Monday 30 June 2014

European Outlook #7, July 2014

American Foreign Policy
                                                 

                                                USS Nimitz

President Barack Obama’s instincts are to stay out of the Middle East but he is up against a powerful alliance of generals and defence contractors who believe the neo-conservative mantra of “perpetual war for perpetual peace”. He has got a problem with his foreign policy but Dave Cameron has no such limitations. The Tory position is absolutely straight forward; the UK will support America unreservedly even if they attack New Zealand. The UK has no vestige of an independent foreign policy. No considerations of commercial advantage or morality are allowed to interfere with our blind obedience to America. Dave Cameron supported the Americans when they wanted to intervene in Syria on the side of the Sunni insurgents fighting the Shia regime, and he supports them in Iraq where they are supporting the Shia regime against the Sunni insurgents. It’s thanks only to the intransigence of the British Parliament and the American Congress that we avoided yet another pointless war. The Americans have no idea what they are doing in the Middle East and we don’t care so long as we have access to American markets. There was a time when we were famous for our diplomatic service. We had linguists and historians who were world experts in their fields and military men who had served with the Arabs and understood their culture. But those days are long gone; now we take the lead from America and follow policies designed to serve interests other than our own.

The Housing Crisis

Londoners are spending forty percent of their income on rent. Accommodation is cheaper in the outer suburbs but the fares are prohibitive, so what you save on rent you spend on transport. This situation is aggravated by uncontrolled immigration and a chronic shortage of social housing. If they moved to a cheaper part of the country they would run into the problem of unemployment. London is overcrowded and expensive but there is plenty of work, especially if you don’t mind working for the minimum wage on zero hours contracts.

The massive construction boom along the Thames in central London will deliver thousands of new apartments but few of them will be for ordinary people. The Battersea Power Station development and the new American Embassy complex at Nine Elms are impressive projects but they will not solve the housing shortage.

Successive governments have failed to make provision for a growing population. They left housing to the private sector but property developers make more money selling riverside penthouses to millionaires than affordable housing to Londoners. The Government should use existing powers to enforce planning regulations and stop speculators from buying flats and houses simply as an investment.

There is no single answer to the housing problem but there are several ways to tackle it. Local authorities should be bankrolled by the central government. Land should be made available by the National Health Service, the Police, the armed forces, and the Fire Service. There are plenty of redundant hospitals, police stations, barracks, airfields, and fire stations that could be used for housing. The Government is helping people to get mortgages but there is a shortage of available properties. We need a positive commitment to housing.

We should approach the problem with the determination of Winston Churchill’s post-war housing minister Harold Macmillan. He built 300,000 houses in 1951 when we were short of money, building materials and labour. With modern materials and fast-track methods of construction we should do as well as “Supermac”. He was hated by right wingers for his “winds of change” speech in Africa and his application to join the European Common Market but he was only accepting the inevitable.


                                                     Harold Macmillan

Critics will ask where the money is coming from but we are spending millions of pounds on temporary housing. It must be cheaper in the long run to build flats and houses instead of putting desperate families in bed and breakfast accommodation. Housing is one of the most pressing problems facing the UK. We are currently commissioning two giant aircraft carriers and buying squadrons of American aircraft to fly off them. We are also replacing the Trident nuclear missile system. Our defence chiefs insist that these expensive toys are necessary but Germany manages to enjoy a high standard of living and a thriving economy without them. It’s nice to have the latest ships and rockets but it’s unacceptable that we have a housing shortage seventy years after World War Two.

Alexander Baron

If you like books, boxing, films, finance, jokes, legal actions, limericks, pamphlets, plays, short stories, songs and sonnets (but not dogs) you should visit Alexander Baron’s website at:  www.infotextmanuscripts.org

He is a freelance writer and researcher and a regular speaker at New Right meetings. Most libertarian writers take themselves far too seriously but he is free of pomposity. Despite health problems he has beaten the DHSS, the Metropolitan Police and the Searchlight gang in court and resisted all efforts to shut him up. He is best described by the following advertisement that he placed in Spearhead in January 1996.


                                                    Alexander Baron

Alexander Baron and the British National Party – A Public Statement

In recent months I have read and heard a great deal of nonsense about myself and certain of my associates. I am therefore issuing this public statement to set the record straight.

I am not, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be, a member of the British National Party. Nor am I a fascist, an anti-Semite, Jewish, insane, a secret state asset, or in any way connected with Larry O’Hara.

