AIRSTRIP ONE

NOVEMBER NEWS SURF:

• Times Nice Guide
• The Feuro Army?
• The US National Guard - history
• Electoral Fraud in the USA
• Who is behind the EU?
• Will EU allow Brit Disk?

Hi, I'm Jim...
Know me as Gemineye Jim or Jim Gemineye. Anything, as long as it's not Jim Gemineye chéri !

For 12 months that's been my opening line - never had time to change it. Strange, how everyone seem's to be running out of time. Must look-up that Edgar Cayce website sometime.

This page will probably be around for a few months. If you like it, there's more in the archive (Jim's Attic) and of course the rest of the Gemineye website. If you still can't get enough, the Eurosceptic Web Ring at Euro-Mad should keep you busy for some time.

BLAIR'S MILLENNIUM

Eric Blair wrote the book 1984 using the pen name GEORGE ORWELL. Like all good science fiction 1984 dealt not so much with fanciful illusions about the future, but about his own perceptions of his time (1948). Writers sometimes have to use outlandish contexts in order to break the barriers of preconceptions that readers put up. However, in creating this new context, he explored several ideas that we could apply to other eras and also see come to fruition in this new millennium.

• Telescreen - we thought this was his view of the new medium of TV being used to brainwash the masses. That was before digital TV came along. Digital TV will evolve - it will be on all the time, it will be two way - the TV in the bedroom will have to go.
• Newspeak - Didn't quiet get this right. The idea was destroy the ability to express unorthodox ideas by destroying the language required to communicate them. This was done by simplification. Well, if anything, language has become even more complex. But some might argue that corruption of words like cool and wicked accomplish the same thing as Newspeak. On the other hand with the creation of a ‘drug culture' do you need Newspeak? If you're on the right drugs you can drivel on for hours without saying anything meaningful - let alone radical.
• Chocolate rations - Not quite sure why chocolate rations figured so much in Orwell's vision. It was used as a kind of reward or punishment. If news was bad, chocolate rations were reduced - if news was good, chocolate rations were increased. It was as if the people were held to blame for events in Airstrip One, We don't have chocolate rations now - but we do have interest rates.

Airstrip One was the new name for England or Britain under the regime of Big Brother.

It's a different kind of spin... it's less gassy and leaves no bitter after-taste.

Why does William Hague keep doing those First Direct commercials?

PREVIEW OF THE 2001 REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2000

Doesn't time fly...
Well those are some of the things you missed during the year to be reviewed next year - only there isn't going to be a next year for Airstrip One.

Time to move forward as they say. Next Year Airstrip One will be replaced by a themed static web page, probably sometime in spring - I've got a lot of reading to do.

When it's one of those why dont we just give up kind of months.

FREE TRADE or SLAVE TRADE?

Gemineye's Airstrip One archive

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THE ARMY GAME

Is Blair having a game with us? He say's the European Rapid Reaction Force will not be a European standing army. So? The USA's National Guard isn't a US standing army - it's a reserve force managed by each state, but it's the US Government that decides where the National Guard are sent. NG units last saw action in Kosovo, some distance from LA where they were deployed to quell anticipated civil disorder at the Democratic National Convention.

As to where British troops will be sent, Tony Blair say's Britain will have a veto... Mmm, that wouldn't be one of the vetoes QMV will eventually do away with would it?

Tony Blair was shy about reassuring Parliament that NATO was under no threat - his line was simply that the two organisations would operate in different areas. But surely the NATO threat is a bit overdone - what's to stop the EU "Army/National Guard/Rapid Reaction Force" becoming part of NATO. The NICE treaty, or any follow-ups, could easily allow the EU to rob the member countries of their place at the UN and the IMF - why not NATO too?

THAT TRUCKING BUDGET

When it comes to finding money for the Government's causes - it's a case of "we're a wealthy country - we can afford it". Yet when it comes to finding money for causes that concern the people - it's a case of "hard choices have to be made"!

Pensioners or Truckers? Couldn't afford both - we must be grateful for what Gordon gives (us back).

And if we don't buy that, government hides behind the skirts of ecology. We need higher taxes to stop global warming - we are told. How long have we been studying the weather - a couple of hundred years? Global weather patterns span millions of years. Britain once had a tropical climate, then again the whole country has been covered by a large slab of glacier more than once.

Even in recent human history there have been big changes - ancient temples have been found on sea beds all around the world - or did the ancients build them under water as a little joke for the 21st century?

There ARE sound reasons not to pollute the air we breathe, the water we drink. There ARE sound reasons to conserve capital resources like oil.

Is the way to conserve oil stocks and reduce pollution to make fuel so expensive that only a few can afford it? We must use the car less or even give it up we are told - but it's...

Ok to increase private air traffic over Biggin Hill - against the wishes of residents.

Ok for the WTO to open-up China's untapped market for the big car companies.
Will we sell China cars then ask them not to use them?

And what if fuel was more affordable? A reduction in fuel tax would have a dramatic effect on inflation - if the savings made in distribution costs were passed on - who knows - negative inflation? But that won't do - a large reduction in fuel costs would lead to HIGHER INFLATION... we are told. How about that, lower prices - increase in inflation!

