Wednesday 28 November 2018

Becoming French

On Monday 26th I declared myself to be a Frenchman. It works much more democratically than than British system. You just have to provide documents proving that you are entitled to be French by ancestry or marriage and that you have no criminal record. You are then invited to have a conversation - in my case with the Vice Consul - showing that you can speak French. After that you sign a declaration that you are claiming your nationality. No exam on French history and culture; no production of utility bills or tax receipts..., and nothing like the gracious act of the Queen accepting you as a subject, So civilized! The French Foreign Ministry has up to a year to find fault with my declaration, but the Vice Consul assured me that would be highly unlikely. They are overwhelmed with applications, and it took them nearly a year to respond to mine, by which time several of the documents had expired and had to be re-done, and the cost of the documents and translations was about £180, plus £47 fee for processing my application: well worth the effort and expense! A happy experience!

Sunday 25 November 2018

Khashoggi

After weeks of uncertainty, newsreaders seem to have settled for pronouncing the name as Kashodji. Never mind about the KH, which is basically like the CH in Scottish 'loch'; the real problem is with the GG, in which the first consonant is the gutteral Q, which few Westerners ever master, and the second is pronounced J in most Arabic dialects, but G in Lower Egypt. None of which is going to bring the poor man back to life or even discover his remains! q

Saturday 24 November 2018

Arabia v. Iran

The American love-in with Saudi Arabia and hatred for Iran is insane. Arabia is a medieval despotism, which has never held an election, which has never allowed a free press, which does not allow women to do anything without the permission of a male relative, which beheads or imprisons dissidents and which uses petro-dollars to disseminate the most extreme form of Sunni Islam. Iran has a constitution which has functioned for nearly forty years and allows women to study and exercise professions; it holds regular elections and has a flourishing press, even though these are more controlled than in the West. Saudi Arabia considers Shia Muslims to be unpardonable heretics, and it has supported extreme Sunni movements across the Middle East. The majority of the 9/11 bombers were Saudi citizens. Iran is by far the biggest Shia-majority country in the world, and its foreign adventures have been limited to protecting Shia Muslims from Sunni persecution; they have even supported Assad's secular regime because it was menaced by Saudi-backed Sunni groups. Saudi derives unjustified influence in the Muslim world from its control of the two holy cities, Mecca and Medina, which they were able to seize when the British conquest of the Middle East left them unprotected. The Saudis have destroyed most of the historic character of Mecca with destruction of monuments and with boastful investments such as a gigantic clock tower looming over the sacred precinct. The latest abuse of Saudi power has been the refusal of visas to Palestinians wishing to perform the Pilgrimage. It seems clear that America's absurd policy imbalance is dictated by Israel, where successive governments have demonized Iran, the one country in the Middle East that still stands up for Palestinian rights. Ahmedinejad was a gift to Israeli propaganda, with his talk of 'wiping Iarael from the world map', and nobody in the West made the effort to ask the Iranians what they meant. They certainly did not mean dropping nuclear bombs all over the region, which would have killed as many Palestinians as Israelis. They were in fact talking about the 'one-state solution', which is the only just possibility, now that the two populations are so tangled up together.

Imperial nostalgia?!

It is often said that the people who voted to leave the EU were nostalgic for the Empire, but if so they forgot the best thing about our Empire - that it was a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural construction. A way to get the feel of it is to read Rudyard Kipling's Kim - a novel in which British, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs met and mingled. Certainly, it was not ideal; the constituent peoples were in very unequal positions, and missionaries pressed non-Christians to change religion, but it brought people together. That is what is great about being in the European Union. Outside it, I am afraid we shall shrivel down into a claustrophobic annex of the USA.

Wednesday 14 November 2018

Computer insanity

I had nearly finished editing a document when I wanted to use the 'replace' function to replace a word beginning with 't'. I must have had the word 'Jack' still in the 'replace by' box, and my finger must have brushed against the 'replace all' box; suddenly more than 33,000 't's in the document had turned to 'Jack'. JusJack picJackure my frusJackraJackion! After a good giggle, I tried to restore the document, but it came out with 33,000 capital 'T's. In the end I just had to abandon a couple of hours of work and start again. Anyway, from now on I clear the 'replace by' box before I make any change.

