Legatum Institute

The Legatum Institute devises and promotes methods of conning the public to make them believe that extreme exploitative “free market” capitalism can help everyone rather than just helping a tiny elite.  

This objective is displayed brazenly throughout Legatum’s literature, speeches and interviews.  For example, as a response to a data-driven report Public Opinion Post-Brexit that showed that there is majority public support in Britain for state control of capitalist mayhem, the author, Matthew Elliott, ended the report by stating

“Now, the political class will need to turn its attention to economic attitudes, or face the risk of the ground shifting beneath its feet.  And for those who believe that competition, entrepreneurship and free trade are key drivers to make societies more prosperous, it’s time for us to up our game.“

That is a plea for the capitalist elite to fight back against the intelligence and knowledge of the public; by “our game” Elliott meant the game of PR, confidence trickery and fraud.  In his comment on the report Elliott displayed utter contempt for the public’s decisions:

“It [the report] suggests that economic attitudes in the country are further to the left than is widely appreciated, posing a challenge for those who have seen at first hand the power of competition, entrepreneurship and free trade to drive prosperity.”  
“The findings of our polling are concerning for anyone committed to the principles of free enterprise. Competition entrepreneurship and free trade are all essential to achieving prosperity, not to simply generate profit for businesses, but to extend opportunity to all.” 

On the same comment page Elliott tried to denigrate left-of-centre politics by equally applying the pejorative term “populist” to the extreme right and to any political stance to the left of Legatum’s.  This tactic of misrepresentation was a clumsy attempt to position mainstream left-of-centre politics as an outlier and to position right-wing unrestricted “free-market” exploitation as the norm and as the centre of the Overton window.  It also normalised the far right: Elliott discussed “right-wing populists such as Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen and the Alternative für Deutschland” but his “populists” Wilders, Le Pen and Weidel are racist extremists.  His downplaying of their extremism was deliberate.

Disaster Capitalism
In Open Democracy on Legatum Peter Geoghegan explained the history of Legatum Institute and its international umbrella group Legatum Foundation, and he discussed the influence it has on the Tory government.  He described the founders of Legatum Foundation as

“disaster capitalists. They created a hedge fund in the 1980s after selling the family department store in Hamilton, New Zealand. They piled into Russia in the ‘shock therapy’ years when the Soviet Union’s state-run businesses were rapidly privatised.  Sovereign Global, the brothers’ fund, was by their reckoning the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia by 1994. By 2002 the pair were the fourth largest investor in Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled gas company.”

In other words, organised crime on a grand multi-billion rouble scale.  Former public-owned services were stolen from the Russian people and continue to be a revenue stream of unearned income for the so-called ‘oligarchs’ and their overseas partners in crime.  

In a different article Peter Geoghegan revealed that Legatum Institute’s income has increased hugely in the last five years with most of that income from Legtaum Foundation.

“The foundation is registered in Bermuda and controlled by a company in the Cayman Islands. The Legatum Institute’s income has grown significantly in recent years, from £35,000 in 2012, to more than £4m in 2016, with around 90% coming from the Legatum Foundation.”

It is no surprise that two notorious locations for mass tax-dodging house the Legatum Foundation.

Post-Brexit Britain
The new target for the Legatum disaster capitalists is post-Brexit Britain.  As part of the process of departure from the EU the Tory government intends to remove all restrictions on exploitation including workers’ rights, tenants’ rights, access to justice and free speech as well as removing dampeners on financial recklessness and on tax avoidance.  The Tories intend to rapidly privatise police, fire and health services.  All such changes provide opportunities for the most disreputable and immoral wealth terrorists, and the Legatum Foundation and its associates are salivating in expectation.

Legatum Institute’s Brexit Inflection Point report press release stated

“Historically, the British system of free trade made Britain, Europe and the world richer. The EU system that has replaced it—of protectionism and harmonised regulation—has constrained economic growth for Britain and the world. There is now a brief opportunity for Britain to restore her freedom to trade, liberalising the global trading system itself.”

