Seder Night in the White House

The incredibly pro-Barack Obama Huffington Post reports on Barack Obama's attempt to appear pro-Jewish, holding a Seder Night. Of course as this is Barack Obama there's a subtext (my emphasis):

'For a president of the United States, the personal is inevitably political. But there is one annual event at the White House that truly is personal for its current chief resident -- or at least as personal as anything can be in the most watched building in the country.

President Obama’s upcoming Passover Seder, scheduled for March 25, will host just 20 or so participants this year -- more or less the same core crowd that has been attending it since 2008, when three young staffers began the tradition while on the campaign trail and then-senator Obama surprised them by dropping in.

In many ways, this presidential Seder resembles that of many families, if you can look past portraits of former first ladies adorning the walls, the elegant crystal chandelier hanging over the guests’ heads and the White House china on which the gefilte fish is being served. The Haggadah of choice is Maxwell House, and the Passover fare is traditional, featuring classics like matzo ball soup, brisket and kugel.

But there are some differences in the ceremony itself -- such as the annual reading of the Emancipation Proclamation right before Elijah sneaks in, and the president’s vocal impersonation of Pharaoh. And, of course, the Secret Service always knows where the afikomen is hidden. “When you work in politics, the people you work with are your family,” said Arun Chaudhary, one of the campaign aides who began the now annual tradition, explaining the uniquely personal nature of this Jewish White House event.

It was in 2008, during the rough Pennsylvania primary, that Chaudhary, Eric Lesser and Herbie Ziskend unknowingly began an Obama White House tradition. Disappointed that they wouldn’t be able to return home for Passover, the three aides made plans to meet up at 10 p.m. in a basement conference room in the Sheraton Hotel in Harrisburg. Weaving through cheerleaders from a convention the hotel was hosting, the trio brought their collected Seder items: a burnt bone from the hotel kitchen, Maxwell House Haggadot, shmura matzo squirreled away from Penn Hillel by Lesser’s cousin, and a bottle of Manischewitz wine.

“The spirit of Passover is, if you’re traveling, you do the best you can, and you celebrate it anywhere, under any circumstances,” said Lesser.

Just as they started the Seder, Obama stopped in to join them. “He peppered us with questions, keeping with traditions of a Seder. ... We had a great time. It was a very special moment … in the middle of an exhausting campaign,” Lesser explained.

At the end of the Seder, after everyone raised a glass and said “Next year in Jerusalem,” Obama “raised his glass and said ‘Next year in the White House,’” Lesser recalled.

A year later, on the way to a meeting in the White House, “the president shouted, ‘Hey, are we doing the Seder again?’” to Lesser, who by then was working as a special assistant to Obama’s senior political adviser, David Axelrod. “Yeah. Sure,” he yelled back.

That year, the original staffers, plus a few others, and a handful of Obama’s friends and family, initiated the first official White House Seder. Planned by the original trio, it was intended to be “true to the original spirit” of the 2008 Seder, Lesser said, though, he joked, “it was in much nicer surroundings.” Still, the group stuck with the Maxwell House Haggadah, served Manischewitz wine and shmura matzo, and tacked on the line “Next Year in the White House” to the end of the Seder.'

I must admit that I did wonder how Barack Hussein Obama would deal with the voiced aspiration of Jews for over two thousand years, that Jews be allowed to retuen to Jerusalem after being expelled.

'At the end of the Seder, after everyone raised a glass and said “Next year in Jerusalem,” Obama “raised his glass and said ‘Next year in the White House,’” Lesser recalled.'

I wonder if Dry Bones read the same article:

Either way, the substitution of 'Next Year in the White House' for the 'Next Year in Jerusalem', may have an unintended meaning. 'Next year in Jerusalem' is a messianic reference. Maybe the story that people, and maybe Barack Obama himself, see Barack Obama as the Obamamessiah has some foundation after all.

'Don’t burn this house. It belongs to a Muslim’

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2013/03/dont-burn-this-house-it-belongs-to-a-muslim.html

It's going to be a long day!

The clocks went forward an hour so I have to manually adjust:
Two alarm clocks
One bedside clock
Central Heating
Two underfloor heating controllers
Two ovens
Burglar alarm
One wall clock
One mantelpiece clock
Four timers for lights
Phone system
Numerous cameras
Old spare mobile phones
Clocks in two cars


Thank heavens for the devices that adjust themselves!

Freedom of speech in Palestinian Territories

'A Palestinian man who clicked "Like" on a Facebook status criticizing a Palestinian Authority official has been sentenced to six months in prison.

Anas Ismail, 29, of Salfit, near Nablus, was found guilty of "libel and slander."'

More here http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Palestinian-imprisoned-for-Facebook-Like-308190 but not on the institutionally biased against Israel BBC.

There are 70 conflicts worldwide, so why do we focus on just one? | Irish Examiner

'The same could be said about Chechnya. The Russians have just announced the end of their "counter-terrorism" operation. There are no solid figures for the number of civilians killed since the second war began there in late 1999, but estimates range anywhere between 25,000 and 200,000.
Put that in context. Israel might be geographically small – smaller than Munster – but in population terms Chechnya is absolutely tiny. A region with a little more than one million inhabitants has seen anything up to one-fifth of its civilian population killed in two decades of war. And one school siege aside, we have largely looked the other way.

By comparison, 6,000 Palestinians – armed and civilian together – out of a Palestinian population in the territories three to four times that of Chechnya have died since the second intifada of 2001.
It goes without saying that any civilian death is a tragedy – and, very often, an outrage – but search for Chechnya on the DFA website and you only receive one-tenth of the number of hits that you do for Israel. No-one believes the DFA is somehow in league with the Russians and supports their quasi-colonial war against Chechnya, but it does go to show some perspective has been lost somewhere along the line.'

A very interesting article on The Irish Examiner here http://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/stephen-king/there-are-70-conflicts-worldwide-so-why-do-we-focus-on-just-one-91585.html

There are two obvious reasons why the Israeli/Palestinian conflict garners so much attention:

1. anti-semitism,  latent or overt
2. oil

Alibi Antisemitism

'These themes pitch those who sponsor them out of a genuine, and into a spurious, type of universalism: one where the Jews are special amongst other groups in being obliged to settle for forms of political freedom in which their identity may not be asserted collectively; Jews must be satisfied, instead, merely with the rights available to them as individuals. I call this a spurious universalism because people's rights to live as they will (subject to the usual constraint of not harming others) is an incomplete right – a truncated and impaired right – if it does not include the freedom to associate with others of their own kind.

To repeat: Israel has been made an alibi for a new climate of antisemitism on the left.'

More here at Fathom Journal

There is much that I disagree with in the above article but enough that I agree with as well. An interesting read either way.

The Economist Backs Off Climate Alarmism | Via Meadia

'The mismatch between rising greenhouse-gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now. It does not mean global warming is a delusion. Flat though they are, temperatures in the first decade of the 21st century remain almost 1°C above their level in the first decade of the 20th. But the puzzle does need explaining.