I am an associate member of the Islamic Party of Britain, a long time Social Creditor, and a committed Libertarian, although my commitment to Libertarianism does not extend to gross libels on either myself or on my friends which lead to ‘anti-fascists’ – be they idealists or hired thugs – assaulting either myself or those with whom I associate.

My only contribution to politics is my writing: I research – usually in libraries – then publish my findings. My writings displease many people, but that is simply because the truth is often ugly, and unpleasant, and hurts, not because of malice on my part. Certain people seem to believe that claiming to be anti-fascists, ‘anti-racists’ or Jewish puts them above all criticism and gives them carte blanche both to lie with impunity and to ride roughshod over the rest of mankind. They are wrong.

Some of my publications have been advertised by Spearhead and sold by the British National Party. As much as I disagree with the BNP’s politics, I welcome such enlightenment and progressiveness, and would dearly like to see it extended to a broader political spectrum.

I have also been smeared as a fascist and/or fellow traveller on account of the above endorsement. People who make such allegations in print should bear in mind that the free speech they and their fellow ‘anti-fascists’ repeatedly attempt to deny the BNP is a myth. There is such a thing as free expression, but there is also the law of defamation. Fees for libel litigation start from around a hundred pounds per hour, as some of the people reading this advertisement know already. To their cost.

The Farage Fantasy

Nigel Farage is convinced that the UK would be “better off out” but if we quit the EU tomorrow we would still be dominated by America. His dream of an independent Britain is a fantasy in a world of American hegemony sustained by petro-dollars and backed by military might. They used economic blackmail to force Britain and France out of Egypt in 1956, and to end white rule in Rhodesia and South Africa almost forty years later.  Europe, including the UK, is controlled by NATO, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the World Trade Organization. All of these agencies are American-controlled and access to world markets depends on our compliance. If we failed to support them we would face economic sanctions, and if we defied them we would suffer the same fate as Iraq.

Ukip can wave Union Jacks until their arms ache but there will be no independence while we are tied to America. They claim to take votes from all parties but at heart they are Tories of the worst sort who would scrap the National Health Service and decimate public services. The European Union is an imperfect organization with the potential to develop into an independent power but an isolated UK would soon discover that under the Pax Americana independence is an illusion.
                                                             


A clear majority now want to reform the EU from within but some people have been seduced by the retro image of Ukip. They relate to the saloon bar culture, the dated wardrobe and the chauvinist rhetoric but apart from nostalgia Ukip have got nothing to offer.

We still have an aviation industry thanks to partnership agreements with Airbus and Eurofighter but our last commercial airliner, the Vickers VC10, was dumped when British Airways bought the Boeing 707. The government of the day did not interfere because of their commitment to the ‘free market’.

Michael Heseltine resigned from the Cabinet over the Westland helicopter affair when Margaret Thatcher favoured a takeover by the American company Sikorsky. Fortunately Westland merged with the Italian company Augusta to continue building helicopters.

The iconic British confectioner Cadburys was taken over in 2010 by Kraft of America in a deal financed by the Royal Bank of Scotland which resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs.

The British drug manufacturer Astra Zeneca has rejected a $106 billion takeover bid by the American company Pfizer. But instead of backing Astra Zeneca Dave Cameron was content to “leave it to the shareholders”.  We have already sold our motor industry to the Japanese and our steel industry to the Indians; now our pathetic prime minister is prepared to sell our pharmaceutical industry. This is the same ‘patriot’ who wants to renegotiate our membership of the EU in order to protect British interests.

There is nothing wrong with the American people. If America was a normal country, like Canada or Australia, we would enjoy a good relationship based on our common language and culture. But America has 900 military bases in 153 countries. Their defence industry depends on perpetual warfare and their predatory capitalism threatens the commerce of the world. This situation is bad enough under Barack Obama and the Democrats but the Republicans would be even worse. The Republican Party is virtually owned by Sheldon Adelson, a committed Zionist billionaire who has the power to choose the next president. It’s up to our American compatriots to reclaim their country. We should scrap NATO, build a strong and united Europe, sign a non-aggression pact with Russia, and elect a genuinely representative government.

