Home » Posts tagged 'england' (Page 2)

Tag Archives: england

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

The Unpleasant Truth About The 1941 Parachuting Of Rudolf Hess In England (II)

The Unpleasant Truth About The 1941 Parachuting Of Rudolf Hess In England (II)

Part I

The context

A little context is mandatory to perfectly define the message that Rudolf was carrying. The outstanding works of researchers such as Anthony Sutton and Charles Higham are critical in our understanding of the real historical context surrounding the creation of the Nazi war machine. When in 1933 Hitler accessed to the Chancellery in the Reichstag, Germany was in financial limbo. Worst, the nation was in the gutters of limbs. It owed tens of billions in reparations for WW1, and its inability to comply had provoked a gargantuan-scale inflation crisis on the mark in 1923 that cut the currency to 1/500 billionth of its original value. To make matters worse, the country suffered along everyone the world Crash of 1929. So how in the world was Germany able to eradicate unemployment and create the most formidable military machine the world had ever seen in just 6 years? Over achievement is under rated when it comes to explain the German Miracle of the ’30s.

The first tool that is required in our investigator’s toolbox is to admit the very documented fact that the Bank of England, controlled by the Rothschild family, had been involved in the financing of the Nazis. It had become a common procedure for the rich European banking family to fund enemies as well as allies, in order to make profits from both sides of wars since Napoleon. The self-proclaimed French Emperor of the early 19th century had been hired as a proxy by Rothschild who wanted to impose his private central banks in the conquered countries. So, the heirs of the Rothschild family saw in Hitler their next Napoleon, who would submit rival colonial empires like Belgium, the Netherlands and France, as well as destroying the mighty USSR, in order to singlehandedly take the reins of the New World Order, which is simply the economical and political ruling of the whole planet by a handful of bankers. Even though the New World Order sounds like a supercharged conspiracy theory, it’s an indisputable and quite simple concept.

Hitler

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

The Unpleasant Truth About The 1941 Parachuting Of Rudolf Hess In England (I)

The Unpleasant Truth About The 1941 Parachuting Of Rudolf Hess In England (I)

Adolf Hitler and Rudolf Hess around 1934

Adolf Hitler and Rudolf Hess around 1934

By 1941, Rudolf Hess had just been ranked by Hitler as the Number Three in the Third Reich hierarchy and bore the title of Deputy Fuhrer.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Else Canadians Should Be Sorry For — Besides Burning the White House

What Else Canadians Should Be Sorry For — Besides Burning the White House

Six-years after the British landing at Jamestown, with the settlers struggling to survive and hardly managing to get their own local genocide underway, these new Virginians hired mercenaries to attack Acadia and (fail to) drive the French out of what they considered their continent.

The colonies that would become the United States decided to take over Canada in 1690 (and failed, again).

They got the British to help them in 1711 (and failed, yet again).

General Braddock and Colonel Washington tried again in 1755 (and still failed, except in the ethnic cleansing perpetrated and the driving out of the Acadians and the Native Americans).

The British and U.S. attacked in 1758 and took away a Canadian fort, renamed it Pittsburgh, and eventually built a giant stadium across the river dedicated to the glorification of ketchup.

George Washington sent troops led by Benedict Arnold to attack Canada yet again in 1775.

An early draft of the U.S. Constitution provided for the inclusion of Canada, despite Canada’s lack of interest in being included.

Benjamin Franklin asked the British to hand Canada over during negotiations for the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Just imagine what that might have done for Canadian healthcare and gun laws! Or don’t imagine it. Britain did hand over Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana. (At least they know they’re free!)

In 1812 the U.S. proposed to march into Canada and be welcomed as liberators. They weren’t. But the Canadians didn’t burn the White House. That was done by British troops that included men recently escaped from U.S. slavery. Killing some of those escapees is celebrated in the U.S. National Anthem, as is the fact that during a battle in which people died, a flag survived.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Making Local Woods Work

The Forestry Commission estimates that 47% of England’s woodlands are unmanaged. If you like to think of woods as wild places and flinch at the idea of a tree being felled, then you might consider this a good thing. But woodlands, at least in this country, need management.

