I was just laughing again at the following clip from Mastermind:
Lammy is no mastermind! His Wikipedia entry is too kind to him, and shows (yet again) the error of relying too much on superficial paper qualifications. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lammy.
I first posted the above clip about 6 months ago, and then wrote that, “Good grief! Someone sent me the clip below. I knew that Lammy was/is a deadhead, and in fact I have been meaning for a long time to add an assessment of him to my “Deadhead MPs” series, but…well, see for yourself!” and “People will say, “oh, but he is a barrister, has several degrees etc”…yes, and one of the most stupid (and ignorant) people I ever met was a former Sierra Leone diplomat, a High Commissioner to the UK when in London, and ambassador to some other state. That African had degrees from one of the most famous English universities, one from the Sorbonne, one from either Harvard or Yale (I forget).” Then I added, “Imagine Lammy as either Lord Chancellor or Attorney-General! Still, now that Keir Starmer is running what is left of Labour into the ground, such appointment is unlikely.”
The most obvious box-tick is the number of blacks and browns in leading roles: the captain of the nuclear submarine Vigil is a black, while the medical officer on board is an (?) Indian woman. Ashore, about half the Scottish (Glasgow) police detectives are non-white, and of the two main MI5 officers in the drama, one is seemingly Pakistani or something else.
Another box-tick is that, of the two women police detectives, the older one, a grieving quasi-widow, has a lesbian affair with the other. Well, such things happen, and there are, no doubt, both Glasgow detectives and naval officers (and MI5 personnel) who are non-white. In such proportion, though? In every TV drama?
A few other points about Vigil caught my attention. The GRU officer caught in Glasgow was interviewed about a murder (in which he was the only obvious suspect) without a lawyer present (despite having asked for one), and apparently without having been cautioned, and the interview was plainly not being taped (as far as I could see). At least three serious breaches of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, aka PACE. Not very good for a “police procedural” type of drama.
Again, the GRU [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRU] officer under diplomatic cover, caught in Glasgow in activities “incompatible with his diplomatic status”, did not, on being caught, immediately proclaim his diplomatic status (and so immunity); neither did he demand to be released at once, or to have contacted for him the Russian Consulate, as a real one would have done.
Not that such “demands” are always treated respectfully. When I myself was arrested (or as the Egyptian army and secret police said repeatedly, “not arrested”) in Alexandria in 1998, and held for about 11 hours by Egyptian Army intelligence/security and then the Mukhabarat (secret police), I asked repeatedly for the British Consul, only to be told (also repeatedly) that I was “not arrested”, but just “answering a few questions“, or “a fewmore questions“; also, that “the Consul will be very busy…“, and “the Consul is only for the most serious cases…you do not want to be treated as a serious case, do you?“…
In a sense, execution is too quick for those and similar monsters. The best thing that can be done to prevent such crimes is to ensure that such creatures cannot be born in the first place.
Apparently, this specimen was actually arrested for holding up this oblong piece of cardboard, illuminated with this risible motif. It's impossible to take sides on this one. pic.twitter.com/K26epvNc9d
Quite. A silly fellow making a pointless and silly (and ahistorical) protest, but why should he not be allowed to do so? The present Home Secretary is an ever-more ballooning Indian woman of surpassing stupidity, incompetence, and ignorance (as well as being, effectively, an agent of Israel). Put that on your placard, you idiot!
The absolute state of this motley rabble! Still wearing their TORY lockdown masks though. https://t.co/LB7REHRNta
More idiots. These ones are so ineffective and ridiculous that they cannot even be said to be “controlled opposition”. Just 5-minutes-of-fame (15 would be too long) political bad jokes. The Monster Raving Loonies are at least amusing when they show up.
Does it really matter any more? the entire state apparatus and political class are in lockstep, imposing globalist agendas, despite any input from the plebs. In truth, she's no more or less 'representative' than any of the rest of them. https://t.co/EJH7Qd5BOG
As British as Mazto ball soup. Pandora Papers reveal shamed retail tycoon Philip Green's wife bought £15m and £4.95m Mayfair apartments and £10.6m home for their daughter near Buckingham Palace as BHS headed for collapse. pic.twitter.com/JNkbr6XDUr
I do not know what is more disturbing, that half-Jew office bully Raab is spouting “woke” nonsense, or that someone who has attended both Oxford and Cambridge universities, and is —even if ludicrously— presently Lord Chancellor, does not know the meaning of the word “misogyny”. Another sign of the times?
