Let's Never Become Blind to Burkhas

If a woman in a burkha, looking like a black spectre, walks by in Sheperds Bush or Oxford Street, people ignore her, pretend not to see her, probably try to believe that it's perfectly OK and normal to be dressed like that.

They have been almost thoroughly desensitised, they are like robots, automata who don't recognise the significance of what they see, who don't think.

Some people say to me things like: "I don't know why you're surprised, we see it all the time. It's just a traditional dress. Would you react in the same way if you saw a nun?"

I usually reply that being used to something shouldn't lead to its blind acceptance. If I had lived in Nazi Germany I probably would have got used to seeing arms risen in the Heil Hitler salute, but I would have resisted considering it right.

The burkha is a symbol, just like a nun's habit is a symbol. But the former symbolises a doctrine - Islam - that brings out the very worst in people, while the latter symbolises a doctrine - Christianity - that, by making them altruistic and considerate, brings out the best in people.

Archbishop of Canterbury: Give Asylum to Iraqi Christians

Is the West waking up, or is it hoping too much? And is it too late anyway, when the genocide is accomplished?

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Most Rev Justin Welby, has called on the UK government to offer asylum to thousands of Iraqi Christians driven from their homes by jihadists. He backed similar calls by several bishops.

The vicar of Baghdad's Anglican church, Canon Andrew White, said the believers' flight is bringing "the end of Christianity very near" in Iraq.

France has already done what the Archbishop proposes. Last week the country declared itself ready to give asylum to any persecuted Christian in Iraq.

On July 26, in the French city of Lyon, over five hundred people held a demonstration about the tragic plight of Iraqi Christians, organised by the Assyro-Chaldean community of Lyon and by the Christians of Lyon. Several religious dignitaries were present, including Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon.

During the march a letter dated July 24 from His Beatitude Louis Raphaël 1st Sako, Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, to His Eminence The Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon and primate of the Gauls, was made ​​public. Its last sentence: "Forget us not!"

O July 29 Cardinal Philip Barbarin travelled to north Iraq to meet with Christian refugees expelled from Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city. On his return to France he held a press conference to deliver fresh information on the situation of the Iraqi Christian community.

The Islamic State ethnically cleansed Mosul of almost all its Christians and imposed Sharia law. Christians who fled Mosul by the thousands in the last few days lost absolutely everything.

On the same day as the march in Lyon, a rally was held in Paris to show support for the persecuted Iraqi Christians.

Iraq is at the end of a process of ethnic cleansing of its Christians, once 10% of the population. Ah, but those were the bad old days of Saddam Hussein. Now, with the advent of democracy, all is better. Isn't it? Well, it is better if you are a jihadist.

Here in the UK, my party Liberty GB is planning to organise a Rally for Persecuted Christians in Iraq in London, in front of the Houses of Parliament.

Ebola and Immigration, a Deadly Combination



The Ebola virus epidemic reminds us that global travel and international communications are not always a good thing.

Furthermore, since epidemics of this kind often originate in the same Third World countries that routinely send us thousands of people - call this phenomenon "immigration" or more appropriately "invasion" -, the infectious diseases emigrate to richer nations with their carriers.

Last year, for example, a report by the UK's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Tuberculosis, Drug-resistant tuberculosis: old disease—new threat, said:

The majority of UK cases are likely as a result from the reactivation of latent TB infection in people who were born in high incidence areas outside the UK.

While cases of tuberculosis, especially drug-resistant, are increasing in the world and - according to The Lancet - "the worldwide number of new cases (more than 9 million) is higher than at any other time in history" largely thanks to the spread of HIV, in developed countries like the UK immigration is the first culprit of the rise in incidence.

The above-mentioned study by the All-Party Parliamentary Group reported that TB rates increased in only three of the 21 countries under investigation: the United Kingdom, Norway and Sweden. In all of them, about three quarters of cases were foreign-born. The UK had the third highest number of foreign nationals overall, but the highest number from a country with a very high TB incidence.

In the USA, last month Fox News disclosed that tuberculosis had spread and become a dangerous issue at both its southern border and the refugee centres housing thousands of illegal immigrants:

Dr. Marc Siegel, a professor of medicine at New York University's Langone Medical Center and a Fox News A Team medical contributor, said tuberculosis appears to be spreading through several counties in southern Texas. He told me that some counties are reporting twice the usual average number of cases.

