Dear Harold,


I am now back from the family holiday in Slovakia. But I was not wholly inactive there. Various to report:



1. My dear friend, Richard Blake, whom you may know as the critically-acclaimed and internationally best-selling author, was briefly with me to speak at the launch of his newly-translated Teror v Konštantínopole. This was indeed a glittering event in the Panta Rhei bookshop in Bratislava, attended by the brightest and the best in Slovak culture.


This was followed by a couple of newspaper interviews and a longish television appearance. There is a video, and I will make this and all else available in due course.


For those who missed this particular launch, there will be another in November, when yet another of Mr Blake's books will come out in Slovak, and he will tour the country, giving speeches and interviews. Stand by for further details.


2. While in Slovakia, Mr Blake was interviewed by Andy Duncan of the Cobden Centre, all about inflation in the Roman and Byzantine Empires. This was a long and interesting discussion. Sadly, the person in charge at the Cobden Centre was plainly lacking in literary taste and common sense, and thought nothing of making himself and his employers look like clowns by having the recording deleted. Nevertheless, the recording has now made its way to Radio Free Market. So has the only person at the Cobden Centre worth talking to.


3. I have also been interviewed by Radio Free Market. Here is a long recording of what I said last month about the decline and fall of English liberty.


4. While in Slovakia, I took part in a BBC Radio 5 discussion. This was in response to a Guardian-writing journalist called Kia Abdullah, who claimed on Twitter that she smiled at the death of three white, middle-class youths. I went on against Sunny Hundal, an Indian lefty, who tried to defend Miss Abdullah.


My points were -

  1. If Miss Abdullah were being done over by the authorities for her remarks, she could count on the immediate and uncompromising support of the Libertarian Alliance. Since she is not being done over, I could ignore her right to freedom of speech in the abstract and comment on her use of that right.
  2. Her comments, as reported, showed a most unusual degeneracy of character. No normal person would ever laugh over the accidental deaths of these young men, or seek to increase the private grief of their parents. I said that I hoped Miss Abdullah would be shunned for the rest of her life as a moral leper.
  3. There was a further consideration. If a white journalist had made similar comments about the death of young men with names like Leroy Jones and Jesmond Akimbo, he would have been crucified at once. There are people in this country capable of finding racism in a bus queue. How will these people treat Miss Abdullah?

I obviously caught Sunny Hundal by surprise. He was reduced to feeble irrelevance. A question I could have asked, but chose not to, was whether he would have been so eager to go on air to defend a white journalist who had laughed at the death of black people. His presence in this debate, and his general conduct, could be seen as one of those acts of ethnic solidarity he and his friends have made virtually impossible for whites.

Even if there was no racial aspect in his defence – even if he were simply defending a fellow lefty – he deserved the good kicking I gave him. Since time out of mind, these people have been telling us how much better they are than everyone else. Well, here is one of those occasions when the mask has slipped, and what these people really look like is not a pleasant sight.

Oh, and I suppose I should also confess that, in the five minutes before I went on, I looked up Mr Hundal on Google. I was much saddened by all the horrid things he had said about me on his blog - he even called me a "politically and historically illiterate prick." I suppose this may, in some small way, have caused me to bite the man's head off live on air.

5. Here is a speech that I gave in Bratislava to INESS on the 13th July 2011. It is notable mainly for a comical slip that I made in the question and answer session. I was trying to distinguish between liberation struggles and terrorism, and neglected to insist that the cause should be just. In consequence, I suddenly found myself admitting that Margaret Thatcher was a legitimate target in the Sinn Fein/IRA murder attempt in 1984. The mental crunching of gears is comical or pathetic - possibly both.


6. I hope, during the next few months, to write a fantasy novel That will rival The Churchill Memorandum as satire from the right. I will also publish a volume of critical essays. Right now, however, I must go shopping.

With love to all - even those who have done nothing or less than nothing to deserve it,


Sean

--
Sean Gabb

Director, The Libertarian Alliance (Carbon Positive since 1979)

sean@libertarian.co.uk Tel: 07956 472 199

Skype Username: seangabb

Postal Address: Suite 35, 2 Lansdowne Row, London W1J 6HL, England


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What would England and the world have been like in 1959 if there had been no Second World War? For one possible answer, read Sean Gabb's new novel "The Churchill Memorandum". If you like Bulldog Drummond and Biggles and the early James Bond, this will be right up your street: http://tinyurl.com/39lpade.Don't be frightened of the TinyURL - the original is just too long for a sig file.