tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44131301687237381662024-03-19T05:55:20.917-07:00Ana the Imp<i>This is a tale of a succubus</i>Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.comBlogger1742125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-91914080308148541912013-03-25T16:25:00.000-07:002013-03-25T16:25:50.284-07:00I am such stuff as dreams are made on <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiURlShWgHQCszaPeZV93OV5mnuAFr8KVvtnXApZoQNA6lGLEWX8hp_SA4QL1jBBkZsaIxVzN2N0ddPcFwhRfNA3RRAA-JgShA40XpZPR6t7jWxDWaKoBYgb7Ov3GV0fYghlBqAxH8nt4u5/s1600/street.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiURlShWgHQCszaPeZV93OV5mnuAFr8KVvtnXApZoQNA6lGLEWX8hp_SA4QL1jBBkZsaIxVzN2N0ddPcFwhRfNA3RRAA-JgShA40XpZPR6t7jWxDWaKoBYgb7Ov3GV0fYghlBqAxH8nt4u5/s400/street.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a;">Nothing is forever. I know that, you know that, we
all know that. Life is all about change and transformation, metamorphosis
in its many forms! I was once Clio the Muse on Wikipedia. I awoke
almost four years ago here as Ana the Imp. But now I am breaking free of
that chrysalis. It’s time for me to dry my wings and fly away.
There are great changes coming in my life. Most important of all I’m
expecting a little imp! At one time this is not something I thought I
would welcome. But now I do, a new challenge, my own offering to the
future. I have so much to think about and so much to do, new foundations
to put down. I just want to thank everyone who has contributed here,
friends old and new. Goodbye and good fortune to you all. <u1:p></u1:p><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i>Our revels now are ended. These our actors,<br />
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and<br />
Are melted into air, into thin air:<br />
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,<br />
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,<br />
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,<br />
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,<br />
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,<br />
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff<br />
As dreams are made on; and our little life<br />
Is rounded with a sleep.</i><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com66tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-11458009695226207072013-03-24T16:58:00.001-07:002013-03-24T16:59:19.038-07:00A Devilish People <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBE8XIbqzILGJFdwI-Z7f2VbSIN9XmJE68zt6yeh_wQUwTRPhxeVY-8QskX5MzcGyGFqtn8BFzf5Ev4wNNvgBINi0zjXL6Om27pMQZ0IVqidl1L1ztKHVyiOJokWaIebbyLPXiUTJK_94k/s1600/victorian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBE8XIbqzILGJFdwI-Z7f2VbSIN9XmJE68zt6yeh_wQUwTRPhxeVY-8QskX5MzcGyGFqtn8BFzf5Ev4wNNvgBINi0zjXL6Om27pMQZ0IVqidl1L1ztKHVyiOJokWaIebbyLPXiUTJK_94k/s400/victorian.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">I was recently asked to identify the various historical
elements that led to the creation of Victorian Britain, the high-water mark of
our national story, a time of innovation, of self-reliance and self-assurance,
things that now seem a distant memory in our present state of senesce. It
comes really at an opportune time, right in the middle of my Trollope period, a
novelist who did much to identity some of the significant political and
intellectual trends in nineteenth century English life. I also have a particularly
close acquaintance with the work of Charles Dickens, another great chronicler
of the day. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">The transformation that
characterised the times, particularly in the Industrial Revolution, is the
stuff of a thousand school essays! The obvious things can be marched out
with ease – the improvements in agriculture, in communication, in transport,
in technology; innovations of all sorts. Much of the mechanical
improvement was directly related to the ever increasing demand for coal, a
power source significant as far back as the Middle Ages. But the mines go
even deeper here, deep into our history.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">On the eve of the Victorian
period feudalism was a distant memory, effectively killed off as early as the
fourteenth century. In contrast it was a living reality on the
Continent, in France, in Prussia and in Russia. In the case of the
latter it was to be a living reality as late as the early 1860s, with shadows
long thereafter. It is England not France that is the true home of
liberty. In France Liberty came late, trailing clouds of terror and bringing
streams of blood. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">In England freedom was far more
than a word. From the myth of Robin Hood to the reality of Magna Carta,
the first great break on royal power, it was a living reality. I find
it difficult to define this properly but I know a poet who can;</span></div>
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<i><span style="background-color: #fff9f4; color: #222222; line-height: 18px;">It is not to be thought of that the Flood</span><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 18px;"><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff9f4; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 20px;">Of British freedom, which to the open Sea</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff9f4; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 20px;">Of the world's praise from dark antiquity</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff9f4; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 20px;">Hath flowed, "with pomp of waters, unwithstood,"</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff9f4; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 20px;">Road by which all might come and go that would,</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff9f4; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 20px;">And bear out freights of worth to foreign lands;</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff9f4; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 20px;">That this most famous Stream in Bogs and Sands</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff9f4; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 20px;">Should perish; and to evil and to good</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff9f4; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 20px;">Be lost for ever. In our Halls is hung</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff9f4; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 20px;">Armoury of the invincible Knights of old:</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff9f4; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 20px;">We must be free or die, who speak the tongue</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff9f4; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 20px;">That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff9f4; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 20px;">Which Milton held. In every thing we are sprung</span><br style="line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: #fff9f4; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 20px;">Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold.</span></span></i></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff9f4; color: #222222; line-height: 12.75pt;">We recently
dug up the remains of Richard III, a reminder of the great fifteenth century
dynastic struggle known as the Wars of the Roses. But that event was far
more significant than a simple game of thrones. It decimated the
hereditary nobility that had effectively ruled the country since the Norman
Conquest. In its place came a new nobility, made up quite often of the
middling sort. Thomas Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, the two most powerful
political figures during the reign of Henry VIII, were respectively the son of
a butcher and the son of a blacksmith. I can think of no other country at
the time that where such a rapid ascent would have been possible.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff9f4; color: #222222; line-height: 12.75pt;">Then there is
Parliament, a uniquely assertive body in English history, present from the
thirteenth century onwards. It was to be an effective scrutiniser over
time of national finances, granting fresh supply only after various grievances
had been addressed. It may have started on a Continental model of an
assembly of estates but it became so much more, the best firm of accountants that the nation has ever had. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff9f4; color: #222222; line-height: 12.75pt;">So, if the Wars
of the Roses saw the beginning of the end of aristocratic power, the political
struggles of the seventeenth century saw the absolute end of royal
absolutism. It is not to be thought that the Restoration of the monarch
in 1660, after a republican interlude, marked the victory of Crown over
Parliament. Charles II was to have almost as much trouble from his loyal
assembles as his father did from his rebellious ones. The Glorious
Revolution of 1688, which saw the overthrow of James II, sent all pretence of
divine right monarchy to the grave.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff9f4; color: #222222; line-height: 12.75pt;">The long
Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was an important
precursor here, freeing people from more traditional forms of thought and
religious practice. The process was also fairly uniform throughout
mainland Britain, uniting people in a common Protestant ideology. Where
there is religious liberty and freedom of thought political liberty
follows. In France such religious liberty was the gift of the state,
ended in a stroke of royal absolutism. As England wakened to freedom France
sunk deeper into the sleep of absolutism. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff9f4; color: #222222; line-height: 12.75pt;">If any one man
supplied the ideological impetus for the Glorious Revolution, and the
subsequent Bill of Rights, then it surely has to be John Locke. For me
Locke serves as an avatar of the English intellect, far more precise and
empirical than the cloudy abstraction of so much Continental thought.
English itself is a precise language which, if used properly, is concerned with
meanings and ends. It is a language that does not readily lend
itself to obscurity. When it does it simply looks ridiculous. A
free language given to free expression, that is of crucial importance in
understanding who we are, in understating our values and our dow-to-earth
sense of what is right and what is wrong. We must indeed be free or die, who speak the tongue
that Shakespeare spake. The corruption of our spoken and written language
is among our greatest contemporary dangers.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff9f4; color: #222222; line-height: 12.75pt;">Our political
struggles did not end with the Glorious Revolution, merely took on a different
form. The early Victorian period saw a new and bloodless civil war,
fought between the passing of the Great Reform Act in 1832, which expanded
middle-class representation in Parliament, and the repeal of the Corn Laws in
1846, which saw the final victory of the industrial over the landed
interest. Through this period, though passions were often heightened,
problems were solved by pragmatic compromise rather than violence, another characteristic
of the English.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff9f4; color: #222222; line-height: 12.75pt;">Take the
career of Benjamin Disraeli, for example, another kind of avatar. He
first made his mark in Parliament by a ruthless assault on Sir Robert Peel, his
own party leader and the Prime Minister responsible for the repeal of the Corn
Laws. At the time Disraeli spoke for the landed interest. But when
he became Prime Minister himself later in the century there was no return to
the past. For him laissez-faire capitalism and free trade, defined by
Adam Smith in <i>The Wealth of Nations</i>, was the wealth of the nation.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff9f4; color: #222222; line-height: 12.75pt;">Britain was
fortunate in being the first industrial nation among a world of primary
producers. But while free trade opened the agricultural sector to foreign
competition in did not entail terminal decline. Instead the nation’s
farms and farmers became more proficient, as proficient as their manufacturing counterparts
in adopting new methods and techniques. Farms became pure commercial
enterprises with little of the inefficient and underproductive peasant
agriculture that continues to be a defining feature of the French system.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff9f4; color: #222222; line-height: 12.75pt;">The country
was also fortunate in not having a standing army on the Continental model, a
drain on national resources. Instead there was the navy, based on the
need to defend ever lengthening trade routes. Naval officers were
generally of a far higher level of ability than those in the army, many of whom
bought their commissions. An idiot could command a regiment; an idiot
could not sail a ship. The defeat of France in the Seven Years War
established Britain as the leading sea power in the world, something that was
to continue right into the twentieth century. Secure trade meant growing
wealth; growing wealth meant an ever greater flow of capital; more capital
meant more investment, and onwards and upwards.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff9f4; color: #222222; line-height: 12.75pt;">The English
don’t do revolution by doing it so well! The changes are outwardly
subtle, so subtle than they can scarcely be seen to have happened.
Consider the difference between the England of Richard III and that of Queen
Victoria. In institutional terms little has changed. They are all
in place, the monarchy, the aristocracy and Parliament, both Lords and
Commons. But the balance between them has changed dramatically and
continued to change. The monarchy is now the decorative part of the
constitution, something that would have caused Richard a new winter of
discontent! </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff9f4; color: #222222; line-height: 12.75pt;">If I take Disraeli
as one avatar of the Victorian age the other has to be Charles Dickens, at once
the least and most political writer we have ever had. His work is in so
many respects another human comedy along the lines of Dante, but he never lost
sight of the various social, politic and institutional abuses of his
time. He is really the great giant of mid-Victorian liberalism, best
caught in <i>Charles Dickens</i>, George Orwell’s brilliant pen portrait, which
concludes thus;</span></div>
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<em style="line-height: 12.75pt;"><span style="background: #F6F6F6; color: #2a2a2a;">When one
reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of
seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face
of the writer. I feel this very strongly with Swift, with Defoe, with Fielding,
Stendhal, Thackeray, Flaubert, though in several cases I do not know what these
people looked like and do not want to know. What one sees is the face that the
writer ought to have. Well, in the case of Dickens I see a face that is not
quite the face of Dickens's photographs, though it resembles it. It is the face
of a man of about forty, with a small beard and a high colour. He is laughing,
with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity. It is the
face of a man who is always fighting against something, but who fights in the
open and is not frightened, the face of a man who is generously angry — in
other words, of a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated
with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending
for our souls.</span></em></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff9f4; color: #222222; line-height: 12.75pt;">I don’t think
there is any better description of the free English intellect. It’s an
insightful portrait of Dickens just as it’s an insightful portrait of Orwell
himself. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff9f4; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222; line-height: 12.75pt;">The English have never been hung on a cross of theory. The Victorian age provides
plenty of examples of this, of people reaching for practical solutions to
practical problems. Karl Marx would have crucified us. Though he spent
many years in exile in London, he never understood the people among whom he
lived. </span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Always
expecting great things from the English proletariat, the most advanced in
Europe, by the lights of his theory, he came to see that England was the one
country in Europe with a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois working class as
well as a bourgeois bourgeois! His last recorded words were “To the Devil with
the British.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">To be cast to
the Devil by Karl, is there any better compliment, I wonder? </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWE4aZKi16F9AIttEu6GS9prs05kF7OfSnMF2_tbqSqi_SglHnoJ82TIeZmG2nU3VYGDsRP56t6XFY8UMANbR5kNrQ-v8308ILp6WL8VYLnOb1FuXuFZpm2LDUBvhY_Y_CZ6sptS7k0eTC/s1600/bw_VictorianStreet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="396" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWE4aZKi16F9AIttEu6GS9prs05kF7OfSnMF2_tbqSqi_SglHnoJ82TIeZmG2nU3VYGDsRP56t6XFY8UMANbR5kNrQ-v8308ILp6WL8VYLnOb1FuXuFZpm2LDUBvhY_Y_CZ6sptS7k0eTC/s640/bw_VictorianStreet.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-16633843924605650152013-03-21T16:33:00.000-07:002013-03-21T16:33:31.075-07:00Paper Tiger <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFzLTiCDUcUdxdSasxC59r4Jwl_XliSOuHBQssDBOQdJdUnjDVxg0gJpNWmGzrawc7__wK81LjJ6FH1HXNU-RH72Yr7vxQq-FjeKSFdI71mcg442kBOlEM_6FkjmzL919PWiWnJYehyphenhyphenTc1/s1600/cann.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFzLTiCDUcUdxdSasxC59r4Jwl_XliSOuHBQssDBOQdJdUnjDVxg0gJpNWmGzrawc7__wK81LjJ6FH1HXNU-RH72Yr7vxQq-FjeKSFdI71mcg442kBOlEM_6FkjmzL919PWiWnJYehyphenhyphenTc1/s400/cann.jpg" width="273" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">It’s by pure chance that I came
to David Cannadine’s recently published <i>The Undivided Past: Humanity Beyond Our
Differences</i> in succession to Catalin Avaramescu’s <i>An Intellectual History of
Cannibalism</i>, though they harmonise quite well. Both are concerned with
categories and perceptions, both with the divisions created between
‘civilization’ and ‘barbarism’, both with notions of ‘Us’ and notions of
‘Them.’</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Cannadine, a professional
historian who professes history at Princeton, comes to us rather in the manner
of a prosecutor, bearing a heavy indictment against the profession of
history! Actually his beginning is the profession of politics, or the
sort of simple-minded politics embraced by the likes of George W. Bush and Tony
Blair in the aftermath of 9/11, a new form of Manichaeism, with clear and
uncomplicated division between the forces of light and the forces of
dark. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Historians are to blame here,
Cannadine feels, in creating to a general mood of division and derision.
