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Old May 5th, 2023 #1
jagd messer
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Default Peter Hitchens

PETER HITCHENS: Why are the SAS in Ukraine – and do we have a clue why we're involved in this war? 15 April 2023.

Who decided to send the SAS to Ukraine? What are they doing there? What would happen were they to be killed by Russian forces, or captured by them? And what was a British surveillance plane, capable of carrying 30 people, doing over the Black Sea last September, when a bungling Russian pilot almost shot it down, only failing because his missile was a dud? What would have happened if the missile had worked, and many British servicemen and women had died?

Nobody will answer these questions when I ask them. Once upon a time, we had a proper Parliament in which brave, indomitable MPs such as the late Tam Dalyell would pursue such matters. Perhaps, even now, some courageous man or woman is getting ready to step into Tam Dalyell’s shoes. I do hope so.

We can be pretty sure that the leaked documents revealing these facts are accurate, given the ferocious reaction of the US authorities to their publication. By the way, you may be sure that the Kremlin will have known about all this for many months. The cloud of secrecy around such matters is (as so often) there to keep the British and American publics in ignorance, not to keep hostile powers in the dark.

Meanwhile, as far as I know, this country is not at war with Russia. If we did enter such a war, as a Nato member, we would instantly widen the current conflict to cover the whole of Europe. Can you begin to imagine what that would involve? How would the people of this country gain by such events? Is anybody thinking about what we are doing?

First of all, what interest does the United Kingdom have in continuing and sustaining this war? A powerful faction in Washington DC, with supporters in the West Wing of the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA, have long wanted a proxy war with Russia. They believe passionately that Russia must never be allowed to rise again. This faction, whose founding document is known as The Wolfowitz Doctrine, have been hard at work since 1992, when The New York Times leaked their plans. They are almost exactly the same people who created the Iraq War out of nothing, who got the West into the Afghanistan quagmire, and who backed Islamist fanatics in Syria – who were the sort of people they would have arrested in Chicago.


Who decided to send the SAS to Ukraine? What are they doing there? What would happen were they to be killed by Russian forces, or captured by them?

They have an unparalleled record of fanatical stupidity, and everywhere they intervene ends up in corpse-strewn ruins, with everyone who can get out fleeing from the fire and screams… towards Europe and the Channel coast.

If every dollar these zealots have spent on war had been spent instead on building prosperous free countries in places such as Russia, the world would be a startlingly better place. That, fundamentally, is America’s problem. If nobody in the USA will stand up to them, they will get their repeated stupid wars and the rest of us will have to watch, weep and receive the fleeing multitudes.

But we do not have to take part. Why are we in this? How does Britain benefit from war between Russia and Ukraine? How, for that matter, has poor Ukraine benefited from it, its cities wrecked, its economy half-dead, untold numbers of its young men gone to graveyards? Why should any British soldiers be there at all? If Parliament does not debate this, then we are not a democracy. And if any critical voices are drowned out with slander and abuse, then we are not a free country.


The UK should have nothing to do with this Ukraine/Russia war. It has nothing to do with us.



PETER HITCHENS: Why are the SAS in Ukraine – and do we have a clue why we're involved in this war? 05 V 2023.


Big 3: Oil, Guns (including Nukes) and Drugs (including Vaccines).
War is just a business, nothing personnal.
 
Old May 8th, 2023 #2
jagd messer
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Default Why am I such a threat to national security?

I really hope that MI5 has a file on me. In fact, I should be shocked and disappointed if it did not, for 30 years ago I was an active member of a far- Left organisation which really should have been kept under observation by the authorities. And now I want to see that file, since there can be no possible reason for keeping it secret. First, it no longer has any bearing on me. I long ago grew up and changed my mind.

Second, it no longer has any bearing on the safety of the country, if it ever did. The world has turned upside down since those distant times. The Cold War, which linked some of the Left with our enemies in the USSR, is over. The USSR has ceased to exist.

What is more, many of those who were then revolutionaries or active Communist sympathisers are now part of the establishment, perhaps even Ministers or senior civil servants.

I am almost the only member of my student generation who is still truly anti-establishment. Perhaps MI5 fears that if it opens my files, it will come under pressure to open those on people who are now in power. Unlike me, many senior Labour figures would prefer to forget this era.

I am not seeking my file because I object to it, or because I want to complain or sue. I am genuinely curious about what is in it, that's all. So, when the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, announced last year that such files could now be opened, I wrote to MI5 and asked for mine. It looked straightforward. Mr Blunkett had told Parliament that MI5 could not refuse my request, provided 'data about an individual is not required for the purpose of safeguarding national security'. That seemed clear. If it applied to anyone, it applied to me. My dabblings with the International Socialists three decades ago obviously didn't have any bearing on national security now.

But it was not to be. Mr Blunkett's words appear to count for nothing in the secret world, where the excuse of 'national security' can be stretched far beyond reason to prevent the publication of anything.

All I have to show for my efforts is a polite refusal on some rather nice MI5 headed paper and a bill for £10 for a supposed search fee. This Tuesday, I will be going before the Information Tribunal, at the wonderfully named International Dispute Resolution Centre, in a final attempt to break through the musty blanket of silly secrecy which surrounds this episode.

I am not allowed to tell you exactly how silly this is. I am forbidden to quote from or make any other use of the documents supplied to me in advance of Tuesday's hearing, which sum up the Government's defence of its position - though if I were to do so I don't think that either national security or the cause of justice would be harmed one bit.

But here is the fascinating thing. MI5 is not just refusing to show me my files. They will not even tell me if they have a file on me. Merely to admit this is said to be too risky.

Well, forgive me, but there are Cabinet papers more recent than this which have now been opened to the public gaze without any harm being done. I think it pretty unlikely that there is anything in my MI5 file - if it exists - more sensitive than that.

I also think there is little chance that the file will give anything away about serving MI5 agents. If there were such people among us they will have long ago become too old to spy on student revolutionaries, or on anyone else much. Intelligence and security people tend to retire early anyway.

As for their methods, let me remind you that in 1970 there were no mobile phones and no personal computers. I have a feeling that MI5's technology may have moved forward a bit since then too.

No, the MI5 case is painfully thin and I just hope that the Information Tribunal will take a good hard look at the excuses being offered, compare them with the Home Secretary's own words, and let me see those files.

Why am I such a threat to national security? | Daily Mail Online 08 V 2023.
 
Old May 8th, 2023 #3
jagd messer
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Default PETER HITCHENS questions the wisdom of stoking Ukraine conflict

PETER HITCHENS questions the wisdom of stoking Ukraine conflict

I'm a British patriot and I'd never shirk a fight. But as we edge closer to nuclear war, why ARE we stoking conflict in Ukraine rather than trying to achieve peace, asks PETER HITCHENS


What is Britain’s interest in Ukraine? Why are we shovelling weapons and equipment into that country, despite the fact that our national budget is stretched to bursting and our own armed forces have for many years been starved of money, men and kit?

If we were a proper open society, surely this question would be asked all the time. But it is not. So I am asking it now, as the Ukraine war threatens to ignite the whole of Europe and has already brought us closer to actual nuclear warfare than we have ever been.

I ask as a British patriot, whose main concern, above all things, is the ‘safety, honour and welfare of this realm’ (as the old Articles of War say).



What is Britain’s interest in Ukraine? Why are we shovelling weapons and equipment into that country, despite the fact that our national budget is stretched to bursting and our own armed forces have for many years been starved of money, men and kit? Pictured: Ukrainian volunteer military recruits take part in a weapon handling exercise whilst being trained by members of the British Armed Forces.

I would not shirk a necessary fight, or desert an ally. But why are we stoking this war instead of trying to bring about peace? This would once have been a perfectly normal British view. Margaret Thatcher was far from keen on Ukrainian nationalism.

