Britain’s new internet censorship regime

This week introduced a very depressing turn in Britain towards authoritarianism.

From now onwards, anyone accessing the internet will be presented with a censored & restricted version: the so-called “safe” version. 

The Online Safety Act does one essential thing: it blocks from the overwhelming majority content (by treating everyone as a child) unless you opt to give your ID or face-scan to the website’s third-party age verification company. This is supposed to “protect children” from porn, violence, terrorist material and content promoting self-harm etc.

However, as the Free Speech Union has been recently reported, that includes content deemed “sensitive” BUT NOT UNLAWFUL which can be regarded as “harmful”. The law requires the big websites to “protect” under-18s from content deemed “harmful” to their mental or physical wellbeing – a concept so broad as to be wholly subjective and limitless in scope. E.g. it includes a tweet calling for single-sex spaces which is deemed “harmful content” (and apt to be censored) !

Censorship is now the default to the entire population of Britain - unless you’re prepared to de-anonymise yourself.  

What are my objections?

1. Censorship never works - What doesn’t ask for ID?  Piracy. If you want to access adult content without handing over PII? Piracy. Want to listen to music without PII? Piracy. Want to watch TV shows without divulging your PII? Well guess what? Piracy. Nothing changes that.
2. Why should we trust this government (or a future government) not to censor internet by moving the goalposts under the guise of “protect the children” claptrap? We shouldn’t ever.
3. I refuse to hand over my ID every time to some unknown company - Hope there will be no abuse. We promise we won’t track you ... our databases won't be breached ... No thanks to this Faustian pact.
4. The OSA infantises the entire British population by default - thus making it harder for Brits to participate fully in the digital world.
5. Content is rendered blocked/missing - You don’t know what you don’t know. You are captive online
6. Section 44 of the OSA includes the classic “Henry VIII clauses” which empowers the executive to expand their lawful remit (beyond what the Act specifies) without seeking appropriate legislative warrant. This is an increasingly serious problem in English law. As Barber and Young argue, “Henry VIII clauses ‘constitute a fetter on the power of future Parliaments creating the risk that as yet un-thought of statutes will be overturned through the use of delegated powers’”
7. The OSA conceptually repackages “offensiveness” as being “harmful” - So instead of arguing that you found something “offensive”; you would argue (in the words of section 179) that it amounted to a “non-trivial psychological ... harm”. Thus, the “False communications offence” is borne. 

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The leader in The Spectator is “The cult of safetyism harms us all”: 

Last month, the government announced that 16-year-olds would be able to vote at the next general election. If these new voters had wanted to inform themselves about political issues over the weekend, they would have found it strangely difficult. Take, for example, a recent speech about the rape gangs made by the Tory MP Katie Lam in parliament. It was blocked on X, alongside transcripts of the trials of the perpetrators. X users also discovered that they were unable to watch videos of protests against illegal immigration, unless they could prove they were over 18. Even if 16-year-olds are now wise enough to vote, the government believes there is information that they are too childish to know.

This mess was a consequence of the Online Safety Act, which was passed by the last government, and is supported by the current one. The act returned to the news last week as porn websites were made to implement age checks. The act is driven by a noble goal: to protect children from online pornography and the perversions of social media. But the legislation shows the problems with putting protection from harm ahead of everything else. We are turning a well-intentioned concern with safety into a cult of safetyism.

For most of the 20th century, opposing safety meant opposing a more secure and better life. Resisting seat belts, for example, was a strange hobby for myopic libertarians; condemning the contraceptive pill the sign of an unrepentant reactionary. These protective measures were not only accompanied by unprecedented reductions in mortality – the RAC calculates that vehicle fatalities fell by 60 per cent in the three decades after seat belts became mandatory – but helped our lives become less burdened by fear.

Yet the reduction of unnecessary evils has descended into the absurd. In their book The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff wrote that safety has become sacred, creating an unwillingness to make trade-offs. Over the past two decades, this has stunted the emotional, intellectual and moral development of young people, leaving them less psychologically resilient and more anxious. Safetyism has become a moral anaesthetic, tranquillising the free spirit that young people need.

Haidt and Lukianoff charted safetyism’s spread across American universities in the early 21st century, in the form of content warnings and safe spaces ‘protecting’ students from ideas that might upset them. But safetyism moved out of the campus and is now the defining mindset of our age. We have become obsessed with mitigating every potential harm or distress, with no thought given to the consequences.

The Covid lockdowns represented the peak of safetyism. A fetishisation for protection spread rapidly through our political class, with politicians competing to demand ever-tighter restrictions. Stay-at-home orders, social distancing, mandatory mask-wearing: the overriding political goal was to achieve as few Covid deaths as possible. Concerns over the cost of the measures, the long-term effects on the nation’s health and the resilience of freedom appeared to occupy less ministerial time than defining what a ‘substantial meal’ was.

