Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - This Week in Stupid (18⧸03⧸2018)

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March 18, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

24:42

This Week in Stupid (18⧸03⧸2018)

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	Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 18th of March 2018.
	I got that right this week.
	Sorry, it's kind of ingrained.
	You say it every week and it becomes almost like muscle memory.
	Anyway, this week I'm just going to get straight on with talking about the fallout from the Mirror's Telford investigation, because believe it or not, this hasn't actually been dominating the news this week.
	The news this week has been dominated by Russia.
	So as you may remember, on the 11th of March, the Daily Mirror, a left-wing tabloid newspaper in this country, published their investigation into Britain's worst ever child grooming scandal, where hundreds of young girls were raped, beaten, sold for sex, and some even killed in the Shropshire town of Telford.
	For the first 24 hours, the BBC didn't report on this for some reason.
	But only after pressure began mounting did they publish this article, Inquiry Called Over Telford Child Sex Exploitation.
	The worst part about reading this article is what the officials involved have to say.
	West Mercier Police said it took out all allegations extremely seriously, but the latest information was not new.
	Well, we know that it wasn't.
	We know that you've known about this for decades, and yet it still persists.
	Assistant Chief Constable of West Mercia Police Martin Evans said that tackling offences of child sexual exploitation was a priority.
	Well, I should fucking hope so, Martin.
	He said the issue gained prominence in Telford because of high-profile cases like Operation Chalice in 2013.
	Right, that's the reason it's gained prominence.
	It's not that there are thousands of victims who are being systematically abused by these terroristic gangs.
	And if you think I'm using hyperbolic language, you're wrong.
	And I've got to say, before we carry on, this is going to be a very fucking dark episode.
	Just so you know, because we're going to be getting into the details of what's happened.
	Unlike the BBC.
	Police and Crimes Commissioner for Shropshire John Campion said, this horrific crime has been happening in our communities now and has been for many years.
	And it was a continued area of focus by the police.
	So the MP for Telford is a woman called Lucy Allen, a conservative, and she fears that the independent sex abuse inquiry will not fully investigate the scandal.
	Just as in 2013's Operation Chalice, which was also an investigation into Telford grooming gangs, failed to fully investigate.
	She said, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse will not fully investigate whether any of the authorities in Telford should be held accountable.
	That is why we must have an independent inquiry into what happened in Telford, as such an inquiry is outside the current scope of the IICSA.
	And I think it's completely sensible of her to call for a separate inquiry into this particular event, because the IICSA are, frankly, massively overworked, given the sheer number of Muslim grooming gangs that are operating in the United Kingdom.
	Given how these Muslim grooming gangs have been operating in at least 18 different cities in not only the UK, but in England alone, they must have quite a lot on their plate.
	And to make sure that nothing is overlooked or just falls by the wayside because there's too many other things to have to worry about, I can understand completely why she would want an independent investigation.
	Her call was echoed by child abuse solicitor Dino Nucevelli of law firm Bolt Burden and Kemp, who said police needed to be held accountable for the failings in the town.
	If you look at someone like Telford where the abuse has been going on for 40 years, if you were a police officer and you started your career at the age of 25 and you retire at the age of 65, you've spent your entire career letting people down.
	If this was a doctor who chopped off the wrong leg in surgery, they'd be struck off.
	But for a police officer who fails to investigate, what actually happens?
	And the answer is nothing.
	Not one police officer, not one council, have been held accountable for their numerous and repeated failings for the past four decades.
	He added that police were using concerns around ethnicity as an excuse not to investigate, which is something that we have seen time and time again.
	As was revealed in Dr. Alexis J's Rotherham inquiry, which revealed that the police and the authorities were just afraid of being called racist.
	So it should come as no surprise when the Sunday Mirror said the police had failed to retain details of abusers from Asian communities for fear of being accused of racism.
	On one side, we've got lots of people being arrested for terrorism offences, and they're targeting the Muslim community, but on the other hand, they're not targeting them for child abuse, and that doesn't make any sense.
	Two days later, the Times reported that pressure was growing for an inquiry into the Telford child sex abuse claims.
	The official inquiry into child abuse has been asked to investigate claims that police and social workers failed to tackle gangs that targeted girls over a 40-year period.
	Three girls are reported to have been murdered by paedophiles who are estimated to have abused hundreds of victims in Telford, Shropshire.
	The local council yesterday asked for the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse to upgrade Telford to become a separate specific review alongside allegations involving establishment figures in the Church of England.