The mismatch might mean that—for some unexplained reason—there has been a temporary lag between more carbon dioxide and higher temperatures in 2000-10. Or it might be that the 1990s, when temperatures were rising fast, was the anomalous period. Or, as an increasing body of research is suggesting, it may be that the climate is responding to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in ways that had not been properly understood before. This possibility, if true, could have profound significance both for climate science and for environmental and social policy.'

More here http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/03/29/the-economist-backs-off-climate-alarmism/

When will the BBC similarly reappraise their fanatical support promotion of the increasingly questionable Man Made Climate Change creed?

Kaley Cuoco's cleavage - A Friday Night Rule 5 Post

'Ogooglebar' ... and 14 Other Swedish Words We Should Incorporate Into English Immediately - Atlantic Mobile

http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/ogooglebar-and-14-other-swedish-words-we-should-incorporate-into-english-immediately/274383/

Now that there are different values of the euro, which ones should you avoid?

Cyprus is now in effect not in the core Euro zone, does that mean that Cyprus Euros are worth less than other Euros? For quite a while I have heard that many Germans have been demanding just German Euros. So how do you know what Euro is from where?

Euro coins have a national side indicating which country issued them but it's the notes that interest me more now. Euro notes do not have a national side but don't worry you can tell their origin from the first character of each note's serial number. The first character of the serial number is a letter and that letter uniquely identifies the country that issued the note. 

Here's the list that you need (thanks to Wikipedia)

So I'll obviously be avoiding Euro bank notes starting with a G, but I think that I'll also be avoiding M, S, T, V and Y.

In fact let's be frank, I'll be insisting upon X when I change my money for my next European holiday.

It seems that X does indeed mark the spot.


As a matter of interest the remaining 11 characters on Euro bank notes are numbers which, when their digital root is calculated, give a checksum also particular to their country of manufacture. Interestingly, because of the arithmetic of the checksum, consecutively issued banknotes are not numbered sequentially, but rather, 'consecutive' banknotes are 9 apart.

The Cyprus banking system explained

Clarke and Dawe explain in their own manner...


Thanks to Theo Spark for the spot.

For the idiots and those full of hate who scream "we are all Hamas now"

This is what Hamas do, still proud?

TV Dragon Breathes New Life Into Jessops

'The collapsed high street camera chain Jessops is being relaunched today by Peter Jones, of Dragon's Den fame.'

More here on Sky News.

I felt sorry for Jessops when they went under and am pleased that they may return to the high street; we need proper camera shops not just Internet suppliers. Jessops had mostly knowledgeable and enthusiastic staff and you could at least handle the cameras you were thinking of buying, something you can't do on the Internet.

However many years ago, I was very keen on photography and saw something play out many times... On New Oxford Street in London, there was an independent camera shop and a Jessops almost opposite it. It was very common to see people spend an hour or more in the independent shop, playing with the cameras and asking technical questions before saying thanks and going over the road to buy it at the cheaper Jessops. The independent camera shop closed down, I presume because it couldn't compete with Jessops on price. Now Jessops has suffered as people used them as the showroom but bought online.

Muslim staff escape NHS hygiene rule - Telegraph

'Muslim doctors and nurses are to be allowed to opt out of strict hygiene rules introduced by the NHS to restrict the spread of hospital superbugs.
Female staff who follow the Islamic faith will be allowed to cover their arms to preserve their modesty despite earlier guidance that all staff should be "bare below the elbow".:

More here in The Telegraph.

What's more important to the patient hygiene or the religious requirements of the Muslim health workers?

Are we sufficiently dhimmified yet?

Two state solution still the pretend aim?

I saw this poster on Twitter, thanks to @kamelhawwash.

Note the map on the poster...Two state solution the aim or one Muslim state?

Such short memories...

The reason is that Israel is not the problem, Jews are the problem.

RubinReports: What Obama Didn't Say: Peace Requires More than Israeli Willpower

http://rubinreports.blogspot.nl/2013/03/what-obama-didnt-say-peace-requires.html

In case you were wondering why BBC and The Guardian were so keen to attack Boris Johnson

'YouGov said: "New research shows that influential Britons view Boris Johnson far more positively than the leaders of the three main political parties. These findings come from YouGov's monthly survey of UK opinion formers, who are drawn from politics, business, media, academia, NGOs and the public sector.

The Mayor of London is the only leading politician to gain a strong net score (+53) when influential Britons were asked how well they believe UK political leaders are doing in their current roles. Two-thirds (67%) say Boris Johnson is doing a good job, and only 14% think he is doing a poor job.'

More here at Cyber Boris

This is why Israel needs secure borders and to search Palestinians

'It's a tiny story; insignificant really, except for those of us with some imagination... andpersonal experience.

It very likely was not reported at all in the news channels which reach most of our readers. But it happened, and it has implications.

A Palestinian Arab male (at this stage, no further details) was stopped at the IDF security checkpoint at Bekaot, south-east of Sh'chem (Nablus) in the northern Jordan Valley yesterday (Tuesday), the first day of Passover.

The personnel manning the checkpoint found four improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on him [Times of Israel].

Army sappers safely detonated the IEDs in a controlled explosion. The man is in the custody of the security forces who have some questions for him. '

More here http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/27-mar-13-instead-of-minor-footnote.html

If there had been no security, how many Israelis would have been killed?

Why no reporting on the anti Israel BBC?

The one hundred and eighty second weekly "No shit Sherlock" award

Late in Europe #forex trading: For what it's worth, every trader I have spoken to says #ECB fighting inevitable #euro collapse @ForexLive -- Robin Shepherd (@RobinShepherd1)

Euro collapse is inevitable - No shit, Sherlock

Palestinians don’t 'deserve' a State

'Palestinians don't deserve a State because they are not interested in peace. The use of death and the exaltation of martyrdom remain an axiom underlying their society. The extent to which terrorists, killers and criminals are glorified in Gaza, Judea and Samaria is not only the indicator of a perverted vision of life but it is also a key element in understanding the pathological way with which Palestinians consider their relations with Israel. From Hamas' genocidal and destructive claims to the weekly stone throwing protests, little is done to show that the Palestinians are willing to abide by the UN first objective: "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war".'

