On Saturday afternoon before listening to two football commentaries, tired emotionally and physically, I tried to watch In the Valley of Elah but fell asleep and had to watch it again later. It was not an easy film for me to follow or understand.
It is a good and honourable that nations remember their dead from the fields of battle, wherever these are. and in whatever form they have become. Alas the dead and the circumstances of the dying will have no bearing on future blood letting, on the numbers who will continue to die in the name of nations, religions and ideologies. But it is good that we remember and learn to live with the hate and the guilt or otherwise we might stop tying to seek a peace.
But one thing all nations and all governments do throughout history is to try and pretend that the fighting has less impact on the living than in truth it does. It is necessary to continually glorify battle and to present the adventure of it, and indeed for many there is glory and there is adventure, and without this how we manage to crate generations of brave young men, and over recent generations brave young men and women willing to place themselves in harm's way on behalf of others or some concept.
Over recent centuries, here in the UK there has been the attempt to heal the physical wounds of battle and to replace the missing and broken limbs, enabling those who survive to continue to live as normal a life as is ever possible, and it was in the 1880's that my great grandfather on my mothers family, having become a Royal Hospital Chelsea Pensioner with Out Payments decided to settle in the Peninsular where his wife was born and family lived rather than return rather than settle in England and in his long standing family town of Calne, in Wiltshire. His wife and presumably his two sons born in Gibraltar and Singapore came back to Ireland as it was during his station there that she became pregnant with their first surviving daughter, and then a second born, from her home village, near Ronda.
The one gap in the nation's response to the returning battle weary is dealing with the psychological and emotional impact of translating knowing how to kill to killing and standing along side others you have come to know and seeing and feeling in a physical sense as their guts were blown into pieces around and sometimes over them.
During the first world war men where branded cowards who found the endless slaughter unbearable and could not fight on. It was only afterwards mothers, fathers, wives, sisters and all those who had not also experienced at first hand what the front line carnage was like, learnt to cope with the returning men who often withdrew within themselves, burying memories which would otherwise have become open sewers constantly gushing from their minds.
There was greater understanding with the end of World War Two, as men were held, allowed to experience the company of others who understood, before released to cope in boring poor paid jobs, that is, if work was available to them. But then they were returning to communities which had also shared the carnage through the blitz and everyone had lived in constant fear and nearly everyone had gone without. Later in the USA it is my understanding that there no such understanding for returning Veterans from Vietnam although some were able to escape the criticism of their war, a lost war, and therefore a criticism of them, by going off into the remaining free spaces and then with first Gulf War those in Britain the talk first became openly of post traumatic stress.
Yesterday or maybe the day before, I heard a news broadcast that of research in the USA which had begun to separate the effects of the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, of the side effects Tablets and hostile nerve agents in Iraq, the former expose to radiation in the atomic and nuclear bomb and weapons testing, from the more general impact of participation in war and its immediate aftermath, especially the new kind of war, the terror, where civilians, including women and children, are used as shields and masks.
In the Valley of Elah Tommy Lee Jones, one of the, if not the greatest actor of motion pictures of this generation plays the rugged and worldly ex sergeant who goes to find out why his son has gone AWOL shortly after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq. The son is found, or at least the remains, butchered, burnt, savaged, and he finds the army and the local police are not interested in why or who offering the explanation that he had become a druggy and pusher and was trying to do deals with local Mexican suppliers.
In the end it does not matter who or why, because all the company had been damaged in some way from an incident, one of many, that is the everyday of the this theatre of war, Recently here in the UK there appears to have been a spate of situations where police vehicles chasing suspected criminals have killed innocent bystanders or other motorists caught up in such situations, enquiries, discipline hearings and criminal trials have followed in a few instances. The Valley of Elah is film which deals with an alleged command order that those driving the Humvee military vehicle must not stop when travelling from A to B, regardless of who is in the way, old, woman or child included, because these are being used to halt vehicles to enable mines, bombs, grenades, rockets to attack vehicles. They hit and kill one of several boys running from one side of the road to another. This affects them all in different ways.
