(Rome, Italy)
As the row surrounding the findings of the Murphy Report rumbles on in Ireland, the priests and the flock appear to be competing with each other to scandalise the rest of the country with their reaction.
Bishop of Kildare Jim Moriarty is the latest in a long list of priests to refuse to resign because he believes he has done nothing wrong in covering up the abuse. At the head of that list is Bishop of Limerick Dónal Murray, who claims that his resignation was a matter for the diocese. He ignores the fact that priests are moved around the country – especially the child abusers – so it is actually a matter for the general population. He is now in Rome, supposedly in order to tender his resignation, but the Vatican has only broken its silence to issue platitudes.
Back in Ireland the faithful are becoming more and more vocal. One woman rang in to a morning radio programme and claimed that the priests should be left in peace because at the time of the abuse “they didn’t know how much pain it would eventually cause”. She likened it to a pharmaceutical drug that a company produces in good faith but which only turns out to kill people much further down the line. She went on to echo many other callers in claiming that child abuse is something that “happens everywhere in society” and called on politicians to resign for their own mistakes.
The woman’s first comment is obviously ridiculous and is not even worth answering. The general claim that abuse happens in every walk of life is true – this is not a problem exclusive to the Catholic Church, but everywhere else it is rejected and punished. In any other organisation the offender would be handed over to the police (and of course sacked). The call for ministers to resign is also completely reasonable, but there is a clear difference between government and Church – at least with the government there is a periodic opportunity for renewal even if a sense of accountability is as absent as within the hierarchy of the Church.
It might be a good idea for the faithful to show some degree of disgust towards the Church for the betrayal – perhaps a one-day strike, a mass refusal to attend Mass or to put the coppers into the plate that pay the priests’ wages. Instead they have compounded the sins of the priests, the government and certain members of the Garda Siochána by sending out a very clear message to child abusers around the world – come to Ireland, get yourself into Maynooth and you will be untouchable.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Hot air
(Copenhagen, Denmark)
This week world leaders enjoy another junket at the expense of the taxpayers as they gather in the Danish capital to achieve nothing and then issue the usual self-congratulatory statements. The subject apparently under scrutiny this time is the thorny question of climate change, upheld as a crusade by some and dismissed as hot air by others. However, the money the politicians waste is symbolic of the money we worship, and the arrogance of the politicians is nothing more than a reflection of our own.
The issue of climate change is apparently based on empirical facts, and those who attack the critics use this as a weapon of immutability and finality – you cannot dispute a fact. However, scientists can be wrong, they can be paid to be wrong, they can lie, they can be paid to lie and they always, without fail, contradict each other. If the statistics and models of climate change were facts, everyone would agree about them, in the same way that everyone agrees that the moon orbits the Earth and not the other way round.
But nobody agrees, principally because of the different vested interests – the same vested interests that pay for the tests that provide the “facts”. Why should I believe a “green” scientist any more than I believe a scientist who works for a tobacco company or a car manufacturer? This is not to say that there is no climate change or that the world is not about to come to an end – it is simply a belief in questioning everything, especially what we are told by governments and journalists.
We are told that we can say goodbye to our way of life – which in simple terms means that we will have to find another way to pay the rent. This means that those who are heeding the warnings and are manoeuvring themselves into a position of advantage are doing so in order to be able to continue making money – it’s not ecology it’s economy. It’s not about survival in a post-global warming world it’s about survival in the new, revised capitalist system.
The whole issue is not even about the world per se, it’s about the world as a place in which humans can continue existing. The whole thing is fuelled by the same human arrogance that has put us in this position, and that is reprehensible.
We are also told that our children and grandchildren will lead damaged lives – perhaps they will by today’s criteria, but this is simply an extension of the way we, with an equal mix of stupidity and vanity, judge all things past and future by present criteria as if this was a perfect moment in time and that that perfection came from our superior intelligence and morality. We believe our children and grandchildren to be incapable of finding a solution, to be as ignorant in their treatment of the planet as we have been and to be too blind to see that they simply have to deal with the problems they inherit from their parents like every generation has done since the dawn of time.
I recently heard the climate change situation likened to a man’s daughter getting on a plane. The man asks the pilot about the probability of an accident, and on hearing the pilot’s reply that the probability would be around one in a hundred the man takes his daughter off the plane because the “potential loss is so great that the odds are unacceptable”. Quite apart from the obvious chauvinist slant, this story is indicative of the arrogance of the present-day West with regard to all future generations, but more importantly of the West towards the developing world. I’m worried about my affluent future, so you have to stop trying to drag yourselves out of poverty.
Whatever the politicians decide this week it will be irrelevant. We will continue to go out to work in order to make more money while the vast majority of the population that lives in poverty will slide further into misery. We will continue to claim higher moral ground at dinner parties based on an over-reliance on what we are told are facts and we will continue to believe that the world should be saved in order to provide a safe haven for us, and only us, because it’s everyone else that is wrong. And unfortunately we will continue to vote in the same suits and ties so they can burn more oil to attend a conference where they will spout hot air and do nothing.
And so on until the end of the world.
This week world leaders enjoy another junket at the expense of the taxpayers as they gather in the Danish capital to achieve nothing and then issue the usual self-congratulatory statements. The subject apparently under scrutiny this time is the thorny question of climate change, upheld as a crusade by some and dismissed as hot air by others. However, the money the politicians waste is symbolic of the money we worship, and the arrogance of the politicians is nothing more than a reflection of our own.
The issue of climate change is apparently based on empirical facts, and those who attack the critics use this as a weapon of immutability and finality – you cannot dispute a fact. However, scientists can be wrong, they can be paid to be wrong, they can lie, they can be paid to lie and they always, without fail, contradict each other. If the statistics and models of climate change were facts, everyone would agree about them, in the same way that everyone agrees that the moon orbits the Earth and not the other way round.
But nobody agrees, principally because of the different vested interests – the same vested interests that pay for the tests that provide the “facts”. Why should I believe a “green” scientist any more than I believe a scientist who works for a tobacco company or a car manufacturer? This is not to say that there is no climate change or that the world is not about to come to an end – it is simply a belief in questioning everything, especially what we are told by governments and journalists.
We are told that we can say goodbye to our way of life – which in simple terms means that we will have to find another way to pay the rent. This means that those who are heeding the warnings and are manoeuvring themselves into a position of advantage are doing so in order to be able to continue making money – it’s not ecology it’s economy. It’s not about survival in a post-global warming world it’s about survival in the new, revised capitalist system.
The whole issue is not even about the world per se, it’s about the world as a place in which humans can continue existing. The whole thing is fuelled by the same human arrogance that has put us in this position, and that is reprehensible.
We are also told that our children and grandchildren will lead damaged lives – perhaps they will by today’s criteria, but this is simply an extension of the way we, with an equal mix of stupidity and vanity, judge all things past and future by present criteria as if this was a perfect moment in time and that that perfection came from our superior intelligence and morality. We believe our children and grandchildren to be incapable of finding a solution, to be as ignorant in their treatment of the planet as we have been and to be too blind to see that they simply have to deal with the problems they inherit from their parents like every generation has done since the dawn of time.
I recently heard the climate change situation likened to a man’s daughter getting on a plane. The man asks the pilot about the probability of an accident, and on hearing the pilot’s reply that the probability would be around one in a hundred the man takes his daughter off the plane because the “potential loss is so great that the odds are unacceptable”. Quite apart from the obvious chauvinist slant, this story is indicative of the arrogance of the present-day West with regard to all future generations, but more importantly of the West towards the developing world. I’m worried about my affluent future, so you have to stop trying to drag yourselves out of poverty.
Whatever the politicians decide this week it will be irrelevant. We will continue to go out to work in order to make more money while the vast majority of the population that lives in poverty will slide further into misery. We will continue to claim higher moral ground at dinner parties based on an over-reliance on what we are told are facts and we will continue to believe that the world should be saved in order to provide a safe haven for us, and only us, because it’s everyone else that is wrong. And unfortunately we will continue to vote in the same suits and ties so they can burn more oil to attend a conference where they will spout hot air and do nothing.
And so on until the end of the world.
Friday, November 27, 2009
The Catholic Church should cease to trade
In late 2001 Enron, a global blue-chip energy company with roots in the 1930s, declared itself bankrupt following revelations of accounting fraud, criminal insider dealing and corruption. Accounting firm Arthur Andersen, the company responsible for auditing and therefore hiding Enron’s accounting malpractice, fell with Enron for prevarication and obstruction of justice. Individuals such as Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow were prosecuted and found guilty of their crimes.
In 1945 the death of Adolf Hitler hastened the demise of the German Nazi Party, the organisation responsible for the extermination of over twelve million Jews, homosexuals, Roma, mentally and physically handicapped people, Slavs, Communists and dissidents. Individuals such as Hermann Göring, Martin Bormann, Alfred Rosenberg, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Konstantin von Neurath were prosecuted and found guilty of various crimes. Allied governments prevented the resurrection of the Nazi Party after the war.
The Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventists, a Protestant sect formed after a schism in 1955, effectively came to end after the siege of Waco in 1993. The sect had been accused of child abuse and rape, among other things more important to the US authorities, and although the charges at the eventual trial reflected the authorities’ priorities there is no doubt that Vernon Howell would have been prosecuted had he survived the siege.
The Ryan Report, published in May 2009, and the Murphy Report, published this week, have concluded that the Catholic Church in Ireland is guilty of perpetrating systematic and institutionalised physical and sexual abuse of children for the last seventy years, of protecting and retaining the services of priests accused of these crimes, of failing to release information about these practices to the relevant authorities, of obstructing any efforts to prosecute or even publicise the abuse and of continuing to allow the abuse within its organisation. Successive governments (in the case of the Ryan report) and members of the Garda Síochána (in the case of the Murphy Report) have been shown to share a large part of the blame for failing to act on accusations and actively protecting the Church and its criminal element. Although it is not a criminal offence, the Church is also failing to show any remorse for the crimes committed under its auspices and within its ranks.
The Church in Ireland is not alone in these accusations, as priests in Canada, Australia and the United States have also been accused – and in some few cases convicted – of child abuse and independent reports have echoed the findings of the reports in Ireland. In total there are thousands of accusations and thousands of priests implicated in the abuse. Many dioceses in the US have been forced to file for bankruptcy either because of paying or in order to avoid paying compensation. And the only response from Rome has been to suggest that homosexuality is a pre-requisite for paedophilia.
Whether the Church is to be regarded as a religious organisation, a political organisation or an economic organisation there is considerable precedent to support the idea that as an organisation it should be dismantled in its entirety and should cease to exist in its current form. The Catholic Church has become not only obsolete and irrelevant to modern life but also a dangerous enemy to modern society. It has strayed so far from Christian principles of charity and protection as to be unrecognisable as a Christian entity, and instead shows the principal characteristics of a mafia-like organisation or a totalitarian regime.
There is no doubt that not all Catholics are bad people, in the same way that not all Germans were Nazis and not all bankers are thieves. They have a right to a church in the same way that Germans have a right to membership of a political party and businessmen have a right to trade; this is beyond dispute.
However, the Catholic Church as it operates today must close its doors permanently and the people who are responsible for the abuse – including those who have attempted to cover it up – should be prosecuted in a civil court and punished for their crimes. Only then can a new church be constructed on the basis of more acceptable ideals, if that is what the Catholic faithful want, and only then can the rest of us see that justice has been done.
In 1945 the death of Adolf Hitler hastened the demise of the German Nazi Party, the organisation responsible for the extermination of over twelve million Jews, homosexuals, Roma, mentally and physically handicapped people, Slavs, Communists and dissidents. Individuals such as Hermann Göring, Martin Bormann, Alfred Rosenberg, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Konstantin von Neurath were prosecuted and found guilty of various crimes. Allied governments prevented the resurrection of the Nazi Party after the war.
The Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventists, a Protestant sect formed after a schism in 1955, effectively came to end after the siege of Waco in 1993. The sect had been accused of child abuse and rape, among other things more important to the US authorities, and although the charges at the eventual trial reflected the authorities’ priorities there is no doubt that Vernon Howell would have been prosecuted had he survived the siege.
The Ryan Report, published in May 2009, and the Murphy Report, published this week, have concluded that the Catholic Church in Ireland is guilty of perpetrating systematic and institutionalised physical and sexual abuse of children for the last seventy years, of protecting and retaining the services of priests accused of these crimes, of failing to release information about these practices to the relevant authorities, of obstructing any efforts to prosecute or even publicise the abuse and of continuing to allow the abuse within its organisation. Successive governments (in the case of the Ryan report) and members of the Garda Síochána (in the case of the Murphy Report) have been shown to share a large part of the blame for failing to act on accusations and actively protecting the Church and its criminal element. Although it is not a criminal offence, the Church is also failing to show any remorse for the crimes committed under its auspices and within its ranks.
The Church in Ireland is not alone in these accusations, as priests in Canada, Australia and the United States have also been accused – and in some few cases convicted – of child abuse and independent reports have echoed the findings of the reports in Ireland. In total there are thousands of accusations and thousands of priests implicated in the abuse. Many dioceses in the US have been forced to file for bankruptcy either because of paying or in order to avoid paying compensation. And the only response from Rome has been to suggest that homosexuality is a pre-requisite for paedophilia.
Whether the Church is to be regarded as a religious organisation, a political organisation or an economic organisation there is considerable precedent to support the idea that as an organisation it should be dismantled in its entirety and should cease to exist in its current form. The Catholic Church has become not only obsolete and irrelevant to modern life but also a dangerous enemy to modern society. It has strayed so far from Christian principles of charity and protection as to be unrecognisable as a Christian entity, and instead shows the principal characteristics of a mafia-like organisation or a totalitarian regime.
There is no doubt that not all Catholics are bad people, in the same way that not all Germans were Nazis and not all bankers are thieves. They have a right to a church in the same way that Germans have a right to membership of a political party and businessmen have a right to trade; this is beyond dispute.
However, the Catholic Church as it operates today must close its doors permanently and the people who are responsible for the abuse – including those who have attempted to cover it up – should be prosecuted in a civil court and punished for their crimes. Only then can a new church be constructed on the basis of more acceptable ideals, if that is what the Catholic faithful want, and only then can the rest of us see that justice has been done.
