Sunday - August 30, 2009
If we hadn’t fought World War 2, would we still have a British Empire?
Can’t wait for Turtler to dig into this.
I’m not certain Peter Hitchens (Christopher Hitchens brother) is serious. But then again. On a second reading I began to wonder. Maybe he is.
Just so you folks in the states understand. Papers here have been running stuff on the war as we approach the 70th anniversary of WW2.
Be interesting to see if on Sept. 1st or at least on the third, if any of em reproduce the original front pages from that time.
Read all of it. Then get back to us.
Last post for the evening. Late, tired, gone.
Cheers.
If we hadn’t fought World War 2, would we still have a British Empire?By PETER HITCHENS
Last updated at 6:59 PM on 30th August 2009Stop the film. We’ve seen it so many times before: the toothy, simpering features of Neville Chamberlain and his bit of paper, an unbalanced Hitler waving his arms about and shouting, the German troops pouring across the Polish border, columns of smoke over Warsaw, more columns of smoke over Dunkirk, German troops marching through Paris, the Battle of Britain, flames across London, a dogged Churchill poking through the ruins, El Alamein, the turning point, our ‘Finest Hour’, Spitfires soaring over Kent. And so on, until triumphant victory six years and tens of thousands of lives later.
The story is all wrong. If it were as good and as right as that, and if we won it, how come we look back on the Second World War from conditions we might normally associate with defeat and occupation?
We are a second-rate power, rapidly slipping into third-rate status. We have a weak currency and shrunken armed forces, deployed as auxiliaries in wars that are not in our interest, and we are largely governed from abroad.
Our Parliament is a bought and paid-for puppet chamber. Our culture and customs have been debauched and our younger generations corrupted, as subject populations are, with drink, drugs and promiscuity.
We are compelled, like an occupied people, to use foreign measures to buy butter or meat, and our history is largely forgotten or deliberately distorted in the schools to suit anti-British dogma. Those schools are unable to educate most of our children up to the levels of our main rivals, so ensuring that we provide no challenge to them. Our country has been Balkanised into provinces and regions.
Our language is invaded by foreign words and expressions. Our food and most of our consumer goods are imported, along with our TV programmes and films.
The remaining veterans of the supposedly glorious struggle, far from being gratefully honoured, often live in pinched poverty, scared of feral youths, or die neglected in squalid hospitals in a country many of them no longer recognise as their own.
Yet 70 years ago, as the Germans moved to their start-lines on the Polish border, we were the world’s greatest empire. Half the globe used our currency, we controlled vast resources and owned enormous foreign investments. We fed ourselves, dug our own coal, made our own steel, controlled our own fisheries and built our own ships, trains, cars and aircraft.
We possessed an enormous Navy, a modern Air Force and, at the same time, the most advanced welfare state in the world. We were competently administered by a small but efficient civil service. Parliament was a genuine national chamber and the Monarch a truly revered head of state. We were modestly but fiercely proud of our traditions, history and literature.
Our only rival for global power was a jealous America, to whose lofty attacks on our Empire we justly responded by pointing at their cruel segregation across the South.
We had then, as we have now, no substantial interests in Poland, the Czech lands, the Balkans or - come to that - France, Belgium or the Netherlands. Much of the Continent, not just Germany and Italy, lay under the rule of various kinds of despot or dictator, none worse than the unhinged and heavily armed regime of Josef Stalin in Moscow, with his empire of torture chambers and concentration camps. In Spain, a savage military had just defeated an equally intolerant and merciless Communist-backed coalition.
Many of us might have regretted these sad conditions, but we did not really think it was any of our concern how they ran their affairs.
What is more, we had been badly burned the last time we had involved ourselves in a Continental quarrel.
We had gained little and lost much to defend France, our historic enemy, against Germany. In a strange paradox, we had gone to war mainly to save our naval supremacy from a German threat - and ended it by conceding that supremacy to the United States, our ally.
