Bavarian memories

Time to immortalise some old family holiday sketches before I mislay them forever...

Escape to Watzmann

“Come on! Time to swim!” came the unmistakeable Montenegrin bark. Yoksy, Steven and Eva turned over in their beds in disgust. Yoksy had been dreaming of glory as a fighter pilot in the looming Gulf War. Miraculously, he had managed to bomb all Iraqi military bases single-handedly without being chased by a single Iraqi aircraft or missile. He had been tucking into a celebratory jumbo deluxe chocolate ice cream back at AFHQ when Pops shattered his slumber.

Steven was slow to rise, placing his feet in the soggy towel Eva had left at his bedside the previous night.

“Come on you guys”, echoed Jenny, Pops’ right-hand woman. “We’ve got to get up. There’s not much time left for breakfast.”

“This is like a recurring nightmare”, thought Steven. “I hear the same god-damned thing every morning.” Sleepy Eva looked confused by a pair of trousers she was trying to pull over her head.

“Eva! Tonta!” screamed Yoksy. “You don’t put pants over your cabeza!!”

“Shut-up Yoksy!” came Eva's witty reply.

Looked like it was going to be one of those days. Steven heard the bathroom door shut. "Damn!" he thought. "Looks like I’ll have to pee in the pool again." He collapsed back into bed.

Yoksy suddenly charged out of the bathroom singing a new variation of “Anchors Away” which only added to the mystery of his obsession with air combat.

“Come on! We play poker!” bellowed Yoksy. He was already dealing cards on Steven’s stomach.

“Yoksy cheater!” shouted Eva. “You didn’t shuffle properly!”

Jenny was back with Pops not far behind. “Look. I told you they’re going to stop serving breakfast soon.” Eva and Yoksy turned around.

“Shut up!!” they roared in touching unison.

Jenny, ever eager to broker a compromise tried again. “OK. You can play poker in the pool as long as you get into your bathing suits immediately.”

Cheshire grins appeared on Eva and Yoksy’s faces. “Immediately” was a flexible unit of time in the Vujacic household spanning 'sometime today’ to ‘2 years from now’.

But a volcano was rumbling. “If you don’t get into your bathing suits this second…….”

Pops didn’t have to finish the sentence. The kids charged out of Room 307 as if pursued by hungry wolves.

“You see! That is how you talk to these kids!”

Alas, many lessons would have to be learned. As Pops returned to his room he collided with Eva who, in the panic, had run out of the room without her hairbrush. “What are you doing here?!?" sputtered Pops. “And why do you have ice cream on your head at this time of the morning?!?”

Quick thinking was called for…………………


A Bunch of Eisholes

“Uh” drawled Jenny. “Yelstin like, he ought to be Prez.”

“Oh shut-up” grumbled Pops. “Jenny always says the first thing that comes into her head”. He took another sip of Dunkel. “Now Yelstin – he ought to be president!”

Jenny heaved a sign of disgust. All was forgotten though when she felt a familiar tug of her threadbare armsleeve. An indignant Yoksy began to scream.

“Mama! The man didn’t let me eated his pickle!” Yoksy was nearly in tears.

“ ‘Ate’ not ‘eated’! bellowed Jenny who detected a resentful Germanic glare from the corner of her eye.

She quickly relented. “But look darling, you can play 7 games of minigolf, have 19 candy bars and order 73 ice creams if you behave yourself”.

Yoksy spotted an opportunity for blackmail. “What about Spezi-Cola?” he shouted.

Eager to avoid embarrassment, Jenny tried to change the subject. “Hey look at that interesting piece of woodwork in the ceiling!” Everyone in the restaurant looked up except for Yoksy.

“WHAT ABOUT THE SPEZI COLA?!?”

Pops stepped in with a deal. “You forget about the Spezi-Cola and I won’t thrash you in front of all of these people.” The bargain was irresistible.

“Ok, ok!” replied Yoksy. “What a bunch of Eisholes!” he whispered. As usual, his “whisper” was overheard.

“Ah ja! Die Eishole!!” came the cry from the next table. “Das ist sehr schoen!!”

Yoksy glared at the amiable eavesdropper. “Stop staring at me, ok? And I can do flips in the pool so NYAH!!!”

When Tom met Jessie, who met Brian, but never Mary

It’s a slow day at the Embassy so I thought I'd treat you to a heart-warming tale of everyday internet folk.

