Greene’s Insite

 Quite a few years ago, when no one had yet heard of the Euro, my wife and I spent a holiday in Greece. The island of Samos was where our dart had landed on the map of the Eastern Med, so off we went. We stayed in a small family-run hotel in a village called Kokkari, a place which at that time boasted a fish restaurant where you couldn’t order fish and a car hire firm where you couldn’t rent a car. ‘Take a pair of binoculars’ a friend had said, ‘for from the beach at Psilli Amos you can see Turkey and wish you were there.’ This advice struck us as unkind, but how right he turned out to be!  Our impression of the Greeks  (or at least the Samosians) was that of a people to whom smiling does not come easily, service is an alien concept and tourists are a bunch of interlopers only good for handing over their cash without expecting too much in return. It was only a first impression and at the time I was willing to concede that repeated and longer visits to Greece might change my mind. No longer.

One day, at Psilli Amos beach, I was looking at the Turkish coast through my binoculars, wishing I was there. There was something intensely beautiful and mysterious about the blue and purplish mountains that made me want to swim across the 1.5 kilometre wide strait and never come back. In fact, I tried swimming across but there was such a strong current that I drifted off and barely made it back to the beach. I had to walk about 500 metres through the soft sand to rejoin my wife and my binoculars.

A bit further on there reclined lazily in the sun a man with greyish straggly hair and leathery weatherbeaten skin. He was wearing crumpled shorts and, from time to time, picked up a bit of fishing net, stared at it for a moment and then put it down again. I had noticed, while observing Turkey through my binocs, that he would regularly glance in my direction. Then, suddenly, he got up and walked over to me. Wordlessly he held out his right hand, while pointing at my binoculars with his left. I gathered he would like to have a look at Turkey, so I handed them over with a friendly smile. He didn’t smile back, but returned to where he came from, sat down and began to scan the horizon. After about ten minutes I felt it was time to re-take possession of what was rightfully mine, so I went over to him and asked him in my most pleasant manner if I could have my binoculars back. At first he ignored me completely, but when I didn’t walk away he looked up and said, in English: ‘You give me. You rich tourist, me poor Greek.’ I felt for him, of course, but as proof of his automatic entitlement to my possessions I found it unconvincing. So I said something like ‘no, no, I really must have them back’ trying to inject into my voice a tone of urgency, if not outright menace. Visibly annoyed at my display of crypto-colonial selfishness he handed me my property and turned away, muttering under his breath an imprecation that sounded like ‘taramasalata’ but could well have been something entirely different.

I was reminded of this holiday when, in early 2001, it was cheerfully announced that Greece, after earlier doubts as to its viability as a member of the European monetary union, was now allowed to adopt the Euro. It meant, as far as I could see, that one and the same currency now had to represent economies of such wildly different strengths that little good could come of it. And so it proved. After the initial boom in countries like Ireland and Spain and, to a lesser extent, Portugal and Greece, the bust has now set in with a vengeance. And still there would be no problem, still the governments of Europe’s economic superpowers would happily be pouring further billions into the bottomless pit of Greek and other debt, but for one thing: their taxpayers (the real victims of the whole shambles) are getting restless. Sooner or later, the Merkels and Sarkozys of this world will have to seek re-election and their prospects don’t look good. Other leaders will come to the fore who realize that the tune should rightfully be called by those who pay the piper. Many Europeans are currently wondering why they have to tighten their belts, work longer for smaller pensions, see energy prices rise to astronomic heights and their savings dwindle, just so the people they foolishly elected can fritter it away on such unrealistic extravagancies as the ‘European Project’.

Luckily, here in the Netherlands the voting public has other things to worry about, such as immigration, the ranking of the national football team, or the burning question ‘will the North-South metro line in Amsterdam ever be built?’ Of course here, too, people will have to pay more for less in public services, health care and the like and work longer for smaller pensions but hey! These things have been happening in the Netherlands for many years, long before the global economic collapse and the Euro crisis. It’s tradition here that prices and taxes go up relentlessly from year to year whatever the economic situation. This we call ‘prudence’ and ‘foresight’. Belt-tightening is a national sport, much as goat-dragging is in Afghanistan. On the international scene, the Dutch have found the perfect solution. In order not to have to think of answers to tricky questions ourselves, take difficult decisions or -God forbid!- act alone and risk opprobrium from our peers we simply do as the Germans do. Berlin wants to fund Greek debt? Then we do as well, with a smile. The Germans want to rid themselves of the modern Trojan Horse and cut the Greeks adrift? Just what they were thinking in The Hague too. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Look down Europe’s Main Street for a moment. Do you see Mama Merkel and Papa Sarkozy heading towards the nearest cash dispenser? And see that toddler sucking a lolly trotting on behind? That’s young master Rutte, our Prime Minister. Ten years from now, only the names will have changed.

