Backs turned on the refugees.

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     As Winston Churchill once told us, this was our proudest moment.  It was when hundreds of little boats went to rescue the British army stranded on the French coast, dodging the Nazi gunships to bring them back to defend their homeland.
     We are again in a critical moment of Europe history, but this time it has not been our proudest moment.   There are threequarters of a million refugees from the Syrian dictatorship, the Afghan Taliban terror troops and other areas. On the Greek island of Lesbos the nearest accessible port of entry, 40,000 arrived in the last week of October and have continued to stumble out of the boats in their thousands every day since.
       What has happened to them?  We know, because dedicated reporters and photographers are there to tell us.  Sometimes they cannot hide their shock at the indifference shown to the refugees crowded on to whatever bit of land they can reach, asking for, and not getting, food and shelter.   There are thousands of children involved, a big proportion having lost their parents.
        The Germans have rightly asked for a sharing of the numbers of refugees among other European countries.  David Cameron offered to take 20,000 over the next five years, but it was not clear where these were going to lay their heads while waiting.
          Giles Duley, an experienced photographer for the UN Refugee Commission, said:  "I have never been so overwhelmed as by the human drama unfolding on the beaches of Lesbos.  In its sheer scale, it is hard to comprehend;  the lack of response impossible to explain or excuse."
        As he knows, there can be no excuse.  So, as a nation, have we changed?   Are we now wanting to close our doors and forget about this massive human disaster?   Are we going to let them starve and die of cold this winter?   Are we going to have to acknowledge that Germany has now become the leader in humanitarian effort and we are stony-hearted islanders isolated and wanting to remain so?  
        In fact, people are volunteering with rescue food and clothes to take to the rough refugee camps in Calais and are offering to take them into their homes, putting together various rescue plans.   What we are lacking are leaders capable of  harvesting this goodwill into a nationally organised effort to bring over refugees now, not later, with homes and shelters available for them.   The refugee crisis is starting to come bottom of the schedule on the media, in Parliament and in everyday conversation.
        The goodwill and the individual efforts will go on, in spite of this. But it seems that this is not one of Britain's proudest moments but one of its most shaming.    
    

The nineties

         You can look on it as an achievement to reach ninety, or as a mistake.   In any case, it's likely to be not so much of an achievement  as a matter of luck.   You didn't, in the end, drink or smoke too much, you weren't struck down by disease, maybe your family were generally long-lived.   Whatever the reason, here you are, at ninety - if you can walk, if you can talk, if you can hear and see, there's nothing to stop you getting on with your life.  But there isn't much of it left to get on with, is there?  You're on death row, in spite of  diligent efforts by friends and family to suggest you might go on forever.
         So what to do with that time?    If you have enough money, you can enjoy it and go on holiday wherever you want.  If you are feeling useless, you could try to get work.   But who will have you?  There are charities calling out for much-needed helpers, but you might not be accepted because of your age, and certainly you are no good at going round knocking on doors anymore.
     We have one shining example, even for republicans, and that is the Queen.   Ninety next spring, she has already stated an intention to hold a 90th birthday party for all in the Mall, leading to Buckingham Palace.
     There she is, dressed in the formal clothes with a hat (which for some reason she feels she has to wear though we know she prefers riding clothes) going round from one formal event to another, giving charities and good works her gracious patronage, standing for far longer than most of her age could manage, banquets and speeches which even the young find tiring.   Yes, she has expert medical help at the ready - we suppose - and bands of dressers and helpers and food supplies without the worries of shopping and cooking.  But all that assistance requires her overall supervision.   Having help can actually be demanding, and dressing up every day certainly is. 
       The rest of us have a drawback - with the retirement age set at the far too early 'sixties, we often have an uneasy place in society and go looking for charity work, though age does not usually stop artists and writers, working independently.  Isolation can bring loneliness.  In some other societies, the nineties are valued, not discouraged. They can be useful with their experience of life.    It's hard for those in the middle, but it could be harder later. 




