? • Book, Film & DVD Reviews Censored by Amazon ii

Book, Film & DVD Reviews Censored by Amazon ii

Propagandists, nuke liars, frauds, publicists, dupes - but also some debunkers - of nuclear and other issues

Re: Book and Film Reviews Removed by Amazon

Postby rerevisionist » 06 Feb 2012 19:30


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A Nation of Immigrants?: A Brief Demographic History of Britain - by David Conway

5 stars - Solid shortish book on population movements into Britain, designed to oppose errors

December 8, 2010 -Removed from Amazon.co.uk

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Published by 'civitas' of [...]- Institute for the Study of civil Society. Short book - about 100 pages. Has endnotes, but is not indexed. It's unillustrated; this may sound trivial, but it means there are no graphs, maps, photos or other aids. The 'Gumball' video illustrates something like the opposite approach; it can be more effective.

Conway clarifies at the start that the 'nation of immigrants' claim presumably is the claim that a majority of people in Britain are descended from immigrants who entered Britain at some stage, when Britain existed - i.e. not the mists of prehistory.

British history is split into five time zones - up to the Roman Conquest (and its fall)/ Up to the Norman Conquest in 1066/ then to the Reformation/ then to Second World War/ finally, 1945 to the present - publication was in 2007.

He's picked these dates because they represent various types of immigration:
* Up to the Roman Conquest - the view now is that agriculture replaced hunter/gatherer life by diffusion, not invasion. Then of course 'Romans' invaded, tho these were mostly Belgae etc. So his first interval includes the Romans.
* There were Angles, Saxons and so on, and Vikings. And some Jews. Conway adduces evidence that the numbers weren't large.

Throughout there is evidence from DNA studies, some on bones a thousand or more years ago. B Sykes and S Oppenheimer are cited here. The Reformation introduced religious refugees, Protestants mostly. These incuded the Huguenots, whom Conway praises as does almost everyone.

* Up to the Second World War there were Jews round about 1890. Alien Act 1905. And Alien Restriction (Amendment) Act 1919. Their numbers however were dwarfed by the Irish. Conway is good on the reasons for England allying with Scotland, then Ireland - defensive measures against France.

* After the Second World War. Conway quotes official figures illustrating the 'staggering growth', mostly in England. He subdivides the period: 1945-1948 (including Poles left from WW2; and Ukrainians - I met an 82-year old Ukrainian woman who bemoaned men she knew from the next village getting married in UK bigamously); 1948-1971 1948 British Nationality Act (under Attlee, Labour) 'extended a right to them all [i.e. Indians and Pakistanis], even after independence' 1969 Commonwealth Appeals Act p 76; 1971-1997 1971 Immigration Act and 'patriality' (p 76) and where the EU had a problem with the eastern borders when the USSR failed, and 1997 is the start of Tony Blair's disastrously dogmatic 'New Labour' regime; 1997 - present includes the further unfolding of chain immigration, arranged marriages, fake asylum, fake students, movement of labour, and all the rest. [1981 Nationality Act changed legal meaning of 'British' - under Labour]

Conway identifies some influential publications and people:--
* 1996 'Commission for Racial Equality': 'Roots of the Future: Ethnic Diversity in the Making of Britain'. Conway says in effect this was propaganda rubbish promoting the lie of a 'mongrel nation'.
* 2000 Barbara Roche speech on 'UK migration in a global economy'. Conway says this was the start of the odd idea that unskilled illiterates were valuable to the economy and would 'pay our pensions'.
* 2004, R Winder, 'Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain'. Conway, here implies this book is simple propaganda, aimed at an increasingly annoyed white populace.
* 2006 B Sykes and S Oppenheimer publish, says Conway, books with very similar accounts of results of DNA research into Britons, showing small penetration even by Angles and Saxons who were supposed to have invaded en masse.

This book needs to be read several times over, to get the feel for the way politicians have slanted and lied about the issues. 'The relatively high level of social harmony Britain has enjoyed results from the fact that earlier waves of immigrants ... had to adapt... Now our culture, and our nation, are in danger of fragmenting...' Conway doesn't tackle, or I think mention, the possible real differences in races - for example the lack of achievements by Africans.
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Re: Book and Film Reviews Removed by Amazon

Postby rerevisionist » 06 Feb 2012 19:37

Who Runs Britain?: and Who's to Blame for the Economic Mess We're in by Robert Peston

1 star - Worthless unintelligent innumerate BBC-style flannel from a BBC hack, November 30, 2010

-removed from amazon.co.uk

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**LONG REVIEW WARNING!**
This book was published in Feb 2008, written, according to the flyleaf, by the BBC's 'award-winning' Business Editor. Among other things, he had the 'Scoop of the Year on Northern Rock seeking emergency help from the Bank of England' which must mean only that they told him first; I wonder why...

It has ten chapters with childish titles (e.g. 'The King of Jackpot Capitalism') - a mixture of human interest drivel - either to hide Peston's ignorance, or to give the audience something easy, or to simply evade the truth.