More here http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/palestinians-dont-deserve-a-state/

United Nations and Palestinians / Israel

That the United Nations has a Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People does suggest that they may not be entirely unbiased with regard to the Israel / Palestinian conflict.
Source - http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2013/gapal1260.doc.htm

The one hundred and eighty first weekly "No shit Sherlock" award

The Human Rights Act has become an umbrella protecting foreign terrorists and criminal suspects from facing justice in their own countries -- Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage)

The Human Rights Act protects foreign terrorists and criminal suspects - No shit, Sherlock

Pamela Geller, Wednesday WND column: Vicious, anti-Israel ads in New York subway - Atlas Shrugs

'Apartheid? Anne Bayefsky notes
that "there were once an estimated 900,000 Jews" in the Muslim world, "but today there are less than a few thousand. They were given a choice: Die, convert or flee." That'sapartheid. The slaughter of gays across the Muslim world: that'sapartheid. The persecution of Christians across the Muslim world: that's apartheid. The prohibition of non-Muslims from even entering Mecca: that'sapartheid. Muslims are freer in Israel than in any Muslim country'

More here http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2013/03/pamela-geller-wednesday-wnd-column-vicious-anti-israel-ads-in-new-york-subway.html

Hacked Off 'steamrolled Labour into deal on press regulation'

http://m.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/mar/27/hacked-off-labour-press-regulation

Maharashtra drought: Many in Mumbai promise Holi without water-India News - IBNLive Mobile

'It's tough to imagine Holi with no water, but that is exactly what Mumbai is aspiring to do this year. An extreme water crisis in the state has prompted various institutions in the city to try and do their bit during this festival. As Maharashtra faces one of its worst droughts in four decades, the city promises to do its bit.'

More at IBN

Islam and modern day slavery

There are some strange people out there.

It wasn't just Prior!

Andrew Samson, BBC Test Match Special statistician

THAT'S A RECORD
"Stuart Broad sets a new Test record for the longest time at the crease without scoring. It took 103 minutes and 62 balls to get off the mark."
Broad beats the previous record which was set by New Zealand's Geoff Allott who took 101 minutes on this ground against South Africa in 1999.

'Mockers' update - Ben from Bath did apologise

Ben, Bath: "Expecting a lynch mob outside my house if we lose this. All I can say is sorry, and this is the last time I'm texting praise for England players!"

This is how 'the mockers' work...

From last night's cricket BBC text commentary:

GET INVOLVED
Ben, Bath, via text on 81111:"Where are Bell's detractors now? Magnificent exhibition of will-power and mental strength."

WICKET- Bell c Southee b Wagner 75 (Eng 237-7)
What a sickener. Just like in the final over before lunch, Ian Bell drives hard outside off stump but, unlike earlier in the day, the catch is safely taken by Tim Southee at third slip.

  
Oh well done Ben from Bath!

Beeb Bias Craig is back!

One of my favourite blogs was Beeb Bias Craig, the blog of Craig a man of Morecambe descent who analysed BBC bias with a degree of forensic detail that I could only marvel at.

He closed his blog on 26 May 2010 and started contributing more at Biased BBC (now here) .

He did promise me that he'd resurrect his blog but instead I learn today that Craig and Sue have been posting on a new blog Is the BBC biased?. I will take a detailed look around the site later but at first glance the detailed investiagtive work you'd expect from Craig is much in evidence.

Nose rubbed yet?

David Goodhart in The Mail writes a powerful mea culpa for the left on immigration, here's a few extracts:

'Among Left-leaning ‘Hampstead’ liberals like me, there has long been what you might call a ‘discrimination assumption’ when it comes to the highly charged issue of immigration.

Our instinctive reaction has been that Britain is a relentlessly racist country bent on thwarting the lives of ethnic minorities, that the only decent policy is to throw open our doors to all and that those with doubts about how we run our multi-racial society are guilty of prejudice.

And that view — echoed in Whitehall, Westminster and town halls around the country — has been the prevailing ideology, setting the tone for the immigration debate.

But for some years, this has troubled me and, gradually, I have changed my mind.

Over 18 months of touring the country to talk to people about their lives for a new book, I have discovered minority Britons thriving more than many liberals suppose possible. But I also saw the mess of division and conflict we have got ourselves into in other places.

I am now convinced that public opinion is right and Britain has had too much immigration too quickly.

For 30 years, the Left has blinded itself with sentiment about diversity. But we got it wrong.

I still believe that large-scale immigration has made Britain livelier and more dynamic than it would otherwise have been. I believe, too, that this country is significantly less racist than it once was.

...

it has also resulted in too many areas in which ethnic minorities lead almost segregated lives — notably in the northern ‘mill towns’ and other declining industrial regions, which in the Sixties and Seventies attracted one of the most clannish minorities of modern times, rural Kashmiri Pakistanis.

In Leicester and Bradford, almost half of the ethnic population live in what are technically ghettos (defined as areas where minorities form more than two-thirds of the population). Meanwhile, parts of white working-class Britain have been left feeling neither valued nor useful, believing that they have been displaced by newcomers not only in the job market but also in the national story itself.

Those in the race lobby have been slow to recognise that strong collective identities are legitimate for majorities as well as minorities, for white as well as for black people.

For a democratic state to have any meaning, it must ‘belong’ to existing citizens. They must have special rights over non-citizens. Immigration must be managed with their interests in mind. But it has not been.

...

The justification for such a large and unpopular change has to be that the economic benefits are significant and measurable. But they are not.

One of the liberal elite’s myths is that we are a ‘mongrel nation’ that has always experienced high inflows of outsiders. But this isn’t true. From 1066 until 1950, immigration was almost non-existent (excluding Ireland) — a quarter of a million at the most, mainly Huguenots and Jews.

Post-World War II immigration has been on a completely different scale from anything that went before. These days, more people arrive on our shores as immigrants in a single year than did so in the entire period from 1066 to 1950, excluding wartime.

Much of this happened by accident. When the 1948 Nationality Act was passed — giving all citizens of the Empire and Commonwealth the right to live and work in Britain — it was not expected that the ordinary people of poor former colonies would arrive in their hundreds of thousands.

Nor was it expected after 1997 that a combination of quite small decisions would lead to 1.5 million East Europeans arriving, about half to settle. But come they did, and a net immigration of around four million foreign-born citizens since 1997 has produced easily the most dramatic demographic revolution in British history.

Yet there was no general discussion in the New Labour Cabinet of the day about who Britain wanted to let in and in what numbers; no discussion about how the country could absorb them without pressure on public services.

By the time of the next census in 2021, the non-white minority population will have risen to around 20 per cent, a trebling in just 25 years.

By 2066, according to one demographer, white Britons will be in a minority.

This is already the case in some towns and cities, including London, Leicester, Slough and Luton, with Birmingham expected to follow in the near future.

If Britain had a clear and confident sense of its national culture and was good at integrating people, then perhaps this speed of change would be of little concern. But this is not the case.

We are deep into a huge social experiment. To give it a chance of working, we need to heed the ‘slow down’ signs that the electorate is waving. And all the more so given that the low economic growth era we are now in means people’s grievances cannot easily be bought off with rising wages and public spending.

The fact is that the whole post-war process of immigration has been badly managed or, rather, not managed at all.

It is often said that the importation of people from the Indian subcontinent to work in textile mills that were soon to close — ironically, partly thanks to competition from India and Pakistan itself — was a poor piece of social engineering.

But the whole point was that no one really engineered it. It just happened.

