Saturday 25 August 2012

Issue 62, December 2009


Nation Revisited

An occasional e-mail to friends. # 62. December 2009.

Promising immigration controls

Six months before a general election the Labour Party has suddenly realized that we have got an immigration problem. And home Secretary Alan Johnson who said that he didn’t lay awake at night worrying about our population reaching 70 millions now says that we got it wrong on immigration.

If the BNP ever came to power their unilateral protectionist policies would reduce Britain to austerity. The pound would be put under pressure as foreign investors pulled out and international markets retaliated. We would have to sell our exports at knock down prices for precious dollars and euros to buy gas and oil.

Any plans they might have to deport illegal immigrants and bogus asylum seekers would be frustrated by lack of money and the refusal of Third World to take their people back. An isolated Britain would lack the logistic, economic and political power for such a massive undertaking.

But despite their lack of credibility the BNP have forced the government to act on immigration. They have frightened the Labour Party by stealing their working class supporters and by getting candidates elected. The Labour Party is now trying to round up their lost sheep with promises of immigration controls, just as Margaret Thatcher did with the National Front in 1979. They will also encourage the Tories to fight amongst themselves over Europe. They know that anti-EU fanatics like Daniel Hannan are more than capable of starting another disastrous civil war.

Playing at empire

The British Empire has been gone for half a century but some people still think that we can strut around the world as though we owned it. Margaret Thatcher reinforced this idea when she responded to the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands by sending a naval task force. No other prime minister would have acted with such determination to defend a remote territory that few people had ever heard of.  But General Leopoldo Galtieri did not reckon with Margaret Hilda Thatcher. The war was hugely popular in Britain and the “Falklands factor” secured her election victory. Eventually she threw away her advantage by adopting the ill-fated poll tax and by growing increasingly dictatorial. But while it lasted Margaret Thatcher’s popularity was unprecedented.

Her military success made such an impression on the young Tony Blair that when he was offered the chance to have his own war he jumped at it. But Tony Blair miscalculated. The Falklands conflict had almost everything going for it. Argentina was a military dictatorship with a “foreign” population that was generally despised by readers of The Sun and The Daily Mail.
 
But the Falklands Islanders were British and because the war was fought at sea and in the wilderness there were no bombed out schools and hospitals or pathetic lines of refugees.
 
The invasion of Iraq was completely different; we were the illegal invaders and our devastating firepower was aimed indiscriminately at densely populated cities. Pictures came back not only of dead and dying civilians but also of Iraqi prisoners of war being routinely tortured, violated and murdered.

Two million people marched against the war in Britain and millions more around the world. Blair’s war had been justified by a dodgy dossier full of lies about non-existent “weapons of mass destruction.” But even the politically unconscious saw through the propaganda when the pro war newspapers started to backtrack. Tony Blair was left with an unpopular war and rising casualties. His best buddy George W Bush still loved him but the great mass of Sun readers who had elected him in 1997 drifted away.

The public’s support for the Falklands conflict was in sharp contrast to the shame and embarrassment of the destruction of Iraq. We had right on our side in the South Atlantic conflict but the invasion of Iraq was a wicked and unnecessary war that could not be justified by lying propaganda.

Tony Blair also supported the American invasion of Afghanistan. We were told that the al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked New York had been trained in Afghanistan with the help of the Taliban regime. Now after eight years of fierce fighting the war has spread to Pakistan and NATO is sending more troops. Nobody can see a way out of this mess. The old military maxim of always having a way out was not observed by over confident NATO commanders. The war has turned into another Vietnam and America and her allies are facing humiliating defeat.

Being a great military power is no longer such an attractive proposition. Armies have to be paid for in blood as well as money. We respect our fallen servicemen but we should question the waste of young British lives. The general public has started to see through the propaganda but our politicians are still waffling meaningless nonsense about “winning the war on terror.”

Despite the recent economic crisis Britain has a decent standard of living. Crime and unemployment are far too high and immigration is out of control but in most respects we are a typical European country. The only difference is that we automatically support American foreign policy and get involved in military adventures. Our politicians are trying to prove that we are still a world power. It makes them feel more important when they attend international conferences.

