France – the new overwhelming the old

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My father spoke excellent French, good enough for him to be an  RAF liaison officer between the British and the Free French forces after D- Day.  He loved France, as my wife and I do, and would have been devastated, not only about the current state of French politics, but about the fate of smaller, ancient and historic towns in la France profonde that he showed me back in 1949, when, thanks to the war, you felt you were stepping back at least a hundred years in time, or more.

On March 1st the New York Times carried a story about Albi, one of the oldest and most attractive of these old towns in Southern France.  The advent of supermarkets and out-of- town shopping has decimated the economic life of the town.  The food shops and the market have gone, the cafes and shops boarded up and deserted.  What thrives are the hotels and tourist souvenir shops, and presumably the  restaurants savvy enough to supply international food to an international audience.  The place is becoming a museum, like Carcassonne or Mont St. Michel. (This, by the way, has happened in Britain, too, only most of the towwns affected are not as picturesque as the French ones)

Of course, young people have been abandoning these towns for decades in favour of Paris or abroad. The French have done a great job, with the help of the EU, keeping the countryside looking like countryside, even if the shepherd and the cowherd have disappeared, and the average age of the “paysans” is, well, rather high.   But, alas, the great tide of mass marketing is destroying the towns.  How long will it be before tourists conclude that they’ve seen enough museums?  I am sure that, were he alive today, Epicurus would mourn with us the loss of the old, relaxed – and at one time the seemingly never-changing – French way of life.

Really bad taste

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Am I the only person (apart from my wife) who writhed in acute embarrassment at the point in Trump’s speech to Congress last week, when the cameras played upon the poor, grieving, widow of the dead soldier, Ryan Owens, killed in Yemen on an assault on Al Queda?

For years Presidents on this type of occasion have used individuals in the audience as political props, but this was particular bad taste. A brief glimpse of the tearful lady might have been one thing, but we had to watch her for about three excruciating minutes. Poor Mrs. Owens! Democrats joined Republicans in lapping up the scene, like gruesome vampires.

Then the story gets worse. We discover that Mr Owens Sr. refused to meet the President or attend the speech with his wife, and has demanded an enquiry. We learn that the raid was not “rewarding”, and that 32 innocent Yemeni civilians, including a small child, were killed. 32 people! No mention of them by the President, and little or no discussion of them in the media at all (that I saw). This type of uncaring treatment of civilians further alienates the moslem population. (Why does one even have to point that out?)

To cap it all Trump refused to take responsibility for this event, the first of its kind since he became President. It was planned by Obama ( he explained) …..”the generals wanted to do it, so I went along….the generals are great guys”. Disgraceful! Every military operation from day one is Trump’s military operation.

The outcome of all the above? “A complete change in tone”. “The bit about Owens and his widow was so touching” etc. etc. What, I asked myself, has gone wrong with people’s judgment?

An introduction via quotation.

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As a new contributor to this blog, I’ve yet to introduce myself properly. But instead of writing about my life story in a rambling sort of way, I thought I’d instead present to you my favourite quotes. They cover a range of topics, from religion, to philosophy, to poverty and even love. I hope they also show you my personality and even my sense of humour. Enjoy!

“The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.” Thomas Paine

“No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavour to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.” Jeremy Bentham

“Death, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that when we are, death is not, and when death is, we are not.” Epicurus. (I had to include this one given the nature of the blog…)

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth a war, is worse.” John Stuart Mill

“Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of western countries.” George Orwell

“The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of common man.” William Bevridge

“A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong” Socrates

“Further, all men are to be loved equally. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.” Saint Augustine

“MT [Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.” Christopher Hitchens

“The Bolsheviks killed their own most loyal supporters at Kronstadt in 1921, because they failed to understand that the revolution no longer required revolutionaries, but obedient servants.” Peter Hitchens

“What would be the nicest thing I could say about Newt Gingrich? He may be one of the great supporters of the humanities, because you have people who don’t want to study the social sciences, because it’s not profitable, and now Newt, as the highest-paid historian in American history, may be an encouragement to people to study history.” Barney Frank

“I’ve said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America!” Harry S. Truman

“It’s weird: The leader of the Conservative Party in England is two years younger than me, and I still don’t really feel like a responsible adult.” Jarvis Cocker (referring to David Cameron)

“To be frank, it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want. I think that, in Europe, we’re probably better at understanding how to balance those competing claims, though not a lot.” Douglas Adams

“When you want to make it clear to the rest of the world that you are not an imperialist, the best countries to have with you are Britain and Spain.” Bill Maher

“I entered the health care debate in response to a statement in the United States press in summer 2009 which claimed the National Health Service in Great Britain would have killed me off, were I a British citizen. I felt compelled to make a statement to explain the error.” Stephen Hawking

“I think that people have to reward those individuals who are prepared to work across the political aisle. I don’t see any other way; if you don’t talk to people with whom you disagree, you’re never going to solve problems.” Angus King

