The often stale British political system is being rocked by its very own Tea Party.
The UK Independence Party (UKIP), formed in 1993 opposing Britain’s entry into the European Union, failed to make an electoral dent for a long time. However UKIP has built up steam in recent years and is spearheading a seismic shift in the British political spectrum.
In this year’s local elections – the British version of midterms — UKIP took a stunning 23 percent of the vote, up from the 3.1 percent they won in the 2010 national election. Their leader, Nigel Farage, is buoyed by their recent success.
“We want to take back our country, we want to take back our government, and we want to take back our birthright,” Farage told FoxNews.com in forthright language rarely seen in British politics.
Farage has good reason to be confident of UKIP’s potential. Since he took the party’s helm for a second time in 2010, the party has been revitalized, capitalizing on dissatisfaction with the Conservative Party’s shift to the center under current Prime Minister David Cameron.
Read more from this story about Britain’s version of the tea party HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2014-01-05 00:24:112014-01-05 00:24:11Britain’s Version of Tea Party Rocks Political System Across the Pond
British lawmakers on Thursday voted against military intervention in Syria, in a major setback for both British Prime Minister David Cameron and the Obama administration in their push to punish the Assad regime for an alleged chemical weapons strike.
Cameron, who has been aligned with President Obama in advocating a tough response, indicated after the vote that he would abide by the outcome. The measure was narrowly defeated, by 285 votes to 272 votes.
The outcome raises serious questions for Obama, who has not yet made a decision on the way forward in Syria but had indicated his administration would need international support for any strike. After failing to win support for an anti-Assad resolution before the U.N. Security Council, U.S. officials were looking to allies like Britain and France to build a coalition for action in Syria.
The White House said after the vote that it would continue to assess its options on Syria.
“The U.S. will continue to consult with the U.K. Government – one of our closest Allies and friends. As we’ve said, President Obama’s decision-making will be guided by what is in the best interests of the United States,” said National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-30 00:36:512013-08-30 00:36:51British Lawmakers Reject Military Action in Syria, in Setback for Obama Administration
The editor of the Guardian, a major outlet for revelations based on leaks from former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, says the British government threatened legal action against the newspaper unless it either destroyed the classified documents or handed them back to British authorities.
In an article posted on the British newspaper’s website on Monday, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said that a month ago, after the newspaper had published several stories based on Snowden’s material, a British official advised him: “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.”
After further talks with the government, Rusbridger said, two “security experts” from Government Communications Headquarters, the British equivalent of the ultra-secretive U.S. National Security Agency, visited the Guardian’s London offices.
In the building’s basement, Rusbridger wrote, government officials watched as computers which contained material provided by Snowden were physically pulverized. “We can call off the black helicopters,” Rusbridger says one of the officials joked.
The Guardian’s decision to publicize the government threat – and the newspaper’s assertion that it can continue reporting on the Snowden revelations from outside of Britain – appears to be the latest step in an escalating battle between the news media and governments over reporting of secret surveillance programs.
David Miranda detention: a betrayal of trust and principle
By The Guardian Editorial.
Long before the partner of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald was detained at Heathrow airport on Sunday, the law that was used to hold him and remove his possessions had been effectively discredited in its present form. Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 is a sweeping power to detain for up to nine hours. It gives border police a power of detention for questioning without specific suspicion or a right to be represented. It is one of the strongest police powers on the statute book – a useful weapon for security services trawling for information but a potential source of injustice waiting to happen. It has provoked some of the strongest community complaints about the way UK terrorism laws operate in practice. Parliament is already scheduled to reform it.
David Miranda’s detention should be seen in the context of the implicit acceptance by the Home Office, which is bringing forward the current changes, that parts of the law are too sweeping. But Mr Miranda’s detention is extraordinary nevertheless. It raises important new issues that parliament cannot now ignore and will have to debate if its terrorism law reform bill is to be in any way meaningful, just or proportionate.
Part of this is because there is not the slightest suggestion that Mr Miranda is a terrorist. But Mr Miranda does live with and work with Mr Greenwald, who has broken most of the stories about US and UK state surveillance based on leaks from the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. None of that work involves committing, preparing or instigating acts of terrorism, or anything that could reasonably fall within even the most capacious definition of such activities. Yet anyone who imagines that Mr Miranda was detained at random at Heathrow is not living in the real world.
White House was given ‘heads-up’ over David Miranda detention in UK
By Nicholas Watt, and Adam Gabbatt.
Britain was facing intense pressure on Monday to give a detailed explanation of the decision to detain the partner of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald after the White House confirmed that it was given a “heads-up” before David Miranda was taken into custody for nine hours at Heathrow.
As the UK’s anti-terror legislation watchdog called for a radical overhaul of the laws that allowed police to confiscate Miranda’s electronic equipment, the US distanced itself from the action by saying that British authorities took the decision to detain him.
The detailed intervention by the White House will put pressure on Downing Street which declined to comment on the detention of Miranda on the grounds that it was an operational matter, adding that the Metropolitan police would decide whether its officers had acted in a proportionate manner.
