I’ll start with something most people don’t know about me: I can’t drive.

(This will seem like a total non sequitur, but hang in there, I’ll deliver the goods, trust me.)

I’ve driven rally cars at high speed down treacherous dirt tracks. I’ve competitively raced quad bikes. I’ve taken a Dodge Viper to almost half the speed of sound.

But… I don’t have a driving license. A little odd, considering I once dreamt of being the world’s greatest rally driver.

The question that everyone inevitably asks is ‘Why don’t get your license?’ I’ve even owned and insured 3 cars in the vain attempt that it would spur me on to take my test. It didn’t. I’ve taken numerous driving lessons, and even passed my theory test… but still, 8 years on, I still haven’t taken a single driving test.

Why?

Because I always meet interesting people on trains and planes. There are other reasons, like the running costs and how fat I would get if I drove everywhere. No doubt, the benefits probably outweigh the inherent problems of having to get trains, planes and taxis everywhere.

However, if I drove a car, I would never have met Donald Rumsfeld’s chief political analyst. Neither would I have been invited to join the American secret service.

It was a blisteringly hot day in July. I’d just said goodbye to my beautiful, blonde hostess in Los Angeles and climbed into a train that would take me through some beautiful vineyards to Fresno — the armpit of America — and then onto Yosemite. Just a few seconds before the train departed, a small, wiry-haired man stumbled up the stairs into the carriage and sat down opposite me. He smiled at me apologetically as I hastily took me feet off his chair — my comfortable trip to Fresno had been scuppered by a very innocuous-looking, slightly-rotund man!

After he’d caught his breath, I introduced myself.

‘Hi.’ He nods back at me. ‘How’d you do?’ (I actually say that — sue me!)

We banter a little. I explain what I’m doing so far from home, alone; he explains why he’s on a train to Fresno, alone. He seems awfully friendly, but then most middle-aged, geeky bachelors tend to make the most of human contact when they can get it — something I have to get used to, I guess…

‘So, what do you do?’ I’d noticed he had a very expensive-looking suitcase, but that was the only hint of affluence about him.

‘I work for the government.’ He grins. My mouth forms a little ‘o’ and every muscle tenses. An awfully large number of misdemeanors from my younger years quickly flash before me. Was this really going to be the end of my short but sweet tale? He must’ve noticed my alarm because he quickly elaborated: ‘I’m a political analyst.’

I relaxed and sunk back into my oversized, supportive Amtrak chair (they’re made to be comfortable for large Americans, I guess). ‘I’m just back from the Middle East, actually.’

And so we talked, and talked and talked some more. I quickly learnt that this guy had a very serious job: to visit countries that America would soon declare war on, or were thinking about declaring war on in the future. It was his job to visit Iraq and find out if the populace would welcome an American invasion and occupation. He was there, in the Balkans, before NATO bombed Yugoslavia, calculating if the risk was worth the reward.

Who did he report to? How was he actually connected to the government? He finally opened up, a little way past Bakersfield, with the grape vines of Central Valley sliding by in a blur. ‘Donald Rumsfeld. He’s my boss.’ He grinned again, and not for the first time he looked apologetic. Humble, resigned to whatever fate he’d cast upon Iraq, and the other nations he’d visited. He flew around the world, analysed the political climate and then reported back to Donald Rumsfeld; if his findings said ‘go’, they went.

If he had reported back with different findings, Rumsfeld might never have given the command to proceed with such shock and awe. Perhaps that’s why the analyst looked so bashful and minced his words. Sitting opposite was his most loyal and unswerving ally: a man from Britain, an allegiance that had been quite severely tested.

As the conversation twisted and turned — my eager inquisition digging deeper and deeper –  I could tell he wanted to talk about different things. He was single, without kids, travelling to see his mother. He wanted to talk about his life, and how troubling it was to be responsible for so many millions of Americans, and the citizens of other countries that might soon feel the brunt of the world’s only super power.

I listened for the rest of the journey. Eventually, we came to a standstill in Fresno. He stood up and smiled properly for the first time since we’d met 3 hours ago. I don’t know if it was my awesome listening skills, or the fact that he was going to see his mother — I like to think I was at least partially to blame.

As I was gathering my bags, he begun to make his way down the stairs. At the foot of the stairs he suddenly stopped and turned around. He said my name and paused; until he had my attention, or steeling himself, who knows.

‘You know, Donald was always against the war in Iraq.’

In September 1939 Hitler invaded Poland. With thousands of tanks and planes, the invasion was short and victory was absolute. Two days later, Hitler’s steady advancement across European borders was finally curtailed by the Allied declaration of war. It would be the last, world-encompassing dying breath of an empire that once spanned a quarter of the world, an empire that had already sustained massive social and military erosion since the First World War.

“I felt as if I were walking with Destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.” Winston Churchill, Prime Minister

Winston Churchill was not Prime Minister when war was declared — Neville Chamberlain was — so most of his rousing, now-renowned speeches came later, after the fall of France. Ironically, it took Britain’s biggest failure in war to see Churchill become the prime minister. The Battle of Britain followed, as did the joining of the war by the Americans. Bridging both the Atlantic and the 250-year imperial divide created by the American Revolutionary War, Roosevelt effectively, excuse the Americanism, ’saved our asses’.