Most of us were far from enthusiastic about the Versailles Treaty, which was the main reason for the new threat of war, and felt Germany had been treated with needless and counterproductive harshness.
We had stayed out of the two great and decisive conflicts of the late 19th Century: the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, and come to no harm as a result.
Rewind the film a little. Imagine we had been hard realists instead of sentimental romantics. If we had found a way, as we so very nearly did, to divide Hitler and Mussolini, so avoiding a threat to our Mediterranean sea-routes and bases. Imagine that we had chosen splendid isolation instead of active intervention over the quarrels of Eastern and Central Europe. It is not as if we saved the Czechs or the Poles from their various enemies by getting involved. And if we were really trying to save the borders of the Versailles Treaty, we made a pretty poor job of it.
Now the great floods of war and cold war have receded, what do we see?
Under the 1985 Schengen Treaty, the borders of continental Europe have ceased to exist, from Calais all the way to Bucharest. Schengen has cancelled Versailles after all, and a giant reunited Germany dominates Europe all the way from Londonderry to the Balkans. Beyond the German sphere of influence, an authoritarian Russia takes over. What was it we went to war for again, exactly?
If we had stayed out, think what might - and might not - have happened. Would France have risked war with Hitler if we had sat on our hands? In that case would there ever have been a war in Western Europe at all?
Might Poland have handed over Danzig and its corridor? Would Germany then have been interested in a pact with Stalin? Or would Stalin - whose aggression against Finland is now forgotten - have started a war with Germany years earlier, perhaps beginning by invading Finland and then by seizing the Baltic republics?
However such a war ended, we would have been untainted by support for either side, and strong enough to maintain our independence in whatever sort of Europe resulted.
What about the Holocaust? There seems to be a common belief that we went to war to save the Jews of Europe. This is not true. We went to war to save Poland, and then didn’t do so. After Dunkirk, we lost control of the war, ceding it first to the USSR and then to America, and had little say in its eventual aims.
When, in 1942, the Germans began their ‘Final Solution’, reliable reports of the outrage were disbelieved or sat on. Later, when the information was beyond doubt, we turned down the opportunity to bomb the railway lines that led to Auschwitz. It is certainly hard to argue that the fate of Europe’s Jews would or could have been any worse than it was if we had stayed out of the war.
So the ripples spread. No Blitzkrieg, no occupation of France or the Low Countries, no war in North Africa. But quite possibly a long war between the two worst tyrants in the world, far away from us, and giving us the chance to strengthen and modernise our armed forces in case it spread.
No desperate expenditure of our last remaining resources to pay for war, no handover of British gold reserves to the United States, no Lend Lease, and no irresistible US pressure to pay for it by handing over bases to the US Navy, or abandoning our empire.
And then no war with Japan either, since the three European powers in Asia - Britain, France and the Netherlands - would all have been in a position to defend themselves - as they were not in 1941, being either conquered or busy elsewhere. Japan might have concentrated on fighting Russia - taking advantage of Stalin’s war with Hitler - and maintained its forces in China, possibly preventing the rise to power of Mao and the communists.
Britain’s greatest military defeat in modern history - at Singapore in 1942 - would never have taken place.
Probably there would have been no Pearl Harbour either, and America, like us, would have remained above the battle. In which case it would never have built the huge armies and air forces it created after 1941, the foundation of the modern US economy. The atom bomb might well have not yet been invented.
In that case, too, the independence movements of India and Burma, both hugely strengthened by our defeat at Singapore, would have been far less ambitious and would have settled for much less. Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian pro-independence leader who won the support of Japan, would have been eclipsed by Gandhi and Nehru, who sought dominion status rather than full independence.
In that case, no partition of India, no Pakistan. And that would mean no scuttle from Palestine, no state of Israel, a Middle East quite different from what we see now. The Suez episode would never have happened.
South Africa might have stayed under the dominance of General Smuts and his United Party, so no Apartheid, which was the creation of the anti-British Nationalists. The rest of Africa, unswept by ‘winds of change’ would probably have remained under largely European rule. No Robert Mugabe. No Idi Amin. No Bokassa.
