Beyond comprehension

The fear and desperation of a fleeing civilian population is etched on all their faces. Where to run to, where is my family, the stories told first hand of their mothers, fathers brothers and sisters killed in front of their eyes, why was this world of the grown up, their personal security, blown up in front of them, where had their reality gone.
I have just been watching film footage made in the streets of a Palestinian town showing the desperation of people fleeing from the areas of Israeli shelling. Running, screaming, limping some dying in the street in front of the camera lens. The film was meant to show the terror inflicted on the civilian population, the emphasis being that innocent civilians are no match for an army pumping fire power into their midst.
Of course the Israeli response is that in the middle of all these civilians is the enemy of Israel, Hamas. The tunnels that Hamas have built to launch attacks on the civilian population of Israel, the rocket launching pads pumping missiles into the suburban areas of Israel are sited within the areas that Israel is pommelling with shells and rockets.A tragedy of epic proportions made more by the fact that we, secure within our home, watch the fear and panic, mesmerised by a drama which we can not comprehend but keep watching as we would a ghoul show. This, as in all conflicts is a power game played out irrespective of the common man and women who are the real casualties. The conflict is a decision made by either fanatics or people who are used to power and the separation that power brings, there is little or no consideration of the people at the end of travel of the shell or rocket its simply a technological opportunity to kill the opposition who became 'the opposition' through the travails of history and storytelling.   .                     

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/

A female attribute

Now all men know that women can be moody but put a golf club in their hands and they become moody plus.
Watching the women's golf at Royal Berkdale one is struck by variables which seem to be indicative of nationality, as well as the gender. The Americans are slim and trim honed on the circuit, they come cut out of a design catalogue to catch the eye of any stray billionaire. The Asian women are Samurai shaped with expressionless faces,  heavily made up probably with a billionaire at home. The Scandinavians are fixated and grumpy, slamming their clubs in the bag with a venom and a pent up anger that comes from living in an area that doesn't get enough sun and whisky, un-affordable.
The women's game seems to lack the dynamic of the men's game. They don't have the testosterone of the men's game, they go for it but in a sort of genteel way, plenty of technical skill but no killer instinct to push their bodies where as Captain Kirk would say "no man has been". Perhaps its a question of the pay cheque since they certainly fall far short of the bucks the men make but in a game where there is less physical effort in the contest than say athletics one has to wonder why. Even in bowls, which is nearly all judgement, the women do not feature in the tournaments and once again its the province of men.
Of course over here we are wringing our hands at the moment in the call for more women in Parliament (and for that matter in the board room), there is demand that if the Prime Minister is a man then the Deputy PM 'has to be' a women.
Perhaps its the nature of the political game where the ability to hector and shout is more of a female attribute ?              

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/          

Remaining mute.

Not long ago we had the Americans huffing and puffing at the Russians for, relatively peacefully, taking over Crimea. The indignation of America was based on a so called incursion of sovereign territory.
Now we have in embryo, a war of the worst kind where the militants in Palestine, Hamas, launch rockets into Israel and the Israelis not surprisingly launch their own bombardment on the positions where the Hamas rockets are launched. Unfortunately these sites are sited in the heavily populated city areas within Palestine and the only people to suffer are the civilian population.
Ancient Israel was predominantly populated and governed by Israelis until the Roman Empire expanded whereupon the Jews became a minority. In the middle centuries it became a part of the Muslim Caliphate until the British conquest in 1917 and the formation of a Palestine Mandated  territory.  The creation of the Israeli state in 1948 to house the Jewish diaspora signalled a world wide home coming  as Jews flooded the newly created  State with immigrants.
The conflict between the Palestinian and the Jew has been very bitter with, in the case of Israel a sense of being surrounded by enemy's, which has fostered a siege mentality with little to loose as they struggle to survive. Of course this has produced an inflexible policy towards anyone dissenting their tactics.
There is no doubt that the Israelis gifted as they are, believing they are 'Gods people' are very difficult to live alongside. Any non Jew is a Goy, the term a disparaging one sets them apart from all mankind in their biblical special status. The term Kafir (unbeliever) to a Muslim has a similar connotation and sets Muslims apart in a similar way which is also the source of much of the conflict within the Muslim world and in the dealings of Muslims outside it.
The American Congress is heavily influenced by its Jewish lobby and it is rare for the American Establishment to speak out against Israel so, unlike in the Ukraine, where the Russian Bear was being provocative but not actually militarily offensive there was a lot of rhetoric whilst when the Israelis kill hundreds if not eventually thousands of Palestinians, they the Americans and their cronies in the West remain mute.              

