[world cup] swing low, sweet chariot

[admitting faults] who can do it?

Was there ever a psychological exercise so difficult and so fraught with self-delusion, outright deception and lies as admitting one's faults?

And even if we do make the journey on the long road to self-knowledge and self-acknowledgment, can we then allow others to see these? To admit anything is a one way street and if even one single little error is admitted to a spouse or lover, it's immediate ammunition in the partner's next fight.

And even if we are so confident in ourselves that we don't worry about what anyone says, don't we still put a sheen, a gloss, a well-intentioned, self-forgiving tone to the admission? And admit only that which others will look at and say: "Oh, James, that's no fault at all." Then we can puff ourselves up, having assuaged our egos.

Quite frankly, in marriages, when she [because I'm a man but the other way for the girls] adds my slightest admission that I may have been wrong to her list of self-vindicatory bullets for next time, it's sickening and the result is NO further admissions whatsoever and watching your back for any surreptitious move to manouver you into said admission.

The nausea is then complete when she sweetly demands that we should be open and honest with each other because she "loves honesty in a man". Sorry, sister, I made one admission and it was used against me. I'm not an idiot to do it again.

Unfortunately, this state of affairs is the beginning of the end - actually a bit further on than the beginning. A partner who needs, absolutely must have Right on her side the whole time and is forever jockeying into a position of Power over her man is going to consume the other and as Helen Rowland said in 1922:

A husband is what is left of a lover once the nerve has been extracted.

Except that my nerve was not extracted - it became a brick wall at which she repeatedly flung herself until she gave it up and left. So now, with the pressure off and no woman on the horizon, I can make a few admissions I hope freely, on the grounds that I don't care any more.

Perhaps this is one of the purposes of a blog - useful things, blogs.

The two things I've been most accused of are passivity and obstinacy. Not in public life - you can judge for yourselves here. No, I mean in the relationship because I see a relationship, not as a war [or ever onwards and upwards] but as a haven, somewhere to withdraw to after the day's vicissitudes are done with.

As I offer an open pair of arms when we meet, so I expect the same, not to be met with a barrage of "did you phone this person" or "did you buy this - oh you forgot!". The moment I hear that sort of thing, I withdraw into myself and go and do something like wash the car or visit a client.

Some years ago a friend told me of coming home after work, stopping at the door and not being able to go inside that door because of the embittered disdain he'd have to endure until next morning and the shouting match which would ensue.

He admitted he might have been the cause of much of it but still - that was the prospect he faced each evening and so he went elsewhere for the night.

That was the beginning of the end.

So admitting faults is a minefield. Here's another - I don't mind her flirting as much as she wants at work where I can't see it or getting up at the café and chatting for a few minutes to some Adonis or even the occasional evening out with some man to break the monotony and the less she wanted, the more I'd be open to it and here we get to another criticism of me - she told me more than once that I gave her too much freedom, which I'm still puzzling over.

What did she mean - that she couldn't trust herself or that she resented that I didn't need her 24/7?

Another criticism came from my mate who asked me, after chatting to her for some minutes, "How central are you to her world?" He added, "I don't mean materially."

That was the beginning of the end.

Jealousy must appear on the list somewhere and the hypocrisy here is astounding. I took a girl out once, held her hand across the table and kissed her and her conversation was about how her guy would be "jealous of a tree". She was full of how she was an independent person and if she wanted to go out with me, she was a free agent and so on. I pitied him, really I did and admit what it said about me too at the time.

Surely it comes down, in the end, to how much that person loves you and how much space you'll allow her, confident in the invisible and elastic ties that bind her heart and not in any external demands on her.

Nowadays I'm over-sensitive to this and if the relationship looks a goer but the nuances are unmistakable that she still likes to play the field after my charm has failed to do its work, it's time to up sticks and move on. Trouble is - women like to play the field these feminist days, free to go out whenever and with whomever they like but I won't accept this social contract. No way.

And to say this would be stifling is to misread these comments. The less she demanded, the more I'd give. That's what it's about.

This is why I plan to remain alone - not because I want to play the field [because in the end it comes down to a lot of froth and bubble flirting and no more] and not because I'm in any way celibate and not because no woman will go out with me but because I need far more than a lover - I need a companion to laugh and go side by side and enjoy things with.

We can do business.

I had a difference of opinion with a woman the other day - she was arguing that men were so much better and I was arguing that women were so much better and we both realized we might be able to do business on that basis.

