It’s always interesting reading about countries whose names have been wiped off the map. Anybody who has ever collected postage stamps knows exactly what I mean. With the dissolution of Yugoslavia, its name was replaced by the names of its six component republics. In the same fashion the USSR became Russia and some of the other former USSR republics. A short time later, East Germany was removed, when it reunited with West Germany.
Korea is now two Koreas, China is two Chinas. The India of the British Empire disappeared to become India Bharat and Pakistan, and later Bangla Desh too. The new India wiped the remaining European enclaves off the map when it annexed Goa and Pondicherry and a few others in the 1960s. Today’s maps show only one Vietnam, one Indonesia and one Malaysia; each of those nations once comprised several separate pages in collectors’ stamp albums.
Sometimes the mapmakers are called upon to make only minor changes in names, following regime changes. The People’s Republic of Poland dropped the word People’s (all in the Polish language, of course) after the collapse of the Communist regime. The Republic of Venezuela added the word Bolivarian in its 1999 Constitution, following an election that brought in a new Government.
The Union of South Africa became the Republic of... in its 1961 Constitution. If the place we now know as Israel ever enfranchises all its subject people it might well change its name to Palestine, following a change of regime. There has been a terrible hoo-hah since Reuters reported the Iranian President’s prediction in 2008 that the Israeli regime “...will soon disappear off the geographical scene”; but it really shouldn’t be a big deal, except for the current regime itself.
The dissolution of empires is commonly accompanied by new national names. The Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire were wiped off the maps after the Great War of 1914-18 – not by military conquest, quite, but by the Peace Treaties that followed the War. Dissolutions are occasionally reversed. After a few years of political independence after the 1917 revolution, parts of the old Russian Empire were absorbed into the new USSR – a Russian Empire by another name.
Much depends on the political preferences of victor nations, after wars. The destruction of the Ottoman Empire resulted in the creation or re-creation of several nations in the Middle East, some of which were considered European colonies under League of Nations “mandates”.
The Western powers’ choice of Palestine as a new territorial home for the world’s Jewry set the stage for the savage fiasco that we see today, with each of the two ethnic groups claiming naming rights. Palestinian maps show the invaders’ land as “Occupied Territories” and Israeli ones show its native reservations as “Disputed Territories”. The cleaning-up of the old Ottoman map is proving to be a long drawn-out affair.
Empires’ and nations’ boundaries change according to the demands of history and military power. It’s no longer true that the sun never sets on the British Empire. Today, the sun never sets on the American Empire. The British people were intensely proud of their empire, brutal though it was for its conquered peoples; but that was then. Americans tend to be embarrassed by theirs, and indeed by the very word “empire”.
Britain used to rule everywhere marked pink on maps of the world, and felt no shame. The USA is not yet ready to brag about the extent of its territorial over-reach. American maps don’t even identify all its satrapies and bases by a single colour, for goodness sake.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
The Tombs of Jesus (T 5 - Jerusalem 1960s)
(Travellers’ tales, fifth episode – January 1965)
The Orthodox-and-Catholic tomb was identified by the mother of the first Christian Emperor of the Roman Empire. She comes with pretty impressive credentials, so she may have been right. Her site is protected by an ornate cathedral with all the traditional bells and whistles, and about as romantic as a brick wall.
The Protestant site – or the Church of England, at least – was identified by a famous English general more than 1500 years later. And thank God for his English perseverance, because his tomb is in a sweet little grotto – a terrifically romantic place altogether. The Emperor’s mother also unearthed four or five (I forget) nails from the One True Cross, which sounds like pretty diligent work from an old lady, three hundred years after the event.
Linda and I walked the original Stations of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa, while trying to resist the temptation to buy any souvenir crowns of thorns from the shopkeepers along the way. “You should buy, effendi! For these, two piastres (or whatever the currency was) – for those, three piastres. You should buy those!” They looked identical. “What’s the difference?” I asked. “Oh, sir! On those, the thorns are much sharper. Feel them, madam!” Our resistance fell away in the face of such logic, and we bought a wreath of sharp ones for the equivalent of two shillings Sterling.
Disappointingly, there was only one site claiming to be where the Holy Manger had stood, in Bethlehem. I have a fuzzy memory of peering into a dark hole in the floor of a second ornate cathedral. You’d think General Gordon might have come up with something better, but he must have been called away on business. The sole unrivalled site had also been identified by the Emperor’s mother. What a busy old lady she was – and so devout.
All these sites were in Palestine, in 1965 – in that part of it that had been given to Jordan in the 1949 Armistice Agreements. Since then, Israel has occupied so much of the territory that it’s hard to say which country they’re in now. All the best Old Testament sites were in Palestine, too, but probably aren’t now. So were most of the United Nations refugee camps for Palestinians expelled by the people they saw as European invaders. (Palestine has been wiped off the map since then, of course...)
We took the liberty of visiting one of the camps, and had tea with a family there. Most Christian Palestinians – Christians since the time of the Apostles, presumably – had given up and emigrated. Generally, only Moslems stayed, trusting in God and their corrupt leaders. They’re still there.
The only way out of Palestine for us was north to Syria. The Jordanian authorities would let us cross into Israel but not come back. That meant flying out to Cyprus from Tel Aviv, and we weren’t ready for that. The barbed-wire of the cease-fire line was fifteen feet from our hotel door, and that was as close as we got.
Instead, we took buses up to Damascus and were shown the very window used by St Paul in his famous escape. That was cool, not least the actual scuff-marks from his sandals on the wall, miraculously preserved. They didn’t actually look two thousand years old – although, in that dry air, who knows?
The Orthodox-and-Catholic tomb was identified by the mother of the first Christian Emperor of the Roman Empire. She comes with pretty impressive credentials, so she may have been right. Her site is protected by an ornate cathedral with all the traditional bells and whistles, and about as romantic as a brick wall.
The Protestant site – or the Church of England, at least – was identified by a famous English general more than 1500 years later. And thank God for his English perseverance, because his tomb is in a sweet little grotto – a terrifically romantic place altogether. The Emperor’s mother also unearthed four or five (I forget) nails from the One True Cross, which sounds like pretty diligent work from an old lady, three hundred years after the event.
Linda and I walked the original Stations of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa, while trying to resist the temptation to buy any souvenir crowns of thorns from the shopkeepers along the way. “You should buy, effendi! For these, two piastres (or whatever the currency was) – for those, three piastres. You should buy those!” They looked identical. “What’s the difference?” I asked. “Oh, sir! On those, the thorns are much sharper. Feel them, madam!” Our resistance fell away in the face of such logic, and we bought a wreath of sharp ones for the equivalent of two shillings Sterling.