        

Help for the helpless?

     The needs of the many thousands fleeing from Syria are huge.   Food and clothing provide only temporary relief for those queueing on the borders in Austria, struggling to get to permanent safety.     They are providing a problem for the European Union it has not met before and so far seems unable to handle effectively.
     Some 18,000 refugees were recognised as a minimum quota for the UK, by EU leaders, though David Cameron, after a long delay, has said 20,000 will be admitted.   It can't be denied that this undertaking seems to be in line with general opinion in the UK, which has not been offering an open-handed welcome to the refugees.   Maybe, as some claim, we have a fine tradition of helping those fleeing from persecution abroad.  Or maybe not.
        If there has been this tradition from the past, the historic record of the fate of the refugees now fleeing to western Europe is likely to be different, with the UK this time showing a disregard for the cold and hunger and lack of shelter of those seeking a place where they can be safe.   And the government's attitude as well as that of the UKIP MEP Nigel Farage, seems to be sympathetically shared by large numbers of the public.   "They should stay and sort out their own country themselves," said one Cornishman to me.   Efforts to raise funds were meeting with no success in this Cornish village and nor were suggestions that Britain might take in refugees.  "How do we know that there aren't some IS terrorists among them?" asked one.
         No, it is not proving a popular charitable cause in many parts of the country, even though others are putting in huge efforts to raise funds and provide temporary homes for refugees.    This is not going to be our proudest moment - that distinction is this time going to Germany.
   
        
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Seeking the truth about Satanism

   Looking up Christ Church, Hampstead, on my iphone for the times of services, I am met by a horrifying and lengthy account on the web of "Satanist" child paedophile rings and activities at the church school -  not easy to read over the Sunday morning tea and biscuits.   But  I did read it along with the various follow-ups, and felt disinclined after that to go to church.     While I had been away, there had been groups booing outside the church after hearing about the allegations.   It was obviously a crisis point for the church and the vicar, who I knew well.
     But then there emerged a postscript to all this.  After more reading, I discovered that all these mind-blowing charges had been denied and an allegation made that an angry mother had made them up to upset the husband from whom she had separated and that she had now left the country.   Her two children, aged 8 and 9, had been at the school and named as "whistleblowers", doing so at their mother's command.  There had been a court case and the judge had dismissed the allegations and handed out a suspended sentence to the mother..   But the allegations have remained on the web.


          But that still left a question mark over the Church of Satan.  This was not the first time I had come across it.   Years ago, in Cornwall, a priest had told me he was worried about Satanism and crimes being carried out by the same people who ran an illegal drugs trade into the county.    He gave me the names of a rural dean and local doctor, who both confirmed his story.   Not an easy one to follow up, though some arrests were eventually made, the headquarters of the cult appearing to be in Penzance.
      So does the Church of Satanism exist still?   Yes, and books on it can be bought and its antecedents available by googling it.   It was founded in the 'sixties by Anton LaVey, now dead, an American from Chicago with a Russian mother and Ukrainian father.  He was a circus performer who became interested in witchcraft and its accompanying rituals.    And the cult he founded, with its worship of materialism  and the ego appears to be thriving still in some parts of the country, including, as I now know, in Hampstead, London and Cornwall.   The arrests were made some years ago in the Midlands so the spread then was wide.   Does it still exist?  I think we have to assume that it does but there are no very obvious ways to attack it except by prayer.   Long ago, when I interviewed police in Penzance, they admitted that Satan is a difficult one to arrest.


