(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.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
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?
Monday, November 17, 2008
When the law doesn't measure up
(Madrid, Spain)
There’s a street in Barcelona called Carrer Guillem Tell, William Tell Street. It’s a respectable street in a nice area, Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, but on the night of the 16th of December 2005 it was the scene of a brutal killing.
Three teenagers, two of whom were barely eighteen and the other a mere sixteen years old, found a woman called Rosario Endrinal who was trying to sleep in the small reception area that houses a cash machine. They spent a number of hours taunting her and then beating her, going away and coming back for more sport several times, before they finally poured twenty-five litres of a highly inflammable liquid on her and set her alight. They laughed as the flames went up, and calmly walked out of the bank. Ms Endrinal’s death throes lasted four hours.
The CCTV footage, played out nightly on news programmes during the trial, showed that Ms Endrinal underwent a terrible ordeal and died a horrific death. People were shocked at the images, even in a country where stills and video footage of the dead and dying are the currency of the lunchtime news and the morning papers.
MUMMY’S KNITTED JUMPER
The boys who committed this crime were middle-class kids who lived a comfortable life. During the trial they wore the sort of jerseys ridiculed in Bridget Jones in a sad attempt to underline their homeliness.
I make this distinction not to claim that poverty is an excuse for brutality, nor to suggest that the working class are skangers whom we should expect to behave in this way, but merely to show that these boys have had absolutely no obstacles in their upbringing other than suffering that most crippling of social diseases, being born middle class.
They have not suffered a negation of their culture, the history books are not rewritten against them, their language is not dying due to prolonged occupation and oppression and they are not subject to torture at the hands of a police force whose acts against society have regularly made the home page of Amnesty International. Ms Endrinal certainly hadn’t done anything to them.
NATIONAL SOCIALISM?
On the same day last week that these three individuals were given token prison sentences, the Audiencia Nacional – Spain’s High Court – announced new measures against people convicted of terrorism.
For now we’ll leave aside the debate on what constitutes terrorism, how modern governments use the term to further oppress the people through fear and even what constitutes a crime in the present Orwellian reality.
The measures announced by Spain’s justice system – and rushed through by what we are given to believe is a Socialist government – involve a period of between ten and twenty years of strict rules which will start after the original sentence has finished. These rules include the restrictions of reporting to the sentencing court at pre-arranged times, communicating all movements – including change of address or workplace – to the court, not taking jobs which could put the person in the position of being able to re-offend, and avoiding victims or families of victims at all costs.
However, there are some ominous signs of the power now enjoyed by the justice system on this list of new measures. The convicted person must seek permission from the court if he or she wants to move house. The person may be obliged to wear an electronic ankle bracelet at all times. And the person must undergo whatever physical or psychological medical treatment the court deems necessary on a whim at any time during the ten to twenty years.
All of this takes place after the so-called debt to society has supposedly been repaid.
Again, this is the work of a Socialist government in an overwhelmingly Socialist country.
THE SCALES OF JUSTICE
The two oldest boys of the three who murdered Ms Endrinal during what they saw as no more than a night of alcohol-fuelled rowdiness were each sentenced to seventeen years in prison. The third boy – only sixteen at the time of the crime, but considered by the court to be the principal author of the crime – had already been sentenced to eight years in youth custody with five extra years of parole.
The sentences were considered severe because the judge believed that beyond any reasonable doubt it had been demonstrated that the three had acted with what the English justice system has always called malice aforethought. If counsel had been able to sow the seeds of doubt around the night’s entertainment, the sentences would have been even lower.
Around three weeks before the sentencing hearing, the leading Catalan newspaper, La Vanguardia, had announced with the self-important frowning glee of the red-top that the boys could face 56 years of prison.
However, as is so often the case, they will serve only a few years before being allowed to carry on as if nothing had ever happened.
BELONGING
On the other hand, according to the High Court’s new measures, a person convicted of simply belonging to any organisation that the Spanish – or indeed the American – government classifies as a terrorist group will face the usual twelve years in prison followed by up to twenty years of enforced medical “re-education” and electronic surveillance.
