One of the most dangerous aspects of modern British society is the poisoning, intentional or otherwise, of our judicial system, by its political masters. This country was always certain of its underlying democracy because it had a bedrock of case and common law that has, by and large, insured there was justice. This is no longer the case. There are some glaring inadequacies that are getting worse with every passing day.
The most recent mistakes are comically beyond belief. The Government has a politically correct agenda that is especially right on when it concerns feminist issues we now have laws being made by stupid and fixed agendas rather than by fairness or common sense. In these, the first major changes to the homicide laws for half a century, the government provides us with yet further proof of it being totally divorced from reality.
As a consequence it is seriously proposed in England that if a woman has an abusive partner and then kills him she could escape a murder charge, and pleading this in mitigation will only face a manslaughter charge. This would automatically ensure that the convicted woman will not face a life sentence for her killing. Under this proposal it will be sufficient to establish that the woman who killed was reacting to a “slow burn of abuse”. This is a murderer’s charter! All of us men had better watch out or we can be killed in future with very little chance of justice for us.
This will remove the present crime of passion defense, in which it was argued that a person could claim a momentary and sudden loss of control. In fact these two elements, when brought together, actually reverses the traditional wisdom of centuries of jurisprudence.
In addition to this ill-conceived measure it is further proposed that the long accepted “partial defense” of killing a wife because she was discovered to having an affair is also on the way out.
Apparently Ministers have ruled that many categories of killer, in addition to victims of domestic violence, will be offered partial defense of provocation. This will specifically include those “seriously wronged” by an insult.
This could be imagined to include whole new classes of those seeking to kill without the threat of a life in jail. Perhaps you have been in a long-term dispute with a neighbor, well now you can kill them!
It’s only human to want to kill the rapist that commits his crime and then laughs and taunts the victim, but this must not mean that its OK to kill him.
It cannot allow a woman who finds her daughter being sexually attacked to kill her attacker, but this law will allow such an action, and the charge will not exceed manslaughter.
It is feminist rubbish when we are faced with the proposed defense of “killing in response to words and conduct which caused the defendant to have a justifiable sense of being seriously wronged.” This is lousy law, with no basis other than feminism.
This series of proposals is riven with contradictions and misconceptions which add up to a man not being allowed to kill his wife under virtually any circumstance, including not being provoked by an unfaithful woman.
This sounds about right, to any sane person, there should not be any excuses to kill another human except in self-defense or in time of war.
But on the other hand this law does allow women a raft of bizarre reasons for them to kill. Basically it would result in women being able to kill their partner and either getting away with it, or, at worst, getting charged with manslaughter. Whereas, if a man kills his partner, he will be charged with murder.
The woman responsible for this botched, ill conceived, and grossly inappropriate set of legal proposals is Harriet Harman, and she has to be the most inept Minister in a totally inadequate government.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
TheJewishParliament
It is said that when there are two Jewish people you will have three opinions. Imagine the British Jewish Parliament, which is known as the Board of Deputies of British Jews when there are several hundred Deputies; as a consequence there are many hundreds of opinions.
Boris Johnson, the recently elected Mayor of London addressed the Deputies at his first official visit with the British Jewish community. He said that he would not be making doing two things, pronouncements on international events nor would he be inviting people like Al Qatari to London. These both seem like very good ideas after several major mistakes in this area from his predecessor as Mayor, Ken Livingstone.
Voting in the Jewish community’s Board of Deputies validates its claim to democracy in action simply not seemingly found within the Muslim community, nor from the recent happenings at the Church of England conclaves at Jerusalem and now in England.
There is no representative body that can claim to speak for an entire community, especially one that contains diverse opinions and agendas like the Jewish community. But it does appear to have a legitimate claim to speak for the vast majority of the Jewish people of Britain.
As Henry Grunwald QC, the President of the Board of Deputies stated so accurately, “We are proud to be British proud to be Jewish and proud to support Israel, especially during its 60th birthday celebrations”.
Judaism is a role model for all the other minority faith communities and many, especially the Muslim community, perversely, some might say, consider the Board of Deputies of British Jews the template for how they wish their own representative organizations should operate.
The Durban conference on anti racism which last year was hijacked and became an anti Israel and anti Semitic festival is about to recur. Because of what transpired last year, Canada has refused to attend and America and Israel will lead the Western countries to do the same thing if there is a similar occurrence.
July 14, 2008, The Washington Times, Ed Royce
In this Op-Ed, Ed Royce of the Washington Times surveyed the anti-Semitic propaganda activities of Durban I, resulting in the United States’ withdrawal from the conference. He anticipates a similar outcome, and because of this the United States withheld its contribution to the UN, which is intended to fund the 2009 Durban Review Conference. Royce believes that Durban II could well be even more extreme than Durban I, with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) setting its agenda, which includes the promotion of restrictions on freedom of expression, under the claim of Islamophobia. “Like the first Durban conference, some of the worst human-rights violators will serve on Durban II’s panel [Libya, chair, Iran, Pakistan and Egypt]. The hugely disappointing and worrying U.N. Commission on Human Rights - the same commission that only passed light condemnation of the regimes in Burma and Sudan, intentionally selected these member countries. Its passion, its all consuming pathological hatred is democratic Israel, which has been condemned 15 times over the past two years.” Royce concludes that the best way for the United States to handle this situation is by refusing to participate in the Durban Review Conference.
Isn’t it a terrible irony that this should be the case when the idea of the conference is supposedly the exact opposite of what they are now doing?
In the UK people of every type are confused by the different events centered on the Holocaust. There is Holocaust Memorial Day, Yom Hashoa, The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and The Holocaust Educational Trust. This is an all year round program, holocaust visits by British school kids, which receives about £1.5 million in government funding. It promotes visits to such places as Auschwitz for the young, who come back, write essays, then tell their fellow non-Jewish schoolmates what they saw, felt and experienced.