Not only did a generation of children see their educational and social development stunted by politicians’ reaction to a disease that posed little danger to them, but voters also became far too used to their freedoms being curbed under the pretence of ‘security’. The move to make smoking illegal for anyone born after 2009 was a natural outgrowth of a belief that the public can’t be trusted with choosing whether to put themselves in harm’s way.

Overzealous ministers have questions to answer, but not all of the blame should be put on them. The sanctification of caution begins at home. The public supports the smoking ban and were hardline on lockdowns. At one point towards the end of the pandemic, one in four people polled by Ipsos Mori said that nightclubs should never reopen, regardless of the Covid risk.

Last year, the TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp hit out at Britain’s ‘risk-averse’ culture after she was reported to social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to join his friends on a post-GCSE interrailing trip. For some parents, we exist in a Brass Eye nightmare-world, where a paedophile or drug dealer lurks around every corner. Only a third as many children play outside regularly as they did 60 years ago.

Plonking a child in front of an iPad is far less stressful than letting them out. Yet this overprotectiveness will only do children more harm in the long term. The best way to keep a child off social media is to encourage them to go out and play.

What should be encouraged is not the worship of safety but the embrace of risk. Exposure to danger, to trauma, to heartbreak and to wickedness is the only way human beings develop experience and resilience. A nation that forgets that will lose its self-confidence. By the time he was the age of Allsopp’s boy, Horatio Nelson had twice crossed the Atlantic, come within ten degrees of the North Pole and chased down a polar bear. While today’s Royal Navy recruits might now have to be a little older, it didn’t set the young Nelson up too badly. Both politicians and parents need to learn that putting safety first is not always the least dangerous option.

Does friendship nowadays require homogeneity of political ideas?

Today, I think, for my generation, politics very strongly intrudes into the domain of friendship.

Some months ago I gave a friend of mine my traditional-conservative take on something and was told “if I knew these were your opinions, I wouldn’t be your friend” line -- what bothers me is why/how we’ve become like this? (I can’t remember the subject, but it was a fairly innocuous topic of current events).

Society didn’t used to be like this, and I think the below article shows this.

I suspect it’s the nefarious influence of social media on our culture.

Politics is about ideas; and civil discussions - especially among friends - should be the norm in a liberal society with a diversity of opinions. Ideas are either right or wrong. And we should engage and discuss things, and I always love a discussion that makes me re-think something. And I have quite often reversed positions on issues because of it.

But today, we’re walking on eggshells. A hypersensitivity to just about everything. And at any moment people can be ostracised for wrongthink.

I think we’ve been subtly programmed to hate people who think differently to us. Buckley and Galbraith (who were very anti and pro New Deal) always remained good friends. That, I don’t think, seems very possible today.

I sometimes think I was born in the wrong age.

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Jeff Greenfield writing in “The Pleasure of Disagreeing with Bill Buckley” (National Review, Feb 2025):

If you’re at all familiar with the contours of Buckley’s life, you likely know that he was friends with and/or an admirer of an array of figures on the left: the brilliant socialist columnist Murray Kempton, longtime activist Al Lowenstein, novelist Norman Mailer, economist (and skiing buddy) John Kenneth Galbraith. The intriguing question is why. Why, given the withering “take no prisoners” persona he presented in public debate, was he so comfortable in the company of his political adversaries?

The key, I think, is less our scintillating personalities and more how much he savored the give-and-take of argument — emphasis on the give and take. As William Kristol put it, “Buckley really believes that in order to convince, you have to debate and not just preach, which of course means risking the possibility that someone will beat you in debate.” ... Those whose exposure to political “debate” these days is confined to outlets that never open themselves to contrary views would likely be startled by the parade of figures who jousted with Buckley on air: Noam Chomsky, Saul Alinsky, Allen Ginsberg, Julian Bond, and Jesse Jackson, among literally dozens of other ideological adversaries.

It was one of Buckley’s admirable attributes — one unfortunately shared by too few across the political spectrum — that he was comfortable with changing his mind. He came to regret his early arguments about race; he came to see that Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose work he had championed in a book, was an impediment to the cause of anti-communism, and he wrote a novel reflecting that revised view. 

From a more civic point of view, Firing Line stands as an unhappy reminder of the distance that political discourse has traveled since its time, mostly because it would be difficult if not impossible to find a host both ideologically committed and open, even delighted, to engage in lengthy, civil discourse with his or her foes (much less breaking bread with them).

“Why does Hitler still cast a shadow over the world?”

A fascinating question on the BBC.

