JTF.ORG Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Havok on April 08, 2013, 10:40:18 AM
-
Margaret Thatcher, the first woman ever to serve as prime minister of Great Britain and the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century has died at age 87.
"It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning," Lord Timothy Bell said today. "A further statement will be made later."
Thatcher had significant health problems in her later years, suffering several small strokes and, according to her daughter, struggling with dementia.
In Dec. 2012, she was underwent an operation to remove a bladder growth, longtime adviser Tim Bell told The Associated Press.
But during her long career on the political stage, Thatcher was known as the Iron Lady. She led Great Britain as Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, a champion of free-market policies and adversary of the Soviet Union.
PHOTOS: Margaret Thatcher Through The Years
Many considered her Britain's Ronald Reagan. In fact, Reagan and Thatcher were political soul mates. Reagan called her the "best man in England" and she called him "the second most important man in my life." The two shared a hatred of communism and a passion for small government. What America knew as "Reaganomics" is still called "Thatcherism" in Britain.
Like Reagan, Thatcher was an outsider in the old boys' club. Just as it was unlikely for an actor to lead the Republicans, the party of Lincoln, it was unthinkable that a grocer's daughter could lead the Conservatives, the party of Churchill and William Pitt -- that is, until Thatcher. She led the Conservatives from 1975 to 1990, the only woman ever to do so.
Personal Life
Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts on Oct. 13, 1925 in Grantham, England. She attended Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied chemistry, and later, in 1953, qualified as a barrister, specializing in tax issues.
She married Denis Thatcher on Dec. 13, 1951, and their marriage lasted for nearly 52 years until his death in June 2003. The couple had twins, Mark and Carol, in 1953.
When Thatcher was elected to Britain's House of Commons in 1959, she was its youngest female member. In 1970, when the Conservatives took power, she was made Britain's secretary of state for education and science. In 1975, she was chosen to lead the Conservatives, and she became the prime minister in 1979.
WATCH: May 4, 1979: Margaret Thatcher Becomes Prime Minister
Her policies were controversial. She took on the nation's labor unions, forcing coal miners to return to work after a year on strike.
"We should back the workers and not the shirkers," she said in May 1978.
She pushed for privatization, lower taxes, and deregulation. And she sought to keep Britain from surrendering any of its sovereignty to the European Union.
FULL COVERAGE: Margaret Thatcher
Thatcher receives standing ovation at Conservative Party Conference in October 1989. REUTERS/Stringer/FilesThatcher receives standing ovation at Conservative Party Conference in October 1989. REUTERS/Stringer/FilesThatcher's admirers say she rejuvenated Britain's faltering economy. Her critics say the rich got richer and the poor were left behind.
In the inner cities, Thatcherism brought a violent backlash. There were calls from her own party to change course. But Thatcher resisted.
"You turn if you want to," she said in October 1980. "The lady's not for turning."
She had courage in abundance. In 1982, when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, she took Britain to war -- and won.
In 1984, she narrowly escaped being killed when the IRA bombed her hotel during a party conference. The morning after, she convened the conference on schedule -- undaunted.
She recognized Mikhail Gorbachev as a man who could help to end the Cold War, commenting famously, "I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together."
Ronald Reagan thought so, too. Together, Thatcher and Reagan savored victory in the Cold War as their proudest achievement. But while Alzheimer's forced Reagan to retire from public life, Thatcher kept on long after leaving Downing Street.
She became Baroness Thatcher, a symbolic leader for a party that struggled to find a worthy successor.
By the time of President Reagan's funeral in 2004, Lady Thatcher had already suffered several strokes. She was a silent witness at her friend's farewell, but she had the foresight to record a eulogy for Reagan several months earlier.
"As the last journey of this faithful pilgrim took him beyond the sunset, and as heaven's morning broke, I like to think -- in the words of Bunyan -- that 'all the trumpets sounded on the other side," she said.
http://gma.yahoo.com/margaret-thatcher--britain-s--iron-lady--prime-minister--dies-120034251.html
-
:dance: :dance: :dance: :dance: :fireworks: :fireworks: :fireworks: :fireworks:
-
:dance: :dance: :dance: :dance: :fireworks: :fireworks: :fireworks: :fireworks:
Wasn't she good? She was like England's Reagan. Why be happy?
-
I'm not happy that she or Reagan liked Gorbachev but she was a heck of a lot better than most politicians.
-
I'm not happy that she or Reagan liked Gorbachev but she was a heck of a lot better than most politicians.
Isn't Putin worse than Gorbachev?
-
Wasn't she good? She was like England's Reagan. Why be happy?
I haven't been this happy in ages, this [censored] hated the Irish and I spit on her grave!
-
I haven't been this happy in ages, this [censored] hated the Irish and I spit on her grave!
You also spit on the graves of the British children that have been killed by the IRA?
-
Isn't Putin worse than Gorbachev?
That's comparing one evil to another evil.
