Good Friday

Man's Inhumanity to God.

Corporal Works of Mercy

Thursday evening in the Crypt, on the knees this Holy Thursday before Easter. On the knees washing the feet of my bar staff. It was my Supplier's suggestion and example some time ago. Now you know why I mop the floors! 

This isn't me.

He had quite a few suggestions about 'Corporal Works'.  "Love one another", He said, and Love is a verb. A 'doing something' word.  We often miss opportunities to 'do something' and indeed some opportunities are rare.  Like the 'visiting prisoners' one. How many of us have rolled up to the gates of our local prison and said, "G'day, I've come to visit some prisoners. Anyone about?" 

Somehow I don't think we would be let in without some pointed questions. Telling the guards that we wanted to do a 'Corporal Work of Mercy' probably won't cut it.

I have an aquaintance, Deborah Kendrick,  who has made a point of advocating for prisoners for quite a long time now. She is a splendid lady and there is much to admire about her. She is not stupid about it and is not one of those 'Serial Killer Groupies'. She is a woman with a good heart. She brings friendship and effort and I hope she does not mind me saying so.

She has a very active Facebook page and a group "Words within the Walls", and TOVA - The Other Victims Advocacy. Look them up. 

Debbi Does Corporal Works. 

Debs

Let's face reality here. There are many in prison for sound reason. They have committed crimes. Some really nasty ones. And some perhaps are innocent. Some are very dangerous and the very situation of prison is fraught with danger.

I have to admit that I have not made a point of going across the river to the place where our home-grown mass murderer is incarcerated in order to have a natter with him. I didn't when 'Chopper' Reid was there either. 

Burying the dead is another one. Lots of people die with no next of kin. They don't get crowds at their funerals. Some get no-one at all. Feeding the hungry has become a popular but these days it can be on an industrial scale. 

But I did hear today of someone else, somewhere else, who did get an invitation to a prison and found the 'Work' unusual and enlightening.

A composer, no less. Eric Genuis. I cannot claim to have seen him around the bars here but he just might get another invitation soon. There are many ways to be 'pro-life'.

Pro-life composer has a mission to bring beauty to the ugly prisons of America

 https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/when-this-pro-life-composer-played-for-the-toughest-prisoners-what-happened

World-class composer and performer Eric Genuis will never forget the first time he was invited to perform his music in a U.S. state prison. As he lugged his heavy keyboard and sound equipment through the security gates into a world of concrete, steel, and razor wires, he could not help but notice how profoundly ugly everything was. 

He noticed the stark lack of anything that could be described as beautiful or inspirational. 

“It was very unnerving. You're there in this ugly facility. The lighting is harsh. There are broken tables and garbage lies strewn about. I’m in the midst of the ugliest place I have ever been.”

“The lives of these imprisoned men and women are plagued and immersed in ugliness. They are swimming in the ocean of the profoundly ugly,” he added. 

Genuis remembers how the prison authorities treated him and his violinist and cellist in a hardly civil and almost severe way. 

“It's not like the prison authorities were saying, ‘Oh, thank you for coming.’ They didn’t seem to care that we were there to help”. 

I am reminded of the late and great Johnny Cash who was a frequent prison visitor. He had  a deep understanding and affection for the prisoners who very often saw him as 'one of them'.  The prison guards were sometimes less than welcoming of him too.  

Prisoners 'identified' with Cash. He was a rough and ready character in appearance and style but just as God-Orientated as Eric who has an entirely different approach and style.  

About 80 male prisoners shuffled into the room where the performance was about to take place. The prisoners had likely come for a change of scene. For many of them, it would provide an occasion for selling cigarettes, making drug deals, and engaging in other illegal activities. 

Genuis remembers the bewilderment he experienced in having no idea what to expect. He could see the men slouching and yawning, getting ready to be bored for the next 90 minutes. Genuis cranked up his speakers in anticipation of likely having to compete with heckling, jeering, and other disturbances. 

He took a breath, and began playing his music. 

Moments into his first song, one male prisoner suddenly stood up and exclaimed at the top of his voice, “I forgot what hope felt like.”

Grown men who were serving time for murder, rape, drug trafficking, and numerous other crimes had tears running down their faces. 

The response to the music was immediate and powerful. 

“After my first performance in a prison I realized that there was something very powerful happening there. I realized that my music could touch the souls of these broken men and give them hope, something to live for,” Genuis said. 

The warden could not believe the transformation that he saw happening to the prisoners.

In a letter to Genuis in 2010, the warden wrote:

Your performance was a huge success. The behavior of the inmates during and after the concert indicated that your performance had a powerful impact on those present. Staff from throughout the institution volunteered observations about the excitement and positive attitude the inmates showed on their way back to their housing assignments after the concert and throughout the rest of the day. You really made a difference in the lives of most of the audience.

Inspiring people with hope

Genuis does not view his concerts to prisoners as simply a “nice thing to do,” as something that entertains or distracts people for a while. 

He plays his music with the specific intention of nourishing people with the “mystical beauty” of music which is created by melody, harmony, and tones. 