I think my answer would be on two fronts:

1. The mechanised nature of human destruction marks it out. More people died under Stalin and Mao. Most of the people died because of disastrous communist economic policies which brought on famine. Otherwise, executions and imprisonments were targeted at specific groups and/or individuals. The Holocaust was a systematic, intentional, industrial killing machine. The Holocaust was organised and operated as a business, with efficiency and cost optimisation.
2. The Holocaust is still very recent & changed our world. Genghis Khan’s empire caused the 10 to 80 million deaths, but the conquest brought gunpowder to Europe, and opened trade between the east and the west (Silk Road) etc. Hitler’s unintended aftermath was laying the foundations of the EU (e.g. through the European Coal and Steel Community), the use of nuclear power as an energy source, and the creation of the state of Israel for the Jews.

Prince Harry, a selfish brat

My God. What a car-crash interview.

For those not in the UK, Prince Harry has just lost a judicial review case about him and his wife not being granted state protection. He does get security every single time he visits the UK. It just isn’t with gun-carrying outriders by his side.

And the first thing Harry did was run to BBC ... and he then wonders why the King wants nothing to do with him.

Everytime he doesn’t get what he wants — he runs to the media, bad-mouthing his family, calling the King’s wife a racist. His father has cancer and he is giving him more stress. Harkles keep telling the world how charming & wonderful they are; but they’re unpleasant and vindictive.

We don’t forget what he did to his ailing grandparents. Now he is doing it to his sick father. He is a selfish delusional spoiled brat.

The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal

Excerpting Louise Perry in “The Rotherham cover-up” (The Spectator):

When I use the word ‘Rotherham’, I am talking about the rape and sexual torture of thousands of underage girls in Britain over many decades by Muslim men from the Middle East, East Africa, and South Asia (predominantly Pakistan). The men targeted these girls because they were white and non-Muslim. Authorities failed to investigate the crimes for fear of being called racist. There is no disputing the fact that the motivation for the crimes was – and is – explicitly anti-white. Many of the perpetrators have said as much in both court testimony and police interviews. 

‘Rotherham’ has become a catch-all for sex crimes that took place across the UK, not just in the town of Rotherham. The journalist Charlie Peters has described this as the biggest race hate scandal in 21st century Britain, having identified at least 50 places in the UK in which these gangs have operated, and are continuing to operate. Notable among these is Oxford, a city in which predominantly Pakistani areas in the east abut predominately poor white areas at the very edge. Excerpts from the sentencing remarks relating to the 2013 conviction of members of an Oxford gang have been circulated on Twitter this week. They tell the stories of girls between the ages of 11 and 16 being anally raped, branded with their perpetrator’s initials, forcibly injected with heroin and trafficked across Britain to have sex with more men.

The authorities did not want to know. Not only did these crimes go uninvestigated, but victims and their families were frequently stonewalled or persecuted by the police. The father of one 15-year-old girl in Rotherham, whose attack had been so brutal she later needed surgery, was told by a police officer that the experience would ‘teach her a lesson’. Again and again, adults in positions of authority discovered what was going on, and yet decided that these underage girls were making their own decisions – that they were demonstrating agency – and so took no action. During this long period of failure, at least three victims were murdered: Laura Wilson (17), Lucy Lowe (16), and Charlene Downes (14).

It’s awful, I know. So awful that it’s tempting to dismiss it all as exaggeration, or even as a malicious invention by the far-right. When Suella Braverman announced the creation of a Grooming Gangs Taskforce in 2023 when she was home secretary, even so many decades after the problem first emerged, one Guardian writer accused her of inflaming ‘Islamophobic and xenophobic prejudice’. Dismissing all of this evidence as lies has been the preferred coping mechanism of the British elite – the people with no social connections to places like Rotherham, who are all eager to believe in the success of our multicultural project. The establishment did not want to know about ‘Rotherham’ – still does not want to know about ‘Rotherham’ – because it upsets that fantasy. 

Horrific reading.

It seems that the establishment is still denying justice to the victims of grooming gangs. The Labour party has rejected calls for an Oldham grooming gang inquiry.

The institutional failures must be exposed and accounted for.

We should probably start by implementing some of the recommendations from any of the previous inquiries. 

But, I think a good response from Labour would be along those lines & with a detailed exposition of which recommendations they are implementing and how long it would take in order to prevent this sort of thing happening. 

Unfortunately, Jess Phillips seems to be saying that it is up to the Council to decide if there is an inquiry or not. That seems like a joke.

A parliamentary enquiry to address a national issue, surely?

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Update: I found a Channel 4 news piece on more grooming/sexual exploitation situ:

The New Orleans terrorist attack

Poor people of New Orleans.

Maniac created by religious fanaticism & blind hatred that comes from being brainwashed.