I know I’ve been goofing off these last few months, but I do have an excuse. My 92-year old mother who lives in a care home and suffers from Alzheimer’s recently had a serious stroke. The result is precisely what my brother and I (her only surviving relatives) had not wanted; instead of peacefully going to sleep one night and not waking up the next morning she is now fighting for her life in hospital, with an array of tubes inserted in her nose, mouth and wrist. This should never happen to someone so old and frail, but there you are. The god that 1.3 billion Roman Catholics so fervently believe in chose to make her suffer some final horror and indignity before her death, which can’t be far off now. I know I’m expected to think something along the lines of  “thy will be done”, but all I can come up with are largely unprintable expressions of a far less devout nature.

I singled out the Roman Catholics but I’m aware, of course, that much the same unquestioning belief in a benign supreme being is shared by other Christians, Jews and Muslims around the world. Still, it’s Catholicism that arouses in me the most passionate surges of atheist fervour and anti-authoritarian resentment. This has to do with the fact that my mother’s second husband (and my brother’s biological father) was a bit of a Catholic priest in his spare time - of which, owing to his congenital inability to hold down a job, he had plenty. Given the fact that his clerical career was somewhat restricted by his aversion to celibacy (and who can blame him, for Ma in those days was a good-looking dame who respected the idea of chastity but didn’t feel it should stand in the way of a good time), his church was a modest affair, lacking the vaulted roof, marble pillars and pipe organ that one might reasonably expect in a branch office of the Holy See. Not to put too fine a point on it, what should have been a basilica the size of St. Peter’s was in fact the attic of our small council house in a western suburb of Amsterdam. The altar -a plank supported by two piles of bricks- looked very much the real article, as it was covered in a white sheet of the finest polyester, embossed with a gold-coloured cross. A small tabernacle holding a gold-plated chalice and two enormous wax candles completed the display. Particularly fond was our priest of his incense-burning thurible, a heavy brass contraption on a chain, which spewed acrid smoke that occasionally billowed out through the attic skylight, alerting the neighbours to the impending start of our worship.

Even smaller than the church itself was the congregation, consisting as it did of my mother, myself and my little brother. Every Sunday morning before breakfast a little bell would ring, as a sign that it was time for the three of us to climb upstairs where Pa would await us, enveloped in a cloud of incense and dressed in the finest ecclesiastical clobber. A full Mass (in Latin) followed, in the course of which the three faithful were to give their responses (also in Latin).  For example, when our priest would well-wish us with the traditional “Dominus vobiscum” the three of us would return the compliment with a tremulous “et cum spirito tuo”. So we would sit there, for well over an hour of “oremuses” and “sursum cordas”, until the words “ite, missa est” would send us scurrying down the stairs in search of breakfast. I used to hate every minute of it and, inevitably, came to hate the man who inflicted all this on a mere twelve-year old. Still, I can safely say that the loony he undoubtedly was never, ever, hurt a hair on any child’s head. Neither did he share the propensity to lie, deceive, manipulate and terrorize that characterizes the church to which his very human urges had forever denied him access.

The Lord be with you…..and with your spirit…..I was back to age twelve again last week, when I heard those words on BBC television. The Pope, who was on a state visit to England and Scotland was celebrating Mass in London. Before that he had already met the Queen, toured Edinburgh in his popemobile and done a gig in a park in Glasgow. Two things were on Benedict XVI’s mind: how to silence the ever louder protests against the way the Vatican has failed to deal with the burgeoning scandal of clerical child abuse and, even more urgently, how to stem the tide of -what he called- “the aggressive secularization of society”.  Having done little or nothing to bring the seemingly endless procession of frocked child rapists to justice (another man would have handed them all over to the police) not much remained for him but to apologize and express regret. And apologize again and express even more regret. It didn’t take too long before Britain and the watching world (except the Catholics, obviously) were heartily sick of the gushing contrition and remorse that remained so stubbornly devoid of positive action. In any other walk of life child abusers are dealt with very severely, both inside and outside the courts, losing their jobs, marriages, freedom and possibly even their very lives. But not in the Roman Catholic Church.

