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.
The EU has not been an unmixed blessing, suffering as it
does from idealism. The holy goal of supranational unity and the extension of
its benefits to other lands have led the Community to do things in haste and to
ignore negative regional economic and social effects; but the 1961 Bonn
Declaration made clear that it had also taken on a geopolitical role and
political philosophy in which the United States was explicitly involved. The
game of thrones had become a game of empires.
Practically, Jean Monnet’s project to make a firm
partnership between France and Germany, those mighty historic rivals, has been
achieved long since and is a monument to Monnet’s heroic tenacity and flexible
diplomacy in the pursuit of lasting peace. Yet its precondition was the USA’s
Marshall Plan and earlier aid immediately following the Second World War,
without which Western Europe faced collapse and revolution.
The path to American involvement was not smooth, because
their way is not entirely like ours; and there remains a cultural tension
between transatlantic economic liberalism and European statist impulses. It was
a tension also at work within the United States itself during Roosevelt’s terms
of Presidency, and resulted in a sea-change marked by the new Truman
administration, with implications not only for his country but for Europe and
the world.
FDR rescued the system with his package of measures
including the Banking Acts of 1933 that supported banks but also restrained
them; the job creation schemes under the National Industrial Recovery Act of
the same year; and the Social Security Act of 1935, helping the needy, the
unemployed and pensioners. It seems unlikely that he actually saved the nation
from Depression-era communist takeover – that tends to come in the wake of total
economic chaos or military defeat; but the fundamentalists of the CPUSA opposed
the New Deal and only abandoned their position in 1935 in order to unite
against fascism (similarly, pure-Marxist China was later to condemn the
‘revisionist traitors’ of the USSR under Khrushchev’s 1956 destalinisation
program.)
From the later 1930s, Roosevelt was also resisted from the
Right, by the ‘Conservative coalition’ in Congress, an alliance of Republicans
and Southern Democrats, who saw the New Deal as not in the American tradition
of personal freedom and self-reliance. Even the Cleveland ‘Plain-Dealer’, loyal
to the Democrats since the mid-nineteenth century, switched to endorsing FDR’s
rivals in the Presidential election campaigns of 1940 and 1944. https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/mccrayjh/id/15177.
in the latter, given how the Electoral College works, the Republicans’ Thomas
Dewey could have won, with only half a million more votes in the right areas (p.
2 herehttps://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1065&context=fac_dis.)
Roosevelt’s failing health, disguised from the public, was
becoming obvious to insiders - his doctor had been warned https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/books/review/franklin-roosevelt-his-final-battle-josephy-lelyveld.htmlthat if FDR ran for a fourth term in office,
he would probably not live to complete it, though it is not clear who if anyone
in the Party knew of this -and made
crucial the choice of running mate in 1944.
Henry Wallace had been FDR’s Vice-President during the
latter’s third term. He was an anti-segregationist, which would not have played
well in the Southern Democrat states mired in the largely British colonial
legacy of the slave trade. He was also an advocate of what he called ‘economic
democracy,’ anathema to fiscal Conservatives increasingly fretting about public
debt and taxation. What with his progressive views and his flaky interest in
numerology and Navajo magic, today he might be called a New Ager https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1948/08/henry-wallace-a-divided-mind/306029/
At any rate, he was potentially a vote-loser in the changing political climate,
and too erratic to be an emergency substitute for the Chief Executive. https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/election/article88007192.html
Yet Wallace was popular with the
rank-and-file. At the 1944 Democratic Party Convention he seemed set to secure
renomination but while the crowd was chanting for him the chairman adjourned
the Convention for the day and the Party leadership worked hard overnight to
secure support for Truman. The next day, Wallace scored more votes than Truman
in the first ballot but not enough to win outright; Truman then picked up
enough second choices in the next ballot to secure victory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_A._Wallace#Election_of_1944
The ticket was set for another successful Presidential election campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_United_States_presidential_election; but within three
months of FDR’s inauguration Truman was suddenly called on to take over,
inexperienced though learning fast; and ready to steer a more conservative course.
In a later piece, I plan to show how the changing tide
worked out for the USA, Europe and Russia.
In a previous piece about how the pandemic was a very useful smokescreen for the surreptitious advancement of all things green, I laid out several examples.