	The abuse in Telford was part of an investigation by The Times that exposed a hidden pattern of street grooming involving white young teenage girls and organized groups of men, largely of Pakistani origin across the country.
	Adele and Mubarak Ali, brothers who a court heard treated white girls as sexual commodities to be bought and sold, were given long jail sentences in 2013 after being found guilty of numerous offences against four girls aged 13 to 17.
	Javad Khan, the chief executive of Bernardo's, the children's protection charity, yesterday supported the call for a public inquiry, saying, The scale of the abuse in Telford is deeply shocking and those responsible must be held accountable for any failings uncovered.
	And on that note, we will talk about a police chaplain who was reportedly suspended after questioning whether claims of child exploitation that were passed to the police were always acted on.
	This was an event that happened in 2016, where the West Mercier Police Chaplain was investigated over child sex comments.
	I wonder what he said.
	According to the BBC, a police chaplain was being investigated after speaking out about child sex exploitation.
	Reverend Keith Osmond Smith, who leads a team of street pastors in Telford, told the Daily Mirror that he doubted information passed to officers about child exploitation was always acted upon.
	West Mercier Police confirmed an internal investigation was taking place into the man who was speaking out about the police not doing their duty.
	Mr. Osmond Smith was quoted in the article in August saying that lots of reports about child sex exploitation were sent to senior officers, but because it was going on so many people, no one was really taking responsibility for it.
	I was never quite sure that the things we were reporting were resulting in any serious action.
	Well, I can see why this man needed to be investigated internally because, good grief, we can't have people like him speaking out and letting the wider world know that there is a massive problem with Muslim rape gangs in Telford and the police just aren't taking responsibility for actually bloody solving it.
	And even back in 2016, Lucy Allen was calling for an inquiry into why child sex abuse had been going on in Telford for over 20 years and why the police had failed to address it.
	By the 15th of March, the Home Office said that they weren't going to conduct an independent inquiry into the Telford abuse scandal.
	The Home Office said the government launched the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse to get to the truth, expose what's gone wrong and learn lessons for the future.
	This includes institutional responses to child sexual exploitation by organized networks such as those in Telford.
	Yes, but don't you think it might be useful to have a targeted inquiry into this specific example?
	Because, as the man who spoke out about it and was punished for speaking out about it, said, it seems that a lot is falling by the wayside because nobody is being held to account.
	Essentially, this was code for the Home Office saying, we want to pass the buck.
	We will let the Telford authorities decide if an abuse inquiry is needed.
	On one hand, I should be pleased about the idea of devolution of powers.
	On the other hand, I'm absolutely furious that the government just simply wants to brush this off.
	On Tuesday of this week, the Telford and Wrecking Council had changed its position and submitted its own request to the Home Office to commission a dedicated independent Telford inquiry.
	But the Home Office spokesman said that the IICSA would look into the failings by institutions in towns and city across the country, including Telford, and that it's for the authorities in Telford to decide whether further review is necessary.
	Well, it seems that they have.
	The next day, on March the 16th, Conservative MP Lucy Allen said that yes, we will have an independent inquiry.
	And honestly, there's a part of me that wonders if this is just about who's going to pay for it.
	But either way, good on her.
	We do need an inquiry into each and every single example of where this has happened.
	We need to know why it's happening, and we need to know why the authorities have failed.
	Not that we don't already have this information, but we have to go through the motions.
	Alan said that there is going to be a dedicated independent inquiry into child exploitation in Telford.
	All parties are now agreed that an inquiry is necessary and can go ahead.
	While it would be expected that such an inquiry would take the form of a Rotherham-style inquiry, as this is a tried and tested model, this is for anyone outside of the UK.
	And again, I'm sorry that I'm not covering American events at the moment, but this is just too important to miss.
	This is the state of affairs in Britain.
	We now have a tried and tested model for investigating Muslim grooming gangs in my country.
	Just so you know.
	There may well be alternative models that work just as well.
	What really matters is that an independent inquiry is going to take place.
	This is vital for the victims, their families, and our community.
	It will enable us to find out why this happened.
	As I said, we already know why this happened, but it's important.
	And of course, Theresa May applauds the investigation into Telford child abuse, as long as it's not her problem and she doesn't have to oversee it and she doesn't have to be responsible for what comes out of it.
	And it looks like I was right.
	There's a holdup because Telford's council says the government should fund the inquiry while the government says Telford should.
