Sean Penn and the ghost of Galtieri

Couldn't help laughing at the latest twist in the Falklands saga; its Sean Penn to the rescue.  Perhaps unable to solve the intractable problems of Hollywood (rampant egos, recreational substance abuse and infinity swimming pools), Mr Penn has once again chosen to tackle those terrible world problems more suited to his enormous status in the great cosmic order of things. What might those be - nuclear war in the Middle East; Famine and terrorism in the Horn of Africa; Syria and the death of the Arab Spring?   

Er…nope. Matters of much greater seriousness - the Malvinas…

That’s the Falklands and the nasty Brits, an easy choice for a vitriolic (and monstrously bad tempered) left winger like Penn.  The Brits, in Mr Madonna’s fevered mind, still stand for all those evil things like colonialism (and what more proof do you need that to find a couple of thousand Brits living on a reasonably large stone in the south Atlantic), illegal wars, bad weather at Wimbledon and so on.

With new best friend, Mrs President of Argentina, Penn is now adding his weight (no chortling please) to the debate. Once again, Argentina wants the Falkland Islands back which, of course, has nothing to do with the rumour of oil in the whereabouts. General Galtieri must be laughing in his grave to find his cause now being advanced by a self-righteous Hollywood featherweight like Penn. All the more is the irony if one considers that,  in his day the grim Generalissimo would almost have certainly have considered detaining Mr Madonna as a dangerous left wing-liberal type.

EINSTEIN IS STILL RIGHT – AND IT’S THE ELECTRICIAN’S FAULT

Late last year the scientific world was just about rendered speechless when it was discovered that neutrinos could, apparently, travel faster than light.  Gasp - this surely proved that anything was possible if Einstein could be proved wrong. All sorts of fantastical things could be true and, yes, perhaps we are even being visited by aliens – why even David Icke might be right and we could all be about to become cold blooded….

Sadly for the world’s conspiracy theorists, UFOlogists and mumbo jumbo addicts, Einstein is still to be proven wrong. Nope, those darn neutrinos were not travelling faster than light; it was down to…experimental error, specifically the fibre optic cable attached to a GPS receiver.  How disappointing but I guess that will cost the electrician his job.  

More excitingly though – experimental error was exactly what I predicted in my blog on 27 November ( http://douglaswhitworth.blogspot.com/2011/11/could-ufos-exist-more-exciting-news.html)  How remarkable! Now, I would never suggest that I have any gift for predicting this sort of amazing outcome, however if anyone would like their palms read……

GREEK TRAGEDY

There is a gut-hollowing hopelessness to the predicament of Greece. They are stuck between either staying put in a place where it is almost certainly fatal for them to remain, or of going to an alternative destination that is almost unbearable to contemplate.  Every evening TV screen are filled with a semi-serialised horror show depicting the seemingly inevitable collapse of the world’s oldest democracy amidst scenes of mob chaos and shallow political manoeuvring. Meanwhile a level of austerity is being imposed upon it by Europe’s leaders, who are so obsessed with sustaining their fiction of a united states of Europe, that it is closer to a form of economic vandalism than anything vaguely resembling a solution.

The truth is, for Greece, there is now no solution that is not almost disastrous.

The best analogy I can think of this that Greece is like a critically failing aeroplane with fatal engine and structural problems and the only airports far outside flight range . The pilots (that’s the Greek politicians, unfortunately for the Greek people) have 2 options:

Option 1: Do nothing. This requires that the pilots deny the crisis is as bad as the flashing cockpit dials and the screaming, bulging eyed passengers might otherwise hint at and instead listen to the ranting of the distant air traffic controllers (the Eurozone leaders) telling them that they have to “adopt tough austerity” by jettisoning all their fuel to lighten the load so they can stay up a bit longer (the austerity measures).

Option 2: Believe the evidence in front of their eyes and get their plane out of the sky and on to the ground as quickly as possible - whilst they still have an element of control, whilst the engines are still just stuttering and the brakes might still just work and whilst there is still have a bit of a choice as to where they bring it down.

Option 2 is Greece going for a semi-disorderly default that will see it leave the Euro, adopt a new drachma, and at least hope it can escape partially intact with some longer term prospects for post-crash recovery.

Option 1 is to stay the path they are on and to “see how long they can keep their bird in the sky”. In that case, pity the ordinary Greeks when it does come plunging down in an uncontrolled spiral out of the Eurozone sky.

Its decision time…………

The US Civil War

Last year was the 150^th anniversary of the start of the US Civil war and we visited Shiloh, Gettysburg and Bull Run, scenes of some of the war’s most famous battles.  There is something deeply disturbing about a civil war where a nation turns upon itself, often with terrifying savagery, and so it was with the US Civil war that began in 1861. Yet, it stands part from so many other such wars, not so much for how it was conducted, but how it concluded and how that shaped not just the future of the USA, but arguably the entire world.

 Unlike so many civil wars that leave their bitter legacies and hates to be transmitted down through future generations, occasionally even bubbling to the surface in renewed conflict (the Balkans), the US civil war concluded in a quite remarkable fashion considering the virtual charnel house of death and slaughter it had become, with over 620 000 soldiers dying and untold havoc being wreaked upon the citizens of the affected states.  That this remarkable ending was possible at all was down to President Lincoln’s overwhelming desire, even during the darkest days of the conflict, for national reconciliation (certainly not shared by all those in his own Gov’t). In this Lincoln was fully supported by two key Union generals, namely US Grant, himself a future president, and WT Sherman (who had terrorised Georgia and the Carolinas in 1865 with his march through those states), both of whom who concluded quite dramatically generous surrenders with their southern opponents. In the case of Sherman this was at great political risk to himself when he accepted Confederate General Joe Johnson’s surrender after Lincoln’s assassination by John Wilkes Booth, a Southern sympathiser. Such was the bond between Sherman and Johnson that 26 years later Johnson was a pallbearer at Sherman’s funeral, one month before his own death.

But this remarkably sane, far-sighted approach was matched by key figures in the South, who took their lead from their iconic hero, General Lee. The scourge of many Northern armies in war, at the critical moment it was Lee who, against the wishes of the Confederate President (Davis), prevented his  Army of Northern Virginia leading the South into years of guerrilla warfare, which could have had devastating implications for the future unity of the entire USA. Instead he matched Lincoln’s desire for reconciliation in deed, both in the manner of the surrender and the peaceful disarming of his army (and with it any real Southern prospect of a continuing guerrilla struggle) and thereafter by personal example in how he then lived out the few remaining years of his life.

Such dramatically reconciled endings to wars of great savagery are very rare. That it happened as it did, now looking back 150 years, conceals from us just how improbable such a scenario was at the time, and how it all turned on the enlightened outlooks and actions of such a frighteningly small handful of individuals. This is even more remarkable given that the most important figure in all this, Lincoln, was assassinated before all the Southern armies had even surrendered, which left the hopes for a reconciled peace hanging by the barest of threads in the chaotic, febrile atmosphere of the last few weeks of the war in 1865.

This is not to deny there was terrible post war hardship in the South and great mourning across the entire country for the loss of life. Likewise, Southern resentment at the wars’ outcome even today is not completely absent. Yet, within a few decades, the US was fighting as a single, united nation in the 1^st World War, and thereafter in the 2^nd World War, where such involvement was ultimately pivotal to the future of a free western Europe. Thereafter the USA went on to become the world’s most powerful country and one of its greatest democracies. Had the South won, or, more likely, been able to force a bitter, resentful truce, a deeply wounded, highly polarised nation and a dramatically weakened country split in two would probably have emerged, unable to realise its potential or wield the strength it does today. This would inevitably have affected its involvement, even its participation, in both world wars. Conceivably, it could have meant an Imperial Japan dominating Asia today, no D-Day invasion and the Iron Curtain quite probably being drawn across Europe along the coast of France.

Perhaps, nearly 150 years on, we are yet to appreciate the impact that the civil war in America had on the world in which we find ourselves today and the lives we lead within in it.

  Visit civil war photo gallery