The Slide Into Authoritarianism ‘To Defend Democracy’

On 19.10.202619.10.2026 By JacIn Brexit, Europe, European Union, Globalism, Housing, Housing Associations, Plaid Cymru, Racism, Russia, Senedd, Ukraine, USA, World Economic Forum19 Comments

There’s a saying wrongly attributed to an old Chinese sage that runs, ‘May you live in interesting times’. Well, we do; and just as phoney as the provenance of that maxim are the statements we’re fed daily by our politicians and their media.

Much of what follows may be updates of what’s gone before; but I increasingly suspect the Western world is approaching a dénouement. That scene at the end of a murder mystery, when everyone is gathered in the drawing room, and all is revealed.

To start, I shall concentrate on our new prime minister, Andy Burnham, whose mounting problems make me think he might soon be gone like his predecessor . . . what was his name?

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THE APPOINTED ONE

Andy Burnham, ‘King of the North’, formerly mayor of Manchester.

As we all know, Burnham was not elected by the people, he was voted into No 10 by the Labour party. Not that the party’s MPs had much say in it, much less party members. Burnham’s coronation was arranged by the Fabian Society, acting for the Globalist network of which the Fabians are a part.

Burnham is already running into trouble. Let’s look at reasons for his difficulties.

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First, he inherited the plan to bring back blasphemy laws – abolished in 2008 – but only for Islam. There had been pressure for some years to introduce anti-blasphemy laws to counter ‘Islamophobia’, but Conservative governments had rightly been cautious.

The election of Labour with a huge majority in July 2024 gave the campaign renewed impetus. In November 2024 Labour MP Tahir Ali set the process moving again. With someone cleverly wording his proposal to call for:

. . . measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions?

The ‘Abrahamic religions’ are Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The ‘People of The Book’. But nobody was fooled.

Suspicions justified by the Labour government formally adopting an official definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ in March. Which soon ran into criticism.

The government’s own counter-terror advisor, Jonathan Hall, has said that the proposed definition could ‘inhibit’ criticisms of Islam. ‘How far are people going to be allowed to push definition effectively in their own political interests?’, he asked. There is no doubt that this is precisely what activists will do. They will try to use this definition to restrict what can be said about Islam.

Inevitably, critics started asking how the government had arrived at the definition. Who advised the politicians? Who supplied evidence? And now it started getting murky.

Initially, the government said it had destroyed all the relevant documents. This would have been illegal. But when pressure was maintained, a civil servant answering to Angela Rayner, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, admitted the documentation did exist – but nobody was allowed to see it!

It’s safe to assume that laws against ‘Islamophobia’ were demanded and framed by Islamists.

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Second, and just last month, Burnham himself announced to the United Nations:

a new national centre to tackle disinformation and deepfakes from hostile states such as Russia . . . saying the government had a duty to “stem the poisonous tide” from damaging British interests.

Note that Russia is singled out. With no other country mentioned. Maybe setting the stage for his next delivery of performance politics.

By the way, ‘misinformation’ is anyone challenging the Globalist narrative. Whether it’s the climate crisis, Covid, DEI, open borders, CRT, gender woo-woo, etc. And it includes the alleged danger posed to us all by Russia.

Next, after his UN gig, and after regularly trailing the idea of closer co-operation with the EU, Burnham announced that it was “Russian interference” wot gave us Brexit . . . but then he started back-tracking.

If Russia did not influence the result of the Brexit referendum, then why resurrect complete bullshit dismissed years ago by the intelligence services? And why kick off this series of performances at the UN? And why single out Russia?

Then, last week, the head of MI5 seemed to slap Burnham down.

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And how can we overlook Burnham’s relationship with the owners of Manchester City? Even though Man of the People Burnham is an Everton supporter he has strong links with Citeh’s Abu Dhabi owners from his time as mayor of Manchester.

For those who’ve been living under a stone . . . it’s alleged the club’s owners funded Man City’s recent success illegally, often through massive sponsorship deals where the bulk of the funding came not from the stated sponsors but from other entities controlled by the owners.

But it didn’t end with football. Because it’s further alleged that in his role as mayor Burnham gave the oil-rich Arabs sweetheart property deals. With complaints over many years by other developers saying they’d been excluded from the tender process.

Here again, Burnham is struggling with the truth, and backtracking. With the suggestion that he might now be using his power as PM to cover up what he might have done when mayor, and to protect the Man City owners.

Even changing official records.

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As if to prove how gaffe prone he is, just a few days ago Burnham had to correct remarks made in the House of Commons in which he referred to the man accused of Ann Widdecombe’s murder as “the man responsible for the murder“. Thereby undermining the accused’s presumption of innocence, and possibly prejudicing the upcoming trial.

Could it have been deliberate?

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But all is not lost – for democracy will be saved by abolishing the need for voters to show photo ID. Straight out of the US Democrats’ playbook – allow illegal and undocumented immigrants to vote.

It looks as if the Globalists should have done a little more research before putting their latest puppet into No 10. He’s turning out to be a disaster for them.

But to cheer you up, the word in the corridors of power is that if Burnham is dumped – he’ll be replaced by Ed Miliband!

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WHY RUSSIA?

These silly allegations against Russia remind me of what the USA went through in 2016, within days of Trump winning the presidential elections.

A campaign led by the defeated candidate Hillary Clinton and former president Barack Obama, and involving the agency behind the JFK assassination, tried to salvage something from that defeat. Tying up the Trump administration for years defending itself against allegations with no substance.

Not even those making the allegations believed them. But that wasn’t the point.

Make the allegations, and with media support guaranteed, just keep repeating the lies and the media will do the same. But it got worse.

To ensure Trump wasn’t re-elected in 2020 the Democrats mounted ludicrous prosecutions, even attempting impeachment. They also rigged the 2020 elections in key states and Democrat-run cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, Phoenix and Atlanta.

As Josef Stalin is reported to have said in 1922:

It’s not who votes that counts, it’s who counts the votes.

And so the 2020 elections gave us Joe Biden. A man so obviously unfit for the role that it became painful to watch. Yet the media went along with the official line that despite his gaffes, his incoherent mumbling, his wandering off stages, his falling over, he was still “sharp as a tack“.

Even after the disastrous presidential debate in 2024, when Biden lost himself entirely and his wavering voice just trailed off – the media still called it a draw!

So who was really running the USA, and leading the free world between 2020 and 2024? Clue: that period is often referred to as Barack Obama’s third term. And in the past week Obama’s been over here meeting Burnham and others. What can it mean?

Is he planning some kind of government in exile? If so, maybe Obama should watch his step. A former president having talks with foreign governments without the permission of the current resident of the White House could be flirting with treason.

But ain’t Western democracy wonderful? Puppets like Burnham up front, ruthless political operators like Obama controlling them, and then, running the whole shebang from the shadows . . .

But why do the puppets, their handlers, and the media all paint Russia as the bad guy? The easiest way to answer that is to ask why the same people also hate Donald Trump. Because it’s the same answer to both questions.

Neither Putin nor Trump will submit to the Globalists. Understand that and so much else becomes clearer.

Trump is restoring US sovereignty by rejecting supranational organisations like the UN, WHO and, most recently, the ICC. He’s rebuilding the USA as a self-sufficient country that makes things, where money has real-world value.

In Russia, Putin dealt with the oligarchs who were ripping off the country’s wealth with the help of the international financial elites. Russia’s wealth is now Russia’s. And of course, Russia has unexploited natural resources that dwarf those of other countries.

Trump and Putin have become the twin bogeymen for the Globalists, their puppet politicians, the media they control, and their useful idiots of the Woke left.

It’s worth dallying with the media for a second. I often refer to the Uniparty, where squabbling is encouraged to give the proles the impression of choice and the promise of change. But in reality it’s just politicians pushing the same message in different ways. It’s all theatre.

Meanwhile, the proof of Globalist control of UK newspapers – from the Guardian to the Daily Mail – is in their reporting of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. They speak as one, hostile to both, revealing who controls them.

Telling us that Russia is not the enemy of the West. Nor is the USA. They are its defenders. As Marcio Rubio reminded us in his speech in Athens.

The enemies of the West are those they’ve been for centuries. Rootless anti-human capital, socialism, and Islam.

But they never before combined. Though it’s unlikely the leftists and the Muslims appreciate who’s using them. Each probably believes they’ll come out on top after they’ve collapsed the West.

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HOW THE WEST IS THREATENED

The West is to be collapsed by a combination of strategies.

First, there’s managed decline through net zero and deindustrialisation. Similar attacks are being mounted against farming and food self-sufficiency. We see it all around us and across Europe.

Second, open borders. Encourage the migration of individuals and groups that it’s known in advance will be no asset to the country and are unlikely to integrate. These will help push up crime and promote social dislocation as well as increasing the welfare budget – until everything collapses.

I’m not making this up. It’s a variation on a theme laid out back in 1966 by a couple of leftist US academics. It even bears their name: The Cloward-Piven Strategy.

It may have been written for the USA in the turbulent 1960s, and envisioned using the black population, but the strategy is applicable elsewhere: Overload a system until it implodes.

In the modified version there’s an element of – and here I’ll use a term I’ve tried to avoid – ‘population replacement’. Which links with something I can’t help returning to – the watershed year of 2016. Brexit in the UK and Trump elected in the USA.

The shock the establishment experienced, and the realisation that the white working class was being ‘lost’, meant that a new voter base was needed. Which then explains the 2018 UN Global Compact on Refugees.

Today we see that Compact in operation – but not in the USA since Trump took over from whoever was working Biden.