It seems he had some financial woes. But, lots of people have financial problems. They get another job, seek the help of a financial advisor etc. They just don’t get into a pickup truck with a rifle and start randomly running over people.

This is what “globalise the intifada” means in reality.

The John Smyth scandal and Justin Welby

Another scandal in England ... and another leader claiming to have “known nothing about it” (à la Vennels at the Post Office).

Justin Welby - Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Communion - is accused of having “most probably” known about the horrific & sadistic abuse meted out at the hands of the serial predator John Smyth. According to the report, it was “most probable”.

He spent some time (vague?) with Smyth in South Africa after he quickly disappeared from England. As far back as the 1970s and 1980s, people within the church are said to have known that Smyth was an abuser. Welby maintains that he wasn’t aware & sorry for the errors. Ultimately, though, the fault lies elsewhere.

Should he resign?

I’m not sure.

For yes = it would because of the Archbishop’s moral authority which may be forfeited if he stays on in Lambeth Palace. It would be about the broader CofE’s safeguarding procedures. After all, Welby appears to have done nothing even in 2013 when he was alerted (presumably call the police?). 

For no = on the other hand, the report says that 40 years ago Welby was in a professional/social circle in which he might have been exposed to information that someone else was behaving in a v. concerning manner. It doesn’t seem just to punish him for something he may not have been responsible for. It seems merely being alive in the 80s was enough for a moral failing. It is hard to say if Welby, personally, covered up the abuse, or ignored it.

Not sure.

The case of Dominique Pélicot - repeatedly sedating his wife and inviting men to rape her while unconscious

This case is pure horror.

Gisèle Pélicot is a 72 year-old French lady. She was repeatedly assaulted while unconscious by 80 men at her husband’s behest. France is still trying to identify 30 of this grandmother’s rapists.

This lady is beyond heroic. And, it sounds like her children are strong also. Her daughter is also a victim (but to a much lesser extent). 

And, today’s headline ... he admits “I am a rapist” in the French mass rape trial.

This guy is a total unhinged psychopath. 

What gets me is how some of the men apparently didn’t think it was rape ... because they had the husband’s permission. What is this? The Dark Ages?

The earliest known original colour film of London in 1924 - hundred years ago

I came across a Daily Mail article about this video which says it was “made by Claude Friese-Greene, a cinema technician and son of moving-image pioneer William.”

It’s a funny thing to see so many people smiling and waving at us ... a hundred years ago.

Trafalgar Sq and the National Gallery behind it.

There is a McDonalds today where that oncoming omnibus is positioned.

I noticed people showing their respects with flowers at the Cenotaph.

Very touching. The Great war ended - at that point - only 6 years ago.

It was “unveiled on Armistice Day, 11 November 1920.

The memorial became a central point for all those whose family and friends had died during the First World War with no known grave.”

Understanding parents who horrifically abuse their children for years

David and Louise Turpin were mum and dad.

They kept their children (all 13!!) imprisoned, chained to beds, starved, allowed to shower once a week, and abused for so many years.

In the sentencing hearing (clip below), they both said they “love” their children, regret abusing them, and “pray for their children”.

What I don’t understand is ... they seem genuine at court. 

But how can you “love” your kids but dish out all this barbaric inhuman horrors?

As parents, there must be some part of them that actually loves their children (in the normal way)!?

I don’t get it.

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Documentary — “Inside the depraved world of David and Louise Turpin | 60 Minutes Australia”

The conviction of Lucy Letby – miscarriage of justice?

Earlier this week, I was reading “Lucy Letby: Serial killer or a miscarriage of justice?” by Sarah Knapton, Martin Evans, Sophie Barnes, and Will Bolton (Daily Telegraph).

It argues that the conviction of neonatal nurse Lucy Letby may have been a miscarriage of justice.

She was convicted on largely circumstantial evidence and no direct evidence and with no (discernible?) motive. 

Nobody saw Letby harming a child, and the coroner didn’t find “foul play” in any of the deaths.

Also, it seems that the statistical evidence used was a bit questionable:

On the other hand, there is damning evidence against Lucy Letby. There is a problem with insulin. There’s no evidence this could have been “accidental”. And there is no reason other than insulin being purposefully administered, and no reason for it to have been done other than to poison. It would be attempted murder because it was likely to have been fatal if not corrected. She was also caught multiple times standing over babies as they died, without doing anything to help.

It doesn’t mean Letby didn't do it, it's not very clear how they can convict on the basis they have.

The new Home Secretary may have to order a review.

The most famous D-Day photograph by Robert F. Sargent

This photograph is the landing on Omaha beach.

It absolutely gripping and terrifying. And also mournful. 

Those poor soldiers were sitting ducks in front of the landing crafts when the ramps dropped.

