EU - The Fourth Reich?

London, UK

"The Devil" is a political blogger I admire on matters concerning the EU. Read his latest article

Referendum - I don't think so

One of the "Devil's best" articles

1 good reason to get out of the European Union?

Read this

The Death of the United Kingdom?

London, UK

Democracy banned in European Parliament

The European Parliament has censored its own television coverage to avoid showing a serious protest in the debating chamber in Strasbourg today. A group of about 80 Eurosceptic MEPs protested loudly as the Charter of Fundamental Rights was signed, with the result that a huge section of UK sovereignty has been swallowed up by the EU. As the demonstration started, TV cameras immediately killed all sound so that none of the protest could be heard and the cameras stayed away resolutely from the large block of protesters. At one stage, The President of the Parliament, Hans Gert Pottering, asked them to leave the chamber. They refused. The protest continued during speech by Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. However as he talked of "greater democracy for Europe" the TV pictures told a different story. Mr Pottering shouted at the protesters accusing them of being "anti-democratic because they will not let our guests speak." He was met with cries of "Let the people speak." UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, one of the prime movers of the protest, said: "This is the new EU in action, showing the world a united face as they steamroll towards their own superstate while totally refusing to allow anyone to see a different point of view." Furious at the protests, some MEPs resorted to rough tactics and one member of the European People's Party dragged a female observer from the Independence and Democracy Group out of the chamber and demanded her camera, which showed footage of the protest. "The high point of this hypocrisy surely came at the end, when MEPs were invited to stand to listen to 'The European Anthem'," said Mr Farage. "This, of course, is the anthem which is supposed to have disappeared. To their everlasting shame, British MEPs from the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties stood ramrod-straight to grant this piece of music national anthem status." Mr Farage added: "Fortunately, cameras from the BBC and ITV were there, so at least there is a chance that people in Britain can actually see for themselves how this European Union stifles debate and refuses to allow legitimate political protest."

Best political blog post of the week........read on

From Devil's Kitchen. It's here in full and is about the ghastly Keith Vaz. You remember, he was at the centre of the Hinduja brothers scandal in 2001.

Keith Vaz: corrupt, hypocritical little turd*

Via The Briff, compare and contrast the contrasting opinions of corrupt MP, Keith Vaz, over the period of just one month.

Keith Vaz, in a letter to the Telegraph, July 30 2007:

"The EU Reform Treaty ("EU treaty published - but only in French", report, July 27) is fundamentally in British and European interests. There is no need for a referendum on a text that had been directed to abandon the constitutional concept, and meets British demands on foreign policy, tax and the judicial system".

Keith Vaz, in a letter to the Sun, August 31 2007:

"I believe in the European Union. And as a former Minister for Europe I believe the time has come for the Government to hold a referendum and decide once and for all Britain’s place is at the heart of Europe”.

A month is a long time in politics, it seems.

You're not wrong there, matey. It seems that, for the perfidious Vaz, it is long enough for him to entirely change his point of view...


* No, I am not calling him a turd because he is brown. I am calling him a turd because he is a fucking turd.

Real Estate Bloggers

Notice I use the Americanism, real estate. For some weird reason, I've attracted several US-based property bloggers. Look, I'm not complaining. Everyone's welcome, well unless you're an enviro-fascist, EU lover...I'd better stop there.

The weekend looms for two Jewish Princesses

Some writing, tidying and speech writing, and there's going to be a couple of sexy women coming over tomorrow night! About time for some fun and frolics with Rachel and Becky. I don't suppose politics, UKIP, Europe or football will be amongst the topics of conversation. More likely the oncoming cold weather which will be gripping the country for most of next week. Apparently!

Of course, there has to be time spent at the gym and walking around Hampstead Garden Suburb. For more details of the Trek preparation please visit here.

For more intellectual pursuits go here

For ogling at Penelope Cruz stay here

Stalinist Britain marches on...........................

Dr Simon Moores of Zentelligence, posted this article about "joined" up government. It probably sums up the feelings of many of us who have to suffer a vile NuLabour government and ever more diktats from the EUssr.

The Beria Principle

Back in the good old days before every bus, train and lamp post carried a CCTV camera and RIPA (the Regulation & Investigatory Power Act) was a twinkle in Home Secretary, David Blunkett’s eye, Silicon asked me to comment on another crazy-sounding scheme, connecting all of government’s citizen information into a single giant database.

