European Court, EU and Human Rights

The European Commission for Human Rights, the brain child of David Maxwell Fyfe, one of the prosecutors at the Nuernberg trials after WWII, has just passed its 60th anniversary on 3 Sept. 2013.

Maxwell Fyfe, who apparently was a bit of a hard-liner, had obviously been strongly influenced and touched by the accounts of the misery imposed upon human kind by dictatorial regimes in the 1930s and ’40s. He felt, that for a civilized world to develop in a global fashion, the excesses he had experienced should never be allowed to develop again. KZ-camps and persecution of people with different thoughts due to creed, religion and race should be a thing of the past.
Modern, international co-existence in a civilized society could only develop in an orderly manner, if some sort of protective, international legislation were implemented.

In 1959 the European Court of Human Rights was therefore established, seated in Strasbourg.

The judges are chosen amongst the 47 contracting countries in order to make it a truly international court. The details can easily be found on various articles via Google and Wikipedia.

I find it more than interesting, however, to observe how this court has developed.
The court’s decisions have not always been popular and in the last few years a strange tendency has developed.
Granted, the question of what constitutes “Human Rights” doesn’t seem to have a clear answer; someone’s right on one side may be someone else’s injustice on the other, but whilst the initial idea is very laudable, it may also be argued, that the power of the Court increasingly seems to infringe upon the law-profile of each of the member states.
Additionally, the larger signatories (e.g. UK, France, Germany, Russia) will have to abide by judgements made by e.g. Malta, San Marino, Andorra and Liechtenstein, whose composite populations could hardly fill a suburb of Moscow.

The questions, therefore, are: who sets the norms and values? To whom is the Court responsible? Who reins it in?

These questions have become more and more accentuated, as judgements increasingly become contradictory to the feelings of right and wrong of many people.

In the UK Abu Quatada, a person who was deemed dangerous due to his terrorist activities and who had entered England illegally, cost the state millions of Pounds, paid by the tax payers, as it proved impossible to extradite him back to his country of origin, Jordan, “due to his human rights”. The fear was that he would be tortured.
But what about his proven terrorist threats and activities? Who would protect the “Human Rights” of his potential victims.

There are many cases like Abu Quatada’s and it seems, that every time a proven criminal or suspected terrorist is threatened by extradition, the Court prevents their removal from a peaceful society with the less and less acceptable excuse: “due to their human rights”.

So what have we actually nurtured in Strasbourg in the years since 1959?

It seems to me, that the European Court has developed quite its own little fiefdom with its own rules, values and interpretations.
It has become a court, who without hesitation protects paedophiles, terrorists, illegal immigrants and ordinary criminals with reference to their ”Human Rights”, but ignores potential victims and in the process of this inequality also ignores the individual state’s rights to administer its established laws.

It has become a Court, who prevents the extradition of people, who are proven to be dangerous for the society in which they live, even when they are staying illegally. Again due to “their Human Rights” and without reference to the negative effects on society.

It is a Court that increasingly has implemented its own rules and values, while shunning the laws of the participating member states.

In fact, it has developed exactly along the same lines as the European Union, whose metamorphosis over the last 30 years has created a self-propagating monster with a deliberate lack of respect for the national states that make up its body.

In both cases a conscious lack of democracy and a focus on own goals and ideas, far from the original concept, flourish, while the participating national entities let it happen without much protest, letting the option of making their own decisions disappear in an empty space.
I find this dangerous, wrong and totally contrary to the ideas and values that have created our modern, West European welfare states.

It is a good example of the “Syndrome of the Boiling Frog”.
Drop a frog in very hot water – and it jumps out.
But drop it in cold water while heating it slowly and it will not discover what is going on before it is too late.
Such is the classic reaction to change – also amongst human beings.

I suggest it is high time to reconsider the operation of both the European Court of Human Rights and the European Union. Both are on a path to become colossuses on clay feet, but it would suit us better to reorganise them in an orderly fashion, than to let them collapse in an uncontrolled way – which they otherwise will.

2500 Years East-West conflict. Salamis, Marathon and Thermopylae reviewed

We forget that the East-West conflict is over 2500 years old.
In fact, the three most important battles in history are in my opinion Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis, where the Greek armies secured the civilisation of today – and here is why.

The overarching issue in this conflict was not the usual “I want more power, land, gold, trade routes, etc.”
The real and not so obvious issue was the firm belief amongst the Persian kings (Darius and his son Xerxes) that their power and their right to extend it were given to them by their super-god Ahuru Mazda. Therefore they had a divine right to imperial expansion that could not even be brought into dispute.

This assumption was in stark contrast to the Greek stance, that the state with its inherent culture and social structure was the result of an intelligent process, human logic and our ability freely to process information.

Surely, the Greek gods were involved, but merely as observing stakeholders and with their built-in human weaknesses as creators of intrigues and conflicts, but certainly not as designers.

Without the Greek victories the emerging, but still frail and undeveloped idea about democracy, would have been buried with Solon and Themistocles. Socrates, the father of observation, analysis, explanation and logical deduction, would not have had a chance to develop his ideas and the basis for our scientific methodology would never have seen the light of day. The Persian master-culture would unhindered have swallowed the rest of Europe. There would have been no Romans, no renaissance, no Beethoven and no Goethe.

Centuries of spiritual and religious darkness would have swept across Europe as the Greek barrier to slavery under the expanding Persian empire, with its suppression of the individual and total demand of submission to the king and his god, was swept away.

