Issue 14, September 2006

Nation Revisited

An occasional email to friends

# 14, September 2006. 

The Great Divide

Opinion is divided on the Middle East right across the political spectrum. The Tories are solidly behind Israel but Dave Cameron has called for restraint and traditional Tories like Ken Clarke have long opposed American policy. The Blairites are blindly obedient to America but the rest of the Labour Party is deeply hostile. On the so-called far right the rank and file remain as anti-Zionist as ever but the populist faction is now openly flirting with Israel.

The Zionists blame the latest war on Hezbollah’s attack on an Israeli military position that resulted in the deaths of three IDF soldiers and the taking two prisoners of war. They see the $3 billion worth of damage done to Lebanon and the 1,200 killed as a justification for this raid. The rest of the world sees the invasion and bombing as another example of Zionist overkill and salutes the defiance of the Lebanese resistance who were still fighting after five weeks of constant bombardment.

The Israeli blitzkrieg failed to drive Hezbollah from the border or stop their rockets. It resulted in a standoff between highly mobile infantry units against heavy Merkava tanks. The Israelis used their formidable air power to destroy roads and apartment blocks because they could not expose their tanks to Hezbollah’s deadly French-made Milan and Russian-made Mital-M anti-tank missiles. According to the “Sunday Times”(27-08-06) they lost 46 tanks at least one ship and a helicopter to missiles. 

This war may have been a rehearsal for the expected American-Israeli attack on Iran and Syria, but the fact that the IDF was fought to a standstill might just cause a rethink in Jerusalem. According to the chief of Israeli Intelligence Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser: “ Hezbollah is not a militia, it’s an infantry brigade with all support units.”  Iran has 420,000 regulars and 350.000 reservists who were trained by the same officers as Hezbollah. More Israelis will come to accept a peace plan based on borders agreed by international arbitration and guaranteed by the great powers.

Since 1955 the United Nations Security Council has passed no less than 61 resolutions condemning Israel but every attempt to enforce UN authority has been vetoed by the United States. But this time Israel was only too pleased to accept a UN cease-fire. The pro-Zionists dismiss the UN as part of a globalist conspiracy but there has to be an international forum for the settlement of territorial disputes. We are living in the real world of trade, commerce and diplomacy between nations, not in a quixotic folk state without commercial or strategic obligations.
 

Supply and Demand                                                                                                 

Eurofighter the makers of the state of the art Typhoon multi role aircraft, have announced a massive 11 billion pounds export order to Saudi Arabia. The order was won against fierce competition from the American Lockheed Martin Boeing F22 Raptor, the French Dassault Rafale and the Russian Sukhoi Golden Eagle. Eurofighter is a Spanish, Italian, German and British consortium.

The Saudis are upgrading to the Typhoon to replace their existing Tornados that were made by Panavia, an earlier German, Italian and British joint venture. The success of the Typhoon has confounded the eurosceptics who have been bad-mouthing the project for years. Now, even the europhobic “ Daily Mail” has welcomed the order that will safeguard 9,000 British jobs for the next decade.

The remarkable Typhoon is already in service with the air forces of the participating countries and has been ordered by Austria and Greece. The plane has received rave reviews from the international aeronautical press and is set to replace the Royal Air Force’s Tornados when they are phased out in 2015.

But Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Nick Harvey has asked the British Government to insist that the planes are not used for internal repression. This is the kind of nonsensical comment that we have come to expect, not just from the Liberal Democrats but also from most of the old gang. Britain has long been an arms exporter to the whole world and our ships, planes and guns have been used in most of the modern wars from Waterloo to Iraq.

It is not our responsibility to monitor the use of exported military equipment. If we start stipulating rules and regulations our customers will soon go elsewhere for their armaments. The pragmatic aircraft salesmen of rival manufacturers will not insist that their planes are only used for reconnaissance and aerobatics.

The Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon were equipped with anti-tank missiles from France and Russia. Despite various trade embargos and restrictions on arms sales they were able to buy these weapons on the open market. The law of supply and demand still applies and given the entrepreneurial reputation of the peoples of the region it is even possible that IDF ordinance found its way into the wrong hands.

This is not as far fetched as it sounds. The Native Americans fought the US Cavalry under General Ranald S Mackenzie with Winchester rifles supplied by the Mexicans and paid for with money given to them as compensation for the loss of their lands.

And when David Lloyd George was minister for munitions and secretary for war he was questioned in the House of Commons about some Turkish troops using British rifles to fight our boys. He replied that it was a good thing we had sold them Lee-Enfields or else they would be using the more efficient German Mausers.

Another Fine Mess                                                                                                        

Tony Blair has continued and escalated the policies pursued by successive British governments since the war by importing multitudes of Muslim immigrants, mostly from Pakistan but also from Africa and the Arab states. He has then granted asylum to political and religious extremists from Muslim countries and allowed them to spread their propaganda. Finally he has allied himself with America and Israel in a global war against Islam. Now he stands back in amazement as the bombs go off and wonders why the British-born sons of Muslim immigrants are behaving like excitable foreigners.

The Prime Minister is a trained barrister who enjoyed a very expensive education, but he doesn’t understand that people get upset when you maim and kill their relations. His money-grabbing legal mind cannot grasp why immigrants do not put self-interest before principles. After all, he is letting them participate in Britain’s booming economy, all they have to do is accept American hegemony and turn a blind eye to the unspeakable savagery of the occupation of Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The unexpected reaction of Britain’s Mulsim immigrant community has been an embarrassment and a disappointment to Tony Blair, who devoted much of his political career to the encouragement of open-door immigration and multiculturalism. The Pakistanis, Somalis and Bangladeshis were not supposed to form exclusive ghettos and no-go areas. They were meant to enrich British society with their exotic cultures and become model citizens who vote Labour and work cheap.

This cunning plan to import a permanent majority of immigrant supporters has gone disastrously wrong. Successful Afro-Caribbeans and Indians are just as likely to vote Tory or Liberal democrat, and the unemployable underclass of the ghettos do not vote at all. Now the Muslims have turned away from Labour in protest at Blair’s pro-American policy and are threatening the party’s survival in many traditional strongholds. This process has already cost Jack Straw his job as Foreign Secretary. The Americans ordered his dismissal after he dared to criticize his Israeli kinsmen to appease his Mulsim constituents in Blackburn.

Tony Blair is desperately trying to save the situation by denying that his policy is a war on Islam. He is trying to convince the Muslims that the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and his support of Israeli aggression in Palestine and Lebanon is all about “spreading democracy” or “building a new Middle East.” But the largely immigrant electorate of Bethnal Green & Bow have exercised their democratic right to disagree with him by ousting Labour’s Oona King and returning George Galloway as the Respect Party Member of Parliament.

The misguided adventures of the Bush-Blair double act have descended from tragedy to farce and their interventions always end in failure. Blair’s simple-minded naivety and Bush’s inarticulate buffoonery have all the elements of black comedy. All that is missing is for George to turn to Tony and say “another fine mess.”

Europe – The Ongoing Debate                                                                                    

Recent articles in the nationalist papers suggest a very tentative move towards European unity. These are qualified by editorial interjections but the first light of dawn is beginning to break. The second generation of Britons born in the European Union is now growing up. They are still British after more than thirty years of EU membership and the dire predictions of the Ukippers have come to nothing. We are enjoying the highest ever standard of living in these islands, with a booming economy and almost full employment.

The only disaster is Britain’s obsession with cheap labour immigration. This has nothing to do with the EU. It was the Labour regime that decided to waive Britain’s option to restrict inter-EU immigration. France and Germany have only taken a token amount but big-hearted Tony decided that despite our population of sixty millions we still need more people. Romania and Bulgaria will join the EU next year.

The wave of European workers has triggered a previously unknown hostility to immigration from the gutter press. The “Daily Mail” and the “Sun” attack our fellow Europeans but they never said a word about the multiple millions of Asians and Afro-Caribbean immigrants who have flooded in since the war.

