UKIP Is Better but Is No Solution

Yesterday the UK Independence Party (UKIP) has gained its second seat in Britain's House of Commons, the lower House of Parliament, with Mark Reckless elected in the Rochester and Strood constituency, in Kent. The victory was obtained through a comfortable, though not dramatic, majority of 2,930 votes over the Conservative runner-up Kelly Tolhurst, a majority which many say may easily be lost again at the May 2015 general election for the UK Parliament.

This, and especially UKIP's first Member of Parliament, Douglas Carswell, elected on 9 October 2014 in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, with a landslide of 60% of the vote, are historical events.

Both seats were won in by-elections necessitated when Mr Carswell and Mr Reckless, already MPs for those constituencies for the Conservative Party, defected to UKIP and left their seats, which they later regained with their new party.

For good or for bad, UKIP, for all its limitations, is changing the British political landscape forever.

Its limitations are a lack of long-term clarity about the objectives the party wants to achieve. "What does it stand for?" is a different question from "Whom does it stand for?".

The answer to the latter is obvious: the great number of British people of middle and working classes who have seen their country transformed beyond recognition in the relatively short time of a few decades, in the most evident way by unrestricted immigration with concomitant multiculturalism and Islamisation, but also in a less macroscopic way by other cultural developments introduced by the New Left, like same-sex marriage, sexualisation of children and what the press calls "political correctness gone mad".

In short, socio-communist agenda goals tacitly or overtly accepted and promoted by the misnamed Conservative Party as well as the most obvious culprits, Labour and LibDems.

The people who are worried by all these recent phenomena and even more scared by the main political parties' inaction at best and collusion at worst regarding them are absolutely right. What they don't necessarily have, after many years of media's and education system's propaganda, is a clear idea of what caused them and where to start if we want to stop, let alone reverse, these momentum-gathering trends.

To know that is the job of politicians. Hence, the question "what to stand for" needs to be answered. It's not enough to be against the EU, mass immigration and the LibLabCon.

Here the UKIP represents vast numbers of the electorate even too well. Like them, it senses the problems but doesn't grasp the solution.

Irish statesman and political thinker Edmund Burke (1729–1797), himself an MP in the House of Commons for many years, made an important distinction between representatives and delegates.

In his famous Speech to the Electors at Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll of 1774, he explained that delegates exclusively carry out the instructions of those who elected them, therefore only reflecting the views and wishes of their constituents.

Representatives, on the other hands, are trustees. Voters have entrusted them to act in their best interest, which doesn't necessarily coincide with what the voters want. Moreover, the representative makes choices on the basis of the common interest, and not just of those who elected him. He considers his constituents' views but doesn't have to abide by their wishes. He follows his conscience. The representative, thus, having knowledge and experience that his constituents generally lack, uses his judgement to form an opinion on what's in the public interest, and acts accordingly.

MPs, Burke said, should be representatives and not delegates.

So, in Bristol he proclaimed (The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume I, London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854, pp. 446–8):

... it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion....

You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament. [Emphasis added]

In these days of rampant populism it's important to realise that the old clique of politicians, in Britain as elsewhere in the West, hasn't acted wrongly so much because it's gone against people's will as because it's gone against people's interest.

In fact, in many cases the political class has given people what they wanted - an unsustainable welfare state - in its own interest, which was to get elected, but has gone against their interest by creating an unprecedented national debt of astronomic proportions that may bankrupt the state and will burden future generations.

UKIP doesn't seem to be different from the other parties in this respect. It doesn't like to tell people uncomfortable truths, as can be seen by the compromises it has already started making, for example by promising that millions of European immigrants can remain in Britain after an EU exit, by its soft stance on Islam, and similar.

UKIP wants to appear politically correct.

Its policies are fluid, constantly changed. Its representatives are often caught saying things against party policy. When put under scrutiny, they often don't know what to say.

All this is not unique to them, but can be found in other parties. But that's exactly it. Where is the difference? Where is a long-term plan for effective change? If UKIP knew the answer, it wouldn't have remained for a very long time without a manifesto, including during the 2014 European elections campaign.