It may of course be argued, that the arrival of a later comparable desert religion, which is as totalitarian as the Persian one, might never have happened. It would already have been there and the need for its creation as an underpinning device for divine expansion and dominance would therefore be redundant.

It is awesome how many of the state- and culture forming processes that took place in the years between 500BC and 480BC can be found mirrored in today’s globalised world.

The political parties in the “West” are still embroiled in strife and contention despite the EU artifice – just as the Greek city states 2500 years ago. Some of the small cities amongst the 700 in Peloponnese and Attica tried their come-uppance much like small West European countries try their influencing manoeuvres against the 4 big countries today, ultimately leaving it to Athens and Sparta to sort everything out – comparable to Germany, France and Britain in the EU. The Greek culture, religion and gods were then, as today, a hodgepodge of beliefs, although some sort of a unified culture and a strong human, or secular, element can be identified in both cases. But today, as then, we are up against the ultimate in totalitarian demands for submission of the individual and abandonment of the secular state as we know it.

Most of the Greek city states either sat on their hands or the fence, or had already made the decision that resistance was in vain; rather give in to the barbarians than be subdued by Athens or Sparta.
Although some sort of unity was achieved at the Hellenion conference in Corinth, it was left to Sparta and Athens to sort things out. For most others a continued existence with the head buried in the sand, a continued parochial life awaiting the inevitable fate, seemed to be the only way forward, as the reflections of the sun in the spear heads of the Persian army began to show. Perhaps a life in the shade of the almighty king Xerxes, who in 480BC ruled over the largest empire the world had ever seen, wasn’t too bad after all?
Treat him well, i.e. with respect, and he would treat you well?

Today we are facing a paradigm shift in both religious and state terms.

Externally, an antiquated, obsolete desert religion requires us to drop our Socratic wisdom and individual taking responsibility for our lives and actions, submitting to yet another Ahuru Mazda with the threat of death if resisting to abandon our humanity and hard won freedoms.

Internally, a European super state has emerged, the EU, marketing eternal happiness and no wars while making us pay dearly for the bag of empty promises, reforms and relief from responsibility, that an unelected elite is pressing down over our heads.
In the economic and cultural turmoil that has arisen as a consequence of our greed and lack of learning from history, political parties are reviving dead donkeys like collectivism, Leninism and oligarch driven societies. University College of London students, for example, have posters all over the place calling for a re-emergence of Marxism 2013.
Are they mad?
Perhaps not - just ignorant in the best case - stupid in the worst.
20% of the Danish population support a party that wants to disband the police force, all military and the parliament, replacing it with "people councils".
Are they mad?
Perhaps not - just ignorant in the best case - stupid in the worst.
Sweden wants to open the borders, raising the population from 8mill to 40mill through non-western immigration before 2040.
Are they mad?
Perhaps not - just ignorant in the best case - stupid in the worst.

And You haven't seen the worst yet!!

Socrates wanted people to learn, to understand, at least to realise when they didn’t know, so they could seek new learning. So he was executed, allegedly depraving the youth.

How far have we really come in the 2500 years since the battle of Salamis and the experience from Marathon - a question we have to ask after the 2013 Boston Marathon?
How many people today actually know what Marathon represents?
One only needs to consider modern school systems that do what they can to eliminate national cultures and history while teaching the kids to play; the blinkered approach of creationism; and too many ultra-orthodox schools that prevent anything outside their own belief sphere to enter the brains of the young.

But worst of all: it is becoming a crime to protest this state of affairs.

We accept this as the blessing of a multi-cultural world, closing our eyes for the fact that it actually represents a misunderstood respect for stupidity and ignorance, while we excuse it by calling it the hall marks of “other people’s culture”.

Where are the Athens and the Sparta of 2013, who can save us?

Socrates' sentencing - and what this can teach us today

On the reasons for the sentencing of Socrates

Jorgen Faxholm April 1962, April 2013

One day at school in April 1962, at the tender age of 18 and just before I finished gymnasium and became a student, our Classical Studies teacher announced, that he was very busy and therefore unable to take the class that day. The initial sentiment of freedom was abruptly interrupted, as he proceeded to define a written task which had to be finished and delivered within the hour. He spent 5 minutes outlining what he expected – and then disappeared.

I recently found my written proposal, written with both speed and content in mind. I can hardly recognise my own handwriting, but I do remember the day very well now 51 years later.

Here it follows, in my own translation from Danish – followed by a comment at the end

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In the year 399 BC three gentlemen by the name of Meletos, Anytos and Lykon filed a complaint against a certain Socrates at the court of the “Basileios” (the king).
Thus started one of the most famous court cases in history.

The reasons for accusing Socrates were mainly as follows:

The Peloponnese war had been raging between 431 and 404, ending with a defeat for Athens. Sparta, being the victor, had reduced the influence of Athens from being a major power to becoming just another small city-state with a reduced army and a destroyed navy.

As the Spartans withdrew their occupation troops, the Athenian democrats overturned the reigning oligarchs and initiated the reconstruction of Athens.

Everyone was now querying the reason for the defeat and at the time it was widely rumoured that it was because of the lethargy of the youth.

The blame was allocated fair and square at the people called “the Sophists”. As many people had become irritated and angry with Socrates’ ways, they found an opportune reason to get rid of him through accusing him of being a “Sophist”.

