Ephemeral Isle
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Thursday
1 September 2005
Pneumonia Days
This is going to be something of a short entry. Quite frankly, if my doctor knew I was banging this out with a couple of lungs full of fluid he'd probably have me assembled in the middle of a hollow square of patients and strip me of my slippers. I'm supposed to be in a state of absolute rest and this sort of hooky is rather frowned upon in medical circles.
Mind you, it's not as though I'm writing this after jogging down to the pub for a quick pint and twenty Rothman's before the big polecat wrestling match. I'm propped up in bed with the lap top and a bucket of medicine close to hand on the end table. Still, medicos can be funny about this sort of thing. Besides, it's the start of a new month and that means another rousing classic radio play to put up to whet your appetites for the original ones that are still in the works. This one is a corker. It's Robert A. Heinlein's The Roads Must Roll and if you enjoy your science fiction mixed with two-fisted industrial relations, then this one is for you.
I was going to write more about hurricane Katrina and the joys of having a serious illness while a three-year old is trying to engage me in a game of "let's jump on the bed," but I'd better be a good boy and save that for tomorrow.
Enjoy.
Friday
2 September 2005
From the Sidelines
Being down with pneumonia is an interesting thing, because it reduces me,
at least for the moment, from information junkie to casual observer. I
don't have the energy to hunt down every hyperlink and obscure reference on
the web and even if I did my wife would soon catch me and shoo me back to
bed so that I could get on with my coverlet picking.
The result is that my impressions of the aftermath of hurricane Katrina are pretty much those of a man who only has time for the scum that rises to the top of the media pot-- at least, the American cable news services' end of the pot. And that impression has not been a favourable one. Granted it's a casual impression, but for the majority of the audience who don't sit glued to the screen with clipboard and stopwatch, that's what they are going to get.
I haven't been enamoured with the American cable services since they began their twenty-four hour coverage of the disaster and have carried on with it ever since to the cost of every other story on the planet. This has now gone on for so long that I keep expecting them to change their collective names to the Hurricane Channels. Perhaps this merely goes to demonstrate the vacuity of cable news when they run the same story twenty-four hours a day for six days to the exclusion of all else.
But since Katrina came and went I find myself gripped with a strong sense of frustration, particularly regarding the fate of New Orleans. I keep tuning in, but I learn practically nothing about what is happening. Oh, there are lots of stories, but very little actual information. There is also such a mixture of official statements, news from sources, gossip, hearsay, what the guy at the end of the bar just said, and reporter speculation that I have no idea of what to believe. I would think that any editor worth his salt would tell his reporters that in a situation as serious as this one they should rely heavily on official statements, pass on emergency information as quickly and clearly as possible, treat all gossip as exactly that, and tell each reporter individually that if he files a story saying that the city faces a threat of hordes of giant man-eating reptiles roaming the streets because he saw a "Do not feed the alligators" sign in the park he'll be out of a job and thumbing it back to New York before you can say "Pulitzer. "
But what really got my goat was the lack of any information that would be of use to anyone in New Orleans or has relatives there. One would think that with all that jazzy technology CNN, Fox, et al would have a continual banner crawl of hotline phone numbers, URLs, evacuation routes, food & water distribution centres, and curfew warnings. I would also expect many fewer stories about the heart being ripped out of a great city and more long stretches of news readers showing maps of flooded areas, pointing out cleared roads, telling people what to do if relief can't get to them, how to make water potable, and the penalties of getting caught looting under martial law.
In other words, real news. The fallen sword that I've noticed has been largely taken up by the likes of Instapundit.
Another impression that I have is of how poorly the people of New Orleans have acted compared to their fellow countrymen in New York and Washington during 9/11-- a day of not only great tragedy, but the very real fear that it was just the overture to much wider attack on the nation.
The stories of lootings, car-jackings, and shootings are enough to turn one's stomach. These are not people who walk into an abandoned convenience store, pick up a few tins of food and some diapers and leave a note on the till saying "IOU $50.00. Bob." These are nasty predators who prey on the weak while the authorities are busy saving lives. As to stories of police looting; it's the sort of thing that makes me just want to breach the levees and call it a day.