Even in the short space of time since then other relevant items have surfaced; one in particular was interesting as it was an example of how big business is having more and more of a stake in pushing the green agenda for its own purposes.
The item was about how meat producers in the USA are being bought out by businesses who are in the substitute meat manufacturing game. They see a potential huge market for lab-made beef or other meat substitutes as the climate change lobby push for higher meat prices, and eventually the elimination of cattle as they produce nasty gases that evidently are causing climate change?
With the western world going down this path of de-meatifyng the populace, using climate change and health as factors that they have discovered very few will object to if those two items are the prefix to any green introductions bingo, it is the magic key to doing anything they like, the west having discovered the magic formula will plough on and make this one of those must-do items on the green agenda.
It has been suggested that by 2040 most meat would not be coming from slaughtered animals. The companies benefiting from this will be the lab-meat producers and it has been noted they are hastening the trend in their favour by buying grazing land in the US to force the speed of the changeover to their products.
Companies too are getting in on the act; this is one of the first now many who have joined the anti-meat agenda:
Back in 2009 a Guardian article had this headline:
“The public sector has accepted the need to tackle climate change, but can't go it alone – business and the people must be engaged too“
Of course the public sector went along with it: what have they to lose? and whose money would they be investing anyway? - not theirs.
As consumers are nudged towards non meat or faux meat products with the help of the health fascists making sure that real meat products eventually price themselves out of reach of the average consumer, we are still not told what the costs of the lab produced article will be. Once that tipping point is reached you can guarantee veg prices will rise as the choice will become in effect none at all.
One of the reasons aired for the eventual erasing of real meat is its huge demand for water. That of course depends largely on demand and they are going to restrict and do away with demand so water will be saved. Of course as with much else on the green agenda; that doesn’t take into account the rise of world populations who all need water in one form or another, reckoned to reach 9.4 billion by 2040 from 7.6 billion today and it just keeps rising. The biggest increases are in African countries which cannot or will not sustain themselves and so mass immigration follows which will not stop but increase, bringing the potential earnings ratio ever lower in places like GB. Many surveys show we have been in decline with earnings since the 2008 crash, which again makes almost all the green projects unaffordable for the average man.
I have to state I am not personally against lab produced meat as long as it tastes the same and is competitively priced. The slaughter house side of meat production is something nearly all of us pretend doesn’t happen when we buy our steak. Will it provide the same taste experience or will it be bland and Quorn like? This article suggests it may be OK for certain types of meat, but this one is hardly your go-to in the Co-Op
There is also a push for vertical farming. This is not new: I recall articles on this innovation decades ago, a modern version of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The principle is you stack floors of greenhouses on top of one another in a city environment, saving transport costs and land usage, all using hydroponics. This saves hugely on water usage and run-off, but as usual there are big disadvantages that have never been solved: being stacked, unlike a conventional single storey greenhouse, all apart from the top one get uneven light which is no good for producing uniform crops so artificial light has to be used, and you guessed it that needs energy and the linking of solar power and inbuilt windmills just doesn’t cut it, so they are not viable. Other types have been suggested but they all need energy, so save water but need a lot more energy = non viable.
The NHS are involved here by prescribing vegetables as an alternative, so the NHS is also in that push to eliminate meat and turn us all vegan. I would be more impressed if the NHS did what we pay them to do, treat people with diseases and ailments.
Needless to say Bojo is playing it soft by saying he does not think taxing people is the right way to go but will discuss and let everyone know in six months, meaning he will tax sugar and salt in one form or another. Boris has certainly made up for all the U turns Mrs Thatcher didn’t make; he also lies a lot.
I like the bit in that link that says any taxes will go towards more free school meals. that makes it all right then, they have seen what St Rashford has done and jumped on the bandwagon. of course any extra tax neve goes directly to anything, it goes in the pot.
Skyscraper farming, where does all that energy for lighting come from? Not solar that’s for sure. There is also the question of what happens to the land previously inhabited by cattle; grazing land despite what the greenies say is not suitable for arable crops, which is why, obviously, it was grazing land in the first place. So far the answers to that are few and none, the only proposal put forward, from the greens, is the re-wilding of everything, a countryside like the middle ages with wild boar, herds of bloody deer (haven’t we enough?) beavers damming all the rivers, birds of prey such as Golden Eagles and a landscape out of Jurassic Park. Perhaps that is the end game: not being able to access enough water, no energy to power anything, freezing houses in winter as energy becomes limited to off-peak because too expensive at any other time, food limited by price and choice, and an exploding population. Yes, that is the answer: free holidays for all in Jurassic Park and the humans become the food; problem solved.
