by Martin Hutchinson

The extraordinary rise in commodity prices, at the beginning of a global cyclical upswing, is beginning to reorder the pecking order of the world economy. Together with the advances made by China and India in the last decade, it is producing an entirely new world order, which many will find uncomfortable. In it, commodities, derided for decades as unimportant, have become scarce resources, to be guarded and managed with the utmost care. Conversely human labor and skill, on the basis of which the glories of human civilization were built, is entering into a state of gigantic glut.

The current commodities boom is qualitatively different from those of the past. In previous commodities booms, such as those of 1972-73 or 2006-08, the global economy was operating close to capacity, and indeed the boom was an important indicator that full capacity was about to be reached. The booms were accompanied by wage inflation and in both cases resulted in price inflation, although in 2007-08 the price inflation was aborted by the financial crash before it could really get hold.

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Just as we saw in the run up to last May’s European Parliament elections, the media is cranking up its BNP “coverage”.  Yesterday we were treated to a nearly balanced opener from the Sunday Times.  Today we were given articles in the Telegraph here and, pathetically, here, in the Mail here and, obliquely, in the Independent here.

I suspect that the attack will take on a different, more focussed form this time.  The BNP are standing a record 326 candidates.  But that’s little more than half the constituencies throughout the country, and the constituencies where the party has a chance of doing well are limited to three or four, all with a current big Labour majority.  The two most realistic chances are Barking and Dagenham, where Richard Barnbrook “agreed” to stand aside for Nick Griffin, and Stoke Central, where Alby Walker did not agree to stand aside for Simon Darby (but had to anyway).  Emma Colgate could poll respectably in Thurrock, notwithstanding the fact that nobody is totally sure whether she is in or out of the party following the last (and let us hope it is the last) Collett affair.  Roger Roberts may do likewise in Dewsbury.

As for the rest, including the council elections on the same day, the objective has to be to show a presence, to increase support (in terms of second and third places where fourths and fifths were had previously), to save deposits, and to build, build, build.  To that end, it is a little strange that the party is campaigning on three principal issues: withdrawal from Afghanistan, a halt to the immigration invasion, and an end to the ‘Global Warming’ conspiracy.  The voting public’s first concern is for the economy and jobs.  But the BNP seems not to understand how to address that (bringing some economic literacy on-board would seem a good start).  Also high on the list of concerns is the related issue of the unaccountability of Westminster and corruption of the political class.  But, again, it is not a major issue in party thinking.

Personally, I would like to see them campaign hard for freedom of speech and association, and an end to cultural warfare in public life, most especially in education (it will have to do so anyway if it wants to attract support from the Conservative/UKIP voting middle-classes).  All told, there is an extraordinary opportunity for the party to sculpt a powerful, attractive and wholly unique ideological niche for itself, and one that the left cannot reply to with the usual smears.

As Simon Heffer noted last week of the mainstream parties:

the choice of voting for staying in Europe or staying in Europe, massive immigration or massive immigration, an enormous and unnecessary public sector or an enormous and unnecessary public sector and more mind-numbing political correctness or more mind-numbing political correctness.

Heffer is a right-wing Tory, and is appealing for a right-wing Tory platform.  But his point holds true for the BNP as well.  Does anyone feel that it is responding appropriately?

Perhaps part of the problem is that, regardless of what they do, growth in support for the party is “inevitable”.  In 2005 it achieved 0.7% of the vote, totalling 192,746 votes, a performance which was three times better than in 2001.  General elections tend to see the votes of minor parties squeezed.  But a performance that is very far adrift of the 940,000 votes in May’s Europeans, or around 3.5% of the 2005 total of 27,110,727, will be taken as a disappointment in the circumstances.

Of course, the media may have something to say about that as well.

“We must turn the country around to face its citizens. The scale of the repair will be so great that Poland will become a new republic.”

Any president of a populous European nation who can utter these words, at once loyal and revolutionary, is a rare and valuable bird likely to be much loved by his people.  Such, we now know, was Lech Aleksander Kaczy?ski who died in an air accident at a fog-bound Smolensk-North airport today, aged sixty.

With him died all ninety-five aboard the Polish Air Force Tupolev Tu-154, including Kaczy?ski’s wife Maria and many members of the Polish ruling elite.

The mainstream media coverage of this tragedy will keep rolling for days, no doubt.  Kaczy?ski’s career will be closely analysed, his successes and failures picked over, his patriotism and social conservatism described perhaps more charitably in some quarters than ever they were while he was alive.  But where here, besides the simple, respectful marking of yet another sadness in Poland’s national life, is the legitimate angle for a nationalist to explore?

It seems to me that Kaczy?ski represents something we should understand well, and that is how liberal democracy limits the action of any patriotic national figure outside of, and hostile to, the neo-Marxist/neoliberal dispensation.  Kaczy?ski enjoyed little freedom of action.  During his presidency he was unable to avoid putting his presidential signature to the Lisbon Treaty.  He saw his Law and Justice (PiS) party ejected from office by Donald Tusk’s neoliberal and europhile Civic Platform.  Earlier he was, as mayor of Warsaw, even dragged before the European Court of Human Rights for refusing homosexuals an opportunity to parade - no doubt, as grotesquely and offensively as possible - through the capital in the name of a non-existent equality.

