Noises from the usual quarters about how Liam Fox should emulate Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, with a view to ending "duplication". This has been a key neoconservative aim for decades. The Statement of Principles of the Henry Jackson Society calls explicitly for a single EU defence "capability" under overall American command but day-to-day German control. Do the constituents of, for example, Michael Gove know that he has signed up to this?
Of course he has: Israel comes first, but America comes second. Every American Administration since the Forties has been in favour of a United Europe, while every American Administration since well before that has preferred Germany to Britain. For the very good reason that, whereas Britain is the founding enemy, most white Americans, especially Protestants, are more German than anything else.
The House of Representatives once came within one vote of making German the only official language of the United States, and numerous expressions in American English are verbatim translations from German. Until 1917, there were many German or Austrian place names in America; before then, anywhere now called Liberty was probably called Berlin, or Vienna, or something like that.
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Could you point to where the Henry Jackson Society says this? I can't find it.
ReplyDeleteThe one now on the website is only a summary of the original, which used to appear there. How odd...
ReplyDeleteI noticed that. They have rewritten it as undergrad lecture notes with numbered bullet points. But you are right, this was there in the original, the one they signed.
ReplyDeleteIt must be out there in the ether somewhere. If anyone tracks it down, then do please let me know.
ReplyDeleteI assume that you have had lots of comemnts you have had to reject.
ReplyDeleteOh, yes...
ReplyDeleteNor do they like having it pointed out that the Statement on their website is not the full text of one that they have signed.
Actually, I am surprised that the HJS still exists. In this age of Liam Fox and his CIA SpAd, it hardly seems necessary anymore. But then, the HJS is only pro-American insofar as America backs up the (extremely and increasingly) anti-American Israeli Hard Right.
Treason. Keep socking it to them, Mr L.
ReplyDeleteIndeed it is.
ReplyDeleteBe assured that I will.
There are a lot of German descended Catholics in the Mid West.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, how many of the people listed as signatories are still in the HJS? Michael Ancram for one has changed his mind completely, opposing the war in Afghanistan and the Israeli attack on Lebanon. The 13th Marquess of Lothian, see. None of your Ed Vaizey/Andrew Roberts pretenders.
You have been saying this all over the blogosphere for years and they have never reacted. It was in the original Statement that used to be on their site. I reckon it was you persistently pointing it out that made them put up the schoolboy summary for exam revision that now appears instead. That is not the one they signed.
ReplyDeleteThis EU capability run by the Germans for the Americans would not include the RAF, which the HJS campaigns to abolish. You have also been the main publicist of that fact. Or after all these years are they now going to deny that as well?
How the hell is it a charity?
ReplyDeleteSteve, funnily enough a friend of mine who is now a professor in Kansas, but who is back at Durham this term on a Visiting Fellowship, was telling me only last night about the German-American Catholics of that region. And yes, it is a very out-of-date list in all sorts of ways.
ReplyDeleteChris, I wouldn't put it past them. Years of regularly stating these facts even on Harry's Place and no attempt at denial, but suddenly there is a problem. They know that they are in trouble, that New Labour is out and that this Government is not without a streak of proper Toryism where foreign policy is concerned.
Anonymous, it might be time to re-visit that one...