In the end, leaving the European Union is not the ultimate solution. What will UKIP change after that? What about the Third World immigrants, who are an immensely greater problem than Bulgarians and Romanians? What about Islamisation of Britain? What about the erosion of Christian values? The ideological dominance of the Left?

UKIP is a breath of fresh air in the stagnant political situation of the UK, but air, though essential, is not the only necessity of life.

Black Pete, Symbol of Dutch Resistance against Invaders, Wins

Saturday, in the Dutch historical city of Gouda, the police arrested no fewer than 90 people, protesting both for and against the "Black Pete" blackface character appearing at a children's party marking the beginning of the traditional pre-Christmas, gift-giving festival of Saint Nicholas.

"Sixty people were arrested for demonstrating in unauthorised areas, and 30 for disturbing the peace" said police spokeswoman Yvette Verboon.

You may wonder what could happen during a festive gathering, held to celebrate the arrival of St. Nicholas, to cause such a law-and-order turmoil.

It's our old friend political correctness at work, with attendant accusations of racism. The word "black" means all the difference in the world. We'll have to abolish it from our vocabulary, we cannot use it any more without provoking mayhem.

Not even children and, as in this Dutch case, their events are immune from the PC clutches, as we know from the over 30,000 nursery toddlers and school children labelled racist or homophobic over minor squabbles in one single year in the UK, where schools are forced to report un-PC words used by kids to education authorities, which keep a register of "incidents". These records can remain on file, and schools will provide future employers or universities with them as a pupil's reference, with the potential to blight a child for life.

Back in Gouda, thousands of parents and their young children - some with their faces painted black - gathered in the the city's market square where the celebration was taking place to welcome the national arrival of Sinterklaas (St Nicholas) and his black-faced helpers on a white horse.

A TRADITION WHICH DIVIDES A NATION

According to Christmas folklore in Holland and Belgium, Black Pete (Zwarte Piet in Dutch) is the jolly companion of Saint Nicholas, who climbs down chimneys to help him deliver presents to kids.

The character has a long history. The Dutch celebrate the Sinterklaas festival during a period that culminates on Saint Nicholas Day, 5 December. The beginning of the festivities coincides with St Nicholas' arrival by boat accompanied by Black Pete, or rather hundreds of Black Petes packing the flotilla following the saint’s vessel. St Nicholas then rides a white horse through the streets, escorted by the Black Petes amusing children as they hand out sweets and treats to them.

It's a fun, joyous time for kids and adults, seen as the highlight of the year.

Dutch cities take it in turn to host the start of the annual festival. This year, the national event of Saint Nicholas' arrival aboard a steamboat from Spain kicked off in Gouda on 15 November, broadcast live on Dutch national television and looked forward to by children.

The actors and revellers portraying the Black Pete character are white people who traditionally paint their faces black, sport frizzy hair, golden earrings, large red lips and gaudy, bright-coloured Medieval costumes.

Across the Netherlands, celebrations in which Saint Nicholas comes to town surrounded by Black Petes have been attacked by "anti-racism" campaigners. The critics, including a group called "Zwarte Piet is Racism", claim that Pete is a racist stereotype from the colonial era, and "liberal" politicians have called for the character to be abolished.

This antagonism has led to an increasingly acrimonious polarisation of the Dutch society, because the overwhelming majority of the country supports Black Pete. A poll showed that more than 90% of the Dutch reject the idea that Black Pete is racist and would not change his appearance.

And, in a population of less than 17 million, over 2 million people signed a Facebook petition last year, calling on Black Pete's appearance to remain the same.

While the Facebook page "The Dutch 'Black Pete' tradition is racism" has a risible number of 198 "Likes", the Facebook page "Pietitie" in Pete's support has 2,012,438 "Likes". It says: "Don't let the Netherlands' most beautiful tradition disappear."

This FB page is Holland's most popular ever.

Kudos to the Dutch. Make no mistake. This is not just to maintain a nice tradition and a children's festival, important as it is. This is a movement to resist invaders who try to impose their ways and wills on the colonised Europeans.

