#ethnic minority MPs

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our website

By Jean Shaoul

University College London (UCL) and Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK hosted a screening of The Unequal Pandemic, followed by a panel discussion, to launch the film about inequality during COVID.

The film is now available here: goodguysproductions.co.uk/the-unequal-pandemic/

Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK was formed in April 2020, because its two founders who had both lost close family members to COVID-19 believed that their loss could have been avoided if the government had made different decisions. They are determined to ensure that lessons are learned from their suffering and that others don’t have to go through the same horrible fate that they had. They want to ensure that the lessons learned from the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, which their campaign had been crucial in setting up, are turned into legislation that saves lives in the future.

They were responsible for the creation of the National Covid Memorial Wall, a 500-metre-long mural with over 200,000 hand sized red hearts painted on it to mark each of the deaths suffered at that time in the UK from COVID-19, on the south bank of the Thames facing Parliament.

The Unequal Pandemic film, by Labour MP Debbie Abrahams and Good Guys Productions, highlights the vastly unequal impact of the pandemic on Britain’s poorest communities, often minority ethnic groups. The short film lays bare the long-term institutional, social and government failures that led to one of the highest excess COVID death rates in the developed world. Its testimonies from bereaved families and stark evidence contradict the then Conservative government’s cynical claim that “We are all in it together.” This was a reference to the now infamous statement of the Tory Chancellor George Osborne in 2012 falsely claiming that everyone, and not only the working class, was bearing the brunt of the savage austerity unleashed by his government.

COVID-19 both reflected and exacerbated all the social inequalities prevalent in Britain today.

Sir Michael Marmot, Professor of Epidemiology at UCL and director of the Institute of Health Equity, a leading authority on health inequalities and author of several landmark government reviews on poverty, introduced the film. He told the audience that the UK is a “poor country with a few rich people in it.”

The pandemic killed nearly 250,000 people in the UK, according to the official statistics, with the population suffering the sixth worst death rate in the world due to the homicidal policy of Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, summed up in his infamous outburst at the height of the pandemic, “No more fucking lockdowns, Let the bodies pile high in their thousands!” The number of people infected with the virus—and continue to be infected—is so great that over a million people are estimated to be suffering from the debilitating impact of Long COVID.

The government’s policies were driven not by the fight against a preventable disease to protect public health, but by the impulse to prevent the disruption of global supply chains and financial markets. The ruling class welcomed the death of the elderly and those in need of care as a means of reducing social spending.

The pandemic had a disproportionate impact on black, ethnic minority and migrant communities (BAME). They were more likely to contract the virus, have a higher death rate, less access to sick pay, with migrants having no access to sick pay, under conditions where sick pay rates in the UK are among the lowest in the developed world, less access to adequate support schemes, unequal vaccination coverage and more likely to have inadequate living space. These conditions had a devastating impact on their health and in turn helped to spread the virus throughout the country.

The film opened with Marmot saying, “People said it will be the great leveller. But that’s not the history of mass disease. It will expose the underlying inequalities and amplify them. Professor Clare Bambra, Professor of Public Health at Newcastle University, said her heart sank when she first heard about the new virus because of the knowledge of what happened in previous global pandemics and what it meant for different communities.

Marmot said that BAME communities suffered huge excess mortality rates, much of which could be attributed to where people lived and other socio-economic factors. But there was something else going on as well. Dr. Habib Naqvi, chief executive of the NHS Race and Health Observatory, explained that the reason typically given for why BAME workers suffered such high rates was they were more likely working on the front line in the pandemic, in health and social care, transport and retail. They were also more likely to have to use public transport to get to work, further exposing them to risk. But no one explained why that was the case in the first place, he said, indicating that racism was the unacknowledged factor.

However, the overwhelming weight of evidence presented demonstrates that it is the socio-economic factors detailed by the documentary that overwhelmingly determine the disparate impact of the pandemic, including on black and Asian workers.

Mortality rates were far higher in the north of England, the former industrial—and now poorer—area of the country, than in the south, and far higher in the more deprived areas, highlighting the north-south divide. According to figures produced by Food Aid Network and the Trussell Trust, “By 2019, prior to the pandemic, the UK had more food banks than McDonalds outlets.” Marmot said that health had been deteriorating prior to the pandemic. His earlier report in 2020, Marmot Review-10 years on, revealed that life expectancy had been stalling and health inequalities were widening. Socioeconomic inequalities played a major part in these adverse health conditions in the decade before 2020.

Marmot explained that the UK fared so badly because the government had disinvested in public services in the most regressive way, with the poorest areas bearing the brunt of the cuts. Local government slashed expenditure on adult social care. Healthcare spending failed to rise in line with demographic and historical patterns. There were cuts in public health funding as well as in welfare to families with children, in education spending per school student and the closure of children’s centres. Not only had public services been cut to the bone but the tax and benefit system had been recalibrated to the disadvantage of the lower income groups, with child poverty almost doubling to 4.2 million in 2022 since 2012.

Marmot noted that income inequality led to health inequality. Health had stopped improving, and there was a high prevalence of the health conditions that increase case fatality ratios of COVID-19. The unequal conditions into which COVID-19 arrived contributed to the high and unequal death toll from COVID-19.

Thus, that disinvestment set the UK to manage the pandemic very poorly.