At home, our cities would have been unbombed and undamaged, depriving greedy developers of the excuse to destroy them completely. Our welfare state and public health services, already extensive but not centralised, would have continued to grow. Nationalisation, already applied to electricity supply and the national airline, would still almost certainly have extended to the coal industry and the railways, but not much further.
Imagine: no European Union, probably no Nato, no United Nations, no courts of Human Rights, no Starbucks, no McDonald’s, no kilograms, no mass migration, no terrorism. Who knows? Certainly no ‘Special Relationship’. One great change of direction can have so many effects, a fair number of them completely unpredictable.
The great undercurrent of conflict throughout the 20th Century was between Britain and the United States, with America determined to break into Britain’s protected markets, push Britain out of the Pacific and supplant British naval power with its own.
Perhaps by now the great Anglo-American war, so many times predicted and so many times averted since the uneasy peace signed between the two countries in Ghent on Christmas Eve 1814, might actually have broken out. More likely, the two nations, too closely related to want war, would have reached a settlement, but one far more advantageous to Britain than the current arrangements.
Perhaps it is because of Iraq and Afghanistan, but many of us are learning to separate our respect for the valour and stoicism of our armed forces from admiration for the politicians who so grievously mislead them.
The great cult of Churchill-worship, with which I and millions of others grew up, has been most gravely damaged by the tawdry attempts of George W. Bush and Anthony Blair to dress their wars in Churchillian clothing. Of course, they look ridiculous, like children who have raided a dressing-up box.
But they have also made me - and I suspect millions more - wonder if the ‘Good War’ was really as good as we have long believed.
Posted by peiper
on 08/30/2009 at 03:12 PM
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Permalink • Friday - August 28, 2009
Bloggus Interruptus
I’m down to the point where the computer is about to be packed up.
I won’t have internet until Tuesday afternoon.
So it looks like BMEWS will be in the capable hands of Peiper and the gang until then. Try not to break the furniture while I’m gone guys. Thanks.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/28/2009 at 08:21 AM
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Permalink • Tuesday - August 25, 2009
LOCKERBIE BOMBER … Most Brits aren’t happy about it either
I really don’t think this was meant to be pro American. Just not too sure of this toonist based on some other things I’ve seen by him.
Generally though, he is pretty good at what he does. But no matter. This is still okay.
The monkey above is supposed to be Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish justice minister.
But this is even better.
This has caused a lot of very bad press here, mostly against MacAskill.
Posted by peiper
on 08/25/2009 at 12:30 PM
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Permalink • IF OBAMA WERE TO RESIGN, CAN YOU SEE THE VP AS PRES. BUT EVEN WORSE .. PELOSI?
H/T Warning Signs
Another good editorial from Alan Caruba at Warning Signs.
If you had purchased a stock in January of this year that had lost as much of its value as Barack Obama, you would be desperate to sell it by now. The problem is, the only buyers would be the mainstream media and their stock has been falling too.
I cannot think of a single President in our 233 year history that was so disliked by so many Americans in so short a time. His polling numbers drop daily and he is poised to make history by losing the confidence and support vital to the ability to lead, let alone to administer the federal government.
It is his judgment that is the issue and, concurrent with that, his actions. If anyone would have predicted that he would impose so much debt on the nation in so short a time they would have been called mad. Barely seven months into his administration the estimated national deficit will be reset at nine trillion dollars between now and 2019.
The federal government now owns General Motors after advancing $60 billion to avoid bankruptcy and then standing by as it went into bankruptcy. We own a huge insurance company, AIG. The recent “Cash for Clunkers” program swiftly ran out of cash and may end up bankrupting participating auto dealers. It has already severely impacted the sale of used cars, a major part of the auto market.
Under Obama, an ever-increasing shadow government of “czars” has been established; people who are presumably not encumbered by the laws that govern appointed Cabinet secretaries. Most have not been vetted, nor approved by Congress and too many have unsavory backgrounds and beliefs.
