Monday 27 August 2012

Issue 94, August 2012


Nation Revisited 
# 94, August 2012. 
 
Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining
 
George Osborne has reversed his policy on fuel prices. This follows his climb-down on takeaway food, mobile homes and charity donations. In fact there’s nothing much left of his budget. The government’s attempt to reduce public spending is on hold and our borrowing is up on last year. We are in the same position as Greece except that we can’t ask the European Financial Stability Facility for a bailout. The ratings agencies have been too busy screwing the eurozone to notice us conjuring another £50 bn of “quantitative easing” but if they take away our triple-A rating the cost of borrowing will rise and things will get even worse.

We desperately need to stop wasting money but our borders are still wide open. If newcomers have got their elderly parents with them we will provide them with a pension. If they’ve got three, four, five or more kids we will find them school places and family allowances. If they are sick or unable to work we will look after them and if they suffer the slightest insult or inconvenience we will compensate them. Dave Cameron has promised to stop Greeks from coming to Britain to escape their economic problems but Third World immigrants are welcome. He can say what he likes about Greeks because they are Europeans but if he pledged to keep out blacks or Asians he could be arrested under the infamous Race Relations Act.

If our economy continues to stagnate and our deficit continues to grow we will be forced to stop taking in people from all over the world. Successive governments imported cheap labour to undercut our wages. They never worried about the views of the British people or the disastrous effects that mass immigration had on our cities. But they will be forced to stop the influx when we run out of credit and have to go cap in hand to the IMF.
 
The governments of several European countries are being forced to limit immigration by the rise of populist parties; but we Brits are unlikely to go down that road. Our salvation will come through our impending bankruptcy. It may cost us our standard of living and destroy the welfare state but every cloud has a silver lining.

Many law-abiding immigrants have settled here successfully and made a contribution but others have send money home or put it overseas bank accounts ready for their departure. In the age of cheap travel and instant communications people are used to flying around the world and keeping in touch with friends and family. We would not have to use force to get rid of them; if we stopped their benefits there would be a mad rush to get out of the country. 
 
No doubt Hilary Clinton will lecture us on human rights but our static economy simply cannot sustain this level of Third World immigration. The UK population now stands at a record 63.1 million. If we need extra labour there is plenty available near at hand without importing people from all over the world.

Foreign Policy
 
I was recently accused, by a regular reader, of supporting Saudi Arabia. Nothing could be further from the truth. I believe in freedom of religion and I deplore attempts by Nick Griffin and the English Defence League to demonise Muslims. But that does not mean that I support the reactionary and oppressive regime in Riyadh.
 
I have always opposed British involvement in Arab affairs. I was against Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq and Dave Cameron’s intervention in Libya. And I warned against being dragged into war in Syria and Iran. I am opposed to British military forces being used for foreign adventures and I refute the government’s propaganda for our presence in Afghanistan. Far from safeguarding British security our occupation of Helmand province endangers British soldiers in the field and encourages terrorist attacks at home. As I write we have just lost another three soldiers.
 
I support the United Nations Organization because it does valuable work in the fields of medicine and education. We need an international forum to discuss border disputes before they become wars. And it’s important that the world agrees on basic standards of civilization. We were right to support UN Resolution 242 calling for Israel to withdraw to her internationally recognized borders and that should be the basis of our Middle East policy.

Britain is an arms producing nation and our defence industry is a massive employer of labour and a major taxpayer. In May of this year (2012) BAE signed a £1.9 bn deal with the Saudis for the sale of Hawk jet trainers. There is no shortage of such aircraft. The Saudis could have gone to the US, Russia, China or France but they chose to buy British. I support this deal because I want British plane makers to be employed; not because I like Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz or his medieval regime.
 
If Britain gave a positive lead in foreign policy our fellow Europeans might follow. But we cling to the Atlantic Alliance and France and Germany follow suit. The upheaval in the Arab world has ousted regimes that relied on American bribery. This must worry Israel. They knew where they were with the old dictators but they are not so sure about the Muslim Brotherhood. But whatever happens we should stick to diplomacy and not get involved in trade boycotts or military expeditions. The Americans appointed themselves policeman to the world; we should let them get on with it.

Public Opinion
 
The voice of the people is supposed to be the voice of God but it’s more likely to be the voice of big business speaking through the media of press and broadcasting. Public opinion is not a spontaneous thing it is the result of editorial direction by the bosses of newspapers and television stations. As I write Syria is in the news and most people would say that the civil war raging in that country is an attempt by the oppressed people to throw off a mad dictator. 

Many of the people holding this opinion know nothing about Syria. They could not tell you where it is situated, or what the population is, or anything about its history and culture. But they are perfectly sure that the rebels are right because they are supported by the West and that Bashir al-Assad is wrong because he is supported by Russia. This is not the result of any process of reasoning but simply because Rupert Murdoch says so.
 
Britain’s enemies are frequently mad. Napoleon was mad and so were Kaiser Bill and Adolf Hitler. They all went in for carpet-chewing and foaming at the mouth. And they were all driven by world domination and unmentionable sexual appetites. Fortunately we had sane, rational and happily married leaders like the Duke of Wellington, Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. All of them pinnacles of Christian charity and humility. And now that we are threatened by the mad and evil Bashir al-Assad we have the heroic figure of William Hague to protect us. Proof, if any were needed, that God is indeed an Englishman. 

But Syria is not the only mystery to the great British public. Economics has got them completely flummoxed. They think that the subprime mortgage crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers were all down to the euro. And most of the misinformed readers of the popular press have absolutely no idea that the USA, Japan and the UK are as broke as Greece. When Dave Cameron makes his vainglorious pronouncements at European conferences the rest of the delegates fall about laughing; it’s only our newspapers that take him seriously. A prime minister who presides over a national debt of £1.2 trillion and the creation of £375 bn in “funny money” is hailed as another Francis Drake who will save us from the EU Armada.

The government is influenced by the media and their policies are decided in the boardrooms of international corporations. The popular press baffle their simple-minded readers with faux-patriotism. They support the Atlantic Alliance but never miss an opportunity to knock the EU. They blame it for immigration but we had millions of Third World immigrants long before we joined the Common Market in 1973. Enoch Powell made his “Rivers of Blood” speech way back in 1967. We have taken in an estimated million Poles since 2004 but they are industrious Europeans who are easily assimilated. The real and present danger is the continued influx of Afro-Asians who do not come from Europe but from the Commonwealth.

The Flame That Never Dies
 
Ideas, like matter, cannot be destroyed. For almost a century patriotic Britons have been fighting to build a political system based on social justice and opposed to atheistic communism. Mosley and the BUF made an impact in the 1930s but the most destructive war in human history put paid to their efforts. Mosley tried again after the war with Union Movement but people were enjoying the post-war boom and didn’t want to hear that we were about to go bust. Union Movement was wound up following the death of Oswald Mosley and his principle officers but it had already achieved its main objective when the UK joined the Common Market in 1973.

