Jeremy Corbyn has been criticized by members of his own party (I think we know they are) for meeting a Jewish group. But they’re the wrong kind of Jews. Jewdas is a dissident faction, a bunch of irreverent, semi-anarchistic bad boys whose greatest sin is that they refuse to support the Zionist hegemony which operates in their own land and the occupied territories of Palestine. They’re not antisemitic, but they don’t approve of Netenyahu’s near-fascist government.
The Zionist’s seek, and indeed succeed to a very large extent, to quell any opposition to their own party and its policies. A few years ago, for instance, an exhibition of art created by Palestinian children was doing the rounds in a series of American cities. Spreading the lie that the art was not created by the children, they went ahead of the exhibition and tried very hard to persuade the venues to cancel the exhibition. It worked, and many, many venues suddenly broke their promises and closed the doors against the exhibition. Of course what they didn’t like was what the art showed: bombs falling from Israeli jets, buildings and homes destroyed and dead and injured Palestinians lying on the ground.
The Israeli government and its many supporters around the world want you to believe the Palestinian people as a whole are terrorists to a man, woman and child, who need to kept behind high walls and killed should they protest, otherwise the Jewish people would be pushed into the sea. It seems now that even here, in the home of Free Speech, it is becoming almost a crime to mention that this is a cruel lie. Hence the concerted campaign to discredit Jeremy Corbyn and anyone else who stands up to the Zionist bullies. If they can, they’d like to destroy any chance of Labour winning the next election by disseminating these lies, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it works.
Tuesday, 3 April 2018
Monday, 2 April 2018
March 2018 film review part 2
BOMBSHELL (2017) D- Alexandra Dean
Being the life and times of Heddy Lamar, one of the most achingly beautiful stars ever to shine on the silver screen. But make no mistake, this was no airhead bimbo. Her mind brimmed with bright ideas, and when a submarine sank a ship in 1942, drowning over 90 children, she worked out, with a friend, a method for detecting submarines under water. But nobody bought the idea. Or did they? Despite the fact that she never made a dime for her invention, the US navy did indeed use a modified version of her idea, and they continue to use of a form of it to this day.
Escaping from Germany prior to WW2, there was one thing she couldn’t escape from: her past. Turns out she made a nudie film in Germany, and this came to haunt her. Offered a series of parts that were beneath her, she accepted them to keep her head above water, and as a result her real talent never made it to the screen. Finally, and most tragically of all, she used plastic surgery in a desperate and wholly unsuccessful bid to hold on to her fading beauty.
An affecting and highly insightful story of promise denied.
A WAR (2015) D- Pilou Lindholm
A Danish commander under fire in Afghanistan (a brilliantl Pilou Asbaek) has one of his men badly injured and must get him out to save his life. There may be civilians in a hut he is attacking in order to effect this, there may not. He takes a gamble and blows it to hell. His man is saved, but the gamble failed. There were civilians in the hut, and they were all killed. Next thing he hears, he’s up on war-crimes charges.
This is how modern wars are fought. Everything is filmed, every command decision questioned, no matter the incredible stress the participants may be under at the time. Until quite recently, deaths under “friendly fire” or little mistakes where a wedding party is blown up rather than a band of terrorists were just put down to the fortunes of war. No longer. And perhaps that’s a good thing. But I worry that the human beings involved are now cut no slack at all for the incredibly difficult job their governments ask them to do.
Being the life and times of Heddy Lamar, one of the most achingly beautiful stars ever to shine on the silver screen. But make no mistake, this was no airhead bimbo. Her mind brimmed with bright ideas, and when a submarine sank a ship in 1942, drowning over 90 children, she worked out, with a friend, a method for detecting submarines under water. But nobody bought the idea. Or did they? Despite the fact that she never made a dime for her invention, the US navy did indeed use a modified version of her idea, and they continue to use of a form of it to this day.
Escaping from Germany prior to WW2, there was one thing she couldn’t escape from: her past. Turns out she made a nudie film in Germany, and this came to haunt her. Offered a series of parts that were beneath her, she accepted them to keep her head above water, and as a result her real talent never made it to the screen. Finally, and most tragically of all, she used plastic surgery in a desperate and wholly unsuccessful bid to hold on to her fading beauty.
An affecting and highly insightful story of promise denied.
