tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35195540756090440102024-03-14T02:20:11.138-07:00Barlow's CaymanGordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comBlogger236125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-33403473503032775002016-04-18T16:56:00.000-07:002017-10-10T20:34:49.581-07:00The travel-bug – Part One<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]-->Just the other day I thought of an item for my bucket-list.
Two years ago I wrote a piece for this blog called “No bucket-list”, in which I
reported that I didn’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have</i> a
bucket-list. Which was true; I hadn’t seen every inspiring sight in the world,
but I’d seen enough to satisfy me. My travel-bug had long ago splattered
against the windshield of domestic life.
<br />
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<br /></div>
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But I had forgotten Geiranger Fjord, until a photo of it
appeared in some Norwegian site I had Googled. So. There’s my first bucket-list
item. I wonder if there’ll be more. I can recall many beautiful places from the
seventy countries I’ve passed through in my time, and no doubt there are
thousands that I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ought</i> to see. So who
knows?</div>
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<br /></div>
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In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Summer of ’63</i>
(June 2013) I reported hitching-hiking (a lot more hiking than I had expected,
in those days before Norway’s oil discoveries made everybody rich enough to own
cars) from Bergen to the Russian border and back to England via Helsinki and Oslo. </div>
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<br /></div>
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A man on a motor-bike rode us down the slow and dangerous switchback road to Geiranger
Fjord. From the top, it looked as though we could have jumped out and down to
where two tiny cruise-ships were anchored next to the little <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vik</i> (village; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wick</i> in England, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vik</i> in
Norwegian, as in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vik</i>-ing).</div>
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<br /></div>
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My Dad believed his house in Toowoomba had the grandest
panorama-view in all of Queensland – looking east from the top of the Great
Dividing Range. He had a huge picture-window put in, to enjoy it the more.
Ross’s “ranch” in southern Norway has a similar view. He’s never seen the one
in Toowoomba, so there may be something in his DNA that attracted him to his
little paradise. (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Norwegian Wood</i>,
July 2015)</div>
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<br /></div>
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My Scandinavian adventure was supposed to be followed by a
year’s auditing in London, but halfway through that Mum needed me back in
Brisbane where Dad was dying. Afterwards, it didn’t seem worth the effort to
resume the job in London, so I went off travelling a bit earlier than the
schedule called for.</div>
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<br /></div>
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David-from-the-ship-over and I drifted around England with a
bunch of skydivers for a few weeks, then I nipped off to buy a car in Hamburg
with the help of a friend of a friend. David joined me in Berlin for the drive
back. He reminded me earlier this week of my then-obsession for driving around churches; we did
that with every church we came to along the way. Not around the whole
churchyards, just the actual church buildings, which was much trickier.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Oktoberfest in Munich, then Greece and the eight months with
Linda through the Middle East and Eastern Europe, which I’ve covered in other
posts. At the end of that adventure, my Mum met us in London – her first trip
overseas. I showed her the best parts of Britain, and she went home vowing to
see the whole place one day. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Toronto was chosen as the place to replenish the bank
account before going back to Toowoomba and settling down. When Linda gave up on
me and flew home to mother, I took a few weeks’ vacation in the Caribbean, just
to keep my hand in. (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eight o’clock White
Man’s Time, </i>July 2013) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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But once she and I sorted out our differences enough,
we married and drove down to jobs in the Bahamas, where the travel-bug came out
of its 18-month hibernation. There – overpaid and underworked – we spent our
spare cash on cheap weekends in the Out-Islands, successive Easters in Jamaica
and Puerto Rico, one vacation in Central America and one in Paris and Spain. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Flush with money – nearly $50,000! – we retired in 1970 and prepared
ourselves for the caves of Crete and a life with the hippies there. Linda took
a primary-teachers course in Perth (Australia) so she could teach English to the
natives, and we signed on for a dusty two-week convoy through the Outback to
the Kimberleys and back down the coast road. That was just to keep the
parasite-bug in good shape.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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We never did make the caves of Crete (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A young man’s car</i>, September 2013). The closest we ever got to
Crete was the whitewashed houses of Mykonos, back in our Big Adventure.
Everyone says Mykonos is the pick of the smaller Greek islands, so maybe it
should go onto my new bucket-list too. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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With just Geiranger for company, that doesn't make much of a bucket-list, does it? Hmmm. More thought is needed. I'll have to get back to you on this. </div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">.</span>Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-87267268690560656592016-03-08T19:19:00.000-08:002016-03-17T19:36:49.099-07:00A matter of timing…<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Histories have never taken account of the cruelty of
victorious armies, and readers of histories are (by default) persuaded to
ignore them. Local atrocities in mopping-up operations must not distract from
the main picture.
<br />
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<br /></div>
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(Not so much these days as in earlier times, though. Today
there are many commentators on the Web who hold their audiences to higher
standards than the standards of traditional journalists in the mainstream media.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Histories are jam-packed with events that parallel those of
today. Modern empires act much the same as empires have always acted. Not much
has changed. The “folk wanderings” of the Celts and Saxons, Mongols and Huns –
all of them were similar to the current “migrant invasions” of Arabs and
Africans. Even the impetus is the same – warfare in the homelands, and
expulsion by other invaders.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Right from their beginning in the 7<sup>th</sup> Century, Moslem
empires’ treatment of their conquered peoples was similar to the Romans’
treatment of theirs Centuries before and to NATO’s treatment of its victims
Centuries after. The European commercial empires (French, British, Portuguese,
Spanish, Dutch) were greater in scope than those of ancient Egypt, China, India
and the American Aztecs and Incas, but the same principles applied. It’s not so
much that the later ones were copy-cats: rather, that all commercial expansions
are similar <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in nature</i>. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Halliburton and Blackwater didn’t model themselves on any of
the European East India Companies; but the same commercial arrogance drove
them. We of today despise the managers and operatives of the two murderous US
companies, while the distance of centuries give their predecessors the gloss of
romance. Robert Clive in India and Cecil Rhodes in Africa are historical
heroes; Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are perceived as monsters. At least,
they are now; they will become heroes when enough time has passed.</div>
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<br /></div>
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It’s a matter of timing. One of my ancestors (born George
Gawler in 1764) trafficked illegal drugs from India to China, and retired an
honoured man. His modern equivalents – minor traffickers in Central America and
South-East Asia – are international pariahs. (The British Army and its government
agents aided and abetted the export of opium from their territories in India,
and the US Army and its agents supervise shipments of the same drug from the
poppy-fields of Afghanistan to the streets of Chicago. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Some</i> things don’t change…)</div>
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<br /></div>
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I have written [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Uncle
Charles and the Boko Haram</i>, October 2014] about Charles Barlow, who
slaughtered his nation’s tribal enemies in 1903 with the same ruthlessness as
ISIS officers apply to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">their</i> enemies
today. Charles was honoured with medals from the British Government; his ISIS
counterpart is damned to eternal hellfire – at least, in the West. The British
Army won in Nigeria: ISIS will lose in Syria. It is the winners who write the
histories.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The Roman Empire eventually collapsed in a welter of
currency depreciation, military entanglements in the outlying provinces, and corruption in the ruling caste. Despite those handicaps, Rome’s momentum
staved off the collapse for ten or twelve generations. Things happen faster
these days, but the general pattern is the same. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The current US Empire has been declining for maybe two
generations from its peak, under the exact same pressures. It too is being
betrayed by its ruling caste. Rome’s Imperial butchers were neither more nor
less repulsive than the monsters in present-day Washington and Tel Aviv.</div>
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<br /></div>
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In olden days, imperial rulers had monuments erected in
their names, and cities re-named for them – even, calendar months, occasionally.
In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">modern</i> times, the best they can
hope for is the occasional warship or a bridge over a hometown river. Today, we
live in democracies, so the names engraved on stone war-memorials are those of urban
peasants rather than of their social superiors who ordered their deaths. </div>
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<br /></div>
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I wonder how long this new custom will last. Only time will
tell.</div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-45887004594910387982016-01-28T16:07:00.000-08:002018-01-02T20:32:41.043-08:00NATO overplays its hand<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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You’d think the rulers of the Western World – the greatest
Empire the world has ever seen – would be smart enough to realise when they’ve
gone too far. Don’t they watch the World Series of Poker on the Fox channels? Professional
card-players know that they must maintain a reputation for honesty and caution,
before they can expect to get away with bluffs and other bullshit. Nobody
wants to get called on a busted flush.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s card-games like bridge and whist that have given us the
expression “overplaying one’s hand” to describe the situation where somebody
pushes harder than he should prudently do. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The little boy who cried “Wolf!” is a classic example from
children’s literature; Butch Cassidy and Sundance in Bolivia, from the movies; the
German Army’s invasion of Russia in the winter of ’42, from real life. The
rulers of the USA in the years following JFK’s assassination… Hmm. Up till
then, we outsiders bought into the bullshit; afterwards, not so much. Today, too
many of us are skeptical of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">official</i>
versions of everything.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gone are the days when we could be jeered into silence and
acquiescence by being labelled “conspiracy theorists”. That just doesn’t work
any more. Some of us can still be fooled by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fake</i>
conspiracies invented by government agencies, but even those are failing these
days.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Individual journalists can be suborned by bribes or threats,
as can entire TV, radio and newspaper networks. The BBC and PBS, The Economist
and the New York Times, Associated Press and Bloomberg – all are suspect. Independent
researchers can be – and sometimes are – slandered as traitors (Snowden,
Manning, Assange), and sometimes suicided. Their fates merely endorse their
credibility, and destroy their accusers’.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The mainstream media organs (“MSM”) have lost their credibility.
I can’t think of a single exception, off-hand. Either they don’t know that or
(more likely) they don’t know how to change their reporting methods. They follow
the Wikipedia model of simply not recognizing the new reality. The alternative
media and the independent bloggers are dismissed as not substantial enough to deserve
respect. As a result, Wikipedia today has minimal credibility on all matters
political; it too has been suborned by government agencies.</div>
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<br /></div>
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There is a new word in the dictionaries: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hasbara.</i> It’s a Hebrew word that
connotes what in essence is a fifth-column of individual propagandists engaged
in rubbishing all opinions and arguments that oppose the official versions of
events and situations. Originally the fifth-column was invented by the Israeli
government to defend its anti-Palestinian activities; but its scope now extends
to all doubt and criticism of official Western propaganda. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Its weapons range from blatant lies and childish personal
insults to repeated obscenities that are so offensive as to make it unlikely
that the piece under attack will be forwarded to others. It works well enough.