He had come to the presidential office promising:

the purging of various pathologies from our life, most prominently including crime (...), particularly criminal corruption – that entire, great rush to obtain unjust enrichment, a rush that is poisoning society, [and preventing the state from ensuring] elementary social security, health security, basic conditions for the development of the family [and] the security of commerce and the basic conditions for economic development

How much of this he achieved I leave it to someone more informed about Polish politics to say.  But the definite sense I have is that he was continually frustrated by the democratic process, which is to say, by the ubiquity and resilience of liberal presumptions and by the power of the liberal dynamic - things that must have seemed so desirable to Poles in 1989.  All conservative political careers end in failure.  Lech Kaczy?ski’s ended in the shocking and sudden violence of a national tragedy too.

by The Narrator

Everyone I know is fuming over the “unconstitutional” health-care bill that was “un-democratically” shoved down our throats. I have to keep explaining to such people that compared to legislation passed in the 1960’s Obamacare is a minor triviality.

It’s amazing (yet sadly not unexpected) that so many seem to gloss over the rather draconian and spirit-crushing bits of legislation commonly refereed to as “civil rights”. Many seem to prefer to ignore or forget that among the “civil rights” accomplishments have been: legalizing abortion, promoting homosexuality, exalting feminism, attacking and attempting to destroy the family, de-constructing communities, rewriting history, and other equally civilization-crushing acts.

And these were done under the notion of “equality”. And to bring about “equality” our society had to destroy, in theory and in fact, freedom of association.

Since the “civil rights” legislation went into effect, Americans have been told (under threat of government force) who they must live among, who they can do business with, who they can vacation with, who their children must attend school with, and in what company they can congregate. All done to criminalize discrimination. Yet the most fundamental freedom that can be had (either collectively or individually) is the right to discriminate. Take away that right and freedom is instantly dead.

And the critical aspect of this is that prejudices and the discriminations they encourage are generally based on collective historical experience. They are an expression of a society’s hard fought for wisdom, enduring and solidifying down through countless ages of toil and struggle. They are not mere attitudes, but rather moral and social guidelines that define and defend a people.

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Or a British nationalist, anyway.  Well, perhaps you are.  But you can now test the thesis courtesy of the Daily Telegraph.  As part of its coverage of the General Election the paper has installed an online engine called Vote Match - presumably a development from dating software.  Anyway, there’s nothing to interest lonelyhearts in the match of voter attitudes to party positions which it calculates.

I tried Vote Match twice this morning so I could get a reading for all six parties (it only allows three at a time) and obtained the following result:

77% British National Party
62% UK Independence Party
26% Conservative Party
23% Green Party
18% Labour Party
12% Liberal Party

The degree of match, as indicated by the percentages, seems a little high for UKIP and Greens, and I am not sure quite why the Labour Party stands above the Liberals - I am equally disinterested in them both.  But in other respects it seems very fair - not least in that, unlike the voter poll in The Sun for example, it actually included the BNP in the exercise.  It’s a given that the party’s policies are far more popular than the party itself - something quite a few innocents will doubtless discover when they hit the last button.

The questions about health, education, pensions and so forth are probably too domestic for non-Brits.  But let’s see some results for MR readers who will be voting in the Westminster election next month.

From the BBC News online:

Eugene Terreblanche killed in South Africa

South African white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche has been killed on his farm in the country’s north-west.

Mr Terreblanche, 69, was beaten to death after a dispute over unpaid wages, local media reports said. Two people are said to have been arrested.

Mr Terreblanche, who campaigned for a separate white homeland, came to prominence in the early 1980s.

He became the champion of a tiny minority determined to stop the process that was bringing apartheid to an end.

“Mr Terreblanche’s body was found on the bed with facial and head injuries,” AFP news agency quoted a police spokesman as saying.

The report said he had been killed after a payment dispute with two workers, who have since been charged with his murder.

“He was hacked to death while he was taking a nap,” a family friend in the town of Ventersdorp was quoted as telling Reuters news agency.

The murder comes amid growing anxiety about crime in South Africa and what opposition politicians say are irresponsible and racially inflammatory sentiments from a minority of the ruling ANC party, says the BBC’s Karen Allen in Johannesburg.

By way of a tribute to an indomitable fighter for his people, here is a short extract from an interview he gave one year ago:

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Everyone knows the history of the US is obscenely distorted by racist spin on the contributions of disadvantaged minorities such as George Washington Carver.  But no one, till now, has revealed the truth behind the real founders of Silicon Valley and why all those Spoiled American Boomer Engineers who are flying their planes into IRS buildings and the like have only themselves to blame for the great need for more immigration to save the US economy. 

Read on for the revised history of Silicon Valley…

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by Alexander Baron

On March 29, 2010, Channel 4 TV screened a so-called debate between the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Shadow Chancellor, and Vincent Cable of the Liberal Democrats.

Although it would be true to say that at times they all made intelligent comments, observations and suggestions, especially Vince Cable, it is also true to say, sadly, that none of them really knew what they were talking about, so it was not a case of them failing to grasp the nettle, they simply had no idea there was anything to grasp.

All three acknowledged that Britain is up to its ears in debt.

On March 25, the “Daily Telegraph” reported that next year the interest on the National Debt will be £73.8 billion. That is just the interest. Where does the Government get the money to pay this interest? From tax revenues, basically, and, we are now told, from cuts in public services. To whom does the Government pay this interest? To the banks. And where do the banks get the money which they lend to the Government? They create it out of nothing, that’s where!

Up until recently this strange fact was denied by mainstream politicians, or even unknown to them, and you would have found no discussion of it outside of specialist economics textbooks or the more popular – and at times whacky – conspiracy literature.

Let’s forget about the conspiriologists for the moment, and let’s forget about economics textbooks.

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