Five more things they want to ban in 2017

Take this post with a pinch of salt - I don't actually believe there is a conspiracy for all this, but it just feels as though there is! Where we still have a chance, and if you agree, we can still try to stop them ..

The nets are closing in and the bansturbators, the disturbing alliance between the global corporates, the UN, EU and political establishments, have their sights set on five more things to ban during the year.

1. FM radio - Efforts to restrict and regulate transmissions have failed, so attention has turned to eliminating receivers. Because the transmission technology is so cheap, efficient, local and available, all official efforts to eliminate non-State sanctioned broadcasts to date have failed. Instead, attention now turns to ridding people of the means of receiving broadcasts. By switching off official FM radio broadcasts, FM receivers in car, home and personal device radios will drop out of the market and legacy devices will decline rapidly due to obsolescence and natural attrition. Future dissidents may broadcast on FM, but no-one will hear them.

2. Wood / Coal fires - There is no better way to bring a truculent and rebellious population to heel than cutting off winter heating. With electric heating, district heating schemes and natural gas networks, authorities can turn people's warmth on and off at will. However, a population equipped with coal and biomass burning stoves will not be so easily cowed; the Greek authorities were astonished last Winter as the people refused to capitulate, in a nation well equipped with stoves in which every variety of scavenged wood fuel, old furniture, pallets and combustible materials were  burned in defiance of the government. So stoves have to go. The UN has already taken measures, well supported by the BMJ (and wasn't Stalin right about bloody doctors ...) on the grounds of PM2.5 emissions. London's wood burning stoves, so popular in Highgate and Islington, apparently kill thousands of Londoners prematurely and are worse than TfL's entire bus fleet. So the BMJ says. Expect a ban on woodburning stoves in the UK this year.

One of my wood stoves .... from my cold, dead hands etc.

3. Shotguns - In implementing the latest 2016 EU Directive on firearms (and I'll bet this will be incorporated into UK legislation pronto and well before Brexit) all shotgun licence holders may have to undergo psychological testing by a State psychiatric examiner in order to retain their licence. The current arrangements, under which they must allow any person to hold a shotgun unless they have good reasons to refuse one, will be scrapped and the onus will be on the holder to prove (a) that they need one and (b) they are no mentalist risk to the State.

4. Power supply / Internet access - Already dealt with in a previous post. The State simply loves technology such as the new Smart Meters that can remotely cut power and Internet access to individual dissidents. Pretty soon disconnect-on-demand will be standard at the moment of a State police raid on a dissidents home, for example, to confuse and disorientate as the doors crash down. Homes of authors of personal blogs not licenced with the Mosley Regulator and people who don't use their real names on Facebook may also be disconnected on grounds of State Security ..

5. Democracy - This will be the subject of many future posts, but attempts to change systems to prevent events such as the Brexit poll are already under way. Already Labour, backed by the RSA, are pushing 'people's juries' in place of voting; a random selection of electors are comprehensively brainwashed briefed by establishment apparatchiks experts before making democratic decisions on behalf of everyone else. The anti-democrats are crowing already; how can this NOT be better than stupid uninformed people casting universal and secret ballots in defiance of the State's advice?

Anti Liberals pollute everything they touch

American sociologist Robert Nisbet valued what he termed intermediate institutions - groupings, communities, loyalties, memberships - because they allow us to face the centralising power of the State together rather than alone. The idea is a direct inheritance of Burke's Little Platoons, and in the 21st century intermediate institutions are much more diverse than the local church, the yacht club, the bell-ringers association or whatever. Vicarious membership of institutions, those clubs of which we are not members but whose values we recognise and value, such as holders of the Victoria Cross, also serve to unite us in valuing the qualities that they embody, such as self-sacrifice, courage and valour. They also serve as rival allegiances to the central State. 

All rival allegiances and rival values are hateful to the Neo Anti-Liberals, of course. In Terry Gilliam's 'Munchausen', the Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson is an AntiLib ruler par excellence;

JACKSON: Ah, the officer who risked his life by single-handedly destroying...Six enemy cannon and rescuing...Ten of our men held captive by The Turk.
HERO: Yes, Sir
JACKSON: The officer about whom we've heard so much. 
HERO: I suppose so, Sir
JACKSON: Always taking risks far beyond the call of duty. 
HERO: I only did my best, Sir 
JACKSON (to GUARD): Execute him.
JACKSON: This sort of behaviour is demoralising for the ordinary soldiers and citizens who are trying to lead normal, simple, unexceptional lives. I think things are difficult enough as it is without these emotional people rocking the boat.

