The Times of London isn't the old "Thunderer" - it's now just a Neo-Con Propaganda rag!
During the EU referendum (and before that in the Scottish Independence referendum) we all had to put up with dishonest and deceptive commentary and reporting from the Times, like this silly and unrealistic editorial nonsense >>> http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/remaking-europe-h7lcgs8bw
A feeble minded attempt to divert our attention form the real issue?
Now the Times and other so called mainstream British Newspapers are making up pathetic nonsense about a supposed Soviet style take over by the Russian secret service of discussions about the UK's future as the bulwark of the defenses of the "West". How about this for Neo-Con fantasy? Click here >>> http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/legal-ok-st73lrtvk
Here's what the rather more sensible and not so hysterical former Republican Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan had to say about the alleged Russian threat:-
Why Russia Resents Us
By Patrick J. Buchanan | May 3, 2016
Friday, a Russian SU-27 did a barrel roll over a U.S. RC-135 over the Baltic, the second time in two weeks.
Also in April, the U.S. destroyer Donald Cook, off Russia's Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, was twice buzzed by Russian planes.
Vladimir Putin's message: Keep your spy planes and ships a respectable distance away from us. Apparently, we have not received it.
Friday, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work announced that 4,000 NATO troops, including two U.S. battalions, will be moved into Poland and the Baltic States, right on Russia's border.
"The Russians have been doing a lot of snap exercises right up against the border with a lot of troops," says Work, who calls this "extraordinarily provocative behavior."
But how are Russian troops deploying inside Russia "provocative," while U.S. troops on Russia's front porch are not? And before we ride this escalator up to a clash, we had best check our hole card.
Germany is to provide one of four battalions to be sent to the Baltic.
But a Bertelsmann Foundation poll last week found that only 31 percent of Germans favor sending their troops to resist a Russian move in the Baltic States or Poland, while 57 percent oppose it, though the NATO treaty requires it.
Last year, a Pew poll found majorities in Italy and France also oppose military action against Russia if she moves into Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia or Poland. If it comes to war in the Baltic, our European allies prefer that we Americans fight it.
Asked on his retirement as Army chief of staff what was the greatest strategic threat to the United States, Gen. Ray Odierno echoed Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, "I believe that Russia is."
He mentioned threats to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine.
Yet, when Gen. Odierno entered the service, all four were part of the Soviet Union, and no Cold War president ever thought any was worth a war.
The independence of the Baltic States was one of the great peace dividends after the Cold War. But when did that become so vital a U.S. interest we would go to war with Russia to guarantee it?
Putin may top the enemies list of the Beltway establishment, but we should try to see the world from his point of view.
When Ronald Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik in 1986, Putin was in his mid-30s, and the Soviet Empire stretched from the Elbe to the Bering Strait and from the Arctic to Afghanistan.
Russians were all over Africa and had penetrated the Caribbean and Central America. The Soviet Union was a global superpower that had attained strategic parity with the United States.
Now consider how the world has changed for Putin, and Russia.
By the time he turned 40, the Red Army had begun its Napoleonic retreat from Europe and his country had splintered into 15 nations.
By the time he came to power, the USSR had lost one-third of its territory and half its population. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan were gone.
The Black Sea, once a Soviet lake, now had on its north shore a pro-Western Ukraine, on its eastern shore a hostile Georgia, and on its western shore two former Warsaw Pact allies, Bulgaria and Romania, being taken into NATO.
For Russian warships in Leningrad, the trip out to the Atlantic now meant cruising past the coastline of eight NATO nations: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Great Britain.
Putin has seen NATO, despite solemn U.S. assurances given to Gorbachev, incorporate all of Eastern Europe that Russia had vacated, and three former republics of the USSR itself.
He now hears a clamor from American hawks to bring three more former Soviet republics — Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine — into a NATO alliance directed against Russia.
After persuading Kiev to join a Moscow-led economic union, Putin saw Ukraine's pro-Russian government overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup.