The current attempt to take over one-sixth of the nation’s economy by socializing the healthcare system is being resisted by millions of Americans, some of whom are showing up at town hall meetings and creating “tea parties” to air their grievances. As many as a million will likely fill the streets of Washington to protest on September 12.
With the exception of liberalism’s “true believers”, some 28 percent of whom will always think Obama is doing a great job, people are wondering if there is some way to remove him from holding the office for the remainder of his term, doing even more damage.
Can a President resign? Yes, Richard Nixon did; the first in the history of the nation, undone by his own paranoia and over-zealous White House henchmen. That scenario is beginning to loom large in the minds of Americans when they give thought to those “czars” and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, the man who never wants to “waste” a crisis.
Americans want to clean house. Congressmen returning from a stormy recess are going to assess the value of supporting the President, the Senate Majority Leader, or the Speaker of the House. The Democrats have near total political power in Congress, but there is a limit to party loyalty and it’s called getting re-elected.
Congress has tried the “bread and circuses” approach to calming the masses. It hasn’t worked. It has tried demonizing protesters as “un-American”. It hasn’t worked. It is running out of options and those that remain include internment camps.
America has demonstrated the ability to right itself after making bad decisions such as Prohibition and previous poor leadership. It is being put to the test again by Barack Obama.
It’s time to resign, Mr. President.
Posted by peiper
on 08/25/2009 at 10:34 AM
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Permalink • Monday - August 17, 2009
It’s being called, “Pink Diplomacy” and yes , the taxpayer will fund it. Like there’s a choice?
So these folks deface their flag and make it pink, which should outrage Brits because that flag is supposed to represent the country and not just one small but highly vocal group of misfits and deviants. This pink outrage does not represent any Brit I personally know. Hey I admit it. I’m a dinosaur.
I just don’t believe a national flag should be taken so much for granted and used that way. I even wonder if it’s right when ppl use the stars and stripes as bathing suits. I know they mean no harm in it. Hell, I don’t even think the homosexuals intend any harm in it. I just don’t believe it’s right.
Jeesh I got long winded there but I have strong feeling about this stuff.
This country is not out of the financial woods by any means. There are serious problems here, the ppl are being told not to be wasteful yadda,yadda while govt. payrolls save nothing. Oh sure, take some cash away from some program or end another program. But that’s so that more councilors and ministers can take “fact finding” trips to warm climes and toast one another on the success of another nice holiday on the txpayer.
So while things are tight and money is short, this fraken govt. somehow finds the money somewhere to:
FUND FOREIGN GAY QUEER RIGHTS CAMPAIGNS IN OTHER COUNTRIES.
This, they have money for.
Foreign Office Minister takes ‘pink diplomacy’ to anti-gay nations.
The gay Foreign Office minister Chris Bryant is championing a controversial drive to fund equal-rights activists in homophobic regimes.
British missions in countries such as Jamaica, where homosexual acts are punishable by long jail terms, and Nigeria, where they can lead to the death penalty, are being encouraged to “support progress” by financing gay pride marches and legal challenges from local campaigners.
As well as targeting Commonwealth countries, “pink diplomacy” will extend to eastern Europe, where gays have suffered brutal attacks from far-right groups. Opportunities to tackle discrimination in ultra-conservative nations, such as Iran, are also being considered - cautiously.
The move risks a backlash from countries where support for homosexuality runs contrary to state teaching and religious beliefs.
So now as if that isn’t enough not so very good policy ..... This guy does a deep throat by sticking his foot in it by saying that,
Terrorism can be ‘justified’ in some circumstances.
He also said in an interview that “there were circumstances where terror was ‘effective’.”
See the problem with that is, this fellow just happens to be , The Foreign Secretary. At least for now.
