furtherandfaster

Speech by war veteran

This could have come from the mouth of a Russian in 1917. It is a rivetting speech which I never thought I would hear from an American. worthy of reflection. And action.

The ultimate sacrifice - reconciliation

Hearing yesterday that a number of reports had been provided for the Afghan government to consider how it might resolve the situation, it seems that perfidious Albion (that's what the French call us in their worst moments) whose casualties have been proportionately worse than any other NATO members has provided a memo suggesting a government of national unity with the Taliban. I don't know know what makes soldiers get up in the morning and take such appalling risks - I have heard it is more to do with loyalty to one another than the gilded phrases spouted around the cenotaph around this time of year about sacrifice for the rest of us.

You might imagine that the reason for all the suffering was the hope of ultimate victory - crushing the enemy absolutely. When what is far more lilkely is that the politicians find a way to make a peace with the enemy who has been successfully killing and maiming. I have a Croatian friend who fought the Serbs at Vukovar for 3 years and was wounded 3 times. I asked him how he could keep going that long. He said To make it stop. The hardest thing about peace is that your enemies need to get involved. Which must be a bitter pill for troops whose training has to be to dehumanise and to diminish those they fought. But must in the end give a place at the negotiating table.

I was brought up in Japan. It was my second language. But when I returned to Britain aged 9 I had to face the prejudices against the Japanese by some who regarded them as devils. Even when the agency I was working in in launched Lexus in the early 90s we were getting hate mail in response to direct mail about a  new Japanese luxury brand.

Getting the immigrants you deserve

Let's imagine for a moment that the national objective is to mainta or increase immigration. Here's how to do it.
1. Have an active foreign policy - in particular pursue military interventions which destabilise formerly sovereign nationstates.
2. Build relationships as best you can with the locals - using interpreters and speaking your own language as much as possible
3. Encourage the building of technological and travel infrastructures that allow the local population to check your integrity using your own national media via radio, satellite TV and online (hasn't the BBC done well as have so many British media brands?)
4. Promote democracy and materialism using varied content much sourced from US TV networks
5. Then stand back and watch as people whose economies have been wrecked try to migrate to the motherland to use their newfound English.

At this stage don't start sending alarmist messages to the home front suggesting we should close the borders and protect ourselves from being over run. Its far too late.  By this time anyway the immigration authorities will be overwhelmed with processing asylum seekers whose claims take years to verify. They haven't the capacity to deal with anyone else.

If by chance you do want to reduce the flow of immigrants. Then consider that British hegemony is the primary driver of these population flows and the sooner we stop sending expeditionary forces (sorry peacekeepers) to various parts of the world the easier it will be to limit the flow of those who come to these shores because we have successfully promoted our way of life through military and media strenth.

Afghan refugee numbers entering Europe are  up this year by 87%. Its time we started looking at causes and consequences.