The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…
By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.
The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!
Worldwide Trade in Gasoline 2022 $16.86 Billion Worldwide Trade in Gold 2022 $14.568 Trillion
When I first researched a list of “Commodities”, Gold and Gasoline were the only two which came up for “G” on the best list I could find, but what a pair! Gold has been sought for centuries – valued for its incorruptible nature though it has arguably been one of the greatest sources of corruption of the human heart. Similarly, crude oil – the source of Gasoline, has shaped the political map ever since its component “gifts” were discovered and exploited with disastrous consequences for many peoples and for the world and its environment as a whole. So I decided to deal with both these commodities together – one constant and immutable, the other volatile, expendable and dangerous…
Gasoline is used for transportation and energy production worldwide and is severely implicated in global warming as a result of CO² emissions. The spread of the motorcar through the 20th century reshaped our lives and living arrangements and wars have been fought to secure, steal or destroy other’s oil sources. Arguably. The US, as the largest consumer has fought an undeclared war against the Arab nations since the Second World War to assure the flow of oil although it began with an alliance with Saudi Arabia that promised guaranteed oil supplies in return for non-interference with the Wahabist-based sect of Islam which was espoused there. The consequences of that are another story, but Iraq and Libya (a country that shared its oil wealth amongst its people in an unprecedented way) are but some of the victims of US-led wars designed to keep the best oil flowing in the “right” direction. The oil lobby is the greatest source of “climate deniers” although the car lobby and many car drivers are equally denying that Climate Change is happening and man-made.
A salutary tale of the corruption that surrounds commodities such as oil (and gold), is the recent movie Killers of the Flower Moon, in which members of the Osage tribe of Native American Indians are at first surfeited in wealth (see above) derived from the rights to oil found on their land but how an unscrupulous local politician then seeks to murder them and acquire their lands into his family.
Gold has also been a source of conflict and a regulator of success in wars as this article outlines. Paper money used to be backed by reserves of the actual gold which it symbolised and this was known as the “Gold Standard” and although this system has been replaced everywhere by the Fiat system the prevalence of inflation as a result of the severing of the link, has risen worldwide. Having gold bullion reserves finances wars – for example, it is estimated that Californian gold was responsible for 10% of the cost of the American Civil War. The UK had access to gold produced by mines in its colonies such as South Africa which the mines were obliged to sell to the treasury whilst over the course of the two World wars, Germany had no such access and so the UK was able to pay for some of the food and armaments that came from the US (and borrowed the rest which it only paid off in 2006).
Gold Fields South Deep Mine The Twin Shaft Complex comprises a Main and Ventilation Shaft. The Main Shaft extends in a single drop to 2,998m below surface, while the ventilation shaft extends to a depth of 2,947m below the surface. That’s almost 3 kilometres…
Oil and thence Gasoline prices are also levers of power in war e.g. the embargo on Russian oil in response to the war in Ukraine although to pull those levers means adversely affecting the price of oil commodities and the US has to try to persuade its Arab producer allies to release more product to stabilise the market. The price of gold and oil or gasoline (their markets show some different behaviours) are some of the most important commodity trading standards in the market and the first thing that many in the know will look at each morning.
Of course, gold has decorative and cultural uses as well as bullion – jewellery, crowns, ceremonial cups and it is because it doesn’t tarnish or corrode that it has had this value since ancient times and so is one of the earliest commodities to be traded.
And so to the poem and having recently written a Ghazal, I decided to try a Glosa…
Glosa, or glose, is a form originally from Spain, featuring a quatrain epigraph, and four ten-line stanzas with the last line of each stanza being the corresponding line of the epigraph. The key to the form is that it incorporates the words of another. The glosser, or glosador, advertises a connection to a prior text.
Gold and Gasoline
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold […] Hoarded, bartered, bought and sold, […] Price of many a crime untold …
Gold has commanded lust of kings and beggars both who wish for things or for gold’s sake alone a useless dragon’s hoard coins, bullion bars and rings miners gave their lives for it soldiers died protecting it across the globe merchants trade the metal that will never fade Price of many a crime untold …
Shallow mines are damp and cold deep in the Earth’s heat lies the gold where miners in the new South Africa still sweat to feed the dragon’s hoard a ring with which to have and hold a brooch to sparkle and attract the eye a sovereign, symbol of King and country pays for the soldiers’ dice with death to die or win and maybe loot a little wealth Price of many a crime untold …
And gasoline’s story is much the same black gold fought over in the Great Game of nations tampering with other nations to keep their cars moving, lights burning the destruction of Libya a tale of infamy the treasures of Iraq to the winds scattered because compared to oil, culture didn’t matter and wars are won and lost by oil’s logistics and the market’s fluctuating statistics Price of many a crime untold …
Whilst gold has spawned so many crimes it doesn’t threaten climate-changing times it will not end our human hubris and rarely even give us bliss as when we ring the wedding chimes both have brought us good and bad and if we perish, though very sad we only have ourselves to blame for seeking gold and gas – the same Price of many a crime untold …
Over at dVerse Poets PubLaura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft is our host and has asked us to write Ghazal using at least one of the lines by Pablo Neruda from his book of poetry – “The Book of Questions” in which he poses 320 questions and answers in couplet form, and she has asked us to use at least one of the six question lines she has selected. I found all six questions stimulating and linked them in this poem.
