Two Tails

One more story about the Olympics before moving on. Visa, as an Olympic sponsor, has banned the use of rival cards at games venues. All Cashpoints that accept MasterCard or American Express – closed! There is the heavy clout of big business for you. The question is, will the other card companies take it lying down or will they fight back and, another question, could it be legal or is it flouting the monopolies commission? We await the outcome with a yawn and only slightly baited breath.

Kim managed to escape from the bunker virgo intacto but naturally she didn’t land with her arse in the honey. Instead she went from frying pan to fire and was taken hostage by a gunman in a convenience store while the cashier lay on the floor wounded and the cops had the place surrounded. Poor Kim, whatever will the poor lass go through next? Meanwhile the main storyline; that is a nuclear device due to be exploded by terrorists over LA has been found and flown out of the city to be safely detonated in the Mojave Desert in a specific spot to limit fallout.

Now a tale of two tails, one wagging happily, one drooping in pain and despair. English visitors to Greece constantly complain (quite rightly) that the Greeks have no respect for and do not know how to treat animals but is it a case of pots and kettles?

In the UK animal cruelty and neglect convictions rise, says the RSPCA. The number of people convicted of animal cruelty and neglect rose by nearly a quarter in England and Wales last year. Cases included a dog stabbed repeatedly with a potato peeler and a blind kitten found dumped in a carrier bag. The animal charity said it was facing a funding crisis as a result of having to deal with so many cases. Its chief executive Gavin Grant said the charity showed "zero tolerance" to people who abused animals. Other cases included a collapsed and emaciated dog dumped on Christmas morning and a dog that ate her dead mate to survive after being abandoned in a flat. “Zero tolerance is shown to animal abusers,” Gavin Grant said. “Anyone causing pain for profit or amusement will be tracked down and prosecuted.” But how many I wonder get away with it? "We need the courts and councils, police and people who care to join us in standing up and getting justice for Britain's abused animals."

Now the wagging tails, an entirely different picture. Dempsey’s report card reads – Dempsey had a really good day at the farm enjoying her time with friends. In the afternoon we went for a lovely walk in the woods. She also had a little nap.

Dempsey is a dog.

The idea for doggie crèches evidently started in America (where else?)  but there are now any number in the UK. While you are out at work your doggie will be having a whale of a time playing with friends, listening to classical music and being chauffeured from and back to home at the end of the day. This of course does not come cheap – £25 a day with owners of two dogs stumping up a whopping £1000 a month for weekly care. It’s great that people love and think so much of their pets but there are some who are, in my opinion just a little bit whacky, like who on earth gives their dog Eggs Benedict for breakfast every day? Or won’t put their dog on the ground in case it gets dirty? Or requesting their dog be chauffeured in a hired car rather than in a van?  We have always loved our animals and given them the best life possible but pampered poochery can go too far and is not necessarily good for the dog. There are a lot of children in the world who could do with such pampering and a thousand pounds a month could go a long way.

 

24

We have been watching number 2 of the television series “24” and I have to admit it has kept us gripped just as the first 24 hours did. We still have twelve hours left but somehow I doubt very much if we will want to go beyond the second round. (I believe there are eight in all). It is certainly ingenious with all its twists and turns, goodies and baddies, especially the Agatha Christie type guess who dunnit, but it is beginning, for me anyway, to strain credibility rather. Let us consider our hero Jack Bauer’s (Keifer Sutherland) daughter, Kim. In the first series she was kidnapped, if I remember correctly not once but twice, escaped death a couple of times, survived a quite spectacular car wreck and at the end saw her mother killed. In this one she is baby-sitting a psychopath’s daughter and, although innocent, is accused of murder and kidnapping in her attempt to get the child away from her father and the discovery of the man’s wife in the trunk of his car she and her boyfriend have commandeered.  She is now involved in yet another car crash when the police vehicle taking them in is set on fire by the boyfriend and the driver loses control, as he would of course because he doesn’t think of just pulling up and evacuating the vehicle. Leaving the police officer and the injured boyfriend in the upturned vehicle from which she manages to clamber out she runs away. Naturally the terrain is forest so she gets lost, gets caught in a trap, is threatened momentarily by a cougar and is eventually rescued by a guy named Lonnie who takes her to his cabin in the wood. At first he is pretty decent but we know perfectly well it ain’t going to stay that way. She tells him she can’t go back to L.A. because of this terrorist threat of a nuclear bomb. Lonnie says he always believed this would happen and shows her the bomb-shelter he has built. Now this is where the imagination boggles slightly. This shelter isn’t just a hole in the ground. This shelter is thirty foot down, reached by a spiral staircase and ends in a tunnel and blast proof chamber. ‘You did this yourself?’ Kim asks. ‘Yeah,’ Lonnie replies, ‘Took me two years.’ Sorry, I just don’t wear it. Chris and Douglas have no problems with it; I am obviously a cynic. The second question I ask is where did Lonnie get the money from to build something that must have cost all of a quarter of a million dollars when he’s a loner who lives in a little wood cabin? Why should we second guess it? He was left it an inheritance? He robbed a bank? What? He is too young to have made it. Douglas and I said simultaneously, ‘Where the hell is all this electricity coming from?’ Okay so far? Right – Kim looks around and sees all sorts of nasty things like knives and guns, panics and is up the spiral staircase faster than you can say knives and guns her excuse being, when Lonnie questions her, that she suffered a bout of claustrophobia. So now he is ready to take her back to the freeway but at this moment a car approaches (of course) and it is the ranger come looking for her. Lonnie denies he has seen her, the ranger drives away, Lonnie, having heard the words murder and kidnapping now feels he can get up to that nastiness promised earlier. He makes believe through a portable radio that the bomb in LA has gone off and he and Kin should take shelter from the fallout and so he gets her back down the spiral staircase… 

I’m afraid were I a script editor or a producer I would never have countenanced this storyline. Lonnie can attempt to have his wicked way with Kim in the locked wood cabin but I suppose the shelter makes for better drama. Or does it?

