I happened to see the second tweet below, the one showcasing an opinion poll from November 1947:
Nov 1947: “Comparing the present with your situation just before the war, in 1939, which would you choose, if you had to make a choice?” Present 31%, Pre-war 62%, No opinion 7%
You see, here we are 73 years later, and the Jewish lobby with the compliant msm are constantly putting forward the idea that the 1930s were backward, poor, basically terrible, but that “the war” changed all that. In reality, the latter part of the 1930s was a time of general economic and social advance.
Looking mainly at the UK, the second part of the 1930s was a time when, at least in the South and Midlands, there were job opportunities, new towns and roads being constructed, air routes being laid out, both across Europe and, via Imperial Airways etc, worldwide, using safe and comfortable flying boats.
Across the South of England, people were moving into the detached and semi-detached suburban housing still considered desirable property today, 80-90 years later.
More than that. Advanced thinkers were already laying the intellectual foundations for the Welfare State: decent public housing, a National Health Service etc.
Then came the war. It has been said that, under strict WW2 rationing, perhaps as much as a quarter of the UK population was actually better-fed than it had been in the 1930s, an indication of the social inequality rampant before the war. However, in general, the war impoverished the whole nation (how could it not?). Britain suffered under rationing of various types until the mid-1950s! There is no doubt that poverty and indeed inequality would overall have been ameliorated quicker had the war not “frozen” the social situation.
Before 1939, Britain was taking steps to grant independence to the colonies. The White colonies had already achieved Dominion status. The colonies of black Africa and elsewhere might have been given independence later but on a more secure basis, after sufficient Africans (etc) had achieved the stature capable of running advanced societies and economies. Sadly, that never happened.
“The War”, as UK people still call WW2, was disastrous for most of the peoples, animals, birds etc of the world. Environmental degradation today continues apace, a result, ultimately, of the corruption and inefficiency of the “independent” states formed after WW2.
The peoples of the former colonies have suffered wars, civil wars, banditry, rapacious officialdom, you name it. All because of premature decolonization. Not only in the former British Empire, which attained its greatest territorial extent after the First World War, in 1918. About a third of the world was under British control at that time. Also, there were the colonies of the other European states in Africa and elsewhere, those of France, Portugal, Spain, Belgium and the former German colonies (South West Africa, Tanganyika).
How much better a world would we now have were those formerly colonized lands still under European rule, or ruled in collaboration with a large enough and cultured enough African elite built up by the colonial powers over time …Look at Rhodesia up to 1979, and then its decrepit successor-state, Zimbabwe…
This is not just a question for the UK. It is a problem, historical and contemporary, for the world.
In Europe, the UK (and France) might have not given the Poles the worthless “guarantees” of 1939, which led the Poles to imagine that Britain and France would actually fight for Poland. Never happened.
Likewise, after the Fall of France in 1940, Britain might have secured an honourable armistice with the German Reich, so saving the peoples of Western and Central Europe from the massive destruction caused, mainly, by the Allied and Soviet forces during, again mainly, 1941-45. It would also have meant no Soviet takeover of the East and most of the Centre of Europe by Stalin’s Soviet Union in the mid-1940s.
We hear much (much too much) of the Jews, who were, prior to WW2, being allowed to emigrate from Germany and its allied or vassal states. Indeed, the Germans were glad to be rid of them. Well, had there been an armistice in 1940, that emigration would have continued: to the USA, Australia, Palestine etc.
Terrorism after WW2 was a product of the terrorists or “guerrillas” during that war, both those trained and funded by the shambolic British organization, SOE, and by the Soviet Union (the “partisans”). Most postwar “terrorism” from 1945 through to recent times can be traced back readily enough to British, American and Soviet sources.
Had “the War” (in the West) never happened, or been stopped in its tracks in 1940, the Soviet Union would probably have collapsed by 1942, there would have been no massive destruction by Soviet forces (or by the UK/USA air fleets) in the Europe of 1941-45, no Cold War, no Berlin Wall, no East-West proxy wars. The Israeli state and the arrogant Arab and Iranian oil states would have all either been strangled at birth, or kept on a tight rein.
In Britain itself, the neglected historian Correlli Barnett [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlli_Barnett] has made the point that, because of Britain’s having been bled dry by the War, it could not do more than one, or at most two, of its three main policy aims after 1945:
keep the Empire;
regenerate UK industry and commerce;
introduce a Welfare state.
In the end, Britain tried to do all three, but could not fully succeed in any, eventually almost abandoning the Empire and its remnants.
If only there had been no “War”, or a war lasting only a year…
The world is not without kind people [Russian saying]
Nice story:
“This photo is from Paris Match, 1958. The Algerian donkey was starving to death, so a soldier from the 13th brigade of the French Foreign Legion carried it back to base where it became a regimental mascot named “Bambi””
Coronavirus
“Police across the country are wielding powers they do not have – with vanishingly little public scrutiny”
“Italy has announced plans for ending its lockdown after the coronavirus-ravaged country today recorded its lowest daily death toll for more than two weeks.
Rome recorded another 525 deaths, taking its total to 15,887 – the highest of any country in the world – however, this marked its lowest daily increase since the 427 registered on March 19.
Furthermore, the number of people in intensive care (3,977), fell by 17 since Friday, and the number of cases rose to 128,948 from yesterday’s 124,632, a lower increase than the day before.
It comes amid growing signs that Spain’s strict coronavirus lockdown may be working, as the country records its lowest death toll for a third consecutive day.” [Daily Mail]
but “Keir” was the surname of Hardie’s mother, which he kept as part of his surname, only later using it as a first name.
Keir Starmer’s parents named him after Keir Hardie:
“Keir Rodney Starmer was born in Southwark, London, on 2 September 1962[5][6] and grew up in the small town of Oxted in Surrey.[7][8][9] He was one of five children of Josephine (née Baker), a nurse, and Rodney Starmer, a toolmaker.[9][10] His mother had Still’s disease.[11][12] His parents were both firm Labour Party supporters, and named him after the first Labour Party MP, Keir Hardie.” [Wikipedia] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keir_Starmer
Note:
“Personal life Starmer married Victoria Alexander, a solicitor, in 2007. The couple’s son and a daughter are being brought up in the Jewish faith of their mother.[12][61]”
[Wikipedia]
There you have it: Starmer’s wife is Jewish, and his children are therefore half-Jewish (according to ordinary genetics), and simply “Jewish” according to Jewish religious practice, as well as being brought up as culturally Jewish.
So far, Starmer has appointed members of Labour Friends of Israel to Shadow Cabinet: Rachel Reeves and Lisa Nandy. Emily Thornberry is to stay in Shadow Cabinet.
[above: Emily Thornberry at a Zionist dinner in London, photographed with her husband —a half-Jewish High Court judge— and —in central position— Mark Regev, the Israeli Ambassador]
I think that we can write off the Labour Party now.
Ghetto life in Israel
The Israeli state is considering sealing off “ultra-Orthodox” areas, thus creating quasi-ghetto zones within the Jewish state. Who would have predicted that?!
The Guardian article also makes the point that the Orthodox Jewish areas in London may also have been major incubators for Coronavirus. The boroughs of Barnet and Harrow, as well as Brent, are in the top half-dozen Coronavirus “hotspots” not just in London but in the whole of the UK.
Coronavirus— the exit strategy
Or to put it another way, what exit strategy? It is one thing to say to people, “stay inside except for a few closely-defined outings for a few weeks“, and quite another to say “stay inside your homes for several months, and if you dare to come out even to spend an hour walking in a national park, or on the beach, or sunbathing harmlessly in a largely empty park, or driving on an empty motorway, the police will stop you, question you, fine you and may fine you as much as £1,000“…
How long is this “lockdown” going to be sustainable? I see that even the msm outlets are beginning to ask the question now.
If someone has a country estate, or even a sizeable ordinary detached suburban or smaller rural house, perhaps with gardens, a swimming pool, a tennis court, an orangerie, a vegetable garden, “staying home” is not so hard to do. For the majority of the population, stuck in small houses, flats etc, perhaps with children or bored teenagers, this “lockdown” is a house arrest which cannot continue indefinitely. At some point, before long, the Government is going to have to announce a relaxation and then an end, before people start to ignore the restrictions.
Good points by Lewis Goodall of BBC TV Newsnight (ex-Sky News):
One of the most unappealing aspects of the current crisis is the judgmental censoriousness we’re seeing on here and in more everyday life. I went past several parks today. Everyone I saw was enjoying them responsibly. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a big house and garden.
Little Matt Hancock and others may threaten more severe restrictions, but without public consent, even the present restrictions cannot be enforced widely. The present conditions are holding because the public has been persuaded or stampeded into compliance. I think that we are just approaching 2 weeks of “lockdown”. Can the UK sustain 2 months? That would be five times as long.
The economic damage is already huge.
Tweets:
That’s what the German government thought in 1914. But it always catches up on you one way or another. Inflation is the nemesis for spending hubris. https://t.co/Xe4W9PavT1
Generally the government and the media don't put much effort into scaring you about the flu. TV does not show sad scenes in ICUs. Yet many thousands die of flu complications each year. No, I have not said the two are the same, as I will now be falsely accused of doing. https://t.co/UH6oaPgY6u
Yes, @ogilvie_cj, sweetie, because I have seen no evidence that it achieves its stated aim, and plenty (piling up daily) that it is wrecking an already fragile economy. Crashing the economy and stifling liberty won't provide better PPE for medical staff. Rather the opposite. https://t.co/7N5QeYzgUa
1/2 What is the use of a Leader of the Opposition who immediately backs the crassest actions of the government, such as threatening to ban outdoor exercise, supposedly in an attempt to protect national health? https://t.co/bmoLYvb7Lz
Anyone who believes that Keir Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet is anything more than a nominal “Opposition” is very naive. In 2015, the Jewish-Zionist lobby lost control of one of the previously-controlled two main System parties. After nearly 5 years, that lobby now has regained control. The Jews as a group care only that the (sort-of) “anti-Zionist” Corbyn has been removed. Hardly any Jews have voted Labour for many years.
Yup @robinbull1. And do you realise how rare this is among its sufferers,&how much the same could be said of influenza complications, which kill thousands every year without a shutdown of the economy? Disease is bad. Who doubts it? Destroying the economy doesn't stop or cure it. https://t.co/kCM11l7K8A
2/2 Mike Graham @lromg . Speech is still free in this country. It's hardly the job of a radio host to tell people to 'shut up'. I'll wager you haven't the guts to have me on your programme and give me an unfettered, fair chance to make my case. https://t.co/GXGbU9N1yc
What is the significance of recorded cases, @shivmalik, when in fact we have no idea of how many unrecorded cases there have been, and probably never will? The nightly 'infections' figure is virtually meaningless. Many infected will have mild symptoms or none. https://t.co/h78SRpvveC
Lord Sumption https://t.co/NUSIEw3uqi '…as soon as the scientists start talking about a month or even three or six months, we are entering a realm of sinister fantasy in which the cure has taken over as the biggest threat to our society.'
Quite. Unreasoning fear is all around. Shoppers at Waitrose stand about 10 feet apart before they are allowed to have a trolley and enter the store, but inside they shop sometimes only a couple of feet from one another!
Likewise, the usual type of Twitter virtue-signallers continue to tweet on silly hashtags demonizing (of all targets!) people doing completely harmless things, such as walking along largely-empty beaches, almost deserted national park moorlands and forest trails etc, driving or motorbiking on almost-empty roads and motorways to places (or simply around, just to get a change of view and some fresh air).
If I had to say what unites the majority of the “Twitterati”, it would be their love of conformity, their obedience to authority, and their love of the largely-failed “multikulti” society. I suppose that is why Twitter was mainly pro-EU…
Here is a typical example, from someone calling himself “@sychodefender”:
You see the mentality. Any dissent from the “authorized” version of the truth is to be suppressed, and anyone not going along with the official narrative is “murdering” those unfortunate enough to die from Coronavirus. Who then is “murdering” those who, by reason of the “lockdown” (house arrest of the British people), cannot access lifesaving operations or other medical help for many other life-threatening conditions which (unlike Coronavirus) can be treated? Coronavirus can only be managed, via ventilation, not “treated” or “cured”. Who is “murdering” those people? No-one? The Government? Conformist tweeters such as “@sychodefender”/Simon Burgess? The first thing being murdered is the truth; after that, the English language.
and more news
Some hopeful news:
In Northern Italy, 60 volunteers who thought they'd never suffered COVID-19 gave blood. 40 of them tested positive for antibodies to the virus.
We URGENTLY need randomized testing to see how representative this finding is.https://t.co/JGqNX5EtQS
Heartbreaking report on BBC TV news this evening from Italy. People spending the last few coins of their savings, no work, an economy paralysed. Has this extraordinary gamble of a policy been worth it? Is there any evidence it has achieved anything? Yet on it goes.
About that hancock denial.. Times: ‘Treasury pushing for more detail but said it was not a “personal” issue: “There’s a real question of whether we will have an economy to come back to at the end of this. We have got to get clarity on the exit strategy”’https://t.co/AVaiIghfPP
It seems to me that the thing SIS/MI6 is best at is bolstering its own reputation (not by its own successful product or analysis, but via self-serving propaganda or public relations). That, and providing fairly well-paid careers for often rather mediocre members of the Oxbridge-educated middle classes.
Let’s think of a few of the less ancient SIS/MI6 failures:
the invasion of the Falklands; failure to warn HMG;
failure to warn HMG about the likely fall of the Shah of Iran;
failure to warn of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe…to name but three very large-scale events.
