"I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more"

In a dramatic reversal, the House today approved by a comfortable margin a $700 billion financial rescue package that will bring the greatest intervention of the federal government into the private marketplace since the Great Depression, attempting to prevent the economy from sliding into a deep recession. Washington Post 3 Oct

How the worm has turned since the heyday of triumphal ideological enthusiasm for the genius, intelligence and efficiency of free market forces opposed to the stultifying bureaucratic incompetence of government. The sheriff has ridden down Wall Street with a sackful of welfare cheques donated by taxpayers to rescue the turbo-capitalist speculators on whose gambling we've depended for too long. Greedy men - like old apparatchniks escaping with illgotten bankrolls through a fallen Wall - now speak of the value of a strong state. [But see The Non-Ethics of the Financial Bailout by Dr. Annabel Beerel] [Back to the future 07/01/2009: See the assessment of 'broken government' at the US Center for Public Integrity] Unlike Roosevelt who led responses to the Great Depression with the words - "we have nothing to fear, but fear itself" - this US president, as is his wont, can only play the fear card. Yesterday's House vote feels, to many commentators, (and - back to the future - it's UK equivalent) like a tipping point - but I suspect a larger wave in a rising storm. I anticipate some reverse equivalent of the old Harry Enfield symbol of the Thatcher years proclaiming "loadsagovernment!" ... or perhaps not. The Paulson-Bernanke bailout bill is so bizarre, so contradictory - a flimsy wedge hurled in desperation under a roller coaster with broken brakes. "Perhaps" as Jack wrote twenty years ago in 'Crescendo', the last Chapter (pp.128-134) of his last book The Old Country, "man is just a blind horse with the bit between his teeth who can’t be stopped until he hits a hay-barn." Certainly people and nations must strive to substitute deferred gratification for deferred debt; governments will roam the world offering equity jabs, but the issue of how we live on and use the land that supports our teaming species must come to permeate our thoughts and actions. An ascetic future or none. A friend sent me this image - as a measure of the times, the changes needed and the distance to go. I just got an e-mail from Harry Tsoukalas 'I tell my wife and to the Corfiots that at least when my son asks me in the years to come what I have done about our huge problems in this paradise I could look at him straight in the eye and answer. How many people can say the same? It's all has to do with the future generation I think, it's too late for us. Thanks again for the great support.' * * * [Back to the future ~ a piece in Athens News of 10 October by Thrasy Petropoulos on reactions to Tsoukalas and like-minded Corfiots. The difference is that our English Civil War was 350 years ago. Sealed Knot re-enacts sanitized versions of its battles to entertain themselves and Bank Holiday tourists. 'Roundheads' and 'Cavaliers' enjoy beer together afterwards. Imagine colourful festivals celebrating the Eμφύλιος πόλεμος - re-enacting fratricide, the street fighting of Dekemvriana, the attack on the gendarmerie at Lithoro, andartes and monarchists slaughtering one another on the slopes of Grammos, to the sweet sad joyful sounds of Vassilis Tsitsanis. The butcher's bill is still being paid - in liminal grief, resentment and fear. It's still too close. See the recent comments after the Greek National Archive extract, if they've not already been disabled by YouTube. If I feel my eye's smarting at the sadness of it, imagine how it must be for Greeks, who, from Corfu, can see over towards Grammos every day.] * * *

Lots in the media about Peter Mandelson, Oleg Deripaska, George Osborne at a taverna at Agni and on a yacht called Queen K - events that happened around the third week of August. Corfucius collates with wry detach. I pretend to be above it all, but the British do political scandal so well. What other news is interred behind this chatter? "It is now a very good day to..."

Our old boat at Agni

Stephan Jaskulowski's brilliant map

Stephan's map of Corfu
Originally uploaded by Sibad.

The more we roam Corfu - by cycle, car or on foot - the more I come to see the scale of the achievement of Stephan Jaskulowski in making this map of the island in 1996. Stephan was a working resident of Corfu in the 90s, found published maps of Corfu inadequate and in places hazardously innaccurate. Being a border state the authorities discouraged surveys. Over 3 years Stephan travelled over the island on foot, cycle, scooter and car with compass, altimeter and hand-held GPS checking roads, footpaths and tracks. This detailed map rich in additional information and inset plans of the city of Corfu is a unique labour of love. I wish Stephan would make a revised version that would pick up changes since he completed this project, but imagining the sheer scale of his original achievement I don't blame him hesitating. I still prefer this map to any other for exploring - and I don't want to know everything anyway and I can always ask for directions - though I'ver found that a gesture to take a right turn often means take a left and vice versa. The mainland stretched north to south in a tableau of varying greys in the damp air this morning. The shores are distinct and darker but beyond are the lighter and more distant peaks of the Grammos in Epirus - site of campaigns that 58 years ago concluded a catastrophe so terrible that even now it starts a lump in my throat to think of such happenings in a land we English have found so kind to us and of whose civility we hold such confident illusions. The vista is framed by the foreground of Vido Island and, even closer, Ipsos' breakwater and its cluster of masts including 'Summer Song's'. I caught the Korakiana bus into town to do some WiFi work and will catch it back to AK in an hour. Stephan e-mailed me on 8 May "Thank you very much once again for your very kind words and endorsement of the map." To get the map while supporting Agni Animal Welfare Fund visit www.agni-animal-welfare-fund.com/Maps.asp

Local history

Tea with village historians at 208 Democracy Street

I was pondering my interest in history, realising that I'm drawn to the fascination of events close in time and place and their connection to the larger flow; our local park that gave identity to the new Birmingham suburb of Handsworth at the end of the 19th century; Black Patch Park which, with friends, we've sought to save from being built over, helped by descendants of the Gypsies once displaced to make it; the life of a family friend, long dead, who fought at sea and taught me to sail a small boat in the ocean.