Why was I not born mysterious? – Sorrowful Then nations would smite down my enemy furious – angry
Why did I grow up without companions – lonely compadres and friends in this world so curious? – and unloved
And do unshed tears wait in little lakes – weeping lurking to ambush we unwary and drown us? – vulnerable
And Why does Spring once again offer its green clothes – landless springing up in the rubble of our homes mocking us? – homeless
How long do others speak if we have already spoken – quashed one hundred years, pleading, crying and dying in the dust? – and denied
Even hope itself may eventually die – we should be hopeless Isn’t it better never than too late for us? – flattened too.
How long do others speak if we have already spoken? – We still As long as it takes for you to hear us – cry out
And Why does Spring once again offer its green clothes? – bear children Because life must triumph, improbable, delirious – all we can
And do unshed tears wait in little lakes? – don’t hold back Yes but cry them, use them, water the dust – start again
Why did I grow up without companions? – seek new friends Because the world heard only another victim’s fuss – in a world of oppressed
Why was I not born mysterious? – we find other victims in common See the wonderful in the ordinary which is us – our voices raised together
There are no especially deserving winners – give us all our due no one deserves our land over us – “Equality now!”
Equal status and our own statehood – “Never Again!” with nobody ruling over us – “Give us Our Due!”
Borrowing these six Neruda questions – “Now!” the poet, Andrew, seeks to give voice to us…
A detective contemplates a corpse stabbed so many times that he concludes – this was personal so I am called an evil terrorist as if the zombies in a first person shoot-’em up were suddenly weighted to win I don’t want to witness my crime by seeing the enemy as people so I remember my X-box shooting down Nazis whose Holocaust ironically helped justify our Palestinian “displacement” between the bullets and the bombs
I press the button which drops the bomb but I don’t see the blast blossom the seven stories pancake down all in my rearview mirror I don’t even see the confirmation back at base – nothing to learn about smart bombs and our TV does not show the dead children or traumatised living amongst the rubble an angel of death my hands are clean only the world seeing the blood dripping from them between the bullets and the bombs
I am an old woman whose heart has just given out on the refugee road to elsewhere surrounded, shelled we took the only road they left open my children will go to Kuwait via camps in Lebanon where they will be displaced again by Saddam Hussain and die in England they will call this The Disaster but my great-grandchildren will have a good life far from the bullets and the bombs
I am an old woman from Poland I escaped the Holocaust of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and the less-than-perfect of mind or body only to find myself taken to another prison camp where the Jews are outside the wire my husband and I helped the inmates driving them to hospital and I learned their language so they have scheduled me for early release and I will not die between the bullets and the bombs
I am a baby who died as the grossest provocation the loudest shout-out to a world that has long since stopped listening and covered its eyes whilst I am a baby crushed into my mother’s breast my grave a concrete sandwich but we two babies separated by bullets and bombs whose ancestors lived here side by side in peace for millennia if tested genetically cannot be told apart brothers and sisters under the skin…
This post by Di on Pandamoniumcat’s Blog, is in response to the No vote in the recent Australian Referendum on the issue of Constitutional recognition of Australia’s indigenous people. Failure to recognise the existence of people who already lived in the land you took can never end well and hopefully, this is not the end of the road for this cause… It was posted in response to For Dverse Poets Meeting the Bar: A Collective Point of View
If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of foods which can be eaten on their own but can also become ingredients in other dishes…
Globalisation has been rolled back since the banking crisis of 2008, first by the banking regulation that followed, then by Trumpian and Brexit nationalism and mercantilism, then by Covid and now by the shock of war. – From The Spectator
What does this mean? In short, we have all got used to supply chains that bring things from all over the world in a complicated, interlinked, interdependent, just-in-time web of trade. For most consumers, this is most apparent in food. When I was little, we enjoyed English seasonal apples because the rest of the time, the options were small, but now we eat apples from New Zealand (the antipodes of the UK) and many other countries – evening out the shortages of seasonality. In other areas, a factory in Ukraine, that produces a major share of the world’s Neon requirements, has closed down due to the WAR. You may wonder why I keep using shouty capitals for WAR, well it’s because Putin keeps trying to fool (mostly his own people) by denying the reality of what he is doing and calling it a “Special Military Operation”. The unintended consequence of his ill-thought-out WAR, is an acceleration of the death of globalisation. The Neon factory, exists not for the creation of colourful neon signs (whose days is done, in the age of LEDs) but instead, is used in the production of microchips. There is already a shortage of microchips (used in almost every industrial product these days) due to the disruption of production and supply chains by Covid 19. The fragility of these supply chains was further evidenced by one ship getting stuck and blocking the Suez Canal for a couple of weeks and forcing other ships to take the long way around Africa.