1 Starts with his autobiography - an ordinary Jewish boy (he notes without comment his ex-school is now largely immigrant filled). There's scattered information - his parents, the post-WW2 world, non-dom and wealthy entrepreneurs, tax havens, capital movements, Indian steel, China, executives' pay. Almost all is unsourced, though sometimes the Financial Times or Times or some magazine ('an analysis in Prospect magazine') is mentioned. He claims to believe the usual conventions on entrepreneurs and performance-related pay (except one must assume for BBC hacks, of course). Obviously there are thousands of relevant people; the choice no doubt is made for him by editors and scribblers and publicity-seekers.

2 Borrowing: goes through the general idea of company takeovers using borrowed money, by comparison with house prices bought on mortgages, in a time of rising prices - he gives no explanation of why these should be rising. He comments (p56) that Gordon Brown confused US 'venture capital' (putting money into promising typically high tech start-ups) with a British sense (putting money into asset-strippers etc).

3 and 4 deal mostly with Philip Green who bought a chain of clothes shops and made money by improving them; or something like that. (He was knighted 'for services to the retail industry'). His strength seems to be that he knew the business thoroughly - letters of credit, warehousing buying from China, cancelled orders etc - if only civil servants were knowledgeable. Chapter 4 looks at an attempted takeover of Marks and Spencer. I have to assume Peston's book came out in a hurry as all this material is anecdotal and essentially of its time.

5 'Poison Manufacturers' - a chapter of random bits and pieces about Robert Shiller's book 'The New Financial Order' on e.g. unlikely schemes such as insuring against house price falls, and more significantly reducing the gap between wealthy and 'developing' nations [except in Palestine?] China, Japan, oil and gas are listed as great exports though none are quantified. One figure quoted is $600bn of sub-prime mortgages as 'toxic debt'; however even if people borrow too much, after throwing them out some value is recoverable - typically, Peston makes no attempt to quantify this.

6 is largely on Goldman Sachs (almost as an anthropology subject - omitting one fact), and JP Morgan. The City of London - 330,000 people - is said to be 'astonishingly productive' although of course what it actually does is unstated. Peston quotes a few facts, or perhaps factoids: (p204) ten hedge-fund managers in 2006 earned more than $500M says 'Alpha', presumably a magazine. A German paper, Bild, (p210) says they are 'like a plague of locusts .. devour everything, then fly on..'. P 215 has a conflict of interest - the holding funds don't want the companies they own to outperform themselves.

7 Pensions: long chapter bemoaning the way Britain's pensions have been under long-term attack. Peston's long account is unsourced, and its impossible to know how reliable it is. Just as the Tories changed the definition of 'unemployed' to suit themselves - 20 times? 30 times? - the laws on pensions and things like tax relief, % limits on contributions, inflation linking or not, tax credit, ACT, valuing of the liabilities have been changed so often by Lawson and Brown and others - quite apart from the ONS getting things wrong - that the subject is highly confusing; very probably intentionally.

8 'Democracy for Sale' is mostly about Levy, fundraiser for the 'Labour' Party - as it's still called - but also the Conservatives. Including not declaring loans - if they expect their money back, it's not really a gift, is it? It's impossible to know how reliable this material is. Tagged on is material on cash for honours. As an example, Gulam Noon is quoted, supplying 120,000 packaged meals a day to Sainsburys [a supermarket chain]. These are designed say Peston for immigrants - for some reason Peston fails to mention that taxpayer's' money for housing, expenses, health, and benefits and presumably barbaric slaughter methods, with standard industrial equipment did all this; Peston typically regards this as wonderful.

9 Royal Mail (the Post Office - renamed Consignia for a bit) was reorganised by Allan Leighton. Peston duly notes that he swore sometimes, and gets up at 5 a.m.

10 Who runs Britain? - Well - whoever it is hasn't told Peston!

It's hard to criticise unresisting imbecility, but let me list a few things:---

** Naturally as with all subjects trying to evade scrutiny inspection Peston uses the elaborate junk vocabulary - 'tax efficient', 'wealth creator', 'stakeholder' - you can imagine.

** (p171) 'financial products whose dangers were misunderstood' - 175 'hard for regulators to work out which hedge funds, or pension funds, or insurers, or banks are actually holding the instruments'. Peston does NOT address the issue of why banks charge low rates of interest on risky matters. Reorganisation mightn't work; bag of miscellaneous loans might fail. It seems likely that there must have been collusion. 'Private Eye' ran a piece in about 1975 called 'Pension Fun' on tricks used by pension funds holders to get money on the side. Another likely issue is the Rothschild money printing aspect of things and the Bank of England/ Fed. (Peston makes no mention of 'Quantitative easing'). There's amusing material on Standard and Poors, to the effect they pleaded in court they were only giving a journalistic opinion on AAA style judgements. Substandard and Poor, indeed.

** Like all hacks, Peston has no imaginative comparisons. Consider for example average North American/ European people. They don't (or didn't) pay much attention to things like drink and cigarettes and junk/spree spending; say £100/year isn't really noticeable. If you put the adult population at say 800M, this amounts to £80 billion a year. The 'entrepreneurs' might be regarded as hoovering up spare change in obsessive mode; this sort of approximation is important to avoid silly panics.