“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” Noam Chomsky

“Both [the right and the left] suspect the white poor. The right regard them as scroungers, who steal the money of the middle classes, either by breaking into their homes or by taking their taxes in benefit cheques. The left regard them as sexist and racist homophobes.” Nick Cohen

“Children who are treated as if they are uneducable, almost invariably become uneducable.” Kenneth Clark

“I have often been called a Nazi, and, although it is unfair, I don’t let it bother me. I don’t let it bother me for one simple reason. No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal.” P.J. O’Rourke

“Why do people say “grow some balls”? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.” Sheng Wang

“Women are there to be loved, not to be understood.” Oscar Wilde

“It would be embarrassing to get married again. It’s something we’ve never talked about. Anyway, we’ve got our gay friends, they are all getting married, people like Elton (Elton John). They have taken the load off all us heterosexuals living in sin.” Janet Street Porter

“There is nothing wrong with going to bed with someone of your own sex. People should be very free with sex, they should draw the line at goats.” Elton John

A government of looters

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 This is part of a posting on Tomgram, Feb 6, 2017,  (Copyright 2017 Tom Engelhardt)
“We have here in the United States the wealthiest cabinet in our history, a true crew of predatory capitalists, including a commerce secretary nicknamed “the king of bankruptcy” for his skills in buying up wrecked companies at staggering profits; a Treasury secretary dubbed the “foreclosure king” of California for evicting thousands of homeowners, including active-duty military families, from distressed properties he partners picked during the 2008 financial meltdown; and the head of the State Department who only recently led ExxonMobil in its global depredations.  As a crew, they and their compatriots are primed to  dismantle or reduce the agencies they’ll run or shred their missions.  That includes the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, a man long in the pay of big energy, who seems determined to reduce the EPA to a place that protects us from nothing; and a fast-food king who, as the new labor secretary, is against the minimum wage and would love to replace workers with machines.
“And don’t forget the White House, now that it’s a family operation — a combination of a real-estate-based global branding outfit (the Trumps) and a real estate empire (son-in-law Jared Kushner).  It’s obvious that decisions made in the White House, but also in government offices in foreign capitals, on the streets of foreign cities, and even among jihadists, will affect the fortunes of those two families.  I’m not exactly the first person to point out that the seven Muslim lands included in Trump’s immigration ban included not one in which he has business dealings.  As patriarch, Donald J. will, of course, rule the Oval Office; his son-in-law will be down the hall somewhere. Thought about in a certain way, you could say “welcome to Saudi Arabia or Bashar al-Assad’s Syria before the catastrophe”.
“From health care and tax policy to environmental protections, this will undoubtedly be a government of the looters, by the looters, and for the looters, and a Congress of the same.  As of yet, however, we’ve seen only the smallest hints of what is to come.  In such a leave-no-billionaires-behind era, forget the past swamps of Washington.  The government of Donald J. Trump seems slated to produce an American swamp of swamps and, somewhere down the line, will surely give new meaning to the phrase “conflict of interest”.  Yet these processes, too, are barely underway.  From this government of 1% looters, you can expect but to be looted and to experience crimes of every sort”.
And to make it worse are the suspicions about the (unproven as yet) deal made with Putin – “you help tip the scales of the election,  Vlad, and I will……” do what?  We are waiting to find out, and surely will, one way or another.  And Mr. Engelhardt doesn’t have room to mention the power behind the throne, Bannon, and the damage he is likely to do.
Epicurus was right – politics is a dirty business. But then there is a lot of (our) money at stake. Meanwhile, half the country seems not to care a tinkers’s cuss, indeed, applauds it all.  What a come- down from the country I thought I knew.

Britain’s sleep crisis

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A charity has called for the Government to implement a “national sleep strategy” after a survey it commissioned found that British people are on average getting only 6.8 hours a night – around an hour less than they feel they need. The Royal Society for Public Health wants people to be given “slumber numbers” (guidance on how much sleep different age groups need) and for cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to be made more available for sleep disorders. Lack of sleep is known to increase the risk not only of various medical conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes, but also of mental illness. “Insomnia, the most common expression of mental disease, is like a Cinderella disorder – seldom receiving proper attention, despite being the most treatable precursor to depression,” said Colin Espie, professor of sleep medicine at Oxford University.

6.8 hours!  That’s a lot! I come from a long line of sleepless people.  Not only am I affected (sometimes being awake all night for 4 or 5 days in a stretch, and I am not exaggerating), but my sister and her children are affected in a similar way.  I joke that our ancestors were night sentries in prehistoric days, protecting our families in the dark hours from woolly mammoths, and thus our genes for sleep were altered.    It is a terrible affliction, and yes, I attest that it is not treated very seriously – few believe you. On the other hand I hardly think it leads to mental disease.  Yes, irritability, confusion and forgetfulness, but not “mental disease”, however you interpret that.  As it happens, by coincidence, I offered my study services in a sleep study to Professor Espie’s clinic in Oxford some while ago, but never had the privilege of a reply.  So maybe  lack of sleep isn’t as urgent a problem as he makes out.  One cannot have people with mental disease walking around unattended.  It’s irresponsible.