We may hope that countries around the world do not return to mercantilism (the opposite of Globalism) but in the light of the WAR in Ukraine, countries will have to consider more self-reliant trading, less dependence on Russian oil and gas for example, more reliable independent defence strategies and more home-grown food strategies. Today’s Food as an Ingredient is the Date, a fruit that is grown from Spain and North Africa, across to the Far East. Are we to face a shortage of Dates in the future? I hope not, and I can’t see a reason why this particular commodity should be affected by a general retrenchment of globalism – let’s hope not anyway, because dates have an important role as an ingredient in Vegetarian and Vegan cooking – which is one response to the coming crisis in food supply chains.
Dates – as an Ingredient…
Dates – little joyous bundles of nutrition…
It is said of Dates, that if you had to survive on one single foodstuff, you could not do better than Dates. They are 75% carbohydrate and have 2% protein and even 1%fat. They are also tasty – especially when freshly dried, having an unctuous, melt in the mouth softness. My first encounter with dates was good, but not as good as the joy of the whole, fresh fruit. My mother used to buy blocks of chopped compressed dates, which she experimentally, (probably a suggestion from Woman’s Weekly) combined with grated apple as sandwich filling! Best eaten quickly before the apple browned… a better experience were the long boxes of dates with rounded ends that we always had at Christmas, slightly dried but glossily sticky. Today, I live near Bradford, which, having a large Moslem population, can be relied upon to supply dates all year round, but with a huge selection of different varieties at either Ramadan or when the date harvest takes place.
From a vegetarian/environmental point of view – getting your sugars from a natural source, as opposed to eating processed sugars, is a great option – true, both have to be transported from afar, but then there is the environmental cost of processing sugar… So considering dates as an ingredient – they add both sweetness and flavour. For example, I love the combination of rhubarb and dates and might not add any sugar at all providing I add enough dates. In my post on apples, the Fresh Apple Oat Cake was topped with a layer of softened dates and think of classic recipe combinations such as Date and Walnut Cake! Indeed you can happily add chopped dates to any recipe calling for mixed fruit – you can add them to salads and savoury dishes where they add a richer sweetness balance than a pinch of sugar. There are, these days, many refined products made from dates – Date Molasses, Date Sugar, Date Spread and read through the ingredients of many chutneys and sauces and you will find dates. HP Brown Sauce (the original brown sauce) was developed in England to sate the taste of British soldiers, returned from India, who had developed a taste for something rich and spicy and the ingredients include date fo sweetness, and tamarind – almost the opposite of dates, for sourness – another unexpected product of British Imperialism…
Dehydrators
Lastly, I want to turn to an aspect of the post-globalism world that might be coming down the line – preserving food. I will cover several forms of preserving that might help us extend the life of our local food products if globally sourced foods are diminished. We have already touched on jam – a form of preserving, and today I want to touch on Dehydrators. Dried fruit, touted as the responsible parent’s alternative to sweets, is expensive – home dehydrated fruit is cheap! I bought a typical dehydrator with six shelves and can load it simultaneously with a pineapple, apples, kiwi fruit and bananas – roughly a carrier-bag full, and reduce it overnight to a few takeaway tubs full of delicious dried fruit! this is the first and most obvious use of a dehydrator, but you can make your own jerky at the meat eater’s end of the scale, and vegan no-bake bread, at the other end of the spectrum – and guess what? The vegan bread can contain Dates – who would have thought it! My Dehydrator cost me £25.00 and has easily paid for itself providing healthy dried fruit snacks to adult grandchildren as well as ourselves.
If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten on their own as well as becoming ingredients in other dishes…
As the WAR in Ukraine rages on, Ukraine’s minister of agrarian and food policy, announced that – Ukraine’s government has banned the export of wheat, oats and other staples that are crucial for global food supplies as authorities try to ensure they can feed people during Russia’s intensifying war. New rules on agricultural exports introduced this week also prohibit the export of millet, buckwheat, sugar, live cattle, and meat and other byproducts from cattle (see article). As things are, Ukrainian farmers will be lucky to get out to fertilise the soon to sprout winter wheat – ironically, whilst Ukraine is often referred to as the bread-basket of the world, and the yellow colour on the flag of Ukraine symbolises the wheat, the fertiliser used to grow Ukrainian wheat, comes from Russia, illustrating the perfect storm of food supply chains that Putin has, with lack of, or incorrect, foresight, loosed upon the world. Every World War is different, and make no mistake, we are in a world war, because the countries and peoples affected by the WAR, lie far beyond the extent of the fighting. Economies and supply chains require no declarations of war to involve and decimate. European countries will feel the loss of Ukrainian wheat, but the other grains on that list – buckwheat and millet are vital imports to many developing countries such as in Africa. Russia looks likely to take all of Ukraine’s coast and ports so that even if they stop where they are at that point, and back down, how will exports to those developing countries take place?
