Sarkozy plays Chamberlain

On 5 August 2007 I warned, in this column, that Russia’s economy had recovered sufficiently to stop growling empty threats and start living up to the power crazy and murderous ambitions of Vladimir Putin and his KGB friends. I pointed out that Russia’s new wealth was largely built on huge gas reserves on which Europe had become all too reliant.

Now Russia has invaded a part of Georgia and openly threatens the rest of Georgia, the Ukraine and other former parts of the Soviet Union where democracy and alliances with the West flourish. It has failed to keep to a peace plan brokered by French President Sarkozy and has threatened to cut off gas supplies to European nations that criticise its refusal to withdraw from Georgian territory.

So what has been the European reaction to such open aggression? British Premier Gordon Brown suggested that Russia might have to be kicked out of the G8, while others proposed some form of economic sanctions. The EU had become used, over the last 15 years, to Russia’s economic weakness and the effect that it has had on its military clout. Their leaders clearly had ignored the signs that had caught my eye last year. It was always going to be a mistake for a disunited and Russian natural gas dependent EU to engage in sabre rattling before meeting to decide what to do.

In the end, Russia stood firm and the EU decided to send a delegation to Moscow to meekly discuss the issue. This was the worst possible result as the course has now been set. Appeasement in such circumstances only rewards the aggressor and the evil day has only been put off temporarily and will be all the worse when it comes as a result. History has taught us this. Can’t anyone recall Neville Chamberlain returning from a meeting with Adolph Hitler, waving a piece of paper and proclaiming “Peace in our time”? I wasn’t born then but grew up knowing the human cost of such folly.

As I have said before, Vladimir Putin is more dangerous than bin Laden and the actions of Sarkozy, Brown and Co just made him a lot more dangerous. We all might be about to take a trip down a 1930s memory lane. Of course, you might think that I have an unusually negative perspective on this – but if I have, then why were yet another three Russian journalists killed in the first week of September alone to add to the long list of those murdered who dared question the Putin government? You tell me.

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The world press reports on Gordon’s decline

How very depressing for the British Labour government that try as it might it hasn’t managed to stop the world press from finally sussing Britain’s social and economic decline and can’t resist covering the final months of Britain’s most morally bankrupt and incapable governments ever. Not even the outrageous attempt to lay claim to Team GB’s brilliant Olympic success, which was laughable given the fact that most of the funding came from John Major’s lottery and not that of the government, was able to stop the world press from joining British newspapers and reporting on the horrors of British drunkenness, knife crime, shootings, theft, broken families, absent fathers, 10-year-olds who get pregnant, benefit fraud, incompetent government and now stagflation and the worst economic outlook in 60 years.

Of course, there will always be the odd diehard self-delusionist who will never accept the facts as they are and will accuse me of “Goebbels-like distortion” for having reported this state of affairs to you for the last 14 months. If they are right then I must be flattered that my column and The Malta Independent on Sunday are so influential that the New York Times, the Herald Tribune, The Indian Times, Le Figaro, The Cape Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Times (London) and even The Times (Malta), to name but a few of hundreds of international newspapers, have all decided to join me in such atrocious distortion of the real truth. This is (according to the self-delusionists) that Britain is a green and pleasant land, run by an enlightened government that has produced a successful economy and created a crime-free society where the human rights of the old, sick and the poor are always respected.

How shameful of anyone to scupper this spin by inconveniently reporting the truth. What awful little 21st century Goebbels we all are! Nevertheless, and ignoring the fact that I might be branded a prince of darkness for telling the truth, here is a little update. Britain boasted over 35,000 attacks by a weapon last year on children alone. This means that more than 96 armed attacks occurred on children every day. This is the reported figure, the actual figure could even be double that. The source? Police figures not published (conveniently) but obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by The Sunday Telegraph. Fifty-four teenagers have died so far this year as a result of gun or knife attacks and nearly 50 per cent of these were in London alone. As a result, Britain continues, under the bankrupt leadership of its government, to top every despicable European social league table.

