The European Union classes the islands as a special overseas territory, subject to EU law in some areas, and eligible for some European funding initiatives. The inclusion of the islands in an appendix to the proposed European Constitution provoked a hostile Argentine response. Its mention is retained in the treaty replacing the abandoned Constitution, the Treaty of Lisbon.
As the UK is now virtually Scotland, Ireland, Wales and the nine formerly English regions, then the defenders of the Falklands are no longer Britain but the EU. Hence the self-determination on the islands and hence Argentina seeing its chance again.
Which forces would come to defend the islands this time? The UK's or the EU's? The latter has been looking for training practice. Their deployments so far, you'll notice, have not yet included former UK overseas dependencies.
However, Liam Fox has warned of the EU incursion, with particular reference to implications for NATO. The good news, if there is any, is that what the EU wants is not necessarily what they're immediately going to get.
La meilleure chanson de Niagara! La barre est haute pour toutes ces pseudo-star que nous offrent les majors aujourd`hui. Niagara n`a pas de frontiere, la bonne muse n`a pas d`époque!
This brings back so many memories of my time in France when I had a French friend and we'd travel over cobblestoned back roads with dry stone walls to country farmhouses [used later in my second novel] whilst listening to her music on the car cassette player, including Cabrel and Niagara.
Like many French groups of the time, they had some excellent songs and others which were a bit dud. Generally they rocked and from St Malo to Lille, it was a good time to be in la belle France.
The Croydonian raises the issue of people's memories of past history [20 years ago] fade with time. Some might venture to suggest it is because people are basically self-interested.
Chris Dillow writes "I don’t think anyone has grasped the full gob-smacking level of imbecility and venality within this ..." Great piece on Nu-Labour's grasp of economics and class hatred - not the usual rant.
Rob, of the Broadsheet Rag, writes of the feeling of depression or as he puts it, melancholy, he's been feeling. I do believe it is rampant across the world just now; it is especially so in Britain and more particularly, in the blogosphere. There have to be reasons. Mopsa adds to this in her way.
Eurodog has all you need to know about the background to the Basenji. You were obviously wondering where you could get your hands on such info before. Now you can.
The Flying Rodent, in his inimitable manner, writes: "From what I can pick up off FOX News and CNN, the internet's a veritable s--tstorm of rancid crazy, and here I am, reading mere books in my spare time! Proper ones, with no pictures!"
Hooky has a nice piece on Hewlett Packard getting it wrong again [Hooky puts it slightly differently] with: "Although the song used in the Hewlett Packard advert was a 1982 cover version sung by Joan Jett, the lyrics... Do you wanna touch (yeah)... Do you wanna touch me there, where..." are also those of Gary Glitter.
An older one from John Trenchard: "Britain loses control over immigration policy... and not a peep from the British mainstream media." 'Nuff said.
From L'Ombre: "Cat and dog owners are to be told to provide "entertainment" and "mental stimulation" for their pets under new government advice." Sigh - more government inanity. Longrider gives his take here. Interesting [to me] that two of my must-read bloggers should tackle the same piece. Well OK ... it's not that interesting, I suppose.
For those who like their posts a bit more enigmatic, you can't go past Lord Somber [that's his pic above left]. You make of it what you will but I agree with him.
If you like your entertainment earthy, the First Lady provides: "No, I canny see the ball at the end of the f****** table and I'm nay strong enuff, Im nay strong enuff to play snooker, and the ball, I canny see the balls, but see they Americans, they have much bigger balls, and bigger cues and bigger pockets ..."
Finally, how better to go out [and maintain the hellfire motif] than with Wonko's take on Guy Fawkes Night in this pic to the right.
There is a theme running through many of my recent posts and I'll expand on it on Saturday, of people being so credulous. Look at this example:
The US has described as "disappointing" Russia's plans to deploy new missiles in the Baltic region to counter a US defence shield in central Europe. The US state department stressed the planned shield in the Czech Republic and Poland was "not aimed at Russia".
It puzzles me that anyone is supposed to swallow that guff about "not aimed at Russia". Oh come on, is there really anyone so patriotically blinded that they don't think the missiles take in Russia, among others? Who else do they take in then? Iceland?
Really and truly. They do believe people are taken in, don't they? Similarly, does anyone really believe that the Russians are not flying long range bomber missions to gear up for conflict? Of course they bl--dy well are.