Which takes me back to the newsletter I spoke about before from Anglia Water on the way forward: we would pay in advance - with no obvious benefits for us - for the renewal of infrastructure for a private company; shares all round, and we will still be asked to share baths etc. in the future to save the planet.
How on earth the average working family is going to be able to afford all these vainglorious projects that our leaders claim are essential to the planet and our well being (?) is a mystery in a global low wage economy. Not one politician to my knowledge has explained how the money will be raised other than ever higher taxes that the many will not pay and the fewer will pay ever more. They talk about sustainability; what they spout is not sustainable. They will either collapse the country - they are not needing much of a push in that direction - or they will have to bin much of this self-proclaimed roadmap into nirvana.
The latter is preferable as very little of it will make one iota of difference to the planet, but as with Covid “if it saves one life” these clowns will plough on, having already tied us to ridiculous agreements. Thanks, Theresa May, your legacy will be noted.
Bang on cue the government announce their ‘greenprint’: all that has been mooted is coming to pass, EVs will not only have to pay tax as petrol cars do but road pricing is coming as well, so not only do EVs cost a lot more and have batteries that currently can’t be disposed of, they will also have double taxes.
HGVs will not be sold after 2040. This could get interesting, it is not an area Deliveroo can step into and help; we await the electric substitute!
Air travel will be carbon neutral, whatever that means; what it really means is that air travel will be for the few as the new fuels will cost more and passengers will pay a carbon tax.
All the usual suspects from green lobby groups naturally support all this as do various think tanks of industry, claiming that our world leading stance on all this will lead to new jobs (and lose many more elsewhere) and reduce our emissions. All this to from a country that contributes less than 1% of the world's CO2 emissions and whose effort to reach carbon neutral by 2050 will have been in vain as the world at large ploughs on and the increasing populations make it all pointless.
You will note in this paper there is not one single word about the big elephant in the room: where is all this extra very expensive energy coming from? We discussed earlier the fact that wind and solar cannot produce enough and even if they could it would be intermittent and we would have rolling blackouts, and that is at current demands; the mere thought about for instance what electric HGVs will require for charging is mind-boggling.
In the video in that link, the usual disingenuous waffle about 50% of our energy being produced by wind power is voiced. As we all know, it only works when the wind blows; even just last week, wind on one day contributed just under 1% of our total energy needs; the difference is made up by buying in energy from abroad, which is hardly a way forward in energy security.
The other item of note and which is already happening is the shutting down of our cities to the motor car. In many ways we can agree on that, but walking or cycling more with an ageing population is not a viable alternative, and unless better public transport is subsidised (more taxpayer's money) many will not be able to afford even that. We can all remember the ticket prices when the buses deregulated; now add on horrendously expensive hydrogen: it is currently 10x more expensive than gas for example. So buses powered by electricity or hydrogen will see prices rocket, unless again they are subsidised, and the subsidy once again falls on those least able to afford it, the taxpayer. They really don’t want the little man to travel anywhere.
The only amusing thing in that video was the appalling state of the city road shown; so much for investment.
Still at least John Lewis have the solution: bring back trams. There is little to say on this other than who is going to support yet another form of transport which requires its own dedicated and electrified lane? Bonkers!
A window into the not-so-distant future, is this from California. Look familiar?
“Last August, after rolling blackouts hit California during a heat wave, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered an investigation."
The report on the root causes of the August blackouts was completed in January. The problem was caused by lack of “resource adequacy” and “planning.” The people making decisions about how much power would be needed in California were routinely underestimating the demand for electricity.
It’s happening again. Summer, it turns out, was unexpected.
The great thing about underestimating California’s power needs is that everybody can pretend the state can run on solar and wind energy, thereby feeling good that we’re doing something to stop climate change. Unmentioned is that California now imports more electricity than any other state, and how that power is generated is somebody else’s problem.”
And as usual in all of this not a single questioning voice is heard. Just why are they pushing this, with the lack of infrastructure to support it, to mention just one problem? A familiar story and oft repeated.