Why this is relevant, and why it is pertinent?
In a world where Iran is permitted to say, “wipe Israel from the face of the earth;” and “The Holocaust never happened,” it’s vital that our British youth understands where such anti-Semitic behavior can lead, and what it means in a very real outcome.
There are lesson to be learned and remembered and the more means we have to do so the better. The numbers who participate in Holocaust Memorial Day or Yom Hashoa is dwindling because of it being populated almost solely survivors and descendants of victims and as one of these people emotionally stated, “you should come, you have a duty to come, and you should bring your children with you or this will become just an empty day with no one to be there.”
Another Deputy at the Board suggested that Commemoration and education and prayer should be differentiated. All of these serving different purposes for a diverse audience.
Meanwhile the Holocaust section of the Imperial War Museum is seen by many thousands of kids and others who don’t have a Jewish agenda and nevertheless gives a true perspective of what happened.
It isn’t just an old boring trotting out of Jewish memory of suffering to act as an apologia for whatever we as Jews might want to claim or Jew haters seemingly think we want to excuse Israel for. If we don’t remind our children and they don’t commemorate the holocaust then who will in a few years?
The dead cry out to you all to spend at least two hours once a year to attend the Yom Hashoa event. In an emotional and very moving speech Ben Helfgot spoke out on the behalf of the dead and to prevent it happening again, anywhere to anyone.
There is probably more publicity and awareness in the UK about the Holocaust now than there was when I was growing up in post war Britain. Moral relativism is sneaking in and being used against the Jewish people. The victims didn’t get the sympathy at the time for their suffering probably because most people didn’t believe or know what had happened.
Proof of this still sometimes being the case can be found when you hear seemingly well educated young people tell you that the total Jewish dead via the Nazis was 50,000 and not 6 million. The need for education can never end.
Sometimes the “Jewish Parliament” can seem an empty talking shop, but when put into the perspective of its use for the entire Jewish community it quickly becomes apparent that it is more than useful to its members. When you realize the respect the Board has with the politicians of the UK and the rest of the world’s Jewish organizations it becomes obvious that the Board of Deputies of British Jews still has an important future.
Boris Johnson, the recently elected Mayor of London addressed the Deputies at his first official visit with the British Jewish community. He said that he would not be making doing two things, pronouncements on international events nor would he be inviting people like Al Qatari to London. These both seem like very good ideas after several major mistakes in this area from his predecessor as Mayor, Ken Livingstone.
Voting in the Jewish community’s Board of Deputies validates its claim to democracy in action simply not seemingly found within the Muslim community, nor from the recent happenings at the Church of England conclaves at Jerusalem and now in England.
There is no representative body that can claim to speak for an entire community, especially one that contains diverse opinions and agendas like the Jewish community. But it does appear to have a legitimate claim to speak for the vast majority of the Jewish people of Britain.
As Henry Grunwald QC, the President of the Board of Deputies stated so accurately, “We are proud to be British proud to be Jewish and proud to support Israel, especially during its 60th birthday celebrations”.
Judaism is a role model for all the other minority faith communities and many, especially the Muslim community, perversely, some might say, consider the Board of Deputies of British Jews the template for how they wish their own representative organizations should operate.
The Durban conference on anti racism which last year was hijacked and became an anti Israel and anti Semitic festival is about to recur. Because of what transpired last year, Canada has refused to attend and America and Israel will lead the Western countries to do the same thing if there is a similar occurrence.
July 14, 2008, The Washington Times, Ed Royce
In this Op-Ed, Ed Royce of the Washington Times surveyed the anti-Semitic propaganda activities of Durban I, resulting in the United States’ withdrawal from the conference. He anticipates a similar outcome, and because of this the United States withheld its contribution to the UN, which is intended to fund the 2009 Durban Review Conference. Royce believes that Durban II could well be even more extreme than Durban I, with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) setting its agenda, which includes the promotion of restrictions on freedom of expression, under the claim of Islamophobia. “Like the first Durban conference, some of the worst human-rights violators will serve on Durban II’s panel [Libya, chair, Iran, Pakistan and Egypt]. The hugely disappointing and worrying U.N. Commission on Human Rights - the same commission that only passed light condemnation of the regimes in Burma and Sudan, intentionally selected these member countries. Its passion, its all consuming pathological hatred is democratic Israel, which has been condemned 15 times over the past two years.” Royce concludes that the best way for the United States to handle this situation is by refusing to participate in the Durban Review Conference.
Isn’t it a terrible irony that this should be the case when the idea of the conference is supposedly the exact opposite of what they are now doing?
In the UK people of every type are confused by the different events centered on the Holocaust. There is Holocaust Memorial Day, Yom Hashoa, The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and The Holocaust Educational Trust. This is an all year round program, holocaust visits by British school kids, which receives about £1.5 million in government funding. It promotes visits to such places as Auschwitz for the young, who come back, write essays, then tell their fellow non-Jewish schoolmates what they saw, felt and experienced.
Why this is relevant, and why it is pertinent?
In a world where Iran is permitted to say, “wipe Israel from the face of the earth;” and “The Holocaust never happened,” it’s vital that our British youth understands where such anti-Semitic behavior can lead, and what it means in a very real outcome.
There are lesson to be learned and remembered and the more means we have to do so the better. The numbers who participate in Holocaust Memorial Day or Yom Hashoa is dwindling because of it being populated almost solely survivors and descendants of victims and as one of these people emotionally stated, “you should come, you have a duty to come, and you should bring your children with you or this will become just an empty day with no one to be there.”
