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The bomb in the town of Omagh, in Northern Ireland, in August 1998, killed 29 people and injured more than 200.
Accusations have been made that the bombing was the work of a British double agent within the Real IRA.
Kevin Fulton, an ex-British army soldier, says he was recruited by the British secret service to spy on the IRA in the 1980s.
Fulton alleged, in comments to the Guardian and Channel 4 News, that two days before the bombing, he met a senior member of the Real IRA in a pub in Dundalk. He states that the man told him, “There’s something big on." The man had definitely "been making a bomb”.
Fulton said that he informed his RUC handler “within hours” and that his handler had subsequently confirmed that this information “was put into the system”.
A portion of Fulton’s interview with Channel Four:
Q: “You think that some of the people responsible for the Omagh bomb were informing at the time?” Fulton: “Yes, no doubt”. Q: “And they couldn’t be compromised? Fulton: “I don’t think the Omagh bombers meant to kill people. The thing is they did, shit happened.” Q: “Were the RUC warned about the bomb? Fulton: “I wouldn’t say they were warned; they would have known that certain things would have happened, yes.” Q: And you know that for sure? Fulton: “Yes.”
Fulton stated to the Guardian that he passed on the name of the Real IRA member he suspected of making a bomb to the RUC and also gave the suspect’s car registration number.
Fulton alleges that the British and Irish security forces allowed the bomb to travel in a stolen car from the nearby town of Dundalk to Omagh because if it was prevented it could lead to the compromising and possible exposure of agents within the Real IRA.
Why did Sinn Fein reportedly close their office the day before the bomb?
Why was the army confined to barracks?
Why did the RUC have only three men on the streets of Omagh and 24 men in surrounding areas?
A former British double agent, Michael Clark, stated: “It makes perfect sense for the army or the intelligence services to allow the progress and delivery of a device of some nature to preserve and protect the safety of an agent. I believe that is possibly the case”.
Is it possible that a British agent within the Real IRA planted the Omagh bomb?
The Force Research Unit (FRU) was an undercover security operation financed and run by the British state in Northern Ireland for more than two decades.
According to WSWS, "The FRU was a terror network that organised a series of covert intelligence and military operations and authorised their agents to carry out numerous illegal activities including bomb making, murder, and the shooting of RUC officers."
Fulton claims that he became an IRA member on FRU instructions, and took part in a series of terrorist bombings in the 1980s and the early 1990s. These included the 1993 bombing that decimated the town centre in Portadown.
According to WSWS, Britain was "a political beneficiary of the Omagh bombing."
It led to a public outcry demanding an end to violence and helped isolate the groups opposed to the signing of the Northern Ireland Agreement.
According to WSWS, "the bombing provided a pretext for the Blair government to introduce new laws before a specially recalled Parliament."
These laws allow the conviction of someone belonging to a proscribed organisation on the evidence of a senior police officer alone.
A defendant’s right to silence was breached.
The measures include powers to convict people on the basis of conspiring within Britain to commit terrorist offences anywhere in the world, making it possible to criminalise and even ban a swathe of organisations opposed to regimes friendly towards Britain.
In the recent BBC series, 'The Power of Nightmares' Adam Curtis claimed:
(1) The neocon politicians have a new way of trying to hold onto power. They promise to protect us from terror.
(2) The neocon politicians are trying to spread democracy around the world.
According to Medialens:
(1) The politicians have been using fake terror as a weapon to control people for many hundreds of years.
(2) The politicians may not be trying to spread democracy; they may be promoting the interests of big business.
According to Medialens, Curtis had nothing to say about the key issue of business control of American society; the words 'corporate', 'corporation' and 'business' were not mentioned in the series. Instead, the neocons were depicted as fanatical ideologues, with no mention of their roots in the business community or their furtherance of corporate interests.
On 31 December 2004, Simon Jenkins wrote in The Times:
"To me the greatest disaster of 2004 was not the Indonesian tsunami but the continuing conflict in Iraq, the bloody endgame of the 9/11 disaster. The upper estimate of deaths in Iraq, 100,000, is eerily similar to that for the tsunami.
According to Medialens, Jenkins is wrong - the upper estimate for Iraq deaths, made in the only serious scientific study to date, is 194,000.
Professor Richard Garfield - one of the authors of a report conducted by the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on Iraqi casualties published in the Lancet science journal - has said: "The true death toll is far more likely to be on the high-side of our point estimate..."
Medialens points out that the words 'The Lancet' and 'John Hopkins Bloomberg School' had been mentioned a total of just 23 times in all UK newspapers since the report was published on October 29, 2004. The words 'The Lancet' and 'Iraq' had been mentioned 127 times. By contrast the words 'tsunami' and 'Asia' were mentioned in 700 newspaper articles in just three days in early January. The total since December 26 runs into many thousands.
Medialens considers that this is a classic example of media servility to power.
Eurico Guterres was the leader of the Indonesian army militias who carried out genocide in East Timor.
It has been reported that he has visited Aceh to set up a militia to fight Aceh's separatist rebels.
Indonesia’s special human rights court in November 2002 convicted Guterres of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 10 years in jail. Jakarta High Court in July 2004 reduced his sentence to five years. He still remains free pending a lengthy appeal process.
Human rights groups in 2003 accused Guterres of going to Papua to set up the ‘Merah Putih’ militia to oppose the separatist Free Papua Organization.
The Daily Telegraph has reported that, according to associates of Guterres, he visited Aceh last week and that 900 members of his Army-backed militia had assembled in the province.
The Telegraph said “The militia's appearance raises fears that the military is using it to sabotage a proposed ceasefire and intimidate Acehnese civilians”.
The report quoted Eddy Juliansyah, who allegedly runs the militia's Aceh headquarters, as saying the group had already assembled 900 members to defend "Indonesian unity".
The Telegraph said there was “little evidence” the militia was conducting relief work. It said the group was not reporting to a local military commander, but instead reported to Major General Adam Damiri, the former chief of Indonesian forces in East Timor.
Damiri was convicted in August 2003 of crimes against humanity and sentenced to three years in jail. He remained free pending appeal and his conviction was overturned by Jakarta High Court in July 2004. Over recent years he has been posted in Aceh, reportedly leading offensives against GAM. Rights groups have for years demanded he be removed from Aceh.
He declined to confirm whether Damiri was still in Aceh, but merely said “many retired generals” had come to help.
The British army has a long history of using torture.
The writer Mark Curtis says that in 1971 an official British investigation found that the British army's torture techniques "played an important part in counter-insurgency operations in Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus and the British Cameroons (1960-1), Brunei (1963), British Guiana (1964), Aden (1964-7), Borneo/Malaysia (1965-6), the Persian Gulf (1970-1) and in Northern Ireland (1971)".
KENYA
The British used beatings, sexual humiliation, hooding, sleep deprivation, and bombarding with white noise.
32 Whites were killed by the Mau Mau during the five-year state of emergency. More whites died in traffic accidents in the capital city, Nairobi.
Kenyans were forced into concentration camps and routinely tortured. Some 150,000 Africans died as a direct result of the British policy.
There was a "constant stream of reports of brutalities by police, military and home guards", wrote Canon Bewes, a British missionary. "Some of the people had been using castration instruments and two men had died under castration."
Other brutalities included slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging people to death, pouring paraffin over suspects and setting them alight and burning eardrums with cigarettes.
A British district officer admitted, "There was outright abuse of power and some of the crimes committed were horrific. One day six Mau Mau suspects were brought into a police station in the neighbouring district to mine. The British police inspector in charge lined them up against a wall and shot them."
A mobile gallows travelled the country. Over 1,000 were hanged, their bodies displayed at crossroads and market places.
MALAYSIA
The British used terror in Malaya.
This involved aerial bombing, massacres of villagers, dictatorial police measures and the "resettlement" of hundreds of thousands of people.
CYPRUS
During the state of emergency, from 1952 to 1957, the British army used torture.
Cypriot Nicos Koshies: "They took me to the Special Branch and they started beating me. They took off all my clothes, they tied my hands and feet. They asked somebody to come in. He was taking a stick to put up my bottom, he was putting cloths in water and putting them on my face so I could not breathe, he threw me down and danced on my stomach when he was wearing boots. After 12 days I could not recognise myself."
