Landschlacht, Switzerland, 12 – 30 April 2018
One day future historians might be puzzled about these days in which we live in.
Let´s see if I can help put events in perspective….
The Syrian Civil War and American involvement
In 1987 the future US President Donald Trump “wrote” a best-selling guide to business strategy called The Art of the Deal, outlining what he believed were invioable principles of negotiation.
As President, Trump would ignore his own cardinal rules.
“The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it.
That makes the other guy smell blood and then you´re dead.”
In March 2018 Trump announced:
“The United States will be making an exit from Syria very soon.
Let the other people take care of it now.”
In The Art of the Deal, Trump emphasizes that you should never, ever telegraph your military moves.
“I don´t want to broadcast to the enemy what my plan is.“, said Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump´s loose lips (and Twitter tweets) could sink ships.
His March announcement emboldened Syrian President Bahar al-Assad to launch a chemical weapons attack on the rebel stronghold in eastern Ghouta 10 days after Trump´s Ohio announcement about his intentions to withdraw from the Middle East.
Trump assumed that Israel and Saudi Arabia would pick up his slack, but seeing an American departure as inevitable, America´s allies hedged their bets by either lying low or heading to Moscow.
Washington might be indispensable, but Moscow is immovable.
Moscow, rightly or wrongly, always stays the course.
Trump and his advisors want to punish Assad for using chemical weapons, yet see no contradiction in their own missile barrages.
America sees no irony in its being scared of other nations having weapons of mass destruction, while it is the most heavily armed nation on the planet with weapons of mass destruction that everyone else is scared of.
The Mueller Investigation
During the 2016 presidential campaign Trump promised to “drain the swamp“.
Yet it is his nemesis Special Counsel Robert Mueller who is the one doing the draining.
Throughout the investigation the world has seen corruption and white collar wrongdoing uncovered.
Trump promised, if elected president, to dismantle the culture of influence peddling and unsavoury financial transactions.
He has done the opposite.
He has perpetuated it.
So far Mueller has uncovered a system of international graft and money laundering.
It is difficult to see the line between charitable donations and political influence as Trump and his team have blurred it considerably.
It is clear that Russians were able to run political advertisements on Facebook because of lax and underenforced regulations meant to constrain foreign involvement in American elections.
Yet American politicians, whether they win or lose elections because of this involvement, won´t risk losing this interference because they rely on this for funds.
Trump´s lawyer Michael Cohen, a man called to the bar to defend the law, finds himself being investigated for bank fraud, wire fraud and violations of campaign finance law.
Trump representing a political party that espouses Christian virtue and family values is a man who has had three wives upon whom he has cheated on and has been accused multiple times of Bill Cosby type behaviour.
Trump claims that any investigation or check on his behaviour is an attack on the nation.
He doesn´t see how his actions are unpatriotic and are violations both in spirit and in practice of the very principles upon which America was founded and supposedly still cherishes.
He attacks the justice system, because it reveals his wrongdoing.
He attacks the media, because he feels they slander his character.
He doesn´t see that it is his own wrongdoing that does the slander.
The man who would drain the swamp is himself the swamp´s living personification, an illustration of how powerful men use their money and connections to shield themselves from consequences, straying over the line of what is morally and legally permissable while using morality and legality as their defence.
He who would put America first is America´s first foe.
He who should be America´s greatest asset is America´s largest liability.
If Trump is not guilty he certainly acts like a criminal at the risk of being caught.
Those meant to represent the people are the least representative of them.
The world´s most used social media is threatened and its critics don´t realize that the very mechanism they criticize is the very medium that allows their criticism to be fully expressed.
Those that criticize Facebook of violating their privacy are themselves too eager to share their data with the world themselves.
Facebook critics (many of them former Facebook users) in asking Facebook to police itself (which it should) somehow fail to realize that Facebook users are also responsible for their own self-policing.
Hither Green
On the evening of 3 April, Richard Osborn-Brooks (78) killed a burglar Henry Vincent (37) who broke into the pensioner´s south London house.
The pensioner was arrested on suspicion of murder the following morning but was later released by Police who told him that he would face no further action.
Osborn-Brooks and his frail wife have left their home and have not returned since.
Dozens of flowers, balloons, cards and soft toys were tied to the pensioner´s fence in memorium of Vincent the following Monday.
Since then the tributes have been repeatedly torn down only to be replaced by Vincent´s family.
Police have warned vigiliantes not to tear down these floral tributes.
But neither side of the memorial floral issue can see the justifications of the other.
Vincent committed a criminal act and in fairness to Osborn-Brooks there is no way of knowing whether Vincent might not have acted violently had he not been first attacked.
In the eyes of Osborn-Brooks´ neighbours, the pensioner was simply defending his home and his wife.
Vincent´s family, while acknowleding that burglary is indeed a crime, don´t believe that he should have been killed for that act.
Those that loved Vincent claimed that the deceased was not a violent man.
This incident does raise a valid question….
Is it OK to commit a violent crime in order to prevent a violent crime?
Boufarik, Algeria, Tuesday 10 April 2018
A Soviet-made Ilyushin Il-76 military plane carries 225 military personnel and seven crew.
The Algerian aircraft took off from the military airport in Boufarik, crashed down in nearby fields (the pilot manuevered the plane to avoid a busy motorway) and caught fire.
More than 250 men, women and children died.
Most of the passengers were soldiers and their families.
There were only five survivors and a farm labourer was admitted to hospital after being hit by debris from the aircraft.
An aircraft that was intended to transport soldiers prepared to kill or be killed was itself a killing machine.
Bangui, Central African Republic, Wednesday 11 April 2018
The corpses of civilians shot dead by United Nations peacekeepers were laid outside UN HQ as protests grew over the killings.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered carrying at least 16 corpses wrapped in cloth before laying them on the ground.
The bodies were later removed by the Red Cross.
The protestors accused UN soldiers of opening fire on civilians in a Muslim district in the Christian-majority capital during a raid on Tuesday night.
The protest coincided with a visit by Jean-Pierre Lacroix, head of the UN peacekeeping operations.
Last year the UN voted to bolster the total number of soldiers to 11,750, but the mission has struggled to maintain order.
Armed groups control 70% of the country.
One million people remain displaced.
2.4 million need humanitarian assistance.
The UN said that it was targeting armed criminal elements in the district responsible for extortion and attacks on civilians, seizing weapons, ammunition and drugs in Tuesday night´s raid.
Is it OK to commit a violent crime in order to prevent a violent crime?
Beijing, China
Local authorities are demolishing thousands of “living tombs” that have been built in fields, hillsides, along roads and even in a national park in central China for generations who are yet to die.
Tombs are taking up so much space that authorities have decided they must be destroyed.
“The living will have no space if this trend continues.“, Zheng Dengpan, Tongcheng County´s deputy civil affairs bureau chief told the South China Morning Post.
The Communist Party has been encouraging cremation since the early days of the People´s Republic.
Mao Zedong was a keen advocate of cremation.
(He lays embalmed in Tiananmen Square.)
The Chinese government hopes to reach almost 100% cremation by 2020 as urban expansion infringes on existing cemeteries.
Ashes to ashes, and all we are is dust in the wind.
Zermatt, Switzerland, Saturday 7 April 2018
Karl-Erivan Haub was training for the Patrouille, a ski mountaineering race organized each year by the Swiss army for military and civilian competitors on 17 April.
The last signal received from his phone was this evening.
He did not compete.
One of Germany´s wealthiest men, the billionaire heir to the Tengelmann retail empire (which includes the hardware store Obi, the clothing retail KiK, the Netto supermarket chain and the online retailer Zalando)(Estimated value: €8 billion) went missing while skiing alone at an altitude of 3,820 metres off-piste near the Klein Matterhorn.
Was he swept away by an avalanche?
Did he fall into a crevasse?
Karl jointly managed the Tengelmann Group with his brother Christian since 2000.
The mountain didn´t care.
Jelsum, Netherlands, Monday 16 April 2018
It takes concerted effort for a nation´s government to make its citizenry hate one of its own anthems, but the Dutch managed it.
Today the locals of Highway N357 are happy if they never hear the anthem De Alde Friezen again.
Music-making ridges, which played the Frisian anthem when cars drove over it, installed on the Highway to encourage motorists to stick to the speed limit, are finally gone after many complaints from local residents.
“The Frisian national anthem is fine but not 24 hours a day.“, local resident Sijitze Jansma told RTL Nieuws.
The road was meant to promote safer driving and advertise that the nearby Frisian capital of Leeuwarden is this year´s European capital of culture.
“Driving too fast happens a lot, we wondered how we could handle that.
If you drive at the right speed (60 km/h) you are rewarded with a tune.”
(Gerrit Hofstra, Friesland Province spokesman)
The scheme cost the Friesland regional government €80,000.
To avoid the anthem I am certain those who knew the strips were there drove faster to prevent hearing it.
Venezia (Venice), Italy, 13 April 2018
Campaigners from some of the most stunning destinations in the Mediterranean held an urgent meeting here two weeks ago on how to control the surging number of tourists, who they say are destroying their homes.
Activists from Dubrovnik, Rhodes, Santorini, Corfu, Paphos (Cyprus) and Venice Claim that cruise ships and the high rise in Airbnb lettings are pushing up rents, forcing out local people and killing off the communities in their towns and cities.
“We are victims of our own success.
We are losing residents and our heritage is vanishing – the very things people come to see.”
(Marco Gasparinetti, 25 Aprile pressure group activist/chief organizer)
The 390,000 residents of the six locations are now outnumbered by 400,000 tourist beds, and that doesn´t count people on moored cruise ships, which can be 24,000 in Venice at the weekend.
Low-cost flights and an absence (so far) of terrorist attacks in Italy, Croatia, Greece and Cyprus have submerged historic town centres under a tide of tourists.
Opposition to cruise ships in Venice has brought protestors out on canals in dinghies and forced promises from the authorities to reduce traffic, but the population is already shrinking below 55,000 from its historical high of 170,000 as people leave.
The pollution that mass tourism brings was also on the agenda.
“When Lord Byron was staying here he would swim from his hotel on the Grand Canal out to the island of San Lazzaro in the lagoon to learn Armenian from the monks there.
If he tried that today he would catch a horrible disease from the canal water.
Venice cannot carry on doing 200,000 visitors in a weekend.”
Dubrovnik, Croatia
This walled town on the Croatian coast has 1,567 residents, while the number of tourists beds is more than 32,000.
“The Dubrovnik streets I played in as a kid are now blocked by restaurant tables and the locals who chatted on their doorsteps are long gone.
In my street there are 24 houses and 7 are inhabited by locals.
The rest are rented.
We used to take refuge on the nearby island of Lokrum, but the tourists have chased us out of there too ever since it was used as a location in Game of Thrones.
We need to control rising rents and give life to a sector like IT to stop the young fleeing.”
(Ljubo Nikolic, IT Manager)
Rhodes, Greece
“In Rhodes, if you talk about keeping tourist numbers down you are treated as an alien or a traitor by politicians, but we now have 2,900 Airbnb rentals and the crammed streets of the old town have lost their soul to Chinese souvenir shops.”
(Christos Maliarakis, Rhodes heritage group)
Santorini, Greece
“Airbnb is the new disease.
There is a new deal to limit cruise ships, which are now floating suburbs of 5,000 people, but they´ve broken it before and we are left with thousands of passengers packed on to buses for tours down lanes that were built for a few people and donkeys.”
(Michael Ermogenis, Santorini activist)
Tourist numbers in these destinations need to be reduced but as well tourism needs to be spread equally through the year.
Cultural visitors need to be attracted rather than just day trippers.
Jobs need to be brought back that are not linked to tourism.
Something has to change.
All over and around the world it seems the message is the same, that the road to man´s demise starts with good intentions.
America elected a cure far worse than the political disease that afflicts it.
Bullying also creates more bullying and violence, no matter what justification is given, begets more violence.
We cannot be a society that insists others safeguard our information that we ourselves won´t safeguard.
Profits come at a cost as every gain means a loss somewhere else.
I have seen the enemy.
It is ourselves.
On This Day (12 April)
1961 Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the 1st man to travel in space.
1981 Launch of the 1st space shuttle (Columbia) by the US
An Anthology of Diarists
1870
“Last night the Swan was very quiet, marvellously quiet and peaceful.
No noise, rowing or fighting whatever and no men as there sometimes are lying by the roadside all night drunk, cursing, muttering, maudering and vomiting.”
(Reverend Francis Kilvert)
Building Everest 