Another Deputy at the Board suggested that Commemoration and education and prayer should be differentiated. All of these serving different purposes for a diverse audience.
Meanwhile the Holocaust section of the Imperial War Museum is seen by many thousands of kids and others who don’t have a Jewish agenda and nevertheless gives a true perspective of what happened.
It isn’t just an old boring trotting out of Jewish memory of suffering to act as an apologia for whatever we as Jews might want to claim or Jew haters seemingly think we want to excuse Israel for. If we don’t remind our children and they don’t commemorate the holocaust then who will in a few years?
The dead cry out to you all to spend at least two hours once a year to attend the Yom Hashoa event. In an emotional and very moving speech Ben Helfgot spoke out on the behalf of the dead and to prevent it happening again, anywhere to anyone.
There is probably more publicity and awareness in the UK about the Holocaust now than there was when I was growing up in post war Britain. Moral relativism is sneaking in and being used against the Jewish people. The victims didn’t get the sympathy at the time for their suffering probably because most people didn’t believe or know what had happened.
Proof of this still sometimes being the case can be found when you hear seemingly well educated young people tell you that the total Jewish dead via the Nazis was 50,000 and not 6 million. The need for education can never end.
Sometimes the “Jewish Parliament” can seem an empty talking shop, but when put into the perspective of its use for the entire Jewish community it quickly becomes apparent that it is more than useful to its members. When you realize the respect the Board has with the politicians of the UK and the rest of the world’s Jewish organizations it becomes obvious that the Board of Deputies of British Jews still has an important future.
Monday, July 28, 2008
BrownedOff
The expectation surrounding Gordon Brown’s ascendancy to the Prime Ministership has only been outweighed by the disappointment in his performance since he got the job.
If you ask the average person in the UK how they would have rated his predecessor in the same job, if Iraq had not happened they begin to talk kindly about Tony Blair. If Blair had enjoyed the luck to have got in and out of Iraq after a quick victory, like Margaret Thatcher did in the Falklands, we’d be having statues erected to the man in Parliament Square.
It’s hard to remember that just one year ago Gordon Brown was considered a financial genius who was secretly running almost everything that was successful in the British government whereas Blair was then considered just a vacuous front man who did some foreign affairs work. Now it’s commonly perceived that Brown was the fortunate inheritor of ultra successful policies of his Conservative predecessors and his astuteness was largely the ability to do as little as possible to rock the boat. His own economic policies were a rehash of old Labour party mantras in which central government spends like a drunken sailor. Now that has come to haunt him as British government spending as a percentage of GDP is dangerously high after a long period of it being kept reasonably low.
Now it’s David Cameron, the leader of the British Conservative opposition, and Barak Obama, the American Democratic presidential hopeful, who bonded this weekend, and who look like tomorrow’s leaders, whereas Brown looked like he was trying to gain something by association with Obama, and not, as you would anticipate, the other way around.
A great deal in politics is about perceptions rather than reality, and the clear feeling is that Brown is knackered. He looks old, beaten, puffy and aware that he’s lost the election well before it’s happened.
As if Gordon didn’t have enough problems the latest opinion polls have his party at their lowest point in collective memory. They’re behind in the marginal seats, amongst voters of every social demographic sector, and even in their core heartlands, the normally dependable poorer city centers. It’s inconceivable that they can come back from this position. It would be the equivalent of me winning a beauty pageant, the Pope winning Rabbi of the year, a bear not doing its business in the woods; and yet?
There was a time when Margaret Thatcher was in exactly the same situation when she was Prime Minister. She was, at that time, described as the most unpopular Prime Minister in the history of the UK. I am not describing her ignominious exit as leader, when the political pygmies from her own party did their best impressions of the midget sized Lilliputians bringing down Gulliver. No, her moment of transcendence came when the Argentine leader, General Galtieri, instructed his army to invade a forlorn piece of rock in the South Atlantic, that his people call the Malvinas, and which the rest of the world still knows as The Falkland Islands.
Through luck, bold political decisions, that could have gone horribly wrong but went gloriously right, Thatcher not only won that war but also restored British self belief after it had been a long time in the freezer of history. Maggie Thatcher’s popularity went from zero to hero overnight, and she became unbeatable politically. The country owed her, and it knew there was a moral debt for this achievement.
From that point in the UK’s modern history until now there has been a growing crescendo of British confidence as success on the world’s battlefields has been echoed in economic terms. The country became richer and with it came comfort and a long term feel good factor that peaked towards the end of the Blair years, and is now, very rapidly ebbing away.
Gordon Brown, whatever bad news he is presented with, comes back with the television sound bite in which he says words to the effect of; “the country wants me to get on with the job, so that’s what I’m going to do.” He smiles without conviction before hurrying off to his unremitting schedule, crushed by what he can’t seem to do, which is to improve the country’s luck. Actually Gordon, the country doesn’t want you doing the job at all. You look like a school bully who has just found out that there are bigger and stronger boys than you out there, and that you need to improve those listening skills.
It became clear yesterday that his own party chiefs harbor enormous doubts about Brown’s leadership becoming acceptable to the British public. There are two schools of thought about this. Either they hang onto him so that they get beaten at the next election, but hopefully not too badly. Then they get rid of Brown immediately thereafter, and give his successor a number of years to resuscitate the party’s fortune. Or they move against Brown immediately after the summer and replace him with a safe pair of hands type leader, so that the consequential damage to the party during the election isn’t an annihilation. Either way Gordon gets to take the long walk off the short plank. It seems probable that it will be the Prime Minister who will make the choice when the going gets even tougher. The fact is that his people are even more scared of Brown than the Conservatives were of Maggie Thatcher, and they were terrified of her until she was politically finished.
