Royal Marines unfurled a Union Flag after their boat was lifted out of the water by an RAF Chinook helicopter [H/T: The Telegraph]

The Death of "the West": The Next Generation!

With American reliability no longer a given, the world generations of Europeans have taken for granted has ended. In that sense, 2025 may come to be remembered as the year “the West” ceased to function as a meaningful political concept.

So whines Francis Dearnley in the Torygraph. And, to be fair, he is correct to be regretful. The problem of course is that it's hardly before time.

In reality the West died in 2002, when it failed to stand up to Saddam Hussein and enforce UNSCR 1441. But even then its death warrant had already been signed by the Blair government (or "the Blair Administration", as the scumbag would no doubt prefer his time in office to be remembered) with its single-minded assault on international law at every level: when it made the UK a pariah state with its horrific legalisation of human cloning in 2000; with Blair's enthusiastic personal support for the illegal attack on Serbia in 1999; and most shockingly of all with its violation of the most basic principle of international law, when it laid aside diplomatic immunity and Senator Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998.

It was under Blair then that we discovered that President Bush's New World Order was not to be. And of course the "joke" in retrospect is that for the globalist Left "international law" is both a Marxist shibboleth (because international courts can supposedly bring sovereign states to heel, etc.) and a means of getting their agenda codified in a way that will make it virtually impossible to repeal again (i.e. because once something's been written into some silly treaty it's very difficult to wriggle out of said "international agreement" without upsetting one's "international colleagues" - q.v. all the gnashing and wailing over Brexit!).

The answer to the riddle of why a man like Blair - a barrister by training and a devout "internationalist" by conviction - should have been frankly so cavalier about international law of course comes down fundamentally to the deep, dark Marxism at the heart of his political identity. For all his trappings of respectability (from "New" Labour right up to literally being a Knight of the Garter), Blair has never stopped believing in "the Greater Good". He has never stopped believing in the Revolution. (For him, change was and is always good - unless it be some fundamental change of direction, such as that currently being touted by Nigel Farage, etc.) And most importantly of all he has never stopped believing that history will judge him - and acquit him!

Well, now it's all coming to an end anyway. His great project to abolish Britain and incorporate its disintegrated relics into some ultra-centralised "Europe" died a death with Brexit. His genius idea that - far from being a glorified off-shore US missile base - Britain would become "a bridge" (if not a mere stepping-stone) between the new world and the old is also collapsing: as the American Right turns its attention to the West Hemisphere in accordance with a newly beefed-up version of the Monroe Doctrine; as the European mainstream continues to show no interest in investing in the enforcement of international order; and as the American Left shows ever less interest in the Real World - period!

Brit boy spirit!

The British Media-Intelligence Complex

I take a deep personal disinterest in "the military-industrial" complex - partly because it doesn't really exist, and partly because if it did exist it would probably be a Good Thing.

I'm more concerned by what I think of as the media-intelligence complex. At the end of the day, pace Oliver Stone, power does not reside in a country's "war powers" (Lenin's "barrel of a gun"). George R R Martin in fact is nearer the mark with his line that power resides where people think it resides. To control people you don't need coercion: all you need to do is control their perceptions. 

Last year, The Daily Sceptic actually started doing some digging. Yes, indeed, who'd have thought it? Spectator hacks and "Tory" arch-sillies, taking an interest in the Real World! But, credit where it's due...

Non-Spontaneous Human Combustion 

Back in 2019, online outlet Middle East Eye published an excellent investigation into something called “controlled spontaneity”, a method of psychological control over the general population devised by the state following Britain’s last major riots of 2011.

Fearing more riots may erupt during the 2012 Olympics, should any terror attack occur during it, a project was designed with the intention “to shape public responses, encouraging individuals to focus on empathy for the victims and a sense of unity with strangers, rather than reacting with violence and anger” – in 2024 terms, that means holding up placards praising Bangladeshis for supposedly saving the NHS, rather than fire-bombing any more mosques.

The whole idea was to provide “an anaesthetic for the local community” by diverting public anger instead into becoming an orgy of saccharine “Princess Diana-esque grief”, with love being the drug considered to have the greatest soporific effect. Government psy-ops agents were co-opted to hand out free flowers to strangers in ‘impromptu’ displays of public-spiritedness, or paste up posters with pre-written, focus-grouped hashtags like #LoveWillWin or #UnitedAgainstAllTerror, designed to go viral online.

Within the current context, one wonders if the present 10-day wonder of #NansAgainst Nazis, which we are told was devised by a mysterious elderly Liverpudlian anti-fascism veteran known only as ‘Pat’, was another slogan designed by a PR expert then stored away just waiting to be unleashed as soon as ‘Nazis’, not Islamists, became the new temporary public enemy number one. (The nans have since magically multiplied like amoebas to defend random Muslims even further.) Here’s a handy list of other ‘heartwarming’ events from recent days printed by the Guardian: real or psyops? You decide!

[Were the 'Spontaneous' Anti-Racism Rallies Even Real? – The Daily Sceptic]

It should go without saying that "controlled spontaneity" is more normally associated with cult dynamics and high-control groups, with corporate and ideological "fun" cultures, with therapeutic and self-help settings, with propaganda and political rallies, and of course with abusive interpersonal relationships. It's not normally associated with accountable and open "liberal democratic" governments. So one would have thought that finding such a reliable tool of authoritarian movements being employed by HMG might have raised some eyebrows on the "liberal" Left. (But then again...)

As it happens, the tactics (not to mention the language) of the British secret state may have changed over the years, but the goal clearly remains the same: to preserve the King's peace by maintaining public order, by covert means if necessary as well overt. 