Disappointingly, there was only one site claiming to be where the Holy Manger had stood, in Bethlehem. I have a fuzzy memory of peering into a dark hole in the floor of a second ornate cathedral. You’d think General Gordon might have come up with something better, but he must have been called away on business. The sole unrivalled site had also been identified by the Emperor’s mother. What a busy old lady she was – and so devout.
All these sites were in Palestine, in 1965 – in that part of it that had been given to Jordan in the 1949 Armistice Agreements. Since then, Israel has occupied so much of the territory that it’s hard to say which country they’re in now. All the best Old Testament sites were in Palestine, too, but probably aren’t now. So were most of the United Nations refugee camps for Palestinians expelled by the people they saw as European invaders. (Palestine has been wiped off the map since then, of course...)
We took the liberty of visiting one of the camps, and had tea with a family there. Most Christian Palestinians – Christians since the time of the Apostles, presumably – had given up and emigrated. Generally, only Moslems stayed, trusting in God and their corrupt leaders. They’re still there.
The only way out of Palestine for us was north to Syria. The Jordanian authorities would let us cross into Israel but not come back. That meant flying out to Cyprus from Tel Aviv, and we weren’t ready for that. The barbed-wire of the cease-fire line was fifteen feet from our hotel door, and that was as close as we got.
Instead, we took buses up to Damascus and were shown the very window used by St Paul in his famous escape. That was cool, not least the actual scuff-marks from his sandals on the wall, miraculously preserved. They didn’t actually look two thousand years old – although, in that dry air, who knows?
Friday, February 17, 2012
Almost American (the imperial heartland)
Visiting my son in Guatemala just after the second US invasion of Iraq, we met up with a young Canadian couple from Vancouver. The man didn’t sound Canadian (couldn’t pronounce “oat and aboat” properly), so I asked “Where before that?” The couple exchanged a doubtful look, then shrugged. “He’s from Texas”, she admitted. The presence of my obviously hippy son had eased me past the barrier of denial.
Thirty years before, I’d met plenty of pretend-Canadians with American accents – angry, betrayed and embarrassed over the invasion of Vietnam. Life is full of embarrassment for young idealists whose homeland is on a brutal imperial rampage. There is a wall in Washington memorialising the fifty thousand US patriot-invaders who died in Vietnam, but there is no memorial for the two million civilians they slaughtered.
I almost became an American myself, back in 1965. I filled in a form at the US Embassy in London, the clerk gave me a ticket, and I sat down in a crowd and waited to be called for an interview. Half an hour later, the Tannoy called for number 23; my number was 104. Huh. Time for Plan B. Around the corner at the Canadian Embassy I filled in another form, was interviewed immediately, and a month later was living in Toronto – reunited with Linda and learning all about curling and ice-hockey.
We were both on our way back to Australia, as soon as we could afford the tickets or until we got a better offer in someplace warm. In those days, Canadian snowbirds used to fly down to Florida and pay agencies to have their cars driven down. Newly married, we packed one of those cars with everything we owned and headed south to look for jobs in the Bahamas. There in Nassau, we all watched American TV, ate American food and learned about baseball and gridiron football. Our employers fleeced American tourists and helped rich people dodge American taxes. (No of course we didn’t fleece tourists. Just joking!) It was a good life, almost American.
We do the same things today in Cayman, pretty much. Many of our children go to US colleges, and come back only slightly changed. Americans work in our watersports operations, our hotels and restaurants, and our construction industry. Not in our banks, though, for fear of moles. We are an offshore tax-haven, after all. The CIA has its agents here, but MI6 (Britain’s equivalent) keeps them out of the banks. We’re a British colony, as Bahamas was in the ‘60s.
Wives go on shopping trips to Florida, husbands on non-shopping trips to Las Vegas. We all fly through the US to points north, east, south and west. Miami is our favourite transit point, despite the sour welcome extended to foreigners by immigration officials on the way in, and the intimidation by TSA perverts on the way out.
I guess the American Dream is still alive, but it is looking increasingly fuzzy at the moment. Can the imperial heartland really be turning into the Oceania depicted in George Orwell’s “1984”, or into the German Reich of the 1930s, or into someplace equally frightening? The “1984” entry in Wikipedia shows too many similarities for comfort. Perpetual war is being used to justify the Empire’s pretend-paranoia which in turn justifies domestic oppression. In his book, Orwell called that oppression Big Brother, and it is closing in fast on America. History reports that the Germans were caught by surprise, too, when domestic oppression snuck up on them.
In 1965, I preferred America over Canada. With a bit more patience I might have become an American. Now, I am wary of even changing planes in Miami or Newark on our way to and from Europe. I prefer the family to fly via Toronto instead. Oh, the irony!
Thirty years before, I’d met plenty of pretend-Canadians with American accents – angry, betrayed and embarrassed over the invasion of Vietnam. Life is full of embarrassment for young idealists whose homeland is on a brutal imperial rampage. There is a wall in Washington memorialising the fifty thousand US patriot-invaders who died in Vietnam, but there is no memorial for the two million civilians they slaughtered.
I almost became an American myself, back in 1965. I filled in a form at the US Embassy in London, the clerk gave me a ticket, and I sat down in a crowd and waited to be called for an interview. Half an hour later, the Tannoy called for number 23; my number was 104. Huh. Time for Plan B. Around the corner at the Canadian Embassy I filled in another form, was interviewed immediately, and a month later was living in Toronto – reunited with Linda and learning all about curling and ice-hockey.
We were both on our way back to Australia, as soon as we could afford the tickets or until we got a better offer in someplace warm. In those days, Canadian snowbirds used to fly down to Florida and pay agencies to have their cars driven down. Newly married, we packed one of those cars with everything we owned and headed south to look for jobs in the Bahamas. There in Nassau, we all watched American TV, ate American food and learned about baseball and gridiron football. Our employers fleeced American tourists and helped rich people dodge American taxes. (No of course we didn’t fleece tourists. Just joking!) It was a good life, almost American.
We do the same things today in Cayman, pretty much. Many of our children go to US colleges, and come back only slightly changed. Americans work in our watersports operations, our hotels and restaurants, and our construction industry. Not in our banks, though, for fear of moles. We are an offshore tax-haven, after all. The CIA has its agents here, but MI6 (Britain’s equivalent) keeps them out of the banks. We’re a British colony, as Bahamas was in the ‘60s.
Wives go on shopping trips to Florida, husbands on non-shopping trips to Las Vegas. We all fly through the US to points north, east, south and west. Miami is our favourite transit point, despite the sour welcome extended to foreigners by immigration officials on the way in, and the intimidation by TSA perverts on the way out.
I guess the American Dream is still alive, but it is looking increasingly fuzzy at the moment. Can the imperial heartland really be turning into the Oceania depicted in George Orwell’s “1984”, or into the German Reich of the 1930s, or into someplace equally frightening? The “1984” entry in Wikipedia shows too many similarities for comfort. Perpetual war is being used to justify the Empire’s pretend-paranoia which in turn justifies domestic oppression. In his book, Orwell called that oppression Big Brother, and it is closing in fast on America. History reports that the Germans were caught by surprise, too, when domestic oppression snuck up on them.
