"Britain- This week, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw accused the Iraqis of being `duplicitous.' That's a five dollar word that means two-faced. Talk about the kettle calling the pot black. The British invented duplicity. In fact, double-dealing British imperialists created many of the world's chronic problems. Thank the Brits for Palestine and Israel; Belfast; India, Pakistan, and Kashmir; Iraq; and the mess in Africa. London is determined to grab a share of Iraq's oil once Saddam is overthrown. That's why Tony Blair, known far and wide as `Bush's poodle,' is barking so loudly."

While some may feel that Tony has earned the sobriquet, the whole idea that a claimed, albeit quite specious, British copyright on duplicity disqualifies modern day Brits from criticising it in third parties is a non-sequitur of the crassest. Madman, old chap, given there are many serious flaws in UN Iraq policy and American foreign policy, can you not do better than this Margulis charlie? Come now!

As for Martin Luther King's comment about the US as the biggest purveyor of violence: is this news? After all, the US is the biggest purveyor of most things, regardless of any particular moral backdrop one or other of us would perceive on a case by case basis. The US is economically the biggest everything. That's not their fault: they have a huge, open society and are a country run, or professedly run, on a series of principles that aren't 'American' either but lifted from classical deistic ideas and certain perceptions of freedom and people, none perfect but always in lively public discussion and open to improvement.

If you want to be anti-American, read the US newspapers. There are few rationally anti-American writers, as opposed to certain irrational hacks abroad, than the ones criticising the Bush régime from the podia offered by The New York Times and other papers. You may compare that to the availbility of anti-regime vehicles available to Saddam opponents in Iraq.

In other words, Madman, my good fellow, if you want to knock the Yanks, do a proper job instead of resorting to jingoistic tripe. And now that I mention it, TCC has plenty of room for (light-hearted) tripe and, as Babs has outpointed, it even has a sort of cyber-tradition along those lines: Forsake Margulis! Feel the Freedom! Ah! Sniff that breeze! And is there honey still for tea?

"This week, we also learned from UN sources in Iraq that the recent `precision' bombing of defenseless Iraq destroyed at least thirteen schools, an important food storehouse, and the municipal water system of Baghdad's Karrada suburb, leaving 300,000 people without clean drinking water. During the 1991 Gulf War, US bombing wrecked Baghdad's water and sewage systems, creating a grave health crisis for millions of Iraqi civilians." --Eric Margolis in his column It's Time to Put Away the Big Stick 1999

"More than one million Iraqis have died- 567,000 of them children -as a direct consequence of economic sanctions... As many as 12% of the children surveyed in Baghdad are wasted, 28% stunted and 29% underweight." --UN FAO, December 1995.

The crimes against Iraqi civilians are committed in full day-light, with the blessing of the ruling "civilized nations" and with the tacit support of the educated classes in these nations. Those who keep silent and are legally able to speak up, are morally accomplices to this crime." -- Elias Davidsson, Musician and a Palestinian Jew

Such substitute institutions and hypotheses must meet varying criteria. In general, they must be technically feasible, politically acceptable, and potentially credible to the members of the societies that adopt them. Specifically, they must be characterized as follows:

1. Economic. An acceptable economic surrogate for the war system will require the expenditure of resources for completely nonproductive purposes at a level comparable to that of the military expenditures otherwise demanded by the size and complexity of each society. Such a substitute system of apparent "waste" must be of a nature that will permit it to remain independent of the normal supply-demand economy; it must be subject to arbitrary political control.

2. Political. A viable political substitute for war must posit a generalized external menace to each society of a nature and degree sufficient to require the organization and acceptance of political authority.

3. Sociological. First, in the permanent absence of war, new institutions must be developed that will effectively control the socially destructive segments of societies. Second, for purposes of adapting the physical and psychological dynamics of human behavior to the needs of social organization, a credible substitute for war must generate an omnipresent and readily understood fear of personal destruction. This fear must be of a nature and degree sufficient to ensure adherence to societal values to the full extent that they are acknowledged to transcend the value of an individual human life.

4. Ecological. A substitute for war in its function as the uniquely human system of population control must ensure the survival, if not necessarily the improvement, of the species, in terms of its relation to environmental supply.

5. Cultural and Scientific. A surrogate for the function of war as the determinant of cultural values must establish a basis of sociomoral conflict of equally compelling force and scope. A substitute motivational basis for the quest for scientific knowledge must be similarly informed by a comparable sense of internal necessity.

Economic analyses of the anticipated problems of transition to peace have not recognized the broad preeminence of war in the definition of social systems. The same is true, with rare and only partial exceptions, of model disarmament "scenarios." For this reason, the value of this previous work is limited to the mechanical aspects of transition. Certain features of these models may perhaps be applicable to a real situation of conversion to peace; this will depend on their compatibility with a substantive, rather than a procedural, peace plan. Such a plan can be developed only from the premise of full understanding of the nature of the war system it proposes to abolish, which in turn presupposes detailed comprehension of the functions the war system performs for society. It will require the construction of a detailed and feasible system of substitutes for those functions that are necessary to the stability and survival of human societies.

1. Economic. War has provided both ancient and modern societies with a dependable system for stabilizing and controlling national economies. No alternate method of control has yet been tested in a complex modern economy that has shown itself remotely comparable in scope or effectiveness.

2. Political. The permanent possibility of war is the foundation for stable government; it supplies the basis for general acceptance of political authority. It has enabled societies to maintain necessary class distinctions, and it has ensured the subordination of the citizen to the state, by virtue of the residual war powers inherent in the concept of nationhood. No modern political ruling group has successfully controlled its constituency after failing to sustain the continuing credibility of an external threat of war.

3. Sociological. War, through the medium of military institutions, has uniquely served societies, throughout the course of known history, as an indispensable controller of dangerous social dissidence and destructive antisocial tendencies. As the most formidable of threats to life itself, and as the only one susceptible to mitigation by social organization alone, it has played another equally fundamental role: the war system has provided the machinery through which the motivational forces governing human behavior have been translated into binding social allegiance. It has thus ensured the degree of social cohesion necessary to the viability of nations. No other institution, or group of institutions, in modern societies, has successfully served these functions.

4. Ecological. War has been the principal evolutionary device for maintaining a satisfactory ecological balance between gross human population and supplies available for its survival. It is unique to the human species.

5. Cultural and Scientific. War-orientation has determined the basic standards of value in the creative arts, and has provided the fundamental motivational source of scientific and technological progress. The concepts that the arts express values independent of their own forms and that the successful pursuit of knowledge has intrinsic social value have long been accepted in modern societies; the development of the arts and sciences during this period has been corollary to the parallel development of weaponry.

Any other good oxymorons?

Since the eugenic solution cannot be achieved until the transition to the peace system takes place, why not wait? One must qualify the inclination to agree. As we noted earlier, a real possibility of an unprecedented global crisis of insufficiency exists today, which the war system may not be able to forestall. If this should come to pass before an agreed-upon transition to peace were completed, the result might be irrevocably disastrous. There is clearly no solution to this dilemma; it is a risk which must be taken. But it tends to support the view that if a decision is made to eliminate the war system, it were better done sooner than later.

It must be remembered that the limitation of war in this function is entirely eugenic. War has not been genetically progressive. But as a system of gross population control to preserve the species it cannot fairly be faulted. And, as has been pointed out, the nature of war is itself in transition. Current trends in warfare - the increased strategic bombing of civilians and the greater military importance now attached to the destruction of sources of supply (as opposed to purely "military" bases and personnel) - strongly suggest that a truly qualitative improvement is in the making. Assuming the war system is to continue, it is more than probable that the regressively selective quality of war will have been reversed, as its victims become more genetically representative of their societies.

There is no question but that a universal requirement that procreation be limited to the products of artificial insemination would provide a fully adequate substitute control for population levels. Such a reproductive system would, of course, have the added advantage of being susceptible of direct eugenic management. Its predictable further development - conception and embryonic growth taking place wholly under laboratory conditions - would extend these controls to their logical conclusion. The ecological function of war under these circumstances would not only be superseded but surpassed in effectiveness.

The indicated intermediate step - total control of conception with a variant of the ubiquitous "pill," via water supplies or certain essential foodstuffs, offset by a controlled "antidote" - is already under development. There would appear to be no foreseeable need to revert to any of the outmoded practices referred to in the previous section (infanticide, etc.) as there might have been if the possibility of transition to peace had arisen two generations ago.

It is also possible that the two functions considered under this heading may be jointly served, in the sense of establishing the antisocial, for whom a control institution is needed, as the "alternate enemy" needed to hold society together. The relentless and irreversible advance of unemployability at all levels of society, and the similar extension of generalized alienation from accepted values may make some such program necessary even as an adjunct to the war system. As before, we will not speculate on the specific forms this kind of program might take, except to note that there is again ample precedent, in the treatment meted out to disfavored, allegedly menacing, ethnic groups in certain societies during historical periods.

When it comes to postulating a credible substitute for war capable of directing human behavior patterns in behalf of social organization, few options suggest themselves. Like its political function, the motivational function of war requires the existence of a genuinely menacing social enemy. The principal difference is that for purposes of motivating basic allegiance, as distinct from accepting political authority, the "alternate enemy" must imply a more immediate, tangible, and directly felt threat of destruction. It must justify the need for taking and paying a "blood price" in wide areas of human concern.