With the trauma the poor girl has suffered in the first 24 hours and now this; if she doesn’t end up a basket case she will start to look like the world’s oldest woman and I never again want to hear Jack Bauer say, ‘Find my daughter, please!’

Kerchunk Kerchunk Kerchunk Kerchunk.  

www.glynjones.net

The Muses Darling

It’s not only the queen who has celebrated an anniversary. Shakespeare is having a right old going over all over the UK, The Globe is featuring every one of his plays with productions from various countries and Amazon.com books is simply awash with new works on the bard of Avon as though not enough has already been written in the last hundred years about a man of whom we know practically nothing. The son of illiterate parents and father of illiterate children he died at the age of fifty two having supposedly written 37 major plays, 154 sonnets and epic poetry, ‘Venus and Adonis,’ ‘The Rape of Lucrece.’ Wow! But, apart from six signatures, three of them from his will, there has never been the slightest sign of any writing. What happened to his original manuscripts? How come he retired to Stratford a fat satisfied gentleman landowner suing people left right and centre and never ever making mention of his London life or of his works? A truly amazing body of works needless to say. The silence speaks volumes.

The silence says William Shaksper of Stratford, who did indeed exist is, as far as the theatre is concerned, a complete phoney.

So what do we know about him? We don’t even know that he did attend the school in Stratford although it is assumed he did and this is the big problem. I have read any number of biographies and theories regarding our Will and in every one there is a super-abundance of we assume, we presume, maybe, perhaps, it is thought,  we believe, it could be that etc., etc. Nothing positive except his return to Stratford and his last will and testament in which he left his second best bed to his wife. Is this really how a man of supposedly colossal genius would end his life? Totally uncaring what happened to his works? Especially when he mentions more than once in the sonnets that his poetry will last down the years. ‘Who will believe my verse in time to come?’ And ‘When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.’ Or ‘Not marble nor the gilded monuments Of Princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme.’ And it would seem in the sonnets we have a clue as to who the real writer was with the constant references to unhappy banishment and in sonnet 74 mention of ‘a wretch’s knife.’ None of this applies to Shakespeare so to whom does it apply?

For more years than I can remember I have wanted to write a play on the Marlowe/Shakespeare theory and have finally done it. Bad timing yet again. Should have written it a year or more ago but there you are, these things come in their own good time. There is nothing new about the theory. I just wanted to have my own go at it.

There has fairly recently been some medical doubt about the wound that purported to put an end to Marlowe’s life. If the poniard struck him above the eye, that is on the temple, it would more than likely have bounced off. That is where the skull is thickest and a stabbing motion that short would not have had the force to penetrate. If the stabbing was inflicted in the actual eye socket the question is would death have been instantaneous as the coroner’s report states? Interestingly enough I have just seen a report of a boy in America who suffered such a wound being accidentally shot by a fishing gun and he has survived. The x-ray from the side shows the dart penetrating almost to the back of the skull.

So what did happen in that room in Deptford?  No one really knows just as no one really knows very much about a man named William Shakespeare except to believe he was the author of such a body of work in so short a time and with such a lack of knowledge and experience is to believe in miracles.

Nuggets of News

So what nifty little nuggets of news have we had recently to lighten our day? Not necessarily to prove the world is going mad or to hell in a hand basket, that is already decided, but just out of curiosity you might say.

Well to start with - Large sums of money received by Somalia's interim UN-backed government have not been accounted for, a World Bank report says. It alleges a discrepancy of about $130m (£85m) in the accounts over two years. The report stops short of making specific allegations, but does not rule out corruption as a possible explanation for the missing government revenue funds. Surprise surprise, now who on earth would have thought it?

A US drug company has agreed to pay out $1.6bn (£1bn) after improperly marketing a mood-stabilising drug in a settlement thought to be the largest of its kind involving a single drug. Abbott Laboratories will pay $800m to federal and state governments, $700m in criminal penalties and a further $100m to resolve consumer protection issues. Now what does that tell you about the profits made by the big drug companies?

The UK's richest people have defied the double-dip recession to become even richer over the past year, according to the annual Sunday Times Rich List. The newspaper's research found the combined worth of the country's 1,000 wealthiest people is £414bn, up 4.7%.

There are now 77 billionaires on the list, with individuals needing to have at least £72m to make the top 1,000.
Several leading British entrepreneurs, who are further down the list, have seen their wealth increase this year. Some of Britain's best-known performers and artists have also seen their fortunes improve.  Sir Paul McCartney's recent marriage to his third wife Nancy Shevell, who is the daughter of an American trucking magnate, sees him become the third wealthiest man in British music, as their combined wealth is now rated at £665m. The two people surpassing him are music executive Clive Calder and theatre owner and producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh, whose fortune has gone up to £725m. (Interesting this – when we submitted the musical LA BELLE OTERO his immediate reaction was to scream, “No money!” No money!”) Harry Potter creator JK Rowling's worth has risen by £30m in the last year to £560m, putting her 148th on the list and the Beckhams are worth £190million.
The four directors who had to share a paltry £57million must be squirming with jealousy at the income of Xstrata’s top staff in line for a pay out of £242million. Beat that if you can. But let us leave high finance and see what other news is there?
Well, in Scotland, after watching hard-core porn on the internet, a twelve year old boy raped a nine year old girl whose family lived next door. When asked why he did it he said it was because he wanted to be grown up. The rape only came to light when the girl complained to her mother that she “might have a baby in her tummy.”
Facebook boss informs women they could very well advance their careers by doing a bit more sobbing in the office. Presumably male softies will immediately surrender to this emotional blackmail.
Now this one really deserves an entry into Ripley’s “Believe It Or not.” The United Nations has appointed Monster Mugabe the UN’s ‘tourism envoy.’ Perhaps he could start by organizing bus trips to the killing fields of Zimbabwe.
A trip to the seaside for inner city disadvantaged kids, what do you think their priority would be? But of course, having licked their ice-creams it would be to dip their toes in the water. No no no no! Perish the thought, says elf and safety, out of the question. Six inches of water is far too dangerous. Do they think the kids are likely to suffer sharks attacks or what? These kids were not infants. Their ages ranged from 14 to 16 and their handicaps were minor but, despite the presence of four teachers and two charity workers it was deemed too dangerous for them to paddle in waters that barely covered their ankles. God help us. (Just an expression.)
A truly feeble joke on television about Cornwall has raised Cornish ire to erupting volcanic proportions. Dan Rogerson Liberal Democrat MP for North Cornwall said the gag proved that the Cornish are ‘discriminated against as a group’ and has made a formal complaint of racism to the BBC and the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. Excuse me for a moment while I break into hysterical laughter.
It gets worse, or more ridiculous, whichever way you care to look at it. Nikky Smedley who played Laa-laa in the popular BBC television programme ‘Telebubbles’ has refuted a claim made by the late Jerry Falwell that they were part of an international gay conspiracy. The good reverend said Tinky Winky’s purple costume and triangular antennae signified as much. Mr. Smedly says: ‘What kind of person can take obvious innocence and turn it into something else?’ Obviously an American evangelical.