** As an example, chapter 9 on the Royal Mail reorganisation states it was losing about £1M each day. Say in a year getting on for half a billion. Is that a lot? Well, that's about what is 'paid' in 'free' legal advice to 'asylum seekers', all of whom have broken the law about travelling to the 'next safe' country. Peston thinks in his simple-minded way that 30,000 'redundancies' (i.e. firings) and 3,000 or so Post Offices closed was worth that. Recently, some energy company (i.e. holding company that had been sold some of Britain's utilities) made £8bn reported profit - enough to keep post offices open 25 years. It's also about a third of the value of homes given to immigrants in one year - not counting the free services they are given.

** Peston says nothing about contributions to the EU - with its accounts not signed off; I've seen a figure of net $6bn, but wouldn't swear to it. The cost of wars, de-industrialisation, financing Indian steel and space and airports (Britain gave a steelworks to India; and also paid for an entire supermodern airport). The cost of the 'global warming' fraud - supported by the BBC, incidentally - the cost of selling off utilities, the astronomical costs of immigration are all ignored by Peston.

** It's perhaps worth making a wry note on 'charitable' giving. For example on 'academies' - where a huge building is given in exchange for a fraction of its value. 'AIDS' work is another notorious fraud. I noticed (p202) £1M for a 'Lib Dem think tank' run by 'Jennifer Moses, a retired Goldman Sachs banker'.

Peston appears to still 'work' for the BBC. He should be out of a job and his 'pension' removed surgically.
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Re: Book (and Film) Reviews Censored by Amazon

Postby rerevisionist » 07 Feb 2012 02:03

Bernard Shaw, Vol. 2: 1898-1918 - The Pursuit of Power by Michael Holroyd

3 stars - Timid-minded but industrious author looks at short-sighted lion,
November 14, 2011

removed from amazon.co.uk
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Holroyd's hefty triptych is now about twenty years old. Holroyd appears to have made much effort - there are huge lists of acknowledgements (and incidentally amusing asides on the teething troubles of then-new word processors). But maybe his effort was confined to mailing out requests for information, and perhaps arranging material in sequence.

Shaw was world-famous from roughly (Max Beerbohm's chronology) his 40th birthday, 1896. This fame lasted to the end of his life. But less that ten years after waking up no longer obscure, the First World War began. He was established in the fin de siecle, a contemporary of a mixed crew including Wilde, Beardsley, William Morris - just about, Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Wagner, Whistler, Zola, H G Wells. Why did Shaw become so well-known, or, if you prefer, notorious? Holroyd, in my opinion, is hopeless on this question. As a minimum, to situate X, it's necessary to establish what outlook was assumed by writers before the advent of X; and then describe what he/she did that was so novel as to attract huge attention. It's also necessary to establish the economic and legal framework: it's likely Shaw benefitted from the relaxation of laws on blasphemy, and on the removal of stamp duty from educational publications, and on Victorian wealth, allowing fairly massive attendance at theatres (and music halls) - and no doubt other things. However, Holroyd seems rather incapable of attempting general topics; his accounts of Shaw's work, mostly plays of course, are competent but seem (to me) superficial. Thus 'Heartbreak House' (first produced 1923) was regarded by Bertrand Russell as an illustration of the enfeebled moral and intellectual state of Britain prior to the First World War, populated by people talking about little of importance; and possibly its audiences viewed it in that light; but Holroyd's descriptions, in a long passage in vol 3, of the characters and their speeches, doesn't do much to bring out the irresponsibility of Heartbreak House types.

Even after fairly careful examination of Holroyd, I can't be certain when Shaw metamorphosed from music critic, ghost writer, author of unfinished novels, and author of unperformed plays into fame. Holroyd, in effect, assumes Shaw's retrospective activity must have been important, and we get a great deal of information on Shaw's life and family in Ireland, St Pancras Vestry and local London politics, Henry George - Shaw regarded the 'land question' as absolutely crucial - and Karl Marx as influences, the Webbs, the founding of the 'New Statesman', and so on. Fascinating to read that the LSE was established with the help of a bequest of £10,000. Socialism in Britain started earlier than anywhere else, and was basically nationalistic. This explains a peculiar difference with both the USA and Germany, where Jewish immigration perverted the movement from the start into a secretive pro-Jewish underground force.

Interesting material on Shaw and sex. Volume I ('The Search for Love') ends in 1898; Volume 3 ('The Lure of Fantasy') begins in 1918. Volume 2 ('The Pursuit of Power') therefore covers the shortest time span of the volumes, Holroyd, probably correctly, implicitly deeming the First World War more influential than the Second. But again there's superficiality: Shaw's 'Common Sense About the War' isn't reproduced, and Holroyd is a bit evasive about it, as of course he is in re the Second World War.

