Issue 95, September 2012

Nation Revisited

# 95, September 2012 

Visit our website: http://nationrevisited.blogspot.co.uk/

Thanks for your help
 

Thanks to Rufus of the News From Atlantis blog for organizing our new website. This will be updated as each copy of NR is issued; usually every month. This newsletter is opposed to both Finance Capitalism and Communism and stands for European solidarity. We reject racial and religious hatred, including Zionism, but we uphold the positive values of Western civilization.

 

The London Olympics 2012
 

The 2012 London Olympics were a great success. The USA and China were clear winners and the UK did well to come third. But if all the states of Europe had competed under one flag they would have dominated the games with 136 gold, 151 silver and 174 bronze medals. The £10 billion extravaganza was a celebration of global capitalism sponsored by MacDonald’s and Coca-Cola. But we shouldn’t forget the lessons of history. The 1936 Berlin Olympics were brilliantly choreographed by Joseph Goebbels and filmed by Leni Riefenstahl, but ten years later the National Socialist state had ceased to exist. And when Leonid Brezhnev hosted the 1980 Moscow Olympics the Red Army had just invaded Afghanistan. But ten years later Mikhail Gorbachev was forced to withdraw his forces and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Let’s hope that our war-mongering plutocracy suffers a similar fate.

 

Real and Present Danger
 

With the backing of the Murdoch press the retrograde wing of the Tory Party is growing stronger. They have already rejected reform of the House of Lords and they are demanding a referendum on Europe. If they win such a referendum they could force Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. 

This would only be a temporary setback on the road to European unity but it would mean a return to the days before 1973 when we joined the old Common Market. We would still have a stagnant economy, high unemployment and a national debt of £1.2 trillion, but we would be able to wave the Union Jack and sing Land of Hope and Glory to our heart’s content.

In an “independent” Britain there would be no hated foreigners poking their noses into our affairs; except for President Obama and his radiant Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. She is responsible for enforcing US foreign policy on the rest of the world including their insistence on open-door immigration.

There is no shortage of right-wing Tories like William Hague and Liam Fox willing to collaborate with her. The Tories like talking about immigration but they always obey American orders. Any attempt to limit Third World immigration - which is 60% of our intake – would be vetoed by Barack Obama whose father was Kenyan. At present Hilary Clinton is directing the destruction of Syria but she would soon turn her attention to the UK if we went against her.

 

The real and present danger to the UK is uncontrolled Third World immigration. It will make no difference if we are in or out of the EU if we are overrun by the surplus population of the world. William Hague and Liam Fox are obsessed with getting Britain out of the EU but race and culture are infinitely more important than political arrangements. In our long history we have been part of an informal Celtic confederation, a province of the Roman Empire, united with Denmark, ruled by the Normans and united with Wales, Scotland and Ireland. We have survives all of these regimes with our DNA intact. But we will not survive the Third World invasion unless we take immediate action.

Anything you say will be taken down, altered, and used in evidence.
 

The Not Guilty verdict for PC Simon Harwood accused of killing newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson during a City of London demonstration will do little to restore public confidence. The police have been using increasing violence against political campaigners. The BNP Liverpool Mayoral candidate Mike Whitby was taken away in handcuffs by police who kicked down his door. The Liverpool Echo reported that he was suspected of forging signatures on his nomination papers. But electoral fraud is not a violent crime and there is no reason to think that he would abscond.  

 

When the police raided Colin Jordan’s North Yorkshire farmhouse in 1991 looking for literature liable to incite racial hatred they didn’t find any but a sharp-eyed CJ noticed that their search warrant was out-of-date. He sued them for violating his rights and accepted £10,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

 

The law is supposed to be independent but most courts serve the government of the day. Some judges served under the Weimar Republic, the Nazis and the East German dictatorship. They dealt impartially with enemies of the state be they Nazi agitators, “rootless cosmopolitans” or kids trying to climb over the Berlin Wall.

 

The police and the judiciary talk about democracy but their instinct is to serve the Establishment and that’s exactly what they do. When the German Army marched through Saint Helier the Jersey cops held up the traffic for them; just as they did in all the occupied countries.

Britain has finally admitted using torture and castration against Mau Mau insurgents in Kenya in the Fifties. They claim that the killing and torture of prisoners was authorized by the colonial administration. These crimes were committed just a few years after British officers had served on the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.

The Israeli Defence Force is currently doing similar things to the Arabs in Palestine and they also claim to be acting within the law. All over the world vicious regimes are brutalizing innocent people under the pretext of law and order.

