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12:00 noon GMT… That ghastly song with the refrain ‘The answer is blowing in the wind’ may have been hippy nonsense but everything else here in Central London bloody well is blowing in the wind. The radio has just reported the winds have hit 75 mph downtown and whilst writing this blog article I have just seen a chair go flying past my window. I am on the third floor!  October 27th, 2002 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
 That 80 or more hostages have been killed is dreadful but the fact 750 were saved is a triumph. But there are some very stark lessons here. In 1995, a related Chechen group took over 2000 people hostage in a hospital in Budyonnovsk. After an initial attempt to free the hostages was botched with considerable loss of life by the Russian forces, a deal was cut by then Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin that agreed a cease-fire in the Chechen war and allowed the hostage takers to escape in return for the safety of their captives. And of course that was proof that you can indeed get the Russians to cut a deal if you are daring enough and willing to slaughter enough innocent civilians. Well I hope that Vladimir Putin has just signalled a complete rejection of that mind set. As terrible as it is that so many hostages have died, the fact is the Chechen terrorists who did this are now either dead or facing a very grim time indeed in a Russian jail… and were given nothing for their pains by the Russians. That is the only message that must be sent to terrorists everywhere, to do otherwise is to motivate such people to cause more horrors in theatres, hospitals and homes. The enemy may not fear death itself but I suspect they do indeed fear pointless death. So whatever the cost, in the long run it is cheaper in lives to never negotiate (other than as a tactical ruse). Give them the death they desire but nothing that would further their aims, no matter how small. 
Russian commando with SV-98 sniper rifle October 26th, 2002 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Alas poor Brendan, we knew him well… No, Brendan O’Neill is not a dead blogger… he has not kicked the bucket, nor shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile! He is not an ex-blogger!!! The reason he has not posted on his blog for a while is that his blog publishing software has gone tits up in a big way. We will report when he is back on line and pooping all over the blogosphere again.
October 25th, 2002 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The intrepid Samizdata Team sent a significant expedition to darkest Shoreditch, in London’s East End, to attend the The Illustrated Ape Party at the Electricity Showrooms.   There was much drinking…   And extremely loud music…  And many many people…   Who watched acts of ‘Art Terrorism’…  All of which might, or might not, make today’s Samizdata posts a bit… strange.  October 24th, 2002 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Across London, these posters can be seen telling us all that we are ‘Secure beneath The Watchful Eyes’ of the Metropolitan Police. I cannot tell you how much better that makes me feel. The imagery is pure 1930’s/1940’s and conjurors up the ‘Golden Age of Totalitarianism’. Britain is already a Police State in so far as the means for total repression are already well and truly in place. As the poster indicates all too well, Britain is the nation most under surveillance on Earth, Echelon monitors our domestic communications, our Internet usage is logged for years due to the Draconian RIP Act, our locations detected via our mobile phones and logged, all for the apparatus of state to access on very low level authority. Civilians are not just deprived of any firearms, in reality we are forbidden to defend ourselves and our property with so much as a broom stick. Our right to trial by Jury faces abridgement, even our ancient protection of Habeas Corpus is now a dead letter under European extradition laws. Yes, we still have a fairly free press, in so far as the media are strong enough to prevent restrictions against their actions… yet do not dare to make an allegedly ‘racist’ remark or pour scorn on someone’s religion or make a joke about Wales: if you do then expect to find yourself up in front of the Beak justifying yourself under threat of fine or gaol, and forget saying “I was just exercising my right to freedom of speech”. Is it any surprise that the powers that be feel they can dare put posters announcing that you are ‘Secure beneath The Watchful Eyes’. Secure? From what? Surveillance increases daily at the same times as crime soars out of control, so if we are not ‘secure’ from crime, then what exactly is being secured? We face many threats in the modern world but the biggest comes from the people who would watch our every action so that the State may choose to judge us when it sees fit.
How long before we start seeing this poster? Update: See follow up articles to this one on Samizdata.net here and here October 23rd, 2002 | 263 comments - (Comments are closed)
noun. A cartoon/comic related weblog, either pertaining to cartoons/comics or featuring graphics of that nature. October 23rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
The EU Commission would appear to be a law unto itself. Confirming his remark last week that the Euro Stability Pact is stupid, he added yesterday:
At least he is honest. He want to power to do what he thinks is best for all of Europe and to hell with any inconvenient agreements that get in the way. Fair enough because I think EU law is also completely illegitimate nonsense too, but then I’m not the head of the European Commission.  October 22nd, 2002 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
On the recommendation of a friend, this afternoon I went to see the IMAX 3D movie Space Station. I expected to enjoy it but I did not think I would be astounded by it. 3D filming sure has come a long way! The experience was made even better by the entirely suitable venue of the IMAX cinema, which is the superb Science Museum in Kensington. After seeing the show, I wandered around and looked at the exhibits. If you want to see the glory of what Islamic culture can produce, go visit the Alhambra in Spain. But if you want to see and understand the glory of what secular western culture can produce, go to the Science Museum and see the making of the modern world. This place is more than just a museum, it is a temple to the western mind and what makes us what we are. It is gallery after gallery of astonishing achievements, dead ends and curiosities. If you would know what you are then understand where you came from. 