The time span of volume 2 included vast Jewish immigration into the East End of London, unnoticed by Holroyd; it's interesting that by 1909 'a power Broadway impresario Charles Frohman' became involved in 'experimental repertory' at the Duke of York's. I wish Holroyd had delved a little into the taboo topic of theatre takings - was Shaw something like an Andrew Lloyd-Webber figure? Anyway, Volume 3 contains 32 years of Shaw ageing from 63 to 94. He clearly had little idea about Stalin, and for that matter little about Hitler. And indeed little about Churchill. His death was eventful - many news hacks and a few religious figures turning up more or less unwantedly. He left money to the British Museum, which later split into two parts, the British Library being the natural destination of his money; however, there was at least one lawsuit over this issue. Bertie Russell said that he was delicious in his attacks on humbug - but also that, his battles being won, his plays were no longer performed. I've seen and heard several people say his plays are "boring".

Holroyd's books therefore are more valuable as reference sources than as a convincing portrait. Interesting to read Shaw on Einstein - not a clue. Or Charlie Chaplin. Or Liberalism - Shaw was brought up when the Manchester School of competition benefitted Britain, especially the entrepreneurial types, and Shaw noted things were changing, and lashed out at Liberalism and Liberals. I expect he helped muddy the meaning of the word - in the USA it's used in truly weird senses. Shaw knew nothing of Judaism (Belloc isn't even mentioned in Volume 3). Or Shakespeare - one of his plays shows Shakespeare jotting down comments from the common people on his wax tablets! I don't think Shaw knew much of India - many of his pithy sayings make sense if you assume that information was restricted, and Shaw was simply assuming that most people were fairly reasonable. It's hard to make sense of his comments on the USSR (Soviet Union) on any other basis - Holroyd has of course quite a bit on this, not of great informational depth. And the same applies to many of his plays - St Joan, for example. Of course, the same applied to his audiences who otherwise would have been less inclined to regard him as a sage.

I have a sort of family anecdote about Shaw: after the War, someone went to Shaw's house to tune a piano (or mend a shelf, or something) and on his return, the others in their workplace asked him what was Shaw like? "Just an old man with a beard."

So - detailed, with many presumably accurate quotations. And full of raw meat, notably on the Socialist movement in Britain, but all somewhat uncooked and indigestible. (There is no real examination of the way Socialist ideals became influenced, corrupted, degraded in their passage to official 'Labour Party' dogma). I don't think I'm alone in thinking this; the laudatory paragraphs in the blurbs don't entirely carry conviction; and my copies ('used', once owned by a school) look unopened. Amazon has virtually no reviews.
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Re: Book (and Film) Reviews Censored by Amazon

Postby rerevisionist » 07 Feb 2012 05:05

Weaving the Web: The Past, Present and Future of the World Wide Web by its Inventor, Tim Berners-Lee
Not very perceptive techie material,
24 Jun 2010
-This was removed from amazon.co.uk, but, when I tried again, it was left

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Most of the action here, assuming it's not updated, is 1990 to 2000. The end-point seems a bit dated now - Amazon gets a mention, but not Google or Windows XP or e-Bay. Modern solid state disks and I think narrow screens didn't exist. There's no anticipation of the huge crash which happened soon after this book was published - though e-Trade is in - and which can be dated at about 2000. He doesn't predict spam and the Nigerian frauds. On the other hand, Mosaic, now almost forgotten, was at that time one of several browsers, and Windows 98 a new product.

I was interested to try to find how much truth there was in the idea that Berners-Lee 'invented' Internet - any spectacular invention tends to have many inventors, in fact. The first thing to note is that 'internet' already existed - Berners-Lee claims to have invented the 'web'. He worked at CERN where of course there were assorted incompatible computers made by different manufacturers. There were also intranets and email. I think Berners-Lee understates by a huge factor the way that de facto standardisation made things easier. For example, everyone uses 8-bit bytes; Mac hardware now is the same as IBM PC hardware, though just one fixed form of it; and the fact most PCs now use the same chip makes it far easier to write common programs. There are standard connections like USB of various types and 'firewire', and their earlier versions - RS232, Centronics, whatever. One very important hidden aspect which Berners-Lee seems not to have noticed is language: all this work was done using the Latin alphabet, and mostly in English. Japanese, Chinese, and other scripts weren't used; even accents, as in French and Vietnamese, weren't taken seriously.

As far as I can see, Berners-Lee managed to get people to use standard 'protocols' - things like IP and ISP and ways of doing things which are highly technical - how difficult to write on these topics without the in-house 'dedicated' jargon! HTML - hypertext mail link, the plain (but Latin alphabet) text plus commands in <these brackets> - was a relatively small part of the action. Sun's Java language, presumably relying on the standard chip, allowed little programs to be run (and introduced the possibility of 'viruses'). The author always talks in a mystical way of how the web is out there, and everything is accessible anywhere, and yet this can't be true, because (as he points out) to check up on say mysite.com must need some sort of look-up system. He also seems to understate the sheer quantity of cables, wires, satellites, transmission systems, hardware etc etc which must be needed. It's a bit disappointing to find hints of misrepresentation. Another aspect is his rather wounded defence of not making money from it - there's an account of a live TV interview which he clearly hated.

What he doesn't say is that CERN was staggeringly expensive, and in fact may have been a waste of money, like NASA. These people at CERN were in a privileged financial position. In fact it's possible the web will be CERN's only legacy.