The fight against usury and Third World immigration was taken up by the National Front but they were against the Common Market and proposed a union of Britain with the White Dominions. The NF grew steadily until 1979 when Margaret Thatcher destroyed them by saying that she understood people’s fears of “being swamped” by immigration. They regrouped as the British National Party and won council seats throughout the country, a seat on the Greater London Authority and two seats on the European Parliament. But thirty years after the collapse of the NF they repeated the performance. They still have their two seats in Europe but their chances of retaining them are slim and they have been overtaken by Ukip; an angry mob of disgruntled Tories stuck in an imperial time warp with no concept of race or culture beyond the trans-Atlantic use of the English language.
 
When the Soviet Union collapsed after 70 years of communist repression the priests of the Russian Orthodox Church suddenly appeared as if by magic and carried on ministering to their flock as though nothing had happened. Such is the power of ideas. Communism couldn’t wipe out the faith of the Russian people and greedy Western materialism has not extinguished the flame that never dies. We are still here and our ideas are still relevant. 

Parties come and go but the urge to build a better Britain has never gone away. We are still being swindled by international finance and governed by corrupt politicians just as we were before the war when the blackshirts mobilized. Their flags and banners belong to the 20th century but their defiant spirit lives and will never die. 

From Nation # 5 April 1974
 
(In 1974 the world was reeling from a fourfold increase in the price of oil resulting from the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Today we are still suffering from the Financial Crisis of 2008. Europe, America and Japan are deeply in debt but the proposed EU fiscal union is a step in the right direction. Self-sufficient blocs such as Europe, the Russian Federation and the North American Free Trade Agreement will not be at the mercy of the rate-fixers.)  
 
Britain now has a minority government; the Tories collected the most votes but Labour captured more seats and the Liberals run their usual third. Our economic crisis continues under the new administration. Like Ted Heath before him Harold Wilson knows only one way to deal with our crushing burden of debt; to run to the international pawnbrokers for a billion dollar loan. They still haven’t learned that it’s impossible to borrow your way out of debt. As soon as one loan is repaid another must be opened. We are working flat out but all of our money is going to the banks.
 
As the debt spiral brought down the government at home it also toppled that of France, but with a wave of the presidential hand Pompidou reinstated it.

In Italy the 36th government since the murder of Mussolini collapsed due to the same problem of debt. The Italians have tried almost every parliamentary permutation without success; their problems cannot be solved by shuffling parties.
 
Belgium has just put together another patchwork coalition and has to insist on compulsory voting to get her electors to bother. 

In Canada their minority government has barely survived a vote of no confidence.
The United States prepares to impeach her president who seems to have had his finger in every pie.

Japan faces a general strike and possible civil-war as her much-lauded economy breaks up.
In India the police are forced to fire on the desperate victims of food racketeering as Mrs Gandhi takes Tiffin with the Maharaja of Notsobad. 

Granny Golda Meir hangs on in Israel against the criminal lunatics of Likud and with a population disenchanted with military adventure.

The Irish government finds itself powerless to deal with a terrorist army that threatens both Dublin and Belfast.

Debt, inflation, chaos, murder, anarchy – this is the record of elective democracy in Britain and throughout the world. Democracy is supposed to be government of the people, for the people and by the people. It is in fact dictatorship of the people, for the bankers, by crooks, liars, fools and failures.
 
What’s left to negotiate?
 
Dave Cameron says that he wants to renegotiate Britain’s membership of the EU. But what’s left to negotiate?  We have opted out of the euro and the Schengen border agreement. We are only nominally in the EU and it’s difficult to see how we could loosen our terms of membership without leaving altogether. Of course that is exactly what the rightwing of the Tory Party want. They want us to negotiate the same deal as Norway, Iceland and Switzerland.
 
But even if we did we would still have to conform to international specifications that are based on the EU. We could not export anything in non-metric sizes so the idea of returning to the old weights and measures is a non-starter. 

The other factor is that many American and Japanese companies are based in the UK in order to gain access to the EU. If we quit the EU a lot of them would relocate to take advantage of the world’s biggest market.
 
We would not have to pay our dues to the EU but we would spend whatever we saved on new legislation. Thousands of specialized lawyers would be required to draft new regulations and the resultant confusion would clog up the courts for years.
 
There is already confusion about the various pan-European agreements that we are party to. The European Court of Human Rights was a post-war British initiative that is not part of the EU. And our military ties to NATO are endorsed by the Lisbon Treaty but are not governed by it. If Dave Cameron is serious about “repatriating powers to Westminster” he must quit NATO and tear up the Anglo-French Defence Agreement of 2010; this is the basis of our defence strategy. 
 
All of this can be done, at a price, but few of those who scream for independence have thought it through. Existing agreements allow us to import gas through the network of pipelines linking us to the mainland; electricity from the French national grid and freight via the channel tunnel. All of these contracts would have to be renegotiated if we quit the EU. We shouldn’t expect any improvement in jobs if the rightwing Tories get their way but there will be plenty of work for lawyers.
 
The North-South Divide
 
The UK press has resorted to the Herrenvolk theory to explain the European debt crisis. They point to the fact that Greece, Italy and Spain are in the south but they forget that many of the northern states have been in the same position.
 
The UK was rescued by the IMF in 1976 when Harold Wilson was handed £2.3 bn just in time to stop the Natwest Bank (RBS) from collapsing. That would be worth about £23 bn in today’s money. Gordon Brown sold half of Britain’s gold reserves in 1999 for the knockdown price of £3.5 bn and Dave Cameron has just issued another £50 bn in QE. Iceland was given $4.6 bn by the IMF in 2008. Latvia received 7.5 bn euros in 2008 and Ireland got 85 bn euros in 2010. There have also been massive internal bailouts by Sweden, Finland and Germany. 
 
The financial crisis in Europe is governed by the trade index not the cephalic index. And when Standard & Poor’s assess the wealth of nations they use calculators rather than cranial calipers. Every state in Europe has enjoyed good times and bad and every one of them have contributed to the sum total of European achievement. We will reform the economic system by adopting the ideas of John Maynard Keynes and Oswald Mosley; not those of Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
 
The USA, Japan, the UK and Europe all have massive national debts, but China, Switzerland and the Gulf States have got so much money they don’t know what to do with it. Eventually there will have to be worldwide redistribution of capital, whether the international banks like it or not.                 

Who Runs the World?
 
Bob Diamond the disgraced former chief executive of Barclays is a Boston boy whose family name was originally O’Daimain. He has no Jewish connections but Marcus Agius the former chairman of Barclays is married to Katherine de Rothschild of the famous banking family. The Rothschilds have controlled Britain ever since Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli borrowed £4 million from them in 1876 to buy a majority interest in the Suez Canal. A policeman earned £4 per month in 1876.