And then no one came forward to grasp the consequences or even acknowledge there might be a problem.

The fault lies with our leaders, not with the people who came for a better life. There has been a huge gap between our ruling elite’s views and those of ordinary people on the street. This was brought home to me when dining at an Oxford college and the eminent person next to me, a very senior civil servant, said: ‘When I was at the Treasury, I argued for the most open door possible to immigration [because] I saw it as my job to maximise global welfare not national welfare.’

I was even more surprised when the notion was endorsed by another guest, one of the most powerful television executives in the country. He, too, felt global welfare was paramount and that he had a greater obligation to someone in Burundi than to someone in Birmingham.

Such grand notions run counter to the way most people in this country think or arrange their priorities.

The British political class has never prepared existing citizens for something as game-changing as large-scale immigration, nor has it done a good job at explaining what the point of large-scale immigration was and whose interests it was meant to serve.

Crucially, they failed to control the inflow more overtly in the interests of existing citizens. On the contrary, the idea that immigration should be unambiguously in the interests of existing citizens was blurred from the start.

Then, whenever there were problems with immigrant communities, the tendency was for the host society to be blamed for not being sufficiently accommodating or for being racist, rather than considering the self-inflicted wounds of some minority cultures.''

So to add to my oft repeated quotation from Andrew Neather who let us know why the Labour government deliberately opened "up the UK to mass migration", it was at least in part due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and "rub the Right's nose in diversity", we now have a very senior civil servant, saying ‘When I was at the Treasury, I argued for the most open door possible to immigration [because] I saw it as my job to maximise global welfare not national welfare.’

Also remember when you are being told that Britain is  a land of immigrants that '
One of the liberal elite’s myths is that we are a ‘mongrel nation’ that has always experienced high inflows of outsiders. But this isn’t true. From 1066 until 1950, immigration was almost non-existent (excluding Ireland) — a quarter of a million at the most, mainly Huguenots and Jews.

Post-World War II immigration has been on a completely different scale from anything that went before. These days, more people arrive on our shores as immigrants in a single year than did so in the entire period from 1066 to 1950, excluding wartime.'

Also remember this about the effect of immigration on jobs.

' The myth peddled by Blair's acolytes – that high levels of immigration generated significant economic benefits for the existing UK population – was demolished in 2008 by a House of Lords select committee. It concluded: "We do not support the general claims that net immigration is indispensable to fill labour and skills shortages. Such claims are analytically weak and provide insufficient reason for promoting net immigration." Reinforcing this point, the government's Migration Advisory Committee recently confirmed that immigrants do "displace" some British workers – ie, take their jobs, most likely those at the bottom end of the pay ladder.' 

Somewhere I wrote an analysis of the numbers of people who immigrated to the UK through history but I can't find it. Until I do here's a brief summary:
Hugenots - 40,000-50,000 in 17th century
Indians - 80,000 pre First World War
Africans - Around 15,000 pre First World War
Germans - Around 50,000 pre First World War
East European Jews - 120,000 pre First World War and maybe another 25,000 pre Second World War
Others fleeing Nazi Europe - 50,0000

Let's compare that with immigration post 1997.
Total net migration to the UK rose sharply from 1998 onwards, with levels being above 150,000 in all but one year since 1999. That's 150,000 a year but that's net of Brits leaving the UK.  So an average of 150,000 net is equivalent to half of the immigration to this country across  300 years. Remember that the next time you're told that we've always ha immigration into the UK. Also remember that when you hear David Cameron hailing as a success cutting net immigration to under 100,000 a year.

Slightly off topic, I remember recently hearing an interview on the BBC radio with someone about why Muslim youths were not used to treating women properly. Apparently they have little contact with their own community's young women as they are not allowed to date before marriage. Instead they are meant to wait before getting a wife and then bring one in from Pakistan. The reasons are I presume clear to you.

The amount of immigration under the last Labour government was intended to change the UK into a properly multicultural country and to literally change the face of the country. After 13 years I think it fair to say that the Labour party succeeded and have indeed rubbed the right's noses in diversity. My personal belief is that it is too late to do anything about the results of this policy, the levels of immigration have been so high that even if there was nil immigration from today onwards, the population of descendants of immigration will increase year on year.

Interestingly I have heard figures on the left claim that the rise in immigration started under the government of John Major. However ONS figures show that from 1991 to 1997 there was net total migration of 286,000.Still very much higher than the historical average but only a quarter of the rate under the Labour government of 1997-2010.

Returning to that article by David Goodhart, he says that by the time of the next census in 2021 the non white population of the UK will have trebled to 20% and predicts that white Britons will be a minority of the UK population by 2066. He also states, quite correctly, that in some towns and cities this is already the case.

As a personal aside, I drove past a girls secondary school in Ealing on Thursday or Friday last week. It was the end of the school day and I drove down as the school was emptying. My estimate was that around 30% of the girls were wearing some form of Islamic head-covering, and that around 40% were of black ethnicity. 

How Israel's neighbours portray the Jewish festival of Pesach/Passover

Another example of Israeli apartheid policy

Those evil Israelis, running an apartheid state of the worst kind!

A question for Jeremy Bowen, Jon Donnison, Wyre Davis etc.

Just a week to go... Doctor Who is coming back to our screens...

And in case you have forgotten the last series and Christmas special, although much of those episodes were forgettable, here's a reminder



"Rageddy man... goodbye"



Now if you really want a some spoilers here's a video that takes the trailer and explains it. I love the idea of travelling within the Tardis. I always enjoyed the 1980s peeks into the Tardis. I loved the idea of rooms, wings indeed, a swimming pool, a library and more... There was the cloister room which is  where the Eye of Harmony is locate which I think was the Tardis's power source.

‘Quarantine her!’ Top Tunisian Islamist says topless girl needs stoning - Alarabiya.net English | Front Page

The religion of tolerance?

' Al Arabiya -
A Tunisian Salafi preacher has called for a 19-year old girl who posted her topless pictures on Facebook to be "quarantined" and stoned to death before she starts "an epidemic."
Tunisian newspaper AssabahNews quoted Salafi preacher Alami Adel, who heads the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, saying: "According to God's law, she deserves 80 to 100 lashes, but what she committed is worth much more than that. She deserves to be stoned to death and she must be quarantined because what she did is an epidemic."'

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/2013/03/23/-Quarantine-her-Top-Tunisian-Islamist-says-topless-girl-needs-stoning.html

Simply adorable: the cute kids of the third Intifada at NYT Magazine | Jerusalem Post - Blogs

' "That's all he writes about Ahlam Tamimi but we can tell you more. She is a Jordanian who was 21 years old and the news-reader on official Palestinian Authority television  when she signed on with Hamas to become a terrorist. She engineered, planned and helped execute a massacre in the center of Jerusalem on a hot summer afternoon in 2001. She chose the target, a restaurant filled with Jewish children . And she brought the bomb. The outcome (15 killed, a sixteenth still in a vegetative state today, 130 injured) was so uplifting to her that she has gone on camera again
and again to say, smiling into the camera lens, how proud she is of what she did. She is entirely free of regret . A convicted felon and a mass-murderer convicted on multiple homicide charges, she has never denied the role she embraced and justifies it fully." So this is the "much-loved" heroine of the "heroic villagers" that NYT Magazine promoted on its cover and in a lengthy feature story.'

