25 December 2006
Langoria
Atop the mountains the view eastwards was of a desolated high desert valley of scrub and sterile earth. To describe it required a palette of browns and tans. There were dry ravines and sandy, sere riverbeds that flowed only occasionally when the rains spilled between the frigid peaks and the ridge beyond which lay Langoria.
North and south of the saddle that formed the only entry to the desert and, ultimately, into Langoria, the peaks curved, ever higher, until they reached the sea, trapping both the desert and Langoria in a giant horseshoe shaped promontory.
To reach the ridge required a descent, at times nearly vertical, down the rock mountainside. Once at the base, the high desert spread out for three days, rough and scarred and permanently parched.
Only near the sharp edge which defined the top of the ridge and marked the border of Langoria did the earth become gentler and more giving. Behind lay the hot, killing world of the desert.
From the ridge Langoria spread out below towards the sea. The land dropped through a mix of oak and pine and then through fields of oats, barley, hops and wheat, separated by orderly rows of apple, pear and peach trees. Still lower there were grape vines spreading their low green canopies, ripening in the dry sun and the cool air, thickening the fruit until it produced a deep, rich purple wine which the people drank before fires on cold winter nights. Scattered amongst the wineries were groves of olives.
From the wine country the land sloped further towards sea where the altitude and the weather combined to create an unvarying cool, misty world of grazing sheep, peat bogs and windswept shores. The small harbour of Langoria, the eponymous capital of the country, had been formed by the laborious placement of riprap rocks to convert a gentle indentation along the coastline into a small, safe-haven where coasters and fishing boats were moored.
For miles both north and south of the capital there was little in the way of variation to the coastline. It formed an even line between land and sea; sometimes the boundary varied a bit, from sandy, straight beach to cliffs where green fields simply terminated and the land tumbled precipitously a hundred or more feet into the sea.
Eventually the coastal strip that marked Langoria narrowed and terminated where the mountains reached the water, marked by towering precipices, shelves that stretched to the north and south nearly a hundred miles, an impassable, unconquerable barrier between tiny Langoria and the hostile lands beyond those impenetrable mountains.
And so Langoria slept. It was a gentle land. Far from the rest of the world and its conflicts, the tiny country prospered in its own way, leading a national life that was in harmony with the gifts given it by the earth: a temperate climate, a beautiful, rolling terrain and a variety of foods, from land and sea, from vine and field, that gave Langorians long lives, even temperaments and a capacity for calm reflection and tolerance that scarce occurs in more heated climes, whatever the temperature.
26 December 2006
10 December 2006
French Fries on the Playa de Cortes
9 December 2006
Besford
The road from Hermosillo to Kino eventually thinned out after Buck Ibarra’s place. Buck was some sort of renegade, part Basque, part Indian and pretty much wholly a rascal. With half a dozen kids from an equal number of mothers, several happily residing together out there in his compound of huts and rusted travel trailers, he was just another of Dad’s curious friends. Many of them had criminal records – some pretty serious. I can vaguely recall that it wasn’t long after we first moved to Sonora that Dad became friends with a gringo staying out at one lonely ranch (God knows how Dad ever met these guys – he’d frequently just show up at dinner time, trailing some shy 'down and outer' who’d fascinate me and slightly disgust my Mom; every one had an interest in mining, many were genuine prospectors of the burro persuasion, for some adventure had become a habit they couldn't break; I never figured out whether they were souls lost or souls with purpose and direction, marching to their own rhythm). This fellow at the ranch, I think it was called Escondido ('hidden' – pretty appropriate, huh?) had already been out there the best part of 7 years when we arrived, never once having travelled the 20 miles or so into town. It was only after the statue of limitations had well and truly expired that he ventured into the city – I'm sure that one of his first stops had to be one of the bars that made up the front rooms of the houses in the ‘Zona’. Even at six I knew the Zona, one afternoon I'd dropped in and had a soda pop with the proprietress of one of the nicer houses but, that’s a story for another time.