In this respect, the possible substitute enemies noted earlier would be insufficient. One exception might be the environmental-pollution model, if the danger to society it posed was genuinely imminent. The fictive models would have to carry the weight of extraordinary conviction, underscored with a not inconsiderable actual sacrifice of life; the construction of an up-to-date mythological or religious structure for this purpose would present difficulties in our era, but must certainly be considered.

Most proposals that address themselves, explicitly or otherwise, to the postwar problem of controlling the socially alienated turn to some variant of the Peace Corps or the so-called Job Corps for a solution. The socially disaffected, the economically unprepared, the psychologically unconformable, the hard-core "delinquents," the incorrigible "subversives," and the rest of the unemployable are seen as somehow transformed by the disciplines of a service modeled on military precedent into more or less dedicated social service workers. This presumption also informs the otherwise hardheaded ratiocination of the "Unarmed Forces" plan.

The problem has been addressed, in the language of popular sociology, by Secretary McNamara. "Even in our abundant societies, we have reason enough to worry over the tensions that coil and tighten among underprivileged young people, and finally flail out in delinquency and crime. What are we to expect ... where mounting frustrations are likely to fester into eruptions of violence and extremism?" In a seemingly unrelated passage, he continues:

"It seems to me that we could move toward remedying that inequity [of the Selective Service System] by asking every young person in the United States to give two years of service to his country - whether in one of the military services, in the Peace Corps, or in some other volunteer developmental work at home or abroad. We could encourage other countries to do the same."

Here, as elsewhere throughout this significant speech, Mr. McNamara has focused, indirectly but unmistakably, on one of the key issues bearing on a possible transition to peace, and has later indicated, also indirectly, a rough approach to its resolution, again phrased in the language of the current war system.

Nevertheless, an effective political substitute for war would require "alternate enemies," some of which might seem equally farfetched in the context of the current war system. It may be, for instance, that gross pollution of the environment can eventually replace the possibility of mass destruction by nuclear weapons as the principal apparent threat to the survival of the species. Poisoning of the air, and of the principal sources of food and water supply, is already well advanced, and at first glance would seem promising in this respect; it constitutes a threat that can be dealt with only through social organization and political power. But from present indications it will be a generation to a generation and a half before environmental pollution, however severe, will be sufficiently menacing, on a global scale, to offer a possible basis for a solution.

It is true that the rate of pollution could be increased selectively for this purpose; in fact, the mere modifying of existing programs for the deterrence of pollution could speed up the process enough to make the threat credible much sooner. But the pollution problem has been so widely publicized in recent years that it seems highly improbable that a program of deliberate environmental poisoning could be implemented in a politically acceptable manner.

However unlikely some of the possible alternate enemies we have mentioned may seem, we must emphasize that one must be found, of credible quality and magnitude, if a transition to peace is ever to come about without social disintegration. It is more probable, in our judgment, that such a threat will have to be invented, rather than developed from unknown conditions. For this reason, we believe further speculation about its putative nature ill-advised in this context. Since there is considerable doubt, in our minds, that any viable political surrogate can be devised, we are reluctant to compromise, by premature discussion, any possible option that may eventually lie open to our government.

We have already pointed out that the end of war means the end of national sovereignty, and thus the end of nationhood as we know it today. But this does not necessarily mean the end of nations in the administrative sense, and internal political power will remain essential to a stable society. The emerging "nations" of the peace epoch must continue to draw political authority from some source.

A number of proposals have been made governing the relations between nations after total disarmament; all are basically juridical in nature. They contemplate institutions more or less like a World Court, or a United Nations, but vested with real authority. They may or may not serve their ostensible postmilitary purpose of settling international disputes, but we need not discuss that here. None would offer effective external pressure on a peace-world nation to organize itself politically.

It might be argued that a well-armed international police force, operating under the authority of such a supranational "court," could well serve the function of external enemy. This, however, would constitute a military operation, like the inspection schemes mentioned, and, like them, would be inconsistent with the premise of an end to the war system. It is possible that a variant of the "Unarmed Forces" idea might be developed in such a way that its "constructive" (i.e., social welfare) activities could be combined with an economic "threat" of sufficient size and credibility to warrant political organization. Would this kind of threat also be contradictory to our central premise? - that is, would it be inevitably military? Not necessarily, in our view, but we are skeptical of its capacity to evoke credibility. Also, the obvious destabilizing effect of any global social welfare surrogate on politically necessary class relationships would create an entirely new set of transition problems at least equal in magnitude.

In this section we will consider some possible substitutes for these functions. Only in rare instances have they been put forth for the purposes which concern us here, but we see no reason to limit ourselves to proposals that address themselves explicitly to the problem as we have outlined it. We will disregard the ostensible, or military, functions of war; it is a premise of this study that the transition to peace implies absolutely that they will no longer exist in any relevant sense. We will also disregard the noncritical functions exemplified at the end of the preceding section.

Economic surrogates for war must meet two principal criteria. They must be "wasteful," in the common sense of the word, and they must operate outside the normal supply-demand system. A corollary that should be obvious is that the magnitude of the waste must be sufficient to meet the needs of a particular society. An economy as advanced and complex as our own requires the planned average annual destruction of not less than 10 percent of gross national product if it is effectively to fulfill its stabilizing function. When the mass of a balance wheel is inadequate to the power it is intended to control, its effect can be self-defeating, as with a runaway locomotive. The analogy, though crude, is especially apt for the American economy, as our record of cyclical depressions shows. All have taken place during periods of grossly inadequate military spending.

War as a general social release. This is a psychosocial function, serving the same purpose for a society as do the holiday, the celebration, and the orgy for the individual - the release and redistribution of undifferentiated tensions. War provides for the periodic necessary readjustment of standards of social behavior (the "moral climate") and for the dissipation of general boredom, one of the most consistently undervalued and unrecognized of social phenomena.

War as a generational stabilizer. This psychological function, served by other behavior patterns in other animals, enables the physically deteriorating older generation to maintain its control of the younger, destroying it if necessary.

War as an ideological clarifier. The dualism that characterizes the traditional dialectic of all branches of philosophy and of stable political relationships stems from war as the prototype of conflict. Except for secondary considerations, there cannot be, to put it as simply as possible, more than two sides to a question because there cannot be more than two sides to a war.

War as the basis for international understanding. Before the development of modern communications, the strategic requirements of war provided the only substantial incentive for the enrichment of one national culture with the achievements of another. Although this is still the case in many international relationships, the function is obsolescent.

We have also foregone extended characterization of those functions we assume to be widely and explicitly recognized. An obvious example is the role of war as controller of the quality and degree of unemployment. This is more than an economic and political subfunction; its sociological, cultural, and ecological aspects are also important, although often teleonomic. But none affect the general problem of substitution. The same is true of certain other functions; those we have included are sufficient to the scope of the problem.

In general, the war system provides the basic motivation for primary social organization. In so doing, it reflects on the societal level the incentives of individual human behavior. The most important of these, for social purposes, is the individual psychological rationale for allegiance to a society and its values. Allegiance requires a cause; a cause requires an enemy. This much is obvious; the critical point is that the enemy that defines the cause must seem genuinely formidable. Roughly speaking, the presumed power of the "enemy" sufficient to warrant an individual sense of allegiance to a society must be proportionate to the size and complexity of the society. Today, of course, that power must be one of unprecedented magnitude and frightfulness.

It follows, from the patterns of human behavior, that the credibility of a social "enemy" demands similarly a readiness of response in proportion to its menace. In a broad social context, "an eye for an eye" still characterizes the only acceptable attitude toward a presumed threat of aggression, despite contrary religious and moral precepts governing personal conduct. The remoteness of personal decision from social consequence in a modern society makes it easy for its members to maintain this attitude without being aware of it. A recent example is the war in Vietnam; a less recent one was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In each case, the extent and gratuitousness of the slaughter were abstracted into political formulae by most Americans, once the proposition that the victims were "enemies" was established. The war system makes such an abstracted response possible in nonmilitary contexts as well. A conventional example of this mechanism is the inability of most people to connect, let us say, the starvation of millions in India with their own past conscious political decision-making. Yet the sequential logic linking a decision to restrict grain production in America with an eventual famine in Asia is obvious, unambiguous, and unconcealed.

What gives the war system its preeminent role in social organization, as elsewhere, is its unmatched authority over life and death. It must be emphasized again that the war system is not a mere social extension of the presumed need for individual human violence, but itself in turn serves to rationalize most nonmilitary killing. It also provides the precedent for collective willingness of members of a society to pay a blood price for institutions far less central to social organization than war. To take a handy example, "... rather than accept speed limits of twenty miles an hour we prefer to let automobiles kill forty thousand people a year." A Rand analyst puts it in more general terms and less rhetorically: "I am sure that there is, in effect, a desirable level of automobile accidents - desirable, that is, from a broad point of view; in the sense that it is a necessary concomitant of things of greater value to society." The point may seem too obvious for iteration, but is essential to an understanding of the important motivational function of war as a model for collective sacrifice.