In 1938 Captain Maule Ramsay MP exchanged angry correspondence with the Chief Rabbi of Scotland Dr Salis Daiches. Ismay Ramsay had made a speech to the Arbroath Business Club in which she accused the Jews of leading a communist plot to take over the world. Dr Daiches demanded that she name those Jews involved or withdraw the accusation. Captain Ramsey replied on his wife’s behalf:

The Jewish group concerning which the reference that Dr Daiches dislikes was made is, of course, the Third Communist International. Does Dr Daiches deny that that body works for world revolution? The Jewish complexion of that body is clearly set out in a booklet published on March 26, 1938, entitled ‘The Rulers of Russia’. It is written by the Rev Denis Fahey CSSP, and bears the imprimatur of the Archbishop of Dublin. It states that, of the 59 members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1935, 56 were Jews (giving the names) and the remaining three, namely Stalin, Lobow and Ossinsky, were married to Jewesses. If that does not constitute, in Dr Daiches opinion, ‘a group of Jews working for world domination’, perhaps he will indicate what clearer definition he would suggest.
Captain Maule Ramsay trusted Denis Fahey’s information but senior members of the Catholic Church were not so sure. Archbishop John McQuaid wrote:
 
Dr Fahey will certainly not err in doctrine, but he is capable of making statements and suggestions that are not capable of proof by any evidence available to the censors. I have been obliged to watch carefully his remarks upon the Jews. He will frequently err in good judgment, and this error will take the shape of excerpts from newspapers as proof of serious statements, unwise generalizations and, where Jews are concerned, remarks capable of rousing the ignorant or malevolent. In his own congregation, Fr Fahey is not regarded as a man of balanced judgment. He is a wretched Professor, obscure and laborious.
 
Captain Maule Ramsay MP was imprisoned without charge in 1940 under Defence Regulation 18B together with Oswald Mosley and 1500 other peace campaigners. He wrote the following sacastic poem on House of Commons notepaper on 4th September 1939 – the day after war broke out.
 
Land of dope and Jewry
Land that once was free
All the Jew boys praise thee
Whilst they plunder thee
Poorer still and poorer
Grow thy true-born sons
Faster still and faster
They’re sent to feed the guns

Land of Jewish finance
Fooled by Jewish lies
In press and books and movies
While our birthright dies
Longer still and longer
Is the rope they get
But – by the God of battles
‘Twill serve to hang them yet
 
Modern critics of the money power should remember that capitalists come in all shapes and sizes. The top ten richest people in the world according to Forbes magazine are:

Carlos Slim, Mexico, Telecoms, $73.5 bn
Bill Gates, USA, Microsoft, $53bn.
Warren Buffet, USA, Berkshire Hathaway, $47 bn.
Mukesh Ambani, India, Reliance Industries, $29 bn.
Lakshmi Mittal, India, Steel, $28.7 bn.
Lawrence Ellison, USA, Oracle Data, $28 bn.
Bernard Arnault, France, Fashion, $27.5 bn.
Elke Batista, Brazil, Oil & Gas, $27 bn.
Amancio Ortela, Spain, Retail, $25 bn.
Karl Albrecht, Germany, Aldi Supermarkets, $23 bn.


The only one with a Jewish connection is Lawrence Ellison. His biological mother was Jewish but he was brought up by Christians and does not practice the Jewish religion. And none of them are bankers. Warren Buffet sells financial advice but he only tips established companies and never speculates. Jews are undoubtedly influential in the media, show business and politics but they do not run the world. 

Crime and Punishment
 
Following allegations of false accounting, money laundering and rate fixing at Barclays the public might have expected prosecutions. None has been forthcoming but the full weight of the law has been brought to bear on former England captain John Terry who was accused of racially abusing fellow footballer Anton Ferdinand. Despite appearing to mouth racist obscenities John Terry who denied the charges was found not guilty after a five day trial at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

We seem to have got our priorities mixed-up. The Borders Agency has lost control of immigration and doesn’t know how many illegal aliens have slipped through the net. The FSA has clearly failed to regulate the banks. And a government committed to reducing the national deficit is actually spending more money. We can’t control our borders, our banks or our bureaucrats but we’ve got racial abuse under control.
 
We are reducing police manpower to save money but we are paying 775 members of the House of Lords £300 per day just for turning up. Lords are either appointed by the government for alleged services to the country or they are Bishops of the Church of England or descended from the Norman conquerors that ravaged Britain almost a thousand years ago. They have no real power but they can delay decisions made in the House of Commons. 
 
Attempts to reform the upper house have been blocked by the same irresponsible Tory rebels that are demanding our exit from Europe. If Dave Cameron doesn’t stand up to them they will bring down the coalition and return us to a lunatic Labour government.

Issue 93, July 2012


Nation Revisited 
# 93, July 2012. 
 
Fears and Expectations
 
In the vintage TV series Dad’s Army Private James Frazer played by John Laurie constantly warned his comrades, “We’re all doomed.” He came from the cold and windy Isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides and his outlook was as bleak as his homeland. If Private Frazer was alive today he would probably be a member of one of the far-right parties. They are chronically pessimistic and believe that the country is dying, the white race is dying, and we’re all doomed.
 
This pessimism started years ago when we expected the Soviet Union to launch an attack on the West. A popular song of the time was “It’s Good News Week – someone dropped a bomb somewhere, contaminating the atmosphere and blackening the sky.” The nuclear threat has passed into history but we are now threatened with Afro-Asian inundation, global warming and sovereign debt. But instead of offering solutions to these problems the far-right likes to frighten everybody.
 
It hasn’t dawned on them that people are reluctant to vote for parties that promise nothing but death and destruction. If they offered even a glimmer of hope it might get them a few votes but that would mean dropping their apocalyptic message. They have been preaching gloom and doom for so long that they believe it themselves. And they have never understood the public’s adverse reaction to their histrionics.

A respectable pensioner who was once a member of John Tyndall’s para-military Spearhead formation tells a story from 1962. The Tyndall gang was fighting a mock battle in the Kentish countryside when a father and his son wandered by. The boy turned to his father and said, “Look dad, it’s those barmy blokes again.” The lad had perfectly grasped the situation. Fifty years later “Those barmy blokes” are still fighting amongst themselves and their image has hardly improved. 

The BNP that was founded by John Tyndall and modernised by Nick Griffin has been eclipsed by Ukip. They have captured the right-wing vote and with the help of the popular press they are trying to tear us away from Europe. They predict a rosy future for Britain once we quit the EU. But if their go-it-alone gamble fails our isolated country will be in more trouble than we are already. The pound is stable at the moment but if our economy shrinks and our deficit grows the rating agencies will force up the cost of borrowing and the quitters will discover that xenophobia and swaggering bravado are no substitutes for guaranteed markets. A medium sized country with over sixty million mouths to feed cannot survive on nostalgia. 

We need to be part of a sustainable economy with the means to feed and defend ourselves. Those wanting to leave the EU should remember how bad thing were before we joined it. 
 