What about SIS/MI6 successes in the past 50 years? The Gordievsky defection, I suppose, but that is or was “spy game” or “spy wars” stuff, rather than large-scale success in forecasting. The same might be said of the “Viktor Suvorov” defection from the GRU or that of Oleg Lyalin (KGB). Those were, in essence, “walk-ins”, of course, though Gordievsky “walked in” having been cultivated for some time (in Copenhagen).
Of course, it can always be said that “the successes must be kept secret”. Perhaps, but I have little doubt that many failures are also kept secret (aka “covered up”).
At some point, SIS/MI6 must be reorganized to provide useful information to government, especially on the strategic level. That might mean using more open-source material as a percentage of the whole.
Naturally, anyone who —like me— is not a member or former member of such an organization is commenting somewhat in the dark, but it is surely clear that this is not a properly-functioning organization.
Now this…
Good grief!
“The Army is so desperate to fill its ranks that it is signing up recruits with a reading age as young as five. Normally, its rules bar hiring anyone with a reading age below ‘entry level two’ – equivalent to that of a child aged seven to nine.” [Daily Mail]
“Last year, the Army was roundly mocked for recruitment advertisements stating ‘Your country needs you’ to ‘snowflakes, phone zombies, binge gamers, selfie addicts, and me, me, millennials’. Now it appears that some potential recruits would not even have been able to under stand the adverts – even as warfare become increasingly computerised.” [Daily Mail]
“A police officer uses a megaphone at Southwark Park, to announce sunbathing is not allowed, but exercise is” [Daily Mail].
How absolutely stupid! The Coronavirus is spread via water in air, so is far more likely to be spread via exercise than via sunbathing!
“...there are concerns that public confidence could be lost if those in power with gardens and ample living space tell those who live in crowded conditions they cannot go to the park or exercise outdoors.” [Daily Mail]
This is becoming very silly (which is why 90% of “Twitterati” support the “lockdown” in an extreme way…).
If the Government and police don’t stand down these restrictions pretty soon, there will be disobedience and perhaps actual disorder. At the very least, much of the public will “just say no”, or perhaps more likely “yes repeat no”, i.e, apparent compliance but followed by the opposite as soon as the police or other busybodies go away.
The rest of Europe is already starting to exit “lockdown”…
The British government is headed by a pack of idiots that have no real idea what they are doing. Look at little Matt Hancock! His only pre-political job was “making tea” (not quite, but he was very junior) for a year at the Bank of England. Now he is a Cabinet minister! It’s mad. The present government is mad or stupid or both.
Has it peaked in the UK too?
“England, Scotland and Wales have declared 434 more deaths caused by the coronavirus today, taking the UK’s total to 5,368.
England accounted for 403 of the fatalities while Scotland and Wales independently declared 31 more deaths in the past 24 hours.
The statistics are a ray of hope as the daily death count has fallen for the second day in a row and was today the lowest it has been since March 31, when it was 381.
Today’s number is a 30 per cent drop from the 621 fatalities recorded yesterday, and a 39 per cent fall from Saturday, which was the worst day so far with 708.” [Daily Mail]
The BBC, in the catchphrase of Private Eye, “getsmuchworse”.
I heard a BBC World Service interviewer, interviewing a Georgian lady about the Stalin-era sanatoria at Tsqaltubo, near Kutaisi, in former Soviet Georgia
The item was quite interesting, but the absurd came in when the interviewee was asked who went there in Stalin’s day. The answer: Communist Party people, but also those who were considered to have been hard workers in their industry, such as mining. The BBC drone then referred to the miners as “the men and women miners”! Women miners?! To be fair to the BBC, there were a few in the Soviet Union at one time, but not many:
At least the idiot did not make tick-box reference to LGBT etc stuff…
Sadly, it seems that the ornate Stalin-era sanatoria, i.e. spa hotels, have been allowed to decay; that does not take long in a subtropical climate.
Postscript
Bloody hell! Even as I finished the above paragraphs, the BBC World Service, which is now just another bad joke, struck again, with some idiot talking about Brexit and UK fishing rights, and referring to “fish sold by UK fishermen…and fisherwomen.” UK “fisherwomen”?! Ha ha! The BBC idiot only just remembered to add “and fisherwomen”, in order to make his sentence clearly “non-sexist”. This country is so screwed, it’s not true…
Meanwhile, the “political correctness” madness is being challenged
“[A] policeman told Harry that he was in trouble for retweeting a ‘transphobic’ limerick.” [Daily Mail].
This is not a reworked Fawlty Towers or Monty Python sketch. This actually happened!
“He was told that he was also being investigated for tweeting support for BBC Woman’s Hour presenter Jenni Murray, who had been criticised by Oxford students after writing a newspaper article questioning whether transgender women are ‘real women’.” [Daily Mail]
“Harry was told in the conversation at Tesco that he had not broken the law but was guilty of a ‘non-crime’ hate incident. According to court papers, the constable explained to him: ‘Sometimes, a woman’s brain grows a man’s body in the womb and that is what transgender is.’” [Daily Mail]
“When Harry asked why the officer kept calling the person who had made the complaint a ‘victim’, when no crime had been established, he was told ‘that’s just how it works’.” [Daily Mail]
“Since the catch-all guidance was released, police forces have recorded at least 87,000 non-crime hate incidents — none of which break the law.” [Daily Mail]
The police drone actually said to the citizen now fighting back, “I need to check your thinking.” This is the police state emerging in plain sight.
I might add that I myself have been subjected to similar:
…and not only in that 2017 incident. A year later, in 2018, a mentally-disturbed Jewess (on medication), apparently resident in Barnet, North London, actually prevailed upon her local (((occupied))) police to telephone me and try to intimidate me into altering completely lawful posts on the GAB platform (the Jewish lobby had already had me expelled from Twitter).
The policeman (a constable) actually had the cheek to send me through the post a purported (but legally-ineffective) notice warning me about “harassment” (despite the fact that I had never had any direct contact with the said Jewess!)… In fact, I myself was the real victim of harassment, by that woman and by a pack of other Jews, all connected with the “Campaign Against Antisemitism” fake charity. I actually had to write to the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police and to the Barnet Police Borough Commander! Even then the same policeman tried to continue for a short while!
This is how the “rule of law” decays: when the police become politicized, subject to backstairs pressure, biased etc (not to mention both ignorant of the law and over-estimating the scope of their own *lawful* powers…).
Radio 4
Just listened on BBC Radio 4 at 0545 to some poor lady, grieving for her father, and droning on endlessly (as it seemed). I felt sorry for her, but this was, imo, not good radio. Have some regard for the listeners, for God’s sake!
Voting intention
I am not sure whether it means much, 4+ years before any likely general election, but for whatever it is worth, Survation has come out with a new poll:
Nothing much there. Conservatives at top by default, because so far they have been cautious about doing anything. Labour still moribund, LibDems, at 10% rather higher than I would have thought (maybe Remain signallers), and Brexit Party on 3% (who are they, that 3%?!) alongside Greens.
John le Carre is a very fine writer in his chosen field and, unlike most “spy writers”, has a wide appreciation of world politics and events. Most writers of “spy fiction” have at best a cartoon view of the world. Ian Fleming. Alastair Maclean. Frederick Forsyth. Others. I regret that I missed out on a lecture that Le Carre/Cornwell gave in or about 1981 at the G.B.-U.S.S.R. Association in Grosvenor Place, London.
The G.B.-U.S.S.R. Association, to which I belonged at the time, was an entity founded in 1958 and funded mainly by the Foreign Office (later, Foreign and Commonwealth Office). It had its funding radically cut in the 1990s and was split into parts after the Soviet Union ceased to exist. It even sold its library (a few volumes from which I was able to buy, though I came late to the party, having been overseas). It had by then moved from its fine building at the rear of Buckingham Palace to a soulless office tower in Vauxhall. The FCO finally cut off funds from its successor-entities in 2002.
Le Carre’s lecture was, I was told, one of the best talks ever given at the Association.
Having said the above, merely being a fine writer does not bestow infallibility. I doubt that there has ever been a better travel writer than Jan Morris:
yet Morris is in some respects also very silly indeed, judging purely from the political point of view (e.g. Morris espousing faux Welsh nationalism on the strength of having been born half-Welsh and having resided for a number of decades in Wales).
I have to say that I am disappointed to see that Le Carre/Cornwell, in that Guardian transcript, said that he was a Remainer and a European, as if the EU equates to Europe. That oft-seen conflation. No. I myself am a European, a white Northern European, but have always, on balance, opposed the EU. I am ethnically and culturally European. That is what matters.
One apparent fact given by Le Carre/Cornwell in the Guardian transcript did, as people now say, “surprise but not shock” me: it seems that Olof Palme was once an “intern” at Swedish Intelligence. I did not know that. His Wikipedia entry does not mention it (neither does it mention Palme’s quite long-running secret affair with the American actress Shirley MacLaine; Wikipedia is likewise not infallible):
What I know about Swedish intelligence and security would scarcely fill the back of a postcard, but I see that their security service has its own jaunty website:
Olof Palme always struck me as rather sinister. His assassination was never publicly solved, though two separate suspects were arrested, one eventually emigrating to the USA and the other being convicted of the assassination, but released on appeal two years later.
Admittedly, Swedish prisons are not usually like that. The original Swedish-language Girl with the Dragon Tattoo lost me at one point, when the investigative journalist seems to be in some kind of hostel or inexpensive hotel reception; it took me another viewing to understand that that was a Swedish prison!
Collapse of smug, virtue-signalling party...
I have no present plans to return to twitter. And I shan't monitor responses to these two tweets. But I wanted to say something for those who have kindly supported my work for the last three and a half years.
The “has support of the unions” aspect shows how very out of touch is even the rank and file Labour membership. In 2019, membership of trade unions was only 3.69M out of a UK population somewhere between 65M and 70M and an official UK workforce population of over 32.5M. Trade unions now are almost powerless, a result of both “Thatcherite” policy since the 1980s and the relentless migration-invasion.
On Trident etc:
Survey of Labour membership: Once Trident reaches the end of its useful life, Britain should…
Replace with an equally powerful system: 10% Retain nukes, but less powerful and less costly: 24% Give up nukes entirely: 60%
Not that I would disagree with that middle position, but what is important is not what I think but what the voters think. Most or at least half want to retain Trident. Yes, perhaps influenced by the popular Press, so be it…
As the recent poll by another polling organization showed, Labour has continued to slide since the recent General Election. Why?
Corbyn has said that he will be resigning once the process of electing a new leader and also Deputy (Tom Watson having imploded and gone down in a ball of fire) is finished. So Corbyn can scarcely be blamed for the continuing slide in voter confidence.
My view is that, though Corbyn was scarcely popular with most voters, the present five candidates wanting to replace him are even less popular. There is, in my view, a perception (which I share) that Labour is a mess, seems not to stand for much except a return to the 1970s (which most voters, however wrongly, look upon with disfavour) and has five people, none of whom is in any way “electable” as potential Prime Minister, vying for the leadership.
There was a huge Jewish (mainly Jewish, or if you like, Zionist; certainly Jewish-led and influenced) campaign against Corbyn and Labour, which started as soon as Corbyn became leader. That certainly had an effect, particularly as it intensified during the election campaign itself. It was not, however, the only factor. It tended to reinforce a view of Corbyn —and so, Labour— that many had anyway. Cartoons such as that below were damaging, but simply played on existing foundations.
Diane Abbott as Home Secretary. That. Alone. I blogged about it before the election. Long before. About how Diane Abbott was worth a million votes to the Conservatives. Not purely because she is a West Indian or, generically, a black. The “Conservative” Party has plenty of black, brown and even Chinese MPs now. It was that and her obvious disdain for real British or English people, and her plain unfitness to be a Cabinet minister. I mean, Diane Abbott was let go from the Home Office when she was a graduate trainee, so how would she be any good at running the whole show?
Not that Diane Abbott is the only deadhead near the top in Labour. Here’s another one, Dawn Butler:
When you look at the above, you see (if not blinded by political correctness) how it is that African and West Indian societies are so chaotic and poorly-run. British voters did not want that; nor the corruption and freeloading (and hypocrisy) that go along with that:
As previously blogged about, Labour emerged from the struggles of the (mainly) Northern English, Scottish and Welsh industrial proletariat. That colouration, socially, economically, even geographically carried on even unto the years of Blair and Brown. After those years, certainly after 2010, Labour’s nature changed. From being a mainly Northern/Scottish/Welsh trade-union orientated, community-orientated semi-socialist or Social Democratic party, it became a party strongest in a few urban centres such as London and Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool. It became increasingly a party of public sector employees and/or managers, and/or of Pakistani, black and other non-white persons and “communities”.
We have seen that Labour simply abandoned its original British (real British) voters. The scandal of non-whites (mainly Pakistanis) abusing young wayward or “mal gardees” white girls, with Labour and its closely-connected Common Purpose quasi-freemasonry covering it all up. The way in which, even before the 2010 General Election, “Labour” MPs were trailing the same kind of cruel or callous policies as were Iain Dunce Duncan Smith and Esther McVey.
