brits to be forced out of their jobs, their homes and their country. Even the I’s repulsive Simon Kelner, who has been pushing the anti-Semitism smears as hard as any of the other liars and propagandist hacks, has said that if Corbyn does take power on 13th of next month, nothing will happen to Britain’s Jews. In fact, as Jeremy Corbyn has shown time and again, he has actively supported Jews against discrimination and persecution. But, well, as Boy George once sang in the ’80s ‘And truth means nothing in some strange places’.

But Barber’s rants also say much about her, Riley’s and Oberman’s twisted view of the world. They really are so twisted with hatred, that in my view they really can’t accept that anyone who takes a different view of Corbyn isn’t part of a troll army or defended by one. Mike had similar accusations flung at him during a spat with one of the anti-Semitism smear merchants. When ordinary people turned up to defend him, the smear merchant accused Mike of having set his followers upon him. Mike had done no such thing. They were defending Mike entirely willingly and unprompted, because they like and trust Mike, and know he’s telling the truth. Just like the people telling Barber she was wrong and possibly unhinged were also doing it spontaneously. But to me it looks like Riley and Oberman do deliberately set their followers on people. Indeed, Oberman is part of a network of trolls, which includes David Collier and the Gnasherjew outfit. So when Barber accuses her critics of being sent to attack her by Aaron Bastani, I believe that it not only shows her own personal fixation with him, but possibly that it’s also a bit of projection on her part. It’s the kind of thing she’d do, or like to do, and so they must be doing it.

It also reminds me of the rants of Steve Renstrom, AKA She-Bop Steve, an American artist who believes that the Californian senator Alan Cranston is at the heart of global conspiracy and is responsible for killing, amongst others, the acts Jim Belushi and Natalie Wood. Of the latter Renstrom’s written

Star Magazine T.V. ad, Natalie Woods’ close friend, Wadkins, tries to wink to indicate B.S. info as to how and why she died. The hog who drowned her remotely from the Federal Building downtown, fooling millions, replaces Wadkins’ wink with a “detectably hog” mechanical wink to say to the ‘Dupe Troops’ “No secret we’re involved since you knew already via, say, Ms. Woods’ “Brainstorm” Flick.

They had to wipe out that simple wink! (Frakin, squirmin, insane, desperate Nazis.) In “Brainstorm” an actor reaches over and touches her neck letting us 20,000 “meat puppets” material witness’ know she was in danger.

Or the notoriously rants of Dr. Francis E. Dec, who believed he was being persecuted by the police and their Black puppet underlings as part of the ‘COMMUNIST GANGSTER GOVERNMENT’ conspiracy which was turning people into ‘GANGSTER FRANKENSTEIN EARPHONE RADIO SLAVES’. In one of his truly barking screeds, Dec claimed that the cops and their Black assistants

SPRAY ME WITH POISON NERVE GAS from AUTOMOBILE EXHAUSTS AND EVEN LAWN MOWERS, DEADLY ASSAULTS EVEN IN MY YARD WITH KNIVES, EVEN BRICKS AND STONES, EVEN DEADLY TOUCH TABIN, or ELECTRIC SHOCK “FLASH LITE”, EVEN REMOTE ELECTRONICALLY CONTROLLED AROUND CORNERS TRAJECTION OF DEADLY TOUCH TARANTULA SPIDERS.

Looking at the increasingly nonsensical rants Riley, Oberman and Barber are making about the Labour leader, I really begin to wonder how long it will be before they start writing similarly deranged and paranoid pieces about him.

 

David Lammy Quotes Legislation to Show Windrush Migrants Are British Citizens

Also today, Mike put up a piece commenting on Lenny Henry giving Tweezer a well-deserved verbal kicking at the memorial service for Stephen Lawrence. He was the Black youth murdered by a gang of White racist thugs nearly a quarter of a century ago. It has been a major scandal because of the way the Met police were extremely reluctant to investigate the case. Independent investigations and proper, investigative journalism, revealed institutional racism at the Met, as well as allegations of corruption. One other reason why the cops didn’t want to prosecute the murderers, is because they were the sons of notorious London gangsters. And so there were repeated attempts to bring them to trial, but due to the Met’s incompetence and racism, several of these fell apart and the butchers walked. I can also remember Private Eye being extremely critical of some sections of the tabloid press, like the Scum, because of the way some of their hacks seemed to be siding with the thugs, seeing them as little more than a group of cheeky, ‘un-pc’ lads rather than the racist murderers they were.