“Music is a language. It is a language that reaches in and touches the heart, mind, and soul in ways that words cannot touch,” he said. 

“Beautiful music has the power to inspire people with hope. It has this mystical ability to reach into the very depths of a soul, in a way that words and even the best of logical arguments never can reach, and move the listener to embrace goodness,” he added. 

Genuis holds that genuine art, whether it be found in painting, sculpture, music, and other mediums, has the purpose of revealing what is beautiful. 

“If it is true art, it is beautiful. And the purpose and the importance of beauty, whether it be in the medium of music or visual art, is to transcend the imperfect and point to the perfect,” he said. 

In this way, beautiful paintings, sculptures, or pieces of music is not the final goal itself, but they all point to something beyond themselves. 

“Beauty is the language of God. And when the human heart encounters beauty, in whatever way, shape, or form, it really becomes an encounter with the almighty God,” he said. 

“It is an encounter beyond the conscious. In that encounter, God speaks to the soul. The encounter uplifts the soul. It makes one feel inspired. It gives one hope. It helps one to set goals and to achieve them. God works through the beautiful to accomplish all of this."

On top of performing his music at national and international venues in front of thousands of people, including performances in private homes of people like actor Jim Caviezel [another extraordinarily Good Man who has been featured in the Tavern before] or a former U.S. president, the 49-year-old composer views it as a special mission to perform his music for what he calls the “forgotten ones” on the fringes of society. 

On top of those who are in prison, these include people in drug rehab centers, in veterans’ homes, kids in inner city schools, as well as the elderly in nursing homes. 

In 2010, Genuis set up a new foundation called “concerts for hope” to facilitate bringing his music to the “least in society” so that through his music they could have a powerful encounter with beauty and goodness. So far, he has given hundreds of such concerts. 

“I go into the prisons to inspire these guys because I have been given this gift that is meant to be used for that purpose. I want to bring them hope and I want to bring them beauty because I think they deserve it as much as anyone else.”

“I will play anywhere for anyone who wants to listen. I feel like I’ve been given a gift, and I will share that gift with the world on a big scale or on a small-scale. I'll play for one person, and I'll play for 50,000 people. I'll play on big beautiful stages worldwide, and I'll play in the ghetto. I'll play anywhere,” he said.

“I feel very honored to be a musician and a composer. I'm very humbled to be able to share these gifts with people. I take what I do very seriously and it gives me more joy than you could imagine,” he added. 

For Genuis, sharing his gift of music is an effective way of affirming the value and dignity of each and every person. He said such affirmation is what it truly means to be “pro-life.”

“If people think that being pro-life means only caring for the unborn child, then they are wrong. Being pro-life means affirming the value and worth and dignity of each and every person, no matter what their circumstances are, what they have done, and what they haven't done. We must learn to look at the dignity of all.” 

Those in prison, where there usually exists an atmosphere of violence, hatred, bigotry, and dominance, are in special need of such affirmation. 

“People ask me, ‘Why do you perform for these guys in prison? They've made their choices. Let them rot.’ I say to them that if your piano is broken, you can throw it out, or if your swing-set is broken, you toss it away. But with people, you can never throw them out. There is a dignity and value to every person just by the fact that they are human, no matter what they’ve done or who they are.”

The Catholic father of 11 — 4 living and 7 in heaven — said that it is specifically his Catholic faith that has taught him about the value and dignity of each and every person. “Everyone is made in the image of God, and God continually calls everyone to a closer relationship with him,” he said. “As Catholics, we believe that we are literally ministering to God himself when we help anybody in need.” 

“Jesus tells us, 

‘When I was in prison, you visited me. What you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me.’ 

Each of us is created in the image of God and this gives each of us dignity. Every person, unborn or born, young or old, sick or healthy, imprisoned or free, deserves to have this incredible dignity recognized and honored. It is because of this dignity that each person deserves a life of inspiration and beauty.” 

“I go into the prisons to inspire these guys because I have been given this gift that is meant to be used for that purpose. I want to bring them hope and I want to bring them beauty because I think they deserve it as much as anyone else,” he said. 

“I can play for people and I can stir them with joy. I can stir them to true joy, to true beauty, to true inspiration, and true meaning, and a true encounter with beauty. And I'm going to use that gift until I have no more air in my lungs,” he added.

Genuis said that everyone has been given gifts from God which they can use to serve others. 

“We have to recognize that everyone has a gift that they can turn around and give to people to make them feel that they are the best thing in the world. It’s as easy as going to a nursing home and having a cup of coffee with a resident. You will be a hero, I promise.”

“People need to ask themselves where are their gifts and where are their talents. And they need to be willing to work beyond their comfort zones. Once we recognize the importance and the value of each person as an individual, and once we treat each person with the dignity that is due to them, then we will begin to restore our culture and society.”

“And that’s what it means to be pro-life. Being pro-life has many faces,” he said. 

One often comes across Good Men, even in an era when men are almost universally condemned. (Perhaps in spite of that era). 

The Tavern is a place for Saints and Heroes and those who are on their way to being Saints. Some who stop by have a long way to go, but I think Eric has a head start on them. He is taking Prisoners ....with him. 

