A few Twitter accounts seemingly worth following
Reminiscent of the Serbsky Institute in the old Soviet Union: dissidence classified as mental illness. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbsky_Center
https://twitter.com/Marquis72099279/status/1287705354218938375?s=20
Interesting. I think that we all know that, in the end, these evils will not be fought and exterminated by debate, tweets, whatever. The enemy have taken away the right of the true European people to tweet, post on YouTube, publish books offline, sell books online via Amazon and elsewhere, post opinions online even on dedicated websites, let alone make public speeches or stand for election anywhere.
The whole “democratic” and “free speech” world is being closed off to social nationalism and even to ordinary conservative nationalism. That leaves only a few alternatives in the emerging culture war.
Tweets seen this morning
A pretty good short film.
Regular readers of my blog will know that I am sceptical of the value of privately-held firearms as a guarantor of liberty. Not that I am “anti” weapon or anti-gun, as such.
I was once a member of a gun club, the now more or less defunct Kensington Rifle and Pistol Club, founded in the Victorian era (I believe). I was a member from 1976 to about 1985. I used only pistols there, usually the Browning Hi-Power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browning_Hi-Power
I have also, though again long ago (1970s, 1980s), handled and/or used other weapons, but mainly overseas, and including some automatic weapons such as, in Africa, the R-1 automatic/semi-automatic rifle (there was a switch on the side— Safe, Semi-Automatic fire, Full Automatic fire).
I have also some (limited) experience of shotgun use, mainly in Wales and Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s (incidentally, not shooting birds or animals; I disapprove fairly strongly of that kind of “sport”).
I mention all the above in case some, perhaps American, readers of this blog imagine that I am —what they may think of as— a typical European anti-gun person. No. However, the idea that weapons of that sort preserve liberty or one’s political freedom is just not so.
David ben Gurion said, in the 1940s, to one of the Jewish terrorist leaders (I think Shamir, a member of the Stern Gang —aka Lehi— and later a Prime Minister of Israel), “do you imagine that you can create a state with pistols?“.
I presume that ben Gurion meant “with pistols only“…Still, the point is valid.
The NSDAP was not primarily an armed body in the Germany of the 1920s and early 1930s. That despite the fact that most NSDAP activists had fought in the First World War and/or in the postwar Freikorps.
In the UK, the question scarcely arises. Tony Blair effectively disarmed the —almost entirely peaceful— recreational pistol and rifle sportsmen in 1997.
Incidentally, we may as well note that in the whole history of the UK, there have been only three gun massacres: Hungerford 1987, Dunblane 1996, and Cumbria 2010. I suppose that some would add to that the Raoul Moat affair of 2010, though Moat actually killed “only” one person (and nearly killed two others).
So the UK has suffered only three or four massacres or rampages in hundreds of years, of which two happened after the gun clubs and their members were disarmed in the late 1990s! Of those latter two incidents, one (the 2010 Cumbria massacre) was committed using legally-held long weapons (a small-calibre rifle, and shotguns); the other (the Raoul Moat matter, also in 2010) involved the use of weapons not lawfully held.
Reverting to the USA, many Americans (probably the majority) hold some form of firearm; many have several, some have dozens or even hundreds. Hundreds of millions of firearms, yet not so many incidents when the numbers are taken into account.
In relation to “preservation of liberty”, the American obsession with “the right to bear arms” is more theoretical than real. One has to ask, under what circumstances would Americans take up arms (meaning actually use arms) against the Federal Government or even, say, against the “antifa” mobs or those behind them? There have been few signs of either so far.
For me, the “gun-owning patriots” (or whatever) of the USA are people who are, so to speak, “all dressed up with nowhere to go”. At least so far…
Cartoon about the facemask nonsense
Tweets seen
Very true. When I last saw (and read) a copy of Private Eye, some years ago, its former, long ago, bite was absent. It is now, appropriately enough in view of its 1960s origins, akin to the “Norwegian Blue Parrot…nailed to its perch”… (come to think of it, that description might apply to many aspects of life in the UK of 2020, among which the Monarchy, Parliamentary “democracy”, the Press, the Bar, the Church of England, to name but a few).
As Peter Hitchens says, Private Eye is now lame, because it has to pull its punches so as not to offend Jews, Muslims, “woke” “celebrities” etc. The old Soviet “humour” magazine, Krokodil, no doubt known to Peter Hitchens (a former correspondent in Moscow), suffered from the same or anyway a similar problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krokodil
Untermenschen of that sort, raping German girls, would have been guillotined during the time of the Reich…
More tweets
and in case you thought that you had seen peak idiocy…look below!