I saw, among others, John Woodcock, Caroline Flint, Gloria de Piero, Tristram Hunt and others talking on TV as if “welfare” (social security) cuts were both necessary and unavoidable. More than that; talking about cutting off money to those who mostly desperately need it. The element of cruel humour was noticeable, even in, say, Gloria de Piero, whose own family, when she was at school, was entirely dependent on State benefits! All of those MPs were Labour Friends of Israel members, too. What a co-incidence…
Well, guess what? None of those named in the above paragraph is still in Parliament. Guess what? If you abandon the voters, they will abandon you. It might not happen overnight, but it will happen. Mass immigration has been encouraged, colluded at, ignored otherwise by all three System parties, for 70 years, but Labour most obviously. That was not the doing of Corbyn; most of it, that happened under Labour, happened under Blair and Brown. The Jewess Barbara Roche (she lost her own seat because of it and has been unable to find another one) was behind much of it, quite deliberately importing as many and as “diverse” a mob of migrant-invaders as possible, with the express aim of destroying Britain’s racial, national and cultural foundations.
For a long time, inertia held Labour together, both as a party and as a party for which people would vote. Finally, again not overnight, but very clearly, the voters just gave up on Labour. Not all (yet), but enough to gift the unmeritorious Conservatives the biggest (and least deserved) electoral victory in a generation. The Labour voters did not move, the majority of them, to the Conservatives, or anywhere else. Many, very many, voted with their feet and stayed at home. Look:
Basically, about 600,000 former Labour voters defected to the Conservative Party, a similar number to the LibDems, about 300,000 to Brexit Party, but about 1,200,000 former Labour voters did not vote at all.
The Conservative vote only increased by about 1 point over that of 2017, but the Labour vote sank by 8 points.
Labour’s problem is not really one of policy, not even one of leadership, certainly not one of “institutional “antisemitism” (and after all, I should know!), but one of overall relevance. The people, though unconsciously, want some kind of social nationalism, but Labour is offering —near enough— open borders, more migration-invasion, no clarity in industrial strategy, no clarity on matters such as Basic Income, State benefits, pay, overall socio-economic goals etc.
What about “free speech”? So far, all five new Labour leadership candidates have signed up to the Jews’ demands to curb it even further. We have seen how Labour has failed to speak up for those suffering repression, or who are prisoners of conscience, e.g. persecuted satirical singer-songwriter Alison Chabloz. Her own MP until the recent General Election, Ruth George, ignored Alison’s plight, while also backing down after at first speaking up about Israeli/Jew interference in the Labour party:
Labour is trying to reconcile two or even three blocs of voters at once:
traditional English and Welsh “working class” voters (the Scottish ones have mostly gone forever);
the “blacks and browns” etc;
the public service workers and bureaucrats.
I do not think that Labour can reconcile, let alone unite, those groups. The rhetoric about “our communities” and “uniting the people” rings hollow. The “communities” are often mutually-antagonistic, for example. As for “uniting” “the people”, one has to ask “what people?” Britain is split into many groupings now. There is no one people or nation. Prince Harry and the Royal Mulatta have surely highlighted that. He’s off to North America with the mulatta, her dogs, and as much loot as they can carry and hang on to, at least until she kicks him out or he “offs” himself. Symptomatic…
A great charismatic leader in the Adolf Hitler mould might be able to reconcile all the elements of modern Britain, at least sufficiently to get the power to expel or restrain those inimical to the evolving real British, but Labour certainly has no-one who can even pretend to go beyond mediocrity.
Labour’s one hope is that, as older (almost-all Conservative-voting) voters die off, and as young voters come on-stream, the demographics will favour Labour. Had only 18-24 y o voters voted at the recent General Election, there would be no Conservative MPs at all, and about 500 or more Labour ones.
However, no-one knows what events may change politics between now and 2024 or even (a significant year) 2022. In 1928, the NSDAP and Hitler got only 2.6% in Germany, nationally. By 1932, that had grown to 33% and by the following year to 44%.
At present, the voters only have a System “three main parties” choice. Tony Blair had advisers who told him that he could go semi-Conservative, import millions of immigrants, because “where will they [Labour voters] go?” Well, now we know: away from Labour, even if that means sitting at home and watching trash TV instead of voting. The “leader” (snake oil promoter) of the “Brexit Party” betrayed his own party, its candidates, members and voters. What if another leader, of another party just formed, did not sell out, but crusaded for and perhaps to victory? It might be that discontented former Labour and other voters, non-voters too (a third of those eligible did not vote either in 2017 or 2019), might sweep such a leader to supreme power. Never say never.
Update, 19 December 2023
Four years on, we see that, superficially, the Labour Party has climbed out of the pit. It now stands between 40% and 50% in the opinion polls, with the Conservative Party polling between 19% and 25%. A stunning turnaround. Why?
Why? Four years of incredible ineptitude, corruption, and general uselessness on the party of a Conservative Party and Government led by “Boris”-idiot, absurd “ho” Liz Truss, and Indian money-juggler Rishi Sunak.
Mass immigration has reached about a million a year, unprecedented. There has been the Covid “panicdemic” and the response to all that. The cost of living has rocketed, but pay has not. Among other events and developments.
Also, snake-oil salesman Farage has another vehicle, Reform UK, which is cutting into Con Party polling, and is now 11% and climbing in those polls.
Labour? Underwhelming but, in a basically binary system, for many voters it is the only game in town.
I sense (in the voters) anger, but also desperation, mixed with apathy.
What makes me laugh, if bitterly, is that so many msm characters still sort-of believe that we in the UK live in a “democracy”, even if flawed. If we are in a “democracy” at all (and it is of course a question of definition: see my brief historical analysis in Notes, below), then it is one where the democracy is little and mostly on the surface:
Christopher Steele, ex-head of MI6 Russia desk & author of so-called ‘Steele dossier’, has made very few public pronouncements. If he talks – as he does below – we really should listen. Lack of action against election interference = ‘scary’ https://t.co/JN1mjuwklk
“The release of documents began on New Year’s Day on an anonymous Twitter account, @HindsightFiles, with links to material on elections in Malaysia, Kenya and Brazil. The documents were revealed to have come from Brittany Kaiser, an ex-Cambridge Analytica employee turned whistleblower, and to be the same ones subpoenaed by Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Kaiser, who starred in the Oscar-shortlisted Netflix documentary The Great Hack, decided to go public after last month’s election in Britain. “It’s so abundantly clear our electoral systems are wide open to abuse,” she said. “I’m very fearful about what is going to happen in the US election later this year, and I think one of the few ways of protecting ourselves is to get as much information out there as possible.”
[Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg testifies to Congress after it was reported 87 million Facebook users had information harvested by Cambridge Analytica. Photograph: Yasin Öztürk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images]
The documents were retrieved from her email accounts and hard drives, and though she handed over some material to parliament in April 2018, she said there were thousands and thousands more pages which showed a “breadth and depth of the work” that went “way beyond what people think they know about ‘the Cambridge Analytica scandal’”.”
UK General Election 2019
The recent General Election was a prime example of the depths into which British “democracy” has fallen. The main three System parties were all headed and fronted by idiots:
Boris-idiot, who shows off his rote-learned ancient Greek and Latin, together with his collection of obscure words from the OED, when he wants to impress the plebs. A part-Jew public entertainer, useless at all previous jobs, sacked from most, whose previous bosses and colleagues concur in saying how useless, dishonest and unpleasant he is. Someone with no real ideas politically or ideologically;
Jeremy Corbyn: a long-term political self-caricature. At least he is anti-Zionist, but spoils even that by parrotting “holocaust” and “anti-fascist” nonsense, marking Jewish holidays etc. A personification of ideological cognitive dissonance, who was backed up by another idiot exhibiting similar traits, John McDonnell (who after the election result was interviewed in his garden, looking bemused and indeed like nothing more than a “grandad” who had been tipped out of his wheelchair and mugged). Corbyn’s political idea for the UK seemed to be a mixture of Labour policies 1945-1992, 1960s Cuba, 1980s Nicaragua, or the crazy Venezuela of more recent times, with a bit of (cartoon version) 1930s politics thrown in— “No Pasaran!” Spanish anti-Franco-ism, the Front Populaire, “the battle of Cable Street” etc. A joke;
Jo Swinson: doormat for the Jew-Zionists, who thought that she could be a Prime Minister when she was already hugely over-promoted as leader of the pathetic LibDem party, which seems to have no reason to exist anyway.
Ecce, your “democratic” choice!
Then we see that a fake pop-up “party” (Brexit Party), promoted by a con-man (Farage) siphoned off any radical nationalist votes, then unexpectedly withdrew all candidates facing Conservative Party candidates. A deliberate manipulation, probably a conspiracy. Possibly even procured by secret bribes, paid to Farage offshore. That is my honest belief, anyway.
And that is before we even consider the role played by the (basically, mainly) Jew-Zionist dominated Press, TV, radio etc. It has already been established by objective academic studies that Boris-idiot and his party were given a completely one-sided easy treatment as compared to Labour. (((They))) wanted Boris-idiot to win. He did.
This is what our “democracy” has come to. You get someone who, like Jess Phillips, is basically uneducated, uncultured, a careerist and/or freeloader (see her MP expenses: eg she employs her husband as “Constituency Support Manager”, meaning house-husband, for which she claims £50,000 a year for his pay, plus this and that).
The selection procedures of the System parties are pathetic. Most people with any real background are filtered out if they have their own views. The ones who get in are those who, like Jess Phillips, cobble together a CV from bits and pieces, and know people. Again, look at Iain Dunce Duncan Smith and his fraudulent CV. Or women like Liz Tr[redacted] and Lucia[redacted], who can be said to have become MPs “on their backs” (if that is the accurate phrase). Then once installed, those MPs are exceptionally hard to remove, particularly if they know the right people in their local party organization.
Boris-Who? Boris-How? Boris-Where?
People are asking “where is Boris, at this time of huge tension in the Middle East?” Well, the straight answer is that he is in a £20,000 a week villa on Mustique, but the answer to the implied question is another question: who cares where the idiot is?
The people who think that Boris should be in Whitehall, leading Britain’s response to the US and Iran, are those who think that Britain is still some kind of huge international player militarily. In reality, not so. We hear a lot about how Britain “punches above its weight” because of its commercial and financial hub position, because of its (supposed) intelligence and security expertise, because of its proficient armed services, even because of the English language!
There is some truth, of course, in all of those, but to say that Britain is a huge player militarily or geopolitically is mainly wishful thinking. It is the same or similar self-delusion that leads people (often misled by scribblers making money out of it) to think that National Socialist Germany was defeated mainly by clever little people in Whitehall back-rooms thinking up terribly clever “deception” operations, running “resistance” networks in occupied Europe etc.
Well, these activities did have some peripheral effect or effects (the ones that worked at all; a notable amateur duffer was the later James Bond scribbler, Ian Fleming), but of course those operations (The Man Who Never Was, the Double-Cross System, and virtually anything attempted by the ludicrous Special Operations Executive) were, or were supposed to be, subordinated to actual military operations.
The Reich was defeated, of course, not by terribly precious people in Whitehall, White’s Club, or the Ritz bar, thinking up deception operations and directing small numbers of sociopaths (in the Maquis, the “Resistance” etc), stabbing lone Germans in the back, or blowing up cafes, but by the millions of Red Army soldiers on the Eastern Front, gradually advancing with their tanks, horses, field guns and terror, by the huge American armies, navy, air force and, though hidden, atom bombs, and by the similar millions of British and Empire soldiers, sailors and airmen, fighting on all fronts.
Britain today is not really very powerful. I regret that, but it does not help to pretend that Britain is almost a superpower. One is reminded of the speech given to the assembled Con Party Conference at 25 years ago by Michael Portillo (he is better as a TV train buff; I enjoy his shows). In fact, part of that speech was good, but he made a fool of himself by pressing into service the name of the Special Air Service:
The thing is that, yes, elite units like the SAS are superb tools of the State, but —as General Schwarzkopf said in the 1990s Gulf War— “special forces do not win wars”. They are strategic tools, to be used in “special” strategic situations, and are not much good —and indeed wasted— in ordinary battles or large scale advances.
The fact is that Boris-idiot, as notional chief of the UK, is not really a player, unless the USA wants Britain to be seen to be there as “ally”, rather than USA seen to be acting unilaterally, which of course is the reality (with Israel hiding behind the curtain).
The events of the world, whether in Iran, Iraq or elsewhere, are happening regardless of what Boris-idiot says or does. Anyway, Britain only has about 70,000 in its Army, and of those only about 50,000 are even deployable. Many are simply not fit for duty, let alone action.
The fact is that Britain is a spectator for the most part. I suppose that the British nuclear forces (on submarines) are the exception to that. It would be an extraordinary misuse of them to utilize them to attack Iran, though, in support of Trump’s adventurism and Israel’s hidden agenda.
Trump and Iran
Trump has managed to do what generations of peacemakers failed to do— unite the Iranians and Iraqis! I suppose, to be fair, Teheran’s influence over Baghdad has been growing for many years anyway.
Looking at the wider picture, in the 1970s, 1980s, Israel was menaced by anti-Israel states all around. Iran, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt and other North African states, Libya in particular. Now look! Syria, Iraq both devastated, Egypt under “control”, Libya on its knees and engaged in internecine conflict, Lebanon flooded with refugees from Syria, and the Gulf Arabs almost lining up to say nice things to Israel.
These changes did not come about by accident. Now Iran is in the gunsights of the Israelis and, more importantly, their “tail wags dog” “ally”, the United States, which subsidizes Israel, gives or sells it weapons, supports everything that Israel does or wants, yet tells its own people that the USA needs Israel, when the reality is of course the reverse!
Today the President of the United States said he is willing to target civilians, cultural sites, and places dear to a society in order to inflict TERROR.
It seems that Iran has offered USD $80M for the head of Donald Trump. About $79,999,099 more than it is worth! Tempting though…Sadly, it is about 42 years since I last fired a long-distance rifle (and if one were to enter the lists, it would be nice to have the chance to spend the bounty…).