The No 10 position was immediately challenged by David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, who described the detention as unusual, and said that decisions about the proportionality were not ultimately for the police.
He told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One: “The police, I’m sure, do their best. But at the end of the day there is the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which can look into the exercise of this power, there are the courts and there is my function.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-08-20 00:20:142013-08-20 00:20:14British Government Forced Media Outlet to Destroy Copy of Snowden Material
The British government has brought in two vans to circle around London, displaying billboards that warn undocumented immigrants to “Go Home Or Face Arrest.”
The effort, which is being piloted by the U.K’s Home Office — similar to our Department of Homeland Security — is meant to encourage people to leave the country before they are deported. As part of the effort, the vans not only display a number that undocumented people can text for help, but also show the tally of people who have been arrested in the area where the vans are circling:
Photo Credit: Gov.uk
The vans are driving through six London boroughs — Hounslow, Barking & Dagenham, Ealing, Barnet, Brent and Redbridge. Those neighborhoods have particularly high immigrant populations.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00newseditorhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngnewseditor2013-07-26 01:56:312016-04-11 11:18:21British Government Embraces ‘Self-Deportation’ With ‘Go Home Or Face Arrest’ Billboards
US President Barack Obama repeatedly called British finance minister George Osborne “Jeffrey” at the G8 summit, media reported on Thursday.
The US president said three times that he agreed fully with “Jeffrey” during his presentation on G8 host Britain’s plans to crack down on tax avoidance, leaving Osborne red-faced.
Realising his blunder afterwards, Obama joked that he had mistaken Britain’s chancellor for the US soul singer Jeffrey Osborne, The Sun and the Financial Times reported.
“I’m sorry, man. I must have confused you with my favourite R and B singer,” Obama was quoted as saying.
The chancellor, 42, bears little resemblance to Jeffrey Osborne, a 65-year-old African-American hit singer-songwriter known for his 1982 classic “On the Wings of Love”.
Photo Credit: APThe former head of MI5 Dame Stella Rimington has called for British people to inform security services if they suspect their neighbours maybe extremists.
Dame Stella, who supports the Government’s controversial ‘snoopers’ charter’, said people need to be more alert because it is impossible for security services to spot every threat.
She called for a wartime vigilance and for people to be the Government’s ‘eyes and ears’ following the killing of Lee Rigby.
The 78-year-old, who was MI5’s first female Director General, said: ‘The community has the responsibility to act as the eyes and ears, as they did during the war … where there were all these posters up saying the walls have ears and the enemy is everywhere.
‘There have often been indications in the community, whether it’s Muslim or anywhere else, that people are becoming extremists and spouting hate phrases.’
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-29 04:00:402016-04-11 11:20:07Ex-Head of British Spy Agency Calls on Everyone to Spy on Neighbors
Photo Credit: Breitbart Nutty British star Russell Brand took to the pages of The Sun today to pretend that there is no relationship between radical Islam and the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby by Islamists in Woolwich. Brand tweeted within hours of the murder, “That bloke is a nut. A nut who happens to be Muslim. Blaming Muslims for this is like blaming Hitler’s moustache for the Holocaust.”
Actually, Russell, it isn’t. Blaming Islamism for what happened to Lee Rigby is sort of like blaming Nazism for the Holocaust. In other words, it’s accurate. But Brand believes that only the insane take murderous action. “In spite of his dispassionate intoning the subject is not rational,” licensed psychiatrist Brand wrote in The Sun. “Of course he’s not rational, he’s just murdered a stranger in the street, he says, because of a book. In my view that man’s severely mentally ill and has found a convenient conduit for his insanity – in this case the Koran.”
Brand actually compared the Islamist murderers to John Lennon’s murderer, Mark Chapman, who said he was inspired by The Catcher in the Rye. Neither book, said Brand, could be linked with murder. “I’ve read that book and I’ve read some of the Koran, and nothing in either of them has compelled me to do violence,” wrote Brand.
Except, of course, that there isn’t an entire movement of would-be murderers and murder-sympathizers who claim their authority from Salinger. There are millions of such would-be murderers and murder supporters around the globe who claim authority from the Koran.
Photo Credit: The BlazeBy Jason Howerton. London is still reeling from the horrific terror attack that took place earlier this week.
Both of the suspects accused of butchering a British soldier during broad daylight on a London street had long been on the radar of Britain’s domestic spy agency, though investigators say it would have been nearly impossible to predict that the men were on the verge of a brutal killing.
Still, counter-terrorism officials said they are reviewing what – if any – lessons can be gleaned from the information they had leading up to the slaying Wednesday.
Authorities in the U.S. have similarly pledged to review their procedures in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, with the Boston police commissioner saying that cities should consider deploying more undercover officers and installing more surveillance cameras.
The British review comes amid an outpouring of grief over Wednesday’s slaughter of 25-year-old Lee Rigby of the 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. Rigby, who had a two-year-old son, had served in Afghanistan. Detectives say they do not believe the attackers knew him or that he was specifically targeted, but they are still investigating. Read more from this story HERE.
