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Sunday 30 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 17 of 17

Click image to enlargify
From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pg.40
If you would like to read the Diary of the War -- No. 44, then you may find it easier to download this image.




Jay's Final Thoughts:  Well, I hope that this What We Are Fighting For series, taken from Picture Post Magazine (13 July 1940) and penned by A.L. Lloyd, has given you some valuable insights into the past and our present-day.  It is some of the finest pro-British war propaganda I've ever read. It was a time when all of Britain was unified against the enemy that was fascist Socialism. It didn't matter which class you belonged to -- you were English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish, you were British.

No sane person ever wants to fight a war. Yet our history is littered with them.  The war we face today is not one that we would recognise if we compare it to the bloody battles of the World Wars last century, or to the wars against any nation.  But there is a war -- it's a war for our minds, our hearts, our identities, and our souls. This war, which we did not ask for, which we never wanted, is being waged by those in our government departments, in our academic institutions, in what we once would have considered to be "charitable" organisations.

It is not a war that is fought with guns and bullets, nor tanks, nor bombs. It's a war fought with pure hatred against ordinary, average people who do not live up to the expectations of our "masters."  They claim they want to save us all from ourselves, but we did not ask to be saved. They claim that they are denormalising us out of human compassion, because they love us, but we did not ask for their help nor their embrace. They conspire to turn our children into activists, not-so-different than the Youth Programmes of 1930s Germany; they conspire to turn our young adults in colleges and universities into propaganda machines, to brainwash them into believing the gospel that "you are free to do what you're told and only what you're told," to make these students churn out endless studies and surveys designed to inflame public opinion to exploit your natural fear of death. It is a war of misinformation and deception, and the mainstream press has aided and abetted the socialists at almost every turn. Bullets, guns, tanks and bombs have no effect on written text, nor upon ideas, so this war is fought with our words and our ideas on a digital battleground. For the time being ....

The war is here, right now.

You do not have to fight -- you can let the Socialists win and destroy our way of life, our communities, our pubs and clubs, our businesses, our families and friends.  You can run away, you can hide, and the Socialists will find you wherever you go and force your compliance to their ideology.

Or you can join the fight and help put an end to the misery and hate that Public Health and its shameful sister organisations, which I sometimes call The New Inquisition, are inflicting upon all of us in these dire, dark days in Britain, in Europe and all over the world.  You can write words, or you can speak out against the tyranny we face each day. The battle will be different for each one of you. Find your place. This is your call to arms. The time is now.

True freedom, true liberty is out there -- a shining beacon of glorious bright light that all of us mortals can see, even with our eyes closed.  We dream of it every night, whether we are aware of it or not. Freedom and liberty for all are the true ideals for all good people of the world -- we strive for it with every intake of breath into our lungs, in almost everything we do. We must not let Socialism extinguish our dreams, our lighted beacon of hope.

Liberty is worth fighting for.  Freedom is worth sacrifice.

We stand united, or we fall united. There can be no other way.

RESIST.

RESIST Socialism - RESIST Tyranny
RESIST Socialism - RESIST Tyranny


Saturday 29 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 16 of 17

Click image to enlargify
From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 38-39
The German mother who still wants to live her own life and look after her own home, has a Block Warden to supervise what friends she meets, what hobbies she has, what radio stations she listens to. Her children are compulsorily enrolled in the Hitler Youth, alienated from her, even incited against her. Her grown-up sons and daughters are enlisted into the army or in various labour camps. As one German mother has remarked: "As long as I've got my baby in the pram, he belongs to me -- but not much longer."

This, then, is something of what Nazi means to the ordinary men and women of Germany. Here, quite deliberately, we have not dealt with those well-known and sensational aspects of German life -- the role of the Gestapo, the position of the Jews, the persecution of the intellectuals. Nor have we touched upon the the opposition to National Socialism. Here we have been concerned with the ordinary Little Man and his Wife, with people economically too hard-pressed to understand clearly what was happening, who gave freely of their enthusiasm and their ideals, and who, in return, had seen the country brought to a state of slavery and the world plunged into war.
-- A.L Lloyd



Jay's thoughts:  What you have just have just read over the previous sixteen posts is a masterpiece of pro-British / anti-Nazi propaganda. You would be wise to remember some of it. To use it against Public Health. To be inspired by it. To take action. To do anything but except the status quo that is modern-day Britain in the thrall of living forever if only you don't smoke, or drink, or eat the wrong foods.

And while the comparisons between Nazi Germany of the 1930s and Britain of the 2010s are sometimes indirect and tenuous, we must admit that there are far too many striking similarities to present-day Britain and the threat of Nazi socialist rule to be ignored.

Have no illusions that the people who want to save you from yourself are little different than the Führers of Nazi Germany. The socialists all had a dream back then, as do those in Public Health now.  It's not the dream that matters, however ... it's the lies, propaganda, and more important the acts (or inaction) of people to achieve those dreams that matter. Are we willing to accept that some members of society are better people simply for whether they don't smoke or don't drink or don't eat too much?  Are we truly ready to say that smokers are a such a burden on society that we should denormalise them and isolate them from their friends and family?

The better questions may be:

"Who are we?"

"Are we Nazi Germany?"

"Or are we truly a tolerant Britain, a  country of the greenest pastures, of the most beautiful cities, a place where each person can choose his or her own life, as each sees fit for themselves?"

"Does the dream of Public Health outweigh the hopes and aspirations of all Britons -- of all Americans -- or all Australians -- of all people all over the world?"

What are your answers to those questions? What questions of your own do you have? What kind of world do you wish to live in?

I know what world I want to live in. It's not the world we see today through the rose-tinted lenses of Public Health, the Tobacco Control Industry, the Alcohol Prohibitionists and the Food Snobs.

Friday 28 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 15 of 17

Click image to enlargify

To view the original images, see the below photo album.



Jay's thoughts: Spend a bit of time with these images. How far removed are these from today's society, when rags like the Daily Mail print photographs and exposés of nothing more than celebrities having a cigarette ... outside!  Smokers, regardless of class, are often treated like the poor Jews in the photographs above. We're sub-human outcasts of a socialist society in modern Britain. Is this really a free and liberal Britain (or America, or Australia)? Do we smokers really deserve this scorn and hatred that Public Health has inflicted upon us?  I say, "No!"

People always need somebody to hate, somebody to fight against. It's a real pity that Public Health has pitted our next-door neighbours against us. So try to see the acts of Public Health for what they are. It's not about health. It's about control. It's about conformity to an evil and overbearing socialist ideal.  It's about forcing everybody to live under one set of hateful rules, and those who fail the litmus test of conformity are doomed to carry placards that read:  "I'm overweight -- I will not speak out against Public Health" or "I smoke, and I kill babies for fun!" That is what we're moving towards.

That is what we're up against right now.

Is it right? Should this be happening?

I don't think it is right at all -- but never mind me, what do you think?

Thursday 27 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 14 of 17

Click image to enlargify
From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 34-35
For the original images, see the below photo album;



Jay's thoughts:   Not a lot to say, except for this:  Next time you are forced to stand outside of a pub or your office to smoke, think about these images as people walk past you.  Brought down to brass tacks, there isn't much difference between a religious choice or upbringing, and a lifestyle choice. The Nazis were masters of "denormalisation." If you didn't fit into the current construct of their idealised society, then they terrorised you, put you on public display for the people to mock and laugh at you, took everything you owned and separated you from friends and family, interred you at concentration camps, and having little use for your ragged, worn-out body, summarily executed you.  How is this any different from how smokers are currently being treated right now? Or how we see public health and others treating people who drink or eat too much? I truly fail to see much difference here -- of course, we're not at the summarily executed stage ... yet.

Bonus Comic:

Send Them To The Gas Chambers - The Tobacco Control Industry's Wet Dream
Click image to enlargify

Wednesday 26 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 13 of 17

What We Are Fighting For - England: Where each one can work out his and her own life
Click image to enlargify
From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 24-25
After the last war, the Baltic States, and even the backward Balkans, broke up their large, old feudal estates and came into line with the modern world. Germany, under the influence of her Junker landlords and generals, turned her agricultural culture into an armament industry. To do so, she kept the old feudal system alive, as did Spain, Italy and Hungary, all countries most favourable to Fascist dictatorship.

