I also am so sorry – My Polish neighbours and my mother’s Polish companion are gutted and let us not forget the large number of Poles exterminated in German prisons including my mothers friend’s father. Bless you ‘Tad.’

Good blog on Poland and Hitler Stalin

The old Stalinists always used the exscuse

that Stalin was buying time and thought the UK was trying to forment war with Germany.Also how strange the first great atrocity of the War revealed by the NAZIs

How come you have not commented on the “events” in Kyrgyzstan? Are there similarities to the way the UK Govt has treated the Uzbeks?

Jimmy, you sound more and more like my e-friend in Australia. He claims that the hard seats in schools don’t suit the more boney bottoms of boys, and that this is why girls do better in school.

I too have been upset by the news of this crash and my thoughts are with the people of Poland today.

[We've had a large number of Polish workers in Ireland since the advent of the "Celtic Tiger" and they earned themselves great respect from Irish people.]

I’m waiting for the conspiracy theories to surface about this one.

Yet another reminder not to fly in Russian-built soviet-era aircraft.

I read from news minute ago that there are no survivor this is a big tragedy from Polish government. Possible that the vice president will be the president after this tragedy.

A nicely reasoned post that actually changed how I thought about the crash. I was expecting a ‘What do you do when a bad person dies whilst trying to do a good thing, cheer or boo?’ post.

Never thought about a Head of State that way before, with the Queen, it’s largely ceremonial and slightly arcane. Interesting to see that the role plays a much bigger part in the day to day life of people form other countries.

Also, spoiled slightly by the nutjob worried about his Precious Bodily Fluids and his huge false equivalence argument.

So much for flying in rotten old aircraft, the plane was from the 1960′s and is not the safest.

meanwhile here in Blackburn, I had my picture taken with Jack Straw last night, I am still recovering from it.

I will try and keep you up to date as to what happens. jack has enetered polling stations on election day some years back, was reported to the police and filmed doing so by the BBC, the tape disappeared and nothing ever came off it.

This time we will make sure that should he do it again, he’ll be a u-tube hit.

Todays afternoon meeting will have 300+ muslim women listening to Yvonne Ridley and Bushra Irfan, the candidate, Aaifa Siddique case, coming before US courts on election day, will be part of the debate by looking at the emailed question we received.

Over and out from Black burn, got to rush.

A Polish leader dies in an aeroplane crash. Shades of Wladyslaw Sikorski.

And on his way to a Katyn commemoration; talk about irony.

I always thought the Kacynski twins were… close to being barmy, religious nutters, extreme right-wing nationalists, who were determined to turn Poland into an American vassal state and pick arguments with there two most powerful neighbours, Russia and Germany, for no real reason. It’s ironic that after such a history the Polish elite would willingly choose to repeat the mistakes of the past all over again by turning Poland into a loyal outpost of the US empire, despite their geographical position.

Poland’s history is somewhat more complex and less “romantic” than the version which is peddled in the West. Poland’s major “problem”, for centuries, was that it was a state that was in the wrong place, between competing great powers, a battleground.

Poland didn’t have to choose confrontation with Germany, as in many repects Polish militarism and nationalism, was a natural ally of German ultra-nationalism. Poland’s anti-semetism for example. Poland’s agressive anti-communism. One could go on…

One things seems clear though, looking at Poland’s history. Poland’s ruling elite have been intoxicated with their own vastly inflated romantic nationalism to the stage that it totally blinded them to reality. They preferred the grand, romantic, gesture, to a rational, sober, apprasal of their objective interests, and realpolitik.

What on earth possessed the Polish ruling class to imagine that the Western powers, France and Britain, could or would, protect them from Nazi agression? Didn’t they have the sense to look at a map?

In my opinion, having talked to many Poles from the south and east of the country, or what was the old Polish easter border; Poland was led up the garden path by France and Britain, who wanted above everything to push Germany into a war in the east with Russia. Poland was a stepping-stone and an expendible one at that. The Poles were incredible gullable in making an alliance with the western powers who didn’t have the means to come to their aide in any meaningful way. Arguably Poland would have been better served by a policy of de-facto alliance with Germany against Russia, or even neutrality.

But this is a massive complex historical subject to get into here.

All I’m trying to say is that one shouldn’t swallow Polish nationalist mythology uncritically, like many Poles do, and this has led them over and over again into very hot water.

“Arguably Poland would have been better served by a policy of de-facto alliance with Germany against Russia, or even neutrality.”

Hitler wanted to incorporate Poland and replace the Poles with Germans. So how would and alliance with Germany have helped the Poles? Are you suggesting that by inviting the Germans in the Poles might have spared themselves from Hitler’s genocidal intention?

Hitler, Hitler, Hitler… Germany was always more than just Hitler. One needs to step back from the traqedy that engulfed Poland and examine the run-up to the war dispassionately and obejectively, surely after so many decades it’s possible to do that, or maybe not?

What Hitler did or did not want is important and relevant, but not the whole story. Of course he was a dictator, but before the outbreak of the war he did not have absolute power to chart Germany’s course. If one carefully examines Germany’s relations with Poland one discovers a surprising willingness for compromise with Poland. But of course once the war started all hell broke loose, literally; which seems to be common in wars.

Poland could have adopted a more “realistic” attitude to Nazi Germany which would have made blatant agression far more problematic for Hitler in relation to German public opinion, which was against another war, for obvious reasons. Poland didn’t play it’s cards at all well, relying on diplomatic and military “promises” from the western powers that weren’t worth the paper they were written on, at least not in the real world. But of course Poles are loathe to examine their own responsibility for their historic disasters, preferring a comforting fairytale to harsh reality, which is common to the mindset of romantic nationalists all over.

It’s a gross over-simplification of a complex and contradictory period of european history to just accept the version that Germany was totally alone in it’s agressive stance to its neighbours and 100% guilty or bad.

Hitler’s charismatic rhetoric was one thing, what was possible was something else.

I think one can make, if one chooses, if one takes a long and hard look at the available historical record, and steps away from the war-propaganda, a case that Poland was bait in a trap and the Polish elite were too stupid to realize this and led Poland towards disaster as they had done so many times before. The trap was to turn Germany towards the east to fight the war in the east, by promissing the eastern nations a lot but not delivering on those promises. Objectively one can argue that the war was in fact fought mostly in the east, so this strategy worked. After all over 80% of the Germany army was fighting in the east for most of the war. Poland was sacrificed and the Polish elite allowed their country to be sacrificed.

Germany didn’t start out with a crazed plan for Poland, that came after the war started and total barbarism took over.

If Poland had adopted a realistic attitude to Germany based on its own national interest and an alliance with Germany, or an understanding with Germany, it would have been very difficult for Hitler to launch a war of conquest against Poland indeed. Hitler had to work hard to convince the German people that he was fighting to defend German interests from a country surrounded by agressive enemies united in an unholy alliance aimed at Germany.

Poland didn’t have to join that alliance, there was an alternative strategy that could have been contemplated and tried, only the Polish elite were too stupid to realize it, with tragic consequences to follow.

It’s not surprising if conspiracy theories do begin. I don’t know much about Poland’s politics. But I do know that the death in a Road Traffic Crash of Alexander Dubcek was, and is, deemed extremely suspicious by many people in Slovakia. Mozambique President, Samora Machel’s death over South African airspace was also highly suspicious. Jorg Haider’s, too. Dag Hammarskjold’s as well.

It’s not a parallel situation, obviously. I’m simply saying that whenever senior politicians die in transit, it’s to be expected that there are going to be serious questions and serious suspicions too.

writerman,

Drang nach Osten. Look it up sometime. And while you’re at it, Lebensraum.

I don’t mind alternative theories, but blaming the victims of fascist aggression seems a bit silly. Your multi-paragraph screed above amounts to nothing more than “she, the rape victim, was dressing provocatively.”

I think you were one of the silly gooses that was arguing that 911 was an inside job on a previous thread, so this doesn’t surprise me.

“Germany didn’t start out with a crazed plan for Poland, that came after the war started and total barbarism took over.”

Is that so? Is it not the case that when Ribbentrop visited Churchill at Chartwell in 1937, showed him a map of Germany’s plan for an eastern empire and asked what Churchill thought, Churchill replied:

“We don’t like the Russians, but we don’t hate them that much.”

And Hitler’s plans were hardly original. Bismark did not want African colonies. “Here” he said pointing to eastern Europe, “is my empire.”

Poland could have been defended by Britain and France, through an attack on Germany’s Western front. At the time France had three million men under arms, whereas Germany had only eight divisions on the Western front. But the French were defeatist, and the Brits, like the French, preferred fascism to communism and so feared to weaken Germany as a bulwark against Russia. That is why, when Leo Amery and others urged the government to bomb German munitions stores in the Black Forest, the air Minister, Sir Kingsley Wood, replied “Are you aware it is private property? Why you will be asking me to bomb Essen next” (Essen being the home of the Krupp munitions factories).

Off-topic but important Craig. Gary McKinnon’s mum will be standing against Jack Straw.

Jeff over at his ‘SNP Tactical Voting’ blog has his say. He’s a very sound chap is Jeff but, I’m staggered to say, he proffers the view that Jack Straw “seems like a decent guy”.

I referred him to your blog.

Well this is a concept, so no one should expect all the details to be there. And only 1st year work?

Awesome.

This is moving towards levels of historical complexity that are perhaps out of place here.

I’m not a fan of Churchill. I think he was a disaster for Britain and it’s longterm interests. Britain virtually destroyed itself fighting Germany for what exactly? Was it to save Poland? Well that didn’t work did it? Poland was destroyed, lost for decades, because it was not defendable. It was obvious that if Germany invaded Poland Russia would too. So promising to defend Poland was an easy promise to make, because it was totally unrealistic.

What did Britain gain from fighting the war exactly? A defeated Germany? But Germany never wanted to fight Britain, on the contrary “all” they wanted from Britain was that Britain kept out of their sphere of influence, which was the East, the fight against the Soviet Union for the East. And did Britain save the East? No, the Russians took the East, after they crushed Germany.

So, Britain’s two main war aims came to nothing. But what about the price that was paid? Britain bankrupted itself fighting a war it didn’t really need to fight and “lost”. Britain became an American vassal state, firmly in the American sphere of influence. Instead of Germany becoming Europe’s great power, Russia and the United States carved up Europe between them, and the UK turned towards nostalgia and the great historical myth that it had won the war against Germany.

Putin’s brand of nationalism has a long and consistent history. Lest you think I am incorrect just consider this, and Stalin did play a role…

Why Do the Russians Need a Headache in Chechnya?

The Chechen culture is different from the Russian culture. Sixteenth century Tsarist Russia provides a precursor and historical hint at the long lines of tensions between the two societies. Turks and other alien forces required a buffer and the Chechen region from time of earlier Russian domination set the stage for resistance, and the broad template remains the same. Different cultures, strong sense of independence from any Russian domination, harsh Russian attacks ?” harsh Chechen resistance.

The Russians do not so much need a “headache” ?” they seek a buffer and a range of control of neighboring countries. When the Americans stirred things up in Georgia with attempts to install missiles and do various mischiefs, the Russians felt threatened and retaliated. It is more about world power, geo-politically perceived spheres of influence and security. When the Russians are unable to accomplish such ends, and elements of determined “Muslim” inspired resistance still fight on, the “headache” becomes the war for dominance and violence breeds more violence. Putin or Medvedev ( see: http://www1.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/special-reports/Russia-Calls-for-Tougher-Measures-to-Fight-Terrorists-89794202.html) or whoever rules believe and voice the idea that overwhelming brutality will conquer and quell ?” in this very Tsarist/Czarist approach. Simply stated, it will not ?” but that’s the Russian way, it is the way of all large powers. And the evidence is there:-

My old family, being large, sometimes rich and powerful, well-connected, highly militarised, have fought in most of the wars fought in Europe over the last three hundred years, on an extraordinary number of different sides, often in the same battles.

In the last great war in Europe, WW2; which has to be seen in the context of WW1, or a continuation of it, otherwise it makes no sense; they fought for Russia, for Poland, for France, for Germany, for Denmark, for Britain, for the United States, and at enormous cost, even for those on the winning side.

So, I’ve become aware of conflicting histories, mythologies, and competing nationalisms. All of them, all the fighters in these various armies, apparently believed they were fighting for God and the Fatherland, or King, and that they were in the right and only fighting to defend themselves from foreign agression and domination, for freedom. They knew, and felt they were right.

Now, I’ve become highly sceptical of the entire ghastly business behind nationalism, folk and blood, and sacred land, especially about the land bit.

I don’t think people in the UK really understand Europe very well. I think they are insular and don’t speak the languages or know much about the history, preferring over-simplification instead, after all Britain had an empire to take care of. Britain’s policy towards Europe was very simple for centuries wasn’t it? We go to war with anyone, any country that seems likely become too powerful and potentially rival us and our empire. But we are not agressors, we are only defending ourselves and our freedom. But is this true, or is it a convenient and powerful myth?

