As an Iranian I was very offended by the movie “300” (and the comic by Frank Miller, in my opinion a complete racist in his work). I have always been offended by the insistence of  the West and, by effect the World to take Herodotus history as fact.

Now anyone who has ever read this blog will know that I am by no means patriotic. I have never held with love of nation, fatherland or any of that way of thinking. Nonetheless I am an Iranian. I am also deeply interested in history. It is my heartfelt belief that in misrepresenting and downright lying about history, in propagating falsehoods we do more damage to international relations than perhaps almost any other form of political propaganda. Anyway the history of nations is often used to back up jingoism and lies for the purposes of political propaganda in the now.

The news is constantly filled with historical inaccuracies and falsehoods. We are told barefaced lies on a daily basis about the history of events, whether they be recent history or old.

Below is a very interesting article by an Iranian film maker trying to tell the history of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire, through an as yet unfinished film to try and balance the books a little.

The Truth Behind 300 the movie

I have written to the author for his permission to post his very interesting article here. If and when I have his permission I shall post it in full here.

My father was occupied by two diametrically opposed demons.

One was his incredible gentleness. A kind man who loved deeply, who gave broadly and open handedly. Generous to a fault I believe the stock phrase goes.

Yet there was this other side of him that had glorified, idolised, sanctified the concept of MAN!

The Male, the masculine. It was jingoistic, it was almost religious in impulse. Oh and what manliness.

Well muscled but not bulky. A stance that was solid yet not stolid or stiff. A fluidity of movement, a grace that was akin to a jaguar’s. A well developed sense of personal care and, preening stopping just short of the effeminate!

And a highly developed charm honed specifically for maximum impact on women!

And how it worked. It was incredible to watch. A thing of beauty and grace.

The women, in droves, in whole gaggles falling at his feet. Enraptured by his poles of sexual magnetism. Every one a willing, perhaps even joyous satellite. Most not even expecting reciprocity. Just there to bask. I remember one look from him getting some into paroxysms of glowing, feral submission.

My mother, no small beauty in her own right, took years to work out that the charm wasn’t just a display thing, it had function. It got him women. For real, he slept with hundreds of them. And every one of them was left believing herself to be the one. Drawing whole architectural plans to corral him and get exclusive dibs on him. Every one of them convinced that she was the one where his lights shone brightest.

But really what else is there? He was all man. What’s more he believed in it. He moulded his life around it. To him manliness was the highest desire and possible achievement. The highest accolade. The greatest prize. That damn code.

It spoke of honour, of spirit, strength, control, dignity. It consumed him, sang to him when he awoke in the morning, when he climbed into that cockpit, when he teased his plane up into the clouds in one smooth motion. At night when he walked into a bar or a party all eyes, male as well as female just inexorably locked onto him.

He looked perfect in that damn uniform. His captain’s cap at just the right angle, never tipping into camp rakishness. His jacket and braids perfectly smooth and sitting like they were sculpted unto his perfect form. Shoulders broad as the world, hips and waist tastefully narrow and svelte. Trouser seams sharp as razor blades and shoes jet black, with a sheen that would be the envy of the most demanding barracks martinet.

And then the quiet instruction. That deep battle rumble of his… “All the drinks are on me tonight” semi whispered to the barman. No one must hear it except the barman since there was no honour in showing off about an act of generosity.

When he disappeared on occasion into the desert, with his rifle, knife and minimal camping gear, for days on end, not to be heard from until he returned with at least a whole venison or mouflon on the back of his jeep. No mention was made, no fuss, no stories about what went on in that time spent communing with his deepest manly nature. Exchanging blows with Nature herself. And surviving no, more, triumphing over her. Unscathed. Battling serpents with the knife or the bare hand and winning.

All, every action precisely aligned to the rules of manliness. Never breaking covenant with his male soul. Or that of his glorious ancestors. But what?

What did he see when he looked in the mirror during those ceremonial two hour long shaving sessions? When he had to have everything just so. Naked down to a simple towel wrapped around his waist. His cigarettes handy, near by with his favourite ashtray. His glass of fresh strong black tea and the two lumps of sugar. His little towel which he bunched on the floor to prop his travelling mirror on. Finding the best spot in the sitting room so he could catch the sun on his beard. The four passes with his razor, always neatly broken in half so he could use one half for the first two passes then wash and change to a fresh razor and two more passes with that blade.

What was it he saw? A heroic, mythical figure? A demigod? A direct descendant of Xerxes and Darius?

What did he see? Really? Was he pleased with the man he saw? Did it calm his raging insecurity? did he believe that he was real? That he was there? that he meant something, that there was sense to him, that his was at least a real humanity? Did the numerous women appease his sense of self finally?

All those answers were stolen from, lost to me by the simple decision of my mother finally to relocate as far from him as possible. I will never now get the chance to face him as a man in my own right, proven so, to sit with him over a drink and ask him, looking him in those deep set eyes, in later life so haunted, so sad. I will never look into those eyes and know a little of what he meant, to me, to himself, to the world.

He was, as far as I could make out a failure. He failed in the very things he set the most store by. His central core of masculine honour was never to recover from the simple acts of betrayal he piled onto his promise to my mother, burying it deeper than was possible to dig back out. He made some amends with his third wife, my mother was his second. The first he walked out on, on their wedding day, during the ceremony. He stuck by her, he brought up their son with her. But by then he was a broken man, a mere skeleton of what he had built his entire life around.

And he made sure that he passed his religion unto his second son, since his first had grown into a man while he was still oscillating between his drives and his honour. His first son who was, to his reckoning stolen away from him, who was probably feminised by the company of women. And yet his belief in the power of his manly genes was so strong that he simply took it for granted that even with that this first son was nevertheless a real man. As much as said so when we finally talked after a thirty year break.

He brought up his second son to feel a feverish need to rejoin his first. His younger son grew up believing that his big, glorious, lost brother was out there waiting for the right time to come be with him again, to take him in his manly arms and make him whole. Thirty years of waiting for this.

Somehow he even managed to do the same things as his big brother had done. I don’t know how but he had followed a similar trajectory as his big brother. He became a designer and a musician. Had his own band. Made fonts for god sake!!!

And of course he looked something like his big brother.

All this my father wrought. He deliberately found his truth in myth and legend rather than ever face the reality of things. That his first son was long gone. His belief in blood, that legendary, holy substance stronger than the simple facts of life. Proximity had no power over blood. Distance had no effect weakening a bond. Blood was blood and there it ended. Nothing could supersede it.

And really what a story my father’s was. A man lost to his father at the age of seven. A whore of a mother, no worse, a pimp of a mother who had driven his gentle father away. With her using of her own sister to set up a successful pimp’s racket during the second world war. She had driven his father away, she had brought every one she touched into her sphere of usury and her own narrow interests. She who had bullied him into submitting to her warped will. How was he ever to survive that woman.

And perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps his need to be perceived by all, all as an absolute quintessence of man was directly related to the ignominy of his mother. Harridan, bitch, whore… I’ll show her what a man is made of.

It is not for me to say. I am no psychologist, nor do I believe in the narrow, easy answers of the armchair psychologist. I will leave him there. I will bid him farewell and rest in peace. Perhaps that was precisely what he sought. Peace. A quieting of the incessant, insistent voices that plagued his every hour. That fuelled his need to find respite in the temple of the eternal masculine.

Vishy (14 June 2010)

And now it seems
as if we’re used to the chagrin
We made our beds
and now we hate where these beds be
Took nothing at all to part this Red Sea
I’m a shackled child
singing the good song of Freedom

They’ve got no pride
they interrupt our grieving
Tear drop dropping
for the pain of the world

My best friend dies
when she was just a young girl
Left me here, to fend for myself
Now the pain never leaves
We just learn to cope

so when the devil needs hanging
will you tie up the rope and shout PULL!?
Let’s put an end to this bull
zen thing
How many years
before we practice what we preach?
How many tears
before we truly clinch the peak?
Only to find that
there is no honey on the moon
Official goon
with the unofficial croon

I’m All Things to All Men
All of the Women
All the Children
Just say when
and I’ll take you to my Tardis
Who’s the Hardest?
Who’s the Hardest?

16 bar cycles
heart felt recital
from the wacky blacky man
they should have called me Michael
Look at the monster you make
look at the monster you pay
But you claim no responsibility
cause it’s each to his self
in these times that we live

Does God have a sense of humour?
Then the joke’s on us
Cause we’re chasing our tails
for how long?
The tussle makes us how strong?
vintage poor people fun
If we could ease up on these booze and fags
then, just maybe
life wouldn’t be so mad

Be a man my dad said
but what the hell he know?
he lost his dreams
he lost his flow
And I don’t wanna be alone

I’m born King
so where’s my throne?
I’m too intense
I’m too deep
I’m too nice for life
So what makes this place so nervous?