Meanwhile, the world press has been commenting on the fact that the British economy produced zero growth in the second quarter of 2008 and is doing much worse than the government predicted – just as I have been saying it would week after week after week. Now Mr Darling, the British Chancellor, agrees with my “Goebbels-like distortion” having admitted to The Guardian newspaper that the economic downturn is much worse than he thought, will get worse and will be the worst crisis in 60 years – a complete contradiction to the recent comments made by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Mr Darling wants all of us to believe that this is a global problem, which of course it is, and that Britain is no worse off than anyone else, which of course is rubbish. However you want to look at it, the global credit crunch is hitting the British economy harder than its European neighbours. This is because it was an over-heated economy built on irresponsible government and domestic consumer spend, brought about by a housing boom, and not built on the rock of genuine wealth creation. Such an economy is totally at risk when a credit squeeze stops property growth and thus slows consumer spend. I wrote about it in this column a year ago when the government was still spending like there was no tomorrow and telling voters that the British economy was in such good shape that it was considering calling an election.

On 1 September the final proof that I was right and that Mr Darling was wrong occurred when the euro hit a record high against sterling. On that day the euro was worth 81p – not that long ago it was worth 66p. This is a serious indication of how the rest of the world views the future prospects of the British economy under the control of the present lunatics.

But the self-delusionists insist that Maltese people couldn’t care less about what happens in Britain. Really? Then why has all of the above been reported time and again in the Maltese Independent and the Malta Times on their international news pages? Don’t they want to sell newspapers by producing news that no one in Malta wants to read? Of course they do and Maltese folk of any sense should be interested in what Britain and Italy do today, as Malta tends to do tomorrow and therefore there is a chance to learn some lessons from the British experience – like not electing a Labour government – and avoid such a sorry state of affairs. And there is real evidence that Malta is already importing some of Britain’s problems – such as drugs. A recent EU-wide survey reported that Maltese youngsters are already more prone than most across Europe to consider that cocaine is relatively easy to obtain and the use of it is unlikely to damage their health.

It gives me absolutely no pleasure to be proved right in all of this as the ghastly combination of economic ruin and social bankruptcy will deliver absolute misery to those who can least defend themselves – the old, the sick and the poor. Indeed, even this pathetic government now realises, if somewhat too late, that the failing economy will only further fuel the lawless attitude of large sections of a truly violent and increasingly uncivilised society. Leader of the Opposition David Cameron described Britain as broken and he was right.

If you love something enough you must be brave and honest enough to recognise the faults and the failings. It is only when you can do this you may start on the road to a cure.

And what should the self-delusionists do? For God’s sake rent An Inconvenient Truth and get your heads out of the sand – for you are not friends to anyone except being a comfort to the incompetent imbeciles who run the asylum known as Great Britain.

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Did you watch an American TV news channel while Hurricane Gustav was raging?

Did you switch on to CNN or another US TV news channel as the storms swept towards New Orleans?

I did and wasn’t a bit surprised to see a media obsessed with a hurricane that hadn’t killed anyone in the US at that time while giving absolutely minimal coverage to the Bihar disaster in India where three million lost their homes and several hundred their lives. Of course, we are all more concerned by what happens in our own backyard but the Americans are masters at it.

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Of course there are worse places

However awful the atrocious state of Britain might be as the morally bankrupt capital of Europe, it all pales into insignificance when compared to life in some other places around the world. In Mexico, over 3,000 drugs related murders have occurred so far this year with 137 in the last week of August alone. In Zimbabwe, the economic decline under evil and incompetent dictator Robert Mugabe has now reached such gigantic proportions that the World Food Agency predicts that will have to feed b over half the population, some five million people, for the foreseeable future. In Burma, the government has decided that all advertising posters of scantily clad women must go and be replaced in Rangoon by “culturally appropriate” pictures – no doubt of children they have murdered. In the Sudan, people die by the thousand each week, either butchered or just starved to death, in a war that has nothing to do with them, but creates absolute human misery nonetheless. In Iraq, while life is getting much better than it has been for many years, you might still get blown up while buying fruit in the local market. In India, the recent floods in Bihar have left three million people homeless with a million of them in serious danger, as further rain has hampered relief efforts and kept over a 1,000 villages under water. And naturally there is much misery elsewhere around the world. So while Britain is a miserable mess of its own privileged making, it isn’t the worst place in the world to be in just now – just in case anyone thought I was saying that it was.

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