Les neiges d’antan

Posted on February 28, 2018 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our Mission Statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

28 February 2018

 

WINTER

 

When icicles hang by the wall

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail;

When blood is nipped and ways be foul,

Then nightly sings the staring owl,

Tu-who!

Tu-whit, tu-who!  – a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

 

When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,

And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian’s nose looks red and raw;

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,

Then nightly sings the staring owl,

Tu-who!

Tu-whit, tu-who! – a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

 

Love’s Labour’s Lost (1595), Act 5, Scene 2, line 920, by English dramatist William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Antigone1984:

London – and much of Britain – drew back the bedroom curtains this morning to a rare white-out, a thick mantle of snow carpeting the capital, metamorphising the city’s parks into a wintery Breugelesque landscape.  It feels as if – courtesy of global warming – the last substantial snowfall of this kind took place a decade, nay two decades, ago. It brings back nostalgic memories of childhood when winter snowfall was to be expected and carol singers beat the hoary bounds of the parish before taking refuge in the cosy parlour of the Big House, a log fire burning merrily in the hearth, as mine host welcomed them to a groaning board of mince tarts and mulled wine. Such, such were the days, my friend – we thought they would never end! Today’s snowfall almost wipes out the intervening decades. And lo! In the garden the fox has left his footprints in the fresh snow. The yucca and the palm, the holly and the ivy each bear their pall of white, the lavender bush is sinking under its candid burden, while the buds on the kerria bush, on the brink of blossoming, have decided to hold back for more clement days.  And outside our kitchen window the powdery flakes have magicked two ancient cobwebs into a delicate tracery of white lace. Ah the days of our youth, those days of snow-white innocence as yet unsullied by experience!

—–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

  1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)
  2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)
  3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)
  4. Capitalism in practice (4 July 2012)
  5. Ladder  (21 June 2012)
  6. A tale of two cities (1) (6 June 2012)
  7. A tale of two cities (2) (7 June 2012)
  8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

Posted in Literature, UK, USA | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The heart and soul of the party

Posted on February 27, 2018 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our Mission Statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

27 February 2018

 

DER UNENTBERHRLICHE

 

Wirklich, er war unentbehrlich!

Überall, wo was geschah

Zu dem Wohle der Gemeinde,

Er war tätig, er war da.

 

Schützenfest, Kasinobālle,

Pferderennen, Preisgericht,

Liedertafel, Spritzenprobe,

Ohne ihn da ging est nicht.

 

Ohne ihn war nichts zu machen,

Keine Stunde hat er frei.

Gestern, als sie ihn begruben,

War er richtig auch dabei.

 

Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908), German satirist

 

THE LIFE AND SOUL OF THE PARTY

 

Really, he was part of the furniture!

Wherever anything happened

That cheered people up,

He was the mover and shaker, he was always around.

 

At shooting parties, at dances in the Casino,

At the horse races, when judging a competition,

At the glee club, at the fire drill,

Without him nothing happened.

 

Without him nothing could be done.

He hadn’t a moment free.

Yesterday, when they buried him,

There he was again, present and correct!

 

Antigone1984:

An old friend of ours recently told a very similar tale about a colleague of his – let us call him JS – at a London office at which our friend worked. JS was the guy described in the poem. Nothing moved at Bullingdon Brothers –the name we shall give to this business – without the nod from JS. At the office from early morning to late in the evening and afterwards at bars and hostelries in the City, JS would be there. His name was on everyone’s lips. “Where’s JS,” they cried. “We’ve got to find him. We need him urgently.” Popular isn’t the word. He could solve any problem, deal with any dilemma, suggest whatever remedy the situation required. He never attacked anyone, he never put anyone down, he never bigged himself up. And he had a never-ending fund of humorous anecdotes, mainly involving the office, that had them rolling in the aisles. If you wanted cheering up, JS was the man to go to. In fact, it was often said that if JS wasn’t there, the business would go under. He was the glue that kept it together. And then one day – as sometimes happens to people – he died. Needless to say, the funeral was a fun thing. Then a strange thing happened. After the funeral, according to our friend, JS was never mentioned again. Not in the board-room, not in the canteen, not in the typing pool, not in the corridors and not in the chill-out room. And the business did not go under. In fact, Bullingdon Brothers went on to scale new heights.

In society you exist only so far as you continue to be there, wherever it is. Once you have left, no trace of you remains, not even a memory, your place now occupied by another.

ἐπάμεροι. τί δέ τις; τί δ᾽ οὔ τις; σκιᾶς ὄναρ
 ἄνθρωπος. 

Here today, gone tomorrow! What is anyone?
 What is he not? Man is but a dream of a shadow
.

