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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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The Wikipedia entry for apophasis, the rhetorical technique of raising an issue while claiming not to mention it, says,
As a rhetorical device, apophasis can serve several purposes. For example, It can be employed to raise an ad hominem or otherwise controversial attack while disclaiming responsibility for it, as in, “I refuse to discuss the rumor that my opponent is a drunk.” This can make it a favored tactic in politics.
Apophasis can be used passive-aggressively, as in, “I forgive you for your jealousy, so I won’t even mention what a betrayal it was.”
From an article by Oliver Wright in yesterday’s Times called “Louis Mosley: Our critics are putting ideology over patient safety”:
It was, by any standards, a very personal attack.
“No-one should be judged by who their parents or grandparents are,” Zack Polanski, the Green Party leader pronounced at a recent campaign event — before proceeding to do just that.
“But this is a man who is the grandson of Oswald Mosley and still insists on wearing a black shirt every single time he is on TV.” The subject of Polanski’s vitriol was Louis Mosley who, by dint of genealogy, is the grandson of the 1930s British fascist leader.
I do not wish to divert attention from the many legitimate concerns about the use of Palantir’s data-gathering software – originally developed for police and military use – during the Covid pandemic and in other civilian contexts, so I won’t even mention what a hypocritical rabble-rouser Zack Polanski is.
I missed this story when it came out a few days ago. It is still relevant. It will be relevant so long as the patterns of human behaviour observed in the Salem Witch Trials last, which is likely to be a long time.
“The Met was duped by fantasist Carl Beech. A decade later, the real victims are still suffering”
Here is an excerpt:
Ten years ago this month, Harvey Proctor, the former Conservative MP, received a letter from the Metropolitan Police informing him that he would not be facing charges of multiple child rape and murder.
Following an 18-month investigation, which had cost more than £3m, the country’s leading police force had concluded there was, after all, not enough evidence to prove that he had been part of a VIP paedophile ring that had spent years torturing, abusing and killing children.
There was not enough evidence, of course, because the entire thing had been made up by a fantasist called Carl Beech, who was, in fact, a paedophile himself.
and
The police investigation – which became known as Operation Midland – began in earnest in November 2014, when Beech, an NHS manager, went to police, claiming to have been abused for almost a decade by a powerful cabal of politicians, establishment and military figures.
He had already met with Tom Watson, the Labour MP, who enthusiastically encouraged him to take his allegations to Scotland Yard and then, without any due diligence, made a speech in the Commons warning of a “powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No 10”.
The list of those Beech – or Nick, the pseudonym he was given – accused read like a Who’s Who of the 1980s establishment.
He named Edward Heath, the former prime minister; Lord Brittan, the former home secretary; Lord Janner, the former Labour grandee; Harvey Proctor, the former Tory backbencher; Field Marshal Lord Bramall, the former head of the Army; General Hugh Beach; Field Marshal Roland Gibbs, the former Chief of the General Staff; Maurice Oldfield, the former head of MI6; Michael Hanley, the former head of MI5; and Major Raymond Beech, his own stepfather. He also threw Jimmy Savile’s name into the mix, perhaps to add a semblance of credibility (Savile’s crimes had become known in late 2012).
The list of people “Nick” claimed had abused him was a great deal longer than that. The Times journalist David Aaronovitch wrote an article (which I cannot now find to link to) before “Nick’s” true identity had been revealed that dared to question Beech’s tale on logistical grounds. I say “dared to” because at that time the witch-hunt was at its height and the comments filled up with people who said that for Aaronovitch to quibble about the likelihood of so many of the most scrutinised men in the country (including Edward Heath who as a former Prime Minister was given round-the-clock police protection) being able to slip away for murder parties quite that often must mean that Aaronovitch was in on the conspiracy too.
The Telegraph article continues,
In December 2014, in line with a new national policy that demanded the police must start from a position of believing all victims, Scotland Yard held a press briefing at which it declared Beech’s claims to be “credible and true”. Seasoned crime journalists present, including me, were somewhat surprised to hear detectives declaring allegations to be “true” at the outset of an investigation.
Sir Richard believes that this was a fatal mistake from the police. “For senior officers to stand outside New Scotland Yard and say Carl Beech was credible and true before they had even spoken to him or read his interviews really was outrageous.”