In between the techie stuff is the human material, mostly rather affectionate descriptions of assorted hardware and software types, and business people typically at shows trying to make sales. However, in my experience, in real life many of these people are grasping and egocentric, and I suspect his accounts are like actors and 'luvvies' praising each other often through clenched teeth.

He's quite good on historical parallels - e.g. he regards tables of contents and indexes, in books, as hypertexts; and he compares tied-in software with a TV that goes straight to one channel and displays it better than others.

There's also intermediate stuff on e.g. censorship. And on secrecy - he described the public key/ private key system but to be honest I couldn't make sense of it.

So - interesting but with bits missing.
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Re: Book (and Film) Reviews Censored by Amazon

Postby rerevisionist » 07 Feb 2012 16:59

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West by Christopher Caldwell

None of these reviewers mention Jews as forcing immigration,
16 Dec 2011
-removed from Amazon.com

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I haven't read this book, but, judging by these reviews, there's no good reason to do so. There appears to be no mention anywhere of Jews as the main force behind pushing unwanted immigration onto all white countries.
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Re: Book (and Film) Reviews Censored by Amazon

Postby rerevisionist » 07 Feb 2012 17:03

The Protestor's Handbook by Bibi Van Der Zee
-removed from Amazon.com

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See link to Women Protestors as 'useful idiots'
http://www.nukelies.com/forum/women-nuclear-protestors-useful-idiots.html
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Re: Book (and Film) Reviews Censored by Amazon

Postby rerevisionist » 07 Feb 2012 17:50

The Origins of the Second World War by A. J. P. Taylor

Vanity publication by partly-awakened fellow-travelling Fellow and propagandist
, 23 Oct 2010
Removed from Amazon.com

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*VERY LONG REVIEW - APOLOGIES!*

Taylor was born in 1906, in odd circumstances, in Lancashire. Online biographies state 'His wealthy parents held strongly left-wing views, which he inherited. His parents were both pacifists who vocally opposed the First World War, and sent their son to Quaker schools as a way of protesting against the war.' His mother had at least one lover, Henry Sara 'a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain'. Nothing much is said about Taylor's (putative?) father. All this is consistent with his parents, or real parents, being Jewish - note for example the code words 'pacifist', 'left-wing', 'Communist', and the non-Christian school; and his accent wasn't Lancashire or Yorkshire. Family money seems to have allowed Taylor to hang around Oxford without a position. Later, Pribram and Namier, both Jewish historians, 'mentored' him. Even his biography is by a Jew (Sisman; there's another by K Burk who may or may not be). Without putting huge emphasis on all this, it is entirely consistent with Taylor's fierce anti-Germanism, and support for 'Russia', the Jewish-controlled USSR. Late in life he published a rather omissive introduction to an English translation of the Communist Manifesto - his introduction says nothing about divisions within states such as Jews exemplify; only class is considered. He was never as far as I can tell a technical Marxist - nobody intelligent can believe in the 'labour theory of value' or that 'all history is class war'. Taylor was a 'fellow traveller' - the 20th century fashion was to hush up such things.

Part of the key to Taylor is simply his personal news background. Let's review events:--

The coup in Russia ('Revolution') occurred when Taylor was 9 years old. By 16, Taylor had lived through the period of the greatest growth in Labour votes. When he was 17, the BBC radio monopoly was granted. When 18 (1924), the first Labour Government was formed, though a minority one. Taylor must have been aware of the Jewish/ Communist connection, and may well have known Labour was compromised from the start. (Taylor never cleared up the confusion between 'socialism' and 'communism', the latter being the Jewish fake version. This suited Conservatives - Thatcher for example - who could pretend that socialism was identical to rule by a small racist cult. Obviously too Taylor ignored the socialist component of the NSDAP).

Taylor went 'up' to Oxford in 1924 to study history. A year later he visited the Soviet Union, presumably as a CPGB hanger-on. He graduated aged 21, but had no academic position. When he was 23 Labour formed a majority in the general election. At the same time the 'great crash' took place, until say 1933. Taylor must have been impressed by Keynes, as the 'spending out of depression' idea occurs often in his books. The BBC started its 'empire service' about this time. A typical event (Taylor now 28) was the Daily Mail NOT running the headline 'Jews threaten the press'. When Taylor was 30, the 'Scott Trust' was set up, relative to the Manchester Guardian, essentially a profit-making fund to promote Jewish attitudes.

The point here is that Taylor's general information on world affairs came through radio and newspaper presentations of the time, but supplemented by Jewish connections. Clearly much material was unknown or omitted by these state, cult and commercial pressure groups. Possibly Taylor or his family kept newspaper cuttings; there's a Manchester Guardian headlinesque quality to all of Taylor's writings on events he'd lived through. Taylor comments on the 'universal belief' that Germans started the bombing. But why was it universal? Obviously, because newspapers, radio, cinema newsreels, magazines, and books said so. How did Taylor know Pearl Harbour (his spelling) had been bombed? - because it was in the news when he was about 35 - old enough to follow, perhaps too young to be sceptical. How did he know Hitler and Mussolini were more or less mad, yet Trotsky should be praised highly, as Taylor did? From the media, but partly from his contacts. Why did he believe Hacha was summoned by Hitler? How did he know opinion in the USSR could be moulded at a nod? How could he believe the US and USSR 'asked only to be left alone'? (Naivete was common - Keynes was bemused at the screaming anti-Germanism in the US press AFTER 1916, imagining it was natural to all Americans).