Jacques Offenbach got it right when he wrote Les Deux Gendarmes: 

We’re public guardians bold yet wary

And of ourselves we take good care

To risk our precious lives we’re chary

When danger threatens we’re not there

But when we see a harmless woman

Or little boys that do no harm

We run them in, we run them in

To show them we’re the beaux gendarme.

 

Commenting on the banning of a UM rally in Trafalgar Square Jeffrey Hamm took a more respectful line in Action of October 1961. He said: “Union Movement does not criticize the police. We know that they act on the orders of governments corruptly employing them (at the taxpayer’s expense) to pursue a political vendetta. The old gibe about “one law for the rich and another for the poor” has long ceased to be operative. As successive governments encouraged mass coloured immigration it was succeeded by “one law for the whites and one for the coloureds”; superseded again by “one law for Union Movement and another for its political opponents.” In the face of all such prejudice and injustice our position is clear and unchanging. We will keep the law until we can change it.”

Global Capitalism
 

The global capitalist system has given most of us a good living for many years but it has run out of gas and the good times are over. We built a social state on high taxation and borrowing but now our perpetually expanding economy has come to a standstill. In order to reduce our national debt we are expected to accept lower wages and pensions and stop spending money on defence, education, health, social security and all the things that we take for granted. But people will not willingly work for less or give up a comfortable life in exchange for poverty. They will only do these things if they are forced to.

Instead of trying to revive global capitalism we should produce our own cars and computers and let the Chinese develop their vast internal market. And instead of growing crops for European supermarkets the Africans should grow their own food. The present system depends on the buyer being able to afford the product. But we can’t reduce the cost of production because the farmers of Africa and the factory workers of China are working as cheap as possible. And we can’t give more money to Western consumers because they are taxed up to the eyeballs. The cheap labour system has run its course and must be replaced.

 

Individual nation states are too small to break away from global capitalism but the world has already divided itself into geopolitical entities. The European Union has been dogged by nationalism and undermined by rate fixing and short selling but it is still the world’s largest trading bloc. The Russian Federation stretches from the Baltic to the Pacific and is rich in natural resources. The North American Free Trade Agreement is established and the nations of East Asia are drawing together. These emerging economic blocs will transform international trade by breaking away from “free trade and open borders.”

Governments supplement taxation by selling interest-bearing bonds to pension funds and investors at rates dictated by the market. Individual states are vulnerable to predatory rate fixing but “federal” bonds backed by the combined industrial might of Europe would be a solid investment. The EU has now taken the first steps toward fiscal union by establishing a mutual fund known as the EFSF.

But politicians should be careful what they say. Markets responded immediately when Mario Draghi, chief of the ECB, vowed to “do whatever it takes to defend the euro”. He was supported by Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande. She had previously depressed the markets by saying: “no debt sharing in my lifetime.” Dave Cameron is always talking down the euro to impress his right-wingers but his negative comments damage the UK economy as well as the eurozone.

 

Britain cannot go on printing money indefinitely and those states being squeezed by the rating agencies cannot go on paying 7% interest. Europe and the rest of the world are in the grip of the worst recession since 1929. But every recession in history has been followed by an economic recovery. Despite the gloom and doom of the popular press this one will be no different.

 

Batman and Mosley
 

The historian Dominic Sandbrook wrote a double page Saturday Essay in the Daily Mail shortly after the Colorado cinema massacre. He linked the scenes of violence depicted in the Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises” with a new production of Shakespeare’s play “Timon of Athens” at the National Theatre, and public disorder resulting from the recession. Sandbrook is afraid that political unrest will lead to a revival of political extremism as it did in the Thirties. 

He recalls:  “Every week tens of millions of Americans tuned in to hear the crude rants of the Catholic “radio priest” Charles Coughlin, one of the most popular celebrities of the day, who claimed the Jews, Wall Street bankers and Bolshevik activists were plotting to undermine the American dream.”

The whole point of the article was to link the headline; “The Batman massacre was the work of a deranged mind. But I’d argue the film and a new play in London both warn how the West may be reverting to the dark days of the Thirties” – with a quarter page picture of Oswald Mosley inspecting his assembled Blackshirts in 1936. This “picture and caption” propaganda trick was pioneered by Joseph Goebbels.

 

When the Colorado shooting was announced we expected the assassin to be a far-right fanatic, like Anders Breivik or Tim McVeigh, but James Holmes turned out to be a non-political psychopath. Nevertheless Dominic Sandbrook still involved Mosley. The average Daily Mail reader will look at the picture and conclude that OM did the shooting. But Sandbrook failed to mention that the Daily Mail initially supported the BUF with their famous headline “Hurrah for The Blackshirts.”

