The Rochestonian Captivity

Our usual priest-in-charge was absent through illness today, so a replacement vicar was called up.  The stand-in said it was good for him to be back home in Gillingham after exile in Rochester.  Would this posit that Rochester is Babylon (with all its connotations) and Gillingham is Zion?  That, were it not anachronistic, the cathedral city was a Mesopotamian Medway?  “By the river of Rochester/ Where we bowed down/ Yea-a, we wept/ When we remembered Gillingham.”

A Tale of Two Countries

With the upsurge in violent (and co-ordinated attacks) across the Middle East and North Africa in the wake of a controversial Internet video mocking the prophet Muhammad (Mohammed, Mehmet, etc.), what has happened in Libya and Pakistan is instructive.  In the former realm of Colonel Gaddafi (Qaddafi, etc.), the American ambassador to the country and three more of his staff were killed by an extremist militia.  Outraged at this assault on ‘guests’, the people of Benghazi – where the atrocity took place – stormed the headquarters of two Islamic militias (one of whom was responsible for the murders) driving them out of the city.  It is a glorious demonstration of people power, one to warm the cockles of anyone who desires a peaceful, democratic system in every country.

The darker side of people power was on the far edge of the Middle East, where the Railways Minister in Pakistan has offered a $100,000 for anyone who kills the person responsible for the offensive film.  This after the Pakistani government, incredibly, sanctioned a day of protest against the movie – an action that led to the death of many in the riots, including an attempt to storm the American embassy in Islamabad.  That the member of a democracy can stand up and issue what is in effect a fatwa is deplorable.  Jinnah would be not just turning but spinning in his grave.   The trouble is Pakistan is one step away from a failed state, but not just any failed state but one encompassing more than 100 million people and possessing nuclear weapons.  The government tries to placate the religious authorities but just encourages them to be even more violent and dogmatic (witness the destruction of cinemas in Peshawar, even though the contentious flick was only released on the Internet).

I don’t agree with those of a so-called realist worldview that these populaces need secular strongmen to keep their ‘raging passions’ in check – in fact, it is distinctly patronising at best, not to mention incorrect.  All bar one of the 9/11 hijackers came from dictatorships.  Many jihadis who travelled to Iraq in the wake of the 2003 American-led invasion originated from Benghazi itself and Gaddafi himself employed fanatical mercenaries who promptly returned home to Mali after his fall and seized half the country (aided by an abortive military coup).  General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq promoted conservative Islam in Pakistan to give an aura of legitimacy to his military rule and General Pervez Musharraf let the radical Islamists flourish.  Bashar al-Assad’s refusal to make a transition to a more open and democratic Syria has caused Islamic terrorism to take root in the country.  Ali Abdullah Saleh was in power in North Yemen since 1978 and a unified Yemen since 1990, yet al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula based itself there and the highest number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay by January 2008 were from Yemen.  These dictators, apart from Zia-ul-Haq who sought to create a hardline Sunni state, all tried to suppress radical tendencies but just inflamed them further through their crackdowns.  Democracy is a useful pressure valve in any society and despite the disturbances and violence in Pakistan, democracy remains its best hope too in the long run.  Libya though seems a state with more promise here and now.

The long (un)arm(ed) of the law

The recent crime that left two policewomen dead in a gun and grenade attack has led some to call for the ordinary police to be armed.  The unpleasant individual charged with the killings was also wanted for two murders (one caused by the victim calling those who slaughtered his son ‘cowards’ – seems a very apt description to me) and four attempted murders and knew he couldn’t avoid the police forever and so decided to take down two of them before handing himself in to the law.  There is no guarantee that had the two WPCs been carrying lethal weapons they would still be alive today.

Thankfully, 82% of the policeforce also recognise that, preferring to keep guns in the hands of special armed response units.  I am fiercely opposed to our bobbies walking around with loaded weapons – in differing from other countries that do, it is a sign that, despite sometimes horrendous and heinous villainy, generally we are civilised enough not to need to do so.  One of the most prominent figures in my head is that of American policemen and women killed by gunshot, the majority are killed by a criminal (at close quarters, obviously) grabbing the cop’s gun and turning it on the owner.  It is a shocking statistic, but regarded by many Americans as just one of those things.