It’s ironic that the very newspapers that scream about European immigration and the EU are dedicated to the Atlantic alliance and multiculturalism. Punjabis are fine but Poles are a threat; Slovaks are a danger but Somalis are OK; the European Parliament is a threat to our sovereignty but it’s fine to put our armed forces under American control in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jeffrey Hamm summed it up in “Their World and Ours” in “Action” July 1981.

“The union of Europe is the corner-stone of our policies, and we must constantly remind our readers of that fact.

From time to time we draw attention to the flaws in the EEC, in grave danger of failure and collapse because it puts the cart before the horse, seeking to create a common market before a common government.

A truly common market is of vital importance, with the industries and agriculture of our continent dedicated to maximum production, not for export but for consumption by our European peoples.

There is a vast market within Europe for all that Europe can produce, and it should be insulated against the undercutting of Asia and the communist bloc, as discussed in this issue.

But Europe needs more, much more than an economic policy. It needs faith, a profound belief in the cause of European unity.

Europe needs a European government for its defence and the leadership of its economy, with national governments for all internal affairs, and regional administrations for local matters and for the preservation of the ancient languages and cultures of our continent.

Within that concept there is no clash between a healthy nationalism and patriotism on the one hand, and a devotion to the Europe of which our respective nations are a part.”

The People’s League                                                                                                

Horatio Bottomley was born in March 1860 in Bethnal Green. He grew up in an orphanage and at fourteen years of age he joined a firm of legal shorthand writers. He was a bright lad who learned enough about the law to defend one of his companies in court in 1885 against charges of false accounting. He famously said; “what poor education I have received has been in the University of Life.”

He sold shares in mostly non-existent Australian gold mines and promoted them by

founding the “Financial Times”. He was elected as a Liberal MP for Hackney in 1905 and used his parliamentary contacts to further increase his business. In 1908 he faced fraud charges but the prosecution were unable to unscramble his deliberately complicated accounts, instead he was made bankrupt and forced to resign from Parliament.

In 1906 he launched the popular newspaper “John Bull,” and in 1918 he won the Hackney seat as an independent MP with an astonishing 80% of the vote. In 1919 he founded The People’s League to “represent the people against organized labour and capital.” In 1914 at the London Opera House 5,000 heard him speak while 15,000 waited outside. The People’s League sold John Bull Victory Bonds to its supporters and was taking millions of pounds until the scheme collapsed in 1921. Horatio again faced charges of fraud and deception, but this time his legal training did not save him and he was sentenced to seven years imprisonment and expelled from Parliament.

It is reported that the prison chaplain at Wormwood Scrubbs came across Bottomley sewing mailbags. He asked him “sewing?” and Bottomley replied “no reaping.”

Despite his creative accounting Horatio Bottomley remained a popular figure, a sort of lovable rouge. One man who had been swindled out of an incredible forty thousand pounds claimed that he had lent Bottomley the money and refused to prosecute. He spent his ill-gotten fortune on women, drink and gambling and ended his days touring the music halls with a one-man show. Travers Humphrey the prosecuting council at his trial wrote: “In truth it was not I who floored Bottomley, it was drink. The man I met in 1922 was a drink-sodden creature whose brain would only be got to work by repeated doses of champagne.”

He may have been genuine patriot but there is no doubt that he was a con man. The People’s League did raise awareness of immigration and its aim to protect the people from the extremes of the political left and right was ahead of its time. If Bottomley had been able to keep his fingers out of the till he might have built the People’s League into a mass movement during the chaotic days between the wars. Horatio Bottomley spent most of his life warning against German militarism, but he died in 1933 as another gifted patriotic orator came to power in Berlin. Perhaps if Bottomley had not made so many enemies he might have survived. He was certainly not the only crook at Westminster but his opposition to immigration and the influence of foreign bankers had made him a target. Powerful interests were determined to destroy him and he played into their hands with his own insatiable greed.