Worthy causes

I'm glad to see that the absence of any postings has gone totally unremarked for the last 4 months or so. Makes me feel less bothered about how lazy I've been. Must remember, this is my therapy, not an ego trip based on the number of readers and responses I get. Yeah, right.

Anyway, Freedmansmum brought to my attention this petition to El Gordo:

We are trying to assist with a petition to the UK Government to create a dedicated Military & Veterans Hospital within the UK.

To give you some background, 2 Para have already sent back over 50 casualties to the UK from their current tour alone. Selly Oak, the only military dedicated ward in UK, cannot accommodate anywhere near this number, so when all of the casualties from other battle groups are added to the figure, how is ONE ward in an NHS hospital going to cope?

In truth it cannot !!!! The individual troops are sent home to recover,relying on NHS and the visiting services available, which themselves are over committed.

More names are needed for this petition, and quite cynically, 'Downing Street' has put a time limit of one month for this to be achieved.

Sign now and do what you can. Please click the link below to sign, you will receive and email to confirm your signature.

We need as many people as possible to sign this petition before 19th August. Could you also if in agreement please pass this on to as many people as possible and ask them to do the same thing?

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Wounded/

Now most Freedmanslifers are somewhere between rabid Bushmonkeys or rational pseudo-pacifists who, whilst not supporting our various wars, do understand the distinction between this and supporting our TROOPS.

So I hope you will all go sign up and give them the recognition they deserve for their bravery and commitment, by helping them get the specialist care they need.

Fuel to the fire

Just a quick note of indignation, as I sit here in deepest Occ Pal, enjoying the fragrant scent of the Zionist springtime. The Beeb have just reported a story about how Israel's embargo of Gaza is preventing the UN carrying out their humanitarian mission.

This is the same UN whose Special Rapporteur on the Palestinians has been refused a visa by Israel because he is so ludicrously biased that even their sclerotic Foreign ministry has got off their falafel-flabby backside and taken a proper stand. Professor Richard Falk, the bloke in question, has had a jolly old time comparing Israel to the Nazis and apparently going on fact-finding missions to Lebanon whose reports then condone suicide bombings. I could write a whole essay on this moron, but instead, found this excellent one at townhall.com.

Anyway, they are repeating the canard about Israel cutting fuel provision for the UN, just a few days after the Pals sent a hit squad to the actual fuel depot where this is put in tankers for shipment. Think about this from the perspective of a worker at that depot. The world barely raises an eyebrow when two of your colleagues are murdered as they go about their work, supplying the murderers' families with fuel, then condemns you when your bosses decide these are not the kind of customers they want.

By way of comparison, the unions at my old haunt of Grangemouth are threatening a strike because new staff aren't going to get a final salary pension scheme. Just like pretty much every other company in the country... puts it in perspective.

Not so Keenan: from Beirut to Stockholm

The Beeb just broadcast two fascinating documentaries back-to-back.

The first was an excellent 20 minutes of Brian Keenan revisiting Beirut and talking about what had changed and his own emotions about returning to the scene of his kidnapping over 20 years ago.

The second was a 40 minute propaganda film in which Lebanon's woes were blamed on Israel, along with the usual broadside of accusations about massacres, disproportion, torture, occupation and myriad other injustices. This was also hosted by Brian Keenan, but somehow the two films merged into one with no credits rolling in between.

Keenan's initial time in Beirut in the 1980s, and his subsequent kidnapping, had absolutely nothing to do with Israel or Israel's presence in Lebanon, and certainly had nothing to do with events in the summer of 2006. Nonetheless, the war that took place then was the focal point for about half of Keenan's documentary, and he placed absolutely no blame on Hezbollah (in fact, he didn't do more than mutter the word under his breath) for any of the terrible loss of life that took place.

Is this the same Keenan who spent over five years as a captive of Islamic Jihad, an associate of the very same Hizbollah? And wasn't his release brokered with Iran and Syria, the only two parties who had influence to do so, and who continue to wage proxy wars in Lebanon and have helped make it volatile and a terrorist hotbed for thirty years?

This is the same Keenan who said in reference to Israel's highly accurate precision bombing of Hizballah's stronghold in Beirut that:

"The word "holocaust" entered my head as I looked back at the devastation."

This seems to be an example of the famed Stockholm Syndrome. I am struggling to put into words how incredulous I am at such an articulate and intelligent man, who has been through so much, taking the standard emotional line of "I see dead people and destruction, Israel dropped bombs, so it's one-sided and all their fault". This is especially distressing from someone who really lived through the complexities and nuances of Lebanon's fractious history.