But this is not an anti war film as such. The local female sheriff used to the behaviour of men, and a single parent with a young daughter, is confronted at the office by a woman who complains that her veteran husband has killed the family dog before their young daughter. She senses, feels, knows that her husband is not right and that something worse is to follow. But what can be done if he has not threatened or behaved criminally either towards her or a daughter. The woman is then found drowned in her bath. The Sheriff is upset but knows she has to live with this, one more casualty of war,
A the beginning of the film a man is raising the USA flag at the start of the day outside the school house, and Tommy Lee points out that he has done so upside down. At the end of the film he unwraps a gift from his son, sent from Iraq before departing, a picture of the company on their Humvee, flying the Stars and the Stripes. He puts up this flag outside the school house also upside down and he tapes the ropes so it will be left that way.
This is a signal used by USA armed services to indicate distress, It is a flay which needs to be flown this way above all of us.
During the afternoon I listened for a short while to radio broadcast about the latest writers from Afghanistan and Iraq. They are following on from the first world poets and writers. This may be one way of coping with the trauma experienced
I discovered Spooks, the 4th in the series was showing late this evening it reminded that I had intended to write about the series to date.
In the second episode the flag of distress continued to be flown as the unit attempted to recover from the death of their section leader, Adam, as he prevented a terrorist bomb attack on a special Remembrance Day Services following the arrival of the Kremlin KGB spymaster who had worked on captured unit man Lucas North during his eight years in prison and who has come to London to destabilise the old enemy. The Unit seeks revenge for his part in the death of their comrade and the opportunity comes with the discovery of a stealth Russian submarine off the coast of Cornwall. This is where previously I have mentioned the great telegraph and telephone cables were lain connecting the world, with several going to Gibraltar and then onward to Australia, South America and the Far East. These have now been replaced by the latest fibre optic cables as thin as hair through which millions of communication channels can flow.. The plan is for the submarine to tap into one of the these on the ocean bed and send a programme designed to shut down the UK digital communications system, with an impact on a greater scale than was envisaged for the Millennium Bug at one point.
The powers that be, with echoes of Baby P, refuse to take pre-emptive or precautionary measures in case this is false alarm and their is substantial political back lash, but the unit pursues the Russian spymaster and though the released home officer blackmails him into revealing the submarine codes which in turn enable the unit to reverse the data communications paralysing programme and paralyse the submarine to the extent that it needs British help to survive. Rather that let the Russian off through usual debriefing methods, imprisonment and future exchange, the head of Unit Harry assassinates the man. Later he describes this as murder, not out of revenge, revenge which he also admits he has felt, but to send a clear and firm message to back to the Russians, the we have no intention of being bullies regardless of their oil and their gas.
There has also been a shock for Lucas when he finds that his Russian wife has become a worker for the Russians and made his handler in the UK. She has remarried and the gulf between them is heart wrenching, both victims of his work, the system and the world as it is. It was from this programme that the statement was made that happiness is accepting what you have rather than getting what you wish for, and also the ultra realist Ros, in quickly moving on from the death of Adam, says People die, everyone you will ever know will die as well as you. However she is not as tough as she presents herself to the world, smashing up her flat, Adam's flat it does not matter which in her rage of anger and grief.
AOL Jazz radio New Orleans
Happy Birthday Louis Armstrong and Friends- St Louis Blues; Going back to New Orleans- r John; The Loved Ones Stella by Starlight- Ellis Marsallis; Fire on the Mountain- the Neville Brothers.
AOL Jazz radio Swingtime
Carnegies Hall 39 Benny Goodman- Avalon; Big John- Special Tom Cunningham; Les Brown- Yo Henry Session 55; Radio sessions Benny Goodman- Riding High; Mary Lou Williams- Little Joe from Chicago; Glenn Miller- Perfidia; Artie Shaw- Smoke Gets in Your Eyes; Count Basie- Something to Live For; Billie Holiday- That Ole Devil Called Love; Count Basie Song- If I didn't Care (who): Fletcher Henderson- Sugar Foot Stomp; Bing Crosbie- Pennies from Heaven; Jackie Gleeson- A taste of Honey; Bob Crosbie- Wolverine Blues; Jack Teargarden- Stop Kicking my Heart Around; Ella Fitzgerald- Can't Help Loving dat man; Teddy Lee and Orchestra- Passionette; Billie Holiday- Lover Man; Dinah Washington- Sometimes I', Happy.