But what I find truly disturbing is how little respect I have for those who remained behind. I don't mean those who were trapped despite attempting to escape or who couldn't leave because of infirmity, but those sound of wind and limb who refused to leave the city or seek safer shelters and now expect the emergency services to tend to their needs and desires-- and not necessarily in that order. I mean the ones I see on the television milling aimlessly around the streets and endlessly complaining to reporters that FEMA should get them food, water, medical care, a place to live, and a good job with a decent retirement plan NOW! I see them standing about in the debris in the hot sun and not once have I seen someone off his own bat clearing some rubbish away or stringing up so much as a tarp to provide some shade. I don't see anyone trying to figure out how to get fresh water for themselves, how to build a latrine, how to collect and temporarily bury the dead that the authorities can't deal with, how to get away from the overcrowded Superdome on foot, or how to scare up a dinghy and an outboard so that they can lend a hand helping their neighbours who are in real need.
I am equally appalled by able-bodied people trapped by their own fault on the third floor of their flooded apartment buildings who are complaining to the media that they are without food and water just TWO DAYS after a hurricane hitting. Have they made no preparations whatsoever?
It is a perfect example of what the welfare state leads to. In New Orleans it seems as if we have upwards to 100,000 people who think that disaster relief is pizza delivery and if it isn't on your doorstep within thirty minutes you should complain to the manager. These are a people who have been carefully taught that the government is their mother and father and will take care of them no matter what happens. All they have to do is sit back and wait. And guess what? That is exactly what tens of thousands of people who could be helping to rescue and rebuild are doing; sitting on their arses.
And it isn't even a matter of New Orleanians actively helping their neighbours, though it should be. If they at least understood that emergency services are exactly what the name says and that the services' job is to help those in dire need, then maybe, just maybe it would sink into their heads that the primary person to take care of you and your family is you, not the government.
It isn't that hard either. You don't need some great bunker with ten year's worth of dried peas and a howitzer to get through a natural disaster. All you need is some bottled water, a primus stove, a first aid kit, a radio, a couple of weeks of tinned stew, and a bag of kitty litter and you've freed up the Coast Guard to rescue some poor bastard stuck in a tree further down the line or to get insulin to the old lady with diabetes. Even a person on the most modest income can put together a simple survival kit that will get him through three days without help. I should know; I've put together quite a few of them for myself, my family, and various institutions. Our home could go without assistance for close to a month and with the kit in our car we could grab our passports and camp out for a week within a minute of the order to evacuate. Hell, even when I work away from home I carry a pouch with a lifeboat ration bar and a day's worth of water sachets if the worst happens.
It's a question of attitude. Do you sit on you backside and wait for Nanny to come along or do you do something about it? Do you prepare for a disaster or is your plan to twirl a white sock out the window of your flat when the Doritos run out on Day Two? If you're a fit young man without kids in tow do you wait for the government to lay on enough buses to carry you and 20,000 others out of town or do you take shank's mare so someone's child has a seat?
In other words, have you grown up yet?
Monday
5 September 2005
USA Out of New Orleans!
A dispatch from the paranoid front
This highlights the perils of writing a column about the New Orleans tragedy after reading too much of the Seattle PI Sound Off page.
After the terrible events of
the past week it has become clear to any sane person that the United
States has no choice but to end the violence and withdraw immediately from
New Orleans.
The United States had no reason to invade the Big Easy. New Orleans posed no threat and had done nothing to justify this rush to war. Bushchimphitler never even considered putting this matter before the UN-- much less trying to gain the required approval of France before launching his Shock and Awe against Bourbon Street. Furthermore, it took the Americans only FOUR DAYS to invade New Orleans, proving that Cheney's puppet was planning this long in advance-- even before he stole the election.
Already we are seeing the usual litany of lies to cover smirky's imperialist ambitions from the moment of the arrogant ultimatum that New Orleans evacuate in 48 hours OR ELSE. The downtrodden people of New Orleans who have been breaking into shops and collecting the cash, jewellery, recreational drugs, plasma televisions, and trainers that they need to survive have been demonised as "looters" and those who engage in rape, murder, gang warfare, or firing on "rescue" helicopters are treated as if they are some sort of criminals when they are, in fact, the legitimate People's Insurgency fighting against an illegal foreign occupation of their homeland.
Yet despite this valiant resistance, the revolutionary people of New Orleans find themselves under the yoke of the American capitalist war machine -- even suffering the ultimate insult of the American flag flying in front of the city hall. Despite the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in the French Quarter, the glowering citadel of the Superdome is fulfilling the purpose for which it was originally built, though never made public: to be the Abu Ghraib of New Orleans that will cause those who live its shadow to cower eternally in mortal fear of Bush and the Carlisle Group. If this wasn't bad enough, the Americans claim to be airlifting the "survivors" to "safety" when everyone knows that they are being shipped secretly off to Guantanamo Bay so that Rumsfield's psycho-killbots can torture them for kicks and grins.