	But Miss Allen told the Sunday Mirror that she's going to let them fight it out and there's going to be an inquiry whoever ends up paying for it.
	It should come as no surprise that once this scandal broke in the national press, new victims have come forward.
	And Lucy Allen says that she has been inundated with reports.
	It is clear that this has been going on for many years and a significant number of girls have been affected.
	Interestingly, Telford police are attempting to downplay the number of people apparently affected by these grooming gangs, saying that this is sensationalised.
	Superintendent Tom Harding of West Mercier Police significantly disputed the figures and argued that the town was no worse than other areas of England and Wales.
	Which should really tell you everything you need to know.
	Harding said that the prosecution happened to be a number of Asian males, but added, What I would say is that sexual offending across Telford and Wrecking is virtually identically proportionate to the breakdown of society.
	So it's not one particular section over others, and we will tackle it wherever it is.
	This is the new normal in Britain.
	This is why when the police say, well, it's no different to any of the other places like Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford, Newcastle, they're right.
	It isn't any different.
	This is happening all over the fucking place.
	In fact, let's take a look at one of the people who may have been involved in this.
	The Mirror reports, vile paedophile granddad who made £2,000 a night selling Telford girls at the rape house.
	Shahzad Keith Khan was the grandfather who ran the Telford child sex ring and sold the girls to be raped.
	Police were tipped off about Khan as far back as 1996, but he was allowed to run his rape house for years.
	He regularly picked up one sex slave outside a local police station.
	A golden chance to nail him and a string of other men went begging in 2013 when a police case collapsed.
	Khan was the head of a family of abusers who subjected dozens of youngsters to a terrifying ordeal.
	He operated his child sex ring from an empty ex-council property and sold one girl for sex at up to £2,000 a night.
	The girl said of her ordeal at Khan's hands, I felt numb and dead inside.
	The monster, fucking Elmira.
	The monster's son and nephew who regularly stayed at the terrorist house have been since caged for sex run jail.
	Jeff, not caged, don't put people in cages, Mira.
	Jesus Christ, I hate fucking tabloids.
	Yet Brazen Khan operated under the notice of authorities in the area and was even featured in his local paper as a pillar of the community.
	He was described as a generous bird lover who fed pigeons to help him get over a cancer ordeal.
	Our investigators discovered that Khan was reported to police over sex abuse fears in the mid-1990s.
	Officers were tipped off by a female neighbour who believed he was selling young girls in the town for sex.
	She had seen him take a 12-year-old from a children's home into a car.
	The neighbour said, I told a police officer at Donington Police Station what Khan was doing.
	I even told them that he had offered my brother sex with an underage girl.
	Nothing was done.
	They told me they couldn't prosecute him as they never had enough evidence.
	I got the feeling they were brushing me off.
	He was later reported to officers by a child sex victim whose police case files have been seen by our team, but no charges were brought against Khan.
	The victims who were forced to provide sex at Khan's drab terrorist property dubbed it the rape house.
	According to police statements and the victim's testimony, Khan took the virginity of one 14-year-old girl and then made up to £2,000 a night selling her for sex with scores of men.
	She was even sexually abused within hours of having an abortion.
	The victim told us how she first fell into Khan's clutches.
	She said, I was already being abused and I didn't understand what was happening to me.
	I first met Keith in the street and he told me because I had a reputation anyway, I may as well get paid for it.
	He told me all about these older girls I knew from school and how they were doing it too and making loads of money.
	It was the beginning of a three-year ordeal which left the young victim suicidal and broken.
	She described being forced to have sex with multiple men in restaurants, houses and fast food joints and even being trafficked to Birmingham for more abuse.
	The girl now in her 30s said, One night I was taken to a takeaway and forced to have sex with nine men in a row.
	I just switched off.
	As one man raped me, the next one would be queuing up on the stairs.
	The next day I went to school like nothing had happened.
	Another victim we spoke to said she was lured by Khan when she developed a heroin problem after being abused by other Pakistani men.
	She said, Keith knew other men and got me into drugs and that I'd do anything for a fix so he started to sell me.
	It turns my stomach to think about some of the disgusting men he forced me to have sex with.
	He'd pick me up right outside the police station in Wellington and sometimes police cars would drive past us.
	They must have realised something was very badly wrong but they never said a word nor asked me what I was doing with a much older man.
	My parents were absolutely beside themselves.
	Yeah, I can fucking imagine.
	And so now we'll get to why this is happening.
