The vehemence of hatred has not dimmed with the passing of centuries.
I was talking to a colleague of my son who is Welsh.
Queen Elizabeth.
He was saying the Welsh also hate the British.
Surprising how the nation has remained and how they ruled the world!
“If the Queen of England were an elected position, Elizabeth II would have been forced out long ago,
Her sixty-year reign has coincided with the total loss of the British Empire and a deeply reduced place for Britain in the world.
Just consider 1953, the year she came to the throne.
It was still the aftermath of the Second World War and Britain was first among all countries in Europe.
The detested Germans were defeated and partitioned and their economy and country seemingly in ruins.
Fast forward 60 years and the Germans are running Europe again and Britain is back to being sick man of Europe along with Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Ireland of course.
They hardly have a voice in European affairs which are now basically overseen by France and Germany.
Back in 1953 the new Queen oversaw an empire that governed vast tracts of land in Africa, Asia, Europe and elsewhere on the globe.
During her reign the British were reduced to fighting Argentina over an utterly nondescript island called Malvinas/Falklands and playing second fiddle to American forces just about everywhere.
Indeed, like the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, there would have been cries of “Off with her head.”
(Many of her predecessors were topped for far less. See Anne Boleyn etc.)
Instead, she is becoming more beloved as she gets older; the sheer longevity of the woman and her ability to carry out her duties at the age of 86 is impressive even to the most avid Republican.
But she must wake up and wonder sometimes where it all went wrong, She came into office as a hugely significant figure on the world stage, with giants like Churchill in her government.
Now it’s the nondescript David Cameron she meets and now the monarchy may even lose Australia and Canada at some point in the near future – not to mention Northern Ireland given the shifting demographics there.
She has become a symbolic figure, which she always was to some extent, but she no longer wields true power.
Unlike the fall of the Roman Empire, it was not the Barbarians at the gate, rather it was the enemy within, as the British simply lost out to Germany in Europe and the US in the world in terms of the scope of their power and influence in the post industrial revolution age.
Rule Britannia, indeed, but nowadays only on a small sliver of the earth, unlike when Elizabeth came to reign in 1953.
Royalty’s new reality was summed up wonderfully by the Guardian editorial writer describing the celebration on The Thames on Sunday as a flotilla of ships and boats honored the Queen;
“Sunday was a day for dressing up. But it was hard to watch the royal men in their sometimes preposterously over decorated uniforms — lord high admirals of ever-declining fleets, commanders of air forces whose future effectiveness hangs in the balance, fighters of wars about which middle Britain has deeply mixed feelings — and take any of it too seriously.
If this is the age of budget cutbacks and government austerity, someone ought to tell the Pentagon and its weapons contractors, because they haven’t gotten the memo about shared sacrifice. According to a summary of the top federal contractors produced by the Federal Procurement Data System, the Defense Department gave out $372.8 billion (70%) of the $532.6 billion in government contract spending in fiscal year 2011, with just 10 arms makers accounting for 28% of all contracting dollars, up from 25% a year before, and the top 5 accounting for 20.8%.
This top heavy pattern, in which companies that have fattened themselves for years on the government teat push and shove to crowd out the runts, is even more egregious when one examines the top five providers of military hardware. Lockheed-Martin, which has been the largest government contractor every year since 1995, collected $42.9 billion, an increase of $7.1 billion over 2010 and almost double the haul of Boeing ($22.1 billion), and far ahead ofGeneral Dynamics ($19 billion), Raytheon ($14.4 billion) andNorthrop Grumman ($12.8 billion). Put another way, Lockheed-Martin got 11.5% of defense contract dollars and 8% of all contract funds. Boeing also saw an increase of $2.7 billion.
Although the budget deal reached between President Obama and Congress last year contemplates across the board cuts at the end of 2012 that would greatly reduce the haul of these weapons makers, Republican leaders in Congress are vowing to exempt the Defence Department and its contractors.