View of the Greek poet Pindar (518-438 BC) as expressed in his Pythian Odes  (Book 8, line 135):

 

—–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

  1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)
  2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)
  3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)
  4. Capitalism in practice (4 July 2012)
  5. Ladder  (21 June 2012)
  6. A tale of two cities (1) (6 June 2012)
  7. A tale of two cities (2) (7 June 2012)
  8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

Posted in Austria, Economics, Germany, Literature, Philosophy, UK, USA | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Having your cake and eating it

Posted on February 26, 2018 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our Mission Statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

26 February 2018

“I have always in the end got what I set out to get. Though keeping it may be another matter. But I have always believed profoundly in the magnetism of desire. There is no superstition about it – if one wants a thing intensely enough one must finally achieve it, for the simple reason that all one’s thoughts and actions are directed towards that end, both consciously and unconsciously, and there is tremendous power in that unconscious propulsion towards the objective. The trouble with the majority of people is that they do not know what they want from life, and even when they have some idea, there is no passion in their wanting.”

“It has always seemed to me that the only intelligent and satisfactory principle of life is that of determining both to have one’s cake and eat it. People say that it can’t be done, and for those people it obviously can’t. In order to make it a practical working philosophy, two things are needful, and those the very things which the vast majority of people lack – immense vitality and a flair for living. I have both. I have always known what I wanted and never been afraid to go after it. Nor had any superstitious fear about taking what life offered and being glad of it, and not stopping to wonder whether it were ‘wise’. It is all this business of being sensible and discreet which drains all the colour and gaiety and spontaneous joy out of living.”

“I have had a full crowded life, like Ulysses, ‘all times I have enjoyed greatly, have suffered greatly…’. Heavens, how one has wept, but heavens how one has laughed and loved and delighted, too. ‘Sensible’ people call it living on one’s emotions, but how else can one live? Living on one’s intellect is a sterile and barren business. Not to feel is not to live.”

The passages above are taken from Chapter XII of “Confessions and Impressions”, published in 1930, the first of three volumes of autobiography from the pen of Ethel Mannin (1900-1984), prolific London-born author of novels, short stories, travel books and works on education and child psychology. Mannin was born to working-class parents and left school at 15 to work as a typist in an advertising agency. As can be inferred from the passages quoted above, she was an early “liberated woman” with a contempt for convention. Popular during the first half of the twentieth century, she is now largely forgotten.

Antigone1984:

In the second passage quoted above, Mannin gives short shrift to people who say that you can’t have your cake and eat it. One of those falling into that category would undoubtedly be the current Polish President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, who has just told UK Ministers seeking to negotiate Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union that they can’t have their cake and eat it. [See our post EU sticks it to UK published on 24 February 2018].

British novelist Julian Barnes, however, takes Mannin’s side, but foresees another problem: “You can have your cake and eat it, the only trouble is you get fat.”

—–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

  1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)
  2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)
  3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)
  4. Capitalism in practice (4 July 2012)
  5. Ladder  (21 June 2012)
  6. A tale of two cities (1) (6 June 2012)
  7. A tale of two cities (2) (7 June 2012)
  8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

Posted in Education, Europe, Ireland, Literature, Philosophy, Poland, UK, USA | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hell on Earth

Posted on February 25, 2018 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our Mission Statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

25 February 2018

After three days of wrangling, the UN Security Council yesterday 24 February 2018 unanimously adopted a resolution urging a 30-day truce “without delay” in Eastern Ghouta, an enclave adjacent to the Syrian capital Damascus where rebel forces are holding out against troops loyal to the sanguinary Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, henchman of the ruthless Russian tsar Vladimir Putin.

The resolution is a dead letter.

Only hours after the UN resolution, Syria commenced a ground offensive against the rebel enclave and continued to pound it with improvised barrel bombs and shells.

The UN resolution was agreed to permit aid deliveries and medical evacuations but – the price for Moscow’s agreement to the resolution – operations against fundamentalist jihadist rebel groups are not covered by the truce.

This get-out clause is, naturally, being cited by the Syrian regime to justify its continued attacks on the enclave.

Which, of course, was the reason that Moscow insisted on exempting certain rebel forces from the truce. It agreed to the cease-fire in the knowledge that it would be impossible to implement in practice if certain rebel groups were still fair game for the regime.

Since the enclave is relatively small and all the rebel factions are necessarily in close proximity within it, the Syrian regime can happily continue with its attacks, claiming that it is targeting only the jihadist groups. However, the bombs themselves, many of them (according to reports) improvised unguided barrel bombs, do not distinguish between the various rebel groups or between rebel groups and civilians.

Nearly 400 000 people, mostly civilians and including non-combatant women and children, are trapped in Eastern Ghouta. About 520 people are said to have died, including more than 120 children, in Eastern Ghouta since a relentless barrage of regime rocket fire, shelling and airstrikes began last Sunday 18 February 2018. The regime has also been targeting bombs at hospitals in the rebel-held area.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said the situation in the Eastern Ghouta is like “Hell on Earth”.

 Today 25 February 2018 Pope Francis said the violence was “inhuman” and called for an immediate halt to the deadly bombardment to allow access for humanitarian aid.