Thumb Island, Peloponnese 1962

Our local church, whose tower I can see above the canopy of trees between us, holds the remains of the founders of the industrial revolution; my stepfather who so influenced my childhood and thus my life; my mum and dad who fell in love amid war - and made me in the Savoy; my grandpa Henry, who with help from Paul Savage, I'm learning things I hardly suspected; my dad and his Greek wife Maria who married in Panaghia Kapnikarea - Παναγίας Καπνικαρέας - in busy Hermou Street in central Athens in 1949 and gave me Greek half-sisters and half-brother and my proud connection to beloved Ελλάδα; my great great grandfather brilliant author of Ancient Law who analysed the frailties of popular government and wrote 'except the blind forces of nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in origin'. Especially, and more recently, I've tried to learn about the Greek Civil War - ο Eμφύλιος - the source of national trauma worse in its ravaging of the national psyche than Nazi Occupation - Η Κατοχή - leaving tensions still unresolved; histories almost impossible to write. And only lately have I learned - see Richard Pine's discussion of it last November - about Pantelis Voulgaris' 2009 film Soul Deep - Ψυχή Βαθιά - about the Greek Civil, just as I was reading the book and seeing the film of Ashes and Diamonds based in Poland in May 1945, and regretting not seeing something similar about the human side of those historical events in Greece! Voulgaris' film shows the last stage of the war on the slopes of Grammos from the perspectives of brothers on different sides. Richard from near Kassiopi writes:

...in the village where I live today, the events of 60 years ago are still fresh. One man is totally ostracised because he gave the authorities the names of three young communists who were then “disappeared”. Every year, the Greek communist party (KKE) organises a pilgrimage of remembrance to the Lazareto islet in Corfu bay, where most of the executions of prisoners took place.

'Execution Island' where we sailed to have a picnic with friends

Encouraged by the scholar and journalist Richard Pine at the Durrell School, met in 2009, I have been learning more about the British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands. He invited me to give a talk last February about what I'd learned about that period in Corfu's and the other Ionian islands' history. My study of the Septinsular had begun a little earlier when Ano Korakiana's historian, Kostas Apergis, and the authors of the village website, Thanassis and Katya Spingos - neighbours - had asked if we could dig out 'a letter' that they had so far been unable to find in Greek archives. I've failed to find this 'letter' in the British Library, the National Archives or the Institute for Historical Research, but on my 'voyage' I've made many visits and learned much from lettered men - and women, especially Eleni Calligas.

...σε πόλεις Αιγυπτιακές πολλές να πας,

να μάθεις και να μάθεις απ' τους σπουδασμένους.

* **

Less wind; more animals and insects about yesterday. A hatch of Scots Argus - ranged above every patch of grass, clustering on tansy ragwort. The air was full of insects revealed then hidden again as the sun went in and out. No midges though. Over a plantation of deciduous saplings east from Brin Croft three buzzards circled mewing, a red deer hind grazing shoots, flushed by the terriers, leapt the low fence I was skirting and disappeared into the dark of the larch enclosure. I came across fresh Chanterelle, picked and fried them in butter with salt and pepper to share with mum as hors d'œuvres in the evening

Descending into the alder edges of the Farnack still strewn with the remains of winter spate I saw the feeding pens I'd passed in the depth of winter - haven for sheep huddled against the wind. Here were foxgloves, harebells, Anne's lace, vetch, flowerless buttercup, rich grass and sedge and a path that gave like a sprung floor through which I'd last waded thigh deep in snow.

Having tea in the conservatory, chatting with my mother. The maiden heifers in the field below us began bulling and there appeared a white Charolais bull. A burst of crackling momentarily deafening sound disturbed this conversation as the big silhouette of a low flying Tornado out of Lossiemouth disappeared trailing sound.

I spend my time in a sort of daze, doing occasional errands for mum when she can't help herself and Sharon's not around. The atmosphere, perhaps the altitude, has always made me slightly sleepy when I'm not being walking. There's occasional work - planning events her; the seminar in Wellington in November; more in Australia with John, who, in passing, has put me in touch with Andy Asquith, at Massey, who's sent me papers to read and the promise of further briefing on local government in New Zealand.

I'm moving over to the log cabin for a few days while my step-niece and her husband with their small children visit for the Moy Fair on Friday and Saturday. Lin and I talk on the phone and to our delight Paul P and his family will take a repair-lease on Rock Cottage ending an episode of neglect for that cherished place in the Forest of Dean, since we've switched our attention to Greece.