And behind all this is money. And the money comes from sources. And the sources have no conscience. This one I wouldn't expect you to believe because it is so out on the edge for the average punter but even a moderate amount of research gives you all the evidence you need..
And why conflict? For example, twelve years ago the west and Russia were aiming for detente, good relations, opening Russia up economically and so on. There were excellent reasons for expanding trade and I even had a minor part in that. I can tell you that relations with almost every nation were not only cordial, they were warm at the upper level.
Now we have the British Council thrown out, Miliband speaking of an EU army, the Americans putting in missile shields, the Russian flights and so on and so on, let alone the real nutter presidents like in Iran.
Who caused this shift from detente to worldwide sabre rattling in such a short time? Jenner's and Quigley's quotes from previous posts touch on it. I know very well many of you think this is guff. It is not - do some research and find out for yourself.
We are heading for war for absolutely no good reason beyond the financial windfalls to be made.
20:59 – Everyone votes it was good fun and we all retire to the living room to watch V for Vendetta. Thanks for joining Bonfire Night Live Blogging.
20:56 – Each one is lit simultaneously by one person but two seem to be slewing so it’s behind the garage and into the kitchen again. Something hits the window and explodes into colour [have to stop drinking this green tea] I think one hit the garage wall but the rest went where they were supposed to. Luvverly colours.
20:54 – Everyone feels we’d better be a bit more careful with the rockets next time and we check that everything seems in order. We decide to let them all off at one time, plus the last Roman Candle. Seems a good plan. All gathered outside for the Big Bang, except for the dog and the toddler who are in the house with mum.
20:50 – Something wrong with one of the rockets stuck too hard. Father grabs toddler and runs behind garage, kids too, dog follows them, everyone else belts into the kitchen and closes door, pretty tight in there, rocket slews sideways, shoots across neighbour’s fence, and the next and the next and explodes in brilliant colours near the end of the street which the first kids have just reached in time to watch. Beautiful trajectory.
20:43 – Second and third rockets go up, two Roman Candles fizz away, kids love it, toddler’s playing with the remaining sticks, tea just about running out, trick or treat sweets now gone, not many sparklers left.
20:37 – First rocket lit, fizzes, shoots sky high and explodes in luvverly colours. Kids stop chasing dog for one moment. Tea drinkers approve. Toddler’s playing with the sticks from late afternoon. Bigger kids grab sticks and start sword fighting. I comment that they remind me of the Knights of Malta. That’s ignored.
20:24 – Neighbours’ noise beginning to die down, thank heavens and our turn to start. Decide to say nothing more about Malta. Dog scampering round looking for scraps, kids chasing dog, about half a box of sparklers left. Rockets ready? Check. Catherine wheels ready? Check. Roman Candles ready? Check. Last guests brought matches. Well, someone smokes at least.
20.12 – Everything’s just about ready for the Big Bang so I tell people about the fireworks factory of Santa Marija of Mqabba, well known in Malta for its beautiful fireworks displays, winning a competition in Rome, Caput Lucis. My mate’s mate asks me where I’d like the Catherine wheel inserted then gets back to his tea. Someone is watching Celtic v Man U upstairs. Seems Celtic scored.
19:53 – Last guests arrive and hallelujah – they bring some Catherine wheels and two rockets. Also a few bangers to use on the neighbours later. I tell the assembled crew that Catherine wheels are called "Irdieden" in Malta. Everyone just stares at me, wondering about my accent and someone puts the kettle on.
19:32 – Still waiting for the last guests to arrive, kitchen rocking, everyone high on green tea and sweets left over from trick or treat, kids all have sparklers and are running around the back yard like headless chickens. Noise in the neighbours’ gardens getting beyond a joke.
