Category Archives: Britain

A #British Libertarian’s #Voting Strategy

As a private individual, and not in his capacity as director of the UK Libertarian Alliance, Sean Gabb, to whose Libertarian Alliance Blog I contribute, summed up his voting strategy thus: He voted for the people he hates to keep out the people he fears.

The big differences are the survival of England and of political accountability. If the Conservatives remain in government after today, they will allow another reasonably free election in 2020. If Labour forms a government, it will fix the voting system to keep itself in power till street protests are needed to remove it. This fixing will be dressed up as “electoral reform.” Moreover, if Labour must rely on Scottish support, the price will involve some Balkanising of England. In or out of the United Kingdom, Scotland cannot be an important entity in the British Isles so long as there is an England. Therefore, any reasonable Scottish nationalist will need to press for the dissolution of England into a group of devolved and squabbling territories. Only the Conservatives stand in the way of this.

My vote is unlikely to determine who wins the election in my constituency. But it may add to a Conservative victory in England in terms of votes if not of seats. This will give Mr Cameron the right to insist that he is the real winner today, and that he should be allowed to stay in government.

Judged by libertarian standards, the Conservatives in government have been half useless and half malevolent. I despise them and I hate them. But I fear Labour. For this reason, I see it as my duty to vote for the lesser of evils. Voting is more of a public duty than a private right, and I see it as my duty to vote for the people I hate to keep out the people I fear.

In closing, I will repeat that this should in no sense be regarded as a recommendation from the Libertarian Alliance. I am speaking not ex cathedra as Director of the Libertarian Alliance, but as a private individual. I also accept that I may be wrong. …

… Read “The Evil Party or the Stupid Party? A Topic for Debate, not a Recommendation.”

The Myth of Munich

BAB's A List, Britain, History, Neoconservatism, War

This is as good a time as any for a history lesson from Barely A Blog’s resident all-rounder.

The Myth of Munich
By Myron Pauli

To some, “Munich” is identified with Oktoberfest; however, to many it refers to what I call the Myth of Munich’—that Neville Chamberlain could have merely snapped his fingers and singlehandedly destroyed the Nazis, but, rather, chose to “appease” them and thus is responsible for the 55 million dead of World War Two. That myth has been invoked to oppose the Nuclear Test Ban and all arms control treaties; rapprochement with China, Cuba and Iran; as well as to start and continue wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, etc.

Britain was exhausted by an idiotic murderous war over an obscure dead Austrian archduke; a war that netted her 1 million casualties and insurmountable debt. One so-called “principle” from World War One was that of “ethnic self-determination,” but Britain and France chose to break up the new Republic of German-Austria by giving the Sudeten Austrians to a new mélange of Austrians, Czechs, Slovaks and a few Poles and Hungarians called Czechoslovakia.

To its credit, Czechoslovakia was a democracy and its largest political party, in the 1935 elections, was the Sudetendeutsche Partei, representing 3 million pro-Nazis who clamored to join Hitler’s new hell. Having swallowed up Austria, Hitler was now demanding to “liberate” Sudetenland. The British and French agreed to a plebiscite in principle but Hitler wanted to just grab it – hence they had a meeting at Munich and a pinky “promise” by Hitler not to ask for any more territory.

Not only was British public opinion overwhelmingly against going to war to prevent Sudeten Nazis from unifying with German Nazis but the British military was skeptical. The pessimistic view was that Germany would crush Czechoslovakia overnight. The “optimistic” view was that perhaps the Czechoslovaks could hold out a few months and then the French Army would attack the Germans from the Maginot Line!

General Hastings Ismay, in charge of British Homeland Defense (London was bombed from the air during World War One), wrote that he thought war was inevitable but it should be postponed until air defenses (recently invented radar and new fighter airplanes) were in place to protect Britain. However, contemporary warmongers expect Neville Chamberlain to have rejected public opinion and that of his own military because Hitler’s “promise” to stop with Sudetenland was nonsense.

Six months later, Hitler broke his “promise” and used Poles, Hungarians and Slovaks to carve up Czechoslovakia. British public opinion moved overnight from pacifism to militarism, and issued a guarantee to Poland. Hitler responded with an agreement with Stalin. Thus, 11 months after Munich, Poland was invaded and Britain was at War with Germany. Neville never got a Nobel Peace Prize like his older brother, Austen.

The “inevitable” war did not commence well – Poland was crushed from two sides, France collapsed quickly, the puny British Army barely escaped from Dunkirk, and Chamberlain fell – but he recommended Churchill over the accommodationist Halifax as his replacement. Those silly radars and fighter airplanes that Chamberlain funded won the Battle of Britain. Britain did not fold in the year she stood alone. Having “given peace a chance” at Munich, the British kept a stiff upper lip during the bombings.