But in order not to weary my, probably already weary, readers, let us for a moment consider the Olympics. A Devon Estate Agent, as a gesture of support for the Olympic torch passing through his town, used five hula hoops to create in his window the Olympic symbol. The result? The London organizing committee of the Olympic Games wrote insisting ‘Olympic related’ material be taken down or face legal procedures. A florist was warned displaying her Olympic ring display could get her sued and an 81 year old had to withdraw a doll from a church sale because its knitted outfit bore the Olympic symbol.

And, finally, still on the subject of the Olympics that seems to have turned into a financial behemoth (it virtually bankrupted Greece and will more than likely do the same for England) we are used to fast food outlets asnd cheap restaurants giving detailed descriptions of their dishes with plenty of delicious adjectives, just in case your average punters need their salivary glands stimulated so why should the Olympic caterers not do the same? So we have in a sandwich Red Leicester British cheese,, apple chutney and farmhouse lettuce on Oxfordshire(!) bread. There is any number of items headed ‘Red tractor’ but it doesn’t mention that ‘Red Tractor’ is a food company. We have Farm-assured Yorkshire butter, Dingley-Dell bacon, Irish mashed potatoes, pole-line-caught tuna, and what is all this flannel in aid of? It’s so that when you have to dig deep into your pocket and stump up eight quid for the plat de jour, your actual bangers, mash, and gravy you feel you’re really getting your money’s worth.

And that is the news on this bright sunny day. Greece might be in the biggest financial mess of all times but it has not lost its sense of proportion – thank God! (only an expression.)

.

The Ambani House

This is not the house that Jack built or that Jerry built though it may look like it; this is the house the Ambanis built in Mumbai

 The first pictures have been released showing the inside of what is believed to be the world's most expensive house. Built by India's richest man Mukesh Ambani, the 27-storey building towers over swanky Altamount Road in Mumbai. Named Antilia, after a mythical island, it cost more than $1bn, reports say.  Those who have visited it speak of helipads, a vast library, extravagant dining areas, opulent marble floors and even a snow room. Until now the family has remained silent on the residence.  "This is the first time I am talking about my home," says Mr. Ambani's wife, Nita, in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine. “There have been exaggerated reports in the media about it, I must say," she adds.!!!!!! In the interview, conducted in November, Mrs. Ambani confirms they took up residence last September. "We moved in two months ago… and then it was going round that we haven't moved in," she told reporter James Reginato, who gained unprecedented access inside the building.

A photo published of one of the rooms shows floor-to-ceiling windows, and a seating arrangement which resembles a five-star hotel lobby. "It's a modern home with an Indian heart," says Mrs. Ambani of her house.  Antilia is 27 storeys high, but as Mr. Reginato writes, many of the floors are double or triple height, so the building rises to 570 feet, equivalent to a 40-storey building. It also has a mutli-storey garage, a ballroom, a spa, a theatre, guest suites and a number of terraced gardens, he writes.

"We made our home right at the top because we wanted the sunlight… so it's an elevated house on top of a garden," said Mrs. Ambani. The design, she says, is based on the lotus and the sun, and is decorated using rare wood, marble, mother-of-pearl and crystal, crafted by Indian artisans. As with many Indian households, it also has a Hindu prayer room, "getting my temple right was so important," she said. Reports suggest the house is worth more than $1bn, small change for Mukesh Ambani, who is worth more than $22bn according to Forbes magazine.
But despite this, the house's construction has attracted some criticism from some who say it is far too grand for a city like Mumbai, where millions of people live in slums, and hundreds of thousands don't have a roof over their head. Besides which it has to be one of the ugliest constructions ever.

Books wot I have wrote

Seeing as to how in my last Blog I mentioned the books I have written I thought, for those who might read this but who don’t know about my literary efforts prose-wise, I would list them here. After all I’ve not discussed them before so why not? I won’t write about plays, only books. Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start, as is sung in a famous musical. When I was very young I can’t remember just how young, I wrote a novel. My novel consisted of half a dozen pages from a school notebook, bound with wool and sold to my mother’s bridge club at sixpence a copy. Now was that a hint of things to come do you suppose? I have no actual memory of what the story was about. Flash forward to the sixties and the first book I had published proper as it were. This one was not prose but poems for children called ‘Hildegarde H And Her friends.’

Illustrated by one Arnold Taraborrelli it was published by a company called Abydos. Unfortunately they made a great mistake by having it ring-bound which meant that libraries would not buy it. Little fingers could soon rip out a favourite picture or versa. First failure. Then along came ‘The Double Deckers.’ This series was made at the beginning of the seventies and has been a great hit all over the world (the DVD released recently) but we won’t go into this painful subject. Another story hangs in the balance here and hopefully the mystery will soon be solved one way or t’other. This time I was approached by Pan to write the book which in no time at all was to be found remaindered on stalls in Bermondsey Market. Second failure. Actually this time I was not affected by the failure as it was a one off and no royalties were due on the book anyway so I didn’t lose out.