The rest is history. Messy, corpse-riddled history. But this story isn’t about America, or even England; it’s about my visit to the Poland in 2008. A trip down a cobbled, dark lane littered with the shadows of my Jewish ancestors. I stood where Hitler had stood. Hitler commanded a vast audience that filled the streets of Danzig (Gdansk) as he delivered his first victory speech. While he spoke and the occupants of Danzig gawped at their new charismatic, self-deprecating emperor, Germany’s vastly superior army was busy destroying the scattered, fragmented remnants of the Polish military.

And do you know the scariest bit about his speech? Not his passion, or immensely self-righteous attitude, nor the propoganda or his fantastic oratory control.  It’s the last few words of his speech:

“We are determined to carry on and stand this war one way or another. We have only this one wish, that the Almighty, who now has blessed our arms, will now perhaps make other peoples understand and give them comprehension of how useless this war, this debacle of peoples, will be intrinsically, and that He may perhaps cause reflection on the blessings of peace which they are sacrificing because a handful of fanatic warmongers, persons who stand to gain by war, want to involve peoples in war.” Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of the Reich

Another war, another crusade. One more Earth-shaking tirade in the name of God! However, this won’t be about God or the atrocities committed for and in his name, I’ve already written more than enough on that topic… at least for now. No, this trip was simply to see Poland, to see a friend, to sample the food and the culture. This wasn’t the stereotypical trip to Auschwitz; the kind of trip that many Jews take in a fruitless attempt to absorb a tiny fraction of what war-time Poland must’ve been like for our ancestors. I can’t begin to conceive what the Holocaust was like, and I have no idea how many members of my family were mercilessly slaved and later executed.

(Old town Sopot, close to where Hitler delivered his victory speech, and one of my favourite photos!)

I couldn’t hope to experience the past, but I could certainly go and see what had become of the trading city of  Gdansk (Danzig), 60 years on. I had been lured by my Canadian friend Mike, enticed by sleazy, hedonistic promises: 

‘Just come for the weekend, Seb. You just have to pay for the flight, I’ll pay for everything else.’

‘Even the hot, Eastern European kurwas?’ Without missing a beat, I’d used one of the few words I’d learnt from my trip to Serbia (pretty photos and a fun story!)

‘If you want some certified-diseased prostitutes, Seb, we can do that… just bring your health insurance documents.’ Mike sounded awfully experienced in the ways of fleeting, paid-by-the-hour love.

‘I’ll see you on Friday.’

The next part will chronicle my long weekend in the Tricity of Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot: the first of many cheap hookers; one of the few times I’ve had acute alcohol poisoning AND… of course there will be more, awful photos of me.

I took yet another wrong turn and looked around. It was 10am, but down here in the maze-like bowels of Venice it could’ve been 10pm. I’d been up since 4am and the caffeine from the cup of coffee on the plane was wearing thin. Breakfast would’ve been lovely and there was certainly the tantalising smell of food in the air, but following my usually-acute sense of smell had already led me into three dead ends.

A couple of geriatric Italians grinned at me toothlessly from a doorway. Even if I attempted to ask them for directions in Italian they would feign illiteracy.

I stared at them and grinned back, making the shape of a gun with my index finger and thumb. My over-sized canines had done most of the work, but I had to admit: the finger-gun was a nice touch. Pointing it at the pensioners I asked: ‘Dov’è Al Doge Beato?‘ They showed me, with a nervous succession of frail arm movements, where I might find my humble abode for the next two days: The Blessed Duke, the Happy Duke — something like that.  It sounded cheesy, but it was charming– everything in Venice is lovely.

Perhaps ‘lovely’ isn’t quite the right word; ‘quaint’ better describes the almost-complete dilapidation of the city. As I walked on, almost everything is in an awful state of repair. There’s something about floating in the middle of a warm and windy salt-water lagoon that really eats away at the paint and brickwork. A few bridges and labyrinthine turns later, I stood outside my hotel: a canal-side, turn-of-the-millennium building — and I’m not talking about a few years ago! My room looked out over a canal on one side, and had a floor-to-ceiling double-door leading out onto an ancient stone balcony on the other. It wasn’t cheap, but considering nothing in Venice is, I thought I’d splash out.

‘You can’t miss Piazza San Marco, just head towards…’ I zoned out as he begun gesturing wildly with his hands. It was obviously an Italian thing, pointing and gesticulating; some kind of sign language that I wasn’t privy to. He noticed the blank look on my face. ‘I’ll get you a map.’ Armed with my map and camera and finger-gun I looked around and then at the map, trying to catch my bearings. Picking one of the three paths that headed south at random I felt like one of my other namesakes, Sebastian Cabot. He’d been a major player in Venice back in the day and he’d probably had less difficulty navigating Venice than me — he ended up exploring Brazil for the King of Spain! — but I gave it my best shot. I’d already decided ahead of time that ‘getting lost in Venice’ would be one of the primary objectives of my trip. Losing myself as I cut between two buildings that were no more than half a meter apart; disappearing amongst the endless serpentine alleys, lost to the world. Venice isn’t big, but you only need walk 50 meters off the beaten path, turn a few corners, and you’ll find yourself alone, standing beneath the imposing facade of a  Gothic church or Renaissance house.