#melbourne has been destroyed by its own government. Practically Everything is for lease.. But what would have happened if the citizens had simply not complied. #massnoncompliance is what’s needed. pic.twitter.com/f0PsTcsOOQ
On my way home and feeling so angry. What has happened tonight over a ‘technical’ issue will have a huge societal impact on the people of Wales. It’s a disgrace. #NoVaccinePassportsAnywherepic.twitter.com/lvhks5ZSQr
FRANCE WANTS TO MAKE VACCINATION MANDATORY FOR ALL
Until now, the vaccine passport in France has made life difficult for the unvaccinated in order to push them into vaccination. But legally, the French can still refuse the vaccine. pic.twitter.com/BiTelj2Feo
— 🍂🎃🍁Pureblood BellatrixLeStrange🍂🎃🍁 (@Bella__Strange1) October 5, 2021
The old Communists caused economic disaster by changing the OWNERSHIP of the means of production. #BorisJohnson & his #GreatReset cronies are ABOLISHING them. The results will be many times worse. Evil or just insane? You decide, but you'll suffer as well.https://t.co/TF3lOPhbLp
I suppose that one could take issue with the first part of Griffin’s tweet: it was not the State ownership of the means of production that crippled socialist economies, but the fact that the State, the political sphere if you like, operated companies etc, in other words made all the important decisions. Admittedly, in many such cases that will be the same as “ownership”.
I wonder if they'll make the unvaccinated wear a special badge so they can be identified and singled out for further 'special treatments.
It is noteworthy that Jews in the UK are among the most fervent supporters of Covid vaccination(s) and vaccines, the facemask nonsense, and all the repressive measures introduced by this crazed government of clowns since early 2020. I am not sure exactly why that should be, but it is a fact that I have noticed. Also, the pro-EU hard-core “Remainers” seem to be facemask zealots etc. Again, hard to see why, unless it is a wish to not have to think for themselves. Preparation of future karma?
Sometimes, I can see why people less polite than me want to kick in the heads of some members of the Parliamentary monkeyhouse… The sheer cheek of many MPs infuriates many members of the public and —in my view— rightly so.
Look at this cretin!
Although he said he currently is not struggling financially, he believes the situation is ‘desperately difficult’ for his newer colleagues.
Admittedly, £81,000 is not a fortune these days, especially when taxable etc, but bearing in mind that average UK pay is only about £31,000 (and the median far less even than that, and less again if those dependent on State benefits and pensions are included), I doubt that many will think MPs are hard done by. Even less so when one considers how many have other sources of income, such as second jobs, “consultancy” “work”, money from scribbling or being TV talking heads etc; not to mention the very many who have large monies via inheritances.
Many MPs are also buy-to-let parasites.
In the end, MPs are volunteers. If they think that they are worth more than £81K p.a., let them go and get it on the open market. Few can do so, which is why so many are found sinecures in state employment, or in quangosw (via cronyism) when they lose their seats.
Friday next week I become unemployed, unable to access public spaces, barred from entering many shops. I will join a state sanctioned underclass in Oz. Some are demanding I pay more tax as I lose the ability to feed my family. Lucky country? Hell on earth. #AustraliaHasFallen
October 29rh 2019; watch this whole C0v1d was planned,listen to Fauci and Co this evil has been Orchestrated from day 1 its not about a v1rus https://t.co/p5uGCVOU1B
Enjoyable, if slightly slow in places. Generally watchable. A team of Swedish and Danish counter-terror officers try to track a team of Islamist terrorists who are planning to use a stolen missile warhead mounted on a drone, and to attack a target not yet known to the authorities.