James Callaghan in the House of Commons: "On 29 June 1957 an inquest was held into the death of Nicos Georghiou. Dr Clearkin said in evidence that bruises in the head were sufficiently severe to have caused the injuries to the brain, perhaps bumping the head against a hard object."
IRAN
In 1953 a coup organised by the British and the USA overthrew Mossadeq and gave power to the Shah.
British SAS forces trained the Shah's Savak secret police. SAS officers helped train the Iranian army in special operations against the Kurds. The Shah's regime used torture until it was overthrown in 1979.
ADEN/SOUTH YEMEN
In Aden, later known as South Yemen, SAS squads used terror against local villages.
An official investigation found that from 1964 to 1967 detainees at a British interrogation centre were routinely tortured. Their eardrums were burst. Others were forced to lean against walls with their fingertips for day and subjected to white noise for hours.
BAHRAIN
Former detainees in Bahrain have described being beaten, electrocuted, whipped, tied in excruciating positions for days on end, kept awake, starved and having their toenails torn out.
NORTHERN IRELAND
The Compton official inquiry acknowledged that the army hooded suspects, fed them on just bread and water and blasted them with noise.
An Amnesty International report said, "It is because we regard the deliberate destruction of a man's ability to control his own mind with revulsion that we reserve a special place in our catalogue of moral crimes for techniques of thought control and brainwashing. Any interrogation procedure which has the purpose or effect of causing a malfunction or breakdown of a man's mental processes constitutes as grave an assault on the inherent dignity of the human person as more traditional techniques of physical torture."
A European human rights report found that British army techniques amounted to "inhuman and degrading treatment" causing "at least intense physical and mental suffering".
"As a Native American, every time I see the American flag I feel the same way I imagine Jewish people must feel when looking at the Nazi flag. The American flag is a flag of oppression and genocide. Because that's what America is built on - from the very beginning when the first European settlers landed in North America, it has been a country built on blood."- Rod Coronado, Native American.
IRAQ
The CIA put Saddam into power and manipulated Iraq and Iran into a war. Then came the Desert Storm campaign, depleted uranium, UN sanctions and the latest Iraq war. Over 1 million have died as a result of American interference in Iraq.
9 11
On 9 11, 1973, Salvador Allende, the President of Chile, was killed in an American-sponsored coup, led by General Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet's rise to power, organised by the CIA and Henry Kissinger, began nearly twenty years of military dictatorship that led to thousands of deaths. 30,000 people were massacred in the weeks following this September 11th, as Pinochet tried to wipe out those who opposed fascism.
The Congo was given a military dictatorship thanks to the CIA assassination of Patrice Lumumba.
In Cambodia, America (and Britain) backed Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot who killed nearly 2 million Cambodians.
In 1936, the American National Guard helped Anastasio Somoza to set up a dictatorship which ruled Nicaragua for 43 years.
Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, Ecuador, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Haiti, Iraq, Iran, Laos, East Timor, Grenada, Greece... All of these and more suffered from torture and death as a result of American 'intervention,'
Ex-State Department employee William Blum stated, "An American holocaust has taken place - So great and deep is the denial of the American holocaust that the deniers are not even aware that the claimers or their claims exist. Yet, a few million people have died in the American holocaust and many more millions have been condemned to lives of misery and torture as a result of US interventions extending from China and Greece in the 1940s to Afghanistan and Iraq in the 1990s."
"I will never apologise for the United States of America - I don't care what the facts are," said President George Bush Sr. in 1988, when the U.S. Navy warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian commercial airliner. The plane was on a routine flight in a commercial corridor in Iranian airspace. All 290 civilians on board the aircraft were killed.
Many thousands of Afghani civilians have died as a result of U.S. led air strikes in Afghanistan.
Since the Second World War, the US government has bombed 21 countries:
China in 1945-46 and again in 1950-53,
Korea in 1950-53,
Nearly 3 million civilians were murdered by the USA and its allies. As with Mai Lai in Vietnam, the murder of civilians at No Gun Ri, Korea, was not an isolated incident. The USA and its fascist puppet regime in South Korea carried out genocide against both North and South Korean people.
Guatemala in 1954, 1960, and 1967-69,
Indonesia in 1958,
Vietnam in 1961-73,
Through the Phoenix Program, hundreds of thousands of people were tortured to death in “interrogation centers”. These torture centers were built by the United States. Women were always raped as part of the torture before being murdered. The large-scale terrorism, rape and mass-murder was the policy of the USA. The My Lai massacre itself was an operation of the Phoenix Program.
Congo in 1964,
Laos in 1964-73,
The United States Air Force dropped the equivalent of a planeload of bombs every eight minutes for nine years on the people of Laos — from 1965 to 1973. Over 2,000,000 tons.
This was some of the heaviest aerial bombardment in world history.
Estimated civilian deaths: 500,000 men, women and children.
Peru in 1965,
Cambodia in 1969-70,
El Salvador throughout the 1980s,
Nicaragua throughout the 1980s,
Lebanon in 1983-84,
Grenada in 1983,
Bosnia in 1985,
Libya in 1986,
Panama in 1989,
Iraq in 1991 and later,
Sudan in 1998,
Former Yugoslavia in 1999,
and Afghanistan in 1998 and 2002.
Up to one million innocent civilians died in Indonesia after the CIA put Suharto into power in Indonesia.
At least one third of the population of East Timor died after the USA gave Suharto permission to invade that country.
If you add up the totals, the United States of America is probably responsible for the biggest holocaust of all time.
"Since before the end of WWII the United States Corporate Mafia Government has been hell bent for total world domination, by any and all means necessary, no matter how brutal — including the slaughter of as many millions of innocent civilian men, women and children as it takes to accomplish that goal." http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/bibliographies/Main.html
All this terror stuff is a device by the fascist elite to stay in power.
Remember that Mosley, Mussolini and Hitler called themselves socialists.
Blair works for the elite in Washington, the people who are at present trying to kill off Leftists in the Philippines, topple the ruler of Venezuela, and smash the Palestinians.
We know that Duncan-Smith has given lectures to extreme right wingers in the USA. But what about Blair and his cronies?
We know that from the 1960's onwards, the CIA was trying to recruit people within the Labour movement. They used various front organisations. So what about Blair?
According to Lobster magazine: "Within his inner group we have Peter Mandelson who has been around MI6 since his early 20s, and Jonathan Powell, ex-FCO in Washington and, it has been alleged, the MI6 man there, before joining Blair... Four of the Blair cabinet are alumni of the Anglo-American elite group the British American Project; three of the Blair cabinet have passed muster at Bilderberg meetings; and the entire Defence team in Blair's first Cabinet in 1997 were members or associates of the Trade Union Committee for European and Transatlantic Unity, created by the Americans in the 1970s - probably though not yet provably created by the CIA - and currently funded by NATO."
Terror is used to frighten and control us. Smallpox, anthrax, dirty bombs.....
What happened in Indonesia gives us a clue to what is happening in Britain under New Labour; and to what is happening in the rest of the world.
Think back to 1998. Hundreds of little girls raped in Jakarta; many of them murdered; around 1000 school kids burnt to death. Who was to blame?
Indonesian special forces, Koppasus Group 4, reportedly organised the May riots which led to the fall of President Suharto.
An independent report found that the rioters had been trained at military style bases and made to dress as students so as to give the impression that the ordinary people were behind the violence.
Prior to the May 1998 Jakarta Riots, the chief of the CIA had visited Jakarta; then the US defence secretary had met notorious US trained Koppasus General, Prabowo; US Defence Intelligence Agency attache at the US Jakarta Embassy, Col. Charles McFetridge had met regularly with Col. Chaiwaran, commander of Koppasus special forces Group 4. The Pentagon had trained Group 4, contrary to the wishes of Congress.
When new elections were due to be held in Indonesia, after the fall of Suharto, mysterious 'ninjas' began slaughtering moderate Moslem preachers in East Java. This was an attempt to terrorise supporters of a moderate party likely to do well in the elections. After the preachers were killed, it was the turn of mentally backward youths to be slaughtered. Analysts pointed the finger at the US trained Kopassus, who were well known for using 'ninjas' in East Timor.
Terror worked in Indonesia. The army still holds all the key posts in government. Its generals are safe from prosecution. There has been no Reformasi.