“You don’t have to worry about government until it’s joined-up” quipped my friend ‘J’ in the coffee lounge of the Institute of Director at the same time. ‘J’ was what the BBC calls a ‘spook’ and had an office overlooking the Prime Minister’s garden.

At the time, I described the giant database idea as ‘The Beria Principle’ after NKVD security Lavrentiy Beria, the executor of Joseph Stalin's ‘Great Purge’ of the 1930s. Now while we have an Office of Constitutional Affairs, we don’t yet have a Combined State Political Directorate and that’s where I fear the idea for a "A huge Whitehall 'super-database' of people's personal details” might best sit, regardless of the noises surrounding its true objective of improving public services."

At the forthcoming e-crime congress in March,, this is a subject we’ll be examining in the company of Professor Ross Anderson and Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, who has already warned that Britain may be 'sleepwalking into a ‘surveillance society'.

So why do I object to the idea of joined-up government in the battle to improve public-sector efficiency and fight fraud. In principle, I don’t but in practise, I’m naturally uneasy when it comes to public-sector guardianship of personal data, whether this involves National Insurance or National Health information, or simply the list of people who want to receive a text warning from MI5 in the even of a security alert.

The simple facts of the matter are that government leaks like a sieve. We know from scandalous story after story that personal information isn’t secure and that criminals, organised or opportunistic, know that working for government departments, like the Immigration service or even the Home Office can give them access to information or materials that can produce anything from Passports to National Insurance numbers. After all, it’s been suggested that as many as 30% of the NI numbers in circulation are bogus, costing the Treasury billions in fraud each year.

So why not have a single database that provides for a cross checking of information, an idea that re-emerged from the Government's policy review on public services, which is headed by Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton?

I have several objections. Firstly, we don’t have enough floor space in our prisons to deal with the number of fraudsters, thieves and illegal immigrants that such a database might reveal. Secondly, mirroring the privacy concerns that have marred the progress of the National Program for IT (NPfIT) in the Health Service, there’s very little trust in government to properly protect the full details of your life from ‘interested parties’. These could be the security services, the Inland Revenue, your local council, Tesco, the Russian Mafia or the nascent Combined State Political Directorate of tomorrow, given the rapid and alarming manner in which our unwritten constitution has changed over the last decade.

While being joined-up may offer a real advantage to governments departments, the privacy risks to the rest of us are even greater and until the public sector can demonstrate a rather better track record of success with personal data than it has in the past I think I’ll support my spooky friend in believing that some things are best left alone if we are not to plunge headlong into Big Brother’s vision of a joined-up future that I want no part in.

and neither do I.

John Brignall's Number watch Site

Number of the Month

January 2007

Alan Caruba has just sent me a copy of this. He despairs at what he sees in Blair's Britain today. So does author John Brignall, as do I, and probably countless millions of Britons.

The first dawn of a new year and the wintry sun picks out the lines of the ancient strip lynchets on the downs edging the Blackmore Vale.

A time of hope for many, but not for Soviet Britain, where the future is BBC (Blair, Brown, Cameron).

01/01/07

In Blair’s Britain

It takes some believing, even for those of us who live here, no wonder those Aussies are agape. Now you may bugger a sixteen year old boy, but you must not supply him with a cigarette.

Your bending author was recently discovered by that other grumpy old sod, the subject matter being the slow death of Britain’s small towns. Like Charles II, they have been an unconscionable time dying, but dying they are. The moves in the Blairisation of Britain are many and various, and you are hardly aware of it until one hits you in the face. By dint of Sod’s law, such an experience happens only at a time of stress; and so it was chez bending author. Oddly enough it occurred two days before this story broke.

It came about with a recrudescence of the lung infection that played such havoc with Number Watch at the end of last year. It came to a head on the Saturday before New Year’s Eve and it became clear that medical advice would be needed, so the obvious thing was to phone your local surgery (as you do). That is what we did when Mrs bending author had a scare last October and one of the local Wiltshire GPs came and ordered an ambulance for her to be rushed (well, actually, it took the ambulance five and a half hours to arrive, but that is another story) into the “local” hospital, which is now thirty miles away. Well, this time the call was diverted to an emergency service in Ringwood, Hampshire (home of the best ale on the planet). The young lady on duty said she would get a doctor to phone “but we are very busy”. At least she did not say “your call is valuable to us”. Five hours later a rather pleasant Asian gentleman phoned and after some discussion he decided that the case merited a personal visit from a doctor, who would be brought by a car based in Shaftesbury, Dorset. Some seven hours after the original call the doctor arrived and suggested immediate admission to the hospital, an invitation that was politely declined on the grounds of risk. As evinced by this piece, the patient has survived so far.

