I tweeted (before Twitter expelled me) in the past about freedom of expression and how it is now under attack across the “West”; I have also blogged about it. It is not a straightforward issue but clarity is possible. The same is true when talking about the enemies of freedom.
Below, I link to a BuzzFeed “report” (propaganda piece) promoting the views of Jess Phillips MP, one of the worst MPs in the present House of Commons, who has now said (of a UKIP candidate, Carl Benjamin):
“The Electoral Commission should surely have standards about who can and can’t stand for election. If Facebook and Twitter can ban these people for hate speech how is it they are allowed to stand for election?”
It is hard to imagine being back in 1999, let alone 1989, 1979, 1969 (or any time before that right back to the 18th Century), when a Member of Parliament, even one as profoundly ignorant, uneducated and uncultured as Jess Phillips, would say that a civil service body should decide who should be allowed to stand for election!
Now there are certain kinds of people who cannot stand for election in the UK, and there is a debate to be had about whether those rules are too restrictive, but it has never been seriously suggested before that a candidate should be barred from standing simply because of whatever he or she has said!
Now, those who read my blog etc know that I have rather little time for “Sargon of Akkad” (Carl Benjamin) or his fellow “alt-Right” vloggers (“Prison Planet” Watson etc) but I think that they have the right to speak, to speak online, and to stand for elections. As to Benjamin’s “rape” comments about Jess Phillips, well they were in very poor taste and certainly not chivalrous (though Jess Phillips has no time for courtesy and, still less, for chivalry, in any case), but I do not think that he should be arrested, questioned by police etc about them, nor prevented from carrying on his doomed attempt to become an MEP.
The general assault on freedom of expression in the UK and across the “West”
The attack on what might loosely be called “free speech” is being led and largely carried out by the Jewish or Jewish-Zionist lobby, monitored and supported by the Israeli state. This can be illustrated by a few examples from the UK, starting with my own experiences:
Alison Chabloz sang satirical songs which were posted online; she placed a link on her blog. She was persecuted, lost her job as a result, further persecuted, then privately prosecuted by the fake “charity” called “Campaign Against AntiSemitism”, which then led to prosecution by the CPS and conviction under the bad law of the Communications Act 2003, s.127. At present she is still appealing:
Jez Turner made a speech in Whitehall in 2015, in which speech he suggested that Jews should be cast out from England as they had been on several occasions in the past (eg under Edward I). After a long legal struggle with the Jewish lobby, more particularly the “CAA”, the CPS caved in and prosecuted Jez Turner. He received a 1 year prison sentence in 2018 (he was released on strict conditions after 6 months).
Tommy Robinson
The activist known as Tommy Robinson has been banned from both Facebook and Twitter.
I have written and spoken many times about the “privatization of public space”. In my case, I have been disbarred because Jews wanted to stop me tweeting and/or punish me for exposing them. I have been interrogated by the police at Jewish instigation. I have had other problems with the authorities in recent years. All the doing of Jew conspirators.
In the past, printed matter was the medium of political propaganda. Today, it is online matter that counts, but the online platforms and internet services are in few hands, and most of the hands that matter are Jewish.
An individual can now be effectively silenced by being banned from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, which can be the decision of a single capitalist “owner”, a manager or executive, or even some deskbound dogsbody.
In addition, that decision-maker, or a couple of such, can deprive the individual of money donations via removal of his or her Paypal, Patreon or other money-donation service.
Likewise, an organization can now be all but wiped out simply by the same methods. Just as I was expelled from Twitter (albeit that Twitter is just a waste of time and effort, really), so have been expelled (“suspended”, in Twitter’s weasel word) Alison Chabloz, Tommy Robinson and innumerable others. They have also been removed from Facebook, YouTube etc (I have no accounts on those platforms) and from donation sites, Paypal etc.
I see that Facebook has now removed Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam organization too (for “anti-Semitism”). The Jews are crowing. Maybe prematurely.
It is clear that power online is in very few hands. One decision by some Jew like Zuckerberg and an organization with literally millions of followers, such as InfoWars, can be sent spinning into outer darkness, with no right of appeal or legal redress qua citizen.
In the USA, these facts also mean that the Constitutional right to free speech is scarcely worth the paper it is printed on. I was always sceptical about it, on the basis that, yes, you can speak freely in the USA, so long as you do not mind losing your job, profession, business, home etc…Now the near-uselessness of the Constitutional freedom of speech is even more stark: by all means speak freely, but you are restricted to howling in the dark, or at least in the street. Your online “free speech”, meaning your communication with anyone not your immediate neighbour or family, is monitored, censored and can be completely taken away from you, not by the State, even, but by online platforms pressured by or owned by the Jewish Zionist lobby. We see that there are moves afoot in the UK even to prevent our taking part in already-stacked elections!
Conclusion
As European people and social nationalists, we can no more rely on online platforms than we can rely on getting elected in a rigged system, on fair reportage from the msm, or on getting justice under rigged legal systems.
Believe it or not, this idiot, Paul Bernal (see below), is a law lecturer! I feel sorry for his students at the University of East Anglia! According to his definition, even Stalin’s Soviet Union or Mao’s China had “free speech” (because you could *say* whatever you liked, but as a consequence might get shot…)
What an idiot! Absolutely prize…!
Time for the regular reminder that freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from the consequences of your speech.
This blog post is not primarily about the Jess Phillips idiot-woman, but it is frightening to see the tweets of her supporters, showing the intellectual dullness even of the supposedly educated these days: see the tweet by one @docsimsim of Richmond, below
Jess Phillips my shero. She should be in the shadow cabinet atleast and possibly the next labour leader should she want the job. #StopBrexithttps://t.co/v0goH4HsOw
Others, however, have seen through the Jess Phillips Empty Vessel performance
Ignorance. Just ignorance. Sad indictment of how poorly ideas/policies are communicated. The MSM only interested in sound bites & those who produce them. The mouthpieces, eg Jess Phillips, always available for comment & contribute nothing. #BBCQT adds nothing to the discussion.
Here’s an American, one “Chris”, who seems to find it unobjectionable that some “authority” persons should “decide” on whether a candidate can be “allowed” to stand:
and here is Jess Phillips trying to make more publicity for herself while trying to squash down what little freedom of expression still exists in the UK:
Happy to discuss indeed. Personally I think we need a code of conduct that cannot be breached by those who stand as public representatives. I'd say saying you would rape someone if forced I'd say was a clear breach. I'll contact you for a meeting. Thanks https://t.co/iMlQvYIOBn
For those who are unaware, since being elected in 2015, Jess Phillips has squeezed every penny she can out of the taxpayers: not satisfied with a salary of nearly £80,000 and very generous “expenses”, she even “employs” her husband on £50,000 a year as “Constituency Support Manager” (he stays at home and is, presumably, a “house husband”). Yet she, this ignorant, rude, uneducated, uncultured creature, has the cheek to talk about “people with literally no discernible skills” getting high pay! That may be so, but she should look in the mirror, if she can bear it!
YouTube have banned me for 'hate speech', I think due to clips on Nazi policy featuring propaganda speeches by Nazi leaders. I'm devastated to have this claim levelled against me, and frustrated 15yrs of materials for #HistoryTeacher community have ended so abruptly.@TeamYouTube
— Mr Allsop History (@MrAllsopHistory) June 5, 2019
Update, 18 June 2019
Just one more random example of the slide into censorship and quasi-official lies or falsity:
A Dr Who writer @OldRoberts953 is expunged from a book by the BBC because he won’t conform to the latest transgender ideology. His views on transgenderism are probably shared by 90%+ of Brits but he’s now a Non-Person for the BBC. The net tightens around free speech. Please share https://t.co/G9fM2BK1e4
The police, CPS etc, but especially police, seem incapable of distinguishing, or unwilling to distinguish, between “grossly offensive” (unlawful) and merely “offensive” (lawful) and tend to treat all “offensive” communications as “grossly offensive”, which runs counter to Court of Appeal and Supreme Court case authority.
This is what happens when plainly bad law, such as Communications Act 2003, s.127, is drafted and passed into statute.
[above, Rory Stewart, many years ago in Afghanistan, consciously reprising Lawrence of Arabia; he was sometimes called both “Florence of Arabia” (in Iraq) and “Florence of Belgravia” (because of his well-connected and wealthy background)]
Introduction
My attention was caught by the BBC Politics tweet below.
Rory Stewart MP [Con, Penrith and Borders], who until yesterday was Minister of State for Prisons, a political dead-end, now can be said, appropriately enough, to have jumped free with one bound, and is now Secretary of State for International Development, a position again not quite in the front rank but a Cabinet post all the same. From his new elevation, Stewart has wasted no time in declaring his candidature for Conservative Party leadership.
I have been interested in Stewart and his political career for several years. I was puzzled as to why someone who appeared to have so many advantages (wealth, family influence, expensive education, pre-political career moves, a degree of public prominence etc) seemed to have run into the sand as an MP. However, it may be that he was playing a long game which will yet bring him to the highest office.
I do blog about MPs individually, but mostly those I term “deadhead MPs”. Stewart is certainly not one of those. However, his CV is almost too obviously brilliant. He seems to have almost too many talents, qualifications and virtues to be true. I do, perhaps unfairly, harbour a suspicion that the sum of his many parts may not quite add up to the same amount.
“After graduating, Stewart joined the Foreign Office.[11] He served in the British Embassy in Indonesia from 1997 to 1999, working on issues related to East Timor independence, and was appointed at the age of 26 as the British Representative to Montenegro in the wake of the Kosovo campaign.” [Wikipedia]
Stewart is believed to have been, like his father, an officer of the Secret Intelligence Service [SIS], a fact alluded to by David Dimbleby on BBC Question Time. Stewart neither agreed nor demurred. Still, a touch of the James Bonds impresses the common herd, I suppose…
[above, Brian Stewart, the father of Rory Stewart, wearing the badge of a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG), the 4th-highest order of chivalry in the UK (if excluding two now-dormant orders, the Order of St. Patrick and the Order of The Star of India)]
“After the coalition invasion of Iraq, he became the Coalition Provisional Authority Deputy Governorate Co-Ordinator in Maysan and Deputy Governorate Co-ordinator/Senior Advisor in Dhi Qar in 2003, both of which are provinces in southern Iraq.[9] He was posted initially to the KOSB Battlegroup then to the Light Infantry.[12] His responsibilities included holding elections, resolving tribal disputes, and implementing development projects.[12] He faced growing unrest and an incipient civil war from his base in a Civil-Military Co-operation(CIMIC) compound in Al Amarah, and in May 2004 was in command of his compound in Nasiriyah when it was besieged by Sadrist militia.[9] He was awarded an OBE for his services during this period. While Stewart initially supported the Iraq War, the International Coalition’s inability to achieve a more humane, prosperous state led him in retrospect to believe the invasion had been a mistake.” [Wikipedia]
Full marks for honesty, but not for perspicacity. Let’s look at the above again: Stewart joined the FCO (and/or SIS) in 1995-96 and by 1999, at age 26, he is British Representative in Montenegro, at that time emerging from nearly a decade of ex-Yugoslav conflict.
This is rather remarkable. Why was a 26-y-o appointed to this rather important strategic post? Even more remarkably, perhaps, Stewart was then posted to Iraq in the immediate post-invasion era, and was rather famously deputy-governor of an Iraqi province at the age of 28. As noted above, he even “saw action” to some extent when his compound was besieged by militia fighters.
“From 2000 to 2002 he travelled on foot through rural districts of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, a journey totalling around 6000 miles, during which time he stayed in five hundred different village houses. He had previously walked across West Papua in 1998,[115] and has since made a number of long walks through Cumbria and Britain. He also travelled into Libya a day after the fall of Colonel Gaddafi.” [Wikipedia]
“In late 2005, at the request of the Prince of Wales and Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan,[15] he established, as Executive Chairman, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, a human development NGO, in Afghanistan, and relocated to Kabul where he lived for the next three years restoring historic buildings in the old city of Kabul, managing its finances, installing water supply, electricity, and establishing a clinic, a school and an institute for traditional crafts.[4] Stewart was awarded the Royal Scottish Geographical Society‘s Livingstone medal in 2009 “in recognition of his work in Afghanistan and his travel writing, and for his distinguished contribution to geography”.[16] Stewart stepped down as Executive Chairman of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in May 2010.” [Wikipedia]
By any standards, Stewart’s life up to age 33 at least (he is now 46) was packed with achievements and adventures. Not many UK MPs could lay claim to anything even a tenth as interesting and varied (note my blogs about “deadhead MPs”). Indeed, it seems that, in 2008, a Hollywood studio (Studio Canal/Brad Pitt) actually bought the film rights to do a biopic of Stewart, starring, it was envisaged, Orlando Bloom as Stewart! No film has been made (yet).
This is not the British politics we know! This is somewhere in the realm of John Buchan and Sidney Reilly, a post-imperial Great Game pastiche.
Stewart’s second book, The Prince of the Marshes: and other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq, also published as Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq, describes his experiences as a Deputy Governorate Co-ordinator in Iraq.[4] The New York Timescritic William Grimes commented that Stewart “seems to be living one of the more extraordinary lives on record”, but for him the “real value of the new book is Mr. Stewart’s sobering picture of the difficulties involved in creating a coherent Iraqi state based on the rule of law”.[126] Stewart’s books have been translated into multiple languages.