Economic Myths
 
Keynesians believe in spending their way out of recession but followers of Milton Friedman do not. Both systems were tried in the 1930s when Britain went for austerity and Germany went for reconstruction and rearmament. The experiments were interrupted by the outbreak of war but Adolf Hitler was credited with curing the German inflation that saw people going shopping with wheelbarrows full of banknotes.
 
In fact the hyperinflation of 1922-23 ended when Chancellor Gustav Stresemann used a massive loan from a consortium led by JP Morgan to recapitalize the Reichsbank and stabilize the currency. This was so successful that by 1925 the government had a surplus and the currency was restored to its 1914 value of 4.2 to the dollar. It was the global crash of 1929 that derailed the Weimar boom and propelled Hitler to power, not the terrible inflation of six years earlier. The National Socialist economy was initially backed by international capitalists like Warburg, WA Harriman and Sir Henri Deterding. Germany had been off the Gold Standard since 1914. Hitler appointed the mysterious figure of Hjamar Schacht as President of the Reichsbank and entrusted the economy to the industrial giants; Thyssen, Krupp, IG Farben and Siemens. The Fuhrer suspended reparations and reformed the banking and trading system but at the outbreak of WW2 Germany had a non-Versailles national debt of RM40 billion – a lot of money in 1939.

Another myth is that the British Empire was brought down by international finance. Britain fought WW1 on borrowed money and by 1929 we were broke. Oswald Mosley wanted to create jobs with public works projects but Ramsay MacDonald refused to borrow any more money. During WW2 the whole country was employed on the war effort. But after the war Britain was bankrupt again and John Maynard Keynes was sent to America to accept a massive loan on condition that the pound was tied to the dollar. That kept us going until the Nixon Shock of 1971 when the pound was untied from the dollar and immediately sank. Our situation was already desperate when the price of oil rocketed in 1973 and the London Stock Exchange lost 45% of its value. We were bailed out by the IMF and lived to fight another day.

We keep hearing about the sovereign debt crisis but Europe has the commercial and political power to renegotiate loans and reach agreement with the international bankers. The eurozone has massive gold and foreign exchange reserves and so have the non-euro states, the EFTA states and Switzerland. The reunification of Germany shows what can be done with targeted investment. East Germany was ruined by years of inefficient communist rule but has now been transformed. A European government with the power to act could use its vast resources to restore all of her member states to prosperity. In alliance with Russia we can create a self-sufficient economy that breaks the stranglehold of international finance. But first we must think and act like Europeans and rise above the divisive tribalism of the popular press. Unity is strength.
 
The luck of the Irish
 
According to an article posted on the UKIP website the sovereign debt crisis has been deliberately engineered to bring about fiscal union. They think that German reluctance to take the lead is a cunning plan to distract us from their real objective - the creation of a United States of Europe with a federal government. That might seem like a perfectly reasonable proposition to most people but Ukippers think that it’s a diabolical plot by unreformed Nazis to enslave us in a Fourth Reich.  
 
The Irish people have voted to accept the fiscal compact against the advice of Gerry Adams who dreams of an independent Ireland with little girls dancing on the village green in their white socks. Ukip doesn’t operate in Ireland but the local eurosceptics are represented by Sinn Fein; an unholy alliance of psychopaths and traditionalists who miss the rare old times when Guinness came in barrels and was delivered by horse and cart. Fortunately Ukip haven’t got an armed wing but their pernicious nationalism is just as dangerous.

We lost our military independence in 1917 when we welcomed American troops to Europe. We lost our economic independence in 1931 when we abandoned the Gold Standard. We lost our international credibility in 1942 when we surrendered to the Japanese at Singapore. We lost our political independence when we signed the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944. And all of these developments were confirmed when we were ordered out of Suez in 1956. In less than 40 years we went from being a great global empire to being an average European country.

It’s no wonder that people seek the reassurance offered by Ukip and the right-wing of the Tory Party. Dave Cameron promises to “protect” us from Europe and derides the idea of Europatriotism. He is the prime minister of the United Kingdom - a federation of four nations - but he cannot understand the concept of extended patriotism. 
 
The result of the Irish referendum would probably be reversed in the UK where the media is hostile to all things European. The great British public voted for the Blair/Brown circus three general elections in a row because Rupert Murdoch told them to. And given the chance they would do his bidding on Europe. But leaving the EU will not solve our problems. Our staggering national debt of £1.2 trillion is rising. The economy is static and attempts to revive it have been undone by punitive taxation. The coalition government has failed to stop immigration – mostly from South Asia. And the Bank of Scotland has hinted that they might need another bailout. None of these problems are caused by the EU. We are crying out for leadership and direction but all that we are offered is jingoistic bluster. The government needs to drastically reduce public spending and leave people with enough money to live on. We are not a global power and its time we stopped pretending to be one; let’s start by sacking William Hague.

                     Another Warmonger
 
William Hague is a proven failure who led his party to humiliating defeat in the 2001 general election. He was quickly dumped as leader of the Conservative Party but he has been recycled as Foreign Secretary. This job enables him to strut around the world threatening countries that are not sufficiently subservient to America. He was instrumental in the bloody removal of Colonel Gaddafi of Libya. Britain sided with rebels that committed unspeakable atrocities throughout the Libyan civil war including sticking a bayonet up the rectum of the old dictator before they killed him.
 
He is now seeking to repeat the performance with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The West has encouraged wars and revolutions in the Middle East by arming rebel groups and providing them with air cover, money and military intelligence. William Hague tries to justify our criminal intervention with torrents of hypocritical propaganda that would have impressed the late Dr Joseph Goebbels. As he condemns the Syrian government for fighting al-Qaeda the neighbouring state of Israel is killing and mistreating Palestinians at will. But he ignores Zionist atrocities because he is member of the Conservative Friends of Israel.
 
Critics of the Americans often accuse them of pursuing selfish foreign policy objectives. But they don’t seem to know what they are doing or who the good guys are. They fought the Korean War to a stalemate; deposed the elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran, lost the Vietnam War, got thrown out of Somalia, destroyed Iraq, and they are currently fighting an unwinnable war in Afghanistan.
 
None of these adventures did much for America. Communism has morphed into capitalism; except for the weird hereditary regime in North Korea that’s on its last legs. The Shah of Iran – the Light of the Aryans - was deposed in 1979. America stole billions of barrels oil from Iraq but the invasion probably cost them just as much; Cruise missiles cost a million dollars apiece and the US Army was reported to be firing them like artillery shells. And they never expected the Afghan campaign to drag on for a decade and spread to Pakistan.
 
Where America goes their lickspittle allies follow. Creatures like William Hague who is salivating at the prospect of attacking Iran. At Nuremburg the Nazi leaders were found guilty and executed for “waging aggressive war.” According to UN law the only justification for war is in defence. But none of the latest wars have been defensive – they have all been in pursuit of American foreign policy. Tony Blair should be brought before the International Court of Justice for his part in the Iraq War. He lied to Parliament about “weapons of mass destruction” and made war on a practically defenceless country weakened by ten years of sanctions. Tony Blair the war criminal should certainly be in the dock with the unspeakable William Hague beside him. 
 