"Some of the tuberculosis that comes from Central America is drug resistant," he told me. "It's not easier to spread but it is harder to treat. I'm concerned about that."

And while TB is not that easy to spread, he warned that all those children living in close quarters could be a ticking time bomb.

"It is a disease that needs to be carefully monitored and screened for -- something that is not possible under the current circumstances," Siegel said.

An earlier article had given a similar warning.

In the video above this article, a map of the United States showing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quarantine stations is compared with another map of the country showing the places to which the illegal immigrants have been sent. They are almost completely identical.

It's not conclusive evidence, of course, but it provides a good working hypothesis to research on.

Now, the Ebola virus is spreading in West Africa. Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone are among the most afflicted countries of what the World Health Organisation has called the worst outbreak of Ebola virus in history, with 932 deaths so far.

To put that into context, in the biggest previous outbreak of the disease 224 died out of 425 cases, and all previous outbreaks resulted in just 2,300 deaths. This epidemic, increasing since January, concerns the deadliest form of the Ebola virus, Zaire ebolavirus.

This means that one third of all the fatalities caused by Ebola since it was recognised as a disease 40 years ago have taken place in the current outbreak. And the number is increasing.

Some nations try to confine the population, but the countries in that region, as nearly all African states, have porous borders with large uncontrolled tracts - which explains why Boko Haram terrorists can cross the border with Cameroon, where they have created several bases, and return home for new attacks. After Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the first case of death due to Ebola was identified in Nigeria, a country located 2,000 km from the epicentre of the epidemic.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Ebola virus disease causes high fever, diarrhea, bleeding, vomiting, chills, muscle aches, headache, joint pain, damage to the nervous system and other symptoms. The disease is transmitted through contact with the bodily fluid of an infected person directly or indirectly - e.g. by touching needles which have come into contact with infected bodily fluid.

The CDC has moved its operations to Level 1, with increased deployment of staff and resources. This is the first time the agency has invoked its highest level alert since 2009, then over a lethal influenza epidemic.

Christian doctors and missionaries treating Ebola patients for Christian charities - not many atheist charities involved in such task, as Dawkins' "rationality" doesn't seem to work in these cases - have died. But then we know that many of today's medical facilities were originally founded by Christians who acted out of a humanitarian impulse inspired by Jesus Christ.

In the UK, according to a union leader, border, customs and immigration staff feel unprepared to deal with people coming to the country with possible cases of the Ebola virus.

If you think that the USA is off the hook due to the provenance of its immigrants from Mexico and Central America, think again:

What’s more alarming, however, are reports confirmed by the National Border Patrol Council, or NBPC, and United Nations that some of the detainees apprehended attempting to enter the U.S. illegally are from Africa – where the Ebola outbreak is thriving...

In 2012, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime released a report confirming, “Central Americans are not the only ones being smuggled through Mexico to the United States. Irregular migrants from the Horn of Africa (Eritrea, Somalia, and Ethiopia), as well as South Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal, India), China, and other African and Asian states are being smuggled through Central America.”

“Border Patrol agents in our sector have in the past apprehended aliens from Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Israel and from many other nations,” Spratte continued. “People think this is just about Mexico and Central America, but it isn’t. People from all over the world are trying to sneak into the United States.

What is happening in Africa due to the Ebola is terrible. But what is there to gain from importing the virus to our countries?

Muslim Iraqis Protest against Christian Persecution

Two anchorwomen in the Middle East have protested against the persecution of Christians in their countries on TV while reading the news.

The Muslim journalist Dalia AlAqidi, who works for the Iraqi TV network Sumaria, wore a cross around her neck on air and launched a verbal attack from the TV against "Islamist fascism", in support of Christians in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city.

AlAqidi made this gesture not only because of the disappearance from Mosul - which since June is in the hands of jihadists - of a Christian community that numbered in the thousands of faithful, but also for "the good of the whole country." She believes the exodus of Christians to be bad for everyone: "Christians are part of the indigenous people of this land and we cannot go on without them."

Dalia defended wearing the Cross, which is forbidden in Mosul, and has shrugged off threats already aimed at her. Writing on her Facebook page, she said she already received calls from Saudi Arabia.

AlAqidi says that this is not a "religious initiative but an uprising against anyone trying to obliterate civilisation...If I do not speak and others remain silent, then, as the saying goes, 'He who is silent about justice is a mute devil.'"