So, who exactly is behind the particularly creepy manipulation of the demos? Well, the list of suspects is not inconsiderable.

• Is it the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT) at the UK Home Office - i.e. the people behind This is Woke, and including the controversial propaganda unit the Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU)?
• How about the FCDO “Counter Disinformation and Media Development” unit - which funded the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) and its organised boycott of UnHerd, amongst others?
• Don't forget the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)'s 2019 Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU), which is now (since 2022) known as the National Security Online Information Team (NSOIT). 
• And what about the MoD's Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee - who e.g. have been known to work with HuffPost, and who were last seen in 2017 trying to cover up the role played by MI6's Christopher Steele in the Trump-Russia hoax?
• Or could it be the Army's own 77th Brigade?

The BBC's relationship with the Deep State of course goes back to Orwell's time. After it had very much hit the skids with the Edward Snowden debacle, The Guardian's own relationship with SIS was evidently patched up not so long ago when Carole Cadwalladr proved herself just as willing a conduit of the MI6's own disinformation about Donald Trump as the Yankee MSM have ever been. (She's currently doing the same for Nigel Farage. Quelle surprise!) And of course there are any number of supposedly "anti-fascist" fanzines (e.g. Searchlight, et al.) where narcissistic hacks are more than happy to publish any amount of deep-state slop in return for not asking questions about where it came from.

Tom Daley

Tom Daley

Michael Henderson in The Spectator writes:

Poor Tom Daley. The cherubic diver, who dazzled as a 14-year-old at the Peking Olympics, turning the heads of Chinese girls like spinning jennies, seems to have banged his head on the board once too often. He won friends everywhere with his easy manner and Colgate smile. The boy next door, people thought, who ran errands for neighbours and lit candles on feast days. But it gets them all in the end, celebrity. He’s gone bonkers.

Daley is now 31 and based in California, where he claims to have found a contentment which eluded him in his sporting endeavours, despite grabbing a gold medal at Tokyo five years ago. The pup from Devon has become a transatlantic crasher. He was on our screens recently in Celebrity Traitors, rolling a jaundiced eye to belittle a rival, and will no doubt roll a few more in the weeks ahead, when he presents Game of Wool on Channel 4.

Game of Wool, it takes some believing, is a knitting contest in a ‘Yarn Barn’. Just the thing to cheer us all up on Sunday evenings after evensong: needles clacking, knees knocking, hearts pounding, tears flowing. We’ve come a long way from all those third-division comics and pub singers at the London Palladium. This is what the ageing starlet told the Radio Times: ‘It’s amazing what you can achieve in such a short time with just two needles or a crochet hook, and the benefits you get from knitting and crochet are just unparalleled.’

Hark at him! ‘Unparalleled benefits’! Clearly climbing a mountain, sailing a boat and learning an instrument – pursuits that stretch bodies and minds – are for lesser folk.

He’s quite a visionary, Tom. ‘It’s the thing that allows me to get away from everything and be creative.’ A knitter, he believes, is always ‘in the moment’, and this has led him on – however did you guess? – ‘a knitting journey’, all the way from Dartmoor to Bel Air.

Even by the standards of the Radio Times, a central pillar of the BBC’s re-education temple, this is gold. To underline their support for this gay icon there’s an extraordinary photograph of him posing in a two-piece outfit that resembles a cross between David Bowie in 1973 and a flowering cherry tree. Daley, looking misty-eyed, like Voltaire at Ferney, grips the hem of his garment like a fast bowler about to release an outswinger.

tomdaley, I MADE TRUNKS! 😏🧶🙌🏻

When you have been ordained as a sleb, courtiers will perform more contortions than a diver leaping from the top board. Take the Traitors schemozzle, when he responded to Kate Garraway’s innocent use of ‘flabbergasted’ by inviting viewers to mock the lady. The gesture did him few favours, because viewers know it is a useful word. For those of a certain age it brings to mind an outraged Frankie Howerd and ‘never has my flabber been so gasted’. Maybe, being half-American, with a husband who works in movies, he’s forgotten how we talk.

When it comes to current affairs, it might be wiser if Daley didn’t talk at all. ‘It’s certainly a scary time for minorities in the US. It does feel as if there’s a regression in people’s opinions and thoughts.’ This is the approved, progressive view, which is why his phizzog is plastered all over the front of the Radio Times.

In another tame interview, with Zoe Williams, one of the Guardian’s privately educated performing fleas, he gives this ball another kick. He and husband Dustin might not live in the United States for ever. ‘We’ll see what happens with democracy.’

Should they ever decide to leave California, where nobody has yet been shoved off a roof for being homosexual, or publicly flogged for committing certain acts in private, they may find a refuge in many lands that honour same-sex couples. Queers for Palestine, those enthusiastic marchers, would be only too willing to assist their relocation. Owen Jones might pocket a finder’s fee.

Daley is of course an athlete so there’s plenty of talk about empowerment and wake-up calls. Do these people, one wonders again, travel anywhere without an alarm clock chiming the hours? Whether you live in Wiveliscombe or Venice Beach, it’s boilerplate stuff passed off as the wisdom of sages.

‘Every time you unravel your knitting, you’re not starting from scratch, you’re starting from experience.’ Another chap, long ago, wrote some songs about innocence and experience. If the fool would persist in his folly, he wrote, he would become wise. So there’s plenty of time for Daley, the man-child, to find out. Meanwhile he has wool in his hands, and wool in his brain.

Tom Daley at the 2008 Olympics

Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see. 

[J E Powell]