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Coast Guard historian Scott Price wrote a brief historical account of the photo in which he explains Sargent’s experience: (excerpted)

The photograph was captured by Coast Guard Chief Photographer’s Mate Robert F. Sargent, and entitled “Into the jaws of death.” 

Sargent, a veteran of the invasions of Sicily and Salerno, took the photo from his landing craft at sector “Easy Red” of Omaha Beach around 7:40 a.m. local time.

The Coast Guard carried out another important mission — sending combat photographers and correspondents in with the troops. Thus, Sargent was at Normandy where he was able to capture the most famous invasion in modern history.

The Historian’s Office recently acquired a copy of the press release issued with the publication of Sargent’s photograph. Printed on brittle mimeograph paper, it has browned with age but is still legible. It was written by Coast Guard Combat Correspondent Thomas Winship who quotes Sargent extensively.

Original caption: “Into the Jaws of Death: Down the ramp of a Coast Guard landing barge Yankee soldiers storm toward the beach-sweeping fire of Nazi defenders in the D-Day invasion of the French coast. Troops ahead may be seen lying flat under the deadly machinegun resistance of the Germans. Soon the Nazis were driven back under the overwhelming invasion forces thrown in from Coast Guard and Navy amphibious craft.”

What those men went through — in that photo — that day was incredible.

The 80th anniversary of the D-Day Normandy landings (on 6 June 1944)

Today, a few remaining veterans at Normandy were sharing their memories & being honoured. 

In the story below, Mr Alex Penstone was only 19 when he was deployed to Normandy. Joined by Mr Harry Birdsall. According to the Daily Telegraph, “he made the journey to remember lost fellow”. The wreath (in the photo) is a symbol of those who never made it back home.

More than 150,000 soldiers from America, UK, Canada and the Commonwealth bravely went into battle to deliver a decisive blow against Nazi Germany. 

I think of my own dear great-grandfather that I never knew but survived WWII.

Much respect & thanks to these elderly gentlemen who were so young going to war.

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Infected blood scandal — biggest scandal in NHS history

Only a few days ago, the long-running inquiry into the infected blood scandal produced its report.

It’s shocking and horrifying. 

The suffering of those affected has been appalling, and compounded by the fact that it has taken half a century for the truth to prevail!

• Between 1970 and 1998 more than 3,000 patients “died or suffered miserably” as a result of being given contaminated blood products that infected them with HIV and Hepatitis.
• Doctors, civil servants and ministers had “closed ranks” to hide the truth for decades.
• One of the most shocking episodes in the scandal happened at Lord Mayor Treloar School for children with disabilities in Alton, Hants, where many of the pupils were haemophiliacs. Children there were “betrayed” when they were used as “objects” of experimental trials. They were not always told they were part of a trial, then suffered a “nightmare of tragic proportion” after being given disease-ridden drugs, Sir Brian said.

It’s just so upsetting that so many people responsible will face little by way of meaningful punishment for their corruption, indifference, complacency. As with the revelations emerging from NHS whistleblowers & the Post Office Horizon scandal, Whitehall and other institutions act as though they are above the law.

Financial compensation will have to be given to the victims — but this burden falls to the taxpayers — whom these officials and corrupt doctors have also betrayed. Another insult.

King Charles III’s new portrait by Jonathan Yeo

I think it’s brilliant! 

Very vivid and engaging. Artistic and beautiful.

I like the atmosphere of the painting, but it’s HRH’s face that is most absorbing. It grows on you.

I think his face has the faint lineaments of a smile, but I also sense some melancholy or pathos.

Alastair Sooke has written that the portrait reveals “a vulnerability the late Queen was rarely allowed”. He “isn’t entirely sure of himself”. I don't think he is uncertain or anxious. But the heaviness of the eyebrows, the kindly wrinkles, and the narrowness of the eyes hint at some kind of sadness.

What are the “pro-Palestinian” protesters actually fighting for?

From University of Michigan to Columbia, protests over the war Israel-Hamas conflict continue to rock campuses across the US. And now, it’s moving to England & the University of Cambridge.

But this is not their war. Where are the demands for the return of the remaining hostages? What about demanding that the perpetrators of Oct 7 atrocities be brought to justice? Nope ... didn’t think so. 

There has been a huge outpouring of antisemitism amid these protests — Jewish students being barred from their own campus by pro-Palestinian activist thugs, told to go back to Poland and to the gas chambers, a Jewish student being beaten unconscious in UCLA, Jews told they were the next target for terrorists. When they shout ‘globalise the intifada’, it reminds me of the Brownshirts.

Today’s Cambridge pro-Palestine camp’s spokesman refused to condemn Hamas or describe them as a terror group when questioned by The Telegraph (reported at 3:26pm).