What made me laugh is how a huge amount of skill and ingenuity is used to try to catch the terrorists, but no-one ever questions the presence in Scandinavia of large populations of alien Muslims, without which situation, and regardless of the fact that (?) 90% or more are neither terrorists nor supporters of terrorism, the terror plot in the TV series would never have been possible…
Tweets seen
1/2 @matthew_lees. Many governments murder and/or torture their people(as well as other people's people). And we trade with them, subsidise them and invite them to stay with the Queen. Therefore our reason for intervening in Syria cannot be that. https://t.co/mJ41tRiH3W
The 'West' was displeased enough by Morsi's election to condone Sisi's seizure of power, and to accept without serious protest his large-scale massacres, so showing that their supposed objections to dictators, 'killing their own people' are in fact selective and not principled. https://t.co/uYtA2tKjTs
You dont Know. there was more freedom under MB rule than at any other time in Egypt’s history. The army though, never gave up control and regained it fully at the first opportunity. Egypt is a tinder box and when it explodes the whole world will be shocked
Nobody wants to see a repetition of US policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen and Syria that have resulted in horrendous bloodshed and have given rise to the terrorist scourge and the refugee problem in Europe.
A nationalist leader has the national interest first & foremost @ heart. He will not give his nation's resources away for a pittance. Mossadegh was a nationalist par excellence, wresting Iran's oil wealth out of British-American hands. He was al-CIAda'd
Let us take a country, unnamed. In that country, freedom of expression is gradually whittled down to almost nothing, especially on certain topics that are the mainstay of a certain ethno-religious minority within the unnamed country. Malicious prosecutions are bulldozed past lazy, dozy, incompetent, or suborned police, prosecutors and even courts.
In the unnamed country in question, the newspapers, radio stations, newspapers, magazines, are virtually all controlled or very strongly influenced by that same ethno-religious minority. In any case, a government organization has regulatory power over TV and radio and works to the agenda of that same minority.
In that country, the political system is likewise controlled, making the formation and operation of a “democratic” political party almost impossible, and certainly (combined with control of the msm) making political success in the ordinary peaceful way all but impossible.
Online, the same group (in fact, a small subset of the minority mentioned), in that same country, makes sure that dissidents are removed from major social media platforms. Any payment pages they have are also interfered with, and donations made difficult.
At the same time, malicious complaints are made about any dissident persons holding views inimical to the same minority mentioned above. Such complaints are made to social media platforms, to employers or business clients of the dissidents, and also to police, as already mentioned.
In such a situation of unfreedom, what is to be done, in what has become, in that unnamed country, an emergent police state, effectively controlled or influenced (to a degree amounting to near-control) by a small and clearly-defined minority?
I 'liked' tweets today that were offensive in nature about the use of the British flag as a backdrop in a government interview this morning. I have since removed these 'likes'. This do not represent the views of me or the BBC. I apologise for any offence taken. Naga
In fact, of course they represented her views and those of the “ZOG” BBC, which is now an organization wholly inimical to British and all other white European people.
To be fair, why should “Naga Munchetty” (real name Subha Nagalakshmi Munchetty-Chendriah) be favourable to the Union flag? After all, though born in London, she is not British by origin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naga_Munchetty. She is, basically, alien.
The problem with Naga Munchetty is not her view of the Union flag (discourteous though that was) but the fact that she and others who are basically not British —and are fundamentally anti-White race and culture— are on the BBC and other TV and radio stations at all (certainly in the numbers they are).
Also, why are mediocre people such as Naga Munchetty and her English or Irish fellow sofa-sitter paid large amounts to sit looking stupid, and asking banal questions, on morning TV? A side point, but another irritating aspect all the same.
Still, her behaviour (not for the first time) is rather rude, and also rather churlish, bearing in mind the opportunities —and the luxury lifestyle— which this country has provided for her.
The Naga Munchetty storm in a Twitter teacup has brought all the political loonies and deadheads out! Here are a few:
All the people giving it "if you don't like the union jack, you don't have to live here" – where do they think people can just go? YOU TOOK THE AUTOMATIC RIGHT TO LIVE AND WORK IN 27 OTHER COUNTRIES AWAY
Oh, yes, the right to work in Slovakia, Portugal, Finland. I am sure that millions of Brits are gnashing their teeth that they can no longer do that! What world do these pro-EU idiots inhabit? Yes, true, I myself lived in France for years (though worked elsewhere, mostly in the UK), but the British masses never realistically had the opportunity to work in mainland EU. Only a few here and there (if you leave out the sad chancers trying to do B&B in Spain or France).
Here’s another:
To my mind the Union Jack has now started to look as sinister as the Nazi flag.#ToryDictatorship
Well, I do not think that the Hakenkreuz (Swastika) is “sinister” anyway, and neither is the Union flag.