But if you bring in millions of people then you must promise them – in addition to benefits – somewhere to live. And now it gets perhaps a little darker. As we saw in a recent exchange in the Senedd.

When Reform suggested locals should have priority when it came to social housing Kiera Marshall of Plaid Cymru giggled her way through a response.

We heard a Plaid Cymru SM argue that Welsh people should be discriminated against in their own country. You can dress it up in ‘progressive’ word salads, but that’s what it amounts to. So who is Kiera Marshall, SM for Caerdydd Penarth?

She says she’s from Townhill, but she’s not really from The Hill. For both parents, of the social worker/’progressive’ type, had moved to Swansea. And Kiera herself, went to the London School of Economics (LSE), founded of course by the Fabian Society.

Lot of kids from The Hill go to the LSE.

Note that she doesn’t claim to have experienced inequality, just observed it; maybe like some 19th century anthropologist studying a tribe of interesting primitives. For Kiera is just another middle class girlie telling us what to think, and how to behave.

Why is Kiera Marshall in Plaid Cymru? What sort of party has Plaid Cymru become to have one of its politicians advocating discrimination against working class Welsh people? Maybe the clue lies in the term ‘working class’.

But why do I even mention Kiera Marshall?

Some forty years ago, during the Meibion Glyndŵr arson campaign against holiday homes, I argued that depriving young local people of somewhere to live, somewhere to raise a family, was a form of birth control.

A similar case could be made today if non-native groups are given priority for housing over local people in their own communities. But as I say, I’m reluctant to get into talk of ‘population replacement’.

But it’s increasingly difficult to dismiss.

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CONCLUSION

We’re at a stage where the enemies of the West know they’re lying, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, but they don’t seem to care. Which could be interpreted as a sign of confidence . . . or desperation.

I believe it’s the latter. There are so many little clues. One was footballers over the weekend being made to ‘take the knee’ again. Has there been a big surge in racism? Then there’s Obama’s visit.

And of course, there’s been constant talk of war with Russia; because those I’m writing about know their time is running out, and thought war could save them and their project. This is why I say they’re ‘anti-human’.

Over in the USA, they’ll have the mid-term elections next month. Normally, the party of the president loses ground in the mid-terms, sometimes badly. But this time, as the realisation grows that the Democrats have been infiltrated – if not taken over – by Marxists and Islamists, the Republicans might do better than expected.

But of course opinion polls, and MSM pundits, are predicting a hammering for Trump and his party. Funny that, innit? Though almost predictable.

The images of the French riots won’t help the Democrats.

If anybody thinks those riots, the arson and looting, are about schoolkids not having enough textbooks, then you need to slap yourself. Hard.

Having their plan of war with Russia rejected by the people of Europe, knowing the US Cavalry won’t come riding over the hill, and seeing the EU rejected by the rise of the national sovereignty right, the Globalists might conclude that destroying Europe from within is the only option left in the time still available to them.

Which again, I find encouraging. Reinforcing my belief that the crunch is coming; everybody’s gathering in the drawing room, paying attention, and the enemies of the West will soon be exposed.

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Plaid Cymru And ‘Independence’

On 06.10.202608.10.2026 By JacIn Europe, European Union, Globalism, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Government, Welsh Independence, Welsh Nationalism115 Comments

A few days after Plaid Cymru’s conference in Llandudno seems a good time to examine where the party stands on independence. And related issues.

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INTRODUCTION

As most of you know, I have always wanted independence for Wales. Partly because I felt Wales was constantly short-changed and could do better with independence; and partly because I saw my people as a European nation and I wanted us to take what I viewed as our rightful place among the nations of Europe.

Unlike many of my contemporaries I did not identify with anti-colonial struggles in the third world. My focus tended to be on Scotland, Brittany, Ireland, Québec and the Basque Country, rather than with peoples I’d never heard of and with whom I found it hard to identify.

I felt this was entirely natural. And I still do. Most of the human race feels, acts, and reacts in the same way.

We identify first with ‘our own’, our immediate family, and then those closest to us. After that, it’s the ripples a stone makes when it’s thrown into a pond. This doesn’t rule out the Good Samaritan, but nor does it encourage ignoring our own in favour of the stranger.

And so I joined Plaid Cymru around 1965 because it was a Welsh-focused party wanting independence. I stood as a candidate a few times and did my fair share of door-knocking, and tramping wet Swansea streets with bundles of leaflets.

I left Plaid Cymru many years ago, and since then we’ve drifted further apart.

So let’s consider what Plaid Cymru offers in its vision for independence.

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EUROPEAN UNION

Starting with the European Union. Which is rather complicated for me because a long time ago I supported a united Europe. That was when I saw such a creation as a force for good in the world, and a mediator between the USA and the USSR.

In recent decades I have swung 180 degrees. To the point where I voted for Brexit in 2016. For even when I believed in European unity, I never wanted the authoritarian, regulation-ridden monster we see today.

My vision was Gaullist: a culturally unified Europe “from the Atlantic to the Urals” that included post-Communist Russia. Where political legitimacy resides exclusively in the sovereign nation-state – not supranational institutions where power is exercised by shadowy cabals through unelected bureaucrats.

I wanted Wales to be one of those sovereign nation-states.

Did you ever see a shiftier-looking git in your life?

The EU today is a Globalist capture and an enemy of the West. Run like the old Soviet Union, with real power in the hands of the unelected Politburo-Commission, ruled since 2019 by Ursula von der Leyen. (Whose husband did so well out of Covid vaccines.)

I recall Plaid promoting the EU, or the Common Market as it still was at the time, with ‘Europe of the Regions’. There was a parade in Machynlleth in 1988, on Glyndŵr’s Day, led by the party leader at the time, the late Dafydd Elis Thomas.

The message being pushed with Europe of the Regions was that the nation-state was outdated, and would soon wither away; replaced by historic regions and submerged nationalities under a loose, pan-European superstructure.

What happened to that idea, I wonder? For as I’ve outlined, the EU has become ever-more centralised and undemocratic. Though the war on the nation-state continues.

On a purely practical and contemporary level, the economies of the EU are tanking, thanks to the deindustrialisation imposed by net zero; and especially in Germany, the largest EU economy and main funder for the whole farrago.

In May 2027, Marine le Pen will be elected President of France. And despite the Breton origin of her name I doubt if she’ll welcome supplicants from Wales looking for hand-outs. For that’s what it’s about for many in Plaid Cymru.

Funding that was squandered when the UK was still in the EU and Wales was run by another socialist party.

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NATO

Some years back I checked the linkage between NATO’s eastward creep and EU membership. The message was clear: ‘Join NATO and you’ll be allowed into the EU. Then, because you’re poor, we’ll give you lots and lots of money’.

NATO is a military alliance. An attack on one is an attack on all. Which was fine, when the threat was the Soviet Union and the combined forces of the Warsaw Pact. (And it’s why NATO should have been scrapped in 1991.)

That NATO continued, and expanded towards Russia, made it clear the Globalists had turned an erstwhile political and military threat into a target for conquest and exploitation. The Russians certainly saw it.

And are alliances that desirable anyway? Remember how the First World War started. A Serb nationalist killed an Austrian Archduke in disputed territory after the Archduke’s chauffeur took a wrong turn. It should have been left to the Serbs and the Austrians to sort it out; with other countries either holding their coats or trying to separate them.

Instead, millions of men died because other, bigger countries were tied to alliances that swung into action because of that lucky shot in Sarajevo.

Who benefited from that war? Best not to go there.

Plaid Cymru’s position on the EU might lack clarity, but its position on NATO is even more cloudy and confused. Let’s just remember what party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth has said in recent months.

Towards the end of June, with Plaid in control of the Senedd, he was interviewed by Ciaran Jenkins of Channel 4, a very left wing outlet. Here’s the relevant section.

Ciaran Jenkins: We live in pretty uncertain times. Do you think an independent Wales should not be a part of Nato?

Rhun ap Iorwerth: I think an independent Wales would want to have a very close relationship with Nato that is an associate membership people have. Ireland, for example, with Nato. That would be a decision for an independent Wales.

First off, there is no such thing as “associate membership” with NATO. In 2024 Ireland joined the Individually Tailored Partnership Programme. Though after seeing Georgia, Bosnia, Moldova and Kazakhstan listed, I conclude it’s designed to annoy Russia without poking the bear too hard by granting full membership.

Though you have to wonder why Japan, South Korea and Colombia should be included in any NATO line-up. Along with other bizarre choices.

Anyway, more recently, this report from Sky News has Rhun ap Iorwerth saying “Wales would join a ‘NATO-type’ organisation“. He stumbles through the interview but suggests there’s some alternative out there to NATO.

What was he thinking? NATO Lite?

The only thing that comes to my mind is the idea that’s been floating around for many, many years of a European Army, which seems to go back to 1952 and the European Defence Community. There have been a few false starts but I can see why the idea might be re-surfacing.

Donald Trump is pissed off with Europe and most of its leaders, he’s not going to war with Russia over Ukraine, and things will stay the same if – as seems likely – he is succeeded as president by J D Vance (possibly Marco Rubio) in 2028.

And so a European military, under the command of the EU (and Ursula von der Leyen), with a more aggressive approach towards Russia, would replace or ‘complement’ NATO. But Russia isn’t threatening Western Europe. The threats are internal, as I’ll explain in a moment.

Let Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth come clean about exactly what he’s trying to say with relation to NATO. Perhaps someone could help him.

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UNITED NATIONS

It has long been Plaid Cymru’s policy to join the United Nations.