Legatum’s support for “free trade” for Britain, free from the EU’s “protectionism,” is the same con as that perpetrated by the Institute for Free Trade: “The IFT’s real objective is not “free trade.”  Its objective is to make it easer for international capitalists to exploit more widely.  The IFT yearns for the days of imperialist colonialist empires” is a summary from Institute For Free Trade and it apples equally to Legatum.

“Historically, the British system of free trade made Britain, Europe and the world richer” is a grotesque misrepresentation of Britain’s vicious colonialism and spotlights Legatum’s intent clearly.

Legatum Institute people
The report author mentioned above, Matthew Elliott, was the director of Vote Leave, the main lobby group for exiting the EU during the EU referendum campaign.  Vote Leave is being investigated by the Electoral Commission for alleged overspending during that campaign: Electoral Commission investigation.

Philippa Stroud, Legatum’s CEO, founded the Centre for Social Justice alongside Iain Duncan-Smith, to whom she was a special adviser for the entirety of the 2010-2015 Tory/Lib Dem government; in that role she was one of the architects of Universal Credit and of other devastating cuts to welfare provision.  Thus, the thousands of deaths caused by the Tories’ continuous assaults on the lives of the poorest people, particularly people with disabilities, are the responsibility of Stroud.  She is as culpable a mass murderer as Duncan-Smith is.

Shanker Singham‘s interesting history of political and business connections was discussed by Peter Geoghegan in his Open Democracy article mentioned (and linked to) above.  Singham plays a major role in Tories’ Brexit plans.  His main focus is promotion and development of charter cities.  

Among Legatum’s fellows is think-tank hopper Tim Montgomerie.  As a co-founder of both the ConservativeHome website and Centre for Social Justice, Montgomorie’s experience as a charlatan is plentiful.  

Links to brief descriptions of other right-wing think-tanks: UK think-tanks

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Another royal wedding

Day 1
As a distraction from the shambles of the Tory government’s mishandling of Brexit, from the dispiriting economic forecasts of the budget, from the life-threatening consequences of the introduction of Universal Credit, from the ongoing life-threatening cuts to police, fire service and NHS and from every other current Tory crime, a royal announced his engagement.  

The media, most notably the BBC, plunged themselves into odious fawning, including a mind-numbing, but carefully scripted, “interview” with the happy couple on primetime BBC.  

While the nation was bombarded with a deluge of anodyne obsequiousness designed to induce catatonic states, the Tories craftily sneaked out a few policy details that might normally have received some negative media time, including another benefits freeze and a further lie and obfuscation about documents that examine the impact of Brexit on various services and businesses.

Next spring or summer there will be another royal wedding, paid for by those who can least afford it, alongside another royal birth and, given the ages of some of the royals, there will probably be a funeral or two, and those are the most expensive.

Day 2
Details of the location of the wedding were made public as part of the continuous drip-feeding of information as a tactic to keep the royal wedding in the news.  The royal family brazenly claimed that they will pay for the wedding.  Not one penny that any of the royals has, not one brick in any property and not one blade of grass on any land belongs to the royals.  Everything they have is stolen from the public and belongs to us.  So, if “the royal family will pay for the wedding” that means we will be paying. 

Day 5
Today, the twerps visited Nottingham for a ‘walkabout.’  More accurately, they went to a random city to get more media coverage in news bulletins and photos in newspapers.  The newest member of the royals is a trained actress and so she has already perfected the dead-eyed rictus grin.  Jason Willamson from the excellent Sleaford Mods wrote a good account of the visit in the Guardian: Notts welcome here. 

Are they going to be touring the UK like the sodding Olympic flame?

Day 19
The date of the wedding was revealed today.  It will be on the same day as the FA cup final.  The president of the FA is the brother of the groom and he would normally attend the cup final, meet the teams prior to kick-off and present the trophy.  The date has been chosen deliberately to create a drama about the FA president’s “busy day.”

Day 25
‘Engagement photos’ were handed to the media today who obediently posted them prominently.  Markle must be a very successful actress if she can afford such a famous photographer.  They are posed photographs made to look like snapshots taken randomly.