Until they began to irrigate the backlands between the river valleys and coast in the 1960’s, the space between Hermosillo, the capital on the river, and Kino, a beach settlement on the Sea of Cortes, didn’t appear to have much to offer man or animal. There were a few scampering desert mammals, Gila monsters, plenty of snakes and some coyotes but not much else. In summer it got so hot so quickly that the trip was only healthy if you left around 7 AM to get there and started back around 6 or 7 PM.
The beach at Kino was very white and very big. The water was clear but you didn’t swim unless you could spot the fins of porpoises in the Bay. The Sea of Cortes has as many tiburones ('sharks') as anywhere in the world. You were only sure that it was safe to swim with the porpoises, otherwise it was build a sand castle.
At one end of the beach there was a point called Black Rock (imaginatively named because of it’s dominant colour) and some ex-fisherman ran a café there. Most of the place was actually jammed back into a cave that had been carved out by thousands of years of waves. You'd give the proprietor whatever fish you’d caught and he’d clean and fry them. His beer was cold (said my Dad) but to me the key thing was that he made papas fritas (‘chips’ or French fries) like I'd never had. He didn’t peel the potatoes, just cut them into wedges and tossed them into a pan swimming in pork fat! There they'd float until they turned a perfect golden brown, flecked with black. Wow! Strange that in the 1950’s, fat wasn’t so bad for you as it is now.
Dad was a hobbyist fisherman – he loved it. He could fish equally in a lake, a stream or the ocean; he even knew how to tie trout flies. Mom fished to keep him company. I mostly played on the rocks or the beach, the only fascination I found in fish was watching them jerk spasmodically as their lives drained away when they were tossed onto the rock. When Dad pulled one in, he would remove his hook and then bang the fish on the head with the blunt end of his pocket knife. When Dad was too far to take care of whatever she'd caught, Mom would just toss the fish onto the rocks, she was too squeamish to bop them. I'd then watch them struggle for breath. Most died in what must have been terrible agony but some managed to bounce themselves back into the sea, determined never to pick at anything dangling at the end of a line, no matter how appetising it looked. Before you go condemning me for my morbid voyeurism, remember that this was the 1950’s. We weren’t as sensitive then and I was only 5 or 6 so I’m not sure that I truly understood what I was watching.
In that decade, I believe that not only weren't we as sensitive as we are now, I’m pretty convinced the fish didn't have much feeling either. Whatever future punishment I let myself in for by witnessing these scenes, though, the memory of the papas fritas is still with me today, half a century later!
Besford
The road from Hermosillo to Kino eventually thinned out after Buck Ibarra’s place. Buck was some sort of renegade, part Basque, part Indian and pretty much wholly a rascal. With half a dozen kids from an equal number of mothers, several happily residing together out there in his compound of huts and rusted travel trailers, he was just another of Dad’s curious friends. Many of them had criminal records – some pretty serious. I can vaguely recall that it wasn’t long after we first moved to Sonora that Dad became friends with a gringo staying out at one lonely ranch (God knows how Dad ever met these guys – he’d frequently just show up at dinner time, trailing some shy 'down and outer' who’d fascinate me and slightly disgust my Mom; every one had an interest in mining, many were genuine prospectors of the burro persuasion, for some adventure had become a habit they couldn't break; I never figured out whether they were souls lost or souls with purpose and direction, marching to their own rhythm). This fellow at the ranch, I think it was called Escondido ('hidden' – pretty appropriate, huh?) had already been out there the best part of 7 years when we arrived, never once having travelled the 20 miles or so into town. It was only after the statue of limitations had well and truly expired that he ventured into the city – I'm sure that one of his first stops had to be one of the bars that made up the front rooms of the houses in the ‘Zona’. Even at six I knew the Zona, one afternoon I'd dropped in and had a soda pop with the proprietress of one of the nicer houses but, that’s a story for another time.
Until they began to irrigate the backlands between the river valleys and coast in the 1960’s, the space between Hermosillo, the capital on the river, and Kino, a beach settlement on the Sea of Cortes, didn’t appear to have much to offer man or animal. There were a few scampering desert mammals, Gila monsters, plenty of snakes and some coyotes but not much else. In summer it got so hot so quickly that the trip was only healthy if you left around 7 AM to get there and started back around 6 or 7 PM.
