Kyoto Protocol and Atlantic Charter : all smiles on outside , all self interest inside

As a moderately well known (and formerly very active) Green politician and activist , it must seem very odd that I have seemingly suddenly turned my back on the party and the movement.

All to devote myself instead to a book on some obscure events from seventy five years ago during WWII.

But I disagree.

I see lessons for us all today from those events so long ago, as the Anglo-American "special relationship" faces its toughest ever crisis : human climate change.

Atlantic Canada : harmlessly old-fashioned to Americans and Britons alike

Atlantic Canada has always seemed harmlessly old fashionedly American to Americans and harmlessly old fashionedly British to the British.

Useful that , in times of war : because as a result, Atlantic Canadians have always been trusted as go-between liaisons linking these two often-sparring partners.

Dawson vs Florey : Plentifier vs Plenticidalist : postmodernity vs modernity

Modernity hated ambiguity and mystery : there always had to be only one correct "clearcut" answer --- not a diversity or variety of maybes, sometimes and sort-ofs.

A clearcut binary division between the right answer or the wrong answer, the right method or the wrong method, the normal individual and family or the deviant individual and family.

Not unexpectedly then, Modernity also wanted a small, clean, clear, pure, gene pool.

And Modernity's eugenic-dominated Science was glad to help.

Plenticidal Modernity's pruning hook unleashed against Victorian architecture

Well before the Jewish Holocaust, Plenticidal Modernity was at work busy eliminating all the "useless mouths" of exuberant Victorian architecture : the end result being the bare grey concrete monstrosities of  The International Style , that Auschwitz of Architecture.

The Victorian Era was also the era of the Evangelical Majority and it is very tempting to see the Evangelical belief in the worth of all the varieties of humankind echoed in their highly eclectic building style.

Pax Penicillia and Martin Henry Dawson's "Neo-Plenitude"

The ever increasing use of the term "Neo-" since 1945 suggests that today we differ greatly from our grandparents in no longer holding fast to their Faith ---- a faith in ever-onward progress.

Today we often prefer a self-conscious circling back to older ideas (usually meaning "anything other than modernist" ideas) , rather than constantly seeking out ever newer ideas.

But because of our awareness that those older ideas have been very heavily modified by the weight of history upon them since they were first articulated, we prefer to prefix them with Neo- .

After Britain sues for an Armistice , France, standing alone against Hitler, seals its "special relationship" with America at St Pierre et Miquelon

In May 1940, Germany , reverting to its original invasion route,  has totally failed to break through the French lines and has subsequently suffered heavy losses.

A relatively unknown French general is now effectively in charge of the country,  after he so successfully rallied the badly commanded French troops, in heat of battle, to conduct a fiery take-no-prisoner defence of every inch of French soil.

In June, Germany successfully invades and occupied most of the English Home Counties , from Portsmouth to Watford to Clacton on Sea and now the Lord Halifax led Conservative government has sued for peace.

The price of that peace is that Britain has agreed to become Neutral .

If only GOD was a book acquisitions editor in London or New York ....

...HE probably say "we seem to have plenty of books on enacted war crimes but what about the even bigger war crimes that were crimes of intention , not of fully carried out action ?"

Because Christians - along with a lot of other religions and even some non-religious people - believe that it is mental intentions , even more than as actual actions, that makes something a crime and a mortal sin.