Wanted – A Sensible Party
 
The people of the UK have a variety of political parties to choose from but they are all lacking in commonsense. The Tory Party is dominated by anti-Europeans; not just   anti-federalists but fully fledged Europe haters. The prime minister and most of his cabinet are eurosceptics and pro-European MPs are under threat of deselection. The reactionary “bastard” faction that helped to destroy John Major’s government in 1997 are still undermining the Tory Party and they are they are prepared to bring down the coalition government just to get their own way.
 
The Labour Party went mad just after the last war when they decided to turn Britain black. They brought in the 1948 Nationality Act to bring in millions of black and brown people and they have succeeded in swamping most of our major cities. The Tories watched this experiment with detachment because they have got nothing against Third World immigrants; it’s just Europeans that they hate.
 
The Liberal Democrats are fairly harmless but they are obliged to support either the Labour or Tory Party. At the moment they are propping up the Tories.
 
The Green Party is led by the attractive and intelligent Caroline Lucas MP. She is committed to noble causes but most of them are unaffordable. Pippa Bartolotti of the Welsh Green Party is an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian cause.
 
The Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties point to Norway as an example of a successful independent country with a small population but they forget to mention the oil. Alex Salmond used to talk glowingly about Ireland and Iceland being “an arc of prosperity in the North” but since they ran out of money he has kept his mouth shut. And the near collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland has been another setback.
 
Outside of Parliament we have the lunatic-left and the reactionary-right. Ukip, the BNP and the National Front want to quit the EU and nationalize the banks. The various left-wing parties agree with them. Apart from the matter of immigration the extremes of left and right share the same tortured view of a world.

We desperately need a party that embraces Europe and has sensible plans for the future. But we don’t need one that believes in conspiracies and fantasizes about Britain abandoning Europe to lead a resurrected Commonwealth. Under our “democratic” system millions of pounds are required to fund a political party. The Tories are backed by big business and the Labour Party by the trade unions. The other parties depend on their members to support them. This structure favours the old gang parties and makes it very difficult for minor parties to gain representation. But the Greens and Respect have shown that it can be done. Please step forward a charismatic and fearless billionaire who loves his country and is not stuck in the past. 
 
Tony Hancock
 
(John Tyndall’s report in Spearhead is reprinted as a tribute to Tony Hancock, founder of the Historical Review Press, who died 11 June 2012.)
 
An historic day – Thursday, 5th September 2002 and the scene is Leeds Crown Court No Four. Tony Hancock, printer of the pamphlet Merrie England, written by veteran nationalist Colin Jordan, is cleared of all charges under Britain’s infamous ‘race’ laws. This is a tremendous victory for the cause in the United Kingdom.
 
The vindictive system – despite the fact that Colin Jordan was never tried or convicted for producing the pamphlet – was determined to have its pound of flesh. So the totally innocent Tony Hancock, who only printed it, was hauled into court; his only crime, printing, which is his business. They dressed-up this gross attack on individual freedom by charging him with ‘aiding and abetting’ Colin Jordan in producing a pamphlet calculated (or ‘likely’ to cause) racial hatred.

Mr Hancock’s barrister, Adrian Davies, brilliantly defended him. Witnesses brought by the prosecution were left-wing Labour MPs – who, needless to say, expressed their ‘outrage’ at receiving the pamphlet Merrie England. They were joined by David Michael Whine, a leading light in the Board of Deputies of British Jews. His evidence was effectively demolished by defence counsel. Whine had a hard job explaining his definition of who and what constitutes a Jewish person, and the whole charade of race laws was shown as the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ piece of legislation that it is.
 
The twists and turns of the prosecution case and the statements of the witnesses in court were mind-boggling in the efforts to prove ‘racial hatred’. The judge, who seemed impartial and fair throughout the trial, when giving his summing-up to the jury stated very forcefully that the whole area of race legislation was particularly difficult. He stated that if the jury thought that if the defendant had the right to express his opinion in the light of a decent society being able to tolerate’ extreme’ views, they should acquit him. The judge also stressed that the right of freedom of speech was reinforced by European human rights legislation, now part of British law.
 
The learned Judge was right. Not only is the race legislation unjust, it is ridiculous. The race acts and public order acts laws governing race are forever being amended and strengthened and leave very little scope for rational and sensible debate on the extremely important issues of race and immigration, and of course on issues concerning the Jewish community and its power. Tony Hancock was tried by twelve true Britons who exercised their common sense above the vagaries and iniquities of unjust legislation and brought out a verdict of “Not Guilty”! The day was a great victory for white nationalism and our freedom. Tony Hancock should be saluted for his firm stand and unflinching courage in winning through against all the system could throw at him!

The Leveson Inquiry

The anti-federalists are absolutely right when they say that political and economic union can only be achieved by the sacrifice of national sovereignty. They are also right when they say that the institutions of the EU are unelected. But nationality does not depend on political arrangements and the will of the people is not necessarily the wisest option. In the UK public opinion is formed by the mass media and its controllers are committed to the Atlantic Alliance and deeply suspicious of Europe.

John Major’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry was clear enough. Rupert Murdoch demanded that the Tories change their policy on Europe before the 1997 general election and warned them that if they didn’t The Sun would put Tony Blair in power. But despite this revelation the anti-federalist lobby, led by Rupert Murdoch, still criticizes the EU for being undemocratic. 
 
Democracy has long been corrupted by big business. One hundred years ago Lloyd George’s Liberal government was rocked by the Marconi Scandal involving insider trading by Sir Rufus Isaacs and Herbert Samuel. This was revealed by Cecil Chesterton’s distributist newspaper New Witness.  During both world wars press magnate Lord Beaverbrook served as a government minister. And when Rupert Murdoch switched his support to Dave Cameron’s money-grubbing Tories they groveled to the master of misinformation just as Tony Blair’s New Labour had done before them.
 
We like to boast about our parliamentary system but its deputies fiddle their expenses, its parties are financed by tax exiles, its leaders make millions out of book deals and speaking tours and its image is promoted by the advertising industry. Compared to our MPs the appointed bureaucrats of Brussels are not so bad.

It’s time to take a good look at parliamentary democracy. The modern world needs managers and technicians more than well-dressed actors with capped teeth. And we need to plan for the future instead of stumbling drunkenly from one election to another. Government by amateurs has not been a success and our first-past-the-post system is unfair and inefficient. We would not expect an untrained worker to run a giant corporation and we should not expect an inexperienced young man to make a good prime minister just because he enjoyed an expensive education. 
 
