Last Saturday I received an empty A4 envelope addressed to Nation Revisited. I contacted Royal Mail Customer Services but they are too busy to answer my query. This is a mystery. If it was opened by Special Branch they would have resealed it and sent it on. And if it was delivered to the wrong address, why would anyone post the empty envelope through my letterbox? If you sent it please get in touch.
Fragments of History
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British troops evacuated from Dunkirk, War Office photo
People interpret history according to their prejudices. John Tyndall in his book 'The Eleventh Hour' says that the Germans allowed Allied troops to escape from Dunkirk on Hitler's orders. It's more likely that the Germans relied on their magnetic mines to stop our ships from getting through. They didn't know that the Royal Navy was equipped with 'degaussing' gear which enabled them to penetrate the minefields. At the same time, the Germans were kept out of the Dunkirk pocket by fierce resistance from our troops; there was nothing magnanimous about it.
They could not invade Britain following the Dunkirk evacuation because they could not defeat the RAF or the Royal Navy. They only had flat-bottomed Rhine barges for transport across the Channel. These would have been sunk by gunfire from planes, ships and shore batteries. Hitler did not cancel the invasion because he wanted peace with Britain, but because he knew that it would end in disaster.
John Tyndall blamed the German defeat at Stalingrad on the weather, but it was just as cold for the Russians. The Axis forces fought bravely but they couldn't match the Red Army for manpower and equipment. German propaganda denigrated the Russians but they had one of the best battlefield tanks in the Second World War, the formidable T34, and arguably the best fighter plane, the Yak 3. Soviet weapons were cheap to produce and easy to maintain. German tanks and planes were much better engineered but too few in number.
John Tyndall took his prejudices with him when he died but there are still plenty of apologists for Adolf Hitler and his bid for world domination. It's a pity that the early achievements of the Third Reich have been forgotten. The Nazis restored Germany to greatness, ended unemployment and built a welfare state, but their economy depended on rearmament and their racial theories underestimated their enemies.
The recovery package agreed by the European Union shows how far we have come from those dark days. Britain is leaving the EU but we are still a European country and solidarity is very much in our interest. We are currently negotiating a trade agreement with our neighbours but 75 years ago we were killing each other.
Childhood Memories
One of my jobs as a boy was to take a rechargeable battery to the local hardware shop. This powered our radio, which was known as 'the wireless'. Later on, I hot-wired a speaker to the British Relay cable system used by our next door neighbour. The only trouble was that you had to listen to whatever program he was listening to. The choice was, the BBC Home Service, the BBC Light Program, and Radio Luxembourg. On Saturday night my sister and I would listen to 'The Hit Parade' hosted by Alan Freeman. If you could guess what would be top of the Hit Parade next week, you won the star prize - a taxi ride round the West End with Donald Peers. Oh happy days.
Before we had mains electricity we used gaslight, and another of my jobs was to go to the same oil shop for gas mantles. They were little gauze caps that glowed with the gas. Every so often they would burst and had to be replaced. But at least, the gaslight helped to warm the house.
When we got connected to the electricity it was only a ring main for lighting, but with the help of bayonet adaptors we ran a fridge and my mother was able to use an electric iron. As she ironed the clothes, with the iron plugged into the light socket, sparks flew in all directions and the lights went on and off. But she pressed on regardless.
Washing was done in a boiler in what was known as the skullery. This was also used to boil Christmas puddings which my mother started preparing about October. The whole family was involved in peeling fruit, shelling almonds, grinding nutmegs, and finally stirring the mixture in a great earthenware dish and making a wish as we did so.
Washing day was Monday and it took all day. Mother piled everything into the copper and filled the skullery with soapsuds and bubbles, while me and my sister operated an ancient wringer with wooden rollers and a great iron spring on the top. On Mondays it was always bubble and squeak for tea; cabbage and potatoes fried up with meat left over from Sunday.
The other thing that sticks in my mind is that I had an army greatcoat on my bed, and so did all of my mates. I thought that this was standard kit for all bedrooms.
Shopping was a nightmare. You had to wait in line at the Co-Op, or wherever you were registered, and hand over your ration book with each purchase. Other items, such as cigarettes, were got from the little shop across the road. I would be sent with a note and told to say "mum says please put in on the book."
Fruit was hard to come by, except for apples, but for some strange reason we had plenty of pomegranates which were full of seeds that we spat all over the place.
I went to St Marks Church of England School which was run by MIss Hatfield, a staunchly patriotic woman who had us marching round the playground and saluting the flag. It's no wonder that I ended up as an Empire Loyalist. We went to St Mark's Church where hymns were sung as loudly as possible, especially Onward Christian Soldiers.