The Charter was signed in June 1945, and the UN came into existence in October, designed to maintain international peace and stability.

But it has now degenerated into a vehicle for third world despots and kleptocracies to dictate to the more advanced countries and demand that the latter keep paying for whatever past crimes can be dreamed up.

Recently, in Gaza, we’re seen UN representatives on the ground being Hamas terrorists under a different badge. And when UN spokespersons on human rights, women’s rights, and other issues, come from countries where such rights don’t exist, then the UN stands exposed for the money-laundering farce it’s become.

And let’s remember that it was the United Nations that gave us, in December 2018, the Global Compact on Refugees. Operated through the UNCHR. This is now used by Globalist European ‘leaders’ to justify open borders.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency works to ensure that everybody has the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge, having fled violence, persecution or war at home.

In reality, those arriving illegally in dinghies, or being secretly flown in, haven’t ‘fled’ anything. They’re here to get whatever they can take and get away with.

They’re not Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany; nor can they be compared to Basque kids taken into Welsh homes during the Spanish Civil War. Or even the East African Asians expelled from Uganda by the Muslim dictator Idi Amin in the early 1970s.

As you might guess, I have no time for the United Nations. My views on the UN are not a million miles from those of President Trump. It’s a Globalist body pushing a distinctly anti-West agenda.

The world might be a better place without the United Nations.

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The EU, NATO and UN have been drinking for too long from the same poisoned well. Which is why an independent Wales should avoid all three organisations.

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SO WHAT IS MODERN PLAID CYMRU?

In a nutshell, nothing more than an agglomeration of grievance-pedlars, with the same undergraduate obsessions we hear everywhere – climate, gender, race, etc – with the only obstacle to heaven on earth being the ‘far-right’.

Plaid wants a socialist Welsh republic. And looking at the party’s Senedd Members, all I see is a marginally more mature and better dressed Welsh Underground Network.

I’m not being flippant here. The policies, attitudes, and ambitions of the party governing Wales and a far-left fringe group are almost identical. But the Welsh Underground Network is just more honest about theirs.

Plaid is also hypocritical. On the one hand, it still defends the Welsh language and the wider identity – yet rejects ‘whiteness’ and the European civilisational norms to which they belong.

In an attempt to square this circle Plaid (and others) pretend Wales has always been multi-racial. This leads to Black History Month, which uses public funds to support race grifters and indoctrinate schoolchildren into accepting mass migration.

But thank God for the decolonised Welsh cake!

Truth is, the malaise is everywhere. Labour controlled by the Fabians has turned on the working class. The Conservatives are no longer conservative. The Greens have ditched the environment for anti-Semitism. Though the Lib Dems are the same odious and buyable little crew they always were – should we be thankful for that?

While Plaid Cymru has lost interest in the real Wales, and the best interests of Welsh people. And it can’t be hidden when Plaid is . . .

More energised about the lack of gender mutilation services than it ever was about the closure of Port Talbot steelworks.
Cosying up to foreign ‘renewables’ companies that enrich themselves from desecrating our homeland.
Siding with ‘environmentalists’ and rewilders from God knows where to destroy Welsh farming.

I could go on, but it’s so depressing. I’ll try to introduce a lighter way of looking at it.

When it comes to having an independent Wales run by Plaid Cymru – or the Welsh political establishment in general – I’m reminded of that wonderful character from Blackadder, Mr Hardwood. When it’s suggested that his daughter should marry the Prince Regent he responds thus:

I’d no more place her in the hands of an unworthy man than I’d place my John Thomas in the hands of a lunatic with a pair of scissors.

That sums up my feelings about Plaid Cymru and the ‘independence’ it’s offering.

Because there’s no point in leaving the UK only to surrender control to agencies less interested in Wales than any in London. Of course it’s argued that it’ll be different because “Wales will have its own voice” in these chambers. So what?

In Globalist organisations – like the EU, NATO, UN – small countries will be ignored or punished if they don’t toe the line.

Which means that to be heard, and favoured, an ‘independent’ Wales would have to follow the agenda: increasing censorship and surveillance, aided by a controlled media; net zero resulting in job losses and higher energy bills; unlimited immigration leading to rising crime and social dislocation.

All of which are damaging. With the real worry that the dire consequences listed are in fact the desired outcomes.

An independent Wales couldn’t isolate itself from the wider world. And I would never argue for isolation. But independence must mean real independence or it’s just a sham. And not worth having.

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FINAL WORD

Before you think all is lost, and reach for the whisky and the revolver, let me tell you there’s a sensible party that still cares about Wales and the Welsh people. A party that wants the best for Wales without joining organisations that don’t give a damn about us.

It just so happens that Gwlad is holding its AGM this coming Saturday in Llandrindod, starting at 10am (’til 4pm) in the golf club. You’re welcome to attend even if you’re not a member. So come along, meet people, hear what they have to say.

You’ll find decent people talking common sense. It’ll be so refreshing.

♦ end ♦

Tidings Of Unease And Foreboding

On 19.12.202521.12.2025 By JacIn Globalism, Russia25 Comments

This is the last posting of 2025. I just wish I could be more optimistic. But the lunatics have taken over the asylum and it looks like they might burn it to the ground.

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WAY BACK WHEN . . .

As he left office in January 1961 outgoing US President Dwight D Eisenhower (R) warned against what he called the “military-industrial complex” (MIC).

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Eisenhower’s successor was Democrat John Fitzgerald Kennedy. For failing to use US troops for an invasion of Cuba, and for refusing to sanction the war the MIC wanted in Vietnam, JFK was assassinated.

Kennedy said many things. But let’s remember that he wanted to, ” . . . splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds”.

For by the early 1960s the Central Intelligence Agency had become a law unto itself, allied with the MIC; free of political oversight, forming its own foreign policy, and acting independently both at home and overseas.

Perhaps they got a taste for it in 1953, when they helped MI6 overthrow the democratically-elected nationalist prime minister in Persia, Mohammad Mosaddegh. Handing all power to the Western puppet whose excesses led to the 1979 revolution and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini.

Interestingly, that revolution saw socialists and Islamists combine to overthrow the Shah. The comrades were soon gobbled up by the tiger they were riding.

To explain . . . the military-industrial complex is an alliance of US corporations involved in the production of armaments and other military necessities aligned with with gung-ho generals (aka ‘The Pentagon’) and the agency that is supposed to monitor and counter overseas threats to the US homeland.

The collective term often used is the ‘Deep State’.

For these people, and as Tom Paxton sang in Daily News:

Ban the bombers are afraid of a fight
Peace hurts business and that ain’t right

At its simplest; war is good for corporate business, it wins gongs for generals and admirals, while sociopaths in Langley VA can bring about the next war through false flag operations, propaganda, or whatever. Or they can while away the hours organising regime change hither and yon.

We see them exposed in Kubrick’s 1964 masterpiece Dr Strangelove: Brig Gen Jack Ripper, good ole boy Maj ‘King’ Kong (who unforgettably rides the bomb), Col ‘Bat’ Guano, Gen ‘Buck’ Turgidson.

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THE WORLD TURNS UPSIDE DOWN

The military-industrial complex was largely a creature of the political right, as was the CIA. Democrats, and liberals more generally, opposed their machinations.

But as the USA suffered financial crises, moved factories overseas, the once-mighty auto industry struggled against foreign competition, with the advent of computers and the internet, the face of American capitalism changed. And with it, political influence.

We had a new generation of multi-billionnaires, many of whom can fairly be described as geeks, but with the power to influence the thinking of the masses. This was coupled with the rise of hedge funds and asset managers, who made nothing, they just invested other people’s money to enrich themselves and gain immense political power.

Without getting in over my head, or risk being called a conspiracy theorist, the Deep State soon realised the power of the new media and the new money. And began co-operating with both.

But there was a slight problem. The geeks and others tended be more liberal in their outlook than the CEO of arms manufacturer Kill All Commie Bastards Inc. They gravitated towards the Democrats rather than towards the Republicans.

I believe there was an uncomfortable accommodation with the new oligarchy that saw the Deep State become for a period bi-partisan, and now, bizarrely, closer to the Democrats than the Republicans.

In fact, those in Donald Trump’s administration talk openly of dismantling the Deep State, defunding it’s money-laundering NGOs and other agencies, and putting an end to the ‘forever wars’ on which the military-industrial complex thrived for decades.

Perhaps even doing away with ‘The Fed‘. Which was set up by bankers to serve bankers. Now Trump wants the US economy to serve the people by concentrating on the ‘real’ economy.

What a novelty!

Big Money is not happy. That includes the City of London. Explained in this video.

Then again, considering that the Deep State sought to imprison him, perhaps even assassinate him, you can understand why Trump’s not too well disposed towards it.

Because the internet is global, and so is money, the new elite often sees a world without borders. Through this mindset, plus their co-operation with supranational bodies like the UN, WEF, Club of Rome, they attracted the soubriquet ‘Globalists’.

The Deep State can go along with this because while Microsoft or BlackRock want to unite the human race like that old Coke advert, they remain US corporations, extending US influence.

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THE NEW ALLIANCE IN OPERATION

The Deep State-Globalist alliance now extends its malign influence across the Western world; done through converting/subverting elites, funding educational establishments, buying media, and thereby corrupting countries.

When BlackRock CEO Larry Fink visited London last year to give Starmer and his crew their orders he was presented as a successful businessman, and a ‘good guy’; as opposed to Trump and his associates who – thanks to a media largely controlled by Fink and his ilk – are the bad guys, the ‘far right’, even fascist.