Meanwhile, New Orleans sinks further and further into anarchy as more and more evidence mounts that the city was better off before the invasion. Even now, almost a week later, the streets are flooded, levees are breached (some of them deliberately by the infamous Army Corps of Engineers who claim to be "letting the water out"), there is no water, no power, no police, no government, and no welfare cheques. Despite pouring blood and treasure into the region and then the waiting pockets of American corporate fat cats, it is certain that the racist puppet regime of New Orleans cannot and never will be able to defend itself and is now on the road to inevitable civil war. Clearly, this New Orleans adventure has become a quagmire for so-called George "W." Bush and unless the Americans abandon their senseless war to impose their unwanted "values" of democracy and freedom on the New Orleanians, it will, of course, become another Vietnam. Who then will be so callous as to face a grieving mother with a large PR machine, several well-heeled far-left pressure groups, and a faded protest folk singer behind her and explain why her son had to die for Walmart?
With all of these unsubstantiated crimes to answer for, it is imperative that the Americans impeach every conservative in government, outlaw the Republican party, and put forward an exit strategy for immediately leaving New Orleans. All authority over the city must be turned over to the UN; the only body in the world that can confer the needed moral authority. Under Kofi Annan's steadfast direction refugee camps will be set up for displaced New Orleanians where they can sit in luxurious squalor under the eye of international bureaucrats for fifty years or so with only a reasonable risk of genocide breaking out. Meanwhile, order in the city will be maintained by a properly constituted peacekeeping force made up of North Koreans, Iranians, Syrians, and Taliban remnants who will do for New Orleans what they did for their own peoples. Only then can we have closure on this senseless, criminal tragedy that Bush and his neocons have deliberately visited upon us.
But why? Why did this happen? Why this distraction from the hunt for Osama Bin Laden; who is probably innocent and never did anyone any harm anyway? Why this dragging away of vital resources from an Iraq in desperate need (not that I really care, but it makes Bush look bad)? Why this destruction of a city that gave us such cultural treasures as Oysters Rockefeller, jazz, Mardi Gras beads, breast flashing, rum cocktails, and Girls Gone Wild videos? There is only one reason and that is that the invasion of New Orleans is a war for OOIIIILLLLLL!!!! It can be taken on good authority that the Gulf of Mexico has huge oil deposits and that this is nothing less than a naked grab by Bush and his cronies to seize the oil fields for themselves and run a pipeline through New Orleans so that they can bath in tubs of crude and fill their wallets with blood money while feeding the American people's environmentally-destructive addiction to SUVs and other vehicles that I personally dislike. Who can deny that the ravenous claw of Halliburton is plainly evident here? You don't see the US invading Iowa!
Oh, yes. And there seems to have been something about a hurricane striking an entire region, but the media aren't really interested, so it can't be that important. Seems that it was of unprecedented ferocity; devastated 93,000 square miles; wiped out untold billions in property and livestock; flattened entire communities; destroyed roads, bridges, airfields, and railways; and left tens of millions still in desperate need. It's supposed to be a natural disaster or something like that and involves a lot of stuff about local and state responsibilities, inevitable human limitations, and how most people outside of New Orleans aren't finger pointing, but are helping one another and not acting like irresponsible animals. Doesn't have anything to do with hating Bush, though, so I don't know what that's all about.
Tuesday
6 September 2005
Never Fear, Sean Penn is Here!
Our Hero in action.
Copyright AFP/Gettyimages.
In an effort to shame the local emergency services, the Louisiana
National Guard, and the federal government by showing them just how easy it
is to save people from a natural disaster, actor
Sean Penn flew to New Orleans, where he donned a flak jacket instead of
the more practical life jacket and set out
in a rented dinghy crammed with his entourage to pluck the city's children
from the flood waters with his own celebrity hands-- only to have the boat
start to sink within seconds and the outboard motor stall, leaving Mr. Penn
and company to paddle back to shore with much haste and little dignity.
This is such a rich vein of metaphors that one scarcely knows where to begin.