Having used the first two programmes of the new series to remind of the re-emergence of Russia and a ruthless cold war manipulator and spymaster, programme three in the 7th series of Spooks returns to the Arab Muslim Terrorist threat and the disclosure by a new informant that the European Al -Qaida controller is planning a major operation in the UK with a dummy run beforehand. The outcome is that the dummy run is for real and it takes all the ingenuity and courage of the unit to prevent catastrophe with three of the four bombs prevented from detonation and 4th only killing the bomber. but there are casualties. Lucas, caught out in the rain is taken back in his mind to the water torturing of Moscow and finds he cannot sleep in an ordinary bed and has sleeps on the floor; and no sooner does be establish a relationship with his new contact than is it revealed that the man in fact is part of the conspiracy, boxes within boxes within boxes, within boxes because his family have been used to make him play the part, so he tries to protect them as well minimise the extent of his involvement killing himself as the only way out; Jo remains affected by the death of Adam, the only man she could trust after being raped by her captor which memory leaves her reacting to strangers without warning. There is a conversation between Lucas and Ros along the lines of Lovers leave you, families mess with your head, colleagues are OK, you can trust: Hmm! This was the episode in which the question was also posed: Such certainty, How can you change such certainty and the response, you can't, you can only stop them, is one about which I am not certain.
AOL Radio more Jazz Swing
Glenn Miller-Tuxedo Junction; Jimmy Launceford- Organ Grinder's swing; Glenn Miller- St Louis Blues March; Duke Ellington- Warm Valley; Harry James- You made me love you; Duke Ellington-The sidewalks of New York; Stan Kenton - Mission Trail; Claud Boiling Big Band-West Side Story Theme; Fletcher Henderson radio Rhythm: Les Brown- Lover; Jimmy Dorsey- Parade of the Milk Bottle Tops; Glenn Miller- American patrol; Benny Goodman Sing Sing, Buck Clayton - Dickie's Dream;
And now to the fourth episode of 7th season of Spooks, and episode I have had to watch 4 times to find out what happed as one each previous instance, one this afternoon and one last night, and one a week ago, I fell asleep. For over twenty years before the public were first advised, the British Government opened communications with the IRA. Such is the nature of war.
"God save me from my fiends for I will deal with my enemies" concluded this episode after the British Government attempted to respond to an invitation for contact from the third highest place official in Al-Qaida, and as this complex story unfolded it emerged that the original three goals had been a peaceful independent state of Palestine, the end of the corrupt regime of Saudi Arabia and the Americans out of the Middle East. Now if this was the only agenda, then the world could do business. Alas there is now a new generation who want differently and in this episode the threat is from Iran and a new generation of mobile rockets missile launchers with the range of the UK. But at least we are made aware of the threat. In order to gain this knowledge the UK unit has to spring the number three who falls into the hands of the USA CIA and then fakes a bomb explosion and pretend there were casualties in order to protect the role of Lucas in his double role as a Russian agent and his wife as his handler. Just in case you think this all far fetched remember what the British Government had to do after using the Enigma machine to break the German code. In order to ensure that we were one step ahead we could not intervene when certain actions took place the most notable suggested in the programme is the bombing of Coventry by 550 planes and the loss of several thousand lives.
I enjoyed an instant porridge for breakfast and then a good portion of stir fry with the remains of yesterday's roast pork, courgette, onion, sweet salad pepper and young pea pods with friend rice and sauce. This evening after a visits to Morrison's and I missed the two for one olive offer I had a small bowl of freshly cut Italian salami, which bought thinly sliced is 20-25% cheaper than that now available repacked. with half the remaining dozen of lemon olives and a glass of wine, followed by a pot noodle and a tin of rice eaten cold and which contained sultanas and cinnamon.
I still remember my first viewing of the fifth episode of series vividly for two reasons. I have speculated about the possible links between Russian crime organisation, the emergence of Russian Billionaires, the reversion of the political leadership away from democracy and back it imperialism. One of the aspects of the recent financial situation is that some people will have made billions out of the near collapse of the banking system and the rapid decline in share values. Episode five has the proposition of a Russia crime lord laundering money, in this instance 65 billions to bail out a British Bank through an international hedge fund player who moves into London and his dual objective of ensuring his Russian financial backer get all his loan back with interest and wanting to the British Government and its banking system to its knees, all because his father's heart was broken by McDonalds opening in the main square of the capital city of the mid European community county from where his parents had escaped following a pre Berlin wall coming down failed revolution.