I’m All Things to All Men
All of the Women
All the Children
Just say when
and I’ll take you to my Tardis
Who’s the Hardest?
Who’s the Hardest?

Look at the monster you make
look at the monster you pay
But you claim no responsibility
but you claim none
We’re searching for Jesus
but I’ll be damned
if I’ll be crucified by 10,000 spies
compulsive lies

They Hate Me
They Love Me
They Hate Me
Cause I’m All Things to All Men, All of the Women, All the Children
Just say when and I’ll take you to my Tardis
Who’s the Hardest, Who’s the Hardest?

Lyrics: Roots Manuva, Music: The Cinematic Orchestra,

Song: “All Things to All Men”, from the album “Every Day”, The Cinematic Orchestra, 2002

Since my last posting the world has changed some more (what a surprise!) and I’ve been getting older (!) and events have become even less easy to unravel and decipher.

We are in the middle of a major crash, some say an invention of those who would benefit most from it (my how many surprises can one mind take in one day?). Vast and obscene atrocities continue to be committed in the name of all the usual suspects, war on terror, the prodding of one dangerous loony dictator and the cuddling of another continue unabated. Our freedoms have taken a few more severe knocks, and our world is a little closer to the brink of utter catastrophe.

And yet we still hanker after the same tired gains no matter how small, no matter how puny. While our cultures become poorer every day with an ever growing diet of absolute dross on our media. The spinners go on spinning and the broadcasters go on pocketing profit from our foolishness and our lack of gumption. Our health and education systems failed a long time ago yet we cared none and did even less to save them. Our basic democratic rights have been almost entirely wiped out, yet we smile for the cameras and allow ourselves to believe it’s for our own good!

We cheered when finally someone who looked really worth voting for became the president of the most powerful nation in history, yet we see little real change. I never did expect change to be fast, but patience is a fragile virtue. After that it sinks into the black hole of despair. And maybe we are all in despair right now, maybe that is why we are so inactive. I wish this was the case but we have been inactive for a long time.

As an Iranian I thought I saw the seeds of counter-revolution germinating in my country in the lead up to the placebo elections there recently. I thought I saw the same patterns as the original revolution of 78-79 unfolding. Yet still nothing. The king is back in his castle and all is business as usual. My countrymen are still tortured and left to rot in Evin and how many other secret or not so secret political prisons. The so called president continues to bully support out of a sniveling, sycophantic clergy. The youth, our last best hope seem to have slowly shrunk back into their little underground scenes and the rest live under the same oppressive paternalistic government as if they have given up hope. News from Iran has lost its bite so the media no longer look at it for us, for what little worth they have when they do. And here we are again, back at starting point wondering where the revolution went.

Still also worrying about our planet and doing less than zero for it. Letting the politicians and big business of every colour and shape feed us the opium of reassurance so we can go on for a bit longer destroying, wasting and bleeding our planet dry. Hoping that the ice caps won’t really melt and destroy every coastal settlement we ever built, hoping that the rain forests will somehow manage to survive and that the fish in the sea will magically revive and be plentiful again. Anything, any last straw we can clutch at to make us believe we didn’t really fuck up as badly as all that. Making ourselves accept thinly disguised lies, transparent to a babe in arms comfort us, so we can keep driving those huge 4×4′s and keep wasting water as if the rains will somehow miraculously replace the billions of cubic tons of irreplaceable water that we waste and pollute annually. As if!

And so it goes. Appeasement rather than solution, ignorance rather than clear-eyed analysis, chatter rather than communication and reality shows instead of reality. Even our definitions, my old bug bear, keep shifting so that torture is now unashamedly referred to as “Enhanced Interrogation” and we do not feel so bad anymore. “Oh no we did not spend the last years since 9/11 torturing random bastards and destroy their lives for good, we questioned them using enhanced interrogation methods to get to the intell we need to defend ourselves! I heard it from the mouth of our former Secretary of State, so it must be true. You bet ya!”. We made friends of monsters in order to fight other monsters we ourselves invented and empowered. We got in bed with oppressors from one place to help take out oppressors from another, all the while ignoring genocide, starvation, growing fascism world wide. We let the Communists wear suit and tie and become “democratic” so that a Putin can carry on the work where Stalin left off. All the while convincing ourselves that selling Russia by the pound to the ex-party members who are now devout gangsters was allowing the people express their freedom.

In Iran the Shah’s organ of primary terror, the SAVAK is still in place, with hardly a step missed, unchanged, unpunished and unrepentant continuing the hard work of enhanced interrogation for the good of yet another bastard dictator. What changed except a few touches of powder and rouge? Nothing of any significance, except of course we are that many inches closer to the final disaster, that many years nearer the precipice of mass suicide.

This stupid, blind species of cave gargoyles we call human is still where it was a million years ago except that it is now equipped with a mobile phone, GPS, PDA and a 4×4 and no where to go.

a line from a poem by South African poet Willie Kgositsile

Small token of respect to the Last Poets.

Sunday, August the 6th was the 61st anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.

Once more the thought of what that day brought upon not just Japan, but the rest of history is a sharp thorn that continues to draw blood from our collective vein.

Yet right now in the Middle East we’re witnessing a situation being pushed towards the inevitable. That Lebanon is being laid waste is in and of itself tragic and lunatic enough, but that that apparently local dispute can lead to new Hiroshimas of far greater scale and destruction is immeasurably more chilling. While any criticism of Israeli action is being shouted down as yet another expression of the rest of the world’s anti-Semitism, Western governments are sitting on their hands and trying hard to ignore the ramifications of an expanding Middle Eastern war. Escalating an explosive situation such as we know exists in the Middle East is short sighted to say the least.

The foolishness of the Arab world in still clinging to the idea that Israel can, or indeed should be removed, and Israeli bullishness in defence of its perceived territory, coupled with Western insistence on not understanding that freedom means different things to different cultures, and that the exercise of Democracy is not necessarily the only route to creating a free nation, at least not the American brand of that philosophy, has put us on a path whose only destination can be disaster and annihilation. The evangelism of the US leadership, the wrong-headedness of the notion that there is only one model for freedom, and the hypocritical example being set daily that tells us that if we do not agree with American policy then we shall have it bombed into us, and the implied license that this mode of operation grants to all nations is a heady mix on its own. Add to that the growing belligerence of Islamic doctrine, the deliberate misrepresentation of Islamic belief and its coercion into a narrow tool for the furtherance of political ambitions in the Middle East, the continual misguiding of the Muslim populace into more and more extreme modes of so called Fundamental Islamism, and you have perhaps one of the most potent explosive mixtures we have seen since the Cold War supposedly ended.

Garrulous and rampant US and British Hawkishness is supplying an effective fast-burning fuse to blow this mix sky high.

There is a purported gathering of opposition in the ranks of the Western nations against the various policies and actions that are taking shape in Middle East. The symptoms of this present disaster were already fully detectable from the moment those two aircraft shattered the twin towers. The West chose a gloves-off policy and propaganda that could only lead us to a scenario closely resembling the action we see unfolding today. The tacit licensing of Israeli over-reaction, the correct degree of pressure to push an already ailing and alienated Muslim World into a vortex of paranoia and enmity, the encouragement of Iran towards more and more extreme forms of government, the barely unspoken go-ahead to Pakistan to see hope in its territorial ambitions towards India, and the uncountable other minor and major resurrections of territorial disputes and secessionist ideologies being reborn across the globe, are all disasters that could have been avoided, if the correct form of diplomacy had been applied to the handling of these sensitive and highly predictable situations. Yet the US still insists on crippling any attempt towards calming the situation down, by simply obfuscating the issues, and refusing to take a decisive hand in correcting its own mistakes and mishandling of the events now taking place. The UN, once a great and hopeful potential force for the rule of reason in world politics, has been limping badly for years and is now fully hobbled by the insertion of a US ambassador transparently hostile to the entire institution, whose sole aim seems to be using the already fabulously over-used US power of veto, with the result of making that flawed organisation appear even more superfluous than ever.

What of the much vaunted axis forming between Iran, Syria and Hizbollah? Is there any truth in the awesome capacities of this alliance? I honestly doubt that in the event of an attack by Israel on Syria, Iran will be able to send any significant military help or indeed any help at all, except perhaps its good will, to help Syria. Consider the geography. There is a huge, US controlled land and air space separating the two main arms of this axis. For Iran to significantly send support to Syria, she has first to fight her way through Iraq, thereby engaging itself in full combat with the US, on land and in the air. Meanwhile Syria, deeply accessible to Israel will find itself effectively crippled in a short space of time, if the example of the Six Day War is anything to go by. I have heard that one route of access for Iran is through Turkey. But the Turkish-Iranian border is well protected by US troop reserves stationed there, from what I understand. At any rate at this time Turkey is trying to join the European Union and would certainly think hard and deep about alienating its prospective allies by helping Iran. Given all that, and even believing the alliance between Iran and Syria not to be at best bravado and at worst a sham, I personally can see no effective way for Iran being a contender against Israel except in empty threats and theatrical chest thumping.

Israel on the other hand has made its intentions perfectly clear, its desire to create a wide no-man’s land, a de-militarised buffer zone about its perimeter, by simply laying waste to its neighbouring countries, is a classically simple and effective form of preventative defence strategy. With all of Iran and Syria’s bluster, if Israel decides to carry its present action to its logical conclusion it can not fail to succeed in removing all effective opposition from about its national boundaries. With the US keeping its back safe, Israel can in a matter of months, establish a massive safe zone around itself, thereby creating a core of safety inside its present borders, that would ultimately be an impenetrable fortress against all comers. And short of serious and massive long-range capability on the part of its enemies, it would fully control the entire region as the sole military might, capable of setting all the rules in the Middle East. In case it has missed anyone’s notice, Israel at present is the only nation in the region capable of reducing even far away Iran to rubble, with the massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction supplied to it by the US and her Allies, not to mention its own formidable capacity in weapons manufacture.

Thus neutralised the Arab alliances will not do very much but crumble in the face insurmountable odds. Arab alliances have historically been shaky at the best of times, and a factor that habitually gets overlooked in Western propaganda is that the Arabs have been no better at keeping a united front amongst themselves than the rest of the world has. At the slightest sign of trouble they are likely to quietly back out of any vows of union they have apparently made between themselves. The Arab world is far more tribal in structure still than the West likes to give them credit for. It serves Western propaganda well to present the Muslim world as a monolithic union of fanatical adherence, but this is at best a misunderstanding of the dynamics extant in that world, and at worst the meanest of scare tactics employed to de-humanise the entire Arab world, in order to gain popular support for holding them to ransom by an increasingly resource hungry West.

Looking back on what I’ve written above something struck me. It reads like the description of events from an older epoch, a positively Medieval flavour. Speaking in 2006 of conquest and intrigue, I feel a definite thrum of familiarity run through me, like reading back an essay on the history of a lost period, when knights battled over control of European feudal lands, of political marriages, of false treaties and deals struck in a bid for gaining the upper hand. Somehow it seemed that the Second World War had put an end to all that. But if there is a shred of truth in my analysis above then we have certainly not changed in the least, except perhaps in the scope of our ambitions, and in the power of our destruction.

I am sure I will get comments asking me to propose a solution to the problems I’ve outlined here. Very well I can only express the most obvious solution, since it is shiningly clear what the solution is, and has always been. Truth, telling it like it is, disseminating the actual facts of the situation and letting Justice take its course is the only true solution. That Israel must exist, but an Israel that does not abuse its power, an Israel that will be a just friend to the people it has displaced and finally allow them the full rights of citizenship and equality it has so long denied them. A Palestine that is willing to lay down arms and forget the injustices of the past and allow a cleansing of the bad blood that has been generated since their lands were given over to the nascent state of Israel. A Muslim world, that is allowed to shed its fanatic element and to be given the chance to rediscover the more positive and peaceful aspects of its common religion. A Muslim world that finally understands what its warlike ancestors understood better by far. That there is a time for aggression and there a time for pause and for thought. That there will be no flowering of knowledge and science and progress if it insists on regarding the world from the ever narrowing Judas window of fundamentalism. It requires a US leadership that is mature and responsible and at least partly able to take on the role it has sought since WWII, that of World leadership and the Policeman of the World. A US that has learned the art of international diplomacy. It requires a Europe no longer held in thrall of American power and supremacy, and can act once more as a confident world leader. An England that is lead by those who are able to see that the long term interest of the UK is not to disappear ever further into the pocket of a bullying US administration. It takes the loud and clear voices of Muslims, Jews and Christians, demanding equilibrium and peace, demanding unwaveringly that we be told the truth, in order to find a way to live together in equality, balance, peace and mutual respect. It takes careful and exacting examination of our potential leaders, and voting for those who will rule with at least a good percentage of our interests and well-being in mind. A leadership that understands the fragility of our planet and the staggeringly dangerous stage it has reached. We need a real operable plan for how the world will be, not just tomorrow, but once our precious resources are finally exhausted. A leadership that finally behaves as if they have really understood what it means for there not to be any more reserves of oil and coal and fossil fuels. A world that is, albeit belatedly preparing, post haste for the time of fundamental and root change that is so close at hand. We are a single generation away from having none of the resources we have based our modern world on left to draw from. Yet our leaders are still fighting wars of conquest as if by taking control of the sources of these resources they would delay their ending, as if ownership of these would prolong their availability. Incredible that seemingly the entire world is suffering from a clinical case of denial.