The beach at Kino was very white and very big. The water was clear but you didn’t swim unless you could spot the fins of porpoises in the Bay. The Sea of Cortes has as many tiburones ('sharks') as anywhere in the world. You were only sure that it was safe to swim with the porpoises, otherwise it was build a sand castle.
At one end of the beach there was a point called Black Rock (imaginatively named because of it’s dominant colour) and some ex-fisherman ran a café there. Most of the place was actually jammed back into a cave that had been carved out by thousands of years of waves. You'd give the proprietor whatever fish you’d caught and he’d clean and fry them. His beer was cold (said my Dad) but to me the key thing was that he made papas fritas (‘chips’ or French fries) like I'd never had. He didn’t peel the potatoes, just cut them into wedges and tossed them into a pan swimming in pork fat! There they'd float until they turned a perfect golden brown, flecked with black. Wow! Strange that in the 1950’s, fat wasn’t so bad for you as it is now.
Dad was a hobbyist fisherman – he loved it. He could fish equally in a lake, a stream or the ocean; he even knew how to tie trout flies. Mom fished to keep him company. I mostly played on the rocks or the beach, the only fascination I found in fish was watching them jerk spasmodically as their lives drained away when they were tossed onto the rock. When Dad pulled one in, he would remove his hook and then bang the fish on the head with the blunt end of his pocket knife. When Dad was too far to take care of whatever she'd caught, Mom would just toss the fish onto the rocks, she was too squeamish to bop them. I'd then watch them struggle for breath. Most died in what must have been terrible agony but some managed to bounce themselves back into the sea, determined never to pick at anything dangling at the end of a line, no matter how appetising it looked. Before you go condemning me for my morbid voyeurism, remember that this was the 1950’s. We weren’t as sensitive then and I was only 5 or 6 so I’m not sure that I truly understood what I was watching.
In that decade, I believe that not only weren't we as sensitive as we are now, I’m pretty convinced the fish didn't have much feeling either. Whatever future punishment I let myself in for by witnessing these scenes, though, the memory of the papas fritas is still with me today, half a century later!
07 December 2006
Sonora Morning ...1950's
6 December 2006
Besford
Only when the rains came, around San Juan day, did the arroyo ever feel riverine. This morning the wan December sun floated through the dry and dusty bottom as men stretched, scratched and spit, rustling up muddy coffee, warming their tortillas on rocks set around the fire, forming them into pockets and filling them with frijoles refritos scooped from an old frying pan.
The plates, pans and cups all matched, blue enamelled metal with white spots, a design that was common up and down the Sonora and a half dozen other rivers. Washing up consisted of wiping them with river sand, water was too precious to waste on unnecessary hygiene.
Some men were still stiff from the overnight cold. It had been clear the night before, nothing unusual in that, but the wind had blown in a ‘norther’ and the mercury had dropped to single digits before midnight. Although the wind then dropped off, the temperature had continued to descend and this morning it was below zero.
Few words were exchanged, the men’s voices were low and quiet, scratchy from the cold, dry air, from cigarettes and tequila. The black, sugary coffee lubricated their voices only enough for instructions to be passed around.
The order that informed their preparations was not immediately visible. Men appeared to be acting independently, without reference to each other. Suddenly, however, the group set off; how they were organised was not immediately apparent but by the discipline that marked their departure from the campsite, fire damped and waste cleaned, was unmistakable.
All of the men, save one, were mounted on horseback. The exception was, however, clearly the leader, he rode a burro. The men treated him with an easy familiarity, they joked and gossiped with him but they also watched him, learning to interpret his moods, to read his body language. There was no fun made of his refusal to ride a horse. He was convinced that a burro was smarter and he would neither go where a burro would not nor go farther in a day than a burro wanted. His selection of camping spots, idiosyncratic but compellingly logical, was based entirely on the whim of his burro, when the burro stopped and would go no more, it was time to camp.
