News to follow

Using a secure server to write this post. It is not something that is normally available to me here. Therefore, apologies to any readers, such as the my little friend in the Brum, who are unable to read my regular entries.

There will be a comprehensive report on my time in Addis when I return to Germany. Until then, why don't you all use some of the links to further your knowledge of the world and, perhaps, get yourself tuned into some real news rather than the daily drivel.

Kinshasa adjusts deal with China

It is interesting to hear that the IMF is now closer to giving the DRC a loan after Kinshasa agreed to "adjust" the $9 billion deal with China. "The DRC will put a third of the investment “on the back-burner” and withhold a state guarantee on another third for 25 years to assuage IMF concerns that it would add to the country’s US$11 billion external debt."

What a weird state of affairs; there was the "hype" man back in April stretching out the begging bowl asking the Chinese to prop those instruments, the IMF and World Bank, that facilitate Anglo-Saxon domination of the planet and there we have today those very same instruments making sure that the DRC backtracks on its agreement with the PRC. What might they be thinking in Beijing?

They have tasty rabbits in Gaza

Isn't the "free press" wonderful? Whereas a real free press would be screaming out in anger at the illegal blockade of Gaza, we have today's 'Independent' writing, ".... rabbits have become an unlikely siege-beating lifeline for some of the poorest families in Gaza. Relatively cheap to feed and famously reproductive, the fluffy creatures are helping families like the Motawes to survive the desperate shortage of income – and nutritious food – imposed by the economic collapse of a Gaza under blockade."

Of course, this is drivel of the worse sort and we have our "mainstream" readers sitting in the comfort of their homes thinking, "ah, well at least they have rabbits to eat and rabbits are, after all, quite tasty." If the mainstream press cannot get the message accross, I will make a, no doubt, forlorn attempt to do so; the blockade of Gaza, is a disgrace, it is not only immoral, it is illegal.

Is the blog unblocked?

This is an opportunity that has to be taken; it would appear that my blog has been unblocked. For how long, I don't know. Certainly there is a feeling of déjá vu about this and my memory finds itself drifting back to China about eighteen months ago. Now, if the authorities in the PRC ultimately came to the conclusion that Jim's ramblings on China and posts on here, there and everywhere weren't worth bothering about, it might be that the government in Addis is now beginning to sense the futility of inteferring in my freedom of expression.

That would be nice, because otherwise things here are generally hunky-dory. Today we couldn't start teaching because of "administrative problems" but tomorrow we should be able to get the ball rolling. Still no printer up here on the university campus for us to access freely but we could have one down at the college.

One of my colleagues who works in Switzerland was quite funny today when he wanted to top up his Ethiopian SIM card on the internet and explained that that is how they do it in Switzerland. Well, of course, the way they do lots of things in Switzerland are slightly different from the way that they do things here.

In Ethiopia

The 'Guardian' informs that British military losses have reached 201 and that the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, says "we must fight on." However, it really has all been said, hasn't it? "This is a war that is causing thousands of deaths, that cannot be won and that is being fought for reasons very different from those that the young men from the United Kingdom, United States and elsewhere are supposedly dying for."

No, I am in Ethiopia and there should enough distraction here, at least some of the time, to keep me distracted from the Hindikush and the shennanigans elsewhere. Not noticing very many shennanigans at the moment though and I am too conscerned about some of the idioscyncracies that one finds from British ex-pats when they are bounding about foreign fields. On returning from Bole yesterday, a good piece of pizza, a good cup of coffee and the live premiership football were put into that kindo of perspective that only middle class, received pronunciation speaking, middle English ladies are capable of putting "modern man's" perspective into. There we were rambling along on the bus and there they were saying things like, "oh look, there is a nice little cafe, we could go down there and talk to some of the locals."

The "nice" little cafe was, of course, in a field of mud and I was left thinking and what are you going to talk to the locals about and have you decided on which language you might want to use. Yes, these experiences are wonderful for putting you in touch with that "Withnail and I" generation, that "stop the planet I want to get off" generation and in touch with that part of that generation who would represent Withnail and not I.

Oh, I almost forgot; the shennigans are beginning to appear and if any of you have clicked on the link to my blog above, you will have noticed that I am having to access my blog through a proxy.