The Dutch say Black Pete is harmless fun, an integral part of Dutch culture that is now under fire from outsiders. As Dutchman Marco put it: "This is how I celebrate, how my grandmother and grandfather and parents celebrated, and I don't think it's racist."

The Dutch Freedom Party, with its leader Geert Wilders, has proposed legislation that would enshrine Pete's black colour in law.

Martin Bosma, the Freedom Party's culture spokesman, said: "Ministers and mayors are working to give this loyal helper another colour. That must not happen. Our culture should not be damaged from on high. This law must protect Black Pete."

Belgium, where Black Pete is also a popular character and the same pre-Christmas celebrations take place in many cities, faces similar problems.

Human rights activist Maria Hengeveld, who writes for the Africa is a Country website, claimed: "In general, attacks on Zwarte Piet are widely interpreted as attacks on (white) Dutchness and threats to (white) children's right to jovially celebrate their 'cultural heritage'". She went on to argue that politicians, lawmakers and big businesses "are sensitive to public feeling" on the issue. As an example, Albert Heijn, Holland's largest supermarket chain, went back on its promise to ban Black Pete from its stores after a huge public outcry.

Even the country’s Prime Minister Mark Rutte, probably sensing that the electorate wouldn't be pleased with anything different, has backed the side that favours Black Pete.

VICTORY FOR BLACK PETE

This shows what a united, determined nation can do. Some meddling from the UN was revoked:

The [Facebook] page, attracting over a million likes in just one day, followed a letter from the UN's human rights body announcing an investigation and warning the Dutch that the [Black Pete] character is a "racist stereotype".

Marc Jacobs, a Belgian Unesco representative, the UN's cultural organisation, has denied that the Jamaican who signed the letter, was authorised to do so.

"She's just a consultant who abused the name of the UN to bring their own agenda to the media. All the hoopla that Shepherd has caused with her letter is nothing more than a bad move in the game of pressure groups in the Netherlands," he told the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper.

The letter, on headed, official UN high commission for human rights paper, was sent to the Dutch government expressing concerns over the tradition and accusing the authorities of failing to react to complaints of racial discrimination.

Verene Shepherd, who said she was the chairwoman of a UN investigation into the Sinterklaas festival earlier this week called on the Dutch to ban Black Pete.

And last week the highest administrative court in the Netherlands, the Council of State, overturned the ruling of a lower court which had called Black Pete "a negative stereotype" that "infringes on the European treaty of human rights".

The Council of State refused to rule on whether the character was racist.

SCUFFLES IN GOUDA

The procession in Gouda was marred by scuffles, whether between the occasion's supporters and protesters, some of whom were wearing T-shirts saying "Black Pete is racist", or between protesters and police is not clear. Probably both, because the protesters did not remain in their cages, the only place suitable for them.

The Dutch police were forced to make dozens of arrests because protesters moved to the centre of the Medieval city, where the festival was taking place, to demonstrate, instead of staying in designated protest areas outside Gouda's market square. When they were asked to leave the square, they refused and the police took the necessary measures.

Public prosecutor spokesman Wouter Bos said all those held for demonstrating in the wrong place were anti-Black-Pete protesters and they would be fined 220 euros each. Not much of a punishment.

Some children got mixed up in the trouble, and Gouda mayor Milo Schoenmaker said the atmosphere had been "vicious". "It's a pity that adults from outside the city felt the need to demonstrate among the children at the end of the procession," he told the national news agency ANP.

The Netherlands' Prime Minister Mark Rutte joined the debate, supporting the controversial ceremony: "Everyone can talk about Black Pete's colour. But we should not disturb a children's party in this way" he told broadcaster NOS. The clashes made him “deeply, deeply sad”, he said.

For the first time, in an attempt to mollify the critics, the mayor introduced other coloured Petes, like "Cheese Petes" with yellow faces, "Stroopwafel Petes" with striped, light brown faces resembling a Dutch biscuit of the same name, and "Clown Petes" with white faces.

This didn't placate demonstrators and made many people angry.


CONCLUSION

"Black Peter is black," said the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. "We cannot do much to change that."

