It says a huge amount about the confidence of the royal family, that they feel able to respond to their Nazi home movie with nothing other than outrage that anybody should see it. They make no denial they were giving Nazi salutes, no statement that the royal family did not support the Nazis. Of course the young children had no idea of the implications. But the adults most certainly did. The missing figure is the cameraman, future King George, who was filming his wife and brother displaying the family sympathies.
The royal family were of course German themselves – completely so. Since George I every royal marriage in line of succession had been conducted in strict accordance with the Furstenprivatrecht, to a member of a German royal family. The Queen Mother, who was of course not expected to feature in promulgating the line of succession, was the first significant exception in 220 years. She was evidently trying hard to fit in. But I am not sure German-ness has much to do with it. Nazi sympathies were much more common in the aristocracy than generally admitted. Their vast wealth and massive land ownership contrasted with the horrific poverty and malnutrition of the 1930’s, led the aristocracy to fear a very real prospect of being stood against a wall and shot. Fascism appeared to offer social amelioration for the workers with continued privilege for the aristocrats. It is completely untrue that its racism, totalitarianism and violence was unknown in 1933-4. They knew what they were doing.
Happily fascism was defeated. The royal family is of course only the tip of the iceberg of whitewashed fascist support – without even starting on industrialists, newspaper proprietors, the Kennedys, etc. etc. But the Buckingham Palace option of outrage that anybody should ever remember is very sad – still more sad that such a position gets such popular support.
We never did get round to shooting the aristocrats.
I am an optimist in politics. My experience of life has taught me that altruism is a far stronger human urge than selfishness. Modern political fashion is based on the denigration of the urge to cooperation, and I do not believe will survive.
Which leads me to believe we are now living in an embarrassing past. Future generations will look back at the massive and exponentially expanding gap between rich and poor, at the super state security services and near total surveillance, at the violent wars waged in ill-disguised annexation of resources, and be amazed that people could support it. I also think that enormous shame will attach to all those who support the excruciatingly slow genocide of the Palestinians. That will be part of our embarrassing past.
Jeremy Corbyn on RT’s Going Underground with Afshin Rattansi/ 17 June 2015. 9 mins. 25,900 views
Jeremy Corbyn on his ‘toxic’ rivals & Labour’s future | Going Underground
Jeremy Corbyn on his record and that of his rivals on the Iraq war, NHS privatisation, banks deregulation, and the future for Labour and possibly the country under his leadership.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odks6jV_AnQ
Now John Mann puts the boot in. Ganging up. They really are a bunch of whatnots.
Jeremy Corbyn accused of inaction over paedophile scandal
Labour MP John Mann says leadership contender Mr Corbyn “did nothing” about allegations of child abuse in Islington in 1980s http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11758612/Jeremy-Corbyn-accused-of-inaction-over-paedophile-scandal.html
Mary – the thing about John Mann is that despite all the bluster, he hasn’t actually
done anything about child rapists in Parliament; in fact he spent many years on the same committee as the slimy Greville Janner yet never said anything about him until others had named him as a paedophile. Want to guess which committee that was?
http://www.allparty.org/all-party-groups/antisemitism
John Mann has also written his own manifesto which could have been written by Nigel Farage (haven’t heard much about him lately). All anti-immigration and anti-wind turbines.
http://www.mann4bassetlaw.com/a_brilliant_britain
Nevermind, sorry. After work on Friday my one wish is to get home and relax. Then I get behind the 12-wheeler which is in turn stuck behind Bradley bloody Wiggins on a B road, overtake all that and find, half a mile further on. the stoned geriatric on his phone in an SUV doing 35 and wandering across the centre line, with no useable straights left. Then I really need to relax. Grrr. Will the next one be a BMW too?
Bell’s *bean* busy…
http://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/7/22/1437575709233/266fcb9d-d409-4a95-8d8f-6d826d6a2532-bestSizeAvailable.jpeg?w=940&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=4c1df4e3215ede41a17e0097a6e426cb
The obvious twist, and I missed it….