Pax.

A Giant amongst the Pigmies.

As we come into that time of the year when we acknowledge and grieve the Sacrifice of our Supplier, of which we shall give due reverence in the Crypt over the next few days, we were reminded  this morning of another less dramatic sacrifice of nearly 50 years ago. 

In light of the history that has unfolded over the past 2000 years one might be forgiven for almost overlooking the history that has unfolded over the past 50 odd but which was prophesied eloquently in Birmingham on the 20th of April 1968. Let us be mindful then.

Mike Cunningham did the honours in the UK room. 

One of the great men of the British political firmament was hanged out to dry by his own traitorous Party who could not bear to hear the truth.

‘Only in his hometown and in his own house…’

The days of protest are unfortunately long past. Of course, when I talk of protest, I talk of legitimate protest against real targets. Why, do we ask; why did Duncan’s Fruit & Nut get assimilated by Cadburys? Why was it truly necessary to change Marathon to Snickers?

And why has Cadburys in Hobart capitulated to the great Halal swindle that funds terrorists? And right before Easter !

But of course I jest! We are just a few days past the anniversary  (20 April 1968) of the only protest which, if recognised and acted upon, would have made a real difference to the way we live, we react and, most importantly, rule ourselves. 

 https://mikecunningham.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/only-in-his-hometown-and-in-his-own-house/

I am of course talking about the enormously gifted classical scholar [Professor at 24]  Brigadier, politician and above all else, a patriot of the finest order; and his speech regarding his personal view of the one Act of Parliament which has done more than any other to betray and alter the basic nature of British Democracy as we used to know it!

To be followed soon after by the Act which took the UK into the EU ! 

The politician was of course the Rt. Hon. John Enoch Powell, MBE, and the speech was what was labelled as the ‘Infamous Rivers of Blood’ speech. 

If you wish, his words can be found and studied here..

 http://www.enochpowell.net/fr-79.html

and believe me, you won’t find any mention of the phrase ‘Rivers of Blood’! 

You shall find the phrase ‘Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’, which I think you would agree, is subtly different to the previous phrase which of course was the one used by every tabloid and broadsheet newspaper, every opposition politician and of course many of Powell’s own Party in their excoriation of one of the finest political minds this country has ever had the privilege of nurturing.

This man, now disowned by his own Party for telling the exact and literal truth, had established beyond any doubt that, if the extrapolation of the (then) immigration rates was carried forward to it’s logical conclusion, some one tenth of the total population would be of either immigrant or immigrant descent. 

This has come to pass, but what Powell did not, and of course could not have foreseen that besides the migrant flow from the Commonwealth countries which he was talking about, there would also be the huge influx of migrants from the expanded conglomerate which was christened the European Union. 

Now the problem is that besides people coming from, say, Poland, who are really just like us, you also ‘have’, I repeat ‘have’ to accept the Roma gypsies from Romania, the Bosnians, Croats, Kosovans and Serbs, who just a few years ago were busy trying to kill one another in some god-forsaken ethnic cleansing exercise fomented by one of half-a-dozen miniature megalomaniacs. 

We also have given ‘ASYLUM’ to a cross-section of the whole of the Continent of Africa, from the savagery of Darfur to the rolling hills of Malawi, all busily fleeing their dust-bowls, and mostly intent on leeching off the State as best they can.

That is to say, leeching off the Taxpayer. 

The last accounting does not, of course, include the approximate one million (1,000,000) illegal and totally bogus ‘asylum seekers’ who have slipped, hidden, clung and crawled through our porous Border defences; many of whom are of course working in the black economy to pay off the huge debts owed to the cynical mobsters who trafficked them into the country in the first place.

In 1968 he predicted that by the year 2000, seven million people living in Britain would be of ethnic descent . The Census in 2001 showed 4.6 million people living in the UK were from an ethnic minority, or 7.9% of the population, that Census being notorious for its’ ability to get things wrong, or counted short!

We see and hear the changes in our towns and cities; the changes such as the plethora of mosques, each of course coming with it’s own (usually Saudi-funded and approved) imam and set of loudspeakers for the interminable wailing of their calls to prayer which have besmirched our highways and suburbs. 

We see the proliferation of the so-called Black Evangelical Churches, which are the outward sign of a communities which is in fact usually in thrall to either a set of Nigerian gangsters or their Jamaican ‘Yardie’ equivalents. 

We also see the influence of the various stages of the QUANGO which is now called the  Equalities and Human Rights Commission. As taken from their web-site, they promote a ‘fairer, more equal Britain’ but behind the slogans lie a literal welter of law and regulation which deny the right of say, a hotelier to bar people from his establishment because he does not like their sexual orientation or practices! 

We see the inroads on our very society by the inclusion of the Brussels’ inspired ‘Human rights’ legislation; all of which was possible very good in theory, but perverted in practice so that we literally cannot get rid of undesirables once they get their feet across the threshold of our crowded little country! 

I doubt if even Enoch Powell could have foreseen the fact that we now shelter nine Afghani hi-jackers who took control of an airplane at the point of guns; who landed and surrendered to officials and were subsequently tried and imprisoned for their deeds; and who now live in Britain.