Our story takes place in Buffalo, New York and some hic-town in West Virginia (did I need to add the prefix "hic"?). The main characters are Tom (a middle-aged Walter Mitty), Jessie (a gullible teenager – or did I need to add “gullible”?), Brian (a tragic opportunist) and Mary (more about her later).

Tom worked in a tool plant in Buffalo. He was married with 2 daughters but decided he needed some spice in his life. So he began scouring the internet for a “companion”. Trouble is, Tom was sick of being Tom so he invented a new persona. Tom became a well-built 18-year old Marine just back from Iraq and looking for romance.

Soon he struck gold. Along came Jessie, a pretty blonde-haired 17-year old high school student from West Virginia eager to find the perfect partner. The cyber-relationship blossomed and before long Tom was sending gifts and (falsified) photos. Jessie was bowled over. Hundreds of hours were lost in on-line chat and declarations of love. Tom’s family were none the wiser.

But Jessie started to worry. It all seemed too good to be true. So she decided to contact a work colleague of Tom’s just to make sure Tom was who he said he was. Armed with the name and address of Tom’s employer (foolishly provided by an over-confident Tom), Jessie managed to track down the email address of Tom’s colleague Brian.

Months of deception unravelled within minutes as Brian confirmed that Tom was more or less the opposite of what he pretended to be. Not only that, Brian turned out to be much more like Tom than Tom, if you see what I mean. Brian was in his early twenties and even more ripe for romance. So Jessie re-focused her affection on Brian.

But she didn't give up entirely on Tom with whom she continued to correspond mostly out of pity. The balancing act proved unmanageable and in a moment of confusion, Jessie left an e-trail back to Tom's new rival. Tom and Brian began squabbling over Jessie.

Then one morning Brian was found dead in his pick-up van with three gunshot wounds to the head. It didn’t take long for the police to point the finger at Tom. Naturally they also wanted to speak to Jessie.

Except that Jessie turned out to be Mary, Jessie’s middle-aged mother who was sending equally bogus “credentials” to Tom (and Brian).

The End

(The moral of the story: Beware of husbands who can't come to the dinner table because they are too busy "blogging".......)

The Croatian curse

The Croatian Fascists have knocked the English Multiculturalists out of the Euro 2008 tournament. The score last night was 3-2, an improvement on the previous encounter (2-0), but with the familiar English goaltending slapstick. To put it bluntly, England would have won if they hadn't lost.

Yes, I know: the condition of the pitch was atrocious. At times it seemed as though the players were skating over the field. But we are talking about England for God’s Sake. Half of professional English football matches are played in mud and rain. That should have given England the advantage.

What makes the outcome doubly embarrassing is that there are only 4 million Croats compared to a whopping 40 million or so English (weighted for relative population sizes, the final scores should read 30-2 and 20-0). And England has a steady stream of immigrants whose citizenship can be fast-tracked should their football skills warrant it. I never read of lorries crammed with suffocating refugees trying to start a new life in Zagreb or Split. Not only that, English football commands a huge budget whereas Croatia's coach struggles to afford pencil and paper:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article488278.ece

Oh well. No point crying over slippery balls when an exciting bitching season is about to get underway. Time to sit back and enjoy the upcoming qualifiers where 10 million overlooked coaching geniuses from every pub and office across England will square off to decide What Went Wrong and How To Make Sure It Never Happens Again before the newest scapegoat is awarded the mandate to resume England’s quest for the long-awaited and elusive "turning point". Whoever thought that Iraq would one day become a metaphor for English football?

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UPDATE: It's just been confirmed. England has no divine right to participate in the major football tournaments:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/internationals/7100393.stm

November's target - Oliver Kamm

When I'm not being hounded for activities compatible with my undiplomatic status, I enjoy tipping embassy champagne over smug neocon heads. This month's target is the bloated Oliver Kamm. Here is a record of our recent exchange:

Hi Oliver

Just catching up on some of your thought-provoking posts and noticed a item on Che Guevara.

Here is something for you to consider:

Guevara was indeed ruthless. But Guevara died for his beliefs.

Why are there no brave neo-cons on the battlefields of Iraq? (and please skip the nonsense about you NOT being a neo-con - it's the foreign policy that matters). I am, of course, referring to you, Aaronovitch, Finkelstein, Geras, etc. Didn't you tell us that this was a war to defend civilisation, no less? Shouldn't you lead by example?

Hasta la victoria siempre, amigo.

CW


To which Ollie replied:


Thanks for your kind comment.

I do not consider it an accurate description of Che's end to say that he died for his beliefs, while your "white feather" argument on foreign policy is less original than I think you assume.


