Book launch talk

Here is the transcript of my book launch talk in Hampton Court on 26 May. 

The Emergency Bouzouki Player is a war story.

I started writing this book in January 1979 when I found myself in a place called the shooting range, one week into basic training as an infantryman in the town of Kimberley, in a unit called 11 Kommando, being prepared for a war called the ‘Border war’, which we now know as ‘the war for apartheid’.

The border war as some of you will know was at the time Africa’s longest running conflict, going on for some 23 years and in 1979 it was at its height even though the terrorist leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, Nelson Mandela had been captured and sentenced to life in prison.

My story started with a realisation. I had been press-ganged. Shanghai’d if you like out of my student life as a happy musical 18 year old and placed in a uniform under the life and death auspices of thoroughly unpleasant Afrikaner Army instructors charged with, in their own words ‘breaking down the person to build a soldier’.

I was at that time a soft skinned University student with liberal leanings, and did not take kindly to being ‘broken down’. To compound matters still further, I am a Libran, and as any Libran will understand, possessed with an advanced sense of justice and fairness. The shock of being threatened – on pain of death – with the prospect of becoming a soldier to fight the war in defense of apartheid was iniquitous to me. I literally could not believe that what was happening around me could be either legal or acceptable.

Although my circumstance was a common one in that every South African born white male of my generation had to serve 2 years of National service, I fell into a small minority group for whom reluctant compliance was replaced by obstinate commitment to fight the system, and so my war began. I was drafted into a war, and a war is what followed. Two years of bitter war with the South African Army.

I completed 5 days of basic training before I reached my self-determined tipping point, after which time I became a deceitful refusenik. Integral to my deceit was the claim to be a bouzouki player. This was especially significant in my story because my only hope of salvation from being sent to fight and kill on the border lay in being transferred to the Entertainment corps. A quite amazing unit tasked with providing a top class show band to service Government and senior military functions.

Being possibly the most desirable posting in the Army, many thousands of gifted musicians applied for a place in the Entertainment corps and the competition for selection was tough. When my turn came to fill out my application for the role of guitar player, in the column marked ‘do you play any other instruments’ I wrote Bouzouki, even though I had no skills on that instrument. I made this claim because, as a Greek, I obviously knew a bit about the Bouzouki, and understanding the South African stereotypical way of thinking, I bluffed that being Greek and saying I could play the bouzouki would add up to – aha – now we have a Bouzouki player.

By this slim thread of deceit and coincidence, I became the South African Army’s premier Bouzouki player and by devising a clever rolling plectrum style on my guitar, was able to approximate the sound of a bouzouki with sufficient conviction to fool even the Prime Minister with my smooth sultry bouzouki styling’s.

On one occasion where I was performing my bouzouki music for the Prime Minister, the odious PW Botha, also known as the great crocodile, possibly because he was so very ugly he resembled a crocodile, driven by his close proximity to a moment of sociopathic rage, I told him  that his ‘bum stinks.’

A modest footnote in the annals of revolutionary protest I know, but certainly the only occasion where a teenaged troop in uniform was able to insult a Prime Minister to his face, in the presence of half of his cabinet, and live to tell the tale.

That tale, and many more like it form the fabric of the book. Two years in the life of a Greek teenager at war with the South African army and two years that shaped the destiny of the emerging South Africa.

In my role as a bandsman in the Entertainment corps I traveled the length and breadth of South Africa and the war zone, which, when I look back on it, was a lot like watching surgery take place from the perspective of the scalpel.

A microscopic insight into the festering toxic puss rotting the soul of a diseased nation. South Africa in 1979 was a sick society. Driven by a fanatical fundamentalism, a religious belief system acquired through that cynical sickening confidence trick called blind-faith.      

With their blind-faith, their god and their iniquitous laws of hate empowering a tiny minority to persecute harass and kill at their whim, they, the devoutly Christian Afrikaner ruling elite, armed, trained and turned a generation of 18 year olds with white skins into the killers and persecutors of their black peers, on a scale that I still find quite incredible. Along the way they found time to kill off many of the very best South Africa had to offer, killing off almost an entire generation of future leaders, like the remarkable Neil Aggett, who I met not long before his terrible death after 70 days of torture in John Vorster square, and the equally remarkable Steven Biko.

I always found it a curious aspect of Christian belief that the Afrikaner Police who tortured and killed Biko and Aggett  are Church going Christians who are assured an eternity in heaven, whilst the atheists Biko and Aggett who gave their lives in service to helping those less fortunate are at this very moment serving their time in the burning pits of hell.

But the book is not limited to doom and gloom and self-limiting stupidity. There are many humorous moments along the way with many inspirational occurrences to raise the spirits, and looking back on it through the retrospectometer, it supports a principle that extends far beyond my own story. That bad experience is a far more efficient teacher than good. And so in that sense, it is a book with a happy ending, being a tribute to the resilience of youth and proof that the human capacity for optimism generates its own unstoppable force. 

Order Hard copy HERE  (With postage £22 to anywhere in the world.)

Order e book copy for Kindle HERE

Order ebook for ipad from itunes HERE

Israel 1967.

Is there anything more stomach turning than listening to an Israeli leader telling off an American President? Watching Netanyahu with his huge IQ rolling out the old platitudes for an embarrassingly docile Obama with his silly reference to the 1967 border is like watching a snake swallow a mouse.

