GreetingsFromAmerica

Greetings from America and forgive me if the jet lag hampers my fluency and my ability to edit myself. It is warmer and sunnier than back home in freezing England. Leaving home it was cold, dark and icy, arriving here I was greeted by a smiling uniformed man who greeted me with the words, “Welcome to Los Angeles, we hope you enjoy your stay!”

I know its corny, or as we now say in England, cheesy, but it is much more pleasant than the people at terminal 3 of Heathrow who informed me that I was at the wrong terminal as if I should know this by telepathy. Apparently I am not alone in my ignorance, as according to the United Airline ground staff, this error is being repeated all the time. But no one cares, in fact it seems as if the mistake amuses him or her.

The whole trip is made even more pleasant by the fact that I have finally been able to accumulate enough miles to obtain free tickets to America and been able to do so before the benefits expired!

Arriving early the flight was informed that we would be bussed to another building because “Immigration” was not able to deal with us. It was as if our planeload of passengers were a total surprise to “immigration”, which does seem strange as the flight in question are daily and have been running for many years. But you know what jokers these airline people are. The huge line facing the passengers trying to get through the customs hall proved this. It was as if we were in a huge Disney line with the only difference being that there was not going to be any great rides a the end of the line.

Better organized this ordeal could have been half as long and much more efficient. Official America lets itself down by the way it treats its visitors with such disdain, but it’s still a great place.

Everything was made wonderful when our daughter, Sarah, along with her children picked us up without attracting a parking ticket from the traffic cop hovering over anyone daring to pause curbside for more than a second or two. Now I’m sitting in her living room, trying to adjust to the time difference without passing out but fully aware that I will be awake about 3 in the morning, so it would be good if it could be fun.

Perhaps I should indulge in the Night Cold remedy, which could fix my cough and cold and allow me the chance to simply fall asleep. Forgive me if I sound sleepy, normal service will shortly

ObamaWhatWorriesMeNow

Yesterday amongst the subjects I covered was my concern that President Elect Obama is acting as if he is already the President. One of my readers wrote me this;

“ I don’t think you can blame the lack of activity and leadership on the one who takes it because he had to pull the baby out of the bathwater.

These months are precious to restore confidence and avoid sliding into a depression- and it may already be too late – so not to try at this stage, knowing he has to deal with it formally, as of January, would be stupid and reckless.”

My response is that it's Obama's hypocrisy and flagrant disregard for the law and constitution I dislike.

Obama does really not convince me but we all really need to hope.

It's not a good start for him to say one thing and do the other. If he said I really need to bend the rules because we have a huge problem and did exactly what he's doing I'd be fine with it.

It's a blatant disregard for the truth or for our ability to spot the lie that's of great concern. It's also really dangerous for us all if we allow breaches of the constitution when it suits us because we won't be able to do anything about future breaches when it doesn't.

WorryingTimes

Two seemingly disassociated events taking place this week in the US and UK might be inextricably linked. In fact they are potentially of immense political significance.

In the USA President Elect Barack Obama is acting, in all but name, as if he were already the President, whereas, in fact, as he has previously correctly stated, there is only one President at a time, and still, at this time, his name is President George W Bush. We have never had such a lame duck last months of a Presidency as we are currently suffering from, and this is caused by two factors. One, we all have to admit, is that George W Bush has not continued to assert himself prior to his leaving and as a consequence there is a leadership deficit. The other unavoidable conclusion is that the President Elect is so determined to hit the ground running that he has inserted himself into the vacuum.

In the UK the police arrested and questioned a Member of Parliament, Damien Green about his alleged gathering and dissemination of Home Office leaks about immigration. The police not only raided Green’s two homes they also entered his House of Commons office. The police virtually never take such actions, in fact the last time someone attempted to arrest Members of Parliament and enter the territory of the Commons was when Charles I did so with his officers in 1642, and he and his men were ejected and their actions led directly to the English Civil War.

Both of these situations represent well-intentioned leadership that assumes they are always right and certainly never wrong. In the case of the British Prime Minister we have a perfect example of the poacher turned gamekeeper. Gordon Brown is the same man who, when in opposition, built a reputation by obtaining and distributing a constant stream of leaks against the then Conservative government.

Unbelievably the senior politicians to whom the police report in the UK deny all prior knowledge of the police action. I am amongst many others who simply don’t believe this assertion, to the extent that I am calling Minister Jacqui Smith a liar.