To which I replied:


Sorry but I don't follow. If Che didn't die for his beliefs, then what did he die for? To appear on t-shirts at university gigs?

Re "white feathers", make no assumptions about my assumptions. While the question is certainly not original, neither is the refusal to answer.

Hasta pronto, amigo.

CW


That, apparently, was too much for poor Ollie. I never heard from him again.

Excuse me, but didn't NATO solve this problem?

Alarm bells are ringing in interventionist corridors. Faced with the spectre of renewed violence in the Balkans on the eve of the Euro-Atlantic imposed deadline to resolve Kosovo’s status, commentators are screaming at European politicians to pay greater attention to the deteriorating situation. What is unravelling, however, is not so much European security as a decade or so of futile nation-building.

Take, for instance, this ICG-type plea from a spokesman for the militant liberal wing of humanity:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2212980,00.html

Now let's put the fear of violence into its proper context. America, the EU and people like Andrew Rawnsley have tolerated Albanian violence and threats of violence in Kosovo, Macedonia and southern Serbia for nearly 8 years. What disturbs Rawnsley is the recent comment by EUFOR officials that violence in Kosovo could provoke a “chain reaction” in Bosnia that would reverse years of iron-fisted tutelage. Proper examination of this connection is skillfully avoided, however, leaving readers to draw the safe conclusion that the Serbs are simply living up to their reputation as trouble-makers.

Clearly the Balkan patient is in bad shape. Unfortunately Rawnsley's admiration for Tony Blair’s foreign policy prevents him from diagnosing the illness. In fact, he confuses the cure with the disease, ie. interventionism. But his hippocratic zeal remains undiminished. It's time to wheel the patient into the operating theatre and gown up for surgical air strikes. When in doubt, fire missiles.

But his most startling suggestion is that everyone is somehow “sleepwalking” into this latest crisis, as though Bosnia were on the dark side of the moon and not awash in financial aid, NGOs and a military “stabilisation” force. A succession of EU appointed high commissioners have ruled Bosnia for the past decade with near-dictatorial powers. They and their bosses in the European capitals know exactly what is going on in their protectorate but they prefer not to advertise it because of the immense embarrassment that after so many years of intervention, they are no closer to forging a Bosnian identity than at the outbreak of war in 1992. To get a realistic picture of interventionist achievements in Bosnia, we must turn to Professor David Chandler who shares none of Rawnsley's illusions:

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4046/

What becomes obvious is that Dayton did not end the war in Bosnia. It merely shifted it onto a political battlefield. America and the EU have acted in bad faith, siding once more with the Muslims in a process of treaty “re-interpretation” designed to undermine and slowly eliminate the autonomy granted to the Bosnian Serbs under the accords. It was precisely this inflammatory insistence on centralisation of power in Sarajevo which triggered the war in the first place. Compare this with the West's enthusiastic and hypocritical support for Kosovo's split from Belgrade and you have a text-book example of strategic incompetence.

Or perhaps not. As I observed in an earlier post, throwing the Serbs to the wolves is part of the larger propaganda war to appease Muslims and undercut support for al-Qaeda whom, ironically, the Americans welcomed to Bosnia back in the early 90s. Rawnsley wishes we had done it sooner.

Rawnsley concludes by recycling a burned out interventionist article of faith: the glaring falsehood that we can never ignore conflicts beyond our borders because somehow they will always find us. Where is the evidence for this assertion? I do not recall a single mortar or shell landing in Picadilly Circus or the Place de la Bastille during the wars of secession in the former Yugoslavia. What mutual defense pacts forced us into action in the Balkans? Weren't we constantly told that we barged in for enlightened “humanitarian” reasons, not out of self-interest?

As a piece of analysis, Rawnsley's article has the depth of a footprint in wet sand. That's because his entire argument is a smokescreen, a call for intervention to mask the failure of the original intervention similar to a murderer who guns down witnesses to thwart discovery of earlier deeds.

As for those humanitarian “sleepwalkers”, trust me - they are strolling with both eyes wide open.

Hugo Chavez - 1, Mr. King - 0

Back to the bar?




Here at the embassy we keep a sharp eye on developments in Latin America. It is a time of great change on this exciting continent as government after government abandons IMF dogma, reasserts its right to run its own affairs for the benefit of its people, and forms political and economic alliances with like-minded nations. To borrow from George Bush’s limited vocabulary, I would liken the process to a surge that is creating a major headache for the United States and possibly Spain judging from the recent high level brawl at the Iberico-American summit.

