It says a huge amount about the confidence of the royal family, that they feel able to respond to their Nazi home movie with nothing other than outrage that anybody should see it. They make no denial they were giving Nazi salutes, no statement that the royal family did not support the Nazis. Of course the young children had no idea of the implications. But the adults most certainly did. The missing figure is the cameraman, future King George, who was filming his wife and brother displaying the family sympathies.
The royal family were of course German themselves – completely so. Since George I every royal marriage in line of succession had been conducted in strict accordance with the Furstenprivatrecht, to a member of a German royal family. The Queen Mother, who was of course not expected to feature in promulgating the line of succession, was the first significant exception in 220 years. She was evidently trying hard to fit in. But I am not sure German-ness has much to do with it. Nazi sympathies were much more common in the aristocracy than generally admitted. Their vast wealth and massive land ownership contrasted with the horrific poverty and malnutrition of the 1930’s, led the aristocracy to fear a very real prospect of being stood against a wall and shot. Fascism appeared to offer social amelioration for the workers with continued privilege for the aristocrats. It is completely untrue that its racism, totalitarianism and violence was unknown in 1933-4. They knew what they were doing.
Happily fascism was defeated. The royal family is of course only the tip of the iceberg of whitewashed fascist support – without even starting on industrialists, newspaper proprietors, the Kennedys, etc. etc. But the Buckingham Palace option of outrage that anybody should ever remember is very sad – still more sad that such a position gets such popular support.
We never did get round to shooting the aristocrats.
I am an optimist in politics. My experience of life has taught me that altruism is a far stronger human urge than selfishness. Modern political fashion is based on the denigration of the urge to cooperation, and I do not believe will survive.
Which leads me to believe we are now living in an embarrassing past. Future generations will look back at the massive and exponentially expanding gap between rich and poor, at the super state security services and near total surveillance, at the violent wars waged in ill-disguised annexation of resources, and be amazed that people could support it. I also think that enormous shame will attach to all those who support the excruciatingly slow genocide of the Palestinians. That will be part of our embarrassing past.
I wish I didn’t have this sort of dispute going on with Fred too, Ben.
This equating – somehow – of Nazis with socialism is such a filthy, pernicious lie. It’s shameful to ride that lie all the way to attacking a policy you don’t happen to like.
That, and the “F-off and die retard c*” thing. Completely uncalled for. Rest of the time, I rather like his posts and the spirit he sends them in, even while not always agreeing. I’d hope one could agree to be agreeable, even if one is forced to disagree.
The BBC (R4 Today) is just a bit too enthusiastically reporting that Tony Blair, the Dear Ex-Leader, who bailed out of representing his constituencey and the premiership as the financial shit really hit the fan, is to make one of his rare appearances in the UK today. He will be blairing at the Progress Group, which (I make no apology for repeating the image) is the Blairite boil on the bum of the Labour Party, and urging it not to countenance a return to Labour’s original purpose and values.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11754589/Tony-Blair-to-warn-Labour-against-lurching-to-left.html
Should be a shoe-in for Corbyn after that.
Blair: you never know exactly where he is, he’s completely inaccessible, and yet something in the air perpetually calls attention to his presence.
Like a dead rat under the floorboards.
From Rehmat’s link:
“On July 20, the Labour Friends of Israel, held a meeting at the Jewish occupied town of Hustings to scan the candidates hoping to fit in the shoes of party’s former Zionist Jew leader Ed Miliband. The meeting was chaired by Jonathan Freedland, executive editor The Guardian and columnist at the Jewish Chronicle.
Andy Burnham (Jewish), Yvette Cooper (Jewish), Jeremy Corbyn (Christian) and Liz Kendall (Jewish) attended the meeting to show their pro-Israel credentials.”
Darlings, why are three of the candidates for leader of New Labour Jewish?
Horsemuck? Any ideas?