Stewart’s reflections on the circumstances under which outside military and political intervention in countries’ internal affairs may or may not hope to achieve positive results were distilled in a 2011 book, Can Intervention Work?, co-authored with Gerald Knaus and part of the Amnesty International Global Ethics Series. He has also written about theory and practice of travel writings in prefaces to Wilfred Thesiger‘s Arabian Sands,[127]Charles Doughty‘s Arabia Deserta[128] and Robert Byron‘s The Road to Oxiana.[129]
In 2016, he published The Marches, a travelogue about a 1,000-mile walk in the borderlands separating England and Scotland, known as the Scottish Marches, and an extended essay on his Father, Brian Stewart.[130] The Marches was long listed for the Orwell Prize, won the Hunter Davies Lakeland Book of the Year,[131] was a Waterstones Book of the Month,[132] and became a Sunday Times top ten bestseller.” [Wikipedia]
I suppose that many would be well satisfied to have done even one or two or three of the things noted above. Stewart has dozens of accomplishments and successes to his name. A few more are:
“His 2008 cover article in Time magazine, where he debated presidential candidates Obama and McCain, arguing against a troop surge in Afghanistan, has been shortlisted for an American Journalism Association Award
Afghanistan: The Great Game – A Personal View by Rory Stewart, a documentary in two parts that tells the story of foreign intervention by Britain, Russia and the United States in Afghanistan from the 19th century to the present day,which aired on BBC2 and which won a Scottish BAFTA (2012).[139]
Border Country: The Story of Britain’s Lost Middleland, which investigates the rift created by Hadrian’s Wall, and the issues of identity and culture in a region divided by the fabricated border, which was singled out for praise by David Attenborough.”
“Stewart speaks some French, Persian (Dari), and Indonesian. He has also studied at school, in the Foreign Office, and on his Asian travels, Latin, Greek, Russian, Chinese, Serbo-Croat, Urdu, and Nepali languages. He acknowledges that the latter three languages are “very rusty“;
He has lectured at Harvard and even advised Hillary Clinton…;
He is a karate expert (level unknown) and belongs to the Special Forces Club in London, some of whose members were in WW2 secret work, some were in the military and naval special forces, some ex-intelligence personnel —and there are also some who are rumoured to be just gold-plated fakes and fantasists;
“His speech about hedgehogs in Parliament in 2015[39] was named by The Times and The Telegraph as the best parliamentary speech of 2015 and described by the Deputy Speaker as “one of the best speeches she had ever heard in Parliament” [Wikipedia]
Stewart is married to an American woman who had previously been married to a fellow NGO worker. One of the children of the Stewarts was delivered by Stewart himself without medical assistance.
Stewart once tweeted to me about something, several years ago, and was very polite, something that I value. I do not attribute that entirely to the influence of the Dragon School or, indeed, Eton. He seems to know how to behave (though not all agree, I have heard).
Thoughts
Stewart’s stellar career stalled after he became an MP in 2010. Having said that, he has chaired Commons committees, been promoted slowly but surely, and Wikipedia notes that he attended the Bilderberg cabal along with George Osborne. Not that being a Bilderberg attendee is a guarantee of lasting political success (cf. Nick Boles MP) but it does indicate that the primary powers behind the Western throne consider that a person is of interest.
This is Rory Stewart’s moment of opportunity. He has seized it. Once Theresa May leaves office, the Conservative Party will elect a new leader. Stewart is the international System candidate nonpareil. I should not be surprised were he to win a first ballot outright, bearing in mind the collection of fools, knaves, deadheads and frauds likely to oppose him in the contest:
Penny Mordaunt, best known for diving in a swimsuit (she looked good, so be it…) and for being a reserve naval sub-lieutenant;
Michael Gove, pro-Jew, pro-Israel fraud and expenses cheat (I tweeted that once and it was one of 5 tweets that had me disbarred at the instigation of the Jew lobby, so it pleases me to repeat it!);
Boris Johnson (aka Boris Idiot), who proved as Foreign Secretary that he cannot hold down high office;
Andrea Leadsom, a nonentity;
Jeremy Hunt, smarmy clever snake and tipped to take May’s purple;
Amber Rudd, yet another dimwit, though she thinks herself terribly clever. Pro-Israel, pro-EU, pro-immigration. Was involved personally with Kwasi Kwarteng, the “African at Eton” (well, one of them), who has now married, or is about to marry, a younger Amber Rudd lookalike. Amber Rudd’s own seat may well be lost next time;
Philip Hammond, careful calculating Remainer;
Dominic Raab, part-Jew, pro-Brexit, hardfaced and careerist.
There may be others. There would have been Gavin Williamson (who has the self-confidence of the stupid) and Stephen Crabb (sex pest, expenses cheat and so pro-Israel that he could be termed “an agent of influence”) but both of those have ruled themselves out by their egregiously poor behaviour. Deadheads.
It scarcely needs to be said that, as social nationalist and thinker into the future, I am not on the same page as Rory Stewart, so obviously NWO/ZOG in orientation is he, and whose MP voting record etc is far from entirely to my liking. He also wanted the UK to remain in the EU and now seems to want to “leave” but not really leave: Brexit in name only (BRINO). However, there is no doubt that he is the standout candidate now to replace Theresa May, which means that he could be Prime Minister by the Autumn.
Still don’t understand the hard-on people have for Rory Stewart. Guess Brits can’t get over their worship for the military or posh men addicted to lying about statistics.
Military? Does 5 months as an instant 2nd lieutenant count? Or is that a reference to Stewart’s “secret war” posts?
A few more thoughts, 4 April 2019:
It seems that Stewart favours immigration:
“One farmer told Stewart, “All illegal immigrants should be rounded up and on the first ship out.” Some voters might expect their Conservative candidate at least to nod, but Stewart said, “Hmm,” and changed the subject. After leaving that house, he said quietly, “Actually, I’m rather in favor of immigration.” [The New Yorker]
So he favours (mass?) immigration. That would chime with those Bilderberg/Davos linkages. Also, it is all very well for a spoiled son of the “British Establishment” (father was a high-ranking SIS officer; Stewart lives in a country house surrounded by a small estate of a hundred acres or so) and who has always had access to effectively any money or anything he wanted without struggle or effort, to be OK about the mass of British people being replaced by blacks, browns, Chinese etc; and having to live with those basically backward peoples, share limited housing, road/rail space etc. Not to mention the effect on rates of pay, and the huge strain on public services, education, NHS, “welfare” etc.
Stewart is quite consciously remote from the concerns of the British people. He has put in huge effort on his adventures and career, but has never had to. Big difference.
I seriously wonder now, looking at or studying Stewart, whether he is right for the office of Prime Minister. Yes, it is very impressive to have run an Iraqi province (effectively or not, though?…) or part of Kabul (ditto) when only 28 or 30-ish, it is impressive to have walked across Afghanistan etc. It is impressive to have all those literary and other medals. However, how far does that get you in terms of being a British Prime Minister?
As a matter of fact, is it really that impressive to have been deputy governor of an Iraqi province when you were (some say) no bloody good, accomplished almost nothing and got a transfer a few months later to a more congenial post elsewhere in Iraq? I do not know the truth of it all, and I may be unfair or simply mistaken here, but I wonder whether Stewart’s other great accomplishments have a rather thin layer of reality under the surface glitter?
Impressive though those career highlights are, I am unsure as to whether Stewart really does have what it takes to be Prime Minister of this country in 2019 or 2020, as distinguished from being in that high office in a John Buchan political landscape circa 1912, and as a kind of Richard Hannay, a Hannay who is playing the role of an earlier and English/Scottish type of “Jack Ryan”, the American adventurer-patriot who eventually becomes President in the bestselling books of Tom Clancy.
I have spent some time (by my standards anyway) in preparing and writing and rethinking this picture of Rory Stewart. He disturbs me more than he reassures me: he seems rather fixated on himself, his own psychology, his motivations, his own (enormous and not denied by the man himself) ambition.
It worries me that, in the interviews and profiles I have read, Stewart says much about himself, his achievements, his accomplishments (or allows them to be known…), but little about the needs of the world, of Europe, of the European peoples, of the British people. I see little or nothing in terms of policy, or wider ideas, just a self-view that he is the right sort of chap to run the UK. That sounds like a more impressive sort of David Cameron-Levita-Schlumberger to me, and that worries the hell out of me.
Parris is not only remote from the concerns of the British people (though in his case the remoteness comes not from ancestral hauteur but is the self-consciously created la-di-da-ness of the fastidious metropolitan gay), but is also a pro-immigration Remainer who thinks that ruling the UK should be left to people like him and his affluent, cosmopolitan, pro-multikulti friends. Trouble is, it has been, and look at the result! (Parris himself, elected in 1979, was reprimanded by Mrs Thatcher for having replied to a constituent that she should count herself lucky to have a council house, whatever its flaws…), though he stayed on as an MP until 1986.
I started off thinking that Rory Stewart was, judging objectively, far and away the best candidate to replace Theresa May. I still think that he is by far the most accomplished candidate, but I the more I read about him, the more doubts and suspicions I have. I am also disturbed that some of the Jewish lobby on Twitter seem to favour him.
In the end, no System party or candidate has the right to rule the UK. Social nationalism must triumph.
A few recent tweets seen about Rory Stewart
I’ve a horrid feeling it means they are going to do a deal soon. She will announce she is going, the contest will start with Rory Stewart being lined up as her successor. Democracy is dead in this country, I just worry they will do us out of voting for MEPs too.
Rory Stewart abnormal. Who ignores pleas fr help when a quadriplegic prisoner lying on back 24/7 with bedsore so badly neglected & tissue deteriorated that pelvic bone is exposed ? Stewart as Prisons Minister downright cruel.
I thought I’d heard it all from Diane Abacus until this bloke Rory Stewart springs up. Where do political parties find these lying conniving self indulgent corrupt fuckwits? https://t.co/6cbEnUKXnY
Here is a surprise. The MI6 house journal, the Guardian, shills for ex MI6 officer Rory Stewart (whose dad was also deputy head of MI6). The Guardian views his role in the destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan as making him "highly qualified" in International Development. https://t.co/2NrZXzC9tE
The first day of his promotion to Cabinet is an opportune time to recall a classic from Rory Stewart's back catalogue. As Floods Minister he said the flood defences had worked well but the water had come over the top of them. #r4today#BBCNews#Reshufflepic.twitter.com/1N2iHIkvpP
Oh, dear…(see below): I am thinking now that Stewart is rapidly using up his credit with at least some of the public, though in the end the ones who will vote for a new Conservative Party leader will be, initially, the Con MPs in the Commons, not Joe Public. It may be that Stewart will be seen as the ideal “Stop Boris” candidate, someone to rally to. I do not know what level of MP support he now has. I presume some, or why would he risk being humiliated? On the other hand, he does strike me as a very ambitious gambler and chancer.
Am I alone in thinking Rory Stewart comes across as a complete prat. I’ve never seen less leadership qualities from an officer in the armed forces.
The tweeter above is yet another who seems to think that Stewart’s 5 months as a gap-year “officer” on probation is something real, rather than a kind of adventure holiday for the gentry. Unless the tweeter, like others, takes the term SIS “officer” at face value, rather than as a conventional designation (cf. police “officer”, council “officer” etc).
Update, 25 May 2019
Well, here we are after Theresa May’s announcement of departure, and Rory Stewart is on all msm outlets. He has put the knife into Boris-Idiot and may have damaged the latter’s campaign. Opinion on Stewart himself is divided, half seeing his accomplishments and character, half seeing his gaffes. The tweet below is more favourable than not to him
On the other hand, I saw Stewart on TV, saying that “we” must build 2 MILLION (!) houses. My reaction? “Only because the UK has imported millions of unwanted immigrants, who are breeding fast; and Britain CONTINUES to import huge numbers, even in 2019!”
I see no willingness in Bilderberg/Davos Stewart to take on mass immigration. In fact, he seems to support it. The negative effects will scarcely impact him or his family, after all, in his listed Borders country house…
Ah…another tweeter who raises points against Stewart:
and, below, the sort of statement that comes easier to those who have never been poor, hungry, desperate etc…Almost clownish coming from someone who has been an MP and whose votes, with those of other Conservatives and LibDems, enabled the attacks on the unemployed and disabled since 2010…
The country can be a much better and much happier place if we learn again to focus on the small things that make a real difference to people. pic.twitter.com/KfYxEi6E6e
Stewart seems to be an engaging fellow, at least on the surface, but the more I see of him, and the more that I read about his voting record and views, the less I like him ideologically or politically.
Update, 1 June 2019
Ah, I see that I am not alone in thinking that Stewart’s accomplishments and achievements are perhaps not quite all that they seem on paper:
“Though few would speak on the record, there is a broad critique of Stewart that his biography is a little overegged and certainly self-regarding – leading to a nickname, a member of his wider social circle confides, of “Florence of Belgravia”.” [The Guardian]
“Though Stewart has claimed to know “what it feels like to be in the army”, for instance, he spent only a gap year stint in the Black Watch and did not see active service. He can often give the impression his role in Iraq was rather more important than the reality, according to someone who witnessed his work there (“He was regarded as a pretty competent mid-ranking Foreign Office official … He wasn’t a nonentity and I think the view in Iraq was that he was conscientious, but he wasn’t Lawrence of Arabia.”).” [The Guardian]
“Several well-placed observers of Stewart’s time in Afghanistan point out that his much-discussed Afghan walk, the origin of his reputation as an expert on the region, was a month spent crossing a comparatively safe part of the country (“Other people would call it a walking holiday,” notes one).” [The Guardian]
“In general, he has done a lot and it’s all very impressive,” says someone who observed Stewart at close quarters in Kabul. “But it’s not quite as impressive and remarkable as he allows people to think. This is not necessarily all his doing, but the willingness of others to project things on to him … All sorts of journalists wrote up the Turquoise Mountain Foundation [Stewart’s Afghan NGO, which aimed to preserve local crafts] as the most amazing project in Afghanistan, when it was actually a rather low impact thing that affected the lives of a small number of people.” [The Guardian]
“…to his credit he does not dissemble when asked directly about his experience (“It was unbelievably brief,” he told the New Yorker of his time in the Black Watch.)” [The New Yorker; The Guardian]. So not even 5 months? Sounds as though it was somewhere between the 5 months previously claimed and, er, what? A week? A month? A few months?
“Claims this week to have “negotiated in Iraq, negotiated in Afghanistan” provoked “snorts of derision”, the former Afghanistan correspondent Jon Boone tweeted. “Who with, the Kabul guild of potters and calligraphers?” [The Guardian]
Maybe Stewart should not have exposed his gilding to the very harsh light of scrutiny.