By fouling, beshitting and filthily corrupting the honours system, for example, Cameron has left his greatest legacy - the destruction of an institution. A knighthood for his barber, CBEs for his wife's manicurist and hair stylist, peerages for his private office clerks. Taking the piss wasn't in it - it was the calculated destruction of an alternative institution, and with it the destruction of the value of any noble and virtuous qualities it represented.  

Charities in Britain, too, were once both local and beneficial. First came their AntiLib corruption as Fake Charities - PR and lobby organisations disguised as charities and largely covertly funded by both central and local government and their offshoots to create a false demand for action or legislation. Some of these Fake Charities are funded up to over 90% by tax funding from grants and awards, with only minimal income from voluntary donations.  

Then came the corruption of real charities - they were soft targets for their hijacking by AntiLib regimes that soon turned them into political lobby bodies stuffed with fat-salaried executives, with monstrous costs skimmed from donations made by a credulous but well-meaning public. AntiLib corporations even set up their own - the BBC's Children in Need, for example:

 "Trust in charities fell last year to the lowest level since records began in 2005, a Populus survey of 1,000 people conducted for the Charity Commission found, after a series of scandals including stratospheric executive salaries, the collapse of Kids Company, and the suicide of Olive Cooke, who died after receiving 3,000 mailings from charities, prompting questions about data-sharing and fundraising techniques. The commission’s director called the findings a “call to action” for the sector." The Guardian reports this morning, in a rare truthful insight.

They don't need a new smartphone app. They don't need a new Director of Twitter Engagement at £64k. They don't need a TV ad campaign to virtue-signal their love of migrants. What charities need most of all is to be free from the pollution, corruption and befouling of the nauseous AntiLibs.

The new Corporate slavery - escaping capture

This year will be make or break for many of the global corporates, and a desperate race continues to capture consumers before the chains go on. Here are a few tips to avoid capture:-

Cars -  Personal Car Leasing means increased sales for the manufacturers and is attractive to consumers who get a new car to drive at low cost for the first three years. The size of the 'bubble' payment is large, discouraging consumers from buying their own car and encouraging them to lock into a new three year deal on expiry. If the manufacturers' profits start to drop, they can nudge up monthy costs for new deals. To escape, bite the bullet, save your pennies and buy a 4 year old version of your car from an auction for cash. 

Electricity - The national drive to get everyone onto smart meters - ostensibly to allow energy savings - may allow price discrimination instead. The suggestion slipped out during the annual Autumn power scare that consumers could avoid blackouts in the future by paying a 'premium' electricity price to keep their 'lecky switched on. This suggests that power cuts in future will be controlled remotely via individual consumer meters rather than by pulling a switch at the power station. They will no doubt justify the technology with an excuse about remote consumer disconnection for non-payment being cheaper and kinder. Or to allow them to keep a home with a dialysis machine connected during a general cut. To avoid, resist the fitting of a smart meter at all costs. 

The Cloud -  This one's pretty obvious. Firstly, vast volumes of storage for all your music, films, data, photographs and so on is offered free. This is the consumer capture stage. Once the market has been fully enrolled, the charging can start. It will be crude blackmail - pay or we'll ditch your stuff. To avoid, never keep anything in the cloud. Back up your stuff onto external HDDs.

Amazon / Spotify etc - Similar. You buy videos, music, games etc only these are not loaded on your own computer but on the vendors' servers. Which means they can cut access, or start charging more, at any time. Your stuff is hostage. To avoid, buy real CDs / DVDs or download MP3s to your own devices unlinked to vendor software

Facebook / Twitter etc - These are the most overvalued stocks in the market, true bubbles. The only reason they're holding value and not bursting is the opportunity the companies have to start charging their massive captive consumer base. Facebook's market penetration means it's almost good to go. Initial fees will be modest to maximise retention, with universal payment via mobile phone charges plus the alternatives. To avoid, ditch Facebook. 

Internet of Things - It starts with apps to turn your central heating on from the office or have your fridge place a repeat order with the supermarket and will end with the corporates controlling your thermostat and filling your fridge with their stuff. This one's a no-brainer. The only thing in your house connected to the internet should be your router/modem and the device you use to surf the web and download data.  

The 'bite' has yet to come for most of these - the corporates are still in the phase of rolling out the tech and capturing consumers. However, they are all good to go if they have to. Together with the good points made in the comments to the previous post about robots, the future is arriving by stealth. I'm not a tinfoil hat sort of person, and the foregoing are just the sort of basic, sensible precautions I take myself. Any such additions to the list are welcome. 