The Syrian government has repeatedly denied targeting civilians and said it is trying to liberate the Eastern Ghouta from “terrorists” – a term it uses to describe both jihadist militants and mainstream rebel groups opposed to the regime – basically, anyone who opposes the bloodstained dictatorship.

[The above account is a conflation of reports today in the BBC and the UK’s online Guardian newspaper]

Here are some excerpts from an analysis today of the latest events in Syria by the Guardian commentator Simon Tisdall, a journalist with whom we often find ourselves in agreement:

“The first signs from Eastern Ghouta are not encouraging. A day after the UN Security Council finally agreed a ceasefire, it was back to bombing-as-usual for Syria’s regime. It is as though the vote for a truce in the besieged enclave, so long in coming and so contentious, never happened at all.

 

Bashar al-ASssad, Syria’s president, is primarily culpable. He probably no longer cares what the world thinks. He has no reputation to lose. Perhaps he calculates one final push by his ground forces will finish the rebels, before a ceasefire takes hold.

 

But the larger burden of responsibility lies with Russia. It was Vladimir Putin who rescued Assad when he was losing the war. Russia’s president has protected his Syrian poodle from war crimes charges and blocked inquiries into his use of banned chemical weapons. Putin has bathed in the kudos of seeming to supplant the US as the Middle East’s big mover and shaker.

 

And it was Putin who delayed the UN ceasefire last week, even as Ghouta’s children were dying, watering down its provisions. He ensured, in effect, that anybody Assad deems a “terrorist” is still fair game for his barrel bombers. That is why the fighting continues unchecked.

 

The Syrian conflict began as a popular, internal uprising against a dictator. But since Russia jumped in militarily it has become Putin’s war. It is Moscow’s biggest foreign military adventure since the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Remember how that ended [Antigone1984: the Russians were forced to pull out ignominiously ten years later]….

 

Russia’s global prestige, geo-strategic interests and political and military credibility are now inextricably linked to Assad. Increasingly that looks like a bad bet that Putin cannot afford to lose.

 

Syria is a shocking, baffling mess. For ordinary Russians, it is a waste of men and money. For a watching world, appalled by scenes of relentless brutality and cruelty in Ghouta, Aleppo, and a thousand other towns and cities, it is Putin’s mess. It’s up to him to fix it.”

 

Antigone1984:

 

In general, we are opposed to western military intervention in the Arab world. It usually leads to interminable conflict and the emergence of anarchic failed states (Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Syria).

However, when it is a question of the butchery of innocent men, women and children, our resolve falters somewhat. As it did in Bosnia, with the genocide of  more than 8 000 Muslim Bosnians by Serbs in Srebrenica in 1995. As a result, the subsequent  intervention in Serbia by NATO in 1999 we welcomed.

 

What if, instead of planning to give a bloody nose to North Korea, particularly at a time when it is seeking a rapprochement with South Korea and apparently (according to the South Koreans) would be happy to have talks with the US, the United States instead  intervened on this occasion to give Putin a helping hand in “fixing” this mess (as Guardian commentator Tisdall puts it)?

 

What if, on humanitarian grounds, the US were to give Bashar al-Assad a bloody nose (and more) by taking out his airforce and maybe the Syrian presidential palace as well? The last US President Barack Obama had the chance to do just that some years ago when Assad attacked a civilian settlement in Syria with sarin gas. The use of chemical weapons was supposed to be a red line for the US at that time.

Obama chickened out and sat on his hands.

Perhaps the current US president could trump him?

If, in doing so, he helped put a stop to the carnage in Syria, who knows,  he might even get some liberals to back him.

 Just a thought.

G’night, folks.

 

—–

 

You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

  1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)
  2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)
  3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)
  4. Capitalism in practice (4 July 2012)
  5. .Ladder  (21 June 2012)
  6. A tale of two cities (1) (6 June 2012)
  7. tale of two cities (2) (7 June 2012)
  8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

Posted in Guardian, Military, Police, Politics, Russia, Syria, UK, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

EU sticks it to UK

Posted on February 24, 2018 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our Mission Statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

24 February 2018

It is of existential importance to the European Union that the secession of the United Kingdom should fail.

If Britain leaves the EU and remains economically viable standing on its own two feet, then other disgruntled members among the 27 remaining EU states – Hungary and Poland, perhaps, even austerity-battered Greece – might follow suit and the whole megalomaniac enterprise intended to lead to a United States of Europe could collapse like a set of dominos – just as the Soviet Union did after 1989. There is no iron law which states that political entities will last forever. Quite the contrary, as history teaches us.

This is why the EU is desperate that Britain should fail to make a go of it and, eventually, sooner or later, see the errors of its ways, come back into the fold and allow the whole bang shooting match to lurch on as before.

In a referendum on 23 June 2016, the British people voted by 51.9 % to 48.1 % to leave the EU.

Since then the EU has wasted no opportunity to thwart this democratic decision. As the recent German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble once memorably said, “elections change nothing”.

