These vainglorious fools will march us into another inferno
A century ago, stupid and vainglorious politicians dragged us into war. We started it as a great, rich empire and ended it as an indebted husk.
Soon afterwards, America’s President Woodrow Wilson told aides he would wipe Britain ‘off the face of the map’ in another ‘terrible and bloody war’ unless we ceded our naval supremacy.
And US Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes raged and shouted at Britain’s ambassador in Washington, Auckland Geddes, that America had saved Britain’s bacon and we had better be grateful from now on.
In a voice rising to a scream, Mr Hughes declared: ‘You would not be here to speak for Britain – you would not be speaking anywhere, England would not be able to speak at all!
'It is the Kaiser who would be heard, if America – seeking nothing for herself but to save England – had not plunged into the war and won it!’
These little-known but important facts should be borne in mind as we look back on this dreadful episode. I for one have had enough of war poets and trench memoirs. Let’s have some proper history – who did what to whom and what it cost.
The UN estimates 800 civilian deaths and 2,000 civilian wounded so far. The region is riven by the sound of guns, the Guns of August thundering yet again.
It is no mere skirmish. It is a war in the making. Do you really want to join in? This is a dangerous time of year. It will be less dangerous if we refuse to trust our leaders.
Let us have no more moves towards conflict with Moscow without a full recall of Parliament. And let us pray that our MPs are reading some history on their holidays.
These vainglorious fools will march us into another inferno
A century ago, stupid and vainglorious politicians dragged us into war. We started it as a great, rich empire and ended it as an indebted husk.
Soon afterwards, America’s President Woodrow Wilson told aides he would wipe Britain ‘off the face of the map’ in another ‘terrible and bloody war’ unless we ceded our naval supremacy.
And US Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes raged and shouted at Britain’s ambassador in Washington, Auckland Geddes, that America had saved Britain’s bacon and we had better be grateful from now on.
In a voice rising to a scream, Mr Hughes declared: ‘You would not be here to speak for Britain – you would not be speaking anywhere, England would not be able to speak at all!
'It is the Kaiser who would be heard, if America – seeking nothing for herself but to save England – had not plunged into the war and won it!’
These little-known but important facts should be borne in mind as we look back on this dreadful episode. I for one have had enough of war poets and trench memoirs. Let’s have some proper history – who did what to whom and what it cost.
The UN estimates 800 civilian deaths and 2,000 civilian wounded so far. The region is riven by the sound of guns, the Guns of August thundering yet again.
It is no mere skirmish. It is a war in the making. Do you really want to join in? This is a dangerous time of year. It will be less dangerous if we refuse to trust our leaders.
Let us have no more moves towards conflict with Moscow without a full recall of Parliament. And let us pray that our MPs are reading some history on their holidays.
I can't get enough of Peter Hitchens at the moment. I have always been lucky enough to have an appreciation of people of substance in and around politics who have an ability for independent thinking, irrespective of their tacit position on the political spectrum. Historically, I would have said that PH and I were at rather different ends of that curve but increasingly I am not so sure about that point. I seem to find a lot of agreement in those that lean left and lean right, both against the liberal mainstream. That is especially true if they are way beyond my limited capabilities but attended the same university as me, that is, before the standards dropped and let we the A'level class of '81 in.
Anyway, not only is there the relief that somebody in the popular press who knows a hell of a lot of "stuff" is saying what many of us feel. It also helps that in matters so grim there are always moments in his turn of phrase which make me chuckle, albeit darkly. I am more than happy to confirm that the source I quoted about the Dutch funding propaganda television ahead of the Chicken Kiev coup is a source he has quoted in his online blog in the Mail, readersupportednews.org. I doubt that he has yet spotted the Netherlander role of Mr Klimkin's wife. That was one of my own discoveries, of which there have been many, and I accept it might be comparatively trivial. But if Dutch voters were more aware of some of the facts, they might talk about Mr Rutte and his Cabinet in less glowing terms than they do. Pristine in appearance though VVD might be, they treat their electors with such contempt they assume their US love-in goes unnoticed. Surely not all are ageing less than gracefully in the haze of a coffee shop.
Back in blighty, Cameron and some seriously influential old timers from the Major days - and man, do their tentacles spread like the proverbial octopus - are throwing in the phrase "Putin's cronies" at the drop of every hat. That has to be one of the biggest examples of a lack of self-awareness that has been repeatedly uttered all year. They, of course, recognise that the average British voter is sufficiently aware to see that they are holding up a mirror to themselves. That they aren't in the slightest bit bothered is just indicative of their woefully arrogant wrongness.