So Brown needs a miracle or a small winnable war, in which Britain can get in and out fast. Neither is probable, or even likely and the man looks like he needs the rest that fate is probably going to give him. You see Gordon, it doesn’t matter how clever you are, it doesn’t matter how hard you work, if you’re a loser and fate isn’t on your side, then the best plan you can make is what to pack in your bags and when to leave. The country is telling you the quicker the better, why don’t you listen?
If you ask the average person in the UK how they would have rated his predecessor in the same job, if Iraq had not happened they begin to talk kindly about Tony Blair. If Blair had enjoyed the luck to have got in and out of Iraq after a quick victory, like Margaret Thatcher did in the Falklands, we’d be having statues erected to the man in Parliament Square.
It’s hard to remember that just one year ago Gordon Brown was considered a financial genius who was secretly running almost everything that was successful in the British government whereas Blair was then considered just a vacuous front man who did some foreign affairs work. Now it’s commonly perceived that Brown was the fortunate inheritor of ultra successful policies of his Conservative predecessors and his astuteness was largely the ability to do as little as possible to rock the boat. His own economic policies were a rehash of old Labour party mantras in which central government spends like a drunken sailor. Now that has come to haunt him as British government spending as a percentage of GDP is dangerously high after a long period of it being kept reasonably low.
Now it’s David Cameron, the leader of the British Conservative opposition, and Barak Obama, the American Democratic presidential hopeful, who bonded this weekend, and who look like tomorrow’s leaders, whereas Brown looked like he was trying to gain something by association with Obama, and not, as you would anticipate, the other way around.
A great deal in politics is about perceptions rather than reality, and the clear feeling is that Brown is knackered. He looks old, beaten, puffy and aware that he’s lost the election well before it’s happened.
As if Gordon didn’t have enough problems the latest opinion polls have his party at their lowest point in collective memory. They’re behind in the marginal seats, amongst voters of every social demographic sector, and even in their core heartlands, the normally dependable poorer city centers. It’s inconceivable that they can come back from this position. It would be the equivalent of me winning a beauty pageant, the Pope winning Rabbi of the year, a bear not doing its business in the woods; and yet?
There was a time when Margaret Thatcher was in exactly the same situation when she was Prime Minister. She was, at that time, described as the most unpopular Prime Minister in the history of the UK. I am not describing her ignominious exit as leader, when the political pygmies from her own party did their best impressions of the midget sized Lilliputians bringing down Gulliver. No, her moment of transcendence came when the Argentine leader, General Galtieri, instructed his army to invade a forlorn piece of rock in the South Atlantic, that his people call the Malvinas, and which the rest of the world still knows as The Falkland Islands.
Through luck, bold political decisions, that could have gone horribly wrong but went gloriously right, Thatcher not only won that war but also restored British self belief after it had been a long time in the freezer of history. Maggie Thatcher’s popularity went from zero to hero overnight, and she became unbeatable politically. The country owed her, and it knew there was a moral debt for this achievement.
From that point in the UK’s modern history until now there has been a growing crescendo of British confidence as success on the world’s battlefields has been echoed in economic terms. The country became richer and with it came comfort and a long term feel good factor that peaked towards the end of the Blair years, and is now, very rapidly ebbing away.
Gordon Brown, whatever bad news he is presented with, comes back with the television sound bite in which he says words to the effect of; “the country wants me to get on with the job, so that’s what I’m going to do.” He smiles without conviction before hurrying off to his unremitting schedule, crushed by what he can’t seem to do, which is to improve the country’s luck. Actually Gordon, the country doesn’t want you doing the job at all. You look like a school bully who has just found out that there are bigger and stronger boys than you out there, and that you need to improve those listening skills.
It became clear yesterday that his own party chiefs harbor enormous doubts about Brown’s leadership becoming acceptable to the British public. There are two schools of thought about this. Either they hang onto him so that they get beaten at the next election, but hopefully not too badly. Then they get rid of Brown immediately thereafter, and give his successor a number of years to resuscitate the party’s fortune. Or they move against Brown immediately after the summer and replace him with a safe pair of hands type leader, so that the consequential damage to the party during the election isn’t an annihilation. Either way Gordon gets to take the long walk off the short plank. It seems probable that it will be the Prime Minister who will make the choice when the going gets even tougher. The fact is that his people are even more scared of Brown than the Conservatives were of Maggie Thatcher, and they were terrified of her until she was politically finished.
So Brown needs a miracle or a small winnable war, in which Britain can get in and out fast. Neither is probable, or even likely and the man looks like he needs the rest that fate is probably going to give him. You see Gordon, it doesn’t matter how clever you are, it doesn’t matter how hard you work, if you’re a loser and fate isn’t on your side, then the best plan you can make is what to pack in your bags and when to leave. The country is telling you the quicker the better, why don’t you listen?
Sunday, July 27, 2008
PastPresentFuture
When you spend some time with your children and grand children it’s natural to reflect on the past and look to the future.
As a baby boomer I have lived with some rationing in post war Britain, and especially remember not being allowed all the sweets (candy) I craved for. I well remember the American Air Force Sergeant who lived downstairs and my uncle, who lived in Los Angeles, arranging for me to receive different flavor chewing gum.
Dad came home with two Vauxhall Wyvern cars, a red one and a blue one, whilst I balanced on a table watching through the window. This was the time when no one could get one car in England. My father was, in the Cockney slang, ducking and diving, trying to make some extra money where he could. Times were a lot tougher in fifties England.
Then came the exciting 60’s which really did swing for my family and me. I had a terrific time, as the world re-discovered color and excitement and music. Everything was moving forward and seemed to have a reason. Cars were better, planes were faster, and homes were becoming more luxurious, seemingly by the day. We still had televisions without color, it was just starting in England, and there were only two channels, then three and finally four.