Keeping your house in order
It seems Google are in hot water. Four executives are being prosecuted in a Milan court after four high school students bullied a teenager with Down’s Syndrome, filmed the bullying and posted the video on the internet. The father of the victim, as well as an organisation that defends the rights of people with Down’s, are accusing the Google executives of “defamation and failure to exercise control over personal data”.
Of course, none of the executives will go to jail, as has been suggested in various reports. Apart from the fact that journalists use the word “could” all the time to fill double the space, create a higher volume of news and increase interest in mundane outcomes, executives rarely go to prison. Judges the world over sympathise more with suits and ties, especially those who work for wealthy companies, than they do with the common person.
This comes in the same week that Google were forced to apologise to Michelle Obama after a racially offensive doctored photograph of the First Lady appeared as the number one hit on Google images. Google, however, refused to remove the image, in the same way that in the Italian case they failed to remove the video for two months.
The comment from the spokesman in the bullying case was as follows: “This prosecution is akin to prosecuting mail service employees for hate speech letters sent in the post.” No, actually it isn’t. As there doesn’t appear to be a convenient alternative following the postman analogy, let’s change the scenario. The Google postman story would be the same as somebody renting out a holiday home to a person who commits a serious crime in the holiday home.
The reality of Google’s situation is akin to somebody inviting a person into their own home and allowing them to commit a serious crime there. You should know what’s happening in your own home, and you have a responsibility to stand against things which harm other people. A website administrator has the responsibility of looking at the content that he or she invites onto the site.
Much has been written on the fear that Google will eventually become some sort of internet police, and perhaps they are conscious of this and are trying hard to give the impression that they have no desire to control any content on the internet. But it’s much simpler than that – Google should monitor site content like any other administrator and take responsibility for their omissions. For their own good too – if they are seen to be above the law, all the more reason why people will think they are trying to be the law.
Of course, none of the executives will go to jail, as has been suggested in various reports. Apart from the fact that journalists use the word “could” all the time to fill double the space, create a higher volume of news and increase interest in mundane outcomes, executives rarely go to prison. Judges the world over sympathise more with suits and ties, especially those who work for wealthy companies, than they do with the common person.
This comes in the same week that Google were forced to apologise to Michelle Obama after a racially offensive doctored photograph of the First Lady appeared as the number one hit on Google images. Google, however, refused to remove the image, in the same way that in the Italian case they failed to remove the video for two months.
The comment from the spokesman in the bullying case was as follows: “This prosecution is akin to prosecuting mail service employees for hate speech letters sent in the post.” No, actually it isn’t. As there doesn’t appear to be a convenient alternative following the postman analogy, let’s change the scenario. The Google postman story would be the same as somebody renting out a holiday home to a person who commits a serious crime in the holiday home.
The reality of Google’s situation is akin to somebody inviting a person into their own home and allowing them to commit a serious crime there. You should know what’s happening in your own home, and you have a responsibility to stand against things which harm other people. A website administrator has the responsibility of looking at the content that he or she invites onto the site.
Much has been written on the fear that Google will eventually become some sort of internet police, and perhaps they are conscious of this and are trying hard to give the impression that they have no desire to control any content on the internet. But it’s much simpler than that – Google should monitor site content like any other administrator and take responsibility for their omissions. For their own good too – if they are seen to be above the law, all the more reason why people will think they are trying to be the law.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Too much like common sense
(Madrid, Spain)
Latin America has long enjoyed a tense and complicated relationship with the two European countries that did the most to shape its history over the last few centuries. The collision of different cultures can be magical or controversial, the waves of European émigrés have been replaced by a flood of Latin American immigrants and successive New World governments have tried to shake off the European influence while continuing to look to their Old World counterparts both politically and financially.
However, the existing symbiosis has recently thrown up one significant parallel between Spain and the whole of Latin America. The issue of abortion in a predominantly Catholic society is always likely to be controversial, but within a chauvinist context it is unlikely to be resolved in favour of those most affected, that is women.
Earlier this month there were demonstrations throughout Latin America for and against various aspects of the subject after the deaths of two young mothers highlighted the dangers of not introducing adequate legislation. There are estimated to be around four million secret abortions a year in the whole of Latin America, resulting in more than 4,000 deaths from surgical complications, infections and a lack of medical assistance.
In Colombia the demonstrations centred on the government’s refusal to inform girls of their rights on this subject, a refusal which had been central in the case of a thirteen-year-old girl who had been raped by a neighbour and was turned away from seven hospitals and one courthouse. A court finally ruled in her favour – after the baby had already been born.
In Chile, which enjoys the reputation of being one of the more progressive and liberal countries in Latin America, the law states that the life of the unborn foetus is always to take precedence over the life of the mother, wife, sister, lover, friend. Even having a female president has been insufficient to change this law.
The Dominican Republic is another example of countries which are not revising the laws in favour of women, but rather against them, as new legislation has made abortion illegal in any case and punishable by prison. Nicaragua is also going backwards – it has been a secular state since 1939, yet since 2006 abortion has been illegal.
The reason for the slide back into primitive legislation is of course the Catholic Church. In Colombia the government refuses to inform girls of their rights because the Church has instructed them to refuse. In Peru and Argentina the Church has organised counter-demonstrations in which the faithful have been ordered to insult the people who support women’s rights and threaten them into submission.
Europe, rightly or wrongly, is generally seen as more progressive and forward-thinking than many other areas of the world, a place where our wealth allows us access to better education and prolonged periods of peace enable us to see each other’s point of view with more ease. Within Europe Spain has long been a beacon of liberalism and equality – the Second Republic bestowed upon the people freedoms and rights of which other countries could only dream, and the current Socialist government has legalised gay marriage and done more than any other government to combat domestic violence.
However, at exactly the same time that Latin America is suffering this upheaval, Spain is undergoing its own share of unrest on the subject of abortion. Bibiana Aído, Minister for Equality, was quoted as saying that abortion was an issue on a scale with breast enlargement. Cardinal Antonio Cañizares was quoted as saying that abortion was worse than child sex abuse.
Somehow, the minister’s comments seem to have caused more of a stir than those of the cardinal, with bishops even threatening to excommunicate ministers, although that could be because certain commentators are striving to discredit the minister because of her support for a bill which would introduce a confidentiality clause for teenagers.
The Catholic Church professes to support life, yet it continues to condemn many of its followers to death through policies – not beliefs, because the Church is after all a political organisation – which do nothing to ease the lives of millions of women and children around the world. In theory the Church is a socialist organisation, yet its pursuit of the disadvantaged and the dissenters is fascist in its intensity.
Fortunately, what the Church lacks in compassion Zapatero’s government makes up for in common sense. Aído’s comments reveal a sharp insight into the world of young women today – breast enlargement operations and abortions are two surgical interventions which could make or break the life of a girl and require compassionate and protective legislation.
Fellow Socialist Carmen Montón, an MP from Valencia, went deeper into the topic saying that while parents had no right to oblige their child to abort neither had they the right to force their child to be a mother. She insisted that the law was about “young women having legal and health protection” and has also been quoted as reminding critics that laws are not just for perfect families but for everyone.
And the President himself showed honesty and intelligence when asked about the possibility of his own daughter deciding on an abortion: “The truth is I would like it if she talked to me about it, obviously. I feel that this desire for her to consult me is the result of the trust that should exist between parents and daughters and we parents have to earn that trust. But at the end of the day the decision must lie with the person who decides to voluntarily terminate their pregnancy.”
Therein lies the importance of this legislation – the daughters of parents who lack the common sense to build a trusting relationship with their children, along with the daughters of parents who would prefer to leave the job of parenting to a misogynist and child-free organisation like the Catholic Church, need the protection of the law to safeguard them against being told what to do simply because they are under eighteen and under their parents’ roof.
Being under your parents’ roof means an obligation on the part of the parents to protect, but does not allow the parents to dictate to children who are capable of making their own decisions. Perhaps they will make the “wrong” decision – all the more reason why the children need protection, not intransigence.
And as for the Catholic Church threatening to excommunicate the ministers in Spain and threatening the pro-women’s rights protesters in Latin America – the Church is reeling from the constant revelations of paedophilia and abuse and is slowly beginning to collapse with at least seven diocese in the United States declaring bankruptcy after being faced with multi-million-dollar compensation claims. It is time for the Church to face the truth of its demise and close its doors for good. For the good of everyone, in fact.
Latin America has long enjoyed a tense and complicated relationship with the two European countries that did the most to shape its history over the last few centuries. The collision of different cultures can be magical or controversial, the waves of European émigrés have been replaced by a flood of Latin American immigrants and successive New World governments have tried to shake off the European influence while continuing to look to their Old World counterparts both politically and financially.
However, the existing symbiosis has recently thrown up one significant parallel between Spain and the whole of Latin America. The issue of abortion in a predominantly Catholic society is always likely to be controversial, but within a chauvinist context it is unlikely to be resolved in favour of those most affected, that is women.
Earlier this month there were demonstrations throughout Latin America for and against various aspects of the subject after the deaths of two young mothers highlighted the dangers of not introducing adequate legislation. There are estimated to be around four million secret abortions a year in the whole of Latin America, resulting in more than 4,000 deaths from surgical complications, infections and a lack of medical assistance.
In Colombia the demonstrations centred on the government’s refusal to inform girls of their rights on this subject, a refusal which had been central in the case of a thirteen-year-old girl who had been raped by a neighbour and was turned away from seven hospitals and one courthouse. A court finally ruled in her favour – after the baby had already been born.
In Chile, which enjoys the reputation of being one of the more progressive and liberal countries in Latin America, the law states that the life of the unborn foetus is always to take precedence over the life of the mother, wife, sister, lover, friend. Even having a female president has been insufficient to change this law.
The Dominican Republic is another example of countries which are not revising the laws in favour of women, but rather against them, as new legislation has made abortion illegal in any case and punishable by prison. Nicaragua is also going backwards – it has been a secular state since 1939, yet since 2006 abortion has been illegal.
The reason for the slide back into primitive legislation is of course the Catholic Church. In Colombia the government refuses to inform girls of their rights because the Church has instructed them to refuse. In Peru and Argentina the Church has organised counter-demonstrations in which the faithful have been ordered to insult the people who support women’s rights and threaten them into submission.
Europe, rightly or wrongly, is generally seen as more progressive and forward-thinking than many other areas of the world, a place where our wealth allows us access to better education and prolonged periods of peace enable us to see each other’s point of view with more ease. Within Europe Spain has long been a beacon of liberalism and equality – the Second Republic bestowed upon the people freedoms and rights of which other countries could only dream, and the current Socialist government has legalised gay marriage and done more than any other government to combat domestic violence.
However, at exactly the same time that Latin America is suffering this upheaval, Spain is undergoing its own share of unrest on the subject of abortion. Bibiana Aído, Minister for Equality, was quoted as saying that abortion was an issue on a scale with breast enlargement. Cardinal Antonio Cañizares was quoted as saying that abortion was worse than child sex abuse.
Somehow, the minister’s comments seem to have caused more of a stir than those of the cardinal, with bishops even threatening to excommunicate ministers, although that could be because certain commentators are striving to discredit the minister because of her support for a bill which would introduce a confidentiality clause for teenagers.
The Catholic Church professes to support life, yet it continues to condemn many of its followers to death through policies – not beliefs, because the Church is after all a political organisation – which do nothing to ease the lives of millions of women and children around the world. In theory the Church is a socialist organisation, yet its pursuit of the disadvantaged and the dissenters is fascist in its intensity.
Fortunately, what the Church lacks in compassion Zapatero’s government makes up for in common sense. Aído’s comments reveal a sharp insight into the world of young women today – breast enlargement operations and abortions are two surgical interventions which could make or break the life of a girl and require compassionate and protective legislation.
Fellow Socialist Carmen Montón, an MP from Valencia, went deeper into the topic saying that while parents had no right to oblige their child to abort neither had they the right to force their child to be a mother. She insisted that the law was about “young women having legal and health protection” and has also been quoted as reminding critics that laws are not just for perfect families but for everyone.
And the President himself showed honesty and intelligence when asked about the possibility of his own daughter deciding on an abortion: “The truth is I would like it if she talked to me about it, obviously. I feel that this desire for her to consult me is the result of the trust that should exist between parents and daughters and we parents have to earn that trust. But at the end of the day the decision must lie with the person who decides to voluntarily terminate their pregnancy.”
Therein lies the importance of this legislation – the daughters of parents who lack the common sense to build a trusting relationship with their children, along with the daughters of parents who would prefer to leave the job of parenting to a misogynist and child-free organisation like the Catholic Church, need the protection of the law to safeguard them against being told what to do simply because they are under eighteen and under their parents’ roof.
Being under your parents’ roof means an obligation on the part of the parents to protect, but does not allow the parents to dictate to children who are capable of making their own decisions. Perhaps they will make the “wrong” decision – all the more reason why the children need protection, not intransigence.
And as for the Catholic Church threatening to excommunicate the ministers in Spain and threatening the pro-women’s rights protesters in Latin America – the Church is reeling from the constant revelations of paedophilia and abuse and is slowly beginning to collapse with at least seven diocese in the United States declaring bankruptcy after being faced with multi-million-dollar compensation claims. It is time for the Church to face the truth of its demise and close its doors for good. For the good of everyone, in fact.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The British Army and the BNP - a marriage made in Hell
(London, England)
On the same day that it was announced that a list of BNP members has appeared on the internet a group of former British generals published an open letter in the press demanding that the party stop using British military symbols such as Churchill’s face and the Spitfire and declared that the party held values that “are fundamentally at odds with the values of the modern British military, such as tolerance and fairness”.
The British army is known the world over as a fascist organisation which draws its members from the thuggish underbelly of a jingoistic society and uses them to enforce the imperialist policies of the British government, the British crown and the xenophobic, hooligan majority of English people. It is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians this decade alone, as well as the deaths of some of its own members through intolerance and injustice.
It has yet to be demonstrated whether the list of BNP party members is real or a hoax, but it is probably not necessary to have a list to see who is a member or a sympathiser. The English are more than vocal in their support of the British army and the exploits of “our boys” against whichever group of foreigners happens to be this year’s target.
They turn out for military parades for returning soldiers, they tune in to television programmes that exalt and reward modern veterans, they read newspapers that support the army and incite hatred for foreigners and they use the national support as a convenient platform to demonstrate their primitive values.