A WAR (2015) D- Pilou Lindholm
A Danish commander under fire in Afghanistan (a brilliantl Pilou Asbaek) has one of his men badly injured and must get him out to save his life. There may be civilians in a hut he is attacking in order to effect this, there may not. He takes a gamble and blows it to hell. His man is saved, but the gamble failed. There were civilians in the hut, and they were all killed. Next thing he hears, he’s up on war-crimes charges.
This is how modern wars are fought. Everything is filmed, every command decision questioned, no matter the incredible stress the participants may be under at the time. Until quite recently, deaths under “friendly fire” or little mistakes where a wedding party is blown up rather than a band of terrorists were just put down to the fortunes of war. No longer. And perhaps that’s a good thing. But I worry that the human beings involved are now cut no slack at all for the incredibly difficult job their governments ask them to do.
March 2018 film review part 1
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (2004) D- David Fincher
A baby is born with the face of an old man. Horrified, the father snatches it and leaves it on an orphanage’s doorstep. As he grows up, his face gradually begins to look more youthful. A fulcrum point is reached in his thirties, when his face looks right for his chronological age. But then, curiously, as he grows older his face begins to look younger and younger. As he hits his forties he goes backpacking in Nepal; by his sixties he has entered his awkward adolescence . Finally, becoming shorter and shorter, he becomes a babe-in-arms. Through it all, he conducts a strange, off/on relationship with a beauful woman (Cate Blanchett).
Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous short story, this is a fine attempt to bring that remarkable tale to the screen and won Brad Pitt an Oscar for his outstanding performance, though whether this short story warrants a 150 minute epic is open to question. But the director’s skill is undeniable and the film remains watchable throughout.
HARMONIUM (2016) D- Koji Fukada
A mother and her emotionally shut-off husband bring up their child in a Tokyo suburb when the father invites an ex-con friend to come and live with them. The new guest rapidly establishes a rapport with the daughter and teaches her the rudiments of the harmonium. Mum isn’t sure about her new house-guest, but puts up with it. Slowly it emerges that father too has a shady past, and that his friend may have taken the fall for a crime they both committed.
In some ways this film reminded me of the French classic Boudu Saved From Drowning, in the way a guest is invited in and gradually comes to dominate the family, and the atmosphere created in this film, as in the earlier film, is incredibly moving and powerful.
One of those few movies to come out of Japan which offers deep insights into Japanese domestic life.
CITY OF TINY LIGHTS (2016) D- Pete Travis
A low-life private dic bites off more than he can chew when he investigates a disappearance, stumbling into the world of Islamic politics as well as uncovering ghosts from his own past.
Riz Ahmed is one of the hottest properties in the world right now. Aclaimed actor, rapper and activist, Time magazine put him on their cover as one of 100 most influential people in the world - all this at under 30. Dontcha hate people who are that talented and successful? I know I do. Seriously, despite all this success, this movie doesn’t actually work. It can’t make up its mind what it wants to be; fictional autobiog, hard-bitten noir, political intrigue. And the result is an uncertain melange of plot and style. Oh well, Riz, you can’t win ‘em all, just most of them. I’m sure you’ll do better next time.
A FANTASTIC WOMAN (2017) D- Sebastian Lelio
In Santiago, Chile, a male-to-female trans woman is with her male lover one night when he drops dead just after completing the act of love. Tricky. The poor girl doesn’t know how tricky until the man’s family show up and seem to regard her as some kind of sub-human monster. She is barred from attending her lover’s funeral and told to vacate their shared apartment forthwith. Somehow she manages to pursue her career as a singer.
This film is a revelation. If you ever wondered what sort of problem transgender people deal with in the modern world you need look no further than this superb movie which shows, with stunning insight and clarity, that they face, really, the same sort of problems as gays did half a century ago: misunderstanding, fear, and deep, deep hatred.
Absolutely brilliant. Seek it out and be moved,
A baby is born with the face of an old man. Horrified, the father snatches it and leaves it on an orphanage’s doorstep. As he grows up, his face gradually begins to look more youthful. A fulcrum point is reached in his thirties, when his face looks right for his chronological age. But then, curiously, as he grows older his face begins to look younger and younger. As he hits his forties he goes backpacking in Nepal; by his sixties he has entered his awkward adolescence . Finally, becoming shorter and shorter, he becomes a babe-in-arms. Through it all, he conducts a strange, off/on relationship with a beauful woman (Cate Blanchett).
Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous short story, this is a fine attempt to bring that remarkable tale to the screen and won Brad Pitt an Oscar for his outstanding performance, though whether this short story warrants a 150 minute epic is open to question. But the director’s skill is undeniable and the film remains watchable throughout.
HARMONIUM (2016) D- Koji Fukada
A mother and her emotionally shut-off husband bring up their child in a Tokyo suburb when the father invites an ex-con friend to come and live with them. The new guest rapidly establishes a rapport with the daughter and teaches her the rudiments of the harmonium. Mum isn’t sure about her new house-guest, but puts up with it. Slowly it emerges that father too has a shady past, and that his friend may have taken the fall for a crime they both committed.
In some ways this film reminded me of the French classic Boudu Saved From Drowning, in the way a guest is invited in and gradually comes to dominate the family, and the atmosphere created in this film, as in the earlier film, is incredibly moving and powerful.
One of those few movies to come out of Japan which offers deep insights into Japanese domestic life.
CITY OF TINY LIGHTS (2016) D- Pete Travis
A low-life private dic bites off more than he can chew when he investigates a disappearance, stumbling into the world of Islamic politics as well as uncovering ghosts from his own past.
Riz Ahmed is one of the hottest properties in the world right now. Aclaimed actor, rapper and activist, Time magazine put him on their cover as one of 100 most influential people in the world - all this at under 30. Dontcha hate people who are that talented and successful? I know I do. Seriously, despite all this success, this movie doesn’t actually work. It can’t make up its mind what it wants to be; fictional autobiog, hard-bitten noir, political intrigue. And the result is an uncertain melange of plot and style. Oh well, Riz, you can’t win ‘em all, just most of them. I’m sure you’ll do better next time.
A FANTASTIC WOMAN (2017) D- Sebastian Lelio
In Santiago, Chile, a male-to-female trans woman is with her male lover one night when he drops dead just after completing the act of love. Tricky. The poor girl doesn’t know how tricky until the man’s family show up and seem to regard her as some kind of sub-human monster. She is barred from attending her lover’s funeral and told to vacate their shared apartment forthwith. Somehow she manages to pursue her career as a singer.
This film is a revelation. If you ever wondered what sort of problem transgender people deal with in the modern world you need look no further than this superb movie which shows, with stunning insight and clarity, that they face, really, the same sort of problems as gays did half a century ago: misunderstanding, fear, and deep, deep hatred.
Absolutely brilliant. Seek it out and be moved,
Saturday, 31 March 2018
March 2018 book review
Welcome to part 1 of this month’s media review. Please see later blogs for more
BOOKS
FORTUNES OF WAR, by Olivier Manning
Cairo, 1942. Rommel’s desert army is carrying all before it and has now crossed the border into Egypt itself. Either Britain’s 8th Army makes a heroic last stand or the Germans will be in Cairo soon, the Suez Canal will fall into enemy hands and from this unassailable position could go on to win the war.
Manning peoples her highly authentic-feeling account of Brits at war with a young soldier who has never seen action but is keen to have at the Hun, a beautiful young tart who is the arm of a different man each night but is really after snagging a man with a title, an academic who is keener on making friends and influencing everyone than he is on nurturing his own marriage, and lastly, but most centrally, his wife Harriet, around whom the book revolves.
Olivier Manning has written a fine account of soldiers and civilians in the turmoil of imminent destruction with this book, which almost feels like a movie screenplay. It has been televised, and in a world where they love to do remakes, they could do worse than have another go at this. I for one would see it.
THE GIFT, by Vladimir Nabokov
A young writer hears from a friend that his latest slim volume of verse has received rapturous acclaim from the critics, but when he turns up to a party held ostensibly in his honour, he finds it was all a hoax, and remembers the date: April Fool’s Day. He pulls himself out of his disappointment and presses on with his writing, because the “Gift” the title refers to is his own talent. He settles down to write a life of Russian writer Chernyshevsky, whose book What is to be Done? Is now regarded by many as being even more influential on the architects of the Russian Revolution than Marx’s Das Kapital.