Brin Rock

* * * I found these images of Ano Korakiana posted last August with the suggestion that the village is 'deserted in winter' - Τωρα δυστυχως το χωριο εχει ερημωνει τον χειμωνα...I wouldn't have thought that a fair description this winter when there was Vassilopita in January and Carnival in February along with other events over Christmas

From the Ano Korakiana website there's news of progress on the long neglected football pitch (in the background of this linked image) below the village and progress on plans for investment in instruments and uniforms for the village Philharmonia band. A meeting took place in late July with representatives of PAOK, local politicians and officials of the Prefecture to review an investment of €420,000 - to be shared between the Prefecture and the Municipality. Have they effectively won the bid then? Could this partnership be at risk with plans to dissolve the current municipality under Athens's Kallicratis local government restructuring supposed to be in place by November? On the other bid for the supply of organs and sewing uniforms for the Corfu Philharmonic including Ano Korakiana's band, 'things get slightly complicated'. It's OK for instruments 'but when it comes to uniforms and helmets' bidding will have to be repeated.

Refreeze

The weather's freezing again - as it should in winter - and reports say its icier in England than here, while photos from Corfu show red dawns bringing wind and rain. Again I'm walking Oscar and Lulu along Farquer's walks by the banks and through the woods beside the Farnack. Is it conceivable that a dog could find life lacks meaning? It's good enough feeling the ground with four feet and parsing the smells we humans miss. How they romp, poking their noses everywhere. It would be good to have eyes and ears on storks to check detail, whiskers to feel the surface of air, but I shouldn't complain, given my brain can enjoy working out the history of this terrain - how twelve mile deep glaciers churned out this strath, marking its edges with black granite basalt escarpments, leaving erratics - great isolated boulders, for worship and wonder at the play of giants, in random parts of the earth lined trough - rocks first held and carried in the ice then dropped when it melted. I see and name the gravel eskers left by the rush of milky meltwater. Unlike the dogs, who don't need words, I've names for things. I can look them up; fit them into patterns; decline their causes. Let the beasts enjoy their innocence, the plants their ... that quote in 1966 in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, talking to his daughter about his fall from royal grace over principle and his plans to, at least, save his life. Margaret meets him late at night walking home, there being no boat for his journey home, a high wind tussling with the trees along his path: “Listen Meg. God made the angels to show him splendour as he made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity, but man he made to serve him wittily in the tangle of his mind. If he suffers us to come to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best we can ... But it’s God’s part, not our own, to bring ourselves to such a pass. Our natural business lies in escaping. If I can take this oath I will.” * * * We went to see a film in Inverness last night at The Scala Cinema in Eden Court. They're so good with disability, help with doors and loo, offering a space in the stalls to park mum's wheel chair next to me. We saw Australia - a romp for the recession, jumbled history teasing the audience with endings of unallowable happiness, digitally rendered vistas of war, product placement of Australian landscape. I really didn't need it but there's probably a place somewhere for kitsch morality and we were entertained. Hearts are in the right place, and it's no more innaccurate than Gone with Wind. Germain Greer runs over something closer to history as did Philip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence. As well as the latter - watched on a 747 above the Pacific - I was far far more moved, last spring, sitting in John and Annie Martin's home in Bendigo watching the cameo screened YouTube playing that speech "I move..." by the little straw haired policy-wonk Kevin Rudd, standing beside Julia Gillard, his deputy - a defining political moment of 2008. "I move..." (along, of course, with the election in November of the 44th) [What I like about these YouTube extracts is the cyberstreet comment they attract - demotic, obscene, vicious, hateful and now and again humane, civil and articulate] * * * An interestingly portentous piece called THE INGLORIOUS END OF THE THIRD HELLENIC REPUBLIC, 1974-2008 by Vassilis K. Fouskas, Professor-elect of International Relations, University of Piraeus can be read off as a PDF from the website of the Research Institute for European and American Studies. Fouskas' argument turns around the problem seemingly facing the Hellenic polity in 1974 - the fall of the junta. The new leadership saw a problem of restoring democracy. They were right but - and this is Fouskas' argument - they forgot that their righteous reconfirmation of democracy placed the new political leadership and every elected leadership since at the head of an archaic government - government in my book comprising a centrifocal mix of political, managerial and professional leadership (see 'the horror' in this blog):