Tuesday 6 November 2018

Project Blitz and Values Voters

Project Blitz is a programme to put evangelical legislation on to state statute books. For example several states now require the words 'In God we Trust' to be prominently displayed in schools. In 1956 this motto replaced 'E pluribus unum', the motto adopted in 1782; the creeping desecularisation of the Republic! Values Voters are those who can be relied on to vote against abortion, contraception etc. They have almost completely taken over the Republican Party. We shall see in a few hours how successful the mobilisation of these voters has been in the mid-term elections.

Saturday 3 November 2018

Queen Wasps and Big Lies

Worker wasps are just looking for something to eat, and if they get trapped they soon die. Queen wasps are looking for somewhere to hide for the winter, and they may spend months concealed in clothes, bedding, shoes etc., so they have a much bigger likelihood of stinging people. It's like the difference between little everyday lies, which are soon forgotten, and huge lies which can last for years, like the one about sending £350 million a week to the EU.

Friday 2 November 2018

Decriminalisation

For most forms of behaviour, criminalisation is ineffective or even counter-productive, encouraging people to reach for forbidden fruit. However, decriminalisation may be understood as meaning that a behaviour is harmless, which is often not the case. For example, the decriminalisation of cannabis in Canada has led to an upsurge in demand, scarcity and the revival of the black market. Cannabis is undoubtedly harmful to health, especially mental health, and should be discouraged by the sort of measures that have brought down smoking so dramatically. Another example is adultery, which is no longer criminal anywhere in Europe; in the permissive society it is widely seen as not mattering very much, yet it can destroy families and even lead to suicide. I have been led to think about this by reading the letters of Sylvia Plath. It seems clear that the adultery of Ted Hughes led directly to her suicide (and that of Assia Wevill, although he never married her). And yet society honoured him by making him Poet Laureate and a member of the Order of Merit. Poetic ability is just a knack with words, and somebody can be a brilliant poet and a horrible person.

Monday 29 October 2018

Wisdom from Haaretz

Here are a few of the lessons we should learn... 1. Respect every Jew’s homeland. 2. Israel should stop interfering. 3. On-site security is only of limited use. 4. Xenophobia and violence will always end up harming Jews. 5. The responsibility is on every government, Anshel Pfeffer Haaretz Correspondent

Pittsburgh Shooting

This has been coming for a while; remember the Alt-Right demo in Charlottesville: 'Jews shall not replace us!' Trump blamed both sides equally for the violence. Anti-Semitism is the ugly underside of Christianity, especially the traditional Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches (remember the Inquisition and pogroms!). There are a number of anti-Jewish gospel texts. The 100 million American Evangelicals are false friends to Zionism; they want to see all Jews 'returned' to Palestine as a precondition to Armageddon and the Last Judgement, in which any Jews who do not convert to Christianity will be sent to Hell. For centuries Jews fled Christian persecution in Europe to find sanctuary in Muslim-majority countries. Muslims were rarely hostile to Jews as such. Jews made a bad call when they fled en masse to the USA, the most observant Christian country of all, still worse when they turned to colonialism in Palestine, just as the colonial empires were crumbling. Israel needs anti-Semitism to spur immigration, and it applies a racial definition to would-be immigrants. We are far from out of the wood yet.

