Sinking the French Fleet at Mers el Kebir by the British

On a previous post I took the position that Menachem Begin was wrong to bomb the King David Hotel in 1946 killing 91 and strongly advocated my position. I stand by my assertion and expected a heated debate which we had. Perhaps I was overly harsh on Begin and it is always dangerous to judge historical decisions from the comfort of the future. Had I taken the other position arguing for Begin's position, I would have replied with the British sinking of the French Fleet at Mers el Kebir in 1940. The British did not want the French Fleet falling to the Germans and they attacked and in less than ten minutes, 1,297 French servicemen were dead and three battleships were sunk.

Below, in the first video, you will find a synopsis of why the French thought it was an outrage and the British thought it was necessary. The second video is in French but show the damage done and the French servicemen killed in a Pearl Harbor type of attack by the British.

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Churchill's Sinking of the French Fleet (July 3, 1940) Scott Manning November 29, 2006

Discuss this article in our forums.

On June 13, 1940, Winston Churchill took one of several trips to France during Hitler's Blitzkrieg. After convincing the French not to sign a separate armistice with Germany just two months prior, Churchill was now being begged to release them from the obligation. When a country loses its will to fight, there's not much you can do to inspire them to anything but quit.

That left Churchill with a loose-end on his mind: The French Fleet.

The French Fleet

By June 10, 1940, the French Army was shattered, but the French Navy was amazingly intact. François Darlan, the Admiral of the French Fleet told Churchill point-blank that the Fleet would be sunk before it was surrendered to the Germans.

Churchill later remarked of Admiral Darlan that he had "but to sail in any one of his ships to any port outside France to become the master of all French interests beyond German control." Darlan could have become "the chief of the French Resistance with a mighty weapon in his hand." Churchill believed the Admiral could have been the "Liberator of France".

But that was not to happen. Although Admiral Darlan was strong in his commitment to prevent the Germans from seizing a single French ship, Churchill was not convinced. Losing Britian's last fighting ally in the war is one thing, but allowing that ally's fleet to fall in the hands of the Germans was something to lose sleep over.

The concern was not over the French using their fleet to assist their new conqueror. The real concern was that Germany would train their own sailors to command those ships.

Members of Britain's own navy spent time with the commanders of the French Fleet. They were convinced that the commanders were dedicated to the cause of not surrendering to the Germans.

On June 17, France pressed for peace with Germany.

Before France could officially surrender, Churchill tried to convince his War Cabinet to attack the French Fleet. The War Cabinet refused. There were several concerns on the table. For one, the attack would surely result in the loss of British troops and ships. Second, although getting beaten by Germany and showing eagerness to throw in the towel, France was still an ally.

On June 24, France and Germany signed an armistice. Part of that agreement was the French could keep their ships, but Germany would gain control over items such as passports and tickets. Hitler treaded lightly concerning the ships and did not push for full ownership. He feared such aggression would inspire the French to keep fighting.

Hitler's concerns were not known to England.

However, on July 1, Churchill was finally able to get the backing of the War Cabinet to sink the ships if they would not be surrendered.

On July 3, the British surrounded the French Fleet at the port of Mers-el-Kebir right outside Oran, Algeria. Churchill's message was clear: sail to Britain, sail to the USA, or scuttle your ships in the next six hours. At first, the French refused to speak to negotiators. Two hours later, the French showed the British an order they had received from Admiral Darlan instructing them to sail the ships to the USA if the Germans broke the armistice and demanded the ships.

Meanwhile, the British intercepted a message from the Vichy Government ordering French reinforcements to move urgently to Oran. Churchill was done playing games and ordered the attack to his commanders, "Settle everything before dark or you will have reinforcements to deal with."

An hour and a half later, the British Fleet attacked. In less than ten minutes, 1,297 French soldiers were dead and three battleships were sunk. One battleship and five destroyers managed to escape.

British Response

While the French were furious over the events, the reaction in England was the exact opposite.

The day after attacking the French, Churchill went to the House of Commons to explain why he ordered the attack on the former ally. Churchill declared, "However painful, the action we have already taken should be, in itself, sufficient to dispose once and for all of the lies and Fifth Column activities that we have the slightest intention of entering into negations. We shall prosecute the war with the utmost vigour by all the means that are open to us."

For the first time since taking over as Prime Minister, Churchill received a unanimous standing ovation. Churchill had a message for the British, for Hitler, and for the world. The message was heard loud and clear.

England would not make peace with Hitler and the country was in this war for the long haul.

SCOTT MANNING

Should Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi be Getting Nervous?

