A Canterbury Fail

Hong Kong 2.0

Sweden’s tax system is not designed to be racist but that is its effect.

Rhodes statue row misses the point

Marxists exploiting grievances as usual

Oriel College caves in

The trials of the dead continue, with the governing body of Oriel College, Oxford, stated its desire to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes, under pressure from its pampered and privileged body of students.

The words of the statement are: “The Governing Body of Oriel College has today (Wednesday 17th June) voted to launch an independent Commission of Inquiry into the key issues surrounding the Rhodes statue. They also expressed their wish to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes and the King Edward Street Plaque. This is what they intend to convey to the Independent Commission of Inquiry.”

How any of this does anything to improve life for anyone alive today is not explained.

If Oriel College and its students are embarrassed by its endowment, they should renounce their claim on the income from the Rhodes endowment. Students who are suffering from guilt ought to give up their studies and get themselves involved on the ground. Virtue signalling is meaningless if it is not backed up by practical action. While the subject is live, the university and colleges could usefully take a look at all their present day investments and the morality or otherwise of the means by which their revenues are generated.

It also needs to be understood that this pressure is being created by cultural Marxist bodies and that there will be no end to their demands.

The statue-toppling epidemic

I wonder if this will bring a bigger audience than the blog?

Skriken av rasism

Händelser i USA har ledit till protester och skrik av rasism. Men brutalitet har alltid hittats bland med militär och polis. Detta handlar om makt och våld. Att skylla på rasism är att missa poängen. I Sverige är svårighet med assimilation först och framst ett problem som uppstår från socialism. Sveriges stora företag och offentliga sektor kultur och ekonomi gynnar inte invandrare, oavsatt sina ursprung, språk, religion, osv.

Traditionellt sätt trivs untlänningar som egetföretagare (skräddare, snickare, torghandlare osv). Då blir rasism ett icke-problem. Om varorna och priserna tillfredställer efterfrågan, ingen bryr sig om ras.

Jätteföretag som Tesco, Marks and Spencers grundades vid slutet av 1800-talets av fattiga judiska torghandlare som flydde från Ryssland och Polen; i dåtiden ville icke-judar absolut inte anställa judiska invandrare som knappast kunde engelska.

I idags Sverige blir småföretagare trakasseras och straffas av myndigheterna, särkilt skatteverket. Problemet är reglerna och systemet. Om assimilering ska tas på allvar, stora ändringar behövs. MP, S och V har tyvärr gjort ingenting att hjälpa till t ex med politiska och ekonomska reformsförslag.

Radicalisation reform programme fails

In the Daily Telegraph this morning.

The Government may have to give up on reforming some terrorists, says its advisor on anti-terror laws, as it emerged high-security prisoners have refused to join a flagship deradicalisation programme. Data released under freedom of information laws has revealed 15 inmates at high-security prisons including HMP Belmarsh, HMP Wakefield and HMP Frankland have refused to enrol on the Government’s main deradicalisation programme since January 2018.
Jonathan Hall, QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said it would be wrong to overstate the significance of the disclosure in terms of the risk to the public because of the uncertainty over the effectiveness of schemes like the Healthy Identity Intervention (HII).

But he said: “We may have to accept that some offenders  and I emphasise some - [can never be reformed] although that doesn’t mean reform should be discounted for others.” He said it was right to expect prisoners to “address the causes of their offending” but in order to do this the authorities including prison, police and probation needed “carrots and sticks.”

The Government’s proposed new anti-terror laws, currently before Parliament, removed “one of those carrots entirely” by denying the most dangerous terrorists the prospect of early release. They will instead be required to serve a minimum of 14 years with no prospect of parole before being released under licence for up to 25 years where they could be recalled to jail for any breach of the tough conditions such as where they live and who they contact. “This may reflect a perception that encouraging reform for these offenders is less important than it was considered previously,” said Mr Hall.

The HII scheme involves the offender attending repeated sessions with a psychologist who encourages them to talk about their motivations, beliefs, identity and relationships with both other extremists and the rest of society.

The scheme, which was piloted in 2010 and will be assessed in 2022, has previously drawn criticism. Christopher Dean, the psychologist who designed it, has even conceded that some of those who have taken part regressed because of their uniquely complex identities.

Those who believe in deradicalisation do not appreciate the power of religious belief. A conversion experience seems to be associated by a kind of re-wiring of the brain, accompanied by a conviction that one has found the absolute truth. This set of beliefs become a sort of 'master programme' which governs everything the believer thinks and does. Any shift from this is extremely difficult. Having recently made the transition from Christian Roman Catholic to Christian Eastern Orthodox - a tiny shift - I have noticed how hard this is, in this case because the Roman church claims to be the sole route to salvation, a claim which is well supported by scriptural and historic claims. My former parish priest and others, genuinely concerned, gave me a talk about the dangers of being out of communion with the Pope and of falling into heresy through not believing in the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.

In the case of a radicalised Moslem, what belief could possibly replace it? Although such conversions are known, the individuals are unlikely to become committed Anglicans, Quakers or Catholics. Reversion to a de-radicalised form of Islam would be difficult because radicalisation is a logical conclusions from the texts themselves; as they are recorded in the Hadith, the lives of Mohammed and his followers are not so different from those of today's radical Islamists, who would claim to be taking them as role models.

This is why deradicalisation programmes were always bound to fail. Allowing these men to develop long term relationships with a good imam or priest or nun might enable a few to find a better path, but it would require dedicated work. One possible alternative to lifelong incarceration would be to allow them to migrate to a country of their choice which was willing to accept them.