“Wear a facemask at home“, says this idiot woman medic! I have to admit that, though my opinion of the sagacity of the people of the UK was never high, it has never previously fallen as low as it has during the present “crisis” (scare). I bet that now there will be at least a few rabbits who will be sitting at home wearing facemasks, like actors in some dystopian black comedy…
Corbyn libel case
I notice that Jeremy Corbyn’s legal defence fund is now standing around £318,000 at time and date of writing. The rate of increase has slowed. At one time, a couple of daysago, about £40 a minute was being donated; now, perhaps £2 a minute. https://uk.gofundme.com/f/47gyy-jeremy039s-legal-fund
It seems that the main, perhaps only, solicitor involved on the other side is the unpleasant Jew-Zionist fanatic Mark Lewis, now a resident of Eilat, Israel, and about whom I have blogged quite extensively in the past, mostly in 2018 and 2019. My exposures of this fake can be found readily enough by searching these pages, or via Google.
Tweets seen
https://twitter.com/SkyeCityAuthor/status/1288429414812975105?s=20
Anyone wanting more information on what a self-publicizing fraud is Mark Lewis, of Eilat, Israel, the self-described great defamation specialist, should take a look at my several blog posts about him.
Mark Lewis’s “explanation” for his failure is in this Daily Mail report: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8572095/Rachel-Riley-Tracy-Ann-Oberman-drop-lawsuit-against-barrister-tweeted-bloggers-article.html
So much for Mark Lewis…
A few other people have been talking about Lewis today…
https://twitter.com/jamesrochestr/status/1288559468008144896?s=20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance#England_and_Wales
Music in late evening
It seems that the Devil did have at least some of the best tunes…
Arguably too fast a tempo; still, it works with the film.
Ian Robert Millard 
Tiresome to see the British experience in the Second World War dragged out of the attic and waived in front of a dissenter to current state policies. (We are not in wartime). One can sense that these people would love to send such persons to internment on the Isle of Man. It is especially ludicrous as the journalist who wrote this ‘satire’ was likely born after the end of the Cold War.
A better analogy would be building a fallout shelter in one’s back garden, or wearing NBC gear in public because the Soviets might launch an all-out nuclear strike at any moment.
And I agree that many American firearms owners are held hostage by their fear of losing their right to bear arms. I’ve seen it said by Americans that gun-owners are very careful about obeying laws so that they don’t fall foul of a confiscation-minded judge. Which these days can come down to an angry ex-girlfriend or wife telling the police and judge that she feels threatened.
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Watcher Enigma:
Thank you. Yes, one constantly sees tweets, for example, by English or Jewish persons, comparing this or that to their (usually mistaken) view of what life was like 1939-45 in the UK.
Increasingly, one sees a kind of collective madness enveloping the UK. The facemask nonsense is the extreme example (so far).
As to weapons such as pistols, kept in the home of many Americans, the fact is that they are, to a large extent a security blanket, though also a kind of bluff (criminals do not know who might be armed in the house they may wish to burgle). Real life poker?
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Another problem with the ‘gas masks in the war’ analogy is that the proposed gas-attack never came and so we have no evidence of how effective mass-adoption of gas masks by the public would have been in saving lives. One assumes it would have reduced casualties by some amount but how many is unknown. Would the reduction have justified the enforcement? And gas masks are a wholly different thing from filmy, flimsy face coverings.
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Watcher Enigma:
Those old gasmasks would have been hard to use. I have tried on a later version,and breathing was not easy. I think that the 1940s ones relied on cork or charcoal, though I may be wrong about that.
As you say, the gas attacks never came.In fact, as far as I know, the German forces never had even a contingency plan to use gas (presumably via air attack).
The whole “gasmask” thing in 1940/1941 (I think that they were discarded for civilians after that year) was a scare with little or no foundation, one of several in 1939 and 1940.
ps saw this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_mask
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Yet our ancestors would not have whinged, whinged, whinged, whinged, whinged, and yes, you guessed it correctly, whinged YET AGAIN if that need to use them HAD come to be a necessity AND those gas masks WERE decidedly uncomfortable compared to most facial masks.
The past as they say is a different country! Yes, a saner one in quite a few respects, without immoral Tory selfish libertarian bastards like Peter Hitchens in it with his fundamentally alien US libertarianism creed given very little credibility.
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I doubt the Germans were that seriously negligent not to have even contingency plans especially as they had many more tonnes of stock of mustard gas etc than we had. Also, unknown to us, they had much more potent forms of chemical warfare like Sarin though they might not have had it at that particular time in the war.
The main reason gas was never used was that Adolf Hitler had an abhorrence of that kind of warfare having been gassed himself in WW1 and Neville Chamberlain had as well seeing as he was one of the most fundamentally decent and humane men we have ever had as PM unlike Churchill and the scumbags since.