The paraphernalia of camping life - tents, army cots, kerosene lanterns, canned goods, utensils and cooking gear - was all loaded into heavy, waterproof rocket boxes. Surplus from the Second World War, the rocket boxes were heavy gauge aluminium. Fully loaded, each one must have weighed 100 pounds and at about 5 feet long, two of them made a formidable load for the burros that were unfortunate enough not to have been selected to carry the leader. It was, however a close call for the leader's weight verged on 200 pounds, not nearly as well distributed as the gear in the rocket boxes.
The camp was cleared and the party ready to move forward within an hour of waking. The last of the coffee was gulped down and unfiltered Mexican Raleighs lit up. A wispy haze of bluish cigarette smoke marked the trail of the group as it wended its way on up the river bed.
Besford
Only when the rains came, around San Juan day, did the arroyo ever feel riverine. This morning the wan December sun floated through the dry and dusty bottom as men stretched, scratched and spit, rustling up muddy coffee, warming their tortillas on rocks set around the fire, forming them into pockets and filling them with frijoles refritos scooped from an old frying pan.
The plates, pans and cups all matched, blue enamelled metal with white spots, a design that was common up and down the Sonora and a half dozen other rivers. Washing up consisted of wiping them with river sand, water was too precious to waste on unnecessary hygiene.
Some men were still stiff from the overnight cold. It had been clear the night before, nothing unusual in that, but the wind had blown in a ‘norther’ and the mercury had dropped to single digits before midnight. Although the wind then dropped off, the temperature had continued to descend and this morning it was below zero.
Few words were exchanged, the men’s voices were low and quiet, scratchy from the cold, dry air, from cigarettes and tequila. The black, sugary coffee lubricated their voices only enough for instructions to be passed around.
The order that informed their preparations was not immediately visible. Men appeared to be acting independently, without reference to each other. Suddenly, however, the group set off; how they were organised was not immediately apparent but by the discipline that marked their departure from the campsite, fire damped and waste cleaned, was unmistakable.
All of the men, save one, were mounted on horseback. The exception was, however, clearly the leader, he rode a burro. The men treated him with an easy familiarity, they joked and gossiped with him but they also watched him, learning to interpret his moods, to read his body language. There was no fun made of his refusal to ride a horse. He was convinced that a burro was smarter and he would neither go where a burro would not nor go farther in a day than a burro wanted. His selection of camping spots, idiosyncratic but compellingly logical, was based entirely on the whim of his burro, when the burro stopped and would go no more, it was time to camp.
The paraphernalia of camping life - tents, army cots, kerosene lanterns, canned goods, utensils and cooking gear - was all loaded into heavy, waterproof rocket boxes. Surplus from the Second World War, the rocket boxes were heavy gauge aluminium. Fully loaded, each one must have weighed 100 pounds and at about 5 feet long, two of them made a formidable load for the burros that were unfortunate enough not to have been selected to carry the leader. It was, however a close call for the leader's weight verged on 200 pounds, not nearly as well distributed as the gear in the rocket boxes.
The camp was cleared and the party ready to move forward within an hour of waking. The last of the coffee was gulped down and unfiltered Mexican Raleighs lit up. A wispy haze of bluish cigarette smoke marked the trail of the group as it wended its way on up the river bed.
03 December 2006
Memories of Parsley Manor
3 December 2006
Besford
This is my first full day out of the hospital – Parsley Manor Leg Care. I’m trying to think about what I miss the most. There was, of course, the food; truly indescribable, mostly inedible, a discredit to the ‘cook’ (how I hurt to use that term for this psychopath!) but, saving grace (??!!), completely unforgettable. I will remember the meals at the hospital long after I’ve forgotten culinary gems at bistros in London, country pubs with ambitious, creative but rationale young chefs and even ready-made, heat in the oven meals from Marks & Spencer and Waitrose. There is something about one bad recommendation only being equalled by ten good ones (or, more crudely, ten ‘atta boys’ required to counterbalance one ‘oh shit’).