Hammond, who for the moment I am half sticking with if only to be fair-minded, has walked into all that nonsense. There he was earlier this weekend reminding us that Vlad is "no friend of the west". He did so like a man who, having taken out a modest chisel, had been handed a b----y great room sized sculpture. One that had been approved by everyone from the anonymous parts of what some call the Civil Service and others HQ to exotic boggle-eyed millionaires who sit firmly on their Committees and have a long history of oil interests in Ukraine. Their greatest contribution to this country would be to retire. To Klaipeda, perhaps, where the climate is oceanic but almost continental and far enough away from the younger British generations who might still hope for a future.
Reading his claptrap just makes me lament his brother's passing even more.
Agree. This article was classic far right isolationism. We should have appeased the Kaiser, let him butcher Europe, seen the Americans as an enemy, and kept the Empire, and let every dictator get on with bombing and gassing their people. We should appease Putin - as he's only trying to restore Catherine the Great's empire. Its full of right wing dogma , inability to realise that there's all sorts of opposition to Assad, and failure to recognise that deterrence requires some effort. It even implies another Munich solution for the Ukraine would be good - regardless of all the lessons of appeasement. It also fails to understand the essential lesson that Chamberlain learnt - sane leaders don't trust foreign leaders like Putin who habitually lie to them. And it ends by being alarmist and forcasting a major war that his policy, of not deterring Russia , would make more likely.
A more convincing critique from the right, is that we habitually will the result without paying for the means, and maintaining the effort. Thats why our tiny army was discounted by Germany in 1914, and why Camerons' words seem backed up by nothing to Putin now. Its also why we lost our last two wars, and allowed Libya to disintegrate when we lost interest there again.
Agree. This article was classic far right isolationism. We should have appeased the Kaiser, let him butcher Europe, seen the Americans as an enemy, and kept the Empire, and let every dictator get on with bombing and gassing their people. We should appease Putin - as he's only trying to restore Catherine the Great's empire. Its full of right wing dogma , inability to realise that there's all sorts of opposition to Assad, and failure to recognise that deterrence requires some effort. It even implies another Munich solution for the Ukraine would be good - regardless of all the lessons of appeasement. It also fails to understand the essential lesson that Chamberlain learnt - sane leaders don't trust foreign leaders like Putin who habitually lie to them. And it ends by being alarmist and forcasting a major war that his policy, of not deterring Russia , would make more likely.
A more convincing critique from the right, is that we habitually will the result without paying for the means, and maintaining the effort. Thats why our tiny army was discounted by Germany in 1914, and why Camerons' words seem backed up by nothing to Putin now. Its also why we lost our last two wars, and allowed Libya to disintegrate when we lost interest there again.
What on the British left are you hoping to save?
You surely don't believe that any of it exists anymore?
To the extent that a monster exists, it was made in the west.
Those who made it see a Frankenstein. The rest of us merely worry about their heads.
Maybe a few years ago or so the downing of the malaysian aircraft would have started a new world war. Think we have all grown up since. Shouldnt be any wars in europe now. Should be talks to end it.
Agree. This article was classic far right isolationism. We should have appeased the Kaiser, let him butcher Europe, seen the Americans as an enemy, and kept the Empire, and let every dictator get on with bombing and gassing their people. We should appease Putin - as he's only trying to restore Catherine the Great's empire. Its full of right wing dogma , inability to realise that there's all sorts of opposition to Assad, and failure to recognise that deterrence requires some effort. It even implies another Munich solution for the Ukraine would be good - regardless of all the lessons of appeasement. It also fails to understand the essential lesson that Chamberlain learnt - sane leaders don't trust foreign leaders like Putin who habitually lie to them. And it ends by being alarmist and forcasting a major war that his policy, of not deterring Russia , would make more likely.
Perhaps given the recent failures in foreign entanglements a period of isolationism would be good?
It will be interesting to see how the West react to the 300+ Ukrainian soldiers entering Russian territory. Ukrainian forces seeking refuge (or defecting) and not being harmed does not fit well with the official line.
Another excellent article from Peter Hitchens, this time in The American Spectator. Here he argues that Britain was not obliged under Treaty to enter into war in 1914 and the decision had largely been taken unbeknown to most of Parliament irrespective of any question arising over Belgian neutrality. Of more relevance to this thread, Western Europe via the EU "has now taken on almost exactly the shape that Berlin dreamed of in 1914" and that "the real vicious battle over the limits and nature of German power in Europe is flickering into life again......in the shabby, weedy, concrete towns of Ukraine". One of the principal differences is that EU expansion, to date, is by soft power. I think that is what he is saying. No one knows how long that will last. Another is that it has the support of the US whereas earlier the US was against that impulse. Given the power of the US today, perhaps "support" should be "direction". Personally, I feel German reunification provided the US with a gift beyond its wildest territorial dreams.