Whilst truly wild woodlands are ‘climax vegetation’ that has achieved a balance between death and renewal, these generally need to be at a scale much bigger than any of our remaining woodlands to thrive independently of humans.

Here in Britain, “the wildwood” has a central place in our culture and imaginations, but the reality is that active management has shaped our woodlands since the ice age, providing supplies of food, fuel and timber, and creating diverse habitats amongst the trees. Unmanaged woodland lacks diversity and can result in poor tree health and increase the spread of tree diseases.

Whilst most of that unmanaged woodland is in private ownership, the future management of our public forest estate also remains uncertain. Attempts in 2010 to sell off the national forest estate were abandoned in the face of a public outcry, but austerity has resulted in many local authority woodland teams being disbanded and the future for the management of the national public forest estate – at least in England – remains unclear.

It is in that gap between the market and the state that we find the commons and, increasingly, a diverse range of community businesses, co-operatives and other forms of social enterprise creating value and livelihoods from its management. So does social and community business have a role in reinvigorating our woods and forests and rebuilding our woodland culture?

In 2012, in the aftermath of the failed forestry sell off and in the wake of the Independent Panel on Forestry’s report, a number of organisations came together to discuss alternative approaches to the management of our woods and forests.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Will England Break-Up Not Just the United Kingdom

QUESTION: Hi Martin.

In your recent blog posts, you talk about the possible timing of the break up of Britain but you talk about that in terms of the regionalisation or break up of England only. Have you not said before that Scotland is likely to become independent sometime in the next few years? Perhaps you could explain how that possibility fits in this process?

Thanks

CGB

ANSWER: There are two expansions on the island of Britain. The more commonly known is the formation of the United Kington which took place in 1707 under Queen Ann. That saw Scotland under English Rule and the birth of the United Kingdom. However, before the reign of Eadgar (959-975 AD), England was divided into Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. It was Eadgar who instituted a uniform coinage throughout the land and a single government. While Eadgar set the pattern for the ‘reformed’ coinage of the later Anglo-Saxon and Norman period and standardized the use of the king’s portrait as in old Roman tradition, it was all about creating BRITAIN as a nation-state.

If we look back in time, we see that the first Anglo-Saxon kingdom to really become powerful was Mercia. It was the King of Mercia who was the one who actually resurrected the old Roman Empire’s monetary system for all of Europe since the French copied his idea. We see that King Offa of Mercia was the first king to put the portrait of himself and his wife on the coinage as was the tradition in the Roman Empire.

Here is the Roman Emperor Claudius who married Agrippina, Jr. in 49AD. You will find throughout the history of Roman coinage, the Roman family of the emperor was traditionally portrayed on the coinage. Constantine the Great even issued coins with the portrait of his mother.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Scarlet Fever Outbreak In England Leaves Researchers Confused: ‘We’re Concerned’

Scarlet Fever Outbreak In England Leaves Researchers Confused: ‘We’re Concerned’

scarletfever

Scarlet fever cases are now at 50-year-high sparking concerns for researchers, as they are baffled as to how “Victorian-era” diseases are making a comeback. The disease has been on the rise since 2014, and researchers are failing to find the cause.

Scarlet fever hit its highest level in England for 50 years, with more than 17,000 cases reported in 2016 according to research in the Lancet. The infection is most common in children under the age of 10 and although highly contagious (being spread easily with a cough) is easily cured with a round of antibiotics. But that, in and of itself, raises concerns of the disease becoming resistant to antibiotics, creating a global pandemic.

Doctors are urging the public to be aware of symptoms, which include a rosy rash, and seek help from their doctor. Data for 2017 suggests the rate of infection may be falling, but experts remain cautious, saying it is “too early to tell.” Normally, first world nations have a better chance of handling an outbreak such as this, but England is on the verge of losing control over this scarlet fever outbreak.