-
I haven't been this happy in ages, this [censored] hated the Irish and I spit on her grave!
I wasn't really aware of this issue. What did she do to harm the Irish?
-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_thatcher
"Thatcher regarded Finchley's Jewish residents as "her people" and became a founding member of the Anglo-Israel Friendship League of Finchley as well as a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel. She also believed Israel had to trade land for peace, and condemned Israel's 1981 bombing of Osirak as "a grave breach of international law"."
(http://static.indianexpress.com/pic/uploadedImages/bigImages/B_Id_374141_Maragret_Thatcher_dies.jpg)
-
I haven't been this happy in ages, this [censored] hated the Irish and I spit on her grave!
what did the censored do to the irish? and when did censored do this?
-
what did the censored do to the irish? and when did censored do this?
That BEAST who is now thankfully dead with maggots puking on her blood regarded ALL Irish as terrorists, said that Ulster (North of Ireland) will always be British and the Irish are just to accept that. Increased the violence in Ulster and blamed only the Irish.
-
That BEAST who is now thankfully dead with maggots puking on her blood regarded ALL Irish as terrorists, said that Ulster (North of Ireland) will always be British and the Irish are just to accept that. Increased the violence in Ulster and blamed only the Irish.
I'm not familiar with this.
What else did she do?
-
I'm not familiar with this.
What else did she do?
Nothing. It's just hard for a Irishman to face the truth. Ulster is British, not Irish.
-
Nothing. It's just hard for a Irishman to face the truth. Ulster is British, not Irish.
It's equally hard for an englishman to face the truth. London is Irish, not british.
-
I remember her as enemy of my people. Aside of that I support Irish people in their struggle for freedom. What was done to them is one of the greatest genocides in history. Englishmen captured them and shipped them to new found lands to be slaves. When that was not enough they forced poor Irish women to have sex with black slaves so that new "breed" could sale for more money.
-
1/2 of the UK revered Maggie and 1/2 hated her
(http://www.geoffreywansell.com/gifs/Thatcher.gif)
But all admired her for the courage of her convictions & her preservation of every inch of UK sovereignty eg to wage war 8000 miles away with the Argie-Bargies over the Falklands.
How unlike most verminous Israeli politicians who are tripping over themselves to give away Eretz Yisrael to the Ishmaelites in exchange for.....nothing!
-
A first class politician... May she rest in peace!
-
.... London is Irish, not british.
cad é? cén fáth Breataine?
-
"Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom as much as my own constituency of Finchley is!" (Margaret Thatcher 1981)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A36Rpn3z9aE
-
Wasn't she good? She was like England's Reagan. Why be happy?
She wasn't "good" but better than most politicians today.
-
"We will not forgive or forget if anyone (ie Israelis) sells anti-ship missiles (Gabriels) to the Argentinians!" (Thatcher's warning to Begin 1982)
(http://file.vintageadbrowser.com/ner9nzh9na92n3.jpg)
-
I remember her as enemy of my people. Aside of that I support Irish people in their struggle for freedom. What was done to them is one of the greatest genocides in history. Englishmen captured them and shipped them to new found lands to be slaves. When that was not enough they forced poor Irish women to have sex with black slaves so that new "breed" could sale for more money.
Can you please elaborate and provide links?
-
I applauded her triumph over the Argies in their illegitimate claim of the Falklands. She beat them, and they fled back to Argentina with their tails between their legs. Shame that they didn't learn their lesson the first time around.
I agree with her stance against the EU, against Unions that had taken over too much power. And for her privatizing the Industry.
I am not Irish nor Argentinian. Nor Labour nor pro-Union. So I don't hate her, nor do I celebrate her passing.
I may not agree with all her policy but I do know that she WAS the Iron Lady. How a woman rose through the ranks and the lead powerfully is admirable to me.
I agree as Pyramid said:
She wasn't "good" but better than most politicians today.
(Falklands for ever British!)
-
I haven't been this happy in ages, this [censored] hated the Irish and I spit on her grave!
My Irish and Scottish friends disliked her as well. I thought that British conservatives liked her. Not sure about the other neighboring countries.
She did have one line that I thought was very true. It went something like this, 'In my day, people would talk about what they were going to do to make the world a better place, nowadays people talk about what they want to be.' In other words, the modern era is filled with narcissism and egotism, whereas in days past, people would actually do something to make the world a better place. It just reminds you of how naturally selfish people are these days.
-
Good riddence she was an evil woman ! >:(
-
IRISH ZIONIST I agree with what you say ! I listen on my radio mon-fri at 1345hrs to the phone in programme on RTE-1 ,yesterdays programme was not not kind to Thatcher! Up the Republic ! :dance:
-
Not many people in Wales liked the woman !
-
cad é? cén fáth Breataine?
