In the words of Lucretius………..

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…we are all born from the same celestial seed;
all of us have the same father,
from which the earth, the mother who feeds us,
receives clear drops of rain,
producing from them bright wheat
and lush trees,
and the human race,
and the species of beasts,
offering up the foods with which all bodies
are nourished,
to lead a sweet life
and generate offspring…

(de rerum natura, bk.II, lines 991- 97)

and he might have added:

There is only one Earth
That nurtures us and is bountiful.
To foul the seas, pollute the air,
Then to deny all responsibility;
To spread soullessness about;
To concrete the land for short-term gain;
To tolerate starvation amid plenty;
To allow the callous purchase of
The political process;
To preside over mass extinctions
Of fellow creatures, innocent of blame;
To disrupt public lives for private gain –
All this is foolishness ………….
Or maybe mass suicide.

Rich, short-sighted sirs, we have your names;
They will be carved in halls of infamy.

(Lucretius was the Roman poet of the Greek philosopher, Epicurus)

A dismal prospect for Britain post- Brexit

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The Institute for Fiscal Studies in Britain has predicted that by the middle of the next decade, public finances will be in the red. It forecasts that GDP per person would be smaller in 2021 than forecast in 2016, that the loss of growth would mean that the economy would be 65 billion pounds smaller in 2021 than previously predicted. Average earnings were on course to be 1,400 pounds lower in 2021 than forecast in 2016. All this means that there is little hope of deficit reduction, or of easing pressure on welfare and public spending. Earnings growth will be flat for two decades and job opportunities sparse, by extension. (Phillip Inman in The Guardian, Dec 2017)

When one bears in mind the fact that flat earnings, poor job prospects and indecent gap between rich and poor put Trump in power and threatens the future of the US as a liberal democracy (in my opinion) then we can look forward to a Britain moving in the same direction, roiled in extremist politics and divisiveness. Brexit will prove much more disastrous than the loss of a few banks to the Continent. Finance is already an “over-mighty subject” that should be put back in its rightful box in any case.

Is all this “Project Fear”? Tom Williams, the chief operating officer of Airbus Commercial Aircraft, recently told the Guardian: “Far from ‘Project Fear’, a no-deal Brexit scenario directly threatens Airbus’s future in the UK.” Airbus is poised to abandon plans to build aircraft wings in British factories. The company directly employs 14,000 people in Britain, supports more than 110,000 jobs in the supply chain and generates £1.7bn in tax revenue.

Just the tip of the iceberg that Britain is irresponsibly on course to hit.

Who are Trump’s American “elite”?

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– They have a measure of actual education.
– They believe in and keep up with advances in science.
– They possess a measure of self-control and self-discipline.
– They have empathy for the poor, the sick and the dispossessed
– and actually give real money to charitable causes.
– They are polite and considerate of others.
– Their IQ ranges from average to excellent.
– Their emotional ages are normal for their actual age.
– They avoid crude language and name-calling.
– They do not have affairs with Playboy Bunnies.
– They do not have multiple bankruptcies or stiff innocent suppliers.
– They keep their word and need hard evidence before a change of mind.
– They can actually read a whole page of briefing and make head and tail of it.
– They do not brag about how rich they are and regard bragging as rather tacky.
– They have a better attention span than a gnat.
– They do not owe their start to sleazy assistance from the Mob.
– They take regular exercise and do not fake good health.
– They can take advice.
– They prefer to tell the truth.
– They don’t bully or approve of bullying.
– They don’t have a kiddy’s diet of Big Macs three times a day.
and lastly –
– Like Epicurus, they drink a glass of wine in the evening and lean towards . moderation, consistency and courtesy.

No wonder, dear Reader, they are so despised.

Name withheld to avoid Twitter frenzy

A thought from CERN, Geneva

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I have just been to CERN and was reminded that Epicurus was a forerunner of todays particle physicists.

Epicurean atomism was remarkably similar to nineteenth-century atomic chemistry: atoms as indivisible, eternal building blocks, things regarded as mere accumulations of atoms colliding with each other. More, the Epicureans came up with a “many worlds” cosmology long before twentieth-century quantum physics did, if for different reasons.

Wrote Epicurus:
“There is an infinite number of worlds, some like this world, others unlike it. . . . For the [infinite] atoms out of which a world might arise, or by which a world might be formed, have not all been expended on one world or a finite number of worlds, whether like or unlike this one.”

Migrant ruling

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The US attorney general has decreed that victims of domestic and gang violence should not usually qualify for asylum. Jeff Sessions’s ruling overturns a 2016 decision by an appeals court to grant asylum to a Salvadorean woman who said she had been repeatedly beaten and raped by her husband. Sessions said abused wives did not count as a persecuted “group”, adding that the law was not designed to protect citizens from private crimes or to “redress all misfortune”. A lawyer working with immigrants called the ruling “a death sentence to potentially thousands of people fleeing harm” in Central America and Mexico. (The Week, June 15,2018)

For most of the history of the United States new migrants arrived for a host of reasons, political, economic and personal. Everyone is, or is descended from, migrants, and migrants are essential to the economy. They work hard and pay their taxes. To refuse residency to drug dealers and known gang members is rational; to deny entry to abused women and children is cruel, as is returning children, brought in infancy to the United States, to their original country. And to overturn an appeals court ruling looks to me to be gross Federal over-reach, begging the question, “what is a public and what is a private crime?” Epicurus, standing for moderation and common sense would say that all violence, in public or in private, is an offense, and the victims should be protected. If Latin American regimes can’t or won’t protect their people the US should set a humane example.