David Prashker's World Hourglass

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Spratly Islands

Be warned, this may be the fulcrum, the catalyst, the locus of the world's next major conflagration, even perhaps the start of World War Three, though the ten thousand reefs and islands which comprise the Spratly Islands have practically no arable land, absolutely no indigenous inhabitants, and virtually no drinkable water, so that logically there should be no cause whatsoever for conflict in, or about, this unimportant nowhere in the South China Sea.

Nonetheless, even now, as you read this over your complacent breakfast and think that all threats to world peace come from radical Islam and the International Zionist Conspiracy, military forces from China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam have already occupied between them some forty-five of the hundred small islands, and there is also Brunei, that major player on the world stage, which has laid claim to an entire continental shelf that overlaps one of the southern reefs, and insists, in what may be interpreted as a form of lebensraum if not yet Anschluss, that the entire region falls within its exclusive economic zone.

No Russian involvement as yet, no European attempts to enlarge its empire beyond the Balkans, no sign of America insisting that MacDonalds and Starbucks be allowed in, but the heat is palpable, the fishing grounds are still plentiful, and what are believed to be substantial gas and oil deposits still remain untapped.

Watch this space for updates on the crisis.

Marks For: 750 (the total number of reefs, islets, atolls, cays and islands, give or take a few that are mostly underwater)

Marks Against: 6 (the number of countries fighting over them)

You can find David Prashker at:
http://theargamanpress.com/
http://davidprashker.com/
http://davidprashker.net/
https://www.facebook.com/TheArgamanPress
http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkerssongsandpoems.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkersbookofdays.blogspot.com/
http://davidprashkersartgallery.blogspot.com/

The Argaman Press

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Spain

When I was sixteen, in 1971, friends of my parents invited me on a golfing holiday at Los Monteros, the exclusive country club and hotel in Marbella; the previous year my parents had taken their son with us on a tour of the championship golf clubs of England and Scotland, so this was their reciprocation. My other friends were shocked. Spain? You had to be joking? No one goes to Spain - that’s like taking a holiday in Germany in 1937. Generalissimo Franco… but I was a romantic and a would-be writer, and going to the land of Laurie Lee and Ernest Hemingway and Federico Garcia Lorca was to join, albeit rather late, the fight against fascism which Franco alone of all of Europe's 20th century despots had managed to sustain for fully forty years (apparently there was also still Salazar in Portugal, but I was a very naive and ignorant sixteen year old), and going as a Jew to that most anti-Semitic of all lands where Jews had once been fully accepted, fully integrated, though not by Christians... this was not just a golfing holiday, this was a pilgrimage and a statement of defiance.

You who were born in the decades after 1980 probably think I made this up. "Spain? On the boycott list? Like South Africa and Israel and Cuba? But every Brit I know has a holiday home in Marbella, or rents one somewhere on the Costa Lotta. If the Germans or the Scandinavians haven't rented them first, or simply put their beach towels down to claim them. Spain unvisitable? You have to be joking."

Though we think of Spain today as one of the most peacefully European, indeed one of the most civilised of countries, few realise just how complex that statement is. The earliest records that we have are from Roman times, and what we think of as Iberians were really Roman and Greek colonists, and quite probably Phoenician and Carthaginian colonists before them, mixed up with Celts and Basques and other tribes who had wandered west and southwards over many centuries. The Romans ruled Spain from 218 BCE to 409 CE, after which it was Germanic Visigoths who migrated through France and took control of Spain, making their capital at Toledo. But in 711 Spain became a Moslem nation, conquered almost in its entirety by what we call the Moors, Moroccans essentially, though Cordoba and Granada attracted Moslems from across the Caliphate, and its history is one of great scientific, architectural, medical, astronomical, engineering, poetic, artistic and literary achievement, some of which still remains as tourist sites to this day, most of which, alas, was wilfully destroyed when that great barbarian the Catholic Church claimed Spain for Christendom, in stages from the 14th century, finally in 1492. Spain as a Moslem country for seven hundred years - and much of southern France, the whole of southern Italy, and several major islands in the Mediterranean too. You won't find any of that in your standard English history book however; the enduring Christian view of the Infidel and ignorant Moor is one of the minor reasons why we are now facing Islamic State in Syria and across the world.