19:18 - Couple from the cul-de-sac at the end arrive with their kids. Kitchen getting pretty full by now. Cups of tea all round while a few of the lads go out back and stick more rockets in the ground. Kids have brought a boxload of bloody sparklers and want to light them. No one has matches and we're on electricity. No one smokes. 18:52 - First neighbours from four doors down arrive with lots of sparklers, a couple of bottles of coke but not much else. We make cups of tea and small talk all round. Someone complains about the bloody fireworks going off everywhere in the neighbourhood. Can't hear ourselves think. 17:54 - Stuck the rocket sticks in lines in the lawn in the back yard, plus the Roman candles. Hoping the guests will bring some fireworks themselves. Fireworks starting to go off in neighbours' yards before we get going. 17:21 - Built a fire in the back yard and decided to chance it. Not a big fire but a few sticks from the garage and a bit of kindling. Dog was so excited it charged through the middle of it, knocking the sticks everywhere. Gave up on the bonfire and decided to do the fireworks only. Couple of beers and phone calls later, the guests had been rounded up by phone and should be arriving soon. 16:15 - Council, fire department or whoever came and knocked it down while we were having a beer at the Park Hotel. Seems it was a designated site of something or other. How were we to know? 14:09 - Decided to shoot the Council but drove round instead and found another spot in the forest and it seems some other people who'd had their bonfire knocked down were also pretty p---ed off so we decided to join forces and build a humungous fire. Took two hours. The story so far - Found a vacant place to build the bonfire this morning; it took an hour and a half and then we broke for lunch. Council came, fire department or whatever and knocked it down. Not to worry.
Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
What has America so proudly hailed last night? Just as the 1977 Aldrich film of the same name sank him into oblivion, I fear that any speaking out against this glib victory will be silenced by the cold shoulder of the entranced.
Blair came to power mouthing sentences without predicates, verbs or specifics: "Now is the time to do," "Britain forward, not back," and "If you value it, vote for it," and Obama has learnt from it: "Yes we can," "Change we can believe in," "If you believe that, I have a bridge I want to sell you in Alaska."
Oh, there is no doubt that the orchestrated insult to the intelligence will now be in full cry. The markets will rally, stocks will rise, the power will cease to bring the people to their knees for some time and give some respite. Obama will have victories and in spite of himself, he will find consensus. He'll be hailed as the Messiah America and the world have been hoping for. He is naive and therefore can be guided. Or coerced. The perfect president.
Then he'll go into the Middle-East and meddle with Israel.
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion, A home and a country should leave us no more!
We are just through the opening song in a bad horror movie. Pages and pages of quotes from key figures in the last decades should have given us pause for thought, should have woken us from our slumber. Over here, we voted in two Bilderbergers to wreak havoc in Britain and now bitterly regret our folly.
Oh my goodness - this is their rhetoric down to a T.
Do you think Iraq was not a scene in a grand play, the grandest play of all, when GHW Bush's own certificates for servicemen stated it clearly [see pic below]? Why do you think the recent incompetence of the Fed and the CBs could contrast so starkly with their earlier savvy modernism? Why have banks gone to the wall, only to be rescued? Why have businesses gone to the wall and not come back? Have you not noticed how the finance is now legally centralized, even as the EU tightens its wasteful grip and the U.S.A. quietly passes its effective sovereignty to the NAU on March 23rd, 2009? Why was nothing done about immigration? Why was Islam given its toehold in western "democracies"? How do jihadis get through? Where is the promised Great Wall of Mexico?
Why are these things so? Many have written on the subject:
Some people call it socialism, some collectivism. I prefer to call it 'democratic centralism.'
The important point to remember about this group is not its ideology but its organization. It is a dynamic, aggressive, elite corps, forcing its way through every opening, to make a breach for a collectivist one-party state. It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government without our suspecting the change is underway.
This secret revolutionary corps understands well the power to influence the people by an elegant form of brainwashing. We see this, for example, in the innocent use of words like 'democracy' in place of 'representative government.' " [Senator William Jenner of Indiana - Feb. 23, 1954]
That quote refers to a collectivist one party state. Wild McCarthyist rhetoric? The rantings of a loony? Then how do you account for this paragraph in the Telegraph article this morning?
Democratic gains of up to nine seats in the Senate would give Democrats the 20-seat majority they need to withstand Republican filibusters and herald a new period of untrammeled one-party rule in Washington.
This is the reality of what America has just voted in, for itself:
May 18, 1972 - Roy M. Ash, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, declares that: "...within two decades the institutional framework for a world economic community will be in place...and aspects of individual sovereignty will be given over to a supernational authority."
The notion has been running through the corridors of power for some considerable time:
October 28, 1939 - In an address by John Foster Dulles [later U.S. Secretary of State], he proposes that America lead the transition to a new order of less independent, semi-sovereign states bound together by a league or federal union.
Harry S Truman, June 28th, 1945?
"It will be just as easy for nations to get along in a republic of the world as it is for us to get along in a republic of the United States."
Rear Admiral Chester Ward, former Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy, in 1975, referred to his CFR supporting:
"...submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all powerful one-world government..."