In 1965, I preferred America over Canada. With a bit more patience I might have become an American. Now, I am wary of even changing planes in Miami or Newark on our way to and from Europe. I prefer the family to fly via Toronto instead. Oh, the irony!
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Introducing Erica (expat websites)
Sharp-eyed visitors to this site will have noticed the link (below, right) to “Expatria, Baby”. It’s the blog of a young Canadian woman, Erica Knecht, who lives in Japan with a Swiss husband and baby daughter. She reckons looking after one’s young child is the best job in the world. As a onetime house-husband and parent of first resort, 1981-86, I happily endorse the sentiment. I don’t know why more men don’t do it.
She has been writing entertaining blogs for time enough to have swapped links with several expats in several spots around the world. I’m her first link in Cayman, and she’s my first anywhere. Mine is by far the less sophisticated site of the two. I don’t even know how to partition a site among categories and topics. Maybe it can’t be done at blogspot.com; I’ve no idea.
Most of my items are commentaries on Cayman’s social and political scene, of interest mainly to local residents. New overseas visitors who don’t know who McKeeva and Dart are will have to identify them either from the context or from Caymannewsservice.com, our local news source and forum. Recently I have branched out into personal reminiscences of youthful travels (e.g. Zorba the Greek), and a couple of tentative efforts at revisionist history (e.g. The Children of Israel). At the moment, everything is lumped in together, and it shouldn’t be.
Erica’s site carries links to a couple of dozen other expatriates’ sites. Each writer’s experiences are different, and there is much of relevance to Cayman’s expats. There are hundreds of blogsites indexed at expat-blog.com – something for everybody, in most nations and territories in the world. Among so many expats, I risk being dismissed as an imposter – an immigrant pretending to be an expat. If there were an Expats’ Club, my membership would have long been revoked. Well, maybe, maybe not.
We came to Cayman in 1978 with our little son as transients, intent on charging our batteries and bank balance in this tax-haven (our third) before going back on the road again. Thirty-four years later, we’re still here. We are citizens; we vote; we travel on Caymanian passports; this is our home. Unfortunately, a significant voting bloc of native-born citizens (descendents of European and/or African immigrants, all) doesn’t take kindly to furriners living amongst them. So when they say we’re expats and not “real” Caymanian at all, how can we argue?
My blog-postings, and my weekly newspaper columns, are written for all Cayman’s residents – native Caymanians, long-term immigrants and transient migrants alike. I have a reputation among them all for being a grumpy old coot who wastes his time trying to convert the unconverted to the virtues of human rights and fiscal responsibility and peace and love between the brothers and the sisters. Not a grumpy old coot who can’t wait to leave, but a grumpy old coot who can’t be persuaded to leave.
This is a small island-community of about 15,000 ethnic Caymanians, 15,000 long-term immigrants and 20,000 transient workers. There is plenty of scope for cultural conflict. New readers who bother to trawl back through my blog archives will see what I mean. My October posting titled Freedom of Speech is as good a place as any to begin.
Ah well, I’ve gotten off the track a bit. We’re here to introduce Erica. All together now: “Hello-o-o, Erica!” That’s the spirit. Long may she flourish. With the blog-name she chose, how could she not? Expatria, Baby! What a classic.
She has been writing entertaining blogs for time enough to have swapped links with several expats in several spots around the world. I’m her first link in Cayman, and she’s my first anywhere. Mine is by far the less sophisticated site of the two. I don’t even know how to partition a site among categories and topics. Maybe it can’t be done at blogspot.com; I’ve no idea.
Most of my items are commentaries on Cayman’s social and political scene, of interest mainly to local residents. New overseas visitors who don’t know who McKeeva and Dart are will have to identify them either from the context or from Caymannewsservice.com, our local news source and forum. Recently I have branched out into personal reminiscences of youthful travels (e.g. Zorba the Greek), and a couple of tentative efforts at revisionist history (e.g. The Children of Israel). At the moment, everything is lumped in together, and it shouldn’t be.
Erica’s site carries links to a couple of dozen other expatriates’ sites. Each writer’s experiences are different, and there is much of relevance to Cayman’s expats. There are hundreds of blogsites indexed at expat-blog.com – something for everybody, in most nations and territories in the world. Among so many expats, I risk being dismissed as an imposter – an immigrant pretending to be an expat. If there were an Expats’ Club, my membership would have long been revoked. Well, maybe, maybe not.
We came to Cayman in 1978 with our little son as transients, intent on charging our batteries and bank balance in this tax-haven (our third) before going back on the road again. Thirty-four years later, we’re still here. We are citizens; we vote; we travel on Caymanian passports; this is our home. Unfortunately, a significant voting bloc of native-born citizens (descendents of European and/or African immigrants, all) doesn’t take kindly to furriners living amongst them. So when they say we’re expats and not “real” Caymanian at all, how can we argue?
My blog-postings, and my weekly newspaper columns, are written for all Cayman’s residents – native Caymanians, long-term immigrants and transient migrants alike. I have a reputation among them all for being a grumpy old coot who wastes his time trying to convert the unconverted to the virtues of human rights and fiscal responsibility and peace and love between the brothers and the sisters. Not a grumpy old coot who can’t wait to leave, but a grumpy old coot who can’t be persuaded to leave.
This is a small island-community of about 15,000 ethnic Caymanians, 15,000 long-term immigrants and 20,000 transient workers. There is plenty of scope for cultural conflict. New readers who bother to trawl back through my blog archives will see what I mean. My October posting titled Freedom of Speech is as good a place as any to begin.
Ah well, I’ve gotten off the track a bit. We’re here to introduce Erica. All together now: “Hello-o-o, Erica!” That’s the spirit. Long may she flourish. With the blog-name she chose, how could she not? Expatria, Baby! What a classic.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Retirement worries (Cayman finances)
Retirees looking for places to live outside their own countries are spoilt for choice these days. The Internet reports on hundreds of places for English-speaking retirees, maybe thousands. All of them are tax-free, practically speaking, and all are cheaper than Cayman. Cheapness may become important to all of us, the way things are going.
There is talk of currencies collapsing. What does that involve, exactly, and could it happen to our Cayman Islands Dollar? What assets should we invest in, to provide income in our retirement years? Our Pension Funds are beyond our personal control, but how should we invest our other savings? There are lots of options: rental properties here and abroad, stock markets, gold & silver, foreign currencies... Will our wages keep pace with rising prices? Will interest rates rise again? Why am I asking all these questions?