I have seen several instances of excessively rough language used as an excuse
to close down online discussions that threatened some official version of
events. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Credibility is a tender flower. We tell our children: if you
tell lies, people won’t know when you’re telling the truth and when not. Little
kids understand the logic of that. Yet our rulers either don’t understand or
don’t care that there are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">posses</i> of
vigilantes out there who will call them out on lies and unfair innuendoes.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Most of us remember the lies that began the savage war
against the Arabs of the Middle East. The NATO nations had actual indisputable proof
that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons already aimed at European cities and
ready to fire on 45 minutes’ notice. “You want a smoking gun?” The US Secretary
of State sneered. “Unless we invade immediately, the smoking gun will appear in
the shape of a mushroom cloud!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Yes, well… Today, we know it was a lie, and that the
invasion had been planned for years. The doubters and vigilantes uncovered the
lies; the liars kept their heads down and planned more lies.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Encouraged by their success in exposing that particular lie,
the doubters and vigilantes started poking around to see what other lies our
rulers might have gotten away with. The Kennedy assassination, of course, Pearl
Harbor, the Lusitania… Afghanistan’s opium fields, Israel’s nuclear arsenal, NATO’s
military alliance with ISIS… Even the Nazi Holocaust is suspect, at least in
some of the specific numbers and other details claimed by authorities now known
to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">be</i> liars.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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How do we decide who to believe, any more? As George Bush famously
said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice – er, um, oh shit, I forget
how that’s supposed to end. Help me out, here, Dick.”</div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-29897486956364267062015-12-20T11:10:00.000-08:002016-01-28T16:08:28.415-08:00Trump – President or Emperor?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;"></span></b><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">The most
interesting thing about Donald Trump is that he is genuinely running for the
office of President of his nation. All his rivals – except Bernie Sanders,
maybe – want to become Emperor of the World.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;"> </span>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">There’s a huge
difference – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">huuuuge</i>, as Trump himself
would say. Trump wants to keep foreign Muslims out of the USA, or at least
submit them to security clearance until he figures out what the hell is going
on. The rivals want to slaughter foreign Muslims in huge numbers – wherever
they live and for as long as the manufacturers keep the bombs and rockets
coming off the production line. (Or until Israel is satisfied with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">its</i> imperial borders. Whichever comes
last.)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">We don’t know
the depth of Trump’s humanitarian feelings. Does he care if millions of civilians
in foreign lands lose their homes and livelihoods, and if their children die of
disease and malnutrition? Maybe, maybe not. But I don’t believe he wants to be
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cause</i> of it. His rivals are less
squeamish. They <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> want to be the
cause, and are set on continuing America’s long-term program of wars of
aggression. As one Christian cleric ordered in an earlier Crusade, “Kill them
all. God will know his own.” </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Trump is not
a psychopath. That alone makes him different from most of the candidates. Aspiring
Emperors by their terms of reference are pretty much obliged to be psychopaths
who happily engage in at mass murder on a Biblical scale. Witless cruelty is their
stock in trade.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Unfortunately,
the whole idea of Trump becoming President of the US is nonsense, based on a
false premise. Neither he nor we will be called upon to judge his Presidential
legacy, because he will never succeed, being dead. The Deep State will see to
that. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">He might, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">conceivably</i>, overcome the obstacle of electronic
voting-machines specially programmed to foil his supporters – first, in the
race to become the Republican nominee, and later in the nationwide election. But
the lone gunman will be a tougher proposition. Or gunmen plural, or remotely
controlled cars or planes or whatever it takes. There are a thousand drugged-up
patsies prepped to sacrifice their lives to maintain a puppet-Presidency of the
kind the US has had since Kennedy.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">We usually
attribute the Kennedy assassinations to the CIA – although the guilty party is
more likely to have been the FBI. Legally, it’s the FBI that is responsible for
domestic issues, so Standard Operating Procedure would be for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> organisation to remove designated
domestic enemies who can’t be silenced by blackmail.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">However, it
really doesn’t matter which agency it was. All the official death squads are enforcement
units of what’s now called “The Deep State” – the manipulators in the
national and imperial bureaucracy who direct the business of the empire.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">As much a
patriot of the USA as Putin is of Russia, he has not sold his soul to The Deep
State or any of its sponsors. I can’t see him ever selling the Palestinians
down the river in exchange for the votes of AIPAC and the Israel-right-or-wrong
lobby, or continuing the worldwide imperial rampage in exchange for
the goodwill of the Military-Industrial-Security Complex. That moral stance is
what will get him killed.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Of course the
man is no fool. He is well aware that they (“They”) will either cheat him out
of the Presidency or kill him out. Yet he carries on with his mission. For me,
that pretty much proves his sincerity. I don’t particularly admire patriotism
as a virtue. An excessive love of country gets in the way of a respect for mankind
in general, as tribal loyalty beats out loyalty to the human species. But a truly
patriotic Head of State does not jeopardise his people’s personal safety by making their
nation hated by the rest of the world. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Trump’s patriotism
stands apart from the imperial arrogance that really doesn’t care whether its citizens
are hated or not by the rest of the world. Only military might is worth
anything – and then only in the service of the self-defined aristocrats. And they
are not about to make room for a genuine patriot.</span></div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-71748603517543777122015-12-07T20:03:00.000-08:002015-12-07T20:03:15.419-08:00In defence of free speech<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;"></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">One of Cayman’s local legislators (an elected member of
our mini-parliament) is in hot water from the liberals among us for defending
his selective Old Testament Christianity. His god disapproves of sodomy, and so
does he. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">His chief critic is the expat Chairman of our
government-appointed Human Rights Commission; he believes in equal rights for
homosexuals. The politician says the Chairman should be replaced by a
Christian, by which he means an Old Testament Christian of his own persuasion.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">As a human-rights advocate myself, and a fairly devout heathen,
I agree with the Chairman on the equal-rights issue. Also as a human rights
advocate, though, I believe in free speech, and must defend the politician’s
right to speak his mind on the issue.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -9.0pt;">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">He (the polly) has not called for violence, or the
jailing of sodomites, or even (I think) the legal banning of homosexual acts of
passion. To the best of my knowledge he has not joined in any of the public
protests against the “gay cruises” that visit Cayman from time to time. This
being Cayman, his words of disapproval don’t amount to an incitement to violence
– though they do encourage discrimination. What to do?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -9.0pt;">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">In recent years, around the world, the right to free
speech has taken a bit of a bashing. There are laws in some otherwise civilized
European nations that actually prosecute <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and
jail</i> people for questioning any detail of the orthodox story of the Nazi
holocaust. (As it relates to Jews, at least: I don’t know the position relating
to Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals and the rest. We never read about that.)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">The iconic figure of six million dead Jews is legally
sacrosanct, in those nations, and to question it is blasphemy. Doubts are classed
as anti-Semitism, intrinsically likely to provoke a second holocaust of Jews.
Since there is no equivalent stigma attached to details of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">other</i> Nazi slaughters – or indeed other historical slaughters of
any time and any peoples – can we shrug off the anti-Semitism focus as driven by tribal
hyperbole? I think we can.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Doubting details doesn’t amount to denying the whole
thing. The “denier/denial” label has been picked up by the AGW brigade, who are
keen to imprison heretics who disbelieve the orthodoxy that Global Warming is
all the fault of humankind. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">By the same token, quoting a couple of isolated incidents
from the Old Testament constitutes homophobia, according to Mr Eden’s critics, and
makes him a “hater”. Surely that is grossly unfair. Surely he is entitled to
his opinion that all queers will go to hell. It’s only <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his</i> hell, after all.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">At my boarding school we were told that our right to
swing a fist stopped where somebody else’s nose began. Also, that freedom of
speech did not extend to crying “FIRE!” in a crowded theatre, unless there really was a fire. All
freedoms sometimes have to bow to other freedoms.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -9.0pt;">
<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">English common-law has always contained a prohibition
against “disturbing the peace”. The prohibition is often abused by Police and Prosecutors,
but its principle is sound enough. Disrespecting any shibboleth may be permitted
by the human-rights canon; but broadcasting that disrespect in a manner or
place that encourages violence, is not. That seems fair enough.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Gay Marriage
Thing</i> (Archives March 2014), I argued against the practice of national
governments to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">license</i> marriages. However,
if they insist on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">retaining</i> the practice,
only minimal tweaking would be needed to extend the licences to same-sex
marriages – and to same-family marriages too. Reproduction, or even sexual
congress, is not an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">essential</i> factor
in any marriage. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Old Testament legends are actually much more tolerant of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">incest</i> than of sodomy; some of the world’s
most respected religions display a similar tolerance. And a few decades ago
incest was relatively common in Cayman – as in many other isolated villages
around the world. We encountered jokes about incest as soon as we arrived in
Cayman. </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-themecolor: text1;">A father expresses disgust to
learn that his son’s intended bride is a virgin. “If she’s not good enough for
her own family,” he huffs, “she’s not good enough for ours.”</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">I don’t have much sympathy for Mr Eden as a person. He
was silent during the most recent kerfuffle over free speech, involving our
local newspaper’s Editor. He was silent when I was being persecuted for the
same reason, nearly thirty years ago. He has been silent for forty years about
the officially tolerated abuse of migrant domestics. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Nevertheless…</span></i><span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;"> he is entitled to maintain his
personal prejudices, and to advertise them, even if he himself might not be as
generous to others. </span></div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-21330493299532255422015-11-20T10:23:00.000-08:002018-06-10T13:26:17.436-07:00Slum-clearance on a massive scale<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Huge fortunes are made out of slum-clearances. It’s an
excellent way to make money, as long as it’s carefully planned. Think about
what’s involved. The residents have to be moved out of their homes and into new
accommodation, and fed and clothed until they have new jobs; schools have to be
built and staffed for their children; social facilities have to be built and
developed for the new communities.<br />
<br />
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All those things are fantastically expensive. Usually, it’s
governments that order the clearances and relocations, which are usually farmed
out to private contractors who – if they have their wits about them – will have
bribed the politicians and bureaucrats for the privilege.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Security is a big factor, from start to finish. After all,
evicted slum-dwellers aren’t moving to a new slum, but to a whole new community
– designed by middle-class architects, and supervised by middle-class
community-organisers. The new accommodation is not intended to be any kind of
concentration-camps: quite the contrary. It's intended to
upgrade the quality of life for the beneficiaries.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Of course it takes a lot of time – one generation, two,
maybe longer – to persuade the newcomers to abandon their customary
slum-habits. Until that happy day arrives, the inmates may pose a threat to
their new neighbours and those neighbours’ possessions. So special policing is
only common sense, employed either by the government or by experienced private
security companies.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Progressively, the slums have to be physically destroyed,
and that’s also costly. Specialised labour and equipment doesn’t come cheap.
Special demolition machinery keeps specialist manufacturing companies paying generous
dividends. When there’s no demolition in the offing, the companies’ dividends
drop out of sight, and one wonders (a bit unkindly) if the companies don’t
sometimes put political pressure on governments to hurry up and plan further
demolitions. Or monetary pressure, in the form of bribery.</div>
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<br /></div>
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It crosses my mind, from time to time, that the gratuitous
wars-of-choice waged against the people of the Middle East might be motivated
for the specific purpose of making money. Apart from the obvious motive of
access to the local nations’ oil revenues, there are boatloads of money to be
made both in destroying the nations’ infrastructure and in replacing it when
the dust clears. </div>
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<br /></div>
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It’s slum-clearance on a massive scale. They may not have been slums before the bombs and drones hit them, but they certainly were afterwards.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Wars have always been fought for loot – land, persons, gold,
and other assets with rich potential… What’s not to like about war, if you’re
on the winning side? The soldiers – the cannon-fodder – don’t get all that much
out of it. The pensions aren’t bad, although the medical care isn’t as good as
advertised. But private contractors make out like bandits. The generals and colonels
also do well, through consultancy deals with TV companies and the corporate
members of the military-industrial complex.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Modern weapons cost billions of dollars, and so do security
guards and caterers. There is only the faintest risk of being held accountable
for unauthorised use, price-gouging and extortion. Families in defeated nations
have always had to buy their freedom from imprisonment and torture; only rarely
in history has that practice been frowned upon. It wasn’t supposed to happen in
the enlightened age that began with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
in 1948, but human rights have never been held in respect outside the
Goody-Two-Shoes brigade.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The latest wheeze is the mass trafficking of the newly
homeless and the soon-to-become homeless from their bombed neighbourhoods in
the villages and towns of the Middle East to safer refuges in the destroyers’
European domiciles. It doesn’t take much of a leap of faith to recognize the
standard slum-clearance pattern, exercised on a larger-than standard scale.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Destruction of homes – check. Temporary accommodation of the
homeless in tents in the deserts – check. Transport to the vicinity of the
greenfield site reserved for them – check. Temporary accommodation there, with
the necessary policing – check. Constructing permanent accommodation there –
check. Reconstructing the originally destroyed homes – check. Rinse and repeat.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Have I missed anything? Paying off all the nominal
principals, of course, but that’s routine. Slotting the generals and senior
politicians into the remunerative lecture-circuits, and arranging lesser
rewards for lesser personalities. New Toyotas for the local sub-agency, that
sort of thing…</div>
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<br /></div>
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But all that goes without saying. After all, you’ve got to
spend money to make money, right? Everybody knows that.</div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-58054232567270788712015-10-26T12:37:00.000-07:002015-10-26T12:44:47.382-07:00Sometimes, you have to turn back<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is a belated addition
to my series on our travels in 1964/65. Earlier reminiscences are identified in
the Archives with the letter <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">T</b>,
beginning with “Checkpoint Charlie” in December 2011.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
My big adventure began after the Munich Oktoberfest in 1964,
driving south in my Beetle into the unknown with a South African chap I’d met
at a Youth Hostel. Somewhere in Yugoslavia our road suddenly ended at a river.
