Sunday, August 31, 2014

A juicy scandal and Judith Collins

Cameron Slater managed to arouse my curiosity. Of course I have seen him on TV, but he hardly registered as someone I would take a real interest in. The Judith Collins saga however has broader implications than sheer gossip on a doubtfully interesting gossip blog. I am trying to reconstruct what happened. Mark Hotchin, formerly of the disastrous Hanover Finance Company rings up his good mate, Judith Collins, who happens to be the Minister of Justice, in charge of, among other things, the Serious Fraud Office. 'Hi darling', say Mark, 'one of your pen pushers is making a nuisance of himself. Just because Eric and I lost a half a billion dollars of investors' funds and tried to help a bit by reinvesting my hard-earned dividends to make the books look better, this chap Adam Feeley or whoever he is, who thinks that he runs the Serious Fraud Office, is thinking of bringing criminal charges against me. We can't have this sort of thing going on, can we?' 'Sweetie' Judith, not wearing her ministerial hat replied: 'I'll see what I can do. Some of these bureaucrats I am supposed to be working with, are getting too big for their boots. See if my good friend, Cameron, has any dirt on this chap.' So one thing lead to another, Cameron managed to find a speck of mud to throw at Feeley, Feeley resigned, his successor dropped criminal charges against Hotchin, and all ended well. Except that it didn't. Judith Collins was ignominiously fired. Mark Hotchin sympathized 'Judith dear, sorry that you got into all this trouble, but I am sure that you will bounce back again. These socialists, who have taken over the government don't value enterprise. No wonder that the country is in the pickle it is in. Entrepreneurship, as you know involves taking risks. Sometimes you have to put a spin on things, make products look better than they are in the cold light of day. There is nothing criminal about that. It is thinking outside the square. It is such pen pushers in the ministries that hold back development. What sort of government is this, supposedly committed to free markets and free enterprise, that spends money on breakfasts for children from families too dumb to look after themselves, instead of using the money to give enterprising businessmen a leg up. You may be better out of this government. When you come back you can take a sword to them.' Judith Collins, I am sure, appreciated these sentiments, after all, while she was accountable to pretty boy investment banker turned Prime Minister, she couldn't say what she really wanted to say. But when she comes back she will sort out this lot. So we have a real juicy scandal on our hands, which might make the coming elections interesting at least.

Saturday, August 30, 2014

If you are an anti-Semite don't let facts get in your way

In a letter to the Listener (August 18) James McNeish wrote that "the toxin of anti-Semitism existed in every gentile" and this appears now in the guise of anti-Israel sentiment. This anti-Israel sentiment manifests itself in the defacing of John Key's election hoarding with the "Lying Jew" message, as it does in Europe with chants such as "Death to the Jews" and "Hamas, Hamas - Jews to the gas". McNeish expressed regret for the "death of innocent Palestinians" but attributed responsibility to the Palestinians in Gaza who elected a government bent on the destruction of Israel and "whose rocket barrage is a continuation by other means of Hamas' suicide bombings inside Israel since 1994" This well reasoned argument brought out the the anti-Israelis, who denied being anti-Semites, played loose and fast with facts. Diane Baguley of Onehunga, Auckland, blames Israel for not taking a "more principled path in seeking its place as a Middle Eastern country". She makes no reference to the offers of Barak, and later of Olmert conceding almost all of the Palestinians' demands, only for the Palestinians to walk away from a negotiated agreement. Peter Vogt of Tauranga claims that the rockets fired at Israel are the result of the "occupation and the internationally respected right of victims to fight back". He doesn't know, or is willfully ignorant, that there are no occupying troops in Gaza, they were withdrawn in September 2005. As to the victims' right to fight back, if you fight you can get hurt. You can't complain. The anti-Israeli anti-Semites keep lining up. It this week's Listener, Robert Lawrence of Tauranga claims that far from being an anti-Semite, his much loved aunt, Helene was Jewish, his father was a supporter of the Zionist cause, his cousin worked on a kibbutz in Israel, and because of these Jewish connections, he assumed the right to criticize the Israeli military as"utterly indifferent to loss of civilian life" though the New Zealand media covered the efforts of the Israeli forces to warn civilian residents to vacate buildings about to be bombed, not a sign of any indifference. He writes about the "ruthless dispossession of whole communities and their concentration into marginal ghettos". True, 76 years ago, in the course of a brutal war, some Arabs were driven out, dispossessed, and so were many Jews. But their concentration into marginal ghettos is fanciful fiction. To add colour to this fiction, he compares Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto. Please Mr. Lawrence, take the trouble to learn about the Warsaw ghetto and the conditions there before you let yourself get carried away with your rhetoric. And when you write about Israel's "military repression" think of the dozens of Palestinians executed in Gaza by Hamas or its supporters without a fair trial, just because they were accused of treason. The language of anti-Semites has changed, but the underlying message is the same. They hate uppity Jews who instead of accepting their persecuted status and bowing to the oppression of goyim, fight back and if they are forced to fight dirty they don't get too squeamish.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