Norman Geras over at Normblog has summed up in concise fashion:

"It is sometimes said that one of the fruits of personal suffering is wisdom, and I know that can be true. But Keenan's sentiment shows that it is not a truth without exceptions - that even one who has suffered unjustly can make himself the conduit for the most poisonous of themes, this one repeated now often enough to be acquiring the status of a special version of the blood libel."

It is even worse - but totally to be expected - that the BBC would broadcast this uncritically.

The Apprentice 4.1 - people in glass houses

After giving the entire third series a miss due to my total disdain for the muppets we met in volume 2, and my own hilarious experiences of the selection process, I thought I would see whether standards had improved this time around. So you will be treated to my weekly critiques of The Apprentice Series Four - or Serious Flaw, as I am already calling it.

The redeeming features of this series are likely to be everyone but the candidates; the Big Koala has already come out with some belting one-liners, whilst Nick's repertoire of pained facial expressions is growing by the week. Best of all, I notice that down on the set of the follow-up You're Fired show, someone's clearly pushing Chilesy and his guests to bare their teeth a bit more.

So, Episode 1 opens with the boss reminding candidates that, despite the obvious spoonful of Sugar gags, "Mary Poppins I am not" (but surely Yoda of the business world he is). Straight on the offensive, he follows this up with a nice put-down regarding their living accommodation:

"In my day it was a glass factory, nowadays they convert them for posers like you lot to live in."

Get in there, you beast.

The first task involved selling - how original for an Alan Sugar task! Boxes of fish from Billingsgate appeared, and candidates had to work it which where what, set prices, pick a location for a market stall, and SELL SELL SELL. Not too complicated to plan and set up, you wouldn't think. But these are the kind of people who think Dover sole is some kind of Kent-based musical genre.

Before we even got to the market, we had the hilarious moment of Sloaney Penelope Pitstop combo Lucinda persuading the girls to call their team Alpha because "it's the first letter of the Greek alphabet, kind of looks like a fish, reminds me of womens liberation due to its Homeric use as a nickname for Helen of Troy's lady-garden, and also because I drive an Alfa Romeo." Okay, I may have made some of that up. But I don't think it would have made Nick Hewer screw his face up into any more of a scowl than the rictus he pulled for what she did say.

So the task unfolded with the girls getting immediately bitchy, using lots of annoying MBA-speak, but at least getting down to the market pronto and nabbing the best stall. Then they used their feminine charms (despite several of them looking like some of their produce) to push all their stock, either at the stall or by flogging it to restaurants and randoms. I'm sure that the Oirish bird who claims to be the "best in Europe" when it comes to sales would present this in a slightly glossier way, but here at Freedmanslife, we call a spade a spade. We may also resort to calling quite a number of candidates a spade as the series progresses.

Meanwhile, the spades on the boys' team quickly divided themselves into two groups along class lines ("I have a Portuguese for that" vs. "use ruddy shoovels"). They then disintegrated completely. It's amazing how a combination of up-themselves chinless wonders and floppy-haired posh twats cannot know the price of a lobster. I keep kosher and even I know it's a bit more than a fiver.

So they went and sold a load of stock before noticing this mistake, whilst blaming each other, mashing fish-brains with a cleaver, wrongly identifying half the product, and getting hilariously ripped off by a bunch of smug lawyers. Given that they wanted to sell for £130, you'd think a starting price of £150 or so and then negotiate would be a good idea.

Instead, they do something that's not a good idea anywhere, let alone with a bunch of (apparently quite literally) hungry shark-type lawyers. They attach themselves like maggots onto the hook, then fling themselves into the infested waters, and seem surprised when the bait is gobbled up along with the rod and fisherman: "...but we'll take £100."

According to the wonderfully named Michael Sophocles (oh lordy, he's Jewish apparently - the shame!), offering less than that would be a price that was "too diminutive". A bit like other parts of the team anatomy, I think.

Final negotiation: the lawyers pick up a fortune's worth of fish for £50. Pretty damn diminutive.

Back in the boardroom, the girls are saved by the boys' even worse incompetence, despite the fact that they spent most of the day selling the fish below cost price. That left Nicholas de Lacy Brown back in the boardroom with raffish Raef and the northern down't'pit charmer Alex.