“In 1920, Adolf Hitler decided that the Nazi Party needed its own insignia and flag. For Hitler, the new flag had to be “a symbol of our own struggle” as well as “highly effective as a poster.” On August 7, 1920, at the Salzburg Congress, this flag became the official emblem of the Nazi Party. In Mein Kampf, Hitler described the Nazis’ new flag: “In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man, and, by the same token, the victory of the idea of creative work, which as such always has been and always will be anti-Semitic.” [National Museum of American History;https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1357427].
The above two tweets represent a current within the UK which is or was probably most concentrated in Corbyn-Labour. A cartoon view of both history and contemporary UK politics.
The Union Jack and the Queen are our British symbols. If you don’t respect that, you should go back to where you came from, your own shitty country, along with your fiends, relatives and family. 🇬🇧
The anti-Union Jack people may be (?) in the majority on Twitter, but in the real world are a small minority. I myself am not a devotee, particularly, of conservative faux-nationalism, nor of monarchy for that matter, but it is irritating when aliens, and/or those with no alternative to speak of, attack either in a silly way. I’m English, you see…
It was not just her abhorrent behaviour on air but the fact she liked a tweet that referred to those respecting the Union Jack as "flag shaggers". I, and millions of others, have found her actions disrespectful & certainly not what you'd expect from a supposed "unbiased reporter"
Tweeter “@Helen121” is an example of a quite commonly seen phenomenon: the (almost certainly) white British person who sincerely, though wrongheadedly, believes that decent civic values, culture, law, order etc can survive migration invasion by (and subsequent breeding by) million upon million non-Brits; non-Europeans who have (even when born here) no real connection to our history, culture, beliefs, or values.
More tweets
I was struck by a final remark from Prof. Seedhouse in the very balanced HART review.
" …we desperately need to shift away from this monomaniacal obsession with one single respiratory virus and reclaim the vast array of choices that make up a worthwhile life"
Well, here we are, almost a year since the start of the “panicdemic”, and travel internationally has been made almost impossible. Tony Blair (“it’s that man again”…) is now proposing that only those carrying a “vaccine passport” be allowed to travel.
“A report by his non-profit organisation the Tony Blair Institute said the “only way to navigate allowing people to travel internationally again” is creating a global travel pass showing each individual’s COVID-19 status.
The idea has been mooted before but was rejected by Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove just last month, when he told Sky News: “I certainly am not planning to introduce any vaccine passports, and I don’t know anyone else in government who is.“
Since then, the Sunday Telegraph reported the government is funding at least eight separate firms to develop such a product, which is already in use in countries in the Middle East and Asia.” [Sky News]
What?! Surely cocaine-snorting, expenses-cheating, often-drunk, little puppet of the Jewish lobby, Michael Gove, would not lie (again)?…
“Turning his attention to what happens next, Mr Blair’s institute said the UK should “place the creation of a global COVID-19 travel pass as a key item on the G7 agenda”, when leaders from the US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada congregate in Cornwall later this summer.” [Sky News]
So soon there may be one international passport, at first a document, but perhaps later something akin to a cat or dog “chip” under the skin, without which you will be unable to travel. Maybe eventually you will be unable to travel even internally, between regions, unless you have it.
People will say, “well, it’s for public health, that’s all“. Is that really all, though? Once such a system is in place, it will be easily expanded. How? By saying “we have a terrorism problem“, or “we have a worldwide child abuse problem“, or (fill in whatever), and so have to restrict travel by those the authorities say might be involved in such activities.
We see the same “mission creep” in the field of restrictions on freedom of expression:
In fact, there is a constant push now, eg in the UK, to go beyond restricting free speech by those who (under already very strict laws) are said to have written illegal things, to those who write things which are not (even under the present quite repressive laws) illegal, but merely “extreme” politically or socially.
Reverting to the “international Covid passport” idea, it could (would) eventually be expanded well beyond travel itself to, for example, whether people can attend universities, use NHS facilities, or even sell things to the public:
“And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six.” [Wikipedia, citing the Revelation of St. John] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_beast
Ironically, my full name (Ian Robert Millard) adds up to 666 (according to one system of numerology)! Yet here I am, trying to fight against that force or tendency. Paradoxical?
These things do not always go the way the Western cabals want, as when Bush snr. proclaimed the New World Order in early 1990, only to see it derailed several years later by both the rebirth of Russia as a truly independent state under Putin, and also by the Islamist upsurge which resulted in, inter alia, the 2001 New York attack. However, these attempts by the powers of Evil are cyclical, and return in renewed and usually more powerful forms later in history.