The opportunity for more accidents abound as well.  The IPCC would be overloaded with cases where a police weapon was deployed and fired, legitimately or not.  But maybe if the police were armed, Andrew Mitchell, the government chief whip, might show a bit more respect for the lawmen guarding No. 10 instead of swearing at them and calling them ‘plebs’ (though apologising, he denied using such language, effectively labelling the policeman a liar - or at best, getting confused - in the process) all because he was asked to go through a side entrance, instead of being let in through the main one.

Wife trouble

The recently analysed 4^th Century Coptic Script that Harvard Professor Karen King believes says that Jesus Christ was married and to Mary is hardly definitive proof that he was.  Those words, written in a language used by ancient Egyptian Christians, translate to “Jesus said to them, my wife,” King said.  Ms King pontificated further that, in the dialogue, the disciples discuss whether Mary is worthy and Jesus says “she can be my disciple.”

Given that it a fragment rather than a complete tome, one has to take with a pinch of salt that this means Mary, presumably Magdalene, was Jesus’ wife.  He could be alluding to a metaphorical wife – when He talked of seed and sheep, He wasn’t being literal!  Moreover, could this ‘Mary’ be unrelated to the wife exegesis and indeed refer to his mother, with whom He was very firm at the wedding at Cana, to which His mother apparently had no problems – a very willing disciple of her son.

This is similar to the far less contentious (outside Roman Catholic circles) issue of whether Jesus had biological brothers or whether His camaraderie with His disciples meant that the ‘brothers’ mentioned were The Twelve.  Indeed, it is raised in non-RC churches merely as an interesting intellectual diversion.

Even if the connections made by modern scholars are representative of the words, it could be that this was a group of Christians who had their own ideas about theology and who could not conceive of Jesus not marrying.  That doesn’t make it so.  400 years after The Passion, the earliest known portrait of Jesus has Him as blond and clean-shaven, though this is highly unlikely of a person who grew up in that part of the world.  This fragment dates from the same era.  Many interpretations of the life of Jesus have abounded throughout history, Mormonism being the most popular of the recent divergences from the mainstream.

I don’t doubt the authenticity of the scrawl, but there are so many questions about it that it is far from being conclusive on anything.  It is bait for conspiracy theorists and dusty antiquarians and few others.

Sorry seems to be the easiest word

Nick Clegg has apologised in a party political broadcast ahead of his party conference over row regarding the hike in tuition fees - a source of immense reputational damage to him and his party.  He is sorry for a mistake but the 'mistake' he is sorry for is for pledging never to raise university tuition fees ahead of the last General Election, not for actually pushing them up once in government.  I don't think this will wash.

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Who's the best sport?

Since I thought Andy Murray was a dead cert for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, I had not discounted Bradley ‘Wiggo’ Wiggins who I believe will run him close, as some have questioned me.  Yes, he has become Britain’s most successful Olympian but that was not achieved solely in the 2012 Olympics; he is also the first British man to win The Tour de France and wore his Yellow Jersey to the Olympic Opening Ceremony.  However, I feel the Tour has become much devalued by drug cheats in the past (the recent humbling of Lance Armstrong another hammer blow to its reputation) and it does not hold the same cachet in Britain as tennis and the Grand Slams.  Murray became the first man ever to win Olympic Gold and the US Open, making it doubly historic.  Some might say that Wiggo has a better ‘personality’ in general than Murray.  We will see how the vote pans out.

Is Mitt Romney among his own ‘47%’?

When I criticised Mitt Romney for his confused message over Ben Bernanke that ended up as an inadvertent endorsement of Barack Obama (a confusion that could be said to sum up his campaign), I (and 99.9999 of the world) was unaware of the avowedly dumb-arse comments in May at a venue periodically used for libertine cavorting.  Dismissing 47% of Americans as a perennial lost cause and not worth bothering about, he followed it up with utter dimness over the Middle Eastern situation, regarding the Palestinian factions as monolithic, the West Bank having a territorial border with Syria and that Jordan, an historic ally of the West who made peace with Israel in 1994, as a fulcrum of Iranian intervention.  I once thought that though a Romney presidency would be a period of dark reaction domestically for the USA, at least I expected an administration of his to have a pragmatic foreign policy as he seemed like an intelligent man.