Now there will be an investigation by another, supposedly independent police officer to discover the truth. I hope they are able to conduct this investigation quickly and thoroughly, and then whoever authorized and controlled this foolhardy and unacceptable breach of our system should be unceremoniously kicked out of office.

There is, in both countries, an erosion of liberty. In the UK the rate of this shrinking freedom is very alarming, so much so that it is a common discussion amongst the population.

In the USA the jury is still out, as none of us knows the actuality of the Obama Presidency. We can only guess at its shape and style by the tone of its preparation. We all understand his desire to hit the ground running but that does not excuse his pre-emption of Presidential authority and power.

Neither of our countries can afford to allow any further slippage of our constitution or tradition and freedom, too many people have shed too much blood to build them for us.

MumbaiAftermath

Over the last two days there have been a series of linked, murderous terrorist outrages in the Indian city of Mumbai. Over 100 people were murdered and more than 300 have been injured. So far we don’t know the precise nature of the group that perpetrated the attack other than the fact that they appear to be from the Indian sub continent and are followers of Islam, as they claim.

The other inescapable fact is that they were targeting, in particular, citizens of the USA and UK in addition to having invaded a specifically Jewish building.

Already the politically correct apologists in our midst have expressed their view that we “must understand the causes of this reaction on their part.” This is code for polite society to turn off their normal morality button unless and except if it were a member of their own family who is lying dead in a bloodied heap because of this group of murdering thugs.

The PC argument continues with, look at how we have made their (Muslim) people suffer in (substitute whichever suits you) Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Bosnia, Sudan etc. etc. and you will have a better understanding of their anger.

Enough of this nonsense, how about our anger, our rights and our people?

Because these people happen to be Muslim terrorists does not make all Muslims terrorists; but there are clearly enough Muslims who are terrorists to cause the sane part of their society major problems. In addition, there have other Muslims who are sympathetic to their "cause" and identify with their anger who provide back up, finance and emotional support.

It is past time for the common Muslim person who is outraged by such acts of terrorism to take every opportunity to express their outrage and to work with the authorities to help stamp such groups out.

Muslim terrorists have been attacking anyone they could attack without any real reason or acceptable justification for a very long time, and its time it was stopped. We plainly will not stop them by talking to them when their intent is to overthrow your civilization and kill or suppress all non-believers.

Before anyone reading this reaches for his or her electronic pen to assail me with any response supporting or understanding the rights of these killers let me, as calmly as possible, respectfully point out that terrorism such as the Mumbai massacre has it roots way before there was any possible justification.

Before there was a modern state of Israel in 1948 there were massacres of vulnerable parts of the Jewish population more than 20 years earlier, before there was any war in Iraq or Afghanistan there was the first bombing of the World Trade Center, 10 years previously.

We could go on with such facts but the truth is that the Politically Correct idiots don’t want to hear facts when they are inconvenient.

There have even been calls for covert talks with Afghanistan’s Taliban despite their bombings of civilians, random massacres and their recent acid attacks on the faces of their country’s girls and young women who dare to get an education.

Let me make my position clear, these are evil people who are at war with us, and they must be eradicated before they are able to do even greater damage. You don’t make peace at any cost with such people; instead you must consign them to the litter-bin of history.

I understand that such terrorist groups seek a political over-reaction on our part, so that we become the agents of oppression they so much would love us to be. But the truth is that in every major conflict the result of the battle is that we have to grow callouses over our souls for the duration, until we've won the fight, and this will be no different.

It is fashionable to condemn anything that President George W Bush or former Premier Tony Blair did when they were in office, but their successors, Gordon Brown and Barack Obama agree with them that the terrorist threat such attacks represent are still top of their target list.

Such terrorists are our deadly enemy and must be beaten, and if we don’t deal with them, root and branch, they will, one day soon, attack you again; the only difference being it will be a bigger, better organized attack and the target will be nearer to your home.

TimeToChange

I see what you see and hear what you hear. The British and American governments are, like their many colleague governments, doing their best to lead the recovery of our economies.

The holes that our banks have helped to dig are so deep and the damage so immense that just this problem will take a long time and a great deal of luck to fix. But the problems are bigger than this; we’re facing a raft of financial and economic woes that have deeper roots than the immediate recession.

The most important of these is not the lack of consumer spending; much more serious are the balance of trade deficit, the lack of manufacturing in our key strategic industries, the growing foreign control of our power and energy sources, in fact overseas ownership of our countries.