Saturday 27 October 2018

Plath and Hughes

I have been reading Sylvia Plath's Letters, Volume 2, 1956-63. Her last 17 months are particularly poignant; she gave up London to help Ted Hughes realise his dream of a country life in Devon. Just before they left London they interviewed tenants for their Primrose Hill flat; one man paid his deposit, but then they met the Wevills, liked them and tore up the first man's cheque, saying that they had decided to stay. They also invited the Wevills to dinner. I think this throws new light on Hughes' poem about Assia Wevill in 'Birthday letters', where he describes her as 'slightly filthy with erotic mystery'. The poem ends 'She fell in love with me, but she did not know it...I fell in love with her and I knew it.' I read this as meaning that he had designs on her from August 1961 and not from May 1962, when the Wevills visited Devon, and Sylvia caught Ted kissing her. This would cast a pathetic light on poor Sylvia's loving toils to furnish the Devon house and make it comfortable, especially when one knows that Assia would move in to replace her, walking on Sylvia's carpets, cooking with her utensils and doing laundry in her beloved Bendix. People have excused Hughes, saying that marriage had become claustrophobic for him, but in fact he and Sylvia had separate spaces and roles; they took it in turns to write in their own studies; they alternated child-care; she was in charge of the house, and he worked mainly in the garden. I think he was mainly motivated by lust, and his treatment of Sylvia seems disgraceful.

Arms to Arabia

Silence since mid-July! It is hard to keep a blog going. Not that much has changed in three months. We have had a grave warning on climate change, but as usual most people seem to ignore it. And there was the horrible consulate murder, but everybody should have known since the 1920s that the Saudi regime is barbaric. The bizarre thing is that the West has taken it as an ally and treats Iran as our enemy. President Macron has just made a speech criticizing Germany for cutting off arms sales, which he says have nothing to do with the murder of Khashoggi; never mind about the pretext, we should never have armed Saudi Arabia in the first place.

Saturday 14 July 2018

Hey you guys!

A 'guy' is a man in American, right? So 'guys' means men, adult males, right? Wrong! It means men or women or boys or girls. 'You guys' has become the plural of 'you', just as 'vosotros' became the plural of 'tu' in Spanish. You now hear it everywhere; even BBC presenters, who are supposed to be models of good English, say it frequently. I think this is just a small indicator of the cultural crushing that awaits us if leaving the EU makes us dependent on the USA. I was at the demonstration at Blenheim Palace on Thursday, when about 4000 people lined the road on both sides of the entrance, and I was in Portland Place in London for the big march. I gave up after a very hot hour, when the large space was still filling up faster than it could empty into Regent Street. French TV said 200,000 people, the BBC said 100,000, and the Daily Mail said 'Corbyn's disgraceful Rent-a-crowd'. The gutter press are faithful imitators of their orange-haired master, who called his interview with the Sun 'fake news'. 'Disgraceful' is the word I would use for the pomp at Blenheim Palace; who authorised the presence of the Horse Guard to honour Mrs May's unlovely guest? And why was the Queen dragooned into giving tea to this monster, who actually pushed himself in front of her. The only redeeming feature of the visit was Melania Trump, who behaved graciously and insisted on her own humanitarian programme; but then, she is an immigrant!

Wednesday 4 July 2018

A cool coalition

The Liberal Democrats made a big mistake in 2010, when they chose to ally themselves with the Tories instead of creating a 'rainbow coalition' with Labour, nationalists and greens. We could have had electoral reform and a fair version of austerity, while the Tories sorted out their problems in opposition. So what will the next coalition be? With both Tories and Labour tainted by 'Brexit', surely neither will be able to win a majority in Parliament. Corbyn will probably refuse to collaborate with the Lib Dems. More chaos ahead - perfect conditions for some sort of authoritarian coup?!

Spanish America

Why are there many people of Hispanic origin in the USA? Because America took several states from the Spanish Empire - California, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas... But why was there a Spanish Empire? Because Spain took the country away from the Aztecs, the Maya, the Inca... All part of the continuing triumphal march of the speakers of Indo-European languages!

Monday 2 July 2018

Silent Dawn

There has been hardly any dawn chorus lately and I'm afraid a lot of the birds are dying for want of insects to eat as the drought deepens. Birds of prey and scavengers, on the other hand, are flourishing. Yet the weather forecasters continue to say 'there is a risk of rain' somewhere. I would have thought everybody would be longing for rain by now. The last time it was like this was 1976.