A few more thoughts
Since I penned the main blog post, much has happened. Stewart has come under more scrutiny, but also has travelled the country (the UK, not Afghanistan) doing Twitter vox pop chats with random passers-by. At least he is not afraid to do that. He is becoming better-known to the public and apparently now has a few Conservative MPs supporting him; but not many. As to the bookmakers, some have him as 66/1 for “next Conservative leader”, though Betfair betting exchange has him at 12/1, which strikes me as more realistic (making that 66/1 a value bet if you can get it)
“Speaking in her personal capacity – and not in her current role as chief executive of the Jo Cox Foundation – Catherine Anderson told The Courier she was drawn to Rory’s internationalism.” [The Courier]
A few more endorsements like that and it’s Goodnight Vienna to Stewart!
Ah…seems that Catherine Anderson is “an aspiring Conservative MP” who used to be “Chief of Staff” and Campaign Manager for (drum roll…) Rory Stewart! In fact she worked for Rory Stewart for nearly 9 years!
Well, the first ballot has been held and Rory Stewart is still standing. Just. 4th from bottom. All below him (McVey, Leadsom, Harper) eliminated (though only from the contest, sadly…). So far, only 19 MPs voted for Stewart. His immediate prospects look bleak, inasmuch as Boris-Idiot, someone with no real vision, ability, ideas, ideals, nor even basic decency, is the frontrunner still. Boris has 114 craven MPs backing him, so far.
Our analysis of the results of the first ballot of the Conservative leadership contest… three candidates have been eliminated – Leadsom, Harper and McVey. pic.twitter.com/GUlcsa900q
What does it say about the Conservative Party and, to a lesser extent, the UK (England, mainly) that a blot like Boris Johnson may soon be Prime Minister? I am not talking about his character alone, but also his actual ability to be effective. Still, there it is…
Update, 17 June 2019
Well, as I guessed a couple of days ago, Rory Stewart has gained ground, at least in the betting, though the betting exchanges’ and bookmakers’ odds are often not a reliable guide to political results (see the EU Referendum, the Trump election, the recent Peterborough by-election etc).
Stewart is now at 2nd place in the betting to be next Conservative leader, though only at 16/1. Boris Johnson is favourite at around 1/5 odds-on (Hunt 20/1, Gove 46/1, Raab 85/1, Javid 120/1).
By all accounts, Stewart did well in the TV debate (Johnson the sole absentee, obviously afraid of being exposed as an idiot and incompetent, as well as wanting to seem to be the “presidential” figure above the fray).
Having said that, Stewart will have to pull off a considerable coup even to be one of the final two, though that now seems a 50-50 possibility.
Update, 19 June 2019
Well, Rory Stewart is out of the race, which means that, until or unless Boris Johnson leaves frontline politics, his career is stalled again. He pledged not to serve in a Johnson Cabinet, and, as I blogged previously, it is doubtful that Johnson will appoint him to anything significant anyway.
That leaves Johnson, Hunt, Gove, Javid.
Looks as though arguably the worst candidate is about to win…
Talked to a Tory MP last night who was backing Johnson "Do you think he'd be any good as PM" "No" "What on earth will he do about Brexit"? "No one knows" "Why do you want him, then?" "He's the best hope we've got" "By 'we" you don't mean Britain do you?" "No the party, of course"
Having said that, Stewart has staked his claim to be taken more seriously somewhere down the line. System politicians, like revolutionary ones, are all seeking to catch the right wave, like surfers.
Update, 20 June 2019
Just saw this tweet, posted 2 days ago. Worth reading; one has to take its veracity on trust, not ever having heard of the tweeter, and the emailer mentioned remaining unnamed.
So Rory Stewart is standing down as MP for Penrith and Borders at next election. He has also resigned from the Conservative Party. Reasons not given. Maybe, in the end, he just was not hungry enough, which would explain why he did not want further ministerial preferment, or to seek the role of PM, but does not explain why he has also decided not to continue as MP; neither does it explain why he has also resigned from the Conservative Party. Perhaps the situation will be clarified in due course.
Update, 5 October 2019
Ah…mystery solved. Stewart is intending to stand for the post of Mayor of London.
He has obviously seen how Boris-Idiot used the position to keep his profile high until he was ready to re-enter the Westminster fray.
The other main candidates are already known: Sadiq Khan, the present Mayor, for Labour, and Shaun Bailey, the West Indian who will be the Conservative candidate. Sadiq Khan has the support of the msm, the Jewish lobby etc, as a Labour mayor who is rather anti-Corbyn. Shaun Bailey may be seen by the blacks as rather an “Uncle Tom”, and there are still questions around missing or misapplied funds of a “social enterprise” he set up in 2006: the monies missing were never accounted for; other monies, amounting to the bulk of spending by the organization, went on “travel and subsistence”, probably for Bailey himself. No criminal charges or civil claims were ever brought, though.
Despite Khan’s poor record as Mayor, he is probably well-placed vis-a-vis Bailey. Now that Rory Stewart has entered the fray, Bailey is holed below the waterline and his candidature will inevitably sink. Whether Rory Stewart can beat Khan and the other candidates (the LibDem being the main also-ran) is an open question.
London is a mainly non-white city now, and an English candidate (well, Anglo-Scottish) like Stewart may find this an uphill slog. On the other hand, Khan is not a popular figure, Stewart is a fresh and now politically non-aligned contender who, however, has high public recognition and profile. I do not think that he can be written off here, and if that is so, his wider ambition, to be Prime Minister, may survive the presently wintry conditions.
Update and addendum, 10 October 2019
Thank to an alert and well-informed blog reader, I can now add a significant addendum to my study of Rory Stewart:
So it turns out that, notwithstanding the listed country house in the Scottish Borders, notwithstanding the almost caricature “country gentry” persona, Stewart is part-Jew! It now is clear that he is what the Reich called a “Mischling”, in his case one-quarter, his maternal grandfather having been “a Jewish doctor from Wimbledon”, whose own parents were Jews from Romania who arrived in London after having lived in New York City for a while.
Well, now it becomes clearer: the self-publicizing (shades of Boris Johnson…), the liking for “fancy dress”, eg tribal costume and being photographed posing in it, the pro-immigration stance, the Davos and Bilderberg linkages.
More than that: Stewart’s wife, Shoshana Stewart, is half-Jewish. In fact, the “half” in question is the maternal half, which means that, according to the way that Jews themselves calculate ancestry, his wife is “Jewish”, simpliciter; that also means that, according to Jewish custom, Stewart’s children are Jewish (though of course we non-Jews decide such designations according to genetic science, meaning that his children are in fact three-eighths Jewish, if my mathematical calculation is right, which often is not the case; anyway, no matter if the right answer is three-eighths or something else, the exact proportion changes nothing). According to the Jewish Chronicle report, above, Stewart and his wife and children celebrate Jewish religious holidays as well as the main Christian ones.
I smelt a rat about Stewart when I saw that the vocal Jew cabal on Twitter all seemed to favour him during the Conservative leadership contest, but it did not occur to me that he himself was part-Jew. I thought that his odd and dark looks came from Western Scottish origins (as they presumably do, in part). I thought that the Jews were supporting Stewart because of his “liberal” Conservatism…
How do these facts, concealed or at least not publicized until now, affect Stewart’s London Mayor election bid? Damaging, I think. While the Jews of North London will probably support him now, the far greater number of Muslims and others who commonly disfavour Jews will probably not vote for him (despite the fact that the present Mayor of London and Labour Party candidate, Sadiq Khan, a Muslim by origin, has been a complete doormat for the Jewish lobby for years).
Fair comment, surely, if one looks at Rory Stewart’s voting record as an MP (2010-2019).
Without taking away from his interesting and accomplished background, as detailed in my lengthy blog hereinabove, my feeling at the moment is that Rory Stewart is basically an oleaginous, dissembling, part-Jew shit.
Update, 6 April 2020
Stewart is no longer standing as candidate for Mayor of London:
There must be a reason; I do not know that reason.
feels entirely absurd that one year ago this month Rory Stewart became the new DfID secretary in Theresa May's cabinet, and since then he's resigned from that post, run for the Tory leadership, left the Tories, and run for London mayor as an independent
So once again Rory Stewart is the nearly man: nearly something important in SIS or FCO, nearly Conservative Party leader, nearly Mayor of London. Sometimes a candidate has to stick in there and await Fate. Had Stewart not huffed off and resigned as MP after losing out to, ultimately, Boris Johnson, his time might have come, after Johnson messes up even more, which is inevitable.
I always recall being in the USA during the 1992 US Presidential Election campaign. At one point, Clinton was placed third of the three major candidates in the opinion polls. A poor third, at that. He stuck it out (admittedly, what else could he do?) and, after Ross Perot dropped out, beat George Bush snr. for the Presidency, being inaugurated in 1993.
[addendum, 31 October 2021: my point about Clinton sticking to it applies more forcefully to Ross Perot, which I should have explained better. Had Perot shown more resilience, and stuck to it, he might easily have become President and thus, as a non-Republican/Democrat candidate, made history. As it was, he dropped out, later claiming that sinister forces had threatened him and his family. Who were they? NWO/ZOG?].
Years earlier, Clinton, who at 31 had been a very young Governor of Arkansas, was defeated there after one 4-year term. Undeterred, he tried the next time and was re-elected. A stayer.
I should think that this spells the end of Rory Stewart as a potential political leader. What does it mean for the London race? I have not followed it closely, but it must give the Conservatives a better chance, despite their candidate being a West Indian with a very dodgy background in terms of near-fraud (though he has never been charged with anything).
Sadiq Khan was running at 8/1 on (1/8) with the bookmakers. Rory Stewart was at 11/8. Shaun Bailey, for Conservative Party, at 20/1. Now that Stewart is gone, I imagine that Sadiq Khan will go out to about 1/6, and Shaun Bailey go in to about 10/1 or so. Despite his poor record, Sadiq Khan is unlikely to lose to Shaun Bailey.
In a John Buchan story, the Stewart or “Hannay” character would no doubt “retire” from public life only because he would be secretly saving the Empire from imperial Russia, or imperial Germany, or would be thwarting a dastardly plot involving transnational conspirators. In fiction, he would save the Empire, then either be knighted or (and/or) be appointed Chief of the Imperial Secret Service. In real life? I have no idea. Stewart is now, or was until recently, teaching at Yale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rory_Stewart#Post-political_career.
Update, 22 January 2022
Boris Johnson is a symptom of a much broader problem in British politics – which can only be fixed with new policies, and – almost certainly – new parties and a new electoral system https://t.co/4XUQ8YGAZ8
Had Stewart retained his MP-status, he might now be in again with a real chance of leading his former party. Having decided not to continue as MP, he is necessarily out in the cold.
Update, 9 July 2022
Just read an appreciation of Stewart from the Tatler (2016, expanded and updated 2019). Don’t think I saw it before today. Written by Quentin Letts [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Letts].
Frankly, nowhere as complete, or as good, as my own assessment, if I say so myself. As for it containing “everything you need to know about Rory Stewart“, I think not! For one thing, no mention of the part-Jewish background, and no mention of the fact that his wife is half-Jewish.
Update, 2 April 2023
Well, in the end, the London Mayoral Election was held in 2021. There were 20 candidates, both Independents and those from political parties. In the run-off, Sadiq Khan (40%), beat Shaun Bailey (35.3%) in what turned out to be a close-run thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_London_mayoral_election.
As for Rory Stewart, now 50, he has pottered around doing podcasts in the past couple of years. He also moved to Jordan in 2021 with his wife and children, apparently to do work connected with his Turquoise Mountain charity.
That article mentions that Stewart is (or was, in September 2021, when the article was written) thinking of possibly standing again as a London mayoral candidate in 2024. I doubt that he will. The 2024 election will be run on FPTP lines, giving an outsider (in his case, as a non-party candidate) fewer chances.
Overall, it seems to me that Rory Stewart’s political career is finished, in all likelihood.
“Anyone with the slightest interest in politics should get a copy of Rory Stewart’s political memoir.
Not because he had a particularly long or even influential career: just nine years in Parliament and only months in the Cabinet. But you will learn more about the nature of Westminster machinations and how government actually works (or doesn’t) from this volume than from those of many more illustrious politicians. In terms of the quality of writing, there has been nothing to approach it since the diaries of Alan Clark (who never made it to the Cabinet at all).
But whereas Clark was a genuinely bad person — part of the attraction, perhaps — Stewart is a fundamentally good man, even if his self-belief, touching on the messianic, occasionally made him appear preposterous.”
[Dominic Lawson in the Daily Mail].
Interesting that Stewart was apparently in SIS/MI6 for several years, and that Dominic Lawson was said to have been a long-term SIS/MI6 source: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Lawson. Lawson is 17 years older than Stewart, in fact born the same year as me— 1956.
However, the allegations about Lawson do refer mainly to the 1990s and focus partly on the Balkans, particularly (ex-) Yugoslavia. Stewart joined FCO/SIS in the mid-1990s, and was posted to Montenegro in, I think, 1999. Tenuous link, perhaps nothing…
“This silly little man has delusions of grandeur“, “I cant wait to see the back of Khan, but Rory Stewart god help us“, “Gottle of Gear“, “Nay ,nay ,thrice times nay.“, “The guy’s a joke, and not a funny one“, “Please no, he’s a right weirdo” and “Oh no! Not this opportunist” are among some of the more polite.
Rory Stewart has now written his latest book. His profile is high enough even in 2023 to ensure msm interest and comment (not all favourable, though):
Behind a paywall, but I include it for the sake of completeness.
[Rory Stewart, 2023]
I expect that I shall buy the book secondhand off Amazon, once it reduces to about £5 or £2. The price for the new and unreleased (until 14 September) book has already declined from the original £22 to £16 or so.
I am not now in the new-book-buying classes (and prefer hardbacks) so the Amazon website is a great boon for me.
Not long ago, I bought the memoirs of Gorbachev, a heavy tome; great value at about £5 including postage from a used-book company on Amazon.
I have now bought another book: £2.80 only, and also including the postage. Hard to believe. One wonders how they make a profit, but then (to coin a phrase) I never was much of a businessman!
I met the author a few times in the 1980s. Frankly, a rather pompous man whom I (even more frankly) found rather unpleasant in a minor way, but his book might be interesting. As for the author, he is now deceased.
