Socialism at Work: Council's Foster Family Break-up

This is another bit of totalitarianism in Britain. We should not be surprised. After all, what we call, sarcastically but also kindly, "political correctness" is in fact socialism or outright Marxism, a totalitarian ideology.

Having the "wrong" ideas and being affiliated with real opposition parties is punished in totalitarian states. Welcome to the UK.

And after all, attacks on the family have been part of Marxism since its inception, when Frederick Engels wrote in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State that family is a patriarchal, bourgeois institution oppressing women, that replaced the matrilineal clan as main domestic institution.

After the news that Labour-run Rotherham Council, in South Yorkshire, had removed children from a foster home only because the foster couple are members of the UK Independence Party broke out, Education Secretary Michael Gove said social workers at the council had made "the wrong decision in the wrong way for the wrong reasons".

Labour leader Ed Miliband also intervened calling for an urgent investigation, saying "being a member of UKIP should not be a bar to adopting children".

As a consequence of the criticisms from all sides, Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, whose original response had been to defend its decision, has now announced that it will carry out an urgent review of the case.

Foster parents 'stigmatised and slandered’ for being members of Ukip:

A couple had their three foster children taken away by a council on the grounds that their membership of the UK Independence Party meant that they supported “racist” policies.

The husband and wife, who have been fostering for nearly seven years, said they were made to feel like criminals when a social worker told them that their views on immigration made them unsuitable carers.

The couple said they feared that there was a black mark against their name and they would not be able to foster again.

Campaigners representing foster parents have described the decision as “ridiculous” and warned that it could deter other prospective foster parents from volunteering.

Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, described the actions of Rotherham borough council as “a bloody outrage” and “political prejudice of the very worst kind”.

Tim Loughton, the former children’s minister, said: “I will be very concerned if decisions have been made about the children’s future that were based on misguided political correctness around ethnic considerations.

"Being a supporter of a mainstream political party is not a deal-breaker when it comes to looking after children if it means they can have a loving family home.”

The couple, who do not want to be named to avoid identifying the children they have fostered, are in their late 50s and live in a neat detached house in a village in South Yorkshire.

The husband was a Royal Navy reservist for more than 30 years and works with disabled people, while his wife is a qualified nursery nurse.

Former Labour voters, they have been approved foster parents for nearly seven years and have looked after about a dozen different children, one of them in a placement lasting four years.

They took on the three children — a baby girl, a boy and an older girl, who were all from an ethnic minority and a troubled family background — in September in an emergency placement.

They believe that the youngsters thrived in their care. The couple were described as “exemplary” foster parents: the baby put on weight and the older girl even began calling them “mum and dad”.

However, just under eight weeks into the placement, they received a visit out of the blue from the children’s social worker at the Labour-run council and an official from their fostering agency.

They were told that the local safeguarding children team had received an anonymous tip-off that they were members of Ukip.

The wife recalled: “I was dumbfounded. Then my question to both of them was, 'What has Ukip got to do with having the children removed?’

“Then one of them said, 'Well, Ukip have got racist policies’. The implication was that we were racist. [The social worker] said Ukip does not like European people and wants them all out of the country to be returned to their own countries.

“I’m sat there and I’m thinking, 'What the hell is going off here?’ because I wouldn’t have joined Ukip if they thought that. I’ve got mixed race in my family. I said, 'I am absolutely offended that you could come in my house and accuse me of being a member of a racist party’.”

The wife said she told the social worker and agency official: “These kids have been loved. These kids have been treated no differently to our own children. We wouldn’t have taken these children on if we had been racist.”

The boy was taken away from them the following day and the two girls were removed at the end of that week.

The wife said the social worker told her: “We would not have placed these children with you had we known you were members of Ukip because it wouldn’t have been the right cultural match.” The wife said she was left “bereft”, adding: “We felt like we were criminals. From having a little baby in my arms, suddenly there was an empty cot. I knew she wouldn’t have been here for ever, but usually there is a build-up of several weeks. I was in tears.”

Her husband added: “If we were moving the children on to happier circumstances we would be feeling warm and happy. To have it done like that, it’s beyond the pale.”

The couple said they had been “stigmatised and slandered”.

A spokesman for Rotherham metropolitan borough council said last night: “After a group of sibling children were placed with agency foster carers, issues were raised regarding the long-term suitability of the carers for these particular children.

"With careful consideration, a decision was taken to move the children to alternative care. We continue to keep the situation under review.”

Ukip was once considered a single-issue fringe party but is now part of Britain’s political mainstream, with some recent national polls putting its support as high as nine per cent. Its manifesto includes a demand for Britain to pull out of Europe and to curb immigration.

It is also critical of multiculturalism and political correctness. It has a candidate in next week’s Rotherham by-election.

Mr Farage said: “I am outraged politically and very upset for them. I think this is the kind of thing where we need some sort of decree from a Government minister that Ukip is not a racist party.

“This is political prejudice of the very worst kind. It is just a bloody outrage.”

He pointed out that Ukip has a black candidate in the forthcoming Croydon North by-election.

David Goosey, the chairman of the trustees at Community Foster care, an independent fostering charity, said: “If this is accurate and there are no other extraneous matters that have concerned the authorities, then it is completely ridiculous and no self-respecting authority should be stopping people fostering on the grounds of their membership of Ukip.”

Rotherham metropolitan borough council’s equality policy states that it is committed to “promoting equality and good relations between people of different racial groups”.

Senior Tories have criticised “politically correct” rules requiring children to be adopted by families of the same ethnic background.

In March, David Cameron pledged to tackle “absurd” barriers to mixed-race adoption, while Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said last year that “Left-wing prescriptions” were denying children loving new homes.

This is the way the council had initially defended its position, which is now reviewing:

But Joyce Thacker, the council's Director of Children and Young People's Services, today said the three ethnic minority children had been placed with the couple as an emergency and the arrangement was never going to be long-term.

She told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We always try to place children in a sensible cultural placement. These children are not UK children and we were not aware of the foster parents having strong political views.

"There are some strong views in the Ukip party and we have to think of the future of the children."

"Also the fact of the matter is I have to look at the children's cultural and ethnic needs. The children have been in care proceedings before and the judge had previously criticised us for not looking after the children's cultural and ethnic needs, and we have had to really take that into consideration with the placement that they were in."

Asked what the specific problem was with the couple being Ukip members, Mrs Thacker told the BBC: "We have to think about the clear statements on ending multi-culturalism for example.

"These children are from EU migrant backgrounds and Ukip has very clear statements on ending multiculturalism, not having that going forward, and I have to think about how sensitive I am being to those children."

Gaza: Media Distortions in Words and Images

Won't Get Fooled Again, sang The Who.

Apparently many got fooled again and again, maybe because they wanted to.

The mainstream media people and outlets have published and circulated in various ways, including social media, photos and videos purportedly of Israel's Palestinian victims in Gaza which were in fact very doubtful, fake or not what they were described to be.

These are some of the several visual misrepresentations:

1) Hamas has used photos of children and other people wounded or killed in Syria and circulated them through social networks claiming they were Palestinians.

2) Jon Donnison, a BBC journalist, retweeted a dramatic photo of two children, one of whom dead on a stretcher, from an original tweet by Palestinian activist Hazem Balousha with the misleading description "Pain in #Gaza." The BBC reporter did not make any effort to verify the picture’s authenticity. In reality, the photo is from October 28 and the child was wounded in Syria.

Donnison later apologized for the retweet, but, after the original retweet had reached his over 7,000 followers and received almost 100 retweets, the damage was already done. As far as I know, the original Palestinian twitter did not issue any apology.

3) On the first day of the war The Guardian published a grotesque cartoon of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a huge, cruel, nasty-looking, all-powerful puppeteer pulling the strings of the UK's Foreign Secretary William Hague and former Prime Minister Tony Blair, against the background of Israeli missiles and the writing "Vote Likud", hinting that, as BBC's Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen has suggested, re-election is the motive for Netanyahu's strikes in Gaza.

4) Hamas has, as other times before, been caught faking an image of a dead Palestinian child claiming that an Israeli strike was responsible, this time using a 4-year-old boy likely killed by its own rocket fire.

CNN's Sara Sidner ran a full report on the death of the child, Mahmoud Sadallah, strongly implying that he had been victim of an Israeli bomb. Associated Press news agency also used the image.

Even The New York Times had doubts about this. Several sources, including the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, have now reported that the child was in reality not killed by Israel but by a Hamas rocket. Many bloggers exposed and reported the fakery.

In fact, the office of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that "60 of the 703 rockets fired by Hamas and other terror groups since the start of the conflict have fallen on Palestinian civilians. The Israel Defense Force says that 99 rockets in total that were fired at Israel have hit Gaza itself in four days of conflict".