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Labouring Labour

LABOURING   LABOUR         1








           There was a time, long ago, when the Labour party felt like a crusade.  Voting for it meant voting for fairness, equality, help for the poor and dispossessed, new and original thinking, a strike against conservatism.   Now, for many, it has become conventional, often indistinguishable from the Tory party.   So faced with a choice, the dramatic leap to the Tories in the election could be explained by voters thinking they might as well go for a continuation of the party which seemed to be the safest to get the country through the economic crisis.    That crisis was the centre of the leaders' battleground - there was little idealistic talk of overturning a regime, and revolutionary thought was far away.
             So, what will happen to the Labour party now?   Will it become more challenging, more left wing, or might it be in danger of dying out in its present form?  The latter certainly seems a possibility.
            Founded in 1900 to secure better pay and rights for workers in the new industrialised society, it had links with the 19th century Chartist workers' movement for political reform.  It  has had a long history of struggle    And the struggles have been not only against the Tories.   There have been breakaway movements of historic significance and another may be on the way now.  The role of Labour in a world ruled by capitalism is difficult.   The leaders now talk of the need to embrace business, but with no clear message on how this will be done without compromising some traditional Labour principles.
               Labour has seen two major splinter movements in its history - one led by Aneurin Bevan,an important wartime Cabinet member and founder of the National Health Service after the war, and the late Tony Benn, who held a number of top Cabinet posts in the Labour government in the 'seventies and whose eventual rebellion against Labour gave birth to a significant  Bennite faction, presenting a serious threat to the established party.
                The Bevanites in the 'fifties were a powerful group, pressing for an internationalism and  ideas then regarded as dangerously close to communism, so unequivocally were they in favour of the working class against the rest of society.   He was also a great leader who drew faithful followers.  "He is a Bevanite" people would say suspiciously of a leading local figure, meaning they were not to be trusted because of their extremist views.
                  Tony  Benn said:  ""If the British people were ever to ask what power they truly enjoyed under our political system they would be amazed to discover how little it is.  The UK is only superficially governed by MP's and voters.  Parliamentary democracy is little more than a means of securing a periodical change in the management team which is thus allowed to preside over a system that remains in essence intact."
                    Now it seems that he is being proved right.




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The case for print

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      There is a generation which regards print as being a relic of the past.  Newspapers are read digitally on mobile phones or laptops.  Anything else is regarded as quaintly old-fashioned.  It is not only the young who think like this.  There are plenty of protagonists for the digital-only way of life among the older generation.   These include newspaper editors.   Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian for the past 20 years, has established his paper as a global phenomenon of digital publication - the most widely read internationally, which is a triumph for a formerly small circulation, leftish liberal newspaper.  It has brought the paper hordes of new readers as well as advertising and promotional  successes, combined with sponsored events and organised membership of its readers.
      At which point I want to make a case for the printed edition, still surviving, as well as for all the other daily and weekend printed newspapers.   Alan Rusbridger has undertaken to keep the printed edition going, so long as it is wanted and if the cost can be afforded.
       I have a laptop and an iphone on which I can read Guardian stories and features as well as those of the other papers. But my day is incomplete without the sound of the arrival of the paper on the doorstep in the early morning, and  the London Evening Standard later in the day - its huge popularity gives the lie to the idea that printed newspapers are no longer needed.
        If I am away I go out to the shops to buy a paper.   That goes not only for this country but for Manhattan, Milan, Berlin and any other place I might have happened to be working in, and if I can't get an overseas edition of the Guardian, then I'll take the local paper.  I just need one to carry around, which I can read while I am waiting for the train, or the cup of coffee.   And, spotting a like-minded friend or colleague, can point to a story on an inside page that suddenly interests me.   This ability to share information easily, in a way you cannot with a computer and the handling it needs, is one of the strongest reasons for appreciating a print copy.   The small Metro printed newspaper, offered free to London travellers is continually popular.
    