Advance to 1984. I was approached by W.H.Allen and asked if I would like to novelise my TV scripts ‘Doctor Who And The Space Museum’ and, if so, would I send them an example of my prose which I duly did. It was found acceptable and I wrote the book. I was teaching in America at the time and discovered to my horror that no one had heard of it, not my students (though they were avid fans of the TV series) or booksellers so god alone knows what went wrong with W.H.Allen’s distribution. Shortly after they were taken over by Virgin who seemed to have absolutely no interest at all. Third failure.

Advance to the twenty first century and a flurry of activity. First of all my autobiography ‘No Official Umbrella’ followed by the first Thornton King thriller, ‘Dead On Time.’ Hardly original I admit. There are at least four other books with the same title. This was followed by the second Thornton King, ‘Just In Case.’ Another not too original title but apt for the story. (a) A case for Thornton to solve and (b) a case full of stolen diamonds. I seem to remember another ‘Just in Case’ appearing at exactly the same time. In between writing Thornton Kings three and four, ‘Dead On Target,’ and ‘The Cinelli Vases, I wrote two novels, ‘Angel,’ and ‘The Journeys We Make.’  Still to come, written and waiting, another novel ‘Torque,’ a motor racing and drugs story. This one started off as a film script and, the film not being made, I felt it was too good to waste. There are two more Thornton Kings, ‘Celluloid and Tinsel,’ obviously set in the film world of which I have some experience, not all of it good, and ‘Men and their Toys,’ sleazy sleazy sex of which I have absolutely no experience at all of course. If anyone is interested in the Thornton King books, my slightly quirky accident prone private eye and his glamorous sidekick Miss Holly Day who seems to have the knack of always coming to his rescue at appropriate moments, read them in sequence because, although each story is complete in itself, the major characters go all the way through from the first book and of course they carry memories forward with them. I don’t pretend for one moment that these are works of art or great literature, they’re just a jolly good read. Give them to family and friends as Christmas and birthday presents. Also to be published soon there is my Gothic novella ‘The Museum Mysteries,’ together with half a dozen short stories.

Add to that two new plays and the book and lyrics of a musical and one could say Crete, if nothing else, has been very good for me as far as output is concerned. Whether there is anymore in the pipeline who can tell?

www.glynjones.net

Baz Bamigboye Daniel Radcliffe Samuel Barnett

I read last week in Baz Bamigboye’ column in The Mail that Daniel Radcliffe is to do a new play in London. He has chosen Martin McDonagh’s play ‘The Cripple of Inishman’ which he describes as having pathos, heartbreak – “and it’s very funny.”

Some time ago while he was in America, knowing he would be looking for something to do after ‘How To Succeed’, I sent him a copy of my play ‘Rosemary’ which has pathos, heartbreak and is very funny and which I feel has a humdinger of a part for an actor his age and was right up his street. I have no doubt that in the avalanche of mail he receives (or somebody receives for him) it was more than likely trashed without being looked at. Shame really. He would have been excellent in it. Well why not? Who is this Glyn Jones who has the temerity to ask Mister Radcliffe to read one of his plays? He is a nobody; hardly anyone has ever heard of him. He is, in England, probably the most neglected ignored playwright of the twentieth/twenty first centuries. His last play to be produced in London was at The Old Vic in 1979 ruthlessly, with one honourable exception, massacred by the English critics. To say they descended on it like a pack of rabid dogs is putting it mildly. Was it such a bad play? No. Audiences were in complete disagreements with the critics so why the execration from the hacks? Well it was put on shortly after Louis Mountbatten’s murder, the critics thought an Irish subject at the time was just not cricket and at the pre-production press-conference one or two of them made no bones about how they felt. So the critics won. It took five years to research and write, fourteen years to get produced and, thanks to the critics, two weeks to come off. (It would seem some critics are under the impression that a play is written on Monday, rehearsed on Tuesday, and performed on Wednesday.)

Well not to worry, carry on regardless. It took two years for me to recover and start writing again but since that fiasco I must have written five or six more (of which Rosemary is one) plus a musical based on the life of that nineteenth century grand horizontal La Belle Otero. Though being somewhat fed-up with the theatre’s neglect I have also produced seven books published and four finished and waiting. Not that they’re exactly selling like hot cakes but at least they are out there in the big wide world for anyone to pick up. Silly me, I invariably do what Ecclesiastes instructs one to do; that is cast my bread upon the waters, a stupid injunction and a stupid thing to do really, it invariably either sinks or comes back soggy and completely inedible

But hey! Nothing venture, nothing gain, when at first you don’t succeed etcetera (full of ye good old clichés I am) on a recent Wednesday I sat down to start on a play I have actually been wanting to write for more years than I can remember and, much to my surprise by the following Tuesday it was finished. Six days! (Noel Coward eat your heart out) Well, because it had been gestating so long I suppose it virtually wrote itself. A couple of days to look it over tweak a bit, polish a bit, add a bit, subtract a bit and there it is – ‘The Muses Darling.’ And, if you are knowledgeable about Elizabethan matters you will know it refers to Christopher Marlowe. Like the recent film ‘Anonymous’ it is a big question mark over the writings attributed to Shakespeare only in this case it is not de Vere but Marlowe. Yes I know, there is nothing new in this theory either, the only new thing about it is a spanking new play. So there you are Master Radcliffe. Maybe when you have finished with all you have on your plate at the moment you might like to consider playing Christopher Marlowe. No? Though, as I have passed my 81^st birthday, I could very well be dead by then. Perhaps Samuel Barnett might like Rosemary but then I should imagine he is probably taken up for a goodly while as well. Hey-ho!

www.glynjones.net

Masturbation

Masturbation – once known as self-abuse – a subject of universal interest from the moment one first learns about or experiences it. There’s no point in denying it and hiding one’s head in shame, everybody does it. There was a time, not so very long ago, when it was believed to be the cause of blindness, madness, and ultimately even death and boys from a tender age were warned in no uncertain terms of the dangers.

