Friday, August 30, 2013

THE POLITICAL CLASS IS DIVIDED. Even the Right-wing press is divided. Stephen Glover and Max Hastings (Daily Mail) are set against; while Mary Riddell and David Blair (The Daily Telegraph) are for. As for the public the division is far wider, as a poll in today's Sun ably demonstrates.
            
            To strike or not to strike. Do nothing and leave the field with our tail between our legs; or fight, which may provoke fearful consequences by so doing. It is time for Cameron to show that he merits the title of statesman - unlike the rest of the elected parliamentary community.
           
           Tomorrow in parliament our MPs will be awarded a debate and are seeking a vote at its end. First of all, let us see what would be our contribution to events when the order is given. We have a Trafalgar class submarine armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles somewhere in the Mediterranean…and that appears to be it.
            
           We have HMS Illustrious, the Royal navy's helicopter carrier as well as the frigate HMS Westminster and naval auxiliary ships undergoing exercises off Albania, but are impotent as far as any strike capability on Syria is concerned. We have an airbase on Cyprus, but I have read that we have no strike aircraft available on site[1]. Rather, its importance will be to the USAF if it is required to launch an air attack - although the Americans are shying away from airstrikes because of Assad's anti-aircraft missiles, many of which he has been well provided for by Russia.
            
            So the UK's military contribution is merely a token. America does not need it militarily, but welcomes it politically. So, it seems that, at great cost to the public purse, our politicians are gathering to discuss whether a single submarine should take part. Our  650 MPs will, on Thursday, decide whether we should launch 20 Tomahawk cruise missiles (a mere pittance) . For this is all we will have to contribute. It matters not a jot if the MPs vote to oppose any military action, for it will take place anyway. So why recall parliament? The whole  situation in the  UK is playing like a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera. On this basis parliament needed never to have been recalled…it is an embarrassment and a victory for hot air.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN when the time comes is that Syria will face a bombardment of Tomahawk missiles -  not however to right an evil, for such a limited reaction will certainly not do what is needed: but to save the West's skins after their leader imposed a red line, which he had to do something about when it was crossed: and when it was crossed, the Western world's leader ordered the minimal military response; and this is what we will see.
            
             Not a single American aircraft will take-off: and not a single soldier (apart from special services) will land on Syrian soil. Obama believes that any military response to his red line threat would be enough to keep his place in history secure as his country's first black president.
            
           America will do the minimal required to keep Obama's legacy safe. Iran will wait and see the extent of the West's response before replying with an attack on Israel. It is Israel, after all, that will be left to cope with any mess the West makes of their attack on Syria.

Thursday, 29 August

SHAMBOLIC, BIZARRE, EMBARRASSING, and humiliating. MPs had all been called back off their summer holidays to debate Syria, before what we were told by the media to be the inevitable air strikes on the Assad regime took place. Word was out that the attack would either begin immediately after the debate, or before the weekend. Now, because of an opposition amendment, the debate need never take place.
            
            The Milliband amendment (as history will no doubt refer to it) has put a bloody great spanner in America's and the UK government's wheel, and, if you believe in chaos theory, will have consequences for the West in the decades to come.
            
            Milliband went back on an earlier decision to support military action; deciding instead to impose six politically motivated criteria of such harshness in his amendment that it would have delayed action for weeks; and  he would only vote for a government motion if the government were to included his amendment in the motion. Which of course they could not.
            
            If Milliband had acted from high principle, then the government would have at least respected his actions. But Milliband was acting in his own party's political interest; and, more significantly, his own.
            
            After the torrid time he has had over the summer; what with his party's backbenchers and 'elder statesmen' criticising his leadership; and an unhappy conference fast approaching, where fevered speculation about his leadership qualities would be whispered about on the conference floor and debated on the fringes; and then speculated upon in interview after interview with his MPs and delegates by the media; something needed to be done.
            
            As with the leadership contest with his brother David, when he made his Mephistophelian pact with the unions, he is now not thinking of his country's interest, or those  2,000  poisoned by the Assad regime; but only of saving his own skin.


WE ALL KNOW WHAT may have happened if the strike on Syria went ahead; but little thought has been given to what may happen in the coming months and years following our retreat. For I do not now see the West attacking Syria…the moment has passed, thanks in no small measure to Ed Miliband's domestic political ambitions.
            
            President Assad has sent to every MP in the UK a letter which includes an invitation to all British MPs to visit Damascus this weekend to hear Assad's side of the story. I am told the Syrian leader enjoys Quality Street.
            