So far we have been dealing with the Man-in-the-street, with Herr Schmidt. What about his wife? What is Frau Schimdt's position in the National Socialist Reich?

It is certain that women did much to put Hitler into office. It seems hard to believe that the Führer, as you and I know him, should have been put across as a sex-appeal figure. But this was done, and done brilliantly. Provincial stationers' shops still bristle with touched-up, coloured postcards representing the Führer in the most heartbreaking, sentimental surroundings: the lonely ascetic of the mountain tops, patting a little girl on the head in a field of cornflowers; the wifeless knight in shining armour -- yes, in armour, if you please -- with the wind blowing his charger's mane, his swastika pennant, his romantic lock of hair. No wonder that in the early days of the regime, the Nazi press reported that shawls, pullovers, mittens and gloves, knitted by adoring women for Hitler's birthday, came in their hundreds of thousands. And what had the Führer to offer these women?

First of all, he promised them a husband and children -- a powerful bait, since there was a surplus of over two million women in Germany. He promised home life, or, if women had to work, he promised work that was womanly in nature. The presence of millions of smartly uniformed men in the S.A. and S.S. added to the rosy picture.

"Give back to the women the sphere that is their right." "The woman's place is in the home." These were the two great Nazi slogans to hide the fact that women were being ruthlessly robbed of political, economic and social equality. No woman can any longer sit in the Reichstag. Nor on County or Borough Councils, nor may she hold a Government post. Even in the Nazi women's organisations, almost all the leaders are men.

And what happened to the bright promises to protect women from the hurly-burly of business life, to provide them with husband, hearth and home? This. Under pressure of the drive for war and finding themselves short of labour, the Nazis began to force women back into industry as hard as they could go. In 1933, German female employment amounted to 4.5 millions. In January, 1939, according to insurance statistics, 7.3 million women were employed in Germany. In the Frankfurter Zeitung (Feb. 26, 1939), Dr. Syrup, chief of the Nazi Labour Exchange, wrote: "Since I can see no further possibility of intensifying male labour, we have no choice but to exploit and rationalise female labour to the very limit."

It must be remembered that these women -- many of the employed in the heavy industries, and even in the mines -- are working at a wage scales far below even the poor wages of male workers in the Reich. In the Rhineland metal factories it is reckoned that an adult woman's average wage is 43 pfennigs an hour -- just over 24s. for a seven-day week, less the heavy deductions which all German workers must pay. One wonders how long the sex appeal of Sir Galahad Hitler of the postcards can stand up to these hard facts, which do but skim the surface of the position of German women, and do not even take into account the obvious strain which the housewife has sustained for years, the strain of making both ends meet on an impossible budget, of scheming to dish up interesting meals out of ersatz food, potatoes and turnips, and of the constant interference of authorities in domestic life.

(continued on WWAFF post 16 -- yes, post 16.)



Jay's thoughts:  Sexism. In the 1940s. I'm wont to go there, if I'm honest. Because I know that there have always been women that wanted to work in whatever industry or business, and women who wanted to be housewives and take care of families. Neither is wrong; both are correct.  It's an entirely different issue when one thing is promised to you by a government, and you expect a fulfilment of that promise.

But if I had to make a point -- and I do -- then it would be that those in tobacco control and public health (and even some MPs) believe that women are weak, are somehow inferior and more susceptible to dangerous logos and trade marks on products than, say, men.  This is of course complete bollocks, but it plays up to the old chivalrous attitudes of yore, a time when people believed that women were incapable of even considering the issues of the day, else those hapless women would develop cranial ridges due to the expansion of their brains.

The truth is that women are equal in intelligence to men (I would lean towards more intelligent than men most days). Women are not more likely to be tempted by a trade mark than a man is. When people suggest such things, I bristle at that the thought of it.  Yet tobacco controllers hate the idea that women smoke -- and they believe, falsely, that the only reason women do smoke is because tobacco companies exist. This is asinine reasoning, of course. Women smoke for the same reasons that men smoke -- because they like smoking, because they get pleasure from smoking, because they enjoy smoking. To suggest otherwise is to say that somehow women are an inferior species, less able than men to determine for themselves the risks they take on for themselves.  Tobacco control and public health nutjobs believe that women (and your children) are stupid, incapable of choosing whether to smoke based on nothing more than a fancy cigarette packet design.

And isn't that precisely the attitude of the Nazis in 1930s Germany?  Women were chattel. Unthinking, breeding machines.  And that's how public health and tobacco control views women today. The evidence is in everything they write and tweet about how a packet is "targeting women."   So what if it a packet is?  Are women so stupid and gullible that they cannot see a trade mark and logo for what they are?

I think not. But then I don't work in tobacco control.

Tuesday 25 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 12 of 17

What We Are Fighting For - Totalitarianism vs Democracy
Click image to enlargify
From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 24-25
In the cities, the impoverished workers were voting Communist. In the country they voted for Nazi. They felt it was all they could vote for. And vote was all they could do. And the Nazis came in.

They gave the peasantry a new name -- "the aristocracy of blood and soil." They broke up their unions and gave them a Nazi organisation instead -- The Reich Food Board. They gave them a new law - the Erbhof law.

Men with spectacles and suitcases came out to see the farmers. They said: "Prove your pure Ayran descent back to 1800, prove you are a good Nazi, and we'll make you a Erbhofbauer, an aristocrat of the soil. We'll have your farm entailed for you, it can't be sold or mortgaged. We'll get you special privileges. It's the same as if you were a count or a prince," they said. "It's a great thing to be an Erbhofbauer, an aristocrat of the soil," they said. "Dr. Ley is an Erbhofbauer, and Julius Streicher. And so is Dr. Goebbels." Dr. Goebbels, who couldn't even weed a front-garden, let alone plough a field.

Naturally, if proof of breeding and opinion is not forthcoming, that is too bad, as the two million small farmers who were unable to to claim this "honour" have discovered. For, deprived of the paltry privileges imparted by the Erbhof Law, they are completely under the heel of the Reich Food Board, a gigantic bureaucratic growth which polices the peasant at every turn.

Darré, Minister of Food, Minister of Agriculture and Führer of Farming, works hand in hand with Himmler and the Gestapo to see that the small farmer toes the line.

Each village has its overseer, each village has its spies. The Reich Food Board is constantly inquiring about the state of crops or livestock, constantly checking up on harvests and deliveries, constantly regulating prices, forbidding purchases and sales, commandeering foodstuffs in the name of this or that. No longer may the farmer sell his eggs, his milk, direct to the customer in town, as he always has done. Now he must take it to the Reich Food Board, which pays him a cut-price rate and fixes its own retail price at a handsome margin of profit. Just before the war, the Reich Food Board in some areas was buying milk from the farmer for 11 to 13 pfennigs a litre and selling it in tow for 25 to 30 pfennigs.

Small wonder that the disappointment and discontent of the peasantry is growing. Small wonder that in "Der Bundschuh," the illegal peasant paper which has circulated in Southern Germany since 1938, a writer remarks: "Our Brown Rulers are guilty. They want everything for themselves. The milk--give it! Eggs--hand them over! Grain--deliver it! The cattle, the land, the children, the farm--they want more and more from us. They want it all!"

So splendid farming talent is misdirected and abused. So the small farmers themselves must pay for their masters' attempts at world domination.

(continued on WWAFF post 13)



Jay's thoughts:  These days the EU decides for Britons which land can be ploughed and seeded and which lands must remain fallow.  EU and British laws dictate what farmers can grow (GM versus non-GM), where they can sell their produce, whom they can sell it to, and so on.  We're not quite at the Nazi Germany stage of total control of farms, but we're not so far removed from it.  A lot has changed in Britain since 1940. We've had remarkable advances in food safety. Yet we've seen the small farmer squeezed out of business -- not just from industrial farming businesses, but by excessive and unnecessary legislation.

In any case, the above should be treated as a cautionary tale of what is to come when Public Health finally gets its filthy mitts on the farming industry.  Right now they're focused on "Big Food" and pretending they're looking out for the small farmers. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If Public Health manages to overpower the Big Food industries by way of treating them just like tobacco companies, and if the Big Food corporations submit to the whims of Public Health, it could lead to Public Health in total control of our food supply.

