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[] | 2016-08-26T12:57:51 | null | 2015-08-07T15:55:57 |
15 Great Love Quotes You Should Know
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15 Great Love Quotes You Should Know
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Today I will show you 15 great love quotes
1.Being someone’s first love may be great , but to be their last is beyon perfect .
2.“If you love two people at the same time, choose the second one. Because if you really loved the first one, you wouldn’t have fallen for the second.” – Johnny Depp
3.“If it doesn’t break your heart, it isn’t love.”
4.“Minimum love is friendship. Maximum friendship is love.”
5.“Love what you do and do what you love. Don’t listen to anyone else who tells you not to.” – Ray Bradbury
6.“A girl should have two things: a smile and a guy who inspires it.”
7.”I’m jealous of the angels because they see you every day.”
8.“When you walk by me, when you are talking to other girls and when you laugh I realize that no matter what I do I can’t get over you.” – Maria Amelia
9.“Like a shift through a storm we can risk it all. That’s how strong my love is.” – Alicia Keys (That’s How Strong My Love Is Lyrics)
10.“Love is a lot like google. If you make your search too specific, you’ll never find what you’re looking for.”
11.“Through the shake of an earthquake I will never fall. That’s how strong my love is.” – Alicia Keys (That’s How Strong My Love Is Lyrics)
12.“A million feelings. A thousand thoughts. A hundred memories. All for one person.” – Lil Wayne
13.“Sex is good for a moment. Love is good for a lifetime.”
14.“When you really love someone, stupid conversations make sense.”
15.“Love is when you have 100 reasons to leave someone but you still look for that one reason to fight for them.”
And the last : ” I love you ”
I hope you will find a true love quotes to say person who you love , or simply you say only ” I love you ” , I think your lover will be happy . Good luck to you .
tag : True Love Quotes , love quotes , famous love quotes , Cute Love Quotes , love quotes for her , quotes about love , love quotes for him , funny love quotes , short love quotes , falling in love quotes , sweet love quotes , best love quotes , romantic love quotes , inspirational love quotes , good love quotes , great love quotes , in love quotes , i love u quotes
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| 2015-08-07T00:00:00 |
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Category: Template articles Published on Wednesday, 12 January 2011 17:12 Written by Super User Hits: 346
Google Chrome Frame is a retort of Google company to Internet Explorer browser which is still widely popular, despite the fact that its rendering engine remains fallen behind other internet browsers. By applying this plug-in, users can benefit from Webkit engine capabilities and, at the same time, do not loose the opportunity of using Internet Explorer interface. To make this interesting solution work, an appropriate "meta name" has to be implemented into the head section of the visited page.
In accordance with that, our template contains an appropriate option in its settings that helps the user to switch the meta name in the head section, so that all IE users that have Google Chrome Frame plug-in installed will be able to see the web site along with all facilities offered by Webkit rendering engine.
To get know more about Google Chrome Frame, please visit:
http://code.google.com/intl/en-GB/chrome/chromeframe/ - the official Project’s web side containing the link to the plug-in.
http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/chrome-frame-getting-started - more info about Google Chrome Frame for developers.
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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Category: Template articles Published on Wednesday, 12 January 2011 17:08 Written by Super User Hits: 476
Joomla! offers three different types of messages. Creatings standard information about Joomla! system is presented depending on a message type as follows:
Error This is a sample message
Error This is a sample warning message
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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Category: Template articles Published on Monday, 17 January 2011 14:47 Written by Super User Hits: 246
Internet Explorer 6 is on the way out, but there is still a significant number of users that are stuck to this browser. According to this, we decided that our templates are going to support IE 6 slightly. By dint of the "IE6 Bar" plug-in, available in templates menu options, users can apply the upper bar in their IE browser to keep them informed that Internet Explorer can not display the Web site properly. Additionally, instead of the whole range of template styles, we created one style- Universal Internet Explorer 6 CSS - project's website. Thanks to this, users will have the full access to the web’s content, but on the other hand, a web site’s appearance and functioning might be more rough to some extend.
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Por Grupo Editorial AUGE de Mexico Enrique de la Madrid Cordero, Secretario de Turismo de la Republica Mexicana A escala global, el turismo tiene un
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OUT AROUND TOWN Out Around Town – May 27, 2016 TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
Entertainment The San Diego Spirits Festival Makes a Splash This Weekend! Attention fans of tequila, whiskey, vodka, rum, and all distilled spirits! You are all invited to enjoy the eighth annual San Diego Spirits Festival, being held this Friday and Saturday. Since 2009, the San Diego Spirits Festival has been bringing the best of the craft cocktail scene to San Diego. A celebration of craft cocktails, […]
SPORTS Nunca lo Volveremos a Ver Por León Bravo Este personaje no usa capa para volar por los aires, su cuerpo no resiste el impacto de las balas, y no tiene poderes especiales para vencer a los malvados que quieren acabar con el globo terráqueo. Este súper hombre solo se pone unos pantaloncillos ajustados de modernas telas sintéticas para salir a […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:47:30 | null | null |
Por Katia Lopez Hodoyan Olga Mireles Tres años es mucho tiempo. Ha sido suficiente tiempo para que Olga Mireles compre una casa, aprenda a pescar, c
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La Vida Después de la Guerra
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OUT AROUND TOWN Out Around Town – May 27, 2016 TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
Entertainment The San Diego Spirits Festival Makes a Splash This Weekend! Attention fans of tequila, whiskey, vodka, rum, and all distilled spirits! You are all invited to enjoy the eighth annual San Diego Spirits Festival, being held this Friday and Saturday. Since 2009, the San Diego Spirits Festival has been bringing the best of the craft cocktail scene to San Diego. A celebration of craft cocktails, […]
SPORTS Nunca lo Volveremos a Ver Por León Bravo Este personaje no usa capa para volar por los aires, su cuerpo no resiste el impacto de las balas, y no tiene poderes especiales para vencer a los malvados que quieren acabar con el globo terráqueo. Este súper hombre solo se pone unos pantaloncillos ajustados de modernas telas sintéticas para salir a […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:46:50 | null | null |
Por Estephania Baez A pesar de que este año fueron aprobados en California los baños unisex, que permiten que individuos puedan elegir el sanitario de su pr
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Controversia Nacional por Baños Unisex
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OUT AROUND TOWN Out Around Town – May 27, 2016 TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
Entertainment The San Diego Spirits Festival Makes a Splash This Weekend! Attention fans of tequila, whiskey, vodka, rum, and all distilled spirits! You are all invited to enjoy the eighth annual San Diego Spirits Festival, being held this Friday and Saturday. Since 2009, the San Diego Spirits Festival has been bringing the best of the craft cocktail scene to San Diego. A celebration of craft cocktails, […]
SPORTS Nunca lo Volveremos a Ver Por León Bravo Este personaje no usa capa para volar por los aires, su cuerpo no resiste el impacto de las balas, y no tiene poderes especiales para vencer a los malvados que quieren acabar con el globo terráqueo. Este súper hombre solo se pone unos pantaloncillos ajustados de modernas telas sintéticas para salir a […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:46:29 | null | null |
By Katia Lopez-Hodoyan Three years is a long time. Long enough for Olga Mireles to buy a house, learn how to fish, meet new friends, and ride her new Harley
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Trying to Find Peace after War
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By Katia Lopez-Hodoyan
Three years is a long time. Long enough for Olga Mireles to buy a house, learn how to fish, meet new friends, and ride her new Harley Davidson through San Diego County. But for some things, time is irrelevant. It’s been three years since Mireles came back home after serving in the military overseas. She still has flashbacks of war. A random sound can immediately trigger an anxiety attack. She doesn’t feel comfortable in big crowds and she keeps her weapon close when she’s at home. It’s not easy to transition back into civilian life. Sometimes a lifetime isn’t enough to completely adjust.
The mental scars are there, but there’s also physical hardships. She has a serious cough caused by working near oil refineries in her last deployment. She has sleep apnea, which causes her to wake up gasping for air.
“It’s definitely a process because you’re not dealing with just one factor,” explains Mireles. “When I got back, I secluded myself for about a month to have some time alone and reflect on everything.”
Mireles has served three tours overseas, one in Iraq, another in Kuwait, and her most recent in a location she would rather not publicize. She will say that one of her main responsibilities was to guard dangerous detainees. Men considered dangerous terrorism suspects who wouldn’t think twice about attacking civilians.
“Some detainees would throw feces and urine at American guards,” says Mireles with a matter of fact tone. “Over time, that can build up a lot of anger in someone. Then you hear about a friend who committed suicide. Sooner or later this starts to take its toll.”
The scars of war are all too real. According to the Department of Veteran Affairs, an estimated 22 veterans commit suicide every day in the United States. This tragic statistic has received a wave of attention recently through the 22 Pushup Challenge. The goal is for social media users to post videos of themselves doing 22 push ups to show support for veterans and their staggering suicide rate. With San Diego’s high military presence, the campaign hits home and is extremely relevant.
“Suicide isn’t easy to talk about, but it definitely still happens,” says Mireles. “When you’re overseas, you are part of one big dysfunctional family, but it’s your military family. When it’s time to come back home, you can feel completely lost.”
With such a high demand for support and services, the Department of Veterans Affairs can sometimes fall short. Organizations are stepping in to help veterans deal with the emotional, mental and even physical challenges that come with managing their transition into civilian life. One of those organizations is Courage to Call, a 24/7 hotline which helps veterans by connecting them with peers who have gone through similar experiences.
“Courage To Call averages approximately 150-175 calls a week,” says Jennifer Santis through a written response to La Prensa San Diego. “Often it isn’t just one specific thing. Symptoms may overlap. Military service members, veterans, military families can struggle with PTSD, suicidal thoughts, depression, or even co-occurring conditions.”
Mireles understands the price of war, but she also misses the camaraderie, purpose, and the adrenaline of military life in action. Five years ago, she shared her story with La Prensa San Diego. Her patriotism is still unwavering, but with an additional deployment under her belt, she can’t unsee the darkness she has witnessed. She can’t erase the pain she has experienced. The scars have selfishly earned their place on her body and in her mind. It is an experience she shares with thousands of veterans scattered across the U.S and abroad.
Her deep patriotism is ingrained in her DNA. Her father was in the military and so was her brother. She was planning on yet another deployment this past January, but her superiors denied it. After reviewing her file, they determined she needed more time to adjust to her new prescription drugs. She says the medication has helped to ease her depression and PTSD symptoms, but there’s still a long road ahead.
“I tried it all,” she says. “After Kuwait, I tried veteran programs, meditation, and even water therapy. Nothing quite fit. I had to find something that worked. All veterans need to find that happy place, where they can just relax, take their mind off the stress, and wind down.”
For those who are still struggling to readjust, Courage to Call urges veterans in need to call 211. The team also has Spanish speakers to help Hispanic veterans and their families.
“Courage to Call’s aid ranges from basic needs [like] housing, clothing, food, and utilities, transition support, money management,” says Santis “to legal help, employment, recreation, social enrichment, family support, counseling, and benefits information.”
Since Mireles was denied deployment, and deemed temporarily not physically qualified, she has developed plenty of hobbies. Veteran activities and groups also keep her active. War is never easy. Despite all the highs and lows of military life, Mireles says she doesn’t regret her 19 years of service. She still has one more year pending before she can retire.
Recently she started looking for a regular job. She’s open to different options, but she does have one specific preference.
“I started to send out applications,” she says. “I’m hoping for a job where I don’t have to take a gun to work every day.”
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:46:08 | null | null |
By Mimi Pollack Here in California, adjunct teachers get some respect, but not a lot despite being the backbone of the system. More classes are taught by p
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The Plight of Adjunct Teachers
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By Mimi Pollack
Here in California, adjunct teachers get some respect, but not a lot despite being the backbone of the system.
More classes are taught by part-time teachers than full-time teachers. The ratio has been as high as 70 percent part-time teachers to 30 percent full-time teachers. Part-time teachers are paid by the hour; whereas full-time teachers receive a salary. The various college districts do this because it saves them money.
The community colleges in San Diego also limit the number of hours an adjunct can teach each semester. Due to limited hours, many part-time teachers have to teach at various colleges to make ends meet.
The result is that rather than being able to give of themselves fully to one school and serve its students, adjunct faculty members have to divide their energies and attention in many places. Many do a good job at all the schools, but turnover can be high as this can be very stressful situation.
In San Diego County there are very capable teachers who have worked at three and four different colleges to earn enough money to live on. One of them taught classes at Grossmont College, Southwestern College, and City College, all belonging to three different districts, at the same time. She is also a single mother, so there was a lot of freeway flying involved. Fortunately, she is now down to two schools as she picked up more classes at two campuses.
Another teacher worked at four different places. This is how she explained the situation to me:
“About four years ago, I had managed to get down to two schools, The University of San Diego and Grossmont College. But then, when the Affordable Care Act passed and USD decided that they had to cap adjunct faculty’s hours,” the part-time professor said.
“This was announced to the faculty in late August, practically a week or so before classes were about to begin. Naturally, there was no way anyone could get extra classes anywhere else at that point. I was on a very limited hourly schedule for a semester, trying to make ends meet,” continued the adjunct USD lecturer.
“Of course, the next semester, I had to get more hours, and I did at San Diego State University’s American Language Institute. Thus, I was back to square one, three schools, twice a week, and three schools a day. From 9 to 10:30 a.m. I was at USD; then, I would have an hour break to drive to Grossmont to teach a class from 11:30 to 3 pm.”
“After that, I would have a class at SDSU from 4 to 6 p.m. So, even though I would have an hour break in between classes, it was spent on driving, snacking in my car, and conferencing with students after class. It was insane!”
The good news is this teacher has also gone back to teaching at two schools, having been assigned more hours at each one.
Many times, department chairs would be happy to give dedicated part-time teachers more hours. However, the colleges are also limited by the district’s policy which says that a part time teacher cannot work over 67 percent or about 12 hours a week. It is the limit per the Educational Code. If they teach more than that, they have rights to be placed in a tenure-track position.
However, it is okay for full time teachers to work overload and earn extra money. They can also “bump” a part time teacher if they need more hours, but that is not usual.
Of course, this issue is much more complex than what I can write here. There are many dedicated folks out there who are working to better the working conditions of part time teachers, including David Milroy, a French instructor at Grossmont College. He has been bemoaning the plight of part-time teachers for years, actively working on many committees and lobbying in Sacramento.
There is also Jim Mahler, president of the local AFT which is the union for the majority of community colleges in San Diego. Mahler advocates for both full-time and part time teachers, but he has been instrumental in getting positive changes passed that have improved the lives of many part-time teachers. For example, paid health insurance is available for teachers who have a 60 percent load.
Another benefit is that community college teachers get is the California State Teacher Retirement System, or CALSTRS, instead of social security.
Many think CALSTRS is a better system. However, as another teacher pointed out, it is fine for people who have basically only worked as teachers. However, for those who have had other jobs, they will receive less social security because of CALSTRS. It is called the Windfall Elimination Act for Social Security.
.As the teacher put it, “Basically, for those of us who have worked other jobs and earned our credits for Social Security benefits, we will have almost half of our benefits taken away from us because of our pensions. It doesn’t matter if your pension benefit is very meager like mine, you are still penalized.”
Finally, this writer has been one of the lucky part-time teachers. I have been at the same two schools since 1983 and 1989 and I have been fortunate in having worked under fine department chairs and with supportive fellow full-time and part-time teachers. I have health insurance and a fairly good CALSTRS pension. However, not everyone has been as lucky as I have.
Hopefully, this brief article can open up the eyes of those outside the community college world that have no idea of what is going on. Although most part-time teachers strive to do a good job at every school they are at, it makes sense that they could do an even better job if their focus was not divided by more than one school.
Welcome changes would be more full-time positions opening up and part-time teachers being allowed to teach a higher load at one college rather than having to scramble at several places. Most people who become teachers don’t do it for the money, but because they truly want to make a difference in others’ lives; however, they still need to make a living. Equal pay for equal work would be a good place to start.
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T16:46:12 | null | null |
By Estephania Baez California passed a gender-neutral restroom bill this year allowing individuals to choose the bathroom they feel most comfortable using.
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Genderless Restroom Debate
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By Estephania Baez
California passed a gender-neutral restroom bill this year allowing individuals to choose the bathroom they feel most comfortable using. However, the implementation of the bill has led to a heated debate that has now reached the floor of the U.S. Senate.
Back in April, some schools in the state implemented these bathrooms. Their common denominator was to keep these bathrooms away from the rest so that the students would not be harassed or bullied by their classmates. This, however, did not happen, as the first act of violence erupted when a student who had transitioned from male to female decided to use the girls’ bathroom instead of the one she had been assigned. The student was first criticized by other classmates and then met with derogatory language by male students as she left the restroom. The female student stated that she wanted to use the restroom her girlfriends use so that she wouldn’t feel different, but it turned out to be worse.
Far from feeling relieved by the approval of these restrooms, mothers of transgender children fear that they will become targets of bullying.
“I am worried. There are days when she tells me that she would rather not use the bathroom so she just holds it in, which is bad for her health. I just don’t know what to do,” said Mary, who has a daughter at an Elementary school in Santee, adding that she supports her daughter 100 percent, but is now worried about her health.
The measure approved in May by the California State Assembly by a 52 to 18 vote made it mandatory in California, home to 39 million residents, for all bars, restaurants and other businesses to provide gender-neutral bathrooms. Other states, such as North Carolina, have opted for making transgender individuals use the restroom in accordance to the gender stated in their birth certificate.
Throughout the country, mothers and fathers of children facing similar situations are coming together and sharing their moving stories in disbelief that having these bathrooms would make not only students and teachers, but also other parents, so uncomfortable.
“It’s ignorance and a lack of education. I don’t know why they want to ostracize our kids, but what they lack most is a heart. They’re parents, how can they not understand that we do and give everything to help our children,” shared Sorayda, a mother of a transgender child who opted for homeschooling until the controversy dies down.
According to a recent study, the transgender community makes up only 1 percent of the population. In a survey done as part of this study, 70 percent of transgender minors indicated having been victims of harassment at some point in their lives.
The transgender bathroom debate is happening amidst the Presidential race, with Democrats in support of the initiative and Republicans coming out against it. In her most recent statement on the topic, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the following to the transgender community: “We see you, we stand with you, and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward.”
The argument posited by Republicans in opposing the initiative is that it would leave women using the restroom unprotected against men with ill intentions, while Democrats argue in defense of the human rights of the transgender community. The issue, however, still has not reached a definitive decision nationwide.
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[] | 2016-08-26T12:57:55 | null | null |
Por Ana Gómez Salcido Josie Flores-Clark creció recolectando cosechas junto a su familia y al líder de los trabajadores, César Chávez. Crecer alrededor del t
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Josie Flores-Clark: La Recompensa del Trabajo
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
By Mario A. Cortez Are you ready to taste the many vibrant flavors of Latin America? The 2016 Latin Food Fest kicks off this weekend at the Embarcadero Park a weekend of amazing food, great drinks, music and celebrity chef demos. On Friday, take part in the Chef’s Night Out kick-off party happening at beautiful Coasterra […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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Most people don’t often think of national parks, but this week we call attention to one of the greatest groups of natural treasures in the world: America’s Nat
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Happy 100th Birthday to the National Park Service
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Most people don’t often think of national parks, but this week we call attention to one of the greatest groups of natural treasures in the world: America’s National Parks.
Although we may take for granted that the Grand Canyon is open to the public, Yellowstone’s Old Faithful is protected, and mountains climbers can scale Yosemite’s El Capitan, our natural landscape and historic parks weren’t always managed by a federal agency whose only mission is to preserve these treasures for future generations to enjoy.
In fact, open natural areas weren’t even considered parks, as we know them, anywhere in the world until 1864. It was President Abraham Lincoln that took the first step when he granted the area of Yosemite Valley to the State of California with the conditions that it would be “held for public use, resort, and recreation…inalienable for all time”.
That later led to President Ulysses S. Grant’s designation of Yellowstone as the world’s first National Park in 1871.
Then other parks soon followed. In 1875, Michigan’s Mackinac Island became a national park, but it was later transferred back to the State of Michigan as a state park; Sequoia, General Grant (now Kings Canyon National Park) and Yosemite became national parks in 1890; Mount Rainier in 1899, Crater Lake in 1902, Wind Cave in 1903, Mesa Verde in 1906, Glacier Park in 1910, Rocky Mountain in Colorado in 1915, and Hawaii Volcanoes in 1916.
By 1916, the country needed an agency dedicated to managing and preserving the growing list of national parks. On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson created the National Park Service to handle the existing national parks and “such other national parks and reservations of like character as may be hereafter created by Congress” and to “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
Since then, the National Park Service has expanded to be the caretaker of the most iconic and treasured national sites in the country, including 412 national parks, monuments, battlefields, military parks, historical parks, historic sites, recreation areas, rivers and trails, and, arguably the most iconic American site, the White House.
In 2015, over 307 million people visited National Park Service sites. The NPS now has over 20,000 employees and also uses over 200,000 volunteers to help fulfil its responsibility to manage these national resources.
And we here in San Diego are fortunate to have a very popular national park in the Cabrillo National Monument in Point Loma. This weekend, in celebration of the Centennial, all national parks sites, including Cabrillo park will be free to the public, suspending the usual park entry fees.
For those who have not visited this local landmark, the Cabrillo Monument honors the history of 16th century explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo who was the first European to set foot on the West Coast of what is now the United States.
Although Cabrillo sailed for Spain, his exact nationality is still debated by historians. Some think he was Portuguese, some maintain he was Spanish, but either way, he was certainly the first European to land on our coast when his ship stopped in what is now San Diego Bay in September 1542. No European explorer had ever sailed this far North. Cabrillo eventually made his way up the coast past San Francisco, then turned back during a storm.
Cabrillo “discovered” and named several popular bays and islands in California, including Monterrey, San Pedro, Catalina Island, and most famously, San Diego. In November 1542, Cabrillo injured his leg while on Catalina Island and died from an infection in January 1543.
Today, the Cabrillo National Monument commands a stunning location at the tip of Point Loma, overlooking Coronado and all of San Diego Bay. The parks also hosts the original Point Loma Lighthouse built in 1855. When it was operating, the Point Loma lighthouse sat at the highest elevation of any lighthouse in the US. It was retired in 1891 and replaced in service by a lower lighthouse at the foot of Point Loma’s western tip.
This weekend, all national parks are open for free for people across the country to enjoy the natural wonders and historic sites of our National Parks.
For San Diegans, it offers an opportunity to spend a weekend at our local national park for free, enjoying the views and admiring the wonderful city we call home.
Happy 100th Birthday to the National Park Service.
Here’s to many more years to come.
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[] | 2016-08-26T12:56:05 | null | null |
Por Estephania Baez Luego de que el pasado mes de Julio entrará en vigor la ley SB277 en el estado de California, misma que obligue a todos los estudiantes e
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Se Manifiestan ante Ley de Vacunación
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
By Mario A. Cortez Are you ready to taste the many vibrant flavors of Latin America? The 2016 Latin Food Fest kicks off this weekend at the Embarcadero Park a weekend of amazing food, great drinks, music and celebrity chef demos. On Friday, take part in the Chef’s Night Out kick-off party happening at beautiful Coasterra […]
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Por Ana Gómez Salcido Las víctimas de la masacre en un McDonald’s en San Ysidro en 1984 compartirán sus historias a través del documental “77 Minutes”
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Sobrevivientes a Masacre Comparten sus Historias
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OUT AROUND TOWN Out Around Town – May 27, 2016 TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
Entertainment The San Diego Spirits Festival Makes a Splash This Weekend! Attention fans of tequila, whiskey, vodka, rum, and all distilled spirits! You are all invited to enjoy the eighth annual San Diego Spirits Festival, being held this Friday and Saturday. Since 2009, the San Diego Spirits Festival has been bringing the best of the craft cocktail scene to San Diego. A celebration of craft cocktails, […]
SPORTS Nunca lo Volveremos a Ver Por León Bravo Este personaje no usa capa para volar por los aires, su cuerpo no resiste el impacto de las balas, y no tiene poderes especiales para vencer a los malvados que quieren acabar con el globo terráqueo. Este súper hombre solo se pone unos pantaloncillos ajustados de modernas telas sintéticas para salir a […]
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Por Alexandra Mendoza La construcción de un nuevo estadio y centro de convenciones propuesto por los Chargers de San Diego derivará en una derrama e
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Chargers Insiste que Estadio Beneficiará a la Ciudad
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
National City is the new host of the Exitos Del Cine Latino Film Festival that will premiere 15 Latino films accompanied by special celebrity appearances, music performances, and exhibits by local artists, from this Friday, August 26 to Thursday, September 1. The creators of the San Diego Latino Film Festival are the organizers of this […]
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Por Katia Lopez-Hodoyan Nunca ha sido secreto que la Ensalada Caesar nació en Tijuana, pero la historia tampoco ha sido difundida a lo largo y ancho. S
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La Ensalada Caesar: ¡De Tijuana para el Mundo!
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
By Mario A. Cortez Are you ready to taste the many vibrant flavors of Latin America? The 2016 Latin Food Fest kicks off this weekend at the Embarcadero Park a weekend of amazing food, great drinks, music and celebrity chef demos. On Friday, take part in the Chef’s Night Out kick-off party happening at beautiful Coasterra […]
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[] | 2016-08-26T12:48:45 | null | null |
By Katia Lopez-Hodoyan It was never a secret, but rather a story that did not really get around all that much. It was brushed off as hearsay, rumors, and even
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Caesar Salad: From Tijuana to the World!
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By Katia Lopez-Hodoyan
It was never a secret, but rather a story that did not really get around all that much. It was brushed off as hearsay, rumors, and even straight out lies. But the story is indeed true and recently it has been gaining validity in restaurants all over the globe: The world famous Caesar Salad was “born” in the city of Tijuana, more specifically, in the kitchen of Caesar’s Restaurant on Revolucion Avenue.
It’s a recipe that dates back to 1924 and almost a century later, its taste has surpassed the test of time. The history of the restaurant may linger in its antique cash register, checkered floors and long wooden bar, but without a doubt the soul is in the menu.
“Our city is very young, so it doesn’t have a lot of history, says Javier Plascencia, head chef of the family run restaurant business. “This is something that gives locals a lot of pride. It’s something positive we’re putting out on an international level.”
There are different versions about how the famous salad came about, but the most popular one is this one: On a busy Fourth of July weekend, Italian immigrant and restaurant owner Caesar Cardini, was running low on ingredients. When a group of guests asked for a dish, he improvised with the leftovers he had laying around, which included romaine lettuce, eggs, olive oil, garlic, croutons, parmesan cheese and Worcestershire sauce. The salad was prepared table side, and just like that, a tradition was born. Other accounts argue it was one of Cardini’s cooks, Livio Santini, who started the salad.
“The problem is, everyone who was involved in the process back then, is now dead,” says Julian Plascencia, the restaurant’s current administrator. “There’s no real way of proving who invented the salad. What we can prove is that it all started in this Tijuana restaurant.”
To understand the origins of the salad, one must first understand the time period. Back in the 1920′s alcohol was banned across the United States, which involuntarily turned Tijuana into a hot spot for American visitors. They craved a good time with good alcohol, and Tijuana delivered with casinos, gambling, alcohol, and just the right ingredients to stir up a good party.
Cardini lived in San Diego, but worked across the border to bypass prohibition laws. Business was booming and the popularity of the salad boomed along with it. It became a popular destination for Californians and for big name Hollywood stars like Jean Harlow and Clark Gable. Even famous cookbook author Julia Child wrote about the excitement of going to Tijuana to try the famous Caesar Salad.
Eventually, the good times came to an end. The alcohol ban was lifted stateside. Ownership of the restaurant was passed on from one patron to the next. The restaurant closed and re-opened, but for the most part, the building was practically abandoned. With no life or activity, the Caesar’s building became a dusty symbol of what was once a shiny golden era for Tijuana.
Decades later, Tijuana was hit hard by drug related violence, eliminating any substantial tourism revenue from the city’s downtown. The big Caesar building stood tall, but it was all about the past, having little to offer for the future.
The Plascencia family took notice back in 2010. If there’s something the family knows how to do well, it’s run restaurants. But this wasn’t just another business venture. There was a lot of nostalgia involved in the decision to take on the old restaurant, renew it and bring out its original luster.
“We were having dinner as a family, when we started talking about renovating the restaurant,” remembers Julian Plascencia. “Being in the food businesses is something that’s just part of us.”
The family saw it as a way to honor the city where they opened Giuseppi’s, their first restaurant. Today, the family runs over a dozen restaurants in Tijuana and San Diego.
“My grandfather used to work at Caesar’s” says Javier Plascencia. “My uncle was a bartender and my dad made a career from the restaurant business. We wanted to renew the building and give life to Tijuana’s downtown area. Now we have people from all over the world who visit the restaurant to try the famous Caesar Salad. It’s become part of a gastronomical attraction. It’s showing the positive side of Tijuana.”
On average the restaurant serves 2,000 Caesar Salads a week. With a staff of about 40 people, the team is always on the go. Waiters don’t just take orders. They must also know the history of the salad and how to prepare it, in real time, right in front of the guests. It’s meant to be more than just a salad, but an experience into Tijuana’s golden era. With all the memorabilia surrounding the tables, it’s easy to feel like one is traveling back in time.
“When we knocked down doors and walls, we found lots of items,” says Javier Plascencia. “Old perfumes from the 1930′s and 1940′s and also alcohol bottles. There were also some photographs, but once the restaurant was opened, locals started bringing their own historic pictures for us to hang on the walls.”
The restaurant helped trigger renovation along Tijuana’s Avenida Revolucion, the heart of the city which seemed to be on life support for some time, but is now beating strong.
“Tijuana has never given up on us,” says Javier Plascencia. “So we couldn’t give up on the city. We even give out the recipe to guests, so they can make the salad as authentically as possible in their homes. For us, it’s an honor.”
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Por León Bravo Los Padres de San Diego se tambalean con la asistencia de aficionados en una temporada desde que juegan en Petco Park. Cuando abrió las pu
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Se Caen las Entradas en Petco Park
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
By Mario A. Cortez Have you been down to Chula Vista’s waterfront yet? If not HarborFest is the perfect excuse to check out some of the South Bay’s coastline. The annual festival takes place at the J Street Marina Park this Saturday August 20 from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. This event full of […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T12:56:33 | null | null |
Por Estephania Baez El estado de California atraviesa uno de sus peores momentos luego de que esta semana se registraran alrededor de 11 incendios forestales
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
By Mario A. Cortez Are you ready to taste the many vibrant flavors of Latin America? The 2016 Latin Food Fest kicks off this weekend at the Embarcadero Park a weekend of amazing food, great drinks, music and celebrity chef demos. On Friday, take part in the Chef’s Night Out kick-off party happening at beautiful Coasterra […]
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:46:16 | null | null |
Por León Bravo El equipo de SanDiego es el mejor de la Liga Nacional en Bases Robadas La velocidad que los Padres de San Diego han demostrado en las b
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Vuelan Padres Sobre los Senderos
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:47:20 | null | null |
By Estephania Baez Respect for the rights of California farm workers has moved a step closer to reality. This past Monday, the California Senate passed the
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California Bill Against Exploitation of Farm Workers Moves Forward
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By Estephania Baez
Respect for the rights of California farm workers has moved a step closer to reality. This past Monday, the California Senate passed the Bill sponsored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez – aimed at putting an end to the labor exploitation of California farm workers – by a 21-14 vote.
AB 1066 would establish a 40-hour work week, with a maximum of 8 hours per day. Should the farm worker be compelled to or asked if they want to work beyond said number of hours, by law they would be entitled to overtime pay at one-and-a-half the regular rate.
While the Bill is not approved yet, the fact that it moved through the Senate is a significant achievement, particularly for the Hispanic community since most farm workers are immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries. The Bill will move to the State Assembly next week and, if approved, would then go to the desk of California Governor Jerry Brown.
Those who voted against the Bill or oppose it have said in the Senate that these changes could impact the way the agricultural industry operates, on top of the drought that has gripped the state in the past five years, adding that it would generate additional costs both in products and labor.
Senate President pro tem Kevin de Leon, on the other hand, feels that the measure is strictly a matter of human rights developed to protect the health and well-being of thousands of families who spend hours picking under the hot sun.
“You, the men and women who plant, sow, and work hard to bring the best for this country spend hours under the sun without being paid for them; You will now earn what you deserve. That is a promise,” stated de Leon at the end of the session during which the bill was passed.
Thousands of members of the Latino community have been involved in the cause. In fact, more than a hundred of them took part in a collective hunger strike earlier this year to draw attention to the bill.
In an effort to raise awareness, a study was cited showing that, in the past decade, 28 field workers have died due to heatstroke, particularly during the hotter months. Furthermore, many do not report abuses and mistreatments by their employers out of fear of losing their jobs.
According to studies by immigrant rights advocacy groups, most of the fields are overseen by foremen who get upset when workers complain, and respond by threatening to fire them unless they keep working as long as they are told. Noontime temperatures can reach 105 degrees during the summer, making overexposure to the sun potentially fatal.
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[] | 2016-08-26T12:52:42 | null | null |
Por Alexandra Mendoza Esta semana el departamento de Parques y Recreación del municipio en conjunto con el Distrito Escolar Unificado de San Diego e
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Un millón de Lonches Gratuitos para Niños Durante el Receso Escolar
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
By Mario A. Cortez Have you been down to Chula Vista’s waterfront yet? If not HarborFest is the perfect excuse to check out some of the South Bay’s coastline. The annual festival takes place at the J Street Marina Park this Saturday August 20 from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. This event full of […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T12:58:44 | null | null |
Por Ana Gomez Salcido Autoridades del Sistema Estatal Educativo de Baja California y del Distrito Escolar de Primarias de Chula Vista (CVESD, por sus siglas
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Autoridades de Baja California y del CVESD se Reunen
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
By Mario A. Cortez Are you ready to taste the many vibrant flavors of Latin America? The 2016 Latin Food Fest kicks off this weekend at the Embarcadero Park a weekend of amazing food, great drinks, music and celebrity chef demos. On Friday, take part in the Chef’s Night Out kick-off party happening at beautiful Coasterra […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:46:06 | null | null |
Por Marinee Zavala Adolfo Gonzales Nacido en Tijuana y criado en San Diego desde los cinco años, Adolfo Gonzáles hoy cuenta con uno de los cu
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Adolfo Gonzáles: Creando Oportunidades Para Nuestros Niños
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OUT AROUND TOWN Out Around Town – May 27, 2016 TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
Entertainment The San Diego Spirits Festival Makes a Splash This Weekend! Attention fans of tequila, whiskey, vodka, rum, and all distilled spirits! You are all invited to enjoy the eighth annual San Diego Spirits Festival, being held this Friday and Saturday. Since 2009, the San Diego Spirits Festival has been bringing the best of the craft cocktail scene to San Diego. A celebration of craft cocktails, […]
SPORTS Nunca lo Volveremos a Ver Por León Bravo Este personaje no usa capa para volar por los aires, su cuerpo no resiste el impacto de las balas, y no tiene poderes especiales para vencer a los malvados que quieren acabar con el globo terráqueo. Este súper hombre solo se pone unos pantaloncillos ajustados de modernas telas sintéticas para salir a […]
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:47:36 | null | null |
Por Ana Gómez Salcido "Cien años de Perdón" National City es la nueva ciudad anfitriona del Festival de Éxitos Del Cine Latino, que estrenará 15 pelíc
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Festival de Cine Latino llega a National City
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:46:36 | null | null |
"Cien años de Perdón" National City is the new host of the Exitos Del Cine Latino Film Festival that will premiere 15 Latino films accompanied by special c
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Latino Film Festival Arrives to National City
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National City is the new host of the Exitos Del Cine Latino Film Festival that will premiere 15 Latino films accompanied by special celebrity appearances, music performances, and exhibits by local artists, from this Friday, August 26 to Thursday, September 1.
The creators of the San Diego Latino Film Festival are the organizers of this event that will take place at the AMC theaters in Plaza Bonita.
“We take great pride of bringing an spectacular event to National City to open doors and support arts and culture in our community,” said CEO and Executive Director of National City Chamber of Commerce, Jacqueline Reynoso. “This is also very good to our economy because we will bring people from all over the county and even from Baja California.”
The festival’s selection features the Spanish-Argentine thriller “Cien años de perdon”, starring Rodrigo de la Serna, Raul Arevalo, and Luis Tosar; the award-winning dramedy “Truman”, featuring Ricardo Darin and Javier Camara; Diego Luna’s emotional “Mr. Pig”, starring Danny Glover and Maya Rudolph; and, “El Tamaño Si Importa”, starring Vhadir Derbez, Ximena Ayala, and Eugenio Derbez.
“Normally the film festival takes place at other places in San Diego, so this will be the first annual event here in National City,” Reynoso said. “National City is going through a full transformation regarding arts and culture.”
The arrival of the Exitos Del Cine Latino Film Festival is an opportunity so youngsters and National City residents are pride of the Latino heritage.
“When we go to the movies here in San Diego or to any place in the world, the majority of the actors are from Hollywood and there is not a Latino representation, not from the actors or the directors.” Reynoso said. “Here, we will see everything from the actors, directors and production made by Latinos, and its something that shows our community that we do have a presence and a future in this business.”
To kick off the festival, an Opening Night Fiesta will take place on Friday, Aug. 26 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on the second level of Westfield Plaza Bonita, outside of AMC Plaza Bonita cinemas. The event will include live music, special guests, drinks, food and more. Party tickets are available for $25.
All Exitos Del Cine Latino Film Festival movies and activities will take place at AMC Plaza Bonita, 3050 Plaza Bonita Road, National City, California, 91950.
Individual movie tickets range from $8.50 to $11.50. Special film festival passes include: $45 5-Movie Ticket Pack, $135 All-Access Pass, and $80 Film Pass.
All proceeds from Exitos Del Cine Latino Film Festival benefit Media Arts Center San Diego’s year-round education and outreach programs and services, such as the award-winning Teen Producers Project.
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http://laprensa-sandiego.org/stories/latino-film-festival-arrives-to-national-city/
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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Por Leon Bravo Tyrrell Williams tiene todo para ser el próximo gran receptor abierto de los Chargers de San Diego que el viernes reciben a los Cardinals de
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Novato de Chargers Recibe Atención
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
By Mario A. Cortez Have you been down to Chula Vista’s waterfront yet? If not HarborFest is the perfect excuse to check out some of the South Bay’s coastline. The annual festival takes place at the J Street Marina Park this Saturday August 20 from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. This event full of […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T12:50:38 | null | null |
Attention fans of tequila, whiskey, vodka, rum, and all distilled spirits! You are all invited to enjoy the eighth annual San Diego Spirits Festival, being held
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The San Diego Spirits Festival Makes a Splash This Weekend!
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Attention fans of tequila, whiskey, vodka, rum, and all distilled spirits! You are all invited to enjoy the eighth annual San Diego Spirits Festival, being held this Friday and Saturday.
Since 2009, the San Diego Spirits Festival has been bringing the best of the craft cocktail scene to San Diego. A celebration of craft cocktails, local cuisine and the best in spirits, the San Diego Spirits Festival has been voted the Must-Try Festival of the Year by Premier Traveler and has been named by Fodors.com as One of the Best Cocktail Festivals in America.
This two-day event will surely be San Diego’s biggest happy hour, with multiple food offerings, drinks and thousands of attendees enjoying the party on San Diego Bay’s Port Pavilion.
Enjoy some of the finest spirits out there such as Bourbon from Ford Reserve Bourbons, Old Forester Bourbons; Rums from Passers Rum, Blue Chair Bay Rum, Tanduay Rum, Squeal Rum, Gubba Rum; Sweet Potato Spirits with their entire line of vodka and gins. Coming in from London have Gins that have just been released in California will be available: Geranium Gin, Old English Gin & Sacred Gin and many more.
Comedian Cheech Marin will also be presenting Tres Papalote Mezcal. Tres Papalote is made from the fine cupreata agave of the Mexican state of Guerrero and features an approachable citrus profile with just a subtle smokiness.
There will also be amazing food from local eateries such as The Fish Market, Feast on this Catering, Ruth Chris Steakhouse, Barely Made it BBQ Smoker, Authentic Flavors Catering, Big Front Door, The Melting Pot, Masters Kitchen & Cocktail, Lady & the Chef’ J Street Tacos & Ceviche and many more.
WHEN
August 27– 28, 2016
Saturday August 27 from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Sunday, Sunday 28 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
WHERE
Port Pavilion on Broadway Pier, 1000 N. Harbor Drive San Diego 92101
TICKETS
Daily prices for Saturday and Sunday are $85 plus service charge.
Group tickets of 5 or more will receive an additional 10 percent off (use promo code COCKTAILS).
Admission includes all spirits and food samples, entertainment, chances to win prizes, and more!
Purchase tickets directly from the website: sandiegospiritsfestival.com
Festival attendees can save $20 using promo code COCKTAILS.
For more information on the San Diego Spirits Festival please visit, SanDiegoSpiritsFestival.com.
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T12:52:11 | null | null |
Por Marinee Zavala El virus del Zika, y la detección del mismo en 23 ciudadanos en San Diego durante la última temporada, ha generado la preocupación de lo
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Los Peligros del Zika en San Diego
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
By Mario A. Cortez Have you been down to Chula Vista’s waterfront yet? If not HarborFest is the perfect excuse to check out some of the South Bay’s coastline. The annual festival takes place at the J Street Marina Park this Saturday August 20 from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. This event full of […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T13:00:47 | null | null |
By Ana Gomez Salcido Authorities of the Secretary of Education of Baja California and from the Chula Vista Elementary School District (CVESD) gathered at Mae
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CVESD Meets Baja Education Reps
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By Ana Gomez Salcido
Authorities of the Secretary of Education of Baja California and from the Chula Vista Elementary School District (CVESD) gathered at Mae L. Feaster Charter School to try to find ways to mutually improve their student strategies for success.
The reunion was this Thursday, August 18, and consisted of a presentation by CVESD officials and a tour of different classrooms so the Mexican education authorities could learn about the education system in California, specifically in Chula Vista.
The California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE) organized the school visit.
CABE board member Norma Sandoval explained that CABE is a non-profit that focuses on increasing the learning skills of bilingual children.
“Hopefully this visit will be one of many. We want to create a seamless interaction between two nations, specifically between San Diego and Tijuana, so we can learn from one another,” said Francisco Escobedo, CVESD superintendent. “One of the things we can learn from each other are instructional practices that can enhance language acquisition, sharing assessments so we can be more uniform and we are following the student academic improvements.”
One of the programs presented to the Mexican visitors was the Dual Language Immersion program, and they visited different classrooms where this practice is implemented to help students improve their English skills.
“We are trying to focus on the students that migrate There are students that come to San Diego from Mexico and that have a problem getting used to the language,” said Baja California Education Deputy Secretary Leopoldo Guerrero Diaz. “We also have students in Tijuana that were deported from the United States and some of them don’t speak Spanish, so there is also an adaptation process there also.”
There are approximately 3,500 foreign students that transition into Baja California public schools each year, said the coordinator of the binational program of migrant education of the State Education System in Baja California, Yara Amparo Lopez Lopez.
There is a program for foreign students that come to Mexico and that don’t speak Spanish or that are not ready for instructional Spanish, said the Tijuana delegate, Adrian Flores Ledesma. “The program consists of a support group that gives them emotional support for the country change and also so they can get to know other students that face the same situation.
The binational meeting included the presence of Consul General of the Mexican Consulate in San Diego, Marcela Celorio, and CVESD board members.
“This collaboration is very important because there are a lot of times that we share students. They start in Tijuana and then come to San Diego. It’s to better look after these students,” said CVESD board member, Eduardo Reyes. “The collaboration is based on which strategies are giving better results in Tijuana and San Diego and explore them.”
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Por León Bravo Miguel Herrera, DT Club Tijuana Los Xolos tienen todo el derecho de estar ladrando alto y fuerte. Con una racha de cuatro partidos s
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Entran Pumas a la Perrera
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
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Por León Bravo Los Xolos llevarán a Aguascalientes su racha de tres triunfos consecutivos en el partido que sostendrán el sábado ante el Necaxa. El cuad
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Xolos Rabiosos Van Contra Necaxa
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
By Mario A. Cortez Have you been down to Chula Vista’s waterfront yet? If not HarborFest is the perfect excuse to check out some of the South Bay’s coastline. The annual festival takes place at the J Street Marina Park this Saturday August 20 from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. This event full of […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:46:29 | null | null |
Por León Bravo Mentiras, traición, y éxito fueron los ingredientes de la novela que por dos semanas mantuvo al mundo en vilo. Los Juegos Olímpicos de Río de J
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Adiós para Siempre, Rio 2016
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:46:33 | null | null |
By Ana Gomez Salcido Photo by Sam Hodgson San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis took the stand this Wednesday at the trial of a Mexican
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DA Dumanis Takes Stand in Court
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By Ana Gomez Salcido
San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis took the stand this Wednesday at the trial of a Mexican businessman charged with funneling illegal contributions into several local campaigns, including Dumanis’ 2012 run for San Diego Mayor.
“I wanted to get back in court, but this wasn’t what I had in mind,” Dumanis jokingly said on Wednesday morning at the trial held at the San Diego Federal Court. Dumanis was subpoenaed to testify by Azano’s defense lawyers.
The DA was asked about her relationship with Jose Susumo Azano Matsura, and Ernesto “Ernie” Encinas, a former San Diego Police detective also charged in the federal case. Federal prosecutors have charged Azano, Encinas, and San Diego political consultant Marco Polo Cortes with orchestrating a scheme to funnel money from Azano into local campaigns. Under federal law, only U.S. citizens can contribute to elections. Azano is a Mexican national.
Dumanis said under oath that she only met Azano twice on a “meet and greet” situation, as is for a candidate during a campaign. Dumanis also claimed that she met Encinas when she was a Deputy DA and that they had cases in which they worked together.
The first “meet and greet” Dumanis had with Azano was in December 2011 at one of his homes in Coronado.
“Ernie [Encinas] introduced us at a lunch at Azano’s home. I hadn’t spoken to him before that,” Dumanis said while on the witness stand. “I don’t remember what we talked about. What I do remember were his cars because they were colorful and sporty and I like cars,” Dumanis added.
Dumanis said the meeting at Azano’s house was nothing special and that she met him again at another “meet and greet” with Sheriff Bill Gore and Encinas in Gore’s office. The DA acknowledged that she initiated the “meet and greet” at Sheriff Gore’s office on March 2, 2012 according to another defense witness’ testimony.
“As an elected official, we do that a lot; it was a meet and greet,” Dumanis said.
At the time of the second meeting, Dumanis said she knew that Azano had helped with her campaign.
“I believed [Azano] was helping with the campaign. My [campaign fundraiser] Kelli [Maruccia] told me that,” Dumanis testified. “I never had contact with him again,” the District Attorney said.
Dumanis was asked if she knew Azano’s immigration status at the time he was helping with her campaign.
“I believed him to be a U.S. citizen,” Dumanis said.
The DA also mentioned that she never spoke directly to Azano about any contributions to her campaign.
During the trial, Dumanis was also questioned about a letter of recommendation she sent to the University of San Diego for Azano’s son, Edward Susumo Azano Hester, also a defendant in the corruption case.
The letter of recommendation is part of the government’s evidence that accuses Azano of funneling $600,000 in cash and services to Dumanis and other San Diego mayoral candidates in 2012, including Bob Filner, the eventual winner of the mayoral election. Filner later resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment.
Dumanis said that Kelli Maruccia, had told her about the request for a letter of recommendation for Azano’s son, and that it was requested by Encinas. Dumanis said that she never talked to Encinas or Azano about the letter, and that all the communication involving that letter was through Kelli Maruccia.
Dumanis also mentioned that she is regularly asked to write similar letters for students trying to get into universities, law schools, or applying for grants, and that financial status doesn’t factor into her decision to support the student.
After approximately 90 minutes on the stand, Dumanis was released from the trial and is not subject to recall.
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T12:51:41 | null | null |
Por León Bravo Este personaje no usa capa para volar por los aires, su cuerpo no resiste el impacto de las balas, y no tiene poderes especiales para vencer a
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Nunca lo Volveremos a Ver
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
By Mario A. Cortez Have you been down to Chula Vista’s waterfront yet? If not HarborFest is the perfect excuse to check out some of the South Bay’s coastline. The annual festival takes place at the J Street Marina Park this Saturday August 20 from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. This event full of […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:46:29 | null | null |
Pre-School For All? San Diego Unified School District’s new pre-school program called “Pre-K for All” is a misnomer. The District has been offering free pre-s
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Out Around Town - August 26, 2016
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Pre-School For All?
San Diego Unified School District’s new pre-school program called “Pre-K for All” is a misnomer. The District has been offering free pre-school for low income families that meet income limits, but some seats have remained empty. Now, it is offering pre-school spots to families that can pay. For fees ranging from $530 for half day to $1,060 per month for full day classes, parents can enroll their kids in public pre-school. And for an additional fee, kids can stay
at school until 6 p.m. The District hopes to fill the classes currently not being filled and help pay for the teachers already in the classrooms.
Prizes Just for Showing Up
Another new program for San Diego Unified School District involves giving away prizes to students. Not for a particular job well done. Just for going to school. The new program offers students prizes like free ice cream, pizza, or discounts at local stores just for attending school. The District says its goal is to raise grades, but critics say it’s just to get more attendance cash. A 1% increase in attendance could bring in more than $6 million per year. SD schools have faced lower attendance each year for the past 5 years. The District is looking for local businesses interested in participating in the prize giveaways.
Schools to Dump Stocks
One more from SD School District. Last month their School Board’s resolution asked the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (STERS) to divest investments in fossil fuel companies. The move is the first among state public school districts. The vote also supports a state law that requires both California employee pension funds to sell off any coal stocks. Last year, CA pensions lost $5.1 billion on fossil fuel stocks and #840 million on coal stocks.
San Diego Housing Gap
A new report details just how expensive housing costs are in SD. The report says it takes an income of $109,000 to buy a median priced home at $590,000. San Francisco is worse, and LA trails San Diego on the list of least affordable areas in California to live.
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http://laprensa-sandiego.org/featured/out-around-town-august-26-2016/
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:46:40 | null | null |
Por Marinee Zavala Como víctimas fueron catalogados por el departamento del sheriff los cuatro agentes que se vieron involucrados en el ataque armado,
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Más Agentes Involucrados en Tiroteos en San Diego
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
National City is the new host of the Exitos Del Cine Latino Film Festival that will premiere 15 Latino films accompanied by special celebrity appearances, music performances, and exhibits by local artists, from this Friday, August 26 to Thursday, September 1. The creators of the San Diego Latino Film Festival are the organizers of this […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T22:46:14 | null | null |
Por Ana Gómez Salcido Los inmigrantes mexicanos que trabajan en Estados Unidos ya pueden recibir un subsidio por parte del Gobierno Federal de México para c
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Revelan Subsidio para Construir en México
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
National City is the new host of the Exitos Del Cine Latino Film Festival that will premiere 15 Latino films accompanied by special celebrity appearances, music performances, and exhibits by local artists, from this Friday, August 26 to Thursday, September 1. The creators of the San Diego Latino Film Festival are the organizers of this […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T12:54:13 | null | null |
By Mimi Pollack It is not always easy being a Latino or Hispanic performer in the entertainment community. Many times the roles that are offered to actors
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Amigos Del REP: Giving Back to the Community
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By Mimi Pollack
It is not always easy being a Latino or Hispanic performer in the entertainment community. Many times the roles that are offered to actors are limited, as are jobs for directors, producers, stagehands, and technicians.
Amigos Del REP founding members Herbert Siguenza, John Padilla, and Dave Rivas wanted to find a way to change that and showcase Latino actors, playwrights, producers, etc. They decided to form a group under the umbrella of the San Diego REP and Amigos Del REP was born. It is a voluntary community council, and once a month, they give free one night performances or staged readings.
In fact, “El Henry,” the 2014 award winning play sponsored by both the San Diego REP and the La Jolla Playhouse, had been a reading given by Amigos Del REP four years earlier.
In the “Time of Butterflies” was another play that started as a reading and was later picked up and produced by the San Diego REP.
In the 2016 season of the San Diego REP, the first and last productions will be plays highlighting Latino performers, including “Manifest Destinitis” and “Into the Beautiful North.”
Today, there are eight members in the core group of Amigos Del REP and three producers, Dave Rivas, John Padilla and Sylvia Enrique. Siguenza has become an adviser. Danielle Ward is the liaison representative. It is a labor of love for the dedicated Rivas, Padilla and Enrique who also have day jobs in other fields.
Amigos Del REP has grown and fosters a large family of actors. On their Facebook page, they have headshots of the actors, along with information on each one. There are also experienced stage managers and technicians to cover all aspects of producing a play.
In addition to highlighting Latino actors and playwrights, educational outreach is another important factor. Their goal is to nurture and expose all kinds of Latino talent.
One of their most successful endeavors has been “Historias Tenebrosas” or “Spooky Stories” which has grown into a two night production for both Halloween and Dia de los Muertos. Rivas is the producer and the goal for both nights is to be a cultural event that entertains, educates and enlightens.
The event showcases the similarities and differences between Halloween and Dia de los Muertos and is open to families of all ages. Historias Tenebrosas will be at the Lyceum Theater October 31 and November 1 and starts at 7p.m.
Another highlight will be the reading of the play El Cipitio at the Lyceum Space Theater on October 17 at 7 p.m. Herbert Siguenza will team up with fellow original Culture Clash member, Ric Salinas. This play is based on Randy Ertll’s novel, “The Life and Times of El Cipitio”, and was written by Siguenza, Salinas, and Ertll. Siguenza will also direct. With the talented Siguenza and Salinas at the helm, this play should also be picked up by the San Diego REP in an upcoming season.
Finally, Amigos del REP wants to reach out to the community, not only by giving free performances, but also by finding and showcasing future Latino/Hispanic/Chicano talent. For the 2016-2017 season, 20 plays were submitted and 12 were chosen. Hopefully, this will continue to grow, the goals of Amigos Del REP will be reached, and Latino culture will become more a part of the main stage and entertainment community.
For more information and upcoming readings/plays/performances, the website is http://www.sdrep.org/amigos.php or on the Amigos Del REP Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/AmigosDelRep/
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Por Leon Bravo Melvin Gordon, se perfila para ser el corredor más importante de los Chargers . Foto/Internet Tener un gran mariscal de campo no es s
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Chargers Alistan Ataque Terrestre
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T13:01:17 | null | null |
By Mario A. Cortez Have you been down to Chula Vista’s waterfront yet? If not HarborFest is the perfect excuse to check out some of the South Bay’s coas
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HarborFest Returns to Chula Vista!
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By Mario A. Cortez
Have you been down to Chula Vista’s waterfront yet? If not HarborFest is the perfect excuse to check out some of the South Bay’s coastline.
The annual festival takes place at the J Street Marina Park this Saturday August 20 from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. This event full of fun for the entire family will have something for everyone. Kids can enjoy many arts and crafts and many games and giveaways adults can enjoy the many merchant booths showing off items for your home.
You can’t have a festival without music, and HarborFest will be jammin’ all day long. Performers taking the stage include local talents such as Hijos Del Santo, Vokab Kompany, DJ Chucuchu, Sacred Heart Dancers, Mariachi Real San Diego, the Manny Cepeda Orchestra, Jean Isaacs San Diego Dance Theater, Danza Mexi’Cayotl, Amy Monzon, and On Fifth.
Make sure you have room for tacos and lots of food and drinks! The Tacos & Spirits Revolution will pit over 20 local taco restaurants in the search for the best taco in the South Bay! If you aren’t feeling like tacos there will also be many food trucks in the fest’s Food Truck Alley featuring many delicious fare ranging from Italian Ice to Japanese food,
Craft brewing is making a splash in the South Bay and you will be able to sample some of the suds brewing in places like Chula Vista, Eastlake, National City and other local cities in the Craft Beer Uprising. Catch a flight featuring amazing IPAs, Stouts and other great beers that are making noise in the craft beer scene.
Other activities during HarborFest include live lucha libre matches every hour, pet adoptions, a classic-car show, stand-up paddleboarding, rock-climbing, kayaks, volleyball, art shows, and other activities.
Be sure to arrive early as parking and traffic around the J Street Marina will become very congested during HarborFest with so many people looking forward to a day of fun in the sun.
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T12:49:11 | null | null |
By Marinee Zavala Increasing the low numbers of university students majoring in science and technology fields in Chula Vista is the aim of a new program in
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Chula Vista Kids Get Science Station
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By Marinee Zavala
Increasing the low numbers of university students majoring in science and technology fields in Chula Vista is the aim of a new program in the city that looks to stir up the interest of science and technology in local children.
The Innovation Station workshop, located inside the Chula Vista Civic Center Library, opened this week looking to reverse the low STEM engagement numbers in the community. The center’s goal is to uncover scientific talent within elementary-school-age children who didn;t think of themselves as scientists and to discover fields that were not aware of.
The program kicked off this past August 1.
“WHen students enter and they see the workshop their eyes brighten up and you can hear them say ‘woah,’” said Michael Bruder, an engineering teacher in the Chula Vista Elementary School District.
A concern that Chula Vista school authorities and Qualcomm have is the low number of Latino students in science related fields.
“The science and technology enrollment rates of the Latino population are terrible, they are very low and they are something we are trying to boost. There are a lot of programs for children with parents in engineering but we are mostly trying to reach the working class communities,” said Susie Armstrong, Vice President of Engineering for Qualcomm.
Chula Vista is one of the regions of the county with the largest Latino populations in the county; about 68 percent of the Chula Vista Elementary School District is Latino.
Anthony Millican, communications director for the Chula Vista Elementary School district, stated that “we want the community to have the same opportunities to enter high level fields that can change the lives of not only the life of the students, but the lives of their families.”
Another goal for Innovation Station is bringing in more young girls into the world of mathematics and to show them that the sciences can be a viable career choice for women as well.
Otra de las grandes preocupaciones y metas del proyecto, es impulsar a más pequeñas y mujeres al mundo de las matemáticas y que consideren como su primera opción el estudiar ciencias, y así no se vean limitadas por las normas sociales.
Diana Rendina, a local teacher, seemed pleased with the new workshop space.
“This is a space where students can gather and create, transform, explore and discover through a variety of tools and materials,” Rendina said.
Less than a month after opening its doors, this space has changed the perspectives of students such as 11-year-old Laura Esmeralda Martinez, who said she thought about other majors but is now thinking of becoming a creator and a scientist.
“What I like most is being able to express our creativity. I wanted to become a lawyer because my mom wanted me to be one, but now I am liking computer programming a lot more,” said Martinez.
Por supporters of this project, awakening excitement por careers that will benefit the lives of these youngsters is the best reward.
The Innovation Station workshop is free and is also seeks to attract other Chula Vista residents such as veterans and teens so that the whole community can be a part of the library’s community.
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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By Ana Gomez Salcido The number of unsheltered homeless people in San Diego County increased this year, according to the San Diego Point-in-Time Count made
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Homeless Population Rises in 2016
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By Ana Gomez Salcido
The number of unsheltered homeless people in San Diego County increased this year, according to the San Diego Point-in-Time Count made by the Regional Task Force on the Homeless San Diego.
The unsheltered count increased 18.9 percent, from 4,156 to 4,940 individuals, between 2015 and 2016. The count was conducted in late January 2016, and the results were published this summer.
“The increase is due to a number of different factors. The housing market in San Diego is really tough and it is very hard for somebody to find an affordable apartment,” said Ruth Bruland, Chief Program Officer at Father Joe’s Villages. “A lot of the apartments that were affordable have been rehabilitated, making rents go up, so more people are losing their housing.”
A total of 8,692 individuals were counted as homeless in San Diego County this year. Out of the total count, 3,752 people were counted as sheltered.
Bruland mentioned that Father Joe’s Villages offers different programs and services that address homelessness in San Diego. One of the most important ones is the Interim Housing Program.
“The most helpful program to ending homelessness as quickly as possible is our interim housing program located in the City of San Diego,” said Bruland. “When you are trying to help someone in their homelessness, it can take a coordinated effort and if that person is on the street it is really hard to find them. You need to give them something that is available, and if you can’t find them, you can’t help them.”
Bruland explained that there are a lot of people that want to help out homeless people like giving them food, and although it is a nice thing to do, it doesn’t link individuals to the services that they need.
“So much of what the general public knows about homelessness is that they are people panhandling with signs asking for spare change. There is so much to homelessness that someone holding up that sign,” said Bruland.
“There are many people in San Diego that had housing but hit some bumps in life like losing their jobs, family issues, or drug addiction and became homeless,” Bruland said. “These are people that with concentrated help, are going to be able to go back to their homes. Without that help, their homelessness is going to last and last.”
Bruland said it can be so tempting for people to do small things like bringing hot lunches for people, but it is better if they can volunteer or donate money to an organization that can really make a difference by providing services to help end homelessness.
“Donating to Father Joe’s Villages, rescue missions, and all other organizations is a tremendous gift for the community because we can turn that money into concrete work to help the homeless,” Bruland concluded.
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Por Estephania Baez El respeto a los derechos de los campesinos en California está cada vez más cerca. Justo este lunes, el senado de California aprobó con
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Avanza Ley en California que Pondrá Fin a la Explotación de Campesinos
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OUT AROUND TOWN Out Around Town – May 27, 2016 TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
Entertainment The San Diego Spirits Festival Makes a Splash This Weekend! Attention fans of tequila, whiskey, vodka, rum, and all distilled spirits! You are all invited to enjoy the eighth annual San Diego Spirits Festival, being held this Friday and Saturday. Since 2009, the San Diego Spirits Festival has been bringing the best of the craft cocktail scene to San Diego. A celebration of craft cocktails, […]
SPORTS Nunca lo Volveremos a Ver Por León Bravo Este personaje no usa capa para volar por los aires, su cuerpo no resiste el impacto de las balas, y no tiene poderes especiales para vencer a los malvados que quieren acabar con el globo terráqueo. Este súper hombre solo se pone unos pantaloncillos ajustados de modernas telas sintéticas para salir a […]
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| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
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[] | 2016-08-26T12:55:11 | null | null |
Por Alexandra Mendoza Mientras que más del 80 por ciento de los inmigrantes mexicanos elegibles para la Acción Diferida y han emitido su solicitud, las es
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es
| null |
Invitan a Asiaticos para Aprovechar DACA
| null | null |
laprensa-sandiego.org
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TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
By Mario A. Cortez Are you ready to taste the many vibrant flavors of Latin America? The 2016 Latin Food Fest kicks off this weekend at the Embarcadero Park a weekend of amazing food, great drinks, music and celebrity chef demos. On Friday, take part in the Chef’s Night Out kick-off party happening at beautiful Coasterra […]
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http://laprensa-sandiego.org/stories/invitan-a-asiaticos-para-aprovechar-daca/
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en
| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
laprensa-sandiego.org/85aee0ce599f4131c25f2be7e7e904bb4e5e150fa55605877b61e7947f9027e2.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T12:48:17 | null | null |
Por Estephania baez Autoridades de Salud del Condado reportaron el primer caso del Virus del Nilo Occidental en la region de San Diego. La víctima es una m
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http%3A%2F%2Flaprensa-sandiego.org%2Fstories%2Faparece-virus-del-nilo-en-san-diego%2F.json
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http://laprensa-sandiego.org/wp-content/themes/freshnews/functions/thumb.php?src=wp-content/uploads/2016/08/chula-vista-harborfest-chula-vista-ca.jpg&w=220&h=165&zc=1&q=90
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es
| null |
Aparece Virus del Nilo en San Diego
| null | null |
laprensa-sandiego.org
|
TRUMP IN SD FRIDAY Republican Donald Trump will hold a rally at 2pm on Friday, May 27, at the SD Convention Center. The planned rally has already drawn organized protests. Several groups, including the janitors’ union and the San Diego Democratic Party, plan to rally near the convention center. A larger rally sponsored by the […]
By Mario A. Cortez Have you been down to Chula Vista’s waterfront yet? If not HarborFest is the perfect excuse to check out some of the South Bay’s coastline. The annual festival takes place at the J Street Marina Park this Saturday August 20 from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. This event full of […]
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http://laprensa-sandiego.org/stories/aparece-virus-del-nilo-en-san-diego/
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en
| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
laprensa-sandiego.org/46f5087e0d88b2fc7bce823e572cde267ffb78c0669b379742b9547a0c323b7d.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T18:47:08 | null | null |
By Ana Gomez Salcido The victims of the massacre at a San Ysidro McDonald’s in 1984 will share their stories about one of the worst days in San Diego hi
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| null |
San Ysidro Massacre Victims Share Their Stories
| null | null |
laprensa-sandiego.org
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By Ana Gomez Salcido
The victims of the massacre at a San Ysidro McDonald’s in 1984 will share their stories about one of the worst days in San Diego history through the upcoming documentary “77 Minutes” which is set to premiere on September 23.
“We have unknown heroes in this story,” said filmmaker, Charlie Minn. “When you ask most San Diegans about the San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre they will tell you that a madman shoot a lot of people and was shot later; and that’s it. The unknown heroes from that day will become known because of this film.”
The San Ysidro McDonald’s Massacre was a mass shooting that occurred in and around a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro on July 18, 1984. There were 21 people shot and killed by the gunman and 19 others were injured before the shooter was fatally shot by a SWAT team sniper.
“The victims need a voice. I think it’s about time after 32 years that someone speaks on their behalf and lets the world know their stories,” said Minn.
About the tone of the film, Minn said that the production“is very emotional; If I have to describe the film in one word is emotional. I haven’t seen a film this emotional of all the films I’ve done.”
The film’s title, which refers to the time it took police to take down the shooter, gives a comprehensive look of what happened inside the fast food restaurant 32 years ago.
The documentary will feature stories of many survivors. One of these survivors is Karla Felix, who at just four-months old, was shot during the massacre.
“My parents were just arriving to the McDonald’s when they were attacked. We were still in the parking lot, and we all got shot,” said Felix. “There was a post office next door, and people took us there for shelter; we were all injured.”
Felix’s father gave her to a stranger on that day, so she could receive help.
“My parents ended up in a different hospital. I actually ended up on the news because there was a baby and no parents. I think my godmother was the one that recognized me on the news and came for me,” Felix said. “I was shot in the head, my back, and I still have a scar on my stomach, and also part of a bullet on my head.”
Felix, now manager of a restaurant in Washington, D.C., mentioned that it makes her sad that there are still massacres going on around the world.
“My heart breaks whenever I see a massacre. I don’t remember that day in San Ysidro, but I see my mom and how it still affects her after all this years. It’s so sad,” said Felix.
“My mom and I wanted to share this story, although it is difficult but we want for all the people to know it,” Felix continued.
The film opens on Friday, September 23, 2016 at Mission Valley Hazard Center in San Diego for a minimum of a one-week run. “77 Minutes” is also expected to open at the Multi-Cultural Complex Center in San Ysidro.
Minn mentioned that partial proceeds from the box office will be donated to the families of the two San Diego police officers shot last month.
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http://laprensa-sandiego.org/stories/san-ysidro-massacre-victims-share-their-stories/
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en
| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
laprensa-sandiego.org/d10b8728ac8674a1a91667a898d987971e17d497555135653c786ecccda1b5e5.json
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[] | 2016-08-26T16:46:09 | null | null |
By Sangra G. Leon A proposal to expand port operations near Barrio Logan has drawn fire from a local environmental group opposed to the plan. A draft
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Port Working to Balance Concerns over Expansion
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laprensa-sandiego.org
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By Sangra G. Leon
A proposal to expand port operations near Barrio Logan has drawn fire from a local environmental group opposed to the plan.
A draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) was released by the Port District on June 27 and open for public comments through August 18 to allow for input from the community and interest groups. The report outlined a proposed redevelopment plan for the marine terminal located just South of the San Diego Convention Center.
“The Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal Redevelopment Plan would replace an existing 2008 Maritime Business Plan to meet current and future market conditions at the terminal,” wrote Jason Giffen, Assistant Vice-President of Planning and Green Port for the San Diego Unified Port District in a June 27 letter. “Depending on market opportunities, some improvements may occur within a 5- to 10- year planning horizon, whereas others may not occur until the 10- to 20-year planning horizon,” Giffen added.
Currently, the marine terminal hosts port facilities for unloading new cars, fresh fruit, construction materials, and other goods transported by ships.
Under the new plan, the facilities would be modernized to expand the scope and scale of sea-based freight being handled at the port, including potentially adding “up to five gantry cranes, additional consolidated dry bulk storage capacity, enhancements to the existing conveyor system, demolition of the molasses tanks and Warehouse C, additional open storage space, and expanded on-dock rail facilities,” according to the letter from Giffen.
The Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal is 96 acres in size and has nine ship berths that allow large ships to dock. The bay’s depth at 43 feet is one of the deepest on the West Coast, and is one of only two ports on the West Coast that has cold-storage facilities for fresh fruit and other perishable goods. The port currently has 300,000 square feet of cold storage facilities and 1,000,000 square feet of warehouse and transit sheds.
Under the new plan, a wider range of goods could be handled at the Port, including dry goods, military supplies, and even more perishable foods, in addition to the 1.8 billion pounds of bananas a year already being shipped in by Dole. The future capacity of the port could increase up to 6 billion tons per year.
But the new redevelopment plan is opposed by at least one local environmental group that recently wrote a letter in opposition to the plan.
The Environmental Health Coalition (EHC) sent a letter to the Port District on August 18 outlining the traffic and health issues that could result from the increased port activities under the new expansion plan.
“The most immediately adjacent and downwind community, Barrio Logan, is already adversely impacted by industrial activity by the Port and its tenants, and will receive the brunt of health impacts, noise, traffic, and other impacts of the proposed project,” wrote Joy Williams, EHC’s Environmental Researcher.
“Barrio Logan residents are being asked to shoulder additional burdens, without any corresponding benefits in terms of local hire, job quality, improved infrastructure, increases in renewable energy, improved waterfront access or other park area, increased public safety, improved filtration and sound attenuation in buildings, or other improvements to quality of life,” Williams added.
The letter cites increased environmental and community impacts that could be caused from the increased truck traffic expected under the new redevelopment plan. The letter claims that, under the proposal, truck traffic could increase by up to 750 percent, resulting in more than 1,372 additional truck trips through the community of Barrio Logan and onto local freeways.
“Port-related truck activity has been a top complaint of Barrio Logan residents since Dole trucks first appeared on Cesar Chavez Parkway in 2003,” EHC’s Williams wrote. “Because of their closer proximity to homes, schools, parks, and walkways, trucks and truck emissions are of special concern to the community,” Williams stated.
The balance between increased maritime activities and community concerns has been an on-going discussion for over 40 years. As the Port District looks for ways to increase maritime activities to promote economic growth and local job creation, community groups and residents have complained of unmitigated traffic and environmental impacts.
“The Port of San Diego is committed to protecting the environment and supporting economic development that creates good jobs,” said San Diego Port Commissioner Rafael Castellanos. “The proposed expansion is contemplated to occur gradually over approximately 20 years, and we are working hard to make sure we address the community’s concerns so that everyone can benefit,” Commissioner Castellanos added.
Commissioner Castellanos also points to technological advances that can help offset future development, including the use of electric vehicles, lower emission trucks, and other new technology that will come to market during the time the expanded port activities take place.
The proposed redevelopment plan will have its next hearing before the full San Diego Port Commission within the next few months, followed by a final Environmental Impact Report (EIR) due sometime in 2017.
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http://laprensa-sandiego.org/featured/port-working-to-balance-concerns-over-expansion/
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en
| 2016-08-01T00:00:00 |
laprensa-sandiego.org/2c112cb94fcc68fbeef816729d0c3aa0fe278bb43e684f4e702ffe70d1af348e.json
|
[
"Teresa Mallam",
"About The Author",
"David Weiman",
"Searching For Style",
"Ross White"
] | 2016-08-26T20:50:57 | null | 2015-05-04T00:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pgfreepress.com%2Fwhat-is-the-real-truth-behind-our-annual-seal-slaughter%2F.json
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http://www.pgfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Teresa-150x150.jpg
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en
| null |
What is the real truth behind our annual seal slaughter?
| null | null |
www.pgfreepress.com
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Whenever I see emails in my inbox from Humane Society International, I try not to open them. I know reading them is going to be painful. Brutal. Sometimes, I leave them until the end of the day so that I can be informed without being sick to my stomach.
The issue is an emotional one for a lot of people.
One that tugs at my heartstrings no matter how hard I try to turn the other way or how deep into the tar sands I bury my head. I pray that it will go away but prayer doesn’t always work like that. I try to see both sides of the issue, I work at being even-handed but all I can see is that club and the red blood on white snow.
As a reporter I know there is a history, a tradition, a reason for the seal slaughter.
There are other people and their livelihoods to consider such as Inuit survival in Canada’s northlands. I try hard to understand why so many hundreds of mostly young seals must be killed each year to satisfy that need.
On April 12, Canada’s commercial seal slaughter opened off Newfoundland and I’m sure lots of baby seals – the ones with the adorable faces and pleading eyes looking up helplessly as they are clubbed to death – wish their date with death had never come. So do I.
The Humane Society International (Canada) is the country’s – and the world’s – watchdog of the events that unfold annually in Newfoundland and other northern areas with a commercial sealing industry.
According to an April 23 HSI media advisory, more than 35 nations have prohibited some or all products of commercial seal hunts but Canada has the distinction of standing firm in its resolve to continue promoting it.
“National polling shows that the majority of Canadians want the commercial seal slaughter to end, and oppose the Canadian government using tax dollars to promote the sealing industry.”
On this issue, I stand with the majority.
Even though I’ve read conflicting reports about how humane or efficient is the manner in which pup seals are killed – and that cattle and chicken have a much worse time of it – I’m not convinced that being bludgeoned to death is the kindest method. Like most people, though, I also have to rely on photos and videos (with graphic footage warnings), supplied by the only protest organization that keeps reporters like me in the loop.
Some documentaries tell a different story.
I have of course read the critics’ comments that this is all just well orchestrated propaganda designed to tug at people’s hearts – people like me who have a beating, some would say bleeding heart, and love animals.
So guess what? It works.
Especially when I hear (also through the HSI) about government reports that say more than 98 per cent of seals killed in Canada’s annual seal “hunt” (how hard are they to find lying on the ice?) are less than three months old. And that many young animals, in their futile efforts to escape their captors, suffer greatly before they die.
No mother can hear that and not weep.
So the debate goes on and the protests and visits by Hollywood celebrities like Bridget Bardot and more recently, Paul McCartney will come and go. And all we who are so far away from the reality and truth about our country’s seal hunt will be left with is the horrific images of pleading puppy dog eyes and red blood on snow.
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http://www.pgfreepress.com/what-is-the-real-truth-behind-our-annual-seal-slaughter/
|
en
| 2015-05-04T00:00:00 |
www.pgfreepress.com/01e025709d3f0efbc8565c937358c55a307fa1062f162dc0bae1501d98c2d65d.json
|
[
"Bill Phillips",
"About The Author",
"Wendy Barteluk",
"Bonny Mclardy",
"Paul Strickland",
"Robert Bissonnette",
"David Heyman",
"Ray Gerow",
"Stella Mckone",
"Diane Nakamura"
] | 2016-08-26T16:49:34 | null | 2015-04-30T00:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pgfreepress.com%2Fsad-day-for-newspapers%2F.json
|
http://www.pgfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Billcol-150x150.jpg
|
en
| null |
Sad day for newspapers
| null | null |
www.pgfreepress.com
|
It is truly a sad day for us here at the Prince George Free Press, and for the community of Prince George.
As of May 1, the Prince George Free Press will cease publishing.
The first issue of the Free Press hit the streets on October 31, 1994 and the last issue today, May 1, 2015 … just over 20 years of telling the stories of Prince George.
But it’s sad for the community as well.
Two newspapers is good for a community. Having two newspapers provides readers with different perspectives on the same issues, different looks, different voices.
As journalists, it keeps us sharp because we’re always trying to beat the other guys (that goes for all media) … trying to get the “scoop” as it were.
Sadly, competition is good for the consumer, it’s not good for business.
In most of B.C., newspaper chains have made concerted efforts to get out of each other’s way, rather than take on the other guys. Black Press and Glacier Media have been carving up the landscape geographically so they don’t directly compete with each other in communities big and small.
The Free Press is owned by Aberdeen Publishing, a relatively small newspaper chain, so we haven’t been a part of that rush to competitively not compete.
For us, it was simply a matter of revenues disappearing.
When I started at the Free Press in 2006, we had 27 people on staff and we were publishing between 40 and 48 pages twice a week. Now, as we close, we have 10 people on staff and have been publishing, on average, 32 pages once a week.
You don’t need to have a UNBC MBA to figure out that, as our owner Bob Doull said, “we just weren’t moving the needle in the right direction.”
And it’s not a case of advertisers flocking to our competition. The Citizen isn’t publishing as many pages as it used to either. The advertising dollars just seem to be going away. So, these days, newspaper wars are battles of attrition. It becomes a question of who can hang on the longest.
Here, it was the Prince George Citizen. Just last year the Kamloops Daily News, which was a sister paper to the Citizen, lost the attrition battle to our sister paper Kamloops This Week.
So, Prince George is not unique. Declining revenues are an issue facing the industry everywhere and if I had a solution to that problem, well, I’d be rich.
As for me, I don’t know what the future holds.
It was on the May long weekend in 1985 when I was hired as the sports reporter for the Fernie Free Press. Almost 30 years to the day.
When people have asked me what I like about being a newspaper reporter and/or editor, my response been the same over those 30 years: “Every day is an adventure. You never know who’s going to come through the door or where the day will take you.”
Today, another adventure begins.
|
http://www.pgfreepress.com/sad-day-for-newspapers/
|
en
| 2015-04-30T00:00:00 |
www.pgfreepress.com/c25155052b49a838fad8af31c4186fd470b0f21b523f5a0b3458e21086e3835f.json
|
[
"Frances Robinson",
"Nick Cohen",
"The Spectator",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T13:01:21 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fbring-back-bonkbusters%2F.json
|
http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/GettyImages-527473636.jpg
|
en
| null |
Bring back bonkbusters!
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
Life is starting to look a lot like the 1980s: Russia is flexing its muscles, the Labour party is tearing itself apart, and there’s a woman in No. 10. Political thinkers are falling over themselves to over-analyse the geopolitical precipice upon which the world seems to be balanced. But life doesn’t have to be serious all the time, so it’s worth reflecting on another aspect of heading back in time: we’re due a revival of the-bonkbuster.
Frances Robinson and Camilla Swift discuss the return of the bonkbuster:
Jilly Cooper’s new book Mount! is published next month, and features the return of Rupert Campbell-Black, 30 years after he first appeared in Riders. Moneyed, charming and blond as Boris, he seduces his way through English idylls and global sporting events alike. There’s much more to Cooper’s books than the naughty bits — but it’s a good place to start.
First, given the younger generation’s apparent reluctance to make out in a maze, shag in a château or go down on the ski slope, they could do with a little inspiration. Surveys show millennials are having less sex than previous generations did at their age. Meanwhile, Edinburgh’s Fettes College has invited the internet porn expert Mary-Sharpe to address students. There is, of course, a healthier way to teach teen-agers about sex — one that preaches neither an online bacchanal nor total abstinence. Let’s give the next generation a copy of Shirley Conran’s Lace.
Bonkies aren’t just about bonking, though. Rupert Campbell-Black eventually gives up his caddish excesses to become minister for sport — as a Conservative, of course. Cooper’s books are shot through with Thatcherite politics. From the characters — Kitty Rannaldini is the perfect working-class Tory, all hard work and typing classes — to the plots. Rivals was set during the ITV franchising process. Deregulation has never been so sexy! And just like Mrs Thatcher, Jilly’s not much interested in anything north of the Cotswolds.
For all that Mrs T. presides over the Cooperian universe, it’s a man’s world. The women tend to be martyrs, harpies or ingenues. In their constant quest for a man to marry (or at least go to bed with), they are rarely agents of their own destiny.
That doesn’t stop feminists loving it. I asked an anarchist friend why she is such a fan of La Cooper. Aside from the ‘wit and heart’, she explained, ‘Jilly got me through a horrendous breakup.’ Flying after the split, she had so many ‘Jillys’ in her luggage that it was overweight. On seeing the books — and my friend’s tears — the easyJet lady waved her through.
The works of authors like Cooper, Conran, Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins are much more than the sum of their parts. Art inevitably reflects political reality, and the bonkbuster fetishises inequality: something the UK currently has in spades. As the ONS — whose statistical bulletins are bedtime reading only in the sense they’ll send you to sleep — explained in April, ‘From a longer-term perspective, [overall income inequality] is above levels seen in the early 1980s.’ That polarisation means that it’s more appealing than ever to be a have-yacht rather than a have-not — or at least to read escapist books about them.
Building bridges across class divides and luggage limits: the bonkbuster’s powers are endless. And now that Theresa May has signalled her intention to ‘heal’ a deeply divided Britain, it’s time they had a revival. ‘We will do everything we can to help anybody, whatever your background, to go as far as your talents will take you,’ she said in her first speech as Prime Minister. Laudable aims: and Mrs May should look no further than another queen of the bonkbuster, Shirley Conran, for inspiration.
For a start, Conran does a rags-to-riches story like nobody else, with Lili, the central character of Lace, going from a refugee camp to being the toast of Hollywood. Learning a language, moving country for love or business affairs, even a little tweaking of one’s accent, is not to be frowned upon. Social mobility isn’t sneered at — it’s central to the plot. As my radical leftist friend points out, this is solidarity in action. Plus, the bit where one character has to model topless to save 3,000 francs for an abortion could provide helpful talking points should any of Theresa’s ministers suggest privatising the NHS.
Conran’s 1980s is a world of shoulder pads, publishing and high finance, where women are constantly doing it for themselves. What could be a better model for Mrs May’s brand of Conservatism than entrepreneurial women starting their own companies or working hard to get their way in the boardroom? (And the bedroom, but the Iron Lady would probably have disapproved of that.) The messages shot through Lace, Crimson and Savages are of self-education, hard work, and never trusting your grandmother’s lawyer’s sleazy gambling-addict son to set up a holding company. (He’ll only embezzle your hard-earned millions.) If only George Osborne had read them before selling the Post Office.
‘Haven’t we just had a bonkbuster revival, with all the Fifty Shades nonsense?’ I hear you ask. Well, no. For a start, that’s glorified Twilight fan fiction — the jetset, devil-may-care world of the bonkbuster is aeons away from the pining of emo vampires. Moreover, the best bonkies are as much about friendship, loyalty and empowerment as about sex — all qualities lacking in E.L. James. Ana tries to avoid Christian Grey, he buys her some consumer goods, then he waves around his helicopter before some clinical thrusting. Rinse and repeat. Yawn.
Real bonkbusters use sensuality as an excuse for insight into another world, whether it’s the international polo circuit, magazine journalism or the film industry. Take Savages, Conran’s 1988 epic, where the pampered wives of a group of mining executives are marooned on a tropical island; this glorious book is effectively a jungle survival manual (complete with poisonous fruit and dead rats) peppered with bitchy remarks.
With a fresh Jilly Cooper out next week and Conran’s classics now downloadable on Kindle, one hopes a new breed of bonkbuster will soon appear — inspired by the Eighties–tastic combination of an unequal society and having a woman in charge again, not to mention the prospect of Donald Trump with his finger on the nuclear button. Yes, I know, correlation doesn’t equal causation. But, like the 1980s, this is a time when anyone sane wants a bit of escapist fun.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/bring-back-bonkbusters/
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/0bea8dd920b16768d186db8fc44fd475eeaf0ab9d12bbd187ab2257a9b8acd6b.json
|
[
"Hugo Rifkind",
"Nick Cohen",
"The Spectator",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T13:15:00 | null | 2016-08-18T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fthe-best-thing-about-brexit-none-of-it-is-my-fault%2F.json
|
http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/GettyImages-579376996.jpg
|
en
| null |
The best thing about Brexit? None of it is my fault
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
Brexit Britain fills me with calm. Six weeks on, there’s no point pretending otherwise. Losing is far better than winning. I am filled with enormous serenity at the thought of this terrible, terrible idea being not my fault at all.
I didn’t expect to feel this way. Although there were signs, now I think back, on the night of the vote. I was at Glastonbury, obviously. (‘Of course you were!’ cried Rod Liddle, when I saw him a few weeks later.) Of course I was. There, with the rest of the metropolitan, liberal, bien-pensant yadda yadda. I found out at about 2 a.m., after a pleasant evening doing pleasant Glastonbury things. I’d wandered backstage, to meet a journalist friend who had secured access to Wi-Fi and a television.
‘It’s all fucked,’ she said. ‘It’s definitely happening.’
‘Jeez,’ I said, or words to that effect. And then we spoke of the miserable future. Of a nation shamed, and racists vindicated, and countrymen which, in hindsight, it turned out we didn’t understand at all. All that fun Remain stuff.
After a while, though, my friend fixed me with a look. ‘You do not,’ she said, quite accusingly, ‘seem very sad.’ And I thought about this, and I realised she was right. ‘It’s probably because I’m wasted,’ I told her. ‘Or in denial. Or Scottish.’ Although it wasn’t. I see that now. It was something else.
I was sad afterwards, obviously. I went home, sobered up, wrote the odd column, did the odd TV appearance, and my approach, I think it is fair to say, was morose. There were practical reasons for this, obviously, but at heart probably was a sense of rejection. Don’t play your tiny violins at me; I’m just saying. After all, wasn’t that what I was supposed to feel? A million times, by then, I had read that Brexit wasn’t about immigration, wasn’t even about Europe, but was actually a blow struck against precisely the sort of aloof, condescending, bubble–dwelling media-politico idiot that the comments under my articles ceaselessly tell me I am. Admittedly, it was invariably other bubble-dwelling media-politico idiots writing this. Still, I did worry they might have a point.
It didn’t last, that sadness. I felt the shift first of all at The Spectator’s summer party in July. I’d expected to feel awkward there, as a woebegone, defensive Remainer, surrounded by Britain’s Brexit elite. Gradually, though, I began to realise that this wasn’t how Britain’s new political dynamic worked. Contrary to my expectations, it was me who made other people feel awkward; the pressure was all on them. And in the weeks since, I’ve felt that dynamic again and again. You can always tell now, with people who voted out. They don’t need to say a word. It’s all in the haunted eyes. The shifty silence. They’re worried. It’s their world now. It’s all down to them.
Although not down to me. To borrow McNulty’s glorious phrase from The Wire (and Remainers have all watched The Wire), ‘This shit ain’t on me.’ I told you this was a bad idea, and you didn’t listen. As yet, we cannot know precisely how Boris Johnson’s vision of Brexit differs from that of Liam Fox or David Davis or Jeremy Corbyn or Theresa May, but the one thing they all have in common is that none of them are in any way my fault.
Only now, post-Brexit, do I truly understand what it means to be part of the elite. It means complicity. It means, whatever your view of this policy or that, or this politician or that, you still possess a vague, unavoidable connection to the way things are. Some fight to be a part of it, others are born to it and fight to leave. It doesn’t make much difference. You’re part of the mob that runs Britain, and thus responsible for how Britain is being run.
Well, not any more. I can’t be held responsible for all this. I hope Brexit goes well, and I’m worried it won’t, but this shit ain’t on me. That’s what I felt, under the stars of Glastonbury, when I inexplicably failed to be sad about something I remain convinced is totally awful. Liberation. Relief. A glimmer of a future in which, for the first time in my supposedly privileged, bubble-dwelling life, I could not be held accountable, even tenuously, for the country going to the dogs. And who knows, maybe that’s how David Cameron now feels too. Although it actually is all his fault, so he shouldn’t.
Definitely Maybes
What, though, are we to call the followers or policies of Theresa May? Assuming, obviously, that there one day are some. At least one columnist last week used ‘Mayist’, which seems to me a terrible, boring waste. Surely we can do better than that? On Twitter, I idly suggested ‘Mayan’ which I still feel is sure to come into its own in the coming economic apocalypse. Thereafter, others weighed in.
‘Mayite’ is no better than ‘Mayist’ and makes you sound like a Geordie when you say it, anyway. ‘Mayflowers’ could work. What with Brexit, ‘Maypoles’ might confuse people. ‘Mayonnaise’, as in ‘the Mayonnaise Government’ is perhaps a bit too weird. ‘The Darling Buds Of May’ might have worked a hundred years ago, but these days sounds obsequious enough to prompt vomiting. ‘The Maytriarchy’ is pretty clever, but far too Guardian.
‘DisMay’ and ‘Mayhem’ don’t really work as collective nouns. ‘Mayors’ would make people think of John Major and Boris Johnson all at once: avoid. ‘Mayonets’ has a nice edge to it though. Or maybe just ‘Maybes’? Maybe it’s ‘Maybelline’.
Hugo Rifkind is a writer for the Times.
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/the-best-thing-about-brexit-none-of-it-is-my-fault/
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en
| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/f7941a07ecf1e67ee7a929359d6715f3cacffc632a954716fbc469cdf41dc23b.json
|
[
"Johan Norberg",
"Nick Cohen",
"The Spectator",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T13:15:44 | null | 2016-08-18T03:00:00 | null |
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http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/cover_200816_landscape.jpg
|
en
| null |
Why can’t we see that we’re living in a golden age?
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www.spectator.co.uk
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‘We have fallen upon evil times, politics is corrupt and the social fabric is fraying.’ Who said that? Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders? Nigel Farage or Marine Le Pen? It’s difficult to keep track. They sound so alike, the populists of the left and the right. Everything is awful, so bring on the scapegoats and the knights on white horses.
Pessimism resonates. A YouGov poll found that just 5 per cent of Britons think that the world, all things considered, is getting better. You would think that the chronically cheerful Americans might be more optimistic — well, yes, 6 per cent of them think that the world is improving. More Americans believe in astrology and reincarnation than in progress.
Johan Norberg and Fraser Nelson discuss the doom delusion:
If you think that there has never been a better time to be alive — that humanity has never been safer, healthier, more prosperous or less unequal — then you’re in the minority. But that is what the evidence incontrovertibly shows. Poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, child labour and infant mortality are falling faster than at any other time in human history. The risk of being caught up in a war, subjected to a dictatorship or of dying in a natural disaster is smaller than ever. The golden age is now.
We’re hardwired not to believe this. We’ve evolved to be suspicious and fretful: fear and worry are tools for survival. The hunters and gatherers who survived sudden storms and predators were the ones who had a tendency to scan the horizon for new threats, rather than sit back and enjoy the view. They passed their stress genes on to us. That is why we find stories about things going wrong far more interesting than stories about things going right. It’s why bad news sells, and newspapers are full of it.
Books that say the world is doomed sell rather well, too. I have just attempted the opposite. I’ve written a book called Progress, about humanity’s triumphs. It is written partly as a warning: when we don’t see the progress we have made, we begin to search for scapegoats for the problems that remain. Sometimes, in the past and perhaps today, we have been too quick to try our luck with demagogues who offer simple solutions to make our nations great again — whether by nationalising the economy, blocking imports or throwing out immigrants. If we think we don’t have anything to lose in doing so, it’s because our memories are faulty.
Look at 1828, when The Spectator was first published. Most people in Britain then lived in what is now regarded as extreme poverty. Life was nasty (people still threw their waste out of the window), brutish (corpses were still displayed on gibbets) and short (30 years on average). But even then things had been improving. The first iteration of The Spectator, in 1711, was published in a Britain whose people subsisted on average on fewer calories than the average child gets today in sub-Saharan Africa.
Karl Marx thought that capitalism inevitably made the rich richer and the poor poorer. By the time Marx died, however, the average Englishman was three times richer than at the time of his birth 65 years earlier — never before had the population experienced anything like it.
Fast forward to 1981. Then, almost nine in ten Chinese lived in extreme poverty; now just one in ten do. Then, just half of the world’s population had access to safe water. Now, 91 per cent do. On average, that means that 285,000 more people have gained access to safe water every day for the past 25 years.
Global trade has led to an expansion of wealth on a magnitude which is hard to comprehend. During the 25 years since the end of the Cold War, global economic wealth — or GDP per capita — has increased almost as much as it did during the preceding 25,000 years. It’s no coincidence that such growth has occurred alongside a massive expansion of rule by the people for the people. A quarter of a century ago, barely half the world’s countries were democracies. Now, almost two thirds are. To say that freedom is still on the march is an understatement.
Part of our problem is one of success. As we get richer, our tolerance for global poverty diminishes. So we get angrier about injustices. Charities quite rightly wish to raise funds, so they draw our attention to the plight of the world’s poorest. But since the Cold War ended, extreme poverty has decreased from 37 per cent to 9.6 per cent — in single digits for the first time in history.
This has not happened through the destruction of the western middle class. Times have been rough since the financial crisis, yet for all the talk of Americans ‘left behind by globalisation’, median income for low- and middle-income US households has increased by more than 30 per cent since 1970. And this excludes all the things you can’t put a price on, such as advances in medicine, an extra ten years of life expectancy, the internet, mass entertainment, and cleaner air and water.
Speaking of water, Disraeli described the Thames as ‘a Stygian pool reeking with ineffable and intolerable horrors’. As late as 1957, the river was declared biologically dead. Today it is in rude health, with scores of different species of fish. The idea of the environment as a clean canvas being steadily spoilt by humanity is simplistic and wrong. As we become richer, we have become cleaner and greener. The quantity of oil spilt in our oceans has decreased by 99 per cent since 1970. Forests are reappearing, even in emerging countries like India and China. And technology is helping to mitigate the effects of global warming.
Parts of the world are falling to pieces but fewer parts than before. Conflicts always make the headlines, so we assume that our age is plagued by violence. We obsess over new or ongoing fights, such as the horrifying civil war in Syria — but we forget the conflicts that have ended in countries such as Colombia, Sri Lanka, Angola and Chad. We remember recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have killed around 650,000. But we struggle to recall that two million died in conflicts in those countries in the 1980s. The jihadi terrorist threat is new and frightening — but Islamists kill comparatively few. Europeans run a 30 times bigger risk of being killed by a ‘normal’ murderer — and the European murder rate has halved in just two decades.
In almost every way human beings today lead more prosperous, safer and longer lives — and we have all the data we need to prove it. So why does everybody remain convinced that the world is going to the dogs? Because that is what we pay attention to, as the thoroughbred fretters we are. The psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have shown that people do not base their assumptions on how frequently something happens, but on how easy it is to recall examples. This ‘availability heuristic’ means that the more memorable an incident is, the more probable we think it is. And what is more memorable than horror? What do you remember best — your neighbour’s story about a decent restaurant which serves excellent lamb stew, or his warning about the place where he was poisoned and threw up all over his boss’s wife?
Bad news now travels a lot faster. Just a few decades ago, you would read that an Asian city with 100,000 people was wiped out in a cyclone on a small notice on page 17. We would never have heard about Burmese serial killers. Now we live in an era with global media and iPhone cameras every-where. Since there is always a natural disaster or a serial murderer somewhere in the world, it will always top the news cycle — giving us the mistaken impression that it is more common than before.
Nostalgia, too, is biological: as we get older, we take on more responsibility and can be prone to looking back on an imagined carefree youth. It is easy to mistake changes in ourselves for changes in the world. Quite often when I ask people about their ideal era, the moment in world history when they think it was the most harmonious and happy, they say it was the era they grew up in. They describe a time before everything became confusing and dangerous, the young became rude, or listened to awful music, or stopped reading books in order to just play Pokémon Go.
The cultural historian Arthur Freeman observed that ‘virtually every culture, past or present, has believed that men and women are not up to the standards of their parents and forebears’. Is it a coincidence that the western world is experiencing this great wave of pessimism at the moment that the baby-boom generation is retiring?
So who did say those words at the start of this article, about how we have ‘fallen upon evil times’? It wasn’t Trump. It wasn’t Farage. A century ago, an American professor found them inscribed on a stone in a museum in Constantinople. He dated them from ancient Chaldea, 3,800 BC.
Johan Norberg’s Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future is published next week. He also appears on this week’s Spectator podcast: spectator.co.uk/podcast
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/why-cant-we-see-that-were-living-in-a-golden-age/
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en
| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/412a436086d4d51d762bdc97fbd4c45da84e937f2e880a82d73548bf000761fe.json
|
[
"The Spectator",
"Nick Cohen",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T13:00:26 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
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Could we win back Gordon Brown’s gold at the Olympics?
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
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Golden years
How many Olympic events would Team GB have to win before we could earn back the gold reserves sold by Gordon Brown?
— Olympic gold medals are in fact gold-plated silver and contain only 6g of gold. Between 1999 and 2002 Gordon Brown sold off 395 tons of gold — enough to mint 64.7m medals. Assuming the number of golds on offer at the summer Olympics remains 812, as at Rio, that would mean winning every event at 79,679 Olympiads, taking us to the games of ad 320736.
— It would be a different story if, as last happened in 1912, the medals were solid gold. With 500g of gold in each medal, we could achieve the feat by ad 5848.
Eastern promises
The Latvian government launched an advertising campaign featuring the Jackson Five hit ‘I Want You Back’ to persuade migrant workers to return home. How much financial incentive is there for Eastern Europeans to seek work abroad?
Median monthly earnings in 2015
Top five in european union
Luxembourg €3,150 Sweden €2,550 Denmark €2,310 Finland €2,300 UK €2,250
Bottom five in european union
Bulgaria €356 Romania €417 Lithuania €544 Latvia €601 Hungary €643
Bad dogs
A man and a child were killed in separate dog attacks. How big a problem are dogs?
— In the year to January 2014, 6,740 people went to hospital as a result of dog bites and strikes. Between them, all other animals accounted for 2,970 admissions.
— England’s worst place for dog attacks was Merseyside, where they caused 23.6 admissions to hospital per 100,000 people.
— The safest was Kent and Medway, with 5.3 admissions per 100,000.
Source: Health and Social Care Information Centre
Old sports
British showjumper Nick Skelton won gold in Rio aged 58. Other mature sports stars:
— Martina Navratilova won the US Open mixed doubles in 2006, aged 49.
— Stanley Matthews played his last league game for Stoke City aged 50 in 1965.
— Cricketer Wilfred Rhodes played his last Test for England aged 58 in 1930.
— Gary Player teed up in the 2009 US Masters, aged 73.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/could-we-win-back-gordon-browns-gold-at-the-olympics/
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/cef7679b841cc2a2819eff8a73defeb413cbb0842774bcdcc999e74e595a902d.json
|
[
"Jonathan Ray",
"Nick Cohen",
"The Spectator",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T13:13:25 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fwine-club-27-august%2F.json
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Wine Club 27 August
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Summer’s taking its leave and we have a fine Gallic half-dozen from Corney & Barrow with which to enjoy the last of the sun. And to cheer us up, we have a double discount on offer, the initial price-lopping enhanced by the fabled Brett-Smith Indulgence, in which a further £6 is knocked off a case if you buy two dozen bottles or more.
We start with the 2015 Corney & Barrow Blanc (1), the most recent vintage of the merchant’s bestselling white wine, beloved of Spectator readers. Produced by Producteurs Plaimont in Gascony, in close cahoots with Corney & Barrow’s buyers, it’s a lemon-fresh, zesty and exuberant blend of Colombard and Ugni Blanc given a touch of extra weight thanks to a short period on the lees. It makes the perfect crowd-pleasing picnic wine or aperitif. £6.63 a bottle with the Brett-Smith Indulgence, £7.13 without, down from the current list price of £7.50.
The 2014 Les Fosses d’Hareng Vouvray (2) is a joy. I love Chenin Blanc, which in the right hands — as here — positively sings in the glass. With the structure and texture of Chardonnay and the vibrancy and freshness of Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin at its best is unbeatable. Sad to say, I’ve had a couple of duffers of late, so fell upon this beauty with open arms. Dry to off-dry, it’s full of peach, pear and custard apple flavours, a whisper of toast and honey and a hint of something savoury on the finish. There’s weight and body too and fine acidity — it’s extremely drinkable. £10.66 with the Indulgence, £11.16 without, down from £11.75.
The 2015 La Muse de Cabestany Rosé (3) is a little gem from the heart of Minervois in the Languedoc exclusive to Corney & Barrow, blended from Grenache and Syrah with an added splash of aromatic Cinsault. It’s a beautiful colour, the price is ridiculously low and with creamy summer fruit on both nose and palate, plus a handy screw cap, it’s a hip-wiggling wine for knocking back with abandon. Forget your woes and enjoy. £7.05 with the Indulgence, £7.55 without, down from £7.95.
The 2015 Corney & Barrow Rouge (4) is another old favourite from the house range. A blend of old vine Carignan, Grenache and Cabernet Sauvignon, it’s made especially for Corney & Barrow by the Celliers Jean d’Alibert, a long-established and much garlanded co-operative in central Languedoc. Early-morning harvesting, cool fermentation and semi-carbonic maceration result in a deliciously soft and spicy red, fresh and juicy with a surprisingly long finish. It’s a little charmer. £6.63 a bottle with the Indulgence, £7.13 without, down from the list price of £7.50.
The 2012 Chartron la Fleur (5) is a claret of quite some style (and pretty decent bottle-age) made by the 200-year-old family firm of Schroder and Schyler négociants in Bordeaux. Blended from two thirds Merlot and one third Cabernet Sauvignon grown in the Entre-Deux-Mers, it’s smooth and supple in the mouth with blackcurrants and mulberries, a touch of warming spice and a long savoury finish. It’s immensely appealing, and marvellous value at well under a tenner. £8.95 with the Indulgence, £9.45 without, down from £9.95.
Finally, the 2015 Crozes-Hermitage Domaine Guillaume Belle (6), a no–nonsense, organic 100 per cent Syrah of top quality from the Northern Rhône. It’s peppery and spicy with marvellous depth of earthy flavour lurking behind the initial hit of damsons, plums, blueberries and even dark chocolate. It’s still young, of course, with a long life ahead of it, but the tannins are so soft and the fruit so ripe that it’s very drinkable now. Crozes-Hermitage is often regarded as poor man’s Hermitage: this, I promise, is anything but. £13.70 with the Indulgence, £14.20 without, down from £14.95.
The mixed case has two bottles of each wine and delivery, as ever, is free.
To order please call 020 7265 2470
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/wine-club-27-august/
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/0a5644901fd0b562f0e48c082202490efbd882f60eccc6cd001da608ad6c252a.json
|
[
"Alex Massie",
"Nick Cohen",
"The Spectator",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T13:15:26 | null | 2016-08-18T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fthe-snps-land-reform-fantasy-world%2F.json
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The SNP’s land reform fantasy world
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www.spectator.co.uk
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There is no party in Britain quite as fake as the Scottish National Party. The SNP, now entrenched in its dominance of Scottish politics, imagines itself a revolutionary force for change. Its mission to break up Britain bolsters that impression. But if the SNP campaigns with zeal, it governs with caution. These are the most conservative revolutionaries on the planet.
On health, education and taxes, the SNP stresses continuity. The party saves its radicalism for issues the public considers trivial. One is Trident. Another is land reform.
According to an opinion poll earlier this year, just 3 per cent of voters consider nuclear weapons one of the three most important issues facing Scotland. Just 2 per cent think that of land reform. Yet the SNP pledges to bring about a nuclear-free country with a transformed pattern of land ownership.
On land reform, ministers now enjoy the power to force a sale ‘where the scale or decisions of landowners are acting as a barrier to the sustainable development of communities’. How that is to be defined remains a mystery.
Still, land distribution is an atavistic problem and one that allows for any amount of demagoguery. As Mike Russell, SNP MSP for Argyll and Bute, says, a landowner is ‘able to do whatever he likes on his property’. This is intolerable.
The SNP’s proposals might be more ‘radical’ but for the constraints of the European Convention on Human Rights. There is an irony in the fact that the SNP, a staunch opponent of Conservative proposals to withdraw from the convention, finds its hands partially bound by the system it defends in other circumstances. This too is intolerable or, as Russell argues, the convention ‘was never meant to be a tool to protect the rich against the poor’. Perhaps not, though it may have been a tool to ensure equal protection under the law for all.
Writing in The Spectator last year, William Astor, David Cameron’s father-in-law, who owns the Tarbert estate on the Isle of Jura, worried about a ‘Mugabe-style land grab’ in which estate owners might be ‘nationalised’ or ‘made to feel so unwelcome that we have to sell up’. A senior figure within Scottish Land and Estates, the landowners’ representative body, observed that these remarks were ‘distinctly unhelpful’. It was suggested Viscount Astor might henceforth observe a period of silence on the matter.
The fact that half of Scotland’s land is owned by just 432 people remains a psychological affront to many Scotsmen. The sense that the Highlands are little more than a rich man’s playground, to be visited for a few weeks’ shooting and fishing each year, remains keenly felt. Radical campaigners for independence point to the empty hills and condemn them as the price of Union, conjuring an imagined future in which the lairds will be routed and the glens repopulated with smallholders and cottage industries. Like so much that is written about the Highlands, this is a fantasy, albeit a beguiling one.
Landowners point to the value of their contributions to the rural economy — and the jobs maintained in managing their estates — but their greatest weakness is their absenteeism. This causes resentment, though not always from the people who actually live on their estates.
The idea of community ownership is attractive. What could be better, and fairer, than land being owned by the people who live on it? But the experience of estates purchased by the ‘community’ demonstrates that someone, somewhere, always has to pay.
Frequently it’s the lowland public, who already (and rightly) help subsidise the Highlands and Islands, who are asked to sustain far-flung and fragile communities. Without generous grants and subsidies, many of the estates now managed by local communities would, like many of their privately owned neighbours, be unprofitable concerns. A new report compiled by Anthony Torrance, a land management expert, reveals that six high-profile community buyouts have received ‘covert subsidies’ of more than £5 million over the past five years.
The state, via public funding or quasi–public lottery investment, has replaced landlords as the guarantor of community viability. The Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust, for instance, lost £269,000 in 2014 and would be in even more trouble if it weren’t for the guaranteed prices supporting renewable energy schemes. The withdrawal of subsidy for new onshore wind farms inevitably imperils the viability of future community buyouts.
In the past 20 years more than £20 million of public money has been spent subsidising community buyouts, and the government promises to support the purchase of another 500,000 acres by 2020. Some of these have been successful. On the Knoydart peninsula, for instance, the population has doubled since the estate was bought by the community in 1999. A buyout on South Uist in 2006 has also helped revitalise the island, not least thanks to the proceeds from wind farms and the regeneration of the harbour at Lochboisdale.
At heart, the argument is over the extent to which the state should interfere in land ownership and the extent to which taxpayers in other parts of Scotland should subside community ownership of land in the Highlands and Islands. According to Roseanna Cunningham, the minister responsible, ‘Land reform is at the heart of this government’s ambitions for a fairer and more prosperous Scotland.’
Even so, campaigners worry that ministers will shy away from more radical reform. As A.J.P. Taylor put it, ‘There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the establishment — and nothing more corrupting.’ When it comes to land reform, one side’s satisfaction is suspicious. If Scottish Land and Estates are, on the whole, ‘comfortable’ with the government’s latest land bill, that bill will be considered disagreeably feeble.
Which is also why land reform remains, in the words of one prominent campaigner, ‘unfinished business’. It is the means by which the SNP, now a party of government, maintains its faith in its old radical religion.
Alex Massie is The Spectator’s Scotland editor.
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/the-snps-land-reform-fantasy-world/
|
en
| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/00e04a88171bf94cb9132166f4c9553027fd624ec6a56f675e3857f3bc4b3e43.json
|
[
"Jonathan Ray",
"Nick Cohen",
"The Spectator",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
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"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T13:11:37 | null | 2016-08-22T09:51:37 | null |
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en
| null |
Imperial pint of champagne
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
Jonathan Ray gives a heartening update on the campaign to bring back the imperial pint of champagne
When the Spectator urges so things start to happen. You might recall a despatch of mine a week or so ago concerning a Spectator Winemaker’s Lunch we held for readers in our boardroom, hosted by James Simpson MW, managing director of Pol Roger (UK).
Whilst we consoled/congratulated ourselves (delete where applicable) in the immediate aftermath of Brexit by drinking plenty of fine vintage Pol, James pointed out that one benefit of our departure from Europe could be the return of the much-missed imperial pint of champagne, a deeply civilised measure roughly equivalent to 50cl (oh, ok, 56.8cl to be exact) and once the UK’s most popular size of champagne bottle, favoured by all the finest restaurants, hotels, clubs and bars but long since outlawed by the EU.
As I mentioned in my despatch, Pol Roger was, famously, Sir Winston Churchill’s favourite champagne and the imperial pint his favourite measure of it. Indeed, he declared it held just the right amount of fizz (“…enough for two at lunch and one at dinner…”) and he was known to keep one in his greatcoat pocket during visits to Blitz-hit London. In fact, anyone who has been to the completely absorbing Churchill War Rooms by St. James’s Park will have seen an imperial pint of 1914 Pol Roger proudly displayed amongst Sir Winston’s effects.
James Simpson told us that current EU regulations stipulate that sparkling wine might be sold in 37.5cl for half bottles and 75cl for full bottles with nothing in between (larger sizes such as magnums and beyond are still, of course, permitted), something which has long irritated fizz fans, himself and myself included. We discussed this at length at our aforementioned readers’ lunch and at our unanimous urging James promised that he would see what could be done.
I’m delighted to report that he has already begun discussions with Pol Roger’s glass supplier and only yesterday had a meeting with my old boss Simon Berry, chairman of Berry Bros & Rudd, and – like James – a long-time advocate of the imperial pint.
“I’ve been campaigning to bring back the imperial pint for over thirty years and until recently I was no closer to winning this battle,” Simon explained. “But perhaps recent events will change that. The imperial pint makes for a perfect-sized bottle.”
James Simpson agreed that there might now be an opportunity for the pint’s return. He did caution though that should the campaign succeed, thanks to the nature of bottle ageing champagne it will still be some time before we see the imperial pint on Berrys’ – or anyone else’s – shelves.
“The first production would not come on to the market for approximately four years for non-vintage champagne and it would be eight years for vintage champagne,” he told me.
I gather that James and Simon split one of the last remaining imperial pints of the fabled 1914 Pol Roger during their discussions and power to their respective elbows say I. The only thing is, though, if they’d split a bottle rather than an imperial pint, there would have been enough for them to invite me along too…
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/imperial-pint-champagne/
|
en
| 2016-08-22T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/556b70e53936922b21c10a1853cb858172cd540d5ce1d44ec2ec5a9e2675532a.json
|
[
"Christopher Howse",
"Peter Gilliver"
] | 2016-08-26T13:15:56 | null | 2016-08-18T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fthe-oxford-english-dictionary-not-just-a-labour-of-love-a-feat-of-endurance%2F.json
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The Oxford English Dictionary: not just a labour of love, a feat of endurance
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
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What the Great Eastern was to Brunel, the New English Dictionary was to James Murray (1837–1915) — an unequalled task that was his life, and eventually his death. What was later known as the Oxford English Dictionary should be a ‘sweep-net over the whole surface of English literature’, said Richard Chenevix Trench, one of its instigators in the 1850s, to be prepared ‘by reading all books’.
This stupendous aim would have guaranteed its failure had not that hard piece of Roxburghshire granite James Murray set up in his iron Scriptorium at 78 Banbury Road, Oxford, working, working, working, 90 hours a week for years, sifting with a mind full of languages through millions of quotations written on slips of paper in pen and ink by volunteers. Some came to him in bad condition: a sack full of words beginning in ‘S’ had a nest of live mice in it, and slips for words beginning ‘Pa’ had been used for rubbing down horses in Ireland.
Yet the biggest struggle was not with paper but with large human characters mobbing him, as zanies did the Duchess of Malfi. On one side was Frederick Furnivall, whose chief passions apart from words were boating and housemaids. Furnivall had a flawed knowledge of philology but unbounded energy which made him meddle tactlessly and endlessly. This mattered because for more than 50 years he was secretary of the Philological Society, which in theory sponsored the Dictionary.
On Murray’s other side were the delegates of the Oxford University Press, the publishers. They exhibited in its most florid form the defects of management by committee, forever scolding Murray for being too slow or too voluminous, while cheese-paring in a way that robbed him of efficiency. Months were spent quibbling over shares of future profits; but no profits materialised: by 1896, when ‘D’ was done, after 17 years’ work, income amounted to £12,000 against an outlay of £52,000.
Before his move to Oxford, a two-day committee session, thrashing out yet again the guiding principles, provoked by Benjamin Jowett, another champion meddler, left Murray running for his train in order to return to the insatiable task. It was like a waking anxiety dream. Dean Liddell, Alice’s father, no mean meddler either, disliked illustrative quotations from news-papers, demanding ‘as little Daily Telegraph as possible’.
Once settled in Oxford (thanks to the loan of £1,600 from the independent scholar W.W. Skeat), Murray was obliged, because of a neighbour’s objection to the Scriptorium’s appearance in the garden, to sink it two feet into the ground, which made it damp and sent a succession of assistants to their sickbeds. What for us takes a minute to discover online meant for him a letter to a leading ichthyologist or dog-breeder. The Post Office set up a pillar box outside his house specially.
Peter Gilliver, a lexicographer himself, who ten years ago gave us a well-turned volume on Tolkien’s work on the OED, does not limit his tale now to Murray. But he generously testifies to the excellence of Murray’s granddaughter Elisabeth’s 20th-century classic biography, Caught in the Web of Words. He nuances some of her lines of narrative, rescuing an OUP man, Philip Gell, from the role of pantomime villain, for example, and confronting Murray’s touchiness and inability to delegate.
Gilliver leaves a vivid impression of the effects of personality on the titanic task of making a dictionary, which didn’t end with Murray’s death, but, having nailed ‘zyxst’ in 1928, then started again. Many of the best dictionary-makers were, like him, not university men (no college made Murray a fellow), or were outsiders. The brilliant and unflagging Fitzedward Hall, who’d sent in 200,000 historical quotations, was sacked from the Foreign Office, accused of being both a drunkard and a foreign spy. Henry Bradley (1845–1923) had been a clerk at a Sheffield cutlery firm. (It was typical of the OUP to delay a decision on fitting up a bathroom in a house for him, and then vote not to install hot water.) He had been engaged on the optimistic task of writing a popular history of the Goths when he was captured by the dragonish Dictionary to labour in piling up its word-hoard.
Charles Onions (1872–1965, who pronounced his name, we learn, like that of the vegetable, while of course being aware of its quite separate origin) benefited, like Tolkien, from a free education at King Edward’s School, Birmingham. William Craigie (1867–1957), the son of a Dundee gardener, postponed his honeymoon to start work on the Dictionary. Another Scot, J.M. Wyllie (1907–71), took his family to live in a hayloft, was barred from Balliol SCR and wrote an epic in which Kenneth Sisam of the OUP was the Antichrist. Robert Burchfield (1923–2004), a working-class New Zealander, worked under Tolkien on an edition of the Ormulum (which, I think, has never been finished).
When the first part of the Dictionary came out in 1884, The Spectator called it ‘truly a national work’, which was right. Dictionaries are now big business, and management in the past generation or two has sometimes been more despicable than ever. It is pleasant to escape, as Gilliver does at intervals, into the world of words: bogus words such as ‘cherisaunce’ that Murray avoided copying from less careful dictionaries; words that got away, such as ‘bondsmaid’, all written up but inexplicably omitted from Part III in 1887 (not that anyone noticed); words like ‘rime’ and ‘ax’ that took their preferred spellings from a fashion for rational principles.
Gilliver’s prose is a pleasure to read and his research indefatigable. We Casaubon-manqués, with the OED stretched out on our shelves and coiled ready in our computers, rejoice at his big book, little as a Leaf by Niggle (in Tolkien’s allegory) though it may look under the great tree of philology.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/the-oxford-english-dictionary-not-just-a-labour-of-love-a-feat-of-endurance/
|
en
| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/a71d2139eb7860ef69de7e487b0675814ef4cd16e1a744ad85dc7ac3e53276ad.json
|
[
"Alexander Chancellor",
"Nick Cohen",
"The Spectator",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T13:10:51 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
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|
http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/GettyImages-511709394.jpg
|
en
| null |
It's better to be a lottery winner than the Duke of Westminster
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
The 6th Duke of Westminster, who died this month, was living support of the claim that wealth doesn’t make you happy. He was as rich as can be, but said he wished he hadn’t been. The dukedom, and the billions of pounds it brought with it, came to him unexpectedly. He had been brought up on a farm in Northern Ireland and wished he had stayed there and become a beef farmer. Instead, he inherited a great property empire in England and around the world, as well as various estates that allowed him the pleasure of game shooting, but otherwise gave him little but grief.
He was overwhelmed by the onerous duties that great riches imposed on him, and he succumbed to depression. ‘Given the choice I would rather not have been wealthy, but I never think of giving up,’ he once said. ‘I can’t sell it. It doesn’t belong to me.’ He could have just run away from it all, I suppose. But the heads of ancient noble families tend to feel an obligation to take care of their inheritance for future generations, and Gerald Grosvenor was one of those. He came into the dukedom at 28, and it seems thence to have blighted the rest of his life.
There are certainly some disadvantages in being very rich. It makes people isolated and treated warily by others. And they don’t have many pleasures that are denied to the merely comfortably off — only yachts, aeroplanes, and the like — and, as Frank Sinatra sang in High Society, who wants those? Nevertheless, there are few people who wouldn’t rather be richer than they are at the moment and thus be spared from the worries that shortage of money can cause. Surveys have shown that most lottery winners have been made happier by their sudden wealth, however much we would like to hope the contrary. They are relieved from financial anxiety and can afford to do things they have never been able to do before. They can also, if they are so disposed, give money away.
The late duke was a generous philanthropist, mainly to military veterans, farmers and countryside campaigners, though not to an extent that would have impinged much on the size of the family’s pile, and not on the scale of some American billionaires. There are some, like Donald Trump, who are very sparing with charity, but Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg have been spectacular with their generosity.
Zuckerberg and his wife have pledged 99 per cent of their Facebook shares, valued last year at $45 billion, to a charitable organisation they have founded to support health and education, while Gates and Buffett have joined forces to commit most of their fortunes, worth about $60 billion, ‘to reduce inequities and improve lives around the world’. They have even demanded that the mega-rich should pay more in taxes.
You couldn’t imagine British billionaires doing the same. Gates and Buffett won’t leave their children poor but, as Buffett said about his own, they should have ‘enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing’. They are inspired to some extent by the American ideal of a meritocratic society, in which everyone starts with the same opportunities and that no hereditary ‘aristocracy’ is allowed to emerge; and they probably also agree with Andrew Carnegie ‘that huge fortunes that flow in large part from society should in large part be returned to society’.
British billionaires tend not to feel like that: think of Sir Philip Green. They are also loath to admit that luck has played any part in their achievement, whereas Buffett has said that he got rich not ‘because of any special virtues or even because of hard work, but simply because I was born with the right skills in the right place at the right time’.
The Duke of Westminster was acutely aware that his own vast wealth was entirely due to luck. When once asked for the secret of financial success, he replied it was to have an ancestor who had been a close friend of William the Conqueror. It may have been that his inability to know how to make amends for this fluke lay behind his discontent.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/its-better-to-be-a-lottery-winner-than-the-duke-of-westminster/
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/a78f11d843b39da76a2a7ee47a7ec93bf14652f963171c7717f1b6302b3e32dc.json
|
[
"Rory Sutherland",
"Nick Cohen",
"The Spectator",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T13:08:54 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
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|
http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/iStock_83170051_SMALL.jpg
|
en
| null |
The internet of stupid things is crowding out real innovation
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
Back in the 1980s a colleague of mine was paranoid about being burgled. Before he went away on a two-week holiday, he bought the most expensive telephone answering-machine he could find and installed it in plain view on his hall table. Each morning he phoned it from Spain and hung up once he heard the outgoing message. He’d then enjoy the rest of the day content in the knowledge that his flat was safe; if no one had stolen his absurdly flashy answering machine, he reasoned, they wouldn’t have stolen anything else.
Today he could buy a Canary. These cost about £139 (the website’s canary.is) and let you view your own hallway in glorious HD from anywhere in the world. Your Canary will alert you to unexpected movements in your house, and monitor air quality and temperature. If you have a second home with a broadband connection, or if your main home is often empty, I can recommend this. Mine was easy to install and for the past year has worked without a glitch.
I suspect most people could benefit from some kind of home monitoring device, if only for reassurance. I am also a fan of those systems (Hive, Nest, etc) which let you control your central heating from anywhere.
My fear is, however, that there are so many stupid inventions now being devised for the ‘internet of things’ that the few good ideas get lost in the noise. It is now so easy and inexpensive to add wireless connectivity to anything — a fridge, a toaster, a waste bin — that it has become a lazy form of innovation. (It also poses scary security risks — in 2013 Dick Cheney underwent surgery to remove the wireless connectivity from his pacemaker, for fear that it could be hacked in an assassination attempt.)
The number of connected devices is now getting silly and is in fact a barrier to adoption. In many technological categories, too much competition can be just as bad as too little.
In markets which become too crowded too quickly, and where no brand reputations have time to form, a kind of Gresham’s Law can take hold; the dodgy players drive out the good and trust in the whole category disappears (something similar happened, I think, with the potentially excellent idea of holiday timeshares). You may remember the craze last Christmas for a kind of electrically powered sideways skateboard called the, um, Hover Board or Hoverboard or Swagway or Soarboard or Airboard or…. These boards were quite an interesting idea. But you didn’t buy one, did you? Not least because Chinese manufacturers made so many variants of the damn things, you didn’t know which one to buy.
A similarly good idea which I suspect may suffer this fate is called… well again there are lots of names, but try searching online for the Lay Bag. It is two airtight tubes in a kind of labial formation which you wave in the air to inflate, creating an amazingly comfortable outdoor sofa or hammock; it folds down to a tiny bag weighing only a couple of pounds, making it one of the first items of outdoor equipment not designed for masochists. Again, there are so many different makes available that it is impossible to decide which one to buy, and pointless for any one manufacturer to invest in making this good idea still better. This is a pity, as with a few added improvements it could be fabulous. One simple thing the designer really does need to add is a number of small pockets to allow you to weigh down your Lay Bag with stones on windy days. Mine was last seen 500 yards out to sea and heading for the Belgian coast.
Rory Sutherland is vice-chairman of Ogilvy Group UK.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/the-internet-of-stupid-things-is-crowding-out-real-innovation/
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/fd9957a98c54461d6b1dcd8dd945f7a60695ea7572d8e385c26a23395e8593da.json
|
[
"Lloyd Evans"
] | 2016-08-26T13:14:54 | null | 2016-08-18T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fluvvie-anger-over-brexit-is-palpable-at-edinburgh-and-its-exposing-their-true-colours%2F.json
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http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/geldof.jpg
|
en
| null |
Luvvie anger over Brexit is palpable at Edinburgh - and it’s exposing their true colours
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
| null |
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/luvvie-anger-over-brexit-is-palpable-at-edinburgh-and-its-exposing-their-true-colours/
|
en
| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/7bf47ae8c931e1a4f6057565115d2bd7a34721d2432623d971910a25e92b93b8.json
|
[
"Nick Cohen",
"The Spectator",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T13:03:06 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2F2272-holiday-time-2%2F.json
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http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/Solution-to-2272-Holiday-time2.jpg
|
en
| null |
to 2272: Holiday time
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
‘And then I met a dyslexic tattooist.’
‘I wonder if the same technology could be used for the Labour party?’
‘Kids blow up very early these days.’
‘When I suggested you write your dream bucket list, I hoped it would be a lot of foreign travel.’
‘Theme? Sure we got a theme. It’s beer.’
‘Great, innit, being a sporting superpower?’
‘Are we nearly there yet?’
‘The other robots don’t like you.’
‘If the wife rings, you haven’t seen me – right?’
‘Looks like a terrorist plot, sir.’
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/2272-holiday-time-2/
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/648adf730b51547c6e60f3c6bb801e557fc6e50c351b53faf5642d7550c950c2.json
|
[
"Sofka Zinovieff",
"Anna Pasternak"
] | 2016-08-26T13:12:14 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fthe-true-story-of-dr-zhivagos-lara%2F.json
|
http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/Lara.jpg
|
en
| null |
The true story of Dr Zhivago’s Lara
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
Between agreeing to review this book and receiving it, I got worried. Like many, I adore Doctor Zhivago with its tragic love story between the eponymous doctor-poet and the beautiful Lara, set in post-revolutionary Russia. When in Moscow, I followed the trail of literary pilgrims to Boris Pasternak’s dacha in the writers’ village of Peredelkino. I also had fond memories of Julie Christie and Omar Sharif in David Lean’s epic 1965 film; never underestimate the enhancing effect on romance of fur hats, sparkling snow and long-distance trains. Anna Pasternak, the writer’s great niece, is a journalist and Daily Mail columnist who made her name with Princess in Love. This 1995 collaboration with ‘love rat’ (as the tabloids dubbed him) James Hewitt detailed his affair with Princess Diana and was followed by the 2008 novel Daisy Dooley Does Divorce.
So it was with trepidation that I opened Lara. How would the author move from love rat to literary muse? And was Olga Ivinskaya, the supposed model for the character of Lara, anything special? Christopher Barnes, Pasternak’s biographer, dismissed (‘slut-shamed’?) Olga as an ‘ambitious and manipulative’ adventuress who fabricated a narrative, placing herself centre stage, and who probably invented her pregnancy by Pasternak and the miscarriage while imprisoned in the terrifying Lubyanka. In fact, he claims, it was just a ‘saccharine flirtation’ with the great man, who admitted a ‘sweet tooth for female company’. The New York Times also summed up a clique of Russian scholars and intellectuals’ opinion of Olga as ‘Lara-Shmara’, suggesting that she had cooperated with the KGB. Unsurprisingly, the Pasternak family demonised Olga and tried to write her out of history.
What a pleasurable surprise, then, to find that Lara is a marvellously interesting book in which the author makes a convincing case for Olga as Pasternak’s great love, literary support, and at least a partial model for the heroine of Doctor Zhivago.
When Boris met Olga, it was 1946 and she was working at the Moscow offices of the literary magazine Novy Mir (New World). She was a 34-year-old, twice-widowed mother of two with blonde hair, sad blue eyes and a long-standing crush on Pasternak. He was 56 and a celebrated poet in the Russian way; lives were willingly risked by reciting perilous poems around kitchen tables and fans of lyric verse filled large auditoriums. If Pasternak paused during a recital, ‘the entire crowd continued to roar the next line of his verse back at him, just as they do at pop concerts today’. Stalin’s henchmen kept confirming that the pen is mightier than the sword by arresting and executing poets, though it was Stalin’s fondness for Pasternak’s translations of Georgian poetry that probably saved the writer from the fate of so many of his literary contemporaries.
The pair were soon embroiled in an affair that was to last until his death in 1960. It was anguished, obsessive and blissful, with ideal elements for a good story: a tormented genius; secret police; and not just a wife, but a whole totalitarian state obstructing the course of true love. Pasternak’s friend the poet Marina Tsvetaeva said, ‘Boris is incapable of a happy love. For him to love means to be tortured.’ This was the man who, when married for the first time, persuaded his best friend’s wife to run off with him by swallowing a bottle of iodine in a failed suicide attempt. He felt understandable guilt towards this second spouse when he fell for Olga, but it didn’t stop him leading everyone a merry dance. He ruthlessly skipped between what became his two households, ignored his children, demanded quiet routines for his writing and agonised neurotically about his own psycho-somatic problems. He also refused to ‘make an honest woman’ out of Olga, even after she’d been sent to the gulag for her association with him; she would have been protected by sharing his surname. He was just as stubborn with Khrushchev’s regime when it tried to suppress his great 1957 novel for its criticism of the revolution, though the pressure was so great that he declined the Nobel Prize. First published in Italy and then around the world, it wasn’t until 1988 that Doctor Zhivago came out in Russia.
Anna Pasternak observes her great-uncle’s faults with a clear eye, but like her, one can’t help warming to his passionate nature, his genuine struggles with morality and the seriousness with which he wrote about the country he loved so much he refused to leave even when his life was in danger. The many quotes from his writing are reminders of how brilliant he was. Like the fictional Yuri and Lara, Boris and Olga’s forbidden love was defined by Soviet terrors and deprivations. There are no happy endings in either version, but both are fascinating tales.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/the-true-story-of-dr-zhivagos-lara/
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/19e89736dde299ca8be58e5c67df23e3c37a629bc119b8f01a4afae0b2c04472.json
|
[
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|
en
| null |
Anti-Semitism of the progressive churches
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
One of the nastiest perversions of Christianity in the world today – the attempted demonisation and isolation of Israel –has been carried out by, among other bodies religious, a German Protestant Church, under, naturally, the World Council of Churches.
One would think a German church, of all things, would hesitate before sticking a toe in the filthy pool of anti-Semitism. Anyway, its Australian equivalents are some way but not all that far behind.
The WCC and liberation theology in general, Catholic and Protestant, have been singing a bit smaller since the fall of the Soviet Union, but are still with us, with hatred of Israel replacing their previous leit-motif of anti-anti-Communism, while their attitude to the almost daily Islamic atrocities remains conciliatory,
Australian academic Bill Rubinstein, writing in last October’s Quadrant, pointed out that attacks on Israel and ‘Christian Zionism’ (ie pro-Israel evangelical churches) have become the No. 1 cause of progressive churches in much of the Western worlds, in some cases trumping even homosexual marriage.
Rubinstein comments ‘the Presbyterian Church of the USA is simply obsessed with its deep hostility to Israel. Not towards, say, Saudi Arabia, where no Christian may set foot.’ In North Africa Boko Haram and other Islamic groups murder Christians wholesale – the Christian death-toll may be in six figures for the last few years -without a word of reproof from liberal clerics. The WCC’s silence is as loud now as was its silence during the Cold War regarding the Soviet Gulag.
The same double standards prevail in the equivalent Australian churches, particularly sections of the Uniting Church which attack Israel ceaselessly, but say virtually nothing about the murderous intolerance of the Islamic countries and societies or Islamc terrorism in the West.
The Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF) of the WCC invited member churches and civil society organisations to join together in 2014 for a week of anti-Israel advocacy and action. PIEF supports the virulently anti-Semitic BDS movement, aimed at marginalising and de-legitimising the State of Israel, and ignores the atrocities committed by Palestinians against Israelis. Isis likewise does not seem to appear on the progressive Christian radar, despite crucifying Christian girl captives who refuse to convert.
Either spontaneously or in obedience to the diktats of the WCC, the Uniting Church in Australia has placed a ‘prayer for peace’ online which, while trying at first to give an impression of even-handedness, contains the unprayerful words: ‘In July, 2011, the Uniting Church in Australia Assembly Standing Committee resolved, on behalf of the Assembly, to join the boycott of products produced in the illegal Israeli Settlements within the Palestinian Territory of the West Bank.’
The WCC helped publish a book Christians and Muslims: The Dialogue Activities of the World Council of Churches and their Theological Foundation which demands the West ‘abandon its pro-Israeli attitude.’ The latest clerical anti-Israel campaign turns upon allegations that it is stealing ‘Palestinians’’ water. To a student of religious history it may bear some resemblance to the medieval anti-Semitic libel of Jews poisoning water.
On Ash Wednesday, the WCC and its subsidiaries launched a campaign, ‘Seven Weeks for Water’ at a (German) Lutheran Church in Jerusalem, with anti-Israel activists in attendance, including someone called the Co-Coordinator of the Ecumenical Water Network (an absence of a sense of the ridiculous in its titles is one of liberation theology’s distinguishing characteristics). Israeli sources say there is a ‘water crisis’ in Arab areas but that this is due to backward agricultural methods, wastage, and failure to provide adequate infrastructure. This was also the impression I received when visiting. Israel leads the world in dry-land farming techniques.
There is also the question of how far the Palestinian Arabs’ own leaders are responsible for keeping their own people as ‘victims’ for international propaganda.
Something called the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace (PJP – how quickly one gets lost in the jungle of acronyms!), was launched in 2013 by the WCC Assembly.The Ecumenical Water Network (EWN), in 2008. The WCC’s press center advertised its Seven Weeks for Water campaign as a ‘pilgrimage of water justice in the Middle East, with specific reference to Palestine.’ Meanwhile, a woman Member of the Palestine Legislative Council, Abu Bakr, has been sheltering within the council building in Ramallah since President Abbas ordered her arrest. Her crime? Blowing the whistle on the financial corruption of a cabinet minister closely associated with the President. She claims that the minister has been privately selling water to Palestinians and has illegally taken more than $200,000 from the Palestinian budget. There has not, of course, been one word about this from the WCC.
The WCC, associated ecumenical movements, and the web of organisations and relationships between them defy an organisational chart, or accountability, unlike government corporations which are, in Western countries, subject to parliamentary or other scrutiny, or private corporations which must publish balance-sheets and be accountable.
The PJP and the EWN are closely interlinked. The intent of launching the Seven Weeks for Water campaign was made plain by General Secretary of the WCC, Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, in his Jerusalem church sermon: ‘As the WCC’s Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace is focused on issues of the Middle East, particularly in this year, we hope your stories and struggle for justice and peace will become the stories and struggle for the churches around the world. May this Lenten season help us to reflect on these issues more deeply. May the Seven Weeks for Water during this Lent help us to highlight the water crisis in Palestine …’
Mr Dinesh Suna, the Coordinator of the EWN wrote on his Facebook page: ‘The IRG meeting of the WCC’s PJP started today at Bethlehem. To set the tone of the discussion we went to listen to stories of struggle to end occupation of Palestine by Israel’ (‘Struggle’? Suicide bombings, perhaps? Knifings of women and children?). ‘It was quite a touching moment for us to hear these stories…’
Any doubt whose side the WCC and the progressive churches are on now? While the progressive churches are losing membership hand-over-fist, in Australia, America and Europe, the demographically young, and very often pro-Israel, evangelical churches, are flourishing. The formation of the Australia-Israel Association in WA in 2014, held at an evangelical church, drew an overflow crowd.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/anti-semitism-progressive-churches/
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/375356add8e12668081954380bb8e60cee06b3d22455aa7dde3037d68b24d664.json
|
[
"Michael Baume",
"Nick Cohen",
"The Spectator",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T13:12:46 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fbusinessrobbery-etc-40%2F.json
|
http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/michael-baume_specaus-27-august_post.jpg
|
en
| null |
Business/Robbery etc
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
There’ll always be a Menzies while there’s a BHP For they have paid their dividends since 1883. There’ll always be a Menzies ‘though nothing else prevails, As long as nothing happens to the Bank of New South Wales…
While the spirit of Sir Robert Menzies, satirised in this 1950s undergraduate song, lives on for at least some current members of the Liberal Party, things are looking a bit grim for both BHP and the Wales in its modern manifestation as Westpac. As one of the four pillars, if not of society, at least of the local banking system, Westpac not only faces what promises to be a hostile Senate-initiated enquiry into banking practices, but also, like its competitors, has to deal with allegations of fixing a key inter-bank interest rate and to cope with profit-dampening additional prudential requirements, all against a background of the prospect of tougher business conditions. Market analysts are predicting an uncertain future for bank dividends.
While something may happen to the Bank of NSW, it has happened in a big way to BHP. This month, after reporting one of Australia’s worst corporate losses of $8.3 billion, BHP-Billiton has cut its dividend by 75 per cent – but is at least paying one, its lowest for more than a decade. The good news for those who still like to think of BHP as the big (well, maybe not quite as big as before) Australian, BHP has, by misfortune, once again become a company with the majority of its assets in Australia. While not a desired corporate objective, Australianising BHP was achieved simply by making such disastrous multi-billion dollar acquisitions in North and South America that they had to be substantially written down to reflect their much diminished value. BHP’s US shale oil adventure has seen $US 7 billion written off its value, as the Houston-based oil business, acquired for $US 20 billion only five years ago, turned last years’ $2 billion pre-tax pre-interest earnings into a half-a-billion loss. And then there was the devastating half-owned Samarco fatal dam burst in Brazil that has so far cost BHP $US2.5 billion. The $US 2 billion of tax losses involved in these write-downs will help with the unwelcome demand from the ATO for $700 million mainly relating to its claim that BHP used Singapore as a tax haven for taxable Australian earnings.
The $13.5 billion drop in BHP’s world-wide assets to $US 80 billion during the year means that Australia, at $US 43 billion, now accounts for more than half, with iron ore and coal making up three quarters of this, and local copper and petroleum each contributing about 13 per cent. Australia now provides about 60 per cent of BHP’s revenue and three-quarters of its earnings before interest, tax and amortisation.
All this was against a background of a collapse in prices for most of the commodities that BHP produces that knocked 80 per cent off the previous year’s underlying profit of $US6.4 billion to only $US1.2 billion (before its $US7.65 billion write-offs). Getting all this bad news out of the way resulted in the stock market (and BHP shareholders like me) giving not only a sigh of relief, but also pushing up the share price from the January low of $15.50 to over $21 for the first time since last November. While the headlines say the worst is over, the company does not anticipate any significant improvement in prices for its main commodities, with profitability depending more on a continuation of the advances in productivity that have softened the blow of depressed prices by bringing remarkable reductions in production costs.
But the really good news for shareholders is that the huge loss has meant that directors have had to cut their expansion plans, with last year’s overseas capital expenditure halved to a little over $US4 billion. For many shareholders the less BHP looks overseas, the better. It has a record of serious mistakes, with shale oil simply following the pattern set by the $US3.2 billion US Magma Copper purchase two decades ago that turned sour within a year and was shut down. There are rumblings about BHP’s big plans for Potash in Canada. But best of all, the less cash flow used on capital expenditure, the more that will be available for directors to make amends for breaking their repeated promises to pay decent dividends. Otherwise the shareholder owners of BHP could get quite cross.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/businessrobbery-etc-40/
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/102e3bb0ccfaf6525341bcee6bc1efa8222904ede7a2a21bac23bc39ba0374ef.json
|
[
"Melanie Mcdonagh",
"Nick Cohen",
"The Spectator",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole",
"Daniel Maris"
] | 2016-08-26T13:17:05 | null | 2013-08-08T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2013%2F08%2Fsorry-the-vikings-really-were-that-bad%2F.json
|
http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2013/08/Bloody-Vikings.jpg
|
en
| null |
Sorry - the Vikings really were that bad
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
Sometimes the really obvious take on history turns out to be the right one. For generations, we all assumed that the atrocities perpetrated by the Germans in Belgium at the outset of the first world war and enthusiastically reported in the British press were Allied propaganda. Yet recent research suggests that quite a lot of it was true.
Well, the same goes for the Vikings. For almost half a century, the academic line on Vikings has been that our old idea of them as raping, pillaging bastards who’d sack a monastery as soon as look at it was a childishly transparent bit of propaganda, perpetuated by Christian monks who were obviously biased against the pagan Northmen. As a recent Cambridge conference put it, ‘Vikings shared technology, swapped ideas and often lived side-by-side in relative harmony with their Anglo-Saxon and Celtic contemporaries.’ So much for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
An admiring editorial in the Guardian duly observed of the Vikings that ‘Men wore stylish baggy trousers and jewellery, as well as spending a lot of time on their hair. And according to Hillary Clinton, no less, Viking society gave women considerable freedom to trade and participate in political and religious life. Before long, the Vikings lived side by side with the people they invaded, leaving many of us with our own inner Viking. There’s a lesson there.’
Well, an impressive new exhibition that’s coming to the British Museum next year, Viking, now in Copenhagen, presents a different take on the Vikings than the revisionist notion of them as proto-feminists and early multiculturalists. They were, as we first thought, violent bastards. In contrast to recent exhibitions which have focused on their (perfectly real) record as city founders, brilliant seafarers and traders with an interest in good governance, the exhibits return us to the traditional image of pillagers, raiders and aggressive colonisers: the artefacts are hard to square with them as peaceful farmers with an interest in travel.
The longboat on display is a weapon of war, and the alarming swords, spears, battleaxes and lozenge-shaped arrows tell their own story. As do the iron slave-collars from Dublin. One observer suggested that the Lewis chessmen in the exhibition biting on their shields recall their reputation for bloodlust. Because, you know, even in a violent age — and monastic chroniclers were perfectly used to violence — the Vikings’ cruelty and joy in battle put them in a class of their own.
Of course the revisionists have a point that there is more to them than this; but what you might call the hinterland of the Vikings has been familiar for over a century; the entry in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, for instance, takes supposedly modern assumptions about their assimilating tendencies as a given and observes that the sources are largely one-sided. What’s more interesting are the reasons for the contemporary need to view the Vikings in a light completely other than the terror of the West.
The flip answer would be that liberals, including scholars, are so captivated by modern Scandinavians, from the women detectives right through to the welfare, that it seems like an error of taste to bring up dirt from the ninth century. A more serious approach is suggested by Professor Stefan Brink in his introduction to The Viking World, a compilation of the best contemporary scholarship on the period: ‘Every era uses history for its own purposes; every time shapes its own history. And especially during periods of strong political hegemony… it has been common to… sanction the politics you pursue. The focus on the warrior Viking in Nazi Germany is an obvious example. In post-war Europe, battered and tired of war, it was more welcome and natural to focus on the peaceful side of the Vikings, as traders.’
One scholar who has made it his business to cut through revisionist cant is David Dumville, professor of history and palaeography at the University of Aberdeen. He puts the fashion for cuddly Vikings squarely down to ‘Swedish war guilt about not participating in the war and American political correctness’. Half a century ago, he says, no one would have said all this; the fashion started with a 1962 book by Peter Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings. But the problem is that the Vikings-as-peaceful-traders approach has now been academic orthodoxy for two generations and its proponents are still getting grants as cutting-edge revisionists. ‘We’re being invited to forget vast amounts of things rather than investigate radically serious new options,’ he says.
For a saner approach, he suggests ‘the simple thing is to go back to the chronicles which were on the whole contemporary records and see the extraordinary similarity between what was happening in different contexts and continents. I don’t think there’s any way round what the contemporary sources are saying.’ Admittedly, later accounts were downright lurid. ‘Babies on spearpoints were later propaganda from the 13th century,’ he says. ‘Overwhelmingly the most colourful accounts came from that point. But among contemporaries, no one was in any doubt that Vikings were bad news.’
The exhibition at the British Museum may be a good first step in what you might call the de-rehabilitation of the Vikings, without losing sight of the insights of the revisionists, chief of which is that they absolutely did not wear horned helmets. It is, after all, only doing justice to the simple facts of history if we return to the version of history immortalised in the old Guinness ad: Looting and pillaging was thirsty work.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/08/sorry-the-vikings-really-were-that-bad/
|
en
| 2013-08-08T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/c195dc064370cff9e2c7b480ddb9d41c973e105ee33a3ff2812020a552d12528.json
|
[
"Dot Wordsworth",
"Nick Cohen",
"The Spectator",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T13:12:37 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fwhat-the-oed-gets-wrong-about-pelican-pie%2F.json
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/content/themes/spectator-new/assets/favicons/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png
|
en
| null |
What the OED gets wrong about pelican pie
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
Revisers of OED have made a pig’s ear of pelican pie, I fear. I’ve been reading for pleasure Peter Gilliver’s The Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (reviewed last week). I’m up to 1904, when James Murray complains he ‘could have written two books with less labour’ than it took to compile the entries for pelican and penguin.
Pelicans enjoyed life for centuries without the British seeing one. John Trevisa, a sort of 14th-century John Aubrey, wrote in 1398 that there were two kinds: one a water bird, the other loving the wilderness. He got this indirectly from St Jerome’s commentary on Psalm 102: ‘I am become like a pelican in the wilderness’ (as the Prayer Book puts it).
Thanks to the fourth-century bestiary Physiologus, pelicans also famously fed their chicks with blood from their breast. Thomas Aquinas began a stanza of the Adoro te devote with the words ‘Pie pelicane’. In 1940 Frederic Geary, a don at Corpus, Oxford (which has a pelican as its emblem), published a volume of verse in dead tongues with the playful title Pelican Pie.
To illustrate another meaning of pelican (‘shot from an ancient piece of artillery’), the OED quoted Horace Walpole, who in 1754 wrote to Horace Mann: ‘When your relation, General Guise, was marching up to Carthagena, and the pelicans whistled round him, he said, “What would Chloe [the Duke of Newcastle’s cook] give for some of these to make a pelican pie?”’ This complicated joke was meant to show him a little cracked. Walpole had already told the story in a letter to Mann in 1742.
But the OED revision in 2005 reduced the quotation: ‘When the pelicans were flying over his head, he cried out, “What would Chloe give for some of these!”’ This spoils the joke. As the internet has no space constraints, the cut seems senseless. Worse, in a separate entry for pelican pie, which it calls ‘obsolete’ (as if it were once commonly eaten), it uses the 1742 quotation: ‘When the pelicans were flying over his head, he cried out, “What would Chloe give for some of these to make a pelican pie!”’ From that you’d never know they weren’t real pelicans. Perhaps the OED, the best book in the world, will adjust all this.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/what-the-oed-gets-wrong-about-pelican-pie/
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/db696e4835b2e5393f0e29bfb2594f482b4604110f6d8a67b77e6d90f89b13e5.json
|
[
"Hanna Weibye"
] | 2016-08-26T13:08:05 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fat-times-utterly-gripping-crystal-pite-at-the-edinburgh-international-festival-reviewed%2F.json
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http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/scotballet.jpg
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At times utterly gripping: Crystal Pite at the Edinburgh International Festival reviewed
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www.spectator.co.uk
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Crystal Pite, the Canadian dancemaker who combines intellectual, emotional and physical intelligence in rare degree, is classically trained, but her work is most often made for and performed by contemporary companies. Hence the attraction of this Edinburgh International Festival programme. Scottish Ballet, in the European premiere of a piece Pite made for the National Ballet of Canada in 2009, offered a rare chance to see how her distinctive sensibility plays on the refined bodies of a classical company, and promised to whet the appetite for her upcoming creation for the Royal Ballet in March next year.
Emergence confronts explicitly the tension between Pite’s experiences of working with contemporary dancers in egalitarian companies and the strict hierarchy of classical ballet. Taking the social life of bees as an inspiration, it plays with the fine lines between cooperation and coercion, discipline and dictatorship. In oscillating formations that constantly hint at iconic corps de ballet groupings (straight lines like the swans in Swan Lake, a one-by-one entry like the Shades in La Bayadère), the women and men of the company flow back and forth across the stage in waves that might or might not be antagonistic: there is no violence, but there is an air of menace as the women, with their spiky elbows held stiffly behind them like wings, begin to make a rustling sound. They are counting out loud, whispering the beats — like soldiers marching, yes, but also making audible their own usually-silent monologue. It’s simple, and utterly gripping: reminiscent of William Forsythe’s silent clock-like Duo. Pite, who danced with Ballett Frankfurt under Forsythe, shares his way with rhythm and the deconstruction of ballet vocabulary (a flat-footed rond de jambe sequence is one of Emergence’s most memorable visuals), but combines it with her own talent for making large groups move in fascinating organic shapes. Emergence starts slowly, but it builds to a throat-tightening climax that is pure Pite, with the massed dancers moving in crisp, fugal sequences, polyphony for the eyes, against the burning light of the ‘hive’ tunnel at the centre of Jay Gower Taylor’s rust-bright backcloth.
Emergence was Pite’s first piece for a large classical company, and to my mind is not as exciting as her recent contemporary work: as a dancemaker of unusual skill and substance, she is by no means automatically improved by working with elite bodies. Angelin Preljocaj, on the other hand, looks very much better on a classical company. At 50 minutes long, his MC 14/22 (Ceci est mon corps) was a marathon opener, and most of its best bits came courtesy of the Scottish Ballet dancers, 12 men who slide through the choreography like so many high-performance racing cars. Sinuous spines, wide-flung arms, sleekness and precision in an intricate quartet, all show off the dancers as aristocrats of their art.
But fine dancers, no matter how beautiful (and with their bare chests and little white pants, they are very beautiful), cannot rescue nearly an hour of laboured religious allegory. The Last Supper allusion of the title is picked up at multiple points in a piece where an apostolic number of dancers share the stage with several tables: the dancers thump their chests with one fist as at the non sum dignus, they mime feeding themselves and each other as if distributing Hosts, they circle arms and hands over the table tops in caressing gestures reminiscent of ritual, garbling the actions of consecration in dance the way ‘hocus pocus’ garbles the words ‘hoc est corpus meum’. One dancer sings, persistently (and for a dancer, impressively) in falsetto as two others prod and hit him; their blows punctuate the song with choking air but can’t stop it. Another is hobbled in parcel tape but continues to perform the same dance. It may suggest Christ-like giving, but it also feels like sub-Pina Bausch Tanztheater. At the piece’s nadir, one lot of men thumped and heaved the other lot on tables like butchers tenderising meat (Catholic Mass is torturous, dehumanising, degrading — geddit?), and the soundtrack’s blend of water drops and static was regularly punctuated by the clatter of a seat springing back with alacrity under the departing bottom of an audience member tried beyond the limits of patience. The final tableau, of dancers diving off a three-story tower of tables, was an arresting sight, but not enough to warm my heart towards this tedious, overlong exercise.
Hanna Weibye is writing a biography of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, the inventor of German gymnastics.
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/at-times-utterly-gripping-crystal-pite-at-the-edinburgh-international-festival-reviewed/
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/26a4611f34c85611c5fa336a85001a9e36f80688733b37a2ecc818d6db85b294.json
|
[
"Kate Chisholm"
] | 2016-08-26T13:00:52 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fhow-radio-4-made-it-possible-for-people-to-talk-to-the-dead%2F.json
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http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/GettyImages-2637033.jpg
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How Radio 4 made it possible for people to talk to the dead
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
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One of the weirdest responses when someone close to you dies is the gradual realisation that now at last you know them fully. They become to you complete, rounded, fully themselves, in a way that just does not seem possible while they are still alive. It’s so frustrating. Just when you’re at last ready and able to talk to them in the way you’ve always wanted, in full knowledge of who they are, seeing clearly every aspect of their person, they are no longer present. Radio 4 has come up with a partial antidote to this aspect of death, loss, grief, and so too of life and living, with its unsettling new lunchtime series, Unforgettable (produced by Adam Fowler), the title inspired by Natalie Cole’s 1991 single, where she duets with her long-dead father.
Using cutting-edge digital technology, which I’m told has been developed by DJs ‘to spontaneously play out musical clips’ (or in other words an advanced ability to edit), real-life people are invited to talk to relatives, colleagues or friends who are no longer with us in person via the use of the radio archives. In the first of the five short programmes, Derek Jarman has a conversation with his brother-in-law David Temple. Two more different people could not be envisioned; Jarman the film-maker, poet, theatre designer, gardener, gay activist, and Temple, a ‘pragmatic’ man working in ‘commerce’. Yet it becomes obvious how much Temple now misses Jarman’s unusual ability to always leave you ‘with a better sense of well-being’.
‘I just wish he was here to ask,’ says Temple. And, hey presto, here is Jarman speaking about the controversies that his work inspired, his garden at Dungeness, his thoughts on death, his relationship with his air-commodore father. ‘I can’t remember whether I told you that my mother went to see Sebastiane,’ says Temple, talking about Jarman’s homoerotic film based on the life and martyrdom of St Sebastian.
Whether or not these conversations work depends on the quality of the archive. Jarman, it turns out, was a remarkably generous and empathetic conversationalist and in his interviews spoke so personally and colourfully that it was possible to weave his now static remarks into the ‘live’ questions posed by his brother-in-law. Maya Angelou’s conversation with her grandson was less successful because what we have on record are interviews where she is performing for the microphone rather than simply chatting. She sounds wonderful with her warm, melodious voice and her deep understanding of what matters in life, but the conversation never takes off.
On Monday night Peter Curran recalled the impact of John Hersey’s 1948 radio broadcast about Hiroshima (Radio 4). The programme was a dramatised reading of his 30,000-word essay for the New Yorker, which had shocked, and terrified, the American people by telling them what had really happened in Japan a year earlier when, at 8.15 on the morning of 6 August, the A-bomb had been dropped on the city known to be at the heart of the Japanese military and naval operation.
At the time of the attack on Hiroshima strict censorship was enforced and the American people were not allowed to know the full horror of what the A-bomb had inflicted. Photographs had been released showing the flattened city but these were little different from the devastated cities of Europe. No newspaper reporters were given full access at the time; there was nothing in words to tell of what the aftermath of the bomb meant to the people who lived there. What Hersey chose to do was tell the story through just six people, including an office worker, a doctor, a clergyman, and not hold back on his descriptions of what they had seen and experienced.
In Hersey’s Hiroshima (produced by Caroline Raphael), we heard clips from the original BBC broadcast (specially made soon after the American radio series), which was relayed via the Home Service and because it was deemed so important a few days later on the Light Programme also, in between snippets of the Palm Court Orchestra and Wilfred Pickles. Hersey’s frank, vivid descriptions of what his witnesses had seen — the flesh falling off in chunks, the eyes liquefying, the hair loss and strange, debilitating weakness that people began to experience — are more familiar now but still as shocking. During this week these original broadcasts were on Radio 4 Extra and are now available on iPlayer. Their unadorned, clean, straight delivery from witness to listener — their focus on the words, nothing else needed, no background music, no effects — sounds old-fashioned but they have lost none of their power. Hersey’s drawing together of the facts, told through individuals who give us no emotion, just straight reportage, remains extraordinarily compelling.
He is held responsible for the development of ‘immersive journalism’, stories told through personal witness. It’s the kind of thing you can hear everywhere in our brave new audio world as podcasts proliferate, now made by all kinds of media organisations, not just those already familiar with creating sound broadcasts. But few can compare with Hersey’s raw understanding of what matters in a story, of the details that count, with his determination to make people see through words alone.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/how-radio-4-made-it-possible-for-people-to-talk-to-the-dead/
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/33834b9d766bca90b42e2ffe29b853cfec459adaafee606bdb1d0fbabfb3f491.json
|
[
"The Spectator",
"Nick Cohen",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T13:06:00 | null | 2016-08-18T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fhow-to-name-an-aeroplane-1916%2F.json
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en
| null |
How to name an aeroplane, 1916
| null | null |
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From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 19 August 1916: The Parliamentary Air Committee having recently inhaled much ozone at giddy heights, during their visits to a R.F.C. park, have breathed some of it forth in a brilliant idea. They propose that the present clumsy and ugly system of designating aircraft by numbers and letters should be replaced by the names of birds. The machines would be grouped in classes, and each class would have a distinctive name. The names of seabirds would be given to seaplanes and the names of land birds to Army aeroplanes. Just as ships of war are grouped in the ‘county’ class, the ‘river’ class, and so on, the aeroplanes would be thrushes, blackbirds, tits, swallows, or sparrows, and the seaplanes redshanks, cormorants, herring-gulls, or guillemots.
Subscribe to The Spectator today for a quality of argument not found in any other publication. Get more Spectator for less – just £12 for 12 issues.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/how-to-name-an-aeroplane-1916/
|
en
| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/c2a1bcd209267ba95e68b0738808b75aa257c5bdcddd37951a95161fffd23e12.json
|
[
"Mary Keen",
"Nick Cohen",
"The Spectator",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T15:17:40 | null | 2016-08-04T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fthe-camerons-are-our-new-neighbours-should-we-throw-them-a-party%2F.json
|
http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/cam.jpg
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en
| null |
The Camerons are our new neighbours - should we throw them a party?
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
Q. David and Samantha Cameron, their family and two armed policemen have moved to the house opposite us. Do you think we should organise a small drinks party to introduce them to the neighbours — or just pretend that we haven’t noticed their arrival? My son has promised to remove his ‘Leave’ poster before we send out invitations.
— Name & address withheld
A. While your gesture may be well-intentioned, the reality is that the Camerons, like many successful couples in their late forties, are probably suffering from ‘new friends fatigue’. Do they really want to be introduced to another tranche based on their doorstep whose invitations will be more difficult to turn down? On the other hand, it is always cosy to know one’s immediate neighbours (and would be helpful for the security detail). Then the Camerons could easily work off all their neighbours in one return match at their own house. But do not make a direct approach. Slip a card through their door asking if they would like you to hold such a party in the first place.
Q. I am in my sixties and have a godson in his early teens whose mother, I fear, is making a misguided attempt to train him to be ‘charming’. When he first started to greet me with compliments on my appearance I was pleased, but now they have become formulaic and come across as, at best smooth and, at worst, patronising. I believe this charm offensive will backfire and it’s my duty to say so. But his mother is very defensive so I would not dare say anything to her. Should I tell my godson that this flattery cuts no ice with me, and nor will it with others who know they certainly don’t look as good as they once did?
—Name and address withheld
A. In many scenarios compliments are the very oil that drives a happy social engine. But their currency is devalued when implausible flattery is purveyed. Next time he greets you with a compliment, chuckle fondly as you reply, ‘Well, that’s exactly what John Smith said to me the other day and I replied, “At my age, I’d much rather you said ‘it’s lovely to see you’ or even ‘Thank goodness you’re here.’ Then I would know you were sincere.”’
Q. A barrister friend has been sent back a bundle of documents from a senior judge in a box file which also held a pair of blue underpants. Should he return them? Or might this prejudice any future appearances in front of the judge?
— Name and address withheld
A. To return the underpants would involve an inherent shifting of the social balance. Moreover, to be forever associated with someone’s pants might also shift the clarity of judgments being made. Therefore discretion should hold the day and your friend should do nothing.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/the-camerons-are-our-new-neighbours-should-we-throw-them-a-party/
|
en
| 2016-08-04T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/423b38d4983133427f1ac0e32f0eaf3764f9df7089d9870e7b3141f665b6823a.json
|
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] | 2016-08-27T22:50:47 | null | 2016-06-16T03:00:00 | null |
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en
| null |
Trump’s train wreck: how the Donald is derailing his own campaign
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
If you think the Conservative party is in a bad way over Europe, spare a thought for the Republicans of Washington DC. Their presidential candidate is Donald Trump, and he’s a nightmare. The party can’t stand him, he can’t stand the party, and somehow they’re supposed to win an election together. The omens don’t look good.
Even the influential Republicans who wish Trump well — and there aren’t many — can’t figure out how to get along with him. ‘I just have no idea how you get an idea into Trumpland,’ says Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, who is known as ‘the most powerful conservative in DC’. He adds, ‘In any campaign, the circle of trust shrinks as the campaign goes on. At this stage, Trump’s circle appears already to be very small. It is certainly opaque.’ One younger Republican puts it more bluntly: ‘Trump’s campaign is, like, so random! I mean who are they? And how is anyone supposed to work with them?’
The spectacular amateurism of the Trump campaign — and its undeniable success — distresses professional right-wingers. It threatens their livelihoods and triggers their snobbery. Whereas Clinton has a campaign staff of about 800, Trump has less than 100, and nobody who’s anybody has a clue who they are. Strategists and party loyalists mutter that, before he decided to Make America Great Again, Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s now notorious campaign manager, was running a branch of Quiznos, the fast-food joint. ‘Well, he’s running your party now,’ snaps back Daniel McCarthy, the independent-minded editor of the American Conservative.
The worst part, for elite Republicans, is that they know how beatable Hillary Clinton is. She’s only just won her fight for the Democratic nomination against that kooky 74-year-old socialist Bernie Sanders. People don’t like her. If the Grand Old Party could establish a modus operandi with the Trump campaign, the 2016 election could be theirs.
But members of the Republican National Committee find Trump so objectionable that they would rather not help him, and some of its officials have quit in disgust. A couple of Washington-based analysts who have worked for the Republicans tell me that RNC staff have set up separate departments to make sure the Trump campaign cannot access parts of their database. The worry is that The Donald will end up using their email lists to target customers for his businesses. Wouldn’t that be illegal, I ask. ‘Yeah, but would Trump care?’
Nothing is as it should be. The presumptive nominee is meant to become de facto leader of the party. But does Trump even want to run something he obviously despises? He’s still in wrecking-ball mode; the maverick outsider who tells the Republicans what losers they are even as he urges the party to unite behind him. He is not willing to play nice.
Take his latest exchange with Mitt Romney, the party’s last nominee. At the weekend, Romney suggested Trump’s takeover of his party was ‘breaking his heart’. Did The Donald empathise? Did he heck! He called Romney a ‘choker’ and added, ‘He ought to go into retirement… he’s wasting a lot of people’s time.’ Trump was also asked if he thought Jeb Bush, who in December was still favourite to be the Republican nominee, would back him. ‘Who the hell cares?’ he answered.
Republicans had thought that, having secured the nomination, Trump would transmogrify. Out would go the apocalyptic narcissist; in would come Donald the dealmaker.
That wasn’t just wishful thinking. Trump showed signs that he might turn into a more conventional — or at least less crazy — candidate. He hired Rick Wiley, a veteran party operator, as his national political director, to ease his relationships on Capitol Hill. He even used a teleprompter to make a speech, having spent months lambasting politicians for doing exactly that. Perhaps he’d listened to Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, who had told him that, in order to sound presidential, he should ‘use a script more often’.
Trump also made friendly overtures to-wards the Republican top brass. He rang Paul Ryan, speaker of the House of Representatives, and the two men had what Trump called a ‘very conciliatory’ conversation.
The Republicans, for their part, began to melt under the sudden glow of the Orange One’s geniality. In the course of a few days, Ryan went from being ‘just not ready’ to endorse Trump to saying that a President Trump would ‘improve people’s lives’. Various other grandees began backing him, too. Trump would tweet back his appreciation. The opportunistic old dog Newt Gingrich, clearly angling for a vice-presidential nomination, went so far as to compare Trump to Reagan. It would all have been quite sweet had it not been so disgusting.
Then, on 8 June, Clinton wrapped up the nomination, and the formidable Democratic electoral machine clicked into gear. President Obama promised to tour the country to support her campaign. Even Bernie Sanders vowed to ‘work as hard as he can to make sure that Donald Trump does not become president’. The fear among establishment Democrats, and the hope among the Trumpists, had been that Sanders supporters were more anti-establishment than pro-progressive. They would plump for an outsider like Trump ahead of Clinton, the ultimate insider. But now it seems certain that a majority of even Bernie’s more radical fans will hold their nose and vote for the ‘neo-liberal’ Hillary above Trump the ‘neofascist’. At a Sanders rally in Washington last Thursday, I asked people in the crowd if they could bring themselves to vote for Hillary. They all said yes, apart from one young man who insisted he would write ‘Sanders’ on the ballot. ‘Fuck her,’ he said. ‘But I’m not voting Trump.’
Meanwhile, The Donald was going off script. He fired Wiley, reportedly after he fell out with an ally of henchman Lewandow-ski. Trump then attacked a district court judge, Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University. Trump said that Curiel, because of his Mexican heritage, was biased against him. A fairly mild insult by Trump standards, yet one that proved sufficiently offensive to provoke a media storm. It also drew attention to Trump’s highly dodgy attempt to move into the education business and added to the general impression that The Donald is not just nasty but a bit of a crook.
Pundits everywhere denounced Trump as unpresidential and un–American. Republicans suddenly remembered that Trump was bad news. Paul Ryan, about 24 hours after officially endorsing him, described Trump’s remark as ‘the textbook definition of a racist comment’. Senator Mark Kirk, having declared his support for Trump, withdrew it. ‘Donald Trump does not have the temperament to command our military or our nuclear arsenal,’ he said. Newt Gingrich joined in, calling Trump’s outburst ‘in-excusable’.
Trump refused to apologise or backtrack, because he never does apologise or backtrack. He went on to TV to reiterate his position and ordered his campaign ‘surrogates’ to do the same. ‘Get over it,’ he said to Republicans who were upset, and he fell out publicly with Gingrich.
It’s not all that difficult to see why Trump feels he doesn’t have to conform to the establishment’s idea of what’s acceptable. He became the nominee by doing precisely the opposite. Why should he listen to the people he just thrashed at the ballot?
But that’s Trump’s problem. He won the Republican nomination in large part as a protest candidate against the Republican party. He needs to do something different to win the White House in November. As he never fails to point out, he won more primary votes than any GOP candidate in history. But he neglects to mention that he also had more votes cast against him than any candidate in history. His divisiveness, which helped him against the fissiparous Republicans, will harm him against the more unified Democrats.
Trump’s great strengths are his unpredictability and his viciousness. He keeps the public entertained. His rudeness thrills, and his contempt for the lords of the Republican party delights almost everyone. But his refusal to play the politics game might end up hurting him. The Trump-generated judge furore, for instance, took attention away from two big stories that should have hurt the Democrats. Days earlier, a jobs report had come out showing that in President Obama’s final year, employment had waned. Then the FBI announced that it would expand its investigation into Hillary’s illegal handling of emails. A skilful campaigner would have leapt on these stories. Trump managed to heap all the opprobrium on to himself.
As Grover Norquist says, ‘“Not Hillary” is a strong campaign to run. But whenever you get distracted from “Not Hillary”, you lose focus.’ Norquist is not altogether gloomy about Trump’s prospects. He says there is time for Trump to unite his party. ‘But — how shall I say this? — he needs to learn quickly.’
But does Trump want to learn? Does he even want to be president? Mark Singer, the New Yorker writer and author of Trump and Me, says, ‘Donald Trump is a compulsive liar. The biggest lie of all is that he wants to be president. The circumstantial evidence indicates otherwise. He has a bare-bones campaign organisation, insufficient funds, and an unwillingness to restrain himself from picking ugly, gratuitous fights.’
Singer points out that, three months ago, a disillusioned former communications director recounted how Trump’s original goal had been to finish second in the state-by-state primaries. His campaign is a ‘con’, Singer concludes, an exercise in ego satisfaction or a publicity stunt that took on a life of its own.
In a bar near Capitol Hill, a grumpy Republican operative sees the question differently: ‘Asking if Trump wants to be president implies a consistency of wants, which in Trump’s case is distinctly lacking.’
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/trumps-train-wreck-how-the-donald-is-derailing-his-own-campaign/
|
en
| 2016-06-16T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/55d28edd3b671c6a3e3b0626439837e94462e2e774f323ccdffc4a170eb77adf.json
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http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/wales.jpg
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en
| null |
Wales is not an emergency - it’s worse than that
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
On Monday 25 July we climbed Cader Idris. No particular reason except a free Monday and a memory of what a fine mountain it looked when, many years ago and heading for the north Wales coast, I skirted this massive ridged hunk of green and black rising from oak forests. Some hills have a strong sense of their own identity and Cader Idris impresses itself on all who see it. It’s a walk, really, not a climb, but at just under 3,000 feet a big, steep walk, taking four or five hours up and down.
So we set out from Derbyshire at seven and were there in three-and-a-half hours. In a little sunshine and some misty drizzle we left the car and followed the trail. Our route was to be circular, clockwise, right over the top.
Cader Idris must be, after Snowdon, Wales’s most climbed serious mountain and even on a dull Monday there were other groups on the path. It’s a challenge to maintain public access while avoiding footpath erosion, but the National Trust are making a determined effort, with thousands of roughly but beautifully built steps using great hunks of natural stone — and evidence of more to come in the shape of helicopter drops of hundreds more bags of rocks. Massive chunks of black slate have been laid across the stream as a bridge. The overall effect is of tremendous but sensitive labours that do not intrude on a wild and natural walk.
You start through oak woods with always the sound of waterfalls and the rushing stream in your ears, you emerge into open grass and heather (all in pink and purple flower now) and a striking diversity of mosses, lichens, flowers and ferns. Slowly the Welsh hillscape opens up beneath you; great flashes of bright quartz streak the dark rock, you circle a dark tarn far below, you begin to see flashes of the Irish sea, then undulate between two summits and pick your way back down. Strenuous (I found it difficult to descend stairs the following day) but I’m 67 in a week or so, and no athlete any more — and I didn’t find it too tough, and managed without those detestable walking poles.
And the whole day reminded me of how much I love Wales, yet how Wales always leaves me a little bit sad.
Some cups of tea at the base, then we drove on, through lovely valleys and miles and miles of hill and forest. I struggle to capture in words the particular quality of the landscape of Wales, and artists have struggled to capture it in paint. The country, only a couple of hundred miles from Brittany, ought to be famous among hikers from continental Europe, yet I remember a group of young French friends, keen outdoorsy types, supposing there was nothing worthwhile until you got to the Lake District and then — vivid in their imhaginations — the Scottish Highlands. The rough and wild romance of Scottish mountains is easily pictured; the soft sweep and grace of the English lakes is its own brand. But Wales? This landscape has stature too, but its character, like its rock, is dark and strangely messy, tormented: a tangled spirit.
Sir Kyffin Williams’s mountainscapes come closest, yet I don’t quite like his paintings. There’s something under the skin of Welsh hills that troubles. Rich in iron, the landscape of my African childhood showed red where torn. Gentle greys underlie the gentle greens of the Lake District. The chalky English South Downs show milky white when gashed. Wales bleeds black.
After an hour we came to a sizeable town called Blaenau Ffestiniog. This was once the centre of Britain’s slate mining, the town’s product still on roofs all over England (and Australia, where slate went out as ballast). Blaenau Ffestiniog now looks as though situated in the middle of an enormous explosion. The hills around it are shattered and strewn with slate rubble. Mysterious brick chimneys poke out of the hillsides, and broken slides, hundreds of feet long, claw down the mountain — once used to tip the slate into the valley.
This town felt like a real place, full of chapels, its bleak terraced architecture, miners’ dwellings, leached of colour like a black-and-white photograph, imparting a nice integrity of urban style — not least because little seems to have been built since.
But so poor. Few shops, and the few you see so shabby. I checked house prices on the website of the estate agent, Bob Parry, whose many boards I saw. You can buy a perfectly good small terraced house for £35,000.
I’ve since done a bit of work on statistics. I won’t bore you with numbers, but of the four countries in the Union, Wales — neglected by its low-calibre Labour politicians, overlooked at Westminster and consistently out-shouted by Scotland — is much the poorest: the poorest nation in western Europe and at present the most dependent on EU funds.
When I was an MP and still dreaming of being prime minister, I resolved (patronisingly no doubt) that when the great day arrived I would try to do something for Wales. I still think we should. How about making the whole principality a tax-holiday enterprise zone, as was done for London Docklands, Liverpool and Canary Wharf? It’s not as if we raise much revenue from Wales anyway: substantially less per head than England and Scotland; less even than Northern Ireland.
Wales is not an emergency — it’s worse than that: it’s chronic. There’s nothing wrong with the Welsh, as their success outside their own country proves, but for reasons entirely of economic and industrial history this has become a stubbornly low-performing part of the UK that isn’t big enough or noisy enough to sting our politics into action.
On Tuesday morning, after a good night in a pleasant little hotel in Dolwyddelan, I took the train to Llandudno Junction. How, I wondered, had they managed to keep the beautiful Conwy Valley railway open? Ah. To take the nuclear waste away from the Trawsfynydd Magnox power station (now closed) that Whitehall plonked on a beauty spot on the Welsh coast. Poor old Wales.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/wales-is-not-an-emergency-its-worse-than-that/
|
en
| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/914cbcdec4e0dcd235cd0fc526144b275c5c132f3c2467b1179e1c9c843a41e6.json
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Syria’s warlords were nobodies. Now they are rich men with sex slaves
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
The other day I was speaking to a Kurdish journalist who was held in Isis captivity for ten months. He and a colleague had had the bad luck to run into an Isis checkpoint in Syria. ‘How do you perform the midday prayer?’ they were asked after their car was waved to a halt. Unable to answer — they were not believers — they were immediately beaten around the head. Then one of the jihadis from the checkpoint was put into the back of their car and they were told to drive to the Isis base. The fighter had a pistol pointed at them the whole time, which was superfluous because he was also wearing a suicide belt. ‘Make a move and I’ll detonate myself,’ he said. ‘We’ll all die together.’
Paul Wood and Lara Prendergast discuss the Syrian crisis:
At the base, the emir, or commander, was so delighted to have two infidel prisoners that he got on to his radio to spread the good news. ‘All units, all units,’ he gleefully proclaimed: ‘We have two journalists. Thanks be to God.’ He ordered them to be handcuffed, blindfolded and taken to jail. It was the start of an ordeal of constant beatings and death threats that came to an end ten months later when the Kurds arranged a prisoner swap. Some time after they arrived in the cell, a new inmate joined them. It was the emir who had ordered their detention. It seems he had been declaring rich local Muslims to be infidels in order to steal their money — but had overplayed his hand and was now in his own jail.
The emir was a Syrian in his late twenties. When the revolution started he had volunteered for the Free Syrian Army. Next, he joined the al-Qaeda group in Syria, the Nusra Front. Finally, he defected to Isis, because they were closer to God, and because they gave him a car and a house. He spent his time in the cells abusing the other prisoners as infidels but mostly ‘all he wanted to talk about was girls’, said the Kurdish journalist. The emir’s story has many familiar elements: the journey from the FSA, through Nusra, to Isis; the greed and corruption of many in the revolution, including those who profess religious motives; and the risible hypocrisy — hilariously exposed by the emir’s sex-obsessed prison talk — of those wrapping themselves in a black flag to dictate the morals of others.
Many Islamic State fighters joined up because Isis were the strongest, richest and most successful group. But now that they look like losers, the defections are gathering pace, hastening the collapse of the ‘Caliphate’ predicted in this magazine in January and which may be starting to happen now. The latest loss is the important town of Manbij. The battle is still going on, but commanders of the advancing Kurdish forces say Isis fighters are shaving off their beards and trying to slip away among groups of refugees. Some have even been captured dressed as women. Only a month ago, according to local activists, Isis had publicly executed a whole family, including two children, for trying to flee.
Of course, even after the caliphate is gone, the so-called Islamic State’s jihad against the West will continue. In fact, as I wrote here in January, its death throes will be marked by more killing in the West, though it seems that the recent horrific attacks in France and Germany were the work of (possibly deranged) individuals, and only later claimed by the Isis leadership. Syria’s war without end will go on, too, because Isis occupies only one corner of a crowded battlefield. Earlier this year, a think-tank produced a handy graphic designed to explain the Syrian conflict. Different coloured lines showed who’s killing whom, who’s arming which side, and whose money keeps the war ticking along. It looked like the world’s most complicated cat’s cradle; it was also reminiscent of a circular firing squad.
The conflict grows steadily more complicated. Take the American offer to Russia of an alliance to carry out joint bombing raids against Nusra, that is to bomb al-Qaeda in Syria. Nusra then cunningly changed their name and announced they were severing the link to al-Qaeda. Many US officials think that is a con. But if the Americans do go ahead and bomb, it will be another example of the United States literally fighting on both sides of the war. Russian military sources recently said one of their helicopters in Syria had been shot down by an American TOW missile. It was supposedly fired by Isis — if so, it’s not clear how they got hold of it — but any of the rebel groups might have launched it. Russia is killing them in large numbers, along with even larger numbers of civilians, as part of its effort to keep President Assad in power.
American policy is still, officially, to depose President Assad. But if they join Russia in targeting the most effective anti-regime rebels, the group formerly known as Nusra, then the Russians will have more bombs left over to drop on the other rebels, the ones the Americans support. The madness extends further. The US airstrikes support the Kurdish militia in Syria, the YPG, because it is the most effective force against Isis. Yet the YPG is in a tacit alliance with the regime, and has found itself in skirmishes with the Arab rebels backed by the Americans. Both are now in a race to occupy territory vacated by Isis fighters as they retreat in northern Syria. And as the US-backed YPG moves through the north, it has come under artillery fire from Turkey, America’s Nato ally. Meanwhile, in the fight against Isis in Iraq, the US finds itself acting as the air force for Shia militias funded and directed by Iran.
It is not just the US that suffers from strategic incoherence. For years, Turkey let Isis keep safehouses and operate rat-lines for volunteers and supplies across its Syrian border. Isis were fighting the Kurds and Turkey’s logic, presumably, was that the jihadis would keep Kurdish nationalism in check. But now Isis suicide bombers are blowing themselves up in Turkey and there may be thousands of jihadi ‘sleepers’ in the country, according to one intelligence source. The Kurds in Syria have anyway managed to establish something that looks very much like their own state, encouraging a resurgence of the bitter conflict between Turkey and its Kurds across the border. (After last month’s failed coup, the Turkish military and security services are now occupied with internal matters rather than their fight with Isis or the Kurds.)
Starting, or escalating, a war with Turkey made no sense at all from the Islamic State’s point of view. Isis is believed to have carried out five to seven attacks in Turkey. The lesson of Afghanistan, and many other conflicts, is that it is almost impossible to defeat an insurgent group that has a rear safe area — yet this is exactly what Isis has denied itself in bringing the war to Turkish soil. It made no sense, either, for Isis to sacrifice so many of its fighters to the battle with Nusra. They have almost identical ideologies — indeed they were one organisation before they split — yet their side-war has often been bloody enough to overshadow the struggle with the regime.
Nusra, as it used to call itself, is coming out on top. According to some reports it has gained 3,000 to 4,000 recruits in northern Syria since spring. This is part of the reason the US proposed an attack, though it’s less than a year since the ex-CIA director and Afghanistan commander General David Petraeus was arguing that elements of Nusra could be peeled off to fight Isis alongside the Americans. If the US bombs now, that is likely to drive Nusra back to al-Qaeda.
The other big beneficiary of the current mess is President Assad. Increasingly, there are moves to rehabilitate him as the alternative to rule by the jihadis. For a long time it has been an article of faith among the dwindling numbers of the ‘moderate’ opposition that Assad incubated the jihadi movement, creating the enemy he needed to unite his own people and win international support. This was in fact exactly what had happened, the commander of one of the biggest Salafi rebel groups in Syria, told me once. He had been in prison before the uprising. He and his cellmates all went on to important leadership positions in Isis, Nusra, and other jihadi groups. They were all freed within weeks of street protests against the regime getting under way.
Some say all this is America’s fault. Firstly, at the start of the conflict, President Obama declared that Assad should go, encouraging many in the uprising to think they had a superpower ally and so victory was inevitable. Secondly, the US then failed to intervene decisively — letting Saudi and Kuwaiti donors put their imprint on the emerging armed groups. People in rebel-held areas did turn to the jihadis in 2013 when the Americans failed to bomb the regime, as President Obama had threatened after the chemical attacks outside Damascus. But the character of the armed uprising was always Islamist, or at least Islamic. The battle cry of every single armed group I met in about a dozen trips inside Syria was not ‘Democracy’ but ‘God is great’. This is one reason why a US training scheme produced ‘only four or five’ rebel fighters despite spending half a billion dollars, as an embarrassed general admitted to Congress last year. (Yes, those figures are correct.)
The US could not have changed the nature of the uprising, though it could perhaps have nudged it in a more moderate direction. This is clearly not going to happen while Obama sees out the last months of his presidency —but even a more engaged US president would struggle with the forces driving the conflict. All sides in the war have been corrupted and degraded by fighting it. Last month there was a report that the US-backed Noureddine Zinki Brigade in Aleppo had beheaded a 12-year-old boy in front of cheering bystanders. The child was said to have been captured while fighting for a pro-regime militia.
Syria’s agony will go on, not just because of big power politics but, more importantly, because so many rebel leaders had nothing — were nothing — before the war and now have everything. One brigade commander made bricks in the sun for a living and now drives a BMW. Two Yazidi sisters told me that the ‘emir’ who bought them as sex slaves had been the village odd job man, who used to beg their father for work. The emir who captured the Kurdish journalist may have ended up in jail, but there are many more like him, for whom war is a business. And business is good.
Paul Wood has spent four years covering the Syrian war for the BBC.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/syrias-warlords-were-nobodies-now-they-are-rich-men-with-sex-slaves/
|
en
| 2016-08-04T00:00:00 |
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en
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Peggy Guggenheim, collector of genius
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
She had come a very long way from the shtetl, but Marguerite ‘Peggy’ Guggenheim was still the poor relation of her fabulously wealthy family. Although these things are, of course, relative. It was her uncle Solomon, enriched by mining, who first made the family’s name. Peggy’s father sank with the Titanic in 1912. Eventually Solomon’s museum, a Frank Lloyd Wright design as magnificent as it was absurd, became a New York landmark. Peggy never much cared for it, so she built her own elsewhere.
Guggenheim was no one’s idea of a great beauty, but possessed enough lust, fortune and ambition to compensate. She moved to France just as traffic on the New York–Paris axis was becoming the standard model of the history of modern art. Here she met Man Ray, Brancusi and Marcel Duchamp. In this threesome were several of the germs of modernism: a clever photo-impresario, an idiot–savant primitive and a genius-charlatan. She also met Samuel Beckett, with whom she soon spent a day and a night in bed, examining intellectual postures and drinking champagne.
Next, she conquered London, or at least Cork Street, opening a gallery here in 1938. It failed financially, so she pondered a museum in Paris, but Hitler intervened and she returned to New York, where the ‘Art of This Century’ gallery opened in 1941. It was in that year that she married the versatile surrealist Max Ernst. By the end of the decade, she was incubating Jackson Pollock, whom she found working as a carpenter on her uncle’s museum site.
Guggenheim was a collector of genius. At one point she made it her business to buy a proper painting every day, and she acquired a personal collection to humble most national museums. Indeed, the reason the Tate has such a feeble collection of mainstream modernism is that its negotiations to acquire Guggenheim’s collection failed.
Her collecting of men was at least as industrious as her collecting of art. Once, wearing an Yves Tanguy earring in one ear and an Alexander Calder in the other (to demonstrate a nice equivocation between surrealism and abstraction), she was asked how many husbands had she had. The answer came: ‘You mean my own, or other women’s?’ Gore Vidal described her as a Henry James heroine with balls.
During her collecting campaigns Guggenheim bedded, by her own estimate, over a thousand men and acquired more than 40 museum-quality Picassos: her voracity in matters of culture and sex made Alma Mahler look like a timid provincial. But fame was always the spur: in her autobiography, art is not discussed until near the halfway point.
Her collection was eventually installed in her Grand Canal-side home, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, near the Accademia. It opened to the public in 1951 and has become one of Venice’s most popular attractions. Modern art never had a better witness, nor mistress, than Peggy Guggenheim.
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/peggy-guggenheim-collector-of-genius/
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en
| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/30115df17fc77bbd7ce8105b936efddd14d37e6b0ba3eca339bdca64c784881f.json
|
[
"Kevin O'Sullivan",
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"Gavin Mortimer",
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"Alex Massie",
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"Ariane Sherine",
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"James Chilton"
] | 2016-08-26T15:17:28 | null | 2016-08-04T03:00:00 | null |
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http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/iStock_3761900_LARGE.jpg
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en
| null |
What happened when I was charged with a hate crime
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www.spectator.co.uk
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For 20 months, I stood accused of a hate crime: homophobically motivated common assault. The British Transport Police pursued my case with extraordinary zeal. So too did the Crown Prosecution Service. I was plunged into a world where common sense withered and died.
The nightmare began when I was travelling home to London after a funeral in Kent. I was chatting with a friend on the train when a strange man started shouting at us from across the carriage. ‘Shut up!’ he yelled before accusing us of conducting a sexist and misogynistic conversation at high volume. This was, in his opinion, ‘offensive’.
Brendan O’Neill and Kevin O’Sullivan discuss the real hate crime scandal:
We were bemused. Talking at a normal volume for a private conversation, we were in fact discussing a male colleague, admittedly using the occasional swear word. Jabbing his finger at us, our accuser insisted we were using derogatory language about a woman. We weren’t. I suggested that he might like to stop his tirade. But he carried on screaming at us. When he went to get up, I decided to defend myself by trying to keep him in his seat. I thought it would be safer that way. My friend was 66 and not well. At this point our accuser leapt to his feet and punched me in the face. A playground grappling session ensued. I’m no fighter and nor was he. It was a non-event, handbags. No one was hurt.
Someone had dialled 999, the guard arrived and I returned to my seat. The entire altercation lasted about 30 seconds. The train halted at Tunbridge Wells, a police officer took our statements separately and informed me that my accuser didn’t want to press charges. Nor did I. He got off the train, I continued my journey and that was the end of it. Or so I thought.
A day later a British Transport Police officer rang my adversary — who turned out to be a university lecturer. For reasons I will never know, this call led to a change of heart by my accuser. The BTP subsequently interviewed me, and before I knew what had happened I was being accused of homophobic abuse and assault. I was stunned. I had allegedly interrupted the man’s attempts to make a phone call by asking him if he was ringing his gay lover.
This allegation could have ruined my life. Had I been found guilty, as a television critic and pundit who appears on the box and the radio regularly, my career would have been over.
The man had no evidence to support his claim. On my side, I had several witnesses who had heard nothing of the sort, plus CCTV footage that showed our altercation had been no more than an insignificant skirmish. Still, the police investigated my case with ardour. The investigating officers’ florid report to the CPS made it sound as if I’d beaten the hell out of the guy. It was nonsense. Nevertheless, charges were duly pressed.
During the long and stressful wait for my trial, it became clear to me that it wasn’t the non-assault they were interested in. It was the homophobic aspect that had mysteriously emerged 24 hours after the incident.
For the record, my accuser’s sexuality had never entered my mind and, it transpired, he wasn’t gay. But these allegations provided the British Transport Police with a potential opportunity to notch up an all-important statistic pointing to how wonderfully tough they are on hate crime. Zero tolerance. Every perceived slight is registered as a crime — even in cases such as mine where the evidence is based only on the accuser’s own account.
The court case itself, which happened last month, was a bizarre affair. The CCTV footage proved that I would have had no reason to interrupt my accuser’s call because he didn’t make one. Three gay friends took the day off work to assure the magistrates that I was not a homophobe. But the CPS’s prosecuting lawyer insisted that I was a hate criminal. The magistrates, in their wisdom, disagreed and concluded that I had acted in self-defence ‘with restraint’. My elation was tempered by the £15,000 I’d been forced to spend on hiring a legal team. I will be very lucky if I manage to reclaim a fraction of that sum.
I hope that what happened to me is rare. But somehow I doubt it. The director of public prosecutions Alison Saunders — who runs the CPS — has announced that new documents will soon be released to explain to a grateful public the definition of hate crime and to encourage everyone to go straight to the police.
Explaining why she wants to see more hate-crime offenders charged, Ms Saunders said: ‘We would like to see it higher because I do think that these cases are not reported enough.’ How can she know that? Is more than a thousand reports a week really too few? How many would suit her? Two thousand? Ten thousand? A million?
I cannot speak scientifically, but from my own experience I felt that I was in the grip of a kind of madness. Now that the pool of 1970s celebrities to arrest for historic sex crimes is running dry, the police and the CPS seem to have climbed aboard a new bandwagon.
The laws and guidance for prosecutors against homophobia, trans-phobia, racism and religious and disability prejudice are well-intentioned. But unless enforced with fairness and a sense of justice they represent a growing menace. Nottinghamshire Police have announced their intention to turn wolf-whistling into a misogynistic hate crime. Isn’t that just a tad over the top? Don’t coppers have better things to do?
For one year and eight months I had a ringside seat at the edge of insanity. A pathetic, tiny scuffle that I did not start escalated into a drawn-out legal battle. Hate crime. Be careful, it could happen to you.
Kevin O’Sullivan was formerly television critic of the Sunday Mirror. He now runs the YouTheCritic website at TVKev.co.uk.
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/what-happened-when-i-was-charged-with-a-hate-crime/
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en
| 2016-08-04T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/3d7fa69b1bcd0c2004c5b927ed9fd48ceaa58e14832bbfbbecce972420c56e63.json
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[
"Kate Webb",
"Sean O Brien"
] | 2016-08-26T13:12:51 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
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Sean O’Brien explores a very English form of sadomasochism
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At first glance Sean O’Brien’s new novel appears to focus on England’s devotion to the past. Even its title carries the sense and long-sustained rhythm of things going on as before. As if to underscore the point, Once Again Assembled Here is set in the autumn of 1968, a year often portrayed in fiction to describe a revolt into the new, but which in O’Brien’s novel merely serves as a reminder that whatever ideas were being cooked up elsewhere, here tradition and continuity would prevail.
Here, in this case, is Blake’s, a jingoistic public school on the outskirts of a city still marked by the Luftwaffe’s bombing raids. In the peculiar way in which enthusiasm for England often turns on the degree to which one is excluded from its centre, this gloomy provincial establishment — stuffed with military historians, minor poets nursing grievances and an army of boys acting out war games — sees itself as a bastion of the country.
Stephen Maxwell, a retired history teacher still living in the school’s grounds — a man of marked literary pretensions — has been commissioned to write the second volume of the school’s history. In an Epilogue from 2010, he warns us that the secret ‘manuscript’ we are about to read is not that dreary tome, but his shadow journal — a darkly entertaining thriller of secret goings-on, treason and murder. Maxwell confesses from the outset that he is guilty of having a hand in the murder and of maintaining the cover up all these years. However, his many references to Boys’ Own adventure stories, tales of espionage and war, and in particular to Graham Greene, give us a clue not only to this manqué novelist’s imaginative aesthetic, but to the moral wriggle-room the English like to afford themselves: Maxwell’s style gives him the leeway to portray himself as a kind of hero, even as he admits to being a culprit.
This moral and intellectual murkiness is reflected in the novel’s landscape. The autumnal Blake’s is often wreathed in fog or mist, and Maxwell’s sojourns into the war-scarred city are by night, when his literary cast of mind picks out the frost glinting off rubbled buildings or, from high windows, stars glimmering above the dark streets below. The high windows — one of several Larkinesque touches — belong to various lovers. Maxwell is far from rebellious, but his penchant for married women repeatedly gets him into trouble, leaving him with a reputation for minor disgraces, for not getting on board. Then, rising out of the tedium and gloom, the worship of war dead and unthinking obedience to authority, something with its own sharp glint of fascination catches the imagination of Blake’s pupils.
Encouraged by the aristocratic Rackham — once a German collaborator, now a quasi-Poundian poet and charismatic English teacher — they stage a mock election, mirroring the by-election taking place in the city. Maxwell’s failure to act means that, as in the city, a fascist candidate is fielded, and with incredible rapidity the atmosphere shifts from boredom to menace: a fight breaks out; a fire is set; a Jewish boy’s life is threatened.
As it transpires, for a novel about the past, O’Brien’s book is extraordinarily prescient. It’s impossible to read of Rackham’s sense of immunity without thinking of Tony Blair and the Iraq War. Nor fail to hear David Cameron’s recent tirade against Jeremy Corbyn, when Blake’s headmaster exhorts Maxwell: ‘Resign, man. Do it today.’ In 2010, O’Brien discussed the political history of this phrase — from Oliver Cromwell to Leo Amery — in Journey to the Interior, a monograph on the idea of Englishness in contemporary poetry. In this prose work, as in Once Again…, it’s the coercive clubbableness of the English that O’Brien dissects — an establishment so keen to re-enact tradition and so punitive to anyone less than ecstatic about its continuation.
Because of this, at Blake’s even someone as ambivalent as Maxwell poses a threat. But just as the pupils are excited by Rackham’s demagoguery, his poetry of blood and soil, so Maxwell is emotionally tethered to Blake’s, finding it hard to extricate himself from the school or from his affair with Rackham’s striking (in both senses of the word) sister. As the initials of his name suggest, sado-masochism runs deep in the English psyche.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/sean-obrien-explores-a-very-english-form-of-sadomasochism/
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/8c35845ae7297e5bd63bdc1dc37f6a416cce4595e51826e9390ef87f103bf620.json
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[
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] | 2016-08-26T13:08:18 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
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http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/Notes-on-pic.jpg
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en
| null |
A beautiful place to die: Mussolini at Lake Como
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
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If your destiny is to be shot dead with your mistress, where better than Lake Como, which, in the words of Shelley, ‘exceeds anything I ever beheld in beauty, with the exception of the Arbutus Islands in Killarney’?
It was in Giulino di Mezzegra, a tiny village in the mountains above the lake, that a handful of communist partisans executed the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress Claretta Petacci on 28 April 1945. The Duce was 61 and his amante 33 — two years older than his daughter Edda.
The partisans loaded their corpses and those of other Fascist leaders — executed separately down by the lake — on to a lorry and drove the 70 miles to Milan where they dumped them in Piazzale Loreto. A huge crowd soon gathered to defile the corpses, especially those of Mussolini and Petacci, which were later strung upside down from the girders of a petrol station in the square. Two days later, in Berlin, Hitler took the Roman option and committed suicide.
But Mussolini — once described by Winston Churchill as ‘the Roman genius’ — had had no intention of doing anything of the sort. He was en route for the Swiss border at the northern end of Lake Como with a small German escort when chance or God intervened to seal his fate.
Mussolini had left both his wife, Rachele, and his mistress behind in Milan. But -Petacci could not live without the Duce and had caught up with him in Como.
On its way to the border, in the village of Dongo, Mussolini’s convoy ran into a flimsy roadblock manned by a dozen or so partisans who had come down from their mountain hideout, desperate for a smoke. The Germans — anxious to get to Switzerland — agreed to let the partisans search the vehicles.
Putting on a pair on sunglasses, Mussolini disguised himself as a German corporal and sat with the German troops. But one of the partisans recognised his profile from the propaganda posters plastered on walls the length and breadth of Italy.
A few months later, having lost the general election in July 1945, Churchill went on a painting holiday to Lake Como — now super-fashionable with the likes of George Clooney, who owns a lakeside palazzo. Italy, it is worth mentioning, is a nation of conspiracy theorists — perhaps because here in Italy the conspiracy theorist is sometimes right. So, Mussolini is killed on Lake Como and a couple of months later Churchill just happens to come to Lake Como to paint? Come off it!
Thus an entire new sector of the Italian conspiracy industry was born — dedicated to proving that Churchill came to Lake Como (he came back in 1947 too, and would return at least once more) for altogether murkier reasons.
First, the conspiracy theorists say, Churchill ordered the execution of -Mussolini, which was carried out by British secret agents. Then he came to Como to destroy or recover the evidence. His motive? A secret compromising correspondence between Churchill and the Duce in which he is said to have made all sorts of embarrassing offers to keep Mussolini out of the war. Not a shred of hard evidence has ever come to light — though plenty of forged letters and other documents have. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I? I’m not an Italian.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/a-beautiful-place-to-die-mussolini-at-lake-como/
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/8c70edcea23cd3e182886c65df140db6fd89b9b04293d857ff46ca827b4b4cad.json
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[
"The Spectator",
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en
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Coming to terms with trench warfare, 1916
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www.spectator.co.uk
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From ‘The bed-rock of war’, The Spectator, 26 August 1916: As a rule in war the bowling has a great advantage over the batting, but it happens that the newest fashion in combat has given a great temporary advantage to the defence. To break a trench line which rests like that of the Germans on the sea and on a neutral country is a task demanding almost superhuman efforts, and yet it must be attempted and accomplished unless we wish the war to drag on for another three years, drag on until attrition has done its dire work, and done it, alas, on us and our allies almost as much as on our enemies.
Subscribe to The Spectator today for a quality of argument not found in any other publication. Get more Spectator for less – just £12 for 12 issues.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/coming-to-terms-with-trench-warfare-1916/
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/1e678ab3afb5406d7b7a734278348b43d0bdff86f7defa601b6e364e370c3441.json
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"Peter Jones",
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] | 2016-08-26T13:09:42 | null | 2016-08-18T03:00:00 | null |
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en
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Why a Roman might have intervened to help the Brits in India
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
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Because no country can interfere in another’s legal system, there is little the UK can do to help the six Britons jailed in India for possessing ‘illegal’ firearms which were, in fact, fully authorised for the protection of shipping against piracy. Where David Cameron failed, Boris might try an appeal based on ius gentium, ‘the law of nations’.
Cicero was the first Roman to discuss the idea. He talked of societas (‘the state of association between people’) having the ‘widest possible application, uniting every man with every other man’. The jurist Gaius (c. AD 150) put it in legal terms like this: ‘Every people governed by statutes and customs observes partly its own peculiar law and partly law common to all mankind. The former… is called ius civile as being the special law of that state (civitas); but the law which ‘natural reason’ establishes among all mankind is observed equally by every people and is called ius gentium as being the law applied by all nations.’ The former is right because it is the law; the latter is the law because it is right.
This law of ‘natural reason’ was called ius naturale. For Cicero, ius naturale derived from divine reason i.e. the principle of ‘order’ which governed the physical world and gave man his own power of reasoning. It therefore explained the source of ius gentium and made the two ‘laws’ effectively identical. But Romans never developed this idea to embrace the notion of a higher law which could override state law, though Sophocles, for example, had partly based his tragedy Antigone on the clash between the two. Romans never attempted to make the idea of ius gentium internationally justiciable.
Had they done so, they might have returned to Quintus Scaevola’s formula, quoted by Cicero, of the importance of transactions being governed ex fide bona, ‘in good faith’. In India, a country whose legal system is riddled with corruption, a little fides bona would go a very long way.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/why-a-roman-might-have-intervened-to-help-the-brits-in-india/
|
en
| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/0408a2c46226e98eb39f931ed691789f2cec60e26a2e4c9a332b850d7935ddfe.json
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Team GB is a near-perfect post-Brexit ideal
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Throughout our holiday, reports from Rio rippled in — last thing at night, first thing in the morning — a regular golden swoosh of heartwarming news. We are only an averagely sporty family, but these Olympics made us all happier. Across the media, there’s been a mild controversy about whether the remarkable achievements of Team GB say anything bigger about Britain — ‘We always punch above our weight’ — or very little; ‘Sport is sport and only sport, and that’s why we like it.’ But of course there are wider lessons. First, there was real, big long-term investment provided by the National Lottery and the foresight of Sir John Major. Second, the unsentimental and even ‘unfair’ way this money was channelled by Sport UK. Then, as every gold winner has pointed out in post-event interviews, a huge amount of tight, disciplined teamwork engaged everyone from parents to sports scientists, groundsmen and cleaners. Finally, of course, came the talent and graft of the athletes. As we wrestle with our post-Brexit destiny, that seems a near-perfect national ideal. Imagine a Britain which had seriously invested for the long term, focusing only on industries and technologies where we were likely to be world-class; and where ‘company’ was used in the old sense of being a tight, committed team of friends and allies working together for a goal many years in the future. It would be a Britain shorn of short-term political lurches in funding and direction, whose corporate leaders had a lively sense of how much they owed to their teams and didn’t treat themselves as Medici princelings. It would be a Britain which didn’t struggle doggedly with the things we don’t do very well, but which focused on we’re good at. Rio 2016 has been a massive national success. To treat it as a happy summer glow would be a woeful waste of inspiration. (Though apparently we are investing less now in community sport: this may make the glow rather less golden in 15 or 20 years’ time.)
I had my annual fortnight away partly in Croatia. The great walled city of Dubrovnik has become a jostling human pâté composed of tens of thousands of decanted cruise-liner passengers and just as many Game of Thrones fans, trying to spot where various deeds of devilment and libidinous misbehaviour were filmed. The sweaty, squelching and wobbling press of damp T-shirts and vicious selfie sticks filled every street and alleyway. It was a cultural mosh pit. Going on cruises has, I’m told, become the biggest growth area in leisure and tourism. But are the cruise companies, who make their living by dropping hundreds of thousands of passengers at exotic locations, properly treating the islands and cities they rely on? From the Caribbean to Croatia, their clients pour off city-sized vessels, file into the squares and churches of real cities, and then promptly return aboard for their next meal and prepaid drink. They don’t seem to leave much behind in the way of cash. To me, it doesn’t seem fair.
That said, Croatia seemed remarkably safe, happy and prosperous — a reminder of how Greece used to be, with Italianate touches. Why remarkably? In Dubrovnik, only a tiny photographic exhibition tucked away in the basement of the Civic Palace bore witness to the 1991–92 bombardment of the city by the Yugoslav National Army during that spectacularly vicious war. It was less than a generation ago. The breakup of Yugoslavia is reckoned to have caused the deaths of around 140,000 people. In the jewel of the Adriatic, 88 civilians died and the shell damage was modest, but across the former country entire cities were razed. In Srebrenica, 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred. For the first time since the defeat of the Nazis, concentration camps appeared in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of refugees were created. So much, so well-known. But what a restorative change a couple of decades of economic growth and prosperity makes! Not everywhere, of course: Bosnian Srebrenica remains unhealed. Croatia, however, enjoys a gloss of safe-seeming, almost smug good cheer. If such a turnaround can be achieved so quickly, it makes one wonder about other still-tormented parts of the world. In 30 years’ time, might even Raqqa be quiet, rebuilt and happy? Will tourists once again visit Roman Libya? Historians crouch beadily over disaster. That’s their job. But sometimes I think we could do with histories of healing, too.
I managed to see almost everything in Dubrovnik except Christ’s nappy, which is apparently held in the cathedral. We shouldn’t assume, however, that this great city is popular everywhere else in Croatia. One man I talked to was bitter about its history of buying off the Ottomans. ‘So they didn’t take away their men and boys, just ours.’ She was talking of course about the Janissaries, the Turkish troops composed of abducted Christian boys in the 14th and 15th centuries. The smaller the country, the longer the memory.
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| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
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Films aren’t better because they bomb - whatever the BBC’s poll says
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The BBC has published a list of the 100 best films of the 21st century, compiled after consulting academics, cinema curators and critics — and, as you’d expect, it’s almost comically dull. The list contains numerous turgid meditations on the spiritual void at the heart of western civilisation by obscure European ‘auteurs’ and not a single Hollywood comedy. It’s as if the respondents mistook the word ‘best’ for ‘boring’.
To give you an idea of just how absurd the list is, it doesn’t include any of the billion-dollar blockbusters from Marvel Studios — no, not even Guardians of the Galaxy — but does have two movies by the impenetrable Danish director Lars von Trier. Nothing featuring Denzel Washington, Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, Bradley Cooper or Robert Downey Jr, but three films starring Joaquin Phoenix (although not Gladiator, obviously).
Jennifer Lawrence, the number one box office star in the world, doesn’t get a look-in, while Michael Haneke, the miserable Austrian director, appears three times. If an actual cinema confined itself to showing just the films on this list, it would go bust within a month.
Don’t get me wrong. I know commercial success isn’t a guarantee of quality — look at Mamma Mia!, for heaven’s sake — but nor is it the mark of Cain. The cineastes who’ve compiled this list have fallen into the old trap of assuming that any film that makes over $100 million at the American box office must be garbage. It’s the same snobbery that’s responsible for the dismissal of genre fiction — even though literary novels are every bit as formulaic as historical romances and spy thrillers — and primetime TV shows. The view that popular equals bad is no more defensible than popular equals good. Genuine artistic value is as likely to be found on ITV2 at 4 a.m. as it is at the Royal Opera House. It’s a random variable.
To be fair, some commercial filmmakers have been allowed to sneak on to the BBC’s list. But they are the usual suspects: Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese. And in every case, the panel of experts haven’t chosen their best films. Tarantino, for instance, gets the nod for Inglourious Basterds, which isn’t a patch on Django Unchained, and Christopher Nolan is recognised for Memento rather than The Dark Knight Rises. As for Scorsese, only someone completely inured to the low, visceral pleasures of moviegoing would choose The Wolf of Wall Street over The Departed. I’m surprised that Hugo, a self-congratulatory paean to the craft of film-making, didn’t make it into the top ten. Not enough tracking shots, perhaps.
As George Orwell said, the only test of artistic merit is survival, from which it follows that we can’t possibly know yet what the best films of the past 16 years are. The BBC implicitly acknowledged this in the guidance it issued to its judges, asking them to choose films that would ‘stand the test of time’. But how can they predict which will and which won’t? The whole point of that yardstick is that merit is revealed only after several decades have passed. If you could confidently say today that a film made in 2014 — such as Boyhood, fifth on the list — will be remembered as a classic in 100 years’ time, then ‘the test of time’ is meaningless.
If you’re not convinced of this, I’d recommend digging up the reviews of some genuine, indisputable classics, such as Bringing Up Baby, the 1938 screwball comedy starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. ‘To the Music Hall yesterday came a farce which you can barely hear above the precisely enunciated patter of Miss Katharine Hepburn and the ominous tread of deliberative gags,’ began the review in the New York Times by Frank S. Nugent, one of the most celebrated critics of his day. He dismissed it as a forgettable assemblage of clichés that would appeal only to those who’d never been to the movies before. I doubt he would have included Bringing Up Baby in a list of the best films of 1938, let alone the 20th century. It took 50 years for it to be recognised as a glittering jewel of Hollywood’s golden age.
I can’t finish without offering my own ten best films of the 21st century, pointless though such lists are. They are, in no particular order: Iron Man, Knocked Up, The Incredibles, The Hangover, The Bourne Identity, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Michael Clayton, American Hustle, Apocalypto and, of course, Guardians of the Galaxy.
Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/films-arent-better-because-they-bomb-whatever-the-bbcs-poll-says/
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en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
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Why we’re past peak tattoo
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www.spectator.co.uk
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I was born in 1958 and turned 58 in June, so for the next five months my age coincides with the year of my birth. Does any significance attach to this pleasing symmetry? If you were born in 1904 then the numerological rhyme would be achieved at four years old, before you were in any position to appreciate it. If you were born in 1990 then the chances are you will never manage this brief docking of age and year; of course the odds are better than they would have been if you were born in 1890 but it’s unlikely you’ll feel some pivotal moment has been reached. Which is how it seems to me. But the feeling of passive accomplishment, that I have somehow come into my own, is undermined by its corollary: that I must soon drift away from myself as birth-year and age move steadily out of alignment. So I send special greetings to near-contemporaries who were born on 5.8.58 and turn 58 on 5 August. Is there a word or name for this brief intersection of starting point and cumulative total? Or is this fascination the last gasp of my capacity for mental arithmetic which means that, without a calculator, I can only perform the simplest equation whereby 58 = 58?
I don’t have reliable stats to hand but am tempted to announce that the moment of peak tattoo has passed. It’s not that people will stop getting inked but the number of new tats — steadily increasing over the last two decades — is now falling. The reasons for both prior increase and current decrease are obvious. For a long while, as fresh tattoos began appearing, they looked increasingly cool — and so more and more people wanted their own piece of the action. It’s a version of the multiplier effect that lifts economies out of recession. The actual tats often looked quite ugly but the idea seemed tempting. They had the glow of ripe fruit at a market, and every day the display was replenished with newer and fresher fruit. But the tattoo fad has been going on for so long that we now have widespread evidence of how things look when ink and flesh are no longer fresh. With every day that goes by more and more tattoos from this 20-year trend become old, blurred, faded and sad. Each day advertisements subtly assume the look and role of deterrents. Speaking personally, my frequent lament — ‘I wish I’d got a tattoo’ — has turned into ‘I’m glad I didn’t.’ I never got one because although I wanted a witty tattoo I was always conscious that if I went ahead with the only gag I could think of — ‘I knew I’d regret this’ — the joke would be on me.
My father-in-law has a wonderful library, full of books I’d like to read. Except they’re mainly dreary old editions with fading covers and brown, slightly brittle pages. His library makes Scott Fitzgerald look like a contemporary of Balzac, whereas mine… Well, I see now that plenty of the items on the shelves have been around for 30 years or more and, like old tattoos, are starting to fade. Former hipsters like Foucault and Barthes now share a dusty resemblance to the likes of Matthew Arnold and F.R. Leavis, whom they were alleged to have rendered obsolete. Even those stars of the Penguin Modern Classics — The Counterfeiters, The Waves, Nausea — are looking less sprightly than more recent acquisitions. In keeping with this, some have started to die off and disappear. What happened, for example, to my edition of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man with the Ben Shahn pen-and-ink drawing on the cover? It was one thing to briefly enjoy the way that it seemed to have become invisible, another to accept that it was missing, presumed lost. I reluctantly bought a new copy and was struck by how dreary the fresh-faced Ellison made his long-time neighbours (Umberto Eco, George Eliot) seem in comparison.
I’m just back from Paris, where I was teaching a creative writing course. It was very social with many dinners in great restaurants. I was staying in the Marais, near where I lived in the early 1990s. Looking back to that time, a quarter of a century ago, I ask a simple question: how did I endure it? I knew almost no one, lived in a wretched apartment, couldn’t speak French and hated the ubiquitous smoking. It was utterly wretched. All I did was stroll around and watch people in cafés living the life I wished were mine: i.e. sitting in a café with a French girlfriend (who didn’t smoke). I got practically no work done but I butched it out. A highlight of each wretched day was having a lonely grand crème on a café terrace even though Paris, I see now, has the most wretched coffee of any major European city. Life, wrote Kierkegaard in my (t)rusty old edition, must be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards. Except it can’t be understood backwards either.
Geoff Dyer’s new book, White Sands, is published by Canongate.
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/why-were-past-peak-tattoo/
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en
| 2016-08-04T00:00:00 |
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It’s fatuous to outlaw an emotion - especially hate
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A man in Austria has been sentenced to three months in prison for posting a picture of his cat on the internet. The photograph showed the cat, which has not been named, raising its right paw in the air in what appears to be a Nazi salute. It also had a side parting in the fur on its head and what we might describe as a distinctive moustache. Clearly the benighted creature was a fan of the controversial politician Adolf Hitler, and equally clearly the Austrians feel a little bit sensitive about all that business. Outrageously, there was no punishment whatsoever for the cat itself, which surely knew what it was getting itself into and cheerfully connived in the whole sordid episode. I’d have had it shot, bang, just like that. There is no place in decent society for animals which venerate Hitler — or Goebbels, Hess or any of those others.
About 80 years ago, on Hitler’s orders, the SS became interested in politicising pets, and especially dogs. Hitler was fascinated by dogs and believed there were hidden depths to their talents. On his orders a hundesprechschule was founded to develop their intellect and teach them German, in the hope they might one day be used for military purposes. You are probably musing to yourself that the German language does not sound terribly dissimilar to the noises you might expect to hear from an inflamed Doberman pinscher, perhaps one that had caught its genitals in a gin trap (while Heinrich Heine said much the same thing about English, so each to their own). But conjugating those verbs and getting the tenses right would surely test even the brightest collie. Anyway, the best the SS could come up with was a dachshund who, when asked ‘Wer ist Adolf Hitler?’ would reply promptly and in perfect German: ‘Mein Führer!’ And also raise his paw in salute. But I digress.
Cats — and goldfish, and houses — that look like Hitler have become a bit of an internet meme, a consequence one supposes of our endless interest in the chap and the fact that he had a very distinctive appearance. Given that one can now be arrested for wearing a Nazi costume to a fancy-dress party, under some fatuous piece of anti-hate legislation, it is surely only a matter of time before somebody over here is prosecuted for having felt-tipped a moustache on their tabby and shoved it on Instagram.
Especially if they live in the hell which is London. The new mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has just announced the formation of a new ‘crime hub’, a special police unit staffed by the Metropolitan Police, which will target something called ‘trolls’. The Times reports that the two-year Online Hate Crime Hub will cost £1.7 million, including a half–million quid bung from the supine Home Office. Khan’s office announced, rather loftily, that there was ‘no place for hate’ in London. Oh yes there is, when I’m there. My face is stretched taut in a permanent rictus of loathing upon entering the capital and remains in place until either Potters Bar or Sevenoaks have been cleared.
There is something magnificently fatuous in trying to outlaw an emotion, and especially one as productive, on occasion, as hatred. If they are determined to go down this route I would much rather they outlawed simpering or self-righteousness — but that would mean banging up half the capital, including the mayor himself.
And then there is the issue of the aforementioned trolls. Khan’s henchmen are not referring to hirsute ogres from Norse legend, sadly — that would have been a slightly more entertaining use of police time — but to people who, properly speaking, do not exist at all. ‘Troll’ is simply a word appended to someone who has said something with which you vigorously disagree. I get called a troll on a pretty much daily basis — usually for saying stuff like ‘I do wish, in that brief moment between those synchronised divers taking off from the board and landing below, someone would drain the water from the pool.’ Take part in any internet discussion for more than five minutes and you’re almost certain to be called a troll, especially if the discussion is about politics or why Brighton is a moral cesspit which should be cleansed from the earth (as detailed in the Sibylline Oracles). Speak on any subject, no matter how judicious your mode of expression, how sincere your motivation, and someone will accuse you of being possessed of, or of displaying, hatred.
It is no longer possible simply to argue that you have your opinion and they have theirs: the internet has taken us all to a place way beyond the reach of such common sense. It is perhaps the anonymity of social media and its instantaneousness that effects this kind of polarisation — as well as the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of people out there desperate to take offence, yearning to be victims of a hate crime, anxious to see you and me punished.
I suppose the police go along with this sort of garbage partly because they have to, but also because these non-crimes are very fashionable and politically correct and are rather less messy to clear up than other sorts of crimes. The rozzers get themselves establishment brownie points without having to do anything too onerous or too dangerous. But trolling is a crime in which nobody is really hurt or even seriously discommoded — unlike, say, being stabbed in the throat, having your car nicked or being burgled. Suffer either of the latter two crimes and you will be exceedingly lucky if a copper turns up at all. Whereas tweet that ‘we should kick out the immigrants, pronto’ and it won’t just be the filth who swarm round, but social services too, if you have children. It is a strange position we have got ourselves into.
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/its-fatuous-to-outlaw-an-emotion-especially-hate/
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| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
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Did Rodgers and Hammerstein intend Allegro for the theatre? Or for euthanasia treatment?
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‘European premiere of classic American musical’ is a phrase that deeply alarms the experienced playgoer. As I tootled along to Southwark Playhouse I asked myself why this Rodgers and Hammerstein masterpiece had taken so long to plough its way across the ocean. In 1947 the Broadway prodigies decided to follow up their first two hits, Oklahoma! and Carousel, with a brand new storyline drawn entirely from their imaginations. The plan was to extoll the life of the ordinary Midwest Joe and they created a figure (Joe Jr, after his dad), living in a backwater in the early years of the 20th century.
The script doggedly stalks Joe Jr through every phase of his morally exemplary and supremely tedious existence. He’s born, he endures the ordeals of infancy, he graduates to adolescence, he wins a college place, he follows his father into the medical profession, and he marries a mincing nobody in a skirt. In the unventilated theatre, this worthy pageant unfolded without the slightest trace of narrative surprise or psychological interest. Not much to hum along to either. Even the song titles seemed to fall dead from the programme: ‘Poor Joe’, ‘A Darn Nice Campus’, ‘Two Short Years’, ‘Winters Go By’. At the interval the parched crowd slouched out into the humid pavements of Southwark, swooning from sensory deprivation. Ten precious minutes later, we groaned back in.
The second act was enlivened by two dramatic molehills. First, Dr Dimwit’s shrill flapper of a wife began a dalliance with a rival quack. Then the Doc was offered a prestigious job in Chicago which, not surprisingly, he rejected during a soirée organised to celebrate his promotion. This counter-climax marked the closing term in a sequence of orchestrated comedowns that left everyone wondering if Rodgers and Hammerstein had really intended this as a piece of theatre or as euthanasia treatment.
Hardcore fans will want to catch this production out of sheer curiosity and they’ll see a decent version of a doomed script with a spirited and disciplined cast. But much of the action is puzzlingly staged on rickety ladders and high perches joined by wobbly wooden platforms. To watch performers belting out songs at full tilt while teetering inches from a ten-foot drop is a distinctly unrestful experience. Top marks to Gary Tushaw, who shines in the role of the gutless Doc. Tushaw sings beautifully and he acts with conviction too. His account of an emotional breakdown, always tricky terrain for a thesp, is perfectly authentic. There are two lessons to learn from this well-crafted dud. Even the greats falter. And shrewd writers should always adapt a new musical from a work with an existing fan base.
Like Groundhog Day at the Old Vic. The fairy-tale story follows a heartless cynic trapped by fate in a existential jail he can only escape by discovering human kindness. The movie starred Bill Murray as Phil Connors, a smug weatherman despatched to a country town to cover a folksy midwinter ritual. The role seemed to define Murray’s capacities on screen and everything he brought to the show is missing here. His melancholy acne-bitten features, his startled girlish pout, his air of drollery and bitterness, his lugubrious frivolity. Instead we have Andy Karl, whose perky, wholesome face has the dead-safe symmetry of a champion swimmer or an insurance clerk. Because he’s tall, slick and handsome, it’s hard to warm to his polished contempt as he prowls his rural prison mocking and humiliating its cheerily contented residents. But he sings powerfully and he has the right physicality for the clowning that forms a large part of the show. Carlyss Peer is fine too as the simpering nunnish temptress who lures Connors back to the fold of humanity.
Tim Minchin’s inventive lyrics are fun to follow but the show succeeds primarily as a spectacle. The brilliantly complex sets are supplemented by some fine sight gags and trompe l’oeil effects. An actor steps behind a bath curtain and emerges a split second later on the far side of the stage. A scene showing traffic stalled in a blizzard would be impossible to replicate in a theatre. Solution: a miniature pick-up truck is illuminated, centre-stage, while a spare actor ambles across and upends a shovel full of fake snow onto its roof. Witty, charming and novel. Everything you could want from a song-and-dance production and yet I didn’t enjoy it much because I have an unnaturally high threshold of resistance to musicals. My heartstrings are like those stiff ferrous shafts that reinforce concrete spurs in tower-blocks.
But even I detected a few oscillations of the ironworks as the show mounted to its emotional climax and the newly freed captive, hand-in-hand with his deflowered bride, stumbled out into the first golden rays of spring. Good news for the investors. Job done. Money safe. It’s a hit.
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/did-rodgers-and-hammerstein-intend-allegro-for-the-theatre-or-for-euthanasia-treatment/
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| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
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The only way to make a ‘safe space’ for conservatives at universities
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To Edinburgh for the book festival, where I am to explain Fools, Frauds and Firebrands to respectable middle-class Scots, who have an endearing way of suggesting to me that I, like them, am a thing of the past. They queue to buy the book, which is nice of them; however, the publisher has failed to deliver any copies, so the need to part with a few quid for politeness’ sake slips painlessly over the horizon. Only the students in the queue awaken me from my complacency. Where do we turn for comfort, they ask, when our reading lists are gibberish about which we can understand only that it is all left-wing? Is there no network, no secret society, no alternative reading list to get us through the next three years? Is there, in a modern university, no ‘safe space’ for conservatives?
I know of only one solution to leftist takeovers, and that is to start again. The decent parliamentarians in the Labour party should take note of this. When we set up the underground university in Prague, we composed a curriculum entirely of classics on a budget of £50,000 a year. We the teachers, and they the students, were volunteers; our shared concern was knowledge, not ideology; conversation, not conscription. Once the state takes over, however, and its vast resources are made available to people otherwise incapable of earning a penny, the fakes and the frauds muscle in. Chanting gobbledegook from Deleuze confers an air of erudition on even the most second-rate intellect, and since in most humanities departments teaching is no longer required and the only tests are political, there is no answer to those desperate students except to start something new. That is what we are doing at the University of Buckingham.
Back home to a punishing hour of physiotherapy. Two surprising and wonderful things happened to me this year. The first was a fall from a bridge, on my horse Desmond — who broke my femur in four places while using it to lever himself out of the water. That was five months ago, and the rescue by air ambulance and the NHS filled me with a kind of gratitude I hardly knew. The slow recovery has been a time to think about what matters to me, and how other people matter more. Even physiotherapy, with those thoughts in mind, is welcome.
The second surprising and wonderful thing was the knighthood conferred in the Queen’s birthday honours list, not for my services to righteous indignation (proud though I am of them) but for my life as an educator. At the very moment when my wife Sophie, as a master of foxhounds at the VWH Hunt, has earned those precious letters ‘MFH’ after her name, she can now put ‘Lady’ in front of it. A pity, of course, that the name is mine, with its ludicrous sound, so easily satirised. But you can’t have everything and in any case, euphonious though her maiden name of Jeffreys might be, she must live with the fact that she inherited it from the most notorious hanging judge in English history.
Of course, in the first-name culture that now prevails, titles might seem merely decorative, and offensive to the cult of equality. The death of the Duke of Westminster has briefly raised the question of what a titled aristocracy does for us. My own view is that titles are much to be preferred to wealth as a mark of distinction, since they give glamour without power. They promote the idea of a purely immaterial reward, and represent eminence as something to live up to, not a power to be used. Of course they can be abused, and a kind of snobbery goes with them. Take them away, however, and you have the mean-minded obsessions of ‘celebrity’ culture, the American idolisation of wealth or the power cult of the Russian mafia. An inherited title sanctifies a family and its ancient territory. The poetry of this is beautifully expressed by Proust, who wrote of an aristocracy from which everything had been taken except its titles — think of ‘Guermantes’ and compare it with ‘Trump’.
Back home in my role as grand panjandrum of Horsell’s Farm Enterprises, and preparing for Apple Day on 22 October, to which you are all invited. Our business is a terrific wheeze which brings together all the things we do on a single patch of earth and brands them with the coveted name of ‘farming’. We have even managed to assemble a group of stray conservatives for a conference in nearby Cirencester as part of our mission to foster worldwide dissent. They (the Vanenburg Meeting) are youngish, come from all parts of western civilisation, and agree about one thing only, which is the right of that civilisation to defend itself. And everything I see from my window, cows included, confirms what they believe.
Roger Scruton’s books include Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left and Confessions of a Heretic.
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/the-only-way-to-make-a-safe-space-for-conservatives-at-universities/
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| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
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It’s right to ‘line shareholders’ pockets’ before fixing pension holes
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The revelation by actuarial consultants Lane Clark & Peacock that 56 of the supposedly blue chip companies in the FTSE 100 index are running deficits totalling £46 billion in their defined benefit pension schemes puts the BHS story into a new perspective.
It tells us that the £571 million ‘black hole’ in the chain’s pension fund was by no means out of the ordinary — it is a small fraction of the deficits declared by the likes of BT, Tesco, BAE Systems and BP, even if it might have been mitigated by wiser decisions on the part of the scheme’s trustees and greater generosity on the part of former BHS owner Sir Philip Green. The truth is that the defined benefit pension model is a thing of the past, having been irreparably damaged first by Gordon Brown’s tax raid on pension funds’ dividend income and then by an era of ultra low interest rates and poor returns on equities.
But the actuaries’ findings raise interesting questions about the balance of companies’ responsibilities towards pensioners and shareholders. Criticism of Green focused on the fact that he and his wife extracted £400 million in BHS dividends before the pension fund fell into trouble. But the FTSE blue chips have gone on paying dividends to shareholders long after their deficits started to build up, and at five times the level of their pension scheme contributions. Many could have wiped out their deficits by redirecting all or part of their annual allocation of dividend cash. The Daily Mail says that means ‘the bosses of Britain’s biggest companies are more interested in lining shareholders’ pockets than plugging black holes’.
How big a sin is that, if it’s a sin at all? The subliminal idea that dividends are a form of ill gotten gain crept into public discourse during the banking crisis, when Governor Mervyn King appeared to equate them with bankers’ inflated bonuses. But any company’s first duty, besides operating within the law, is to provide returns for shareholders, either in dividends or rising share values. Otherwise who would invest in companies, and how would they raise capital to expand, stay ahead of competitors or even survive?
So I would argue that ‘lining shareholders’ pockets’ actually ranks ahead of ‘plugging black holes’, morally speaking, because a pension deficit ought to be manageable through market cycles so long as the company behind it remains healthy. Only when the company itself fails does the black hole become a catastrophe. Frank Field’s select committee, moving on from its BHS show trial to a wider inquiry into the pensions crisis, should begin by debating that motion.
Unicorns up north
Much as I enjoy my summer sojourn in France, I’m naturally homesick for the north of England. So I was delighted to receive, in response to my call for readers’ nominations of future UK ‘unicorns’ (billion dollar businesses), to receive a copy of Northern Tech Revealed, a report by the investment bank GP Bullhound, which specialises in capital raising for high growth technology ventures. It identifies eight existing northern unicorns, including Leeds based Sky Betting & Gaming and online sports nutrition and clothing retailer The Hut, at Northwich in Cheshire; coming up behind them are the likes of holiday company On The Beach; Lad Bible, an online community for lads who like funny video clips; Tyres On The Drive, a mobile tyre fitting service; and Emis, which creates software for medical practices.
The report says the north ‘has a keen eye for spotting sectors that are ripe for disruption’ but hints that critical mass — on the scale of Cambridge’s Silicon Fen — has yet to be achieved. Meanwhile, it’s all gone quiet on the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ front since Theresa May arrived in Downing Street, but there’s still a junior minister responsible for what was formerly George Osborne’s pet project: he is Andrew Percy, MP for Brigg and Goole. If as I suspect, funding previously pencilled in for major infrastructure improvements up north is about to evaporate, my advice to the minister is to read GP Bullhound’s paper and start devising low cost measures to help catalyse a couple of flourishing northern technology clusters.
Gloves and ghosts
With the pound at a three year low against the euro, you may think it odd that I’m offering French restaurant tips this month instead of predictions on the economic impact of Brexit. But it’s still too early to assess the length and depth of the incipient downturn, and in the meantime we might as well enjoy the glow of Olympic success, the unexpected strength of the London stock market (reflecting Wall Street’s exuberance and an uptick in oil prices) and — in these baking hot days — a fine lunch on a shady terrace. My discovery of the week was the charmingly old fashioned station buffet at Brive la Gaillarde, but my top recommendation is an old friend: Le Relais de Comodoliac at St Junien, on the confluence of the rivers Vienne and Glane west of Limoges.
As well as offering good food and verdant gardens, this is a handy stopover for Oradour sur Glane, the village where Waffen SS troops massacred 642 men, women and children in June 1942. Left untouched on De Gaulle’s orders, the ghostly site is all you need to see to understand why our soon to be former partners value the EU as a mechanism for peaceful coexistence between former enemies.
And St Junien has a parable of globalisation to offer: it was once a world leader in leather glove making, but gloves are no longer part of everyday dress, Asian sweatshops make them cheaper, and most of the town’s riverside tanneries are ghostly ruins. But I was pleased to discover that designer gloves are still made here in smaller quantities — from a choice of ‘crocodile, peccary, ostrich, lamb, kid, fox or deer hide’ — by Hermès, the luxury goods brand that is itself a beneficiary of globalised consumerism: so we may hope that St Junien’s finest products have become must have items for high spending Chinese shoppers.
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/its-right-to-line-shareholders-pockets-before-fixing-pension-holes/
|
en
| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/51f2a223cd01518a53a7b119af53e7b085fdc0ce6d5eeec282ca0834b06bc4f0.json
|
[
"Sam Kitchener"
] | 2016-08-26T13:02:16 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
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http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/iStock_17015366_LARGE.jpg
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en
| null |
Who wouldn't want to be Joseph Conrad?
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
A certain sort of male novelist will always aspire to be Joseph Conrad. The seedy cosmopolitanism of his fiction and its worldly, morally compromised protagonists — those European merchant seamen negotiating far-flung colonies — are an attractive counterpoint to the unmanly business of staying indoors to write a book.
Toby Vieira’s entertaining, globe-hopping debut tale of diamond smugglers wears its debt to the great man on its sleeve notes. These tout Vieira’s ‘passion’ for Conrad’s work, while his title recalls Charles Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness, sent down an unnamed African river to retrieve the rogue ivory trader Mr Kurtz.
Marlow’s Landing is in this case a settlement in the interior of St Andrew’s, a fictional country on the Caribbean coast. ‘Ain’t no good never come out of Marlow’s,’ counsels a punter at a nearby brothel. ‘You pay me a thousand bucks, no way I’m going to Marlow’s.’ But this doesn’t dissuade the narrator, an unnamed Antwerp-based English accountant, working for a prominent ‘minerals’ dynasty (‘the Indians’). He is travelling upriver to Marlow’s on the promise of rather more than a thousand bucks, sent on an off-the-books mission to retrieve ‘a big pink stone’ by a rogue diamond trader, Goldhaven.
Goldhaven’s backstory, related through an extended flashback, is lent authority by Vieira’s own past ‘close professional interest in precious stones’. We see Goldhaven grifting African mining concerns and tribal elders. He may have ‘never knowingly started a war’ but the knowingness of that ‘knowingly’ suggests Goldhaven knows more about the trouble he causes than he lets on.
Sure enough, we flash forward again to discover that the narrator’s vanity has landed him as the patsy in a double cross that Goldhaven is attempting to pull on some Russian government goons.
The novel’s brisk, blokeish present tense (‘Goldhaven has found what the boys back home call a Lolita. A seam that no one has mined’) becomes more fevered. As the narrator deals with the fallout from Goldhaven’s con, Marlow’s Landing begins to resemble his sweaty nightmares in the St Andrew’s rainforest. Belgian Feds and Caribbean mobsters taking the place of the ‘crawling legions’ of insects outside his tent, wrestling ‘each other for a view to a kill’.
There is a lot going on for such a slim book, sometimes a little too much. But then again much that Conrad, stern old coot though he was, might have approved of.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/who-wouldnt-want-to-be-joseph-conrad/
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/ee1b1d7769fa35ce3fe441e3b086e4b7b90c86d4521caaed7e24cb26135fc14e.json
|
[
"Anne Applebaum",
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"Gavin Mortimer",
"Nick Cohen",
"James Delingpole",
"Tom Goodenough",
"Ariane Sherine",
"Douglas Murray",
"Fraser Nelson",
"Father Todd Unctious"
] | 2016-08-27T22:50:42 | null | 2016-07-28T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F07%2Fis-moscow-really-working-to-put-donald-trump-in-the-white-house%2F.json
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http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/07/GettyImages-583518404.jpg
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en
| null |
How Putin plans to disrupt the US election
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
Spy novels and James Bond movies; post-war Vienna and East Berlin; Manchurian candidates and Third Men. The pop culture of the Cold War era created a set of stereotypes about hostile foreign intelligence services, especially Russian intelligence services, and they still exist. We still imagine undercover agents, dead drops, messages left under park benches, microphones inside fountain pens.
It’s time to forget all of that, because the signature Russian intelligence operation of the future, and indeed of the present, is not going to unfold in secret, but rather in public. It’s not going to involve stolen documents, but rather disinformation operations designed to influence democratic elections. It’s not going to use cash, but rather open support for candidates who will weaken Nato and the European Union, the two organisations which pose the greatest threat to President Vladimir Putin’s personal power.
Anne Applebaum and Freddy Gray discuss Donald Trump’s Russian connections:
How do I know this? Because this kind of operation has already taken place in several European countries, as I described in this magazine back in 2015: the use of secret tapes and hacked email in Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine; bank loans for Marine le Pen in France; even loud Russian media support for Brexit. More to the point, the most audacious disinformation operation ever attempted has been unfolding this week, in the US, at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia.
This time the goal is to disrupt the American election, discredit the process and, if possible, elect Donald Trump as President of the United States. All available evidence now points to Russian involvement in a thorough hack of the Democratic National Committee. As early as last April, the DNC thought someone had entered their servers; a company called CrowdStrike identified the hackers as Russian. Several others confirmed that assessment and the FBI is investigating.
Leaks duly began appearing. On the eve of the convention, Wikileaks, which has longstanding links to Russia (remember the operation to get Edward Snowden to Moscow?) dumped 19,000 emails on to the internet.
Predictably, the media jumped on the cache and discovered, unsurprisingly, that the DNC was resisting a hostile takeover by Bernie Sanders, and that some of the email exchanged over at party HQ is sarcastic or cynical. This, of course, is how people communicate during political campaigns, and I have absolutely no doubt the staff of the Trump or indeed the Sanders campaign write to one another in the same way. But few initially focused on who leaked the emails or why. Instead, the story played out as it was supposed to, riling the Democrats, spoiling the first day of the convention, leading to the resignation of the party chairman. If the Russians are true to form, they will slowly leak more material between now and election day, in order to cause the maximum damage.
Why would they bother? Maybe it’s because Trump has said repeatedly that he admires Vladimir Putin. ‘At least he’s a leader,’ he said. And indeed, Putin is the wealthy, vulgar boss of a system in which all of the political actors are oligarchs, and in which money and political influence work in tandem — exactly the kind of system that Trump and his children aspire to create.
Or maybe it’s because Trump’s business appears hugely dependent on Russian money. Trump has such a bad record that many US banks won’t lend to him, but Russian oligarchs will. He’s had multiple business partners and investors from the post-Soviet world, ran a Miss Universe contest in Moscow, and has sought hotel deals as far afield as Azerbaijan. The Russians like dealing with greedy and unscrupulous people; they also like dealing with people whose business secrets they know. One wonders whether his links to Russian money explain Trump’s unprecedented reluctance to release his tax records.
Trump is also surrounded by other people who have close links to Russia and Russian money. His campaign manager, Paul Manafort, worked for many years in Ukraine on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych, the thuggish and corrupt pro-Russian president ousted in 2014. Manafort staged a Yanukovych ‘makeover’, presenting him as the unlikeable but ‘reliable’ law-and-order candidate — exactly the same trick he’s trying to pull with Trump. In Ukraine he used many of the same tactics on display in this US election: the volunteer thugs, the appeals to extreme and negative emotions, and, of course, fake websites and internet trolls. A friend who follows these things says many of the computer ‘bots’ used by the Trump campaign — fake social media which post or tweet on his behalf — seem to be of Russian origin.
But the smoking gun, if you want to call it that, emerged at the Republican convention last week. Unusually, the Trump campaign had little interest in shaping the party platform. There was only one exception: they insisted on watering down a clause that referred to American support for Ukraine. Strange, no, that this marginal issue would interest the US presidential candidate above all others? A few days later, Trump himself told the New York Times that the US would no longer be a voice for democracy in the world, and that Nato’s Article 5 guarantee could no longer be taken for granted either: If Russia invades an American ally, he’d think twice before coming to their aid.
This is exceptional: US politicians have many contacts and even financial relationships with foreigners, but it’s very rare to find one at this level who has explicitly and publicly carried out a specific political favour on their behalf. Trump also has dealt with Chinese investors, but you don’t hear him talking about China’s rights to islands in the South China Sea. The Clinton Foundation has taken money from any number of people, but it’s not so easy to link Hillary Clinton’s actions to any one of them — and believe me, many people have tried.
I concede, the idea that Russia might try to throw a US election does sound improbable. But the potential rewards are enormous. Already, Trump is doing favours for Putin. Already, his comments have undermined the confidence of US allies and moved the Republican party well away from its decades-long commitment to transatlantic security. His demeanour and his bizarre behaviour make the US look crazy and unreliable. A Trump presidency would probably finish off the US as a world power for good.
Whatever risks there might have been to the DNC computer hack, in other words, the rewards for Russia could be many times greater.
Anne Applebaum is a columnist for the Washington Post and a former deputy editor of The Spectator.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/is-moscow-really-working-to-put-donald-trump-in-the-white-house/
|
en
| 2016-07-28T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/d6bf3c0fd6c594c9a2df09424c05c2e1d6fe8e0a2e158e09192ef1e4f440fbbd.json
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[
"Michael Henderson",
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"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole",
"The Dybbuk"
] | 2016-08-26T20:49:29 | null | 2016-08-04T03:00:00 | null |
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|
http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/Henderson-Notebook.jpg
|
en
| null |
Munich: Germany’s best face
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
It has been a strange week in Munich; a week of deceptively cool mornings, afternoons hot enough to fry eggs and thunderstorms at twilight that have turned streets into streams. A week of reflection, too, capped last Sunday by a service of remembrance in the cathedral, attended by Chancellor Merkel, to honour the nine young lives taken in the shooting at the shopping centre which sent a tremor through Freistaat Bayern, and through the nation.
One more tremor. It has been the summer of terror in Bavaria. Würzburg, Ansbach, Munich. But the Münchners have taken it well, in as much as one ever takes these things well. Along Maximilianstrasse, where the rich play; by the banks of the River Isar; in the lush acres of the Englischer Garten, life has gone on. A front-page headline saluted the city: ‘Head high, Munich.’
The mood has occasionally been uneasy. How could it not be? They threw a police cordon around the cathedral for the service of commemoration, and closed streets for the duration. Yet, given the number of people of Middle Eastern background wandering through those streets, many of them very rich indeed and making no effort to conceal it, the atmosphere has been benign.
Quartered in the most expensive hotels, their pockets groaning with dollars, some of these visitors are fairly unappetising. In particular the patronising behaviour of the menfolk towards the maids who wait at their tables, all gold watches and permanently engaged cellphones, is despicable. Many of these people loathe the West and all its doings. But they love the things they can buy here.
Attitudes will harden in time. And the revolt will be most apparent not in Saxon towns in the dead of winter but in the cafes and restaurants of Munich, when the serving wenches, fed up of being ignored by men who can’t be bothered to look at them, throw down their aprons and say ‘Genug!’
‘Waiting for the German verb,’ wrote Flann O’Brien, ‘is surely the ultimate thrill.’ It isn’t only language that separates peoples. Customs can also be baffling. This is a city of communal pleasures, where people eat and drink side by side, indoors and in the many cherishable beer gardens. Yet, when it comes to hey-lads-hey, everybody pays separately. Try to explain the British custom of ‘the round’ and you will get some funny looks.
Ah well, drinking in Munich brings its own rewards. The best beer brewed in this city of breweries is Augustiner but the best beer to be drunk here is probably, this being a matter of taste, brewed by the monks at the monastery in Andechs, eight miles south-west of Munich. The place to drink it is Andechser am Dom, a cricket pitch away from the high altar of the Frauenkirche, that twin-domed symbol of this most Catholic of cities.
Forget the Hofbräuhaus. It’s like Madame Tussauds with pilsner instead of mannequins. For an authentic Munich experience, for superb beer and the best black pudding you will ever scoff, head for the terraced tavern by the cathedral. ‘Delight for body and soul,’ they like to say of their beer. They’re right.
The Munich Opera Festival closed on the last day of July, as it always does, with Wagner’s serious comedy Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which received its baptism in this city in 1868. There aren’t many better places to enjoy opera than the Bavarian National Theatre, particularly if you’re sitting in the king’s box (swank swank), and musically it was very fine indeed. Kirill Petrenko, the music director, conducted a propulsive account of the score — at five minutes over four hours it was fully half an hour lighter than Ed Gardner’s interpretation for English National Opera last year — and Jonas Kaufmann, the local hero, showed again that he is a great singer as well as a star. But, heavens, the production! There is a club of German directors who seem to think Wagner’s intentions must be ‘subverted’ to make him ‘relevant’ to modern audiences, and this travesty was clearly David Bösch’s application for membership. A work famous for light, life and radiance was reduced to a grim masquerade, which rejoiced in its ugliness. Sixteenth-century Nuremberg was represented as East Berlin circa 1982; a bust of Wagner was smashed (yawn); and Beckmesser shot himself in the final bar as Hans Sachs, with a fag on, like a caretaker in his lunch hour, looked the other way.
Worst of all, the riot scene in the second act, which is a form of midsummer madness, was presented in the most graphic, stomach-turning way as a violent uprising by blackshirts-in-waiting. Did Herr Bösch not listen to the work before he got his grubby mitts on the libretto? We really must save Wagner from those Germans who are ashamed of his genius.
Sitting on a favourite bench in the Hofgarten, rereading Howards End, it was striking to be reminded of something Forster wrote in 1910. ‘The Germans are too thorough,’ Mrs Munt tells her nieces, the half-German Schlegel sisters, ‘and this is all very well sometimes, but at other times it does not do.’ Aldous Huxley was less coy. The Germans may dive deeper, he observed in one of his own novels, published two decades later, but they come up muddier.
Only a fool or a knave would say that now. This is still a land of poets and philosophers, of deep thoughts in dark forests, and long may it remain so, but the modern German dances to a different melody. The post-war transformation of Germany, one of the greatest achievements in human history, may be seen most clearly in Munich.
This is now the richest city in the richest state in the richest nation in Europe. But it isn’t the wealth that impresses so much as the gracious living, and the feeling that, however troubled things are at the moment, this is a place where the old adjoins the new more harmoniously than almost anywhere else. Head high, Munich.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/munich-notebook/
|
en
| 2016-08-04T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/739608108e34ab8269570af3b44ddbf06effa59bd688c0e5cd074db94807e2fd.json
|
[
"The Spectator",
"Nick Cohen",
"Gavin Mortimer",
"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T13:06:18 | null | 2016-08-18T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fits-time-to-defend-brexit%2F.json
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en
| null |
It's time to defend Brexit
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
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One of the many incorrect predictions about this year’s referendum was that those who voted for Brexit would soon regret it. The theory was that these deluded souls only intended to lodge a protest vote, and would be overcome with buyers’ remorse as Britain fell headlong into a deep recession.
Two months after the referendum, there is precious little regret. Polls suggest that just 5 per cent of those who backed Brexit wish they hadn’t; the same is true for those who voted Remain. However, the Remainers have moved quickly and effectively into post-campaign mode and have found a new vocabulary. Their new enemy is ‘hard Brexit’. They seize on every piece of bad economic news while rubbishing renegotiation prospects. They work effectively through agencies such as the Resolution Foundation, now perhaps the most influential think tank on the left.
And from the Brexiteers? Silence. We have barely heard a squeak from Vote Leave since the referendum. The group, like David Cameron, seems not to have had a plan for its victory. Like athletes collapsing at the finish line, they threw every last bit of thought and energy into the campaign and saved none for its aftermath. As a result, the side who won the war now risk losing the peace.
With Vote Leave gone, Brexit risks being defined by its enemies and moulded to fit their caricature. Theresa May, for example, has adopted a fringe position on EU migrants, keeping open the possibility of deporting them en masse in the confused belief that, if she doesn’t keep up that threat, British pensioners might be expelled from the Costa del Sol. Vote Leave had said all EU nationals here legally should stay legally, a consensus backed by everyone from the Liberal Democrats to Ukip. But when Mrs May decided to place a question mark on the status of legal EU passport holders in the UK, Vote Leave was not around to show her the consequences.
They can be seen now. Employers say their EU staff are alarmed, and worried that they are no longer welcome; some investors are pulling out because of the uncertainty. This week, hospitals warned that EU doctors have started to leave the NHS. The damage is serious. With so few voices defending the Brexit vote, more errors like this seem certain.
Mrs May shrewdly appointed Brexit-eers to positions of influence in the government, but this already looks like turning into a bad episode of Yes, Minister. David Davis, the Secretary of State for Brexit, was handed a new government department only to find himself fighting a one-man turf war with the civil service. Permanent secretaries are boasting about how they have stopped their most talented officials being seconded to help the Brexit agenda they campaigned against. Mr Davis had hoped for a team of 200 people to help chart the new territory; he has been given 100.
Jeremy Heywood, the chief mandarin, likes referring to ‘the current Prime Minister’, a reminder that he has now served four. Elections and referendums come and go; he still runs the government.
How do you bring about change if the government machine is opposed to your agenda? Margaret Thatcher faced a similar predicament when she became Conservative leader, inheriting a party apparatus that had become part of the failed collectivist consensus she sought to overthrow. She needed a new organisation to kindle new ideas, and looked to the Centre for Policy Studies. This model, that of the external think tank, has since become common. When he was education secretary, Michael Gove used the New Schools Network to develop his free-school project; Iain Duncan Smith used the Centre for Social Justice for his pioneering welfare reform.
The recipe for changing anything in the UK government is simple: ideas come first, action second, and a close relationship must be maintained between the two. It’s encouraging to see that Matthew Elliott, who jointly ran Vote Leave, reviving Business for Britain. But reinforcements are needed. Think tanks, websites and other groups should make the case for the clear, open version of Brexit that was described, and endorsed, at the referendum. Michael Gove did more than perhaps anyone to make the case for Brexit and widen its appeal. Theresa May has said that she does not require his services in her government, which leaves him at a loose end. He once set up a think tank, Policy Exchange, which went on to be an incubator of extraordinary talent. He could set up a new one now, providing an intellectual leadership that will not come from any government department.
As Charles Moore observed recently, the Brexiteers still seem unable to recover from their victory, like Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Jacobites reaching Derby. The referendum was just one battle, but many more now follow. The vision of Brexit sold in the campaign was detailed, liberal, globally minded and massively popular. It’s time to start fighting for it once again.
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http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/its-time-to-defend-brexit/
|
en
| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/d80b5e814f8e78019d223db56ebe9d24417779f962c559f7ccb121a3de06b514.json
|
[
"Benjamin Beasley-Murray",
"Susan Williams",
"Giles Milton"
] | 2016-08-26T13:15:06 | null | 2016-08-18T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fthe-business-of-war-and-espionage-is-never-gentlemanly%2F.json
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The business of war - and espionage - is never gentlemanly
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
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A teenager in the second decade of the Cold War, my father was taught to play snooker by a KGB agent. His own father was the principal of a theological college in London that had been allowed to accept two foreign students from Russia only if, said the Moscow authorities, a third ‘student’ (notably less ardent in his desire to become a clergyman) was allowed to accompany them.
And this is the problem of the world of international espionage: you think it’s going to be all poisoned-tip umbrellas and canasta parties but can wind up in South Norwood studying early church history while making sure Sergey and Dmitry aren’t getting the bus up to Whitehall in the afternoons or swapping briefcases with carnation-wearing strangers at train stations. After writing your daily dispatch in lemon juice with a cocktail stick, you end up with nothing more exciting to do with your evening than play my dad at snooker.
Spies in the Congo drives home how trying the cover-life of a spy can be, introducing us to American agents who played a potentially civilisation-saving role during the second world war by posing as businessmen, photographers, ornithologists and gem prospectors in the Belgian Congo. Frequently ill with malaria and other afflictions, and faced with track and river journeys that would make even a Southern Rail commuter shudder, these spooks, in the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo, gave service to the Allied forces that was tough and, until now, largely thankless.
The US agents’ central task was to prevent the Germans from acquiring high-grade uranium that could be used by the Nazis to make a nuclear bomb. For the Congo, in particular its Katanga region nestled in the east, was — and indeed remains, as eagle-eyed perusers of the Snowden documents may notice — the source of the richest uranium in the world. A mine called Shinkolobwe yielded uranium ore with as high as 75 per cent uranium oxide and an average of 65 per cent, levels that were extraordinary compared with mines in Canada, which gave up ores of just 0.02 per cent uranium oxide, or South African ores that came in at 0.03 per cent. From 1940, the Americans began to ship from the Congo to New York several thousand tonnes of this super-rich ore, at the time key to separating out the rare fissionable uranium or making bomb-grade plutonium.
Relying in large part on papers that have only recently been made public, Susan Williams lays out in fascinating detail how several score US spies went about monitoring whether the Germans were gathering Congolese uranium and preparing to scupper them if so. The bind, though, was that (in a manner reminiscent of Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the Nazis are likewise in quest of a potent source of catastrophic power) the agents couldn’t be seen to be taking any interest in uranium whatsoever, for at the time the bare idea of a uranium-led project to create a bomb was quite unknown. Because there was every chance the Germans would realise that US spooks were circulating in the region — a possibility made more likely by Belgium itself having fallen to the Nazis — the Americans cloaked their operations under the veil of an apparent mission to seek control of the Congo’s diamond trade. Industrial diamonds were openly needed by both sides for their war efforts, but they were small fry compared with occult nuclear materials, and so their control was used as plausible cover for the uranium investigation and oversight.
The result was multiple layers of secrecy, like skins of an onion, and Williams’s account is nuanced but gripping. There was unease and distrust between America’s spy agency, the Office of Strategic Services, and its diplomatic bodies in the Belgian Congo and (plus ça change) we learn that US and British intelligence went together like oil and water. Belgium’s Société Générale and Union Minière (relabelled Umicore in 2001) proved tainted by Nazi influence, and there were dramatic scenes when one of the key US agents was betrayed by domestic authorities and forced to flee the country after attempts were made on his life.
Meanwhile, back in the US, some 130,000 workers (the population of non-metropolitan Norwich, as Alan Partridge would note) were busy on the Manhattan Project, readying the bomb, an endeavour fully understood by only a tiny number of those taking part in it. At every level we see key operatives making vital contributions to they knew not what.
Williams does a sterling job of delineating a complicated plot while at the same time giving a clear sense of the characters of the major players. Wilbur ‘Dock’ Hogue, codenamed TETON or WEST, was the Léopoldville head of station who had the nerve of a James Bond but none of the frippery. And we meet a large cast of other brave but unassuming agents, including LOCUST, who moved around the country under cover of an interest in silk textiles; CLOCK, who operated under the cloak of the Texas Oil Company; RUFUS, who flew below the radar with Pan Am; and the plucky agent and administrator ANGELLA. Gorilla-collectors and ornithologists were also in tow, sometimes more particular about wildlife taxonomy than properly encoding transmissions, to the chagrin of their bosses.
The exploits of these men and women are only now emerging from the archives. While the threat of Hitler getting his hands on a nuclear bomb proved empty, they are owed belated awareness and thanks for staving off great potential horror.
The understated stoics that populate Williams’s story were rather different to the secret agents that Giles Milton writes about in his latest book: a fresh account of the men behind Britain’s Special Operations Executive, the unit created by Churchill to carry out espionage and sabotage in Occupied Europe. Flashier than Williams’s crew, these operatives were behind many audacious and spectacular operations, including the 1943 destruction of the Norsk Hydro Plant in Norway, which was being used to manufacture heavy water for the Nazis’ atomic bomb programme.
Many of the subjects of Milton’s book have been well covered before, whether it be Operation Anthropoid, the SOE-planned assassination of key Nazi henchman Reynard Heydrich by two Czechoslovaks in 1942, or the same year’s Operation Harling, in which the Gorgopotamos viaduct in Greece was destroyed, boosting Allied morale although its objective of stanching supplies for Rommel’s troops had been made redundant by the Allied victory at El Alamein.
What sets Milton’s work apart from other recountings of these tales is his behind-the-scenes access to the stories of the small group of men who put their minds to creating new ways of waging war. We learn about the precursors to Bond’s M (Ian Fleming liaised with SOE when working in naval intelligence during the second world war) and their development of the magnetic limpet mine, along with more exotic devices such as the castrator, an exploding lavatory.
In 1911 the view of the Admiralty was that submarines were ‘ungentlemanly’ and should not be used for military purposes. But as both these books show — whether it be down to William Fairbairn, a pensioner brought in to teach SOE agents how best to kill with silent stealth, or the spies in Central Africa charged with ensuring the most deadly weapon of history stayed out of others’ hands — war is never gentlemanly.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/the-business-of-war-and-espionage-is-never-gentlemanly/
|
en
| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/b8e10e5b808c5aec406bb0c8174b5146355b3b5035e5819a0a9986b449f97a13.json
|
[
"James Forsyth",
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"Gavin Mortimer",
"Nick Cohen",
"James Delingpole",
"Tom Goodenough",
"Ariane Sherine",
"Douglas Murray",
"Fraser Nelson",
"Johnny Foreigner"
] | 2016-08-27T22:50:33 | null | 2016-08-04T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fcan-anyone-lead-the-hopelessly-divided-labour-party%2F.json
|
http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/GettyImages-578249160.jpg
|
en
| null |
Can anyone lead the hopelessly divided Labour party?
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
Westminster prefers to concentrate on one drama at a time. That is why the old rule of thumb was that only one party leader could be under pressure at any given moment. Recent events have upended that convention. The Brexit vote precipitated leadership crises for more than one party. But the spectacle of the Tory leadership election has rather overshadowed the fact that Labour is having its own leadership contest.
The contest between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith, the party’s former work and pensions spokesman, will run all summer. In Labour circles, Corbyn is regarded as the clear favourite. Once again, the hard left appears to have succeeded in getting far more people to sign up to Labour’s registered supporter scheme than the so-called moderates have. Smith, though, is not going down without a fight. He is trying to reach out to soft Corbyn supporters by offering a manifesto far to the left of that on which Ed Miliband stood at the last election. He is promising to concentrate on equality of outcome, not opportunity, to introduce a wealth tax and to make £200 billion of investment over the next five years. He boasts that he is ‘going to be just as radical as Jeremy Corbyn’.
The hope is that by minimising the differences between him and Corbyn on policy, he can persuade the left-wing Labour selectorate that he has more chance of actually introducing these changes as he’d be both a more competent and a more electorally appealing leader of the party. Smith can do this because he knows that the moderates have nowhere else to go. They will vote for him come what may, on the grounds that almost anything is better than Corbyn continuing.
Smith’s supporters, though, are not confident of victory. They are already talking about how — if they lose this time round — they will come back for another go next year. They hope that, even if defeated, they could deny Corbyn a repeat of the overwhelming mandate he won last year.
But concentrating on the choice of leader risks obscuring the fact that if Corbyn resigned tomorrow to spend more time with his allotment, Labour would still be a party with big, existential issues to resolve.
Some of the party’s problems have been caused by its success. Tony Blair’s three election victories forced the Conservatives to change; in May 1997 few would have predicted that the next Tory prime minister would legislate for both gay marriage and a national living wage. But while the Tory party was aware that forcing Labour to accept Thatcher’s economic settlement was one of its great achievements, too many on the left see the Tories’ willingness to adopt bits of the Blair agenda as proof that he wasn’t really Labour.
Its troubled relationship with its most electorally successful leader has also contributed to Labour’s odd attitude to winning elections. A strain of Labour thought has always been wary of ‘compromise with the electorate’ — to use the old Bennite phrase. And the way Blair has conducted himself out of office has cast his time in government in the worst possible light. Another problem for the party is that New Labour’s economic model is broken. Essentially, Gordon Brown increased spending on public services by using tax revenues raised from allowing the City to let rip. After the financial crisis, this is no longer viable. But globalisation means that the previous Labour approach — taxing the rich until the pips squeak — isn’t a goer either. If government increases personal or corporate tax rates too much, people simply vote with their feet. Socialism in one country isn’t an option any more, whatever Corbyn might think.
Globalisation poses a particular challenge for Labour after Brexit. The current move against Corbyn was sparked by Labour MPs’ fury at his lacklustre efforts in the EU referendum campaign. Once Brexit happens domestic politics will become much harder for Labour because it will focus attention on many of its own issues with globalisation. Parliament will have to vote on trade deals and immigration levels, which will exacerbate divisions within Labour.
Essentially, this issue divides the party’s two main support bases — in London and working-class areas in the North and the Midlands. Crudely speaking, Labour voters in the capital are in favour of more openness and more immigration, while those in the North are more worried about protecting jobs and the effects of immigration. This divide is so serious that one London Labour MP recently remarked to me that he thought it would ultimately lead to a split.
All these problems are compounded by a Labour talent shortage. It is hard to see who in the Parliamentary Labour Party would make a commanding Prime Minister. Owen Smith might mature in time, but at the moment he looks and sounds too much like another PR-man-turned-politician. Then there is Theresa May’s shadow cabinet opponent in the last parliament, Yvette Cooper. But those who propose her as the solution to Labour’s difficulties need to remember that she came third in last year’s leadership contest. Among the recent intakes, Chuka Umunna has some genuine star power. But his abortive entry into the 2015 leadership contest showed just how much he still has to learn.
If Labour can’t be an effective opposition, who can be? The Ukip leadership contest has, so far, been a disaster; a reminder of how factional and unprofessional the party can be. Ukip does have an opportunity in those Labour heartlands that voted for Brexit, but to take advantage of this it would have to get its act together. The Liberal Democrats, for their part, are busy trying to turn themselves into the Ukip of the 48 per cent. This is a strategy that could help them win significantly more than eight seats in 2020. But it is not a route to becoming the main opposition.
Binding together the disparate parts of the Labour coalition will require a talented and politically adroit leader. But as Labour MPs campaign against Jeremy Corbyn this summer, they would do well to remember that he is a symptom of their party’s problems, not the sole cause of them.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/can-anyone-lead-the-hopelessly-divided-labour-party/
|
en
| 2016-08-04T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/d4b2f67533ab27158574b5a76bd19b6bc5adb3bbca034d0c8bfe0a7cabb97aaa.json
|
[
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"Tom Goodenough",
"Ariane Sherine",
"Douglas Murray",
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"Smedley Butler"
] | 2016-08-27T04:49:46 | null | 2016-08-04T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fthe-best-way-to-shag-a-sheep%2F.json
|
http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/iStock_96965615_LARGE.jpg
|
en
| null |
The best way to shag a sheep
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
After the death by boredom of the slow traffic jam, the agricultural-show field was an assault on the senses. The sun was out and my grandson and I wandered around stripped to the waist. Soon we found ourselves among the livestock pens and we paused to watch a line of nine Texel rams being judged by a tall, distinguished-looking man wearing a country check shirt, tweed jacket, mauve trousers, brogues and a bowler hat. We stood next to the single strand of baler-twine fence and watched him weigh the merit of each sheep. Texels have no wool on their faces, which are as expressive and individual as human ones. My grandson, aged six, said he thought that the one on the extreme left had the prettiest face and the second ram from the right had the shapeliest body.
The judge, I think, was looking for breed conformation, symmetry and meat on the bone. He straddled each sheep from behind, exactly as though he were about to commit a surprisingly obscene act, then he reached forward and searched with his spread fingertips down through the thick orange-yellow fleece for the shoulder muscles. Then he ran his hands sensuously over the sheep’s back, thighs and buttocks. I remembered working on a council grass-cutting gang with an old working-class Devon countryman called Henry, and asking him whether it was true that the best way to shag a sheep was to shove the back legs down your wellies. Old Henry assumed I was asking him a serious and important question, however. ‘There no need for that,’ he said scornfully. ‘If ye spread thy ’and over the small of ’er back, she’ll stand for ’ee.’ The Texels’ thoughtful stillness under the judge’s voluptuous caresses appeared to bear this out. Finally, the judge awarded the red, white and blue champion rosette to the Texel with the pretty face, and the blue and white runner-up rosette to the shapely one, exactly as Oscar had predicted, and we moved on, satisfied with the judge’s decision.
Moving up the grassy hill, we decided next to inspect the cattle lines. Among them was a Devon Red bull of a massiveness that truly astonished us. Instead of the usual simple copper nose-ring, his septum was attached to his lead by a steel ring with an elaborate spring leader: even bulls’ nose-rings, one realises, are subject to technological advance.
His handler was leaning against the rail. She was middle-aged, also with a nose-ring. Hers was silver. ‘How old?’ I said, expecting her to say at least ten. ‘I’m 35,’ she said. ‘Oh, you mean the bull! Lord John is nearly two,’ she said. The bone, muscle and prominent sinews in his handler’s junkie-thin arms attested to the strength needed to persuade this bovine toddler to move when he didn’t particularly want to.
The bull stood patiently, unfazed by our talking over his head like this. His bull’s eyes were unsuspicious, his bull mind miles away. ‘Stroke him,’ she said. ‘He loves it!’ So we reached down and mussed the curly hair on his lordship’s monumental forehead, mainly to see how this huge, stoical unit of muscle and bone might express his pleasure. Lord John lifted his head gently, twice, as though mildly irritated. ‘What’s that?’ said Oscar, now leaning out to the side and pointing at the pair of avocados in a flesh-coloured string bag suspended between the bull’s back legs. ‘Them’s his knackers, Oscar,’ I said, didactically adding, ‘They’re what he’s for.’ ‘That’s nothing, my dear,’ said the handler to Oscar. ‘My husband’s are bigger than that.’
We wandered away. The tented restaurants reserved for judges ‘only’, or ‘only’ employees of this insurance company or that legal firm, gave the show a strangely corporate air. If I’d wanted to, and had the money, I could have gone home with a tweed shooting jacket for £350, an outdoor wood stove for a £1,000, or a brand-new three-litre Landrover Discovery in graphite, on the road, for £41,000. Instead of which, we bought ourselves ice creams from the van. Oscar asked for chocolate-chip flavour; I for honeycomb. At the first lick, Oscar’s scoop dropped off the cone and on to the ground. When I asked the man for a replacement, he argued with the conviction and confidence of a man in an exalted position that the negligence was entirely on Oscar’s part and that he was therefore under no obligation. I argued that he hadn’t rammed the ice cream into the cone hard enough with the curve of his scoop. And that if he didn’t give us another, I’d come up there and show him what I meant.
Albeit with bad grace and muttering about ‘chavs’, he furnished us with a replacement scoop.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/the-best-way-to-shag-a-sheep/
|
en
| 2016-08-04T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/3a69d9a5dbe198dd9c10627e76f60a58f2641e8c68f643832c1276f9bb1d49f9.json
|
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"Douglas Murray",
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"Aidan Hartley",
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] | 2016-08-26T13:11:02 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fno-423%2F.json
|
http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/423.jpg
|
en
| null |
The Spectator
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
Black to play. This is from Vachier-Lagrave–Anand, Sinquefield Cup, St Louis 2016. White has played to win a pawn but what has he overlooked? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 30 August via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.
Last week’s solution 1 f6
Last week’s winner Dennis Owen, Urmston, Manchester
Subscribe to The Spectator today for a quality of argument not found in any other publication. Get more Spectator for less – just £12 for 12 issues.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/no-423/
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/5bbfae4002247bfe624d580c29394105bbc86c5dcc6b8be3c3036b63378e3666.json
|
[
"Iain Martin",
"Benjamin Anderson",
"Dominic Allkins",
"Brian Jones",
"Peter Parker",
"James Waldie",
"Border Guy Scot",
"Gary K. Busch",
"Jim W",
"Ingmar Blessing"
] | 2016-08-27T04:49:48 | null | 2016-06-30T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F07%2Fnicola-sturgeons-gigantic-eu-bluff%2F.json
|
http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/07/GettyImages-542917744.jpg
|
en
| null |
Nicola Sturgeon’s gigantic EU bluff
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
It ought not to be a surprise that Alex Salmond, Scotland’s former First Minister, has declared that the vote to leave the European Union is the trigger for a second referendum on Scottish independence. Salmond thinks everything is an excuse for another go. If a new Bay City Rollers album suffered poor reviews south of the border, or an English football pundit failed to declare Archie Gemmill’s wonder goal for Scotland against Holland in the 1978 world cup the best ever, Salmond would be right there on the UK’s television screens, chortling at the brilliance of his own wit, before intoning gravely that this insult is surely the final straw for the United Kingdom.
Salmond has been demanding a second Scottish referendum almost from the moment he lost the last one. Having been beaten 55-45 on a turnout of 85 per cent in 2014, the hotheaded and emotional Salmond struggles, in a manner that is psychologically interesting, to process that defeat. It is customary to affix the term ‘canny’ to Salmond whenever he is written about outside Scotland. But his successor Nicola Sturgeon is actually the more sensible operator, capable of calmness and strategic subtlety. She is also not (yet) an egomaniac.
Sadly, in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, even Sturgeon succumbed to over-excitement, look-at-me delirium and constitutional chicanery. On what seemed like an hourly basis in the days after the EU vote, Scotland’s First Minister gave interviews, convened press conferences and hosted Scottish cabinet meetings, all the time wearing her best I-am-a-stateswoman frown.
The Scottish Parliament might be able to block Brexit, she said. No, it cannot. Yes, 1.5 million Scots may have voted to Remain in the European Union, but 2 million Scots voted to remain in the UK less than two years ago. The UK that existed before 23 June no longer exists, she said. Wrong. It very much exists, and until Article 50 and the two-year process is triggered the UK is in the EU.
Sturgeon’s promise to get on with preparing a second independence referendum has been cheered on by some defeated Remainers in London, who are so annoyed at having lost the EU referendum that they are willing to accept that Britain will now break up as a result. Her mantra — Brexit means Scotland goes — was repeated by Remainers in the campaign. But in so doing, they accepted Scottish Nationalist claims at their own inflated estimation — always a bad idea.
Take, for example, the debate on the EU referendum held in the Scottish parliament this week. Even by the standards of that body (and its moral superiority complex) this was a festival of cant, piety and self-regard. Scotland is European, it was repeatedly said. Indeed, and so are England and Wales — they simply choose not to be in the European Union (as did a third of SNP voters, as it happens). ‘It was enough to make me a Leaver,’ was how one Remainer watching from the gallery put it.
In the parts of the London media which has seen its assumptions (and much of its worldview) put into the shredder of history by the vote for Brexit, the despondent view seems to be that these forces, the Nationalists and Scottish Lib Dem politicians flirting with independence, will definitely persuade the Scottish electorate to vote to leave the UK soon. That is far from a certain outcome.
Recent polls suggest that Brexit has hardened the support for independence, but not by much. The effect may soon dissipate. While it is perfectly possible that Scotland will end up voting for independence, such an outcome was feasible even without the impact of the EU referendum. But as with so many other aspects of the post-Brexit world, it depends. For a start, the precise shape of the EU that the Scottish nomenklatura is trying to stay in is in doubt. Who knows what it will look like in several years’ time. The Italian banking crisis could provoke seismic upheaval in the eurozone. Other countries may try to leave the EU. By 2018, the UK may be operating with the EU on the basis of a compromise arrangement — associate status for example — that the majority of Scots find acceptable.
What also needs considering calmly is the shape of an SNP offer in the event of the party holding a referendum. The questions have not gone away since 2014. What will the Scottish currency be post-independence? How about the euro? Will there be a full border with England?
This will all be OK, says Sturgeon with breezy certainty. On close examination, hers is a wish-list even more fanciful than that contained in the first draft of a Boris Johnson column. Scotland will keep the pound and an entirely open border with England, but remain in the EU.
This demonstrates that the financial lesson of the last Scottish referendum has still not been absorbed. If Scotland keeps the pound, it will not have a banking union or any protection for its financial system. If the more logical solution is proposed — a new Scottish currency and central bank, joining the euro queue — that really does mean operating in a different currency from the country that buys 60 per cent of Scotland’s exports.
It is quite possible that Scots will vote for independence. Perhaps out of disgust, perhaps convinced by the SNP’s prospectus. They may perhaps wish to find contributions for a hungry Brussels, decide not to pool risk with England and embark on the sizeable austerity package that would be required by European budgetary rules. Nothing, in the current political climate, could be ruled out. But let’s just say that this is far from certain.
The Union now has someone more than capable of highlighting the weaknesses in the SNP’s case in the form of Ruth Davidson, the dynamic Scottish Tory leader who was for Remain but who is Britain’s best defender of the positive case for the UK.
At present, nothing will eclipse the storm of anger among Scotland’s politically engaged. You may notice, incidentally, that straight away there have been chippy SNP demands that no one — in London or Scotland — should dare try to block a referendum. No one will seriously try to do this and it should be remembered that the largest obstacle to the holding of a referendum in Scotland is Nicola Sturgeon. She cannot risk calling it and losing again.
Iain Martin is a former editor of the Scotsman.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/nicola-sturgeons-gigantic-eu-bluff/
|
en
| 2016-06-30T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/fec993aff81b7504ce49b3680a8d1abc9ff6cdd5aedcc9faf85d7305e070649b.json
|
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"Nick Cohen",
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"Aidan Hartley",
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] | 2016-08-26T13:08:41 | null | 2016-08-25T03:00:00 | null |
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en
| null |
What we thought of Tibetan Buddhism before we got soppy
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
Next week I’m going to Ladakh for a travel gig. Me neither — never heard of it. So I heaved out my Victorian world atlas and found it at the apex of India, northwest of Kashmir, and sharing a border with Tibet. Then I went online to find books about the place. Choice was limited. I bought A Journey in Ladakh by David Harvey (‘Extremely entertaining, a classy travel book and a palpitating fragment of a spiritual autobiography’ — David Mitchell, New Society); I bought Ancient Futures by Helena Norberg-Hodge (‘The book that has had the greatest influence on my life… about tradition and change in a remote corner of India that has never been subject to the brutality of the modern, global economy’ — Zac Goldsmith); and I bought The Road to Lamaland by ‘Ganpat’ (M.L.A. Gompertz), published in 1919, and therefore predating the age of the fatuous puff.
A Journey in Ladakh is a spiritual journey undertaken by a poet whose life, he says, was ‘full of confusion and distress of every kind’. To ameliorate that distress he cultivated an interest in Buddhism. He liked Buddhism’s ‘calm and radical analysis of desire, its rejection of all the self-dramatising intensities by which I lived, and its promise of a possible, strong, and unsentimental serenity’. Then he went to Ladakh, found a holy man, and wrote a sentimental book about it with page after page of intense, self-dramatising dialogue.
Ancient Futures — foreword by HH The Dalai Lama, introduction by Peter Matthiesen — turned out to be a sentimental Luddite romance disguised as anthropology. In short, it is an account of how the evil tentacles of western industrialisation penetrate the Himalayan vastness and tragically impinge on a hitherto idyllic agrarian society (Ladakh) which has no concept of tragedy and which recycles even its own faeces. I lost confidence in the author’s intelligence right from the off. Before she went to Ladakh, she says, she staunchly believed that the western way of life was nothing but a blessing and the acme of human progress. If true, she must be the only educated individual to have done so in half a century. Then she went to Ladakh, where, ‘as you wander through the fields, or follow the narrow paths that wind between the houses, smiling faces greet you’, and she began to have terrible doubts. I gave up on Ancient Futures when I was introduced to the first monk ‘with a balding head and a contagious smile’. Nobody, it seemed, had smiled at Helena Norberg-Hodge before. Certainly none had smiled with such devastating effect. Old Baldy lived, she says, in an ‘awe-inspiring’ monastery.
And then, thankfully, I turned to ‘Ganpat’, and The Road to Lamaland. Unlike Helena Norberg-Hodge, ‘Ganpat’ had fought in East Africa against General Lettow von Vorbuck. He was christened Ganpat by his sepoys because they couldn’t pronounce ‘Gompertz’, and because he was tall and thin and Ganpat is another word for Ganesh, the elephant God. His book is the account of a pony trek overland from Srinagar in Kashmir made while on annual leave from his post on the North-West Frontier. He takes with him a Sunni Muslim servant called Habib. Habib is comically contemptuous of everyone they meet — Tibetans, Ladakhis, Kashmiris, Mongols, Shia Muslims. Far above Habib in the travelling band’s pecking order, however, is an English fox terrier called Bill, and above Bill come two ‘hunt terrier’ pups called Vagrant and Vixen, whose unworldly behaviour on the trek through the Indus Valley accounts for a great deal of the author’s ruminative narrative.
I loved this cheerful old thick-paged book. Unlike the cringing relativism of the previous two authors, ‘Ganpat’ wears the cultural confidence of an English soldier-servant of the British empire without apology. He has no time at all, for example, for Tibetan Buddhism which, in his opinion, is a polite fiction concealing nothing more than naked devil worship. (So acclimatised am I to Tibetan mysticism’s status as one of western materialism’s most sacred totems, this thrilled me.) The sight of his first Lama drives him to an outburst of furious anticlericalism:
The Tibetans, a mountain people with the natural superstition common to all ignorant races who live under the high snows, with the terrors of gale and snowfall and avalanche ever before them, and the bleak solitude of the heights about them, inevitably come under the thumb of the Lamas, and so today the Lama is the most important person in Tibet, and the Tibetan’s life is literally one unceasing round of devil-dodging from birth to death.
Ladakh is known as ‘Little Tibet’. Ladakh culture is largely Tibetan culture. Now that the Chinese have put the squeeze on old Tibet, Ladakh is where one still goes to see it. On my itinerary are meetings with holy men. Are they simply devil worshippers? I shall ask them.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/what-we-thought-of-tibetan-buddhism-before-we-got-soppy/
|
en
| 2016-08-25T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/fc675637a53f276a3579fc5c7a087c2088f6f06e21f6608df693a62ca25bec4b.json
|
[
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"Leftism Is A Societal Cancer",
"Alison Houston",
"David Webb",
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] | 2016-08-27T22:50:28 | null | 2016-01-14T04:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F01%2Fits-not-only-germany-that-covers-up-mass-sex-attacks-by-migrant-men-swedens-record-is-shameful%2F.json
|
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en
| null |
It’s not only Germany that covers up mass sex attacks by migrant men... Sweden’s record is shameful
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
Stockholm
It took days for police to acknowledge the extent of the mass attacks on women celebrating New Year’s Eve in Cologne. The Germans were lucky; in Sweden, similar attacks have been taking place for more than a year and the authorities are still playing catch up. Only now is the truth emerging, both about the attacks and the cover-ups. Stefan Löfven, our Prime Minister, has denounced a ‘double betrayal’ of women and has promised an investigation. But he ought to be asking this: what made the police and even journalists cover up the truth?
The answer can be discovered in the reaction to the Cologne attacks. Sweden prides itself on its sexual equality and has even pioneered a feminist foreign policy. When hundreds of women were reported to have been molested and abused in Cologne — at the hands of an organised mob — the reaction from Swedish politicians and pundits ought to have been one of outrage.
Instead, we were told that the events in Cologne were not unusual. An article in Aftonbladet, Sweden’s largest tabloid, argued that it was racist to point out that the perpetrators in Cologne had been described as North African or Arab, since German men had carried out sexual assaults during Bavaria’s Oktober-fest. Another Aftonbladet article said that reporting on the Cologne attacks was bowing to right-wing extremism. Over the last week, we have been told over and over that the real issue is men, not any particular culture — that Swedish men are no better.
Then last week Sweden’s own stories began to emerge. During the We Are Sthlm music festival, large groups of young men harassed girls sexually. It began in 2014 and it also went on during last year’s festival. According to internal police reports the groups were ‘so-called refugee youths primarily from Afghanistan’. The youngest of the victims was 12 years old.
The police claimed that there were ‘relatively few crimes and arrests considering the number of participants’. Internal reports told a different story. The police were shocked enough by the harassment to try to come up with a strategy to handle the groups of molesters at the festival — a strategy that was evidently unsuccessful. The trouble was that they were trying to deal with a problem but would not speak its name. As Peter Ågren, police chief in central Stockholm, put it: ‘Sometimes we do not dare to say how things really are because we believe it will play into the hands of the Sweden Democrats.’ As we now know, police officers in Stockholm are instructed not to reveal the ethnicity or nationality of any suspects lest they be accused of racism.
The Sweden Democrats are the anti-immigration populist force in Sweden — no longer a fringe element but the third–largest party after the election of 2014. Opinion polls suggest they are growing ever stronger. They are reviled by all other parties, who try to fight them by rejecting their every claim as baseless. As a result, immigration cannot be discussed frankly in Sweden. If you mention anything negative about refugees or immigration, you’re accused of playing into the hands of the reviled far-right. As a result, even legitimate concerns are silenced or labelled xenophobic. The recent migration crisis has changed this only slightly.
When a country cannot hold honest debates, there are consequences. Take Roger Ticoalu, director of events at Stockholm City Council. He said he had been utterly unaware of the risk of such attacks:
‘It was a modus operandi that we had never seen before: large groups of young men who surround girls and molest them.’
The German police made a similar point: they are used to handling drunks. But gangs of young men encircling and then groping women at large public gatherings: who has ever heard of such a thing?
In the Arab world, it’s something of a phenomenon. It has a name: ‘Taharrush gamea’. Sometimes the girls are teased and have their veils torn off by gangs of young men; sometimes it escalates into rape. Five years ago, this form of attack was the subject of an award-winning Egyptian film, 678. Instances of young men surrounding and attacking girls were reported throughout the Arab Spring protests in Cairo in 2011 and 2012. Lara Logan, a CNN journalist covering the fall of Hosni Mubarak, was raped in Tahrir Square. Taharrush gamea is a modern evil, and it’s being imported into Europe. Our authorities ought to be aware of it.
But they can’t be made aware, when any mention of the issue is discouraged. This leaves the police unprepared, and leaves the public feeling not just vulnerable but deceived. It doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to wonder how many more instances there have been where Swedish police have taken political considerations into account before disclosing information.
Before Dan Eliasson became Sweden’s national police commissioner, he tweeted that he ‘vomited’ when he saw Jimmie Åkesson, party leader of the Sweden Democrats, on television. To what degree were his own personal political views imprinted on the Swedish police? Were the officers who covered up the sexual harassments responding to signals from Eliasson? Did they think that making a fuss about immigrant crime was a bad career move, and did that stop them doing their duty?
Even now, Swedes are still trying to figure out what exactly has been going on. Reports are emerging of Taharrush gamea-style harassment in Malmö on New Year’s Eve. According to police reports, hundreds of refugee youths from Afghanistan roamed around and ‘surrounded intoxicated girls/women and harassed them’. Similar incidents are being reported from towns such as Kalmar and Karlstad. The Finnish authorities are handling reports of organised sexual harassment perpetrated by Iraqi immigrants.
We Swedes pride ourselves on our unrivalled record on respecting women’s rights. But when women’s rights conflict with the goal of accommodating other cultures, it’s almost always women who are pushed to the side. This week, the chattering classes in Sweden will be worrying about how this story plays into the hands of the Sweden Democrats. But events have moved beyond that. The truth may be painful. Yet, as we have seen, concealing the truth is worse.
Ivar Arpi is an editorial page writer for Svenska Dagbladet.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/its-not-only-germany-that-covers-up-mass-sex-attacks-by-migrant-men-swedens-record-is-shameful/
|
en
| 2016-01-14T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/cefc528cb4a00269be5199d1be5e9a1187d3e9418bf80812404dab51f685a25b.json
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"Douglas Murray",
"Alex Massie",
"Aidan Hartley",
"Ariane Sherine",
"James Delingpole"
] | 2016-08-26T13:16:11 | null | 2016-08-18T03:00:00 | null |
http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spectator.co.uk%2F2016%2F08%2Fwho-should-rule-syria-nobody%2F.json
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http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/08/GettyImages-585823496.jpg
|
en
| null |
Who should rule Syria? Nobody
| null | null |
www.spectator.co.uk
|
The long civil war in Syria is still far from conclusion. Any real possibility of rebel victory ended with the entry of Russian forces last autumn — but while the initiative is now with the Assad regime, the government’s forces are also far from a decisive breakthrough. So who, if anyone, should the UK be backing in the Syrian slaughterhouse, and what might constitute progress in this broken and burning land?
It ought to be fairly obvious why a victory for the Assad regime would be a disaster for the West. Assad, an enthusiastic user of chemical weapons against his own people, is aligned with the most powerful anti–western coalition in the Middle East. This is the alliance dominated by the Islamic Republic of Iran. It includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shia militias of Iraq, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. If Assad won, the Iranian alliance would consolidate its domination of the entire land area between the Iraq-Iran border and the Mediterranean Sea — a major step towards regional hegemony for Iran. So an Assad victory would be good for Islamism — at least of the Shia variety — and bad for world peace. It should be prevented.
The controversy begins when one starts to look at the alternative to an Assad victory.
In November last year, David Cameron claimed to have identified 70,000 ‘moderate’ rebels ready to challenge Islamic State in the east of Syria. That figure was a myth. Yours truly was among the very first western journalists to spend time in Syria with the rebels. I recently returned from a trip to southern Turkey, where I interviewed fighters and commanders of the main rebel coalitions. With no particular joy but a good deal of confidence, I can report that the Syrian rebellion today is dominated in its entirety by Sunni Islamist forces. And the most powerful of these are the most radical.
The most potent rebel coalition in Syria today is called Jaish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest). It has three main component parts: Ahrar al-Sham (Free Men of the Levant), a Salafist jihadi group; Jabhat al-Nusra, until recently the official franchise of al–Qaeda in Syria, now renamed Jabhat Fatah al-Sham; and Faylaq al-Sham (Legion of the Levant), whose ideology derives from the Muslim Brotherhood branch of Sunni political Islam.
Jaish al-Fatah dominates the main rebel-controlled area in Aleppo, Idleb, Latakia and northern Hama. Its various components seek the establishment of a state dominated by Islamic sharia law. There is no reason to suppose that Nusra’s recent renunciation of its al-Qaeda affiliation was anything more than tactical. When one speaks of the Syrian rebellion today, one is speaking of Jaish al-Fatah. The small ‘Free Syrian Army’ groups that still exist do so only with Jaish al-Fatah’s permission, and only for as long as they serve some useful purpose for it. In the now extremely unlikely event of the Islamist rebels defeating the Assad regime and reuniting Syria under their rule, the country would become a Sunni Islamist dictatorship.
So if there is no British or western interest in a victory for either the regime or the rebels, what should be done with regard to Syria?
First of all, it is important to understand that ‘Syria’ as a unitary state no longer exists. A rebel commander whom I interviewed in the border town of Kilis in June told me: ‘Syria today is divided into four projects, none of which is strong enough to defeat all the others. These are the Assad regime, the rebellion, the Kurds and the Islamic State.’ This is accurate.
So the beginning of a coherent Syria policy requires understanding that the country has fragmented into enclaves, and is not going to be reunited in the near future, if at all.
Various external powers have elected to back one or another element in this landscape. The Russians and Iranians are backing the regime. Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are supporting the Islamist rebels.
The West, too, has established a successful and effective patron-client relationship — with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Dominated by the Kurdish YPG, but including also Arab tribal forces such as the Sanadid militia, this is the force which is reducing the dominions of the Islamic State in eastern Syria, in partnership with western air power and special forces.
In contrast to the sometimes farcical attempts to identify partners among the Syrian Sunni rebels, the partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces works. Weaponry does not get passed on to or taken by radical jihadi groups, because the SDF is at war with such groups. Training and assistance produces a united force with a single chain of command. And this force captures ground and frees Syrians living under the vicious rule of Isis.
On the commonsense principle that success should be built on, it is clear that the alliance with the SDF ought to be strengthened and grown. The West is committed, correctly, to the destruction of the Islamic State. The pace of the war against Isis needs to be stepped up. As witnessed in Nice, Würz-burg, Normandy and elsewhere in recent weeks, Isis is an entity that will make war on the West until it is destroyed.
The destruction of the Islamic State by a strengthened SDF would lead to control of Syria east of the Euphrates by a western client of proven anti-terrorist credentials. Further west, the truncated enclaves of Assad and of the Sunni Arab rebels would remain. It is possible that, over time, the fragmentation of Syria would be formalised. But it’s equally likely that the various component parts would remain in de facto existence for the foreseeable future.
What matters is that three outcomes be avoided: the Assad regime should not be permitted to reunite Syria under its rule, the Islamist rebels should similarly not be allowed to establish a jihadi state in the country, and the Islamic State should not be permitted to remain in existence. By strengthening the alliance with the SDF, utilising it and its allies to take Raqqa and destroy Isis in the east, and then allowing its component parts to establish their rule in eastern and northern Syria, these objectives can be attained. For a change, the US and its allies have found an unambiguously anti-Islamist and anti-jihadi force in the Middle East which has a habit of winning its battles. This is a success which should be reinforced.
|
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/who-should-rule-syria-nobody/
|
en
| 2016-08-18T00:00:00 |
www.spectator.co.uk/52a6eb72a76e0c607bf5d837f1ec1679c9a24d1253973c84dd4494b59df186d6.json
|
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