The EU strategy since the election has been three-fold:

  1. Use of the stick. This is the primary weapon in the EU arsenal. They have bent over backwards to make the secession negotiations between the UK and the EU as difficult as possible. Threatening Britain with economic collapse, Brussels has insisted that any economic deal must be on the EU’s terms. The EU will lay down the conditions and the UK can take it or leave it. No question of a genuine negotiation on an amicable basis with give-and-take on both sides. If the UK wants continued economic relations with the EU after Brexit it will have to be on terms set unilaterally by Brussels.  Those conditions, as the EU has repeatedly stressed, must involve continued acceptance of the rules of the EU’s single market and customs union under the supervision of the European Court of Justice together with continued contributions to the EU budget but no say in decisions taken by the EU authorities – the European Council, the European Commission or the European Parliament. This is what, in negotiations, is called a “non-negotiable demand”. It is presented to the other party in the full knowledge that they cannot accept it. Since the single market and the customs union constitute the EU’s core, Britain would be bound by all its current EU obligations but would have no say in future EU decision-taking. By definition its position would be worse than at present: all the responsibilities but no share of the power. Far from leaving the EU, the position for which a majority of UK voters opted, to all intents and purposes the UK would remain within the core EU structures but no longer as a member but rather as a vassal state. Moreover, it would still be subject to EU court decisions while having no UK judges in the EU court to represent it.

We had a good example of this hardline approach yesterday, as reported by both the BBC and the Guardian.

Speaking on the occasion of an informal meeting of EU heads of state and government, Mr Donald Tusk, the current Polish President of the EU Council, appeared to reject outright the British preference for a unique custom-built special relationship between the UK and the EU, taking into account the interests of both parties as sovereign bodies.

Mr Tusk is quoted as saying that media reports suggested that a “have your cake and eat it” approach was still alive in the UK. “If these reports are correct, I am afraid that the UK position today is based on pure illusion,” he is quoted as saying. He is said to have ruled out any notion that the UK will be allowed to “cherry-pick” aspects of its future relationship with the EU or that it will be able to join the single market “à la carte” .

The UK government is currently thought to want to exit from the current customs union with the EU – but to mirror EU rules in some industries in an attempt to achieve “frictionless trade”. A senior UK minister, Jeremy Hunt, is quoted as saying that the regulations covering some UK sectors could be aligned with those that apply to their European counterparts. “But it will be on a voluntary basis. We will, as a sovereign power, have the right to choose to diverge.” In other sectors regulations might diverge from those in the EU in order to give the UK a competitive advantage in the international marketplace.

2. Use of the carrot. Hardly a week goes by without one senior EU figure or another suggesting to the UK government that it should ignore the democratically expressed wishes of the British people and turn a blind eye to the referendum. The patter is always the same and is always accompanied by an ingratiating smile: “If you were to decide, after all, to stay in the EU, we would, of course, welcome you back in with open arms.”

3. However, just in case the carrot-and-stick approach is not sufficiently effective to achieve their objectives, they are conspiring day-in-day out with a fifth column of UK Brexit opponents across the party political divide and throughout the media establishment to sway public opinion against leaving the EU by stoking fears that to leave the EU would inevitably provoke an economic Armageddon. Remember, these guys can foretell the future. Like Nostradamus, they “know” what is going to happen. They must be the first people in history with such “knowledge”. As we have often said to self-styled prophets, why don’t they hightail it to a betting shop and do themselves some good?

Antigone1984:

Oh dear. It has not turned out as it was supposed to, neither for those opposed to Brexit or for the Brexiteers.

For those opposed to Brexit, particularly the cosmopolitan metropolitan elite, who had generally assumed that, after 43 years of EU membership, the country would vote to press ahead on the road to a United States of Europe, the referendum result was a catastrophe with which they are still struggling to come to terms.

Those in favour of Brexit were naturally chuffed by the result. However, many of them naively expected an easy ride from the EU when it came to developing an economic modus vivendi post-Brexit. After all, they thought, rightly in our view, that it was in the interests of both parties to negotiate a mutually beneficial divorce – a win-win deal – given that both sides benefit enormously from their mutual economic and financial relations. This position is put most optimistically in the polemic, “Why vote leave”, a very readable summary of the arguments for Brexit written by UK MEP Daniel Hannan and published before the referendum in 2016 by Head Zeus. After all, Britain has traded successfully with the Continent since King Offa of Mercia signed the first recorded commercial treaty in English history with the Emperor Charlemagne in 796. Why stop now?

However, this optimism has been comprehensively dashed by the hardline approach adopted by the EU in the aftermath of the referendum.

At this stage, it is not possible to predict the outcome. A watered-down version of Brexit may be adopted which will satisfy neither Remainers nor Brexiteers. Moreover, even if Britain does leave the EU, it will still presumably be eligible to re-apply for membership if life outside becomes intolerable. Besides, it is also quite possible that the UK’s Conservative Government, which does not have an overall majority in Parliament without support from outside its own party, will be unable to persuade MPs to adopt the legislation needed for Brexit to take place at all: a minority of Conservative MPs are opposed to Brexit and these could join forces with the increasingly popular Labour Party to outvote the government. The Labour Party has been ambivalent towards Brexit so far but it appears to be moving in the direction of supporting continued membership of the EU. If Brexit does not get through Parliament, a general election is inevitable – a general election which the Labour Party is currently in pole position to win. Since getting into power is the main objective of a political party, it is more than likely that the Labour Party will, in any case, put expediency before principle and oppose Brexit in Parliament – if only on the grounds that this is the swiftest way for it to get into power.