On June 9 1990, Mrs Thatcher (still then in power) spoke to what was then the Ukrainian provincial assembly in Kiev. She briskly batted away a question about opening a British embassy in that city. This, she explained, was as likely as Britain opening an embassy in California or Quebec. ‘I can see you are trying to get me involved in your politics!’ she scolded her questioner, adding: ‘Embassies are only for countries which have full national status. 'Therefore, we have ambassadorial diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, with the United States, with Canada, with Australia. 'We do not have embassies for California, for Quebec, for states in Australia.’


Once upon a time, the Americans, likewise, would have stayed out of it. On August 1 1991, President George H W Bush delivered an oration which would later become known derisively (among American hawks) as ‘The Chicken Kiev Speech’. Bush was not keen on an independent Ukraine. He told what was still Ukraine’s Soviet puppet parliament, ‘I come here to tell you: We support the struggle in this great country for democracy and economic reform. 'In Moscow, I outlined our approach. We will support those in the centre and the republics who pursue freedom, democracy and economic liberty.’ But when he used the phrase ‘this great country’ he was talking about the Soviet Union, not Ukraine.

He expected (and wanted) the USSR to continue to exist. During his visit he had refused to meet campaigners for Ukrainian independence. After praising the reforms of the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, he warned against independence if it only changed a distant despot for a local one, suggesting that this was the outcome he feared. What the Western democracies had wanted was a reformed, free version of the old Soviet Union. They had never expected or calculated on an explosion of nationalism in the region and did not much like the look of it. It was only after the USSR fell to pieces in 1991 that the unthinkable became the unstoppable.


But some people in American politics wanted to push further. They feared that Russia would one day rise again and challenge American power. Paul Wolfowitz, also one of the authors of the Iraq disaster, set out a policy of diminishing and humiliating Russia back in 1992, long before anyone had ever heard of Vladimir Putin. While it found supporters in the Pentagon and elsewhere, many others, from the brilliant veteran Cold War diplomat George Kennan to the ultimate master of cynical diplomacy Henry Kissinger, opposed the resulting policy of Nato expansion.

Kennan prophetically said in 1998 (when Putin was an obscure politician) that ‘I think it is the beginning of a new Cold War’. He warned: ‘I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake.’ He said it was an insult to Russia’s then fledgling democrats, arguing: ‘We are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.’ And so it was.

Prominent Russian liberals, such as Yegor Gaidar, begged influential Western friends to challenge the Nato expansion policy. But there is a lot of money in the making of weapons, and a lot of fame to be won in pursuing warlike policies, and so it went ahead, gathering speed and strengthening Russian nationalists and antidemocrats as it did so.

Then in 2008 George W Bush, a pathetic parody of his war veteran father, suggested Ukrainian Nato membership. That was probably the moment at which conflict became inevitable. The prominent American neoconservative Robert Kagan has put the matter well: ‘While it would be obscene to blame the US for Putin’s inhumane attack on Ukraine, to insist that the invasion was entirely unprovoked is misleading.’

The point of all this is that the current policy, of militant and indeed military support for Ukraine, is a very old one, and a very controversial one. There is a serious case against it, made by serious patriotic people in the West. Yet it is seldom heard. Nearly as important, there simply is no direct British interest here, though the fact is never discussed.

We have very little in the way of trade, political or cultural links with Ukraine (or with Russia for that matter). We have no territorial conflict with Russia. Not since the long-ago Crimean War, now recognised by most people as a futile folly which achieved nothing, have British armed forces been active in that region.

As long as the war was a distant battle, this perhaps did not matter so much. But even before the Putin invasion those, like me, who opposed goading Russia were defamed as ‘Putin apologists’ (I have for years referred to him as a sinister tyrant) and falsely accused of ‘parroting Russian propaganda’.


Anyone who has Russia’s best interests at heart is grinding his teeth in fury at Putin’s idiotic crime, which has done limitless damage to the peace and security of that country for decades to come and perhaps forever. And now it has brought us closer to nuclear war than ever before. Surely that development – and it would be extreme folly to dismiss Putin’s words as bluff – compels us all to be more thoughtful, not less.

Aren’t we supposed to live in a free democracy in which both sides of a question can be discussed, without one side being accused of treachery?

Surely it is Putin who regards dissent as treason? Once Putin had invaded, I was constantly accused of ‘justifying’ the action, even though I clearly, and without hesitation, condemned the invasion as barbaric, lawless and stupid, and have never deviated from this view.

Yet not a day goes by without someone smearing me as a traitor of some sort. Actually, anyone who has Russia’s best interests at heart is grinding his teeth in fury at Putin’s idiotic crime, which has done limitless damage to the peace and security of that country for decades to come and perhaps forever.

And now it has brought us closer to nuclear war than ever before. Surely that development – and it would be extreme folly to dismiss Putin’s words as bluff – compels us all to be more thoughtful, not less.

I would just like to make a plea for us as a people and a nation to start discussing this in a grown-up fashion, rather than by assuming the present policy is the only right or patriotic one. Perhaps it isn’t. In which case it has never been more important to approach the subject with an open mind.




PETER HITCHENS questions the wisdom of stoking Ukraine conflict
 
Old May 8th, 2023 #4
jagd messer
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Default Peter Hitchens writes ‘why England should leave the UK’.

"Can't we all secede from Peter Hitchens? That seems the best solution," wrote one person on Twitter.


As the argument over the Northern Ireland protocol continues and Brexit impacts mainland UK, an article has called for England to leave the UK.

Peter Hitchens, for it is he, wrote a new think piece in the Mail entitled ‘Why England should leave the UK instead of persuading the others to stay and embrace a golden future.’ He writes: You could not call this ‘independence’ since England has never depended on the other countries in these islands.

“I would call it the Restoration of England, in recollection of that other great moment in our history when Oliver Cromwell’s nightmare republican junta crumbled in 1660 and we returned with relief to our ancient laws and liberties.

Secretly thrilling

And there is: “Personally, I have long found the words ‘English’ and ‘England’ secretly thrilling. One of my favourite moments in our history is the first Queen Elizabeth’s speech at Tilbury before the Armada, in which she proclaimed that she had ‘the heart and stomach of a King — and of a King of England too!’

He goes on: “Call me a ‘Little Englander’ if you want. The great marvel of this country was always that it was so small, yet came to dominate the whole world for a few astonishing decades.”

This is probably the highlight: “No doubt many wicked things were done by our empire, but compare it with the Soviet, Belgian, Spanish, and Portuguese empires of the past, or with the hideous Chinese empire of the future.”

You get the point?

Reactions
Well, his urge to turn back time has left a lot of people to lampoon his plan:

Yeah. England to leave the UK. Hard borders everywhere. Bollocks to WTO, WHO, NATO, all of it. Brick up the Chunnel. Deport All foreign born then Close all ferry ports and airports. No-one allowed in or out. Flags compulsory on every inch of land.

Peter Hitchens writes 'why England should leave the UK'
Web19 May 2022 · Peter Hitchens, for it is he, wrote a new think piece in the Mail entitled ‘Why England should leave the UK instead of persuading the others to stay and embrace a golden future …



Conservative journalist Peter Hitchens is the author of a number of books including The Abolition of Britain and The Rage Against God. He is a columnist for The Mail on Sunday.
08 V 2023.
 
Old May 8th, 2023 #5
jagd messer
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Default Peter Hitchens on Brexit, God and Islam

https://archive.org/download/youtube...VAnUaX9fBU.mp4
 
Old May 26th, 2023 #6
jagd messer
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Default Hitchens - The war on marriage? It is all about controlling YOUR children.

Why does our new power elite hate lifelong marriage so much? Why does the legal arm of that elite, the Supreme Court, hand out what is left of the privileges of marriage to those who won’t get married, as it did with the widowed parents’ allowance on Thursday?