The media coverage of the exchange is quite revealing. According to my impeccable sources, the spat was largely ignored by the Spanish media for several days, whether on the grounds of newsworthiness or embarrassment it is not entirely clear. Only when the story spilled out all over the world did the Spanish feel obliged to react. With a few exceptions mentioned below, the defense of King Juan Carlos was mostly lukewarm though in some quarters the king was openly criticised.

The BBC, on the other hand, provided its usual decontexualised (ie. anti-Chavez) analysis which it took steps to rectify the following day once the world's attention had departed. I will try to toss some pebbles into the gaping hole but first the highlights:

Hugo Chavez called the former Spanish PM and Bush groupie Jose Maria Aznar a fascist and compared him unfavourably with a snake. Spain's current PM Jose Luis Zapatero objected to Chavez’s language and retorted that Aznar was democratically elected. Chavez interrupted Zapatero at which point an irritated King Juan Carlos of Spain leaned across the table and mustering all of his royal dignity shouted to Chavez “Por que no te callas?”, the Spanish equivalent of “Aw shaddup!!” Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Evo Morales of Bolivia sprung to Chavez’s defense as did the vice-president of Cuba and the King left the chamber in a huff.

Now for those pebbles:

1) Chavez's attack on Anzar began as a criticism of outside intervention in Latin American politics. You would never guess from the BBC’s coverage but not only did Aznar support the abortive coup against Chavez in 2002, he continues to denounce the democratically elected Chavez as a "dictator". You can split hairs over whether it would have been more accurate to refer to Aznar's behaviour as fascist rather than labelling him a fascist but as shown by the link below, the PP government's ties with the coup leaders are beyond doubt:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/vene-d10.shtml

2) Becuase Chavez's microphone was switched off, his interruption was dismissed as a rant. In fact, Chavez was responding to Zapatero's comment that all democratically elected leaders, including Aznar, deserve respect. Why, observed Chavez, did this fine principle not apply to the democratically elected president of Venezuela? Zapatero agreed with Chavez that it should.

3) As a decolonised continent, Latin Americans both on the left and right are sensitive to lectures from Spain. However "intolerable" El Pais and Spanish neo-colonialists may have found Mr. Chavez, the king shot himself in the foot. His outburst will not endear him to many of his former subjects.

4) Juan Carlos is incapable of making a speech without reading from a text. On television, his eyes are always cast downwards on the script in front of him. Now we understand why. Deprived of the crutch of a prepared statement the vulgar royal tongue seized control.

Chavez spoke for millions the following day when he noted that the king was out of his depth:

But I think it's imprudent for a king to shout at a president to shut up. Mr King, we are not going to shut up.

That much you can count on, Mr. King.

Lantos, Armenia and Jihad

I am not convinced it is the business of government to officially recognise holocausts. But if we are going to do it, then let's at least aim for some consistency.

A propos, Robert Fisk wrote a solid piece in the Independent the other day attacking the three stooges (Bush, Petraeus and Crocker) for caving into Turkish pressure over the non-binding House resolution recognising the Armenian holocaust:

http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3146418.ece

However, what deserves more attention than Fisk or the mainstream media are likely to provide is the role of prominent Jews in downplaying the horrendous events in Ottoman Turkey during the 1st World War. Several years ago, the Nobel Prize winning author Elie Wiesel attempted to suppress mention of the Armenian genocide at a conference on genocide in Israel. Yet when it comes to Armenia, there is no more accomplished practitioner of selective indignation than the Democratic congressman from San Francisco, Tom Lantos.

I may have confused you since Tom is never described by the sages of our media as plain old "Democratic congressman". That would be unthinkably vulgar. Holocaust Industry protocol requires the bestowal of an untouchable (and not in the Indian caste sense) moral quality upon his opinions and outbursts. The correct way to refer to Tom is “Holocaust survivor and Democratic congressman”. Not bad going for someone who doubles as a holocaust denier.

Despite the overwhelming documentary evidence, photos, testimony etc. Tom is still not sure that the massacres of Armenians in the first world war constitute genocide (this from a man who has lived amongst educated and well-informed Armenians all his political life - California has the largest Armenian population in the United States). Tom even helped AIPAC’s previous stooge in the White House block passage of a similar resolution in 2000. Tom's "agnosticism" towards the Armenian holocaust is even more shameful once you appreciate the inspiration the Nazis drew from this genocidal prototype. *

So I was stunned when I picked up a newspaper a month ago and read how Tom had changed his mind and decided to vote for the resolution this year. I would love to tell you how he summoned the courage to jump ship following a titanic wrestling bout with his conscience. How, for the sake of the truth and justice and at the persistent urging of Jewish organizations all over America, he abandoned the preposterous notion of the uniqueness and superiority of Jewish suffering. How it was time to make room for 2 holocausts in the history books of America’s public schools and holocaust exhibits and museums….