Kicking off with this post, we propose to publish further occasional posts on the Brexit saga.

For a fuller background to Brexit, readers can check out four of our earlier posts:

  1. Our magnum opus stating a case for Brexit: Contra Unionem Europaeam
  2. The result of the UK referendum on Brexit, which took place on 23 June 2016: The peasants have revolted
  3. A short resumé of our case for Brexit, being a summary of the 10 key arguments: Why the UK does not need the EU crutch
  4. An in-depth analysis of immigration, which plays a major role on the Brexit stage: Immigration

—–

Posted in Economics, Europe, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Politics, UK | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Disraeli

Posted on February 23, 2018 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our Mission Statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

23 February 2018

“There is no act of treachery, or meanness, of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.”

Quotation from the novel Vivian Grey by Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), who was Prime Minister of Britain in 1868 and 1874-80

Antigone1984:

The novel was published in 1826 and 1827. That was then and this is now… Mais plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

For our take on the current situation as regards political parties, check out our post “Partitocracy v. Democracy” below.

—–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

  1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)
  2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)
  3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)
  4. Capitalism in practice (4 July 2012)
  5. Ladder  (21 June 2012)
  6. A tale of two cities (1) (6 June 2012)D
  7. A tale of two cities (2) (7 June 2012)
  8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Butchery of the Innocents

Posted on February 22, 2018 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our Mission Statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

22 February 2018

A bill has been tabled in the Icelandic Parliament that would ban circumcision for non-medical reasons, according to a report on the BBC on 20 February 2018. If enacted, the bill would make Iceland the first European country to ban the practice.

The move has provoked a strong reaction from religious groups. Jewish and Muslim leaders have condemned the bill as an attack on religious freedom.

Claiming that the practice violates the rights of the child, the bill would impose a six-year prison term for cutting off a baby boy’s prepuce without medical justification.

Tabling the bill earlier this month, MP Silja Dögg Gunnarsdóttir of the Progressive Party, said: “Everyone has the right to believe in what they want, but the rights of children come above the right to believe”.

The bill – which has yet to have its first reading in the Icelandic parliament and then be considered by a parliamentary committee – maintains that circumcision “involves permanent intervention in a child’s body that can cause severe pain”.

If adopted by parliament, the legislation would complement a law passed in 2005 banning female genital mutilation.

However, the Nordic Jewish Communities condemned the ban on “the most central rite” in their faith. Jewish campaign group Milah UK said that comparison with female genital mutilation was unwarranted, claiming that male circumcision involved “no recognized long-term negative impact on the child”.

According to the BBC, The Bishop of Reykjavik, Agnes M. Sigurðardóttir said: “The danger that arises, if this bill becomes law, is that Judaism and Islam will become criminalized religions. We must avoid all such forms of extremism.”

However, Michelle Roberts, a BBC health editor, says that circumcision is not entirely risk-free, the main risks being bleeding and infection. However, doctors may recommend circumcision if the boy has phimosis (an unusually tight foreskin) or suffers from balanitis (inflammation of the glans – the top part – of the penis).

While Iceland would be the first European country to ban non-medical circumcision, the practice is becoming more controversial and has been contested in court in Germany and the UK. In 2013 the Council of Europe recommended that countries take steps to ensure that good medical and sanitary practices are followed when circumcision is performed.

Antigone1984:

We last addressed this subject on 6 October 2012 in our post circumcision .

As we said then, ”Circumcision is a barbaric ritual involving the forcible mutilation of the natural body of a defenceless baby that is not of an age to give its assent to the aggression. The assent of the parents is irrelevant. It is the rights of the child that are at stake. The excision of a normal foreskin has no medical justification. Circumcision purely as a religious rite is, therefore, in our view, unconditionally wrong.”

And, regardless of the long-term effect, what about the pain suffered by the baby as part of its body is cut off? Is that OK?

In its report, the BBC refers to circumcision as “surgery”.

This is highly misleading. Surgery is a term that refers to corporal incision (cuts made in skin or flesh) for medical purposes.

That is why the Council of Europe is wrong, in our view, to recommend that countries take steps to ensure that good medical and sanitary practices are followed when circumcision is performed. Circumcision for non-medical purposes is a non-medical procedure. It is illogical to recommend “good medical and sanitary practices” for a procedure that is non-medical. The Council of Europe, to which the European Court of Human Rights, the Continent’s supreme human rights tribunal,  is attached, should be calling for a blanket ban on this barbarous practice.