Why does the propaganda arm of our ruling class, the BBC, promote a drama called Wanderlust with publicity which, in the BBC’s own words, ‘asks whether lifelong monogamy is possible – or even desirable’. You know as well as I do that they’re not really asking. They are saying, amid countless wearisome and embarrassing bedroom scenes, that it is neither possible nor desirable. This is a lie, as millions of honest, generous and kind men and women proved in the better generations which came before this one.

Our modern upper crust hate marriage because it is a fortress of private life. They hate it above all because they can’t control it, because it is the place where the next generation learn how to be distinct, thinking individuals instead of conformist robots.

It is where they discover the truth about the past, the lore of the tribe, the traditions and beliefs that make us who we are. It is where they become capable of being free. But our new rulers don’t want that. They don’t want fully formed people who know who they are and where they come from. They want obedient, placid consumers, slumped open-mouthed in front of screens, drugged into flaccid apathy (legally or illegally, the Government don’t care which), slaving all hours in the dreary low-wage, high-tax economy they are so busily creating.

Much better if they’ve never heard of the great golden drama of our national history and literature, so they don’t know what they’re missing and don’t care.

They would prefer the young to be brought up in a sort of moral car park, knowing nothing except what they are told by authority and the advertising industry. In this brave new world, sex is a spectacle and a sport, solemn oaths are worthless, and duty is a joke. In this, they are much like the Soviet Communists, who deliberately made divorce as easy as crossing the road, and made absolutely sure that hardly any parents could afford to stay at home to raise their own children.

They have not yet gone quite as far as them – Soviet children were encouraged to worship, as a martyr, a semi-mythical figure called Pavlik Morozov, who was supposedly killed by his grandfather after informing on his own parents to the secret police. Russian friends of mine brought up in this vicious cult shuddered at the memory. But if you look carefully, you will see a ghostly shadow of this culture of denunciation growing up in our midst. And, as we forget all our long history of freedom and justice, it will become easier for such things to happen.

After all, we have long been used to the sight, on TV, of police officers smashing down front doors, or conducting dawn raids – and of being expected to approve of it.

An Englishman’s home is not his castle. And his life is not his own. That is what all this means, and will mean.

Amid the grunts and the creaking of bedsprings, and the pompous phrases of the judges, listen hard and you can hear them weaving Britain’s winding sheet.




The war on marriage? It is all about controlling YOUR children
02 September 2018

26 V 2023.


Marriage is a European / Christian relationship which give women security to have children,to rear them and provide for them. A sort of 'safety net'.

Africoons don’t have life-long monogamous relationships. Children have no idea who their father is. The village / tribe is the childs father.

Muslims have a different social order too. 4 wives . . .

The spread of Christianity to South America and elsewhere promoted the European marriage custom as formalizing male/female relationships.

Today’s ‘War on Marriage’ is about population reduction and control. A single Mother will have a lot less children. One parent will never do the job of two parents. These are indisputable facts.

The 'new power elite' feel they are Gods and well balanced functional people are a real threat to them.
 
Old June 4th, 2023 #7
jagd messer
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Default It's the duty of every parent to ask what's REALLY going on in our secretive schools

Whatever do they teach them in these schools? How do we find out? How can we change it if we do not like it?


In the past few years it has become clear that the schools of this country, state and private, have been invaded by Left-wing dogmas, dogmas it is dangerous to challenge. For they are enforced, hard, with the backing of a supposedly Conservative government.

For example, you do not need to like or agree with the former Oxford state school teacher Joshua Sutcliffe. I think he may be a bit of a pain. Brave people often are a pain. But every civilised person must be scared by the fact that he is now forbidden to teach at all – by a body called the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA), which ought not to exist in a free country.

The decision to ban him from teaching was made on behalf of Tory Education Secretary Gillian Keegan by the TRA’s decision-maker, Alan Meyrick. This is not just because Mr Sutcliffe supposedly ‘misgendered’ a pupil. It is also because he let slip some deeply unfashionable opinions about homosexuality and masculinity.

He first ran into trouble at The Cherwell School, which serves the Rich People’s Republic of North Oxford, the densest concentration of wealthy, self-righteous Left-wingers outside Hollywood. But I suspect he would have faced the same problem in Barnsley or Cowdenbeath, because a vigilant thought police are ever watchful in all our schools and universities.

The schools I attended in my prehistoric childhood were run by conservative men, often military or naval types who had served in the Second World War. But also teaching alongside these Captains, Commanders and Majors were men and women with heretical, Left-wing ideas. They didn’t keep quiet about them and nobody tried to stop them. On the contrary, they greatly added to our knowledge and understanding of the world, bless them all.

Most of us were tiny Tories in those days but we would never have thought of snitching on them. And if we had, I suspect we would have been told sharply to go away. For all those Navy and Army officers might have been crusty reactionaries but they had recently fought in the cause of freedom and this meant a lot to them.

I am myself hugely uninterested in the transgender debate and all that goes with it. It looks to me like a ruse to tempt moral conservatives into a battle they are bound to lose. I am more interested in the use of what was once sex education to promote the new morality and abolish the old Christian one. But what most concern me are the harder politics of what is being taught – and how it is being done.

In a fascinating new pamphlet by think-tank Civitas, called Show, Tell And Leave Nothing To The Imagination, Jo-Anne Nadler has tried to get to grips with this problem. She concludes that there has been ‘a revolution that has been delivered largely by stealth’. She says it has ‘injected political ideology into schools, both organisationally through the adoption of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) policies relating to hiring, admissions and the wider school culture, and directly into the classroom through curriculum initiatives’.

This has replaced education as we once knew it with an ‘illiberal, uniform worldview on contentious social issues’. Of course teachers are not openly urging their charges to vote Labour or Green. But beyond doubt the effect is to create a Left-wing consensus, reinforced outside school by broadcasting and social media.

In my experience, schools are among the most secretive institutions in the country. There is no formal means by which a parent can find out what really goes on inside most of them. The new fashion for ‘academies’, whatever they may be, has made schools, if anything, less accountable than ever. Many of the worst propaganda schemes are run by outside companies which claim that they will endanger their copyright by letting us know what is in them.

And a lot of children aid this by clamming up the moment parents ask them anything about their school lives. But unless we ask, we won’t find out. My advice is this: Ask and keep asking until you find out. And if you do not like it, find others who agree with you and protest, systematically and doggedly, until it stops. Education remains a Secret Garden in which things are done that we would not support if we knew.

I have at last found the time to watch the best thing on TV. This is Trauma Zone, and you can only watch it on the BBC iPlayer. Hundreds of hours of forgotten recordings, made during the collapse of the USSR, were found in a cupboard in the BBC’s Moscow office.

The quirky genius Adam Curtis has gone through them to knit together a profoundly moving, surprising and disturbing picture of this colossal event. I can vouch for the accuracy of the atmosphere and direction, having lived through many of these moments in what was then the filthy, desperate and exhausting city of Moscow. I also managed to get outside the capital, to remote places where the water came out of the taps brown and stinking, or where fresh meat was an event.

But this goes much further. Three things are especially well done. They are the Western rape of Russia under the drunk Boris Yeltsin, and the USA’s complacency when Yeltsin (long before Putin mattered) smashed Russia’s young democracy by ordering his tanks to fire on Parliament, and telling his police to shoot down unarmed demonstrators. And we smiled, and helped him win re-election in a shamelessly rigged poll.

Next is Yeltsin’s barbaric war on Chechnya, designed to bolster his shrivelling authority, likewise winked at by Westerners who later prosed moralistically about Putin’s war in the same place.

And third is the portrayal of Soviet and Russian women who, as usual, had to endure the worst while their menfolk sank into a vodka coma. Look out for the courageous, determined mother who rescues her soldier son from the Chechnya war by sheer force of personality; and for the other mother, frantic to find the vanished body of her soldier son, because if she cannot find it she will not get a pension.

