Tag Archives: Rivonia

Diary Blog, 30 October 2025

Afternoon music

[painting by Victor Ostrovsky]

Don’t I know that blonde in the maroon hat? (only joking).

Tweets seen

“Rachel from Accounts and Customer Relations” Reeves is now Chancellor of the Exchequer. What could possibly go wrong?…

Walls, squads, and ends are better.

The very idea that the Home Office and System political cretins believe that the way to stop knife crime is to ban knives. Get rid of those not just carrying knives (many do so legitimately), but those who also use them to hurt others. The vast majority of the latter are black or brown.

[“Our once high trust society has been destroyed in only a few decades. You’re even seeing a rise with White people doing it and I think it’s other people’s cultures rubbing off on them to some degree for being around them for so long. I know people who are constantly advocating for kitchen knives to be modified and I keep asking them “why do we need that when it never used to be like this?”]

One former MP, a “Conservative” cretin called Scott Mann, even wanted tracking devices put into the hilts of each and every knife, even kitchen knives! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Mann_(politician)

He was so ridiculous that I posted a blog article about him several years ago:

No longer an MP, and justly booted back into obscurity.

Wall. Squad. End.

More music

Zoe Gardner has made a whole career by selling out the British people.

Disgusting woman.

She must hate white British people too, if she belongs to the fake “Green Party”, which wants even more black/brown immigration:

It is good to see young people, including young women, waking up. My unconquerable children!

Many Jew-Zionists do display signs of being “brainwashed”, in a sense; brought up in a very strict schedule of ancient religious festivals etc (most of which celebrate Jewish ethnic supremacism and/or military and/or intelligence successes, including ethnic cleansing).

Then add to that the largely-fake”holocaust” mythus and narrative, and the modern “Israel” foundation myth or “ur-mythus” as seen in so many post-1945 “American” films, such as Exodus [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_(1960_film)], and Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (a film made as quasi-“fact”, but in fact based on a novel written by an Australian who was only 4 years old in 1939. Even Wikipedia calls his book (Shindler’s Ark) “historical fiction“: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Keneally.

Schindler’s Ark/Schindler’s List are no more “fact” than is, say, Day of the Jackal [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Jackal].

Something such as Exodus is (or was), however, powerful political propaganda showing only one, and a very partial, side of a multi-sided struggle.

More music

Ostalgie…

[Wandlitz, aka “Volvograd” or “Bonzograd”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldsiedlung]

More tweets

Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan.

In a decent society that untermensch would be put up against a wall and shot. Come the day…

See also:

South Africa

I happened to see a blog post from nearly two years ago. I think that the facts displayed should be far better known than they are.

Another talking point

South Africa – 1st for deaths by knife globally – 8th highest murder rate globally – a woman is more likely to be raped than learn to read – 32% unemployment rate – [only] 46% of children in secondary education.”

[from a tweet seen]

…and yet the whole System mass media, all the fake “celebrities”, all the “antifa” dimwits, pretty much all the Labour Party membership etc still think that South Africa is better than it was in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s. They still think that thick-as-two-short-planks Nelson Mandela was both saintly and incredibly intelligent (in fact, he was a would-be terrorist leader who turned to African revolution at the age of 42, and after having failed his law degree several times, and the only reason he was not an active terrorist leader is because he was so inept at conspiracy, and was arrested before he could start a race war against South African whites).

Few people in the West are aware of the true facts, or that those behind Mandela and his botched race-war terror strategy were Jews, including at least one formerly involved in the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing.

South Africa may have needed reform in the 1960-1990 period, but African “majority rule” was always going to be disastrous. It has been.

See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/15/has-parliamentary-democracy-as-we-have-known-it-until-now-had-its-day-in-the-uk/.

I wrote that almost two years ago on the blog. Still true.

Even now, the name “Nelson Mandela” is customarily intoned on TV quiz shows and news broadcasts in the UK with ludicrous reverence. That thick African “secular saint”, in reality a failed law student and a failed, inept, would-be terrorist “leader” is (or so they pretend) venerated by System talking heads, scribblers, political drones etc. All part of the overall conspiracy, of course.