The rise of the BNP simply underlines and confirms what those on the outside looking in have known for a long time – England is “against Continental totalitarianism” and the BNP is “the party of the British squaddie”.
Anybody in the British army that feels the BNP is distorting the world’s view of the British military is deluded. Anybody in the BNP who would rather we believed they do not support the British army’s slaughter of foreign civilians is deluded too. They are made for each other.
On the same day that it was announced that a list of BNP members has appeared on the internet a group of former British generals published an open letter in the press demanding that the party stop using British military symbols such as Churchill’s face and the Spitfire and declared that the party held values that “are fundamentally at odds with the values of the modern British military, such as tolerance and fairness”.
The British army is known the world over as a fascist organisation which draws its members from the thuggish underbelly of a jingoistic society and uses them to enforce the imperialist policies of the British government, the British crown and the xenophobic, hooligan majority of English people. It is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians this decade alone, as well as the deaths of some of its own members through intolerance and injustice.
It has yet to be demonstrated whether the list of BNP party members is real or a hoax, but it is probably not necessary to have a list to see who is a member or a sympathiser. The English are more than vocal in their support of the British army and the exploits of “our boys” against whichever group of foreigners happens to be this year’s target.
They turn out for military parades for returning soldiers, they tune in to television programmes that exalt and reward modern veterans, they read newspapers that support the army and incite hatred for foreigners and they use the national support as a convenient platform to demonstrate their primitive values.
The rise of the BNP simply underlines and confirms what those on the outside looking in have known for a long time – England is “against Continental totalitarianism” and the BNP is “the party of the British squaddie”.
Anybody in the British army that feels the BNP is distorting the world’s view of the British military is deluded. Anybody in the BNP who would rather we believed they do not support the British army’s slaughter of foreign civilians is deluded too. They are made for each other.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Ripping up the West's credibility
(New York, USA)
It is difficult to find a transcript of Libyan president Gaddafi’s speech to the UN, let alone a coherent translation of his words. Perhaps we are simply supposed to accept the snippets that have been interpreted for us and hate the man without ever questioning why.
Two things have been repeated almost non-stop since his mammoth speech finished – he “ripped up” the UN charter and he suggested the Security Council be renamed the “Terror Council”.
First of all, he did not “rip up” the Charter. He had a copy of the joke that is the Charter in his hands as he was speaking and made a small tear in one corner of the booklet before appearing to realise what he was holding and putting it down quickly. Sinéad O’Connor “ripped up” that photo of the Pope (may she forgive me for dragging that up after so long but I cannot find a better example) – Gaddafi did not “rip up” the Charter.
Secondly – without wishing to succumb to the “reflexive anti-Americanism” that Obama accused the world of perpetrating – various Western governments including the US, Britain and Spain have indeed committed acts of terrorism in recent times. In fact most of the suits and ties who were sat listening to Gaddafi were there in representation of regimes that have used “violence and threats to intimidate or coerce”, that have caused a “state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorisation” or that have shown a “terroristic method of governing” at one time or another in recent years.
These regimes include Israel (countless examples of violence against Palestine and Lebanon), Sudan (Darfur), Uganda and France (their involvement in the Rwandan genocide), Ireland (the use of the armed forces and the police against the people of Mayo and in protection of the economic interests of Shell), Zimbabwe (violent oppression of dissenters) and many others.
Western commentators are happy to follow the party line and condemn Gaddafi as a “nutcase” (Irish Times) but the people who read the newspapers and watch the news are not stupid. In response to one journalist’s blog on the BBC the first reader to reply summed up the attitude perfectly:
“Can we have the full transcript Nick so we can make our own minds up?”
It is difficult to find a transcript of Libyan president Gaddafi’s speech to the UN, let alone a coherent translation of his words. Perhaps we are simply supposed to accept the snippets that have been interpreted for us and hate the man without ever questioning why.
Two things have been repeated almost non-stop since his mammoth speech finished – he “ripped up” the UN charter and he suggested the Security Council be renamed the “Terror Council”.
First of all, he did not “rip up” the Charter. He had a copy of the joke that is the Charter in his hands as he was speaking and made a small tear in one corner of the booklet before appearing to realise what he was holding and putting it down quickly. Sinéad O’Connor “ripped up” that photo of the Pope (may she forgive me for dragging that up after so long but I cannot find a better example) – Gaddafi did not “rip up” the Charter.
Secondly – without wishing to succumb to the “reflexive anti-Americanism” that Obama accused the world of perpetrating – various Western governments including the US, Britain and Spain have indeed committed acts of terrorism in recent times. In fact most of the suits and ties who were sat listening to Gaddafi were there in representation of regimes that have used “violence and threats to intimidate or coerce”, that have caused a “state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorisation” or that have shown a “terroristic method of governing” at one time or another in recent years.
These regimes include Israel (countless examples of violence against Palestine and Lebanon), Sudan (Darfur), Uganda and France (their involvement in the Rwandan genocide), Ireland (the use of the armed forces and the police against the people of Mayo and in protection of the economic interests of Shell), Zimbabwe (violent oppression of dissenters) and many others.
Western commentators are happy to follow the party line and condemn Gaddafi as a “nutcase” (Irish Times) but the people who read the newspapers and watch the news are not stupid. In response to one journalist’s blog on the BBC the first reader to reply summed up the attitude perfectly:
“Can we have the full transcript Nick so we can make our own minds up?”
Obama's speech-writer stands alone
(New York, USA)
The United Nations has long staggered between the pillar of laughing-stock and the post of pariah within the international community. Speeches from US presidents do little to help that image.
On Wednesday US president Obama addressed the “grubby elected members” for the first time since he came to power. For those of us who look to Obama to correct the mistakes of former US presidents the ambiguity created between the tired rhetoric and the stated facts was worrying to say the least.
One of the most fundamental changes that is required – and one that the UN has never facilitated – is America’s self-appraisal as the world leader. Obama appears to want to perpetuate this self-appointed role:
“These expectations ... are rooted ... in the hope that America will be a leader in bringing about such change.”
He also seems surprised that America is so unpopular in the world, and unrealistic as to the causes of this lack of popularity:
“I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust. Part of this was due to misperceptions and misinformation about my country. Part of this was due to opposition to specific policies, and a belief that on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others. This has fed an almost reflexive anti-Americanism, which too often has served as an excuse for our collective inaction.”
While I completely agree that there exists an unfortunate “reflexive anti-Americanism”, I must insist that America’s position in the world opinion has nothing to do with “misperceptions and misinformation” – it is a direct result of foreign invasions, terrorist activities, a refusal to mend their ecological ways, a tendency to change the moral code depending on resources and money and the constant lack of respect that American citizens show people of other cultures. By “American citizens” of course I am not simply referring to a dozen people that I may have encountered over the last year, but to individual representatives of the American community such as may be found in the armed forces.
Obama as an individual may not be guilty of any of the atrocities – verbal or physical – committed by his fellow Americans, but he could be accused of offering words with no substance:
“But it is my deeply held belief that in the year 2009 more than at any point in human history -- the interests of nations and peoples are shared.
“The religious convictions that we hold in our hearts can forge new bonds among people, or tear us apart. The technology we harness can light the path to peace, or forever darken it. The energy we use can sustain our planet, or destroy it. What happens to the hope of a single child anywhere - can enrich our world, or impoverish it.”
This is the stuff of rookie speech-writers, B-movie script-writers and satirical cartoons. It is the words of a man who would have us believe that we reached a critical moment like no other critical moment before, that everything hinges on this moment in time. It is a common mistake made by men who are given too much power and therefore believe themselves to be more important in a historical sense than they really are – it is the mistake of the man who believes that this moment is critical because it is the moment of his own speech.
In fairness to Obama, that is probably a redundant criticism – we are, after all, talking about an American president talking to a bunch of self-important but largely irrelevant suits and ties.
During the speech Obama lists the changes he has made and what his government has achieved; no problems there. There is no denying that he has made some key changes to the way his country is behaving in public, and the changes are to be welcomed. Unfortunately he returns far too often to words that are empty of anything but threat:
“Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone.”
Here Obama shows himself to be seriously misguided when it comes to accepting what the speech-writers give him. The first part of that statement is wrong – nobody is angry that America apparently acted alone, they are angry that Western governments gang up on the rest of the world. And the second part of the statement is offensive in the extreme – it is a return to Reagan and both Bushes, to the belief that America is the sheriff of the world. It is a return to the delusion that America is the solution, when in fact it is the problem. It is a return to the time when America provided the problem in order to be the solution (Nicaragua, Colombia and so on). And it is a perfect example of the madman becoming the psychiatrist in order to avoid being accused.
The proof that the emptiest of his words carries the most threat comes in the following statements:
“No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed.
“Those nations that refuse to live up to their obligations must face consequences. Let me be clear, this is not about singling out individual nations -- it is about standing up for the rights of all nations that do live up to their responsibilities. Because a world in which IAEA inspections are avoided and the United Nation's demands are ignored will leave all people less safe, and all nations less secure.”
It is obvious that he is referring to the two enemies à la mode, North Korea and Iran, and sure enough his next paragraph contains threats against those two countries. I use the word “threats” because he is continuing the sabre-rattling of his predecessor, and if America were to invade the only people to suffer would again be the innocent masses. A bit like Iraq and Afghanistan, but also similar to the way in which ordinary Americans suffer the “reflexive anti-Americanism” caused by actions of successive leaders. The irony of all three paragraphs (the two quoted and the one I have simply referred to) appears to be lost on him, especially as he managed keep a straight face when he said the following (a statement which comes between the two previous quoted segments):
“We must never allow a single nuclear device to fall into the hands of a violent extremist.”
Is that so?
The need for a heavy sense of irony continues throughout the speech:
“That effort must begin with an unshakeable determination that the murder of innocent men, women and children will never be tolerated. On this, no one can be -- there can be no dispute. The violent extremists who promote conflict by distorting faith have discredited and isolated themselves.”
Yes, Bush, Blair and Aznar, you have indeed.
Perhaps I am being harsh on the man – although perhaps it is our duty to be harsh on people who set themselves up to “lead the world”. Obama himself warns against the perceived importance of words and the true relevance of actions:
“We know the future will be forged by deeds and not simply words. Speeches alone will not solve our problems. It will take persistent action. So for those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions that we have taken in just nine months.”
Fair enough. And as I have already conceded, Obama’s decisions as president have been good, not least on the question of Israel:
“we continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.”
Perhaps Obama is still the good man I believed him to be. His script-writer, however, should go and find a job somewhere where men of few talents are appreciated beyond their worth. He could try the UN.
The United Nations has long staggered between the pillar of laughing-stock and the post of pariah within the international community. Speeches from US presidents do little to help that image.
On Wednesday US president Obama addressed the “grubby elected members” for the first time since he came to power. For those of us who look to Obama to correct the mistakes of former US presidents the ambiguity created between the tired rhetoric and the stated facts was worrying to say the least.
One of the most fundamental changes that is required – and one that the UN has never facilitated – is America’s self-appraisal as the world leader. Obama appears to want to perpetuate this self-appointed role:
“These expectations ... are rooted ... in the hope that America will be a leader in bringing about such change.”
He also seems surprised that America is so unpopular in the world, and unrealistic as to the causes of this lack of popularity:
“I took office at a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust. Part of this was due to misperceptions and misinformation about my country. Part of this was due to opposition to specific policies, and a belief that on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others. This has fed an almost reflexive anti-Americanism, which too often has served as an excuse for our collective inaction.”
While I completely agree that there exists an unfortunate “reflexive anti-Americanism”, I must insist that America’s position in the world opinion has nothing to do with “misperceptions and misinformation” – it is a direct result of foreign invasions, terrorist activities, a refusal to mend their ecological ways, a tendency to change the moral code depending on resources and money and the constant lack of respect that American citizens show people of other cultures. By “American citizens” of course I am not simply referring to a dozen people that I may have encountered over the last year, but to individual representatives of the American community such as may be found in the armed forces.
Obama as an individual may not be guilty of any of the atrocities – verbal or physical – committed by his fellow Americans, but he could be accused of offering words with no substance:
“But it is my deeply held belief that in the year 2009 more than at any point in human history -- the interests of nations and peoples are shared.
“The religious convictions that we hold in our hearts can forge new bonds among people, or tear us apart. The technology we harness can light the path to peace, or forever darken it. The energy we use can sustain our planet, or destroy it. What happens to the hope of a single child anywhere - can enrich our world, or impoverish it.”
This is the stuff of rookie speech-writers, B-movie script-writers and satirical cartoons. It is the words of a man who would have us believe that we reached a critical moment like no other critical moment before, that everything hinges on this moment in time. It is a common mistake made by men who are given too much power and therefore believe themselves to be more important in a historical sense than they really are – it is the mistake of the man who believes that this moment is critical because it is the moment of his own speech.
In fairness to Obama, that is probably a redundant criticism – we are, after all, talking about an American president talking to a bunch of self-important but largely irrelevant suits and ties.
During the speech Obama lists the changes he has made and what his government has achieved; no problems there. There is no denying that he has made some key changes to the way his country is behaving in public, and the changes are to be welcomed. Unfortunately he returns far too often to words that are empty of anything but threat:
“Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone.”
Here Obama shows himself to be seriously misguided when it comes to accepting what the speech-writers give him. The first part of that statement is wrong – nobody is angry that America apparently acted alone, they are angry that Western governments gang up on the rest of the world. And the second part of the statement is offensive in the extreme – it is a return to Reagan and both Bushes, to the belief that America is the sheriff of the world. It is a return to the delusion that America is the solution, when in fact it is the problem. It is a return to the time when America provided the problem in order to be the solution (Nicaragua, Colombia and so on). And it is a perfect example of the madman becoming the psychiatrist in order to avoid being accused.
The proof that the emptiest of his words carries the most threat comes in the following statements:
“No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed.
“Those nations that refuse to live up to their obligations must face consequences. Let me be clear, this is not about singling out individual nations -- it is about standing up for the rights of all nations that do live up to their responsibilities. Because a world in which IAEA inspections are avoided and the United Nation's demands are ignored will leave all people less safe, and all nations less secure.”