All civilian deaths are abhorrent; but we shouldn’t lose sight of the basic proposition: Hamas’s declared intention is to annihilate Israel and its population – whilst Israel is fighting against a fanatical fascist enemy who prop their own citizens as human shields and then cynically and gleefully propagandise the inevitable collateral casualties. 

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So what are they fighting for?

1. A narcissistic game of pretending to be a revolutionary and pretending to be part of something bigger than oneself. Protesters in the 60s were fighting for CND, Vietnam, gay rights, animal rights, environmentalism etc. Today’s protesters are positioning themselves against the progress made in the 60s onwards. I.e. with Hamas.
2. Antisemitism — Where were these protesters when Syria was wiping out its citizens? Where were they when Iraqi women were protesting against the killing or girls and women? There are no protests against the War in Yemen with over 150k+ direct casualties in that conflict. They only can be bothered to protest against the Jews. 
3. To isolate Israel from the global economy. They want the West to adopt the old “Arab boycott” against Israel in which any kind of business with Israel/Jews is banned. No oil, no gas, no electricity, no food. Essentially, they want to turn Israel into North Korea. This is ironic as they claim that Israel banning of trade with Gaza amounts to “genocide”.
4. They don’t want ceasefire. They want intifada. “Students for Justice” in Columbia — and people like Norman Finkelstein — have endorsed Hamas on October 7 arguing their “resistance” was justified. There is enough toxicity among this “underbelly” that a non-insignificant pro-Hamas sentiment can be easily found. Some are no better than their Holocaust-denying fellow travellers.
5. Decolonisation “settler-colonial” dialectical narratives — At recent protests, they were shouting that Israel are white colonialists oppressing brown people. This offshoot of Marxian traditional class-conflict presents itself in the post-modern “identity-politics” “decolonization” framework which leading universities (whose academics are overwhelmingly left-wing) have been pushing for years now. This shows a serious lack of understanding about Middle Eastern demographics. There are Lebanese & Palestinians who are the whitest people you can see. Meanwhile, there are Israelis who are black, and every shade in between. Essentially, projecting US racial dynamics onto this conflict. 
6. And some are genuinely well-meaning students, albeit mistaken, about the conflict; and have imbibed the media tropes about “genocide” etc. They are decent and would probably be shocked if they knew enough about their comrades. I suspect that most pro-Palestine supporters probably didn’t even know where the Gaza strip was before Oct 7. 

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Some interesting articles:

Michael Powell, in “The Unreality of Columbia’s ‘Liberated Zone’” (The Atlantic). He writes, about the protests at Columbia University:

As the war has raged on and the death toll has grown, protest rallies on American campuses have morphed into a campaign of ever grander and more elaborate ambitions: From “Cease-fire now” to the categorical claim that Israel is guilty of genocide and war crimes to demands that Columbia divest from Israeli companies and any American company selling arms to the Jewish state.

Many protesters argue that, from the river to the sea, the settler-colonialist state must simply disappear. To inquire, as I did at Columbia, what would happen to Israelis living under a theocratic fascist movement such as Hamas is to ask the wrong question. A young female protester, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, responded: “Maybe Israelis need to check their privilege.”

 John McWhorter, in “The Columbia Protests Made the Same Mistake the Civil Rights Movement Did” (NYT), also writes:

What happened this week was not just a rise in the temperature. The protests took a wrong turn, of a kind I have seen too many other activist movements take. It’s the same wrong turn that the civil rights movement took in the late 1960s.

Beyond a certain point, however, we must ask whether the escalating protests are helping to change those circumstances. Columbia’s administration agreed to review proposals about divestment, shareholder activism and other issues and to create health and education programs in Gaza and the West Bank. But the protesters were unmoved and a subgroup of them, apparently, further enraged … Who among the protesters really thought that Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, and the board of trustees would view the occupation of Hamilton Hall — and the visible destruction of property — and say, “Oh, if the students feel that strongly, then let’s divest from Israel immediately”? The point seemed less to make change than to manifest anger for its own sake, with the encampment having become old news.

Princess of Wales undergoing cancer treatment

Poor woman. A young mother faces much more than just her own suffering; and having to go through this publically must be brutal for her and the family. I hope the press give her some privacy which she deserves.

I understand some horrid and unscrupulous type had accessed her medical records in order to sell it to the tabloids. 

It’s pretty awful that she had to release the announcement of her surgery earlier than, I think, she would have wanted because some idiot wanted to make a quick buck.

Must be awful for William too. He lost his own mum at a young age. This has to be heartbreaking for him as well. He finds out his dad has cancer; then, almost immediately, finds out his wife does too. He recently lost his granny, and his brother is an estranged idiot. Poor guy.

Wishing her all the best.