“This is every kid’s dream. Imagine traveling through a local forest and coming across an abandoned military pillbox with an open hatch leading to a massive bunker rife for exploration. You and your buddies drop inside the hatch and discover that this bunker is enormous and build into parts of an abandoned quarry complex as you end up descending a five-story concrete staircase into the underground lair. Now for the best part. Not only are you having a blast pretending to be Indiana Jones exploring a once-secret military bunker, you come across abandoned military equipment! You first come across a rusting pair of German 77-mm cannons from World War I. It gets even better, as you move further throughout the bunker you come across relatively new French military gear that’s in great shape considering that it’s been sitting underground for years. You round a corner and right in front of you sits a six-wheeled French ERC-90 Sagaiearmored reconnaissance vehicle, sadly it’s lacking the 90-mm cannon that the vehicle is normally armed with. Next you come across a Panhard VCR armored personnell carrier that’s in nearly perfect condition and finally a old military truck.
Well as the photos above and below show, if you can make your way to France and find this bunker that’s been used on and off since around World War I for everything from military purposes to mushroom farming, you can have this expereience. The only trick is finding the place. S. Marshall at Pridian.net who took these awesome pics in 2008 won’t reveal the facility’s location.
Bunkers full of rusting Cold War and World War II gear are rumored to be all over Europe (heck, the U.S. Army still has massive underground stockpiles of “prepositioned” tanks in Germany, a legacy of the Cold War). Usually, these bunkers are found to be empty and falling apart (like the famous underground Soviet sub base turned museum in Ukraine). This is the real deal; one of the few times we’ve ever seen any evidence to show that sometimes the rumors can be true.
Click through the jump to explore the rest of the bunker without that musty underground smell (and without the thrill of being there yourself).
Whatever be the source of Knowledge or Whence it comes from, it is worth noting .
Mein Kampf
Hitler, no doubt, was , a Megalomaniac, a butcher who sent people to Gas Chambers to create Lebensraum (Living Space for Aryans),suppressed dissent with an iron fist and a Dictator of the worst Order.
But that does not mean what ever he had to say is non-sense.
” It was Nationalist,but unfortunately it paid too little heed to social problems” (Mein Kampf p.113)
True, Nationalism without addressing Social Problems is worthless.
On Doctrines without Spiritual Base.
“”all attempts to exterminate a Doctrine,without a Spiritual basis of attack against it,and to wipe out all the organizations it has created ,have led in many cases to the very opposite being achieved”( Mein Kampf-p. 152)
Right.Any Doctrine/Party without Spiritual basis is harmful to the Society,
On Prostitution.
“Prostitution is a disgrace to Humanity and can not be removed simply by Academic or Charitable methods.Its restriction and final extermination presupposes the removal of a whole series of contributory circumstances. The first remedy must always be to establish such conditions as will make early marriages possible,especially for young men-for women are,only passive subjects in this matter”
On Spurious Literature and Adults Only.
“In almost all the various fields of of German Art and Culture those morbid phenomena may be observed.Here every thing seems to have crossed the culminating point of excellence and to have entered the curve of hasty decline…….
A sad symptom of decline was manifested by the fact that in the case of many ‘Art Centres’ the sign was posted on the entrance doors:
For Adults Only”
I have quoted some which are of relevance but this is not to approve of what he did.
Most of Hitler’s ideas were good.
It is unfortunate that he did not have a Mentor like Alexander had-Aristotle!
It is good that the Mein Kampf is being republished in Germany and Bavaria.
Mein Kampf must be made available with the necessary annotations as to what is to be not followed with explanations thereof.
Story:
One of the most controversial books in history is about to come back into print in its homeland — something that hasn’t been true in nearly 70 years. On Monday, the German state of Bavaria announced plans to publish an annotated version of Adolf Hitler’s infamous “Mein Kampf,” according to Der Spiegel.