A referendum on immigration

Under the Citizens’ Initiative of the Lisbon Treaty the EU is obliged to grant a referendum on any issue if one million signatures from several countries are collected. If we spread this over the 10 countries most “enriched” by non-European immigration - the UK and her neighbours in Western Europe - we would need 100,000 British signatures. But all of Europe is affected by Third World immigration and if we spread it over all 27-member states we would only need 37,037 signatures.
 
The Lisbon Treaty only applies to EU states but Brussels could hardly ignore the rest of Europe. If the nations of the European Economic Area - Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland - were included we would need 32,258 signatures. And if all 47-member states of The Council of Europe were included we would only need 21,276 signatures.

Some of those campaigning against immigration are bitterly opposed to the Lisbon Treaty. They argue that it’s undemocratic but it would actually give them the chance to take part in a Europe-wide referendum on Third World immigration. It would also foster comradeship between many movements that have spent too long by themselves.

The whole thing could be done on the Internet with running totals displayed on websites in a coordinated campaign. There is no need to be racist or objectionable; our line should be that Europe is full up and we can’t take any more people. The campaign would be non-political; signatories could be anything from conservatives to communists so long as they think that we have got too many immigrants. It’s surprising how many so-called left-wingers, and politically correct centrists, are opposed to uncontrolled immigration.

It’s an issue that affects all classes and all nations. The arrival of a million Polish workers in the UK has changed the immigration debate forever. Because the Poles are white we are allowed to comment but if they had been black or Asian we would be silenced by race-relations legislation. We must thank our Polish friends for making it possible to discuss immigration after keeping our mouths shut for fifty years. 

Those deluded souls who think that European Union is a Nazi conspiracy will put no trust in a referendum. They are stuck in the past, playing with their toy Spitfires, listening to Vera Lynne records and waiting for Churchill to come back and save us. But those of us who live in the real world can make our feelings known. Remember that a majority of 55% of member states is all that’s required for a referendum to become law. This is a chance to make a stand against the exploitation of cheap labour immigrants and redundant European workers. Even a Labour or Tory government obsessed with multi-racialism would be bound by a majority decision.

A thousand years

According to The Daily Mail the Lisbon Treaty means the end of a thousand years of British history. Stirring words from the self-appointed defender of British sovereignty, but what do they mean? A thousand years ago Britain was divided amongst warring tribes and England didn’t exist as a unitary state. In 1009 the Danes occupied the north east of England, the Anglo-Saxons were fighting Vikings, Picts, Scots, Welsh and Irish and the country was in a state of chaos leading to the Norman conquest of 1066. Then as now England was inextricably tied to Europe by blood and culture. The Germanic invasion of the British Isles started with the Anglo Saxons at the end of the Roman period and ended with the Normans under William the Conqueror. The Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Vikings and Normans came from mainland Europe, just as the Iberians, Celts and Romans before them. And all of them contributed to the British nation.

The reign of Elizabeth I was happier than that of her homicidal father. Henry VIII executed her mother Anne Boleyn and slaughtered thousands in his campaign against the Catholic Church. England was at war for much of Elizabeth’s reign in the Netherlands, France and Ireland but it’s fondly remembered for Sir Francis Drake who finished his game of bowls before defeating the Spanish Armada

The next two hundred years was dominated by famine, plague and almost perpetual warfare during which Britain, Spain, Portugal, France and Russia conquered most of the world. In the 18th century France and The United States rebelled against monarchy and the old order. Tea was dumped in Boston and heads were cut off in Paris but in London 20,000 Chartists sang the Marseilles and went home after an appeal on behalf of the King.

In the 19th century Britain ruled a fabulously wealthy empire but most Britons lived in abject poverty. Britain was at peace with France after 1815 but made war on Russia and South Africa. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert produced princes and princesses for the whole of Europe but their dream of a continent united by monarchy was blown away by fratricide between the empires of King George V, Kaiser Wilhem II and Tzar Nicholas II. Britain’s massive borrowing to fight WW1 led to the Great Depression of the Thirties and our eventual demise as an imperial power after WWII.