It is significant to point out that the post-1974 Greek polity... did not make any significant attempt to rationalize and modernize its branches, particularly those that are directly relevant to its internal and external security: I am referring here to the civil service, police, the army and the ministries of interior, national economy and foreign affairs. Once in power, the ruling groups of the parties that instituted the Third Republic got their priorities backwards. Their analysis went as follows: the main problem of the pre-1974 Greece was lack of democracy; the remedy, therefore, should take the form of deepening the people’s participation into the state’s governing branches in order to re-build the lost consensual nexus between civil society and political elites. The approach, however, was deeply flawed.... ...the so-called “democratic participation of the people into the post-1974 governance of the state” did not take the form of a rational process of normative undertakings and institutional openings in decision-making, but that of the extended reproduction of pre-1974 clientelistic networks and nepotistic practices (my italics). This, apart from having a negative repercussion on the fiscal performance of the polity, created a corrupt and bi-partisan oligarchic system mediating between bureaucratic privileges and comprador/parasitic capitalism. This is the way in which the new consensual nexus between political parties/system and civil society came into being after 1974...Thus, the analysis of the Greek Left that the culprit is the state and its authoritarian tendencies is as generic as it is wrong. The future generations that will build the Fourth Hellenic Republic should remember that the Third did not suffer from authoritarianism, but from a lack of institutional norms and rules that are the requisites of every modern polity. Lack of knowledge, discipline and professionalism are the key characteristics of the average Greek civil servant, not least of the person who pulled the trigger on the night of December 7, 2008 in central Athens. (SB note: I understand this occurred at 2130 on 6/12/08)

* * * According to John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, of the web based World Association of International Studies (WAIS) Professor Jon V Kofas retired from being a professor of history at Indiana University Kokomo to live in Tripolis, Arkadias, where stands a flamboyant bronze equestrian statue of the Greek civil war general Theodoros Kolokotronis whose first action in the war for Greek independence was at Valtetsi, a village near Tripoli. The WAIS website reported that Kofas would be likely to meet fellow WAISer Professor Harry Papasotiriou, both interested in modern history and politics. 'They may disagree, but I am sure they will do so WAISly.' These two historians are an interesting discovery for me. Kofas, in 1989, wrote Intervention and Underdevelopment: Greece During the Cold War. Kofas' premise is that after WW2 'American counterinsurgency, pacification, and containment tactics were evolved, (and) tested' in Greece and 'applied elsewhere in the Third World.' US aid, which began under Truman, when the British could no longer afford support for Greece, was paid on condition that Greece remained an exporter of raw materials and an importer of manufactured goods - a policy that blocked modernisation of the Hellenic economy, causing its contemporary vulnerability. In 1944 it was assumed by 'the great and the good' that Greece must become either pro-American or pro-Soviet (see the percentages agreement). Kofas rejects the Anglo-American conviction that Greece had to be in one of these camps, arguing that post-war governments in Greece could have pursued social and economic reforms at home, and pro-Greek rather than pro-Soviet or pro-American policies abroad. The victory of American-supported forces in Greece at the Battle of Grammos-Vitsi in August 1949 enduringly obscured this alternative vision. I guess I'm so imbued with the accounts I've read so far about what happened from 1944 to 1949; so convinced of the divisions and partisanship that existed, regardless of the undoubted pot stirring of the great powers, that I find the idea of a post-war government in Athens that could have brought growth and stability to the country or which could have held the support of a majority of the population almost inconceivable - at least in the country in the state it was at the end of 1944. My bias is to share the view that Greece was ungovernable without the support and intervention of Britain or America - but I've bought Kofas' book. I'll see what I think when I've read it, but the problem is that, past causes, however apportioned, turn into present blame. Perhaps the policy interventions that propped up the returning King, encouraged withholding serious pursuit of collaborators, treated anyone who'd fought in the resistance as Comintern inspired insurgents, were sustained far too long and implemented far too intrusively, preventing Greeks from working through their internal tensions, Greece, for thirty years, remained, like a third world country, an arena for surrogate rivalries. It's possible that there could have been changes in the way the hidden hand of America was applied that might in the 60s and 70s have helped Greece reform its institutions. Instead successive governments operated inside a protectorate culture that preserved clientalism, patronage, nepotism and incompetence throughout the Greek polity - providing excuses for errant and largely ineffectual radicalism that fed and justified dynamic conservatism, constantly blocking attempts at deep reform of central and local government. * * * On 10 December 2008 Jon Kofas wrote to WAIS. I've only read this today, but his analysis, from a commentator likely to be sympathetic to campaigns against the status quo, matches my sense of incoherent protest. A keen anarchist might say Kofas writes "as though this is something bad", arguing that incoherence excludes none from rioting :

The violent protests in Greece that erupted late at night on Saturday, 6 December could have evolved into a revolt and social movement if there was organization, coherent ideological orientation, and leadership behind them. While this may still occur at some point in the future, more than likely we have just experienced something far less than 'Robin Hood Revolts' of the kind that Zapata and Villa engaged in during the Mexican Revolution, something closer to violent student and immigrant youth protests that usually take place in Paris. The nation-wide violent protests in Greece are marked by an absence of an ideology that articulates grievances, mode of operation, and goals. Nor were the protests part of a coherent social movement but simply a series of spontaneous responses with minimal organization operating beyond the confines of the political opposition. Clearly what is happening in Greece is a reflection of a social, political and economic crisis, one that will also erupt in other countries but assume different forms. And clearly modern technology has made such events possible and we will see more of them.