Damn and blast! The nearest bridge was an hour away, back the way we’d just
come. My map hadn’t actually promised a bridge, and it was a dirt road in the
middle of nowhere; but I felt cheated, all the same.<br />
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<br /></div>
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Ah, but there was a ferry. Not a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vehicle</i> ferry as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">such</i>,
but one of those cable pontoon-things for pedestrians and animals. The villagers
enthusiastically produced two planks, eight or ten feet long, and laid them
from the ground up to the level of the deck. It was a fair gradient, and I
started to drive slowly up the planks. Now… Those who have driven Beetles will
know that they have virtually no weight in the front (the engine is in the rear),
and are therefore very sensitive there. I felt the planks sag, and knew immediately
that they wouldn’t take the weight of the whole car. </div>
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<br /></div>
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I rolled back and asked for thicker planks, but there were none
to be had. Perhaps I could take a run at the boards and get on deck before they
cracked. “What do you reckon, Paul?” “Well, it’s your car”, Paul said. So, reluctantly,
and to the villagers’ great disappointment, we retraced our tracks to the
bridge. I wasn’t at all happy; I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">never</i>
liked having to retrace my steps. But, well, sigh… sometimes, you just <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have</i> to turn back.</div>
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<br /></div>
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A couple of days later, we almost slipped off the side of a hill
on another dirt road, with occasional patches of ice. Paul jumped up and down
on the back bumper to give me just enough traction to get past the patch. A bit
scary, but this time my stubbornness was rewarded.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Looking back, I must have had more confidence than it seemed
at the time. Later in the adventure, Linda and I bluffed Bulgarian
border-guards into letting us take contraband currency into Rumania, faced down
Egyptian Customs officials who looked askance at some shoddily forged
currency-exchange slips, and persuaded East German border-guards to let us pass
through the Wall into West Berlin at a no-entry point. In my youthful arrogance
I took it for granted that all those successes were simply my due. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Budget travel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">demands</i>
confidence. You must believe in the mission. You’re taking on the whole world,
with no backup except the nearest consulate, if you could reach it, and no security
besides your American Express cheques if you weren’t robbed of them. So every
minor victory is hard-won. How could the gods <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fail</i> to be impressed with our innocent goodwill and delight in
immersing ourselves in foreign cultures? And indeed they didn’t fail us – although
they put a scare into us (mainly Linda) every so often, just to remind us (me)
who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">were</i> the gods and who weren’t.</div>
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<br /></div>
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One of my major regrets is that we never got to visit the
Greek island of Rhodes. We had an opportunity, during that trip, but again I
chickened out. At a village on the coast of Turkey, there was a man with a boat
– and some decently thick planks – who offered to take us and the car the ten
or fifteen miles across the water for about forty dollars. The ridiculous illegality of the challenge was tempting. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Could I sweet-talk the Greek officials into letting us enter,
assuming my little dictionary could supply me with the right words? Would the
forty dollars include bribes? Would we ever be able to get to the Greek
mainland, via other ferries and other islands? Mmm. Not easily. Maybe we could
leave the car in the village and go across to Rhodes by ourselves for a
couple of days. But that would bring a new risk.<br />
<br /></div>
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Forty dollars was a huge amount
of money for those villagers, and if the young foreigners could afford to pay
that, maybe they could afford to pay handsomely to buy their car back when they
returned. It wouldn’t have been fair to them to put such temptation in their
way. (In some parts of Turkey, private cars were virtually unknown, to the
extent that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all </i>cars were called “taxis”.)</div>
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<br /></div>
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In the end, common sense won out. We turned away and wended
our way north to Istanbul and onward into the Soviet Empire. There were other
challenges, and one notable failure to charm or bluster our illegal way through
a border. That was disappointing, too; but you can’t win them all. Sometimes,
you just <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have</i> to turn back.</div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-50184260233433771872015-10-24T12:44:00.000-07:002015-10-24T17:42:47.193-07:00The right to kill<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]-->Murder has always been a totally <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tribal</i> offence – by which I mean it’s only offensive when the deed
happens within one’s own national community, and not elsewhere. The murder of
foreigners rarely disturbs anybody. <br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
One doesn’t have to be Jewish or Christian or Moslem to
accept that The Ten Commandments have always been purely tribal in their application.
The prohibitions against killing, stealing, coveting and the rest of them don’t
apply when foreigners are the victims. Tribal traditions all over the world
endorse this judgment. Traditions of hospitality – where they still exist – generally
outweigh the predatory urge, as many a backpacker has learned to his delight. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(However, the tradition is more in the nature of a truce, in
times of conflict. These days, young US backpackers would be wise to masquerade
as Canadians – as they used to do back during their nation’s invasion of
Vietnam.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Modern nations are simply closed-minded tribes wearing a
thin veneer of hypocrisy. Human behaviour hasn’t changed in ten thousand years.
The modern concept of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">human</i> rights has
never stood a chance of superseding <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tribal</i>
rights. Our Western communities all claim the right to kill foreigners at will
and without restraint. Mercy is for wusses.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Generally, we don’t recognize the deaths of foreigners as a
bad thing; and therefore their murder – even <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">en masse</i> – can be safely shrugged off, even if it’s we who are the
predators. Indeed, our political leaders become indignant when somebody else
horns in on our killing-fields. Our NATO governments claim first-dibs on
homicide in Syria, for instance, and are angry at Russia for its intervention. The
cheek of it!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A “foreigner” isn’t necessarily someone of a different <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nationality</i>, just as a “tribe” isn’t
necessarily a nation. In the context of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">religion</i>,
a foreigner is someone not of our faith; in cities he may be a member of a
different street gang, or of the Police; in the Police Force he’s a resident of
the ghetto – or, increasingly, any non-Policeman. To severely autistic
individuals – out-and-out psychopaths, for instance – he’s everybody and
anybody.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By popular definition, a psychopath is someone who commits
wholesale murders without remorse. That pretty much describes every NATO nation’s
political leader and every one of his or her lieutenants. And every terrorist,
of course; I don’t mean to imply that NATO’s leaders are any worse than terrorists. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This perceived <i>right to kill</i> is a horrific
conception, when you think about it. Such savagery is unexpected in our modern
world. Yet civilians in their millions fall victims to it every decade. A
former US Secretary of State, when asked about the morality of the US embargo
on the sale of medicines to the people of Iraq, cheerfully defended it. The
resultant deaths of half a million children had been “very much worthwhile”,
she said. The recent bombing of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Medicins
Sans Frontieres</i> hospital in Afghanistan was barely a blip on the radar of
the current Secretary. “Meh...”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s fair to wonder how mankind manages to survive this
perceived right to kill. One plausible explanation is that one community’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tribal</i> instinct is in some degree
countered by another community’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">survival</i>
instinct. After all, a weaker tribe’s members would be better off surrendering and
living as slaves, than to die fighting a battle they can’t win.
Though not on all occasions…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Too Many Gods</i>
(posted here in December 2011), I quoted from the Biblical legend of the fate of one
defeated tribe:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And they warred
against the Midianite and they slew all the males. And the children of Israel
took all the women of Midian captive, and their little ones. And Moses said
unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children
of Israel to commit trespass against the Lord. Now therefore kill every male
among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man. But all the
women children that have not known man, keep alive for yourselves.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Slaughtering prisoners of war, raping and killing their
widows and sons, and keeping the little girls as sex slaves… it all seems somewhat
excessive to anybody handicapped by a “live and let live” sentiment. Yet the
practice is as common today as it was then. ISIS does it, and NATO nations do
it, and their allies. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We have a<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> right</i> to kill you, and we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">will</i> kill you, and torture your families.
The most you can hope for is that our soldiers will keep your daughters alive
for their own purposes.” Dear God!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mankind’s tribal brutality really hasn’t improved any in the
past three thousand years, has it?</div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-59120977907684709282015-09-25T19:11:00.000-07:002018-06-17T07:18:17.927-07:00Europe’s refugee problem<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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“Karma’s a bitch”, as
the hippies used to say – and maybe still do. What goes around, comes around. They
had it coming. Serves them right. A headline on the website rt.com the other
day read, “Blowback on a NATO beach”, above a photograph of a crowd of asylum-seekers
landing on a Greek island. What’s going on?<br />
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<br /></div>
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Ah well, destabilising the Middle East and North Africa did
achieve its goal of protecting the European beach-head in Palestine; but the
agents of destruction are now about to pay for that achievement. Or, rather,
their citizens are. The end result will probably be the Greater Israel of
Zionist dreams – in effect, a Jewish Caliphate with no fixed borders. It will
flourish, as long as it has the support of every Western politician willing to commit
to Big Brother’s perpetual war – and willing to take responsibility for a few
million displaced persons...</div>
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<br /></div>
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The process has already cost the Western nations their moral
reputation; what virtue is there in democracy, if its politicians engage in the
wholesale slaughter of civilians? The demise of the international human-rights
experiment is a bonus for their leaders. The eventual <i>total</i> cost will
include their demographic balance, as we read in all our daily newspapers.
Slaughtering civilians in faraway lands is morally corrupt: most of us
presumably know that from our personal upbringings. It’s a tragic truth,
though, that most citizens of the guilty nations take the matter lightly, and
feel no shame for the blatant atrocities done in their names. </div>
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After all, we’re at war, right? And, as our politicians and
their corporate sponsors regularly explain to us, war excuses atrocities of all
kinds. Human rights almost never triumph over tribal and national rights. The
dominant precept is <i>my country, right or wrong</i> – “my country” being “my”
politicians and their sponsors.</div>
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The chief opposition party in Britain has just elected a
leader who actually does subscribe to the concept of international human
rights, and who believes that there is no moral virtue in wars of aggression.
That’s a refreshing stance, although those factors wouldn’t have played much of
a part in his election. The British MSM predicts that his principles rule out
any chance of his becoming Prime Minister. What kind of retard is this man, to
be against wars of aggression? God help us!</div>
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Unfortunately, human rights have been a passing fancy.
Anybody who believes in them can never become Prime Minister – or President, in
nations that don’t have Prime Ministers.</div>
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<br /></div>
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For some time now, all but a few of Europe’s politicians have
been obedient minions of US emperors. They jostle to out-do each other in harassing
America’s designated enemies, with scant regard for the interests of their own
constituents. Thus, the chaos of Europe’s current invasion by refugees landing
on Mediterranean shores in the tens of thousands, and swarming across the
hinterland. Blowback, indeed, from NATO’s military interference in their
homelands.</div>
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<br /></div>
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But wait! Why <i>should</i> the citizens of NATO nations be
punished for the crimes of their leaders? Isn’t that collective punishment? Don’t
we have the right to elect sociopaths, without accepting responsibility to take
care of their victims? If the psychos whom NATO citizens elect – and re-elect <i>ad
nauseam</i> – if they hand our tax moneys over to the military-industrial
complex instead of to their victims, what’s that to us? After all, that’s what
politicians <i>do</i>, in a corrupt system.</div>
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corrupt ones. Vice feeds upon vice. A society that consents to wars of
aggression, and the destruction of civilians’ homes and livelihoods, must
expect at least <i>some</i> of the victims to come calling. I mean, surely!</div>
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Should the reluctant hosts demand that their politicians
divert some of their war-budgets to providing the innocent victims with food
and shelter? Or should they (the hosts) toss them back in the sea, and vote for
ever more brutal military adventures? </div>
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<br /></div>
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One way or another, people have to pay for their fun
activities. When their fun involves destroying homes and lives, the payment can
turn out to be a heavy one. Our children and grandchildren will <i>curse</i> us for
our idea of fun.</div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-22799674070882911122015-08-16T07:40:00.000-07:002015-08-16T07:43:51.068-07:00The killing of Cecil the Lion<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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When I was a young man, many years ago, a few of us
pretend-intellectuals used to kick around this ethical conundrum. “Suppose that
by hitting a button, some random Chinaman would die and you would receive a
million pounds. Would you do it?"</div>
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<br /></div>
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Probably, one of us would quote the story attributed to
George Bernard Shaw, in which he asks a society lady at the dinner table if she
would go to bed with him for a million pounds. After some hesitation she says,
Yes she would. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a million pounds,” he says; “Would
you do it for ten shillings?” Certainly not! What do you think I am? “Madam,
we’ve already established that. Now, we’re just haggling over the price.”</div>
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In recent times, science has brought the conundrum of the
random Chinaman into the realm of the practical. Now, it’s available to all –
or all who volunteer to be a drone-pilot in the NATO army, at least. A few
weeks training is all that’s required to zap an anonymous family in a faraway
village. Not a <i>random</i> family, no, but close enough. Some anonymous
military bureaucrat chooses the family on the authority of some anonymous
political commissar whose future pension depends on the perpetual war that
emanates from the killing of anonymous foreign villagers.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Anonymity is the general theme, in the West’s slaughter of
foreign civilians. The button-jockeys and their superiors are never publicly
named. Their identities are as hidden as those of ISIS soldiers’ in their hoods,
and for much the same reason: their deeds are too shameful to bear exposure.
