A Head of State has a symbolic importance for the nation, that transcends the personalityand politics of the individual in office. I am therefore very sorry for the Polish people at the loss of President Kaczynski and the Polish delegation in the air crash at Smolensk.
Looking at the list of victims, I knew at least five of them, though not colse friends, from my time in the British Embassy in Warsaw, which makes the tragedy more real to me.
The massacre at Katyn was one of the most dreadful chapters in Poland’s tragic history. It was not just a massacre of 22,000 soldiers – it was a determined attempt by Stalin to wipe out the entire Polish officer class, as a step towards eliminating Poland’s indigenous leadership potential.
You have to understand Polish history to fully guage the significance of this. In the eighteenth century Poland was wiped off the map in successive partitions by Austria, Prussia and Russia. For two and a half centuries the Polish nation disappeared from Europe. Poles werensplit between different Empires, with Poles expected to fight Poles on their new masters’ behalf. A brief period of existence under Napoleon helped keep Polish identity alive – and along with the Chopin story sparked a lasting attachment to France..
So when Poland reemerged from the mists of time – to quote Norman Davies – in 1918 as a nation again, it was a nation with a sense of the precariousness of its own existence, which was to be strengthened by the hard but succesful battles against Soviet invasion in 1921.
It was only 18 years later, and Poland had only existed anew for 21 years, when Stalin and Hitler treacherously invaded Poland and partitioned it yet again. Britian’s declaration of war was no practical help to the Poles. As Poland was fighting for its very existence, even the least warlike had signed up for the hopeless fight against both Hitler and Stalin, so the 22,000 Polish officers among Stalin’s prisoners of war were a broad cross section of Poland’s educated classes.
Stalin’s decision to massacre them was an attempt to eradicate the very idea of an independent Poland.
When I was in Uzbekistan I was astonsihed to find that in Uzbek schools and universities the Stalin-Hitler pact had been eradicated from the history books. That is true today. They are told the “Great Patriotic War” started inn 1941. The Soviet invasion of Poland is a banned subject.
Since Putin’s new brand of Russian nationalism, the Stalin/Hitler pact has again diasppeared from Russian school books, although it is not formally a banned subject and is taught at some universities. But Putin – who of course is a product of the Soviet secret services – has discouraged at every turn openness about the crimes of Stalin, and archives on the subject have again been closed to the public.
The Poles were therefore quite right to press the Russians hard on Katyn, and you can be sure that the ceremonies would not have been given much prominence in Russian media. The fascinating thing now will be to monitor just how much depth the Russian media give to explaining just what President Kaczynski was on his way to Russia for
They think they owe something to Labour.
They think they owe them for the roads, the schools and the hospitals.
They assume they are gifts from a kind king instead of a simple fraction of their taxes returned to the.
Arsalan: Re. “the bus”. Thanks for your question about this.
On another thread, I’d invited Larry to imagine that he was sitting next to me on a long-distance American bus with the rain falling outside and no in-cabin entertainment, to forget for a few minutes about politics and just to tell me something about himself in order to allow me to understand that he was a singular human being. Larry had objected to my constantly referring to him in the plural.
The bus then became a reference to Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters as immortalised in Tom Wolfe’s book, ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test’. “Are you on the bus” was a phrase the Pranksters used and I think may have derived from the restless ‘genius’ of the journey, Neal Casady, who was also the central study of Jack Kerouac’s iconic book, ‘On The Road’. Both books trace a journey across the mid-C20th American soul.
What you have to show them is they owe Labour Nothing!
Instead Labour owed them for all the loyal voting the kept Labout in power.
But instead Labour stabbed them in the back. By attacking them to appease everyone but them.
Suhayl Saadi
I was right, that comment was beyond my intelegence.
Actually, while the adherence of South Asians (of all religions) to the Labour Party is still largely true, in Scotland, there are now quite a few South Asians who have. and will. vote SNP. They had the first Asian MSP (sadly now deceased) and indeed the SNP has courted the ‘Asian Vote’ for around a decade now. Osama Saeed will be their candidate against Labour’s Anis Sarwar for Glasgow Central (that’s the parliamentary constituency, not the railway station!). It’ll be an interesting contest.
Not at all, Arsalan, you do yourself a disservice, my man! It’s just that they didn’t have fish on the bus, but rather, Kool-Aid, spiked with acid.
“Muslims are blindly loyal to Labour.”
What a strangely white bitter Middle England sort of thing to say! As Craig points out, many of the Muslim votes in Blackburn, for example, come from people who are being bullied into it, or defrauded, not because of loyalty. This isn’t a generic character flaw, it’s a crime.
So Ingo, hurrah for what you’re doing in Blackburn. Bushra Irfan’s website’s looking good now, too (though is she allowed to offer a free dinner?)