End of an era with the passing of Jack Shallcrass

Jack Shallcrass, educationist, humanist, and just a delightful charming human being passed away on August 13, at the age of 91. The last time I saw him, at the Pataka museum in Porirua last year he looked frail, but he still had his welcoming warm smile, and he greeted me, as he greeted everyone elese, with genuine pleasure, like a long lost friend.  Jack was one of the remarkable group of teachers at Wellington teachers' College in the early 1950s that included Walter Scott, Anton Vogt, Bill Renwick, John Drawbridge, Doreen Blumhardt, Pat McCaskill and the poet Arthur Barker. It was, I believe, the golden age of teacher training. Young people, mostly girls, and many from the country, were exposed top new ideas and challenged to think. Many had the first experience in their lives of listening to classical music, seeing serious art, reading contemporary literature. I believe that I was there not because the selection panel that accepted me as a student thought that I would make a great teacher, but because being a bit different, coming from a different, European, cultured background Walter Scott and others on the panel thought that I would inject something different, a cosmopolitan world view in the largely homogeneous student body. There were others who were there because of their different backgrounds, Mike (later known as Charles) Doyle, the poet, Cros Walsh, the crooner Ron Polson, Jenny Priestly, jeweller, writer and former head of the Arts Council, Grant Tilly, actor and artist. I was a writer, a fairly humble writer, contributing to the Literary Society and the magazine Ako Pai. Those were two stimulating happy years, and Jack, with his outgoing embracing, friendly personality was an important part of that scene. Those were the years when C. E. Beeby's educational reforms, and in particular, educational ideas were seeping into the school system. Treating children with respect, encouraging them to think and fostering their creativity was radical and resisted by many of the old guard teachers and principals. I, and I believe many others, struggled to implement in the classroom the ideas we learned at Teachers College. Many of us left teaching. Now, in my old age, and much more mature, teach in the Holocaust Centre as I would have liked to teach then. At the time, Jack Shallcrass and his colleagues inspired us to teach infused with his humanist values.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