They have spent too much time, he argues, on conflict and very little on
collaboration, on disharmony rather than harmony. Above all, they have
failed to celebrate a ‘common humanity.’</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;"><i>The Undivided Past</i>, if you like,
is a critique of artificial identity politics. Professor Cannadine
unveils his six paper tigers. These are religion, nation, class, gender,
race and civilization. In cementing differences and creating antagonisms,
historians made their particular choices. The overall result is a kind of
interpretive straightjacket. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">The simple truth is that we have
multiple and shifting identities, a truth so simple it scarcely deserves
repeating. But the author’s blood is up and his challenge offered. He
bears down on “the conventional wisdom of single-identity politics, the alleged
uniformity of antagonistic groups, the widespread liking for polarized modes of
thought, and the scholarly preoccupations with difference.” My, how those
paper tigers fall, driven down by this mighty verbal onslaught! </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Broadly speaking it’s possible to
accept elements of Cannadine’s argument. All history, to take one
example, is<i> not</i> the history of class struggle! But Marx and Marxism is
such an easy target, for the simple reason that ‘class’ is the weakest of all
the tigers. Old dinosaurs like Eric Hobsbawm and E. P. Thompson, are now
themselves consigned to the past with a good part of their tendentious
scholarship, though they and their kind still have an abiding influence on
sections of the liberal media.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Yes, what a chimera class
politics proved to be. The whole sandcastle was swept into the sea in
1914, when the German Social Democrats, the largest Marxist party in the world,
voted for war credits, thus in a single move destroying the Second
International. Here nation trumped class, but even so Cannadine’s method
would not allow us comprehend why class-based politics became so important in
the Second Reich in the first place. Why on earth did Bismarck and Bebel
not simply celebrate ‘togetherness’? Altogether there is a conceit and
polemical blindness here that I find difficult to accept, for all of the
author’s weighty scholarship. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Actually I’m not quite sure who
the author is arguing against, beyond the ghosts of the past, those who rest in
the shade of Karl Marx or Oswald Spengler or Arnold Toynbee. I know of no
reputable scholar today who is in thrall to any single one of the six
categories. We all know – surely we do? – just how complex the past is,
just how hopeless the search for any imperial model of explanation. The
supposed big division between Christianity and Islam sublimates a great many
internal divisions within these faiths. Historians have long been alert
to the truth that wars of religion, for example, are never exclusively about
religion. The Thirty Years War is very fertile ground here. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Cannadine is certainly no Marxist
but paradoxically he seems to have lifted notions of false consciousness from
the ideological wreckage. His fellow historians, you see, have helped to
create artificial and misleading perceptions of reality. Alas, he would
do well to remember that the task of historians is to interpret the past, not
change it. It there are conflicts the conflicts are real; if there are debates
the debates are real, if there is oppression the oppression is real. We
cannot conjure away the things we do not like or approve of by fatuous appeals
to a ‘common humanity.’ This book, for all its weightiness, is replete
with too many unsupported generalisations and too much, well, pious
intellectual conceit. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">There is the professor at the end
of the lists, his tigers all knocked down. The contest was just too easy,
the false solidarities all dead. The only solidarity acceptable from this
point forward is human solidarity; it’s really as simple as that. Come,
now, ye academic historians, see the truth and abandon the artificial divisions
and celebrate those things “that still bind us together today.” Yes, I
imagine Haitian slum dwellers and Russian billionaires will be delighted to see
a celebration of a ‘common humanity’ as the profession of history sinks into a
sleep of quietism! </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">All history may not be the
history of class struggle, but it is the history of struggle, as Arthur
Schopenhauer rightly contended. Yes, we are all human but any attempt to
create a ‘common identity’ or a common history is a task that has failed,
destroyed by its own absurd contradictions. There is nothing new in this
observation. As long ago as the 1960s J. H. Plumb described UNESCO’s
<i>History of Humanity</i> as “an encyclopaedia gone berserk, or resorted by a
deficient computer.” Speaking of berserkers, there is the European
Union’s House of European History, which begins the story in 1946, because the
various national governments can’t agree on what went before! I’ll go with
Cannadine’s six categories, liberally mixed, any day over absurdities like
this, or over his hippy-like, Kumbaya approach to the past.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">At the end I found that <i>The
Undivided Past</i> was the biggest paper tiger of all. It’s entertaining,
certainly, at least now and again, though far too prolix and dense in style. It's also wide-ranging, but that does not compensate for its deficiencies. My
most serious criticism is over the stunning banality of the central
message. Simply put, it’s almost impossible to provide an acceptable
definition of a ‘common humanity’ when one proceeds beyond the basics – we are
born, we breath, we eat, we grow, we decline, we die. That’s it, a
‘common humanity’ we share with every other species on earth. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Historians have to grapple with
the past and interpret it for the present and perhaps even the future, with as
much honesty and integrity as they can, not be seduced by cosy common room
cant. We are in the presence here of a new Francis Fukuyama. </span></div>
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-1943280764733296042013-03-20T16:59:00.003-07:002013-03-20T16:59:54.359-07:00Faddishness and Minorities<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ZOQsZwo0dbL7TtWrh6lpVzAgRXLRB_ZSuLcG5VuCuQwGWxNR-9Hj_3jl9Ubvw2jUJjx-D1IQi34sBaTMBLi_dGiXT7ixvWKwZl0ncTg-tdLFfBVc4yivPD06LtKLn-tnPR2NIeirommd/s1600/c+and+o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ZOQsZwo0dbL7TtWrh6lpVzAgRXLRB_ZSuLcG5VuCuQwGWxNR-9Hj_3jl9Ubvw2jUJjx-D1IQi34sBaTMBLi_dGiXT7ixvWKwZl0ncTg-tdLFfBVc4yivPD06LtKLn-tnPR2NIeirommd/s320/c+and+o.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad”, so the
ancient proverb goes. I’m quietly rejoicing over the great Cyprus bank
bungle, the latest symptom of European insanity and a clear sign that the gods
are on my side! I have my eye also on the craziness of our present
coalition government in England, the craziness in particular of David Cameron
and George Osborne, the Dumb and Dumber of our political life. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">I’m in the mood for quotations; I’m in a particular mood for
Disraeli. England does not love coalitions, he rightly said. I
would update this slightly by saying that England </span><i style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">hates</i><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"> coalitions;
this Englishwoman certainly does. The grand old Tory also said that a
Conservative government is an organised hypocrisy. My, oh my, I do wonder
what he would have made of our present government and the present leadership of
the Conservative Party – a disorganised idiocy, perhaps? </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Lynton Crosby, Cameron’s campaign chief, has a cunning plan for a Tory
victory in the scheduled 2015 general election, or so I read recently in the
<i>Telegraph</i>. In the wake of the drubbing the Party got in the recent
Eastleigh by-election there are to be no more stupid ideas. Really?
Then I take it we can see gay marriage and windmills dropping from the
agenda? I have a plan also for a Tory victory, though it’s not really
that cunning – get rid of Cameron and Osborne. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Take the Prime Minister…please. Mediocre leaders are the rule
rather than the exception in the Tory Party. Margaret Thatcher? No
thanks; let’s have John Major instead. But, my goodness, on the scale of
mediocrity Cameron has no contenders. He even manages to make Stanley
Baldwin look good. When it comes to breath-taking incompetence there are
few better than Call Me Dave. His latest wheeze was the introduction of
minimum alcohol pricing. Eh, excuse me, Prime Minister, does this not
mean that the price of booze will increase when voters have had more than
enough of price increases in general? Oops – goodbye to all that.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Simple truths are simply stated – the Conservative Party led by Cameron
is heading for sure defeat. I was tempted to write that there are lies,
damned lies and David Cameron but, on reflection, I think that’s unfair.
It’s better said that he is a little man lost in his own confusion.
Having no identity of his own he took on that of Tony Blair and the
metro-cosmopolitans. The Tory Party went mad when it elected him leader,
much as Labour did when it elected Michael Foot. The Cameron Manifesto is
another of history’s long suicide notes.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">The credibility of all politicians is pretty low these days, particularly those in the Conservative Party. It gives me no pleasure to write
this because I have only ever voted Tory – a long family tradition – and I have
a great many Conservative friends. But the Party has forfeited all
credibility and all trust; people simply do not believe a word it says.
In fact the more Cameron and Osborne say the greater the disbelief. These
men are </span><i style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">hopelessly</i><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"> out of touch. The one great platform
the government stood on was reduction of the public debt. What’s
happened? It’s now more bloated than ever. Some of the reductions
we have had are beyond crazy. Favoured socialist causes have been
ring-fenced while defence spending is being slashed. We spend millions on
foreign aid while depriving tank regiments of, er, tanks. This really is
the political theatre of the absurd. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Can things get any worse? Yes, indeed they can.
If people distrust the Conservative Party the Conservative Party
distrusts itself. Call Me Dave’s gay marriage scheme has introduced a
huge fissure into the Party ranks, one I suspect will never be fully
healed. Nobody wanted this; nobody needed this except a loud-mouthed
minority. And when it came to standing up to Europe and the European
Court of Human Rights the Cameron government is nothing but piss and
wind. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Oh, yes, on the subject of wind we have what the Chancellor calls a
‘renewable levy’, a rip-off tax by any other name, one which will penalise
consumers and cripple industry. And for what? Merely to placate
another loud-mouthed minority, the green fanatics who are set on covering this
green and pleasant land with ugly and unpleasant windmills. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I
do not care what Osborne says in today’s budget (I wrote this piece before I
knew the details) because it will make little practical difference. The
game is up. There are simply not enough gay couples, greens and lovers of
foreign aid to secure a future Conservative government. Under Cameron the
Tory Party has become a movement of faddishness and minorities. In future
it is likely to become the biggest minority of all. </span></div>
Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-44411105622970279822013-03-19T16:48:00.000-07:002013-03-19T16:48:14.387-07:00Venezuela's Sawdust Caesar <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ0gKXblVgMVFCFapAi1AD4fTRWtZXlyaZnBRiQnm6U4dsTKDI913ez4DFMdr04T9dT_JKxs_cuykaokQgfLqPxLsfpThIXIPRGNMbWHwHhxqMZ0I5p_6ntkYwNYniXpBT_OCYEf9WwRfb/s1600/hugo_chavez_caricatura_33.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ0gKXblVgMVFCFapAi1AD4fTRWtZXlyaZnBRiQnm6U4dsTKDI913ez4DFMdr04T9dT_JKxs_cuykaokQgfLqPxLsfpThIXIPRGNMbWHwHhxqMZ0I5p_6ntkYwNYniXpBT_OCYEf9WwRfb/s400/hugo_chavez_caricatura_33.jpg" width="308" /></a><br />
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Hugo Chavez, the late president
of Venezuela, may have been “poisoned by dark forces that wanted him out of the
way”, at least according to Nicolas Maduro, his less than charismatic stand
in. I think the ‘dark force’ may very well have been Chavez himself,
anxious to preserve something of his inflated reputation before his country
implodes under his poisonous legacy. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">What an illusion the so-called
‘Bolivarian Revolution’ was, based on little more than a sharp rise in world
commodity prices that enabled Chavez to float on a lot of oil revenue,
squandered away in one cack-handed scheme after another. The corruption
and mismanagement was extreme, even by South American standards. I’m
reminded here of one of the jokes that was popular in the old Eastern Bloc.
“What would happen if the communists took control of the desert?”
“Nothing for a while and then there would be a shortage of sand.”
Venezuela, a country rich in natural energy, has suffered periodic power cuts
for years.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">I’ve long understood that Chavez
was a complete fraud. My goodness, I asked myself, who could not see
through the posturing of this manipulative and self-regarding demagogue?
Politically he was an interesting phenomenon. Supposedly of the left, his
inspiration was shallow and eclectic, a ragbag of ideological detritus. I
read recently that Carlos Fuentes, a left-wing Mexican writer, described him as
a ‘tropical Mussolini’, which comes extraordinarily close to the truth.
The political technique is just the same, the bread and circuses approach to
life. Now the circus is over and the bread, as Venezuelans may soon
discover, is likely to be in ever shorter supply.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">The signs are already in
place. Inflation is out of control, a fact that is unlikely to be changed
by Maduro’s recent devaluation of the bolivar, the national currency.
Venezuela, after years with Chavez at the helm, is a ship floating at the
bottom of every league table of good governance and economic competitiveness,
an inconvenient truth pointed out by a recent report in the <i>Economist.</i>
Inflation is bad, poverty is worse, crime is unmanageable. This, I
suppose, must be the true definition of the ‘Bolivarian Revolution.’ The
Revolution in health care, for instance, seems to have involved rotting hospitals
and declining investment. The fact that Chavez had to seek medical
treatment in Cuba is a perfect indictment of a lamentable state of
affairs. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">So, yes, he exited, stage-left,
at just at the right time, no longer around to face the reckoning after
fourteen years of corrupt, oil-fuelled autocracy. His legacy, I suspect,
will survive as a kind of grand illusion, a little like that of Juan Peron in
Argentina, or a little like that of Mussolini. </span></div>
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-75001148623876834062013-03-18T16:51:00.000-07:002013-03-19T18:47:27.957-07:00Death by Diversity<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9mmZW7jekitlL49HreyaEBndlJ_yZZJmunA9iMf2t26xAip7n8U_xvFXRKiY9mOXAegMLtZAaF_jLDKFpM19VMQ87wJkEDy-9dU_4jby1izAIyOXKXxbKfkMibvhxUqozE1K89hrk5738/s1600/immigration-open-your-eyes11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9mmZW7jekitlL49HreyaEBndlJ_yZZJmunA9iMf2t26xAip7n8U_xvFXRKiY9mOXAegMLtZAaF_jLDKFpM19VMQ87wJkEDy-9dU_4jby1izAIyOXKXxbKfkMibvhxUqozE1K89hrk5738/s400/immigration-open-your-eyes11.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Observers of the last general
election will surely remember the encounter between Gordon Brown and a woman by
the name of Gillian Duffy, a voter from some Lancashire constituency or other,
a person of no importance at all; just an ordinary individual. Still, she
had her fifteen minutes of fame. She spoke some unwelcome truths to the
then Prime Minister. She raised concerns over mass immigration, for which
she was later dismissed as an ‘awful woman’ and a ‘bigot’ by Brown when he
thought only his toadies were listening. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Gillian Duffy became for a brief
time everywoman, or everyperson, a representative of thousands and thousands of ordinary voters who have effectively been disenfranchised, vote or
not, by the political machine, by the social democratic oligarchy that dominates
debate and dismisses each and every concern over immigration as ‘bigotry’ and
‘racism.’ The real issue is nothing of the kind; the real issue is
numbers. But it’s become a truth that dare not speak its name, or if it
does speak its name – bang! bang!, you are dead. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Douglas Murray is one of the few
journalists for whom I have a particularly high regard. He says what he
thinks, a dangerous pastime in our liberally illiberal culture. He said
what he thinks about mass immigration in the latest issue of <i>Standpoint</i> (“A
census that revealed our troubling future”). His focus is the 2011
census, which does indeed show that we have a troubling future. The
census, and the comment that has followed its publication, shows something else
I think: it shows that England, as a nation, is being systematically eroded,
worn away, deliberately so, by the politicians, bureaucrats and pundits who
govern our lives and dominate our media.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">I often use the term England –
wrongly, I’m occasionally reminded – to refer to the United Kingdom as a
whole. But here I really do mean England. Wales, which I do not
know that well, and Scotland, which I know very well indeed, have magnified
their own distinct identities, just as England’s vanishes by degrees. The
arrogance of the liberal intelligentsia, you know, the Islington set, is quite
stunning, the contempt for our past and our traditions palpable. Murray
mentions two of the usual suspects, liberal rent-a-mouths wheeled out on
television discussion shows – Bonnie Greer and Will Self, the former who
appeared on <i>Newsnight</i>, the latter on <i>Question Time</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">So, Greer speaks – “There is
always this failsafe, spoken or unspoken, that there is a British
identity. That’s always interesting to me. I think it one of the
geniuses of the British – of being British – is that there isn’t this sort of
rock-solid definition of identity that an American has.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">She obviously is referring to the
English, as I think few will dispute that the Scots, Welsh and Irish have a
fairly rock-solid definition of identity. The argument that the English
allegedly do not is a justification for mass immigration, the more the merrier,
all in the name of multiculturalism and diversity. One of the most
alarming facts from the census is that native English people are now in a
minority in London, the nation’s capital. Boris Johnson, the mayor, says
that we need to “stop moaning about the dam burst.” Yes, that’s right;
let’s just drown. In 23 out of the 33 London Boroughs ‘white Britons’ are
now in a minority. A spokesman for the National Statistics Office
apparently hailed this as a victory for ‘diversity.’ As Murray rightly
asks, what exactly are the limits of diversity? When there are no white
Londoners at all? </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Then there is that self-satisfied
prig Will Self, the grand ayatollah of soft soap leftism, mouthing away
shop-soiled clichés on<i> Newsnight</i>. The audience was packed with the usual
debating fodder (does the BBC keep these people in permanent reserve?), that
‘cross section’ of the English public who clap at every right on remark, sorry,
left on remark. In the wake of the census he said “Up to the Suez
crisis...most people’s conception of what being British involved was basically
going overseas and subjugating black and brown people and taking their stuff
and the fruits of their labours. That was the core part of British
identity, was the British empire. [sic]. Now the various members of the
political class have tried to revive the idea quite recently without much
success?” </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Do you have any idea what he is
on about because, quite frankly, I don’t? Anyway, his view is in complete
contrast to that of George Orwell, who had far more direct experience of Empire
than Self will ever have. Most English people ignored the Empire, Orwell
wrote more than once; it wasn’t something that impacted directly on their
lives. The Self argument is essentially that England must be punished for
its past ‘crimes’. The Empire, you see, strikes back in mass
immigration. The <i>Newsnight</i> audience went in to orgasmic hysteria over his
platitudes – “The people who line up on the opposition to the immigration line
of the argument are usually racists...with an antipathy to people, particularly
with black and brown skins.” </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Back we go to Gillian Duffy and
her kind, the people who simply don’t matter, the people who are not
‘representative’ enough ever to be included in a <i>Newsnight</i> audience, the people
who can be scorned and ignored as their nation is literally swept from under
them by the dam burst. These are the people that Self and the other
metropolitan literati can disregard; these are the people who can be damned as
racist with the usual self-satisfied smugness of those who know that they are
always right. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">I value the tolerance of the
English people, one of the defining characteristics of an identity that we are
not supposed to have. But tolerance can be too tolerant. Is there
any other nation in the world that would allow itself to be treated like this,
to be told that mass immigration is a necessary corrective for past
wrongs? The implication is that the end of England should be celebrated
in the name of diversity. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">We are not and never have been a
nation of migrants, another lie perpetrated by the likes of Greer and
Self. Until fairly recently in history our identity as a people was solid
and unremarkable. The mass migration of the French Huguenots in the late
seventeenth century, for example, was a fraction of a fraction compared with
today’s figures. Orwell could write about the English in a wholly
uncontroversial way. He couldn’t now; few could. Perhaps we should
call, before it is too late, for our country to wake up. </span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;"> </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Either that or face death by
diversity. </span></div>
Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-20546606869931267092013-03-17T16:41:00.000-07:002013-03-17T16:41:50.571-07:00Monsters of Imagination<br />
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<span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Those who have read<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><em>Robinson Crusoe</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> will recall the point when the hero
discovers that he is not alone on his island when he rather ludicrously finds a
single footprint! A duffelpud, perhaps? Defoe is really setting the mood, one
of horror and one of fascination. And it’s with horror and fascination that the
cannibals made their way into the western imagination, from Robinson’s Island
to the feasts of Hannibal Lector.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">I had so much fun – if that’s the word! - in picking my way
through<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>An Intellectual History of Cannibalism</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> by
Catalin Avaramescu, translated by Alastair Blyth and published by the Princeton
Press. It really helped me to put the practice in a the wider context of
history, civilization and imagination</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">I love Hannibal Lector as much as the next girl but - oh my -
when it comes to the real thing some of the details of the cannibal life are
truly hard to take in. I remember when I was in my teens reading about the case
of one Armin Meiwes, who lived in the German town of Rotenburg an der Fulda.