More tweets seen

This policy placates at least two lobby groups in the UK— Jewish/Jew-Zionist (because it gets rid of Palestinian Arabs out of Gaza, which is being ethnically-cleansed so that Jews can populate it as part of “Israel”), and the Muslim lobby. Both.

What group is not benefited by it? Oh, yes, the white European people “formerly known as British”, but of course the Labour, Conservative, and other treacherous System bastards care nothing for us, or the future of the English/British people.

It’s almost funny— all the MPs (inc. Farage and his cabal), System talking-heads and scribblers etc, are horrified at the very idea that the migrant-invaders might be shot down in the Channel, yet they think it wonderful that WW2 Germans were, or that 21stC Russians might be. Both Germans and Russians would be a thousand times better than the current black/brown invaders.

Stop the migration invasion in any way necessary. It is an existential danger.

Starmer-stein and Rachel Reeves, both pro-Jewish lobby/pro-Israel, and both fervently-slavish members of Labour Friends of Israel. That leaves “ethics adviser” Laurie Magnus. Oh…

Sir Laurence Henry Philip Magnus, 3rd BaronetCBE (born 24 September 1955[1]) is a British executive who has worked as a financier in the City of London, and was appointed as the UK Prime Minister‘s Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests in December 2022…


Born into a well-established Anglo-Jewish family[2], he was educated at Eton College

Magnus had a four-decade career in finance in the City of London...”

[Wikipedia]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Laurie_Magnus,_3rd_Baronet

Well, there it is…

Does not clarify whether that is the border with Afghanistan or with Pakistan. There are walls along both borders, but this is probably the border with Afghanistan.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Haushofer#Geopolitics

[Professor Haushofer with Rudolf Hess, 1920s]

The slow attritional advance of Russian forces continues.

[“When I was arrested, Met Police officer Julia Bill specifically cited my use of the term ‘jewish supremacy’. Let that sink in. The charge that any criticism of ‘jewish supremacy’ is hatred of all jews ironically presumes that all jews are supremacists. Whether 60% or 98% of a group supports a supremacist ideology does not change the reality of an oppressive system. The only thing that percentage affects is the system’s potential to survive. In Britain, you can criticise White supremacy freely without fear of being sacked, defamed, or arrested. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has himself used the term ‘White supremacists’. Was he punished or arrested for it? Of course not. To make one ideology immune from criticism levied against all others is the essence of supremacy. This is not an academic point. It is even more profoundly sinister when this particular system underpinned the two-year Holocaust of Palestinians we have just witnessed. This immunity has fatal consequences. My case, Dr @EllenKriesels‘s, and others are the live test. The ‘israeli’ lobby is using this double standard to persecute doctors and pressure the British medical regulator (@gmcuk) to overturn independent tribunal rulings (@the_mpts). This is not about us. It’s about whether UK institutions will enforce a supremacist principle into law.”]

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/help-me-fight-the-israel-lobby/

Ask Starmer-stein, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall, and all the other members of Labour Friends of Israel who are presently in the doomed fake “Labour” Cabinet.

[“It’s less a question of ‘elites’. Elites of any variety simply do not go to Dubai anyway because it is widely recognised to be a very large brothel; a refuge for scammers, fraudsters and drug-dealing rappers; and a dumping ground for illicit cash in gaudy Sajwani tower blocks designed for mob bosses who boast about their Versace interiors.

But yes, large swathes of Muslims and black influencers — certainly not the ‘elites’ of their communities — do waste their money in Dubai to fund the genocidal colonial expansion of this vassal state to the Zionist project. And even they must now reflect on their choices. Going to Dubai on holiday will soon be as taboo among Muslims and black communities as going to the genocidal Zionist state itself.