However what ever the debatable strength and weaknesses of the story line, the main impact of the programme was the falling apart of Jo because of the rape juxtaposed with Ros who goes to bed with the mid European investment bank head in order to convince him of her loyalty and adopt a strategy which will bankrupt him and the crime Lord, and save the British financial system. One feels there should be a flag of distress permanently above homeland security service.
Before the rerun of this episode, this evening, there was Panorama Programme about the death of Baby P and which attempted to shift responsibility away from the front social worker and her immediate superior up to management. I will go back to writing about this tragedy tomorrow as 250000 people have so far signed the Sun petition calling for action to be taken against the workers at all levels who were involved. I understand this frustration as the British people no longer have faith in the banking system as well as government at national and local level and this tragedy has become one tragedy too far for British patience and understanding.
And then there was the first showing of the sixth episode which seemed more contrived than the others, with a peace conference between representatives of Palestine, Israel and the UN meeting in London to save a deteriorating situation and where the unit boss is pursuing his discovery that his former friend and colleague is the high placed member of the intelligence who has revealed the existence of a special operation in Russia.
The main plot concerns the appearance on the internet of an experimental ray gun fro sale which can immobilise targeted electrical systems and has been borrowed by an (ex?) MI6 man from its makers and used to kill a journalist who had been taking photos of a celebrity quarry and came accidentally across the foreign secretary having a secret rendezvous with the failing UN negotiator for the middle east peace process and the long term MI6 undercover man, The assassination of the photographer is seen by a mixed race young man (with the intended implication of being a loner and not socially adjusted) who has found the weapon and also had access to the photos without knowledge of their content. He becomes the target for an MI6 operation unbeknown to MI5 who attempt to keep the young man and his single parent mother out of harms way until sorting out the failing UN negotiator in a nice way and covering up the tracks of the Foreign secretary, and then provide the young man and his mother with a new identity and financial means and new life in Spain.
The final moments of this episode are even more dramatic and harrowing that the first.
The flag of distress is needed over the whole population and me.
It is a good and honourable that nations remember their dead from the fields of battle, wherever these are. and in whatever form they have become. Alas the dead and the circumstances of the dying will have no bearing on future blood letting, on the numbers who will continue to die in the name of nations, religions and ideologies. But it is good that we remember and learn to live with the hate and the guilt or otherwise we might stop tying to seek a peace.
But one thing all nations and all governments do throughout history is to try and pretend that the fighting has less impact on the living than in truth it does. It is necessary to continually glorify battle and to present the adventure of it, and indeed for many there is glory and there is adventure, and without this how we manage to crate generations of brave young men, and over recent generations brave young men and women willing to place themselves in harm's way on behalf of others or some concept.
Over recent centuries, here in the UK there has been the attempt to heal the physical wounds of battle and to replace the missing and broken limbs, enabling those who survive to continue to live as normal a life as is ever possible, and it was in the 1880's that my great grandfather on my mothers family, having become a Royal Hospital Chelsea Pensioner with Out Payments decided to settle in the Peninsular where his wife was born and family lived rather than return rather than settle in England and in his long standing family town of Calne, in Wiltshire. His wife and presumably his two sons born in Gibraltar and Singapore came back to Ireland as it was during his station there that she became pregnant with their first surviving daughter, and then a second born, from her home village, near Ronda.
The one gap in the nation's response to the returning battle weary is dealing with the psychological and emotional impact of translating knowing how to kill to killing and standing along side others you have come to know and seeing and feeling in a physical sense as their guts were blown into pieces around and sometimes over them.
During the first world war men where branded cowards who found the endless slaughter unbearable and could not fight on. It was only afterwards mothers, fathers, wives, sisters and all those who had not also experienced at first hand what the front line carnage was like, learnt to cope with the returning men who often withdrew within themselves, burying memories which would otherwise have become open sewers constantly gushing from their minds.