God save us all from such fates but do not be sure you are immune from these things. I constantly asked myself what I was being told during my time in Moscow. I now think I was being warned of what the world would be like without God and that such a world was only a few mistakes away.

I am starting to loathe those green-striped car number plates which boast that the vehicle is electric. Their drivers all too often seem to think they are so virtuous they have no need to behave well. The other evening I was riding my pushbike home along a narrow, quiet street and stopped to allow two old people (I mean, even older than me) to totter across the road. I was immediately blasted by the sound of an enormous horn, as if the US Navy’s biggest aircraft carrier was behind me and trying to get through. No, it was one of those big, fat Teslas, with the green flash on its plates. I urged the two old people to totter more slowly, if they could. I am pleased to say that they got the point, and did as I asked.

It's the duty of every parent to ask what's REALLY going on in our secretive schools 04 VI 2023.


Under the guise of 'hate speech' this 'change' is brought about by MSM / television without debate or discussion.
 
Old June 25th, 2023 #8
jagd messer
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Default Archbishop of Canterbury is fiercely militant about any efforts to curb mass immigration... But we can't impoverish our own nation to help the poor of this world

Did Jesus want Britain to increase its population by seven million people in 20 years? That is the number of migrants who have come to this country in that period, permanently changing the country in many ways.



The Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking in the Lords debate, said that ¿in the New Testament, in Matthew Chapter 25, Jesus calls us to welcome the stranger.

I had no idea that Our Lord had any such policy. In fact, my searches of the Scriptures reveal no clear guidance on mass immigration as such. On the other hand, I am quite sure that both Labour and Tory governments have deliberately encouraged this revolution.

Labour, as we know from the blurted revelations of the Blairite functionary Andrew Neather, actually wanted to change the character of the country. The Tories wanted lots of cheap labour, and didn't care if it changed the country. The policy continues. I doubt that the latest law on migration will make much difference.

Lord Green of Deddington – a measured former diplomat who deals in hard fact – mordantly pointed this out during last Thursday's debate in the House of Lords. He said: 'The Government have actively encouraged large-scale economic migration,' and produced clear evidence of this.

He warned: 'The current scale of immigration, of which asylum is only a small part, simply cannot be allowed to continue. The pressure on our schools and public services is heavy and increasing. We already have to build… nearly 300 homes every single day just to house immigrant families.'

Note that he states that 'asylum' – the contentious name given to a particular form of migration including the passage of small boats across the Channel – is just a small part of it. What does 'asylum' mean in reality? Lord Lilley offered this fascinating reflection, which I have not heard answered by pro-migration liberals. 'British courts and administrators reject only 26 per cent of initial asylum claims, whereas France rejects 75 per cent, Germany rejects 55 per cent, and both Sweden and Spain reject 71 per cent... in addition, Britain goes on to accept a majority of those who appeal.

'If lawyers do not admit that our system is too credulous, why do they not criticise our EU neighbours for being too harsh? Does not this disparity explain why… some people are willing to risk their lives to escape safe EU countries to claim asylum in the UK?'

Those who read the devastating reports of our asylum system by my diligent, unstoppable Daily Mail colleague Sue Reid will know just what Lord Lilley means when he says our system is too credulous.

Honestly, no sensible government of any nation state can afford, as we have done, to more or less abolish our borders. If we have no choice in who comes here, then we have no idea who is coming, saint or criminal.

And if there is no limit on numbers, how long can we sustain the already tottering welfare state, health service, school system, transport system and housing supply, not to mention the relative social peace, which make us a desirable destination in the first place? Our Government absolutely cannot do this when it also goes round the world starting or fuelling wars, and so hugely increasing the number of refugees heading towards Calais.

Yet the leaders of my Church, the Church of England, so soppy about the hard issues of personal behaviour that are their true business, become fiercely militant about any efforts to curb mass immigration. The Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking in the Lords debate, said that 'in the New Testament, in Matthew Chapter 25, Jesus calls us to welcome the stranger'.

Actually, He is much tougher than that. Christ, in verse 46 of that Chapter, says to those who do not take in strangers that 'these shall go away into everlasting punishment'. I'm not sure Mr Welby believes in everlasting punishment anyway. But was the founder of our national religion, in these words, demanding that whole nations impoverish themselves so as to take in people from poorer parts of the world? How long will we be able to offer any sort of refuge if we continue such a policy without limit? If the rich man is so thoughtlessly generous that he ceases to be rich, how can he help or house the poor man?

The Christian message is about personal behaviour, not about government policy. As a country, we are bound to help within reason but not without limit. What is more, certain persons should stop believing that it is virtuous to compel others to be generous. In reality, those who really pay for mass immigration through its consequences tend to be the poor, the old, the ill and the badly housed. Many people do a lot of quiet good in the face of this, and I greatly respect them.

'The Bench of Bishops might take a look at Luke, Chapter 18, in which Jesus mocks a self-satisfied, publicly charitable person who noisily thanks God that he is not as other men are'

But I am not so sure about those who parade their consciences about the streets. The Bench of Bishops might take a look at Luke, Chapter 18, in which Jesus mocks a self-satisfied, publicly charitable person who noisily thanks God that he is not as other men are. Far too much of the debate on immigration features righteous, loud liberals living in nice places, despising those who do not share their generosity with other people's lives and living conditions.

Welby is no more an Archbishop than he is a dustman and is fiercely outnumbered the majority of the public who disagree with him.

PETER HITCHENS: The Archbishop of Canterbury is fiercely militant about any efforts to curb mass immigration... But we can't impoverish our own nation to help the poor of this world 25 VI 2023.


Industrial scale 'abortion' for the indigenous people exacerbated by poverty and for the MENA aliens who absolutely loathe us: free RNLI taxi service, board, lodging, social security and health services.
 
Old June 25th, 2023 #9
bradfromjoeford
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Originally Posted by jagd messer View Post
Did Jesus want Britain to increase its population by seven million people in 20 years? That is the number of migrants who have come to this country in that period, permanently changing the country in many ways.



The Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking in the Lords debate, said that ¿in the New Testament, in Matthew Chapter 25, Jesus calls us to welcome the stranger.

I had no idea that Our Lord had any such policy. In fact, my searches of the Scriptures reveal no clear guidance on mass immigration as such. On the other hand, I am quite sure that both Labour and Tory governments have deliberately encouraged this revolution.

Labour, as we know from the blurted revelations of the Blairite functionary Andrew Neather, actually wanted to change the character of the country. The Tories wanted lots of cheap labour, and didn't care if it changed the country. The policy continues. I doubt that the latest law on migration will make much difference.

Lord Green of Deddington – a measured former diplomat who deals in hard fact – mordantly pointed this out during last Thursday's debate in the House of Lords. He said: 'The Government have actively encouraged large-scale economic migration,' and produced clear evidence of this.

He warned: 'The current scale of immigration, of which asylum is only a small part, simply cannot be allowed to continue. The pressure on our schools and public services is heavy and increasing. We already have to build… nearly 300 homes every single day just to house immigrant families.'

Note that he states that 'asylum' – the contentious name given to a particular form of migration including the passage of small boats across the Channel – is just a small part of it. What does 'asylum' mean in reality? Lord Lilley offered this fascinating reflection, which I have not heard answered by pro-migration liberals. 'British courts and administrators reject only 26 per cent of initial asylum claims, whereas France rejects 75 per cent, Germany rejects 55 per cent, and both Sweden and Spain reject 71 per cent... in addition, Britain goes on to accept a majority of those who appeal.

'If lawyers do not admit that our system is too credulous, why do they not criticise our EU neighbours for being too harsh? Does not this disparity explain why… some people are willing to risk their lives to escape safe EU countries to claim asylum in the UK?'

Those who read the devastating reports of our asylum system by my diligent, unstoppable Daily Mail colleague Sue Reid will know just what Lord Lilley means when he says our system is too credulous.