First up was a trip to to the Piazza — the only real open space in central Venice and the home of most major landmarks in Venice. There’s also a huge clock tower in the middle which, as you’d expect, grants a spectacular view of the ancient core of Venice.

There are museums and churches aplenty in Venice, much like every major city in Italy, but they pale in comparison to the ones in Florence and Rome. I could easily spend hours writing about the 50 churches that I visited during my trip, but that’d be boring! (Unless you like churches a lot… like me!) Perhaps you can now understand where my recent interest in dissecting religion has come from — you can only spend so long basking in the shadow of such an ancient, powerful institution — Roman Catholicism — before something goes ‘pop’.

Venice was home to the very first Jewish Ghetto, a Venetian word that probably derives from ‘iron foundry’, or a corruption of ‘Judaca’, the name given to the streets in which the Jews were confined to in Venice. This is where Jewish segregation all began, though this ghetto didn’t enforce labour like later incarnations around the world — it was merely separation from the aggressive and violent Christians. Set up by the incumbent Duke to protect rather than enslave, the Jews probably sought refuge there — they definitely weren’t free to leave however! It was also around this time that Jews became, um, Jewish: Catholic law prevented money-lending, but Jewish law did not. Jews also became the best doctors because most medical texts at the time were in Arabic, a language that Italians and Venetians struggled to understand.

The Venetian Ghetto existed until Napoleon came along in 1797 and removed all of the gates that had penned them in for 250 years, though some early documents could put it over 700 years! All that remain are the hinges that held those gates, but the Jewish love of money lives on! (Remember, it’s not our fault though — blame the Pope!)

It was a little sad, walking around the dirty, tired streets of Venice, a city that had once been the most affluent city state the world has ever seen. The Queen of the Adriatic was one of its many names, a name that makes you wonder just how opulent and vibrant the city had been 600 years ago. For centuries, Venice was ruled by merchants – a republic, led by aristocratic merchants, their sole purpose being to make more money (something they did very well. What most people don’t know is that Venice actually held an empire — a small one, mainly consisting of the Aegean islands Crete and Cyprus, but an empire nonetheless. They had a sizable military force, and their navy of 3,000 ships were almost invulnerable in their stronghold of a lagoon. Most were merchant ships but often converted into warships when piracy flared up in the East, or when they played a large part in the Forth Crusade — the crusade often viewed as the final schism between Catholic and East Orthodox religions — a role in a war that would ultimately spell the end of the Byzantine empire. Not bad for an unnavigable flyspeck of an island!

And the scary bit? It was all made possible with money; a leader with almost unlimited resources and support from a loyal, trusting republic:  that’s capitalism.

Welcome to my first American special: Why Americans are awesome. I appreciate that I haven’t actually written a whole lot about America, so you might question my authority — and rightly so! I’ve visited a few times — about two months in total on five individual trips. I don’t claim to know everything about the States but as you probably know by now, that won’t stop this entry from being highly opinionated. Bear in mind then, as you read this, that ‘awesome’ doesn’t necessarily mean really neat, though it often does. Awesome means ‘awe inspiring’ — mouth-agape and stupefied — something you tell your kids about! Awww-sum, dude!!!

That’s why I chose that word in particular. America is awesome, no matter which facet you gaze upon. Either in military might or economic growth, America rules supreme. From the sheer vastness of their natural splendours — Yosemite, Yellowstone, The Grand Canyon — to the rich oil and gold and mineral reserves, America really is an adventurous place.

You have to imagine what it would’ve been like for an Irishman, pushing west across undiscovered America. How it must’ve felt to experience those sense-shattering sights. Mountains, glacial valleys, geysers — it would’ve been overwhelming! As I explored America, I liked to think I felt an inkling of the awe that those tiny colonies of trailblazing frontiersmen felt centuries ago as they pushed west across the New World.

It is perhaps no wonder that Americans retain an adventurous glint in their eye and bounce in their step — an enthusiasm and appetite for endeavour that precious few nations have. I guess, unlike many other countries, they still have something to be enthusiastic about. They’re still looking through rose-tinted spectacles left by their one-sixteenth Irish-blood great grandfather.

They’re big and brash

No matter which way you look at it: over wide, beautiful vistas or around the orbital curvature of an obese chest, Americans are by far the biggest race in the world. It’s no surprise, considering the seemingly never-ending expanse of their virgin habitat, that they’ve evolved into the largest of the Homo neanderthalensis. Animals tend to grow to occupy a given space — in high-density areas, animals tend to be smaller. America is huge and its population equally expansive.

The equation isn’t quite so simple though. The reason Americans are so large is because they are so self-sufficient. They have so many natural resources and such huge swathes of land suitable for agriculture that they have an abundance of cheap, locally-grown food. Couple in the fact that tropical conditions are available just short boat ride away, across the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s really no surprise that Americans are big (see Appendix A).

The brashness comes from being big and knowing you’re a force to be reckoned with, both on a global scale thanks to a huge military, and in the dusty, windswept saloons with your natural body armour. The confidence that Americans ooze is one of the (desirable?) traits that separates Americans from the rest of the world. Perhaps it’s because they’ve never really tasted defeat like most other Western nations, or just because they’re still so incredibly young in the grand scale of history.