Art vandalism — the painting of Lord Balfour

We have yet another idiot destroying and ruining art — in the service of their “cause”. 

The portrait that was spray-painted and slashed was of Lord Balfour, the former British Prime Minister. This took place at Trinity College in Cambridge by a “pro-Palestinian protester”. 

Cultural vandalism

We have seen this happen to the poor Van Gogh pieces in the National Gallery, or the ‘Mona Lisa’ in Paris; and I think symptomatic of our times: throwing a temper tantrums and vandalising art in museums.

I must admit: I don’t have any special concern for this particular painting. It seems a conventional portrait. What angers me is the fact that anyone can destroy art, of any type.

This kind of vandalism creates a culture that normalises the targeting art for mere self-indulgence. It’s the self-preening attempt to strike the pose as a “great revolutionary”.

I think the very notion of threatening or attacking art and artists — as a mode of political speech — is cultural poison. This rotten stupidity is becoming a regular thing now. Every maniac — acquiped with what they perceive as a political grievance — feels entitled to use works of art to project their anger. 

Yet, these are vertible cultural artifacts; and we have a duty to preserve them for future generations. Works are held in the public trust. This kind of vandalism isn’t anything new; and I really hate it. It’s such arrogance and ignorance. 

I’ve always wondered how many books and how much art was collected and then burned in the “Bonfire of the Vanities” in Florence. We can only imagine. It’s said that over 90% of all religious art was destroyed during the English Civil War. Years ago, Daesh destroyed parts of a Roman Amphitheater in the ancient city of Palmyra. In all cases, society has robbed its progeny of pieces of our common heritage and history.

These vandalisms impose a cost on the gallery visitors.

Museums now respond with barriers, wires and fences that make loud horrible noises when triggered. There are guards and alarms. When we go into a museum and see a beautiful work of art; we now see it through a pane of glass/perspex. It creates an artificial barrier between the art and the viewer. It’s an extra separation between the art and someone — like myself — trying to admire it. 

It’s a necessary evil that is separating us from really “touching” and “feeling” every artwork. I regularly find myself distracted by the pane of perspex distorting the imagine or reflecting the museum’s often bright lights into the painting. It’s so irritating. And to think earlier generations could just walk into the Louvre and see a Da Vinci without any separation. This is also not confined to the most iconic pieces. This ridiculous levels of security is a huge expense to often threadbare budgets (often consumed by conservation costs). Nowadays, in some cases, the actual real objects are not even shown anymore. A facsimile is presented for the masses. And, we all have to be strip-searched just to get into a museum.

Moreover, with some of the soup-splashing; they invariably damage the centuries-old gold-gilded frames which can often be valuable work of art in themselves. Fashioned from antique wood and plaster, they don’t respond well to moisture and acidity.

Then, we must ask, who cares about Lord Balfour in the painting?

We care about the art. We care about who painted it, why, the technique used by the artist, and how it influenced other artworks. The wealthy have always been commissioning artists to do their portraits for centuries, so they can be immortalised. This is an act of disrespect towards the artist and to the history of art itself. Art is a window into contemporaneous perspectives. 

It is also the arrogance of declaring that my personal modern perspective on history allows me to censor art at my discretion. Except we’ve seen examples in history where the contemporary political environment tarnishes a piece of art because of the values of the period. Then, the political environment evolves and changes; and for that censorship to be looked at unfavorably through a longer historical lens. We shouldn’t destroy pieces of historical art because of our current political environment.

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Update: 12 March 2024 — In today’s Daily Telegraph, there is an interesting letter from the Earl of Balfour which I enjoyed reading:

King Charles talking about cancer

Very recently, King Charles announced that he was diagnosed with cancer:

The type of cancer has not been revealed - it is not prostate cancer, but was discovered during his recent treatment for an enlarged prostate.

The King began "regular treatments" on Monday and will postpone public duties during it, the Palace said.

The Monarch, 75, "remains wholly positive about his treatment and looks forward to returning to full public duty as soon as possible," it added.

No further details are being shared on the stage of cancer or a prognosis.

I think this is big news.

For many years, the policy of the Crown has been not to mention any condition that a member of the Royal Family was suffering from. This revelation – alongside the Duchess of York's skin cancer – seems to have increased discussion and/or awareness of health issues:

• "Visits to the NHS webpage on melanoma skin cancer saw an increase in visits of 741% following the recent announcement from the Duchess of York."
• "Macmillan Cancer Support, of which the King is patron, saw a dramatic spike in visits to its information and support pages on Monday, after his cancer diagnosis was revealed."

I think we are v. scared of hearing the c word. We automatically think of chemo and dying, but after reading and learning more about cancer in the past few days, and how survivable it is (e.g. prostate and testicular cancers can be as high as 99%); I think we can 'relax' perhaps a bit more over this subject.