A joint investigation by public health authorities from across England and Wales found that the incidence of scarlet fever tripled between 2013 and 2014, rising from 4,700 cases to 15,637 cases. In 2016, there were 19,206 reported cases, the highest level since 1967. The majority of the outbreaks were in England.

“We are concerned – it’s quite a dramatic rise,” said Dr. Theresa Lamagni, head of streptococcal surveillance at Public Health England, who led the study. “We’ve always seen cases of scarlet fever – it’s just the scale in the past has been much lower than the last few years.” Dr. Lamagni described the soaring number of cases of scarlet fever as “baffling”, adding that no underlying causes had been identified. 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

England Inches Down the Road to Serfdom

England Inches Down the Road to Serfdom

Hayek’s whole purpose in writing this chapter, “The Totalitarians in Our Midst,” serves as a warning to his readers.

Hayek has spent the last few chapters of The Road to Serfdom explaining the roots and rise of totalitarian governments. In chapter twelve, Hayek highlighted prominent Marxist theorists who would later lay the roots for the German National Socialist party.

Hayek’s whole purpose in writing this chapter, “The Totalitarians in Our Midst,” serves as a warning to his readers. The mass death of WWII had devastated and shocked the world. But unless individuals were able to identify how totalitarianism had taken over Europe in the first place, they would be ill-prepared to prevent it from happening again.

It was for this reason that Hayek uses chapter thirteen to demonstrate to his readers that a similar perversion of truth was already occurring among England’s intellectual elite as had occurred in the leadup to the Third Reich.

Individualism in Danger

England, which, as explained in the last chapter, represented the origin of individualist thought, had steadily been heading down a similar road as Germany had in the decades prior to WWII. While it may have taken a different form, when looked at from the perspective of totalitarianism in all things economic, England, as it stood in 1944, had taken swift strides away from liberalism and instead found itself headed in the direction of complete central authority.

It is for this reason that Hayek’s writing sounds so urgent in this chapter. As fresh as WWII was in the minds of all people, Hayek is urging them to not become complacent. It was not enough to mourn the recent past; they needed to proceed vigilantly and look to the enemies in their own nations.

As Hayek writes:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Empty Countryside

THE EMPTY COUNTRYSIDE

I thought the sheep was dead. It was lying in the middle of a big grass field with its legs in the air. I wasn’t surprised; those fields are rented by a farmer who can’t afford to run his business in the way modern farming demands. He doesn’t own enough land to scale up his production by borrowing against its value. The result is not too many beasts on the farm,but too few: in this case six scraggy ewes roaming 15 acres. As I walked by, the dead one waved her legs. Alive then, but stuck on her back by her weight of wool. I trudged across to her, put my foot on her side and pushed her over away from me. She scrambled to her feet and ran off, fleece bouncing, bleating confusedly. If I hadn’t rescued her she probably would have died. No one would have noticed in time because no one passes this way.

For thousands of years, the English countryside has never been so empty of people and animals as it is now.

The part of West Dorset where I live was once a busy network of small farmsteads, most with fewer than 100 acres, keeping Red Devon cattle for meat and milk. Today, the old farm names on the Ordnance Survey map are a roll call of lost activity: Prime, Oselhay, Middlebrook, Taphouse, Lower Park, Purcombe, and Higher Sminhay. Their land has been sold and consolidated into bigger agricultural landholdings. Some of the farmhouses are second homes or holiday lets. Many more settlements have simply disappeared. The 1861 census lists Dodseye, Brickhouse, Poor House, Froghouse and Duckpool – all gone

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

UK’s European Future In Jeopardy: London Mayor Boris Johnson Will Campaign For Brexit

UK’s European Future In Jeopardy: London Mayor Boris Johnson Will Campaign For Brexit

Yesterday, when we summarized the statements by UK politicians regarding the June 23 EU referendum, we said the one most important opinion has yet to come: that of London mayor Boris Johnson’s whose “opinion may sway the vote one way or another in four months. As the Telegraph reproted that “David Cameron is mounting a last-ditch effort to woo Boris Johnson to back his campaign to stay in the European Union, by drawing up plans for a new constitutional settlement that puts the sovereignty of British institutions beyond doubt.”