It is obvious that he is referring to the two enemies à la mode, North Korea and Iran, and sure enough his next paragraph contains threats against those two countries. I use the word “threats” because he is continuing the sabre-rattling of his predecessor, and if America were to invade the only people to suffer would again be the innocent masses. A bit like Iraq and Afghanistan, but also similar to the way in which ordinary Americans suffer the “reflexive anti-Americanism” caused by actions of successive leaders. The irony of all three paragraphs (the two quoted and the one I have simply referred to) appears to be lost on him, especially as he managed keep a straight face when he said the following (a statement which comes between the two previous quoted segments):
“We must never allow a single nuclear device to fall into the hands of a violent extremist.”
Is that so?
The need for a heavy sense of irony continues throughout the speech:
“That effort must begin with an unshakeable determination that the murder of innocent men, women and children will never be tolerated. On this, no one can be -- there can be no dispute. The violent extremists who promote conflict by distorting faith have discredited and isolated themselves.”
Yes, Bush, Blair and Aznar, you have indeed.
Perhaps I am being harsh on the man – although perhaps it is our duty to be harsh on people who set themselves up to “lead the world”. Obama himself warns against the perceived importance of words and the true relevance of actions:
“We know the future will be forged by deeds and not simply words. Speeches alone will not solve our problems. It will take persistent action. So for those who question the character and cause of my nation, I ask you to look at the concrete actions that we have taken in just nine months.”
Fair enough. And as I have already conceded, Obama’s decisions as president have been good, not least on the question of Israel:
“we continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.”
Perhaps Obama is still the good man I believed him to be. His script-writer, however, should go and find a job somewhere where men of few talents are appreciated beyond their worth. He could try the UN.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Mind your own business
(Edinburgh, Scotland)
On 21st December 1988 a bomb exploded on a Pan-Am flight over Scotland. Two hundred and seventy people were killed, including eleven people in the Scottish town of Lockerbie. In May 2000 the trial of the only two accused started in a specially convened Scottish court in Holland, in front of Scottish judges and under Scottish law.
One of the accused was found not guilty of murder and sent home. The other was found guilty and sent to Barlinnie. This month, terminally ill with prostate cancer, he was released on compassionate grounds and sent home according to Scottish laws which allow any terminally ill prisoner to be released.
Devolution might be a convenient excuse to pass on controversial decisions that London hasn’t the guts to make, but it’s no excuse to start bullying yet another small country. Time for London to mind its own business.
On 21st December 1988 a bomb exploded on a Pan-Am flight over Scotland. Two hundred and seventy people were killed, including eleven people in the Scottish town of Lockerbie. In May 2000 the trial of the only two accused started in a specially convened Scottish court in Holland, in front of Scottish judges and under Scottish law.
One of the accused was found not guilty of murder and sent home. The other was found guilty and sent to Barlinnie. This month, terminally ill with prostate cancer, he was released on compassionate grounds and sent home according to Scottish laws which allow any terminally ill prisoner to be released.
Devolution might be a convenient excuse to pass on controversial decisions that London hasn’t the guts to make, but it’s no excuse to start bullying yet another small country. Time for London to mind its own business.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
To die in vain
(Kabul, Afghanistan)
The polling stations have just closed across Afghanistan, on an election day inevitably marked by violence in a country once beautiful, but now a victim of Western rape.
The other night I was flicking and stopped on a Panorama report about women’s rights and the Taleban, surprised that an English television programme should suddenly be sympathetic to Afghans, let alone Afghan women. The journalist talked about today’s elections and Karzai’s militant social politics. Women who had attempted to burn themselves to death were interviewed, their hairless heads still wrapped in cloth. They had tried to reach freedom, but now bandages replaced the hijab.
Then the journalist muttered something like “British soldiers died in vain”.
Aha.
The programme wasn’t about Afghanistan or the atrocious situation that has arisen as a result of Western meddling and murdering, it was the usual nationalistic cry of “me, me, me”. It wasn’t about middle-aged Afghan women and their rights, it was about young lads from a rich country and how they had been “murdered”. It wasn’t about young girls and the possibility of a better life through education, rather it was about how badly the English have educated their own kids so that they think it is fine to go off round the world killing innocent people.
There was a photo on a sideboard of a young lad in military fatigues, striking a playground pose and brandishing a gun with the bayonet fixed. The bayonet, rather than the young lad’s face, was the focus of the photograph as if to say “Let’s go and disembowel some towelheads”.
Is it a shame that this boy died? Of course it is. Is it a shame that many other British soldiers have died? Indeed. But if one life is equal to any other life it is a far greater shame that between 11,000 and 31,000 Afghan civilians have died at the hands of fixed bayonets that should not have been there in the first place.
Yes, that lad died in vain, because in a rich Western country full of opportunities that places like Afghanistan do not have he went looking for trouble. And all soldiers die in vain because war is unnecessary. Panorama should be making programmes that could show the English that they have no right to put a gun to young Afghan girls’ heads. Then maybe their own little boys will stop dying.
The polling stations have just closed across Afghanistan, on an election day inevitably marked by violence in a country once beautiful, but now a victim of Western rape.
The other night I was flicking and stopped on a Panorama report about women’s rights and the Taleban, surprised that an English television programme should suddenly be sympathetic to Afghans, let alone Afghan women. The journalist talked about today’s elections and Karzai’s militant social politics. Women who had attempted to burn themselves to death were interviewed, their hairless heads still wrapped in cloth. They had tried to reach freedom, but now bandages replaced the hijab.
Then the journalist muttered something like “British soldiers died in vain”.
Aha.
The programme wasn’t about Afghanistan or the atrocious situation that has arisen as a result of Western meddling and murdering, it was the usual nationalistic cry of “me, me, me”. It wasn’t about middle-aged Afghan women and their rights, it was about young lads from a rich country and how they had been “murdered”. It wasn’t about young girls and the possibility of a better life through education, rather it was about how badly the English have educated their own kids so that they think it is fine to go off round the world killing innocent people.
There was a photo on a sideboard of a young lad in military fatigues, striking a playground pose and brandishing a gun with the bayonet fixed. The bayonet, rather than the young lad’s face, was the focus of the photograph as if to say “Let’s go and disembowel some towelheads”.
Is it a shame that this boy died? Of course it is. Is it a shame that many other British soldiers have died? Indeed. But if one life is equal to any other life it is a far greater shame that between 11,000 and 31,000 Afghan civilians have died at the hands of fixed bayonets that should not have been there in the first place.
Yes, that lad died in vain, because in a rich Western country full of opportunities that places like Afghanistan do not have he went looking for trouble. And all soldiers die in vain because war is unnecessary. Panorama should be making programmes that could show the English that they have no right to put a gun to young Afghan girls’ heads. Then maybe their own little boys will stop dying.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Deny when you win, deny when you lose
(Calvià, Mallorca)
July has been a particularly bloody month in a particularly violent year for Spain. Bombs in Durango, Burgos and today in Mallorca have left two dead, forty-eight injured and extensive physical damage to surrounding buildings.
Every time there is news of another bomb attack in Spain people’s thoughts inevitably turn to the bombings at Atocha Station in 2004, the worst attack the country has suffered on its soil (Franco’s atrocities aside) since Napoleon’s troops retaliated against an uprising in Madrid in May 1808.
My window at work looked out over the station; it also looked out over the sea of umbrellas as a million and a half people flooded the streets of the capital to protest not only against the bombings but also against the right-wing government’s handling of the affair.
Of course, the Atocha bombings had nothing to do with ETA, in spite of the best efforts of Aznar, Zaplana, Pastor and the comic-book simpleton Acebes to convince the world otherwise. We all knew almost immediately that it wasn’t ETA – it didn’t feel like them, it didn’t sound like them. ETA generally give warnings, and while it’s true they don’t always do so what they never do is deny responsibility afterwards, and Arnaldo Otegi’s words after news of the bombings had hit the television screens were the equivalent of a denial.
There was also the small matter of the reaction of the Spanish police. Nobody but the most deluded ever took Aznar’s regime seriously, but the police are not generally considered to be fools. The government could bleat what it liked, but the police had a serious job to do, and already on the Friday morning (the day after the attacks) there were lecheras blocking the streets around Lavapiés and north African men lined up facing the wall as the anti-terrorist brigade tracked down the people who had provided the mobile phones which had been used in the attacks.
In 2007 I was chatting to a young Spanish professional when the subject of Atocha came up. He was a nice enough bloke in his late twenties, smartly dressed and well-spoken, university-educated and well-travelled. However, this apparently educated man tried to convince me that the bombings were instigated by Zapatero, in collusion with ETA, in order to fool the people into thinking that it had been al-Qaeda so that they would vote against Aznar.
He tried to lend weight to his theory by stating that as he was a member of the Partido Popular he was privy to such intimate details of the Spanish political panorama. This theory, he claimed, was gospel among the ranks of pepeístas.
Today I was chatting to another Spanish person, a young woman who would fit the general description I have just given of the young man. She tried to convince me that Franco had never been all that bad, and that the atrocities that the “reds” would have committed had they won the Civil War would have been “worse than a hundred Francos”.
The Spanish are predominantly (and peacefully) socialistas and republicanos, and yet this country of contrasts never ceases to amaze me as it throws up the sort of person who would make not just Franco but Hitler proud.
Every aspect of modern Spanish history is tortuously complicated, but basically ETA was founded as a direct challenge to the brutality of Franco’s totalitarian regime and the organisation still generally targets the Civil Guard, seen by Basque nationalists as the inheritor of Franco’s men. Socialist governments tend to favour dialogue whereas the PP tends to favour torture and oppression. So if the PP with its intransigence, lies and dictatorial attitude were ever to get back into power Spain could expect even more blood and violence. And more denial.
July has been a particularly bloody month in a particularly violent year for Spain. Bombs in Durango, Burgos and today in Mallorca have left two dead, forty-eight injured and extensive physical damage to surrounding buildings.
Every time there is news of another bomb attack in Spain people’s thoughts inevitably turn to the bombings at Atocha Station in 2004, the worst attack the country has suffered on its soil (Franco’s atrocities aside) since Napoleon’s troops retaliated against an uprising in Madrid in May 1808.
My window at work looked out over the station; it also looked out over the sea of umbrellas as a million and a half people flooded the streets of the capital to protest not only against the bombings but also against the right-wing government’s handling of the affair.
Of course, the Atocha bombings had nothing to do with ETA, in spite of the best efforts of Aznar, Zaplana, Pastor and the comic-book simpleton Acebes to convince the world otherwise. We all knew almost immediately that it wasn’t ETA – it didn’t feel like them, it didn’t sound like them. ETA generally give warnings, and while it’s true they don’t always do so what they never do is deny responsibility afterwards, and Arnaldo Otegi’s words after news of the bombings had hit the television screens were the equivalent of a denial.
There was also the small matter of the reaction of the Spanish police. Nobody but the most deluded ever took Aznar’s regime seriously, but the police are not generally considered to be fools. The government could bleat what it liked, but the police had a serious job to do, and already on the Friday morning (the day after the attacks) there were lecheras blocking the streets around Lavapiés and north African men lined up facing the wall as the anti-terrorist brigade tracked down the people who had provided the mobile phones which had been used in the attacks.
In 2007 I was chatting to a young Spanish professional when the subject of Atocha came up. He was a nice enough bloke in his late twenties, smartly dressed and well-spoken, university-educated and well-travelled. However, this apparently educated man tried to convince me that the bombings were instigated by Zapatero, in collusion with ETA, in order to fool the people into thinking that it had been al-Qaeda so that they would vote against Aznar.
He tried to lend weight to his theory by stating that as he was a member of the Partido Popular he was privy to such intimate details of the Spanish political panorama. This theory, he claimed, was gospel among the ranks of pepeístas.
Today I was chatting to another Spanish person, a young woman who would fit the general description I have just given of the young man. She tried to convince me that Franco had never been all that bad, and that the atrocities that the “reds” would have committed had they won the Civil War would have been “worse than a hundred Francos”.
The Spanish are predominantly (and peacefully) socialistas and republicanos, and yet this country of contrasts never ceases to amaze me as it throws up the sort of person who would make not just Franco but Hitler proud.
Every aspect of modern Spanish history is tortuously complicated, but basically ETA was founded as a direct challenge to the brutality of Franco’s totalitarian regime and the organisation still generally targets the Civil Guard, seen by Basque nationalists as the inheritor of Franco’s men. Socialist governments tend to favour dialogue whereas the PP tends to favour torture and oppression. So if the PP with its intransigence, lies and dictatorial attitude were ever to get back into power Spain could expect even more blood and violence. And more denial.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Waste not, want not
(Dublin, Ireland)
The financial situation in Ireland is well-known around the world; all the neighbours have watched as the failing banks have hung the country’s dirty knickers on the line. This week the extravagant junkets of former tourism minister John O’Donoghue and his wife have come to light, straining the ability to be shocked at government incompetence to the limit.
This squander by the ruling regime is akin to the father of a poor family going out to buy expensive alloy wheels for his car while his children go hungry. Government ministers should be working on the same shoestring as the people, and their partners should stay at home instead of going on holiday at the expense of the Irish workforce.
The likes of O’Donoghue should think on – come the next election he’ll be out of a job too. Then he’ll be bleating about how much the next government is wasting. And his tongue will be nowhere near his overfed cheek.
The financial situation in Ireland is well-known around the world; all the neighbours have watched as the failing banks have hung the country’s dirty knickers on the line. This week the extravagant junkets of former tourism minister John O’Donoghue and his wife have come to light, straining the ability to be shocked at government incompetence to the limit.
This squander by the ruling regime is akin to the father of a poor family going out to buy expensive alloy wheels for his car while his children go hungry. Government ministers should be working on the same shoestring as the people, and their partners should stay at home instead of going on holiday at the expense of the Irish workforce.
The likes of O’Donoghue should think on – come the next election he’ll be out of a job too. Then he’ll be bleating about how much the next government is wasting. And his tongue will be nowhere near his overfed cheek.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
I'm innocent (but punish me anyway)
(New York, USA)
Earlier this month Shell agreed to pay $15.5 million to settle a lawsuit which alleged that the company were behind the campaign of “murder, torture and other abuses” perpetrated by Nigeria’s former military government. Shell denied any involvement before inexplicably accepting the financial imposition. Malcolm Brinded, executive director for exploration and production, was reported as saying, “Shell has always maintained the allegations were false”.