Even after the first case of COVID-19 was announced in February 2020 and the virus was spreading rapidly, superspreader events such as a football match in Liverpool and the horse races at Cheltenham were allowed to go ahead, with the inevitable results. The government was complacent and ignored the lessons of previous pandemics, the healthcare specialists explained. They had totally inadequate protective clothing, masks that did not fit and personal protective equipment (PPE), if it was provided at all and in many cases it was not, was useless, leaving them exposed to COVID and terrified. One healthcare worker was told when she complained to buy her own from Amazon, at a cost of £300! Many hospital workers died as a result.

When the government did try to procure PPE, it turned to its friends to do so without even the pretence of going through the correct procedures for public procurement. As a result, much of it ended up in bonfires. As Marmot said, “Pub landlords might not be the best people to buy our PPE from. So the government’s absolute faith in the private sector led to an incredible waste—£38 billion for the government’s test and trace system. The government stopped funding public health, so we had no capacity. So then it says, ‘Let’s get some capacity, let’s put tens of billions into some new private sector organisation to do.’

“No, how about funding Public Health to do it? That’s what it is set up to do. To work with local government. To work with the voluntary organisations. Do I think that running Test and Trace through local public health services would have been better than the private sector? I don’t think it could have been worse.”

The film’s screenshots show Britain’s deprivation graphically. It gives voice to some of the people who lost family members. Francesca Michaels speaks about her mother, Billie Michaels, who grew up in a deprived, working class area of Liverpool in the north west of England. Billie brought up five children while on benefits and lost her life to the virus while parties were going on in Downing Street: “It was a conveyor belt of death. She was cremated in a body bag.”

Karren Frasier-Knight speaks about losing her twin sister, Paula Greenhough. “I lost half of me – half of me is gone,” she says through tears. Lobby Akinnola, one of the panellists in the discussion after the film, had a similar experience. He says: “When I got the call from my mum that dad was no longer with us, my world ended in that instant. I fell on the floor. Everything fell apart.”

In conclusion, Marmot said that many of the failings before and during the pandemic were clear to see. Poverty is something that “impedes freedom… Don’t get rid of environmental and social protections: get rid of poverty. That way, we will be better prepared to face the next pandemic.”

Following the film, there was a discussion chaired by Delanjathan Devakumar, Professor of Global Child Health and Director of the UCL Centre for the Health of Women, Children and Adolescents. The panellists included: Sir Michael Marmot, Naomi Fulop, Professor of Health Care Organisation and Management and Director of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, Oluwalogbon Akinnola, a campaigner from Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, Debbie Abrahams, Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth and Andrew Gwynne, Labour MP for Gorton and Denton and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care.

While the discussion centred on health care inequalities, none of the panellists addressed the central questions: how is social inequality to be eradicated or where is the much-needed funding for healthcare to come from? Much less did they challenge Abrahams and Gwynne over the Labour government’s plans for a budget with at least £40 billion in spending cuts and tax rises that will vastly accelerate the 14 years of brutal cuts already carried out by Conservative-led governments and the continued evisceration of the National Health Service. That this will fall hardest upon the most vulnerable was made clear by the Labour government’s first act—to abolish the winter fuel supplement for the elderly.

Ending social inequality can only be achieved by expropriating the billionaires’ wealth and imposing massive taxes on the super-rich, the financial institutions and the corporations to fund urgently needed social programmes for workers and young people. No solution can be found to any of the problems confronting working people except through the ending of the capitalist system and its replacement with socialism.

[bulldogblues]

If you'd like some positive political news for a change, the new UK parliament forming as a result of this election is officially the most diverse of all time, including a record number of:

* Female MPs (264, around 40% of parliament)

* Black, Asian or other ethnic minority MPs (89)

* Not mentioned in this article, but LGBT MPs too (at least 60)

There's still further to go of course, but parliament is now closer than it's ever been to having demographics reflecting the people it serves. Let's hope that greater range of voices receive the attention they deserve.

[giyrut-girlie]

slayful australian greens party moment! so iconic when their mps refer to jews as having their “tentacles” in ethnic community groups for nefarious reasons!

“showing solidarity”?? huge if true! certainly wouldn’t be bc we actually want to stand with oppressed minority groups

(check out recent statements by greens mp jenny leong for context and try not to break something :,,))

[beardedmrbean]

The UK’s first professor of Black studies is facing a criminal investigation over a video in which he called right-wing commentator Calvin Robinson a “house n*gro”.

Professor Kehinde Andrews was visited by three police officers at his Birmingham home on Wednesday morning and invited to attend a voluntary interview.

In a video posted online in June, the academic argued that terms such as ‘coconut’, ‘house n*gro’, ‘c**n’ and ‘Uncle Tom’ are “vital expressions of Black political thought that should be celebrated and not policed”.

But the comment Prof Andrews made about former GB News host Mr Robinson in the video has prompted a complaint to West Midlands Police.

In the video, Prof Andrews went on to explain the origins of the term: “Malcolm X popularised the idea of the ‘house n*gro’: Those people who, because of their relative privilege, relative connection to the master, tend to be deluded into believing they’re not slaves,” he said.

“On the plantation, they live in the house... get slightly better conditions; they’re not catching hell from sunup to sundown. So, because of that, house n*gro starts to identify with the master... more than the master identifies with himself.

“The point of this is to say that house n*gro’s wrong. Because they’re treated slightly better, they’re missing the point they’re still slaves. This is ‘love teaching’ from Malcolm. He’s calling out, saying ‘you are still a slave, you are still suffering from racism (...)’.