Al-Megrahi cancer release defended by Scotland two years on

Lockerbie bomber's release has been vindicated, says Scottish government, despite the 'terminal cancer patient' still being alive

• David Batty and agencies
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 20 August 2011 13.59 BST
• Article history

Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi arrives back in Tripoli two years ago. The 'terminal cancer patient' is still alive today. Photograph: AP

The Scottish government says its decision to release the Lockerbie bomber exactly two years ago has been vindicated.

The release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi from Greenock Prison on the grounds that he had just three months to live has proved controversial as he is still alive two years after returning home to Tripoli.

On the second anniversary of his release, two US senators have demanded his extradition from Libya. New Jersey senators Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg want the rebel-led transitional Libyan government to send Megrahi to the US.

But a spokesman for Scottish first minister Alex Salmond said the government stood by the decision. In a statement, the spokesman said the decision "was taken on the basis of Scots law" and was not influenced by economic, political or diplomatic factors.

"We stand by it, and al-Megrahi is dying of terminal prostate cancer."

Megrahi is the only man convicted over the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people, mostly Americans, when it exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

He was freed on 20 August 2009, after prison doctors said he had prostate cancer and likely had only three months to live.

Last month he appeared at a televised rally in Tripoli alongside Muammar Gaddafi.

Michele Bachmann, A Midwestern Margaret Thatcher with added divinity?

Being Michele Bachmann

The terrifying truthfulness of the victor of the Ames straw poll

Aug 20th 2011 | The Economist

PRESUMABLY because both are attractive women, and she the lesser-known, the media used to disparage Michele Bachmann, who won the Ames straw poll on August 13th, as “Palin-lite”. That was always upside down. Whereas Sarah Palin was once flummoxed when invited to name the newspapers—any newspaper—she read, Mrs Bachmann, the third-term congresswoman from Minnesota, told the Wall Street Journal earlier this year that her favourite beachside reading included the work of Ludwig von Mises, a towering economist of the Austrian school. This column is even more impressed by her mastery of the 3.8m or so words of the ludicrous federal tax code. A lawyer who spent five years working for the Internal Revenue Service is not to be trifled with. When she says that the tax code is “a weapon of mass destruction”, she knows whereof she speaks.

If Mrs Bachmann’s cleverness was ever in question, the doubt should have been dispelled by her performance since confirming in June that she was running for the Republican presidential nomination. Before that she had attracted rather little national attention beyond the rapt circles of the tea-party movement. Her signature legislation, a light-bulb freedom of choice act, designed to protect the God-given right of every American to waste as much electricity as he pleases, had attracted more mirth than votes. In January she irritated the Republican leadership by insisting on delivering her own rebuttal, as creator and leader of the tea-party caucus in the House of Representatives, to Barack Obama’s state-of-the-union speech. It was an amateurish affair, in which she appeared to stare throughout at the wrong camera.

But how the lady has turned. Since joining the race for president she has exhibited a flair for organisation and a political cunning above the ordinary. If her victory in Ames was no great surprise—an evangelical Christian with hard-boiled pro-life, anti-gay-marriage credentials was always likely to prosper in the God-fearing cornfields of Iowa—her disciplined comportment as a campaigner has been. When, before Ames, Chris Wallace of Fox News asked her outright whether she was a “flake”, she refused to be baited, maintained an icy insouciance and, later, received a grovelling apology. A Newsweek cover picturing her with crazed eyes as “The Queen of Rage” probably did more damage to Tina Brown, the would-be saviour of that troubled publication, than to the would-be saviour of America, who affected to pay it no attention. Under attack in the debate at Ames, she coolly disposed of one of her main challengers, Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota.

Still, there is a reason why that “flake” question was posed. Mrs Bachmann has a record of making factual mistakes, repeating untruths and adopting preposterous stances. Though some of the mistakes have been mere slips, they were slips of a sort that a candidate who claims a close familiarity with America’s founding ought never to have made. At one point she said that the “shot heard round the world” had been fired in Lexington, New Hampshire (it was Lexington, Massachusetts); at another that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly until slavery was no more” (wrong by almost a century). She claimed in 2008 that Mr Obama held “anti-American” views, and last year that his visit to India would cost taxpayers $200m a day, a fantastic number apparently plucked, unchecked, from Indian newspapers. She continues to maintain, preposterously, that Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s credit because Congress raised the debt ceiling. The opposite is true: the agency wanted more deficit reduction but expressed alarm at the spectacle of politicians like Mrs Bachmann turning the debt ceiling into a political bargaining chip.

Judgmental, moi?