The Leveson report is awaited but it’s obvious that the power of the press has been abused and most people trust their unelected dentists and bank managers more than their elected politicians. The established political parties recruit political advisors from the media and use their contacts to leak information. And the powerful press barons use their money and influence to advance policies. We are therefore governed by the press and the political parties are nothing but whores for hire. That is the hallowed democratic system that we seek to impose on others by force.
 
I didn’t get where I am today…
 
In The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin by David Nobbs, CJ the former head of Sunshine Desserts continues to give advice even though he is reduced to poverty. He still gives little speeches that begin: “I didn’t get where I am today.” The idea of a failed boss giving financial advice is funny but that’s exactly what Dave Cameron has been doing. He presides over a country with a flatlining economy and a rising national debt of £1.2 trillion but that doesn’t stop him from lecturing Angela Merkel who is one of the world’s most successful leaders.

Dave Cameron is urging the eurozone to move towards fiscal union. Unfortunately the founders of the EU did not have a brilliant man like Alexander Hamilton to insist on a strong central government when the union was set up. George Washington and his fellow revolutionaries wanted self-government for the original thirteen American colonies but Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), the son of a French mother and a Scottish father founded the Federalist Party because he saw the vital importance of a strong federal government with a central bank. He was killed in a duel but the USA can thank him for their political and economic union. If it wasn’t for their visionary Secretary of the Treasury the state of California and several other cash-strapped states would now be in the same position as Greece.
 
The Greeks have been through a period of chaos but they have elected Antonis Samaris leader of the pro-European New Democracy Party. They have done everything possible to reduce their deficit and install a viable government. The Germans are influenced by a nationalistic press and a racial memory of rampant inflation but they know that their prosperity depends on a European Union with a single market and a common currency. It’s in their own interest to cooperate with the new French government of Francois Hollande to manage the sovereign debt crisis that also affects the UK, Japan and the USA.

The nations of Europe will unite but the UK will probably remain outside for the foreseeable future. It took us two hundred years to adopt the Gregorian calendar and about the same time to accept decimalization and metrication. We have got used to the ‘new money’ but some people still cling to the past. They buy petrol in litres and potatoes in kilos because they have to but they consult conversion tables to find out if the weather is hot or cold. The British people have become cautious conservatives but this hasn’t always been the case. In earlier times we overcame obstacles, pioneered new technology and grew rich as a result. But a series of wars and recessions has left us shell-shocked and frightened to try anything new. We lack the confidence to fully embrace the European project. If we dropped our pointless hostility and stopped reading neurotic newspapers our neighbours might welcome our prime minister’s advice instead of finding it amusing.

Issue 92, June 2012


Nation Revisited
 
# 92, June 2012.
 
The Philosophers’ Arms
 
In a nondescript pub in Central London I overheard two men having a drunken debate. The existentialist said: “when you’re dead that’s the end of it,” but his metaphysical opponent insisted: “we must go somewhere – it stands to reason.” I tend to agree with him but “reason” has got nothing to do with it; belief in the supernatural is a matter of faith. The argument was settled by a third person, presumably the chairman, who said: “You’re all talking bollocks.” From that moment I have remembered that pub as “The Philosophers Arms” and made a point of avoiding it.

Another pub philosopher that I knew was an old soldier who constantly used the phrases “the direction of application” and “the application of direction.” I think that he knew the difference between them but I can’t remember what it was.
 
The world of philosophy is currently torn between Homer Simpson who epitomizes moral cowardice and Rab C Nesbitt who rejects altruism. Both men have risen above conventional mores but Simpson’s perpetual gluttony contrasts sharply with Nesbitt’s Spartan alcoholism. The objectivists cite cultural differences for this dichotomy but students of the great Liverpudlian mystic Pierre Head are undecided.
 
Cultural pessimism is a thinly disguised fear of death. If optimism is cowardice then pessimism is self-indulgence. It’s not Western civilization that is doomed but the mortal Oswald Spengler and it’s not God who is dead but Friedrich Nietzsche. 
 
As great minds wrestle with these eternal problems the rest of us can figure out how to feed an ever-expanding world population on finite resources. The answer lies in harnessing the power of the Sun and mastering the technology to rearrange matter to our requirements. These things are not beyond us. We already have the basic knowledge and we are making steady progress. But as we conquer space and time drunks and depressives will still be dreaming.
 
Better Days Ahead
 
Austerity may not be the answer to the current recession but we still need to economise. We can’t cut health, pensions or education but we could look at defence. We are currently spending £7 bn on two 65,000 tonne aircraft carriers that would be vulnerable to the Chinese “Dongfeng” (East Wind) anti-ship missile with a range of 1600 kilometers. Professor Andrew Erickson of the US Navy has described the missile system as placing US ships “at the wrong side of physics.”
 
The current estimate of £130 bn for big-ticket defence projects including the replacement of the Trident missile system is way beyond our means.  We should integrate our armed forces with the rest of Europe, negotiate a treaty of friendship with Russia, and withdraw from NATO.
 
Our biggest expenditure is welfare at £110.9 bn. The majority of welfare recipients are genuine but we are subsidising people who have no intention of going to work. And not content with our own scroungers we are importing them from all over the world. We could make massive savings on welfare. Many people are working cash-in-hand and still signing on the dole, and many so-called single mothers have got a man in the house who should be keeping them. We must clamp down on bogus claimants, strictly control our borders and adjust taxation to ensure that people are better off working.
 
Dave Cameron blames our economic problems on the eurozone. But the EU did not make us borrow £1.2 trillion to pay for unlimited immigration and our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Blair/Brown government borrowed money to buy popularity at home and prestige abroad. At the same time they neglected British industry and removed all constraints from the banks. This country would still be in dire trouble if the euro had never been issued.
 
European integration is part of a worldwide pattern of geopolitical realignment. China, South Korea and Japan have agreed to boost cross-investment in government bonds, worth nearly $15 trillion, in a move that will better prepare the countries to protect their financial markets from external shocks (Reuters 03-05-12). This is a revival of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement are further examples of related states coming together for mutual protection and assistance. 

There is no way that Britain can stand apart from worldwide economic developments.
Recessions are cyclical economic adjustments that occur about every 20 years. They perpetuate capitalism by killing off failing businesses and making room for new ones. And they prove that we are only an island geographically – not economically. The International Labour Organisation predicts that the world economy will recover by 2016. This is also the objective of Barack Obama. If they are right we can look forward to better days ahead. Until then we must keep our nerve and stop wasting money.
 
Democracy and the Power of the Press
 
Democracy is supposed to guarantee representative government but the Leveson Inquiry shows that we have been manipulated by Rupert Murdoch since the days of Margaret Thatcher. He took over the Times and the Sunday Times with her blessing and backed her in return. He supported the contemptible Tony Blair and tried to use the same tactics on Dave Cameron to take over B Sky B.
 