Stephen Lawrence’s murder and his commemoration is naturally an important issue, and particularly for Henry. The former comedian has been actively campaigning against racism and to improve opportunities for Black people, particularly in film and television, ever since he presented The Black and White Media Show on the Beeb right at the beginning of the 1980s. Mike has put up the clip with him laying into Tweezer, as it’s well done, and makes her squirm. Ah, schadenfreude! The pleasure of someone else coming to grief. And in this case, why not? It’s no more, and indeed, a lot less, than Tweezer deserves.

But Mike’s article is also important because he’s put up a couple of tweets from the Labour politician and Black rights activist, David Lammy. Lammy quotes the 1948 Nationality Act to show that the Windrush people were British citizens. He wrote

Here is the relevant section of the 1948 British Nationality Act. The Windrush Generation were British citizens when they were invited here. Their citizenship is theirs by right. It is not a gift that your government is benevolently granting them. They are reclaiming their rights pic.twitter.com/8BaTKqDFGn

He’s absolutely right. I always understood that, under the terms of the existing legislation at the time, citizens of one Commonwealth country were automatically British citizens with a right to enter Britain. I’ve also been told that Winston Churchill, who was himself quite racist, fully accepted and supported this principle. It only changed in 1979 when Maggie Thatcher reformed the legislation to make further New Commonwealth immigration difficult. Which contributed to the outrage at Tory racism at the time, apart from the general massive racism in British society and the poverty and discrimination endured by Black and Asian Brits.

But as I’ve said in a previous article, May and the Tories seem to regard citizenship not as something, which is people’s by right, but something like a gift, which can be bestowed or withdrawn on a whim. This cavalier attitude to the law and fundamental rights puts each and every one of us in danger, regardless of colour, ethnicity and immigration status. It means she and the Tories feel they can remove and deny us the protections that are ours by right under law, at any time they like. Just as May did when she quietly had the legislation protecting the Windrush migrants repealed.

The Tories are a danger to individual liberty and the rule of law. As well as horrendous racist bigots. Get them out. Now!

Guy Debord’s Cat on the Deceptive Charm of Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Fascist Entryism in the Tory Party

The current popularity amongst the Tories and their lackeys for Jacob Rees-Mogg is a particular concern of mine. Mogg is the highly privileged son of William Rees-Mogg, a titled member of the aristocracy, who wrote at various times for the Times and Independent. Rees-Mogg senior lived in one of the villages around Bath, if I recall correctly. His son is the Tory MP for north Somerset, just south of where I live in Bristol.

Jacob Rees-Mogg has somehow endeared himself to the Tories and part of the British public through his polite, aristocratic and anachronistic demeanour. He’s been called ‘the minister for the 18th century’. He now has a fan club, Moggmentum, in imitation of Corbyn’s support group of Momentum. He also has 25,000 followers on Twitter. One fan of his in Somerset is such a mad fan of his, that he had Mogg’s face tattooed on him, which became one of the evening’s news stories for the local news programme, Points West here in Bristol a few weeks ago. He’s so popular indeed, that he’s being touted as a possible successor to Theresa May.

This should terrify anyone, with any real idea of politics and the true state of this country. For his smooth, cultured and quiet-spoken politesse, Mogg’s own views are highly reactionary, and frankly horrific. He began his career as a politician campaign in Fife, where the major platform of his campaign was trying to convince impoverished fisherfolk that retaining an hereditary House of Lords was supremely important and beneficial. And as a blue-blooded aristo, he is convinced that the poor should be kept firmly in their place, serving and transferring whatever wealth they have to the rich and powerful. A little while ago Mike did a feature on him on his blog. He discussed the numerous instances in which Mogg had consistently voted down bills, which would improve conditions for the poor and disabled, and voted instead for cutting benefits and privatizing what’s left of the welfare state.