Honestly, no sensible government of any nation state can afford, as we have done, to more or less abolish our borders. If we have no choice in who comes here, then we have no idea who is coming, saint or criminal.

And if there is no limit on numbers, how long can we sustain the already tottering welfare state, health service, school system, transport system and housing supply, not to mention the relative social peace, which make us a desirable destination in the first place? Our Government absolutely cannot do this when it also goes round the world starting or fuelling wars, and so hugely increasing the number of refugees heading towards Calais.

Yet the leaders of my Church, the Church of England, so soppy about the hard issues of personal behaviour that are their true business, become fiercely militant about any efforts to curb mass immigration. The Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking in the Lords debate, said that 'in the New Testament, in Matthew Chapter 25, Jesus calls us to welcome the stranger'.

Actually, He is much tougher than that. Christ, in verse 46 of that Chapter, says to those who do not take in strangers that 'these shall go away into everlasting punishment'. I'm not sure Mr Welby believes in everlasting punishment anyway. But was the founder of our national religion, in these words, demanding that whole nations impoverish themselves so as to take in people from poorer parts of the world? How long will we be able to offer any sort of refuge if we continue such a policy without limit? If the rich man is so thoughtlessly generous that he ceases to be rich, how can he help or house the poor man?

The Christian message is about personal behaviour, not about government policy. As a country, we are bound to help within reason but not without limit. What is more, certain persons should stop believing that it is virtuous to compel others to be generous. In reality, those who really pay for mass immigration through its consequences tend to be the poor, the old, the ill and the badly housed. Many people do a lot of quiet good in the face of this, and I greatly respect them.

'The Bench of Bishops might take a look at Luke, Chapter 18, in which Jesus mocks a self-satisfied, publicly charitable person who noisily thanks God that he is not as other men are'

But I am not so sure about those who parade their consciences about the streets. The Bench of Bishops might take a look at Luke, Chapter 18, in which Jesus mocks a self-satisfied, publicly charitable person who noisily thanks God that he is not as other men are. Far too much of the debate on immigration features righteous, loud liberals living in nice places, despising those who do not share their generosity with other people's lives and living conditions.

Welby is no more an Archbishop than he is a dustman and is fiercely outnumbered the majority of the public who disagree with him.

PETER HITCHENS: The Archbishop of Canterbury is fiercely militant about any efforts to curb mass immigration... But we can't impoverish our own nation to help the poor of this world 25 VI 2023.


Industrial scale 'abortion' for the indigenous people exacerbated by poverty and for the MENA aliens who absolutely loathe us: free RNLI taxi service, board, lodging, social security and health services.
Plenty of stuff in the Bible that forbids race-mixing, and they say, "Oh, but attitudes have changed since back then" - so these aren't real Christians who do not take the Bible literally or as the word of God.
 
Old June 26th, 2023 #10
jagd messer
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Default The greatest power we have is to refuse to vote for people who insult us - so save democracy and vote for my None Of The Below Party


The greatest power we have is to refuse to vote for people who insult us - so save democracy and vote for my 'None Of The Below Party'



Refuse to vote for people who insult us - save democracy by voting for my None Of These listed on the Ballot Paper.

Did democracy die the other night when Donald Trump and Joe Biden scuffled, snarled and shouted over each other, showing utter contempt for anyone intelligent who was watching? People who loathe freedom, such as the Chinese Politburo in Peking, must have rejoiced at this spectacle of incoherence and crudity.

But there’s no point in us feeling superior to those raucous Americans. Our own political debates are as mindless in their own way, and our elections decided not by reasoned discussion but by unchecked bending of the spending rules, by unscrupulous hidden persuaders.



To this day, few people have grasped the enormous revolutionary programme of the 1997 Blair Government. Blair, a former student Trotskyist (a fact which was dishonestly concealed at the time and for years afterwards) was in fact a fervent social radical.


If this was the end of democracy, it hasn’t lasted long. Full democracy only arrived in the USA in 1913 when they first started electing the Senate.

It finally came to Britain in 1948 when they abolished the University seats in Parliament which gave graduates extra votes.

I’d say it has not been much of a success, launching an era when people were repeatedly bribed with their own money, by increasingly cynical political careerists.

And since the advertising men got involved in the 1950s, slippery manipulators have taken over. Image, not truth, has been at the centre of every major campaign. All very well, until the image turns out to be false and the promises undeliverable or untrue. It doesn’t matter that Harold Wilson preferred cigars to a pipe and brandy to beer.

It did matter that his supposedly mainstream 1964-70 Government launched a series of searing, painful and often mistaken changes in our society which had never been put before the people, and whose real nature had been concealed. Left-wingers might make similar charges against Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher, as neither of them were what they appeared to be. But to this day, few people have grasped the enormous revolutionary programme of the 1997 Blair Government. Blair, a former student Trotskyist (a fact which was dishonestly concealed at the time and for years afterwards) was in fact a fervent social radical.

What Wilson had begun – revolutions in family life, crime and punishment, education and welfare – Blair finished. He also browbeat the Tories into going along with it all and leaving it untouched.

This is why you never get what you want when you vote. The debate is elsewhere. You are just required to endorse it by voting for it. Your vote, in the modern age, gives legitimacy to the powerful. They will spend a lot of money to get that vote, but it is a false bargain. They do not really care what you want, but they have got a lot better at pretending that they do. To me, it has been obvious for years that we should stop playing this game. The greatest power we have is to refuse to vote for people who insult us. My simple proposal is that the words ‘None Of The Below’ should appear at the top of every ballot paper.

In all seats where ‘None Of The Below’ tops the poll, all the losing parties and candidates should be prevented from standing in the rerun which would then be held a month later. In the interval, new political formations which truly reflect the divisions in our society should select candidates who are quite free from the careerism, conformism and inexperience of life which seem to be the main qualifications for MPs in these times.

After the spineless confirmation of the scandalous Coronavirus Act last week – in which almost all MPs declared that they do not care about the country or the livelihoods and freedom of the people – can you think of a better idea? Begone, all of you, and let us have done with you.

The BBC’s big new star? Cannabis


I thought I would at least try the BBC’s two new autumn dramas, Us and Life. Well, I have tried them and stopped watching them. Apart from their incessant anti-marriage propaganda, in which the married family is portrayed pretty much as the root of all evil, they use respectable, much-liked actors and actresses to normalise drug-taking.

Middle-aged respectable Tom Hollander, in Us, is shown boasting in Amsterdam to his son about his youthful drug use, trying to be hip by using druggie jargon (‘I had a massive whitey’). Middle-aged respectable Alison Steadman, in revolt against her nasty, belittling husband in Life, is shown on a doorstep sharing a joint with the much-liked ‘disability ambassador’ Melissa Johns, who previously played Imogen Pascoe in Coronation Street.

This is pretty much product placement. In the case of Life, it is also a direct breach of the BBC’s own rules against portraying crime in drama, as they well know. But nothing will happen.

A crucial clue that links so many killings

The heartbreaking death of respected police officer Matiu Ratana has rightly caused much grief and concern. But once again, one of the most crucial facts of modern life, quite possibly involved here, has been pushed to one side in absurd speculation about the supposed terrorist links of the suspect, as it was after the stabbings in a Reading park last June.

In both cases I had no need to wait long to find that there were allegations the suspect had been a user of marijuana, a drug whose use is increasingly correlated with mental illness and violent crime.

As it happened, I had also been looking into another case in a major UK city I will not for the moment name, of a young marijuana user. This person, well known to neighbours and police for increasingly erratic and violent behaviour, has also been found in possession of the drug. And there is little doubt that he is a long-term user. In fact, neighbours recall his transformation from a pleasant and likeable boy into the miserable husk he has now become, after he began using a drug which is absurdly promoted as mild and harmless (see my item on the BBC’s new dramas, left).