The senior officer who stood outside New Scotland Yard and said that Carl Beech’s accusations were “credible and true” was Detective Superintendent Kenny McDonald. It was no mere slip of the tongue. Here is a BBC video from 2014 of him repeating it. I once thought that the presumption of innocence was drilled into every police officer.
What happened to Detective Superintendent Kenny McDonald? He and the other officers who led Operation Midland to disaster were allowed to retire early on full pensions.
What happened to Tom Watson, the Labour MP who used Parliamentary Privilege to amplify Beech’s accusations in Parliament? Sir Keir Starmer sent him to the House of Lords. He should now be addressed as “The Right Honourable the Baron Watson of Wyre Forest”.
What happened to Harvey Proctor, the former Tory MP falsely accused of multiple rapes and murders of children? He lost his job and his home and says he will never feel safe again.
What happened to Field Marshall Lord Bramall and Leon Brittan? They did not live to see their names cleared. Their last days were darkened by the knowledge that millions of people believed they had raped and murdered children, because the police said the accusations were true.
What happened to “Nick” a.k.a. Carl Beech? He was released from jail early having served less than seven years of his 18 year sentence.
I was going to say that Guido’s headline cannot be improved upon, but, on second thoughts, the headline-writer really should have mentioned that the hamster was dressed as Godzilla. Details matter.
This letter appeared in today’s Guardian:
What needs to be spelled out to the politicians looking to consult people about digital ID is that you cannot have a universal digital anything until you have universal phone coverage (UK digital ID scheme to have limited use before next general election, minister says, 10 March). When the old copper phone lines are switched off, we will be cut off because no provider will invest in our area, and this is not untypical of large areas of Devon.
That means that any digital ID accessed by phone will not be available to us unless we go and park in a layby every day where we can get signal. Does Darren Jones, the prime minister’s chief secretary, even understand this point? We are not refuseniks. We just live near a hill, and so we won’t be able to do our car tax, get our medical records or anything else as things stand.
This is not a lifestyle choice either because we had a properly functioning analog TV signal as well as a landline when we moved here. We can’t give out our mobile number to anybody important because we know that the device will let us down, and we are paying the same as everyone else – have been for years.
Teresa Rodrigues
Crediton, Devon
This is a good argument against digital ID in itself and is also likely to work well in the public sphere. I welcome any blow against digital ID, and I sympathise with Ms Rodrigues, but I must acknowledge that there is a problem for libertarians here.
As the letter says, the UK’s old Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) landline phone network is in the process of being replaced. This link takes you to the government guidance page on “Moving landlines to digital technologies”. The government and the phone companies present this transition to “Digital Voice” as being un upgrade for which we should be grateful. It is not an upgrade for me and I am not grateful. Compared to some, I am not badly affected, but I have lost the convenient ability to dial six digits instead of eleven for a local number, and, more worryingly, Digital Effing Voice doesn’t work when there is a power cut, which we have fairly often. For those who live in rural areas, such as the writer of the above letter, it will be much worse. A friend of mine lives in Scotland, has very poor mobile signal at the best of times, and regularly experiences days-long power cuts due to snow. That’ll be fun when the landline doesn’t work. Next year’s papers will be full of stories about old people in isolated houses who died because they could not call for help in an emergency. This change is not being done for the benefit of the customers. It is being done because the “new digital technologies using the internet such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Digital Voice or All-IP telephony” cost less to run than the old technologies.
What to do? If I was a socialist or a big-state Conservative, I would immediately say that the old copper phone lines must be maintained despite the expense in order to protect the vulnerable and to keep the system working in the face of attack or disaster. As a minarchist, I might be able to say the same, but given that the actual socialists in power and the big-state Conservatives who preceded them have not taken that route, when I have no doubt that they would have been happy to trumpet that they were doing so, I would guess that the extra expense of maintaining the old system must be insupportable.
Or am I wrong?
Maybe I imagined it.