Indonesia's Laskar Jihad was presented to the world as an extremist Moslem group. But what is the truth? Most experts now believe Laskar Jihad is run by the anti-Islamist, US trained army of Indonesia. Laskar Jihad was meant to undermine democracy. Thousands died in the Moluccas at the hands of Laskar Jihad and their likes. Laskar Jihad allegedly attacked both mosques and churches.
Terror is a weapon of the fascist elite. Laskar Jihad's activities helped keep the army in power. And what about al Qaeda? 9 11 was almost certainly not the work of militant Moslems. We have been lied to. It is time to dump New Labour.
SECOND - Dump the idea that 9 11 was the work of fundamentalist moslems.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the so-called mastermind of 9-11, is believed to have attended college in North Carolina. In Manila, he met associates in karaoke bars and giant go-go clubs filled with mirrors, flashing lights and bikini-clad dancers. He held meetings at four-star hotels. He took scuba-diving lessons at a coastal resort.
When he wasn't with the go-go dancers, he courted a Filipina dentist. Once, he rented a helicopter and flew it over her office, then called her on his mobile phone and told her to look up and wave. Other members of the terror cell Mohammed led had local girlfriends as well.
Shaikh Mohammed is considered by many analysts to be an agent of the Pakistan intelligence service ISI, which is generally considered to be controlled by the CIA.
Robert Fisk, 3 March 03, in the Independent: "Mr Mohammed was an ISI asset; indeed, anyone who is "handed over" by the ISI these days is almost certainly a former (or present) employee of the Pakistani agency, whose control of Taliban operatives amazed even the Pakistani government during the years before 2001. Mr Pearl, it should be remembered, arranged his fatal assignation in Karachi on a mobile phone from an ISI office."
US counter-terrorism officials claim Shaikh Mohammed was in Germany before the 9 11 attacks, liaising with Mohamed Atta. A secretive U.S. eavesdropping agency monitored telephone conversations. But, the Germans weren't told about it – and when they ask Washington for further information, none is forthcoming.
There was already a $2 million reward for Mohammed in 1998.
In 2000, the CIA monitered his presence at an al Qaeda meeting, yet they didn't arrest him. Why wasn't the 9/11 plot discovered in June 2001 when US intelligence learned Mohammed was sending terrorists to live in the US.
And is Shaikh Mohammed still alive? Asia Times, 30 2 02, "Ever since the frenzied shootout last month on September 11 2002 in Karachi there have been doubts over whether Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed head of al-Qaeda's military committee, died in the police raid on his apartment.
"Now it has emerged that Kuwaiti national Khalid Shaikh Mohammed did indeed perish in the raid, but his wife and child were taken from the apartment and handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in whose hands they remain."
THIRD - Dump the idea you can't do anything about Blair. Manchester United was not taken over by BSkyB, after a SMALL group of shareholders took action. Esso had suffered a drop in regular buyers by June 2002 thanks to the Stop Esso campaign.
Here is a list of the Labour MPs who do not side with Blair over Iraq: Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North & Stoke Newington) Graham Allen (Nottingham North) John Austin (Erith & Thamesmead) Tony Banks (West Ham) Harry Barnes (Derbyshire North East) John Battle (Leeds West) Ms Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) Andrew Bennett (Denton & Reddish) Joe Benton (Bootle) Dr Roger Berry (Kingswood) Harold Best (Leeds North West) Richard Burden (Birmingham Northfield) Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) Martin Caton (Gower) Colin Challen (Morley & Rothwell) David Chaytor (Bury North) Michael Clapham (Barnsley West & Penistone) Mrs Helen Clark (Peterborough) Tom Clarke (Coatbridge & Chryston) Tony Clarke (Northampton South) Harry Cohen (Leyton & Wanstead) Iain Coleman (Hammersmith & Fulham) <>Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) Jim Cousins (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) Tom Cox (Tooting) Ms Ann Cryer (Keighley) John Cryer (Hornchurch) Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) Ms Valerie Davey (Bristol West) Denzil Davies (Llanelli) Terry Davis (Birmingham Hodge Hill) Hilton Dawson (Lancaster & Wyre) Jim Dobbin (Heywood & Middleton) Terry Davis (Birmingham Hodge Hill) Frank Dobson (Holborn & St Pancras) Brian Donohoe (Cunninghame South) Frank Doran (Aberdeen Central) David Drew (Stroud) Huw Edwards (Monmouth) Jeff Ennis (Barnsley East & Mexborough) Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent Central) Paul Flynn (Newport West) Hywel Francis (Aberavon) George Galloway (Glasgow Kelvin) Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow) Dr Ian Gibson (Norwich North) Roger Godsiff (Birmingham Sparkbrook & Small Heath) Patrick Hall (Bedford) David Hamilton (Midlothian) Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) Doug Henderson (Newcastle upon Tyne North) David Hinchliffe (Wakefield) Ms Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) Jimmy Hood (Clydesdale) Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) Dr Brian Iddon (Bolton South East) Eric Illsley (Barnsley Central) Ms Glenda Jackson (Hampstead & Highgate) Ms Helen Jackson (Sheffield Hillsborough) Jon Owen Jones (Cardiff Central) Dr Lynne Jones (Birmingham Selly Oak) Martyn Jones (Clwyd South) Peter Kilfoyle (Liverpool Walton) Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North & Leith) David Lepper (Brighton Pavilion) Terry Lewis (Worsley) Iain Luke (Dundee East) John Lyons (Strathkelvin & Bearsden) Mrs Christine McCafferty (Calder Valley) John McDonnell (Hayes & Harlington) Ann McKechin (Glasgow Maryhill) Kevin McNamara (Hull North) Tony McWalter (Hemel Hempstead) Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham Perry Barr) Ms Alice Mahon (Halifax) David Marshall (Glasgow Sh ettleston) Jim Marshall (Leicester South) Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway) Chris Mole (Ipswich) Ms Julie Morgan (Cardiff North) Tony McWalter (Hemel Hempstead) Denis Murphy (Wansbeck) Doug Naysmith (Bristol North West) Ms Diana Organ (Forest of Dean) Albert Owen (Ynys Mon) Ms Linda Perham (Ilford North) Peter Pike (Burnley) Kerry Pollard (St Albans) Gordon Prentice (Pendle) Andy Reed (Loughborough) Joan Ruddock (Lewisham Deptford) Martin Salter (Reading West) Malcolm Savidge (Aberdeen North) Mohammad Sarwar (Glasgow Govan) Philip Sawford (Kettering) Brian Sedgemore (Hackney South & Shoreditch) Ms Debra Shipley (Stourbridge) Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) Alan Simpson(Nottingham South) Marsha Singh (Bradford West) Chris Smith (Islington South & Finsbury) Llew Smith (Blaenau Gwent) George Stevenson (Stoke-on-Trent South) Paul Stinchcombe (Wellingborough) Dr Gavin Strang (Edinburgh East & Musselburgh) David Taylor (Leicestershire North West) Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) Paul Truswell (Pudsey) Dr Desmond Turner (Brighton Kemptown) Bill Tynan (Hamilton South) Rudi Vis (Finchley & Golders Green) Ms Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) Robert Wareing (Liverpool West Derby) Brian White (Milton Keynes North East) Alan Williams (Swansea West) Mrs Betty Williams (Conwy) Mike Wood (Batley & Spen) Tony Worthington (Clydebank & Milngavie) Tony Wright (Cannock Chase) Derek Wyatt (Sittingbourne & Sheppey)
"The lesson began with one boy walking into the room and kicking over chairs while his pals ran around and stood at the door shouting. A group of about five boys – with two particularly unruly ring-leaders – brought this class to a standstill from the word go .
"Their teacher, who was treated with disgraceful contempt, was forced to contain when she wanted to teach. When she tried to calm them down, she was mocked and shouted down. Boys swung on their seats and sneered at her when she tried to exert any authority . Even the “good” kids started playing up within minutes as the virus of bad behaviour spread.
"There was silence in the classroom for no more than four seconds throughout the entire lesson. I timed it. Kids banged themselves on the head with their books, sang, shouted – one boy refused to take off his headphones; when he eventually did, he started thumping them on his desk. The teacher told him to stop, he looked her up and down, yawned and started arguing back. They laughed at the teacher, swore at her in stage- whispers, mocked the way she spoke. As she read the poem about neds, a group of boys got up from their seats and started strolling about impersonating the way neds walk. They adopted aggressive hard-men poses and swaggered around, shouting in front of the teacher ...