Nobody ever brags about being a drone-pilot – any more than they do about being
a torturer in some CIA prison-camp.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Like a notional killer of the random Chinaman, each armchair
pilot receives his promised reward. Salary, performance bonuses, medical cover,
guaranteed pension – those add up to a million pounds, over a lifetime. What a
deal! Many of them seem to enjoy a high level of job satisfaction.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Not all of them, though. There is a downside to the job, for
sensitive souls. PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) is more common than it
is among, say, infantry soldiers. Maybe it’s just not enough of a challenge. Nobody
is shooting back. After all, a villager in Afghanistan is in no position to
defend himself. He’s a sitting duck. Press the button, and it’s game over.
Villager and family die in a cloud of dust, as do their nearest neighbours.</div>
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<br /></div>
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What in the trade are called “double-tap” engagements, are more
fun, but no more demanding. Those require the button to be pressed a second
time, after an interval just long enough to permit other villagers to assemble
and begin rescue efforts. Wham! Bam! And thank you, ma’am! With any luck
another dozen families can be killed or mutilated, all in complete anonymity.
(I don’t think the pilots’ bounty or bonuses increase according to the number
of dead or mutilated; it’s not piece-work, to that extent.)</div>
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<br /></div>
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Job satisfaction or not, it’s hard to imagine the work as
being socially acceptable: hence all the anonymity, of course. Morally corrupt though
it be, by most people’s standards, it is actually more socially acceptable than
hunting wild animals. Remember the recent hoo-hah when some
fellow shot a wild lion in Africa?</div>
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<br /></div>
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Animal-hunters tend <i>not</i> to be anonymous. Indeed, they
post photos of themselves and their victims on Facebook – and, sometimes,
newspapers publish the names of the victims. That almost <i>never</i> happens
in the case of drone-killings. The name of the dead lion was Eric. No, it was Cecil,
of all innocuous names. Eric was the name of his brother. It’s hard to keep up
with the names of wild lions. Cecil, King of the Jungle, anyway.</div>
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<br /></div>
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It seems bizarre – and rather unfair – for one wild lion to
become famous for being shot, when Afghan and Syrian and Iraqi villagers remain
anonymous. I think the difference in treatment must be because lions are fine-looking
creatures, whereas villagers in the Middle East are not, in general. Our
Western leaders dismiss the villagers as a humanoid sub-species – like monkeys,
but not as cute.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Until they are given Western names like Cecil or Eric, they
will remain where they are now – with no claim to sympathy, or even dignity. I
mean – Abdul, Fatima… What kind of names are those? Huh. Not cute, that’s for sure!</div>
<br />Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-62516888551513584702015-08-06T18:25:00.000-07:002015-08-28T14:56:02.974-07:00Rum and Coca Cola (Bahamas)<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]-->The first thing Linda and I had to do after our travels was replenish
our bank accounts. We'd travelled very much on the cheap through the
Middle East and Eastern Europe, but the money had to run out eventually.
Linda’s sister lived in Canada, so it made sense for her to go over there.<br />
<br />
So she
did that, and became the chef of a hospital in Barrie. My old employers in
London arranged a transfer to their Toronto office as an auditor. First, I
drove my Mum around England and Scotland, at her expense, then hit her for the
airfare across to the new job.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Canada wasn’t my first choice, actually, but its immigration
line was shorter than the US’s - a story told in <i>The Turning Point</i> in
January 2014. Linda and I were on our <i>(</i>separate) ways home to Australia;
Canada was just a place to save money so as not to go back broke. Linda met me
off the plane, which was nice…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That was in 1965. Eventually, she lost patience with my
reluctance to commit, and headed back to Melbourne to make a new life for herself.
By the time I finally did commit, by phone, and in writing (as demanded...!), our logistics were all skewiff, and I was out of town when she arrived.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Touche’s office down in the Bahamas had asked Toronto to
lend them three or four young and single audit clerks for a few weeks in December. Rum and
Coca Cola on a tropical beach instead of hot coffee in a cold motel room in
Windsor, Ontario, seemed like a good deal, and I jumped at the chance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Linda reckons she landed with only $30 on her, which in all
the confusion she left behind in a phone booth at the airport. Poor Linda! Poor
Jon, my flatmate, who had to stake her to the airfare down to Nassau – plus $30
pocket-money, I guess. The details are fuzzy, after all these years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So we got an early honeymoon in the old Royal
Victoria Hotel, and wondered if we might come back to live in Nassau one day. But
Touche didn’t want me, except for the few weeks; and the trust company I’d been
auditing chose somebody else for the job they had advertised. Bummer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sigh. As a second-best, I persuaded Touche Toronto to
recommend me to its office in Kingston, Jamaica. A few months after our wedding,
we signed up with an agency that delivered snowbirds’ cars to them in Florida. A
leisurely drive down to Orlando took five days, staying at motels along the
way.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jamaica ahoy! But - never say die, eh? Our personal
schedule left us two weeks to knock on doors in Nassau, and we landed jobs
halfway through the second week. Linda began teaching at a government school,
me at the trust company I'd audited before. The chap who had beaten me for the job had failed
to turn up. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A warehouse in Miami had let us park our
belongings with them until we sent for them – to Nassau if we got lucky, or to
Kingston if we didn’t. We phoned and sent a cheque, and all our suitcases and
boxes came on the next boat. No problem. Imagine making an
arrangement like that these days! Our gear would be blown up by Big Brother the
first day. Simpler times, back then.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our first house and car in Nassau were provided by Tim, who also
worked for the trust company. He was off the Island with his family on “long
leave”, and didn’t find out about the deal until he got back. That was par for
the course, apparently. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Long leave” was a carry-over from the Good Old Days
when the sun never set on the British Empire, in which anywhere in the tropics
was a “hardship post”. Two weeks in the hill stations of India or Kenya or anywhere else were a refreshing
break from the stinking heat of the population centres, but it needed three
months in Blighty every two years to prevent the chaps from “going native”. Mad
dogs and Englishmen, and all that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By the time Tim and Mrs Tim and the little Tims came back,
we had our own accommodation and car. We blew all our savings on the car <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- as reported in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Me and Miss Ohio</i>, in April
2013. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We finally made it to Jamaica for the Easter of ’68 – a second
honeymoon, or a third, or a fourth. We loved it, and did all the usual tourist
things – Dunn River Falls, rafting on the Rio Grande, the hot spa at Milk River,
rum and Coca Cola on the beaches… Those were good years for expats in Jamaica
as well as Nassau.<br />
<br />
But the latter was a <i>tax-haven</i>, and by gosh didn't we flourish in the
absence of Income Tax! When the time came to move on, we looked for another
tax-haven.</div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-15952006316976481082015-07-29T17:42:00.000-07:002018-01-02T20:26:22.719-08:00Empires on the go<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span lang="EN-GB">When I was a boy in Australia, all our
world maps showed the British Empire in red. It covered the world, pretty much;
the sun never set on it. We felt lucky to be a part of it, and we pitied those
nations that weren’t. It’s a measure of how narrow our world-view was, that we
had no notion that the American Empire was on the way up, and the British on
the way down.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">A few years ago a well-travelled American
friend of mine protested indignantly, “We don’t do empires”. He’s changed his
mind, since. He could hardly not do. Today, the new Empire announces its
presence with all the fanfare and arrogance of every past empire – the Roman,
the Persian, the Mongol, the Turkish, the Spanish, the British, and so on. To
outsiders, though,too many American citizens seem to be unaware of
the historical context of their empire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">From the time of the earliest foreign settlements
in North America, the British and (later) Americans expanded their realms inexorably
– sometimes in small increments, sometimes in large. The “Louisiana Purchase”
from France in 1803 of nearly a million square miles was a false bill of goods,
since the vendor didn’t own the territory and the buyer knew it. What was
bought and sold was the exclusive right to steal it from the people in
possession. Well, that’s how empires expand; they don’t ask permission from the
conquered.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The forced transfer of half of Mexico in
1848 – also nearly a million square miles – was the same kind of acquisition.
So was the purchase of Russian America in 1867 – only half a million square
miles, this time. Several of Spain’s overseas possessions were added to the
empire by force of arms in 1898: Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico...</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Since then, America’s expansion has
followed the broad method of the European trading nations between the 16<sup>th</sup>
and 20<sup>th</sup> Centuries, with businessmen and troops moving more or less
in lock-step. The military occupation of the Middle East was predictable. It’s
what the British did in India. Local <i>satraps </i>can’t be relied on to provide
the raw materials necessary for the prosperity of the imperial homeland – not
without the presence of imperial troops to remind them of their duties.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Brutality is a natural part of the
reminding-process, and psychopaths are hired to do the reminding. Human-rights
have no part to play in the administration of empires, and are pretty much a
dead letter in any imperial context. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Non-Americans have no excuse for not
recognising this truth. Europe remembers the excesses of Germany and Russia.
Asia remembers China’s “Great Leap Forward”, Japan’s invasions, and the more
recent holocausts in Cambodia and Vietnam. Latin America remembers its genocides
of aboriginal peoples. Africa’s history is cluttered with similar savagery. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Non-Americans in general are inclined to sympathize
more with local resistance movements that pit themselves against foreign
occupiers. We are more aware of history. The French civilians who resisted the
German occupation were called <i>terrorists</i>. The local heroes who made the
American Revolution were called terrorists by the British. Non-American <i>politicians</i>
tend to condone their US colleagues’ use of terror-tactics to counter the
resistance of the conquered – but not their constituents, in general.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The bogey-man of worldwide <i>Islamic
terrorism </i>is a conspiracy theory too far for most of us. We know that the
entire Islamic community isn’t savage. Religious crusades are frowned on by most educated observers, today.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Nevertheless, we don’t doubt that the <i>Oceania</i>
envisioned by George Orwell in “<i>1984</i>”, of America (and Israel, its <i>Airstrip
One</i>), will endure for the foreseeable future – or at least as long as its
currency can bear the expense. Empires’ lives are measured in centuries. There
is nothing new under the sun.</span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">This essay was originally posted a couple of years ago. Somehow, it has appeared again now, with the date 29 July 2015. I've no idea how this happened, and the Blogger website can't explain it. So... The content is still valid, but I do apologise for anybody irritated by the apparent double-post!</span> </span></div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-24938349584764665102015-07-28T10:29:00.002-07:002015-08-26T18:58:49.414-07:00Norwegian Wood<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]-->Ross gave me a glowing report on the property he was
intending to buy – and eventually did buy with the help of his Norwegian bank. “And
– listen to this, Dad – <i><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">there’s a
river runs through it!</b></i>” Wow. I’ve never actually read the book of that
title, or seen the movie, and I’m not sure he has. But I recognized the romance
in the reference, and gave it the nod.<br />
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Actually, the “river” was – is – a downhill trickle from a
natural mountain spring, but it made a satisfactory river-ish noise all the way
down. It rained most of the time we visited (earlier this month), and the wet
grass and undergrowth put us off exploring for the source further up the
mountain in the forest. Next time…</div>
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<br /></div>
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So. The Barlow Family’s property empire now includes sixty
acres of harvestable Norwegian trees in that nation’s wild, wild, west, to
augment the forest cabin’s half-acre in the east. It hardly seems worth while listing
our two little suburban blocks in the Caribbean. Yee-hah, though, eh?</div>
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<br /></div>
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The idea (not a <i>plan, </i>as such…) is to convert
some of the rickety shacks into basic accommodation for the hostel trade. There’s
a lot of conversion to do, and very little capital to do it with. Dreams and romance
don’t transform easily into practicality, do they? We parents will
give what encouragement we can – short of committing our retirement fund to the
project. That <i>would</i> need a <i>serious</i> plan.</div>
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<br /></div>
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He bought it for the view, which is magnificent: two or
three thousand feet above a valley with a <i>real</i> river and a very cute
town. Snow-capped mountains in the far distance, even in the summer. In the
winter it’s ski-territory, and by gosh it must be cold then. Linda and I
huddled in Ross’s coats and woolly hats, on top of our own – while the young
Norskie grandchildren cavorted (yes they did – they cavorted, shamelessly) in
short-shorts and T-shirts, and bare feet. Madness.</div>
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The place came on the basis of “as is, where is”.