No, the miscreants who really push this Pope’s endurance to the limits are of a different type. They include, apart from homosexuals and women seeking to join the ministry, the current crop of outspoken god-deniers. It’s true, of course, that after many years of unbelieving in anonymity, atheists are at last showing their colours and trumpeting their views. To my mind it’s a welcome antidote to the mindless, spineless, unquestioning submission to religious indoctrination that is the lifeblood of the monotheistic faiths. Had their churches and their coffers been fuller, what would have been the chance of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Pope and the Chief Rabbi standing shoulder to shoulder on a dais, fulminating against a small, albeit vocal, bunch of freethinkers who prefer the illuminating power of reason, scientific evidence and discovery to the sensory deprivation, guilt and vain hope of future reward that come with blind faith? None whatsoever. They hate each other far more than they fear Dawkins. But needs must: bums in pews and pennies on the collection plate will keep the circus going. They’ve got to hang together lest, at some future time when the minds of the faithful have finally been set free, they’ll be made to hang separately. Metaphorically speaking, of course: atheists have no need to resort to any kind of violence, sexual or otherwise.

Still, one niggly thought remains. Dawkins recently embossed a London bus with the slogan: There Probably Is No God – So Stop Worrying And Enjoy Your Life. Could it be that the child abusing clerics have known this for a long time already?

“OK Barack, say after me: ‘Israel…..’”"

“Eh, Israel…..”

“….is…..”

“….is…..”

“wrong.”

“…weahhh…..frrrrr……bromm….”

“No, wrong. Say: wrong.”

‘Wroammmm….bongbollah…..drannnnn…whoooobaradabangabangbalooba.”

“Oh dear. Seems we’ve got a problem. Let’s try this. Say: ‘North Korea is wrong.’”

“North Korea is wrong.”

“Fine, fine. Now this. Say; ‘Iran is wrong.’”

“Iran is wrong.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. What about BP?”

“Wrong. But we’ll get their ass.”

“Al Qaeda?”

“Wrong. Probably the wrongest bunch on the planet.”

“The Taliban?”

“Wrong. Jeez, are they wrong.”

“Hamas?”

“Wrong. Seriously bad and dead wrong.”

“Splendid. Now again: ‘Israel is….’”

“Weahhh…..frrrrr…….brommmm…….”

Careful what I say now, I don’t want to be branded an antisemite or a holocaust-denier again. But what is careful? Am I to overlook the fact that the war-hungry part of the Israeli nation (which just happens to call the shots there) has no desire for a fair, equitable settlement with the Palestinians, believing instead that a few homemade missiles from time to time and the occasional suicide blast is a price well worth paying for the permanent enslavement of an entire people? Am I to believe, seriously believe, that the military assault on a small humanitarian flotilla on the high seas, constitutes a legitimate act of self-defence? Can anyone explain what the strongest military power by far in the Middle East has to fear from anyone? For many years now, every Palestinian pinprick (that’s what they are, no more) has been met with retribution of outrageous, brutal force and still the world’s politicians haven’t the guts to come to any conclusion other than that this is a battle between equals, that both sides have comparable weaknesses and strengths. So they wring their hands and call on both sides to please be reasonable. REASONABLE?                                                                                          

We’ve been here before, of course, and we’ll get to this point again unless…. Unless an American president comes to the fore who is not afraid of the powerful Jewish lobby in the United States, who is willing to put his own job on the line in a bid to settle this historic obscenity once and for all. Sixty-two years have seen the West move from outright, unquestioning, guilt-ridden support of Israel to the middle of the road, where Palestinian violent excesses are roundly criticized and met with concerted sanctions and Israel’s murderous transgressions are likewise bemoaned, although they have consistently remained unpunished. Mach shabbes damit, my father would have said. And watch another UN resolution get crumpled up into a ball.

Such is the hold that Zionist blackmailers have on us that, 65 years after the end of World War II, hysterical Israeli accusations of antisemitism still faze us, despite the fact that there are very few Jews left who have any conscious recollection of the period, just as there are very few Germans left who are old enought to have played an active part in the Holocaust. Of course this horrid episode in Man’s history must not be forgotten and lessons must be learned from it. But today, in 2010, I -a 69-year old half Jew from Amsterdam- reserve the right to call Benyamin Netanyahu a vicious thug, the settlers a bunch of wild-eyed fanatics and Israel a rogue state that gives the finger to anyone who urges restraint. I tell you, if today antisemitism is alive and well it isn’t because of an old and long discredited view of Jews as vermin or hook-nosed moneylenders and babysnatchers, but because of the modern perception of Israelis as benders of the truth who cock a snook at the rest of the world, pursue what they see as their self-interest with the most brutal means and then cry bloody murder when anyone dares to object. I share that perception, so maybe I’m an antisemite after all.