For as we are reminded after every Islamist atrocity – by that same media – the biggest terror threat to the West comes from ‘far right extremism’.

The next element to join the Deep State-Globalist march to ultimate power was the left. Feeling low after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and China abandoning the centralised economy model, socialists were at a bit of a loose end.

But the impulse to destroy the capitalist West, demolish churches, and unite the global proletariat remained.

Which chimed perfectly with the Globalist vision of a world controlled by them with no competing loyalties such as family, nation, or religion.

And so the most absurd ideas of the revamped left were encouraged. Women have penises, white people (particularly men) are dangerous, boys are girls and girls are boys, secure elections are racist, while religion is a pernicious evil from which mankind must be freed . . . but Islam’s just fine.

For in its assault on the West the Globalists also needed Islam, but there weren’t enough Muslims here to really pose a threat. So from 2016 or so Europe was told to open its doors to hundreds of thousands of ‘refugees’, people escaping war and persecution. (Wars often started by the Deep State.)

The same thing happened under Biden (or whoever was running the USA).

But the over-arching scam used to weaken and demoralise the West through deindustrialisation, and employed to control human behaviour, while also being used to grab land and other resources, was the ‘Climate Crisis’, and the carefully orchestrated hysteria over carbon levels in the atmosphere.

Both now exposed as utter bullshit.

◊

HOW THE EU FITS

From a Globalist perspective, the European Union represents the future model they’d like to impose on the world.

To begin with, at national level, voters are offered a ‘choice’ from establishment parties and politicians that answer to the Globalists. Parties and politicians that don’t toe the Globalist line are persecuted.

We saw this with Trump under the Biden administration, we see it Europe with Marine le Pen banned from standing for the French presidency, moves to ban AfD in Germany, the demonisation of Reform and Farage, elections and referendums being re-run from Romania to Ireland until the ‘right’ result is achieved.

Politicians from these Globalist-approved parties are elected to the European Parliament. Where they are ultimately impotent. The President of the EU Parliament since January 2022 is Roberta Metsola. You ever heard of her? Nor me.

That’s because the EU is run like the old Soviet Union. The Parliament is a talking shop. Decisions are made by the politburo, which in the EU is the Commission. Headed by the unelected Ursula von der Leyen. You’ve all heard of her.

Which means that some 450 million people are effectively ruled by one woman that nobody voted for – but she’s a loyal Globalist.

This explains why another Globalist puppet, PM Keir Starmer, who has done so much for Ukraine (especially its young ‘male models’), is taking the UK back into the EU, step by step.

Because those are his orders.

◊

BUT HOW DOES IT END?

Globalism is cornered, but far from defeated.

Having its grip on the USA loosened by President Trump, and with Latin America turning against them, it was inevitable that the Deep-State-Globalists would focus increasingly on Europe.

But this side of the Atlantic don’t look a whole lot better for them.

Their puppets are reviled, especially those leading the three major European economies. (With Italy less and less willing to obey EU diktats.) ‘Insurgent’ parties head the polls in France, Germany, and the UK. Countries in the east are in open revolt against the EU over immigration and funding for the war in Ukraine.

As the BBC reported it: “Hungary and Slovakia are known to be closer to the Kremlin.” Er, no, closer to sanity would be nearer the mark. But that’s how the media operates: join in the madness or be branded a “puppet of Putin“.

But a cornered animal is dangerous. And desperate.

For while BlackRock and others have major investments in Ukraine, the ultimate target, the whole point of this war, is to weaken and hopefully defeat, Russia. Then to seize as ‘reparations’ the vast resources of that huge country. But it’s not going to happen.

For no matter how much Western aid Ukraine has received, in funding, in armaments, military ‘advisers’, intelligence, it’s losing.

And that’s why we hear silly talk now of Russia threatening the West. To justify all-out war. But there’ll be little support from ordinary people in the West. They’ve been lied to too often; on Covid, Net Zero, DEI, open borders. They live with the results.

So the Globalists are staring at the loss of money and power.

While for Starmer, Merz, Macron, von der Leyen, and the other Globalist puppets, war has become their only hope of survival.

Their economies are collapsing, their peoples are in revolt, so war will allow them to declare martial law, impose complete censorship, cancel elections, bring in Digital ID, restrict movement, impose rationing, and make our lives even more miserable.

And by so doing usher in the age of full and untrammeled Globalist control.

But for the time being, masters and servants are so desperate that they might resort to anything to save their miserable skins. So be on your guard. Make your feelings known to the elite. And don’t believe anything the Globalist media tells you.

Russia has no intention of attacking the West. But she will respond if she’s attacked.

So don’t support a war to save Globalism and its beleaguered elites.

♦ end ♦

High Stakes General Election 2024

On 01.07.202401.07.2024 By JacIn Globalism47 Comments

There’s no avoiding it, and I won’t bother trying. So here’s my quick preview of the general election, and my reason for voting for Reform. Not because I support Reform but because I reject the rest.

Don’t worry, I still want independence, but the immediate priority is confronting Globalism. Because an ‘independent’ Wales run from the shadows, a virtue-signalling basket-case begging to join the EU, isn’t worth having.

◊

THE TITANIC DECKCHAIRS ANALOGY, AGAIN

In this election I see the political parties as passengers on the Titanic. With the doomed ship heading towards the iceberg they squabble over the arrangement of the deckchairs.

Yet when you listen to the ‘deckchair’ parties arguing you realise that, from the wider perspective, it will make hardly any difference which of them wins. Because they all ignore what’s really important – the looming ‘iceberg’.

Thankfully, there may be one party that realises where the focus should lie, and that party is Reform. Which is why I shall be voting for Reform on July 4.

I know nothing of my local candidate, I don’t need to. It doesn’t matter to me if he / she has horns, chronic flatulence, and supports Cardiff City.

That’s because party politics is dead. It is now the Globalists, their media, and their uniparty, versus the rest of us – Them against us, the people.

◊

. . . BUT FEW NOTED ITS PASSING

You can see that politics is dead when the uniparty stresses minor differences that are barely perceptible; exploiting understandings and interpretations that no longer apply.

Done to hide the fact that both major parties have signed up to The Agenda. Labour because it’s swallowed the nonsense about a ‘climate crisis’, transgenderism, and believes the New World Order offers something better for humanity; the Tories because they’ve always been relaxed about corporate greed.

You must reject this deception that relies on long gone ideological differences.

The struggle now is for the Western way of life, national sovereignty, the family, individual freedom, traditional values, biology, and simple common sense.

Confronting us we have political placemen, a bought media, a corrupted education system, assorted activists, all working to weaken the West so that a select group of wealthy, powerful, and increasingly desperate people can take control.

They’re getting desperate because they can no longer hide. Too many people know about them. Which means more people wanting to thwart their plans.

For as the recent elections in the EU told us, the ‘iceberg’ is increasingly visible to ordinary people in many countries. This explains traditional parties suffering electoral defeats, and the ‘far-right’ doing so well.

For while the Globalists have effectively merged ‘mainstream’ parties, giving them supporters on what are still perceived as left and right, real opposition can only come from where we have always found those who believe in the values I earlier listed.

Which explains why we’re vilified by the Globalist media and other shills as ‘far-right’, or whatever.

◊

TO FOCUS ON WALES

This election could not have come at a worse time for Labour and Plaid Cymru. Let me explain why.

Since the advent of devolution in 1999, which put the party in control, Labour has taken credit for anything that went right (very little), while blaming ‘London’ / Tories for everything that went wrong (a lot). But you can only get away with this, even in Wales, for so long.

Now, after 25 years of devolution, perhaps even the stupidest among us realise that the NHS is devolved, so is education. Similarly with the cancellation of desperately-needed infrastructure projects, including improvements to the M4.

With no hope of the kakistocracy pinning the 20mph disaster on anybody else.

While in the pipeline is road charging, emission charges, an intensification of the war on farmers, and even more draconian measures serving net zero.

These are all Globalist policies being pushed harder in Wales because with no successes to claim in areas that matter, the ‘Welsh Government’ thinks that leading the world in ‘saving’ a planet in no danger is the only way they’re going to get a pat on the head from anybody.

In fact, we’re entering a phase of blatant deception where we’re told to forget crass and selfish material considerations like food on the table, clothes for the kids, and dignity for your elderly parents; we should focus instead on the joys derived from greater diversity, increased toad populations, and just being nice.

This is what ‘Well-being‘ is really about. Making you accept declining standards across the board in favour of airy-fairy concepts that mean fuck all. And you’re being preached at by people who will go without nothing.

In the reality from which those clowns have long drifted it means Wales going down the tubes faster than anywhere else.

As if 25 years of failure wasn’t enough to damage their chances, Labour in Wales also has to worry about Vaughan Gething, their new leader. To begin with, he’s embroiled in a donations scandal; then two of his Senedd Members stayed away and caused him to lose a vote of no confidence, yet he refuses to stand down.

I think that on July 4 Labour in Wales will be judged on their record in Wales to a greater extent than at any election in the past. This can not be good for them.

When we turn to Plaid Cymru, Labour’s erstwhile partners in Corruption Bay, we see another party for whom the timing of this general election has not been kind.

Plaid recently disengaged itself from Labour with the 2026 Senedd elections in mind. Done to give them enough time to go in for some gentle sparring that might persuade mug punters they are now in opposition.

Then came the announcement of the general election.

Which means that in most people’s minds Plaid is still Labour’s little helper, and only slightly less culpable for the horrors of recent years.

