A New And Old Year

There is the question of terrorism, the groups involved and what it means.  We have been here before. One element which spawned others was led by Che Guevara, 1928-1967. The item below was from a long time ago, but the source unknown. Quote:

What Che Guevara Stood For

1. Hatred.

Che wanted to see ‘Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine’. He considered Americans to be ‘hyenas … fit only for extermination’.

2. Mass Murder.

Che wanted to launch a nuclear attack on New York City. He desired ‘atomic extermination’ of the ‘hyenas’ (read civilians) who lived there and in November 1962 he boasted to the London "Daily Worker" of the nuclear weapons, ‘We would have used them against the very heart of the US, including New York City’.

Even Che’s sympathetic interviewer from the then "Daily Worker" considered him to be ‘crackers from the way he went on about the missiles’. It’s only thanks to the intervention of Nikita Khrushchev that Che’s plans came to nothing.

3. Terrorism.

With the nuclear attack plans shelved, Che instead attempted to launch a terrorist campaign in New York City. Had it have worked, Macy’s, Gimbels, Bloomingdales, and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal would have been hit with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. To give some perspective, the 2004 Madrid train bombings used 100 kilos of TNT and killed and maimed almost 2,000 people.

4. Sacrificing the people of Cuba.

At the First Latin American Youth Congress in July 1959, Che proudly claimed: ‘These people [of Cuba] you see today tell you that even if they should disappear from the face of the earth because an atomic war is unleashed in their names … they would feel completely happy and fulfilled’.

5. Executions without trial.

Che delighted in ordering and carrying out executions and considered the need to present a legal case and to give the accused the right to defend him or herself to be ‘archaic bourgeois details’. ‘I don’t need proof to execute a man, I only need proof that it’s necessary to execute him!’, Che declared in 1959.

6. Persecution of gay men.

In Che’s Cuba, ‘effeminate behaviour’ became a crime and gay men were consigned to forced labour camps with the words ‘Work Will Make Men Out of You’ posted over the entry gates.

7. Totalitarianism.

Che demanded that ‘individualism must disappear!’ Perhaps his greatest support for this principle is found in his relationship with the USSR. Indeed, according to KGB official Alexander Alexiev, ‘Che was practically the architect of the Soviet-Cuban relationship’.

Unquote.

There is something uncannily familiar about this.

Moving Pictures

Over a Christmas and New Year holiday period there are many questions. For quite a number of people one will be the films to watch and when and why? Now it is possible to chose to watch only when you want to and there is a wide choice, new, recent, past and almost archive at the click of a remote.

No longer do families gather round to watch what is trumpeted the films that they must or are expected to watch. We can all do our own thing. If I want the Muppets or Shaun The Sheep, and the lady wants the films she missed in the past then we can do just that.

One film that turned up on BBC2 in a late afternoon slot was one from the antique shop, a couple of hours of World War 2 from the mid 1950's and a major intelligence caper. It is difficult to know who would actually want to watch it now but I had my own reason.

The film was "The Man Who Never Was" from 1955-6, 20th Century Fox doing British, about high ups in counter intelligence putting one over on the Nazi's using a dead body and false documents. The purpose was to persuade Hitler etc. that in 1943 the Allies would be going for Greece and not Sicily, the obvious choice.

My reason was that in 1956 I saw this film in a German cinema with German subtitles in a garrison town in north Germany. What the locals made of it I do not know, there were not many of them in the audience. Not many troops went either, despite the garrison having a Royal Signals Regiment.

What I wanted to know was how much of my memory about it was "false" or bad as well as how much stands up to inspection in the light of later knowledge. There is a Wikipedia article on the film with links to the people involved and also a website about the later revelations as to who the person might have been whose remains had been used.

One relief about the older films is that you can hear the speech and the takes are longer. For the speech, did people really talk like that? Did they really behave like that? The film "Patton", made later, also deals with the Sicily question, but the Brit's shown are very much a caricature. In this film they are rather nearer the truth but how near?

As the Wikipedia article says, the film did depart from the truth, notably in the use of Irish Catholic spies working for the German's. Perhaps it was a dig at the time at the republican De Valera's studied politeness to the Germans, perhaps arising from Hitler's support for Franco in Spain. The audience of 1956 would have understood.

The major aspect that was missing was the absence of much at all about signals intelligence and communication. The Irish spy uses a radio to tell Berlin what he is doing using a very crude system. Nowhere is there any hint or knowledge of the extent and nature of the signals intelligence at the time.