As the Telegraph added, “sources close to Johnson said he remained “genuinely torn” and that he would “chew over” what the prime minister has to say when Cameron appears on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, before issuing some form of statement this evening. He will then spell out the reasons for his decision in his column for the Daily Telegraph on Monday.”

It appears that Cameron’s effort to “woo” Johnson has failed because moments ago BBC reported that “Boris Johnson is to campaign to leave the EU in the UK’s referendum, BBC understands.”

The Guardian has more:

Boris Johnson is to transform the terms of the EU referendum by announcing that he is to throw his weight behind the campaign to take Britain out of the EU, according to the BBC.

In the biggest boost to the Leave campaign so far, the London mayor is to announce that after much soul-searching he now believes the time has come for Britain to sever its EU membership.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We Know How This Ends, Part 2

We Know How This Ends, Part 2

In March 1969, while Buba was busy in the quicksand of its swaps and forward dollar interventions, Netherlands Bank (the Dutch central bank) had instructed commercial banks in Holland to pull back funds from the eurodollar market in order to bring up their liquidity positions which had dwindled dangerously during this increasing currency chaos.  At the start of April that year, the Swiss National Bank (Swiss central bank) was suddenly refusing its own banks dollar swaps in order that they would have to unwind foreign funds positions in the eurodollar market.  The Bank of Italy (the Italian central bank) had ordered some Italian banks to repatriate $800 million by the end of the second quarter of 1969.  It also raised the premium on forward lire at which it offered dollar swaps to 4% from 2%, discouraging Italian banks from engaging in covered eurodollar placements.

The “rising dollar” of 1969 had somehow become anathema to global banking liquidity even in local terms.

The FOMC, which had perhaps the best vantage point with which to view the unfolding events, documented the whole affair though stubbornly and maddeningly refusing to understand it all in greater context of radical paradigm banking and money alterations.  In other words, the FOMC meeting MOD’s for 1968 and 1969 give you an almost exact window into what was occurring as it occurred, but then, during the discussions that followed, degenerating into confusion and mystification as these economists struggled to only frame everything in their own traditional monetary understanding – a religious-like tendency that we can also appreciate very well at this moment.

At the April 1969 FOMC meeting, Charles A. Coombs, Special Manager of the System Open Market Account, reported that the bank liquidity issue then seemingly focused on Germany was indeed replicated in far more countries.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We Know How This Ends, Part 1

We Know How This Ends, Part 1

The finance ministers and representatives of central banks from the world’s ten largest “capitalist” economies gathered in Bonn, West Germany on November 20, 1968. The global financial system was then enthralled by a third major currency crisis of the past year or so and there was great angst and disagreement as to what to do about it. While sterling had become something of a recurring devaluation tendency and francs perpetually, it seemed, in disarray, this time it was the Deutsche mark that was the great object of conjecture and anger. What happened at that meeting, a discussion that lasted thirty-two hours, depends upon which source material you choose to dissect it. From the point of view of the Germans, it was a convivial exchange of ideas from among partners; the Americans and British, a sometimes testy and perhaps heated debate about clearly divergent merits; the French were just outraged.

The communique issued at the end of the “conference” only said, “The ministers and governors had a comprehensive and thorough exchange of views on the basic problems of balance-of-payments disequilibria and on the recent speculative capital movements.” In reality, none of them truly cared about the former except as may be controlled by the latter. These “speculative capital movements” became the target of focused energy which would not restore balance and stability but ultimately see the end of the global monetary system.