On the other hand, you could say that many votes are the result of people being bullied or defrauded in some way. From ‘Vote for us or suffer’ to ‘We promise we’ll do this, honest’.
That’s why, if faced with no credible independent, or Green, I’m still inclined to hope the Lib Dems get a go, since they are patently the worst of the three parties at doing either.
I can’t understand why people on this blog want to be friendly to muslims.
Muslims want to change your way of life. They want you to submit to their religious laws.
Why don’t you join with your friends in Israel to eliminate forever this menace to our people.
We have a solution, a final solution, that will rid us of this muslim menace once and for all!
Come join with us.
Join New Labour, today…
Tony, tell the truth. You’re Arsalan, aren’t you?
I’d like to know what this Bushra Irfan really believes. On her website she says:
“Muslim terrorists is [sic] inevitable and bound to be more likely as we are attacking, invading and bombing muslim countries…If we stopped the action ( of invading and attacking people) we may see a dramatic fall in terrorism as violence begets violence”.
Yet at the bottom of every page she has links to an Alex Jones piece on 7/7 and the Loose Change video about 9/11.
“they didn’t have fish on the bus, but rather, Kool-Aid, spiked with acid”
Vinegar ? no problem.
Yeah, that’s terrible about Bushra Irfan.
Another British leftist manipulated by American right-wing nutters.
Under the headline: “Polish president had history of dangerous landings,” ABC News reports that: “A leading Polish defence analyst says late president Lech Kaczynski was well known for ordering pilots to land in dangerous conditions.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/12/2869997.htm?section=justin
Many air disasters have resulted from a co-pilot’s failure, due to deference, to correct an error by a pilot of superior rank. The crash of the Polish President’s plane appears to fit this pattern, undue deference in this case having been shown by the pilot to the poor judgment of the President.
The moral is, don’t fly on Air Force One or any other presidential plane unless the President has been bound and gagged before takeoff and denied any possible means of communicating with the cockpit.
The Katyn Massacre refers, specifically, to the murder by the NKVD of 4,243 Polish military officers in the Kozelsk prisoner-of-war camp in the spring of 1940. This was, by Polish standards during WW2, a rather minor catastrophe, since more than five million Polish civilians, of whom slightly more than half may have been Jews, were slaughtered by occupying German and Russian forces.
The greater massacre of civilians was a direct consequence of Germany’s plan for eastward expansion, a plan known to the western powers well in advance. Britain’s policy of appeasement might, therefore, be better understood as a policy to enable a German assault on Russia, an assault that made the destruction of Poland inevitable.
Is that one reason why we hear so much about the Jewish holocaust: because it distracts attention from the far greater holocaust that was the Second World War (62 to 78 million dead), for which British policy might be considered largely responsible?
The moral culpability for Hitler’s pursuit of lebensraum and his extermination of Poles, Jews, Roma and (beginning with the pre-war T-4 programme) lies with Hitler. And, if you really want, with Stalin as well given the Nazi-Soviet pact, Stalin’s assistance in carving up Poland and Stalin’s refusal to believe any one who told him about Hitler’s plans to invade the Soviet Union. This included a Communist German worker who brought to the Soviet embassy a German-Russian phrasebook with phrases such as “Hands up!”, “Surrender!”, “Take us to the commisar of the collaective farm!” etc… etc… Stalin refused to believe British intelligence who told him Hitler was planning to invade and he also refused to believe Richard Sorge, Soviet spy in Japan, who had discovered Hitler’s invasion plans.
Appeasement was a hope that war could be averted given that Britain and others really cringingly believed Hitler might settle for what they allowed him to take and it certainly did not make Operation Barbarossa inevitable.
Besides, I don’t understand your point.
“Appeasement” made World War Two possible, therefore World War Two was largely Britain’s fault?
If that’s true what was the alternative? Begin World War Two earlier? In which case someone like Alfred would be able to blame Britain for World War Two and think that the Holocaust is some hyped up attempt to take the blame off the Allies!
World War Two had already begun, by the way, in Asia where hundreds of thousands were fighting and dying throughout the nineteen thirties. Japan had already gone to war twice with the Soviet Union and was carving up China. One of the problems Stalin had with a possible invasion from Hitler’s Germany was the possibility of having to fight a war on two fronts.
Anyway, I am sure from your vantage point of seventy years of hindsight you’ll have a better plan about what Britain could have done.
Suhayl Saadi
Not this time.
Anyway, you can use cool aid and acid(viniger) with fish.
If your fish smells because it wasn’t caught on the day, the trick is to wash it with viniger.
And then you can use coke/cool aid or any other soda drink on your batter to get the same effect(Hallal) of beer batter.
Nice tradition tasting Hallal fish and chips just like you get in the shops!!!!
Thanks, Arsalan, I’ll try the recipe!