Electricity, but no hot-water tank or pipes; a little stove and fridge (!),
lights and a heater, but no sink or shower or washing machine, or TV. Oh, and
the toilet facilities were – uh, as simple as you can get, pretty much. I hadn’t
used one of those places since 1955 when we left Hannaford; I’m not sure Linda
had ever used one, at least in a Western country. The only good thing about it
is that the seat was warm. I’m guessing it will need to be upgraded before the
local authorities grant any licences.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Or maybe not. Norway is a surprisingly relaxed place:
cheerful and friendly to a fault. Ross once ran across the Prime Minister of
the day while waiting for a ferry. “Are you good for a selfie, squire?” “Well,
why not?” Something like that. It’s a nice photo for his Facebook page – Ross’s,
at least: maybe not the PM’s.</div>
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<br /></div>
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That PM has come down in the world since then, regrettably.
Today he’s Secretary-General of NATO – doing the US’s bidding, and complicit in
that organisation’s war crimes. Sigh. Oh well. He <i>has</i> publicly scoffed
at the idea that Russia poses an imminent threat to Europe, so we must hope he can
keep his idiotic generals from starting World War III. (One of them is actually
called General Strangelove, for goodness sake. Well, <i>Breed</i>love, which is
even sillier.)</div>
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<br /></div>
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I’m always disgusted by double standards, and my heart breaks to note that Norway’s are as disgusting as
anybody’s. In the exact same week in 2011 that Anders Breivik slaughtered 69 members
of a youth camp on the island of Utoya, Norway’s air force was slaughtering an
unrecorded number of civilians in Libya as part of NATO’s unprovoked attack on
that nation. Nobody seems to have noticed the irony. (This was before
Stoltenberg took over, by the way; some Danish politician was in charge.)</div>
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<br /></div>
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The hypocrisy of mourning the one event while celebrating
the other is too much for me to stomach. Norwegians were themselves victims of
an aggressive-war machine in the 1940s. Is there a qualitative difference? I
can’t see it. Aren’t Libyans humans, too? If we bomb their legs off, do they
not bleed? </div>
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<br /></div>
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Running with the NATO dogs of war invites comparison with that old German
aggression, and the comparison demeans Norway’s gentle image in the civilized world.
Norway’s people <i>are</i> gentle, and well-mannered, and humane. They deserve
a more moral leadership and representation. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Sadly, all the peaceful forest in
the world can’t cancel out the wickedness of crimes against humanity.</div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-3643132181096056702015-06-09T11:26:00.000-07:002015-07-28T15:13:08.685-07:00FIFA – Where were the auditors?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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In the murky world of international commerce, the directors
and auditors of companies are responsible for guarding against operational
carelessness and naughtiness of all kinds. Watching them from above are state supervisory
authorities; and down in the boiler-rooms are the salaried managers and
minions. I’ve been all those things, in my time, except a state supervisor, so
very little happens in the world of international commerce that is new to me.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Directors are paid handsomely to direct the strategy of
their companies. With the cooperation of outside auditors the directors are
obliged to ensure that the Profit & Loss Accounts are a “true and fair”
statement of the operations and that the Balance Sheets give a “true and fair”
statement of the assets and liabilities. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s nothing particularly onerous in this second, shared,
duty. It might require a long time, and cost a lot of money – and they might
never uncover any errors. And, there may be no errors to discover. BUT if there
are some errors to discover, and they aren’t detected, then the directors and
auditors deserve to be held accountable.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Regrettably, good directors and auditors are not as easy to
find as they used to be. As long as directors observe the formal regulations
set out in their companies’ charters, and as long as auditors pay lip-service
to the relevant GAAP rules (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), then the
regulatory authorities tend to give the published Financial Statements a pass.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The blame for every corporate fraud in history rests with
the directors and auditors of the enterprise. For some reason, auditors never
get as much flak as directors. Speaking as a former auditor, that’s not the way
it should be. After all, a company’s auditors only have the one job. They are
independent. They have the run of the entire premises of the company, with <i>carte
blanche</i> to inspect what they want. Nobody can deny them access to any
records – or any physical equipment, come to that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They can write their own audit programs. As a young man I
once got the thrill of my life when one manager rather reluctantly gave way to
my request to see some record or other. “I don’t know what use that will be to
you”, he said. “Nobody’s ever asked for it before.” The record was indeed of no
value to me, in the event – but it was a useful reminder to him that I set the limits
to my investigations, not him.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At least, not if he wanted a “clean” audit report. Such a
thing was held in higher regard then than it is today. After all, incredibly
few companies in history have ever gone bankrupt <i>without</i> a clean audit
report. What does that say about changing auditing standards? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cayman’s own financial scandals have all arisen because of
inadequate auditing. BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International), Parmalat,
Enron – and now FIFA. Not a dollar should have gotten past the auditors of any
of them, never mind millions. What’s gone wrong, in recent decades?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every one of those companies’ auditors had an excuse, and I
know what it is. <i><u>The “audit budget” was too tight.</u></i> Overall budgets (so
many hours at so much an hour) are agreed each year between one of a company’s
directors and one of its audit firm’s partners, often during a round of golf.
The audit partner divides the dollar total by his preferred hourly rates, and
the minions are ordered to do their work within the calculated number of hours.
(As a mid-level minion, years ago in Canada, I was seriously threatened with
firing when I insisted on extra time, beyond the budget. My fellow minions all
took the easier path. Ah well, that’s a story for another time.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The term <i>Enron accounting</i> has entered the
dictionaries, but it ought to be called <i>Enron auditing</i>. The current FIFA
furore should be bringing down the auditors as much as the directors and
officers. The BCCI investigation in the 1980s did result in the demise of one
of the world’s biggest audit firms, but all their hotshots quickly found
employment with the others. There is little downside in being an audit partner.
(I’ve got a personal story about the principles that prevailed in that audit, too, for
another day…)</div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-58897461838783388932015-05-18T17:20:00.000-07:002015-07-28T15:13:30.416-07:00Cayman’s entitlement culture<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]-->Following an English Army’s conquest of Jamaica in 1655,
European and African refugees and drifters became the Cayman Islands’
indigenous/aboriginal inhabitants, as far as we know. There is no evidence
that any native-American tribes ever lived here. It is those first settlers’
bloodline descendants who still rule Cayman today, and claim preferential
rights to all manner of privileges. Migrants have always been tolerated, but full
acceptance has come only after mating with someone of the bloodline.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As in other communities around the world whose governance is
founded on bloodline or tribal inheritance, Cayman’s local rulers have found it
difficult to give up their tribal privileges – even impossible. Like Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf Emirates, Cayman has been lucky to have found a steady
source of state revenue without imposing an income-tax on their subjects. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every Arab tribal autocracy has its oil, Cayman’s has its
“offshore” international tax-haven. Those sources produce oodles of Public
Revenue, and every ruling tribe produces plenty of members ready to claim first
dibs on it by virtue of their bloodline. Historically, their political
representatives (who must be fellow-aboriginals, by law) have created an entire
system of governance that caters to that sentiment – regardless of consequences.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cayman’s current representatives have their knickers in a
twist, trying to resolve the consequences. <i>An uncomfortable number</i> of the
tribe’s members are coming up short in the following respects:-</div>
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<br /></div>
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</span></span></span>Unschooled beyond a minimal level</div>
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their personal finances</div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>Intolerant towards foreign ethnic groups</div>
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<br /></div>
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Those deficiencies have steadily worsened in recent years;
the drift to full dependency on government handouts has passed the point of no
return. There is no apparent solution on the horizon. It looks as though, in
time, our “native” citizenry will become overwhelmingly dependent on welfare.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Most</i> Caymanian families will rely on the plethora of
government bureaucracies for food-vouchers; most Caymanian children will rely
on charities to feed them before, during and after school; most Caymanian old
folk will receive free Meals on Wheels, free healthcare, and pocket-money.
Already, a huge segment of our bloated Civil Service is occupied with forcing
private-sector businesses to hire and promote bloodline Caymanians ahead of
immigrants, regardless of experience or (often) education.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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The four deficiencies listed above have achieved unstoppable
momentum. None of the four is ever publicly spoken of as a <i>dependency</i> by
ethnic Caymanians, or acknowledged as a predictable product of the culture of
entitlement. Expats know better than to argue, for fear of being punished by
the authorities. The problems could all be fixed if Caymanians allowed expats
to participate in the fixing – but expats are not to be trusted.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The schooling could be improved with the help of expat
teachers and employers – if they were trusted. The unemployables could be made
employable with the help of expats – if they were trusted. The financially incapable
could be taught by expat volunteers – if they were trusted. The intolerant
could be educated out of their narrow tribal prejudices – if their community
would trust the outside world.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(Of course there are some expat cronies and stooges whose
lives are spent giving comfort and assurance to the intolerant. There always
are people like that, aren’t there? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those
expats brave enough to disagree openly, have given up. Their independence is viewed
with suspicion; they will never be called upon, except as prospective stooges.
What a waste of useful resources it all is!)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every year, the Caymanians-only government schools add more inadequately
educated graduates to the ranks of the unemployable, the financially
irresponsible and the intolerant. All expats whose home this is, would love to be
called on to help stop the rot – but they never will be, because they aren’t trusted. </div>
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<br /></div>
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An uncomfortably large segment of our native Caymanian
community is addicted to its protectionist culture. Government-school standards
stay low because entitlement is more important than education. Respect for
foreign ways is absent because mistrust of foreigners is so strong. Personal
financial responsibility is pointless when every need is met by handouts.</div>
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<br /></div>
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It all reminds me of Bob Dylan’s famous song of the 1950s about
a drug-addict friend of his who, trapped by her dependency, could find “no direction
home”, he said. She was like a rolling stone, he told her brutally. By the same
token, the native-Caymanian community (as a whole) will find no way out of its
social confusion, until it casts off its dependency on its entitlement culture.</div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-23369319947027622952015-05-13T16:47:00.001-07:002015-07-28T15:13:56.537-07:00Fixing up George Town<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]-->The way things are going, George Town (our main commercial
centre) will lose most of its relevance within the next ten years. Camana Bay –
four miles to the north – is very up-market, and a much more attractive place
for stopover tourists and cruise-passengers alike. It would be unfair to say
that George Town is looking seedy, yet – or even particularly tired; but it does
have some tacky retail shops and eating-places, not appropriate for
middle-class visitors. There’s a lot of chatter about sprucing GT up, to
compete with the new town. <br />
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<br /></div>
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Camana Bay was established just a few years ago, designed by
the best town-planners Ken Dart’s infinite supply of capital could buy. As the
owner of the whole development Mr Dart has had the freedom to negotiate the
re-siting of roads and the allocation of land-units. He has done a superb job. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Predictably, his commercial park knocks the socks off
downtown, as an attraction for visitors. GT grew up before the days of
professional town-planning. Confined in a haphazard layout of mildly congested
streets and lanes, financial-sector offices rub shoulders with cheapo T-shirt
shops and rowdy bars. Wild chickens share the sidewalks with pedestrians.