According to the Forbes Global 2000 list for 2009 Shell is the second biggest company in the world, so I imagine the compensation figure will not represent any hardship for them. As a proportion of their annual profit (as listed by Forbes) it would be the equivalent of my paying around ten cents of my own salary (if my sums are right).
The difference is that I would not be prepared to pay even ten cents for something I had not done. I contribute to charity on a monthly basis and I would have no problem in attempting to help any community in as desperate a situation as the Ogoni people of the Niger delta, but I would not pay for a crime I had not committed and I would certainly not allow such a serious charge as that levelled at Shell to be attached to my name.
Perhaps, if I was guilty, and somebody offered me the chance of paying ten cents to avoid any prosecution and the subsequent confirmation of guilt I would overcome my principles and accept. Perhaps if I was the sort of person who was guilty of such crimes there would be no principles to overcome. I would bite their hand off. If I was guilty.
It is clear then that I don’t understand one important detail – if Shell are innocent, why have they paid up?
And the Nigeria affair begs another question – how bad does the situation in Mayo have to become before it is necessary for Shell to settle with the Irish government?
Gloomsday, or the annual Lisbon referendum
(Dublin, Ireland)
Last week Dublin got its glad rags on to celebrate Bloomsday. For those who don’t know, this is the day when all the people who claim to have understood James Joyce’s “Ulysses” flock to certain landmark places in the city and gaze in self-satisfied delight at what the emperor is wearing.
In the same week Taoiseach Brian Cowen urged Irish voters to say yes to the Lisbon treaty as he announced that the government was about to make a formal decision on the date for a new referendum. Naughty children, you got it wrong so you’ll have to do it again. It is reminiscent of the referendum on the Treaty of Nice which the Irish electorate “got wrong” in 2001 and were forced to repeat until they “got it right”. It also reminds me of how the mothers of my childhood would serve the previous night’s dinner at breakfast time to bring recalcitrant children into line.
Perhaps, in a land so steeped in tradition, this could become a new annual festival. The people could mill around outside the schools that are used as polling stations, dressed as Declan Ganley, Václav Klaus or Durão Barroso, and spout the stream-of-consciousness rhetoric of our leading pallyticians. They could call it “Gloomsday”, because it is a sorry day indeed when the government is allowed to instruct the people how to vote.
Last week Dublin got its glad rags on to celebrate Bloomsday. For those who don’t know, this is the day when all the people who claim to have understood James Joyce’s “Ulysses” flock to certain landmark places in the city and gaze in self-satisfied delight at what the emperor is wearing.
In the same week Taoiseach Brian Cowen urged Irish voters to say yes to the Lisbon treaty as he announced that the government was about to make a formal decision on the date for a new referendum. Naughty children, you got it wrong so you’ll have to do it again. It is reminiscent of the referendum on the Treaty of Nice which the Irish electorate “got wrong” in 2001 and were forced to repeat until they “got it right”. It also reminds me of how the mothers of my childhood would serve the previous night’s dinner at breakfast time to bring recalcitrant children into line.
Perhaps, in a land so steeped in tradition, this could become a new annual festival. The people could mill around outside the schools that are used as polling stations, dressed as Declan Ganley, Václav Klaus or Durão Barroso, and spout the stream-of-consciousness rhetoric of our leading pallyticians. They could call it “Gloomsday”, because it is a sorry day indeed when the government is allowed to instruct the people how to vote.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Colonial trespass
(Nairobi, Kenya)
“Cholmondeley” is one of those surnames that are guaranteed to get the anti-class brigade’s blood boiling, as it has become synonymous with arrogant, air-headed toffs and the dying tail-flapping of the feudal system. I have never met anybody whose surname is Cholmondeley and I don’t personally know anyone who has, but I suspect that’s not really the point. The Ruperts, Sebastians, Farquhars and ffoulkes of this world are destined to be reviled as worthless idiots until they do the sensible thing and change their name to something inoffensive. Something like Simon Howard, for example.
To be termed an “aristocrat” in the twenty-first century is indeed unfortunate for your public image, as is the fact of being an alumnus of Eton (or Harrow, or Rugby or any of the other knee-jerk school names). Shooting somebody doesn’t help much, either.
Last week Thomas Cholmondeley, an Eton-educated “aristocrat” and important landowner in Kenya was convicted of manslaughter after shooting an alleged poacher on his land in 2006. There were echoes of the case of Pádraig Nally, the County Mayo farmer who shot dead an alleged trespasser on his land in 2004, in that it brought up once more the debate of the right of a person to protect themselves on their own property, the moral or legal limits of the method used and the possible legal repercussions of the resulting death.
However, the West of Ireland is very different from Kenya. Cholmondeley is one of the white people who sit on vast tracts of land that once belonged to the indigenous population, land that was acquired through murder and maintained through violence and enforced poverty. Ever since they arrived – and apparently this is just as true now as ever – these landowners have killed anyone who has strayed onto their land and expected the justice system to absolve them of any wrong-doing.
In fact, Cholmondeley himself had a murder case against him dismissed for lack of evidence after shooting dead another alleged intruder on his land the year before the shooting for which he has just been convicted.
From afar we sit in judgement of the actions of others without pausing to consider what the local system of morals or ethics would allow or proscribe. In some places it is perfectly acceptable to shoot somebody who has trespassed on to your property or who appears to pose a physical threat to you. However, nowhere is it acceptable to attempt to maintain a status quo from colonial times, and it is obvious in this case that it is another example of a powerful landowner killing one of the indigenous people and expecting to be acquitted.
Cholmondeley was found guilty according to the current laws of the country he lives in, and if anything this conviction is a sign that in Africa, the white aristocratic landowner has more than outstayed his welcome.
“Cholmondeley” is one of those surnames that are guaranteed to get the anti-class brigade’s blood boiling, as it has become synonymous with arrogant, air-headed toffs and the dying tail-flapping of the feudal system. I have never met anybody whose surname is Cholmondeley and I don’t personally know anyone who has, but I suspect that’s not really the point. The Ruperts, Sebastians, Farquhars and ffoulkes of this world are destined to be reviled as worthless idiots until they do the sensible thing and change their name to something inoffensive. Something like Simon Howard, for example.
To be termed an “aristocrat” in the twenty-first century is indeed unfortunate for your public image, as is the fact of being an alumnus of Eton (or Harrow, or Rugby or any of the other knee-jerk school names). Shooting somebody doesn’t help much, either.
Last week Thomas Cholmondeley, an Eton-educated “aristocrat” and important landowner in Kenya was convicted of manslaughter after shooting an alleged poacher on his land in 2006. There were echoes of the case of Pádraig Nally, the County Mayo farmer who shot dead an alleged trespasser on his land in 2004, in that it brought up once more the debate of the right of a person to protect themselves on their own property, the moral or legal limits of the method used and the possible legal repercussions of the resulting death.
However, the West of Ireland is very different from Kenya. Cholmondeley is one of the white people who sit on vast tracts of land that once belonged to the indigenous population, land that was acquired through murder and maintained through violence and enforced poverty. Ever since they arrived – and apparently this is just as true now as ever – these landowners have killed anyone who has strayed onto their land and expected the justice system to absolve them of any wrong-doing.
In fact, Cholmondeley himself had a murder case against him dismissed for lack of evidence after shooting dead another alleged intruder on his land the year before the shooting for which he has just been convicted.
From afar we sit in judgement of the actions of others without pausing to consider what the local system of morals or ethics would allow or proscribe. In some places it is perfectly acceptable to shoot somebody who has trespassed on to your property or who appears to pose a physical threat to you. However, nowhere is it acceptable to attempt to maintain a status quo from colonial times, and it is obvious in this case that it is another example of a powerful landowner killing one of the indigenous people and expecting to be acquitted.
Cholmondeley was found guilty according to the current laws of the country he lives in, and if anything this conviction is a sign that in Africa, the white aristocratic landowner has more than outstayed his welcome.
Tony's punishment
(Sedgefield, England)
May is an important month in the life of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He was born in May 1953, became PM in May 1997, and announced his resignation at a meeting in Sedgefield in May 2007.
It is now two years since that speech, in which Blair told the democratic world what it had deserved to hear for some time, and yet nothing has been done to convict one of the most notorious and unrepentant modern leaders.
On 8th July 1982 Saddam Hussein responded to an attempted assassination by having 148 men killed in the town of Dujail, a crime for which he was eventually tried and hanged in December 2006.
On 11th July 1995 Radislav Krstic oversaw the killing of as many as 8000 men from Srebrenica, and in August 2001 he was sentenced to 46 years in prison (later reduced to 35).
On the 20th March 2003 Blair and then US President George Bush started the Iraq war based on lies about Iraqi weaponry – most conservative estimates are that 100,000 civilians died and nearly two million people were made refugees, and there are still numerous charges of torture and other war crimes outstanding against the invading forces.
And then there’s the matter of Doctor David Kelly.
So far Blair has been rewarded with the job of peace envoy to the Middle East – oh the irony – and choice posts at JPMorgan Chase, Yale University with the promise that he will be made President of Europe. He is also a millionaire.
The people of Iraq still have to contend with the presence of around 140,000 mainly US and British troops, a lack of utilities, and other life-threatening problems such as hunger and cholera.
It is time for the so-called international community to exert pressure on Britain to try Blair for his crimes, and if Britain refuses to clean up after its own then the ICC should take up the responsibility on behalf of the victims, otherwise a dangerous message will be sent to Western leaders – if you are rich and white, you can do whatever you want.
And one day, the victims will not be on the other side of the world.
May is an important month in the life of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He was born in May 1953, became PM in May 1997, and announced his resignation at a meeting in Sedgefield in May 2007.
It is now two years since that speech, in which Blair told the democratic world what it had deserved to hear for some time, and yet nothing has been done to convict one of the most notorious and unrepentant modern leaders.
On 8th July 1982 Saddam Hussein responded to an attempted assassination by having 148 men killed in the town of Dujail, a crime for which he was eventually tried and hanged in December 2006.
On 11th July 1995 Radislav Krstic oversaw the killing of as many as 8000 men from Srebrenica, and in August 2001 he was sentenced to 46 years in prison (later reduced to 35).
On the 20th March 2003 Blair and then US President George Bush started the Iraq war based on lies about Iraqi weaponry – most conservative estimates are that 100,000 civilians died and nearly two million people were made refugees, and there are still numerous charges of torture and other war crimes outstanding against the invading forces.
And then there’s the matter of Doctor David Kelly.
So far Blair has been rewarded with the job of peace envoy to the Middle East – oh the irony – and choice posts at JPMorgan Chase, Yale University with the promise that he will be made President of Europe. He is also a millionaire.
The people of Iraq still have to contend with the presence of around 140,000 mainly US and British troops, a lack of utilities, and other life-threatening problems such as hunger and cholera.
It is time for the so-called international community to exert pressure on Britain to try Blair for his crimes, and if Britain refuses to clean up after its own then the ICC should take up the responsibility on behalf of the victims, otherwise a dangerous message will be sent to Western leaders – if you are rich and white, you can do whatever you want.
And one day, the victims will not be on the other side of the world.
Friday, April 24, 2009
We choose our own heroes
(Glasgow, Scotland)
Early last month Chuck Norris wrote an article for conservative news website WorldNetDaily in which he mentioned the possibility of Texas seceding from the union and his readiness to be its first president in independence. How many votes would he obtain? The result would probably be a landslide, taking into account his popularity among extreme conservative, pro-Second Amendment, anti-abortionist and anti-gay marriage voters.
However, any other candidate with identical political views would be beaten not on policy but on the advantage of exposure and the influence of modern popular culture.
In 1981, former Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan was voted in as president in the US, and he kept his Alzheimer’s-ridden finger hovering over the nuclear button for two full terms. In 2003, another former Hollywood actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was voted in as Governor of California and the politically uncertain muscleman is currently serving his second full term in office.
These are two high-profile entertainment-politics crossovers, but there have been many more people in the history if the US who have used their popularity in film and television as a springboard into politics, from Helen Gahagan Douglas to Shirley Temple Black to Clint Eastwood. From the records it would appear as if screen exposure translated easily into votes, even if it does seem to be a little frivolous to vote in an entertainer residing in an ivory tower as a high-ranking public official.
This is one of the many interesting aspects of modern culture – the faces that entertain us are much more influential in our lives than the politicians who really do have a great deal of control over us, which of course makes it easier for people to cross the divide between the two supposedly separate fields. It is something not too dissimilar from preferring to watch soap operas than the news as an antidote to the working day.
On this side of the water we have seen another fascinating aspect of modern culture at work as the internet helped create another legend. The people voted with their clicks by making an anonymous Scottish woman more relevant to popular culture than Barack Obama’s inauguration speech. Obama was only voted in a few short months ago, but in this frantically-paced modern world we need and create heroes at a staggering rate, and Susan Boyle is our new hero.
Is it frivolous to prefer an audition from a talent show to the speech of a modern statesman? Perhaps, but it is also shows that popular culture is a manifestation of the freedom that the people feel is their inherent right – in spite of the politicians, we still choose who and what we want. And in this case, the people have their priorities exactly right – the little person in the flowery dress over the big person in the suit, the power of a beautiful voice over the banality of political rhetoric (however well-intentioned), the simplicity of the solo singer over the spin of the speech-writer.
I don’t care if Chuck Norris wins an election and becomes President, but I would love to see Susan Boyle win that talent show, not just because she deserves to but also in order to see the people exercise their right to choose their own heroes.
Early last month Chuck Norris wrote an article for conservative news website WorldNetDaily in which he mentioned the possibility of Texas seceding from the union and his readiness to be its first president in independence. How many votes would he obtain? The result would probably be a landslide, taking into account his popularity among extreme conservative, pro-Second Amendment, anti-abortionist and anti-gay marriage voters.
However, any other candidate with identical political views would be beaten not on policy but on the advantage of exposure and the influence of modern popular culture.
In 1981, former Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan was voted in as president in the US, and he kept his Alzheimer’s-ridden finger hovering over the nuclear button for two full terms. In 2003, another former Hollywood actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was voted in as Governor of California and the politically uncertain muscleman is currently serving his second full term in office.
These are two high-profile entertainment-politics crossovers, but there have been many more people in the history if the US who have used their popularity in film and television as a springboard into politics, from Helen Gahagan Douglas to Shirley Temple Black to Clint Eastwood. From the records it would appear as if screen exposure translated easily into votes, even if it does seem to be a little frivolous to vote in an entertainer residing in an ivory tower as a high-ranking public official.