I thought I saw the first few seconds of a scary video, either put out by the Home Office “Prevent” scheme or by some NGO with a similar remit. The video featured a teenage actor – white and male, obviously – portraying a boy lamenting that he had got a criminal record after impulsively posting hate speech online. I remembered the title as being something like “It just takes a few seconds to get a criminal record” or “It only takes a few words to get a criminal record”. From what little I saw of it, the video seemed more sinister than 99% of the hate speech it aimed to combat – because it was not put out by some Twitter-addled rando with thirteen followers but by His Majesty’s government, or an organisation closely associated with the same.
Ya know how it is. I just saw a second or two and thought, “I might blog about that”, but I was too busy to note it down. And now it’s disappeared. I put a query into CoPilot, which might have been unwise, and got this:
🔗 Official Home Office Video Link
🎥 “It Just Takes a Few Words to Get a Criminal Record” — UK Government (Prevent)
YouTube (Official UK Government Channel): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8hE1G9FqJw (youtube.com in Bing)
This is the authentic version of the video you’re looking for. It’s produced as part of the UK Government’s counter extremism and online safety messaging aimed at young people.
📌 What this video covers
• Warns young people that posting extremist or hateful content online can lead to:
o Arrest
o Prosecution
o A criminal record
• Uses a serious, cautionary tone
• Shows teen actors in realistic online scenarios
• Designed to discourage impulsive posting of harmful content
The link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8hE1G9FqJw says “This video isn’t available anymore”
That “anymore” suggests it did once exist, but I am beginning to wonder if I did not hallucinate the whole thing and spur the A.I. to join in my hallucination by means of my prompts.
Assuming I did not imagine it, can I get this video back from the void? I’ve tried the Wayback Machine without success.
UPDATE: That was quick. My thanks to commenter nbc who said, “This one?”
Yes. This one.
https://xcancel.com/Steve_Laws_/status/2029317472059359438
It took me about a second of scrolling down from that post to find views expressed by Steve Laws that I strongly disagreed with. For instance, he mocks Laurence Fox for saying, in the context of the child-killer Ian Huntley being attacked and killed by another prisoner, that even the most depraved criminals should be protected from vigilante justice in prison. Steve Laws appears to be an actual far-right person. They do exist. But as I have said before, “if there is a truth respectable people shy away from mentioning, do not be surprised when the despicable people who will say it aloud are listened to.”
The video appears to have been put out by the police rather than the Home Office, and shows a boy – not “a boy” in the sense of “a young man”; a child of about thirteen – tearfully saying “I just got all my devices taken away by the police. My mum couldn’t believe it. I might get a criminal record and not be able to go to college. I only shared a link. I just thought it was funny. But it was terrorist content, and that is not a game, it’s real life.”
That is a deeply sinister message for the police to be putting out, particularly in that it is aimed at children.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Ted Schuerzinger has provided a direct link to the video: https://www.instagram.com/terrorismpolice/reel/DVd1g1bkg7I/. It came from an Instagram account called “terrorismpolice”. The final frame shows a police logo and the words:
COUNTER TERRORISM POLICING
A.C.T.|ACTION COUNTERS TERRORISM
WHAT YOU SHARE LEAVES A TRACE
CLICK TO FIND OUT MORE
and the caption to the Instagram video says,
Has your child spotted our latest campaign on their feed? 👀
We’ve launched a digital campaign aimed at teenage boys to highlight the real-world consequences of sharing harmful extremist content online.
The content is being promoted on platforms young people already use, to reach them where they are.
Our message is simple: sharing extremist material can lead to serious legal and life-changing consequences.
It’s not just a laugh. What you share leaves a trace.
Learn more about the campaign and the message behind it via the link in our story.
Two questions occur to me:
1) Why was the video removed from YouTube? Hostile comments?
2) Is the video an accurate portrayal of the likely “real-world consequences of sharing harmful extremist content online” when the sharer is a child and the content is something the child shares because they think it is funny? If it is not an accurate portrayal, then the police officers or police employees who made the video are deliberately frightening children with misinformation regarding the law. People have had the police turn up at their doors to issue a “friendly warning” for less. If, however, it is an accurate portrayal of the real world – that is, if children really are being given criminal records for sharing (not creating, sharing) comic memes of whose extremist origin they were unaware, then we are further along than even I thought.
Message from BitChute:
Due to what we view as ongoing harassment from Ofcom, as well as our unwillingness to cooperate with a regime we view as hostile to our values and principles, we have disabled all remaining comment access entirely for UK video creators.