He has seen U.S.-funded "color-coded" revolutions try to dump over friendly regimes all across his "near abroad."
"Russia has not accepted the hand of partnership," says NATO commander, Gen. Philip Breedlove, "but has chosen a path of belligerence."
But why should Putin see NATO's inexorable eastward march as an extended "hand of partnership"?
Had we lost the Cold War and Russian spy planes began to patrol off Pensacola, Norfolk and San Diego, how would U.S. F-16 pilots have reacted? If we awoke to find Mexico, Canada, Cuba, and most of South America in a military alliance against us, welcoming Russian bases and troops, would we regard that as "the hand of partnership"?
We are reaping the understandable rage and resentment of the Russian people over how we exploited Moscow's retreat from empire.
Did we not ourselves slap aside the hand of Russian friendship, when proffered, when we chose to embrace our "unipolar moment," to play the "great game" of empire and seek "benevolent global hegemony"?
If there is a second Cold War, did Russia really start it?
(Here is a link to the original >>> http://buchanan.org/blog/russia-resents-us-125183 )
A FLOCK OF REMAINIST LAWYERS INDULGE IN ANTI-BREXIT GESTURE LETTER WRITING!
My attention was caught by the report of this letter in the Independent. It is instructive to look at the list of the thousand or so lawyers who have signed a letter addressed to the Prime Minister (saying that the EU referendum result is merely “Advisory” and not “legally binding”). The list includes all the usual suspects: internationalists, social justice campaigners and globalist Remain camp lawyers, etc., who are to a “person” anti-English.
Those who read the letter carefully, certainly those with legal training, will have noted that the letter writers are careful not to overstate their case whilst appearing to suggest that the result is “Advisory”.
In fact it is constitutionally obvious that the referendum is “Advisory” in the British Governmental system. This is a system in which the democratic vote of the People in a General Election and the election of Members of Parliament is technically largely “Advisory”. The basis of the appointment system for Ministers is technically that of the Royal Prerogative. They are technically Royal Appointments to deal with matters of the Royal Government.
Since Sir Robert Walpole, it has been necessary for the Prime Minister to retain the confidence of the House of Commons as well as the Monarch. As the balance of initiative has tipped toward the House of Commons and away from the Monarch, political power has come more into the hands of an “Executive” based, as it is in our current constitutional arrangements, within the legislature.
Whilst Democracy generally therefore has been “Advisory” to the British constitutional construct of the “Crown in Parliament”, nevertheless it has been so long since a Monarch or Government thought it could ignore such “Advisory” democracy that many commentators have forgotten that it is constitutionally possible.
It is therefore “deceptive”, to say the least, for these “Lawyers” to even imply that the referendum’s result could be treated as not being politically, morally or constitutionally in effect binding.
I was also amused to read their comment that “there is evidence that the referendum result was influenced by mis-representations of fact and promises that could not be delivered”. Many of those misrepresentations and promises were those of the Remain side!
The idea that the result was “only narrowly in favour of Brexit” is also a ridiculous proposition especially in England where, if you remove Gibraltar from its inclusion in the English figures (in most of the published results), the majority in England was almost 2 million voters. In any case more people voted for Brexit than have ever voted for any British Government!
It is equally fanciful for these “Lawyers” to claim that the positions of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar require “special consideration” since their populations did not vote to leave the EU. The only special consideration that they should get is that they will either have to leave the EU as the English have voted to do so, or Leave the UK. They will not be able to Remain in both Unions.
The silliest point of all of course is the idea that the activation of Article 50 requires a parliamentary vote. The constitutional position is simple. The Prime Minister, on behalf of the Queen and in exercise of the royal prerogative has an unfettered ability to trigger the kind of Notice that Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty requires. The only fora in which there could be any argument about the validity of the Article 50 Notice is within the EU institutions. Provided the Council of Europe are happy that a proper Article 50 Notice has been given, then the process of Exit will commence. That is whatever a relatively small proportion of the total number of lawyers in the UK may think!