I recognise that it would be difficult to try to compare the three boys with members of a terrorist organisation, or even to try to justify the existence of such groups here. However, the former would be difficult simply because of a lack of context, and the latter would only be impossible because of the mass hysteria attached to the topic.
So I’ll put it another way. The potential 12+20-year sentence simply for belonging to a group would be the equivalent of condemning those three boys to a similar sentence simply for being Catalan, or teenagers, or middle-class, or bored, or for enjoying a drink, or for having wilfully neglectful parents, or whatever you believe to be at the root of their crime.
Therefore this would surely mean that the brutality of the crime itself and the teenagers’ delight at their achievement, having not been taken into consideration within that offence, would have to be punished by many more years of prison, followed by decades of the sort of treatment of which Hitler could only dream.
WHAT ARE OUR PRIORITIES?
As it stands, these three boys have been handed down a sentence of a few years of comfortable, middle-class retirement followed by years of amnesia, for the crime of taunting a woman and then beating her and finally burning her to death.
And as it stands, deciding to join an organisation as a protest against a government or other authority because your people is being silently, but no less brutally, oppressed will carry a much heavier sentence than burning a woman to death in the street.
The Socialist Spanish government should ask itself – what are our priorities now?
There’s a street in Barcelona called Carrer Guillem Tell, William Tell Street. It’s a respectable street in a nice area, Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, but on the night of the 16th of December 2005 it was the scene of a brutal killing.
Three teenagers, two of whom were barely eighteen and the other a mere sixteen years old, found a woman called Rosario Endrinal who was trying to sleep in the small reception area that houses a cash machine. They spent a number of hours taunting her and then beating her, going away and coming back for more sport several times, before they finally poured twenty-five litres of a highly inflammable liquid on her and set her alight. They laughed as the flames went up, and calmly walked out of the bank. Ms Endrinal’s death throes lasted four hours.
The CCTV footage, played out nightly on news programmes during the trial, showed that Ms Endrinal underwent a terrible ordeal and died a horrific death. People were shocked at the images, even in a country where stills and video footage of the dead and dying are the currency of the lunchtime news and the morning papers.
MUMMY’S KNITTED JUMPER
The boys who committed this crime were middle-class kids who lived a comfortable life. During the trial they wore the sort of jerseys ridiculed in Bridget Jones in a sad attempt to underline their homeliness.
I make this distinction not to claim that poverty is an excuse for brutality, nor to suggest that the working class are skangers whom we should expect to behave in this way, but merely to show that these boys have had absolutely no obstacles in their upbringing other than suffering that most crippling of social diseases, being born middle class.
They have not suffered a negation of their culture, the history books are not rewritten against them, their language is not dying due to prolonged occupation and oppression and they are not subject to torture at the hands of a police force whose acts against society have regularly made the home page of Amnesty International. Ms Endrinal certainly hadn’t done anything to them.
NATIONAL SOCIALISM?
On the same day last week that these three individuals were given token prison sentences, the Audiencia Nacional – Spain’s High Court – announced new measures against people convicted of terrorism.
For now we’ll leave aside the debate on what constitutes terrorism, how modern governments use the term to further oppress the people through fear and even what constitutes a crime in the present Orwellian reality.
The measures announced by Spain’s justice system – and rushed through by what we are given to believe is a Socialist government – involve a period of between ten and twenty years of strict rules which will start after the original sentence has finished. These rules include the restrictions of reporting to the sentencing court at pre-arranged times, communicating all movements – including change of address or workplace – to the court, not taking jobs which could put the person in the position of being able to re-offend, and avoiding victims or families of victims at all costs.
However, there are some ominous signs of the power now enjoyed by the justice system on this list of new measures. The convicted person must seek permission from the court if he or she wants to move house. The person may be obliged to wear an electronic ankle bracelet at all times. And the person must undergo whatever physical or psychological medical treatment the court deems necessary on a whim at any time during the ten to twenty years.
All of this takes place after the so-called debt to society has supposedly been repaid.
Again, this is the work of a Socialist government in an overwhelmingly Socialist country.
THE SCALES OF JUSTICE
The two oldest boys of the three who murdered Ms Endrinal during what they saw as no more than a night of alcohol-fuelled rowdiness were each sentenced to seventeen years in prison. The third boy – only sixteen at the time of the crime, but considered by the court to be the principal author of the crime – had already been sentenced to eight years in youth custody with five extra years of parole.
The sentences were considered severe because the judge believed that beyond any reasonable doubt it had been demonstrated that the three had acted with what the English justice system has always called malice aforethought. If counsel had been able to sow the seeds of doubt around the night’s entertainment, the sentences would have been even lower.
Around three weeks before the sentencing hearing, the leading Catalan newspaper, La Vanguardia, had announced with the self-important frowning glee of the red-top that the boys could face 56 years of prison.
However, as is so often the case, they will serve only a few years before being allowed to carry on as if nothing had ever happened.
BELONGING
On the other hand, according to the High Court’s new measures, a person convicted of simply belonging to any organisation that the Spanish – or indeed the American – government classifies as a terrorist group will face the usual twelve years in prison followed by up to twenty years of enforced medical “re-education” and electronic surveillance.
I recognise that it would be difficult to try to compare the three boys with members of a terrorist organisation, or even to try to justify the existence of such groups here. However, the former would be difficult simply because of a lack of context, and the latter would only be impossible because of the mass hysteria attached to the topic.
So I’ll put it another way. The potential 12+20-year sentence simply for belonging to a group would be the equivalent of condemning those three boys to a similar sentence simply for being Catalan, or teenagers, or middle-class, or bored, or for enjoying a drink, or for having wilfully neglectful parents, or whatever you believe to be at the root of their crime.
Therefore this would surely mean that the brutality of the crime itself and the teenagers’ delight at their achievement, having not been taken into consideration within that offence, would have to be punished by many more years of prison, followed by decades of the sort of treatment of which Hitler could only dream.
WHAT ARE OUR PRIORITIES?
As it stands, these three boys have been handed down a sentence of a few years of comfortable, middle-class retirement followed by years of amnesia, for the crime of taunting a woman and then beating her and finally burning her to death.
And as it stands, deciding to join an organisation as a protest against a government or other authority because your people is being silently, but no less brutally, oppressed will carry a much heavier sentence than burning a woman to death in the street.
The Socialist Spanish government should ask itself – what are our priorities now?
Sunday, November 16, 2008
What age are you?
(Delhi, India)
Strange as it may seem to all the comfortable Europeans who jumped on the Barack Obama bandwagon, his victory has been met with no more than caution in many countries, particularly the Gulf States and various African countries.
One country which has made polite comments about optimism, while tending towards caution, is India. The world’s largest free-market democracy is making all the right noises in response to Obama’s election, but neither is it making a secret of the fact that it is waiting to see how relations between the two countries will develop.
More importantly, it is waiting for an indication as to how relations will develop between two worlds.
THE GOLD AGE
Perhaps the historical fact which most astonishes people is that the accepted ages in history happened at different times in different parts of the world. On the Indian sub-continent, the Iron Age lasted from around 1200 BC to around 200 BC. In Europe, however, that same Age lasted from around 1000 BC to around 400 AD.
As for other areas of the world, the difference was even greater. When the Indus Valley Civilisation – centred on what is now Pakistan and northern India – was at its peak (in the third and second millennia before Christ), the peoples of the Americas and Oceania were still using stone tools, and in some parts they continued doing so until the time of European colonisation.
Even today we are not all living through the same period of history, in spite of the fact that we are living in a globalised world which appears to grow ever smaller. The differences between certain places are so great as to appear insurmountable. It would be foolish to compare the U.S. and Papua New Guinea, for example.
Incidentally, what name could we give to this present age of history in the western world? Electricity powers just about every appliance in the modern home, light pollution is worse now than ever and a blackout can throw a city into chaos, not least because without television or computers most people have no idea how to function. On the other hand, oil dominates our every move, from controlling the price of our groceries to allowing world powers to justify obscene spending on “defence” by attacking the countries which produce it. And then there’s football.