I love Nabokov’s writing. Fluid, stately, smooth as silk on a beautiful woman’s skin, there is no one who builds a better sentence than he does. But here, in one of his least approachable books, I struggled to stay afloat. His last book written in Russian when he was still living in exile in Berlin, even his publishers refused to include the chapter which is in essence a condensed form of the book on Chernyshevsky the fictional author is writing, and in one sense you can see why. Now restored, it seems completely separate from the remainder of the narrative, while at the end of the book there is a lengthy afterword by Nabokov’s brother Dimitri, on the subject of their lepidopterist father.
Strictly for Nabokov enthusiasts.
THE BEST OF SAKI, by H.H. Munro
Being a presentation of strange but sometimes hilarious tales from the pen of one of Britain’s most notable short story writers. Here you will meet Clovis Sangrail, whose sense of humour can be bizarre to put it mildly. In one story, he hears someone showing off that he learnt from a Siberian shaman how to transform people into animals, and arranges to have the demonstration work only too well. In another, a baby goes missing, and he goes off and finds it, only to be told it is the wrong baby. Then the right baby is found, leaving the family with one baby in excess of requirements...
Largely forgotten now, Saki’s quirky, surprising little gems of short stories should not be overlooked by anyone interested in that most tricky of formats.
Definitely worth a couple of hours of your time.
OUR MAN IN HAVANA, by Graham Greene
A British expat is selling vacuum cleaners in Cuba when he is somewhat reluctantly recruited into MI6. The training is minimal; he doesn’t really have a clue how to go about garnering information useful to the Home Country. Then he has the idea simply to make it up. He imagines a secret factory in the Cuban hinterland, and sends plans which resemble a vastly enlarged version of the vacuum cleaner he sells. To his astonishment the high-ups back home swallow the whole thing and beg for more of the same. Then an assistant is sent out to Cuba to assist him...
Greene put this book in the category of what he called “entertainments”; light-as-air divertissements as opposed to his “proper” novels, such as The Heart of the Matter. But even this tale has a dark edge. A friend is murdered simply for being his friend, and the local security chief who has earned the moniker of the “Red Vulture” for his cruelty, has designs on his beautiful teenage daughter.
Certainly an “entertainment”, and a damn good read too.
BOOKS
FORTUNES OF WAR, by Olivier Manning
Cairo, 1942. Rommel’s desert army is carrying all before it and has now crossed the border into Egypt itself. Either Britain’s 8th Army makes a heroic last stand or the Germans will be in Cairo soon, the Suez Canal will fall into enemy hands and from this unassailable position could go on to win the war.
Manning peoples her highly authentic-feeling account of Brits at war with a young soldier who has never seen action but is keen to have at the Hun, a beautiful young tart who is the arm of a different man each night but is really after snagging a man with a title, an academic who is keener on making friends and influencing everyone than he is on nurturing his own marriage, and lastly, but most centrally, his wife Harriet, around whom the book revolves.
Olivier Manning has written a fine account of soldiers and civilians in the turmoil of imminent destruction with this book, which almost feels like a movie screenplay. It has been televised, and in a world where they love to do remakes, they could do worse than have another go at this. I for one would see it.
THE GIFT, by Vladimir Nabokov
A young writer hears from a friend that his latest slim volume of verse has received rapturous acclaim from the critics, but when he turns up to a party held ostensibly in his honour, he finds it was all a hoax, and remembers the date: April Fool’s Day. He pulls himself out of his disappointment and presses on with his writing, because the “Gift” the title refers to is his own talent. He settles down to write a life of Russian writer Chernyshevsky, whose book What is to be Done? Is now regarded by many as being even more influential on the architects of the Russian Revolution than Marx’s Das Kapital.
I love Nabokov’s writing. Fluid, stately, smooth as silk on a beautiful woman’s skin, there is no one who builds a better sentence than he does. But here, in one of his least approachable books, I struggled to stay afloat. His last book written in Russian when he was still living in exile in Berlin, even his publishers refused to include the chapter which is in essence a condensed form of the book on Chernyshevsky the fictional author is writing, and in one sense you can see why. Now restored, it seems completely separate from the remainder of the narrative, while at the end of the book there is a lengthy afterword by Nabokov’s brother Dimitri, on the subject of their lepidopterist father.
Strictly for Nabokov enthusiasts.