“The whole point of it is to say we’re all in the same boat, we’re all catching the same hell but you can’t see that because you’ve got the house n*gro mentality.”

When approached by The Independent, Mr Robinson declined to comment about Prof Andrews’ video and the investigation.

However, he posted on X, stating he had filed a complaint against Prof Andrews, and saying that he believed the academic was racist.

West Midlands Police told The Independent: “We’ve received a report of racist comments being posted online and we’re carrying out enquiries. There is no place for hate crime and we’ll investigate any reports we receive.”

Prof Andrews, who teaches the UK’s first undergraduate Black studies course, described the police probe as “utterly ludicrous”.

“As I go to lengths to explain in the video, ‘house n*gro’ is a political critique and has never been used as a racial slur,” he told The Independent.

“The whole point is to remind those who think they have ‘made it’ (...) that we are all still ex-slaves, colonial subjects, who will experience racism no matter how much they embrace the ‘master’ (in modern times, this would be the nation, government, etc).

“Malcolm X uses it as an anti-racist metaphor to promote resistance, which is exactly what I did in the video. The fact this is a police issue just shows how little respect there is for Black political thought.

“The terms ‘house n*gro’ and ‘field n*gro’ have a decades-long history, with countless books including their use.

“It is deeply concerning that the police would want to haul in a professor to question me about my area of expertise. This would never happen if I were white or the work I do was given the respect it deserves.

“The police have a long history of criminalising Black and brown people, now we are seeing that converge with the wider attack on Black knowledge which is being erased from university, the closure of Black courses and more.”

The investigation follows a string of cases where Black and Asian people have faced prosecution for hate crimes after using specific language to criticise other people from ethnic minority communities.

In March, The Independent first reported on the case of a Black man who was acquitted of hate crime charges after sending a raccoon emoji to Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty on social media. A Black HR professional was interviewed under caution for sending a GIF of Daffy Duck tap-dancing to the same politician, as first reported by The Independent in May.

Prof Andrews has said he will attend a voluntary interview later this month. The CPS has been approached for comment.

[upsettingandunfortunateclasshate]

And no doubt the highest amount of private schoolers if the trend continues. The middle and upper class of all ethnicities and genders are getting in on the act. And most of em are anti working class neolib shithouses like their white male counterparts who together are continuing the managed decline of people's lives. Literally nothing has changed for working class people despite this fact. It's an irrelevance for people struggling to eat more than a meal a day.

[mariacallous]

Since it gained semi-autonomous status in 1992, Iraqi Kurdistan has largely charted its own course, separate from the federal government in Baghdad. But in recent months, increasingly organized federal authorities have attempted to impose greater control over the region. And ethnic and religious minorities are caught in the middle.

Since the start of the year, Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court has eliminated seats in the Kurdistan Parliament that had been reserved for Christians, Turkmens, and Armenians. The Ministry of Displacement and Migration also announced that remaining camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Kurdistan Region, which house tens of thousands of Yazidis and Sunni Arabs, must close by the end of July.

The Kurdistan Region’s image on the world stage has long been one of exception; Kurdish leaders have carefully cultivated a reputation that, “whereas in the rest of Iraq and the Middle East, minorities are prosecuted for being Yazidi or Christian … in the Kurdistan Region, they are protected, they are given a shelter,” said Shivan Fazil, a researcher at the Institute of Regional and International Studies, housed within the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani.

On Easter last year, the prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) cited a “culture of coexistence and unity between the different communities.” The frequently invoked line is a central plank of the KRG’s pitch for political support and economic development aid to foreign partners and donors, including the United States.

The situation on the ground was never as rosy as Kurdish officials claimed, however. The KRG “might claim coexistence, brotherhood, and peaceful living together, but none of this is true,” said Toma Khoshaba, an official with the Assyrian political party Sons of Mesopotamia. “We still feel a lot of bias and prejudice.” Christian communities, for example, regularly complain that their land is taken without compensation. Last year, Yazidis were subjected to attacks and abuse online after baseless rumors circulated on social media that a mosque had been burned in Sinjar.

Now, Baghdad’s steps to dismantle vehicles for minority representation and protection could imperil the KRG’s global stature—and leave minorities in the Kurdistan Region even more vulnerable to discrimination. These communities are caught in the middle of a larger shift in Iraq’s federal system that empowers Baghdad at the expense of the KRG in Erbil.

When the Kurdistan Parliament was set up in 1992, it included five seats specifically for Christians. In 2009, the body added five additional spots for Turkmens and one for Armenians. The 11 seats for minorities—out of 111 total in the last parliament—enabled the KRG to claim that its institutions reflected its diverse constituency.

In recent years, however, the reserved seats became more and more controversial. Critics alleged that the representatives acted as de facto representatives of the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which has been accused of being increasingly undemocratic. By subsuming state institutions under party authority, the KDP has co-opted some legislators within the minority communities and allegedly gamed the electoral system to ensure loyalists win the reserved seats. Minority communities also complained that open voting lists allowed KDP-affiliated security forces and KDP supporters to dilute authentic minority participation. Some activists, like Khoshaba, feel that voting on these lists should have been legally restricted to members of the minority communities rather than to all voters. Many felt that the MPs failed to stand up for the interests of their communities once elected.

The Kurdistan Region’s other parties argued that the system provided the KDP with an unfair advantage in parliament by giving the party an 11-seat head start. Seeking to capture some of those positions for itself, the KDP’s rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), in May 2023 filed a lawsuit in Baghdad challenging the Kurdistan Region’s electoral law.