This man went into a website called Cannibal Café and there advertised for a
“well-built eighteen to thirty-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Who on earth is going to volunteer for that? Well, someone
did, someone by the name of Bernd Brandes. The actual details of what followed are
truly repellent. Let me just say that dinner began while Brandes was still
alive, the hors d'oeuvre being a certain part of the anatomy that most men find
dear. Found to be too rubbery, it was sautéed and fed to the dog!<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">To a certain extent, as Avaramescu explores, cannibalism
began really as an invented concept, a dividing line between civilization and
savagery. It was another form of ‘here be dragons,’ filling out the space on
empty maps, those barbarous places “...of the Cannibals that each other eat.”
Cannibals, in other words, entered the western imagination alongside such
fabulous creatures as the dog-headed men and monopods.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">For Thomas Hobbes the cannibal was a useful concept, a
warning of the depths that the war of all against all could descend to in the
absence the social contract and the state. But it became something more in the
real world; for the discovery of supposed cannibal ‘savages’ became an excuse
for far greater savagery, as the Spanish fully demonstrated in the Americas.
The hypocrisy, not just in this, but in much of the practice of ‘civilization,’
was touched on by Montaigne;</span><br />
<br />
<em><span style="background: white;">I
conceive there is more barbarity in eating a man alive, than when he is dead;
in tearing a body limb from limb by racks and torments, that is yet in perfect
sense; in roasting by degrees; in causing it to be bitten and worried by dogs
and swine (as we have not only read but lately seen, not among the inveterate
and mortal enemies, but among neighbours and fellow citizens, and which is
worse, under the colours of piety and religion), than to roast and eat him
after he is dead.</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span style="background: white;"> </span></i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">I suppose the modern cannibal, cannibals in the form of the
fictional Lector or the factual Meiwes, are really the creation of civilization
rather than savagery, a notion supported by arguments advanced by the Marquis
de Sade, who saw the absorption of ‘the other’ as a perfect expression of one’s
freedom. Alas, there are some forms of freedom one would rather not have.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Avaramescu has performed commendably in exploring the darker
side of human imagination; for this is a journey less into the practice than
the perception. It touches on assumptions about barbarism that allowed
supposedly civilized societies to behave towards others in a wholly barbarous
way. As much as anything<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>An Intellectual History of Cannibalism</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> is an
exploration of evil, of ideas and practices that go well beyond the consumption
of human flesh.</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-78801383573681254062013-03-14T17:17:00.000-07:002013-03-14T17:19:46.255-07:00In Thrall to the Past <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 17px;">This September will mark the five hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Flodden, fought in the county of Northumberland close to the Anglo-Scottish border. In terms of the numbers engaged it is a good candidate to be the largest ever fought on English soil, though most people broadly acquainted with the battle history of this country would probably select either Towton from the Wars of the Roses or Marston Moor from the Civil Wars in preference. The fact is, so far as the English are concerned, Flodden is a forgotten epic, no matter that it was the most complete victory ever won over Scottish invaders.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 10pt;">It’s better remember in Scotland as a catastrophic defeat and tragic memory. King James IV headed the company of the dead, joined there by men from virtually every family in the land, including many of the leading nobility. Their sacrifice is recalled in a lament known as <i>The Flowers of the Forest</i>. It is also recalled in <i>Marmion</i>, Sir Walter Scott’s epic poem</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 10pt;">I know many Scots will resent me for saying this, but James, often perceived as their best and most enlightened king, was a vainglorious and shallow individual, with ambitions far too big for his small country. It was his disastrous invasion of 1513 – mounted when Henry VIII was abroad campaigning in the Low Countries – that ended all pretence that Scotland was a major independent power. No significant purpose was served by his military adventurism. He was aiding France, Scotland’s old ally, though the French time and again had used this partnership of unequals to serve their own cynical ends. As it was Scotland never recovered from the disaster. Within a few decades the country was to find that its French ally was a far greater danger to its independence than its English enemy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 10pt;">As Scotland heads blindly towards a new pretence of independence (Independence in Europe – what a joke!) it’s as well to remember Flodden, along with the political illusions and national vanities that preceded the disaster At the present it is commemorated by a simple stone cross, erected in 1910, I believe, dedicated to the brave of both nations. Now there are proposals for a new ‘ecomuseum’, England’s first, a project linking several pertinent sites across a wide area, places and features in the landscape related to the battle on both sides of the Border. Each site will have its own visitor information and resources. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 10pt;">I understand also that September pilgrimages are being planned from Durham and from Edinburgh to the battlefield. I’ve been there myself. The landscape itself, although a lot of it is now farmland, is largely as it was in the early sixteenth century. Although the encounter is known as the Battle of Flodden, it was actually fought at Branxton, to the north of the hill known as Flodden Edge. Tree covered Flodden Edge, the site of the first Scottish camp, is a mournful place. It least it was that day I walked up, passing the Well of Sybil Grey, marking the place where Marmion, Scott’s knight, died of his wounds. The sound of the wind lightly passing through the trees was as hauntingly sad as any lament. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 10pt;">Speaking of which, <i>The Flowers of the Forest</i> is an ancient Scottish folk tune with battle lyrics added in the eighteenth century by Jean Elliot, another Scottish poet. The English, we are told, “...for ance, by guile wan the day.” No, they did not! They ‘wan’ with inferior numbers by superior leadership, superior gunners and superior weaponry. The Scots, atrociously led, charged in to the affray in an age old manner, lacking all discipline and co-ordination. Bravery did not compensate for folly. It very rarely does. </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 10pt;">I am fond of Scotland, a country I have visited more than any other. But if this is a country where the past is paid proper reverence it is also a country in thrall to past illusions. Perhaps in the end the myth of Bannockburn, Scotland’s one and only great victory over England, will serve to be the most significant illusion of all. Next year will see the seven hundredth anniversary of this seminal encounter, a high tide which the present Nationalist administration in Edinburgh hopes will float their referendum on independence all the way into a triumphant harbour. Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister, is preparing, in the style of King Robert Bruce, the victor of Bannockburn, to mount his own pale horse. He is hoping for one battle; he might very well find another. </span></div>
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-68203467475589832712013-03-13T17:34:00.001-07:002013-03-13T17:34:48.567-07:00YES, sí (that’s YES!) <br />
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So, it’s YES; the people of the Falkland Islands have voted, and they have voted to preserve their connection with Britain. In a 92% turnout 99.8% voted YES, that’s 1513 of the islands’ population of 2900 people. A search is now underway for the three losers who voted no, presumably planted members of Argentinian President Kristina Kirchner’s coterie. <br />
<br />
Jan Cheek, a member of the island’s eight-strong legislative Assembly, said that the vote should leave the world no doubt about the wishes of the people. The world should be in no doubt; the world was there to see that the poll was carried out properly, including observers from Mexico, Uruguay and Chile. Brad Smith, the American head of the international team, said that “The Falkland Islands referendum process was free and fair, reflecting the democratic will of the Falkland Islands.” <br />
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It’s a real slap in the face to Madame Botox, Argentina’s hapless president, who would allow no voice at all to those she condescendingly refers to as an “implanted population”, notwithstanding the fact that many have been there for generations. The same principle, as I’ve said before, should be extended to the people of Patagonia. Kirchner’s idiocy has even been remarked upon by an Argentinian columnist. Writing in the <em>Miami Herald</em>, Andres Oppenheimer said that “Argentina’s latest offensive against the islanders may go down in history as a text-book example of diplomatic incompetence.” <br />
<br />
When the votes of the people who actually live in a place are dismissed as ‘irrelevant’ one simply knows what one is up against. Do the people of Argentina know what they are up against? I expect a great many do, those who are the victims of their president's mismanagement and incompetence. Her Falklands’ offensive is as much a distraction from her country’s internal woes as General Galtieri’s was in 1982. Her words are inflating faster, if such a thing is possible, than Argentina’s national currency. <br />
<br />
I should make it clear that, much as I despise Madame Botox, whose head is as empty as her lips are full, I admire Argentina as a nation. I was in Buenos Aires a few years ago over Christmas and New Year and I found the people unfailingly courteous, particularly those who taught me to tango! It may be a dangerous thing to confess but I have a sneaking affection for Eva Peron (I laid flowers by her family tomb in Recoleta Cemetery), as skilled a politician as Kirchner is incompetent. Argentina was also the home of Jorge Luis Borges, one of my all-time favourite writers, a man of unparalleled genius, who understood the English mind and English literature so well. <br />
<br />
It saddens me to see the country so ill-served by Kirchner, little more than a Chavez in skirts. If any one person is responsible for the Falkland’s record-breaking YES vote it is her. It was she in her arrogance and stupidity that pushed for this result. In her dismissal of a properly conducted democratic vote the world should be able to understand exactly what she represents - an old fashioned imperialist by any other name, full of contemp for the wishes of the ‘natives.’ My goodness, why on earth would the ‘natives’ want to be a colony of Argentina under Kirchner? Oh, yes, I know – to see the savings of a lifetime diminish to nothing and to see the economy ruined, all part of her magnificent legacy. They would be able to enjoy a lot of hot air, though. It might be good for floating balloons. <br />
<br />
I noticed from a post on Twitter last night that, in the wake of the referendum, Prime Minister David Cameron has called on Buenos Aries to take note. “The Falkland Islands may be thousands of miles away”, he said, but they are British through and through. People should know that we will always be there to defend them.” All I can say in response to this is that the Islanders best make ready to form their own self-defence force. <br />
<br />
Defend them, Prime Minister; oh, yes, with what exactly? When even the Archbishop of York was moved to criticise dangerous cuts in our defence capability then one knows just how bad things have become. Could we even defend ourselves, I ask, let alone the Falklands? I suppose we can always rely on the Seventh Armoured Brigade, the famed Desert Rats of the Second World War. There is only one problem – soon they will be a tank formation with no tanks. <br />
<br />
How I wish we could send Madame Botox and Gay Dave to one of the remoter and uninhabited islands in the Falkland’s group, there to fight it out as best they are able. I just thought as I was writing this of Jean Paul Sartre’s play<em> No Exit</em>, where three totally incompatible characters are sent to hell, isolated in the same room forever and ever and ever. To make up the trio I would add Barry O’Bama. Now that’s really lifted my spirits. <br />
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-616257072894878442013-03-12T17:35:00.001-07:002013-03-12T17:35:41.548-07:00 Freedom is the Freedom to Enjoy Pornography<br />
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<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 12.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
Do you think the world has gone mad? I don’t.
I <i>know </i>it’s gone mad. More and more the human race
resembles a heard of lemmings, rushing towards that final precipice. I am
the little girl looking at life’s absurdities, shouting, as the parade passes
by, that the emperor is naked. Nonsense, the mass response comes: he is
just beautifully dressed!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 12.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
Speaking of nakedness, I have
porn on my mind at the moment, specifically the dire<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Fifty Shades of Grey</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>by the talentless E. L. James.
Who buys this appalling rubbish, I wonder? What purpose does it
serve? Is its bewildering success a measure of just how empty the
emotional and sexual life of middle aged women has become? Is it an indictment
of middle-aged men? Alas, I fear it must be. More than that, I fear
its commercial success shows just how stupidly gullible a great many people
are, how stupidly gullible most women are, particularly women of a certain
age. These are the people who look before and after and pine for what is
not. Actually they pine for what has never been, for what they have never
had, true erotic fulfilment. All they can do is feast on it vicariously,
dining on fifty shades of boredom. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 12.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
E. L James is really Julia come
to life. Surely you remember Julia? A pledged member of the
Anti-Sex League, she is Winston Smith’s lover in George Orwell’s<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i>.
When she’s not having extra Anti-Sex League sex she works in Pornosec, Muck
House, as it’s colloquially known, a sub-section of the Ministry of Truth, which
produces erotica for the masses. Specifically she works on the novel
writing machines, turning out boring, ghastly rubbish, as she puts it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Still, it’s important to
recognise that rubbish, particularly pornography, serves a purpose. It’s
often a way of mopping up all sorts of residuals energies and frustrated
libidos. How prescient Orwell was to make an outwardly orthodox member of
the Anti-Sex League a functionary in the manufacturing of muck! For porn,
it might be said, is really just a form of anti-sex, judging real sex to be
contact between real people, people who are emotionally and physically engaged
with one another. Who knows? Without porn to compensate for vacuous
sterility hordes of frustrated and under-fulfilled proles might cause social
chaos. “The people have such empty lives”, the queen is told. “Let
them read Fifty Shades of Grey”, she responds.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The underemployed members of the
European Parliament really should be told that they close down Muck House at
their own peril. This week, you see, they will be voting to ‘ban all
forms of pornography.’ This will include yet more censorship of the
internet in an attempt to “eliminate gender stereotypes” that demean
women. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Our MEPs, the dear old things, are
also proposing the establishment of an Anti-Sex League. No; what they
actually want is for governments to set up state sex censors with “a mandate to
impose effective sanctions on companies and individuals promoting the
sexualisation of girls.” Would that include girls, I wonder, promoting
their own sexualisation? <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The
charge is being led by Kartika Liotard, a left-wing Dutch feminist MEP,
bedecked with the characteristic red sash of the Anti-Sex League, who
wants </span><span style="color: #282828;">"</span>statutory measures to prevent any form of pornography in
the media and in advertising and for a ban on advertising for pornographic
products and sex tourism.” So, Amsterdam’s red light specials can -
excuse the profanity - get fucked! <o:p></o:p></div>
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There are of course unenlightened
people (aren’t there always?) who see this as just another erosion of free
speech. The accusation has been given added weight by the fact that the
parliament has blocked the orgasmic rush of protest emails that followed when
news of the measure emerged. Criticism in any form, the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>vox populi</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>itself, is being treated like so much
rubbish, dumped straight into the Memory Hole by the spam filters. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Yes, indeed, we move ever forward
into a modern version of Orwell’s super state. It is not governed by
malign forces, though, just those who act for our own good; those who know what
is best for us in their magnificent condescension. The anti-porn drive
comes soon after a report urging tighter press regulations, including the right
of Brussels officials to control and supervise national media, with powers to
enforce fines or sack journalists. Censorship is clearly the wave of the
future in our brave new – sexless - Europe that has such people in it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I have little or no interest in
porn. I agree with Julia - though not E. L. James - that commercial
erotica is boring and predictable. I do not want to read about sex, still
less watch other people having sex. I’m far too hands-on for that.