Answers soon come. This is an introductory essay, the first of what will be an occasional series on the general topic of retirement. A “currency collapse” is another way of saying “hyperinflation”, and that is the one thing every retiree ought to be scared of. Hyperinflation can kill off just about everybody’s retirement dreams, when currency is replaced by barter, and the law of the jungle replaces the written laws we are accustomed to.
There is no effective hedge against it. Gold, maybe, but gold is really just another medium of exchange. The only difference between gold and all the world’s paper currencies is that its exchange value is harder for the financial Mafia to manipulate. Even then, only in bullion form. Futures contracts are just paper, too. A written promise to deliver gold to an investor who has bought it, is just another promise.
Financial-management ability is at a premium in hard times, and very few people have it – or recognise it when they see it. It’s not just retirees who suffer from not finding it when they need it. Some working people put their mortgage payments on their credit cards, for goodness sake. Some top up their mortgages to pay for everyday expenses. Some people have no idea how to economise. Those are serious defects.
Caymanians who are defective money-managers are usually bailed out by a government that is itself defective. It spends its revenues with an irresponsibility that is staggering. Cayman’s private sector keeps the government supplied with far more revenue than it knows how to spend wisely. The Social Services bail-outs merely pour good money after bad.
Debates are raging, in the Western mainstream media and alternative media alike, over the world’s financial chaos. At least our unsophisticated little territory has money enough to waste. The financial powerhouses of the world are under the control of a “New World Order” regime that creates money by journal entries, and invests it in invasions of foreign nations. Bomb a city to smithereens and then award contracts to rebuild it. Never mind the morality, look at the billions gained.
Corruption in the international investment-industry has spread like a cancer through virtually the whole system. In Cayman we are largely protected from the greed and corruption so rampant in many other communities. We lead a charmed life. Our tax-haven clients include plenty of arms manufacturers and investment funds of ill repute, but our local lawyers pay themselves mere millions instead of billions. Our commercial banks subscribe to a standard of ethics that Goldman Sachs and J P Morgan abandoned years ago. Our government is grossly over-borrowed, but our status as a British dependent territory has protected us from the insanity that is modern Greece. Even our politicians are honest compared with those of the US and Europe. What does that tell you?
There is talk of currencies collapsing. What does that involve, exactly, and could it happen to our Cayman Islands Dollar? What assets should we invest in, to provide income in our retirement years? Our Pension Funds are beyond our personal control, but how should we invest our other savings? There are lots of options: rental properties here and abroad, stock markets, gold & silver, foreign currencies... Will our wages keep pace with rising prices? Will interest rates rise again? Why am I asking all these questions?
Answers soon come. This is an introductory essay, the first of what will be an occasional series on the general topic of retirement. A “currency collapse” is another way of saying “hyperinflation”, and that is the one thing every retiree ought to be scared of. Hyperinflation can kill off just about everybody’s retirement dreams, when currency is replaced by barter, and the law of the jungle replaces the written laws we are accustomed to.
There is no effective hedge against it. Gold, maybe, but gold is really just another medium of exchange. The only difference between gold and all the world’s paper currencies is that its exchange value is harder for the financial Mafia to manipulate. Even then, only in bullion form. Futures contracts are just paper, too. A written promise to deliver gold to an investor who has bought it, is just another promise.
Financial-management ability is at a premium in hard times, and very few people have it – or recognise it when they see it. It’s not just retirees who suffer from not finding it when they need it. Some working people put their mortgage payments on their credit cards, for goodness sake. Some top up their mortgages to pay for everyday expenses. Some people have no idea how to economise. Those are serious defects.
Caymanians who are defective money-managers are usually bailed out by a government that is itself defective. It spends its revenues with an irresponsibility that is staggering. Cayman’s private sector keeps the government supplied with far more revenue than it knows how to spend wisely. The Social Services bail-outs merely pour good money after bad.
Debates are raging, in the Western mainstream media and alternative media alike, over the world’s financial chaos. At least our unsophisticated little territory has money enough to waste. The financial powerhouses of the world are under the control of a “New World Order” regime that creates money by journal entries, and invests it in invasions of foreign nations. Bomb a city to smithereens and then award contracts to rebuild it. Never mind the morality, look at the billions gained.
Corruption in the international investment-industry has spread like a cancer through virtually the whole system. In Cayman we are largely protected from the greed and corruption so rampant in many other communities. We lead a charmed life. Our tax-haven clients include plenty of arms manufacturers and investment funds of ill repute, but our local lawyers pay themselves mere millions instead of billions. Our commercial banks subscribe to a standard of ethics that Goldman Sachs and J P Morgan abandoned years ago. Our government is grossly over-borrowed, but our status as a British dependent territory has protected us from the insanity that is modern Greece. Even our politicians are honest compared with those of the US and Europe. What does that tell you?
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Russian Roulette (T 4 - USSR 1960s)
(Travellers’ tales – fourth episode, April 1965)
There we were, rolling along the highway from Finland to Leningrad in the middle of a virgin forest with not the slightest sign of human habitation. Just the two of us in my Beetle, not another car on the road, and very pleased with ourselves for having put one over on the border guards. Yee-hah! So it was a bit of a shock to suddenly see a man in uniform standing in the middle of the road a hundred yards ahead, one hand up to stop us and the other holding a rifle in case the hand failed.
“Oh, those damn apples!” Linda cried, while my heart sank. At the border, the guards had wanted to confiscate eight or ten apples we’d bought with the last of our Finnish money; but we said we’d eat them there and then, and began to do so. Two serfs were instructed to search the car for any other contraband. On the back shelf they found a copy of Time Magazine someone had given us back at the hostel. Surreptitiously, with fearful glances towards the boss in the office, they studied every page in silent wonderment, this unspeakably evil symbol of Western decadence. They lost track of time until a roar from the office had them scrambling guiltily out of the car. We were waved hastily through, and entered the Soviet Union with the uneaten apples beside us.
How typical of the bloody KGB, now, to send a man with a gun to catch us with our smuggled goodies, two miles away from the safety of The West. What a rude welcome for a pair of innocent tourists! But actually, the man with the gun just wanted to check that we were who we were supposed to be. So we got to keep the apples – and, incidentally, the Soviet currency notes hidden at the bottom of a tin of English tea. We had bought the notes at a bank way back in Austria, for a third of the official exchange rate. What we did was legal in Austria; in Russia, local currency had to be bought at local banks or kiosks.
A common practice of young budget travellers was selling Western clothing for roubles on the black market, often at night in back streets. Denim jeans were particularly prized by young Soviet citizens, for whom wearing jeans (in private) was super-cool. But every once in a while the local customer for the jeans was an incorruptible young copper. Then, the seller lost his jeans and everything else, and had to wire home for the fare out, plus a fine. It was a risky game, and the secret of playing the black market is always to minimise risk. Plan ahead. Buy currency outside the country and sneak it in.