This intra-Kurdish division gave the authorities in Baghdad an opening to exploit. In a bombshell Feb. 21 ruling that went beyond what the PUK sought, the Federal Supreme Court abolished the seats entirely. It did not outline a specific logic in its decision. While opponents of the KDP celebrated the decision, Christian and Turkmen parties felt as if they had lost, even if they harbored complicated views about how the reserved seats worked in practice.

“By eliminating the reserved seats, they are eliminating our ethnic rights and our votes,” Khoshaba told Foreign Policy. He had hoped the court would reform the system rather than scrap it.

The KDP reacted furiously to the court’s decision, writing on X that the verdict violated “the principles of federalism and the principle of separation of powers enshrined in the Iraqi constitution.” But many consider the KDP’s protests political because the party so clearly benefited from the minority representation system.

“We are not even able to select a cleaner to work in our schools because the KDP selects them. The Kurdish authorities must select them. We do not have the right to select a mukhtar for any of our villages or in any Assyrian area because they are always selected by the KDP and the Kurds,” Khoshaba said. “We want to have authority. We want to be in a real partnership and not just to live and be safe and practice out religion.”

The Kurdistan Parliament could still pass a new, better electoral law to ensure authentic minority representation in the future, Fazil told Foreign Policy. “If they genuinely care about representation of those minorities, they can still salvage something,” he said. Instead, the KDP chose to boycott new regional legislative elections slated for June 10 in reaction to the court’s decision.

Baghdad is playing a bigger game. The court’s ruling is consistent with a pattern of decisions by Iraq’s federal government that undermine the Kurdistan Region’s ability to manage its own political and economic affairs—and instead boost the fortunes of the country’s ruling Shiite Coordination Framework, which came to power in 2022 after the election of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani. It is made up of a range of Shiite parties, many with strong ties to Iran.

While the Coordination Framework includes many major parties, some important factions like the Sadrists are not present in the current cabinet. Both the KDP and PUK have ministerial posts, but their presence is the result of Iraq’s sectarian power-sharing system rather than a reflection of their ability to drive policy. Reducing Erbil’s ability to govern its own affairs is key to rebalancing federal power toward Baghdad and centralizing decision-making across all of Iraq.

Minority communities are also significantly affected by Sudani’s order to close the remaining IDP camps in the Kurdistan Region, most of which were established in the 2010s. In January, Iraq’s Ministry of Displacement and Migration set a deadline of July 30 for the facilities to cease operations. Baghdad is also providing monetary incentives to tempt displaced families to go back to their homes in federal-controlled territory.

Fazil said that the government’s campaign to close the camps is partially an effort to move past a period defined by the Islamic State, but there is a clear political dimension to the decision as well. IDPs are a rich source of votes at election time, with the next round of federal parliamentary polls expected in 2025. The closure policy will likely push many IDPs back into disputed territories where they can be integrated into political patronage networks. Most IDPs are vulnerable and can be threatened or incentivized into voting a certain way. When they are located in the Kurdistan Region, the KDP can exert greater influence over IDPs’ voting behavior than if they returned to the disputed areas.

Asaad Barjas was a teenager when the Islamic State attacked his hometown in the Yazidi district of Sinjar in August 2014. He and his family escaped the militant group and have lived in the Kabarto IDP camp in the Kurdistan Region’s Duhok governorate for the last nine years. Life is hard in the camp and, like many others, Barjas hopes to return to Sinjar. But his village of Tel Azer lacks basic services, adequate housing, and jobs.

In January, there were an estimated 161,000 IDPs living in the 22 camps currently operating in areas controlled by the KRG, according to statistics published by the International Organization for Migration. It is not clear from publicly available data how many of those in the camps are members of minority groups, but it is likely to be a high proportion given the IDPs’ places of origin. Almost 90 percent of those living in the camps are originally from Nineveh governorate, which includes diverse areas like Sinjar, Mosul, and the Nineveh Plains. Shabaks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Yazidis, Kurds, Sunni and Shiite Arabs, Kaka’is, and Turkmens all call this area home.

“I think this is a political decision. If they really want people to return to their homes—it’s been 10 years—they could have done something about that earlier,” Barjas said. “This decision is not well-studied. It’s not right. It’s not the right time, and we don’t see it as something logical to do.”

International humanitarian actors and foreign governments are closely watching the camps’ impending closures. As part of a shift from emergency humanitarian assistance to development, they are also in the process of shifting programming for IDPs to the federal government and the KRG, who will be primarily responsible for providing services to this population once they leave the camps. Nevertheless, the question of what will happen to the IDPs and where they will go looms large.

The KRG’s Joint Crisis Coordination Centre, the local department in charge of the camps in the Kurdistan Region, did not return a request for comment.

Since November 2023, three camps have shut down in Sulaymaniyah governorate, which is run by the PUK. The most recent to close was the Tazade camp on March 19. But so far, no camps have ceased operations in areas where the KDP is in charge. Those facilities host 94 percent of the IDPs currently living in the Kurdistan Region’s camps. The Ministry of Displacement and Migration has filed a lawsuit to force the KRG to act.

“The federal government is pressuring the KRG, and the decision to push the IDPs to return is part of a broader campaign to reduce the KRG’s authority,” Fazil said.

But it is minority groups that will suffer amid this escalating conflict between Iraq’s federal government and the Kurdistan Region. “As long as this minority-majority mindset continues, we are going to be continuously persecuted,” Khoshaba said. “We will not have a bright future here and everyone will leave.”

[spider-xan]

Honestly, i've seen a lot of racism from white libs in general. Like them saying they hope the Latinos that voted for Trump get deported first. It's Disgusting, but not surprising.

Yeah, like, look, I will never defend POC who align with white supremacy, but as I have said before, the number of POC who voted for Tr*mp is a drop in the bucket compared to the overwhelming numbers of white people (including white women) who voted for him - but even the white liberals (and sadly libs of colour too, but again, it's far more whites) who know Tr*mp voters are to blame, not third party voters or non-voters, are singling out the POC while giving a pass to the many more white voters; it's especially ridiculous and anti-Black to go after Black voters when they make up only around 10% of voters and overwhelmingly voted for H*rris (yes, Black men too), but ofc they are getting scapegoated by racists for the fault of white people.

Even for the POC who did vote for Tr*mp, there are complicated forces at work here that are not monolithic to POC as a whole or even to specific races or ethnicities - like, why Latinos would vote for Tr*mp at that rate (Cubans in Florida being right wing) is different from why the Indigenous share of GOP votes may have gone up this time (as explained in a post, progressives staying at home to protest genocide, leaving more conservatives to vote), etc., and these issues are best dealt with by their own communities, not raging white racists who just want to punish everyone for the votes of a minority that didn't have enough numbers to tip the scale anyway.

[sparksinthenight]

Letter to Canadian Government Asking them to Help Myanmar

Our names are _____. We are from _____. We are writing to you today to ask that you send military aid to the brave revolutionaries fighting the Myanmar military and fighting for democracy and ethnic equality in the country.

The Myanmar military has suppressed the power of the people for decades. It has created a Myanmar where the people are poor and inequality is high. Civil rights, political rights, workers rights, economic rights, and human rights have all been repressed. There has been so much racism and prejudice baked into the institutions of the country by the military. There was some hope after the country supposedly transitioned into a democracy, but the military coup that gave all political power back to the military has killed this dream. The Myanmar military has also committed genocide against ethnic minorities.

People have joined peaceful protests for a long time, but those protestors were met with murder, torture, and arrest by the Myanmar military. They realized that the only way they can fight for the freedom, equality, and very survival of all the people in their country was by engaging in armed struggle. And so the people are engaging in armed struggle. Vast majority of the common people of Myanmar are either in armed conflict for their freedom, or they’re materially and logistically supporting the people who are in armed conflict for their freedom.

We need to support them as they fight for the rights of the common people, the rights of all ethnicities, and the rights of the future generations. If we give them military aid, then they will have an easier time fighting the military. If they have good, reliable, powerful military equipment, they will have a much easier time fighting their oppressors and they will have a higher chance of winning the revolution.

So please give them military aid so that they have an edge against the oppressive military.

Sincerely,

Send to:

Prime Minister Trudeau- justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca

Deputy Prime Minister Freeland- chrystia.freeland@parl.gc.ca

Minister of Foreign Affairs Joly- melanie.joly@parl.gc.ca

Find your MP here: https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en

Minister of National Defence Blair- bill.blair@parl.gc.ca

Associate Minister of National Defence Taylor- ginette.petitpastaylor@parl.gc.ca

[planefood]

I don’t usually bring up NZ politics here cus I know most people following me aren’t from here but holyyyy shit the amount of fuck wits talking about “anti white racism” in light of fucking David Seymour and ACT asking other MPs why “ethnicity was a factor” in surgery waiting lists in one fucking city. (as in, making sure marginalised peoples have EQUAL opportunity for medical care when they’re so under represented, esp Māori, as pākehā. It’s NOT denying white people medical care because the government is “racist against white people”, think for a moment. It also includes area you live in and time waited on the list as well as other factors.) It’s such a slimey move to bring it up as well in the midst of the actually racist “stop co governance” rallies and meetings that have been popping up around the country.  Marama actually said so herself that Seymour bringing it up was to just spark racial discourse between the public and she got kicked out of the house of parliament for it??? because it was “too serious an accusation” WHEN NATIONAL LEADER LUXON ACCUSED HER OF BEING RACIST TO WHITE PEOPLE BACK DURING THE ANTI TRANS RALLIES FOR SAYING THAT WHITE CIS MEN CAUSED A LOT OF VIOLENCE IN THE WORLD when she was in hospital was hit by a fucking motorcycle for supporting trans people at the rally holy shit I am so angry. Nobody said anything about him bringing up “too serious accusations”  I think I’ll throw a missile at the next person who says anything about “anti white racism” the people that whine about that shit are awfully quiet when they’re shown rates of actual medical discrimination against Māori and Pasifika.  These people turning around and telling actual racial minorities that they’re “stuck in the past” and being “racist” against Pākehā when they’re the ones digging in their heels anytime there’s even a hint of racial equality in this country or ignoring actual racism. Fuck I thought those guys liked traditional values and wanted this country to be the same as it was back in the 1800s. I don’t want to live in a country governed by ACT or National that puts my actual life at risk as a marginalised person all because some dumbasses decided that they were being racially discriminated for being white. You wouldn’t survive a day facing actual discrimination you snotball  

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jacob Freedland

Published: Jun 8, 2024

Non-white applicants to the BBC’s flagship journalism training scheme were almost two and a half times more likely to get in than their white counterparts.