什么？
-
I remember her as enemy of my people. Aside of that I support Irish people in their struggle for freedom. What was done to them is one of the greatest genocides in history. Englishmen captured them and shipped them to new found lands to be slaves. When that was not enough they forced poor Irish women to have sex with black slaves so that new "breed" could sale for more money.
Yip. She was the enemy, I support the Irish too. This is one of the Thatcher's statements about the Serbs:
Stop the Serbs. Immediately. Forever.
(Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain,, New York Times ", May 4, 1994.)
-
Compared to the muslamics, I must support British. But I can not support a British when compared to an Irish when playing on level fields.
>>She also believed Israel had to trade land for peace, and condemned Israel's 1981 bombing of Osirak as "a grave breach of international law"."<<
What is this?
She helped finish the Communism, but in that process also shifted the axis of communism from Moscow to Washington.
-
http://www.theworkersrepublic.com/the-death-of-margaret-thatcher.html
... "Thatcher is a hate-figure in Ireland, primarily due to her callous treatment of the H-Block Hunger Strikers of 1981 and her ill-concealed glee at the deaths of those ten political prisoners. Thatcher's crimes against the Irish working class have never been forgotten or forgiven. The English, Scottish and Welsh working-class will also remain dry eyed, most notably due to her despicable treatment of the Mine workers and her brutal suppression of the mineworkers' union the N.U.M."
...."Ironically, Thatcher spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayers money and all her government's resources into rescuing her feckless, disorientated son, less than a year after she had used similar resources to callously ensure the deaths of ten Irish Republican mothers' sons in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh concentration camp in Ireland!"
-
There are c600,000 Jews/part-Jews/Israelis in the UK.
The alternative to Thatcher (PM 1979-1990) would have been the ginger Welsh Labour windbag Neil Kinnock. If he would have become the PM then the UK would quickly have gone bellyup, and all those 600,000 would have had to flee to Israel, those that survived!
(http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41569000/jpg/_41569532_kinnock203.jpg)
-
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/margaret-thatcher-dies-criticism-of-her-policies-132906942.html#M0vv9PI
The death of Baroness Thatcher was a "great day" for coal miners, David Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miners' Association said today.
The ex-miner, who turned 70 today, spent all of his working life at Wearmouth Colliery.
He said: "It looks like one of the best birthdays I have ever had.
"There's no sympathy from me for what she did to our community. She destroyed our community, our villages and our people.
"For the union this could not come soon enough and I'm pleased that I have outlived her.
"It's a great day for all the miners, I imagine we will have a counter demonstration when they have her funeral.
"Our children have got no jobs and the community is full of problems. There's no work and no money and it's very sad the legacy she has left behind.
"She absolutely hated working people and I have got very bitter memories of what she did. She turned all the nation against us and the violence that was meted out on us was terrible.
"I would say to those people who want to mourn her that they're lucky she did not treat them like she treated us."
Meanwhile, Baroness Thatcher's policies were called "fundamentally wrong" by former London mayor Ken Livingstone.
He told Sky News the former Conservative prime minister was responsible for "every real problem" faced in the UK today, as he claimed she had led millions of people out of work.
Mr Livingstone said: "Of course she was popular, she was offering people their homes at a cut price. But she didn't build any houses.
"She created today's housing crisis, she produced the banking crisis, she created the benefits crisis. It was her government that started putting people on incapacity benefits rather than register them as unemployed because the Britain she inherited was broadly at full employment."She decided when she wrote off our manufacturing industry that she could live with two or three million unemployed and the legacy of that, the benefits bill that we are still struggling with today.
"In actual fact, every real problem we face today is the legacy of the fact she was fundamentally wrong."
He also said that it was to Tony Blair's "shame" that he "broadly carried on" most of her policies.
Mr Livingstone added: "She once claimed New Labour was her greatest legacy and I am not saying she was joking."
Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB union, said: "Mrs Thatcher was a powerful politician who will be remembered by many for the destructive and divisive policies she reigned over which in the end, even in the Tory party, proved to be her downfall.
"Her legacy involves the destruction of communities, the elevation of personal greed over social values and legitimising the exploitation of the weak by the strong."
Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop The War Coalition, said: "Margaret Thatcher laid the basis for policies which wrecked the lives of millions in Britain. But she should also be remembered as a warmonger.
"She led alongside Ronald Reagan the escalation of the Cold War. She introduced cruise missiles to Britain and fought the Falklands war. Her arms deals with Saudi Arabia were notorious. Her legacy was Tony Blair who built enthusiastically on her record."
Most of the country's leading unions preferred not to make any comment about her death.
Colleagues of Arthur Scargill, the former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, who clashed bitterly with Mrs Thatcher during the 1984/85 miners' strike, said he was unlikely to make any comment.