Nick clearly has no idea who Sir Alan is, or where he's come from (the streets, to the very top, via his bootstraps, blood, sweat, tears, selling his own grandma at Hackney wholesale market etc etc, you know the story, it's told in snarling tones during the opening credits each week). I think the guy (Nick, not Sir Al) is prissy, campy, sly, conceited, snobby mummy's boy, with no real-world experience. I'm thinking not really the Big Koala's type.

So then it may not be the cleverest thing in the world to defend yourself against the "working class and proud" Alex with comments like these:

"It's just that some of us are more educated."
"I feel that the barrier that has been drawn is kind of, you know, like maybe, kind of, educated against, you know, more kind of gritty salesmen."
"I'm very into art and culture... I find it very difficult to have conversations about football, for example - I don't really like football."

Idiot. Especially because Alex was really to blame in this task, for botching up every aspect of it from start to finish. He allowed and encouraged the class division, screwed up on location, pricing, sales strategy, general management, and just getting the f***ing team to a market to set up within, like, half a day.

Still, I was quite glad to see Nick take a hike, especially with his even more excruciating performance on You're Fired, in which he continued his oily arrogance, showed off his ghastly paintings, and generally proved himself to be exactly as vile as I had first thought.

The Sugababe got it spot on when picking up on his conceit about having only "failed" once in life, and duly sent him on his way:

"Tu as été dévasté quand tu gagnais une "B" dans ton GCSE de français, et tu vas être bien plus dévasté maintenant parce que tu as gagné une grande graisse "F". Tu es licencié!"

Nick, that's Sugar's own French for "p*** off, you posh tw*t, and get some life experience."

Until next week...

Cycle of silence

Some empirical evidence about blogging came out this week, showing that the average blogger starts out with good intentions, posts regularly, then hits "blogger's fatigue"... seems this happens to me on a cyclical basis. Apologies for the lull... oddly enough, it usually happens when there is too MUCH to write about that I don't know where to start.

Obviously the Israel thing is pissing me off just now; the crazy moral equivalences are so absurd it's hard to rebut them succinctly, and pretty much the entire planet seems deluded or in some way under the influence of mind drugs in that they still just don't get it. Wake up, planet. These people want to kill us, then make it look like our fault because we react "disproportionately", then get you to help them stockpile more weapons, and kill us some more. Eventually they will slaughter you too, but I'm sure you'll just blame yourselves again.

You might note, moronic world, that we have outlived the Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Cossacks, Nazis and many other persecutors, invaders and so-called "great civilizations". If I were a betting man, I'd say the odds were that we will survive both you, the wonderful liberal, multicultural society that is a borderline cult of misplaced guilt and self-hate, and the Islamofascism that you embrace just as it tries to destroy you.

You shall rise up early and strike them first

Before I put myself through the torture of reading the papers and internet comment on what has been happening in Gaza in the last 24 hours, I am going to hazard a guess. If I later have to go and change this article, I promise to leave any amendments in strikethrough, so you can see where I messed up.

The world is largely going ballistic with Israel for what it sees as the heavy-handed and indiscriminate way in which it has gone into Gaza. No doubt they believe the intent is to re-occupy it (some will say "formally" as they think Israel never really left). Israel has been attacking "the Palestinians", many women and children are dead, and as a casual aside, yes, so are lots of "militants".

About now, the UN, and even the Condi-led US State Dept, are probably calling for Israel's withdrawal. Hardly anyone is going to mention the very interesting stat that Sderot, just over the border from Gaza, has been in the last year the most-bombed place in the world on a missiles-per-head basis. Nobody will spare a moment to think about how their own government would react if a neighbouring government launched such an attack.

And yes, we can use the words "state" and "government" because most people see Hamas as legitimately elected, already refer to Palestine like it's a country, and indeed a few weeks ago, Costa Rica recognised it formally as such. This also means, as far as the Israelis are concerned, that it should damn well act like one. The nonsense of media and diplomatic criticism of Israel attacking the poor, defenseless Palestinians on the one hand, whilst legitimising a government that, depending on their whim (and audience), directly carries out, or indirectly supports, the rocket attacks, is just perverse.

Now I am going to have some breakfast. Maybe I will be back later to edit these assumptions, because just for once, the world is seeing Israel's actions in Gaza for what they are. However, I will probably be too busy blogging about Lord Lucan flying a pig to the blue moon of cheese.

London mayor 'misquotes former chief rabbi' on Israel

By Jonny Paul at the Jerusalem Post. Hat tip from none other than Jonathan Hoffman himself!