2020 Migrant wave - and why Europe needs Russia as an ally

As a lengthy (45mts) but comprehensive briefing on the matter, the podcast doc by David Willetts now available from Radio 4, is reasonably good. Using the analogy of a python swallowing a pig, the blurb states 

"a big bulge makes its way slowly down the snake from the head end to the other end. That's a bit like what's happened to the UK demographically. The baby boom generation - which has changed Britain politically, culturally and economically - is now retiring. That means a large bulge of pensioners with big implications for the generations that come behind them. Other advanced economies face a similar challenge and emerging economies - most notably China - will be dealing with an ageing bulge themselves soon. But in Africa, the bulge is at the other end. A very young generation is about to make its way through the snake."

And it's the African bulge that is exercising minds in Europe. 

The current migration report of an Austrian intelligence service shows why the time for action is scarce: experts warn that 15 million young adults will be without jobs by the year 2020 in Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Ethiopia and seven other African countries And the masses want to emigrate to Europe.

Whilst the Middle East youth bulge is now passing through and will generally decline by 2020, two exceptions; Iraq and the West Bank and Gaza are both expected to rise to 29% by 2020, when Iran's will have fallen to 22%. Both flash points will continue to push migrants into Europe through Turkey and the Russian federal states. 

Only utter fools believe that the present policy of the world's navies providing a taxi service from points 3 miles off the North African coast to Europe is sustainable. For that's the range of the boats and the fuel now being used by the smugglers; it's cheaper to buy a VHF to make an SOS call just outside the territorial limit than 100 extra litres of diesel. No ship can ignore a distress call, and a nice NATO frigate will come collect you to take you to Italy.

But to contain the migrants in North Africa or the Middle East will need the active co-operation of Russia, both on the ground and at sea and at the UN Security Council. It may involve taking control of sovereign national territory in North Africa to hold (and feed) millions of migrants.

This is Europe's biggest challenge. And we need Russia as an ally to face it.  

  

Petulant arrogant hubristic arsehole quits

Ivan Rogers, who after Balliol and the École Normale Supérieure spent pretty much his whole adult life working for government, was predictably seduced by the heady vapours of Brussels. The EU has made normal the elevation of unelected bureaucrats to positions of great power, and in such an atmosphere it was almost inevitable that Rogers, whose petulant, sulky, narcissistic face stares at the nation from today's front pages, would forget that he was just an unelected employee and start to imagine that he was someone important.  

If Rogers had been doing his job he would not have penned the extraordinary 1,400 word apology for his meretricious and dishonourable departure. If Rogers had a true allegiance to his nation and sovereign rather than to the unelected officials of the Commission, he would not have gushed his hubristic nonsense all over the papers. And if Rogers had any real intellectual grasp of the over-riding issues rather than a shallow official's understanding of the minutiae, the problem would not have arisen in the first place. The bloke is quite clearly a shallow, petulant arsehole and we're really much better off without him.

Banks - More Fake News from the Guardian

The Guardian has started 2017 as it ended 2016 - with Fake News, distortion, omission and misrepresentation. The paper's decline from the 1970s and 80s when it represented fearless journalism to the sad little agitprop rag it has become today is precipitous. Now just a platform for waspish spite and crude post-truth corporatist Federast propaganda, Paul Foot will be spinning in his grave. Still fighting the Brexit battle with Fear and Smear, today's risible guff is a story that banks are preparing to leave Britain. 

What the paper knows but omits from printing is that:-

• All banks are tackling how to split their retail from their investment operations by 2019 - a post 2008 crash requirement and nothing to do with Brexit
• That there is NO risk whatsoever that retail banks will move offshore
• That banks have a duty to examine options for the future location of investment bank operations - which require separate HR, legal and risk back-office support rather than shared as at present
• That London will retain global #1 ranking for financial ops, that Frankfurt, currently at #19 in the world ranking, is a dreary little provincial town to which bankers will not move
• That it is almost inevitable that the options appraisals will demonstrate that London remains the best option for bank investment ops - better staff pool quality, advantageous employment law, preferred law and court structure, best legal pool quality, best transport and time links - but just in case Juncker's bent chums in Lux suddenly offer banks a 5% tax rate, alternatives must be considered

Of course, if the Guardian had printed the truth, there would be no story. So they go with lies, omissions, distortions and misrepresentation of which Goebbels would be proud. Sad, nasty little rag.