Tweets seen today
Made by the same people who are openly "joking" about snatching peoples kids and sending them to reeducation camps because blompf bad. https://t.co/3Ysr33QJAp
Migration-invasion. This is not a “debate”; it is an existential struggle, a war.
Are merit & quality 'artificial racist constructs', or is this a ghastly combination of brainwashing & shakedown? But don't complain, #homeschool and take back control.https://t.co/7yTiADN1ah
@vanessagray99, While I share your distress at such cases (I believe there are many) please don't call for imprisonment. It help create an atmosphere of intolerant revenge. We have a democratic system which allows us to remove governments which fail. https://t.co/YGjicT7Yfn
In fact, Peter Hitchens is entirely wrong here. The System does not “allow us to remove governments which fail”, but merely (if at all) allows the people to vote once every few years for an almost-identical set of System drones and puppets. Cuckoo-clock binary. Con-Lab-Con-Lab-Con-Lab…
The pseudo-democratic MPs and ministers (in Hitler’s words, “dirty democratic politicians“) have been allowed to get away, in the past decades, with importing millions of blacks and browns etc, and so just ruining this country; allowed to get away with cheating and stealing millions individually; allowed to get away with reduction of pay and State benefits to levels below basic decency; allowed to get away with all the police-state “panicdemic” nonsense now imposed.
MPs have not been punished.
You think I should be *prosecuted* for drawing attention to and doubting the exaggerated warnings issued by Imperial College in March? @currancathie. https://t.co/Z3425w81dH
One fact which is not known to many is that DNA from Egyptian relics, notably Tutankhamun’s remains, shows that modern Europeans have more in common, ethnically, with ancient Egyptians than the latter have in common with modern Egyptians, who basically just crawl over the fallen and ruined stones of ancient greatness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun
Just enjoying a cup of Grandma Towler’s Earl Grey tea which is one of our new products that will be launching in a couple of weeks. 😁 pic.twitter.com/PQwShQMgQO
The white population of South Africa (mostly the English/British South Africans rather than the Afrikaaners, but both) gave in to the forces of the New World Order [NWO] by installing the semi-reformed terrorist Mandela as head of state. Mandela was an ineffective President (also, as thick as two short planks: “Having devoted his time to politics, Mandela failed his final year at Witwatersrand [University] three times; he was ultimately denied his [law] degree in December 1949” [Wikipedia]).
If only South Africa had held out for another year or two! Once the Soviet Union collapsed, the funding tap for sub-Saharan black power movements was cut off. White South Africa might have won out.
The Jews in South Africa, typically, wanted it all ways: they enjoyed a pleasant affluent lifestyle under “apartheid” (though there never was real or complete separation); often supported anti-White causes; owned newspapers that were anti-White; infested TV as soon as it arrived in South Africa; owned much of the commerce and industry; switched to support the corrupt ANC as soon as the Whites stupidly ceded power to it; either left to go to London, USA, or Israel when things got sticky, or hired more security guards and turned their estates into fortresses, while parkig their money overseas.
Our @AliDriverUK will be participating in @ClimateActionNE's Trees and Bees event (19 March) on behalf of Rewilding Britain. 2021's theme – forest restoration: a path to recovery and well-being. Find out more & how to get tickets here 👇https://t.co/yetnQr8Bvh
In part 6 of our series about the #LakeDistrict’s missing wildlife, Site Manager Lee Schofield writes about #wildcats, a species that was common in our woods and fells until surprisingly recently.
Damian Collins asks for reassurance that no more Channel migrants will be sent to Napier Barracks
Patel churns out the usual- those entering illegally should claim asylum in first safe country – THEY DON’T & YOU DO NOTHING TO STOP IT pic.twitter.com/VzVeuw8kND
I ask myself, how could anyone support a government policy that causes so much misery. The bankruptcies, the unemployment, the mental health burden, the collapse of the education system. And the simple answer is, the lockdown hawks don't care. They. Don't. Care.
Single mother of three Kristen has been forced to shut down her hair salon as a result of the lockdown, and is now living on Universal Credit. She tells Julia how she "spent a fortune" on making her business Covid-secure before being told she had to close again.@JuliaHB1pic.twitter.com/If9038xtxa
Lockdown zealots want to stop you from working, close your business, stop you seeing family and friends, ban your kids from school, ban you from playing sport, but THEY are the reasonable ones. Give me a break.