We may have no choice but to eat less meat since as we saw in the last post, it takes so much grain to raise beef cattle, and we should face this shift with no complaint since there are many people in the world who will have less choice than we do. We will not be being forced to live solely on the staple dish of bread (or as Marie Antoinette would have it – cake) but undoubtedly some things will change our eating habits, whether we like it or not. The rich will, of course, continue to afford the full menu of choices.
Bread is a Staple Food! Of the ten world staple foods, wheat, the source of most breads, is at number three, after maise and rice, which might come as a surprise to Europeans, whose massive use of bread and whose knowledge of foods foreign is often dismal. Maise, or Corn, is, of course, the source of Cornbread, whilst Rice is the main ingredient in most Gluten-Free flour and the bread made from it. After these three staples, comes Potato which is also used in some bread recipes together with some wheat flour. The rest of the ten staples do not significantly feature in the world of bread – Cassava, Soybeans, Sweet Potatoes, Yams, Sorghum and Plantain. If you know of any breads made from these, please correct me by sharing in the comments!
Before looking at bread as an ingredient, let us take a quick trip around the manna itself. The first thing that comes to mind, is a loaf of bread, and to make this, you need hard wheat, as opposed to the soft wheat used for cake and some softer, cake-like breads such as brioche, of which more later. If you take morning toast and sandwiches, you have the main ingredient of two of the daily meals and think of beans/spaghetti/cheese/eggs on toast and that represents supper for some people, or think pizza, or hummus and pitta bread. Most bread is Leavened (made to rise), with yeast, but Soda Bread (risen with baking soda activated by buttermilk) also has it’s place. Sourdough is very trendy but has a long history and depends on natural yeasts which gradually accumulate and become something unique in each baker’s precious starter… But there are many unleavened breads – a plethora of flatbreads – from all over the world – Middle Eastern pitta bread, to South Asian Chapatis or even Aboriginal Australian Dampers.
Some like hearty wholemeal, seedy granary or dabble with ancient grains but many people, at peril to their health, like the refinement of white bread! During World war Two, The refinement of bread was regarded as wasteful and wholemeal was the order of the day, so once the war was over, white bread boomed – a whole generation put themselves at risk of diverticulitis – the cure? Bran cereal made from the bran taken out of the flour to render it white!
But what of bread as an ingredient?
Bread goes stale with varying degrees of speed – not that it can’t be eaten, but it is hard and dry, however, since it is still nutritionally sound, there are many ways to use up stale bread by turning it into an ingredient – breadcrumbs, bread pudding, bread-and-butter pudding, Apple Charlotte – the latter made with bread crumbs. Rusk goes into sausages and that could be meat or veggie and of course, bread itself is Vegan – seems those one-celled creatures, the yeasts, don’t count… I once, briefly, had a restaurant, and I worked hard at developing a range of sophisticated puddings, however, I made a rod for my own back by including bread-and-butter pudding, because over 50% of customers chose that – of course, it may be that they liked my particular recipe, or maybe they couldn’t be bothered to make it at home, though why ever not, I can’t imagine – preparation time, even for a full family size dish, is 10 minutes at most. My restaurant version, though, is even quicker and I made them to order.
Frewin’s Bread and Butter Pudding Preheat the oven to 170C, 325F or Gas mark 3 Take a ramekin or very small bowl, and grease it with butter Cut a few slices of Brioch Bread and butter them with softened butter Cut a slice into pices to fit the base of the ramekin Sprinkle a teaspoon of the sugar of your choice Sprinkle half a dozen plump raisins or mixed, dried fruit (must be large, fresh and soft, no small gritty ones) Repeat till the ramekin is full to the brim (this won’t take much, leave small gaps for the mixture to find its way in) The mixture for a large pudding is 5 eggs beaten into 1 pint of milk but you will have to scale down for just a couple of ramekins. To make it even richer, substitute a little single cream for part of the milk. Sprinkle a little sugar over the top of the pudding and make sure no dried fruit is standing proud as it will go bitter if burnt. You need a pre-heated oven to finish the pudding – but start off in the microwave if you are in a hurry, or bake completely in the oven if you are not. You could assemble your puddings and leave to soak while you have your main course and finish off between courses. One minute or so, in the microwave and a couple of minutes in the oven. Watch as it microwaves and when the surface begins to rise, transfer to the oven. Keep checking and when the pudding has risen (as it will, splendidly) and is browning a little – your pudding is ready!