However, considering our ceaseless pursuit of riches, and continuing the tradition of using the names of metals, perhaps the most appropriate label should be the Gold Age.
KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES
In the developed world people have been leading comfortable lives for decades, especially as in modern societies, material possessions rate higher than cultural, emotional or spiritual development. Even the poorest people in most Western countries have a television, a fridge-freezer and access to motorised transport and computers.
Countries like India and China have been developing at a rate of knots over the last twenty years, and they are determined to have the same comfortable lifestyle and material possessions as in the West, especially as Western businesses rarely miss an advertising or sponsorship opportunity to throw it in their faces. More importantly, they feel that they have every right to this lifestyle.
Developed countries have grown rich by exploiting weaker markets in the name of a free market and by bringing the planet to the verge of collapse during 150 years of intense industrialisation. And the threat of population growth is a fallacy – one study shows that a child in a developed country consumes between 16 and 31 times more resources than a child in a country whose market is in transition, so for an average family in a developing country to consume an equivalent amount it must consist of between 32 and 62 children.
People in developing countries will feel rightly aggrieved, then, at the recent constant attempts of the West to limit free-market economy with fair trade agreements and to limit industrial progress by capping emissions levels, all the while making oblique comments about population control.
Indian people may well feel they are just about to enter a new age of prosperity but at a crucial time in their development they are being held back.
NOT SO BLACK AND WHITE
It has been commented that middle-class Europeans have allowed themselves to be caught up in the Obama euphoria simply because he is African-American as opposed to a W.A.S.P. (while conveniently forgetting that Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice were too) combined with the fact that he is not George Bush.
However, Obama is still a member of the same political elite – American, suited-and-tied, globalised, capitalist. In terms of atoning for the atrocities of the Bush regime, there is little he can do as his hands are tied by the same forces that tied those of his predecessor.
An immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan will be impossible. A sudden end to the sword-rattling towards Iran, North Korea and other sworn enemies is unlikely. Turning U.S. military attentions to conflicts which do not involve oil in order to prevent further human tragedy would be problematic at best.
Domestically, African-Americans, Hispano-Americans and Asian-Americans are not about to enter a new age of prosperity any more than the developing world is, and poor people are not going to see an immediate improvement in their lot.
That Obama should defend anything other than the best interests of the U.S. – and of those people who traditionally have the ear of the White House – is nothing more than a pipe dream.
Fortunately for Europe’s middle-class, certain aspects of those best interests not only appear more fashionably socialist, they are also in the best interests of middle-class, developed society everywhere.
So everyone wishes Barack Obama good luck as he attempts to lead the world from the Gold Age to a Golden Age. However, who will he be taking on the journey?
Strange as it may seem to all the comfortable Europeans who jumped on the Barack Obama bandwagon, his victory has been met with no more than caution in many countries, particularly the Gulf States and various African countries.
One country which has made polite comments about optimism, while tending towards caution, is India. The world’s largest free-market democracy is making all the right noises in response to Obama’s election, but neither is it making a secret of the fact that it is waiting to see how relations between the two countries will develop.
More importantly, it is waiting for an indication as to how relations will develop between two worlds.
THE GOLD AGE
Perhaps the historical fact which most astonishes people is that the accepted ages in history happened at different times in different parts of the world. On the Indian sub-continent, the Iron Age lasted from around 1200 BC to around 200 BC. In Europe, however, that same Age lasted from around 1000 BC to around 400 AD.
As for other areas of the world, the difference was even greater. When the Indus Valley Civilisation – centred on what is now Pakistan and northern India – was at its peak (in the third and second millennia before Christ), the peoples of the Americas and Oceania were still using stone tools, and in some parts they continued doing so until the time of European colonisation.
Even today we are not all living through the same period of history, in spite of the fact that we are living in a globalised world which appears to grow ever smaller. The differences between certain places are so great as to appear insurmountable. It would be foolish to compare the U.S. and Papua New Guinea, for example.