 Books for boys were written about it and no doubt the writer at the time was having a jolly good slaver over what he was writing and being frequently forced to wipe his chops so as not to dribble on the paper. I remember as a very young schoolboy a joke played on  innocents which went, if you wank too much you grow hair on your hands, and watching as the young innocent surreptitiously tried to look at his hands to see if it was true and his secret game was up. Was it in the play ‘Boys In The Band’ that a character says the good thing about masturbation is you don’t have to look your best?

So, according to the Sunday Times review, what does Mels van Driel, a Dutch urologist whose previous book was a history of the penis have to say about it in his book, “With The Hand”? Well, from the nineteenth century’s blindness, madness, and certain death we now have: “It is a cure for hiccups and insomnia, (top sheet tapping I know it as) helps keep women’s blood pressure low and reduces the risk of prostate cancer in older men. It features in paintings by Titian and Gorgione, in drawings by Klimnt and Rembrandt (and probably by modern painters like Hockney maybe?) and in writings by everyone from Rousseau to Philip Roth and surprisingly Emily Dickenson. Now there’s a turn up for the books. It is pleasurable and exceedingly common but something we don’t like to talk about. According to Doctor van Driel the anti-masturbation hysteria of the post-Enlightenment was the strange child of Christian distrust of non-procreative sex and quack medicine and began with the Swiss physician Samuel-Auguste Tissot He warned that it causes haemorrhoids, tuberculosis and paralysis and recommended severing the nerves at the head of the penis (Ouch!) His many followers added to the list emaciation, listlessness, asthma, acne, warts, cramps and, yes, blindness and created fresh sadistic cures like “sewing shut” performed without anaesthetic of course. Circumcision was thought to be a preventative and Sylvester Graham, inventor of the cracker, and John Harvey Kellogg came up with their diet-based solutions, though how corn flakes was meant to stop people wanking I simply can’t fathom. Neither can anyone else I shouldn’t wonder. In certain sleazy joints men pay money to be masturbated by an unseen hand and sympathetic medics have been known to do it for patients unable to do it for themselves.

So to wind up, are we humans the only animal who masturbates? Far from it. Parakeets do it, pigeons do it, porcupines do it. Male elephants auto-fellate with their trunks and females give their vulvas a satisfying slap with their tails. Horses do it by slapping the penis against their bellies. And of course our nearest relatives the apes do it. I remember as a kid visiting the Johannesburg zoo where a chimp was a great exhibitionist proudly doing it in front of an audience and if the audience, out of embarrassment, moved, he moved with it keeping up the good work all the while.

Finally there is a wonderful video on the net showing a commentator in the foreground blissfully unaware of a great big buckaroo behind him lying back and wanking itself to a standstill.

Unhappy Muslims

Today’s Blog is not mine and it is very long but I feel important. Put so succinctly and to the point, plain and simple.

       The Muslims are not happy!

       They're not happy in Gaza.
       They're not happy in Egypt.
       They're not happy in Libya.
       They're not happy in Morocco.
       They're not happy in Iran.
       They're not happy in Iraq.
       They're not happy in Yemen.
       They're not happy in Afghanistan.
       They're not happy in Pakistan.
       They're not happy in Syria.
       They're not happy in Lebanon.

       They're not happy in Indonesia.

       So, where are they happy?

       They're happy in Australia.
       They're happy in England.
       They're happy in France.
       They're happy in Italy.
       They're happy in Germany.
       They're happy in Sweden.
       They're happy in the USA.
       They're happy in Norway.
       They're happy in every country that is not Muslim.

       And who do they blame?

       Not Islam.
       Not their leadership.
       Not themselves.
      

       They blame the countries they are happy in.

       And they want to change them to be like the country they came
       from where they were unhappy.

This may have started off as a bit of a joke but, as the old saying has it; many a true word is said in jest.

In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: "Who lost Europe?"
Here is the speech of Geert Wilders, Dutch Member of Parliament, at the Four Seasons in New York.

Dear friends,
Thank you very much for inviting me.

I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.

First, I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe. Then, I will say a few things about Islam. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem.

The Europe you know is changing.

You have probably seen the landmarks. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration.

All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighbourhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighbourhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe . These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe , street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, city by city.

There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe. With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.

Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam , Marseille and Malmo in Sweden . In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighbourhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities.

In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims.

Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear 'whore, whore'. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin.

In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin. The history of the Holocaust can no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity.

In England Sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. (?) Many neighbourhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels, because he was drinking during Ramadan.

Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanyahu, Israel.
A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe . San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.

Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Centre reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France . One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favour of a worldwide caliphate. Muslims demand what they call 'respect'. And this is how we give them respect. We have Muslim official state holidays.

The Christian-Democratic attorney general is willing to accept Sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey.

Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behaviour, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. I call the perpetrators 'settlers,' because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies; they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.

Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighborhoods, their cities, their countries. Moreover, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.

The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behaviour is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a paedophile, and had several marriages - at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad.

Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins but in essence Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means 'submission'. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is Sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.

Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam 'the most retrograde force in the world', and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran. The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor. I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times. I support Israel. First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz; second because it is a democracy, and third because Israel is our first line of defence.

This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam's territorial advance. Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines, Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan , Lebanon , and Aceh in Indonesia . Israel is simply in the way. The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.

The war against Israel is not a war against Israel. It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel, Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming.

Many in Europe argue in favour of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behaviour and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel, they can get everything. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a 'right-wing extremists' or 'racists'. In my country, the Netherlands, 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat. Yet there is a greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing. The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine. An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America - as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem....

Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe, American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe’s children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.

We have to take the necessary action now to stop this Islamic stupidity from destroying the free world that we know.

Please take the time to read and understand what is written here. Please send it to every free person that you know, it is so very important.