In this way they conveniently combined two accusations: accusing Socrates of subversive activities, causing the war to be lost and as a person, who was destroying the respect for the state through his sophistic activities.
In short, there is both a political and a philosophical background to his court case.

The Sophists spread their learning through eloquence and charged money for their teaching. It is in this context interesting that several sciences can trace their origin and development to the activities of the Athenian Sophists, e.g. in Mathematics and Geography.

However, the general attitude was that the Sophists undermined the fundamentals of common sense, as they said: every case can be viewed from two sides. The truth is inherent in a person’s conviction and it is impossible to have a wrong opinion; if one realises that one’s stance is wrong, then – of course – one wouldn’t have it any longer!

Consequently even a discussion on the fairness of the laws was possible – in other words: anything goes. Not exactly a solid basis for society.
This quibbling meant that it was possible to turn a weak case into a strong one and vice versa through an eloquent presentation. A clever Sophist could for example turn a creditor into a debtor. It is quite easy to see that a society built on such a premise would soon end up in turmoil. Aristophanes used such arguments in his play “the Clouds”, while thoroughly thrashing the Sophists in general and Socrates in particular.

An added consequence of the sophistic eloquence was the perceived break down of the respect for the Gods, an accusation that added to the serious situation in which Socrates had been landed.

Now, let’s us have a look at why people were so angry with Socrates.

The main object of Socrates’ philosophy was to achieve the perfection of the soul, the “aretē”.

Socrates did not sympathise with the nature-philosophers, who dominated in the period of 600-450. He totally agreed with the logical approach and methods of the Sophists. This is clearly demonstrated in his defence speech and in the dialogue with Kriton.

Socrates was a local Athenian and he took a special delight in getting people to contradict themselves, while his youthful followers listened and laughed. In this way he instigated doubt about the confidence of the culture of the educated classes amongst his audience.

During these word-duels he used Sophistic logic, techniques and eloquence, the result of which was that people took him for being a Sophist.
Unfortunately very few people were able to see Socrates’ deeper objective, namely achieving “Eudaimonia”, true happiness, which could only be reached through one being released from all external surrounding forces. An understandable, but sad inability of the people at the time.

I mentioned the “aretē” of the soul above.
The definition of this concept is “the correct content of courage, fairness, moderation and humility” that constitutes the required elements for success in life.
According to Socrates this could be learned.

Unfortunately no written words from Socrates’ hand have been preserved for the future, but his many small street presentations were intended to prepare the youth, his audience, to see the light, thus providing them with the key to create their own soul’s “aretē”.
In this way he managed to ridicule politicians, orators, poets and others while ordinary people listened.

No wonder he created enemies faster than friends.

One of his proofs concerned a demonstration that he was wiser than everyone else. This clearly provoked and irritated many people.
As an example Xenophon gave this description of Socrates: “a petit-bourgeois, a self serving and irritating old man, who sticks his nose in other peoples’ matters and tells them something they already know”.
2200 years later even Kierkegaard offered the opinion that he understood very well why Socrates had been executed.
Somehow these opinions don’t rhyme well with the fact that Socrates and his learning has had an enormous impact on the thought processes and philosophy of the present.

The accusations against Socrates were presented at the Court of the Heliasts.
There were 501 judges, making a 50-50 result  impossible, but it is honestly a little beyond me, how such a large group would ever be able to reach a concluding judgement.

Meletos, one of the accusers, was the first one to speak.
Next Sokrates defended himself.
Subsequently the Court passed its judgement.

After this both the prosecutor and the accused would speak and indicate the extent of the punishment, provided a guilty sentence had been pronounced.
The judges were forced to accept one of these, a principle that forced both parties to select a reasonable punishment.

In this case Meletos suggested the death sentence, while Socrates, quite undisturbed and to demonstrate his innocence, suggested, that the city should entertain him with a dinner at the Prytaneion (the town hall) just as for the victors from large sports games.
Socrates was quite convinced that this was well deserved, as he considered himself to be “the town conscience”, like a social horsefly.
There is no doubt that this suggestion irritated the judges and moved their attitude closer to that of Meletos.

Socrates then modified his suggestion to a fine of 1 Mine, but his friends now came to his support, proposing a fine of 30 Mines.
It didn’t help.

Socrates was subsequently sentenced to be executed. After the court case he spoke to the Heliasts, predicting that they would deeply regret what they had just done.

Socrates was basically accused of 3 things: that

1) he was a Nature-Philosopher

2) he was a Sophist and

3) he was depraving the youth

In addition he was accused of not believing in the Gods but in demons. The reason for this was probably that Socrates constantly referred to his “daimon”, which is what the rest of us would call our inner voice or conscience.

Meletos said that Socrates has been known to define the moon as a lump of soil and the sun to be a rock, i.e. not being Gods!

In response, Socrates told Meletos off, accusing him of comparing Socrates with Anaxagoras, the Nature-Philosopher. Socrates continued, saying that this kind of learning could be bought for 1 Drachme, essentially not being worth considering. He proceeded with proving that the accusations were contradictory, using sophist eloquence and showing that he actually did believe in the Gods while also believing in “daimons”, as the demons are the children of the Gods.

On the account of being a Sophist, Socrates’ logic fails slightly, when he compares the Sophists with shepherds, but a stronger argument is that he can prove his poverty, i.e. that he never charged for his teachings like other Sophists.

The reason that Socrates was sentenced now seems rather clear: it was his conduct, rather than a proven guilt according to Meletos’ accusations.
Who wants to be publicly told off – exactly what Socrates so eloquently was able to do?

In addition he no doubt irritated the Court, in particular during the sentencing.
The Court had known about Socrates and his activities, not just for a couple of years, but for the last 15-20 years and Socrates’ admiration of the Spartan Constitution was also very well documented. After the Peloponnese war this was hardly to Socrates’ advantage.

Finally Socrates was still friendly with Kritias, the leader of the Oligarchs, after 404 BC, and with Alkibiades.

Consequently, in the mind of his accusers he had built up an image as a traitor – despite a very successful past as a Hoplite during the war.

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A stern comment 51 years later:

What was it that Socrates taught us then and that so profoundly has impacted our society and civilisation?

- Socrates used intellect and logic, rather than blind ‘belief’
- He was a master in the art of questioning. Why? How? – the basis for all science.
- He emphasised the importance of doubt, without which all research would be vain.
- He believed in justice and fairness, without which society would succumb into anarchy or tyranny.
- He was ruthless with people, who exhibited false confidence.

Importantly he also believed that knowledge was a virtue, he was devoted and pietous, politically aware and prudent – but these characteristics were imbedded in a person of a strong temperament and tendency to conceit with an uninhibited delight in mocking others.

Above all, Socrates didn’t pull his punches, but he also knew the strength of his arguments. He was a hard adversary in any discussion, staying clear of belief-arguments and value-statements.

We are deeply indebted to Socrates for creating the underpinning values of our Western society – and more than that: he was a defender of what we would call free speech.

However, being under attack from the politically correct, we are in danger of losing the right and the willingness to express ourselves today.
Very few people find the courage to defend this important basis for civilisation.

The EU is pushing for the abolition of the national state, national values and culture.

A medieval desert culture, which cannot be criticised for fear of political incorrectness, racism and hate speech, is slowly taking over our Socratic values.
Socrates would have been appalled.

Foreign nationals who commit violent crimes cannot be returned to their country of origin for fear of violating their “human rights”, meaning they can continue their criminal behaviour with impunity, eliminating the human rights of their victims.

Authors, writers, artists and intellectuals, who speak up in true Socratic spirit, are condemned to a life in protected anonymity for fear of their lives. One only needs to remember Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Lars Hedegaard, Kurt Westergaard, Lars Vilks and the murdered Dutch film maker Theo Van Gogh.

So, is there hope?
Perhaps.

Under celebrity pressure (Rowan Atkinson) and lots of signatures the English Parliament has just, exceptionally, verified “our right to insult”, lighting a small candle in the darkness, but the creeping attack of a medieval desert culture continues to pull us in the other direction.

Everything Socrates stood for is under attack and unfortunately ignorance, materialism, indifference and "the General Human Condition" are taking over – until it perhaps is too late!

But there is another thing that relates directly to the parochial side of Socrates’ sentencing: his social horsefly tendency.
Very few people dare speak up against the society in which they live for fear of social ostracism.
Socrates did and we need people with such courage lest we become a mass of intellectual molasses without values.

In St Peter’s Square, Hammersmith/ London, the residents’ association called SPRA is a true image of the Heliast Court: impervious to criticism, aloof, self centred and responding to criticism with bullying – mainly as hemlock juice is prohibited.

Whistle blowers will always lose, even when they win.
Socrates taught us this as well.

.

British Airways - How to abandon responsibility - and regain a little

Coming from Copenhagen 3 March on a late BA flight, it shocked me that a modern airline - the World's favourite, you know! - could be so inept in resolving a fairly simple problem, with so little communication as was the case.
Certain events were clearly beyond BA's responsibility, e.g. that police helicopters over a runway caused Heathrow to close down briefly - but the way it was mishandled by the crew of our circling plane and by BAA was shocking.

It started with an hour's delay in Copenhagen, which was announced as just 20 min on the screens. 2035 instead of 2015. As usual "due to the late incoming plane" - the rubbish reason always given.
When we finally boarded, an apparent engineering defect with the flaps took a further 25 min to correct - not a pleasant thought, but you put your trust in the fact that the BA crew wouldn't like to take risks either.

20 miles from LHR around 22.30 our A320 started to circle. After several circles we were told that there was a police helicopter incident over the runway and we couldn't land.
More seriously, though, the captain was unable to continue the waiting position, as the plane had too little fuel (SIC!) - what? Too little fuel?
The Captain was unable to give us more information at this point, as he had to concentrate on the fuel problem and where to take us.
So we were redirected to Stansted.

Here we were not allowed to disembark neither in full nor partly (because of security). Fair enough.
But Stansted was unfamiliar with the flap issue, which now - together with all the other security procedures - had to be repeated.
Result: we started towards LHR over an hour later at 0000 - arriving at 0020.
The matter was made worse, as the Cabin Crew limited themselves to issue apologies and refrain from providing proper information.

Landing 3 hours late at T5 - the flagship terminal of British Airways - I found a closed underground.
If you have ever been there at night, you can imagine the panic - stuck at T5 at 0035 is not pleasant, I can assure you.
It's dead, closed, abandoned!

It appeared later that the LHR police helicopter incident had lasted appx 15 min. - but why was it that
passengers using mobiles were able to get more info from family and waiting friends than we received from the staff in the plane?

We had been promised help with onward transport if we needed it from T5 (who wouldn't need this?)
But to my amazement there was no one there to help and nothing had been arranged.
It was apparently all hot air to keep us quiet.

We were also promised help from the Ground Staff.
But no Ground Staff was available at all.
NONE.
T5 had essential closed down at 0000 with only maintenance staff (cleaners) and booked cab drivers waiting.

QUESTIONS:

Why was the A320 plane so short of fuel, that we couldn't circle 20 minutes (like so often at LHR)?
If we had been tanked up, we would have been in time, as a bit of circling in a parking position would have resolved the time-issue.

Why did the Cabin Crew not organise the promised transport - mostly taxis? They just ran away from all responsibility.

Why did the Cabin Crew not contact BAA, who could have liaised with the Taxi Management at T5?
The result was a totally empty taxi rank, something BAA should have foreseen.
Unbelievable.

Where was the BA Ground Staff? (Probably home in bed).

Why did BAA ignore the consequences of closing down Heathrow for 15 min.? There must have been several planes going through this diversion.

Why should it take an hour waiting for a taxi in a 100 people queue.

Is this a world class airport ?

How could a world class airline (!) abandon its passengers so blatantly when this incident happened?

Has BA no procedures in place for such a small matter?
I dread thinking about a big incident.

It cost me £65 for a night taxi from the taxi rank to go to Hammersmith - a mere 12 miles - arriving home  at appx 0200. There were still around 50-100 people in queue by then. The Taxi driver was angry as well, saying that NO ONE had informed him, neither the Taxi Management nor BAA.

BA actually promised to compensate £50 of the £65.
But why £50?
Because their Customer Agent maintained that I was lying about the £65, which were the metered costs in a black cab ride at 0135 at night!!
It beggars belief that The World's Favourite Airline finds it useful to add rudeness and stingyness to incompetence - but of course: it might just be a one off and a training problem..
That's what I think, as someone intervened, apologised - and paid the remaining £15.
There's hope and BA gets another chance.

Have Paris' bistrots and brasseries lost it?

I remember when you could go into almost any street Brasserie, Cafe, Bar or Bistrot in Paris and get a 'Biftek au frites', pay a reasonable amount and walk out saying: "They know how to do this, these French. Delicious".
We tried to find the old atmosphere at a recent 1-day trip to Paris, made possible by the only 2 ½ hour Eurostar door to door journey at £60 for a return ticket.
It was a mixed experience.
A confused and dirty Gare du Nord, a long queue at the single ATM in the arrivals hall followed by an even longer queue to obtain the obligatory carnet for the underground, was not a good start. It didn’t help that the EU-blessing of free travel for everyone seems to have filled Paris with hordes of begging Romanian gypsies, not to mention beggars on every street corner.

If this is Van Rompuy’s, Baroso’s and Schultz’s EU anno 2013, we don’t need it.

At previous visits we have begun the day with a simple petit dejeuner: cafe au lait, a baguette with jam and the breathing in of the atmosphere. We shouldn’t have done it this time.
A disinterested waiter did everything he could to tell these “Anglais” that they were not welcome. He managed to ignore us, forgetting to deliver jam and butter, ignoring the need for cutlery and plates and serving the cafe au lait as if it were a badly produced cappucino.
Apparently they charge 15% for service as standard on the bills in France these days! But not only that – the prices are roughly 50% above corresponding meals in the UK, even with a falling Euro.

My wife's omelette was the only star of the show. Clearly some French chefs have retained a little self respect - but there certainly were no extras for the waiter (which is what they seem to expect on top of their 15%).

So if you happen to pass Brasserie Sarah Bernhard around Tour St Jacques, don’t feel tempted to enter.

Later we had a more elaborate dinner, trying to convince ourselves that one bad experience shouldn’t be allowed to taint French cuisine and hospitality.

At the square next to the Metro Maubert-Mutualite there is a string of typical French shops selling wine, charcuterie, cheese and fish. It is like a little market and a very attractive one at that. Next to the shops, on the corner, there’s a fairly simple small Bistrot. We have been there before some years ago and had pleasant memories of our visit.

To make a long story short, if the food there is representative of what they can produce these days in France, at an exorbitant price, I can promise you that France will not last much longer as a leading EU-country. Perhaps it is too late anyway, as apparently the Muslims in Marseille and Avignon are having some success scaring charcuterie (pork!), wine merchants and lingerie sellers away. France without wine and sausages?
Mon Dieu!

Nevertheless, Paris has a “Je ne sais quoi” and we enjoyed our 8 hours cruising Paris on foot, walking ourselves an inch shorter – even while some of the time we had to accept a light drizzle.

My personal enjoyment could of course be because of my memories from many trips to the city of cities – or Mother of all cities in today’s parlance - but we agreed it would ‘vaut le voyage’ to return.

Perhaps bringing our own sandwiches this time - - - -

Change, Society and the Credit Crunch

I recently fell into the 1992 film with Mel Gibson, Forever Young. The film is about a guy, who is deep-frozen in 1939, waking up 50 years later as a couple of kids pilfer with the power supply to his long forgotten cryogenic coffin. In real life there are many people who pay for this delusionary “treatment” in the hope that future medical research can cure them from whatever fatal illness they carry in their body.

The major fallacy in this hope is not even the fact that their cells explode and are destroyed by the freezing process. The real rub is: will there be stability and continuity in society for even the foreseeable future – let alone the required 50, 100 or 200 years ahead? Or will the object of their efforts drown in war, broken energy supplies or something else?

I think I can say with 100% security:They have wasted their money.

This brought me to think about where else we make this mistake: that life will just go on and on and that the changes we experience will be manageable and arrive piece-meal, giving us plenty of time to adjust. In other words, how many years will pass between major societal discontinuity points?
West European people being up to 67 years old have lived through the longest period of stability ever experienced by anyone. Until recently this part of the world has had a voice with a lot of weight, i.e. “we write the history”, as we were the winners of WWII.

But even within the W. European borders there has been massive change, in some cases for the better, in other cases containing the seeds of massive disasters – we just forget. Spain and Portugal shook off their dictators. We (almost) got rid of 3 rather terrible ideologies: Fascism, Nazism and Communism.
Unfortunately we imported a fourth, a desert culture that preaches as much hate to people of a different belief as the old monsters. The European Union was established, as it grew out of the Coal and Steel Union, an attempt to establish free trade coalitions and the idea that the EU could create long term peace in a historically war torn Europe. (I shall deal with that fallacy at a later time). The technologies developed during WWII have been refined into peace technologies, applied in medicine, physics, electronics, communication and general infrastructure. This has created rich and prospering societies that seem to have become immune to the danger signals.

European overseas colonies became autonomous in the 1940s-70s, leading to mass immigration into Europe. Poverty and wars elsewhere send more people on a migration path, changing populations and religious demography beyond recognition. The effect is dramatic, as the original populations are forced to rethink or even abandon (change) their 1000 year old cultures while trying to accommodate the incoming hordes.

Two major political parties in Sweden, a country of ca. 9mill inhabitants, are now suggesting a complete opening of the borders, expecting a population growth through immigration to 40mill. They are obviously totally blind for the fact that Sweden has moved from being one of the richest states in Europe to a level, where social costs has eroded this position dramatically and immigrant criminality is rampant.
Then imagine free growth from 9mill. to 40mill. - uncontrolled!
The European Union has become a federal state, where laws are made centrally, while the national state concept actively is being discouraged. Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland are basically bankrupt, only kept afloat by the other EU members, the ECB and the IMF. As this happens without a well structured plan to bring their economies back on track, it can only get worse.

At the borders of Western Europe change becomes more violent: in Yugoslavia KZ-camps and ethnic cleansing as bad as seen in Nazi Germany could be experienced during the war of the 1990s, when new countries were established. East Germany (DDR) collapsed in 1989 as did the Berlin wall resulting in a united Germany, which again has become a European economic superpower. The Warsaw pact countries switched side to NATO and many joined the EU. In 1991 Ukraine became an autonomous country for the first time since Volodymir and Jaroslav in the 11th and 12th Century and immediately collapsed economically, even twice, within 5 years. For the populations of these countries such changes have been massive both culturally and economically, as national assets and personal fortunes came, went or changed hand.
And now the world has become global.

The clerical regime in Iran and the continued attempt by the Arabs to throw Israel into the Mediterranean must range top on the danger list, when we look at potential time bombs under world peace. Next time around it will not be as easy for Israel to repel an Arabic attack. The danger of a nuclear war has moved several paces closer.

But how do we assess the jihadist Islamisation of the world and the fact that one of the world’s richest countries, Qatar, has embarked on a major shopping spree for European brands? With increased economic influence it will be much easier for them to support the accelerating implementation of Islam. It already happens. Secular dictatorships in North Africa and Syria are now being replaced by Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood with Sunni/Shia infights and persecution of Christians as a result. Yet, we still look at Islam as a religion. It is not. It is a culture, a thoroughly different lifestyle that clashes violently with classic Western European values. It is very sad to see how easily we denounced these values, including the right to thinking, believing and speaking freely, just to accommodate a culture that so far is in the minority.

Or what will be the consequence of the march of the Chinese world-wide as they take over Old Europe’s manufacturing role and access to raw materials?

There are many more examples of dramatic change and the trouble is, that we look at it as step-change and not as discontinuity jumps. It is the “Boiling Frog Syndrome” again. We are caught asleep and our traditional piece-meal reactions to change only make things worse, as we let it happen as if life will go on as before.
It won’t.

Have we learnt anything from all this and from the past?
Public amnesia is rife, so quite frankly, I doubt it.

Does change (=improvement) mean that we are now able to do things better, more efficiently?

Not if you look at the UK’s National Health Service, which is a shambles, or the Falklands. We would not be able to defend these islands against an aggressor today, 30 years after we threw the Argentineans out.

More pertinently, are we in better control of our finances today? Have we learnt from disasters within living memory?
Definitely not.

Labour brought the UK to its knees economically through 13 years resource squandering, so that we now owe close to 10 times the value of our economy and the public debt stands at £1.5 Trillion – whatever that means!! The Conservatives are not improving anything despite firm claims. In fact borrowing is going up.

In the 1970s inflation was close to 30%. We seemed to get this under control and we have tried to alleviate the indebtedness and cost of loans for our businesses by holding the interest rate at 0.5% at the Bank of England. Our loans from the ECB and the IMF are just manageable – if we stay at an AAA credit rating.
The problem is that it has been too cheap to borrow money – and we did.

But what now if the interest rate goes up?

If I remember correctly, England was bankrupt after WWII and in the 70s under Callaghan, who had to ask the IMF to bail us out. Loans were charged at 18% interest, property was repossessed and the mood in the country was very pessimistic.
It happened again in 1987, when interest rates went from 9% to 15% and back to 12% in a day, showing that we really understood what was going on. Or?

And now a new financial crisis has played havoc with us for almost 5 years.
It happens again and again, but this time it is dangerous and hard to get out.

The government now guarantees everyone that their bank deposits up to £80,000 are safe. Not much of a consolation if you have a couple of million in the bank and it crashes. Could that happen?
Yes it could.
Do I have to guess that assets/ investments are leaving the country?

Remember Northern Rock in 2008 with queues outside the bank of people who wanted to withdraw their money. How could the Government guarantee your money, if the state’s debt is of dinosaurian proportions and interest rates went up?
Exactly – they couldn’t.

Since the credit crunch began, our economy has balanced on a knife’s edge and it is getting sharper and sharper. In my opinion there is a 99% chance that it will get worse. David Cameron is lying through his teeth, when he says that everything has improved and that the debt has been brought down by 25%. Eh? While increasing borrowing?

If Greece and Spain collapse, the shockwaves will be immense.
The question is then: what will the government do?

If the past is anything to go by – and I am not an economist – I think the state will take over and control every penny you own, try to withdraw, your pension payment, your investments and some foreign financiers will be called in to save the shreds.
Qatar? At what cost?

So, is there no way out?

There always is – and one way is a total collapse of the economy, as the past has shown us (Germany in the 1920s, USA in the 1930s), followed by rebuilding. This is probably the least preferable and most painful method.
But we can minimise the pain for a while – and perhaps long term, if we are willing to wait 25 years – which we may have to!
Stop our membership of the European Union circus!

This would be a sound alternative.

It will save us £55mill a day and take us out of the ridiculous tariff system the EU imposes on its members. A renewed free trade with e.g. the Commonwealth would be an immediate boon. Since Britain joined the EU, Commonwealth trade has become a trickle. This is an obvious place to start.

It would also bring law-making and administration back where it belongs and we would be free to design our own saving plank. Norway, Switzerland and Lichtenstein have shown that you may have all the benefits of the European Economic Community with economic growth at the same time as having the freedom of self-determination. It would give us the option to define our own way back to prosperity without disadvantages.

I think Britain’s exit from the EU will happen! Over 60% of the UK population is against the EU as a federal state, which is committed to the elimination of the national state, while running a gravy train for a select few and increasing its own power. EMPs receive Euro 12,000/month. It costs £600Bill/year to keep it running and the trade benefit - according to EU's own accounts - hover around "120Bill. If that doesn't say it all.
A plebiscite within the next 2 years is an absolute must, before things become totally uncontrollable.
As a result, the EU will break up - and not even the dirty trick with repeating the plebiscite to change the result, like in Holland and Ireland about the Lisbon Treaty, will help.

It is interesting to see how all the big-wigs with their snout in the jam-jar are now warning the UK: don't leave the EU. EMP and Commissioners, as they will lose millions when this dinosaur breaks up; the USA, because the 'special' friendship provides the Americans with a lot of inside knowledge and access; and all the misinformed, because they think the UK will lose access to a market of 500 mill. customers. Rubbish. Did Norway and Switzerland lose access? NO!!!!
The UK will become rich again.

Baroso, Schulz and van Rompuy will have to seek proper work and all the organisations that receive big handouts, keeping them in-line, as well as the money grabbing, un-elected commissioners, may have to find more productive ways to generate an income.

This would be a very desirable side effect of a collapsed EU.
Because collapse it will.

And then you will know what societal change is!!
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Change and Social Survival

Change, like time, is an almost uncontrollable concept. Whether we like it or not, we are being dragged more or less consciously, sometimes screaming, along.

For most of us change is dealt with reactively, as it often is impossible proactively to direct change. The main reason is that change is systemic: the planned transition from A to B more often than not becomes a move from A to K to Z, avoiding B at all – and then landing us with the issue of coming from Z to B, etc.!!!

There is another reason: many philosophers claim we have no free will; free will is an illusion. I don’t agree, but prefer to leave that discussion for later.

For most of us, the daily changing parameters of life concern small decisions such as shopping for dinner in the Supermarket. A clear plan for the day may change into something totally different, once we are under the marketing influence of the shop’s display. Fine, this can be termed “opportunity knocks” and as such it provides us with a feeling that we have a choice. There you go: Free Will!

Real change, the next level up, may be either social or societal.

Let me describe a few examples of social change first in this essay. To this group belongs a move of house, change of job, divorce, having children, fighting the neighbour and other issues, that will hit most people in a lifetime. These are problems, with which we all must learn to deal while remaining mentally healthy and fulfil our roles in life. We learn the necessary skills from early on in childhood, where at the same time we enjoy the parental protection. As we grow older through our productive lives, we have to use our practised ability to learn in order to control the 1000s of parameters that may lead us astray, so that we can find the fastest way between A and B.

Between 25 and 60 most of us have a major advantage: we generate assets – or money – which are the underpinning for most of our decisions. Money creates freedom. Decisions and change become driven by our attitude to the balance between cost and priority. We use the assets to lead our lives in the direction we want. This includes directing, guiding and paying for our dependants. If there’s any meaning with life, this is probably the main purpose: propagation of the species while securing the take-over by our descendants.

At the moment of writing a law has been introduced in the UK, which eliminates child benefit payments for families above £50k income p.a. For most of these families it seems to be the end of the world. They have become accustomed to a choice of several holidays every year, upgrade of their iPads every 6 months and a choice of restaurant visits. Suddenly £25/week/child delimits these choices. In other words, the feeling of freedom and ability to choose (i.e. the option of being able to change) has been curtailed. I leave it to the reader to ascertain how realistic this feeling is.