Quoth Writerman – “So, Britain’s two main war aims came to nothing.”

You’re not serious, surely. We played a crucial part in resisting the onslaught of the Nazis and their depraved ideology, and were in at the kill. True, the cream of the Nazi war machine was chewed up on the Eastern front, but millions of servicemen and women knew they had to fight to win or a horrific regime might prevail. Germany never wanted to fight Britain? Such wishes were voiced but the expansionist logic of Nazism could only to a clash between the Nazis and Britain. Get real.

writerman,

I can’t quite believe you are serious. You seem to be saying that the problem was that Hitler was not appeased enough and should have been given bits of Poland like he was given bits of the Czech republic.

And left to pursue the final solution unimpeded or what? I really cannot quite believe you are saying this.

Craig,

I’m not sure how much historical detail to go into here, or whether it’s really worth it, as this is still a highly emotive and controversial historical area. Unfortunately I just don’t uncritically accept the British version of European history as the only valid or incontravertable one.

I am not defending Hitler. Hitler though a powerful dictator, wasn’t Germany, despite what he thought. Hitler was able to rule Germany because he tapped into a vein, or culture, inside many Germans that reacted against what was perceived as foreign agression aimed at dominating Germany and boxing it inside artificial post WW1 borders which left millions of ethnic Germans outside the homeland. This redrawing of Germany’s borders was always going to lead to problems sooner or later. Problems that Hitler and his party skilfully exploited. Tapping into a nationalist feeling that Germany was surrounded by enemies, which has been part of German culture for centuries, linked to its geographical position and lack of natural borders.

I am not defending Hitler. I loathe Hitler and all he stood for. But he didn’t just appear out of nowhere. He was a product of an historial epoc that wasn’t created by Germany alone. Like Germany wasn’t responsible for the first world war alone. Hitler and the Germany he came to rule over was, I would argue, a product of WW1 and it’s aftermath. Surely nobody can argue that Germany uniquely responisble for the world that came into existance after WW1?

Germany’s historical relationship to Poland is complex and of long standing. The reason Hitler could play his Polish cards so successfully was that there was a game to be played. Cutting Prussia in half and giving so much territory to a newly created Poland after WW1 was an attempt by the western powers to weaken Germany, and it was ceretainly seen as such inside Germany. It was a source of conflict and resentment just waiting to explode. We are talking about Dazig and the corridor here.

All, and that’s obviously an understatement, I’m saying is that I don’t believe the Polish government played it’s hand well, or intelligently, in relation to Germany in the years leading up to WW2. Poland relied too much on alliances with countries that couldn’t deliver, namely Britain and France.

The whole thrust of German policy was not to fight, if it could be avoided, in the west, but in the east. Unfortunately Poland was in the way.

Was it sensible for Poland to adopt a confrontational line with Germany? I think history shows that it wasn’t. The question is of course, could Poland have chosen a different course? Wouldn’t Germany have invaded them anyway and enslaved them, as Germany was an agressive, fascist regime, led by a maniac?

Well, I’m not sure about this. Couldn’t Poland have adopted a role like Vicy France which had a degree of autonomy and was nominally independent, yet under German influence?

Wouldn’t “appeasement” have been preferable, and giving bit of land back to Germany, have been better than what actually happened to Poland? That is being destroyed and then occupied by the Russians. Was the price in suffering worth it for Poland?

As to the final solution which I didn’t mention. I believe the final solution was a product of the war, not a reason for it being fought. In the chaos that ensued as the war progressed and degenerated into a racewar between a radicalized Germany and the “salvic hordes” typified by Russia, a war of racial survival according to the Nazis, terrible, terrible, things became possible and the ideology of total war took over from all concepts of civilization and barbarism ruled.

Surely, given the scale of the destruction and killing that emerged from the two great wars in Europe, one is allowed, or perhaps one has a duty, to examine the causes of the conflict dispassionately, even if that means questioning historical “truth” and the version of events and cause and effect, which for the most part have been written by the victorious side?

The plan,to which Britain’s elite was party,was indeed to use Poland as bait to start a general war.

How else do we explain Britain and France’s willingness to declare war on Germany in 1939 when the Soviets had committed exactly the same crime as Hitler?

How else do we explain the assassination of Sikorski by British intelligence at the end of WW2?

We are in WW2 territory here and this war has had more lies told about it (especially by the British to themselves) than any other.

On the creation of Hitler to regain control of international communism see Landowski’s account of the Rakovsky interrogation in 1939.Rakovsky,a Rothschild agent,had been given the truth drug and sang like a canary!

It’s online at scribd.com Google Red Symphony.

Oh, dear. I’ve just seen how much I’ve written, sorry. I didn’t intend to hijack anything. Neither did I intend to anger anyone or insult anyone in particular. I suppose I have bit of a thing about Poland. I still have family in Poland, or what’s left of them.

To be honest. I lost a large part of my family in Poland, almost all of them were killed, one way or another. Bizarrely not by the Germans, or the Russians, but by Ukrainian facists who were encouraged and let off their leash by the Germans and their own hatred of Jews, whoops, I may have given the game away there!

As I seem to have irritated a few people, I suppose I should mention as a kind of explanation, that at one of the universities I studied at in Europe I took a two year course in something called “conflict studies” which dealt specifically with the mechanisms involved in international conflicts/war, and how, if possible, one could avoid them in the future. This necessitated a lot of study relating to the causes of wars, especially WW2, which is an extreme case, and therefore both interesting and instructive, and the ultimate challenge for those interested in avoiding war and preserving peace.

The central question was, could one have adopted strategies short of military conflict that could have stopped Hitler? The answer seemed to be that one should never have fought WW1 in the first place, as that led both to Hitler and Stalin taking over. The rise of the Nazis and the Russian Revolution.

Obviously one cannot rewrite history, but of course one can, but one cannot change what’s happened. The past is the past, but one can try to understand it, what actually happened and why, one can try to learn from the mistakes of the past and use this knowledge to protect the future from the same or similar tragedies that may have been avoidable.

When Elvis Costello saw in 1977 Oswald Mosley putting forward views very similar to those of ‘writerman’ on BBC TV’s ’24 Hours’ (the predecessor to ‘Newnight’) about how Britain’s involvement in WW2 had been futile he decided to write a song about it. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ7bsiAYLaA

Polish ‘romanticists’ and ‘realists’:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n12/john-connelly/those-streets-over-there

@writerman

It’s not what Britain gained from WWII, it is how much more would have been lost without pursuing the course they did. For example, on the question of technological progress, with war machines bursting into life all around them, would it make sense for Britain not to be participating in this process? (Arguably, every well-developed industrial nation *had* to take part in WWII)

Ireland, for example, remained ostensibly neutral, but also largely agricultural, and so on. If Ireland had joined the Allies, how might their economy have developed between the 50s and 90s, when a miracle was engineered by paying (yes, paying) host foreign capital at rock-bottom prices and let them use their skilled labour force.

For the amount you’ve written here, the wheat to chaff ratio could be a touch higher.

@writerman

Also, please don’t write a response more than 1.5 x longer than my post.

@ kingfelix

@writerman

“Also, please don’t write a response more than 1.5 x longer than my post.”

Why not let the fella answer as succintly or long-windedly as he likes? You scared of sustained argument?

Wheat from chaff ratio you say?

Could say the same about your input..

.

What’s with keeping comments short? We’re only talking a few electrons.

Those with a short attention span should migrate to Twitter, whatever that is.

Writerman asks, “What did Britain gain from fighting the war exactly?”

It seems to me that a good answer is provided by considering the likely alternative outcomes, which were:

(1) German conquest of Russia, consolidation of the German empire including Vichy France, with fascist Italy and Spain as satellites — an outcome that would have made British independence tenuous in the extreme, especially as many of the ruling elite would have been happy to do a deal with Hitler and join a fascist block;

(2) Russian defeat of Germany followed by a drive to the Atlantic ?” an outcome fatal to British independence;

(3) a Russo-German struggle to the point of exhaustion, ending in a stalemate, with (most of) Germany under Allied control.

The third outcome is what Britain worked for and got, and which most people in Britain would have wanted. Britain lost the empire and her great power status, but became a relatively independent member of an American-led democratic alliance, which until China went Communist, encircled the only major totalitarian regime still standing. That alliance insured Britain’s security for more than 60 years.

Britain’s primary role in WW2, was to provide the unsinkable aircraft carrier that allowed the US to gather up its resources and put a halt to the Russian advance at a line just inside the Germany’s eastern frontier. Britain’s loss of status reflected her relative economic decline, a loss of status that was inevitably, although the transformation was hastened by war.

The best possibility for averting war may have occurred in 1934 when Poland proposed to France military action to remove Hitler. By this time, Germany was a one-party state, Hitler was ruling by decree and the Blood Purge of June 1934 made it clear that Hitler was a psychopathic tyrant who would not hesitate to use violence when it served his purpose. Yet Britain, under the National Government of MacDonald, would not support such action and France would not act without Britain.

Thus Britain’s policy. which promoted German rearmament and territorial expansion “provided not a shot is fired,” was either totally unrealistic, or cynically crafted to provoke a Russo-German war of mutual annihilation.

For Poland, in 1939, refusal to negotiate with Hitler, once Britain had provided a guarantee of security, does not seem so crazy. The Poles saw Czechoslovakia dismembered in stages. So why give any ground voluntarily? It would only make the final assault on their territorial integrity that much more certain of success.

It seems to me that occurrences such as the Blood Purge of 1934 should be seen as watershed events marking the transformation of constitutional states into a threat to world peace. In modern times, 9/11 seems to mark such a transformation. That there are so many agents of the US, Israel and the corporate world intent on cramming the ludicrous official conspiracy theory down the public’s throat, surely confirms the significance of that event.

@writerman

“I don’t think people in the UK really understand Europe very well. I think they are insular and don’t speak the languages or know much about the history, preferring over-simplification instead, after all Britain had an empire to take care of.”

From my own travels, I would say – I don’t think people in America really understand the world, and do prefer over-simplifications while the US tries to build its global Empire. Is it simply a process of cycles of human history? Willful conflict being an integral part of building the Empire? The Romans, Britsh and now the Americans are having a go?

“Also, please don’t write a response more than 1.5 x longer than my post.

Why not let the fella answer as succintly or long-windedly as he likes?

”

Not to worry, I hadn’t exactly noticed everyone here doing what anybody tells them, anyway

“From my own travels, I would say – I don’t think people in America really understand the world”

Confirmation bias. It’s fairly easy to find such behavior if you’re looking for it.

Alfred: “That there are so many agents of the US, Israel and the corporate world intent on cramming the ludicrous official conspiracy theory down the public’s throat, surely confirms the significance of that event.”

Bullshit. Really the only time people ever talk about such in the popular press is when the nutjobs bother them with their loony conspiracy theories.

What person or entity in the corporate world has been cramming down the “official theory”? What Israeli has responded to the nutjobs, such that they have cited the “official theory”?

I think you’re starting to believe the conspiracy nuts who seem to think that the world cares about conspiracy nuts.

And by the way, congratulations on being manipulated by the American right wing!

Hey, Larry,

I thought that’d get you going, which is one reason I put it in. But your response “bullshit” is hardly convincing.

As for conpiracy nuts, how about these folks:

http://patriotsquestion911.com/

You think they’re all nuts?

And anyhow, how was it a bunch of Arabs with no obvious skills or moral conviction, armed only with box cutters, were able to outwit a trillion-dollar defense establishment — and no one at the Department of Defense or the military had to resign.

Thre is a special thread all for 911.

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/the_911_post.html

Larry knows this already, but Alfred is a fairly newly-appeared name, I think, so he may perhaps not know.

Yeah, Alfred, we’ve been through that. Some of those “patriots” are actually certifiable. Or have been certified.

And your “bunch of Arabs” comment is racist and stupid. (I didn’t initially think that often-stated “argument” was racist, but I’ve heard it so much that I know it comes from a racist place).

Larry,

Why don’t you deploy a real argument? But no, not here.

Hey, Richard,

You’re up late, or are you not in Britain? Anyhow, I only mentioned 9/11 in the context of British foreign policy 1934-1939, and to annoy Larry. My point, however, was relevant.

“Yet another reminder not to fly in Russian-built soviet-era aircraft.”

I’ve flown on a TU-154 before (operated by Air Koryo) and it wouldn’t be my choice for the chief executive’s airline if I were a president but it has a surprisingly good safety record. Surprising given that it is used in countries with some of the laxest safety regulations (i.e the old Soviet bloc, especially the stans) and very few of the crashes have been due to mechanical error.

Thanks angrysoba!

Waow Jake, Ingo and consorts!

“Yet another reminder not to fly in Russian-built soviet-era aircraft.”

“So much for flying in rotten old aircraft, the plane was from the 1960′s and is not the safest.”

Isn’t that a cliche worth of “conspiracy theories”?

At least theories are tentative insight, not uninformed belief.