I begin to think we shall not wake up to this until the time to act has passed.

Hancock’s using crude propaganda

The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, seems to be entirely unaware of many important facts which have become clear over the past few months. Especially, he has not noticed that wild predictions of mass deaths, made in Sweden and this country in March, were not borne out in reality.

The important thing about this is that Sweden did not follow Mr Hancock’s policy of severe compulsory restrictions of normal life. The Swedes did not ‘let the virus rip’, as the zealots like to claim. They took moderate precautions. Yet the predicted deaths did not take place. In fact, evidence from around the world still shows no connection between dictatorial, punitive rules and lower deaths.

Yet in Parliament on Thursday, Mr Hancock sneered at one of his rare Commons critics, the Shipley MP Philip Davies. The Minister said: ‘It is perfectly reasonable to make the argument that we should just let the virus rip; I just think that the hundreds of thousands of deaths that would follow is not a price that anyone should pay.’ Mr Hancock, whose grasp of fact seems to me to be sketchy in general, has no reason to say that ‘hundreds of thousands’ of deaths would follow a wiser, more proportionate policy. He could say it was possible, or that he thought it likely, but he does not know that it would happen, and he must be aware of the work of eminent scientists who think it would not happen.

And the caricature, that critics wish to ‘let the virus rip’, is shameful, crude propaganda rather than an argument.

"Bottom line is always the money"


It is a large part of it and is certainly what most of the career politicians and vaccine investors are looking at. But besides a corporate power grab which plunges billions into debt and dependency, I think there is another agenda behind it. The main theme is getting you to adapt to becoming a slave. But they know if they come with force there will be massive resistance to it. So what they say is that it's for your health - the good of the community. That's the Trojan horse to trick you to give your consent to what they are doing, and at that point they have no liability on the vaccine or what happens to you. Again, the power they have is the power you give them. Gates has even said that up to 80% of those who take the vaccine will get sick and 20% could be hospitalised. On those types of numbers, what fool would take a vaccine made by them for a disease with kills fewer than 99% of those who get it? Another thing which could explain the fanaticism of those driving this is what they really want - immortality. They are looking for the immortal cell lines and the only way they're going to get it is by a worldwide testing dragnet of samples to try and discover what they believe will turn them into Gods.


PETER HITCHENS: Save democracy and vote for ...
The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, seems to be entirely unaware of many important facts which have become clear over the past few months. Especially, he has not noticed that wild predictions of mass deaths, made in Sweden and this country in March, were not borne out in reality. The important …
26 VI 2023.

Unto politicians are legally held to account and sentenced for 'wrong doing', the corruption and rot not only continues but increases. Hancock won't be re-elected but for the rest of his life will have his members and ministerial pensions. If convicted those should not be retained.

Democracy rules are written in stone and will never be improved because the reality is no elected Democratic representatives really believes in Democracy. The frequency of referendum is ample proof.
 
Old July 18th, 2023 #11
jagd messer
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Default Peter Hitchens Quotes






Abortion is the only event that modern liberals think too violent and obscene to portray on TV. This is not because they are squeamish or prudish. It is because if people knew what Abortion really looked like, it would destroy their pretence that it is a civilized answer to the problem of what to do about unwanted babies.
Peter Hitchens




Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think?
Peter Hitchens




Evolution is an unproven theory. If what its fundamentalist supporters believe is true, fishes decided to grow lungs and legs and walk up the beach. The idea is so comically daft that only one thing explains its survival-that lonely, frightened people wanted to expel God from the Universe because they found the idea that He exists profoundly uncomfortable.
Peter Hitchens



A nation is the sum of its memories, and when those memories are allowed to die, it is less of a nation.
Peter Hitchens.


Peter Hitchens Quotes 18 VII 2023.
 
Old July 18th, 2023 #12
jagd messer
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Default Empires - Have Your Own, or Be Part of Someone Else's. And the Everlasting Church Schools Question

Empires - Have Your Own, or Be Part of Someone Else's.

I was struck by a comment from Stephen Squires on 27th July, after I cast doubt on the 'Special Relationship' and noted that the USA had used World War Two to bring about the end of the British Empire.

Mr Squires wrote: ‘Hitchens, you can't be serious? Churchill-like, do you REALLY pine for “lost” colonies after WWII (I don't mean America!). Long before 1940, you Brits couldn't even afford your so-called “empire,” upon which sun never set. Colonialism repressed legitimate movements for self-determination, which your wiser leaders recognized at the end of the war. Try this one on: USA in 1940 did not just act in its own interests since it was not yet at war with Germany, and had to fig-leaf a basis for legitimate national self-interest. That ‘fig-leaf’ we rightly now see as in the interests of Britain's and the later allies war effort...do GET REAL!’

And (apart from enjoying, as I always do, exhortations such as 'Get Real!', I felt the answer to it was really rather interesting and so will concentrate on that for now. But first, a brief diversion.

On other subjects, I feel that I have exhausted the possibilities of the discussion with Mr Storke. We have reached bedrock, namely the discovery that we differ not on facts but on our views of mankind.

I also feel that we have reached the end of any serious discussion about the religious education questions on which some readers continue to nitpick. On church schools, the point is quite simple. I think we should retain and urgently reinforce the Christian nature of our society, which means that I would use the law to ensure that the schools taught (Anglican) Christianity as truth. I use this phrase 'as truth' to distinguish this from the secular technique of teaching children *about* religion, not as a living thing, but as a historical or anthropological curiosity, to be 'respected' when ethnic minorities practise it, but to be dismissed as fatuous, false and doomed when it is our own.

If those who are interested in this discussion wish to maintain that there will be no disadvantages (and haven't been any) thanks to the death of Christianity among the British peoples, then we might get somewhere. We might at last get these passionate, aggressive atheists to tell us why it is that they so much want there not to be a God (or is that 'don't want there to be a God'?). This is of course the heart of the argument. It is also the subject they mostly seek to avoid. I think I know why - they don't like admitting that they wish, in their private lives, to be free of any moral restraint apart from their own choices, moderated by their own self-generated view of right and wrong. If we could only establish this, then we would see what the argument had been about, all along.

By doing so I don't intend to pre-empt the insoluble question (this side of the grave, where we all are at present) of whether religion is in fact true. I simply urge our society to recognise that unless it's taught as a living thing it will die, and that we will suffer, as individuals and a society, if it does die.

Under my proposal, schools in the state system would teach Christianity. This would be the normal position, from which dissenters would be free to opt out, either as individuals or as groups establishing schools of their own (as some already do, including Roman Catholics, Muslims and Jews. As I have said, I would be happy for the state to set up specifically Atheist schools if parents petitioned for them in reasonable numbers. I would be most interested to see how they got on).

The point of argument is not over the truth of Christianity, on which I have already made it clear I believe there can be no resolution. But over society's agreement that the Christian ethos is specially beneficial to the country, and is culturally established in our laws, morals, music, family structure, politics, architecture, landscape, calendar, literature, painting, diet, sculpture, sports, cityscapes and language, and so should enjoy advantages over other faiths and over those who believe there should be none. Mr 'Un' has as much difficulty grasping that this is the point on which he disagrees with me as Mr Storke has in grasping that he and I differ over human responsibility.

But back to Mr Squires and his agreeably frank bit of American triumphalism. I wonder what Mr Squires would think of the suggestion that the United States is itself an empire. There is of course the question of the original settlements, which involved taking land and the freedom to roam from the indigenous peoples. Then there is the period of 19th century expansion. What was the Louisiana Purchase if not a colonial acquisition? Then there's the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), as colonial as anything we British ever did in India or Africa.

