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For some, the problem of writer’s block may be down to a lack of ideas, an empty head refusing to materialize any pertinent thought that can be caught, held, worked, and finally displayed, like pizza dough transformed from a lifeless mound to a gloriously shaped pastry tray resplendent with glorious topping and ready for the oven.

With me, the opposite is the problem: a head so stuffed with pizza doughs that trying to untangle the sticky goo of ideas, all intertwined and refusing to separate, leaves me jumping from one to the other, unable to settle to any, and finally hurling the keyboard at the wall in disgust at my own limitations.

Ah, well, as Gene Fowler once said, “Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.”

Here’s part of my problem: America makes me uncomfortable. For a writer, it’s an exciting, often exhilarating, place to live. There’s always much going on in this country – far more than in Britain, or other nations of Europe – but a great deal of that “going-on” is decidedly undesirable.

I’m sure many Americans hoped that once Obama was president the country would settle down and become less frenetic. Eight years of George W Bush left normally sane individuals wondering if they weren’t slowly tipping over the precipice into a bottomless void of madness.

Obama, by comparison with his predecessor, is so calm and sane, unruffled and intelligent, that one almost expected a mighty sigh of relief to stir the branches of trees from Florida to Alaska, as Americans settled back into their armchairs, reached for a favorite tipple, and thanked God the bad times were finally over.

Of course, there were certain minor difficulties thoughtfully bequeathed by the previous incumbent – two wars, an economy past the brink of collapse, terrorism on the rise around the world – but those would all be dealt with in time, and most important was the knowledge that we could all finally relax and enjoy our lives once more.

Then, the asylum doors burst asunder and CPAC^[1] spewed forth to haunt our very souls. Like some ghastly, recurring, nightmare the monsters of the GOP we thought had gone forever were suddenly exposing themselves, in all their demented ghoulishness, upon our TV and computer screens.

It could only happen in America.

There they were, once again pouring forth the same old foetid poison that’s been dragging this country back to the dark ages since time immemorial:

Limbaugh:

Ronald Reagan used to speak of a shining city on a hill. Barack Obama portrays America as a soup kitchen in some dark night in a corner of America that’s very obscure.”

Coulter:

Obama has the entire media, the European Union, and Oprah on his side. A poll in Germany said 80% of Germans liked Obama over McCain and we all know how infallible Germans are at picking leaders.”

Bolton:

The fact is on foreign policy I don’t think President Obama thinks it’s a priority. He said during the campaign he thought Iran was a tiny threat. Tiny, tiny depending on how many nuclear weapons they are ultimately able to deliver on target. Its, uh, its tiny compared to the Soviet Union, but is the loss of one American city, pick one at random – Chicago! – [thunderous applause and laughter] is that a tiny threat?”

Joe the Plumber:

Uh…ummmm?”

Instead of retiring to ‘a soup kitchen in some dark night in a corner of America that’s very obscure’ and licking their wounds, realizing they’re mortally wounded and dragging themselves away to die unceremoniously in the gutter, the GOP not only continues to display an arrogance for which it’s long been infamous, but attempts to intensify the party’s swaggering pomposity by roping in a second-rate talk radio has-been, and an unlicensed nobody of a tradesman, for support.

So egotistical are these people that they are totally unaware how sad and bitter this makes them look.

Were they a political party in Britain, or any other nation of western Europe, one could rely on their demise being relatively permanent. Sure, they might manage to garner nine or ten percent in any election held during a time of extreme crisis, for it is such moments that cause the crazed and insane to vote for nationalistic idols, but as a mainstream political party their allegiance with the religious nut machine, and grovelling affiliation to the corporate masters, would ensure a ‘Des-Res’ in the political wilderness for the foreseeable……

Unfortunately, this is America. To quote from another of Ann Coulter’s quips this CPAC:

If Obama thinks the people really want change, wait till 2012.”

Just once, she might be right.

And that’s why America makes me uncomfortable.

Pizza, anyone?

^{[1] “Conservative Political Action Conference Website” February 26th 2009}

Filed under: Zombies of the GOP

The United States of America is to be congratulated. Its annual report on worldwide human rights violations, released in February, is very comprehensive.

Perusing the lengthy document, it’s difficult to find a nation on Earth that isn’t listed among the six geographical sub-headings. The amount of time, money, and work spent compiling this report has to be phenomenal. It is needed, however, as a signpost to Congress when foreign aid is doled out.^[1]

There is one conspicuous absentee.

China, a nation that fared not at all well in the report, noticed one country the compilers appeared to have inadvertently overlooked.

Always meticulous and thorough, the Chinese set out to rectify the omission by compiling their own report on the nation that had been left out.

It’s a very full report running to six pages, each subdivided into a specific category of human rights violation.