Thursday 28 June 2018

Refugees from what?

Nobody flees from home, country, family and friends without good reason, so why are there so many refugees? Part of the reason lies in things that the West did or failed to do in the past. There would not be so many refugees from the Middle East if the US and UK had not invaded Iraq in 2003, setting in train Sunni-Shia wars, ISIS, the revolt in Syria... And there would not be so many from Africa if the West had continued its 1960s policies of support for family planning, rural clinics and the health of mothers and infants. Yet it still goes on; the sale of offensive Western and Russian arms fuels several wars, and Trump has reduced funding for various humanitarian programmes. The refugees of the future are already being prepared.

Sunday 24 June 2018

The Mapuche

The Mapuche people occupied most of Patagonia until they were subdued by Argentina and Chile in the 1860s and 70s in a savage ethnic cleansing, which left thousands of Mapuche skulls and skeletons in museums. Their land was taken from them and given or sold to European settlers. A huge area belongs, for example to Benetton (of United Colours). Their agriculture was destroyed to make room for ranching, and their forests have been intensively logged and partly destroyed. Remember this when you buy Argentinian beef! Their resistance continues, and small groups have attempted to farm limited areas. The Argentinian and Chilean governments, continue to suppress them, claiming that they are 'terrorists'. More innocent victims of the West's 'War on Terror'! Information from an excellent programme by Al-Jazeera.

Friday 22 June 2018

Live not on evil!

My son Christopher told me a very clever palindrome: 'Live dirt up a side-track carted is a putrid evil'. This beats the longest I knew: 'Able was I ere I saw Elba' (put into the mouth of Napoleon in exile). However 'live' and 'evil' gave me the idea for a short and punchy one: 'Live not on evil!' I think this would have made a better motto for Google than 'Don't be evil'.

A 'People's Vote'

I shall not march on Saturday for a 'people's vote', which would be a referendum by another name. I am against referendums on principle, and for once I agreed with Maggie Thatcher when she quoted Clement Attlee, calling them a device of dictators and demagogues'. Mrs Mayhem will call a referendum only if she feels sure she can win it. Admittedly she got it wrong over the 2017 election, but we can't count on that. If she is clever she will frame the question so that she can live with either answer - and she will rig the electorate as Cameron did in 2016. Any outcome other than abandoning 'Brexit' will be a defeat in my eyes. I'm afraid a 'people's vote' will be wangled to look like an endorsement of 'Brexit'. If you march for a 'people's vote' beware of getting what you wish for.

Thursday 21 June 2018

Ignoramuses

Definition of an ignoramus: person who thinks the plural of ignoramus is 'ignorami'. Ignoramus is not a Latin masculine singular but a 1st person plural verb meaning 'we do not know', from ignorare. And while we are about it, the plural of octopus is not octopi but octopodes; -us is not a Latin singular ending but comes from from Greek pous 'a foot'. Fake Latin plurals are an embarrassing attempt to be learned. Even genuine examples like musea, errata seem rather pompous. It is not an erratum to say museums and octopuses.

Friday 15 June 2018

Promises

Mrs Mayhem is promising a 'Brexit bonus' of £4 billion a year for the NHS, so does this vindicate Boris Johnson's promise on the Big Red Bus? No!!! He promised £350 million a week, which would be £18.2 billion a year. And Mrs Mayhem's figure is partly out of taxes, which have nothing to do with the EU. More lies! They are getting desperate.

Tuesday 12 June 2018

Trump's Nobel?!

Nobel Peace Prize for Trump??!! They must be joking. He is still threatening war on Iran. But what is stopping him from having a summit meeting with President Rouhani, a more affable man that Kim? Is it because Netanyahu has told him not to? Or is it because Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons to bargain with? A united Korea would have a population of 77 million, making it the 20th most populous country in the world, ahead of the UK, France and Italy. At present South Korea with 51.2 million is 27th and the North with 25.6 million is 52nd.