The msm campaign to push blacks in everything intensifies. Sky and Channel 4 now has “Black History Month“, despite the fact that “black history”, when set against the rich real history of both Europe and Asia (not to mention the pre-Columbian Americas), is at best peropheral.
I happened to be in Waitrose recently, and glanced at the magazines on sale there. There was one entitled Exploring History, which featured ancient Egypt. The headline? “Explore Africa’s iconic civilization“. Africa? Geographically, yes, but culturally, ethnically, racially, no. Again, there is a deliberate attempt, and has been for about 20-30 years, to call the North African countries, the countries north of the Sahara, simply “African”, when in most respects there is a fairly sharp dividing line between the countries and cultures of North Africa and those of “black Africa” south of the Sahara.
As a matter of fact, when scientists conducted DNA tests on the remains of Tutankhamun and others, it was discovered that their DNA was fairly similar to that of modern Europeans, speaking in broad terms; however, those ancient Egyptians had little DNA in common with the Egyptians of the present day.
If one spends time in Egypt, especially away from the cloistered tourist hotels, it becomes very obvious very soon that the modern Egyptians have little in common with their great ancestors…
Look at any police-connected Twitter accounts: all “black this, black that”. Propaganda from what is now a State/System militia.
Tweets seen
Palestinian kids help a cat drink from a public fountain on the Temple Mount.
Jews have been prevented and barred from drinking at this fountain several times, only muslims are allowed to drink from it.
Part-Jew, part-Turk/Levantine, a scribbler and public entertainer. Not a real Prime Minister at all. Not even a halfway-decent human being.
Another Trump supporter shot dead & the left cheer
Remember they want you jobless, broke & dead
They have rendered me jobless & broke. Antifa doxxing my home address & calling a nazi is encouraging that last one to take place. Then they will cheer
I insisted we see dad over the wall today. It’s so upsetting. My mum was telling him we love him and all want to see him but can’t and she tried to tell him it’s almost their 52nd wedding anniversary. @JohnCampaign@MattHancock 😢 pic.twitter.com/ckT1oK8tL8
All this isn't accidental. What sort of people are behind all this? If you can't answer that, isn't it time you did some digging, thinking and judging? pic.twitter.com/RBIvgPTZ9O
Obviously, I have no time for the “QAnon” people, but I do like their motto: “Where we go one, we go all“. Ungrammatical perhaps, but the sentiment is great. If only the best white British people really lived up to that, we the people would be defended, our enemies exterminated, and a decent future secured.
‘I wear this to protect you’ – Yeah, selflessly discarded muzzles found on Cornwall’s coastline. pic.twitter.com/3vY51iGvno
Been some bizarre stuff in politics over the past few years. But this is now the weirdest I’ve ever seen. Almost no-one in Government – Ministers, MPs, advisors – thinks the current Covid strategy is working, or will ever work. But it carries on anyway. Government by auto-pilot.
The Muslims in Europe and the Jews in Europe (as groups, not individuals) differ in their aims: the one group wishes all Europe to come to Islam; the other (as a “tribal” or ethnocentric religion) has no such aim, but wishes to control Europe for reasons of group profit and benefit.
If there were an enemy dictator waiting for the right moment to strike, this would be it. Peak madness (?). Frightened young rabbits afraid to dance face to face even while wearing facemasks or muzzles.
Man regurgitates government propaganda. The whole thing was a mistake from the start, and there is not one half ounce of evidence that any of it did any good at all. Tons f evidence that it did great harm . @entoprofhttps://t.co/3OXCKluZNx
'The mad shutdown measures are visibly not working, because you might as well seek to control the wind by law as try to control a virus by shutting pubs or wearing a damp nappy on your face.'https://t.co/EWHJ6iWshX
As you awake on this fine Sunday morning in the land of muzzles, job loses, home imprisonment, and national cowardice. I’d like to remind you of a life you once had, just earlier this year. A life now taken from you. Welcome to Sweden! 🇸🇪
A random tweet seen just reminded me of when I met a group of Jews in a desert oasis. It happened like this: I was in Egypt for several months in the winter of 1997-98. I started off in charming Aswan, spent a week or two under canvas in a then-remote part of the Red Sea coast, and then a month or so in Alexandria (an experience recounted, in part, here: https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/03/07/when-i-was-not-arrested-in-egypt/).
