The EU and Russia

The last few weeks have left me aghast with the hypocrisy of the west over Russia and the Ukraine. At times I've been angry at some absolutely fuming. If I was Putin I'd be sticking a middle finger up at the west and telling us to keep out and shut up.

Strange but when the USSR fell the Russian Federation, the heir to the USSR, got on with life while numerous former USSR states became independent, including the Ukraine. That's it put simply and yes there are countless arguments to be had about oligarchs, corruption and so on. But the fact remains that countries such as Ukraine became sovereign independent states. Former serf states of the USSR, such as Romania, Poland and so on were also freed and became truly independent sovereign states again, free of the shackles of soviet socialist domination.

What happened next was that the European Union, as it does, went on an orgy of expansionism. After expanding north, west and south it went towards the East, a process known in pre-WWII Germany as the 'drang nach osten' or 'push to the east'. The EU empire gobbled up the Baltic states, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the other former USSR satellite states. Then it turned its power grab to the Ukraine. Understandably this made Russia twitchy. Of course the EU doesn't expand its empire in the traditional way, with armies or votes, it buys off governments with our tax money.

As EU cash was thrown at the Ukraine, and the promise of ever more dangled in temptation the Ukrainian government decided to look to Russia as an ally rather than being gobbled up, or bought by the EU empire. Cue western backed riots that led to a coup that overthrew the democratically elected government. How would we feel if a few thousand people rioted in London and it brought down the government? Again the Ukrainian government wasn't whiter than white, but at least it was elected and could have been voted out, the current government has no mandate from the people whatsoever.

Understandably the autonomous region of the Crimea, with an overwhelming ethnic Russian population, held a referendum and the overwhelming majority voted for the Crimea to become part of the Russian Federation. Of course the European Union went into a rage, when the EU has a referendum and the people don't vote the way it wants it just re-runs the referendum until it gets the result it wants, that's the EU's idea of democracy. So the EU doesn't recognise the result of the referendum and the west accuses Russia of expansionism.

It seems to me that Russia has been very patient as the EU has expanded eastwards, with the support of the USA, and it has every right to protect its interests against this western imperialism. My only worry, if I were a Russian citizen, would be what the west may do when you look at its recent record of bombing the crap out of states it decides it's no longer too keen on.

Western Civilisation RIP

Largely thanks to political correctness I am convinced that we are moving into the final death throes of our civilisation. Maybe, when you look around at Britain in 2013, it will be a relief to some extent, maybe something better will rise from the ashes.

At home political correctness has created such an atmosphere of self-loathing that any expression of patriotism is seen by many as extreme right-wing at best, evil xenophobia/racism at worst. Likewise if you dare to be critical of foreign states and people unless it's the USA, in which case it's open season. A current fine example is daring to criticise Nelson Mandela rather than slobbering and cooing at the sound of his name, that will have you attacked as an obvious Nazi/White Supremacist.

Our government ousted Sadam in Iraq, admittedly a right bastard, but have left behind a murdering cauldron of hatred and death largely fuelled by hatred of the West. All over the Middle East our government seems intent on supporting terrorist gangs of Islamist nutters who want to take over one country after another and install hate filled, lunatic regimes that loathe us.

A squaddie is murdered in Woolwich by Islamist nutters but large swathes of the press tried to draw some moral equivalence between the killers and demonstrators who took to the streets to condemn the killers.

Now then, here's a question:

Somebody was refused entry to the UK this week for  making a statement. Was it the person who uttered:

‘It [Islam] is a religion and a belief system that mandates warfare against unbelievers for the purpose for establishing a societal model that is absolutely incompatible with Western society. Because of media and general government unwillingness to face the sources of Islamic terrorism these things remain largely unknown.’

Or was it the person who stated:

‘Devotion to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and the desire to shed blood, to smash skulls and to sever limbs for the sake of Allah and in defense of His religion, is, undoubtedly, an honor for the believer.’

As if you need a clue, here is what British MP Keith Vaz said to justify the ban:

‘The UK should never become a stage for inflammatory speakers who promote hate.’

If you really need to check the answer then visit Douglas Murray's Blog in The Spectator.

Increasingly the political class appear to hate us, increasingly I see voting as a form of collaboration.

Scott Brown Republican Senator

If, like me, you were wondering who this Scott Brown fella is, then here is his campaign website.

If you are still wondering, he won the Massachusetts Senate seat yesterday vacated by the death of Edward Kennedy. Maybe the influence of the Keenedy clan is finally gone, or maybe they have used up all their gin running millions. Either way it was thought to be a safe Democrat seat. The loss is maybe an indication of Obama's fast fading popularity.

Looking at some US blogs this morning it seems that Brown is the new darling of the Republican Party. Move aside for a male model Sarah.

Joe McCarthy and Communism

I've always respected Senator Joe McCarthy's crusade in the '50s against communism in the USA, and thoughts of him were rekindled today on Twitter.

