Palestinian Prisoners

The recent news that agreement has been reached to secure the release of an Israeli soldier in return for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners is most welcome.  Especially for all those who will be released.  However it should not obscure the reality of Israel’s ongoing attack on Palestinians.

For example, since the military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, Israel has imprisoned more than 700,000 Palestinians.  This represents around 20% of the population.  Just take a moment or two to reflect on this.  Some 20% of the population of Palestine has been imprisoned by the Israelis over the past 40 years.

Currently there are, according to the Israel Prison Service, approximately 5,200 Palestinians in Israeli prisons.  The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights claims that more than 6,000 Palestinians are in prison.

It is also important to note that though these Palestinian prisoners are civilians they are dealt with by Israeli military courts.  This in itself is against UN conventions.  In addition human rights organizations have found wide spread abuses of the accused people’s rights, including interrogation without the presence of a lawyer.

All this of course in the context of an ongoing occupation.  Any kind of resistance to this brutal occupation is met with arrest and subsequent imprisonment via a military court.  It should also be noted that most of this resistance to the occupation is either peaceful - marches, demonstrations etc - or involves throwing stones.   Not the sort of activities that would normally get you imprisoned in the UK.  Even in Northern Ireland during the height of the troubles, was there such a heavy handed resort to imprisonment.

The treatment of Palestinian prisoners within Israeli prisons leaves much to be desired.   Amnesty International has reported “consistent allegations of torture and other ill-treatment, including of children. Among the most commonly cited methods were beatings, threats to the detainee or their family, sleep deprivation, and being subjected to painful stress positions for long periods.”

It seems that things have got even worse.  As a result since September 27, thousands of Palestinian prisoners have been on a hunger strike to protest the conditions of their incarceration. They have made several key demands, including an end to abusive isolation, restrictions on higher education in prisons, denial of books and newspapers, shackling, excessive fines, and most importantly, an end to all forms of collective punishment, including the refusal of family visits, night searches of prisoners’ cells, and the denial of basic health treatment.

While news of the release of Gilad Shalit has made the front pages of newspapers world wide, little has been reported about this hunger strike, which is now in its third week.  Let us hope that amid the joy at the release of some Palestinian prisoners, the world’s media turn some attention to the conditions of the remaining prisoners.

For more information about Palestinian prisoners, see this fact sheet published by the Institute for Middle East Understanding.

Photo of the Month - September 2011

September has become our favourite month for visiting Switzerland.  This has something to do with the fact that Alessio's birthday is on 3rd September and this year he was five as you can just make out as he tries to blow out all the candles on his yummy cake.

One of our great pleasures when in Switzerland is to just wander around Zürich and other towns looking at some of the wonderful sights.  Zürich doesn't have any real skycrapers, but recently they did build Prime Tower, which is by far the biggest and highest building in the city.  Below are a couple of views of the place.

On a completely different scale is this rather unusual and somewhat "in your face" family home which I came across in Kilchberg.

Zürich is a pretty bright and lively city and below is my attempt to capture the city at night.

Switzerland is also a great place for window shopping.  With the exchange rate so poor, it is just about the only shopping we can afford.  However the window displays are so beautifully arranged that it is a pleasure to linger by some of them.  Here are a couple.

Everywhere in Switzerland you come across public drinking fountains.  Usually they are very simple affairs, and in autumn they begin to fill up with falling leaves.  This often makes for some beautiful displays as in the one below, taken in Rüschlikon.

The holiday is of course also a time to relax and luckily we always manage to sneak in some R&R, usually accompanied by a glass of fine wine.

Though we are based in Zürich, we always manage to visit other parts of Switzerland.  One of our trips was to Schaffhausen where we visited the Rheinfall, the largest waterfall in Europe.  Nothing compared to the giants elsewhere in the world, but still, pretty impressive.

Our main trip this time was to Zermatt, a ski resort in the south of the country near the Italian border.  We had glorious sunny weather and had a wonderful time going up the mountain railways and admiring the views.  Below is Alessio in reflective mode just below the summit of the Gornergrat at 3,100m and then the Matterhorn itself the iconic mountain of the area.

Back in Scotland things returned to a slightly slower pace.  But we still managed to fit in one more outing, this time to an Apple Day at the Botanical Gardens in St Andrews.  We went with Elena and her boys and there was plenty for them to do, including crushing apples to make apple juice.  They also got to try out a special tool for coring and peeling apples as demonstrated by Jamie below.