Sunday 10 June 2018

The True Slogan

Virgil wrote 'Amor vincit omnia' - 'Love conquers everything' - but our governments seem to think that should read 'Armor vincit omnia' - 'Arms conquer everything'. Peace talks in Korea beware!

Thursday 7 June 2018

Obliteration

The governments of Israel, Turkey and Burma refuse to recognise the rights or even the existence of, respectively, the Palestinian, Kurdish and Rohingya peoples, and these are by no means the only examples. Is there no limit to the human capacity to obliterate inconvenient peoples? This is the backside of nationalism, which for all its popularity is an oppressive ideology. As long as human rights are defined by the 'United Nations', there seems to be no escape. We need concepts based not on nationality but on citizenship, not on nation-states but on jurisdictions, not on the right of nations to self-determination but on the right of people to live unmolested according to their culture in the country of their birth.

Monday 4 June 2018

Self-inflicted!

Another right-wing nationalist party is on the rise in Slovenia. The cause again seems to be fear of migrants. But why do so many people migrate? It is not natural for large numbers to be ready to leave their family, friends and country - perhaps never again see their familiar faces and places. They set off because life has become unbearable for them, without jobs or hope of education. And why are their countries destitute? Well, the world economy does not work for them; their resources are exported, their labour is exploited, and aid from rich countries is inadequate or comes with strings attached. In many cases war is involved, whether by direct aggression as in Iraq or through arms sales to corrupt governments. Rich countries bear a heavy share of the blame because they have disproportionate power and influence; the damage is self-inflicted, but it threatens to get worse because right-wing nationalist governments will do even less to help poorer countries,

Saturday 2 June 2018

Protecting ISIS.

America is protecting the last stronghold of ISIS/al-Qaeda in Syria, by threatening to intervene against any attempt by the Syrian government to take control of the area. If this sounds crazy, look at it from the Jerusalem point of view. Syria and Iran are the two last countries to hold out against Zionism; Sunni extremists are th e sworn enemies of both, therefore they must be protected. QED!

Down with the Dollar! Oops!

The obvious solution to the huge US trade deficit is to devalue the dollar. That would also be in accordance with the prevailing free market dogma. However, nobody dares let that happen because everybody holds American debt, which is how the US controls so much of the world and pays for its armaments and its wars. Since 1945 the global economy has been based on the dollar, which in effect means American debt. To unwind such a lop-sided system there would have to be an almighty world-wide crisis. Perhaps that is exactly what Trump will bring about.

Trade War

How exciting! A new world trade war - the first since the 1930s, and remember what a thrill that was! But last time the Great Dictator rose out of the trade war; this time he has given rise to it. Take a bow D Trump! Meanwhile, since the ceremony to recognise Jerusalem as capital of the USA, Netanyahu has exceeded himself: the heaviest bombardment of Gaze since 2014, thousands more houses approved for the occupied West Bank... But at least in Japan imports of Golan Heights wine are in trouble.

Monday 28 May 2018

Duped by the DUP

Women from Northern Ireland going to the Republic for abortions?! What a turnaround that would be! But it is no longer impossible. Yet another twist to the Brexit business! Mrs May can't move an inch without the permission of the DUP, which is now the most conservative party anywhere in these islands. It seems more and more likely that the EU will veto whatever plans the UK puts forward. And will the Westminster Parliament accept a no-deal exit?

Sunday 27 May 2018

Korea, Iran

We the public do not know half of what is going on behind the scenes between Korea and the USA, but it is clear that there are lots of low-level contacts. But why have there been no contacts between the USA and Iran? Rouhani is a highly enlightened Iranian leader, in danger of being replaced by another Ahmedinejad. The Iranian presence in Iraq and Syria is better justified than that of the USA, and it is probably the best defence against victory for Sunni extremists egged on by the Saudis. Trump's behaviour is frankly crazy.

Wednesday 23 May 2018

Noura Hussein

Imminent execution of a young Sudanese woman who killed her 'husband' after he raped her twice. She had not consented to marriage, which under Sudanese law made it invalid. More than a million people have signed a petition asking for clemency. There was a very good discussion on Aljazeera, May 23.