 

They  had their convictions quashed last summer, and the Immigration Appellate Authority (IAA) ruled that sending the nine back to Afghanistan would breach their human rights, as adjudicators said that the men would be in danger of attack from members of the deposed Taleban regime if they were deported. Oh, and just as an aside, all their families are allowed to stay as well!

The clarion call of all liberals and socialists in this now benighted society of ours is ‘Integration’ and the magic buzz-word so beloved of all the soft-lefties, ‘Multiculturalism’. 

What they pretend it to mean is that we all can live together in harmony and peace, as long as we ‘bend’ a little in the way we live! 

In actuality, all the ‘bending’ has and is being done by native British people, as we are forced to watch as our cities are ‘Balkanized’ into Pakistani, Indian, Black, and most often Muslim ghettoes. 

They mostly do not mix, they do not speak our language, they do not respect our ways of life and of law. They wish to import their own foreign beliefs and practices into a country which was foolish enough to say, ‘We are not strong enough to defend our way of life, so come on down, Sucker Country is open for business!’

When Powell said in reference to an Englishman who was planning to emigrate because of Black immigration was, “What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking – not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.

The other undying shame which I am of course forced to admit is this ruthless rejection of an honest man was achieved under a Conservative Government.

A fine tradition of turncoat cowardice has been carried on by conservative gummunts ever since, as they allow, whenever elected , to retain the damaging and often downright wicked laws and regulations of the socialists they replace periodically.  The abortion laws spring easily to mind as one of the most egregiously wicked.

Mind you, the leader of that administration was the same Edward Heath who manoeuvred Britain into the Common Market on the lying premise that it was a ‘trading bloc’ instead of a gargantuan Federalist monster, organised by bureaucrats of the member nations for bureaucrats of the member Nations! Margaret Thatcher, for some strange reason further ennobled the grip of Europe on our lives by signing up to the Single European Act, an document which she later was to bitterly regret as she often said she had been ‘misled’ as to it’s purpose! 

The Labour Party grabbed the handles of power with both hands once they finally got their hands on the British purse-strings, and extended both immigration numbers and classes, including the infamous ‘family members’ component, whereby if one gets in, everyone allied or related to him comes along as well for the free ride! 

So as some of us, patriots all, who remember the ideal of Britain for Britons, who regret the vitriol which was poured so liberally over the head of one of Great Britain’s major minds and of what surely was a giant amongst the pigmies who opposed him; hopefully when a newer and harder breed of Conservatives finally retake the reins of power from the tired bunch in Westminster and Whitehall, we might see the return of sensible and steady controls on the mass immigration which has so badly soiled our once green and pleasant land!

To which I scratch my ancient head (still have my hair, mind you) and say 'Fat Chance'. 

Drink on the bar Mike.

Pax.

The White Man's Burden

Bonus addition below.

It is all too fashionable today to disparage white men.  It is politically correct to denounce, demean and dismiss men in general and white men in particular, but do not for a moment think that this is new. It has taken different forms and has been aimed at different subsets over the years and few have taken the brunt as much as Anglo white men. The Europeans seem to have been neglected in this regard but rest assured their turn will come. For the moment it is Americans who have replaced the English white whipping boy.

It is almost ironic, from an English viewpoint. The English have been standing on a hill, surrounded,  being pilloried for the best part of 80 years and who was down the slope throwing rotton tomatos? Yep, along with sundry others, Americans, I am sad to say. Now it is their turn.

The 'British' were for quite a while the 'Colonial overlords' we are told. We ( I am one) had an 'Empire' We were 'Imperialists'. No good came out of Imperialism, goes the mantra,in complete disregard to the evidence.

Take India, for example. 

Upon hearing a visiting English chap speak up in the UK bar about a book he has been reading (by an Indian chap) several voices chimed up.

Brilliant, about time modern Britain realised Colonialism was a force for good, not to be ashamed of (Leftwing nonsense), of course there were mistakes, but giving India, Malaysia and Central and Southern Africa, Law, Hospitals, Schools, Railways & Roads Democracy and Employment was no small undertaking.

And..... 

If you were a country that was going to be colonised in the 18th/19th centuries, your best choice - by a long way - would be the Brits.

I pulled a couple of pints for those small interjections. 

The British ( I say that rather than 'English', because many were actually Scottish, Welsh and Irish) worked like, well, MEN, in India to raise it to some semblance of  modern civilisation. They were literally educated to the role in the Public Schools (that is to say, Private schools) to 'Serve'. 

And serve they did.

But at the end of WW2 largely under pressure from America, the British Empire was rapidly dismantled and the 'colonisers' sent packing.  Britain could not afford the burden in any event.

This has proven a disaster in many parts of the world. 

It should have been an eye opening realization that 'Empire' was an investment and not as the lefties would have us believe a plot to simply exploit. The American Governments' post war never got that, which is possibly built into the national psyche.  America, one might recall, was a beneficiary of several hundred years of British Blood and Treasure investment before they cooked up a rationale to steal it all and declare independance and throwing the 'oppressive colonial overlords' out. Something not taught in their schools.