Mary gives the following info about the British NHS and generics:
‘UPDATE: NHS saving extra £1.3bn from generic drugs
“The National Health Service in England and Wales saved an extra £1.3 billion last year as usage of generic drugs rose to more than 75%, expanding patient access to potentially life-saving medicines.
Generics are now saving the NHS almost £12.3 billion a year, according to the British Generic Manufacturers Association (BGMA), up from a saving of nearly £11 billion in 2012.”
and therefore reinforces the point I was making about the Greek NHS, doesn’t she.
Ie, that had the Greek govt delivered on its commitment to get the Greek NHS to use more generics, a lot of money would have been saved for use within said NHS.
Thanks, Mary.
UK Labour leadership candidates debate Israel-Palestine policy: Left-wing candidate Jeremy Corbyn stood alone among the four candidates in supporting an arms embargo on Israel:
I know there were references to this debate earlier, but it wasn’t clear to me from those references what Corbyn had said. Look at the full article to see what discussion there was of such things as the Balfour Declaration.
Interesting comments under the article, including this one by Falah:
Fedup
“”God has sent Da’ish to fight against nations that want to destroy Israel. You are our brothers!” (Lamb, 2015) The Rabbi cited verses such as “The day on which Tadmor (Palmyra) is destroyed will be made a holiday (Yeb. 16b-17a)” (ibid).
-Rabbi Nir Ben Artzi
Thanks Mark Golding for the irrefutable proof that the unhinged zionist supremacists etc”
______________________________
Irrefutable proof my arse. It’s yet another made-up quote from some loony site that gets passed around the internet by half-wits like Fedup to the point where it becomes “irrefutable proof” to everyone except those outside the circle jerk. We’re getting about two or three a week of these at the moment- last one was some John Dross featured crud about Jews ruling the world or something. Complete bullshit quote, even Komodo had to haul him up on it embarrassing as it was.
Giyane
“No doubt the contracts for the purchase of medicines in Greece is also controlled by the pals of the European genocide -bankers, otherwise the obvious savings would have already been made.”
_________________
Another more likely explanation might be that certain Greek ministers and civil servants in the Ministry of Health are getting backhanders from the branded drug manufacturer and importers.
Nothing to do with “genocide-bankers”, Giyane; do you ever realise how stupid you sound?
Big Pharma and Big Banks usually work together. Big Pharma is to a large extent owned by the Big Banks.
[ ————– ]
“So poor that it got a rating of ‘relatively efficient’ from the OECD in 2009.
‘Nevertheless the health system was considered “relatively efficient” before the crisis despite a variety of problems including a fragmented organization and excess bureaucracy, according to a 2009 report for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Etc, etc..”
___________________________
Mary obviously does not know that OECD studies are ultimately dependent on statistics supplied by its member countries. Given the record of Greece in providing information and statistics to, for example, the EC Commission (eg, on Greek elegibility for joining the Eurozone), I should not place too much faith in the OECD study she referred to.
And, by the way – Mary has obviously read the study very carefully. Did it say anything about the well-attested (by Greeks themselves) practice of the “fakellaki”? The “fakellaki” is the envelope which Greeks slip across to the hospital doctors in order to ensure that they get the operation or treatment they need this side of dying of whatever ails them.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/23/wrong-on-the-facts-wrong-on-the-law-israelis-false-claims-of-self-defense-in-gaza-war/
And now, having dealt with the Greek NHS, let us move to the Greek education system.
Some readers might have herd that the SYRIZA govt is about to table a new education bill. Inter alia, that bill seeks to reverse a previous education bill, passed a few years ago, on the following points:
!/. University governing Councils will, according to the SYRIZA bill, no longer be able to include (by co-option) Greek academics or non-Greek academics. Now, the advantages of including such people – greater objectivity, flowing from greater independence and the opportunities to learn nd apply international best practice in the running of universitie – would seem fairly obvious to most people. The SYRIZA govt is therefore giving in to the cosy corporatist and self-serving home-based Greek academic establishment.