-
"We will not forgive or forget if anyone (ie Israelis) sells anti-ship missiles (Gabriels) to the Argentinians!" (Thatcher's warning to Begin 1982)
(http://file.vintageadbrowser.com/ner9nzh9na92n3.jpg)
She forgave the French when they sold Argentina Exocet missles http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2253942/Margaret-Thatchers-war-treacherous-Francois-Mitterrand-Exocet-missile.html
-
什么？
google translate is your friend.
that was Gaelic.
its amazing how many languages I "know".
-
Nothing. It's just hard for a Irishman to face the truth. Ulster is British, not Irish.
uhh...I'll push this one away with a 12 foot pole.
so much conflict between the Ires and the Engs on that land.
-
"Ireland" literally means "The land of ire" ie "the land of anger", hinting at its blood-soaked history!
Even though outnumbered 8 to 1, if the Catholics started up again the Prots would soon have them on the ropes. A shame really, since many of the Anglos, Celts & Scots on the Emerald isle may well be of TLT origins
http://britam.org/ErinNaphtali.html
-
Her economic policy was great. The unions she defeated were communist leeches who nearly destroyed the British economy. She also lowered taxes and practically reintroduced free market economy to what as a very sick socialist basket case.
Defeating the Argentina Junta in a Falkland War was another plus of course. Otherwise I think her foreign policy stuck, certainly regarding Israel. But she wasn't so tough against the red block, that was all due to Reagan.
-
Thatcher was backstabbed by the misogynists in her own party in 1990. Had she still been PM in 1991 during the Gulf War, she would have stiffened Bush enough to get the Allies to pursue Saddam all the way & conquer Baghdad.
Instead Bush went limp, which resulted in Bush II having to finish the job 12 years later, with all its disastrous sequellae!
-
Thatcher was backstabbed by the misogynists in her own party in 1990. Had she still been PM in 1991 during the Gulf War, she would have stiffened Bush enough to get the Allies to pursue Saddam all the way & conquer Baghdad.
Instead Bush went limp, which resulted in Bush II having to finish the job 12 years later, with all its disastrous sequellae!
You are dumb. Leaving Sadam weak in power was a good result. The second Iraq war was a huge mistake.
-
Thatcher the milk snatcher ! :::D
-
If the Allies on Thatcher's urging had taken out Saddam back in 1991 it would have squashed the rise of both Wahabic & Shiitic Islam in the bud long before they reached today's levels: "Never give a sucker a 2nd chance!".
R.Kahane & Thatcher were both taken off the scene at the end of 1990 just when they were most needed.
-
To me, Thatcher came off to be better than most, but cannot say much more than that. I posted a JTF question for Chaim about her.
-
:usa+israel: :fist:
I definitely understand the great Irish Zionist's sentiments about Margaret Thatcher. One of the only positive things
you can conjure up about this individual was her collaberative efforts with Ronald Reagan when it came to the
Soviet union.
-
(http://www.awesomestories.com/images/user/6d215dc0ca.jpg)
Maggie at 13
A Tribute to Margaret Thatcher
by Sara Debbie Gutfreund
When Margaret Thatcher passed away today, the tributes began pouring in from all over the world. Mrs. Thatcher was Britain’s first female prime minister, serving for 11 years starting in 1979. Known as the Iron Lady, she was a strong Conservative who changed England’s perspective on its economic and political life.
Despite her many impressive accomplishments, including fighting the Soviet communist regime, Thatcher said that her proudest moment was when she saved a Jewish teenager from Austria during the Holocaust.
In 1938, Edith Muhlbauer, a 17-year-old Jewish girl, sent a letter to Muriel Roberts, Edith’s pen pal and the older sister of Margaret Thatcher, asking if the Roberts family could help her escape from Austria. The Nazis had started rounding up Jews from Vienna and Edith knew it was just a matter of time before she would be among them.
Alfred Roberts, the father of Muriel and Margaret, was a grocer in a small town. They lived in a cold water flat above the grocery with an outhouse; the Roberts did not have the time or the money to bring Edith to their home. So Margaret, then 12 and Muriel, 17, decided to try raising money and asking the local Rotary club to help. They succeeded in bringing Edith to England where she stayed with several Rotary families, including the Roberts for the next two years before joining relatives in South America.
Edith slept in Margaret’s room and Thatcher later wrote in her memoir: “She was tall, beautiful, evidently from a well to do family. But most important, she told us what it was like to live as a Jew under an anti-Semitic regime. One thing Edith reported particularly stuck in my mind. The Jews, she said, were being made to scrub the streets.”
In 1995, after Edith had been located in Brazil, she told audiences, “Never hesitate to do whatever you can for you may save a life.”
Edith is now a Jewish grandmother in Sao Paolo who says that she owes her life and the life of her children and grandchildren to Margaret Thatcher’s family. When Thatcher visited Yad Vashem during a historic, first visit to Israel by a British prime minister in 1986, she was visibly shaken as she stood in front of a photo of a German soldier shooting a Jewish mother and child. She exclaimed, “It is so terrible. Everyone should come and see it so that they never forget. I am not quite sure whether the new generation really knows what we are fighting against.”