 

 

Books

Books, books, books –another batch of Sunday Times Kultur and the book sections are awash with interesting new publications that I know we simply can’t afford but interesting reviews nevertheless. To begin with there are a number of new biographies: Joseph Roth, Michelangelo (Vol.1), J. Bruce Ismay (Titanic), “Under our Skin” a white family’s journey through South Africa’s darkest years, “Why Be Happy When You could Be Normal?” By Jeanette Winterson, Strindberg – what a character – wrote 60 plays, 18 novels, nine volumes of autobiography, his private life a disaster. Wilkie Collins – another weird character, Christopher Isherwood, Henry Miller, Simon Cowell (!!!??? Only joking –can’t wait not to get this one), Edith Sitwell, “Leaving Alexandria” the autobiography of Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh who left the church. A fascinating story by the sound of it, “The Man Without A face” The unlikely rise of Vladimir Putin and a new biography of TE Lawrence. Is that enough to be getting on with do you suppose? But biographies apart there is “The Great Sea” A human history of the Mediterranean, “London in the Eighteenth Century” – a regular cesspool whichever way you look at it. “Savage Continent”: Europe in the aftermath of World War Two. “Thomas Becket” – or should this one be under biography? “Enemies”: A History of the FBI. “The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England.” “With The Hand”: A Cultural History of masturbation. (And this one deserves a quote later.) “Seasons Of The Sun”: The Battle For Britain 1974-1979. And this one, with the influx of immigrants since then, particularly Muslim, I should think definitely needs updating!

“A History of Ancient Egypt”: From the first farmers to the great pyramid. “In The Shadow of the Sword”: The battle for global empire and the end of the ancient world. “The Spanish Holocaust”: Inquisition and extermination in twentieth century Spain. Well that little lot would keep me busy for a while, no?

Have finally finished the rewrite of my third novel, ‘Torque.’ (That is apart from the Thornton Kings of which there are now six – two waiting in the wings). It has taken longer than anything else I’ve ever worked on. I can’t remember exactly when I started on it but it must be well over two years ago; but it’s not really surprising because I only came back to it whenever I felt in the mood and other things took precedence: for example a new play ‘Marry Go Round,’ and the two Thornton King books, ‘Celluloid and Tinsel’ and ‘Men and their Toys’ still to be published. Also ‘The Museum Mysteries’ that Douglas is currently proofing, hopefully for the last time. It’s amazing how many times you can proof read a manuscript and still miss mistakes. In every book I read these days I am certain to come across a typo or other mistake somewhere along the way. Now he is adamant he won’t put up with any mistakes, certainly not if he can help it.

He reread ‘Dead on Time,’ published in the United States a few years back and decided it’s not up to standard so has republished it. I have to admit, looking at it, it’s a great improvement. Apologies to all those who bought the original. At the time we thought it was terrific. Four years later with that much more experience – in presentation it doesn’t appear to be quite so terrific. That’s not to say it isn’t eminently readable. Take my word for it, I have just reread it and enjoyed it immensely, as Oscar Wilde might have said. Tee-hee!

Chris has been having a little contretemps with Amazon UK. His Champagne Charlie biography, ‘The Heaviest Of Swells,’ as everyone must surely know by now, was shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize 2012 and he wanted to put that piece of information on Amazon under the book’s title but was told that was not policy so was refused. Title only thank you very much. Oh Yes? So why was it allowed for the winner of the prize? Anyway a flurry of back and forth e-mails resulted I’m afraid in the winning book losing its accolade, Oh dear! The playing field was now even. But, to add insult to injury, rub salt in the wound, turn the screw, and anything else you might think of, Amazon e-mailed Chris with a list of “theatre” books he might find enjoyable and guess what was on top of the list? You guessed it, the winner of the 2012 theatre book prize.

Gosh, how about that?

Fruit

Forty kilos of apricots and more still on the tree but inaccessible because the ‘Pride of Madeira,’ not realising how big it would grow, was planted too close, making it impossible to get to some branches. The shrub itself is not only enormous but so beautiful with its huge rosettes of bright blue flowers, quite spectacular, but there are still apricots on the branches above it and littering the ground below. Having used all the fruit we could, carrier bags full have been given away to friends and neighbours and, in exchange, we have had more than a dozen eggs and fourteen litres of olive oil. The second apricot tree that ripens a little later is already laden and fruit ripening so there’s another bumper crop coming and the fruit on our one and only plum tree is also about ready. Its branches are so heavy with fruit they are practically hanging vertically. That too needs severe pruning later in the year. We did have two plums in the garden and a different variety in the courtyard but one died and the one in the courtyard developed a fungus and had to be severely cut back so no fruit from that this year. I see the avocado has flowered so maybe we’ll get some pears later and the prickly pear is laden. That too will have to be severely cut back but the big problem with prickly pear is what to do with the bulky cuttings? It is the most amazing plant. Leave a leaf or a portion lying on the ground and you can be sure it will eventually take root. When Douglas and I came back from Italy some years ago, where we went in search of family history, we brought Chris a bottle of prickly pear liqueur; I wonder if I can make a prickly pear wine. Don’t see why not. Actually, on second thoughts, I think I’ll confine myself to the next lot of apricots. There are already nine demijohns of homemade fruit wine waiting to be bottled.

Douglas always had trouble starting the old petrol driven chain saw so bought himself an electric one and the nectarine has finally been cut to a six inch stump. Not only that but he has cut down an enormous fig taking up much too much space under a walnut tree and there is a month’s supply of wood from it; not this next winter maybe but the winter after. The trunk is a good five inches or more across. It was laden with fruit but unfortunately it is a male and the fruit is inedible, otherwise it wouldn’t have been taken down. We do have another, a winter fig. It is unbelievable how big everything has grown in the garden all of which needs drastically cutting back. I brought some seeds from Australia like nine years ago and the tree I planted is now something like forty feet high! We have also, having cut down the fig, found a good place to plant my loquat I have grown from a pip. It is the loquat season at the moment, unfortunately a very short season, just a couple of weeks or so, and I do love them, one of my favourite fruits.  The mature tree we already have seems to have developed that fungus as well and what fruit there is is grey and shrivelled so nothing from it this year. Greeks call loquats moosmoola but the Cretans have to be different and here they are called thespoola. It’s no wonder my Greek is still so poor, even after nearly sixteen years.

Everything is bone dry at the moment and we desperately need rain. The days can come over cloudy but soon the clouds disperse. Some shrubs are looking very dodgy and although we have a watering system it doesn’t seem to get everywhere. Guess it’s watering can and hosepipe time and summer is only just with us.