Other - very few - Muslim Iraqis have taken risks by defending the Christians from persecution by the Islamic State. Still others have been killed for not pledging allegiance to the Islamic State.

The Islamic State jihadists, after having settled in Mosul and declared the caliphate, have started a systematic persecution of Christians, which culminated in their expulsion from their homes.

While the large majority of Muslims and Muslim leaders - like the grand imam of Al Azhar mosque in Egypt - have remained silent, a small group of Muslims have protested, paying with their lives.

Sixteen of them, the news of whose killing was released about a month after the capture of Mosul by the Islamic state, were killed according to the UN on 12-14 June. Among them are the imam of Mosul’s Great Nurridin Mosque, Muhammad al-Mansuri, and that of the mosque of the Prophet Jonah, Abdel-Salam Muhammad.

Bielefeldt, a professor of human rights and human rights politics at the University of Erlangen-Nurnberg in Germany, said the purpose of such executions was to silence critics of extreme movements. Those who oppose the movement, he said, “don’t dare to say this publicly because it can be a matter of life and death.”

The executions apparently have had an effect. A resident of Mosul who once worked at the Great Nurridin Mosque told McClatchy on Saturday that the Islamic State is now dictating the content of Friday sermons in Mosul. The resident cannot be identified for security reasons.

More recently Mahmoud Al ‘Asali, a Muslim law professor who lectures on pedagogy at the University of Mosul, was killed after speaking out against the persecution of Christians, against the looting and burning of Mosul Christians' properties and possessions.

He refused to keep silent about the violence agaist Mosul’s Christians who are forced to choose between converting to the Muslim faith, paying the jizyah (the Islamic tax for non-Muslims) or fleeing...

Professor Ali ‘Asali knew what he was risking: everyone in Mosul knows that in Raqqa - the Syrian city which the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant seized last year – there are many human rights activists who have paid for their opposition to ISIS’ acts of intolerance with their own lives. But Al ‘Asali was nevertheless unable to stand by in silence.

Christians in Mosul have been given the ultimatum: convert to Islam, pay the jizyah or be put to death. Those who decide to flee are not allowed to take anything with them, except the clothes they are wearing. Christians who are not healthy enough to flee Mosul must renounce their faith for Islam "just to stay alive".

The jizyah tax for non-Muslims - that all Christians have to pay if they want to stay alive and remain or return to Mosul - is 450 dollars per month, "which is an impossible sum for anyone living in Northern Iraq to pay".

It's unspeakable that the West ignores the Christian genocide in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.

The jihadists of the Islamic state - reminiscent of Nazi methods - mark Christian homes in Mosul with the Arabic letter "N" which stands for the word "Nasrani", meaning "Christian" in Arabic.

Some Muslims have launched the “I am Iraqi, I am Christian” campaign in solidarity with Christians and in response to the letter "N" written on the walls of Christian homes. A group of them turned up outside the Chaldean Church of St. George in Baghdad with a banner displaying that slogan, and posted a picture on Facebook.

Joining this initiative and inspired by her Iraqi colleague Dalia AlAqidi, Dima Sadeq, of the Lebanese TV network LBCI, appeared on television wearing a t-shirt printed with the Arabic letter "ن" (corresponding to the "N" - pronounced Noon - of the word "Nasrani", Christian) used to mark the Christian homes. Before beginning to read the newscast, Sadeq said: "From Mosul to Beirut, we are all Christians."

Subsequently, the LBCI has turned its logo into Lb ن and launched the hashtag # Lb ن to kick off a campaign that has persuaded thousands of Twitter and Facebook users to replace their profile images and avatars with a picture of a yellow “ن” in a black background, the "brand" of Iraqi Christians. "The darkest place in hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis" Dalia AlAqidi said, paraphrasing Dante Alighieri. "We will not allow", Sadeq echoed, "the walls to become the place on which letters of exile are drawn."

Le Pen Leads in Poll on Next President

An opinion poll among 947 people on the French electoral roll, with a margin of error of about 2.5%, conducted for the French magazine Marianne, shows Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National party, leading in first round of France’s next presidential election.

The FN performed very well at the last European Election in May, getting almost 25% of the French vote, while President François Hollande's socialists only got 14%.

The Front National wants France to leave the euro and would support France's continued European Union membership only under certain, very strict conditions - including primacy of French law over EU law, abolition of the Schengen Area of free movement of people, €0 net contribution to the EU budget and nationalisation of agricultural policy.