One might speculate that had Britain gone to war with shoddy air defense over the principle of keeping Sudeten Nazis apart from German Nazis, and that earlier war had its own Dunkirk (so much for the British Army!)—there might have been the equivalent of a Vichy Britain. However, for warmongers, peace (even with rearmament) is never worth a gamble and war (regardless of realistic limitations) should always be option number one.

Thus, “The Myth of Munich” lives on with Khe Sanh, Phnom Penh, Fallujah, Kandahar and Benghazi. Anything short of war, even sanctions, is “appeasement” and every two-bit thug is the “next Hitler.” America has seen the massive regional chaos and the elevation of Shiite power engendered because “The Myth of Munich” was evoked against Saddam “Hitler” Hussein. The McCains and Grahams will continue to evoke “The Myth of Munich” against anything resembling action short of war – and the warmongering media will pick it up without question. Bad wars, like bad history, leave a terrible aftertaste.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

UPDATED: The Curse Of Col. Gadhafi (& The Neocons)

Britain, Canada, Europe, Foreign Policy, History, IMMIGRATION

“The Curse Of Col. Gadhafi” is the current column, now on the UK’s Libertarian Alliance Blog. An excerpt:

When they destabilized Libya and overthrew strongman Muammar Gadhafi in 2011 the U.S. and its Canadian and European allies unleashed a series of events that accounts for the steady flood into Europe of migrants from North Africa. There are, purportedly, “up to 1 million” poor, uneducated, possibly illiterate, predominantly male, and by necessity violence-prone individuals, poised to board rickety freighters in the Libyan ports of Tripoli and Zuwarah, and make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean, to southern Italy. The 900 migrants who perished off the coast of Libya when their vessel capsized embarked in Zuwara.

Zuwara has always been “famous for people smuggling,” notes Richard Spencer, Middle East editor of The Telegraph. “The modern story of Zuwara and its trade in people,” says Spencer, whose newspaper has documented the genesis of the exodus well before the U.S. press awoke to it, “was a key part of the late Col. Muammar Gadhafi’s relationship with the European Union.”

The “indigenous, pre-Arab inhabitants of North Africa,” Berbers, as they are known in the West, have long since had a hand in human trafficking. As part of an agreement he made with Silvio Berlusconi’s government, “Col. Gaddafi had agreed to crack down on the trade in people.” For prior to the dissolution of Libya at the behest of Barack Obama’s Amazon women warriors—Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Power—Libya had a navy. Under the same accord with the Berlusconi government (and for a pretty penny), Gadhafi’s admiralty stemmed the tide of migrants into Europe.

Here’s an interesting aside: Because he cracked down on their customary trade, the Zuwarans of Libya rose up against Gadhafi; the reason for this faction’s uprising, in 2011, was not the hunger for democracy, as John McCain and his BFF Lindsey Graham would have it. …

… Read the rest. “The Curse Of Col. Gadhafi” is the current column, now on the UK’s Libertarian Alliance Blog.

UPDATE (4/25): Sean Gabb goes to bat for truth against statists and assorted neoconservatives on the matter of the Anglo-American sphere warring with the world and overthrowing its dictators for “democracy” and more deaths.

Our detractor, on the UK’s Libertarian Alliance Blog, is the same commenter who thinks of Andrew Roberts, a court ‘historian” of the worse kind–as Rob Stove has pointed out—as a legitimate reference on the Boer war.

Sean’s defense:

I will say nothing in my own defence, But Ilana Mercer is a woman of strong and consistent moral principle. She has an impressive record of saying what she believes, and saying it very well. You are at perfect liberty to disagree with how she believes the libertarian case should be put. I only ask you once again to stop regarding any disagreement with what you believe as a sign of moral corruption. It does no credit to you, and makes argument less profitable than it ought to be.
Because your comments are never moderated, and are sometimes promoted to the front page, where they can be read by large number of people, you have the confidence to put a lot of effort into this blog. Please consider that the tolerance you enjoy is owed to others.

‘Beer Talk’ From Blowhards: Pat Buchanan On Iran Hysteria

Britain, Foreign Policy, History, Iran, Israel, Middle East

“Are we going to be frightened by words from an Iranian blowhard?” Pat Buchanan tries to school Sean Hannity on the insignificance of Iran’s military as compared to American and Israeli might (and Bibi’s 200 plus atom bombs). It has not dawned on Mr. Hannity that the Arab alliance forming in the Middle East against ISIS, our mortal enemy, is exactly what the US needs if she is to get the hell out of the business of meddling where we are hated.

I like Pat’s description of Britain ending up on US food stamps because of WWII.

What is so disconcerting is the blowhards of cable. In Pat Buchanan you have a learned man who partook in successive American administration, at crucial times in our history; who has so much too impart. And rather than let him teach you something, you scream him down.

Anti-intellectual.