Except that she's married, lucky guy.

[the whole] greater than the sum of the parts

Richard Havers has been writing about guitarist Jan Akkerman, a prodigious talent but not the only one in the group Focus.

One of the driving forces was Thijs van Leer, classically trained flautist and resident crazy man. They were far too classical for mainstream pop and far too rocky for the classicists. Result - a very select bunch who followed them and yet, as Richard says:

Dutch band Focus in the Seventies – and a brilliant one at that. House of the King, Sylvia, Hocus Pocus and Moving Waves are some of the tracks you might recall.

Classics

Sometimes, when you take a group of talented musos who enjoy both their music and absurdity, some classics emerge and these are two I'd like to recall:

Hamburger Concerto, by Focus. It features the "St. Anthony Chorale" by Haydn, fake magnifico lyrics, yodelling falsetto and brilliant guitar riffs. An extraordinary track really - some say it didn't work but I beg to differ:

[i] Starter

[ii] Medium 1

[iii] Medium 2

[iv] Well done

[v] One for the road

A commenter at Amazon said of this track:

A sunset never blazed so brightly – the penultimate Focus album was their most perfectly achieved statement, a beautifully composed and produced celebration of the Akkerman/van Leer partnership at a creative, if not social, peak.

A real synthesis of their musical strengths – crunching riffs, memorable tunes, classical motifs, whimsy, humour, and those carmine Akkerman guitar runs threading the whole thing together.

Down in the Sewer, by the Stranglers [from Rattus Norvegicus]. As Wiki says about them:

The Stranglers were, beginning in 1976, tangentially associated with punk rock, due in part to their opening for The Ramones' first British tour. [They] were also associated with New Wave as well as gothic rock, but their idiosyncratic approach never fitted completely within any musical genre.

That's what I loved about them. Not only that but they were too good as musos to be accepted in any one genre. Wiki continues:

Although initially received with mixed reaction because of their apparent sexist and racist innuendo, the Stranglers employed a sort of dog-humour in their lyrics that won over many music critics. Indeed, Dave Thompson wrote that the Stranglers themselves revelled in an almost Monty Python-esque grasp of absurdity (and, in particular, the absurdities of modern 'men's talk').

And as for Hugh Cornwell … well:

[i] Falling

[ii] Down In The Sewer

[iii] Trying To Get Out Again

[iv] Rat's Rally

Hughy in recent years

In my humble opinion, the tracks on the next album - Bitching, Something Better Change and the title track No More Heroes are some of the best semi-punk rock ever produced and the free flowing energy is infectious.

[You can hear samples by clicking on the album name links.]

[england] sweet taste of victory

Don't often blog about cricket:

Luke Wright and Matt Prior fell for ducks but Ian Bell (36) steadied the reply before Kevin Pietersen (71no) and Paul Collingwood (64no) took over. They shared an unbroken 114 to ease the hosts to victory with 13.4 overs left, to beat India by seven wickets and clinch their one-day series 4-3.

Now bring on the Aussies. Well, maybe not quite yet.

[gold is good] but perhaps silver is better

In gold we trust - I didn't say it, CityUnslicker, they did:

The global financial system is broken, with banks refusing to lend to one another at any cost, even as central banks attempt to increase system liquidity. As the interbank lending rate surges well past normal levels, usual circuit-breakers such as liquidity facilities have simply failed. In this environment, only the holders of physical assets such as gold and oil appear to have the upper hand. Sell your equities, by the way.

CityUnslicker is not happy that I'm talking doom and gloom when what is needed in the financial markets at present is confidence. I do see your point but sorry - this thing is induced and the rhetoric is simply reflecting what I suggested to everyone some time back.

And I think silver is a better bet in uncertain times - governments have a habit of confiscating gold in time of trouble.

[deobandi] who allowed it to breed, then cried foul

The respected Beaman is "speechless" after reading the Times report that 600 of Britain’s 1,350 mosques are reportedly under the control of the Deobandi sect in Britain:

The Times investigation casts serious doubts on government statements that foreign preachers are to blame for spreading the creed of radical Islam in Britain’s mosques and its policy of encouraging the recruitment of more “home-grown” preachers.

I don't see what's to be surprised about - it just takes a bit of homework and research.