Looking at the bigger picture, it’s difficult to see Plaid now as anything more than a ship that long ago slipped its moorings; since when it’s been drifting aimlessly, at the mercy of wind and tide.

Plaid Cymru no longer believes in Wales and what makes Wales Welsh. It has swapped it all for an artisanal tote bag stuffed with green-woke-left lunacies. And people can see it.

In my area, UK elections saw farmers’ fields filled with Plaid Cymru placards. But not this time round. But never mind, Wil is being replaced with Sarah and others of her ilk who see Plaid as an acceptable left wing party.

Looking at LSR in that picture it’s as if Leanne Wood never went away. Then again, maybe performative ‘socialism’ appeals to you; but it’s always left me cold.

There was a time when the media used to gleefully report ‘extremists’ in Plaid Cymru, I knew some of them. (I was one of them!) Their ‘crime’ was being over-zealous in their patriotism. Plaid now attracts real extremists who don’t give a toss about Wales.

◊

WHY WE MUST STAND UP NOW

So, yes, I suppose me voting Reform could be seen as a protest vote, but it goes way beyond a traditional protest vote. Because the West is at a crossroads, and we know where we’re heading unless we change course – because they’ve told us!

Into a cold, dark future, with few jobs; our movements restricted and our behaviour and speech monitored. It’s already out there with hate speech laws. And with the EU implementing online censorship.

Let me explain how ‘hate speech’ works. It begins with politicians allowing themselves to be led by groups pushing idiocies like women having penises and men being able to give birth.

Everybody knows these suggestions are biological nonsense. But the left promotes them because it’s a way of kicking back at ‘bourgeois values’, ‘the patriarchy’, even (somehow!) ‘white supremacy’.

Liberals go along with it wanting to be ‘progressive’.

And so laws are passed stating biological absurdities. These laws, of themselves, could be dismissed as a bit of harmless fun. But it never ends there. For this legislation empowers freaks, perverts, sexual predators . . . and of course, political activists.

And gives governments the power to silence any criticism.

Which was always the intention.

Your little daughter comes home traumatised because some bloke flashed his penis at her in the swimming pool changing room. You go to the police, complain – and are told, ‘But that’s a female penis, and you’re under arrest for hate speech.’

We have now arrived at a point where stating the truth has become a crime. This is the totalitarians’ nirvana. The shades of Hitler and Stalin are comparing erections!

And censorship doesn’t come alone. It is accompanied by wrecking economies in pursuit of net zero. Arguing that white people are evil, and making them pay for it. And of course, the illegal immigration of unvetted, mainly young males who have no intention of working or integrating.

For to achieve the objective of destabilising the West the Globalists have recruited environmentalists, Islamists, sexual deviants and God knows what else. And of course, the quisling left, seeking to succeed from within where the Soviet Union failed from without.

Nor must we forget Rupert and Clarissa of the dilettante left; who’ll throw paint, stop traffic, and topple statues to prove how frightfully poor and oppressed they are. Yah.

Goes down well with other spoilt brats at Glasto.

Either we troop silently into this dystopian future, or we say no. And at the moment the best way to say no is to vote for political parties the Globalists do not control. Parties like Marine le Pen’s RN (didn’t they do well!), Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, the AfD in Germany, and others across Europe.

For that’s one thing I’ve noticed in recent years – a growing appreciation of what it means to be European by people who increasingly reject the EU. There’s a powerful message there if you think about it.

Finally, let’s not forget Donald Trump. When he’s elected US President in November he must not make the mistake he made first time round by taking into his camp too many who were not really on his side.

He must be ruthless from Day One in rooting out the enemies of the USA and the West. A great start would be keeping his promise to release all the JFK assassination files. As a first step in undoing the power of the deep state that has caused so much misery in the USA and around the world.

For one of the Globalists’ greatest successes has been to manoeuvre leftists and liberals, who so revered JFK, onto the same side as those who killed him.

◊

A MESSAGE TO LABOUR VOTERS

I’m going to end with a message addressed to Labour voters in Blaengwynfi and Bonymaen, the people from whom I am sprung, and with whom I identify.

The Labour party has always taken your vote for granted, knowing you’d chop your arm off rather than vote Conservative. But times have changed; there’s no difference between them any more. They march to the same drum.

Labour and Conservatives will make you and your communities poorer, both will close Port Talbot steelworks, and both will implement the half-arsed ideas of those attending the Hay Festival rather than listen to the needs of working class people.

Are you going to carry on being the mug who votes Labour?

♦ end ♦

Weapons of Mass Deception

On 21.12.201607.01.2017 By JacIn British Nationalism, Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Devolution, English Nationalism, European Union, History, Labour Party, Plaid Cymru, Third Sector, Welsh Government144 Comments

Well, boys and girls, it’s that time of year. Those of you who haven’t done a runner with the Christmas Club money will be relaxing at home wrapping your bottles of Old Sheepshagger with festive ribbons before immediately opening them, feigning joy and surprise, then getting quietly pissed. For now, as Christmas approaches, we tend to look back and contemplate the year past, before looking forward to 2017. Why should I break with tradition?

This year saw the revolt of the Hitherto Ignored, and 2017 will see those who’ve done the ignoring swear to change their ways. This is explained by the angst and confusion now being experienced by ‘progressives’. (I laugh every time I type that word!) For these exalted and superior beings always justified their vacuous spoutings and their laughable posturing on the grounds that they were the voice of the inarticulate Mob.

This year the Mob has found its own voices and, surprise, surprise, its spokesmen are not Leftists and liberals. Which means that those self-appointed spokespersons are now left high and dry, exposed as speaking for none but themselves. This has made them angry and bitter, to the extent that some of them now slag off as ‘fascists’ those they so very recently eulogised and patronised!

Truly is it written, ‘Hell hath no fury like a ‘progressive’ made to look an utter twat!’

Let us start this review with May’s Welsh Assembly elections. (Check the results here.) Labour’s share of the vote continued to decline, down 7.6% in the constituencies and 5.4% in the regions). The Tories did marginally better with figures of -3.9% and -3.7%. For the Lib Dems the figures were -2.9% and -1.6%. The parties to increase their share of the vote were Plaid Cymru +1.3% and +3.0% and, most spectacularly, Ukip, +12.5% and +8.5%.

Despite all the noise they make, and all the publicity they’ve had (including some from me), the Green Party of Englandandwales achieved the mighty totals of 2.5% of the constituency vote and 3.0% of the regional vote. The latter figure being less than the 4.4% won by the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party on its first outing.

The single most noteworthy result was of course Plaid Cymru’s leader Leanne Wood taking Rhondda from Labour heavyweight Leighton Andrews. Though given the imperfect electoral system Labour today is still in control of the Assembly after getting a third of the votes cast.

For anyone interested, I told you my voting intentions in Assembly Elections 2016 and picked through the bones in Assembly Elections 2016: Hopes and Ashes.

Next came the EU referendum in June. Again, I made my position clear before the event with EU Referendum: Why I Want OUT! Even so, I was rather surprised to be on the winning side.

Then, in November, our cousins across the Pond elected Donald Trump to be their next president. I can safely say ‘our cousins’ because, as Welsh people, there is a greater likelihood of us being related to those who voted for Trump than to those who voted for Clinton. Unpalatable though that may be to many Leftists among us.

Meanwhile, our continental cousins almost elected a nationalist president in Austria, and followed that up by giving the Italian establishment a kicking in voting out Signor Renzi via a referendum.

Liberals and socialists interpreted these results as disasters, some of the more overwrought viewed them as the first steps on the road to the Fourth Reich. In truth, the Leftists should have asked themselves why so many millions of ordinary, decent people detest them, their politics, their media and their distant, out-of-touch systems so much that they were prepared to vote for a self-obsessed buffoon, a gang of saloon bar hearties, and a clown.

Next year sees elections in France, Germany, Netherlands and other countries. In France, the Left is hoping that the victor will be François Fillon, the presidential candidate who takes a hard line on Islam, hopes to do away with the 35-hour working week, wants to abolish wealth tax, is opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage, and is a great admirer of both Margaret Thatcher and Vladimir Putin. Because it’s a straight fight between him and Marine le Pen of the Front National.

This gives you some idea of how far the political pendulum has swung in the Western world, because socialists in France wrote off the chances of their candidate – whoever it might be – a long time ago.

In Germany Dr Merkel (or Frau Sauer) is under pressure for a number of reasons, not least her decision to open Germany’s borders to refugees. It went well for a while, German guilt for WWII overcoming reasonable apprehensions that most of those arriving seemed to be able-bodied young men and were not coming from Iraq and Syria, but from North Africa, the Sahel, Pakistan, the Balkans . . . mmm, were these really refugees?

The ‘Willkommenskultur’ soon began to dissipate, and disappeared almost entirely after the truth eventually leaked – despite the best efforts of politicians, police and media – about the rapes and other sexual assaults that took place on New Year’s Eve in Köln, Hamburg and other cities. The recent attack on a Christmas market in Berlin dealt it another blow.

Another factor contributing to the evaporating sympathy for the ‘refugees’ was that Angela Merkel had hoped to take them in, garner the kudos, and then, with rather less publicity, offload as many as she could onto neighbouring countries. These countries, quite rightly said, ‘You invited them, you look after them’.

Immigration is clearly a major issue in the Western world; it has influenced the votes of 2016 and it will do the same in 2017. So let us be thankful that calling someone a ‘racist’ can no longer close down debate. Equally, that wanting an honest discussion on how to deal with Islamic terrorism can no longer be dismissed as ‘Islamophobia’.

I suspect that the rise of Islamic extremism over the past couple of decades has played a big part in undermining the Left in western countries, and this of course contributed to Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. For two main reasons.