That New Years Honours List in full

Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to grant:

Knights Bachelor – Knighthoods
Kevin Darren OUTHOUSE	Chair of Fake Charities International. For services to political corruption
John CHUNDER	Director of MoD weaponised sea mammals research. For gross expenditure of public money.
Derek Douglas HUNN-FELCHER	Campaign Director, the Privilege Trust. For services to the Establishment
Tarquin Henry BUMBRIGHT	Treasuer, Chipping Norton Conservative Party. For services to political Anilinction
Peter Arthur GROSSNONSE, Suffragan Bishop of Luton	Director, Rough Lads Foundation. For services to Young Men
Dean PFUNDER-PHART	Political philanthropist. For Services to Corruption
Henry Morgan EYEPATCH	CBI Director, asset stripper and crook. For services to Business
Lobitch Lowery LUDD	MP for Much Weeping, former junior undersecretary for Badger Culling. Services to political Anilinction
John FOMITT	Director Home Office Immigration. For services to Waste and Incompetence
Stan RUFFDIAMOND	Former barber to Mr Cameron. For services to political Hair
Dame Commanders of the British Empire
Sharon SHORTOTTY	Former toenail painter to Mrs Cameron. For services to Grooming
Polly WACHTER	Former roots-dyer to Mrs Cameron. For services to Grooming
Janet BAG-THROTTLER CBE	Former BBC Head of Talent and TV Pop. For services to Grooming
Hillary BHOY	Founder, the Naughty Panties Co, political donor. For services to Bad Taste, and services to Corruption
Aisha KHAN	Chair, Labour Lawyers for Sharia. For services to Islamism
Professor Myrtle DIESEL	Rights campaigner. For services to Hatred.
Commanders of the British Empire
Hugh Calvin BULLIE	Head of Fake Research, Department of Coercion. For services to Illiberality
Rupert Charles POINTLESS	Head of Treasury Brexit Unit. For services to the European Union
Christopher John MOLL-GOBBLER	Director, Unique Tiny Missiles Programme, BAe. For services to National Humiliation

Photo ID and the secret ballot

Let's be honest. We all know the real reason for rolling this out is that those from countries, notably those from Pakistan and Bangladesh, which have a tradition of electoral corruption, personation, vote rigging, electoral fraud and criminal politicians, have been caught many times trying the same tricks at UK elections. That's not racist - the Electoral Commission lays it out quite honestly in its 2014 report. 

Now photo ID requirements just for certain ethnic groups is of course highly discriminatory and quite wrong. But the Electoral Commission don't want to make it harder for the innocent majority to vote in the next election. What to do? Well, why not roll out a 'trial ID scheme' in all those places most likely to be subject to voting fraud? The EC identified the following; 

Cue howls of rage and anguish from the corrupt Left whose poll in many red areas depends on voting fraud and corruption. And thereby they also declare that for them, party comes before country. 

Labour's support of democratic corruption left the coalition in 2010 with a voting system of third world standards; Michael Pinto-Duschinsky advised parliament that there were 3m electors on the rolls who shouldn't be, and 3m missing who should be. Our constituency boundaries, and Electoral Quotient, did not even meet the minimum standards for First World standards of +/- 5%, let alone the +/- 3% standard applied by advanced economies such as New Zealand.

Since 2010, and since this blog joined in the chorus of horror and shock at Labour's complacency, from 2008 onwards, the EC have reformed voter registration (new IVR) and made some valuable changes to postal voting. New constituency boundaries are scheduled to be in place by 2020. All that remains (except reversing the Blair corruption of postal votes) is to tackle the South Asian practice of electoral corruption by personation - and this is now being done.  

I think cautious praise is due. It's all been done quietly and incrementally, drawing howls of rage from corrupt Labour each time but the changes have a fairness and equity that the population can recognise and welcome. So well done, the Electoral Commission. Don't let it all be corrupted again.

Woman achievers, stress and cancer

I'm just throwing a thought, a question, out this morning. Along with the headline sudden death of this Christmas, I received in an email exchange with an old workmate news that a woman ex-colleague died of cancer last month. Nothing unusual about that, you may think, but she's either either the fourth or fifth that I know about - albeit over about twenty years. 

They all had certain things in common. They were ambitious achievers, in reasonably senior positions and all worked under greater than usual stress and all have died of cancer in their 40s and 50s. The blokes all seem to be buggering on, with various ailments coming with age but not the attrition rate of the big C. And that's anecdotal, not empirical, so not science.

The science I can find tends to say there's no link between stress and female cancer but the many answers seem to indicate that I'm not the only one seeing a correlation and asking the question. Which is, does busting the glass ceiling, competing with men in a male-normative environment, and coping with above normal stress, increase the cancer risk for women?