Arrival in Ethiopia

Arrived about one o'clock in the morning in Addis and I didn't get to my bed until three. Nevertheless, there are some poignant first impressions. On the way to the hotel from the airport I could distinguish numerous figures huddled together in doorways, under bridges, under open umbrellas. For the most part they will probably be the people who come into Addis from the outside countryside, hoping to eek out a better existence than the one that they have at home and believe me this is not some warm sub tropical country, with constant rain and temperatures below those back in Munich.

Pleasant surprises have also been made. The internet connection in the hotel is good enough and I am sitting in the sixth floor restaurant. Furthermore, the coffee is excellent and certainly as good as the best you will taste at home. Now, it is off to the university and will there be electricity? That being available and the internet connection being readily accessible at least in the publi areas will make my day and, to no little extent, decide my quality of life over the next five weeks. Of course, one just has to look out of the window to put my little problems in perspective.

"On the Road"

"On the road" today and the transit in Istanbul's Atatürk Airport is pleasant enough; very expensive coffee but a reasonably good wireless connection can be "stolen" from the HSBC bank above the food court. Yes, Mustafa Kemal was a sort of "European" man and the airport that bears his adopted name would have had the father of modern Turkey as proud as punch. Yes, modern enough here.

Apropos "modern", off to Addis Ababa this evening and there are already forewarnings that the "modern" might be on the wane with a mail coming out of the Ethiopian capital telling me that, "the electricity the university fix a new generator". Now, does this mean that, "a long time ago they fixed a new generator but it has long since broken again", or does it mean that "they have fixed a new generator", or are "they in the process of fixing a new generator, or will they "fix a new generator when they get round to it"? Of course, shouldn't they be fixing an old generator and installing a new generator? Whatever, there is already evidence to suggest that Ethiopia is not going to be quite predictable as Seville, Munich, Glasgow and, yes the quite modern Atatürk Airport, and I am already getting excited about the wireless internet connection that they have at Addis Ababa University.

Full Spectrum Dominance

On going to Frederick William Engdahl's site today I found myself making a refreshing return to 'Real News' to follow an interview that Paul Jay, the senior editor at 'Real News' gave Engdahl and what we get is, indeed, "real news" and we are suddenly freed from the daily drivel and the jingoism that dominates the mainstream media.

Engdahl, I believe, is marvelous at exposing the real reasons behind America's wars and at showing how those wars are a continuation of a century of Anglo-Saxon domination of the globe. Nevertheless, his suggestion that Eurasian cohesion will sooner or later bring that hegemony to an end is not one I necessarily share and not because, as Paul Jay asserts, the Chinese, with a trillion dollars in currency reserves, are emeshed in the Anglo-Saxon financial system. No, there I would agree with Engdahl and, as the Shanghai Cooperation indicates, there are very real reasons to believe that the Chinese in particular are building bridges which, if the constellation were different, could allow them an opportunity to get off of what is a sinking ship and create the conditions for a new world order. What, however, is the "constellation" that could very well prevent them doing so?

Firstly, the evidence would appear to suggest that, at a time when the American economy is going down the drain, its global military presence is, in fact, increasing. Moreover, the network of alliances that Engdahl talks about at length will also help to ensure that "Uncle Sam" will set the agenda for some time to come. In short, while Engdahl is right when he says that the Chinese cannot do much to actually help the US economy and that that economy is going to go through ten years of hell, it is, I believe, a hell that "Uncle Sam" will "share" with the rest of the world. If the Anglo-Saxons are to leave the limelight we can be sure that they will not be going out without a bang.

"Blah, Blah, Blah"

Down in Africa we have Hillary pompously pointing out in her run of the mill puerile, pathetic, platitudes, that civilians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have to be protected. However, that is going to be difficult considering US corporate interests in the region's mineral wealth. Those interests, dictate that American companies will continue to provide the funds and the incentives that will ensure that the maiming and massacring will continue.

It is a picture that is repeated all over Africa and it won't change despite the Congo Conflict Minerals Act and the Extractive Industries Transparency Disclosure Act. In theory those acts, should they make their way through congress and become law, will require that companies disclose new information in their financial reporting to ensure that the minerals that are being extracted don't support conflicts. It is, however, difficult to imagine that either of them, even should they become law, will prevent companies such as Chevron in Angola, stopping their support of those corrupt little elites and warring factions that ensure maximum profits.