On the wrong side of history

Some people never learn. Catherine Delahunty, a Green Party member of Parliament, and bearer of a renowned name in the New Zealand protest movement, dragged along a 93 year Gunther Warner, who fled Germany before the Second World War to address a Palestine Rally in Auckland. I don't imagine that Gunther Warner is an expert on Middle-Eastern politics, his grasp of the meaning of dog-whistling words such as "Fascism", "Final Solution", "Pogrom", "Humanity",and the "Elimination of Arab people" is tenuous. Perhaps, being 93 years old, he spent a life-time protesting and supporting evil causes. He may be old enough to have supported the communists in the Spanish Civil War, he might have been a member of the USSR - New Zealand Friendship Association, with Joe Stalin as its pin-up boy, or perhaps he split with the Soviets and joined the supporters of Communist China and switched his allegiance to Mao Tse Tung. With the misuse of words he could save himself from the necessity to think, to analyze, to explore the reality behind his words. The louder he shouted these words the less he had to think. No one, even the most ardent supporter of the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas group, implied that the aim of the Jews was the elimination of the Arab people, or that the Israeli politics with its heated debates and controversies is anything like a fascist government. It is chutzpah, and I hope that Mr Warner, even if he drifted away from Judaism knows this word, to support a fundamentalist Islamic movement and preach to the Israelis about human rights. The fact that members of Mr. Warner's family were murdered by the Nazis does not qualify him as an expert on the politics of the Middle-East. But then, at 93, he may be excused for being in his dotage and perhaps a little meshugah. But Catherine Delahunty, a member of Parliament and a political party that has a reasonable chance of having an input in New Zealand's foreign policy in the future ought to know better. She doesn't have to like Jews, she can have her own views on Zionism, but aligning herself with total misrepresentations of the tragic events of the Arab Israeli conflict through the misuse of emotive words is quite irresponsible.

Monday, August 25, 2014

Recovering Forbidden Voices

Four days of unfamiliar music and talks, it was a marathon, but it was also a memorable experience. From the start, a performance of Hans Krása's Brundibar by the children of Kelburn School, a work that lives in the memory of survivors of the Theresienstadt concentration camp, then Shostakovich's Eights String Quartet, Laurence Scherr's Flame Language, setting of  Nelly Sachs's poem, Jun Bouterey-Ishido's haunting piano piece in memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Erwin Schulhoff's Five Pieces for Sting Quartet. And this was just the beginning. Then we heard Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Cello Sonata, Arnold Schoenberg's Six Little Piano Pieces, a heartbreaking setting of children's poems from Theresienstadt from the collection I Never Saw Another Butterfly by Ellwood Derr, and Shostakovich's moving Third Quartet. We were treated to a talk about Georg Tintner who attained late in life fame for his Bruckner recordings, but who as a young man exerted a great influence on the New Zealand musical scene and we heard some of his music. We had a recital of violin music by Jewish composers on the fringe of modernity, Franz Schreker, Zemlinsky and Korngold, capturing a "World of Yesterday". Anton Killin's Podróze an electroacoustic piece commemorated the journey of the 838 Polish refugees who came during the war to Pahiatua, New Zealand, through Russia and Persia,and a nod towards the modern classics, we heard Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht. Then more Nelly Schachs, Laurence' Scherr's setting of Fugitive Footsteps. and also Scherr's piece for solo cello, Elegy and Vision. We had two more pieces written in concentration camps, Messian's Abyss of birds, and Gideon Klein's String Trio. The  musical highlight of the conference was the concert that featured Richard Fuchs's prize-winning choral work, Vom Jüdischen Schiksal, (The Jewish Fate), suppressed by the Nazis and performed for the first time 78 years after its composition, Weinberg's Cello Concerto and the finale form Victor Ullmann's Emperor of Atlantis. On the last day of the conference we were treated to Steve Reich's Different Trains for string quartet and tape. The cherry on the top was the Wellington Youth Orchestra playing Beethoven's Two Romances for violin, and Shostakovich's colossal Eighth Symphony It takes time to come down to earth after such a stimulating conference. The thought that stayed was the sense of tremendous loss, the murder of the four Theresienstadt composers, Krása, Ullmann, Klein,  and Schulhoff, in Auschwitz, all cut off in their prime, the murder of all the children featured in the Never Saw Another Butterfly anthology, but also the loss of the voice of the German musical tradition that Tintner and Fuchs faced in exile. Yet on a positive note, I was tremendously impressed by the skill and insight of the students of the New Zealand School of Music who performed much of this music. Every one of the players, soloists, members of the string quartet and other ensembles, was a complete artist. The standard of playing was so high that any musical institute anywhere in the world would have been proud of such musicians. 

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Children of the gang and chess

I went to see the one movie I really wanted to see, The Dark Horse, a New Zealand film based on the true story of Genesis Potini, a former chess champion who spent years in an out of mental institutions battling with severe bipolar disorder. Out of hospital he was advised to find something positive to do. His family and all their friends were gang members, rather threatening characters. Genesis decided to teach the children of these gang members chess and prepare them for a chess tournament in Auckland. The ideas seemed quite crazy in the environment these children lived in, but the children took to it with enthusiasm. Going from Gisborne to Auckland for the tournament was a very big deal for them.  It was the best thing that ever happened to them. It was the best thing for Genesis too. He gained respect and acceptance. As a film it was there with the very best. I can't even think of a film I could compare it with. It is dark. Bipolar disorder is a terrible condition. Genesis got little sympathy from the gang members, the circle he moved in. The subject might have been distressing, but the film is quite uplifting with a positive message. You don't realise how much tension there can be following a chess move in a children's tournament.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

I was wrong about Nixon

Tricky Dickie, the ruthless manipulator, the President that was a crook, this is how I thought of Nixon, but I was wrong. I watched last night David Reynolds's brilliant documentary, Nixon in his den. This is how history should be presented, a story, an account from which you gain a greater, deeper understanding of human frailty that makes up history. Nixon came through as a driven manipulative obsessive man with huge chips on his shoulders. He came from the wrong side of the track, resented that East-Coast wealthy intellectuals educated at Harvard looked down on his small college education, though his degree from Duke University was respectable enough. To compensate for his seeming social disadvantages he worked constantly and excessively hard. He was a loner, but he was ambitious. He was secretive and distrusting. He had no friends, no confidants. He made his name and built up his political capital by hounding communists, yet he harboured a vision as President to end the Cold War, and build a more peaceful future. He inherited a war in Vietnam which he didn't believe in, realized that America could not win, and considered it his priority to get out of it. When bombing the Viet Cong into submission didn't achieve its end, he played chess with world politics, by bringing China in from the cold, establishing relations with China and persuading China to suspend support for the Viet Cong. This put pressure on the Soviet Union to follow suit. By cutting off support for the Viet Cong he could negotiate a withdrawal from Vietnam. His close ally was Kissinger, but when Kissinger claimed credit for his diplomatic successes Nixon became jealous of him and tried to distance him. Yet Nixon's paranoia and his secretive ways which stood him in good stand in his diplomatic efforts was his undoing in domestic politics. In the end he was a man to be pitied, a successful President who left big footprints in the sand of history, but the honour and respect due to him for his great achievements was denied to him because of his personal failings.

Monday, August 18, 2014

Crime, corruption and loyalty

I seldom watch crime stories on TV. It is not my thing. But Consent, a television drama screened this week, about the story of Louise Nicholas, raped by three policemen, the first time when she was only 13, was shown as one of a series of New Zealand documentaries and I thought that it may be worth trying. It proved to be an absolutely riveting film. Apart from the sordid account of brutal rapes, which the film makers handled discreetly, it touched on the dark side of New Zealand life. Murupara, where Louise Nicholas grew up, and where she was raped by the local policeman and a friend of the family seemed like an idyllic small timber town, in the midst of beautiful green landscape, a paradise for children. But the policeman, a happy family man considered the sexual assault of a defenceless young girl as his rightful due. The girl's family didn't know, or chose not to know what happened, turned a blind eye to it, and didn't know how to handle it. When as a young woman Louise Nicholas moved to Rotorua, three policemen raped her together with her flat mate. Again, the policemen, large, threatening presences, didn't see anything wrong with their actions. The police superintendent, the senior police officer in charge of these men found himself in a difficult and embarrassing position. He had sympathy for the girl complainant, but he also felt loyalty to his policemen and the good name of the police. So he did what he, in his simple-minded way thought was the best, would do least harm, and perverted the course of justice, to use the legal jargon. He presented his evidence in the first trial in such a way that the trial had to be aborted. At the retrial he omitted evidence which would have secured a conviction. The guilty officers got away scot free. The officer who raped the 13 year old girl was even awarded $20,000 compensation for legal costs. It was the police superintendent, who out of loyalty for his police officers and the police protected the guilty parties who was convicted. Watching the film there was no doubt where our sympathies should lie, and indeed the rights and wrongs of the matter are very clear. But the world of Murupara and Rotorua, where such atrocities could be perpetrated and tolerated was left unexplored. Violence against women is still a burning issue in New Zealand. I hope that there are no men left who think of young women as meat that can be abused with impunity, but the reality is that there is a dark underbelly of New Zealand society that was ignored, and very likely is still ignored.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Jewish identity