Well said. Aren't tradition and national folklore values to respect a bit more, and the hypersensitivities of minorities, who are after all uninvited guests to the Netherlands treated with great generosity, a bit less? Why should the Dutch, as well as the rest of white Westerners, be the only ones expected to make sacrifices of their identity?

American Whites a Minority by 2050

If current worldwide demographic trends continue, whites are seriously an endangered race.

A new baby boom of Hispanic, Asian and black children will make whites a minority in the USA by 2050.

White birth rates in America are falling, while immigrants and minorities are having more children.

The population surge does not derive directly from immigration, but rather from immigrants alreday in the USA having children.

This is in the new book Diversity Explosion (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) by Brookings Institution demographer William Frey.

The book contains highly detailed charts and maps showing how falling white birth-rates and rising minority birth-rates will change the way the United States looks and votes forever.

The population of mixed-race Americans will dramatically increase, nearly tripling, in the next 50 years.

The Brookings Institution appears fairly liberal, but the book itself has precious information.

From The Daily Mail:

There are already nearly as many non-white babies being born as white children, according to Census Bureau statistics. It's only a matter of time before minorities children outnumber white ones.

The result, Frey tells the Atlantic, will be very similar to the Baby Boom after the Second World War - except this time it will be minority children being born.

'Back in the 1950s, we had a lot of Americans across the board in their childbearing years - we had all these babies,' he said.

'Now, that's really only the case for some of the newer minorities.'

And it's not just cities that will be changing. The suburbs are already becoming more diverse and are likely to become progressively less white year after year.

Between 2000 and 2010, the population of Hispanics in suburbs grew by more than eight million. Major cities added just three million Hispanics.

Islam between Illusion and Reality

A new article by our guest writer Cassandra.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Imagine, if you can, a fairy tale where a mother teaches her toddler that wolves are simply big, furry, friendly dogs that love a good cuddle. Although she and her child live in a village, nestled against a hillside, in a lush valley where humans and wolves exist in close proximity to each other, she doesn't warn her little girl that wolves are dangerous.

Instead, as well as teaching her daughter that wolves are just big, furry, friendly dogs that love a good cuddle, she also teaches her that it is deeply wrong, even evil, to think the opposite. She explains that this is a bigoted way of thinking. It is what the people of the village thought in the past, and it led to warfare and unbridled hatred towards noble, peaceful wolves. So, although now and again news spreads throughout the village that a wolf has taken a child in the night, the mother continues to assure her daughter that it is the worst thing imaginable to even think about being wary of wolves.

It might make for a marginally entertaining fairy-tale: one that I may write some day, but the mother would surely be the villain of the story. In that fairy tale rather than referring to the Big Bad Wolf, it would be more fitting to refer to the Big Bad Mum.

Something similar is happening today in the West in relation to Islam. We see the effect of it whenever its followers do something so atrociously violent that the media cannot ignore it, and our rulers rush out to defend the reputation of Islam by telling us that it is a religion of peace. It would be "Islamophobic" not to think so, and there is nothing worse than that. However, if a Muslim does something good, the good act can, and most likely will, be attributed to Islam. The implication being that Islam is good, and that it only inspires good acts in people.

I am not saying that all Muslims are violent or dangerous. What I am saying is that this new dogma being adopted in the West - that there is nothing negative, violent or threatening in the doctrine of Islam - is not just false, it is also dangerous. To cajole people into thinking that Islam poses no danger to them on penalty of being deemed "Islamophobic" is to force people to irrationally view something which is a potential danger to them as harmless. This puts lives at risk. Since one of the prime duties of government is to protect the lives of the governed, this is a dereliction of duty on the part of our rulers.

But it is more than that, because it also shows that, although they like to portray themselves as people who care about the weak and vulnerable in society, the opposite is true. They do not in fact care about their people - weak, vulnerable or otherwise. What they do care about is maintaining the status of their ideology and quelling opposition to the type of society that they have engineered through mass immigration. If their citizens, old and young, male and female, suffer or die as a result, that is a price worth paying. They are worthy sacrifices to the Moloch that is multiculturalism.