And really, do you want Public Health telling you what you can eat, what farmers are allowed to grow?  No, you probably don't. I know that I don't.  So again, I ask you, are you really in control of your own businesses and lives, or are the unelected EU technocrats and sympathetic UK politicians in control of you?

Bonus comic:

2012 FCTC Convention in Seoul, Korea

(kind of reminds me of this image, and this image, from my Black Seoul Days post last year)

Monday 24 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 11 of 17

What We Are Fighting For - The British Way of Life vs The Snitch/Socialist Way of Life
Click image to enlargify
From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 28-29
[...] And the fact remains that the entire working population, working harder than ever, is seeing its living standards become increasingly lower, despite Germany's gains in territory and wealth.

So that is what it means in concrete terms to be a working man under Nazi rule. But then Hitler and his fellows never pretended among themselves to have anything but contempt for the working masses. Their outlook, their ideals, were always said to be more sympathetic to the middle-class, especially to those small craftsmen and shopkeepers from whom they derived their greatest numerical support during the fourteen years' struggle for power.  It is therefore particularly interesting to observe what is happening to these "lower middle" classes.

So much was promised. The craftsman was to be raised on a pedestal of honour such as he had never occupied since the Middle Ages. The small shopkeeper, backbone of honest German trade, was to be freed from the unfair competition of department stores and monopolies. But what happened? AS we have seen, the turnover of consumer goods was limited in favour of armaments. "Guns not butter," said Goering. Oil not oranges. Steel not stockings. But the small shopkeeper doesn't sell howitzers or fuel oil or iron ore. With workers' wages low as the floor, with rations cut to the bone, it is small wonder that, by latest statistics, out of the four hundred thousand owners of provision stores, more than half (246,787) are so poor as to be exempt from Income Tax, and only about a quarter of the total (110,565) net an annual income of more than 3,000 marks -- £150 at par.

Small wonder, too, that, particularly since the war, in some towns whole streets of derelict shops are to be seen, the windows boarded, the mice scampering among the empty sample cartons on the dusty shelves.

So while the great smelting and refining plants of the Ruhr and the Rhineland pour their smoke into the air by day and by night, while labourers in the metal trades are working as never before, foodstuffs are scarce and clothing is scarce, and the unemployed bakers and drapers' assistants are going to school to learn to be machinists, making guns and tanks and bomb casings that nobody can eat or wear.

The following report from Munich will illustrates the craftsman's position: "Independent craftsmen who do not happen to have taken their master's degree are now required to pass the examination within a few months. If not, they may shut up shop and work in an armament factory. The fee to be paid for the examination is 200 marks, which must be paid all at once." This, of course, few independent craftsmen are able to do.

Quite apart from the impoverishment and regimentation of shopkeepers and craftsmen, black-coated workers by the thousands have also been ruined by topsy-turvy Nazi economics, and forced into factories or road-making or other labouring work. Recently, the B.B.C. broadcast as letter from a highly qualified office-worker, a "delicate frail little woman of about 45." It is well worth quoting here: --

"I have been on the sick-list for ten days because I have an infection of the quick of the finger-nails. Apart from this I do three days compulsory work at digging. As a result of my ailment I am exempt from this, but I shall have to start again directly I am off the sick-list. At first I was to have gone to the labour camp for Forestry Workers, but the doctor declared me unsuited for this. I think I would rather do this work than the sort of washing-up I have to do. My work at the camp could hardly be heavier than digging, and if I can do this, eight hours, three times a week, I ought to be able to stand forestry work. Forestry work is at least paid for, whereas I only get 40 pfennigs a day -- that's only a few pence -- for digging. I only get three marks (say 3s.) benefit a week and that only for a period of 20 weeks. After that I shall have to apply for state relief."

Probably the section of the German people most deeply disappointed in Hitler's achievements is the peasantry. Bismarck and the Kaiser aimed at making Germany self-supporting. Grain was the great thing, they said. For fifty years the rulers of Germany, like the generals in its army, have been drawn from the Junkers, the big landowners in the east. The Junkers, with their large estates, are the chief growers of German grain. Their hand was heavy on the peasant's throat. The peasant thought Hitler would alter all this. But nothing has changed. Hitler, like Bismarck and the Kaiser, aims at world domination. Hitler wants self-sufficiency, too. And, Hitler also thinks self-sufficiency means grain. Smallholdings are not suitable for grain. They lend themselves better to dairy-farming and the like. So the big estates remain. The big land owners remain, the Junkers, with their hands on the peasant's throat.

During the slump of 1930, the peasants lived on potatoes and skimmed milk. They fed their children on famine rations out of the fields. It was the same everywhere; in the Rhineland as in Silesia, in East Prussia as in Schleswig-Holstein.

(continued on WWAFF post 12)



Jay's thoughts:  The references to the middle and the lower-middle classes are important. Control them, you control a country. So most propaganda is directed at the middle classes, including the pro-British propaganda in this magazine -- because that's what you're reading up there. Propaganda -- and particularly effective propaganda. If you can sway the middle classes to your belief system, you've won the battles for hearts and minds. Once held, it is then easy for governments to systematically strip away any other beliefs, replacing them with socialist mantras of hatred against some other group or cause.

So-called pressure charities of tobacco control, alcohol control and public health nutjob academic socialists aided by the mainstream press have succeeded marvellously at convincing the middle classes that "Something Must Be Done!"  Well, it's always been the press's job to disseminate the propaganda of the day.  And academics have always been at the forefront of any social ideology, good or bad.  But charities are another matter entirely.

The charities of today, pressure or otherwise, act more like corporations with their stakeholders and boards of directors. It's not only about money.  They seek to influence political decisions rather than helping any person or group of people.  When you donate to, say, Cancer Research UK, don't you expect your money to go towards finding a cure for cancer?  You certainly don't expect it to be spent on a wiki at the University of Bath -- a site run by a Dutch woman whose only life experience is being anti-business activist who wrote a couple of anti-big corporation books you've never read, nor will you ever read. Nevertheless, some of your money has been siphoned off to the University of Bath's Tobacco Control Research Group to denounce, among others, bloggers and libertarians, none of whom are the cause for cancer, no matter how much tobacco control would have you believe it to be true.

And what do we make of pressure organisations that use children to do its dirty work? I speak of D-MYST, which is funded by Liverpool council and run by a marketing firm on the council's behalf. They call it "arm's length" by the way.  Although funded by the local government, the council pretends it has no say in what happens. I, for one, don't believe it. I'm certain that one council member is heavily involved with the D-MYST group.

So while we can trace the roots of socialism much farther back than even 1930s Germany, the brand of public health socialism we see today is closer to activism we saw in American and British colleges and universities in 1960s / early 70s during the Vietnam war.  It wouldn't be fair to blame the Baby Boomers for all of it, though, as much as I would like to do so. Just most of it.

Bonus comic:

The Family Life of Modern-Day Britain : Son Denounces and Turns In Father for Smoking.
"The duty of the child is first to the State and second to the parents," declared an anti-smoking group, speaking to a Guardian reporter. Thousands of children have acted on that declaration. Thousands have denounced their parents to anti-smoker politicians or anti-smoker charities.

Utah: No Smoking Allowed, Nor Dogs, Nor Double Measures

The greatest confidence trick Public Health has ever pulled must be redefining the concepts of "public" versus "private."  Business owners do not own their property -- the [Nanny] State owns them.  There is a massive difference between "protecting" people from, say, eating at a rat-infested greasy spoon diner and "protecting" people from their own choices.  But Public Health and the State see no difference between the two.  In order  to implement "public" smoking bans, the definitions for what are private and public had to be redefined.  Without this con-trick in place, smoking bans could not have succeeded. With this great con-trick firmly rooted in the consciousness of society, backed up by a tangled web of legalese and fines, the State can force private businesses to do whatever the State wants.

We're in Utah this morning, and leaving in about an hour or so.  We've spent two days here. The first day we holed up in Kanab, which is central to a host of amazing sights and natural wonders like Bryce Canyon and Lake Powell.  The landscape here is stunning and we are not sorry for spending two days to see it all.  But for all its splendour, Utah has serious issues with free choice.