But in 1956 this was still a very delicate issue, so the less said the better. Sixty odd years later, it is still a delicate issue. As I am aware because of the way the search engines react to my use and the telephonists know who I am and where I am before I even begin to explain.

In 1956 we believed that we had won the war. What we did not know at the time was that we were losing the peace.

Three Men In A Library

The three men in the picture above, born variously in Dublin, by Paris and in London, were among the leading and best known writers and public figures in the first half of the 20th Century.

They are now forgotten and their books gather dust on the shelves of libraries if they are not already packed into boxes in the cellars or have been disposed of.

They were prolific in their writing and in public meetings and debates. Can you name them and more to the point know what their ideas were and the various beliefs they held?

Which of them now would be hounded out of our universities and public bodies and forbidden to express their opinions and for what reason?

Which of them said "the faith is Europe and Europe is the faith"?

Enough Of Words

All Change

When did the modern world begin? This is a question that can provoke many arguments with few answers. There are many events or happenings that contribute to it.

For those travelling, watching TV or listening to radio or engaged with many activities they can trace this back to the early 20th Century.

This article from the "Engineer" of 17 December 1909 is titled "Marconi Wireless Telegraphy" and is written by Mr. G. Marconi. The number of people at the time who read this may not have been many.

How many more knew or understood much from reports is a question but probably it may have seemed to them another toy and something strictly for specialists.

A parlour game over the holiday to suggest everything that followed from this discovery and its application might be fun.

Also, it would be a change from TV, radio, or use of other devices.

Green Grow The Rushes O!

The excitements of the last few days and for that matter before in the Tory party are becoming redolent of the novels of Anthony Powell and Evelyn Waugh in their nature. Damien Green it seems was chucked into the River Cherwell while at Oxford by fellow students including a present colleague, Dominic Grieve, who rants for the EU.

His father, Percy Grieve, during WW2 spent some time with General Charles de Gaulle, later President of France. De Gaulle did not want the UK in the Common Market. Many in France since have felt that he may have been right and the UK should never have been allowed in. It is all a long time ago.

Well, it is for the rest of us. What is striking about all this and the who's and what's of the current Tory government and members of the House of Commons is how quaint it is. If the Labour Party is seen in the same light it much applies. Between their leaders and their ideas it is like a political antiques roadshow.

The EU is becoming rather like one of those 1970's rock bands who jump about a lot and shout but whose age and incoherence are all too evident being driven by what amounts to the speed equivalent of making rules if only to get the big hit from enforcement.

The UN has more central offices, parts, branches etc. than there are countries. There must be many among them trying to find where they are and who without much success. This is not international government, it is administration without governance.

The lack of real modern government or structures to enable it is one reason for what amounts to the breakup of some states. It can happen in the UK. It seems to be happening in Spain. Around Europe and the world seams are splitting and old empires fading.

If history is any guide the results will be continuing conflicts, wars, attempted takeovers, failed takeovers, collapses, aggression, empires that fail before succeeding and peoples who come to look to their local warlords for protection and guidance.

Call it the multicultural millennia to come.

Checking The Mails

The picture above from an Evening Standard feature on past times is of London Bridge Station, but it could have been almost any railway station at the time. It is the mail bags during the Christmas rush of 1928 waiting to be loaded. This would not have been the only time in the day when this could have been seen.

In the mid 1950's when I was putting in time and overtime on the railways it was the same and by then had been the case for a century or more. This could be a long post telling all about it. There was all the manual labour involved, the coming and going, and the way the mail was routed, often not the obvious ways.

We assumed at the time that this was the most efficient way of doing things and our Royal Mail set the standard for the world. Foreigners would visit and wonder at the complexity of it all and the high standards achieved. I hoped that this practical experience plus education could allow me an office job and after a decade or three a position in management.

I was turned down for having a sense of humour that did not fit the decorum and politeness expected. What none realised that all was about to change. The Royal Mail began to take to the roads which meant extensive restructuring. The railways shrank. Managers came in who were not of The Mail but of "business", whatever that was.

What none of us began to think or even crossed the threshold of our minds was that all this electrical kit and messaging gear could begin to impact on the mails and that in a relatively short time the Royal Mail would be just another delivery firm, one among many, better than some, worse than others.

At least on the railway platforms passengers no long have to put up with sweaty gangs of men making questionable jokes as they heave the bags about.