There was greater understanding with the end of World War Two, as men were held, allowed to experience the company of others who understood, before released to cope in boring poor paid jobs, that is, if work was available to them. But then they were returning to communities which had also shared the carnage through the blitz and everyone had lived in constant fear and nearly everyone had gone without. Later in the USA it is my understanding that there no such understanding for returning Veterans from Vietnam although some were able to escape the criticism of their war, a lost war, and therefore a criticism of them, by going off into the remaining free spaces and then with first Gulf War those in Britain the talk first became openly of post traumatic stress.
Yesterday or maybe the day before, I heard a news broadcast that of research in the USA which had begun to separate the effects of the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, of the side effects Tablets and hostile nerve agents in Iraq, the former expose to radiation in the atomic and nuclear bomb and weapons testing, from the more general impact of participation in war and its immediate aftermath, especially the new kind of war, the terror, where civilians, including women and children, are used as shields and masks.
In the Valley of Elah Tommy Lee Jones, one of the, if not the greatest actor of motion pictures of this generation plays the rugged and worldly ex sergeant who goes to find out why his son has gone AWOL shortly after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq. The son is found, or at least the remains, butchered, burnt, savaged, and he finds the army and the local police are not interested in why or who offering the explanation that he had become a druggy and pusher and was trying to do deals with local Mexican suppliers.
In the end it does not matter who or why, because all the company had been damaged in some way from an incident, one of many, that is the everyday of the this theatre of war, Recently here in the UK there appears to have been a spate of situations where police vehicles chasing suspected criminals have killed innocent bystanders or other motorists caught up in such situations, enquiries, discipline hearings and criminal trials have followed in a few instances. The Valley of Elah is film which deals with an alleged command order that those driving the Humvee military vehicle must not stop when travelling from A to B, regardless of who is in the way, old, woman or child included, because these are being used to halt vehicles to enable mines, bombs, grenades, rockets to attack vehicles. They hit and kill one of several boys running from one side of the road to another. This affects them all in different ways.
But this is not an anti war film as such. The local female sheriff used to the behaviour of men, and a single parent with a young daughter, is confronted at the office by a woman who complains that her veteran husband has killed the family dog before their young daughter. She senses, feels, knows that her husband is not right and that something worse is to follow. But what can be done if he has not threatened or behaved criminally either towards her or a daughter. The woman is then found drowned in her bath. The Sheriff is upset but knows she has to live with this, one more casualty of war,
A the beginning of the film a man is raising the USA flag at the start of the day outside the school house, and Tommy Lee points out that he has done so upside down. At the end of the film he unwraps a gift from his son, sent from Iraq before departing, a picture of the company on their Humvee, flying the Stars and the Stripes. He puts up this flag outside the school house also upside down and he tapes the ropes so it will be left that way.
This is a signal used by USA armed services to indicate distress, It is a flay which needs to be flown this way above all of us.
During the afternoon I listened for a short while to radio broadcast about the latest writers from Afghanistan and Iraq. They are following on from the first world poets and writers. This may be one way of coping with the trauma experienced
I discovered Spooks, the 4th in the series was showing late this evening it reminded that I had intended to write about the series to date.
In the second episode the flag of distress continued to be flown as the unit attempted to recover from the death of their section leader, Adam, as he prevented a terrorist bomb attack on a special Remembrance Day Services following the arrival of the Kremlin KGB spymaster who had worked on captured unit man Lucas North during his eight years in prison and who has come to London to destabilise the old enemy. The Unit seeks revenge for his part in the death of their comrade and the opportunity comes with the discovery of a stealth Russian submarine off the coast of Cornwall. This is where previously I have mentioned the great telegraph and telephone cables were lain connecting the world, with several going to Gibraltar and then onward to Australia, South America and the Far East. These have now been replaced by the latest fibre optic cables as thin as hair through which millions of communication channels can flow.. The plan is for the submarine to tap into one of the these on the ocean bed and send a programme designed to shut down the UK digital communications system, with an impact on a greater scale than was envisaged for the Millennium Bug at one point.
The powers that be, with echoes of Baby P, refuse to take pre-emptive or precautionary measures in case this is false alarm and their is substantial political back lash, but the unit pursues the Russian spymaster and though the released home officer blackmails him into revealing the submarine codes which in turn enable the unit to reverse the data communications paralysing programme and paralyse the submarine to the extent that it needs British help to survive. Rather that let the Russian off through usual debriefing methods, imprisonment and future exchange, the head of Unit Harry assassinates the man. Later he describes this as murder, not out of revenge, revenge which he also admits he has felt, but to send a clear and firm message to back to the Russians, the we have no intention of being bullies regardless of their oil and their gas.