No empty and unfulfilling fantasies for me, thanks ever so much; I leave that
for the mummies and all others who are past it, assuming that they ever drew
alongside it in the first place. No, I could not care less about porn,
but I do care more about freedom. I will speak as often and as loudly as I can
against Big Brother, or Sister, in Brussels, whose creeping tyranny does not
creep any more. Freedom is the freedom to enjoy pornography, even if it
is something as banal and lifeless as<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Fifty
Shades of Grey</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-73732589970886450412013-03-11T16:56:00.000-07:002013-03-11T16:58:27.429-07:00Captain, my Captain<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik0hz8TbvBqRBl1rW3xt3ppEbaK6RFF0LX4twozH2SDaFgQW3D86JzsReNiuAk53sW2zSNaD0nvbT-jaFamr29aY1fCYxiluOYQ8hcvBUFgX0kAk8coYVetukDBctEPtXIgkZuknc1_47C/s1600/hauptmann+von+koepenick.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik0hz8TbvBqRBl1rW3xt3ppEbaK6RFF0LX4twozH2SDaFgQW3D86JzsReNiuAk53sW2zSNaD0nvbT-jaFamr29aY1fCYxiluOYQ8hcvBUFgX0kAk8coYVetukDBctEPtXIgkZuknc1_47C/s400/hauptmann+von+koepenick.jpg" width="252" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 17px; text-align: start;">Köpenick's memorial to its Captain</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Picture
this. In 1906 a man named Wilhelm Voigt, a life-long petty criminal,
was released from his latest term of imprisonment. Now in his late
fifties he’s had enough of his former life. He wants to go
straight. He wants a job. He wants a place to live. But
Wilhelm Voigt is invisible. He has no identity
papers. Without identity papers he cannot get a residence
permit. Without a residence permit he cannot get a
job. Without a job he cannot get a residence permit, and so on in an
endless vortex. He is lost, a little like the Flying Dutchman,
seemingly doomed forever to be tossed around on waves of bureaucratic
idiocy. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">In
one final attempt to break to break the bars of the prison outside prison, he
dons a military uniform, that of a captain. As if by magic he ceases
to be invisible. The clothes have made the man. He orders
some passing troops to fall in, marching them to the town hall, hoping to trace
his missing papers. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">On
the way he stops at the police station, there ordering the officers to ‘care
for law and order’ by preventing all telephone calls to the capital for the
next hour. In the town hall both the mayor and the treasurer are
arrested for ‘crooked bookkeeping’. The Captain orders the safe to
be opened. When the mayor asks for a warrant he points to the
bayonets of his soldiers, saying ‘These are my authority’, a line in any other
country in the world that would have exposed him as a fake. The safe
is opened and the mayor relieved of a fairly large amount of cash. A
receipt is provided, of course. After all, this is a society built of paper. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">I
know this seems like a fairy story but it really happened. You may
very well have guessed where from the name of the Captain. Yes, this
is Germany, the Germany of Kaiser Bill, Prussia, to be precise, a place
obsessed with uniforms and tied tight in regulations, a place where to hear is
to obey, a place where everyone only obeys orders. The little drama
took place in the town of </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Köpenick</span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"> to
the east of Berlin, from which Voigt was ever after known as the Captain of
Köpenick. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">He
was caught and faced another lengthy term in prison. </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">But
his exploit</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"> captured the imagination of a people not generally
noted for their sense of humour. </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Bit by bit he was transformed
in to a German version of Robin Hood, and as such he is still celebrated
today. </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"> Even the Kaiser was amused, later pardoning Voigt as
an ‘amiable scoundrel.’ But
Bill was not a subtle man; the irony and absurdity of the incident and all that
it told of the Second Reich was lost on him. He was pleased, rather, by the obvious reverence that
a military uniform carried among the people at large.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">A
quarter of a century later Carl Zuckmayer, a playwright, wrote <i>Der Hauptmann
von Köpenick</i></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"> – The Captain of
Köpenick -, a satire based on the incident. First performed in
Berlin in 1931, it was a commentary on contemporary society as much as the
past, a commentary and a warning. Two years later it was banned and
Zuckmayer went into exile. The Kaiser, unsubtle or not, had a sense
of humor. Hitler had none.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"><i>The
Captain of Köpenick</i></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"> is a play not
that well-known outside Germany. I don’t suppose there is any great
surprise in this, in that the humour does not travel that well, or German humor,
to say the least, tends to be a little bit on the heavy side. But it
has made one of its rare foreign excursions to London’s National Theatre, which
is where I saw it at the weekend. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">In a
new English language version by Ron Hutchison and directed by Adrian Noble, it
stars Anthony Sher as the eponymous anti-hero. </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"> It was a
commendable performance, just as I have come to expect from Sher, an actor of
range and depth. Here he could
embrace comedy and pathos with equal ease, as he was transformed from a real
nobody into a fake somebody, the talented Herr Voigt! </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Set
in the National’s Olivier Theatre, the play made good use of all the technical
wizardry at the director’s fingertips, allowing for rapid scene changes,
including some wonderful expressionist-cum-cubist Berlin cityscapes in the
style of <i>The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari.</i> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"><i>The
Captain of Köpenick</i></span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"> is as relevant
today as it was when first performed. The continual flow of
bureaucratic absurdity from Brussels is sufficient proof of that. I
could only wish that it had been handled with greater skill. I found
Hutchison’s updated version irksome and silly at points rather than funny,
descending now and again into outright vulgarity. More than that,
Zuckmayer’s message is obvious enough, the satire biting enough, without the
need for the continual reminders, and certainly without the need for the
climatic “hysterical Dance of Death.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">This
is a play, as I wrote above, that does not travel well. </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"> It might
have travelled better with a little more discipline, a little less reverence
and a lot less Teutonic</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"> stodge</span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">! </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"> Still,
Sher, along with some of the supporting cast, makes the experience all
worthwhile. If you are in
London, and minded to go, the Captain will be goose-stepping around until 4
April. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje5jTg8EpdEJuJ12Kv6axecvpCHqIBjvmOXJO-Kf-pf6PABSAHVysa5RrxnMLxu7waOrHtnl9QoCjCznO1S7X0JOUCOWJ8TyiwCgChITYB3F8o2UHf7O0cmq1K0MACi2CNs9O8hIwGrJcv/s1600/Sher.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje5jTg8EpdEJuJ12Kv6axecvpCHqIBjvmOXJO-Kf-pf6PABSAHVysa5RrxnMLxu7waOrHtnl9QoCjCznO1S7X0JOUCOWJ8TyiwCgChITYB3F8o2UHf7O0cmq1K0MACi2CNs9O8hIwGrJcv/s640/Sher.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-47187370856085292062013-03-10T17:32:00.002-07:002013-03-10T17:32:53.215-07:00Love in the Shadows <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFO-KqNiDP4BpjZiGkgrTKR0GyrWFmOGUlT8gbFzDzFVFArWn2p242SEuyKA1DHccxTafzbzWTvL8gcfZ_MxxVRO_4v1CbPUVwcw1mZssSYD87hfqo25avD27RREaVv8Jkn7O8J8nhf4vr/s1600/amour-movie-poster-11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFO-KqNiDP4BpjZiGkgrTKR0GyrWFmOGUlT8gbFzDzFVFArWn2p242SEuyKA1DHccxTafzbzWTvL8gcfZ_MxxVRO_4v1CbPUVwcw1mZssSYD87hfqo25avD27RREaVv8Jkn7O8J8nhf4vr/s400/amour-movie-poster-11.jpg" width="293" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I didn’t watch this year’s Oscar ceremony; I
very rarely watch it any other year; the hype and the razzmatazz is just too
much for me, no matter how much I love cinema. I knew that Daniel
Day-Lewis had won best actor for his performance in <i>Lincoln</i>, but
that’s really about it. So far as the general field is concerned, I had
seen <i>Brave</i>, <i>Anna Karenina</i> and <i>Django
Unchained</i>. I also saw <i>The Beasts of the Southern Wild</i> recently,
though I can’t say I was hugely impressed by this confused and misdirected
piece of cinematic hype. What I had not seen - what I had not even heard
of - was a French movie called <i>Amour</i>, which won the Academy Award
for the best foreign film. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thanks to another blogger I finally caught up
with this movie. I am so glad that I did. It’s a marvel, an intelligent,
thoughtful, perceptive and well-crafted piece of cinema. It’s a movie for
grown-ups, different in every way from the usual hyperactive adolescent
nonsense that English-language producers largely prefer. I was on the
point of writing that I don’t think a movie like <i>Amour</i> could
ever have been made in the Anglo-Saxon orbit – it simply would not have
attracted sufficient commercial support – when it occurred to me that in some
ways it resembles <i>Iris</i>, the 2001 biopic about the novelist Irish
Murdoch. <i>Amour</i> deals with the same themes of love and
loss as <i>Iris</i>, though in a far less glossy manner.</span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Written
and directed by the Austrian film-maker Michael Haneke, <i>Amour</i>, by
coincidence, is the second movie of his that I’ve seen within a fairly short
space of time. The first was </span><i><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Das weiße Band – </span></i><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The White Ribbon – a German language film shown recently on the
BBC’s catch up service. This concerns a rural community in Germany on the
eve of the First World War, a place beset by a growing sense of menace.
The menace is also present in <i>Amour</i>; the menace here is death, an
opponent that wins every battle, though often victory is claimed slowly,
claimed, moreover, with sadistic relish. </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Amour</span></i><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> – Love – is a story of disentanglement, of a relationship
being slowly unwoven after a life-time; it’s about the disintegration, if
anything, of love and of life. It’s a story set in the twilight days of
Anne and Georges Laurent, two elderly former music teachers, wonderfully played
by Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant. The action takes place
mostly in their well-appointed Parisian apartment, which here serves the
purpose of a theatre. </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The movie begins, pre-credits, with the police
breaking in to the apartment, there to discover the body of an elderly woman,
her head surrounded with flowers. Then it’s a journey back into the
recent past, starting, post credits, with an elderly couple attending a piano
recital. Afterwards they return to their apartment, a sanctuary replete
with objects and haunted by memories, only to discover that the door has been
damaged in an attempted break-in by some unknown stranger. Puzzled and
unsettled, they arrange to have the door fixed, but the stranger, in a sense,
never really goes away. Something cold and unsympathetic has entered
their lives and made a home.</span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s almost impossible to review this film
without writing one big spoiler. But what is important is not so much the
story of Anne’s descent into debilitating dementia, the outcome of successive
strokes, and Georges’ attempts to cope – a simple enough tale in itself – as
the sparkling personal interplay between the two characters. Everyone else
seems like an intruder, even their own daughter Eva (Isabelle Huppert).
The old couple now live in the midst of lengthening shadows. Is love
enough? No, it is not. For Georges it is replaced by fear, as he
sees Anne slip through his fingers like sand, with nothing substantial to hang
on to. This is a chamber piece with no music, only the sounds of silence,
sounds arising from the shadows. </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the dead of night Georges hears the
doorbell. He opens but there is nobody there. Walking down the
hall, he finds that he is wadding ever deeper in water. A hand clamps
over his mouth from behind; his eyes fill with panic and fear. He is
drowning. Then he wakes. It’s only a nightmare. But it’s
not. He is being suffocated by Anne’s decline. </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The suffocation serves as a metaphor, but it
also prefigures Anne’s final demise - Georges smothers her with a pillow.
But this is no mercy killing; there is nothing premeditated about it; he kills
her in a rush of passion, angered by her refusal to eat. We are left to
assume that Georges own death follows, but with the mystery now complete we
simply do not know; he is just no longer there. The apartment and its
shadows are left to Eva</span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I read an article by one Peter Saunders
describing <i>Amour</i> as a “dangerously seductive piece of
pro-euthanasia propaganda.” He goes on to compare it to <i>Ich Klage
An</i> – I Accuse -, a movie made in 1941 under the auspices of Josef
Goebbels, intended to make the public more supportive of the Nazi state’s
euthanasia</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> programme</span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. There is even a hint at the end that <i>Amour</i> deserves
to be banned, just as <i>Ich Klage An</i> was by the Allies after the
War.</span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I find it difficult to cope with this kind of
fearful stupidity, the assumption that movies must inevitably carry some
message or other, some </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">generalised</span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> desiderata that we are all meant to
absorb uncritically, that our emotions, childlike in their innocence, can be
corrupted and manipulated by ‘propaganda’. </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Amour</span></i><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> is no more an argument for </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">euthanasia</span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> than it is an advertisement for
book-lined Parisian apartments. It’s a story, that’s all; a story of two
particular people and their particular existential anguish. Other people
could have produced another story, another director might have told the tale
differently, with less poignancy and less restraint than Haneke. He does
it so well, asking some of the hardest questions of all, chiefly what is the
right way to behave when faced with huge and personal changes in one’s
life? I certainly do not know the answer. More than that, I do not
think there is an answer. We come to life’s dilemmas, each and everyone
of us, in our own unique ways; we find our own paths, even in the midst of
loneliness and despair. In the end love may not be enough but at least it
makes life worth living, even in the lengthening shadows. </span><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Time has transfigures them into </span></i><i><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
Untruth. The stone fidelity<br />
They hardly meant has come to be<br />
Their final blazon, and to prove<br />
Our almost-instinct almost true:<br />
What will survive of us is love.</span></i><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
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<br />
Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-31087280910233576732013-03-07T15:55:00.000-08:002013-03-08T17:41:48.163-08:00Ding, dong, Hugo is Dead, Horrible Hugo is Dead! <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizBif14jM1qSLSWC0EZ0JQ3rrIEpf_8-KMsKqcNdnFdI2cbDgbnDNgbtxjeBDjCWak32XH9LWtCTB4eiBG6T_-_K6Oix-Zmof_bMPQ62ZIl2jVX6pWLxSSQ9TCSo07iNXR46eiWHRo03Yq/s1600/Chav.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizBif14jM1qSLSWC0EZ0JQ3rrIEpf_8-KMsKqcNdnFdI2cbDgbnDNgbtxjeBDjCWak32XH9LWtCTB4eiBG6T_-_K6Oix-Zmof_bMPQ62ZIl2jVX6pWLxSSQ9TCSo07iNXR46eiWHRo03Yq/s400/Chav.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bye, bye</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: #f7f7f7; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Chavez
Vive!”, the red-shirted chavs are shouting on the streets of Caracas, the
capital of Venezuela. No, he is not – Chavez Muerto! Thank
goodness that the world is rid of another petty demagogue, a corrupt and
degraded icon of the left. It's a measure of just how degenerate left wing
thinking has become when a creature like this is celebrated. Rather have
no more heroes anymore than a hero like Horrible Hugo. </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f7f7f7; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">By
his friends shall ye know him, and lamentations are coming from the likes of
Syria’s Basher Bashar al-Assad and our very own Ken Livingstone, King Newt
himself. Diane Abbott, that fat thick black racist, said that his death was a
‘tragedy’ for South America. Imam George Galloway described him as
‘Spartacus.’ I wish that the Romans had got to him sooner. “He’s Spartacus”, I would gleefully have shouted. </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f7f7f7; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; padding: 0cm;">Obsequies
are also coming from Iran’s President Mahmoud Amadinejad. Apparently
Saint Hugo will rise from the dead, reappearing among us in the wake of Shia
Islam’s long awaited T</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #f7f7f7; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; padding: 0cm;">welfth</span><span style="background-color: #f7f7f7; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; padding: 0cm;"> Imam, which means, of
course, it will be the twelfth of never, which will be a long, long time.
Then there is the mass outpouring of woe from the readership of the</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <i><span style="background: #F7F7F7; border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">Guardian</span></i><span style="background: #F7F7F7; border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">, a paper, ironically, that would never have
survived in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Hmm...maybe there is
something to be said for Chavez after all. </span></span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f7f7f7; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">We
go now to another delusional tyranny; we go to Cuba.
There two days of national mourning has been announced, a period of “deep and
excruciating sorrow”. It will indeed be deep and excruciating for the
Castro mafia if a post-Chavez government cuts off the oil transfusions which
have kept their shabby regime afloat for the past few years. </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f7f7f7; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Meanwhile,
back in Caracas, the red shirts wail. Oh, woe is them. Vice President
Nicolas Maduro led the lamentations. There he is, flailing around the
place, blaming shadowy right wing and foreign forces for Chavez’ premature demise.
Apparently his cancer might have been plotted from ‘outside.’ Yes,
indeed, a successful attack, code named Operation Crab! </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f7f7f7; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Not
everyone is as deluded as Maduro and the hysterical canaille in Caracas.
There are those in the country who are courageously prepared to speak the
truth. “Hate and division was the only thing that he spread”, one man
said. “He did a lot of harm because there are no institutions, there is
no justice. He mistreated everyone who disagreed with his government.” </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f7f7f7; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Even so the mourning extends, yea, even so far as the United States, that is to say, even so
far as the actor Sean Penn. Apparently Chavez’ death is the hardest thing
he has had to endure since trying to watch all of ex-wife Robin Wright’s series</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <i><span style="background: #F7F7F7;">House
of Cards</span></i> <span style="background: #F7F7F7;">on Netflix. He
plans to honour his late buddy by making life a ‘living hell’ for his fellow
Americans. I guess he won’t have to do very much then; his mere presence
among them should be more than enough. Penn’s counter-attack on the Great
Satan will include chain-smoking, which may mean that Operation Crab will soon
claim another victim. In that sad event I expect the scenes of hysteria
on the streets of Los Angeles greatly to exceed those in Caracas.</span></span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f7f7f7; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Elsewhere
there is a lot of pious hand-wring, the usual guff that follows the departure
of leaders like this, hated while they were alive, loved now that they are
dead. William Hague, our own Foreign Secretary, claims to have been
‘saddened’ by the event. Personally I prefer my hypocrisy in extremely
small doses. Evo Morales, Bolivia’s indigenous and semi-literate
president, said that Chavez is “more alive than ever.” Actually he’s more
dead than ever. Amado Boudou, Argentina’s vice-President, tweeted that
“one of the best has left us; you will always be with us.” Never mind the
contradiction here. Perhaps he might like to go and find him? I
would advise him to hold his nose in the process. </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f7f7f7; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Amidst
the guff there is a nugget or two of sanity. The best, I think, comes from Ed
Royce, Chairman of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs. “Hugo
Chavez was a tyrant," he said “who forced the Venezuelan people to live in
fear. His death dents the alliance of anti-US leftist leaders in South
America. Good riddance to this dictator.” </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <i><span style="background: #F7F7F7;">Venceremos</span></i><span style="background: #F7F7F7;">, Comrade Royce! </span></span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f7f7f7; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
simple fact is that for all of his left-wing credentials, or rather because of his
leftist credentials, Hugo Chavez was nothing but a bully and a thug, a
fascist by any other name, who did much to destroy the economy of Venezuela for
the greater good of...of what, exactly? Why, of himself and his venal,
money-grubbing family. Is there anything at all to be said in his
favour? There is this much: he over-fulfilled, Stalin-style, aspects of
his own five year plan – Venezuela’s murder and inflation rates are now among
the highest in the world. </span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f7f7f7; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">My,
how it delights me to speak ill of the dead; how it delights me that Chavez has
been swept off to the deepest circle of hell, where he can dance forever with
the likes of the late Kim Jon-il.</span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The world
will not record their having been there;</span><br />
Heaven's
mercy and its justice turn from them.<br />
Let's
not discuss them; look and pass them by...</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-12998389413189365102013-03-06T15:37:00.001-08:002013-03-06T15:37:51.897-08:00Shitting on Haiti<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmH0vE0G-jP1X821lSkFdtqFy_oyYhZ-gfreS3n4Eiy_I9ul0DisLa6GmKtghuoRRUtYjUHyCmZIQeiTjFLFSH9DuRRlTljEBJcIxU57ihAbZ6Y7PLNnajJMsHtqDF8M7YJ02YOzpoEDTh/s1600/colera_article-420x0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmH0vE0G-jP1X821lSkFdtqFy_oyYhZ-gfreS3n4Eiy_I9ul0DisLa6GmKtghuoRRUtYjUHyCmZIQeiTjFLFSH9DuRRlTljEBJcIxU57ihAbZ6Y7PLNnajJMsHtqDF8M7YJ02YOzpoEDTh/s400/colera_article-420x0.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Haiti
is a young nation, which is to say that it is a nation of the young. Growing
old here without mishap is something of an achievement. If history in the
widest sense is no more than a form of collective memory, then there are not
many still alive who remember the days of Baby Doc Duvalier, the former
dictator. The son of the infamous Papa Doc, Baby Doc ruled the country from his
father’s death in 1971 until he was ousted in 1986 by a military coup.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">After
many years in exile he returned home in 2011. Some remembered. Some even
celebrated his return, seeing his rule in a positive light, a measure of just
how miserable things were in the country after the previous year’s devastating
earthquake. Others were less enthused. Baby Doc’s apology to those who “rightly
feel were the victims” did little to dispel the blacker memories. A legal
action was mounted on behalf of a few dozen people, the survivors of the past,
calling him to account for the tortures, disappearances and murders that took
place under his regime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Last
year a court ruled that too much time had elapsed since the alleged crimes were
committed. For most people this is a past that is simply too far away. Although
the case is being appealed, very little is happening in the face of Baby Doc’s
obduracy (he has boycotted all hearings) and the weakness of the Haitian
justice system.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
United Nations (UN) is outraged. Towards the end of last month the organisation
issued a statement, urging the judicial authorities in the country to act on
their responsibilities. “Such systematic violations of rights must not remain
unaddressed”, lectured Navi Pillay, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights. So
far as she is concerned there can be no statute of limitations when it comes to
the kind of grave abuses that were such a feature of the Duvalier regime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
have no information on the point but I would be surprised if that many
Haitians, beyond the alleged victims, care overmuch about past injustices. As I
say, this is a young country. The past is far less important than the present;
the crimes of Baby Doc far less relevant than the crimes of...the UN. Yes,
indeed, if misery was not misery enough in this country the UN introduced even
more; it reintroduced cholera, a disease that had been absent from Haiti for
over a hundred years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">After the 2010 quake UN teams arrived bringing all sorts of aid.