To our valued users in the United Kingdom, after careful review and ongoing evaluation of the regulatory landscape in the United Kingdom, we regret to inform you that BitChute will be discontinuing its video sharing service for UK residents.
The introduction of the UK Online Safety Act of 2023 has brought about significant changes in the regulatory framework governing online content and community interactions. Notably, the Act contains sweeping provisions and onerous corrective measures with respect to content moderation and enforcement. In particular, the broad enforcement powers granted to the regulator of communication services, Ofcom, have raised concerns regarding the open-ended and unpredictable nature of regulatory compliance for our platform.
The BitChute platform has always operated on principles of freedom of speech, expression and association, and strived to foster an open and inclusive environment for content creators and audiences alike. However, the evolving regulatory pressures—including strict enforcement mechanisms and potential liabilities—have created an operational landscape in which continuing to serve the UK market exposes our company to unacceptable legal and compliance risks. Despite our best efforts to navigate these challenges, the uncertainty surrounding the OSA’s enforcement by Ofcom and its far-reaching implications leaves us no viable alternative but to cease normal operations in the UK.
Therefore, effective immediately, BitChute platform users in the UK will no longer be available to view content produced by any other BitChute user. Because the OSA’s primary concern is that members of the public will view content deemed unsafe, however, we will permit UK BitChute users to continue to post content. The significant change will be that this UK user-posted content will not be viewable by any other UK user, but will be visible to other users outside of the UK. Users outside the UK may comment on that content, which the creator will continue to be able to read, delete, block, reply and flag. Users outside the UK may share UK-user produced content to other users outside of the UK as normal. In other words, for users in the UK, including content creators, the BitChute platform is no longer a user-to-UK user video sharing service.
We deeply regret the inconvenience and disappointment this decision may cause to our UK users and partners. This decision was not taken lightly. It reflects our commitment to maintaining the highest standards of compliance, protecting our community, and ensuring that our platform remains a safe and sustainable space for creative expression globally. We recognize the value of our UK community and extend our sincerest apologies for the disruption caused by this necessary step. Our support team remains available to answer any queries or concerns regarding this transition.
We appreciate the support and engagement of our community around the world and remain dedicated to providing a platform that champions free expression and innovative content sharing in an environment of regulatory certainty.
Thank you for your understanding.
The BitChute Team
So… use a VPN if you are in the UK to access BitChute videos (of which there are many on Samizdata).
This tweet (https://x.com/nicolelampert/status/2026017118341263795) from Nicole Lampert shows a 45 second video of Jeremy Corbyn, former Leader of the Opposition and twice the Labour Party’s candidate to be Prime Minister. In it, he says,
‘[I got a message] from the director of Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza. And he said there had been a delivery of boxes to the hospital by the IDF. A large number of boxes, 60 or 70 boxes. And after the IDF had gone off, they opened the boxes. And each one contained the skull of a Palestinian who had been killed. And there were also delivered [sic] of bodies of dead women in Pala- in Gaza – that had been opened and some of the organs removed. I mean, it’s hard to describe this. That is what is happening to the people of Palestine.’
As Alex Hearn said said in the comments, “He won’t believe British intelligence about a Russian chemical attack in Salisbury but he’ll believe a fantasy from Hamas run Gaza.”
There is a slightly longer version of the same video from CAMERA UK here: https://x.com/CAMERAorgUK/status/2026229835803107332. This starts a few seconds earlier than Nicole Lampert’s video and includes Mr Corbyn saying that he got the message from the director of Al Shifa Hospital on Thursday or Friday morning.
In case you are wondering, no, I do not believe the director of Al Shifa Hospital (who appears to be Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya, although I would like Mr Corbyn to specify who gave him this message) for a moment. Not just because he is the head of an organisation controlled by Hamas, although that would be enough in itself to make me disbelieve him, but because this claim is identical in form to a centuries long stream of anti-Jewish blood libels about Jews murdering Christians or Muslims to harvest their bodies. The old version, exemplified by Little St Hugh of Lincoln had the Jews killing Christians as human sacrifices, usually with the additional detail that the Jews baked the victims’ bodies into their matzos, the unleavened bread served at Passover. This religious version of the blood libel is almost dead in Europe but still commonplace among Palestinians, including academics like Dr Samar Maqusi, formerly of University College London. The slightly updated version drops the matzos and has organ-harvesting as the motive instead. This one is very common among Palestinians and increasingly common among Westerners – witness the Right Honourable Jeremy Corbyn MP speaking in February 2026.