5) As Honest Reporting highlighted in its top 5 media fails, "The footage of a beige jacketed Palestinian man making a miraculous recovery after appearing to be injured in an Israeli airstrike was broadcast not only on the BBC but also on CNN." (video above)

CNN verified the footage with Reuters news agency, from which they had got it, and not receiving a satisfactory answer removed the footage and apologized.

The BBC, on the other hand, defended the footage it too had received from Reuters, claiming that the footage it broadcast was edited from a longer sequence.

This should not be too surprising. As Melanie Phillips says:

"In 2004, prompted by persistent concerns about anti-Israel bias, a report was written by broadcasting executive Malcolm Balen on the BBC’s Middle East coverage. The BBC has spent more than a third of a million pounds resisting legal efforts to force it to publish this report, which remains secret to this day."

In another post Phillips expands on this:

The fact is that broadcasters including the BBC have been falling for Pallywood scams for years, for two reasons. First, a number of the freelances involved in the news agencies supplying these materials are themselves Arab or Muslim partisans or Palestinians under the thumb of, or even supporters of, Hamas; and second, such is the western animus against Israel that western broadcasters simply don’t see what is right there under their noses, that the Palestinian ‘victims’ in these staged tableaux are quite obviously play-acting.

One further thought about the malevolently warped reporting of this latest phase in the Arab and Islamic war against Israel. Among British reporters and commentators, there is a pronounced obsession with the numbers killed on either side. The three Israelis killed this morning were all but brushed aside by reporters hastening to tell us that (at that stage) eleven Palestinians had been killed.

The implication is of course as odious as it is irrational -- that Israel cannot be considered the victim of aggression unless more of its citizens die. It is also odious to suggest some kind of moral equivalence between those killed by acts of aggression in the cause of exterminating a country, and those who are killed by that country in its own self defence.

The implication of the numbers game is that there is no moral difference between aggression and defence. That’s why so much of the reporting seeks to suggest a ‘cycle of violence’ or ‘tit-for-tat’ attacks. But there is no tit-for-tat cycle. There is aggression, and there is defence against aggression; there is attempted mass murder, and there is the attempt to prevent mass murder. Those who claim a ‘tit-for-tat’ cycle are effectively sanitising, and thus helping promote, mass murder.

As I wrote before, there is a certain widespread illogical assumption of direct proportionality between number of casualties and position on the moral high ground, therefore judging the ethicality of actions of Israelis and Palestinians not by what is morally relevant, namely the intended consequences and whether they are aggressive or defensive, but on the irrational basis of which side has had more dead in its midst, which can be, and in this case is, caused by morally irrelevant factors, like the higher or lower level of efficiency and advanced technology of either side's defensive apparatus.

In addition to fake images, the media are replete with "fake words", false assertions and misleading explanations.

I watched the political debate programme Question Time on the BBC, and I had to endure a "discussion" in which the two ends of the spectrum were ranging from the majority-view idea that both Israel and Hamas could find an everlasting peace if they only wanted and we all have to blame ourselves for not doing enough towards that admirable goal, to the claim of a moral equivalence between Iran and Israel  - the usual fare of Muslims and their extreme left allies.

And on the BBC Radio 4's Any Questions member of the audience Stephen Bedford asked: "Despite all the foreign aid and support Israel has spectacularly failed to get on with its neighbours. Does Israel deserve a future?". Douglas Murray made these sharp comments in The Spectator's blog:

The same could be said of absolutely any and every country in the region. But I doubt that the Mr Bedfords of this world would ask whether these countries ‘deserve to have a future.’ And this isn’t a despotism we are speaking about, but an ally and a democracy. How does hatred like this become so mainstream?

Well, one reason is that so many British politicians, including Britain’s favourite idiot granny Shirley Williams, tell them lies about Israel which the BBC allows to go out uncorrected. Here is Shirley Williams in reply to the bigoted question with which (unlike the excellent two conservative voices on the panel) she had absolutely no problem.

[Liberal Democrat] Shirley Williams told the audience that Gaza is ‘a slum’ and then went on to say the following:

‘It’s crowded out to the gills. It’s full of people struggling to find a box in which to live. It’s full of people who see their land slowly eaten up by more and more Israeli settlements.’

What settlements? What ‘slow eating up’? Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005. There is not a Jew in Gaza. Not a Jewish family, not a Jewish settlement, not a Jewish house, not a Jew. The place is – as the Palestinians have said they would like the West Bank to be if it comes under their full control – wholly and absolutely Judenrein. The last Jew in Gaza was Gilad Shalit. Does Shirley Williams think he was there building settlements for five years, rather than holed up in captivity as a hostage of Hamas?

Hamas and Palestinian activists' propaganda did - from their perverse viewpoint - a terrific job. The media didn't.

Israel-Palestinian Conflict: Who are the Main Victims Is not the Same as Who is Right

The question: which of the two sides, Israel and the Palestinian-elected Hamas, is mainly responsible for what is happening in Gaza? and the question: who has fewer victims? do not need to have necessarily the same answer.

The often-repeated claim of Israel's "disproportionate reaction" has no basis.

Hamas spokespersons are always keen to say - and their apologists in the media and elsewhere to repeat - that the much greater number of civilian casualties among Palestinians than Israelis is evidence that Israel is the aggressor.

There is absolutely no logic in that assertion.

The number of victims in one camp is caused by how advanced the technology in military defence and prevention of casualities is in that country.

Nobody disputes that Israel is far more developed than the primitive Palestinians, but that is hardly a fault. Being good at defending oneself from an attacker is not a sign of guilt.

In fact, the opposite is true. We can see that, generally, it is the groups who commit and are responsible for most violence who are also the main victims of violence. Violent criminals, for instance, lead a dangerous life.

If we compare different countries and more specifically different populations by ethnic, socio-economic, age or other grouping, we will see that the countries or groups which commit most violence are also those that are on the receiving end of most violence (except in the case of black and white communities living together, in which blacks commit most violence and whites are the victims of most violence, mirroring the pattern among men and women).

The group of humans in the world which has the highest proportion of casualties must be the suicide bombers: that does not show that they are victims, but on the contrary that they are among the worst possible murderers.

This excerpt from The Retreat of Reason: Political correctness and the corruption of public debate in modern Britain by Anthony Browne illustrates where this fault in reasoning originates:

"The aim of political correctness is to redistribute power from the powerful to the powerless. It automatically and unquestioningly supports those it deems victims, irrespective of whether they merit it, and opposes the powerful, irrespective of whether they are malign or benign. For the politically correct, the West, the US and multinational corporations can do no good, and the developing world can do no wrong." [Emphasis added]

HuffPo: Hamas Tactic Is to Require Israel to Cause Civilian Victims

Has the world finally come to its senses?

Even far-left publications recognize that Hamas is the most responsible for what is going on in Gaza or at least open the debate to this view.

After The Guardian, now The Huffington Post has started publishing commentaries defending Israel. Criminal and civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz writes in "Hamas' Tactic: Require Israel to Cause Civilian Casualties" in the HuffPo:

As the rockets continue to fall in Israel and Gaza, it is important to understand Hamas's tactic and how the international community and the media are encouraging it. Hamas's tactic is as simple as it is criminal and brutal. Its leaders know that by repeatedly firing rockets at Israeli civilian areas, they will give Israel no choice but to respond. Israel's response will target the rockets and those sending them. In order to maximize their own civilian casualties, and thereby earn the sympathy of the international community and media, Hamas leaders deliberately fire their rockets from densely populated civilian areas. The Hamas fighters hide in underground bunkers but Hamas refuses to provide any shelter for its own civilians, who they use as "human shields." This unlawful tactic puts Israel to a tragic choice: simply allow Hamas rockets to continue to target Israeli cities and towns; or respond to the rockets, with inevitable civilian casualties among the Palestinian "human shields."

Every democracy would choose the latter option if presented with a similar choice. Although Israel goes to great efforts to reduce civilian casualties, the Hamas tactic is designed to maximize them. The international community and the media must understand this and begin to blame Hamas, rather than Israel, for the Palestinian civilians who are killed by Israeli rockets but whose deaths are clearly part of the Hamas tactic.