You could blame it on the Mormons, who aren't allowed to smoke, nor drink alcohol or coffee, but that blame would be somewhat misplaced. Because I spent some time here years and years ago, and back then you could smoke in restaurants and other places.  I remember several very late nights drinking coffee and smoking in a restaurant that stays open for 24 hours.  So at one time, Utah was much more liberal and accepting of smokers, despite it's predominantly Mormon population and beliefs.

All that has changed since Public Health's New Inquisition took hold in the past decade or more.  Now in Utah, thanks to the Utah Indoor Clean Air Act, it's illegal to smoke inside "public" places -- it's even illegal to smoke within 25 feet of a "public" building's entrance, although the latter is widely ignored.  Break the law and you're liable to pay hefty fines. I am hardly surprised. Here's a slightly-fuzzy-but-still-legible photo I took of a notice posted on the door of a souvenir shop in Kanab.


If there was ever a place where an oppressive anti-smoking law wasn't needed, it's Utah. Because even 20 years ago or more, most places were non-smoking, because most businesses owners here  are Mormons and don't smoke, and the majority of smokers will generally abide by no smoking notices posted by business owners. But that's how Public Health rolls. This is denormalisation, and it must be applied everywhere, under the threat of extortionate fines.

Strange that dogs and other pets are not allowed in a souvenir shop, which did not serve food, due to a state law.  It would be fine if the owner decided she did not want animals in her shop.  But the State decided that for her, and so unless you're blind and need a guide dog, your dog is unwelcome. That said, I saw a dog hanging out inside a coffee shop ... nobody cared.

As for booze, well the beer here is limited to a maximum alcohol content of 3.2%.  This restriction is definitely a product of the religious beliefs here. Public Health should rejoice and praise the Lord, however, since most beers in America tend to fall in the 4% to 6% range, which means Utahns are 0.8% to 2.8% less likely to get some kind of alcohol-induced cancer or liver disease.  I suppose.

You can get full-strength spirits, but there appears to be a twist. You can't order a double gin and tonic. You can get one single measure per person per order.  So no double gin and tonics for Mrs Tyranny, but we worked around that by ordering a "primary" for each of us. Nevertheless, a customer in the restaurant we were at said that he thought the law had been changed to allow double measures and that the restaurant was probably unaware of it.  Regardless, it is or was a dumb ass law.

Let people decided for themselves. Let business owners decide how to run their businesses. It doesn't matter where in the world this should be.  If we want to live in a free society -- and clearly Public Health does not like freedom and liberty and individual responsibility -- then our governments need to stop passing laws that restrict our free choices.

Sunday 23 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 10 of 17

What We Are Fighting For - Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering with their toys
Click image to enlargify
From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 24-25
What Dr. Ley describes as socialism, the wary German worker realises is nothing less than an unscrupulous employers' paradise -- a vast national Company Union.

"Everyone must bear sacrifices," has long been the Nazi cry. And there, too, it is claimed that sacrifices are borne equally. But their own official figures contradict this. For under Nazi rule, down to November, 1939, while the total wages of workers has risen by 65 per cent, the number of workers has also sharply risen. Which means, of course, that the average is reduced. And over the same period a decreasing number of capitalists received one hundred and eighty per cent more profits. And it must remembered that more than half he national taxation falls on the workers, whose pay envelopes each week are docked for such things as social insurance, winter relief, Strength through Joy, and the hire purchase swindle of the non-existent "German People's Car."

One German factory hand, working top-speed on armaments, speaks for all when he reports from the Rhineland: "A year and a half ago I was getting an hourly rate of 80 pfennigs. Now they pay 62 pfennigs. Then I earned 40 marks a week, now I earn 24. In the so-called bad old times before Hitler I used to get a mark or more per hour. Now it comes to about 30 marks a week of which 6 have to go in compulsory contributions."

Working on the official figures, margarine costs the ordinary German worker three hours wages. A pound of butter six hours. A ready-made suit of clothes three months. Unemployment may, perhaps, have been "liquidated." But only by building up the armament industries at enormous pace and flooding them with workers paid wages not much higher than the eighteen mark fifty dole of pre-Hitler days -- not to mention the hundreds of thousands in gaols and camps, and the further hundreds of thousands guarding and ruling them; and the enormous party bureaucracy with its millions of State-supported servants. [...]

(continued on WWAFF post 11)



Jay's thoughts:  Well, this all sounds frighteningly familiar to me. How many of us have seen our wages decline over the past few years?  We still have unemployment problems, but those who are working are paying ever more in taxes, insurances and VAT each year.  Then we are relentlessly bombarded with calls for asinine "social welfare" programmes like minimum unit pricing for alcohol and beer.  Most of us are struggling to get by as it is.

We can thank the previous Labour government for really ballsing up just about everything. How many civil service jobs did Labour create? Millions? Keep in mind, civil servants are paid for with the taxes the government takes from the private sector -- civil servants create no wealth. They simply redistribute the wealth of others. Civil servants do not pay income taxes. They simply have the requisite amount of taxpayer-received funds deducted from their payroll, in order to give the appearance of being a taxpayer. They aren't though. (This does not necessarily mean that civil servants are bad people. Most of them are ordinary folk just trying to get by like the rest of us. Some of them, however, are certainly duplicitous and evil.)

Still, the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition government is no better -- indeed, one might say that it's just more of the same we got from Labour.  I see very little difference between Conservatives and Labour and Lib Dems.  They all want to "nudge" us this way, control us that way, make us plebs live our lives in whatever manner they deem necessary. There is no room for negotiation. You must do as they tell you. You are Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

And most -- but not all -- of this is happening now because the EU wants this to happen.  Our governments have been stripped of their rightful duties to the people of Britain, usurped in tiny degrees by unelected technocrats in Brussels.  We were sold a promise of free trade amongst all EU nations who joined the collective.  What we got instead was hundreds of thousands of new laws that we must follow, whether they are good or bad, whether we are even aware of their existence, whether we want them or do not.  What we got was a dictatorship pretending to a democracy.

Bonus comic:

Inside the Department of Health's Anti-Smoker War Room
Click image to enlargify

Saturday 22 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 9 of 17

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From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 24-25
SOMETHING OUR FATHERS FOUGHT FOR ALL THROUGH THE CENTURIES: SOMETHING WE MUST FIGHT FOR TO-DAY

The land of Britain has been fought for many times. Our fathers of a thousand years ago fought to keep off the Danes. Our fathers of a hundred years ago fought to keep off the French. Now we fight to keep off the Germans. We fight so that there shall not be a Gauleiter of Kent or Cumberland, or Lincoln. So that there shall be no branch of the Gestapo in Harlech or Dundee.

* * *

Jay's thoughts:  Our enemies of today are of a similar ilk to those of the 1940s. But our enemies come from many different nations, including our own.  It's difficult to fight against an enemy that has no borders, no national identity.  It is difficult to fight against our own people -- people who seem like ordinary folk and believe they are in the right, yet are doing incredible damage to the fabric that holds our society together.  But we must fight, like our forefathers fought against the the Nordic invaders, and the French, and the Germans. We must hold our enemies at bay. We must not lose. Our freedom and liberties are at stake. Our very lives and families are at risk.

Lessons Learnt in Las Vegas

So, I'm in Vegas.  I'm not the gambling type, nor is Mrs Tyranny.  We played some slots, came out ahead, but really... gambling doesn't do it for us.  That, and we have no idea how most of the games work -- the intricacies, the hand gestures, what to say, etc.  We're genuinely clueless about gambling.  Intrigued, but clueless. We could have used an old salt for a guide to Vegas.

But we learnt something.  Vegas casinos have the most amazing smoke extractors. You can be standing right next to somebody who is smoking and not smell a thing. The smoke dissipates immediately. There is no haze in the air; there is no lingering smell of smoke -- the air quality of the casino floors is the exact same as anywhere else in the hotels where smoking isn't allowed.  Ditto for our room, which is a smoking room. It doesn't smell at all of smoke, and we've smoked plenty in this sin bin.