The rest of the world knows about its weaknesses only too well. Americans are sure that they have some weakness, some flaw, somewhere… they just don’t stop to think about it. Maybe they’ll stop to think about it after yet another conquest — following yet another war that they can’t possibly lose. Because losing has never been an option.

That’s why Americans are confident.

They don’t have a class system… kind of

While the rest of the Western world is still battling with an archaic, feudal hand-me-down class system, and the undeveloped world still qualifies its leaders by the size of their ears or gonads, America is essentially classless. In England you can spot a millionaire from 100 meters. In America… good luck! A millionaire might wear a suit, or he might just wear jeans and a t-shirt, depending on how he feels. Or what’s fresh out of the washing machine.

This is because America is primarily made of new money. There are certainly a few British-occupation throwbacks — old, rich slavers  — but most rich people in America today made their own money. They struggled against adversity to become stupendously rich. Capitalism might be frowned upon by many other developed nations but people forget that America has only had a couple of hundred years to catch up with the rest of the world! Without capitalism, America would probably still be a farming country (and some of it is!)

It’s only classless by definition though. Americans still strive to be better than their neighbours, it’s just more of a low-key, Cold War affair. Bigger cars. Greener lawns. Smaller dogs. Prom, rodeo and Mardi Gras queens. Beauty pageants. Bigger cows; riding rowdier bovines and horses. America is competitive. Without a defined class system, with nothing more than the equivalent of a league of comparitive penis lengths, Americans go out of their way to be bigger, better, faster and wholly more awesome than everyone else.

That continuing, never-let-it-lie attitude of trying to one-up its compatriots and the rest of the world has resulted in their global supremacy.

You can buy anything

Thanks to capitalism everything in America has a price. Really, anything; it’s shocking and at the same time strangely impressive. In most of the Western world, manners, deference, politeness and etiquette grease the cogs of society. In America it’s money. A big, toothy smile helps too — but mostly it’s cold, hard cash.

My trips to America have been liberating. I’ve known that at any time, as long as I have some money in my pocket, I’m safe; I’m enabled. I can (and did) literally anything I could think of. You’ll have to wait for my travel stories from America before you hear about those!

Back in England and Europe I’m fettered, restricted by social norms and expectations: who I’m friends with matters, and possibly who my enemies are too. I don’t think it’s any surprise that people searching for a new beginning travelled to the New World where there were no limits to what you could do or accomplish — no more arbitrary limitations  imposed by your family’s history or religious affiliations — just an as-far-as-the-eye-can-see, unspoilt horizon and only one way to measure and compare success: money.

Appendix A: American Food

I’ll continue this tomorrow — there’s simply too much awesomeness in America for one blog entry — but for now, I want to leave you with some truly amazing culinary (I use that word loosely) creations, ripped off from thisiswhyyourefat.com.

The thing I love most about this one is the piece of lettuce. God bless America.

Two Danish pastries. And bacon. And is that the yolk of a sunny-side-up fried egg I see in the mix too?

You probably scrolled off this one quickly because it almost looks internal. Entitled ‘The Cornhole’, this… creation… this… monstrosity means I’ll never be able to look sweetcorn in the eye again. Or anyone else for that matter.

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: God bless America.
That’s a chocolate cake with crispy bacon sprinkles. You can’t see, but right now I have tears running down my cheeks.
Salty-wet trails of pride. The tears of someone that has glimpsed true beauty in the form of cake.
America, you truly are one of a kind. Thank God.

America’s so awesome that I ran out of space yesterday! I’m going to continue where I left off, but not without first wowing you with a recent discovery of mine: The Heart Attack Grill. Words don’t really do it justice, so just watch this little video segment from a very serious-sounding TV news reporter.

With that out of the way — Christ, those nurses were hot, eh?  Did you see that ‘A wheelchair ride to your car’ is on the menu? My kind of establishment! — it’s now time to conclude why Americans are AWESOME.

Guns don’t kill people

There’s something about America and the celebration of firearms. It’s probably tied into what I said yesterday about Americans being big and brash — what better way to win an argument or ensure the cessation of all disagreement than with an automatic shotgun? If that doesn’t work, how about equipping it with a clip of armour-penetrating grenade rounds that can be fired off in under two seconds?

Apparently, it’s your God-given right to bear arms in the United States. Well, not God-given, but granted by the second amendment — which was probably divined under the omnipresent supervision of God. Most things back then were, don’t worry — anyway, constitutionally, Americans are allowed to own a firearm. 200 years ago, y’see, there was still some risk of a tyrant leader forcing their way to the top. It was actually sensible that localised militias were maintained in case of emergency — in the event that they would have to help maintain the republic (by shootin’ the dictator).

Fear of oppressive/tyrannical leadership is a common trait amongst all democratic republics and begun way back in Roman times. Today though, there isn’t really a reason to own a lethal weapon, other than because your neighbours do. And other bad drivers. Do Americans really think that owning a gun makes them safer? I can’t get my head around that one so I’m just going to label that particular logic as ‘awesome’ — perhaps there is a method in the madness. Perhaps you really can whip your gun outta your glove box and shoot ‘im dead faster than he can squeeze the trigger.