In the bad old days, the town had its own ambulance station, run by the Red Cross. They worked then on the principle that the health service was there for the well-being of patients and not for the convenience of bureaucrats. The idea then was to minimise the time to reach the patient. In fact, after standing for many years as a silent, derelict monument to health service past, it has just been acquired for private development. Only someone with the chutzpah of Tony Blair could argue that increasing the travel time for emergency cases by closing hospitals will save lives. The justifications come from Blair allies, such as IPPR, armed with figures of theoretical lives saved, which are obtained by careful data selection.

It is another sign of the times that the dedicated GP is a thing of the past. They now only work office hours. It is a story with all the usual modern ingredients – a diktat from the EU, hopeless negotiating by bureaucrats, determined negotiation by a powerful union and complete disregard of the cost to the taxpayer and the consequences for the victims. It is the same across the whole public service, particularly in education.

When bureaucracy comes through the door, dedication flies out of the window!

Here, for purely sentimental reasons and not artistic merit, is a picture of the old ambulance station.

Footnote: Why is it happening? See here.

03/01/06

Index

Deutschland uber alles? - THE DAMN EU AGAIN

New EU constitution "without public poll"

Nicholas Cecil in today's Evening Standard reports that Wolfgang Ischinger, the German Ambassador to Britain, said Berlin would "love" to get through a new treaty containing the key parts of the EU constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters. He suggested this could be done by scrapping the pledge made in countries such as Britain and France........Mr Ischinger told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We would love to preserve to the maximum extent possible the substance of that draft".

........and what is the substance of the draft?

A total loss of sovereignty, our way of life and our laws and customs which have served Britain well for centuries. As I said at the General Election in May 2005, the undemocratic, evil EU is succeeding where the Luftwaffe failed in 1940.

Balkan Bottoms

Once again I feel compelled to copy & paste from Richard North's site. This time the subject is the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the EUssr Club.

At midnight tonight, with the dawn of the New Year, Romania and Bulgaria join the European Union, bringing it to 27 members. But that means more than them joining a cosy little club. It means that Romanians and Bulgarians have the right to enter our country. They do not, as yet, have a right to work here – unless they are self-employed – but who is checking?

It does mean, though, that their governments become part of our government. Romania and Bulgaria will supply officials, high and low, to the EU commission, which makes decisions on how we in England are required to run our affairs. Their ministers join the Council of Ministers, which decides which laws are adopted, and their heads of government become members of the European Council – and decide on "European" political strategy. For that privilege, we also pay several more billions into the kitty.

The funny thing is, I do not ever remember being asked - not by my government or anyone else - if I wanted Romania and Bulgaria as part of my government, giving their officials the right to decide on the laws that affect me. And do I mind? Hell yes! I do mind, very much indeed.

Accordingly, I will not be welcoming the latest new members into the "club". I would sooner they and all the rest celebrated our departure from it. In the meantime, they can - as the song goes - stick their blue flags up their .....

..........................Balkan bottoms?

Post Office closures.

Taken from the UKIP website

Lost in the post?

14-12-2006
The government was accused today of covering up the true reason why thousands of British post offices have been, or will be, closed.
In spite of all their explanations, they have not revealed the true reason behind the closures.

"The plain truth is that the scandal of these closures is directly because of a ruling from the European Commission.

UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage added, "Three years ago, this government signed away the Royal Mail's ability to conduct its own financial affairs."

The deal struck in 2003 allowed the government to provide £150 million a year to the post office, which has been extended by another three years. However, the costs of subsidising the service cost £4 million a week, which means a £58 million deficit every year.

"The three years is up and now we are having to live with the consequences. Yet the government still refuses to admit this is the real reason. Perhaps their explanation got lost in the post?"

Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party said, "Why should we have to go to Brussels to beg permission to fund a service which is important to so many local communities; especially in rural areas? In spite of Alastair Darling declaring investment of £1.7 billion, he will still have to ask permission from the EU to do this.

"Thanks to the EU, the profitable services have been 'cherry-picked' whilst the small and rural post offices will get cut or axed.

"It's about time we stamped on the power of the European Union if we are going to address the problems facing postal services: they have consistently failed to deliver."

Treaty of Amsterdam , Article 88 demands that a national government seeks permission from the Commission to grant state aid.

