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.
^^ Caroline Flint…or, for that matter, Liz Kendall:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/solomonhughes/liz-kendalls-labour-campaign-is-being-funded-by-blairite-cor
Recently appointed Minister of Propaganda Goebbels spoke at the book burning in Berlin. I have seen clips of him speaking there. And since book burnings of this kind occurred at universities throughout Germany, I think it is very likely indeed that the burnings were inspired by the government. Whether or not that is true, however, it is certainly true that the book burnings happened with official approval.
Glasgow Friends of Israel.
It’s a first as Friends set out their stall in Glasgow
July 16, 2015
http://thejc.co.uk/community/community-life/139812/its-a-first-friends-set-out-their-stall-glasgow
Perhaps Nigel Goodrich is one of those ‘Christian Zionists’. He sounds determined.
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/139241/scottish-christians-and-jews-unite-combat-antisemitism
John Hilley who runs a stall in Glasgow supporting the Palestinians counters.
Peddling ‘peace’ and selling the aggressor state – Friends of Israel do street propaganda
It’s a measure of Israel’s increasing concern over its pariah status in the world that Zionist campaign groups are now delivering street-based propaganda.
http://johnhilley.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/peddling-peace-and-selling-aggressor.html
Good catch, Ben. But I see Robert Kagan, from the same stud, was against Netanyahu addressing Congress last year. Could it be that Bibi’s getting too toxic even for the neocons? What says the USA?
Well, it appears they didn’t feel the respect they required from Petraeus, Ba’al. Someone had it in for him and he apparently failed to adequately appease the warmongers.
Do parents not teach their children to follow their faith and beliefs, as well as all the little rituals? For instance, how to cross themselves, how to place hand over heart while saying, “God Bless America?”.
Is the Royal Family not doing the same?.
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Great to see you back Mary. I hope you are well.
I need to take a holiday from the troubles of the world, and concentrate on my on troubles.
Your posts/links are brilliant!.
Thanks Robert and best wishes for your own health.
OldMark
“The Scourge of the Swastika” was published in the early-to-mid 1950s if memory serves (1954-1956 My father had an inscribed copy.
You may be interested to know that Lord Russell also published “The Knights of Bushido” as a follow-up, so to speak.
Best wishes for the health of everyone, says Habbabkuk!
Summer is the healthy season, one should make the most of it..
Science has demonstrated that unremittingly negative thoughts and excessive, obsessive bitterness are VERY bad for one’s health.
Considering today’s speech by Agent Cameron, the question remaining is; where do Muslims apply for their green crescents (or do they have to cut these themselves, out of an official green fabric bought from approved suppliers) and which side of their chest said green crescent ought to be sewn?
Further, given that the government now officially is setting out to consider any narrative, or thought other than the officially sanctioned narrative as “conspiracy theories”, we the conspiracy theorists are to be sent to which particular concentration camp, for the sake of preparation and letting our relevant kin to know how far do they have to travel for visitations? That is if we are to be allowed any visitors and gitmo rules are not applied.
Yeah Craig how right you were;”Fascists were defeated”, so I should cacao too mate!
Fallon is having a hard time of it in the HoC (apart from the Tory stooges that is) trying to justify the cover up of the embedded RAF personnel in the US bombing of Syria.
He is not credible.
Mission creep Mr Fallon, mission creep. Have you heard of it?
Mary
“Mission creep Mr Fallon, mission creep. Have you heard of it?”
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I’m sure he has, Mary – after all, most people have.
Did you know, by the way, that one of the planners on the German pre-1914 Imperial General Staff once wrote that no military plan ever survives unscathed past the moment of its initial implementation? Wise words.
David Cameron told US news channel NBC, that he wanted Britain to step up, and do more (with regards to bombing Syria).
If only I could secure the approval of my parliament, he said, his parliament?
Havd I missed something?
David Cameron has already invited Labour’s Harriet Harman, to a National Security Council briefing, to prepare the ground, for further air strikes in Syria.
Have this lot learned nothing from the debacles of Libya and Iraq? Apparently not.
I forsee Syria, becoming the new Angola, with proxy fighting groups slugging it out, for the West and Russia, with Assad holed up in the middle.
No wonder millions of Syrians have fled to Turkey.
Fallon has shuffled off to be replaced by his fellow capo IDS and the infamous Welfare Reform and Work Bill. All being put through quickly as there is a shortage of time. Handy that.
They are off tomorrow for seven weeks. Then another month off Sept/Oct for conferences but never mind, they work hard according to some so they go off for their jolly holidays tomorrow with their 10% salary rise in their back pockets.
Nurses and others get 1% and receive far less paid holiday entitlement.
Assad Junior – the current proprietor of the family firm Assa & Sons (est. 1970, torture, murder and repression our speciality; exile facilities by special arrangement – should have been eliminated a long time ago.
But better late than never, as the saying goes. 🙂
Mary
Do you believe that MPs are overpaid? If so, what in your opinion should be the amount of their pay ad allowances?
Meanwhile, the new leader of the LibDems Tim (nice but dim, a character from a old Harry Enfield show) has had a go at Scotland again, calling it a “authoritaruan state.”
His proof for such a allegation is he lived in Cumbria and he senses that Scotland is becoming a Orwellian state.
With such wonderous soothsayer powers, isn’t it surprising that Mr Fallon didn’t see what a thrashing his party was about to receive in the GE.
Maybe his foresight can only encompass Scotland, there goes the next prime minister.
Fedup
“..we the conspiracy theorists are to be sent to which particular concentration camp, for the sake of preparation and letting our relevant kin to know how far do they have to travel for visitations (sic)”
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Thanks for that heads-up, Fedup. Would you happen to know whether the camps have already been built or are merely in the planning stage – and where in the country they are/might be located?