First, the Left – certainly its more extreme and vocal elements – has a default position dictating that it must always support the West’s enemies, on the grounds that these are bound to be victims of Western colonialism or ‘oppression’. Pure evil, intolerance, racism, etc., are crimes of the white man, and the white man alone.

Those promoting this nonsense tend to be celebrities, students (and others equally gullible or brainwashed), plus of course members of ethnic and other minorities. This has inevitably alienated many white people, to the point where they now view socialism and liberalism as ‘luxuries’ they cannot afford, or else as viewpoints hostile to them, attacking who and what they are.

Second, in the recent US presidential election liberals and Leftists around the world rallied to Hillary Clinton, yet her financial links with the Gulf states – countries where stoning is practised, where women aren’t allowed to drive, where immigrant labour equals slave labour – undermined her liberal credentials while exposing the gullibility of the ‘progressives’ who supported her.

Slowly but surely, more and more people are waking up to the hypocrisies of the liberal elite, and the lies of its manipulative media. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

‘But what has this to do with Wales?’, you mumble through a mouthful of mulled wine whilst absent-mindedly stroking the maid’s derrière. Well, it’s quite simple – do you really think that politicians and their mainstream media only tell porkies about faraway lands and our more distant cousins? Of course not.

First of all, let’s consider this island known as Britain or, when six counties of Ulster are added, the United Kingdom. Now the big political debate at the moment is what kind of Brexit we should have. Should it be hard or soft? Should it be red, white and blue? (Don’t ask me what these mean, I haven’t got a clue.) Should there be a West End musical version?

The truth is that the type and the timing of the EU exit is irrelevant, a distraction. I say that because the United Kingdom is going down the tubes no matter what. And if things are bad in the UK then they’re even worse in Wales. Let’s look at a couple of recent news items to explain what I mean.

First, education. The Pisa rankings (for 2015) released earlier this month tell us that the UK came 27th in maths, 22nd in reading, and 15th in science. Within the UK, Wales came bottom across the board.

Then last week, we learnt that our GVA figure for 2015 again confirms our position at the bottom of the UK heap. Gross value added figures measures money generated per job within an area, which explains why Cardiff has the best figure for Wales (£22,783), though much of it will have been generated by commuters living outside the city. Overall, Wales accounts for 5% of the UK population but is responsible for only 3.4% of the UK economy.

As the report I linked to (by BBC Wales’ Sarah Dickens) also tells us, “It would be wrong to say Wales has a strong economy purely because unemployment is relatively low. Only 72.9% are employed – lower than the UK figure of 74.4%”. Which tells us that Welsh politicians crowing over Wales having a lower unemployment rate than the UK as a whole are talking their usual bollocks. The truth is that more of us are economically inactive and too many of us are doing shitty, low paid jobs.

These dire figures don’t say a lot for devolution, nor for ‘Welsh’ Labour, which has run the show since 1999. Things are bad, and getting worse. There is no other interpretation unless you’re a politician or some other kind of professional liar. These figures also tell us that the EU funding given to the poorest parts of Wales since 2000 has been wasted by ‘Welsh’ Labour. So it won’t be missed.

(22.12.2016: I didn’t expect support from this quarter, or so quickly, but Victoria Winckler of the Bevan Foundation says – among other things – that too much EU money was used to replace UK government, ‘Welsh’ government and local authority funding, with the result that, because it wasn’t spent on new projects, people saw little improvement.)

But then, I’ve always argued that devolution is a chimera. Now I have been vindicated by no less than the Secretary of State for Wales, Alun Cairns. When he announced that Air Passenger Duty would not be devolved to Wales (i.e. Cardiff airport) he was quite open about the decision having been taken to protect the interests of Bristol and other English airports. This, remember, is the Secretary of State for Wales and the MP in whose constituency we find Cardiff airport!

More recently, more honesty; when his department underwent something of a face-lift and dropped the dragon which had suggested the Welsh Office exists to serve Wales. Why anyone should get worked up about this is beyond me. Would you rather be lied to? Is that more comforting?

Face it – Wales is screwed, good and proper. All that matters is that enough money comes in to keep the politicians and their cronies in jobs that no one would miss, and the rest of us in a state of resigned acceptance. A basket case country with a begging bowl ‘economy’. Nothing will improve because there is no force for real change. Plaid Cymru gave up decades ago and threw in its lot with the English Left and the colonialist system.

The party’s position was summed up recently by leader Leanne Wood, when she stated, without any hint of irony or sarcasm, that “We’ve got no problem in attracting people here to retire” (0:31) before going on to express concern about the high levels of elderly people in Wales!

Which means that Plaid Cymru has “no problem” with the inevitable burden placed on our NHS and other services. Or that Plaid Cymru has “no problem” with locals being outbid for homes in rural and coastal areas. I suppose it also means that Plaid Cymru has “no problem” with the anglicisation of Wales. But what it really means is that Plaid Cymru, more than at any time in its history, is a party that has completely lost its way. It is now an irrelevance.

For a start, Plaid Cymru has lost touch with the Welsh people. We voted to leave the EU, yet Plaid Cymru carries on as if we voted the same way as Scotland. We didn’t. And the reason we didn’t is that Plaid Cymru isn’t even a pale shadow of the SNP.

The voters that Plaid has been trying to detach from Labour for decades – in the Valleys, on Swansea Bay, the north east – voted for Brexit and they are also turning to Ukip, yet Plaid is in denial. Plaid Cymru the socialist, environmentalist, statist, EU friendly party has lost the plot. Big time.

And because Plaid Cymru has lost the plot due to its socialism and its inflexibility on certain issues, and because some within the party now regard as crypto-fascists many of those who were once viewed as potential converts, they risk driving many of our people towards Ukip and, worse, alienating them to the extent that they begin to think there is no alternative to Englandandwales.

In many respects, Plaid Cymru is now viewed as part of the out-of-touch, liberal elite that drove so many people into the arms of Farage, Trump, and others yet to arise. That is some achievement.

Which is why Wales needs a new voice that speaks for the nation and the national interest. A voice that is ideologically flexible but immovable in its defence of the Welsh people. A voice that will never say, ‘We have no objection to being colonised’.

This is the task for 2017.

Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda

Poppies, Row on Row

On 28.11.201628.11.2016 By JacIn British Nationalism, Devolution, English Nationalism, European Union, Iraq, Media, Royalty, Scotland, Welsh Assembly, World99 Comments

PART 1: ‘THE BEAUTIFUL GAME’

This autumn has seen a succession of spats between the football associations of the ‘home’ nations and FIFA the international governing body of the game over displays of poppies, which FIFA deems to be a political symbol. These disputes reached something of a fever pitch last week when FIFA laid a number of charges against the Football Association of Wales (FAW) linked to the game against Serbia on November 12 (which I attended).

Press reports suggest that one of the charges was that fans had worn poppies in their coats! Which, if true, is insane. For not only would such a charge infringe personal liberty but also open up a vat of worms for those having to decide what qualifies as a political symbol. (At the game I wore a discreet Glyndŵr flag lapel badge.)

Consider Barcelona, one of the biggest clubs in the world, intertwined with Catalan identity and the independence movement. Everywhere at their stadium you will read it spelled out for you – Mes que un club (more than a club). Their big rivals are of course Real Madrid, the club of ruling Castille, the club of the monarchy, and the multi-ethnic – but definitely unified – Spanish state.

Last week Barcelona played in Glasgow against Celtic, an intense, occasionally tetchy, but nevertheless enjoyable game that saw the magnificent Celtic fans waving their Irish tricolours and singing their Irish rebel songs. Across town you’ll find arch-rivals Rangers, whose fans wave union flags and sing ditties such as The Billie Boys (‘Up to our knees in Fenian blood, etc’).

There are hundreds of other clubs in the world with an intensely partisan identity that is overtly and unmistakably political, or even ethnic. Until very recently only Basques were allowed to play for Bilboko Athletic Kluba and even though that rule now appears to have been relaxed Athletic Bilbao and the other Basque clubs retain an intensely nationalistic ethos. (Though Celtic and Rangers may be unique in that the fans are animated by the history and politics of another country.)

Come to that, what about international games, such as the one between Wales and Serbia that caused FIFA’s representative such concern? As with every competitive international game there were national flags, and national anthems – aren’t they ‘political’? Come to that, national teams, the raison d’être for FIFA, are obviously political because they represent nation-states or, in the case of Wales, a nation without a state.

Whereas on the other hand, the Serbs might argue that Serbia is a nation-state but too many Serbs are stranded outside the homeland, in Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo. And yet, Kosovo, a breakaway province of Serbia, handed over by NATO to Albanian gangsters was, in a blatantly political decision, admitted to both FIFA and the European governing body, UEFA, in May 2016. Too late to qualify for the World Cup Finals in Russia in 2018, which is just as well, because Russia doesn’t recognise Kosovo.

In other words, football at club and international level has always been political. Whether it’s the England team giving a Nazi salute in 1938, the so-called ‘Football War’ between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969, or German football fans welcoming refugees (last year). So for FIFA to try to punish Wales for individuals making the personal decision to wear a poppy is absurd. Worse, it could be dangerous; for does FIFA now wish to dictate what people wear to football matches?

♦

Early in the second paragraph I qualified my criticism of FIFA with “if true”, partly because I find it difficult to believe that anyone would try to dictate what football fans wear, and partly because it could be that what FIFA meant by ‘fans in the stand’ was the display organised by the FAW, not far from where I was sitting with my son and grandsons. (Being aware of this stunt in advance I was praying that our section of the crowd wouldn’t be involved. Taid being thrown out could have spoilt the night even more than the late Serbian equaliser.)