Over the years he has been vilified by the 'liberal' press and intelligentsia as a paranoid extremist, but we owe him a huge debt of gratitude for sticking to his guns. Reluctantly, many in the mainstream have revised their views on Senator McCarthy as witnessed by the following:

In 1953-54, McCarthy had been investigating lax security in the top secret facility at Ft. Monmouth, N.J. He was attacked by liberals and Communists on the grounds that there were no security problems at Ft. Monmouth. Years later, in addressing the reason why the U.S. Army's top-secret operations at Fort Monmouth were quietly moved to Arizona, Senator Barry Goldwater, in his 1979 book With no apologies: The personal and political memoirs of United States Senator Barry M. Goldwater, Goldwater stated:
"Carl Hayden, who in January 1955 became chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee of the United States Senate, told me privately Monmouth had been moved because he and other members of the majority Democratic Party were convinced security at Monmouth had been penetrated. They didn't want to admit that McCarthy was right in his accusations. Their only alternative was to move the installation from New Jersey to a new location in Arizona."[112]
Even though McCarthy's investigations proved that his suspicions were right, for many years afterwards and continue to this day, liberals have spread the falsehood that McCarthy had found nothing at Fort Monmouth.

Before the 1989 release of Carl Bernstein's book, Loyalties: A Son's Memoir, Albert Bernstein, Carl's father, expressed dismay at the revelations that the book would make regarding Communist infiltration of the U.S. government and other sectors of American society. Albert Bernstein stated:
"You're going to prove [Sen. Joseph] McCarthy was right, because all he was saying is that the system was loaded with Communists. And he was right. ... I'm worried about the kind of book you're going to write and about cleaning up McCarthy. The problem is that everybody said he was a liar; you're saying he was right. ... I agree that the Party was a force in the country."[113]
Both Albert Bernstein and Sylvia Bernstein, Carl's mother, had both been Communists since the 1940's. Albert Bernstein was a Union activist, while Sylvia Bernstein was a secretary for the War Department in the 1930's and, during the Clinton Administration, volunteered in the White House, answering letters that were addressed to Hillary Clinton. During the 1950's, Sylvia Bernstein invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid revealing her party ties to Congress but worked openly in assisting convicted spies Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 for espionage.

Senator McCarthy had the guts to stand firm, in the face of particularly vile attacks, in his defence of freedom and liberty. This potted biography is well worth a quick look, especially if you are interested in an introduction to the story of Joe McCarthy's bravery and courage.

NHS v Private Healthcare

The Club for Growth is one of the main American groups fighting the 'socialisation of medicine', and I wish them well in their campaign, even if some of the campaign statements about the NHS have been somewhat inaccurate. For example, claiming that Stephen Hawking would have been dead if he had to be treated solely by the NHS, not true.

Most politicos, even in the mainstream, accept that nationalisation is not really a good idea, so why leave something as vital as our healthcare to a gargantuan, inefficient, nationalised bureaucracy? It is not free, we pay through our taxes, so why not let us choose how we spend our money on healthcare? Because the NHS is a sacred cow, and they are all too scared to tell the truth about it, or being seen to even criticise it.

Most of us despise politicians, so why trust them to run our health services?

Following is one of the Club of Growth's US TV commercials:

American Healthcare

With all the fuss about US critics of the NHS I thought the following might be interesting viewing:



Then Dick Morris goes on to savage Obama on healthcare and much more:

Barack Obama

Here is a selection of current bumper stickers from the USA:







Thanks for those Steve.

Not So Smug Britons

One of the first signs, to me at least, of a degree of anti-Americanism in a person is when they attack Yanks for not knowing that Ulam Bator is the capital of Mongolia, or that the River Keer runs through Carnforth, England. I then usually point out that the U.S.A. is the size of Europe so we are not comparing like with like. This survey, for National Geography Week, shows that there are plenty of dense Britons too.

The other thing that really riles me is when Britons self-flagellate over our perceived lack of foreign language skills. The answer to that is that we are just as skilled as any other people but which language do we learn? Dutch? German? Mandarin maybe or French? Then how often do we get to practice and use it? The problem, if there is one, is that English, like it or not, is a universal language. If German was the universal language we would be fluent in German as others are now in English, from necessity.

In Paraguay in 1991 we met a girl who worked at the airport who was learning English. She decided to be different at college and learned French because all the others were learning English. It was a mistake, she never got to use French as the world seemed to all speak English, she was then catching up.

Empty Rhetoric Awards

This one's for Barack's old mate Gordon Brown.

Sarah Palin

If you haven't heard, or heard about, Sarah Palin's incredible speech accepting the role of running mate to John McCain, then I fear you have been in a coma. Anybody who supports hunting, although I don't hunt myself, opposes abortion, although I will never need one myself, and eats mooseburgers just has to be a good thing.