My political awakening started in 1956 when I was 11 years-old. The Russians invaded Hungary and Britain and France invaded Egypt. I was all for the Hungarians for fighting for their independence but unsympathetic to the Egyptians for doing the same thing. I was outraged when we were ordered to pull out of Egypt by the Americans. I realised for the first time that we were no longer a world power. Times were hard but I still think of them as the good old days.
A History of Violence - Mark Webb
I have written this rather long complex story, but I've time jumped to shorten it. I think it's current in the light of recent and ongoing BLM / NFAC violence in the US and the way the US Police are handling that violence.
The story begins in Miracle Valley, Cochise County, Arizona. It was a huge farming area with lush, good growing land. A preacher by the name of AA Allen had a mobile tent Evangelist thing going on in the 50s and 60s. He was a white guy, but he ordained some 10,000 people as preachers, both black and white alike. A farmer from the Valley saw one of Allen's 'shows' and donated a big piece of land to the church so that they could have a full time home. They built a huge domed church, had mass meetings and got on well with the locals. Allen died in 1970 (death by alcohol misuse it was said) and the church was given to a faction inside the movement.
An Allen preacher called Frances Thomas from Chicago was spoken to by God and she moved herself and all of her followers from Chicago to land she had purchased opposite the old Allen church and set up a community settlement called 'Frontsight'. A religious, pro-gun, Pentecostal, all black church and 'village'. Hundreds of urban black Christians moved into an all white, rural community. At first things were ok, several years of peaceful coexisting and then an incident at a local school between black teens, white teens and the local police turned nasty. Word got back to Frontsight and several dozen of the faithful headed, unarmed, to the school. They turned on the local police and a fist fight broke out. The black people left in a running battle, followed by the police and as they entered, Frontsight cars pulled in front of the entrance and that stopped the police gaining access. Tensions in the local community started rising. Another church / cult member was arrested in town (Sierra Visa) on the 10th September 1981 and the people at Frontsight drove a twelve seater van packed with bombs on board made from dynamite.
They drove towards town, followed by a car load of armed 'Commandos for Christ', cult members carrying rifles, shotguns, pistols, and knives. The plan was to blow up cars in town and then in the chaos, hit the jail house and free the prisoner. However, one of the bombs exploded in the van killing Brother Stevie (the bomb was in his lap when it exploded), wrecking the van, wounding the others on board and covering them in his gore. Things in the community went up another notch . A TV crew turned up to film Frontsight and twenty women , some middle aged and older came out and attacked the film crew with claw hammers. Bashing them and throwing the hammers at them again and again. It was filmed by another TV crew. This was April of 1982.
The locals and local police had by now had enough and a police raid was planned to arrest several cult members on failure to attend court and some other minor charges. Warrants at the ready, a small scale police operation was planned. So on the 22nd October 1982 the police entered the compound in several vehicles, it was mid-morning on a weekday. They started knocking on doors. No-one answered. Then from inside the main hall (the healing centre and church) and from other houses scores of cult members appeared and approached the police , they had been expecting the police to arrive and had gathered together and armed themselves the night before. The police disarmed one man who was carrying a metal pipe. He was handcuffed and placed inside a police car.
This was the trigger! A huge melee then broke out. Cult members armed with rocks, sticks, baseball bats, lengths of rebar and such laid into the police, who called for backup. Shots (rifle and shotgun) rang out from inside the houses and one cult member was shot in the back with a .22 bullet that paralysed him for life from the waist down. Someone blasted a police jeep with a shotgun wounding the officer inside. The police used batons but were reluctant to draw their firearms as the cultists had formed a tactic of having women at the front of the fighting. The cops did not want to hurt them. Police reinforcements arrived and now thirty six officers faced around two hundred cult members plus more inside the homes, shooting out of the windows). One officer was hit in the arm with a metal bar and his arm shattered with bones protruding through his skin. Another officer was struck in the face with a rock that was thrown, and knocked out. Another was hit in the head with a wooden floor board, he fell to the ground and was struck in the chest with a five foot metal pipe and he later died. A boy armed with a .22 pistol approached the police and raised the gun, an officer drew his gun and the boy dropped the .22 pistol and ran off. Bottles were thrown. A man armed with nunchucks swung them at another officer and that officer drew his gun and threatened to shoot him, he ran off. More rounds were fired at the police from inside the houses. Rounds struck the police cars, bullets hissed overhead. A boy walked towards the police with a copy of an 1894 Winchester lever action rifle in .30-.30 (like a 303 round). He cocked it and aimed it at an officer, the officer was armed with a mini-Ruger 14, he fired first and from the hip, at a range of about 40 yards, putting four 5.56mm rounds in the boy's chest. The boy dropped dead. A man ran out and grabbed up the rifle, again aiming it at the officer, the same officer fired another four round burst, all the rounds hit the man in the chest and he fell dead. The fighting suddenly stopped (it had been raging for 15 minutes). 25 policeman were very badly injured, 7 critically wounded, shot with birdshot, some suffering with broken bones, teeth knocked out and skull fractures. Dozens of cultists were hurt, heads whacked with batons and many had bullet / pellet wounds from friendly fire. The final death toll was two dead cult members and one dead officer. In the aftermath Cochise County could not afford a trial so all charges were dropped against 22 cultists charged with murder, attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon etc.