Every reasonable commentator has agreed with President Obama that Hamas started this battle by firing thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians. Every reasonable commentator also agrees with President Obama that Israel has the right to defend its citizens. But many commentators fault Israel for causing Palestinian civilian casualties. But what is Israel's option, other than to simply allow rockets to be aimed at its own women and children. As President Obama observed when he went to Sderot as a candidate:

"The first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And so I can assure you that if...somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

Israel should continue to make every effort to reduce civilian casualties, both because that is the humane thing to do and because it serves their interests. But so long as Hamas continues to fire rockets from densely populated civilian areas, rather than from the many open areas outside of Gaza City, this cynical tactic--which constitutes a double war crime--will guarantee that some Palestinian women and children will be killed. And the Hamas leadership prepares for this gruesome certainty by arranging for the dead babies to be paraded in front of the international media. In one such case, the Palestinian radicals posted a video of a dead baby who turned out to have been reportedly killed in Syria by the Assad government, and in another case, they displayed the body of a baby who had been killed by a Hamas rocket that misfired, falsely claiming that it had been the victim of an Israeli rocket.

As Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan has said, the Israeli Army does "more to safeguard civilians than any Army in the history of warfare." This includes dropping leaflets, making phone calls and providing other warnings to civilian residents of Gaza City. But Hamas refuses to provide shelter for its civilians, deliberately exposing them to the risks associated with warfare, while it shelters its own fighters in underground bunkers.

The Hamas tactic is also designed to prevent Israel from making peace with the Palestinian Authority. Even Israeli doves are concerned that if Israel ends its occupation of the West Bank, Hamas may take over that territory, as it took over Gaza shortly after Israel ended its occupation of that area. The West Bank is much closer to Israel's major population centers than the Gaza. If Hamas were to fire rockets from the West Bank at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel would then have to respond militarily, as it has in Gaza. Once again, civilians would be killed, thus provoking international outcry against Israel.

What we are seeing in Gaza today is a replay of what happened in 2008 and 2009, when Israel went into Gaza to stop the rocket fire. The result was the Goldstone report which put the blame squarely on Israel. This benighted report--condemned by most thoughtful people, and eventually even critiqued by Goldstone himself--has encouraged Hamas to go back to the tactic that resulted in international condemnation of Israel. This tactic will persist as long as the international community and the media persist in blaming Israel for civilian deaths caused by a deliberate Hamas tactic.

The Guardian: Israel Is Only Justly Defending Itself

If even The Guardian publishes online a comment siding with Israel, by no less than Israel's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon, it must really mean that it is becoming obvious to everyone with an ounce of brain that, defending itself after years of restraint, the Jewish state is only doing what any other country in the same situation would do.

Are The Guardian's falling readership numbers making the paper take into more consideration the opinions of people who are not totally blinded by ideology?

Hamas leaves Israel no choice:

Israel will not allow the lives of its citizens to be endangered. If only Gaza's leaders felt the same.

Hamas's charter includes the aspiration that "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews)". While many concentrate on its death-cult worship, its bloodthirsty killing of adversaries, or its contempt for women, Christians and homosexuals, it is this aspiration for genocide that is at the root of Hamas activities. This is the primary reason why Hamas, the governing regime in Gaza, will never recognise or accept a peace accord with Israel in any form.

Since Israel left Gaza in 2005, thousands of rockets have rained down on Israeli cities and towns in deliberate contravention not just of international law, but all humanity and morality. While some might suggest the so-called blockade is the cause of the attacks, it is actually a consequence. The restrictions were only implemented two years after Israel left Gaza, when it was clear that instead of building a "Singapore of the Middle East", Hamas was interested in importing stockpiles of weapons from places like Iran. Instead of building a future for its people, Hamas built an open-air prison for the million and a half inhabitants who fell into its grasp.

However, Gaza was never enough for an organisation whose raison d'etre is the annihilation of Israel, and whose charter begins with the ominous warning that "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it".

Every rocket from Gaza is a double war crime. First, the rockets are aimed at civilians; second, they are fired from built-up civilian areas, often close to schools, mosques and hospitals. And about 10% of Hamas rockets fired from Gaza don't reach Israel, exploding in Gaza. Mohammed Sadallah – a four-year-old killed on Saturday, his body displayed in a press conference with Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's leader – was, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, most likely killed by an errant Hamas rocket.

Hamas leaders frequently declare that their people actively seek death. Fathi Hamad, a senior member of Hamas, stated in 2008 that "for the Palestinian people, death became an industry, at which women and children excel. Accordingly we created a human shield of women, children and elderly. We seek death as you [Israelis] desire life."

Hamas seeks conflagration and war. Death and destruction is seen as a win-win calculation, as any Israeli death is considered a glorious achievement and every Palestinian death that of a "holy martyr", providing badly needed propaganda locally and internationally. Seemingly there are not enough deaths for them, so Hamas's military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, has been busy sending out pictures of massacres in Syria, claiming they were taken in Gaza.

Israel has been left with little choice but to root out this nest of hate and destruction. No nation on earth would allow a third of its population to live in constant fear of incessant fire emanating from a neighbouring territory. Our government exercised restraint. We gave the international community time to act. However, there was a deafening silence, demonstrating to Israelis that we had to take action to protect our citizens.

Those who refused to condemn the attacks on Israeli citizens have no right to condemn Israel's response to establish peace and quiet for its citizens. This is the basic obligation of any sovereign nation, and we will continue taking any action necessary to achieve this aim.

In the face of this undeniable truth, the usual accusation is that Israel is responding with "disproportionate force" or carrying out "collective punishment". I urge all who make this accusation to consider that Israel has successfully targeted in excess of 1,300 weapons caches, rocket launchers and other elements of Hamas's terrorist infrastructure. Yet despite this, the number of Palestinian casualties remains around one for every 13 strikes, the majority killed being active members of Hamas and combatants.

Israel will not allow its citizens' lives to be endangered. The international community must call on the Palestinian leadership in the Gaza Strip to take the same approach with its own people.

Islam, Racism and Slavery. Blacks in Morocco: "I Get Called a Slave"

Islam is a supremacist doctrine that affirms not only Muslim superiority over non-Muslims, but also Arab superiority over other ethnic groups and races. Both Islam's holy texts - the Quran and the Hadith, namely Muhammad's official biography - and scholars are testament to that.

Muhammad himself bought, sold and kept African slaves.

Historically, Muslims' slave trade of black Africans has been by far the world's greatest numerically and the most long-lasting, spanning over 1400 years (watch the above video, "The Arab Muslim Slave Trade Of Africans, The Untold Story").

Arab Muslims initiated slavery of ethnic Africans and breathed new life into slavery and the slave trade.

All over the world, only Christianity brought an end to slavery of all races. The Roman Empire abolished slavery after converting to Christianity, and Christians banned slavery in 19th century America.

But slavery still exists in Muslim countries of the Middle East and north-central Africa. Watch the video "Muslim Slavery Still Exists" below:

Islamic racism against black people is well documented in its theological foundations as it is in today's practices. Here is a recent report from Morocco.

Being black in Morocco: 'I get called a slave':

The latest cover of Maroc Hebdo magazine—seen as racist by some, defended by others—has launched a national debate on the struggles faced by sub-Saharan Africans living in Morocco.

“The Black Peril.” That's the controversial headline that the Moroccan weekly ran on its cover last week to tease to an article about the rise in the number of immigrants from sub-Saharan African, many of whom come to Morocco in the hopes of making it to Europe. Many are turned back and end up staying in Morocco, where they live in poverty. Some end up taking part in illegal activities to make a living. According to Morocco’s Interior ministry, there are about 10,000 illegal immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa living in the country. Human rights organisations estimate this number higher as closer to 15,000.

Moroccan authorities are taking an increasingly strict approach to immigration from sub-Saharan Africa. Immigrants without residency permits are quickly expelled. The European Union’s ambassador to Morocco, Eneko Landaburu, recently called the treatment of these immigrants “problematic”, a sentiment echoed by the Moroccan Human Rights Organisation. Meanwhile, the Moroccan labour minister, Abdelouahed Souhail, accused sub-Saharan African immigrants of being in part responsible for the country’s employment crisis.

The International Organisation for Migration recently launched a campaign to raise 620,000 euros to help send some 1,000 illegal migrants from sub-Saharan Africa home.


"Young Moroccans have physically assaulted me on several occasions, for no reason"

Joseph (not his real name) is from Guinea. He lives in Casablanca, where he studies computing at a local university. He is a legal resident.

I came here to study computing thanks to a grant from my country. I’ve been here for four years, and for four years I’ve been a victim of racism. It happens all the time, everywhere.

The most awful incident took place at the airport. I was with my aunt, who was heading back to Guinea and had a lot of luggage. Other passengers from sub-Saharan countries, seeing her struggle to carry it, came to help her get it onto the plane, but an airline employee stopped them, saying she had to deal with it on her own because she was black. I replied in Arabic, and he replied by hitting me in the head. I told him I was going to file a complaint, and he said, sarcastically: “That’s right, go complain to the king!” I never did file a complaint.

