Category Archives: syria

SOME SYRIAN CHILD REFUGEES TURN OUT TO BE A PROBLEM AFTER ALL!

SOME SYRIAN CHILD REFUGEES TURN OUT TO BE A PROBLEM AFTER ALL!

One of the bizarre side stories of the “Syrian Refugee Crisis” was the furore about England being required to let in large numbers of “Syrian child refugees” following the sad incident of a little boy’s body being washed up on the beach in Turkey after a failed attempt by his family of trying to get to the Greek Islands.

Anyone who opposed opening our border gates to un-vetted alleged Syrian refugees who were claiming to be children was shouted down and told that they should be allowed in without either any testing or even any attempt to find out whether they were really suitable people to let into our country, or whether they were actually a danger to our country and our people! Some Syrian child refugees were then let in. It was then straightaway pointed out that some of them didn’t even look anything like children!

The serious objection was also raised at the time that they might turn out to be Jihadis. Now, lo and behold, one so-called “Syrian child refugee” turns out to be the Jihadi who attempted mass murder in his failed plot to fully explode the bomb on the Underground which partly went off at Parsons Green Tube Station.

Surely nothing could expose the sheer irresponsible wrong-headedness of all those, including of course the BBC, ITV and Sky, that campaigned for an “open doors” policy on Syrian refugees, let alone the various politicians and miscellaneous so-called celebrities who said that they would take some into their own homes (but actually of course haven’t taken any in themselves at all!).

It seems that many of our country’s leaders have no care either for our country or for the safety of our people. Instead they care only for their multi-culturalist pipe-dream. Any one of sense could tell them that their dream is bound to smash on the harsh rocks of the reality that there are many people whose ideas, culture and tribal blood feuds not only don’t enrich us but actually positively endanger us. 



The fact that the British political system seems incapable of being sensible about such an important issue is yet another marker of how just broken that system is. We need a root and branch reform which replaces the multi-nationalist British State with a proper modern democratic Nation State!

THE NATIONS ARE REVOLTING! (AND WANT INDEPENDENCE!)

THE NATIONS ARE REVOLTING! (AND WANT INDEPENDENCE!)


Many of us have now seen the results of the dramatic intervention of the Spanish Prime Minister who ordered the heavily armed Guardia Civil to storm the Catalonian Government Buildings and to arrest ringleaders of the Catalonian Government, who were saying they intended to go ahead with an Independence referendum for Catalonia (since they have been repeatedly democratically elected to hold one!). 

 The Spanish Prime Minster and the State system are claiming that holding an Independence Referendum is illegal, which of course merely goes to show that the Spanish constitution itself is undemocratic.

Memories of the Guardia Civil’s actions when Barcelona was captured by Franco’s Spanish Fascists are regularly reawakened by the discovery of more pits of the remains of executed Republicans and Catalonian nationalists.

Now there has been a violent police attempt to suppress the referendum with injuries to about 900 people. Just as telling has been the anti-nationalist and authoritarian statist reaction of the EU which is supporting the Spanish State in suppressing the democratic nationalism of the Catalans.

Meanwhile in the Middle East a further consequence of the Iraq war is played out with the Kurds holding a referendum on independence from Iraq.

The Kurds were one of the victims of the post First World War settlement in the Middle East, since a just settlement would have given them their own Nation State since they were and remain self-evidently a Nation. Since that time they have suffered horribly from being divided partly into the post 1919 countries of Iraq, partly into Iran, partly into Syria and partly into Turkey.

Any nationalist who believes that the natural state of a nation is to rule itself must wish both the Kurds and the Catalonians well in their struggle to become free and independent Nation States.

Here is an article drawn to my attention by a patriot:-

>>> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/world/kurdistan-independence-referendum/hopes-for-a-new-kurdistan/

Our patriotic supporter rightly asks me:-

“Why is independence wonderful for Kurdistan, a country in excess of 74,000 square miles, but England is too big at just over 50,000 square miles?”

And so now what was that about England and the English Nation? What about our own Nation State?

WHY IS VIKTOR ORBÁN SO POPULAR WITH HUNGARIANS?

WHY IS VIKTOR ORBÁN SO POPULAR WITH HUNGARIANS?
 
If you were to believe the BBC and most of the “mainstream media” you would think that most people in England are clamouring for an open door immigration policy and allowing in unlimited numbers of economic migrants and, in particular, so called refugees from Syria.