Foreign Secretary, David Miliband
Posted by peiper
on 08/17/2009 at 09:38 AM
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • Gay Gay Gay! • Government • Stoopid-People • UK •
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Permalink • Wednesday - August 12, 2009
A VERY HIGH WOW FACTOR FROM PAT CONDELL ….. CAUTION, UNKIND WORDS FOR LIB-LEFT
Nothing for me to say except watch this ... I believe you’ll be most impressed. He has it right and he says it well.
My postings may be light today so happy I found this.
Cheers.
[ Drew watches the video and responds: ]
Posted by peiper
on 08/12/2009 at 09:27 AM
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • Liberals • Muslims • Racism •
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Permalink • Monday - August 03, 2009
Country/City Counter Screwy
The widget over on the top of the right sidebar is acting up today. It’s an actual bit of software that I purchased, made by NeoWorx. They are doing some maintenance. So if you get that slow Adobe Flash 10 script error message, just abort the script.
I contacted the company, and they say
Scheduled database maintenance - FINISHED
We are conducting a long-needed maintenance of your database. This may cause a few brief interruptions of your counter, but be assured that your visitor count will not be affected. Your data is SAFE! Thank you for your patience.
Which is nice, but if it isn’t working properly in half an hour then I’ll take it down for a day or two.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/03/2009 at 12:08 PM
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Permalink • Shamelessly stolen from Joe at … A YANK IN KIWI LAND …
H/T Joe, http://ayankinkiwiland.blogspot.com/
Hope and Change
You might recall that John Hinckley was a seriously deranged young man who shot President Reagan in the early 1980s. Hinckley, extremely jealous, was absolutely obsessed with movie star Jodie Foster, and in his twisted mind, loved Jodie Foster to the point that, to make himself well-known to her, he attempted to assassinate President Reagan.There is speculation Hinckley may soon be released as having been rehabilitated.
Consequently, you may appreciate the following letter from John McCain received by the staff at the mental facility treating Hinckley:
To: John Hinckley
From: Sen. John McCainIn our fine country’s spirit of understanding and forgiveness, we want you to know there is a non-partisan consensus of compassion and forgiveness throughout America.
We are confident that you will soon make a complete recovery and return to your family and join the world again as a healthy and productive young man.
Best Wishes,
John McCain
PS: While you have been incarcerated, Barack Obama has been banging Jodie Foster like a screen door in a tornado.
You might want to look into that.
Posted by peiper
on 08/03/2009 at 09:38 AM
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Permalink • Where politicians are concerned, you usually can’t go wrong in assuming the worst. A. Tiger
That’s it folks. That’s my first post for early Monday morning, and someone else wrote it for me. You may notice I did not post under humor. It’s too true for that.
Thanks Tiger.
“Where politicians are concerned, you usually can’t go wrong in assuming the worst.”
Posted by Argentium G. Tiger
Posted by peiper
on 08/03/2009 at 03:47 AM
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Permalink • Sunday - August 02, 2009
Fight Spam
I’ve been out of town for a few days. I had to go help out family out of state. No emergency, just adding muscle and sweat to a home improvement project.
Anyway, I get back and I have a couple of emails concerning spam. We may have had a spam situation, wherein one very new member sent out at least one suspiciously spammish email to another member. If everybody got such an email ( I didn’t ) then BMEWS has been spam-hacked. I don’t think that is the case though.
Ok, here’s how the blog engine works. BMEWS members are allowed to send each other emails and messages. You can click on a user’s name in the comments and this blog will do the work for you. That way one user can contact another, and I’m pretty sure it protects your email address. (I’ve never tried it, but as Super Duper Admin I can do anything, so to test it I’d have to create 2 regular membership accounts, log on as one of them, and send an email one to the other via BMEWS. Hassle for me, much?) I have everyone’s email address, and I never send out spam. I sometimes reply directly to a member when they have made an especially good comment, or when they email me directly. [ I am still a couple weeks behind on my direct emails. Sorry. ] Contact from me, the blog owner, or from Peiper, Mr. Christian, or one of our small cadre of highly trained and trusted cohorts, is not spam.