According to news released yesterday, the pilot declined pressing suggestions from the Russian controlers to divert to more suitable airports. His several attempts to land in Smolensk against advice and standard professional common sense has to be questioned and investigated.

More of interest in this (air) field is the probable assassination of president Sikorsky in (still) occupied Gibraltar (a well substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, not “shades from the past”, Dr Paul)

Well, all in all the reactions show interest for this important political event and that’s good news.

The central question raised by Poland as staging ground for WW2 is whether or not there was an Anglo-American plan for WW2.

A number of inescapable facts suggest that this was indeed the case.

FDR had given pre-war undertakings to Churchill that the US would enter the war on the side of Britain and France.He was providing naval and materiel assistance to Britain when the US was pretending to its own people that they were neutral and had no plans whatever to involve the US in another European war.

There is extensive evidence that the US provoked and fully expected the Japanese intervention in 1941.

Official historians have allowed themselves to be thoroughly misled into relaying accounts of WW2 that ignore the existence in powerful places like Windsor Castle of documents re-important actors like the Duke of Kent, his brother Windsor,George VI and Mountbatten in the run-up to WW2.

Official history has it that both Edward and his brother were against war with Germany.The same is recorded re-Joseph Kennedy.The supposed crypto-fascism of these players is used to furnish this misleading account of their true role.

All,I would suggest,were party to a plan to entrap Hitler into a two-front war that would culminate in the expansion of the state-capitalist Soviet empire.Thus Poland,which was the ostensible reason for Britain and France to make a stand against Hitler in 1939,would by the end of the war be a troublesome obstacle to Allied plans for the post-war settlement of E.Europe.

Sikorski personified that obstacle and Frederick Winterbottom,the secret service agent later responsible for the Duke of Kent’s death,removed that obstacle via plane sabotage in both cases.

Others who were not party to the plan were removed from the scene.Patton failed to understand that the US had no plans to push into Soviet territory and had actually deemed the East/West frontier to be a line much further West than most envisaged.

It surely is high time people had a better understanding of how wars come about.The true story will never be found in the records released by the victors.

I don’t want to say anything positive about the Russian media, Craig, but coverage of the ceremony at Katyn attended by Putin and Prime Minister Tusk was rather extensive. The report I saw on Channel One the evening after the ceremony even included sound bites from Andrzej Wajda and Lech Walesa, who were there as well.

More interestingly, a couple days before the ceremony the Kultura channel broadcast Wajda’s 2007 film “Katyn,” which until then had had only limited screenings in Russia.

Another person attending the ceremony was Arseny Roginsky, chair of Memorial. In an article published this past week, he called the ceremony a big step forward. And he is certainly no fan of Putin’s, as he underscores in the article:

http://hro.org/node/7932

On the other hand, immediately after the ceremony coverage on Channel One, the news reader reported that Putin and Tusk had a separate meeting after the ceremony to “discuss a long-term natural gas delivery contract and the Nord Stream project.” I took this as a not-so tacit admission that the new “thaw” vis-a-vis Katyn had a quite practical dimension for Putin.

Interesting, Apostate.

Louis Mountbatten… his name pops up everywhere, doesn’t it? He contributed to the monumental screw-up that was the Partition of India, Lady Mountbatten had a long-running affair with Nehru about which he knew and in which he acquiesced, he appears again in murky corners and smoke-filled rooms during the third Harold Wilson term and then, later, is assassinated, obliterated, allegedly (officially) by the IRA – but responsibility for that act is disputed.

Interestingly, the UK did not invade the Republic of Ireland after that terrorist act, nor did they do so when Airey Neave (again, an assassination of disputed provenance) was killed, nor even when the Grand Hotel, Brighton was bombed and Thatcher nearly killed (saved by a visit to the bathroom).

You on the bus, Larry?

My sympathies for the Polish amongst you…

Off Topic

You know Craig Im sure I saw an interview with David Frost and Benazir Bhutto after her first assasination attempt failed. Im sure she mentioned the name of someone who killed Osama Bin Laden. Someone better tell the Americans..

Also for the conspiracy debunkers over 9/11, and this is from people who know.

1) Pentagon Strike: how can a jetliner, travelling at the alleged speed it hit the Pentagon, strike it so close to the ground. Here is where physics causes the ‘smoking gun’ problem with the official version.

Ground effect means its impossible for the plane to fly so low, and if it was, that pristine lawn you see in the photos in front of the Pentagon…well that wouldnt be there…..

Why would anyone even think of invading Ireland? The IRA were a creature of the North, i.e. the UK. They used the Republic as somewhere to hide out, or to rob our banks.

Yes, anonymous, 9/11 has been done to death, on a special 9/11 thread. It’s not supposed to be discussed here.

Oh and if you are really bored today, go look into the Minot Incident (missing nuclear warheads from American base in 2007?)

Aparently by mistake they were loaded onto a plane!

1) Knowing military procedure, this wasnt no mistake, nothing happens with those things without a full auditable trail. There are enough failsafes in the procedures to stop it from happening accidentally….

So which moron high up in the American services was trying to start a war….Cheney?…

http://www.legitgov.org/minot_afb_nukes_oddities.html

CLG has a collection of “oddities” on the Minot affair at the above.

Suhayl Saadi

What does “You on the bus, Larry? ” mean?

I don’t mean its literal meaning. I know you are probably using it to mean some sort of analogy that I’m not smart enough to work out?

OT

This just coming through on Twitter (a URL will follow)

“Homosexual link to murder of South African white supremacist Terre’blanche under investigation, police say” – Reuters

Arsalan,

I left a note for you on the “Comment Is Free, But Hidden” thread.

Dreoilin I know I replied to it but I think the reply was deleted.

Ok, Arsalan, no worries.

——

Anyone interested in the Terre’blanche thing has probably Googled, but if not it’s in the NYT:

http://tinyurl.com/y9mtywp

Tom,

Thanks – that’s interesting, especially the Wajda bit. Hopeful, really. You may not remember, but did the Soviet alliance with Hitler get a mention? I can see a scenario where the audience was left to presume these were poles fighting for the Nazis like so many of the Baltics.

Here’s a bit of a mish-mash post, which also features the issue that shall not be mentioned for those obsessives who insist on bringing it up.

http://angrysoba.blogspot.com/2010/04/tragic-flights.html

Thanks for interesting post & comments.

Fascinating to see history in the prcoess of being re-written, again.

Writerman, think whoever told you to shorten your comments should apologise!

yes writerman, keep posting, you make more sense on here than most do.

(off topic) Angrysoba, A* for the isle of Man!

Writerman: Germany of course was more than Hitler, just as everywhere is more than the sum of their dictators. However, he & his ilk encouraged self-pity & selfishness, and created the climate of fear which allowed indifference to brutality and, eventually, genocide, to prevail. What a dick. Thank goodness these dictators inevitably die horrible deaths, it’s the only point to them.

My word this blog is beginbnign to shape up into a WW2 rememberance blog.

We canvassed near Ewood park today,Rovers held Man U to a draw and we got as very good response from the people living there,. 5thats to say the indigenous population, not one nasty word for this independent candidate.

jack Straw cannot imagine what we have gotin stall for him.

Still, we need all the support you can give us,either by coming to Blackburn or by blogging on Jacks favourite sites, his past has caused rivers of blood in Iraq Afghanisrtan and soon in Iran, so what ever you can bring up to make him think and worry ios appreciated and will be helping us.

Jack Straw is a whore

No one loves his war any More!

Ingo

You have a lot more confidence in my people than I do.

Muslims are blindly loyal to Labour.

They vote for it because their fathers did, and their fathers before them.

What you need to make them realise is loyalty to Labour does not mean Loyalty to Islam.

The attitude of the elders is, obey the law, obey the leader. They repeat the old saying that we are told by racists, “If you don’t like it here leave”, by changing it to “If you don’t want to vote Labour leave the country”.

They will not tell you this, but they tell each other.

This link needs to be broken, don’t under estimate how difficult it will be to break it.

They think they owe something to Labour.

They think they owe them for the roads, the schools and the hospitals.

They assume they are gifts from a kind king instead of a simple fraction of their taxes returned to the.

Arsalan: Re. “the bus”. Thanks for your question about this.

On another thread, I’d invited Larry to imagine that he was sitting next to me on a long-distance American bus with the rain falling outside and no in-cabin entertainment, to forget for a few minutes about politics and just to tell me something about himself in order to allow me to understand that he was a singular human being. Larry had objected to my constantly referring to him in the plural.

The bus then became a reference to Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters as immortalised in Tom Wolfe’s book, ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test’. “Are you on the bus” was a phrase the Pranksters used and I think may have derived from the restless ‘genius’ of the journey, Neal Casady, who was also the central study of Jack Kerouac’s iconic book, ‘On The Road’. Both books trace a journey across the mid-C20th American soul.

What you have to show them is they owe Labour Nothing!

Instead Labour owed them for all the loyal voting the kept Labout in power.

But instead Labour stabbed them in the back. By attacking them to appease everyone but them.

Suhayl Saadi

I was right, that comment was beyond my intelegence.

Actually, while the adherence of South Asians (of all religions) to the Labour Party is still largely true, in Scotland, there are now quite a few South Asians who have. and will. vote SNP. They had the first Asian MSP (sadly now deceased) and indeed the SNP has courted the ‘Asian Vote’ for around a decade now. Osama Saeed will be their candidate against Labour’s Anis Sarwar for Glasgow Central (that’s the parliamentary constituency, not the railway station!). It’ll be an interesting contest.

Not at all, Arsalan, you do yourself a disservice, my man! It’s just that they didn’t have fish on the bus, but rather, Kool-Aid, spiked with acid.

“Muslims are blindly loyal to Labour.”

What a strangely white bitter Middle England sort of thing to say! As Craig points out, many of the Muslim votes in Blackburn, for example, come from people who are being bullied into it, or defrauded, not because of loyalty. This isn’t a generic character flaw, it’s a crime.

So Ingo, hurrah for what you’re doing in Blackburn. Bushra Irfan’s website’s looking good now, too (though is she allowed to offer a free dinner?)

On the other hand, you could say that many votes are the result of people being bullied or defrauded in some way. From ‘Vote for us or suffer’ to ‘We promise we’ll do this, honest’.

That’s why, if faced with no credible independent, or Green, I’m still inclined to hope the Lib Dems get a go, since they are patently the worst of the three parties at doing either.

I can’t understand why people on this blog want to be friendly to muslims.

Muslims want to change your way of life. They want you to submit to their religious laws.

Why don’t you join with your friends in Israel to eliminate forever this menace to our people.

We have a solution, a final solution, that will rid us of this muslim menace once and for all!

Come join with us.

Join New Labour, today…

Tony, tell the truth. You’re Arsalan, aren’t you?

I’d like to know what this Bushra Irfan really believes. On her website she says:

“Muslim terrorists is [sic] inevitable and bound to be more likely as we are attacking, invading and bombing muslim countries…If we stopped the action ( of invading and attacking people) we may see a dramatic fall in terrorism as violence begets violence”.

Yet at the bottom of every page she has links to an Alex Jones piece on 7/7 and the Loose Change video about 9/11.

“they didn’t have fish on the bus, but rather, Kool-Aid, spiked with acid”

Vinegar ? no problem.

Yeah, that’s terrible about Bushra Irfan.

Another British leftist manipulated by American right-wing nutters.

Under the headline: “Polish president had history of dangerous landings,” ABC News reports that: “A leading Polish defence analyst says late president Lech Kaczynski was well known for ordering pilots to land in dangerous conditions.”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/12/2869997.htm?section=justin

Many air disasters have resulted from a co-pilot’s failure, due to deference, to correct an error by a pilot of superior rank. The crash of the Polish President’s plane appears to fit this pattern, undue deference in this case having been shown by the pilot to the poor judgment of the President.

The moral is, don’t fly on Air Force One or any other presidential plane unless the President has been bound and gagged before takeoff and denied any possible means of communicating with the cockpit.

The Katyn Massacre refers, specifically, to the murder by the NKVD of 4,243 Polish military officers in the Kozelsk prisoner-of-war camp in the spring of 1940. This was, by Polish standards during WW2, a rather minor catastrophe, since more than five million Polish civilians, of whom slightly more than half may have been Jews, were slaughtered by occupying German and Russian forces.

The greater massacre of civilians was a direct consequence of Germany’s plan for eastward expansion, a plan known to the western powers well in advance. Britain’s policy of appeasement might, therefore, be better understood as a policy to enable a German assault on Russia, an assault that made the destruction of Poland inevitable.

Is that one reason why we hear so much about the Jewish holocaust: because it distracts attention from the far greater holocaust that was the Second World War (62 to 78 million dead), for which British policy might be considered largely responsible?