For information, I would suggest that the number of barristers, solicitors, in-house lawyers and advocates in Scotland, Northern Ireland and England and Wales would probably exceed 300,000. As the word of “Lawyer” is rather a vague term, the total number of “Lawyers” may well exceed 500,000, of which it would appear that only approximately 1,000 were sufficiently ideologically committed Remainers to sign this letter!
Here is the text of the “Lawyers” letter:-
9 July 2016
Dear Prime Minister and Members of Parliament
Re: Brexit
We are all individual members of the Bars of England and Wales, Scotland
and Northern Ireland. We are writing to propose a way forward which
reconciles the legal, constitutional and political issues which arise
following the Brexit referendum.
The result of the referendum must be acknowledged. Our legal opinion is
that the referendum is advisory.
The European Referendum Act does not make it legally binding. We believe
that in order to trigger Article 50, there must first be primary
legislation. It is of the utmost importance that the legislative process
is informed by an objective understanding as to the benefits, costs and
risks of triggering Article 50.
The reasons for this include the following: There is evidence that the
referendum result was influenced by misrepresentations of fact and
promises that could not be delivered.
Since the result was only narrowly in favour of Brexit, it cannot be
discounted that the misrepresentations and promises were a decisive or
contributory factor in the result.
The parliamentary vote must not be similarly affected. The referendum
did not set a threshold necessary to leave the EU, commonly adopted in
polls of national importance, e.g. 60% of those voting or 40% of the
electorate.
This is presumably because the result was only advisory. The outcome of
the exit process will affect a generation of people who were not old
enough to vote in the referendum.
The positions of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Gibraltar require
special consideration, since their populations did not vote to leave the EU.
The referendum did not concern the negotiating position of the UK
following the triggering of Article 50, nor the possibility that no
agreement could be reached within the stipulated two year period for
negotiation, nor the emerging reality that the Article 50 negotiations
will concern only the manner of exit from the EU and not future economic
relationships.
All of these matters need to be fully explored and understood prior to
the Parliamentary vote. The Parliamentary vote should take place with a
greater understanding as to the economic consequences of Brexit, as
businesses and investors in the UK start to react to the outcome of the
referendum.
For all of these reasons, it is proposed that the Government
establishes, as a matter of urgency, a Royal Commission or an equivalent
independent body to receive evidence and report, within a short, fixed
timescale, on the benefits, costs and risks of triggering Article 50 to
the UK as a whole, and to all of its constituent populations.
The Parliamentary vote should not take place until the Commission has
reported. In view of the extremely serious constitutional, economic and
legal importance of the vote either way, we believe that there should be
a free vote in Parliament.
Yours sincerely
PHILIP KOLVIN QC
And 1053 others
(Here is a link to the original in the Independent>>>
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/in-full-the-letter-from-1000-lawyers-to-david-cameron-over-eu-referendum-brexit-legality-a7130226.html)
“TO THE STRONGEST!” “KRATISTOS” - ALEXANDER THE GREAT’S “LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT”
A week ago, with almost all the Party Leaders in trouble or resigning I was reminded of the famous story of Alexander The Great’s last Will and Testament in which it is claimed that he left his empire:- “To the Strongest!”
One of the principal classical histories says that on Alexander's deathbed in 323 BC:-
“When he (Alexander), at length, despaired of life, he took off his ring and handed it to Perdiccas. His friends asked: "To whom do you leave the kingdom?" and he replied: "To the strongest!" Diodorus Siculus
The resulting wars between his Generals, which raged all across Alexander’s vast empire, gave birth to the Hellenistic kingdoms whose Kings rested upon the, often very temporary, support of their soldiers.
I was reminded of those times and that period of history when I suddenly found myself the only remaining leader of a political party in England who has held his position for any length of time!