This stunt was arranged by placing cards on seats which, when held up, combined to give the image of a big poppy. This was rather naughty of the FAW, and very silly. Naughty because it forced people to be part of something about which they might have had reservations, and silly because it was sticking two fingers up to FIFA, which had already warned the FAW that the players should not wear poppies on their shirts, nor should there be other displays. But then, the Sun, the Daily Mail and other good friends of Wales said it should be done, so that presumably made it OK.

Now if it is this display of poppies organised by the FAW that FIFA is objecting to, and if it results in points being deducted and Wales not reaching the World Cup Finals, then I believe that the officials of the FAW will have failed us all and should consider their positions.

I say that because the duty of the FAW is to manage the game in Wales in the best interests of the member clubs, the national team and the fans, not to jeopardise the best interests of Welsh football by falling into line with the cynical and engineered poppy frenzy.

Personal freedom is one of the cornerstones of a democratic society, and must be defended. And that’s why FIFA is wrong if it charges the FAW for individual fans choosing to wear a poppy in their lapel. But considerations of personal freedom also put the FAW in the wrong for forcing individuals to be part of that poppy display.

I think we’re entitled to answers, from both FIFA and the FAW.

♦

PART 2: “SQUEAKY BUM TIME”

Demanding that everyone, including footballers, wears a poppy for the weeks leading up to Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday is quite recent, maybe no more than a decade old. Here’s a photo from a Scotland v England game played on Saturday November 14, 1999, the day before Remembrance Sunday. There are no poppies. There was no one-minute silence before the game.

It’s fitting that the photo comes from 1999, and was taken in the home city of Sir Alex Ferguson, the great Manchester United manager, because that year almost certainly marks the start of “squeaky bum time” (a period of nervousness and uncertainty) for those who were soon promoting the poppy and what they wanted it to stand for.

Because 1999 was the year of the first elections to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. The SNP got 28.7% of the vote and 35 out the 129 seats in Scotland, while in Wales Plaid Cymru achieved 28.4% of the vote and 17 out of 60 seats. So even though Plaid Cymru did better than expected there was nothing for our masters to get overly concerned about in either country, yet within the establishment there were those who already feared where devolution might lead.

September 11, 2001 saw the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, soon followed by retaliatory US and UK air strikes against Al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Afghanistan. To be followed by ground troops. January 4 2002 saw the first US soldier killed by enemy fire. The conflict dragged on.

The USA and UK invaded Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein in March 2003. All kinds of reasons were proffered to justify this aggression but none were convincing. It was regime change linked to oil, and another ‘All be home by Christmas’ intervention that dragged on, and on.

Then, in July 2005, London experienced suicide bomb attacks that killed 52 people, and carried out by British-born Islamic terrorists. These bombings were the most extreme expression of the growing anger within Muslim communities in Europe and the USA at the West’s military interventions in the Islamic world.

The May 2007 elections to the Scottish Parliament saw the SNP’s share of the vote climb to 32.9% of the vote, giving it the most votes, and with 47 seats (one more than Labour) it was now the largest party. Squeaky bum time was really upon us (or them).

By the end of 2007 it became clear that the Western world was entering a period of economic turmoil. It was equally clear that the recession had been caused by irresponsible lending by banks and mortgage institutions coupled with the imaginative trading of debts and other worthless packages. As with Afghanistan and Iraq, it was the USA and the UK leading the way, with other countries quick to blame ‘the Anglo-Saxon economic model’ of quick-buck trading having no concern for the wider economy, let alone society as a whole.

By 2010 everyone knew that the UK was up shit creek economically, with the public purse bailing out criminally irresponsible banks. The public turned against banks and the City of London. The UK was still bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Al Qaeda had been overtaken by the much more ruthless ISIS, which had support from young British Muslims.

To cap it all, the Monarchy started losing what had been its 90+ per cent approval rating. I suspect this started with the death of Princess Diana in 1997, made worse by divorces and scandals, with the prospect of Charles becoming king viewed with concern in certain quarters.

♦

So our elite consulted that well-thumbed manual, ‘Cunning Plans For When Things Go Pear Shaped”. And there, in among chapters headed, ‘Blame Somebody Else’, ‘Start A War’, ‘Scapegoat A Minority’, ‘Do A Runner With The Loot’ and ‘Pray For Divine Intervention’ they found ‘Whip Up A Frenzy Of Faux Patriotism’.

This explains why, in the mid to late noughties the largely neglected poppy saw the first drops of revivifying water and became the symbol not of sacrifice in war but of British identity and ‘pulling together’. The UK media played its role with an enthusiasm almost unknown in democratic societies.

Could it get any worse for the establishment? Yes it could, for in May 2011 the SNP took 44% (+13%) of the vote and 69 seats, giving it a clear majority in the Scottish Parliament. There would now be a referendum on Scottish independence.

Television companies responded by going into overdrive in promoting British unity. In the final year of the Labour – Lib Dem coalition in the Scottish Parliament (to May 3, 2007) there were just 25 television programmes with ‘Britain’ or ‘British’ in the title. Between January 2013 and January 2014, with the SNP in power and the independence referendum looming, the number of ‘Britain’ / ‘British’ programmes had risen to 516!

♦

Which brings us to where we are today. To the point where the now regular autumn hysteria has reached absurd proportions. Here are a couple of examples.

On the evening of Friday November 18 I watched a televised football game (Brighton & Hove Albion v Aston Villa) and I couldn’t understand why the players had poppies on their shirts a week after Armistice Day and five days after Remembrance Sunday. Then the commentator told us it was to commemorate the last day of the Battle of the Somme!

So are we now compelled to remember every date that someone, somewhere, deems significant? And if so, where does this end? Can anyone remember any other instance of poppies being worn after Remembrance Sunday?

Nowhere is the poppy cult more slavishly followed than at the BBC. It is now obvious that from mid or late October no one is allowed to appear on any BBC programme without a poppy. (Though Evan Davis on Newsnight held out longer than most.) So terrified is the Beeb of falling foul of the Sun and the other directors of the national mood that anything that moves is liable to have a poppy pinned to it.

But this fear of manufactured British patriotism can bring its own problems, such as when someone at The One Show pinned a poppy on the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. This outraged some for “trivialising the sacrifice of millions”, but as Dara Ó Briain suggested, it might have been satire, somebody having a pop at the poppy fascists. Here’s how the story was covered in Heatstreet, MailOnline, The Express, and the Huffington Post.

As the BBC discovered with the Cookie Monster, when you’re dealing with poppy fascists it’s difficult to do the right thing. Perhaps the rule for broadcasters should be to pin a poppy on everything that breathes irrespective of whether it wants to wear one or not. Which might result in an apologist for ISIS appearing on Newsnight or Channel 4 News wearing a poppy.

♦

PART 3: CUNNING PLANS GANG AFT AGLEY

What I hope I’ve explained is that the past decade has seen a poppy cult engineered to engender a sense of Britishness, patriotism and unity, in order to counter threats from within and without; also to divert attention away from military blunders and other cracks in the façade of the British system that had led people to question the roles of the armed forces, the Monarchy, the City of London and other institutions.

To some extent this has worked. For example, the first referendum on Scottish independence in September 2014 was ‘won’. Then, the prince who many would like to see accede to the throne instead of his father has knocked out a few sprogs, and the ‘Ah!’ factor always works for the House of Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha.

Yet the success of this strategy is now causing problems that the Elite had not foreseen. You’ll note that I’m talking now of an ‘Elite’, so let me explain myself. Perhaps the best way is to refer back to my post EU Referendum: Why I Want OUT! where I wrote of an Elite that opposes “nation-states, national identities, local governments, languages other than English, regional tastes and peculiarities. In fact, many of the things you and I cherish.”

Those behind the relentless promotion of the poppy are linked to that global Elite. They opposed Scottish independence and they were against Brexit, for they believe in the Elite’s agenda of globalisation and mass migration as these drive down wages and help destroy the national identities that are viewed as an obstacle to globalisation.

The problem is that for most English people ‘Britishness’ and ‘Englishness’, ‘Britain’ and ‘England’, are synonyms, and the English make up almost 80% of the UK’s population. Which has meant that by clumsily promoting the poppy and British nationalism as a short-term fix for assorted problems the Elite unleashed insurgent English populism that resulted in UKIP and Brexit, and may now take us on a journey no one foresaw.

This revolt against the Elite is not confined to the UK. Donald Trump is President-elect of the USA. François Fillon is the Centre-right’s candidate against Marine le Pen, and he will fight that election on a platform that Donald Trump would approve: making friends with Putin, cracking down hard on Islamic extremists, opposing same-sex couples adopting children, etc.

When the French go to the polls in April to elect a new president it will be a choice between a weak and demoralised Left on the one side, while the alternatives are the Hard Right and the Very Hard Right. Then, between Fillon and le Pen, attitudes to the EU could be the main and defining difference.

The liberal, globalist, ‘do your own thing’ consensus we’ve lived with since the 1960s is almost dead. Accidentally killed by an Elite that over-reached itself, assisted by a Left that had been allowed to dictate the social agenda (because it complemented the ambitions of the Elite) but so detached itself from the concerns of most people that ‘liberal elite’ is now a term of abuse.

For me, it’s one of the great political ironies that an annual propaganda exercise to defend established interests favouring the EU, centrist politics, globalisation and unrestricted immigration has breathed life into forces representing their very antithesis. But so fitting.