Eventually I sorted things out and had porridge for breakfast – that English for oatmeal – an omelette for lunch and, for variety, an omelette for dinner. The vegetables were so overcooked that I remain convinced they actually sucked food value out of your body rather than put any in so my steadfast refusal to ingest any of them was fully justified.
I dreaded the thought of coffee at Parsley Manor, a most substantial memorial to a Britain before fusion cooking. The British consume more total instant coffee than any other nation on earth. That’s not on a per capita basis, that’s ‘total’. There are now something over 300 million Americans, many with no judgement at all but even a country whose taste buds are so completely jaded as the US cannot match the brown swilling efforts of 50 million or so island dwellers here in the North Sea! You can imagine how I cringed every time one of the pleasant tea trolley ladies asked me if I wanted a coffee, love?
There is a slightly positive codicil to the coffee story, the last day I couldn’t stand it anymore. My desperate efforts to secure a cup of strong black coffee had even been thwarted by my wife. She’d promised me a Starbucks; we have the beans, grinder and advanced, pricey, button-girded machinery to produce a thick, rich, aromatic cup of caffeine strong enough for me to imitate Fred Astaire dancing on the walls without the fancy camera work! So I awoke in eager anticipation, hours before she was due to arrive, my first cup of coffee since surgery, something like 3 days!
Come the moment (picture it!), the wife comes in, a thermos tucked under her arm and smiling comfortingly, a glance filled with matrimonial love. She pours me a cup and hands it over, I sip gently, wanting to truly savour the first taste. But, what is this? Something is wrong! This stuff tastes both mealy and watery, it’s horrible! My beloved smiles at me, ‘I forgot to put in a filter but the grounds seem to have settled so I thought why bother doing another pot, it would just be a waste.’
Caffeine addiction is a strong and dangerous habit. It is best not to try to thwart the caffeine addict when he needs that morning fix or the late afternoon recharger. To do so is to risk a severe and completely unreasonable tongue lashing. My wife had probably chosen the one moment in our life that she could fail to feed my addiction without serious danger to herself and because I depended on her for the papers, books and a link to a world beyond the corridors of Parsley Manor Leg Care Hospital, I managed a grimace that she innocently or, this may be more likely as she knows me well, deviously chose to interpret as a grin of gratitude.
But that last morning the young nurse on the night shift went and pressed the espresso button three times on the coffee machine, bringing me a cup of bitter, brown, treacly stuff that kept me from violence and allowed me to get safely home to my beloved coffee maker.
This whole coffee thing has so distracted me from talking about what I miss most from Parsley Manor that I will have to recline a while, sip a cup of Starbucks best Italian Roast and see if I can put together my scattered and random thoughts into something coherent. For now, this sad tale of coffee callousness will have to do.
Besford
This is my first full day out of the hospital – Parsley Manor Leg Care. I’m trying to think about what I miss the most. There was, of course, the food; truly indescribable, mostly inedible, a discredit to the ‘cook’ (how I hurt to use that term for this psychopath!) but, saving grace (??!!), completely unforgettable. I will remember the meals at the hospital long after I’ve forgotten culinary gems at bistros in London, country pubs with ambitious, creative but rationale young chefs and even ready-made, heat in the oven meals from Marks & Spencer and Waitrose. There is something about one bad recommendation only being equalled by ten good ones (or, more crudely, ten ‘atta boys’ required to counterbalance one ‘oh shit’).
Eventually I sorted things out and had porridge for breakfast – that English for oatmeal – an omelette for lunch and, for variety, an omelette for dinner. The vegetables were so overcooked that I remain convinced they actually sucked food value out of your body rather than put any in so my steadfast refusal to ingest any of them was fully justified.
I dreaded the thought of coffee at Parsley Manor, a most substantial memorial to a Britain before fusion cooking. The British consume more total instant coffee than any other nation on earth. That’s not on a per capita basis, that’s ‘total’. There are now something over 300 million Americans, many with no judgement at all but even a country whose taste buds are so completely jaded as the US cannot match the brown swilling efforts of 50 million or so island dwellers here in the North Sea! You can imagine how I cringed every time one of the pleasant tea trolley ladies asked me if I wanted a coffee, love?
