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.

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.

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!

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!

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.