In 2010 he wrote: “Britain’s empire stands out as a beacon of tolerance, decency and the rule of law… Nor did Britain countenance anything like the dreadful torture committed in French Algeria.” He should talk to some of the victims of imperialism including those interned under Defence Regulation 18B; or the castrated Kenyans who are currently suing the British government. The Mau Mau was a bloodthirsty enemy that showed no mercy but so was the British government. Britain was no worse than any other colonial power but she was never a “beacon of tolerance.”

 

The Colorado shooting was the work of a deranged young man with access to firearms. Similar atrocities have happened around the world. It had nothing to do with civil unrest and even less with a political movement that existed in Britain over 70 years ago. This story was a conflation of lies, innuendo, half-truths and inappropriate photos designed to grab the interest of the Daily Mail’s diminishing readership.

But we didn’t have to wait very long for a real far-right atrocity. Wade Michael Page a 40 year-old ex-soldier was shot dead by the police after opening fire on a Sikh temple. He killed six people and wounded three including a policeman. According to Fox news Page was a right wing extremists with a shaven head and a 9/11 tattoo. He probably thought that the Sikhs were Muslims.

 

Celebrating Diversity
 

Most of our readers are well informed and intelligent people who believe in social justice and European solidarity. They accept that global capitalism is controlled by the World Trade Organization and the central banks of the great powers. But there are others with more exotic ideas.

The conspiracy theorists believe that literally everything is controlled by a secret gang of plotters. They were originally supposed to be Jews and Freemasons but over the years they have been joined by communists and Muslims. The fact that these groups are mutually hostile is apparently part of their cunning plan. 

The head measurers are searching for racial purity. But history shows that humanity is made up of black, white and brown people that have been driven around the world by the forces of climate, hunger, disease, commerce and war since the dawn of time. Recognising our heritage is fine but obsessive subdivision is self-destructive.

 

The pagans want to dance naked around the rune stones in the pale northern sunlight of a cold winter’s morning. They have an idealized view of ancient times that does not include the overwhelming ignorance, endemic disease, grinding poverty, perpetual starvation, routine violence, insanitary conditions and early death that epitomized the good old days.

The Thatcherites are deluded Tories who have a false memory of life under the Iron Lady. The truth is that she did absolutely nothing about immigration and started the deregulation of the banks that led inevitably to the financial crisis of 2008.

 

The eurosceptics will only be happy when Britain quits the EU to be absorbed into the United States. They blame the EU for immigration, the loss of the Empire and the decline of manners and morals. And they reject economic arguments because they think that economics is a “left wing” thing that should be banned.

 

According to this paranoid nonsense “the liberal elite” are responsible for every terrorist attack, every run on the pound, and every job lost. People who are fed up with immigration have every right to vote BNP but the conspiracy freaks should get their heads examined. Mr Levy the tailor is actually too busy to take over the world, and so is Mr Patel at the corner shop. The local Masons meeting in the upstairs room at the Red Lion are doing no harm with their embroidered aprons and secret handshakes; and the last card-carrying communist died of incurable resentment and was buried by the Co-Op in 1999.

 

The world is run by the people that have always run it – those with the most money. Some of them are Jews and Freemasons but most of them are not. Revolutionary systems have been tried but they all revert to plutocracy in the end. We can build a better world by making education and medical care available to all. But we will never make all men equal.

 

Selective Compassion
 

Hilary Clinton is currently leading the gang of sanctimonious hypocrites who are crying about human rights in Syria. They have tried to sell the idea that the rebels are peaceful demonstrators but TV pictures of them fighting government forces with tanks and heavy machine guns indicate that they are well armed and funded. It’s a toss-up whether Hilary Clinton or William Hague is the biggest liar.

 

Both of them know very well that Israel has a worse human rights record than Syria. The UN estimates that 5 million Palestinians are being denied the right to return to their homeland. The Israelis are violating UN Resolution 242 by occupying Palestine and by stealing land and resources. But we have not heard a squeak out of the Anglo-American double act; they are too busy provoking violence in Syria to notice that Israel is a rogue nuclear state that threatens the peace of the world.

 

In the great days of the British Empire it was an established practice to appoint diplomats and administrators who knew nothing about world affairs. The Colonial Office distrusted academics and much preferred sportsmen. As a result the Sudan was known as a country of Blacks ruled by Blues. But the Americans value education and both William Hague and Hilary Clinton have got impressive qualifications. Their one-sided approach to the Middle East must therefore be a matter of selective compassion. The Voltaire news agency reports that up to 60,000 Libyans are fighting in Syria on the rebel side under Turkish officers. This is not a civil war but a proxy war supported by the US, financed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and fought by mercenaries.