Taylor was 33 when he (no doubt) heard Chamberlain on the radio in the morning: [Sept 1939] '.. no such undertaking has been received..'. From 1939-1945: Taylor was some sort of writer/propagandist. He was always very anti-German - they were wicked, arrogant; Germany was 'too large' etc; he'd written WW1 was worth it to drive the Germans out of conquered territory - though like many other fierce scribblers he preferred to leave others to die, for example on the barbed wire.

It's unclear how fluent Taylor was in German; some of his translations are odd; and there are virtually no quotations from Hitler, or any other German, in his works - yet surely if he had been fluent, he could have noted supporting detail from speeches and German newspapers. His 'Habsburg Monarchy' was published in 1948; it seems hardly credible Taylor could have invesigated Hungarian and other archives. I assume this book is simply taken from other sources, no doubt mainly historians. Up to the age of 50 Taylor taught unfortunate undergraduates, and turned out book reviews on German-related issues. He said (in 'Second Thoughts') it was in this stage of his life that he developed doubts as to whether Hitler had been a diabolic genius planning war. (Taylor doesn't say whether his diabolic genius included final defeat). Rather oddly, Taylor had a belief that a 'trained historian' could see below the everyday crust of life. He seemed to think it a technical skill - like a structural engineer, or chemical analyst. It's tempting to think he imagined himself a Sherlock Holmes, or just possibly a Trotsky, at least when 'Trotsky' was in writing mode. Taylor claimed historians 'want a high standard of proof' - understandably he gives no evidence. In fact Taylor's scholarship was feeble: he says for example 'Mein Kampf' was mostly about 'anti-Semitism', when in fact it largely looks at the innumerable border disputes around Germany - the sea shore was almost the only uncontested zone. Taylor, as was the fashion, doesn't mention the Jewish role in the defeat of Germany in 1919, nor the blockade and starvation - enough to make anti-Jewish feeling entirely reasonable. Many Taylor pages go by without footnotes to indicate the source. He says of historians 'none escaped its influence' of Die Grosse Politik [documents on WW1 origin]. His essay on the rise and fall of diplomatic history (1950s) comments on absence of military service records; and he seems just about aware of the absence of military-industrial and financial material. Most of his sources are edited selections of papers, presumably typeset - giving plenty to scope to remove embarrassing material. He said of Nuremberg, 'of course the documents are genuine', which says something about his standards of scholarship.

Anyway, aged about 50, in 1957 Taylor became famous. The Regius Professorship of 'Modern History' at Oxford became vacant when someone called Vivian Galbraith retired. Several people were suggested as candidates - including someone called Lucy Sutherland, Hugh Trevor-Roper who'd written a short work on Hitler's death, and Taylor. At the time professors were few in number; these days they are ten a penny. Taylor seems to have considered himself a worthy candidate. For some reason, probably a Jewish connection, this was made a newspaper headline issue. Possibly the chosen wanted a sleeper. Bear in mind Regius Professors are of virtually no public interest - their complete list of names has an effect reminiscent of names of, for instance, past Archbishops of Canterbury.

(Trevor-Roper was elected and spent his life writing on post-medieval church figures, English gentry, Philby - his book says nothing about the actual secrets involved - until, like Bullock, he was added to the House of Lords as Lord Dacre. Dacre seriously believed Greek and Latin was the ideal training for Britain's 19th century public school empire builders. The low point of his career was his failure to detect the elementary forgeries of the 'Hitler Diaries'. Dacre believed the fraud of what became named 'the Holocaust' for the whole of his life).
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In 1961 (Taylor aged 56) 'The Origins of the Second World War' was published. Much of the bibliography was 1940s volumes, mostly printed edited selections from diplomatic archives (so handwritten additions etc could be concealed) plus a few memoirs and general books. Bear in mind the Second World War started, and remained for a long time, a war only involving Germany, France, and Britain. There was some media excitement, but as always it's hard to tell how synthetic it was. In 1963 Taylor added a new preface, 'Second Thoughts', which he never updated; this included material on the meaning of the word 'plan', and on Trevor-Roper.

Why did Taylor write this book? Taylor was the author of some dull books on German history, and many reviews of mostly dull books on history; and he taught the period to students who hadn't been born when it started. He didn't like Germany - he was like a man who hates snakes but has ended up a herpetologist. Is it possible that he might have tired of being a rent boy, and decided to strike out into controversy? Maybe he read Gibbon's autobiography; who knows. Maybe someone he respected caused him to reconsider, up to a point; Bertrand Russell's 'Which Way to Peace' (1936) as an 'appeaser', for example. Anyway, here are some notes on 'The Origins...':-

FIRST CHAPTER - The 'forgotten problem' was how WW2 started. He says historians of WW1 only examined the lead-up to the war; while WW2 historians only examined the battles. What Taylor omits is what may be the genuine reason, the cowardliness of 'scholars'. Avoiding 1914 to 1939 means inter alia - Nothing on the Balfour Declaration; nothing on the Lusitania trick to get the US into war; nothing on blockade and starvation; nothing on Jewish funding of the new Soviet Union; nothing on famine in the USSR; nothing on hyperinflation in Europe; nothing on Hitler's monetary policy; nothing on secret industrialisaiton of the USSR by European and American companies, with Jewish money and Russian slave labour.