We need immediate encouragement for our people to save for the future, to curb their long term spending on consumer rubbish and focus on our real needs, such as building pension values and investments. Governments and individuals should be encouraged to live within their means.

We must find ways to keep people in their homes and to generate movement in the property market. In the UK this could easily be helped by reducing the taxes and increasing the incentives, even on a temporary basis this would help.

Perhaps one of the most pressing issues that must be unraveled is the sheer size of the public spending in the UK as a percentage of our Gross Domestic Product. This has been growing in this country and elsewhere at an alarming rate and will continue to do so for the immediate future as this is one of the areas of the economy that governments feel might be successfully pump primed as a means of resuscitating the flat lining economy.

The fact is that the government is mortgaging our future as a rescue package for our present and this will linger like a bad smell, possibly for generations. Perhaps we need to swallow hard and take the awful medicine now rather than have to swallow poison later. We should seek solutions that might be less immediately palatable but provide long term and effective solutions. The voters will swing behind whichever politicians generate genuine answers rather than silly quick fixes that we will have to pay for in the long term.

Piracy

Certain things seem so obvious to me that I feel there should be no need to write them in a blog or article. But then something comes along that shakes the foundations of your beliefs.

I am, as some of you already know, a writer and a filmmaker, I am also an occasional media academic. Clearly that gives me a vested interest in the well-being of those sectors. You would think the same would apply to others similarly laboring in these creative areas. Apparently we would all be wrong.

Whilst discussing some recent movies over lunch last week one of my colleagues calmly announced that he burned downloads on the net onto his blank DVD’s. He made it plain, in case I’d not understood him that these were unlicensed copies that he had not paid for. I asked him to think about this for a moment and he laughed, “What, you care for the fat cats that run those hugely rich foreign corporations, why should we care about any of them?”

I was staggered by his attitude, and I imagine it showed on my face. He smiled again, less cocky this time as I responded, “What about the several hundred thousand British people who earn their living in the production of media?” I asked him, “What do you want to say to them when they lose their jobs because people like you are stealing their livelihood by your piracy.” He now colored in embarrassment, and he said, “I’d never thought about that really.”

If there were no British creative industries the actual amount lost to our Treasury would be something in the region of 10% of this country’s Gross Domestic Product and it employs more than 600,000 people. This is not an argument about semantics, this industry is far more important than car production, steel, coal and several other industrial sectors added together.

Think about it, this lecturer is a man who teaches young impressionable people about media and he didn’t realize there was anything morally or economically wrong with pirating other people’s work.

Surely this is a perfect example of what teaching without context can bring.

During the same discussion it also became apparent that most of the media teachers around the table are also not paying their TV license fee. They dressed this up as a form of Robin Hood like act of defiance against authority, when the truth is that they are simply trying to defend the indefensible.

You cannot opt out of laws you don’t like. The option we all have is seek to change such laws, or vote for people with similar views to your own. It is totally unacceptable for our teachers to preach general anarchy like this because it is both immature and dangerous.

We are left to shake our heads and ask how our students will learn to understand the difference between right and wrong with teachers like these?

BNPBusted

This week someone published the BNP membership list on the net. The BNP is the British National Party, and for those of you that still don’t understand, they are a bunch of fellow traveling National Socialists, still don’t get it? The BNP are Nazis in all but name.

Apparently, and somewhat hilariously, the BNP Party Leader, Nick Griffin, is disgusted that a supposedly disgruntled ex-employee should stoop so low that he or she had seen fit to expose his previous fellow travelers.

Personally I am delighted that these swamp people are now exposed to the rest of us. They are racists dressed up as nationalists and they follow the same general principles as Hitler and his stooges of the Third Reich. Anything that can be done within the law to damage this group of evil and stupid people is not only permissible but should be compulsory.

I admit to a prejudice against Nazis born out of the fact that I’m Jewish and anti racist and many members of my own family were murdered for being Jewish by bastards such as these. So if these deluded BNP pinheads lose their jobs or friends or previous high regard now that their secret is revealed I really don’t care, I delight in the fact.

By the way their claims for racial purity and superiority are also misguided and inaccurate. Once, not so long ago when I was a Director of a department of an East London University we checked out the backgrounds of 100 local people who regarded themselves as pure English. It turned out that only 7 people qualified and all the rest were a dolly mixture of different origins.