Wednesday
7 September 2005
Paternal Expectations Department
"But Dad, I'm a prefect, an Eagle scout, the captain of boxing team, and my recruiter says that I'm sure to get into the SAS."
"Don't hand me that, you little panty-waist. If you're going to be your own man you've got to learn your way around a bulldozer and pronto!"
Thursday
8 September 2005
Self-Improvement Department
Friday
9 September 2005
Reality Check
Let's face it, when you need paint remover to take off the make up, it's time to admit that the years are catching up with you.
Has Katrina Doomed George Bush?
The Irish Times says yes, provided...
Monday
12 September 2005
Four Years On
One of my rare dead-serious columns on the one topic I take dead serious enough to rant about in public on a regular basis: the war.
For
the past couple of weeks the attention of the world, the United States, and
the American news media in particular has been focused on the tragedy left
across several states in the wake of hurricane Katrina and the horrible
mixture of natural catastrophe incompetent, government, feckless police, and
a criminal class run amok that turned the city of New Orleans into something
out of a Mad Max film.
Some have compared this event to what happened on 11 September 2001. Superficially, that is an easy thing to do. Both resulted in terrible loss of life, both caused billions of dollars in property damage, and both produced a tremendous outpouring of charity to help those worst affected. But there is where it ends. A hurricane is a thing of nature; a thing, by definition, beyond our control. Katrina was not a thing of mind and will. It was not the agent of a ruthless enemy bent on our destruction. It was a thing of wind and water and energy that came into being and followed its career regardless of whether or not the works of man were in its path.
When
the WTC was destroyed, the Pentagon attacked, and Flight 93 ploughed into
that Pennsylvania field it was not an act of nature. It was not
tragedy, although it was painfully tragic. It was an act of war by an
enemy who hate us-- and by us I mean all civilised peoples whether
Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Agnostic, or Atheist.
September 11th was a conscious act carried out deliberately and
methodically by evil men who were the agents of equally evil men-- men who
gloried in the murder of a two-year old little girl on her way to Disneyland
because they thought it would further their sick dream of forcing the world
to bow down to their twisted vision of Islam.
These men declared war on us decades ago, but we didn't believe them.
We didn't believe them when they chanted "Death to America"; called Jews
"Monkeys and Pigs"; or even when they took diplomats hostage, blew up our
soldiers, bombed embassies, bombed warships, or threw men in wheelchairs off
of hijacked cruise ships.
On that clear-skied day in New York we had to believe them and the United States, Great Britain, and our allies finally took the Islamofascists at their word and paid them back with interest.
Four years on, the war still continues. We have made mistakes, but we
have also made magnificent progress. We have liberated Afghanistan and
Iraq. We have put paid to Saddam Hussein's reign of mass murder,
sponsoring of terrorism, lust for weapons of mass destruction, and crazed
dream to be the new Saladin. We have forced Libya to disarm. We
made it possible for Lebanon to throw out their Syrian masters. We
made Yasser Arafat end his days in impotent ignominy. We forced Egypt
to put up at least the pretence of democracy. We have brought to light
the perfidy of the French, German, and Russian governments when forced to
choose between their commercial interests and confronting dictators.
We have revealed the corruption, ineffectualness, and moral vacuity of the
United Nations. And we have set what was
once the worst cess pool of tyranny in the Middle East on the path to
democracy.
But there have been setbacks. Bali, Jakarta, Istanbul, Beslan, Tel
Aviv, Moscow, Amsterdam, Madrid, and London make of a bloody roll call.
Spain capitulated to the terrorists after Madrid. Iraq and her fragile
democracy have become the front line of the war as the terrorists and their
sponsors throw everything they have into the fray, because they know that
they do not dare allow the Iraqis to be free. We have seen the swift
aggression of 2001 become the steady, sometimes timid, slog of 2005.
We have seen Iran move closer and closer to building a nuclear weapon
without serious challenge. We have seen innocent men and women
kidnapped and beheaded.
We have seen an anti-war movement grow; based
not on constructive criticism of policy, but on an irrational hatred of George
Bush and a self-loathing of Westerners for their own culture. We have seen a
frightening alliance grow between the far left and the Islamofascists that
is as bizarre as anything from the days of the Hitler/Stalin pact. We
have seen the mainstream media go from sceptical to openly hostile to the
war effort to the point where they refuse to report anything except a steady
drip of allied casualties. We see the likes of George Galloway, the
Sir Oswald Mosley of this war, and imams in the West who openly support the
terrorists walk free to spew their hatred and propaganda.