But the last stalwarts of crass Dubai genocide tourism will be white working-class Britons, who have displayed over the past four decades a startling inability to care about anything, much less the industrial-scale imperial murder of Arabs and Africans. The UAE, or as I put it, Luton-on-the-Gulf, will continue attracting those for whom it is simply small-town Britain but with hotter weather. Any effective boycott of the UAE must much more aggressively pull in atomised, nihilistic, depoliticised audiences across all demographics, and the most depoliticised audience of all remains white working-class Britons.”]

I have to say that, were I the ruler of Dubai, I should have created a far better city-state than that ugly pastiche of Miami Beach and Monaco. The same goes for the other UAE emirates, and Qatar.

The weird thing, of course, about Muslim statelets such as the UAE and Qatar is that, on the one hand, they have the very latest technology, the latest and most expensive cars etc, but at the same time an underlying way of life which is feudal, mediaeval and, indeed, almost in the dark ages: Islam, and legal systems based on Islam.

The other odd thing about those Gulf statelets is that 90% of the population of most if not all of them is foreign, all of which foreigners are there short-term, in a few cases medium-term, trying to make and save money before they head home (as they have to do— they have no right to remain…).

Mini-states that take themselves too seriously are always open to ridicule, of course. I have never been to Monaco, but recall seeing a two or three-part series about the Principality, which has 510 acres, about the size (somewhat smaller) than Hyde Park (350 acres) and Kensington Gardens (265 acres) combined, and much smaller than New York’s Central Park (843 acres). The excessive respect (servility, indeed) shown by everyone there to its ruling prince, Albert, was very funny.

Not that there seemed to be anything terrible about this American-sounding fellow (the son, of course, of the American film actress, Grace Kelly), but it just is rather funny to see quite a bit of pomp and circumstance going on in this tiny semi-enclave not much bigger than Hyde Park; a Ruritanian feeling.

Late talking point

https://nickgriffin544956.substack.com/p/rachel-reeves-must-go

Late tweets seen

Pretty amazing, if anywhere near accurate. About 422 Reform MPs, 51 Greens, 49 LibDems, 44 SNP, 34 Lab, 14 Cons [etc].

That would be a stunning result, giving Reform a huge Commons majority of nearly a hundred MPs.

If that came to pass, you could pretty much knock out the Conservative Party completely. It would never recover. Labour probably much the same, though less clearly so, because the Conservative bases have been eroding for a long time despite, maybe even because of, the 14 years of (incompetent) Con Party government. Labour is still well-embedded in the trade unions, public services, and the ethnic minority “communities”.

Looks as though many of the actual “socialists” or play-socialists, have abandoned Labour for the Greens, just as a certain number of former Con voters have abandoned the Cons for the LibDems, and others for Reform UK.

Incidentally, if my present feeling is right about the Con vote declining to as low as 10% by 2028/2029 (partly because many of the very old people who are the Con mainstay will not be living by then, and partly because many will go either Reform or LibDem), then the Conservative Party might be left with only 1 MP, Labour about 30, the SNP, Greens, and LibDems 30-40 each, and Reform as many as 459 MPs out of 650.

As usual, I was well ahead of the curve, and have been referring to “Andrew Windsor” for some time…

See also:

Does that mean that his thick, ugly, daughters are now, following suit, not “Princess”? I hope so.

Late musing

I have been interested to see that, during the last few days, the number of individual visitors has increased very markedly. Several hundred each day, from about 20 countries, but with the majority of both visitors and hits (some people look at more than one blog post) coming from the USA and, after the USA, the UK.

There have been a few times in the past when high hundreds, even over a thousand, visitors visited in a single day, but not very many, if truth be known. I’m easy (“one human soul is a big audience“).

Late music

Diary Blog, 28 January 2024

Morning music

[The Angel of the North]

Talking point

[re. a quite recent though controversial scientific study published in the USA]

See also:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/scientists-reveal-jewish-history-s-forgotten-turkish-roots-a6992076.html

[Ashkenazi Jews in Jerusalem, c. 1885; The Independent/Getty Images]

Tweets seen

The big drivers of “national debt” were the two world wars (i.e. not State benefits, pensions etc).