(Actually, they’re quite cute, especially when they hang out around the KFC
shop, but – well, let’s just say it’s not quite in accordance with the image that
our “offshore” hotshots would like to project!) </div>
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<br /></div>
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Downtown merchants are increasingly indignant at the bussing
of cruise-passengers up to Camana Bay, to shop and wander around, but are
relying on government to help them out and to pay for whatever it costs. That’s
pretty pathetic, but par for the course, in a Cayman in which people are
encouraged to suck on the government teat rather than find their own sustenance. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Regrettably, Cayman is no longer a self-help society. A
couple of months ago, in a blog-post called <i>Give a kid breakfast</i>, I grumbled
about the welfare mentality that encouraged parents of schoolchildren to rely
on charities to feed those children. Some of the parents are genuinely not
competent to manage the money they earn, but most seem to believe that they are
<i>entitled</i> to mooch off the rest of society at every opportunity. <i>The
entitlement culture</i>, we call it. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Charity recipients are supposed to be means-tested, but most
people I speak with believe the testing-system is corrupt. Certainly, many of the kids applying for the free school-meals come from homes with
fancier cars than Linda and I can afford! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ah well…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can’t
blame the politicians and government bureaucrats for turning a blind eye to the
corruption that allows self-reliance to be thrown out the window. After all, it’s
the absence of self-reliance that keeps them all in their well-paid jobs. Their
secret aim in life is probably to abolish self-reliance altogether. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(Outside the offshore-finance sector, Cayman is galloping
towards full socialism. Already we have quasi-communist state control of the
entire workforce, and already there are moves to control day-to-day operations
of commerce, too – offshore-finance excepted.) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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As a general statement, our downtown merchants are milking the entitlement culture as
much as the free-breakfast mothers. They (the merchants) want government to
make their place more attractive, and seem unwilling to do anything substantive themselves
– or to pay for the refurbishment demanded. They’re too cheap to even
set up a Merchants Association, for goodness sake. If they’ve even thought
about it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thirty years ago our Chamber of Commerce was slapped awake
from a long sleep by an enlightened group of local businessmen, just in time to
fight off a proposed Income Tax that would have destroyed Cayman’s prosperity. It
was a narrow escape, and the total cost was a mere $100,000. Who will slap
today’s downtown merchants awake, and persuade them to finance a war-chest of
$100,000 or so? </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If they can’t find an enlightened group from within their
number, they won’t deserve to survive. Sadly, it seems that all the
get-up-and-go of earlier times has simply got up and gone.</div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-6794322891708433782015-04-27T22:05:00.000-07:002015-07-28T15:14:47.751-07:00We’d all be speaking German…<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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In 2003 the US government assembled an international army to
invade and occupy Iraq, in order to destabilize the region and thus allow
Israel to feel more secure. France refused to join. The Imperial rulers were so
offended that for the next three years the menus of the US Congress’s
cafeterias sold “freedom fries” instead of “French fries”.<br />
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The US’s idiot-fringe has never forgiven the French and
their nation. “If it wasn’t for us you’d all be speaking German!” “Our boys
saved you last time, yet now you won’t help us!” Never mind that the Iraq
venture was illegal, immoral, and based on the deliberate lie that that nation
had hidden weapons of mass destruction ready to launch at 45 minutes’ notice.<br />
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On one international web-forum I once had occasion to criticise
the US military’s routine torture of POWs in Iraq (members of the local
resistance). In response, one simple-minded patriot demanded to know why I felt
no gratitude to the US military of the 1940s for saving Australia from invasion
and occupation by the armies of Japan. Another poster frothed with indignation:
“My father was a US Marine, and he was a fine man and a war hero, and how dare
you demean his heroism by questioning the Marine Corps?” And so on.<br />
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It’s a dangerous path to follow. Is one never to forgive the
descendants of an ancestor’s enemies? “Those Afghan bastards! My great-grandpa
died invading their country. I will never buy an Afghan rug! The more villagers
killed by drone strikes, the better.” “Those Russian bastards! My German
grandpa froze to death during the siege of Leningrad. Let’s nuke the whole
nation now!”<br />
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Is one never to resent atrocities committed by criminal
gangs claiming to act in the name of an old political ally?<br />
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In October last year I noted a great-uncle’s role in the
slaughter of Nigerian natives rebelling against the British invasion of their
homeland in 1902. I wondered if that slaughter might be in part responsible for
the current atrocities against Christians in the region. [You can find a direct link to my piece
by Googling “Uncle Charles and the Boko Haram”.]<br />
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In the early 1800s a great-great-great-grandfather of mine made
a modest fortune as a trafficker of opium from India to China. A few of his
rupees (sadly not many, but a few) have trickled down to me. Do I deserve the
wrath of a billion Chinese descendants of his victims? “You bastard! If it
wasn’t for your criminal ancestor, our families would be rich today.”<br />
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It’s alarming how many people do hold grudges for
ridiculously long times. Western newspapers carry resentful accusations of
Kurds’ and Arabs’ killing of European invaders a thousand years ago – and even
of the Persians for their invasion of Europe <i>two</i> thousand years ago.
There are European Jews who have not yet forgiven Egyptians for enslaving the
Hebrews<i> three</i> thousand years ago. The descendants of African slaves are
claiming trillions of dollars in reparations for <i>their</i> ancestors’
sufferings. And so on.<br />
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In light of such nonsense, I suppose re-living atrocities of
a mere seventy years ago is not surprising. The government of Israel has a regular
blackmail campaign against the current taxpayers of Germany in respect of their
forebears’ crimes in the 1940s. In decades to come, lawyers for Palestinian
survivors will be seeking redress from Israeli taxpayers in respect of today’s
brutalities. Maybe the Palestinian government-in-exile will persuade Germany to
pay the blackmail money directly to it, and cut out the middle-man. At least
there would be a logic to <i>that</i>.<br />
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Interestingly, few conquered peoples ever do allow their
languages to be replaced by those of their conquerors. Wholesale ethnic
cleansing is effective, and we can expect Arabic to disappear from Palestine
when all the natives have been removed from there. But when the local populace
is left in place – as it has been in so many places in Europe over the
Centuries – its language almost always survives intact.<br />
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The French would <i>not</i> all be speaking German if Hitler
had won his War – any more than the Germans spoke the languages of any of <i>their</i>
conquerors when Hitler’s War was lost. Whatever the current US Empire does and doesn’t
do to <i>its</i> conquered peoples, it won’t alter the languages they speak.</div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-3756926508164272372015-04-12T12:27:00.001-07:002015-07-28T15:15:30.351-07:00Where did all the bad people come from?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]-->Linda and her young sister learnt to swim in the hands of a
middle-aged man who knew their mother, though not particularly well. He had no
qualifications, no insurance, no supervision, and (on the evidence) no evil
desires. It never occurred to anybody that he might let his hands roam where
they shouldn’t roam – and one assumes it never occurred to him either. Those
were the days, eh?
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
She and her friends rode or walked to school and back
unmolested, and played in parks afterwards, and crossed roads and tramlines,
and skipped safely through dark underpasses. No mobile phones to tell their
mums where they were, no wrist-watches to tell the time; bikes were never
stolen from where they’d been dropped on the ground.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
(In the Exeter City public swimming baths a few years ago I
was ticked off for taking photos of my granddaughters while they swam with
their grandma. I was probably lucky not to have my name put on the
sex-offenders Register.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Out in the bush, my young brother and I rode our bikes home
after school – in a convoy up the dirt road, peeling off one by one at the
tracks to our respective homes, half a mile or more in from the road. During
the rains, horses took the place of bikes on what was then a <i>mud</i> road.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Some days, I would go home with the Cameron kids, and Mrs
Cameron would phone Mum to negotiate a departure time. On hot days, we’d all
pile into their swimming hole. I don’t think any of us could swim, but we could
stay afloat; the nearest adult was up at the house two hundred yards away.<br />
<br />
Except
for the time Bryan broke his arm galloping through the scrub [reported in <i>The
Man from Snowy River</i> in the Archives of November 2012], nothing bad ever
happened to us. Frankie once accidentally rode his bike over the tail of a
brown-snake: that could have been nasty – but he was lucky, so we didn’t even
bother to tell the parents.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Back then, we were allowed to look after ourselves – Linda
in her seaside town, me in the bush. So was our son on this island, a
generation later. So too are his children in their semi-rural Scandinavian
setting. We have all learned to calculate the risk of any activity, and to act
accordingly.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When Linda and I backpacked through the Middle East in our
mid-20s, our mothers took comfort (well, <i>some</i> comfort…) in the knowledge
that we probably <i>could</i> look after ourselves.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Surely, far too many middle-class children today are coddled
– by parents, neighbourhoods, towns, provinces and nations. Toddlers whose
parents leave them in cars for more than ten seconds run the risk of being
abducted by social-services bureaucrats. Parents are publicly scolded for
letting their kids find their own way home from schools and playgrounds.
Indeed, for even letting them <u>be</u> at playgrounds without adult
supervision. What’s next: certificates from City Hall for play-dates?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
All parents know that at <i>some</i> stage children have to
be capable of crossing streets without having their hands held. At some point
car-drivers have to be trusted not to run them down, and ice-cream vendors not
to rape them, and teachers not to turn comforting hugs into rabid molestation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Sooner or later – children have to be trusted to look after
themselves. Society just hasn’t got the resources to look after<i> everybody</i>.
Already, “society” is looking after far more people than it ought to be – far
more babies, far more children, far more incompetent adults, far more old folk.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Here in Cayman, half of all Civil Servants, half of all
private-sector personnel-staff, and half of our Public Revenues, are assigned
to protecting Caymanian citizens who aren’t even <i>encouraged</i> to look
after themselves. Civil Servants and politicians all have a vested interest in maintaining
the <i>status quo</i>.<br />
<br />
Like most other communities in the Western World, we are
in danger of ending up with <i>everybody</i> being protected all of the time,
by armies of bureaucrats whose wages are paid out of money borrowed against the
taxes of future generations. In the end, everybody will have forgotten <i>how</i>
to look after themselves.<br />
<br />
That’s the socialist dream, isn’t it?</div>
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-31952872522725312542015-03-16T08:09:00.000-07:002015-07-28T15:16:17.296-07:00Entertaining the NorskiesWe’ve just had our Norskies (son and granddaughters) here for a couple of weeks, and very nice too. The exit was not so pleasant, because of our local Airport Management’s policy of pissing all over people who schedule their departures on Saturdays and Sundays. What a shambles it was last weekend.<br />
<br />
It reminded me of Athens airport in 1976 when I met my Mum off the plane from Australia. Poor Mum thought she’d died and gone to hell. Passengers and greeters and farewellers in mobs; cases and packages strewn around getting trampled underfoot by goats and camels and who knows what-all. It was like wandering in the wake of an earthquake. Being trapped in the middle of a thousand milling sheep back on the farm was much less dusty and disorganized, she reckoned.<br />
<br />
It was like that on Saturday at our international airport. Two (count ‘em!) airline ground-staff were on hand to guide five or six hundred milling sheep (as it were…) to their respective check-in desks as well as the TSA security line that stretched the entire length of the building both inside and outside. For the record, the two ground-staff were employed by Jet Blue and Delta.<br />
<br />
Nobody from American that I could see, nobody from United, nobody from Cayman Airways. Shame on the absentees: credit to the unflappable reps from the two good guys. What a slap in the face to all the tourists and businessmen whose last impression of Cayman was of Third World incompetence.<br />
<br />
Except for the departure shambles, it was a super holiday for our family. Linda took time off from her part-time job, and swam with the girls every morning at the little cove down the road. Ross and I did it a couple of times with them, but we were poor substitutes. The girls adore their father, and tolerate me; but Mamma Linda is the main attraction in all circumstances. She cooks with them and takes them up to the Turtle Farm and the Dolphin place, and the Agricultural Fair, and even a tennis knock-around on a friend’s court on the south side.<br />
<br />
She it was who dug out the Scrabble and the Boggle, and taught them all the English words and spellings. Ross and I gave an exhibition of <i>Championship</i> Monopoly (Ross’s World Championship appearance was the subject of my January 2013 blog <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Monopoly Money</span></i>). Fortunately, the younger one is old enough now not to mind getting thrashed in table games.<br />
<br />
The highlight of the vacation was a one-day “resort course” Scuba lesson. For one day back in 1993 Ross would have been the youngest PADI instructor in the world, and he has never lost his teaching skills. But after leaving Cayman he let his insurance lapse, and without a current card he can’t rent tanks and equipment for others. So he wore Linda’s gear and watched a young professional diver give the lesson.<br />
<br />
He (Ross) never seriously considered making a career as an instructor. Piloting our local tourist submarines was the closest he ever came to an underwater career. Above my chair as I write this is a head-on photograph he took of a turtle in the wild when he was thirteen. He’s quite proud of that, but only in a “been there, done that” kind of way. Linda and I would <i>never</i> part with it.<br />
<br />
The girls take their father at face value, the way kids do. His exotic history is only half-listened-to, when we refer to it. Maybe it’s a bit too exotic to appreciate, for youngsters raised in the protective custody of a Scandinavian welfare-state. The older girl has had her own exotic adventures – Mayan minders in Guatemala and Peru, and the tropical diseases associated with a hippy lifestyle in those parts – but they are lost in the mists of toddlerhood.<br />
<br />
There aren’t many opportunities for Scuba divers in Norway’s frozen waters besides the offshore oil wells. But - who knows? The lesson here in Cayman may have given our two the taste for more diving – and maybe, even, the taste for a life in places <i>without</i> frozen waters, one day.