The few opinion polls that have been published relating to this show that the opposite is true. The vast majority of the People of England do not want to see more migrants from any part of the world flooding into our country.

Here is an article about this >>> https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/09/06/no-increase-syrian-refugee-numbers/

It should not therefore really surprise anyone that the one democratically elected politician who has been full-throttle opposed to mass immigration into his country, in particular mass Muslim immigration, should have seen his popularity rise to unprecedented levels of support. For example, here is an article from an enemy confirming his support >>> http://qz.com/501666/take-it-from-a-hungarian-journalist-orban-is-playing-a-dangerous-game/


Our electoral system which clothes parties with the support of only about a quarter of the electorate with the illusion of majority of support, such as Cameron in the recent election with the votes of 26% of the electorate and Tony Blair in the 2005 election with the votes of only 21.6% of the electorate. 

One of the problems of our nation is therefore actually our “elected” leaders are not in fact representative of the majority of opinion in our country. I would suggest that, if they were, our country would be run in a very different and more democratic way. There would then be an immediate end to mass immigration.

What do you think?

ENGLISH SUPPORT FOR RUSSIAN ACTION IN SYRIA GROWS

ENGLISH SUPPORT FOR RUSSIAN ACTION IN SYRIA GROWS


On Friday, the Daily Express carried an article showing that despite the concerted efforts of the British and American political Establishments and mass media, the majority of the English people support the decisive action being taken by Russia’s President Putin and the Russian military in supporting the only viable answer to the Islamist terrorist army of Islamic State or ISIS. Here is a link to the Express article >>>
More than 70% SUPPORT Vladimir Putin’s ISIS airstrikes despite rising Middle East tensions | UK | News | Daily Express http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/611495/Vladimir-Putin-bombing-campaign-poll-support-syria-middle-east

On Friday I was asked by Russia Today whether I would comment on it and here is a link to their article about it and at the bottom of the article you can play the sound track of their interviews with others >>>
Why does Western public opinion support Russian ops in Syria? — RT Op-Edge
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/318878-us-poll-isis-russia/

Also here is a link to my interview >>> Robin Tilbrook about public opinion on Russia’s campaign in Syria – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM1BoHtN5mE&feature=youtu.be

In my view it is not at all surprising that the common sense minded public in England has not been bamboozled by the efforts of the mass media into thinking that we have got to support some groups of “moderate” Islamists, whatever that might amount to, in fighting President Assad, when it is all too clear that frequently that the so-called moderate Islamists accept the weapons and training that they are given before defecting to ISIS.

The United States has a track record of misjudging this kind of situation. After all in Afghanistan the rise of the Taliban was largely the result of US policy, supported by Islamists within Pakistan, originally with a view to undermining the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. They succeeded in arming and training a huge number of Islamists who then, not surprisingly, proceeded to take-over the country and run it according to fundamentalist Islamic Sharia Law principles. The same cack-handed approach seems to have been attempted in Syria leading to a protracted civil war.

In considering what has happened in the Middle East it would be remiss not to mention the mainly British and American intervention in Iraq, which not only led to the deaths of uncounted tens of thousands of Iraqis, but also the virtual collapse of the Iraqi State.

Having learnt nothing from Iraq, David Cameron and William Hague plunged into an attack on the Libyan Government, led by Colonel Gadaffi, and have left that country in a Hobbsian state of nature of a “war of all against all in which man’s life is nasty, brutish and short”! Both Iraq and Libya are products of a neo-colonialist “liberal interventionist” doctrine developed partly by Tony Blair, over amongst other places Kosovo.

This doctrine is in stark contrast to one of the most fundamental rules of “international law” from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years War, until modern times. It was generally considered to be a clear breach of “international law” for other countries to intervene in the internal affairs of other states. 

Not only is this new doctrine very doubtful as a concept of “international law”, but also it is demonstrably both contrary to Realpolitik and dangerous. The Syrian conflict is merely the latest manifestation of this Blairite dodgy doctrine. A doctrine which is even more dodgy than Blair’s infamous dodgy dossier which he used as a pretext for war in Iraq!