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/simply-adorable-cute-kids-third-intifada-nyt-magazine

They're not borders

The anti Israel crowd and their mouthpiece, the institutionally biased against Israel BBC, are fond of calling for a return to the 1967 borders. The problem is that they aren't borders, as the 1967 Armistice agreement makes clear.

' Article VI
9. The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in articles V and VI of this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto."'

They're NOT borders.

http://bbcwatch.org/2013/03/23/yolande-knell-ties-one-state-banner-to-bbc-mast/

Svensmark: “global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning” – “enjoy global warming while it lasts” | Watts Up With That?

The warmists ignore any history that might show the problem with their position,Watts Up With That has some extracts from a recent paper that addresses that shortage:

'Solar activity has always varied. Around the year 1000, we had a period of very high solar activity, which coincided with the Medieval Warm Period. It was a time when frosts in May were almost unknown – a matter of great importance for a good harvest. Vikings settled in Greenland and explored the coast of North America. On the whole it was a good time. For example, China’s population doubled in this period.

But after about 1300 solar activity declined and the world began to get colder. It was the beginning of the episode we now call the Little Ice Age. In this cold time, all the Viking settlements in Greenland disappeared. Sweden surprised Denmark by marching across the ice, and in London the Thames froze repeatedly. But more serious were the long periods of crop failures, which resulted in poorly nourished populations, reduced in Europe by about 30 per cent because of disease and hunger.

It’s important to realise that the Little Ice Age was a global event. It ended in the late 19th Century and was followed by increasing solar activity. Over the past 50 years solar activity has been at its highest since the medieval warmth of 1000 years ago. But now it appears that the Sun has changed again, and is returning towards what solar scientists call a “grand minimum” such as we saw in the Little Ice Age.

The match between solar activity and climate through the ages is sometimes explained away as coincidence. Yet it turns out that, almost no matter when you look and not just in the last 1000 years, there is a link. Solar activity has repeatedly fluctuated between high and low during the past 10,000 years. In fact the Sun spent about 17 per cent of those 10,000 years in a sleeping mode, with a cooling Earth the result.'

There's science as well:

'You may wonder why the international climate panel IPCC does not believe that the Sun’s changing activity affects the climate. The reason is that it considers only changes in solar radiation. That would be the simplest way for the Sun to change the climate – a bit like turning up and down the brightness of a light bulb.

Satellite measurements have shown that the variations of solar radiation are too small to explain climate change. But the panel has closed its eyes to another, much more powerful way for the Sun to affect Earth’s climate. In 1996 we discovered a surprising influence of the Sun – its impact on Earth’s cloud cover. High-energy accelerated particles coming from exploded stars, the cosmic rays, help to form clouds.

When the Sun is active, its magnetic field is better at shielding us against the cosmic rays coming from outer space, before they reach our planet. By regulating the Earth’s cloud cover, the Sun can turn the temperature up and down. High solar activity means fewer clouds and and a warmer world. Low solar activity and poorer shielding against cosmic rays result in increased cloud cover and hence a cooling. As the Sun’s magnetism doubled in strength during the 20th century, this natural mechanism may be responsible for a large part of global warming seen then.

That also explains why most climate scientists try to ignore this possibility. It does not favour their idea that the 20th century temperature rise was mainly due to human emissions of CO2. If the Sun provoked a significant part of warming in the 20th Century, then the contribution by CO2 must necessarily be smaller.'

Read the whole article and rest assured that the BBC won't be reporting this scientific paper any time soon.

The great global warming swindle - Full version

The great global warming swindle.

10 Hollywood Celebrities Who Should Be Blacklisted By Conservatives | Right Wing News

Don't feed the enemy.

1) “First of all, give an honor to God and our lord and savior Barack Obama. Barack Obama.” — Jamie Foxx

2) “(The Tea Party’s) stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term. What underlines that? ‘Screw the country. We’re going to whatever we can to get this black man outta here.’ …It is a racist thing….(that) just shows the weak, dark, underside of America. We’re supposed to be better than that.” — Morgan Freeman

3) Herman Cain is probably well-liked by some of the Republicans because it hides the racist elements of the Republican Party, conservative movement and tea party movement. People like Karl Rove like to keep the racism very covert and so Herman Cain provides this great opportunity so he can say, ‘Look: This is not a racist anti-immigrant, anti-female, anti-gay movement. Look: We have a black man.’ And look he’s polling well and he won a straw poll. — Janeane Garofalo

4) “If I got (Condi Rice) on camera, I would put my Mars Air Jordans so far up her butt that the Mayo Clinic would have to remove them.” — Spike Lee

5) “Latins for Republicans — it’s like roaches for Raid.” — John Leguizamo

6) “Y’all better vote for f——g Obama, OK? For better or for worse, we have a black Muslim in the White House. Now, …that’s some amazing s—-t. It means there is hope in this country.” — Madonna

7) “You have what I call the ‘Get the N-word out of the White House party,’ the Tea Party…. At the end of the day, there’s a big bubble coming out of their heads saying, you know, ‘Can we just lynch him?’” –Sean Penn

8) “The Tea Party really is just a c*nt hair away from being the Westboro Baptist Church…” — Sarah Silverman

9) “Glen Rice is a wonderful man. He’s a wonderful guy. You want (Sarah Palin) to be with somebody like [Dennis] Rodman getting up … in there. Pushing her guts up in the back of her head! …Glen Rice is a nice, mellow, docile man, non-threatening guy. You want someone like Rodman — yeah baby! Let’s get that donkey in here now. [laughter] Just imagine Palin with a big old black stallion ripping. Yeehaw! [I]n life in general you know … everybody got to get that out of their system when they get out of college. If you’re a black man, every white girl, every uppity middle class … everybody got to get their share of love. She could always get boned out by a black person, a vote to bang her. Other than a vote to run office, the only thing she can do … she’s not a bad person because she likes black people at least in her. Sarah Palin … she met the ‘wombshifter.’” — Mike Tyson on ESPN radio

10) “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” — Kanye West

World Health Organization ranking of health systems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Analysis to follow...But 'envy of the world'? I think not, and bloody expensive.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_ranking_of_health_systems#section_1

Welcome to Pallywood

Can you believe CNN, the BBC etc. when they show you footage of fighting involving Israel and Palestinians? Of course not.

Watch and learn, watch and learn.



The section for 4:10 to 5:43 is especially interesting.

Another scene from the apartheid state of Israel

Farce of new £545m NHS Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham which is too SMALL | Mail Online

No mention of immigration?