This sounds harsh, but truth often does. 

But to the chap, John Preston, a literary sort who had a book under his arm. He left it on the bar. It was by an Indian fellow. And it took a very different view from the PC crowd's. 

John cautioned us....

Before you read this review, it's important that we get a couple of things straight. 

The first is that Kartar Lalvani is himself Indian. 

The second is that, as far as I can tell, he is not mad.

 The British were imperialist brutes? 

No, Britain made India great (says an Indian!) 

The reason both these things are so important is that for more than half a century scarcely anybody - let alone an Indian - has dared suggest that British rule in India was anything other than an utter disaster.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-3497620/The-British-imperialist-brutes-No-Britain-India-great-says-Indian.html

In his preface, Lalvani notes sadly that he's been living in England for more than 50 years and in that time 'I have not encountered a single native Brit who has stated any form of belief that the British benefited India'.

Even British education has fallen to the lefty hordes. 

Received wisdom - carefully nurtured by generations of Lefty academics - holds that Britain, the wicked colonial oppressor, sucked the wealth out of India, crushing the poor Indians under their boot heels at the same time.

As the founder of Vitabiotics, 'Britain's most successful vitamin company', Dr Lalvani is presumably a very busy man.

Yet he feels so strongly that British rule in India has been unfairly vilified that he's produced a scrupulously researched examination of its achievements.

One of the main charges against the British is that they looted India of many of its assets.

Nonsense, insists Lalvani. If anyone looted India, it was the Persians - by the time the British arrived, the country's coffers were almost empty.

But surely India has always been dogged by the most appalling poverty? Isn't that also a legacy of British rule? Not according to Lalvani. As he points out, it's now almost 70 years since the British left India and the poverty is almost as bad as it's ever been.

If there is a villain to be fingered here - someone responsible for keeping India bumping along the bottom - it's not a representative of British rule.  Instead, we should be pointing accusingly at none other than Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister who is generally reckoned to be the father of the nation.

It was Nehru who cravenly sucked up to Stalin - a far greater brute than any Brit. 

Not that one can criticise Nehru nor indeed Stalin (the Enn-word in the woodpile?) of course.  Few dare say a word about Nehru's 'Partition' for instance - Britain gets the blame for that, of course - and the expulsion of over a million Muslims to the newly created Pakistan. Perhaps Europe can dig out his plans and use them again.  Same place, perhaps? 

One rarely hears a fuss made about the exploits of the Dutch East India mob, the sort of Halliburton of the day. The British copied them with the British East India Company, also Halliburtonish. The Dutch, of course, aren't 'Anglo' so they barely rate. Trade rather than road building was their game although they did quite a bit of the civilising spade work. Hmmmm. Back to Nehru and Stalin. Two likely (but not 'white' ) lads.

'As a result, India's pace of industrial growth was seriously stunted, depriving the country of precious financial development funds from the U.S. and European nations.'

Lalvani is only limbering up, though. It isn't until he gets into what the British did for India's infrastructure that he really hits his stride.

Not only did the British give India a legal system, an efficient police force, an apolitical army and a smooth running - if astonishingly bureaucratic - civil service, but just look at the concrete benefits they provided.

Let's start with roads. In 1836, work began to construct a highway between Calcutta and Lahore - that's 1,423 miles.  When it was finally completed almost 30 years later 'wheeled carriages could roll across the land' for the first time.

There is time here only for a few of a multitude of examples, I told him.  So he showed me the title again.

THE MAKING OF INDIA: THE UNTOLD STORY OF BRITISH ENTERPRISE  

by Kartar Lalvani

(Bloomsbury £25)

Not only that, trees had been planted every 60 ft along the way 'to provide beautification and much-needed shade to travellers'.

And then, of course, there were the railways. In a section entitled Awe-Inspiring Railways Statistics, Lalvani lists how India's railway network came to cover the map. He's right; the statistics really are awe-inspiring.

In 1853, there were a mere 21 miles of railway in India. Ten years later, there were 2,512. Jump forward 20 years, and that figure has gone up to 10,000 miles, and another 20 years later to 26,378.

The British built more railways in India than America, France, Germany and other European colonialists built in all their colonies. 

And in order to do so, they had to build bridges - lots and lots of bridges. At this point it's worth recalling Franklin D. Roosevelt's quote: 'There can be little doubt that in many ways the story of bridge building is the story of civilisation.  'By it, we can readily measure a people's progress.'

In fact, the British had been building bridges in India long before the railways came along.  In 1811, the first iron bridge in British India was built across the Gomti River at Lucknow - the design was based on a bridge over the River Wear in Sunderland. When it was shipped to India, it became the largest single structure ever exported from Britain.  It consisting of 2,627 pieces, of which just 19 arrived broken.

To build the Simla railway that led from the plains up to the cooler hill country, the track had to climb almost 500 ft - requiring the construction of 103 tunnels. And this for a railway that was a mere 60 miles long.

