So, Mrs Clinton met Mrs Kirchner and offered US assistance to mediate between Britain and Argentina. Mediation implies there is something to mediate. There isn’t. The Falkland Islands are British, have been 1833, and have cost British blood and treasure to defend. There is no legitmacy to Argentina’s rumblings and nothing to discuss.
The extent of American hypocrisy is truly galling. There are some other islands belonging to Britain about which the Obama White House has nothing to say. Perhaps Mrs Clinton would like the British government to sit down with the former residents of Diego Garcia, now living in squalor in Mauritius? Given that the US uses the atoll as a military base, housing B2s and refueling extraordinary renditions, this seems unlikely.
Diego Garcia is a stain on Britain and America; the Falklands aren’t. Given this irrefutable fact, the White House has no right weighing-in on anything flying a Union Jack.
One of my earliest memories is of listening to BBC broadcasts about the Falklands War while holidaying in the south of France, so it’s entirely possible that my thoughts on the dispute are hopelessly tainted by childhood-bred jingoism. Also, there’s the Maradona incident of 1986.
But still, possession is 9/10 of the law and 9/10 of the other tenth comes from winning a war to repel an illegal invasion of said possession. I’m with Hugo Rifkind:
Honestly, where do you people get off calling us colonialists? Generally speaking, we gave our empire back. You moved to yours, and then basically killed everybody. Forgive me, but I just don’t see how this puts you in a morally superior position.
Another thing: I’ve long thought that the Brits would sour on Obama. Well, America’s refusal to immediately put the smack on Buenos Aires over this is another reminder that Mr. Obama is not on “our side.” Nothing new there, I suppose. After all, back in 1982, the US took a lot of persuading to allow British jets to use its runway on Ascension Island.
I spent some of last night flicking between CNN and BBC News as the verdict from Perugia was announced. It was predictable but interesting nonetheless. The Beeb was rather dispassionate in their reporting, reflecting, perhaps, that there is no particular interest in the UK for defending Knox. A young Briton died, people are now behind bars, the end. (Of course, that the story is largely focused on Knox rather than Sollecito is revealing, but that’s another issue.)
CNN was quite different. Wolf Blitzer announced the news and then hosted a couple of Talking Head’s whose view of Knox was of an innocent girl, stitched-up by dodgy, third world Italian justice. We learned that the case against her was “preposterous,” “shaky,” “trumped-up,” and that the whole trial was a sham.
I have no idea whether Knox is guilty but I am certain that had Knox been British and Kercher American, the reporting in England would have been similar (so much for media non-bias). Watch what happens if the US puts Gary McKinnon — the autistic British computer hacker — away for the threatened 60 years (cf. Knox’s 26). American justice!
I’ve been putting off this admission for quite a while but cometh the hour cometh the confession:
Football is rotten. Not just bent, not just greedy. Rotten, as in an infestation of maggots munching their wormy way through the once beautiful game.
The Thierry Henry incident confirms it. It’s not really about Henry — professional athletes will always seek competitive advantage, some will cheat.
No, I blame FIFA. Talk about asleep at the wheel. As custodians of the game they must take immediate and decisive action to exile the cheaters. The remedy is easy:
1. Video panels to assess every high level game, identify divers and other cheats, and serve offenders with lengthy bans.
2. Video replay. Give managers two challenges per game.
Until this happens, football will further descend into pantomime.
I’m not entirely sure why I do it — maybe it’s penance for cutting off my cat’s whiskers when I was 5 — but I spend some of my Wednesday evenings watching Fox News on satellite. This act of self-flagellation usually leads me to the Glenn Beck show, the viewing of which I chalk-up to the need to conduct anthropological investigations of bizarre foreign cultures.
Anyway, I just watched Beck talk to a psychiatrist — A PSYCHIATRIST — about Obama’s initial response to the the Ft. Hood shootings. Apparently, he did not show enough emotion. (A PSYCHIATRIST!) I’m not sure what the point was. Maybe Obama is supposed to be insane. At the very least, he hates white people. Also, Americans must take the power back. And cry.
Cut to the UK and The Sun’s campaign of hatred against Gordon Brown for writing a letter to a dead soldier’s mother with a few spelling mistakes and poor handwriting. Never mind he wrote a hand-written letter — a perfectly reasonable and sensitive gesture. No! The scruffy writing in thick pen and the misspellings are proof that Brown is an oaf, a dimwit, and a heartless bastard AND MUST BE REMOVED.
(Brown is blind in one eye and has dodgy sight in the other. Hence thick pen and poor handwriting.)