The differences are these. One, the USA had the sense to have its empire concentrated in one landmass, rather than scattered across the globe. Two, it had the sense not to call its empire an empire. Three, by setting up this empire in the isolated continent of North America, with vast oceans to East and West and weak neighbours incapable of rivalry, the USA assured itself of that great essential of all successful civilisations - physical safety from invasion or encroachment. Four, the American Civil War put an end to any serious idea that the USA was a voluntary assembly of individual states, and made it plain that it was in fact a federal, centralised nation which granted some local limited autonomy but which did not, in practice, permit any of its members to leave. The enormous growth of the Federal state and its agencies (look at the huge federal buildings now to be found in any major city) has both confirmed and strengthened this.

Now, Mr Squires (who I think must be a US Citizen) produces the following standard propaganda position: ‘Colonialism repressed legitimate movements for self-determination, which your wiser leaders recognized at the end of the war.’

Well, have there been no 'movements for self-determination' in the imperial possessions of the USA? Yes, there have been, and they are so well-known that they are part of the American national myth, but also somehow forgotten in discussions such as these. But Washington's response to them was far more ruthless and repressive than anything the British Empire ever contemplated in, say, India. I am of course talking about the 'Native Americans', whose resistance was utterly crushed in a series of campaigns of extraordinary cruelty. (I always find the treatment of the Nez Perce nation particularly poignant.) Well, you could say - the Marxists certainly would - that these actions 'had' to be done to secure the future of the USA. And Asia and continental Europe are full of the ghosts of extinguished nations and forgotten peoples, overwhelmed by greater civilisations.

I am also told that many Mexicans resent to this day the confiscation of about a quarter of their country by the USA in 1848, and some see the Mexican migration into the lost lands of Texas (a slightly separate question, I know), Arizona, New Mexico and California as a way of regaining what was taken away. Certainly I noticed, during a visit to the border city of El Paso, just across the ditch-like Rio Grande from Ciudad Juarez, slogans painted on the concrete sides of the canalised river, pointing out the contrast between the USA's outrage over the seizure of Kuwait by Iraq, and the lack of American consciousness that their country had also seized territory by armed force.

I'd only say that those who condemn British 'colonialism' and 'repression' of 'movements for self-determination' really ought to be careful to ensure that they know their own history - and, crucially, recognise it for what it is (for many colonialist oppressors have no idea that this is what they are) - before making such grandiose statements as Mr Squires has made.

I willingly concede that the British Empire often behaved with cruelty and stupidity. Why deny the obviously true? My view is that it was, even so, a good deal better for its subjects than many other empires that have come and gone, and sustained at its peak one of the most beneficial national civilisations ever to have existed. I really cannot say that I am pleased that it has gone, and more than I wish the USA to be supplanted by China. The interesting Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana (who knew a thing or two about empires), once famously said of Britain: ’Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just , boyish master. It will be a black day for the human race when scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls and fanatics manage to supplant him’ ('Soliloquies in England' - The British Character, 1922).

So I have reached this conclusion. That there will always be empires, that they vary immensely (compare and contrast Tamerlane the Great and Stanley Baldwin, or Stalin and FDR) and that on the whole it is better to have your own than to be in someone else's.

Peter Hitchens.

Empires - Have Your Own, or Be Part of Someone …
18 VII 2023.
 
Old August 4th, 2023 #13
jagd messer
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Peter Hitchens interviewed by John Anderson, a former Australian politician who was the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia.



The future and the decline of the West.

8:50 - 11:30 strategy of Socialists prevent free speech and make dialogue impossible

34:30 - We're like the ant which can only see small things not big things (1984)

Future part of which will be like China 'you're not allowed to think or speak.

We have had it.

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04 VIII 2023.
 
Old August 28th, 2023 #14
jagd messer
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Default In the Sleep of Reason, Monsters are Born

In the Sleep of Reason, Monsters are Born


The likely next President of the USA has his mugshot taken as he faces racketeering charges. He doesn’t care. He is not ashamed to be put through a procedure designed to humiliate him. The current President of Russia makes little effort to pretend that he had nothing to do with the violent death of his enemy. He too does not care. By 2025 it is quite possible that both these men will have control over huge nuclear arsenals. One of them already does.

We seem to be entering a time of troubles quite unlike anything in the modern era. Something similar gripped Europe in the middle 1930s, when reason flew away, and did not return for many years. Can we do anything about it?

Oddly enough, I think we can, and the key to it is to stop being swayed by crude emotion, especially in matters of politics. It suited us all (me included) to believe that the Cold War was a simple conflict between good and evil. And so we rejoiced when Moscow’s Evil Empire fell. Few made any serious effort to work out what to do next, and I believe the western democracies, especially the USA, failed terribly. Look at Poland, ruined by Communism in 1989, then wisely rescued, subsidised, and helped, so that it is now a wealthy, reasonably free and democratic country. Why could we not have achieved the same in Russia? It would have been a bigger job, but it would still have cost us far less than the current mess is costing us and will cost us. Was it perhaps because certain people in the West still felt bitterly towards Russia and wanted that country to remain weak and poor? It is a possible explanation.

And I do not just mean money when I mention the cost. There are now credible suggestions that 70,000 Ukrainian young men, sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, have been killed in the war in that country, which I believe was totally avoidable. The real figure is a secret. Still more have been wounded, maimed and disfigured. If you care (and I do, for it was not their choice) similar numbers of Russians and their families have suffered in the same way.

Even now, we look at this emotionally rather than reasonably. Any attempt to discuss bringing this war to an end with a lasting compromise is dismissed as little short of treason. What if the war, which is always in danger of bursting beyond its current limits, pulls us down into the pit of conflict, loss, corruption and national poverty which now engulfs Ukraine? Our politics are not that stable. Both our big parties are increasingly despised by people who were once their loyal voters. Powerful, passionate resentments are growing in our midst. We may sneer at American supporters of the oaf, Donald Trump. But if we continue down our current path of debt, inflation and feeble government, with deepening war added to the mix, are we sure that we may not find and elect our own Trump before long? I am not.

********

I still long for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to send a thank-you letter to us taxpayers each year. Just a tiny acknowledgement would be good. But in the meantime, I am grateful to the government for telling me what they are wasting, I mean spending my money on. They tell me that 7.6% of everything I pay is squandered on servicing the government’s gigantic debt. This is a huge sum, and it makes me very angry because it produces absolutely nothing – and because I learned the other day that the government is now actually borrowing more money – to pay the interest on what it already owes. I think this is more or less mad. This is a larger share than they spend on Defence (5.1%), Transport (4.7%) ‘Public order and safety’ (4.4%) and ‘Housing and utilities’(1.6%). Of course the greatest share, almost 23%, goes on the Sacred NHS. Another 20.4% goes on ‘welfare’, a figure which does not include the state pension (11%). The worst state school system in the western world swallows up 10.5%. Overseas aid, you will be interested to learn, accounts for only 0.6%, which came as a surprise to me. I thought it was more, and will now adjust my opinions. I have never objected to paying tax in itself, but I do think our leaders, our Parliament and we ourselves should pay much more attention to how exactly it is spent. This list, which I think is now sent to all taxpayers, might help.

******

An extraordinary new TV drama from Italy, ‘Exterior Night’ (now available through Channel 4) explores the kidnap and murder, in 1978, of the Italian political leader Aldo Moro. I remember this well, and the way it hardened my already strong loathing of terrorism, But I had not realised that it tore Italy apart almost as badly as JFK’s assassination damaged the USA. Dressed, weirdly, in Alitalia airline pilots’ uniforms, ultra-leftist fanatics calling themselves ‘The Red Brigades’ murdered four of Moro’s five bodyguards in a Rome Street (they left one to die in his own blood) , dragged Moro away in a box and held him for seven weeks in a makeshift dungeon. Then they murdered him too. Some of these monsters are still alive. Like the JFK murder, the Moro kidnapping has spawned multiple conspiracy theories (more credible in the labyrinth of Italian politics than in the USA). To this day nobody is sure just who was playing what game. The whole thing is beautifully done, and it made me wish that something similar might be attempted about some of the great events of British politics, for example the Suez Affair, the Falklands War and the Brighton Bomb, though preferably not made by left-wing people.