In the late 1700s, the British decided to construct a mint in Calcutta. Behind a colonnaded facade inspired by the Temple of Minerva in Athens, steam-driven machines stamped out 200,000 coins every eight hours.

A few years later they built another equally grand mint in Bombay. When an Indian engineer at the Bombay mint came to London in the 1840s, he took one look at the Royal Mint and pronounced it to be 'much inferior'.

Inevitably, a history like this is going to be on the selective side. For instance, there's barely any mention of a thoroughly discreditable episode such as the opium trade, while the Indian Mutiny also passes in a convenient blur. But even so, it's still hard - indeed almost impossible - not to be struck by how much the British sought to improve India.

Of course, their ideas of what constituted improvements were very British ones, yet many of the institutions they introduced are still functioning pretty well today.

And when the time eventually came for the British to leave India in 1947, power was relinquished with 'for the most part good grace and mutual respect' - unlike a lot of other countries one could mention.

After reading a book as bracingly controversial as this, you may find yourself in need of some refreshment - 

a cup of tea, perhaps.   

As you are waiting for the kettle to boil, you could reflect on how it was the British who introduced tea to India, turning the country into the biggest tea producer in the world in little more than a century.

And from there you might go on to chalk up a few other achievements: the introduction of coffee, sugar, fresh drinking water, public toilets...

Doubtless there will be those who dismiss Dr Lalvani as the worst kind of imperialist lackey.  But I defy anyone with a modicum of open-mindedness not to read The Making Of India and concede, however grudgingly, that he just might have a point.

As interjected above, there were Hospitals, Schools, Law courts and Law, Government and above all a Common Language to knit together people with over 200 existing languages. All painstakingly and expensively put in place. And we won't even mention the massive trade imbalance that saw funds flood into India 

A burden of maintaing all of that fell on the shoulders of British tax-payers and their sound, middle-class, Christian souls.


(As an aside, it is estimated that 20% of the world's gold dangles on Indian Ladies.) 

Additional interjection.

Tucker Carlson added a personal view from a visit he made earlier in the month.

Flying from Donald Trump to the beautiful ruins of another empire

Tucker Carlson’s diary: 

The aesthetic merits of British colonialism; 

The first thing you notice about Mumbai is the first thing you notice about every place the British once occupied, which is how much of themselves they left there. 

 http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/03/flying-from-donald-trump-to-the-beautiful-ruins-of-another-empire/

The US spent over a decade and trillions of dollars in Iraq, and the only physical evidence that remains is a concrete embassy compound, some airstrips and a sea of steel shipping containers. Maybe because they never considered that they might leave, the British built entire cities out of stone, with railways to connect them. 

And they did it with reliably good taste. 

Too often lost in the hand-wringing over the evils of colonialism is the aesthetic contribution of the British empire. The Brits tended to colonise beautiful places and make them prettier. 

Bermuda, New Zealand, Fiji, Cape Town — notice a theme? 

Style wasn’t an ancillary benefit; it was part of the point. 

Behind every Gurkha regiment marched a battalion of interior designers.

English taste seemed to improve with distance. At home, 19th-century British architecture tended towards excess, layers of rococo baubles alternating with blocky overkill. 

Abroad, the form became more flexible, often incorporating local features like Moorish arches and minarets. (Contrast this with the French, to whom every colony was a chance to recreate an outer ring of Paris.) 

The average English customs house on a minor Bahamian island enhances its surroundings more than anything Frank Lloyd Wright ever built. More durable too. 

British colonial buildings were the most appealing structures in virtually every city the empire controlled. 

Fifty years later, they often still are. When he seized power in Pakistan, Pervaiz Musharraf never even pretended to settle in the new PM’s residence in Islamabad. He headed for the old British headquarters in Rawalpindi, where he sat beneath ceiling fans sipping Scotch and reading Flashman novels.

So, think about it whilst you hear about the wrath now poured upon the poor American men. Particularly those who have, too, chosen to Serve.

Barbara Holligsworth was wrapped in a Flag in the US Room. 

Troops at Ft. Gordon Subjected to Unauthorized Lecture on ‘White Privilege’

Troops stationed at Ford Gordon, Georgia were subjected to an unauthorized lecture on “white privilege” during an Equal Opportunity briefing last year, according to a PowerPoint presentation the Army released last month to Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

It beggars belief that it was 'unauthorised'. Someone is ducking for cover. 

The PowerPoint presentation, which was shown to 400 members of the 67th Signal Battalion on April 2, 2015, defined privilege as “an unearned advantage,” and stated: “Our society attaches privilege to being white and male and heterosexual regardless of your social class.”

“Privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve done or failed to do,” the briefing continued.

Women of Colour now share the Privilege of being killed in combat just like White males.

“Privilege grants the cultural authority to make judgments about others and to have those judgments stick….Privilege means being able to decide who gets taken seriously, receives attention, etc ….

 “Privilege is always at someone else’s expense and always exacts a cost… however passive and unconscious, [it] results in suffering and deprivation for someone.”

One wonders whether this hectoring was in fact part of a 'Resist Indoctrination Course' and given as an example of the type of sheer crap an enemy of the nation might subject a soldier to.  