There is a slightly positive codicil to the coffee story, the last day I couldn’t stand it anymore. My desperate efforts to secure a cup of strong black coffee had even been thwarted by my wife. She’d promised me a Starbucks; we have the beans, grinder and advanced, pricey, button-girded machinery to produce a thick, rich, aromatic cup of caffeine strong enough for me to imitate Fred Astaire dancing on the walls without the fancy camera work! So I awoke in eager anticipation, hours before she was due to arrive, my first cup of coffee since surgery, something like 3 days!
Come the moment (picture it!), the wife comes in, a thermos tucked under her arm and smiling comfortingly, a glance filled with matrimonial love. She pours me a cup and hands it over, I sip gently, wanting to truly savour the first taste. But, what is this? Something is wrong! This stuff tastes both mealy and watery, it’s horrible! My beloved smiles at me, ‘I forgot to put in a filter but the grounds seem to have settled so I thought why bother doing another pot, it would just be a waste.’
Caffeine addiction is a strong and dangerous habit. It is best not to try to thwart the caffeine addict when he needs that morning fix or the late afternoon recharger. To do so is to risk a severe and completely unreasonable tongue lashing. My wife had probably chosen the one moment in our life that she could fail to feed my addiction without serious danger to herself and because I depended on her for the papers, books and a link to a world beyond the corridors of Parsley Manor Leg Care Hospital, I managed a grimace that she innocently or, this may be more likely as she knows me well, deviously chose to interpret as a grin of gratitude.
But that last morning the young nurse on the night shift went and pressed the espresso button three times on the coffee machine, bringing me a cup of bitter, brown, treacly stuff that kept me from violence and allowed me to get safely home to my beloved coffee maker.
This whole coffee thing has so distracted me from talking about what I miss most from Parsley Manor that I will have to recline a while, sip a cup of Starbucks best Italian Roast and see if I can put together my scattered and random thoughts into something coherent. For now, this sad tale of coffee callousness will have to do.
26 November 2006
I'm genuinely sorry that my ancestors had anything to do with slavery!
26 November 2006
Sunday
Tony Blair has stopped short of apologising for Britain’s role in the slave trade. I believe that the United States has also failed to apologise.
It seems to me that this is all nonsense. Why not apologise? What would be the implication? If the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom says he’s sorry – and, indeed, he says he’s sorry on behalf of the nation – that Britons sanctioned, participated in and profited from the slave trade – there’s nothing wrong with that. It seems to me it’s the right thing to do. There’s something of an irony in the fact there’s a controversy in one action that’s moral and healing in the tawdry history of an unprecedented crime against humanity.
Personally, I’m sorry that so much of the history of the United Sates is built on the blood of unknown and unrecognised men and women held as slaves. The whole concept, if you stop and think about it even for a moment, is so revolting and unimaginable, that you cannot conceive of any reasonable objection to a national and personal apology for it.
Consider: If your grandparents had been kidnapped from their homes, survived a hellish voyage in chains across the ocean and sold into involuntary servitude, would that not be sufficient crime against your ancestors for you to ask for an apology from the inheritors of the culture that committed that heinous crime? And it was even worse, you not only had to survive, you frequently had to survive completely alone, with strangers, fellow-slaves, who did not speak your language and worshipped different gods. Then, having survived these challenges, having been renamed, forced to worship the white man’s god and forced to labour at the whim and sole direction of the ‘master’, imagine the hopeless sense that there was no alternative to this existence, neither for you nor for your descendants (frequently products of a pairing in which you had no choice). It sure doesn’t seem to me that both personal and national apologies are out of order!
The argument may be about where you stop. Are the descendants of the victims entitled to reparations? Should money be given to the societies from which these people were taken? Well, probably not; I think our economies – made up of both former slaves and former ‘masters’ – would be stretched too far to pay for it. What we can do is ensure that we have created a fair and just society for the descendants of those people who suffered this enormous crime.
Sunday
Tony Blair has stopped short of apologising for Britain’s role in the slave trade. I believe that the United States has also failed to apologise.