Are my proposed solutions the impossible pipe dreams of an idealist? Is what I propose impracticable? Impossible? Then I can only respond in one way. My belief is firmly that we have reached a pivotal point in our history where the only possible solutions are sweepingly dramatic and wide-ranging ones requiring every ounce of our imagination and intellectual capacity. No other solutions are feasible, none other, drastic enough to be of any use. It is my belief that today we stand at a point of history where all other doors have closed and the only way forward is immediate and lasting peace, and a totally united effort in finding exact and workable solutions to the root problems that have pushed us to the very edge of euthanasia. Perhaps the end of our species is inevitable, perhaps we have been moving ever faster towards our logical biological end-cycle, but in our position at the top of the food chain coupled with our immense capacity for problem solving surely we must be able to prolong our survival somehow, surely our innovation can come to our rescue now when we need it more than ever in our two million plus years of evolution. If not then let’s gracefully bend over and kiss our collective arses goodbye.

What does self-defence mean? What does Limited Military Action mean? What qualifies Israeli action as self-defence and Arab action as terrorism? What do collateral damage, peaceful action, terrorism, retaliation, justifiable cause, or any of the multitude other euphemisms we hear daily mean? I for one no longer understand the distinctions. What is happening is that one of the most powerful military states in history is systematically destroying one of its neighbours. And the majority of its casualties are non-combatants. Lebanon, that troubled and damaged nation, is being reduced to rubble.

Were the Israeli soldiers ‘Kidnapped” or were they captured while illegally entering sovereign foreign territory as “Infiltrators“?

Is Hezbollah the target for Israeli attacks in this officially undeclared war, or is the real target or aim of these attacks to strike fear into the Arab neighbours of Israel, to put on a demonstration of fire-power, and will-power on the part of Israel as a warning to the Muslim World? Or is this in fact what it looks like, namely Israel jumping at a good enough excuse to bomb the crap out of its neighbours, and get the job done that it started years ago?

What will happen if any of the Arab countries strike back? Is anyone going to say they are responding to an unjustified and destructive threat against them, or are we going to see a shift of opinion back to support for Israel as the victim of Arab violence?

Is UN going to actually make a stand against Israeli aggression, once and for all, or is it going once more to take the soft option of falling in with the barely unspoken policy of the US, in supporting any act of Israeli militarism?

Are we, the rest of the world going to take the statement by Ms Rice that Israel is blameless in this situation at face value and not face up to the fact that theirs is an illegal and unilateral act of extreme aggression with the single aim of destroying the social and political infrastructure of another sovereign nation?

Is Israel giving vent to its long standing desire for “Living Room” (ominously reminiscent of Hitler’s policies in the 30′s)? Or is Israel laying waste its bordering country, thus creating a de-militrarised “buffer” zone as a means of controlling and expanding its physical, geographical sphere of influence in the region?

What does the rest of the World intend to do about it?

A friend of mine just sent me some photos of Israeli children writing messages on bombs destined for Lebanon! Well what can any sane person say?

Perhaps the most important question right now in this context is, what will the Muslim world do now? And how will the rest of the world react if it decides to fight back? Will they be given the right to strike back, or will they face the usual media and international braying of how they are justifying Israeli acts of violence?