             The MP George Galloway was recently seen on Iranian (Shia Muslim) television blaming al-Queada (Sunni Muslim) for the chemical attack: and what is more Galloway suggested the chemical weapons were supplied to al-Queada by Israel no less.
            
             Today's worthless debate means little, except for Syria. Assad has, it seems, access to hundreds of what he regards as his useful idiots. Through his correspondence with the UK's MPs, he hopes that sufficient numbers will be drawn to his cause to give his regime publicity and more importantly legitimacy…let the homage to Assad begin.


           








[1] Today it has been announced we have deployed six Typhoon jets to Cyprus; but only to deter any Syrian attack on the island.

Is there an ounce of decency in the man?

DAVID CAMERON should have realised that if Ed Miliband was capable of betraying his brother, he would have very few qualms about doing the same to him. Miliband cannot be trusted and should be avoided at all times by political opponents from within and without his party.  When it comes to trust and forming alliances, Ed Miliband has only one priority - himself; and, as he has proven in the last 24 hours, if after the next election there is another coalition; it should not be shared with Miliband.      
            
            David Cameron met all of Miliband's demands in order to get his support in yesterday's debate. Miliband's behaviour has so angered Dan Hodges, a Blairite Telegraph blogger, that he has resigned his Labour Party membership. His reasons are worth showing in full, as there is no greater condemnation of Miliband's deceitful behaviour:

 'Ed Miliband said that if he was to back the Government, David Cameron would have to publish the legal advice upon which the case for war rested. David Cameron agreed, and did so.
Ed Miliband then said a solid case needed to be presented demonstrating the Assad regime’s culpability for the chemical attacks. David Cameron agreed, and published the JIC analysis which concluded “there are no plausible alternative scenarios to regime responsibility”.
Ed Miliband then said the Government would have to exhaust the UN route before any recourse to military action. David Cameron agreed, and confirmed he would be submitting a motion to the P5 to that effect.
Ed Miliband said he would need to await the UN weapons inspectors report. David Cameron agreed.
Finally, and crucially, Ed Miliband said there would have to be not one, but two House of Commons votes before military action could be authorised. Once again David Cameron agreed.
And then, having sought – and received – all these assurances from the Prime Minister, Ed Miliband went ahead and voted against the Government anyway.'
He concludes:
'Every step of the way Ed Miliband’s actions were governed by what was in his own narrow political interests, rather than the national interest. As for the children of Syria, they didn’t even get a look in.
This week I’ve seen the true face of Ed Miliband. And I suspect that the country has too.'
             Dan Hodges was right to resign. If Ed Milliband had acted out of principle, and stated his case accordingly, at least people like Hodges would have understood. But Milliband was only acting in his own interest, and not even in that of his party's. Such low behaviour should not be considered prime ministerial. For let us think about those who were at the centre of this whole issue, but whom Miliband dismissed in order to varnish his own lacklustre performance over the summer.
            Last week the Assad regime used chemical weapons indiscriminately - for there is no other way such weapons can be used. The images that travelled the world following the attack, reminded one (and Miliband should take note) of Jews having been gassed by the Nazis. Those lines of bodies wrapped in linen ready for burial were not unlike images of countless Nazi victims piled high ready for the crematorium. But as was pointed out today, not even Hitler used  chemicals weapons on the battlefield.
            Such images should therefore have touched Miliband's conscience even deeper than the rest of us. But they did not. It was Miliband first and last. I doubt his brother David would have so easily brushed to one side such a horror for political preferment.
            After all, the Miliband family were originally refugees themselves, who fled persecution to find a home in the UK. Ed Miliband's academic father Ralph, then set about trying to destroy the democratic society that had embraced him by fighting to create a Marxist state to replace it. Another example, no doubt, of the opportunistic gene that seems to run through the family.
LUCKILY THE gene is not recessive, so David escaped its pernicious influence, and would have made a fine leader of the Labour Party, and an excellent prime minister but for the betrayal of his brother, who engaged in a Faustian pact with the trade unions, who had no love for his brother, or he for them.
            But Ed even turned on those who secured his leadership of the Labour Party in order to serve his ambition. He involved the police in the Falkirk shenanigans when Unite members were, without their knowledge, made members of the Falkirk constituency Labour Party, so the Unite union could use their votes to get their preferred candidate selected to represent the constituency in the next general election
            No good can come of Ed Miliband in politics, either for the Labour Party or the country; but the Labour Party will as always let their hearts rule their head, and, especially after what will be seen as an act of political astuteness by their leader; the party will want to keep him as their leader, as they did when Neil Kinnock stood up to Militant in the 1980s.
WETHER WE JOIN an international alliance with America or not; in purely military terms our support is not needed. But, because of the so-called 'special relationship', both politically and diplomatically, what Miliband has done may prove in the coming years and decades, to have been the pivotal moment that finally accelerated and ended the tortuous decline of our nation; and at 63, I am glad I will not be around to mourn its end.  
            I do not think that Ed Miliband has fully comprehended the damage he has done; for he has acted, as he has always done throughout his political life, to safe-guard and advance his own political ambition without any decent impulse toward his nation's interest.
           

           
           
           
           


Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Calm down dear!

WHEN A BLACK AMERICAN billionaire celebrity plays the race card, it is to make her own experience of prejudice identical to her sisters in Harlem, as well as that of Rosa Parks, the heroine of the civil rights  movement in the dark days of American segregation.
            
            I do not know what was going through Oprah Winfrey's mind when she entered the Trois Pommes boutique in Zurich. But she says she suffered her own Rosa Park moment, when she complained that the assistant in the boutique refused to sell her a handbag because she thought that the beloved Oprah could not afford it .
           
            It seemed strange to me at the time that a sales assistant would refuse any kind of purchase, unless (in Ms Winfrey's case) the sales assistant wore the black uniform of the German SS. For why else would such an assistant be regarded as racist? Winfrey is sainted in America. Her word goes on any issue of the day; which is why she is courted by the political establishment in Washington.
           
            She, in a small way, governs the country with her views and opinions. So what chance would a mere shop assistant working in a Zurich boutique have, when the world's media take up Oprah's cause? This is the age of celebrity when a culture (this time Western) is in decline, and celebrities are treated by the media, like ancient Greek and Roman Gods.

 NOW THE SALES  assistant has replied via the same media Winfrey almost controls. Fearing repercussions the sales lady who worked at the Zurich boutique, is using anonymity. But she has chosen to speak out; and she accuses the  blessed Oprah of lying. As we have been blessed with many quotes from Winfrey, let us balance them with a quote from the lady she accuses of racism.
            When the sales lady heard Winfrey describe how she refused to show her a £25,000 luxury hand bag because she was black and could not afford it , she decided to hit back; and according to the Daily Mail, themselves quoting from an interview Winfrey's accused gave to the Sunday Newspaper  SonntagsBlick; the sales lady said she felt powerless.
           
             'I wasn't sure what I should present to her when she came in on the afternoon of Saturday July 20 so I showed her some bags from the Jennifer Aniston collection.
           
            'I explained to her the bags came in different sizes and materials, like I always do. 

            'She looked at a frame behind me. Far above there was the 35,000 Swiss franc crocodile leather bag.  
           
            'I simply told her that it was like the one I held in my hand, only much more expensive, and that I could show her similar bags.
           
            'It is absolutely not true that I declined to show her the bag on racist grounds. I even asked her if she wanted to look at the bag'.   

            I know that it will, in some liberal minds, make me a racist, but nevertheless this young shop assistant's riposte rings true to me, as I am sure it will to many other sale's personnel. I believe this young sale's lady is owed an apology from Oprah Winfrey, but it will not be forthcoming, simply because she has the American public wrapped around her little finger, and they will move heaven and earth to protect her; which is why the lady she accuses of racism feels the need to remain anonymous.

IT IS FRIGHTENING that a mere celebrity within a democracy orchestrates more control over society than a senator, congressman, or a member of parliament. If I had access to Ms Winfrey's wealth, I would pay the full legal costs of  the sale assistant accused of racism, if she wished to pursue her claim against Winfrey in an American court.
           
            Winfrey, as a black American, emanates from a race sensitive society, and when they travel abroad, they will be seeking out prejudice (especially after Winfrey's 'experience'). And when a black billionaire travels to a wedding in Switzerland and  she seeks to purchase a product from a boutique, she is ever sensitive to the way she is treated.
           
            If I owned a business that attracted the likes of Oprah Winfrey; then not only would I not employ people prejudiced against wealth, but I would not ever consider a racist. Selling the product would be first and last  - and if I were on commission I would tie Ms Winfrey to a chair until she agreed to hand over the plastic.