Although it cannot be said absolutely that such critical measures of social control as the draft require a military rationale, no modern society has yet been willing to risk experimentation with any other kind. Even during such periods of comparatively simple social crisis as the so-called Great Depression of the 1930s, it was deemed prudent by the government to invest minor make-work projects, like "Civilian" Conservation Corps, with a military character, and to place the more ambitious National Recovery Administration under the direction of a professional army officer at its inception. Today, at least one small Northern European country, plagued with uncontrollable unrest among its "alienated youth," is considering the expansion of its armed forces, despite the problem of making credible the expansion of a non-existent external threat.

Sporadic efforts have been made to promote general recognition of broad national values free of military connotation, but they have been ineffective. For example, to enlist public support of even such modest programs of social adjustment as "fighting inflation" or "maintaining physical fitness" it has been necessary for the government to utilize a patriotic (i.e., military) incentive. It sells "defense" bonds and it equates health with military preparedness. This is not surprising; since the concept of "nationhood" implies readiness for war, a "national" program must do likewise.

This system and its analogues elsewhere furnish remarkably clear examples of disguised military utility. Informed persons in this country have never accepted the official rationale for a peacetime draft - military necessity, preparedness, etc. - as worthy of serious consideration. But what has gained credence among thoughtful men is the rarely voiced, less easily refuted, proposition that the institution of military service has a "patriotic" priority in our society that must be maintained for its own sake. Ironically, the simplistic official justification for selective service comes closer to the mark, once the nonmilitary functions of military institutions are understood. As a control device over the hostile, nihilistic, and potentially unsettling elements of a society in transition, the draft can again be defended, and quite convincingly, as a "military" necessity.

Dear Frank, The form of words isn't important. Orally, I usually get "Hey ,you!" so any improvement is welcome. Shillings for the meter: that takes one back a bit, eh? Did you guys ever play 'Knock Down Sally', using twigs aginst a city street wall to be knocked down with marbles or pebbles?

Dear Bonnie, Do you post as 'the dog' to apprise us of your canine nature per se or to distinguish yourself from some third-party non-dog Bonnie, possibly known in the UK but certainly not here in Caracas? What other non-dog Bonnies are there apart from the Bedelia birdle? Do tell.

Another secondary ecological trend bearing on projected population growth is the regressive effect of certain medical advances. Pestilence, for example, is no longer an important factor in population control. The problem of increased life expectancy has been aggravated. These advances also pose a potentially more sinister problem, in that undesirable genetic traits that were formally self-liquidating are now medically maintained. Many diseases that were once fatal at preprocreational ages are now cured; the effect of this development is to perpetuate undesirable susceptibilities and mutations. It seems clear that a new quasi-eugenic function of war is now in process of formation that will have to be taken into account in any transition plan. For the time being, the Department of Defense appears to have recognized such factors, as has been demonstrated by the planning under way by the Rand Corporation to cope with the breakdown in the ecological balance anticipated after a thermonuclear war. The Department has also begun to stockpile birds, for example, against the expected proliferation of radiation-resistant insects, etc.

But as the polemologist Gaston Bouthoul has pointed out, other institutions that were developed to serve this ecological function have proved even less satisfactory. (They such established forms as these: infanticide, practiced chiefly in ancient and primitive societies; sexual mutilation; monasticism; forced emigration; extensive capital punishment, as in old China and eighteenth-century England; and other similar, usually localized, practices.)

Man's ability to increase his productivity of the essentials of physical life suggests that the need for protection against cyclical famine may be nearly obsolete. It has thus tended to reduce the apparent importance of the basic ecological function of war, which is generally disregarded by peace theorists. Two aspects of it remain especially relevant, however. The first is obvious: current rates of population growth, compounded by environmental threat of chemical and other contaminants, may well bring about a new crisis of insufficiency. If so, it is likely to be one of unprecedented global magnitude, not merely regional or temporary. Conventional methods of warfare would almost surely prove inadequate, in this event, to reduce the consuming population to a level consistent with survival of the species.

Man, like all other animals, is subject to the continuing process of adapting to the limitations of his environment. But the principal mechanism he has utilized for this purpose is unique among living creatures. To forestall the inevitable historical cycles of inadequate food supply, post-Neolithic man destroys surplus members of his own species by organized warfare.

Ethologists have often observed that the organized slaughter of members of their own species is virtually unknown among other animals. Man's special propensity to kill his own kind (shared to a limited degree with rats) may be attributed to his inability to adapt anachronistic patterns of survival (like primitive hunting) to his development of "civilizations" in which these patterns cannot be effectively sublimated. It may be attributed to other causes that have been suggested, such as a maladapted "territorial instinct," etc. Nevertheless, it exists and its social expression in war constitutes a biological control of his relationship to his natural environment that is peculiar to man alone.

War has served to help assure the survival of the human species. But as an evolutionary device to improve it, war is almost unbelievably inefficient. With few exceptions, the selective processes of other living creatures promote both specific survival and genetic improvement. When a conventionally adaptive animal faces one of its periodic crises of insufficiency, it is the "inferior" members of the species that normally disappear. An animal's social response to such a crisis may take the form of a mass migration, during which the weak fall by the wayside. Or it may follow the dramatic and more efficient pattern of lemming societies, in which the weaker members voluntarily disperse, leaving available food supplies for the stronger. In either case, the strong survive and the weak fall. In human societies, those who fight and die in wars for survival are in general its biologically stronger members. This is natural selection in reverse.

In advanced modern democratic societies, the war system has provided political leaders with another political-economic function of increasing importance: it has served as the last great safeguard against the elimination of necessary social classes. As economic productivity increases to a level further and further above that of minimum subsistence, it becomes more and more difficult for a society to maintain distribution patterns insuring the existence of "hewers of wood and drawers of water." The further progress of automation can be expected to differentiate still more sharply between "superior" workers and what Ricardo called "menials," while simultaneously aggravating the problem of maintaining an unskilled labor supply.

The arbitrary nature of war expenditures and of other military activities make them ideally suited to control these essential class relationships. Obviously, if the war system were to be discarded, new political machinery would be needed at once to serve this vital subfunction. Until it is developed, the continuance of the war system must be assured, if for no other reason, among others, than to preserve whatever quality and degree of poverty a society requires as an incentive, as well as to maintain the stability of its internal organization of power.

The political functions of war have been up to now even more critical to social stability. It is not surprising, nevertheless, that discussions of economic conversion for peace tend to fall silent on the matter of political implementation, and that disarmament scenarios, often sophisticated in their weighing of international political factors, tend to disregard the political functions of the war system within individual societies.

These functions are essentially organizational. First of all, the existence of a society as a political "nation" requires as part of its definition an attitude of relationship toward other "nations." This is what we usually call a foreign policy. But a nation's foreign policy can have no substance if it lacks the means of enforcing its attitude toward other nations. It can do this in a credible manner only if it implies the threat of maximum political organization for this purpose - which is to say that it is organized to some degree for war. War, then, as we have defined it to all national activities that recognize the possibility of armed conflict, is itself the defining element of any nation's existence vis-a-vis any other nation. Since it is historically axiomatic that the existence of any form of weaponry insures its use, we have used the word "peace" as virtually synonymous with disarmament. By the same token, "war" is virtually synonymous with nationhood. The elimination of war implies the inevitable elimination of national sovereignty and the traditional nation-state.

The war system not only has been essential to the existence of nations as independent political entities, but has been equally indispensable to their stable internal political structure. Without it, no government has ever been able to obtain acquiescence in its "legitimacy," or right to rule its society. The possibility of war provides the sense of external necessity without which no government can long remain in power. The historical record reveals one instance after another where the failure of a regime to maintain the credibility of a war threat led to its dissolution, by the forces of private interest, of reactions to social injustice, or of other disintegrative elements. The organization of a society for the possibility of war is its principal political stabilizer. It is ironic that this primary function of war has been generally recognized by historians only where it has been expressly acknowledged - in the pirate societies of the great conquerors.

Although we do not imply that a substitute for war in the economy cannot be devised, no combination of techniques for controlling employment, production, and consumption has yet been tested that can remotely compare to it in effectiveness. It is, and has been, the essential economic stabilizer of modern societies.

It should also be noted that war production has a dependable stimulation effect outside itself. Far from constituting a "wasteful" drain on the economy, war spending, considered pragmatically, has been a consistently positive factor in the rise of gross national product and of individual productivity. A former Secretary of the Army has carefully phrased it for public consumption thus: "If there is, as I suspect there is, a direct relation between the stimulus of large defense spending and a substantially increased rate of growth of gross national product, it quite simply follows that defense spending per se might be countenanced on economic grounds alone [emphasis added] as a stimulator of the national metabolism." Actually, the fundamental nonmilitary utility of war in the economy is far more widely acknowledged than the scarcity of such affirmations as that quoted above would suggest.

The principal economic function of war, in our view, is that it provides just such a flywheel. It is not to be confused in function with the the various forms of fiscal control, none of which directly engages vast numbers of men and units of production. It is not to be confused with massive government expenditures in social welfare programs; once initiated, such programs normally become integral parts of the general economy and are no longer subject to arbitrary control.