Day 78
Some more details of the wedding day were pumped into the media today.  There will be a carriage ride through the town of Windsor at 1pm.  This will mean roads and pedestrian access will be restricted at a time when many people are shopping.  All costs for policing this ride will be dumped on the tax-payers.  Prior to the ride, Windsor council plans to remove any homeless people from view; this removal includes fining people for being homeless: Windsor council to fine homeless.

Abolition of this nonsense is long overdue.

Other royal blogs
The Royal Family and Remembrance
Prince William And Racial Eugenics
Royalty week: Bridges, Babies, Boobs, School, Suits and a dead princess
One person is dodging scrutiny at the Football Association. Why?
Abolish The Monarchy
Prince Andrew: The Return Of Annus Horribilis?

British Tax Havens Are Acts Of War Against British People

The empire of tax avoidance is outside of the connected national and regional economies of the world.  Tax havens are effectively on another planet.  That’s how the wealthiest like it.  Their enablers in governments impose restrictions on all of the people of the world and then they operate off-world.  It is a worldwide racket, the biggest mass theft in the history of mankind.  It is a continuous war against 99.9% of the world’s population.

Some remaining outposts of the decayed British empire exist solely as fake locations to dodge taxes that should be paid to the British exchequer.  The current Tory government has no interest in addressing this multi-billion pound per year theft; the Tories exist to feed the wealthiest exploiters not to take from them.  

Any later British government that is sincere about fighting the extreme tax-dodgers will not achieve success just by changing laws in the UK.  Such a UK government will be unable, on its own, to effect sufficient change in the non-British tax havens, such as Panama.  But, it could force the British tax havens to halt their participation in the global racket.

British tax havens: Deliberate creations by venal British governments
The extents of respective separations of British overseas territories from Britain vary but they are not independent states.  All the territories rely on Britain for military defence and all of their permanent residents have access to British passports.  Their separate tax systems steal billions every year from the people of Britain but their residents do not benefit; the stolen money just disappears.  

All British overseas territories have been independent and have been part of the British empire; some have been components of other imperialist empires.  The common factor for each territory is that, within the last half-century, its structure of government was changed deliberately to turn it into a tax haven.  The instructions for these changes came from British governments.  

The respective histories of the British territories are now irrelevant.  They are created locations for the wealthiest to use as tools to steal billions, the result of which directly affects the livelihoods and lifespans of British people.  They are safe locations for war against British people.  That is all they are and they should be dealt with exactly how any safe location for war should be tackled: By force.

Destroy the fake autonomy of British tax havens
Artificially created tax havens have no right to autonomy or quasi-independence because British governments (re)invented the current status of these territories as tax-dodging cons.  A British government that is genuine about ending this racket should not waste time with requests for change in the British tax havens and it should not try to attain a woolly compromise.  The only successful option to take is to erase the fake autonomy and impose British tax laws on the territories.  Any resistance to such imposition should be moved aside by whatever means are necessary.  Each set-up of a tax haven was an act of war against British people and its removal should be of the form of defence against an act of war.

Replacing the fake administrations and removing the criminal tax-dodging systems would not be a difficult physical challenge because none of the British tax havens has the physical capacity to defend themselves and none can call on other countries for assistance.  

If a new government is sincere about tackling tax avoidance then it shouldn’t shirk from using whatever tactics are needed.

House of Keys, Isle of Man (left)

 

Due Process (Think tank)

Website: Due Process

“Reform the European Arrest Warrant.  Time and again it has been shown that the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) system does not adequately protect human rights. We demand reform.”

Due Process claims to focus on modifications it thinks are needed to the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) after Britain leaves the European Union.  Its (slim) website contains links to some imported articles that raise reasonable concerns regarding extradition procedures: Due Process EAW articles.  

But, the inclusion of the links to these articles appears to be a misdirection.  One simple test of intent of a newly formed political group is to examine which other political organisations it chooses to align itself to, and one method of examination is to see what are the first social media accounts with whom the new group connects.  An example is to see which political twitter accounts are the first that the new group ‘follows.’  