Maybe, if the mugger knew you weren’t packing heat, he’d carry a baseball bat instead of a gun? Broken ribs instead of dead on the cold floor.

I still remember the day I first saw an automatic submachine gun, at the airport, cradled gently, reverentially, in the arm of a police officer. I was meant to feel safe; I had never been so afraid.

McDonalds and Starbucks — globalisation — American havens the world over

Most non-Americans reading this will probably have bumped into an American tourist at some time or another. More than likely this would be in a Starbucks or McDonalds — the American’s there to pur-chase a slice of cake that’s just like my momma’s home cookin or a cup of hot, national-pride piss. I’ve found the best way to enjoy Starbucks coffee is to drink it fast while it’s still hot; burn all of them there pesky taste buds off! You then have a tongue that’s ready to sample the finest of American mud. Like KFC: they tell us it’s chicken, as we’re biting down into that slippery, spicy succulent morsel we try our damnedest to believe it is chicken — but is it really chicken? Starbucks tell us they serve great coffee. They wouldn’t lie to us like KFC, right?

(As an aside, the gangster slang ‘homeslice’ originates from from the phrase ‘a slice of home’, i.e. someone that reminds you of what it’s like to be back home. How cute is that? Starbucks, your American homeslice, the only solid bastion in a sea of crazy foreigners; seriously, Europeans, go check out a Starbucks in a busy city like Paris or Rome and just marvel at the number of Amerkins you find.)

The unstoppable sprawl of globalisation is an almost-uniquely American thing. The fast food chains, music, film — television. I’ve seen a news clip of a religious fanatic in Iraq decrying Americans as imperialist pigs with Friends and Joey’s inane face plastered on the TV behind him — you couldn’t make that kind of sweet irony up. A lot of people actually learn English from syndicated TV and Hollywood films and pop music — it always amuses me when I meet a local resident in Turkey or Croatia or Serbia that has an American accent. I wonder if they know just how funny it is?

Realising fairly quickly that they couldn’t actually take over the whole world (damn those commie Ruski pigs) they had to settle for the next best thing — CAPITALISM! Once you’ve reached national saturation there’s only one option left: go multinational! There’s a place in Portland, Washington there are actually two Starbuckses opposite each other. Either side of the street. That’s saturation and that’s why I have more Starbucks stores in London than in New York — I’m not complaining though — their coffee might be shit, but their ice-blended coffees with whipped cream on top… mmm.

(I did a little research, and it turns out ‘two Starbuckses on the same street’ is actually a smart move intentionally deployed by Starbucks. Each cafe would be decorated differently and thus serve a different kind of clientelle! So that’s actually quite smart, Mr Starbucks…)

I don’t think globalisation is intentional though, it’s just a side-effect. In the olden days, only the richest of merchants would have offices in more than one city. Today, our technology-rich world is an environment tailor-made for America’s big corporations. They’ve capitalised on their vast reserves cash to quickly spread their long, gribbly, money-grabbing tendrils all over the world. That’s not to say the rest of the world has suffered — far from it. We’ve reaped a lot of benefits of such quick world-devouring expansion (though there are plenty of arguments against the culture-destroying aspects of globalisation). We have globalisation to thank for cheap fast food (hooray!), a lot of employment and a huge amount of consumable entertainment. Kudos has to be given to Americans for finding some way to conquer the modern world without nukes.

The first black president!!

Apparently, this is fairly big news. Also, curiously, the USA is the first country to have a dildo shaped like their head of state (pun intended, animated and totally NSFW). I can’t wait for the first British-born Indian-parented Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Thinking about it, I don’t think there’s ever been a black president in any of the European countries… Maybe I should another entry  on why Europeans suck!

A turkey, stuffed with a chicken, stuffed with a duck. Wrapped in bacon. Perhaps America’s greatest invention: The Turbaconucken, courtesy of thisiswhyyourefat.com.

I was sitting in front of the TV — not something I do often, I assure you — and for some reason or another my mind wandered towards Germany. I think it was a war film. Anyway, I had a little ponder, a little brainstorm, and I came to the conclusion that I actually know very little about Germany. I also assumed that other people might not know much about pre-War Germany too! Perhaps people study the history of Germany in more detail in other countries, but I can’t imagine it being an important topic outside of Deutchland itself.

There are experts out there, but this entry is not for you — this is just a short piece on the formation of Germany itself: the 2500 years that occurred before the World Wars — believe it or not, a lot has happened there! Our contemporary culture, both European and worldwide, has thick roots that stem from Germany. This little story will wend its way from the Nordic tribal settlers to the early dominance of the Franks; from the long-winded Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation to the downfall of the German Empire at the end of the first World War.

Germany’s recorded history begins in 56BC, though for 500 years tribes had been moving down from northern Scandinavia through to Denmark and then Germany. Famously, Caesar (who was first to record the name Germania) built a wooden bridge that spanned the Rhine in just ten days, but then retreated once he heard that the Seubi (Suevi) tribe had amassed a force to repel him, should he attack. The name ‘Seubi’, incidentally, has its roots in the prefix ‘Swe-’ which literally means ‘one’s own’ — the same prefix that gave Sweden its name. The tribe that repelled Caesar was almost certainly from Sweden originally! I’m sure it’s quite common knowledge, but all Prussian and Russian kings — Kaisers and Czars — derive their title directly from Julius Caesar himself.