EU Directive 2002/39/EC requires permission before any state aid can be granted.

The Postal Services Directive 2002/39/EC reduced the part of the postal market which could be reserved for the national monopoly

UK Independence Party: The only Party telling you the truth about the European Union
Privacy Statement and Terms of use (including use of content) All work © 2006 UKIP and other contributors

The Post Office Closures, or who runs this country?

Andrew Gilligan wrote a brilliant piece in the London Evening Standard on Monday about the scandal concerning the closure of our rural Post Offices.

The Devil wrote this.........................

Post Office closures: what nobody's telling us

Iain Dale has noted that a few thousand Post Offices are to close.

While Lord Stevens announced the findings of his inquiry into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the Government announced that 2,500 Post Offices would close. Another good day to bury bad news.

Indeed; up to 3,000 Post Offices, mainly in rural areas, face closure but there is something that the government aren't telling you: can you guess what it is?

I shall pass you over to the lovely Trixy so that she can spell it out for you.

So, Alastair Darling is going to ask the European Commission very nicely if he can provide investment of £1.7 billion for the Post Offices, is he? It's so nice to know that these people we elect to run our country, who have recently decided they just don't get paid enough, can't even decide how they are going to spend tax revenue.

Mr Darling said the annual £150m subsidy to help rural branches stay open will be extended beyond 2008 until 2011.

What, however, Mr Darling doesn't say is that under Article 88 of the Treaty of Amsterdam, a national government needs permission from the European Commission to grant state aid, and under Directive 2002/39/EC, this permission must be granted before the aid can be given.
...

Can you imagine the grief Mr Darling would get (oh, if only he was a Captain) from dear old Tone' if he stood up and, perhaps, told the fucking truth about this post office debacle?

"Sorry, chaps, the European Commission says we can't fund post offices, even if they are the only facility in a rural area or tiny village miles from anywhere, somewhere that the elderly rely on. Sorry, but that's the way it is. They are the bosses now, and if they want to bend me over and bugger me with the Acquis Communautaire then they can."

If you look at the BBC News article that I linked to, you'll see not one mention of the EU's part in all this. Just for your enlightenment, let's hop over to UKIP's Press Release on the subject.

The Postal Services Directive 2002/39/EC reduced the part of the postal market which could be reserved for the national monopoly.

The breakup of the Royal Mail was actually initiated by an EU Directive.

Treaty of Amsterdam , Article 88 demands that a national government seeks permission from the Commission to grant state aid.

EU Directive 2002/39/EC requires permission before any state aid can be granted.

So, who rules in this country? Our elected government—awful, devious, dishonest, venal, little shits though they might be—or the unelected bureaucrats of the EU Commission. Well, I think that the answer to that question is becoming increasingly obvious.

So, can we leave yet?

Don't you just love the EU

Richard North at EU Referendum (I'd wish he'd rename it EUssr)has written this sublime article.

Here it is in full:

"Britain gives go-ahead to GMO potato trials", says Reuters. The Press Association, via The Guardian, headlines: "GM potato trials given go-ahead" and tells us that, "The Government has granted permission for genetically modified potatoes to be grown in the UK."

The BBC Website has "GM potato trials given go-ahead" and tells us that, "A plan to grow genetically modified potatoes on two trial sites in England has been approved by the government." The Times gives us, "Trials for GM potatoes agreed" and its story starts: "The Government has agreed to new GM trials for potatoes."

Then we get The New Scientist with: "Gene-modified potatoes get trial go-ahead", adding, "The UK government has approved the growing of genetically modified potatoes in two field trials." The Farmers Weekly though – as you might expect – is more specific, giving you the name of the ministry, declaring: "DEFRA approves BASF's application to plant genetically modified potatoes".

The plants, we are told, will be grown next year on land owned by a scientific research station in Cambridgeshire, and on land secured by the biotechnology firm BASF Plant Sciences in Derbyshire.

Then to sweep up, in this sample of news coverage, we have the dedicated political website, Politics.co.uk, which also refers to the ministry. It's headline is, "Defra approves GM potato trials" and the strap reads: "Defra approves the first GM crop trials for three years".

Technically, all these media are right. The government, through its "Competent Authority", the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has approved trials on GM potatoes. But what none of them say it that the UK government had no choice about this, thus omitting to mention the "elephant in the room", the European Union.