Thatcher continued to be a loyal friend to the Jews as she fought the British support for the Arab boycott of Israel, protested on behalf of Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union and chose several Jewish leaders to be part of her cabinet. Thatcher admired the hard work and self-reliance of the British Jewish community and frequently turned to England’s late chief rabbi, Immanuel Jakobovits for spiritual back up. She even elevated Rabbi Jakobovits to the House of the Lords and he later became known as “Thatcher’s rabbi.”
Thatcher also made the following statement about Israel’s security: “Israel must never be expected to jeopardize her security; if she was ever foolish enough to do so and then suffered for it, the backlash against both honest brokers and Palestinians would be immense - ‘land for peace’ must also bring peace.”
Thatcher spoke up with such courage and strength because as she described herself, “This lady is not for turning.” When she believed in an ideal, whether it was transforming the British economy or saving a terrified Jew from Austria, she was not afraid to follow through, even if she had to stand up against popular opinions to do so.
-
http://www.sott.net/article/260648-The-Wicked-Witch-is-Dead-Margaret-Thatchers-toxic-legacy-public-division-and-unfettered-corporate-greed
"The Wicked Witch is Dead: Margaret Thatcher's toxic legacy - public division and unfettered corporate greed
Her legacy is public division, private selfishness and a cult of greed that together shackle the human spirit
Whether you were for her or against her, Margaret Thatcher set the agenda for the past three and a half decades of British politics. All the debates that matter today in the public arena, whether in economics, social policy, politics, the law, the national culture or this country's relations with the rest of the world, still bear something of the imprint she left on them in her years in office between 1979 and 1990. More than 20 years after her party disposed of her when she had become an electoral liability, British public life is still defined to an extraordinary degree by the argument between those who wish to continue or refine what she started and those who want to mitigate or turn it back. Just as in life she shaped the past 30 years, so in death she may well continue to shape the next 30. These are claims that can be made about no other modern British prime minister. She was in many ways the most formidable peacetime leader this country has had since Gladstone.
The fact that Mrs Thatcher was Britain's first and so far only woman major party leader, chosen entirely on merit, and then Britain's first woman prime minister, were of course huge landmarks. But her gender, though fundamental to her story, was in the end secondary. It was at least as significant, in the evolution of the late 20th-century Tory party, that she came from a petit-bourgeois background, a shopkeeper's daughter, though the man she overthrew in 1975, Ted Heath, had similarly middling origins and John Major an even humbler start. There was something of the rebel and outsider about her, as well as much that was stultifyingly conventional.
Mrs Thatcher's transcendent quality, however, was that she was a political warrior. She had a love of political combat, a zealotry for the causes she believed in, a reluctance to listen to advice, a conviction that she was always right and never wrong, and a scorn for consensus that set her apart from almost all her predecessors and, with the occasional exception of Tony Blair, from those who came after.
Mrs Thatcher was proof positive that personality matters in politics. As a young minister she did not seem destined for greatness. Even her election as Tory leader was something of a surprise, though her audacity in going for the top job while so many more senior figures hesitated was an indication of what was to come. Early on in her leadership, she was much patronised by male colleagues and adversaries. But as the social democratic consensus faltered in the 1970s and then cracked in the 1980s she rode the wind of history with an opportunist's brilliance. A Britain led by Willie Whitelaw or Michael Heseltine would have faced most of the same challenges that the one led by Mrs Thatcher faced. But the response would have been completely different. For good or ill, she made a difference.
The late Guardian columnist and Thatcher biographer Hugo Young, reflecting on her overthrow in 1990, identified five large events that would not have happened the way they did without her.
The first was the Falklands war of 1982, which Young described as "a prime example of ignorance lending pellucid clarity to her judgment". Surrounded by sceptical men who had fought in the second world war and knew what combat involved, she went for it. The result was an astonishing and absurd military triumph followed by an electoral one, which elevated Mrs Thatcher from the ordinary to the extraordinary.
A second, which would not have been possible without the authority conferred by the first, was the dethroning of trade union power. Once again, against the instincts of ministers - and the grandest of grandees, Harold Macmillan - who all preferred compromise to confrontation, she fought the miners' strike to the bitterest of finishes, in a contest that was always about industrial strategy rather than just coal.
Arguably even more important than these headline events was the third example, the conduct of economic policy. There had been a New Right before Mrs Thatcher, but it was the ideas of Friedrich von Hayek, as articulated to her by a series of domestic rightwing ideologues, on which she seized. It was Mrs Thatcher, abetted by her chancellors Sir Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson, who drove the policy that the public sector was an unproductive burden on the wealth-creating sector and on taxpayers, and must therefore be reduced and privatised. It was she who insisted that the chief aim of government economic policy should be price stability, and that it should not give priority to reducing unemployment or to stimulating demand.