Often, when I’m just walking down the street, people will call me a “dirty black man” or call me a slave. Young Moroccans have physically assaulted me on several occasions, for no reason, and passers-by who saw this didn’t lift a finger to help me. All my friends are black and they have all had similar experiences. Even the girls get insulted in the street. To avoid getting hurt, I now try to ignore the insults. But if someone starts to hit me, what can I do? I have to defend myself...

In two years, I’ll be done with my studies, and I certainly don’t intend to stay in Morocco to look for work. Even if someone were to offer me a job here, I would rather go home to Guinea.

Good Move: UK Children Will Learn Latin and Classical Greek

UK Education Secretary Michael Gove has been doing good things for the British education system.

The latest reform is to introduce for 7-year-olds compulsory classes of foreign languages (which will be advantageous in today's global economic competition), with Latin and Greek being two of the seven languages from which to choose.

The study of Latin and ancient Greek is very useful for several reasons.

Latin is a very logical language, and its study helps think analytically. Both Latin and Greek can be understood only after learning syntax and logical analysis of language, which again, by breaking down the elements of a sentence, serve to have a clearer idea of what we are saying and therefore thinking.

In addition to being an aid to logic and thought, Latin and Greek are highly useful for learning English itself. Due to the strict correspondence between thought and language, the building blocks are the same for all languages. So, when you study syntax and logical analysis - which are essential to learn Latin and Greek - your knowledge of the English language will also be based on much more solid foundations.

Seven-year-olds to get lessons in Greek and Latin under reforms to introduce compulsory language classes:

Latin and Greek will be taught in primary schools under government reforms that introduce compulsory language lessons for seven-year-olds.

For the first time, all children will be required to study a foreign language while at primary school, ministers announced yesterday.

Schools will be able to choose from a list of seven languages including Latin and ancient Greek.

The list also features Mandarin – because of the growing importance of China as an economic power – plus French, German, Spanish and Italian.

Under a new national curriculum coming into force in September 2014, primary schools will be required to teach at least one language from the list.

If they wish to teach an additional language, they will be allowed complete freedom of choice, raising the prospect of pupils learning to speak languages as diverse as Russian, Portuguese and Arabic.

Ministers have included Latin and ancient Greek in the core list in the hope of sparking a resurgence of the classics in state schools.

Study of the ancient languages is said to give a rigorous grounding in the grammar and vocabulary of many modern languages, including English. But Latin and Greek have become largely the preserve of independent schools.

Currently, foreign language teaching is compulsory in state schools for only the first three years of secondary school.

There is a mixed picture in primaries, with some offering no language teaching at all. The introduction of compulsory languages for pupils from the age of seven is aimed at arresting a slump in language studies over the past decade.

Labour scrapped compulsory language learning for 14-year-olds in 2004, which led to a gradual decline in the numbers taking them at GCSE.

Last year, a European Commission study of foreign languages skills among 15-year-olds in 14 countries in Europe put England at the bottom of the table.

The primary school changes were unveiled yesterday by Education Minister Elizabeth Truss.

'We will ensure that every primary school child has a good grasp of a language by age 11,' she said.

'We must give young people the opportunities they need to compete in a global jobs market. Fluency in a foreign language will now be another asset our school leavers and graduates will be able to boast.'

UK: Man Demoted for His Christian Views Wins under £100 in Compensation Case

A country where you can demote an employee because he does not share your views and get away with it - Mr Smith remains in his demoted position - is getting dangerously close to a totalitarian state where there is control over what people may or may not think.

We can jokingly call it "political correctness" but it is deadly serious.

My definition of political correctness is this: the orthodoxy, namely the ideology that is dominant in both senses of the term - dominant because most widespread, and dominant because it is imposed with non-democratic means, through the use of force.

What I find most ironic is that the people who hold politically correct views and force everyone else to embrace them are the very same people who are horrified at the Counter-Reformation times' Catholic Church's use of dogma and heresy as a way of controlling ideas and hence people.

The only difference between the methods used by the masters of PC and the Inquisition is that in the intervening centuries the penal system of punishment has changed and instead of torture and burning at stake we have destructions of heretics' careers and livelihoods.

A Christian who was demoted for posting his opposition to gay marriage on Facebook will receive less than £100 compensation after winning his legal action for breach of contract.

Adrian Smith, 55, lost his managerial position, had his salary cut by 40% and was given a final written warning by Trafford Housing Trust (THT) after posting that gay weddings in churches were "an equality too far".

The comments were not visible to the general public, and were posted outside work time, but the trust said he broke its code of conduct by expressing religious or political views which might upset co-workers.

To be allowed to upset or offend is the essence of freedom of speech: there is no call for restriction on expression that does not offend anyone.

Mr Justice Briggs, in London's High Court, said the trust did not have a right to demote Mr Smith as his Facebook postings did not amount to misconduct. He added that the postings were not - viewed objectively - judgmental, disrespectful or liable to cause upset or offence, and were expressed in moderate language.

As for their content, they were widely held views frequently to be heard on radio and television, or read in the newspapers. He said he had "real disquiet" about the financial outcome for Mr Smith, whose compensation was limited to the small difference between his contractual salary and the amount actually paid to him during the 12 weeks following his assumption of his new, but reduced, role.

If Mr Smith had begun proceedings for unfair dismissal in the Employment Tribunal, rather than for breach of contract in the county court, there was every reason to suppose he would have been awarded a substantial sum - but Mr Smith had said that by the time he had raised the necessary funds, the time limit for such proceedings had expired.

The judge said: "Mr Smith was taken to task for doing nothing wrong, suspended and subjected to a disciplinary procedure which wrongly found him guilty of gross misconduct, and then demoted to a non-managerial post with an eventual 40% reduction in salary. The breach of contract which the trust thereby committed was serious and repudiatory. A conclusion that his damages are limited to less than £100 leaves the uncomfortable feeling that justice has not been done to him in the circumstances."

Later, Mr Smith said: "I'm pleased to have won my case for breach of contract today. The judge exonerated me and made clear that my comments about marriage were in no way 'misconduct'. My award of damages has been limited to less than £100. But I didn't do this for the money - I did this because there is an important principle at stake."

Matthew Gardiner, chief executive at Trafford Housing Trust said: "We fully accept the court's decision and I have made a full and sincere apology to Adrian. At the time we believed we were taking the appropriate action following discussions with our employment solicitors and taking into account his previous disciplinary record.

"We have always vigorously denied allegations that the trust had breached an employee's rights to freedom of religious expression under human rights and equalities legislation and, in a written judgment handed down on 21st March 2012, a district judge agreed that these matters should be struck out. This case has highlighted the challenges that businesses face with the increased use of social media and we have reviewed our documentation and procedures to avoid a similar situation arising in the future. Adrian remains employed by the trust and I am pleased this matter has now concluded."

France: Over 100,000 March against Gay Marriage

The photo above is of a previous, unrelated pro LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) demonstration.

This is the current story:

More than a hundred thousand people attended rallies across France Saturday in protest at plans to legalize gay marriage, according to police figures obtained by AFP.

In Paris alone, 70,000 people turned out at one rally, said police — organisers put the figure at 200,000 — while another 22,000 protested in the southeastern city of Lyon, said police, and up to 8,000 in the southern city of Marseille.

Good News: Half of Voters Got Their Campaign News from the Web

A little piece of good news after the US election disappointment: half of voters got their campaign news from the Internet.

A pew survey released yesterday shows a steep increase in voters who got their campaign news from the Internet. The number went up from 36 percent in the 2008 election to 47 percent in this year’s election.

Television continued to serve as the primary source with 67 percent of voters saying they turned to the TV for campaign news coverage. Another interesting bit of info: Cable news was by far preferred to the networks:

Among TV news outlets, 42% cite cable news as a main source. Network television is named by 19% of voters, while 11% cite local TV news. These percentages are little changed from 2008.

Among cable networks, 23% of voters name the Fox News Channel as a main source; 18% cite CNN and 9% MSNBC. There also is little change in the percentage naming any of these cable networks from 2008.

If this trend continues and the number of voters consulting the internet for their news keeps increasing, there is a better likelihood that people will be able to go beyond the myths constructed by the mainstream media.

A Woman's Body Does Not Have Two Heads: Pro-Abortion Irrationality

Your body does not have 2 heads and 2 different sets of DNA.

Clever image that sums up one part of the illogicality in the feminist claim that the moral issue of abortion is largely limited to the assertion that a woman does what she likes with her body.

The other part of the irrationality in that pseudo-argument is illustrated by what I wrote in my previous post Legalizing Infanticide or Limiting Abortion:

What is absurd is for women to shut all the discussion by saying "it's my body, so I decide".