The point is that the approval of the "deliberate release into the environment of genetically modified organisms" is an exclusive EU competence under Directive 2001/18/EC. It was adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers in February 2001 and entered into force on 17 October 2002, since when member states are required to process applications in accordance with the Directive. In particular, Article 6 refers:

5. The competent authority shall acknowledge the date of receipt of the notification and, having considered, where appropriate, any observations by other Member States made in accordance with Article 11, shall respond in writing to the notifier within 90 days of receipt of the notification by either:

(a) indicating that it is satisfied that the notification is in compliance with this Directive and that the release may proceed; or

(b) indicating that the release does not fulfil the conditions of this Directive and that notification is therefore rejected.

In effect, the member state is merely acting as an agent for the community. Its job is assess whether or not the test protocol complies with the Directive. If it does, the application must be approved – the member state has no discretion in this. Only if it does not, can the application be rejected.

Quite how the news should be reported is a moot point but an accurate or balanced report would include reference to the EU dimension, in terms: UK finds application in conformity with EU law and therefor is required to give a go ahead to the tests.

At least that would put into context the comments of the Friends of the Earth representative, who said the trials posed a "significant contamination threat" to future potato crops. “The government should promote safe and sustainable agriculture, not this half-baked GM potato plan," said Clare Oxborrow.

It would also put into context the statement by environment minister Ian Pearson. He says: "Our top priority on this issue remains protecting consumers and the environment, and a rigorous independent assessment has concluded that these trials do not give rise to any safety concerns.

Neither mentions the EU. Neither acknowledges that the government has not choice.

Perhaps Oxborrow's ignorance is forgivable. She is, after all, only an environmental campaigner. But the minister and the media should know better. He and the Guardian, the BBC, The Times, and all the others are just like the felukka.

Why?

They are all in de Nile.

..................................


One of these days, we'll have a leader who'll stand up to the undemocratic and corrupt EU






One of these day

UKIP on the way up?

The Devil highlights a brilliant media coup for the United Kingdom Independence Party.

Jeremy Paxman on Bulgaria & Romania

In one of his tamer interviews this evening on BBC's Newsnight, top TV presenter, Jeremy Paxman asked Sir Chris Fox (former very important person at ACPO) about controlling criminals from EUssr's two "new" states. Bulgaria & Romania.

Both parties, in an awful exchange, just couldn't bring themselves to say that the way to stop the next wave of gangsters is to have proper border controls (which of course this country hasn't had for some time). Our borders at one time were Dover, Ramsgate, Heathrow et al, now they're Minsk, Omsk, Tomsk parts of Poland, Moldova and other lands that God forgot.

The subject of restricting immigration through "controls" was mentioned, or rather, waffled through. The truth is of course, this country can't do diddly-squat about immigration from any EUssr state.

Bulgarians & Romanians

The comment by Serf in his Blog is self-evident and more than worthy of a mention.

Here it is in full:
Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Tough on Immigration

Our Glorious Leader, in the knowledge that his lies on immigration have been rumbled, has vowed to be much tougher this time. His tame Pit Bull has been telling the world that Romanians and Bulgarians, will not have the automatic right to work in the UK next year, unlike their more fortunate Polish counterparts. Thats the theory anyway. The reality?

EU law means the Government can’t stop people coming – so permits will only drive people into the illegal economy.Read that carefully. Under EU law, all Romanians and Bulgarians have the right to come to the UK. The system to be put in place simply means that they cannot work legally. So my question to you is this: A Bulgarian who has been unable to find a job at home is now faced with an option

1. Stay where he is unemployed
2. Come to the UK and work illegally

Personally I would choose option number two.
Something which not enough people are aware of is exactly what free movement of people means. Open Europe spells out one very big problem with it:

While EU law allows the Government to restrict numbers coming to work for companies in the UK it currently forbids it from stopping dangerous criminals from entering the country, or deporting them if they commit a crime in the UK.

Seeing as crooks have more reason than most to wish to move around, this part of the law is a complete criminals charter. Probably in place to make a power grab in the area of justice much easier.

All aboard to Bordeaux

This was the sixth tour of it's kind for the dynamic duo (although it felt like the nth time I'd been away with Paul). Previously, various towns on the Continent of Europe, had been terrorised by us. These include: Bayeux, Compiegne, Ostend and Milano Marittima on the Adriatic coast.

But this weekend was unlike any other, as Bordeaux is a magnificent city. Full of Classic and neo-Classic architecture, wide roads where the trams snake through like smooth, semi-silent serpents. There are no cars in the centre, as several years ago it was decided to turn it into a pedestrian-only zone, the cornerstone of which, is the magnificent Greek and Romanesque- stlyed Opera House.