Much of the language is moving, including the descriptions of apprehension. Those help to show how ordinary folk really felt about the onset of war. It certainly wasn't all jingoistic naivety. I also like his quoting of Helmut Schmidt with the accompanying endorsement of elder statesmen as, on balance, that plays to the stereotyping I prefer although I recognise there are many exceptions. As for the heart of it, I find a lot what he says persuasive while also feeling that there is an element of conflict in his main argument. For he also quotes Max Hastings as having argued that a German-dominated Europe, including what would have been domination of France, would have been grim, oppressive, and threatening. His response to that is "It is hard to see why. The Hohenzollern empire was far from free, but it was certainly not an insane despotism". And yet while he never argues that EU is an "insane despotism", one does have a distinct impression that he feels the EU is grim or oppressive or threatening or all these things.
In this piece, WW1 represents the end of old Britain and true conservatism. It is the last of men gathering wild flowers for their sweethearts and the beginnings of a long and broad list of the dire, all of which we live with now somehow. It hardly matters if in literal terms some have come and gone. If the poetic symbolism has an aching resonance, notwithstanding the absence of Dickens in its lens, the baddies who followed are an odd bunch. While it is impossible to counter criticism of Nazis and Soviets, I could never subscribe to a similar enlisting of the Welfare State. But the final sentences, which are a commentary on the current situation in Ukraine, are spot on. "Did they sleepwalk? Or is that an excuse? It is truer to say that they were greedy and stupid, and unwilling to believe that they could ever do as much harm as they actually did. But this explanation is more disturbing than “sleepwalking.” For it is equally true of the leaders of today, who (as we know) are quite capable of idiocy while wide awake."
Billionaire businessman Gennady Timchenko - close to President Vladimir Putin - told Russia's Itar-Tass news agency (in Russian) that Gulfstream was no longer servicing his jet and the pilots were not allowed to use its navigation equipment.
Oh dear. So ditch the Gulfstream and buy an Embraer instead. Support BRICS. Perhaps co-develop a competing exec jet with it's partners. I'm sure General Dyamics won't mind the competition.
Dobrolet, a Russian budget airline, grounds its planes. A subsidiary of Aeroflot, it had been flying from Moscow to Crimea after Russia's annexation of the peninsula, but was named on an EU sanctions list last week
Oh dear. Flying with leased Boeings while waiting for the ones it had ordered. It won't need those and I'm sure Boeing won't mind the lost sales.
The chairman of UK firm JCB, which exports tractors, diggers and other heavy equipment, says that "if sanctions restrict sales of machines and spare parts there will be obviously be a major impact on JCB, which could put hundreds of British jobs at risk".
Oh dear. I'm sure those people won't mind losing their jobs. I'm sure JCB won't be wondering about moving production off-shore either.
It will be interesting to see how the West react to the 300+ Ukrainian soldiers entering Russian territory. Ukrainian forces seeking refuge (or defecting) and not being harmed does not fit well with the official line.
Expect a press release from the SBU stating they were kidnapped. But you're right, it doesn't fit the party line that Russians have been killing Ukrainians. Especially as it was a reasonably sized invasion by the Ukrainians. I suspect the Russian's offer of asylum shows the Russian sense of humor though.
It will be interesting to see how the West react to the 300+ Ukrainian soldiers entering Russian territory. Ukrainian forces seeking refuge (or defecting) and not being harmed does not fit well with the official line.
Quite. This is the first proof that we have had of the Eastern border being crossed and it is Ukraine into Russia rather than vice versa. Contrast with the finger wagging Washington led position of Europe in which all hell would break loose if Russia overstepped that line, which given that the west was claiming had effectively happened already is further demonstration of how irrational it has become. "We had to", says Ukraine. Really. The city of Donetsk is 62 miles from the border, Torez is 25 and even Mirny is 12. Diplomatically it should by rights be an own goal and one doubts if they are capable of anything else. The idea that they would play by EU rules is hysterical.
It will be interesting to see how the West react to the 300+ Ukrainian soldiers entering Russian territory. Ukrainian forces seeking refuge (or defecting) and not being harmed does not fit well with the official line.
180 have now returned to Ukraine. The others are still deciding what to do.