Responding to a question about his position on Israel during a debate on Monday, London Mayor Ken Livingstone reportedly said his views were echoed by a former chief rabbi of Britain who he claimed had said that Israel should not have been created.

At a debate entitled "How London can stay ahead as a great world city," organized by the Evening Standard newspaper in central London on Monday night, Livingstone was asked how London can stay ahead "when it is led by a mayor who descends into petty sectarianism, notably in saying that Israel should never have been created?"

Asking the question, Jewish community member Jonathan Hoffman was referring to remarks made by Livingstone during an election campaign in Finchley, north London, in 2004.

Hoffman said that in response to his question about his views on Israel, Livingstone said: "I have criticized Mrs. Thatcher in the past. All governments including that of Israel should be open to criticism. Even the former chief rabbi was quoted in the Evening Standard as saying that maybe it would be better if Israel had not been created."

The mayor was referring to remarks made by former chief rabbi Lord Jakobovits in a May 1991 newspaper article.

In the article - which had the screaming headline "Bad news... Chief Rabbi shames Israel" - Lord Jakobovits said that the Palestinian refugee problem was a "stain on humanity" and that Israel, in cooperation with wealthy Arab nations, would do well to remove that stain.

"It is sad that the mayor's recollection of the interview from 1991 isn't as good as mine," Shimon Cohen, former private secretary to Lord Jakobovits, told The Jerusalem Post. "In the Evening Standard interview Lord Jakobovits actually described the plight of Palestinian refugees as a 'stain on humanity' but he said that the Jews were not to blame for creating the problem.

"He added, 'we cannot forever dominate a million and a half Arabs... this blinkered attitude is self destructive,'" Cohen said.

"The mayor has compounded an anti-Semitic statement with a falsehood," Hoffman told the Post.

A front-page article in The Jewish Chronicle at the time asked: "Surely, however, a crucial question must be how a serious newspaper could manage to contort Lord Jakobovits's [not unfamiliar] views on Israel and the Palestinians into an amazing attack on the Jewish state."

Not doing the job properly

We can't save the people on our side of the fence from indiscriminate attacks.

We can't prevent the media making the usual moral equivalences when one of the world's worst terrorists is taken out.

We can't even carry out a genocide properly and keep the breeding rate down.

I'm beginning to wonder what we CAN do...

BBC's laughable excuse

This snippet was on an Honest Reporting email I got today:

Many of you send us the BBC's replies to your e-mail complaints, most of which are standard responses claiming that the BBC upholds the finest traditions of balance and objectivity. The following, however, stands out as one of the more ridiculous responses we have seen.

A subscriber wanted to know why the BBC's choice of headlines never directly mentions Palestinians as aggressors, preferring neutral descriptions such as "Rocket injures dozens in Israel", while Israel is almost always named as the primary actor in headlines such as "Israeli raids kill nine in Gaza". The BBC's response was revealing:

Please understand that we try to use neutral language in all our reporting, headlines included. Our writers, sub-editors and editors are required to write headlines that are between 31 and 33 characters long, including spaces, to fit in a Ceefax (teletext) template. It means that some long words, such as Palestinian, are often avoided to get more germane information into a headline. Neither of the suggestions you make (25 and 51 characters respectively) would fit the template.

So, for the BBC, fitting the text on the page and spacing is more important than an accurate message. The BBC admits it doesn't let the facts interfere with a good headline - even if readers get a false impression of the story.

I thought perhaps it would be in order for Freedmanslifers to compose their own headlines of 31 to 33 characters to convey a message. Of course, it doesn't have to have anything to do with the story that follows, let alone the facts.

Here's an example:

"BBC writers deserve to get shot"

That's 31 characters. Of course, I would never advocate that the nice staffers of the Beeb should be killed. The article I imagined would appear below such a caption relates to who should be among the privileged few who would be inoculated in the event of a deadly virus epidemic sweeping the capital. Hopefully an illness like journalismus factuali...

Feel free to send in your own contributions, with headline of the right length, and a description of the article that might follow. Best one wins a special prize!


* * * UPDATE * * *

The Beeb provides 31 joyous characters:

Bomb kills top Hezbollah leader

Grandma (2)

I was asked by the family to say a few words at the last night of shiva for Grandma. She was a really awesome lady, and the way in which our family has come together has been the most fitting tribute, so I wanted to share this with those of you who didn't know her:

This is a bit of a mish-mash of things I have been thinking about this week – a stream of consciousness really. In respect to Grandma’s preference for things to be carefully prepared, and not being a fan of huge surprises, for once I have written my whole speech in advance.