Kvass is a barely alcoholic drink made from stale rye bread from the Eastern European Countries through the Russias. When the USSR broke up, instead of embracing the western passion for Cocoa-Cola, the people of the east, in a patriotic passion, started to drink a lot of Kvass. what did Cocoa-Cola do? They bought Kvass factories on the basis that if you can’t beat them – join them! I can buy kvass from various Polish shops near me, but I was really intrigued by the fact that this drink was made from bread and that you could make it yourself, so I decided to have a go! There are many recipes on the internet and I am still trying them out, some contain beetroot, or fruit, but here is a good one to start with. So Rye bread is an example of a bread not made with wheat and many people are turning to it to avoid some of the side effects of wheat, gluten, bloating etc. – but the main reason to start including it in your diet is just that it is a rich flavour and when toasted, is crisp on the outside and soft in the middle – yummy! And now you know what to do with the leftovers!
So here were some ideas for using bread as an ingredient – care to share your favourites?
Carrie-Anne over at Welcome to My Magick Theatre, is writing about Ukrainian history and culture for this year’s A2Z Challenge and has a list of charities you may wish to donate to for the Ukrainian cause.
Zalka Csenge Virág posted on International Women’s Day, 10 tales about women and war (including a Ukrainian tale) over at The Multicoloured Diary.
Last Saturday was Nakba Day. It is no accident that there are more people in the world who do not know what that means, than there are people who do know what Holocaust Memorial Day is – the Zionist Project that is Israel has worked assiduously to make sure of that. Nakba Day is the day marking “Memory of the Catastrophe” for the Palestinian people – the day in 1948 when their society and homeland was destroyed and the majority of their population displaced. Those that remained have faced slow attrition – no let us call it what it is – Genocide and never less nakedly than right now when the stolen state of Israel is nakedly stealing more Palestinian homes in Jerusalem, invading their most holy place of worship with troops and tear gas during the holy month of Ramadan and then bombing the civilian population of Gaza in “self-defence” for their reaction to these provocative events. Meanwhile, state players around the world stand by and watch without condemning – HOW DID WE GET HERE?
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
[…]
And you may ask yourself, “Well… how did I get here?”
Talking Heads – Once in a Lifetime
During the recent A2Z Challenge, I encountered a fellow writer Iain Kelly who wrote about his State Trilogy. Iain lives near Glasgow which approximates to the northern capital of his future, dystopian State and in which the population live amongst other things, without alcohol. Glasgow is renowned for its drinkers of the beer known as “Heavy” if not for heavy drinking, and having bought Iain’s book, the question that constantly reverberates for me as I read it, and which he gradually answers, is how did things get there from here? How do you get people to accept what is fundamentally unpalatable? There is an irony in the promotion of Holocaust Memorial Day by Israel as part of its justification for a Jewish homeland in Israel – several ironies. The state of Israel was avowedly secular yet it uses a religious/tribal identity to define its raison d’etre and within that irony is nestled another. Many Orthodox Jews believe that God expelled the Jews from Palestine 1500 years ago and they have no business being there until God gives them permission to return. The monstrous act which was the Holocaust (whose veracity must rightly be defended against Holocaust deniers), is another example of something so unpalatable that one must wonder, how were the German people led to that unspeakable place? Other Orthodox Jews, within Israel – the Religious Right, are calling for an ever closer equivalence to the holocaust to be perpetrated on the so-called Palestinian people and they are driving the Zionist project in a way it never intended to be driven even if the desired end result might be the same. Why so-called?
Why the “so-called” Palestinian peoples – an exercise in Re-branding?