Some basic arithmetic skill is necessary where tight currency-controls exist. You have to exchange enough at the official rates to hide the fact that you have acquired some somewhere else as well. If you live entirely on the food that you brought in (no apples!), and your car gets sixty miles per gallon of the 20-octane dishwater sold at the local pumps, your exit-form will balance. Ours balanced – clear evidence that we had done those things. We heard of one unfortunate fellow who accidentally declared more money on exit than he had declared on entry. Oops!
Months before, in Egypt, the border police had glared long and hard at the figures on one or two of our currency-exchange slips. And, to be fair, some of the figures did look as though they could perhaps have been forged. Ah well, some of these semi-literate bank clerks, you know... After that, we played it straight down the line, except for some small equivocations at points of entry. It was better to be safe than sorry.
There we were, rolling along the highway from Finland to Leningrad in the middle of a virgin forest with not the slightest sign of human habitation. Just the two of us in my Beetle, not another car on the road, and very pleased with ourselves for having put one over on the border guards. Yee-hah! So it was a bit of a shock to suddenly see a man in uniform standing in the middle of the road a hundred yards ahead, one hand up to stop us and the other holding a rifle in case the hand failed.
“Oh, those damn apples!” Linda cried, while my heart sank. At the border, the guards had wanted to confiscate eight or ten apples we’d bought with the last of our Finnish money; but we said we’d eat them there and then, and began to do so. Two serfs were instructed to search the car for any other contraband. On the back shelf they found a copy of Time Magazine someone had given us back at the hostel. Surreptitiously, with fearful glances towards the boss in the office, they studied every page in silent wonderment, this unspeakably evil symbol of Western decadence. They lost track of time until a roar from the office had them scrambling guiltily out of the car. We were waved hastily through, and entered the Soviet Union with the uneaten apples beside us.
How typical of the bloody KGB, now, to send a man with a gun to catch us with our smuggled goodies, two miles away from the safety of The West. What a rude welcome for a pair of innocent tourists! But actually, the man with the gun just wanted to check that we were who we were supposed to be. So we got to keep the apples – and, incidentally, the Soviet currency notes hidden at the bottom of a tin of English tea. We had bought the notes at a bank way back in Austria, for a third of the official exchange rate. What we did was legal in Austria; in Russia, local currency had to be bought at local banks or kiosks.
A common practice of young budget travellers was selling Western clothing for roubles on the black market, often at night in back streets. Denim jeans were particularly prized by young Soviet citizens, for whom wearing jeans (in private) was super-cool. But every once in a while the local customer for the jeans was an incorruptible young copper. Then, the seller lost his jeans and everything else, and had to wire home for the fare out, plus a fine. It was a risky game, and the secret of playing the black market is always to minimise risk. Plan ahead. Buy currency outside the country and sneak it in.
Some basic arithmetic skill is necessary where tight currency-controls exist. You have to exchange enough at the official rates to hide the fact that you have acquired some somewhere else as well. If you live entirely on the food that you brought in (no apples!), and your car gets sixty miles per gallon of the 20-octane dishwater sold at the local pumps, your exit-form will balance. Ours balanced – clear evidence that we had done those things. We heard of one unfortunate fellow who accidentally declared more money on exit than he had declared on entry. Oops!
Months before, in Egypt, the border police had glared long and hard at the figures on one or two of our currency-exchange slips. And, to be fair, some of the figures did look as though they could perhaps have been forged. Ah well, some of these semi-literate bank clerks, you know... After that, we played it straight down the line, except for some small equivocations at points of entry. It was better to be safe than sorry.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Halfway to Mt Ararat (T 3 - Turkey 1960s)
(Travellers’ tales – third episode, February 1965)
Two of the tyres were flat when we got back to the car after three months away. The Customs shed had no sides to it, and just enough roof to protect the contents from the winter snow. We pumped up the tyres, scraped the cable and connected it to the battery, and the engine caught at the second attempt. We thanked the Customs Officers lavishly in pidgin Turkish, and I gave them my last two Australian beers, carried all the way from London the year before. We hit the road out of Ankara, headed for Scandinavia and points east.
No wonder the tyres were soft. On a back road in a village not far from Istanbul, we had chosen the wrong fork in the road. Our choice really did look marginally the less rocky of the two, but eighty yards into it we reckoned we must be on a dry river-bed. And so it proved, eventually. We were lucky that only two of the tyres lost their pressure during the winter. I don’t remember ever replacing them; the budget didn’t run to new tyres, even with Linda paying half the expenses. Still, I guess we must have done it at some time and somewhere before we got back to London.***
*** Eventually I did remember where we had them fixed. I reported it in "The German Lesson" posted in May 2012.
Turkey was immensely kind to us. Someone reckoned that being Australian must have helped, with the Turks feeling superior because their army had beaten back the ANZAC invaders in 1915 at Gallipoli. But most of the people we mixed with would never have heard of the invasion. In a town halfway to Mount Ararat we were intercepted in the street while looking for a cheap hotel, and pressed to stay in a private home. The small children were woken up and brought to meet us, and we slept in a bed still warm from their bodies. (Some things you just can’t argue about.)
We were snowed in the whole of the next day, and did what the natives did – sat around in a cafe sipping glasses of sweet black tea. I hate sweet black tea, but what can you do? I stood up to buy my round, only to be confronted by a fierce-looking fellow with red hair who dismissed my money. A futile argument (sign language and shouting) ended by his thumping his chest while roaring “ME TURK!” I glanced at the others, who gave me the slight shifting of eyes and head that says, “Let it go.” His command of English impressed his friends enormously, so he got his money’s worth, I guess.
In the villages, the sexes were segregated, pretty much. We knew enough not to hold hands, or show affection in any way, or to offend the dress code. We heard of a Danish couple who had been knifed in their tent one night for cuddling in public during the day. In most places our very presence was exotic enough to put us beyond the reach of local etiquette rules. Linda was an honorary male, in effect. Only once was she invited (with a hint of desperation, as courtesy warred with custom) to go with the women upstairs in their harem. They had never had a foreign woman up there before, and she had a great time dancing the Twist with them. I was guest of honour on a chair down in the street watching the men doing their line-dancing. Ho-hum. The village schoolteacher spoke a smattering of German, as did I, and he translated every word he thought I’d said to him.
Some time later, an English-speaker must have visited the village. In our mail at the Bank back in London there was a postcard with a message in English, printed in block capitals. “WE HOPE YOU COME BACK. OUR WILLAGE PEOPLES LOVES YOU.” Verbatim.
It doesn’t get any better than that.
Two of the tyres were flat when we got back to the car after three months away. The Customs shed had no sides to it, and just enough roof to protect the contents from the winter snow. We pumped up the tyres, scraped the cable and connected it to the battery, and the engine caught at the second attempt. We thanked the Customs Officers lavishly in pidgin Turkish, and I gave them my last two Australian beers, carried all the way from London the year before. We hit the road out of Ankara, headed for Scandinavia and points east.