This point was made clear recently here in England where staff members at Rotherham council were reported to have been reluctant to identify the ethnic origin of child abusers for fear of being considered "racist". They would no doubt have been equally nervous about identifying the religion to which these men belonged for fear of being considered "Islamophobic". It was later reported that child abuse files went missing from the council's archives.

Of course there are many peaceful Muslims who do not do everything that their religion demands, but there are many Muslims that are not peaceful and who do follow their religion to the letter. The current UK terrorist "threat level" is set at "severe", which means that "a terrorist attack is highly likely". Which supposedly means that one should be particularly vigilant as to "suspicious" behaviour. At the same time, since Islam is a "religion of peace" from which only good actions can possibly come forth, people like the staff members at Rotherham council would supposedly be reluctant to report any "suspicious" behaviour on the part of a Muslim for fear of being deemed "Islamophobic".

It is the same insidious dogma which has led to the kidnapping and/or murder of well-meaning Westerners attempting to help people in the Middle East, the most recent example of which is the murder of American citizen Peter Kassig. The American president has already taken the opportunity to use the beheading of Mr Kassig by a Muslim who justified his actions in Islamic terms, and who belonged to a group calling itself the Islamic State, to defend the reputation of Islam. President Obama is reported as having said: “ISIL's actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith which Abdul-Rahman adopted as his own”. He failed to highlight the fact that Peter Kassig “adopted” Islam while a captive whose life was at the mercy of his Muslim captors. He also failed to highlight the fact that Mr Kassig had “adopted” the only religion that mandates death for those who apostatise from it.

Others who have followed President Obama's way of thinking include two female Italian aid workers, Greta Ramelli and Vanessa Marzullo, kidnapped by Muslims in northern Syria. And Theo Padnos, whose story I recommend that you read in its entirety. It shows precisely how the “Islam is a religion of peace” dogma renders people unable to recognise danger.

And, lest anyone should think that this is just a European problem, in the US children are also being indoctrinated in school to believe that Islam is a religion of peace.

We should observe not only the strange phenomenon of Western leaders rushing to defend the reputation of Islam, but also that the West is subtly introducing blasphemy laws when it comes to that religion, under the guise of "hate-speech" laws. In parts of the world where Muslims are a majority, it is anathema to say anything that may tarnish Islam's reputation. The reputation of the ideology must be maintained at all costs. It is even more important than the human being. As such, the human being may be punished or even destroyed for the sake of preserving the status of the doctrine. That is the kind of society that we are drifting towards. It goes against the worldview developed in the West where the individual is central and respect for the individual trumps - or used to trump - any other ideology, thus producing the notion of freedom of speech. Respect for the individual and respect for freedom of speech are two sides of the same coin.

Leaders in Muslim-majority countries and Islamic leaders in this country fear that Muslims will connect the dots by looking at the effect of Islam across the modern world and reach the common-sense conclusion that it is not a good religion and they will therefore abandon it. Leaders in the West fear that their citizens will look at the effect of Islam across the modern world and reach the conclusion that is not a good religion, and therefore that the multicultural project which feeds its growth here in the West is not a good thing either. Both know that, once the illusions they have fostered are shattered, it will be impossible to reconstruct them.

World's Largest Solar Plant Is a Failure

"The largest solar power plant of its type in the world [the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, in California] - once promoted as a turning point in green energy - isn't producing as much energy as planned."

Why aren't I surprised?

"One of the reasons is as basic as it gets: The sun isn't shining as much as expected."

A bit like the wind doesn't blow as much or as little as expected, which is why wind farms are useless.

And that's not all. The worst is this: the Ivanpah solar power plant is killing nearly 30,000 birds per year. Birds are being scorched to death mid-air in the idiotic quest for "clean" energy.

Federal wildlife investigators visited the plant and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one "streamer" (as the birds are called for the smoke plume that comes from them as they ignite in midair) every two minutes.

They are now proposing to build an even larger, new 75-storey plant, to be located near a huge bird sanctuary.