It has to be remembered that the States in the Middle East are the product of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and of the disastrous peace conference of Versailles. The boundaries were drawn principally to enable the colonialist victorious powers to divide up the territory between them. With this agenda in mind, it would not have suited the imperialists to have States which had homogeneous Nation States created with a strong sense of their identity and cultural roots. Instead what imperialists wanted were States where the opportunities for the ancient Roman imperialist doctrine of “divide and rule” could easily be applied.

It was for this reason that Iraq, for example, was created with borders that were drawn by British decision makers at Versailles to break up the Kurds, who are by any usual measure a Nation partly into Iran, partly into Iraq, partly into Syria and partly into Turkey to prevent them from uniting. A mixture then of Sunni Arabs, the Marsh Arabs and part of ancient Persia were then added to the mix to create the new territory of Iraq, which British imperialists hoped could never be expected to unite against them.

Even so it should be remembered that the British imperialists did find it impossible to maintain control of Iraq and, despite the best efforts of the young “Bomber Harris” to bomb opposing populations into submission, the British Empire withdrew from Iraq setting up what they hoped would be a puppet State. In fact of course Iraq, like most of the States set up in this way, has inevitably wound up with a series of dictators as willingness to use violent oppression is probably the only effective way of maintaining control of a disunited, antagonistic and feuding population.

Syria is of course another one of those States where the borders were drawn up arbitrarily to include different populations. In the case of Syria it was in the interests of French imperialism and again a series of dictators following withdrawal of France has been the only effective way of keeping that State together. It is in this context that the American and to some extent the British policy of supporting groups of Islamist rebels against the current Government of Syria has to be considered. I do not think it is at all surprising that this ill-thought out policy has resulted in catastrophe.

If the real objective is to get rid of ISIS the only sensible answer is the policy that President Putin and the Russian Government are now pursuing which is the open and full throttle support of the Government of Syria. The fact that so much time and effort and money has been spent by the Obama administration and his other Western allies on other tactics (including the drone terrorist tactic of assassinating individual opponents), suggests that either they must be utterly incompetent or they have another hidden and perhaps more sinister agenda; or that they have been misled by their alliance with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, both of which countries have been sponsors of Sunni Islamist terrorism in Syria.

What do you think?

Poor Nigel Farage? Syrian slip-up or miscalculation?

                            Poor Nigel Farage? Syrian slip-up or miscalculation?
 
Late December 2013 turned out not to be a very good time for Nigel Farage, not only did Nigel Farage’s one time close and only close personal friend who is in politics, Godfrey Bloom give an interview of outstanding frankness and grievous long-term damage to Nigel Farage,
(click here >>>  http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/20/ukip-godfrey-bloom-interview-punch )
but also his house was left without power over Christmas, leaving him and his family having to de-camp.  If these problems are not enough he also tried a flutter at Blair style “triangulation” and came an almighty cropper!  (If you will pardon the hunting expression!). 

But let us re-cap for a moment.  On 29th December 2013 Nigel Farage calmly announced that were he in power that he would open the “UK’s” doors to an unspecified but seemingly potentially very large number of “Syrian Refugees”. 

After the initial gasps of astonishment our left/liberal media types questioned whether Nigel wasn’t the same person as had been saying that “Britain is full”.  In reply to this Nigel Farage is reported as saying that “I have never ever said that Britain is full”.  The Huffington Post then obligingly published this article
(click here >>> http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/12/30/nigel-farage-britain-is-full_n_4518312.html) in which there is a link to a BBC news interview in which Nigel Farage explicitly says “Britain is full”!  Result massive damage to Nigel Farage’s credibility as an honest politician.

As if that wasn’t enough, it then became apparent that a large number of people who had previously said that they supported UKIP or were intending to support UKIP were appalled that UKIP appeared to be as slack on the immigration issue as any Lib/Lab/Con politician. 

The initial UKIP response, as can be seen from UKIP’s Facebook page, was to try to argue that what Nigel Farage had said was totally consistent with UKIP’s published manifesto.  Frankly this point is slightly disingenuous as is pointed out in the Daily Telegraph article below. 

Nigel Farage, as the storm continued, then made a quibbling attempt to try to make out that there was a significant difference between the word refugee and asylum seeker.  However as anybody who has actually looked at the issue would  know the only difference is that a “refugee” is somebody who is in the act of fleeing, whereas an “asylum seeker” is somebody who has actually made an application through the immigration authorities for asylum.  The distinction therefore is not only trivial, but merely a matter of where a person is in the process of seeking refuge!