Throughout history we have been at war with our neighbours. We eventually united with Scotland and Wales but not with Ireland.  England has seldom been a free, happy and independent country. We have enjoyed brief periods of happiness but we have also suffered the worse excesses of capitalism. Today those that are working enjoy a decent standard of living. We have never had much political influence because big business has always controlled our so-called democracy. But we have grown used to the prosperity and security and we are frightened of losing it. The Golden Age of the Daily Mail never existed for working people; what we are really saying goodbye to is a thousand years of war and poverty.

Cowboys and Indians

With sincere apologies to Francis Parker Yockey, Ezra Pound and all thinking Americans. There are many people in the United States who reject the New World Order and Wall Street’s attempt to enslave the world with debt. The financial gangsters have devastated the American economy and undermined their workers just as they have done to the rest of the world. America faces the same problems of imported cheap labour and exported jobs that we do.

In the Anglo-Saxon world we have been brought up on cowboys and Indians. America is all about good guys and bad guys. The good guys are Americans and the bad guys are foreigners; these have included Native Americans who were cruel savages that attacked wagon trains full of harmless settlers. Mexicans who were devious savages that dared to defend their own territory – remember the Alamo. Japanese who were treacherous savages who attacked Pearl Harbour. The Chinese and Russian communists who were fanatical savages that tried to take over the world. And Muslims who are fanatical, treacherous, devious, cruel savages that hate Israel and America.

Patriotic, God-fearing Americans naturally want to kill as many of the enemy as possible. They taught the Japanese a lesson at Hiroshima and Nagasaki when they dropped atomic bombs on them. They bankrupted the Soviet Union with the arms race and they lynched Sadaam Hussein for threatening to sell oil for euros. Now it’s the turn of the Afghans, a bunch of ragheads who caused 9/11. There can be no peace with people that don’t eat hot dogs, drink Budweiser and go to Church on Sundays. They are positively un-American.

But all is not well in the home of the brave land of the free. They now have a secret Moslem president who is threatening to introduce health care and extend public education and social housing. Patriotic Americans will never stand for this communist attack on their way of life. They will fight to defend their constitutional right to sickness, ignorance, poverty and homelessness.

In “Old Europe” half starved surrender monkeys scrape a living while well-fed Americans have donut eating competitions. They don’t have Wal-Mart in Europe, just primitive street markets where the wretched subjects of tyrannical Kings haggle over a few rotten vegetables. The only hope for Europeans is to get a green card to work in America. Even under the Democrats the USA is a paradise compared to the near-communist regimes that they are used to.

But come the next election Barack Obama will be run out of town and replaced with a red-blooded Republican who stands for God, private property, apple pie and handguns.  America will be restored as number one superpower. Europe will be slapped down and told to behave. Iran and North Korea will be bombed back to the Stone Age. Israel will occupy the entire Middle East and all will be right in the world. Just like it says in the Bible.

Democracy

The concept of democracy is universally supported. People trust doctors, dentists, motor mechanics and airline pilots with their lives and bank managers and financial advisors with their savings. They are happy to trust the experts except when it comes to government. Then they put their trust in elected amateurs. This is based on the idea that a multitude knows better than an individual. There is no basis for this belief but its entrenched in popular culture and one of the tenets of political correctness.

If opinions were arrived at by careful deliberation democracy might be fair system of government. But the trouble is that opinions are created by the mass media. The parties that get elected and the laws that are passed are decided by radio, television and newspapers, not by people thinking for themselves. Democracy is therefore an instrument of power controlled by big business and operated by the mass media.

Nobody voted for the wars of the last hundred years. We fought the First World War in a frenzy of patriotism. Hundreds of thousands of men volunteered to be slaughtered in the mud of Flanders or the burning sands of Arabia. By the Second World War the jingoism had died down but still men went to their deaths willingly. Then followed a string of colonial wars as the empire fell apart. Britain fought in Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, Aden and the Falklands, and as part of the United Nations in Korea. Recently we have supported the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. But not one of these wars was voted on by the people; in every case it was the government that decided to go to war.