From Associated Press:

Sprawling across roughly 5 square miles of federal desert near the California-Nevada border, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System opened in February, with operators saying it would produce enough electricity to power a city of 140,000 homes.

So far, however, the plant is producing about half of its expected annual output for 2014, according to calculations by the California Energy Commission.

It had been projected to produce its full capacity for 8 hours a day, on average.

"Factors such as clouds, jet contrails and weather have had a greater impact on the plant than the owners anticipated," the agency said in a statement.

It could take until 2018 for the plant backed by $1.6 billion in federal loan guarantees to hit its annual peak target, said NRG Energy Inc., which operates the plant and co-owns it with Google Inc. and BrightSource Energy.

"During startup we have experienced ... equipment challenges, typical with any new technology, combined with irregular weather patterns," NRG spokesman Jeff Holland said in a statement. "We are confident that Ivanpah's long-term generation projections will meet expectations."

The technology used at Ivanpah is different than the familiar photovoltaic panels commonly used for rooftop solar installations. The plant's solar-thermal system - sometimes called concentrated-solar thermal - relies on nearly 350,000 computer-controlled mirrors at the site, each the size of a garage door.

The mirrors reflect sunlight to boilers atop 459-foot towers - each taller than the Statue of Liberty. The resulting steam drives turbines to create electricity.

When the $2.2 billion complex opened, Energy Department Secretary Ernest Moniz called it a "symbol of the exciting progress" in renewable energy.

While the agency still says the project remains in good standing, Kaitlin Meese, an analyst at research firm Bentek Energy, said its early production figures "do not paint a strong picture for solar-thermal technology development."

The operation of such plants is highly dependent on weather conditions, and predicting when and how strongly the sun will shine is not a perfect science.

A little bit of inefficiency with mirrors can translate into a loss of power output ranging from small to significant, said Dr. Neil Fromer, executive director of the Resnick Sustainability Institute at the California Institute of Technology.

Norway Says Enough, Deports Record Numbers of Immigrants to Reduce Crime

The Norwegian paper The Local reported in September that asylum seekers and illegal immigrants (euphemistically called "persons living in Norway without papers") are over-represented in the country's crime statistics:

Asylum seekers and visa-less immigrants in Norway are charged with twice as many crimes per head of population as Norwegians, but still account for a very small proportion of overall criminality, a new report has said. [Emphasis added]

The authors of the report from the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI), in the typical, apologetic style of officialdom, felt compelled to add: "This is so little that it has minimal significance to the big picture of crime in Norway." This reservation echoes the way in which in Britain figures are twisted and contorted to portray immigration, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, as economically beneficial to the UK.

But on this occasion there has been a sort of social experiment carried out in Norway in the last couple of years, that empirically disproves the "minimal significance to the big picture of crime" fabrication.

Norwegians have progressively become aware of the link between crime and immigration. A November 2013 survey revealed that over half of the capital Oslo's residents feared street crime due to the rise in muggings. It got so bad that even the new Prime Minister, Conservative Erna Solberg, declared that immigrant parents should control their mugger kids.

Oslo saw 120 robberies in October [2013], more than any other city in Scandinavia. There were just 78 robberies recorded in Copenhagen and only 63 in Stockholm.

That something has started to change in Europe is obvious from the response from Norway's immigrant politicians, who agreed that young gang members are mostly foreigners and their parents could do more.

"I think actually Erna's hit the nail on the head here," said Abid Raja from the Liberal Party. "It's time to get past worries over making immigrant parents feel stigmatized. It is mainly young people from immigrant community who commit these robberies."

Action followed words. Last year the brand new government elected in Autumn - a minority coalition of Conservatives with the right-wing, anti-immigration, populist Progress Party, that has replaced a Labour government - started cracking down on immigration.

Progress, created 40 years ago, is in government for the first time.

Among the tougher measures implemented was that deported foreign criminals who return to Norway now face 2 years’ jail, a 10-fold increase in the penalty from 35 days, a measure that had the unanimous support from all parties.

But the most important policy introduced has been the vast increase in number of deportations.

In 2013, a record number of 5,198 foreign citizens were expelled from the country, an increase of 31% from 2012, when 3,958 people were deported.