A word we have heard used this week in regard to Grandma is that she was a stoic. I think this is a huge compliment. The ancient Stoics are often misunderstood because the terms they used pertained to different concepts in the past than they do today. The word stoic has come to mean unemotional or indifferent to pain, because Stoic ethics taught freedom from passion by following reason. But the Stoics did not seek to extinguish emotions, only to avoid emotional troubles by developing clear judgment and inner calm through diligent practice of logic, reflection, and concentration.

Grandpa mentioned to me that he didn’t think he had ever seen her cry. Certainly she never cried in public. In fact, he has reprimanded himself this week that she would tell him to “stop being a cry-baby”. I for one have tried to respect her wishes and think of her in the way she wanted – or maybe even planned meticulously – to be remembered.

She was a great one for literature (I remember being made by mum to read War and Peace aged 11 for my City scholarship exam, and grandma had just read Anna Karenina, so we were able to talk about Tolstoy’s style of writing as essentially a form of historical social and political reference, dressed as novel.

A phrase from Tolstoy springs to mind: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” Grandma was acutely aware of what she could influence, and focused single-mindedly on it – she was not one for fripperies.

In digging out that quotation, I came across this from Pearl Buck: “You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.” I think that also sums Grandma up. She was not particularly enthusiastic about adopting new things – especially the Internet – and used to roll her eyes and ask what on earth she would need that for. She never took to flying all that much, and we shall politely say she was an extremely patient driver, with an acute understanding that 30mph was the maximum limit, despite the potential power of the car to do a bit more.

All this made me think about the dramatic use of the word “expired” in old literature for when someone died. Somehow this seemed very appropriate to Grandma. We all knew inside that she had been unwell for several months, but none of us were able to break down her stubborn defence of her health and find out how serious it really was. Once she felt unable to continue caring for everyone to her usual meticulous standards, I think she was ready to go.

Until then, she wanted to keep things on her own terms, and most importantly she saw herself as part of a team. For her, what mattered was the aggregate age score with Grandpa. She must have had some inkling that she could not go on in her weakened state, so she carefully laid all the groundwork for him to have the best network of support possible.

Then she was concerned for all of us to reach our own milestones – Aunt Yvonne’s 80^th, Helen’s new flat (and becoming a Fast Streamer!), my birthday and brunch – and to see everyone together on happy occasions right until the last.

I must confess that my first reaction on hearing the news was one of anger at her for not taking better care of herself, but almost immediately that I started talking with other people in our family, I realised that her way was never to prioritise her own wellbeing over those around her. This is who she was.

I think very few people have meaningful personalities that everyone gets to know. We all put up a persona for the convenience of associating briefly with the vast majority of people in our lives. I often question whether we are innately anything except to a few who know us incredibly well.

For anyone else who knows us, we are defined by the nature of the relationships we have with other people. In this way, as was said on Sunday, Grandma was defined by the many warm relationships she had. Even those who knew her only slightly would be aware of the constant desire she had to care for others, giving hospitality, time and advice in bountiful quantities. What makes this a point of interest to me is that this really is who she was.

The grandchildren related to her despite the generation gap. This went beyond the standard grandparent to grandchild connection, though we certainly enjoyed getting endless sherbets and chocolate éclairs from the sweet jar. She could outrun me well into her 60s, but only now do I realise that this was cause and effect…

She took a genuine interest not just in our activities, but really in how we developed as people. Who were we really? What were our individual philosophies, political and moral viewpoints and so on? In this way, we spent time with her as a friend and out of choice.

One really positive thing that has come out of this week has been to continue this relationship with Grandpa and Aunt Yvonne, who share many of these characteristics.

How do we cope then, with her passing? I think the answer comes from how she carried herself and what she would want us to do. We have all been so proud of Grandpa, who has been heroic in picking up the mantle of “family stoic” in her honour.

He announced earlier in the week that it was a “new epoch” – and indeed it is. When someone is taken away from us, they leave behind a series of broken connections. Even in these last few days, we have all taken great strength from how some of these loose ends have found each other.

It’s never going to replace Grandma, but it’s absolutely fitting that instead of crying and dwelling on her last few weeks when all was less than good, we are remembering those previous 80 years, largely of health and happiness, looking to the future and thinking about how we are going to apply the lessons she taught so ably.