From a mono-political culture that essentially serves big business, big business has nothing to fear and if Hillary's "blah, blah, blah" were to ever be anything more than just run of the mill puerile, pathetic, platitudes, then corporate America would make sure that she wouldn't be Secretary of State.

Of course, it is too easy to view "Uncle Sam" as the sole "whipping boy" here and as Global Witness points out European and Asian companies are also culpable when it comes to buying from suppliers who trade in minerals from the warring parties. Nevertheless, it becomes particularly offensive when it comes from the Anglo-Saxons with their hypocritical harping on about human rights when they are in fact facilitating those rights being abused.
The picture shows Hillary letting someone else do the talking.

Wary and Weary

Gaza has been pummelled, the Hezbollah is being held hostage to the broader political spectrum in the Lebanon and it has to negotiate a UNIFIL-monitored south of the country in order to reach the border. It really is difficult to see how Jerusalem is going to invent a provocation that will allow Israel to start its next "little" war before the summer has finished.

However, if Israel is wary of the calm, as an article in the 'New York Times' suggests then it really would appear to be a case of gnotis auton for it is Israel, of course, who will break that "calm" and as the article in the 'New York Times' indicates, the pretext for doing so is already being sought. Therefore, while it is difficult to see where the provocation is going to come from we can, nevertheless, expect Jerusalem to come up with some absurd pretext for, once again, bombing innocent men, women and children.

It is in Beruit and Gaza that the people have good cause to be wary and the rest of us have more than enough reason to be weary of the continued drivel that is spouted out by rags like the 'New York Times' when it comes to discussing the Middle East.

In the meantime the illegal blockade of Gaza, the illegal building of settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, the illegal refusal to give the UN maps of where Israel has left millions of cluster bombs that maim and murder on an almost daily basis, and the illegal occupation of the Shebaa Farms continues.

No choice: Harry had to go to war and it wasn't worth it

The Second International effectively collapsed with l'union sacrée in France and the Burgfrieden in Germany and the "reformist" socialist parties that were to emerge from the carnage were soon to be flattered into a submission that "allowed" them to be salon fähig.

Nevertheless, the "reformists" were not without their successes and in the aftermath of Atlee's landslide victory in 1945, Britain was to have its NHS, its Welfare State and some were even to have "homes fit for heroes", the Germans were to have their Soziale Marktwirtchaft and in France the working classes were soon to move into the habitation à loyer modéré.

There was a choice of sorts; a choice between left and right and then there was Thatcher and then we had Blair and today we have Gordon Brown. In France the Parti socialisti is not the SFIO and in Germany the Grosse Koalition realistically reflects the Federal Republic's mono political culture. Today, there is no real choice; not in France, not in the UK and not in Germany and, despite their being quite a bit of support for an alternative in Spain and Italy, not, realistically, in those two countries either.

"No choice" and there is the leader of a nominally socialist party, Gordon Brown, nominally paying tribute to Harry Patch, Britain's last survivor of the trenches of World War I,but in actual fact spouting out perifidous piffle in the form of an eulogy when saying that "the whole country would mourn "the passing of a great man. The noblest of all the generations has left us, but they will never be forgotten." Harry on the other hand thought that "it wasn't worth it". It wasn't Harry and the sad thing is that today the stooges in the various parliaments are just as willing to send today's youth to their deaths as the Assemblée Nationale, Westminster and the Reichstag were back in 1914 and the main reason for Mr Brown's eulogy Harry, well, I am sorry to say, there are troops to be movitated, there is an unwinnable war to be won even if, "it isn't worth it."

The picture shows the pall-bearers carrying the coffin of a man who refused to speak about his experiences of war for over eighty years. A picture which might, however, motivate one modern day Tommy to fight for the "Queens shilling". And what about Harry's, "it wasn't worth it"?