In the case of military "waste," there is indeed a larger social utility. It derives from the fact that the "wastefulness" of war production is exercised entirely outside the framework of the economy of supply and demand. As such, it provides the only critically large segment of the total economy that is subject to complete and arbitrary central control. If modern industrial societies can be defined as those which have developed the capacity to produce more than is required for their economic survival (regardless of the equities of distribution of goods within them), military spending can be said to furnish the only balance wheel with sufficient inertia to stabilize the advance of their economies. The fact that war is "wasteful" is what enables it to serve this function. And the faster the economy advances, the heavier this balance wheel must be.

Leckie railway up so high

Over Liverpool streets

Leckie railway in the sky

That's crackin!

Leckie railway linked the docks

FOr the dockers and the flocks

Of mucky kids

When their mas'd sent 'em packin!

Refrain:

Dallying down the Dingle

On the good old L.O.R.

Whether married or you're single

Or you'd come from near or far

Whether you wanted sands at Seaforth

Or a ship at Prince's Dock

The Pier Head or the Gladstone

Or you'd got a ring to hock

Y'took the train that flew without wings

Not a bus or a bike or a car

And then you'd surely realise

The Dockers' Umbrella... is a star!

Ol' General Turdgison, Class of 1959, East Point, touting specious argument, eruditely configured, would have us sign on for this 'War is the secret of a society's vitality, therefore, a warlike stance, confirmed with occasional sallies and raids plus a well defined 'Feindbild', is a sine qua non for any thriving society. By extension, its absence is the mark of a society in decadence and decline, a society at its most defeatable.' The argument presented, not for the first time, comes dressed in sheep's clothing, as part of a report on '... the feasibility and desirability of peace'. Blimey Days! It is excerpted, as it were, 'for war', though we get nowt of the report as a whole. Indeed, we are led to believe that this is it. There ain't no way nothin' else. In other words, we're given helf the story, guised as the whole story. Here we have a saying, 'No hay mentira mas grande que la media verdad', 'The biggest lie is the half truth'. Gee, Buck, old chap, if the thesis were irrevocably the case, then the most belligerant societies would be the most thrusting and advanced. The excerpts, presented as irrefutable fact, are actually an elaborate self fulfilling truth affair, generated because the writers are, probably unwittingly, culturally biassed and consequently, they lead themselves and others up a garden path entirely of their own fabrication, somehow justifying a war culture, which, we begin to suspect, was what they, being prisoners of their own cultural blinkerage, actually set out to do. The other detail of interest is that, if you accept the thesis put forward, you no longer have to think about owt. You can abdicate your responsibility for a series of things: with this absolutist conclusion, much of responsibility, moral, national, patriotic, personal etc is to all intents and purposes, resolved. Ah! Relief! On to less incommoding stuff then and blow all that about right and wrong and whether it's important. And, by the way, what was that sole untouchable tree in that garden affair? The knowledge of right and wrong or something wasn't it? Since Adam and Eve were upgrown at that point and acquiring the essence of our flwed humanity, I see no problem at all to reading this tree bit as "Mature people know the difference between right and wrong; those who don't are not mature".

Now, to the nittygrittiness: why all this exclusively Airstrip focussed attention? Who is going to put in a word for what came before and gave Airstrips time to arrive at all at all? Who is going to speak up for Railway Stations, e.g., á la Carnforth that gave us "Brief Encounter"; who is going to stand up for bus depots, á la Ribble in Crosby, engenderer of so much of the delightul early culture of what is finally emerging as one of the premier boroughs in the country, nay, the continent! Who is going to speak up for the Overhead Railway terminus at Gladstone Dock? Who remembers skiffle groups? Who remembers Lonny Donnegan? Who can tell Stork from Butter? These too are impactfully configured aspects of an imperfectly assembled Weltanschauung, dammitall and ought also to be adressed, 'To Occupier, or Other, as fitseen on the day or return unopened'. Or, as has been observed by the maturer youngsters, "'Tis a far happier state to see your garden through its flowers than its fallen leaves,...."

Beginning with the development of iron and steel, and proceeding through the discoveries of the laws of motion and thermodynamics to the age of the atomic particle, the synthetic polymer, and the space capsule, no important scientific advance has not been at least indirectly initiated by an implicit requirement of weaponry. More prosaic examples the transistor radio (an outgrowth of military communications requirements), the assembly line (from Civil War firearms needs), the steel-frame building (from the steel battleship), the canal lock, and so on. A typical adaptation can be seen in a device as modest as the common lawnmower; it developed from the revolving scythe devised by Leonardo da Vinci to precede a horse-powered vehicle into enemy ranks.

The most direct relationship can be found in medical technology. The Vietnam war alone has led to spectacular improvements in amputation procedures, blood-handling techniques, and surgical logistics. It has stimulated new large-scale research on malaria and other tropical parasitic diseases; it is hard to estimate how long this work would otherwise have been delayed, despite its enormous nonmilitary importance to nearly half the world's population.

Of all the countless dichotomies invented by scholars to account for the major differences in art styles and cycles, only one has been consistently unambiguous in its application to a variety of forms and cultures. However it may be verbalized, the basic distinction is this: Is the work war-oriented or is it not? Among primitive peoples, the war dance is the most important art form. Elsewhere, literature, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture that has won lasting acceptance has invariably dealt with a theme of war, expressly or implicitly, and has expressed the centricity of war to society. The war in question may be national conflict, as in Shakespeare's plays, Beethoven's music, or Goya's paintings, or it may be reflected in the form of religious, social, or moral struggle, as in the work of Dante, Rembrandt, and Bach. Art that cannot be classified as war-oriented is usually described as "sterile," "decadent," and so on. Application of the "war standard" to works of art may often leave room for debate in individual cases, but there is no question of its role as the fundamental determinant of cultural values. Aesthetic and moral standards have a common anthropological origin, in the exaltation of bravery, the willingness to kill and risk death in tribal warfare.

It is also instructive to note that the character of a society's culture has borne a close relationship to its war-making potential, in the context of its times. It is no accident that the current(1966) "cultural explosion" in the United States is taking place during an era marked by an unusually rapid advance in weaponry. This relationship is more generally recognized than the literature on the subject would suggest. For example, many artists and writers are now beginning to express concern over the limited creative options they envisage in the warless world they think, or hope, may be soon upon us. They are currently preparing for this possibility by unprecedented experimentation with meaningless forms; their interest in recent years has been increasingly engaged by the abstract pattern, the gratuitous emotion, the random happening, and the unrelated sequence.

The existence of an accepted external menace, then, is essential to social cohesiveness as well as to the acceptance of political authority. The menace must be believable, it must be of a magnitude consistent with the complexity of the society threatened, and it must appear, at least, to affect the entire society.

The existence of an accepted external menace, then, is essential to social cohesiveness as well as to the acceptance of political authority. The menace must be believable, it must be of a magnitude consistent with the complexity of the society threatened, and it must appear, at least, to affect the entire society.

It must be emphasized that the precedence of a society's war-making potential over its other characteristics is not the result of the "threat" presumed to exist at any one time from other societies. This is the reverse of the basic situation; "threats" against the "national interest" are usually created or accelerated to meet the changing needs of the war system. Only in comparatively recent times has it been considered politically expedient to euphemize war budgets as "defense" requirements.

Wars are not "caused" by international conflicts of interest. Proper logical sequence would make it more often accurate to say that war-making societies require---and thus bring about---such conflicts. The capacity of a nation to make war expresses the greatest social power it can exercise; war-making, active or contemplated, is a matter of life and death on the greatest scale subject to social control. It should therefore hardly be surprising that the military institutions in each society claim its highest priorities.

A brief look at some defunct premodern societies is instructive. One of the most noteworthy features common to the larger, more complex, and more successful of ancient civilizations was their widespread use of the BLOOD SACRIFICE (qv Blair). If one were to limit consideration to those cultures whose regional hegemony was so complete that the prospect of "war" had become virtually inconceivable ---as was the case with several of the great pre-Columbian societies of the Western Hemisphere---it would be found that some form of ritual killing occupied a position of paramount social importance in each. Invariably, the ritual was invested with mythic or religious significance; as will all religious and totemic practice, however, the ritual masked a broader and more important social function.

In these societies, the blood sacrifice served the purpose of maintaining a vestigial "earnest" of the society's capability and willingness to make war-- i.e., kill and be killed---in the event that some mystical--i.e., unforeseen --circumstance were to give rise to the possibility. That the "earnest" was not an adequate substitute for genuine military organization when the unthinkable enemy, such as the Spanish conquistadores, actually appeared on the scene in no way negates the function of the ritual. It was primarily, if not exclusively, a symbolic reminder that war had once been the central organizing force of the society, and that this condition might recur.

Gooooing to it, by numbers: ----Go, 1!

Your fate was decided decades ago!!

Do you think "leaders" like Bush or Blair would get anywhere near to the top if they weren't groomed by the "Power Elite" to follow instructions...

Remember JFK? he made the mistake of believing he actually WAS the President....and paid the appropriate price for his conceit.

Since then, our "leaders" have proved more amenable to the realities of power - i.e. they recognise they don't have any power... WE have the POWER!!!

It was laid out to Johnson in 1966, and to every subsequent president.