Now, I’ll bet if the Merry Pranksters had known that…
“World War Two had already begun, by the way, in Asia where hundreds of thousands were fighting and dying throughout the nineteen thirties. Japan had already gone to war twice with the Soviet Union and was carving up China. One of the problems Stalin had with a possible invasion from Hitler’s Germany was the possibility of having to fight a war on two fronts.”
Angrysoba
That’s a crucial point.
“The IRA were a creature of the North, i.e. the UK. They used the Republic as somewhere to hide out, or to rob our banks.” Dreoilin
Exactly.
Poor Poland hit by yet another terrible tragedy, sometimes I think we’re cursed.
One of the interesting things about the origional Katyn Massacre, when the advancing German army found the site and began digging up the bodies, is the reaction of the British press which accepted without question the Russian version of events, that it was, in fact, the Germans who had executed the Polish officers. This fantasy, which was known to be a fantasy, and the opposite of the truth, continued for years and was an cause of incredible friction between the Polish government in exile, Polish military personel, and the British Government.
One particular Polish general, Sikorski, just would let the matter be swept under the propaganda carpet. He was then involved in a mysterious plane crash which silenced him for ever. My father who was a member of Sikorski’s bodyguard, always believed that Churchill ordered his assassination, as did most of the Poles around Sikorski.
The twisting of the truth out of all recognition by the British press, blaming the Germans for a warcrime everyone knew couldn’t have been committed by the Germans, because they were’nt even there and the Russians were, is just an illustration of how truth is sacrificed in wartime, if it’s necessary. This is why one needs to be sceptical when dealing with the truths of history too. War is a very dirty business indeed, and total war is totally dirty. And this realization can help us develope a healthy scepticism about the “truths” we are told today about the reasons behind our current wars and conflicts. That’s what we can learn from hisory, to be sceptical and as a rule of thumb never believe a word our leaders tell us, until we’ve seen the proof, or at least examined it objectively. For example in relation to Iran and the difficulty they have in proving that they are not secretly developing nuclear weapons.
For those who question whether Poland was really “set up” and used as “bait”, “sacrificed” in order to push Germany towards the East and the Russians, and I am not saying this is “true” but a possible interpretation of what happened, perhaps another example might shed some light on how small countries are regarded, as pawns, by great powers.
A mountain of evidence shows that Britain used Denmark and Norway as “bait” for yet another trap and the Germans fell for it, spreading themselves even thinner on the ground, which was the purpose of the trap. Britain spread the story that it was planning to invade/occupy Norway, Denmark and Swenden and attack Germany from there. The Germans then occupied Norway and Denmark first to counteract this move. Swenden was left alone because the Swedish government was neutral and enjoyed excellent relations with Berlin, at least until it was clear that Germany had lost the war. This happened after Stalingrad, when everyone knew the game was up.
Anyway what the fate of Norway and Denmark shows, is that the idea, the practice, of sacrificing small countries and their people, in wartime, like pawns in a monsterous and bloody chess game is as “shocking” or totally lacking in “seriousness” as it may seem at first glance.
Actually I am with angrysoba here. I think the idea that we should have coexisted with fascism peacefully is nuts. I was reading Mike Arnott’s excellent booklet on the Dundee members of the International Brigade, which reminds me that some people had the courage and foresight to start fighting fascism earlier.
As is now well-known (but not well-known enough, perhaps), the UK hard state was actively manipulating the various manifestations of violent (essentially right-wing) Republicanism (and violent Unionism) for decades.
On possibly the same note, or possibly a separate note, there are those who question the provenance of the deaths of Neave, Mountbatten, and others.
On a third note, the reason there was no clarion-call to pursue the Provisional IRA into the Republic to their hide-outs (to invade The Republic) was because the aim of the whole thing was not to re-take S. Ireland. It had a different agenda pertaining to internal UK politics.
Contrastingly, the aim of the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia is precisely to re-take/ take the Middle East and Central Asia – or at least to lever control of its resources. So the acts of terrorism in the West help to fuel a macro-economic war agenda. That was not the case in relation to ‘The Troubles’ in N. Ireland.
Writerman,
It is absolutely untrue that Britain in any way encouraged or connived at the Stalin/Hitler invasion of Poland, for whatever reason. There is an argument that Britian did ultimayely betray Poland, at Yalta. But the truth is Britain had no practical ability at all to counter Stalin in Central Europe.
One great tragedy was the fate of the Poles who fought so valiantly with the British forces in the RAF or in North Africa, Italy, and Northern Europe, who then returned home and were imprisoned by Stalin – including those who had intended to fight the “free and fair” elections Stalin had promised Churchill with no ntention of delivering.
There was one old Spitfire pilot whose name sadly escapes me who spent 40 odd years in jail. He used to come to Embassy parties and was great fun – he once punched General Jaruselski in our Ambassador’s residence.