Some background is needed before jumping into West Germany’s financial energy. The gold exchange standard under the Bretton Woods framework had appeared to have lasted as far as this monetary conference, but it had ended in practicality long before. In the late 1950’s, central banks, the Federal Reserve primary among them, had rendered gold especially and increasingly irrelevant in settling the world’s trade finance.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Who May Use the King’s Forest? The Meaning of Magna Carta, Commons and Law in Our Time

Who May Use the King’s Forest? The Meaning of Magna Carta, Commons and Law in Our Time

The relationship between law and the commons is very much on my mind these days.  I recently posted a four-part serialization of my strategy memo, “Reinventing Law for the Commons.”  The following public talk, which I gave at the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Berlin on September 8, is a kind of companion piece.  The theme: this year’s celebration of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta and its significance for commoners today.

Thank you for inviting me to speak tonight about the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta and the significance of law for the commons.  It’s pretty amazing that anyone is still celebrating something that happened eight centuries ago!   Besides our memory of this event, I think it is so interesting what we have chosen to remember about this history, and what we have forgotten.

This anniversary is essentially about the signing of peace treaty on the fields of Runnymede, England, in 1215.  The treaty settled a bloody civil war between the much-despised King John and his rebellious barons eight centuries ago.  What was intended as an armistice was soon regarded as a larger canonical statement about the proper structure of governance.  Amidst a lot of archaic language about medieval ways of life, Magna Carta is now seen as a landmark statement about the limited powers of the sovereign, and the rights and liberties of ordinary people.

The King’s acceptance of Magna Carta after a long civil war seems unbelievably distant and almost forgettable.  How could it have anything to do with us moderns?  I think its durability and resonance have to do with our wariness about concentrated power, especially of the sovereign.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Happy Birthday Magna Carta

Happy Birthday Magna Carta

Monday, June 15, 2015, is the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. In his book, Magna Carta, J.C. Holt, professor of medieval history, University of Cambridge, notes that three of the chapters of this ancient document still stand on the English Stature Book and that so much of what survives of the Great Charter is “concerned with individual liberty,” which “is a reflexion of the quality of the original act of 1215.”

In the 17th century Sir Edward Coke used the Great Charter of the Liberties to establish the supremacy of Parliament, the representative of the people, as the origin of law.

A number of legal scholars have made the irrelevant point that the Magna Carter protected rights of the Church, nobles, and free men who were not enserfed, a small percentage of the population in the early 13th century. We hear the same about the US Constitution–it was something the rich did for themselves. I have no sympathy for debunking human achievements that, in the end, gave ordinary people liberty.

At Runnymede in 1215 no one but the armed barons had the power and audacity to make King John submit to law. The rule of law, not the rule of the sovereign or of the executive branch in Washington acceded to by a cowardly and corrupt Congress and Supreme Court, is a human achievement that grew out of the Magna Carta over the centuries, with ups and downs of course.

Blackstone’s Commentaries in 1759 fed into the American Revolution and gave us the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fracking set to be banned from 40% of England’s shale areas

Guardian analysis reveals new rules agreed by government will make huge swath of protected areas off limits for shale gas exploration

Fracking is set to be banned on two-fifths of the land in England being offered for shale gas exploration by the government, according to a Guardian analysis.

Such a wide-ranging ban would be a significant blow to the UK’s embryonic fracking industry, which David Cameron and George Osborne have enthusiastically backed.

There were setbacks last week after the Scottish government declared a moratorium and UK ministers were forced to accept a swath of new environmental protections proposed by Labour, leading some analysts to say the outlook for fracking was bleak

One of those new protections was to rule out fracking in national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty (AONBs), sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) andgroundwater source protection zones (SPZs).

Neither the government nor Labour have stated how much of the land available for future shale gas drilling – 60% of England – would be affected by the new bans. But a Guardian data analysis has revealed it is 39.7%, with large swaths of the south and south east off-limits, as well as the Yorkshire Dales and Peak district.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress