Tiger Woods

I grew up in the suburbs surrounded by golf courses. As a teenager I did a bit of caddying and I played  a bit of golf. Surprisingly I wasn't too bad but it was not really the game for me - I prefer my exercise a bit more vigorous.

But it wasn't this that really put me off, it was the arseholes who are magnetically drawn to golf clubs. The kind of aspirational twats who enjoy being part of an organisation that tells them they musn't wear shorts on the course or that they have to wear a collar in the bar  - and that after twenty years of kissing arse they can become the club captain. And then I found in work that golf was a social forum for 'business' - which really meant a vehicle for brown-nosing with clients or superiors. So I avoided golf much as I also avoided the freemasons and the rotary club - and haven't found my career disadvantaged.

So I'm not big on golf or golfers and I haven't followed closely, or particularly cared much, about the Tiger Woods scandal. But I can offer a couple of observations without straying into the morality of his infidelities:

Firstly I suspect that they are more about power than they are about sex. Celebrities are the new royalty - of the worst 'divine right' kind. Such is the cult that surrounds them that they feel, and most of the time the media and public go along with this, that they are above the constraints of the great unwashed. The feeling that they can shag every gold-digger that makes herself (or maybe himself ?) available becomes not only a privilege but a defining quality; and consequently almost a necessity of celebrity. It's the same sense of 'droit de seigneur' that drives pissed up footballers to pick fights in Cheshire night clubs - or worse.

And secondly, and specifically with the Tiger Woods case, there is more than a hint of racism. The underlying  feeling that black celebrities have by their very definition 'got above themselves'. Particularly so if they have conquered a WASP  bastion such as the golfing world. Particularly so if they have a glamorous  and conspicuously aryan wife. There will always be the 'OJ Simpson' factor' - the facts of the case secondary to the white establishment's delight at seeing an 'uppity' black man fail.

That's it - I promise I will never mention golf here again.

Then Came Bronson

I'm just a bit too young to have seen this first time around in 1969 - but I'm trying to catch up on 'Then Came Bronson'. They don't make shows ... or bikes ... likes this any more.

Love it:
Taking at trip ?
Yeah
Where to ?
Wherever I end I up I guess ..
Boy I wish I was you
Well hang in there ...

Afghanistan and the reason why*

News that the 100th British soldier has been killed in Afghanistan this year. Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth has cautioned us not to become distracted by the casualty rate and to concentrate on the progress 'we' have made in Afghanistan: Personally I find this far more callous than any gripes about Gordon Brown's handwriting but we will let that pass for a moment and have a look at the balance sheet:

• After two dodgy elections the people have the corrupt Karazai government

• Probably linked to this, 40% of the promised Western aid has not reached the people it was intended for.

• 77% of the population do not have access to clean water.

• In rural areas 80% of the population do not have electricity.

It is tempting to conclude that the US and British governments simply don't have a fucking clue as to what the objectives are. But that actually lets them off the hook too lightly - the strategy is both knowing and cynical.( And forget the blustering humanitarian fig leaf, by that logic British troops would be dying in Darfur).

The allies  may have gone into Afghanistan to fight Al Quaida but couldn't find them so ended up fighting the Taliban instead - but there was some grand strategic vision too. A grandiose idea of retaining influence in a zone that, judging from instability in Pakistan, was rapidly slipping away from their control. A zone of immense productive importance to them - the oilfields of the Middle East - at which the otherwise desolate region of Afghanistan stands at the gates. And of course the country also sits on top of a strategic pipeline. This is nothing more than good old fashioned imperialism.

Anyone with a passing knowledge of colonial history, or even of the Flashman novels, will know that this is nothing new. In the Nineteenth Century the competing superpowers were Britain and Russian, and it wasn't about about protecting oil fields but trade routes - again Afghanistan had the misfortune to be in exactly the wrong place. The struggle then was played with rather more sophistication, as a war of espionage, diplomacy and outright bribery of local factions. When direct military intervention was required the Western forces invariably got their arses royally kicked by local forces.

From a military point of view the current strategy is that of every imperialist power since the Romans - control key towns and strong-points and police the surrounding countryside by patrols. And from the Teutoburg Forest to Dien Bien Phu or most appropriately the 'North West Frontier' it hasn't worked. In the long run, time, logistics and geography are not on the side of empires. And neither usually is justice.

* 'Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do & die' -

Alfred Lord Tennyson - 'The Charge Of The Light Brigade'

Other days remembered 'in infamy'

In the US, today marks the start of the Second World War in 1941 with the anniversary of Pearl Harbour.  For us Brits it’s the 3^rd of September when, in 1939 Britain declared war following the Nazi invasion of Poland. In Russia the same anniversary would be marked on 22^nd June 1941 when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa on the Soviet Union. 

By convention and convenience the Second War is dated 1939-45. But this is a selective chronology on the worldwide struggle against Fascism – it is also a view through a specifically European lens: In 1935 Mussolini’s Italy invaded Ethiopia. In 1936’s Franco led a revolt of Spanish colonial troops in Morocco that would escalate into civil war. And in 1931 Imperial Japan invaded Chinese Manchuria.

This week in 1937 marks the fall of the Chinese city of Nanking and the start of a six week period of atrocities against surrendered troops and the civilian  population that resulted in  over 250,000 deaths and untold instances of rape and other war crimes.

 Outside of Asian communities, this ‘other genocide’ is still largely unknown outside the West. Partly because the telling of the story is clouded with the propaganda of Communist China: Partly because the Japanese authorities were not as bureaucratic as their Nazi counterparts in documenting their crimes; partly because certain Japanese nationalists have, like Western Neo-Nazis, attempted to use historical revisionism to diminish and ultimately deny these crimes. But mostly I suspect that these crimes are unknown – and those in Nanking were representative of those of Imperial Japanese Forces throughout Asia – because the evidence was not right under Western noses, and because they did not affect ‘people like us’.

Ten years ago a Chinese-American, Iris Chang, wrote ‘The Rape Of Nanking’ and did in some part redress this. The book is frankly not good history. Revisionist historians have found it rather too easy to pick holes in her reliance on some questionable secondary sources. In its analysis it strays into a Chinese nationalism that sees the Japanese atrocities of the period as the inevitable by-product of a national character exemplified by the bushido code. It is uncomfortable and shocking reading told from an undeniably partisan point of view- to the extent that after writing it the author suffered depression and finally took her own life in 2004. Even so the book still justifies compulsory reading for any Westerner trying to understand the period. And much of the revisionist criticism amount to  nothing less than a nationalist-fueled blanket denial of the crimes - on a scale that no Western historian would dare suggest in relation to the Holocaust.

If nothing else it explains why in all those cheesy kung-fu movies, the karate guys are always depicted as the villains …

Real world interlude.

A momentary change from the general smart-arsery and occasional bile that is the usual tone of this blog:

Back in the Spring I had a health scare that sent me a warning shot of mortality  - this weekend I had a similar experience with dad. He's in his 80's, increasing frail and until now the sole carer for my mum who is effectively house-bound. I got a phone call on Friday from the ambulance service to say that they were taking him into hospital as he had become confused and lost his memory. So I had a manic ride across London through the rush hour down to Kent to check that my mum was with a neighbour, and then on to the hospital.

There I found my dad, who until very recently was a local councillor, school governor and leading light in the local Labour Party, utterly disorientated and just about able to recognise me.

He had lost all recollection of where he was and what he was doing and could only just about recall his own date of birth and what he had done for a living before retiring. A stroke was suspected but then dismissed. In the course of four or five agonising hours in the A&E department, whilst he waited admission to a ward, he was given medication to lower his blood pressure. As this happened his memory and awareness gradually returned. I went back to my parents' house to check on my mum and just after midnight we had a ominous phone call. Answering with trepidation  - it was my dad's more or less normal voice speaking - more or less lucidly. I returned to the hospital the next morning to find him sat up in bed reading the Independent and talking about the news.

Having got him home, it was apparent that things cannot continue as before. So from having no support at all in looking after my mum, he now has a package from social services. I stayed with them until this support kicked-in. It's not really much more than a safety net but it will hopefully give him the all-important psychological reassurance that the burden is not solely on his shoulders.

Again, as with my own very similar experience, I am struck by the fragility of life and 'self'. Those things that define us as a person hang by such a thin thread. I'm also struck by the underlying sadness of old age - the knowledge that our world and its horizons will slowly close in around us so that planning a journey upstairs or cooking lunch becomes a major pre-occupation. I am disgusted with my  selfish panic of 'how the fuck am I going to cope with this from now on?' And I'm also struck, despite all the frustrations and delays, by the fundamental kindness of everyone in the caring professions from doctors to home-helps - and  I find it humbling and sobering in comparison with the fundamentally vacuous nature of  my own working life.

That's about it I'm afraid. Nothing original, insightful or witty to say. But at the same time not to record my feelings here on my blog would somehow seem dis-honest. I promise normal service will soon be resumed.