It makes you wonder why this couldn't be replicated anywhere in Britain. Well, I don't wonder. I know why this hasn't happened in Britain.  It's because the anti-smokers don't want you to smoke anywhere. The anti-smokers hate smokers first and foremost -- it's never been about the health of non-smokers, because if it were, then Vegas would stand out as a prime example of smoke reduction. The technology to simply eradicate all smoke from the air clearly exists, evidently. And yet in England, Scotland and Wales, businesses owners are not allowed to have extractors nor allowed to let their customers smoke (legally) because Public Health said so, convinced our idiot politicians that people were dying from second-hand smoke. Which isn't true and never was true.  So Britons cannot smoke indoors, because the New Inquisition that is Public Health is trying to denormalise smokers.

But smoking is alive and well in Vegas. Because you can -- even the drunk muppets who don't normally smoke are smoking. And casinos have a special exemption from the anti-smoker laws here in Nevada that allow you to smoke on the casino floors -- but not in the restaurants directly adjacent to the casino.  Indeed, we ate at a restaurant that was attached to the casino and couldn't smoke at our table, but if we stood up and moved five feet away, we could smoke freely.  How absurd is that?

And that's another lesson learnt.  Everything anti-smoking / anti-smoker is utterly absurd.  We were only a few feet from the restaurant's boundaries and we could smoke. But if we sat down at the table, we couldn't. Madness.

So, that's Vegas for you.  Madness on top of madness.  We also learnt that Vegas is all about "bling" and "ass" and there is an abundance of both here.  It's a visual feast, at the very least.

Also, it's really fucking hot here, and one needs to drink plenty of water. It's been just under 100F (37C) every day we've been here. We were cold and shivering on the day we left England....

Changing the subject ... I've been looking over my blog stats, and I see that the What We Are Fighting For series of posts aren't particularly popular. I don't know why this is -- and I admit to being enormously disappointed for several reasons. But you live and learn, and you can't know what works and what doesn't unless you try. Your disdain of  history being compared to present-day aside, the posts will continue nevertheless whilst I'm on holiday -- because even though it seems you don't like them, it took me days to make them and the bonus comics, the latter I love to bits. So all 17 posts are going to be published anyway, because I think they're enormously important*, and because I'm stubborn like that, and because this is my blog.

*(I believe there is a great deal to be learnt from reading how Britain once fought against socialism. Maybe you don't, but that would be an error, in my opinion.)

Friday 21 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 8 of 17

What We Once Fought Against - Nazis: Hermann Goering, Julius Streicher, Heinrich Himmer, and Joseph Goebbels
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From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 22-23
Use the photo album below to read the bios:



Bonus Packetracket Collector's Cards:



Thursday 20 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 7 of 17

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From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 20-21
[...] It was said that the slogan of Dinta was "We aim to control the workers' souls." And symbolically, Professor Arnold, one of the Dinta Chiefs, became a high official of the Labour Front.

Under the Labour Front, hours went up, wages came down, in spite of the rapid increase of production in the Reich. Re-armament meant diverting half the national income to war preparations. That meant all ordinary consumption -- food, clothes, and so on -- had to be kept to a minimum. There was only one way of doing this -- hold the wages down. So with the German adult workers' gross wage averaging about 28s. a week, wage rates are actually below crisis level of 1932.

On the other hand, food prices have increased tremendously. As to hours, the official Nazi figures speak for themselves -- ten hours a day for men over eighteen was the normal working day before the war. Now it's the minimum. By permission of the authorities it can be extended to sixteen hours.

Inevitably, the pace doesn't hold. Though the factories and shops be packed with S.S. spies, through exhaustion and desperation German workers began to work slow. As production figures fell off in the Reich, as the Nazi press began to write about "signs of fatigue" among the workers, and the employers decided to yield to the prevailing discontent, and to withdraw certain measures they had imposed at the outbreak of war. On November 27, 1939, all Sunday and holiday bonuses were restored. Soon after, Reich Labour Minister Seldte declared holidays were to be allowed again. At the end of December, the ban on overtime pay was removed. And Dr. Ley, leader of the Labour Front, declared in a public speech "Men and women workers, all this has not happened because the leadership has been forced to retreat before your demands!" That sentence speaks volumes about the attitude of the "German Socialist" Labour Front leaders to the workers.

True, the Nazis made great play of the fat that in the National Socialist state such shameful class distinctions as employer and employee no longer need exist -- henceforth every worker could call himself simply Gefolgschaftsmitglied (personal member), while his boss would be simply Gefolgschaftfuhrer. So, as has been pointed out, the humblest labourer at, for example, the Krupp works, though his wages may be cut to the bone and himself deprived of overtime, has this consolation, that should he ever set eyes on Baron Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, he is perfectly entitled to address him as Herr Personal Leader instead of the old-fashioned Herr General Direktor. [...]

(continued on WWAFF post 10 -- yes, I know this is post 7. Trust me.)



Jay's thoughts:  Compelling stuff. The socialists of modern-day Britain increasingly call for the end to all "Big Business" and demand nationalisation of every last business in Britain.  Every problem in society, the socialists claim, can be traced to multi-national conglomerates.  No doubt, capitalism is not perfect nor will it ever be perfect.  But when you look at what happened in Germany in 1930s when the Socialist State took over every last industry, and you see how badly it failed, you have to wonder why on earth people would ever clamour for nationalisation. Socialism will destroy our already tenuous economy.

Look no farther than the NHS, which has grown into a bastion of socialist control and hate against some of the people it is their duty to care for.  In its original concept, the NHS was meant to provide the most basic of health care to those who needed it most. It was not a universal health care system.  It was meant for the elderly, the poor, for emergencies. It was created out of compassion in a time after the war, when so much had been lost during the fight against fascism and socialism in Europe. It was never intended to grow into the nation's largest employer.  It was never intended to be anything at all like it is today, where treatment and surgery is refused to the neediest because they smoke, or are overweight, or imbibe a few too many pints per week.  Socialism within the ranks of the NHS has created this mindset -- this "you cost the State too much money to be treated, so we refuse to treat you."

The truth is, there is possibly more than enough money to fund the NHS several orders of magnitude higher than we are doing so now.  So-called "free" healthcare for all is surely compassionate, if not utterly unrealistic. It's not free, though. Most of us pay for it through taxes, and we pay dearly even if we never make use of it. The trouble with funding the NHS is that most of the money that could be used to fund it is being spent elsewhere on things we don't need, or simply given away to the disaster that is the European Union as price for our membership, money that is in turn used by technocrats to force laws upon us unwary Britons that we don't want and we don't need, which are in turn rammed through Parliament with barely a whisper of consideration or debate. The problem with the current construct of our local, national and European governments are that they are all primarily socialist, and they do whatever they like with the money they take from us.

We're supposed to thank them for stealing our money and using it for their own gains and against us at every opportunity, they tell us. Well they and everybody else who says "people should pay their fair share" can take a flying leap. Those are the people who are making our lives miserable, and pilfering our opportunities, and crushing our dreams. They are aiming to "control our souls" and we're letting them do it every minute of every day.  And for what?  Some grand idea that everything is fair and we will all be immortal?

Pull the other one.

Bonus comic:

Stephen Williams MP
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Wednesday 19 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 6 of 17

What We Are Fighting For - What We Don't Want to Lose - The British Way of Life vs The Socialist Way of Life
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From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 18-19
[...] So, though German people sit down to fatless meals, though parents must censor their own dinner-table conversation lest their children report them to authorities, though Germany's economy can only be kept going by complicated barter, that sends, say, German guns to Spain, Spanish oranges to Sweden, Swedish ore to Essen, most Germans still feel that between the Fatherland and another 1918 stands Adolf Hitler. Herr Schmidt pays a high price for that feeling. A terribly exorbitant price.

Suppose you could visit one of the tenements in the Berlin working-class suburbs of Wedding, Neukölln, Moabit, or the Weddings, Neuköllns, Moabits anywhere in the Reich. Suppose you could talk about conditions quite freely without fear of the Gestapo, to hear Factory-worker Schimdt over a pint of beer. Suppose you were discussing with him labour in Germany before and after Hitler. What is the difference that stands out a mile? First, that under the Nazis, Labour is no longer organised into trade unions.