This inquiry shows that the British people are being rounded up and driven like sheep by the popular press. The press proprietors support free markets, open borders and American hegemony, and that is exactly what we have got. If newspapers had different policies there would be an element of choice. But there is very little difference between Rupert Murdoch, Lord Rothermere, the Barclay brothers and Richard Desmond. They all pursue the same eurosceptic, neo-conservative, pro-Zionist policies.
 
Rupert Murdoch must be given credit for spearheading the modernization of the media. He took on the print unions that were clinging to obsolete technology. He introduced computerization and pioneered satellite television. But he will be remembered for his backing of Tony Blair, his enthusiasm for the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and his support for Israel. He is no better or worse than the rest of the press proprietors.
 
The less than one third turnout at the May UK elections shows that people are not interested in democracy. They know that voting makes no difference because the country is run by big business. The trappings of government alternate between the established political parties but the real power lies with the giant corporations. Britain is a plutocracy run by newspapers, banks and oil companies.

But cracks are appearing in the monolith of global capitalism. The laws of nature decree that nothing lasts forever. The great empires of antiquity ran their course and the empire of the Rothschilds will be no different. The British Empire relied on deficit spending and the USA adopted the same system when they took over the world in 1945. But now the West is running out of credit and the emerging nations have broken the industrial monopoly of Europe and North America. We live in interesting times. 

Does Race Matter?
 
The old guard of the far-right believed in keeping Britain white but apart from the National Front most of them have reluctantly accepted the presence of millions of nonwhites. They have been forced to obey laws against racial incitement and most of them now accept that Britain lacks the resources to round up and deport millions of people, many of whom were born and raised here. They have therefore switched their focus from race to religion and campaign against the Muslims. They are supported in this spurious crusade by the pro-Zionist popular press that includes all Muslims in their “war on terror”. Racial hatred is illegal but religious hatred is allowed so long as it doesn’t include anti-Semitism.
 
Followers of Sir Oswald Mosley’s ideas are divided on the importance of race and both camps use his quotations to justify their arguments. He was no racist but he opposed non-European immigration and campaigned to send them home. Of course their numbers have trebled since his death in 1980. In “Mosley Right or Wrong” he said: 

          “It is right to be proud of your race and to want to preserve it, just as it is right to be proud of your family and want to preserve it. Race exists just as much as family exists, and in much the same way. It is simply a wider form of relationship. Of course, a lot of nonsense is talked about race as about most of the great truths of nature. It is exaggerated nonsense both ways.”

Eu      Europe is defined by its culture and a minority of non-Europeans who share that culture are no threat to its existence. But millions of Africans and Asians with no intention of assimilating are a threat to the survival of the greatest force for civilisation and progress that the world has ever known. One does not have to be a white supremacist to be opposed to unlimited Third World immigration into Europe. The great Irish playwright Samuel Beckett defined an Aryan as: “Blond like Hitler, thin like Goering, handsome like Goebbels, virile like Rohm – and be called Rosenberg.” The Nazis got carried away with racial theory but the defence of Europe and its people is a legitimate objective.
 
Between the extremes of racism and liberalism lies commonsense. We need to stop all non-European immigration; not a difficult proposition at a time of record unemployment and economic downturn. We must deport non-European criminals, illegal immigrants and bogus asylum seekers. And we should assist all those who want to go home. But limited numbers of law-abiding non-Europeans who are prepared to work hard and embrace our culture can be accommodated. The liberals will sneer about our culture consisting of beer and football. But we have a perfect right to our own way of life and anyone who doesn’t like it only needs to make his way to an airport.
 
           Europe is the product of its entire people; Celts, Tuetons, Slavs and Latins forged together by war and scientific achievement into a unique civilisation. The USA and Canada are committed to the North American Free Trade Agreement. East Asia is coming together. Brazil leads South America. And the Russian Federation stretches from the Baltic to the Pacific.  The nations of the world are forming themselves into self-sufficient blocs and Europe will be no exception.


          The global capitalist racket depends on cheap labour and open markets but we are entering a new phase of geopolitical development that will link production to consumption. United Europe allied to a resurgent Russia would have the economic, logistic and military power to launch a great programme of resettlement. Non-Europeans who want to go home could be funded by the money saved on welfare benefits and their home countries helped by foreign aid programmes and trade deals. A self-sufficient Europe stretching from Galway to Vladivostok would develop its own foreign policy and act in its own interest. We would not have to bow to international pressure for fear of economic reprisals; we could ignore ratings agencies and outlaw predatory speculators. And the European people who have butchered each other for centuries would be united; not just by political agreement but by blood and culture    
 
Brave New Europe?
 
This is the title of a UKIP pamphlet that’s supposed to be a general audit of the European Union. It starts with a potted history of Europe:

“The concept of a ‘united’ Europe under a single authority is by no means a new idea. Imperial Rome was the first to try under the Senate. From then on several others have made determined attempts – a number of popes under the Vatican; Charlemagne with the Holy Roman Empire; Napoleon with his French Empire; Hitler’s Third Reich and Stalin’s Soviet Socialism. They were virtually all ruthless authoritarian or police states. Most viewed Britain with covetous eyes – but apart from Rome and William the Conqueror, none made it across the English Channel. Until now? For the European Union, under the European Commission, can be viewed as the latest adventure...”

UKIP’s contends that every European power from Rome to the Soviet Union was motivated by a desire to invade and occupy Britain. They conflate the EU with Nazi Germany but they fail to mention that Edward Heath had a splendid war record as an officer in the Royal Artillery, or that Jean Monnet served with Charles de Gaulle’s Free French forces.  Instead they accuse the founders the EU of conspiring to enslave us in an authoritarian super state. And they seriously believe that the clerks, accountants and administrators of the EU are dictators.

“A 1942 conference in Berlin, Europaische Wirtschafts Gemeinsschaft (the European Economic Community) published a series of 11 documents, presenting in some detail how Germany intended to rule Europe after winning the war. While this has many similarities with the EU project, the origins of the EU are quite separate. The 12 years of Nazi rule and 50 years of Communist rule, however, clearly gave many executives and civil servants of Europe an enthralling taste of authoritarian control without accountability. They are essentially the same sort of people sitting at the same desks now being increasingly similarly fulfilled by working for the EU project.”
 
“Vladimir Bukovski, the Russian dissident who spent a total of 12 years in Soviet prisons, labour camps and psychiatric institutes, gives his informed opinion of the EU (or he calls it – the EUSSR).”
 
“Two of the early enthusiastic proponents of the EU were French president Francois Mitterand (1981-85 was a member of the Vichy government that collaborated with Hitler 1940-1945), and Jacques Delors, an active member of the Vichy Youth (French equivalent of the Hitler Youth) and president of the European Commission 1985–1995.Jose Manuel Barroso, EC President, was an ardent Maoist when a student. President Mitterand of France once told his close confidant, Magoudi: “I will take my revenge on the English upstarts. I will destroy their beloved island by linking it to Europe.”
 
