Lysistrata in Colombia

I have no idea whether it is another apocryphal tale but this story appeared in today’s Guardian and elsewhere. I like the idea of thugs being told “make war and you don’t make love!” It is an idea that has so many applications

Gang members in Pereira, one of Colombia's most violent cities face an ultimatum: give up guns or give up sex. In what is being called a "strike of crossed legs” the wives and girlfriends of gang members have said they will not have sex with their partners until they hand over their weapons to authorities and sign up for vocational training offered by the mayor's office.

Pereira, a city of 300,000 people, has Colombia's highest murder rate at 97 per 100,000 inhabitants.

The Worst Possible Tribute to Steve Irwin

This story is all over the press here. I hope it proves to be apocryphal. The death of Steve Irwin has apparently motivated some to wreak revenge. Eight days after he was killed in a freak encounter with a stingray authorities are investigating the possibility that the species that took Irwin's life is being targeted in acts of retribution - Up to 10 apparently mutilated stingrays have washed up in coastal waters since his death,.

"We do find dead stingrays with their tails cut off from time to time. People usually do it if they are worried about getting stung by a stingray, or they just do it maliciously, but it is pretty rare," said Wayne Sumpton, a senior biologist in Queensland's fisheries department. "We do not know if these incidents are motivated by Steve Irwin's death. At the moment that is just speculation."

Killing stingrays, said Michael Hornby, executive director of Irwin's conservation group Wildlife Warriors, is "not what Steve was about.We are disgusted and disappointed that people would take this sort of action to hurt wildlife," he said. "It may be some sort of retribution, or it may be fear from certain individuals, or it just may be yet another callous act toward wildlife"

Steve
Irwin

Spider and Wasp

A Garden Spider with what looks like the remains of a wasp. It really is the season for spiders. There are webs everywhere in the garden. I am glad I am not an arachnophobe

Fighting Mac, homosexuality and camp coffee

This interesting but squalid story from the Days of the British Empire appeared in Independent. It is a story I had never heard before.

When the inventors of Camp Coffee needed an image to market their new product 121 years ago, it seemed little could do the job better than a Scottish soldier sitting down for a brew in a far-flung corner of empire. To ensure Victorian consumers got the message that they were drinking the same treacly caffeine concentrate designed to fortify soldiers subduing the colonies, the kilted Gordon Highlander was shown being brought his drink by a Sikh manservant. Over the past century, the relationship between manservant and master changed to reflect attitudes towards the colonial era: by the 1980s, the Indian servant had lost his tray; a new label will now show the Sikh soldier sitting beside his former boss - and with a cup and saucer of his own.
Times and attitude rightly change but the Victorian soldier remains constant. The image is based on a Victorian military hero, Major General Sir Hector Macdonald, an ordinary soldier who turned down a Victoria Cross in favour of a commission and attained high rank. That the man who was known as "Fighting Mac" is now forgotten is evidence of a fall from grace which ended in him taking his own life after a whispering campaign suggesting he was a homosexual. Macdonald, shot himself in the head in his bedroom in a Paris hotel on 25 March 1903, apparently minutes after reading a front-page story in the New York Herald suggesting he faced a "grave charge".



Hector Macdonald was born in 1853 in Dingwall, Scotland to a crofter and a dressmaker. He was an apprentice draper when he persuaded a recruiting sergeant from the Gordon Highlanders to accept him for training at the age of 17. A professional soldier he spent most of his 33 years in the Army in the outer reaches of the empire was held in such esteem by some of his compatriots was proof at least of a popular reputation built on stories of his talents as a military tactician and bravery as a commander.

While serving in Afghanistan in 1879 as a regimental sergeant, he distinguished himself in battle to the extent that he was given the choice of a Victoria Cross, the ultimate military accolade, or a rare commission as an officer. He is reputed to have accepted the commission with the words: "I shall win the medal later." Macdonald was credited with saving Lord Kitchener's imperial army at Omdurman - the Dervish stronghold across the Nile from where General Gordon of Khartoum was killed. At the head of his highly trained brigade of Sudanese troops, Macdonald repelled a counter-offensive by 20,000 Dervishes with the loss of only 48 men and 382 wounded. A young Winston Churchill, reporting on the battle, wrote how, at one point in the battle, Macdonald called his officers around him and rebuked them for "having wheeled into line in anticipation of his order and requested them to drill more steadily".
MacDonald was appointed military commander in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1902. A letter, printed in The Times of Ceylon shortly after he said: "You know, we heard a whispered rumour that he does not like ladies, and possibly may have been pleasantly surprised to find he had dropped on a spicy little isle where ladies are few and far between.”