        Of course, it is not only the carrying around which is the strongest argument for retaining the print editions.  That is the pleasure of carrying the delivered paper, with a cup of tea, back to bed to devour the latest headlines and stories.   This may need a second cup because it is likely to become a long and enjoyable study of national and international affairs only barely touched on by the TV news and even the Today programme, good though that is.   So the result is to be better-informed and readier for the challenges of the day if all that material has been even partially digested.
      It also means that the printed edition cannot carry as its lead story on the front page the same lead story which was carried on the late-night TV news the day before, which makes the challenge of selecting the best stories for the front page a demanding one - but also one that helps to maintain the intellectual sharpness and competitiveness of those given the power of choice.
    I can remember when TV news first started its round-the-clock coverage, saying to my editor at the time that now there was no point in having a front page any longer.  He brushed this aside sharply, saying we must just get on with meeting the challenge, which we did.     And the present editors are doing the same.  The Times has broad and excellent news coverage in its print edition and so does the Telegraph and to some extent the Independent, though it is constrained financially.


     News coverage costs money.  C.P. Scott, the original founder of the trust which runs the Guardian, was famous for his quote "Comment is free, facts are sacred" and in modern times editors mentally change this to "Comment is free, facts are expensive."


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Nuclear Nightmare

     The nuclear war games have started again.   The latest estimate of the number of nuclear weapons in the world is 16,300.    There are only nine countries holding them, Britain included.  We have 225, the Russians 8000 and the US  7300.   As told to me at the Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland, each warhead is 13 times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb and anyone who has seen the film of the total devastation there will find this too difficult to contemplate.

    That is the problem with nuclear weapons.     Most countries, most people, find them too difficult to contemplate.  Occasionally they will join up to form a nuclear forces treaty agreeing to cut back tactical nuclear weapons, but they are still there.

    And now President Putin, admitting being scared of the NATO forces which have been moving ever-forward to Ukraine,  has said that he was so fearful of attack that he was prepared to arm nuclear weapons there.

      Not to be outdone, the hardy, outdoor MP Rory Stewart, who once walked solo across deserts, has joined in.   He is now chairman of the Parliamentary  Select Committee on Defence.     Their report calls for an increase in Britain’s defence spending which has been cut,  saying that the world was ‘more dangerous and unstable’ than at any timed since the end of the Cold War.     Rory Stewart emphasised that this should include the British nuclear capabilities.

         These capabilities, of course, include the renewal of the Trident submarine warheads, costing many billions, against which there have been loud and ongoing protests.    The money, the protesters argue, should be used instead for spending where it is badly needed, on health and education.   The Green Party, which has recently had an upsurge in membership, would cut Trident, as well as the Scottish National Party, which almost succeeded in gaining independence for Scotland, announced in its manifesto that it would withdraw from the Trident programme.

         If most of Europe chooses to remain without nuclear weapons, notably the Scandinavian countries, why is the UK so intent on keeping these costly weapons?  Under what circumstances would they be used?   First strike against an invader?  Retaliation after the country had been half-demolished by nuclear attack, even if it was able to strike back?   

     Even if the object of possessing them provided the deterrent from attack which is said to be their purpose, surely a few warheads would be enough, considering it needed only one to demolish Hiroshima, and not 225?

     Russia withdrew from the joint consultative group on the European Armed Forces consultative group drawing up a treaty and their new ground-launched cruise missile is said by the US to violate the INF treaty.   The US and Russia need to stop growling at each other, for whatever reasons, and get back to talking again.

     

           

 