It is firmly opposed to unrestricted immigration, on which its policies are:

Reduce legal immigration 95% to 10,000 people annually, no amnesty or benefits for illegal immigrants or their children, abolition of jus soli, and citizenship only to be granted to foreigners’ children who are legally resident, speak French, are law-abiding and show “proof of assimilation.”

According to the latest poll, carried out online by Ifop on July 21 and 22, Le Pen would attract 26% of the vote, more than former president Nicolas Sarkozy's 25%. From Bloomberg:

The socialist candidate, President Francois Hollande or Prime Minister Manuel Valls, would finish third and would fail to make the second round with 17 percent. The poll did not measure second-round voting intentions.

Marine Le Pen's father and founder of FN Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round of the presidential election in 2002 with 17%, beating socialist Lionel Jospin and only losing in the second round to Jacques Chirac.

Marine took over the Front National in 2011 and has been trying to render it more moderate, although some say that the transformation is more superficial than fundamental.

Neverthless, for a while she and Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch anti-Islam party PVV and one of the best-known figures of the European counterjihad, seemed bound to form a publicly-funded alliance of like-minded parties in the European Parliament.

Fred and Ginger

Today the film "The Gay Divorce" with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was on the TV.

Watching it - even the little bit I did - is like experiencing a cultural time travel through the development in mores between then and now.

The term "gay" could still be used in its proper sense, then, before being highjacked by the homosexualist movement that made it impossible to use it except in their own chosen meaning, as in any other way it would give rise to misinterpretations.

Psychoanalysis - with its corollary of word association - was still fashionable, as was elephant hunting.

Two step forward and one step back, but it's a huge step back in its implications.

Not Much Hope but Lots of Hate

I don't know if you'ever heard of the extreme Left group Hope not Hate (HnH).

I hadn't, until I joined the party Liberty GB. Because all the activity of this group consists of is attacking political organisations that have different opinions from them.

The choice of its name is particularly unfortunate, especially the "Not Hate" bit, as hate for the holders of non-socialist views is what motivates the group and its only raison d'etre.

Not being an avid reader of its website, only yesterday I chanced to see a blog post in it, written before the last European Elections, in which the three Liberty GB candidates - Paul Weston, Jack Buckby and I - are scrutinised.

But don't expect analysis, or even comment, on ideas and political positions.

Hope not Hate doesn't waste time and the little mental energy it must have on such trivia as the ideolological foundations for a party manifesto policy or the arguments supporting a political stance.

In the old electoral-campaign polarisation of issues versus personalities, this far-Left group has no hesitation in siding with the latter.

Ad hominem attacks is what it's specialised in, indeed not just in this post but in all the others in its website that I read.

The most paradoxical, if we were to take Hope not Hate seriously - choice that I don't recommend - and therefore consider it as a suitable object for a logical assessment of self-contradictions, thing I read was the part about me, since I am, as HnH nicely put it, a "Johnny Foreigner".

Here this group that prides itself for its anti-bigotry and open-mindedness showed itself - inadvertently, but then intellect is not its strong point - for what it is: exactly the opposite.

Here is what it says:

"This one is a woman and she is from Italy. Before you can throw accusations of bunga-bunga at the party, Enza Ferreri, the woman in question, has a name not too dissimilar to that of a flash sports car that rich people drive and she also has a degree in philosophy from an Italian University.

"Like Jack and Paul, it appears she is also very posh. She claims she used to write for the Italian magazine L'Espresso which is probably some kind of industry magazine for coffee lovers."

See how many national stereotypes and prejudices you can cram into a few sentences if you put your mind to it?

The "bunga bunga" reference is particularly telling, since only Italians are mindlessly and sweepingly associated with the sexcapades of their politicians, in this case former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

As Italian journalist and friend Alessandra Nucci said, Americans are not all painted with the same brush as Oval Office adulterer Bill Clinton.

So here you have it as clear as daylight: the self-proclaimed anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-xenophobic group par excellence is revealing its hidden bigotry, thus showing to be motivated not so much by pure and philanthropic ideals but by hatred for conservatives, as the entire focus and activity of the group - merely negative, attacking something or rather someone - also amply demonstrates.

http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/blog/insider/a-bit-of-racist-posh-and-spice-3586