H, who died most recently, had actually left her high-stress job more than a year ago to do something far more relaxed, that she enjoyed, in a county city that she loved. So poignant.

Con Coughlin coughing into his cornflakes

Poor old Con Coughlin must be coughing into his Christmas cornflakes this morning. Following instructions from his FCO and MoD masters, poor old Con has being doing his best to talk-up a war with Russia all year. No incident was too trivial to be mis-interpreted, no pretext too minor for Con to rattle his lightsabre on the Telegraph's Defence desk. And all year all the poor sod's earned for his pains is laughter, mockery and regular pillorying in blogs such as this. And now his own paper mocks his efforts; former Moscow Ambassador Tony Brenton writes

"Russia is not a threat to the West. Our defence expenditure is ten times, and our economy 20 times, Russia’s. Putin is ruthless but not stupid – he will not take on those odds. Current western policy towards Russia has failed. Sanctions have cemented popular support for Putin even as the Russian economy resumes growth. The Russians are winning in Syria, and show no sign of letting go in Ukraine. Meanwhile there are important things we should be working on together. Islamic extremism is a much greater threat to both of us than we are to each other. The British government has been among the most vociferous hawks on Russia. Time for us to be more British; lower the volume, and think harder about where our real interests lie."

Amen to that. Peace and fellowship between our Christian lands, and love to all men except the buggers trying to kill us. Have a wonderful Christmas all and thanks for another superlative year - your comments are a joy, and inspire me each day.  

Post-Brexit status of EU prisoners?

Nothing too taxing for the holiday period, but looking at the most recent parliamentary prison stats document a couple of things struck me -

• We currently hold about 2,900 prisoners from EU countries - almost a thousand from Poland alone. Will they be included in a Brexit right of residence deal?
• Christians form 50% of the prison population but 60% of the general population while Muslims form 15% of the prison population but only 4% of the General population over 15. Does this prove Christians are better people than Muslims? (Athiests are only marginally over-represented in prison)

On a serious note, younger people are becoming progressively less likely to offend, which suggests the crim bulge may be just that - a moving, ageing crim bulge - and as it works its way through and the drunks, bottlers, tea leaves and  assorted ne'er-do-wells just become too old to be serious offenders our prison population will fall. So perhaps no need for panic - those born before 1976 just seem to be more criminal. 

When will we cut the head from this Saudi terror serpent?

What do virtually all US and European Islamist terror attacks since 9/11 have in common? Easy, isn't it. Not only is anti-western terrorism almost exclusively a Sunni Muslim occupation, but it comes from one single branch of radical Salafist / Wahhabi / Deobandi Islamism. And this originates in Saudi Arabia, is funded, promoted and exported by Saudi Arabia and is nurtured, protected and shielded by Western greed for Saudi blood money. 

Europe's governments, and particularly Germany's government already know this. German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel told us so last year; "Wahhabi mosques are financed all over the world by Saudi Arabia. In Germany, many dangerous Islamists come from these communities" he told Bild am Sonntag. Austria recently passed a special law to ban foreign funding of mosques and imams - so far the only EU country to do so. Turkey's carpet-chewing dictator Erdogan was bitter in his reaction - the Turkish government directly employed and supplied 60 radical Sunni imams to Austrian mosques, all of whom would be deported and replaced with native-grown ones. And the Saudi patrons of terror are banned from any funding of Islamist organisations. Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz defended the pragmatic new law, which only applies to Islamic funding, from accusations of discrimination; "The influence of foreign countries is a problem we only have in the Muslim community. We do not have this problem in the other religious communities" he shrugged.

The perpetrator of yesterday's Berlin outrage has tentatively been identified as Pakistani / Afghan. No doubt he is a Sunni, and no doubt from one of the Salafist branches. The only other question is whether he was radicalised by a Saudi-funded mosque serving the 25,000 strong migrant camp in which he was located. But I fear neither the BBC nor others of the #fakenews tendency will tell us.

So. We all know the Islamists have been planning Christmas attacks in Europe, ISIS and al nusra / al queda and the other Saudi terror arms have been encouraging their sleepers to commit such acts and now it's happened why should we be surprised? Europe including the UK still allows the Saudi serpent to spread its poison venom across our continent. When will we have the sense to strike the head from this terror serpent?

Update
=======
Adjacent to the Tempelhof camp is the Salafist-funded Ibrahim al-Khalil Mosque. According to Wikipedia, the Moroccan imam has a history of recruiting to Syrian terrorist groups and inciting Islamist violence ...