As the Due Process Follows On Twitter page reveals – (scroll down as far as possible to see the first ‘followed’ accounts) – the first fifty accounts it ‘follows’ are predominantly right-wing libertarian think-tanks and the members thereof, including all on the list below,

• Centre for Policy Studies
• Tax-Payers’ Alliance
• Freedom Association
• CapX
• Institute of Economic Affairs
• Adam Smith Institute

several fact-averse pro-Brexit rabble rouser groups,

• @BrugesGroup
• @GetBritainOut
• @BetterOffOut
• @LeaveEUOfficial
• @LeaveMnsLeave
• @BrexitCentral

and some right-wing agitators and professional screaming heads, namely Arron Banks, Nigel Farage and Daniel Hannan.  

The above were the first, and, therefore, the most obviously like-minded accounts Due Process ‘followed.’  That gives a clear unambiguous indicator of where Due Process sits politically.  (Eventually, whoever manages its twitter account realised that they had better ‘follow’ Amnesty as well.)  Perhaps, later, some legal experts or other human rights organisations may be added to the ‘followed’ list 😐, but the first choices are a huge signpost.  The direct connection with right-wing think-tanks was exposed further  by the fact that the deputy chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies, Tory MP Graham Brady, presented the ‘launch’ of Due Process at the House of Commons.

Another alarm bell sounded with the inclusion on the Due Process ‘follow’ list of a ‘bluehand’ account – @bluesmokinghand.  All ‘bluehand’ accounts on social media are extreme right-wing, are extremely racist and are vehemently opposed to human rights and to correct legal process.

‘Due Process’ twitter ‘following’ page on November 15th 2017

Due Process is just another tool of the usual gang of right-wing confidence tricksters.  Its alleged interest in the EAW is just a ruse to acquire media access.

Centrists’ Fear Of Socialism Grows

The purpose of liberal and centrist politics is to attempt to suppress revolutionary opposition to exploitative capitalism.  A potential challenge to the wealth terrorists is and always has been ever-present and it is the role of the centre to con the budding revolutionaries, to distract them and to ultimately suffocate them.  This strangulation is not a new phenomena; it has existed since the first cod democracy.

Liberal politics is borne of careerism and of misplaced self-congratulation.  It is useful only to its practitioners.  It is of no use to anyone suffering the consequences of destructive capitalism.  It suits the beneficiaries of said destruction that the liberals and centrists exist: The con trick that casts them as opposition to conservatives is mutually beneficial to both.  However, that con trick is now exposed.  Gormless politicians in a variety of ‘Western’ democracies have failed to elucidate or practice their pseudo-opposition sufficiently coherently.  People who are genuinely opposed to a world run by financial gangsters are no longer willing to be directed or silenced by supercilious liberal fraudsters.

Centrists’ fear of socialism
Like all supporters of exploitative capitalism, centrists fear the end of their supply of unearnt wealth but they also fear the end of their own existence as a political group.  They fear their irrelevance.  Thus, particularly in European and US mainstream liberal media circle jerks, there is never a shortage of half-baked attacks on socialism.  The theme is usually mock horror about the ineluctable brutality of totalitarianism coupled with insipid horseshoe theory extrapolations; such arguments are tired, have been refuted completely and easily on an uncountable number of occasions, and are necessarily insulting both to the listener/reader and to the people being discussed.

The centrists’ arguments against socialism rely on the their perception of ignorance among their target audience.  Any political argument that relies on its listeners to be ignorant is doomed to fail eventually and the success of liberal political confidence trickery has now expired.  All that are left are plaintive cries to the remaining liberal centrist politicians, beseeching them to think of some new trick before it’s too late.  Thankfully, it is too late.  However, the professional trolls keep on beseeching, because it is all they know and the only job they can do.