What the government is really saying is that we can't be trusted with a bit of money in our pockets. If we saved a few bob on petrol, we would only go and spend it on something else. The government has got better things to spend our money on, like EU harmonisation and legislation.

So, what is the budget, and the threat of inflation, all about? It's about keeping us poor - and that is the bottom line.

GEMINEYE JIM'S CHRISTMAS BIT

Did I hear someone say lighten-up. Well, as it's nearly Christmas - possibly it is Christmas (time is so flexible on the web) - I shall stop ranting for a moment to share with you some of my favourite films.

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
The original version was made in 1956 and has it's own charm. I prefer the 1976 version with Donald Sutherland - his performance at the end of the film is unforgettable.
REVIEW1 - REVIEW2

PACIFIC HEIGHTS
The film starts with Michael Keaton being beaten to within an inch of his life - you are appalled, but by the end of the film you're screaming "nail the bastard" at the telly. A truly excellent example of audience manipulation.
REVIEW

MAD CITY
Some critics didn't like this film, perhaps it was just too obvious about the way the media works. Best to hide those things away in subtlety that goes over Joe public's head. This film is direct - it drives home the way the media can so easily create alternative realities where the truth becomes blurred or lost. Stars John Travolta and Dustin Hoffman.
REVIEW1 - REVIEW2

HUDSUCKER PROXY
If you've ever been unemployed, you'll sympathise with the lead character - Tim Robbins as Norville Barnes - in the opening sequence which starts with voice over "Out of hope, out of rope, out of time." . I particularly enjoyed the employment agency scene where the jobs move so fast they're displayed on the kind of boards you get for aircraft arrivals and departures.
REVIEW1

BRAZIL
I have very obvious reasons for liking this film, not least because it reminds me so much of the EU. See HARMONISING WITH BRAZIL.
REVIEW1 - REVIEW2

In the middle of November New Labour decided it was time to say...

"There is nothing to fear - come and join us - it's quiet painless, all you have to do is sleep damn it!"

So did the increasingly petulant New Labour offer us a compelling argument for joining the Euro and to accept further integration with the EU?

No - they didn't. Instead they tried to make us sleepy with tired catch phrases like:

Robin Cook did string a few complete sentences together though. He said " I want to bury the myth of a superstate - national identities are too strong... I want to bury the myth that Brussels is Them. Brussels is Us."

Well he buried the wrong body! If the EU is not a superstate, then what are EU citizens... er... citizens of? As for ‘Them and Us', Robin Cook is guilty of a bit of miss-direction. There are Eurosceptics in Belgium and every other European Nation - of the nations that allowed a vote on Maastricht Treaty none won with a significant majority - half of Europe was against it. The ‘Them and Us' are the Europhiles and the Eurosceptics. ‘Them and Us' is the result of ideological conflict, not the cause of it.

Robin Cook also resurrected a few myths of his own - he continued by characterising the views of the Eurosceptics as people who saw the future of the EU as "an EU in which jack booted Eurocops roam the streets of Britain, arresting anyone eating bent bananas or drinking beer in pints...". Strangely, he omitted any mention of arresting people for selling fruit and veg in pounds! He was getting too close to putting foot in mouth, but he recovered his grip on fantasy and went on to say " A Europe where lollipop ladies are harmonised, where darts are banned from British pubs and where rubber ducks are banned from the great British bathtub." Robin Cook is now in urgent need of a visit from the "Men in Black" - who will no doubt find that he is really from Alpha Centauri. Has anyone noticed any pods around the back of Parliament recently?

With the details of the Nice Treaty now trickling out, it must be clear even to Europhiles that it is time to WAKE UP!

FEDERAL LANDMARKS TIME LINE

1949:
Treaty of London, creates the Council of Europe.

1951
Council of Europe creates The European Coal & Steel Community (ECSC).

1957
Treaty of Rome creates European Economic Community (EEC or "Common Market").

1967
European Community formed by a merger of the EEC, Euratom and European Coal & Steel Community. EEC becomes EC.

1993
Maastricht Treaty Ratified. The EC becomes the EU

20??
United States of Europe formed by a merger of EU and Council of Europe. EU becomes USE.

We need to look back to 1949 to see where it all began and to see how clear that goal was all along. From the Council of Europe's website I quote a bit of history:

Winston Churchill was the first to point to the solution, in his speech of 19 September 1946 in Zurich. According to him, what was needed was "a remedy which,as if by miracle, would transform the whole scene and in a few years make all Europe as free and happy as Switzerland is today. We must build a kind of United States of Europe". Movements of various persuasions, but all dedicated to European unity, were springing up everywhere at the time. All these organisations were to combine to form the International Committee of the Movements for European Unity. Its first act was to organise the Hague Congress, on 7 May 1948, remembered as "The Congress of Europe".

A year later the Council of Europe was formed. Today CoE countries include all the European countries (west and east), Iceland, Scandinavian and Baltic states and the Russian Federation.

1949 may have been the birth of a federal Europe, but it's conception dates back even further. Delving back that far requires a bit of heavyweight academic research, but there is someone who has done this. She is Lindsay Jenkins, author of Britain Held Hostage. Eurosceptic website www.taylor.co.uk is promoting her book. It's the most informative work on the creation of the EU you will find anywhere. Strongly recommended, CLICK HERE to read the excerpts at Taylor's website.

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