Most homes were beginning to get freezers and washing machines but dryers and dishwashers were yet to arrive everywhere.
The 70’s to the 90’s were even better for me and mine, now we had all the material possessions that you have come to expect in every modern home. Our family was growing, the children were getting exceptional educations, at a comparatively low cost, food, travel and entertainment and housing were excellent and we had them all.
This century started with great promise but soon was marred by Islamic fundamentalism, the additional scourge of regimes like those in Iraq and Iran and the uncertainties brought about by the collapse of Soviet style communism. These all brought about reactions which still resonate and continue to cause seismic shifts and some instability in the oil industry which underpin our already unstable global economy.
What of the future? It’s very easy to project forward from where we are in the mistaken belief that progress is straightforward and linear. It is not. There are always surprises, and as the name implies, we won’t be expecting them and therefore we can’t anticipate or predict them accurately.
The immediate past points towards a confused future buffeted between an ever increasing consumerism fuelled by the habit of brand purchasing on a greater scale set against the potential cataclysm brought about by global warming in which we might have to cut back on our carbon emissions between 50% and 80%.
If the latter were to come to pass our lifestyles will have to change drastically and fast, and not for the better. It will necessitate rationing of fuel, transportation, heating, cooling, manufacturing, clothing, food and possibly, even housing. In such a society there might also have to be martial law, mass identification programs, including biometric data and restrictions on travel.
There will be increased use of virtual meetings, working and studying from home to eliminate use of fuels and resources. The lack of going out from our houses will decimate businesses that rely on our presence, such as restaurants, cinemas and retail shopping. Only the rich and powerful will travel freely. These decreases of social interactions, especially with people who live far away, and therefore become inaccessible and unknown, will have results none of us can know.
There is every chance that, for the first time since the collapse of the Roman Empire, and the world’s slide into the dark ages civilization will actually go backwards. There is real concern that we will see medical pandemics, flooding of our major low lying cities caused by global warming and a lack of a choice of food in the first world and starvation in the third world.
Of course this apocalyptic series of visions could be total nonsense and we have to hope and work for this outcome. I remember working as a production assistant on a 60’s television magazine program in the UK. On it there was a projection scientifically calculated by the high gurus of academia that London’s population would double by the end of the last century and that we’d have to walk sideways to have enough space. It didn’t happen and we’re still not walking like crabs. Maybe we’ll continue to struggle but find answers, somehow, just in time, as we’ve usually done throughout history. When we didn’t, as with the dark ages, it can be a very long time before we can recover.
As a baby boomer I have lived with some rationing in post war Britain, and especially remember not being allowed all the sweets (candy) I craved for. I well remember the American Air Force Sergeant who lived downstairs and my uncle, who lived in Los Angeles, arranging for me to receive different flavor chewing gum.
Dad came home with two Vauxhall Wyvern cars, a red one and a blue one, whilst I balanced on a table watching through the window. This was the time when no one could get one car in England. My father was, in the Cockney slang, ducking and diving, trying to make some extra money where he could. Times were a lot tougher in fifties England.
Then came the exciting 60’s which really did swing for my family and me. I had a terrific time, as the world re-discovered color and excitement and music. Everything was moving forward and seemed to have a reason. Cars were better, planes were faster, and homes were becoming more luxurious, seemingly by the day. We still had televisions without color, it was just starting in England, and there were only two channels, then three and finally four.
Most homes were beginning to get freezers and washing machines but dryers and dishwashers were yet to arrive everywhere.
The 70’s to the 90’s were even better for me and mine, now we had all the material possessions that you have come to expect in every modern home. Our family was growing, the children were getting exceptional educations, at a comparatively low cost, food, travel and entertainment and housing were excellent and we had them all.
This century started with great promise but soon was marred by Islamic fundamentalism, the additional scourge of regimes like those in Iraq and Iran and the uncertainties brought about by the collapse of Soviet style communism. These all brought about reactions which still resonate and continue to cause seismic shifts and some instability in the oil industry which underpin our already unstable global economy.
What of the future? It’s very easy to project forward from where we are in the mistaken belief that progress is straightforward and linear. It is not. There are always surprises, and as the name implies, we won’t be expecting them and therefore we can’t anticipate or predict them accurately.
The immediate past points towards a confused future buffeted between an ever increasing consumerism fuelled by the habit of brand purchasing on a greater scale set against the potential cataclysm brought about by global warming in which we might have to cut back on our carbon emissions between 50% and 80%.
If the latter were to come to pass our lifestyles will have to change drastically and fast, and not for the better. It will necessitate rationing of fuel, transportation, heating, cooling, manufacturing, clothing, food and possibly, even housing. In such a society there might also have to be martial law, mass identification programs, including biometric data and restrictions on travel.
There will be increased use of virtual meetings, working and studying from home to eliminate use of fuels and resources. The lack of going out from our houses will decimate businesses that rely on our presence, such as restaurants, cinemas and retail shopping. Only the rich and powerful will travel freely. These decreases of social interactions, especially with people who live far away, and therefore become inaccessible and unknown, will have results none of us can know.
There is every chance that, for the first time since the collapse of the Roman Empire, and the world’s slide into the dark ages civilization will actually go backwards. There is real concern that we will see medical pandemics, flooding of our major low lying cities caused by global warming and a lack of a choice of food in the first world and starvation in the third world.