'A new £545 million hospital built under the controversial PFI scheme has run out of beds, forcing bosses to re-open wards on the the hospital it replaced.

Unprecedented demand on A&E admissions at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham means two wards will be brought back into action at the neighbouring old Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which was built in the 1930s and closed in 2010.

The building had stood empty before the overcrowding crisis hit and was not expected to receive patients again.

The move is highly embarrassing given that the new state-of-the-art hospital is the second biggest Hospital PFI in the Midlands, and the second biggest in the NHS.

The new hospital, in Edgbaston, may also be a victim of its own success, as patients from the region travel to the widely-praised facility in preference to local clinics.

Speaking on BBC Radio West Midlands, she said: 'We’ve seen the biggest number of patients coming in since we’ve been keeping records.

'We’ve got an ageing population, people with chronic disease, people are living longer and we’ve had the winter period.'

More in The Mail

Those savage cuts in perspective

The BBC and the Labour Party, connected as they are by a common agenda, have spent the last three years railing agianst the 'savage Tory cuts', 'too deep, too fast' they cry.

Do remember that Labour under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, asisted by such as Ed Balls and Ed MiMiliband increased state spending by 50% in a decade and the BBC never thought that extrvagent or unwise. Now the Conservative lead coalition have dared to reduce spening by a measly 2.7% we are meant to believe that that is evil?

I think the BBC Weather twitter account (@bbcweather) may have been hacked

Usually the @bbcweather twitter account is pretty non-controversial, not so recently. A couple are rather unpleasant about Israel, promising a nuclear attack on Tel Aviv on Saturday and suggesting that residents of Haifa 'return to Poland'.

 

Other targets for the hackers, apparently Syrian, include Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.
 
I'm sure normal service will be restored soon and we'll be seeing more tweets like this one from earlier today

The deliberately 'offensive' Michael White

His words, not mine...

One question is why is he being so deliberately offensive towards me and at least one other blogger, @yidtech.

The other questions are a) why Michael White made that original 'settlements' comment and b) why he is so shy of answering that simple question?

One final question, I've been nothing but polite when questioning him, so why has he been so 'offensive'?

UPDATE:
Since writing, but not posting this piece yesterday afternoon, I have continued to try and elicit a reply from Michael White to my questions; I have not been successful...

I've tried for several days to get Michael White to actually explain why he brought up Israeli 'settlements' in response to a story about a Muslim Labour peer being accused of hate speech against Jews. Unfortunately it seems that he thinks he can just keep blustering and casting insults and the matter will go away.

Well this post is out there, I'll keep nudging him with the occasional tweeted reminder and we'll see if he ever does just answer the question.

The sorry truth is that the virus of anti-Semitism has infected the British Muslim community

'It pains me to have to admit this but anti-Semitism isn't just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it's routine and commonplace. Any Muslims reading this article – if they are honest with themselves – will know instantly what I am referring to. It's our dirty little secret. You could call it the banality of Muslim anti-Semitism.
I can't keep count of the number of Muslims I have come across – from close friends and relatives to perfect strangers – for whom weird and wacky anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are the default explanation for a range of national and international events. Who killed Diana and Dodi? The Mossad, say many Muslims. They didn't want the British heir to the throne having an Arab stepfather. What about 9/11? Definitely those damn Yehudis. I mean, why else were 4,000 Jews in New York told to stay home from work on the morning of 11 September 2001? How about the financial crisis? Er, Jewish bankers. Obviously. Oh, and the Holocaust? Don't be silly. Never happened.
...
The truth is that the virus of anti-Semitism has infected members of the British Muslim community, both young and old. No, the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict hasn't helped matters. But this goes beyond the Middle East. How else to explain why British Pakistanis are so often the most ardent advocates of anti-Semitic conspiracies, even though there are so few Jews living in Pakistan?
It is sheer hypocrisy for Muslims to complain of Islamophobia in every nook and cranny of British public life, to denounce the newspapers for running Muslim-baiting headlines, and yet ignore the rampant anti-Semitism in our own backyard. We cannot credibly fight Islamophobia while making excuses for Judaeophobia.'

I am no fan of Mehdi Hasan, but his piece in The New Statesman is on the money?

So far most of the comments have been favourabpe twards this article but I wonder how long that will last. Here's a few interesting ones:
'Antisemitism isn't restricted to the Muslim community in Britain, or even the Muslim community generally. It is found worldwide, although not always as explicitly stated. It is alive and well among the British Left, sometimes masquerading as criticism of Israel. The same people who fight for the rights of women and minorities seem to adopt a different stance towards Jews.


This piece very much sums up my experiences as a young Muslim from a "progressive" Islamic community, Antisemitism is rife. Muslims are in desperately need to confront this issue but antisemitism is embedded in mainstream interpretations of Islam, unless Muslims are willing to become selective with the Qur'an there really isn't much hope.
My long term boyfriend is Israeli and I fear the day I have to confront my family and the community!

Thank you for writing this, it is really important that people such as yourself speak out on this and I hope you get support from other British Muslims and some recognition from Jewish commentators.

An excellent article
I would add that in my experience, those fighting absolutely the hardest in this country against antisemitism, including Islamist antisemitism, include a large number of British Muslims.
They do this in the face of significant odium, and some receive hate mail and are shunned for this reason.
I'd also add the experience of a friend of mine, organising a demonstration against the National Front in the 1980s. He tried to get some local British Muslim lads involved, and was told:
"Why? We agree with what they say about the Jews".

Unfortunately, things got much worse when islam got into Europe. The first pogroms of jews in europe began in muslim-controlled Spain. There were pogroms against jews in Morocco next. The pogroms by european christians began later, once the Crusades began as a reaction to hundreds of years of islamic war and invasion of christian territory.
It seems highly plausible that the increase in hostility towards jews in europe came from the post-Crusades christians regarding jews as the enemy along with muslims.
The european intelligentsia seem to be unable to exercise critical thought on this matter. The christians must be responsible, and muslim anti-semitism must be whitewashed. So, the wikipedia entry starts off by blaming christians for starting the pogroms in 1096, but as soon as they turn to the actual chronology, it transpires that the pogroms began in Spain and Morocco, almost 100 years earlier.
"In the 11th century, however, there were several Muslim pogroms against Jews; notably those that occurred in Cordoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066. In the 1066 Granada massacre, the first large pogrom on European soil, a Muslim mob crucified the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacred about 4,000 Jews. In 1033 about 6,000 Jews were killed in Fez, Morocco, by Muslim mobs..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Thus are these myths passed on.

 

 

 

Pietro Mennea R.I.P.

I am sure that most of you have never heard of Pietro Mennea but I remember him well. He was  the Italian sprinter who broke the 200m world record in Mexico in 1979, his time 19.72




Pietro Mennea was often in races with Allan Wells and they were usually close, here's the 1979 Europa Cup 200m




In the Moscow Olympics of 1980 it was Pietro Mennea that passed Allan Wells on the line to deny Allan Wells a 100m and 200m double.




