ALBANIAN INVASION

The home secretary, Suella Braverman, in parliament on 31 October, where she spoke of an ‘invasion’ on the south coast. (Photograph: Jessica Taylor/UK Parliament/AFP/Getty Images)

For hundreds of years, Great Britain had the biggest navy in the world.   It kept all invaders out of the British Isles and kept them away from Britain’s vast colonial empire as well.  Chief amongst its enemies were Spain and France, two Catholic powers that wanted to restore Britain to the church.  More recently, there was Germany.   In two world wars Britain kept the German invader out and maintained the country’s independence.

But everything is different now.  The Royal Navy was the great protector of Great Britain, keeping out the Germans, before them, the French and Spanish.  But now they are being defeated by an irregular force of Albanians, who, apparently want to expand their criminal activities to England (human trafficking, gambling and drugs).   At least one thousand people a week arrive in dinghies, claiming asylum.  It should be noted here that there is absolutely no reason for them to seek asylum, as Albania is a democracy.  It’s been a member of NATO since 2009.  And since most arrivals are young men (and not women and children), these new arrivals are clearly economic migrants, simply out to better themselves.

The RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) rescues them, gives them a hot cup of tea, and brings them safely to shore where they are then housed in 3- or 4-star hotels at tax-payer expense.  They are given three meals a day and 38 pounds spending money a week. This, at a time when many people in Britain do not have enough to eat.

Suella Braverman, Home Secretary (Interior Minister) in the UK, described what is happening as an “invasion.”   She was criticized in parliament for using that word, but what word should she use?   The waves of immigrants in recent years are changing Great Britain out of recognition; making it worse is that people have been silenced through repressive laws that limit their freedom to speak on this issue.

Once again, Britain is asking the French to help stop the flow.  They are to pay France 72.2 million euros (the dollar and the euro are on a par right now), up from 63 million last year.    One question: If it didn’t work then, why should it work now?

A solution might be to bring some royal naval commanders out of retirement.  They will know what to do and take great pleasure in doing it!

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PS:  It’s just been announced that only 46% of the British people, in a recent survey, consider themselves Christian.   In the US it’s 71% Coincidentally, my electronic Bible opened up at the following verse this morning: “The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you. The LORD will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the LORD your God and walk in his ways. Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will fear you. ” (Deut 28)

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US MIDTERMS

The Republicans had a disappointing electoral result in the Midterms.   Inflation did not turn people against the Democrats.   Many commentators said it was the female vote that did it.  More specifically women who support abortion.

For the GOP, it’s an opportunity to launch investigations on stuff like the origins of COVID, the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the Republicans’ favorite target: Biden’s own son, Hunter. It might even lead to impeaching the president. On foreign policy, expect the GOP to penny-pinch US aid to Ukraine and make Congress get even tougher on China — perhaps not the best idea after Biden and Xi Jinping decided to cool things down at the G-20 in Bali.  (Gzero Signal, 11/17/2022)

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UN Mideast envoy warns West Bank ‘reaching a boiling point’ The UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Tor Wennesland, warns the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “reaching a boiling point.”  (Times of Israel, by Luke Tress, 28 Nov 2022)

“The high level of violence in the occupied West Bank and Israel in recent months including attacks against Israeli and Palestinian civilians,” Wennesland says, “have caused grave human suffering.”  

“The targeting of civilians can never be justified and the violence must stop,” Wennesland says at a Security Council briefing, calling for a return to a political process for a resolution to the conflict.  He condemns the recent terror attacks in Jerusalem and Ariel, as well as settler violence against Palestinians in Hebron.  He warns that “demography is moving faster than politics,” and that the rapid population growth in Gaza and the West Bank will make it “increasingly difficult” to manage the conflict.  The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, condemns the terror attacks against Israelis and settler violence.  The US “is deeply concerned about the sharp escalation,” Thomas-Greenfield says. “This has been the deadliest year in the West Bank since 2004.”  She condemns the Palestinian Authority’s payments to terrorists and the “disruption to the historic status quo of holy sites.”  Thomas-Greenfield blasts the UN for its “lopsided focus” on Israel, including the open-ended Commission of Inquiry and the request for the International Court of Justice to weigh in on the conflict.  “The UN system is replete with anti-Israel actions and bodies,” she says. “Instead of grandstanding and pursuing unproductive measures, we hope the UN will start focusing on concrete steps that improve the lives of Israelis and Palestinians.” 

(https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-november-28-2022/)

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BERLIN AND THE “UKRAINIAN HOLOCAUST”

The German Bundestag wants to declare the 1932/33 famine in Ukraine a genocide and is thus adopting a politically motivated classification from the milieu of the former Ukrainian Nazi collaboration. As research by historians shows, the claim that the famine was a deliberately planned “Ukrainian Holocaust” originated within the Ukrainian exile community in Canada, where former Nazi-collaborators set the tone. In the late 1980s, this claim was subsumed under the newly coined term “Holdomor.”  Historians overwhelmingly reject this claim, particularly because the famine affected the populations of agrarian regions throughout the Soviet Union. The Bundestag plans to pass its resolution on the “Holdomor” already on Wednesday. This also threatens to have serious domestic consequences. Last Friday the Bundesrat had approved the recent tightening of §130 of the German penal code, according to which “the public condoning, denying, or grossly trivializing” of war crimes and genocide will be punishable by law.   (German Foreign Policy, 11/28/2022)