The moral culpability for Hitler’s pursuit of lebensraum and his extermination of Poles, Jews, Roma and (beginning with the pre-war T-4 programme) lies with Hitler. And, if you really want, with Stalin as well given the Nazi-Soviet pact, Stalin’s assistance in carving up Poland and Stalin’s refusal to believe any one who told him about Hitler’s plans to invade the Soviet Union. This included a Communist German worker who brought to the Soviet embassy a German-Russian phrasebook with phrases such as “Hands up!”, “Surrender!”, “Take us to the commisar of the collaective farm!” etc… etc… Stalin refused to believe British intelligence who told him Hitler was planning to invade and he also refused to believe Richard Sorge, Soviet spy in Japan, who had discovered Hitler’s invasion plans.

Appeasement was a hope that war could be averted given that Britain and others really cringingly believed Hitler might settle for what they allowed him to take and it certainly did not make Operation Barbarossa inevitable.

Besides, I don’t understand your point.

“Appeasement” made World War Two possible, therefore World War Two was largely Britain’s fault?

If that’s true what was the alternative? Begin World War Two earlier? In which case someone like Alfred would be able to blame Britain for World War Two and think that the Holocaust is some hyped up attempt to take the blame off the Allies!

World War Two had already begun, by the way, in Asia where hundreds of thousands were fighting and dying throughout the nineteen thirties. Japan had already gone to war twice with the Soviet Union and was carving up China. One of the problems Stalin had with a possible invasion from Hitler’s Germany was the possibility of having to fight a war on two fronts.

Anyway, I am sure from your vantage point of seventy years of hindsight you’ll have a better plan about what Britain could have done.

Suhayl Saadi

Not this time.

Anyway, you can use cool aid and acid(viniger) with fish.

If your fish smells because it wasn’t caught on the day, the trick is to wash it with viniger.

And then you can use coke/cool aid or any other soda drink on your batter to get the same effect(Hallal) of beer batter.

Nice tradition tasting Hallal fish and chips just like you get in the shops!!!!

Thanks, Arsalan, I’ll try the recipe!

Now, I’ll bet if the Merry Pranksters had known that…

“World War Two had already begun, by the way, in Asia where hundreds of thousands were fighting and dying throughout the nineteen thirties. Japan had already gone to war twice with the Soviet Union and was carving up China. One of the problems Stalin had with a possible invasion from Hitler’s Germany was the possibility of having to fight a war on two fronts.”

Angrysoba

That’s a crucial point.

“The IRA were a creature of the North, i.e. the UK. They used the Republic as somewhere to hide out, or to rob our banks.” Dreoilin

Exactly.

Poor Poland hit by yet another terrible tragedy, sometimes I think we’re cursed.

One of the interesting things about the origional Katyn Massacre, when the advancing German army found the site and began digging up the bodies, is the reaction of the British press which accepted without question the Russian version of events, that it was, in fact, the Germans who had executed the Polish officers. This fantasy, which was known to be a fantasy, and the opposite of the truth, continued for years and was an cause of incredible friction between the Polish government in exile, Polish military personel, and the British Government.

One particular Polish general, Sikorski, just would let the matter be swept under the propaganda carpet. He was then involved in a mysterious plane crash which silenced him for ever. My father who was a member of Sikorski’s bodyguard, always believed that Churchill ordered his assassination, as did most of the Poles around Sikorski.

The twisting of the truth out of all recognition by the British press, blaming the Germans for a warcrime everyone knew couldn’t have been committed by the Germans, because they were’nt even there and the Russians were, is just an illustration of how truth is sacrificed in wartime, if it’s necessary. This is why one needs to be sceptical when dealing with the truths of history too. War is a very dirty business indeed, and total war is totally dirty. And this realization can help us develope a healthy scepticism about the “truths” we are told today about the reasons behind our current wars and conflicts. That’s what we can learn from hisory, to be sceptical and as a rule of thumb never believe a word our leaders tell us, until we’ve seen the proof, or at least examined it objectively. For example in relation to Iran and the difficulty they have in proving that they are not secretly developing nuclear weapons.

For those who question whether Poland was really “set up” and used as “bait”, “sacrificed” in order to push Germany towards the East and the Russians, and I am not saying this is “true” but a possible interpretation of what happened, perhaps another example might shed some light on how small countries are regarded, as pawns, by great powers.

A mountain of evidence shows that Britain used Denmark and Norway as “bait” for yet another trap and the Germans fell for it, spreading themselves even thinner on the ground, which was the purpose of the trap. Britain spread the story that it was planning to invade/occupy Norway, Denmark and Swenden and attack Germany from there. The Germans then occupied Norway and Denmark first to counteract this move. Swenden was left alone because the Swedish government was neutral and enjoyed excellent relations with Berlin, at least until it was clear that Germany had lost the war. This happened after Stalingrad, when everyone knew the game was up.

Anyway what the fate of Norway and Denmark shows, is that the idea, the practice, of sacrificing small countries and their people, in wartime, like pawns in a monsterous and bloody chess game is as “shocking” or totally lacking in “seriousness” as it may seem at first glance.

Actually I am with angrysoba here. I think the idea that we should have coexisted with fascism peacefully is nuts. I was reading Mike Arnott’s excellent booklet on the Dundee members of the International Brigade, which reminds me that some people had the courage and foresight to start fighting fascism earlier.

As is now well-known (but not well-known enough, perhaps), the UK hard state was actively manipulating the various manifestations of violent (essentially right-wing) Republicanism (and violent Unionism) for decades.

On possibly the same note, or possibly a separate note, there are those who question the provenance of the deaths of Neave, Mountbatten, and others.

On a third note, the reason there was no clarion-call to pursue the Provisional IRA into the Republic to their hide-outs (to invade The Republic) was because the aim of the whole thing was not to re-take S. Ireland. It had a different agenda pertaining to internal UK politics.

Contrastingly, the aim of the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia is precisely to re-take/ take the Middle East and Central Asia – or at least to lever control of its resources. So the acts of terrorism in the West help to fuel a macro-economic war agenda. That was not the case in relation to ‘The Troubles’ in N. Ireland.

Writerman,

It is absolutely untrue that Britain in any way encouraged or connived at the Stalin/Hitler invasion of Poland, for whatever reason. There is an argument that Britian did ultimayely betray Poland, at Yalta. But the truth is Britain had no practical ability at all to counter Stalin in Central Europe.

One great tragedy was the fate of the Poles who fought so valiantly with the British forces in the RAF or in North Africa, Italy, and Northern Europe, who then returned home and were imprisoned by Stalin – including those who had intended to fight the “free and fair” elections Stalin had promised Churchill with no ntention of delivering.

There was one old Spitfire pilot whose name sadly escapes me who spent 40 odd years in jail. He used to come to Embassy parties and was great fun – he once punched General Jaruselski in our Ambassador’s residence.

Jaruselski’s role is still a subject of some dispute. The idea that he was a patriot who kept the Russians out while not really trying to crush Solidarity is not complete nonsense. He certainly had much less blood on his hands than other communist dictators. I am a bit biased as our back gardens used to connect and we got on fairly well.

Drat this thread, I’ve got no time but keep learning from it. I agree there was no way to coexist with Hitler’s Germany; so did a pacifist friend of mine who signed the peace pledge in the 20′s but ended up being one of the first people into Belsen (as a General’s aide-de-camp).

Off to work!

A lot of East European Communist leaders did that balancing act. Made a deal with ‘the devil’ to keep the devil out. Or at least to prevent overt invasions.

On the other hand, war’s a mindset, isn’t it? All that waste and terror. Would have been good to kidnap Hitler & turn him into a gardener in remotest Scotland instead.

“On possibly the same note, or possibly a separate note, there are those who question the provenance of the deaths of Neave, Mountbatten, and others.”

Who are these people who question?

“On a third note, the reason there was no clarion-call to pursue the Provisional IRA into the Republic to their hide-outs (to invade The Republic) was because the aim of the whole thing was not to re-take S. Ireland. It had a different agenda pertaining to internal UK politics.”

The aim of what whole thing? Who or what had a different agenda? The IRA did not live in the south or operate from here. I can’t follow you for toffee, Suhayl.

Well, you know, technicolour, there’s a tale about that, too. Hitler, of course, had failed to get into the Vienna School of Art on a number of occasions; he was a very mediocre artist. For a while, as a young man, he worked in a park in Vienna, clearing leaves, etc. Stalin was an accomplished, published Georgian poet (“this young man has a great future…”) who spent exile time in Vienna around the same time. Goebbels was a failed novelist.

There’s a three-hander stage-play in that (probably been done, though):

Schiklgruber, Djugashvili and Freud, in a park, in the summer, in Vienna.

‘Schiklgruber, Djugashvili and Freud’… sounds like a Brooklyn law firm: “We do real estate!”

So, next time you see a guy sweeping up leaves… offer him a job in the Applecross Peninsula – a beautiful spot in the north-west of Scotland with lovely gardens and lots of leaves.

Dreolin, now that the fish has all been gobbled-up by Arsalan, Richard and the Merry Pranksters… check out Lobster magazine. There’s quite a lot in their back issues about Northern Ireland, it makes fascinating reading; my allusions in this regard are half-baked (treacle toffee), but there’s far more in-depth analysis there. It’s a rational magazine, not into wild hypothesising, and was founded in the early 1980s by Robin Ramsey and Stephen Dorrill (the latter of whom wrote a big book on the SIS):

http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/

“I think the idea that we should have coexisted with fascism peacefully is nuts.”

But that is precisely what Britain sought until 1939 and even beyond 1939. As late as May 1940, the British Government, under Churchill, contemplated a settlement with Germany which would have involved ceding to Germany British possessions in the Mediterranean and elsewhere.

That is why Britain would not support the Polish-French plan to remove Hitler in 1934. It was why Britain would not act with France to prevent Germany’s remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, contrary to the terms of the Locarno Treaty. And it was why as late as 1939 the British Ambassador to Germany, Arthur Henderson, was instructed to inform Germany that they could do what they wanted in Eastern Europe provided that “not a shot is fired”.

Further, Churchill is said to have remarked after the war that it was the most unnecessary war ever fought. So if the attempt to coexist with fascist Germany was nuts, there were a lot of nutters in the British Government –including Churchill.

Anyway, the idea that one cannot coexist with a government that one does not like is truly nuts. America did not take that view in dealing with the Soviet Union, although the Soviets were at least as vile as Hitler’s Reich and were openly committed to world domination (“we will bury you”, etc.). And, of course, no one even thinks of doing anything about truly nasty government that happen to be on our side, Poland in 1939 for example was no democracy, and was headed by fools who thought that Polish cavalry (on horses) would make an impression against Germany’s Panzer Divisions, or today, Saudi Arabia, for example, or Uzbekistan.

As for Angrysoba’s claim that Britain and France could have done nothing to help Poland when attacked by Germany, it is rubbish. As I pointed out above, the French had three million armed men on Germany’s western front and wouldn’t move against a mere eight German divisions (about 80,000 men). And Britain with a superior air force to Germany would not bomb German ammunition dumps “because they were private property.”

What the Brits did do was distribute gas masks when the possibility of a German gas attack on Britains was precisely zero. They also had people digging trenches in Hide Park. The purpose: to instill a defeatism, which would prevent a public demand for support for Poland. (Tony Blair used the same trick to start the Iraq war, although in that case the argument was that Londoners would be gassed if Britain did not go to war).

Craig,

But Craig I didn’t actually write that Britain connived with Hitler and Stalin in their invasion of Poland, or that they encouraged it, though I’m not sure exactly what “encouraged” means in this context.

It seems odd that Britain and France gave assurances to Poland, in the event of German agression, that they would come to Poland’s aide when this was a practical impossibility, given Poland’s geographical position. There was no land route to Poland, unless one carved one through Germany, and that was impossible given the strength of the German army. There was no sea route for aide because the Baltic was under German control. The only possibility would have been to attack Germany from the air with the Royal Air Force, but how could that possibly have saved Poland?

Obviously Britain didn’t save Poland. It was crushed by overwhelming force, so the assurances were worthless in reality.

It was also obvious that the Russians would invade Poland from the East if the Germans attacked Poland. The government in London wasn’t so obtuse that none of this totally escaped their notice. There was a debate inside the UK government about how Britain should react if war broke out between Germany and Poland. The debate was centred around precisely the question of whether going to war with Germany was “worth it” when Poland’s position was untenable should war break out. What shocked people was the extraordinary speed of the German victory in Poland, regardless of how brave the Polish army was. One of my uncles actually died in a senseless Polish counter-attack against German panzers which was suicidal, though perhaps understandable. I’m not personally an admirer of suicide missions, however “noble.”

I think one needs to look at the practical results of a policy, and then interpret the diplomacy’s effectiveness in that light. That may seem like judging with the benefit of hindsight, but none-the-less this can often shed light, or at least give one a clue towards the context in which policy is taken.

I just don’t have the same “benevolent” attitude to British diplomacy that you do, or the same absolute faith that Britain’s assurances to Poland were quite what they appeared to be on the surface.

You mention Britain’s position in Yalta and that Britain had no choice, in practice, and it was forced to “betray” Poland when faced by Stalin’s boots on the ground.

But Britain was alone at Yalta. Britain was an ally of the other collosus at Yalta, the United States. By this stage Britain was a mere bystander with little real influence and could only watch virtually helplessly as the US and the USSR carved up Europe between them.

If it was right to go to war to save Poland from Hitler, why wasn’t it right to go to war to save Poland from Stalin, especially now that Britain had a really powerful ally beside it? After all Britain, ostensibly, went to war with Germany over Poland. That was the primary war aim at the beginning, saving Poland. Obviously things had changed and now Poland’s fate was not reason enough to go to war. Why not, what had changed? Obviously a lot had changed, and these changes can teach us a lot.

Why could one “exist” peacefully with Stalin’s form of “fascism” for so long, even helping to cover-up the Katyn Massacre, and not live with German fascism?

I am not saying that one should have co-existed with German fascism, but the fact is we were allied with Stalin’s “communism” or red fascism against Hitler’s fascism and called him Uncle Joe and chose to ignore his collosal crimes, which are now regarded as being on a par with Hitler’s. So our attitude to “fascism” and totalitarianism wasn’t as absolutely pure and clear as you seem to think.

One could add that Western countries lived peacefully, for decades, with Spain and Portugal’s fascist regimes without any trouble at all, so things are rather more complex than they appear. It seems there are “fascist” regimes that one goes to war with to save people and liberate them, from the evils of fascism, and other fascist regimes that one doesn’t seem to mind so much. Isn’t that a bit odd? Or at least shouldn’t it make one think a bit and perhaps cause one to reconsider one’s perspectives a tad.

Obviously Hitler was a worse butcher than Franco, but the idea that the West cannot exist peacefully with fascist regimes simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, and that should make one cautious about absolutes. Pretty much the same as today when one thinks about it.

It seems there are “fascist” regimes that one goes to war with to save people and liberate them, from the evils of fascism, and other fascist regimes that one doesn’t seem to mind so much.

Could it be that the former are those one thinks one can win against and/or which present a threat of invasion?

And there are, as you say, fascists and fascists. I always rather thought that, combined with the advancing German armies, people were moved enough by reports of the concentration camps to become NIMBY about it. There was at least one British plot to assasinate Hitler, apparently.

“There was at least one British plot to assasinate Hitler, apparently.”

There are said to have been at least 17 assassination attempts on Hitler’s life. Most if not all undertaken by the same group from the conservative upper classes, and including General Ludwig Beck, Helmut von Moltke, son of the German commander in chief in 1914, Eric Kordt who headed Ribbentrop’s office in the Foreign Ministry, and possibly Admiral Canaris, chief of Military Counterintelligence.

Their best shot was on June 20, 1944 during a daily report to Hitler by Count Klaus Schenk von Stauffenberg, chief of staff of the Home Army. An English-made bomb in a brief case was placed by Hitler’s chair and detonated at the time intended. However, a few moments before, Hitler had left his chair to go to a map on a distant wall.

This was an elaborate plot, but Hitler’s survival, was immediately broadcast on the radio which put the conspirators into confusion. About 700 suspects were arrested and about 5000, killed usually after weeks or months of horrific torture. A few, including Field Marshall Rommel, were allowed to commit suicide as a reward for their past service to the regime. One of those executed was Erwin Planck, son of Max Planck, founder of quantum physics.

Writerman,

“It seems odd that Britain and France gave assurances to Poland, in the event of German agression, that they would come to Poland’s aide when this was a practical impossibility.”

While I agree with most of what you say, I do not believe it is correct, technically, to say that it was impossible for the Allies to aid Poland. Not only, as you acknowledge, could the British have bombed Germany, but the French could have launched an invasion of Germany, against whom they had a 30 to one manpower advantage on the Western front. That would undoubtedly have forced Hitler to divert forces from Poland.

So the Anglo-French guarantee of Poland may have been morally worthless, but it was not impossible of execution.

“It was also obvious that the Russians would invade Poland from the East if the Germans attacked Poland.”

Exactly, that is why the British and French did not fulfill the guarantee to Poland. They were not prepared to weaken Germany lest they be compelled to fight the Russians marching on through Germany and heading for the Atlantic coast.

@suhayl

Any chance of specific references in Lobster. Searches tend to produce Iraq.

Are you aware that in 1969 there was a serious chance of Ireland invading the North but it took refuge in the UN at the time, which organisation was not helpful.

The UK parliament’s treatment of the NI minority since 1922 was shameful and an abrogation of “Imperial” responsibility.

Alfred,

“Impossible” is a big word and I probably shouldn’t have used it.

Why is all this debate about the origins of WW2 relevant anyway, why bother with the past so much, after all, it’s done with isn’t it?

Well, no, it isn’t. The past is coming back at us again. Everytime we want to launch a new imperilist war for oil we seem to dream up a new Hitler leading his SS and panzers against some new, plucky little Poland that needs our help all over again, and then we demonize some second-rate dictator and those who question the fairytale are new appeasers and on and on…

It’s like being stuck in a bloody timewarp, going round and round in circles, fighting WW2 all over again. Why? Because WW2 war supposedly the good war, a war everyone can agree on, therefore it’s a very powerful frame or propaganda tool still. Put the enemy inside the well-understood WW2 frame and suddenly everything becomes so much clearer.

What muddies this “good war” perspective is the fact that the vast majority of the real fighting, where the really massive, historic, battles were fought, didn’t occure between the forces of “good” against “evil”, with democracy triumphing over the Nazis, but were fought by two cruel totalitarian regimes fighting for survival and to the death. For most of the war the Germans had between 75 and 80 of their army on the eastern front. That’s where the German war machine was destroyed. One just has to compare German and Allied casualties on the western front, with the casualties on the eastern front to see how different these two wars really were. And then one gets to the thorny, controversial, and unpleasant subject; if one was going to have a war like that, where would one, if one could, choose to have it fought and by whom?

polo, here you go, re. N. Ireland. If you do a search on the actual Lobster site, you get a number of hits:

http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/intro/search.cgi?zoom_query=Ireland&zoom_and=1

I wouldn’t be at all surprised at what you say, as the Catholics in N. Ireland were being systemically oppressed over many decades, hence the Civil Rights movement. And we know what happened to that, don’t we? Bloody Bloody Sunday (and Bloody Mon-Sat as well).

“why bother with the past so much, after all, it’s done with isn’t it?

Well, no, it isn’t. The past is coming back at us again. Everytime we want to launch a new imperilist war for oil we seem to dream up a new Hitler leading his SS and panzers against some new, plucky little Poland that needs our help all over again, and then we demonize some second-rate dictator and those who question the fairytale are new appeasers and on and on…”

Exactly. Which is why we mustn’t question, here, the official account of Muslim terrorism since September 11, 2001 — except on an expired thread that no one reads!

“if one was going to have a war like that, where would one, if one could, choose to have it fought and by whom?”

Good question.

In which connection, the casualty figures are instructive:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

As a percent of population:

Germany: 7.8 to 9.4% (1937 borders), ethnic Germans in other countries 10 to 19.2%.

Soviet Union: 14.2%

Poland: 16.1 to 16.7%

UK: 0.92%

Canada: 0.4%

USA: 0.32%

@suhayl

Protesters were being kneed in the balls in front of the cameras as early as 1969. I don’t have a link off hand to the online news photo, but I have vivid memories of it. Nothing surprising there.

I can’t get a fix on any invasion of the South in the link you provided. Could you be more specific?

I didn’t say anything about a ‘planned invasion of the South’, polo. My point in raising that hypothetical spectre was simply to demonstrate that the way in which ‘Islamist’ terrorism has been used – to facilitate and leverage a mass invasion of Asia – differs from the way in which ‘Irish Republican’ terrorism was used because the agenda in the case of the UK establishment’s manipulation of the situation in the latter case was entirely different. But the common factor is state instrumentalisation – either overt or covert.

The Lobster articles point to to systemic and violent UK state manipulation of various groups in N. Ireland. If the UK state had wanted for some or other reason to ‘invade’ S. Ireland, they would no doubt have manufactured public hysteria about The Republic in the same way they do today over ‘Islamism’. Instead, they ‘cultivated’ a situation where the security state essentially gained control in the domestic political area and so perpetuated the colonial situation in (domination of) N. Ireland. It also prevented the Civil Rights Movement in N. Ireland from building a strong, non-violent (and possibly also left-wing; some of the Official IRA and some of the Protestant groups were avowedly leftist in orientation, aiming to build links b/w the Protestant and Catholic working classes; this is a narrative completely omitted in the MSM) movement in N. Ireland itself. Ian Paisley and the UDA were the UK hard state’s greatest boons in this scenario. The Provos and the violent Unionist groups both were heavily infiltrated and manipulated by the British Army/ UK intelligence. The articles in ‘Lobster’ go into some detail about such matters. I tried posting some links also re. Prof. David Miller, who makes a study of various aspects of the N. Ireland situation but because this website now screens out postings with more than one Link – at least I think it does – it may not come through. I’ll try posting the links in the next couple of posts.

Here you go:

http://www.dmiller.info/

There’s more by him, but I think you could surf from his site to other ones. He also runs Spinwatch (I say this with some trepidation at the risk of upsetting Apostate).

Miller’s thesis (among many) is that N. Ireland is “an unresolved colonial situation”.

Another one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Mention-War-Northern-Propaganda/dp/0745308368http:

Another:

http://www.amazon.com/Rethinking-Northern-Ireland-Ideology-Colonialism/dp/0582302870

And one more, an article this time. I think that the British people – at least on the ‘mainland’ – have not, as a whole, been exposed to even an iceberg’s edge of the truth about what happened in N. Ireland.

I think it’s important because of Ireland (in many ways, the relationship historically b/w Ireland and Britain over several hundred years both prefigured and annunciated the mechanics of imperialism of the British Empire as a whole; it most definitely was not cricket), but also because once one sees the state with its gloves off, one can no longer harbour illusions about the imperial(ist) state.

http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&folder=715&paper=1039

@suhayl

I don’t think the UK could have manufactured a justification for invading the South nor would it have been in their interest as it would have increased IRA membership expenentionally.

The UK was constantly spinning against the South in relation to it being a haven for the IRA and backing this up with assertions of negligible expenditure in the South on border security compared with that by the UK. This spurious assertion was exposed by the Irish Government which was, at the time, bearing a much larger per head expenditure burden on border security than the UK.

Whatever about the UK, I don’t think the Southern MSM were in any doubt about the methods of perfidious Albion and fully realised that the North was being used as a laboratory for dealing with potential internal civil unrest within the UK and urban excursions outside it.

As for Bloody Sunday, it led, inter alia, to the burning of the British Embassy in Dublin, at which I was present and for which I make no apology. In fact that occasion was one of enlightenment where the Irish Justice Minister instructed the police to place the preservation of human life above that of property.

Infiltration of Irish revolutionary movements by UK forces has been endemic for centuries. We are well used to it and factor it in to our understanding of events.

Why’s everyone talking about Ireland here. What’s it go to do with Poland, and the Katyn massacre?

Folks here have a talent for total irrelevance.

@anonymous

I’m just responding to the comments of others.

Polish disaster was appalling. Unfortunately it is looking increasingly like political interference in the professional sphere. Lessons to be learned worldwide?

Some of you may wish to understand where Alfred is coming from given his understandable reluctance to detail his own political views which he keeps hidden so as to create a false image of objectivity. The attached article by Christopher Hitchens may make things a lot clearer, and rebuts Alfred’s points with a style and panache that I can only dream of achieving. Please not the little reference to the British failure to procreate.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/141501/page/1

The libel on Churchill re saying the war was unnecessary is really outrageous. in the context of 1940 Churchill most certainly not think that the war was unnecessary.

Imperialism and disinformation is one of the larger subjects of this blog, as I perceive it. It will wander occasionally, somewhat in the manner of the ‘Wandering Jew’.

This wander came about because of a reference to Mountbatten in relation to WW2, I think. A study of Louis Mountbatten (Battenberg) tells us much about British Imperialism and without a clear understanding of British Imperialism we cannot fully comprehend either of the World Wars.

So, in a roundabout way, it is of relevance in relation to Polish and Russian history, too. There were (? still are) Polish troops in Iraq; the Polish Govt was intensely adherent to the US line on this and then there was the issue of siting nuclear warheads in Poland – thankfully shelved for the time being.

The manner in which the media manipulates information into propaganda for the war machine is of utmost relevance in today’s world.

One cannot place things into boxes and treat them as though they are separate. So I think it was valid wander.

To learn about British imperialism, or imperialism in general, it is imperative that one study the history of Ireland. I also learned a lot from Polo. Anything that teaches us is good. What an amazing vignette of recent history, Polo, the British Embassy burning in Dublin. Plus ca change…

Suhayl,

We were aware that the building was empty. It had been vacated earlier in the day, and we knew this. There was no danger to life.

Years later, when invited to attend a function at the British Ambassador’s residence and on being introduced to him, I was terribly tempted to say, “I once burned down your Embassy, you know”, which would not have been accurate, as I was only standing around. Shouting perhaps. But not throwing.

It’s taken a while but the idea that it was not really an accident is now surfacing. The interesting thing is that it’s the Georgian president and Polish MPs who are suggesting it:

http://www.worldreports.org/news/283_polands_suspicious_second_katyn_massacre_tragedy

It would’ve made a great conversation-stopper, though, Dreoilin! Priceless! The Second Secretary might’ve choked on the asparagus-tips.

PS. What were you shouting…?

Fascinating, MJ. I thought this would begin soon. I put nothing past Putin. Mind you, does one believe anything the US-stooge President of Georgia says? One might also speculate that what better way, in the Lukewarm War b/w the USA and Russia, of implicating Russia than this? And anyway, in the face of all that, tell me what state puts all its senior armed service people on a single ‘plane? What kind of planning is that? I’m sure it’ll run and run, this story… we’ll never know, we never do end-up knowing, do we? It was much easier in the time of Henry II. Blues skies everywhere.

Stephen, a self-confessed admirer of war-crimes enabler-Jack Straw states, with reference to me, that:

“saying the war (WW2) was unnecessary is really [an] outrageous [libel].”

Unfortunately, Stephen doesn’t know anything relevant to the discussion and so has to engage in silly lying interventions that waste people’s time to rebut.

In his memoirs (which I have read and Stephen hasn’t), Churchill, who led Britain to victory in World War II, wrote:

“One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once, “The Unnecessary War.” There never was a war more easy to stop than that which has just wrecked what was left of the world from the previous struggle.”*

*Memoirs of the Second World War: Part 1, The Gathering Storm.

In his book “The Unnecessary War” (which I have also read and Stephen hasn’t) Patrick Buchanan writes:

“The war was unnecessary, Churchill said, because of the constant blunders before the war that got us into it. It was the easiest war to avoid in all of history. That’s what Churchill told Franklin Roosevelt and he was right. What he didn’t say was a number of those blunders had been committed by Winston Churchill himself.”

Among blunders Churchill referred to included the refusal of Britain to work with France and Poland in 1934 to remove Hitler from power by military intervention, which would have been a simple matter as Germany was then still virtually disarmed, and the refusal of Britain to do anything to oppose Germany’s remilitarization of the Rhineland, contrary to the Locarno Treaty — both errors in policy that I have noted above.

I suggest, Stephen, that you go away a read one or two relevant books.

Here’s one that will be particularly helpful:

“Tragedy and Hope” by Carroll Quigley. It covers the entire progress of civilization from Ur to 1966. It’s over thirteen hundred pages. So run a long, Steve, like a good lad. And we won’t expect you back for a month or two.

“Mind you, does one believe anything the US-stooge President of Georgia says?”

That’s what I thought.

“I put nothing past Putin”

And that.

“Blues skies everywhere”

That’s what the Polish MP said.

The Global Analysis International Intelligence report (link provided by MJ above) headed “Poland’s Suspicious Second Katyn Massacre Tragedy,” which suggests that the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his entire retinue seems highly implausible.

First, it quotes an unsupported accusation by Georgia’s mad dog President Mikheil Saakashvili, which should certainly be ignored.

Second, it states:

“[The] terrain WEST of the Smolensk-Severnyi military airport reveals that for an extended area, the terrain is DISTINCTLY LOWER than the airport itself, which is situated on a sort of plateau. The area to the WEST of the military airport is between 100 and 150 feet BELOW the plateau. In THAT case, the plane COULD NOT HAVE SCRAPED THE TOPS OF TREES, unless the trees were about 400 feet high.”

This is nonsense. The airport is said to have been shrouded in fog, so what would a pilot do?

Approaching from the West, 5km from the airport, the ground rises from around 734 feet above sea level to 752 (see Google Earth), it then dips to about 739 feet in a treed area, before rising to 789 feet at the West end of the runway. Unable to make an instrument landing, the pilot’s only option, would have been to bring the plane down, through the fog, to within sight of the ground as he approaches the airport. He would then have had to follow the ground visually, all the way in to the landing strip.

That dip of around 15 feet, at about 2 km out, is probably what proved fatal. As the ground fell, the pilot would have had to lose height or lose sight of the ground. The trees need not have been more than 50 feet tall, and perhaps less, to provide a deadly obstruction.

This may sound an improbably way of landing a plane, but that is how Aurigny Air pilots sometimes land on the Channel Island of Alderney when the landing strip is in fog. They come in low over the water (which is warm, and therefore free of fog) from the North then follow the ground as it rises several hundred feet, through fog, to the landing strip. Throughout the final approach, visibility may often appear to be less than 50 feet. A treed dip of 15 or 20 feet on that approach would be lethal.

The inference that because the crash is being investigated by Russian military intelligence it must have been engineered by Russian military intelligence is weak, even by the standards of your average conspiracy theorist, especially as there is no report that agents of the Polish government have been denied involvement in the inquiry.

Finally, the report states that “An article in The Guardian cites a Polish MP who attended the memorial gathering in the Katyn forests, having travelled there by train, who claims that at the time of the alleged ‘accident’, which occurred just before 11:00 a.m., there were blue skies over Katyn.”

If anything, this supports the official account of the crash, since ground fog normally occurs after a clear night that allows radiant cooling of the ground, which is necessary to the formation of fog. It is not surprising, therefore, that the sky over Katyn was blue.

On the last landing I experienced at a fog-bound Alderney airport, the sky was blue ?” which enabled me to follow the transit of Venus by projecting the image of the sun on the cabin wall through an inverted binocular (So now Stephen can run off and check the date of the last transit of Venus and then check the weather report for Alderney Airport and prove that I’m actually telling the truth.).

My first sentence above should, obviously have read:

The Global Analysis International Intelligence report (link provided by MJ above) headed “Poland’s Suspicious Second Katyn Massacre Tragedy,” which suggests that the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his entire retinue was due to a Russian assassination plot seems highly implausible.

But I was watching Sky not very long after the crash, and I could see the fog all around. It was hard to see among the trees, although the camera was on the crashed plane and I could see that fair enough. Saakashvili is a liar and an American pawn.

Meanwhile,

“A leading Polish defence analyst says late president Lech Kaczynski was well known for ordering pilots to land in dangerous conditions …”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/12/2869997.htm?section=justin

—-

“What were you shouting…?”

I really haven’t a clue but I’m sure bastards came into it somwhere.

Sorry, cross-posted, Alfred.

I saw the “worldreports” article on the Katyn crash mentioned here. I never go for it when people credentialise themselves by saying how long they’ve been doing a job; I think it’s pathetic. I have no idea whether Christopher Story is an agent of a foreign power – the first I heard of the idea was when I heard him shout from the rooftops that the idea is untrue. But I do know that if he exercised a bit more rigour as an “intelligence expert”, he wouldn’t have stated that Putin was in the GRU. He wasn’t. He was in the KGB. It’s like the difference between British army intelligence and SIS, or between Israel’s Aman and Mossad, or the American DIA and CIA. Give us a break!

Suhayl, thanks for clarifying the Polish-Irish connection. I doubt, though that you’ll learn much about the empire from the life of Dickie Battenberg (Batternberg, better known as a kind of cake: pink and white inside and wrapped in marzipan, very good.).

The empire, surely, was just the outcome of a run of luck. Britain was an island, which meant no need for a standing army to resist invasion. The only risk was from the sea, therefore money saved on the army could be devoted to the navy. With a better navy, Britian was better able than her rivals to project power overseas. Hence, in the age of colonialism, Britian got the best colonies: the empty spaces of North America, Australia and Southern Africa; the best places for tropical crop production in the Caribbean, and the best locations for trade: India, and Hong Kong.

The colonies generated wealth from sugar, tobacco and cotton, trade in calicos, jute, etc. The profits, particularly those from the slave plantations (The saintly Willian Ewart Gladstone, owed his wealth and position to the 2,183 Jamaican slaves owned by his father ?” for which the Government paid 85,600 pounds when they were freed.) were available for investment in processing industries at home: rum tobacco, textiles, etc. The rise of British manufacturing, with its abnormally high profits due to the lack of foreign competition, stimulated investment in new technology, which enhanced the productivity of labor and thus further enhanced profits. Enormous wealth supported the world’s largest and most modern navy.

Hence, until the rest of the world caught up, Britain ruled. But there was no real plan. The Brits were on a roll, they just went rollicking along, until their advantage ran out in the 1930′s. It ran out because Britain, a rather small and insignificant country, was no longer particularly wealthy. Had they played their cards better in the 30′s the second world war, “the Unnecessary War” as Churchill called it, might have been averted, in which case the decline of Britain might have taken another fifty years or so.

If ideas, personalities or social factors come into an account of the British empire, they are surely ideas and personalities relating to the rise of science and industry, and the social conditions that allowed Britain so readily to become a highly innovative industrial state, when a unique economic opportunity arose.

Hello? Did I just read ‘the empty spaces of North America’ in Alfred’s post? Where did the Native Americans go? What about the deer and the antelope? And the buffalo? Oh, that’s right, they were murdered en masse by our friendly roaming colonial adventurers, some with small pox, some with guns.

Gosh, doesn’t nationalism make things simple.

The fate of the North American natives is discussed here:

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann

http://www.amazon.ca/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/140004006X

The details will never be known, but it is clear that a large proportion of the population died from European diseases, often before direct contact with Europeans. Thus the Caribbs carried smallpox and other diseases from the West Indies to the continental mainland. These diseases then spread throughout both continents with devastating effect. It was an unintended genocide. The deadly effect on the American Indians of European diseases was attributable to the more limited immunological resources of the native people. Thus, although smallpox and other diseases killed many Europeans, the death rate among Europeans from smallpox epidemics was, maybe, 70% versus 90% for the North American indians. But in any case, much of North America was essentially vacant by the time European settlers arrived, which is why the Americans, in the name of Yahweh and the doctrine of Manifest Destiny were able to sweep the remaining population aside.

At least, here in Western Canada, the government, in the name of Victoria, signed treaties with the first nations, treaties that are still honored.

As for nationalism, I don’t think that had anything to do with it. Colonization is not a matter if ideology, it’s just doing what all territorial species do, expanding their territory when they have the chance. Take a look at the history of your own ancestors. If they were always losers, you wouldn’t be here today.

Alfred, the decline of Britain’s economic dominance began in the 1890s. Britain had been overtaken by Germany by 1890. That’s one of the reasons WWI happened.

Furthermore, the colonies – India in particular – would most definitely have tossed Britain out in the early 1940s if the mass movements (except the relatively small ‘Indian National Army’ which decided to support the Japanese) hadn’t done a deal with Britain to support the war effort in exchange for independence immediately after the war was won.

There is absolutely no way hypothetically Britain could have staved-off imperial decline in the manner you suggest for another half-a-century. Yes, WW2 made it a fait accompli, but it would’ve happened during the 1940s in any case.

Communicable disease certainly played a part in the decimation of the American Indian as it did in South America. But there was also widespread de facto genocide – by starvation, forced winter marches, herding onto barren reservations and of forked-tongue broken treaties and course war. There’s no point attempting to deny, or should I say, sublimate or justify, all this. very recent history.

Human history and evolutionary theory are two entirely different disciplines. Evolutionary theory is complex, it’s not just ‘survival of those who are able to bash the others over the head’. It’s also ‘survival of those who are able to engage in a sustainable manner with their environment’ and much more besides.

I was descended from a single-celled organism, the same single-celled organism from which you also are descended. This does not mean that we have to behave like single-celled organisms for all eternity. Though sometimes I do think that it would be mellow being an amoeba again… dream it, man, everything-in-one and one-in-everything, just like the Three Musketeers.

“But in any case, much of North America was essentially vacant by the time European settlers arrived”

Goodness, that’s a handy way of looking at it. Doesn’t Alfred sound remarkably self-satisfied? Does he have a similar handy theory as to where the 2 million Irish went who disappeared during An Gorta Mor?

“Take a look at the history of your own ancestors. If they were always losers, you wouldn’t be here today.”

Ah, but I am.

In any case, nearly 300 years of Indian Wars were not fought against empty space!

Dreoilin’s poignant comments also reminded me to allude to the Highland Clearances in Scotland.

Of course, the irony is that many of those ‘cleared’ to make way for sheep ended up in North America. But that’s human history, it’s complex, it’s messy, it’s the product of many forces – economics, resources, ideologies, luck, disease, faith, community, the quest for power, technology and occasionally, in the right circumstances, individual impact (Alexander, Genghis, Hitler and the rest, not forgetting Cleo and the Viper). It cannot be reduced to simple, all-embracing hypothesis.

Yes indeed, here we are! And we’re no longer amoebas.

Mmm. Thanks for the reminder & perspective, Suhayl.

My own highland ancestors, from Easter Ross, were cleared along with the rest. So do you mind according me the respect that a victim group member deserves.