Sadly I must report that Tom's fundamental view of the Armenian holocaust remains unchanged. What has shifted is Tom's opinion of Israel's erstwhile military ally Turkey. Tom thinks Turkey is a strategic write-off and needs to be humiliated for its failure to co-operate with the invasion of Iraq. Put more succintly, Turkey obstructed the AIPAC agenda, a huge no-no. Not only has Turkey been flexing its muscles in its relationship with United States, it has been flirting with Islamic fundamentalism. This is very unwelcome news for diehard defenders of Israel.

But there is a final twist. It turns out that the Great Holocaust Survivor is also the Jihadists Best Friend, a relationship dating back to Bosnia. Check out Tom’s latest oral contribution to peace and stability in the Balkans, this time on the topic of an independent "Republic of Kosova":

"Just a reminder to the predominantly Muslim-led government[s] in this world that here is yet another example that the United States leads the way for the creation of a predominantly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe. This should be noted by both responsible leaders of Islamic governments, such as Indonesia, and also for jihadists of all color and hue. The United States' principles are universal, and in this instance, the United States stands foursquare for the creation of an overwhelmingly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe."

In other words, appeasing jihadists in Europe is totally consistent with the global War on Terror, part of Tom’s brilliant plan to fool those dumb Muslims into believing that, despite its slavish support of Israel, America is really on their side. Jihad, it seems, is only a problem when the rockets are aimed at Tel Aviv.

I recall reading somewhere how some female inmates became whores to survive the Nazi death camps. Tom Lantos’ career is testament to the fact that in the political arena, the process can work in reverse.

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(* Note: For those who wish to learn more about the Armenian holocaust, I recommend highly Professor Peter Balakian’s “The Burning Tigris”, a masterpiece of research into the 20th century's first genocide.)

Knowledge sinking faster than the dollar

I remember growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia believing that everyone was jealous of America. With the notable exception of my parents (European immigrants) this was the view of the whole neighbourhood. Kids my age would repeat what they heard at the dinner table, namely that the only explanation for European post-war ingratitude towards the United States was jealousy. Our 2-story houses, our front gardens, our large cars, our baseball stadiums, Disneyland, etc., you name it, they wanted it. Europeans were so envious they couldn’t sleep at night.

Fast forward twenty years and I am back in Philadelphia listening to a supposedly educated American woman (now the ex-wife of a good friend of mine) telling me exactly the same thing. Her husband disagrees but then he has traveled overseas.

Fast forward another 10 years to 11 September 2001. Americans everywhere are asking: “Why do they hate us?” George Bush has a reassuring answer: “They are jealous of our freedoms and our way of life”. No one had to prompt him. This is Bush’s core belief and it is shared by millions of Americans because they all grew up with it. “The War on Terror” is merely a subset of “The War on Jealousy”.

In Stanley Kubrick’s film Full Metal Jacket, a senior American army officer in Vietnam explains to a skeptical journalist that “inside every Vietnamese is an American screaming to get out”. Today we are fighting (and losing) wars in the Middle East to liberate that inner American inside every Iraqi and every Afghan. Anyone who resists is, by definition, sub-human or would benefit from psychiatric help. The irony is, of course, that for all the money Americans pour annually into self-analysis and therapy, they are the most useless psychologists in the world. Years of sub-standard education, druggy pop culture, cretinous television, and a hopelessly corrupt political class have destroyed the average American’s ability to place his or herself in anyone else’s shoes. There is only one valid perspective: the American one.

The jealousy myth is, of course, a corollary of that other unassailable certainty: America is the greatest country in the world. Didn't Madeleine Albright describe it as the "indispensable nation"? Americans are always telling each other this – on television, in schools, in bars, in supermarkets, on the golf course. Though anecdotal, it is perhaps the most convincing evidence of mass ignorance that we have today. Besides, how on earth does one measure greatness? Greatness is an entirely subjective concept and has a multitude of facets, eg. economic, military, political, education, culture, food, health care, social services etc. against plenty of which America scores extremely badly.