Although well-loved and respected by his subordinates, it is suggested that the jealousy of his superiors boiled over in Ceylon in 1902 when he yelled at the Governor, Sir West Ridgeway, to get off his training ground during manoeuvres. It was Ridgeway's reports back to London which resulted in the decision that he should face a court martial. Others suggested that Lord Kitchener, leader of the British Army Sudan, ordered a whispering campaign against the general after he was humiliated by Macdonald's brilliant rearguard action in the Battle of Omdurman in 1898.
The accusation was one of homosexuality, an offence considered extremely serious and in keeping with the mores of his era, Macdonald decided even the allegation was a death sentence. Such was his status in Britain that news of the circumstances of his death brought an immediate backlash from a doubting civilian population. The establishment was forced to offer the family of the dead general a full state funeral when his previously unknown wife, Edinburgh-born Christina Duncan, arrived in Paris with their young son to collect her husband's body.

Even after death, the besmirched general continued to have a hold on the popular imagination. Rumours swirled around that, tired of his treatment by the Army, Macdonald staged his suicide to assume the identity of a German cousin, August von Mackensen, who was of a similar age and reported as being "gravely ill" at the time of the suicide attempt. Von Mackensen, who rose to the rank of field marshal in the Prussian army, miraculously recovered and suddenly discovered military skills he had not previously possessed. German propagandists wasted little time in perpetuating the idea of a betrayal by Macdonald in leaflets dropped behind British lines during the First World War.

What may have been seen as normal in the Victorian era seems so inappropriate in our time. That is not political correctness but our perception of the world. The story of Sir Hector Macdonald a sad one but the biggest shock of all is that anyone actually drinks the dam stuff!

Check here and here for more information on Sir Hector Macdonald.

Hector
Macdonald
Camp
coffee

Donald Robson

On the fifth anniversary of 9/11 volunteer bloggers will come together to write a short tribute to each of the 2,996 victims of that awful day. Although I live an ocean away from New York I am proud to be a participant and to honour the memory of Donald Robson who died in the World Trade Center.

Donald Robson, aged 52, of Manhasset, New York was a partner and bond broker for Cantor Fitzgerald. Raised in Toronto he had spent the last two decades in New York and had also been present at the 1993 tower bombing. He is survived by two sons, Geoff and Scott. A kind man and a great father, he was one of 24 Canadians to die on 9/11 and one of the 658 victims from Cantor Fitzgerald.

My thoughts are with Donald’s family and friends on the anniversary of this terrible act, a senseless and evil act that brought short so many lives. May he rest in peace.

Please check this link to 2,996 for tributes to the other victims of 9/11.

An Experiment

I recently bought a new camera: a bottom of the range Nikon D50 digital SLR. I thought I would have a play around and try a few things that I could not do with a copmact camera. This photo was taken trhough an Infrared filter and converted to black and white so as to get the effect I would have had I shot with infrared film. Not much of a pic maybe but I sort of like it

Garden 10 September

This is proof positive that the camera can lie or at least distort. Move just a little to the left and you would see a crappy shed that is overdue for demolition and a pile of waste that needs to be composted. Even so it gives us a lot of pleasure to see so much in bloom when most other things are in decline.

Garden 9 September

Chocolate Cosmos

Fucshia magellanica

Morning Glory

The garden starts to decline somewhat from late July onwards as the "big ticket" items like the Cephalaria and the Echinops bloom and fade but there is still a lot of flowers in bloomespecially nearest the house where we have a number of containers. Some perennials, like the Fuchsias will soldier on in bloom until we get the first frosts so we will still have a few flowers well into October.

David Beresford on the Art of Contrition

Yesterday David Beresford posted an article called the Art of Contrition in the Guardian’s Comment is Free section. I had not noticed it until I was checking my visitor stats and I was puzzled to see a number of referrals from the article.

Mr Beresford had linked to an item I posted on 28 August called An Act of Contrition. This was about a former Aparthied era Law and Order Minister who washed the feet of Rev Frank Chikane, a man he allegedly tried to have murdered.

Given that Mr Vlok’s act was given widespread coverage I am surprised that a veteran
journalist would choose to link to what I wrote!. I’m not sure what to make of his using “washed the feet of a black man” as the link title though, even if it is factual, Ah well no publicity is bad publicity, except if you've just poisoned the Ugley Women's Institute!

One thing I hadn't noticed was that I had managed to lose the link to the Guardian article I quoted in "an act of contrition". I have now restored that link.

Vlok
Chikane
contrition
Guardian

Stop Press... Charles Clarke to stay on backbenches until the Second Coming

This story is plastered across the national press to day so take your pick of sources. As ever I choose the trusty Guardian (if for no other reason that it is the first paper I read every day).

Charles Clarke seemed to throw away any chance of a return to the front benches any time this millennium by letting rip with an all-out attack on Gordon Brown, accusing him of "absolutely stupid" behaviour during the leadership crisis. The outburst seems to be the result of a long standing conflict between himself and Brown rather than anything else. Even so colleagues describe this intervention as baffling, unhelpful and ill-advised.

The former home secretary said MPs had been angered by pictures of Mr Brown grinning on Wednesday, at the height of the furore surrounding Mr Blair's future. "A lot of people are very upset and cross about that. It was absolutely stupid: a stupid, stupid thing to do," he said. "What he should have done was come out strongly and distance himself from [backbench rebels]. He could have done that with a click of his fingers. This has been complete madness." He went on to tell today's Daily Telegraph that Mr Brown was a "control freak" who might lack "the bottle" to become prime minister.

Allies of Mr Brown have quite rightly refused to take the bait: "Charles is naturally provocative, but I don't think his remarks will be welcomed by anybody bar the Tories. I don't think he is easy to put up to things; he's very independent-minded," said one minister supportive of Mr Brown. A Blairite colleague added: "Charles is just doing his own thing in his own way; he is not part of a concerted effort. He's kicked both Tony and Gordon recently."

Mr Clarke also attacked the prime minister for a failure of leadership after being sacked as home secretary. The timing of that criticism - shortly before the local elections in May - did not win him friends; one MP yesterday labelled him "petulant". The former home secretary has always retained his independence from the prime minister, and several colleagues thought he might be hoping to return to government under Mr Brown's leadership. One Blair loyalist said yesterday: "I'm surprised by the strength of what he said"

In the meantime, according to an opinion poll in today’s Independent Labour is now seen as being more divided than the Tories during the John Major years. The survey found that 56 per cent of voters see Labour as more divided than the Tories during the Major government, which was racked by bitter divisions over Europe. Only 22 per cent regard Labour as more united. More than a quarter of Labour supporters (27 per cent) believe that Labour is more divided than the Conservatives were in 1992-1997.

The poll also found strong evidence that the public will want an early general election after the change of prime minister. Seven out of 10 people think there should be an election within a year. Some 35 per cent think the new Prime Minister should seek a fresh mandate immediately, with a further 35 per cent believing that he should do so within six months to a year. Only 18 per cent believe the election should be delayed beyond that.

There is logic in linking the two articles: Clarke has shown himself to be an utter fool to talk as he did. It almost certainly consigns him to political oblivion – Even if a Blairite such as Alan Johnson became the next PM would he want such a loose cannon aboard? Far worse, it provides further confirmation to the public that we are utterly disunited.

As for the poll, we party members can scoff at the fickle nature of public opinion but we know full well that it does not take much for public perceptions to become so entrenched that no evidence to the contrary will shake them. We are seen as dangerously divided and unless we can get our act together now, then Cameron will be PM after next. Is that what we really want? The Labour Party is a party of Government. Let’s keep it that way!

Do we need a general election as soon as we have chosen our new leader? No. The 2005 result gives Blair’s successor a mandate to govern. I only hope that Blair's successor does better than Callaghan and Major did in 1979 and 1997 respectively...
Charles
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Labout
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Blair