Frode Forfang, head of the UDI, put it simply: "We believe that one reason for the increase is that the police have become more conscious of using deportation as a tool to fight crime.”

The number of deportations increases from one year to the next and one month to the other.

In October 2014, 824 people were forced out, which is the highest number of people deported in a month in the history of Norway’s National Police Immigration Service (PU).

This has established a new record, beating the previous record set in the month before, September 2014, with 763 deportations.

The National Police Immigration Service (Politiets Utlendingsenhet) has released latest figures showing in the last six months [from the article's date, 3 July 2014] an average of 18 illegal immigrants per day were deported from Norway. This figure is up from 13 deportations for the same period last year.

The main reasons for deportations are people not having valid residence visas or being involved in crime. During the first half year this year, 3,167 people were forced out of Norway, 1,237 of whom had criminal convictions, newspaper Dagbladet reports.

Kristin Ottesen Kvigne, head of the police immigration service, told the newspaper: "We are at our highest number of illegal immigrants ever and deportation is a policy the government wants".

The service has a target of 7,100 people to be deported by the end of 2014.

What has the result been?

PU head Kristin Kvigne, in an interview with the Dagsavisen newspaper, said that the increased deportations save Norwegian society much money. It costs money to try people in the courts and to jail them.

She explained that people have been deported because their asylum applications have been rejected in terms of the Dublin Agreement, the international agreement which governs asylum seeker applications.

If the current trend continues, the PU will “reach its target” of deporting at least 7,100 people this year, meaning that at least 20 per day are being sent home.

Of the 5876 people deported this year so far, the majority have already been found guilty of criminal acts, Kvigne said. She said it was thus “important to view the high number of deportations made by PU in the context of falling crime rates across the country.”

She said that Norway has a voluntary repatriation program, where “asylum seekers” are paid to return to their home countries, but few take up the offer and most have to be forcibly deported.

Patriotism Means Uncovering the Truth

Unfortunately I'll have to skip tomorrow's London Forum meeting.

But I wish to write about the topic of one of the announced speeches, by Richard Edmonds: "Bad Nenndorf – a Nuremberg Trial for Allied War Criminals". The subject is described as "the tragedy of Bad Nenndorf where in the aftermath of WWII British torturers, many of them later emigrating to Israel, killed dozens of National Socialist sympathisers including girls belonging to the BDSM."

Richard Edmonds is a British nationalist who is capable of criticising his country when necessary, who rightly doesn't believe that patriotism means defending the indefensible.

I'd never heard of this Allied interrogation centre, a secret prison established after the British occupation of north-west Germany in 1945, so I did some research and here's what I've found.

This is Wikipedia's brief introduction to it:

The Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre was a British Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre in the town of Bad Nenndorf, Germany, which operated from June 1945 to July 1947. Allegations of mistreatment of detainees by British troops resulted in a police investigation, a public controversy in both Britain and Germany and the camp's eventual closure. Four of the camp's officers were brought before courts-martial in 1948 and one of the four was convicted on charges of neglect.

Hundreds of mostly German prisoners after the end of WWII were held in a camp converted from a mud bath complex - with the former bathing chambers becoming prison cells - in Bad Nenndorf, a spa town near Hanover.

Although British authorities tried to keep this centre hidden from public scrutiny, in December 2005 investigative reporter Ian Cobain wrote an article published in The Guardian, based on information he had obtained from a Freedom of Information Request to the Foreign Office. He described Bad Nenndorf in powerful terms:

Britain's secret torture centre. The interrogation camp that turned prisoners into living skeletons.

German spa became a forbidden village where Gestapo-like techniques were used...

CSDIC [Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre], a division of the War Office, operated interrogation centres around the world, including one known as the London Cage, located in one of London's most exclusive neighbourhoods. Official documents discovered last month at the National Archives at Kew, south-west London, show that the London Cage was a secret torture centre where German prisoners who had been concealed from the Red Cross were beaten, deprived of sleep, and threatened with execution or with unnecessary surgery.