To the Slaughter: British Lions Come up Lambs in Woolwich
Photo Credit: National Review By Mark Steyn. On Wednesday, Drummer Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, a man who had served Queen and country honorably in the hell of Helmand Province in Afghanistan, emerged from his barracks on Wellington Street, named after the Duke thereof, in southeast London. Minutes later, he was hacked to death in broad daylight and in full view of onlookers by two men with machetes who crowed “Allahu akbar!” as they dumped his carcass in the middle of the street like so much road kill.
As grotesque as this act of savagery was, the aftermath was even more unsettling. The perpetrators did not, as the Tsarnaev brothers did in Boston, attempt to escape. Instead, they held court in the street gloating over their trophy, and flagged down a London bus to demand the passengers record their triumph on film. As the crowd of bystanders swelled, the remarkably urbane savages posed for photographs with the remains of their victim while discoursing on the iniquities of Britain toward the Muslim world. Having killed Drummer Rigby, they were killing time: It took 20 minutes for the somnolent British constabulary to show up. And so television viewers were treated to the spectacle of a young man, speaking in the vowels of south London, chatting calmly with his “fellow Britons” about his geopolitical grievances and apologizing to the ladies present for any discomfort his beheading of Drummer Rigby might have caused them, all while drenched in blood and still wielding his cleaver.
If you’re thinking of getting steamed over all that, don’t. Simon Jenkins, the former editor of the Times of London, cautioned against “mass hysteria” over “mundane acts of violence.”
That’s easy for him to say. Woolwich is an unfashionable part of town, and Sir Simon is unlikely to find himself there of an afternoon stroll. Drummer Rigby had less choice in the matter. Being jumped by barbarians with machetes is certainly “mundane” in Somalia and Sudan, but it’s the sort of thing that would once have been considered somewhat unusual on a sunny afternoon in south London — at least as unusual as, say, blowing up eight-year-old boys at the Boston Marathon. It was “mundane” only in the sense that, as at weddings and kindergarten concerts, the reflexive reaction of everybody present was to get out their cell phones and start filming. Read more from this story HERE.
Cameron calls for probe on word terrorists were known to UK authorities prior to attack
By Fox News. The savage attack mounted by Muslim terrorists on a soldier on a busy London street has prompted a parliament inquiry into what the nation’s vaunted MI5 domestic intelligence agency could have done to stop the suspects, both of whom had raised alarms with authorities.
The two suspects accused of hacking 25-year-old British soldier Lee Rigby to death Wednesday remained hospitalized under guard after being shot by police following the shocking incident, the aftermath of which was caught on cellphone video by passersby.
Michael Adebolajo, 28 and Michael Adebowale, 22, hit Rigby with their car and then attacked him with knives and a meat cleaver, according to witnesses.
Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday a parliamentary committee will carry out an investigation into the role of the security services in tracking the suspects before their bloody rampage. MI5 was apparently aware of the men, and while Adebolajo had handed out radical Islamist pamphlets neither was considered a serious threat, a government source told Reuters. Adebowale is a naturalized British citizen born in Nigeria, while Adebolajo was born in Britain to a Nigerian immigrant family, according to a Reuters report.
“To find the signals, the red flags as it were, I think is enormously hard,” Richard Barrett, former head of counter-terrorism at the Secret Intelligence Service MI6, Britain’s foreign spy agency, told the BBC. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-25 04:21:192016-04-11 11:20:23Widow of Butchered British Soldier Gives Heartbreaking Tearful Interview: ‘I Love Lee and Always Will’
Photo Credit: ITV NewsClutching a bloodied meat cleaver, the suspected killer who executed a soldier on a crowded street declared: ‘you and your kids will be next’.
In a chilling rant captured on camera, the knife-wielding man declared: ‘The only reason we have killed this man today is because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers.’
The man who launched the terrifying diatribe in Woolwich, south-east London, is believed to be Michael Adebolajo, who has been identified on Twitter and web forums as one of the two people arrested.
He added, in the video obtained by ITV News: ‘Remove your governments – they don’t care about you. You think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start bursting our guns? You think politicians are going to die?
Yesterday the serviceman, wearing a Help for Heroes top, was run down by a car before being brutally attacked in Woolwich, just 200 yards from the barracks.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-23 03:34:412016-04-11 11:20:32Islamic Fundamentalists Attempt Beheading of British Soldier in London in Broad Daylight (+videos)
Photo Credit: ALAMYMore than a third of those who said they support a change in the law cited a belief that dying people cannot expect to receive “decent” care at the end of their lives among their reasons.
And while a conviction that people in the 21st century should have a “right to choose” how and when they die dominated the thinking of supporters of assisted dying, only a minority of opponents cited traditional arguments based on life being “sacred”.
The findings emerge from detailed polling of than 4,000 people by YouGov on behalf of the organisers of the regular Westminster Faith Debates.
Overall seven out of 10 people polled agreed with the notion that people with “incurable” illnesses should have the right to ask close friends or relatives to help them commit suicide, without the risk of those people being prosecuted.
Only 16 per cent were actively opposed to the suggestion while 14 per cent were torn.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-05-01 23:35:122016-04-11 11:22:15Socialized Medicine So Bad in UK that Brits are turning to Assisted Suicide