Dark Posts

Did you know that Facebook allows the sending of 'dark posts', which are targeted to particular users, are not visible to anybody else, and which disappear without trace after a few hours (except that FB keeps a record of them)? It appears these were used on a large scale by Strategy Communication Labs and Cambridge Analytica to target selected voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to win the election for Trump. Information from Carole Cadwalladr on Aljazeera News May 23. So did these demons help to swing the EU referendum? I would think that was matter for a criminal investigation.

Tuesday 22 May 2018

Election 2019

It seems that we shall save £109 million by not electing Euro-MPs next year - less than £2 per citizen or 40p a year for the duration of the Parliament - a small reward for loss of influence! Of course, the fact that we flooded it with UKIP parasites last time was off-putting, but it was a useful warning against proportional representation.

Monday 21 May 2018

Home Office Gnome Office

Today's Guardian brings yet another story of abuse by the Home Office. A hard-working and successful Asian software engineer realised that Inland Revenue had made a mistake in his favour. As soon as he realised he contacted them and paid the extra £4000, as was his right. Some gnome in the bowels of the Home Office decided this was suspicious and invoked an obscure clause allowing them to withdraw his work permit and right to stay. He and his family risk imminent deportation. What is shocking about all these cases is the total lack of flexibility and compassion. The arrival of a new minister has so far made no difference. The 'culture' of this rotten ministry seems to be infected from top to bottom. Some civil servants at all levels should be sacked, and so should one or two past ministers, starting with Theresa May.

Saturday 19 May 2018

8th Amendment

I have not followed the campaign to repeal the 8th amendment to the Irish constitution, but I find it absurd that people who oppose abortion also oppose contraception. Women abort because they have become pregnant and cannot face bearing the baby, but if contraception were freely available fewer women would find themselves in this situation in the first place. More generally, it seems a mistake to enshrine laws in the constitution of a country, which makes them much harder to change. A prime example is the American 2nd amendment adopted in 1791, at a time when machine guns and assault rifles were inconceivable. Ten more students died in Texas yesterday in the latest high school shooting; these assaults have been taking place almost weekly this year.

Friday 18 May 2018

Armageddon!

Michelle Goldberg has pointed out in a NY Time opinion piece, that the opening and closing prayers at the US Embassy ceremony were given by American Evangelicals who believe that all Jews must be gathered in to Israel as the prelude to the Apocalypse, in which any Jews who don't convert will be sent to hell. Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch preacher, who opened proceedings, is recorded as having said that religions like 'Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism' lead people 'to an eternity of separation from God in Hell.' John Hagee, one of America’s most prominent end-times preachers, gave the closing benediction; he once said that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews to their ancestral homeland. It is terrifying to think that VP Pence, who is 'a heart-beat away from the Presidency' belongs to this crowd. Michelle Goldberg is author of 'Kingdom Coming: the Rise of Christian Nationalism' - highly recommended!