The state of Israel calls the Arab residents of the Occupied territories– Palestinians rather than Arab Israelis because this makes them seem like they don’t belong in the de facto state of Israel. They do! It is the mass of Jewish immigrants who have flooded into Israel that have a questionable claim to the land. The Arabs who live mixed in amongst Jewish people in the rest of Israel are referred to by Israel as Arab Israelis (or “Good” Arabs) but they prefer to refer to themselves as Palestinian Israelis in solidarity with their oppressed brothers and sisters but more of that later. The establishment of Israel has never been ratified in International Law and was imposed on the land of Palestine by force. Before this, Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews, both rich and poor, lived in harmony. Genetic testing could not tell the difference between the two groups because there is no difference – they are both classified as Semitic people and their different languages are nevertheless both classified as Semitic languages. These facts might come as a shock to most young Israeli citizens because the state lies not only to the rest of the world, but also to its own citizens, that, is Propaganda. Israeli children are taught to regard “Palestinians” as Arabs who do not belong, as terrorists who are trying to steal the country from those to whom it truly belongs – once again, this is the opposite of the truth. Palestinians are portrayed as terrorists who oppose the noble project of Israel – but those of us on the outside must never forget that one state’s terrorists are another people’s freedom fighters. This link to a film by a Palestinian filmmaker illustrates the degree of prejudice in a 15-year-old Israeli girl…
Just as the Nazis in Germany promoted the myth of the noble Aryan, so the Zionist project has cultivated the image of the sun-bronzed, hard-working, enterprising Kibbutznik striving to wrest modern farms from the dry land alongside their indolent Palestinian neighbours who are content to subsist on their backward farms consisting of olive groves and a few goats. The Jaffa orange, though developed originally by Palestinian Arabs, was developed by Zionists into a major export brand and similarly with the development of Avocado farming. Young people from around the world, and not just Jewish young people, volunteered on Israeli Kibbutz and became a party to this propaganda view. It is worth noting that wells dug by kibbutz often sucked dry the wells of Arab neighbours for their more intensive agriculture so stealing the water as well as the land… Now, as resistance to Israel increases as evidenced by the support for the BDS movement (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions), Israeli origins of agricultural products may be concealed rather than trumpeted. I live just outside Bradford, UK which has a large Moslem Pakistani population who have vociferously embraced the Palestinian cause in recent years. Imagine my disgust then, when shopping in an Aldi supermarket, to discover that mangos which had no indication of their country of origin, were in fact from Israel. The lack of labelling made me suspicious so I examined the box – bearing in mind that fruit boxes usually celebrate their country and company of origin with colourful artwork – nothing! So I lifted the box up and on the underside, printed in very small letters, was the name of a company which when Googled, turned out to be Israeli. I complained to the store both about the lack of labelling and the origin of the mangos from occupied lands and they were swiftly withdrawn…
Truth is the first casualty of war.
The attribution of this well-known quotation is the subject of some controversy but I prefer the slightly more elaborate 1758 version by Samuel Johnson in “The Idler” – “Among the calamities of War may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.” There are two sides then to successful propaganda – interests that motivate the lies and credulous people to be deceived by the lies.
Truth is such a fundamental issue, if we do not have the correct facts about any given situation, then how can we make the correct decisions, the object of Israel’s lies about its Zionist project, is to obfuscate the facts so that, for example, if Israel cites the right to self-determination and a homeland, we think that it sounds reasonable without thinking that that is no good if it means that the Palestinians must lose their self-determination and their homeland. If Israel says rockets are being fired on innocent Israeli citizens by Hamas terrorists, we will not compare the proportionality of the response or the degree of provocation…
One central lie of the Zionist project has been to remake the very definition of Anti-Semitism. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of antisemitism extends the meaning to include any criticism of Israel. This definition has then been forced onto most countries in the world by means of bullying, threats and blackmail. Lest you think this an insignificant thing, well in Britain, this was used to assist in getting Jeremy Corbyn removed as the Labour Party’s Opposition Leader by constantly alleging that Labour Party members were making anti-semitic comments (mostly criticism of Israel) and that, under Corbyn, these were not being dealt with. This was an unwarranted interference in the democratic processes of the UK but so great was Israel’s fear of Corbyn – a supporter of Palestinian rights – being elected to the position of Prime Minister that Israel’s lobbying, propaganda and dirty tricks machine went into overdrive. Needless to say, the Centrist yes man Keir Starmer, who replaced Corbyn as leader, knows his place in relation to Israel and will not rock the boat…
In the US Joe Biden is equally hamstrung to prevent him from offering the kind of criticism one might reasonably expect from a man of his political persuasion because major Jewish donors are amongst the Democratic party’s main financial supports. Very few Americans have any idea how much money the US gives to Israel each year and would be shocked if they did although their government, no matter which party was in power, would justify it thus; Much of the “aid” to Israel is spent on American goods (for which read American arms). Israel deserves protection from its unfriendly neighbours in the Middle East and is America’s major ally in the Middle East. True that, though America’s other ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia reveals the true reason for US machinations in the region – oil! Saudi Arabia and America did a deal after World War 2 whereby America guaranteed not to interfere with Saudi Arabia’s religion in return for the guaranteed supply of Saudi Arabia’s oil. Saudi Arabia is an anomaly in the Islamic world since it is led by an oil-enriched royal family who has promoted a fundamentalist sect of its desert tribes to worldwide prominence whilst leading an opulent and perhaps decadent lifestyle behind closed doors. Saudi Arabia once supported Palestinian interests but as its own position in the region is increasingly threatened by Iran and more recently Turkey, and with America as a mutual ally, it should not be surprising that Israel and Saudi Arabia, whilst having no official Diplomatic relations, find their interests increasingly aligned…
Origins of an Illegitimate state…
UNSCOP (3 September 1947; see green line) and UN Ad Hoc Committee (25 November 1947) partition plans. The UN Ad Hoc Committee proposal was voted on in the resolution.
Much is made by Israel, of The Balfour Declaration. It is the first, and one of the few unequivocal declarations of support for the idea of a Jewish homeland and was issued during World War 1, just after Britain had declared war on the Ottomans who were in league with Germany. Palestine was occupied by the Ottomans and German/Ottoman forces clashed with the (British) Egyptian Expeditionary Force in the Southern Palestine Offensive – a little known part of the First World War since the story of the Western Front has eclipsed the war in Palestine. At the end of the war, with the Ottomans defeated, Britain was given a mandate to rule Palestine by the League of Nations and this, together with the Balfour Declaration, significantly led the way towards the creation of Israel. However, following the Second World War, with Britain anxious to please both Jewish and Arab interests, the newly formed United Nations, was unable to get its Partition Plan for Israel – Resolution 181 – across the line as although it was accepted by the Jewish population of Palestine it was rejected by the Arab population as well as neighbouring Arab countries. (See proposed Partition Map to right.) Britain had handed control of Palestine to the UN who eventually withdrew precipitating a civil war in Palestine until the Zionists unilaterally declared the formation of the state of Israel. Surrounding Arab countries joined in the fighting – the 1948 Arab- Israeli War – but America immediately recognised Israel as a state and began lending support. It has been said that the US has regarded Britain as a static aircraft carrier at a convenient location for stopping to refuel on its way to act as putative world policeman and Israel fulfils the same role as Britain in the Middle East. When Israel purchases armaments from America, it does not have to wait for delivery – there are already massive arms stocks cached in Israel, sufficient for any imaginable war America – or Israel – might want to wage in the Middle East. Israel, firmly supported by America where the Jewish lobby had been carefully nurtured by the Zionist project, eventually achieved a secure position by means of a series of short sharp wars and by making a pragmatic peace with the Egyptians. The Palestinian Arabs who fled their homes to avoid being caught in the crossfire, were not allowed back and their land was “legitimately” seized by the new state whilst the diaspora of Palestinian Arabs were left to foment in reugee camps in neighbouring countries. Israel weathered the storms of world opinion and terrorist threat and I return to my original question – how did they do it?
Bully to Intimidate and Enforce…
If the last section implied that Britain was wholeheartedly behind the Zionist project and that Zionists gave her an easy ride of governing under the British Mandate – think again! In the run-up to the creation of Israel, many acts of terrorism were perpetrated by Zionist groups against the British administration and soldiers, against Arab Palestinians and even against other Zionist groups with different views on how to proceed towards the goal of creating Israel. One of the worst atrocities for Britain – was the bombing of The King David Hotel in which 92 lives were lost. These tactics were designed to put pressure on Britain to withdraw from Israel and so if one wants to ask from whom the later PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation) and their ilk learnt that terrorism might get you what you want or at the very least, get your enemy’s attention, well then, they learned it from the Zionists…
There are three main groups of Palestinians in Israel – those imprisoned in Gaza , those who farm in the West Bank and those who live intermixed with Jewish neighbours in the towns and cities. The Gaza strip is often described as the world’s largest prison since residents are completely controlled by Israeli security as to how or even whether they may leave Gaza’s confines. Goods in and out are also controlled by Israel and it has been alledged that at times, Israel has calculated exactly how much food is required by the population of Gaza and then allowed just a little bit less in. The farmers of the West Bank are the ongoing victims of land theft by illegal settlers – a thorny optic for Israel since the rest of the world has become increasingly aware of the shrinking land belonging to Palestinians and the corresponding growth of Jewish settlements. This runs contrary to the long espoused idea (by outsiders like America and the EU), of a Two-State Solution to offer both Israelis and Palestinians permanent lands but the West Bank is so riddled with illegal Jewish Settlements that this is beginning to seem impossible. Israeli “activists wield slogans like “from the river to the sea,” or “no settlement is illegal.” Israel was considerably emboldened under Trump, whose son-in-law Jared Kushner pushed Israels cause – the US controversially moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – an act of provocation to the Palestinians given that Jerusalem is sacred to Jews, Moslems and Christians and is supposed to be a neutral zone.
I have already referred to the “Good Arabs” who live in the town and the evidence that this latest conflict is different because this time, the Good Arabs are siding with their much more put upon brothers and sisters in Gaza and the West Bank and threatening or indeed committing civil insurrection.
Bullying tactics, whether they are directed at the state level or at individuals who displease the state, are designed to intimidate and enforce what the state wants and Israel is equipped with one of the world’s most assiduous secret services -Mossad who can dig the dirt and put the squeeze on individuals, groups, politicians and whole state apparatus. Israel may be too small to develop its own aircraft industry but they make up for it in other ways… Israeli firms have developed the “best” in spyware such as “Pegasus” which they now sell to other rogue governments around the world to enable them to spy on their dissident citizens via everything they can do with their phones and to record sound and video without the phone’s owner being aware of it. Another export of Israel to those who support it and to America in particular, is the hosting of training sessions for “Law” Enforcement officers which include the technique of neck kneeling employed in the murder of George Floyd which triggered the worldwide Black Lives Matter movement. Links back to the Israeli run training courses were highlighted and questioned – unwelcome attention from Israel’s point of view and which contributes to the slow sea change in opinion of Israel and other governments (lack of) response to Israel’s actions against the Palestinians… It is fair to say that Israel leads the world in techniques of bullying from straightforward violence against the person right up to the most sophisticated forms of social enforcement…
Control the Narrative…
The tricks used to establish and maintain control of Israeli politics both internally and externally are nothing new and they exemplify perfectly that maxim “History is written by the Winners!” Up to now, the Zionist project has been winning – but will it last?
One of the tricks of controlling the narrative is not to allow a hint that there even exists opposition on a political level. However, even Jewish groups who are dismayed at the atrocities being carried out in their name are starting to coalesce in opposition to Israel. The Jewish Voice for Peace says about Zionism that “Through study and action, through deep relationship with Palestinians fighting for their own liberation, and through our own understanding of Jewish safety and self-determination, we have come to see that Zionism was a false and failed answer to the desperately real question many of our ancestors faced of how to protect Jewish lives from murderous antisemitism in Europe.”
Indigenous people around the world are finding their voices against each and every one of their own Settler Colonialist states – not least the Native Americans and the Australian Aboriginal peoples and they are turning the property laws by which these countries are governed back on those who stole their land and with that, comes solidarity with other oppressed groups.
Israel has strenuously attempted to counter the use of words such as Genocide and Apartheid from gaining currency in relation to its treatment of the Palestinians but they are fighting a losing battle – this article in Mondoweiss details the recent blows to Israel’s propaganda and posits that Israel is beginning to face an endgame… Let’s hope…
The history of Israel is a very complex topic and I know this piece only scratches the surface in an attempt to answer the question “How did we get here?2, but I hope it gives food for thought and that the links will take anyone wanting to know more further along a search for truth and understanding. I will leave you with one final quote…
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Edmund Burke (in a letter addressed to Thomas Mercer).
If you have been following this blog’s A2Z Challenge then you will know that I have been trying to finish a novel, “Train Wreck”, and publishing a chapter below each post – at least until day 15 when I ran out of completed chapters – there is another one in progress – but if you have been following the novel and would like to receive the balance of the chapters – let me know in a comment. Meanwhile, Utopia is a central theme in the book…
I looked at how the desire for someone to be living a Utopian existence, led us to project the idea onto Scandinavian countries under my entry for S, and how we have eventually discovered that they have feet of clay like the rest of us. But what exactly is a Utopia and must we always be doomed to disappointment?
The word Utopia was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book of that name describing a fictional island society in the south Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South America. The term has come to be used as a synonym for “deluded”, “impossible” or “far-fetched” and it has a counter term Dystopia. The very SciFi picture at the top, comes from a blog piece that argues for the additional idea of a False Utopia – one which initially appears Utopian but hides a dark secret. An example of this would be HG Wells’ “The Time Machine” where the happy, beautiful people living their utopian life above ground, are in fact fodder for the Morlocks who live underground.
The Wikipedia article on Utopias suggests that whilst mainly a literary endeavour, thought experiments if you will, Utopias can be the subject of real-world experiments too but quotes Lyman Tower Sargent who argues that “the nature of a utopia is inherently contradictory because societies are not homogeneous and have desires which conflict and therefore cannot simultaneously be satisfied”. In other words, to offer equality to all people – a fundamental aim of the Utopian dream – you cannot offer the same thing to all people because they are different. Lyman Tower Sargent further states “There are socialist, capitalist, monarchical, democratic, anarchist, ecological, feminist, patriarchal, egalitarian, hierarchical, racist, left-wing, right-wing, reformist, free love, nuclear family, extended family, gay, lesbian and many more utopias…”
We tell stories, I believe, as a fundamental aspect of our human nature – a consequence of our big brains. For if we can deduce “Those are lion tracks, they were made three days ago and there was a cub too, so a lone female, with a limp – so wounded…) then we can also put together a story which is completely made up, because both the deduction and the fiction require the use of our big-brain imagination. So in telling Utopian stories, we are trying to imagine a better way to live, one which will reconcile the flaws in human nature and the contradictions those flaws create in the real world.
Are we wrong to keep trying to visualise Utopias? Of course not, our human nature might remain essentially the same but our superficial circumstances change all the time and we must constantly re-envision utopian possibilities…
“Train Wreck” is just another Utopian experiment imagined and described and then traversed to uncover its inevitable flaws and contradictions – but I hope, that in the tradition of HG Wells, my SciFi tale is a good enough story to be worth the reading…
“And now I was to see the most weird and horrible scene
of all that I had beheld in that future age.”
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