I left Alexandria to visit the remote oasis of Siwa, in the Western Desert not very far from Libya, southwest of the Qattara Depression and only a mile or two from the first great dunes of the Great Sea of Sand:
I lived for a month, maybe longer, in a kind of small concrete chalet in the garden of the very small hotel I used. The hotel garden was sand but planted with closely-situated date palms. I discovered that dry date palm fronds, fallen from the trees, burn easily. Thus I inadvertently started a “tradition” of having a fire around which people gathered and talked in the cool of the evening.
Most visitors to the oasis would arrive on the one bus (a luxury Mercedes coach) in early evening, stay only one or two nights, then return to Alexandria (an 8-hour journey via Marsa Matruh on the coast). By the time I left, I had spent at least a month there and was the longest-resident foreigner save for a Finnish person who did Tai Chi on the flat roof of the hotel (well, maybe you have to be a little unusual to stay long at Siwa!) and an Anglican nun who wanted to set up a Christian centre there (not a very good idea even if the authorities approved it, which was almost inconceivable). Turned out that she knew a man who had tried (unsuccessfully) to teach me Physics when I was at school in the early 1970s. Small world.
I met a number of mostly young people there. I myself was an arguably youthful 41. Apart from the Finn and the English nun, I recall quite a few others who stayed at the oasis for longer than average. Some were more eccentric than others.
There was an odd young man from somewhere near Lancaster. When in the UK, he lived in a caravan on a red squirrel conservancy and had inherited a small legacy (£12,000, I think) from his grandmother. He had lived for eight years on that, in India. He said that India was both cheaper and dirtier than Egypt. I found both statements hard to believe.
Another oddity, also English, was someone about 28, whom I at first took to be some sort of evangelical Christian, but who in fact was a militant atheist. Very militant. He had bicycled across vast expanses (including the Kazakh steppe), using a specially-built bicycle which had water storage inside its frame. He had cycled from Alexandria and was planning to cycle from Siwa to the next oasis, Bahariya, a journey of some 250 miles to the East, on a desert road used only by occasional Egyptian Army patrols, perhaps once weekly. Not a good place to get a flat or run out of water. I wonder whether he made it.
One young lady, a very attractive French girl from Rennes, the capital of Brittany, was rather interested in me, but had a boyfriend with her, a pleasant young fellow from Montpellier, so our animated conversations did not lead anywhere, or any further…
We temporary “local expats” would eat such as molokhiya, a rather slimy but oddly tasty soup made mainly from green vegetables (jute leaves); more often we might have falafel, and maybe drink helba, a kind of yellow-green herbal tea made from fenugreek (Siwa was dry in both senses).
So what about those Jews? They were tourists from Israel, travelling in a group. Students. There seemed to be about 8 of them. None of them seemed to be overtly attached. The girls were quiet, pleasant, modest; the boys slightly less quiet. Only one was extremely unpleasant, a transplanted New York Jew aged about 25, with beard and carrying at all times a thick and obviously unread paperback about “the holocaust”. I cannot recall the exact title, something about the SS and “holocaust” anyway. This particular Jew was studying at some university at Jerusalem and within minutes had marked me as a probable enemy! My copy of Alan Clark’s Barbarossa probably triggered his interest.
The others in that Israeli group, in discussion with other tourists (including my French “girlfriend” who never became a girlfriend), seemed to be reasonable in that they were not looking for war with the Arab world, but of course the unspoken elephant in the room was the historical basis: the migration of millions of Jews to British Mandate Palestine and later Israel, which displaced the previous occupants.
Still, in that milieu, by the “camp-fire”, one could briefly believe in an Arab-Israeli concordat. Only the occasional presence of the American Jew Zionist fanatic disturbed that pacific fantasy. He personified the Zionist fanatics who never quite get around to moving permanently from New York, Los Angeles or London to “Eretz Israel”, yet they are the ones who, as much or more than the “native” Israelis, push the hardline Zionist agenda. Look at the recent film featuring the former heads of MOSSAD, Shin Beth etc. They seem, in principle, less warlike than both the American (etc) “diasporic” Jew fanatics and Israel’s own political leaders.
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.