Whatever else Hitler struck at -- preachers, teachers, intellectuals -- he struck at the organised workers first. For on May 2, 1933, the very day after "his" first May Day and less than two months after he had tricked his way into power, Hitler broke the great trade union movement of Germany, with its six million membership. Storm Troopers invaded all the union offices -- as well as those of the Socialist Party and the Co-operatives -- they arrested, beat, even murdered any officials who resisted (the Communists had already been similarly dealt with months before). They confiscated all the available property and funds -- the collected savings over many decades of millions of German workers. The loot was tremendous; the powerful Metal Workers' Union alone lost forty-two million marks -- over two million pounds. And out of the ashes of the democratic unions arose -- the Labour Front, the common Nazi organisation for workers and employers.

The Labour Front, meant to replace the unions, is actually under a constitutional prohibition from interfering with either wages or labour conditions. Moreover, the Minister of Labour has often issued decrees warning Labour Front officials not to interfere with the employers in any way. Warier German workers, hearing so much about "German Socialism" from Labour Front Leader Dr. Ley, are apt to remember the old days of Dinta -- The Deutsche Institut Technische Arbeitseinsatz. Dinta was the employers' organisation for the development of rationalisation, for the speed-up of production by stop-watch and conveyor belt. [...]

(continued on WWAFF post 7)



Jay's thoughts:  Although I'll come to it in a later post, the "parents must censor their own dinner-table conversation lest their children report them to authorities" is so apt today -- is it not?  How many organisations are conscripting our children and trying to use them against those children's own parents?  Dozens and dozens. Parents are afraid to smoke around their own children, or even let their children know that they smoke. Social services will consider it child abuse.  Adoptions are impossible for smoking potential parents, and foster carers must be free from nicotine these days. Pregnant women are to be tested for cotinine to measure if they are smokers -- and what happens if they fail that test?  Children are regularly given cotinine tests in schools, as required by the Department of Health for its Health Surveys.  Socialists in our modern-day Britain are using our own children against us.  Liverpool has its D-MYST youth group, an organisation of hate run by kids wearing white drama masks to hide their identity.  ASH Wales has its own youth group, and of course ASH London and FRESH, to name only a few, regularly recruit young children as placard-waving activists for protesting outside of tobacco companies offices or annual stockholder meetings, or to send letters to MPs that one wonders whether the child actually wrote or if somebody in tobacco control had written for the child.

This is what is socialism is -- this is what socialism does to a country and its people. This is fascism -- and it's here, right now in modern-day Britain, and in America, and in Australia particularly.  We may have won the war against Hitler last century, but his beliefs about controlling the people -- now modified, distilled, and slightly sanitised for political correctness in this new age --  live on unfettered in the minds of far too many people, particularly those in Public Health, as well as in our mainstream press.

Tuesday 18 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 5 of 17

What We Are Fighting For - The King Who Serves; The Fuhrer Who Commands
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From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 16-17

[...] Through the underground passages men were hurrying into the the deserted Reichstag. They carried bundles that smelt of tar, of shavings, of paraffin. German freedom slept. Slept, and never woke again.

The Reichstag went up in flames. "It's the work of the Reds," cried Dr. Goebbels. "It's the beacon of insurrection," cried Minister Goering.  "It's a sign from heaven," cried Chancellor Hitler.

And that night, in the name of the Führer, men and women by the thousand were imprisoned. That night, liberties were put in pawn that have never since been redeemed. That night, the opposition was broken by violence. The rule of the bullies and the sneaks was assured. The world knows what followed. The unbelievable, the indefatigable brutality, the stealthy kindness of ordinary folks, the total ignorance of most people as to what went on in their own country, the attempt to bring a whole intelligent nation to the level of insects. All this in general is well known. The hideous Nazi melodrama of the silencing of opposition by whip, by barbed-wire and by axe, is more familiar to many British people than the history of their own Empire in recent times.

But here we do not intend to deal with such sensational aspects of the German brand of Fascism. Here let us rather consider what National Socialism has meant to the Man-in-the-German-Street, the ordinary quiet, peace-loving, pipe-smoking Herr Schmidt and his wife.

First it must be remembered the Nazi regime is impressed on the masses as the regenerator of the German people, ruling those people by flattery and fear, organising economy till the needs of war have dominated national life. And now, like it or not, the German nation is drilled to say in chorus: "We thank our Führer." But for what? For concentration camps? No. For the creation of work? Perhaps. For the feeling that, after years of humiliation, Germany is once again a power to be reckoned with? Yes.

[...]

(continued on WWAFF post 6)



Jay's thoughts:  For public health and tobacco control, it's all about instilling fear and exploiting fear to control you, as it was in 1930s and 1940s Germany.  There are differences, naturally. But the means are the same. The ends are very similar.  Make no mistake, socialism is alive and well in Britain and throughout Europe. It is a socio-political means of controlling people, to make them conform to what is always an impossible ideal. They do this by forcing compliance through imprisonment and fines, through propaganda, by way of false education, through telling you that something else is to blame for all that ails you and society.  Surely we should be able to see right through that?

Well, this line stands out for me:  "The rule of the bullies and the sneaks was assured."  That's what our country has become under the auspices of Public Health, the EU, the WHO, our press and our once-fine academic institutions. We are a nation ruled by bullies, from all over the world.  How do you fight back against an enemy that has no true national borders ...?

Monday 17 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 4 of 17

What We Are Fighting For - It's the CHILDREN!
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From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 14-15
This is indeed a war for all we are. We have much to lose. But we have also much to gain. This is a war, too, for all we hope to be. A war for the reality which we know and for the dream towards we are striving. Let us not forget that the Nazis (going into action with shouts of "Heil Hitler!") are fighting for their dream. The dream of a continent clamped down. The dream of a continent manipulated by a master race. If we are to win this battle, the dream that we fight for must be a grander and more spacious one. A dream of fellowship and life, instead of division and death. A dream of a country -- and a continent -- in which everyone shall be their own masters and their own men. A world fit for men and women to live in. This dream is not one of the sort that can be promised or conferred by politicians.

It is a dream which we, the people, can make real for ourselves -- by our own exertions and skill, our own tenacity and cunning. If we smash the Nazis, we earn the chance to make the dream real. If we fail before the Nazis, we stand no chance at all.

And Here is the Story of Life Under Nazi Rule

On a moonless winter night of February 27, 1933, Germany lay quiet. The children were in bed at their usual hour. The big yellow buses rolled out to the Berlin suburbs according to schedule. On time, the trains clattered across the dark and frozen countryside. Everything seemed as usual. German freedom slept.

Through underground passages men were hurrying into the deserted Reichstag. [...]

(continued on WWAFF post 5)



Jay's thoughts:  What do people dream about these days?  Liberty? Freedom? The right to live your life as you wish?  Or is the collective dream a totalitarian nightmare, in which we all do precisely as we're told for fear of punishment, a fascist dystopia where individuality, choice and free thought is replaced with an oppressive regime of conformity of opinion and beliefs?

To paraphrase the above:  Let us not forget that Public Health and the Tobacco Control Industry (going into action with shouts of "FOR THE CHILDREN!") are fighting for their dream of control. The dream of an island and continent free from liberty and choice, free from the child-tempting perils of trade marks and logos. The dream of an island and continent manipulated by socialist academics with their hate campaigns and distortions of facts, of politicians who care only for the power to control others and who wilfully do the bidding of the socialists for personal gain.

If we are to win this battle against the New Inquisition that has usurped the true Public Health (i.e. communicable disease prevention, fresh water, etc.), and has overtaken our once democratic governments, then our dreams that we fight for must be for freedom and civil liberties for all people equally, the fight for the right to make our own choices as we see fit, without interference from nannying tyrants.

Bonus comic:

The Filter Wales Wants Your Children For Nefarious Purposes
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Sunday 16 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 3 of 17

What We Are Fighting For - Nazi Germany vs the English Pub
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From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 12-13
(continued from WWAFF post 2)

[...] They dreaded the sovereignty of Hitler less than they dreaded the sovereignty of their own working countrymen. They allowed their country to be lost. They will not even save their own property for long. But the world believes that the British industrialists are not like that. Truly, with such an audience looking on, they have much to lose.

What of the prospects for the great mass of the middle class of Britain? At present they are perhaps the most satisfied section of all. They are comfortably off. They have a pleasant margin of choice in their lives. They can choose how they will work. They can choose what they will do with their leisure. If they want to make a good job of their work, they have reasonable opportunities for doing so. A lawyer can be a good lawyer. A tradesman can be a scrupulous and efficient tradesman. A journalist can be an honest journalist. On the whole, nobody interferes with the middle classes, nobody bothers them. They are free to make a success of their job or not, according as they feel inclined.