* * * Officer Diamandi Matzounis was shot twice and seriously wounded while guarding the Hellenic Ministry of Culture in Bouboulinas Street, Athens. Brabant for BBC reports this and speaks, further on in his report, of a young police officer - Jimmy - contacting him weary of being demonised by the Greek media wanting to explain in greater detail the import and effect of the insult 'batsos' so regularly directed at him by rioters."We are afraid that one of us will be murdered soon." * * * My pleasure is to have discovered new URLs rich with conversation and thought about Greek politics, laced with links. One is John Akritas' Hellenic Antidote, another, from JA's blog is the Modern Greek Studies Association which summarised a great number of web commentaries on current events, and another is A Different Voice who's author, M, regularly converses on Stavros' My Greek Odyssey and has even left comments on Democracy Street. Another blog I'm glad to have come across is by a former US Diplomat based in Athens, who resigned over the invasion of Iraq, John Brady Kiesling. * * *

Inverarnie ~ Oscar on the path through the wood

Flying home

Sat in the cramped space of our plane from Rome to Zurich – buying pace for discomfort. Whether more speed also buys time is debatable given the things you can do in the space of a ship or train, and clouds, though beautiful, are hardly an exchange for the surroundings enjoyed when going slower. Boarding a plane is also complicated, entailing boarding the right bus or train to the airport, identifying the correct terminal, finding your check-in desk, locating departure gates, while negotiating concourses, corridors, escalators, lifts, moving walkways and serial queues, while submitting to luggage x-ray, random body search, baggage restriction, showing of papers at successive checkpoints, check-in, security, immigration and departure gate and, all for good security reasons, and having to start the process hours before take off. It’s not that good a deal – but for the moment flying is often the only choice and costs less than other ways of getting around – until we start paying more for carbon. At Rome we had a text message giving us a SWIFT code for the builders’ account and the news “ALL MATERIALS PURCHASED TODAY EXCEPT MARBLE. WILL LEAVE LATE TO AVOID ACCIDENTS.” Then another at Zurich “ROOF DONE. START WALLS MONDAY. MATERIALS ARRIVE TUE. KALOS TAXHIDI.” I’ve just finished Nicholas Gage’s account of the life, and death in 1948, of his mother Eleni Gatzoyiannis from the village of Lia in the Grammos Mountains, whose peaks can be seen from 208 Democracy Street.

On the plot

"Your shed roof's collapsing, Simon" said Winnie the other day.
"Not the roof, the veranda. I'll mend it next week"
I took cordless drill, screwdriver, saw, screws and brackets out to the plot and using discarded wood - available in plenty - I cut four lengths to serve as beams attached to the veranda's original supports...

Our shed backs on to Handsworth Park

...dug out another length for a prop; pushed it under a length of the roof, heaved upwards before kicking a brick under the foot of my prop; drilled and screwed brackets on the end of each small beam and fixed them below the sag.

I've still to plant more winter onions, and early peas. This afternoon I pruned the small fruit trees taking out inward pointing branches and buds and, where possible, encouraging a higher central growth. I've got a pear, a plum, a cherry and two apple trees. In the last three years only the apples have borne fruit.

My Brussels sprouts still waiting to be picked would have been fine had I netted them earlier. As it is the harvest is mostly pecked out by pigeons.

That aside. I've got potatoes still to unearth along with Jerusalem artichokes. I'm waiting on a crop of onions planted in early September. I planted winter broad beans a week ago.
I've miles to go before becoming productive but I'm pleased with the work that's been done over the last year on improving the soil and creating paths to access the plot without treading on planting space. I've paid Taj and then Winnie to do digging and weeding when I'm away. Much will depend on what I get into the ground; how well i plant it and cane for it during January, February and March next year. I've accepted that I'm not a working man growing food for my family, but I'm uncomfortable with the notion that I'm 'a middle class hobbyist', rationale for this recent letter from Edinburgh...

ALLOTMENT PRICE HIKE WOULD BE FAIR AND AFFORDABLE
Tuesday, 4 November 2014
Dear Editor. No one likes to be confronted with a 300% price hike, which I note as you turn your guns on CEC's proposal to increase the rental on allotments (Issue 235).
I have had the pleasure of being an allotment holder in Warriston for more than 15 years and I, like many others, have wondered at the largesse of the Council for the rock bottom price of the allotment, and the gradual increase of services from rubbish clearance to toilets on the site.
Having an allotment is a hobby. After the proposed price rise the full price of a half-plot would be £155, less than a pint of beer a week. No doubt there are one or two allotment holders for whom the price rise would be too much but, in my experience, the vast majority are in employment or sturdy pensioners, like myself, and quite able to afford the new prices.
Many allotments are still full-size and a holder could halve the expense by switching to a smaller plot, which would also give someone else on the long waiting list a chance.
It is not fair to ask the Council Tax payers of Edinburgh to continue to subsidise a few fortunate allotment holders when so many other amenities, like the park at Scotland Yard which is used by hundreds every day, are crying out for additional expenditure. Yours sincerely, Hugh Lockhart (London Street)

A winter gale's blowing up

*** *** ***
I have just been reading the unclassified version of the report, the Senate Intelligence Committee Study on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program...