"It is a typical Scottish school. I spent a week there, just before Christmas, observing, sitting in classes and talking to kids, teachers and parents.... It would be an educational utopia if just 20 or so kids weren’t there...
"What infuriates teachers is the inclusion of youngsters with “social and behavioural problems”. Years ago, these pupils would simply have been expelled and stuck in List-D schools.
"Teachers realise that many of the youngsters who give them problems have been abused, come from intensely dysfunctional homes, have drug-addicted parents, spent time in care and generally lived a life that no child should have to bear. But they argue that just because the child is a victim, there is no reason for the school to have to pick up all the pieces. They are teachers, not psychiatrists or social workers...
“See that kid over there?” asked one student, as he pointed to a pupil working on a lathe. “He’s stoned. And so’s he. And so’s he and him and him and him.” His finger darted around the room.
He told me that he hadn’t smoked a joint in school that day but about five or six of his pals had...
"Some teachers suggested taking schools out of local authority control He also suggested setting up a dedicated unit off campus for children with behavioural problems...
"The biggest enemy of the teacher is the parent. Not the ordinary mum or dad, but the growing number of parents who either collude in their child’s bad behaviour or do nothing about it, usually because they are so dysfunctional themselves.
"Ask a teacher what’s wrong with our children and this is the mantra you’ll hear: games consoles, TVs in bedrooms, mobile phones, parents not reading to kids, violent movies, the greater sexualisation of our society, the spread of drugs, the materialistic consumerist “me” culture of modern society. It’s not a reactionary plea for Britain to roll back to some mythic 1950s’ idyll, instead it’s a desire for children to retain some sort of innocence, for parents to parent and for children to seek mental stimulation in a book rather than intellectual oblivion in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
"Headmaster McAlpine points out that when pupils do get one-to-one support they tend to improve rapidly. He tells about one “poor kid from a very bad family background” who was seen as a candidate for expulsion almost from the moment he arrived in school. After one-to-one support, he quickly improved and is now doing well. “That’s why we need additional resourcing,” McAlpine adds. “It’s very frustrating for us.”...
"Les Obre, a psychologist and teacher who runs the pupil support centre at Bannockburn High, says he’s seen children who have suffered every type of abuse. One kid gets down on his hands and knees and barks like a dog..."
Indonesian Military Accused of Extorting Money from Aid Workers
January 14, 2005
Foreign volunteers have accused Indonesian troops of extracting money from them when they enter Aceh province.
Adian, chairman of the Independent Volunteers' Commission, said on14/1/05 that complaints had been raised by volunteers from several countries, including Australia and Japan, state news agency Antara reported.
The volunteers were reportedly asked by troops to pay Rp1 million ($110) each for security support and communications equipment.
The Indonesian military (TNI) makes much of its money from running businesses such as 'protection'. Indonesia has for years been rated as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
Indonesia Corruption Watch, a respected non-government organization, is monitoring the aid to Aceh. Luky Djani, who is in charge of the project, was quoted by The New York Times as saying food or other supplies would probably be siphoned off by soldiers or corrupt officials.
He said opportunities for greater theft would arise in the rehabilitation and reconstruction phase, which the government has said will cost about $3 billion. He expressed concern that government departments might exaggerate their needs for aid to get more money.
Presidential spokesman Andi Mallarangeng confirmed that not all foreigners would be kicked out of Aceh by the end of March. "Not all of the foreigners must leave Aceh by March 26 because there will still be certain needs.
Refugees have expressed hope the foreign troops will remain as long as they are needed. "If they leave, we will starve," refugee Syarwan was quoted as saying by AP. "We can't expect any help from the Indonesian government. We trust the foreign military," said another refugee, Muhammad Yusuf.
About 3,000 people have been killed as a result of the recent military operation against separatists. Rights groups claim many of the dead were innocent civilians and accuse the military of continuing the conflict in order to protect its business interests in Aceh.
The UK's anti-Iraq-war Liberal Democrats have just won a council by-election in the constituency of Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.
The by-election in the Derringham ward on Hull City Council was called after two High Court judges ruled the original election last June was void.
Former Independent councillor John Considine launched the legal challenge after he lost the seat to UKIP by seven votes after six recounts during the council elections on June 10.
Mr Considine claimed that problems with implementing the all-postal ballot system led to some homes failing to receive voting papers while others received ballot papers for the Marfleet ward instead.
Derringham ward result :Paul Buckley, British National Party (BNP) 116 ; John Considine, Hull Independents 679; John Cornforth, United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) 320 ; Alan Gardiner, Labour Party 353; Michael Rouse-Deane, Liberal Democrat 927.
'The greatest real-world threat to Uncle Sam is that the inflow of dollars dries up. For instance, foreign central banks and private investors could any day decide to place more of their money elsewhere than in the declining dollar and abandon poor ol' Uncle Sam to his destiny. China could double its per capita income very quickly if it made real investments at home instead of financial ones with Uncle Sam. Central banks, European and others, can now put their reserves in (rising!) euros or even soon-to-be-revalued Chinese yuan. Not so far down the road, there may be an East Asian currency...'
``Homosexual Prostitution Probe Ensnares Official of Bush, Reagan,'' screamed the front-page headline of the Washington Times with the kicker ``Call Boys Took Midnight Tour of White House.''
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~# 10 Jan 2005
Commodore David White, the commander of British forces on Gibraltar, found dead in his swimming pool, appears to have committed suicide after being recalled pending an investigation into pornography offences, The Sun tabloid daily reported 10 January 2005.
Chief Inspector Eddie Yome of the Royal Gibraltar Police said on Saturday: "We don't suspect any foul play at this stage. Obviously, it was not a natural death but we must wait for results of the post mortem".The Sun reported that detectives had been investigating White for several months "for having hundreds of indecent images of children".
Conspiracy of Silence was to be aired on the Discovery Channel, on May 3, 1994. This documentary exposed a network of religious leaders and Washington politicians who flew children to Washington D.C. for sex orgies.
At the last minute before airing, unknown congressmen threatened the TV Cable industry with restrictive legislation if this documentary was aired. Almost immediately, the rights to the documentary were purchased by unknown persons who had ordered all copies destroyed.
'The government of Acheh in exile, the PNA/ASNLF, deplores the arrival in Acheh of members of the thuggish so-called Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and the terroristic Indonesia Mujahidin Council (MMI)... The FPI has been involved in sectarian killings in Maluku and Central Sulawesi and illegal attacks against non-Muslims and others in Java and elsewhere. The FPI, which is made up of street thugs and minor criminals, was established as a militia by TNI generals on 17 August 1998 to act as a vanguard against Indonesia’s pro-democracy activists. It has since become infamous for attacking nightclubs and other places it claims contradict the teachings of Islam. However, as is well known, the FPI has used these attacks to extort ‘protection’ money from bar owners. The FPI continues to act with the support of, and on behalf of, TNI generals, and is clearly in Acheh on their behalf.'
According to a spokesman for an Aceh non-government forum, an estimated 39,000 or more people disappeared between 1989 and 1998. As early as 1992, international human rights organisations such as Asia Watch and Amnesty reported that mass killings were taking place.
Mass graves were unearthed in August 1998 in the Aceh region, on the northern tip of Sumatra, pointing to the murder of thousands of people by the Indonesian military.
Baharuddin Lopa of the Indonesian government's National Commission on Human Rights recorded hundreds of cases of disappearances, torture and rape in Aceh. Lopa died suddenly, some time after making his report.
In the Denver area, Geologists found that injecting waste fluids deep into the earth could trigger earthquakes. A series of earthquakes in the Denver area, between 1962 and 1965, coincided with periods when waste was injected.
In the 11 July, 1935 issue of the New York American there was an article entitled 'Tesla's Controlled Earthquakes'. Nicola Tesla's "experiments in transmitting mechanical vibrations through the earth were roughly described by the scientists as a sort of controlled earthquake."
In 1966, Professor Gordon J. F. MacDonald, a member of the US President's Science Advisory Committee, published papers on the use of environmental-control technologies for military purposes. MacDonald stated: "The key to geophysical warfare is the identification of environmental instabilities to which the addition of a small amount of energy would release vastly greater amounts of energy. "
MacDonald wrote a chapter entitled "How To Wreck The Environment," for the book Unless Peace Comes. He describes the possibility of engineering earthquakes.