Nigel Farage’s resignation, seemingly unexpected to the media, but which had seemed not unlikely to those that had heard that he was deeply fed up with the internal politics of UKIP, coupled with UKIP’s redundancy now that it has achieved the purpose of getting and winning the referendum on EU membership, suggests the story of Alexander’s Will is still highly topical and it may be something of a paradigm for the infighting which will now occur in UKIP between its various factions!
It was already apparent that this was going to happen after the referendum, when Neil Hamilton called for a leadership election within UKIP, saying that he intended to support Paul Nuttall. Paul for his part had then indicated that he now felt that he was ready to be Leader. Now however he too has withdrawn leaving the field open to only a medley of “Believe in Britain” types!
The saying:- “may you live in interesting times” is said to be an old Afghan curse, in that blood-soaked country. In England “may you live in interesting times” may however be a blessing to English nationalists.
Let’s work to make it so!
WESTERN MORAL DECLINE AND FALL OR CHANGE?
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has written an interesting article which I reproduce below which appeared in the Telegraph. As a religious figure it is perhaps not surprising that he identifies the failures of the current “Western” systems as being moral and religious. I think he has highlighted some very important issues in his article.
However I do think there are other important contributory factors in creating the deep-seated anger of people. He hasn’t mentioned the way in which the basis of world trade has been restructured over the last 20-25 years.
During that period of time there has been a growing tendency for Governments to enter into wide-ranging “Trade Agreements” which create the conditions where it is in the interests of big business to transfer manufacturing facilities from the developed “Western nation states” to “Developing” states. In America this has led to many hundreds of thousands of jobs being relocated to Mexico and other Middle and South American countries and to Far Eastern countries, such as China.
In our own country with the active collaboration of our national political elite and of course at the urging of our business “leaders” often working through the EU, huge swathes of our national productive capacity has been “off-shored”.
There has also been the development of more complicated internationalisation of the ownership of national infrastructure. Many of our bus and rail companies have been bought by foreign companies. Even our nuclear facilities may soon be foreign owned and developed.
What Jonathan Sacks calls the “Liberal Democratic State” is a contradiction in terms since, as he suggests, the elite within that state has deliberately tried to abolish “national identity in favour of multi-culturalism”. Such states are therefore of course not actually “Democratic” in any meaningful sense at all, since a major part of their operating strategy is not to enable the role of the People but instead to change and replace the People!
Also the World Trading and economic system not only naturally leads to dissatisfaction due to rising unemployment amongst those whose jobs have been “off-shored” but also having created a fundamentally and inherently unsound international financial system, as was all too vividly demonstrated by the widespread collapse in the banking and financial system during the crash in 2007 and 2008.
The responses from Governments around the world has been widespread “quantitive easing” which has taken much of the role of bankers of expanding the money supply. There has also been wide-ranging regulatory crackdown on the ease of transfer of money not only internationally but also within the Nation State itself. Much of this has been done under the bogus and misleading label of controlling Money Laundering, but the net effect is that it is actually increasingly difficult to transfer money from one country to another, or if the sums are significant, from one person to another within the country. Such a regulatory approach naturally risks the collapse of the whole system of exchange and is an all too typical example of bureaucracies using a problem to increase their role and power instead of trying to actually solve the root causes of the problems.
In these circumstances it is not surprising that when people see those who should be genuinely setting us an example, because they have been put in positions of trust, abusing that position whether that is to advance their own interests or to fill their pockets, instead of demonstrating any genuine morality or honour, it is not surprising that those of us who still cling to the older ideas of national identity and of personal morality should feel disgust at the behaviour of many of the current crop of decision makers.
Here is the article:-
We need morality to beat this hurricane of anger; Jonathan Sacks
The Prime Minister resigns. There are calls for the Leader of the Opposition to likewise. A petition for a second referendum gathers millions of votes. There is talk of the United Kingdom splitting apart. The Tory succession campaign turns nasty.