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/          

Deutschland Urber Alice

So the Germans have done it again. They were the best team in the World Cup and overall deserved to win the tournament.
Without a Lionel Messi or a Neymar, without a Arjen Robben or Cristiano Ronaldo the Germans had a team that played the simple game simply !! Their vision was their team, not an individuals glory, not based on the hype  but as a team they played positional football knowing that the goals would come.
It all came down to preparation, a preparation that has been maturing and allowed to mature for years. Its based on their attitude to football at the club level where home grown talent is nurtured and given its head to play in the first team week in and week out. Its reflected in their pricing at the turnstiles where the game is within the reach of every German. Its based in refusing to import the so called super stars and playing their own crop of players first. Its based on the principle that the game is a game of the Volk and not a game concocted in the boardroom of Sky and the billionaires for whom it is a plaything. We sadly treat the game first and foremost as a business, a place to make money and with this in mind the national character of the game is irrelevant.
Import the football icons with Abu Dhabi money, what does an Arab Sheik know about Manchester City other than an investment opportunity, what does he care about the pricing policy or the need to cultivate local lads into the team. There's no kudos in that, reflect how he values his own people.
Its nearly impossible to imagine how we escape the American business model when profit is all that counts, a mentality that excludes long term patience and planning.
The German concept of club ownership being, in part, in the hands of the fans as shareholders which is an anathema over here .
We have sold the 'national silver' for a quick buck, becoming sated on the belief that success is wholly based on money. We have no sense of community, ownership or endeavour, no wonder an old fashioned concept like national prestige is alien to us as we substitute our own identity for one crafted in the minds of the global view.      

Race doesn't matter

The argument that race doesn't matter seems only to be voiced by the white race, or at least by a section of the middle and upper class who seem to do all the talking for the rest of us. I think if the Chinese were faced by an influx of people who threatened their culture or they were being forced into becoming a minority,  (a 2 billion minority seems a bit oxymoronic)  there would be hell to pay.
The whites have taken it upon their shoulders to take the blame for History and the inequities there in and continually beat themselves up about norms which were in fashion then, by applying the norms of today which is stupid.
I bet you the ranch that any of these so called minorities would not countenance what we put ourselves through to find common ground. Old fashioned Nationalism had at least the benefit of making a statement without the guilt that clouds our way of thinking today.
When those Chinese become sufficiently embolden they won't think twice to subvert the existing structures.

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/          

A cry baby

It's strange to see grown men cry so readily yet I know how, from my own experience how quickly one can become emotional. I'm not sure if its an ageing thing but certain things seem to trigger this rush to tears.
In my case I seem to be triggered by implicit conjecture regarding certain situations, simply a belief that there is something elemental behind the scene in front of ones eyes which makes one emotional.
When I hear a Welsh crowd sing their national anthem at an international rugby match I see a relatively poor nation drawing together in a defiant stance, knowing who they are, in a world of fragmentation and conflicting cultures.
Its the same when I watch the 'All Blacks' doing their marvellous Haka. The symbolism of the Maori's ancestral challenge to the 'pakeha', their traditional enemy makes the challenge on the rugby field so much more a subject of history. The small pitched against the large and powerful. Its this symbolism that makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise with the lump in the throat.
This then is the background to the tears, on and off the pitch at the World Cup. People carry their own image of who they are and every so often there is moment, it can be a happy one but more often, a sad occasion when their team is defeated and the tears begin to flow as their national psyche is brought crashing down. In this hectic world, as individuals, we have little to hang on to and it makes being part of a tribe and the sense of belonging, an important human concern which in defeat is momentarily shattered.        

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/          

White Australia Policy

I have been watching a really interesting program going back over Australian history, especially the "White Australia Policy" and its slow and painful evolution to today.
My experience of the Australian Political establishment stretches  back to the days of the rock solid colonial past and its gate keeper Bob Menzies. The names of Authur Calwell and Harold Holt, along with Menzies were, although coming from different parties, concerned about the plight of the Asian diaspora after the Second World War and the subsequent turmoil caused by the Vietnam War which heralded a massive potential influx of immigrants to Australia. Gough Whitlams Labour Government and then, after the unprecedented intervention by the Governor General (the Queens mouthpiece), Whitlam had to step aside to allow Malcolm Fraser's Liberal Party to form the government and continue the movement to take more and more Asian immigrants.
These names were the grist of my Australian experience, which says as much about me as anything else, and it was interesting to watch old footage of these political titans. There were lots of shots of students parading the streets with anti- segregation posters, as always it had became a moral issue vying with  the practicality of potentially millions of refugees who if they came would swamp a relatively small economy and totally change the fabric of the whole country.
The idealism of youth is a powerful tool and was used by the media to question the concept of keeping Australia white.
The picture of Captain Cook stepping ashore, not many decades previously, was the clinching argument when no one, (other than the Aborigine), it was argued, had an ancestral claim to Australia.
As in all these claims to ownership through ancestry, people have a right to believe their claim. Their fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers are the warp and the weft of their sense of being who they are. Around them, as in South Africa, the symbols of that past lay functioning, providing the systems that made a country work. The buildings and the institutions that had been created by their fore parents. The industry and the substance of the environment which defines a country and comes from a particular source.  It is natural that the people who felt this ancestry meant something would oppose the changing format.
Created in an intellectual ferment with classically based assumption, based on  philosophically contrived, ethical and moral aspirations - held to the be, 'natural law', insisted upon by the powerful elite who were always secure in their own moral vicissitude through their wealth and the security which ameliorates any hardship that change of any kind brings. 
The people, and I include the Aborigine, were always the last to be consulted.           

A collective sameness

Watching the World Cup match France v Germany I am of an age when I am struck by the fact that France like England field so many black players, whilst Germany field none. Now to allow that thought to come into my mind I could, in some quarters be accused of racism and would be howled down for not understanding that the colour of the skin has no relevance in modern thought.
Without doubt there is no fundamental difference between what are euphemistically called people of colour and people of no colour (I am not sure where the Chinese and the Japanese fit in), that's us, but of course there are differences other than colour that set one group from another. The Kenyans  and the Ethiopians have developed a physiology that makes them the best distance runners in the world. Black short distance runners are clearly ahead of anyone in the white camp and we accept their superiority without question. Whether this is a racial factor or not we can all acknowledge their supremacy. In the playground children will drift into groups that are recognisable by their skin colour, its not a rejection of the one for the other but a bias that is, at its root the inherited mindset of people who recognise similarities and feel more at home, or at the very least feel there is one less a factor of  difference between them. Girls gather with girls and boys with boys for much the same reason.
The second generation immigrant born into a foreign country and a foreign culture will still carry his parents culture and allegiance, this is well demonstrated when his parents homeland cricket team arrive and the local side is swamped with support for the foreign team be it India, Bangladesh or Pakistan. The links and the self identification, part of which is the skin colour subverts any sense of the new nationality that it is argued, should be their new all consuming sense of identity.
When the German team play, and it is interesting that no identifiable immigrant plays for them, (even though Germany has its fair share of immigrants), they play as Germans who, through the ages were recognised as a race of white people. 

Teams with people who are but  a generation old in a country perhaps don't feel the same commitment to give it all unlike the the players from Chile, again clearly from old Chilean stock,  who worked their collective socks off to win. 
Perhaps we are too dismissive of those deep tribal affiliations that lurk inside all of us, in our obsessive desire to paint the human canvas with a collective sameness which we probe at our peril !! 

Tour de France

Watching the Tour de France as it pursues its route through the UK, (a precursor for when we get swallowed up by Europe) its been marvellous to see, as the aerial shots of the race normally showing France at its best, its now the UKs turn to show the world what a pretty place we live in.
I can't believe the crowds, maybe the cynic in me feels its another indicator of our Benefit Culture when so many people can take time off work but their enthusiasm is unalloyed and  special as they cheer the riders every kilometre of the way, an incredible a sea of happy expectant faces lining the route. The enthusiasm is scary for a nation known for its reticence. People waiting for what is no more than a couple of minutes of the actual race, they have waited hours and, when its all done, one imagines them turning into a pub or two to chat about the day the race came by their front door.
The sunshine has been the match maker and we have been blessed both in Yorkshire  and now in the area in which I live. The sun has highlighted the colour and the contrasts, the yellow of the rapeseed crop, the green of the trees and hedgerows the Norman Castles and the dinky villages, all are on show and look a treat.
Yorkshire was lovely with its narrow roads, winding up and down  the hills, lined by famous dry stone walls over which the open fells makes the Dales as good as anywhere on a sunny day. The roads here in Essex are also lined with people. Its as if the Counties are competing with each other to show the best, most enthusiastic publicity face and, as a spectacle the race begins to take second place to the scenery as we make our way towards London.
The crowds have equalled anything seen in France or Italy the home of professional cycling and we have to reflect what the Europeans make of this and how an event like this can be worth millions in export value as we promote the country and its people.        




          

A conundrum

Its a strange dichotomy to listen to the opposing views of "women". One group who see wearing the Buka as, ' men 'controlling' the female.  Another group of "women" want to cover themselves up so they feel empowered by hiding their femininity from other men in some sort of sanctifying process.
The facts seen from outside the tent, are simple. It is known that men who believe they have the power of a patriarch, who see the women in their life as something they own and have the power to dictate to would find the opportunity to hide their wife behind a dress code designed to exclude the sight of the women from any other male, made to order. Yet there are women who yearn for this sanctity such that the interplay between men and women is wholly for them to dictate. The self identification that a person carries around with them is sharpened if they are not under scrutiny, its as if they are segregated and therefore comfortable in dictating their own options. If you add to this, a religious concept, of purity and self sacrifice it builds a powerful incentive to be special within their own sisterhood.
We all need to feel special, if this can be achieved by the simple expedient of a dress code, recognised and valued amongst the people who matter to us, it becomes a clear dividing line between the unhealthy activity and overt exposure we see all around in a society which in so many ways is engrossed in its self destruction in aspects of moral integrity. 

The barbaric FGM (female genital mutilation) is also a matter of conflict in Africa where the older women in the tribe support the practice, whilst the younger women are fervently opposed. The case of FGM provides nothing more than a clash of tribal custom which is held to be important in maintaining some sort of chastity amongst the girls. 
Not to enjoy sex would pre-suppose that you might limit yourself but of course, for it to work one would have to find a way of making it un-enjoyable for the man. True to form, no male would subject himself to any sort of such constraint and so we have a conundrum.