As horrific as conditions were at the London Cage, Bad Nenndorf was far worse. Last week, Foreign Office files which have remained closed for almost 60 years were opened after a request by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act. These papers, and others declassified earlier, lay bare the appalling suffering of many of the 372 men and 44 women who passed through the centre during the 22 months it operated before its closure in July 1947.

They detail the investigation carried out by a Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Tom Hayward, following the complaints of Major Morgan-Jones and Dr Jordan. Despite the precise and formal prose of the detective's report to the military government, anger and revulsion leap from every page as he turns his spotlight on a place where prisoners were systematically beaten and exposed to extreme cold, where some were starved to death and, allegedly, tortured with instruments that his fellow countrymen had recovered from a Gestapo prison in Hamburg. Even today, the Foreign Office is refusing to release photographs taken of some of the "living skeletons" on their release.

Initially, most of the detainees were Nazi party members or former members of the SS, rounded up in an attempt to thwart any Nazi insurgency. A significant number, however, were industrialists, tobacco importers, oil company bosses or forestry owners who had flourished under Hitler.

By late 1946, the papers show, an increasing number were suspected Soviet agents. Some were NKVD officers - Russians, Czechs and Hungarians - but many were simply German leftists. Others were Germans living in the Russian zone who had crossed the line, offered to spy on the Russians, and were tortured to establish whether they were genuine defectors.

Of many of these men Scotland Yard detective Hayward said that there were not charged with any crime but on the contrary were willing to help, were detained for no reason at all, and died of malnutrition and lack of medical care. Inspector Hayward reported: "There are a number against whom no offence has been alleged, and the only authority for their detention would appear to be that they are citizens of a country still nominally at war with us." Cobain goes on to explain an important part of the problem:

Of the 20 interrogators ordered to break the inmates of Bad Nenndorf, 12 were British, a combination of officers from the three services and civilian linguists. The remaining eight included a Pole and a Dutchman, but were mostly German Jewish refugees who had enlisted on the outbreak of war, and who, Inspector Hayward suggested, "might not be expected to be wholly impartial".

Cobain has penned other articles on the subject for The Guardian and written a book on the history of torture perpetrated by British officials during and after the Second World War, entitled Cruel Britannia (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) . The book was published in autumn 2012, when one of his essays appeared in the Daily Mail with this headline, upsetting but truthful:

How Britain tortured Nazi PoWs: The horrifying interrogation methods that belie our proud boast that we fought a clean war.

James Heartfield, in the book Unpatriotic History of the Second World War (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) , writes:

Internal investigations revealed that torture was rife at Bad Nenndorf, and that many had died of injuries or of starvation.

Why, then, were there so few convictions?

After, in 1946 and 1947, several Bad Nenndorf inmates were taken to nearby hospitals and some died there, the doctors reported these cases. A court of inquiry was appointed, followed by a full enquiry by a Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Tom Hayward. By June 1947 Hayward had amassed an enormous amount of evidence in support of the allegations of ill-treatment and use of methods which were extreme even for a harsh military prison holding suspected Nazi war criminals.

His report led to the camp's closure the following month, and to the courts-martial of the camp Commandant Lt Col Robin Stephens, the medical officer and two interrogators in 1948.

Hayward had found that interrogators and guards were not likely to be impartial towards the prisoners because of the criteria used in their selection, among which knowledge of German language and hatred for Germans were predominant. The most likely new recruits, as a consequence, were Austrian and German Jewish refugees. One such recruit was Lt Richard Oliver Langham, one of the interrogators to be court-martialled.

News of the courts-martial reached the papers, in particular The Times and The Daily Express.

The book Liberal Democracies at War: Conflict and Representation (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) , edited by Andrew Knapp and Hilary Footitt, gives some idea of why these men were acquitted or convicted on minor charges, like neglect rather than manslaughter.

The Times's coverage of the courts-martial well reflected the spirit of the time and its little appetite for getting to the truth and giving a just punishment which was unpalatable for so many reasons, not least as an admission of guilt involving the war effort itself. That spirit was probably behind the excessive leniency of the court.

This latter topic is too long for the present article, and may be worth covering in a separate one.