And it was she again who seemed to believe, far more than those around her, that the market economy required not a minimal state to protect it but a strong state, marked by everything from the abolition of local government autonomy to the enhancement of police powers, intolerance towards gay rights, the broadcasting ban on Sinn Féin, and increased defence spending. She made enemies without flinching, and they reciprocated. Her rule was marked by the most serious urban riots of the 20th century, one of the most divisive strikes in recent times, and the century's most audacious prime ministerial assassination attempt, which thankfully she survived.
Mrs Thatcher's unique mark was also felt in the two confrontations that ultimately undid her. The first was the poll tax, which was disastrous, unjust and was her policy alone. The poll tax came to embody a prime minister who ruled from conviction not sense, and who did not care about, indeed gloried in, a confrontation that destroyed the Tory party in Scotland and may indirectly come to destroy the union she otherwise championed. Similarly, and less easily disposed of after her fall, was Europe. Mrs Thatcher began her prime ministership as a pragmatic, if often acerbic, European. But as she became a bigger figure on the world stage, feted both by Mr Reagan and by Mikhail Gorbachev, she became increasingly strident and disruptive towards Europe. Her style became the policy, cementing the love affair with an already overmighty press but with disastrous effects for her leadership (which was ended by Sir Geoffrey's resignation over the issue), her party (which became obsessed with the subject) and for Britain. Except for Mr Blair in his early years, every British leader since has felt Mrs Thatcher at his shoulder in dealings with Europe, to the lasting national loss.
When she arrived in Downing Street in 1979 she talked about replacing discord with harmony. She may briefly have meant it, but the harmony she sought in the long term was one whose terms were set overwhelmingly in the interests of the British business class as she perceived them. She disdained the public realm and presided over the growth of the cult of marketplace success as the foundation of a good society - a low-tax, home-owning, privatised, high-carbon, possessive, individualist, winner-takes-all financial model whose failure haunts the choices still facing this country today. Much was wrong with the Britain she inherited in 1979, undemocratic union power among them, and many things, though not wrong in themselves, were unsustainable without radical change, including some nationalised utilities. Britain would have had to alter radically in the 1980s and 90s, and the process would have been hard and controversial. But, as Germany and other northern nations have shown, economic dynamism has been possible without the squandering of social cohesion that Mrs Thatcher promoted.
In the last analysis, though, her stock in trade was division. By instinct, inclination and effect she was a polariser. She glorified both individualism and the nation state, but lacked much feeling for the communities and bonds that knit them together. When she spoke, as she often did, about "our people", she did not mean the people of Britain; she meant people who thought like her and shared her prejudices. She abhorred disorder, decadence and bad behaviour but she was the empress ruler of a process of social and cultural atomism that has fostered all of them, and still does.
The governments that followed have struggled to put a kinder and more cohesive face on the forces she unleashed and to create stability and validity for the public realm that yet remains. New Labour offered a first response. The coalition is attempting a second draft in grimmer circumstances, and there will be others. There can certainly be no going back to the failed postwar past with which Margaret Thatcher had to wrestle. But there should be no going back to her own failed answer either. She was an exceptionally consequential leader, in many ways a very great woman. There should be no dancing on her grave but it is right there is no state funeral either. Her legacy is of public division, private selfishness and a cult of greed, which together shackle far more of the human spirit than they ever set free.
Comment: In short, she was a psychopath whose pernicious influence spread through society, embodying the destructive principle from the top down. As for the 'kinder, more cohesive face' that succeeded her, Tony Blair was worse than Thatcher... Britain, like the U.S. and elsewhere, is truly in the death grip of a bunch of toxic psychopaths."
-
Thatcher on the Lubavitcher Rebbe
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=434447863313527&set=vb.100002449522698&type=2&theater
-
Margaret Thatcher was 'evil', says Arthur Scargill's former wife - video
Anne Scargill, former wife of Arthur Scargill, who led the miners during the strike of 1984-85, says she was 'really happy' to hear about Margaret Thatcher's death. Scargill called Thatcher evil and accused her of 'smashing' the trade unions and the country
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2013/apr/09/arthur-scargill-wife-margaret-thatcher-evil-video
-
http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/132947/jewish/Margaret-Thatcher-on-the-Rebbes-Leadership.htm
-
Thatcher's great relations with Russians:
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/vladimir-kara-murza/margaret-thatcher-understood-russia
"It has often been said that Margaret Thatcher was more popular in Russia than she was in her own country. This was especially true in the late 1980s, when she, together with Ronald Reagan, played an instrumental role in the weakening of Soviet Communism, helping Russians liberate themselves from totalitarian rule. Having forced the Kremlin into an “arms race” it could not win, Thatcher and Reagan accelerated the demise of the Soviet system, making its political and economic bankruptcy evident to the entire world, including, not least, to the Russian people.