Under a slide entitled “The luxury of obliviousness,” troops were told that “race privilege gives whites little reason to pay a lot of attention to African Americans or to how white privilege affects them. ‘To be white in America means not having to think about it.’”

“The trouble we’re in can’t be solved unless the ‘privileged’ make the problem of privilege their problem and do something about it,” the slideshow concluded, urging soldiers to “reclaim” words such as “racist”, “patriarchy”, “oppression and dominance”, and  [of course, drum roll please....] “feminism”… “so that we can use them to name and make sense of the truth of what’s going on.”

Ze Truth vill zet you unt Barabbas, frei. 

“We certainly found it shocking,” Judicial Watch attorney William Marshall told CNSNews.com. “We’re always on the lookout for any indoctrination material provided to our military personnel. In my view, this is a pretty radical way of looking at race relations.” 

Why? How come the Military does not produce its own training materials? Hello. 

In response to an inquiry by 

CNSNews.com, an Army spokeswoman said that “the slides presented were not authorized.  "The information on the slide presentation was not a part of the original training material distributed to all battalion Equal Opportunity Leaders from the brigade's Equal Opportunity Advisor.

“The presentation shown was altered by the instructor and was not then, nor was it ever a presentation that the Army approved,” Capt. Lindsay Roman, public affairs officer of the 35th Signal Brigade, told CNSNews.com in an email.

Has that 'Instructor' been charged with sedition?  Silly question really. 

She added that the brigade “supports the right of every Soldier, civilian employee and family member to file an Equal Opportunity complaint when experiencing or witnessing unfair treatment based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation and/or national origin.”

As long as it is not simply exercising White Privilege, presumably, and does not complain about a 'person of colour' or a female, or heavens and the Batallion Cmdr forbid, a Transgender person' ! 

When CNSNews.com asked Roman if the instructor had been disciplined for altering the original training material, she replied: “The brigade leadership determined that re-training was the most appropriate course of action, and the instructor received a 40-hour block of instruction.”

Again, presumably the previous 'Train the Trainer' program did not work. Had someone made 'unauthorised' alterations to that too? 

Diversity and Inclusion.

“The United States military is in the midst of the longest period of sustained combat in our nation’s history,” Judicial Watch said in a press release.

“It is beyond belief that our military personnel would be required to sit through a left-wing effort at PC brainwashing as the price for defending our country.” 

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/troops-ft-gordon-got-unauthorized-lecture-white-privilege

You had better believe it.

Drink up. I have some tea from Darjeeling especially blended for White American Male oppressors.

And don't worry: some friendly woman of colour will write a book in 60 years or so saying you were actually quite a benefit.

Pax.

The CO2 Baloney

Belief is much maligned. A belief or two came in for some knocking in the P&B this morning. Knowledge is transient and incomplete, although there are some 'scientists' - perhaps pseudo-scientists would be a more accurate term - would have us believe otherwise, so sure are they that what they know is the end of any argument. 

The science is settled, they say. 

Sheer hubris.

The great CO2 debate is stiffled by such certainty. Nobel Prizes are sometimes given for sheer Ego-size and that is a Fact. One can be forgiven for speaking up about what one knows but unless it is qualified by a nod to the  'T'was-ever-thus' Fact that what we know is very soon going to be improved upon, refuted and replaced, we can establish very expensive 'Policies' that blow up in our faces.

So it is with the great Global Warming scam which keeps so many lab-coat manufacturers in business.

We are told as a 'Fact' that Mankind (no, make that 'MENZ !!! (tm)  ) - is responsible for Global Warming. Wimminz are the ones that suffer the most from it, is another factoid we are told to swallow. 

Industrial mankind has 'caused' a HUGE rise in CO2 on our Planet. We are told. By 'scientists'.

We are to believe it. Or else.

But what of volcanos ?  a skeptic might ask; or a denier as they are more commonly called.  Don't they pump out a bit of CO2 too? And weren't they pumping it out long before we bipedals 'evolved' to the dizzy heights of pumping oil?

"Ahh, but Volcanos are a mere also-ran contributor", say the Anthropological GW blamers. 

Now, in the Tavern's bars comes a challenge to 'best' knowledge and Belief.

Robin Wylie, from University College London  was having a swift pint and telling the morning imbibers.

Long Invisible, Research Shows Volcanic CO2 Levels Are Staggering 

 Until the end of the 20th century, the academic consensus was that this volcanic output was tiny — a fiery speck against the colossal anthropogenic footprint. Recently, though, volcanologists have begun to reveal a hidden side to our leaking planet.

That new scientific paradigm, 'consensus' has much to answer for. And we forgive a UCL chap's grammar too. The research was not 'long invisible': the CO2 levels were simply under-rated and overstated. One of the 'T'was-ever-thus' facts. Still.......

The exploding hills really give the game away: We've always known the Earth is a smoker. The true extent of its habit, though, is only just beginning to surface.

 http://www.livescience.com/40451-volcanic-co2-levels-are-staggering.html

Before the human species found its talent for pyromania, atmospheric levels of the Earth's greenhouse superstar, carbon dioxide (CO2), were controlled, for the most part, by volcanoes.