438 Ukrainian Troops Seek Asylum In Russia; Government Passes "War Tax"
Over the weekend, the Ukrainian government imposed a series of “temporary” taxes to help the war effort as Ukrainian press reports several hundred solders were left without weapons or ammunition and crossed the border into Russia. The Ukrainian government is in a hurry to raise money. For the last few months, even before the turmoil began, Ukraine has been in an inflationary cycle. Both retail and asset prices were spiraling higher. Now they’ve entered a stagflationary period. The currency has gone into freefall. Unemployment is rising. The economy is contracting (6% by phony government estimates). And inflation is a whopping 19%... and rising. These people are getting abused. And the worst is yet to come.
Still no word on MH17 voice recorder, nothing on Ukraine ATC recordings, (anyone asked for them yet?) and no comment about the apparent 30mm cannon damage to the cockpit area of MH17.
Has the west just bypassed that incident and gone straight for Russian culpability, sanctions and eventually confrontation?
Still no word on MH17 voice recorder, nothing on Ukraine ATC recordings, (anyone asked for them yet?) and no comment about the apparent 30mm cannon damage to the cockpit area of MH17.
Has the west just bypassed that incident and gone straight for Russian culpability, sanctions and eventually confrontation?
Who cares about evidence and due process. Just blame Putin for everything!
Still no word on MH17 voice recorder, nothing on Ukraine ATC recordings, (anyone asked for them yet?) and no comment about the apparent 30mm cannon damage to the cockpit area of MH17.
Has the west just bypassed that incident and gone straight for Russian culpability, sanctions and eventually confrontation?
And what has happened to the private discussions between Merkel and Putin that the Mail mentioned several days ago? There was detail - albeit alleged - and it implied some sort of plan. Instead, we hear in the news today that Russia has imposed tit-for-tat sanctions. Hence both sides have declared war on their populations. "Cronies" are not purely in the business classes. A businessman's cronies are senior politicians. Many individuals, being both in business and politics, are cronies with themselves. Most could probably lose 90% of their wealth. They would still not ever have to worry about food, housing, heating and lighting. The same is not true of voters so one can only hope any secret sums that have been done are not just for the purpose of shoring up minority privileged positions.
What follows may sound a bit cheap and over-emotional but I make no apology for it. It is a counterweight to the absence of human feeling, as well as to the worryingly small logic, in current leadership. Where is the remorse? By rights, the mood in Parliament, had it not been shut until autumn, should have been sombre. Every member of the Government would have been permanently on radio and television issuing heartfelt apology after apology. Putting aside any argument about who started it - that will never lead to consensus - each should have bowed his or her head in deep shame and regret that these matters have developed as they have done. And they would then have accepted a significant element of responsibility as it happened on their watch. In parallel, the London Mayor would not have been using it to promote himself - and, ideally, even Washington and Berlin would have sounded grave.
For beyond reducing democracy domestically while purporting to promote it abroad; beyond cheating the taxpayer out of money in a broader range of scams than would ever be in the mind of a common thief; beyond the deliberate creation of an economic crisis which has exacerbated the gap between the haves and the have nots; and beyond the sheer incompetence of failing to plan ahead so that fulfilling energy needs would not require a triggering of old political earthquakes - what could be worse than a new major war, whether it is to be military or cold? While the language of Britain and the US was eventually toned down to assure the public that neither was an option, that needed to be backed up by transparent and hence politically accountable action. Instead, what we have had is historical ceremony. The latter is all to the well and good except that Britain in particular does that effectively not for one but two reasons. First, it is entirely genuine about the messages it conveys and considers them of the utmost importance. Secondly, it is a wonderful way of pretending that the significant problems belong to the past and that the present, if not at all wonderful, is sufficiently irrelevant to be summarily suspended in a more distant domain.
So Cameron, we are told, is somewhere in Portugal with his family. It might still be possible to find someone who hopes that he is enjoying the ice cream. Rather as with Obama who is spending more time on the golf course, one might be forgiven for thinking that he has clocked off early. The latter will depart in 2016 and the former may already have decided that he will have gone by May 2015. Both have got the achievements that they wanted, to be the Prime Minister of Britain and the President of the United States respectively, instead of being proud to leave their countries in a healthier position. Well, one can't ask for miracles. Expectations now are always low. However, one might have thought that they could have kept things ticking over as they were. As things stand, the chaos is akin to nothing we have witnessed for many a long year. They have impacts on all our interests going forward.