The moral absurdity of the pro-Palestinian protests (supporting Hamas)

There have been thousands of people in ‘pro-Palestinian protests’ in London this weekend. 

According to the BBC: 

The demonstration was organised by several groups who are calling on the British and Welsh governments to insist on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for “full humanitarian aid” to be sent in.
Maggie Morgan, from the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign Cardiff, said: “We are taking to the streets as a show of solidarity to the people of Gaza, to show our support for them, but also to make the government listen, and say "not in our name, we’re not having this.”

I am writing this post as a brief riposte to the protest’s underlying arguments. These so-called “pro-Palestinian” protests are ultimately, in reality, misguided (or deliberate) support for Hamas.

For me, I have been v. shocked & disturbed by the British reaction to the horrific massacres in Israel. I have already written about my anxiety with the general tone of equivocation against calling the Hamas attack on 7th October as ‘terrorism’; and the media bias - made obvious at the al-Ahli hospital. With regards to these protests, I think a huge part of them is driven by a nasty latent antisemitism. To me, I can’t think of another serious explanation. It’s shocking to me how so many people can take to the streets to criticize Israel – and yet nothing to say about what Hamas has done. The actions of Hamas were equivalent to the SS Einsatzgruppen - children thrown on a pile and set on fire; and kids chased with machine guns at a concert!

Of course scenes of civilian suffering in Gaza is distressing. They rightly deserve our sympathy; and, as I wrote in an earlier post, it behoves Israel to conduct its warfare in line with the rules of war. However, we should not blind ourselves to the underlying reality. 

My two overarching arguments; firstly, Israel can no longer tolerate such a potent threat on its border. Its primordial obligation is to protect its own Jewish and Israeli population, perhaps even more than any other state on Earth (the Holocaust still within living memory). Secondly, it is the deranged leaders of Hamas that have wrought this destruction and death to Gazans. 

With that in mind, I should like to rebut the following arguments: 

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Argument 1: “show of solidarity to the people of Gaza”

    The people of Gaza are being hurt by Hamas

1. Hamas is sponsored by the Ayatollah of Iran. It is not an expression of Palestinian self-determination. The regime’s oppression can be seen in the many Iranian women who are currently risking their lives to defy that regime’s Orwellian oppression.
2. The endless stream of footage of human suffering from within Gaza is part of its propaganda machine. This is done to inflame and multiply its legion of useful idiots in Western democracies. Every death is a valuable contribution to its cynical war effort.
3. The Geneva Convention draws a distinction between military officers and non-combatants who don’t wear a uniform. The rules of war have always respected the need for military combatants to be properly identified in order to protect the civilian populations. As such, soldiers caught wearing the enemy uniform - if caught by enemy forces - can be subject to execution. This happened in the Battle of the Bulge when German officers attempted to infiltrate Allied lines by dressing up as US Army officers. Because Hamas ignores this rule, it deliberately puts the Gazan citizenry - not only at risk, but in the direct line of Israeli force.
4. Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, and his children are living in wealth and luxury in Qatar.
5. This week Hamas blocked civilians from fleeing the zone of conflict - as part of its multifaceted practice of using human shields.

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Argument 2: “full humanitarian aid should be sent in”

1. The BBC - and various media - have discussed Israel’s cutting off the water, electricity, gas, food and medicine to Gaza; but scarcely mention that Israel has constantly maintained that it would reinstate all supply lines – if Hamas frees the Israeli hostages.
2. For Hamas, keeping the 210 kidnapped hostages is more important than the well-being of ‘its’ own people.

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Argument 3: “Israel as an occupier”

Israel is not an occupier by choice – it is being blamed for defending itself.

Since its birth in 1948, its Arab neighbours have sought to destroy it. Israel has prevailed and acquired - with each war - territory to administer. Following Israeli withdrawal, as in Gaza in 2005, it was attacked with rockets by terrorists who are committed to its destruction and (as we recently saw) the butchering of Israeli citizens. When Israel offered 94% of the West Bank to the PLO, as a separate state; Yasser Arafat declined it. Today, it is again being blamed for defending itself. It was soon after Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza that the Palestinians elected Hamas.

Without the Iron-dome defence system, Hamas’s shower of rockets of 7th October would have levelled Israel. Its enemies seriously mean its destruction. Israel cannot entertain any ceasefire with these terrorists (and their Iranian offshoot sister organizations) - it’s security demands that they be rooted out.

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According to the police, since the pogrom of the 7th, there has been an enormous rise in antisemitic incidents in England compared to previous years.

If you’re a Brit - please consider signing The October Declaration (britishfriendsofisrael.org) to show support for our Jewish friends in England.