No wonder the tyres were soft. On a back road in a village not far from Istanbul, we had chosen the wrong fork in the road. Our choice really did look marginally the less rocky of the two, but eighty yards into it we reckoned we must be on a dry river-bed. And so it proved, eventually. We were lucky that only two of the tyres lost their pressure during the winter. I don’t remember ever replacing them; the budget didn’t run to new tyres, even with Linda paying half the expenses. Still, I guess we must have done it at some time and somewhere before we got back to London.***
*** Eventually I did remember where we had them fixed. I reported it in "The German Lesson" posted in May 2012.
Turkey was immensely kind to us. Someone reckoned that being Australian must have helped, with the Turks feeling superior because their army had beaten back the ANZAC invaders in 1915 at Gallipoli. But most of the people we mixed with would never have heard of the invasion. In a town halfway to Mount Ararat we were intercepted in the street while looking for a cheap hotel, and pressed to stay in a private home. The small children were woken up and brought to meet us, and we slept in a bed still warm from their bodies. (Some things you just can’t argue about.)
We were snowed in the whole of the next day, and did what the natives did – sat around in a cafe sipping glasses of sweet black tea. I hate sweet black tea, but what can you do? I stood up to buy my round, only to be confronted by a fierce-looking fellow with red hair who dismissed my money. A futile argument (sign language and shouting) ended by his thumping his chest while roaring “ME TURK!” I glanced at the others, who gave me the slight shifting of eyes and head that says, “Let it go.” His command of English impressed his friends enormously, so he got his money’s worth, I guess.
In the villages, the sexes were segregated, pretty much. We knew enough not to hold hands, or show affection in any way, or to offend the dress code. We heard of a Danish couple who had been knifed in their tent one night for cuddling in public during the day. In most places our very presence was exotic enough to put us beyond the reach of local etiquette rules. Linda was an honorary male, in effect. Only once was she invited (with a hint of desperation, as courtesy warred with custom) to go with the women upstairs in their harem. They had never had a foreign woman up there before, and she had a great time dancing the Twist with them. I was guest of honour on a chair down in the street watching the men doing their line-dancing. Ho-hum. The village schoolteacher spoke a smattering of German, as did I, and he translated every word he thought I’d said to him.
Some time later, an English-speaker must have visited the village. In our mail at the Bank back in London there was a postcard with a message in English, printed in block capitals. “WE HOPE YOU COME BACK. OUR WILLAGE PEOPLES LOVES YOU.” Verbatim.
It doesn’t get any better than that.
Rats, dogs and kangaroos (culling pests)
Killing kangaroos is not generally popular in Australia, even for the soundest of economic reasons. Out on the sheep and cattle stations (ranches) they eat the grass that would otherwise be available for the income-producing animals. In the towns, they die for the lack of grass, or they wander into the streets and get hit by vehicles. The State governments license special shooters to keep the numbers down.
Dingoes and rabbits are also on the killing-list. Shooting rabbits failed to kill enough of them, so they were pretty much exterminated by deliberate infection. Dingoes were mostly shot. When I was very young, the sheep-farmers organised “dingo drives”, on horseback with Enfield rifles. A far cry from “The Man from Snowy River”, but the exercises were effective enough; dingoes became extinct in our area. The sheep were safe, and the graziers’ incomes were safe. In between drives, poison-traps in paddocks accounted for strays. Unfortunately, my own personal dog (not a pet, just a friend) died after eating strychnine in one of the traps. Well, what can you do? A boy didn’t deserve a dog if he couldn’t take care of it.
Canada licenses the killing of baby seals, Japan of dolphins. On the South Pacific island we lived on in the early ‘70s, the Vietnamese immigrants killed cats, and cooked them into nems for sale in their shops. (Nems were a tasty snack halfway between a meatball and a spring roll.) Whenever a pet cat went missing, its owners swore off nems for a week or two until the memory faded.
Cayman allows the culling of parrots, and turns a blind eye in respect of agoutis and “expat” iguanas. But not sharks, and not dogs, although dogs are culled by the Humane Society when they become too much of a pest. Sometimes private individuals take matters into their own hands, when neighbours’ yard-dogs’ persistent barking gets too intrusive. The Compass and the Humane agonise over private action like that, but offer no practical alternative.
There is no doubt that undisciplined yard-dogs, like rats and green iguanas, should be killed as public nuisances, when they become an obstacle to people’s “quiet enjoyment”. Yard-dogs are not pets, of course. Pets are members of families; they live mostly indoors, subject to family rules that are compatible with peace and quiet for all. Dogs whose lives are spent in a yard – even an enclosed yard – are not pets. Backyard-dogs belong in communities where quiet enjoyment and privacy are not valued, and where loudness is a way of life, and where the neighbours’ comfort is of no account.
Cayman’s society is a broad church. Half its population doesn’t mind living in a state of rowdiness and absence of privacy; the other half much prefers to live more gently and quietly. The first half tolerates yard-dogs barking day and night, the second half hates it. We all have our prejudices. I myself belong to the second half, and am dismayed whenever my neighbourhood seems in danger of degenerating into a kind of Dog City South. Most of my readers probably share that prejudice. The dog-owners among them are, I’m sure, responsible enough to keep their pets in the house and under control.
Ah well, I yell ferociously at backyard-dogs when their noise intrudes too much on my peace and privacy, especially very early in the morning. Ferocious yelling is pretty low-class too, I guess, but it’s all I’ve got. I don’t approve of feeding Paraquat sandwiches to backyard dogs who are allowed to bark all day and night, but I understand the temptation.
Dingoes and rabbits are also on the killing-list. Shooting rabbits failed to kill enough of them, so they were pretty much exterminated by deliberate infection. Dingoes were mostly shot. When I was very young, the sheep-farmers organised “dingo drives”, on horseback with Enfield rifles. A far cry from “The Man from Snowy River”, but the exercises were effective enough; dingoes became extinct in our area. The sheep were safe, and the graziers’ incomes were safe. In between drives, poison-traps in paddocks accounted for strays. Unfortunately, my own personal dog (not a pet, just a friend) died after eating strychnine in one of the traps. Well, what can you do? A boy didn’t deserve a dog if he couldn’t take care of it.
Canada licenses the killing of baby seals, Japan of dolphins. On the South Pacific island we lived on in the early ‘70s, the Vietnamese immigrants killed cats, and cooked them into nems for sale in their shops. (Nems were a tasty snack halfway between a meatball and a spring roll.) Whenever a pet cat went missing, its owners swore off nems for a week or two until the memory faded.