The Chinese report on the Human Rights Record of the United States of America in 2008 is available for reading at the link below.^[2]

^{[1] “2008 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices” US State Department, February 25th 2009}

^{[2] “Human Rights Record of United States in 2008” China View, February 26th 2009}

Filed under: Tit or tat?

I began today writing an article in defense of Roman Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson, who was foolish, or brave, enough to express misgivings on Swedish television over the extent of the Jewish Holocaust. His apology has been churlishly rejected by Jewish authority, on the grounds it wasn’t sufficiently abject.^[1]

That article is no more. I deleted it because I found the whole business bloody stupid and no more than a perfect example of arrogance taking on egotism and losing to pomposity.

Frankly, the bishop’s views are of no concern to me. His right to express them is, however, a totally separate matter and one that Jewish authority has continually sought to stifle since 1948. Today, in a repulsive act of Jewish ass-licking, the Vatican also refused Williamson’s apology.

It’s not enough to regret expressing one’s beliefs, one has to jettison those beliefs completely.

Apart from probably a minority of Jews, who gives a damn about Nazi atrocities anymore? So it happened. Butchery of it’s own species has been the epitome of human achievement since time immemorial. Why are the Jews so special?

As the guardians of antisemitism reach for their pens to respond, let me clarify my own views on the matter. I am neither a Holocaust denier, nor a ‘revisionist’. While many Holocaust obsessives will refute any difference between the two, there is a clear-cut dissimilarity. As I am neither, however, and as the subject only concerns my own opinions, such discrepancies are not relevant here.

Do I believe six million Jews were exterminated by the Nazis during WW2? I have to answer: no.

Do I then believe the Holocaust never took place? Again, I must answer: no.

It’s so easy to sit back and accept everything ‘history’ throws at you. Sadly, history is invariably written by the victors, and as a consequence rarely denies glory in favor of plain fact. I just happen to be one of those people who doesn’t believe that everything taught in school, or in books, or via any other media, is necessarily plain, ungarnished, truth, and consequently have wasted much of my life verifying to my own satisfaction the truths, or otherwise, of those things schoolmasters, politicians, and historians insist we believe simply because they say it is so.

Have I then, during this wasted life, verified the authenticity, or otherwise, of the events now known as the Jewish Holocaust?

No. Or, at least, only superficially.

Certainly, many Jews died at the hands of the Nazis. Those who deny the Holocaust are wrong, but whether six million were annihilated is open to debate. Evidence suggests it was a lot.

The reason I never pursued a more qualitative answer was simply because I’ve never considered that knowledge important enough to spend time researching it. While the Jewish authorities make much of ‘remembering’, as a non-Jew I see no virtue in donning proverbial sackcloth and ashes and taking on the guilt of mankind over this issue.

As with all human atrocities, we are afterward exhorted “never to forget”. World War One was the “War to end all Wars”. It turned out a mere precursor to its bigger brother that came along only two decades later. Human memory – of the loss of sixteen million lives – is not that short.

Every year, the goons in their black overcoats and fancy poppy buttonholes desert their gentlemen’s clubs, put aside their Napoleon brandies, and traipse down Whitehall (London) to the Cenotaph, where they lay their wreaths in honor of the dead of two world wars and mumble, “Lest we forget.”

Still they die – in Korea, Vietnam, the Arab-Israeli wars, the Iraq war, Afghanistan, and many more.

Remembering has never stopped war, or the atrocities associated with every conflict since man stood upright and left the trees. Indeed, it’s likely the memories only assist in provoking more violence – a staid hand of history informing us this is how we are; this is the way we are supposed to behave.

Lest we forget? Lest we forget war and settle for living in peace?

Has remembering the Holocaust with such vehemence assisted the Jews to live in peace? Is it by remembering the atrocities of the Nazis that Israelis can perpetrate similar brutality on their Palestinian underdogs?

Bishop Richard Williamson has a right to express his views in a free society. It should be of no consequence to the rest of us what Bishop Williamson believes. Whether the Holocaust was fact, or exaggeration, matters not one iota to the overall wellbeing of mankind. The only purpose served by prolonging the memories and exhuming the atrocities, is to strengthen the arrogance of those Jews who quickly cry, “Antisemitism”, at any questioning of the facts surrounding that event.

Jewish authority has learned to use the Holocaust as a weapon against those who would criticize their actions, even when such criticism is entirely justifiable. We are all supposed to feel the guilt for Jewish suffering. It is necessary for the world to bow its knee before the Star of David and beg forgiveness for the Nazi sin.

Bishop Williamson may be wrong in his belief, but by daring to utter it he has again unlocked the cell door confining those who dare to express themselves openly, without fear of reprisal from the jailer whose name is “Antisemitism”.

^{[1] “Vatican rejects bishop’s apology” BBC, February 27th 2009}

Filed under: Political repression