It makes as much sense as for a killer to say "I used my hand to kill, the hand is part of my body, therefore no-one can tell me what I can or cannot do with it".

The fact remains that, even if a foetus is inside a woman's body, it is still a different living, and in some stages sentient, being, so should not be treated just like an appendix of her body.

Why Paedophilia Concerns Have Come to Override Basic Rules of Law

Whether or not the BBC, as the Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson argues, should prove that the programme Newsnight was not acting with malice towards senior Tory politician Lord McAlpine wrongly accused of paedophilia by an abuse victim, one thing is clear.

The current obsession with paedophilia seems to have erased or greatly diluted the basic legal principles that a person is innocent until proven guilty and, even more importantly, that the burden of the proof is on the accuser.

Paedophilia and, to a lesser extent, rape have become such politically incorrect crimes that they are treated as if they were worse than even murder or mutilation.

Yet losing life or a limb is certainly worse than being a victim of sex crimes.

When another child abuse scandal connected to the BBC, that of Jimmy Savile, emerged, we heard a never-ending number of celebrities and commentators repeating ad nauseam that children must absolutely be believed without a doubt in the world when they make this kind of accusations, almost implying that disbelief is a crime in itself and echoing similar assertions made about rape and women who claim to have been raped.

Nobody should be believed absolutely and undoubtedly: children, adults, women and men. People who say they have been victims of a crime are witnesses; and it is a well known fact that crime witnesses are highly unreliable, as this latest case concerning Lord McAlpine confirms for the umpteenth time.

This applies to all crimes: the least unpopular as much as the most hated ones. It has nothing to do with the severity of the crime, or how much it is disliked, or how strong emotions it arises.

It is a simple rule of law. To punish an innocent is worse than to let a guilty off the hook.

In the case of paedophilia, even accusing an innocent may be worse than to let a guilty off the hook.

"To call someone a paedophile is to consign them to the lowest circle of hell – and while they are still alive" correctly writes Boris Johnson.

But why have we got to this point of insanity, where paediatricians have been lynch mobbed for having the same prefix as paedophiles (from the Greek for "child") in their name and accusations can fly around and be believed so liberally?

The reason is very simple. Starting from the 1960s "sexual revolution", strongly if not entirely consciously influenced by Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich theories that repressing sexual impulses is not good for you, sexual activity has been removed from the moral sphere.

Contemporary, influential moral philosopher Peter Singer writes in his Practical Ethics that ethics should not concern itself with sexuality, and that driving a car, due to what he believes to be its environmental impact, raises more moral issues than having sex.

This new dogma has been readily and happily accepted by a majority opinion, leading to such nice results as multiplication of marriage breakdowns, adultery, divorces, broken families, abortions, illegitimate births, multiple partners and fathers, AIDS, increase in sexually transmitted diseases, homosexualist agenda being imposed on everybody, incest and Muslim polygamy made quasi-legal or accepted.

But public opinion, seeing where all this was going, namely that sex with children woud be next on the list of morally permissible activities, strongly drew a line at that. Something similar happened with rape.

Given the very confused ideas about sexuality and morality that prevail in our societies (and I grant that the subject is complex), all the furore about paedophilia (and to a lesser degree rape) derives from and is directly proportional to the eagerness and almost desperation with which all other forms of sexuality have been embraced without a thought in the world.

It turns out that sexual activity is not beyond the realm of ethics after all.

Kids Reported and Arrested for Being Non Politically Correct

A rather illiterate, in terms of both grammar and ideas, profanity-laden website called Jezebel has "named and shamed" young teens for twitting about Obama in politically incorrect ways by reporting them to their schools.

Teachers as well have been the target.

Several public school teachers are facing investigations for posting items on social networking sites that opposed President Obama and his agenda. Parents raised concerns regarding the teachers’ posts, prompting the school districts to launch investigations. Similarly, teens who posted anti-Obama messages on social networking sites are being targeted by a website called Jezebel, which not only reveals the identities of the students who made the posts, but reported the students to their schools.

In Rock Hill, South Carolina, a middle-school teacher was placed on leave after posting a message on her personal Facebook page about Obama and food stamps. “Congrats Obama,” she allegedly wrote. “As one of my students sang down the hallway, ‘We get to keep our food stamps’ … which I pay for because they can’t budget their money … and really, neither can you.”

According to a school spokesperson, several parents had called the school complaining about the teacher’s post. The teacher was forced to apologize.

What had she done wrong, except expressing political views that differ from those of her bosses?

“People outside the school system ... saw her posting and some of them said they were offended by it,” spokesperson Elaine Baker said. “She used poor judgment according to our social media policy. Teachers are kept to higher standards.” Baker continued, “Sometimes you just can’t speak out publicly about what you’d personally like to say, about anything.” She told television station WSOC that teachers in general should “watch what they post on Facebook.”

I didn't know that the First Amendment does not apply to teachers.

This is not as bad as the British 14-year-old girl who was arrested for making "racist remarks" at a school in Greater Manchester, but it is going in the same direction of policing speech and thought from a very young age, so they learn soon how narrow the limits to free speech have become, even for children.

All she had done was asking her science teacher to be moved from a class of Asian pupils only one of whom could speak English.

For this the 14-year-old girl, Codie Stott, was reported to the police by the school, arrested and questioned.

Codie said: "I asked the teacher could I change groups because I didn't understand them and she said I was being racist and started shouting at me."

A complaint was made and she was taken to a police station.

Her mother said her Codie's jewellery and shoelaces were removed, her fingerprints and DNA samples were taken and she was put in a cell.

The school said it wanted to ensure it had a caring and tolerant attitude to pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and it did not stand for racism in any form.

Greater Manchester Police said it took hate crime reports very seriously and its treatment of the teenager was in line with normal procedure.

What "hate crime" was that, I'd like to know?

80,000 Citizens in 33 US States Submit Petitions for Secession

Here is what creates division. People in the US are understandably getting tired of a situation that is on the edge of unsustainability.

The presidential election, with very close results and marred by voter fraud mostly committed by Democrats and losses of military absentee ballots and of military votes which would have been overwhelmingly Republican, has not resulted in a clear mandate for Obama.

This lack of legitimacy, together with his anti-American policies, are the real cause of division in the country, so much so that people in the United States want to secede from the union. 

Citizens From Over 30 States Submit Secession Petitions to White House:

Seventy-seven thousand seven hundred and thirty-two people have signed the petition created by a citizen of Texas to secede from the union.

The petition, posted on the White House website, lays out the signatories' reasons for seeking to separate from the United States and form its own independent government:

"The US continues to suffer economic difficulties stemming from the federal government's neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending. The citizens of the US suffer from blatant abuses of their rights such as the NDAA, the TSA, etc. Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect it's citizens' standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government."

At the time of writing this article, individuals from 33 states have filed similar petitions calling for secession.

The “We, the People” program includes a “create a petition” tab on the White House website. The explanation of the site claims that "if a petition gets enough support," — more than 25,000 signatures within 30 days — the "White House staff will review it, ensure it's sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response." The Houston Chronicle reported that “shortly after 2:30 p.m. Central time on Monday, the [Texas] petition passed that threshold.”

Since that report, Louisiana’s petition has also crossed the 25,000 signature threshold.

Regardless, President Obama has made no statement regarding the crescendo of calls to bust up the union.

Although Texas Governor Rick Perry in 2009 said “one of the deals” made at the time Texas entered the union was that the Lone Star State could leave at any time, a spokeswoman for the former GOP presidential candidate repudiates that position and declares the governor’s preference for union.

GOP Trilemma: Compromise, Stand Firm, Go to the Right

This interesting video sums up, better than many words and in-depth analyses, why Obama won. This has truly become a client state. I like the following definition of client state, applied to Scotland:

Keep spending more and more money on more and more voters, and you've built a client state. Those in receipt of the largesse will want it to continue. One day the money will no longer be there to spend (see technical note from Liam Byrne for details), but by that point you will have engineered a situation where any modulation of public spending will cause pain to such a large proportion of the electorate that the chances of the Conservatives winning a straight fight will be much reduced.

Although I am not American, I am very, very sad that Romney did not win the election.

I had got to like him, a Christian, obviously good, warm and gentle person. I liked the way he spoke during the presidential debates, firm but always polite, compared to the impersonal and arrogant Obama.

I can easily believe what popular radio talk show host and political commentator Rush Limbaugh said of him, that “Mitt Romney is one of the best people, human beings I’ve ever met.”

Limbaugh also said:

None of it makes any sense! Mitt Romney and his wife and his family are the essence of decency. He's the essence of achievement. Mitt Romney's life is a testament to what's possible in this country. Mitt Romney is the nicest guy anybody would ever run into. Mitt Romney is charitable. He wouldn't hurt a fly. He doesn't hate. He's not discriminatory in any way, shape, manner, or form.