Natan Sharansky predicts 'beginning of the end of Jewish history in Europe' in the article he published in the Jewish Chronicle. As an ardent Zionist, he would of course. This is the age old argument for Zionism. He approves of the emphasis placed on "Jewish identity"  in the programs of the Jewish Agency.  We are about to have a dose of this "Jewish identity" program in little old New Zealand. But please forgive me, Natan, if I take issue with you. What sort of identity do you promote if this identity has the only common theme that all the goyim hate us? There is a lot more to Jewish identity than concern about anti-Semitic slogans. The threat of assimilation was always a Zionist message. But the reality is that throughout the ages Jews managed to assimilate in many ways to their host societies,  yet maintain their Jewish identities. It is the ignorance of Jewish roots and traditions, not the threat of rowdy, ignorant anti-Semites that undermines Jewish identity. History shows that those who want to flee from their Jewish heritage have more to fear from the anti-Semites than Jews strong in their heritage. It is Jews who want to be someone else than they truly are who have the fear of being exposed. For Jews who never try to deny their roots divided loyalty is never an issue. Using anti-Semitism to strengthen Jewish identity is a futile exercise. Who wants to be Jewish just because anti-Semites hate Jews. You would want to identify as a Jew because Judaism has an amazing, proud history and culture. It is a club you would certainly want to belong to.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

The spy I knew

I don't normally move in circles where I would encounter spies, but did come to know Bill Sutch, who according to Soviet intelligence documents had been recruited as a Soviet spy in 1951. Dr Sutch was at the time part of the New Zealand mission to the United Nations in New York. Just a few years later, when I was a university student, he advertised on the university notice board for students to help him excavate his section in Brooklyn. He commissioned the renowned Austrian architect who found refuge in New Zealand, Ernst Plischke to design a house for him, but he wanted to save the soil that had to be excavated to have a garden by the time the house was built. I was one of the students who helped Bill Sutch to excavate his section. We would chop away with our picks and shovels all morning, then sit down, have a beer, and engage in stimulating discussions before moving a few more wheel-barrows full of soil. I don't recall either saying much or drinking much, but I was there along with a whole generation of students who would possibly become senior public servants in the future. Who knew then that Sutch, a stimulating conversationalist full of broad encompassing ideas was a spy? Later, over the years I ran into Bill Sutch on various occasions, we greeted each other, but never had much of a conversation, until, while I worked for the Oxford University Press, he came in with the proposal that we reissue his book Quest for Security in New Zealand in a new edition. We consulted people in Oxford, almost certainly Dan Davin, like Sutch an old time lefty, and he thought that the proposal had merit and we could go ahead with it. The original book had a chequered history. It was commissioned by the government as one of the volumes of the centennial publications to be published in 1940. When Sutch delivered the manuscript the commissioning editor was horrified. The book had such a left-leaning angle that it could not be endorsed and published by a government department, even under a Labour government, so Sutch sent it to Penguin, who had a Left Book Club and they published it. It was a short radical account of New Zealand history. It sold well enough and by the 1960s, when I worked for Oxford, the time was right to up-date it and bring out a new edition. I, a totally inexperienced editor, was put in charge of it. The original Penguin was perhaps 120 pages, certainly no more than 160-180, a slim little book. Sutch turned up with a revised manuscript at least three times as long. The small paperback that we had planned became a chunky brick. Sutch's account was still controversial, perhaps more so than in 1940. He had some harsh things to say about the Federation of Labour and its leaders, F. P. Walsh in particular, who, Sutch believed, betrayed the labour movement. It was good fiery stuff. The book sold well, sold out. No one suggested that I should have stood up to Sutch, get him to shorten the book, cut out some of the dubious controversial bits. You didn't argue with Bill Sutch, he was a bulldozer. He also lacked any sense of humour. Every conversation was dead serious. He was a talented man, interested not only in economics that was his professional expertise, but also the arts. He later became head of the Arts Council. As an economist his views were radical, he believed that New Zealand should aim to be economically self-sufficient and free itself from its colonial dependency on selling primary produce to Britain. He encouraged industrial development, including car manufacture. New Zealand had its own Trabant, a jeep-like vehicle put together in Nelson, with a Skoda engine. I suppose Sutch's ideas cut across too many vested interests, he was dumped together with his economic programs. Forty years ago the then Prime Minister, Norman Kirk, was informed that his trusted mentor and intellectual power house behind the economic planning of the Labour Party, Dr. W. B. Sutch, was a  Soviet agent. Sutch was tried for treason, the first treason trial in memory, and was acquitted, but unquestionably he had acted foolishly, meeting at night a contact from the Soviet Embassy at at the end of Aro Street and handing him a package the content of which remained unknown. I had been reading a bit of John Le Carre. This seemed to me a real life spy mystery story. Sutch was not a venal man, he would not have worked for the Soviets for money. He was a conceited man, full of his own superior intellect. As a student in the 1930s he travelled in the Soviet Union, claimed that he walked across the land, but apparently he travelled like everybody else on public transport. Still, he knew about Russia, and saw what he was allowed to see. After the war, in 1951, in New York, he realised that the world had learned nothing from the terrible slaughter of the war, that the injustices that precipitated the war would be perpetuated, and helping to put the world right by sharing some of his knowledge with the Soviets seemed like a reasonable thing to do. Now intelligence records from the Soviet era that have come to light show that Sutch was indeed a Soviet agent, even if he was acquitted of the crime. Granted that spies lie, that the spy who wrote the report might have claimed more credit for recruiting a top New Zealand civil servant than he deserved, but John Le Carre knew better. Spies come in all shapes and sizes, all with their own egos and weaknesses.

Monday, August 11, 2014

Nadine Gordimer and her right to criticize

Nadine Gordimer died on July 13, 2014 at the age of 90. She published her last novel, No time like the present, in 2012, at the age of 87. It deals, like all of Gordimer's books, with the contemporary situation in South Africa. It is about a mixed couple, he European, part Jewish, she Zulu, who participated in the anti-apartheid 'struggle' in Swaziland. It explores the middle class life of people, black and white, who enjoy the perks of freedom, but fail to address South Africa's major problems, the impoverishment of a large black underclass, and the plight of refugees from Zimbabwe, with no rights and no livelihood. It is a political novel, that dwells on political corruption, the failure of former freedom fighters, and in particular Zoma, who shared Mandela's incarceration on Robben Island, yet once in power, abused his authority. It is a book about dreams turned sour. The protagonists of the book, disillusioned, decide to leave South Africa and move to Australia. Nadine Gordimer had been writing and publishing stories, novels, and essays since 1953. She was a constant outspoken critic of the apartheid regime, an active member of the ANC (African National Congress) and a close friend of Nelson Mandela, who in his lonely old age would often drop in and have a meal with Gordimer. Her books are not easy reading, but she captures a vision of a divided, troubled, yet vibrant South Africa.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Questions about prejudice

I attended a talk last night about Prejudice in the 21st century. It was a well constructed address, delivered in a beautiful deliberate priestly voice. It was well received. But I felt short changed. True, prejudice has its roots in the past, whatever the prejudice is, and to understand it one has to explore these roots. But before doing so, there has to be an agreement on terms. What is meant by prejudice. Is one man's prejudice another's plain blindingly obvious common sense? Some individuals might dislike, Maoris, Blacks, Chinese, Muslims, Jews, or smokers, obese people or any other raft of categories, but surely when one talks about prejudice in our age one talks about more than individual dislikes. Underscoring the talk was racial prejudice, and in particular, as the address was at the AGM of the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand, racial prejudice as it manifests itself in anti-Semitism. There is, without question, an amazing and quite unexpected rise in anti-Semitism the world over, but particularly in Europe, where one would have expected anti-Semitism to be dead and buried after the Holocaust, but whether anti-Semitism is racial or cultural is something that can be debated. You can't be converted to be African or Chinese, but you can be converted to be Jewish, and your DNA, which remains unchanged will be part of the heritage of future generations, obliterating clear racial divides. Anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews, irrespective of their distinctive DNAs. It is also an irrational hatred, and can manifest itself in all sorts of ways, the 'some of my friends are Jewish, I am not an anti-Semite, but ...' and here fill in your own qualifications, "I don't like Israelis, or Zionists, or Jewish bankers, or socialist who are Jewish". Describing such views as prejudice is using the term so loosely that it loses its meaning. This has a bearing on Holocaust Studies. If the object Holocaust Studies gets absorbed in studies of 'prejudice', 'genocides' 'intolerance' its core focus, the unprecedented rift in liberal Western civilization that made the Holocaust possible gets obscured.

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Hamas, ISIS and Islamic fanatics

The rapid conquest of much of Syria and Northern Iraq by the fundamentalist Islamic group ISIS, and the stubborn resistance of Hamas and its sub-groups in Gaza seem almost inexplicable in this rational age. How can a group of fanatics exert such influence and achieve such military success at the expense of the well being of the people who should be their supporters and the beneficiaries of their efforts. But go back in history, look at the conquests of the Almoravids in the eleventh century, primitive but fanatical Berber warriors who conquered much of Africa north of the Sahara and the Iberian peninsula, and the Almohads who defeated them and ruled Iberia until they were defeated in 1212 by an alliance of Christian princes at the battle of Las Navas ed Tolosa and were driven back to North Africa. You might think that there is no place for such fanaticism in our enlightened age, but perhaps we are not more enlightened than the Berbers of the 11th and 12th centuries. Despite all the advances in modern science and technology our understanding of ethical behaviour, morality, and simple good judgement has not changed much over the ages.

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Champagne socialists

Karl du Fresne, a respected columnist of the Dominion Post took to task Bob Harvey, former Mayor of Waitakere for claiming that he is a socialist. Socialism, according to du Fresne is synonymous with economic failure, and gives the Soviet Union, North Korea and Venezuela as examples of these. Whatever you say about these countries, the Soviet Union developed from a backward peasant society into a powerful industrial society within a generation. It did so with great brutality, with oppression of human rights, But you can't deny the astounding economic progress the country had made over a life time, hardly economic failure. Venezuela achieved virtually universal literacy and health care over a remarkable few years, universal health care that the great bastion of capitalism, the United States is still arguing over and is yet to achieve. As to North Korea, a country ruled by a ruthless autocratic dynasty can hardly be claimed as socialist. In New Zealand socialism has achieved universal welfare benefits, social equity,built homes for the working man and the underprivileged, Built a network of efficient hydroelectric and thermal power plants, ran an efficient rail network that was ruined when it was privatized, a national air line that had to be rescued from bankruptcy under its privatized owners. New Zealand had efficient state managed marketing Boards, the Dairy Board, the Meat Marketing Board, that enabled  New Zealand agriculture to weather the loss of its main market, the UK. New Zealand also had the opportunity to develop industries with State support, the railway workshops were  efficient and versatile enterprises, the Air New Zealand workshop serviced aircrafts from all over the world, the Think Big projects of the 1970s and the socialist ventures of the 1960s would have changed the economic profile of New Zealand so that the country would not now be entirely depended on the price the Chinese are prepared to pay for milk powder. Socialism served New Zealand well, capitalism, like colonialism made New Zealand depend on outside forces. It is corruption that at times undermined socialism, as excessive greed undermined capitalism.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Three Anniversaries