Yet his disastrous tour of the UK, Israel and Poland, leaving a trail of gaffes like a habitual litterbug, was after his May comments on the Middle East.  You might say he follows in an infamous tradition of Republican leaders ignorant of the world beyond the borders of the USA.  George W Bush talked of “Greece and the Grecians” and failed to name any national leaders in the Indian subcontinent when questioned in 2000.  His father announced the end of communism in 1991, when a prominent proponent of this philosophy was merely 90 miles off the coast of Florida, China was rising and the victor in the Vietnam War was still in power (plus there was Laos). This was the time of the notorious Dan Quayle ( though not the apocrypha; “I was on a tour of Latin America recently and the only regret I have is that I didn’t study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people,” he did say “We have a firm commitment to Europe.  We are a part of Europe.”).  Ronald Reagan could be questioned as if he was ever really aware of what was happening in the world, especially when he denied the Iran-Contra affair (which broke the US Constitution).   Then there was the nadir of Gerald Ford – “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.... The United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.”  It took his advisors many days to convince him that he was wrong after this debacle in one of the election debates.

Thankfully, it seems Mitt Romney has blown the election (maybe the first in a long time when the highest spender did not win).  Be afraid, very afraid, if he does accede to The Oval Office.

Foot in Momney

A day after being roundly lambasted for trying to take political advantage of the death of the American ambassador to Libya (along with several others) and then caught on camera smirking as he left the press conference, Mitt Romney said the ‘middle income’ bracket in the USA is around the $200,000 - $250,000 per annum mark, when in fact average earnings are roughly $39,000 p.a. How out of touch can one be? It’s no wonder that his campaign manager said that the Romney team were not going to care what fact-checkers uncovered.


But what really struck me in the interview he gave was how he used Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chief. Trying to contrast Barack Obama’s ‘view’ that the economy was improving, with Bernanke’s decision for another round of quantitative easing i.e increasing the money supply by printing faster than the replacement rate (a sign to Romney that the economy was not recovering), he ended up implicitly endorsing Obama. He criticised Bernanke (a Republican pick in 2006) for the QE and said he would most likely replace him were he to become president. So, if one places so little faith in the competence of the Federal Reserve Chairman, why use him as an economic pointer on Obama’s ‘failed’ policies? It is truly moronic. What were the voters of Massachusetts thinking when they elected him governor?

Exposed

Though tempted, I resisted the male inclination to ogle and so did not look online for the semi-naked pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge whose breasts are on unobstructed view.  Kate Middleton (she’ll never be Catherine Wales to me, too formal and fuddy-duddy) is quite beautiful and sexy enough already in her public engagements, without needing to be caught in the nude and thus humiliated in this grotesque, prurient way.  She is a public figure but this is not public interest; it is brazen titillation.  I hope Prince William sues the French tabloid into bankruptcy.

At long, long last!

He didn’t do it the easy way, being taken to five sets, but finally Andy Murray has won a Grand Slam Final and ended the 76 drought for Great Britain.  I only woke to the result, rather than monitor it via radio or Internet (I have no Sky TV), as I felt tired at 9 pm – as the match was starting - and anyway had an early start the next day.  Just as well I didn’t stay up for this epic (I’m sure there will be a brisk trade in DVD souvenirs for others in the same situation), as otherwise I’d got almost no sleep at all.

Murray has to be a shoo-in for BBC Sports Personality of the Year, as Greg Rusedski and Tim Henman are further relegated to footnotes in history.  I mean, hey, if Rusedski can win the award for finishing runner-up at the US Open, any justice would see it going to Murray, who also has an Olympic Gold Medal from this summer.  While Team GB got a collective victory parade on the same day as the match, Murray could fill the streets of London with one of his own.

Hopefully, this will lead to more majors.  Once asked if he would have rather have played in the less demanding years before Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic bestrode the majors likes colossuses and giving him a chance of more championships, Murray dismissed this, saying that to win in this era would make it even more special.  Ivan Lendl has been instrumental in giving Murray that little bit extra that separates winners from losers.  He also benefitted from an extra day of rest, as storm clouds delayed Djokovic’s semi-final (monumental in length in itself).  Of course, Murray would beg to differ but I would be happy if he never won another major, just hoping that it would not be another three-quarters of a century before anyone did it again.  Yet breaking the duck also involves breaking a mental glass ceiling.  When in similar situations, Murray will have this additional reserve of confidence to fall back upon - that he knows he can do it.