Doctors who carry out circumcisions should also examine their consciences. Since the time of Hippocrates of Kos, the Greek physician traditionally regarded as the  father of Western medicine, who died around 380 BC,  medical practitioners have been assumed to be bound by the Hippocratic Oath, which commits them to use their skills solely for the purpose of improving a patient’s health.

Let us call a spade a spade. Incision for non-medical purposes is not surgery but butchery. In the case of children, it is the butchery of the innocents.

However, this is one of the few occasions on which we are able to make a positive suggestion that might be able, in this area, to reconcile the conflicting demands of religion and medicine.

Long-standing cultural practices are usually of mega importance to those who practise them. The upset that the prohibition of circumcision would cause to many Jews and Muslims should not be downplayed.

Our suggestion, therefore, is that the actual act of circumcision be replaced by a ritual symbolic procedure conserving the spiritual objectives for which circumcision is currently prescribed.

There are precedents. For example – unless this practice has been discontinued unbeknownst to us –  when Roman Catholics take communion, they do not actually eat the blood and flesh of Christ. Instead, they eat a white wheaten wafer (simbolising the body of Christ) and drink a potion of wine (symbolising the blood of Christ).

 —–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

  1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)
  2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)
  3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)
  4. Capitalism in practice (4 July 2012)
  5. Ladder  (21 June 2012)
  6. A tale of two cities (1) (6 June 2012)
  7. A tale of two cities (2) (7 June 2012)
  8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

Posted in COUNTRIES/INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS, Europe, Finland, Health, Iceland, Israel, Justice, Politics, Religion, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, UK, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

In praise of speaking out

Posted on February 21, 2018 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our Mission Statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

21 February 2018

 

“It’s the hinge that squeaks that gets the grease”

Malcolm X (1925-1965), US political radical.

 

—–

 

You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

  1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)
  2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)
  3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)
  4. Capitalism in practice (4 July 2012)
  5. Ladder  (21 June 2012)
  6. A tale of two cities (1) (6 June 2012)
  7. A tale of two cities (2) (7 June 2012)
  8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

Posted in Politics, Revolution, UK, USA | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

ANTIGONE1984 SPRINGS TO LIFE AGAIN

Posted on February 20, 2018 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our Mission Statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

20 February 2018

Antigone1984 is aiming to relaunch. This attempt may or not be successful. We shall have to wait and see. However, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, we want to re-emphasize a number of points ( a fuller picture of our aims and beliefs is contained in our Mission Statement above):

 

  1. This is a committed left-wing (in US English, “liberal”) blog.
  2. It is intended, therefore, to promote an exclusively left-wing viewpoint. Antigone1984 is not a journal of record aimed at presenting a balance of left-wing and right-wing views. It is a polemical tract intended to promote the left. We leave it to conventional commentators, of which there are legions, to root for the right.
  3. Within the spectrum of left-wing opinion, the blog has three unconditional standpoints.

 

      It supports:

 

  1. human rights (first and foremost being the right to life and hence repudiation in all circumstances of the death penalty and, more broadly, war).
  2. political, economic and cultural cooperation instead of competition. A natural corollary is our outright opposition to the market economy: we are unreservedly anti-capitalist.
  3. universal participative democracy (as opposed to so-called “representative” democracy, whereby the fate of human beings is stealthily micro-managed by tight-knit hierarchically-organised political parties composed of elites of principle-free self-seeking opportunists [check out our article below on “Partitocracy v. Democracy” for further information].

 

With the above in mind, we have a favour to ask of internauts who happen upon the blog. If you disagree with the three standpoints mentioned above, then please switch off immediately: this blog is not for you. The blog is aimed at readers who are already committed left-wingers as well as at those who still have an open mind on the principles we have sketched out above.

Finally, we would ask readers to have some patience with us till we get back into our stride. We published the blog almost daily for around five years (from 2011 to 2015). Then in July 2015 the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tspras, leader of the previously vociferous left-wing Syriza Party, took only a week flatly to disregard the results of a national referendum rejecting the imposition of economic austerity by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. At that point Antigone1984 threw in the towel. The postwar history of Europe is littered with erstwhile left-wing parties who have sold out comprehensively to the right. Tsipras set a new standard: never has a leftwing party on this Continent sold out so quickly and so comprehensively to the forces of reaction. In such bleak circumstances, what was the point, we thought, of continuing. The blog sputtered into lethargic decline and largely ceased publication.

That was then, however, and now is now. After Winter cometh the Spring…the green shoots of hope push once again through the damp soil… LA LUTTE CONTINUE!

—–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

  1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)
  2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)
  3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)
  4. Capitalism in practice (4 July 2012)
  5. Ladder  (21 June 2012)
  6. A tale of two cities (1) (6 June 2012)
  7. A tale of two cities (2) (7 June 2012)
  8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

Posted in Economics, Europe, Greece, Military, Politics, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Protection money: Don Corleone

Posted on April 29, 2017 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

29 April 2017

Potus is sitting in the Oval Office, complaining of his workload and wondering what to do. He has an idea. He is surprised at this as he is not really an ideas man. He addresses his gopher.