THE BEST OF SAKI, by H.H. Munro
Being a presentation of strange but sometimes hilarious tales from the pen of one of Britain’s most notable short story writers. Here you will meet Clovis Sangrail, whose sense of humour can be bizarre to put it mildly. In one story, he hears someone showing off that he learnt from a Siberian shaman how to transform people into animals, and arranges to have the demonstration work only too well. In another, a baby goes missing, and he goes off and finds it, only to be told it is the wrong baby. Then the right baby is found, leaving the family with one baby in excess of requirements...
Largely forgotten now, Saki’s quirky, surprising little gems of short stories should not be overlooked by anyone interested in that most tricky of formats.
Definitely worth a couple of hours of your time.
OUR MAN IN HAVANA, by Graham Greene
A British expat is selling vacuum cleaners in Cuba when he is somewhat reluctantly recruited into MI6. The training is minimal; he doesn’t really have a clue how to go about garnering information useful to the Home Country. Then he has the idea simply to make it up. He imagines a secret factory in the Cuban hinterland, and sends plans which resemble a vastly enlarged version of the vacuum cleaner he sells. To his astonishment the high-ups back home swallow the whole thing and beg for more of the same. Then an assistant is sent out to Cuba to assist him...
Greene put this book in the category of what he called “entertainments”; light-as-air divertissements as opposed to his “proper” novels, such as The Heart of the Matter. But even this tale has a dark edge. A friend is murdered simply for being his friend, and the local security chief who has earned the moniker of the “Red Vulture” for his cruelty, has designs on his beautiful teenage daughter.
Certainly an “entertainment”, and a damn good read too.
Antisemites all
Poor old Jeremy. No sooner does he sort out one problem within his party when another one comes along. Now one of his honchos has been castigated for supporting another who is, according to reports, a holocaust denier.
Holocaust denial is the very definition of antisemitism. To attempt to refute the enormous weight of evidence that the Nazis tried very hard to rid the world of Jewry is idiotic, noy only deeply hurtful to the Jewish community, but an affront to anyone who believes in truth. But sections of the Labour Party have seized on this as a new way to displace Corbyn from the leadership. Led by John Mann, a man so right wing and rabidly Zionist it is almost impossible to understand how is a member of the Labour Party at all, they seek to expunge all traces of antisemitism from the ranks of the Labour Party. People who suggest this is simply another way to get rid of Corbyn and his left-of-centre cadre are shouted down as antisemitic.
Well and good, until you realize that what they also want is to expunge any opposition to the ultra-right wing Zionist leadership of the land of Israel. Yesterday a protest was mounted in Gaza against the expropriation of their land by the Israeli ‘settlers’ as Palestinians refer to them. Stone throwing was met with automatic rifle fire; 17 young men were shot dead. That’s how the Israelis operate. They believe they have a literally God-given right to occupy the land, regardless of the fact that 7 million Arabs were already occupying it. Labeling them all terrorists, they feel justified in denying them the human rights they themselves enjoy, corralling them into ever smaller enclaves and shooting them dead should they be so outrageous as to protest the injustices they face every day.
Yet so all-powerful and far-reaching is the Jewish lobby that even mentioning these injustices is deemed ‘antisemitic’. And there’s your injustice, your racism, right there.
Holocaust denial is the very definition of antisemitism. To attempt to refute the enormous weight of evidence that the Nazis tried very hard to rid the world of Jewry is idiotic, noy only deeply hurtful to the Jewish community, but an affront to anyone who believes in truth. But sections of the Labour Party have seized on this as a new way to displace Corbyn from the leadership. Led by John Mann, a man so right wing and rabidly Zionist it is almost impossible to understand how is a member of the Labour Party at all, they seek to expunge all traces of antisemitism from the ranks of the Labour Party. People who suggest this is simply another way to get rid of Corbyn and his left-of-centre cadre are shouted down as antisemitic.
Well and good, until you realize that what they also want is to expunge any opposition to the ultra-right wing Zionist leadership of the land of Israel. Yesterday a protest was mounted in Gaza against the expropriation of their land by the Israeli ‘settlers’ as Palestinians refer to them. Stone throwing was met with automatic rifle fire; 17 young men were shot dead. That’s how the Israelis operate. They believe they have a literally God-given right to occupy the land, regardless of the fact that 7 million Arabs were already occupying it. Labeling them all terrorists, they feel justified in denying them the human rights they themselves enjoy, corralling them into ever smaller enclaves and shooting them dead should they be so outrageous as to protest the injustices they face every day.