I end September with this photo of a rather colourful butterfly which we found attached to a wall on one of the houses in our street.

Does the Tory Party have a Future in Scotland?

That is a future other than stagnating at around 16% of the electorate.  This a question for all the Unionist parties, but is particularly urgent for the Scottish Tories as they are in the middle of a leadership election.  And one of the candidates - Murdo Fraser - has come up with a novel and rather daring solution to the crisis of Toryism in Scotland.  His solution is to disband the current party - The Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party - and begin afresh with a new party with a new name.  Alan Trench has written an interesting piece here, showing that this proposal is in tune with developments elsewhere in the world.

There is a lot to be said for this idea, and at the very least shows that some Tories are aware of how much Scotland has changed over the last two or three decades.  Which is more than can be said of either the LibDems or Labour.  However merely changing the name is unlikely to make much of a difference.  If a new centre-right party is to succeed then it needs to accept the key reality of politics in Scotland now.  All opinion polls, not to mention actual votes, confirm that the overwhelming majority of Scots want their politicians and their political parties to put Scotland first.  To stand up for Scotland as it is often popularly expressed.  In the key constitutional question this translates into an expressed demand for the Scottish Parliament to be given substantially more powers, including financial and economic powers.  Indeed most Scots want their Parliament to have more or less full control over taxation.  Instead of a block grant coming from London to Edinburgh, the Scottish Government would send a cheque down to London to cover Scotland’s share of the remaining UK matters - primarily defence, foreign affairs and whatever else was felt to be better dealt with at a UK wide level.

Such a policy change to what is often referred to as fiscal responsibility, should be natural territory for a centre-right party.  It would ensure that future Scottish governments could only promise to spend what they were prepared to raise in taxes.  There would be no-one else to blame.  This is the kind of thing the Tories are always going on about - getting rid of the dependency culture, standing on your two feet, taking responsibility etc.

This policy has the great added advantage of making it clear that the new party is indeed a Scottish party, beholden to no-one else.  The new party could and probably will have clear links with the Conservative party in England and Wales, but it would in fact and in deed be an independent party.  Maintaining the UK would remain a key part of their programme, but the emphasis would clearly be on Scotland.  Since polls show that this is want most Scots want - a more powerful parliament, but remaining within the UK - the new party would for the first time in decades be in tune with majority opinion in Scotland.  

The other advantage that would come from such a policy change is that the new party could expect to attract a lot of popular support for its centre-right policies.  For despite appearances to the contrary, Scotland has historically been a predominantly centre-right country.  The only party to win over 50% of the popular vote in a general election was the old Tory party, way back in the mid 1950s.   There has been a steady decline since then, which became a flood with the rise of Thatcherism which was massively rejected by almost all sections of Scottish opinion.  The final blow came with the rise of the SNP, who were originally dubbed the Tartan Tories by their political opponents.  This would seem to indicate that there is fertile ground for a  centre-right party that is seen to be authentically Scottish and one that puts Scottish interests first.

But herein perhaps lies the rub.  For the current Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party seems to have become reduced to primarily representing those who are more attached to the UK than to Scotland.  It is telling that of the four candidates standing for the leadership, only one, the aforementioned Murdo Fraser, is calling for this radical change in direction.  The party seems to be bitterly divided over this proposal.  The danger for the Tories is that if they reject Murdo Fraser and his vision, they become an even more marginalised party.  A rump of embittered right wing unionists who would deep in their hearts really like to the the Scottish Parliament disappear and all would be well in the world again as in the glory days of Mrs T.  Alas for them, such a Scotland never existed.

Fiscal responsibility is of course, not just a Tory idea.  It has been LibDem policy, or at least some version of it has been.  The LibDems are after all the historic party of Home Rule and are theoretically at least in favour of a Federal UK.  Strangely Fiscal responsibility has never much appealed to the Labour party.  In this Labour too faces the prospect of a slow decline à la Scottish Tories.  They are in serious danger of becoming more and more defined by their visceral opposition to any further change and to maintaining the UK at any cost.

If the Unionist parties are to succeed in persuading a majority of Scots to stay with the UK, then paradoxically they need to become more independent and Scottish first.  Most Scots want their political parties to represent Scotland and not to be primarily branch parties of the UK.  We will shortly find out if the Tories, of all people, have seized their chance to respond to this key dynamic of Scottish politics.

FC Barcelona: 4-3-3 or 3-4-3?