It probably isn’t too much to say that many of those, who vote for him either believe themselves to be of the same class as him, and so will also benefit by his efforts to restore aristocratic privilege. Or else they’re members of the lower classes, who have been convinced through repetition of the same claims down the generations that the aristocracy are the country’s natural rulers, and working people should know their place. Like the various servants Mum met while working in that part of Somerset, who voted Tory because that’s the way Master voted.

Guy Debord’s Cat has written a very good piece over on his site, describing just how vile Mogg and what he represents actually are. He writes

It’s a sure sign of the Conservative Party’s dearth of talent that Jacob Rees Mogg should be talked up as a possible successor to the hapless and utterly useless Theresa May. Many people find Moggy endearing. They love his plummy RP accent. They love his double-breasted suit jackets. They love his fustiness. They love his toffee-nosed demeanour and they love his apparently Waugh-esque wit. At Nowhere Towers we take a different view: we find him tiresome and representative of an ages old problem with Britain. Namely, he reeks of privilege and his accent and ‘eccentric’ charm masks a ruthlessness and cruelty that is common to many members of his class.

When it comes to loving one’s oppressor, the Brits have both rationalized and elevated their oppression a fine art. We love our posh bastards. Don’t we? Remember how people fawned over Bozza? I haven’t forgotten. Both of them went to Eton and Oxford. Both of them are seen as rather buffoonish, though for very different reasons. And both are seen as thoroughly British eccentrics. But that’s the problem: many people refuse to see through their media-constructed façades and choose to see oh-so-disarming posh twits instead. Please, wake up!

That Moggy should be touted by some Tories as a counterweight to Jeremy Corbyn’s soaring popularity speaks volumes about the parlous condition of his party and the dire health of our media.

He goes on to mention three articles taking apart Mogg, his highly deceptive appeal, exposing what he really represents, from Skwawkbox, the New Statesman and Victor Lewis-Smith. But he goes on to discuss an event the other articles don’t. This is the time in 2013 when Mogg went off to a formal, black tie dinner with the Traditional Britain Group. His article includes a photo from the evening, showing Mogg seated next to two truly horrific fixtures of the British Far Right, Jack Buckby of the Cultural Nationalists and the BNP, and Gregory Lauder-Frost.

The Traditional Britain Group itself, from what I’ve seen of it, is another xenophobic, anti-immigrant, racist group, which particularly despises Islam. They also want to restore the old class system and privatize the NHS. Gerry Gable of the anti-Nazi organization, Searchlight, warned Mogg not to attend. But he did. When he was exposed by the press, he made a gushing Mea Culpa condemning racism, distancing himself from them, and claimed he had been misinformed and acted in ignorance.

To me, this is less than convincing. As the French philosophical feline points out, most people if invited to attend a function by a group they know nothing about would try to know what it stood for first.

The article then goes on to discuss just how unpleasant Buckby and Lauder-Frost are. As well as founding the National Culturalists, which was banned on campus as a racist, Fascist organization by the Students’ Guild at Liverpool University, Buckby was also a member of the BNP. He was their candidate for the Batley and Spen bye-election, caused by the assassination of Jo Cox. Which shows this character’s complete lack of class. He was also press officer for Liberty GB. The Cat’s article states that it is anti-immigration. That’s true, but it’s also specifically against one ethnic group of immigrants: Muslims. It was founded as part of the Islamophobic ‘counter-jihad’ movement by many of the same people involved in the EDL.

Demonstrating Buckby’s personal nastiness, the Cat’s article has a clip of him being interviewed by Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4 News, along with an Irish expert on White supremacist and Fascist movements and a young Black woman from Black students’ group. Guru-Murthy makes it very clearly that he despises Buckby’s views, but has to interview him as part of the programme’s mission to investigate minority opinions. Buckby spends much of the interview vehemently denying that he is at all racist, while loudly declaring that we shouldn’t allow more Muslim immigrants into the country because of their inherently violent, criminal nature. When one of the two women argues against him, he replies by saying ‘I hope you don’t get raped.’ Because all Muslims are rapists, right?