Of course this apocalyptic series of visions could be total nonsense and we have to hope and work for this outcome. I remember working as a production assistant on a 60’s television magazine program in the UK. On it there was a projection scientifically calculated by the high gurus of academia that London’s population would double by the end of the last century and that we’d have to walk sideways to have enough space. It didn’t happen and we’re still not walking like crabs. Maybe we’ll continue to struggle but find answers, somehow, just in time, as we’ve usually done throughout history. When we didn’t, as with the dark ages, it can be a very long time before we can recover.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
TheOldestHatred
What do the Roman Emperor Hadrian, Eric Newby the famed travel writer, Aldus Huxley, Roald Dahl, PG Woodhouse, all of these great writers, the French philosopher Voltaire, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler the Russian and German despots, Napoleon Bonaparte, the all conquering Frenchmen, have in common?
They all hated or despised Jews to a greater or lesser extent. They and many others like them, felt it was OK, even a good thing, to persecute, hate and malign an entire people just for being Jewish.
This was brought home to me this week in a series of jarring incidents. Two of these were insignificant and others that were far more profound.
Eric Newby was a famous travel writer and, in the documentary about him on television he came across as a very nice guy. That’s why the casual comment in his book, “A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush” was upsetting. He was describing the different groups of people to be found in the Afghanistan of a half-century ago. For all other groups and looks his attitude was romanticized until he came to the men who, he felt looked like Jews with their big hook noses and dark hair. I look around my Jewish family and friends and there is no one who fits this description, but this is clearly Newby’s casual, off hand, even unknown and self unaware anti Semitism.
Last night there was a comedy program on one of the British TV channels, I shall not dignify them by naming it, in which the comedians lampooned the dilemma of a woman given “Sophie’s Choice”, in which the idea of a woman having to choose which child of hers she has to send to the concentration camp to their deaths, is the subject of a joke. These bright boys and girls even thought it was funny to have a fake article condemning themselves in their program, as if from the British newspaper, The Jewish Chronicle.
Neither of these programs would have dared transmit the same, casual racism about Muslims or black people, and there would have been, correctly, mass outrage had they done so. Why is it acceptable to do this to Jewish people in a modern, politically correct society like Britain?
Currently there is a British Museum exhibition on the life of the Roman emperor, Hadrian. This led to TV programs and a few debates in the media, which in turn led to several in depth articles. Hadrian was, unquestionably one of the great emperors of Rome. He imposed Roman culture and methods of worship on the peoples under his control. In Judea this took the form of having statues of himself erected, expressly against the Jewish prohibition of a graven image, and banned the Jewish rites of circumcision.
This led to a Jewish rebellion both throughout the empire and in Judea, which Hadrian put down and then massacred over 500,000 Jews, dispersed those from Judea throughout the empire, sold the survivors into slavery, banned the religion and its teaching and destroyed the Second Temple and any Jewish social center in Jerusalem. Hadrian even banned the name of Israel and Judea, making the country known (in modern parlance) as Syria Palestine.
Throughout history it’s harder to find leading people in the world’s societies who were pro-Jewish than the other way around. Why is this, did the Jews, throughout history do something to bring this hate, vitriol and terrible acts of violent suppression down on the Jewish people?
Maybe the age-old calumny that the Jews killed the Son of God is the reason for all this hate? Yes, Jesus, a Jewish rabbi, was killed by the Romans with the connivance of some his fellow Jews. But if nations and religions are going to feel the vitriol of the descendants of victims throughout time, then surely the Jews could declare war on the entire world.
If you examine the facts the Jews were, almost without exception, a positive influence for the societies they inhabited.
The Jews, as a group but mainly as individuals, created such entities as monotheistic religions, such as Christianity, political creeds like Marxism, psycho analysis, the theory of relativity, from which flowed nuclear science, modern international banking, most of what makes the film and entertainment industry today, the list could go on endlessly.
Jews have, in addition, won an enormously disproportionate number of awards such as Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes, Academy Awards, Emmys, Tony’s, in fact any competition for excellence. Perhaps the Jews very success is what brings them into sharper focus and makes them a group to be jealous of.
The strange thing is that this group of people currently number just over 13 million in a world of over 6 billion, far less than .1%. But the Jews do have a disproportionate influence on the world around them, and this is clearly by accident, not design.
There are as many Kurdish or Armenian people but these nationalities simply don’t resonate the same way.
Perhaps if the Jews had simply been left alone in their original Middle Eastern homeland no one might have heard of them. Perhaps there is an accelerated form of Darwinian theory at work here. As the world kept mass murdering the Jews who were not quick or lucky enough to escape the pogroms, inquisitions and pillage of the last two thousand years, the ones who survived were the faster, more cunning or clever, physically tougher, or just plain luckier folks who were destined to produce tougher, brighter and more articulate survivors. The world, including the Nazis, in their efforts to categorize the Jews as sub humans had, in one of the great ironies of history, created their own nemesis, Jews who would be great achievers.
Whatever the reason, it would be great if everyone just left the Jewish people alone and in peace. We all know that isn’t going to happen, the question is why? The answer, when you find it, will tell you much more about the world than it does about the Jewish people.
They all hated or despised Jews to a greater or lesser extent. They and many others like them, felt it was OK, even a good thing, to persecute, hate and malign an entire people just for being Jewish.
This was brought home to me this week in a series of jarring incidents. Two of these were insignificant and others that were far more profound.
Eric Newby was a famous travel writer and, in the documentary about him on television he came across as a very nice guy. That’s why the casual comment in his book, “A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush” was upsetting. He was describing the different groups of people to be found in the Afghanistan of a half-century ago. For all other groups and looks his attitude was romanticized until he came to the men who, he felt looked like Jews with their big hook noses and dark hair. I look around my Jewish family and friends and there is no one who fits this description, but this is clearly Newby’s casual, off hand, even unknown and self unaware anti Semitism.