Social change also encompasses the flux in values, e.g. political correctness, freedom of speech (or not). Believe me: if someone had told me 30 years ago what our society would look like in 2013, I would not have believed them and asked them to stop the clock in order to get off the train. This is a good example of “the boiling frog” syndrome – we accept change, even when it is rather negative, as long as it is slow! – but these concepts demand a special treatment, too long for this little essay.

Time goes.
You survive.
And then we hit older age.
We have fulfilled our role and are essentially not of any real use any more.

The politicians call it the “burden” of the elderly – a rather disgusting characterisation, but typical of highly materialistic societies, where money has replaced family values, wisdom, experience and other “soft” values.

Do we not have the responsibility to include the elderly in an active society?
Are they not a part of or a significant consequence of our medical progress and technology? We spend a lot of money on longevity, so it appears illogical to me not to focus on an improved life quality of older people.

If the word “burden” is accepted, should we not choose to get rid of the elderly at a given age?
If so, I suggest the age of 75.
It is a compromise between some sort of nostalgia and family feeling and the rising maintenance cost after that age. Most children would probably agree, as any inheritance due would be available to them at a lifetime, where they could still enjoy the proceeds.

It has often hit me, that there is very little learning that transcends from one generation to the next. In the technologically accelerated world of the 2000s, living conditions and the need to follow and be totally updated on the complex composition of our society, have created an “ability-gap” which for many people is becoming an insurmountable chasm. The ubiquitous “iPhone, iPod, iPad, I Paid!” boomerangs on the productive generation in its later years by a demand to live with the consequences of what they created: one cannot just call a friendly tax advisor any more, a bank manager, talk to a utility customer services clerk or find a high street shop that can repair a wrist watch. On-line, automated, press 1/ press 4/ press 3 ending up with 20 min music before being cut off are on the menu of the day. A new form of 1984 has arrived, a technological and de-humanised society where those without the required android phone, broadband connection and the latest PC are ostracised by default.
Even 6-year olds have a better chance of matching the demands of the daily grind than a 70-year old person, who has contributed to this society with hard toil.

The consequence of entering Charon’s anteroom is often a feeling of isolation.

You don’t produce anything any more – neither children, new knowledge or money. No one expects you at work. If you have done a good job, your off-spring doesn’t need you. This need was the major objective, in particular when the human species tended to die at the age of 25. You have become an artifice, a product of medical technology, keeping you alive well above your shelf life, rather than a depository of answers to the eternal repetition of the questions that each generation asks. The delusion repeats itself: every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

As you age, your friends may begin to disappear. As a 75-year old said: “I don’t need Facebook to stay in contact; I’d rather have a Ouija board!”

When Orwell said: “The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness. For the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better”, he might have thought of old age as much as of our political and societal mismanagement. At any rate, for most people it is a fact, that freedom disappears with age, either because of failing health or because the money flow has dried up. Learning to live – happily – in these circumstances is mentally at a par with bereavement. Unfortunately our present social structure fails miserably here compared with the families of the past, who saw several generations staying together in large groups.

There is probably only one alternative, or solution, to what Zappfe called “suicide as a logical consequence”: “make sure you prepare for enough activities to keep you occupied for the next 40 years after retirement!”

In Coptic (Ptolemaic) Egypt, families lined the ‘Triclinium’ with the mummy-coffins of their departed family members, until such time where no one remembered who they were. The coffins were then dumped in the dry desert sand, later to be found by Flinders Petrie, the English archaeologist, reducing these artefacts to demonstrations of a highly developed skill of painting.
The content has lost its significance.

Well, perhaps this ritual is a bit far fetched in a dining room of 2013 and as few of us believe in the Roman concept of the "Lares", we had better concentrate on life here and now.

So, I have an idea for people to take on board, namely Christopher Hitchens’ words during an interview with Jeremy Paxman just before he died: “If you wonder whether to call someone or not – chose call. Always”.

And just a thought: the meaning of the Chinese phrase “May you live in changing times” is normally completely misunderstood.

It is actually a curse.

Freedom of Speech - YES, we did screw up!

How ironic that we live in a society that prides itself on 'Free Speech' and yet irrationally undermines the very idea by allowing the Police or a courtroom to decide, if I or someone else might feel insulted. There is a growing number of extremists who are prepared to maim or murder on the basis that they feel victimised and downtrodden by someone, who is expressing an opinion.

I plead for a REFORM of SECTION 5 of the Public Order Act or as a consequence suffer the loss of a most basic but essential HUMAN RIGHT: believing, thinking and expressing your thoughts - freely!
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See Rowan Atkinson's speech, if you haven't already, as it has gone viral long ago:
http://reformsection5.org.uk/2012/10/rowan-atkinson-rs5-video-goes-viral/

Freedom of speech - did we screw up?

Before he was executed by the Germans on 29 June 1944, Niels Fiil from the Danish resistance organisation, the "Hvidsten Group", said:

"I know Denmark will go towards brighter and happier times, where everyone freely can speak, believe and think - - - .


Is that so?   Ask Firoozeh Bazrafkhan, Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean), Salman Rushdie and the courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Shame on those who let Niels Fiil down - in Denmark and England and USA and Holland and - - - -