The globalisation of telecommunications has had little impact. With all the overseas channels now available to us through satellite, we should have a much better understanding of external attitudes towards America. Instead the technology serves to identify those channels that need to be bombed (eg. Al-Jazeera). The reality is that all most Americans want in the way of overseas news and analysis is 24-hour feel-good patriotic mumbo-jumbo about our brave boys in Baghdad and Kabul. The situation promises to worsen as the dollar sinks below the waves and even fewer people can afford to travel outside the United States. Of course, the sick dollar means more foreigners are now able to visit the United States but surely that will be taken as further proof that foreigners want to be American.

We should be more like the Chinese

Someone was obviously inspired by my post about Toady and decided to track down the villain:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2207514,00.html

Well how about that!! Abbas has turned out to be such a star pupil that Toady has spare time to pontificate in China (for an exorbitant fee naturally). Failed statesmanship is a very lucrative profession these days but I was struck by how quickly his hosts realized they had a bullshitter on their hands. Bird flu may have originated in China but it appears the Chinese are immune to the far more serious brain-numbing Anglo-Saxon disease that results in Blair worship. Compare the swift reaction of the Chinese media with the complaceny of their Anglo-American counterparts who, with a few notable exceptions, swooned over Blair's lies and platitudes for 10 miserable years. Were I mayor, I would unilaterally twin my town with Guangdong as a matter of principle.

Of course, it will be a very different story when Toady's road-show moves to the USA. They’ll be pumping out souvenir American baseballs by the thousands stamped with images of Toady and Bush arm-in-arm. He’ll be showered with worthless medals and doctorates and applauded on talk-shows for spouting pseudo-Churchillian nonsense about “standing together against evil” and “doing the right thing”. He’ll pose cheerfully yet meaningfully with graduates of West Point Academy and pop-up in Pennsylvania pancake houses to cement the Anglo-American alliance at the grassroots level, though always careful to make sure some hapless local picks up the tab for his eggs and bacon (the Blairs are formidable cheapskates).

All of which proves that we need to become more Chinese.

Where is Toady?

I am referring, of course, to none other than the unindicted war criminal Tony Blair, former PM of Great Britain. I know he is supposed to be advising Mahmoud Abbas on something or other (like how to be a more effective liar?) but we haven’t heard from him in a while. That is so unlike Toady who seeks publicity the way Pooh craves honey. It’s not that I miss him. Lord, it is so nice to read a newspaper or watch the BBC without any mention of this rogue. It’s as if a lengthy and persistent bout of severe nausea has ended.

Actually, I must correct myself. I did read about him in the Independent the other day. Apparently he was shocked by the conditions in which Palestinians lived. Shocked, I tell you. Rubbish. The only thing that would shock Tony Blair is to learn how totally irrelevant he has become. Maybe that is why Russia didn’t obstruct the decision to appoint Blair as Middle Eastern envoy. Sending this menace to tutor the equally irrelevant Abbas was probably the best way to marginalize Toady. Unlike the idiots in DC and Whitehall, Vladimir Putin understood the outcome of the last Palestinian elections and quickly grasped that Hamas is the true representative power in the occupied territories. No lasting peace deal can be done without them. How typical of our approach to the Middle East. Russia talks to the people who matter while we send our high-profile failures to train Palestinian parrots to squawk democratic clichés and kow-tow to Israel. Today Russia is the true home of diplomacy, not America or England.

Sooner or later, though, Toady (and his wife) will tire of the anonymity and the lack of influence at which point he will look for some sort of dignified exit. Apparently the dwarf Sarkozy would be happy to seem him as President of Europe but I think that is pie-dans-le-sky. I am still betting he will try to grab the NATO Secretary General position. You have been warned.

Crack open the Bollinger

I penned this a while ago. I know its an old story but just for the record.......

Lee Bollinger acted extremely discourteously towards Ahmedinejad. His introduction was a disgrace and the President of Iran displayed tremendous magnanimity in not walking off the stage. But Bollinger, as someone pointed out, dare not risk the financial security of Columbia.

Despite the rehearsed insinuations, Bollinger would never dare to open a speech by George Bush in similar fashion, eg.

“Mr. Bush, you have been invited to this university to express views that are repugnant not only to the majority of students and academics of this institution of higher learning, but to the vast majority of the world. You exhibit the traits of a liar and a warmonger who has brought tremendous suffering to millions of people in the Middle East and beyond, a suffering to which you appear utterly oblivious. Nor do you appear to learn from your errors, normally a sign of basic intelligence amongst humans. Furthermore, you mangle the English language, get your facts (especially geography) wrong with alarming frequency and have plunged America into a financial, military and moral abyss. Now you will have the opportunity to confront an audience that has not been hand picked by your advisors and I wish you luck”

Finally, to those who would tape the mouths of everyone who questions the Jewish holocaust (the lower case “h” is deliberate - there have been many holocausts), do you work yourself into a frenzy when Turkish officials visit the United States? They all deny the Armenian holocaust. In fact, Turkey is made up of roughly 50 million holocaust deniers. And besides, what blood does Ahmedinejad have on his hands compared to Ariel Sharon, a regular undisturbed visitor to American shores until he entered cabbagedom?