The Telegraph of all papers - one might have expected it in the Sun - reported a few days ago that Putin had done two things wrong in Merkel's opinion. One, she made several phone calls to him which he had decided not to answer. Two, when he did ring she too was on holiday and it was only at that point she became, quote, "angry". Washington "joked" about it - that is the word the paper used - on account of the fact that European leaders insist on having their summer breaks and woe betide anyone who interrupts them. One wonders quite when she decided to take that break and what was taking place in Ukraine at that time to the disquiet of all newspaper readers. What we do know of Frau Merkel is that she is in her third period of elected office which is always the time in which political leaders are guaranteed to lose their sanity. But what that trivial trumped up petty nonsense signifies is the exceedingly poor calibre of them all. Whatever of an unwanted nature happens next - or whatever that is of vital importance just fails to materialise - the history books will need to emphasise that juveniles were the cause of it.
The American Volunteer in the Donbas Battalion: Russian Roulette (Dispatch 66)
Donbas is a bit of an odd bunch, a volunteer battalion doing it's thing in support of the Ukrainians. Guy makes some interesting points about the lack of support/clue from Kiev and the soldiers saying the 'political elite in Kiev has to change'.
The American Volunteer in the Donbas Battalion: Russian Roulette (Dispatch 66)
Donbas is a bit of an odd bunch, a volunteer battalion doing it's thing in support of the Ukrainians. Guy makes some interesting points about the lack of support/clue from Kiev and the soldiers saying the 'political elite in Kiev has to change'.
So Maidan 2.0/coup 2.0 coming up?
And he says - is it a Bronx accent? - that change should have occurred 20 years ago and the political elite has to be destroyed. That would be 20 years of elections tossed aside, then. It - the entire commentary which belongs only to fantasy - is also illogically devoid of any definition of those elites. They were so wide ranging they regularly had punch ups in the Parliament and they still are today. Perhaps Poroshenko and all the others need to be advised that peculiar American grandfathers in combat gear want them to be removed too. Cue widespread kowtowing - not.
What the film doesn't show are the very many civilians who have been murdered and maimed. We are simply told that he has crossed an ocean and a continent to moan about having to be transported in a "coffin" bus. Maybe if he hadn't decided to fight for a cause to which at most he is tenuously attached, he could still be in his slippers in down town wherever-he-lives. That will be in the country where he was born or - an outside bet - he emigrated to with barely a tear in the eye. The key phrase in it? "We are all paranoid". Too right they are. Sickening all round.
I don't think I have ever read an article in which so many things have been turned into reverse. If he doesn't put boiled eggs in egg-cups upside down, I'd be extremely surprised. Does he even know there is a right way round?
(In fact, he can't even spell "egregious" - preferring to add another "g")
Comments
hey - its on the David Icke website so it must be true..
A century ago, stupid and vainglorious politicians dragged us into war. We started it as a great, rich empire and ended it as an indebted husk.
Soon afterwards, America’s President Woodrow Wilson told aides he would wipe Britain ‘off the face of the map’ in another ‘terrible and bloody war’ unless we ceded our naval supremacy.
And US Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes raged and shouted at Britain’s ambassador in Washington, Auckland Geddes, that America had saved Britain’s bacon and we had better be grateful from now on.
In a voice rising to a scream, Mr Hughes declared: ‘You would not be here to speak for Britain – you would not be speaking anywhere, England would not be able to speak at all!
'It is the Kaiser who would be heard, if America – seeking nothing for herself but to save England – had not plunged into the war and won it!’
These little-known but important facts should be borne in mind as we look back on this dreadful episode. I for one have had enough of war poets and trench memoirs. Let’s have some proper history – who did what to whom and what it cost.
The UN estimates 800 civilian deaths and 2,000 civilian wounded so far. The region is riven by the sound of guns, the Guns of August thundering yet again.
It is no mere skirmish. It is a war in the making. Do you really want to join in? This is a dangerous time of year. It will be less dangerous if we refuse to trust our leaders.
Let us have no more moves towards conflict with Moscow without a full recall of Parliament. And let us pray that our MPs are reading some history on their holidays.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2714462/PETER-HITCHENS-These-vainglorious-fools-march-inferno.html
Good article by Peter Hitchens.
I can't get enough of Peter Hitchens at the moment. I have always been lucky enough to have an appreciation of people of substance in and around politics who have an ability for independent thinking, irrespective of their tacit position on the political spectrum. Historically, I would have said that PH and I were at rather different ends of that curve but increasingly I am not so sure about that point. I seem to find a lot of agreement in those that lean left and lean right, both against the liberal mainstream. That is especially true if they are way beyond my limited capabilities but attended the same university as me, that is, before the standards dropped and let we the A'level class of '81 in.