Mary, I wonder if you would care to join me in a focussed enquiry into the backing and commercial affiliations of the leading members of Progress? They may be found here:
http://www.progressonline.org.uk/about-progress/chair-patrons/
Stephen Twigg, its chair, was formerly the chairman of Labour FoI, of course, but that is not the allegiance I want to stress. Here’s Twigg, as he often does, making the right noises about childcare:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/15/childcare-crisis-cameron-making-budget
And here’s Twigg abstaining from voting on the shameful welfare bill.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/these-are-the-184-labour-mps-who-didnt-vote-against-the-tories-welfare-bill-10404831.html
Blair’s speech warning Labour not to go too far to the left! is being carried live by the news channels now. The gangsters-in-charge must be really rattled at Corbyn’s lead.
Ba’al: “like a dead rat under the floorboards”
Boil on the bum of New Labour, yes, but dead rat, no. That smell goes away pretty quickly, but none of the whopping lies of British political history ever loses its pong. The UK police state hermetically seals its political victims from justice. The Scots are still bitter about Glencoe over 300 years later; Suhayl Saydi still bitter about 300 years of British brutality, 300 years later.
Even the preserved body of the Pharaoh who persecuted Bani Israeel at the time of Prophet Moses AS has lost its pong.
Tony Blair is still stinking out Middle Eastern politics to this day. Ba’al’s bete noir. Mine is Mrs T.
Giyane, from past experience, I’d like to see some evidence of Rehmat’s assertion re. Kendall, Cooper and Burnham.
Kendall is Jewish Labour’s preferred candidate, but that doesn’t make her Jewish. Cooper is pro-Israel, but ….
And
“Last week Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary and a leading Labour figure, tweeted his concern over Benjamin Netanyahu’s reelection. Nothing wrong with that in principle—except looking back over his Twitter, that tweet was the only time he mentioned a foreign policy issue in 2015. He hasn’t mentioned ISIS, or Ukraine, or Syria, or Iran, or death on the streets of Paris and Copenhagen. Only the election of Netanyahu roused him into looking beyond Britain.”
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/189623/a-polite-hatred-4-british-left
Evidence please. And evidence that this matters.
Calm down, it’s only a simile. And one I am thinking of copyrighting 🙂
Tony Blair is still stinking out Middle Eastern politics to this day. Ba’al’s bete noir. Mine is Mrs T.
Thatcher had principles, and where it was politically possible, acted on them. I loathed her with a passion, but I couldn’t fault her on that. Also she sought and listened to advice. Blair has adequately demonstrated that he has no principles at all, and only listened to his PR wonks. The greater evil. Join me.
Here’s the Progress Group, which probably abstained en masse on the Welfare Bill, charitably considering the prioritised interests of the employers.
http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2015/07/15/welfare-reform-what-do-employers-want/
WTF?
Note the thrust of this argument, The data says that employers would like a better trained workforce, if it were provided on a plate. Progress ignores the question of who will pay for this, absent much indication that the employers are prepared to. IOW, yet another subsidy to private industry from the public purse…
I should have said ‘news channel’. The BBC did not take it. Sky News did but there was a foul up with the sound at the start. LOL
BLiar is now taking questions from an adoring audience of Progress members.
Heading the list of directors on the Board
http://companycheck.co.uk/company/03109611/PROGRESS-LIMITED
is Mendelsohn. 15 directorships incl New Israel Fund/Holocaust Education Trust/ etc etc
http://companycheck.co.uk/director/905327902
‘The combined cash at bank value for all businesses where Jonathan holds a current appointment equals £6,410,613, with a combined total current assets value of £8,063,439 and total current liabilities of £3,597,612.’
Their funding here.
http://www.progressonline.org.uk/about-progress/how-progress-is-funded/
I am afraid I have not got the time today Ba’al to go through that list of Progress stooges. They are mostly irrelevant. Take Kendall for instance.
Ba’al
Thatcher had no moral principles even if she had political principles. She was the one who interpreted the Gospels that you should look after No 1 to mean in the worldly sense, while the obvious meaning for 2000 years was understood in the spiritual sense, that you are responsible for acting morally towards your fellow human beings.
Can’t join you, i’m afraid, in your detestation of blair, just a monumental prat in my eyes.
But total Tory majority UK is not a place I particularly want to be in ever again.
This is a heart breaking report on Sky.