No doubt I will be accused of being an anti-Israeli, an anti-semite, a Jew Hater, a Muslim Lover. No doubt. We live in a world that shirks from criticising Israel on any account. If anyone reading this, reads the rest of this blog, I hope they are intelligent enough to distinguish where I stand on the issue of racism. If not then you will no doubt waste my time with comments accusing me of it. No doubt.

Well I was to be the one who should die a violent but colourful death. I was to die while exploring, or fighting for the cause of the less than unfortunate in this world. I was to add something to our world no matter how insignificant, no matter how small, I was the one who most wanted to be of some serious use in this miserable sack which supports us, God and the powers willing. This dirt from which we come and to which we return. It's not really a case of being afraid of death, I had always felt that the idea of shedding the weight of this mortal form would be only too welcome, the idea of eternal rest only too attractive. But as long as death had some semblance of purpose, some sense of dignity.

To go like this, this gradual but interminable deterioration, it is truly the final desecration of all that one holds sacred about oneself. As a human being one is encouraged, indeed educated to feel one's importance, to believe in the integrity and importance of the individual, in spite of all the injustice, torture, crime and abuse that the vast majority of us go through daily, we still cling desperately to some abstract notion of dignity, some mirage of the existence of the eternal and inalienable rights of the individual. Think about it and you'll have to agree man's only rights are those he can get for himself and those he can hold on to. And after all there is always someone with a sharper knife or a bigger gun than you. So if our rights are so much dependent on our muscle and the goodwill of others, then we each of us stands teetering on the very edge of a deep chasm, with the sole desire to hang on to solid land for as long as possible, even if it means actively throwing everyone else in, for a second's delay of our own end.

I should like to have gone to many places, done many things, seen a multitude of wonders.

I would like to have died of snake bite…

JUNE 14:
Finally we have recovered from the party. The village is once more a hive of activity. As might be expected the 'pigs' are the centre of their attention. These people seem to live from hand to mouth, and presumably the discovery of these animals means a break from the hard and often fruitless pursuit of prey day in, day out. The aforementioned lady gave the call again today and a new ceremony was performed, again involving the whole population, but this time the purpose was the slaughter of one of the precious animals. This was done in a somewhat similar way to the Muslim style, which involves slitting the throat, as it were from ear to ear and allowing the blood to drain freely. Then the creature was skinned, and having dug a pit, which was filled with burning logs, it was placed inside and surrounded with fruits and herbs. The the whole was covered with broad leaves and then piled with earth, an it was left to cook slowly for hours. The resulting feast was truly magnificent. None of us had ever tasted anything quite so delicious, and we now understood the real reason for all the celebration, this was simply meat from heaven. No wonder they were all so excited…

JUNE 7:
Something very interesting happened today. After some deep discussion a small group set off towards the Northwest, carrying all manner of arms and supplies. we've of course absolutely no idea where they are off to, or what they intend to do. All we know is that the late yesterday a young girl who'd been away for a while, returned in a very exited mood and seemingly brought news of enough importance for practically everyone except for the very youngest, and of course us, was instantly mobilised. As it turned out almost the entire village worked through the night to pack all the supplies for the next days expedition. We are also rather excited, since we may be on the verge of some new and groundbreaking discovery of our own in fathoming this mysterious tribe. Perhaps we are about to witness something that will give us a key to shed a little light our confusion….?

JUNE 12:
At last, the expeditionary band has returned. It might be useful at this juncture to record that so far their, and therefore our, diet has been the usual jungle fare, some roots and vegetable, various birds and the occasional venison or buffalo meat and much fruit. As far as we've known it no special or noticeable variance in relation to other jungle tribes. But the returning hunters, for that was what they were, brought back what seems to be an inordinately large herd of an animal, pig-like in appearance, but otherwise unknown to us, which was received with great jubilation by the villagers. One of the old women, who seems to enjoy the special respect of the rest, was first to greet the returning heroes and heroines of the expedition. Here we witnessed the first overt sign of pomp and ceremony we'd seen so far. With great dignity she left the centre of the complex at the head of of the rest which formed itself eventually into a circle around the herd, and into an enclosure which was quickly constructed to contain the animals. Here the old lady made a loud call and a small group of boys and girls responded by bringing various instruments and the rest of the day and all of the following night was spent in dancing and celebration.