Closing Time - again

The far -from-fat lady Katharine Jenkins has sung (the national anthem) and London 2012 is over.  I’m pretty tolerant but even I have felt my attitudes towards disabled people change during the Paralympics.  Initially, I was sceptical that I would be enthused in the same way as the Olympics itself, with so many ‘confusing’ categories – whereas Usain Bolt is the 100m Olympic champion, there would be many different champions in this event for the Paralympics depending on the range of disability.  Yet I did get carried away with it all.  Ironically, despite massively exceeding the medal haul from Beijing (by a fifth), GB dropped one place in the table from four years ago, from second to third, as Russia became the empire that struck back, though only in gold medals, as it had twenty medals fewer than Great Britain.

I didn’t get to see as much of the Paralympics as I would have liked.  The £307 cost of examining my (now healthy again) cat blew away any hope of affording to go and see an event and Altaa felt squeamish about watching people with disabilities and often insisted on changing the channel.  I did get to see Ellie Simmonds win the 200m swimming medley as well as a few heats in other events.  On Sunday afternoon/evening I almost monopolised the TV, watching the wheelchair rugby final (Australia were just a class above Canada), a bit of the seven-a-side football and the Closing Ceremony (plus the build-up).

I had missed the meat of the Opening Ceremony, misjudging the schedule.  The umbrellas that began the show seemed to take their cue from the Czech team at the Olympics opening show, when they, alone amongst all other squads, walked in with matching wellington boots and umbrellas – welly-brolly wallies.  The Closing Ceremony for the Paralympics was handled by the same artistic director as its Olympic counterpart, Kim Gavin, but this affair was a lot more anonydyne whilst never being banal.  The steampunk theme was well-judged in its current on-topic fashionability, with many weird and wonderful mechanical hybrids.  Coldplay had the talent and the back catalogue to make the concert side of the party really special and even the song Yellow did not seem its usual moping self.  Special guest stars of Coldplay, Rihanna and Jay-Zee, added a frisson of internationality to the proceedings.  It was all very awe-inspiring engendering much warmth and happiness, inside me at least.  I will definitely look at disabled people in a new light.

Today, there was the victory parade.  It was closed with a rousing speech by the prime minister and Conservative leader, David Cameron and a tub-thumping, somewhat salty (“You have inspired a generation  and you have created a generation – oh, come on, I can get away with that one”)speech by Boris Johnson, the London mayor and Tory leader.  Princess Anne had a speech separating the rivals, as a rose between two thorns.  I tried to imagine the man who would be prime minister as the resident of 10 Downing Street and it isn’t that preposterous anymore.

So, there it is.  A wonderful month and a half of sport.  Roll on Rio.

Watch-changing time

In qualifying for the group stage of the Europa League over Atromitos, Newcastle United rode a wave of luck a mile wide.  To be sure, injuries to Ryan Taylor and James Perch are the last thing a small squad needs, but in the actual matter of advancement in the competition, NUFC can be hugely relieved.  Two certain penalty appeals against them that resulted in bookings for diving to the Atromitos players fouled and the goal scored was the result of a massive deflection.  In fairness, they were going through anyway on the away goals rule, but as it was 1-1 from the first leg, the maths of the Greeks needing to score at least one goal was unchanged from going behind.  Atromitos were far from atrocious and Newcastle have still to rediscover last season’s mettle in their first four games of the season.  Ramadan has undoubtedly affected Muslim players Demba Ba and Papiss Cisse, Ba handling it slightly better in his second season on Tyneside.  They will improve when eating on a more standard basis.

Chelsea were also lucky in their Super Cup meeting with Atletico Madrid – an unusual statement when they lost 4-1, but Atletico struck the bar twice on their own account and once off Chelsea defender David Luiz, so it could have been 7-1.  I tuned in quite late on when Atletico were four-nil up and saw Gary Cahill register, so I witnessed a 1-0 Chelsea win.  In reality, Atletico did to the west Londoners what Bayern Munich should have done, had they not been spooked by the pressure of the possibility of winning the Champions League trophy at home.

Atletico’s comprehensive victory despite hitting the post three times, lays bare the pathetic nature of Liverpool’s play last season.  The management pointed to how many times they had hit the bar, but there comes a point when it moves from bad luck to bad shooting and Atletico are the gleaming example.  This season Liverpool have to travel to Anzi Makhachkala, a southern Russian club in the most dangerous regions of the world.  Killings, kidnappings and mass criminality in general are issues with which the Scousers have to contend and then they leave Liverpool to travel to southern Russia.