Anyway, I’m on record as a great admirer of Barack Obama, a man of deep intellect, great humanity and all the right instincts. His first year and a half in office has failed to bring all the great achievements I’d been hoping for but boy! Did he have the tide running against him! No, I can’t blame him for not doing the impossible. I blame him for not doing the achievable. An example: if I had been elected in Obama’s place I would, within weeks of my inauguration, have normalized relations with Cuba. Castro’s revolution is now a half century in the past, the man himself is no longer in charge, Cuba   -no longer enjoying the comfort of the Soviet Union standing shoulder to shoulder-  poses no credible threat of any kind. For God’s sake Obama, with America still squeezing the lifeblood out of that proud but underfed island, no wonder the Israelis think it’s OK to do the same to Gaza!

As for the Middle East: take it from me that no solution will ever be possble until and unless the state of Israel is taught that it can no longer rely on western support whatever the circumstances. Erase the word ‘unconditional’ from your Hebrew-English dictionary. Let Jerusalem know that the next time it oversteps the mark it can expect sanctions. Nothing military, you understand. We can’t have Israelis kill US troops with the very weapons Washington supplied to them. No, economic and diplomatic sanctions are the only ones that will do the trick. Cut off the money supply, boycot Israeli produce (I’ve been doing that for quite some years now), recall your Ambassador, that sort of thing. Tell all your western mates to do the same. Oh, and send a detail of the US fleet into the eastern Med to run humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Should be fun.                                           

Get it, Obama? The key to the solution to this 62-year old problem lies in your ability to tell the Israelis that they are wrong. That they’re wrong and that things are going to change whether they like it or not. Do not tie your geopolitical future to that of Bibi Netanyahu or some day he’ll drag you into a regional conflict worse than your worst nightmare.

It’s that time of year again: Sophie’s Choice, Schindler’s List and Der Untergang (The Downfall) have all been trotted out on TV once more, last night the Dutch remembered their dead with lots of bugle calls, pealing bells, minutes of silence, black outfits, bowed heads and faces set in masks of noble, earnest grief. 

Today, though, it’s party time in Holland. Liberation Day is being celebrated in a blaze of orange, red-white-and-blue. The country is littered with bandstands, bouncy castles, portable beer pumps and Canadians who can’t get enough of Dutch gratitude. The problem is: to remember May 5th 1945 with any clarity at all you’d have to be at least 70 years old. Like me, in fact. So how many of those oldies are there? The vast majority of the population here either knows about World War II and Dutch suffering second hand or, seeing as many come from places like Turkey, Morocco, Ethiopia, Somalia, Ghana and Iraq, don’t know anything at all and probably don’t care either. All this means that, in another ten years or so, there’ll be no one left in this country who has ever heard the menacing roar of overflying Stukas or harsh German voices barking orders during a razzia in their street. And who will remember the sickly taste of sugar beet bread, sugar beet soup, sugar beet mash and the, by comparison, exquisite flavour of tulip bulbs and potato peel? Yes, the Netherlands is ready to leave it all in the past and move on. In any case, all these national holidays are bad for the economy. People should work  their butts off and pay taxes, not dance in the park and get drunk.

The end of World War II is now 65 years behind us and the need to remember is no longer urgent. Other wars and holocausts have vied for our attention since and let’s face it: man has learned nothing at all from them. Identifying an enemy and then blasting the bejezus out of  them has always been a good way to unite a country and never more so now we’ve all gone multicultural.

Actually, the only country that really seems to have learned from past events is Germany itself. The way the German people -even the under sixty-fives who could not possible have been involved in any way- have donned their hairshirts and atoned for the  crimes of the Nazis to an extent unparallelled in human history. Not only has Germany paid billions upon billions in reparations to its former victims, it has made certain that nothing like the Holocaust will ever again be the result of German actions by passing anti-Nazi legislation so draconian that the question “isn’t that going a bit over the top?” seems entirely justified. A strong vein of anti-militarism now runs through German society where previously there was none.

But most of all Germany has redeemed itself through hard work and iron self-discipline. While the British wasted time revelling in their victory, queueing patiently for their rations and looking forward to the 1966 World Cup, the Germans worked. The French also took their time giving up their four- hour al fresco lunches and their barefoot grape treading, but the Germans worked at their lathes, in their foundries and on their autobahn system, creating an economic powerhouse unrivalled in Europe. The Italians, once the guns fell silent, went back to what they do best: get a haircut and ogle the girls at the Scala di Spagna. OK, they have woken up since and now build jolly fine cars when they’re not on strike. The Germans, though, worked. And worked. And worked. As a result, they are now the dominant economic force in Europe and the ones who sign most of the cheques. To cut a long story short: from the hideous aberration and the murderous excesses of the Thirties and Forties Germany has gone on to be a powerful force for good. Long may it last. It deserves much better from us than constant reminders of a tainted past and modern jibes at the occasional poolside dispute over a sunbed in Majorca.