"Exxon-Mobil has a 60-billion-standard-cubic-foot-per-day facility near Aceh. In the span of four years the company extracts more than one cubic mile of natural gas from the formations beneath what has turned out to be the epicenter of the Aceh earthquake. The gas field there has been producing for much longer than four years, and is one of the largest such facilities in the world.Scientists have known for some time that earthquakes in the order of 4.0 on the Richtor scale have been caused by oil drilling and other earth intrusive practices."
Allegedly the Bush people spent $29 million to rig the election for Bush.
The leak about the money and the rigged election apparently came from technicians who felt they had been cheated over payments.
The money to rig the election reportedly came from Five Star Trust, largely based in Houston but tied to the Saudi Royal Family. "It has been used to support both Bush and Osama bin Laden in the US and around the world."
Other money used to fund the election rigging was allegedly from siphoned Enron money in accounts in the Cook Islands.
The BBC and the Guardian may now be heavily influenced by the spooks.
Now, where does Lolita come into this?
Well, things are not always how they seem. Lolita was a boy. If you've read Nabokov's PALE FIRE, you'll know that Nabokov loved butterflies and bamboozling people and boys. In both Lolita and Pale Fire it takes the reader a while to realise what is going on.
One of the most disturbing allegations is that criminal gangs are befriending children orphaned by the tsunami, and selling them to sex traffickers....
There are unconfirmed reports of up to 20 children being taken from Aceh to Malaysia, and possibly hundreds to Jakarta.
The ILO reported its researchers finding more than 21,000 prostituted children – some as young as 15 – during a study of Jakarta and all Javanese provinces except Banten. Many brothel complexes are maintained and patronized by military and government officials.
Experts say the Indonesian military generates more than 70% of its budget from external operations, including involvement in protection and extortion rackets, illegal mining, illegal logging, prostitution, gambling, and trafficking in narcotics and endangered species.
Scotland's Deputy Chief Medical Officer said in 2000, "What is needed is a culture change in Scotland...we need to make violence fueled by alcohol misuse something which is socially unacceptable..."
"Scotland's First Minister Henry McLeish... identified tackling the violent side of Scotland's culture as a top priority," according to Scotland on Sunday 24/12/00.
Official figures released in December 2000 showed violent crime had risen by one third. (Scotland on Sunday 24/12/00)
Henry McLeish said,"There is a violence to the Scottish character that worries me. There's a yob culture- it's bad manners, it's ignorance, it's thuggery, it's violence..." (Scotland on Sunday 24/12/00)
Is a culture of knives, drugs, drunkeness and nasty videos the culture of parts of Britain today?
These are found mainly in the NORTH of Scotland (only 1 homicide in 1999)
and in FIFE(only 1 homicide in 1999).
DUNDEE only had 2 homicides.
Dumfries and Galloway 3.
Homicides in Strathclyde 1997 - 59
1999 - 82
Homicides in Lothian & Borders 1996 - 9
1999 - 17
Homicides in Glasgow 1996 - 24
1999 - 35
In Westminster, between 1997 and 1999, there were 29 murders.
Murders committed by 18-25 year-old men in Scotland rank next only to the USA in a survey of the developed world. (Sunday Times 26/3/00).
Cornell University professor James Garbarino commented that Scotland's young men react to perceived slights with unreasonable fury. (Sunday Times 26/3/00).
Joan McAlpine in an article "Saving our sons from taking up a life of crime" suggested that the number of Scottish lads turning to violence was increasing. She wrote, "bullying 8 year-olds grow into aggressive 18 year-olds. But this is not inevitable. We can intervene by being loving parents." The article suggests that too many Scots parents abuse alcohol and drugs.
The Inverclyde Forum About Drugs has issued a league table relating to heroin use. Top of the league come: Greenock, Port Glasgow, Gourock, Aberdeen, Glasgow, and West Dumbartonshire.
At the bottom of the league come places like Dundee.
Heroin addicts are often unemployed and yet spend £22,000 a year on buying heroin. The addicts tend to resort to theft to gain the money to feed their habit.
In Scotland, one in three schoolboys carries a knife. In some areas, almost every kid is armed.
In one Scottish tourist village, X went straight to the police when teenagers with knives demanded money. The police took one knife off a teenager, but took no further action. In the local park the kids continue to carry knives and baseball bats and continue to sell drugs. Needles are a major hazard.
The Dumfries Courier 8/12/00 reported in its editorial: "there is an ever present fear of violence and the 'yob culture' and it is not simply confined to the most deprived council estates in inner cities."
In Stirling a man caught a 10-year-old throwing stones at windows. The man hauled the kid into his girlfriend's house to tell him off. The man was fined £250 (Daily Record 7/12/00)
In Lanarkshire a family passed on information to the police about drug dealing in Bellshill. Their son, 12, was assaulted by older teens. Their daughter, 9, was threatened with rape. A DRUGS LYNCH MOB THEN DROVE THE FAMILY FROM THEIR HOME. (Daily Record 6/12/00)
Recently a Mr C was brutally stabbed to death. The two men responsible for the death walked free from court.The press accused the Crown Office of incompetence or worse.
The Glasgow Herald reported, "The trial of 3 men accused of assault was haulted because a signature was missing from the charge sheet..."
3 trials involving drugs charges collapsed because of search warrant blunders.
According to the Daily Record 7/12/00, "hour by hour, day and night, the emaciated drug addicts file into...239 Bellrock Street, Cranhill." It is there that JM (The record gives his name) sells heroin to children aged 12 and 13. On 7/12/00 alone, the Daily record named and shamed 30 drug deale rs. Each day, more names appeared.
In the year 2000 in Scotland, 340 people died from drugs (and over 1000 from alcohol).
Andrew was aged 13 when he died after taking 2 ecstasy pills. The teenage son of his mum's partner died after taking morphine.
And what is Scotland's second newest MP going to say about all this? John Robertson is the MP for Anniesland! On 6 december 2000, his daughter Laura was "being investigated by the drugs squad after dealing ecstasy" (Daily Record 7/12/00). It is alleged that Laura Robertson sells ecstasy at Bonkers nightclub in Glasgow.
In 1999, a record-breaking 14,183 children were referred to the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration for SERIOUS NEGLECT compared with 9245 in 1998 - a rise of more than 50%.
In 1997 the figure was 4671.
Drugs and alcohol and knives are increasingly involved in the murders of children. Is the culture in parts of Scotland one that would shock many visitors from the Third World?
Youth crime in places like SINGAPORE, MALTA and BHUTAN used to be extremely rare.
The introduction of nasty films has changed all that.
Crime figures in Singapore, Malta and Bhutan, although still lower than in Britain, tended to rise at the same time as horrid media material was introduced.
"Four years ago, Bhutan, the fabled Himalayan Shangri-la, became the last nation on earth to introduce television. Suddenly a culture, barely changed in centuries, was bombarded by 46 cable channels. And all too soon came Bhutan's first crime wave - murder, fraud, drug offences." http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,975769,00.html
In THE FAILURE OF BRITAIN'S POLICE, Dennis and Erdos report that in December 2002 there were 282 robberies of personal property in Lambeth. This figure, for one borough for one month, exceeded all robberies, personal and business, for the whole of England and Wales in any year between the two world wars, with the exception of 1932 (342) and 1938 (287). In 1971 there were 17 reported crimes for every police officer. There are now 44.
In 1921 there were 57,000 police officers dealing with 103,000 crimes - two to each officer - but in 2002/2003134,000 police officers had to deal with 5,899,000 crimes.
1921 - 103,000 crimes recorded 1955 - 500,000 crimes recorded 2003 - 5,899,000 crimes recorded
Dr Ian Stevenson is the former head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, and now is Director of the Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia.
For 40 years he has been studying the past life memories of children from all over the world.
Anthony Flew, a philosophy professor who has been an atheist for more than 50 years, has decided that God may exist after all. He believes scientific evidence supports the theory that some sort of intelligence created the universe.
Flew argues that the investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved."
According to Dr Robert Beckford, a committed pentecostal Christian and a reader in theology at Birmingham University, the Bible may not have all the answers.