This is one of the many interesting aspects of modern culture – the faces that entertain us are much more influential in our lives than the politicians who really do have a great deal of control over us, which of course makes it easier for people to cross the divide between the two supposedly separate fields. It is something not too dissimilar from preferring to watch soap operas than the news as an antidote to the working day.
On this side of the water we have seen another fascinating aspect of modern culture at work as the internet helped create another legend. The people voted with their clicks by making an anonymous Scottish woman more relevant to popular culture than Barack Obama’s inauguration speech. Obama was only voted in a few short months ago, but in this frantically-paced modern world we need and create heroes at a staggering rate, and Susan Boyle is our new hero.
Is it frivolous to prefer an audition from a talent show to the speech of a modern statesman? Perhaps, but it is also shows that popular culture is a manifestation of the freedom that the people feel is their inherent right – in spite of the politicians, we still choose who and what we want. And in this case, the people have their priorities exactly right – the little person in the flowery dress over the big person in the suit, the power of a beautiful voice over the banality of political rhetoric (however well-intentioned), the simplicity of the solo singer over the spin of the speech-writer.
I don’t care if Chuck Norris wins an election and becomes President, but I would love to see Susan Boyle win that talent show, not just because she deserves to but also in order to see the people exercise their right to choose their own heroes.
The camera never lies
(London, England)
Norfolk conjures up images of a traditional, rural lifestyle played out in small market towns, of a place unspoilt by the more pernicious aspects of the industrial revolution and certainly far removed from the post-industrial information holocaust. Here you can find Norwich, the greenest city in the UK and one of the most polite, or Sandringham, the beautiful royal estate set in 8,000 acres of stunning English countryside.
As it happens, Norwich has the highest number of internet users in the country, and shows itself to be a modern, cultured city. And nearby King’s Lynn also offers an ambiguous image, for this quiet rural haven was the first town in the country to have CCTV cameras installed, suggesting a population of thuggish ne’er-do-wells and an absence of law and order.
However, Norfolk is not alone in being tainted by the connotations of modern technology. Bournemouth, the sedate retirement town on the south coast and home to the Winter Gardens and The Royal Bath Hotel, suffered a similar fate in 1985 when it became the first town in the country to have these cameras installed on the streets, evoking images of wild lawlessness.
It is estimated that a generation later there are between four and five million public and private surveillance cameras (the government being by far the biggest operator), which in a population of approximately sixty million translates as one camera for every twelve to fifteen people. Not 12,000 to 15,000 or even 1,200 to 1,500 – one camera for every 12 to 15 people.
Norfolk is certainly a county which matches England’s view of itself and indeed for many years the view that the rest of the world had about the English – polite and calm, a fair-minded people with their emotions under control and a strong sense of right and wrong.
However, the visitor to the modern UK will surely be overwhelmed by a sense of panic on seeing the number of security cameras. And they are everywhere, on all forms of transport including taxis, all town centre buildings including shops and restaurants, and on every street corner be it city centre, urban outskirts or rural idyll. And now they are to be accompanied with Orwellian loudspeakers which utter anonymous, monotone instructions to the citizens as they go about their daily business.
How ironic, therefore, that those same cameras betrayed the forces of government oppression when they attempted to cover up their brutal murder of Jean Charles de Menezes. And how appropriate now that the people should use their camera-phones and video cameras to capture more examples of police brutality during the G20 protests, namely the manslaughter of Ian Tomlinson and the assault on another young woman.
However, perhaps the greatest irony of all is the fact that the conservative population of middle England – whose representatives in blue have been found out in such an unequivocal way – will eventually suffer the consequences of ‘getting what they wished for’. An unsurprisingly high number of English people are in favour of the presence of constant surveillance to back up the popular ASBO court orders – it is part of the typically English desire to control every last movement of their neighbours and to be able to have that all-important last word by proving that their neighbours are indeed indulging in such anti-social behaviour as not putting their bins out in the correct way or parking on the kerb.
Having loudspeakers tell people what to do is the ultimate asexual fantasy of those who lurk behind net curtains and in the corner of bay windows, squinting at those awful people from across the road (or indeed across the seas). Barked orders and short, sharp shocks is what middle Englanders have always threatened to impose if they were ever made Prime Minister.
I have every sympathy for that young woman in London and for the family of Ian Tomlinson, people who tried to exercise the supposedly traditional English rights of free speech and freedom of movement but who became victims of the age-old English desire to oppress. I have no sympathy whatsoever for the conservative middle class who are hanging themselves with the electrical cables of their own CCTV.
Norfolk conjures up images of a traditional, rural lifestyle played out in small market towns, of a place unspoilt by the more pernicious aspects of the industrial revolution and certainly far removed from the post-industrial information holocaust. Here you can find Norwich, the greenest city in the UK and one of the most polite, or Sandringham, the beautiful royal estate set in 8,000 acres of stunning English countryside.
As it happens, Norwich has the highest number of internet users in the country, and shows itself to be a modern, cultured city. And nearby King’s Lynn also offers an ambiguous image, for this quiet rural haven was the first town in the country to have CCTV cameras installed, suggesting a population of thuggish ne’er-do-wells and an absence of law and order.
However, Norfolk is not alone in being tainted by the connotations of modern technology. Bournemouth, the sedate retirement town on the south coast and home to the Winter Gardens and The Royal Bath Hotel, suffered a similar fate in 1985 when it became the first town in the country to have these cameras installed on the streets, evoking images of wild lawlessness.
It is estimated that a generation later there are between four and five million public and private surveillance cameras (the government being by far the biggest operator), which in a population of approximately sixty million translates as one camera for every twelve to fifteen people. Not 12,000 to 15,000 or even 1,200 to 1,500 – one camera for every 12 to 15 people.
Norfolk is certainly a county which matches England’s view of itself and indeed for many years the view that the rest of the world had about the English – polite and calm, a fair-minded people with their emotions under control and a strong sense of right and wrong.
However, the visitor to the modern UK will surely be overwhelmed by a sense of panic on seeing the number of security cameras. And they are everywhere, on all forms of transport including taxis, all town centre buildings including shops and restaurants, and on every street corner be it city centre, urban outskirts or rural idyll. And now they are to be accompanied with Orwellian loudspeakers which utter anonymous, monotone instructions to the citizens as they go about their daily business.
How ironic, therefore, that those same cameras betrayed the forces of government oppression when they attempted to cover up their brutal murder of Jean Charles de Menezes. And how appropriate now that the people should use their camera-phones and video cameras to capture more examples of police brutality during the G20 protests, namely the manslaughter of Ian Tomlinson and the assault on another young woman.
However, perhaps the greatest irony of all is the fact that the conservative population of middle England – whose representatives in blue have been found out in such an unequivocal way – will eventually suffer the consequences of ‘getting what they wished for’. An unsurprisingly high number of English people are in favour of the presence of constant surveillance to back up the popular ASBO court orders – it is part of the typically English desire to control every last movement of their neighbours and to be able to have that all-important last word by proving that their neighbours are indeed indulging in such anti-social behaviour as not putting their bins out in the correct way or parking on the kerb.
Having loudspeakers tell people what to do is the ultimate asexual fantasy of those who lurk behind net curtains and in the corner of bay windows, squinting at those awful people from across the road (or indeed across the seas). Barked orders and short, sharp shocks is what middle Englanders have always threatened to impose if they were ever made Prime Minister.
I have every sympathy for that young woman in London and for the family of Ian Tomlinson, people who tried to exercise the supposedly traditional English rights of free speech and freedom of movement but who became victims of the age-old English desire to oppress. I have no sympathy whatsoever for the conservative middle class who are hanging themselves with the electrical cables of their own CCTV.
Monday, March 16, 2009
When a weapon is attacked
(Lahore, Pakistan)
Lahore is a beautiful city boasting an exotic mix of impressive monuments, exquisite street food, modern media companies and traditional festivals. It would be a tourist paradise were it not for the problems that still beset this jewel. The city was torn apart during Partition, and soon afterwards riots between Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus further damaged both the physical infrastructure and everyday life. It was the objective of an attack by the Indian army in 1965, and its position close to the new border has never let it rest. Today Lahore figures prominently in the conflict against between the West and its enemies.
On March 3rd a group of gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team, killing six people (five policemen and a driver) and injuring nine more. Comparisons were quickly made to the violence at the Munich Olympics in 1972, when members of Palestinian group “Black September” kidnapped and later killed eleven member of the Israeli Olympic team.
However, the Olympics are widely regarded as an event which brings nations together in a sporting festival which still observes the accepted ethics of competition and morals of human co-existence. The irony of the Lahore attack is that it was committed against a team engaged in a “sporting” activity which was used as an unsubtle truncheon in the English class war and more importantly as a weapon in the colonial domination of a post-abolition British Empire.
Many people have likened sport to war – not least when the situation in question involves English football supporters – and there are obvious parallels between armies and teams, flags and team colours, trophies and conquests and primitive tribal belligerence and football crowds. Some would even point to a direct connection between the gentlemanly rules of engagement and the gentlemanly rules of a sport. Whatever the extent of the similarities, it was only a question of time before the already blurred boundaries between these two “sporting” activities were shot to pieces.
Lahore is a beautiful city boasting an exotic mix of impressive monuments, exquisite street food, modern media companies and traditional festivals. It would be a tourist paradise were it not for the problems that still beset this jewel. The city was torn apart during Partition, and soon afterwards riots between Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus further damaged both the physical infrastructure and everyday life. It was the objective of an attack by the Indian army in 1965, and its position close to the new border has never let it rest. Today Lahore figures prominently in the conflict against between the West and its enemies.
On March 3rd a group of gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team, killing six people (five policemen and a driver) and injuring nine more. Comparisons were quickly made to the violence at the Munich Olympics in 1972, when members of Palestinian group “Black September” kidnapped and later killed eleven member of the Israeli Olympic team.
However, the Olympics are widely regarded as an event which brings nations together in a sporting festival which still observes the accepted ethics of competition and morals of human co-existence. The irony of the Lahore attack is that it was committed against a team engaged in a “sporting” activity which was used as an unsubtle truncheon in the English class war and more importantly as a weapon in the colonial domination of a post-abolition British Empire.
Many people have likened sport to war – not least when the situation in question involves English football supporters – and there are obvious parallels between armies and teams, flags and team colours, trophies and conquests and primitive tribal belligerence and football crowds. Some would even point to a direct connection between the gentlemanly rules of engagement and the gentlemanly rules of a sport. Whatever the extent of the similarities, it was only a question of time before the already blurred boundaries between these two “sporting” activities were shot to pieces.
Marching out of time
(Helmand Province, Afghanistan)
The Helmand province of southern Afghanistan is mainly a desert, although the Helmand River provides extensive irrigation for agriculture. The main crop is poppies, and this region produces nearly half of all of the world’s supply of opium. It has also been the epicentre of intense fighting between first American, and then British occupying forces and the Taleban.
Last Saturday it was announced that another British soldier had died in Helmand, bringing the total British casualties in the eight-year war in Afghanistan to a round figure of 150. In Iraq the British army has lost closer to 200 soldiers. To those who share the petty-minded, flag-waving mentality prevalent in a tiny nation with a disproportionate ego, these people are heroes, and are always labelled as such by the British press.
This hero-worship reached its hysterical zenith last December when Sky 1 screened an awards ceremony which had apparently been dreamt up by Prince Charles and sponsored by The Sun newspaper. The ceremony was criticised by readers of others newspapers as being a cynical attempt on the part of The Sun to increase its circulation and by veterans’ associations as a glossing over of the real issues for survivors.
A DROP IN THE OCEAN
Despite the criticism, the programme was a success among that alarmingly large sector of the British population that still believes that if you take a gun and invade a foreign country and kill civilians in order to take control of natural resources you are a conquering hero. Prince Charles himself declared:
...as I speak many members of our Armed Forces are far away from their families, working in austere, challenging and often dangerous environments.
It appears to be as lost on him as it is on the rest of the warmongers that they would not have to be working in such conditions if they had not gone to a foreign country with a gun etc. To put it simply, people have a choice. The people who enlist in the army do so voluntarily and in full knowledge of the consequences – at some point they will have to kill somebody. And perhaps at some point they will have to die.
Let us not forget that this is not some humanitarian force which arms itself for self-protection while undertaking aid projects in areas in need of a more permanent infrastructure. Their losses are a drop in the ocean – or indeed a grain of sand in the desert – compared to the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths they have caused in Iraq and Afghanistan. The numbers vary wildly depending on the source, with some organisations quoting as many as one million civilian deaths, but everybody agrees that the figure is at the very least 100,000.
WHITE FEATHERS
Many countries have seen great empires rise and fall on the back of military conquest and plunder, but most modern people would accept that these are feats that have not only been consigned to the history books but should also never be repeated. The British army may be a collection of heroes to some British people, but – from Cromwell’s crimes in Ireland through the phosphorous fire-bombing of Dresden to the fuel-air bombing of Iraq – to the Argentines, Afghans, Germans, Irish, Indians and Iraqis they are no more than war criminals.
The British government will continue to use its army as an imperialist battering ram for as long as such actions continue to receive support from a large proportion of the British population, and awards ceremonies such as the “Millies” will only fuel that support. It is time for the silent millions who do not support British involvement in wars to stand up not only in the occasional – albeit impressive – street protest, but also on a daily basis.
There needs to be a recognised symbol for those who are brave enough to show their disdain for the army in public. Perhaps an appropriate gesture would be to serve a white feather with pints of beer to those who have enlisted or those who have encouraged others to do so, as a symbol of peace and of the cowardice of those who would seek to bully countries into submission using guns and bombs.
The Helmand province of southern Afghanistan is mainly a desert, although the Helmand River provides extensive irrigation for agriculture. The main crop is poppies, and this region produces nearly half of all of the world’s supply of opium. It has also been the epicentre of intense fighting between first American, and then British occupying forces and the Taleban.
Last Saturday it was announced that another British soldier had died in Helmand, bringing the total British casualties in the eight-year war in Afghanistan to a round figure of 150. In Iraq the British army has lost closer to 200 soldiers. To those who share the petty-minded, flag-waving mentality prevalent in a tiny nation with a disproportionate ego, these people are heroes, and are always labelled as such by the British press.
This hero-worship reached its hysterical zenith last December when Sky 1 screened an awards ceremony which had apparently been dreamt up by Prince Charles and sponsored by The Sun newspaper. The ceremony was criticised by readers of others newspapers as being a cynical attempt on the part of The Sun to increase its circulation and by veterans’ associations as a glossing over of the real issues for survivors.
A DROP IN THE OCEAN
Despite the criticism, the programme was a success among that alarmingly large sector of the British population that still believes that if you take a gun and invade a foreign country and kill civilians in order to take control of natural resources you are a conquering hero. Prince Charles himself declared:
...as I speak many members of our Armed Forces are far away from their families, working in austere, challenging and often dangerous environments.
It appears to be as lost on him as it is on the rest of the warmongers that they would not have to be working in such conditions if they had not gone to a foreign country with a gun etc. To put it simply, people have a choice. The people who enlist in the army do so voluntarily and in full knowledge of the consequences – at some point they will have to kill somebody. And perhaps at some point they will have to die.
Let us not forget that this is not some humanitarian force which arms itself for self-protection while undertaking aid projects in areas in need of a more permanent infrastructure. Their losses are a drop in the ocean – or indeed a grain of sand in the desert – compared to the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths they have caused in Iraq and Afghanistan. The numbers vary wildly depending on the source, with some organisations quoting as many as one million civilian deaths, but everybody agrees that the figure is at the very least 100,000.
WHITE FEATHERS
Many countries have seen great empires rise and fall on the back of military conquest and plunder, but most modern people would accept that these are feats that have not only been consigned to the history books but should also never be repeated. The British army may be a collection of heroes to some British people, but – from Cromwell’s crimes in Ireland through the phosphorous fire-bombing of Dresden to the fuel-air bombing of Iraq – to the Argentines, Afghans, Germans, Irish, Indians and Iraqis they are no more than war criminals.
The British government will continue to use its army as an imperialist battering ram for as long as such actions continue to receive support from a large proportion of the British population, and awards ceremonies such as the “Millies” will only fuel that support. It is time for the silent millions who do not support British involvement in wars to stand up not only in the occasional – albeit impressive – street protest, but also on a daily basis.
There needs to be a recognised symbol for those who are brave enough to show their disdain for the army in public. Perhaps an appropriate gesture would be to serve a white feather with pints of beer to those who have enlisted or those who have encouraged others to do so, as a symbol of peace and of the cowardice of those who would seek to bully countries into submission using guns and bombs.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Decadence, recession, anonymity
It was a mighty empire, built on the invasion and occupation of other countries and the arrogant belief of superior and separate people that it was their sole responsibility to spread “civilisation” and its mores to the world. It worked for a time, while their military superiority outweighed the increasing decadence of a self-satisfied, bloated society, fat from the spoils of victory.
However, the decadence brought about recession, and the recession led to downfall. Soon, all that was left was the language, an international parlance which continued for another thousand years among the people who wielded the power, even though the empire that had first seen the rise of the language was nothing but a vague memory.
The descendants are still superior and separate but considered irrelevant in anything other than a localised context. Some people try to glorify that empire; they are rightly dismissed as fascists. When decadence and self-glorification lead to recession, the result is downfall and anonymity.
However, the decadence brought about recession, and the recession led to downfall. Soon, all that was left was the language, an international parlance which continued for another thousand years among the people who wielded the power, even though the empire that had first seen the rise of the language was nothing but a vague memory.
The descendants are still superior and separate but considered irrelevant in anything other than a localised context. Some people try to glorify that empire; they are rightly dismissed as fascists. When decadence and self-glorification lead to recession, the result is downfall and anonymity.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Dances with defiance
(Los Angeles, U.S.A.)
Los Angeles: Rodney King, earthquakes, drugs gangs and the Oscars. For better or for worse, a city’s reputation is based on broad brushstrokes of history, and L.A. is no different. A visit to any city may leave us with fond memories, but for those who watch from afar it is the most unsavoury aspects of the city’s life which often attract more attention, and there is nothing more appealingly seedy than the annual bun-fight that is the Academy Awards Ceremony.
This year, like every year, there are clear favourites for most categories and films which promise to clean up, but there is one film which has only merited one nomination, slipping under the radar as easily as an Israeli plane over American-controlled territory. “Defiance” tells the tale of Jewish resistance and heroism in the Second World War, and was released to mixed reviews on New Year’s Eve of 2008.
WAR (FILM) – WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
In modern cinema, there are few things more pointless than spending two hours watching – not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars making – a film which attempts to glorify violence, especially that perpetrated by successive criminal Western governments in the name of some fallacious cause.
Inevitably, for a generation after the end of WW2, there were a plethora of such films, tales in which the men were men and the enemy was nervous. For the most part they were unashamedly chauvinist, phallocentric and stereotypical and served no greater purpose than to perpetuate the ridiculous myth that war is glorious and dying for your country an honour.
When the interest in WW2 films finally – thankfully – waned, it was replaced by films about the Vietnam War. Fortunately, people had also finally realised that wars started or continued by certain Western governments were no more than war crimes committed in the name of an arrogant belief in Western “civilisation”, and the films which dealt with Vietnam showed the war as futile, arrogant and flawed.
OUT OF THE BLUE
Recently we have been spared too many trashy American films glorifying Western atrocities committed in, for example, Afghanistan or Iraq, and there have obviously been only a handful of films glorifying WW2 during the last decade or so.
How strange then that there should suddenly appear a $32 million American film about the plight of the Jews – the first since “Schindler’s List” in 1993 – at a time when nobody else in the world of cinema seems to be interested in such ancient history. The massacre of Israelis in Munich, maybe, but WW2 is no longer in fashion.
A cynical interpretation of events would focus on the coincidence in the timing of the release of the film with the atrocious Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. How better to confuse the issue of these attacks by setting up the usual Israeli-American smokescreen of reminding the world once more of previous atrocities committed against the Jewish people.
SMOKE SIGNALS OR SMOKESCREEN?
This is not the first time American money has helped to create confusion around contemporary topics. Back in 1990, “Dances with wolves” was greeted as a sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans at a time when various peoples were struggling to retain the rights to their ancestral land and when the American authorities had successfully driven a wedge among them in the shape of gambling licences.
More recently, in 2007, the film “300” met with criticism for its extremely negative portrayal of the Persians – the people indigenous to the territory which is roughly now Iran – at a time when the American administration’s sword-rattling towards Tehran was at its loudest. In 2005 “Jarhead” showed an extremely pro-American view of the Iraq War when the Bush administration was coming under increasing pressure to justify the number of casualties among the armed forces (although not among Iraqi civilians, for some reason).
A POWERFUL TOOL
Cinema is a medium which enjoys instant worldwide acceptance and is in the enviable position of being able to reach a global audience with the simple yet effective communication of a message. There are times when cinema brings us films of protest and indignation about man’s inhumanity to man and shows that it is a force for good.
However, with power comes responsibility, and Hollywood would be wise not to promote any films which could be suspected of abusing that power. The eyes of the world are invariably focused on America, and now more than ever it is time for the more prominent American institutions to show integrity and transparency, two qualities which are notably absent from recent American foreign policy.
Los Angeles: Rodney King, earthquakes, drugs gangs and the Oscars. For better or for worse, a city’s reputation is based on broad brushstrokes of history, and L.A. is no different. A visit to any city may leave us with fond memories, but for those who watch from afar it is the most unsavoury aspects of the city’s life which often attract more attention, and there is nothing more appealingly seedy than the annual bun-fight that is the Academy Awards Ceremony.
This year, like every year, there are clear favourites for most categories and films which promise to clean up, but there is one film which has only merited one nomination, slipping under the radar as easily as an Israeli plane over American-controlled territory. “Defiance” tells the tale of Jewish resistance and heroism in the Second World War, and was released to mixed reviews on New Year’s Eve of 2008.
WAR (FILM) – WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
In modern cinema, there are few things more pointless than spending two hours watching – not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars making – a film which attempts to glorify violence, especially that perpetrated by successive criminal Western governments in the name of some fallacious cause.
Inevitably, for a generation after the end of WW2, there were a plethora of such films, tales in which the men were men and the enemy was nervous. For the most part they were unashamedly chauvinist, phallocentric and stereotypical and served no greater purpose than to perpetuate the ridiculous myth that war is glorious and dying for your country an honour.
When the interest in WW2 films finally – thankfully – waned, it was replaced by films about the Vietnam War. Fortunately, people had also finally realised that wars started or continued by certain Western governments were no more than war crimes committed in the name of an arrogant belief in Western “civilisation”, and the films which dealt with Vietnam showed the war as futile, arrogant and flawed.
OUT OF THE BLUE
Recently we have been spared too many trashy American films glorifying Western atrocities committed in, for example, Afghanistan or Iraq, and there have obviously been only a handful of films glorifying WW2 during the last decade or so.
How strange then that there should suddenly appear a $32 million American film about the plight of the Jews – the first since “Schindler’s List” in 1993 – at a time when nobody else in the world of cinema seems to be interested in such ancient history. The massacre of Israelis in Munich, maybe, but WW2 is no longer in fashion.
A cynical interpretation of events would focus on the coincidence in the timing of the release of the film with the atrocious Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. How better to confuse the issue of these attacks by setting up the usual Israeli-American smokescreen of reminding the world once more of previous atrocities committed against the Jewish people.
SMOKE SIGNALS OR SMOKESCREEN?
This is not the first time American money has helped to create confusion around contemporary topics. Back in 1990, “Dances with wolves” was greeted as a sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans at a time when various peoples were struggling to retain the rights to their ancestral land and when the American authorities had successfully driven a wedge among them in the shape of gambling licences.
More recently, in 2007, the film “300” met with criticism for its extremely negative portrayal of the Persians – the people indigenous to the territory which is roughly now Iran – at a time when the American administration’s sword-rattling towards Tehran was at its loudest. In 2005 “Jarhead” showed an extremely pro-American view of the Iraq War when the Bush administration was coming under increasing pressure to justify the number of casualties among the armed forces (although not among Iraqi civilians, for some reason).
A POWERFUL TOOL
Cinema is a medium which enjoys instant worldwide acceptance and is in the enviable position of being able to reach a global audience with the simple yet effective communication of a message. There are times when cinema brings us films of protest and indignation about man’s inhumanity to man and shows that it is a force for good.
However, with power comes responsibility, and Hollywood would be wise not to promote any films which could be suspected of abusing that power. The eyes of the world are invariably focused on America, and now more than ever it is time for the more prominent American institutions to show integrity and transparency, two qualities which are notably absent from recent American foreign policy.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
A new dawn
(Washington D.C., U.S.A.)
I didn’t bother watching President Obama’s inauguration. I have never seen any of the political leaders of my own country being sworn in, so I was hardly going to watch the ceremony to inaugurate some foreign leader.
With this I do not mean to say that I have not been feeling the emotion surrounding his election; it is simply that I am not one of television’s sheep. I breathed in the excitement on the dawn of his election – it was dawn where I was – and the time of day almost seemed appropriate in a symbolic sort of way. It was not only the first time an African-American had become president, but his style and demeanour suggested a fresh start for his country.
Not only would he erase the bad memories left by the likes of Powell and Rice, and not only would he right the terrible wrongs committed by the Bush administration but he would start to take care of the weaker sections of American society. At last the masses would be protected against the onslaught of modern capitalism.
There was talk of a revolution.
REVOLUTION
The problem with revolutions is that they rarely bring the benefits of which the people had dreamed.
In Paris in May, 1968 the student strikes were the most visible aspect of the attempt to overhaul establishment ideals, but as early as June not only did the Gaullist government win an overwhelming majority but the leftist groups lost sixty-one seats and the communists lost thirty-nine. It could be argued that the upheaval cost de Gaulle his job (in a referendum in April 1969) but France simply swept up the rubble and continued as it had before.
In Russia in 1918 Lenin’s communists managed to take over a huge country, but immediately afterwards a civil war started, territory (and 60 million people, 25% of farming land and 75% of iron ore and coal deposits) were handed over to Germany, then the Cheka secret police were formed to keep the people in check. Years of famine, crime and cannibalism followed for Russia.
In Prague in the spring of 1968 the fight for reforms led to the Soviet invasion and suppression and an even greater limitation of freedom of speech and thought.
As for more modern times, there has been very little chance of revolution in the West in the last couple of decades as Western society has grown richer. People tend to become more conservative as they become more prosperous, and appear to go from looking down on poorer people to resenting them – poorer people or the “people we are subsidising”.
And left-wing students also become more conservative as their priorities change – there is nothing more fascist and intransigent than an ageing hippy. It is almost as if they have their revolution and imagine the world around them the way they want it and immediately become reactionary in order to protect their new status quo. They all become the film version of Strelnikov.
WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN
There is a strange cycle in American politics which warrants further research. The prosperity of the fifties was followed by unrest in the sixties, and the US government responded by invading Vietnam. The growth of the eighties could never last, and the US government went into the Gulf. Now that the prosperity of recent years has given way to a period of worldwide economic recession – “worldwide” because when the West is faring badly it kicks everyone else in the teeth just to make sure it is not suffering alone – it is interesting to observe the reaction of the US.
As people get poorer they complain more, protest more, and tend to lash out more. However, being human we never lash out at those who are really at fault – usually those people are untouchable, unreachable or unidentifiable anyway – so we go for the weaker people, or the people who are far enough removed from our own blueprint to have become legitimate targets in order to stop us from attacking each other.
In this new century Western governments, with a remarkable blindness for irony, strive to convince us of the “terrorist threat”. Muslims are the enemy, Arabs are a menace and there are terrorists lurking around every corner. Establishment television stations allow some Muslims to remind us that they are not all the same, but they make it look no more than an ugly sycophancy towards the West and the decision to show them is simply a sop to political correctness. It is designed not to make some Muslims look more reasonable but to allow the television stations to claim impartiality and therefore cover them for more attacks on the Middle East and its religion.
Are we to believe that with a change of president, the US is to suddenly embrace Muslims as brothers? Does anybody really think that after half a century of interfering in other people’s affairs (and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people) the US army will cease its foreign occupation or that after sixty years of economic and military backing the US administration will withdraw support for Israeli atrocities?