Cayman allows the culling of parrots, and turns a blind eye in respect of agoutis and “expat” iguanas. But not sharks, and not dogs, although dogs are culled by the Humane Society when they become too much of a pest. Sometimes private individuals take matters into their own hands, when neighbours’ yard-dogs’ persistent barking gets too intrusive. The Compass and the Humane agonise over private action like that, but offer no practical alternative.
There is no doubt that undisciplined yard-dogs, like rats and green iguanas, should be killed as public nuisances, when they become an obstacle to people’s “quiet enjoyment”. Yard-dogs are not pets, of course. Pets are members of families; they live mostly indoors, subject to family rules that are compatible with peace and quiet for all. Dogs whose lives are spent in a yard – even an enclosed yard – are not pets. Backyard-dogs belong in communities where quiet enjoyment and privacy are not valued, and where loudness is a way of life, and where the neighbours’ comfort is of no account.
Cayman’s society is a broad church. Half its population doesn’t mind living in a state of rowdiness and absence of privacy; the other half much prefers to live more gently and quietly. The first half tolerates yard-dogs barking day and night, the second half hates it. We all have our prejudices. I myself belong to the second half, and am dismayed whenever my neighbourhood seems in danger of degenerating into a kind of Dog City South. Most of my readers probably share that prejudice. The dog-owners among them are, I’m sure, responsible enough to keep their pets in the house and under control.
Ah well, I yell ferociously at backyard-dogs when their noise intrudes too much on my peace and privacy, especially very early in the morning. Ferocious yelling is pretty low-class too, I guess, but it’s all I’ve got. I don’t approve of feeding Paraquat sandwiches to backyard dogs who are allowed to bark all day and night, but I understand the temptation.
Friday, January 20, 2012
The Children of Israel (speculations about Moses)
Like the song says: Don’t believe all you’re liable to read in the Bible: it ain’t necessarily so. [Ira Gershwin, 1935]
Generally, historians focus on individuals: no nuances, no details, no mention of the minions who did the dirty work down in the historical trenches. Wellington defeated Napoleon. Columbus discovered the Americas. Joshua fought the battle of Jericho.
Some famous names aren’t even real. Stalin was a pseudonym, Caesar a nickname, Moses an Egyptian title. Roman Catholic Popes rarely use their own names. Germans were never Huns, and nor were Hungarians. One man’s Mede is another man’s Persian. Foreign names are translated (or transliterated) into English for our reading convenience. Columbus was not the man’s native name.
The more ancient the record, the less certain the names of individuals and nations are. Who were the Hittites of 3500 years ago? They spoke an Aryan language: was their name a variation of “Hindu”? The two names probably shared a common origin, at least. Were the people of Amurru the Amorites of the Bible, and the people of Mitanni the Midianites? Very likely, in both cases. Who was Jacob, and why was his name changed to Israel? The Bible is the official history of the tribe that called itself The Children of Israel; why couldn’t it be The Children of Jacob?
My own speculation is that Israel was a rendition of Isuwa-ili, the suffix -ili being found in the names of some Hittite rulers. Isuwa was a buffer state bordering two famed empires: the Hittite and Assyrian – and the wild mountains of Ur, familiar to us as Ararat. Isuwa-ili is a name that might have been borne by the leader of any swarm of Isuwan refugees displaced by a clash of the empires in south-central Anatolia.
Wandering refugees are a problem for settled peoples. The makeshift tribe calling itself the “children” of Isuwa-ili or Isra-el, seems to have been refused sanctuary by the nation of Amurru; the tribe’s bitter resentment of the Amorites was added to the history recited by the tribal bards. A similar refusal by Mitanni explains the tribe’s anger towards the Midianites – who were Moses’s wife’s people, for goodness sake. Such a betrayal. The wanderers eventually found a home in “the land of Egypt”. This would not have been Egypt proper, as we see it on modern maps, but more plausibly an area of northern Phoenicia that for several generations was part of the Egyptian Empire. Its major port serviced a flourishing trading route to and from the east.
This was where the Children of Israel presumably camped as refugees, in the interval between their escape from Isuwa and their escape to “the wilderness” under Moses. 400 years was a Biblical wild-ass guess; nobody knows how long they were there. The “wilderness” would not have been Sinai, but the sparsely settled hinterland of Lebanon and Palestine. The tribal bards of later times might have taken poetic liberties with the identity of “Egypt”; but the qualifier “the land of...” betrays the truth.
“Moses” is “Prince” in Egyptian. It was a strange name for the leader of a culturally Semitic troop of refugees, especially if he wasn’t fluent in the Egyptian language (Ex. 4.10 & 6.30 KJV). Perhaps it was an ironic title, or a code to hide his identity from government spies. The “Pharaoh” with whom Moses negotiated would have been the Egyptian governor of the northern province – a newly appointed governor: “... a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.”
The Children of Isuwa-ili may not all have spoken Hebrew to begin with, by the way. Moses may have chosen that language for his new warrior-tribe in order to unite them in a cultural bond with the legendary Abraham, who really was a Hebrew, as his name indicates. But that’s for another day.
Generally, historians focus on individuals: no nuances, no details, no mention of the minions who did the dirty work down in the historical trenches. Wellington defeated Napoleon. Columbus discovered the Americas. Joshua fought the battle of Jericho.
Some famous names aren’t even real. Stalin was a pseudonym, Caesar a nickname, Moses an Egyptian title. Roman Catholic Popes rarely use their own names. Germans were never Huns, and nor were Hungarians. One man’s Mede is another man’s Persian. Foreign names are translated (or transliterated) into English for our reading convenience. Columbus was not the man’s native name.
The more ancient the record, the less certain the names of individuals and nations are. Who were the Hittites of 3500 years ago? They spoke an Aryan language: was their name a variation of “Hindu”? The two names probably shared a common origin, at least. Were the people of Amurru the Amorites of the Bible, and the people of Mitanni the Midianites? Very likely, in both cases. Who was Jacob, and why was his name changed to Israel? The Bible is the official history of the tribe that called itself The Children of Israel; why couldn’t it be The Children of Jacob?
My own speculation is that Israel was a rendition of Isuwa-ili, the suffix -ili being found in the names of some Hittite rulers. Isuwa was a buffer state bordering two famed empires: the Hittite and Assyrian – and the wild mountains of Ur, familiar to us as Ararat. Isuwa-ili is a name that might have been borne by the leader of any swarm of Isuwan refugees displaced by a clash of the empires in south-central Anatolia.
Wandering refugees are a problem for settled peoples. The makeshift tribe calling itself the “children” of Isuwa-ili or Isra-el, seems to have been refused sanctuary by the nation of Amurru; the tribe’s bitter resentment of the Amorites was added to the history recited by the tribal bards. A similar refusal by Mitanni explains the tribe’s anger towards the Midianites – who were Moses’s wife’s people, for goodness sake. Such a betrayal. The wanderers eventually found a home in “the land of Egypt”. This would not have been Egypt proper, as we see it on modern maps, but more plausibly an area of northern Phoenicia that for several generations was part of the Egyptian Empire. Its major port serviced a flourishing trading route to and from the east.
