24 July: Wilfred Roman Oquendo, a Cuban-born American citizen, hijacks Eastern Airlines Flight 202 at pistol point in Miami and forces the pilot to take him to Cuba. 'Skyjacking' has been developed by Fidel Castro's brother Raul, initially targeting the planes of Cubana de Aviación; in the US it is not technically illegal until September 1961:
25 July: President Kennedy makes a televised address announcing that the US will defend West Berlin against the Soviets at any cost including nuclear war.
26 July: In the African sub-Saharan continent, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) votes in a constitutional referendum to allow some representation for black people, in the Rhodesian Parliament.
Although technically non-racial, there are two electoral rolls: on the 'A' list 50 constituencies are largely inhabited by whites; the 15 on the 'B' list are almost entirely black. The 'B' roll therefore has c. 23% of the seats in Parliament.
At this time the European population is estimated to number 225,000 (out of a total c. 3.75 million in 1960); that is, whites represent about 6% of the population but have 77% of the seats. Nevertheless this new proposed constitution is broadly welcomed in the UK House of Commons as a first step towards a non-racial society, as the debate there some weeks before, on 22 June, shows:
'It may be that many of us would like to see rather more, but, even a year ago, the most liberal-minded Southern Rhodesian that I have met would hardly have looked forward to being able to have 15 so quickly, and many were hoping to get only two, three or four after the next election' -
Later, as other African countries gain sovereignty, Southern Rhodesia wishes to follow suit, but is refused UK permission on the grounds that it has not yet moved to majority rule; this leads in 1965 to the colony's 'unilateral declaration of independence', not recognised internationally or by the United Nations. Following internal conflict and a period of direct rule from Britain, Zimbabwe gains its independence at last in 1980.
Some things today would be quite funny if they were not so numerous, tedious and in some cases dangerous. It is not unlike that old habit of when someone says ‘in my day all we had (insert favourite phrase)', someone else would trump it with 'nothing like as bad as ...), only this time it is in reverse: wokery for some has become a means of staying in the limelight, of having their fifteen minutes of fame by being total twats, there can be no other rational reason for much of what we see today.
And then when the embedded troops of woke progressives use their platforms, whether uni, social media, print, whatever to push for change in areas that really no one gives a jot about, you are met with this daily tsunami of irrelevant word soup.
Institutions from the NHS, National Trust, Police, government, building regulations and down are all immersed in this nonsense, and it is nonsense. Even our local town council are proudly pictured with a bench that has a rainbow theme across it; why? What will it achieve other than for those councillors to somehow feel they have done their bit to keep up with the lunacy?
The entrance roads to our main hospital have signs in the road thanking NHS workers on a rainbow banner. Is the NHS run by LBGT++++ staff only? They also fly a rainbow flag on the main building, that they say is to show how inclusive they are. Inclusive? They are there to treat sick people. Will flying a rainbow flag shorten waiting lists, improve treatment, build more hospitals? That is all the general public care about with the NHS, not flags or right-on statements.
Shell are getting in on the act with the ‘diversity is our strength’ meme: four petrol stations are to follow four in the Netherlands with the rainbow stripes all round the canopy of the service stations. If they have been successfully using people from the LGBT community in their business, fine; why would someone going to fill their car up with what Shell sell be needed to be told what is company policy. Just stick to selling petrol, while you still can.
I honestly believe that the sheer amount of trans posts on social media is a sign of the mentally inept. None of this existed until a few years ago. When did you ever see one of these stupid tattooed, pierced, clown-dressed people in real life? Now if the number on social media are to go by there is one on every street corner; only there isn’t. It is a way for many to be recognised, a sort of alternative to the perfect teeth, plastic boob, suntanned abs brigade on Love Island: can’t aspire to that, so let's pretend we are something else and wear nonsense clothing and bugger our bodies up with bad artwork, then we can be unemployable and spend our time on Tik Tok making ‘controversial’ videos. There are dozens of them, all pathetic people clamouring for their fifteen minutes or less of fame; you have probably seen some but I include one below.
Despite the apparent flood of these types of people there is nothing new in it. Narcissism has been around since the beginning of time, it just has more outlets for those who suffer from it to parade it.
Is this a snobbish attitude? Not in any way: there is nothing wrong in being different; it is why you are different that matters, not following some false construct of society.
My own early life was very different. Post war, there was very little money going round; you made do with what you had, there was no real place for anything outside of getting by.
In the Sixties things changed: we had money, jobs were easy to come by and we enjoyed ourselves riding on the crest of a music revolution. It was - but we didn’t know it - the best of times. We had people who would qualify for TOWIE or Love Island then, the young men were called poseurs and the young women who believed just being would attract a like soul and played it hard were called East End Queens, both were generally ignored; today they are admired. Plus ça change...