Mike Greenhough lists all the British institutions that will be banned under the EU dictatorship; our existing political parties, our judicial system, our trade unions and our armed forces. He then assesses the cost of our EU membership:

“The ‘cost’ to the UK of being in the EU is almost impossible to determine with any accuracy, but certainly in excess of £50 billion per year – perhaps even twice that. The nearest and best estimate can be found in an excellent publication by Gerald Battern, MEP for London.”

Gerald Battern’s figure of £50 billion – perhaps even twice that - is ten, or twenty times our actual contribution; but he is better known as a conspiracy theorist than an economist. He will be remembered for a speech on the Bilderberg group that he made to a bemused European Parliament in September 2011:
 
“It’s impossible not to reach the conclusion that the non-reporting of these events is anything other than a conspiracy between the (Bilderberg) organisers and the media. It merely confirms the belief of many that the Bilderberg group is to bring about undemocratic world government. It’s a disgrace that the European Commission is colluding in that.”
 
The author is worried about the democratic credentials of the EU but he ignores anti-terrorist laws in the UK and the USA that allow suspects to be detained without charge.  The police state that he worries about is already in place. He goes on:

“What I have done is to take the evidence and put it in a line to see where it points. To me, it points towards a very authoritarian and thoroughly undemocratic European society. There doesn’t seem to be any built-in democratic checks to prevent it systematically guided into becoming a police state. Much of what is in this pamphlet has had to be very short because of space restrictions. You, dear reader must read the references and come to your own conclusion.”
 
The Nazi concept of Fortress Europe and the Vichy regime were wartime expedients. Jose Barroso may have waived his little red book in his student days but he has been a Social Democrat and a practicing Catholic ever since. Vladimir Bukovski is a member of UKIP and a professional agitator who betrayed the democratic government of Russia when he defected to the West with their military secrets. And when Francois Mitterand referred to Britain’s island status he was talking about the Channel Tunnel that he opened with Queen Elizabeth in 1994.
 
All the fears and insecurities of UKIP are aired in this pamphlet. They see dark foreign forces including the Vatican and the Third Reich behind a monstrous conspiracy to undermine our pristine democracy. Only those who hate the idea of European solidarity will agree with this reactionary publication that is worthy of the Murdoch press.

Nationalist Perspective
 
UK newspapers report air disasters according to how many Britons were on board. If a jumbo jet with hundreds of passengers goes down their headline would probably read: “Air Disaster: Two Britons Dead.” This is the nationalist perspective; they see everything in terms of nationality. 
 
The subject of European unity and the ongoing economic crisis is the clearest example of their limited vision. They refuse to recognise that the sovereign debt problems of the European states are exactly the same as those of the UK, Japan and the USA. 

Greece and California are bankrupt because they borrowed too much money. Greece is a member of the European Union but under the limited remit of the EU she is still treated as a sovereign state. California is supposed to be a sovereign state under the terms of the US Constitution but in fact she is a federal entity kept afloat by Washington and able to borrow money at reasonable rates. If California was treated the same as Greece she would be reduced to starvation. And if Europe had a federal government with one finance minister and a fully empowered European Central Bank the Greek economic crisis would not dominate the headlines. 
 
Few Americans want to cut California adrift but British and German right-wingers want to throw Greece out of Europe. Their mantra goes: “bring back the drachma, devalue it, the tourists will come back and all will be well.” But Argentina’s experience of breaking with the dollar has been a long and painful descent into poverty. In or out of the eurozone Greece will need the help of her neighbours. We cannot stand by while 12 million Greeks starve to death. Isolation is not the answer.
 
Journalists writing for the popular press have finally realised that the euro is a political rather than an economic imperative. Well done lads you’re dead right. The next step is to grasp that France and Germany will defend the euro with whatever it takes. It’s not just another currency it’s the symbol of European unity. Of course that will mean nothing to nationalists who favour little states with marching armies and stirring anthems. They would drag Europe back to the days of competing currencies and protectionist tariffs backed up with bayonets. Back to the dark days of 1914 and perpetual hostility. 

If nationalism degenerates into tribalism Belgium will be carved up like Ireland and Spain split into half a dozen states. The UK will be divided into four states and the Union Jack hauled down for the last time. The Serbo-Croat states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire willingly banded together as Yugoslavia after WW1 because they spoke related languages and shared the same Slavic culture. But following the death of Marshal Tito separatists backed by NATO blasted Yugoslavia into seven mutually hostile republics; all of them eager to join the EU. This is what happens when the amoeba mentality of petty nationalism splits nations into ever decreasing units.
 
Yet Another Conspiracy
 
The world of conspiracy theory was robbed when the lightning that struck Francois Hollande’s Dassault Falcon 7X aircraft failed to bring it down. The newly appointed President of France was flying to Berlin to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel when it was struck. Reports that she was seen at the Idar-Oberstein Haupstadt der Deutschen Artillerie directing the crew of a Krupp 88 mm flak cannon have been denied.

This incident had everything beloved of the conspiracy enthusiasts; a French president on his way to meet his German counterpart to discuss EU business following an inconclusive Greek election. It would have taken its place along with 9/11, the death of Princess Diana, the JFK assassination and the Moon landing as another triumph for the forces of darkness now known as the “liberal elite.”

If the president’s plane had been less robust books would have been have churned out and the Sunday papers would produced beautiful coloured graphics showing how it was blasted out of the sky. Experts of all sorts would be paraded on television giving their considered opinions and the usual suspects would push their agendas. The left would blame the CIA and Mossad while the right would blame Hamas or Hezbollah. The Jews would put it all down to anti-Semitism, the born-again brigade would see it as a warning of impending doom, and the Daily Telegraph would blame it on the euro.
 
The fact that it never happened will not stop the conspiracists from speculating. After all it’s not their fault that the Frenchman survived. The website www.conspiracyplanet.com lists hundreds of conspiracies mostly involving Jews and freemasons but including the British Royal Family and a tribe of green lizard people. Some of them are plausible, most of them are beyond belief and nearly all of them tell only part of the story.
 
In his expose of the money power “The New Unhappy Lords” AK Chesterton blamed the fall of the British Empire on the Bretton Woods Agreement that linked the pound to the dollar and gave Britain a massive bail out. It marked the end of Britain’s independence but the alternative would have been starvation. Our current national debt is bad enough at 62% of GDP but in 1945 it was 180%. We had no choice but to accept an American loan. Our decline was caused by the rise of America, Germany and Japan, our involvement in WW2, the growth of Indian nationalism and the cost of maintaining global forces. It’s unfair to blame it all on Bernard Baruch and the Federal Reserve. 
 
Now that the West is massively in debt to the Chinese and the Arabs it’s unreasonable to blame our financial troubles on the American Money Power. There was no greater commercial power than Britain in her prime. British bankers and insurers dominated the world and the City of London still exerts enormous financial clout. There will always be trusts and cartels but markets are driven by supply and demand and nations rise and fall by their own efforts; not as a result of conspiracies.