Jaruselski’s role is still a subject of some dispute. The idea that he was a patriot who kept the Russians out while not really trying to crush Solidarity is not complete nonsense. He certainly had much less blood on his hands than other communist dictators. I am a bit biased as our back gardens used to connect and we got on fairly well.
Drat this thread, I’ve got no time but keep learning from it. I agree there was no way to coexist with Hitler’s Germany; so did a pacifist friend of mine who signed the peace pledge in the 20’s but ended up being one of the first people into Belsen (as a General’s aide-de-camp).
Off to work!
A lot of East European Communist leaders did that balancing act. Made a deal with ‘the devil’ to keep the devil out. Or at least to prevent overt invasions.
On the other hand, war’s a mindset, isn’t it? All that waste and terror. Would have been good to kidnap Hitler & turn him into a gardener in remotest Scotland instead.
“On possibly the same note, or possibly a separate note, there are those who question the provenance of the deaths of Neave, Mountbatten, and others.”
Who are these people who question?
“On a third note, the reason there was no clarion-call to pursue the Provisional IRA into the Republic to their hide-outs (to invade The Republic) was because the aim of the whole thing was not to re-take S. Ireland. It had a different agenda pertaining to internal UK politics.”
The aim of what whole thing? Who or what had a different agenda? The IRA did not live in the south or operate from here. I can’t follow you for toffee, Suhayl.
Well, you know, technicolour, there’s a tale about that, too. Hitler, of course, had failed to get into the Vienna School of Art on a number of occasions; he was a very mediocre artist. For a while, as a young man, he worked in a park in Vienna, clearing leaves, etc. Stalin was an accomplished, published Georgian poet (“this young man has a great future…”) who spent exile time in Vienna around the same time. Goebbels was a failed novelist.
There’s a three-hander stage-play in that (probably been done, though):
Schiklgruber, Djugashvili and Freud, in a park, in the summer, in Vienna.
‘Schiklgruber, Djugashvili and Freud’… sounds like a Brooklyn law firm: “We do real estate!”
So, next time you see a guy sweeping up leaves… offer him a job in the Applecross Peninsula – a beautiful spot in the north-west of Scotland with lovely gardens and lots of leaves.
Dreolin, now that the fish has all been gobbled-up by Arsalan, Richard and the Merry Pranksters… check out Lobster magazine. There’s quite a lot in their back issues about Northern Ireland, it makes fascinating reading; my allusions in this regard are half-baked (treacle toffee), but there’s far more in-depth analysis there. It’s a rational magazine, not into wild hypothesising, and was founded in the early 1980s by Robin Ramsey and Stephen Dorrill (the latter of whom wrote a big book on the SIS):
http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/
“I think the idea that we should have coexisted with fascism peacefully is nuts.”
But that is precisely what Britain sought until 1939 and even beyond 1939. As late as May 1940, the British Government, under Churchill, contemplated a settlement with Germany which would have involved ceding to Germany British possessions in the Mediterranean and elsewhere.
That is why Britain would not support the Polish-French plan to remove Hitler in 1934. It was why Britain would not act with France to prevent Germany’s remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, contrary to the terms of the Locarno Treaty. And it was why as late as 1939 the British Ambassador to Germany, Arthur Henderson, was instructed to inform Germany that they could do what they wanted in Eastern Europe provided that “not a shot is fired”.
Further, Churchill is said to have remarked after the war that it was the most unnecessary war ever fought. So if the attempt to coexist with fascist Germany was nuts, there were a lot of nutters in the British Government –including Churchill.
Anyway, the idea that one cannot coexist with a government that one does not like is truly nuts. America did not take that view in dealing with the Soviet Union, although the Soviets were at least as vile as Hitler’s Reich and were openly committed to world domination (“we will bury you”, etc.). And, of course, no one even thinks of doing anything about truly nasty government that happen to be on our side, Poland in 1939 for example was no democracy, and was headed by fools who thought that Polish cavalry (on horses) would make an impression against Germany’s Panzer Divisions, or today, Saudi Arabia, for example, or Uzbekistan.
As for Angrysoba’s claim that Britain and France could have done nothing to help Poland when attacked by Germany, it is rubbish. As I pointed out above, the French had three million armed men on Germany’s western front and wouldn’t move against a mere eight German divisions (about 80,000 men). And Britain with a superior air force to Germany would not bomb German ammunition dumps “because they were private property.”
What the Brits did do was distribute gas masks when the possibility of a German gas attack on Britains was precisely zero. They also had people digging trenches in Hide Park. The purpose: to instill a defeatism, which would prevent a public demand for support for Poland. (Tony Blair used the same trick to start the Iraq war, although in that case the argument was that Londoners would be gassed if Britain did not go to war).