This one contains all the affectations that many others do, apart from the look. This is quite mild, you have the orchestrated speech and the hand movements that so many of them display, and oh how clever they are, many hours in front of a mirror for a few seconds of rubbish on Tik Tok.
Back on planet Earth, the push for change for no other reason than those pushing live in a closed environment with like minded souls, produces nonsense like this…..
They are now running out of things to hang a racist slur on - I shouldn’t say that as it tempts providence, but Anna Sewell's ‘Black Bess’ must be in the firing line; and the Lloyds Bank black horse ad must be for the chop, far too provocative; and how long can Black Pudding escape censure?
Inevitably Enid Blyton, the second most successful author in history with 6,000 million sales, ‘lacks literary merit’. The little black doll has sealed her fate for good; even the fact all her works are written in a different age does not save her from being cancelled or well on the way to be, I am amazed her old home hasn’t been razed to the ground or at least the equivalent of a yellow star painted on the door.
With the National Trust now putting up explanatory notices next to any object that could have even the slightest connections to slavery, I fully expect the next time I visit Rome to see the same in the Forum and Coliseum, or not; totally bonkers.
In America wokeness has reached new levels, since insisting that the military have trans and LGBT+++ people in front line units and pregnant women flying fighter planes. Now the CIA have started their march to full wokeness with this video for recruitment; more nonsense, more word salad:
Many on the Liberal and progressive Left have taken on the role of apologists for the white race for actually being in existence at all. 'White supremacy' like 'racist' has lost its meaning and has no validity in how it is used, tagged on to the end of countless sentences as a means of finality in any discussion on any subject on race that happens to occur. It means that having used the aforementioned there is nothing else to say, they have won.
Big corporations everywhere are joining in. Some have backed the wrong horse in order to appear progressive. Coke in the USA said this about the voter legislation regarding voter fraud in Georgia:
“We want to be crystal clear and state unambiguously that we are disappointed in the outcome of the Georgia voting legislation.”
Putting their oar in and basically coming down on the side of the Democrats is not something any company should do, whatever the party. The backlash was huge and they backed down two weeks later with this:
“We believe the best way to make progress now is for everyone to come together to listen respectfully, share concerns and collaborate on a path forward. We remain open to productive conversations with advocacy groups and lawmakers who may have differing views,” the company said. “It’s time to find common ground. In the end, we all want the same thing – free and fair elections, the cornerstone of our democracy.”
So why get involved in the first place. It serves no purpose and has absolutely nothing to do with a commercial enterprise. What they do privately donation-wise is something between them and the shareholders; the rest, butt out.
They are one of a whole phalanx of companies that feel making woke statements is the way forward, or their business strategists suggest they should not be left behind by those already on the ladder to peak wokeness.
This nonsense from IKEA:
“Swedish-founded giant IKEA is the latest company to announce it has stopped advertising on the newly-founded GB News following outrage from left-wing activists threatening to boycott if they don’t suspend advertising on the channel.
A statement from the company suggested the channel was not aligned with its “humanistic values”, despite it only being on air for a total of two days.”
So IKEA caved in to a small group of vociferous lefty activists who declare that GB News is a far-right news organisation despite the fact they could not have watched any of it. What have IKEA to fear? It would not make one iota of difference if they had simply ignored the activists, but it seems these days no one can resist being seen to be on the side of the progressives.
Education meanwhile on both sides of the pond carries on regardless of what anyone outside of the institutions thinks. Here we are mimicking what has been going on in the States for some time, with what used to be standard methods of learning being outed as racist; such things as basic English, doing your allotted homework and even maths are now seen as white man's privilege and no longer required in the learning process for black students. How this non-learning and the subsequent awarding of diplomas without actually doing the graft will be viewed in the workplace is itself now open to question as again certain institutions are going along with this, which makes a university course and grades all a bit pointless.
As I said above, we are not that far behind and 150 dons are threatening to down tools unless Oriel College do something about that pesky Rhodes statue that has resisted being removed so far. After all, wherever the money came from it was he who made the college possible and Rhodes scholars from Africa have benefited, though today even those who are benefiting would rather not, despite none of them going home in protest.
The instigator of this is said to be one Dr Kate Tunstall, a French literature expert known as Red Kate and interim provost at the self-styled ‘People’s Republic of Worcester College’. After sending an email out she has garnered the support of 150 dons who believe that they will not teach until the Rhodes statue is removed; the rest of the illuminati backing Red Kate can be seen here, no surprises at all.
What is surprising in its scale is the support: 150 dons! If ever there was an indication of how far the long march through the institutions has managed to progress, this is it. In reality they should all be told 'either teach or be sacked'. This type of person should never be teaching anyone, it should be that simple; but again there is no fight back, instead there are accommodating statements. The lack of moral fibre at the top is frightening and damning.
