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All European countries are US satellites except Hungary, Serbia, Belarus and Russia.
Empires often do much good. The world would be a better place if the Habsburg, Czarist and Ottoman empires had not been broken up.
The American empire has unfortunately not been much of a force for good since the First Gulf War.
Con Coughlin today in the Telegraph admits that the Anglo-Americans are not backing Ukraine for Ukraine's sake. He is right and right too that NATO countries have no real selfish interests in the Gaza war.
Why do the UK and EU countries back Israel?
I can only think that it is a form of vassalage they pay to their American masters.
"The Gaza conflict, so long as it is confined to the narrow strip of scrubland on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean that is home to two million Palestinians, is unlikely to disrupt global energy markets to the same extent as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which caused a dramatic spike in prices. Given the broader threat Putin’s aggression poses, Western military support for Ukraine has been motivated as much by the desire to give the Russian military a bloody nose as the principle of defending territorial integrity."
Con Coughlin today in the Telegraph admits that the Anglo-Americans are not backing Ukraine for Ukraine's sake. He is right and right too that NATO countries have no real selfish interests in the Gaza war.
Why do the UK and EU countries back Israel?
I can only think that it is a form of vassalage they pay to their American masters.
Why the British Labour leader, the wooden Sir Keir Starmer, is firing frontbenchers who vote for a ceasefire is beyond me.
Why does it matter what their views on Gaza are?
Why does it matter what their views on Gaza are?
Why should it be illegal in Great Britain, come to that, to express liking for Hamas, a bunch of unsavoury fanatics on another continent?
And why should RIGHT-WING conservatives like Mrs Braverman, who has been called 'a pound shop Enoch Powell' despite being a British Indian, be calling for bans on pro-Palestinian marches?
Enoch Powell, a passionate believer in freedom, would be horrified.
He'd be horrified by a lot of things.
The Guardian is accused of being anti-Israel but I am not sure about that. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12758235/guardian-deletes-osama-bin-laden-letter-america-attacks-united-states.html
ReplyDeleteThe greatest sin in the Anglo world is to be accessed of anti-semitism. This is an obvious truth, but one whose intensity seems to have reached insane proportions. In Germany, it has reached truly demented levels. Even the sight of Le Pen at the antisemitism march in France the other day seemed bizarre.
ReplyDeleteThat was clearly true thirty years ago, but “Islamophobia” and “Homophobia” must be catching up fast.
DeleteThe obsession with Hitler and the Nazis only became extreme after about 1990 and it gets bigger and bigger. I recommend Richard Vinen’s A History in Fragments: Europe in the Twentieth Century. He says: 'The history of post-war Europe is a meditation on Nazism.' This years ago struck me as a striking observation - now it is a cliche. Yes indeed he is right though it does not apply to post-Communist Europe. As always many wrong lessons are drawn from history. Auschwitz is the reason for multiculturalism, mass immigration and the political correctness and woke which so closely resemble fascism.
DeleteHitler, the new human rights religion and the fall of the West https://pvewood.blogspot.com/2019/12/hitler-neo-liberalism-and-new-religion.html
DeleteSomething I blogged 5 years ago.
Delete<"A Labour MP has apologised for the offence caused by remarks about the Holocaust but denied seeking to equate its horrors with Israel's treatment of people in Gaza."
I am so bored by people likening the Israelis to the Nazis. So bored by people likening anything or anyone to the Nazis. And bored by people complaining about other people likening people to the Nazis. And bored by people apologising for comparing other people to the Nazis. Let's all stop mentioning the Nazis in political discussions. The harm done by inapt analogies with the Nazis is immeasurable. It has led to a host of evils, at least from a conservative point of view, including the always burgeoning non-discrimination obsession. It is like a cultural computer virus infecting the Western mind. Sometimes it feels like a cancer, taking over the developed world. >
The German parliament is today debating new legislation that would insist people seeking to become German citizens recognise Israel's 'right to exist'. Demented nonsense.
DeleteI can understand your annoyance about that but people who think Israel has no right to exist are not the immigrants Germany or Europe wants - in fact I think Europe should stop letting immigrants settle permanently. The German government issued a striking statement in 2019: "Germany’s historic responsibility for the Jewish and democratic State of Israel and its security is part of our raison d’ĂȘtre. Germany will always work, including in the UN, to ensure that Israel’s right to exist is never called into question." https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/-/2217506
DeleteBy the way your strong siding with the Arabs in this ghastly nightmare is because you are Irish Catholic, therefore anti-British (we created the whole problem), anti colonial and see the close similarities between Israel and the Ulster settlement. Most things come down to nationality or religion. I tend to see things from the imperialist point of view and sympathise with the Ottoman and British empires up to a point, but one has to be sorry for the victims of ethnic cleansing which both sides in this dispute are.
The truth is that, as a young survivor of the kibbutz attacked by Hamas said, Netanyahu's policy led to this horror. But when Barak made Arafat a wonderful deal Arafat did not even negotiate but spurned it.
My siding with the Palestinians is hardly entirely due to my own background. One would like to think any person with a moral compass can see the massacre of 11,000 civilians including over 4,000 children is horrendous.
DeleteAnyway, you told me you were 100% pro-Arab now after having previously Benn 50-50. Have you changed your mind again?
The Pax Americana has kept the world far more peaceful and prosperous than ever before. It's essentially the successor to the British Empire in many ways. I'd rather the world be ruled by a society guides by Anglo Saxon principles than by one with a different outlook. Be careful what you wish for.
ReplyDeleteThat is exactly what I thought until fairly recently but it has gone badly wrong starting with the invasion of Iraq twenty years ago.
DeleteBut if there really were a “broader threat Putin’s aggression poses”, which John Mearsheimer for one doesn’t see, then the principle of territorial integrity would be exactly what needed defending. It’s clearly nearer the truth to say “Western military support for Ukraine has been motivated… by the desire to give the Russian military a bloody nose”, but the trouble with that is that it’s a foolish aim that can’t be achieved, as anyone in the Pentagon with half a brain should have been able to see from the beginning.
ReplyDeleteWhat I draw from that is that what the US government is really up to is that it believes wrecking the Ukraine, closing down the Russian gas pipelines to Germany, and creating a new Cold War in Europe are all in its national interest, which arguably they are. But they are not in the interest of the EU or Britain. We are making fools of ourselves, and our leaders will have to be paid off for putting their own globalist careers before their countries.
By the way, I don't blame the British for it at all. The Balfour Declaration was stupid, but no authority would have been able to deal with the Zionist-Arab clash, bar some very stern Ottoman one perhaps that would have been unafraid of shedding blood.
ReplyDeleteWere it not for Great Britain there would be no Zionist-Arab clash so you might well blame the British.
DeleteThe Commonwealth is the only institution of that ilk, I am still curious about.
ReplyDeleteThe former British Commonwealth? It's pointless.
DeleteIt is exceedingly not pointless, just about anywhere else but Europe; a good end of its history.
DeleteFinland wants no part of immigrants sent from Russia. Russia warns Finland that it is damaging bilateral relations. Who is in the right here?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12781211/Finland-shuts-one-border-crossing-Russia-700-asylum-seekers-entered-country-plot-Putin-weaponise-mass-migration-Helsinki-joined-NATO.html