Unfortunately for Haiti they also brought a lot of shit. Human beings are human
beings and waste is waste; there is really not an awful lot one can do about
that. But the one thing that should not be done is the dumping of a lot of
untreated faecal matter into local rivers, sources of bathing and drinking
water. Jonathan Katz describes what he saw, and smelt, in <i>The Big Truck
That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Behind a Disaster</i>, his
recently published book;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Young men from the village were standing in front of the gate
wearing backpacks and ball caps. Evens greeted them, approaching with open
arms. "We heard someone dumped kaka in the river. Know anything about
that?"</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Heads nodded.</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">"Can you show us where?"</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">At once they turned and walked toward the base. We followed.
Nepalese soldiers in green-and-brown camouflage and sky-blue helmets watched us
from a guard tower. Just before the gate, the young men turned right and walked
to the back of the base, where only a steep narrow slope of mud and rock
separated the compound from the river. As we neared, they covered their noses
and mouths. A second later, I realised why. The stench of rotting human filth
was debilitating. We held our breath and crossed a concrete embankment along
the ridge.</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
result was a mass outbreak of cholera, a dreadful water-borne disease, which so
far has killed over 8000 people and infected a further 640,000. The disease is
now endemic, predicted to kill as many as 1000 people every year. In the end
the fatalities are likely to exceed those of the 2010 quake many times over.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Yes,
it is a dreadful condition. The body becomes like a burst dam, water evacuated
out copiously from both ends of the alimentary system, in uncontrollable
vomiting and diarrhoea. This extreme evacuation is accompanied by high fever
and terrible intestinal pain, as if one had eaten a stick of thorns, so some have
described. Death, when it comes, is by dehydration. There is no liquid left.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Now
just imagine if a private company, by a singular act of negligence, was
responsible for such devastation. Inevitably it would face all sorts of
penalties - in compensation payments, in legal costs and in damage limitation.
Just remember the case of BP and the Gulf oil disaster. But BP is a legal
entity; it’s a public corporation and it can be sued by the public. The UN is
above all that. The UN is divine in the sense that its acts are like the acts
of God, beyond all human retribution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
very same day that Navi Pillay chose fit to lecture Haitians on human rights,
the office of Bi Ki-moon, the Secretary General, issued a statement dismissing
the claims for compensation involving 5000 people. The action was, to use the
jargon, “not receivable” because of the UN’s privileges and immunities. In
other words, the UN is above all national law; there is simply no basis for
legal action against this organisation. Writing to the lawyers acting for the
claimants, the UN’s legal office said “...consideration of these claims would
necessarily involve a review of political and policy matters.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">So,
yes; dumping faeces in clean rivers would seem to be a matter of UN policy.
Dealing with the consequences is not. The callousness, the arrogance and the
high-handedness here is quite simply stunning. Compared with the irresponsible
actions of a body that behaves a little like an international pirate the crimes
of Baby Doc seem almost irrelevant. Clearly, when it comes to human rights, all
cases are equal, but some cases are more equal than others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB3O3p_d_QS5KrHbHBXaJijOwT7QzTuvrYpIqWIG_ThBVZj7PaaQEkTz03SYaP-1T8Uv0VgaPJI1bi-HyGbEaxhNMX-a8NeyI0smI9-7y2py9yAFmyiEqHUggTvOg5DVenEsNR3-epAr7D/s1600/Haiti-cholera-010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB3O3p_d_QS5KrHbHBXaJijOwT7QzTuvrYpIqWIG_ThBVZj7PaaQEkTz03SYaP-1T8Uv0VgaPJI1bi-HyGbEaxhNMX-a8NeyI0smI9-7y2py9yAFmyiEqHUggTvOg5DVenEsNR3-epAr7D/s640/Haiti-cholera-010.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-46461412508555966442013-03-05T13:31:00.001-08:002013-03-05T17:33:29.481-08:00King Henri’s Head <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf0vu-b21kCn5YIIyvbQhALsevBNXNK4JAjVElSBbmgJo8yI1wDLTmVWAx57qb2poLUN4ihlbNX3tNKT5cOdED1DxNtOSxRuIt_d6ikXFPJnDdH0vyF5u_VdhPWl_-CDH5ZCcAT5E2WUMS/s1600/henry+remodelled.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf0vu-b21kCn5YIIyvbQhALsevBNXNK4JAjVElSBbmgJo8yI1wDLTmVWAx57qb2poLUN4ihlbNX3tNKT5cOdED1DxNtOSxRuIt_d6ikXFPJnDdH0vyF5u_VdhPWl_-CDH5ZCcAT5E2WUMS/s400/henry+remodelled.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Royal
reconstruction is rather the fashion at the present. First we
had England’s Richard III, discovered illegally parked in
Leicester, now we have France’s Henri IV, the other king who lost
his head during the Revolution! </span></span><br />
<div style="line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Buried
in the Basilica of Saint Denis, along with the other monarchs of
France, his body was dug up by revolutionaries in 1793 and thrown
into a mass grave, though some mystery admirer managed to make off
with the head. It finally turned up, after a two century gap,
in the attic of a retired tax inspector, or so it is claimed. </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div lang="en-GB" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Henri,
who was assassinated in May 1610 by a deranged religious fanatic, was
one of France’s better kings. The first in the Bourbon line,
he converted from Calvinism to Catholicism, thus ending the Wars of
Religion that had troubled France for a good bit of the sixteenth
century. Paris was worth a mass, he famously said, just as
famously promising the French people the means to have a chicken in
the pot every Sunday. </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The
reconstruction, carried out by Philippe Froesch, a craniofacial
expert linked to Barcelona University, certainly looks convincing,
resembling the king’s portraits in life, though the addition of the
hair, the beard and the ruff has certainly helped!
Identification was apparently aided by a gash near the nose, as well
as a beauty spot and a pierced ear along with other key features.
But, alas and alack, Good King Henri has been the cause of a new
civil war between France’s squabbling royals. Yes, they are
still around.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="en-GB">The
head comes, you see, at the head of a new book – </span><span lang="en-GB"><i>Henri
IV, The Mystery of the Headless King </i></span><span lang="en-GB">by </span>Stéphane
Gabet and Philippe Charlier. “Oh, yes it is”, they say.
“Oh, no it isn’t”, the critics reply. The brain was still
in place, they say, though that would have been removed after death
by the royal embalmers. </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The
royals have weighed in, the Bourbons on the pro side and their
Orleanist cousins on the anti. Prince Louis Bourbon, a banker
and Henri’s distant descendant, says that the head is genuine.
There is no question of it, he explained to journalists<i> Le Figaro</i>,
“It is both highly moving and a great responsibility.”
Well, I suppose it would be, coming face to face with a face from the
past. In the other corner there is Henri d'Orléans, Count of
Paris and Duke of France, described the book as a "pseudo
inquiry". "This affair seems closer to a novel than
scientific or historic truth," he told French journalists. "What
are we supposed to see from this supposed facial reconstitution –
that he had a Bourbon nose?"</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Yes,
I suppose he has the point, by a nose at least. Support here
has come from Oliver Pascal, president of the French Institute of
Genetic Testing, who told <i>Figaro</i> that there is no conclusive proof
that the head is Henri’s. “The information would not stand
up in a court of law”, he added. </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Meanwhile
the head that may or may not have been that of the king sits in a
bank vault, ironically enough, in the Bastille district of Paris.
The mystery of the head looks set to intrude into French testimonials
for some time to come, rather like that of King Charles, which
continually troubled poor Mister Dick. </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">‘</span></strong><strong><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Do
you recollect the date,’ said Mr. Dick, looking earnestly at me,
and taking up his pen to note it down, ‘when King Charles the First
had his head cut off?’ I said I believed it happened in
the year sixteen hundred and forty-nine.</span></i></span></span></span></strong></div>
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<br /></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #2a2a2a;">”
‘</span></strong><strong><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Well,’
returned Mr. Dick, scratching his ear with his pen, and looking
dubiously at me. ‘So the books say; but I don’t see how that can
be. Because, if it was so long ago, how could the people about him
have made that mistake of putting some of the trouble out of his
head, after it was taken off, into mine?</span></i></span></span></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Oh,
well, long live the King’s Head! </span></span></span></span></strong></div>
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-89619360063410025072013-03-04T16:04:00.001-08:002013-03-04T16:04:49.960-08:00Vaffa! <br />
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">I’m
going to ask you to imagine that we have just had a general election. I’m
going to do more than that: I want you to imagine that the Monster Raving
Looney Party has emerged as the strongest force in Parliament.
Impossible, you say; such a thing is beyond imagination. Oh, no, it is
not; at least it’s not in Italy. Following the recent election Beppe
Grillo’s Five Star Movement attracted a quarter of the vote. It now has
108 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house, and 54 in the Senate.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Who’s
Beppe Grillo, you ask? He’s a comedian, that’s who he is, part of a long
tradition of Italian funny men. Where people once chanted ‘Du-ce!’
‘Du-ce!’ then now chant ‘Bep-pe! Bep-pe!’ His story is remarkable, even more remarkable
in some ways than that of Mussolini. Turning from jokes to political
activism, Il Beppe founded the MoVimento 5 Stelle (M5S) – the Five Star
movement – in Milan in October, 2009, the very same city, incidentally, where
life was first breathed into Fascism in 1919. The capital V in the party
title – well, not so much a party as a movement – stands for <i>Vaffa!</i>, the
leader’s own signature, which roughly translates as Fuck off! </span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">And
how Grillo wants so much in Italian life, particularly to Italian politics, to,
well, <i>Vaffa!</i> Ever since 2005, when he started his blog, now the most
popular in Italy, he has gathered a large following among the disaffected,
chiefly from the young. Many of his new MPs and Senators only just scrape
past the minimum 25 age limit for entering Parliament. These are the
people for whom, in their disgust, <i>Vaffa!</i> has become the watchword; these are
the people who have been the devotees of Beppe’s <i>Vaffa!</i> Day, or V Day, set up
in 2007.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">All
politicians are crooks, says Beppe, apart from his own, of course, a line that
echoes all the way back to 1919. He’s now had his very own, and rather
remarkable, March on Rome. The <i>Economist</i>, that maiden aunt of political
journalism, is tut tutting its disapproval in the latest issue. <i>Send in
the clowns</i>, the old dear trumpets across her front cover, with an additional
<i>How Italy’s disastrous election threatens the future of the euro</i>. Inside
the humourless dowager drones on about those naughty Italian children,
determined as they are to avoid reality. It’s not just the future of the
euro that is threatened, she witters on, but the future of Italy itself.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Dear, oh dear, there is Beppe and Silvio Berlusconi, the other clown who made a
reasonably good showing, moving ever forward while “...Mario Monti, the
reform-minded technocrat who has led Italy for the past 15 months and restored
much of its battered credibility, got a measly 10%” Really, there is only
one word for that and the word is...<i>Vaffa!</i> </span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">Democracy
would be all right if it wasn’t for the voters. That’s the reality of the
European Union, a reality clearly endorsed by the <i>Economist</i>. The people
did not want Monti; Monti was imposed upon them. Now the people, rather
inconveniently, have spoken, exposing the fraudulent politics of Europe with a
bold finger gesture. <i>Me ne freggo!</i> – I don’t give a damn - , now there is
another decent slogan worth reviving. </span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">The
inconclusive result of the election is conclusive on one point at least:
Italians do not want to be ruled by the technocrats, either of the Brussels or
the local variety. Monti was imposed on them in 2011 without elections by
the Eurocrats. Charles Moore puts the point very well in his <i>Spectator
Notes</i>. Just imagine (sorry, I hope I’m not overtaxing you here!) if David
Cameron was kicked out of office by the European Central Bank, which decreed
that Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, the chairman of the Financial Services
Authority, was elevated in his place. Yes, I too would support any
British Beppe who came along, Ken Dodd or whoever, rather than the cat’s paw of
the European banking-bureaucracy complex.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="line-height: 12.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">People
can only be pushed so far before they start to get angry. Our own anger
was shown in a small way during the recent Eastleigh by-election, which saw the
United Kingdom Independence Party pushing the Conservatives into a humiliating
third place. ‘It’s only a protest vote’, the Tory apparatchiks wailed,
‘The masses will return in 2015.’ Oh, really, will they? Only, I think,
if they are in a gay mood, as Cameron hopes. But the anger over Europe,
over the highhandedness of the dreadful European tyranny, grows by the
day. The Long March of UKIP is by no means over.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #2a2a2a; line-height: 12.75pt;">And
then there is the onward march of Beppe. His politics are not my
politics; he is far too left-wing and statist for that, far too, ahem,
fascist! Still, he is a symptom of a growing disgust across the whole of
Europe with Europe, with those who make a mockery of democracy because it does
not suit their technocratic ends. “We are all young”, the sixty-four-year
old Beppe says on his blog. “We’re a movement of many people who are uniting
from the bottom up. We don’t have structures, hierarchies, bosses,
secretaries...No one gives us orders.” Yes, I am young. I turn to
Brussels and I really only have one word – <i>Vaffa!</i> </span></div>
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-57621086578570947002013-03-03T16:50:00.002-08:002013-03-03T16:50:57.423-08:00Let Them Eat Crap<br />
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<span style="line-height: 12.75pt;">You obviously will know about the horsey in the national
diet if you are British, on the assumption that you have not been away on Mars
for the past few weeks. For the rest of the world, those who are
blissfully ignorant of these shores, let me just say that the British public,
or the poorer part of it, was being fed horse meat pretending to be beef. </span></div>
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Shocking! Shocking! Mind
you, I’m not convinced that those who buy tripe (possibly?) like Findus’ or
Tesco’s deep frozen lasagne really know or care what they are eating, so long
as it has a meaty taste. Then there are the burgers. Lord alone
knows what’s in those. Actually, we do know – udders, guts, sexual parts,
all rendered down; revolting enough, even when it is not horse. <span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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There was a readers’ poll in the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Daily Telegraph</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>recently arising from the horse meat
scandal. The question was simple: do you think it acceptable to eat horse meat
or not? I voted no, because I would no more eat horse than I would eat
cat or rat. Rat, yes, this is something I will come on to in a bit or a
bite. The result of the poll - revealed after one had voted - was almost
neck and neck, the antis winning by a mere nose. So, whether or not the
pros actually eat horse burgers they do not think there is anything wrong in
principle here.<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Oh, but there is. First of
all the issue is about honesty. I know one virtually has to have a PhD
now to make sense of the labelling on food products, but at the most basic
level people have a right to know if they are eating beef or dog meat. If
they have a preference for dog that’s fine, just as long as they understand
what it is they are buying. I say dog, knowing full well that the
<i>Telegraph</i> poll would have produced a far clearer result if that had been the
product in question, though there are some places in the world where dog is
considered tasty and nutritious. <span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The real issue, the issue that is
beyond the comprehension of the unimaginative, is that of adulteration; of the
corruption of food, a corruption born of the drive to feed the masses with the
cheapest product available. “Let them eat cake”, Marie Antoinette is
falsely alleged to have said. But that is positively benign compared with
the “Let them eat crap” of the modern food Tsars.<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The adulteration of food was big
issue in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both in England and the
United States. The problem got worse with industrialisation, when cheap
food was a necessary corollary of low wages. In the States it got so bad
that the New York<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Evening Post</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>published a parody of a well-known
nursery rhyme;<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i>Mary had a little lamb,<br />
And when she saw it sicken,<br />
She shipped it off to Packingtown,<br />
And now it's labeled chicken.</i><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Upton Sinclair caught the mood in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Jungle</i>, a novel published
in 1906, which described the dreadful conditions in the meat packing
industry. But sick lamb pretending to be chicken was not enough for him;
oh, no. He went that step further, claiming that the workers who had the
misfortune to fall into the rendering tanks were ground up and sold with the
rest as Durham’s Pure Beef Lard! <span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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We have come a long way since
then, with legislation and inspection aimed at reducing corruption (meat) and
corruption (human). No we have not. If anything the situation is
getting worse. Corruption, in one form or another, is the name of a
pretty dirty game; and when it comes to meat things can get an awful lot dirtier.