This is not politics as usual. I can recall nothing like it in my lifetime. But the hurricane blowing through Britain is not unique to us. In one form or another it is hitting every western democracy including the United States. There is a widespread feeling that politicians have been failing us. The real question is: what kind of leadership do we need to steer us through the storm?
Too many people in positions of public trust have come to the conclusion that if you can get away with it, you would be a fool not to do it
What we are witnessing throughout the West is a new politics of anger. There is anger at the spread of unemployment, leaving whole regions and generations bereft of hope. There is anger at the failure of successive governments to control immigration and to integrate some of the new arrivals.
There is anger at the financiers who brought the global economy to the brink of disaster and yet continued to reward themselves as if nothing had happened. There is anger at CEOs using public corporations for private benefit. There is anger that while a few have benefited disproportionately from the global economy, most people have seen their standards of living stay static or decline.
There is anger at the perceived impotence of governments to control the spread of extremism and terror. There is a widespread feeling that the world in the 21st century is running out of control. This has led in France, Greece, Austria, Hungary and Poland, to a resurgence of the Far Right. Elsewhere there is an emerging alliance of the Far Left and radical political Islam. These are dangerous forces, the Far Right seeking a return to a golden age that never was, the Far Left in pursuit of a utopia that will never be. They are both enemies of freedom.
Meanwhile figures have emerged like Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the United States who are essentially anti-political politicians, populists whose appeal is that they channel widespread anger at the existing elites. Anti-political politicians raise expectations that cannot be met. When reality bites, the anger becomes deeper and darker.
The problems facing the West are real and serious, the results of the massive dislocations of the global economy, the information age, instantaneous worldwide communication and the outsourcing of production and services to low-wage economies. What makes them so intractable is the fact that they are global and long-term, while our best political institutions are national and focused on the immediate future.
The European Union and the United Nations have lamentably failed to lift horizons from the here-and-now of national self-interest to long-term global responsibility. WB Yeats’s vision has come to pass. The centre no longer holds. Things fall apart. Anarchy is loosed upon the world.
But there is something deeper behind the dysfunctional politics of the contemporary West. For the past half century we have been living through one of the great unstated social experiments of all time. We have tried to construct a world without identity and morality. Instead we left it to two systems to deal with the problems of our collective life: the market economy and the liberal democratic state.
The market economy and the liberal democratic state are two of the West’s greatest achievements, but without a strong sense of identity and morality, they will fail.
Morality has been outsourced to the market. The market gives us choices, and morality has been reduced to a set of choices in which right or wrong have no meaning beyond the satisfaction or frustration of desire. We find it increasingly hard to understand why there might be things we want to do and can afford to do, that we should not do because they are dishonourable or disloyal or demeaning: in a word, unethical. Too many people in positions of public trust have come to the conclusion that if you can get away with it, you would be a fool not to do it. That is how elites betray the public they were supposed to serve. When that happens, trust collapses and a civilization begins to decay and die.
Meanwhile the liberal democratic state abolished national identity in favour of multiculturalism. The effect was to turn society from a home into a hotel. In a hotel you pay the price, get a room, and are free to do what you like so long as you do not disturb the other guests. But a hotel is not a home. It doesn’t generate identity, loyalty or a sense of belonging. Multiculturalism was supposed to make Europe more tolerant. Its effect has been precisely the opposite, leading to segregation, not integration.
The market economy and the liberal democratic state are two of the West’s greatest achievements, but without a strong sense of identity and morality, they will fail. To turn crisis into opportunity, we must recover the central insight of our great religious and civic traditions, that society is woven out shared ideals. Confident in our identity, we can welcome and integrate new waves of immigration. Strong in our moral sense, we can build businesses that strengthen communities. The choice is stark. Fail, and we will have the politics of anger and decline. Succeed and Britain may yet again become an example to the world.
(Here is a link to the original >>> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/01/we-need-morality-to-beat-this-hurricane-of-anger/)