The UN Convention in any case does not require the UK to take any Syrian refugees/asylum seekers since they should be seeking refuge or asylum in the first safe neighbouring state, rather than in a country many of thousands of miles distant. 

As the storm of protest amongst potential UKIP members and voters continued, Nigel Farage then tried to play down the level of his earlier commitment, seemingly claiming that the only refugees that should be accepted were Syrian Christians.  A group which, I might point out, although in a terrible situation, are not the only minority group in Syria who are being genocidally targeted by murderous Islamist gangs that our government was recently talking about offering significant logistical support to! 

Needless to say Nigel Farage’s comment provoked outrage amongst all the secularist, Jewish and Muslim groups which he had until recently been seeking to bring into the UIKP fold!

So all in all Nigel Farage managed to achieve one objective in getting lots of media coverage, but in doing so he managed to annoy not only the left liberals in the media that he was seeking to placate, but also any sensible ordinary English people.  That is people who are simply fed up with the open door policies of mass immigration which have so changed the character of our country without any democratic mandate to do so over the last 50 years.  This has happened at a particularly alarming and unsustainable rate during the period of the last Labour government whose intention, as we now know, was to “rub the noses of the right” into the (dog mess?) of diversity like an incontinent naughty puppy subjected to old fashioned house training methods! 

Why has this PR disaster happened?  Well from my discussions with Nigel, I think he has a great need to be liked and to be the centre of attention.  Also he came across to me as somebody very likely to want to be “nice” and with a nostalgia for Britain’s old imperial position as the world’s policeman.  I think his position on immigration generally and asylum seekers or refugees, in particular, has evolved in quite an opportunistic fashion from being someone who is quite comfortable with immigration.  As he often says his surname derives from a French Huguenot refugee and he is of course married to a German.

The issue of immigration was simply taken up as a populist positioning on the aspect of EU membership and the single European market:- free movement of people. 

So in short I think Nigel Farage was giving expression to his genuine view that Syrian “refugees” should be allowed to come here, but I suspect he also thought it would get a lot of extra coverage during perhaps a news starved holiday season and also some useful Blair style “triangulation”!

One of the things it does however show is that now that Godfrey Bloom is no longer Nigel’s confidant there is no-one else in the leadership of UKIP that Nigel will go to to sense check things before he makes any announcement.  I wonder if this is going to be a recurring problem?  In any case I bet Nigel regrets giving vent to this particular flight of fancy!

Here is Paul Goodman’s and the Telegraph’s take on the whole Farago.  What do you think?

Does Nigel Farage want to join the Conservatives?

By urging ministers to accept Syrian refugees, Ukip’s leader has played a canny game

 Why did Nigel Farage say this week that Syrian refugees should be admitted to Britain – a view apparently at odds with his party’s outlook on immigration, and certainly in conflict with the instincts of its supporters? There are three possible explanations.

The first is that he said it because he believes it. Such a straightforward explanation would fit nicely with the breezy, plain-speaking, straight-from-the-shoulder persona that the Ukip leader wants to project.


The second is that he was merely repeating Ukip’s present position. The party’s website helpfully explains that “immigration Policy is currently undergoing a review and update. The full policy will be published in due course.” However, its holding “statement of principles” explains that “Ukip would allow genuine asylum applications in accordance with our international obligations”. So what Mr Farage said was in accord with his party’s policy on the matter, such as it is.


The third is that – since politicians are seldom as simple as they like to appear – the Ukip leader is up to something. What could it be?


Let us consider the evidence of his former colleague and long-time Brussels flatmate, Godfrey Bloom. Interviewed recently, Mr Bloom – a member of the European Parliament, until recently representing Ukip – claimed that the party “is in the grip of an internal battle for its future”, that senior staff “are all stabbing each other in the back”, and grassroots members are being “purged”. He declared: “This is 1933 Germany, night of the long knives. I’m waiting to be dragged out of the pub and butchered.”


Who was the Führer in this bloody metaphor? Mr Bloom left little room for doubt that he had Mr Farage in mind. And as if evoking the Nazis was not bad enough, he went on to name an organisation that strikes almost as much fear and loathing into the hearts of Ukip members – namely, the Conservative Party. Mr Farage, he said, has always really been a Tory and is “desperate to be a Conservative again”. He is “looking for a deal with the Tories”. Indeed, “the deal has already now been done”. Ukip will allegedly stand down candidates in key seats, and its leader will be rewarded with a title and a seat in the Lords.