Alison Chabloz, the persecuted singer-songwriter, is in court on Friday 10 January 2020, her appeal hearing against a relatively brief prison sentence imposed for “breach of condition” within another sentence. Good luck to her!
Well, here we are…not on Merry Christmas but (maybe) near Happy New Year. Time for a few stray thoughts about the year passing away, the year(s) ahead, and about where UK society and the world may be going.
I am going to be adding to this throughout the day, in a stream of consciousness way, not in any particular order or with any fixed structure.
Bush fires in Australia
As a child of 10-13, I lived in Sydney, on the North Shore (Mosman/Cremorne), in the late 1960s (2-3 years). I recall seeing bushfire damage in the Ku-ring-gai Chase area (many miles to the North) once or twice (may have been a controlled burn fire gap), but only once saw an actual bushfire, and that was when my family drove up to Queensland in 1968. Somewhere in the Northern coastal part of New South Wales. We drove through an area with fire on both sides of the highway (Australia had no motorways then outside Sydney). That cannot of course be compared to the almost apocalyptic pictures we now see on TV from NSW and Victoria.
Temperatures? Well, I do recall that, one day, in Sydney, the news was full of how the next day would be the hottest ever recorded in Sydney. I think it got to 112F (44C). One day only, as far as I can remember. I think that that was in December 1967 or January 1968. I see from Wikipedia that Sydney’s record high, more recently, is recorded as having been 45C. So not very different.
Where it is now different is that such extreme heat now seems to go on for weeks or even months. I have heard so from members of my family who have visited Sydney a number of times in the past 20 years or so (a few even live there). They have no doubt that Australia is far hotter now than it was in the late 1960s. As I say, it is now not a question of isolated very hot days but of relentless heat every year for months at a time.
No-one had aircon in their home then!
For me, the question of “climate change” or “global warming” resolves into:
Is the climate worldwide getting hotter?
Is human behaviour part (or even all) of the causation?
What if anything can be done to ameliorate the effects, or even halt the process?
For me (obviously not a scientist and/or “expert”), again, the answers (provisionally) seem to be:
There is evidence that there is a warming trend worldwide, but the evidence is far from conclusive;
Human behaviour may be part of the causative trigger, but is unlikely to be the whole or only reason why the Earth’s atmosphere etc is warming (assuming that it is);
Human behaviour might make a difference but only if the really large-scale industrial powers, with overwhelmingly huge populations, cease to exist or to exist in the way that they now do. I am talking about, mainly, China and India.
What I can be certain about is that ridiculous rants by the likes of Greta Thunberg, and the kind of pathetic sub-terrorism indulged in by Extinction Rebellion will achieve nothing at all. I have blogged about these already:
For me, it is clear that the problem is, at root, the huge human population on the Earth now, which is twice as large as it was even in 1970 and about twenty times what it was at the start of our present age (the Fifth Post-Atlantean) in or about 1400 AD.
I feel that a huge “correction” in coming. In fact, I am rather glad that I shall probably be discarnate when it happens, though I do feel a responsibility, not to do anything to prevent it (I have no power to do so anyway), but to plant a seed which may one day burst into life as a new super-race and super-culture.
The collapse of the recent “climate change” summit was inevitable. The large polluting countries, chief among them China and India, cannot do enough (on the premise that cutting back on “emissions” actually helps), the USA will not do much, so the international System and the System msm concentrate on the peripheral issues, such as “emissions” of carbon from countries such as the UK, Australia etc. The UK only produces about 1% of global carbon “emissions” anyway, so it scarcely matters, in reality, what the UK does. That is even more true in respect of Australia.
Russia and “the West”
Russia today is not the Soviet Union. It is merely a large nation-state which sits somewhere between being a regional power and being a superpower.
The Soviet Union wanted to take over the world and certainly Europe in the 1920s, 1930s and even 1940s. By the 1950s, its leaders knew that that would probably never happen. Just as the Schlieffen Plan solidified into the trench warfare of the First World War after 1914, the revolutionary and later at least expansionist aspirations of the Soviet Union had solidified by the late 1940s into the Cold War rivalry with the US-led “West”. After 1989, that had all but stopped but was then replaced by a Russian-nationalist ideology.
As it now is, Russia is not going to invade Europe, but NATO is encircling (has encircled) Russia, and is pushing. Don’t push Russia too far. It now has hypersonic missiles and is years in advance of the Americans. The new missiles can hit American targets within 15 minutes.
“The general who oversees U.S. nuclear forces, Air Force Gen. John Hyten, said in February that hypersonic missiles can strike America within 15 minutes, half the time of ballistic weapons” [Bloomberg]
The lesson is obvious: stop poking Russia with a sharp stick.
In terms of conventional arms too, if need be, Russia can place 4 million men in the field, and even its active forces dwarf those of Europe and are more effective as well. As for the Americans, they have technology and numbers, but do they have real will?
The New World Order tried to swallow Russia in the decade after 1989. It failed, thanks to the upsurge in Russian nationalism under Putin and also thanks to the Islamist upsurge.
Russia is unlikely to be the aggressor (in Europe) but do not underestimate its power.
Some people make the mistake of saying “Russia’s economy has fundamental weaknesses, therefore it is militarily weak”. A mistake made throughout history. The Medes and the Persians. The Spartans and the Persian Empire etc. Stalin said of the atom bomb, “we must have it even if we have to eat grass”…(cf. North Korea).
China
One of the jokes of recent years was the spectacle of the then UK Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, a former fireplace salesman, interrupting playing with his pet spider (yes, really…) to threaten both Russia and China with his meagre forces! What a total idiot! He even threatened to send one of Britain’s few (about 20) capital ships to the South China Sea! That would really frighten China, which has about 700 naval ships and submarines, and over 700 naval aircraft! Not to mention 255,000 sailors:
I have blogged a great deal about the recent General Election. No point in regurgitating all that. Still, worth recalling that the 2019 Conservative vote only increased by 1.2 points over 2017. The Labour vote fell by 8 points. All the same, Corbyn did as well or better than Miliband or Brown, in national vote percentage terms, and not far short of Blair. Unfortunately for Corbyn, the national vote percentage is not the only factor.
The General Election of 2019 reinforced my view that Labour is now a niche party for the “blacks and browns” as well as public service people. It has no broad appeal. That however may change. Had only 18-24 y o voters voted, Labour would have captured almost all seats in England and Wales, and at least half of those in Scotland. The Conservatives would, by contrast, have no seats at all, not one. Is that a straw in the wind? Was 2019 the “last hurrah” for Labour, for the Conservatives, or for both?
The roots of the Conservatives in their new Northern seats are very shallow. Look at Hartlepool, a Labour seat even now. Labour received over a third of the vote, but both Con and Brexit Party over a quarter. Volatile, like all of the North and Midlands now.
It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Labour, if radical, could bounce back and, with new voters coming up and retired elderly ones dying, seize back the field, all but wiping out a Conservative Party which in some respect is as weak as Labour.
In the last couple of years, we have seen Jez Turner (Jeremy Bedford-Turner) convicted and (incredibly) imprisoned merely for making a humorous reference to Jews in a public speech, and the satirical singer-songwriter Alison Chabloz convicted and briefly imprisoned (the matter is still in part under appeal as I write) for singing humorous songs!
What we face in the UK is an intensification of the assault on free speech, which is actually now being placed in the hands of police supposedly investigating “terrorism”! One man was convicted in 2019 of putting up “neo-Nazi” stickers on lamp-posts. Sentence? 2.5 years! Another was imprisoned for 2 years merely for posting remarks o Twitter and Facebook. The judge in that case was unwise enough to say that the harsh punishment was “to deter others”. A poundland Judge Jeffreys…
Etc
There is a huge amount still to say, but no more time today.
— Elena Haskins, Authentic American (@ElenaHaskins) December 25, 2019
Interesting. I have often wondered whether Mother Teresa was very good or very evil. Naturally, one’s instinct is to think “very good”, but there are disturbing aspects to her:
“There is no such thing as a right not to be offended, the outgoing chairman of the UK’s leading press regulator has said.”
“Sir Alan Moses, a former lord justice of appeal, said freedom of speech must trump individual feelings of distress or hurt caused by unpleasant opinions.”
“If you’re the victim of something that is deeply offensive, it is the most unpleasant, uncomfortable thing that you can imagine,” the 74-year-old told The Times. “But what we have to acknowledge is that, in striking the right balance in this country, there is no right not to be offended.” [The Independent]
“Confidential contact”…that was the designation that the U.S. Embassy gave to Ruth Smeeth, the Jew-Zionist “Labour”-label MP, who lost her seat at the recent General Election.
In the future, we shall know the names of the MPs around today who are agents of the CIA and MOSSAD.
More of the same (as Geoffrey Robinson may be finally going to get his wings clipped…):
I have just been listening to a rather disturbing Hard Talk interview on BBC World Service radio, in which BBC man Stephen Sackur interviewed the co-founder and (?) de facto leader of “Extinction Rebellion”, Roger Hallam.
Extinction Rebellion
I have blogged previously about Extinction Rebellion:
The Wikipedia entry is not very detailed, saying nothing about Hallam’s life before 2017 (he is, at time of writing, 53, having been born in 1966) except that:
” Hallam was previously an organic farmer in Wales; he attributes the destruction of his business to a series of extreme weather events.” [Wikipedia]
Strange. When I was about 25, I worked for a couple of weeks (unpaid) on an organic farm in West Wales. That farm, Blaencamel Farm, in 1982 a rather pathetic though beautiful 24 acres (now, I notice, 50 acres) in Ceredigion, has become (as I heard on BBC Radio 4 Farming Today a couple of years ago), a highly-successful business which is also the hub of the organic movement in that part of the world:
Apropos of nothing, I notice that the farmer at Blaencamel Farm, Peter Segger (who had previously, that is before he bought that farm in 1979, been a mainstream food industry executive, buying shiploads of Arctic fish etc), seems to have mellowed considerably and, though still recognizable, has aged considerably (haven’t we all?) in the past 37 years!
I suppose that the point is that there are numerous successful or at least sustainable organic farms in West Wales. I have no idea whether Hallam farmed 500 acres, 50, or lived on a 5-acre smallholding. I suspect nearer 5 than 500, which if so would make his farming inherently unsustainable from a strictly business viewpoint. In fact, when questioned by the Daily Mail in April 2019, Hallam said that ” ‘No-one wants to get arrested. I want to get back to my farm. I’m just a poor farmer, nothing special.” So he still has a farm? I thought that he was supposed to have lost it? Does it mean that he still owns a farm but does not farm it? We do not know.
[Update, 17 September 2020: Hallam’s Wikipedia entry now reads “Hallam was previously an organic farmer on a 10-acre (4-hectare) farm near Llandeilo in South Wales.” So it seems that my guess that Hallam’s farm was “nearer 5 acres than 500” was pretty close to the mark.]
In any event, he first came to public attention in 2017: “Between at least 2017 and early 2019 he was studying for a PhD in civil disobedience at King’s College London,[5] researching how to achieve social change through radical movements. In January 2017, in an action to urge King’s College London to divest from fossil fuels, Hallam and another person, using water-soluble chalk-based spray paint,[4] painted “Divest from oil and gas”, “Now!” and “Out of time” on the university’s Strand campus entrance.[7][5]They were arrested in February when they again spray painted the university’s Great Hall,[7] charged by the state with criminal damage and fined £500.[8] In May 2019, after a three day trial at Southwark Crown Court, they were cleared by a jury of all charges, having argued in their defence that their actions were a proportionate response to the climate crisis.[5] In March 2017, Hallam went on hunger strike to demand the university divest from fossil fuels—the institution had millions of pounds invested in fossil fuels but no investment in renewable energy.[8] Five weeks after the first protest, the university removed £14m worth of investments from fossil fuel companies and pledged to become carbon neutral by 2025.”
Now I have no objection to older people studying, though I am surprised that King’s College London offers a Ph.D. in Civil Disobedience (is this 2019 or 1969?), but for someone in his fifties to spraypaint the interior and exterior of his college with activist graffiti seems not so much youthful as puerile.
In the Hard Talk interview, Hallam sounded fanatical and inflexible. He kept referring to “the Science” (with a capital “S”), repeating it like a religious mantra, yet he himself is not even a scientist. He referred to himself as “a sociologist” at one point. So…here we have someone who got a sociology degree from somewhere (either in recent years or perhaps in the 1980s), and is now an almost perennial student aged 53 who has taken 2 years, it seems, to get a “doctorate” in “Civil Disobedience”, and yet (in the radio interview) lectures the interviewer on the need to believe The Science (which Hallam may or may not understand and —at least judging from his rather unintelligent radio persona— probably does not). He certainly does not think that there can be any doubt about what he says that The Science tells us about “climate change” (formerly “global warming”), despite there being a degree of scientific debate on the subject.
I have to say that I found Hallam’s style disturbing. Did the Levellers of Cromwell’s time sound like that? Or the true believers in Trotsky, Lenin or Stalin, circa 1920 or 1930?
Hallam referred, in the interview, to his belief (he said “fact”) that 6 billion people would die if the UK (and the rest of the world?) did not reduce “carbon emissions” to zero by 2025. When challenged by Stephen Sackur about how that would mean that, within 6 years, the UK would have to have no (or very few) cars, planes, trains, or centrally heated (by gas) houses, Hallam just retreated into his bubble of unreality and said that it was a matter of political will! I suppose that the last country to try that was mid-1970s Cambodia, sub nom “Democratic Kampuchea”, the Year Zero society of The Killing Fields etc.