Why does Corbyn think the IDF would bring these boxes of skulls and dismembered corpses to Al Shifa hospital? [Update: OK, someone in the comments to the CAMERA post says the ceasefire agreement required the IDF return unidentified human remains to Gaza. But in that case the director of Al-Shifa hospital would know perfectly well what was going on, and it does not explain why there were claimed to be boxes of skulls in particular, nor why a medical doctor would specifically claim that women’s internal organs had been removed.]
Did Corbyn think to ask the director of Al-Shifa Hospital what he did with them? If the IDF ever deliver any boxes of skulls and corpses with missing organs to me, I’ll be sure and contact all the world’s most eminent forensic pathologists so they can carry out post mortems and give the evidence to the world.
Another update: This was no “misspeaking”. Jeremy Corbyn has publicly made the same allegation in more detail within the last few days. In the comments to the CAMERA post, someone called SHO_MY links to a video posted at 3:03pm on 23 Feb 2026 (https://x.com/EL4JC/status/2025949713292296383) from a pro-Corbyn account called #EL4C @EL4JC:
In the video Corbyn is addressing a public meeting. In his speech he says,
‘I’m going to read something to you. If you’ve already heard it, please be patient. If you haven’t, please be prepared to be shocked. I got a statement this morning from my good friend Doctor Mustafa Barghouti who’s an independent member of the Palestine National Initiative, a member of the Palestine National Assembly, and he’s forwarded me a statement by the director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, Gaza, and I’m going to read it to you. “The director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex stated that approximately 10,000 individuals remain missing underneath the rubble across the Gaza Strip. Of these, around 5,000 persons are unaccounted for and their fate remains unknown. He further reported that 66 boxes were received yesterday from the occupying authorities – that’s the IDF – containing only the skulls of deceased victims. In addition, the bodies of women were handed over with no information provided regarding the location or circumstances of their abduction. According to the director, some of the returned bodies showed signs of severe mutilation including severed hands, while others had their abdomens surgically opened and subsequently restitched. Thus these findings raise great, raise grave concerns. He warned of credible indications of organ theft from the bodies of martyrs in the Gaza Strip, describing these acts as serious violations of international humanitarian law and human dignity.” And that I just received this morning. Just think about that statement. And I’ve no reason to disbelieve anything Mustafa Barghouti says, or the director of Al Shifa Medical Complex.’
I do.
And I ask again, what has the director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex done with these bodies that he says show credible indications of organ theft? What action has he taken to get what he believes to be evidence of a horrible crime out to the world so that impartial outside observers can assess it? What is he doing to get these “credible indications” of organ theft either proved or disproved?
Soon Brits will need Starlink + VPN to read the news. Like Iran
– Douglas Carswell
Officials with the lowest approval ratings in the world (Macron, Starmer, Merz, Sanchez) are the loudest champions of social media bans for teens and ‘misinformation’ crackdowns.
– Pavel Durov
The future is choice.
The BBC hates choice — because choice exposes irrelevance.
No more reverence.
No more compulsory funding.
No more pretending this is about anything other than control.
– Russ
“The First Amendment doesn’t stop at the water’s edge just because a foreign bureaucrat sends a threatening letter. If you’re in Wyoming, you speak freely. Period.”
– Daniel Singh
Keir Starmer is mulling a ban on X, formerly Twitter. This would be a shocking, draconian move, bringing the UK into line with states as authoritarian as Russia, China and North Korea. Yet the only real surprise here is that he hasn’t tried it sooner. As I argue today on spiked, the PM’s claim that this is about protecting children from X-generated AI deepfakes is incredibly weak sauce. Every man and his AI companion knows that X and its owner, Elon Musk, have been a constant thorn in the side of this loathsome Labour government. Starmer holds X responsible for reviving interest in the grooming gangs and even stoking the Southport riots. We should take his threat to ban it incredibly seriously.
– Fraser Myers
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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