United States Senator Dianne Feinstein - a few good men

The study’s 20 findings and conclusions can be grouped into four central themes, each of which is supported extensively in the Executive Summary:
- The CIA’s 'enhanced interrogation techniques' were not effective.
- The CIA provided extensive inaccurate information about the operation of the program and its effectiveness to policymakers and the public.
- The CIA’s management of the program was inadequate and deeply flawed.
- The CIA program was far more brutal than the CIA represented to policymakers and the American public.

Apart from my doubts as to whether torture works in extracting reliable information in a 'ticking bomb' scenario, I do not wish to avoid my own or my family's death or injury through the use of so-called 'enhanced interrogation techniques'. Of course I am fearful of dying or being injured in a terrorist attack and far more fearful that any of my family should be its victims. This statement, like an AND request , is made at a point where my detachment from the reality of my own mortality and moral frailty when frightened is sufficient for me to have no reservations about stating a most personal and vital principle about my country, about democracy, about citizenship and my understanding of civilisation. I honour and respect Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein for oversight that some will consider beyond the call of duty. She can handle the truth.
That last phrase can be too easily said. I approach it as I would a minefield were I trained as a sapper. My training includes an existential tool kit. In the 90s wrote about it as much as anything to equip that tool kit. Writing Internal Polity I was so struck by Joseph Conrad's observation that...

Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and of its morals, in the power of its police and of its opinion. (Conrad (1897) An Outpost of Progress in Cosmopolis (London) Vol. 7, No.XVIII (Jun 1897), pp.608-908)

This lies behind Aaron Sorkin's superb scripting of the role of US marine Colonel Nathan R. Jessup in the film A Few Good Men - a fiction created 95 years after Conrad's tale, when Colonel Jessup is goaded by Lt Daniel Kaffee into this courtroom outburst on Conrad's 'crowd', on how most men and women sleep "under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide", in other words 'the power of its police'....

Jessup: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know, that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives! You don't want the truth, because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like "honor", "code", "loyalty". We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said "thank you", and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to!

Weren't we discussing this last night at supper? Anyone - any adult - who thinks we are not at war just because we're sitting fairly pretty round the kitchen table is almost culpably naïve. Says Lin's best friend who lives in Mrs Miniver-land, buys the Daily Mail and makes unembarrassed use of the political pronoun 'we'...

"It's hypocritical. We drop bombs on Iraq and use drones in Afghanistan which do horrendous things most of us don't see while we're going ape about the horrible things ISIS is doing to hostages...and now it's coming out what the CIA were doing..."
"But you have to respect the US for publishing that"
"Of course"

*** *** ***

The balcony of the house on Democracy Street as shown in the estate agent's particulars ~ Nov 2006

Nov 2014

Mark's written after a few rainy days about our 'new' balcony as he gets closer to our plan for recovering the increasingly unstable construction, by adding new tantalised beams, turning the old beams 180° after sanding and treating them with Resolcoat, removing all the previous decking - made up of thick heavy deal beams - and storing them for firewood, and replacing them with treated hardwood grooved decking.

Hi Simon and Lin. As you can see from the photo's the decking is nearly complete. I had to go back up to Sidari for more screws, if those boxes do truly hold 200 in each box, then I have used 2 full boxes and am half way through the 3rd with a few more lengths to go down and that is without putting screws down on every beam, its nice and firm. Sally has been by today for a look and thinks it looks really nice.

Decking in place, now the railings

I now need to do the railing posts before I finish the last few lengths of decking. I bought some 8mm galvanised studded bar for securing the posts as I couldn't find bolts long enough, also because of how bad the rot is on the posts I will be putting a pad on one side to act like a new piece of wood and then the other end of the bar will have the new or refurbished beam to go against. It's going to be a bit of a mission to get it pretty secure but we shall do our best...That's it for now really the weather is on and off rain just now so I work when I can between showers if needs be. Hope all is well. Mark

...and hardly a day later...

Hi Simon and Lin. I have attached a couple of photo's of the finished balcony...as you can see the railings are all up and together as best I can do as they are in a very poor state and may need to be replaced in a year or two. I have put on, but not attached to any of the wooden upright posts, some of the brackets to show you what I think should be done on the house side of the balcony but this would mean then I would have to screw a dome head coach bolt through the decking and on the other side of the railings. it would be the same as now there is one balcony's length of  decking there also...For aesthetic reasons all except the two front corner posts would be done and also they will give all of them a very strong feel. The one post certainly needs it. I think you know the one I mean on the outside front edge on the right. It had nothing below it, so could not be attached to any of the beams. I think you have enough brackets at the house to do this so I wouldn't have to buy any more just the dome head coach bolts...I think you have enough brackets at the house to do this so I wouldn't have to buy any more  just the dome head coach bolts...Sally came up with the idea and she actually likes them on there and says it finishes the job off, but I thought I would let you decide what you would prefer. Weather here just now is fab, cold clear. I wonder when the UK weather bomb will hit us. Never heard of that before.  Hope all is well with you both. Cheerio. Mark

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First 2014 Christmas card - 'wishing you every happiness' Simon and Lin from Martin, Sandra and Adam