That ultimate institution of wokery the UCLA has now got a problem with soap dispensers, the automatic variety: evidently they don’t recognise dark pigment in skin and black pupils have to show their palms, which are lighter, to make them work. The fact that you dispense soap into the palm of your hand and not anywhere else escapes them: they think all soap dispensers of this type are a product of white supremacy and are naturally racist. Having inanimate objects saddled with human frailties is a new one but then they have only just started in this area.
All this is enough to make you want to join a protest or even riot in objection to the sheer stupidity of it all, but wait, you can’t even do that without having th term 'racist' attached to the riot. We are truly living in a dystopian world, or at least one set of people think we are; the rest of us think it is all nuts:
18 July: on the 25th anniversary of Spain's dictator Francisco Franco's rise to power, Basque separatist and Marxist group ETA (brief history above) attempts to derail a train carrying military veterans. Franco's response is large-scale arrests and trials of the activists, who in turn escalate their campaign. In 1973 ETA assassinates his Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco who had been tipped to succeed Franco in due course. After Franco dies in 1975 Spain begins its transition to democracy; such support as exists domestically and in France for ETA declines.
(Image source) Europa, representing the ideal of Continental unity (and holding a lead to the bull - Zeus in disguise - that abducted her in Greek mythology), is told to 'be patient, everything takes time.' EWG stands for 'Europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft', German for 'European Economic Community.' The sapling that will grow to support the other end of Europa's hammock is 'Political Co-operation.'
18 July: at a meeting in Bad Godesderg, Bonn (capital of what was then West Germany), the leaders of the six nations making up the European Economic Community since the Treaty of Rome in 1957 agree the Bonn Declaration committing the group to further integration and enlargement.
It was not only trade that united them: Euratom was also agreed in 1957, to share resources on atomic energy; and in July 1961 De Gaulle was already envisioning a common defence policy: “There can be no European unity if Europe does not constitute a political entity distinct from other entities. A personality. But there can be no European personality if Europe does not have control over the defense of its personality. Defense is always the basis of politics.” (See here, page 101, or 109 online.)
These developments aroused concern in the British Prime Minister, "Harold Macmillan, alarmed not least of all by the danger of an autonomous foreign and defense policy organization of the Six, announced in the House of Commons on 31 July that he would seek to negotiate Britain’s entry into the EEC." (Ibid., page 105, or 113 online.)
21 July: Astronaut Gus Grissom nearly drowns. The capsule door opens prematurely and seawater floods in; Grissom gets out and swims, but water is getting in through his suit's inlet valve and air being forced out through his neck dam. He is rescued just in time and winched up, but the capsule now weighs too much for the helicopter to take it away; it is eventually recovered by ship in 1999.
The 1945 plan https://www.fdrlibrary.org/address-text
was radical: full employment, housing, health, education and welfare - and FDR
might have achieved it.
America had a thriving economy, and the President had a
fresh electoral validation plus huge personal political capital built up over
twelve years of strong and popular leadership. Had he not died in April, he might
eventually have pushed the program through Congress despite the ‘Conservative
coalition’, who didn’t like it.
Nor did they like Britain’s new Labour government, which had
a similar agenda. The difference was that Britain needed money, and Washington
had the chance to put a spanner in our socialist works. The termination of Lend-Lease
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
in September left us facing bankruptcy, but when Keynes went to America to ask
for a grant or gift to keep us going, the answer was no; and it could have
remained ‘no’ had it not been for growing awareness of the Soviet menace. Sir
Christopher Meyers explains:
Relations between Roosevelt and
Stalin had begun to sour in FDR’s last days. When the Wehrmacht transferred divisions
from the Western front to face the oncoming Red Army, Stalin accused the
President (3 April 1945) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stalins-War-History-Second-World-ebook/dp/B08FXYWSKK/ref=sr_1_1
of concluding a separate peace with the Germans, allowing Allied forces to
advance eastwards in return for the prospect of better peace terms. Roosevelt
exploded, writing of his ‘bitter resentment toward your informers’. Also, according
to FDR’s adviser Charles Bohlen https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/12/archives/foreign-affairs-if-roosevelt-had-lived.html
, Roosevelt ‘was profoundly disturbed by the evidences of the Russian violation
of the agreement on Poland and the agreement covering the Balkan countries.’ His
successor had met FDR only twice as Vice-President, and there was a fateful delay
in Truman’s getting up to speed on international developments after being sworn-in
on 12 April.