Greece: Unwanted Children Abandoned In Crisis
Children are the unseen victims of Greece’s debt: abandoned because of a crisis that began before many were even born.
http://news.sky.com/story/1523062/greece-unwanted-children-abandoned-in-crisis
Do those faceless bankers care? Not one jot.
The Medialens editors on the Palestinians’ genocide.
•Permanent victims of war: Who remembers Gaza’s children? – The Editors Today, 9:13 am
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1437552818.html
•Israeli forces shoot, kill Palestinian near Jenin – The Editors Today, 9:11 am
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1437552719.html
No moral principles? I disagree. She had her own set of rather individual principles, and a Methodist background. Unfortunately Christianity permits this…
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iH3NBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT121&lpg=PT121&dq=margaret+thatcher+gospels&source=bl&ots=ZmuXRPzh_W&sig=PA_0ikgz_4JyHWx6TB6BBcSIkIQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDQQ6AEwA2oVChMIgqD58KnuxgIVij8UCh0S2gOY#v=onepage&q=margaret%20thatcher%20gospels&f=false
I didn’t like them, and many a Christian would be unhappy about them. But she had them.
Blair, on the other hand, thinks he is the personal agent of God Almighty, and has no consistent ethical basis for what he does. He’s more than a monumental prat. He’s got away with mass murder, and he’s being rewarded for it. And he’s still alive.
All this hot air in this thread about Fascism and Communism/Socialism. They are 2 sides of the same coin surely? They both want to force ordinary people into boxes. Boxes that they have created. Boxes that ordinary people would not choose for themselves.
Somebody once said:
Fascism is when the Corporations own the State and the Banks own the Corporations.
Communism/socialism is when the State owns the Corporations and the Banks own the State.
Same same but different.
“This equating – somehow – of Nazis with socialism is such a filthy, pernicious lie. It’s shameful to ride that lie all the way to attacking a policy you don’t happen to like.”
Socialists aren’t the only ones who didn’t want to be associated with the Nazis after the war.
But the fact remains, they called themselves the National Socialist Workers’ party for a reason and that reason was that they considered themselves Socialists.
You may wish to stick your head in the sand and pretend different, you may be so bigoted that you accuse me of trolling or making mischief but the fact is they did consider themselves Socialists and did have many Socialist policies.
So if you don’t want to be told to fuck off and die I suggest you concentrate on the issues not on the person. Understand.
“The Truth: Hitler hated socialism and communism and worked to destroy these ideologies. Nazism, confused as it was, was based on race, and fundamentally different from class focused socialism.”
Myth, political belief is on a straight line. To say that being racist makes someone automatically right wing is just ridiculous. Was Saddam Hussein right wing, what about his murder of the Marsh Arabs and lets face it Stalin turned against the Jews and committed quite a few atrocities himself but nobody says that makes him right wing.
Ditch this model of the world you have with everything on straight lines and start thinking in two, or even three dimensions.
“I am afraid I have not got the time today Ba’al to go through that list of Progress stooges. They are mostly irrelevant.”
Are they? What makes a Labour MP cleave so affectionately to capitalism as to be a Blairite?
Liz Kendall is funded by this lot:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/13/gay-cure-christian-charity-mps-interns
Yet, (wiki) – Kendall is a strong supporter of LGBT rights and voted for gay marriage in 2013
Go figure.
To say that being racist makes someone automatically right wing is just ridiculous.
But he didn’t say that. He said, Hitler hated socialism and communism and worked to destroy these ideologies. Nazism, confused as it was, was based on race, and fundamentally different from class focused socialism
Absolutely true. And it is a matter of record that Hitler scrapped any pretence of socialism once he had the socialist vote safely in the bag. Rather like friend Blair, come to think of it.
“Somebody once said:
Fascism is when the Corporations own the State and the Banks own the Corporations.
Communism/socialism is when the State owns the Corporations and the Banks own the State.”
There was another saying that capitalism was the exploitation of man by his fellow man while with socialism it was the other way round.
“Nazism, confused as it was, was based on race, and fundamentally different from class focused socialism”
Yes, he did base his beliefs on race as well, that’s why he put the word “National” before the word “Socialist”.