Pastor Charles Worley

Pastor Charles Worley of the providence Road Baptist church in North Carolina has come up with a stunning plan “to get rid of all queers and lesbians.” And exactly what is this stunning amazing brilliant wonderful fantastic final solution kind of plan? A concentration camp no less. “Build a great big large fence 150 by 100,” he says, “put them in there, feed them and in a few years they will soon die out as they cannot reproduce.” If this were not so inane as to beggar the imagination it would be laughable except of course that fundamentalist Christians are not exactly known for their sense of humour. Obviously the rev. (sic) Worley believes homosexuality is a one-off thing existing in one generation and once the current batch have been dispatched, hey presto, no more poovery! Hitler had the same brilliant idea which is why there are no homosexuals in Germany today. Not in Austria, Poland, or any other country the Germans overran; all eliminated for once and all.

As I say, Christians do not on the whole have a sense of humour and if the rev. intended this as a joke it was a truly sick one. On the other hand if he seriously believes what he says he must have the intelligence of a roach. In fact a roach, having survived billions of years, is probably the cleverer.  How could he lay himself open to obvious ridicule if he weren’t a total idiot and as thick as two planks? Let’s seriously consider his plan. Firstly, would his 150/100 be large enough to hold all the gays, lesbians and bisexuals in America and how would he root out all the unobvious married ones or those still in the closet and, if those of the current generation don’t die off fast enough, how is he going to make room for those coming of age as it were?  Who exactly is going to do the rounding up? I am led to believe in the Third Reich it was the butch non-obvious band of brothers type in the SS who hounded and gave away their weaker brethren whose obviousness could queer their pitch (apt saying that, no?) It is a fact that the warrior class are renowned for their homosexuality but at least the Theban Band and the Japanese Samurai behaved nobly, unlike their SS counterparts. Secondly if Kinsey and other sexologists are correct he will be denying society a significant number of its work force and who is going to pay for all the food so many hungry mouths will need in their camp? The Nazis solved the problem by simply not feeding their prisoners and letting them starve to death but their camps did not last, being in duration no more than eight years before being finally liberated at the end of World War Two, so that still doesn’t solve the problem of the continual yearly input for ever and ever and ever and ever.

Does the reverend firmly believe he numbers no homosexuals among his acquaintances, friends, family, and relations? Or that his Baptist congregation is entirely immune to this dreadful sin? Chance would be a fine thing. His ignorance is appalling. Churches do breed some truly weird specimens or some truly weird specimens disgrace their church.

There is an old saying that goes something like “methinks the lady protesteth too much” and I cannot help but feel this could very well apply to our rev. noting his hatred, his spleen, and his obvious fear. Self denial and the dark of the closet is safer than the bright light of day.

Poverty and Riches

As parts of the world seem to be in such a financial mess: in Greece, women are taking their children to homes because they can no longer afford to keep them and one whole town is on the verge of bankruptcy. There are no jobs, no income and no social fallback and the soup kitchen queues grow longer and longer, so let’s talk about rich and poor. Yes, I know, I know, I’m on one of my soapboxes again, but the unfairness of it all never ceases to anger me. How many thousands spend their time scavenging through the filth of city rubbish dumps in the hope of finding something they might find resalable, perhaps finding something still edible and eking out a few pennies to keep body and soul together?

In 2005 the UN said between 1.2 and 1.5 million children lived on Pakistan's streets - but activists say their numbers are rising. Most of the street children live in the southern city of Karachi. Apart from abuse deprivation is the biggest reason forcing parents to abandon such children or compelling children to leave home.

Most of them work up to seven hours a day in the blistering heat. "I collect plastic bottles," one says, "and other things I can sell on to be recycled."  It earns him about a 100 rupees a day ($1: 70).  Some of the children are no older than five or six and on the streets great dangers await. Most of the children are picked up and recruited into gangs within a few weeks. Others are forced to become commercial sex workers. Rana Asif - who runs the Centre for Street Children charity - puts the blame for this on the government: "Police are not providing protection to children," he says.” But it is providing protection to criminals and abusers. They have their own interests and get financial benefit through children's activities.” And they're getting cuts from criminal gangs. That's why police are not helping these children." The police themselves of course deny it. Other local charities and social activists confirm this view. They say that it is not just criminal gangs targeting these kids - jihadi groups also scour the streets looking for easy recruits. Karachi is not the only city and Pakistan not the only country where unwanted children so young have to fend for themselves.
Meanwhile in India, and god knows there are enough existing beneath the poverty line there,  the wealthiest man has a multi- story home built filled with all mod cons and all the riches and wonders of the East. It is a monstrosity of higgledy-piggledy architecture, possibly the ugliest building ever built. It looks like a tower of assorted boxes piled atop each other and all about to fall off and, together with its contents it cost multi-millions and they are naturally very proud of it.
In Zimbabwe with its people also on the poverty line that megalomaniac monster Mugabe has a palace built of the most extraordinary lushness, extravagance, vulgarity, and bad taste and that little edifice also cost millions. I suppose the Mugabe’s needed all that space for Mrs. to store all the luxury shopping she’s indulged in when in Europe. Is this where all the aid goes to?
And in the UK the bonus culture is alive and kicking. Four directors of an English firm are being paid a bonus of fifty seven million between them and BT’s annual report informs the world that the boss, Ian Livingston’s income last year including payouts was £7.7million.
The labourer might very well be worthy of his hire but this has become totally obscene. In Hong Kong the Martian pink diamond has sold for $17.4million. I say it yet again: it’s a mad, mad world, my masters.