Ukip is a reactionary party that will probably steal enough Tory votes to put the Labour Party in power and avoid a referendum on Europe. Their ‘free market’ policies tie us to America, and their immigration policy discriminates against Poles and other Europeans but encourages Afro-Asians. We don’t know the rest of their policies because they have torn up their old manifesto and promised to publish a new one for the 2015 general election. But from statements made by their candidates we know some of their ideas. These include a flat rate income tax that would hit low wage earners; charging for visits to the doctor, and throwing out all legislation from Brussels, including employment rights. Some of them have even fantasized about deporting foreigners, allowing smoking in pubs and restaurants, and putting women “back in the kitchen where they belong”; a raft of right wing policies that would drag us back to the fifties. To Ukip they were the “good old days” but most of us remember rationing, shortages, austerity, and an entirely undeserved respect for authority; the conditions that prompted Andrew Fountaine to make the following speech.

Andrew Fountaine: National Front Movement 1952
 
In the seven lean years since the War, they said we won; we have drifted from crisis to crisis. If it isn't a dollar scare, then it's a panic call for rearmament in the face of the Russian menace. The politicians still talk as if this is some sort of accident, something that just couldn't be avoided. Thinking people though are beginning to see through the bluff. They realise that the Butlers and Gaitskell’s cannot really stop the rot. They cannot cope with the situation for which their own party leaders are directly responsible. It has gone beyond the balancing of budgets and the juggling of economic theories. Instead of arguing about what they talk of doing, it will pay us better to consider what Churchill and Attlee between them have actually done.

The Facts of the crisis are clear enough. Before the war we managed to exist by the import / export system. Not that the system was entirely satisfactory... nevertheless it worked, largely because of "invisible exports," that is to say, the money which our investments abroad brought in. We had vast overseas possessions, which of course, guaranteed the security and prosperity of these islands, if only we cared to develop them properly. Today the cry is "Export or Die!" Frankly it looks as though we're in danger of dying. Why? Because every source of wealth is going, whether our foreign investments or our overseas possessions. Poor and weakened we are crowded on to an island which just cannot produce enough food for us. On the one side we are threatened by the armed might of Bolshevik Russia, while on the other we are in danger of complete enslavement to the financiers of Wall Street.

Who Was Responsible? We know that the villain of the piece was Roosevelt, who was not, apparently, the kind benefactor of the British people he would have us believe. This man was determined not merely to defeat the common enemy, but also to get rid of the British Empire. Thus, although Roosevelt was not prepared to enter the war at the beginning, he allowed us to fight on alone, and during that period we had to sell our foreign investments at knockdown prices to buy munitions from America, so we could hold the fort until America was ready to come to our assistance.
                                                                        
                                                   FD Roosevelt

The Lend-Lease agreement was likewise no generosity, for it contained a clause designed to cripple our export trade all over the world, and it stopped dead the minute America had gained its victory. Roosevelt's greatest political triumph was the destruction of Europe at Yalta, when he literally placed Russia in its present position by allowing the Russian Hordes to get to Berlin, Prague and Vienna, when the Allies could easily have got there first. His advisers were all pro-Soviet and many of them remain in office in America to this day. Yet Roosevelt's successors, Truman and Eisenhower, now expect the Europe which their system destroyed to help them in their quarrel with the Russian Imperialism which their system brought into being.
Never forget that the closest collaborator of Roosevelt during the war was the Prime Minister who must be held responsible for unnecessarily allowing this country to fall under American economic domination -- the man of Yalta, Winston Churchill.

Labour's Record was no better than that of the coalition Government when it came to surrendering British interests and truckling to the Americans. They began by destroying two hundred years of endeavour in India by handing it over to independence and fanatical self-massacre. They wrote off years of heroic jungle fighting by plunging Burma into anarchy. They started the same cowardly, simpering process of "freezing" the African colonies. They accepted Marshall's generous gift of surplus American production and, when Roosevelt's successor had handed China on a plate to the Communists, they supported the phoney war in Korea. Meanwhile they had sent top-secret aeroplane engines to Russia...... One of the last acts of this pitiful administration was to surrender our oil supplies at the instigation of the American government. The man we must hold responsible for that was Clement Attlee.

Is there a way out? Yes, there is, but it's a way out that's hard and it can only be faced by men and women who are brave enough and determined enough to win through. Clearly, the only salvation for our country lies in getting back on our feet - and that means running our own affairs. It's no use sitting back and letting a set of discredited mountebanks continue to mess up your lives and those of your children. It's even worse to let yourself be drugged by propaganda and think the Americans will save us, when we can thank Roosevelt and Co for the mess we are in.

Our country is capable of great things - we have an immense industrial capacity, we still have a large empire which is as rich potentially as America and Russia put together. What is more important, we have some of the best inventors, designers, engineers and craftsmen.