*******

There have been calls for the restoration of the death penalty after the Lucy Letby case. I am - in principle - a supporter of capital punishment but I could not endorse any such thing just now. Only a few weeks ago we were all rightly horrified by the wrongful imprisonment of Andrew Malkinson for 17 years for a rape of which he was entirely innocent. So now we want people to be hanged as a result of the same system which buried the innocent Mr Malkinson alive for a quarter of his life? For me, nowadays, a jury’s guilty verdict is no longer the certain end of a trial which we can all rely on. I have seen too many such verdicts overturned, and suspect there are many more which ought to have been. The police, the prosecution service, the bench of judges and the jury system itself (with its terrifying majority verdicts) all need urgent reform. If we want the ferocity of capital punishment, then we must also have real rigour back in the courts.

In the Sleep of Reason, Monsters are Born 28 VIII 2023.

Don't agree with his comment on President Trump
and his opinion of the land grabbers Poland.


oaf - a man who is rough or clumsy and unintelligent.
 
Old 4 Weeks Ago #15
jagd messer
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2014
Location: UK
Posts: 1,351
Default Who began this filthy war? Why didn't we side with democracy against the Kiev mob?

Who began this filthy war? Why didn't we side with democracy against the Kiev mob? Peter Hitchens.

It is ten years, not two years, since the war in Ukraine began. And once you have grasped that, you can begin to think clearly about it. What is Britain’s interest in this conflict? Why do so many in politics and the media cheer for carnage that has devastated Ukraine, the country they claim to love and admire? What has Ukraine gained from it? What can Ukraine and its people possibly gain from it?

I ask only that you use your minds instead of your emotions. Let us begin with what happened ten years ago. It ought to be shocking. In 2014, Ukraine had a crude but functioning democracy. This worked because the country was pretty evenly divided between its east and its west. Power swung from one side to the other, and in 2010 Viktor Yanukovych won the presidential election with 12.5 million votes, beating his nearest rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, who won 11.6 million.

Unlike the previous election in 2004, nobody seriously disputed the result. So in February 2014, Yanukovych was the lawful head of state, with two years to run. If we believe, as we all say we do, in democracy, then this is a near-sacred fact. The widespread and justified disgust over the invasion of the US Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021, is based on the belief that power rests on ballots, not on force.

There is no clearer distinction between democracies and the rest. The losers must respect the result. If they dispute it, they must use lawful methods. But in general if they do not like whoever is in power, they must wait till the next election.

Militant protesters gather on the streets of the capital Kiev in early 2014 in the run-up to the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected head of state. But now we come to the big exception. In February 2014, a violent mob infiltrated and came to dominate what had originally been genuine democratic protests in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.

There is much that is murky about these bitter days, including the mysterious shootings of members of the crowd. Let us just say that there is a serious dispute about who was responsible, which has yet to be resolved. In a leaked (and undenied) phone conversation, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet told the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, that there was ‘stronger and stronger understanding’ that ‘behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition’.

A UN report (published on July 15, 2014) concluded that 103 protesters and 20 police officers died in these events. I believe at least some of the protesters were armed, and the deaths of 20 policemen suggest some pretty heavy violence on the side of the protesters. In the midst of all this bloodshed, two serious efforts were made to reach a peaceful, lawful outcome. The first was wrecked, perhaps deliberately, when protesters responded to it on Tuesday, February 18, by setting fire to Yanukovych’s party HQ. On the night of Thursday, February 20, the foreign ministers of Germany, Poland and France flew to Kiev to broker a deal with the embattled Ukrainian President.

On February 21, that deal was signed by the President, by three senior members of the anti-Yanukovych opposition and witnessed by the three EU ministers. Yanukovych offered a rewrite of the constitution to suit the opposition; a new government; early presidential elections (no later than December 2014); and an impartial probe into the violence (which there has never been). All sides renounced the use of force.

Anti-government protesters guard the perimeter of Independence Square in February 2014 in Kiev, Ukraine. But that Friday evening, the deal was put to the crowd in the Maidan, an unelected body with no constitutional or democratic authority. They certainly did not represent the eastern part of the country. Their chieftains rejected it and threatened to ‘take arms and go’ to Yanukovych’s residence if he did not step down by the next morning. The opposition leaders who had signed the deal crumbled, and made no effort to defend it against the yelling anger of the crowd.

Yanukovych, whose security protection had melted away, left Kiev. But he did not resign and he did not leave the country. A recent book by the highly respected Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy shows beyond doubt that the elected President was still in office and in Ukraine when parliament voted to remove him. The vote was unlawful, since MPs lacked the votes needed to do so under the constitution. But they went ahead anyway.

So anti-democratic violence was followed by lawlessness. The offer of early elections was brushed aside (did the mob fear their faction would lose them?). Thus a mob overthrew a legitimate head of state. And here comes the shocking test. Western nations, including Britain, should have condemned this action. They are normally vigilant defenders of law and democracy all over the world, are they not? But in this case, they Britain condoned the coup.

The then Foreign Secretary, William Hague, made a wholly inaccurate statement to the House of Commons on March 4, 2014. He said that Yanukovych was removed ‘by the very large majorities required under the constitution’. This is simply untrue. And so the future Lord Hague’s next assertion that ‘it is wrong to question the legitimacy of the new authorities’ seriously misled Parliament.

I took this up with Lord Hague. After it became plain he had no good defence of his actions, he stopped replying to me and fell silent. Pathetically, an awkward letter I sent to his official address was returned to me adorned with a sticker saying he was not known there. If we had a proper Opposition in this country, he would never have been able to get away with this. But we do not.

The events of February 2014 split Ukraine and began a filthy little war in the east of the country in which (among other tragedies and horrors) many civilians died at the hands of the Ukrainian army. The disgusting Russian invasion two years ago, indefensible and barbaric, was the second stage of the war, not the start of it.

Of course, I do not know who if anyone was behind the overthrow of Yanukovych. All kinds of Western politicians and intelligence types were hanging around Kiev at the time. And the West blatantly betrayed its own principles to condone and forgive the nasty event. But that of course does not prove that any Western nation backed the coup against Yanukovych.

Even so, it is my view that any outside force which did support that putsch is just as guilty of aggression and warmongering as Russia’s Putin is. Think of that as you listen to all those loud, safe voices demanding that we keep on fuelling this war, in which Ukrainians die daily for democratic principles we do not, in fact, support.


At the time,a phone recording of Victoria Nuland was released discussing who the U.S. should put in power in Ukraine.
I have no doubt both the U.S and the U.K were involved in overthrowing the Yanakovitch Govt.-Yanakovitch was about to make a better trade deal with Russia than the E.U. was offering.
They then installed a brutal and heartless President (Poroshenko) who went on to visciously attack the ethnic Russian Ukrainians in Eastern Ukraine and deny them basic rights.

The nuclear weapons were never Ukraines.


Who began this filthy war? Why didn't we side with democracy against the Kiev mob? Peter Hitchens, Daily Mail.
26 II 2024.


"anyone was behind the overthrow of Yanukovych. All kinds of Western politicians and intelligence types were hanging around Kiev at the time."
- the 2014 Ukrainian Coup d'état by the United States was a Colour Revolution coup d'état against the government of Ukraine and installed a pro-Western government on the border of Russia.

The role of the United States in the colour revolutions has been a matter of significant controversy. British newspaper The Guardian accused the United States government, alongside the Freedom House non-governmental organization and George Soros' Open Society Foundations of organising the Orange Revolution as part of a broader campaign of regime change in Eastern Europe, also involving the overthrow of Milošević, the Rose Revolution, and unsuccessful attempts to contest the results of the 2001 Belarusian presidential election.
Colour revolution - Wikipedia
 
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