This is about Romney as a person. But the reasons why I would have voted for him, if I had been American, are obviously political and I've blogged extensively about them before the election, from the economy to abortion, from Marxism to the presidential debates, from totalitarianism to the Benghazi attack.

Romney's policies were not perfect, but infinitely better than Obama's. Barack Hussein is also someone who has been very shady about his life as well as mendacious about his politics, which makes it unwise to trust him as President of the world's most powerful country.

Exactly because I am European, I've considered the US as something to look to for upholding the western and Christian values that are being eroded so rapidly in my continent.

I'm seriously saddened now to see that the US is going the European way too. But I am still hopeful: this is not the last election, and things may happen before the next that might change America's current political and economical course towards socialism, big government, welfare state, poverty and loss of moral compass.

Looking at the election results, there has clearly been a shift much more pronouncedly to the political left in US voting patterns, strongly determined by minority votes like blacks and Latinos, groups that probably made the difference about who of the two candidates got elected.

Some commentators, on the BBC for instance, said that the Republicans must acknowledge the democraphic change produced by the much higher percentage of Latinos in several states and, if they want to woo these voters, should make changes to their policies, prominently on immigration.

We have to remember this: "As Doug Ross has pointed out, Obama is – among many other things – the lawless president: the first one to sue states for enforcing laws Congress had passed".

The state in question is Arizona, and the law is the immigration law:

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that one key part of the Arizona immigration law, known as Senate Bill 1070, is constitutional, paving the way for it to go into effect. Three other portions were deemed unconstitutional in a 5-3 opinion.

The part ruled constitutional is among the most controversial of the law's provisions. It requires an officer to make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained or arrested if there's reasonable suspicion that person is in the country illegally.

The three parts ruled unconstitutional make it a state crime for an immigrant not to be carrying papers, allow for warrant-less arrest in some situations and forbid an illegal immigrant from working in Arizona.

The long-awaited decision was a partial victory for Gov. Jan Brewer and for President Barack Obama, who sued the state of Arizona to keep the law from taking effect. By striking down the portions they did, justices said states could not overstep the federal government's immigration-enforcement authority. But by upholding the portion it did, the court said it was proper for states to partner with the federal government in immigration enforcement.

This may help explain why Latinos tend to vote for Obama. But should the Republican Party make concessions of this sort and risk going against the Constitution? Is this just a small compromise, or is it damaging what America, since its foundation, really is and stands for?

On immigration, Obama was accused by Bush administration counsel John Yoo of executive overreach:

President Obama’s claim that he can refuse to deport 800,000 aliens here in the country illegally illustrates the unprecedented stretching of the Constitution and the rule of law. He is laying claim to presidential power that goes even beyond that claimed by the Bush administration, in which I served. There is a world of difference in refusing to enforce laws that violate the Constitution (Bush) and refusing to enforce laws because of disagreements over policy (Obama).

Under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, the president has the duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This provision was included to make sure that the president could not simply choose, as the British King had, to cancel legislation simply because he disagreed with it. President Obama cannot refuse to carry out a congressional statute simply because he thinks it advances the wrong policy. To do so violates the very core of his constitutional duties.

There are two exceptions, neither of which applies here. The first is that “the Laws” includes the Constitution. The president can and should refuse to execute congressional statutes that violate the Constitution, because the Constitution is the highest form of law. We in the Bush administration argued that the president could refuse to execute laws that infringed on the executive’s constitutional powers, particularly when it came to national security — otherwise, a Congress that had a different view of foreign policy could order the military to refuse to carry out the president’s orders as Commander-in-Chief, for example. When presidents such as Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR said that they would not enforce a law, they did so when the law violated their executive powers under the Constitution or the individual rights of citizens.

The president’s right to refuse to enforce unconstitutional legislation, of course, does not apply here. No one can claim with a straight face that the immigration laws here violate the Constitution.

The second exception is prosecutorial discretion, which is the idea that because of limited resources the executive cannot pursue every violation of federal law. The Justice Department must choose priorities and prosecute cases that are the most important, have the greatest impact, deter the most, and so on. But prosecutorial discretion is not being used in good faith here: A president cannot claim discretion honestly to say that he will not enforce an entire law - especially where, as here, the executive branch is enforcing the rest of immigration law.

Imagine the precedent this claim would create. President Romney could lower tax rates simply by saying he will not use enforcement resources to prosecute anyone who refuses to pay capital-gains tax. He could repeal Obamacare simply by refusing to fine or prosecute anyone who violates it.

So what we have here is a president who is refusing to carry out federal law simply because he disagrees with Congress’s policy choices. That is an exercise of executive power that even the most stalwart defenders of an energetic executive — not to mention the Framers — cannot support.

On the other side of the debate, there are those who say that Romney was not conservative enough. Romney was chosen as Republican candidate because he covered a kind of moderate middle ground in the GOP, in the hope that this would appeal to middle America's voters come Election Day.

Some commentators now say that a more consistent conservative approach would have been the way forward.

British political journalist Melanie Phillips is one of them:

Britain and the Europeans love Obama because they think he will end American exceptionalism and turn the US into a pale shadow of themselves. What they don’t realise is that, all but lobotomised by consumerist rights, state dependency, victim culture, sentimentality, post-religion, post-nationalism and post-Holocaust and Empire guilt, Britain and Europe are themselves fast going down the civilisational tubes.

Romney lost because he refused to provide an alternative to any of this for fear of being labelled a warmonger, flint-heart or social reactionary. He refused to engage with any of the issues that made this Presidential election so truly momentous. Up against the bullying of the totalitarian left, he ran for cover. He played safe, and as a result only advertised his own weakness and dishonesty. Well, voters can smell inconsistency from a mile away; they call it untrustworthiness, and they are right.

Rush Limbaugh is another:

“If there’s one option that hasn’t been tried in a long time, it’s called conservatism with a capital C,” he said. “This was not a conservative campaign.”

This is the trilemma facing the GOP: compromise, stand firm, or go the full length and be more consistent in its conservative principles.

Romney Lost the Election. Now What?

Romney lost the election and, unlike Al Gore against George W. Bush in 2000, he lost the national popular vote, although not by a large margin. This is close to what some opinion polls just before the election had predicted.

At first there was uncertainty about the result of the popular vote and I was doubting whether he would accept this result or, as Al Gore did, he would contest it, but he accepted the result and conceded defeat. Maybe litigiosity is not his style anyway, although in this case I wish it were.

The Republicans' victory in the House of Representatives will make life difficult for Obama.

Obama's political friends may not like this and call it obstructionism, but that's what the Congress, elected by and representing the people, is there to do: to balance the power of the administration and prevent it from becoming a tyranny.

And with this President and his Marxist, Islamophile, statist ideas there is certainly a lot that needs counterbalancing and outright opposition.

We can try and make all sorts of hypotheses about why Romney lost the election, although I don't know how useful it can be now.

It's been a real rollercoaster, with the polls a few months ago giving a certain victory for Obama, then the first televised presidential debate changed that scenario dramatically and saw the number of people saying they would vote for Romney skyrocketing.

We can say that the undoing of Romney was due to two factors, two events that occurred very shortly before the election, both fortuitous and accidental, showing how thin the basis of Obama's victory is.

These two events are the unemployment figures marginally improving, and the tragic Superstorm Sandy.

There are those who believe that without even one of those developments things would have gone the other way and Romney would have been elected President, and that Obama has been this time again, as always, an extraordinarily lucky man.

But maybe these assumptions derive from the misconception, common among conservatives, that pre-election polls were generally wrong or biased in Obama's favor, whereas they proved in fact to be rather accurate.

What Now?

Now that the election is over -  there may be a renewed effort to hold Obama and his administration responsible for the support they gave, at the time of the 'Arab Spring-Turned-Winter', to the Libyan terrorists who took governance of Libya and carried out the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11, killing four Americans.

The general media silence on this matter has certainly much helped Obama's re-election.

But the many voices who called for his impeachment for treason may now find more vigor and urgency.

Either way, I have the feeling that, especially now that he doesn't even have to worry about re-election for another term and can be even bolder in his approach and extreme in his policies, Obama might just go too far and provoke his own downfall before his second term is over.

Should Obama Be Impeached for Treason?

Many American voices are rising to say that Obama, far from being re-elected, should resign or be impeached for high treason.

"He should resign!" Giuliani told a revved up crowd of Mitt Romney supporters in Ohio. "He told us he would resign if he did this poorly! Do you remember that?"

"'He lied!' Giuliani continued. "He has been a disaster. The worst president for our economy in our lifetime. He doesn't want a second term. He wants a second chance, because he screwed it up the first time."