Incidentally, what name could we give to this present age of history in the western world? Electricity powers just about every appliance in the modern home, light pollution is worse now than ever and a blackout can throw a city into chaos, not least because without television or computers most people have no idea how to function. On the other hand, oil dominates our every move, from controlling the price of our groceries to allowing world powers to justify obscene spending on “defence” by attacking the countries which produce it. And then there’s football.
However, considering our ceaseless pursuit of riches, and continuing the tradition of using the names of metals, perhaps the most appropriate label should be the Gold Age.
KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES
In the developed world people have been leading comfortable lives for decades, especially as in modern societies, material possessions rate higher than cultural, emotional or spiritual development. Even the poorest people in most Western countries have a television, a fridge-freezer and access to motorised transport and computers.
Countries like India and China have been developing at a rate of knots over the last twenty years, and they are determined to have the same comfortable lifestyle and material possessions as in the West, especially as Western businesses rarely miss an advertising or sponsorship opportunity to throw it in their faces. More importantly, they feel that they have every right to this lifestyle.
Developed countries have grown rich by exploiting weaker markets in the name of a free market and by bringing the planet to the verge of collapse during 150 years of intense industrialisation. And the threat of population growth is a fallacy – one study shows that a child in a developed country consumes between 16 and 31 times more resources than a child in a country whose market is in transition, so for an average family in a developing country to consume an equivalent amount it must consist of between 32 and 62 children.
People in developing countries will feel rightly aggrieved, then, at the recent constant attempts of the West to limit free-market economy with fair trade agreements and to limit industrial progress by capping emissions levels, all the while making oblique comments about population control.
Indian people may well feel they are just about to enter a new age of prosperity but at a crucial time in their development they are being held back.
NOT SO BLACK AND WHITE
It has been commented that middle-class Europeans have allowed themselves to be caught up in the Obama euphoria simply because he is African-American as opposed to a W.A.S.P. (while conveniently forgetting that Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice were too) combined with the fact that he is not George Bush.
However, Obama is still a member of the same political elite – American, suited-and-tied, globalised, capitalist. In terms of atoning for the atrocities of the Bush regime, there is little he can do as his hands are tied by the same forces that tied those of his predecessor.
An immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan will be impossible. A sudden end to the sword-rattling towards Iran, North Korea and other sworn enemies is unlikely. Turning U.S. military attentions to conflicts which do not involve oil in order to prevent further human tragedy would be problematic at best.
Domestically, African-Americans, Hispano-Americans and Asian-Americans are not about to enter a new age of prosperity any more than the developing world is, and poor people are not going to see an immediate improvement in their lot.
That Obama should defend anything other than the best interests of the U.S. – and of those people who traditionally have the ear of the White House – is nothing more than a pipe dream.
Fortunately for Europe’s middle-class, certain aspects of those best interests not only appear more fashionably socialist, they are also in the best interests of middle-class, developed society everywhere.
So everyone wishes Barack Obama good luck as he attempts to lead the world from the Gold Age to a Golden Age. However, who will he be taking on the journey?
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Beyond the pale
(Dublin, Ireland)
A north-south divide is a fascinating phenomenon. It is easy to understand how geographical barriers like huge mountain ranges create separate identities – for example either side of the Urals or the Himalayas – but a divide just for its own sake seems a little unlikely.
England apparently has such a divide, between the supposedly more industrial, working-class north and the industrial, working-class Midlands and south east. The Earth itself is divided between the immensely rich northern hemisphere – India, Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia and Sudan – and the impoverished southern hemisphere – Australia, South Africa and Argentina.
Dublin, this raven-haired, raggedly-dressed flower girl among capital cities, also has a north-south divide, with the river Liffey providing the buffer between the two different worlds. Northsiders are supposed to be uncouth and unwashed, while the Southside is the haven of unbelievable house prices and incomprehensible accents.
It wasn’t always that way round, though, and it was only when the Duke of Leinster built a tastelessly opulent spread on the south side of the river that the area became fashionable among the ruling class. This monument to oppression and imperialist triumph was saved from such an awful reputation in 1922 when it was turned into the refuge of democracy and impartiality. It became the seat of government.