Pietro Mennea was fast, indeed to this day only eight other athletes have run 200m faster than he did that day in Mexico City, albeit Pietro Mennea did have the advantage of running at altitude that day.


OK the eight runners are in order of speed, fastest first:Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake, Michael Johnson, Walter Dix, Tyson Gay, Xavier Carter, Wallace Spearman & Frankie Fredericks.

So Pietro Mennea is still the fastest ever white man over 200m.  He's also still the fastest ever Italian man over 100m with a best time of 10.01set at that same meeting in Mexico City.

Another great athlete of my youth has passed away, a sad day.

The Saudis oppress their people and expect visitors to look the other way » Spectator Blogs

' Saudis who espouse human rights and secular ideals can hang (often literally) if the trade-off means our short-term goals are secured. We betray progressives and empower reactionaries. Should we really then be all that surprised if more people embrace radical jihadist narratives which advocate change through violent means?'

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/03/the-saudis-oppress-their-people-and-expect-vistors-to-look-the-other-way/

The New York Times: Muslim Brotherhood's Words on women

' "A woman needs to be confined within a framework that is controlled by the man of the house," Osama Yehia Abu Salama, a Brotherhood family expert, said of the group's general approach, speaking in a recent seminar for women training to become marriage counselors. Even if a wife were beaten by her husband, he advised, "Show her how she had a role in what happened to her."
"If he is to blame," Mr. Abu Salama added, "she shares 30 percent or 40 percent of the fault."'

The delightful face of the Muslim Brotherhood.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/world/middleeast/muslim-brotherhoods-words-on-women-stir-liberal-fears.xml

Behind their back - A six year anniversary

I have come across this video which shows David Cameron sneakily popping a mint into his mouth during yesterday's Budget announcement by George Osborne




Ifyou want to understand the difference between this Prime Minister and the last, the lamentable Gordon Brown, here's Gordon Brown having a sneaky bogey nibble during a Tony Blair PMQs from 21 March 2007



David Cameron eats mints to keep his breath fresh, Gordon Brown....

And just imagine the state of the back of Gordon Brown's tie.

I couldn't have said it better myself

From the comments on Biased-BBC this morning:

Doublethinker says:

March 21, 2013 at 6:58 am

Agree.
The problem that contributors to this site have is that the BBC is stuffed full of employees with a liberal/left view of the world and that because there is no centre right counter weight in side the BBC their view determines how the BBC goes about its business.
Their own prejudices become a collective BBC bias which gives open door to causes they agree with, eg state spending , global warming and multiculturalism, but firmly shut doors to causes they don’t agree with ,eg less state spending, anti global warmering and people who don’t want alien cultures foisted on them.
Now if the BBC was a commercial operation such a bias would be fine but of course it isn’t and it ought not to promote some views and oppose others.
So powerful is the BBC, due to its enormous tax based funding, that it is changing the political outlook of the British people by this never ending all pervasive bias. Even if the BBC was abiding by its Charter and being scrupulously impartial it would be dangerous for so much power to be in the hands of one organisation, which is of course why the BBC opposes Murdoch. But to have the BBC supporting one side of political argument and opposing the other is undermining democracy in Britain.
The fact that the BBC is staffed almost exclusively by people from the liberal left means that it cannot be reformed unless very large numbers of people are got rid of. This is not a practical proposition and so the BBC in its present form must be got rid of if democracy is to survive in Britain.

Why has Rory McIlroy lost form?

Consnsus opinion is that it's the fault of his changing clubs in that massive deal with Nike. However  I wonder if he's been distracted recently...


His girlfriend, world tennis number 1, Caroline Wozniacki has been posing for promotional material for a new sports lingerie range. The Mail have some diverting stills.

Here are some others that I found that may illustrate why Rory is off his game.

 Maybe this has put Rory off of his stroke...

Should I be reassured?

EU Referendum has posted an interesting piece that addresses some of my worries I expressed in this piece:

'There has been a certain amount of concern as to whether bloggers might be caught by the proposed press regulations, and thus be exposed to crippling fines. However, in the debate last night in the Commons, the position was made clear by culture secretary Maria Miller.

A clause inserted into the coming Bill makes the law apply only to a "relevant publisher". Such a publisher would have to be publishing news-related material in the course of a business, the material would have to be written by a range of authors and it would have to be subject to editorial control.

These tests, says Miller, "would exclude a one-man band or a single blogger". The clause added is "specifically designed to protect small-scale bloggers", she said. Lone bloggers clearly do not meet the criteria necessary to include them in the regulatory maw.

However, online news sites such as Huffington Post, may well be caught in the net. Thus, if anything, this new law will have the effect of levelling the playing field between the clogs and the independent bloggers.'

I will wait to see if such a clause is inserted but I won't be allowing myself a celebratory drink just yet.


Thanks to Ronnie B for pointing me in the direction of the EU Referendum article.

Whilst I am saying thank you, I must also thank the two commenters who said such nice things following my rather depressed post:

Davieboy said...

Much as I admire you and would be desperately sorry to lose your blog, I cannot blame you. The bastards are making themselves unaccountable. A very, very dark day.
Thanks for all you've achieved to date - I'm sure it's been a pretty thankless task but many of us value it tremendously.

Anonymous said...

I can only agree with Davieboy. Thanks for your tireless work in upholding what is good and exposing what is evil.

 

The BBC still trying to keep the hidden agenda, hidden

This morning much of the British media, including Sky, The Mail and The Scotsman are reporting  that:

'Labour backbencher Jim Sheridan was facing a backlash last night after suggesting that journalists who mocked MPs should be banned from parliament.
The comment came as the culture, media and sport committee took evidence from the Hacked Off pressure group on proposals for regulating the press.

In a swipe at Commons sketchwriters, Mr Sheridan said: “I don’t understand why they are allowed to come into this place and behave in the way that they do.”'

Of course Jim Sheridan's attitude towards to the press and press freedom is in no way affected by his appearance in the expenses scandal story, a story that The Telegraph broke. Here's what The Telegraph wrote about Jim Sheridan:

'But The Daily Telegraph can reveal details of how Mr Sheridan, the MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, benefited from the second homes allowance that Mr Martin vigorously defended.

Mr Sheridan previously rented a flat in London’s Dolphin Square, designating the property as his second home, and reclaiming the rent of about £3,400 every quarter.

In the 2005/06 financial year, he used his second homes allowance to pay a £991.95 bill for a Memory foam mattress and "ivory leather bed". A further £500 spent on furniture and household accessories that year was also claimed on his expenses.

Between January and April 2006, he reclaimed £699 for a three-seater sofa, £829 for a two-seater sofa bed, £219 for a coffee table and £199 for a lamp table.

In 2006/07, he bought a flat in London, designated it as his second home and started reclaiming the monthly mortgage interest of around £924.