Every war was fought for commercial reasons that had nothing whatever to do with Belgian neutrality or Polish independence. We fought the First World War to steal Middle East oil from the Turks and the Second World War to stop Germany from bypassing the banks by trading manufactured goods for raw materials. Nearly all subsequent conflicts, including Iraq and Afghanistan, were really about natural resources. America’s ultimate aim is to control all the gas and oil between Egypt and China.

And just as big business sent us to war they also decided to change the population of our country without consulting us. So they introduced the British Nationality Act and imported millions of Third World immigrants to undercut wages and drive down expectations. Then they rushed through laws to stop any criticism of their actions. And at every stage, in every war and throughout half a century of mass migration the people have gone to the polls to endorse their own destruction. They have voted for the very parties that took us to war and turned our country into a dumping ground for the surplus population of the world.

From time to time protest movements have arisen that have fought for justice. Some of them have become mass movements but the power of the state has been used without mercy to detain people without trial or charge them with newly invented crimes.

Our task must be to educate the masses, to wean them off of the existing “democratic” system and make them aware that there are alternatives. We do not need 650 professional politicians to speak for us. And we do not need them to be divided into meaningless parties that all serve the same masters.

People must realize that charlatans are abusing them. Nothing is more sickening than the false patriotism of the capitalists. They send us to war with drums beating and flags flying but they couldn’t care less who wins the war so long as they are making profits. Big business is international and has been for hundreds of years. The great corporations do not recognize countries or races; they exploit mankind without regard to race, creed or colour.

Communism and fascism came and went without destroying the capitalist system. But they showed that mighty states could be built with their own resources without submitting to international finance. The Internet is changing everything; it’s no longer possible to control information and keep people in a state of ignorance. Revolutionary philosophies may yet come together with climate change and demographics to finally bury debt and usury.

We must read, write and communicate. The state can close down dissenting movements but ideas cannot be destroyed. The present system relies on media control and political corruption but it cannot survive in the age of information technology. The people now know too much to be treated with contempt by elected representatives who are mainly interested in fiddling their expenses. We
must develop a modern system of government that is not controlled by bankers and speculators. The financial crisis shows that capitalists are only vulnerable human beings who make mistakes. They can be beaten.

Views on the news

Tom Wise the former policeman and UKIP MEP who led the fight against EU corruption have been jailed for two years for fiddling his expenses. He was secretly filmed in a Belgian bar boasting that he was “milking the system.” His conviction sends a message to the Euro parliament that cheating members will be prosecuted. Following Wise’s conviction attention should be focused on those who shout the loudest about corruption. Wise is surely not the only Euro-sceptic MEP driven by an obsession with money.

The new generation of nuclear power plants announced by the government are necessary but they will have to be subsidized. Nuclear power generation is not cost effective when waste disposal and decommissioning are included. If the power companies had to pay the real cost they would not stay in business. The idea that all goods and services should be run by private enterprise is another right-wing theory that doesn’t work in practice. The railways in Britain are supposed to be run as commercial enterprises but they are massively subsidized. And the banks had to be rescued by the taxpayer after they wasted billions of pounds playing the markets. If banks, railways and power plants need to be subsidized they should be nationalized and any profits should go to the state. “Private enterprise,” together with “free markets” and “open borders,” are empty phrases that really mean highway robbery.

Sixty-four years after WW2 and twenty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union we still have 20,000 troops stationed in Germany. The Tories are now looking at withdrawing them as a cost cutting measure and to make servicemen available for Afghanistan. The timing of this decision gives us some idea of the desperately slow acceptance of reality by our politicians. Even now fossilized Tory supporters are writing furious letters to The Daily Telegraph warning of the continued danger of “The Hun” and the need to keep our troops in Germany. It’s little wonder that these people are unable to accept European solidarity. Their minds are stuck in the postwar era when the Germans were beaten and starving and their cities and factories lay in ruins. But modern Germany is a thriving and dynamic state that is leading Europe out of recession. The Germans are fellow Europeans with a vital role to play in the unification of our continent. Their prosperity is in our best interest. It’s time for us to forget about the war and look to the future.

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