We see those who claim that the war is unwinnable, but who never reflect on
the cost of defeat. We have even seen some people go so far as to deny
that there is a war or an enemy to fight. We have learned to our cost
that the policy of multiculturalism and appeasement has bought us nothing
but a fifth column in our midst rather than safety. And yet we see Ken
Livingstone attempt to make a mockery of the memorial for the victims of 7/7
by saying that the families of the bombers should be included in the
service.
No, Katrina is not like September 11th, because Katrina has blown
out and ended her days as a cold front in Canada. She is gone and will
never return, but Bin Laden and his ilk are still out there and they
will come back again and again with the worst weapons at their disposal
until we defeat them (certain, if we will it), they defeat us (highly unlikely), or until we lose our will to fight
and give in little by little to their demands (depressingly possible).
Don't take my word for it. Listen to Adam Gadahn, an American Al Qaeda agent in a video tape message released yesterday via ABC News:
“Yesterday, London and Madrid. Tomorrow, Los Angeles and Melbourne, Allah willing. And this time, don’t count on us demonstrating restraint or compassion. We are Muslims. We love peace, but peace on our terms, peace as laid down by Islam, not the so-called peace of occupiers and dictators. We love peace, but when the enemy violates that peace or prevents us from achieving it, then we love nothing better than the heat of battle, the echo of explosions and slitting the throats of the infidels.”
They love "peace" all right-- as in "Peace in our time." Katrina was an incident. September 11th was a gauntlet thrown down.
Tuesday
13 September 2005
RESULT!
ENGLAND WINS THE ASHES!
ENGLAND WINS THE ASHES!
ENGLAND WINS THE ASHES!
England 373 & 221-7 drew with Australia 367
Yes!
England has
beaten Australia in the Fifth Test at the Oval and has won back the
Ashes for the first time since 1987.
And why, yes, I am excited. Funny you should ask. I'm also a bit cheesed off, as I'm still recovering from pneumonia, so no champers for me.
Somehow toasting the victory with cocoa just doesn't quite do it.
Wednesday
14 September 2005
Whodunnit
I met Dame Agatha Christie in 1980; which is rather alarming, as she'd been
dead for four years. It was at Madame Tussaud's. I can't
remember exactly why I was there. I think it had something to do with
it being a rainy Sunday and there being nothing of interest playing at the
revival cinema. But I do remember the Garden Party exhibit at Madame Tussaud's, which was a large room made out like a sort of arbour with
all sorts of lattice work and fake ferns and as you wandered around in it
you kept coming on wax images of celebrities standing casually about.
You'd bump into the likes of Andre Previn and you'd say "Oh, it's
Andre Previn," or something equally obvious. Anyway, I recall seeing
an elderly lady sitting in a chair and at first I thought it was some OAP
having a bit of a rest until I noticed that she wasn't moving. Or
breathing. My first thought was, "Uh, oh. It's a dead 'un."
My second was, "Oh, hang on. That's Agatha Christie and not a corpse
after all. Jolly good. No dead little old ladies to contend with."
I'm reminded of this because there's something of an Agatha Christie revival being organised this year. Apparently Dame Agatha isn't getting the official respect in Britain that she deserves despite being the best-selling author of all time. That isn't so surprising. Like so much else in Blighty her books are firmly a part of Old Britain and in a country where the elite now look upon anything crafted before 1997 as irrelevant or suspect she was due for the chop right along with the House of Lords and cream teas. At any rate, Chorion, which owns her brand and estate, are determined to put Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, and maybe even (God help us) Tommy & Tuppy back into the limelight.
Agatha Christie was never one of my favourite authors. In fact, she's one of those writers that I come away from with a feeling of indifference. Her books always reminded me of crossword puzzles and they were the sort of read that was okay if I was trapped in a hotel lounge on a foul day, but I could never remember what the deuce the book was about a day after finishing it. I think only Murder on the Orient Express made any impression on me, but that had more to do with the 1974 film with that decadent dining car scene of Poirot enjoying an obscenely wonderful meal that made me loathe British Rail buffet cars forever after. No stick-to-itivness, if there is such a phrase and if there isn't, I've just made it up.