Now that she is running for president, Mrs Bachmann is choosing her words more cautiously, especially on social issues. But she has had to resort to credulity-stretching gymnastics to explain past utterances. Did she become a tax lawyer against her own will because, as she once argued, it was a wife’s duty (see the fifth chapter of Ephesians) to be “submissive” to her husband, who thought it was a good idea? No, she says now, in an assertion that would dumbfound a lexicographer: to “submit” means to “respect”. Why in 2004 did she equate homosexuality to “personal enslavement”? “I am running for the presidency of the United States. I am not running to be anyone’s judge.” Such evasions are less than convincing. As a Minnesota state senator a decade ago, Mrs Bachmann made her opposition to gay marriage into a crusade that helped to build her political career. The clinic she set up with her husband Marcus (which she cites as evidence of her understanding of job creation) offered to make gays straight via the agency of prayer. Judgmental, moi?

Her liberal critics make rich fun of all this. But exaggeration, inexactitude and mendacity are the currency of politics. The voter who grumbles about these things is like the farmer who grumbles about the weather. If Mrs Bachmann is guilty of such sins, she is hardly alone. Indeed, her most potent weapon might, paradoxically, be the fundamental honesty that undergirds her positions. That is to say, people can tell that, unlike most candidates, what you see is what you would get: a strongly religious person; a moraliser; a diminutive figure who really does appear to have, as she boasts, a “titanium spine”; a conviction politician in an age when many convictions are feigned. A Midwestern Margaret Thatcher with added divinity, she stands primed to reverse the monstrous growth of the entitlement state, convinced that whatever short-term suffering this causes will nonetheless restore the moral fibre of America. Many Americans would no doubt vote for her if she made it through the primaries. But far more are likely to be frightened, which is why she probably won’t.

Can't we all just get along?

Research explores potential outcomes of contact with aliens

BOSTON | Fri Aug 19, 2011 4:13pm EDT Reuters
(Reuters) - Contact with extraterrestrials could be beneficial or might destroy the human race, according to an analysis of possible outcomes of an alien encounter that even one author of the study described as unlikely.

The scenarios are contained in a paper written by a trio of scientists dated in April and published in the journal Acta Astronautica that won media attention this week following an article published in a British newspaper.

The collection of possible outcomes, should earthlings meet beings from elsewhere, ranges from beneficial to harmful, according to the paper by Seth Baum, a doctoral candidate, and Jacob Haqq-Misra and Shawn Domagal-Goldman, both postdoctoral scholars.

Contact with extraterrestrials might lead to a discussion of math and science or helpful collaboration on solving serious issues like world hunger or poverty, the paper said.

In some of the more dire situations, the scientists said aliens could intentionally plan to eat or enslave people on earth.

Another possibility would be for extraterrestrials to destroy life on earth if they detected civilization was expanding too rapidly and could harm others. Evidence of humans destroying the environment could prompt such an attack.

Extraterrestrials could also harm earth through disease or by using technology, knowingly or unintentionally, they said.

The journal that published the study, Acta Astronautica, publishes articles on developments in space research. Baum is doing doctoral work at Pennsylvania State University, where Haqq-Misra is a post-doctoral research associate.

The other author, Domagal-Goldman, said in a blog post on Friday that while he believed contact with alien civilization was unlikely, researching the possibility was fun.

While there is still no detected form of extraterrestrial intelligence, the researchers said their review provided the groundwork for a more comprehensive plan to respond to alien contact should it ever occur.

Obama Tunes Into His Inner Negro - Whites Have Too Many Federal Jobs

Hat Tip Quark:

Obama has a new jobs program: Carefully identify all white workers in the federal work force, and reduce their numbers by replacing them with people who Obama prefers to be employed, and that is those with darker skin. After statistical analysis Obama has carefully categorized the melamine content of all federal workers. The data shows  that Whites still have  81 percent of senior pay-level positions. How the fuck did that happen? Surely the government didn't have people employed because they are competent. The government simply has too many white people. This truly troubles The First Hoopster and he will do something about it. Obama will now engage in a federal ethnic cleansing of all these troubling excess white workers.

Obama is disturbed by all those white faces and and has recognized the urgency to cleanse the federal workforce of excess whites. The process is to begin in 90 days. The white problem is now a top priority of what used to be your federal government. Obama will not rest until the White Problem is solved.

If You Are White, That Ain't Right.

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Obama orders improved workforce-diversity effort

By Isaac Arnsdorf, Published: August 18 WAPO

President Obama on Thursday issued an executive order requiring government agencies to develop plans for improving federal workforce diversity.

The long-awaited executive order directs a group of high-ranking officials to create a government-wide plan, followed by specific plans in each agency. It marks the highest-profile response to a problem that has been on the administration’s radar: Whites still hold more than 81 percent of senior pay-level positions.

“The federal government has a special opportunity to lead by example,” John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management, said in a conference call. “We will only succeed in our critical mission with a workforce that hails from, represents and is connected to the needs of every American community.”

The order creates a framework, but the details have not been worked out. Instead of creating a new administrative body, as with Obama’s 2009 executive order on veterans’ employment, this initiative will look to a council of deputy agency chiefs. OPM, the Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will participate.