Bloodworth’s Fear
James Bloodworth is a typical example of a careerist professional troll who, randomly, aligned himself to the venal centre of politics.  In Bloodworth’s fear he criticised some recent liberal arguments that have equated the left-of-centre politics of Corbyn, Podemas, etc. with historical socialist revolutions.  He claimed that such comparisons are not taken seriously by people who are enthused by the appeal of left-wing politics.  Bloodworth’s criticism of liberal attacks on left-wing politics is criticism that is a cover for an attempt to sever the connection between left-leaning politics and socialism.  The supporters of Corbyn, Lucas, Podemas, Syriza, etc. can see what next steps to take.  So-called “democratic socialism” is a gateway to real socialism unencumbered by cod democracy.  The greatest fear that the centre has is that more people will easily recognise these obvious next steps.  Thus, Bloodworth asks his fellow liberal voices to keep quiet about it.

His lament is that the centre has failed to develop a useful method of conning people who are tending leftward:

“Instead of wringing their hands and crying ‘totalitarianism’, liberals would do well to examine the growing problems facing the young in Western democracies today.”

Bloodworth knows that the “growing problems” he refers to are all direct consequences of ever-increasing exploitation of the public by wealth terrorists and their lackeys.  He knows that centrist politicians can offer only deceptive crumbs.  His forlorn cry is for a new method of deception.

An imperialistic aroma permeates Bloodworth’s piece: When, correctly, stating that early twentieth century Russia is not comparable to early twenty-first century USA or Western Europe as motivation for inevitable revolution, he omits the whole of the rest of the world.  

“[Russian revolution] was made possible by economic and military collapse.  As Victor Sebestyen writes in his new biography of Vladimir Lenin, prices of some basic foodstuffs had “quadrupled” between February and September 1917. ‘More than 500 factories in Petrograd and Moscow had closed down and over 100,000 workers had lost their jobs in the capital since February’.  Beyond that, more than a million Russians had by this point been slaughtered in the First World War, and only Lenin can be said to have consistently opposed the war.  The point here is not to directly compare the fortunes of British and American youth in 2017 with that of their Russian counterparts a century ago.”

His comparison of difference, related to living conditions, personal wealth and war, does not apply to every country in South America, Central America, Asia and Africa.  For many countries on those continents, current living conditions are much worse than 1910s Russia.  To perceive revolution as exclusively ‘Western’ is a bizarre take on the imperialist outlook of the world.  Of course, the over-riding reason why many people around the world have not be able to alter their political system is due to murderous corrupt dictatorships, funded and militarised by the marvellous liberal democracies in Europe and North America.

Emmanuel Macron secures an arms deal

Bloodworth attempted some weak dismissiveness mixed with condescension and insults:

“The Russian Revolution does offer a useful reminder that, when people feel they have little stake in the existing system, they are liable to throw their lot in with an alternative – sometimes any alternative.”

A tiny elite of people have a “stake” in the “existing system.”  The majority of people want a good viable alternative.  It is Bloodworth’s job to try to obscure a good alternative.  The “existing” system is the current system, nothing more.

Related blog links
On Lieberty
Venezuela: Pick a side
Castro’s Death

Le Charlatan Est Dans L’Arbre

Où est mon bicyclette?

Veteran entertainer Eddie Izzard keeps trying to get elected to Labour’s National Executive Committee.  He has elucidated his pro-Blair anti-Corbyn political perspective many times but, for his latest attempt to stifle the advance of socialism in the Labour Party, Izzard has chosen to wilfully misrepresent his own political stance.  He is pretending to be unaligned with any particular subset of Labour and classifying himself as “independent.”  (I use the word “pretending” as a nod to politeness; the more accurate word “lying” is so aggressive.)

Solomon Hughes gave a full account of Izzard’s deliberate misrepresentation on the Vice website: Izzard’s Con.  Therein, Hughes revealed that Izzard and his fellow “independent” NEC candidates are aligned with right-of-centre disruptors Labour First, an infiltration group that is notoriously anti-Corbyn.  These candidates and Labour First claimed that their connection to each other is not obscured, but the only pointer to Labour First on the “independent” candidates’ website is a tiny, barely visible and falsely worded link.  Solomon Hughes showed how hidden this link is in his article:

The double con
Izzard and his “independent” colleagues are executing a double con.
CON 1: Their political perspective claims to be opposed to Tory exploitation but it is just a variant of the latter.  They offer a different administration but not different politics.
CON 2: They falsely claim not to be aligned with an anti-Corbyn group within Labour and try to hide that affiliation.