It’s not really that long since England was beset by the BSE crisis, when it
was discovered that rendered meat products was being fed to cattle, with
disastrous human results. We learned from that that we clearly learned
nothing. For now horse is in the stakes and the steaks.<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 12.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
Keep your eye on that horse; keep
your eye on the one named Profit, the odds on<span lang="EN-GB"> favourite</span>; for that is what it’s all about. We have enough
pasture in England to produce all of the lamb and beef we need, with pork and
chicken not far behind. But we have become a link in a longer and longer
international food chain. The more extended it gets the greater the
opportunity for criminal intervention. Writing in the New Statesman (<i>Meat
Market</i>, 22 February), Colin Tudge rightly asked “If crooks along the
tortuous food chain can add horse to our meat products, why not dog, or rat, or
cat?” Yes, why not? He raises some additional pertinent
questions;<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 12.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
<i>Given that the world trade in
bushmeat is now vast, why not add bush fat of baboon? What’s to keep out
the meat that has been assigned for pet food? Why not meat that has been
condemned? What guarantees can be given? </i><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 12.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
None, it would appear, though we
have had a Food Standards Agency in England for the past twelve years, a
guarantor that clearly <span lang="EN-GB">guarantees</span> nothing.
Then there are the supermarket chains like Findus and Tesco, who have
singularly failed to investigate their suppliers. Then there are the
politicians, who assure us that our meat is ‘safe’ when they know full well
that, as a member of the European Union, we as a country have no proper control
over the product that comes from the Continent. Horse meat today; cat or
rat tomorrow. <span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 12.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
I think there is a strong element
of cynicism here. As I say, the horse to watch is Profit. The poor
- and it is the poor - are the principle victims of our two for one deep frozen
food culture. In the wake of the horse fiasco, super market chiefs are
saying that their products are likely to become more expensive, that the days
of cheap food are over. This suggests to me that they already knew that
there was something fishy, make that horsey, about the stuff they were selling,
that or they simply did not ask too many pertinent questions. Get ‘beef’
from Mexico or Bulgaria rather than local suppliers – why not? It’s cheap
and goes very well in burgers and<span lang="EN-GB"> lasagne</span>.<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal" style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; line-height: 12.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 16.2pt;">
This is a story, as Tudge says,
that might turn nastier yet. The world food chain is out of control, or
falling in to the control of unscrupulous profiteers, pirates of all sorts, the
sort of people who only care about Profit, the one horse they do not want to
see fall. Inevitably the scandal will settle down as cosmetic changes are
made, as politicians issue further assurances and standards are supposedly
raised, as the public’s <span lang="EN-GB">fickle </span>attention
turns to some other tale of woe. Those who have become veggies, fearful
of eating horse, will return to meat. The pendulum will swing the other
way in this best of all possible worlds. At least until it is discovered
that the benighted public have been eating something a lot less benign
than horse. In the meantime I would strongly urge you to avoid Durham’s
Pure Beef Lard. <span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-35039184623855084722013-02-28T16:34:00.000-08:002013-02-28T16:34:07.554-08:00Whistling Dixie<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmUCd-jx6-F3xe-WcRFty6-4j3P4NmHkMyEEvvPos-8ELPOs1ziY0-RPKqo_onlZbP4PKA7HmrYz76HbNfPNO_fw0NR-W-MKmeaouGtubk1yKGvPG3k0cAN5f6nq3dO3b8WXSA_9DJXyCh/s1600/rebel-flag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmUCd-jx6-F3xe-WcRFty6-4j3P4NmHkMyEEvvPos-8ELPOs1ziY0-RPKqo_onlZbP4PKA7HmrYz76HbNfPNO_fw0NR-W-MKmeaouGtubk1yKGvPG3k0cAN5f6nq3dO3b8WXSA_9DJXyCh/s400/rebel-flag.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
Barack Obama has seen fit to
lecture us benighted Brits on the value of the European Union. I have
only one observation: I do so wish that he would stick to his own Union and not
ours. Does he not have troubles enough on his doorstep? Perhaps he
might care for a few helpful tips on managing his own affairs? Would he
welcome such a thing? I rather think not.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
He's a bit worried, you see, by
Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposed in out referendum on British membership
of our less perfect Union. His administration has gone so far as to
‘warn’ (good word) our government against secession. Has Obama, by
chance, started to wear a stove pipe hat? There he is, hoping that the
mystic chords of memory will swell as they are touched by the better angels of
our nature, that and a word or two from him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
My mystic chords are starting
to hum. I’m a secessionist; I want the bells of Charleston...sorry,
London, to toll that day when we are once again free as a nation. I want
to be the first to fire on Fort Sumter, now conveniently located in
Brussels. The better angels of my nature tell me that the European Union
is an affront to liberty, an affront to everything this nation stands
for; an affront, for that matter, to everything America once stood for.
Quite frankly I can’t stand it; I can’t stand the bureaucrats and apparatchiks,
the foreigners who exercise more control over our destiny than our own
Parliament. If Obama thinks it is possible to fool all of the people all
of the time then he is wrong. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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</div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
But he can stand it, sitting in
Washington, knowing not the first thing about this country or Europe.
Apparently he has raised the issue personally with Cameron. A strong
Britain in a strong Europe is in “America’s national interest.” Oh,
really? Well, then, let me return the favour – “Mister President, it is in the
British national interest for a strong America remains a member of the North
America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA.)” Now, just imagine the reaction to
that!</div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
Obama’s earnest desire that the
British people are not allowed a vote on their future, just in case that such a
vote proves contrary to the ‘American interest’, has a long history in his
administration. Three years ago Vice President Joe Biden (what a perfect
foil against presidential assassination he is) visited Brussels, ludicrously
describing the place as “the capital of the free world” and the European Parliament
as the “bastion of European democracy.” He went on to compare it with the
US Congress. To that I say he understands little about his own political
process and nothing at all about ours.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
But, please,
please witter on, Joe. As Neil Gardiner noted in the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Telegraph</i>, Obama and Biden’s
views on Europe “are as relevant to British voters as the futile ranting
of Herman Van Rompuy or Jose Manuel Barroso, and will only serve to reinforce
the determination of millions of Britons to throw off the shackles of Brussels.”
If that’s the case then they are to be welcomed! <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
American liberals, so I
believe, think that the EU is a jolly good thing, a beacon of benevolence, an
icon of peace, fairness and equality, as Lionel Shirver ironically observed in
the latest issue of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Standpoint</i>. Criticising the
EU, she goes on to say, is like “drawing horns on Nelson Mandela, or making
lewd thrusting hand gestures at Aung San Suu Kyi.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
Do they know, do you know, what
incorporation in this Union actually means? Well, let me tell you this –
the Southern Confederates of 1860 and 1861 had not a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>fraction</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>of our grievances. Let’s play a
game, one which may help to focus things just a shade or two better. Just
imagine if the United States was part of a super
national Conglomerate, incorporating both North and South America.
Just imagine the capital of this Conglomerate is in, say, Mexico City.
Are you ready? OK, then, now we are set to go. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
There are so many aspects of
your national life that are controlled from south of the border, down Mexico
way. Traders face severe legal penalties if they use any other than
the metric system; so forget about your quarter pounders.
Washington has no control over immigration policy or the nation’s territorial
waters; foreigners and foreign fishermen can come and go as they please; that’s
all to the good, because Guatemala and Honduras are about to join the
Conglomerate, thousands and thousands already looking hungrily towards your
vanishing border. Your law making bodies are no longer sovereign; even judgements by
the Supreme Court can be overruled. By the lights of the American Court
of Human Rights, based in Bogota, even foreign terrorists will be allowed to
remain, living for years on public support, because they have a “right to a
family life.” If, for any reason, the government offers the people a
choice on some aspect of the Conglomerate’s policy, then, if the result is a
negative one, the people will be asked to vote again and again until the people
get it right. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
You think this is a joke, that
things could not possibly go to this extreme? It might be a joke for you;
I assure you it is not joke for us. The EU, contrary to Biden’s BS, is
not the beacon of democracy but its shadow. The European Parliament is
not Congress but a hugely corrupt sinecure. European democracy is a
pretence, a hollow shell, eaten from the inside by termites. It’s not the
people who decide on the great issues of the day but the bureaucrats.
Manuel Barroso, the bureaucrat-in-chief who heads the Commission, is a former
Maoist, which may give some insight into the political techniques he
favours. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
People of my generation have never had a say in
whether we want to be part of the EU or not. The last vote we had on the
subject was in 1975, so only people of my parents’ generation have had a choice
on something that is of fundamental importance to us all. And that
referendum, I should add, was based on dissimulation, evasion and outright
political fraud. Mother and father voted yes then; they will not vote yes
now.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="ecxmsonormal">
I have no interest in the
American interest. I have an interest in my own interest, an interest in
my future and the future of my nation, which is precisely why I want out of
this corrupt and deadening Leviathan, this contemptible Union. For all
these reasons and more I’m a secessionist. Obama can go hang and, for
good measure, let the EU drop with him. Meanwhile I shall sit on my hands
and whistle Dixie. <o:p></o:p></div>
Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-81125076752790661502013-02-27T15:56:00.000-08:002013-02-28T16:05:04.981-08:00A Culture of Fear<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbkNbCa167j7xV04VVwW76GdklfeNgOR-UNMqgD00mbD2RwvAU5XJB53oJ-qm0FeXdhIaQEABpOt0brA56BvBgJqG4OKkvqL6HQMQKTDXyN4dQLJd-dAB7bJ9yCUmf6DvEvLZk0_0n1gPQ/s1600/cartoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbkNbCa167j7xV04VVwW76GdklfeNgOR-UNMqgD00mbD2RwvAU5XJB53oJ-qm0FeXdhIaQEABpOt0brA56BvBgJqG4OKkvqL6HQMQKTDXyN4dQLJd-dAB7bJ9yCUmf6DvEvLZk0_0n1gPQ/s400/cartoon.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
wrote recently about the atrocious case of Stafford Hospital, a place where
hundreds of patients are now thought to have died needlessly as a result of
mismanagement, negligence and incompetence. Mismanagement, negligence and
incompetence seem to have become the three wicked fairies haunting the
state-funded British National Health Service (NHS). The scandal caused by their
malevolent magic is now all but impossible to disguise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
attempt has been made, though. The rot here goes high; it goes high as Sir
David Nicholson, the former communist who is now Chief Executive of the
National Health Service. He recently made
it plain that he had no intention of resigning, despite the damning and
damaging report on Stafford Hospital, detailing abuses committed under his
watch. But now the dam has burst; now we know of even further abuses that he
chose to ignore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">In
2010 Gary Walker was sacked as the chief executive of the United Lincolnshire
Hospital Trust in the east of England. The reason given was that he swore
openly at meetings, which seems pretty flimsy on the face of it. Swearing or
not, he was given a very generous severance package - £500,000 ($775,000) is
not to be sworn at. It now appears that this money really was meant to shut his
mouth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2-T28VryeFRK8XbFJNnilKcAwA0gK71onlH3BTZLQhlBWXgPZpaM4iBZZlo5b_taSJbYNcd0aozeYwA1anEejExew78JdHTUvxs6s_FxyhtTDTPT6Jg9acM3WXHiI6-iWkF6fF7cKMX3j/s1600/gary-walker_2480722b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2-T28VryeFRK8XbFJNnilKcAwA0gK71onlH3BTZLQhlBWXgPZpaM4iBZZlo5b_taSJbYNcd0aozeYwA1anEejExew78JdHTUvxs6s_FxyhtTDTPT6Jg9acM3WXHiI6-iWkF6fF7cKMX3j/s400/gary-walker_2480722b.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
year before Walker was sworn off he raised concerns with Sir David over the
standard of care in Lincolnshire hospitals. It seems that close on 700 patients
may have died needlessly as a result of poor care. More were at risk. His
warnings were ignored by Sir David, allegedly because he was “not interested in
patient safety.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">He
may not have cared about patient safety but he certainly cared about swearing
Walker to silence. As part of his Midas handshake, he pledged to keep his
concerns to himself. It was not, perhaps, a commendable choice on his part but
his conscience got the better of him. His silence has been broken despite
emails from NHS-funded lawyers warning him to keep to the terms of the 2010
agreement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Speaking to the <i>Daily Mail</i> Walker said “I want
David Nicholson to be held to account. I warned him that this was going to
happen. I warned him that Lincolnshire was going to become the next Mid
Staffordshire. He didn’t investigate those concerns, and now look what’s
happened.” He went on to refer to the “culture of fear” within the NHS,
something that seems to have been part of Nicholson’s management style.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">United
Lincolnshire Hospitals is one of fourteen trusts presently under investigation
for negligence in the wake of the Mid-Staffordshire revelations about death
under care. Gagging is clearly no longer an option. But Walker’s honesty has
placed him in an invidious position;</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I stand to lose everything if they sue...Now I risk having to
repay more than the settlement because I could be liable for the Trust’s legal
fees. I face ruin. But if it’s got to the stage where thousands and thousands
of patients are dying needlessly in NHS hospitals and the government says no
one’s to blame, someone needs to stand up and be counted...I lost my career, my
partner of six years and most of my assets challenging my dismissal. But I
would not lose my integrity.</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Letters
have now emerged written by doctors and staff at the Lincolnshire Trust warning
that they were being coerced into treating patients in an unsafe environment
and thus endangering their safety. High mortality rates were simply ignored and
staff told that “targets must be met regardless of demand.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The recent Francis Report on the Stafford Scandal might useful be subtitled the No
One’s to Blame Report; for seemingly no one is to blame for the abuses and the
atrocities inflicted on patients, from Nicholson downwards. But at least it
recommended an end to gagging orders imposed on whistle-blowers. Gary Walker’s
case has now been raised in Parliament. Stephen Dorrell, Chairman of the House
of Commons Select Committee on Health, has said that he will be invited to give
evidence. He went on to condemn gagging orders, describing them as
“unacceptable in the NHS” and “against the public interest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">But
that’s the thing: they clearly were acceptable, a part of a corporate culture
that had little concern for the public interest or patient welfare. Speaking to
the BBC Walker compounded an already heavy indictment against his former
employers;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">This is a culture of fear, a culture of oppression - of
information that's either going to embarrass a civil servant or embarrass a
minister. These are big problems. And if you consider that the people that have
been running the NHS have created that culture of fear, they need either to be
held to account or new people need to be brought in to change that culture.</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">On
present indicators it seems likely that little will change. The corruption, the
complacency and the laziness here go deep. In face of monstrous state bureaucracies
like the NHS ordinary people, those who cannot afford private care, are
effectively powerless, as much guinea pigs as they were in times past. Rather
ironic considering that the whole institution is supported through their taxes.