In a British Channel 4 documentary on 25 December 2004 Beckford said: 'The so-called law of Moses turns out to be the work of many human hands. What I once thought was the word of God was now beginning to sound like something out of Stalin's Russia.'
Beckford produced archaeological evidence to suggest that the kingdoms of David and Solomon did NOT dominate the 10th century BC, as the Bible claims.
He declared the New Testament a 'masterwork of spin written by people who were nowhere near the events they describe, all gathered by powerful editors who kept out ideas they did not like'.
Does anyone have the answers?
To Carl Jung, God may be an evolving being.
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875 - 1961) said in Memories, Dreams, Reflections:
"If the Creator were conscious of Himself, He would not need conscious creatures; nor is it probable that the extremely indirect methods of creation, which squander millions of years upon the development of countless species and creatures, are the outcome of purposeful intention. Natural history tells us of a haphazard and casual transformation of species over hundreds of millions of years of devouring and being devoured. The biological and political history of man is an elaborate repetition of the same thing. But the history of the mind offers a different picture. Here the miracle of reflecting consciousness intervenes."
French theologian and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) also sees God as an evolving thing. De Chardin argues that all things are evolving and the unity of the universe is grounded not in matter or energy but spirit.
The Buddhists keep a noble silence on the subject of God.
Taoists say that the Tao which can be described in words is not the real Tao.
Thomas Mann set out to write a short novel about "passion as confusion and degradation".
The result was Death in Venice, a book which raises age old questions about the difference between love and lust, about forbidden love and about what is normal. It is not a book for narrow minded philistines, or is it?
INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS NORMAL?
Let us consider a variety of attitudes towards sex.
In 16th Century England, 13 year-old Elisabeth Ramsbotham complained that her 11 year-old husband, John Bridge, had not yet deflowered her.
In my humble opinion, eleven may be a bit too young to understand fully the deeper elements of love and marriage.
Among bonobo apes, which are reputed to be jolly and sociable creatures, sex takes place between males and males, between females and females, between males and females, and between adults and children.
Bonobos, according to recent research, may be closer to us than chimps; bonobos share 98% of our genetic profile.
Among female couples, genito-genital rubbing takes place. Male bonobos stand back to back, one male rubbing his scrotum against the buttocks of another.
Sexual activity among bonobos is casual and relaxed and seems to be the bonobos' way of avoiding conflict. Whereas chimps sometimes kill each other; bonobos kiss and make up after they've had a tiff.
Some final points on bonobos: they engage in sex only occasionaly, and copulation on average lasts only 13 seconds.
What do I think? I'm worried about the fact that bonobos appear not to use condoms; but perhaps there would be fewer wars if humans adopted some of the bonobo ideas (Imagine Ariel Sharon and Yassar Arafat..... kissing and making up.)
Another point is that bonobos may be close to us genetically, but they don't have to worry about all the nastier side of human life from religious fanaticism to child prostitution.
For the Buddhists, all visual attraction is the reaction of the lower self.
Fleshly charm does not last and is in a sense unreal.
In other words, you don't need a girl/boyfriend; and the girl/boyfriend's sexiness is a bit of an illusion.
However, according to the Buddhists, avoiding sex, while continuing to think foul thoughts, is not good. Better to obtain physical outlet, while thinking wholesome thoughts.
You want my opinion? It could take several lifetimes to achieve Nirvana; and not all Buddhist Thais have yet managed to conquer fleshy desires.
On the other hand, I have a strong suspicion Buddha got it right about sexual attraction.
In The Symposium the argument from Plato/Socrates is that beauty of the soul is more important than beauty of the body.
What we should be seeking is beauty that is eternal and absolute. If we can manage to recognise divine beauty, then we will act morally, and become immortal.
My immediate thought is that Socrates may well be correct. We should love the beauty of the soul and we should love all the world's souls, not just one particular one that turns us on temporarily.
But, did not Socrates also say: "as wolves for lambs, so lovers lust for boys," and did he not suggest that beauty of the body is easier to understand than beauty of the soul?
Ideas about sex certainly vary according to time and place.
In 1911, a world-famous 36 year-old author, on holiday in Venice with his wife, fell in love with an aristocratic 10 year-old Polish boy called Wladyslaw Moes. Why did this author's work sell so many millions of copies world-wide?
"Men," wrote this 36 year-old author, "do not know why they award fame to one work rather than another. Without being in the faintest connoiseurs, they think to justify the warmth of their commendations by discovering in it a hundred virtues, whereas the real ground of their applause is inexplicable - it is sympathy." In other words, the author's readers sympathised either with the author's philosophy, or, with his sexual tastes!
In countries from Thailand to Belgium there have been well reported cases of wicked child abuse, and this set me wondering if there could be such a person as a 'good' paedophile. (Child abuse I take to mean things like the rape and torture of children. A paedophile I define as someone who finds that some under sixteen year-olds are sexually attractive.)
A 'good' paedophile would be one who understands the difference between 'love' and 'lust' and who follows the path of love rather than lust. The path of love is one which may involve self-sacrifice; it is the path followed by someone like Mother Theresa.
I thought it was time to write a review about a famous and respected person who was 'very fond' of children. Hans Christian Andersen? Enid Blyton? Mark Twain? Leo Tolstoy? Andre Gide? J M Barrie? Alexander the Great? Benjamin Britten? L S Lowrey? Laurie Lee? Dante? Edgar Allan Poe? Baden Powell? John Ruskin? T H White? Wilfred Owen? General Montgomery?
The most 'respectable' figure I could think of was the German author Thomas Mann, born 1875, author of The Magic Mountain and DEATH IN VENICE. (In any case, I struggled to understand Mann at school, so thought maybe it was time to have another go.) SOME HISTORY.
Thomas Mann was married, produced many children, and was considered to be ultra-respectable. His novels were best sellers, won him a Nobel Prize, and made him extremely rich and famous. When Mann came to live in America in the 1930's, Time and Life magazines welcomed Mann as "the greatest living author." Mann was the 'good' German who had begun attacking the Nazis as early as 1921 and who was among the first to draw attention to the systematic extermination of the Jews. President Roosevelt considered naming Mann the head of postwar Germany. (The best biography of Mann is "Thomas Mann: Ero s and Literature", by Anthony Heilbut, published by Macmillan. Very witty and entertaining.)
When he was 14, Mann fell in love with a classmate, Armin Martens. In his popular 1903 masterpiece, 'Tonio Kroger', Mann describes one schoolboy's love for another- shy awkward Tonio's platonic love for handsome Hans Hansen. Tonio eventually realises that love causes "sadness and humiliation" and that he must transform his energies into literature. Mann saw himself as Tonio.
Mann was aware that German culture was full of forms of love of a Greco-Roman type. Schiller loved young Goethe; Goethe wrote to von Herder: "Be my Socrates. Let me be your Alcibiades." Schubert, Frederick the Great and even Bismarck were considered by many to be less than thoroughly heterosexual. Nietzsche was fond of Wagner; Wagner spread the word that Nietzsche's problems were due in part to pederasty.
In an 1896 letter, a rather tense and neurotic Mann, aged 20, described a trip to Naples: "Here and there, among a thousand peddlers, are sly hissing dealers who urge you to come along with them to allegedly 'very beautiful' girls, and not only girls....They don't know that you have almost resolved to eat nothing but rice just to escape from sexuality."
It seems that at this point in time Mann was probably resisting Dionysian desires and instead using his urges to inspire great literature. Mann considered that the sexual urge was "the essence of the creative artist." Life could also be easier if one avoided sex? The heroes of Mann's novels were often men who felt an "impotent, sensual hatred" for the beautiful boys or girls who destroyed their peace of mind.
'Buddenbrooks', Mann's first magnum opus, was published when Mann was in his early twenties, and it sold millions throughout the world. This wildly popular 'soap opera' about a middle class Ge rman family, was based partly on Mann's own relatives. One of the Buddenbrooks, a male called Hanno, loves a male called Count Kai; but this homosexual love is somewhat disguised, partly by Mann's 'distinguished' language. In Buddenbrooks there is a brief interest in 'religion' of a Buddhist sort. Thomas Buddenbrooks picks up a volume by Schopenhauer about the 'indestructibility of our essence.' Thomas Buddenbrooks sees death as 'a great joy...a return from an unspeakably painful wandering.' Sometimes Mann found life unspeakably painful.