That group will be responsible for creating a government-wide plan within 90 days. According to the order, after that plan is released, each agency must present its own specific diversity plan within 120 days. The efforts must reflect initiatives on a number of fronts, including recruitment, training and promotion.

Berry said that the executive order elevates the issue of diversity to a level of attention that will prevent this initiative from falling by the wayside, as other efforts have. “Rather than create a new structure, the president has built upon an existing structure at the very highest level that will get attention and scrutiny,” he said.

Officials did not commit to specific goals or measures, which they said will vary by agency.

“We are trying to say that this is something that should be folded into and a part of everything you do,” Deputy Director Christine Griffin said.

According to the latest Federal Equal Opportunity Recruitment Program Report, women hold 31 percent of senior positions, African Americans 7 percent and Latinos 4 percent.

At an EEOC conference in Baltimore this week, the commission and OPM released a joint memorandum vowing “the most rigorous possible enforcement” of equal-pay laws for federal employees. The memo noted that while the gender pay gap had fallen from 28 cents on the dollar in 1987, it still stood at 11 cents in 2007.

Increasing workplace diversity has been among Berry’s top three long-term goals — alongside controlling health-care costs and improving the federal pay system — since he took office in 2009.

Housing Prices Still Falling - Thirteen Trillion in Home Equity (Savings) Lost

The median price of a single-family house fell in 109 of 150 metropolitan areas in the second quarter as foreclosures devalued real estate. In 2005, owners' equity represented 58.5% of real estate values. According to most studies, people will increase their spending by about $5 for each $100 increase in their net wealth. Therefore, they will reduce their spending by $5 for each $100 reduction in their wealth as well. Unless we have increasing employment and rising incomes, there is no way to replace that lost savings. The attempt by individuals to replace this savings loss will only further reduce consumer spending. There is no way possible to export your way out of that trap.

Such a huge gap in demand can only be replaced by government spending on infrastructure projects or support for manufacturing that will replace imports. If you assume that people will save 7% of their income, it will take $100 Trillion spending to generate public savings lost in the housing debacle? How do you get out of that mess?

Good Morning Stupid

Thinking about waffels? "Ugh ugh ugh em, I havn't had lunch."  

Obama won the Democratic caucuses in Iowa in 2008. Johnny, Pretty Boy, Edwards, who is currently fighting a losing battle to stay out of prison, came in second and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton finished third.

Obama wants to get back to the people in Iowa, so he flies out in Air Force One, which costs $181,757 an hour to operate, and then gets on a custom-made $1.1 million bus, followed by another custom-made $1.1 million bus and a convoy of everything funded by you. All this is about Mr. Meathead's coming views about creating American jobs. In reality, it is cover for He-Who-Never-Rests and the Movingonup's to rest and play in Martha's Vineyard.
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Even Left is Abandoning Obama as His Poll Numbers Continue to Decline

Barack Obama’s poll numbers in heavily Democratic New York have gone negative, with 49 percent disapproving of his job performance compared to only 45 percent who approve. The Quinnipiac University poll last showed the President with a 57 percent approval rating in late June, a drop of 9 points in six weeks. Among Republicans, the poll showed disapproval ratings of 86 percent, up from 74 percent in June, while among Democrats his approval rating dropped from 82 percent to 75 percent. Among independents 58 percent expressed their disapproval, up from 45 percent in June. “The evidence continues to mount,” writes Dan Weil at Newsmax.com, “that President Barack Obama’s re-election bid is in trouble.”

The latest daily Presidential Tracking Poll by Rasmussen Reports confirms those results, with their Presidential Approval Index rating at -22 approval index rating, the lowest of Obama's presidency, and down from a +22 approval index rating at the start of his presidency in 2009. Gallup tracks his job approval on a daily basis where 48 percent disapprove of his job performance, his weakest standing since December of 2009. NEW AMERICAN

We're Number One!

Fitch reaffirms top U.S. credit rating

By Jeanne Sahadi @CNNMoney August 16, 2011: 10:20 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Fitch Ratings on Tuesday reaffirmed the United States' AAA credit rating.
The move comes less than two weeks after Standard & Poor's downgraded the United States' long-term debt to AA+. "The key pillars of US's exceptional creditworthiness remains intact: its pivotal role in the global financial system and the flexible, diversified and wealthy economy that provides its revenue base. Monetary and exchange rate flexibility further enhances the capacity of the economy to absorb and adjust to 'shocks,' " Fitch said in a statement.

Fitch did add a caveat, however. It would likely revise its outlook on the U.S. rating to negative from stable if the congressional committee charged with proposing at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction fails to reach agreement, or if the economic recovery proves weaker than expected. That means there would be a greater than 50% chance that Fitch would downgrade the country within two years.