Thatcher was enchanted with Mikhail Gorbachev—“the man I can do business with,” as she famously referred to him—much to the displeasure of her longtime friend Vladimir Bukovsky, a legendary Soviet-era dissident who often acted as the British prime minister’s unofficial adviser on Russian matters. Gorbachev wanted to preserve the system by reforming it, Bukovsky explained to her, whereas what the Russian people (and the world) needed was to be free of that system altogether. Countering Thatcher’s argument that Gorbachev was a “pragmatic” leader, Bukovsky affirmed that “a pragmatic Communist is a Communist who has run out of money.”
“We argued [about Gorbachev], it came to shouting and banging of the fists on the table,” Bukovsky recalls. Finally, in 1992, when the Soviet Union was gone, and Thatcher was in retirement, Bukovsky brought her a piece of paper he had copied at the former Communist Party Central Committee Archive in Moscow. It showed Gorbachev’s signature on the 1984 authorization to transfer $1 million from Soviet funds to the striking British miners led by socialist firebrand Arthur Scargill who were trying to bring down Thatcher’s government.
In April 1990, Margaret Thatcher became one of the first Western leaders to welcome Boris Yeltsin to the world stage, inviting him to Downing Street. The British prime minister was gradually but surely shifting her support from Gorbachev to Yeltsin, the rising star in the Russian democratic movement, who would soon forever lower the red flag over the Kremlin.
Thatcher’s interest in Russia—and her support for the cause of freedom in Russia—did not wane after her own retirement and the demise of the Soviet system. “I had heard back in London that the Governor of the [Nizhny Novgorod] province, Boris Nemtsov, was … committed to a radical programme of what some call Thatcherism but what I had always regarded as commonsense,” she wrote in her seminal book Statecraft, recalling her 1993 visit to Nizhny Novgorod. Having become governor in 1991, Nemtsov embarked on an ambitious program of free market reforms that would propel his region from 70th to 7th place in the country in terms of socioeconomic development. Political leaders from around the world—including Newt Gingrich and Alain Juppé —came to Nizhny Novgorod to witness its “economic miracle.” “The Governor and I took a walk down Bolshaya Pokrovskaya street,” Thatcher continued. “All the stores here were privately owned. Every few yards we stopped to talk to the shopkeepers and see what they had to sell. No greater contrast with the drab uniformity of Moscow could be imagined … A combination of excellent local products, talented entrepreneurs and laws favourable to enterprise applied by honest and capable political leadership could generate prosperity and progress.”
Thatcher would continue to support Boris Nemtsov when he became leader of the democratic opposition to Vladimir Putin, sending personal greetings to the conventions of Nemtsov’s SPS party in 2001 and 2003. “The last time I saw her was at her 80th birthday party [in 2005],” Nemtsov recalls. “She approached me and asked me just one question: ‘When will he [Putin] leave?’” “She clearly understood what is Putin and what is Putinism,” concurs Vladimir Bukovsky, “She would say [to me] with great regret, ‘Why is your country so unlucky?’ … She was upset about what was going on [in Russia].”
The world was fortunate to have Margaret Thatcher as one of its leading statesmen at such a pivotal time in history. It is to be hoped that someone, one day, will be able to match her foresight and determination, and her caliber of personality and leadership."
-
Unfortunately IZ, most Irish have chosen to be anti-Semites, anti-Westerners, and allies of the Fakestinians and all other gutter rats they know about. Does this make all that the British have done to them right? No, but the majority of Irish, today, are evil people.
-
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/dark-side-tolerance-british-anti-semitism
"The specter of anti-Semitism is stalking Britain. It is guilt-free and unrestrained by historical literacy. According to a recent survey, many British children believe Auschwitz is a brand of beer. Placards equating the swastika to the Star of David have become so common a feature at demonstrations that the linkage has become virtually common wisdom. The Holocaust is not so much something that happened, as something that is happening now—to Palestinians. With all the obstacles to ignorance presented by an informed understanding of the past now being smoothed away, the future is increasingly shaped in Britain by a politically tinged anti-Semitism that seeks to impose itself on national culture wherever possible and by whatever means available. This triumphalist movement’s fanciful but murderous perception of Jews has become one of those bad ideas whose bad consequences are everywhere on display in British society.
As Israel’s military operation in Gaza came to a halt in mid-February, a Jewish defense organization had already recorded some 270 cases of anti-Semitic attacks and harassment in Britain. This figure included 88 violent assaults and 74 cases of damage to Jewish property. The year 2009, therefore, is likely to surpass the total of 598 and 541 anti-Semitic attacks for the entire years of 2006 and 2008 respectively, hitherto the highest on record. These incidents were mostly disorganized, local disturbances in the street or the playground that were anecdotal in character but nonetheless a barometer of evolving public opinion. A man, incidentally a lawyer, shouts “Jew boy” at a fan of the rival team at a football match. In Birmingham, a 12-year-old girl and the only Jewish child in the school is terrorized by a mob of twenty youths shouting, “Kill all Jews” and “Death to Jews.” In the East End of London, windows are smashed and “Kill Jews” daubed on a supermarket, part of a chain started by a Jewish owner.
