Showing posts with label Falkland Islands. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Falkland Islands. Show all posts

Monday, January 16, 2012

The Iron Lady - A Movie About Margaret Thatcher

"If the state wishes to spend more, it can do so only by borrowing your savings or taxing you more. And it's no good thinking someone else will pay, that someone else is you." Margaret Thatcher.
I went to see Iron Lady last night at the movie theater and was kept in rapt attention at this woman's life. I'm in my 50's so I remember her in the 90's but had only a vague idea that she was one of the good guys. This movie manages to show that but not to the extent I would have liked. They do dwell too much on her later years when Alzheimer's was taking her mind. I would have liked to see more of the political battles she fought. She was the ONLY woman to have won a seat in Parliament at the time and she went on to win the elections for Prime Minister in 1979.
I got this from Wikipedia:
"She was influenced at university by political works such as Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to
Serfdom (1944),[17] which condemned economic intervention by government as a precursor to an authoritarian state.[18] "...she became the face of the ideological movement opposing the welfare state Keynesian economics they believed was weakening Britain. The institute's pamphlets proposed less government, lower taxes, and more freedom for business and consumers.[51][page needed] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher
So there you have it. An amazing movie even though it lacked more about her life. Maybe someone will do a better movie and put her entire life in perspective. How about a movie on Ronald Reagan?

Friday, July 02, 2010

Words, Words and Words...Obama Is the Master of Uttering the Wrong Words and Giving the Wrong Signal to our Enemies

If you think that words don't matter in politics and the world stage you should read this essay by Victor Hanson "(Even a Few) Words Matter to Bad Actors" at IBD. In this article Mr. Hanson lists some of the remarks, comments and quips that have been made in history and the signals these utterances give to those who are threats to our liberty. History is filled with the consequences of the wrong words at the wrong time. Obama and his minions seem not to be aware (or are doing it on purpose) that what comes out of their mouths is interpreted with great care. And if the thugs of the world see that Obama and his administration will not carry a stick then they will have their their way.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was ecstatic after the Munich Conference of 1938. He bragged that he had coaxed Adolf Hitler into stopping further aggression after the Nazis gobbled up much of Czechoslovakia.

Arriving home, Chamberlain proudly displayed Hitler's signature on the Munich Agreement, exclaiming to adoring crowds, "I believe it is peace for our time. ... And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds."

But after listening to Chamberlain's nice nonsense, Hitler remarked to his generals about a week later, "Our enemies are little worms, I saw them at Munich." War followed in about a year.

Sometimes deterrence against aggression is lost with just a few unfortunate words or a relatively minor gesture.

Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave a comprehensive address to the National Press Club in early 1950. Either intentionally or by accident, he mentioned that South Korea was beyond the American defense perimeter. Communist North Korea, and later China, agreed. War broke out six months later.

Well before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, and sent aid to communist rebels in Central America, President Jimmy Carter announced that America had lost its "inordinate fear of communism."

In 1981, Britain, as a goodwill gesture in the growing Falkland Islands dispute, promised to withdraw a tiny warship from the islands. But to the Argentine dictatorship, that reset-button diplomacy was seen as appeasement. It convinced them that the United Kingdom was no longer the nation of Admiral Nelson, the Duke of Wellington and Winston Churchill. So Argentina invaded the Falklands...
(READ at IBD) Read what Obama has said so far to make this world a more dangerous world by what comes out of his mouth.

Monday, April 05, 2010

The Allies and Friends of America are Now to Be Dissed

Obama and Hillary turn on our friends and coddle up to dictators, middle Eastern thugs out to build a nuclear bomb and invite to our White House all sorts of leftists and socialists. What's going on? Here is another report to depress you by Charles Krauthammer.

What is it like to be a foreign ally of Barack Obama's America?


If you're a Brit, your head is spinning. It's not just the personal slights to Prime Minister Gordon Brown — the ridiculous 25-DVD gift, the five refusals before Brown was granted a one-on-one with The One.

Nor is it just the symbolism of Obama returning the Churchill bust that was in the Oval Office. Query: If it absolutely had to be out of Obama's sight, could it not have been housed somewhere else on U.S. soil rather than ostentatiously repatriated?

Perhaps it was the State Department official who last year denied there even was a special relationship between the U.S. and Britain, a relationship cultivated by every U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt.
And then there was Hillary Clinton's astonishing, nearly unreported (in the U.S.) performance in Argentina last month. She called for Britain to negotiate with Argentina over the Falklands.

For those who know no history — or who believe it began on Jan. 20, 2009 — and therefore don't know why this was an out-of-the-blue slap at Britain, here's the back story:

In 1982, Argentina's military junta invaded the (British) Falkland Islands. The generals thought the British, having long lost their taste for foreign lands, would let it pass. Besides, the Falklands have uncountably more sheep than people. They underestimated Margaret Thatcher (the Argentines, that is, not the sheep). She was not about to permit the conquest of a people whose political allegiance and ethnic ties are to Britain. She dispatched the navy. Britannia took it back
. READ AT IBD "Administration Not Interested In Old Friends".