There has always been a constant and relentless move on the part of hardline nutters to run the show in each country. This is a given and will never change. The character of a country is simply a reflection on how far the nutters get to the reins of power and that depends largely on societal forces.

Where the bad seed falls on uneven ground, such as in Iran, Afghanistan and Hitler's Germany, it sprouts and the result is there for all, in retrospect, to see. Maniacal leaderships [e.g. Saddam] choke the life out of the people and even create a bizarre sort of patriotism, predicated on hate for one or more sections of society, for the purpose of deflecting attention away from what is really going down with the leadership.

In the west, there has been a sort of tacit resistance to the nutters until the last two decades - a perfect case being when Joe McCarthy came a cropper in the 50s. What protected the west for so long were so-called Christian values, the Judaeo-Christian tradition and a fierce belief in democracy and that elected leaders were just that - elected leaders.

In turn, the people who actually do control society [follow the money, as Deep Throat said] - well, it suited their book at that stage to allow Korea and Vietnam to occur - the profits rolled in and all was well.

However, with the advent of genuine peace after 1972, this worried the hell out of the ghouls and they've done all they could to exacerbate conflict - Munich '72 was an example. Ireland was a pretty good breeding ground for some time but the moves to conciliation there were deeply worrying.

So there had to be a catalyst to move society one step closer to the "melting pot", out of which the new order would arise and this came in the form of fomenting the Muslim issue. There is no evidence of this degree of Islamicization [now occurring] happening pre-72.

Communism was the bugbear then and has it not struck you as uncanny how, when the communist threat lost its teeth in the late 80s, the Islamic threat neatly stepped in to take its place?

Thus to Iraq, 911, Beslan and 7/7.

Has it not occurred to you to wonder how freedom has become licentiousness, justice has become law and order, the three rs have become moral relativism and precious little else, how high class bimbos [e.g. reality TV] are the new folk heroes, how society has been turned on its head, at the same time the Islamic threat has become an onslaught?

Has it not occurred to you to wonder how feminism changed from the redressing of injustice for women to giant vaginas parading around college campuses or how to speak one word against the gay mafia lands you in prison or worse?

Has it not occurred to you how the severing of the connection of most people with their Maker has been closely followed by the scramble for the dollar and how material things have become the summum bonum for virtually everybody?

Is it no wonder that Islam is seen by many in the west as an attractive alternative? That it appears to be a return to the rule of order? Does it not puzzle you that church leaders are either silent or mumble in the corner or worse - that their voice is never reported? They could give you the ethic which would correct society overnight, if they only would.

Which is why their voice is suppressed.

Has it not occurred to you that you've never heard of the CFR, the TLC or the SPPNA through the media nor any of the other dastardly manifestations of the real power? That it takes bloggers or the peripheral media to bring it to people's notice?

Do you really see that all this just "happened" for broad sociological reasons? And even if you do concede that there is a distinct driving force behind it, why do you put it down to incompetence? The incompetence of the Fed, for example?

Do you really see the Greenspans and Sutherlands of the world as klutzes? Do you really see the ignoring of the Israeli warning to MI5 as incompetence and the major players in 7/7 just happening to be out of town at the time as sheer coincidence?

Analogously, the uncovering of Philby in the 60s was followed by such head shaking and mutterings of "but he was one of us" and yet it was quite an easy genesis and development to follow with hindsight.

The ones who are doing the major damage to society are not the Deobandi and the like but the "one-of-us"es, cocktails in hand, who are failing to act at critical times, who are turning a blind eye to the Deobandi, who are allowing draconian laws to be stealthily put into place and to whom no blame can ever be sheeted home.

Have you forgotten the fifth column, very popular during the last world war and into the 50s? On February 23, 1954, U.S. Senator William Jenner of Indiana, took to the Senate Floor, to speak in support of the Bricker Amendment, addressing the nature of these people:

"The important point to remember about this group is not its ideology but its organization. It is a dynamic, aggressive, elite corps, forcing its way through every opening, to make a breach for a collectivist one-party state. It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government without our suspecting the change is under way... It conducts tactical retreats but only the more surely to advance its own goal."

Ron Paul estimated [August 2003] that there were about 25 000 of them in key positions in the U.S. alone. Note also that Jenner was an arch conservative and Ron Paul's bio is well known. They were GOP through and through.

So don't look for the real enemy in dark, smoke filled corners of Trotskyite cafes. Raise your eyes upwards and there they are in all their inglorious, Armani invisibility.