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Well, well, well, I never thought I would see the day when I would have a small smidgeon of sympathy for the actions of the SNP in government but that day has arrived.
It is a shame though that loony libertarian Peter Hitchens doesn’t live in Scotland as he can then be put away and sectioned to a mental hospital where he can then rant to his heart’s content spewing his libertarian loony nonsense but, crucially, not undermining the national fight against Covid-19.
Ah, diddums , Peter, stop whining about a magazine having the LIBERTY to satirise you though you do that quite well by yourself!
At least you are not being locked-up as Sir Oswald Mosley and Lady Diana Mosley were in May 1940 when your best buddy, Winston Churchill, came into office, merely for being against his war.
YOU are doing far more REAL damage to the nation’s morale in this fight than Sir Oswald and Lady Diana could EVER be truthfully accused of and should suffer the same fate.
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Also, at least Sir Oswald and Lady DIana had some good points to make about the war ie that it was better for us to be strictly neutral and to stay away from interminable and not easily understood from the British perspective European squabbles.
Sir Oswald had a distinguished record of service to his country in WW1 to prove his patriotism, what have you got, Peter, that could match that?🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄 🤬🤬🤬😡😡😡
Being a globalist, libertarian Tory media ‘gatekeeper’ and licensed ‘clickbait’ maker for the Tory Sunday Mail DOESN’T count, I’m afraid!🙄
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Lord Sumption needs to be reminded of the rather obvious fact that human beings can’t show their humanity if they are dead OR they are in obvious ill health in a hospital bed wearing a ghastly ventilator to help them breath even faintly. They CAN’T show their humanity by talking freely with friends and interacting with them when they have such a hideous contraption attached to them!
Better for people to remain health/alive by following fairly mild social distancing restrictions than be dead or stuck in hospital beds for weeks on end on ventilators.
When are we going to be rid as a country of this pestilence of daft left-liberal judges?
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M’Lord of Essex,
As I have said many times, we shall not agree on these matters. The use of facemasks by the general population does not much, if at all, prevent the spread of viruses. What it does do is reduce the population to a bunch of compliant serfs, pointlessly.
The measures now in place are unnecessary and illogical. Facemasks in supermarkets but not in pubs?! Where is the logic?
The “lockdown”/shutdown has all but ruined the economy (that ultimately supports public health inc. NHS etc), and Britain has had more deaths per million than Sweden, which has largely stayed open.
The Boris-idiot government, with its contradictory policies and cheap gimmicks (“£10 off a pub lunch!”; “vouchers for bicycle repair!”) is surely obviously now a bad joke.
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Swedes are following social distancing requirements. Sweden has had Socially Democrat governments for most of the post war period ie it has had virtually NO political influence on is governance by libertarian Tory types like Peter encouraging by their own political philosophy a culture of rabid ‘me, me, me’ selfish individualism aka ‘Thatcherism’.
We in a situation which calls for the vast majority of the population to demonstrate very high levels of social and national solidarity but we are not demonstrating enough of that unless forced to by laws. Basically, Mrs Thatcher’s libertarian philosophy and its baleful effects are now coming home to roost in abundance.
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Peter is NOT interested in criticising ANY of that or the fact Priti Useless didn’t introduce ultra-tough travel restrictions in March/April as the likes of Japan did – a country he has praised yet not understood the fact that Japan’s response DOESN’T back-up his arguments. .All he is interested in doing is trying to steer the population down political cul de sacs so that they don’t really criticise the worst mistakes this government has made ie the tardiness of its response and that missing action at our airports early on.
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He also conveniently forgets the fact this government DID try his libertarian approach ie NOT using the power of government to enforce containment measures and just trying to rely upon people’s good sense.
Needless to say, with too many people in Britain being selfish and socially irresponsible arseholes this appeal for people to follow advice voluntarily DIDN’T work and then Boris made a quick about turn and introduced a leaky lockdown a week to ten days later. Unfortunately, this meant we lost crucial time and didn’t get ‘ahead of the curve’ as much as we should have done.
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Using Mr Hitchen’s ideology of libertarianism with regard to this issue he should be able to see that the PREMIER LIBERTY any human being has is the right to life itself thus the protection of that right in others is more important than his own personal ‘right’ to not wear a mask in a shop and if the British State has to use its power to protect that PREMIER LIBERTY in others then that is a just and NOT disproportionate use of governmental authority.
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That, m’Lord of Essex, depends partly on whether facemasks actually protect *anyone* (except surgeons and their surgical patients; surgeons use quite different masks in any case).
It cannot simply be assumed that that is the case.
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