The Law

It would appear that while the United States of America tends to ignore international law when it comes to its machiavellian "Realpolitik", the courts at home at least give the outward appearance of accepting international law. This is evidenced by an article from the 'Jerusalem Post', which I first noticed on Norman Finkelstein's website; the article states that "Parents of a Jerusalem-born American boy who want “Israel” listed as their son’s country of birth on his American passport have been dealt another blow with the dismissal of their case by a US court of appeals." The US Courts of Appeal in Washington agreeing that the final status of Jerusalem has not been decided and that "US passports for those born in Jerusalem do not list a country because doing so would interfere with and pre-judge Israeli-Palestinian negotiations." The decision would appear to be in line with a similar decision made in Canada when the Canadian citizen Eliyahu Veffer's effort to have Jerusalem Israel listed as his place of birth on his Canadian passport was refused. The very upset young man then stated in an affidavit that his religion informs him that Jerusalem is the Israeli capital. Well, there is, of course, a solution and that might be for them to give up their American and Canadian passports and join the rest of their "friends" in that "little" Zionist undertaking that is Israel. Of course, it might be pointed out to them that should they ever indulge in their "god given" luxury of moving to a country that six million Palestinians in the diaspora cannot return to then, despite what they and their Zionist fellow travellers might think to the contrary, Jerusalem will still not be in Israel. At least not as far as international law, including US and Canadian law, are concerned and this in spite of what their religion tells them.

Poppycock

Jon Snow, not really part of my exophoric reference, he's not; heard of him before but it is only after picking up and indulging in a copy of his 'Shooting History', which I purchased in that lovely little chaotic island of books, Voltaire & Roussea, in Glasgow's Otago Lane, that I have made any real acquaintaince with him. Anyway, there was me googling Jon and discovering an interesting little article, from 2006, where Jon complains that "the pressure on news-readers to wear the Remembrance Day emblem was "poppy facism". Nice one Jon and remember that the "poppy campaign" is part of a fund that is named after a certain Field Marshal Haig who, along with his staff, lived a life of luxury far behind the frontlines, while British soldiers were living and dying in rat infested trenches. Indeed, Dr Niall Ferguson, tutor in Modern History at Jesus College, Oxford, sums up the role of the number one "poppy fascist" in the carnage that was WWI when he says, "There is nothing heroic about what Haig did -the heroes were the badly trained Tommies who carried out what were at times completely deranged orders." Yes, indeed and we would not be wholly wrong to suppose that the forces behind "poppy fascism" today are of the Haig ilk and that they are those who today sit on their fat arses while young working class boys are once again being slaughtered on foreign fields and what they do to distract you from their crimes is they get you involved in their "all inclusive" communities and if you don't get involved, you are not for them, you are against "them". Of course, it is not a method that is unique to the "poppy fascists" and you will find it in Hitler's "Wer nicht für uns ist, ist gegen uns", it is a "Weltanschuung" that "Uncle Sam" invariably adopts and you will find it in a Zionist ideology that is quick to brand any Jew who criticises Israel as a "self hating Jew". Yes it is not unique to Britain but it is of course poppycock.

The last great European colonial adventure

Stumbled on an intesting article from the Sydney-based freelance journalist, author and blogger, Anthony Loewenstein, entitled, "Where to now for Jewish America". Interesting not so much because of the author's contention that "In the US, moderate Jewish voices on the Middle East are gaining strength, but many American Jews are still reluctant to criticise Israel", as both facts are hardly new to me, but rather because of Chomsky challenging Loewenstein's description of the situation in Palestine as apartheid by claiming that the bad days of Afrikaner hegemony in Southern Africa are not a good analogy because, the situation there was far more humane. In South Africa, the government and population relied on black labour, so they kept the Bantustans up and developed them to an extent because they were crucial. Just like how slave owners fed their slaves. In Palestine, the situation is different. They (the Israelis) don't want the Palestinians, nor do they care about them. They don't really rely on them anymore and they don't need them for labour. They get cheap labour from Thailand or Romania. That's what's taking place." Now, while there might be some truth in this I am certainly sceptical of the "extent" to which the government in Pretoria "kept the Bantustans up and developed them." However, there is a more important reason why the analogy with South Africa doesn't hold and it would appear that, while both Chomsky and Loewenstein are no doubt aware of it, they seem to bypass it in their discussion. Quite simply the regime in South Africa, was so blatantly racist and colonialist that it had nowhere left to hide. Their "lie" was an affront to international community that could no longer be kept up. What we have in Palestine on the other hand is the continued cultivation of that strange oxymoron, a Jewish democracy, and a strange "Weltanschauung" that says that some people are entitled to someone else's land. The racist regime in South Africa had nowhere left to hide, it could no longer disguise itself, it was so obviously a hangover from a time where the white man had his scramble for Africa. On the other hand even those moderate Jews that Loewenstein is referring to continue to see the colonisation of Palestine not quite for what it really is and the mainstream media continues to do a good job in portraying this as a struggle not between an oppressed people and its oppressors but as a conflict in which both parties are at fault and in which both parties have to make a compromise. The myopia suffered by the majority of Jews can be, to some extent, understood. However, the inability of the media to portray, what is in effect, the last great European colonial adventure for what it is, is nothing short of a scandal.

AFRICOM and the spreading of democracy

Interesting stuff on 'Democracy Now' from Jeremy Keenan, a Professor of social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.(1) The conclusion would appear to be that not only do the Africans not want AFRICOM messing up their messed up continent even more than their despotic leaders are capable of doing themselves, but also the rationale behind that organisation is very different from the "blah, blah, blah, spreading of democracy" that Washington would like us to believe. What it does in fact mean is the primacy of the military in an American foreign policy that is aimed at securing Africa's mineral reserves in general and its oil reserves in particular for "Uncle Sam". Bad enough but when Keenan goes on to outline the details of the lie that spawned AFRICOM, we really should be more than a trifle worried.
The evidence would appear to suggest that the Algerian president, Abdelazis Bouteflika, colluded with George W Bush back in 2003 and that it was the "Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurite" (DRS), the Algerian state intelligence service, which was responsible for kidnapping various groups of tourists throughout the year. It was those kidnapping that gave Bush not only the pretext to contend that terrorism had not left Africa, but also provided the basis of his ridiculous assertion that Al-Qaeda had returned to the continent. AFRICOM was born but let us make no mistake about it, its' mission is not, and never was, to promote democracy in the region but rather to provide a military solution to secure "Uncle Sam's" hegemony and geopolitical goals in a part of the globe where the Chinese in particular are becoming serious competitors. Moreover, with Obama most definitely following in the footsteps of his predecessor not only in Africa but also in Afghanistan and elsewhere, it really is difficult to believe that there is much more to this "hype" fellow than the hype itself. In the meantime it is time for us to shout down the hypocrites and make some effort to show them for what they are.

Hillary Clinton traipses through Africa

Hillary Clinton has just started traipsing through Africa where she will be visiting Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, and, to show support for three nations recovering from conflict, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia while also stopping in small US ally Cape Verde. Of course, the eleven day trip is to emphasis Washington's support for democracy in the region. What drivel and more interestingly is that there are no American bases in any of the countries she is visiting apart from the one in Kenya and those in the small but strategically important Cape Verde islands off of the west coast of the continent. Moreover, the nonsense about supporting countries that are "recovering from conflict" when the United States is largely responsible for those conflicts is disgusting hypocrisy to say the least, while it also has to be said that America's "democratic friends" in the region, for instance, Museveni in Uganda and Kagame in Rwanda, should be in front of the ICC in the Hague. We should be in no doubt why Hillary is traipsing through Africa and one would only hope that they would spare us drivel of the sort spouted out by Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, when she said that the Obama administration might push for sanctions against Eritrea if it didn't change course, while adding,"There's a very short window for Eritrea to signal, through its actions, that it wishes (for) a better relationship with the United States and indeed the wider international community." Of course, what Susan means is that it is time for Eritrea and Zimbabwe and Somalia and everyone else in Africa to do what "Uncle Sam" wants and who knows, if they do, they might even let the new "democrats" Isaias Afewerki in Eritrea, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Sheikh Sharif Ahmed in Somalia to join Washington's other "democratic" friends in Africa. Once they do, of course, they can continue their despotic rule, while appearing in the western media as moderates, as democrats and, indeed, as statesmen.

Pleading for peace again

In an article in this week's 'New Statesmen' Yitzhak Rabin's daughter, Dalia Rabin-Pelosoff, is "Pleading for peace, again", while extolling the courage of her father and King Hussein of Jordan when they ended the war between Israel and Jordan in 1994.(1) Now, while Yitzhak Rabin might have been assassinated by a very extreme, very deluded, right wing lunatic this does not mean that the "peace" he helped to achieve at Oslo in 1993 was any sort of "peace" at all and if it were any sort of "peace" at all, it was one that was unjusted and based on surrender. To think otherwise it would appear that Mr Rabin's daughter, while not so very deluded as the man who killed her father, suffers from that collective delusion that has all Zionists living in a wee world of their own. This is all the more apparent when she goes on to say that, "Today even Binyamin Netanyahu, for years a fierce opponent, acknowledges the need for a two-state solution."(2) Was it not Netanyahu who said that the Palestinians can call their "Bantustans" a "state" if they want, indeed, they can call it anything they want?" Of course, what we had at Oslo was an Arafat who was seriously in decline, a senile old man, who hardly mentioned Jerusalem once, who accepted the building of settlements on Palestinian land, who appeared to have forgotten all about resolutions 198 and 242, who appeared to have forgotten all about the Palestinians in the diaspora. An old man who was conned by the Israelis into accepting the responsibility for policing the resistance against them.
The point I am making is this; the Zionist mind, as evidenced by Dalia Rabin-Pelosoff's article, really isn't very accessible to those types of truths that we would deem ethical, just and moral. Of course, it cannot be for then it would no longer be a "zionist mind" and while Dalia is only doing what any good Zionist and daughter can do in sticking up for her assassinated father it has to be said that there is a priori no difference in the "Weltanschuung" of her father and the man who shot him. The really brave Israeli Prime Minister, the really brave statesman, will be that one who apologises to the Palestinians and asks them to forgive and come and share a truely free Palestine. However, now I am becoming as deluded as the most deluded of Zionists and they are a deluded, misinformed, bunch, aren't they?
1 'New Statesman' p13
2 ibid

The National Health Service

Went to Woodside Health Centre in Glasgow yesterday and there is me, the prodigal son, from just around the corner and down the road, and, despite my having not lived in the UK for a long, long, long time, I could have seen a doctor free of charge, if I had time, but I hadn't and I returned to Munich today. Still, Nye Bevin's "child", the NHS, is a goodie and if it is not socialist Britain, it is, at least, a social Britain as we wait with bated breath for the "hype" man to keep his promises in the land of hope and gory accross the big pond. No chance of that happening with Congress already placing obstacles in his way and the media maverick, Bill Reilly, crowing, "President Obama and his gang cannot run the healthcare industry, and they will create chaos if they try, the folks know this, and that's why the president is taking a beating. He does not understand that freedom trumps ideological legislation."(1) And freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, except your, good health, your sanity, your life, of course, and it is nice to see mighty 'Blighty', at least, keeping that bit of alrighty and thank you Nye. Yes, my exophoric, my cultural reference, might have changed, might have "moved on" but there are some things that are just great back in the UK. For instance, the National Health System.

Palestinians evicted in East Jerusalem

With the eviction of nine Palestinian families from the two East Jerusalem homes which they had occupied for some fifty years, the real nature of the ethnic cleansing that has been going on unimpeded since, at least, 1948 is surely obvious to all and sundry. The houses were immediately occupied by "settler" families. "Settlers", and one really wonders what planet these people live on. "Settler" a word that automatically conjours up colonisation or, at best, people migrating to a place in order to establish their permanent residence there. Only the most myopic would fail to appreciate what is going on in Palestine, yet most people appear to suffer from a sight disorder that needs sunglasses and a guide dog rather than a pair of reading glasses.

Afghanistan and advice to the Germans

With some 3,500 "Bundeswehr" troops in Afghanistan, only 38 German soldiers have died. Bad enough, of course, but one only has to compare it to the 124 Canadians, out of a contingent of 2,800, who have died to date. Nevertheless, the war has arrived in "der Heimat" and it is interesting how the German media reports it. While the British press, have been passing on the "optimistic" drivel it has received from a military that has lost 191 men since operations in Afghanistan began in 2002, including 22 last month alone, the German media, despite the still "relatively" low number of "Bundeswehr" casualties, is already providing the German public with a more realistic assessment of the situation and in his weekend's 'Süddeutsche Zeitung' we are told that the Taliban have returned to the villages in the Chahar Darreh region of Helmland just days after the "Bundeswehr" 'Operation Adler' was declared a success. It is a sense of realism that, when it reaches the British media, reaches it in a different form. Nevertheless, only days after the 'Times' was reporting, "The first phase of a bitterly fought British military operation in southern Afghanistan is over and has succeeded in driving the Taleban out of a former stronghold, senior officials said today,"we do have the 'Guardian' informing us, "British soldiers were sent into Helmand province on an ill-defined mission undermined by "unrealistic" planning and lack of manpower, according to a withering Commons report published today, which concludes that the strategic threat has shifted to Pakistan."There we have it; the Germans believe that once you beat them they just return, effectively they have decided that this is a war that cannot be won, on the other hand, the British celebrate a major victory and when it transpires that it is not so "major" and not such a "victory" after all, the realisation is that the threat has moved to Pakistan. Next stop then, the Swat Valley and there must be those who wish that they could get a hold of Sir Mortimer Durand by the throat and ring his neck; Sir Mortimer is the man who gave his name in 1893 to the Durand Line, the boundary that remains today the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and which effectively cuts the Pashtu people in two. For my part, I will not follow Kipling and offer the young British soldier advice on going out east, because the young British soldier will not be following it and when Afghanistan has been "pacified" our Brits will be moving onto Pakistan and the next stage in this ridiculous "war on terror". For the young German "Berufssoldaten", however, maybe the situation is not irretrievable and even if Berlin has aready joined the Anglo-Saxon bum chums, it might not be too late for young Germans to at least assess the situation correctly.

Attack on Gay Centre in Tel Aviv

To some extent yesterday's attack on a Gay Centre in Tel Aviv, which left two dead, is a reflection of the fact that in an exclusive, racist, state you are bound to get little egoists who hate anything different from how they might perceive "their" inclusive, in the case of Israel, Jewish state should look. Of course, homophobic attacks can occur anywhere and they do. Nevertheless, what this attack demonstrates is that the "bubble" that is Tel Aviv, a supposed island of liberalism and tolerance, cannot be divorced from the country as a whole and that it is time for secular liberal Jews to stand up for what they really believe in. Or rather,"should believe in, but don't", for while opposition leader Tzipi Livni was quck to declare "This grave incident should awaken society to rid itself of prejudice. We must accept and recognize the right of every person to live safely and with dignity," it is a life in security and dignity that she is, of course, not willing to extend to Palestinians. The demons are out there and just as European nationalism went to bed as a sleeping beauty and awoke as an ugly demon, so too is the Zionist state beginning to appear very different from the one that was envisaged by the founding fathers. Of course, in the case of Zionism it was always inevitable and the misinformed, misled, idealism of the movement's founding fathers could, unlike nationalism, never have any basis in that liberal philosophy, which spawns tolerant societies, and which in Europe created that sleeping beauty that was only later to metamorphose into an ugly monster.

Cheek, Chic, Chickens and Cheerio

The Glasgow "adventure" is approaching its end and there they were trying to give us an "advance" of three weeks salary, which wasn't even three weeks salary, after five weeks work, and it wouldn't even cover my costs here. The reservoir of local talent, MAs, RSA Diplomas, in "fucked-up" 'Blighty', makes it possible; running around like chickens with their heads chopped off, while trying to keep all of their eggs in the one basket, and even if they get out of that basket, they are only jumping into the small pool, Paisley, Anniesland, Strathclyde, Caledonian and one or two others sprinkled in the West of Scotland. No, keep the mouths shut, need a reference, need a job and, anyway, they will pay, don't know where, don't know when but I know they will pay again some sunny day. Don't blame them, really I don't, but I suggest they pick up a copy of the 'Ragged Trouser Philanthropist' and not for me 'old bean', not for me!
The city itself; a much ado about nothing, culture got left behind somewhere along the line, reference is mostly of the local sort, even if it is sometimes dressed up to look cosmopolitan; oh there is the decent "French Farmhouse Breakfast" at the top of Byres Rd, a run of the mill affair of the sort that I enjoy at the river at the bottom of my garden back in Fürstenfeldbruck, prohibitively expensive in Glasgow though but then that is par for the course and what was it we used to say about the people in Morningside, Edinburgh, when I was a kid; "all fur coats and no knickers". Yes, Glasgow, cheek, chic, chickens and cherrio!
The picture shows Glasgow University, where cheek meets chic and they run around like chickens with their heads chopped off.