(about how Stewart is now angling for both a peerage and a ministerial portfolio from Starmer…).
Stewart’s ambition and careerism are both relentless, if inconsistent.
Actually, in terms of individual jobs or posts, I should say that Stewart (despite his many accomplishments) is a “quitter”, but behind that is his already-noted enormous ambition, “looming like a thundercloud over the scene“…
An old friend of mine used to quote her deceased husband (ex-Guards officer, ex-Royal Flying Corps, WW1, d. circa 1970): “if you throw a Jew out of the door, the Jew will sneak back through a window“… Of course, Stewart is only part-Jew.
If Starmer can indeed give Rory Stewart a job and put him out of his often expressed misery of not being a politician with a brief anymore then that really would be great for everyone including those who are tired of hearing him pine pic.twitter.com/83Q6CfN6Lz
Stewart will fight Vance over 'ordo amoris' but stands idly by while mothers kill their own children in their wombs and HMG arrests those who pray silently against it!
Emasculated phoney who actually cares nothing for the most vulnerable and marginalized.
USAID: British politician complaining that his wife was supposed to get $1M in USAID grants before Trump cancelled the contract. Rory Stewart's wife runs Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which exposes modern art to puzzled Afghan women.
USAID: The NGO which Rory Stewart’s wife works for just has its USAID funding cancelled, The Turquiose Mountain Foundation, teaches ‘liberated’ Afghan women about modern art like Duchamp’s urinal. pic.twitter.com/0IJdoF2Rwn
Oh this has absolutely made my day. Rory Wrong About Everything Stewart whingeing about his wife having her $1 million contract from USAID cancelled with immediate effect by DOGE. Priceless, absolutely priceless🤣🤣
Stewart once again proving the truth of the old adage about how it is better to keep your mouth shut and let people assume that you are an idiot, than speak and thus confirm it…
I am now writing about a personal experience, because I feel that some people might find it interesting anyway, and because I also feel that, inter alia, it says something about the EU and the way it operates.
The facts
In 1998, some months after my return from a several-months sojourn in Egypt, I was telephoned by someone whom I did not know, Leasor by name, who told me that my name had been suggested as someone who might be a suitable candidate for a project funded by the EU, and would I meet the next day to discuss it? I was interested, not least because I needed a job.
At the time, I was staying temporarily with my parents, at the yachting haven of Hamble, in Hampshire. As I say, I had been in Egypt for quite a while, had then spent three months penniless and effectively homeless in London (a dystopian nightmare), and since that time another lucrative work possibility, in Odessa (Ukraine), had just recently fallen through. The small financial settlement I had been paid (after having had to issue court proceedings against a Jew fraud —will blog about that another time—) was running out rapidly. So I was happy to investigate this new idea, whatever it might be.
A day or two later I was in London, lunching in a smallish and pleasant Italian restaurant in Pimlico, a stone’s throw from the Vauxhall Bridge Road. My host, Leasor (I forget his Christian name), was easy to talk to and explained that there was an EU TACIS project coming up for tender. TACIS was “Technical Aid to the Commonwealth of Independent States”, a foreign aid umbrella supposedly helping out the former Soviet republics by providing “expertise”. I regarded it as largely a boondoggle, a major aim of which was to help out not the former Soviet Union but large Western law firms, accountancy firms, “consultancy” firms and industrial concerns.
I believe that, since our telephone conversation, I had faxed my CV to Leasor, so he knew my work background, qualifications etc. He also knew that I had been, during 1995-1996, on the Committee of the Central Asia and Transcaucasia Law Association [CATLA], also connected with TACIS; the CATLA committee met every few weeks at one or another plush office of law firms in the City of London or West End. I remember that they included Clifford Chance, Norton Rose and other large firms. CATLA had been set up by UK law firms with interests in the new states recently carved out of the Soviet Union.
As for Leasor himself, I do not think that he said much about himself, save for the fact that he had been involved in a few similar deals in recent years. I am not someone who questions people closely (leaving aside my years at the practising Bar); I always think it rather rude. Neither did I enquire how he got my temporary home telephone number.
I had spent a year in Kazakhstan (1996-97), and had, a few years earlier, visited post-Soviet Moscow. This was of interest to the consortium which was bidding for the contract in Uzbekistan; also useful was my far-from-perfect but serviceable Russian language (both reading and speaking).
After lunch, Leasor took me to see his brother (in fact he had or has at least one other, but I did not know that then). His brother had been Adjutant of the 17th/21st Lancers, a smart cavalry unit now (at time of writing) not in independent existence; that brother was running what was basically a public relations outfit in a small office in Westminster. The brother or his firm would also be part of the bid consortium. I found both brothers pleasant and polite, though the ex-officer one did carry light traces of his former profession of arms in his speech and manner.
The next meeting was at the offices of yet another part of the consortium, the large law firm Simmons & Simmons, in the City of London. The meeting was chaired by its then “emerging markets” partner, a small Jew with a name so Scottish that the possessor of it should have had bagpipes and a tartan Tam O’Shanter. I had met him before. Also present was a City of London bod with a good line in convoluted financial jargon.
The project in Uzbekistan was to be based in the capital, Tashkent, the largest city in Central Asia. The title of the project was something like “Secondary Markets in Uzbekistan”. What I knew about secondary markets could be written, if not on a postcard, then certainly on a single side of paper, but no matter: the financial bod and the law firm would jointly take up that slack. My role would be to be second-in-command, so to speak, based as sole resident representative in Tashkent. All that was really required of me was legal and resident experience in the region (Uzbekistan borders Kazakhstan) and serviceable Russian. The others would be based in London.
It turned out that this was the EU’s second attempt to get a secondary market going in Uzbekistan. The first had sunk without trace, taking about £2 million in EU funding with it. I discovered that the team who had won the previous bid (I think French) had blown almost all the budget on salaries and on staying in the most expensive hotels in Tashkent, Moscow and European capitals, leaving nothing for publishing useful (educative) information or for effective liaison with the government of Uzbekistan.
20 years have now elapsed. I realized only years after the events now chronicled that, in overall charge of TACIS projects for that part of the world from 1994-1996, i.e. not so very long before I got directly involved in the region, was one Nick Clegg, since then of course MP (2005-2017), UK Liberal Democrat Party leader (2007-2015) and (2010-2015) Deputy PM, but then just a wealthy “trustafarian” whose parents had got him a job in Brussels:
“He took up a post at the European Commission in April 1994, working in the TACIS aid programme to the former Soviet Union. For two years, Clegg was responsible for developing direct aid programmes in Central Asia and the Caucasus worth €50 million. He was involved in negotiations with Russia on airline overflight rights, and launched a conference in Tashkent in 1993 that founded TRACECA—an international transport programme for the development of a transport corridor for Europe, the Caucasus and Asia.” [Wikipedia].
No wonder the project for which I was recruited had failed at its first attempt! Clegg! I note also that only now, a quarter of a century later, is the “new Silk Road” coming into being. I wonder how much EU money Clegg wasted overall…
Coming back to a micro level of economics, my own proposed salary was, if I remember rightly, going to be somewhere around £100,000 (I think more) taxfree (and paid offshore), equivalent to maybe £150,000 or so taxfree today (educated guess). I think that accommodation and flights were also on offer. This was more than attractive to someone who had, that very same year, been for months all but destitute in London (where some of my adventures would make amusing reading, were I able to write them down).
So to Brussels…
The two Leasor brothers and I flew on a small business airline to Brussels. The jet was almost empty and arrived just as darkness was falling, around 1800 hrs. A confusing taxi ride through endless tunnels and we were there, in the middle of Brussels, a city to which I had never been (though I had visited Belgium itself on a number of occasions, starting in (I think) 1963, aged maybe just 7, when my family flew Sabena from Heathrow to Ostend, a service long-since discontinued).
In the morning, after an excellent dinner (Brussels is noted for cuisine) and a night in some hotel which appeared to be exclusively occupied by delegates and supplicants to the EU Commission or Parliament, we set off on foot to our own appointment with the Commission.
At the Commission (not the famous main building but a quite neglected smaller one nearby), we were ushered in eventually to a room set up like a tribunal, with EU flags on vertical poles and tables for us, the Uzbek delegation and the Eurocrats judging our bid.
The Uzbeks were a government minister (I forget now, 20+ years later, whether it was the Foreign Minister or Minister for Foreign Trade, I think the former) and his English-speaking assistant, a clever-looking young man who had “KGB” or the equivalent written all over him.
The “tribunal” consisted of a troika: the chairwoman was a French or Belgian woman, maybe 50, very much conscious of her importance (whatever that was) and looking somehow lacquered, as if her hair or face might crack if she were to fall over. There was also a besuited person of, I think, Belgian nationality and an English or maybe Scottish civil servant, looking scruffy and wearing a roll-neck jumper, making him look like the once-famous 1956 publicity shot of the young Colin Wilson, writer of The Outsider, pictured as enfant terrible of popular philosophy.
After one of the others gave an overview of our bid, it was my turn to be grilled. The main thing was to ask about my legal background and then to test my facility in Russian conversation. That was done by the minister, with help from “KGB” assistant. After a while, the KGB assistant carried on, until one of the troika interjected and said “I think that we have established that Mr. Millard has a good command of Russian…we are running short of time.” The KGB assistant wanted to carry on interrogating me but had to shut up. Not before time. The bastard had pretty much reached the outer limits of my fluency. As he subsided, he flashed me a smile and a sharp glance as if to say “I’ve got your number…”
We went back separately to London. I thought that we had done enough to win the bid, as had the brothers, but in the end it turned out that, for purely political reasons, a consortium from, if I recall, Spain had to be awarded the contract, because Spain had not had enough of a bite at the TACIS cherry…
Aftermath
My visit to Brussels over, I only heard once more from Leasor (the one who contacted me initially). I ended up, not long afterward, going to live for a while in the Caribbean and elsewhere. To this day, I have never visited Tashkent.
It was only much later that I started to wonder whether there had been something else behind that —superficially— purely commercial bid. Uzbekistan, like Kazakhstan, was just then, in 1998, becoming pivotal in geopolitical terms, as “Western”/NATO/NWO power rubbed up against an upsurging China, a Russia starting to be resurgent, and Islamism from the South. Maybe Professor Haushofer was at least partly correct…
Uzbekistan was under strict dictatorial control and at that time had not yet committed itself to cooperation with NATO. It might be that our bid was really an opening gambit to insert an intelligence post into Tashkent, with me as “clean” figurehead, at least at first. The project would have provided access to Uzbek ministers and advisors at or near the top level of their government.
Evidence? Not much. Was it relevant that I was called out of the blue? Not necessarily (headhunters had done that before and would do so again). Was it relevant that the Italian restaurant was near Vauxhall Bridge Road? Not necessarily. Was it in any way relevant that —as I only discovered a few years ago— the brothers were the sons of the writer James Leasor, who was a WW2 officer, later a foreign correspondent and writer of famous books on war and espionage, some of which were filmed: The One That Got Away and (filmed sub nom The Sea Wolves) Boarding Party? I suppose not. Straws in the wind, as we are in life…
Extinction Rebellion, David Attenborough, and the debate
In the past days, the “Extinction Rebellion” troops have brought Central London to a halt. I am interested in the protest, not because of its own puerile idea that it will actually accomplish anything, but for other reasons: interesting how limited the official (police) reaction was at first, before millions of Londoners started to get angry at their daily life being disrupted; interesting how the protests have dovetailed with more Establishment propaganda (and I use the term purely neutrally), such as the David Attenborough film trailed below; interesting too how easily the London streets were “taken over”.
I should say immediately and in brief what is my own view of climate change.
I think that there is little doubt that climate change is happening. In particular, the Earth may well be warming. It has both warmed and cooled in the past, both in periods of geological time and in the relatively short time that humans have been on the Earth. In fact, we know from written records and necessary implications that there has been a considerable variation even in the last few hundred years, over the past 1,000 years, over the past 2,000 (etc).
In the times of the Vikings, Greenland was exactly that, albeit briefly, and in the 11th and 12th centuries had farms, homesteads etc, as recent archaeological discoveries have confirmed. The “Mediaeval Warm Period”, c.950-c.1250 AD also meant that vines could be grown successfully in Britain. It is said to have been the warmest period in Europe since the “Roman Warm Period” (c.250 BC to c.400 AD), which of course covers both much of the time of the ancient Greek or Hellenistic Period and then the flowering of both the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire.
More recently, there was the “Little Ice Age”, which is rather elastic: c.1300 AD to the second half of the 19thC , but within those 550+ years, three colder periods, especially the one starting in 1650, famous for ice fairs on the Thames, skating on ponds in the Low Countries (as shown in Old Master paintings) etc. There is a good representation of the former in the 1947 film Wicked Lady [see Notes below; the Thames ice fair scene starts just before 00:59:05 and ends at about 01:03:05].
It is noteworthy, by the way, that the warmer periods of Europe’s history have been the more prosperous and the more peaceful too, overall, though not without exceptions.
Obviously, human beings cannot tolerate temperatures too cold or too hot. We require temperate or relatively temperate climatic conditions.
Let us say (i.e. assume) that the orthodox scientists are correct and that there is “climate change” amounting to “global warming”. Then we move to causation: what is causing the warming? The scientific establishment has established a dogma which says that human activities, specifically emissions of carbon, are the predominant causes. Dissident scientists etc point to sunspots or other causes.
Let us further say/assume that the more-officially-approved scientists are right and that human activity is the cause of the putative climate change/global warming. What can be done? There consensus breaks down.
The huge new economies of Asia do not want to stop polluting if that means that industrial output slows, because in India that would mean destitution for untold millions, and in China would mean, very likely, economic collapse and political revolution.
In fact, China at least is doing much in terms of reducing “emissions” (assuming that therein lies the problem) but here we come up against the real cause of most of the environmental problems of the world today: too many people, and too many farm animals to feed carnivorous populations, as well as too much energy used to warm or cool those enormous populations, the world population having grown about 20 times larger since the start of our age (the 5th Post-Atlantean Age) around 1400 AD.
I blogged not too long ago about the overall problem facing the world:
The obvious answer to the present or upcoming world crisis, which crisis includes, but not exclusively, mass extinction of creatures, “emissions” (assuming that they are of the importance the scientific establishment thinks), spoliation of land and oceans, is a huge reduction of the human population of the Earth. The main question, apart from whether it will happen, is by what method it could (will?) happen.
From the sublime to the ridiculous…
So we come back to “Extinction Rebellion” and their London protest. I am sure that most of them are well-meaning, even if totally and laughably up their own a***s, in the contemporary phrase. Many of these people are all too easy to ridicule. Emma Thompson, with or without her designer non-European adoptee, flew in (no doubt First Class) from LA to protest about people like her flying all over the place for trivial reasons; maybe it is thought OK if you are a millionairess and actress who lives in houses and villas in Hampstead, Bute (Scottish Highlands), Ibiza or France, when not in Beverly Hills or Bel-Air.
The reaction to the poseurs has been vitriolic in places:
Emma Thompson joins Extinction Rebellion climate change protest. She flew in from L. A last night and landed at Heathrow. Today she will help fuck holidays, meetings, funerals and reunions….pompous privileged pillock
Emma Thompson jets back from birthday celebrations in LA to join environmental protests. Ha ha ha! What hypocrisy! Yet the idiots regard her as some Messiah and lap it all up. #ExtinctionRebellion
“Geri the Gerbil” seems to assume that the Extinction Rebellion protests will actually accomplish anything re. “climate change”. No, let alone “save the planet”! Obviously they change nothing at all.
Here’s another one (see below) defending Emma Thompson, while urging people to sell their second homes and stop holidaying overseas (mixed message? Emma Thompson has about 4 or 5 luxury homes, including 2 or 3 overseas, and flies frequently, sometimes on private jets…). Maybe the clue is in the “Costa del Sol” part of the tweet by tweeter “Caroline” , i.e. it’s OK for a wealthy and terminally politically correct theatrical like Emma Thompson to fly all over the world, have half a dozen houses in several different countries etc, but woe betide you plebs from having a tiny concrete villa on a Spanish costa and taking an EasyJet there a couple of times a year! Shades of Emily Thornberry’s “White Van Man” gaffe, perhaps.
I might respect Emma Thompson more if she just said “it would be better to have a tenth of the present world population” (I might even agree with that, especially if those left were mainly European) or “international flights and second, third or fourth homes are OK for a few rich people like me, but not for the million…”
Why target Emma Thompson with criticism. Nearly everyone flies everywhere nowadays. She is high profile. Isn't her presence worth the carbon? Cancel all your holidays in the Costa del Sol and sell your second homes abroad. Everyone's greed is killing our planet https://t.co/NmX4VMA4wU
— 🍃💚🍃Caroline Shah – fighting for what is right (@Justwantclarity) April 19, 2019
Well, I cannot reproduce the full range of idiocy on display here, but here are just a couple of other deluded fools anyway:
And what about this one (below), one Natasha Cox? She loves London being closed down because the atmosphere is lovely, there is no traffic, and there is dancing! She is evidently not an economic scientist! Where does one even start with such people?! Smiling and being well-meaning are both good, but not nearly enough…
What interests me is that the Extinction Rebellion mobs were at first not stopped by the police: some police “officers” even danced with some of the protestors. I wonder what would happen if a few thousand social nationalists took over Central London. Would the police be so easygoing? I think not. Is it a class thing, because so many of the protestors seem to have come from rural or suburban enclaves where some no doubt live in comfort on their trust funds or buy-to-let incomes? The police are now belatedly getting a little tougher:
The serious disruption the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations are causing to people in central London and beyond is unacceptable and we completely understand the concern it is causing to those who are disrupted by it https://t.co/dS2NOnbPsy
Another point that interested me, watching some self-righteous fellow on TV news today explaining why this direct action protest was the right method, was his assertion that MPs, society etc had to be forced to do what the protestors would like to see. Whatever one may think of their views (and I am not completely out of sympathy with them —social nationalism has always been quite “green”:
the fact is that this protest has a quite strong sub-terroristic edge under the surface “non-violent civil disobedience” stuff. If ten thousand (?) people are willing to shut down Central London “peacefully”, it may be that 1% of them, say 100, might be willing to do some very non-peaceful things. I merely pose the question.
Conclusion
The Extinction Rebellion protests will not change or expedite government policy, will not convince many not already convinced, and might cause others to be even more resistant to the environmental movement, which has some excellent aspects but which is terribly confused.
It is clear that only a mass sweeping away of the world population can accomplish the rescue of the planet and its life.
"A petition being submitted by hundreds of independent climate scientists and professionals from numerous countries to heads of the European Council, Commission and Parliament declares "There is No Climate Emergency."" https://t.co/NELzaEpm09
Now many who read my blog will know that I was, in the 1991-2008 period, at various times a practising barrister (in England) and an employed barrister (mostly overseas). Defamation was not one of my specialisms. I would have liked it to have been. It is an interesting and lucrative field, often involving interesting and/or famous people, though certainly not demanding the highest legal skills or intellectual gifts (contrary to the general public belief).
I did a few cases of libel while at the Bar, though all were advisory; none reached a substantive court hearing. I did advise, pro bono (unpaid), and when only a student, on a libel matter the result of which made the front pages of the more serious newspapers: Flegon v. Solzhenitsyn [1987].
Unable (as a mere student) to appear before the judge and civil jury (all defamation cases then had a jury), I nonetheless attended court most days, sometimes all day, wrote (mostly ignored) instructions and good advice for the plaintiff (now dumbed-down to “claimant”), and advised generally on tactics etc (also mostly ignored). I was told by another attendee that once, I having told Flegon’s assistant to give Flegon a note while he, Flegon, was (speaking very loosely) “cross-examining” a witness, I bowed myself out of [High] Court, only for the judge to demand of Flegon, as soon as I had gone, “to see that note that you have just been given”. Apparently, the judge read the note and told Flegon (who was proving a massive pain to the judge in various ways) to “listen to the good advice that you have been given, Mr. Flegon”! My first commendation by the Bench!
The Daily Telegraph said, when Flegon died (16 years later, in 2003):
“His remarkable success at repeatedly getting manuscripts out of the Soviet Union led to the widespread view that he must have had contacts in the KGB; but in 1987 he won £10,000 libel damages in the High Court from Solzhenitsyn over an allegation to that effect in the Russian version of The Oak and Calf. Unable to afford a barrister’s fees, Flegon conducted his case himself, in faltering English.”
Well, returning from the past to the present, we often see people, usually on Twitter, either talking about suing this or that person (often another “tweeter”) or expressing an opinion on defamation cases before the courts.
The average Joe has no idea about legal matters, and yet many opine about the law and practice of defamation, perhaps because it tends to attract msm publicity. For example, the tweet below betrays no hint that the tweeter knows that people have never been allowed to get legal aid for matters of defamation.
"Kezia Dugdale wins £25k defamation case brought by Wings Over Scotland"
This seems to me a balanced and reasonable judgement. A Win-Win. But who will pay the costs of the action? Shared costs between plaintiff and defendant? The taxpayer? I hope not …https://t.co/ix1WbN1CBQ
Despite having been expelled from Twitter, I read the tweets of others, particularly those whom I consider “persons of interest”. Often, en passant, I see tweets by various idiots either threatening others with legal action or recommending that others sue —often named— other parties in defamation. Few seem to understand either the relevant law (which has changed somewhat in recent years) or the practical aspects.
In the Kezia Dugdale case reported today, the Scottish judge decided that the words written were defamatory, but that the defendant, Ms. Dugdale, had a defence (that of fair comment). By the way, note that that defence has now been replaced, in England and Wales, by a defence of “honest opinion”, but this case was heard in Scotland under Scottish law.
Now the claimant in that Kezia Dugdale case, a Mr. Campbell, obviously does not understand the law, having tweeted only today that the law or legal system is, in effect, asinine because the judge decided that the words were defamatory and yet had decided against him! Like many many others on Twitter etc, the said Mr. Campbell does not seem to understand that even if words are defamatory on their face or by implication, the defendant might yet have one or more of the available defences.
Time and again on Twitter (I am not on Facebook) I see people, innocent of any useful legal knowledge, claiming that words which are not defamatory anyway are defamatory, or (where the words might be defamatory) ignoring the available defences.
Prominent among the above are Jews on Twitter, who often invoke the name of “Mark Lewis Lawyer” (the Jew-Zionist lawyer who recently fled to Israel after being found guilty of professional misconduct: see Notes, below). In fact, his publicized defamation cases were all (the ones I saw anyway) very simple and straightforward, requiring little real legal expertise. My honest opinion is that he is a copper-bottomed self-publicizing poseur.
Take a look at the above paragraph. It might or might not be considered in part “defamatory” (or it might be considered as a whole or in part a “mere vulgar insult”, which would not be actionable in any event). Also, even if the statements above, or some or one, were to be considered defamatory, I have defences open to me should the supposed “top defamation specialist” reach out from his mobility scooter or wheelchair in Israel to sue me (he has so far not done so in respect of any of the rather many blog posts which I have written about him in the past months). I have the defences of, inter alia, “Truth”, “Honest Opinion”, and “Publication on a matter of public interest” available to me.
There again, the armchair lawyers of Twitter rarely consider other factors, chief amongst which is whether the defendant has any funds. If not, large sums (in some cases, hundreds of thousands of pounds) might be expended in pursuit of a defendant who (like me) would simply declare bankruptcy if faced with a money judgment. Bankruptcy in England is now little more than an inconvenience lasting for a year (in most cases) for someone without capital (whether in cash or real or other property) or income. There are few advantages to being broke (as I now am and, incidentally, as “Mark Lewis Lawyer” now is); one of them, though, is the useful one of being effectively “unsueable”.
There are other factors, but this is a blog post, not a legal treatise.
It is usually the case that the best advice that can be given to a potential litigant in defamation is “don’t”! Three examples:
Oscar Wilde. Wilde need not have brought the libel action which eventually led to his disgrace, imprisonment, exile and early death;
David Irving. A fine and persecuted (by the Jew lobby) historian, but not a lawyer. Need not have brought the case against Deborah Lipstadt, an American Jew-Zionist academic supported and funded by the worldwide Jewish/Zionist lobby. Insisted on appearing for himself. Said to have lost £2M in costs to the other side, at least on paper. He also, more importantly, had his books removed from large bookshop chains; some were even pulped. Large publishers dropped him;
Count Nikolai Tolstoy. The only one of the three whom I have ever met (once). The only one of these three who was the defendant (there was also a co-defendant in his case). He lost, but eventually paid only £57,000 of the £1.5M awarded against him initially; he paid the £57,000 years later and only after the death of the plaintiff, Lord Aldington.
So, Twitter armchair lawyers and the perpetually outraged: don’t put your daughter on the stage, never wear brown in town and stop threatening libel suits against people, even if you can get lawyers you can rely upon…
Notre Dame, which as I write is still ablaze, is of course at the very heart of Paris and, metaphorically, France too. One could point to other buildings in that latter regard, perhaps the Sainte-Chapelle, the Sacre-Coeur, the Cathedral at Rheims, or even that of Chartres, but Notre-Dame symbolizes Paris, or did, until the secular landmark of the Eiffel Tower was constructed.
Like millions of visitors to Paris, I have been inside Notre-Dame a couple of times (as I have the Sainte-Chapelle, and the Sacre-Coeur with its unique atmosphere and where a Mass is continuously performed, 24 hours a day).
Sometimes, the burning of, e.g., a great building, is considered a symbolic event, marking a great change. One thinks of the Burning of Rome, the later Sack of Rome, the destruction of the great ancient Library of Alexandria, the Great Fire of London etc. In more modern times there was the deliberate burning of both the First Goetheanum in Switzerland (see Notes, below) and the Reichstag in Berlin.
Other catastrophic events can be —or be seen as— historically, politically or socially significant. When the Herald of Free Enterprise sank, in 1987, the very name made me wonder whether the era of “Thatcherism” was drawing to a close. It was. On a smaller scale, there was even speculation, at the time of the Marchioness disaster of 1989, as to the sociological meaning of it, if any (because so many well-heeled families in London, it was said, knew or were acquainted with one or more of the 51 people drowned and/or others on board).
Are these events causally connected in some way with the movement of history, or is it that human beings, having perhaps a premonition of coming events, attach meaning to large fires and other disasters? Was the fire at Windsor Castle in 1992 somehow connected with the events that hit the British Royal Family in 1992 and in the years after the Queen’s annus horribilis? It was certainly the case that, after hundreds were crushed to death at Khodinka Field while celebrating the crowning of Nikolai II in 1896, the “simple people” thought it a bad omen. Were they wrong?
France is facing an existential crisis still not fully accepted as such by most. The influx of Algerians, Tunisians and black Africans since the 1960s became a flood, a disastrous flood, many years ago.
France and particularly Paris is now under siege from those of non-European descent, some of which may have been born and (semi) educated in France, but who are, except in language (and sometimes even in that way) alien.
An extremely high proportion of the population of France (at least 30%) is now non-European, and that situation is worsening. At the same time, there is a pushback by the (real) French via the Gilets Jaunes movement and via support for Marine le Pen.
“President” Macron, a complete puppet of the Jewish lobby and New World Order, has instituted a “Zionist Occupation Government” in France via his pop-up “party” (facade), En Marche, which consists of random people from nowhere who were recruited almost overnight, thanks to funding from secretive sources.
Macron’s expressed policies are to ruin the French way of life and French society, and to put in its place a globalized bastard-American culture. His secret policies (the policies of those behind Macron) are no doubt worse yet. He has allowed yet more hordes of non-Europeans to flood into France. Paris itself has become a poubelle (dustbin) compared to what it was only a few decades ago.
I hope that some of Notre Dame can be saved. I wonder whether France can be, and what it might take to do it.