Auschwitz

While on the subject of Jews and the holocaust, some time ago when watching that moving little film “The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas” I was struck by the fact that the commandant and his family lived in this luxurious villa and a gate, through which his son Bruno stole away led, after a short distance, to the camp and I wondered at the time how accurate this could be. Well I now have the answer – it was pretty close. An article in News Headlines – Nazi legacy – about descendents of those criminals tried to analyse how they cope bearing the names of Himmler, Goering, Goeth and Hoess, names that still have the power to evoke the horrors of Nazi Germany, what is it like to live with the legacy of those surnames, and is it ever possible to move on from the terrible crimes committed by your ancestors?  When he was a child Rainer Hoess was shown a family heirloom; he remembers his mother lifting the heavy lid of the fireproof chest with a large swastika on the lid, revealing bundles of family photos. They featured his father as a young child playing with his brothers and sisters, in the garden of their grand family home. The photos show a pool with a slide and a sand pit - an idyllic family setting - but one that was separated from the gas chambers of Auschwitz by just a few yards. His grandfather Rudolf Hoess was the first commandant of Auschwitz. His father grew up in that villa adjoining the camp, where he and his siblings played with toys made by prisoners. It was where his grandmother told the children to wash the strawberries they picked because they smelled of ash from the concentration camp ovens. That is so sick it’s hard to believe isn’t it? Rainer is haunted by the garden gate he spotted in the photos that went straight into the camp - he calls it the "gate to hell". Rainer’s father, that child playing happily in the sandpit, never abandoned the ideology he grew up with and Rainer no longer has contact with him, as he attempts to cope with his family's guilt and shame. He decided he had to visit the heart of that shame - Auschwitz. As a child he was not allowed on school trips to Auschwitz because of his surname, but as an adult in his forties, he felt the need to face "the reality of the horror and the lies I've had all these years in my family".  Seeing his father's childhood home he broke down and kept repeating the word "insanity". He could not speak at all when he saw the "gate to hell".

After my Blog on Sharia I received this by e-mail –

We should know more about these people who proclaim us “the enemy”, whom it is their duty to kill in the name of their god. Islamic law is not confined to the basic laws defined in the Koran. It also includes the hadith, purportedly the considered sayings of Mohammed, and the Fatawa. The latter are rulings similar to Anglo-American case law.

Just reading the Koran gives one little insight into concepts such as Taqiyya, for instance, whereby it is a Muslim’s duty to lie to an unbeliever in order to save himself or to advance the cause of Islam, especially in what the individual Muslim regards as a Jihad. This is based on a hadith. As regards fatawa, it is usually up to an individual Muslim to act according to them or not.

Here are some fatawa from the famous Ayatollah who took power in Iran:

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, The Supreme Leader of Iran, the Shia Grand Ayatollah, 1979-89 said in his official statements: (mothers of America take note)

"A man can quench his sexual lusts with a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate.

Sodomizing the baby is halal (allowed by Sharia law).

If the man penetrates and damages the child, then he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl, however, does not count as one of his four permanent wives. The man will not be eligible to marry the girl’s sister. It is better for a girl to marry when her menstruation starts, and at her husband's house rather than her father's home. Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven."

Khomeini, "Tahrirolvasyleh" fourth volume, Darol Elm, Gom, Iran, 1990

“It is not illegal for an adult male to 'thigh' or enjoy a young girl who is still in the age of weaning; meaning to place his penis between her thighs, and to kiss her.”

The west does its best to fight paedophilia: in the east the Ayatollahs actively encourage it. I am of the firm belief that the world is going to hell in a hand basket.

 

The Jew

Ten thousand ultra-orthodox Jews in New York descended on a stadium to discuss their worries about the internet and how they believe it is damaging their faith and way of life. A whole crowd of other Jews gathered outside to oppose the Ultra-Orthodox Jews inside. Those of us who stop to think about it consider anti-Semitism both today and its history wholly horrific. There are those of course who are so fanatical they don’t stop to think of it, in fact they don’t think at all. Why is it that all religions starting off as a unity will, with the passage of time, become fragmented and in many cases turn decidedly murderous? Catholic versus Protestant – a hundred different Protestant sects agreeing to disagree – Sufi versus Shia and other Muslim sects each with their own agenda, each being the one true faith, all of them at each other’s throats and, as far as I am concerned, all of them totally illusioned. The answer I suppose is that, Christian, Islam, Judaism or any other religious belief, none of it is down to God. From the very beginning it is all down to humans. Well, Christians and Muslims may be at loggerheads with each other but that does not apply to the Jews surely who, have suffered painful discrimination and a history of horror over the millennia. They must surely be united in both their religion and their race? Yes, you would think so, but evidently not. A book has recently been published, “On The Eve: The Jews of Europe before the Second World War” by Bernard Wasserstein. I quote from the Dominic Sandbrook revue in The Sunday Times – “Yet there is nothing rose-tinted about Wasserstein’s book. Unlike many writers, he does not romanticise the rural Jewish village of Eastern Europe, and he has some superb passages on the poverty, filth and sheer claustrophobia of much shtetl life…” but here comes the most interesting section… “And he is excellent on the bitter rivalries between different kinds of Jews. So-called Litvaks from modern Lithuania and Belarus were mocked by other Jews as cold and unemotional whilst the average Galitsyaner from southern Poland and western Ukraine was supposedly sly, crafty, and unreliable. Orthodox Jews had little time for Zionists ‘May the Lord rebuke you, O Satan, who choose Jerusalem!’ wrote one conservative rabbi. Above all western Jews looked down on their eastern brethren.”

 “The Frankfurt Jew despises the Berlin Jew, the Berlin Jew despises the Viennese Jew, the Viennese Jew despises the Warsaw Jew,” observed the brilliant writer Joseph Roth. “Then there are Jews from all the way back in Galicia, upon whom, they all look down, and that’s where I come from, the lowest of the Jews.”

All this of course was before the horror of the Holocaust. I wonder how much might have changed since then if at all. Judging by the Ultra-Orthodox in the stadium and the placards wielded by the protesters outside maybe not so much. As they are God’s chosen people God really should take time out to knock their heads together but he’s either looking in the opposite direction or occupied with matters elsewhere and anyway, alas, no amount of head knocking will eradicate those age-old differences. Have you ever heard the expression you are your own worst enemy? It makes one think of Ogden Nash’s verse

How odd of God

To choose the Jews!

Those in the stadium despise those outside while those outside despise those inside. Interesting, fascinating, but sad that human beings have to behave this way.