Last night there was a comedy program on one of the British TV channels, I shall not dignify them by naming it, in which the comedians lampooned the dilemma of a woman given “Sophie’s Choice”, in which the idea of a woman having to choose which child of hers she has to send to the concentration camp to their deaths, is the subject of a joke. These bright boys and girls even thought it was funny to have a fake article condemning themselves in their program, as if from the British newspaper, The Jewish Chronicle.
Neither of these programs would have dared transmit the same, casual racism about Muslims or black people, and there would have been, correctly, mass outrage had they done so. Why is it acceptable to do this to Jewish people in a modern, politically correct society like Britain?
Currently there is a British Museum exhibition on the life of the Roman emperor, Hadrian. This led to TV programs and a few debates in the media, which in turn led to several in depth articles. Hadrian was, unquestionably one of the great emperors of Rome. He imposed Roman culture and methods of worship on the peoples under his control. In Judea this took the form of having statues of himself erected, expressly against the Jewish prohibition of a graven image, and banned the Jewish rites of circumcision.
This led to a Jewish rebellion both throughout the empire and in Judea, which Hadrian put down and then massacred over 500,000 Jews, dispersed those from Judea throughout the empire, sold the survivors into slavery, banned the religion and its teaching and destroyed the Second Temple and any Jewish social center in Jerusalem. Hadrian even banned the name of Israel and Judea, making the country known (in modern parlance) as Syria Palestine.
Throughout history it’s harder to find leading people in the world’s societies who were pro-Jewish than the other way around. Why is this, did the Jews, throughout history do something to bring this hate, vitriol and terrible acts of violent suppression down on the Jewish people?
Maybe the age-old calumny that the Jews killed the Son of God is the reason for all this hate? Yes, Jesus, a Jewish rabbi, was killed by the Romans with the connivance of some his fellow Jews. But if nations and religions are going to feel the vitriol of the descendants of victims throughout time, then surely the Jews could declare war on the entire world.
If you examine the facts the Jews were, almost without exception, a positive influence for the societies they inhabited.
The Jews, as a group but mainly as individuals, created such entities as monotheistic religions, such as Christianity, political creeds like Marxism, psycho analysis, the theory of relativity, from which flowed nuclear science, modern international banking, most of what makes the film and entertainment industry today, the list could go on endlessly.
Jews have, in addition, won an enormously disproportionate number of awards such as Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes, Academy Awards, Emmys, Tony’s, in fact any competition for excellence. Perhaps the Jews very success is what brings them into sharper focus and makes them a group to be jealous of.
The strange thing is that this group of people currently number just over 13 million in a world of over 6 billion, far less than .1%. But the Jews do have a disproportionate influence on the world around them, and this is clearly by accident, not design.
There are as many Kurdish or Armenian people but these nationalities simply don’t resonate the same way.
Perhaps if the Jews had simply been left alone in their original Middle Eastern homeland no one might have heard of them. Perhaps there is an accelerated form of Darwinian theory at work here. As the world kept mass murdering the Jews who were not quick or lucky enough to escape the pogroms, inquisitions and pillage of the last two thousand years, the ones who survived were the faster, more cunning or clever, physically tougher, or just plain luckier folks who were destined to produce tougher, brighter and more articulate survivors. The world, including the Nazis, in their efforts to categorize the Jews as sub humans had, in one of the great ironies of history, created their own nemesis, Jews who would be great achievers.
Whatever the reason, it would be great if everyone just left the Jewish people alone and in peace. We all know that isn’t going to happen, the question is why? The answer, when you find it, will tell you much more about the world than it does about the Jewish people.
Friday, July 25, 2008
BarakinBerlin
Barak Obama was in Berlin speechifying to 200,000 Germans yesterday. As ever, he was very impressive. However, reviewing this as a European you could be excused for a certain uneasiness in finding Barak in this prominent a position at the center of Germany and our continent.
There have previously been two American Presidents who made outstanding speeches in Berlin since World War 2. The first was the famous John F. Kennedy, identifying himself and America with that city’s plight whilst they lived under the threat of the Soviets. The second great piece of oratory was delivered by Ronald Reagan when he told the Soviet leader, Gorbachav, to “take down that wall;” referring to the Berlin wall, then separating the West from the Eastern, Soviet dominated sector.
The big difference between both of those men and Barak is that they were the President when they delivered those speeches and Barak seems to have overlooked the fact that he is not yet in this position.
There is a man in America called John McCann who stands a very reasonable chance of winning the coming election and Barak Obama seems to have allowed a little triumphalism to creep into his campaign. The last time we saw something similar was when Neil Kinnock was standing for the job of Prime Minister in the UK and made the same mistake, and he immediately went from being hot favorite to loser.
Once again Barak’s public, set piece speech said nothing of substance whatsoever. In fact, other than producing wonderful sound bites you could find them the subject of fun, but when delivered by a master orator they can be spellbinding. What does this mean, “People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment. This is our time. A new generation must make our mark on history;” or another of his phrases, “Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.
That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.”
Wonderful and generalized words, that without specifics attached are exactly like anyone saying, love your family and country, and be kind to everyone. That’s how we all feel until the other guy starts kicking sand in our face. Barak Obama, what do you believe in, and what, precisely are you going to do if you win the reins of power?
Watching Obama and the reaction to him in Europe is a little like watching Beatle mania at its peak in 60’s America. There was talent, a lot of it, and a certain charm and freshness about the Beatles, that have echoes in Barak. However there was little to warrant the wild adulation for the boys from Liverpool and similarly there is not enough known about Barak to justify the hero worship for him.