Since 2022, an average of 22.5 per cent of applicants were classed as coming from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds (BAME).

However over that same two-year period, BAME individuals made up 41 per cent of participants on the scheme.

In contrast, whites made up an average of 77.5 per cent of applicants but only 59 per cent of participants, since 2022.

This means that non-white applicants were 2.4 times more likely to be given a place on the highly coveted scheme than their white counterparts.

The two-year scheme, referred to as the Journalism Advanced Apprenticeship, provides participants with training and a potentially permanent role at the Corporation.

Females also had stronger chance

The findings were released via the Freedom of Information Act. Female applicants also had a stronger chance of getting in than men, but by a lesser degree.

Since 2022, an average of 60.25 per cent of applicants were women. But in that same period, women made up 71 per cent of participants.

In contrast, men made up an average of 39.75 per cent of applicants but 29 per cent of participants, meaning that womens’ chances of getting onto the scheme were 1.6 times higher than their male counterparts.

Neil O’Brien, who until the election was the Conservative MP for Harborough, said: “Unlike previous BBC schemes which have stated they are BAME-only, this scheme markets itself as open to anyone. But in practice there is discrimination.

“These practices will go into overdrive if Sir Keir Starmer becomes prime minister.

“People are not being treated fairly. We need to get back to hiring the best person for the job rather than basing it on the colour of your skin.”

‘Offer places based on merit’

In April, the Telegraph revealed that one in three participants on the scheme identified as white British.

A BBC spokesman said: “Similarly to The Telegraph’s Newsroom apprenticeship scheme, our apprenticeship courses enable people from a range of backgrounds to enter the media industry. We always offer places based on merit.

“We’re committed to our recruitment processes being fair to everyone, and attracting applicants that represent all parts of the UK, and like the Telegraph Media Group we’re committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture at the BBC.

“The BBC runs many apprenticeship schemes, so it’s unclear what analysis can be determined from applications made to one course.”

==

DEI is systemic racism and systemic sexism, by definition.

[eaglesnick]

“Whoever debases others is debasing himself.” - JAMES BALDWIN

Over half a century ago Enoch Powell made his infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech wherein he alluded to a prophecy from Virgil’s Aeneid:

“As I look ahead", said Powell,” I am filled with foreboding: like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood'." (Enoch Powell: 20/04/1968)

As with any prophecy, if you wait long enough, it’s almost bound to come true in one form or another. But rather than a “river of blood” caused by irresolvable racial tension, Britain has, in the main, weathered the social changes that mass migration brings with it.

In true dog whistling tradition Powell avoided being overtly racist himself but “quoted” a constituents instead, one who allegedly said:

"In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man"

As we all know this simply did not happen. By 1988 it wasn’t the "black man" who was the enemy of ordinary working people, it was Margaret Thatcher and her Tory government.

 It was Thatcher who raised interest rates and imposed huge spending cuts on the public services ordinary working people depended on. It was the Tory Government that drove unemployment up to 3 million, and it was Powell’s Conservative’s who waged war on trade unions and workers rights. It was Thatcher who was responsible for the deep recession in the early 1980’s and it was Thatcher who, by selling off council houses, kick-started the market trend towards unaffordable rents and house prices we see today.

The last 14 years of Tory government has seen a continuation of Thatcherite policies: public services starved of funding, massive rises in interest rates leading to unaffordable mortgages and rents, rising unemployment, and the resulting cost of living crisis.

Like Powell before him, Nigel Farage likes to blame immigrants for the countries ills and like Powell he is no stranger to the political art of dog whistling.  Talking on TV about the Southport murders he asked the “innocent” question:

“Why is it these days whenever something happens, we are told almost immediately it's a non-terror attack?" (Farage: 01/08/24)

Linking the horrendous murder of children in Southport to other, totally unrelated murders elsewhere in the country, he then answered his own question.

“Whenever these things happen there is a reluctance to tell us the full truth.”

There is the dog whistle. The authorities are withholding the truth about murders committed by non-whites. They are, for some reason known only to them, protecting ethnic minority killers and in all likelihood these murders are terror related. If only the police and the authorities would tell us “the truth” then the subsequent extreme right-wing led riots could have been prevented.

“Sometimes just tell the public the truth and you might actually stop riots happening” (Farage:01/08/24)

Light all bigots – left or right – it is only their version of the "truth" that they are interested in. Using the death of three innocent children to advance your own political ambitions is beyond contempt. Brandon Cox, husband of Labour MP Joe Cox who was murdered in a right-wing terror attack, had the measure of Farage when he described him as:

“nothing better than Tommy Robinson in a suit”

Mass immigration does present many problems but they are not problems that will be solved by whipping up hatred and bloodshed on Britain’s Streets. So far, Powell’s predictions have failed to materialise and his prophesy of violence and bloodshed have come to nothing.

Powell did get something right though.

In 1994 Farage wrote asking Powell to endorse him in his election campaign to become an MP. Powell refused. In the event, Farage came forth, with just 952 votes, only just ahead of the candidate for the Monster Raving Looney Party

If only today’s British electorate could see Farage for what he really is: a right wing, self-serving opportunist with not one shred of common decency.

[oldraysblog]

Plurality of Britons Believe in Cover-up of Muslim Grooming Gangs

A plurality of Britons, including Labour voters, believe that there was a cover-up of the scale of the abuse and failings by local officials in the Muslim child rape grooming gang scandal.