Which brings us to the very brief period in which Spain was identifiable as itself, and became a great empire in the world, conquering most of South America and various parts of Europe, becoming so rich that it could arm itself for further world expansion - and then go bankrupt, and be defeated, in the process. By the end of the 17th century Spain was no more - France conquered and absorbed it, with a line of Hapsburg and then Bourbon kings, before Napoleon made it part of his empire, and then the Bourbons were re-established, as their line still is today.

A Germanic people then, still ruled by the French, with their more ancient peoples (in this case the Basques and Catelans) pushed into the geographical extremities and denied their national identity, let alone a political autonomy - a comparison with Great Britain would not be out of order!
Marks for: not simply Cervantes and Federica Garcia Lorca, but major figures such as Averroes (ibn Rushd) and Maimonides (Moshe ben Maimon), as well as ibn Fathun, al-Majriti, ibn Bajjah (Avempace), Judah ha-Levi; many others.

Marks against: 1236 (the year in which Cordoba fell to the Christians, and its library, the greatest in the world at the time with more than half a millon books, was burned to the ground.

You can find David Prashker at:
http://theargamanpress.com/
http://davidprashker.com/
http://davidprashker.net/
https://www.facebook.com/TheArgamanPress
http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkerssongsandpoems.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkersbookofdays.blogspot.com/
http://davidprashkersartgallery.blogspot.com/

The Argaman Press

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

South Sudan

The world’s most recent country, I wrote, when I began this blog back in 2012; but no longer so, if we count the Crimea as the still more recent. Before that, as far as Africa is concerned, Eritrea had been the newest and, like Eritrea, South Sudan came about as a consequence of ethnic hatred and civil war, for which creating new countries seemed the best solution at the time, but probably was not. The referendum in favour of establishing South Sudan took place in January 2011, and in less than two years it was already in trouble, with the President, Salva Kiir Mayardit, sacking his entire cabinet, including Vice-President Riek Machar, who he accused of instigating a coup, and the VP going off to lead a rebel army which has already killed tens of thousands and forced several hundred thousand more to become refugees. Both sides agreed to participate in peace talks in Ethiopia in January 2014, but it is now August 2015 and no sign of any peace. In the end it's all about the oil revenues, so this one is going to run and run – like refugees.

Marks For/Against: Too early to pass judgement.

The Argaman Press

South Korea

The national flag of South Korea appears to be a tennis ball constructed around the symbols Yin and Yang - the Yin is blue and the Yang red (why is it a tennis ball, when surely it should be a golf ball?) The four Trigrams, which are called "Kwae" in Korean, represent Heaven (three unbroken bars, top left), the Earth (three broken bars, bottom right), water (one unbroken line between two broken bars, top right), and fire (one broken bar between two unbroken bars, bottom left). The Kwae are positioned to balance each other: Heaven facing Earth, Fire opposite Water. The white background symbolises peace and purity and the flag as a whole is known as the "Taegukki", which means "great extremes". Great extremes is a very accurate descriptor for South Korea.

After half a century of Japanese colonisation, Korea obtained independence at the end of World War Two, only to divide between the Communist north supported by both the Soviet Union and China, and the western-supported south. Division equals war, and this one lasted from 1950 to 1953, with both sides attempting to reunify the land under its authority.

Though the army ran the country for the next forty years in a strictly authoritarian manner, it pretended a quasi-civilian role while doing so, and elections of a sort were conducted. Only in 1993 did a fully democratic President take office, inheriting considerable economic success – mostly the state-sponsored growth of family-owned companies such as Samsung and Hyundai - which has been continued.

In the 1960s GDP per capita was at much the same level as most of the poor nations of Africa and Asia; by 2004 it had joined the trillion-dollar club of world economies, and is currently rated twelfth. President Kim Dae-jung was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000, both for his contributions to South Korean democracy and for his "Sunshine" policy, which at least attempted to engage with North Korea, though it was largely unreciprocated. The current President is Park Geun-hye, herself the daughter of another former President, Park Chung-hee. Women clearly are not a suppressed or subjugated gender in South Korea (a statement which may have been proven false by the discovery that tens of thousands have been conscripted into prostitution by the government in order to keep the American troops rested and recuperated), though there does appear to be a spirit among the women that tends towards world domination, at least in the world of golf. At some point, one suspects, the 10,000 US soldiers stationed in South Korea are going to have to do something about this unacceptable situation in which Stacey Lewis is running number two to Inbee Park.