Anyway, not only is there the relief that somebody in the popular press who knows a hell of a lot of "stuff" is saying what many of us feel. It also helps that in matters so grim there are always moments in his turn of phrase which make me chuckle, albeit darkly. I am more than happy to confirm that the source I quoted about the Dutch funding propaganda television ahead of the Chicken Kiev coup is a source he has quoted in his online blog in the Mail, readersupportednews.org. I doubt that he has yet spotted the Netherlander role of Mr Klimkin's wife. That was one of my own discoveries, of which there have been many, and I accept it might be comparatively trivial. But if Dutch voters were more aware of some of the facts, they might talk about Mr Rutte and his Cabinet in less glowing terms than they do. Pristine in appearance though VVD might be, they treat their electors with such contempt they assume their US love-in goes unnoticed. Surely not all are ageing less than gracefully in the haze of a coffee shop.
Back in blighty, Cameron and some seriously influential old timers from the Major days - and man, do their tentacles spread like the proverbial octopus - are throwing in the phrase "Putin's cronies" at the drop of every hat. That has to be one of the biggest examples of a lack of self-awareness that has been repeatedly uttered all year. They, of course, recognise that the average British voter is sufficiently aware to see that they are holding up a mirror to themselves. That they aren't in the slightest bit bothered is just indicative of their woefully arrogant wrongness.
Hammond, who for the moment I am half sticking with if only to be fair-minded, has walked into all that nonsense. There he was earlier this weekend reminding us that Vlad is "no friend of the west". He did so like a man who, having taken out a modest chisel, had been handed a b----y great room sized sculpture. One that had been approved by everyone from the anonymous parts of what some call the Civil Service and others HQ to exotic boggle-eyed millionaires who sit firmly on their Committees and have a long history of oil interests in Ukraine. Their greatest contribution to this country would be to retire. To Klaipeda, perhaps, where the climate is oceanic but almost continental and far enough away from the younger British generations who might still hope for a future.
Agree. This article was classic far right isolationism. We should have appeased the Kaiser, let him butcher Europe, seen the Americans as an enemy, and kept the Empire, and let every dictator get on with bombing and gassing their people. We should appease Putin - as he's only trying to restore Catherine the Great's empire. Its full of right wing dogma , inability to realise that there's all sorts of opposition to Assad, and failure to recognise that deterrence requires some effort. It even implies another Munich solution for the Ukraine would be good - regardless of all the lessons of appeasement. It also fails to understand the essential lesson that Chamberlain learnt - sane leaders don't trust foreign leaders like Putin who habitually lie to them. And it ends by being alarmist and forcasting a major war that his policy, of not deterring Russia , would make more likely.
A more convincing critique from the right, is that we habitually will the result without paying for the means, and maintaining the effort. Thats why our tiny army was discounted by Germany in 1914, and why Camerons' words seem backed up by nothing to Putin now. Its also why we lost our last two wars, and allowed Libya to disintegrate when we lost interest there again.
What on the British left are you hoping to save?
You surely don't believe that any of it exists anymore?
To the extent that a monster exists, it was made in the west.
Those who made it see a Frankenstein. The rest of us merely worry about their heads.
Perhaps given the recent failures in foreign entanglements a period of isolationism would be good?
Much of the language is moving, including the descriptions of apprehension. Those help to show how ordinary folk really felt about the onset of war. It certainly wasn't all jingoistic naivety. I also like his quoting of Helmut Schmidt with the accompanying endorsement of elder statesmen as, on balance, that plays to the stereotyping I prefer although I recognise there are many exceptions. As for the heart of it, I find a lot what he says persuasive while also feeling that there is an element of conflict in his main argument. For he also quotes Max Hastings as having argued that a German-dominated Europe, including what would have been domination of France, would have been grim, oppressive, and threatening. His response to that is "It is hard to see why. The Hohenzollern empire was far from free, but it was certainly not an insane despotism". And yet while he never argues that EU is an "insane despotism", one does have a distinct impression that he feels the EU is grim or oppressive or threatening or all these things.
