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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.