The royal nazi

RUNS IN THE FAMILY

King Edward VIII was forced to abdicate in 1936, and soon took the title of the Duke of Windsor. He has always been known for his pro-Nazi sympathies. However, the extent of his betrayal could never be fully verified due to the secrecy of the Royal Archives. Before he abdicated and a month after Hitler occupied the Rhineland in March 1936, Windsor sent Hitler a telegram wishing him "happiness and welfare" for his 47th birthday.

Queen Mary had renewed contacts with her German relatives as early as 1918. This occasion and subsequent visits were not listed in the Court Circular, as they normally would have been. One guest was  Charles Edward Duke of Coburg. In the 1920s he got involved with a German terrorist group that tried to overthrow the democratically elected German Republic. Members of the group were involved in several political murders in the 1920s. Though he did not pull the trigger himself, Coburg funded these murders. After the failed Hitler Putsch of 1923, Coburg hid several Hitler supporters on the run in his castles. Hitler would not forget this great favour and later rewarded Coburg by making him a general. But he also needed him for something more secretive. In 1933 the Führer was short of international contacts and did not trust his own foreign ministry. He therefore used members of the German aristocracy for secret missions. Coburg was particularly useful in London from 1935 to 1939 and was received in Britain due to his sister Alice Countess of Athlone’s tireless work. She was Queen Mary’s sister-in-law and fought for Coburg’s acceptance.

The Duke of Windsor was anti-Semitic. In June 1940 Don Javier Bermejillo, a Spanish diplomat and old friend of Windsor – he had known him since the 1920s – reported that the Duke of Windsor blamed “the Jews, the Reds and the Foreign Office for the war”. Windsor added that he would like to put Anthony Eden and other British politicians “up against a wall”. Bermejillo stated that Windsor had already made similar remarks about the Reds and the Jews to him long before he became King in 1936. In another conversation on June 25 1940 Bermejillo reported that Windsor stressed if one bombed England effectively this could bring peace. Bermejillo concluded that the Duke of Windsor seemed very much to hope that this would occur: “He wants peace at any price.” This report went to Franco and was then passed on to the Germans. The bombing of Britain started on 10 July albeit probably coincidental. 

Another toe-job

Now it seems we are getting to the bottom of Fergie's foot fetish...something she acquired from ex-husband Prince Andrew. No wonder she was so keen to defend him. 

Virginia Roberts on her sex encounter with HRH. He took the teen to Club Tramp and then got her alone in a private townhouse, where he “continued with back and forth foreplay, touching, kissing, and him even licking my toes.”

“I love your feet,” he whispered, “they are so irresistible,” Roberts claimed the Prince said.

Once the foreplay was over, the two had sex, she alleged. “The entire affair was short-lived, when his climax was achieved he was not the same attentive guy I had know for the last few hours,” Roberts wrote. “Instead, [he] quickly got dressed, said his goodbyes and slipped out of my bedroom to the driver still waiting for him outside.”

After her alleged tryst with Prince Andrew, Roberts claimed couldn’t shake the dirty experience from her mind. “In my quietest moments I flick back to these memories I have of degrading my body and morals and I fill up with agony knowing I participated in acts I would never wish on any young lady,” she wrote.

Soldier of Fortune

So the wealthy privileged blue-blood Prince Harry eagerly sought adventure and excitement in the battlefields of Afghanistan to prove himself a real soldier , a true gentleman officer of the regiment , and has according to the press reports organised bombing attacks on the Taleban .

How gratifying it is that he is offered a choice and it is not out of economic necessity that he has to risk dying for a cause .

Abdul Malik, aged 17, joined Taliban insurgents in the south after two Taliban supporters gave him a mobile phone. A short while later his dead body was brought to his family. "In our district many young guys join Taliban ranks for pocket money, a mobile phone or other financial incentives," said Safiullah, a resident of Sangeen District in Helmand.

"The government of Afghanistan lacks the funds to provide for its citizens and is unable to create sustainable job opportunities for a large proportion of the population. Therefore, the south is a rapidly growing recruitment ground for the Taliban. Where the government is failing to provide basic services, often the Taliban are filling the gap with more radical alternatives. This means that sought-after trust from the Afghan people is going to the radical militants rather than the elected government," The Senlis Council, a London-based international policy think tank, said in a report in February 2008.

High levels of rural poverty or unemployment are probably helping to drive young people like Malik to join the Taliban. A report by Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission on the social and economic rights of Afghans estimated that in some parts of the country the unemployment rate was as high as 60 percent.

A reason why there are so many rural poor is the fact that agriculture, which employs over 60 percent of the estimated 26.6 population, has received only US$300-400 million of the over US$15 billion of international development aid given to Afghanistan since 2002, Oxfam International reported in January.

Edward Girardet, a programme director for the Geneva-based Media21 Global Journalism Network, told IRIN that immediately after the demise of the Taliban regime Afghans had high expectations for a rapid rebuilding of their country and a positive change in their living conditions. However, six years on there is an enormous amount of frustration, "particularly among young Pashtuns who have returned from Pakistan only to find no jobs," he said.

According to Girardet, Oxfam and others, billions in aid to the war-torn country have been misused and/or mismanaged, and have produced only limited results. To defeat Taliban insurgents the US military spends $65,000 a minute in Afghanistan ($35 billion for 2007) .

Aid agencies and some experts doubt an increase in military spending will end the growing violence in Afghanistan: "There are no military solutions to Afghanistan..." Girardet said.

A resident of Kajaki District in Helmand Province put it simply "All we want is a job - to earn some money and support our families."

No-one questions Harry's personal courage or his bravery or his commitment to his chosen martial career , but for those Afghanis like young Abdul Malik , Prince Harry is representative of an economic system where power and wealth dominates and divides and continues to leave youths like Abdul powerless and in poverty .