Talking of Nazis…ein Reich department…
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/142BB/production/_84391628_028250829-1.jpg
Also note the Osberon references (all recent speeches, every five minutes) to ‘*our* country’, along with hardworking families and hardworking taxpayers. The attempt at inclusiveness sorta falls flat when it comes from a toff, doean’t it? We know who *us* are, George and Dave. And it’s not us.
No, he put it there to appeal to patriotic Germans. To present the Nazis as a country-wide movement rather than a minority in a Munich bierkeller. To be inclusive. Like Cameron (see my previous post) There is a difference between thinking ‘in two or three dimensions’, and ‘knight’s move’ thinking, Fred. The latter is a symptom of schizophrenia.
http://www.log24.com/log08/saved/081005-KtMove.html
….cue Carruthers…
The following may be of interest to those following developments in Greece but also to those who follow the travails of the British NHS.
(Bloomberg as reported in Kathimerini today)
“Here’s a simple way to prune Greece’s debt load: use fewer brand-name drugs.
The land of Hippocrates taps fewer generic medicines (and reaps lower savings) than any other European nation at the moment. Not ideal for a country negotiating its third bailout.
Greek pharmacies last year continued to dispense a majority of branded medicines from overseas, according to data from IMS Health Holdings Inc., which tracks drug consumption. Novartis AG’s Diovan, which keeps blood vessels from narrowing, and Pfizer Inc.’s cholesterol-buster Lipitor still dominate, years after their expired patents opened the door for generics.
That’s because Greece doesn’t require doctors to prescribe cheaper alternatives, according to Per Troein, IMS’s vice president of strategic partners. The branded drug dominance is hobbling authorities’ efforts to comply with the terms of the last rescue.
“If they’re going to save money, they need to have prescription guidelines,” Troein said by phone. “The first- line treatment in many cases should be an off-patent product.”
Diovan, for instance, accounted for 82 percent of prescriptions in the fourth quarter, according to IMS. By contrast, the medicine makes up only 4 percent of pharmacy sales in Germany after it lost patent protection in Europe four years ago. The Lipitor original commands 29 percent of the market in Greece, compared with just 5 percent in Germany.
Blame drugmakers
Lipitor, which went off patent in 2012, costs about 11.51 euros ($12.49) for a pack of 14 tablets of 40 milligrams each in Greece, 27 percent more than the generic version, IMS data show. Diovan costs about 7.22 euros, or 48 percent more than the generic, for a pack of pills that are 320 milligrams each.
Even so, branded drugs account for 51 percent of medicines dispensed in Greece, the most among 20 European countries studied by IMS in a report published last month. The daily treatment cost in Greece for seven key drug classes is the third-highest in Europe, behind Switzerland and Ireland, the IMS data show.
Panagiotis Kouroumplis, who became health minister after the Syriza party came to power this year, blames drugmakers. He was among the cabinet ministers to retain his position after Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras last week replaced officials who rejected austerity measures needed to appease creditors.
“Efforts to increase the penetration of generics in the Greek market did not yield fruit mainly because of the fact that the interests of the pharmaceutical companies which promote the brands are very powerful,” Kouroumplis said in an e-mailed response to questions earlier this month.
Target missed
Medicines are one of Greece’s biggest imports, alongside fuel, cars and electronics. Foreign-made drugs make up about 88 percent of Greece’s pharmaceutical market, according to IMS.
Part of the reason the debt-laden nation has been slow to embrace generics is that the country has traditionally had low prices for branded drugs relative to the rest of Europe, and relatively high ones for generics, according to Troein.
Greece slashed its pharmaceutical bill to 2 billion euros last year from 5.6 billion euros in 2009 as part of a requirement by creditors to limit drug spending to 1 percent of gross domestic product. Still, while prices for original branded drugs have been cut in half since 2008, prices for generics have had only modest declines, according to IMS.
Kouroumplis’s predecessor, Adonis Georgiadis, set a target last year to increase the share of generics to at least 30 percent by the end of 2014, and to triple it to 60 percent by the end of 2015. By the ministry’s own measure, Greece failed to meet the 2014 deadline as the generic penetration rate remained at about 20 percent.