“Blood will stream over Europe until the nations become aware of the frightful madness which drives them in circles. And then, struck by celestial music and made gentle, they approach their former altars all together, hear about the works of peace, and hold a great celebration of peace with fervent tears before the smoking altars” [Novalis]
I was just reading the blog of some Mancunian of whom I was unaware until today. I found his blog interesting despite his (to my mind, rather silly) pro-EU and (evident from his Twitter output) pro-immigration views.
His blog tells of how he and his family were immune from the mass hysteria all around after the death of Princess Diana. I found that interesting, partly because it echoes what I heard from people who were in London when it happened, in 1997 (the actual death was on 31 August 1997). I heard tales of pubs full of blubbing drinkers (days after the actual death), people who did not smile or even look normal in the streets, crowds treating Harrods department store (owned by Mohammed Fayed, the father of the last of Diana’s known lovers, Dodi Fayed) as if it were a shrine, taking flowers there etc.
In fact, I had seen the evidence of that last, because I had been to Harrods to buy a raincoat. I myself was not in England at the time of what I call the Diana Death Hysteria. I was then living in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Only about 70 English/British people lived in Almaty in 1997 (I know that because I had quite close contact with the small British Embassy and in fact visited the Embassy fairly frequently).
I did not have satellite TV and was unaware of the fact that Diana had died until 2 days later, when a colleague told me about it on Monday morning (the death having occurred on the weekend). I was later told that I was pretty much the only British person who had not gone to the Embassy to sign a book of condolence opened by the staff there.
On my return to London a few weeks later, I needed to buy a raincoat (it scarcely ever rains heavily in Almaty), so headed to Harrods in a taxi. When we approached the store, I noticed what seemed to be piles of trash outside Harrods, piled against crowd barriers. I asked the driver what that rubbish was doing there (to me it was reminiscent of the scenes seen during the 1979 “Winter of Discontent”, when rubbish went uncollected) but the driver replied, “that isn’t rubbish, Sir, it’s flower tributes for Princess Diana”. Well…
The phenomenon of mass hysteria or collective grief and/or jubilation has tended to pass me by. I also missed the mass celebrations for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 because, again, I was at the time overseas and incommunicado (in Rhodesia). Those who experienced either or both have found it hard to explain what exactly happened to (other) people (I can only assume that my own connections and associates are a hard-bitten lot!).
I am no psychologist (or psychiatrist) but have some tentative theories, revolving around emotional triggers in the population. I have wondered whether such mass emotionalism could be harnessed for the public good in future. In the past, a usually more restrained type of emotionalism bound the British people together. In the 20th Century, that involved devices such as the Union flag, shared “experiences” (even if in reality never actually experienced by many of those emotionally affected), such as the two World Wars, the Poppy Day commemorations, noted historical events and people (such as Nelson, Trafalgar, Wellington and Waterloo, Richard the Lionheart, Florence Nightingale, Robin Hood), music such as “For those in peril on the sea“, the National Anthem, “There’ll Always Be An England” etc. A patriotic and historical pastiche, certainly, neither comprehensive nor even particularly accurate in parts, but true enough and simple enough to bind a people together.
Today, the UK population is so fragmented in terms of race, ethnicity, language, age, (what passes for) “ideology”, culture, even sexual orientation or display, that it is hard to imagine them coming together in collective grief (false or otherwise) or jubilation today. I suppose that some would point to football or cricket games, the Olympics etc, but these are minority interests, despite the large number interested.
If one talks to people, or watches the often incredibly ignorant TV quiz contestants, it is realized that many (and by no means always the “blacks and browns”) know next to nothing of British history, literature, music, or even basic geography. Their world is not even a post-1945 one, but a post-2000 one of X-Factor persons, “soaps”, “celebrities” of whom I at least have never heard, music which is either banal or simply noise.
It may be that the Diana mood of 1997 was an elegiac lament for a Britain —or more accurately an England— which was on the point of disappearing (and now has disappeared).
A couple of days ago, I needed to buy a new mouse for my laptop computer and also to ask advice on a technical issue. I decided to go to a PC World outlet about 15 miles from where I now live. The PC World store was outside a small town on the coast of Southern England. I was there by 0900 hrs, its opening time. A routine matter, of course, but I felt that I should blog, briefly, about it because it confirmed some of what I have been saying online for years.
There was only one other customer in the large hangar-like store at nine in the morning. I was greeted on going to the service desk by a youngish blonde woman who looked rather fed up. I feared that she would be surly or unhelpful. I could not have been more wrong.
The woman, who was not as young as she looked (she turned out to have a daughter aged 16; well, the police now also look young to me…) dealt with my technical question in a matter of seconds (completely correctly, it later transpired). She also directed me to the part of of the store which displayed “mice”. I chose one, brought it back and, the store now being empty, was told that I could pay for it there at the enquiries desk rather than going to a check-out. I did that.
It might be asked at this point why I am bothering to write about this? Well, I ended up having a chat with the blonde woman employee who had been so useful and helpful, and what she said was very concerning. I don’t know why she confided in me, whom she had only just met, except that people often do. They seem to divine that I can keep a secret, for one thing, though that does not apply in this case. I think that people also know that I want to help if I can.
The blonde woman worked full-time in the PC World store, but lived in a housing association property and received Housing Benefit to pay for the rent or part of the rent. That alone confirmed some of my expressed views over the years. Here she was, in a full-time job, and moreover one which actually required some skill and knowledge, which job she was doing really competently too (as I myself saw), yet was unable to pay her modest rent (after all, this was a housing association property) out of her pay!
Now this is just plain wrong. Here we have a large chain, part of a group (Dixons Carphone, formerly Dixons Group) which, in the financial year 2017-2018, made (pre-tax) profits of £382 million, yet is not paying its staff enough so that they can even pay their domestic rent! Instead, PC World relies on the State to stump up monies (Housing Benefit and also, perhaps, Working Tax Credit— I did not talk to the woman in such detail).
In other words, the profits of the employer are being bolstered by the State, meaning taxpayers (and including, at least via National Insurance and VAT etc, the employee herself in this case).
Previous visits to PC World had been far less satisfactory. That woman had made the difference, yet was struggling to survive. When will British businesses realize that they are only as good as their employees, at all levels?
There is something wrong about a system or society in which the pay received by an employee for full-time work is not enough to allow her even to pay her rent.
Further, I was told that, because the Housing Benefit was delayed by a few days, routinely, the woman had fallen into arrears and, though the arrears were always only in existence for a few days, the Housing Association had taken her to court at least once and, as a result, she had had to pay £100-something in court costs and also a financial impost of about the same to the Housing Association! This surely must be seen as unfair and unjust.
The woman also told me that her daughter was autistic (I do not know, of course, to what extent) and had been getting Disability Living Allowance (DLA) in respect of that. Recently, the daughter had reached the age of 16. As a result, she had been forced off DLA and forced to undertake a “test” for “Personal Independence Payment” or PIP [off-piste, someone must one day do a sketch on the vulgar cheesy names for such things: “Personal Independence Payment”, “Jobseeker’s Allowance”, “Job Centre” etc].
The daughter had, subsequently, been awarded nothing. So suddenly, this girl, long diagnosed as autistic, had now, despite the diagnosis and her previously accepted status, been cut off from State funds by reason only of a change in policy by government (Iain Dunce Duncan Smith and the jew “lord” Freud, Esther McVey, not to mention David Gauke and Chris Grayling etc).
I went away from that encounter at PC World thinking about how unjust and in fact how simply inefficient the system in the UK is, in that instead of a person being able to work and provide for herself and her daughter and/or get help from the State in a simple manner, she (a useful member of society at that) was being made anxious and being forced to jump through hoops in order to survive.
The present system is not efficient, is callous and unfair and is a complicated maze. Hopeless. Parliament is hopeless. “Democracy” (as we know it) is hopeless. The MPs and “peers” are hopeless. Business is not pulling its weight. The people are not only not being helped but are being impeded unnecessarily by the overall system in which they live and work.
I have thought for a week or so before writing this. As one would expect, there has been an outpouring of virtue-signalling (accompanied by State repression or threats thereof) not seen since the Anders Breivik event in Norway eight years ago. I wanted to write not only about the Christchurch shooting itself, and about the perpetrator, but also about surrounding events and the overall context. I also want to examine the moral and ethical aspects.
Firearms
There are many mass shootings in the world. The USA alone seems to have one on a weekly if not daily basis (and those are only the ones which are reported heavily). The anti-gun lobby focusses on ease of access in the USA, New Zealand etc. Obviously, if a disturbed (or other) person cannot acquire firearms, then he cannot shoot people; he can, however, stab them, blow them up, drive at them etc.
Firearms events have more victims, usually. Having said that, one could say “ban cars, because some people misuse them”, to which the answer would no doubt come, “people need cars, they don’t need guns”. Well, true, though still arguable. It all depends on where society decides to draw the line. In the UK, since the late 1990s, it has been almost impossible to own lawfully-held firearms (except shotguns and, in some cases, certain types of hunting rifle). That was not always the case.
“Members of the public may own sporting rifles and shotguns, subject to licensing, but handguns were effectively banned after the Dunblane school massacre in 1996 with the exception of Northern Ireland. Dunblane was the UK’s first and only school shooting. There has been one spree killing since Dunblane, the Cumbria shootings in June 2010, which involved a shotgun and a .22 calibre rifle, both legally-held. Prior to Dunblane though, there had only been one mass shooting carried out by a civilian in the entire history of Great Britain, which took place in Hungerford on 19 August 1987.” [Wikipedia]
Note that. In the entire history of Great Britain there have only been three mass shootings, yet the government took the opportunity to ban most firearms (at which time there had only been two such events in British history), and did so with the apparent agreement of a majority, probably high, of the general public, most of whom know nothing about firearms, have never so much as seen one (other than on TV), and who were stampeded by the publicity around the 1996 Dunblane school murders.
At one time, there was little regulation of firearms in the UK:
“Following the assassination of William of Orange in 1584 with a concealed wheellock pistol, Queen Elizabeth I, fearing assassination by Roman Catholics, banned possession of wheellock pistols in England near a royal palace in 1594.[73] There were growing concerns in the 16th century over the use of guns and crossbows. Four acts were imposed to restrict their use in England and Wales.[74]
The Bill of Rights restated the ancient rights of the people to bear arms by reinstating the right of Protestants to have arms after they had been illegally disarmed by James II. It follows closely the Declaration of Rights made in Parliament in February 1689.[75] The Bill of Rights text declares that “That the Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law”.” [Wikipedia]
“British common law applied to the UK and Australia, and until 1791 to the colonies in North America that became the United States. The right to keep and bear arms had originated in England during the reign of Henry II with the 1181 Assize of Arms, and developed as part of common law.”
Starting in 1903, there were restrictions placed on purchase of certain firearms (mainly pistols), subsequent Acts of 1920, 1937, 1968 and 1988 tightening the law in other respects too.
It is worth noting that, following the two 1997 Acts, which effectively banned private possession of handguns (pistols and revolvers) and required surrender of thus-affected weapons, 57,000 people (0.1% of the population) handed in 162,000 weapons and 700 tons of ammunition! In other words, one maniac with a few weapons became the trigger (so to speak) for a law which affected at least 57,000 people all of whom had held and used their weapons peacefully until then!
I personally was not affected by the ban, though I was at one time (mid 1970s/mid 1980s) a member of the Kensington Rifle and Pistol Club in London. In the UK and/or other countries, I have fired a variety of weapons, including the 7.62 R-1 automatic/semi-auto rifle (there was a switch on the side), semi-automatic pistols including the 9mm Browning Hi-Power and numerous others in .32 and .22 calibre, and also revolvers such as the Colt .32, .38 and .357 Magnum, and have handled (overseas and mostly long ago, again in the 1970s and 1980s) others, such as the famous Uzi submachinegun and some Warsaw Pact automatic weapons. Despite that, I am not in fact particularly interested in firearms (or any weapons) and, even in the unlikely event of the 1997 Acts being repealed, would probably not bother to join a gun club. As far as shotguns are concerned, I have used them in Ireland and in England (in England only for clay pigeon, because I disapprove of shooting birds and animals for sport or “fun”). I myself have never privately owned any firearm.
I doubt that many people now even know that there used to be public ranges in England, where for a small fee, people could take their own weapons and fire them. I went once (in 1976) to the one at Dartford (Kent), quite near what was then a (disused?) mental hospital. Now the area is probably either a housing development or perhaps might be the present Dartford Clay Shooting Club, which (I just saw on Google) seems to be at or near the same location (it is not an area that I know, though).
Most British people have never fired nor even seen a firearm and that does tend to colour their reaction.
In the USA, things are of course very different. The old English Common Law right to bear arms is written into the U.S. Constitution, though muddied by the famous words about “a well-regulated militia” etc. Leaving aside the legal and quasi-theological arguments revolving around that Amendment, it always seemed to me when I lived there (in New Jersey) that it was odd for many American states to require people to have a licence to own or at least drive a car, but not a pistol, shotgun or something even more dangerous.
In the UK, people tend to say, “look at the USA: easy ownership of guns and a massacre every week!”, but that has to be set against the fact that tens and probably hundreds of millions of Americans own firearms. Probably the vast majority have never received even the most basic training. True, there are huge numbers of crimes committed with firearms in the USA, but simply banning guns (as in some other countries) is a simplistic solution which might leave American citizens helpless. Societies differ. I met an American lady, a blonde with startlingly blue eyes, in the Caribbean. She said that she had a large silver-plated semi-automatic pistol (I forget the marque), which she kept under her pillow. I never got to see it, by the way!
As far as New Zealand is concerned, its gun ownership laws were lax compared to the UK or even Australia, but huge numbers of New Zealanders (about 5% of the population, 250,000 out of 5 million) own at least one weapon. New Zealand is a country about 10% larger than the UK but with only about 5 million inhabitants. Much of the country is rural. There had never been a massacre there such as the one recently perpetrated in Christchurch by Brenton Tarrant.
First impressions, Muslims in the UK and NZ, the history, the demographics
When the Christchurch attack happened and the news organizations started to report, my first surprise was to hear that New Zealand has 50,000 Muslims living there! That figure may seem small, but is still 1% of the whole population.