♦ end ♦

Chilcot and Iraq, All You Really Need to Know

On 08.07.201604.08.2016 By JacIn Iraq, Middle East, World127 Comments

Having read the full Chilcot Report on the invasion of Iraq by the USA and the UK – in the original Latin – I have decided to spare my readers that ordeal by giving a succinct summary of what lies behind that disaster and why we are where we are.

However, for the masochists among you, here’s a link to the Executive Summary. This runs to 150 pages, but the full Report is 2.6 million words long, or over four times the size of War and Peace, so don’t even think about reading it.

For all you need to know, read on . . .

1/ The best place to start is with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. From the perspective of the Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department at that time, anyone who fought against communism was a ‘freedom-fighter’, be he a drug-trafficking fascist, a mass-murdering psychopath or, as in Afghanistan, a religious fanatic wanting to turn the clock back a few centuries.

And so it came to pass that Uncle Sam ended up funding, arming and in other ways supporting the Bearded Ones in their fight against the Russians. (No, these were not hipsters.)

In the same year, the major US ally in the region, the Shah of Iran, was forced into exile by another bunch of Bearded Ones. There was further humiliation for the USA when its Tehran embassy was overrun and 66 US citizens taken hostage.

2/ Next, in September 1980, hostilities commenced between Iran and Iraq. Despite Iraq being ruled by a ruthless tyrant named Saddam Hussein, who began his career as an assassin for the Ba’ath Party, the USA decided – on the ‘enemy of my enemy’ principle – to back (the beardless) Saddam.

After massive losses on both sides the inconclusive war came to its end with the ceasefire of August 20th 1988.

3/ Saddam Hussein decided to flex his military muscles again by invading Kuwait in August 1990 – using weaponry supplied by Western powers during the war with Iran. This invasion was widely condemned, and a UN-supported coalition force was organised under US leadership to liberate Kuwait.

A brief military campaign at the start of 1991 saw the Iraqi army expelled and Kuwait restored to its former condition of Western-friendly despotism. However, the coalition stopped short of toppling Saddam, who then took revenge on his Kurdish and Shia subjects, who had been encouraged to rise against him by the USA and its partners with the promise of protection and / or Saddam’s removal.

The US president at the time of the ‘liberation’ of Kuwait was George H W Bush.

4/ With the Russians gone Afghanistan descended into civil war, from which emerged victorious, in 1996, the fundamentalist (and well bearded) Taliban, but nobody paid them too much attention because they were the good guys who’d fought against Ronald Reagan’s ‘Evil Empire‘.

The Taliban takeover allowed Saudi national Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation to return from its four-year exile in Sudan. (Bin Laden was never seen without his beard.) Al-Qaeda is a Sunni Muslim terrorist organisation that views the West as a corrupting influence on the Islamic world, and it announced its war on the West with attacks on US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi in August 1998.

5/ Unpleasant though these incidents were they were both a long way away, but everything changed with al-Qaeda’s attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11th, 2001.

In response, Afghanistan was invaded, and it was soon realised that 9/11, as it became known, could also be used as an excuse to remove Saddam Hussein. For by now the US president was George W Bush, son of the president Bush who had lost face by leaving Saddam in power.

Attacking Iraq was a curious decision for many reasons. As I’ve said, Osama bin Laden was a Saudi, many of his funders and supporters were Saudis, most of the hijackers on the planes that caused such devastation were Saudis. So if any country should have been attacked in response to 9/11 it was surely Saudi Arabia! But no, for the Saudis and the Americans were friends.

6/ But this time there was to be no UN support, and no grand coalition. Russia, Germany, France and most other countries opposed US action against Iraq. So to give himself a fig leaf / partner George W Bush turned to the UK, and its prime minister Tony Blair. At a meeting on his Texas ranch in April 2002 Bush got Blair to commit the UK to joining with the USA in invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein. (Bush and Blair have never been seen bearded.)

Three months later Blair wrote his now infamous memo to Bush in which he promised, “I will be with you, whatever”.

My view has always been that Blair was seduced by the opportunity to play a world role in partnership with the USA, and so he allowed himself to be talked into invading Iraq. A country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and led by a man who was as hostile to the Bearded Ones as Western leaders. (And who understood far better what he was dealing with.)

Fundamentally, the problem may have been that Blair allowed it all to go to his head, he seemed to think that he too was a president, rather than a prime minister answerable to parliament. That he was able to get away with it exposed weaknesses in the UK system that seem to have been overlooked. What steps have been taken to ensure that no future prime minister can behave like a one-man government?

7/ The planned invasion then had to be justified. Which saw a year or more in which we heard one ludicrous claim after another telling us how dangerous Saddam Hussein was, and what a threat he was to the West. Why! he had missiles that could target British bathers on Cyprus beaches.

This is when we became familiar with the term Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), which it was claimed – by the US and UK – Saddam possessed, and was preparing to use. The problem with this assertion was that United Nations weapons inspectors that were in the country, and free to go wherever they wished, could find absolutely nothing to substantiate these claims. That was because the claims were bullshit, and those making the claims knew they were bullshit.

Bush, Blair and their underlings knew that Iraq had no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons but the pretence had to be maintained. In his State of the Union address on January 28th 2003 George Bush said, “If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.” Saddam Hussein was being told to get rid of weapons he didn’t possess otherwise his country would be invaded! Clearly the USA was going to invade Iraq, and sure enough, Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 19th 2003.

8/ The invasion itself went swimmingly, the Iraqi army was soon rolled up and the media showed us grateful Iraqis dancing in the streets and showering their liberators with gifts. British forces were given territory in the Shia heartlands of the south east to control, in and around the city of Basra, not far from Iran. Then it all started to go wrong.

The sudden and complete removal of Saddam’s army and police, coupled with the reluctance of the US and UK military to antagonise the locals, resulted in looting and more general criminality becoming widespread. The political situation deteriorated by the day as the Iranians encouraged the Shia majority to exercise its new-found power through its militias. While Saddam’s now dis-empowered and jobless Sunni supporters grew ever more bitter as they envisioned a Shia-run Iraq.

In the north, the Kurds effectively withdrew from the crumbling state and set up their own institutions.

The truth was that no one in the US-UK alliance really had a clue what might happen after Saddam was toppled. It was all wishful thinking premised on the aftermath of D-Day: Go in, kick out the bad guys, be welcomed as liberators, drink some booze and lay a few chicks, set out the rules for a pro-Western system of government, go home to ticker-tape welcome . . . more booze and chicks.

If only!

9/ What actually happened after the initial welcome was years of fighting between coalition forces and Shia militias or Sunni insurgents. The country fell apart. A major contribution to the upsurge in hostility to the occupying forces was the decline in public amenities, health care and other facilities, this being the inevitable result of the gratuitous destruction of infrastructure by the coalition at the start of the campaign, largely done for the entertainment of the television audience in the West.

Saddam Hussein was unquestionably a bastard, but he wasn’t particularly ideological, and he certainly wasn’t driven by religious zeal, nor was he especially greedy. He certainly liked power and used it as he thought necessary to hold together an artificial and fissiparous country bequeathed by the Sykes-Picot carve-up during WWI.

But as Iraqis were soon to lament, under Saddam they at least had electricity, and a working sewage system, the hospitals had drugs and doctors, there was public transport, kids went to school and on to university. Compared to the ‘liberation’ Iraq under Saddam Hussein began to look like a lost golden age.

10/ Democracy (of a sort) was installed . . . or another way of putting it would be that Shia sectarianism was empowered. For the Shia majority, with its (lavishly bearded) leaders controlled by Iran, now ruled the roost and were determined to make the Sunni – of whom Saddam was nominally one – pay for the years in which they, the Sunni, had ruled that same roost at the expense of Shia and Kurds.

The resentment felt by the Sunni resulted in attacks on the US military, and on Shia shrines and other targets. To cut a long story short, it was the treatment meted out to the Sunni by the USA and the Shia – who were backed, bizarrely, by both the USA and Iran – that created the conditions in which Sunni ISIS could establish itself and flourish.

And that’s where we are today, boys and girls.

CONCLUSION

With no clear plan beyond settling a family score by getting rid of Saddam Hussein, and grabbing Iraq’s oilfields and other assets for vice president Dick Cheney’s Halliburton and other US companies, George W Bush didn’t really know what he was doing. His ally, or perhaps his dupe, Tony Blair, deluded himself that this was some noble crusade against evil. Even today Blair argues that he did the right thing. One’s a duplicitous and devious idiot, the other’s a self-deluding zealot who, like so many who have done great wrong, now finds solace in religion.

They blundered in, blundered about for a few years, wrecking an entire country, strengthening Iran, causing the rise of ISIS, before blundering out, little wiser about the country they’d destroyed than when they invaded.

Add disastrous military escapades like Iraq and Afghanistan to globalisation and immigration and you explain the increasing alienation of the white working class in the USA and in post-industrial regions across Europe. Which in turn explains the popularity of Donald Trump (and Bernie Sanders), Brexit, Marine le Pen and a host of other examples showing growing public contempt for what had been the established political order.

President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair told us that by invading Iraq they were making the world a safer place. The world is now infinitely more dangerous, both from external foes and also from internal divisions due to the discrediting of the Anglo-Saxon, transatlantic political and economic model (the latter following the Crash of 2008).

When millions of voters are prepared to put their faith in Nigel Farage you know just how badly Bush and Blair fucked up. That is their legacy.

Jac o' the North

Tag: Marine le Pen

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Chilcot and Iraq, All You Really Need to Know