Distorted market
“We cannot claim that the policies adopted were very effective,” said Elpida Pavi, a senior lecturer in health economics at the National School of Public Health in Athens. “There still is a pharmaceutical-market distortion in favor of off-patent rather than generics.”
Meanwhile, foreign drugmakers operating in Greece have said they’re continuing to supply products that can save lives, but that they’re owed more than 1 billion euros by the government in unpaid bills.
They’re also under pressure to cut prices. Drugmakers have been required to give mandatory discounts and to pay back any spending on pharmaceuticals that exceeds the 2 billion-euro cap. So-called rebates and clawbacks amounted to 530 million euros last year, according to Natalia Toubanaki, a spokeswoman for the Hellenic Association of Pharmaceutical Companies.
“If you add that to the outstanding debt, it is not a very nice situation for pharma companies here,” Toubanaki said.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is yet another example of how Greece, since the beginning of the crisis and after the first bailout, has committed to a number of useful measures (measures which would have no negative effects on the population at large) but has unfortunately failed to implement them. One could of course argue, correctly,that this particular measure represents only a drop in the ocean but there are others of considerably greater practical import on which progress = whether under previous govts or this one – has also been minimal if not inexistent. The failure to reform the Byzantine tax system and to properly collect taxes due is the most egregious example.
“No, he put it there to appeal to patriotic Germans. To present the Nazis as a country-wide movement rather than a minority in a Munich bierkeller. To be inclusive. Like Cameron (see my previous post) There is a difference between thinking ‘in two or three dimensions’, and ‘knight’s move’ thinking, Fred. The latter is a symptom of schizophrenia.”
So you’re saying Hitler wasn’t a nationalist either then, his politics weren’t based on either socialism or nationalism. He came out of the army after WWI and said to himself “I think I’ll join the German Workers Party because it’s everything I don’t believe in”.
So you’re saying Hitler wasn’t a nationalist either then, his politics weren’t based on either socialism or nationalism.
Not at all. Please read my comments before responding to them. Of course he was a nationalist. Though a nationalist-of-convenience. But he wasn’t in any sense a socialist.
He came out of the army after WWI and said to himself “I think I’ll join the German Workers Party because it’s everything I don’t believe in”.
Actually, no. He was planted on the GWP by the Army, which didn’t like its left-leaning views. He liked the nationalist, antisemitic element (Drexler) and stayed.
In April, 1920, Hitler advocated that the party should change its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). Hitler had always been hostile to socialist ideas, especially those that involved racial or sexual equality. However, socialism was a popular political philosophy in Germany after the First World War. This was reflected in the growth in the German Social Democrat Party (SDP), the largest political party in Germany.
Hitler, therefore redefined socialism by placing the word ‘National’ before it. He claimed he was only in favour of equality for those who had “German blood.” Jews and other “aliens” would lose their rights of citizenship, and immigration of non-Germans should be brought to an end.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/nsdap.html
Not that I expect you to take this as accurate: it doesn’t accord with your very fixed prejudices.
When the SNP disenfranchises Jews and other aliens, bans trade unions and ends free elections, give me a call. Until then the short jerky motions culminating in the big sleep can be your consolation.
http://tapnewswire.com/2015/07/how-the-scottish-referendum-was-rigged/
“When the SNP disenfranchises Jews and other aliens, bans trade unions and ends free elections, give me a call. Until then the short jerky motions culminating in the big sleep can be your consolation.”
But Hitler didn’t do those things till he had taken power which he did not be getting a majority but by getting a minority and pretending it was a majority. A bit like if the SNP were to just declare themselves the official opposition despite only having 56 seats.
He didn’t exactly ban trade unions either, he sort of nationalised them.
Pete Fairhurst: All this hot air in this thread about Fascism and Communism/Socialism.”
Actually, no. The hot air is about equating Nazis with democratic socialists. You are equating communists with socialists. A lot of false equivalence going on all round.
*
Radio-4 appears stuck on “Mr. Blair says” for the first half of its news bulletins today.