Hallam claimed that the UK produces 10% of “emissions”. That is plain wrong if he meant 10% of the world’s carbon emissions. The real figure is about 1% (he may, however, if I take the role of Devil’s advocate, have meant 10% of all EU emissions). In other words, even if the UK disappeared into a black hole tomorrow, the other 99% of “emissions” in the world would still be there. That is taking “The Science” at face value, as Hallam obviously does.
What Hallam and his fellow Extinction Rebellion types fail to see is that in fact only the removal of 90% (maybe 80%) of the world population will “save” the planet now. Man-made climate change (taking it as Extinction Rebellion believe it to be) is not caused, at root, by cars, planes etc as such, but by the billions of people in the world, as well as their farmed animals, cars, planes, central heating etc. Numbers.
I agree that there is an environmental crisis, though “global warming”/”climate change” is only part of it. I have blogged about it, as well as the need to create what would be seen as a “super-race”, i.e, evolution of the species combined with evolution of consciousness:
It is as plain as day that Hallam and many of his fellow leading Extinction Rebellion zealots are basically fanatical drop-outs and misfits, most of whom have and have had no profession or occupation (or much academic background) to speak of (see the Daily Mail report in Notes, below):
Hallam himself, ex-farmer and now a superannuated “student” aged 53: “Mr Hallam has also claimed paralysing traffic will eventually cause food shortages and trigger uprisings” [Daily Mail];
Simon Bramwell, 46-47, a former builder, now “bushcraft instructor”;
Gail Bradbrook, 47-48, a mother of two teenage children, who divorced her husband and became an “activist” after an hallucinogenic-drug trip to Costa Rica;
Tasmin Osmond, 34-35, “a veteran of ‘direct actions’ such as Occupy London, the poverty protest which set up a camp outside St Paul’s cathedral in 2011. The granddaughter of Dorset baronet Sir Thomas Lees, Omond [sic] went to Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where she read English.” [Daily Mail] (no actual profession or occupation ever, apparently; presumably a trustafarian);
George Barda, 43-44: “He is a post-graduate student at King’s College in London and the son of classical music and stage photographer Clive Barda…Mr Barda is also a dedicated revolutionary who camped outside St Paul’s cathedral in the Occupy London campaign. Today, he is a director of XR parent company Compassionate Revolution and regularly appears on Russia Today.” [Daily Mail]. So again no profession or occupation, another “eternal student”…;
The XR “strategy”
I see that none of those noted above, or the others reported on by the Daily Mail, are climate scientists or anything similar (Gail Bradbrook apparently has a Ph.D. in molecular biology).
More accurately, they have a “programme” for protest action, or how to create a kind of anarchic situation, but no programme for what to do if, in some parallel reality, they were to attain to political power. They say that they want 3.5% of the population to create a momentum for change. 3.5%? From where does that come? Popular “philosophy”? Some paperback sci-fi novel? A brainwave by someone such as Hallam? Or a vision seen by the lady noted in the Daily Mail report below, in Notes, Gail Bradbrook, while on ibogaine, ayahuasca, peyote or magic mushrooms? We are not told.
I do not mistake labelling for understanding, but what do we call Extinction Rebellion, ideologically? Perhaps the closest is “anarcho-syndicalism meets treehugging” (and I favour treehugging far more than I do anarcho-syndicalism).
Were Extinction Rebellion actually able to stop government, society and economy from operating in the UK, the result would indeed be the deaths of millions, not from “climate change” but from disruption of supplies of food, water, medicine, not to mention huge lawlessness. That in turn would certainly lead to political dictatorship if not tyranny, as the “huddled masses” start to cry out for, not freedom, and most certainly not for “zero emissions” (!) but for safety, security, food, water, heat etc.
Maybe these Extinction Rebellion cranks think that they and their “3.5%” of (?) “woke” “activists” will become that dictatorship (once they understand that popular mass meetings cannot run a society of more than a couple of hundred people). More likely, they would be among the first to be put up against a wall and shot.
As I said earlier, I am very much an environmentalist and very concerned about the state of the planet in that way and in other ways, but this silly “reduce emissions to zero” idea will get nowhere in itself (even if it were to be put somehow into effect worldwide). In six years? Fantasy politics. As for “Extinction Rebellion” leading some mass movement, that is also complete fantasy:
as in… “ALL TOGETHER NOW!— “WHAT DO WE WANT?”; “NO CARS, PLANES, TRAINS, DECENT FOOD, ELECTRICITY OR HEATING!”; “WHEN DO WE WANT [TO LIVE LIKE STONE AGE PEOPLE]?”— “NOW!”
I cannot see many begging for that. Certainly not Emma Thompson, achingly politically-correct actress and “XR” supporter. She would not want that (at least not for herself and her contrived multikulti “family”). My God, it might mean that she would not be able to fly First Class from LA to London to speak at the, er, Extinction Rebellion protests! She might even have to give up some of her half-dozen luxury homes around the world!
Roger Hallam, in interview, bravely opined that “young people” support XR, but quite a few of the XR activists are over 60 and most seem to be over 40 anyway, though I do not have statistics to support that provisional view. Hallam stood as an Independent for the London constituency, during the EU elections. His vote? 924 votes (out of 2,241,681), a vote-share of 0.04%, so not even a half of a tenth of one per cent… Seems that only 4 in 10,000voted for Mr. Hallam. Statistical zero. Eloquent testimony.
The Extinction Rebellion protesters were (belatedly) cracked down on by the Metropolitan Police. Not for several days, though. Why? Was the fix in, as with so-called “activist” on climate change, the weird 16 year old Swedish autistic, Greta Thunberg, who has had a remarkably smooth ride, meeting leading politicians, receiving respectful attention, despite her obvious mental problems and what seems to me to be scarcely-concealed malice. [I shall blog separately about her].
Previous claims that “we have x-years to save the planet”
Silly people ranging from Ed Miliband and Al Gore to Prince Charles all said, back in or around 2009, that “we have 3/5/7/etc years in which to save the planet”. Then the planet yawned and the silly people went away again. There is too much of an attempt, a repeated attempt, to panic us (white Northern Europeans) into accepting lives that are not worth living. Yes there are too many people on this Earth at present. My view is that the advanced peoples should live, procreate and evolve higher. The backward peoples and races (who are by far the more numerous) are not required.
Accusations of “terrorism”; analogy with Greenham Common
One senior policeman said, after the London protests, that XR was, or was close to being, “terrorist”. I think that he was right. Look at these people. Listen to the Stephen Sackur interview. These people are willing to do anything to achieve their ends, even though their ends (insofar as they have “ends”) are in fact unachievable, certainly via protests etc.
The Greenham Common women in the early 1980s thought that they were stopping cruise missiles being based in the UK, whereas their protests (which were hell for the local people— much the lesbians and/or feminists cared…) actually achieved nothing. The missiles were removed by reason of NATO-Warsaw Pact negotiations. The “Women’s Peace Camp” was a complete waste of time and effort.
“A series of meetings held during August and September 1986 culminated in a summit between United States President Ronald Reaganand the General Secretary of the CPSUMikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavík, Iceland, on 11 October 1986. To the surprise of both men’s advisers, the two agreed in principle to removing INF systems from Europe and to equal global limits of 100 INF missile warheads.
The United States and the Soviet Union signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, which led to the removal of all nuclear missiles from the base. The last GLCMs at RAF Greenham Common were removed in March 1991, and the 501st TMW inactivated on 4 June 1991.” [Wikipedia]
Incidentally and incredibly, even though the last missiles left Greenham Common in 1991, even though the Americans left Greenham in 1992 and even though the UK Ministry of Defence closed the base in 1993, putting it up for sale (the area being almost all designated by 1997 as public parkland), the “Greenham Women” stayed, some of them, until 2000! To me that proves that without their having “political activism” to do, some of them had nothing to do with their time or their lives. They were unable to accept that their protests (for 19 years!) had actually achieved nothing and in any case had been superseded by large-scale international events. Like the Japanese soldier in the 1970s, fighting a lone war in the jungle, 30 years after the Pacific War had ended.
Extinction Rebellion protesters are obviously not entirely peaceful. Some are willing to use violence or force to achieve their immediate aims, eg to shut down London. Hallam has, it seems, mooted the shutting down of Heathrow Airport using drones. This is not Gandhi’s “non-violence”. If 10,000 protesters are willing to shut down London by obstruction or inertia, if 1,000 are willing to be even more disruptive, then it may be that 100 are willing to use drones or other means to attack airports, electrical supplies etc. Is it not at least possible that, out of the 10,000, 10 might be willing to use violence of a directly and unambiguously terroristic kind “to save the planet”? I would not bet against it.
We shall soon know. The big “XR” protests are scheduled for October 2019.
"A petition being submitted by hundreds of independent climate scientists and professionals from numerous countries to heads of the European Council, Commission and Parliament declares "There is No Climate Emergency."" https://t.co/NELzaEpm09
“The Metropolitan Police have described the protests as “unprecedented” in their scale and length and warned that they will arrest those breaking the law.
However, Extinction Rebellion has told its protesters not to co-operate with so that they have to hold them in the cells and cannot arrest another activist.
The group wrote on their website: “There are roughly 1,000 jail cells in London – we filled many of them in April.
“Police could often only arrest 100-200 people a day because the cells were full. If we fill them every day – the streets will remain ours. That it is why we refuse bail, to fill up the cells and to show our open defiance of the system that is killing us.”” [Daily Telegraph]
My solution? If the arrested refuse bail, then stuff them ten to a cell like they do in Egypt. And if that is not enough, stuff them twenty to a cell. This is war.
For once, I agree with Boris-Idiot…and while we are on the subject of idiots, what about the one featured in the report below? Pathetic does not even start to cover it. He must have mental problems.
She has elected Crown Court trial (jury trial) despite the risk of a heavier sentence on conviction. She obviously hopes for a sympathetic jury. I see that the Daily Mail, itself ever-sympathetic to the middle classes, calls her a “molecular biologist” because she has a degree in the subject (though I doubt whether she has ever worked in that field or any other).
Update, 20 January 2020
Hallam now wants “a World War 2 mobilization of society”, with rationing and “confiscation of private property”. He says that “Nuremberg” trials should be set up for anyone “guilty” re. climate change, and that some people should “get a bullet in the head”.
What about people who just own a car, or central heating? Do they get a bullet too, or just deportation to re-education camps? In short, this Hallam character is not only an idiot, he is a dangerous idiot.
“What are the dangerous and shadowy links between the UK Government’s Rwanda flights and a heartbreaking war over resources in Africa that is also fuelling the climate crisis and destroying vital ecosystems? Today Extinction Rebellion activists answered that complex question. The group staged a protest in the House of Commons pretending to hold guns to their heads and unfurling a banner saying: ‘STOP FUNDING RWANDA WAR IN D.R. CONGO’.”
“Police have arrested six Just Stop Oil activists at a supposed soup night in London this evening.
Hackney Police has detained a number of key organisers for the group who had allegedly been plotting to cause mayhem for thousands of holidaymakers this summer by disrupting airports across the UK.“
[Daily Mail]
Just Stop Oil, connected to Extinction Rebellion.
It is clear that MI5 has people in there, and reporting.
The Jew paedophile, sex predator, rapist etc Jeffrey Epstein has committed suicide, it is claimed. The circumstances seem mysterious, as when that other Jew disgrace, “Robert Maxwell”, supposedly fell off or jumped off or was pushed off his motor yacht in the region of the Canary Islands.
The Jew Epstein has been in the firing line (not literally, as he should have been) for years:
When “Robert Maxwell” died, his daughter, Ghislaine, who was completely mixed up with Epstein for decades (from age 29 or 30; she is now 57), said that she believed her father to have been murdered. Now Epstein’s death also raises questions. He too was mixed up with some of the most famous and/or powerful figures in the US and UK: Trump, Clinton, Prince Andrew…
Robert Maxwell was thought to be a (perhaps the) major MOSSAD operative in Europe. Now we see that his daughter was intimate or at least friendly with many of the world’s powerful and uber-wealthy. That does not mean that she was operating or partly operating on behalf of the Israeli state or the world Zionist conspiracy, but it does raise questions.
One has to ask why Ghislaine Maxwell has not (at least not yet) been arrested either in the UK or USA. Apparently, some of the young girls abused by the Jew Epstein used to refer to the Jewess “Maxwell” as “the Madam”. Say no more…
So why no action against her? Is this the Jew-Zionist lobby working behind the scenes of our “democracy” again?
Prince Andrew
As far as I am concerned, Prince Andrew is a useless fellow, a complete waste of space. People always say “but he fought in the Falklands!”, as if a few weeks in action (in fact merely observing; he was never under direct fire) gave the prince a free ride for life (his birth already gave him that, I suppose). Admittedly, Andrew did serve for a number of years as Lieutenant, but his service is said to have been generally underwhelming. On retirement from the Royal Navy, he was given the rank of Honorary Captain, rather than promoted as substantive Captain. In 2015, Andrew was made Honorary Vice-Admiral (I have no idea whether he gets a toy battleship to go with that).
Typical British cap-doffing, always bending over backwards to show deference to “royalty”, is still endemic in the UK. People less enamoured of the royals have commented that the Press and royal PR people have also rather (in the vulgar phrase of today) “bigged-up” the WW2 service of Andrew’s father, Philip [see Notes, below]. He has lived off the public weal and his wife’s money for 70 years!
Prince Philip and that clan may not be actual lizards (as David Icke is said to have once claimed), but looking at Philip, I can see from where the idea might have originated…
This morning, I saw an account by Sky News about the Epstein scandal that somehow contrived to avoid the use of the words “Prince Andrew”! Incredible. Needless to say, the facts that Epstein was a Jew and Ghislaine Maxwell is a half-Jewess are also absent from all TV and Press reports. (and yes, many British people, in particular, are so naive that they might not realize).