There are several different drivers for this movement, which
is why the results have been patchy. They include:
·Preventing war in Europe
·Developing selected African nations
·Fighting Soviet Communism on behalf of the USA
·Abolishing nationhood
·Building an empire
·Achieving full employment and prosperity
Jean Monnet, an internationalist in outlook from his
business as a French brandy exporter, believed that the way to prevent European
conflicts was to unite the countries, especially France and Germany. He was advising
the French minister of commerce and industry at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference
when the latter put forward a plan for international economic cooperation.
Instead, France was set on ruinous reparations from Germany and the rest we
know.
Again in 1940, as France was falling to German blitzkrieg,
Monnet was in London, urging the unification of France and Britain – joint
citizenship, and joint armed forces, which might have been enough to resist the
Nazis. His idea was tabled for British Cabinet discussion, but the French
government capitulated before the scheme could be considered.
In 1950 his plan of absorbing into a higher authority the
French and German production of coal and steel, key war-making materials, was
announced by Robert Schuman, the French Foreign Minister; the 1951 Treaty of
Paris established the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and Monnet
became its President. Monnet’s ambitions went further, but the French
Parliament rejected a proposal for a unified European Defence Community.
‘Only a united Europe, allied to
the United States of America and to other free peoples, is capable of meeting
the dangers which threaten the existence of Europe and of the whole free world.’
The threat to world peace had shifted from nationalism to
ideology. Of the USA, more later.
‘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 defence of its personality. Defence is always the basis of
politics.’
These developments aroused concern in the British Prime Minister
(ibid., p. 105):
‘Harold Macmillan, alarmed not
least of all by the danger of an autonomous foreign and defence 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.’
Whatever British leaders said publicly in the years to
follow, post-Bonn they knew where the EEC was headed.
9 July: following the coup of 27 May 1960, a Turkish referendum approves a new constitution for the country; this replaces the one from 1924 (and will itself be superseded following another coup in 1980.) Members of the ousted government of 1960 (photo above, source) have been put on trial on the island of Yassiada, beginning 14 October 1960, with verdicts eventually pronounced in September 1961; three will be executed including the former Prime Minister Adnan Menderes; in June 2020 the Grand National Assembly of Turkey retrospectively declares the trials null and void.
9 July: Greece and the European Economic Community sign a treaty making Greece the first nation to become an associate member of the Common Market, later becoming a full member in 1981.
15 July: William A. Fitzgerald, alias Nathan Boya, is the fifth person to survive riding over Niagara Falls. 'Interviewed in 2012 for a National Geographic television special about Niagara Falls daredevils, Fitzgerald revealed his reason for his stunt after decades of silence: He had broken off his engagement to a woman that he felt he had wronged, and he performed the dangerous stunt as a form of penance. Niagara Falls had been their planned honeymoon destination.'
Fitzgerald later moved to Bangkok and wrote novels titled 'Up Against The Wall You Spic Bastard: I'm Going to Blow Your Goddamn Head Off' and 'Wanted by Mafia: Hyawatha Two-Feathers: Either Dead or Alive.'
One of my old friends once told me how an accident saved his life. He slipped in his driveway, and the subsequent CAT scan uncovered a growth on his kidney. That discovery gave him a number of extra years of life.
In a similar way, the pandemic has made issues with our country readily apparent, rather than causing them: access to health care, lack of sick leave, a weak safety net, and the imbalance in the economy.
Forty years ago, a person could work really hard at a union job, and support a family. I read this morning how some celebrity's first job was sweeping up in an Iowa factory, at $12 per hour. Today, that same job would probably earn about the same, even though the total inflation since that time has been something like 400%
Starting in about 1980, a large proportion of GDP has been the banking sector, now reaching 40% Realize that banking, while necessary, is essentially parasitic. Not coincidentally, 40% of the gains of the economy go to 1% of the population, most of whom are in banking and investment. If one looks at gains in the stock market, 92% go to the 10% of the richest.
We have created an unsustainable economy, and not in the way that conservatives would have us believe. In the past 250 years, the Scientific, Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions brought plenty to the wealthy nations, and that plenty has now been sequestered by a handful of largely non-productive individuals.
At some point, the average people will earn too little to keep the system running. If too few people have good health insurance, then the medical system will not do research or treatment, because there won't be enough money in the system. Likewise for energy, information, and all other industries.