"Lasting peace, while not theoretically impossibe, is probably unattainable; even if it could be achieved it would most certainly not be in the best interests of a stable society to achieve it.

"War fills certain functions essential to the stability of our society; until other ways of filling them are developed, the war system must be maintained - and improved in effectiveness. Allegiance to the State requires a cause - and a cause requires an enemy.

"War has provided both ancient and modern societies with a dependable system for stabilizing and controlling national economies. No alternate method of control has yet been tested in a complex modern economy that has shown itself remotely comparable in scope or effectiveness.

"War itself is the basic social system. It is the system which has governed most human societies of record, as it does today. War-readiness is the dominant force. It accounts for approximately a tenth of the World's total economy.

"The organization of a society for the possibility of war is its principal political stabilizer. The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in its war powers...."

The Truth shall set you free!!

i) protection of the Zionist Entity by its Client, USA.
ii) the understanding by the USA since at least 1945 that Peace in the World is undesirable and unfeasible from their point of view, and incompatible with US economic and political determinants.
iii) Oil
iv) the establishment of a New World Order.

Saddam is a living saint compared to the unbridled evil of the USA and its ZOG, (for the benefit of the lemmings, that's the Zionist Occupation Government)

Aproximately EIGHT MILLION PEOPLE have been murdered by the USA in its contrived and manufactured wars since 1945.

The west is stuck trying to figure how one counters threats from a force made up of suicide bombers, a detail that we are culturally ill prepared to appreciate on the one hand and, at the operational level is hugely simpler since operatives don't have to figure and arrange for a complicated getaway phase. Simply saying that the suicide approach is illogical hasn't helped the Israelis much. It is true that the Saudis are tottering but, were I an American, the last place I'd want my troops to be if Arab hell breaks loose is in the middle of it. I don't think the US could defend the Saudi oil fields anyway: at the first sign of a move on their part, the fields can be disabled by their own current operators. It didn't take long for Saddam to fire up 800 Kuwaiti wells in the Gulf war. It would take long either to disable Saudi wells to a decisive degree before clumsy US forces arrived on the scene, clumsy because frontline battle units are not set up to protect oil wells, fields and suchlike, however bravely and skillfully led. None of the foregoing is to justify military action at this stage. It is simply to say that, just as folk have done over the years - Hitler expected to break London's spirit with bombing raids, guerillas in Colombia expect to break civil society by terror tactics, bomber Harris expected to break German morale by his carpet bombing - if we assume that our logic will predict the potential adversary's upcoming moves, we are getting ouraelves into the hairiest of delicate situations and risking our lads' lives. I still think the terrorism factor and fundamentalism are still decisive ones and the oil bit an aggravating one to the extent that oil income is fuelling Saddam's regime. There is an understandable but dangerous tendancy, I feel, to assume that all woes are America's fault and all America's concern is exclusively oil-based. I see this assumption as underlying a seemingly innate anti-Americanism: you can choose to be anti-American but when these feeling become culturally ingrained, they cloud out all other angles and are therefore dangerous in themselves. The lamentable oratory of George et al doesn't help, of course, but there are still some upstart issues that, all unaware of American monopolaric 'sole pole' status, don't play by the rules emanting from that assumption and, as the US has found over the years, the Middle East is choc-a-bloc with them.

If you don't think it's all about the supply of cheap oil take a look at what Mo Mowlam (an ex British cabinet member) has to say.

The other detail is simply that, although there seems to be no evidence Saddam had anything to do with September the 11th, a Saddam with a bomb in his back pocket could threaten America itself: he sails his bomb into New York harbour in a container and detonates it at will. Wiping out New York and humbling the Great Satan would practically beatify Saddam in many Middle Eastern eyes and I think his vanity renders him susceptible to temptations of that kind, even though, once identified as the dirty rotter responsible, US reaction would be prompt, as we have seen already.

So, I think that the US position reflects their reasonable and natural apprehension about having a megalomaniacal nut in a position to cause them and the whole Middle Eastern powderkeg very serious damage, damage from which they would probably never properly recover, in the terms undertsandable today.

As for the arguments against a war, the obvious ones focus on a negotiated solution, inspectors and suchlike, and one of the dreadful consequences being bruited about, namely, that a war could swell Al Quaeda's recruitment lines beyond measure, further endangering the US's safety. The idea of negotiating with Saddam has to be rated against the history of his having lied and reneged on a very long list of agreements, mainly with the UN, and he has shewn every intention of carrying on his military research and acquisitions aimed at getting his hands on the ruddy bomb. Saddam has repeatedly shewn that, with him and his ilk, no meaningful negotiations can be undertaken. If progrees is to be made, he has to go. If Dubya can come up with credible evidence of Saddam's imminent acquisition, by hook or by crook, of weapons of mass destruction, then the matter boils down to "Do we wait until the US, the UK or whomsoever, is hugely damaged and then, to cheers and encouragement, launch a devastating 'back-to-the-stone-age' attack, or do we undertake a limited action to unseat Saddam and protect ourselves and our lively critics, safely ensconced, as they feel themselves to be, in countries whose oft undervalued freedom was, ultimately, very dearly bought."

So, is Dubya the man for the job? I think that discussion will be far from protracted and we'd all be out by 9.30am, in time to buy the freshest of Bav Slices, confected that very morning. Now, you probably saw that Gerhard Schroeder in today's New York Times wasn't at all convinced of the war has to be undertaken at all and denied that this position owed more to elections later this year than wider practicalities. Do you feel he may have a point, a way out of the situation without actual fighting a limited conflict; if so, what is it?

Now, in regard to Burbo burbeoningliness, I feel that our watchword ought to be 'most circumspect' for several reasons, one being that no-one else has claimed it as theirs so we could be full owners. But I digress. The attraction of Burbo surely is based at least partly on its untouchidity, its 'open to the sea and skyness' as it were and I would be loath to sacrifice that je-ne-sais-quoi-ship for a few barrels of oil. Now, were reserves proven to be more than a few barrels, we could always adopt a lateral drill and production technique, whereby we could actually keep all the paraphernalia, derricks, drillstrings, kellys (yes, actually; and for the curious, here in Venezuela, 'vástago cuadrado de transmisión') etc etc at a remote point. At first blush, the most promising would be somewhere in downtown Formby but that's not definitive, naturally. The bank itself would remain pristine, doing real estate values no harm at all at all. As for the aerodrome, as community-at-large conscious folk, I am for using Speke, bolstering the low key aspect, as it were and boosting our local airport's precarious fortunes in the face of Ringway and all its works and pomps.

The proposed mafia connexion is another matter altogether. I feel it would be advisable to secretly ask Elaine, as in all self respecting scenes of this type, 'Look, lass: are you in or are you in?'. Elaine's professed reminiscence was breadbin oriented and we really ought to ask whether she fancies shifting field a bit to accommodate mob connexionry, payoffs and suchlike. I mean, how do we know that Elaine isn't mother superior of an enclosed order with one computer in the entire province? Besides, if she's 'not in', we can save a cool 33.333%, dammit.

Before bruiting about our secret pre-emptive strike plan, I want to know whether such an initiative, reflected in extra work for Crosby strategists and tacticians as they hone their varied expertises and consequently stay up late and eat more Satterthwaite's bread, will bear at all on the usual Bavarian Slice Supply: if that were to fall at all noticeably, the ever-present eye of the spy could readily jump to the traditional conclusion, namely, "They're up to something, probably a pre-emptive strike!" immediately signalled back to headquarters in Bagdaddly and/or Washington-on-the-Pot-Omac, and provoking a pre-pre-emptive strike, readily enough predictable when you see Arabs and Buzzin' Cuzzins, buying up the last Bavslice stocks before the balloon goes up. So, let's bend with the breeze for the moment then and keep our upsleave options in our back pockets with a view to adroitly sidestepping foreign kibosh actions. For the moment.

In an ecological aside, I would like to second the proposal from the honourable member fromn Darien: apart from the obvious benefits from the proposed facility, Crosby terminological leadership, resting in this case on our claiming ownership of the widely used phrase, 'When the cowpats hit the fan', would be rendered almost unassailable.

Bear in mind that this is a watershed, a turning point, a Wendespot, a great 'before and after' in binliness: as always in rubbishy stuff, there is a deeper meaning that reaches apogee at an international conference. Just think: a binresqueue, Crosby-led, no less, at not just any international do but the very earth summit. It's overoodled with cosmic siginificance: the conference will spawn kilometres of ink of all sorts, being newspaper, reports and even handwrit like when we was sprightlier youngsters than today, and therein lies the esotericocity of the thing: the words 'bin' and 'nib', mirror images one of the other, are both derived from the ancient Sanskrut stem, 'i', a touching detail graphically revealing that, even from time immemorial most trash was 'nib' generated! Evidence is myriad; even in our own neck of the woods, only educated people could write and they were precious few so, as their rubbish gathered momentum, the common man had the word for the snootier literate charlie. And what was that word? None other than 'his nibs'! So, our binbrigade members are being called upon not just to collect rubbish but to realise and embody the veryness of rubbish disposal, clearing up after an international tripefest held under tripe reduction auspices! What greater Bin-occasion are we likely to see in our lifetimes?