As for the North American Indians, maybe dreoilin has a better source on their demographics than I have provided. If so maybe he will reference it. But it is obviously the case that if a society of mostly hunter gatherers is reduced by 90% due to smallpox, measles, influenza and other diseases, the landscape will be desolate, which is what the first settlers in New England reported: numerous large native settlements deserted.

Alfred

Churchill was not saying that the war was unnecessary in 1940 as you very clearly infer. He may well have thought that it would have been unnecessary if the right steps had been taken much earlier – but that isn’t what you said or inferred – when you suggested that Churchill was in favour of coexistence with facist Germany – which he never was.

In addition, Churchill was not in the Government in 1934 – so the blunder of not working with France and Poland to remove Hitler was not one of his – as you rather nastily infer by the previous quote from Buchanan – Churchill was agitating against German rearmament from 1932 onwards.

As always you will twist the facts and pile on a few insults to present your distorted view of the world. I’m afraid I know your game even if others haven’t cottoned on yet.

And I don’t need to read Churchill memoirs (or Jenkins biography which certainly doesn’t support your viewpoint either) or Buchanan’s disgusting book – although the latter didn’t take very long.

And BTW the ambassador in Berlin was Nevile not Arthur Henderson, who was someone else. The cod round here is beginning to smell somewhat.

I could spend more time pulling your many inaccuracies apart – but as past experience is you will only misquote yourself – I see little point in doing so.

Since, we’re so far off topic, I thought I’d add a link to a picture of the Battenberg cake, which for some reason came up earlier with reference to the Polish-Irish link:

http://tiny.cc/49l6c

If you follow the link you will find a BBC report that this iconic British food item been declared illegal by the EU’s evil bureaucrats.

I think this should be the prime election issue for the BNP: Give us back our Battenberg cake. I’d vote for that.

Suhayl is quite correct, we are no longer amoebas, a wise observation, and nicely put.

I recall, though, being taught that we did not, in fact, evolve from the amoeba.

But I wonder. You know those amoeboid things, slime molds, that swarm together into a huge mass that can roll along the ground, climb fences, engulf dogs and babies, until eventually rearing up to form a complex fruiting body.

Now suppose one of those things turned into Adam and Eve. I’m sure H.G. Wells could have made something out of the idea. Then one might have a throwback, a true shape shifter, human (Nick Griffin, perhaps)- blob – giant cockroach, or whatever.

Yes, I could see that Alfred was gearing up for a bit of revisionism a la Pat Buchanan.

It’s good to see Stephen, the New Laborite, staunchly siding with that old racist Winston S. Churchill. The BNP would be proud of you Stephen.

Arundhati Roy, provided a vivid appreciation of Churchill’s Zionist racism here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vnaf8R_SJo

Yet like all his views, Churchill’s views about race were complex and reflected a deep appreciation for the realities of life and power. Thus, of the Jews, to which race he could claim membership through his mother, Jenny (Jacobson) Jerome, he wrote:

“Some people like Jews and some do not; but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world.

And it may well be that this same astounding race may at the present time be in the actual process of producing another system of morals and philosophy, as malevolent as Christianity was benevolent, which, if not arrested would shatter irretrievably all that Christianity has rendered possible … ”

(I’d put in a link to the rest of it, except that the blog software doesn’t seem to allow more than one URL per comment. So if you wish to read the rest you’ll have to Google it.)

Re: the Unnecessary war, Stephen, as usual accuses me of what he imagines I said, not what I actually said.

Thus Stephen asserts:

“The libel on Churchill re saying the war was unnecessary is really outrageous. in the context of 1940 Churchill most certainly not think that the war was unnecessary.”

The absurdity of alleging libel of a dead person, aside, I said nothing about anything “in the context of 1940.”

Self-evidently, when Britain was at war and Churchill was Prime Minister, Churchill did not consider the war unnecessary.

To quote myself:

“In his memoirs … Churchill, who led Britain to victory in World War II, wrote:

“One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once, “The Unnecessary War.” There never was a war more easy to stop than that which has just wrecked what was left of the world from the previous struggle.”*

*Memoirs of the Second World War: Part 1, The Gathering Storm.

It is quite clear from this that I was not calling the war unnecessary “in the context of 1940,” as Stephen alleges.

It is the case, though, that the cabinet discussed further concession to Germany after Churchill became Prime Minister and Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary argued strongly for this course of action.

Alfred

“It is the case, though, that the cabinet discussed further concession to Germany after Churchill became Prime Minister and Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary argued strongly for this course of action.”

But Churchill vigously argued the opposite and won the argument – and VISCOUNT Halifax was despatched to Washington DC as ambassador shortly thereafter.

I note that you do not address my comments on your slur re Churchill in 1934. You first of all talk about the Britain scuppering the French Polish plan to remove Hitler in 1934 – and then in the next para say that Churchill was a nutter seeking co-existence with Nazi Germany – without making clear that Churchill had no part in the 1934 decision. Although you do not make the direct link – the insinuation is pretty clear, and given past form is in my view pretty deliberate.

And i don’t side with Churchill on all his actions – my position is similar to Christopher Hitchens in the linked article – Churchill was wrong on many things, but on this matter he was right. Of course such a nuance will be igored by those like yourself who are well versed in the guilt by association game.

If you want to know who the “Guilty Men” were they were pretty well identified by “Cato” at the time – but of course the revisionists have Churchill in their sights – and if only Poland had been more reasonable in their negotiations with Hitler about Danzig blah blah blah.

Since Albert doesn’t tell us who took the census in North America and what the result was, before these diseases arrived, I have no idea what the starting figure was for a reduction of 90% to be calculated.

“maybe dreoilin has a better source on their demographics”

The source you gave is a book cover on Amazon. I can’t read the book, but I did read the reviews, some of which are quite critical. But none of them mention the precise argument you have made above. So I’m still wondering who took the census and where it is.

I have noted that you said, “the details will never be known”, and, “the death rate among Europeans from smallpox epidemics was, maybe, 70% versus 90% for the North American indians” — which depends on a big fat “maybe”. Because you provide no starting figure, and no evidence that anyone has one.

As for the reference to “limited immunological resources of the native people”, surely the word you want is “different” and not “limited”, since their immunological resources were tailored to their own environment.

You then casually remark about “what the first settlers in New England reported: numerous large native settlements deserted.” I don’t know about you, but deserted to me means people left and moved on. You didn’t say that there were a couple of hundred graves alongside. So maybe they just moved to better hunting grounds. Who knows? And even if they did die of disease, I still have no idea where your 90% figure comes from or who counted the original population.

Sorry, Alfred, and not Albert!

I have an Amazon link for Alfred:

http://tinyurl.com/y2uyhuu

Dreoilin,

Obviously there was no census. How could there have been?

Mann’s book is the only one I know that deals comprehensively with the impact of European contact on the native peoples of the Americas. But no doubt there are many other works that bear on the topic. And I am sure that the nature of the impact can be debated endlessly. One hopes that the debate is always conducted with the goal of understanding more about what happened and what was lost.

Stephen, you say,

“then in the next para say that Churchill was a nutter seeking co-existence with Nazi Germany – without making clear that Churchill had no part in the 1934 decision.”

This is entirely false. I say nothing of the kind. I have never referred to Churchill as a “nutter” or suggested that he sought co-existence with the Nazis. Had I done so, you would no doubt have quoted me directly. But as you cannot do that you make the lie up out of whole cloth.

Your comments are shear provocation.

“But I wonder. You know those amoeboid things, slime molds, that swarm together into a huge mass that can roll along the ground, climb fences, engulf dogs and babies, until eventually rearing up to form a complex fruiting body.

Now suppose one of those things turned into Adam and Eve. I’m sure H.G. Wells could have made something out of the idea. Then one might have a throwback, a true shape shifter, human (Nick Griffin, perhaps)- blob – giant cockroach, or whatever.” Alfred

Alfred, you, I (and technicolour) have been grooving to far too much ‘Dr Who’ (or else, in the USA, re-runs of the excellent and monstrous, ‘The Twilight Zone’), I suspect!

Are you a paleo-conservative, by any chance? Don’t mind my asking.

“One hopes that the debate is always conducted with the goal of understanding more about what happened and what was lost”.

Alfred: I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible if you don’t reference or back up your lengthy assertions when asked to.

Slime molds that rear up & engulf dogs and babies? Brilliant!

Suhayl,

I have heard of “Dr. Who” but quite honestly I have never heard of “The Twilight Zone.” We once had a television with a rabbit ears aerial, on which I could sometimes watch Star Trek. But that set broke down about twenty years ago, never to be replaced. Since then, the only TV I see is when away from home or via U-Tube.

Star Trek probably has influenced me. I think it has largely replaced the Bible as the universal shared cultural experience of our civilization.

The slime mold idea appealed to me because it might be made a reality with a bit of genetic engineering. Start with some fairly blobby thing to begin with, hence my suggestion of Nick Griffin, set off a process of cellular de-differentiation, and then run a new program of differentiation to produce a porpoise with a Cambridge law degree. Whether personal experience would be retained throughout the transformation is a little uncertain. But the idea seems worth exploring. As you can tell, I am no writer, therefore, I freely present you with the idea, should you feel able to make anything of it.

As to politics, I am not a sufficiently deep or systematic thinker to have an ideology. I started out on the left, naturally, before realizing that life cannot be organized satisfactorily in accordance with a few slogans and simple-minded good intentions. I later read Adam Smith, the Austrian economists, Milton Friedman, Michael Polanyi, a genius at Manchester University whose rather less talented son came to Canada and won a Nobel prize. My conservative phase ended at about the time Margaret Thatcher was acclaimed the savior of western civilization.

Now, my ideas are more tentative, but I retain a few heroes: Winston Churchill, certainly, Desmond Tutu, Sam Johnson, and many more, not all conservatives.

Technicolour,

I did reference my assertions:

“1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann

http://www.amazon.ca/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/140004006X”

This book provides what appears to be a conscientiously assembled review of current research. It was top of the New York Times non-fiction best seller list for months. Of course there must be thousands of primary works, but that’s not my field, so I cannot quote any of that.

“Obviously there was no census. How could there have been?”–Alfred

My point exactly.

“Mann’s book is the only one I know that deals comprehensively with the impact of European contact on the native peoples of the Americas.”

If you haven’t already read Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee (which is at the link I left) maybe reading part of the story from the “Indian” point of view would be a good idea. I highly recommend it. Especially the notes, which include what was said in Congress, which treaties were broken etc.

Dreiolin,

If that’s your point, that there was no census because there could not have been, it does not seem much of a point.

Mann attempts, at least, to piece together a broad picture of what happened to native societies throughout the Americas.

I am sure that from the native point of view, much of what happened was heart-rending. Literally, so, in the case of the alleged 80,000 humans sacrificed by Aztec priests who ripped the beating heart from the breast of each victim — to assuage the anger of the gods.

Nice picture of the process here:

http://www.crystalinks.com/aztecreligion.html

See, it’s not just white people who are beastly.

Alfred: thanks. The book’s unavailable to most people, and the survey you quote and the facts you give do not appear to be online elsewhere, or substantiated by anyone else, so relevant extracts, and sources given in the book would be the way to go.

Still, I’m reading what I can find of the book online from your link. So far, the book seems to say that, instead of leaving the landscape empty, the Native Americans had in fact had thriving agricultural communities, including complicated networks of fishing nets.

The writer castigates today’s green activists for, among other things, their belief in the Indians’ ‘inherent simplicity and innocence’. This belief is, he argues, based on the mistaken assumption that the ‘Indians’ (what did they call themselves, I wonder?) had left the environment untouched. Whem on the contrary, they had altered it substantially.

He then equates the impact of modern day pollution with the impact of traditional crop growing and fishing nets.

The book then quotes the man who argued that the place was an ‘unproductive waste’ when the settlers arrived; George Bancroft. He seems an interesting & decent person, apart from calling the Native Americans ‘feeble barbarians’.

I can’t stand reading books online, as a rule, so could you quote the parts from which you reached your conclusions?

Alfred

12 April 4:45pm

“Further, Churchill is said to have remarked after the war that it was the most unnecessary war ever fought. So if the attempt to coexist with fascist Germany was nuts, there were a lot of nutters in the British Government –including Churchill.”

Alfred 14 April

I have never referred to Churchill as a “nutter” or suggested that he sought co-existence with the Nazis.

Compare and contrast.

I think you will find that it is your comment’s that are sheer provocation.

Alfred,

I’m afraid we can’t discuss anything if you keep changing the goalposts. I understood you were talking about, “the impact of European contact on the native peoples of the Americas.” So dragging in “not just white people who are beastly” and Aztec priests, is hardly relevant.

Goodnight

PS “If that’s your point, that there was no census because there could not have been, it does not seem much of a point”

Unfortunately, it makes rubbish of your 90%. Goodnight again

Thanks, Alfred. Much appreciated. The ‘slime’ concept is fabulous. You’re lucky not to have a TV set, I’ll tell you: Original Silence: a truly Zen situation.

Dreoilin, have you heard the powerful Buffy St Marie early 1990s ‘Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee’? It’s very good. She’s the one who did ‘Soldier Blue’ in the very early 1970s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9bErRmuIGU

“I think you will find that it is your comment’s that are sheer provocation”

–stephen

I agree with you Stephen.

And anyone who dismisses a book like the one I mentioned (which by the way has 184 reviews on Amazon, compared to 6 for his masterful work by Charles C. Mann) can’t possible be treating the subject seriously.

Maybe that’s why he dragged in the Polish crash again.

Suhayl,

No, I haven’t! Thanks for the link. I’ll go there now.

Re: Conspiracy theory on the Smolensk crash

The report on “Poland’s suspicious second Katyn massacre tragedy”, which MJ linked to above states among other things that:

“A close examination of the precise terrain WEST of the Smolensk-Severnyi military airport reveals that for an extended area, the terrain is DISTINCTLY LOWER than the airport itself, which is situated on a sort of plateau. The area to the WEST of the military airport is between 100 and 150 feet BELOW the plateau. In THAT case, the plane COULD NOT HAVE SCRAPED THE TOPS OF TREES, unless the trees were about 400 feet high.”

This is not only bunk for the reason I stated earlier, but it is totally nonsensical since satellite images (see link below) show that the plane crashed on an approach from the East, not the West (the Google satellite image I referenced earlier clearly shows the features visible in the satellite photo published by the Daily Mail at the East end of the Smolensk Military Airport runway):

‘Russia engineered air crash that killed President Kaczynski,’ claims Polish MP

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1265482/Leck-Kaczynski-Russia-engineered-plane-crash-claims-Polish-MP.html

So my ingenious theory about lakes and visibility is irrelevant. However, from the East, also, the land undulates sharply, with elevations of around 670 feet above sea level 5 km East of the airport, climbing to 820 feet, then dropping to 670 feet again, before a final rise to the East end of the landing strip at an elevation of 840 feet.

As discussed earlier, the pilot must have glimpsed the ground at some point and then followed the terrain to keep within sight of the ground. Because forward visibility would have been severely limited, there would have been virtually no chance of avoiding a clump of trees before they plane struck them.

There is nothing in this new allegation of Russian sabotage to warrant changing my earlier conclusion that the crash was due to pilot deference, against his better judgment and the instructions of the Russian air traffic controllers, to the crazy insistence of the President of the Polish Republic.

Present for Suhayl!

http://www.drwhoguide.com/who_3t.htm

Technicolour – thanks – now I read it, I remember that one! Primal sludge…

Did you that one of the 1st Dr’s assistants, ‘Vicky’ (Maureen O’Brien), is now a crime fiction novelist in the south of France?

Stephen,

I have assumed that you are a provocateur like your hero Jack Straw who was reported to be such in a message to the Foreign Office by the British Embassy in Chile when Straw was in Chile as part of some student delegation during his early political life.

However, perhaps you have a problem like Dreiolin in understanding the English language.

In particular, you should try to understand the meaning of the word “if”.

Clearly, from Churchill’s post-war assessment that the war was unnecessary, he believed that co-existence with the Nazis could have been achieved had the British Government not blundered during after 1932 when the scale of German (illegal) rearmament became known. He said as much in “Great Contemporaries” published in 1937:

“We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war in which civilisation will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the great Germanic nation. . . . [History] is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler.”

Thus Churchill did not believe, as late as 1937, that the idea of co-existence with Hitler to be nuts, therefore, by the statement of mine that you quote it cannot be inferred that Churchill was a nutter.

So which is it? Do you have a problem with comprehension or are simply a liar?

And don’t waste time citing that absurd popinjay Hitchens, who rightly denounced Henry Kissinger as a war criminal only then to become a Bushist, neocon advocate of Kissingerian war crimes himself.

Dreoilin,

I don’t dismiss the book you recommend. How can I, I haven’t read it.

I have noted your recommendation, for which I thank you, but I don’t have the book to hand right now so what am I supposed to do about it?

In any case, it is clear from what you say about it that the book does not provide a comprehensive picture of the impact of European contact on the native peoples of the Americas. Therefore, as a source, it is not an alternative to the book by Mann.

The mortality rates that I quoted, admittedly from memory — I don’t have the Mann book to hand either, were Mann’s estimates. However, they were not entirely without basis in fact. Epidemics among native populations continued throughout the period 1491 to the modern era and there is no doubt that native populations were often largely destroyed by diseases such as small pox.

For example, smallpox deliberately spread by American gold miners among the people of the village of Bella Coola on the BC coast resulted in a death rate of close to 99%. Europeans were also vulnerable to smallpox but their death rate was obviously much lower or they would never have managed to settle the Americas.

Does everyone know about the function CONTROL and PLUS (simultaneously), which makes text larger? It’s amazing.

Craig wrote:

“Thanks – that’s interesting, especially the Wajda bit. Hopeful, really. You may not remember, but did the Soviet alliance with Hitler get a mention? I can see a scenario where the audience was left to presume these were poles fighting for the Nazis like so many of the Baltics.”

No, I don’t remember any references to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in the news reports I saw. Given that some of these same channels (especially Channel 2) were, a year ago, practically peddling the notion that Poland started the war by not accepting the German “peace plan,” I guess it would be too much to expect them to come full circle and explain why the NKVD arrested those Polish officers in the first place. Besides, the coverage had to be line in with the general tone of Putin’s remarks at the commemoration ceremony: the Katyn massacre was a particular episode in the overall tragedy of totalitarianism, from which Russians themselves suffered more than anyone else.

Instead, Wajda’s “Katyn” film was made to do the heavy lifting. It was broadcast again, post-crash, this time on Channel 2 (“Rossiya”), during prime time on Sunday night, right after the weekly “news of the week” broadcast, which was mostly taken up by coverage of the crash.

This is really remarkable, given that two years ago Memorial and other human rights organizations were holding what practically amounted to clandestine screenings of the film, one of which I attended in Petersburg. And now, suddenly, the film gets two screenings in the space of one week on two state channels (Kultura and Channel 2).

This is not to mention the official and non-official response to the crash, which has been exemplary.

On the other hand, it is hard to say what the overall effect of all these moves in the right direction will be given the general atmosphere of (officially encouraged) historical schizophrenia in the country, which on the “popular” level is expressed in attempts to decorate Moscow and other cities with banners and billboards with Stalin’s image for the V-Day celebrations, and, on the official level, in the work of Medvedev’s anti-”falsification of history” commission, whose brief is not only to combat the glorification of Nazi collaborators in former Soviet countries, but also to prevent more complicated interpretations of the war’s causes and its aftermath.

Tom

You make several very valid points. The Russian government is playing an increasingly sophisticated game in order to spread its influence in to what it considers its sphere of influence, and it has probably realised that outright confrontation will not always deliver the influence that it wants. It is also becoming increasingly versed in modern PR techniques which use different messages for different audiences.

Look at how Moscow has reasserted its influence over the Ukraine despite its previous heavy handed approcah. Look at how it is now jumping in to provide budgetary support to the new Kyrgyz government. There should be no doubt at all as well that Russia sees Uzbekistan and Afghanistan as being within its zone of interest.

As for schizophrenia – I think most people who have visited Russia will know that it goes much deeper than the Government – many ordinary people see nothing wrong with nostalgia for the days of a strong Russia with the likes of Stalin at the helm – yet, they somehow divorce this from the experience of their private family lives, where there is nevertheless an increasing acknowledgement of the past – and an awful lot of people are accessing the records provided by Memory and others. Perhaps some day in the not too distant future Russia willn get the politicians who can start to address this schizophrenia rather than continue to play with it as at present.

Mind you, Stephen, there is a considerable degree of deep political and corporate psycho-pathology at home as well. So much so, that one might posit (as did R.D Laing and the anti-psychiatry movement way back when) that to seem sane is in fact to be insane. Take, as one small example, the whole ‘positive thinking’ tendency and look at its origins and context.

This actually also relates back to technicolour’s quote from Max Hastings (Ah, my hero!) in which he asks why there is no mass civil disobedience/ mass street protestations about the UK’s part in illegal wars, as well as to anno’s astute observtion that to some extent, psycho-politically, the British people are in “shock” at the turn of events globally over the past several years.

I’m not an avid supporter of the anti-psychiatry movement as such but Laing made some extremly astute and valid points in his sustained critique of the mind and society and the societal mind, as well as of the way psychiatry was being defined dispensed in the mid-C20th, a critique which to some extent holds validity today both in terms of our undertsanding of ‘mental illness’ and of such an understanding’s broader implication in the context of our society.

Famed Pakistani writer, Saadat Hasan Manto wrote a short story entitled, ‘Toba Tek Singh’ which has since become iconic in this regard. It has been translated on numerous occasions and concerns a busload of ‘lunatics’ from various religious communities at the time of the Partition of India’ in 1947. It’s a good story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_Tek_Singh_(short_story)

Astonishingly good story. Thanks Suhayl.

If you ask me, it was R.D Laing who was the nutter.

I don’t suppose you’re asking me though.

Oh yeah, he was pretty flawed – and without getting too conspiratorial in tone about this, he may also have had links to the intelligence services via the IRD. Nonetheless, this Glaswegian psychiatrist did make some very penetrating and resonant observations and achieved some insights which since have permeated mainstream psychiatry.

And the whole idea of society being ‘mad’ is a poignant one, esp. in these times of war, mass murder, Black Holes of Bagram and psychological/ physical torture.

Btw, of course, we can’t really ‘ask’ you as we don’t who ‘you’ are, as you’ve not rendered even a pseudonymous identity for your post. Perhaps, then, you are RD Laing’s astral body, come to contend with yourself…

Re: The Smolensk crash

According to Popular Mechanics, that reliable guide to the official 9/11 conspiracy theory, the pilot of the Polish President’s plane was attempting an instrument landing at Smolensk, i.e., he was bringing the plane down through the fog using his GPS, altimeter, etc. in the expectation that the runway would come into view before the plane hit anything.

tinyurl.com/y6zwyjz

So, those who suspect a Russian assassination plot, might think about interference with radio altimeter and GPS signals, etc. But pilot error seems more likely. This is discussed at great length on the Professional Pilots Rumour network:

tinyurl.com/yymnmdd

And, Suhayl,

There were no Indian wars here in British Columbia. Furthermore, some First Nations have negotiated settlements involving the transfer of thousands of square kilometers of land and the creation of a form of self-government. Altogether, British Columbia’s native bands claim more than 100% of the total area of the Province, and treaty negotiations remain in progress.

True, in the US and eastern Canada, settlers adopted a more aggressive approach: we come, we kill you, we take you land, no hard feelings, huh? Same as Britain’s current approach to Iraq oil and Afghan pipeline routes, as supported by all parties but the BNP. True Nick Griffin has talked about destroying Afghan cities in the war against drugs, but that is another matter. And an aerial strike on the President’s cronies who run the drug trade does not seem an altogether bad idea.

Could we now give up the struggle for existence? As long as individuals, tribes and nations differ in reproductive rate, the answer, as a strictly technical matter, must be no.

Swift was right! It’s all about eggs, after all!

But the ENP…? That bunch of Hard State rent-boys wouldn’t know what it means to be English if an igneous statue of St George were thrust… uhm, into their consciousnesses.

I’ve re-named them, btw, since they know nothing about the ‘water of life’.

“It’s all about eggs, after all!”

Yes, how many you hatch, not how you crack them.

I am having a some difficulty decoding your assessment of the nationalists. You’re saying none of them drink scotch? If that is correct, it is, no doubt, a defect.

But can they be faulted for failing to recognize St. George, however petrified and wherever stuffed? Would any Englishman recognize this rather obscure Turkish person unless draped in the flag and with a dragon on his lance?

Hard state is Israel and US, according the Indian Express as opposed to soft state India, although to some folks it describes a signalling protocol.

Rent boy, I can figure that out, so OK, setting aside signalling protocols, these are beer-swilling agents of the security state. That seems a reasonable interpretation to me.

But perhaps I am bashing the wrong end of the egg.

But Swift was right about the importance of cracking eggs.

Individuals can increase their representation in the gene pool by raising their reproductive success or by decreasing the reproductive success of competitors. In gull colonies, as the late Wynne-Edwards of Aberdeen University documented, eggs must be constantly watched if they are not to be destroyed by aggressive neighbors.

Either way, though, a reproductive rate below the replacement rate, if long persisted in, leads to extinction. The current autogenocide of the European peoples is largely concealed because of the extended post-reproductive longevity of present-day Europeans. Thus, while the reproductive potential of Europeans is collapsing, the numbers of Europeans will not collapse for some decades yet.

A population collapse due to war, famine, epidemic, does not necessarily jeopardize the long-term survival of a population, provided that the remnants of that population are in a position to rebound and re-occupy the space. However, when a population collapses while a competing population expands within the same territory, then it’s almost certainly game over.

Where the more fertile population breeds with the declining population, the disappearance of the latter is hastened through what is known as introgressive hybridization, although some genes of the displace population will remain in the resultant gene pool.