Cuba te espera

This summer I traveled to Cuba with my family. It was an experience I will never forget and mentally I am already planning a return although in some respects the first trip will be a hard act to follow.

For instance, we had the incredible fortune to be on stage with Son 14 in Santiago on the night of 26 July 2007, the anniversary of Castro’s assault on the Moncada Barracks and the Cuban equivalent of the American 4th of July (without the hot dogs and hideously fat people but with far better music). How do you beat that? It was a miracle and it only happened because the night before we met a very talented Cuban singer who needed a lift back to Chago (Santiago) from our hotel by the sea on the remote south west tip of Granma province.

So seven of us jumped into our hired van the following morning and took off, swerving around potholes and bypassing sinking bridges for 5 hours along the incredibly beautiful and completely undeveloped coastline of the Sierra Maestra. During the journey we learned that Julio was good friends with members of the band including the son of the Tiburon, co-founder and the original lead singer. “I will introduce you tonite”, he promised. I was ecstatic but it seemed too good to be true.

We arrived in Santiago and Julio took us to a rooftop restaurant full of mismatched couples (ie. elderly European men in floral shirts snuggling teenage Cuban beauties in tight jeans). The food looked good but it never arrived and I was getting nervous about missing Son 14 so I took a command decision and did something incredibly un-English: I paid the waiter for the meal we never had, but which had been “on its way” for an hour, and ordered everyone back into the van for our audience with Son 14.

With my wife and mother’s denunciations of my prolifigate behaviour passing through one ear and out the other, I obeyed Julio’s navigation which led us to a dingy and smelly alley. A few peso convertibles were flashed and some bored police were persuaded to do their duty and guard the car.

We walked a few metres to the back of the stage which had been constructed in the middle of a large street and Julio signaled us to wait while he climbed some steps and disappeared. He quickly re-appeared grinning and waving to us to join him.

We climbed the steps and joined the entourage of a dozen or so amigos and novias obliged to share space with the mammoth speakers, anaconda-sized cables and now a curious white family that appeared to have lost its tour guide.

I looked at the band. The singers were jumping up and down wildly as they sang, pointing to a poorly-lit sea of Cubans, nearly all black, who swayed and chanted in the street. The beat was ferocious and I kept saying to myself “Incredible. No one is going to believe this”.

The introductions were as warm as the night air. My throat got into the groove with a shot of Anejo Especial. The liquid fire soon reached the rest of my body and the God of Salsa began to cast his spell. My son began pounding some unused bongos. Suddenly my father was twirling with a Cubana. Flattered by the invitation of the locals, even the "Queens of Frugality" crumbled as brains started taking orders from hips and feet.

“Son 14! Fantastic!” I exclaimed. “No. This is the band before Son 14.” Julio explained. It no longer mattered. Everything and everyone was Son 14, a metaphor for the best of Cuba. We were part of the biggest and best family in the world. Eventually it was Son 14’s turn and we took a break, perching on some boxes inches away from the brass players (the heart of this amazing band) and speakers. Julio grabbed a guira and joined the percussionists. Later on he stepped forward to sing totally unfazed by the huge crowd, the miniscule band of Canadian tourists thawing out back in Mareo del Portillo by now a distant absurdity. The kids crashed out on our laps oblivious to the cruise ship horn intensity of the nearby speakers. It had been a exhausting journey but I could not bring myself to leave. What a crime that this day should come to an end!!

Around 3 am we called it quits and retreated to our hotel. Needless to say, we were the first to leave. On the way back I asked my mother, “What were the lyrics to that really cool song at the beginning?” She laughed with a hint of astonishment. “When they crouched down and pointed to the crowd, they were pointing an imaginary gun……”

If the Yankees go crazy and invade
Then pull out your gun
Take aim
And FIRE!!!

And if the Yankees go crazy, I think the Cubans will do just that. These people have incredible spirit.

Ollie and Tibbets

Sadly this has nothing to do with some cute little cartoon characters. It is about a mass murderer and his greasy apologist.