It’s worth noting that the Seubians were converted from their pagan rituals to Arianism in the 400s — a ‘heretical’ (after the First Council of Nicaea) sect of Christianity that believed Jesus was extraordinary, but not as powerful as God himself. I mention this only because of the later use of the term ‘Aryan’ by the Nazis to represent the one, true, destined-for-leadership master race is completely unrelated — but it’s an interesting coincidence!

The fall of the Western Roman Empire allowed the expansion of the Frankish Empire to begin. Originally a West Germanic confederation of tribes, the Franks would go on to form an empire that would span France, Germany, Northern Italy and make dependent states of the modern-day Eastern Bloc. With the baptism of some Frankish nobles, and later on the work of missionaries from England, Scotland and Ireland, Germany dropped its old Arianist ways and became fully Roman Catholic by the 800s. The aid of the British Catholic missionaries would turn out to be, 1200 years later, beautifully ironic.

Another thing that people forget is that English — both the language and the name — originates from the Western Germanic people of Angeln, or its modern name of ‘Anglia’. Regions of this name still exist in England and Germany! As an aside, while the Angles were settling in what would become England, Britons were settling in Brittany (France) — and while I’m at it (blame the nationalist streak in me), the Normans that invaded England weren’t French — they were descendents of the Vikings that had occupied what would eventually become France! Anyway, back to Germany…

By the 9th and 10th century the Frankish Empire had been divided and weakened enough for the emergence of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Despite its awesome name, it did not actually include Rome for most of its rule — the name derived from each new emperor having to be crowned by the Pope. Not a lot happened until the 15th century when the Renaissance finally blew away the cobwebs of the Middle Ages, leaving Germany with the beginnings of a powerful and industrious empire. The 1400s brought us Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the mechanical printing press, and Albrecht Dürer who is widely considered the finest Northern European artist of all time.

The 17th and 18th centuries would finally see the efforts of the Renaissance period come to full fruition: The philosophers Leibniz and Kant; the musicians Bach and Mozart. Genius polymath and the author of Faust, Goethe, would be be the first writer to emerge from the growing, Bohemian strength of the Germany. The turn of the 19th century would see their intellectual powerhouse continue to grow with the birth of philosophers Marx and Nietzsche, the eminence of the piano virtuoso Ludwig van Beethoven, and the composer that would craft musical masterpieces destined to be played at max volume while conquering Europe, or in fact anyone that stands in your way: Wagner. Two of the most important and influential scientists of all time, Planck and Einstein, were also born in Germany during the 19th century.

Throughout the 1600s the Duchy of Prussia had continued its spread across what is now the top of Poland. When the Holy Roman Empire finally fell after the Napoleonic Wars in 1806, Prussia would continue to gain land across the north of Germany. In 1871, with the help of decisive victories on the Franco and Austro-Hungarian fronts, the German Empire was formed by the president of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck with William (Wilhelm) the First installed as emperor. This is the same Empire that would be the unwitting instigator of first World War. Bismarck himself kept the role of Chancellor, the one-man-cabinet, a position whose power would later be confirmed as autocratic by Adolf Hitler.

The next 50 years would see a huge surge in industrial strength and population — from 40 to 70 million, with over half of those living in cities. Germany became the world’s first social welfare state with sickness and maternity leave, and it had a free press! But such privileges and liberties were not easily come by — Germans worked hard; a work ethic that still exists today.

Back in 1800, Napoleon had been crushed by a mix of Prussian (German) and English forces at Waterloo, but how quickly allegiances are forgotten! Only 80 years later, Emperor Wilhelm formed the Triple Alliance with Italy and Austria-Hungary, its purpose to defend itself from potential attacks by Russia, France and Britain — the three countries that then formed a similar, counter-allegiance: the Triple Entente (’Triple Agreement’). It would be Germany’s allegiance to the Austro-Hungarian Empire — and the British Empire’s anger at Germany’s growing navy — that would spur the Triple Entente into joining a war: World War I.

Though it falls outside the scope of this entry, and just because I love bringing religion into these things, I’ll share an ironic little coincidence. When Hitler was made Chancellor he had to pass the Enabling Act of 1933 to actually become the Führer; to effectively demolish the democratic powers of the Reichstag for four years while he ‘tidied things up’ (this sounds a lot like Caesar demanding to be made Dictator back in Rome…) Despite the instigation of concentration camps in the hope of terrorising the populace into voting for Hitler’s party — the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or more commonly ‘Nazis’ — they could only muster 44% of the 66% majority required to pass the Enabling Act. Desperately, he turned to the Catholic Central Party for their votes. They demanded continued liberty for the Church and their involvement in education, which he obviously granted — not that it mattered, after the Act had been passed. The kicker: who brought Catholicism to Germany? Missionaries from Britain!

And there you have it, the exciting history of Germany in 1200 words. If you made it this far — hooray! I hope it wasn’t too boring; I hope you learnt as much as I did. Now I actually have to visit Germany…

The stagnancy of human culture and later, the formation of civilization, is staggering.

Think about it for a moment; think about just how far we’ve come since the dawn of art and culture 10,000 years ago. Or how far we’ve not come, as the case actually is. Sure, we have technology. Sure, we have philosophy. But are we actually any different? Is it the way we do something that defines us? The way we ‘think’ about something? Or is it deeper than that? Let’s go back to the beginning and have a look.

There is — and was — a split between the east and west. The split goes far beyond skin colour or hair type, but it is the very same environmental differences that caused the West/East genetic and cultural schism.

In the West, we hit things. We hit things so that we may survive a little longer but at the expense of others — other humans, other animals. We spend our entire life killing.

In the East, we cogitate. We cogitate until the tides of cosmos take us from the land of the living. We spend our entire life thinking.

And then occasionally, but on a fairly regular timer, as if it’s running to some kind of universal schedule, religion pops up.

The funny thing is, despite any misgivings you might have, religion is actually the injection of aesthetics. It’s as if killing or thinking can only take you so far down the track of social and cultural development — and ultimately modernity of civilization. Killing puts food on the table; you subside, day after day, year after year until you die — but at least you survive. It’s the same with the Eastern sitting-and-thinking: pondering stuff certainly doesn’t put food on the table, that’s for sure, but perhaps through sifting and thinking and thought permutation you come up with ways for future generations to put food on the table.

The West are in the now and the East are in the future and the past. But neither of them move — not by themselves, anyway. There’s no impetus. No driving force.

Then, after a long period of subsistence, something snaps and faith enters stage right: the Western gods of War and Famine and Wine; the Eastern gods of Creation, Knowledge and Maintenance. The singular, unified, vengeful God didn’t come into existence until much later, after plenty of intermingling and amalgamation of West and East — unsurprisingly, through the body of land we call the Middle East, though it is actually… the middle. Middle West-East doesn’t quite spill from the tongue so easy, eh.

Even with religion, we don’t stop with the killing or thinking though. Religion doesn’t stop us from our age-old rites and customs. It just gives us something to attribute our acts to. This is where the phrase ‘practising’ enters the equation. Are we killing an animal for food, or are we practising our religion and sacrificing an animal for Zeus? Are we raping and pillaging for gold and glory, or are we you cleansing the world of disbelievers for God?

Ultimately, we are still killing. We are still thinking.

We continue to seek solace and recompense and meaning for our actions in religion.

We are not moving. Just grinding our gears.

What we are today is the build-up of thousands of years of repetition, contagion, custom: mother to daughter, father to son. Our cultures might now change, given that the geographical division between West and East has been blown to pieces by technology. But it will take time, an awful lot of time. For now, we in the West are stuck with our incessant need to kill, to win.

I’ve been tackling the subject of authority (who or what you trust when seeking the answer to a question) and knowledge (a working, true data set) for a while now. I haven’t really gone into ethics because it’s a sticky one. I’m going to try it now, in a couple of articles.

* * *

I think it’s painfully apparent to everyone by now that technology itself is not a good thing.

Technology is merely a tool. Really, that’s all. Technology is a tool that can be used for good or bad. In the future, technology might gain sentience and become much more than a tool, but that’s outside the scope of this entry because… well… arguing something that may or may not come true is hard work. And I’m not a sci-fi author.

There’s an old, trite argument, but it illustrates my point: guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Technology is the same thing, but because inventions are new and shiny, people are mostly blind to its nefarious uses; it lacks the evil connotations of the gun that we’ve developed over hundreds of years. When the gun was first invented it wasn’t ‘bad’ either — just new, and very cool.

Technology — the idea of new inventions, modifications, enhancements – really is the same thing as the humble gun. I mean, if you want proof, a gun is technology. Weaponry is one of the longest chains of technological development in history! And it’s not abating either… it has a long way to go. I’m sure you’re aware of the tax money that goes into ‘defence’. Weapon technology has been the deciding factor of major wars and the continuation of empires and dynasties — having advanced weapons is (sadly?) probably the pinnacle of any given modern civilisation.

But because guns (and canons and muskets and rifles and…) have killed huge swathes of the population, does that make technology bad?

There are literally millions (billions?) of people that would say guns and weapons are Bad Things. They kill people, ergo… bad. Before guns, we had swords, spears, slings — were they also bad?

How about fire? Was Prometheus, the lad that stole fire from the Gods, the greatest war criminal of all time? Without fire, almost everything you see today wouldn’t exist. Chemical energy is the end of that technology chain, and we frickin’ worship chemical energy.

That’s the thing — without fire, that desk in front of you wouldn’t exist. That’s how technology works — it’s omnipotent and omnipresent. You can’t staunch the flow of one technology and expect to carry on living the life you live.

Without fire, we would have burnt out [hah -- frozen to death more likely] and gone extinct a long time ago. Without spears, we would’ve starved. Without guns we would’ve perished in wars.

You see how I keep using the word ‘we’? It’s a selfish thing, eh? Man makes fire because he doesn’t want to freeze. Selfish, selfish, selfish. Man fashions a spear because without it, he uses more energy hunting than he gains from the animal’s flesh. Man crafts a gun because it lets him kill — or threaten — at range, without putting himself at risk. SELFISH!