Andrew, of course, married “Fergie”, with all the consequent scandal that entailed. Now, he is or was involved with a very wealthy woman called Goga Ashkenazi, born in Kazakhstan, and who is part-Jew, part-Muslim.
Andrew finished his official time with the Royal Navy in 2001 at the age of 40, since when he has played golf, flown around the world on rather easy “missions” for charity or government (more or less freeloading, hence his nickname of “air miles Andy”) and enjoyed himself.
“The Duke of York receives a £249,000 annuity from the Queen.[68]The Sunday Times reported in July 2008 that for “the Duke of York’s public role,… he last year received £436,000 to cover his expenses.”[69] On 8 March 2011, The Daily Telegraph reported: “In 2010, the Prince spent £620,000 as a trade envoy, including £154,000 on hotels, food and hospitality and £465,000 on travel.” [Wikipedia]. “Not a bad little earner”…
“Earlier in 2010, it was revealed that the Kazakhstan President’s billionaire son-in-law Timur Kulibayev paid the Duke of York’s representatives £15 million – £3 million over the asking price – via offshore companies, for the Duke’s Surrey mansion, Sunninghill Park. Kulibayev frequently appears in US dispatches as one of the men who have accumulated millions in gas-rich Kazakhstan.[100]
In May 2012, it was reported that Swiss and Italian police investigating “a network of personal and business relationships” allegedly used for “international corruption” were looking at the activities of Enviro Pacific Investments which charges “multi-million pound fees” to energy companies wishing to deal with Kazakhstan.[101] The trust is believed to have paid £6 million towards the purchase of Sunninghill which now appears derelict.[101] In response, a Palace spokesman said “This was a private sale between two trusts. There was never any impropriety on the part of The Duke of York”.[101]
Libby Purves wrote in The Times in January 2015: “Prince Andrew dazzles easily when confronted with immense wealth and apparent power. He has fallen for ‘friendships’ with bad, corrupt and clever men, not only in the US but in Libya, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tunisia, wherever.”
In May 2016, a fresh controversy broke out when the Daily Mail alleged that the Duke had brokered a deal to assist a Greek and Swiss consortium secure a £385 million contract to build water and sewerage networks in two of Kazakhstan’s largest cities, while working as British trade envoy, and had stood to gain a £4 million payment in commission.[102] The newspaper published an email from the Duke to Kazakh oligarch Kenges Rakishev, (who had allegedly brokered sale of the Prince’s Berkshire mansion Sunninghill Park), and claimed that Rakishev had arranged meetings for the consortium. After initially claiming the email was a forgery, Buckingham Palace sought to block its publication as a privacy breach.[103] The Palace strongly denied the allegation that the Duke had acted as a “fixer” calling the article “untrue, defamatory and a breach of the editor’s code of conduct.” [Wikipedia]
This is, however, not meant to be an attack on Prince Andrew, however well-merited. Let’s look at a few others in the useless rabble that now constitutes the “royals”.
Prince Charles
I once met the Prince of Wales, at the official Residence of H.M. Ambassador in the capital city of a foreign country “East of Suez”. There were about 30 people at the reception, though I myself knew only a couple of the guests and a few of the diplomats (including the ambassador). HRH moved through the groups of informally arranged guests, saying hello to almost everyone and speaking with a few favoured people, of which I was one (my time with him probably lasted all of three minutes, though having drunk about a bottle of red wine, I cannot be sure!).
My impressions? Shorter than I expected from having seen photographs and TV news footage for much of my life. I was somewhat taller than him. I was also surprised to see that he was almost bald in places, especially the top of his head (which I could look down on as he turned away). As to personality, I should say pleasant, slightly mocking or humorous (he made a joke about the city and country, which was unexpected). Not someone difficult or rude.
I can support some of what Charles does for animal welfare and the environment, though some of the lustre rubs off when one thinks of his “sporting” slaughter of birds, foxes and other creatures (I let him off as regards salmon and trout!).
Charles has made (with expert help of course) a big success of the Duchy Originals brand, and has in general advanced the cause of organic agriculture. I do think that he in general means well, but his self-pity and preciousness (retailed in various newspaper anecdotes) does make him hard to much like as far as the public is concerned (and that is leaving aside the whole Diana and Camilla saga).
Prince Edward
What can one say? I suppose that the, er, fag-end of a royal house always has a few “princes” of this sort. After dropping out of the Royal Marines fairly quickly, Edward decided, as Wikipedia puts it “on a career in entertainment”. A royal prince playing the theatre manager? Unglaublich… He married a public relations woman and they, apparently, have had two children together.
Princess Anne
Someone who seems to have all the charm of her father. Nuff said. In fact, I have over the years heard some inside track, but I prefer to leave that out of this article (not least because some sources, though thought reliable, may not be).
It has been asserted that Prince Albert was half-Jewish, his real or natural father having been a Jew banker. I do not know whether there is any truth in that, but certainly some members of the Royal Family have looked quite Semitic. Princess Margaret looked very Semitic indeed. Lord Snowdon, her husband, used to make bitter remarks to her face, and about how she looked like an old Jewess, in the years when their marriage was disintegrating.
If reports can be believed, until the 21st Century dawned, all male children of the first rank of the Royal Family were actually circumcised and not even merely by a surgeon, but by a Jewish religious expert. It’s all very strange.
Freemasonry
The links between the Royal Family and freemasonry are well-known and documented.
Overall view
One can see that the British monarchy, qua monarchy (i.e. not qua a function of the “celebrity” culture), is running into the sand. The oldest generation, meaning the Queen and Prince Philip, are now not far from 100 years of age. Prince Charles is now 70 and will soon be 71.
As for Princes William and Harry, “tame thick princelings” pretty much covers it, though they are now perhaps a little old to be called “princelings”— William is now 37.
William’s marriage to Kate, though outside normal royal tradition, could be presented as sort-of within it. Kate is said to be part-Jewish, and so through the matrilineal side, i.e. which the Jews themselves accept as conferring “Jewishness”. However, that sort of thing goes over the head of the public and so, if you like, “caviar to the general”. Not so Harry’s marriage to Meghan, aka the Royal Mulatta (previously married to a Jew in California). That has the possibility (especially when combined with the couple’s absurd recent antics), to sever any bond of affection or respect still binding monarchy to “the people”.
My view
What strikes me increasingly about the Royal Family is its sheer irrelevance both to the UK as a whole and to the people of the UK. When most subjects (as they were; now citizens) had gone through the Second World War, good and bad times economically, had only 2 or 3 TV stations, and everyone wore poppies in November, there was some kind of bond or at least link. Now, the only thing linking the “royals” with the people is that of prurient interest (of the latter in the former), a link no more strong than the people have with pop stars, Katie Price or the cast of the latest braindead “reality” show. As for the proliferating population of “blacks and browns”, very few these days have any interest in the “royals” (now that few have come directly from former colonies).
I have no great animus against monarchy as a system. It is sometimes the best system, whether absolute monarchy or constitutional monarchy. However, Britain now is outgrowing this long-established institution. There is, perhaps, still a place for a constitutional figurehead, but beyond that I think that the time has come to say goodbye.
There it is: The Jews Epstein and “Maxwell” both admitted that they were gathering blackmail materials on the rich and famous. This must be connected with Israeli Intelligence.
Better make it quick, before the bitch flees to Israel…
Ah…: “Her current whereabouts are unknown and sources close to her claim she planned to ‘totally disappear’.” [Daily Mail]. Right…to bloody Israel! I guessed right. Give that man a cee-gar! I wonder how long it will be before the (half)-Jewess starts screaming about “anti-Semitism”?
The Daily Mail today has an exclusive on the scandal. Beyond even the details, the photograph of “royal prince” Andrew, peering round the front door of the Jew’s mansion, is a stunning indictment in itself. Andrew, Jew’s flunkey (or should that be “Jews'”? They seem to be numerous around him)…
…it is all rather reminiscent of the 1940 German film, Jud Suss [The Jew Suss]!
note: The full version of the 1940 film Jud Suss is now censored, completely removed from YouTube (as indeed I predicted, a few years ago, would happen…). Only a few short clips (such as the one above) and the —far less hardhitting— 1934 film version of the (true) story, are still up.
However, Jud Suss is still on the Internet, though it must be sought out in quiet corners. It is well worth seeing (why else would “they” try to “disappear” it?). Here is one good copy:
Buckingham Palace PR people have released a truly pathetic exculpa on behalf of Prince Andrew, saying how “appalled” he is at the “revelation” that his friend, the billionaire Jew Epstein, was a sex criminal etc. Really, how strange. So in 2011 and 2012, when Andrew was visiting and perhaps staying in the Jew’s Manhattan mansion (and acting as the Jew’s flunkey at the door), he, Andrew, was unaware that Epstein had been convicted and imprisoned in 2008 over such matters? Hardy ha ha…It was the subject of publicity at the time and thereafter…
In fact, Epstein’s money and connections had greatly helped the Jew himself in 2008: a light sentence, mostly spent on “day release” (so prison was just somewhere less comfortable than, say, the Pierre, or the Waldorf-Astoria, in which to doss down in overnight); then early parole. The fix was in, somewhere, that much is obvious.
In other, connected, news, the Queen seems to have required the “royal prince” to fly home early from the traditional Summer break at Balmoral.
Andrew is now exposed as, at best, a complete fool and grifter; at worst (and the worst is more likely than the best), a user of procured young girls, procured for him by both the Jew rapist Epstein and Epstein’s one-time “ho”, the half-Jewess Ghislaine “Maxwell”, daughter of MOSSAD operative and fraudster “Robert Maxwell” (and herself quite likely “connected”). Israeli Intelligence and the Jew-Zionist web worldwide must have learned a lot and suborned many, taking the operation as a whole. The Royal Family has probably lost most of its own secrets via Andrew.
In other news, thick princeling Harry, and the Royal Mulatta, have just vacated the UK on their third private-jet jaunt in less than a month (the first was, laughably, to go to Sicily to a “climate-change” event!).
It occurs to me that, at one time, the “royals” of the various European states were the acme of European society, but now absurd end-of-line “royals” want to ape the Hollywood film-star lifestyle.
Worse, Harry has become a figure out of American sitcom-land, the henpecked husband whose petulant young wife runs him ragged with her absurd demands. “Royal Married With Children“…(though in fact, in this case, she is about 4 years older than her husband, 38 compared to his 34).
The royals are now squandering their life’s gold heedlessly.
and now, reverting to Andrew’s very strange behaviour and lifestyle, it turns out that Andrew hosted Epstein at Balmoral, while the Monarch was in residence, at that!
Thick Andrew (all the royals are both painfully thick and cringingly uncultured) is of course “appalled” at the behaviour of his Jew billionaire “friend”, so appalled that he stayed at the Jew’s mansion, used the young girls there (almost certainly) and had nice chats with the Jew while walking in Central Park…2 years after the Jew had been convicted of sex crimes.
“Time and again, Andrew, who a courtier once reportedly described as having “a pompous level of self-importance”, has demonstrated an eye-watering lack of judgment. Palace staff have rated him the rudest of royals, according to reports. A secret cable, published on WikiLeaks in 2010, revealed a US ambassador describing Andrew speaking “cockily” during one official lunch,leading to a discussion that “verged on the rude”.” [The Guardian]
“Rightly, or wrongly, there is a perceived air of arrogance about Andrew, and he is described by various people as boorish and very self-centred,” said Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty Magazine. “Perhaps we shouldn’t be judging the book by its cover. But, certainly, that’s the impression he has given for a very long time.” [The Guardian]
The Guardian’s piece ends with an almost “sympathetic” paragraph:
“His fate is that of the typical second son, struggling to find a role. “I think despite knowing he was always going to go down the line of succession, the fact that in his youth he was second in line to the throne, and now he is wherever he is, that must be quite a blow to your confidence and feeling of importance,” said Little.”
On the other hand, the stupid arrogant bastard might actually show a little humility (I mean to the British people who have been subsidizing him all his rotten life, not to the wealthy Jews for whom he seems to behave like a doormat), not to mention gratitude to the British people (and to Fate or God, or the gods, without whose largesse “Prince” Andrew would just be a very very mediocre naval officer who would struggle to rise beyond the rank of lieutenant).
…and still it continues, with painfully thick Andrew still trying to say that he had no idea that the Jew Epstein had been convicted a couple of years previously for sex crimes (as if the police would not have known!)
Daily Mail: “A source said that when working as Special Representative for International Trade and Investment between 2001 and 2011, Andrew was asked to travel regularly to the US. Since relinquishing this role in 2011, they maintained Andrew had continued to travel to the US, but claimed that his focus, particularly with Pitch@Palaces, had been on ‘other markets’.”
A “royal prince” trying to play the Internet “entrepreneur”? Ha ha! It would be tacky even if successful. As it is, it just looks pathetic, like thicko Andrew himself and the whole “right royal” circus!
…and it looks as if I was right about the connection with Israeli Intelligence!
“In light of what is now known about Epstein’s sexual blackmail operation and sex trafficking activities, several reports from the late 1990s and early 2000s contain details long since forgotten regarding Epstein’s relationship with Prince Andrew.