According to a survey of 2,002 British voters conducted by Friderichs Advisory and JL Partners, nearly half of the public, 46 per cent, either tend to or strongly agree with the idea that there was a cover-up of the grooming gang scandal, GB News reports.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the percentage of both supporters of the Conservatives and Nigel Farge’s Reform UK party who believe there was a cover-up was above 50 per cent.

However, in what might be another blow to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s leftist government, the poll found that a plurality of Labour voters also believe there was a cover-up. The poll found that 41 per cent of Labour voters agreed that there was a cover-up, compared to around a fifth of Labour voters who disagreed.

Prime Minister Starmer, whose own role in the scandal from when he served as Britain’s top prosecutor between 2008 and 2013 might come under scrutiny in a full-scale investigation and whose part controlled many of the central grooming locations, controversially ordered members of his party last week to vote down a motion from Tory leader Kemi Badenoch to launch a national public inquiry.

Starmer argued that the government should focus on implementing recommendations of previous reports while castigating those demanding a full inquiry specifically focussed on the mainly Pakistani child rape gangs and the failure of local officials to protect young white girls as being merely a fixation of the “far-right��.

However, pressure has continued to ramp up on Starmer, with multiple Labour MPs breaking rank to demand a national inquiry, including the representatives for grooming hot spots Rochdale and Rotherham. The influential Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has also broken with his party leader to call for a full investigation.

Contrary to Starmer’s dismissal, the poll released by GB News found that nearly two-thirds of Britons think that “those calling for a national inquiry are motivated by getting justice for the victims.”

As to the motivation for such an alleged cover-up, 42 per cent of those surveyed listed corruption as the most likely culprit, while 38 per cent said that it resulted from political correctness.

While there has never been a full national inquiry into the matter, previous localised and broader reports on child sex abuse found numerous instances of local officials ignoring the child rape and trafficking of young white girls by predominantly Pakistani-heritage grooming gangs for fear of appearing racist or stoking ethnic divisions.

The survey found that eight in ten Britons think that government authorities who either covered up or failed to investigate grooming gang allegations should face prosecution.

Meanwhile, two-thirds said that prosecutions of public servants who failed to safeguard young girls should face prison time. As for the grooming gang rapists, the poll found that 47 per cent backed life in prison, while 30 per cent believed that they should face the death penalty. Intriguingly, the two groups most likely to favour the death penalty were Reform UK voters and members of black or other ethnic minorities in the country.

The father of a grooming gang victim said: “Let’s just get on with it and put this to bed for good. People of this country deserve to know what our children are facing and they’re facing it today.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on X:Follow @KurtZindulkaor e-mail to: kzindulka@breitbart.com

[head-post]

UK Parliament votes against investigation into child rape gangs

UK Parliament voted on Wednesday against an enquiry into mass rapes of children by migrant gangs from Pakistan.

According to the results of the parliamentary vote, 364 MPs voted against the Tory initiative. Only 111 MPs were in favour of an enquiry into the rapes and sexual exploitation of children in Oldham, Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford and other towns in the north of England, which were committed from the late 1980s and early 1990s until the mid-2010s, mostly by people from Pakistan.

Last week it was revealed that Jess Phillips, the UK’s deputy Home Office chief executive, refused to launch a national enquiry into these sexual offences and the police, prosecutors and local authorities’ response to them, despite a request from Oldham Town Council. She suggested that such an investigation should be conducted at a local level, as was the case in Rotherham and Telford. The Daily Telegraph saw her refusal as a reluctance to alienate Muslim voters.

Phillips told Sky News on Wednesday that the British government would allow a national enquiry into these sexual offences if approached by victims. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, for his part, said from the parliamentary rostrum after meeting with the victims that there was no consensus among them on the issue. He added that the authorities should not focus on another investigation but on implementing concrete measures to protect women and children.

UK PM pleaded guilty

Sexual offences committed against underage girls in the north of England, which were silenced or ignored for years, only began to be publicised in 2012. Starmer, who became leader of the Labour government in July, led The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) from 2008 to 2013 and has previously acknowledged that in some cases police and prosecutors avoided bringing ethnic and religious minorities to trial for fear of accusations of racism and Islamophobia. However, Starmer said on January 6 that it was he, when he was head of the CPS, who started prosecuting members of these criminal groups.

According to the BBC, the Rotherham enquiry found that between 1997 and 2013 alone, some 1,400 children suffered sexual abuse, mostly by British men of Pakistani origin. The Telford investigation in turn revealed that around 1,000 girls had been sexually abused over a 40-year period. More than 100 people have been convicted of the offences in the two towns alone.

Musk: “Starmer must go”

Earlier, US billionaire Elon Musk called UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer “complicit in the mass rapes” committed by gangs. “Starmer must go and he must be charged for his complicity in the worst mass crime in British history,” the entrepreneur wrote.

Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, leader of the party Debout la France (France Arise), commented on the news on X:

“364 British MPs vote against national enquiry into Pakistani gang rapes. Double punishment for the victims: to the horror of the crime is added the rejection of their parliament.”

Read more HERE

[beardedmrbean]

Following the police killing of George Floyd in the US, the Black Lives Matter movement was largely imported into Britain, with a rapid expansion of our own grievance industrial-complex. This disastrous superstructure peddled the myth that the UK’s social, political, and economic systems are deliberately rigged against racial and ethnic minorities. This form of aggressive racial identity politics from the US – a comparatively youthful country struggling to get to grips with the legacy of slavery on its own soil and recent forms of segregation – fundamentally undermined the credibility of the British anti-racist cause. 