There has also been a shock for Lucas when he finds that his Russian wife has become a worker for the Russians and made his handler in the UK. She has remarried and the gulf between them is heart wrenching, both victims of his work, the system and the world as it is. It was from this programme that the statement was made that happiness is accepting what you have rather than getting what you wish for, and also the ultra realist Ros, in quickly moving on from the death of Adam, says People die, everyone you will ever know will die as well as you. However she is not as tough as she presents herself to the world, smashing up her flat, Adam's flat it does not matter which in her rage of anger and grief.
AOL Jazz radio New Orleans
Happy Birthday Louis Armstrong and Friends- St Louis Blues; Going back to New Orleans- r John; The Loved Ones Stella by Starlight- Ellis Marsallis; Fire on the Mountain- the Neville Brothers.
AOL Jazz radio Swingtime
Carnegies Hall 39 Benny Goodman- Avalon; Big John- Special Tom Cunningham; Les Brown- Yo Henry Session 55; Radio sessions Benny Goodman- Riding High; Mary Lou Williams- Little Joe from Chicago; Glenn Miller- Perfidia; Artie Shaw- Smoke Gets in Your Eyes; Count Basie- Something to Live For; Billie Holiday- That Ole Devil Called Love; Count Basie Song- If I didn't Care (who): Fletcher Henderson- Sugar Foot Stomp; Bing Crosbie- Pennies from Heaven; Jackie Gleeson- A taste of Honey; Bob Crosbie- Wolverine Blues; Jack Teargarden- Stop Kicking my Heart Around; Ella Fitzgerald- Can't Help Loving dat man; Teddy Lee and Orchestra- Passionette; Billie Holiday- Lover Man; Dinah Washington- Sometimes I', Happy.
Having used the first two programmes of the new series to remind of the re-emergence of Russia and a ruthless cold war manipulator and spymaster, programme three in the 7th series of Spooks returns to the Arab Muslim Terrorist threat and the disclosure by a new informant that the European Al -Qaida controller is planning a major operation in the UK with a dummy run beforehand. The outcome is that the dummy run is for real and it takes all the ingenuity and courage of the unit to prevent catastrophe with three of the four bombs prevented from detonation and 4th only killing the bomber. but there are casualties. Lucas, caught out in the rain is taken back in his mind to the water torturing of Moscow and finds he cannot sleep in an ordinary bed and has sleeps on the floor; and no sooner does be establish a relationship with his new contact than is it revealed that the man in fact is part of the conspiracy, boxes within boxes within boxes, within boxes because his family have been used to make him play the part, so he tries to protect them as well minimise the extent of his involvement killing himself as the only way out; Jo remains affected by the death of Adam, the only man she could trust after being raped by her captor which memory leaves her reacting to strangers without warning. There is a conversation between Lucas and Ros along the lines of Lovers leave you, families mess with your head, colleagues are OK, you can trust: Hmm! This was the episode in which the question was also posed: Such certainty, How can you change such certainty and the response, you can't, you can only stop them, is one about which I am not certain.
AOL Radio more Jazz Swing
Glenn Miller-Tuxedo Junction; Jimmy Launceford- Organ Grinder's swing; Glenn Miller- St Louis Blues March; Duke Ellington- Warm Valley; Harry James- You made me love you; Duke Ellington-The sidewalks of New York; Stan Kenton - Mission Trail; Claud Boiling Big Band-West Side Story Theme; Fletcher Henderson radio Rhythm: Les Brown- Lover; Jimmy Dorsey- Parade of the Milk Bottle Tops; Glenn Miller- American patrol; Benny Goodman Sing Sing, Buck Clayton - Dickie's Dream;
And now to the fourth episode of 7th season of Spooks, and episode I have had to watch 4 times to find out what happed as one each previous instance, one this afternoon and one last night, and one a week ago, I fell asleep. For over twenty years before the public were first advised, the British Government opened communications with the IRA. Such is the nature of war.