In 1899 Mann met Paul Ehrenberg, aged 23, fell in love with him, and became seriously depressed. Many years later, while reading Gore Vidal's 'The City and the Pillar', Mann wondered how one could sleep with a man; so Mann's relationship with Ehrenberg was presumably platonic. However, Mann found Vidal's description of teenage sex "glorious."
Mann was full of longing and envy. Mann sometimes wondered if he should try to be as free as a gypsy and enjoy simple warm heartfelt feelings. The problem was that to Mann, "warm heartfelt feeling is often banal and useless; only the irritations and frigid ecstasies of a corrupted nervous system can produce art."
In 1903 Mann met 20 year-old Katia Pringsheim, an intelligent girl of boyish appearance, who happened to have a handsome twin brother called Klaus. Mann referred to Katia as "the twin sister of an almost equally pretty fellow." In 1905 Mann, aged 29, married Katia.
Within a month of his marriage Mann wrote a story about a married Schiller's "love for Goethe". Mann also began plotting a story, never completed, which would include Schopenhauer's (slightly Buddhist) idea that life, with all its sensual desires, is an illusion.
In 1906 Armin Martens, whom Mann had loved at the age of 14, died penniless in Africa, aged 29. Mann, suffering from depression, entered a sanatorium to recover. 1908 saw the trial in Germany of a journalist who had exposed a homosexual clique at the court of the Kaiser. This so-called Eulenburg case ruined many wealthy and powerful Germans. Mann applauded the "outing".
Thomas Mann's wife Katia recalls an actual holiday in Venice and relates that "In the dining-room, on the very first day, we saw the Polish family, which looked exactly the way my husband described them... the very charming, beautiful boy of about 13 was wearing a sailor suit ... He caught my husband's attention immediately. This boy was tremendously attractive, and my husband was always watching him with his companions on the beach."
DEATH IN VENICE: ASCHENBACH AND TADZIO.
In 1910, Mann attended the premiere of Mahler's Eighth Symphony, and in seeing the face of Mahler, saw the face that would inspire Aschenbach, the central character in Death in Venice.
But Death in Venice, one of the great classics of world literature, is about Thomas Mann and Mann's love for a 10 year-old boy. In real life, 36 year-old Mann, on holiday in Venice with his wife, fell in love with an aristocratic 10 year-old Polish boy called Wladyslaw Moes, nicknamed Adzio. In the novella, von Aschenbach, a respectable writer in his fifties, falls for an aristocratic 14 year-old Polish boy called Tadzio.
Mann wrote: "Nothing is invented in Death in Venice...Tadzio...the cholera...the ballad singer...they were all there."
Wladyslaw/Adzio grew up ignorant of the fact that he had inspired Death in Venice. It was not until 1924 that one of Adzio's cousins read the novella and showed it to Adzio. Adzio was amused but "not terribly interested."
In Death in Venice, Mann describes Aschenbach watching a fight between Tadzio (Adzio) and his older friend Jaschiu (in real life, 10 year-old Jasio). After the film of Death in Venice was released, Jasio wrote to Adzio: "I don't remember being as cruel to you as Mann describes in the book." Adzio replied in a letter to Jasio: "I still remember the athletic wrestling which you always won; but the title of winner could only be gained after one's opponent was forced on his back. So no wonder I fought till I was flat out, which obviously struck Thomas Mann as cruelty on your part."
According to Gilbert Adair's excellent book "The Real Tadzio", published by the Short Book Company, Adzio was exactly 'the pretty, pampered darling' described in Mann's novella. Adzio was singled out for special treatment by his mother and sisters. Adzio had a punctured lung and was therefore slightly frail. Aschenbach noted that Tadzio's teeth were "imperfect, rather jagged and bluish, and without a healthy glaze."
Aschenbach thought, with a hint of rather disturbing gleefulness, that the boy "will most likely not live to grow old."
I can't imagine a bonobo thinking such an unwholesome thought.
According to Gilbert Adair, Mann was not the first writer to be attracted to Adzio.
"At a wedding of one of his aunts- for which, as garcon d'honneur, he was turned out in lace of a fetchingly creamy blanc d'ivoire- the six year-old Adzio caught the eye of Henryk Sienkiewicz, the ...Nobel Prize winning author of....Quo Vadis. Leaving the church in his landau, the doting Sienkiewicz insisted that the infant come perch upon his knees, only hurriedly to offload him when he discovered that his Tiepolesque seraph had peed down the leg of his morning suit."
Adzio seems to have been a bit of a flirt. While in Venice, he would chat up fruit sellers and charm them into giving him free fruit. Local fishermen would take him out on their boats and "he would court ... all the petting and fondling that he came in for."
One evening in the Hotel des Bains he held back until the other guests had taken their seats, and then "with his clustered blond ringlets and watery-blue eyes, he all but goose-stepped down the grand central staircase into the dining room...." 'Did everyone see me? Was everyone watching,' he asked his nurse.
Mann was watching. Adzio remembered one particular man staring at him wherever he went, "hovering always just out of sight as the Moeses ambled through the ci ty's Piranesian labyrinth of tourist-worn streets and dark sunless alleys and stairways..."
Adzio also remembered an especially strong stare from Mann when he and the great author shared the hotel lift.
"It's just another gentleman who likes me," Adzio would say to his nurse. According to Adair, "No one in those innocent, halcyon Edwardian days appears to have thought it worth advising him to steer clear of 'old men'."
And what did Mann's wife think? In her memoirs, Katia, a tolerant woman, remembers well that her husband was 'intrigued by the ten year-old boy.'
And what do I think? It would appear that Mann behaved mildly improperly, but that he did not descend into 'the abyss', and he did not apparently do Adzio any harm. He remained 'respectable'. Was he a 'good' paedophile? He was not wicked, but there was always a risk that his actions could have hurt both Katia and Adzio.
While writing Death in Venice, Mann read the Symposium, the Phaedrus and Plutarch's Erotikos, which concerned the love of boys by Greek men.
DEATH IN VENICE.
In the novella, Aschenbach/Mann is the cerebral, sexually repressed, politically conservative, writer who has achieved fame but whose writing lacks deep insight into the world of love and lust. In Venice he lets sensual beauty into his life and goes astray. He becomes a slave to desire, feels tortured by guilt, and cannot relax and enjoy his passions. And his "dignity is rescued only by ... Death." Mann is warning us to avoid extremes.
We learn at the start of the story that the ultra-respectable Aschenbach, has received a knighthood. In his home town of Munich he exchanges glances with a red haired stranger who symbolises corruption. Aschenbach has a vision of a tropical swamp with phalic looking palm trees "fat, swollen, thick with incredible bloom". Aschenbach, tired out by his work, is tempted to take a holiday in Italy.
"When one wanted to arrive overnight at the incomparable, the fabulous, the like-nothing-else-in-the-world, where was it one went?" On the boat to Venice, Aschenbach sees a crowd of young men. In the middle of the group is an old man, with his face made up in a failed and foolish attempt to make himself look as young as his companions. As Aschenbach is about to disembark, this old drunken man winks at Aschenbach and says to him, "Give her our love, will you, the p-pretty little dear." And later the writer will also try to make himself look younger for his pretty little dear.
Having arrived in the Hotel des Bains on the Venice Lido, Aschenbach surveys his fellow guests and his eyes fix on Tadzio. The boy is "long-haired...pale, with a sweet reserve, with clustering , honey-coloured ringlets... winning mouth, expression of pure and godlike serenity....of such unique personal charm...happy...a spoilt, exquisite air...He walked with extraordinary grace...at once dainty and proud...The head was poised like a flower...It was the head of Eros, with the yellowish bloom of Parian marble... " Mann is the master of this sort of description of the physically beautiful.
Aschenbach assumes "the patronizing air of the connoisseur to hide ... his ravishment over a masterpiece." One suspects that Mann/Aschenbach sees Tadzio not simply as representing 'beauty' but as something erotic. Mann gets away with his description of the 'sexy' boy by using fine language and by filling the novella with classical references. "In almost every artist nature is inborn a wanton and treacherous proneness to side with the beauty that breaks hearts...," writes Mann.