 

The real power struggle is between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Americans are only interested in grabbing Iranian oil and Britain and France are just obeying orders. The bosses of the American oil and defence industries are looking forward to massive profits from a protracted war with Iran. They made fortunes out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya but they would really hit the jackpot in Iran. Of course they expect to lose soldiers, but they would mostly be poor whites and blacks from the South who would otherwise be unemployed and therefore of no economic value.

 

The so-called “merchants of death” pushed Europe into both world wars, but the population booms after both conflicts more than made up for the “collateral damage” sustained; and rising commodity prices brought massive profits. For most people war is disastrous but not for the profiteers. John Maynard Keynes was already a leading economist when he predicted events in his book: “The Economic Consequences of the Peace.” But governments infested with arms dealers and war profiteers ignored his advice and enforced the Treaty of Versailles. As a result Europe was plunged into another bloodbath.

 

Now another gang of greedy and immoral fixers and financiers are pushing for war with Iran. Dick Cheney and the neocons are just as greedy as Sir Basil Zaharoff who sold armaments to both sides during the Balkan Wars. These later day “merchants of death” have no national allegiances or moral compunctions. They camouflage their avarice with patriotic sentiments and talk about spreading democracy but in reality they are only interested in money.

The National Health Service
 

Americans cannot understand Britain’s devotion to the NHS. They think that everyone should pay their own medical bills and they are opposed to state-run health care. That would be fine in a booming economy but the world is currently in a recession and many people have no insurance or savings. A civilized society cannot let sick people suffer and die for want of money. It is the duty of the State to provide the necessities of life; work, food, shelter, education and medical care. Those who abuse the system and refuse to contribute must be weeded out but we cannot dismantle society because of an antisocial minority. It’s true that a social state attracts immigrants but few countries have seriously tried to keep them out. The USA and Europe have traditionally encouraged immigration as a source of cheap labour. 

 

European Socialists are opposed to globalism and usury but we strive for affordable housing, decent working conditions, free education and medical care. The private sector cannot provide universal medical care free at the point of issue.

 

Paul Barnes RIP
 

My oldest friend Paul Barnes has died aged 65. He was the son of pre-war Blackshirt Bill Barnes and the Godson of John Beckett. Paul was opposed to usury and uncontrolled immigration but he was not a bigot or a reactionary. The following article that he wrote for Nation in April 1974 gives some idea of the man and his politics. 

Social Issues by Paul Barnes
 

“Centrepoint Occupied by the People” ran the headline in The Sun; “The squatters consisted of a Bank Manager, Doctors, Architects” – all members of that elusive quantity “The People”. 

Thus we watched a major coup by the international left, well organized, well executed and guaranteed to receive maximum publicity with maximum public sympathy and approval. Sympathy and approval for whom; the ratepayers of Camden who have subsidized and suffered the dealings of Harry Hyams and company for so long? The young house buyer who has watched the cost of a basic essential – the need for housing – rise out of all proportion to his income? Or was it for Ron Bailey and his team of professional demonstrators, who far from caring for the problems of the indigenous population of Central London see it as a convenient bandwagon upon which they can expound the doctrines of the revolutionary left?

 

Surely if ever there was a cause célèbre for the radical right this was it; but where were we?

On the very night of the occupation some 3,000 of us marched through Central London protesting against the Common Market. To say that is not to suggest that the issues of the Market are not of desperate importance but to state that the social conditions of millions of our fellow Britons, and the struggle against the usurer, are of equal importance to the fight against the Council of Europe.

Any right thinking person must cringe when reading the Evening Standard headline: “Peter Hain to Lead The Fight Against The Motorways”, what does this invidious little school ma’am know of the misery of living next to the major motor routes through London, or once again, is the motivation behind community politics a convenient bandwagon from which to peddle international socialism?

 

The fight against non-European immigration is of national importance but the fight against the money-motivated road lobby and aviation lobby is of almost equal importance. I see little advantage in living in a racially desirable society in conditions of technological madness.

Who is better equipped to lead the fight against the destroyers disguised as progressives than those who love and understand their national heritage – the radical right? We must involve ourselves in social issues; it is the right who should lead the fight against alien usury in housing and the fight against technological destruction. Too long have the Marxists made the running in the field of social issues. We are involved in politics; why give the left all the good tunes?

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 20^th 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 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.