To be fair to Mr Farage, Mr Bloom is scarcely a disinterested observer. The former withdrew the whip from the latter, during the Ukip conference earlier this year, with an ease that demonstrates the dominance he has achieved within the party. Mr Bloom’s chief crime was to have hit a journalist on the head with a Ukip brochure. Mr Farage will surely have been tempted in his time to hit the odd journalist over the head with a Ukip brochure himself, but clearly felt that the timing and the manner were unhelpful.


Of course, Mr Bloom’s suggestion of a clandestine deal between Mr Farage and David Cameron – with the Ukip leader perhaps merging his party with the Conservatives, and certainly going to the Upper House – is preposterous. The Ukip leader has no time whatsoever for the Prime Minister, whom he sees as a conviction-free member of an interchangeable political class. But Mr Bloom undoubtedly touched a nerve.


Mr Farage has helped to build Ukip up from almost nothing. In 1997, it won just over 100,000 votes. By 2010, that had grown to just under a million. In between, it won some 15 per cent of the vote in two sets of European elections – beating both Labour and the Liberal Democrats last time round. It has come second in several by-elections, including a major contest in Eastleigh earlier this year, and now holds about 150 council seats. It would be surprising, at the next election, if Ukip were to reach the 10 per cent or so of the vote that it currently boasts in opinion polls. But it is hard to see it being squeezed back down to the 3 per cent it took last time round.


Because Ukip tends to take more votes from the Tories than from any other party, its showing could make the difference in 2015 between Mr Cameron remaining Prime Minister or Ed Miliband taking office. So far, so good for Mr Farage – or at least, so powerful.
But his strength is a wholly negative one. He may be able to turn Mr Cameron out, but he cannot put himself in. Ukip cannot possibly hope to match the third of the vote that remains the Tories’ electoral base. Indeed, first-past-the-post leaves it unlikely to win a single seat in the Commons. For all the distance the party has travelled, it remains as far from office as ever.


This leaves Mr Farage with precisely the choice suggested by Mr Bloom. Does he want to settle down in his snug in the European Parliament – making speeches, writing books, cracking jokes, provoking headlines and ending up as a “national treasure” (heaven help him), secure in his salary and pension? Or does he want to do something rather than just be something – that’s to say, become a man of government rather than a man of opposition?
Mr Farage is clever enough not to answer such questions directly, but also smart enough to show a sense of direction. Though scornful of the Prime Minister, he has been guardedly respectful of other senior Tories, such as Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. He has said that he could “have a conversation” with the London Mayor – who, more sweepingly, has described Mr Farage as “a rather engaging geezer” and, in a Bloom-type moment, as “someone who is fundamentally indistinguishable from us”.


Like the Ukip leader’s earlier attack on the vans advising illegal immigrants to go home or face arrest (which caused just 11 of them to leave the UK), the intervention over Syria was a reminder of Mr Farage’s desire to keep his party respectable – one with which a future Tory leadership could deal. It was also a sign of his growing electoral influence. Fear of what Ukip would say will undoubtedly have been a factor in the Government’s decision not to admit Syrian refugees. Mr Farage is able to have it both ways: first frightening ministers off admitting the Syrians, then attacking them for being hard-hearted.


The headlines he won for the move (and the discomfort he has caused Downing Street) may not be worth the anger it sparked among many of Ukip’s members and supporters – in narrow political terms, at least. Mr Farage seems to agree, since he backed down yesterday, stating that only Syrian Christians should be admitted.


But the Ukip leader seems to have his eyes on a bigger prize. Perhaps, at some point in the future, there will indeed be a Tory-Ukip rapprochement: not the unworkable electoral pact that some are proposing at the moment, but the assimilation of part of the smaller party by the bigger one – in much the same way that the Conservatives swallowed up the National Party and the Anti-Waste League during the early Twenties. And maybe the Ukip leader will be part of such a realignment.


But in the meantime, he has other fish to fry – winning headlines, tilting at David Cameron, striving all the while to push his party just a little nearer the mainstream of British politics. So was he speaking his mind on the Syrian refugees, or repeating his party’s position, or proving some of Mr Bloom’s fears correct? The answer turns out to be: all three at once.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/10542611/Does-Nigel-Farage-want-to-join-the-Conservatives.html)