I think we should be sending our frontline binmen and women into the fray with a new uniform, a new slogan (suggestions welcome) and that they should be deemed eligible for a new medal in this new war, a stylised represenation of their valour in stainless (of course) steel: "The Crosby Bin Lid", class 1 for leading binmen and class 2 for adjacent binmen. Go Crsoby!

Invited to this will be the educationally sub normal Toxic Texan and his war loving, world opinion ignoring, war mongering, blood thirsty, bomb loving, armageddon inducing, planet polluting, nuke desiring, oil greedy, megalomaniac, corporately crooked, deluded, Churchillian aspiring, hawk like cronies who need a little cheering up.

Instead of making the world even more miserable, a few Bav Slices will transform their view of mankind, inducing a flower power, warm glowing, rose tinted, all you need is love, hallucinogenic, feeling of tolerance and spirituality to all and sundry.

Our own area is plagued at the minute with budding postulants for 'hairy' distinguishabilitation: today's novices, currently including even the foreign minister, are those trying to impugn the supreme court's finding for the high ranking officers, a finding saying that the government's accusation of their having been guilty of 'military rebellion' in the April episodes was unfounded. All erroneously, this has been bruited about, primarily by the president whose rating of the court only weeks ago was, '....one of the best, if not the best, in the world', as being a finding that there was no coup d'état. While the Pres. Man is culpably mistaken on that front, it suits his purpose because his paid demonstators - who now earn more and have better benefits than the guardsmen sent to protect them (yes, the government supplies paid demonstrators and military guards for them thus to prevent local police from interrupting their officially sanctioned riots) feed on this stuff. Their latest declared enemies are 'international neo-liberalism' and, get this: - 'international zionism'. Well, Gee: sounds like déja vu all over again, eh?

Both our bailiwicks seem to be in one of those phases, of themselves not bereft of interest and simultaneously transitively trepidatatory, where personal strategy is dictated by mutually conflictive directives, being 'heads above water, lads' and 'heads below parapets, lads' and where the water is nazi-salute high and the damn parapets are all erected on low-slung bungalow-like edifications.

That's where the Burbo connexion comes in: in Crosby, we have but few odds and sods onto which to hang our straightfaced convolutions and that are capable of standing the continual TCC hammering they might get. Look what happened to 5 Lamps! Hence the possibly irreverant tendancy by some who'll stay nameless to play fast and loose with the sacred Burbo, although Sniggery Woods, which to date has only had to conceal a mere Galactic Radar Listening Post squirreled away in its dark entrails, still has rubbish mileage left in it, I'd've opined.

But how to make a solid case that Crosby's outstandingness, appreciated most readily in the radiance of soul and bod of its ladies is in fact the very beating heart of classical Greek perfection? (since the whole thing began with 'class') I chose the purporting route and revealed how it all emenated from the Great B and provided the now pretty obvious underpinning of the hotly unundisputed predominance of charm and stuff daily oozed by Crosby lasses so naturally as they sashay their way into history; or the George. But there was still a wide-open hitch. Enter Melanie and her Antonio: no 3 guesses for which one he is. First, she doesn't spell her name like real Welshy, which always has to be allffffaigypllann sort of thing so that was corrected in short order. Then there's all this lisping stuff. Antonio Banderas(it means 'flags' btw) is in thick with Melanie Gryyyyphytthhhwwffffyth and the famous Spanish lisp was upbrought by her posting, a bit naughtily but there it is. That gave the key to the caboodle: take Mythology and unlisp it to Missology. Now you're in open country and the route to Seafield and Manor Road and Merch's (B & G) and St. Lukes and Holy Family and St. Peter's and Paul's and St Bede's and Uncle Tom Cobley's Shoe-in group is an open book, waiting only to be downset, if not downput.

The portmanteau bit was a red herring throwed in mischievously to distract attention by focussing momentarily on the well known bags for carrying coats used by sailors in port.

As for schoolyears, the delight-fact is that, if you can only experience just so many from 9 to 4 in school, the experience of any one of them would, per se, ipso facto and on the spottle, eliminate the opportunity to experience any other one during that time. Whatever: on an 'a posteriori' evidence basis, old Manor must have done a wonderful job in spite of it all, otherwise, you couldn't have finished up being so delightfull, now could you?

Main Entry: 1gree

Pronunciation: 'grE

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French grE step,

degree, from Latin gradus -- more at GRADE

Date: 14th century

Scottish : MASTERY (q.v.)

whence, if we merge the Scottish 'mastery' with the Middle French 'step' solution as given and rejoin the result to 'pedi', we find that the ostensibly class-associated term, 'pedigree' actually refers - or referred - specifically to the 'mastery of steps of the foot' wherefore, seemingly, the 'pedigree' route to a solution of the real live meaning of 'class', when not talking of locomotives, of course, would throw up the version, 'one exhibiting such mastery', esp if Scottish or at the middle of French homework, being in short, 'Twinkletoes', there being one or two caveats in connexion with Medieval Dance. It thus becomes crystal-clear that the classy thing in them days was the 'Pas de Calais', or 'Calais Step', a form of 'To-Step', closely related to the peasant variant 'Gerroff', ealier "Ger'ov", through the German who made it famous at the Elizabethan court's 1582 Hanseatic conference celebrating the birth of the Hamburg nautical connexion and illustrating the Scottish commercial ascendancy prevalent at that time. Contemporary records mention a Thane McDonald. All this bears closely on our own very Scouseland heritage because, as it flagrantly blatant, dancing skill depended almost exlcusively on the suitability of the legs, particularly the direct foot-bearing parts, namely the lower leg bit. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see, jumping out of the paper, that deftness of lower leg, the local 'mastery' of which is carved in Liverpool Football club history, was the ability to wield one's upper limb in a "Shankly" fashion.

I rest my portmanteau having hoped to clarify the obvious, namely, that, to have class, you have to come from Liverpool, or be married to one such, or have flown in an aeroplane of a model not undissimilar to those observable from Burbo Bank while cashing damp cheques.

Experience has taught me that the group that most believes in a "classless" society are those in the middle. The ones at the top and at the bottom know otherwise.

Or are racial minorities or aboriginal groups happy with their lot? I know the ones at the top are!

Got into my local, which seemed to have been taken over by a bunch of big chaps in red and black checkered jackets and ditto kecks. They were extremely vociferous for the Crosbeians, for the Waterluvians, they were a gobby bunch.

On the way to the bar I asked one of the chaps if they were Americans. He denied this, explaining that, as a Canadian, he hated Yanks, and then proceeded to give the reasons. The last was the cutest; "and they're such loud-mouthed a******s!" And he was being serious.

The other, non-questionly details cover: 1) the terminology part: I am of those who figger that if you were once a Seafield girl, you never become an 'ex'. I am prepared to admit that, having been a Preseland Road passer-by and beneficiary of Crosby's 4.00pm shimmering glory of yesteryear, so naturally, elegantly and rheologically perfectly lighting up the skies and hearts of the Borough, my votes in this may be deemed less than impartial but, whatever, I'd've plumped for, "Once a Seafield girl, always a Seafield girl', just as 'a Merchants boy' or 'a Brown School boy' can readily denote fellas who went to those schools in what is now a previous century; and 2) the validity of the metaphysical underpinning for the argument that reuniting former pupils will per se of itself and inherently, per ipsum ut ad hoc non jubilattii carbunculiborum, create an everlasting pride and support for misspelled childrenly offspringlies. Or maybe I just feel that way because, seemingly by dint if a administrative oversight, they didn't get my invite off in the same post that goes to Holland.

Things here are getting serious. Again. On national telly yesterday, the president said very forcibly that magistrates of the top court of the land are being pressured by foreign conspirators: the court, he said must find(in a a key matter about the April 'coup d'etat', so called) for the government's thesis that there was a coup. It has twice found there wasn't on grounds of manifest lack of evidence. He pointed out that the 'pueblo' wouldn't stand for any other result and would take matters to the streets. No manipulation there at all. He's afraid because a 'non-coup coup' would mean that his departure on the 12th of April becomes an abandonment of post a situation tantamount, with or without a signed document, to a resigantion. There being no constitutional mechanism to 'unresign', he would suddenly be seen to be governing now in usurpation of power. I might add that he and his political cronies packed the court with handpicked lawyers (the main guy had to get a PhD fast. All of 6 weeks it took) in the first place. Caray! The attorney general has things well in hand, though, being well counselled: among his advisors is the Colombian defence lawyer for the IRA guys in a Bogota gaol for aiding the FARC to make better bombs. Weaher's lovely.

I am sure Manorly Roadles are wonderfull and, is thirty ones for a 5 courser, or slap-up dingle dongle, deemed a 'posh' do, not forgetting the Seafield importées?

I think Babs is right about the silt: a national monument rating of some sort, agreed on with the government of neigbouring Great Britain, among whose influential advisors there figures a, well - a Seafield Girl. Can summat not be outworked?

The last time St Mary's College wrote to me was to inform me of my 'O' Level results. 32 years later they have decided to write to me again with the urgent message "The school needs your help"

To "reunite former pupils creating an everlasting pride and support for the future of your children and their childrens (sic) children", they are holding a "super calendar of events" the first of which is on Friday 11 October at Formby Hall Golf Club. Tickets £30 for a 5 course dinner and a HALF bottle of wine. (Looks like they're -a registered charity - short of a few bob.