“One particularly censored article that appeared in London’s Evening Standard in January 2001, for instance, gives several indications regarding the apparent entrapment of Prince Andrew as part of Epstein’s sexual blackmail operation, which is now known to have been connected to intelligence — specifically Israeli military intelligence, according to recent revelations in the case.” [Mint Press News]
Prince Andrew caught “bang to rights” (again). A useless, charmless, pretentious idiot who thinks that he is terribly important. Had he not been born where and “who” he was, Andrew would be —at most— a small businessman, and an unsuccessful one at that.
Prince Andrew thought that “it was the right and honourable thing to do”, to stay with the convicted Jew sex predator Epstein. In the immortal word of “Manuel”, “Que?”.
Prince Andrew was not only able to remember his visit to the Woking branch of Pizza Express, but was able to say with certainty that he went there on the very day on which he is alleged to have screwed the American 17 y o trafficked by the Jew Epstein and the half-Jewess Ghislaine “Maxwell”!
Remarkable memory, to be able to recall the exact date, 18 years in the past…
Call Detective Columbo…
Apart from that, it made me laugh that Andrew went to Pizza Express. I mean, I do not expect a “royal prince” to eat drumsticks at a banquet every evening, casting the half-eaten ones over his shoulder in the manner of Henry VIII as played by Charles Laughton, or to eat only slices of cucumber washed down by champagne, like one of the cavalry officers in Anna Karenina, but…Pizza Express?…at…Woking?!
Seems that Andrew met the “ho” “madam” Ghislaine “Maxwell” as recently as June 2019! Looks as though they were discussing legal strategems, aka “how are we going to get out of this?”
Well, they could always take a cruise off the Canary Isles together…
…and the popular prints are just not giving up; here (see below), a TV doctor rubbishes Andrew’s claim that he, Andrew, cannot or could not sweat by reason of having “been shot at” in the Falklands (and that’s even leaving aside the —apparent— fact that Andrew never was shot at during the few weeks that he spent in the Falklands, and that the nearest that he came to being in peril that way was when he observed from a helicopter a ship being shot at):
According to the New York Post, the “ho” “madam”, Ghislaine “Maxwell”, wanted to become la Contessa Cicogna, but failed in that. I presume that the Italian’s family were appalled at the prospect of a Jewess (actually, half-Jewess) polluting the family escutcheon…
Now it turns out that the arrogant stupid bastard has been pocketing bungs worth millions. I suppose that he wanted to try to keep up financially with his billionaire half-Jew, half-Muslim girlfriend from Kazakhstan. He must be binned (the rest of his family too). Time for some kind of republic.
Well, give that man a cee-gar! Turns out that I guessed right (I usually do, if I myself say so):
“Jeffrey Epstein’s socialite ‘madam’ Ghislaine Maxwell ‘is being hidden from the FBI in a series of safe houses because of the information she has on powerful people’“
Maxwell has remained incognito since Epstein’s arrest and death behind bars
New report claims both she and Epstein were ‘assets’ for a foreign government
Source says they funneled dirt on the rich and powerful to foreign spies
Now Maxwell may be hiding in a safehouse in Israel, the new report claims
She is a British and US citizen, and daughter of an alleged Mossad operative.“
“An explosive new report has asserted that deceased sex criminal Jeffery Epstein and his alleged ‘madame’ Ghislaine Maxwell were foreign intelligence ‘assets’, and that she is currently hiding in a safehouse in Israel.“
“She is not in the US, she moves around. She is sometimes in the UK, but most often in other countries, such as Israel, where her powerful contacts have provided her with safe houses and protection,’ the source said.“
“Born in France, Maxwell is both a U.S. citizen and British subject. Her family’s alleged ties to Israel’s national intelligence service, Mossad, have been well documented.
Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell, was a Czech-born British media mogul whose financial fraud in raiding the Mirror Group pension fund was discovered after his death in 1991.
Also a British member of parliament, Robert Maxwell reportedly had ties to British intelligence, the Soviet KGB, and Mossad — and was suspected of being a double or even triple agent by British Foreign Office officials.“
Western world, wake up to the Jew/Zionist/Israel conspiracy. It’s everywhere…
Update, 7 January 2020
Seems that the “ho” “madam”, Ghislaine Maxwell, “is reportedly in hiding and being guarded round the clock by former US Navy SEALs amid fears her life is in danger.” [Daily Mirror]. In Israel? Some US Navy Seals are Jews, perhaps surprisingly. I met one myself once.
Latest about the half-Jew “ho” madam, Ghislaine “Maxwell”:
Ryan Dawson@RyLiberty
British Spoiled Brat and Child Rapist Ghislaine Maxwell is hiding in Israel. Over 8000 pages of her e-mails have been hacked. US media is doing triple back flips to avoid mentioning the entire ring was Jewish and financed by Jewish supremacists.
Well, there is not much “British” about the aforesaid “ho”: born in France of one Jew and one French parent, though educated in England (Marlborough College and Balliol, Oxford).
The story is interesting, though. I wonder whether this alleged telephone hacking had a connection to the Saudi Crown Prince, like other hacking exposed in recent weeks? I speculated some months ago that the “ho” Maxwell was hiding out in Israel, presumably under MOSSAD or Aman control.
“It is claimed in the unsealed papers that an island orgy was one of three occasions when Jane Doe #3 was forced to have sex with Andrew. The other locations were Maxwell’s London flat and and in New York.” [The Guardian]
Andrew’s motive is obvious: to try to exculpate himself; what, though, of Dershowitz? He is said to have visited the Epstein island and travelled on Epstein’s jet. He may have abused young girls himself. Whether that was so or not, was that and is that the whole story?
We know that the Jew who was mainly known as “Robert Maxwell” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell was a major MOSSAD operative. His daughter, Ghislaine, is now the prime focus of the post-Epstein inquiry, and is on trial in Federal court in New York. She, it is said, was also an Israeli agent, either MOSSAD or Aman, or both. Epstein (who has now “gone up the chimney”) the same.
We know that Israeli Intelligence co-opts Israeli and other Jew “civilians” as operatives when necessary. Look at the Dikko case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dikko_affair): “Though Israel, at the time, did not have formal diplomatic relations with Nigeria, there were less visible ties between the two nations. In particular, Nigeria was an important source of oil for Israel, and Israel was a significant supplier of arms to Nigeria. The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was tasked with locating Dikko and bringing him back to Nigeria to stand trial.” [Wikipedia]
” Mossad recruited Levi-Arie Shapiro, an Israeli doctor who was a consultant anesthetist and director of the intensive care unit at HaSharon Hospital. He was to fly to London and participate in the operation. Shapiro’s job would be to drug Dikko, and insert an endotracheal tube to keep him from choking on his own vomit while being transported in a crate.” [Wikipedia]
A Jew (whether Israeli or any other nominal nationality) may be a doctor, a lawyer, or whatever, but is first and foremost a Jew and likely to do whatever Israel and its “services” want…
It may well be that the successful Epstein blackmail and suborning operation, likely to have been very productive for Israeli Intelligence, was in part facilitated by the Jew Dershowitz. I imagine that his role was, precisely, to shield Epstein (and so Maxwell and/or others) from legal inquiry from both USA and UK.
Meanwhile, Ghislaine “Maxwell”, the half-Jew (Mischling) “ho” “madam”, is pulling out all the stops to get released on bail in he USA. Seems that she is married to a Jew “tech millionaire”. The bail suggested by her legal team may be USD $30 million. Where do the Jews get such money? Is the “husband” stumping up? Is any of it from monies stolen from UK Mirror Group pensioners by the “ho’s” repulsive father, Robert Maxwell?
“Borgerson was involved with the Council on Foreign Relations.” Well, well, was he really? A slightly unusual connection for someone who spent 4 years as a US Coastguard officer, though others have said that he was a US Navy SEAL. A Jew as Navy SEAL may sound odd, but there are some; I myself met one such, about 18 years ago, at Charleston, South Carolina.
I thought that Ghislaine “Maxwell” would have played the “antisemitism” card by now, but admittedly that would be hard to justify in New York City, especially when the judge is herself Jewish! Indeed, the judge is more Jewish than Ghislaine Maxwell, who is genetically only half-Jew: her mother was a French Protestant, who “converted” to Judaism (and became fanatically pro-Jew and pro-Israel) after meeting the MOSSAD asset “Robert Maxwell”.
Update, 25 April 2021
Ghislaine Maxwell now charged with further and even more serious offences:
[President Clinton, a complete NWO/ZOG puppet, mired in sleaze of all kinds, greets the paedophile Jew criminal and Israeli Intelligence asset Epstein, and his “ho”, the half-Jew Israeli asset Ghislaine Maxwell, at the White House in 1993]
The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell is apparently scheduled for November 2021, so it is interesting that quite sympathetic documentaries are now appearing…
I notice that that ABC doc features Robert Maxwell’s son, Ian [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Maxwell], as well as journalists who are either Jewish or at least perceived by many as generally pro-Jewish.
Having said that, the film does contain material not entirely exculpatory of Ghislaine Maxwell. On the other hand, turning it around again, it might be argued that, bearing in mind what has already been exposed, the only thing for Ghislaine Maxwell to do is to limit the damage— to accept a hit, but a limited hit.
[the Jew Epstein, smugly smirking in front of one of his private jets. It is good to know that the evil Jew exploiter was sent “up the chimney” not so many years later]
Update, 9 December 2021
Below, a photograph admitted into evidence in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, showing her giving the Jew exploiter Epstein a foot massage on one of his private jets:
Guilty on 5 out of 6 charges. Forecast to be sentenced to (up to) 65 years. These being Federal offences, parole chances are minimal. An appeal has been or is in process of being lodged.
Update, 15 January 2022
Ghislaine Maxwell may get a retrial, based on apparent procedural and other problems to do with some of the jurors. Meanwhile, sentencing has been set down for 28 June 2022.
In other news, Andrew Windsor, the thick bully and freeloader (etc) formerly known as “Prince”, has lost a number of military and other titles and ranks (including effectively, though not officially, “HRH”), and may even lose his title “Duke of York”.
If and when Andrew is completely reduced to the ranks, it may send a shiver down the spines of other “Royal Family” members on the right royal gravytrain, especially but not exclusively the minor ones.
“Seems that the person formerly known as Prince (Andrew) is probably going to request a civil jury in the case brought against him by one of the victims of the Jew Epstein. To my mind, this is a strategy unlikely to succeed. I am still nominally an attorney at the New York Bar, though I have never practised law in that state (I passed the exam 32 years ago), but my view about this matter comes more from my knowledge of Americans themselves.
Andrew Windsor is on the wrong side tactically: British, as against his accuser, an American. A man as against a woman, in a generally feministic part of the world. An older man as against a younger woman. An hereditary foreign “royal” as against a US-born-and-bred US citizen. Very wealthy, as against someone without inherited wealth, and brought up in either a “trailer” or a very modest house.
Does Andrew Windsor really think that a civil jury in New York City will be on his side? Maybe this is a tactic to gain time while his lawyers find out how much the lady’s price might be. A great deal more than the rent of a Manhattan apartment and a free seat on a private jet, anyway.“
So Andrew Windsor, “formerly known as Prince”, has settled the civil suit brought in New York by Virginia Giuffre (as was). Rumours abound that the settlement is around £12M in British money.
“EXCLUSIVE: Bill Clinton’s special advisor who let Jeffrey Epstein into the White House seven times and flew on the Lolita Express dies at 59 – the latest associate of the former President to suffer an early demise“
Ehud Barak…[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehud_Barak]. Now there’s a name not quite in sync with the others. I wonder what he was up to, bearing in mind the Israeli Intelligence connection with both the Jew Epstein and the half-Jew Ghislaine “Maxwell”.
Unless either an appeal happens (and is successful), or a pardon is granted by the U.S. President, Ghislaine Maxwell will be incarcerated until she is 80 years old (2041). There is no parole, as such, in the U.S. Federal system, only in individual states’ systems. However, an inmate can get nearly 2 months “credit” for every year served, dependent on behaviour, so on a 20-year sentence a couple of years might get shaved off.
It is all starting to come out. Names are being revealed. I notice that a very high proportion of the guilty are Jews. I think well over half. Yet in the American population, only 2.4% “identify” as Jewish. So the proportion of Jews visiting the Jew Epstein’s island was about twenty times their proportion in the US population…
Of course, the main traffickers have already been well and truly dealt with. Epstein himself has gone “up the chimney”, and the half-Jewess Ghislaine Maxwell is likely to be in US Federal prison until she is over 80 (she is presently 62). She still faces a further Federal trial (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghislaine_Maxwell), so may be sentenced to a further term, though she will probably be released while still under 85…
I am sure that the Israelis would welcome her back. After all, they allowed her unpleasant and fraudulent Jew father, Robert “Maxwell”, to be buried on the supposedly sacred Mount of Olives in Jerusalem (presumably for his services to MOSSAD etc), though Ghislaine Maxwell is said to believe that MOSSAD or other Israeli agency murdered him and then passed it off as suicide or accident (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell#Death).
“Prince Andrew is ‘terrified’ to visit the US in case he is arrested amid calls for a fresh FBI probe into the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, sources claimed last night.
The disgraced Duke of York has barely left Britain in nearly six years, with insiders claiming he fears arrest, civil lawsuits, or being subpoenaed if he travels abroad.
The 64-year-old’s anxiety has only deepened following the release of court documents that have sparked demands for a fresh criminal probe into Epstein’s network.
Andrew has always denied allegations of sexual misconduct but paid millions in an out-of-court settlement to Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre in 2022.
In 2020, the FBI asked the Home Office for assistance in questioning Andrew, but the investigation was put on hold last year.
However, fresh scrutiny has emerged after High Court documents last week revealed an email exchange between Andrew and Epstein in February 2011, in which the prince wrote: ‘We’ll play some more soon.’