Shame, then, on the British who (in the words of Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg and -mark!- the only man worth voting for tomorrow) are still stuck in the lazy anti-German “who won the war then, sonny?’ groove. Ask yourselves who won the peace. Shame also on Israel. It has every reason and right to remember the Holocaust as a brutal attempt at the eradication of their race. What it hasn’t got is the right to tar with the anti-semitic Holocaust brush everyone who dares disagree with the way the Jewish State operates in the Middle East.

And most recently, shame on Greece which, after a past filled with economic mismanagement, dictatorship, tax-dodging shipping billionnaires and civil unrest, managed to lie its way into the eurozone. Well, the chickens have come home to roost and Greece needs a massive bale-out. Guess who’s doing most of the baleing? Right: Germany. A reason for profound gratitude, you would think. But no. The Greeks are up in arms. Not only must the loan be repaid, there’s also interest due on it. This is, for Athens, too much to bear. Let’s call this German reparation for their wartime occupation of Greece, they say. I hope Angela Merkel will tell them where to go. I know a German phrase she could use, but it’s not printable.

That said: glad to be back.

No technical difficulties can keep a man like myself down for long. What’s eleven months between friends? So here we are: May 5th 2010 will see the return of opinions that no sensible person could be remotely interested in. Still, should you want to become reacquainted, have a go. And whatever you do in the UK, don’t vote New Labour. Pity Mickey Mouse is disqualified from standing in that election.

stay well,

Rob Greene

A long silence, I agree. But here’s the good news: I’ll be back shortly, technology permitting. Not medical technology, fortunately; merely the electronic kind.

see you all soon,

Greene

So here we are: the truth is out. The Westminster government had absolutely nothing to do with the release of Abdulbaset Ali Mohmet Al-Megrahi. It was -and always had been- a matter for the Scottish authorities and them alone. Rumours of an oil-for-Megrahi deal a few years ago are, in spite of the copious evidence to support them, untrue. Believe us, London says, when Kenny McAskill announced that this odious mass murderer was getting compassionate release because he was suffering from prostate cancer you could have knocked us over with a feather. How do I know this? How can I be sure that all the reports of a 2007 lucrative contract for the British oil company BP in exchange for a prisoner transfer scheme that would explicitly include Al-Megrahi are at best a mistake and at worst a fabrication? Because Jack Straw tells me so. I am not aware of the UK holding any other Libyans than Al-Megrahi or of UK nationals languishing in Libyan prison cells, but there you are. Libya now has its native son back and BP can drill for oil off the Libyan coast. Pure coincidence, nothing to do with us, mate.

I have a high regard for Jack Straw. Here is a man who, in spite of tremendous difficulties (such as having been born without a backbone, a set of immutable principles and a moral compass) has risen through the ranks of the Labour Party to hold a succession of exalted posts. They are, in order: Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Lord Privy Seal, leader of the House of Commons and, most recently, Lord Chancellor and the relatively new invention Secretary of State for Justice. Not bad for a barrister who read law at Leeds University. The absence of a spine allowed him to complete  the contortion that turned him from a left wing rabble rouser into the man who won praise from Margaret Thatcher for his draconian anti-terrorism policies, including a plan to reduce, in certain cases, the right to trial by jury. His double-jointedness made it possible to express misgivings about the Iraq war and his great confidence in the Iraqi judicial system while still remaining a loyal vassal of whoever was leading the Labour Party and becoming uncomfortably close to then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Where others who were opposed to the war either quit right away (Robin Cook) or after a period of examining the lie of the land (Clare Short), Jacko kept his nose clean. Why walk out in a fit of principle when there was still so much good work to be done? (A similar ability to ‘go with the flow’ has been perceived in the once ubiquitous Margaret Beckett).

Had the release of Al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds not been a matter for Scotland and Scotland only (just joking; is there still anybody who believes that?) there is every chance that Jack Straw would have joined Kenny McAskill in his passionate defence of certain humanitarian principles held sacred in the UK but sadly alien to the rest of the world. For in the arena of soft-hearted mercy when dealing with suffering miscreants the Secretary of State for Justice yields to no man. Who doesn’t remember his outpouring of compassion in 2000 when, ignoring a spate of international requests for extradion and criminal prosecution, he allowed the Chilean dictator, mass-murderer and close personal friend of Margaret Thatcher Augusto Pinochet, who was said to be too ill to stand trial, to return to Chile? Pinochet cheeckily chucked aside his walking stick on arrival at Santiago airport and lived on for another six years. What chance of Al-Megrahi doing the same? None, I think.

Personally I don’t give a monkey’s about the murky goings-on that led to Al-Megrahi’s repatriation. No one emerges from this tale with any credit, except the man himself. The Scots use the cover of compassion to hide their anxiety at what might have become public in the course of Megrahi’s now dropped appeal; Westminster plays dumb in a matter in which it exercised full control; Americans bluster and cry blue murder without caring whether the guy they want to rot in jail is actually guilty or not. Khadaffi prances on the international stage as if nothing untoward ever happened. The Libyan is now at home and I hope that, like Pinochet, he lives on for a good spell.

Meanwhile, the real murky deal that needs light shed on it is the one that led to Al-Megrahi’s appearance before a politically manipulated court in Camp Zeist. The details of that bear direct relevance to his guilt or, as I am convinced, innocence. This latest kerfuffle over his release isn’t really worth the candle.

When, as latest news reports suggest, Lockerbie convict Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi will sometime this week be set free from a Scottish jail, an administrative end will have come to one of the worst, most shameful miscarriages of justice the world has seen in recent years, or possibly ever. I say ‘administrative’ because, with al-Megrahi’s health effectively ruined through medical neglect (not many prison inmates under constant obervation  nowadays face death from untreated prostate cancer) the injustice will follow him right into his unnecessarily early grave. Forget any bullshit about this being an act of compassion: sending him home to Libya now that his demise seems imminent will save the Scottish authorities further unwanted expense and a flurry of equally unwanted bad publicity.

What angers me most about this hideous affair is that, at the time of the ridiculous show trial in Holland’s Camp Zeist, it was already clear that there was no evidence available that would stand up in any normal western court. What clinched the case against al-Megrahi was the testimony of a dodgy Maltese shopkeeper with a tenuous grip on the truth and a poor recollection of facts. (The shopkeeper’s name, by the way, was Gauci, which just happens to be the surname of a hot operatic favourite of mine, soprano Miriam Gauci. I hope fervently that they’re not related, but Malta is a small country.) The ‘evidence’ that sent al-Megrahi to his doom, under examination, wouldn’t have convicted a jaywalker. Not surprising, because everything, absolutely everything, to do with the case militates against al-Megrahi’s guilt.

I am aware that, in the wake of the terrible act of terrorism against the PanAm airliner -270 innocent dead is a ghastly toll- emotions ran high, both in the UK and the United States. Acts like that, I fully agree, must not go unpunished and the sooner the guilty are collared, the easier it is for the relatives of the victims to find closure and get on with their lives. Even at the time, rumours were buzzing around the world of western intelligence that Iran was most likely involved. After all, five months earlier a US warship in the Gulf had shot down an Iranian civilian airliner; by mistake, as Washington insisted. That might -some say ‘should’- have fulfilled the prime requirement in proving a criminal’s guilt: establishing a motive. The other requirement, opportunity, did not enter the equation at all for, as we all know, in the world of international terrorism there’s always a way where there’s a will. Trouble was: Iran is rich in oil and militarily powerful. Any retribution for Lockerbie would inevitably be costly, dangerous and time-consuming. Somebody mentioned Syria as a possibility: no good, same story, except the oil. An easier, quicker fix was obviously needed.

I have no idea who it was that hit on the Libyan variant (dammit, I can’t know everything) but what’s certain is that it had, from a western point of view, obvious merits. Libya had oil, its leader Khadaffi, after exchanging a series of blows with the United States, seemed keen to come in from the cold and become a respectable world leader and car designer, there was a deal on there. All the west needed was some names, preferably names of people professionally involved in international skulduggery. Where better to look than the Libyan intelligence service? We all know what happened next. Two names were produced, Khadaffi -after some hemming and hawing for public consumption- handed them over and justice was on its way. Next came the Camp Zeist trial, where a bunch of superannuated Scottish dodderers sat in judgement as western (read: American) prosecutors pulled the wool over their eyes. So there we were, in rural Holland: two defendants, a battery of international journalists, a prosecution that knew what it was after, a bench that was half asleep most of the time and not a shred of serious evidence. Sorry, I take that back. There was serious evidence that Iran was involved, but it was not admitted in court. (The fact that, only recently, al-Megrahi had instructed is legal team to publish the evidence may well have caused the sudden upsurge of ‘compassion’ that has come over the Scottish authorities.)

It didn’t matter, of course. The two men in the dock, in the absence of support from their own government (which had sold them down the river) didn’t stand a chance of justice. After all, who was going to complain? Not Khadaffi, who had international respectability on his mind. Not anyone, in fact, except a few independent minds around the world who saw the whole thing as an exercise in cynicism, a convenient stitch-up of a couple of nameless, unlamented patsies. Their views appeared, in print and on the internet, but they were not heeded. I was one of those and still am.

In the most bizarre twist of all, al-Megrahi’s co-defendant was found not guilty and allowed to return home. That left the ultimate, familiar outcome: the world was told that the bombing of the PanAm airliner over Lockerbie in 1988 was the work of a single man, one with no previous record of terrorist activity or intent, a man with no accomplices, not doing his government’s bidding; a man with no discernible personal motive, a man implicated by no solid evidence of any kind: forensic, circumstantial or even testimonial. He had no reason for doing it, yet he did it; that’s what we’re supposed to believe. Do they think we are all stark raving mad?

Abdelhaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, you don’t know me but I want you to know that I am your friend. Hilary Clinton may want you to rot in jail (there are votes to be had in America for those who take that position), but I know you are innocent. My most fervent hope right now is that, insh’Allah, you will still somehow recover from your illness and live out your life in the bosom of your family.

Good to see that the Find Maddie Campaign is ticking over nicely. New suspects pop up with some regularity -most recently a British paedophile being treated for cancer in Germany, a Portuguese market trader of  ”gipsy appearance”  and another British man in jail in the UK-, adverts calling on the public to keep looking (“she might be next to you”) continue to appear regularly in the British tabloid press and presumably financial contributions to the capaign fund keep flowing in. I say this (about the money) because little has recently been heard of the McCanns’ plan -first mooted in april 2008-  to write a book about their ordeal. At the time, a deal possibly worth two million pounds was mentioned, at a time when the existing Find Maddie campaign coffers were running disturbingly low.

Still, with their unerring talent for raising doubts in the minds of even the most sympathetic members of the public, Gerry and Kate McCann have decided to embellish the newspaper advertisement not just with the familiar picture of Maddie aged 3  but also with a computer generated image of what she might look like at the age of six. And what a lovely girl it is! Beautiful eyes, with the tell-tale mark of course, shiny hair combed back behind her ears: a picture of health and happiness. A girl that is obviously being well looked after. Every bit the Maddie we might have known today….if she hadn’t disappeared over two years ago and suffered an as yet unknown fate.

I remain unwavering in my personal conviction that little Maddie is no longer alive. How she died and at whose hands I cannot say; no theory, however outlandish, can be entirely discounted. Identifying a guilty party is well-nigh impossible in the absence of a body or a shred of forensic evidence. Any remains found could always be identified via DNA, but evidence pointing at a killer (or killers) will inevitably degenerate with the passing of time. How much time I don’t know, you’d need a trained medic to tell you that. But let’s not dwell on this, the McCanns believe Maddie is alive and that’s all we have to go on. If she is, though, then what? If indeed she was abducted by some hideous paedophile and subjected to unspeakable horror and abuse she’d be a hollow-eyed waif by now, possibly on drugs, underfed and in ill health. A far cry from the girl with the cheeky grin that the McCanns would have us believe could be Maddie as a six-year old.

So, assuming that Gerry and Kate aren’t stupid, what’s the point of the photographic update? I see two possibilities. Either the McCanns have an inkling that Maddie is indeed dead but, for their own reasons, want to keep the campaign going (you can get used to receiving big cheques in the post) or they believe that she may have been stolen to order, possibly for resale to a well-to-do childless couple. Only in a case like that is there any likelihood that she would look as hale and hearty as she obviously does in the newly concocted picture. It’s a long shot, admittedly, but stranger things have happened.

But finding Maddie alive and well, happily living with a new family is probably the worst case scenario for the McCanns. A girl of six, who has just spent two happy years with a new identity, new family, new friends will be entirely different from the toddler left on her own in a holiday apartment in the Algarve in May 2007. At such an early age, the process of learning new things, adapting to new situations and forgetting what was takes place at breakneck speed. By now she may have no recollection of ever being called Maddie. I know what I’m talking about: when I was nine I went into hospital, I came out again nearly two years later. Older than Maddie is now, with the contact with my family intact, I still had enormous problems readjusting to life at home, fitting in and getting on with my next of kin. Not to put too fine a point on it: for a long time I felt closer to the man who, for the past eight months, had been lying in the bed next to mine than I did to my own mother. Imagine a young, impressionable child, entirely at ease in her new life, reacting to a family she hasn’t seen for over two years! Or much longer, depending on when she would be found. Gerry and Kate would be strangers to her; and disruptive, unwanted strangers at that. Claiming Maddie back in such circumstances would be a recipe for disaster.

But as I said, this is probably a fantasy scenario. Maddie McCann is dead. But until her remains are found and identified, the circus will continue. Not with my money, though.

Did Benyamin Netanyahu really take an important step forward by committing himself (sort of) to a two-state settlement of the conflict with the Palestinians? Don’t be silly. A Palestinian state that meets the conditions Bibi set -demilitarized, recognising Israel as a Jewish state and abandoning its claim on Jerusalem as its capital- would be a bantustan, not a truly independent entity. Still, so used have we become to hardline, ruthless Israeli behaviour that even this con trick is now being hailed in some western quarters as an encouraging sign that the peace process is once again a going concern. Don’t believe it; the Palestinians themselves aren’t fooled.

What Netanyahu aimed to do was play for time. The election of Barack Obama as president of the United States must have sent a ripple of disquiet through Israel’s nationalist camp. Would the days of limitless, unquestioning American economic, political and military support come to an end? If so, what then? And there was Obama, quick off the mark, dropping all sorts of heavy hints about the desirability of a halt to the construction of further settlements and -from Israel’s point of view- hobnobbing far too chummily with the Arabs. After all, no guy with the middle name Hussein had ever been taken seriously by Netanyahu and suddenly there was one he couldn’t possibly ignore. Hell, this US administration might even stop routinely vetoing anti-Israel resolutions at the Security Council! Other anxieties surfaced: America’s concern at Iran’s nuclear programme might, in time, be matched by a similar unease about Israel’s fully developed and ready-for-use nuclear arsenal. Face it: when the mushroom clouds billow upwards and humans die in their tens of thousands in the blinking of an eye, does it really matter whether the guy who dropped the bombs was wearing a white or a black hat?

So Netanyahu’s subtext consisted of a message to Obama (‘seriously Mr. President, we want nothing more than to live in peace and security with our neighbours, but you’ll understand that we have legitimate concerns, the buggers want to kill us in our beds’) and one to his own political friends (‘don’t worry boys, we’ll drag this out for as long as we can -four years, or even eight- and hope for better times and a new George W. Bush’). His less subtle message to the Palestinians -unchanged from before- was: ‘up yours buddy’. 

So  if Barack Obama doesn’t want to become the next in a long line of US Presidents to be defeated by the sheer intractability of the Middle East problem, here’s what I think he should do. To the Palestinians he should pledge his full, unwavering support for a fully fledged independent state, with all the trappings of proud nationhood. These must include full territorial integrity, control of their borders, a viable econonomy and a modern national defence force. Equally full and unwavering should be his support of the Iraelis’ right to a state where they can live safely without fear of attack, where they can prosper and start the process of digesting, and ultimately filing away as history, the horrors of the past. The Holocaust lies 65 years behind us and, for that reason, should no longer play a part in driving Israeli policy. Whatever dangers Israel may face in the future, annihilation isn’t one of them.

But words are cheap and pledges of support in themselves will not bring a settlement an inch closer. Without an extra something from Washington, the immovable object and the irresistible force in the Middle East will continue to grind against each other and, at regular intervals, shed each other’s blood. That extra something should be a stern warning to both sides that, from now on, America’s support no longer comes without strings attached. Actually the Palestinians know this already, they’ve been given short shrift on many occasions; it’s Israel that has so far benefited from Washington’s blank cheques.  I feel that if Obama were to make clear to the protagonists that unreasonable intransigence and resorting to violence will forfeit US support and even lead to sanctions things might start moving in earnest. The removal of the word ‘unconditional’ from the language of Obama’s Middle East rhetoric will work wonders.

Something similar, of course, can be expected from this side of the Atlantic. The powerhouse that is the European Union has strong economic tools at its disposal. If the Palestinians won’t play ball, if the Israelis keep stalling, we’ll set Tony Blair on them. To you he may be a greedy, self-serving, sanctimonious squirt and utterly useless with it (I know he is to me) but in Jerusalem and Ramallah he commands great respect. Something to do with him being a recent convert to Catholicism, I believe.