The mass murderer is the recently deceased Brigadier General Paul Tibbets who piloted Enola Gay, the plane which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and vaporized 140,000 innocent Japanese (not to mention the flood of deaths that followed from radiation sickness). Tibbets is quoted as saying that he never lost a night’s sleep over his atomic handiwork. Nice guy.

The apologist is a creepy little neo-con called Oliver Kamm who bears a frightening likeness to the 30s horror film actor Bela Lugosi (check out his picture – the fangs must have been air-brushed).

Still this is not about Kamm’s unappealing physical appearance. Rather it is about his equally unappealing (and I am being very charitable) politics and the repulsive way he exploits one of the nastiest episodes in human history. (Incidentally the petulant Kamm insists that he is not a neo-conservative and refers to himself instead as a Militant Liberal. After wading through a handful of his turgid posts, however, you will soon realize that he suffers from political dyslexia. He is in fact a Liberal Militarist, shorthand for those who champion violence in the pursuit of “noble causes”, all from a safe distance of course.)

Kamm went so far to post a fawning piece in which Tibbets is eulogized not just as the man who without question helped bring the Pacific War to an end but more subtly as a crusader against “totalitarianism”. It doesn’t take a genius to spot Kamm's true motive an he tries to draw a parallel with his own “principled” stance against Iraqi “totalitarianism”. If the annhililation of hundreds of thousands of people in the name of civilization qualifies one for militant liberal sainthood, then surely those neo-conservatives/militant liberals who stood up to the evil Baathist regime without resorting to nukes have earned their places in the choir of angels.

All that remains is to erect a glorious statue to Bomber Tibbets alongside the one of his soul-mate Bomber Harris which already adorns the Aldwych entrance to the City of London, to be unveiled by Kamm and his fellow ghouls from the Henry Jackson Society.

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PS. If you think I am being too hard on Tibbets, then have a gander at this interview, especially the final paragraphs in which he makes it very clear how he would handle terrorism:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,769634,00.html

This man had no compunction about murdering civilians.

Millie tangoes with Mushy

If you expected tough talk from Britain in reaction to Musharraf's coup, then double-check the mushrooms you have been eating with your salad. Taking his cue from Condi, David Milliband made it clear that "it was not the right time" to talk about applying pressure to restore democracy in Pakistan. Instead, the head of the US State Department's London branch gave us a lecture on how everyone (ie. him, Condi and Javier Solana) agrees that democracy is the best way to promote stability and human rights in Pakistan. I don't claim to be an expert on Pakistan but recent history shows that neither military rule nor democracy have been outstanding successes. From what I understand, Pakistan is almost as tribal as Afghanistan (that other model democracy) and is therefore doomed either to corrupt chaos or heavy clampdown.

Anyway, the issue is definitely not democracy. It's not even about maintaining the integrity of Pakistan. It is about making sure that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal does not fall into the hands of Taliban sympathisers and for America it is better the devil you know although it's an anxious time with Waziri tribesman capturing and beheading Pakistani soldiers. That is why the US State Department talks about "its regret" over the coup. The language is identical to that used when an US taxpayer funded Israeli Apache helicopter fires a missile into an appartment block in Gaza and wipes out 50 civilians. In other words, we don't regret a damn thing but we have to maintain our hollow reputation as a defender of global democratic/humanitarian values.

And what happens when Musharraf is forced to flee like the Shah of Iran and the venal politicians fail for the n-th time to provide leadership and maintain law and order? Will we see Enduring Freedom Part II? Or will we nuke several cities just to be on the safe side? David?

Before we get the ball rolling.........

and sink teeth into some juicy backsides, let's be clear what this blog isn't.

Despite the title, this is not a club for satan worshippers. Visit AIPAC's website if you want to learn about black magic and human sacrifice.

Nor is it a pretentious scholarly forum. Yes, I may quote from a book here and there or even attempt a book review and I welcome serious debate but if you are the sort of person who loves to squabble over the interpretation of this or that paragraph of Das Kapital or gets a kick from over-analysing footnotes in some stale American political biography then you have come to the wrong blog.

And I have a message for anyone who finds my postings moody, lop-sided, and irrational: that's the sort of guy that I am. Get used to it.

Finally, I want to have some fun with this blog. It's not just about attacking warmongers and their sycophants but sharing thoughts on topics which haven't been totally corrupted by politics. And even cracking a joke from time to time.

Welcome

This is my first blog and I hope it will acquire a very bad reputation amongst people whose political views I detest. Only time will tell. I do not plan to post frequently - only when I have something to say.