Here, perhaps, we have the true meaning of taxation without representation.</span></div>
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-55013621515255602112013-02-26T17:27:00.001-08:002013-02-26T17:28:40.382-08:00Tim Yeo is NOT a Corrupt Bastard <br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Do you ever wonder about political corruption, about those who use positions of power to advance their own venal interests? I imagine it’s an issue that concerns most people, the declining standards of honesty in public life. It’s always been with us, of course, but there was a time when it took effort to uncover dishonesty and the abuse of office. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Now the corrupt are able to drape their dealings quite openly in some fashionable theory or other, avoiding all conflict of interest and crisis of conscience. How convenient when one no longer has to justify one’s financial wheeler-dealing; how convenient when enrichment is aided by theory and by fashion. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Just think of Timothy Yeo. For those unfamiliar with the British political constellation, he is one of the stars in the Tory firmament, presently among the luminaries of our tree-hugging Coalition government, out to save the planet, regardless of the cost. Oh, but no cost to Yeo; just the contrary; it’s rather a nice little earner. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Rather conveniently for him, and for his bank balance, he is the Chairman of the Commons Select Committee, a powerful and influential voice. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Green policies and wind farms are a jolly good thing, he thinks. Is there any surprise here? He earns £65,000 ($98,500) as a Member of Parliament, not a lot, you may very well agree, not a lot for a man like Yeo. Not to worry: this was supplemented last year by those who appreciate the true value of the Yeo factor. It was supplemented, to be exact, by an extra £136,000 ($206,000), enabling the poor man to live in a manner to which he clearly has become accustomed. This, I should add, for a minimum of work. More, really, for his windy presence. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">So who are these Yeo philanthropists, you ask? Would it surprise you to know that they are all green? Oh, not green in judgement, just green in interest, keen in ensuring that environmental friendliness remains one of the great political and policy stalwarts of the day. For as Tim gets rich they get richer - ‘green’ companies like AFC Energy, Eco City Vehicles and TMO Renewables. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">On his paymaster’s behalf – sorry...in the interests of all of us, at least for those who are not green with envy, Yeo has moved an amendment to the present Energy Bill that will add even tighter targets on the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted by generating power. A holy green alliance has been formed. Alongside Yeo and his shadowy backers (where does their money come from? Who are the investors) there are the usual suspects, the usual variety of nauseating green lobby groups, Socialist and Liberal MPs and others who are likely to ensure that the amendment is adopted. The irony of making the rich richer and the poor poorer seems to have escaped the Parliamentary Labour Party. Yeo’s amendment will mean ever higher energy bills, energy beyond the means of many of the elderly, many more of how will die in future of hypothermia. I urge you, do not grow old in our brave new energy world. Oh, but the greater cause of Yeo is such a noble end, worth a few casualties along the way</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Two years ago I wrote an article on the spread of wind farms (</span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Whistle down the wind</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">, 31, May 2011) in which I made the following points;</span></div>
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<i><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Wind farms, who does not hate the sight of wind-farms? I certainly do. You may think they are necessary as a source of clean and renewable power. If you do I urge you to think again, think of the implications of these hideous blots on the landscape for the landscape. As foreign investors rush in to capitalise on British wind - and the wind of British politicians - just remember that it would take require a farm the size of Greater London to generate as much energy as a single coal-fired power station, assuming a never ending windy day.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"> </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6;">Oh, but think of the money to be made; think of the money being made, for example, by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, effectively bribed by developers to stop them complaining about the killing of eagles by wind turbines. Then there are the bats, of course, the damage these things cause to them; but who cares about the bats? You should care about yourself, though, enough to make sure that you live nowhere near these monstrous carbuncles, because the noise generated has caused health problems for those who do. The difficulty here is that, as the contagion spreads, it will be difficult for any of us to escape them.</span> <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"><i>And all this for what, all this disruption, all this stupidity for what? We see our land destroyed, we see the economy weakened, jobs lost or exported elsewhere; we see an ever greater burden of taxation for what?</i></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;"><i> </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Well now I know – it’s all for the benefit of Yeo! Speak out as much as you want; it will make no practical difference. Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University has spoken out, saying that even without the amendment the long-term consequences of the Bill will be horrible (his word). “It’s a recipe for deindustrialisation”, he added. “Either we get rid of this obsession, or we give our future to the rest of the world. The question is whether we are serious about our economic future or not.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12.75pt;">Tim Yeo is serious about his own economic future, just as he is serious about keeping wind farms away from his own immediate neighbourhood. The rest can go hang, which a great many may very well do in future, when the alternative is a slow death by cold. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Let me amend the ending of my previous article. As you sit in your blacked-out and freezing home, listening to the sound of the roaring wind farms, comfort yourself by thinking of Yeo’s profits. Shame on you for thinking this man, with all of his noble intentions, is a greedy, corrupt, pocket-lining bastard. Same on you for thinking that the Energy Bill is a fraud, verging on treason against this country. Shame on you for thinking that Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the Labour Party are deluded, self-serving and pathetic morons. Shame on you for thinking that the investors in the ‘green’ energy firms might very well be Chinese. The future, you see, is Green...backs. Oh, and the future is for pigs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-40806496778638332332013-02-25T16:06:00.000-08:002013-02-25T16:06:28.857-08:00Pants on Fire! <br />
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When I was in Taiwan I visited the Chiang Kai-shek
Memorial Hall in Taipei, a structure worthy of a Chinese Emperor, there to see
mementos of the late Generalissimo, including his car. When I was in
Tunisia I visited the Habib Bourgiba Mausoleum in Monastir, there to see
mementos of the country’s first president, including his silk summer
suit. <span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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How would you choose to be
remembered, what object or personal belonging might best represent your
life? Perhaps a car, or a suit or some other item that would reflect on
your dignity or your humility? Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former president
of Yemen, is memorialising his own thirty three year rule in a new museum
created in his honour. And what do you think he has chosen as the central
and most personal exhibit, the thing he wants people to remember him by?
This is a man less ordinary. He does not want anything as ordinary as a
car or a suit. He has chosen, rather, a pair of his scorched
underpants. Yes it’s true – Ali, Ali, Pants on Fire! <span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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His singed white pants, along
with a pair of torn trousers, is the central display in the new museum, set up in
a wing of the Saleh Mosque in Sanaa, the capital. The torn and burnt
clothing is a reminder of the bomb blast that almost killed the ex-president
during the 2011 rising against his autocratic rule. Although not yet open
to the public, the news of Ali Saleh’s risible narcissism has spread. <span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Although still a powerful figure
in Yemeni politics, he is seemingly wholly unaware just how ridiculous this
makes him look, a clear comment on the blind and humourless vanity of certain
politicians. Or perhaps it’s just Arab autocrats that are at fault here.
Can you imagine Hitler, Stalin or Mao expecting the masses to be in awe
of their burnt smalls? No? I certainly can't. </div>
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I expect you have already booked
your flight to Sanaa, keen to pay your own respects to the Ali Saleh
legacy. You will be pleased to know that the museum holds a further 2000
exhibits, gifts from foreign dignitaries. There is a Christmas card from
Princess Anne that you might want to see. Just look for the section
marked “Spain, Portugal and Hungari” [sic]. I’m not sure if this means
that the said card was sent from Spain, Portugal or Hungari, or if some other
bizarre logic is at work. Perhaps the curators think that Britain is
located somewhere alongside Spain, Portugal or Hungari. <span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Meanwhile Hamza al-Shargabi, a
Yemeni blogger now based in New York, has set up a page on Facebook, “We are
all going to see Ali Saleh pants on fire.” I can’t wait. <span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-20080824970382173502013-02-24T17:09:00.000-08:002013-02-24T17:09:11.983-08:00Various Conservatives in Search of an Ideology <br />
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<em>Six Characters in Search of an Author</em> is a play by Luigi Pirandello, first performed in Italy in 1921. It’s an absurdist drama which might be said to have anticipated an absurdist turn in Italian politics the following year, when Mussolini did or did not march on Rome, creating his own incomprehensible drama. <br />
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David Cameron, our present Prime Minister; now there is another absurd little man. He is also the leader of the Conservative Party, for which he has penned his own drama – <em>Various Characters in Search of an Ideology</em>. Manicomio!, - Madness - the audience shouted at Pirandello’s premier. I doubt very many people will muster sufficient energy to pass any comment at all on the Cameron show. It’s really quite funny, though, in a sort of gallows-humour kind of way. <br />
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Cameron, as most people are aware (surely they are?), is a chip off the old Tony Blair block. He is a post-modern Tory who has forgotten, if he ever learned, the fundamental truth about the Conservative Party – it does not think; it does not do philosophy; it just is – it exists therefore it exists. But now, under the guidance of the Dear Leader, the Party is in search of an anchor; it looks to fix itself in a seabed of trendy and fashionable ideas. <br />
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Roger Scruton, who does a passable imitation of a traditional conservative thinker, as opposed to a Conservative thinker, has published a perceptive article in the March issue of <em>Prospect.</em> It’s headed <em>Postmodern Tories: What does the Conservative party believe any more?</em> Is it meant to believe anything, I ask? The answer is, yes; unfortunately it is. Nature, after all, hates a vacuum. His article is a reflection on two recent publications: <em>Britannia Unchained,</em> co-authored by a group of up-thrusting and young Conservative Members of Parliament, and <em>Tory Modernisation 2.0</em>, issued by Bright Blue, an organisation that apparently campaigns for reform within the Conservative Party. Where the Number 2.0 comes from I have no idea. Oh, well, maybe I do! <br />
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The authors of <em>Britannia Unchained</em> include Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel and Dominic Raab, a measure of just how far the cosmopolitan and deracinated Cameron project has advanced in recent years. As some of you may have noted, I’m reading the Palliser novels, Anthony Trollope’s epic account of nineteenth century English political life and political attitudes. It’s put me in rather a nostalgic mood, longing for good old-fashioned Tory names like Sir Orlando Drought and Sir Timothy Beeswax. Alas, I fear I’m a hopeless case when it comes to post-modern modernisation.<br />
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I’m getting away from the point, the point being Scruton’s article. The philosophy here is deep and difficult, he writes, but the rhetoric is easy. Matthew Arnold put it well: “...a very good horse to ride; but to ride <em>somewhere</em>.” Aye, there’s the rub. Where is this horse being ridden? Just about as far away from the bedrock of conservatism as is possible to get; as far away from Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and David Hume managed to get, those fossils whose accounts are of no account compared with the masterly analysis of Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel and Dominic Raab, to say nothing of the Blue Group, whoever they are. Today’s winning rhetoric is all about ‘fairness’, ‘compassion’ and ‘cuddles.’ Who exactly is taken in by this rot? Honestly, I have no idea. <br />
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As Scruton says, even those on the right (right of what?) who believe that the long-term effect of this rhetoric is to make everyone dependent on the state, and the state dependent on borrowing from a purely imaginary future, will go on repeating it. It’s all about being caring, fairing and nice; it’s about hugging a hoodie; it’s all about singing <em>Kumbaya </em>around a vast communal bonfire. That’s not Scruton; that’s my own spin, my view of the Cameroons, situated in those tropics where intelligence simply melts in the heat.<br />
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The Tory past is a foreign country; they did things differently there. The Tory past includes Sir Robert Peel, himself something of a moderniser. Peel was clear enough in his view:<br />
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<em>By Conservative principles I mean ... the maintenance of the Peerage and Monarchy — the continuance of the just powers and attributes of King, Lords and Commons in this country ... By Conservative principles I mean that, coexistent with equality of civil rights and privileges, there shall be an established religion and imperishable faith and that established religion shall maintain the doctrines of the Protestant Church ... By Conservative principles, I mean ... the maintenance, defence and continuance of those laws, those institutions, that society, and those habits and manners, which have contributed to and mould and form the character of Englishmen.</em><br />
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Now just imagine ‘Call me Dave’ thinking or speaking like that! Call me Dave calls to the founder of modern Conservatism, saying that he supports gay marriage not in spite of being a Conservative but because he is a Conservative. I suppose it’s a measure of just how healthy the Party is now under his Gay Watch that he is receiving all sorts of helpful advice on ‘modernisation’ from publications like the <em>New Statesman.</em> It’s quite understandable from their point of view, a meaningful political strategy. After all, why bother attempting to deconstruct and destroy the Conservative Party when its leader is doing such a first class job? Just help them bit by bit along the road to modernisation and electoral oblivion. This first class job, incidentally, includes the deconstruction of England itself, a project begun so admirably by Tony Blair.<br />
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Scruton’s conclusion hits home;<br />
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<em>Those are only some of the problems faced, now, by the Conservative party in its search for a defining philosophy. Demographic changes, highlighted by the recent census, further emphasise the difficulty in reformulating the philosophy of “us.” Far easier, you might think, to replace “us” with everyone, to dissolve the country and its culture in the abstract idea of human rights, and to march with Nick Clegg into a transnational future, leaving England on the dust-heap of history. That, in effect, is what the “modernisation wing” of the Tory party is hoping for—a new kind of conservatism which conserves nothing, changes everything, and is guided by the very same rhetoric of equality and human rights that shapes the left-liberal agenda. If that is where we are, then conservatism is dead. </em><br />
<br />
That, Dear Roger, is exactly where we are. Conservatism, at lest insofar as it is embodied in the modern Conservative Party, is dead. What we have in its place is a Party committed to a loose amalgam of trendy metropolitan causes, as trendy and as metropolitan as those who pen advice on modernisation, on forms of political innovation that nobody beyond themselves has any interest in, apart from the liberal left, that is, who see a chance of nailing Conservatism forever. <br />
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There is a tiny ray of hope. Conservatism in the small c sense isn’t dead; it’s too much a part of the English character for that. But it has no effective voice in the representative bodies of our nation. Real conservatism has been defined as ‘nasty’ by the persuasive pundits who now supposedly speak from the right. <br />
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And me? I’m opposed to Cameron not in spite of being a conservative but <em>because</em> I am a conservative. I would never dream, though, of being a Conservative, not now, not at any time in the foreseeable future. My mind is too empty and too nasty for that, too lost in the past. Apart from that, my name isn’t foreign or cosmopolitan or post-modern enough. <br />
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-32789455678611512482013-02-21T16:03:00.000-08:002013-02-21T16:03:18.560-08:00Creating a Desolation<br />
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<span lang="EN-GB">Last week, just before Valentine’s
Day, North Korea carried out its latest nuclear test. In a way this was a
greeting to the world, or at least to the United States. It was meant to
convey one core message: all members of the Axis of Evil are equal, but some
are more equal than others.<u1:p></u1:p></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">T</span>his test comes almost ten years
after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It’s time, I think, to recall
the words of Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State – “The message
out of Iraq is that if you don’t have nuclear weapons, you get invaded.
If you do have nuclear weapons, you don’t get invaded.” North Korea has
them, and is determined to show the world that it has them. Iran - also
on George Bush’s Axis - is on the way to acquiring them and there is really
very little to be done. The truth is simple enough: the invasion of Iraq
has made the world an immeasurably more dangerous place.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Perhaps if George Bush had read Carl von Clausewitz, the
great Prussian military strategist, things might have been different. My
goodness; what could a nineteenth century thinker have to say about a
twenty-first century military fiasco, what could he possibly say to Bush that
Bush would have understood? Probably nothing, but you might care to
consider the following passage from<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>On
War</i>, Clausewitz' magnum opus:<o:p></o:p><u1:p></u1:p></div>
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<em>No one starts a war-or rather, no one in his senses should
do so-without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that
war and how he intends to conduct it.</em><u1:p></u1:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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You see, what is important here, what Clausewitz understood
and American strategic planners did not, is not so much the specific design,
the aims and objectives as these are conceived in advance of an attack, but
what <i>unintended consequences</i>may arise. War is then not a
‘continuation of policy by other means.’ Rather it can, and does, produce
entirely new lines of policy that turn the original objectives inside out. For
Washington the unintended consequences of the war in Iraq have, quite simply,
been endless.<o:p></o:p><u1:p></u1:p></div>
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So, what did the Bush administration not anticipate? For
one thing it did not anticipate that America casualties would be greater after
‘victory’ than before. Above all, it did not anticipate being involved in a
sectarian war. It was all so one dimensional: a deposed dictator, a grateful
people, a new democracy. The real consequences have been a more unstable Middle
East, an increased danger of terrorism, a growing threat to the civil liberties
of the democratic nations, and a widespread distrust of the United States and
England among the Islamic countries.<o:p></o:p><u1:p></u1:p></div>
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In response to a deteriorating strategic situation Donald
Rumsfeld, the then US Secretary of Defence, said quite simply, in the crassest
possible way, ‘Stuff happens’. But you see, <em>stuff should not happen</em> if
war is a rational pursuit of policy in the sense that Clausewitz conceived. The
advice he would have given to Bush and Rumsfeld is to read the signs
of history for possible consequences, in an attempt to minimise the variables.