This is your heritage. October 22nd, 2002 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
October 21st, 2002 | Comments are closed
The next time one of you says that “The so-called war against Al Qaeda has got nothing to do with us in the United Kingdom, we must just leave the Yanks to sort out their own problems”, please wait a moment while I read the following list of British names to you:
Jon Ellwood Ian Findley Marc Gajardo Paul Hussey David Kent Peter Record Chris Redman Clive Walton Douglas Warner Tim Arnold John Beaumont Daniel Braden Chris Bradford Matthew Chappell Rachael Edwards Lucy Empson Emma Fox Laura France Tom Holmes Chris Kays Annika Linden Daniel Miller Natalie Perkins Stephen Speirs Edward Waller All these British people were murdered in Bali by Islamic terrorists whilst on holiday. Add them to the 67 British reasons from September 11th as to why this is not just a matter for the United States .. and then please shut the fuck up. October 19th, 2002 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
In the aftermath of what has been bizarrely described as a landmark speech by Prime Minister Tony Blair (or ‘The Naive Idiot’ as he seems to be known in IRA circles), we are now told in no uncertain terms that the IRA will not disband. Gosh, what a surprise. As has been the case since British Prime Ministers started making ‘landmark speeches’ about Northern Ireland from 1968 onwards, and republicans started replying to them, “Sinn Fein’s” political spokesmen would have people believe that the Marxist Nationalists of the IRA and the Nationalist Marxists of Sinn Fein are not in fact one and the same thing, regardless of the manifest absurdity of the claim:
And I suppose the SS was not the Nazi Party’s private army either. The difference in objectives between the IRA and Sinn Fein are what exactly? Sinn Fein is in government in Ulster in order to induce the IRA to stop setting bombs off. Although it has been manifestly within the capabilities of the British state to achieve a drastic military solution to the main problem of Ulster, the post war British system has ensured that the sort of people who find themselves with their hands on the levers of power in Westminster lack the ruthless Imperial disposition to actually do what would need to be done to put that into effect. Similarly arming the Protestant majority and allowing a bloody ‘domestic’ demographic solution (i.e. the way it was ‘solved’ in the former Yugoslavia) is simply far beyond the mindset of modern British polity. None of that is going to change in the foreseeable future of course, as Sinn Fein/IRA are well aware. So let us not pretend that the persistent terrorist violence of the IRA has not been successful politically and that Sinn Fein is both the beneficiaries and authors of that violence. Accept that and just get on with the process of managing Britain’s incremental surrender and withdrawal. Of course if my Green and Orange Northern Irish relatives are anything to go by, what Sinn Fein/IRA will actually get in a post-UK Ulster will be rather different to what they hope for. The Protestants are no more going to disappear under republican pressure than the Nationalists have under British/Loyalist pressure, regardless of what Britain does in the future. The current situation is an Indian Summer, a comfortable delusion that in the long run will be seen to mean a lot less than it currently appears to. I have always thought it will end extremely badly in Ulster and nothing has changed my mind in the last few years… but to be honest, if I did not know both communities so well I would care a lot more than I actually do. October 19th, 2002 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
If so then people will soon start lying, perjuring and deceiving if they wish to do so in Britain… Increasingly people may conclude that is the only rational response if they ever find themselves in fear for their life some night in their own home. Barry-Lee Hastings found out what happens if you tell the truth. He killed a burglar in his house using a knife, stabbing him in the back after mistaking a crowbar in the criminal’s hands as a machete. So if you find yourself confronted by an intruder and you live in Britain, generations of cultural logic tell you to not do what the state would have you do: retreat, surrender your property and realise only the state has the right to use force. No, if that person is British then they will understand that the correct thing to do is to fight for what is yours. They will defend themselves as is their inalienable common law right and if need be, kill the person who is threatening them. …and so some British homeowner find themselves standing over the dead body of a burglar holding a crowbar. But because they also read the newspapers, watch the television and hopefully read blogs, they will quickly realise that they are still very much in danger. Once they have calmed down, they will start to examine the body of the dead criminal and what they were holding… and they will make sure that the evidence of the intruder’s clear and present threat to their life is not just manifest but incontrovertible: if necessary they will cut themselves and arrange things to make the reality of their contention ‘hyper-real’. They will conclude there is no shame in defending themselves but they will also realise that it is not just the intruder they must defend themselves against, but also the state which would make them a neutered victim. If the state wanted to encourage perjury and hostility to the judiciary, it could not have found a better way of going about engendering it. This is Britain’s future as the alienation between the commonsensical British expectation of law and the state’s law grows. After presiding over Barry-Lee Hastings’ conviction for manslaughter, Judge Barker said:
Ludicrous dissembling sentiments. I rather doubt Barry-Lee Hastings will give a damn about Judge Barker’s worthless ‘sympathy’ as he rots in jail for the next five years. Well sorry, how is a crowbar in an intruder’s hands not a deadly weapon? The next time this happens, as happen it will, I wonder what the next householder with the bloody knife will tell the police? The unvarnished truth? I have my doubts. The state is not your friend. October 17th, 2002 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
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Update: Brendan has fixed his technical problems and is once again ‘with blog’.