It seems to me that this is all nonsense. Why not apologise? What would be the implication? If the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom says he’s sorry – and, indeed, he says he’s sorry on behalf of the nation – that Britons sanctioned, participated in and profited from the slave trade – there’s nothing wrong with that. It seems to me it’s the right thing to do. There’s something of an irony in the fact there’s a controversy in one action that’s moral and healing in the tawdry history of an unprecedented crime against humanity.
Personally, I’m sorry that so much of the history of the United Sates is built on the blood of unknown and unrecognised men and women held as slaves. The whole concept, if you stop and think about it even for a moment, is so revolting and unimaginable, that you cannot conceive of any reasonable objection to a national and personal apology for it.
Consider: If your grandparents had been kidnapped from their homes, survived a hellish voyage in chains across the ocean and sold into involuntary servitude, would that not be sufficient crime against your ancestors for you to ask for an apology from the inheritors of the culture that committed that heinous crime? And it was even worse, you not only had to survive, you frequently had to survive completely alone, with strangers, fellow-slaves, who did not speak your language and worshipped different gods. Then, having survived these challenges, having been renamed, forced to worship the white man’s god and forced to labour at the whim and sole direction of the ‘master’, imagine the hopeless sense that there was no alternative to this existence, neither for you nor for your descendants (frequently products of a pairing in which you had no choice). It sure doesn’t seem to me that both personal and national apologies are out of order!
The argument may be about where you stop. Are the descendants of the victims entitled to reparations? Should money be given to the societies from which these people were taken? Well, probably not; I think our economies – made up of both former slaves and former ‘masters’ – would be stretched too far to pay for it. What we can do is ensure that we have created a fair and just society for the descendants of those people who suffered this enormous crime.
03 March 2006
Bush in New Delhi
Bush is probably wrong on this one. Do we really need to put geopolitics before nuclear non-proliferation? Are we building an alliance against the Chinese for the next 50 years? Why not build an alliance with the Chinese and use that to dominate the entire globe? The US would dominate Latin America, China would dominate Asia. Africa may not count for much for another century -- blame Europe! Meantime, Europe sits in the middle, prosperous but ineffective. India becomes an industrious non-entity.
India is prickly. Their reaction to many international issues is always reminiscent of some sort of national inferiority complex; reminds me a bit of the instinctive anti-Americanism of the Filipinos. For the subcontinent, of course, it's born of 200 years of domination by the British rather than centuries under the Spanish followed by five decades under the Almighty Dollar (the case of the Philippines).
So, by the terms of this new agreement, the international non-proliferation treaty is gutted but India opens up two-thirds of its reactors for inspection by the IAEA, imports US nuclear fuels, freeing up more of its own production to be diverted to mulitply its nuclear weapons production. This makes US conservatives happy because India's weapons then balance China's.
It gets ever more complicated. I don't want another nuclear power but India already is. So, this will just make them stronger? Does that make China relatively weaker? Do I worry more about China or India?
India is prickly. Their reaction to many international issues is always reminiscent of some sort of national inferiority complex; reminds me a bit of the instinctive anti-Americanism of the Filipinos. For the subcontinent, of course, it's born of 200 years of domination by the British rather than centuries under the Spanish followed by five decades under the Almighty Dollar (the case of the Philippines).
So, by the terms of this new agreement, the international non-proliferation treaty is gutted but India opens up two-thirds of its reactors for inspection by the IAEA, imports US nuclear fuels, freeing up more of its own production to be diverted to mulitply its nuclear weapons production. This makes US conservatives happy because India's weapons then balance China's.
It gets ever more complicated. I don't want another nuclear power but India already is. So, this will just make them stronger? Does that make China relatively weaker? Do I worry more about China or India?
24 February 2006
Charity the Wal-Mart Way!
Well, it’s a step in the right direction! Wal-Mart, the developed world’s most egregious profiteer whose senior executives are not either indicted, on trial or in jail, has announced that it will make some health insurance available to the 50% of their employees who are not currently eligible (that’s right, half of their work-force, around 650,000 people are currently out in the cold!). Of course, you’ve got to wonder how the workers are going to pay for this benefit with average wages under $20,000 per year.