In this piece, WW1 represents the end of old Britain and true conservatism. It is the last of men gathering wild flowers for their sweethearts and the beginnings of a long and broad list of the dire, all of which we live with now somehow. It hardly matters if in literal terms some have come and gone. If the poetic symbolism has an aching resonance, notwithstanding the absence of Dickens in its lens, the baddies who followed are an odd bunch. While it is impossible to counter criticism of Nazis and Soviets, I could never subscribe to a similar enlisting of the Welfare State. But the final sentences, which are a commentary on the current situation in Ukraine, are spot on. "Did they sleepwalk? Or is that an excuse? It is truer to say that they were greedy and stupid, and unwilling to believe that they could ever do as much harm as they actually did. But this explanation is more disturbing than “sleepwalking.” For it is equally true of the leaders of today, who (as we know) are quite capable of idiocy while wide awake."
http://spectator.org/articles/59563/foul-tornado
One can live in hope. But sanctions. Who do they really affect?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28637794
Billionaire businessman Gennady Timchenko - close to President Vladimir Putin - told Russia's Itar-Tass news agency (in Russian) that Gulfstream was no longer servicing his jet and the pilots were not allowed to use its navigation equipment.
Oh dear. So ditch the Gulfstream and buy an Embraer instead. Support BRICS. Perhaps co-develop a competing exec jet with it's partners. I'm sure General Dyamics won't mind the competition.
Dobrolet, a Russian budget airline, grounds its planes. A subsidiary of Aeroflot, it had been flying from Moscow to Crimea after Russia's annexation of the peninsula, but was named on an EU sanctions list last week
Oh dear. Flying with leased Boeings while waiting for the ones it had ordered. It won't need those and I'm sure Boeing won't mind the lost sales.
The chairman of UK firm JCB, which exports tractors, diggers and other heavy equipment, says that "if sanctions restrict sales of machines and spare parts there will be obviously be a major impact on JCB, which could put hundreds of British jobs at risk".
Oh dear. I'm sure those people won't mind losing their jobs. I'm sure JCB won't be wondering about moving production off-shore either.
Expect a press release from the SBU stating they were kidnapped. But you're right, it doesn't fit the party line that Russians have been killing Ukrainians. Especially as it was a reasonably sized invasion by the Ukrainians. I suspect the Russian's offer of asylum shows the Russian sense of humor though.
Quite. This is the first proof that we have had of the Eastern border being crossed and it is Ukraine into Russia rather than vice versa. Contrast with the finger wagging Washington led position of Europe in which all hell would break loose if Russia overstepped that line, which given that the west was claiming had effectively happened already is further demonstration of how irrational it has become. "We had to", says Ukraine. Really. The city of Donetsk is 62 miles from the border, Torez is 25 and even Mirny is 12. Diplomatically it should by rights be an own goal and one doubts if they are capable of anything else. The idea that they would play by EU rules is hysterical.
180 have now returned to Ukraine. The others are still deciding what to do.
http://townhall.com/columnists/ronpaul/2014/08/05/why-wont-obama-just-leave-ukraine-alone-n1874524
Over the weekend, the Ukrainian government imposed a series of “temporary” taxes to help the war effort as Ukrainian press reports several hundred solders were left without weapons or ammunition and crossed the border into Russia. The Ukrainian government is in a hurry to raise money. For the last few months, even before the turmoil began, Ukraine has been in an inflationary cycle. Both retail and asset prices were spiraling higher. Now they’ve entered a stagflationary period. The currency has gone into freefall. Unemployment is rising. The economy is contracting (6% by phony government estimates). And inflation is a whopping 19%... and rising. These people are getting abused. And the worst is yet to come.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-05/438-ukrainian-troops-seek-asylum-russia-government-passes-war-tax
Gas supplies to Ukraine are already shut down and Kiev has had to cut off hot water to many Soviet-era tower blocks
Not just tower blocks, but any building connected to Kiev's municipal heating system.
Has the west just bypassed that incident and gone straight for Russian culpability, sanctions and eventually confrontation?
Excellent article with questions which many of us would like the answers to and which the Western media has no interest in asking..
Who cares about evidence and due process. Just blame Putin for everything!
And what has happened to the private discussions between Merkel and Putin that the Mail mentioned several days ago? There was detail - albeit alleged - and it implied some sort of plan. Instead, we hear in the news today that Russia has imposed tit-for-tat sanctions. Hence both sides have declared war on their populations. "Cronies" are not purely in the business classes. A businessman's cronies are senior politicians. Many individuals, being both in business and politics, are cronies with themselves. Most could probably lose 90% of their wealth. They would still not ever have to worry about food, housing, heating and lighting. The same is not true of voters so one can only hope any secret sums that have been done are not just for the purpose of shoring up minority privileged positions.