How the Guardian tells lies

As one of the UK's post-truth behemoths, the Guardian still trades on a reputation established in more honest times, before the paper carried fake news as a matter of course. Jonathan Freedland today condemns what he terms the lies of others - but ignores his paper's own record of journalistic dishonesty. 

In the paper's news content you don't have to look far to find prime examples of those heinous journalistic sins Omission, Distortion and Misrepresentation. It took me just a few minutes today to find the following in this morning's report in the paper of the protests outside the Polish parliament; 'Police use tear gas to clear parliament blockade' reads the headline, but in the piece itself the gassing is hardly mentioned - "Opposition party MP Jerzy Meysztowicz told the television network that police used tear gas to disperse the protesters who tried to prevent the cars from leaving." In other words, the paper has no evidence for the use of tear gas, no independent corroboration, just a hearsay anecdote from one of the protesters.

Nor it seems did the paper's 'journalists' seek to confirm the story with the Polish police - or perhaps they DID check with the Polish police as to whether tear gas had been used. And didn't like the answer, and so lied about it. RT also carries the protest story -  and reports "Warsaw police spokesman Mariusz Mrozek subsequently denied reports that police had deployed tear gas against protesters, claiming that what might have looked like tear gas in fact was smoke from fireworks thrown by demonstrators".  

And so the truth emerges. Protesters trying to prevent the convoy of official cars from leaving threw 'fireworks' - in probability marine signal flares - the smoke from which was interpreted by an inexperienced protester in a heightened state of excitement as tear gas, and the Guardian reported this as a fact.

So the Guardian's strap line is simply lousy, unacceptable, fake-news journalism, based on the single uncorroborated hearsay of a single demonstrator and officially denied by the police. It's either omission or distortion, take your pick. And in Freedland's own words, it's a lie.

Post-credulous audience hears evidence of fake news broadcast by post-truth BBC

The video link provided by a commentor in the post below is a scorcher. At a UN press conference, independent Canadian journo Eva Bartlett demolishes the credibility of the fake news from Aleppo promulgated by, amongst others, the Guardian and the BBC.

"..what you hear in the corporate media, and I will name them – BBC, Guardian, the New York Times etc. – on Aleppo is also the opposite of reality"

In a devastating surgical dissection, Bartlett dismisses the BBC's main source of news in Aleppo - one man in Coventry, with an agenda, who calls himself 'Syrian Observatory for Human Rights'. She points out that there are NO international humanitarian organisations in rebel-held Aleppo and NO credible independent sources of news from there. The White Helmets are exposed as an armed partisan force funded by $100m from the US / EU / UK who fake news footage (documented) and are, I strongly suspect, a thin cover for arms shipments to the rebels and for western intelligence organisations.

There is NO evidence, she points out, that the White Helmets have ever been in rebel-held areas of Aleppo at all. Such news is fake.

Bartlett appeared before fellow international journalists, all of whom had full opportunity to question her and require evidence. She comes out as honest, sane and very credible - and the post-truth BBC and Guardian come out as shabby liars and charlatans.

"So they [the White Helmets] are not credible. The SOHR are not credible. 'Unnamed activists' are not credible. Once or twice maybe, but every time? Not credible. So your sources on the ground – you don't have them. You ask why we aren't seeing this. This relates to the other gentleman's question about why most of the corporate media are telling lies about Syria. It's because this is the agenda; if they had told the truth about Syria from the beginning, we wouldn't be here now. We wouldn't have seen so many people killed."

I commend this video. Make a coffee, take a break and play.

Christmas peace for Aleppo's Christians as Islamist butchers routed

The routing of Saudi, Turkish and US backed Islamist butchers from Aleppo by united Syrian and Iranian forces, backed by Russia, will allow the devastated city's remaining Christians  to celebrate a bleak Christmas this year. They may have little for a festive feast - but the gifts of life, family and hope will transcend the horrors of persecution, dreadful torture and genocide under the repressive and murderous regime of the Islamist rebels. 

Assad has many faults but religious intolerance is not amongst them. He protects not only Syria's ancient Christian population but also many other minority faiths, all the target of violence, hate and extinction by the Islamist rebels backed by Saudi Arabia and others. 

Fools including Cameron and George Osborne in the UK have done nothing but prolong the war, extend the agony and add to the heaps of dead and dreadfully injured innocents. Their corrupt links with KSA and Sunni business interests will not stand scrutiny - and they put greed for gold above the lives of the poor suffering innocents of Syria. May they have a miserable Christmas amongst their Islamist chums. 