She was, however, one of those authors who I kept bumping into-- and I don't just mean as a wax effigy. As an professional actor I ended up in her plays on more than one occasion and usually in a part requiring heavy character make up. For some reason whenever I did an Agatha Christie I was never the romantic lead or the young layabout who get's poisoned in Act One. No, I was always the ancient servant or some exotic like Mr. Paravicini in The Mousetrap, a middle-aged Italian bisexual drug addict given to covering his years in heavy make up. I remember Mr. Paravicini very well. Not only did I have to squeeze half a tube of brylcream into my hair every night for the proper Bela Lugosi helmet look, but I had to make it look like I'd had a bad dye job at the some time. Try going out to the pub after a show with that lot in your hair or worse, get pulled over by the police for a traffic offence while looking like a downmarket version of the Joker and try to talk your way out of that one. It is not easy.
I also recall Mr. Paravicini because it was during the Unpleasantness in Washington that I made my entrance as him and had my one and only total freeze on stage. I came on with my case and brushed the pretend snow from my coat only to look up and totally forgot not only my first line, but also what play I was in, what my real name was, or where the nearest fire exit was located. I know the last for certain because otherwise I would have bolted for it in a heartbeat. Instead I managed to make a noise like a balloon being shoved into an umbrella stand followed by the most incredible piece of ad libing in the history of stage as I and the other two actors tried to cover our arses and shove every bit of vital plot exposition we could in sideways without the audience realising what an utter pig's breakfast I'd made of the scene.
I was so much more pleased when I played Rogers the Butler in Ten Little Indians. True, I had to make my self up to look about ninety, but I I was also happily dead and back in the dressing room with a pitcher of martinis by the middle of Act Two.
Still, one mustn't be too hard on Dame Agatha. After all, murder has its little compensations. When I did Ten Little Indians in Edmonds, WA the female lead and the romantic hero hit it off so well that I had the honour of being the best man at their wedding. And this is really quite a surprising turn of events, given that during their courtship she pulled out a gun and shot her future husband five times a week if you included Sunday matinees.
It's the sort of background that would make the most stout-hearted marriage counsellor just straighten his papers and quietly leave the office never to be seen again.
Thursday
15 September 2005
Frustrations Department
Despite winning several awards for his groundbreaking discoveries in electronics, people still made cracks about Bernard's moustache.
Friday
16 September 2005
The Red Crystal of Cowardice
In one of history's more
fat-headed decisions, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
has taken a page out of the Neville Chamberlain Hymn Book and decided to
rebrand itself by
adopting a new
symbol that means... nothing.
You see, the current symbol, indeed the very name of the Red Cross is incredibly offensive. Even though the logo of the humanitarian agency was created in the 19th century by merely reversing the colours on the Swiss flag, it has since come to light that the red cross is, in point of fact, a cross and that this is also, unfortunately, the symbol of Christianity.
I know, I know, sorry. Settle down, please. I didn't mean to use profanity. I know that the "X" religion is never to be mentioned in polite, enlightened, PC society unless the context is ironic or derogatory, but sometimes one can't avoid it. I mean, I've once heard it obliquely referred to in an Anglican church and you can't get much further from... um... "it" than that.
The Red Cross has been aware of the problem for over a century and so has the Muslim world. In 1873 the Turkish Empire, suspicious that the Red Cross was some sort of devious Crusader plot, adopted the Islamic red crescent as the symbol for its own humanitarian organisation because it wasn't going to fall for that one, no sir. And in 1929, in an early display of well-intentioned spinelessness, the ICRC dumped its ideal of cleaving to a single, universally recognised symbol and agreed to adopt the red crescent as an alternate symbol of the ICRC rather than telling the Muslims countries that there is nothing inherently evil about the cross and that they should put their prejudices in a bag and join the rest of us in the 20th century.
Anyway, it seems that unlike most Muslims who just want to get on with their lives and maybe enjoy a little democracy when it comes their way, there are still some who are seething with resentment because Christendom (Sorry! Sorry!) did not fall before the sword of the Prophet and dared to fight back against Islamic conquest during the Middle Ages. Some of them have even gone a bit violent over the topic, what with declaring jihad against the infidels, murdering Jews, slamming airliners into office towers, and generally carrying on in a rather excitable fashion. For the Red Cross this has become a particular difficulty because, as Ron Liddle points out in this week's Spectator (Subscription required after this week):
(The) problem with the cross is that it enrages Muslims. In the theatre of war, when most combatants see the red cross, they put their weapons down. Muslim combatants, though, have a tendency to pick theirs up and start shooting with even greater avidity.