Well indeed! There's a place in Dr Zhivago called Varykino not far from Yuriatin. Evocative names lodged in imagination. Our Varykino has been for twenty years Rock Cottage in Lydbrook which we've allowed to fall into damp disrepair. Trying to recover it we allowed a bad builder to make it even worse. I entertained the idea of just putting this place - 150yards up a steep path on the edge of the Forest of Dean - up for auction. Our friend Steve Outram, who lives in an old converted chapel across the narrow valley from Rock Cottage on the west side of the village, has captured - always indirectly - the feel of this place...somewhere near

Steven Outram Somewhere Near

A few weeks ago, just returned from Greece, Lin and I went to Lydbrook to have a look at the work that's been going on at Rock Cottage since, in an act of special friendship, 'Team Ward' - Martin, Sandra, Adam (and his workmate Jack) took over the restoration of our precious home in the forest. A few months earlier Evolution Trees had cleared an abundance of trees growing almost up to the house endangering our connecting electric cable. One weekend in spring Lin and I cleared a few smaller trees and enveloping shrubs. Adam and Jack started work in August clearing a load of rubbish left in the garden; filling a skip at the foot of Bell Hill...

Adam and Jack in Lydbrook at the foot of Bell Hill - skip half full

...thereafter, over weekends, 'Team Ward' went down to Lydbrook, ascended the hill, and began working on the interior of the house, sending us photos and reporting on the detail of the task as it emerged. First - a renewed kitchen and bathroom. Amy and Guy have been extending their house in Birmingham. Instead of throwing away their old kitchen they gave its furnishings to us for the cottage. The iron bath was sitting in the garden needing a good scrub, but this time there would be a shower and other improvements. Each time they went down the team as well as doing redecoration also tidied, scrubbed and polished; cleaning windows, clearing cobwebs, re-plastering, removing furniture damp and mildew had rendered beyond repair. Lin and I collected a car-load of bedding to wash and dry back in Birmingham. The problem of damp upstairs seemed intractable. The team replaced guttering, riddled out compacted rotting leaves from a roof drain leading to the soak-away, moved damp logs and other debris that had piled against an end wall and left the boiler - serviced along with drained and cleaned radiators - heating the house, supported at weekends with a roaring log fire. Gradually the place has dried out, damp driven slowly away and kept at bay.
"Lots of the problem is condensation" said Martin. "Your builder applied a plastic exterior paint that locks in damp. The new windows have no vents"
We'd had windows installed that wouldn't open properly. One pane in each unit sliding out sideways. Jack, who also works for a double glazing company in the week, found us sets of hinges costing £35 the lot, that, once installed, allowed all windows to open fully. Martin made use of a ventilation latch to leave a tiny gap reducing condensation dramatically.
Third week of November; Lin and I drove south on the M5 - the old journey we'd been so used to making..

Down the M5 to Gloucestershire

Ross-on-Wye 

...turning west onto the M50 to Ross, then four miles onto the turning into Goodrich, and three more miles beside the River Wye to Lydbrook - 71 miles in under an hour and a half.
Seeing the cottage since work started in August was a joy. Exciting. There's still lots to be done but the feel of spreading dereliction is gone, replaced by the smell of new materials, of paint and plaster and dry stone. The windows are clean top to bottom - a new one with a ventilator on the bathroom where all the plumbing has been replaced; cobwebs swept, mildew disappeared, dust removed.

Linda and Martin at Rock Cottage in November

The view through the window of Rock Cottage looking down the village towards Courtfield beyond the Wye

Sandra painting in the hall

Lin and I wandered about admiring everything, then we headed for the Inn on the Wye by Kerne Bridge and happily bought lunch.

Next steps?

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As one of the QE Medical School's 1000 Elders I'm a small cog in part of their Healthy Ageing work. I've now taken part in four sessions for Rehan Junejo, who's researching the role of oxygen in the muscle blood flow changes which occur with exercise. His original request:

Can anyone help Rehan, PhD student in Medical Sciences? He is looking for 18-25 and 60-70 year-old recreationally active, healthy male volunteers for a research study on the increase in forearm blood flow that occurs with handgrip exercise. The study is being carried out within the University's Medical School under the supervision of Professor Janice Marshall and Dr Clare Ray. If you would like to participate and find out how cardiovascular measurements are made for scientific research, please contact Rehan Junejo: rtj252@bham.ac.uk

With Rehan Junejo

What's been required...

• Performing a maintained handgrip contraction until exhaustion with your dominant hand at 100% of your maximum on 2 occasions on each experiment visit.
• Recording of Heart Rate and Blood Pressure via a small cuff on a finger of your non exercising hand (non invasive procedure).
• Recording of Oxygen uptake at muscular level in your exercising arm (non invasive procedure).
• Recording blood oxygen concentrations from the skin in some of the experiments (non invasive procedure).
• Blood flow recording in the exercising arm – this involves inflating two blood pressure cuffs at roughly the same time.  A smaller (child size) cuff will be inflated around your wrist and a regular (adult size) cuff will be inflated around your upper arm. Each inflation lasts for a few seconds.  The middle part of your forearm will have a light, thin tube wrapped around it to record blood flow to the arm (non invasive procedure).
All visits last approximately 1 hour.