This is not going to get me into Wal-Mart. I still go to Costco! Their average wage is 70% higher than Wal-Mart’s and their Chief Executive actually has a pay packet that bears scrutiny. You can look at what Costco’s top guys are paid without getting a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach.
How does the senior executive corps at Wal-Mart manage to sleep? I’m not sure what innovations they’ve introduced that really make our lives better. Bill Gates’ wealth doesn’t bother me, he’s driven innovation and productivity and his charitable impulses are admirable. Wal-Mart? Well, let’s see, they’ve destroyed communities, nearly bankrupted some of their suppliers, exploit their workers and build giant, ugly boxes around the country to which people drive miles and miles, persuaded to do so only by what I can characterize as a mass psychosis and an ephemeral hope of savings. And, by the way, I do wonder how much additional oil we use every year in this country just to get to Wal-Mart for those savings? I bet it’s significant!
This is not going to get me into Wal-Mart. I still go to Costco! Their average wage is 70% higher than Wal-Mart’s and their Chief Executive actually has a pay packet that bears scrutiny. You can look at what Costco’s top guys are paid without getting a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach.
How does the senior executive corps at Wal-Mart manage to sleep? I’m not sure what innovations they’ve introduced that really make our lives better. Bill Gates’ wealth doesn’t bother me, he’s driven innovation and productivity and his charitable impulses are admirable. Wal-Mart? Well, let’s see, they’ve destroyed communities, nearly bankrupted some of their suppliers, exploit their workers and build giant, ugly boxes around the country to which people drive miles and miles, persuaded to do so only by what I can characterize as a mass psychosis and an ephemeral hope of savings. And, by the way, I do wonder how much additional oil we use every year in this country just to get to Wal-Mart for those savings? I bet it’s significant!
23 February 2006
Shooting at the Arab company that bought the UK company that has a port operation contract and has, so far, not, itself, shot anyone at the ranch!
Bush was wrong when he ignored the secret court set up to authorise eavesdropping in the interest of national security. If the court was too slow, he should have asked for the court to be given either greater authority or more resources.
On the other hand, Bush was/is right to defend the granting of port operation contracts to a company owned by the Government of the UAE. If they won and they were fully vetted by various US Government bodies, they deserve to have the contract.
Those politicians who are trying to capitalise on this issue are wrong and self-serving. Only John McCain has shown any character on this matter -- he has, at least, said that we ought to give the process the benefit of the doubt.
I am not against a review of the process but any arbitrary cancellation will reflect badly on us as a nation of laws.
Actually, I'm convinced that all of this brouhaha over the port contract was concocted by Cheney's staff to distract attention from his culpability over the shooting of a lawyer during a hunting weekend at the Armstrong Ranch in Texas. Too bad, this, because Cheney demonstrated how dangerous guns are. He should lose his license but, wait, I forgot, there are no licenses for gun operation in the US. Any idiot, Dick Cheney included, is allowed to tote around a weapon that could end human life. That's reasonable, isn't it?
On the other hand, Bush was/is right to defend the granting of port operation contracts to a company owned by the Government of the UAE. If they won and they were fully vetted by various US Government bodies, they deserve to have the contract.
Those politicians who are trying to capitalise on this issue are wrong and self-serving. Only John McCain has shown any character on this matter -- he has, at least, said that we ought to give the process the benefit of the doubt.
I am not against a review of the process but any arbitrary cancellation will reflect badly on us as a nation of laws.
Actually, I'm convinced that all of this brouhaha over the port contract was concocted by Cheney's staff to distract attention from his culpability over the shooting of a lawyer during a hunting weekend at the Armstrong Ranch in Texas. Too bad, this, because Cheney demonstrated how dangerous guns are. He should lose his license but, wait, I forgot, there are no licenses for gun operation in the US. Any idiot, Dick Cheney included, is allowed to tote around a weapon that could end human life. That's reasonable, isn't it?
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