I need not dilate on the excellences of foreign travel to such places as Italy, Spain and France. This compares of course, to what we have at home. Instead of stylish, chic-looking women parading in and out of fashionable boutiques or sophisticated cafes, we have half-dressed, barely conscious; alcoholically-challenged, raucous females and males from some sub-culture, downloading (or is it chucking-up) images on their "phones" in their own self-amused fashion, on and around our High Streets.

Bordeaux, like most other towns and cities in France, has no thoroughfares called High Street, or it's equivalent in la belle langue - and as an antedote to English homogeneous, in Bordeaux there is the Place du Parlement, Cours de L'Intendance and the the superb sounding Place des Quinconces.

Along Les Allees de Tourny, Sunday lunch was taken at La Noaille, one of the finest bistro's in the city. Fresh asparagus, sole menuire and a peach and raspberry tart all washed down wth an excellent white wine - and how could I not mention our visit to St. Emilion. This village, world renowned for it's wine, quaint little restaurants and shops is really a sight to behold and " a must see" on any visit to South-West France.

(There's also a little extra piece about the car we took to St Emilion, here) and.....................

...........the bizarre-looking drink in the photo above, is a Monaco. Beer with a dash of grenadine.

Four Days In Provence

No, not another book by Peter Mayle, but another stay by me (and friend) at the home and gite (pronounced jeeeettt, not git) of my dear cousin, Michael Altman. He has built up a magnificent reputation with a variety of travel organisations with his particular style of accommodating an eclectic mix of mainly British tourists. On this occasion however, we were also joined by Canadian and French visitors.

On arrival, one is presented with two barking dogs, a welcome drink and in my case an excellent 4- course meal. These are normally served every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the non self-catering guests at around 8pm. Luckily, my upgrade to a decent rental car, ensured that my dash from Nice airport (which started shortly after 7pm) to junction 36 on the A8 was covered in good time. The final meandering along the D54, near to Draguignan, only took a few minutes.

Throughout the year, Michael also accepts parties of guests who want to learn Provencal cooking and others who enjoy a corporate-style golfing break. Nearby are jewels of any southern French trip. The gorgeous villages of Bargemon, Callas and Tourtour. For the slightly more motoring adventurous of you, there are magnificent views at the Gorges de Verdon......and for the totally mad you can do something called Bungee jumping. What you do is give a total stranger about 75 quid. He then straps your legs together to a thick cord, then tells you to stand on the edge of the bridge and jump-off.

My lovely companion and I, preferred to lounge on a private beach called "Wyc" ( prounounced Vick) near Les Issambres, a delightful little place between Frejus and Ste. Maxime. And speaking of SM, this is where we took a boat, known in France as a Verte Vedette, to St. Tropez. The trip takes only about 15 minutes but is well-worth the £15.00 return trip for two people. Despite the soaking we took on both legs (or sea-legs) of the journey, this was the highlight of my long week-end away from dull BBC radio news presenters, diversity training; Polish immigrants, corporate spokemen from the bloody water companies justifying their huge profits blah, blah, blah,and so on...........

give yourself a break, just book up at Michael's

Do it now or do it later?

One of the best articles Alan Caruba has written. This is from www.anxietycenter.com and the series of articles entitled: Warning Signs


July 26, 2006, Volume 8, No. 30


Do it now or Do it later?

We are beginning to see the national debate about what to do in the Middle East shape up into fairly specific sides. I call them the "Do it now" crowd and the "Do it later" crowd.

One can cite history to support either side. The "Do it now" crowd these days are called "neoconservatives" and they are led by people like Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, a respected forum that makes ordinary Republicans look like wimps. Arguing for "Do it later" is George Wills, a respected conservative Washington Post columnist.

It should be noted that there is also a "Let’s not do anything" or a "Let’s run away" crowd who are called liberals and/or Democrats.

Maybe it’s just a trick of my imagination, but I seem to recall Americans of all descriptions just loving those images on television after 9-11 of the U.S. bombing the hell out of Afghanistan’s Tora Bora region where Osama bin Laden was said to be hiding or, better still, driving our tanks into downtown Baghdad. Later we found Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in the ground.

Perhaps the most powerful argument for "Doing it now" is the fact that it’s been five years since 9/11 and the U.S. has not experienced another comparable attack. Keeping al Qaeda on the run, killing its leaders, and playing havoc with its funding was, in retrospect, probably a good idea.