I have heard no reports of Christian or Jewish combatants firing on Red Crescent vehicles.
So how to handle this situation? Tell Islamofascists to obey the rules of war? Acknowledge that some people are so evil or so barking mad that there's no talking to them? Nope. The answer is: Change the symbol!
The
ICRC's brilliant idea is to come up with an appropriately "neutral"
alternate symbol that no one can be offended by-- except people who are
offended by craven, fatuous symbols sucked dry of any meaning.*
And so was born the red crystal: an abstract geometric construct chosen
because it boldly and forthrightly tells the world that it stands for
nothing whatsoever. And a jellyfish will be the official mascot.
Think of it as a graphic arts version of that South Park episode where everyone found so much to be offended by at the local Christmas (Sorry!) play that they ended up with the kids silently groping around an empty stage in grey jump suits.
Mind you, I'm not at all sure that it does stand for nothing. After all, the red crystal thing has come up right in the middle of a war between civilisation and a virulent, totalitarian version of Islam and instead of telling the Muslim world to stop shooting at Red Cross ambulances or using them to transport terrorists, the ICRC is dealing with people who are offended by the current pair of symbols by caving in like a wet paper bag. Of course, the only ones who are complaining are the adherents of the Religion of Peace who aren't offended by the crescent, but are so offended by the cross that they blaze away at it on sight. Also, it seems highly unlikely that anyone except nominally Christian (SORRY!) nations wracked with guilt will actually adopt the red crystal while the Muslim countries will happily go on using the red crescent, and we end up with a symbol adopted for openly religious reasons on one side and another adopted to avoid all mention of their own religion on the other.
So, perhaps the red crystal does stand for something after all: dhimmitude.
*One interesting point is that the ICRC claims that the real reason for this "reform" is that it is needed because Israel has been excluded from joining the ICRC for over fifty years because it wants to use the Star of David as its symbol and that this change is for their benefit. I tend to take a jaundiced view of this reasoning because a) Israel has no enthusiasm for the red crystal, b) the ICRC has never seemed particularly bothered about freezing Israel out until now, c) it is the Muslim countries that object to the Star of David becoming a part of the ICRC, not the likes of Italy or Norway, and d) Israel tends not to gun down Red Cross workers in the street, so there's not much pressure from that quarter.
Update: Run It Up the Flagpole and See If Anyone Shoots at It
My wife wants to know if the ICRC has tried the red crystal out in the Middle East for target practice yet.
Monday
19 September 2005
Pneumonia Mania
The thing about pneumonia is that it gets boring after a while.
Oh, I will admit that it is fairly interesting in the early stages. I have a cold that goes on for a bit too long, then I think its the flu, then I end up at the doctors being told that both lungs are so filled with fluid that that they resemble half-empty wine sacks and that if I don't take the heavy meds and put my feet for a month I'll find myself discovering what intensive care is like from the receiving end. I then spend about a week so doped up on steroids, codeine, and Percocet that I'm perfectly happy to lie in bed with a portable DVD player on my chest watching old episodes of Danger Man.
But then the marvellously narcotic Percocet train leaves the station and when I'm back on the cough syrup and aspirins things start to get a bit "samey." After a month of illness with another couple of weeks to go it gets downright tedious. I mean, you can only shuffle around the flat in jammies and carpet slippers for so long before the bloom fades off the rose. I never realised how many pairs of pyjamas a man can go through in a week when he wears them 24/7. Trouble is, that I'm pretty much stuck here because a) I'm not supposed to tire myself, so no jaunts to the bookshop, which Amazon is no doubt pleased with, and b) the steroids I've been taking (and am back on thanks to a relapse) impair my immune system. The latter I think I'm handling very well although I have covered the entire floor with lavatory paper, wear Kleenex boxes on my feet, and scream GERMS! if anything is handed to me that hasn't been put in an autoclave for an hour and a half.
Which reminds me, I haven't watched Ice Station Zebra more than three times today, so I'd better put it on again. Excuse me. Thank you.
In fact, I haven't been out of the house in over a month for anything except doctor visits and the strain is starting to tell. The high point of my week was Saturday when we stopped for breakfast on the way back from the doctor, did some grocery shopping while waiting for my new prescription to be filled, and stopped off at the toy shop to get Emma a doctor kit so she can make sure Daddy is "okay." The latter is something of a compensation, as Daddy isn't allowed to horseplay with her, so she's been feeling a bit neglected of late.