HOWEVER, some folks may feel that out-of-the-blue contact is spam. That is their right and I respect it. If you would prefer not to be contacted by other members, you can uncheck these 2 boxes in your membership profile:
uncheck “Accept email from other members of this site”, and then
uncheck “Notify me via email when someone sends me a private message”
and that should do it. I haven’t tested that either, but it seems right.
Should you make such changes, and then want to contact some other BMEWS member, you’ll probably have to go through me as an intermediary. And I’ll do for you a couple of times, but that’s about it. Don’t be uncheckin if you wants to be emailin.
I know that once or twice in the past we’ve had a small bit of annoyance when one member contacts another “out of school” ... typical flame wars kind of stuff. That isn’t what I’m talking about here today. You know spam when you see it.
So ... if you feel you have received spam from someone here in the past 3 or 4 days, write me an email and say whodunnit. If I get the same name twice - 2 spams sent - that’s a guilty verdict and the axe falls. Actually, Peiper will be manning the guillotine this time, as he has needs the practice. No worries, we keep the blade sharp. Well, mostly sharp.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/02/2009 at 05:19 PM
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Permalink • Monday - July 27, 2009
Monday afternoon and back with: Uncle Jay Explains The News. Couldn’t resist it.
Clearing weekend mail and was working on something else but had to post this for those who don’t see this guy.
It’s worth a peek.
Posted by peiper
on 07/27/2009 at 06:48 AM
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Permalink • Friday - July 24, 2009
WHAT PEOPLE LEAVE BEHIND …. AIRCRAFT AND SHIPS OF WW2.
Over the last few weeks and only a little bit at a time, the wife has been uncovering millions of bits of things left by her late mother.
The old lady was a major pack rat. Over two years ago, when the BIL was here for a visit, the three of us, he, the wife and myself, dug out the garage and discovered much junk. Things I couldn’t believe anyone would find trouble parting with. Things she didn’t even know she had anymore. But as my wife would remind me, once her mom got her hands on something, it never left. She even had her report card from the age of 12. No harm in that I guess. But so many things were stored so haphazardly and exposed to not just the elements in a leaky garage, but rodent piss and crap up in the attic among all her saved letters and cards.
Any card or letter for any occasion that she ever got, was saved. Well, not saved properly but stuffed away in bags and left. Any card or letter from anyone and not just her own kids.
Tucked away in a corner of this desk drawer is a small packet containing impossibly small brown photos and letters from her late first fiancée, whose plane was lost on a mission during WW2. The tiny packet contains the letter from his commanding officer, who knew him and wrote comforting words altho I’m not sure there are words in that kind of situation. But anyway, they’re still here in a desk that dates from the same period.
An aside. Doesn’t mean a thing really but. His name was Roy.
Recently, a new house was built next door and the new owners name is Roy.
So, about these photos. While clearing out yet more savings, and fortunately saved in a dry room and sealed for years, the wife came across these photos that date from the war. All but two are post cards. There are two plane cards that are identified as, RECOGNITION CARDS. On the back of them are also the words, “The Proficiency Test Series.”
Unfortunately, they were all apparently glued at one time, into a photo album. Whoever did it sure used a lot of glue because there are large splotches of black paper stuck to the back. Right exactly where all the technical data is. Size, speed, engines etc. Unless I can figure a SAFE way to remove the black paper to read the info under it, most of the info is lost to me. Altho actually it could easily be looked up in Google I suppose.
While this tiny collection isn’t very dramatic, no ME109s or Spitfires, I find them a treasure anyway. And so I thought you might like to see them too.
When I did the scan, the file was so large that I reduced them to what you see here. Hope I didn’t spoil anything and they show up ok on your computers.
ID Info for aircraft below.
TOP LEFT: THE IMPERIAL AIRWAYS FLYING BOAT “CALEDONIA” used on the two-way Atlantic Mail Service
TOP RIGHT: THE MAYO COMPOSITE PLANE - MAIA
... LEFT: SHORT “SINGAPORE” ............................... RIGHT: SHORT “SCION SENIOR”
The following info provided on the front of the cards.
TOP LEFT: (no name or id given)
NEW MILITARY HIGH SPEED PLANE FLYING OVER THE FLEET
TOP RIGHT: “OXFORD” AIRCRAFT (no other info or id)
BOTTOM LEFT: AIRCRAFT RECOGNITION CARDS
Part of the back that’s readable has following info.
“Proficiency Test Series”
THE DONIER DO 24
GERMAN RECONNAISSANCE FLYING BOAT.
Three 880 hp BMW 132 (? covered) radial motors. Crew of 6. Gun turrets in nose. Bomb load, 12 bombs of 110 lbs can be carried under wings.
MAX SPEED 195 at 13,000 ft.
RIGHT: AIRCRAFT RECOGNITION CARDS
“Proficiency Test Series”
THE De HAVILLAND FLAMINGO
Two 930 hp Bristol .......? all the rest is covered up.
Ships in the extended part below.
Posted by peiper
on 07/24/2009 at 09:16 AM
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • History • planes, trains, tanks, ships, big machinery, and automobiles • UK •
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Permalink • Friday - July 17, 2009
NOTES FROM PEIPER’S WORLD PRE WEEKEND. THE USUAL BIZARRE HAPPENINGS OF SOME NOTE.
SWINE FLU in the news all week.
Swine flu is reported to have caused the deaths of 29 people so far. Death has doubled in a week say authorities.
652 ppl are now being treated in hospitals and there are 55,000 new cases being diagnosed every week.
Powers that be tell us that sufferers can be diagnosed via the internet. That’s reassuring.
Half the kids in the country could be infected during the first wave.
The National Health Service has been told to plan for up to 65,000 deaths. However ... Health officials are telling people
NOT TO PANIC!
IN OTHER NEWSY BLURBS THIS WEEK IS THE FOLLOWING FROM COMRADE LEADER OF CONSERVATIVE PARTY.
This falls into one of those I couldn’t make it up themes.
The head of the party that often refers to itself as conservative, David Cameron, has said that when his party takes power again in the next elections,
they (the Tories) will pass legislation to INCREASE FOREIGN AID to needy countries. Ithant that thweet? Like England itself isn’t needy and taxed enough.
In the meantime, Brit soldiers are quite literally dying due to underfunding by the current mal-administration, and poor equipment.
I’M A UNION MAN ... STWIKE - STWIKE - STWIKE
It’s being announced that postal workers are going to strike. Again. They warn of possible mail delays lasting a week for some parts of the country and especially London.
For now BMEWS .. that’s all but Stay Tuned.
Posted by peiper
on 07/17/2009 at 02:50 AM
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • UK •
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Permalink • Wednesday - July 15, 2009
THE NEW RIGHT, ER, LEFT . Steyn on Britain and Europe
Wish I had the talent/brains to write like this guy. Oh well, thankfully I can read and so here with no comments cause I don’t need to make em,
is the truth, the whole truth and nuthin’ but .... from Mark Steyn.
THE NEW RIGHT, ER, LEFT
Steyn on Britain and EuropeAre you getting just a teensy bit tired of the ol’ “Whither The Right?” navel-gazing? Even with our good friends at The New York Times, The Washington Post et al so eager to offer helpful advice, there’s a limit to how much pondering of conservatism’s future a chap can take. So how about, just for a change, “Whither the left?”
Exhibit A: The European parliamentary elections. The Continent’s economy has taken a far bigger clobbering than America’s: Capitalism is dead, declared Cardinal Murphy O’Connor, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales. In France, President Sarkozy agrees, while being careful to identify the deceased as “Anglo-American capitalism”. And woe betide any Continental foolish enough to have got into bed with it: In Spain, the unemployment rate is 17 per cent and rising.