You can watch and listen to Barak a great deal without obtaining the answer to that old question, “where’s the beef?” It seems obvious that he has led his campaign to the center ground of politics from the left of the left where it started. You can’t blame him for doing this, as anyone wanting to win the Presidency would have to do so. But the specifics of what he’s actually planning for the USA are unknowable from his public utterances.
This is more reminiscent of another British politician, who was determined to win, and who reinvented the public perception of his party to win, his name is Tony Blair, and he transformed the unelectable Labour Party to the unbeatable New Labour Party for an entire decade. This was one of the most remarkable re-branding and marketing jobs in political history. It is hard to believe that the fingerprints of the British political spin-doctors of the Left have not been doing some work behind the scenes with Obama and his team. This is ironic when you consider the fact that Barak’s rise coincides with the simultaneous long-term decline of the British Labour Party under the leadership of Blair’s successor, Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
One thing we learned in the UK with Tony Blair was that after the too idyllic a honeymoon comes the inevitable messy divorce. If Barak’s popularity does sweep him to power in America there will be a glorious opening to his Presidency, to be followed by an equally terrible fall from power when the realization sweeps the nation, he promised more than he could deliver.
The primary reason for Barak Obama being adored in Europe is this; he isn’t George W. Bush. As much as Bush is hated and despised Obama is loved and admired as the new, black JFK. Next Obama will arrive in London, where no doubt the presidential candidate will enrapture another country’s population. Is it possible for a man like Obama to win the election in the US without our discovering how he intends to run that country?
There have previously been two American Presidents who made outstanding speeches in Berlin since World War 2. The first was the famous John F. Kennedy, identifying himself and America with that city’s plight whilst they lived under the threat of the Soviets. The second great piece of oratory was delivered by Ronald Reagan when he told the Soviet leader, Gorbachav, to “take down that wall;” referring to the Berlin wall, then separating the West from the Eastern, Soviet dominated sector.
The big difference between both of those men and Barak is that they were the President when they delivered those speeches and Barak seems to have overlooked the fact that he is not yet in this position.
There is a man in America called John McCann who stands a very reasonable chance of winning the coming election and Barak Obama seems to have allowed a little triumphalism to creep into his campaign. The last time we saw something similar was when Neil Kinnock was standing for the job of Prime Minister in the UK and made the same mistake, and he immediately went from being hot favorite to loser.
Once again Barak’s public, set piece speech said nothing of substance whatsoever. In fact, other than producing wonderful sound bites you could find them the subject of fun, but when delivered by a master orator they can be spellbinding. What does this mean, “People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment. This is our time. A new generation must make our mark on history;” or another of his phrases, “Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.
That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.”
Wonderful and generalized words, that without specifics attached are exactly like anyone saying, love your family and country, and be kind to everyone. That’s how we all feel until the other guy starts kicking sand in our face. Barak Obama, what do you believe in, and what, precisely are you going to do if you win the reins of power?
Watching Obama and the reaction to him in Europe is a little like watching Beatle mania at its peak in 60’s America. There was talent, a lot of it, and a certain charm and freshness about the Beatles, that have echoes in Barak. However there was little to warrant the wild adulation for the boys from Liverpool and similarly there is not enough known about Barak to justify the hero worship for him.
You can watch and listen to Barak a great deal without obtaining the answer to that old question, “where’s the beef?” It seems obvious that he has led his campaign to the center ground of politics from the left of the left where it started. You can’t blame him for doing this, as anyone wanting to win the Presidency would have to do so. But the specifics of what he’s actually planning for the USA are unknowable from his public utterances.
This is more reminiscent of another British politician, who was determined to win, and who reinvented the public perception of his party to win, his name is Tony Blair, and he transformed the unelectable Labour Party to the unbeatable New Labour Party for an entire decade. This was one of the most remarkable re-branding and marketing jobs in political history. It is hard to believe that the fingerprints of the British political spin-doctors of the Left have not been doing some work behind the scenes with Obama and his team. This is ironic when you consider the fact that Barak’s rise coincides with the simultaneous long-term decline of the British Labour Party under the leadership of Blair’s successor, Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
One thing we learned in the UK with Tony Blair was that after the too idyllic a honeymoon comes the inevitable messy divorce. If Barak’s popularity does sweep him to power in America there will be a glorious opening to his Presidency, to be followed by an equally terrible fall from power when the realization sweeps the nation, he promised more than he could deliver.
The primary reason for Barak Obama being adored in Europe is this; he isn’t George W. Bush. As much as Bush is hated and despised Obama is loved and admired as the new, black JFK. Next Obama will arrive in London, where no doubt the presidential candidate will enrapture another country’s population. Is it possible for a man like Obama to win the election in the US without our discovering how he intends to run that country?
Thursday, July 24, 2008
SorryMax
It seems that we all owe Max Mosley a huge and groveling apology. Max is the man who heads up the world’s Formula 1 racing. He was wrongly accused by the British red top tabloid, the News of the World, of taking part in a Nazi oriented sadomasochistic sex romp with several women dressed in German prison garb and speaking in German. This was a private moment in a private apartment, paid for by Max, ever the gentleman; it was clearly not to be shared by everyone.
The News of the World reported this story in all its glory and was the loser in the British High Court this afternoon when Max Mosley’s case against them was won. He was awarded substantial damages and costs and this is a potential curb on the freedom of the press in the UK.
But, we all have to bow to the law; it was not a Nazi sex romp, just a private session for the discerning sexual tourist. Sorry Max!
The News of the World reported this story in all its glory and was the loser in the British High Court this afternoon when Max Mosley’s case against them was won. He was awarded substantial damages and costs and this is a potential curb on the freedom of the press in the UK.
But, we all have to bow to the law; it was not a Nazi sex romp, just a private session for the discerning sexual tourist. Sorry Max!
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