In the UK, there were at one time effectively no Muslims, though trade with Muslim lands, evidenced by coins, goes back at least as far as the time of King Offa in the 8th Century. All the same, there were only a few Muslims in England, mostly diplomats, traders etc, for centuries, e.g. in the Tudor and Stuart periods (15th-17thC), until sailors from British India (mostly Bengal) known as lascars started to spend time in ports such as London, Bristol, Liverpool etc in the 19thC. There may have been 10,000 at any one time, but few were permanent residents. The Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle occasionally mention lascars, not infrequently preceded by words such as “rascally”.
The first small mosque in England was built in Woking (Surrey) in 1889 (it’s still there, quite near the railway station), having been built there adjunct to an Islamic burial ground. The first mosque in London only appeared in 1924. By 2007, there had been established 1,500 mosques in the UK! Now, in 2019, the figure is even greater: 1,750 [BBC statistic]. 250 more mosques in little more than a decade…
[please see addendum at foot of this blog post]
As to the population figures, England and Wales had 50,000 Muslims in 1961. That was then around 0.1% of the whole population. A decade later, in 1971, there were 226,000, a quadrupling, then by 1981, 553,000; 1991, 950,000. Doubling every decade at that point. Then 1.6 million in 2001; 2.7 million by 2011 and, a mere three years later in 2014, well over 3 million.
The present number of UK-based Muslims is not officially known but is around 3.5 million.
So in the UK, 50,000 Muslims became (via immigration and births) 3.5 million within little more than half a century. New Zealand has 50,000 now. New Zealand has different immigration and other factors as compared to the UK, but will New Zealand, a land of only 5 million people now, have a population of Muslims alone of 3.5 million by, say, 2075 or 2100? It cannot be dismissed out of hand. At that point, the Muslims would be already dominant even if the general NZ population will by then have grown to, say, 10 million (twice its present level). Yes, that projected third of the population could in fact be the dominant bloc. A laser is powerful because its light is concentrated and disciplined, not diffuse.
The intention of the shooter
It seems that the perpetrator of the massacre had been travelling, perhaps using inherited monies, for 7 years. Information given out by the msm indicates that Tarrant was “radicalized” not while a member of some group or party, but by events witnessed while travelling around Europe and, finally, in New Zealand itself.
The manifesto of Brenton Tarrant, The Great Replacement, will not be reproduced here. It is found with ease on the Internet, via Google or the like. I do not want to give anyone hostile the excuse to say that, by posting it on here, I am somehow “encouraging” terrorism or political violence. It does seem very repressive that major Internet platforms have been pressured to remove his manifesto, and have acquiesced.
Reading that manifesto, the motivation of Brenton Tarrant seems to be almost impersonal on the face of it. It has elements of sacrifice and self-sacrifice. It shows determination (he has that in common with Breivik). As to education or erudition, I do not think that he lays claim to much, but there is intelligence manifest in the document. He has learned (whatever might be said about that) from his travels.
Politically, Brenton Tarrant describes himself as an “ethno-nationalist”. He also says (the manifesto is mostly written in Q & A format):
“Were/are you a nazi?
No, actual nazis do not exist.They haven’t been a political or social force anywhere in the world for more than 60 years.”
That is a good point. As Hitler said, “National Socialism is not for export.” Hitler also remarked to his last secretary, Traudl Junge, and others, in 1945, that German National Socialism was finished, but that something with the same essential core might emerge “in a “hundred years” and then “take hold of the world with the force of a religion”. Well, here we are in 2019, 100 years after the founding of the NSDAP, though of course we are only 74 years from the end of the Reich.
Tarrant also describes himself as an “eco-fascist” as well as writing that he is at one with many of the policies expounded by Oswald Mosley. A word of explanation might be useful here. I knew someone who was at one time quite well acquainted with Mosley. She always said that he was basically an intellectual who saw himself as a “man of action” (“Action” was also the name of Mosley’s newspaper). Mosley of course was also a “man of action”, who had flown in the First World War (where he was a fellow-officer of the aforesaid lady’s husband in the Royal Flying Corps), but he, arguably, made too much of sports, fencing, physical fitness generally, as a politician. That was the Zeitgeist of the 1930s though, not only in Germany and Italy but in the UK, where lidos and indoor public swimming pools etc proliferated.
Mosley was once described as someone who could have been a great prime minister of the UK, for either [System] party. He was unwilling to accept mass unemployment, so resigned from the Labour Party (under which he was a government minister).
Mosley is now remembered, in the public mind, in the “cartoon” version put out by a largely Jewish mass media: the sneering Fascist demagogue in his black uniform. As with all important lies, of course, there was a kernel of truth in that.
As to Tarrant’s “eco-fascism”, there has always been linkage between “green” politics, environmentalism etc, and social nationalism. See:
In fact, the author Henry Williamson, who wrote Tarka the Otter, combined Englishness, support for Mosley and support for German National Socialism with being an early environmentalist and, in essence, “green” activist:
Tarrant declares in his manifesto that he will not kill NZ police. He kept to that and allowed himself to be captured. He also makes the following point:
“Were/are you a supporter of Brexit?
Yes, though not for an official policy made. The truth is that eventually people must face the fact that it wasn’t a damn thing to do with the economy.That it was the British people firing back at mass immigration, cultural displacement and globalism, and that’s a great and wonderful thing.”
Amen to that.
He adds, re. Marine le Pen’s party in France:
“Were/are you a supporter of Front National?
No,they’re a party of milquetoast civic nationalist boomers, completely incapable of creating real change and with no actual viable plan to save their nation.“
Rather oddly, Tarrant says that one Candace Owens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candace_Owens#Political_views was a major influence. I had to look up her details. I myself see nothing of any real interest there, but this blog post is about the New Zealand attack and its author, not me.
As to the psychology of Brenton Tarrant, hard to say. True, he shares some characteristics with other “rampage killers”, being marginalized by society, not having a solid career or place in society, not having a solid marriage or other relationship either. He seems to be sane and in fact makes some very good if obvious points in his manifesto. No doubt the New Zealand state’s psychiatrists will find suitable labels to attach…
The reaction of the New Zealand state, msm and public
Once the initial shock of the massacre ebbed, there was a wave of sympathy for the victims, especially in New Zealand itself. Looking at the TV news, one can see how warm-hearted the New Zealanders are, though it is all too easy to see a crowd of a few hundred and assume that it represents a whole country. The New Zealanders have proven that they have a heart. It is far more doubtful as to whether they have a head. Like Australia, New Zealand has gone from being an entirely white European society (albeit grafted onto an existing “native” one) to a developing multikulti mess, but the extent of that is probably slight enough in terms of numbers and percentages (so far) that most New Zealanders are unaware of it. I cannot say.
The New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, immediately started virtue-signalling on an epic scale, wearing Arab dress and insisting that even women police officers did the same. It was rather chilling to see an armed policewoman carrying her automatic rifle and wearing the Arab hijab. Reminiscent of the ISIS barbarians.
Stray thoughts
Many of those who virtue-signalled like mad about the people shot in New Zealand scarcely noticed, I think, the many killed recently by American or British bombers when the ISIS barbarians were under attack. The ISIS fighters had to take their chances, perhaps their camp-followers too, but what about uninvolved civilians? What about small children also killed by the assaults on towns such as Raqqa?
Then take another example: the Second World War bombings (on both sides, though the Allied bombing was far worse, in Germany, both in terms of numbers killed and in terms of intensity). In Japan, the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have supported the war effort, may also have been related to soldiers or whatever, but were themselves not combatants. Their children even less so.
[above, Dresden 1945]
To attribute blame becomes difficult. That is why human beings cling to the conventional. Many will have seen The Night of the Generals, which is based around questions like that: in the midst of a massive war, where thousands are being killed monthly or weekly, and where the Wehrmacht resistance to Hitler is in the background (with its premise that Hitler must die for the greater good…), an investigation is launched into the murder of a prostitute.
If conventional morality says that it is justified for a state to kill civilians and even civilian children for some larger end result, then perhaps the same argument could be used by an individual who massacres civilians whom he regards as either “the enemy” or “collateral damage” to achieve some larger end? The moral question which looked so clear superficially becomes opaque.
For me, the NZ shooting was unpleasant, unnecessary and possibly counter-productive. Tarrant obviously disagrees with that conclusion. All one can say is that the large-scale movements of population will continue until someone says or enough people say NO.
Nature's sublime experience with its terrifying beauty of incomprehensible power threatens our human finiteness with the infinitude of spaces. Human speech fails to fully describe its vast power likewise it cannot be defined ethically [good or evil]. pic.twitter.com/Ng5NB1nkOB
In 1997, I moved back to London after having spent an interesting year in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Almaty was, even then, a quite large city, was at the time the capital of Kazakhstan, and boasted green spaces, tree-lined streets, pavement cafes, pretty girls in short skirts (or furs, depending on the season), a city as hot as 40C in high Summer, sub-zero and snowy in Winter.
[immediately above, Pushkin Street, not very far from where I lived at one time]
[above, Almaty in Winter]
On returning to London after 12 months, in late September 1997, I found that it was easier to be “offered” another overseas position than to actually get one. In the world of the headhunters, words are cheap. I found myself rapidly running out of funds in a London where the weather became wet and then cold and wet; in fact, my very first day back in London, it became necessary to visit Knightsbridge to buy a raincoat (unnecessary in Almaty, where it rains heavily for only a few days in the year). I went on holiday to Minorca and then, after a number of fruitless meetings re. possible contracts (everywhere Russophone from Moscow to Moldova to Baku and back to Almaty) sat down to decide where to winter, in the hope that a new contract might be offered in the upcoming new year; it was by now already early December.
It had to be somewhere both reasonably warm and reasonably (if not very) cheap. I considered the Canaries, Asmara (Eritrea) and a few other locations, before settling on Egypt, partly because I had been there before (only briefly though, a short break at the Luxor Hilton a few years before), partly because I knew that it could be cheap if one did not stay at a luxury-grade hotel, partly because it would be pleasantly warm even in December. There had also just been a terrible massacre at the Temple of Hatshepsut in the Valley of the Kings (across the river from Luxor), which led me to consider that there might be cheap flights and hotel rooms on offer.
What spoiled the flight part of the plan was that after the news media reported the massacre, the package tour and cheap flights people immediately cancelled all flights to Egypt. However, I had already decided by then to go, my resolve hardened by a pointless breakfast meeting at 0730 (!) with a couple of American “emerging markets” hucksters at the Mount Royal Hotel near Marble Arch, after which I got an overpriced taxi back to Little Venice in the pouring rain and chill.
Olympic and Egyptair were still flying, so I bought a ticket to Aswan via Athens and Cairo.
Egypt
Cutting through the detail of my first weeks in Egypt, I stayed in subtropical Aswan (it’s 1 degree North of the Tropic of Cancer) for 2 weeks before spending a couple of dull weeks at an almost deserted, beautiful and undeveloped beach (living in a large tent) near the then almost uninhabited and tiny settlement of Marsa Alam on the Red Sea. Served by one bus every day or two, it was hard to get to and harder to escape from… (now, over 20 years later, that almost derelict area is very different, has luxury hotels and even its own international airport!). From there I went, not without difficulty, to Alexandria, a journey of at least 12 hours by both what in Tunisia is called voiture de louage (a 6-seat car shared by 5 customers and driver) and long-distance bus via Port Safaga, al-Quseir and Hurghada.
I had already selected a small 3-star hotel on the Corniche in Alexandria, thanks to my Lonely Planet guidebook. Walking distance from Ramla, the central place in Alex. However, unknown to Lonely Planet, the buses no longer terminated at Ramla for reasons of traffic control, so I ended up pulling my heavy (thankfully, wheeled) suitcases (inc. portable typewriter) miles along the Corniche (seafront).
After a day or so, I decided to stay in the supposedly good semi-gated beach suburb of Mamoura Beach, at the Eastern extremity of Alex. If possible, I would then rent a flat there via a local agency.
As anyone who has spent more than a brief holiday in Egypt will tell you, organization is not to be expected, chaos is the norm…
At the railway station, which was not busy, I got a local train. It terminated at Abu Qir, which was the place where, in the bay of which, Nelson defeated a French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 (the westernmost mouth of the Nile itself is now a few miles to the East of that bay).
I had bought a ticket to Mamoura. The train would then continue only for two or three stops until it finished its journey. The seats were polished wooden benches and the train’s journey passed at a snail’s pace. Eventually the train reached Mamoura. I disembarked. It was still mid-morning.
I was not entirely expecting the typically Egyptian scene outside the small station. Crowded streets, traffic, donkey-carts carrying aysh (flat and usually very tasty Egyptian bread), schoolchildren in uniform (this was the first day of Ramadan, so they had probably been sent home early). I had been expecting a quieter sort of place.
What I did not understand at the time was that I had got off at the wrong stop. I had assumed that the nearest station to Mamoura Beach would be Mamoura, whereas in fact the latter was a suburb to the East of Mamoura Beach. I should have disembarked at Montazah.
I had a map, but not a good one. I walked through a couple of crowded residential streets going North, in the direction of the sea. I came upon an Islamic cemetery, the wall of which had a gap on the other side. A small boy was climbing through it. I assumed (wrongly, again…) that he must have been going to the beach, so I followed. When I arrived on the other side, the boy had gone and I found myself in a large open area with some buildings in the middle distance. I saw some soldiers doing road repair on an unused roadway. Their sergeant, when approached, directed me (thanks to my Arabic phrasebook) to where there was the hotel (the only one) on Mamoura Beach, and where I had thought that I might stay. He helpfully wrote the name of that hotel (as I thought) on a scrap of paper, in case I needed to ask anyone else.
I carried on but was surprised to see that the beach, cut off by barbed wire, appeared to be mined. The skull and crossbones motif and a warning in Arabic and English made that plain. As for what I thought was some kind of disused military camp, it appeared now to be, well, an in-use military base. Oh dear…
I walked on and found myself next to a large ground-to-air missile battery, with 4 missiles in place, pointing upward at about 45 degrees.