WHEN THE CRUNCH COMES
Irish history is colourful and fascinating, and even in the relatively short history of this new flowering of the little black rose Leinster House has been the scene of many intriguing political events. None more so than the events of the night of Monday 29th September through to the new dawn of Tuesday 30th September, when an “exhausted” Taoiseach finally announced that a deal had been reached which would guarantee the money deposited in Irish banks.
The exact details of the marathon meetings have already been examined by seasoned commentators in the leading newspapers, and although the attempts of gardaí to track down Green Party leader John Gormley are relevant to the sense of urgency of the night, and the description of banking executives being forced to sweat through hours of uncertainty contributes to the laughter of relief, the analysis of such details must be left to others, as must any comments on the fact that the Irish government has somehow managed to guarantee the people’s deposits with the people’s own money.
By far the most remarkable part of the night was the flurry of telephone calls from London, as reported by Mark Hennessey in The Irish Times (Saturday 4th October). The chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland inexplicably called Prince Charles – presumably to demand that he rally the troops – before bending the British Prime Minister’s ear. Britain’s infuriated – and panicked – Chancellor of the Exchequer rang the Taoiseach twice to demand satisfaction, before the impressive person of the Prime Minister of Great Britain and so on twice rang the Taoiseach, first to chide, then to grovel. The Taoiseach’s reply provoked such consternation that the Prime Minister felt he had no choice but to run crying to the President of the European Union.
SWISS FAMILY TRAGEDY
It is surprising to think that Britain still feels it is important enough in the world to be able to throw its political weight around. However, Britain has always had a reputation of being a bully, and the Prime Minister and his Chancellor rang the Taoiseach because Britain still thinks of Ireland as a poor neighbour. Of course, they ignore the fact that any poverty was inflicted on the Irish by the British themselves, and judging by their actions appear to believe that the Irish are irremediably ignorant and incapable of lifting themselves out of the mire.
Would the British government have made such bullying telephone calls to France or Germany, or indeed to the U.S.? Of course not, but recently another interesting case has come to light which, while having nothing to do with the international economic situation, does tend to highlight the British belief that it can legislate for other territories.
On September 12th, a young English man called Daniel James was assisted in his suicide in the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. His parents had accompanied him on the journey, so a file has now been passed on to the Crown Prosecution Service. To add to the anguish of losing their son, these parents now face a lengthy legal process and the possibility of years in jail.
The arguments for and against assisted suicide will continue for many decades to come, and the fires of controversy can only be stoked by each successive change in legislation. What is relevant here, though, is the fact that the British Government wants to punish people for their actions on foreign soil.
ACCOUNTABILITY
It could be argued that the British government is right to prosecute its citizens when they misbehave abroad. Fair enough.
So where was the government when the hooliganism which has become synonymous with the English reared its ugly head in Marseille, Charleroi, Bratislava, Albufeira and Stuttgart?
Where was the government when Mark Thatcher was accused of trying to start a coup in Equatorial Guinea?
How many of the tens of thousands of British men who go abroad for paedophile tourism are actually prosecuted on their return to Britain?
And what was the government thinking when it gave the British Army permission to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and continue its long history of committing atrocities on foreign soil?
THE HAVES AND THE HAVE NOTS
It seems there is a huge divide in Britain between the haves and the have nots, but it has nothing to do with money. It has more to do with a sense of reality, and while a lot of people may be aware of their humble position in relation to the rest of the planet, the people who make up the British government quite obviously have not got a clue.
A north-south divide is a fascinating phenomenon. It is easy to understand how geographical barriers like huge mountain ranges create separate identities – for example either side of the Urals or the Himalayas – but a divide just for its own sake seems a little unlikely.
England apparently has such a divide, between the supposedly more industrial, working-class north and the industrial, working-class Midlands and south east. The Earth itself is divided between the immensely rich northern hemisphere – India, Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia and Sudan – and the impoverished southern hemisphere – Australia, South Africa and Argentina.