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, affectionately called "America's mayor" for the way he handled the terrible aftermath of Sept. 11 when he was Mayor of the city, knows a thing or two about both Islamic terrorism and disaster crises.

Bravely he called for Obama's resignation, doing what many other people in politics and the media should have done.

Obama did make that promise. As with many others of his promises, he broke this one. Actually, he broke two: that of mending the economy in his first term, and that of resigning if he din't. He lied on both accounts.

The video above shows a February 2009 interview in which Obama promised to turn the economy around in three years. At 4.15 minute of the video, in answer to a question whether he should change course, he says that he is at the beginning of his office, but if he hasn't fixed the economy in 3 years his will be a "one-term propoposition", and that he will be held "accountable".

Giuliani is right in holding Obama - in the President's own words - "accountable", although unfortunately not many have dared do the same.

Giuliani attacked Obama for his "incompetence" over his management of the economy, his handling of the assault on the U.S consulate in Benghazi, and for putting his own campaign ahead of managing the fallout from Superstorm Sandy.

Obama's treatment of the Benghazi crisis, about which Obama supporters turned out to know knothing (which may go some way to explain why they are his supporters), has been so serious to warrant calls for impeachment for high treason.

Former five-term congressman Tom Tancredo says: "Benghazi amounts to giving 'aid and comfort' to enemy".

Radio, TV and press veteran Barbara Simpson, in her piece Liar or Traitor? writes: "In a just world, he would be impeached and tried for treason; he would not be re-elected. I hope you know that."

As we've known for many days now, CIA sources said they had reported to Obama "within 24 hours" that the fatal Benghazi assault was carried out by Islamist militants, and had nothing to do with the Muhammad video which for weeks he spinned was the caue of the attack.

More recently, documents obtained by former Muslim Brotherhood member Walid Shoebat have emerged.

These documents reportedly show that the Obama administration is responsible for the deaths of four Americans in the Benghazi consulate assault because it empowered the Islamic terror group al-Qaeda to take control and rule over Libya.

Barack Obama’s claim to election fame – that Al-Qaeda has been destroyed – needs a reality check, according to a group of anti-Al Qaeda Libyans in exile. “We beg to differ,” they exclaimed. “Obama gift-wrapped Libya, handed it over to Al-Qaeda, and we can prove it.”

...These documents include evidence of highly sophisticated weaponry provided to jihadists which leads them [anti-Al Qaeda Libyans in exile] to doubt that any solutions will take place under what they called “The Obama regime”.

We have come into the possession of an array of records obtained from top-level sources inside the Libyan government. They include passports of Al-Qaeda operatives and identifications of terrorists from many nations—Chad, Egypt and Pakistan to name a few—which are now all camped in Libya as they enter by crossing borders guarded and managed officially by what they called “government appointed Al-Qaeda leaders.”

This explains why the drafts of two letters on September 11th expressing worry that the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was under ‘troubling’ surveillance and that the Libyan government failed to fulfill requests for additional security. “It wasn’t failure,” these pro-U.S. agents said, “but the Libyan government’s mafia-like system, subordinate to Al-Qaeda and installed with the blessings of the Obama administration that is responsible for the deaths of Americans in Benghazi,” they said.

And this also explains why Obama preferred to blame the Youtube video rather than the terrorists for the fatal Benghazi attack.

Ex-Federal Elections Commission Member: "Democrats Commit Most Voter Fraud"

This PJTV video "Voter Fraud: Will The Democrats Vote Early, and Often?" makes a comparison between the Chicago gangsters of the 1920s who made famous the phrase "Vote early and vote often" and the current crop of Chicago gangsters.

It is introduced thus: "Can we expect the Democrats to engage in gangland style voter fraud in the presidential election? Democrats are encouraging their base to vote early through absentee ballots." The idea, the video suggests, is to get Democratic electorate to vote twice: with an early vote and on Election Day, maybe in a different state.

Of course the liberal media try to deny the existence of voter fraud, since it is mainly left-wing parties that commit it, in the USA as in other parts of the world.

This is probably why the Dems don't like so much the idea of ID presentation at the ballot box while Republicans have righly backed genuinely tough and enforceable voter ID laws nationwide.

But Obama and Democratic Party election frauds at the highest level have already been demonstrated on video and resulted in investigations and resignations. There have been criminal cases involving Democratic-supporting ACORN in several states.

The organization Project Veritas has been conducting an ongoing series of investigations in more than a dozen states “demonstrating the ease with which election fraud can be committed and legitimate voters can be disenfranchised.”

Former Federal Elections Commission (FEC) member and Justice Department official Hans von Spakovsky praises Project Veritas' work, and has said that its videos are reflective of cases he has researched, including one few weeks ago in Vernon, California, in which a judge threw out an election result after determining that voters included people who didn’t live in the jurisdiction where they were registered.

Spakovsky added that vote fraud is a bipartisan endeavor, carried out by both Democrats and Republicans, but Democrats are the perpetrators in most of the cases.

He highlighted the particular vulnerability of Virginia’s voter ID law, which unlike Georgia’s or Indiana’s does not require a government-issued photo ID, because the many other documents that can be used in Virginia, like utility bills, can be faked, as is shown in a high-profile Project Veritas videos.

And new suspicions and evidence of more voter fraud are constantly emerging.

There are the voting machines that, when you try to vote for Romney, record a vote for Obama in the crucial swing state of Ohio, in Colorado and in other states. What is suspicious is that it never happens the other way round, whereas faulty machines should produce random wrong choices. This is why it is recommended that you check your ballots when finished. The story:

The DNC’s 2004 Colorado Election Manual is a helpful reminder of what Democrats can be expected to do to try win President Obama’s reelection. Page 54 of the manual instructs:

“If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a pre-emptive strike…“

With the presidential contest too close to call, Obama’s Justice Department dispatching hundreds of lawyers to 23 states and Democrats having 2,500 lawyers stationed across Ohio, 600 in Cuyahoga County alone, to “monitor” elections there are bound to be more shenanigans than we can imagine. Don’t forget Obama’s Attorney General decided not to go after the New Black Panther Party members who were intimidating voters in 2008.

So it is troubling that we are hearing numerous reports of voting machines recording votes intended for Romney as votes for Obama.

Members of NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) were denounced by poll watcher Eve Rockford, trained by True the Vote, a nonpartisan election integrity association that is "equipping citizens to take a stand for free and fair elections".

The NAACP members descended on a polling station in Houston, Texas, to “encourage” people to vote for President Barack Obama, wearing NAACP clothing and caps and behaving in many ways as if they owned the place, including "picking people out line and moving them to the front, cutting off everyone else". Rockford says: "The NAACP basically ran this poll location and the judges did nothing about it".

In addition:

the “ringleader” of the group was also accused of touching an electronic voting machine that a voter was using.

Eve Rockford said the woman in the NAACP attire first screamed at the poll supervisor and demanded that a clerk be removed during the Friday incident.

“She starts screaming at [poll supervisor Rose Cochran] and she says ‘get this clerk out of here, get him out of here I’ve had enough of him,” Rockford, 51, told TheBlaze. “He starts calmly, using his voice, ‘she’s touching the machines, she’s touching the machines, she’s not acting appropriately, she’s touching the machines.’”

WND online news magazine tested the Obama campaign and found it wanting on the crucial issue of donations:

The controversial Media Matters For America progressive group today posted a false article claiming President Obama’s campaign did not accept a donation from someone impersonating Osama bin Laden using a foreign proxy server.

...The Media Matters piece took issue with a WND article, linked at the popular DrudgeReport.com, reporting “bin Laden” successfully donated twice to Obama’s presidential re-election campaign using a Pakistani Internet Protocol address and proxy server, a disposable credit card and a fake address.

The “Bin Laden” donations, actually made by WND staff, included a listed occupation of “deceased terror chief” and a stated employer of “al-Qaida.”

The apparently foreign-based contributions were conducted as a test after media reports described the ability of foreigners to donate to the Obama campaign but not to Mitt Romney’s site, which has placed safeguards against such efforts.

The acceptance of foreign contributions is strictly illegal under U.S. campaign finance law.

...Indeed, the two donations, for $15 and $5 respectively, were accepted by the campaign and were deducted from the disposable credit card that was used.

Media Matters further wrongly claimed, “The Obama campaign also requests ‘proof of a current and valid U.S. passport’ if a contribution originates from outside the United States and raises questions about the contributor’s citizenship.”

When the “bin Laden” donations were made using a foreign proxy server, no such requests of citizenship were made. At no point was the user prompted to enter any passport information. No questions were asked at any time by the Obama campaign website to verify proof of citizenship or even whether the donor was a U.S. citizen at all.