The shady behaviour of Izzard and his “independent” colleagues is unsurprising.  They support a political stance that has been simultaneously rejected and revealed as utterly defunct.  They are wholly unable to present what they support with any coherence or with any honesty.  All they can do is misrepresent both themselves and their left-wing opponents.  Their ethos is dishonesty driven by cowardice.

The Royal Family and Remembrance

Yesterday (November 11th 2017) was Remembrance Day in the UK and commonwealth.  The parasites from the royal family were at the Festival of Remembrance.  

World War 1 was a family squabble for land and wealth between various branches of the same mob of inbred royals.  Millions died because the royal sons of royal brothers and royal sisters couldn’t communicate with each other in an adult manner.  Meanwhile, soon after the end of the war, the Bolsheviks took a different tack to dealing with royals.

The men in the royal family strut around like pin cushions with so many unearned medals on their weak chests.  There is no bravery in the royal family.  The undead Prince Philip scarpered from Greece with his family in the late 1930s the first time a Greek communist popped up and said “Boo!”  Prince Andrew’s only connection with war is as an arms broker for a variety of brutal dictators.  Prince ‘Harry’ described working as a helicopter pilot as like being in a computer game.

The British royal family, like other similar European royal families – all blood-connected several times over in an incest orgy, has been the cause of military conflict for centuries.  The aim of these conflicts they caused has been to enhance their own wealth regardless of the consequences for the people.  Further, via (often offshore) investments, the royals benefit financially from the arms industry.  This week, the shameless multi-million pound tax-dodging of the queen and Prince Charles has been exposed while thousands of veterans are destitute and homeless in Britain.

When a royal views remembrance it sees the people who risked life and limb so that the royal could become wealthier.  The queen and her family and their ancestors have the blood of millions on their hands and the toil of millions in their offshore accounts.

Prince Andrew, thinking about an arms deal

Priti Patel: A typical corrupt freelance Tory or May’s Patsy?

As she arrived at 10 Downing Street to be forced to resign by hapless Tory leader Theresa May in November 2017, Priti Patel used a common celeb trick for the waiting photographers: She pretended to be listening to someone on her phone so she would be photographed smiling.  She was not having any conversation, her phone was off.  If she had smiled without a phone it would have looked odd.  Hence she used a standard celeb ruse to get a smiling photograph on the front pages of the newspapers.

Priti Patel, definitely not on the phone

The use of such a con by Patel is indicative of her intrinsic dishonesty and of her contempt for professional political behaviour.  

In August, Patel went to Israel to discuss arms deals and oil deals.  She met senior government ministers, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, some characters from the oil industry and senior military personnel.  She entered Syria illegally to visit an illegal Israeli military base.

The meetings were unminuted (according to the Israeli government) and their existence was kept secret from the British people.  Theresa May claimed that she had no knowledge of any such meetings until she was informed by a journalist three months later that they had taken place.  But, the Israeli government, via journalist Stephen Pollard, claimed that May was aware of the meetings before they took place.  

So, who is being more dishonest?  Patel or May?

Is Patel the bigger liar?
If Theresa May, and foreign secretary Boris Johnson, were unaware of Patel’s plans and were not informed afterward of their content, then Priti Patel acted as a freelance politician.  In such a scenario Patel brokered political deals with a foreign prime minster, brokered arms deals with foreign military and brokered financial deals with foreign businesses without instruction from the British government and without any official records of the meetings.  A forced resignation would be a miniscule response to such behaviour.  Additionally, she entered Syrian territory bypassing customs procedure and visa application.  The Tory government’s website warns of what can happen for an illegal entry into Syria: “In June 2013, the Syrian [government] issued a new law stating that individuals who enter Syrian territories illegally will be punished by a prison sentence of 5 to 10 years and/or a fine of 5 to 10 million Syrian pounds.” See Syrian visa requirements.