Dublin, this raven-haired, raggedly-dressed flower girl among capital cities, also has a north-south divide, with the river Liffey providing the buffer between the two different worlds. Northsiders are supposed to be uncouth and unwashed, while the Southside is the haven of unbelievable house prices and incomprehensible accents.
It wasn’t always that way round, though, and it was only when the Duke of Leinster built a tastelessly opulent spread on the south side of the river that the area became fashionable among the ruling class. This monument to oppression and imperialist triumph was saved from such an awful reputation in 1922 when it was turned into the refuge of democracy and impartiality. It became the seat of government.
WHEN THE CRUNCH COMES
Irish history is colourful and fascinating, and even in the relatively short history of this new flowering of the little black rose Leinster House has been the scene of many intriguing political events. None more so than the events of the night of Monday 29th September through to the new dawn of Tuesday 30th September, when an “exhausted” Taoiseach finally announced that a deal had been reached which would guarantee the money deposited in Irish banks.
The exact details of the marathon meetings have already been examined by seasoned commentators in the leading newspapers, and although the attempts of gardaí to track down Green Party leader John Gormley are relevant to the sense of urgency of the night, and the description of banking executives being forced to sweat through hours of uncertainty contributes to the laughter of relief, the analysis of such details must be left to others, as must any comments on the fact that the Irish government has somehow managed to guarantee the people’s deposits with the people’s own money.
By far the most remarkable part of the night was the flurry of telephone calls from London, as reported by Mark Hennessey in The Irish Times (Saturday 4th October). The chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland inexplicably called Prince Charles – presumably to demand that he rally the troops – before bending the British Prime Minister’s ear. Britain’s infuriated – and panicked – Chancellor of the Exchequer rang the Taoiseach twice to demand satisfaction, before the impressive person of the Prime Minister of Great Britain and so on twice rang the Taoiseach, first to chide, then to grovel. The Taoiseach’s reply provoked such consternation that the Prime Minister felt he had no choice but to run crying to the President of the European Union.
SWISS FAMILY TRAGEDY
It is surprising to think that Britain still feels it is important enough in the world to be able to throw its political weight around. However, Britain has always had a reputation of being a bully, and the Prime Minister and his Chancellor rang the Taoiseach because Britain still thinks of Ireland as a poor neighbour. Of course, they ignore the fact that any poverty was inflicted on the Irish by the British themselves, and judging by their actions appear to believe that the Irish are irremediably ignorant and incapable of lifting themselves out of the mire.
Would the British government have made such bullying telephone calls to France or Germany, or indeed to the U.S.? Of course not, but recently another interesting case has come to light which, while having nothing to do with the international economic situation, does tend to highlight the British belief that it can legislate for other territories.
On September 12th, a young English man called Daniel James was assisted in his suicide in the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. His parents had accompanied him on the journey, so a file has now been passed on to the Crown Prosecution Service. To add to the anguish of losing their son, these parents now face a lengthy legal process and the possibility of years in jail.
The arguments for and against assisted suicide will continue for many decades to come, and the fires of controversy can only be stoked by each successive change in legislation. What is relevant here, though, is the fact that the British Government wants to punish people for their actions on foreign soil.
ACCOUNTABILITY
It could be argued that the British government is right to prosecute its citizens when they misbehave abroad. Fair enough.
So where was the government when the hooliganism which has become synonymous with the English reared its ugly head in Marseille, Charleroi, Bratislava, Albufeira and Stuttgart?
Where was the government when Mark Thatcher was accused of trying to start a coup in Equatorial Guinea?
How many of the tens of thousands of British men who go abroad for paedophile tourism are actually prosecuted on their return to Britain?
And what was the government thinking when it gave the British Army permission to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and continue its long history of committing atrocities on foreign soil?
THE HAVES AND THE HAVE NOTS
It seems there is a huge divide in Britain between the haves and the have nots, but it has nothing to do with money. It has more to do with a sense of reality, and while a lot of people may be aware of their humble position in relation to the rest of the planet, the people who make up the British government quite obviously have not got a clue.
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