It will be a revolution indeed if Obama forces the pharmaceutical industry to finally do the right thing by victims of AIDS in Africa, reduces military spending and once and for all provides some coherent form of health care for the poor of his country. He could start by shutting down Guantanamo...
“Revolution” is a word which people unsheathe with alarming regularity, and in an economic situation which demands profound change people are more trigger-happy with their clichés than usual. However, there is no doubt that Obama is a good and intelligent man, and he will know – even if the social commentators do not – that change is a dish best served cold.
I didn’t bother watching President Obama’s inauguration. I have never seen any of the political leaders of my own country being sworn in, so I was hardly going to watch the ceremony to inaugurate some foreign leader.
With this I do not mean to say that I have not been feeling the emotion surrounding his election; it is simply that I am not one of television’s sheep. I breathed in the excitement on the dawn of his election – it was dawn where I was – and the time of day almost seemed appropriate in a symbolic sort of way. It was not only the first time an African-American had become president, but his style and demeanour suggested a fresh start for his country.
Not only would he erase the bad memories left by the likes of Powell and Rice, and not only would he right the terrible wrongs committed by the Bush administration but he would start to take care of the weaker sections of American society. At last the masses would be protected against the onslaught of modern capitalism.
There was talk of a revolution.
REVOLUTION
The problem with revolutions is that they rarely bring the benefits of which the people had dreamed.
In Paris in May, 1968 the student strikes were the most visible aspect of the attempt to overhaul establishment ideals, but as early as June not only did the Gaullist government win an overwhelming majority but the leftist groups lost sixty-one seats and the communists lost thirty-nine. It could be argued that the upheaval cost de Gaulle his job (in a referendum in April 1969) but France simply swept up the rubble and continued as it had before.
In Russia in 1918 Lenin’s communists managed to take over a huge country, but immediately afterwards a civil war started, territory (and 60 million people, 25% of farming land and 75% of iron ore and coal deposits) were handed over to Germany, then the Cheka secret police were formed to keep the people in check. Years of famine, crime and cannibalism followed for Russia.
In Prague in the spring of 1968 the fight for reforms led to the Soviet invasion and suppression and an even greater limitation of freedom of speech and thought.
As for more modern times, there has been very little chance of revolution in the West in the last couple of decades as Western society has grown richer. People tend to become more conservative as they become more prosperous, and appear to go from looking down on poorer people to resenting them – poorer people or the “people we are subsidising”.
And left-wing students also become more conservative as their priorities change – there is nothing more fascist and intransigent than an ageing hippy. It is almost as if they have their revolution and imagine the world around them the way they want it and immediately become reactionary in order to protect their new status quo. They all become the film version of Strelnikov.
WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN
There is a strange cycle in American politics which warrants further research. The prosperity of the fifties was followed by unrest in the sixties, and the US government responded by invading Vietnam. The growth of the eighties could never last, and the US government went into the Gulf. Now that the prosperity of recent years has given way to a period of worldwide economic recession – “worldwide” because when the West is faring badly it kicks everyone else in the teeth just to make sure it is not suffering alone – it is interesting to observe the reaction of the US.
As people get poorer they complain more, protest more, and tend to lash out more. However, being human we never lash out at those who are really at fault – usually those people are untouchable, unreachable or unidentifiable anyway – so we go for the weaker people, or the people who are far enough removed from our own blueprint to have become legitimate targets in order to stop us from attacking each other.
In this new century Western governments, with a remarkable blindness for irony, strive to convince us of the “terrorist threat”. Muslims are the enemy, Arabs are a menace and there are terrorists lurking around every corner. Establishment television stations allow some Muslims to remind us that they are not all the same, but they make it look no more than an ugly sycophancy towards the West and the decision to show them is simply a sop to political correctness. It is designed not to make some Muslims look more reasonable but to allow the television stations to claim impartiality and therefore cover them for more attacks on the Middle East and its religion.
Are we to believe that with a change of president, the US is to suddenly embrace Muslims as brothers? Does anybody really think that after half a century of interfering in other people’s affairs (and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people) the US army will cease its foreign occupation or that after sixty years of economic and military backing the US administration will withdraw support for Israeli atrocities?
It will be a revolution indeed if Obama forces the pharmaceutical industry to finally do the right thing by victims of AIDS in Africa, reduces military spending and once and for all provides some coherent form of health care for the poor of his country. He could start by shutting down Guantanamo...
“Revolution” is a word which people unsheathe with alarming regularity, and in an economic situation which demands profound change people are more trigger-happy with their clichés than usual. However, there is no doubt that Obama is a good and intelligent man, and he will know – even if the social commentators do not – that change is a dish best served cold.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Bully boys
(Gaza City, State of Palestine)
The Gaza Strip should be a beautiful place. It is a gentle territory which fades out into the Mediterranean Sea, never more than a hundred or so metres high at any point, and around a third of the 360 square kilometres is well irrigated. Almost half of the population are children under the age of fourteen, making it a predominantly young society. And it is populated by one of the most generous and hospitable peoples on Earth, the Palestinians.
However, more than two thirds of the population are UN-registered refugees. The vast majority of its land border is controlled by a neighbouring state which also runs constant sea and air patrols and controls the electricity supply of the entire territory. Eighty-one per cent of the population live under the poverty line.
To make an already critical situation worse, that neighbouring state, Israel, is currently engaged in one of its frequent military attacks. One of the major incidents of this invasion was the bombing of a girls’ school on January 6th, with the loss of forty civilians. The UN had previously given the Israeli government the coordinates of all protected buildings, so over four hundred refugees had moved into the school just before the attack.
A second major incident came on January 15th, when the Israelis bombed three hospitals and the UN headquarters in Gaza City. In the attack on the UN compound, the Israelis used white phosphorous, a controversial substance employed in both World Wars and in Vietnam. The compound was full of aid and aid workers.
Bombing a school when you know it is a school is quite obviously a reprehensible act committed by an amoral government and only justified by people with no humanity. What about bombing the UN headquarters?
THE CHICKEN AND THE EGG
The situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians is, of course, a problem with roots that lie deep in history. The territory has been changing hands in this area for a long time, and violence has invariably been an integral part of those changes of ownership. As far as land can actually belong to a people, it would be difficult – not to mention petty – to say now who had the original claim on the area.
Palestine existed as a state until comparatively recently, not just in Roman times – the so-called British Mandate of Palestine enjoyed international recognition from 1920 to 1948. However, this territory only existed as a pawn in a private deal between the British and the French – not the last time that Palestine would be the victim of Western meddling – and the intention of the Mandate was only to give the Jewish people a home.
So Israel was invented in the same place in 1947. It declared independence the following year and it has been growing ever since through a Hitlerian process of military annexation (1967 Golan Heights/Shebaa/East Jerusalem/Gaza Strip, 1978 South Lebanon, 1981 Golan Heights, 2000 South Lebanon, 2006 South Lebanon), and as a result Palestine does not now exist. There is the State of Palestine, of course, to be found in the spirit of the people in the Gaza Strip (taken by force from Egypt) and the West Bank (taken by force from Jordan).
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW
Israel’s strength lies in its allies. The US has supported Israeli anti-Arab aggression since the establishment of Israel in 1948, and it continues to fund the violence in the area through extensive economic and military aid. However, the worst aspect of this alliance, from the point of view of peace, is the fact that the US has always shown scant regard for the resolutions of the United Nations by simply vetoing anything that would prevent Israel from committing more atrocities (UNSCRs 16732, 19459, 17000, 17769, 19434, 19868, 19780, 20463 are among the more than one hundred UN resolutions that the US has vetoed in the last thirty-five or so years and relate specifically to the problem of Israel). Thanks to the lack of cooperation from the most powerful nation on Earth – a nation that time and again demonstrates that it believes itself to be above international law – the UN cannot enforce the UN Charter and the international community loses the opportunity to prevent further genocide.
In short, the Israeli government and military resemble a white supremacist organisation that threatens peace in the Arab world, and the US is the bully boy that lends real menace to the threats. Bombing a school is what we have come to expect from successive Israeli (and American) governments, but the shelling of the UN compound demonstrates a cynical disregard for the collective wishes of the international community as well as a supreme arrogance.
It is a gesture which seems to send a clear message to the rest of the world – we will do what we like and you are powerless to stop us.
EXCUSES
It is true that this land has been pulled apart since time immemorial – as land has everywhere else in the world throughout the inexorable rise of the human being, and it still does not justify the atrocities being committed by Israel this month. It is also true that Palestinians have sent bombs over too – it’s the panic-stricken, heart-rending and invariably futile gesture of the scared victim trying to fend off a crazed, violent attacker.
Watching the suffering in the Gaza Strip is like watching the small kid being beaten senseless in the playground by the bullies, and you cannot do anything because the head of the bullies stands there to make sure it happens. You – and the world – are screaming for it to stop but the big hard boy will not allow it to stop. Israel is beating the Palestinians senseless while the US stands there threateningly like the archetypal pig-ignorant playground thug and makes sure nobody intervenes.
Perhaps the most sickening aspect of this is the fact that Israelis still dare to talk about the Nazi Holocaust while they commit their own atrocity by decimating a population. They act the innocent victim while they make victims of their neighbours. They wave documentary evidence around with one hand while the other one is behind their back, throttling Palestinian children.
And what comes next for Israel and the State of Palestine? Will Iran or any other Arab state be provoked into attacking and thereby give the US the excuse it needs to continue its slaughter in the Middle East? And if the rabid dog that is modern America starts slavering and baying for blood, will the glorious new leader be able to keep hold of the lead?
The Gaza Strip should be a beautiful place. It is a gentle territory which fades out into the Mediterranean Sea, never more than a hundred or so metres high at any point, and around a third of the 360 square kilometres is well irrigated. Almost half of the population are children under the age of fourteen, making it a predominantly young society. And it is populated by one of the most generous and hospitable peoples on Earth, the Palestinians.
However, more than two thirds of the population are UN-registered refugees. The vast majority of its land border is controlled by a neighbouring state which also runs constant sea and air patrols and controls the electricity supply of the entire territory. Eighty-one per cent of the population live under the poverty line.
To make an already critical situation worse, that neighbouring state, Israel, is currently engaged in one of its frequent military attacks. One of the major incidents of this invasion was the bombing of a girls’ school on January 6th, with the loss of forty civilians. The UN had previously given the Israeli government the coordinates of all protected buildings, so over four hundred refugees had moved into the school just before the attack.
A second major incident came on January 15th, when the Israelis bombed three hospitals and the UN headquarters in Gaza City. In the attack on the UN compound, the Israelis used white phosphorous, a controversial substance employed in both World Wars and in Vietnam. The compound was full of aid and aid workers.
Bombing a school when you know it is a school is quite obviously a reprehensible act committed by an amoral government and only justified by people with no humanity. What about bombing the UN headquarters?
THE CHICKEN AND THE EGG
The situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians is, of course, a problem with roots that lie deep in history. The territory has been changing hands in this area for a long time, and violence has invariably been an integral part of those changes of ownership. As far as land can actually belong to a people, it would be difficult – not to mention petty – to say now who had the original claim on the area.
Palestine existed as a state until comparatively recently, not just in Roman times – the so-called British Mandate of Palestine enjoyed international recognition from 1920 to 1948. However, this territory only existed as a pawn in a private deal between the British and the French – not the last time that Palestine would be the victim of Western meddling – and the intention of the Mandate was only to give the Jewish people a home.
So Israel was invented in the same place in 1947. It declared independence the following year and it has been growing ever since through a Hitlerian process of military annexation (1967 Golan Heights/Shebaa/East Jerusalem/Gaza Strip, 1978 South Lebanon, 1981 Golan Heights, 2000 South Lebanon, 2006 South Lebanon), and as a result Palestine does not now exist. There is the State of Palestine, of course, to be found in the spirit of the people in the Gaza Strip (taken by force from Egypt) and the West Bank (taken by force from Jordan).
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW
Israel’s strength lies in its allies. The US has supported Israeli anti-Arab aggression since the establishment of Israel in 1948, and it continues to fund the violence in the area through extensive economic and military aid. However, the worst aspect of this alliance, from the point of view of peace, is the fact that the US has always shown scant regard for the resolutions of the United Nations by simply vetoing anything that would prevent Israel from committing more atrocities (UNSCRs 16732, 19459, 17000, 17769, 19434, 19868, 19780, 20463 are among the more than one hundred UN resolutions that the US has vetoed in the last thirty-five or so years and relate specifically to the problem of Israel). Thanks to the lack of cooperation from the most powerful nation on Earth – a nation that time and again demonstrates that it believes itself to be above international law – the UN cannot enforce the UN Charter and the international community loses the opportunity to prevent further genocide.
In short, the Israeli government and military resemble a white supremacist organisation that threatens peace in the Arab world, and the US is the bully boy that lends real menace to the threats. Bombing a school is what we have come to expect from successive Israeli (and American) governments, but the shelling of the UN compound demonstrates a cynical disregard for the collective wishes of the international community as well as a supreme arrogance.
It is a gesture which seems to send a clear message to the rest of the world – we will do what we like and you are powerless to stop us.
EXCUSES
It is true that this land has been pulled apart since time immemorial – as land has everywhere else in the world throughout the inexorable rise of the human being, and it still does not justify the atrocities being committed by Israel this month. It is also true that Palestinians have sent bombs over too – it’s the panic-stricken, heart-rending and invariably futile gesture of the scared victim trying to fend off a crazed, violent attacker.
Watching the suffering in the Gaza Strip is like watching the small kid being beaten senseless in the playground by the bullies, and you cannot do anything because the head of the bullies stands there to make sure it happens. You – and the world – are screaming for it to stop but the big hard boy will not allow it to stop. Israel is beating the Palestinians senseless while the US stands there threateningly like the archetypal pig-ignorant playground thug and makes sure nobody intervenes.
Perhaps the most sickening aspect of this is the fact that Israelis still dare to talk about the Nazi Holocaust while they commit their own atrocity by decimating a population. They act the innocent victim while they make victims of their neighbours. They wave documentary evidence around with one hand while the other one is behind their back, throttling Palestinian children.
And what comes next for Israel and the State of Palestine? Will Iran or any other Arab state be provoked into attacking and thereby give the US the excuse it needs to continue its slaughter in the Middle East? And if the rabid dog that is modern America starts slavering and baying for blood, will the glorious new leader be able to keep hold of the lead?
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