In theory, this ought to be boom time for lefties. As their jobs, homes and savings vanish, the downtrodden masses should be stampeding back to the embrace of the Big Government nanny’s apron strings. Instead, the Euro-left got hammered at the polls, the center-right survived, and a significant chunk of the electorate switched to the “far right” – the various neo-nationalist and quasi-fascist parties cleaning up everywhere from Northern England to the Balkans. My favorite of these new and mostly unlovely groupings is Bulgaria’s Attack party, mainly because of its name. I would suggest the Republican Party adopt it, but no doubt within a month or two the latest Bush scion would be claiming to stand for a Compassionate Attack movement, and governors of coastal states would be declaring themselves fiscally attacking but socially surrendering, and the whole brand would go to hell.
Perhaps it’s just as well. On closer inspection, Europe’s “far right” doesn’t seem to go very far at all. The British National Party’s parliamentary victories are a very belated breakthrough for Fascism, for which in Britain there were few takers back in the Thirties. So what do they stand for? Well, they won’t accept blacks or Asians as members. Typical right-wing racists, eh? Also, they want protectionist laws limiting the import of foreign goods. And they favor giving workers shares in their bosses’ companies. And they want to nationalize the public utilities, railroad companies and so forth. Economic protectionism. Worker cooperatives. State ownership. Boy, these right-wing nuts with their crazy ideas on free market capitalism.
If the British elections are beginning to sound like the dinner-theatre production of Jonah Goldberg’s book, you’re right – if by dinner you had in mind tripe, pork scratchings and mushy peas washed down with 14 pints of brown ale and a knife fight. Economically, the BNP is the Labour Party before the Blairite metrosexual makeover, and its voting base comes all but entirely from the old white working-class abandoned by “New Labour” in its pursuit of more fashionable identity groups.
Of course, economic protectionism is not its principal appeal. But yoke economic protectionism to cultural protectionism, and you’ve got an electorally viable combination. These are bad times, but they’re not just bad economically. According to a YouGov poll, the average BNP voter is a manual worker with an annual household income of 27,000 pounds – or about 2,000 pounds less than the national median. Two thousand quid isn’t to be sniffed at, but it doesn’t explain why these voters were willing to take a flyer on an openly racist party universally reviled by the media and political class and banished from public discourse.
England has (or had) a three-party system: Labour, Liberals, Tories. But on any number of issues – the European Union, immigration, crime, the remorseless one-way multiculturalism under which what were homogenous white working-class communities 40 years ago Islamize ever more rapidly with each passing day – on all these issues, the big three parties plus the BBC and the rest of the elites are in complete agreement: We don’t want to talk about it. Since the election, the grand panjandrums of the Palace of Westminster have been competing to out-Lady Bracknell each other in professing how “horrified” they are by the BNP’s success. Such protestations are invariably accompanied by ostentatious recital of their own multiculti bona fides, nicely parodied by Ed West in The Daily Telegraph: “I was just saying how awful the BNP were to my Polish cleaner yesterday. She agreed, as did my Chinese nanny, Wen or Yen, or whatever her name is. My Brazilian catamite wasn’t that bothered.”
If 15 per cent of the US electorate had voted for the American Fatherland Front or some such, you’d never hear the end of it from Le Monde and The Guardian and all the rest. But the Euro-elites have adjusted to the knuckledraggers’ lese-majeste, and are already congratulating themselves on holding the “far right”’s vote down to the low double-digits. It won’t be that low next time, but they’ll adjust to that, too. You can’t blame ‘em: It’s easier to do that than re-thinking your entire worldview, never mind trying to figure out anything you could actually do about these issues.
I doubt the new kids on the block will be able to do anything, either. But, for a while, there will be votes in impotent rage, and the economic-&-cultural protectionism twofer will eat deep into the mainstream left’s base. They in turn will not change – for, in Britain and elsewhere, they have determined to celebrate diversity even unto societal death.
Posted by peiper
on 07/15/2009 at 02:24 PM
Filed Under: • Blog Stuff • Editorials • International •
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