A further £359 was claimed on his expenses for a wardrobe in August 2006, along with £299 for a chest of drawers, £159 for a bedside cabinet and £109 for a mirror.

In July that year, Mr Sheridan charged the taxpayer £1,200 for painting the ceilings, walls and woodwork in his second home.

The MP then claimed £1,280 to supply and fit a new shower, although the fees office initially threatened to withhold payment because of a lack of proper receipts. However, Mr Sheridan provided an invoice and the money was paid.

The same month, February 2007, he claimed the £595 cost of supplying and fitting three sets of blinds.

In October last year, Mr Sheridan claimed the £699.99 cost of a 42-inch plasma television, just under the £750 limit imposed by the Commons fees office. He also claimed £219.99 for a four-year warranty.'

At least Jim Sheridan is consistent for back in 2009 in that Telegraph  report this appears:
 'Mr Sheridan told BBC News yesterday that Gorbals Mick, the nickname given to Mr Martin by some sketch writers, was "prejudiced" and they should be banned from the Commons.'

Of course Jim Sheridan relied on the same excuse that most MPs did:

'Asked by The Daily Telegraph about his expense claims, he said his constituency was too far from London to commute.

"That is why I maintain a house in London. The claims for that second home were paid for by the fees office because they fell within the scope of permissible claims," he continued.

"They were authorised by the Fees Office and receipts were provided against all claims."

He said he supported Gordon Brown’s plans for an independent audit to scrutinise every receipt and would be "happy" to discuss the issue with his constituents.'

Jim Sheridan's expenses are neither here nor there now but his desire to muzzle press freedom in 2009 is now becoming a reality with the latest rushed through legislation, legislation that will not be scrutinised by parliament before becoming law.

Why are the BBC not reporting Jim Sheridan's desire, are they trying to pretend that this legislation is all about controlling phone-hacking and other already illegal activities, rather than protecting our 'betters' from scrutiny? Is the fact that he is a Labour MP a contributory factor?

The apartheid state

'Meet Sgt. Rima Baboo.

The daughter of a Muslim Arab father and a Christian mother, Rima says she never really knew who she was. "I lived a double life," she says, "never feeling that I truly had a place."

Then, she volunteered to serve in the Israel Defense Forces.

"I knew I would find my identity in the army," she says. "I wanted to wear the uniform of the IDF, to be like everyone else and fit in better. Today I know that I was right all along. It's not that all my problems have been solved or that my family tree has changed, but now I have a better sense of who I am and I'm not ashamed of where I come from."

"I feel just as Israeli as anybody else."

This, my friends, is Israel.'

In what other country in the Middle East would the daughter of a Muslim and a Christian be free to make her own decisions and live her own life? Yet 'Israel is an apartheid state' will still be yelled by the unthinking, the haters of Jews and those who just want a cause to replace destroying apartheid in South Africa.


Thanks to Avi Mayer for the link.

'Only throwing stones'?

What a sweet little girl, but to certain the Palestinians she's just a target.

'A woman and her three young daughters were wounded on Thursday when Palestinians hurled rocks onto their vehicle, causing their car to swerve off the road and collide with an oncoming truck. By Friday morning, 10 Palestinians from a nearby village had been arrested and taken into custody for questioning.

Samaria police commander Kobi Shabtai told Army Radio on Friday, "In coming hours we will move forward with the investigation and find out whether these suspects are the ones who did this yesterday."

The incident occurred on Route 5 in Samaria.

One of the daughters, 2-year-old Adele, was in critical condition while the mother, Adva Biton, in her 40s, and two other daughters — Avigail, 4, and Naama, 6 — were moderately injured in the crash. 

Another daughter, 8, was not in the car. Adva Biton is a doctor of chemistry and works as a lecturer at several academic institutions.

Around 6 p.m. on Thursday, police in the area began fielding reports of rocks being thrown at passing vehicles on Route 5 between Ariel and the Barkan interchange in Samaria. Just as in other areas prone to such attacks, this area has seen a marked increase in stone-throwing incidents recently, and residents have repeatedly warned that it was only a matter of time before tragedy would strike.

Two crowded buses were also targeted by the Palestinian rock throwers on Thursday, causing several injuries. A police patrol unit was summoned to the scene, but while en route to the bus, it received the call to rush to the scene of the crash in which Adva Biton and her girls were injured.

Firefighters and emergency health services were summoned to the scene to provide first aid and rescue services. They found the girls trapped inside the vehicle, with varying degrees of injuries.

"Two firefighting teams arrived at the scene and began rescue efforts, which turned out to be complex," a firefighter at the scene said. "There were two girls in the back seat, aged 4 and 6, and we were able to extricate them quickly. The driver was trapped, as was the toddler strapped into a car seat in the front seat. The teams had to perform intricate extrication maneuvers, under difficult conditions and while making every effort not to further harm the driver or the toddler."

Adele Biton was hospitalized in critical condition at Rabin Medical Center in Petach Tikvah, but was later transferred to the adjacent Schneider Children's hospital. The two older girls were hospitalized at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan and at Rabin Medical Center.

Upon receiving news of the incident, the girls' father rushed between hospitals to be with his wife and daughters.

"The 2-year-old baby is in critical condition. We are not giving up. We are doing everything in our power to save her. We are optimistic," Dr. Oleg Kaminsky, a senior doctor at Rabin Medical Center, said Thursday.

The girls' grandmother said, "They come over twice a week, every week. We ate and laughed, we had a good time together. I asked them to stay a little longer. After they left, my oldest son told me that he heard on the news that there had been a terror attack. I tried to call the house and their cell phone but there was no answer. I had a bad feeling. We then drove toward Yakir [near Ariel, where the Biton family lives] on the road, and I saw the accident. I was blown over. I said, 'Adele is gone,' because I knew she was in the front seat. I'm glad that at least the eldest daughter wasn't with them."

Police officers and IDF troops combed the area in search of the perpetrators, focusing mainly on the nearby Palestinian village of Kif al-Hares. The police have yet to question the driver, and they have been careful not to rule the accident as directly caused by rock throwing. But judging from the sequence of events and the evidence on the road, it seems likely that the driver was hit by a rock, or lost control over the vehicle because of the barrage of rocks.

Several minutes before the crash, rocks were also hurled at another Israeli vehicle, shattering the windshield. The driver, a resident of Eli, and his 1-year-old son were lightly wounded.

Gershon Mesika, the head of the Samaria Regional Council, said in response on Thursday that government policy was "backward."

"The insistence on classifying rock throwing not as terrorism but as a mere disturbance is complete recklessness," Mesika said.

"Over the last two months, the rock-throwing incidents have become more frequent, but there has been no response due to the limitations imposed on the IDF by our politicians. It is time that we fully understand: A rock can kill. Rock throwing should be viewed only as terrorism."'

Thanks to Israel Hayom for the report.

Come on all you supporters of the Palestinians, defend that.