This week we commemorated the outbreak of the First World War on August 4, 1914, Tisha B'Av, the destruction of the Temple on the 9th of Av,70 CE, and the dropping of the atom bomb on August 6, 1945. The three commemorations were very different. The outbreak of the war was remembered for the 'heroism', the courage and the sacrifice of an enormous number of young New Zealand men who foolishly rushed up a cliff in Turkey at Gallipoli only to be slaughtered, or fought in the trenches at Passschendaele in futile efforts to gain another 25 metres of territory. Perhaps it also marked the emergence of a New Zealand nationhood. The dropping of the atom bomb, with the utter destruction of a city is remembered with ambivalence. There is no sense of shame or regret, no clear positive outcome. The Japanese foolishly entered a war, the Americans had the bomb so there was pressure on them to use it and achieve a victory with minimum sacrifice. The destruction of the Temple was remembered differently; a day of sheer mourning, a great sense of loss. All three events had profound outcomes. The First World War marked the decline of a liberal civilization, the end of an era of enlightenment. It also destroyed two great empires that somehow maintained peace among a variety of ethnic groups within their jurisdiction, the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman empires.  The bomb on Hiroshima marked the end of Japanese militarism, the rule of a military elite and the shift of the balance to a commercial and industrial class. The destruction of the Temple ended Judaism as a priestly religion based on sacrifices, and lead to the evolution of a religion based on rituals of daily life and the study of the words of the scriptures as these touched on everyday living. It also became a religion of ideas that could be discussed, explored, and could evolve constantly.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Lebanon - the movie

I can't get the war in Gaza out of my head. I blog about it with reluctance, but it dominates my thoughts. For the need to understand, not the politics behind it, but the human side of it, I watched the movie, Lebanon, which I had saved on my T-Box. It is about the most powerful war film I ever saw, the war seen though the view-finder of a tank and through the eyes of the four members of the tank crew. It is clear that these four would be scarred  by their experience for the rest of their lives. Is it now 69000 young Israelis called up for the war? All those who fight in Gaza, witness the destruction, see the mayhem and death, will remember it for ever and will feel diminished by it, scarred, and guilty. I wonder whether Netanyahu, Naftali Bennett, Liberman, the newly elected President Shimon Rivlin, the settlers' parties that put pressure on the politicians to engage in this war and reject alternatives, ever tried to put themselves in the shoes of the young men whom they sent in to fight on their behalf. It is easy to have an opinion, be a peacenik or war monger in peaceful New Zealand where nothing much affects our lives. I wonder what outcome the Israeli leaders who got these thousands of young men into this brutal conflict  expected from this war.

Saturday, August 2, 2014

The three influential Hungarians who shared a bed

Gabriel Heimler, French / German artist of Hungarian origin, now resident in Wellington New Zealand gave a fascinating talk last week about Jewish art and Jewish artists. He mentioned among many other fascinating facts that after the war a Hungarian cantor / rabbi worked on bringing the remnants of Jews from displaced persons' camps together in Berlin to form a Jewish community. In the 1930s this rabbi studied in Paris with two other poor Hungarian students and shared a room and a bed with them. They took turns at sleeping in the one bed, each sleeping for six hours at a time. The other two occupants of the solitary bed were Robert Capa, who later became the foremost war photographer,  took some of the iconic photos of the Vietnam war and was killed in Vietnam, the other was Mihaly Gyarmati, the artistic director of the Follies Bergere. The German officers loved the Follies Berger, and Gyarmati used the money he made off the Germans to fund a synagogue in Paris after the war. That bed had some amazing occupants.