A judge dismissed all of the cases with prejudice, so the defendants could not face charges in the future. Frances Thomas took everyone back to Chicago and the site was abandoned.
Lessons: Black radical groups with guns on one side and the police on the other side don't mix. What is past is prologue, such events are destined to happen in the future as reasonable debate and calm discussion are simply not on the agenda. This type of clash has happened throughout the history of the USA, with Blacks, Irish, Native Indians, Mexicans, Chinese immigrants, poor Whites etc. America and American culture is full of violence and that violence spreads like a cancer. People see what goes on in America and then protest about it here. Why, I do not know or understand. It is a mystery to me? Once in a group, and if armed, these people seem to feel that they are above the law and as we have seen again and again they attack the police. From the 19th century until now there have been more than six hundred major incidents of revolt and civil unrest in the United States.
Natural Selection
The Coronavirus pandemic hit the big cities the hardest. Viruses prefer dense centres of population where they infect the maximum number of victims. The trend all over the world is for the big cities to grow as people leave the countryside in search of work. Some affluent members of the middle classes are going in the opposite direction - fleeing the cities for the wide open spaces, often to escape from Third World immigration. But the great migration from country to town continues, and with it grows the risk of a devastating future pandemic.
Countries with health services and access to credit can withstand millions of deaths but the poorest countries in Africa and Asia face oblivion. When the rich northern hemisphere runs out of money the poor south will be the first to feel it. Foreign aid will dry up and and expensive medicines will be reserved for those who can afford them. The extinction will not be based on race, but the vast majority of its victims will be Africans, Asians and South Americans.
The current pandemic has been fought by national governments according to the advice of their scientists. Such methods as 'lockdown' and 'testing' have helped to slow down the virus but in the end it will run its course, just like the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. Coronavirus might kill several million people worldwide but those deaths hardly register against the relentless increase in population.
It would take a lethal and highly infectious virus to make an impression on the world population. But with the continued growth of our big cities, and the decline in the world economy, we could find ourselves in such a position. The first to go would be the old and the sick, followed by the working population. As they died the economy would collapse leading to general starvation and even more fatalities. But humanity will find a way to survive, even if millions perish.
We don't know how many people died in the Black Death of the 14th century, estimates vary but fifty percent seems about right. It caused a labour shortage that ended feudalism and drove entire populations across oceans, deserts and mountains. The world was changed forever and we can expect it to change again.
The US Election
The 2020 US presidential election will not matter much to us in the UK. Whatever differences there are between Trump and Biden are domestic. When it comes to foreign policy they follow the same strict Israel First policy. Both major parties in the US are dominated by Zionists who support what Dwight D Eisenhower called the 'military industrial complex'. Whoever wins the coming election will pursue the same policies; countries that follow US orders will be allowed to prosper and those that don't will be undermined by economic warfare.
We must thank the Founding Fathers of the American Constitution for designing the system of checks and balances that holds the US together. It's popularly believed that the US military are gung-ho warmongers but that is not so. The 2011 film 'Thirteen Days', starring Kevin Costner, showed the American generals involved in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis to be sane and rational men. We hope that the current chiefs of staff are just as sensible. The President might be suffering from senile dementia but his generals will keep his finger off the button.
The retirement age for airline pilots is 65 but most pilots all over the world are under 60. The same restrictions should apply to presidents. Both Trump and Biden are in their seventies and showing clear signs of senility.
Common sense restrains the military and commerce restrains the politicians. Trump might think it's a good idea for the worlds biggest economy to engage in a trade war with the world's second biggest economy, but commercial reality will ensure that Americans with dollars to spend will buy goods and services from China. The US is big enough, and rich enough, to fend for herself, but America is so much a part of the global economy that the dream of economic nationalism will never be realised.
The era of gas-guzzling cars from Detroit and coal-fired power plants is coming to an end. New eco-friendly industries will eventually take their place, but in the short term Trump's promises to the coal miners and the auto workers will not be kept. The challenge of the future is not to 'make America Great', but to share the wealth.
Friendly Websites
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Nation Revisited
This blog seeks reform by legal means. All articles are by Bill Baillie unless otherwise stated. The opinions of guest writers are entirely their own. We uphold the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19:
"We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share our ideas with other people ."