Now the images on television are of war in Israel and Lebanon. Israel has been the subject of attacks since the day it declared its independence in 1948. It took awhile for the message to sink in, but its neighbors eventually figured out that massing armies on its borders was a very bad idea. They switched to a low-level war involving suicide bombers and rockets. Imagine how long we would patiently deal with Canada or Mexico if they were rocketing our cities and towns?

The "Do it now" crowd is now rooting for Israel to get rid of Hezbollah in Lebanon; mostly Palestinians who took up residence there after previously losing encounters with Israel and Jordan. First thing they did, of course, was to lay waste to Lebanon with a fifteen-year civil war pitting Muslims against Christians. Having no idea what peace is, other than the total destruction of Israel, Palestinians and other Arabs are once again learning what a bad idea it is to provoke yeshiva boys.

In Gaza, Hamas—another group of unhappy Palestinians—is also getting shot up by the Israelis. The Israeli’s "Do it now" crowd has concluded that waiting around for peace with Palestinians is a bad idea and a higher level of payback may prove palliative.

All of which brings us to our "Do it later" crowd who advise that waiting is just as good an idea, particularly as regards Iran who everyone knows is developing its own nuclear weapons capability. By way of a reminder, it was Iranians who in 1979 invaded the U.S. embassy in Tehran, seized our diplomats, and held them hostage for 444 days. It can be argued that most Iranians are being held hostage by the mullahs, but the funding and arming of Hezbollah comes from Iran.

The "Do it later" crowd always proudly points to how we patiently waited for the former Soviet Union to implode. The problem with that argument is that we also engaged in several proxy wars with them. Owing to Red China’s intervention, the best the U.S. could achieve was a stalemate in Korea and now we are stuck with a loony dictator in the north who has missiles and nukes.

Then there was that nastiness in Vietnam. Despite that loss the U.S. stayed busy sending troops to various places for the purpose of peacekeeping or swatting bad guys in Grenada, Panama, and Haiti. In 1983 Hezbollah blew up several hundred U.S. Marines who were in Beirut on a peacekeeping mission.

After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, we funded and equipped Muslim holy warriors to drive out the Russians, thus helping to bring about the downfall of the Soviet Union. The Muslims, however, became al Qaeda and showed their gratitude by destroying the World Trade Center, flying a commercial jet into the Pentagon, and killing some 3,000 Americans.

The problem with waiting for Iran to become a nuclear power is that the leaders of Iran keep saying crazy things and promising to do crazy things. Even Arabs, no slouches when it comes to crazy, think the Persian, albeit Muslim, Iranians are really crazy.

So, while the warnings and recommendations of the "Do it later" crowd sound like a good idea, they rarely are. History is filled with examples of why "Do it now" is a better idea because failure to respond to Big Trouble almost always results in Even Bigger Trouble.

Every generation of Americans has had to learn this lesson. The nation has always been sharply divided over questions of war. This is what we pay Presidents to decide. After 9/11, we wanted the President to punish al Qaeda and, somewhat reluctantly, we agreed to his getting rid of a murderous despot in Iraq. Then we wanted that war to be over in two weeks.

History is rarely so accommodating. Wars tend to be very messy and this is especially true of the years after victory is declared. Militarily, we are still in Europe since the end of World War II in 1945. We are still in South Korea since 1953.

War is transformative and, even the most cursory look back at the past half-century or so reveals that the U.S. has benefited itself and much of the world by opposing evil. Wherever the forces of evil may be and whomever they might call themselves, we still need to be able to "Do it now" because power-crazed lunatics will always find an excuse to make trouble.

As we debate whether to "Do it now" or "Do it later" regarding the Iranian mullahs, perhaps we should recall British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who, after negotiating with Adolph Hitler, returned home to proclaim "peace in our time."

There is no substitute for victory

As this is written, George W. Bush is the subject of mockery and disdain, but sixmonths after the liberation of Baghdad by American and British forces, on November 6, 2003, he reminded the nation that "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe—because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty."

On May 12, 1962, one of the greatest generals of World War II returned to West Point to deliver a farewell speech. Douglas MacArthur spoke as a soldier of one era to the young soldiers who would take up the duty of defending the nation. He told them, "Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory; that if you lose, the nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be duty, honor, country."

"Others," MacArthur said, "will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men’s minds. But serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the nation’s war guardians, as its lifeguards from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiators in the arena of battle."

Today, there is no lack of controversial issues and no lack of enemies who challenge our nation and the values of Western civilization on which it is based. Those values began 2,500 years ago with a tribe of people, the Hebrews who entered into a covenant with a God they deemed to be the creator and lord of all mankind.

Take away the Jews and there is no Judaism. Take away Judaism and there is no Jesus and no Christianity. There would have been no Diaspora and no Renaissance, no Reformation and no Enlightenment. The only constant to which one can point is the Jews. Empires and Nations rose and fell, but always, always there were the Jews, keeping the covenant, observing the laws, lighting the Sabbath candles, reading from the Torah, and yearning to return to Jerusalem and their promised land.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing that occurred in the twentieth century was that return, that resurrection, of Israel.

On May 14, 1948 Israel’s independence was declared. The Arab response was war. Israel fought again for its survival in 1967 when adjacent Arab nations attacked. Again in 1973, on the eve of Yom Kippur, one of the holiest days of Judaism, Israel was attacked. Each time it successfully fought off the Arabs. In 1977, Menachem Begin became Prime Minister of Israel and in 1978 he would share the Nobel Peace Prize with President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt as the result of their peace accords. Sadat’s efforts for peace were rewarded with assassination.

Begin was well known to those early, first Israelis. He had served in the Irgun Zvai Leumi, an organization that forced the British to relinquish control of what was then called Palestine, a name first given it by the Roman Emperor Hadrian who thought it would erase all memory of Israel.

It remained the given name of the area when, after World War I, the British and French drew lines on the map of the Middle East to create Lebanon as a French Protectorate and Palestine as Britain’s. Other nations created were Iraq and what was then called Trans-Jordan.

Following the day in 1948 when a provisional Hebrew government was announced, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt prepared to attack the re-born Israel. Menachem Begun went to a secret radio station in Tel Aviv. Virtually every home in the land was tuned to listen.

"One phase of the battle for freedom, for the return of the whole people of Israel to its homeland, for the restoration of the whole land of Israel to its God-covenanted owners, has ended," he said. "The state of Israel has risen…through blood, through fire…it could not have been otherwise…and it is compelled to fight—or to continue to fight satanic enemies and blood-thirsty mercenaries, on land, in the air, and on the sea."

"The first pillar of our state must therefore be victory, total victory, in the war which is raging all over the country, said Menachem Begin, eerily echoing the words of General MacArthur at West Point. "Whoever does not recognize our natural right to our entire homeland, does not recognize our right to any part of it."

And he reminded the new citizens of Israel; "We cannot buy peace from our enemies with appeasement." Facing the first war of national survival, he told them that, "in this battle we shall break the enemy and bring salvation to our people, tried in the furnace of persecution, thirsting only for freedom, for righteousness, and for justice."

Nearly sixty years after Begin addressed his people, Israel is still the only truly free nation in the whole of the Middle East. It constitutes barely one percent of the total area occupied by its Muslim enemies. Israel’s population of 6.4 million people is equal to two percent of the combined 315 million Muslims of the nations surrounding and threatening them.

A friend of mine asked, "Why does 98% of the Middle East’s population with 99% of the land hate Israel so much? It is a mystery that defies explanation." It is no mystery. The reason is Islam, a religion that holds all other religions in utter contempt, but especially the Jews whose ancestors had refused to recognize Mohammed as a prophet.

Finally, in this hour of blood and fire for both America and Israel, the words of another U.S. General, George S. Patton, Jr. are worth recalling when, on the eve of the invasion of Europe, he told his troops, "Americans love to fight, traditionally. Americans love the sting and clash of battle. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win."

The wavering, the calls for cease-fire, the urgings for appeasement and withdrawal are not the foundation upon which great nations are born and based.

In Iraq, Americans must play to win and so must Israel in yet another hour of another war it must not lose. Our fates are intertwined; our destinies are the same. The issue is freedom and the battle must be joined. There is no substitute for victory.

"Warning Signs" is the Center’s way of helping Americans and others gain an insight to both national and international events, issues, and trends that will protect our interests and those of others striving toward freedom everywhere. The Center needs your donation to maintain this effort. If you prefer to send a check, please make it payable to The Caruba Organization, 28 West Third Street, Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ 07079.

Coming in September, Alan Caruba’s new collection of his commentaries written between 2003 and 2005. To learn more about "Right Answers: Short Takes on Big Issues", click here.



© 2006 Alan Caruba.
All Rights Reserved