	Telford sex abuse scandal.
	I wasn't brave enough to talk about race, I wish I'd had, says Lucy Allen.
	Honestly, Lucy, it's not about race.
	It's about religion.
	But I think everyone already knows that.
	When Alan moved to Telford five years ago, and she wanted a seat for the Conservatives in 2015, the assumption was that the awful cases of gangs of Asian men preying on vulnerable young white girls, as they had in Rotherham and Rochdale, had been dealt with.
	The men convicted by Operation Chalice in 2012 had received long jail sentences for charges ranging from sexual activity with the child to controlling child prostitution.
	A clear pattern had emerged of older Asian men grooming young white girls who were seen as willing participants by the police and social services who chose to believe that girls as young as 13 had made a lifestyle choice to become child prostitutes.
	It's symptomatic of an attitude that's allowed this to happen, she says.
	People say to themselves, well, of course it's consensual.
	She got in his car, she took the cigarette, she took the money, she came back for more, without joining the dots and asking why a 14-year-old has a 35-year-old boyfriend.
	In September 2016, she started raising this issue with the Prime Minister.
	She started at PMQs with a call for a Rotherham-style inquiry into the town.
	Theresa May was privately sympathetic, but it was not possible to go ahead with an inquiry unless the local council agreed.
	It would not agree, arguing that it already had adequate training and procedures in place, and that the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse chaired by Alexis J would look at Telford and that was sufficient.
	So began a war of attrition, with Alan refusing to give up her call for an inquiry.
	The council then wrote a shocking letter to the Home Secretary, signed by 10 men, saying that the J Inquiry would conduct a review of the events in Telford.
	After months of badgering, Alan established that the J Inquiry did not intend to look into Telford in any great detail.
	Alan was then accused of stirring up racial divisions by pointing the finger at Asian men when child abuse was perpetrated by people from all backgrounds.
	At that time, I hadn't even mentioned race, I wasn't brave enough.
	The cultural differences had been underplayed because police tended to conflate child sexual abuse, which can happen in the family, with child sexual exploitation.
	By not distinguishing between the two, you don't identify that the grooming gangs are of Pakistani heritage, while someone who abuses a child at home might be a white stepparent, or even the parent.
	Even I was too readily accepting of, well, the stats say lots of white men perpetrate abuse.
	Yes, white men abuse, but this gang element is associated with Pakistani culture.
	Recognising the problem is the first step to tackling it.
	A report by Think Tank William late last year found that 84% of men convicted of being part of grooming gangs since 2005 were Asian.
	But really, it doesn't matter what part of the world these people come from because as Trevor Phillips, the former race czar to the government said, it's because they're Muslims.
	They're all Muslims.
	All of these grooming gang members are Muslims.
	So a Muslim from North Africa can join a gang that is predominantly Pakistani and still fit in.
	Because they have the same identity.
	Phillips said that describing these gangs as Asian wrongly points the finger at ethnic groups like Indian Hindus who have not been implicated.
	In a column for The Telegraph, he wrote, What the perpetrators have in common is that they proclaim faith.
	They are Muslims, and many of them would claim to be practicing.
	It is not Islamophobic to point this out, any more than it would be racist to point out the most active persecutors of LGBT people come from countries where most people are, like me, black.
	It is a religious problem, as Ella Hill, which is a pseudonym for a woman who was systematically abused by these gangs, will point out.
	She says, as a Rotherham grooming gang survivor, I want people to know about the religious extremism which inspired my abusers.
	Grooming gangs are not like paedophile rings.
	Instead, they operate almost exactly like terrorist networks with all the same strategies.
	She says, as a teenager, I was taken to various houses and flats above takeaways in the north of England to be beaten, tortured, and raped over a hundred times.
	I was called a white slag, a white cunt, as they beat me.
	They made it clear it was because I was a non-Muslim, not a virgin, and because I didn't dress modestly, and that they believed I deserved to be punished.
	They said I had to obey or be beaten.
	Fear of being killed and threats to my parents' lives made it impossible for me to escape for about a year.
	The police didn't help me.
	As I write this, it has been widely reported that a letter sent to Muslim groups around the country declaring a national Punish a Muslim Day.
	Elsewhere, the leaders of Britain first have been found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment.
	Islamophobic online hate and personal attacks occur every day.
	In response, anti-fascist groups on the far left have carried out their own violent attacks on groups they perceive to comprise white supremacists or Nazis.