If we lost this war there is on thing that would immediately happen to the middle class. They would forfeit all right to choose. They would be told what work to do, and told how to use their leisure. The lawyer's life would conscripted for the purpose of finding "legal" justifications for all Nazi actions. The tradesman would be squeezed out of business. The journalist would write what he was told write. Life would be a matter of taking orders from people whose mentality was odious, but whose spies were ruthlessly efficient.

Each of the three main classes of Britain stands to lose some different sets of rights. But there are still two things in which all of them have a common stake. Religion -- and children.

Manufacturer and riveter, landowner and farm hand, clerk and doctor -- they are all free to worship as they please. Catholic and Protestant, Quaker and Jew, Methodist and Plymouth Brother -- their faith is not subject of interest to any secret police. Their church's funds are not looted to help make any bombers. In a conquered Britain, on the other hand, the Nazis would have no room for any god except the Führer. As the National Zeitung put it on June 3rd, 1937: "God has revealed Himself, not in Jesus Christ, but in Adolph Hitler."

Finally -- children. Everyone's children. Squire's children and villagers' children, duke's children and dustmen's children. Whatever the shortcomings of our educational system, every child does still get a chance of learning the truth for himself, instead of having false history and false racial theories pumped into him, with a daily dose of hate and indignation for good measure. In this summer of 1940, we are fighting for the hopes and happiness of the children of to-day and of 1950, and of A.D. 2,000. The prospect if we fail? Hear the words Dr. Ley, German Minister of Labour: "We begin with the child when he is three years old. As soon as he begins to think we put a little flag in his hand; then follows the school, the Hitler Youth, the Storm Troops and military training. We don't let him go . . ."




Jay's thoughts:  In our modern-day, are we truly free to choose much of anything for ourselves any longer, or is it an illusion of choice?  Are you free to run your business the way you see fit, or has the New Inquisition and our government trampled all over your rights?  And what about the children?  Are they not indoctrinated by public health's youth programmes and socialist academics at every opportunity?  We are losing our civil liberties and freedoms one by one every day. We are losing the war for freedom and common sense against those who seek to control your every move and thought.  We have little of our freedom of speech protections left in modern-day Britain.  Opinions are stifled by a hostile press. Ordinary citizens are prosecuted for exercising free thought and expression.  How free are we right now, in today's Britain? Have we allowed this country to be lost to the socialists?

And again, what about your children? How free are they, and how free will they be eighty years from now? Do you even know who is educating our kids, what our boys and girls are being taught, and what, ultimately, our children believe?


Saturday 15 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 2 of 17

What We Are Fighting For - Sunday Afternoon in England and Germany
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From Picture Post Magazine, July 13, 1940, pp 10-11
We are fighting, then, firstly for an island -- for a few hundred square miles of land floating in the North Sea. More important, we fighting for a way of life which has its setting in that island. Nobody needs to tell us that our way of life is not perfect. But we are fighting to preserve the best of it, and to have the opportunity to change the not-so-good for the better. We are taking up arms to preserve the rights of free speech and free opinion for which our fathers struggled, and to keep the road towards total freedom open for our sons. And to this end there is one thing we are fighting for above all, the right to work out our own agreements and disagreements for ourselves. We who live in Britain during this summer and autumn of 1940 are guarding the gorge between the past of the the British race and its future. If we hold, we have the chance to take a great jump forward together. If we yield, we shall be put back six hundred years. All of us. Not just one section or group or class. But all of us.

Nevertheless each class in this country has something particular to fight for now -- apart from the land and the way of life which are common to us all. Each class severally has much to lose.

The workers of Britain have much to lose. The navvy and the farm labourer, the craftsman and the engineer -- their life is not perfect now. They put into their work more than they get out of it. But in a Nazi Britain they would put in even more and get out even less. In a free Britain they have the chance to continue the struggle for the full fruits of our labour. In a free Britain their future is in their own hands.

The workers have much to lose materially -- in wages and hours and conditions of work. But they have also much that is not material to lose. All the things which make life worth living when they come off the job are in danger.

The evening spent in the privacy of their own homes. The evening spent digging their own garden, or gossiping in the pub. All those things are threatened. Instead the Nazis offer a prospect of evening drills and evening propaganda lectures, marching and salutings, world without end. And the police everywhere. The police in the pub. The police in the club. The police under the garden wall. Police who bear no relation to the British village "copper."

As for industrialists and landlords, they, too, have much to lose. They have a tradition and an inheritance to lose. And a reputation for patriotism which the whole world is watching. The world, and the ordinary people of this country -- are watching with the greater attention because of what happened only yesterday, in another country. In that country a small but powerful clique of industrialists and landowners put security of their own property before the independence of their nation. [...]
(cont. on WWAFF post 3 - stay tuned)



Jay's thoughts:  I read the words above and I cannot help but think of the unelected bureaucrats and technocrats in the present EU, and the unelected inquisitors of the WHO, and the unelected civil servants in our governments, and public health academics, and the state of our current mainstream press, all of who are pushing us towards full-on socialism, which I believe will lead to the direst of outcomes for all Britons and the rest of the world.  The most salient words for me are the bits about the police:
And the police everywhere. The police in the pub. The police in the club. The police under the garden wall. Police who bear no relation to the British village "copper."
Do we not already have this police state now? The smoking enforcement officers who prowl our streets, who lurk outside our pubs, who conscript our "coppers" to barge into our private premises to force us to comply with the anti-smokers' evil demands?  We do. We have it in spades.  Once upon a time, we would fight against it. Now, we meekly accept our fate like sheep, awaiting slaughter.

Friday 14 June 2013

What We Are Fighting For - 1 of 17

What We Are Fighting For - Adolf Hitler & Winston Churchill
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WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR

Politicians have told us what they are fighting for. To many their aims sound unreal and far-away. Here, in the simplest possible terms, are the things the British people -- you and I and the man next door -- are fighting for. Here, too, are the things we are fighting against.
ONE by one, the lights have gone out all over Europe. Only if we win the battle which will be fought here during this lovely summer, can those lights be lit again. We, and we alone, can save the sum of things.

If Hitler is going to snuff out this final candle, then it is over our dead bodies that he'll have to do it. Never was the danger so sharp. Never was the opportunity so thrilling. Fifty generations of dead Britons would sell their souls to be alive this year. And there is not one of them but would recognise the nature and import of this war.

This is a war, firstly, for the land we live in. England or Wales, Scotland or Ireland. Whatever other things we may be fighting for, we are fighting first for the physical body and shape of Britain. A war for the county we live in, Kent or Cornwall, Cardigan or Ayr. A war for the Fens and the Dales, the Downs and the Highlands. A war for the village we live in. For the independence of Oakhanger Village. For the territorial integrity of Headley Green.

This is a war for everything that we can see from our own window. For the cottage at the end of the lane, and the old bridge by the mill. We are fighting for the very soil and stuff of Britain. Intact for a thousand years, it is not to be tampered with now. Lambeth Walk is not to be a stamping ground for storm-troopers. Stratford-on-Avon is to be no site for Goering to build a castle. Clovelly gives no admittance to the Gestapo.



Jay's thoughts:  Churchill posed with his trade mark cigar with the word "...Democracy" under the photo is simply awesome.  Go on and airbrush that out of our history! Go on! I dare you!  Also, fellow bloggers, note the outstanding use of pro-British propaganda -- we can learn a great deal from this (and from the text in the posts that will follow).  This was a call to arms, a rallying cry, an appeal to British patriotism and sovereignty.  Such sentiment is all but abandoned in modern Britain in 2013.  Can we ever get it back?

Thursday 13 June 2013

Rubbish

Where I live, the council is trying to "nudge" me to live a "greener" lifestyle it seems.  I've now got those newfangle rubbish, recycling and food waste bins replete with RFID spy chips. In respect of the spy chips, the council insists that the RFID chips are only going to be used to track down missing or stolen rubbish bins.  Fine. But I know that mission creep will eventually occur, and I suspect that these chips will be used to track how much waste my household generates (the new lorries are fitted with a scale to weigh your bin as it is being lifted up to be emptied), because that's what the manufacturer of the spy chips says the chips are designed for. As soon as I can find a tool or make a tool to remove the chips cleanly, I will do so (removing the spy chips require some kind of 4-pin spanner that doesn't appear to be on sale anywhere), disable them, and screw them back in.