I issued a warning over this in an article for this paper back in June 2020. Promoting the concept of “white privilege” – in a country where some of the most materially-deprived and culturally marginalised communities predominantly belong to that race – was always going to lead to awful outcomes. Yet public-sector organisations such as the BBC and the NHS, two woefully underperforming behemoths funded by the British taxpayer, time and again provided a platform for pro-BLM radical activists to pour scorn on one of the most tolerant, anti-discriminatory and pro-equality countries on the planet. 

BLM-mania also saw a flurry of corporations taking the opportunity to deflect attention away from their own business practices by jumping on supposedly virtuous causes of “racial justice”. Across a variety of sectors, a class of DEI “professionals” was ushered in – often as unproductive as they are divisive. Companies announced a range of costly initiatives, donations and hiring sprees, with little scrutiny. 

In mainstream politics, we were greeted to a cringeworthy image of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and his deputy Angela Rayner “taking the knee” for a social movement that says it cares about young black lives but rarely flags the impact of gang-related knife crime in London. Labour MP Dawn Butler, no stranger to inflammatory language, weaponised Floyd’s death by calling for the Tory government to get its “knee off the neck of the Black, African Caribbean, Asian and minority ethnic community” in a House of Commons statement. All of this was a national embarrassment. 

Now, though, we seem finally to have come to our senses – and the BLM movement has been thoroughly discredited. Like many identitarian causes which are full-to-the-brim with rank opportunists, it has suffered from high-profile cases of fraud. In the UK, this includes Xahra Saleem – a high profile BLM activist. She was sentenced to two and a half years after it was found that she used her profile to raise money for young people in the St Paul’s area of Bristol and then spent it on herself. The judge said that money was used “not for their benefit but for your own, funding a lifestyle for yourself that you could not otherwise have afforded”. 

The prosecution said that, in the 15 months to September 2021, there were more than 2,500 payments made from Saleem’s account which included general shopping and bills, plus a new iPhone, hair and beauty appointments, clothes stores, Amazon purchases, taxis and takeaways.

Lessons must be taken on board from the era of BLM-mania. Attempts to coerce the wider public into believing that Britain should be ashamed of its history and appalled with its record on race relations should never be tolerated again. Because for all its flaws, Britain has contributed a magnificent amount to the advancement of humankind – and like many of my compatriots spanning a wealth of backgrounds, I am proud to call it home.

[zogdon]

Chechen leader threatens MPs with ‘blood feud’

Chechen leader threatens MPs with ‘blood feud’ https://www.rt.com/russia/605518-kadyrov-threatens-blood-feud-mps/

This is the last thing, the Russian Federation Parliament, as well as Putin's government want right now.. A "blood feud" between powerful Southern Russian Republics Law Makers.

In a huge country like the Russian Federation, where a number of powerful Southern Republics are all Muslims, and where the Northern Russian Federation Republics have large minorities of Jews, the Kremlin has had to always keep the proper internal and international politics in good, and proper balance, in order to achieve a peaceful society overall.. between all minorities, religious groups, and all other issues that split so many western states apart. And the Russian/Soviet state has always delivered very good results.

However now, the latest Israeli Genocide in Palestine, has challenged the official Russian Federation policy of many years, for two state solution, in the Mideast.

Russian Muslim are challenging the Putin government.. asking for much stronger response by the Russian Federation against Israelli occupation of Palestine, and waging yet another violent war on Lebanese society. And that is exactly what it is..it ain't some precisely targeted, precious war on Hezbollah and Hamas.. it's Full On Israelli War on unarmed Arab civilians. And Arab neighbours in the conflict area, are finding themselves with politicians, who collude with Israelli violence, for profit.

So, it's a complicated war, in which the Putin government has struggled to respond, as it's proper.. ie. Denouncing Israel at the UN Security Council with the strongest statements possible, demanding international action..real impactful action..not just words.. and confronting the supplier of all these deadly weapons to Israel, Washington.

Henceforth, it's exactly this lukewarm response against Israelli aggression, that has landed the Putin government in trouble with all the Russian Federation Muslim population.. and it's a large population. And one that's just as Russian and as committed to the Russian Federation, as any other ethnic group in Russia. That has been proven also on the battlefield in Ukraine and in Kursk, where Chechens in particular have been one the best Russian soldiers, liberating so much territory and populations from the Zelensky Nato regime.

But Putin has to keep the Russian jews, also in support. Many jews are in the Russian Federation Parliament, the Duma, making laws, drawing up local, foreign and international policies.

So, Putin has to walk a fine line.. between Russian Muslims and Russian Jews.

And perhaps the best advice that he can draw on, is the long Soviet experience with this balancing action. However, at the end of the day.. when balancing acts are so difficult to achieve.. the Best Way forward is:

Go with what Is Right, don't surrender your justice principals for the sake of balancing acts. And in the Mideast, that has meant for for so many years, since 1947..the start of Israeli occupation of Palestine...

That Palestine is in the Right, and Israel is in the wrong. It's as Simple As That!!!

So now, the Putin government must step in, and sort out all the issues of discontent, arising from the Mideast Israeli Genocide, and the very personal issues that have arisen between powerful Russian Muslim Law Makers, and big business in the Russian Federation.