And the doctors weren't kidding about taking it easy. After Saturday's outing I felt as though I'd run five blocks in full battle gear. I can't do my share of the household chores, and as I do half the cleaning and most of the heavy lifting that means that the larder is a bit bare because I can't carry the shopping upstairs, the laundry tends to pile, and chaos has descended on the living spaces as my wife takes over the Sisyphean task of picking up after hurricane Emma.
This doesn't even begin to address what has happened in my professional life. Right now I have a To Do list that stretches a mile, my work on the site is reduced to this column and the odd tweaks, and thank God for telecommuting or I'd have had to drop my biggest client and lose a month's pay in the bargain.
Of course, none of this would be complete without the insult added to injury, which is that I've no desire to compound pneumonia and codeine with alcohol and tobacco, so it's no nice little glass of wine with supper or brandy and cigar for afters.
Positively inhuman, that is.
Tuesday
20 September 2005
Biggles Flies a Bit Over That Way
In his most recent adventure, Biggles demonstrates that Lower Witton, Hants is such a mind-bogglingly tedious place that one can draw a crowd simply by reading a newspaper.
Wednesday
21 September 2005
Stop Me If....
Yes, Carl, we have heard that one before!
Thursday
22 September 2005
Job Satisfaction
It was becoming apparent to everyone in the office that Ogden was way too happy in his work.
Thursday
22 September 2005 (Update)
Hurricane Alert
Hurricane Rita is headed for Houston, Texas where, unfortunately, my host's servers are located and I've just been warned that they may go down, so if you have or had trouble accessing, I do apologise, but must plead force majeure.
Friday
23 September 2005
At the Calais Swimming Baths
Oddly enough, the Euroidiot contest was actually won by the twit at the council office who told François he needed a permit to fish there in the first place.
Hurricane Alert
Hurricane Rita is headed for Houston, Texas where, unfortunately, my host's servers are located and I've just been warned that they may go down, so if you have or had trouble accessing, I do apologise, but must plead force majeure.
Monday
26 September 2005
Great Moments in Management
"And in just a second you'll hear that disloyal swine Murdock call me an obsessive, paranoid git who probably has the office bugged!"
Tuesday
27 September 2005
Great Moments in Technology
The first ipods were not as elegant as later models.
Wednesday
28 September 2005
Great Moments in Pastry
Bernice was determined to take doughnuts to a whole new level.
Thursday
29 September 2005
The March of Secularism
The moment when the ACLU Anti-Prayer Squad went clear off the deep end.
Friday
30 September 2005
Quandry
He was like one, who having survived an earthquake, is hit by an automobile.
P. G. Wodehouse
What happens when you write a humour column and you don't feel funny? I don't mean at times when I get serious because of some outrage in the news, nor when I'm not funny because I can't think of the suitable bon mot. (Like you ever could!, I hear you carp. Well, maybe, but that's another topic for another day.) I mean when I just can't come up with a proper quip, witticism, or jape because there doesn't seem to be anything really to laugh at anymore.
No, I haven't given into the dark forces of cynicism-- at least, not those portions of it that don't realise that there are laughs to be found even in the most sordid of human failings. In fact, that's probably what gets most of us through the day. And I'm not talking about having the well of humour run dry. I've written whole plays when that seemed to be the case and I learned that it is possible to switch on "funny" when you really need to.
My current fallow period is because I've just been hit square in the back of the neck with a nasty piece of personal bad news that was so unexpected and so ill timed that it's a wonder that I wasn't knocked over a very low, very rusty, and very sharp guard rail with jagged edges and then plunged into the Grand Canyon to tumble down the steep slopes through numerous beds of assorted cacti, bounced off several very hard boulders and then coming to rest on a bed of broken bottled sprinkled liberally with lemon juice. And then they release the vultures. It's the sort of bad news that is universally received even by the sort who chew caltrops for breakfast with words along the lines of, "I say, old chap. That's a nasty bit of work. Bit like something you'd run across in the book of Job. Rum do, that."
Yes, that sort of bad news.
Hang on, hang on. I'm not going to burden you with it. After all, as the old saying goes, a problem shared is a problem that two people now have, and I've no intention to have that preying upon my already frayed conscience. Suffice it to say that this has ended up as one of those days that calls for, in the vernacular, popping down to the pub for "a quick one."
And that's just what I'm going to do now.