Influential in the formulation of American policy towards
Europe and the Soviet Union, and in the drafting of the Marshall Plan, was a US
State Department official named George Kennan. He felt his warnings about the
Soviets were being ignored by Truman’s advisers, and when asked by the State
Department to explain recent Soviet behaviour he replied (22 February 1946) with
a ‘Long Telegram’ https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116178.pdf
on the Russian character and outlook and what needed to be done. According to
Heinz-Dietrich Fischer (https://www.amazon.co.uk/American-Figures-Communicate-Through-Memoirs/dp/3643912951/ref=sr_1_1
, p.98):
‘Kennan believed that a
federation needed to be established in Western Europe to counter Soviet
influence in the region and to compete against the Soviet stronghold in Eastern
Europe… In 1949, he suggested a plan for the reunification of Germany, stating
the partition of Germany was unsustainable in the long run.’
Yet it is both more and less than Monnet’s dream. His
purpose was peace; the use of the Community as a passive-aggressive bulwark
against Communist Russia tended in the opposite direction. Even after the fall of
the Soviet Union, there have been (unscrupulous and dangerous, in this writer’s
opinion) ‘voices prophesying war’.
In a later piece, I hope to discuss other cross-currents in
the EU’s goals.
What if Henry Wallace had become Vice-President in FDR’s fourth
term, and suddenly been faced in 1945 with the smorgasbord of difficult
decisions that Truman handled so manfully? As head of the Board of Economic
Warfare (1941-1943) Wallace became embroiled in interdepartmental quarrels that
ended with the dissolution of the BEW; whereas Truman’s Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Committee
proved the latter to be formidably effective, saving the country many billions
of dollars in its war on waste and corruption among defence contractors, through
meetings noted for their absence of grandstanding by inquisitors. How well would
a Wallace administration have tackled the war in the Pacific, the near-meltdown
of post-war Europe, the industrial unrest in America in the switchover to a
peacetime economy… and Stalin?
Roosevelt’s victory in 1944 was conclusive nevertheless; but
there was a bomb that could have gone off under his campaign platform https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1706
:
‘Dewey had learned that decrypted
Japanese communications should have alerted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to
the Pearl Harbor attack and was about to make this a campaign issue. Clarke
pleaded that the disclosure would reveal to the Japanese U.S. code-breaking
progress. Dewey reluctantly agreed to keep silent, and FDR was elected to a
fourth term.’
Imagine the impact on America, which Roosevelt had gradually
hauled out of isolationism, of the accusation that he might have prevented the Pearl
Harbor disaster, and maybe even the USA’s entry into WWII? Would a modern
political competitor have shown Dewey’s restraint?
‘I just have a hunch that Stalin
is not that kind of man. Harry says he's not and that he doesn't want anything
except security for his own country, and I think that if I give him everything
I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't
try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.’
This is not simple proof of Roosevelt’s gullibility. Churchill
said of the Hun http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,792515,00.html
that he ‘is always either at your throat or at your feet,’ and while Stalin had
ruled his developing country for 18 years, Roosevelt had ruled his for twelve
already and it was a very mighty nation. FDR had fine ideals, but he was also
tough, even with allies – brutally so with Churchill, when it suited him. Would
Stalin have dared for example, to continue resisting his Yalta commitment https://www.britannica.com/event/Yalta-Conference
to free elections in eastern Europe, if FDR had been there to face him down at
Potsdam https://alphahistory.com/coldwar/post-war-divisions/
in July 1945?
Writing in 1970, the NYT’s C. L. Sulzberger said https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/12/archives/foreign-affairs-if-roosevelt-had-lived.html
‘It was not the death of a pro Soviet Roosevelt and his replacement by a
reactionary Truman that touched it [the Cold War] off… Roosevelt had reached
the end of his patience at precisely the moment his life was snuffed out.’ Sulzberger
recalled that Churchill had lamented the tragic timing of FDR’s death, coming
as it had when Truman was still getting up to speed with his briefings:
‘It was a tragedy that he had the
initial ignorant period. It was then we lost Eastern Europe... We should have
taken Berlin and Prague where the United States had two armored divisions
stranded just three days' march away.’
It might have been a mistake for Ambassador Harriman to
admit to Stalin (ibid.) that Truman was ‘not
experienced in foreign affairs.’ It was not enough (or perhaps too much) for
the brand-new President to have told Molotov the Russians could ‘go to hell’ if
they did not cooperate over Eastern Europe; but then, Truman was overwhelmed
with a sea of troubles. As he said to reporters the day after learning of FDR’s
death, ‘Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now.’
Truman was in need of good advisers and an integrated
foreign policy. This was to involve the reluctant rescue of Britain, the
salvation of Western Europe, and a long campaign – uniting the ‘free peoples’
of the world - against Stalin’s imperialism; which we shall come to next.