We were not intended to work like slaves, scrounging for dollars to keep body and soul together. Our children were not intended to be cannon fodder in some future war between America and Russia, with which we and the other countries of Western Europe have little or nothing in common. Our fathers didn't place their reliance on a discredited, mongrelised United Nations Organisation, and they would expect us to live as they lived - proud, free, energetic and resolute.

But to do all this we must act as an organised movement, for the voices of individuals are soon drowned by the clamour of the parties, the actions of isolated enthusiasts come to nothing in a world of confusion, doubts and anxieties. Something new is needed, all are agreed, but the new party must rise above the artificial divisions of today and appeal directly to the nation as a whole. National unity is the key to National rebirth. This is The Only Way to preserve the traditions of the past and to make sure of the welfare and security of our people in the future.... it means a hard, tough struggle against heavy odds, but it means at last that we shall once again be living not as slaves, but as free men and women in our country with our future in our hands.

The Meaning of an Enemy


                                                         Andrew Fountaine


Andrew Fountaine (1918-1997) was a staunch defender of Britain and Europe. He fought for the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War and served as a naval Lieutenant Commander in the Pacific during WW2. He was president of the original BNP and formed the short-lived NF Constitutional Movement. His masterly denunciation of Winston Churchill ‘The Meaning of an Enemy’ was serialized in Combat magazine from 1960 to 1965. It is now available from Ostara Publications at £7.45 plus p&p. www.ostarapublication.com

Personal Opinions

Parliamentary democracy fails to deliver representative government because it has been hijacked by big business and perverted by the party system. But freedom of speech is a basic human right. People are entitled to their opinions and should be able to express them.

Opinions range from Anarchism to Zionism. Some people deny the Holocaust because they have convinced themselves that it never happened. Others blame all the troubles of the world on a great conspiracy of Jews, Freemasons, Bilderbergers, and all the usual suspects. The British Israelites maintain that we are the true Jews, and amateur anthropologists discern one’s ethnicity from sepia tinted photographs in old and unreadable books.
Some of these people are undoubtedly mad but most of them are simply deluded. Conspiracy theory is a type of religion – it provides answers to questions and it cannot be disproved because it’s a matter of faith. There is no point in arguing with a conspiracy theorist; as one of them said to me: “I don’t have to prove it – I know that it’s true”.

In the European parliamentary election Ukip commanded 27% of the votes cast, or 9% of the electorate. They were delighted when the financial crisis of 2008 hit Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and Cyprus because they used the single currency; but they ignored the desperate plight of Iceland, the UK, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and Ukraine because they still had their own currencies. Six years later most of Europe is returning to stability and the dire warnings of the doom mongers have come to nothing. But none of this matters to the Euro-sceptics who believe their own propaganda..

The human capacity for self-deception is paramount. When British troops of the 6th Airborne Division liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the end of the war they found 38,500 sick, starving and dying people. British soldiers had no reason to exaggerate but their testimony is rejected by the Holocaust deniers who refuse to believe that the Third Reich committed any atrocities. It’s all a matter of faith.

We are witnessing the decline of the nation state and the emergence of largely self-sufficient geopolitical blocs. The European Union and the Russian Federation are prototypes and similar arrangements are emerging in North America and East Asia. This development will not be stopped by angry old men shouting slogans. Ukip and their nationalist cousins throughout Europe are dinosaurs having their last thrash about in the swamp of history. But they are entitled to their opinions just like the rest of us. The law must protect society from psychopaths and terrorists but reasonable opinions should be tolerated.


                                                          Colin Jordan

Colin Jordan was foolish to dress up as a storm trooper in the days of the National Socialist Movement. Some of his members have blamed this indescretion on their youth but CJ was thirty nine in 1962, which is old enough to know better. He remained an unrepentant National Socialist until the day he died in 2009. He defended the infamous Night of the Long Knives and propagated the myth of the Nazi superman but he despised petty nationalism and understood the power of plutocracy and the futility of electioneering. His article “Party Time Has Ended” should be read by anyone trying to influence events by the ballot box. Public opinion can be influenced by propaganda but the Establishment would never allow a genuinely revolutionary party to flourish. They crushed Mosley’s movement in 1940 and they would not hesitate to do it again. Ukip are only tolerated because they are a harmless bunch of disaffected Tories. It’s still possible to educate the public, and we have a duty to do so, but let us not deceive ourselves about ‘democracy’. Colin Jordan’s article is posted on: http://www.skrewdriver.net/party.html

















No comments:

Post a Comment