	As someone who's experienced life inside a grooming gang, I can tell you with certainty that none of this is likely to make any difference to the behaviour of the groomers.
	Like terrorists, they firmly believe that the crimes they carried out are justified by their religious beliefs.
	If anything, rising anti-Muslim hate will probably make groomers stronger in their convictions and drive ordinary young Muslim men towards fundamentalism, grooming gangs and terrorism.
	The camaraderie, protection, money and kudos that these groups offer makes them a strong pull for anyone.
	Worryingly, several young men I have spoken to joke that being a gangster and going to jail are their life goals.
	Religious indoctrination is a big part of the process of getting young men involved in grooming gang crime.
	Religious ideas about purity, virginity, modesty and obedience are taken to the extreme until horrific abuse becomes the norm.
	It was taught to me as the concept of othering.
	Muslim girls are good and pure because they dress modestly, covering down to their ankles and wrists and covering their crotch area.
	They stay virgins until married.
	They are our girls.
	White girls and non-Muslim girls are bad because you dress like slags.
	You show the curves of your bodies, showing the gap between your thighs means you're asking for it, and therefore you're immoral.
	White girls sleep with hundreds of men.
	You are the other girls.
	You are worthless and you deserve to be gang raped.
	I experienced horrific, religiously sanctioned sexual violence and torture, so I definitely believe that we need to be aware of religious extremism as something potentially harmful so we can protect people from it.
	I witnessed the ways young men are groomed to become perpetrators by older grooming gang members.
	It's very similar to the tactics used in grooming for terrorism with love bombing, emotive language, brother, cuz, blood, and promises of wealth and fame, then humiliation, controlling with guilt and shame, training with weapons and instilling hate and fear of outsiders.
	Always at the same time they continue to convince these young men that they must find girls to be gang raped too.
	Grooming gang crime is upheld by religious extremism.
	Like Sweden, we must officially recognize this and work to curb extremist preaching, teach religious counter-narratives, give gendered extremism education, and deliver quality relationships education while learning the lessons from Prevent and Channel.
	And as an Oxford police chief pointed out, these are what we would call racist crimes.
	This was from back in 2017.
	Operation Bullfinch and other sex crimes involving Asian gangs, again, Asian, targeting white girls should be treated as racist, politicians and campaigners have said.
	Anthony Stansfield, the police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley, told the Oxford Mail that the National Review was required to get a better understanding of the grooming culture and sex abuse offending.
	He echoed points raised by the former Crown Prosecution Service chief Lord MacDonald, which said that cases need to be recognised in courts as profoundly racist crimes.
	They're doing it because they're white and non-Muslim, and often not just to white, to Sikhs and Hindus as well, but at this point, you know, do we really need to differentiate?
	And of course, Mr. Stansfeld also said that prior cases such as the Bullfinch scandal which was unearthed in 2012, political correctness had got in the way of investigations.
	We should have a high inquiry into why this is happening.
	It's clearly a racist crime.
	It's not just one or two isolated cases, it's quite clearly happening.
	And you can find this almost anywhere, and almost any time.
	And let me give you a far-flung example from Sydney, back in 2002.
	Racist rapes, the truth finally comes out.
	So now we know the facts, straight from the Supreme Court, that a group of Lebanese Muslim gang rapists from southwestern Sydney hunted their victims on the basis of their ethnicity and subjected them to hours of degrading, dehumanizing torture.
	The young women and girls as young as 14 were sluts and Aussie pigs, the rapists said.
	Now that some of the perpetrators are in jail, will those who cried racism and media sensationalism hang their heads in shame?
	Hardly.
	The left has been providing cover for this for years.
	There is no question of why this is happening.
	These are Muslim men with a Muslim identity who view non-Muslim girls as inferior and who find it religiously justified to victimize them.
	And it doesn't surprise me at all that Sikh and Hindu groups are asking politicians in the media to just stop using the term Asian to describe these Muslim grooming gangs.
	Because it's not about them being Asian, it's about them being Muslims.
	There is simply no debating this at this point.
	This has been demonstrated many times, from the girls who have been abused to the young men who are doing the abusing to the older men who are organizing all of this and their own statements in the fucking courts.
	Oh yeah, just so you know, it's not like the British authorities are treating these people with any particular degree of severity.
	Tulsid sex gang ringleader Mubarak Ali said to be freed early.
	He's identified as the offender being prepared to be released just five years into a 22 year jail sentence.
	Well that just makes perfect sense.

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