Marks for: 6 (the number of years since a non-South Korean won the US Women's Open Golf championship)

Marks against: 30 (the percentage of history books in South Korean schools which express overt hatred for the Japanese)

The Argaman Press

South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands

“Stunningly beautiful and rugged, this island wildlife sanctuary, once visited, is not easily forgotten. Its snow covered peaks, blue glacier ice and emerald green bays, are breath-taking sights. It is a real ‘oasis’ in the stormy southern oceans and is home to sea and land birds, seals and other amazing creatures.”

Thus do South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands present themselves on their national website, where the most recent headline (dated 16/09/14, September 16th for you Americans who do your dates the other way around; eleven full months back from the date on which I am writing this; which shows how much is going on there) notes the world-shatteringly significant news that “Following its five-yearly Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) assessment, the South Georgia Patagonian toothfish longline fishery has, for the third time, been certified as a sustainable and well-managed fishery. MSC is the world’s leading certification and ecolabel program for wild-caught environmentally sustainable seafood.”

So there you go. Some countries have military coups and some countries have student protests, but South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands have a toothfishery. You can see why the Argentinians invaded it in 1982. It wasn’t to kick the British out of the Antarctic at all; it was to get hold of those toothfish (a species of cod apparently, Dissostichus Eleginoides is the Patagonian variety, Dissostichus Mawson the one that prefers the cold of the deeper Antarctic). Her Majesty Queen Margaret I of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire dug a route canal on which to send the battleships, and reclaimed South Georgia, along with Las Malvinas – apologies, I mean the Falkland Islands – for Harry, England and St George (perhaps she mis-read South Georgia for Saint George, or maybe she thought South Georgia was in the Crimea and the Sandwich Islands a branch of Prêt-à-Manger in Kent). The islanders weren’t terribly happy at the time about the entire incident, from the Argie-bargy invasion to the arrival of the hydra-ships of the Thatcher-dragon; but now they look back on it as the one moment in the island’s entire history when anything newsworthy ever happened. Not counting the toothfish, obviously.

Marks for: 0 (the number of people who continued to support Queen Margaret in the run-up to the 1992 general election)

Marks against: 13,012,316 (the number of votes cast for the victorious Conservative Party in the UK in the aftermath of the Falklands War)

You can find David Prashker at:
http://theargamanpress.com/
http://davidprashker.com/
http://davidprashker.net/
https://www.facebook.com/TheArgamanPress
http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkerssongsandpoems.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkersbookofdays.blogspot.com/
http://davidprashkersartgallery.blogspot.com/

The Argaman Press

Monday, August 3, 2015

Southern Ocean

Isn't that pretty? A descendant of the albatross killed by Coleridge's ancient mariner

Also known as the Austral Ocean, but I remain unconvinced that there is any such thing as a Southern Ocean in God's original blueprint for intelligent design, let alone the happenstance movements of tectonic plates when the earth cooled, the land and the seas separated, and oceans and continents formed. The southern portion of the Pacific and the southern portion of the Atlantic I can handle, but what exactly constitutes a Southern Ocean?

The answer to that question does not in fact lie in geography, nor in plate tectonics, but where everything ultimately ends up, in the desire of nations to become powerful and own the whole wide world with all its resources. And as the Americans are still, if only just, the major power in that world, and as the CIA insists that there is a Southern Ocean, then there is definitely a Southern Ocean, and I am ready to fight and die to keep it American and free.