So the recycling bin is large, twice the size of the household waste rubbish bin.  That's the first nudge, right there. It's not exactly subtle.  The council wants me, you, all of us, to recycle more, so they give us a larger recycling bin, and reduce the size of the general household waste bin.   It goes further than that, however. The council gives "helpful" tips on ensuring that you buy products that have packaging that can be recycled. The council also gives tips on reducing your food waste -- because food waste, the literature tells me, is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases and by throwing out your food, you are killing the planet with every uneaten salad leaf you left on your plate.  The council wants us to cook less food, or at least ensure that we eat the food we cook.  I suppose the council is not necessarily concerned with the obesity epidemic, or if it is, then the people responsible for waste management haven't been in contact with Public Health lately.

The second nudge is that our general household waste collection has changed from weekly to fortnightly.  So, the smaller rubbish bin is only collected every other week.  Now, I live in a two-person, three-cat household. We don't generate all that much waste to begin with -- not like some of our neighbours, who live in five or six-person households, who also have these smaller rubbish bins -- but the cats don't care about living a green lifestyle and their litter tray waste can be substantial (they go outside, and two of them refuse to urinate or defecate outside -- damn cats!).  Yet even so, our rubbish bin was already full on the day they came for the recycling collection, in part because of our cats, but also because the household waste bin is too fucking small, and we are still a week away from that bin being collected.  And, oh, by the way, the council says that the dustmen won't pick up your household bin if the lid isn't completely closed -- you are not allowed to overfill it, except for on Christmas, when the council makes an exception (yet, they still say to make sure your gifts come in packaging that can be recycled to reduce your waste).

We pay a shit-load of money in local council tax, and it went up by the maximum percentage allowed this year as well.  I think it's like the third or fourth-highest in this region. I don't recall, to be honest, but the rate of increase this year was the highest of all the other nearby boroughs.  For that money, the only service the council provides that we actually use is ... RUBBISH COLLECTION (notwithstanding any roadworks, pavement repair, or clearing of public footpaths performed by the council -- although both of these things are rarely done anyway -- the same pot-holes in the road from two years ago are still present and damaging countless tyres).  We don't live in council housing. We receive no benefits from local or national governments.  The only thing we ask is that for the high price of paying council tax to ensure that our esteemed council members have fantastic pensions and retirement packages, is ... for dustmen to pick up our rubbish weekly. Seems fair. Right?

But no, the household rubbish collection is now bi-weekly.  And the rubbish bin is half the size of what it should be. We pay more in council tax for a lesser service with spy chips installed to measure/weigh our compliance.*

And that, my friends, is fucking rubbish.

(*The literature also claims that EU legislation is forcing the council to do all of these things, it should be said.)

Wednesday 12 June 2013

Is Dr Margaret Chan The Most Dangerous Woman in the World?

Repeat after Public Heath:

There is no slippery slope.

There is no slippery slope.

There is no slippery slope.

Stop.

Most certainly there is a slippery slope, and now it's a veritable avalanche of New Inquisition hatred against capitalism and consumers, all designed to force you to live your life precisely in the manner that Public Health deems fit.

In the last 30 or 40 years, Public Health has transmogrified from a group of compassionate scientists and doctors, who strove to eradicate communicable diseases all over the world, into what I call The New Inquisition, which is a self-serving socio-political / activist taxpayer-funded industry staffed with socialists (i.e. anti-capitalists who hate that people make money) and prohibitionists of the worst kind.  Public Health, in its present incarnation, is the greatest threat to freedom and civilisation the world has seen since National Socialism ran roughshod over continental Europe in the 1930s.

You don't have to take my word for it, though. You can read the following excerpted incantations of the High Priestess of Public Health, one of the Grand Inquisitors of the New Inquisition, the Director-General of the World Health Organisation, Dr Margaret Chan, which she chanted to her faithful minions of hate in Helsinki, Finland, just two days ago (emphases added):

The determinants of health are exceptionally broad. Policies made in other sectors can have a profound, and often adverse, effect on health.

Public health has been on the receiving end of these policies for a very long time. With this meeting, it is time for us to move to the top of the table, and have our say. A great deal is at stake.
[...]

The challenges facing public health have changed enormously since the start of this century. In our closely interconnected world, health everywhere is being shaped by the same powerful forces: demographic ageing, rapid urbanization, and the globalization of unhealthy lifestyles.

Under the pressure of these forces, chronic non-communicable diseases have overtaken infectious diseases as the leading cause of morbidity, disability, and mortality.

As stated in the UN Political Declaration on NCDs, prevention must be the cornerstone of the global response to these costly, deadly, and demanding diseases. Their root causes reside in non-health sectors. Collaboration among multiple sectors is imperative.

The consequences of this shift in the disease burden reach far beyond the health sector to touch economies everywhere. Recent studies demonstrate that the costs of advanced cancer care are unsustainable, even in the richest countries in the world.

[...]

Today, the tables are turned. Instead of diseases vanishing as living conditions improve, socioeconomic progress is actually creating the conditions that favour the rise of noncommunicable diseases. Economic growth, modernization, and urbanization have opened wide the entry point for the spread of unhealthy lifestyles.
The globalization of unhealthy lifestyles is by no means just a technical issue for public health. It is a political issue. It is a trade issue. And it is an issue for foreign affairs.

[...]

In the 1980s, when we talked about multisectoral collaboration for health, we meant working together with friendly sister sectors. Like education, housing, nutrition, and water supply and sanitation. When the health and education sectors collaborate, when health works with water supply and sanitation, conflicts of interest are rarely an issue.

Today, getting people to lead healthy lifestyles and adopt healthy behaviours faces opposition from forces that are not so friendly. Not at all.

Efforts to prevent non-communicable diseases go against the business interests of powerful economic operators. In my view, this is one of the biggest challenges facing health promotion.

[...] it is not just Big Tobacco any more. Public health must also contend with Big Food, Big Soda, and Big Alcohol. All of these industries fear regulation, and protect themselves by using the same tactics.

[...]

Tactics also include gifts, grants, and contributions to worthy causes that cast these industries as respectable corporate citizens in the eyes of politicians and the public. They include arguments that place the responsibility for harm to health on individuals, and portray government actions as interference in personal liberties and free choice.
[...]

As we learned from experience with the tobacco industry, a powerful corporation can sell the public just about anything.
[...]

Not one single country has managed to turn around its obesity epidemic in all age groups. This is not a failure of individual will-power. This is a failure of political will to take on big business.

This is the guidance gospel given to all public health fanatics the world over -- this is their rallying cry.  Let's summarise and rephrase Dr Chan's evil beliefs and intentions for world domination, shall we?

YOU are incapable of free choice and free will. Everything is the fault of capitalism. You have no control over anything you do.  Public Health will save you, but only when Public Health can force governments to let Public Health save you by destroying free markets and individualism, by eradicating responsibility and choice.  Every decision you can ever make is wrong, because you don't know how to make decisions -- only The New Inquisition has the knowledge, the know-how, the drive even, to force you to comply with their demands. You will be immortal, if only you have faith.

And that, if I do say so myself, is an excellent summary of the Slippery Slope / Avalanche of Hellish and Biblical Proportions that is coming to every country in the world, thanks to people like Dr Margaret Chan and those who think just like her.  We are all in imminent danger from Public Health.  We should never have to say those words, but sadly they have never been more true.  Public Health is a menace to society, and it must be stopped.

For more on this, see this video with Christopher Snowdon discussing the "non-existent" slippery slope with the Sun News in Canada.  It's about 14 minutes long and Chris appears about 4 or 5 minutes in...

By the way, you may remember Margaret Chan from my Black Seoul Days post -- she's holding a glass of champagne. So I suppose it's all right for her to drink alcohol, just not the plebs of the world.

This woman may be the most evil woman the world has ever known. Maybe.
High Priestess of Public Health, Dr Margaret Chan