Orwellian England.

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American Liberty, BBC, CCTV, CCTV cameras, Civil liberties, Civilisation, Closed Circuit, Defend the modern world, George Orwell, Orwell, Orwellian, Policing in the United States, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Rights and responsibilites, UK politics, United Kingdom, United States

The fear of being watched is innate within the human condition, having been developed over millions of years of evolutionary time and experience. The right not to be watched when going about private or legal business has equally ancient roots, having been fought for from the earliest flickerings of human civilisation.

Despite that long struggle (and its success in other parts of the West) the amount of active surveillance in the United Kingdom remains a disgrace. Take this from someone who is coming to the close of an extended period working abroad – a period that has been marked by a strange and bracing sense of personal freedom and responsibility.

When British people complain of a nanny state or of a ‘Big Brother’ society, the popular tendency is to snigger and judge. Such people (others feel) are simply exaggerating, guilty or else unduly paranoid. To ruffle up this lackadaisical (not to mention extremely irresponsible) serenity, let’s rehearse some important figures:

According to the Guardian (a most un-libertarian rag) there is now one CCTV camera in operation for every 32 British citizens. This means that a total of 1.85 million cameras currently operate in the United Kingdom. There are more CCTV cameras operating in the London borough of Wandsworth than in Dublin, San Francisco, Boston and Johannesburg combined. In the capital as a whole (not the greater region), there are 7431. This compares to just 326 operating in the city of Paris. Indeed, there are more cameras operating in the town of Wigan than in the terror-hit French capital.

British people are watched to an extent that even Orwell’s famous dystopia would have found excessive. When this is added to other forms of surveillance, Britons are reckoned (by serious observers) to enjoy less privacy than East-Germans at the time of the Stasi.

Why is this the case? Of course, the government will reflexively claim that it is for ‘our own good’ – that it is to protect us from crime, terror and accident. But if this were true, why on Earth are the citizenry of Wigan considered to be at greater risk than the Parisians?

None of the official excuses make any sense. And while I don’t want to become a tin-foil hat-wearing type, (I don’t believe in the grand conclusions of Alex Jones et al) something does need to be done if we (and our posterity) are to retain the most basic levels of dignity and freedom of action.

As is well known, Americans are more naturally attuned to the barometer of liberty than we are. On occasion, they are rather too attuned to it. But we really need to take a leaf out of their book when it is necessary to do so. The UK government currently retains the power to read our private emails, to watch what we do in the street and (in urban environments) to film our own back gardens.

This isn’t natural. This isn’t necessary.

D, LDN.

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Don’t be silly, Vladimir.

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America 911, Barack Obama, BBC, BNP, Britain, British comedy, Christianity and Islam, Christopher Caldwell, Civilisation, Coffee, David Cameron, England Pride, Europe, George Orwell, John Donne, No to Turkey in the EU, Putin, Russia, United States, Vladimir Putin

I have some respect for the Russian President Vladimir Putin. His leadership, though authoritarian and often cruel, has greatly improved the lot of ordinary Russians, among whom the President enjoys considerable affection and support. On Syria too, the President has taken a uniquely rational and firm position, much to the benefit of us all.

That being said, at this weeks G20 summit, Putin made a silly, offhand comment that has offended many in the UK. Talking to a reporter, the President is alleged to have described Britain as ‘a small island nobody listens to’.

Whatever motivated him to say it (almost certainly the Syrian debacle) and though it isn’t technically-speaking a slight on British culture, I must join with the Prime Minister in defending my little island from such a patronizing and ignorant assessment.

David Cameron’s rejoinder has so far met with mixed reviews. Shortly after Putin made the gaffe, our Prime Minister gave a bizarre speech intended to list the glories of British achievement, historic and current. Among the examples he chose were the Beatles and One Direction.

Can’t we do better?

The nation of Russia has roughly 143 million inhabitants and a land mass of 17,000,000 square kilometers. Britain has 60 million citizens and a land mass of 230,000 square kilometers. That is indeed a great difference in size, so hats off to Mr Putin for noticing this. The difference in cultural achievement however is equally large, but this time exactly inverted. Despite its size, Britain can make a claim to be the most inventive country the world has ever known.

The following list is an excerpt from an even larger list of British inventions compiled by the Radio Times:

Light Bulbs, Telephones, Steam Turbines, Electric motors, Cement, Fire Extinguishers, Photography, Chocolate Bars, Television, the Jet Engine, the Kettle, Hovercraft, Vacuum Cleaners, Stainless Steel, the Torpedo, Hypodermic syringes,  the World Wide Web, ATM machines, Carbon Fibre, the Programmable computer and the Military Tank.