One of the hot topics for aficionados of Barça during the summer was how will the team line up this season.  Especially with the arrival of Cesc Fàbregas, it was reckoned by many that Guardiola would revert to Johan Cruyff's famous 3-4-3 system as a way to incorporate Cesc while still finding space for Xavi and Iniesta.  So far this has proved to be the case.  However it always amazes me that most commentators refer to this 3-4-3 line up as more risky than the traditional   4-3-3.  At first sight 3-4-3 does appear to be a more attack minded line up.  However the conventional way to describe the line-ups do not describe the same thing.  


4-3-3 only describes the defensive system that Barça use when they need to defend.  However, 3-4-3 describes an attacking line-up.  In reality when Barça have to defend they always seek to get their players into a 4-3-3 formation.  This is important as Barça are a very attack minded team and tend to dominate possession of the ball.  What is crucial then is how the team is aligned at the moment when they lose possession of the ball.  For this is when the team is most vulnerable to a counter attack.  


It is therefore better to compare the two attacking line-ups that Barça tend to use.  In this case 4-3-3 becomes much more a 2-3-2-3 line-up.  While 3-4-3 is more accurately described as a 3-1-2-1-3 system.  From this it is obvious that the so-called 4-3-3 line-up as actually as practised by Barça is the more risky option.  With this system, when the team lose possession they only have two defenders in place, while with the other system they always have three defenders in place.  In other words, 3-4-3 is the more secure defensively.


It may be easier to appreciate the difference if we put names to the line-ups.  First the traditional 4-3-3 or more accurately, 2-3-2-3 system.  Recently this has featured the following players, starting from the back.


                           Abidal                          Villa
Piqué                                      Iniesta
                           Busquets                      Messi
Mascheranno                         Xavi
                          Alves                             Pedro


When the team lose the ball, Abidal and Alves move back to form a back four with Piqué and Mascheranno, while Iniesta and Xavi also move back to line up alongside Busquets, thus creating the traditional 4-3-3 defensive set-up.


Now for the 3-4-3 or 3-1-2-1-3 system.  This is how it looks with the following players, again starting from the back.


Abidal                                                                                 Villa
                                                 Iniesta
Mascheranno        Busquets                       Fàbregas         Messi
                                                 Xavi
Alves                                                                                   Pedro


In this case, when Barça lose the ball, Busquets would try to get back as quickly as possible to join the back three, while Fàbregas would also move back to play alongside Xavi and Iniesta.  Once again the team is organized in their traditional defensive 4-3-3 set-up.


So, as far as I can see, the so-called 3-4-3 line-up is the more secure defensively, as the team always has three defenders in place.  The other advantage is that the diamond shaped midfield allows Guardiola to play Fàbregas alongside Xavi and Iniesta.  There would appear though to be two downsides to this system.  One was shown in the first half of their away match against Valencia.  There the home team attacked with skill, speed and numbers and caused Barça all kinds of problems and managed to score two goals.  What this shows to me is that against some teams, Guardiola may have to use four defenders.  The crucial point is that the two full backs have to stay back.  In such a situation Barça's attacking line-up would be 4-1-2-3.  The other possible weakness of 3-4-3 is that a lot seems to depend on the use of Fàbregas as the apex of the midfield diamond.  His skill, movement and understanding with Messi has been one of the keys to Barça's attacking threat this season.  Against Sporting, with Fàbregas injured, they tried Pedro in that role, with only limited success.  I'm not sure who else in the squad can fulfil this role with the same effectiveness as Fàbregas.  But it will be interesting to see if Guardiola sticks with this system while Cesc is out injured.  As usual interesting times ahead for Barça. 

More Unionist Nonsense

The current craze for Unionists to belittle Scotland and tell downright lies continues unabated.  A recent entry into the fray was newly elected Tory MSP Ruth Davidson.  She offered us a piece in the Better Nation weblog entitled - Why I’m proud to be Scottish and British.  From her initial paragraph it looked like we were to at long last to get some kind of positive case for the Union.  Alas this was not to be.

The give-away came later on when she wrote:  “I believe Scotland is better off as part of the United Kingdom.”  Now this is not a case for anything, merely as she herself states, her belief.  Well, some people continue to believe that the Earth is flat.  I was hoping for something in the way of evidence to support her belief, but none came.  The most that came was this anodyne, “We are part of one of the worlds largest economies.”  But what difference, pray Ms Davidson, did this actually make when the financial crisis came?  It certainly didn’t stop the crisis from coming.  And despite all the claims from the Coalition to the contrary, the UK economy is still in a deep, deep mess.