Dan and I are hitch-hiking from Vienna to Bruck an der Mur. We are abandoned near Semmering and fail to get an onward lift so end up rolling out our sleeping bags in the woods off the road. It is April and cold so we start a fire, a beautiful pyre that warms our weary bones. Flashing blue lights. Someone had seen the glow and called the Polizei. Once they establish we are English students and not illegal Serbian immigrants, the police leave us to our woodland beds but join us in urinating on the fire (seriously). Freezing night. Awake to see a mouse looking at me.
#2: 2009, Traunsee, Austria.
The last night of a wonderful few days in the mountains. We bivvy down by the side of the lake underneath the mighty Traunstein. The fire is sublime but catches the attention of a forest ranger who drives down to inspect. Again, Dan leaves me to talk my German way out of trouble. The ranger doesn’t mind the fire but warns us of rockfall and suggests that if we stay the night there is a good chance a boulder will roll down the mountain and crush our heads in our sleep. “But you can stay if you want to.” Er, no. We reluctantly kick out the fire and move on.
#3: 2009, Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire.
A few miles from our home there is a secluded little wood that has a perfect bedding plateau — dry canopy overhead and a pine needle bed below. One match, some paper, a handful of pine needles. Fire! Then Dan sees a light. A farmer is driving his truck in the field below, a beam of light scouring the valley and the trees on the side. The light hits us and we frantically throw dirt on the fire. Is he looking for us? The fire reignites. Crap. The truck stops.
Last week I caught a joke about American “friendly fire.” It was along the lines of this quip — “British soldiers in Iraq were being shot at on a daily basis…although obviously it’ll get much safer when the Americans leave” — but transplanted to Afghanistan.
This is a common source of gallows humour around here and reflects a genuine problem. The Times has cataloged recent American FF deaths until 2007. The first is one I remember vividly at the time: the nine British soldiers killed by the US in 1991 during the Gulf War. In a conflict in which little death was inflicted on the British by the enemy, this friendly fire incident was big news.
Cockpit film in 2003 of American A-10’s firing on British vehicles in Iraq sparked predictable outrage, but as far as I can tell, the basic question is not being asked:
Are the Americans more incompetent than most and should her allies wave white flags when Uncle Sam revs his engines? Or is it an inevitable and unfortunate side effect of being the biggest kid in class? Regarding the latter, this guy thinks that the Brits invented friendly fire back when we had the biggest guns.
My mother Gudrun Bachmann was born on June 9, 1939. When World War II begun with the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, she was less than three months old. When Germany surrendered on May 9, 1945, she was one month shy of her sixth birthday.
Besides a treasure trove of family stories from aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents and older siblings, my mother possesses remarkable childhood memories reaching as far back as before her second birthday.
Tonight, I want to tell you about my granduncles Theodor and Emil Fritz who perished in the battle of Crete on May 20, 1941.
My mother told me that my grandmother had confronted the director of the Office of Racial Policy (Rassenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP) in Stuttgart and told him: “Why don’t you just exterminate the entire German people. After so many centuries, there is no one left who does not have Jewish blood.”
My granduncle Emil had been arrested twice on the street because he did not appear to be “Aryan.” The first time, Emil had dressed up as a fiddling gypsy while fundraising for the Winterhilfswerk, a charity of the propaganda ministry. I do not know the details about the other arrest. Perhaps, it was sufficient to be short, dark haired, and dark skinned to be suspicious.
You can attack the Dachstein (2995m, Austria) from the south in Styria, either using the cable car to get quick altitude or via rather difficult climbing routes. The northern route from Upper Austria is the classic choice, however, and it’s the one we took. Day one took us from the car park at the Lower Gosausee to the Upper Gosausee, on up the ancient glacial wall, and to our destination at the Adamek hut on the glacial moraines.
The Adamekhütte, like all such Alpine huts, is a remarkable place. It’s like a high altitude pub/youth hostel and was packed to the rafters when we arrived on Saturday. The climate at 2000m is noticeably colder; the topography barren and eerie. The next day we plodded up the moraines and on up the glacier, reaching the Obere Windlücke which heralds the beginning of the summit climb (west ridge). Crampons off, Klettersteig harness on. The via ferrata is quite easy but the 1000m drop to the south keeps you honest. Luckily for the vertiginously wary, much of it was shrouded in cloud.
You can summit and get back to the car in one day, but this means that:
(a) You have to get up early.
(b) Your knees take a prolonged pounding.
(c) You miss another evening playing cards in the Adamekhütte.
So, we came down the next day, taking a different, longer route to the Upper Gosausee.
March 2, 2010 Ronan 
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