Such events have played out against a backdrop of demographic change whose net effect has been to remind Britons which side their bread is buttered on. There are roughly 300,000 Jews in Britain. Over the decades, Muslims have been immigrating legally and illegally, often not identified as Muslims in censuses, and therefore not easily quantifiable. But according to best estimates, there are probably 2 million in Britain.
True to their pragmatic nature, the British dealt with Muslim immigration by improvising an informal policy of multiculturalism, which in practice became a high-flown euphemism for separation. Politicians did not bother to think through the consequences of the new social world being created as a fact on the ground. In what was assumed to be their best interest, Muslims were encouraged to stay together but apart, to build mosques, keep to Islamic dietary injunctions, and cultivate their original languages and customs. When these customs included Jew-hatred, the authorities, which had enabled these developments by surrendering their ideal of assimilation, had little choice but to look away. Whether to promote further multiculturalism or to reverse it, and if so how: these are questions that demographic critical mass and past political incoherence forbid being asked today."
-
She'll be roasting in hell tonight, imagine the smell she's causing.
(http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article8436155.ece/ALTERNATES/w460/pg-20-thatcher-epa.jpg)
:yuck: :yuck: :yuck: :yuck: :yuck: :yuck: :yuck:
-
She'll be roasting in hell tonight, imagine the smell she's causing.
(http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article8436155.ece/ALTERNATES/w460/pg-20-thatcher-epa.jpg)
:yuck: :yuck: :yuck: :yuck: :yuck: :yuck: :yuck:
hey its benny hill!
-
http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/132947/jewish/Margaret-Thatcher-on-the-Rebbes-Leadership.htm
Great, I just saw this on Twitter too.
I also got this:
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/128755/margaret-thatcher-and-yom-hashoah (http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/128755/margaret-thatcher-and-yom-hashoah)
Margaret Thatcher and Yom Hashoah
According to the late Iron Lady, saving an Austrian Jewish girl was her proudest moment
As tributes begin to pour in from across the world to honor Baroness Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister who passed away earlier today, the hope is that the global mourning for Thatcher will not obscure another important observance–Yom Hashoah.
Fortunately for us, history sometimes dovetails nicely and the remembrances of Thatcher–who held many honorifics as a long-serving prime minister and woman pioneer in British politics–can boast Thatcher’s sensitivity toward and fidelity to the important Jewish causes of her era. Leading this, I’d like to point back to Charles Johnson’s thorough exploration of Thatcher’s relationship with the Jews, written in late December of 2011.
Johnson starts with what Thatcher often said was her greatest accomplishment, which was not her work in helping to topple the Soviet Union or being the first British woman to hold the post of prime minister, but rather, was her work as a child to save a Jewish teenager in Austria from the grasp of Hitler’s terror.
In 1938, Edith Muhlbauer, a 17-year-old Jewish girl, wrote to Muriel Roberts, Edith’s pen pal and the future prime minister’s [Margaret Thatcher] older sister, asking if the Roberts family might help her escape Hitler’s Austria. The Nazis had begun rounding up the first of Vienna’s Jews after the Anschluss, and Edith and her family worried she might be next. Alfred Roberts, Margaret and Muriel’s father, was a small-town grocer; the family had neither the time nor the money to take Edith in. So Margaret, then 12, and Muriel, 17, set about raising funds and persuading the local Rotary club to help.
Edith stayed with more than a dozen Rotary families, including the Robertses, for the next two years, until she could move to join relatives in South America. Edith bunked in Margaret’s room, and she left an impression. “She was 17, tall, beautiful, evidently from a well-to-do family,” Thatcher later wrote in her memoir. But most important, “she told us what it was like to live as a Jew under an anti-Semitic regime. One thing Edith reported particularly stuck in my mind: The Jews, she said, were being made to scrub the streets.” For Thatcher, who believed in meaningful work, this was as much a waste as it was an outrage. Had the Roberts family not intervened, Edith recalled years later, “I would have stayed in Vienna and they would have killed me.” Thatcher never forgot the lesson: “Never hesitate to do whatever you can, for you may save a life,” she told audiences in 1995 after Edith had been located, alive and well, in Brazil.
Throughout Thatcher’s life, this commitment never waned. Divisive as she was, her energetic work to supplant British support for the Arab boycott of Israel, her hectoring of Soviet Union officials about the treatment of Jewish refuseniks, her inclusion of Jewish leaders in her cabinet (to the frustration of some), and her landmark visit to Israel–the first by a sitting British prime minister–will likely keep her as a cherished figure in the collective Jewish memory for a long time to come.
Baroness Thatcher!
-
Maggie, Maggie, Maggie!
(http://w3.chabad.org/media/images/729/FYAm7298261.jpg)
-
She was anyones for a few bob! :)