This was where the Children of Israel presumably camped as refugees, in the interval between their escape from Isuwa and their escape to “the wilderness” under Moses. 400 years was a Biblical wild-ass guess; nobody knows how long they were there. The “wilderness” would not have been Sinai, but the sparsely settled hinterland of Lebanon and Palestine. The tribal bards of later times might have taken poetic liberties with the identity of “Egypt”; but the qualifier “the land of...” betrays the truth.
“Moses” is “Prince” in Egyptian. It was a strange name for the leader of a culturally Semitic troop of refugees, especially if he wasn’t fluent in the Egyptian language (Ex. 4.10 & 6.30 KJV). Perhaps it was an ironic title, or a code to hide his identity from government spies. The “Pharaoh” with whom Moses negotiated would have been the Egyptian governor of the northern province – a newly appointed governor: “... a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.”
The Children of Isuwa-ili may not all have spoken Hebrew to begin with, by the way. Moses may have chosen that language for his new warrior-tribe in order to unite them in a cultural bond with the legendary Abraham, who really was a Hebrew, as his name indicates. But that’s for another day.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
The Age of Irresponsibility (children going wild)
By the time a man reaches his 70s, he has passed through the stage of forgetting his youthful irresponsibility and is remembering it again. Whatever the irresponsible youth of today get up to, their grandfathers did similar things. Far too many of us in the older generations get our diapers in a twist about the threat to society posed by our grandchildren’s wildness.
Of course sometimes they go too far – further than we went, perhaps – but we ought to be more tolerant of the activities in principle. Children jumping off cliffs is the latest outrage; but didn’t we all do that when we were younger? We didn’t all drown, but that owed more to good luck than to good judgment. Young men driving cars too fast or too dangerously or too drunk, is a serious social problem; but hasn’t it always been? Those of us who did it in our time (when we ourselves were young and stupid) generally survived; but wasn’t that more by good luck than good judgment? Sure it was.
I fell asleep at the wheel once, late at night and sober, and in the days before seatbelts. A telegraph pole was two yards to the right of where the car stopped. If I’d stayed awake another fifth of a second, it would have been two yards to the left. Another tenth of a second, well... I once wound my crappy little Hillman Minx up to seventy miles an hour downhill with four of my National Service mates on board. The brakes were shot, at the time, and slowing down was achieved only by changing down the gears at high revs and by careful use of the handbrake. How stupid; how irresponsible; how lucky.
The thing is that when you’re young, you’re invincible. If life were a comic-book you’d be a superhero. And what kind of superhero ever took advice from wusses? Warning notices at Pedro? As some poster in the CNS forums pointed out, the notices will come in handy as alternative jumping-off platforms. Don’t speed down the middle lane of West Bay Road? Hey, bring it on: catch me if you can. Don’t do drugs? Peace, man: go chase the bad guys. Girls, don’t have babies? Well, but my babies love me.
It’s not that we can’t understand our irresponsible youths, it’s that we pretend not to understand them. They are us. Older readers of this blog who never, ever, drove fast or played fast: stay out of the debate; you have nothing to offer. Those who did, know that the reason why they’re here today is sheer bloody luck.
If only we could get inside their heads, these irresponsible young idiots... But we’d be surprised by what we find in there. We would find images from electronic games, TV and movies, of fast cars and dangerous jumps and ferocious fights and mass slaughters, rapes and disrespect, intoxication (mainly alcohol) and promiscuity. How can signposts at Pedro and lectures from policemen and churchmen hope to compete with those exciting images? What’s the solution? All I know is, until we get rid of the humbug we’ll never find a solution. Putting small-time thieves in jail while letting big-time ones go free: that’s humbug. Going after low-class gangs while ignoring “establishment” gangs: more humbug.
Who else besides me remembers “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”? What a great movie that was! Remember when Butch and Sundance were trapped by law-enforcement agents on a high, high, rock, and escaped by leaping two hundred feet down into the rapids, and Sundance couldn’t even swim? Wow. That was a pretty cool jump, eh?
Of course sometimes they go too far – further than we went, perhaps – but we ought to be more tolerant of the activities in principle. Children jumping off cliffs is the latest outrage; but didn’t we all do that when we were younger? We didn’t all drown, but that owed more to good luck than to good judgment. Young men driving cars too fast or too dangerously or too drunk, is a serious social problem; but hasn’t it always been? Those of us who did it in our time (when we ourselves were young and stupid) generally survived; but wasn’t that more by good luck than good judgment? Sure it was.
I fell asleep at the wheel once, late at night and sober, and in the days before seatbelts. A telegraph pole was two yards to the right of where the car stopped. If I’d stayed awake another fifth of a second, it would have been two yards to the left. Another tenth of a second, well... I once wound my crappy little Hillman Minx up to seventy miles an hour downhill with four of my National Service mates on board. The brakes were shot, at the time, and slowing down was achieved only by changing down the gears at high revs and by careful use of the handbrake. How stupid; how irresponsible; how lucky.
The thing is that when you’re young, you’re invincible. If life were a comic-book you’d be a superhero. And what kind of superhero ever took advice from wusses? Warning notices at Pedro? As some poster in the CNS forums pointed out, the notices will come in handy as alternative jumping-off platforms. Don’t speed down the middle lane of West Bay Road? Hey, bring it on: catch me if you can. Don’t do drugs? Peace, man: go chase the bad guys. Girls, don’t have babies? Well, but my babies love me.
It’s not that we can’t understand our irresponsible youths, it’s that we pretend not to understand them. They are us. Older readers of this blog who never, ever, drove fast or played fast: stay out of the debate; you have nothing to offer. Those who did, know that the reason why they’re here today is sheer bloody luck.
If only we could get inside their heads, these irresponsible young idiots... But we’d be surprised by what we find in there. We would find images from electronic games, TV and movies, of fast cars and dangerous jumps and ferocious fights and mass slaughters, rapes and disrespect, intoxication (mainly alcohol) and promiscuity. How can signposts at Pedro and lectures from policemen and churchmen hope to compete with those exciting images? What’s the solution? All I know is, until we get rid of the humbug we’ll never find a solution. Putting small-time thieves in jail while letting big-time ones go free: that’s humbug. Going after low-class gangs while ignoring “establishment” gangs: more humbug.
Who else besides me remembers “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”? What a great movie that was! Remember when Butch and Sundance were trapped by law-enforcement agents on a high, high, rock, and escaped by leaping two hundred feet down into the rapids, and Sundance couldn’t even swim? Wow. That was a pretty cool jump, eh?
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