Just rejoice and spare a prayer of thanks for our brothers and sisters now rebuilding their lives in Aleppo under Syrian government protection.  

President and Mrs Assad attend a Christmas service

Yes, Vladimir Putin should be TIME's person of the year

The headline of Jonathan Freedland's piece in the Guardian is about the only accurate thing in the article. Truly, the Guardian has found its niche in a post-truth world in which omission, distortion and misrepresentation of the truth pads the pages of even the broadsheets. But of course the post-truth meme has a corollary; an informed readership that is post-credulous. We simply don't believe them any more. And with good reason. 

Yes, everyone admits, Boris was quite right, absolutely spot-on about Saudi Arabia, but as a member of the establishment he is required to lie to the public. His fault was not to lie for his government. And if the establishment grudgingly admits that it's lying about KSA, it won't take much to squeeze the admission that they lied over Yugoslavia, Iraq (whoops - got that one already), Afghanistan, Ukraine, Libya and Syria. Only patsies such as Jonathan and Con over at the Telegraph still trot out the feeble old establishment ordure. But the post-credulous don't buy it. 

I was enjoying drinks with some undergrads from Vienna a couple of weeks ago. Without any diminution of their proper patriotism (for Germany and Denmark as well as for Austria) they all expressed their admiration for Putin. He's everything they want our own leaders to be - smart, ruthless, patriotic, daring, skilled and cynical. And yes. For all his successes evident in 2016, he deserves TIME's appellation more than Trump. Russia has just the GDP of Italy yet still strides the world stage like a colossus. And outsmarts and outfoxes all of Europe's dull, failing, ineffective unelected officials with all their dreary policy blunders. 

What a perfect time for that leprous old fossil, himself the very Father of Fake News, bloody Blair to appear with the intention of founding a new public disinformation service, pumping out prime fake news better than the rest. And he may even have an establishment fair wind; a well informed comment over at CAW reveals that

Raedwald, I strongly suspect it is the National Security Council not the "the numpties at the FCO" that is responsible for the UK line on Syria, and I suspect the NSC is strongly under the influence of the Cabinet Office / Joint Intelligence Committee / PM. For example the new-ish £1+ billion Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) seems to be driving UK spending in Syria now, and that has been under NSC control since 2015, using money largely transferred away from DfID. (eg spending on the White Helmets is now cumulatively £32+ million, part of "capacity building for civil society"). Also £5.3+m for "media activists" - bloggers, tweeters and facebookers? More alarming £1.4 million UK CSSF money spent on the "Syrian rebel coalition's lobbying bill in Washington DC and the UN" - pretty weird stuff.

So who better than Blair to head up the government's own fake news channels? New Blair - New Disinformation?

Top Human Rights lawyer to be struck off for lack of integrity

P.Shiner - to be struck off

The first of a number of corrupt human rights lawyers to face legal action is set to be struck-off after admitting a raft of charges of recklessness and lack of integrity. Shiner is contesting a further raft of dishonesty charges, which if proven could lead to his being jailed. 

Shiner's firm PIL has already been shut down. Other 'human rights' lawyers who were part of the frenzy of improper and unprofessional bottom-feeding coprophagia led by Shiner and his firm may also now face charges. 

Even as Shiner's life now lies in ruins - some justice, many will think, for the misery and persecution his scum-sucking business brought to members and ex-members of HM Armed Forces - other bottom-feeding scum lawyers are even now unearthing unreliable anecdotes and prejudiced memories of the Troubles in the province of Northern Ireland. Their aim is to find wrongdoing in the actions of members of HM Armed Forces in order to extort 'compensation' from UK taxpayers to meet both their own fat fees and a payoff for any 'victims' they can find.

They will no doubt by now be on notice as to how they proceed. Shiner's downfall is not only for his own malfeasance but pour encourager les autres.

Boris spot-on about the head-choppers & crane-hangers

Boris' leaked comments about the primitive native barbarism of the uncivilised head-choppers of Saudi Arabia and the crane-hangers of Iran are actually spot on. The effete old maids of the FCO, perhaps the most utterly useless bunch of tossers in charge of foreign policy since the Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames to poop in the king's river, are having camp vapours at the honesty. 

Of course these two champions of the Sunni and Shia branches of the Islamic superstition are fighting proxy wars all over the Middle East of the most primitive barbarity, but wars waged with all the technological weapons that these oil-rich spear chuckers haven't the wit or the means to make for themselves. Half of Europe is shovelling in the cash whilst maintaining the pretence that the Islamic savages are actually allies. 