Since our planet emerged from the debris which formed the solar system, some four and a half billion years ago, a lifetime supply of primordial carbon has been locked away in the mantle — against its will.

Oh dear. CO2 does not have a 'Will'. Unless one is willing to anthropomorphise gasses !  Still... read on.

Partnering with oxygen and smuggled as a dissolved gas in liquid rock, it breaches the surface at our planet's volcanic airways: CO2, then, has been seeping into the planet's atmosphere for as long as there has been one.

Exactly how much CO2 passes through the magmatic vents in our crust might be one of the most important questions that Earth science can answer. 

Volcanoes may have been overtaken in the carbon stakes, but in order to properly assess the consequences of human pollution, we need the reference point of the natural background. And we're getting there; the last twenty years have seen huge steps in our understanding of how, and how much CO2 leaves the deep Earth. 

But at the same time, a disturbing pattern has been emerging.

In 1992, it was thought that volcanic degassing released something like 100 million tons of CO2 each year.

And believed as a Fact. 

Around the turn of the millennium, this figure was getting closer to 200 [million]. 

The most recent estimate,released this February, comes from a team led by Mike Burton, of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology – and it’s just shy of 600 million tons. 

It caps a staggering trend: A six-fold increase in just two decades.   

These inflating figures, I hasten to add, don't mean that our planet is suddenly venting more CO2.

Humanity certainly is; but any changes to the volcanic background level would occur over generations, not years. The rise we’re seeing now, therefore, must have been there all along: As scientific progress is widening our perspective, the daunting outline of how little we really know about volcanoes is beginning to loom large.

The 'rise' there all along?  I hope that is simple grammar too and not a less than firm grasp on what he speaks about. I put it down to his youth, m'self, and his education in our oh-so dumbed system. He means, of course, that we measured it poorly in the first place and have been getting better at it. That is the 'rise'. 

Why not replace hubris with humility.

The exhalations of our planet can be spectacularly obvious.

The fireworks, though, are only part of the picture. We now know that the CO2 released during volcanic eruptions is almost insignificant compared with what happens after the camera crews get bored. 

The emissions that really matter are concealed. 

The silent, silvery plumes which are currently winding their way skyward above the 150 or so active volcanoes on our planet also carry with them the bulk of its carbon dioxide. Their coughing fits might catch the eye — but in between tantrums, the steady breathing of volcanoes quietly sheds 

upwards of a quarter of a billion tons of CO2 every year. 

We think. Scientists' best estimates, however, are based on an assumption. It might surprise you to learn that, well into the new century, of the 150 smokers I mentioned, almost 80 percent are still as mysterious, in terms of the quantity of CO2 they emit, as they were a generation ago: We've only actually measured 33.

If the 117 unsampled peaks follow a similar trend, then the research community's current projection might stand. But looking through such a small window, there's no way of knowing if what we have seen until now is typical or not. 

It's like shining a light on a darkened globe: randomly, you might hit Australia, and think you’d seen it all – while on the edge of your beam, unnoticed, would be Asia. Our planet's isolated volcanic frontiers could easily be hiding a monster or two; and with a bit of exploration, our estimate of volcanic CO2 output could rise even higher.

You'd think that would be enough. That might be my fault — I tend to save the weird stuff until the end. Recently, an enigmatic source of volcanic carbon has come to light that isn't involved with lava — or even craters. It now seems that not only is there CO2 we can't get to, there's some we can't even see.

Carbon dioxide is always invisible, but its presence can be inferred in volcanic plumes — betrayed by the billowing clouds of water vapour released alongside it. Without the water, though, it's a different story. The new poster-child of planetary degassing is diffuse CO2 — invisible emanations which can occur across vast areas surrounding the main vents of a volcano, rising through the bulk of the mountains. This transparent haze is only just beginning to receive proper attention, and as such we have very little idea of how much it might contribute to the global output.

Even more incredibly, it even seems that some volcanoes which are considered inactive, in terms of their potential to ooze new land, can still make some serious additions to the atmosphere through diffuse CO2 release.

Residual magma beneath dormant craters, though it might never reach the surface, can still 'erupt' gases from a distance. Amazingly, from what little scientists have measured, it looks like this process might give off as much as half the CO2 put out by fully active volcanoes.

If these additional 'carbon-active' volcanoes are included, the number of degassing peaks skyrockets to more than 500. Of which we've measured a grand total of nine percent. You can probably fill it in by now — we need to climb more mountains.

Flashes of bright light illuminate our knowledge and what we Believe. 

A bit of a Revelation, in fact.

Now, I have to admit something here: I am a Knight. And a Tavern Keeper. I was a King. I have travelled. I have even tried Hermiting, Psychomancy and being a bit of a Monk, but my vast experience has not included being a climate scientist. But I can assess evidence.

An occasional customer, Lloyd, can too.

Now, again to be fair in this, he did have a few more things to say so I will let him take us out while I pull him a pint.

And remember, our drinks in this Tavern do not contain CO2. They have their own special Fizz !!

Pax