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-9233808475464763982015-03-05T09:28:00.000-08:002015-07-28T15:16:39.984-07:00Global Warming, Global CoolingRoss and I agree on most things in life, but the fuss over the changing climate isn’t one of them. We’re not scientists or climatologists, so our opinions are based on what’s reported as being the opinions of those who are. The real question for us is: which of the two competing sets of scientists and climatologists do we believe is telling the truth.<br />
<br />
Every thinking person in the world believes in “climate change”, of course. Who could not? Winters and summers are colder than they used to be, in places – and hotter than usual in other places. Droughts are dryer: floods are wetter. Hurricanes are fiercer but fewer, except when they’re not. Sea-ice at the Poles is shrinking, or it is expanding, depending which set of observers is telling the story.<br />
<br />
Unless we lower our consumption of oil, the planet is doomed - also our consumption of spray deodorants and Windex. Yet politicians and their sponsors all fly off to faraway conferences in their private planes once or twice a year, staying in centrally heated luxury hotels, so perhaps it’s doomed anyway. Fuel saved by conscientious households is all diverted to Imperial armies and their suppliers; won’t that doom the planet anyway? Better (for the world) to deny the armies than the householders, wouldn’t you say? I would.<br />
<br />
My son and I both distrust liars. We don’t tell lies ourselves, and become distressed when we encounter blatant liars. We’re never quite sure how to handle them. He has been a wonderfully forgiving person all his life, and tends to give second chances - sometimes even third chances. I’m not, and I don’t. For me, once is enough. Life’s too short to tolerate habitual liars.<br />
<br />
I remember the manufactured panic over Saddam’s WMDs. We were 45 minutes away from a mushroom cloud over London, the liars told the Western press, and the press told us suckers. The politicians and bureaucrats thirsted after war and bloodshed, and had a vested interest in those things. The sheep didn’t doubt the mass media, and let the bloodshed proceed on the nod. A million civilians died; millions more were traumatized, physically or mentally or both, and most of them will never recover. The perpetrators shrugged, and have never felt remorse.<br />
<br />
How can such a monstrous lie and its enablers be forgiven by anyone with any moral values? Hitler’s willing executioners (that was the title of a book about them) have as much claim to respect as those monsters.<br />
<br />
The same monsters and the same obedient reporters are today pushing another Big Lie in respect of the world’s changing climate. Instead of WMD, today’s selected enemy is AGW. The pushers don’t care whether AGW is true or not; they only care that the sheep can be manipulated to the point of believing it.<br />
<br />
In October of 2013 I wrote a blog-post called SUM TING WONG. Google will lead you to it if you search for that title with my name in front. That was the name of the captain of a Korean passenger jet that clipped the perimeter-fence at San Francisco’s airport, announced to the nation in all solemnity by a TV network reporter on the day, reading from what was typed and shown on the screen. The other officers in the cockpit were solemnly reported as WI TU LO, HO LEE FUK, and BANG DING OW. I kid you not.<br />
<br />
The same degree of diligence goes into all that they do. By and large, only the “alternative media” questions the official versions of events - from Saddam’s nuclear weapons and the names of Korean airline pilots, to the casual defeat of the world’s most sophisticated national defence-system in 2001, by nineteen barefoot Arab boys with a dozen fifty-cent box-cutters.<br />
<br />
It is independent researchers who genuinely seek alternatives to suspicious narratives – the Malaysian Airlines planes, the Charlie Hebdo shootings, the Ukrainian civil war, the threat of Global Warming. Mind you, the independents’ conclusions aren’t <i>always</i> right. <i>Sometimes</i> – when it suits Big Brother – the official versions are right.<br />
<br />
One day, Sum Ting Wong really will be the name of an airline pilot. One day, either Global Warming will be proven to be the fault of mankind, and all the billionaires’ private planes will be grounded for the common good; or, Global Cooling will be proven, and reckless fuel usage will be encouraged. Hasten the day.
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-53205171911614883232015-02-14T13:30:00.001-08:002015-08-26T18:58:12.461-07:00The right to dieIn a blog-post called <i>The Gay Marriage Thing</i> in March last year, I recognized that the legalization of same-sex marriages in effect dismissed procreation as the basic premise on which formal marriage has always been based. The premise dated from the days when love had nothing to do with marriage, and everything to do with family alliances.<br />
<br />
When marriage is removed from the context of family alliances and children, why does a community – any community – need to be in the business of licensing marriages at all? Why can’t communities simply butt out altogether, and let marriages happen in the absence of any community acknowledgment?<br />
<br />
By the same token: why does any community have to be in the business of legislating with regard to death?<br />
<br />
In most Western societies – liberal democracies – individuals are already free (within reason) to bequeath their assets to whomever they want. Most societies do levy <i>ad-valorem taxes</i> on deceased estates, though. That’s a custom that began when relatively primitive communities or their rulers held actual legal title to all the land, and whose approval had to be granted for the transfer of occupancy on the death of their tenants. It’s not called “real estate” for nothing; the word “real” meant “royal”.<br />
<br />
At all levels of society, it wasn’t just the land that belonged to a community or its lords and/or kings, it was also the people who lived on it. The rulers held the power of life and death over their subjects. It still is, if you think about it. Even in democracies, such actions as abduction, assault, murder and theft are forbidden to all but the authorized servants of the state.<br />
<br />
Chief among those prohibitions is the termination of human life. Even the most lowly members of the proletariat are valuable, as spear-carriers and cannon-fodder in tribal wars. To deprive the community of prospective soldiers was tantamount to treason. Even today, the killer of a fellow-subject must be tried in the lawcourts of the relevant king or his agents. Private vengeance is forbidden. Vengeance is <i>mine</i>, saith the king: <i>I</i> will repay.<br />
<br />
Suicide deprives a community and its rulers of their property. Therefore, nobody can assist in a suicide, any more than in a private murder. In many nations, a suicide forfeited the privilege of being buried in a churchyard – as well as the privilege of God’s mercy in the afterlife.<br />
<br />
Over centuries, individuals have gradually been allowed to gain some rights over their own lives. In Western societies, at least. Some simpler, pacifist, cultures have always been generous in recognizing individual rights in respect of death. Committing suicide has never been a shameful act, there, and nor has assisting it.<br />
<br />
Logically, suicide is the final freedom. Indeed, it is irrefutable proof of individual freedom. Neither church canon nor civil statute ought to hold any veto over the basic human right to be free. The main clause of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights obliges all national government-signatories to recognize <i>a right to life</i>, and the right to life ends with death, surely, not a split-second earlier.<br />
<br />
Human Rights advocates and supporters claim that human rights exist <i>ab initio</i>, so to speak. They can’t be granted, only recognized: they can’t be withdrawn or cancelled, only not recognized. Communities who endorse the basic principle have no moral option but to recognize the logic of the statement in the paragraph above this one. The right to life ends with death, and not a moment earlier. Suicide is the act of a free man. Preventing it is the act of an unfree society.
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-50672306986890482062015-02-09T08:13:00.000-08:002015-07-28T15:17:39.161-07:00Give a Kid BreakfastOne of Cayman’s most emotive charity-appeals is for children who arrive at school without having been fed any breakfast. A newspaper report from two years ago spoke of 1000 children in this situation, and the website of the (separate) children’s charity that gives schoolkids free <i>lunches</i> estimates that 1200 “families” regularly need food. The figures are probably a lot higher now than when they were reported. In every case, the parent or parents either don’t have the <i>time</i> to feed the children or can’t <i>afford</i> to feed them, or can’t be <i>bothered</i> to feed them.<br />
<br />
Those who know of Cayman’s wealth (its <i>per-capita</i> Public Revenue is huge, by regional standards) must wonder if these charities aren’t a bit of a racket. Would 20% of Caymanian schoolchildren really starve without private charities’ efforts? I don’t believe it. I can easily believe that the 20% turn up at school without breakfast inside them or lunch in hand; but I don’t believe all their parents can’t afford the food. A simple breakfast of cold cereal and milk costs fifty cents, and nobody in Cayman is too poor to afford that.<br />
<br />
The two main charities are <i>Give a Kid Breakfast</i> and <i>Feed our Future</i>. Between them they feed a reported 25% of all the Caymanian children in primary and secondary schools in the Islands. No <i>expat</i> children are included in these programs, because a) the children of well-paid expats must by law attend fee-paying private schools, and b) <i>low-paid</i> expat parents aren’t permitted to have their children with them in Cayman.<br />
<br />
Are any of the charity-parents means-tested? Supposedly, yes, though I wonder how thorough the testing is. If I were to do the testing, how many would I find driving new cars and spending their wages on beauty salons or alcohol or huge flat-screen TVs? Those charities could hire <i>me</i> to do the means-testing (free of charge, I promise), and to publish my findings, with names. Huh. <i>That</i>'s not going to happen. <br />
<br />
Back in 1988, as a member of the government High School’s PTA sub-committee looking into the drugs problem at the School, I persuaded my colleagues to call for convicted drugs-dealers to be banned from the campus, even if they were parents or guardians of pupils, and for their photos to be posted on the Notice Board. The day after our report went forward, word came down from the Education Department to the Headmaster to close down the sub-committee immediately. Even drugs dealers had the vote, after all… It’s the same thing with charity-cheats. Ach, what can you do?<br />
<br />
Even more important than the cheating, is the deliberate grooming of the unfortunate children to a lifetime of cosseting. Free meals at their primary and secondary schools, free scholarships for their college education, full protection by the Immigration system during their working lives, and free <i>Meals on Wheels</i> when they retire. From kindergarten to the grave, the community will protect them from the burdens of character-building and financial responsibility.<br />
<br />
I have left out the pre-schoolers, because I don’t know what happens to them. I suppose that if they don’t get free food there, they are fed at home by relatives or friends. I’ve never heard of a new pupil turning up at a primary school malnourished, on his or her first day.<br />
<br />
The other thing to say about the free meals is that a lot of careful thought has gone into the sample menus. I wonder if the whole program isn’t rather over-egged, so to speak. For my four years at the local bush primary-school, between home-schooling and boarding-school, Mum gave me Marmite sandwiches every day for lunch, and my brother peanut-butter sandwiches – plus an apple or orange. At break-times we drank water out of the school’s storage-tank, warm from the hot sun. <i>If we were lucky!</i> (<span style="font-size: x-small;">Monty Python joke; video accessible via Google</span>.)<br />
<br />
We never swapped lunches. There were only a dozen of us, and our parents all knew each other. It would have been disloyal to spurn the lunch we were given. Anyway, I <i>liked</i> Marmite, and Doug liked peanut butter; it never occurred to us to expect variety, or a choice.<br />
<br />
How times have changed.