Interesting info from Agence France Presse:
“The International Monetary Fund named Maurice Obstfeld, one of US President Barack Obamas top economic advisers, as its new chief economist on Monday.
Obstfeld, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, will replace outgoing IMF economist Olivier Blanchard.
“His outstanding academic credentials and extensive international experience make him exceptionally well-placed to provide intellectual leadership to the IMF at this important juncture,” said the Fund’s managing director, Christine Lagarde, in a statement.
“He is known around the globe for his work on international economics and is considered one of the most influential macroeconomists in the world.”
Obstfeld, 63, has been on leave from Berkeley since mid-2014 to serve on the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
He will start at the Washington-based IMF on September 8, where a key task will be helping with the Fund’s huge, troubled rescue programs for Greece and Ukraine, and more broadly, keeping a close eye on the slowdown in the global economy”
Have you seen the Effin summer in Scotland Hab….. I yearn for the Beauty of Winter… 🙁
Mary Great to see Ya.
Not a lot of point learning about history if we don’t learn from it. The signs were all there in Germany but people chose not to see them because their their nationalism came first, let’s not do the same in Scotland.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/snp-mp-told-racist-cybernat-to-keep-it-up-1-3835158
Special Investigation Spies,Lords and Predators, uncovering the truth.
http://wingsoverscotland.com/our-lords-above-us/
‘How does your MP spend their time? Members of Parliament work for an average of 70 hours a week, representing their constituents and performing their duties in the House of Commons.
But some spend substantial amounts of their spare time working for outside employers or directorships. The Guardian analysed filings made by MPs to see how much MPs’ second jobs were worth to them for a news piece. It found MPs had made more than £7m.
Analysis by the Guardian reveals 20 MPs made more money from their outside jobs than they did from their Parliamentary salary, with some spending more than 1,000 hours engaging in outside employment. Of those, 17 declared more than £100,000 in income …
In total, Conservative MPs declared more than £4.3m in earnings from outside directorships or jobs, versus £2.4m (including Gordon Brown’s £1.36m) for Labour. More than 50 MPs had directorships of at least one company, while 295 declared at least some kind of minimal earnings from outside work.’
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/may/27/mps-jobs-interests-full-list-data
Historic. May 2013. Probably more now with the Tories in the vanguard.
Cheers Brian.
It has been hot and dry here. Grass is brown and most plants have gone to seed. Also no birdsong and no birds about. Yesterday and today there was light rain but the soil is like dust. My favourite season is Spring.
Have you been watching the millionaires hitting little white balls around St Andrews? 🙂
‘Major golf tournaments are stoking their pots to get attention and golfers.
Tension builds in St. Andrews as a handful of players could still win the Britsh Open, according to the tournament’s leaderboard. Not only is the Claret Jug, the nickname for the Golf Championship Trophy presented to the winner, up for grabs, but so is a top prize of $1.8 million out of the $9.8 million total.’
http://fortune.com/2015/07/20/british-open-2015-record-prize-money/?xid=timehp-category
Ian Mckellen in Richard III. So good: http://youtu.be/OXc0-EME0C8
@Resident Dissident
20 Jul, 2015 – 7:06 am
I’m a Londoner born and bred, a British passport holder. Outside of London, I’ve lived and worked in Cornwall, Wales and Scotland (far north and the islands), as well as North America. For 25 years I paid a high rate of income tax in the UK. I don’t expect to get any kind of state pension, or to have an NHS to look after me in my old age, because successive governments have pissed it all down the drain in the name of neoliberalism.
If I went back to live in the UK, because I’m outspoken it’s fairly certain that I would be hassled by those in power. See, they’ve done it incrementally, salami tactics, and I’ve watched it from afar. Britain is now, to all intents and purposes, a police state. Most of you lot who still live there don’t seem to realise it.
As an example of this, myself and others in this thread have posted links to the 60 Minutes programme that was broadcast yesterday in Australia, which was an expose of the Westminster child sex abuse scandal. Not a peep about it today in the UK media (although I think the Daily Mail did run a piece on it). Almost total silence on what’s probably the biggest issue in modern British politics.
You live in a police state.
For legal reasons I have to be careful what I say here, but I will say that the CSA scandal is not just about the rich and powerful ‘fiddling with children’ many decades ago, it’s also about the torture and murder of children that continues right to this day, and it goes up to the highest levels of the government and establishment.
You can call me a dissident in exile if you want, but please don’t tell me that I have no say in what goes on in my country, a country that has become rotten to the core.
Fred
The Scottish Green Party supported independence. Are its members Nazis?
“The Scottish Green Party supported independence. Are its members Nazis?”
Do they have the word “national” in their title, like Hitler’s National Socialists or Mussolini’s National Fascist party? Are their policies based on Nationalist principles either civic or ethnic? Were their founders on Hitler’s side in WWII? If the answer to these questions is yes then they are.
“Not a lot of point learning about history if we don’t learn from it. The signs were all there in Germany but people chose not to see them because their their nationalism came first”
Yes, the question of how a tolerant, liberal democracy could so quickly become complicit in blatant authoritarian nationalism and discrimination is an interesting one and not discussed widely.
Hitler looked after the middle classes. He ensured that their lifestyles, professions and prospects were untouched. The middle classes could just carry on doing their thing and they were happy to turn a blind eye to all the unpleasantness.
What about National Express, Fred? Are they a fascist bus service, are the drivers and passengers all Nazis?
http://www.nationalexpress.com