“Bin Laden” is currently set up on the official campaign website to contribute more to Obama’s campaign. The name is also registered as a volunteer.

Since the “foreign” contribution was sent, “Bin Laden’s” email address has received several solicitations from Obama’s campaign for more donations.

This doesn't require a comment.

Obama's Socialism is Making America Poor

The above video has been viewed almost half a million times (488,318) in less than two weeks, since October 23, on YouTube.

It is the most visually compelling indictment of President Obama and his administration’s policies, showing the outcome of the “hope” and “change” Obama promised in 2008.

It shows, inter alia, that Obama dedicated more time to golf than work “during the worst economy since the Depression.”

A report by the Government Accountability Institute in July revealed that "President Barack Obama averages just eight minutes more a week on economic meetings than the average dog owner spends walking their dog".

US radio host, writer and commentator Michael Savage said: “What’s relevant is that Obama is our first socialist president,” and added: “That’s what this election is about”.

Why is that important? Because, among other things, it fundamentally explains the horrific statistics of the current American economy:

Falling wages. 47 million on food stamps. In 2009 the economy was generating $13.2 trillion in wealth annually. After borrowing $6 trillion, the economy is generating $13.6 trillion. Good investment? His promise to cut the deficit in half. His agreement that if the economy was not better after four years, he would be a one-term president.

Since he is running again for president, that was another of his many lies.

“Green energy” scam. Climate-change fairy tales.

Only half of America paying taxes. Yet, even considering that fact, the average American must work 107 days just to make enough money to pay local, state and federal taxes.

When Obama took office in 2009, the average price for a gallon of gas was $1.85. The average American household spent $4,155 on gasoline during 2011. At the same time, the real median household income has declined by $4,300 since Obama entered the White House.

The poverty rate in the U.S. is 22 percent.

An average of 23 manufacturing facilities permanently shut down in the United States every single day during 2010.

30 percent of unemployed Americans have been out of work for 52 weeks or longer. 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty. 49.1 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives benefits from the government. And this is Obama’s constituency! This is his base.

Last year, 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed. Student loan debt is at $1 trillion.

He [Obama] claims to feel our pain, but Americans buy 80 percent of the pain pills sold on the entire globe each year.

95 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were middle-class jobs. America is losing 500,000 jobs to China every single year. The national debt is rising by more than $2 million every single minute. 88 million working-age Americans are not employed and are not looking for employment – an all-time record high.

The U.S. national debt has risen $6 trillion since Obama took office. In his first three years in office, Obama added more to the national debt than the first 41 presidents combined.

And the biggest reason of all to defeat Obama next Tuesday is this: You ain’t seen nothing yet. If Obama created this disaster in his first four years, what will he do in his second four years when he is unaccountable for re-election?

As they say, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Or, put it this way:

If Mr. Obama wins re-election, and his budget projections prove accurate, the National Debt will top $20 trillion in 2016, the final year of his second term. If GDP grows at an annual rate of 3%, it will take $120 of debt to create $100 dollars of GDP. (similar to Italy). More simply put, a household that earns $100,000 will need loans of $120,000 to support that income. Bottom line, the US is heading into bankruptcy and the American dream is becoming a nightmare.

And who is it that supports this president, besides the super elitist left media and the occupy stoners? His largest support base are the public sector unions. Let's take the average municipal worker in Wisconsin. These folks can retire after 25 years of service and continue to receive full salary and healthcare for the rest of their lives. Millions of parasites swarming all over the US economy and sucking the life out of hard working families and their children. Almost 50% of US citizens don't pay federal income taxes while Obama campaigns for the other 50% to pay their fair share. The Greek socialists would be proud of these figures.

In conclusion, its clear to anyone with an inkling of common sense that all this man cares about is re-election. If he is elected for four more years, extinguish the lights. The nightmare will quickly metamorphose into reality.

Socialist ideas are always deleterious for a country's economy (as well as for many other things). Just look around the globe and you'll see the poverty spread by communist and socialist regimes. China itself developed when it abandoned many of them.

And there is plenty of evidence for Obama's past and present communist affiliations:

Barack Hussein Obama was during his college years a committed Marxist, advocating the revolutionary overthrow of America’s capitalist system. His father was a communist. His main mentor as a young teenager, Frank Marshall Davis, was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party USA.

Obama admits in “Dreams From My Father” that, during college, he was attracted to the “Marxist professors.” Indeed, the Marxist student leader at Occidental College at the time, John Drew, says Obama was far more radical than even Drew was, actually believing that Marx’s prophesied proletariat revolution to overthrow capitalism was imminent in the United States. Today Drew, who has long since repudiated his former radicalism, says that even in his Marxist days he attempted to rein in Obama by trying to persuade him to work within America’s political system to bring about the Marxist transformation they all desired.

After college, Obama followed in the footsteps of Chicago Marxist Saul Alinsky and went on to practice and teach Alinsky’s revolutionary street-organizing methods. Obama launched his political career in the living room of Bill Ayers, a self-described “small-c communist” and unrepentant Pentagon-bombing terrorist. Moreover, the evidence is indisputable that Ayers played a major role in writing Obama’s highly acclaimed autobiography, “Dreams From My Father.”

Obama’s pastor for two decades, whom he described as his “spiritual mentor,” was Jeremiah Wright, a perennially enraged, America-hating purveyor of “Black Liberation Theology” (Marxism disguised as Christianity). As president, Obama appointed as White House communications director Anita Dunn, who in a speech to students claimed mass-murdering Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong was one of her “favorite political philosophers,” and “green jobs czar” Van Jones, who in his earlier years admitted to being a communist and, in fact, founded the communist group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM.

Regarding the interesting point of Marxism disguised as Christianity, it's worth noting that Obama has learned and applied that lesson from Jeremiah Wright very well.

He uses Christianity and the Scriptures as justifications for the government doing the good, charitable work for its citizens through high taxes, wealth redistribution and welfare state.

The reality is that the New Testament does not contain and can never be construed as providing such justifications.

The Holy Scriptures speak to individuals, not governments. The individual is the one who makes the choice of what and who to give to, and should not be coerced by the state who deprives him of this choice.

Man's free will is at the centre of Christianity.

Going back to the article on Obama's past and present communist affiliations:

I could go on and on. These oft-cited facts merely scratch the surface of Obama’s long-term radicalism.

... But now, sitting in the White House is a man who has spent most of his entire life immersed in Marxist ideology, influences, mentors and benefactors. He has proven, as president, that he is still fully committed to dragging America – kicking and screaming if necessary (recall the outrageous and illegal way Obamacare was passed) – into a new era of unprecedented, government-coerced redistribution of wealth and power. To be precise: Marxism.

It would be folly, of course, to imagine that Obama just magically appeared out of thin air to lead a nation of liberty-loving, responsible, moral, right-thinking grownups leftward. America has been moving in this sad direction for decades. No, not under the “Marxist” label, or any of those other nasty words of yesteryear, like “socialism” or “communism” or “collectivism.” They’ve all been carefully replaced by warm-and-cuddly terms like “fairness,” “economic justice,” “redistribution,” “progressivism” and – as an off-script Obama famously told Joe the Plumber – “spread[ing] the wealth around.”

The spirit of socialism has taken root and flowered spectacularly in America, especially in all of our elite, idea-generating institutions like education, the news and entertainment media, and, of course, government. The original American spirit – stout, risk-taking, God-fearing, responsible, adult – has progressively been displaced by the spirit of dependency and helplessness, of perpetual grievance and victimization, and most of all, of envy and resentment. All of which cries out for ever bigger government.
So the question is: Will we Americans re-embrace the values that made ours the greatest nation in history, or will we continue on our current path toward the godless mirage of “redistributive change” – and the poverty and loss of liberty that always follow?

In any event, for the present I can at least derive some solace from remembering that I was raised by parents and grandparents who appreciated their adopted country and all the blessings the Creator freely bestowed upon it – and weren’t angrily obsessed with “transforming” it into a socialist paradise. For that I am truly grateful.

Still in 2007, a year before his election, he was marching with hard-left members of the New Black Panther Party:

New photographs obtained exclusively by BigGovernment.com reveal that Barack Obama appeared and marched with members of the New Black Panther Party as he campaigned for president in Selma, Alabama in March 2007.

The photographs, captured from a Flickr photo-sharing account before it was scrubbed, are the latest evidence of the mainstream media’s failure to examine Obama’s extremist ties and radical roots.

In addition, the new images raise questions about the possible motives of the Obama administration in its infamous decision to drop the prosecution of the Panthers for voter intimidation.

It's worth remembering what Norman Thomas, 6-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America, said in 1944:

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened."