As we await the results of the EU Parliamentary elections…..

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Support for remaining in the EU is above 80% in most EU countries. Asked how they would vote in an in-out referendum, 94% of people in Luxembourg said “in”, as did 92% of people in Portugal, and 91% in Ireland and the Netherlands. In the UK, the poll found that 55% want to remain, making it the most Eurosceptic country; followed by the Czech Republic on 66%, and Italy (72%).  ( reported by Kantar/The Independent, the Observer and The Week, 24 May 2019)

I was  reading an article in The Spectator (right-wing) about Brexit, written by a former Australian Prime Minister.  He couldn’t understand what the fuss was about a “no agreement “ exit from the EU  -Australia trades with the EU successfully, he wrote,  without being a member.  What’s the problem?

Well, the fuss isn’t just about trade, business and money, money, money (which obsess conservatives) It’s also about European security and peace ( justification in itself) at a time when Russia is trying to dissolve it and America is unreliable, to say the least.  It’s about trying to ensure such civilised things as safety at work, fair employment, the development of poor regions of the EU, fair business competition, and the many things that constitute a decent, modern set of rules of behaviour.  Big money hates constraints and discipline.

 

 

 

Engine idling while parked

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“The Swiss have long been aware of the problem of leaving cars idling for ages. My brother, a young research scientist at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich in the early 1970s, used to tell me that even if he just left his engine ticking over at traffic lights ,he would get a knock on his window and an angry shout of “umweltschutz!” (environmental protection). We used to joke about Swiss officiousness, but times change.” (John Dover , Glasgow, in letter to The Times)
 My take:  People come from out of town, park at no expense, and leave their engines idling while the driver waits for (usually his) appointment or time to be off to the office.  The air gets filled with fumes on a still morning.

Suggestion: if the weather is cold, wrap up!  Put on a sweater or an overcoat!  Why should the air be fouled by you and your car.  In Europe, people who sit there, their engines ticking over, are fined, often on the spot.

What has this do with Epicurus?  Well, it’s about thinking of other people and consideration for their health. This is basic to the teaching of Epicurus.  The American health system is expensive enough without having to be treated for lung disease caused by a casual lack of consideration for others.

Where I live the parking attendants are seldom encountered and even defenders call the system “weak”.  We must allow shoppers to park and visit the shops, mustn’t we?  It’s bad enough that residents cannot park, but to have in addition to fill ones lungs with gas fumes is too much. Who cares? Nobody –  until they have. breathing difficulties.  As for the deteriorating environment, that’s someone else’s problem, bogus news according to some.

Now will you believe the science?

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This planet of ours is beginning to burn — and not just last week or month either. It’s been smoldering for decades now. Last summer, for instance, amid global heat records (Ouargla, Algeria, 124 degrees Fahrenheit; Hong Kong, over 91 degrees Fahrenheit for 16 straight days; Nawabsha, Pakistan, 122 degrees Fahrenheit; Oslo, Norway, over 86 degrees Fahrenheit for 16 consecutive days; Los Angeles, 108 degrees Fahrenheit), and wildfires have been raging within the Arctic Circle.

This March, in case you hadn’t noticed — and why would you, since it’s gotten so little attention? — the temperature in Alaska was, on average, 20 degrees, yes, that is not a misprint) above normal and typical ice roads between villages and towns across parts of that state were melting and collapsing , with deaths ensuing.

Meanwhile, in the Antarctic, ice is melting at a rate startling to scientists. If the process accelerates, global sea levels could rise far faster than expected, beginning to drown coastal cities like Miami, New York, and Shanghai more quickly than previously imagined. Meanwhile, globally, the wildfire season is lengthening. Fearsome fires are on the rise, as are droughts, and that’s just to begin to paint a picture of a heating planet and its ever more extreme weather systems and storms.  (Excerpt from Tom Dispatch April 25, 2019)

The Guardian newspaper has just announced that it is banning the phrase “global climate change” and substituting “global climate crisis”.  But the American government, whose priority is protecting special interests (and particularly special donors) has been busy effectively dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency.  If there is anyone left on Earth in a century’s time I hope people will gaze at memorials to the shortsighted, money- grubbing people who commit such an appalling act, sitting on their hands, hoping to get through their own selfish lives comfortably and to hell with everyone else, presumably their own children into the bargain.  Do they have no shame at all?

Epicurus, who believed in the pleasant life, would be appalled.

A Polish church stuck in the past

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In Poland a simple poster distributed by an LGBT activist featuring an image of the Virgin Mary with a rainbow halo has got Catholic leaders in a lather.

Elzbieta Podlesna allegedly put up the posters near a church to protest an anti-gay Easter message that denounced words like “LGBT” and “gender” as “aggressive” and “deviant”. She has been arrested for offending religious beliefs and faces two years (!) in jail. The poster was pretty mild stuff and even apparently had some aesthetic charm. But with elections coming up this year, the ruling Law and Justice Party seized this as a golden opportunity to win favour with “hysterical” Church spokespeople, for whom the LGBT campaigners’ rainbow motif acts like a red rag to a bull. The party is now doubling down on the threat of “sexual deviation” to Catholic values.  It’s going to be a tough few months for Poland’s LGBT community. (Piotr Sarzynski,  Polityka, Warsaw, and The Week. 17 May 2019).

I picked on this particular piece of old- fashioned intolerance  to illustrate the fact that extreme right- wing activity is mounting everywhere in the Western world, encouraged by the example of Trump and what I personally see as a creeping right- wing coup in the United States, together with the crass stupidity of Brexit, to name but two instances. Copycats are everywhere in the Western world, replaying the Hitler- Mussolini-Franco reaction to economic hardship and “bring- all- their- houses down” attitudes prevalent in the 1930s.  A novel way of portraying the Virgin Mary should be treated at worst with a simple shrug.  It’s called free speech and, as far as this non- Catholic is concerned, just a statement about the humanity of the LGBT community, which can’t, for heaven’s sake, help the sexual orientations of its members.  They  were born LGBT, like it or not.  Leave them alone and focus on the sexual deviations among some priests in the most reactionary  Catholic church in Europe.

 

Hard to comprehend such a massive difference in values!

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Earlier this year, the National Rifle Association opposed a bill that would prevent convicted stalkers and abusive boyfriends from possessing guns. “Why? Because any gun purchase increases profits for gun manufacturers, and any regulation – even common-sense measures – is to be opposed.”

Having arrived at this indecent and immoral policy the NRA leadership deserves everything it gets, and it is starting to get it.  It is losing money to the tune of $40m a year, and at its recent annual meeting an ugly power struggle broke out among its leadership. Long-time CEO Wayne LaPierre accused the NRA’s now-ousted president, Oliver North, of trying to blackmail him into resigning, with a dossier of alleged financial improprieties. This followed a devastating New Yorker exposé revealing a culture of “secrecy, self-dealing and greed” in the organisation, with NRA executives awarding themselves high six-figure salaries and lavish benefits. To add to the NRA’s woes, it’s also facing an investigation into whether Russian agents used it to funnel money from a Kremlin-linked banker to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

It gets worse.  The attorney general for New York state (where the NRA is chartered), has announced an investigation of the NRA’s tax-exempt status, stating that the group, which holds itself up as a charitable body, is more akin to a “terrorist organisation”. It was originally designed to help marksmen with firearms training and safety. Lobbying for gun rights only became central to its mission in the 1970s: even then the group pursued that end in a “notably bipartisan” way. Today though, it cleaves to the Republicans and goes “all in for the culture war”. Where once NRA leaders concerned themselves with safe, responsible gun ownership, they now inveigh against “socialists” and hold forth about issues such as immigration, race and healthcare, a virtual surrogate for the current White House. It has no hint of empathy for the the scores of people killed by gunfire, or their families – the guns count for more than people, a stance that is greeted with disbelief everywhere else in the world.  (Adapted from a variety of articles in the press, including The Week, 11 May 2019)