But what’s the other option? No technology? No fire? No human race? Just step to the side and make way for another master species? How on earth are we ever going to agree to that? No, we can’t stop progressing — that’s one thing we can’t do. We might nuke ourself in the process, like so many civilisations before us, but it’s better than standing still, stagnating, dying.

We can agree then that technology isn’t a good thing itself, but something so intrinsic to human survival that we can’t imagine life without it, without tools. But as always, when anything involves humans, it’s more complicated than that.

With technology we create both solutions and problems. One caveman uses fire to cook his food while another uses it to brand dissident villagers. You keep a gun in the house to dissuade burglars, I keep a gun to shoot Negroes. While one scientist is planning clean, sustained energy from nuclear fission, another is working under the duress of an evil mastermind that wants to nuke us to smithereens.

Thus there are some that think technology has lowered our quality of life — that technology is a bad thing — though that’s impossible if you take ‘technology’ to mean any and every tool we’ve ever fashioned. So they probably mean ‘recent technology’ — the atomic bomb, the Internet, sports cars, Facebook, etc.

And maybe they have a point. You’d never think of a telephone as a bad thing, right? But the Internet? Maybe. Fire’s a good thing — but weapons of mass destruction? Probably not. They’re both advancements on the same technological line

It’s too unknown. The rules are unknown, the lines are blurred. There have been failed technologies in the past

How better to celebrate the day after Valentine’s Day than with the discussion of WAR?

I’ll let you in on a little secret, something I’m rather ashamed of: my knowledge of history is really lacking. I blame it on my schooling: basically, we studied the Romans, the Tudors, some Jurassic/dinosaur stuff… and that’s it. Seriously, I left school not knowing a thing about World War 1 and 2, or any contemporary political history. Oh, I forgot: we also studied the Normans — so, millions of years ago — then a huge gap — 2000 (the Romans), 1000 (the Normans) and 500 (the Tudors). And that’s it.

Obviously my knowledge of history has improved now, but there’s still some huge gaps from the last 500 years or so — Napoleon? I know that ended in Waterloo… I think. And there was the Crimean, but I don’t know anything about that. World War 1 was started in Serbia or something… but Vietnam? I haven’t a frickin’ clue why there was a war in Vietnam — and Burma too?

There’s a huge block of wars that occurred in colonial times, between 1600 and 1900 — not least of all the War of Independence (which I only found out was America vs. Britain recently!) Britain has been at war with Spain, the Netherlands, France… in fact, I think the only power we haven’t been at war with is the Portuguese. The colonies (i.e. everywhere except Europe) have basically been in a constant state of flux for 500 years, until the relatively-calm period of the last 50 years.

You probably know that New York was originally New Amsterdam — it was handed over to the British Empire, as part of some peace treaty with the Dutch Empire. Did you know that, after the First World War, Iraq was part of the British Empire… for more than a decade! Ah, the Middle East… for more than 2,000 years it has been the most contested part of the world. First for religious reasons, then exploration and trade, and now energy (with a bit of religion).

That’s the bit I get a little bit hung up on. History is full of war. Peace can be described as ‘the time between two wars’. Is there really a difference between terrorism (the instilling of terror within a given populace), and war? ‘Terrorism’ is usually used to describe acts by small groups upon entire nations — paramilitary, guerillas, etc. Is it any better if you declare war beforehand, and then send five guys in a B-29 to kill 100,000 people in Hiroshima?

Then we have ‘the crusades’, a rather fancy term used to connote a religious war. Crusaders are, by definition, religiously sanctioned warriors — you are killing in the name of a god. A crusade, generically, is an attack on some kind of lifestyle or ideology. You can have a crusade against drugs, or drunken behaviour, or Islam. A crusade, in essence, is righteous — its instigators firmly believe that what they are doing is right.

And therein we have a problem, because I’ve just described every war, religious or otherwise. War, from the protagonist’s point of view, is right. You don’t march into another country for fun, you do it because you must. War is a necessity for long-term survival — it is rational in that sense. (Well, OK, war — after diplomatic means have been exhausted — is rational.)

This is quite a hard thought to get your head around, but hang in there. Islamic terrorists declared war on America for ideological reasons — as an American, you probably can’t comprehend their rationale, but the terrorists believe they are right. Seriously, just as the Nazis wanted a world without Jews, they want a world without Americans. Look at it from the opposite point of view: George Bush declared war on Iraq, because he thought it was right. It’s as simple as that. The calculations leading up to that decision might be infinitely more complex, but it ultimately boils down to ‘it’s us or them’ — our way of living, or theirs.

It’s kind of funny, but obviously very sad at the same time: war will always exist. Fortunately, with the world explored and colonialism out of the way, we don’t war over land — but it was never about land anyway; it was about resources (food, slaves, oil, etc.) And guess what… (those of you that know me will know what’s coming) — until we get off this planet of ours, until we reduce the strain on our natural resources, war will always exist. We can build upwards into the stratosphere and down to the Earth’s mantle, we can synthesize materials and use ‘greener’ manufacturing methods, but ultimately we’re going to run out of resources.

Imagine for a moment: we have space travel. We can jet around from star to star, planet to planet. Can you imagine a war occurring back on the home world? No. Try to visualize the extent of the universe and the trillions of planets that can support life. Do you think we would ever need to war again? No — at least not for a very, very long time.