Realizing that I had to get out, I moved across cut grass towards a distant wall, only to find that a small pack of what seemed to be wild dogs, sunning themselves near the wall, had noticed me. I slowly moved away, tracked parallel to my course by one of those dogs. This was not a military base as known in the UK, USA or even (where I had been in 1977) Rhodesia.
It was at that moment that an officer spotted me and sent over a young sergeant to me to see who was this European wearing chinos, climbing boots and a tweed-style jacket. After I had dropped the half-brick I was carrying (in case the dog attacked), the sergeant escorted me to the officer. A short conversation later (in which I tried to thank them for their help and to walk out of what I could now see was the nearby guarded exit from the base), ended with me taken a few steps to a nearby low building, which turned out to be the Officers’ Mess. Half a dozen curious officers came out, one with a wooden chair, which was placed in front of me. I was gestured to sit. The officers were not unfriendly (several shook hands with me), but just very curious. It felt like being treated as were the shot-down fliers of the First World War. The only thing missing was the bottle of champagne.
Minutes later, a car rolled up, which turned out to contain a major and a captain, who turned out to be the security officer (major) and intelligence officer (captain) of the base. The major searched me, including my boots (while still on my feet), then I was placed in the car and driven away. Thus began a boring but not uneventful day.
The major and captain (the latter more pleasant and I thought probably from a more cultured background, though that was just an impression) questioned me over some Arab coffee (which I like). The captain spoke English, the major none or almost none. There was no rough stuff, no violence or obvious threat. However, they went over my reasons for being in Egypt, in Alex, in Abu Qir and, most of all, on their base.
It turned out that the address in Arabic scrawled by the sergeant I had encountered was not the Mamoura Beach Hotel but a special Soviet-style hotel for officers only, just by the base. Why did I have this in my pocket? Why did I have a Swiss Army knife? Why did I have a map, a small torch, a phrase-book? And so on. One officer casually remarked that, the year before, they had caught an agent of MOSSAD. I have no idea whether that was true, or if so what happened to him, and I decided not to ask, or to appear too interested in what happened to spies in Egypt. I just evinced what I hoped sounded like polite slight interest.
Several times, I asked for the British Consul. The responses were almost amusing, but it was hard to see the joke: “the Consul? Oh, no, the Consul is only for the most serious cases. You don’t want to be treated as a serious case, do you?” or “the Consul will be busy. We just need to ask a few questions more.” When I said that I needed access to the Consul because I was under arrest, the answer was “No, no! You are not under arrest. You are very welcome in Egypt!” (“Ah, so I am free to leave?” “Once we have asked a few more questions…”).
After a couple of hours of such light diversions, including my asking about whether the base had been once a British one, which was me trying to lighten the atmosphere as well as genuine curiosity (they said no), I was informed that I would be leaving, but only because some civilian colleagues needed to speak to me. This was not good news. The Mukhabarat (security police, secret police) is a ubiquitous and feared organization in Egypt. I had entertained a slight hope that the Army might just release me as innocent tourist with a warning not to stray in future. Vain hope.
I was escorted out of the office into a larger reception-style office crowded with ordinary Egyptian soldiers, many of whom were plainly there to catch a glimpse of me, though none said anything. There was also a very sinister body, a civilian, in a light brown leather jacket, with dark glasses and heavy stubble, who absurdly —in that situation— pretended not to have noticed that a foreigner was in the reception area. One of “them”, of course.
I was taken by car out of the base in a car driven by the young sergeant, my fellow passengers the captain and the major. Alexandria is about 20 miles long but only a mile or so deep. It runs along the coast. We were driving now from the edge of the city, past vegetable allotments and near the sea towards central Alex. It was not long before we were in one of the suburbs of Alex not far from the centre of the city (as I thought; I did not then know the city, of course). I thought that we were possibly in the Chatby neighbourhood. The car stopped by a quite high wall. A door was there. We were admitted. On the other side, there seemed to be a fine looking white house, like a small palace, amid luxuriant gardens. There was a little white painted waiting building by the entrance. We waited. The captain left. I lightened the atmosphere by asking the young conscript how come he was a sergeant at such a young age. He blushed as the major asked what I had said! When the sergeant translated it, the major laughed.
A civilian with a long scar down his cheek came to take me into the house. The soldiers left, the major shaking my hand. In a way, that seemed ominous.
Inside, the house was all marble, white and gold. I was shown into a glitz-palatial room, with white and gold chairs around a long low coffee table. It was the very image of the rooms in which Saddam Hussein used to receive his visitors.
Already gathered there were my new interrogators, several Mukhabarat officers. The only one who said nothing was Scarface, presumably there to provide the muscle in case the dangerous spy tried to escape or to kill those present with his bare hands.
A boy came in to take orders for coffee. Displaying all the confidence of my dozen words of phrase-book Arabic, I requested “aqwa mazboot, min fadlak” (loosely meaning Arab coffee with a little sugar please) and one of the Mukhabarat people jumped on it: “oh, so you speak Arabic?!” “I have a phrasebook, that’s all”. “But you ask for coffee with a good Egyptian accent…” and so I nearly became the first man hanged (well, not really, but halfway there) because I owned a good phrasebook. Thanks, Berlitz!
I tried the ask-for-British-Consul thing again, with the by-now-expected response: “The Consul will be busy…You are not under arrest…You are welcome in Egypt…We just have to ask a few questions” etc.
Then the polite but persistent questioning resumed: why was I in Egypt? Why was I on the military base? “What do you think of Israel?”; “I have always opposed Zionism”; “Oh, why would you answer thus to an Egyptian intelligence officer?” Smiles all round, mine by far the most nervous.
Another strange question: “what do you think of Princess Diana?” [who, as mentioned above, had died about 3 months previously]; “I have no particular view of her”; “Really?” [incredulously]…”all Egyptian people love Princess Diana”. Now it was my turn to respond “really?”. “Yes…I myself met Princess Diana here in Alexandria.” I supposed that that was plausible, Mohammed Fayed (father of her lover, Dodi Fayed) having originated in Alex.
Yet another strange question: “why do British government not clear the mines that they put on the beaches of Egypt?”, this a reference to the thousands, maybe millions, of landmines placed under the sands of Egypt (beaches and inland) by the British, Germans and Italians during the Second World War. There are even some on Red Sea beaches. The barbed wire with the warning symbol and English/Arabic “Beware Mines” is everywhere in some regions. I could only nod sympathetically and indicate that I had no influence or power over the British Government or its actions… All in all, this was a very odd little tea party or, rather, Arab coffee party.
In the end, after a couple of hours, it was decided that I had to return to my hotel on the Corniche to get my passport (I carried around only a photocopy). Scarface, a younger officer and a driver accompanied me.
The expressions on the faces of the staff at the hotel were telling: they were petrified. They knew at once who my “guests” were. The officers examined my baggage, my passport etc. They were most interested in the typewriter, my snorkelling equipment (especially the very large “professional”-size fins) and my sole reading matter: Barbarossa, by Alan Clark.
I was surprised that we did not return to the villa, but went to another, possibly more central neighbourhood (not knowing the city, I was trying to see clues to where we were). The driver was a professional, the only one I ever encountered in Egypt who did not use the horn incessantly. It was now drizzling as darkness fell, and as we drove slowly down a street of tall pre-WW2 houses, rather reminiscent of Paris (Alex having been effectively under joint Anglo-French control in the decades up to the late 1940s), the streetlights showed a steel barrier ahead, guarded by a phalanx of uniformed security police with submachineguns, the rain glistening on their short capes, again reminiscent of old Paris. They were ready for trouble, wearing not caps but steel helmets. As our car approached at a snail’s pace, the driver signalled twice using his headlights. The barriers were parted for us.
The car stopped. I was asked to disembark. The air was fresh and cool, as it often is at night in the Alexandrian winter. I was not restrained in any way. After all, to where would I run (even if I were not shot in the back)?
We were outside what had obviously been the townhouse of some wealthy merchant of the late 19thC. Depressingly, the windows were all barred. At first, I thought that I was going to be actually imprisoned in that place.
Above the door, the coat of arms of the Mukhabarat, incorporating the Egyptian all-seeing eye and a hawk or eagle (I think hawk: Horus was “the Hawk of Light” in ancient Egypt; that eye was his eye, “the Eye of Horus”). Also, the words, in Arabic and English, “State Security Headquarters, Alexandria”.
I was led in. At one time in the mists of history (well, pre-1945 anyway) the entrance hall must have been quite grand. A very high ceiling, a wide curved staircase leading up to the next floor, a crystal chandelier, a generally white and gold ambience. An entrance hall for a Hollywood film, perhaps one starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Or some version of Anna Karenina. The effect was spoiled, however, by the general lack of maintenance and cleanliness, the long sofa with its dirty fabric badly torn, and the battered old wooden table, at which sat a scruffy middleaged fellow in a warm jacket, his revolver casually in front of him on the table, together with a clipboard and a landline telephone.
Once I was left there, this individual struck up a conversation as I sat on the sofa that the Mukhabarat might have taken from a skip, so old and used was it. There was no-one else around. Kafka-esque. The “receptionist” told me that I was waiting to see the general in charge of all state security in Alexandria. He would then order my release. I had little confidence in that, having been given the run-around all day and knowing that Egyptians can have an odd sense of humour (and a certain streak of sadism, somehow, too). Still, I had no choice but to wait.
At one point, around 1900 hrs, some people arrived and ascended the staircase. The night shift? Or do secret police personnel find the night more congenial for their work? One fellow, dressed in what looked like an expensive suit, was obviously important, because the scruffy receptionist actually got off his rear to greet him. The new arrival looked rather comical to my mind, in that he seemed almost as broad as he was tall, like the British advertising cartoon seen on posters and TV in my childhood, “Mr. Cube”, who was the face of Tate & Lyle sugar. There was something slightly sinister about this man, though. He stopped part-way up the grand staircase and turned round to look at me briefly. His gaze was or seemed quizzical.
I was later escorted by the scruffy fellow upstairs and through quite bright, well-appointed corridors to a small but comfortable office occupied by, as the reader may have guessed, “Mr. Cube” and a colleague, the largest person I ever saw in Egypt. They were friendly enough, and Mr. Cube (aka General Cube, who introduced himself only as the head of state security in Alexandria) explained that before I could be released, he would have to be satisfied that I was not a spy. So we ran through all the same stuff all over again. Mr. Cube was not unfriendly and had some Turkish or Arab coffee brought in, the best I have ever had, served in exquisite tiny china cups. Very welcome after a foodless day (I had not even had breakfast).
At the end of our talk, Mr. Cube did a strange thing (but one I later read about in relation to both the Soviet and British intelligence services). He just looked at me, straight in the eye, and his friendly demeanour turned into something so chilling and indeed evil that it has stayed with me to this day. His gaze seemed to be penetrating deep into my consciousness. The word which came to mind later was “pitiless”. This was a man who might be capable of anything and quite probably had tortured and killed people. Then Cube turned off the terror as easily as he had turned it on, and pronounced that he thought that I was not a spy, but that he had to get clearance from Cairo before releasing me. He busied out of the office and his large assistant clapped me on the back in a friendly way (which felt like the blow from a large bear must feel).
Half an hour later and Cube was himself driving me back to my hotel in his own (very modest) little car (I think that it was a Fiat). It was almost midnight, about 2300 hours. He wished me a pleasant stay in Egypt (in fact I did stay, for another 2 months) and I entered the hotel again. Again the faces of the staff said it all. They obviously had not expected to see me again. The waiter even raised his arms in the air and quietly cheered, as if a goal had been scored.
Well, I did many other things in Egypt but that’s enough for now. If anyone ever asks me about my longest trip to Egypt and what happened, I just say that I was “not” arrested…
Alexandria, San Stefano (now redeveloped)
Early morning sea view from the Corniche at Alexandria
above: the main residential road in Mamoura Beach, Alexandria, where I rented a flat a few days after the events described above; I lived there for a month
above: Mamoura Beach. When I was there it was off-season, January, but quite warm in daytime, though cool and often wet at night.
above: Old Montazah Station, near both the Montazah Palace and Mamoura Beach where I lived for a month.
The short 1946 film below shows mainly the grounds of the Montazah Palace in Alex, not far from where I lived for a while; it also shows the Corniche.
Alexandria was much better under European rule and/or influence!
[above: scenes from pre-Nasser Egypt: Cairo, Alexandria and elsewhere]
[below: old Alexandria]
[below: amateur film from, at a guess, a few years ago. It shows some places I occasionally frequented, such as the Brazilian Coffee Stores in central Alex, mentioned in Lawrence Durrell’s books known as The Alexandria Quartet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alexandria_Quartet]
[below, a critical look at Alexandria as it is now]
Below, another view of Alex as it is now:
Another (less impliedly critical) film, below:
above: scenes of Alex, the one immediately shown above being the Montazah Gardens, surrounding the Montazah Palace. Easy walking distance from my one-time temporary refuge at nearby Mamoura Beach. I was there a couple of times. An oasis of tranquility.
below: amateur video from the city
A few further thoughts…
When I was first in Alex (as every foreigner calls it before long), my impression was of a kind of Miami Beach, or as such a place might be after large-scale devastation and/or long-term neglect. Ironically, one seafront part of Alex is actually called Miami! Maybe that’s where the more famous one got its name, but [see Note, below] apparently not.
Despite the acreage of decaying concrete there, despite the nuisance of a goodly part of the population, despite the traffic (and noise thereof), despite despite despite, there is something compelling about Alexandria, at least to me. The sea is a large part of that. The sea at Alex is so beautiful that not even the decaying concrete and the often-ghastly people can ruin it. I was there in winter, and it may be that winter, or perhaps slightly earlier or later, is the best time there. In any case, the 5+ million population swells even more in summer, and Alex must be unbearable then. When I was there, in 1998, the settled population was “only” 3.5 million, so has grown by about 50% in just 20 or so years! Before the Second World War, the population was below 1 million.
There is, or was, something indefinably romantic about Alexandria, despite everything (concrete near-ruins, street nuisances, general chaos, tasteless redevelopment —the most egregious example since I was there being the huge excrescence now at San Stefano). I am not sure that I have any wish to return to Alex, but I cannot say that I never shall.