Lauder-Frost, it seems, is a former member of the Monday Club, who used to chair their Foreign Affairs Committee, and is the Traditional Britain Group’s vice-president and treasurer. Before joining them, he was one of the steering committee of the Conservative Democratic Alliance, formed by disaffected members of the Monday Club. There’s also a clip of him being interviewed on Vanessa Feltz’s radio show. Lauder-Frost spends much of the interview sneering at Doreen Lawrence, whom he feels should not have been elevated to the House of Lords. Because she’s ‘a nothing’, who he claims hasn’t done anything for this country and despises it. It’s not hard to see behind his attitude a mixture of racism and sheer class snobbery. Doreen Lawrence is a Black woman, and not a member of the British aristocracy. Hence Lauder-Frost is utterly horrified at her taking a seat in the upper house.

Now it’s true that Doreen Lawrence has made statements where she has said she doesn’t have any love for this country. Or that’s how it’s been reported. It grates, but she has every right. Her son, Stephen, was murdered by a gang of racist thugs, who got off scot-free. The Met investigating his murder was corrupt and riddled with racism, and the thugs were the sons of notorious gang bosses. See the press coverage at the time, and also Private Eye passim ad nauseam. She then dedicated her life to trying to obtain justice for her murdered child. This is a far better reasons for being given an honour than simply being Dave Cameron’s hairdresser.

Lauder-Frost also waffles on about how immigrant groups don’t support this country at sports matches, which recalls Norman Tebbitt’s infamous comment about coloured immigrants not supporting Britain at cricket. He also recommends that we should go back to the Tory party’s 1970s promise for ‘assisted repatriation’ for coloured immigrants to go back to their countries of origin. Feltz is definitely not impressed, and pointedly asks him where she should go, as she’s Jewish, and one set of her grandparents came from Poland, while another of her antecedents was also not British. Lauder-Frost simply says that if he was a Zionist, he would say she should go to Israel. To cap it all, Lauder-Frost is also a massive fan of the Nazis. No wonder Feltz was unimpressed. As were no doubt every other decent person listening to the programme, regardless of ethnicity or religious beliefs.

The TBG was also invited to a dinner by the Bow Group, another outfit like the Monday Club on the extreme right of the Tories. The Cat cites Louise Haigh, the Labour politico, who managed to get the Nazi youth group, Britain First, banned, who states very clearly that Lauder-Frost’s comments about Doreen Laurence and assisted repatriation are racist, and that the Bow Group should not invited them to their functions.

The TBG’s other vice-president is Professor John Kersey, a traditionalist Roman Catholic clergyman, a professor at a right-wing university with branches in the Caribbean and West Africa, who is nostalgic for the old days of feudalism. If you follow the link on the Cat’s blog, you come to a site for the British followers of the Austrian Libertarian, Von Mises. Kersey is also the Director of Cultural Affairs of the Libertarian Alliance.

Other members of the Traditional Britain Group are Stuart Millson and Jonathan Bowden. Together these two charmers founded the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus. Millson was also a former member of the BNP and an officer in Western Goals, which the Cat describes as ‘semi-Fascist’. He’s not alone in this assessment. Western Goals also got into the pages of Lobster as a Far Right organization. Also in the Revolutionary Conservative Caucus was Mark Cotterill a former member of the NF. The Cat then describes how Millson joined the Tories despite being a member of the BNP and having had dinner with Jean-Marie Le Pen. The Tories refused to throw him out, and Millson only resigned after this was exposed by the Mirror.

The Cat’s article concludes

The Tories may deny it, but many of their members are sympathetic to groups like the TBG. Indeed, in the 1970s NF members joined local Conservative Clubs and were members of the Monday Club. Others are members of The Freedom Association, the faux libertarian pressure group that talks warmly about their idea of ‘freedom’, while working hard to deny it to others. Tories may complain about ‘entryism’ in the Labour Party, but for decades extreme-right entryists joined the party and they’re still joining.