“Mein Kampf” is currently banned in Austria and Russia, the Daily Mail writes. But contrary to popular belief, the notorious book is not banned in Germany — Bavaria has simply prevented its printing in an effort to control production, the AP notes.
In January, a German magazine ignited controversy when it tried to publish excerpts from the book alongside critical commentary, the New York Times reports. German authorities took the matter to court, which ruled that any publication of the book violated Bavaria’s copyright.
But now, with the copyright expiration drawing near, Bavaria is publishing its own version of the book and calling it damage control. Der Spiegel reports that the book will include commentaries that condemn Hitler’s arguments.
A British publisher plans to sell excerpts from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” in Germany, claiming he wants to demystify the infamous book. But the controversial move could provoke a legal dispute with the Bavarian government, which owns the copyright and refuses reprint permission.
Is it permissible to sit in a cafe and read Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf?” British publisher Peter McGee, 51, has no doubt. “Of course it is. It’s long overdue that a broad public should get the opportunity to deal with the original text.”
And because McGee is so sure he’s right, he plans to serialize extracts of the book in three small 15-page brochures with an initial print run of 100,000 copies each. The front cover features a photo of Hitler with a black bar obscuring his eyes and a headline that translates to “The unreadable book.”
The plans could trigger opposition from Bavarian civil servants, though. Contrary to common belief, “Mein Kampf” is not banned in Germany. But the state of Bavaria, which seized Hitler’s assets after his death, owns the copyright to his infamous treatise and has so far consistently prohibited efforts to reprint it.
McGee likes a fight and is no stranger to scandal. In 2009, he published reprints of vintage Nazi newspapers like Der Angriff and Völkischer Beobachter with print runs of up to 300,000, delivered alongside comments from historians.
Confiscated By Police
The move caused a minor uproar in Germany, with the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warning of an “embellishment of horror” and the Central Council of Jews in Germany labelling the reprints potential “blueprints for budding Nazis.”
The row escalated and the Bavarian government, which also owns the copyright to the two newspapers, dispatched police throughout the nation to seize the republished copies.
There have long been periodic calls from historians for “Mein Kampf,” Adolf Hitler’s seminal work of hate and prejudice, to be republished in German. If an annotated, academic version of the polemic comes out, so goes the argument, it could take the wind out of neo-Nazi sails once the book is no longer protected by copyright.
Now, a new version is in the works. According to a Wednesday report on German radio, the Munich Institute of Contemporary History is working on an annotated edition complete with notes on where the ideas Hitler expounds on in his book originated.
But the state of Bavaria, which holds the “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”) copyright, says that it doesn’t plan on allowing the new version to hit the shelves before the book enters the public domain.
“The state government is not planning on changing course,” the Bavarian government said in a statement to the Bayerischer Rundfunk public radio station. “No permission has been granted to the Institute of Contemporary History.”
70 Years after Hitler’s Death
Nevertheless, institute head Horst Möller says that work on the new edition, undertaken by historians Edith Raim and Othmar Plöckinger, will go ahead. “If we complete the text prior to the end of the copyright, we can approach the authorities once again,” he told Bayerischer Rundfunk.'( source : er Spiegel)
Release of MI 5 of UK gives an insight into the activities of those who spied for Germany in World War II.
‘The file contains names and details of British and other renegades who worked for the German cause during the war, including membership of the British Free Corps. The lists include civilians who aided the Germans in occupied Europe as well as prisoners of war who became ‘stool pigeons’ (acting as decoys or informers), or signed up to the British Free Corps and other ways of getting out of PoW camps. William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw) and P.G Wodehouse are among those listed.’
File KV2/3581 is available to view on Documents Online.
PG Wodehouse pictured circa 1928. Photograph: Hulton Getty
PG Wodehouse was questioned by MI5 as a suspected collaborator for broadcasting from Berlin during the second world war. The creator of Jeeves protested that he was shocked and dismayed at the criticism his broadcasts had provoked in Britain.
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