She continues with this gem, “We have more influence over our future, as well as other parts of the world.  Scots influence the direction of a great nation.  That is something we would lose if we lost the Union.  Unfortunately, small independent nations don’t have that influence.  Look at the impact of the credit crisis upon Scotland and Ireland.”  Her assertion that we influence the direction of a great nation would be more impressive if she came up some concrete examples of this influence.  I can think of none.  She seems to think that the baling out of HBOS and RBS was some kind act of tremendous generosity by the UK government towards badly run Scottish banks.  But as all studies have shown, both these banks are UK banks.  They may have the word Scotland in their name and they may be headquartered in Scotland, but they are both integral parts of the UK financial system.  Crucially most of their business is done in England.  They are thus regulated by UK wide authorities.  Though precious little regulation seems to have taken place.  She provides no other examples of Scots influencing the direction of the UK.

Her broader claim that we have more influence over our future, as well as other parts of the world is just plain ridiculous.   It would have been nice if Ruth had explained in simple language and with a few illustrations just how Scots have more influence over our future than the citizens of independent countries.   The same applies to our apparent influence over other parts of the world.  This seems to boil down to the fact that a few Scots can and occasionally do, achieve prominent positions in the UK government.  This is not in any sense the same as Scotland as a country having influence.

It is also incredibly insulting to all those small independent countries who somehow manage to survive very nicely.  While Ireland may, just like the apparently great UK, be going through its own little difficulties, this is not the case with all small countries.  I wonder why she decided to only mention Ireland.  Could it be that the likes of Denmark, Norway, Finland and many others have been much less affected by the financial crisis than the UK?  And as regards the ludicrous notion that Scotland has some influence over the future of other parts of the world, is Ruth Davidson seriously of the belief that Denmark, Norway, Ireland, to name just three, all have less influence in the world than Scotland?

As usual what is missing from this article is any sense of the world beyond the UK.  If a small country like Scotland gets all these wonderful benefits from being part of a great nation, then surely other small countries would also benefit.  In particular, given her criticism of Ireland, surely she should be advocating that Ireland rejoins the UK so that it too can get all those benefits that now come to Scotland.  Is this in fact Ruth Davidson’s opinion?  It is amazing that no-one in Ireland is recommending this option.  Is anyone in the UK recommending it?  And what about other small countries.  Surely Denmark would benefit enormously from becoming part of Germany - the most successful of all European states.  And how come Portugal has not begged to rejoin Spain?  

The whole notion is of course absurd.  Yet the likes of Ruth Davidson continue to assert that Scotland and apparently Scotland alone, of all the small countries in the whole world needs the eternal support of a great nation.  Ruth claims she is proud to be Scottish.  Not sure why she should be proud to be part of a country that in her view is incapable of running it own affairs.  Methinks she is much more proud to be British.  Though God knows why.

Reading Challenges 2011 - Update

At the beginning of the year I wrote a post about Reading Challenges and this post is an update on my progress so far.  I have formally signed up for one just the one challenge - the East European Reading Challenge.  I didn’t specify the level, but as I have now read six books from Eastern Europe, I have already passed the tourist level, (four books) and need another two to reach the Amabassador status.  Which I will try to do between now and the end of the year.

The books have been a bit of a mixture.  I started with Boris Akunin and his Erast Fandorin series of crime novels.  Both The Turkish Gambit and The Winter Queen are set in the 1870s and are not your typical crime novel.  They tend to go at a rather leisurely pace and are full of strange and unusual characters.  They also give us a good idea of the world view of (probably) most Russians, not just then, but as of to-day.  Well worth trying out.

I followed up with two of the great classics of not just Russian, but world literature - Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.  Not much to add about either book.  Both are wonderful creations, though very much on the long side.

Since then I have dipped into post Yugoslav literature.  Death of the Little Match Girl is by Croatian writer Zoran Ferić, while The Tiger’s Wife is by Serbian author Tea Obreht.  Ferić writes in Croatian, while Obreht, who left Serbia as a child, writes in English and now lives in the USA.  Book books are rather strange and unsettling affairs.  Not surprising as both deal, in an offstage kind of way with the wars that followed the break up of Yugoslavia.  Interesting and on the whole successful attempts at story telling.  I now need to find two more books from Eastern Europe.