Moggy’s antiquated views are only matched by his sartorial style. If you find him amusing or endearing, you might want to ask yourself this: what kind of friends are the TBG? Rees Mogg only apologised when he got caught by Liberal Conspiracy. If that had never happened, Moggy would have got away with it. Makes you wonder…

The Cat’s article also has a link to the original piece by the Liberal Conspiracy website.

For more information, see: https://buddyhell.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/friends-like-these/

The Cat certainly ain’t wrong about Fascist infiltration of the Tory party. Lobster a few decades ago devoted several pieces to exposing this. And it’s something else you won’t see being reported by the Beeb. Way back in the 1980s the BBC was due to screen a Panorama expose, ‘Maggie’s Militant Tendency’, on the Far Right’s infiltration of the Tory. Maggie and the Tories, however, threw a strop and the BBC was forced to spike the programme.

As for the Libertarians, their definition of liberty is definitely reserved only for the upper classes. They hate socialism, trade unions and organized labour. I can’t remember which one of the libertarian organisations actually did it, but one of them invited the head of a central American death squad to their annual dinner. As for Kersey being a fan of feudalism, this adds a new dimension to Von Hayek’s book, The Road to Serfdom. Von Hayek thought it was socialism, but as subsequent events show, it’s really the far right-wing economics he advocated.

Libertarians have always denied being Fascists, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that’s exactly what they are. I’ve put up several pieces from the American YouTuber, Reichwing Watch, on how Libertarian not only shares many of the same tenets and attitudes of Fascism and Nazism, but that its adherents are beginning to admit this quite openly. One Black YouTuber, ‘That Guy T’, discusses and advocates ‘anarcho-Fascism’ on his vlog.

As for Mogg, while he denies sharing the Traditional Britain Group’s racism, he certainly shares their attitude towards aristocratic privilege, and keeping the poor and marginalized so. It shows how corrupt and class-ridden this country is that this man is at all popular, let alone an MP and possible successor to May.

Vox Political: Police Considering Handing 999 Calls to G4S

Mike has posted a number of very important, ominous pieces about Tory reforms to the police force, reforms which will undermine the police as a public, state institution tackling crime, and deny those arrested of their fundamental right to legal representation and a fair hearing.

All this is being done in the name of private profit and cutting costs.

Last week Mike revealed the news that the government was considering putting 999 calls in the hands of G4S. Even without their record of incompetence, which has included letting prisoners escape while under their escort to the courts for trial, this would still be a matter for concern for corruption and conflict of interest. On of the company’s major shareholders is the husband of Theresa May, the current head of the Home Office.

See Mike’s story: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/11/08/police-forces-consider-company-part-owned-by-theresa-mays-husband-to-handle-999-calls/

The next day, Mike posted up this story, expanding on the news: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/11/10/more-cuts-mean-privatised-police-for-profit-theresa-may-call-it-what-it-is/

Not only are Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Northamptonshire police forces considering granting the operation of their 999 lines to the company, but Theresa May has announced that she intends to give G4S and other private security firms and government contractors like it police powers. This will be ‘when the time is right’, of course. Mike points out that this is truly policing for profit, whatever May says to the contrary.

The Tories have been floating the idea of privatising the police force for nearly a quarter of a century. In Christmas 1991 I recall the Mail on Sunday running a story about the wonderful, Minarchist Tory Britain that would be ushered in the majority of MPs were women. This included a privatised police force, hired by individual communities. It’s an idea ultimately lifted from Rothbard and the American Libertarians. It was put into a feature about a future parliament controlled by women, as the Daily Mail has always aimed at a female readership, despite having a highly reactionary attitude to feminism, and an attitude towards women that comes dangerously close, and at times has crossed over into misogyny. If you want an example, think about the various articles the Mail has run demanding that women return to their traditional roles in the home. Or the photographs of underage, teenage girls, accompanied by sexual captions commenting on their attractiveness.

The Mail was hoping with this story to capitalise on the support the party had received from women, partly due to the election of Margaret Thatcher. This was despite the fact that Maggie had no women in her cabinet, and most of her policies actually harmed them as women form the majority of workers in the low-paid sectors.