Unfortunately the letter contains several spelling and grammatical errors that put mine to shame. This will not do and the strap should be applied liberally.

However, if anyone wants to attend (and since this is the first time any official 'reunion' has been mentioned in 30 years at least) tickets can be ordered by cheque to the school (You know the address) payable to St Mary's Social Fund. Or telephone the school on GRE... er, I mean, +44 (0) 151 924 3926.

I have no doubt than when he doffs his Mayoral Chain, several large companies will find a place for him on their boards.

Failing that, a comfy chair in Brussels could be his lot. Advantage of that is his missus can be his P.A., his kids research assistants, and his dog a consultant.

in a different vein, given the the prevailing TCC ambiance, still well within the penumbra of the Burbo turbo's discussion, I cannot pass on without observing admiringly that that tossed-over-the-shoulder-btw-before-I-forget enquiry about acquisition of some 'Burbo' action in the 'current' market was a stroke of genius. A sort of humourly 'raisin d'être', as it were.

Now to this newspaper or rag and the ad hoc TCC monnikering committee: in the tradition of not losing a faithfully transmitted vision of the past, the lively social relief achieved by rags (and rampant in the 'Waterloo' piece on this channel) in the early years of last century and the movement of calling them after street addresses, as "The Twelfth Street Rag" and as acknowledgement of Scott Joplin's contribution to Crosby's past, I suggest a groundbreaking name such as "The Moor Lane Stompers' Rag" as illustrating a naming philosophy, all with a view to arriving at a finalised re-Crosbied Herald that we all will come to know and love, inter alia, 'cos it'll be online. I add no more except to mention that there may well be a case, aimed at a spot of cachet, for writing "Rag" as "Wrag", to kind of, well, set it apart, I'd've figgered, there. Myself, I'd go for it.

That crosbycam thing is quite something isn't it? Still, I do think that, if they, a channel called 'Crosbycam', are to keep the momentum going, they're gonna have to get more cams active. I have looked at the current shot several times and particularly found it cute that you can see Crosby's local time right there: an entirely new approach to 'real time' to all us offshorers toiling under Eastern Standard, Venezuelan Legal (ours) or other such rubbish,..... but there is a quickly reached limit of just how many times one can beneficially contemplate the one village shot.

Dear Andy, How can we be sure they are not last year's Christmas lights?

Subject to how we're spelling L**chtenstein this week, if victory is claimed 'gainst the Guardian of the Quiz, I'll be over to Caracas in shot. Or a plane.

The weather's lovely though and PovStruck, by the way, don't let these lead-laced wrangles put you off: there's virtually no waiting time in the restaurants and the prices - though it's on me, of course - prices are very reasonable. Ever tried South American T-bone?

Just so you realise it isn't all beer, skittles and humming birds for us Caraqueños, not far from whence I transmit, the Tupamaro urban guerillas, here agents of the sitting government, are firing on the police, including the police helicopter.

I suggest you take a copy of "Pears Cyclopedaedia" next time you enter a (Pub) quiz. It's the best one-volume encyclopaedia I've ever come across.

Bill - yep, the little state, not the bloke. Although, the guardian of the quiz seemed to be spelling it as though the bloke. How are you supposed to contend with that?

BUT-

Dear Jacobo, One never knows with these guerilla flavoured announcements whether it's really them, Comandante Zero of happy memory, the Joyjoy Monkey or other suchable. Or some faceticle of their putative budding opposition. As a card-carrying member of the combined revolutionary forces, albeit an undercover splinter-group offshoot engaged in the struggle for the betterment of tropical marijuana-for-medical-purposes growers - an unwellied and selfless column of like minded fighters for peace and liberty - I would add my voice to the ringing tones of hope in the Mayor's forthright refusal to be forced into a denial or confirmation of rumours to the contrary and would push for this as an ongoing policy. From our jungle vantage point, I would further propose such policy be translated, in motto form, into Latin, in order to achieve an air of verisimilitude. Or respectability. Or something. Today, at this point in time on the globality scene.

And so to the NittilyGrittilies: Our group is revolutionarily nonplussed at there not having been any mention made to the non-mutual exclusivity option, namely, that of approval of the two turbine projects, being both the German one, feeding bilinigual Euro-leccy into our pure national griddle, Aarhhh..., and the C-Scapeled amperibles one, voltaically accessing the same griddibule, consolidating someone's victory over prejudice and expensive hair-dryer power. And stuff.

This whole episode reflects too the continuing inoperability of the MoD's 'stick-in-muddle' tumour. The real revolution will get nowhere if the opposition spends time engaging the exclusive services of a series of public servants, collectively categorisable as "Dr. No!". Exactly which sort of low flying Jihad Junk luanched from which secret 'whence' is conceivably likely to edge up, supposedly disguised - Ho,Ho,Ho - as wind turbine electro-eddies until the very last minute, only to appear in righteous fervour 10 miles offshore and come tooling accross the bay at a high rate of knottles is beyond us, tireless indefatigables as we are, especially if the same certificable certainty stops short and, shifting gear in mid-puff, entirely fails to appreciate the advantage of edging up behind an identical set of C-Scapulated turbinicals, much closer on the Great Burbo. This comparative proximity would also reduce the 'howling' phase to be painted on the weapons' lateral sides, to terrify the dingle-dongles out of early dory-borne fishermen or birds. In all fairness, however, truth be told, the latest editions of 'Radar for Revolutionaries' always arrive late here at our firmset-weathered-features headquarters, with bath, just so Mr. Sureshot of Maruly fame doesn't think we can't carry a yellow towel just as revolutionarily as he. Him. They do. Or whatever.

Liddypool sounds like Diddymen stuff to me.

I rather liked the sight of cheap, silent, eco-clean energy being harvested, all a testimony to elegant engineering, some Liverpool engendered. What could be more natural than the best of both worlds, harmony with nature, electrically pumped creation coming out of your water tap. All natural beauty isn't of necessity bereft of human input. Revolving reflexions for a rainy season Friday afternoon. Here, anyway.

You see, a tailoring franchise has recently opened on The Great Bank selling quality gentlemens' trousers. The franchise is rather aptly called "KECKS on Burbo Bank:" Obviously Stamps Bistro has sadly been misinformed.

However, it does give me an idea on how to breathe new life into the rather squalid Burbo red light district.

Should the proposed Crosby/Amsterdam event happen, I may be able to get some tips from the rather racy streets of the Dutch capital about how to capitalise on our sandbank's vice potential. Mrs Andy is looking forward to the trip already. Being a legal consultant to the mayoral office (as well as an enthusiastic supporter of women's career advancement), she has heard that there is a great deal of female soliciting in that wonderful city.

Whatever: I think there's a danger of underestimating the weight of Uncle Frank's previous post: is Burbo on anybody's invasion list? Is the Mayor in possession of an updated Arabian Marrige schedule? Or this year's list of Irish-Welsh-Scottish Celtic Eisteddffford-c*m-PU fixtures? Are any bagpipe factories celebrating their centenaries? In a word: is the Burbo Security (sic) office sufficiently well funded and up to snuff; are the operatives fully trained, or in the jargon, 'Slice Current'? Has anyone told Bonnie that GRrrr only has 3 r's, notwithsatnding her/his impressive typing performance? In this uncertain day and age, regardless of Bonnie's achievements, not excluding an ongoingly notable Cheri symbiosis, there are noses to be stoneground and breaches to be into-ed before we can say that Burbo's potential disprupters will be duly convinced that any proto-incursion will be on-the-spotted-ly repelled with all, well ---- courteous promptness, shall we say. But first things first: know your opposition! Who are those parties potentially interested in Burbo occupation with subsequent sovereignty claims? Who out there is Crosby-jealous -- or even, perish the thought -- would deem us but a stepping stone to ill-perceivedly "greater things". How are the Mayor and his counterintelligence staff to prepare if the threat is uncharacterised?

If I was allowed to say things like "****", or "****" or even "********* with a huge ***** hanging out of her ****** while I was ********* it", things here would be so much more inciting, and there would be a dirth of yawners.

1950 Billy Liddell 18

1951 Billy Liddell 15

1952 Billy Liddell 19

1953 Billy Liddell 13

1954 Louis Bimpson/Jack Smith 13

1955 Billy Liddell 30

1956 Billy Liddell 28

1957 Billy Liddell 21

1958 Billy Liddell 24

billy liddell died twelve months ago.

both on the field and off it, billy liddell lived up to the very highest of standards and was an example and inspiration to all. A supreme athlete, he was one of the most complete players of his day and to many seasoned observers is still the greatest performer anfield has seen.

away from the game he did a vast amount of voluntary work for local boys' clubs and after his retirement he became a magistrate, a lay preacher and bursar of liverpool Uuiversity. The selflessness and sense of duty that guided his life outside football was as central to his approach as his vocation itself, and he was never anything less than a model proffesional.

It was his misfortune that, for the greater part of his two decades at anfield, there were too few other players of his ability at the club. The most modest of men, liddell would deny that he was forced to carry the team by himself for long periods of his career, but the fact that his side was universally known by the nickname "liddellpool" provides the most telling measure of his influence.(From "liverpool's greatest players" by david walmsley)

"BUT", I hear you cry, "BUT" - Ah! there's always a 'but' - " But how valid is the proposal that the name of the airport will so influence anyone, and that even inludes Americans?" Well, now you're talkin'! Because the question about the airport is but a special case of Mr.Paul Jones's greater and elegantly hued question plant on TCC, namely, should the perception that tourist, or indeed foreign or local investment income opportunities are influenced by the names of sites of interest in a given locality be a determining factor or even a factor in naming said sites of local interest? Now there's a thing! And the possibilties are myriad: what would one call the Albert Dock? Ought we to graft a spot of the classic onto Crosby's "QuintiLampi"? This is virgin territory, requiring cutting at the gorsey undergrowth to edge forward but I am sure we are up to it!

The second question raised by Paul's post is the possibilty of arriving at John Lennon at al at all, in his terms, 'as opposed to Manchester'. From Eurolocations, it's easy as we have seen from Bill's notably fecund post of yesterweek. But does our airport have facilities to take transatlantic, i.e. longhaul flights, with their long runway requirements and people administration capacity? Well, I don't know. Maybe some other poster does and could enlighten us. The other, associated, detail that crops up there is the 'Manchester as an alternative' view: now, in the light of the huge expense and planning complications of lengthening existing runways and laying new ones, why should we in the northwest continue to barney - 'your airport over mine' - between ourselves, only to benefit the rest of the country, notably, the southeast? I favour the merging of our two major airports, by means of a high-speed surface rail link between John Lennon and M/C(Ringway?) to create a NorthWest Regional Flight Centre for all longhaul flights, relieving some pressure at M/C and opening the possibilty that, together, we could improve our global validity as a well-served business and tourist centre, boasting all facilties and outstanding links to the region, the midlands and Scotland: Catch that between yer teeth, southeast!

Well just a few reflexions on Paul Jones's adroit focus, possibly owing to his specially privileged vantage point, living in a locality full of those very Americans who, we hope, will soon be upqueuing for tickets to the "England's Heartland, the Fascinating NorthWest, Dripping History, Throbbing Culture and a Step From Woodsworth's Front Door!"

... & God Bless

In this same vein, in matters Crosbyan, culpable ignorance of 'how it was, like, y'know' has now grown somehwat because of an interesting site upon which I stumbled recently, namely http://www.sunnyfields.freeserve.co.uk/crosby/ where the old Ribble bus depot, ownership of shops, a couple of oil paintings (my own particular fancy) and other village stuff covering 1946-1970 was available. Shufti it up!

I see the airport nomeclaturical sub-comitteee hasn't finalised it indubitably arduous task at the time of going to press. Maybe it would be better to start by sounding out the feeling for dropping the current Lennon option. Who's for and who's not? I am for dropping it myself, in favour of anotherly focussed name as yet undecided, as opposed to a simple return to 'Liverpool Airport' for reasons priorly forthset and, whilst acknowledging validity of others' ideas, my own vote still favours the historically flavoured 'Red Duster'.

For all you Venezuela watchers out there, btw, a mega-march of protest against the government is programmed for this Thursday. It has been billed as the 'definitive march' and, in internet invites, we are told of how peaceful it will be, as against the April 11th march when 18 Venezuelans were murdered on the street on national tv. These same invites, however, go on to details of how to minimise the effects of tear gas and very especially the need for a vinegar-soaked handkerchief to be placed over the nose for that purpose. The weather is lovely despite the rainy season being in full swing; fact is, as rainy seasons go this one hasn't yet lived up to its predecessors' hard won reputation. And our currency, the 'Bolívar' has trundled down a devaluatory path to the tune of only 78% this year, quite an exciting ride in its way but, let me empahsise, it's not all beer and skittles here in this neck of the tropics!

No, I think the Beatles owe a great deal to Liverpool - as one born 253 yards from Penny Lane and a bona fide contributor to the ambiance subsequently embodied in a sizeable bank account, I feel proud, albeit shortchanged - but the upshot of it all is that Liverpool is now on more peoples' cultural maps than it would otherwise have been and the Beatles symbiosis did us no harm at al at all....

So what should we call the Airport then? What do we seek when seeking a name for a Municipal Airport? Given the chance, would I go for 'John Lennon' again, as opposed to the name of a noble Spitfire pilot hauling his roaring MkIX off a Speke runway into a tearing climbing turn to port under full boost? I think we ought finally to move on, leaving our heroes in peace but unforgotten and gratefully and respectfully build our best efforts on the freedom they purchased for us making something that, had they survived they would be glad to wave at saying: "Them's our lads doin' that, y'know!". My Liverpool Airport could bear any of many names and I would have no problem endorsing those of the Billy Liddel or Dixie Dean variety but pressed, would probably opt for a vaguely cryptic one, namely "RED DUSTER AIRPORT" in tribute to our merchant seamen who, well, actually did put Liverpool on the map and which would give us a chance, when questioned to tell, doubtless in pithy and encapsulated versions, of some of their exploits, whether of when they transatlantiqued protected by Captain Johnny Walker's vessels on convoy duty in the 40's or when pitting their skills against the Boston transatlantic men in the 1880's.

So that's mine then: "RED DUSTER AIRPORT". Do I have anyone to second that motion?

I think that their efforts were part of a greater sea change where, thanks to RAB Butler, the now more educated 'lower classes' were daily more aware of their being fed Bulldog Drummond rubbish as a matter of course and of seeing tastefull drawing room comedy, farce and drama when they could truly cry, "Oh, Drawing Room, I Know Thee not! I've on'y gorra a frunt room with empty coal sacks on the floor for the dog ter sleep on". The emergence of Goons, Coronation Street and so forth as opposed to James Mason or even Dirk Bogard (actually, Derek Van den Bogaerde, btw see http://members.aol.com/Alpheratz9/Biography.html) and Doctor films was a flag planting exercise by the avant garde producers, comics and musical practitioners, whereof Liverpool was unshort - I even played in a skiffle group myself, ahem - who transmitted the age more faithfully than others who sought well (who can forget Brief Encounter?) or otherwise to feed a changed audience more of the same old same old.

As I flew out of John Lennon International Airport (Above Us Only Sky) on Tuesday, I thought of something my mother said:

"When we had our backs to the wall, and the only thing between us and a Thousands Years of National Socialism was the R.A.F., Speke Airport was a good enough name for the local aerodrome.

John Lennon loved the place so much he left it as soon as humanly possible.

Which of our working-class heroes deserve to be remembered in the name of the Liverpool Airport; those who made the ultimate sacrifice over the skies of our fair city, or a smackhead who was taken out by a fruit loop in his adopted home town?"

Discuss...

Claire, did I miss something? On what do you base your (somanyeth) threat to terminate the Channel?

Whilst knee-jerk anti-americanism may be fashionable, I think you have to differentiate between Daft George and 'all things American' per se. We Brittles have all sortsa things in common with the 'Yanquis' of 'Go home' fame and we didna' oughta flex reflexes for flexing's sake. Where'd've we have been in the last century had Honest Abe's perception of the open society's founding principles had not been applied to keep the Union together in the 1860's and today's US had become two, or three, or four, or five different countries with varying languages and currencies and views of roiling Europe? Where would we all be without a huge natural rights-based consumer market for a whole slew of our stuff, beginning with Land Rovers, Monticule Pythonibus and Masterpiece Theater? Even things such as Seinfeld and Friends have served to sharpen our appreciation of Brit national humour and, absent Americans, we'd not've seen things like the (US financed) 'Chariots of Fire' either. No, the George phenomenon does'nt help a great deal (though even The Economist was against the Kyoto Accords as ineffectual) but neither do a series of Brit or French or German shortcomings help their respectives either. The yanks may not do the best job but can you imagine le Monsieur Président Jacques Chirac (or Ken Livingstone) in power in Washington? Scary! So, let's hear it for all the yanks. Except George and guys like Strom and Jesse, eh? Besides, I see Al Gore is gearing up for a shot at the Seat in the Oval again.(http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=311160) Will that render anyone's sleep sounder?

PS: Hintle: If you play tennis, top class Dunlop balls are very much cheaper in the US than back home.

Dear Bill, I looked at the German joke website and, whilst agreeing they maybe have a witferous edge over the comically-challenged Dutch, I found the stuff a tad heavy-handed altogether. Oddly enough, and I'd probably have not spotted it without having your recent your post in mind, I saw a German joke on a T-shirt a few days later. The scene is a large lass pig and a smaller lad-pig, both sty-borne: LASS: "Alle Männer sind Schweine!" LAD. "Na, und?" (Lass: "All men are pigs!" Lad: "So what?") which I felt steered close to some intense, albeit diffusely defined, truth.

All of the very bestles for Brooke II at which, apart from timeless reminiscences, is the only one of our events at which the Mayor is expected to upturn in "Panoplia completicus et enteritus, ohne Pooch". That didna oughta disappoint.

Well, back to the Friday grind of watching humming birds just outside my window as I take orders over the 'phone. Ayay-Ay! A whole day before sunblock application and moseying over to the tennis club for a set or two and getting a papaya and a few mangoes on the way home. "Adios muchachos compañeros de mi vida,....."