snowden

     Edward Snowden is now in exile in Russia, having landed there almost by accident when his passport was revoked by the US.  They have given him temporary asylum.   European countries have refused to give him asylum saying they cannot protect him from extradition to face spying charges in his home country.
      So, while he is being hailed as a hero in many quarters for leaking classified information from the National Security Agency which he says operates unconstitutional and illegal surveillance of the general population and been awarded the Stuttgart Peace Prize last year, President Obama simply says he should  come back and face espionage charges.
    The film made by Laura Poitras showing him handed over secret information to Guardian journalists, Citizenfour, shows the firmness of his intent "whatever they do to me."   It is a portrait of extraordinary courage and determination.  "These are not my issues.  They are everyone's issues."      The NSA has direct access to millions of privage phone calls and messages, he says, and the public is unprotected - it is blanket surveillance.
      The film, nearly two hours long, gives an opportunity to study him.  He is intelligent, thoughtful, modest (a friend described him as 'a deep thinker, caring and sensitive') the sort of young man you would trust with a secret.   But he decided to break that trust when he decided the secret was based on State lying and subterfuge he could no longer support.
 There were "billions" of intercepts on laptops, and GCHQ was "the most invasive system in the world."    His breaking point came when he saw lying about the system in Congress and felt he had to come up with the truth.
     But he has not decided which of the many subjects in the documents should be disclosed.   Instead, he handed it all over to Guardian journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill, giving the paper the huge task of discovering the public interest stories in them which could be carried in the paper, as well as facing the retribution by the authorities for doing so.
    Greenwald has published a book about the disclosures "No Place to Hide.".   Prism was the programme used by the NSA to access, among others, Google, Microsoft and Apple servers, and the UK's Tempora which deals with web and telephone traffic.  So none of us is safe.   This is how it was in the old Soviet Union when, if you needed to discuss something privately, you arranged to meet on the metro underground platform or in a wood if you were in the country.   I know, I've done it, and don't really want to have to do it here.  Thanks, Edward Snowden.


ends

        Whatever they do to him, he will never regret disclosing the illegal surveillance of millions of private communications by the US National Security Agency, says Edward Snowden.
     I watched Laura Poitras's film, citizenfour, which shows Snowden producing the secret files in the neutral safety of Hong Kong.  It was an extraordinary experience.   Snowden ("I'm known as Ed) emerges as a likeable, modest, highly intelligent young man whom you would have no trouble in trusting with any of your secrets.   But the NSA did trust him, mistakenly.
      Snowden says the NSA programme is unconstitutional and illegal.    He says when he saw two congressmen lying under oath about it to Congress, he came to breaking point and decided to act.
 in its extensive sur his job working for the corporation Booz Allen Hamilton after being trained  by the NSA was tp look for ways that could be used to break into the internet and phone traffic globally.
     Now President Obama is saying he should come back to the States, where he was born in North Caroline, to face espionage charges.   In detail, these are theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified intelligence.

Green Coalition?

      Both the Tories and Labour are having to face the possibility of sharing a coalition government with the Greens after the May election.   Green membership has quadrupled - there appears to be an idealistic yearning growing in the UK, apparently, for policies to save the planet.    The Greens now have more members than the LibDems or UKIP.
But the day-to-day mechanics of running the country would present new problems with a Green voice in the government;  negative growth is one of their policies.   
    This is reminiscent of the days of the growth of the Green movement in Germany a long time ago, when there were the same problems for the ruling parties.   In 1982, the Greens were stating conditions for coalition talks under their extraordinary young leader, Petra Kelly.    She had a missionary fervour totally committed to Green ideas, never giving up on her crusade to recruit to her cause everyone she met.   Under her leadership, power was taken away from the Social Democrats.  
     "If the SPD switches off all atomic power stations, stops the stationing of missiles, and starts building ambulances in place of tanks, we can begin to talk to them" she declared.    The Greens were warned - as has been the case in this country - that entry into the German Parliament, the Bundestag, could mean a victory for the Conservative DDU over the Social Democrats.  They said they were not concerned about this, that they were the anti-party party.   But the Greens secured significant representation in the Bundestag and Germany did not get nuclear weapons.
     Her father was an American serving in the forces in Germany after the war.  Petra had started her career with a post working for the EU in Brussels where she found many compromises in policy which shocked her.
     She came to Britain and spoke for the Greens in Trafalgar Square and at the War Memorial in Whitehall.   Now, at last, the Green party is here in force in this country, with its environmentalist ideas.   Whatever the outcome of the May election, some of those ideas will now be taken into account, as they were in Germany.