It was also about this time that they launched the old propaganda line about national economics being similar to budgeting for a household. The article claimed that women automatically knew to vote Tory, as they naturally have a better understanding of men through handling the household budgets. This is a bit of specious, condescending flattery, as running a household is not like running a national economy, even if the word ‘economics’ ultimately does come from the ancient Greek term for ‘household management’. And it doesn’t impugn anyone’s ability to run a home to point this out.

The story was run at the beginning of Major’s ministry, and much was made of his inclusion of women in his cabinet, like Virginia Bottomley and Edwina Currey. If I remember correctly, the article claimed that the privatisation of the police was a police particularly favoured by Bottomley. Now nearly a quarter of a century later, it’s being announced by another female politico, in this case Theresa May. I wonder if this is entirely coincidental, or if the Tories feel that this would look far better being announced by a woman. Perhaps they hope that by specifically appealing to women, they can make it look like some kind of neighbourhood policing, done by corporations that know the needs and requirements of their local communities, rather than what it is: the assumption of authoritarian powers of arrest and detention by a private corporation, acting only for the profit of its senior management and shareholders.

If they are trying to present it as such, which I recall the Daily Mail article attempting to do, then backing G4S and other government contractors seems to me to be a grave error of judgement. Apart from letting their prisoners escape, I also remember that one of them was involved in serious riots in a refugee detention centre, which employed them. The inmates had risen up in protest at a series of abuse committed by the centre’s wardens, who were not state screws, but security guards in one of these private firms.

I also wonder if the person, who dreamed up this idea, has also seen some of the same Science Fiction films I have. Like the Heavy Metal movie and Robocop. The Heavy Metal movie was an ’80s animated film, based on the adult comic of the same name, which was the Anglophone version of the French Metal Hurlant. It was an anthology based on the comic’s various strips, linked by a story in which a young girl is led to realise that she is a warrior woman with cosmic powers, dedicated to fight evil.

One of the stories is set in a decaying future, where the police act like a private detective agency. The victim comes in, reports the crime, and then is expected to pay for the costs and manpower of the investigation.

The other film is another flick from the ’80s, Robocop. This was set in a decay, near-future Detroit, where crime was rampant and the police force had been privatised and handed over to a private corporation, OCR, or Omni-Consumer Products. Beset by bad management and suffering from an appalling death rate at the hands of local criminal gangs, Detroit’s boys and girls in blue go on strike. Meanwhile, the company has been trying to crush crime by using robots. These are failures, the prototype malfunctioning lethal during a boardroom demonstration in which it fatally shoots one of the corporation’s executives pretending to be an armed villain.

So the company decides to try again, this time using a machine which will also be part human. They set a new, rookie policeman, Murphy, up to suffer a brutal shooting in order to supply a suitable subject for transformation.

Directed by Paul Verhoeven, it’s a fast-paced, ultra-violent action movie. One of my mother’s friends went to see it at the cinema when it came out, and left feeling physically ill because of the graphic violence. Despite this, it is a good movie, with a sympathetic treatment of the resentment and anger of the demoralised cops, and the central character’s own struggle to remember who he is and regain what little he can of his lost humanity. It also makes the point that what people need on the streets isn’t efficient machines, but real people with compassion and empathy towards the victims, as well as the aggression and determination needed to tackle offenders. In one scene, Murphy as Robocop saves a woman from rape by shooting her attacker in the crotch. The victim runs to him to offer her thanks. But the Robocop machine can only diagnose her as traumatise, and impersonally calls a rape crisis centre on her behalf before going on to his next assignment.

And just as Superman is powerless when his enemies wield Kryptonite, so Robocop also has a built-in weakness. His manufacturers have built into his programming a secret protocol that prevents him from apprehending or harming any of the corporation’s employees or management. It is only when the board chairman – the Old Man – sacks the villain that Robocop is finally able to get justice and avenge himself by shooting him.

Robocop is, of course, very definitely SF, though possibly not so far away from reality. I doubt that we will ever be able to create cyborg super-cops any time soon. Detroit was and is a declining city with a severe crime problem. Furthermore, the storyline’s partly based on the city’s privatisation of its services. It did not, mercifully, privatise the police.

Now a privatised police force in the system May and her bosses are advocating clearly wouldn’t charge individuals for investigating crimes. But they are going to charge the state for their services. And in order to make sure they remain profitable and give a dividend to their shareholders, they will have to economise and make cuts. Mike has already reported on the concerns by the police that Tory cuts to their budgets of up to 25 per cent will leave them unable to properly investigate and prevent crime, and arrest offenders. So it looks like handing over police powers to the likes of G4S will actually increase it, not cut down on crime.

And as with Robocop, there is the problem of corruption in the assumption of the state’s powers of arrest and punishment by a private corporation. There have been major scandals over corruption in normal police force, particularly the Met and the West Midlands forces. People have been wrongfully arrested and suspects beaten, as well as collusion between the police and criminal gangs. It has been hard enough bringing these cases to justice. I doubt very, very much that the task will be any easier if policing is handed over to private companies. How many private policemen or women would dare to risk arresting a manager or senior boardmember?

And finally, there is the matter of principle that justice should always be public, and only the state should have fundamental right and trust to arrest, detain and punish offenders. The Mail on Sunday’s Peter Hitchens, while in many respects a highly reactionary arch-Tory, has stated that he opposes private prisons on this exact point.

So just on considerations of efficiency, competence, and the philosophical foundation of the state as the public arbiter of justice, this is an appalling decision. But this all counts for nothing when the Conservatives see an opportunity to turn a quick buck from privatising a public utility.

I doubt very much, however, that they will go as far in their privatisation of the justice as Rothbard advocates. That would mean the privatisation of the courts themselves, so they could receive all the benefits of commercial competition in a free market economy. That’s anarchism, and whatever the Tories say they stand for in terms of personal freedom and free enterprise, they have always stood for a highly authoritarian society backed by the use of force against the lower orders. The very last thing they want to do is dismantle that. Rather, they are doing everything in their power to reinforce and strengthen it.

Not Just Russians: Britain’s Webcam Computer Spies

One of the major stories over the past week or so has been that a Russian website is showing hacked images from webcams from around the world, including about 600 or so from Britain. This has naturally caused alarm at the way the potential exists for people’s private computers to be attacked and used to spy on them.

The Russians, however, are not the first or only people to have developed and used such software. In its ‘In the Back’ section for the 22nd August – 4th September issue of this year, Private Eye published a story about the use of similar software developed by a British company. This was being used by the Bahraini government to spy on and persecute dissidents. Here’s the story.

Bahrain Shower

New documents reveal that expensive British spy software – marketed as a means of tracking “paedophiles and terrorists” – has been used by the Bahraini Ministry of the Interior to hack the phones and computers of activists and lawyers.

The software, sold by Gamma Group, a company based out of serviced offices in Winchester, works by sending malware called FinSpy to “target” computers and phones (see Eyes 1368 and 1351). This allows content to be harvested and turns the computer or phone into a mobile spying device by secretly activating the microphone and webcam and intercepting Skype calls.

Gamma Group, which had not applied for an export licence from the UK authorities, denied last year that is product was being used in Bahrain. A spokesman told the Observer: “It appears that during a demonstration one of our products was stolen and has been used elsewhere. I believe a copy of FinSpy was made during a presentation and that copy was modified and then used elsewhere.

However, new documents obtained from the Gamma Group customer support server include logs sent to Gamma, showing a list of Bahraini targets and whether or not all their files had been “archived” – in other words, pinched Gamma says it only sells to government agencies.

Mohammed Al-Tajer, Bahrain’s leading human rights lawyer, has been on the wrong end of Gamma-inspired snooping. Having once defended a group of Shia Muslims accused of throwing a petrol bomb at a police car, and having also published evidence of torture of detainees, shortly before Bahrain’s Arab Spring uprising, in January 2011, he received a recording of himself having sex with his second wife, accompanied by a message telling him to watch his step. The new documents show that, on the same day in January, Gamma spyware was successfully installed on Al-Tajer’s computer, archiving all his files, in contravention of illegal privilege and most likely turning his computer into a mobile spying device.

In April 2011, Al-Tajer was then arrested and held by the Bahraini Ministry of the Interior for four months. Every morning he was made to stand against a wall and was beaten until he fainted. A subsequent report5 into the security services, commissioned by Bahrain’s King Hamad Al-Khalifa and carried out by human rights lawyers and others, found evidence of widespread torture, including “beating; punching; hitting the detainee with rubber hoses (including on the soles of the feet), cables, whips, metal, wooden planks or other objects; electrocution; sleep-deprivation; exposure to extreme temperatures; verbal abuse; threats of rape; and insulting the detainee’s religious sect Shia).” It also found evidence of deaths at the hands of the security forces.

In late 2011, Bahrain thought it had better do something to reform its police forces, bringing in a hired hand from overseas to ensure the force met international codes of practice. It wasn’t long before this new adviser was hailing the “substantial progress” being made, detailing a “new police code of conduct” and “comprehensive programme of training in human rights”, adding: “I am bewildered by the level of criticism aimed at a nation that has acknowledged its mistakes, but has plans in place to put things right.”

This state of bewilderment was presumably nothing new to the adviser, John “Yates of the Yard” Yates (for it was he”, who as Met Police assistant commissioner in London had overseen the Met’s brilliant early phone-hacking investigation and had personally declared that there were only a “handful of victims”. He later resigned when the number approached 4,000.

Even after Yates had begun his reforms in Bahrain, Al-Tajer continued to receive text message threats from anonymous telephone numbers; and in June 2012 the sex recording was finally published on YouTube, as was footage of Al-Tajer eating and praying.

Yates told the Eye he had never heard of Mohammed Al-Tajer (he was only the leading lawyer defending police cases, after all), nor of Gamma Group, and that he had had no operational involvement in police matters, acting solely as a “strategic adviser”.

* The hacker who posted internal Gamma documents on the internet showing how it FinSpy, aka FinFisher, software had been sold to the oppressive regime and used to spy on the Bahrain Independent Commission of Investigation (BICI), which was investigating torture and killings in the country, also revealed that the kit wasn’t quite as effective as Gamma likes to claim.

“After infecting a target’s [computer]the targets [sic] works for few days only then he never comes online and we have to infect him again,” the Bahrainis complained. “We can’t stay bugging and infecting the target every time since it is very sensitive. And we don’t want the target to reach [sic] to know that someone is infecting his PC or spying on him.”

I can’t say that the information that webcams could be hacked came as news to me. I can remember being told by a member of staff in one of Bristol’s computer shops that they had a friend, who was a hacker. This individual used to tap their victim’s webcams, so he could see them through the computer. The staff member, who told me this, didn’t approve of it himself, and really didn’t want anything to do with such activities. Nevertheless, hackers were still doing it.

This is very much the world of 1984, where Big Brother used the televisions in people’s homes to spy on them. In the case of the Russian hackers, despite their protestations that they are doing it to make people aware of the existence and the dangers posed by the software, it looks to me very much like the Russian secret services making veiled threats about their capability for cyberwarfare, espionage, and ability to intimidate foreign nationals in their own homes.

As for Gamma Group and the Bahrain government, Britain has, unfortunately, a long history of supplying arms and spying equipment to oppressive governments around the world, including the Middle East. This includes BAE selling weapons banned under international law, like electronic batons and shields, to places like Saudi Arabia. Gamma Group is merely the latest to join this long and infamous list.

Other foreign companies are no better. Nokia sold software it had developed to allow governments to hack into and monitor private mobile phones to various despotic governments in the Middle East, including Iran.

This does, however, raise the chilling question of whether this software is being used domestically to gather information on people the British and American states consider politically awkward. The Snowden revelations showed the truly massive extent to which both countries’ secret services were monitoring and spying on the phone calls and electronic communications of their citizens. The Coalition has attempted to censor politically inconvenient websites, like Pride’s Purge, using legislation it has attempted to pass under the pretext that this would protect children from internet paedophiles. The police have also been used by UKIP and fracking companies to harass and intimidate Green protestors and documentary film-makers.

How do we know that the Tories and their corporate backers aren’t using this already to track and monitor left-wing groups and individuals they consider subversive?