2/. Students will again be able to spend almost s long as they like at university since they will be able to take and retake their (annual) exams as many times as they want. The existing bill limited the number of times students coulkd retake their exams, thus plcing a time-limit on how long lazy or underperforming students could call on scarce university ressoures. Cynics will say tht the objective of the proposed education bill is to pull in the student vote (and, incidentallt, massege the youth unemployment figured).
The Greek crisis is down to this sort of mentality and gross govt overspending in the face of an inability and/or unwillingness to ensure that people pay their taxes and not to some kind of bankers’ conspiracy.
[ —————— ]
~~~
Thanks for the Mann info Summerhead. I see what you mean.
‘Overseas visits
Name of donor: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Israeli Embassy London
Address of donor: 9 Yitzhak Rabin Blvd, Kiryat Ben-Gurion, Jerusalem 91035
Amount of donation (or estimate of the probable value): return flight to Tel Aviv and accommodation in Jerusalem, with a total value of £852.56
Destination of visit: Jerusalem
Date of visit: 28 – 31 May 2013
Purpose of visit: Attendance and speaker at the Global Forum on Combating Antisemitism, organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel.’
’22 November 2010 – View full entry
6. Overseas visits
Name of donor: Israel-Britain Commonwealth Association
Address of donor: IBCA, PO Box 2012, 24 Maskit Street, Herzliya Pituach 46733, Israel.
Amount of donation (or estimate of the probable value): £1200 for flights (accommodation provided by British Embassy)
Destination of visit: Israel
Date of visit: 1-3 November 2009
Purpose of visit: the British Embassy invited me, in my capacity as Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, to visit Israel and give a speech at the Balfour Dinner.
(Registered 12 November 2009)’
‘Name of donor: Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism
Address of donor: 6 Manchester Square, London
Amount of donation or nature and value if donation in kind: the salary of a researcher in my office who provides support to the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism of which I am Chairman; value £20,000
Date of receipt: May 2010
Date of acceptance: May 2010
Donor status: charity
(Registered 26 May 2010)’
‘6-9 May 2009, to Washington DC, USA, to American Jewish Committee Annual Meeting. Registrable contributions to costs by American Jewish Committee. (Registered 28 May 2009)’
from his register of interests
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=11093
He is part of the powerful Israel lobby in the HoC and as we know, Jeremy Corbyn supports the cause of the Palestinians.
Miss Castello, Max Blumenthal’s new book The 51-Day War agrees with the chronology of that Counterpunch piece.
Habby good you pointed out the, what would be called a low-lying fruit opportunity n the management consultancy world, of the switch to generics.
Greece not being in ship-shape, pun intended must afford a good dozen or more such opportunities to pursue. But what mystifies me is the lack of comment here or support for the principle that the Greeks start paying their taxes honestly and that any Govt ought to start getting tough on that front. Does the ‘fakellaki’ or brown-envelopes apply there too?
Still on Greek education systems, I wonder how many people know that every Greek parent who is ambitious for his children and wishes to give them a good chance of getting into of of the better universities will bust his gut to pay for the child to attend what is called a “frontistirion”. “Frontistiria”, for those unfamiliar with the term, are private schools which offer Greek children supplementary tuition in any and all of the subjects making up the Greek “Apolytirion”, aka the Greek baccalaureat.
And why do they do that? Because, like the Greek NHS, the Greek secondary school education system delivers piss-poor results for all but the most gifted and/or motivated students.
He is here in this photo along with Ms Cooper, Mr Speaker and the Archbishop, both Jewish. Even Grieve, the ex Attorney General and Birt late of the FCO and now a Health minister. LOL.
https://twitter.com/APPGAA
Alycone
“But what mystifies me is the lack of comment here or support for the principle that the Greeks start paying their taxes honestly and that any Govt ought to start getting tough on that front. Does the ‘fakellaki’ or brown-envelopes apply there too?”
____________________
I’ll admit that I can’t at the moment supply chapter and verse (although there have apparently been occasional prosecutions) but I should be very surprised if that were not the case.
This is in part due to the fact that tax payers know their tax inspectors personally and will meet them in cases of “dispute” over their tax return, and in part because there are no performing systems for controlling the tax inspectors (ie, a question of systems).
T illustrate the notion: a few years ago, a handful of private doctors practising in a rather swish area of Athens called Kolonaki were named and shamed for tax evasion (the reason they were caught was that they got too greedy, claiming that their annual income was around 12.000 euros p.a., which just happened to be the amount one could earn at the time before becoming liable for income tax).
Now, you can work it out for yourself. Let us say that such a doctor was actually earning 300.000 euros p.a. If he declared that income, or was asessed for that amount, he would be paying something like 150.000 euros in tax. So you offer the tax inspector 20.000 euros in a “fakellaki” and thereby save yourself 130.000 euros. And the tax inspector pockets a sum equivalent to say 5 or 6 months net salary.
The underlying point of all of the above is that Greece is and has been for some time now a failed state in terms of its functioning and its sense of financial responsibility.
All this talk of a conspiracy of international banksters seeking to bring the state to its knees (for what reason, pray?) is just bollocks. It is just the talk of a band of malcontents who know nothing beyond their own obsessions.
Habba plays beach football.
I wonder whose heads you use.
Are any other All Party Parliamentary Groups registered charities? Unusually the APPGAA, the All Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, is one such.
In the accounts to Dec 2013, there is an acknowledgement to Lord Janner who resigned as a Trustee on 19 May 2014. p 6 on http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends36/0001089736_AC_20131231_E_C.pdf
Income £243,000 mostly from charitable foundations.
Mary – you might also be interested in one of John Mann’s new colleagues – Ruth Smeeth. She used to be a PR for Sodexo, the outsourcing firm and Nestle. She also used to work for Bicom and she is now in the APPGAA. In her own resume, she is oddly reticent about these achievements.http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem/150713/smeeth_ruth.htm
Alcyone, the dire economic situation in Greece was not caused by Syriza. It was caused by previous more right wing parties. The Greek people voted for Syriza as a reaction to this, in much the same way that Corbyn will most likely become leader of the Labour party.
It’s great fun to watch the totally corrupt Establishment sh*tting themselves about this, and the lapdog media onslaught that’s being unleashed on Corbyn.
More in the Ben Fellows trial today, with regard to police corruption and the aforementioned high profile celeb who appeared in porn films.
The reaction of the UK media to the Australian 60 minutes programme broadcast at the weekend has been an utter disgrace. The media are putting out dribs and drabs (none of it new) in a totally pathetic attempt to give the impression that they are actually informing the British public about the Westminster child sex abuse scandal.
It’s laughable, much like the army of trolls who are employed to come on comment threads and ‘steer the conversation’.
I think he’s getting fogged RobG. He says beach football. No that’s what the little kids were playing on the beach in Gaza before they were murdered.
He means beach volleyball. That’s the game played at the Limp Ics by athletic young women wearing bras and pants being watched by pervy men.
He’s probably had a surfeit of retsina today.
~~~
I take no instructions on what I say from Alcyone/Villager.
Lysias @9:27pm;
Thanks Lysias. (I think!) Too many books- too little time; but I’m tempted to check this one out.
Atb.
12 big wheels fitting into the A14’s ruts, Ba’al? not my preferred Friday haul. Maybe another Friday, no worries, I shall have a razzzz.
Mary speculates:
“He means beach volleyball. That’s the game played at the Limp Ics by athletic young women wearing bras and pants being watched by pervy men.”
___________________
No I don’t. I play both beqch football and beach volloyball. But I’m not a fa of beach ball and bat, it’s soooo boring.
BTW, what’s wrong with athletic young women? Wouldn’t you like to be one?
or even beach football and beach volleyball. 🙂
Mary – any pertinent comments on the use of generics?
Lots of typos there, Habba (it seems like you’re weary of kicking heads around).
And of course you make no mention of the fact that in Greece it was New Democracy and PASOK, who are pretty much Greek versions of the Tories and New Labour, who racked-up all the debt.
Likewise, the world economy has been totally trashed by neoliberal ideology.
The poor, the sick, the socialists, the immigrants didn’t trash the economy. The neo-loons were the culprits, and it started more than three decades ago under Thatcher and Reagan.
It’s all become so mad it’s beyond belief.