It never ends:
1975 - In Congress, 32 Senators and 92 Representatives sign "A Declaration of Interdependence," which states that "we must join with others to bring forth a new world order...Narrow notions of national sovereignty must not be permitted to curtail that obligation." Congresswoman Marjorie Holt refuses to sign the Declaration saying:
"It calls for the surrender of our national sovereignty to international organizations. It declares that our economy should be regulated by international authorities. It proposes that we enter a 'new world order' that would redistribute the wealth created by the American people."
Where are these ideas springing from? Here is one source:
1966 - Professor Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton's mentor at Georgetown University, authors a massive volume entitled "Tragedy and Hope" in which he states:
"There does exist and has existed for a generation, an international network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so.
I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies, but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known."
Secrecy. Here is one chief executive speaking specifically on this point:
Kennedy spoke from the heart, as does Obama. Both were put into power by forces behind the scenes, forces in control of the chief executive, or so they assumed. In Kennedy's case, there is a body of opinion which says he turned his rhetoric into a real belief in himself and his messianic mission. There are parallels here with Obama.
The socialist friends I have all have good hearts and really believe that it will relieve people's suffering for society to be re-engineered and for wealth to be redistributed forcibly. They speak of "fairness" but advocate coercion to achieve their concept of it. They seem to have no notion of the importance of "incentive" in producing the wealth they will then redistribute. They are focused on "injustice" and "prejudice" and see socialism as the ony way to make things right. They speak in Kennedian language.
The problem is that they are naive. They play right into the hands of the wolves and piranhas skilled in double-speak and ingsoc who pretend they are acting for freedom when they are really acting for slavery. Now Americans have voted a person in and have no idea that they have given him almost unlimited power, power which he does not himself have the wherewithal to exercise because of the forces which placed him in the presidency. If he does try, if he does start to follow his own rhetoric into action ... well.
This is the sort of thing he would be up against. Here is Pulitzer Award winning Professor Emeritus James McGregor Burns, in his innovation in leadership theory, which has been influential with all potential leaders of state, writing in "The Power to Lead" [1984]:
"The framers of the U.S. Constitution have simply been too shrewd for us. They have outwitted us. They designed separate institutions that cannot be unified by mechanical linkages, frail bridges, tinkering. If we are to 'turn the founders upside down' - we must directly confront the constitutional structure they erected."
The extremes of right and left are no different. This is where the BNP, the John Birch Society, the communists and the national socialists all lie. All have agendas of social engineering, redistributing wealth and centralized command and control. Far worse than these are the so-called "patriots" in the military industrial complex, the latter term a notion emanating from the farewell speech [1961] of the Chief Executive and former Commander of all Allied Forces, Eisenhower but laughed to scorn by many Americans :
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Does my memory serve me correctly that Ike was a patriotic Republican? This is what I am driving at here. What Ike was effectively saying was that you look at a man in a uniform, speaking of patriotism, democracy and freedom and you take him to be a patriot. Yet the quotes above are far from patriotic to America. The notion is too bizarre for the average person in the street to comprehend but it is so.
Some blogfriends said that America is a republic, not a democracy. I would suggest that America is an oligarchy and now it has a chief executive who has a mandate to alter the face of America, signing over vast amounts of sovereignty on March 23rd, 2009 to an NAU and no one can do anything about it because:
1. most Americans are in thrall to his charisma;
2. he has the political power to ram proposals through both congress and the senate.
Worse than this is that he is naive in the exercise of that power and will be subject to advice - the wrong advice. Plus coercion.
America has just signed its death warrant as an independent nation, as Britain did some years back in Nu Labour. Now Brown has come out with his "new financial architecture" of the world and is being roundly praised for it by the Round Table. Have you looked at this in any detail? It will repay the time spent. It is now impossible for England to exist as an entity and impossible for Britain to exist either with the provisions of Lisbon and the sheer weight of intrusive EU legislation stymiing every move to relieve the suffering of the UK.
Our task is not to weaken support for the IMF and World Bank at a time when the need for surveillance and coordination across the world is more pressing, but to strengthen them by building the operational rules and architecture for the new global financial system.
Ditto for America in the nearest future. And who will defend the sovereignty of the ordinary American and uphold the constitution? Obama?
And for how long can blogs publicize what is going on? Australia has brought in internet censorship. How long until America and Britain follow suit?
Small voices will still cry out, in ever decreasing numbers, to the bitter end:
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