In addition to the Eastern European Challenge I set myself some non formal challenges of my own for the year.  I had hoped to dip into Japanese literature again but so far I have not managed one.  I have however read three books about China which would qualify me for the Merchant level in The Chinese Literature Challenge.  Two are by Chinese women writers who now live in the West and both deal with the travails of growing up in China.  Falling Leaves by Adeline Yen Mah is the author’s personal story of her and her family’s life in both pre and post revolutionary China and then subsequently in the USA.  She had a pretty unhappy childhood as she was actively disliked by her stepmother.  Miss Chopsticks by Xinran is an altogether more upbeat and light hearted tale of how young peasant women are beginning to empower themselves in the new China.  River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh is the second part of the Bengali writer’s trilogy set in the 1830s.  As most of the action in this novel takes place in and around Canton it qualifies for the Chinese Challenge.  River of Smoke is a great book about the interaction between Chinese and foreigners at the time of the 1st Opium War.  I have also read one other book by an Asian writer.  The Calligrapher’s Daughter by Eugenia Kim is set in Korea and vividly describes life in that country before and during the Japanese occupation.  This means that I have also made it for the East and South East Asia Challenge, as I can count two of the previously mentioned books for this challenge.

Another of my informal challenges was to continue reading lots of Scandinavian crime novels.  In particular I wanted to finish the Jo Nesbø series.  This I have managed to do quite easily and very enjoyably.  Just about everything I read from Scandinavia is very, very good.  I am now up-to-date with Jo Nesbø’s works.  Luckily I have come across a writer new to me - Mari Jungstedt from Sweden who writes about a detective based on the Baltic island of Gotland.  So far I have read one of this series, The Death of Summer and very good it was too.

Reading some books in German was another personal challenge and I have stubbornly stuck to it.  I say stubbornly as it is not at all easy for me to read books written in German.  But with the help of the dictionary I usually manage to get through.  So far I have read three books in German, two by Swiss writers - Die Haushälterin by Jens Petersen, a tender tale about the fraught relationship between a teenager and his widowed father; and Silberkiesel, a crime novel set in Basel, by Hansjörg Schneider.   The third was another krimi by Austrian writer Heinrich Steinfest.

I also planned to read more books in Spanish this year.  The challenge was to read one each month.   This I have not managed to do, partly because I have interspersed Spanish language books with German language books.  Nevertheless I have read four books in Spanish.  All of them crime novels and all very good.  In order of reading they were:  Un Crimen Imperfecto, by Teresa Solanas;  Ojos de Agua by Domingo Villar:  Ritos de Muerte by Alicia Gimenez Bartlett and Dulce Amor a Muerte by Guillermo Arriaga.  The first three are by Spanish writers, while the last is by a Mexican author.  As part of my Spanish language challenge I intend to sign up for another challenge - the Argentina Reading Challenge.  I hope to achieve the Student level, which requires me to read three books by Argentinian authors.  I now have two such books, again both crime novels - Plata Quemada by Ricardo Piglia and El Enigma de París by Pablo De Santis.  This challenge ends in February 2012, so I have until then to find one more book by an Argentinian author.  Wish me luck.

Photo of the Month - August 2011

August was quite a good month photo wise.  Early August sees the annual Pittenweem Arts Festival.  Below are some photos from the town.  The first is a view of the harbour, followed by an unusual use for lobster creels.

Next are some of the sculptures which dotted the main pier.  They were all made from discarded bits of motor bikes.

The following two photos come from the Tay estuary.  The first is a rather strange collection of objects which I found lying on the beach and then comes a little tug on the waters.

August is one of the school holiday months and we had the pleasure of Liam and Jamie's company for some of the time.  Here they are enjoying themselves.

During August we had some rather spectacular sunsets and here is my attempt to capture one of them.  It is the view looking across to the houses on the other side of our street.

Below is one of Kathleen's lovely flower arrangements which brighten our rooms.

For a few days in August Dundee hosted a Youth Festival with guests from all four of the city's Twin partners.  This included a delegation from Nablus in Palestine.  Below, one of the Nabulsi guests show off her new kilt.

August is also the birthday month for Liam, who is now eight years old.  Below are a couple of photos of Liam and his birthday cake, with first up the two Grannies in riotous form.

One of the highlights of August is to enjoy the full flowering of Hydrangeas.  The lace cap variety is Kathleen's favourite and below is a lovely specimen.

I end with one of my bargello pieces.  This one is entitled Petals and was stitched in shades of violet and lavender.  I think it goes well with the hydrangea above.