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-45004801552544997512015-01-31T10:38:00.000-08:002015-07-28T15:18:07.772-07:00Hobson’s Choice (eating well)When I was a boy… [Surely one of the benefits of becoming an old codger is that you can get away with reminiscences beginning with “When I was a boy”.] So. When I was a boy, life was simpler for children than it is now.<br />
<br />
For one thing, the food was simpler. In the 1940s and ‘50s, shops didn’t carry pre-cooked meals, at least in Queensland. McDonald’s and KFC hadn’t come to us yet.
Prepared food in general? Heck, even sandwich-shops created their goodies while we watched. Nothing was prepared ahead of time. We office-workers lined up at midday and gave our orders one by one to sweaty-handed lads living dangerously with razor-sharp knives. There was no air-conditioning, and the fans couldn’t really cope with the heat.<br />
<br />
Hygienic gloves hadn’t come into fashion, then, but we hardly ever discovered any blood in our fillings. The sandwich-makers were skilled at their job.<br />
<br />
We didn’t have allergies, because allergies are immune-deficiencies caused by the excessive avoidance of germs. Frankie Gardiner was the only kid with asthma that anybody ever knew, out at Hannaford; and he was from Melbourne, a thousand miles or more to the south. Maybe he had led too sheltered a life; he was a delicate boy, who tended to hang back when the rest of us were messing around in the dirt.<br />
<br />
Kitchen-cleansers that remove 99% of all household germs are bad for young children. It’s the 99% of household germs that build up kids’ immunities. What doesn’t kill children makes them stronger – just like our Grandmas said.<br />
<br />
When I was a boy, not only was food simpler than it is now: so were menus. Our mothers’ menus at every mealtime were quintessentially simple – namely, what was on the plate. The choice was Hobson’s choice: eat it or don’t eat it. Actually: eat it all or don’t bother turning up for the <i>next</i> meal.<br />
<br />
My Mum would bend the rules a bit, in a good cause; but she never broke them. I hated pumpkin, so she kindly served me only a token amount; and in the spirit of fair play I ate all of <i>that</i>. It was easier at boarding school. There I could give my pumpkin away, and fill up with the stale bread that usually went begging.<br />
<br />
In the bush, most of our food was mutton, home-raised at a marginal cost that was close to zero. In town, too, our only meat was mutton, out of residual loyalty to the sheep-farming industry. During my working years in Brisbane my landladies often served up roast beef on Sundays, but it was many years before I could eat it without feeling guilty.<br />
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I was left with a lifelong aversion to choice, with regard to foods. Even today I never feel completely comfortable in restaurants, for that reason. I love eating at friends’ houses, because they don’t give me a choice. Occasionally a hostess will say, “I hope you like this”, but she doesn’t really care. There’s never an alternative on offer. “Sorry, Wendy, I’m a vegetarian.” “Oh dear, George; let me scrape the meat off your plate and give you a few more potatoes. There you go.”<br />
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When courtesy requires, I will eat anything at all. In Tehran, I was once offered a sheep’s eye. As it happens – and fortunately – our host had lived in the West. As I steeled myself, the eye glaring at me defiantly, he took pity. (The host, not the eye. The eye was pitiless.) “I know it’s not a western thing”, he said, “and I won’t be offended if you’d rather not choke it down. But for us it’s a delicacy. Why not let me eat it?” I settled for the tender eyelid-meat that surrounded the organ. That saved me a little bit of “face”. Linda wouldn’t even eat that.<br />
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Somebody once told me of a British couple who discovered a restaurant in Madrid whose specialty was bulls’ testicles. Animals killed in the bull-fights are sold at the markets, and no part of the beast is wasted. One night the serving was meagre – tasty, but much smaller than usual – and the couple asked why. The waiter shrugged. “Senor, Senora… You know, the bull doesn't <i>always</i> lose. Very occasionally, he wins, and it is the matador who dies.” Shrug.<br />
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It – uhhh – it may not be a true story, but it’s worth the telling.
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-24755622543572790172015-01-06T09:33:00.000-08:002015-07-28T15:18:32.894-07:00Standards in Public Life (in Cayman)Having Cayman as a colony is not all fun and games for the British Government. The poor old FCO (Foreign & Commonwealth Office) goes to all the trouble of designing a framework to contain bad behavior by our local rulers, only for the framework to be ignored or subverted.<br />
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Bad behavior is supposed to be monitored – and, ideally, curtailed – by three politically appointed Commissions, as well as by the FCO-appointed Public Auditor. A couple of other public officers are supposed to keep the Civil Service in line – an ombudsman (Complaints Commissioner) and a Freedom of Information Officer.<br />
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Nothing works the way it was intended. Each member of the Commissions was chosen because he or she was reckoned to be “a safe pair of hands”. The <i>Anti-Corruption Commission</i> has uncovered two or three of the most blatant of thousands of daily illegalities within the Immigration Department, but any trials will have to wait two or three years. After all, why hurry? There’s plenty of cash in the kitty to keep the suspects’ salaries and perks paid in full while they sit at home and attend to their private businesses.<br />
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The <i>Human Rights Commission</i> wastes its time on legal technicalities, and avoids taking official notice of the longtime exploitation of unskilled migrants, indentured (without the slightest supervision) to their employers. “Near slavery”, the Jamaicans call it, sometimes with good reason. The HRC also ignores Cayman’s treatment of our boat-people – Cuban refugees, many of whom die on the way from Cuba to Honduras via Cayman waters. The HRC doesn’t seem to regard refugees or poor migrants as human, within the terms of its responsibility.<br />
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The <i>Standards in Public Life Commission</i> does nothing at all, as far as we can tell.<br />
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Last week one of our Cabinet Ministers, responsible for Health, Culture, Youth and Gender Affairs, lost his rag when invited by his Chief Officer (the most senior Civil Servant in any Ministry) to provide evidence to support a dubious expense-claim before submitting it for reimbursement. The Minister – an arrogant bully at any time; he “has form”, as the English say – cursed out the unfortunate CO in the hearing of the entire staff. "How dare you!! I am a born Caymanian and you are just a piece of fucking driftwood! Get the fuck out of my office! Go on - fuck off!" Or words to that effect.<br />
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Our Premier backed his crony, the bully. The Chief Officer was transferred to another Portfolio. The Minister lost a couple of responsibilities, but retained Culture – which gives us lots of hope for the future…<br />
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Never mind the cursing. The word "driftwood" – and its tolerance by our Premier – is what will cost his Party the next election. That the Chief Officer was a highly respected immigrant of longstanding (foreign-born, but with bloodline-Caymanian children by her bloodline-Caymanian ex-husband) indicates the profound contempt for expats that flourishes in the leadership of our ruling party.<br />
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Ever since I began this blog in 2010, I have bewailed the anti-expat attitudes of many bloodline-Caymanians. Not all of them: probably not even a majority: but many. And most of the “many” voted for this present ruling party, which has always had a bit of a name for being anti-expatriate. This latest incident removes all doubt, and it is way too much for any of our expat communities to accept.<br />
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Our votes are gone, and they won’t be coming back. British and other European, North American, Latino, Jamaican, Asian, African… we’re all well represented on the voting lists these days, and we will probably vote as a bloc next time. Come back, McKeeva – all is forgiven!<br />
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Where does Cayman go from here? Into further tribal divisiveness, unfortunately. And further corruption. When Linda and I came here in 1978, <i>Caymanian Status</i> (citizenship, in effect) could be bought for $30,000, paid under the counter to the right person in high office. The “marl road” – our grapevine – reports that it has been available for only $20,000 recently. Ah well: it’s good to know some prices have escaped inflation.
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3519554075609044010.post-54701753873385410582014-12-30T08:42:00.000-08:002015-07-28T15:19:09.740-07:00X is for Xmas (the A-Z of blogging)I came across a website the other day that challenged readers to write a series of 26 essays, within a selected theme, each essay to be identified with a different letter of the alphabet. Mentally flipping through my blog’s archives I found I could handle the assignment only if I used X for Xmas – or, X for <i>Xnty</i>, which is my private shorthand for Christianity.<br />
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Q & Z were easy: they could stand for Queensland and Zorba, respectively. <i>Zorba the Greek</i> was a movie that was showing at a cinema in Thessaloniki, Greece, one night in 1964; a gang of us from the Youth Hostel went and watched it – dubbed in Greek, with English sub-titles. I was reminded of the event by a Canadian chap we came across in what is now Vanuatu eight years later; I blogged about that meeting in January 2012, and it’s in the Archives under the name of the movie.<br />
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It’s nice to have a legitimate “Z for …” in my bag. My cousin Arthur was Secretary to the Bishop of Zambia in the 1950s, but I’ve never written about that; and nothing memorable has ever happened to me at a zoo. So it was Zorba or nothing. It’s much the same with Queensland. I’ve hitched to and through Queenstown in New Zealand and Qum in Iran, and I once took in a day’s polo at Windsor Great Park in the company of a Duke named Quentin. But Qs are slim pickings in any context.<br />
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This month I’m reading “The Atheists’ Guide to Christmas” – which to my surprise uses the C-word and not the X-abbreviation. That’s weird. I myself always write Xmas, unless to a known or suspected Christian whom I don’t want to offend. (My shorthand for “Christian” is <i>Xn</i>, naturally enough. Among some of my US acquaintances, <i>Xian</i> is a code word for Zionist, which is interesting; maybe they use it to throw the censors off the scent.)<br />
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X was and is the letter of the Greek alphabet whose sound was and is similar to our English hard-C. When Christianity began as a religion, Greek commentators translated the Semitic title “Messiah” [“the anointed”] as <i>Christos</i> – in Greek lettering which was later transliterated into Christ. <i>Christos</i> meant “anointed” (smeared with ointment) in a general religious context, and was conveniently close in sound to <i>Horus</i>, the Egyptian sky-god widely respected (and sometimes worshipped) in the Greek culture of the time. And who was born of a virgin, and whose holy day was 25th December. What a coincidence! <br />
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Happily, too, Jesus/<i>Iesus</i> was conveniently close in sound to <i>Isis</i>, that same virgin mother. Thus: Jesus Christ = <i>Iesus Horus</i>, as though the “Christ” part was a surname and not a title. There is another Greek word (probably related), that transliterates as <i>kharis</i>, meaning “grace”, which is used in their “thanks” – <i>efkharisto</i>, from which we got our English Eucharist.<br />
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Christianity is a largely synthetic religion, absorbing rituals, traditions, legends and names from just about every belief-system it encountered. It pinched the whole of the Old Testament from Judaism – and, more recently, the Christmas Tree and Santa Claus from the Germans.<br />
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Our English name for God is Germanic – <i>Gott</i> from the Goths and Scots, both of which peoples took their names from the same ancient tribal god. In contrast, southern European tribes mostly stuck with the name of <i>Zeus</i> in its several forms, inherited from the even more ancient tribal god of Sumer in southern Iraq. I blogged about The Names of God in March 2012.<br />
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For centuries the name “damn” was considered a blasphemy, after Christianity had commandeered the general sound of it for its own god. (“Damn/<i>domine</i>” in Latin meant “master” or “lord”; its origin – as far as can be speculated – was the ancestor of the Aramaic god <i>Tammuz</i>, whose name endures in England’s River <i>Thames</i>. And in the word <i>democracy</i> – as explained in a blog-post of November 2011.<br />
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Gods’ names are the very devil to shake off.
Gordon Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04525819944507167458noreply@blogger.com