As Boris might say, Pish.

Forced Muslim integration - painful but necessary

I'm going to annoy some regular commentors by re-stating that I have a problem with the Islamic faith, not Muslims and with primitive native fetishes, not people with brown skin. Muslims are never going to be deported en masse, sent to concentration camps, compulsorily sterilised or chemically lobotomised. So get over it. Those that are here legally are here to stay, and we can act to modify any exhibition of deviant behaviour within the law but that's it. 

Even a year ago writing the paragraph above would still have been seen as the action of a right-wing extremist, a racist or a dangerous swivel-eyed loony by the coercive, bullying and illiberal neo-libs. Today it's mainstream. This week the floodgates have opened and the pushback by a sensible, humane and intelligent majority against the bigoted zealotry of lefty neolibs is gaining momentum.

First the Policy Exchange survey, watered and bowdlerised but still effective, graded the way.  Then came the Casey Review, which pulled no punches at all. Trevor Phillips followed-up with a hard hitting piece entitled "White liberals have speeded segregation in the UK. The great struggle now is to reverse it" and today I delight in another piece in the Telegraph by Allison Pearson;

It sounds good – but what the Casey report really tells us is unbearably bleak. Immigration needs to be restricted, marriages to “cousins” must be stopped (that means closing any ruses about coming in through Europe, too). Any man whose wife needs his permission to leave the house is not a patriarch, he’s a criminal. Islamic schools that brainwash their pupils, and treat boys differently from girls, must be closed. It’s no good pretending that all “faith schools” are equal; how many “British Catholic” primaries do you know that are incubating extremists? There is no place in a liberal, equal society for sharia courts. Oh, and ban the wretched burka, please.

And on that final point even Mutti Merkel is a convert. Yes, trash the ghastly dehumanising rags and let's see the faces of our fellow citizens. Forcing the backward and superstitious Muslim people of Britain to integrate will hurt both them and us - but it's entirely necessary.

Austrians are neither cowards nor fascists

The volume and viciousness of the internet invective directed at the Austrians yesterday surprised me. Their crime was to have swung about 8% since the last time they voted, defeating the candidate of the right. The rabid UK right on the web angrily branded them leftist green cowards, whilst the Guardian's own little Owen Jones waspishly asked why was he supposed to praise Austria because only 46% of them had voted fascist. Both extremes of hate are prime examples of gobbing-off without knowing one's arse from one's elbow. 

I strongly suspect Van der Bellen was supported because he stood as an independent, has stressed he represents all Austrians, is a more presidential figure than Hofer, defends the status quo and will do nothing to rock the boat - in other words, he will do exactly what a largely ceremonial President is expected to do. But Hofer is no fascist, nor even is he 'far right' as the BBC insists on terming him. He's just a deeply conservative Austrian traditionalist embodying the fear that Austrians are losing control over their own destiny. A Venn diagram of the two candidates would actually show a large overlap - giving the lie to uninformed UK commentors who see a divisive polarisation.  

Austrian politics are largely consensual. A Red-Black coalition - socialists and conservatives - has effectively been in power since the war, and only recently is being challenged in the Nationalrat by the Greens and Hofer's Blues. It's as if Theresa May was in coalition with Labour, and had Hillary Benn as her Foreign Secretary. Crazy, but it works. 

But perhaps more deeply ingrained in voters is Austria's post war irrevocable declaration of Permanent Neutrality. Never again, pledged Austrians, would their nation strike the spark of European war. I don't think that's cowardice. 

The country's conservative traditionalism does not make it a comfortable place for migrants. Dispersed to small rural communities around Austria, housed in barracks and youth hostels, fed boiled pasta three times a day and de-loused, disinfected and medicated as efficiently and bio-organically as any dairy herd, restricted to riding bicycles or using country postbus services, it is not the instant wealth, apartment and Audi they dreamt of. Add to those discomforts the insistence of cheery Austrians in greeting them a score of times a day with "Grüß Gott!" in praise to the Christian three-person God, a profusion of lovingly tended roadside crosses and Marian shrines, and Alpine valleys that ring with the echo of church bells three times a day and you can understand why the migrants drift to Germany and elsewhere where the Ummah has taken stronger hold.   

So neither cowards nor fascists, Austrians made a decision that will be comfortable for all Austrians to wear. And they did it for themselves, not for rabid incendiaries in foreign lands nor for ill-informed and illiberal scribblers like the Guardian's little stars. 

I can live with that.