To save you the trouble of going to the CIA World FactBook and looking it up for yourself, here is the verbatim:

"A large body of recent oceanographic research has shown that the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), an ocean current that flows from west to east around Antarctica, plays a crucial role in global ocean circulation. The region where the cold waters of the ACC meet and mingle with the warmer waters of the north defines a distinct border - the Antarctic Convergence - which fluctuates with the seasons, but which encompasses a discrete body of water and a unique ecologic region. The Convergence concentrates nutrients, which promotes marine plant life, and which, in turn, allows for a greater abundance of animal life. In 2000, the International Hydrographic Organization delimited the waters within the Convergence as a fifth world ocean - the Southern Ocean - by combining the southern portions of the Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, and Pacific Ocean. The Southern Ocean extends from the coast of Antarctica north to 60 degrees south latitude, which coincides with the Antarctic Treaty Limit and which approximates the extent of the Antarctic Convergence. As such, the Southern Ocean is now the fourth largest of the world's five oceans (after the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, and Indian Ocean, but larger than the Arctic Ocean). It should be noted that inclusion of the Southern Ocean does not imply recognition of this feature as one of the world's primary oceans by the US Government."

And if you can make head or tail of that, you are, as Rudyard Kipling once famously put it, speaking of the then world-owning British Empire, "you're a better man than I am Gunga Din".

Marks for: I have no idea. Ask the CIA.

Marks against: None if it's American or British; lots if it isn't; and even more if those darned Ruskies or Chinese get their hands on it.

You can find David Prashker at:
http://theargamanpress.com/
http://davidprashker.com/
http://davidprashker.net/
https://www.facebook.com/TheArgamanPress
http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkerssongsandpoems.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkersbookofdays.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkersartgallery.blogspot.com/

The Argaman Press

South Africa

Ah, South Africa, beloved South Africa, resonating through history with so many glorious names: Cecil Rhodes, Paul Kruger, Daniel Malan, Hendrik Verwoerd, P.W. Botha... the British and Dutch founders of apartheid, that most glorious of all contributions to the betterment of nations, the advancement of humanity, and the harmonisation of ethnic groups within a society.

It was Botha who famously told the South African Parliament, in 1964 when he was Minister for Coloured Affairs: "I am one of those who believe that there is no permanent home for even a section of the Bantu in the white area of South Africa, and the destiny of South Africa depends on this essential point. If the principle of permanent residence for the black man in the area of the white is accepted then it is the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it in this country." How charming!

Later, when he was President, he clarified his position: "I am sick and tired of the hollow parrot-cry of Apartheid! I have said many times that the word Apartheid means good neighbourliness."

Ah yes, good neighbourliness. We whites in our areas, which happen to be the ones with the arable land and the minerals underneath, you blacks in your bantustans which are predominantly mineral-free deserts, but still neighbours, and, why not, if you will serve us as we require, and go home to your shanty towns at night, and not raise any complaints about it, yes, why not, good neighbours.

Then do I mean, when I say beloved South Africa, when I echo Alan Paton in his wonderful novel "Cry The Beloved Country" do I mean Steve Biko, Joe Slovo, Ruth First, Donald Woods, Helen Suzman, Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela, and a hundred others who fought, from jail or from the partisan bases of Mozambique or the opposition benches in Parliament or even from the pulpit, to bring that down that vile calumny which had the audacity to claim it was inspired by God and faith?

Of today's South Africa I am going to say nothing, or only this: that after a hundred years of apartheid, it is a miracle that a rainbow nation (the phrase was coined by Bishop Desmond Tutu) of any sort emerged, rather than blood-letting and genocide. The place is riddled with crime and corruption and AIDS and HIV and poverty and everything else that you would expect given that it was only twenty years ago that minority rule finally ended, but it was only twenty years ago, and in most places in the world twenty-year-olds can't vote yet, let alone run their country.

Marks for: 1994 and still counting

Marks against: count temporarily suspended, awaiting review

You can find David Prashker at:
http://theargamanpress.com/
http://davidprashker.com/
http://davidprashker.net/
https://www.facebook.com/TheArgamanPress
http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkerssongsandpoems.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkersbookofdays.blogspot.com/
http://davidprashkersartgallery.blogspot.com/

The Argaman Press

David Prashker's World Hourglass

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Spratly Islands

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Spain

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

South Sudan

South Korea

South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands

Monday, August 3, 2015

Southern Ocean

South Africa

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