Is May the bigger liar?
If Theresa May knew in advance of Patel’s meetings in Israel and knew their purpose then May lied to the British people about her knowledge and May’s intent was that the meetings remain secret and unminuted.  In such a scenario May was complicit in arranging government policy secretly with a foreign government including arms deals, business deals and discussion of policy with respect to Israel and Palestine.  Such off-the-record meetings are unacceptable in a democracy.

For now, the Tory government’s position is that Priti Patel has wronged and not May.  That position may change: The Israeli government claimed no minutes were taken but is has a reputation for being economical with the truth and, so, records of the meetings’ respective discussions may exist.  Conversely, the same relationship with truth may mean that the information fed to Stephen Pollard is false.

Whichever of the two possibilities above is correct, the shenanigans have further exposed the machinations in the Tory cabinet, the abject weakness of Theresa May as a leader and the rancid corruption and dishonesty in the Tory ranks.

Prince William And Racial Eugenics

In November 2017 at a ball to raise funds for the charity Tusk its patron “Prince” William spoke about wildlife conservation and human population control.

In the middle of his speech the royal discussed population growth on the continent of Africa.

“In my lifetime we have seen global wildlife populations decline by over half.  Africa’s rapidly growing human population is predicted to more than double by 2050 – a staggering increase of three and a half million people per month.  There is no question that this increase puts wildlife and habitat under enormous pressure. Urbanisation, infrastructure development, cultivation – all good things in themselves, but they will have a terrible impact unless we begin to plan and to take measures now.  On human populations alone, over-grazing and poor water supplies could have a catastrophic effect unless we start to think about how to mitigate these challenges.”

A proper map that doesn’t diminish the continent’s dimensions, or a globe, or videos from orbit show how huge a continent Africa is with millions of square miles of space.  So much room for huge population increases, for huge improvements to infrastructure, for huge increases to farmland and for sufficient space for wildlife.  “Prince” William is fully aware how large and spacious Africa is.  He knows population growth in any of the countries on the continent need not impact negatively on the wildlife nor on land set aside for the animals.  His suggestion that a large increase in human population would cause irreparable damage to animal populations in Africa is a false statement, and he knows it is false.

People living in any of the countries on the continent of Africa have as much right to any of the advantages of developed society as anyone from London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, etc. There is no moral reason why Addis Adaba or Khartoum should be denied all the splendour of a modern city with sufficient infrastructure and farmland to support the population.  There should exist more, and bigger, airports, more railways, a huge network of motorways, bigger seaports, thousands upon thousands of enhanced high quality tourist locations, hundreds of “silicon valleys,” more factories, hospitals, universities, parks, etc.  A standard of living, both economically and aesthetically, equivalent to the best of Western society should be the starting point for peoples’ expectations throughout the whole of Africa.  If that happened, it would not decline the volume or quality of land available for wildlife.

“Prince” William has regurgitated a tired old imperialist axiom about population growth outside of the cossetted Western world.  Such beliefs are ingrained within him.  His elite school education and his royal background are designed to give him a skewed view of the world, including the possession of an imperialist colonialist viewpoint.

In his speech he omitted the fact that a lot of land in many of the countries in Africa is controlled by non-African companies and governments and is used to extract natural resources which are then stolen from the people of those countries.  Coal, gas, oil, gold, silver and uranium are some of the valuable natural assets that disappear from the continent with little or no financial benefit to the people who live there, and whose reckless extraction causes much more damage to wildlife than any increase in population.  The “prince” wouldn’t mention such exploitation because his family has investments in such enterprises.

“A staggering increase of three and a half million people per month” is a statement one expects to hear from Farage, or Le Pen, or Trump.  It isn’t a surprise that a member of the British royal family uses such an evocative adjective as “staggering.”  It is easy to see the motivation for someone like “Prince” William to make such a comment: His family’s background, steeped in colonialist privilege and inherited stupidity, encourages him to see the world from the perspective of empire including its rabid exploitation.

Racial eugenics, expressed as comments about the world’s population, is used by both the far-right and also by corporate wealth terrorists who want to be able to continue to exploit most of the world.  The prince can decide for himself to which of those two symbiotic groups he belongs.

Prince William enjoying a hobby