A politician who is normal, real and pulls no punches is rare indeed and should be cherished. Mrs B and I were sat in the supermarket car park today when excerpts of her speech were on the radio, we couldn't leave the car, we just wanted to hear more.

I don't intend to ramble on about the content, if you've found this blog you can easily find huge coverage of the speech elsewhere. But here is a link to her website as Governor of Alaska.

And here is a link to one of her campaign blogs.

And here's another.

If only there was a British politician with her bottle, honesty and apparent integrity.

Yankophobia and Pinko Liberals!

David Aaronovitch is a writer who often enrages me, but in this article from the Times today I have to say he is absolutely spot on.

It always strikes me that pinko liberals go berserk if you criticise a whole group, let alone a whole nation or, God forbid, a whole race. But when it comes to the USA it's open season, the whole nation is fat, greedy, drives cars that do 2 miles to the gallon and have no culture whatsoever. They are loud, rude and all wear outrageous Hawaiian shirts and baseball caps back-to-front. I'm sure you know what I mean.

Pinko liberals have this sickly habit of referring to what we used to call 'Red Indians' as 'native Americans', when in reality they were originally immigrants themselves, they just got there slightly earlier than the Dutch, English etc. Now this to me implies that they, 'native Americans', have more of a claim than whites who have only been there a couple of hundred years. But you try using that argument about 'native Britons' and the whole PC armoury is pointed directly at your head.

Another example of left-liberal hypocrisy is their criticism of British migrants. You know the ones I mean, they go to Spain or France and turn villages into little England with shops that sell HP sauce and Fray Bentos pies, they don't mingle and integrate with the locals like they should and never bother to learn the lingo. Then you point out that it's a bit like Cheetham Hill in Manchester, or Brick Lane in London where migrants to this country have done the same thing and they go apoplectic with rage, scream that it is a totally different thing and call you a racist.

Personally I think life is too short. If a Briton abroad wants to eat pie and chips let him, and nobody loves Brick Lane more than I do. It's the hypocrisy that gets to me. I can't be doing with all this splitting the population into racial groups and long for the day the far-left and far-right drop racial politics and see us all as human beings, period, as the Americans say.

Zimbabwe and Mbeki

It seems that Thabo Mbeki has now jumped in to defend Robert Mugabe, scratch the surface of an African democrat and there is a raging lunatic despot waiting to spring forth. According to this report Mbeki has sent a snotty letter to George Bush for being nasty to that nice Mr Mugabe, and for being disrespectful to the people of Zimbabwe for daring to criticise Mugabe.

Forgive me but a country's president starving his own people half to death, and rigging election after election, is hardly showing immense respect to his people. And with the rate of decline in South Africa I would have thought Mbeki would have enough on his plate sorting his own mess out.

On gaining independence in Zimbabwe, and the subsequent end of apartheid in South Africa, the world thought that both countries would prosper and break the tradition of wealthy and relatively stable African countries gaining self-government then sliding into poverty and dictatorship. How wrong the world was.

Police State

Until the Glazers took over at Old Trafford in 2005 I used to travel with my Dad, who was also a season ticket holder, to watch United in Europe on average about 2 or 3 times a season. Good fun and we spent a day or two in some great cities sightseeing and watching football with friends who were also on the trips. Since then we have had one foreign jaunt watching FC United of Manchester in Leipzig in 2006. Withdrawal symptoms have set in.

This week we were mulling over possibility of a sporting away trip when a weekend in the USA to watch our first ever baseball game came up as a possibility. But, considering the oppressive security measures now operating at US airports, that thought was knocked on the head, if I behave criminally then treat me like a criminal, until then no thank you.

So instead we are off to Oslo to watch a Norwegian championship game between Lyn Oslo and the quaintly named HamKam, otherwise known as Hamerkameratane, not a name that lends itself easily to pithy chants from the terrace songsters of Hamer, the club's hometown. At least going from Liverpool to Oslo we only have to show passports, and will be outside the EU for a few days which is a nice bonus.

However, this article by Nigel Rumfitt QC highlights a worrying development at Heathrow's Terminal 5. Here the Spanish owned British Airports Authority, and British Airways, are fingerprinting all passengers on domestic flights claiming it to be a government requirement. When challenged on this, as ever, the standard response is that by agreeing to use the facility you are "consenting" to being fingerprinted therefore there is no compulsion. How long before our airport security, for domestic and foreign flights, becomes as oppressive as US security currently is?

Yet another step in the direction of a full blown police state. Support for No2ID is now more vital than ever.

New York Philharmonic

Interesting to read here about the New York Philharmonic escorting Condolezza Rice to North Korea. Much more constructive than sending the bombers over there.

I've heard that that the UK offered to send opera singer Paul Potts, but George Bush vetoed that thinking we were offering to send numerous bloodthirsty dictators from Cambodia.