THE HALF-ARMED PEACE - An astonishing bit of nonsense from Taylor is this: '...the British.. bombing of Germany.. did more harm themselves than to the Germans - .. it used up more British men and materials than it destroyed German.'

THE WAR OF NERVES: '..Soviet Russia was truly cut off from Europe so long as the cordon sanitaire existed.'
'without doubt' they regarded all foreign powers with intense suspicion, and Soviet policy's prime motive was 'the desire to be left alone.' Astonishing really; Taylor had actually met the Soviet Trade Minister!

LAST CHAPTER - DANZIG: frenetic account of pre-Poland; the book stops with Hitler invading Poland. This is assumed as per Chamberlain to be the start of the war. But all the other treaties had been discarded or ignored - why not that as well?

Taylor's book's most obvious omission is his treatment of the USSR - the necessity for Germany to do something isn't mentioned by Taylor, undoubedly because of the Jewish connection. Then there's the Versailles Treaty; Taylor mentions German objections but without taking them seriously. Another problem of course is Taylor's ignorance or suppression of specifically Jewish issues, such as their influence in the USA, the currency issue, the post-war Anglo-Jewish war, and what was not then called 'the Holocaust' about which Taylor seems a bit ambivalent. The German/Polish border disputes which played a key part are missed out; Taylor seems to have consulted no Polish archives. It's now known that Churchill, bankrupted by the Crash, kept Chartwell by being paid to be anti-German, and her started the bombing of civilians against Germany to force Hitler into war with Britain, something he didn't want. Taylor must have been aware of speculation about all this, but had no technical apparatus to allow for fuzzy information. Incidentally Taylor has no idea about intelligence; nor does he have any feeling for the desire of military people for empire building, even with no purpose. There's much more - Lindemann giving high estimates of German arms, questions over reparations, Poland and Russia in WW1, numbers of fighters and bombers but unawareness of what these could do, 'gas chambers', the Hossbach Memorandum: A J P Taylor was proud of noting the nothingness of this memorandum, but has no methodology to assess many other documents which were touted (or unmentioned).
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Taylor's often-praised writing style is worth a mention. I think the praise is unjustified; his joky asides are rather like cartoons in the middle of dull propagandist tracts. His writings typically consist of a mixture of [1] Anti-German comments; though sometimes these are varied by comments anti-other powers. [2] Ridiculous claims that he is free of value-judgments or that historians have mysterious gifts. [3] Fast-moving passages, like action thrillers, but in a diplomatic sense; much of the last chapter, leading up to the German invasion of Poland, is in this mode. It's not unlike the chase scenes and cliff-hangers in films, and has the same effect in suspending thought. [4] Personification of states, and also casual lack of interest in alliances - if A decides to ally with B, there must presumably be endless small print about obligations and duties and risks, but Taylor only takes the most superficial view. His book ends with Poland's invasion, and yet Taylor doesn't consider why Britain should have declared war - he's perfectly aware the 'guarantee' with Poland was unworkable, and anyway all the other alliances had been ignored. [5] Philosophical and historical generalisations - these are the supposed gems in his works. These are always after-the-event; the fact appears to be that Taylor had no predictive skill whatever. [6] Assumptions on military and other power which seem to have no sound basis. The German who remarked that the Second World War was like Germany playing chess with odds of a rook down illustrates what Taylor lacks. Taylor assumes, for example, that the Russian steppes etc would be an asset; but he also states Hitler made no survey of resources of eastern Europe. So how can Taylor be sure it would have been a net asset for Germany? Maybe they only had disposable labour as exploited by Americanised Jews.

Anyway, it worked for Taylor - he had TV exposure, fame, and a house in Highgate which he said was 'nearly perfect'. But his last books illustrate his limitations: 'How Wars Begin' and 'How Wars End' are the same old same old - European wars in the last few centuries, nothing about the rest of the world. Anyone wanting general observations on wars, from a 'trained historian', will look in vain. And it worked for his handlers - his book helped head off serious researchers. For example, in the same year as 'The Origins..', Hoggan's 'The Forced War' gave far more detail on Poland, and Irving's '.. Dresden ..' forced some reality into considerations of bomb damage. But Taylor could be pointed out as the only official 'revisionist' - he was the tolerated house radical.

Three stars because this book carries some lessons, though they are tiresome to unearth. A lesson external to the book is of course the utterly pitiful standard of historical research in Britain in the 20th century. Three stars also because very many other books were much worse.
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Re: Book (and Film) Reviews Censored by Amazon

Postby rerevisionist » 07 Feb 2012 18:25

Full Moon by Andrew Chaikin

2 stars - May be worth owning a copy if you're interested in the truth about 'moon landings'
, June 26, 2010
Removed from Amazon.co.uk

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Hefty hardback volume, about one foot square, published 1999, with photos on art paper, mostly with black backgrounds. They must have been selected with as many as possible of the suspect photos removed - there are a number of totally black pages suggesting some last-minute editing out! It's likely some have been rephotographed, maybe in their original, terrestrial, locations. It's a small number, considering how many photographs were supposedly taken, and how many missions were involved - they numbering goes up to 128 and quite a few are non-informational blurs of e.g. red flames from rocket engines or photos of the moon or earth. A lot of effort's gone into making the lunar ones sharp and convincing. Note that the National Geographic in the late 1960s and 1970s had well-reproduced sharp photos too, so cynics might like to do comparison jobs. The end of the book has thumbnails of each picture, plus written material. Includes #90, full 360-degree panorama where they forgot to include the module, and 106 with reflections (in space) of TV monitors, and quite a few fish-eye lens photos of reflections in visors.

Worth getting a second-hand (or 'used') copy cheaply IF you're interested in all this. However the total material is smaller than appears at first sight. I have no idea how many stars to give - I'll pick two, to be at the low end of the approvals rating.
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Re: Book (and Film) Reviews Censored by Amazon

Postby rerevisionist » 07 Feb 2012 18:36

The Planets by Heather Couper & Nigel Henbest (import)

Attractive pictures - but beware of fakes!
, 26 Aug 2010
-Removed from Amazon.com

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This is a Pan book published in 1985, related to a Channel 4 TV series. My copy has a section of an image of Jupiter on the cover. This image in fact on examination is a painting - probably gouache or coloured chalks. The book also contains many standard 'moon landing' photos known to be fakes. Ditto with Mars. This is basically a picture book of phoniness, intended, no doubt, to keep funding directed to these people. Worth buying if you want evidence of the corruption of modern science. Also must be an artefact for students of image processing: black and white photography, cine film, digital capture, image processing all have their little tricks and styles of retouching.
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Re: Book (and Film) Reviews Censored by Amazon

Postby rerevisionist » 07 Feb 2012 18:46

Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities by Ian Stewart
-removed from Amazon.com
Loathesome plagiarism and mess and unwisdom
, 10 Oct 2010

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I'm not sure whether all, or only 99%, of the entries in this book are plagiarised. Probably all. My reasons for dislike are:
** Utterly scrambled nature of the entries - a miscellany is all very well, but this book is like a miscellany on English with crossword clues, brief biographies, poor puns, anecdotes, all of them on different emotional and logical footings...
** Complete failure to situate techniques. For example the long 's' symbol of integration could perhaps be explained, but isn't
** Utterly uncritical commentary and examples: relativity, 'chaos' (in fact perfectly determined stuff), the 19th century 'infinite' stuff, Goedel, Goldbach, expanding universe etc etc all appear as though there are no possible doubts
** Plagiarism: Dudeney is of course one plagiaree, but Hubert Phillips - who composed innumerable puzzles of the Alf, Bert and Charlie being liars (or not) type is another. Martin Gardner's material has something of a look-in - Gardner was infinitely more interesting. There are wearing accounts of things like the 4 colour theorem, Fermat etc etc, none as far as I can see with anything new to say, no doubt taken from standard histories and probably modern popular accounts
** Worth noting there's no international feel: on the continent, for example, spherical geometry was a major topic - probably for some geography-related reason. France has a different maths feel than in Britain - popular maths there is rather different in several ways
** There's no feeling whatever for the way mathematics has (or hasn't) progressed; what did calculus actually achieve? Are new developments likely, perhaps more sociological rather than physics-based?
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Re: Book (and Film) Reviews Censored by Amazon

Postby rerevisionist » 08 Feb 2012 16:19

Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?: Confronting 21st Century Philistinism - by Frank Furedi

Removed from both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk


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I didn't save a copy of my review of this Hungarian Jew's typically trashy book. (He is, or was described as a Professor of Sociology at Canterbury University). Sorry. However, I doubt I was flattering.
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Re: Book (and Film) Reviews Censored by Amazon

Postby rerevisionist » 08 Feb 2012 17:05

DVD - Last Orders [2002] - Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Tom Courtenay; Fred Schepisi
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Indirectly reveals the powerlessness of actors, 20 Nov 2011


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Curiously fantastical film. The east end of London has been transformed by immigration. This film is deliberately phoney; virtually all the characters are shown as white - honest cockney caricatures, spending much of their time in almost-empty pubs joking about whose round it is. The Lancs actor is the exception, and is duly given hardly any lines. There are wartime scenes with a young actor pretending to be Caine, and scene of hop-picking in Kent. The scenery is minimal - it's quite an appropriate match, really, the cut-down scenesetting with the cut-down perspective of the film. There's a wartime scene celebrating our plucky country helping Stalin with his mass-murders. Curious obsolete trash which indirectly reveals how powerless actors are to select their material.
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