ThyssenKrupp in Alabama and Prof. Kerber's Carriers, both pose worrying questions.

The CNBC Squawk Box morning TV programme this week sent a reporter across America on a feature dubbed 'Opportunity USA'. Yesterday morning they were in Alabama and did a feature on the new ThyssenKrupp $5 Billion investment in Calvert, read here or view the actual report from that link.

Given the history of ThyssenKrupp, read here, and that Company's known use of slave labour during the second world war (a quote from the linked report "Krupp Industries employed workers conscripted by the Nazi regime from across Europe. These workers were initially paid, but as Nazi fortunes declined they were kept as slave workers. They were abused, beaten, and starved by the thousands, as detailed in the book The Arms of Krupp"), is it not quite extraordinary that the parent group is sufficiently insensitive to its own fairly recent past to have named this subsidiary  'ThyssenKrupp Steel USA' especially when reflecting on the huge investment involved? What is the mindset, I wonder, of those who could make such a decision?

Another question it is pertinent to pose as Europes' leaders today meet in Brussels to consider further subsuming all their economies into that of Germany, what exactly does Germany intend for this drastically restructured EU?

Professor Markus Kerber, mentioned before on this blog, is a remarkable German defender of the German Constitution, which itself was put in place, originally to forestall any repeat of Nazism, by constitutional experts from the allied nations after the defeat of Nazism in World War Two.  Yet even Professor Kerber seems to suggest a potentially eventual imperial role for the EU, as may be seen at 11 minutes 35 seconds in to Part 2 of a France 24 TV debate, linked here.

Two examples, which tend to indicate to this observer, that in the ThyssenKrupp case there is no longer the intense desire in modern Germany to put the stain of the past to rest once and for all, and in the second that some in Europe are unable to bury ambitions for imperialism, the projection of force beyond the borders of a peaceful trading group of countries supposedly being unthinkable, yet for what else do navies exist? I quote Professor Kerber from the video:

Europe cannot afford to have a European aircraft carrier. France has one, France won't purchase a second  - France isn't able - Europe as a whole is not able to have one or two aircraft carriers, we don't have a European fleet, a navy an embryo of a european navy, at the same time shipyards go bust..."  

Major steps are being considered in Europe, supposedly only to dampen minor bush fires, in small countries, all of which have been easily foreseeable for years. Many signs are in the wind, our leaders will ignore them to the great peril of all!

Prof. Markus Kerber leads 50 strong German fightback against Euro Insanity

EurActiv gives added publicity to Professor Markus Kerber's determined resistance to the currency insanity now spreading like a plague across Europe, read from here.

Earlier commentary on this blog regarding Professor Kerber's efforts since last May are available from here.

UPDATE  1441 GMT: Speaking at an Open Europe event In Brussels last evening, read here, Professor Kerber, warned that the ECB is becoming a “bad bank” and “The euro will fail, it’s better to face that”

EU Squadrons will most probably be the only ones to fly from Britain's new Carriers!

What a dog's dinner was yesterday's defence review! Drawing a pension, as I do, I have seen many such reviews down the years from both main parties during the long sorry decades of Britain's steady and now obviously carefully and deliberately contrived decline. Never, however, one to match the apparent intellectual vacuity or deliberate treachery of that announced yesterday!

The Prime Minister, David Cameron stated the following, (see Hansard from this link):

There is only one thing worse than spending money you don't have, and that is buying the wrong things with it-and doing so in the wrong way. The carriers they ordered were unable to work effectively with our key defence partners, the United States or France. They had failed to plan so carriers and planes would arrive at the same time. They ordered the more expensive and less capable version of the joint strike fighter to fly off the carriers. And they signed contracts, so we were left in a situation where even cancelling the second carrier would actually cost more than to build it. [Interruption.] I have this in written confirmation from BAE Systems.

1) It beggars belief that the USA, other than in emergency situations would choose to land their aircraft on our carriers given their own large fleet. Is the Prime Minister suggesting the ships will be interoperable for both French and all the many US planes some of which are Harrier versions, which he himself yesterday scrapped!

2) The French are as bankrupt as ourselves, but wisely decided to cancel their two carriers - furthermore we have few joint strategic interests with the French.

3) If he has the evidence he states from BAE systems then he has proof of what appears clear treason in an obvious attempt to bind the hands of any administration following that of Gordon Brown the effect of which has been to further impoverish the nation (as if Brown had not gone far enough in that direction already given his economic incompetence or deliberate neglect).

There is only one so-called ally of Britain with the economic muscle to finance the jet fighters that might be able to fly from these carriers and that is Germany. Even Cameron appeared reluctant to give words to this truth, therefore his bleatings about planes from France and the USA. In view of such sensibilities the planes will no doubt be labelled as EU squadrons as no doubt will the crews who man the ships. It seems unlikely that officers trained in the tradition of the Royal Navy at the Britannia Royal Navy College in Dartmouth would be prepared to mount the kind of internal dissent suppression missions that the shadowy figures behind the EU are likely to require of these ships, their jet fighters and presumably Chinook delivered EU Rapid Action storm troopers able to put ashore at short notice anywhere near the austerity weary coastal regions of the centralised and de-democratised EU. In view of the cuts in other surface ships the proud days of Britannia College in Dartmouth must also therefore seem surely numbered.

German Professor Markus Kerber, of the University of Berlin, with views with which I concur on the economy but not the direction of the EU, on a recent debate in Paris on the France 24 TV Debate programme gave a good insight into the lust for military might that now exists within Germany. We must question why and unite to defeat the new EU Treaty proposed by EU President Van Rompuy this week with the very short 2013 deadline and immediate endorsement from Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy meeting with the Russian President at Deauville, read here.

The debate referred to in the last paragraph above may be watched from this link. The comment on the Aircraft Carriers is at 11 minutes 30 seconds into part 2 of the debate.