The border change that came in 1967 following the so called '6 day war' saw Israel bombing and killing all around them with great success, including the American ship they attacked on June 8, 1967. 

The USS Liberty was in 1967 the US Navy's most advanced surveillance ship, patrolling the Mediterranean in International waters within monitoring distance of Israel during the 6 day war under the command of Captain William McGonagle, when IDF boats and planes launched a sustained attack on her, killing 34 Americans and wounding 171 crew.

This attack provides a pretty clear indication of Israels position when it comes to American interference with Israels right to self defense by whatever means necessary, be it the seizure of neighboring land, or the bombing of American ships and killing of American Sailors.

If ever there was substance to the idea that pro Zionist influence runs a controlling hand over News media, it may be found in the total exclusion of the USS Liberty's attack by Israel from any mainstream press. 

IDF Planes strafe an American Navy ship flying the American flag, repeatedly, while IDF Boats launch torpedoes and make every effort to sink her. 34 Americans die and only  heroic defensive action by the American sailors prevented the ship and all who sailed on her going to the bottom of the Ocean under the weight of IDF fired missiles and torpedoes, which we can safely assume were paid for by American Israeli funding.  
And the reaction from the Worlds press is - Nothing to see here.
  The surviving crew of the USS Liberty, led by Captain William McGonagle, must have been as surprised as we all are to see how quickly the entire event was denied. 

To this day, despite the heavyweight representations by high level US Navy leaders, there has never been any accountability for the attack and killing of American sailors by the IDF. 

This is because Israel can attack anyone with impunity, including American Navy ships. It seems strange that Obama would be the only recent American President unaware of this.

Following the swift burial of the USS Liberty story, survivors of the IDF attack on that ship presented a War Crimes report. 

"The United States is obligated by law and by international treaty to investigate all reports of war crimes by or against United States Forces. This report obligates such an investigation. We are still waiting patiently for a reply." 

Obama with his tremendous enthusiasm for promoting revenge on those who launch attacks on America may well be playing a double bluff with the brilliant Netanyahu. Perhaps this is his strategy all along. Does the US at last have a leader prepared to avenge the dead of the USS Liberty?
On 8th June it will be 44 years.

Here is the USS LIBERTY memorial  website, by survivors of the IDF attack, in case you are unfamiliar with the events of 8 June 1967, some 40 km out to sea.

 

Selling news

Increasingly since the advent of rolling live TV news, news agencies face the challenge of supplying demand for popular stories in a fiercely competitive market, where Political interests often require spinning of the subject matter. In this tripartite meeting place between profit making, reporting the facts and spinning the Government cheese, the one thing you can be sure of is that the news you are seeing places the traditionally understood model of journalistic integrity guiding honest reporting of events considerably below the other two.

The Lara Logan story demonstrates how far news agencies have strayed from the path of honest reporting quite well.

Remember just a few Months ago how captivated we all were with events in Cairo's Tahrir square. The brave protesters facing down the nasty Mubarak forces. How we cheered them on. Papers ran double page spreads showing where each group had their headquarters and where the toilets were and where the Human rights activists were. All jolly good reporting which we lapped up. Thousands of miles of newsprint sold. Tahrir square - right up there with Tiananmen. The tension grew and grew and wherever you went, anywhere in the world for that matter, the talk was all perfectly clear. Mubarak bad. Protesters good. Support change in Egypt. Then, overnight, Egypt disappeared from the news. The disappearance coincided with events following Mubarak's resignation announcement, 11 February, and in the time it takes to say 'Nothing to see here' Egypt's revolution was pushed down the pecking order with just a one line mention of a journalist being assaulted in the Cairo Square.

What happened to Lara Logan, South African born reporter for CBS, is of course not the news that suits the commercial interests of the broadcasters, placing itself so firmly at odds with the product on sale. Mubarak, established regime, bad - Protesters, change for the better, good.

Twenty five minutes after Lara Logan's horrific sexual attack by around 200 men, who committed acts so violent and debased that describing them as barbaric animals whose actions demonstrate with more clarity than any gifted writer could hope to achieve with the written word, the inherent vulgarity of their belief system, Egypt was no longer suitable front-page news.

The thought that for 25 minutes whilst the good men of Tahrir square repeatedly raped, bit chunks off, urinated and ejaculated over, and generally battered this woman, no one in the crowd saw fit to intervene, although some felt it appropriate to cheer and clap, while others photographed the attack on their cell phones.

Eventually, someone did step in. Gosh and darn. One of Mubarak's soldiers, who baton charged the raping protesters and carried her body, over his shoulder, out of further harms way. Almost certainly that mans actions saved Lara Logan's life.

That soldiers story would make a good feature, wouldn't it? Brave fellow who placed his own life at risk at a time when he was very much a villain of world peace. Well. of course not. He is/was a Mubarak employee and no one is interested in that story. (I wonder if Lara Logan ever found him with thanks.)

Even her own employers, CBS News downplayed the incident. Nothing to see here.

http://www.uncoverage.net/2011/02/lara-logans-rape-in-egypt-square-much-worse-than-reported/

News is a cynical business. I find its usually safe to assume 90% of what you see is split between Government cheese and broadcasters commercial interest. Coincidentally this is about the same percentage split Ronnie Johnson's formula for identifying idiots confirms.