The Donald (DT) : Get me the phone!

Gopher (G): Sir, you already have it in your hand.

DT: So I have, so I have. Smart of you to spot it. I had my hand behind my head – the hand with the phone in it – so naturally I didn’t know I was holding it.

G: Can I be of any further assistance, Mr President?

DT: Yes, tell me why I wanted the phone?

G: Perhaps to speak to a President, I mean a President who is not you.

DT: Yes, Yes, that’s a good idea. But which President?

G: Well, there’s the Chinese President and the Japanese President and the President of Mexico and there’s that nice President Putin who seems put out at the moment for some reason…

DT: People get upset at just about everything nowadays. Perhaps it’s because we have just bombed his towel-head friend…that Basher chap or whatever he’s called. These foreigners all have foreign names. How can any one remember who they are? Why don’t they just have straightforward names like anyone else? Donald, for instance? This world would be a better place if more people were called Donald. Doncha think?

G: Sure do, Mr President. Sure do.

DT: Isn’t there any other President I could ring. I always ring the same people. I need to inject some variety into my life. It’s so boring always making small talk with the same Presidents.

G: Well, Mr President, there are about 150 Presidents in the world that you could ring. There’s the President of Iran, for instance, or the President of France, or the President of Kazakhstan….or you could maybe try the President of our allies in South Korea?

DT: Yes, that’s it. I knew there was some President I wanted to talk to. I have a deal I want to make with those South Koreans. Here’s the goddam phone! Get me the President of South Korea!

G: Yessir!

Gopher is on the phone for five minutes. Reports back crestfallen.

G: Unfortunately, Mr President, President Park Geun-hye of South Korea is under house arrest. She’s been impeached.

DT: What do you mean, she’s under house arrest? What’s she doing under house arrest at a time like this? Doesn’t she know there’s a war on? Or at least there soon will be if I have anything to do with it. This is ridiculous. She’s let me down. What am I going to do?

G: Perhaps ring the Vice-President of South Korea?

DT: Great idea! Get me the Vice-President!

Gopher is on the phone for five minutes. DT chews a banana. Gopher returns.

G: Here he is, Sir. It’s Mr Kim, the acting Vice-President of South Korea.

DT picks up the phone.

DT: Hi, Jim! What’s the weather like in Tokyo these days?

Kim: Mumble mumble mumble.

DT: Sounds like the line is not too good. It doesn’t matter, anyway. You don’t need to speak. You just need to listen. OK, compadre?

Kim: Mumble mumble mumble.

DT: Jim, you may not know this yet, but last night I installed some Thud missile launchers in your country right up against the North Korean border. OK? Yes, I know it’s OK. You don’t need to answer. Well, now you’re real safe, coz those Thuds can shoot your northern relative’s missiles right out of the sky – that’s if they haven’t exploded on take-off as they usually do. But I’m real sorry that we had to base them on a golf course. That’s the worst part of this whole mission. I mean I know about golf courses. I’m very particular about them. In fact, we have one at a nice place called Mar-a-Lago down in Florida. Fancy a round, by the way? Naturally, special rates for you, my Chink friend.

Mr Kim: Mumble mumble mumble.

DT: I take that to be a yes. I’ll get the Vice-President Mr Pence to arrange it. He doesn’t have much to do. In fact, that’s actually his job, they tell, me – doing nothing. It’s a funny old place this White House, takes some gettin’ used to. Now back to business. I’ll be straight with you, Jim. I like you personally, although I’ve never seen you and maybe never will – except at Mar-a-Lago, of course. Well, Jim, I’m going to cut you a deal that you won’t be able to refuse. I am going to charge you only one billion US dollars – remember, by the way, US dollars, not some worthless foreign bucks – for the privilege of our basing our Thud missiles in your backyard. Jim, you are a very lucky man. I have done many deals in my life but you have got the best price that I have ever given to a Chinese Vice-President. Congratulations!

Gopher intervenes gingerly.

G: Excuse me, Mr President, but with the greatest respect I think you’re talking to the South Korean Vice-President.

DT: Is that so? Well, I’m not at all surprised. Those Orientals are all just asking to get mixed up. They speak different lingos and yet they look all the same. Anyway, I don’t think Jim’ll mind. I’ve been getting on real well with him. We’ve just clinched a great deal! He was so grateful for our Thuds. In fact, I’m thinking of sending him some more. The price will probably go up in the meantime, of course. But then that’s business and those Japs sure know about business. After all, we taught them all about it after we bombed the living daylights out of them in one of those wars.

DT turns back to the phone.

DT: Hi Jim, sorry to keep you waiting. My assistant here was suggesting that I had called you the Chinese Vice-President. Well, maybe I did, maybe I didn’t, who knows? But it doesn’t really matter in any case what I call you. The important thing is that you know who you are. And I am sure you do. A deal-maker like you, Jim, sure knows who he is. In any case, I don’t need to tell you that Korea used to be a part of China. You’re Japanese and you know that already. Or was Korea a part of Japan?