"God save me from my fiends for I will deal with my enemies" concluded this episode after the British Government attempted to respond to an invitation for contact from the third highest place official in Al-Qaida, and as this complex story unfolded it emerged that the original three goals had been a peaceful independent state of Palestine, the end of the corrupt regime of Saudi Arabia and the Americans out of the Middle East. Now if this was the only agenda, then the world could do business. Alas there is now a new generation who want differently and in this episode the threat is from Iran and a new generation of mobile rockets missile launchers with the range of the UK. But at least we are made aware of the threat. In order to gain this knowledge the UK unit has to spring the number three who falls into the hands of the USA CIA and then fakes a bomb explosion and pretend there were casualties in order to protect the role of Lucas in his double role as a Russian agent and his wife as his handler. Just in case you think this all far fetched remember what the British Government had to do after using the Enigma machine to break the German code. In order to ensure that we were one step ahead we could not intervene when certain actions took place the most notable suggested in the programme is the bombing of Coventry by 550 planes and the loss of several thousand lives.
I enjoyed an instant porridge for breakfast and then a good portion of stir fry with the remains of yesterday's roast pork, courgette, onion, sweet salad pepper and young pea pods with friend rice and sauce. This evening after a visits to Morrison's and I missed the two for one olive offer I had a small bowl of freshly cut Italian salami, which bought thinly sliced is 20-25% cheaper than that now available repacked. with half the remaining dozen of lemon olives and a glass of wine, followed by a pot noodle and a tin of rice eaten cold and which contained sultanas and cinnamon.
I still remember my first viewing of the fifth episode of series vividly for two reasons. I have speculated about the possible links between Russian crime organisation, the emergence of Russian Billionaires, the reversion of the political leadership away from democracy and back it imperialism. One of the aspects of the recent financial situation is that some people will have made billions out of the near collapse of the banking system and the rapid decline in share values. Episode five has the proposition of a Russia crime lord laundering money, in this instance 65 billions to bail out a British Bank through an international hedge fund player who moves into London and his dual objective of ensuring his Russian financial backer get all his loan back with interest and wanting to the British Government and its banking system to its knees, all because his father's heart was broken by McDonalds opening in the main square of the capital city of the mid European community county from where his parents had escaped following a pre Berlin wall coming down failed revolution.
However what ever the debatable strength and weaknesses of the story line, the main impact of the programme was the falling apart of Jo because of the rape juxtaposed with Ros who goes to bed with the mid European investment bank head in order to convince him of her loyalty and adopt a strategy which will bankrupt him and the crime Lord, and save the British financial system. One feels there should be a flag of distress permanently above homeland security service.
Before the rerun of this episode, this evening, there was Panorama Programme about the death of Baby P and which attempted to shift responsibility away from the front social worker and her immediate superior up to management. I will go back to writing about this tragedy tomorrow as 250000 people have so far signed the Sun petition calling for action to be taken against the workers at all levels who were involved. I understand this frustration as the British people no longer have faith in the banking system as well as government at national and local level and this tragedy has become one tragedy too far for British patience and understanding.
And then there was the first showing of the sixth episode which seemed more contrived than the others, with a peace conference between representatives of Palestine, Israel and the UN meeting in London to save a deteriorating situation and where the unit boss is pursuing his discovery that his former friend and colleague is the high placed member of the intelligence who has revealed the existence of a special operation in Russia.
The main plot concerns the appearance on the internet of an experimental ray gun fro sale which can immobilise targeted electrical systems and has been borrowed by an (ex?) MI6 man from its makers and used to kill a journalist who had been taking photos of a celebrity quarry and came accidentally across the foreign secretary having a secret rendezvous with the failing UN negotiator for the middle east peace process and the long term MI6 undercover man, The assassination of the photographer is seen by a mixed race young man (with the intended implication of being a loner and not socially adjusted) who has found the weapon and also had access to the photos without knowledge of their content. He becomes the target for an MI6 operation unbeknown to MI5 who attempt to keep the young man and his single parent mother out of harms way until sorting out the failing UN negotiator in a nice way and covering up the tracks of the Foreign secretary, and then provide the young man and his mother with a new identity and financial means and new life in Spain.
The final moments of this episode are even more dramatic and harrowing that the first.
The flag of distress is needed over the whole population and me.
No comments:
Post a Comment