Aschenbach spends some time on the beach where "awnings of rust-coloured canvas spanned before the bathing-huts, under the ether's quivering silver-blue." At one point Aschenbach spies Tadzio glancing at a family from Russia, a country not loved by Poles. Tadzio "distorted his features in a spasm of angry disgust." Aschenbach is delighted at this "childish exhibition of fanaticism" which gives the god a human touch.
Later, Aschenbach watches Tadzio walking arm in arm with his young friend Jaschiu and at one point sees Jaschiu give Tadzio a kiss. Aschenbach crosses the "foul smelling lagoon" in order to explore the city but he finds the streets have a "hateful sultriness." The sirocco is making him feel old and feverish. He decides to leave Venice. Next morning at breakfast in the Hotel des Bains, Tadzio passes Aschenbach's table. Tadzio "modestly cast down his eyes...only to lift them again in that sweet way he had and direct his full soft gaze upon Aschenbach's face." Aschenbach leaves the hotel and arrives at the railway station, but there is a problem; his luggage has been sent to the wrong destination. This gives Aschenbach the excuse he needs - to return to the Lido and to Tadzio. Aschenbach seems motivated more by lust than love.
Tadzio has "a sweetly idle, trifling life, of play and rest, of strolling, wading, digging, fishing, swimming, lying on the sand....The lad's foreign birth raised his speech to music; a wanton sun showered splendour on him, and the noble distances of the sea formed the background which set off his figure." Aschenbach notes "the fine down along the upper vertebrae...the delicate outlines of the ribs and the symmetry of the breast structure. His armpits were still as smooth as a statue's, smooth the glistening hollows behind the knees." Aschenbach begins to think of Plato, perhaps in order to persuade himself (or the reader) that this is about divine beauty and not sex. "The god, in order to make visible the spirit, avails himself of the forms and colours of human you th," muses Aschenbach.
One day Aschenbach sights Tadzio in front of him on his way to the beach. "Aschenbach felt quite simply a wish to overtake him, to address him and have the pleasure of his reply and answering look....The lovely youth moved at a loitering pace...and Aschenbach hastened his own step....Aschenbach all but put out his hand to lay it on shoulder or head, while his lips parted to utter a friendly salutation...he found his heart throbbing unpleasantly fast...he was suddenly panic-stricken....and abandoned his plan."
Aschenbach's life revolves around watching Tadzio. "It was a world possessed, peopled by Pan, that closed round the spellbound man and his doting heart conceived the most delicate fancies. When the sun was going down behind Venice, he would sometimes sit on a bench in the park and watch Tadzio, white clad, with gay-coloured sash, at play there on the rolled gravel with his ball; and at such times it was not Tadzio he saw, but Hyacinthus, doomed to die because two gods were rivals for his love....he watched the discus, guided by torturing jealousy, strike the beloved head; paled as he received the broken body in his arms..." Mann certainly understood the darker side of human life.
Tadzio and Aschenbach become fully aware of each other. Tadzio deliberately passes in front of Aschenbach's beach tent, "sometimes so unnecessarily close as to graze his table or chair.....Daily Aschenbach would wait for Tadzio. Then sometimes, on his approach, he would pretend to be preoccupied and let the charmer pass unregarded by. But sometimes he looked up, and their glances met; when that happened both were profoundly serious."
They flirt in silence. When by accident they nearly crash into each other, each one involuntarily smiles.
Aschenbach follows Tadzio to a church, where the boy is watching out for him. He pursues the boy in a gondola, not noticing the smirks of the gondolier.
At a musical event in the hotel gardens in the evening, Aschenbach finds Tadzio seeking him out and is struck by a feeling of both triumph and horror. The lead musician is a vulgar redhead, symbolising more corruption.
Next day Aschenbach is warned about the the dangers of cholera approaching Venice.
Aschenbach has a dream or sensual nightmare in which smooth skinned boys and shrieking women fondling snakes bow down to 'the stranger god.' There is an orgy of promiscuous embraces.
Should Aschenbach warn Tadzio's family about the cholera? Is Aschenbach motivated more by lust than love?
CONCLUSION
If you liked the Visconti film, you'll like the book. Mann is subtle, sensitive, intelligent, lyrical, ironical and profound. He understands the complexity of love: its pains , its joys, its deceptions, its beauty and its darker side. He is a literary genius.
Some critics might find the book lacks humour; some might find it too restrained. For example, Tadzio never breaks wind or picks his nose. But remember that in most of the serious literature of the early 1900's, people simply did not break wind or nose pick. And to write in 1911 about a man's love for a young boy was pretty damn daring. (Perhaps if Tadzio had broken wind, the spell would have been broken for Aschenbach, and he would have realised that Tadzio was just an ordinary boy?)
The novella Death in Venice was wildly popular with the public. During Mann's lifetime, it was published in twenty countries and in thirty seven editions. One suspects that its popularity was not based entirely on its classical references. Tadzio, like the cute boys in toothpaste commercials, turned many people on.
But was it, in Mann's words, a 'drunken song' or an 'ethical fable.' A few years after writing Death in venice, Mann confesses that the 'indecency' of some of Verlain 'e poems has shaken him and reminded him of the dangers of the abyss. Mann writes that all his life he has contemplated the nature of morality. (And history has taught him, he writes, that 'great moralists have mostly been great sinners also.' He refers to Dostoyevsky being a paedophile.) However, Mann hoped Death in Venice would not be seen simply as a morality tale. He rather liked the idea of its sexiness. Benjamin Britten's opera Death in Venice was certainly more about the beauty of young boys than it was about philosophy.
Anthony Heilbut writes, "Death in Venice can be read as a muffled plea for emancipation. At the very least, a drunken song offers an alternative to the extremes of chaste sublimation and insane orgy." I couldn't put it any better than that. Mann wanted a balance between sensuality and morality.
Mann, apparently, remained chaste, so far as small boys were concerned. He was unhappily stuck between two worlds: the world of the respectable bourgeois writer and the world of the decadent bohemian artist. Mann turned his lust into literature. But Mann would have liked, ideally, to have lived in a world like that of the sociable bonobo apes, where everything is natural and relaxed.
In Tonio Kroger, Mann quotes Tonio (Mann) as saying, "My deepest and secretest love belongs to the blond and blue-eyed, the fair and the living, the happy, lovely, and commonplace." Mann might have been happy being born with a mediocre brain, in some relaxed southern European town, where he would be one of the fair haired lads, like Armin Martens / Hans Hansen, and he would not have to worry about morality or about producing great art.
Mann remained the 'respected' and relatively 'good'writer/paedophile partly because he was a realist. He was aware that he was not an attractive figure, that homosexuality and pederasty were illegal in Germany, that venereal disea ses could kill, that respectability was usually important to him, that people could often behave like murderous chimps, that sexual love can bring unhappiness....He never made any great effort to try the Buddhist path, which might have rid him of his melancholy? Mann/Aschenbach came to understood all about 'lust', but did he understand 'love'?
Mann's brother, Heinrich, describes him as being incapable of imagining another person's existence. Mann's private diaries from 1918-21 reveal a man obsessed by his own feelings. He writes about his own insomnia, constipation and toothaches; he writes about his infatuations with beautiful youths he has glimpsed; and in 1918 he briefly writes about his incestuous feelings for his twelve year-old son Klaus.
Mann's eldest son Klaus chose a different path to that chosen by his father. Anthony Heilbut writes, "Klaus's youth coincided with the world's discovery of Youth...Bliss it may have been then to be alive, to prowl the world's capitals in pursuit of drugs and pretty boys, to party with Garbo and commune with Gide. He knew the addresses of each of the city's best-populated baths and enjoyed identifying the male prostitutes of Berlin as sons of Russian princes and Prussian generals." Klaus bravely opposed the Nazis and joined the US army to help fight Germany. He wrote "Mephisto"; he turned to drugs. In some senses Klaus opted partly for 'insane orgy' and, for whatever reasons, ended up committing suicide. (The Mann family were prone to melancholy).
Thomas Mann's eightieth year brought him Germany's highest honour, and honours and greetings from around the world, and also his decease.
"It seemed to him (Aschenbach) the pale and lovely Summoner (Tadzio) out there smiled at him and beckoned; as though with the hand he lifted from his hip, he pointed outward as he hovered on before into an immensity of richest expectation."
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