But they did not read history; they did not read Clausewitz and they did not
understand Iraq. The only certainty has been and more chaos.<o:p></o:p><u1:p></u1:p></div>
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I am convinced, in this anniversary year, that history will
look back on the Iraq War as one of the great political and strategic disasters
of our age. The whole escapade was built on a lie after lie: Saddam had
no weapons of mass destruction and he had no contact whatsoever with Islamic
terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. It was the invasion itself that gave
these murderous militants a major opportunity. Rather than a stable
democracy, the most pronounced of Bush’s many delusions, Iraq today is not that
much better than it was yesterday. Nouri al-Maliki, the present prime
minister, has been building up a new dictatorship, concentrating more and more
power in his hands and in the hands of his Dawa Party. <o:p></o:p><u1:p></u1:p></div>
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Out of sight out of mind, or hear no evil, see no evil,
seems to be the attitude of people who have the good fortune not live in this
benighted ‘democracy.’ But evil there is. We no longer hear of the
killing but the killing still goes on. Last year alone some 4500
civilians died in violence. So far this month another 253 have been added
to the list. The body count grows by the day. Yesterday seventeen people
were killed, fourteen by gunfire and three by bombs. <o:p></o:p><u1:p></u1:p></div>
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The overall picture is horrendous, a cost that almost
defies comprehension. In the nine year period from 2003 to 2012 almost
4,500 American service people were killed along with 179 British. But the
Iraqi deaths, what of those? According to the<i>Lancet,</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>a well respected British medical
journal, in the three years from 2003 to 2006 alone over 600,000 died as a
result of violence, Yes, <em>600,000</em> – bombed, burned, stabbed,
shot and tortured to death. Proportionately that's the equivalent of 6
million Americans or 1.2 million Britons killed over the same period. Can
you conceive of such a Holocaust, can you conceive of the anguish and horror it
would cause? I can't. <o:p></o:p><u1:p></u1:p></div>
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According to recent polls, the majority of the Iraqi people
believe that they are worse off now than they were under Saddam, quite an
achievement by any reasonable measure, considering what a thoroughly unpleasant
person the former tyrant was. <o:p></o:p><u1:p></u1:p></div>
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Now instead of a strong secular dictatorship there is a
weak half-hearted democracy, torn by factional divisions and haunted by
unresolved tensions. A large part of its population in the south is more loyal
in political and religious outlook to Tehran rather than Baghdad. Quite
frankly, I don’t believe that Iraq will ever be a stable democracy in the
Western sense of the term. We wasted millions for what? For precisely
nothing, no political advantage, no strategic advantage; nothing. There
is a perversity here that, quite frankly, is beyond my comprehension. <o:p></o:p><u1:p></u1:p></div>
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There are other issues, other things opened up by the invasion
that people might not have been aware of. Did you know, for instance, that
women under the rule of Saddam enjoyed a relatively free lifestyle, in that
they had many of the same opportunities as men? They were not required to wear
the burqa or the headscarf. After the invasion women in the south around the
city of Basra were murdered for being considered ‘too western’ by the Shiite
militias. Female athletes have been threatened with death for appearing
‘immodest’. Teenagers have been killed because of their hair styles. The
whole thing, quite simply, is a nightmare.<o:p></o:p><u1:p></u1:p></div>
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I cast my eye over the disaster of Iraq and the Roman
historian Tacitus comes to mind. Into the mouth of a barbarian chef,
resisting a Roman incursion, he puts some powerful words;<o:p></o:p><u1:p></u1:p></div>
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<em>A rich enemy excites their cupidity; a poor one, their lust
for power. East and West alike have failed to satisfy them. They are the only
people on earth to whose covetousness both riches and poverty are equally
tempting. To robbery, butchery and rapine, they give the lying name of
'government'; they create a desolation and call it peace.....</em><u1:p></u1:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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As we approach another milestone in this sad history you
might care to reflect that your country and mine, the United States and
England, President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, those emperors of
lying conceit, created a desolation and called it democracy. No wonder North
Korea is perfecting its nuclear shield. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-16942305226256634572013-02-20T15:51:00.000-08:002013-02-20T15:51:37.377-08:00At the Top of the Greasy Pole<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8Um7IvPvn2XQ1Fugmr3i_NjuuN728-BnnCBqKLDmj8NuGxfuj8cRHyPONIM6M8-JvMB5woOI2NnAx3270lUARQ8O800Qa6DP9FIJ_tabWOJihTHdHNLxCFPTYdOatwcslc5NvwIFSfetO/s1600/The+Prime+Minister.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8Um7IvPvn2XQ1Fugmr3i_NjuuN728-BnnCBqKLDmj8NuGxfuj8cRHyPONIM6M8-JvMB5woOI2NnAx3270lUARQ8O800Qa6DP9FIJ_tabWOJihTHdHNLxCFPTYdOatwcslc5NvwIFSfetO/s400/The+Prime+Minister.jpg" width="260" /></a><span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I started my odyssey
through Anthony Trollope’s Palliser series of political novels in early 2011,
beginning with<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><em>Can You Forgive Her?</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> I said at the outset of my review of
this book that the year was to be my Trollope period, an author I had hitherto
overlooked. Well, I only made it as far as<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><em>Phineas Redux</em>, the fourth in the series, which I reviewed in October,
2011, just before a trip to Egypt. I was sidetracked, as I am invariably am,
setting off in the pursuit of various literary foxes, shifting from one horse
to another in mid-gallop. I took time out but I was out for almost a year and a
half!<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Now I’m back on
course, having finished<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>The Prime Minister</em>, the sequel to<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Phineas Redux</em>, at the weekend. Once again I immersed myself in the high
Victorian political and social milieu; once again I was captivated by the
intrigues and the machinations of Trollope’s most engaging character – Lady Glencora
Palliser, now the Duchess of Omnium. Her husband, Plantagenet Palliser, the
Duke of Omnium, formerly the Chancellor of the Exchequer and now the Prime
Minister, has at last made it to the top of the greasy pole, but, oh my, what a
struggle she has trying to stop him from sliding back down!<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Her problem is
simply stated: Plantagenet is the noblest Roman of them all, something of a
drawback when it comes to the realities of modern political life. He heads a
coalition, a compromise on men and measures, cobbled together to break a
political deadlock. He becomes Prime Minister, moreover, simply because there
is no one else suitable at the time, not as the fruit of his own ambition. But,
alas, he is not comfortable in the role; he is far too honest, far too
thin-skinned and far, far too scrupulous. The Duchess, if only it were
possible, could have done it so much better;</span><br />
<br />
<em><span style="background: white;">They should have made me Prime
Minister...I could have done all the dirty work. I could have given away
garters and ribbons and made my bargains while giving them. I would give
pensions or withheld them and make stupid men peers..... a man at a regular
office has to work and that is what Plantagenet is fit for. He wants always to
be doing something...............but a Prime Minister should never go beyond
generalities about commerce, agriculture, peace and general philanthropy. Of
course he should have the gift of the gab and that Plantagenet hasn't got....I
could do a Mansion House dinner to a marvel.</span></em><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Oh, Glencora, you
were a hundred years too early!<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">The truth is that
the Duke, for all his moral rectitude, or because of his moral rectitude, is a
dull dog, high-minded but uninspiring, wholly unsuited for a position which
demands the kind of personal and managerial skills that he simply does not
have. Does Trollope conceive of him as an admirable figure? Yes, he obviously
does, though he is clearly one best suited the second rank of political life,
far better as a Chancellor, where he can ponder the ins and outs of
decimalisation – one of his obsessions – without having to concern himself with
the kind of things that the Duchess understands are an essential part of
effective leadership. A good Prime Minister has to be a consummate actor.
Glencora realises this; Plantagenet does not. No, that’s not quite true: he
does not want to play a part. Playing a part, to be more exact, involves
compromising his Olympian ideals of probity and honour.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Those who are
interested in present day English political realities will find<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>The Prime Minister</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> dryly amusing at points, not least
when the author touches on the nature of coalition government. England does not
love coalitions, Disraeli said. That may be true, but England has to suffer
coalition;</span></span><br />
<br />
<em><span style="background: white;">...coalitions of this kind
have been generally feeble, sometimes disastrous, and on occasions, even
disgraceful. When a man, perhaps through a long political life, has bound
himself to a certain code of opinions, how can he change the code in a moment?
And when at the same moment, together with the change, he secures power,
patronage, and pay, how shall the public voice absolve him?</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<em><span style="background: white;">The Prime Minister</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;"> </span><span style="background: white;">is
certainly a political novel, but the game – unlike the novels of Disraeli
himself - is played in the minor key; the politics are the personal. There are
really no high ideological issues at stake, no great clash of principles. The
focus, rather, is on social, sexual and domestic politics, the politics of
marriage above all, particularly as this bears on property relations.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">The author is
particularly good on the position of women in the Victorian world. Marriage to
a virtuous gentleman, as he sees it, is that highest thing they can aim for,
but he does not shy away from the penalties: the frustration of limited
prospects and circumscribed lives. It’s also a novel of contrasting types.
There is the practical Glencora, a foil to the high-minded Plantagenet. But the
greatest contrast of all is between the Duke, a very perfect, gentle knight,
and one Ferdinand Lopez, a parvenu, an interloper and - in his personal impact
on the lifes of those with whom he comes into contact - something of an
incubus.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Where Lopez comes
from, who and what his antecedents were, and how this outsider managed to graft
himself on to the highest reaches of English society is never fully explained.
Why Glencora takes him up – with unfortunate consequences for her husband – is
also something of a mystery, given that he is wholly without connections or
influence. Lopez, as an interloper, becomes the butt of all sorts of
mid-Victorian prejudices. He is “a man without a father, a foreigner, a black
Portuguese nameless Jew...[with] a bright eye, a hook nose and a glib tongue.”
Whether or not Lopez is Jewish he certainly takes on the role of the
unscrupulous financier, comparing himself at one point to Shakespeare’s Shylock.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Lopez is the kind
of figure that might very well find a resonance with a modern readership,
particularly as we all now live in ABC – the Aftermath of the Banking Crisis.
He’s not a banker himself but he is a speculator, a man who uses the money of
others wholly without any kind of scruple. Amongst other things he deals in
guano, which may or may not be intended to convey the author’s own estimation
of a particular kind of entrepreneurial capitalism! Lopez has nothing, no
background, no wealth, no prospects; nothing beyond his wit.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">In his smooth
glibness, he manages to contract a socially advantageous marriage to one Emily
Wharton, the daughter of a wealthy lawyer, who also happens to be a scion of
England’s old rural Tory squirearchy.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">I’ve admired a
great many of Trollope’s female characters hitherto, particularly Glencora (who
could not admire and love her?), Madame Max Goesler and even the colourful and
slightly disreputable Lizzie Eustace.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Emily Wharton is a
contrast in every way; she is a crashing bore. Her one defining characteristic
is a perverse obstinacy, coupled with dog-like notions of duty. She is
obstinate in her desire to marry Lopez, though she knows nothing about him, and
she is obstinate in widowhood – sorry for the spoiler – when he has
conveniently been dispatched, Anna Karenina-style, though he had previously
used her shamefully in an attempt to milk her father's wealth. After his death
she descends into morbid mourning, even though the marriage was a disaster. In
fact her widowhood becomes a badge of personal self-immolation. The man was
unworthy of her; she should never have married; she rejected honest and true
love; it's all her fault -<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> Why
poor Andrew Fletcher, part of the family’s county set, continued in his
unrelenting devotions I have no idea!<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">I was tempted to
write that<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>The Prime Minister</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> is a kind of comedy of manners,
except there is not really much in the way of comedy (The Duchess has a few
good self-deprecating lines, though). It’s certainly a superb panorama, ranging
over aspects of Victorian life, attitudes and manners at the higher reaches of
society, the kind of parts that Dickens never reached or wanted to reach.
Trollope, moreover, has a crisp and engaging style.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">There is also, at
least it seems to me, an intriguing ambiguity in his message. He obviously
disapproves of the morally reprehensible Lopez, but Lopez, or people like him,
were the motors of Victorian transformation, the risk takers and the deal
makers. Is he really suggesting that the only alternative is the unimpeachable
Whartons and Fletchers, the epitome of rural stasis and torpor? Ah, but as Abel
Wharton, Emily's father, reflects "...the world was changing around him
every day. Royalty was marrying out of its degree. Peers' sons were looking
only for money. And, more than that, peers' daughters were bestowing themselves
on Jews and shopkeepers." The world is changing, yes, but all change is
accompanied by fear, uncertainty and prejudice.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">Anyway, read it and
make up your own mind. I assure you it’s well worth the effort. You may even,
like me, be engaged enough to cry out in frustration when the plot takes a
particular turn, or certain characters prove to be more than usually annoying.
I defy anyone, moreover, not to hate Quintus Slide the newspaper proprietor, as
slimy as any modern press baron.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">So, yes, I’ve
bagged my fifth literary Munro in the Trollope range. I spy the last,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>The Duke’s Children</em>, in the distance. I promise my next review shall not be as
distant.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4413130168723738166.post-47965167816417929842013-02-19T16:30:00.000-08:002013-02-19T17:32:58.856-08:00Benedict and the Wolves<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQZ7DTW1nRfTPHHNv4LeLRGoOGnsYZ2NHmKAFP5xmh3OHdOQrt8VuqveZIy220euc5cEAQyROuseaJUFYWc5uymiMhabJ39XQh1WHSxa-vufByHisNGP9ASdFmDADWdHbyXJyxLn1-wtXi/s1600/Pope-Benedict-XVI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" mea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQZ7DTW1nRfTPHHNv4LeLRGoOGnsYZ2NHmKAFP5xmh3OHdOQrt8VuqveZIy220euc5cEAQyROuseaJUFYWc5uymiMhabJ39XQh1WHSxa-vufByHisNGP9ASdFmDADWdHbyXJyxLn1-wtXi/s400/Pope-Benedict-XVI.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">TIred and emotional</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In his very first sermon as Pope, Benedict XVI asked the faithful to pray for their new shepherd “that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.” The wolves, it would seem, have proved too numerous and too strong. He has become the first Pope to step down from the throne of Saint Peter since Gregory XII in 1415. <br />
<br />
<br />
Who are the wolves, you might wonder? The first thing anyone looking at Vatican politics should be aware of is that it is the last Byzantine Court in Europe, surviving all others by several centuries. It combines, as did its long dead predecessors, an outward and divinely sanctioned autocracy with internal politics of bewildering complexity.<br />
<br />
The resignation of Benedict, which a great many are refusing to accept at face value, namely that it was for health reasons, has led to levels of speculation and conspiracy theories that even Dan Brown, the author of <em>The Da Vinci Code</em>, could would find implausible and fanciful. I’m no wiser than anyone else but I think it reasonable to suggest that the Pope’s loss of vocation, if that’s the right word, has as much to do with the back-stabbing politics of the Curia as anything else. If he wasn’t exhausted already the poison here would certainly have seriously weakened his system. <br />
<br />
If one really wants to understand the Curia then one could do no better to turn to John Cornwall, an expert on papal history and author of the controversial <em>Hitler’s Pope</em>, who aptly described it as a “palace of gossipy eunuchs.” I would simply add treachery and back-stabbing to the gossip, the speciality of eunuchs throughout history. <br />
<br />
Apparently Benedict is suffering from a terminal illness; either that or the head injury he suffered on a visit to Mexico last March convinced him it was time to abdicate. The fact that it took him almost a year to make up his mind suggests that it also reduced his decision-making process to glacial slowness. Then there is the Renaissance-style drama: he is being forced out after a recent acrimonious exchange with senior cardinals, or he faces disgrace over the shady dealings of the Vatican Bank. Add to that even more venomous accusations: his fall is attributable to past cover ups over paedophile priests. <br />
<br />
There is a lot of tut-tutting disapproval among some of the faithful. In his blog, Marco Ventura, professor of law and religion at Siena University, wrote that “The theologian who held relativism as the worst foe of the church will be the pope who relativised the papacy.” That’s nothing. Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the late John Paul II’s secretary, is a wolf closer to home. According him “one does not come down from the cross”, a rather interesting interpretation of the papal office. Ignore this; the words were taken ‘out of context’, the Vatican later said, the usual thing when the context, and the intent, is blindingly obvious. Anyway, it seems only fair to note that there is a wider ‘context’ that the Cardinal appears to have forgotten: John Paul twice prepared letters of resignation in case he became incapable. The Pope may be the Vicar of Christ but he is still only human.<br />
<br />
I’m not a Catholic; I’m not even a Christian, so why do I feel the need to speak out here? Why? Simply because I hate to see this occasion being turned in to a cudgel with which to beat Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. I may not be a Christian but I grew up in the time-worn Anglo-Catholic tradition, one for which I still retain considerable respect. What I hate with a passion, as I wrote elsewhere, is ignorance and prejudice and ignorance born of prejudice. I fully agree with John O’Sullivan, who wrote in this weeks Spectator;<br />
<br />
<em>...Benedict dealt with the problems he inherited with courage, honesty and surprising dispatch, but often in the face of resistance. That was especially true of the child sex abuse scandals. After an investigation that left him horrified, Benedict not only offered victims and their families sincere apologies; he strengthened canon law to compel Church authorities to inform the police of abuse accusations; and he investigated and condemned powerful figures who had managed to escape censure. But though his zeal never weakened, his energy and ability to pursue crime and the criminals through the ecclesiastical machine did.</em><br />
<br />
Ah, yes, the machine, the Curia, the Court, the Bureaucracy, worse than anything ever faced by a Byzantine Emperor. In his Ash Wednesday mass in Saint Peter’s Benedict appealed to the Church to move beyond “individualism and rivalry.” Aye, there’s the rub. <br />
<br />
There is no reason to suppose that Benedict’s resignation was not brought on by declining powers; and there is no reason to suppose that the powers made the decline all the more inevitable. Last year’s revelations by Pablo Gabriele, the Pope’s former butler, showed a culture of vicious infighting and character assassination. You see: it’s all those gossipy eunuchs. <br />
<br />
Benedict never wanted to be Pope; he was his predecessor’s choice-in-waiting. His talents are those of the scholar and the theologian, not the politician. Benedict is no Borgia. Come to think of it, perhaps that what the Vatican needs, a Borgia for the twenty-first century, one who can master the Curia and ensure the continuing relevance of the Church in an ever more complex and fractious world. <br />
<br />
It seems to me that the Vatican has returned to the Middle Ages, the time when Popes were the playthings of the Roman nobility, when pontiffs like John XVIII and Benedict IX were forced to resign by a mixture of political intimidation and personal bullying. The nobility is long gone. No, it has not. Families like the Crescentii have long gone; in their place has come the College of Cardinals, the new aristocracy, as treacherous and often as self-serving as the old. Benedict retired simply because his health was no longer equal to the politics. The wolves ate him alive. <br />
<br />
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<br />Anastasia F-Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01284602529524462457noreply@blogger.com7