Islamic terrorists can always rely on the British courts to give them victory.

Take the news that yet another suspected terrorist has scored a legal victory against the Government. He is a senior al-Qaeda operative living openly in London, security agencies say. The man, who can be identified only as G, is one of five people who challenged the Treasury’s powers to freeze terrorist suspects’ bank accounts in a successful High Court action.

Yesterday security sources described him as “a key player” who acts as a conduit between British-based extremists and the al-Qaeda leadership hiding out in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Under the Government’s al-Qaeda Order, G was one of 58 people forced to apply to the Treasury for a licence to obtain £10 a week for basic expenses. His grocery receipts had to be sent to the Treasury for scrutiny and he was required to seek permission if he wanted to borrow a car, obtain an Oyster card or buy shoes. He strongly denies any involvement in terrorism and maintains that he is a Muslim missionary on behalf of an apolitical, non-violent religious group.  I bet! The  judge ruled on Thursday that financial sanctions imposed on him by the Treasury, which led to his bank account being frozen and his benefit payments stopped, were unfair and unlawful. Mmm– not as unfair as detonating Muslims on the London transport system.

It strikes me that the British judiciary have been turned into virtual accomplices to the fermentation of Islamic terrorism. For starters, this guy should be locked up, then deported, in the interests of the British people. But of course the Human Rights Act trumps that and provides a victory to Al Queda.

A Friend of mine was awarded today the Silver Star with a Combat V and a Purple Heart. This is for him.

Whe-hey! It’s Friday night Jukebox time!

As you probably know, when it comes to rock ‘n’ roll music, I appreciate a loud and in-your-face dose of punk and indie, such as The Hives, or The Cure, or my favourite band Joy Division. Not to everyone’s taste, I know. But I am also an enthusiast of classical music, and especially of the work of Ludwig Van Beethoven. His work, to me, has a soul and spirituality (for want of a better word) unmatched by any of his peers. His music seems to dig very deep into the heart and soul of things.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is widely regarded as the very crown, the absolute zenith of the classical symphonic form, and I’d like to share a YouTube video of part of it, and to explain what this music says to me. Here’s the vid – in my opinion the work is rendered at far too fast a tempo here, but there you go…

Beethoven’s work always seems to be centred around a deep struggle to find meaning, and peace within oneself.  His musical themes are often problematic, and nowhere is this struggle displayed more vividly than in the 9th.

The main struggle, the main question to be solved, is placed right upfront, in the first movement. Here, the music is like an aural description of an insomniac, desperate to find a sleep which evades him. It’s almost schizophrenic in its tossing and turning: At one moment a wave of serenity; the next moment all is darkness and turmoil. The rhythm keeps leaping from one beat to another. Just when you think you’ve "caught" the beat, it changes, and you have to readjust to it again. In the middle of the movement, things resolve into an almighty, thunderous, crashing/crushing apoplexy, with the underlying chord of A major held fast throughout the phrase…. but then it un-resolves back into a land of uncertainty. Several of the sub-themes are repeated, and then it "breathes a sigh of almost-despair", before launching into a coda of immense power and fury, a huge, apocalyptic death-defying scream of "Why….?" The first movement ends, with its central argument completely unresolved, it’s awesome "challenge to the gods" still unanswered.

The next two movements are (as I see them) attempts at escapism from the real problem, in different ways. The second movement, I visualise as a demented horse galloping along, with a salivating mouth and a crazed, demonic laughter in its nostrils. This is Caligula’s Rome, an orgy of self-satisfaction and self-gratification. Yes, it truly GALLOPS along, but there’s this very unsettling undertone of…almost tangible evil, within the second movement. It doesn’t work, it doesn’t settle the problem.

The third movement, by complete contrast, delves into a sense of overblown sentimentality and romanticism. The tempo here is "andante", and to be sure, there are some exquisitely beautiful moments in this movement.  I have shed tears while listening to this piece, but, if you really look at what the composer is doing, I think that this luscious, romantic movement is not meant to be taken as "sincerely" as, say, the second movement of his 3rd Piano Concerto. It’s still just an illusion, an attempt to find ultimate solace in "feelings". This is accentuated towards the end of the movement, when a dark minor chord moves in, as if to question the assumptions of the preceding phrases. The central question remains unresolved, and our insomniac subject has only fooled himself once more. Eventually, the movement ends quietly, and uncertain of itself.

Movement 4 (the famous Choral movement) comes crashing in with a flourish of angry brass! Here is the rub! Here, we’ll settle this damned issue once and for all!  One by one, the central themes of each preceding movement are briefly re-examined, and are abruptly swept aside. None of what has gone before will fully answer the problem. So… what, then? Gradually, the "Ode To Joy" theme is introduced via the instruments, but in a sudden, spectacular "coup-de-theatre" moment, everything comes to a sudden halt. Then, something entirely new (at that time) in symphonic music makes its startling debut: The human voice. "O friends! Not these sounds! Rather, let us sing something joyful!" And at last, instrumental music joins up with human lyrics, to produce a hymn, an ode to our shared humanity. The resolution to the composer’s spiritual struggles is expressed by a metaphorical linking-up of arms, a shared cry that we are one family, one body. What is my struggle is your struggle also. What is my pain and suffering is also yours. The answer to it all? – Who knows, but at least as a first step, let us link arms and sing together, suffer together, rejoice together.