From the newspapers

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/pigs-farm-pork-tesco-morrisons-rspca-b2470540.html

“Two farm workers have been sacked after a film revealed pigs apparently being beaten to death on a free-range farm supplying Morrisons and Tesco supermarkets. Other animals were sick or paralysed, but left untreated, footage appeared to show.

The RSPCA suspended the farm from its Assured scheme after The Independent notified it of the scenes of cruelty.

[The Independent]

When are the penalties for cruelty to animals going to be commensurate with the suffering caused?

More tweets seen

Unscientific, of course, but I think that it still says something, even if popular support for Putin in the UK is half or a quarter of the figure above.

Putin may not be a “nice person” (are Sunak, Starmer, and Schwab?) but he is effective, most of the time. Sunak and Starmer are dull nobodies, really, for all their career “success” and/or money. As for Schwab, just evil; sinister.

I saw Moscow in 1993. Russia was on its knees. It was until about 2000. Russians over the age of, say, thirty years of age, remember those days. I returned in 2007. Amazing difference (though the rough edges were still there).

Because (((the usual suspects))) own or influence the Western msm…

Another talking point

South Africa – 1st for deaths by knife globally – 8th highest murder rate globally – a woman is more likely to be raped than learn to read – 32% unemployment rate – [only] 46% of children in secondary education.”

[from a tweet seen]

…and yet the whole System mass media, all the fake “celebrities”, all the “antifa” dimwits, pretty much all the Labour Party membership etc still think that South Africa is better than it was in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s. They still think that thick-as-two-short planks Nelson Mandela was both saintly and incredibly intelligent (in fact, he was a would-be terrorist leader who turned to African revolution at the age of 42, and after having failed his law degree several times, and the only reason he was not an active terrorist leader is because he was so inept at conspiracy, and was arrested before he could start a race war against South African whites).

Few people in the West are aware of the true facts, or that those behind Mandela and his botched race-war terror strategy were Jews, including at least one formerly involved in the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing.

South Africa may have needed reform in the 1960-1990 period, but African “majority rule” was always going to be disastrous. It has been.

See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/15/has-parliamentary-democracy-as-we-have-known-it-until-now-had-its-day-in-the-uk/.

More tweets

What the Israeli Jews are doing in Gaza is not, under any reasonable or fair assessment, or view, “self-defence”. The killing of tens of thousands, almost all civilians, half of them under 18, a quarter (approximately) under 12 years of age. The wounding of several times that number.

The Jew/Zionist lobby in the UK and elsewhere is, on the whole, supportive of the actions of the Israeli state. Their cries of “nothing to do with us, guv!” ring very hollow.

As for the recent “apology” from Sky News to the Jewish lobby and to some evil Israeli demagogue [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Danon; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Danon#Gaza_Strip], it just shows how weak the so-called “free msm” are when it comes to resisting the typical barrage of wheedling or angry demands from the Israeli andf/or Jewish lobby.

“They” always seek “apologies”. Any “apologies” to them are regarded by them as being equivalent to surrender, and humiliating surrender at that.

They will never get one from me.

See also: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13012211/Sky-News-apologises-presenter-compares-Israels-campaign-Gaza-Holocaust.html.

Possibly interesting, but without detailed knowledge of the Israeli order of battle in the Gaza operation, meaningless. I have no such knowledge, so the intelligence noted is not useful to me.

The news broadcast is in Arabic and (judging by the device at bottom right) is from Al Jazeera.

Anything taken to an excess, to an absurd excess, is just out of concordance with the Universe and reality in the macro sense.

When I look at Elon Musk, or that odd little man Jeff Bezos, or Bill Gates, or (before he went up the chimney) Steve Jobs, or the myriad “Russian” (mostly Jew) “oligarchs”, my primary thought is “they have too much money“.

I do not mean that they have “too much money” relative to me (that is very easy!) or even in relation to most people, or most wealthy people (“wealthy” in a more ordinary sense); no, what I mean is that people on the Musk, Bezos, Gates level of wealth literally have too much money.

The ultra-wealthy have so much money that they do not know what to do with it, except get a team of people working on how to further increase the hoard of wealth that the ultra-wealthy have already.

In the end, all it becomes is a kind of Masque of the Red Death game or competition; whoever has the most beans, the highest figures on a computer screen, is the winner. A winner, someone who has won something and nothing. Ask Steve Jobs. Oh…you can’t…

Some of the ultra-wealthy are themselves casting around, trying to find something worthy to do with at least some of their vast wealth. Merely being rich is not enough, not when you are that rich. Several of such people (eg Musk) are in control of assets worth around USD $220 BILLION, i.e. two hundred and twenty thousand million! When you consider that a massive mega-yacht might cost USD $500 million or, at most (?), USD $1 billion (thus costing the buyer maybe less than half of one percent of his asset-value), you see both the problem and the consequent frustration.

As for smaller toys (houses, estates, cars etc) they are as nothing in comparison to the wealth some hold. Even hugely “overpriced” artworks the same.

Look at the competition among a handful of the ultra-wealthy to build their own rockets. An exercise in showing off toys, really, the aim being what? To send groups of tourists into orbit? How pointless.

To have “too much” wealth (without putting any particular figure on it) is like eating 100 pizzas a day, drinking 10 bottles of Chateau Margaux each day, or even drinking 10 gallons of water, and is dangerous for a person’s health; in the case of wealth, also dangerous for society.

Late tweets

God, what a horrible tribe.

The Kiev regime is a mainly Jewish/Zionist-ruled, shambolic, corrupt, and brutal dictatorship, in which most political parties and trade unions are banned, and where exercizing “free speech” can get you arrested and criminalized.

Thank God the UK is not like that! Oh, no, wait…(I am being sentenced in a few days’ time for a few comments, analyses, and cartoons allegedly published on this blog over the past few years…).

Late music

[Raphael, The School of Athens]

Diary Blog, 17 March 2022, including some personal reminiscences, and also some historical notes about South Africa

Afternoon music

On this day a year ago

Temps perdu

I happened to see the pdf link below, which is a tribute (a collection of eulogies) to John Lloyd, a barrister who was in my chambers when I practised in Exeter (2002-2008):

John Lloyd, who was born in 1941, died in 2017, a fact of which I was unaware until I saw the link yesterday.

I usually follow the maxim de mortuis nihil nisi bonum (“about the dead, nothing if not good“), but Lloyd did die about 5 years ago, and some matters are of historical interest.

I rather liked John Lloyd, someone who was unfailingly polite, and with whom I shared a room at Chambers, though he was rarely at his desk. I was under the impression that most of his work was done in London or at home. I believe that he had property in both London and Exeter.

Lloyd had taken on the English or Oxbridge eccentricity displayed by some affluent and financially-successful persons, of riding an ancient bicycle, in his case to Chambers, at which times he changed his “Gromyko” black wide-brimmed hat for a bike helmet.

Lloyd was one of the highest-earning members of Chambers (I believe in the £300,000+ bracket, which would be good now, let alone 15-20 years ago). His work came, I was told, mainly from Labour Party-controlled local councils in London.

I myself only encountered John Lloyd once in Court, in — I forget which— Plymouth or Exeter County Court, and in an unusual matter in which three members of Chambers were briefed for different parties in the same case; incidentally, the matter ended satisfactorily for all in the end.

Though I liked John Lloyd, I knew that he had been anti-apartheid, and had strong political views, though (like me) he rarely spoke about political matters in Chambers. I have to say that, despite quite liking him, there was some element there that had me wondering whether he was entirely trustworthy or open. Nothing concrete, just a vague sense of something hidden.

John Lloyd was diagnosed with cancer in or about 2007, but lived for another decade. I myself ceased active Bar practice at the end of 2007, though remained notionally in practice until mid/late 2008. I think that I last saw him sometime in 2007.

I was aware that John Lloyd had been dropped as prospective Labour candidate for Exeter several years before I met him, but did not know much detail, though I knew from someone at the Bar that it was connected with his having given evidence against a terrorist in a bombing case in South Africa. The local Exeter Labour Party was (quelle surprise) all in favour of the anti-white terrorism in South Africa, though by the time Lloyd was binned (mid-1990s), South Africa was already under ANC control.

The half-witted Nelson Mandela (an ex-law student who had failed his law degree three times) was 46 when convicted in 1964 of plotting to start a race war): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivonia_Trial.

The defendants in that trial were all either Africans or Jews.

I have just now been looking at what is available about John Lloyd and South Africa at that time.

It seems that Lloyd had joined an extremist/terrorist organization after the Rivonia trial, as had one John Harris: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_John_Harris; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Resistance_Movement.

The “ARM” started to blow up electrical-power pylons etc before graduating to the operation that destroyed it and also led to convictions for most of its small membership. That operation was the planting of a bomb in a whites-only waiting room at Johannesburg Railway Station.

One old lady of 77 (or as the apologists would have it, “only” one person) was killed; many others “only” injured. One was a 12-year old girl, Glynnis Burleigh, the grand-daughter of the murdered old lady.

[Glynnis Burleigh, a young girl who was one victim of the Johannesburg Railway Station Bomb of 1964; she was badly mutilated]
[Glynnis Burleigh in 2016, still bearing scars, 52 years later]

A doctor involved in the aftermath has written: https://www.theheritageportal.co.za/article/caring-injured-after-johannesburg-station-bombing

The bomb at the railway station was mainly made of sticks of dynamite wrapped around a core consisting of cans of petrol; it seems that some phosphorus was also included. A simple but wickedly-deadly device.

It is now claimed that the bomb was “symbolic”, having been placed in a whites-only area. Tell that to, say, Glynnis Burleigh.

It is also pleaded, by (in my opinion) apologists, such as a London (I think Jewish or partly-Jewish) lawyer whose father was apparently the bomber, that “a warning was given“.

That kind of attempt to shift the blame for the death and injury caused by acts of terror will not wash. The IRA used to give warnings of that sort, as did the Jews who killed about a hundred people at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing#Warnings.

You can see from Wikipedia etc that the same claims are made about the Jerusalem bombing of 1946 as about that in Johannesburg in 1964: a “warning” was given, and “the authorities may have deliberately not acted on the warning” (in order to incite hatred against the bombers). Pretty unconvincing in both cases.

As a matter of fact, the Johannesburg “warning” was telephoned to police only six minutes before the bomb exploded; the police did act on the warning but by that time the device had detonated.

https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/john-harris-and-the-joburg-station-bomb-the-real-t

Incidentally, there may even have been a link between the two bombings. It seems that a leading member of the terrorist cell in South Africa was an Israeli Jew who had held senior rank in the Israeli military apparat:

The [Johannesburg Railway Station bombing] operation was planned by Lionel Schwartz, who was ARM’s most militarily experienced operative, having served as an officer in WW2 in the British army, and in the IDF in Israel’s 1948-49 Independence War. He served as a senior (Brig. General) in the IDF until he returned to SA in 1953 or 54.” [Wikipedia].

Having said that, there is no direct evidence (that I have seen) of a link (i.e. that Schwartz was also involved in the 1946 bombing).

The said Schwartz may also have been a Soviet agent, which would fit:

 “In recent years, however, it has been suggested by Eli Bardenstein in his article ‘Traitor or Liar?’ in Maariv (22 July 2003) that Lionel Schwartz, a key Soviet spy who penetrated the highest echelons of Israel’s political and intelligence establishment in the 1950s, and who was heavily involved in the Lavon affair, handed over the Israeli network to Egypt“. [Spies Against Armageddon]

There is a suspicious dearth of information online about that Lionel Schwartz Jew.

Returning to John Lloyd, he had (probably fortunately for him) been arrested a day before the bombing, as the South African authorities rolled-up the small ARM network.

It is claimed that Lloyd was “tortured”; he was certainly ill-treated, made to stand in one place for two days. If taken to an extreme, that might amount to “torture”: in the days of Stalin, the “stoyka” or “standing” was a recognized technique of the NKVD, with some prisoners having to stand (because forced into vertical oubliette-style tiny cylindrical cells and kept there for days) until they died or “confessed”.

I was made to stand on one spot. It is a devilish torture for would-be heroes. You torture yourself. I stood for two days. On the evening of the second day, a bomb exploded on the Johannesburg railway station. The police told me that 20 people had been killed. It was not until months later that I learned that, in fact, only one person had been killed.” [John Lloyd in the Independent].

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/i-do-not-condone-terrorism-1580013.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bombs-and-betrayal-haunt-wouldbe-mp-1579969.html

Note the weaselling again, though; “only” one person killed (and no mention of the terrible injuries suffered by many other victims).

Whether because of his interrogation, or because he was shocked at the bombing having been carried out at all, or with such carnage, Lloyd agreed to co-operate, and eventually testified against several of his former comrades. It is also a fair conclusion that Lloyd did not want to be incarcerated with them. In return for immunity from prosecution, Lloyd turned State’s Evidence (became a prosecution witness).

The bomber, Harris, was hanged after a trial. His son, now a barrister in London, referred to his father, in a Guardian piece some 9 years ago, as an “activist“…: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/13/my-activist-father-was-hanged.

Mandela, of course, morphed from being just a failed law student and failed or would-be terrorist leader into the West’s secular “saint” of the age, having mellowed in his (actually eventually quite comfortable) incarceration (in the last few years he was in a house reserved for him alone, and even had his own chef and other servants!).

John Lloyd never did become MP for Exeter. The Conservative Party made much of his early “terrorist” activities, while the Labour Party binned him because he had (as they preferred to look upon it) turned coat and “betrayed” his former “comrades”.

https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/10512/mr-john-lloyd-labour-party-candidate-for-exeter

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-s-nec-tells-candidate-to-stand-down-1344451.html

Ben Bradshaw, a mediocre and rather dishonest person who later became a Cabinet minister (and noted expenses cheat and/or freeloader), became MP for Exeter in 1997, as well as an “ultra-loyal” Blairite, and is still sitting there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Bradshaw.

So there we are. A few reminiscences, and a few more-general thoughts.

Postscriptum: I should add that, though I did spend some time in Rhodesia and Botswana (in 1977), I have never visited South Africa (unless you count my almost-overnight plane change at Johannesburg, also in 1977: Gaborone-Johannesburg-Frankfurt). I believe that my maternal great-grandfather is buried, or memorialized, at Cape Town, though.

Tweets seen today

I agree, in that you see newspaper readers’ comments, Twitter twit comments etc to the effect of “let’s bomb Russia” or the even more brain-dead “bring it on!“. People sitting in suburban England, who apparently cannot wait for their entire world, home, family etc to be utterly destroyed by nuclear attack. “Idiots” hardly covers it…

Then add in the pseudo-machismo. “Britain can take it” etc. Yes, Britain, which will not exist except in terms of geography after a nuclear attack, can take having all its main (if not all) cities and towns destroyed, irradiated, all the people killed, or mutilated and/or mortally-irradiated, all supplies of food and water gone, all services (NHS, financial, police, fire, even sewerage) gone. As I say, “idiots” hardly even covers it.

The West is weak. Britain is very weak. Look at the Russians. Look at the Ukrainians. They both have national and national-cultural sentiment. That has been large wiped out in the UK. A high proportion of the UK population is now not really British, nor even white European.

I understood decades ago that The Economist is more or less the house journal of what one might now call the “New World Order” [“NWO”] or Western establishment.

Apparently about a third of the “Ukrainian” “refugees” are actually blacks and other non-Europeans.

I hope that it survives the present conflict intact.

Early evening music

Late music

[Levitan, landscape, 1885]

Update, 15 November 2024

I happened to notice this piece about the London barrister whose father was hanged in 1965 for having executed a terrible terror attack at Johannesburg Railway Station in 1964:

That very political set of chambers was founded, inter alia, by Cherie Blair, though I looked for her name on the website without success (and she no longer practises from there): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherie_Blair#Legal_career.