The Duke of York sent a bombshell email pledging to ‘keep in close touch’, despite claiming he had ceased all contact with the American financier weeks earlier, it has emerged.
The new evidence suggests Andrew may have lied in his infamous Newsnight interview.
He insisted to Emily Maitlis in the disastrous 2019 grilling at Buckingham Palace that he had stopped seeing Epstein in early December 2010, when they were photographed walking through New York’s Central Park.
The Duke said: ‘I never had any contact with him from that day forward.”
Meanwhile, useless and nasty parasite “Prince of the Blood” Andrew was invited recently to attend Church with Charles, Camilla etc. Semi-rehabilitation exercise?
“Jeffrey Epstein was a very wealthy man, but exactly how wealthy and where that money came from remains shrouded in mystery.
Newly unearthed emails last week shone light on Epstein’s role as freelance client development officer, acting as a channel between political figures and business titans, greasing up the former with lifestyles they could not afford and the latter with avenues of political influence.
…the questions about the source of Epstein’s wealth have never been fully resolved. He was worth nearly $600m at his death, thanks mostly to two wealthy billionaire clients – Victoria’s Secret founder Les Wexner and, later, Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black – as well as Johnson & Johnson heiress Elizabeth “Libet” Johnson, sister of former US ambassador to the UK Woody Johnson.
Between his collection of lavish homes in New York, Palm Beach and Paris, two private Caribbean islands, two jets and helicopter, Epstein held nearly $380m in cash and investments, according to his estate.
That wealth arrived suddenly. According to associates, until the end of the 90s, Epstein was living in a two-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side close to the river. It was only when Maxwell arrived from London that his lifestyle was dramatically elevated.
Epstein moved to a townhouse on 68th Street and later to a 28,000-sq-ft mansion on 71st Street, later transferred to him by Wexner in 2011.
Steven Hoffenberg, a former business partner of Epstein convicted of running a Ponzi scheme, claimed that Maxwell’s father, disgraced press baron Robert Maxwell, introduced his daughter to Epstein in the late 1980s.“
“Revealed: 100 new Epstein emails ‘that could destroy’ Prince Andrew: Cache of ‘devastating’ messages between the Duke and convicted paedophile unearthed in US probe“
“Fergie’s Epstein lies exposed in bombshell email: She publicly apologised for taking abuser’s cash and vowed to cut ties with him, then weeks later told him: I only said it to save book deals.”
Apparently, that was the Jew Ehud Barak, whose presence at “Lolita Island” has been known for years. An evil bastard once part of Israel’s special forces attack and assassination group.
Well, I have just watched a Netflix documentary (4 hour-long episodes) about the case of the Jew Epstein etc. It ends with the indictment of the half-Jewish Ghislaine Maxwell, after the supposed suicide of Epstein, so misses out her conviction and sentence.
Fairly good as a documentary, and it kept the interest, but it completely failed to investigate the Israeli intelligence and espionage connections. Not one word…
In fact, despite almost all the main characters on the “guilty” and/or allegedly guilty side (Epstein, Maxwell, Dershowitz, many many others) having been Jews or (in Ghislaine Maxwell’s case) half-Jews, the word “Jew” was, I think, not uttered even once. Of course, not all of the alleged abusers were Jews (Andrew Windsor, Bill Clinton etc) but many were, and most if not all of those connected in other ways to Epstein were Jews, even those who were not American (e.g. “lord” Mandelson).
No mention of MOSSAD, Aman, the Trilateral Commission, or the Council on Foreign Relations.
Still, it was good to reflect, while watching, on the fact that the Jew Epstein has gone up the chimney, and that Ghislaine Maxwell remains in a U.S. prison, albeit now in a “Club Fed” soft one, and may remain there for much of the rest of her life.
Update, 9 March 2026
More about the evil of the half-Jew criminal, Ghislaine “Maxwell”:
I was just watching one of the seemingly endless re-runs of the early 1970s historical documentary series, The World at War, and in particular the episode named Barbarossa (from Fall Barbarossa or Operation Barbarossa, named after Friedrich I, the Holy Roman Emperor of the 12th Century who led the Third Crusade against the infidels).
I of course remember watching the TV series when it first was broadcast, in 1973. Many will say that it is in many parts contaminated by what amounts to Jew-Zionist propaganda, and I do not dispute that. Others point out, in a connected critique, that every alleged wrong done by the German Reich and its forces is given great prominence, whereas the cruelties and barbarities of the Soviet regime are barely mentioned (I suppose that it could be argued that the most famous chronicles of those terrible times were not published in English until after The World at War was made: GULAG Archipelago, for one). The criticisms are valid, but one cannot write off The World At War because of those flaws.
The strength of The World at War was that many of the leading personalities on all sides, such as German, English and other general officers, admirals etc, some members of Hitler’s circle (eg Speer), and a host of lesser-ranked people, were all still alive in 1973, giving their filmed testimony weight and immediacy.
Anyway, this article is not meant to focus on The World at War alone, but to examine a couple of “what if?” situations, both in the war years of 1939-45 (for Russians and Americans, 1941-45) and at other times.
The drive to Moscow in 1941
When I was first in Moscow, in 1993, my assigned driver, Pasha (an insolent loutish youth, apropos of nothing) pointed out, as we drove into the city from Sheremetyevo airport, the tank trap memorial, 23 kilometres from the Kremlin on the Leningrad Highway (Leningradskoye Shosse). The memorial marks the supposed furthest point of advance of the German forces in 1941. We drove near to the Kremlin only about 15-20 minutes later.
In 1941, the town of Khimki (now effectively a suburb of Moscow) had only just (1939) been administratively created, and was little developed. Now, hundreds of thousands live close by. Even since I drove through in 1993 there has been further development. Indeed, in the photograph below, taken in a recent year, there can be seen an IKEA warehouse. What would Stalin have had to say about that?!
The proximity to central Moscow amazed me. Even if not true (as some say) that some German advance-reconnaissance motorcyclists advanced yet further, to a point where they could see the golden domes of the Kremlin churches, it is incredible to see how close the forces of the Reich came to capturing Moscow.
In 1941, flush with the victories in the West in 1940, Hitler intended to advance in Russia against 3 main objectives: Leningrad, Moscow, and also the Ukraine generally, with its huge natural resources of grain crops etc and (in the Don Basin or Donbass), coal.
Hitler at first prioritized Leningrad, followed by the Donbass, and only then Moscow. His generals disagreed, arguing that only a decisive blow against Moscow could achieve victory. There were cogent arguments for all three main objectives:
Leningrad: reasons based around morale (the city of the two 1917 Revolutions and in particular the second, Bolshevik, one; the city bearing the name of Lenin); also, the city without which the all-weather port of Murmansk could probably not be held. If Murmansk fell, there could be no Allied resupply of the Soviet Union except via the Soviet Far East. At that stage of the war, that alone might sink the Soviet regime;
Ukraine: grain supplies, coal, even oil (should German forces be able to advance beyond Ukraine; also, protection for the Romanian oilfields supplying Germany);
Moscow: in the highly-centralized Stalinist system of the Soviet Union, everything came from the centre. Indeed, in the earliest hours of Barbarossa, Soviet officers were heard in German intercepts begging Moscow for orders: “we are under attack; what shall we do?”…It might be that, were Moscow to fall, the Soviet Union would fall. Hitler himself had said that “all we need do is kick open the front door and the whole rotten structure will come tumbling down.”
I have to say that (of course with the knowledge of the decades since 1941) I would favour the Moscow option. Had Moscow fallen, the bubble of the regime would have burst. In a small way, the open panic of the NKVD and CPSU when they thought the Germans would soon be in Moscow, and which led to open rebelliousness on the part of ordinary Moscow inhabitants, leads me to think that a German capture of the city would have led to a rapid fall of the Soviet regime in all of European Russia and perhaps beyond.
In any case, without Moscow under Soviet control, Leningrad must surely have fallen too before very long.
Hitler thought that it was more important to defeat the Soviet armies in the field. European thinking, thinking from the constricted lands of Central and Western Europe. In the Russian space, those otherwise valid ideas become less valid. New armies can be (and were) raised from the vast areas beyond the Volga, beyond the Urals.
As for going for three objectives at once, it might, under other stars, have worked, but the cautious Russian proverb says “chase two hares and you will not catch one”…
Still, what if? What if Moscow had fallen in 1941? Without a two-front war, Germany could not have been defeated in the West. There could not have been the Normandy Landings of 1944, certainly not successfully. European Russia would have been under German control, and the wider expanses of the Soviet Union would probably have been invaded and taken by a Russian but anti-Soviet army such as the Vlasov Army, which might have been expanded to a formidable force. Also, the forces under Rommel in North Africa would have been able to have been hugely reinforced, with the heady strategic possibility that Rommel might have been able not only to take Alexandria, Cairo and the Suez Canal, but Jerusalem, Damascus and then drive up through the foothills of the Caucasus towards Baku and its oilfields, linking up with the forces of Army Group South driving South-East from Ukraine; German forces did occupy part of the Caucasus and even part of Kalmykia in 1942 (occupying Elista briefly).
Mainland Europe would, in that overall scenario, have avoided most of the destruction of 1941-1945. In time, there would no doubt have been peace made between the German Reich and the British Empire. The calamitous decolonization in Africa etc would have been avoided, at least until such time as it would not have had such terrible effects on human and animal inhabitants. There would be either no State of Israel, or one which would not be the hub of a worldwide Jew-Zionist web. The forces of Stalinism would never have invaded Eastern and Central Europe. There would have been no Korean War, no Vietnam War, no Cuban Missile Crisis, and Castro himself would have been seen as just another Latin American tinpot dictator (which is all he was anyway, once Soviet backup was removed) and unable to pose as a world “statesman” (BBC and Labour Party idiots please note).
What if? If only…
And now for something completely different…
What if…Beeching had never happened? Alternatively, what if rail lines had been closed but maintenance of track continued?
I wonder how many British people of the post-1960s age, let alone the (often vacant-seeming) “millennials”, have even heard of Dr. Beeching, his reports and his “Beeching Axe”? [see Notes, below]. In outline, then:
“The first report identified 2,363 stations and 5,000 miles (8,000 km) of railway line for closure, 55% of stations and 30% of route miles, with an objective of stemming the large losses being incurred during a period of increasing competition from road transport and reducing the rail subsidies necessary to keep the network running; the second identified a small number of major routes for significant investment. The 1963 report also recommended some less well-publicised changes, including a switch to containerisation for rail freight“. [Wikipedia]
Note those figures: 2,363 rail stations to be closed! Not to mention 5,000 miles of track.
“Protests resulted in the saving of some stations and lines, but the majority were closed as planned, and Beeching’s name remains associated with the mass closure of railways and the loss of many local services in the period that followed. A few of these routes have since reopened, some short sections have been preserved as heritage railways, while others have been incorporated into the National Cycle Network or used for road schemes; others now are lost to construction, have reverted to farmland, or remain derelict.” [Wikipedia]
“Beeching’s reports made no recommendations about the handling of land after closures. British Rail operated a policy of disposing of land that was surplus to requirements. Many bridges, cuttings and embankments have been removed and the land sold for development. Closed station buildings on remaining lines have often been demolished or sold for housing or other purposes. Increasing pressure on land use meant that protection of closed trackbeds, as in other countries (such as the US Rail Bank scheme, which holds former railway land for possible future use) was not seen to be practical. Many redundant structures from closed lines remain, such as bridges over other lines and drainage culverts. They often require maintenance as part of the rail infrastructure while providing no benefit. Critics of Beeching argue that the lack of recommendations on the handling of closed railway property demonstrates that the report was short-sighted. On the other hand, retaining a railway on these routes, which would obviously have increased maintenance costs, might not have earned enough to justify that greater cost. As demand for rail has grown since the 1990s, the failure to preserve the routes of closed lines (such as the one between Bedford and Cambridge, which was closed despite Beeching recommending its retention) has been criticized.” [Wikipedia]
The above long extracts from Wikipedia lay out the facts quite well. What is missing is perspective. The postwar period in the UK, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, was one of almost wholesale destruction of old buildings, streets, villages, towns and cities. In fact, postwar redevelopment changed London a great deal more than the oft-cited depredations of the Luftwaffe (most of which bomb damage was concentrated on the Thames dock areas and nearby areas which suffered collateral damage). Naturally, demolitions are sometimes inevitable and sometimes an improvement [see Notes, below], but much that was valuable has gone.
In fact, the 5,000 miles of track closures earmarked by Beeching were in addition to about 3,318 miles of railway track closed between 1948 and 1962 and also a further 1,300 miles of passenger railway between 1923 and 1939! Over 9,000 miles of track!
So “what if”? What if, for example, the rail track had been maintained? That way, were (as now are) different ideas, new technical ideas, possible (eg robot trains, no-staff trains, small ultralight trains, trains made with lighter materials, trains using solar power etc), those tracks could be the basis for new transport links and could be further linked with new track.
The expense of a railway is mostly in the staff pay, pensions etc; after that, the cost of actually running trains (fuel etc); after that, maintenance of trains, track, bridges, tunnels etc. The core maintenance can be relatively little. In the USA, this is the policy (see Wikipedia in Notes, below). Political policy which is also a national insurance policy.
Not that the trekking ways, cycleways and nature walks which often have replaced the old railways are not useful too, but most rail track destroyed has been simply ploughed over, built over or abandoned. Pity.
“A police officer uses a megaphone at Southwark Park, to announce sunbathing is not allowed, but exercise is” [Daily Mail].
Ian Robert Millard 