Thursday 17 May 2018

AntiSemitism and Islamophobia

Orthodox Judaism and traditional Islam resemble each other more than either resembles Christianity, both being religions of obedience to laws rooted in the huge literature of Talmud and Hadith. Jews and Muslims suffered for centuries from Christian persecution, fleeing together from Iberia and the Balkans. The sacred languages of both are Semitic. You would expect the followers of both religions to stand together today, yet the supporters of Israel are now the greatest purveyors of Islamophobia; how does one explain the paradox? The big change came in the 19th century, when more and more Jews achieved citizenship in West European countries, many of them at the same time abandoning the practice of Judaism. Also, many Europeans were ceasing to practise Christianity, but prejudice against Jews persisted and mutated into a new racist form; it was claimed that Jews are an alien race, an enemy of Western culture. People like Felix Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler were abused as 'Jews' in spite of being Christians. Zionism was born as a reaction to this racism and was itself a form of racism, based on the myth that all Jews everywhere are permanently in danger of persecution, whether or not they practise Judaism. Anyway, Zionism, and Israel which is its realisation, still need antisemitism both to recruit new immigrants to Israel and to silence critics, who are afraid of being called antisemitic if they criticise Israel. But by calling itself 'the nation State of the Jewish people', Israel seems to make all Jews everywhere responsible for its expropriation and abuse of Palestinians. It is not commonly realised that Hitler multiplied the number of 'Jews' by four; the traditional definition of a Jew was the child of a Jewish mother, herself raised by a Jewish mother; the Nazis regarded anybody with one Jewish grandparent as Jewish, and Israel has adopted the same definition. To delegitimise resistance, supporters of Israel have helped to spread and finance fear of Islam, ably assisted by fanatics such as Bin Laden and al-Baghdadi. You can read all about it in 'The Islamophobia Industry' by Nathan Lean (Pluto Press, 2012), now made into an excellent documentary by Al-Jazeera. The consequence, Muslims in America and parts of Western Europe suffer abuse like that of the Jews in 1930s Germany.

Wednesday 16 May 2018

Iran Deal

The USA had a big investment in the Shah's Iran, so they were terribly shocked by the Iran hostage crisis in 1979-81, When revolutionary students broke into the embassy and held its personnel hostage. It probably cost Jimmy Carter his re-election and ended on the day Reagan was installed, suggesting that the Republicans made a secret deal (cf the pact with North Vietnam which enabled Nixon to defeat Humphrey in 1968). But that doesn't explain why the US still has a fixation on Iran 36 years later. In fact, Iran does not threaten any vital American interest - unless Israel is considered an interest rather than a drag on US foreign policy. The influence of Iran on Iraq was brought about by the US-UK invasion of 2003. Its presence in Syria is widely misunderstood as support for a 'Shia government'. In fact the Assad regime is secular, based on the Baath ideology, but Iran is more afraid of extreme Sunni militancy than of secularism (and so should the US be). Saudi Arabia hates Iran because Wahhabism holds that all Shia are enemies, to be fought against wherever they are found. As for Bahrain, it is a Sunni tyranny dominating a Shia majority. There remains Israel, which has a pathological fear of Iran, based on Iranian rhetoric about 'removing Israel from the map', but that does not mean nuking Israelis - and countless Palestinians; Israel has had nuclear weapons for fifty years, and there is no reason to believe that Iran's leaders are suicidal. In fact a one-state solution for Palestine would remove Israel from the map and replace it by a secular state with equal rights for all its people, but for that Israel would have to abandon its 'racially' based nationalism (although there is no Jewish race; that was a fiction invented by European anti-Semites). And what if Iran did re-start its nuclear programme? America made no effort to stop Pakistan from getting the bomb, although India already had it, and Pakistan is a much more unstable country than Iran. For seventy years the logic of MAD (mutually assured destruction) has prevented nuclear war. If US aggressiveness made Iranians re-start their nuclear programme, it would apply to Iran too. But perhaps Trump is too mad for MAD.

Tuesday 15 May 2018

May 2018

Four and a half years since I posted anything! I have been using Facebook to put ideas out, but I am more and more suspicious of the site and what it has done, used by people like Cambridge Analytica, so I'll try blogging again. I was disgusted by the coverage of yesterday's events in Gaza. The wrong questions were being asked, giving Israeli spokesmen the opportunity to spout standard speeches about Hamas, risks to Israeli civilians etc. The sort of questions I wanted to hear: - David Cameron said in 2010 'Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.' What has Israel done to realise that aspiration? - Most of the inhabitants of Gaza fled from Southern Israel in 1948; what has Israel done to compensate them for the land and property that was taken over by Israelis? - Does Israel accept the right of other people's to self-defence? - The UN partition resolution of 1947 required Jerusalem to become an international city, and Count Bernadotte was assassinated because of his efforts as UN representative to realise that goal. How does Israel justify the total takeover of Jerusalem?