Britain’s musical exports have included David Bowie, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Clash, the Sex Pistols, Radiohead, Oasis, Blur, the Smiths, Joy Division, New Order, Pulp, Adele, Massive Attack, Coldplay, Muse, the Who and the Kinks.

British writers, past and present, include Shakespeare, Martin Amis, Phillip Pullman, Byron, Coleridge, Samuel Johnson, Keats,  EL James (sorry), JK Rowling, CS Lewis, De Quincey, John Donne, George Orwell, Thomas Carlyle, Aldous Huxley and Samuel Pepys.

It’s never a bad thing to pat one’s country on the back, especially in the midst of such a bleak political and economic landscape. Whatever else Britain may be, its people are of the profoundest creative quality and without them the world would be considerably poorer.

D, LDN.

She Told us So: The Brilliance of Oriana Fallaci.

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Counter-Jihad, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, English Defence League, Eurabia, Force of Reason, George Orwell, Islam and the West, Islamification of Britain, Islamisation of London, Multiculturalism, Muslim, No to Turkey in the EU, Oriana Fallaci, Rihanna Muslim, The Rage and the Pride

“Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam. And Italy is an outpost of that province, a stronghold of that colony…In each of our cities lies a second city: a Muslim city, a city run by the Quran. A stage of Islamic expansion.”

The most beautiful, talented and inspiring political writer of the millennial age was an Italian named Oriana Fallaci.

Her name, so musically pleasant to hear and say, unlocks a reputation of beauty, courage and indefatigability (let’s not allow that last word to be forever tarnished by Mr Galloway).

Fallaci wrote, before most of us had found our bearings on the issue, the two greatest books about the Islamisation of Europe ever written – “The Rage and the Pride” and “The Force of Reason”.

These volumes are not like any other book on the subject published before or since. They are written not by an academic, or a soapbox agitator, but by a witness to history of the first rank. The language used in the expression of their content is so passionate, well-chosen and spiritual, it easily ascends to poetry. While the books aren’t particularly complex, they reward slow and thoughtful reading and settle eventually more as philosophy than journalism.

Praise for Ms Fallaci (particularly in her native Italy) often takes on a tone reminiscent of Saint-worship. This is easily explained. As a polemicist, she wrote with an emotional, Latin urgency which tends to either greatly repel or greatly endear.

When her writing repels, it shocks. When it endears, it turns one from an admirer into a devotee.

Fallaci’s prematurity created a strong and strange mystique, much like that which attaches to George Orwell and his lonely stand against prevailing orthodoxies. Fallaci like Orwell, got to the point of the era before the intellectuals. She had the correct answer before the question was widely known. To protest against Muslim immigration now is common-sense, but when Fallaci wrote those books, it was regarded as outrageous racism. Her willingness to be misunderstood in this respect truly deserves the epithet ‘heroic’.

Fallaci was instrumental in waking up the Western intellect to the horror of Muslim immigration (and not just terrorism). Her books predate those which made the anti-Islamisation position easy and fashionable. Her volumes never topped the bestseller stands either here or in Europe. She tragically died of cancer before her opinions were vindicated or broadly accepted. As terrible as such facts are, they have served to embalm her reputation from the arrows of her (numerous) critics.

Fallaci’s physical beauty greatly amplifies the effect of her writing. This brilliant, beautiful, empowered Italian woman when compared against the house-bound wretches of the Islamic World adds great emphasis to our struggle. How could we give up the cultural foundations which allow for this superior kind of womanhood?

Age and ill-health never completely diminished Fallaci’s appearance. At 75, she still looked like a film star. The fight for liberty never looked so dignified.

Leftists – of course – continue to despise her. For as long as they do this, I will despise Leftists. On dozens of occasions liberals have trotted out the same Fallaci quote in which she complains that Muslim immigrants ‘breed like rats’ and held it up as if it was a bleeding knife, hard evidence of some kind of nascent National Socialism in her personality.

But this is ridiculous. As a metaphor, it is nicely to the point and entirely correct. Muslim immigrants are breeding like rats. Rats, rabbits, bacteria…whatever you might want to compare it to, that is what they are doing, and should it continue, we will end up with a continent burning with hatred and war.

Fallaci’s tone was often furious, even – some say – ‘fanatical’, but since our enemies are so easily enlivened by the dictats of Sharia law, we could do worse than become fanatical about our own beliefs and virtues. The Muslims are fanatical about the need for women to be veiled. We can (and should) match that fanaticism with a desire that they should remain free. Let’s not be afraid of anger, even less of passion.

As we go forward in the struggle to avoid the destiny she forewarned us of, Fallaci’s books must be our manifesto. I will continue to read her and take encouragement from her words. I hope that she will not be forgotten now that her views have become widespread. No-one has yet matched her tone of moral anger, her poetry, her cruel exactness. Her words still perfectly define our challenge….

“There are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape.”

D, LDN.