An additional aspect of the experiment is that for each of the four sessions I get to drink, 10 minutes before doing the handgrip exercise,  a small bottle of orange flavoured juice that may be a placebo or may contain vitamin C and, during the exercise, to breath, through a face mask, either placebo air or oxygen. While all this is going on - over an hour - Rehan has a number of films I can choose to watch, switched off during the contraction exercise - a slightly uncomfortable test of my will-power. I chose the new film The Lone Ranger, a more or less plotless sequence of impossible special effects with a more or less correct White man-Native American relationship 

Despite the producers citing the presence of an adviser from the Comanche Nation, some debated the advisability of casting of Depp as a Native American and whether the film would present a positive and accurate representation of the Comanche. Depp has stated he believes he has Native American ancestry, possibly from a great-grandmother. He has said that he considered the role a personal attempt "to try to right the wrongs of the past", in reference to portrayals of Native American culture in the media. Todd McDaniels, a linguist at the Comanche Nation College, commented favorably on Depp's attempts to speak the Comanche language, which has 25 to 30 living native speakers. “The words were there, the pronunciation was shaky, but adequate.

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A few days back I had one of my regular meetings devoted to putting the world to rights. Dave Church sometimes comes to have a pint with me at the Old Joint Stock in St Phillips Square, Birmingham, or I go to Walsall to have pint with him at the old Court House, St Matthew's Hall. Many years ago - around 1975 - when he was a left wing councillor Dave and fellow councillors from Walsall listened to a lecture I gave on 'corporate management in local government'. It was a convivial occasion but after my talk was over and we were having a drink at the bar Dave and I were chatting
"Good lecture, Simon. Very interesting. But come the revolution it's up against the wall for you"

Dave and Simon at St Matthew's Hall, Walsall (photo: Dave Yates)

We were there with Cllr Pete Smith, current Mayor of Walsall and also with a veteran from Dave's days as a Labour councillor, Bryan Powell, both, with 15 others, expelled for their break-away radicalism from the ranks of Walsall's Labour party in the mid-90s. I value and enjoy Dave's table talk on current issues, the new West Midland combined authority, the forthcoming Kerslake Review of Birmingham City Council, the de-politicisation of everything and the intimate seduction of consumerism.  I talked about the view that allotments had become an increasingly middle class activity. Dave was interested in my overview of the events of the Greek Civil War...

A pamphlet from KKE

...I showed him a booklet and how I had got it. Some years ago I'd enquired over the internet about a leaflet published by the Communist Party of Greece. Back from their Central Committee's address in Athens, in just three days, came an envelope with postage stamps bearing the words ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑ beside rich colours like the ones Dad used in 1949, when he wrote from Greece to me at school, 'Notes on the Greek Civil War (1946-1949) 60th Anniversary of the formation of the Democratic Army of Greece', with the logo of a red hammer and sickle and a greeting card with a striking painting by Maria Pesmatzoglou 'Best wishes for the new year. 90 years since the foundation of KKE. Central Committee, Communist Party of Greece.'

My Christmas card from Chris and Dave Church

The theme of trying to understand the Greek Civil War runs through my blog.
'The mainland stretched north to south in a tableau of varying greys in the damp air this morning. The shores are distinct and darker but beyond are the lighter and more distant peaks of the Grammos in Epirus - site of campaigns that 58 years ago concluded a catastrophe so terrible that even now it starts a lump in my throat to think of such happenings in a land we English have found so kind to us and of whose civility we hold such confident illusions.'
Since I wrote that in early 2007 I have been doing much reading, for example:
Thanasis D. Sfikas' book 'The British Labour Government and the Greek Civil War: The Imperialism of 'Non-Intervention' Keele University Press. 1994. Thanasis D. Sfikas, who teaches European political history at the University of Central Lancashire decribes how Britain continued to play a key role in Greek developments even after the Truman Doctrine of March 1947 had brought the Americans on the scene.
I have also been reading the work of Professor Mark Mazower who quotes a primary source for a series of formative events that were, in his scholarly view, ‘more traumatic’ for Greece than the Occupation – the British Civil Police Liaison log book in WO 170/4049 and the subsequent account of events in Syntagma Square on Sunday 3 December 1944 by 23rd Armoured Brigade in WO 204/8312 – ta dekemvriana. On that day an icon of our fight against the Nazis, the Spitfire, was strafing parts of Athens and Englishmen in English khaki were sniping at Greeks from the Acropolis and, something few knew about, ‘the percentages agreement’, informed the fate of the wondrous land. After the occupation came five years of Civil War already metastasizing inside occupied Greece, with the carcinogens of human weakness and constant fear brought on by starvation, brutalisation, grief and fear to add to the intensity of human division. And Greeks had yet to endure 'the stone years' and the armoured democracy that lasted until 1974. This has been uncomfortable reading for me and I am not giving up now. I left Dave with these reflections, to discuss when we meet again in The Old Joint Stock.

5th (Scots) Parachute Battalion, 2nd Parachute Brigade, fighting ELAS in Athens, 18 December 1944 (photo: Powell-Davies (Lt), No 2 Army Film & Photographic Unit)