Beethoven’s Ninth truly is the greatest piece of classical music ever written. It’s difficult to get to know (as is common with all classical music – it’s a right pain; you’ve got to listen to it several times before you can even begin to get familiar with it) but if you’re into music, it is SO worth getting to know this magnificent work of art.

One thing which I find especially poignant about it, is that Beethoven never actually heard a note of it. He was absolutely stone deaf by the time he wrote this symphony,  and when he conducted its premier performance, he was oblivious to the applause from the crowd, until someone made him turn and face the audience, and see their reaction to it. I just can’t find the words to express how utterly gobsmacked I am at that.  Anyway, hope you enjoy it.

Interesting to read that the local Council Elections planned for 2009 here in Northern Ireland have been "postponed" until 2011 – at the special request of our wonderful new Stormont Executive. I guess those DUP guys just didn’t want the prospect of suffering many more Dromore by-elections. It’s amazing to see the fascist tendency in the DUP/IRA marriage assert itself so quickly – the people may speak but they will be made to wait until it suits our new political overlords. Isn’t it GREAT to have our own politicians in power?

Interesting to view what has happened to UK immigration ever since the Labour Party came to power in 1997. Why it’s almost as if Labour has gone OUT OF ITS WAY to bring in Asian and African immigrants. Perish the thought!

So, who would have thought it?  Muslims would like to see Mecca Mean Time replace Greenwich Mean Time"

" A conference was recently held in Qatar, entitled: "Mecca, the Center of the Earth, Theory and Practice." The meeting was attended by scholars and scientists, though there was remarkably little science on show. The scholars suggested that Mecca was the real "center" of the earth. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, “spiritual leader” of the Muslim Brotherhood, claimed that "modern science" had "evidence" to show Mecca was the center of the earth. Another speaker, a geologist, claimed that the English had imposed Greenwich Mean Time upon the world, and it was time that the situation changed. He also claimed that the longitude of Mecca placed it in perfect alignment to magnetic north."

 Adrian Morgan has written an excellent article on this issue and it is well worth your time reading it in full. Highly recommended.

Here we go with an erudite little ditty from the late Mr Ian Dury and his blockheads – do pardon the language ladies! 

OK – we all know that we need to circumspect about what the CIA tells us but we cannot just dismiss the news that US intelligence agencies have produced evidence which the White House says proves that North Korea helped Syria build a secret nuclear reactor before it was bombed by Israeli warplanes last year"!  After seven months of secrecy, the Bush administration has gone public with what it claims is video evidence of North Koreans at the suspected nuclear reactor in Syria, just before it was destroyed on 6 September last. What were the doing – on holiday?  

I tend to believe that North Korea and Syria would co-operate on this since both are vipers, nations with corrupt leadership interested in the retention of absolute power at all costs. I can understand why the US State has immediately gone on the attack here challenging what has been released and implying Dick Cheney is behind it all – Condi and her pals are big on appeasement of both these terror regimes these days and it is obviously a bit awkward  for them if the true degree of this nuclear co-operation is exposed. The biggest laugh I got however was the news that the UN is "concerned" about the fact the US did not come running to them with all the evidence it has now produced. I can give them the  answer – it’s because Israel and the US actually wanted a RESULT here -  not years of pathetic un-equivocation. Well done to Israel for taking out Boy Bashar’s nuke facility – next stop Iran! 

THE UNITED KINGDOM’S descent into Third World despotism was stalled slightly yesterday when the High Court reminded the government that it is not above the law and is bound by constitutional constraint:

Rules imposed under UN laws to enable the freezing of terror suspects’ assets are not lawful because they “bypassed” Parliament, the High Court has ruled. Mr Justice Collins allowed challenges by five men whose assets were frozen under the Treasury-imposed powers.

The British state has imposed a complete economic embargo on 70 people without legal authority, warrant or due process. The mechanisms by which the government ‘achieved’ this are the Terrorism (UN Measures) Order 2006 and the 2006 al-Qaeda and Taliban (UN Measures) Order, each of which were made under section 1 of the 1946 UN Act in order to implement resolutions of the UN Security Council. These Orders are not creatures of Parliament, but of the Privy Council, which makes them on behalf of the Crown, and is the monarch’s principle advisory body.

Jonathon Crow QC, for HM Treasury had told him (Collins) the UK government would left in violation of a UN Security Council order were the orders to be quashed immediately … A spokesman said the asset-freezing regime made an "important contribution" to national security by helping prevent funds being used for terrorism and was "central to our obligations under successive UN Security Council resolutions".

Fer cryin’ out loud. When the EU isn’t the source of our law, it turns out to be the UN! Listen, Jonathon Crow QC, Gordon Brown doesn’t make our law; neither do the Treasury, the Privy Council and certainly not the UN, which can get stuffed. I know I know, these are terror suspects, people will say, and these orders apply only to terror suspects. Yeah, we’ve heard that one before.