Silence from Mr Kim. Not even a mumble.

DT: That guy’s not answering. Fix him back up for me.

Gopher is on the phone for five minutes. Potus eats another banana. Gopher returns, ashen-faced.

G: Mr President, I have bad news for you. Mr Kim, he’s dead. He’s just dropped dead of a heart attack!

DT: No problem. Stuff happens, as they say. At least he wasn’t impeached like the other guy. Get me another banana. I can’t say it bothers me too much, to be honest. I didn’t even know the guy, although I have to say he was a pleasure to do business with. Now you go and get the protocol guys to fax over pronto to wherever my friend Jim came from a contract confirming  the deal I made with him. Jim may have passed away but the business lives on.

DT cogitates:….All the same, come to think of it, it’s a darn pity our friend Jim’s no longer around to benefit from his plan to take out a lifetime subscription to the golf club at Mar-a-Lago….But wait a minute, here’s a thought. Couldn’t we fix him up with preposterous membership – and charge him pro rata? Could be a cool deal for the club. He’d be paying his dues for ever!

Gopher: Yessir! You’re on the money there, for sure. Sounds like another of your light-bulb moments!…A lot of people might agree with you that this a preposterous idea, but I’m wondering, with due respect, whether you might perhaps have been thinking of posthumous rather than preposterous?

DT: Could be, could be. One word is as good as another as far as I am concerned. In any case, I always tell people, “listen to what I’m thinking, not what I’m  saying.”

Gopher: That seems very sound advice, Sir. And now, if you don’t mind, I’ll be getting along to have that contract faxed out lickety-split.

DT: Right then! That’s enough bananas for tonight…I must go and see Melania now. We’ve got a dinner date upcoming. Don’t disturb me again unless it’s really necessary. And tell folks not to worry whatever happens. I’ve got my finger on the button.

DT and gopher exit by separate doors from the Oval Office.

It is a starlit night in Washington DC…and once again there is Peace on Earth to all Men of Good Will.

A grateful nation sinks into a deep slumber.

But which nation?

Antigone1984:

Readers might usefully check out our blog of 25 April 2017 Lost at sea for the background to this blog.

Otherwise, we are grateful to an article in the Financial Times (FT) of 29/30 April 2017: “US demands on S Korea prompt backlash”.

According to the FT, the Donald informed South Korea that “it would be appropriate if they paid” for Thaad (which we have called “Thud” in our skit above, since presumably at some point in the action something or other will come down to earth with a thud).

According to Wikipedia, “Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD is a United States Army anti-ballistic missile system which is designed to shoot down short, medium, and intermediate range ballistic missiles in their terminal phase using a hit-to-kill approach.”

According to the FT, the Donald also reiterated the administration’s intention to renegotiate or terminate the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

Moon Jae-in, candidate for the opposition Democratic Party in the Soouth Korean presidential election scheduled for 9 May 2017, is not happy. His sp0kesman said: “We should think about whether [US demands in respect] of South Korea’s unilaterally shouldering the cost [of the Thaad deployment] and of scrapping the Korea-US FTA without close bilateral consultation are in line with the two countries’ alliance.”

Antigone1984: very polite the South Koreans are, as you can see. They certainly know how to defuse tension.

However, the problems don’t end there.

According to the FT, the Donald’s comments are only the latests to spark alarm in South Korea. “Officials expressed private shock this week when Mr Trump phoned Beijing and Tokyo but not Seoul ahead of an anticipated provocation by North Korea.”

Park Hui-rak, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, said: “The current situation is very serious. South Korea is facing a situation where the country has become marginalised by its neighbours and excluded from dialogue on North Korea.”

It seems, not implausibly, that the installation of the Thaad base in South Korea has also sparked a reaction in China, which (according to the FT) has targeted South Korean conglomerates, such as Hyundai and Lotte, with retaliatory punitive measures. “Beijing fears that the base’s radar could be used to spy on its own military developments,” according to the FT.

Antigone1984: Beijing’s fears are justified. They will undoubtedly be used for that purpose. One feels even more sorry for the 50 million South Koreans. It is as if they were citizens of Monaco or San Marino. They now realise that they just don’t count. They are not important enough. Antigone1984 would draw another crucial lesson (which we may develop in a later blog): steer clear of alliances and stay on good terms, so far as possible, with all the world. Nobody is going to nuke Switzerland. By contrast, regardless of the fact that Estonia (population 1.5 million) is a member of NATO, the USA is not going to go to its assistance against Russia if New York or Chicago is likely to be nuked in retaliation. Get real, f0lks!

—–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

  1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)
  2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)
  3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)
  4. Capitalism in practice (4 July 2012)
  5. Ladder  (21 June 2012)
  6. A tale of two cities (1) (6 June 2012)
  7. A tale of two cities (2) (7 June 2012)
  8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

Posted in China, Italy, Japan, Korea, Military, Politics, Russia, Switzerland, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment