tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2647860061782695582024-03-12T16:46:38.585-07:00AquaregiaQuestions of peace between peoples and between people and the living planet.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.comBlogger244125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-8206379021202073692018-11-28T04:03:00.000-08:002018-11-28T09:52:00.278-08:00Becoming FrenchOn 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!Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-82134340974020761292018-11-25T00:58:00.001-08:002018-11-25T00:58:28.836-08:00KhashoggiAfter 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!
qCyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-32997010038293879272018-11-24T10:13:00.000-08:002018-11-24T10:13:10.393-08:00Arabia v. IranThe 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.
Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-70656060646682250552018-11-24T07:08:00.000-08:002018-11-24T07:08:59.816-08:00Imperial 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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-61974442400267967952018-11-14T01:57:00.001-08:002018-11-14T01:57:34.048-08:00Computer insanityI 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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-35553550537479673992018-11-06T08:44:00.000-08:002018-11-06T08:44:02.761-08:00Project Blitz and Values VotersProject 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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-81624621015768971722018-11-03T09:57:00.001-07:002018-11-03T09:57:38.961-07:00Queen Wasps and Big LiesWorker 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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-83973626894701540922018-11-02T00:28:00.003-07:002018-11-02T00:28:59.382-07:00DecriminalisationFor 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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-18012530488306231112018-10-29T08:27:00.000-07:002018-10-29T08:27:02.844-07:00Wisdom from HaaretzHere 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 CorrespondentCyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-3273779220279251332018-10-29T03:00:00.000-07:002018-10-29T03:00:01.012-07:00Pittsburgh ShootingThis 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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-18502543855646010292018-10-27T09:44:00.001-07:002018-10-27T09:44:18.440-07:00Plath and HughesI 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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-65542686229664395132018-10-27T06:42:00.002-07:002018-10-27T06:42:57.402-07:00Arms to ArabiaSilence 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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-10629598568501946802018-07-14T05:33:00.000-07:002018-07-14T05:33:55.943-07:00Hey 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!Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-79438383348459500712018-07-04T23:19:00.003-07:002018-07-04T23:19:58.769-07:00A cool coalitionThe 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?!Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-29761284621932064232018-07-04T23:19:00.002-07:002018-07-04T23:19:31.761-07:00Spanish AmericaWhy 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!Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-57373000942608739042018-07-02T02:15:00.001-07:002018-07-02T02:15:43.249-07:00Silent DawnThere 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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-7279357078753373602018-06-28T09:55:00.000-07:002018-06-28T09:55:30.955-07:00Refugees 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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-35636305563337003702018-06-24T01:19:00.002-07:002018-06-24T01:19:16.470-07:00The MapucheThe 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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-4124679303181152662018-06-22T10:22:00.001-07:002018-06-22T10:22:33.873-07:00Live 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'.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-51312279598936426532018-06-22T01:11:00.000-07:002018-06-22T01:11:22.235-07:00A '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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-14320232973186721072018-06-21T08:57:00.001-07:002018-06-21T08:57:49.681-07:00IgnoramusesDefinition 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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-70619687306196670112018-06-15T08:29:00.002-07:002018-06-15T08:29:48.595-07:00PromisesMrs 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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-68474186348424381482018-06-12T10:43:00.000-07:002018-06-12T10:43:38.977-07:00Trump'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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-81622874676940598592018-06-10T02:35:00.001-07:002018-06-10T02:35:21.847-07:00The True SloganVirgil 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!Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-264786006178269558.post-16910514775749753002018-06-07T03:36:00.000-07:002018-06-07T03:36:29.935-07:00ObliterationThe 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.Cyclepathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09857943860884333157noreply@blogger.com0