Yet so all-powerful and far-reaching is the Jewish lobby that even mentioning these injustices is deemed ‘antisemitic’. And there’s your injustice, your racism, right there.
Tuesday, 20 March 2018
Poor little gambling companies get well again
Having taken something of a hit while the regulator strove to decide how best to deal with them and their gigantic profits, shares in the big gaming companies recovered substantially after the former said the limit of spending on FOBs (Fixed Odds Betting terminals) should only go down to 30 quid every 20 seconds instead of the 100 smackers you are allowed to lose at the moment.
Losing only 90 pounds a minute rather than 300 is obviously an improvement. Just not much of one.
When I learned the rudiments of psychology at medical school, I heard that of all the ways to persuade any animal, including humans, to do any given thing, the most effective method is what is called “positive intermittent reinforcement” In other words, you don’t reward a given behavior every time, just every now and then. This works much better than aversion therapy, where the contrary behavior is punished. Just rewarding once in a while is almost guaranteed to maintain the desired behavior. Which is why FOB terminals are so addictive. You let people win just often enough to keep them hoping, but not enough to give them any real chance of ending with a profit at the end of any given session.
“Oh, please don’t bring the figure down!” Bleat the gaming companies. “Thousands of jobs will be lost!” When slavery was outlawed in the 19th century, thousands of people were put out of work, and a good thing too. Hopefully they went off and found less hideous ways of making a living. If the frug trade stopped tomorrow, millions of people around the world would be out of work. Would that be such a bad thing? Yet when it comes to an only marginally less pernicious activity like running FOB terminals, suddenly it’s beyond the pale.
The government and its “independent” regulator had a real chance to make a difference with this. Bringing the maximum down to 2 pounds, or even 5, would have been a real advance, and still allow the gaming companies to maintain their position as some of Britain’s wealthiest concerns. But no, they went with greed, doubtless influenced by the very powerful gaming lobby, who seem intent on fleecing thousands of Britains poorest people. Why does the government like FOB terminals? Simple: tax revenue. They generate 1.5 billion in tax exact year. Who cares if people get ripped off?
Gambling has been a popular pursuit in cultures around the world for millennia. They absolutely love it in the Far East, where Macao now takes in more revenue even than Las Vegas. But that doesn’t mean governments should encourage it. Which is what our government is doing right now. Shame on them.
Losing only 90 pounds a minute rather than 300 is obviously an improvement. Just not much of one.
When I learned the rudiments of psychology at medical school, I heard that of all the ways to persuade any animal, including humans, to do any given thing, the most effective method is what is called “positive intermittent reinforcement” In other words, you don’t reward a given behavior every time, just every now and then. This works much better than aversion therapy, where the contrary behavior is punished. Just rewarding once in a while is almost guaranteed to maintain the desired behavior. Which is why FOB terminals are so addictive. You let people win just often enough to keep them hoping, but not enough to give them any real chance of ending with a profit at the end of any given session.
“Oh, please don’t bring the figure down!” Bleat the gaming companies. “Thousands of jobs will be lost!” When slavery was outlawed in the 19th century, thousands of people were put out of work, and a good thing too. Hopefully they went off and found less hideous ways of making a living. If the frug trade stopped tomorrow, millions of people around the world would be out of work. Would that be such a bad thing? Yet when it comes to an only marginally less pernicious activity like running FOB terminals, suddenly it’s beyond the pale.
The government and its “independent” regulator had a real chance to make a difference with this. Bringing the maximum down to 2 pounds, or even 5, would have been a real advance, and still allow the gaming companies to maintain their position as some of Britain’s wealthiest concerns. But no, they went with greed, doubtless influenced by the very powerful gaming lobby, who seem intent on fleecing thousands of Britains poorest people. Why does the government like FOB terminals? Simple: tax revenue. They generate 1.5 billion in tax exact year. Who cares if people get ripped off?
Gambling has been a popular pursuit in cultures around the world for millennia. They absolutely love it in the Far East, where Macao now takes in more revenue even than Las Vegas. But that doesn’t mean governments should encourage it. Which is what our government is doing right now. Shame on them.
Sunday, 18 March 2018
Did Putin do it? Applying the CPS rules
Let’s imagine the unlikely scenario of Vladimir Putin making a private visit to Britain tomorrow. Would he be arrested at the airport, based on the existing evidence, and interrogated as to his responsibility? Of course he would deny everything, and then be released on police bail pending further enquiries.
The stage would be reached when the police would deliver their file to the CPS, who would then have to make a charging decision. In most cases they would apply the ‘50% rule’, where they would not proceed unless they thought there was a greater than 50% prospect of conviction. (This rule does not apply in cases of rape and historical sexual abuse, of course, where the vast majority of cases are put to the jury, regardless of the evidence, and juries tend to find the vast majority of them not guilty, reluctant to convict in cases of ‘he said/she said’. But I digress)
On the basis of what has been made public so far, I would expect the CPS to charge Putin and let a jury decide. Theresa May has been explicit in her condemnation of the Russian state, and when Jeremy Corbyn sounded a note of caution he was excoriated by the press for his disloyalty, despite the fact he was simply doing his job as leader of the opposition in a democratic state.
But would a jury convict Putin? The question any jury has to answer is: is the case proved beyond a reasonable doubt? Are you sure? They are asked. Come to that, what does the word sure mean in this context? Some judges and others authorities say, 90% certainty constitutes sure. We know Theresa May is sure; she made that perfectly clear last Wednesday, but how would a jury decide?
It is said that in the early 90s Russia transformed itself from a Soviet state to a criminal organisation in the space of less than two years. Under the auspices of Boris Yeltsin, that bumbling, corrupt if relatively benevolent alcoholic, the oligarchy was created. In order to build his power base, he delivered some of the biggest state industries; coal, oil, gas, infrastructure development and so on into the hands of a very few people, who overnight became some of the richest and most powerful men on Earth. In this environment the Russian mob blossomed into a kind of mini-state only marginally less powerful than the government itself. They are certainly capable of reaching out and disposing of anyone they don’t like, wherever they are. Some say they are actually indivisible from the government. That’s what people believe.
We know the Russian state developed the nerve agent responsible for the attack, and that Russia has acted in a pretty unscrupulous manner in the last few years (Ukraine, Crimea, etc), but would a jury, forced to consider the facts alone, without any political considerations, acquit Putin? I think they might.
The stage would be reached when the police would deliver their file to the CPS, who would then have to make a charging decision. In most cases they would apply the ‘50% rule’, where they would not proceed unless they thought there was a greater than 50% prospect of conviction. (This rule does not apply in cases of rape and historical sexual abuse, of course, where the vast majority of cases are put to the jury, regardless of the evidence, and juries tend to find the vast majority of them not guilty, reluctant to convict in cases of ‘he said/she said’. But I digress)
On the basis of what has been made public so far, I would expect the CPS to charge Putin and let a jury decide. Theresa May has been explicit in her condemnation of the Russian state, and when Jeremy Corbyn sounded a note of caution he was excoriated by the press for his disloyalty, despite the fact he was simply doing his job as leader of the opposition in a democratic state.
But would a jury convict Putin? The question any jury has to answer is: is the case proved beyond a reasonable doubt? Are you sure? They are asked. Come to that, what does the word sure mean in this context? Some judges and others authorities say, 90% certainty constitutes sure. We know Theresa May is sure; she made that perfectly clear last Wednesday, but how would a jury decide?
It is said that in the early 90s Russia transformed itself from a Soviet state to a criminal organisation in the space of less than two years. Under the auspices of Boris Yeltsin, that bumbling, corrupt if relatively benevolent alcoholic, the oligarchy was created. In order to build his power base, he delivered some of the biggest state industries; coal, oil, gas, infrastructure development and so on into the hands of a very few people, who overnight became some of the richest and most powerful men on Earth. In this environment the Russian mob blossomed into a kind of mini-state only marginally less powerful than the government itself. They are certainly capable of reaching out and disposing of anyone they don’t like, wherever they are. Some say they are actually indivisible from the government. That’s what people believe.
We know the Russian state developed the nerve agent responsible for the attack, and that Russia has acted in a pretty unscrupulous manner in the last few years (Ukraine, Crimea, etc), but would a jury, forced to consider the facts alone, without any political considerations, acquit Putin? I think they might.
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