What follows may sound a bit cheap and over-emotional but I make no apology for it. It is a counterweight to the absence of human feeling, as well as to the worryingly small logic, in current leadership. Where is the remorse? By rights, the mood in Parliament, had it not been shut until autumn, should have been sombre. Every member of the Government would have been permanently on radio and television issuing heartfelt apology after apology. Putting aside any argument about who started it - that will never lead to consensus - each should have bowed his or her head in deep shame and regret that these matters have developed as they have done. And they would then have accepted a significant element of responsibility as it happened on their watch. In parallel, the London Mayor would not have been using it to promote himself - and, ideally, even Washington and Berlin would have sounded grave.
For beyond reducing democracy domestically while purporting to promote it abroad; beyond cheating the taxpayer out of money in a broader range of scams than would ever be in the mind of a common thief; beyond the deliberate creation of an economic crisis which has exacerbated the gap between the haves and the have nots; and beyond the sheer incompetence of failing to plan ahead so that fulfilling energy needs would not require a triggering of old political earthquakes - what could be worse than a new major war, whether it is to be military or cold? While the language of Britain and the US was eventually toned down to assure the public that neither was an option, that needed to be backed up by transparent and hence politically accountable action. Instead, what we have had is historical ceremony. The latter is all to the well and good except that Britain in particular does that effectively not for one but two reasons. First, it is entirely genuine about the messages it conveys and considers them of the utmost importance. Secondly, it is a wonderful way of pretending that the significant problems belong to the past and that the present, if not at all wonderful, is sufficiently irrelevant to be summarily suspended in a more distant domain.
So Cameron, we are told, is somewhere in Portugal with his family. It might still be possible to find someone who hopes that he is enjoying the ice cream. Rather as with Obama who is spending more time on the golf course, one might be forgiven for thinking that he has clocked off early. The latter will depart in 2016 and the former may already have decided that he will have gone by May 2015. Both have got the achievements that they wanted, to be the Prime Minister of Britain and the President of the United States respectively, instead of being proud to leave their countries in a healthier position. Well, one can't ask for miracles. Expectations now are always low. However, one might have thought that they could have kept things ticking over as they were. As things stand, the chaos is akin to nothing we have witnessed for many a long year. They have impacts on all our interests going forward.
The Telegraph of all papers - one might have expected it in the Sun - reported a few days ago that Putin had done two things wrong in Merkel's opinion. One, she made several phone calls to him which he had decided not to answer. Two, when he did ring she too was on holiday and it was only at that point she became, quote, "angry". Washington "joked" about it - that is the word the paper used - on account of the fact that European leaders insist on having their summer breaks and woe betide anyone who interrupts them. One wonders quite when she decided to take that break and what was taking place in Ukraine at that time to the disquiet of all newspaper readers. What we do know of Frau Merkel is that she is in her third period of elected office which is always the time in which political leaders are guaranteed to lose their sanity. But what that trivial trumped up petty nonsense signifies is the exceedingly poor calibre of them all. Whatever of an unwanted nature happens next - or whatever that is of vital importance just fails to materialise - the history books will need to emphasise that juveniles were the cause of it.
The American Volunteer in the Donbas Battalion: Russian Roulette (Dispatch 66)
Donbas is a bit of an odd bunch, a volunteer battalion doing it's thing in support of the Ukrainians. Guy makes some interesting points about the lack of support/clue from Kiev and the soldiers saying the 'political elite in Kiev has to change'.
So Maidan 2.0/coup 2.0 coming up?
And he says - is it a Bronx accent? - that change should have occurred 20 years ago and the political elite has to be destroyed. That would be 20 years of elections tossed aside, then. It - the entire commentary which belongs only to fantasy - is also illogically devoid of any definition of those elites. They were so wide ranging they regularly had punch ups in the Parliament and they still are today. Perhaps Poroshenko and all the others need to be advised that peculiar American grandfathers in combat gear want them to be removed too. Cue widespread kowtowing - not.
What the film doesn't show are the very many civilians who have been murdered and maimed. We are simply told that he has crossed an ocean and a continent to moan about having to be transported in a "coffin" bus. Maybe if he hadn't decided to fight for a cause to which at most he is tenuously attached, he could still be in his slippers in down town wherever-he-lives. That will be in the country where he was born or - an outside bet - he emigrated to with barely a tear in the eye. The key phrase in it? "We are all paranoid". Too right they are. Sickening all round.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - aged 56
"Vladimir Putin's pointless conflict with Europe leaves it a vassal of China"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/11017413/Vladimir-Putins-pointless-conflict-with-Europe-leaves-it-a-vassal-of-China.html
I don't think I have ever read an article in which so many things have been turned into reverse. If he doesn't put boiled eggs in egg-cups upside down, I'd be extremely surprised. Does he even know there is a right way round?
(In fact, he can't even spell "egregious" - preferring to add another "g")