THE RICH AND THE GREAT, THE WISE AND THE VIRTUOUS

 We desire both to be respectable and to be respected. We dread both to be contemptible and to be contemned. But, upon coming into the world, we soon find that wisdom and virtue are by no means the sole objects neither of respect; nor vice and folly, of contempt. We frequently see the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous. We see frequently the vices and follies of the powerful much less despised than the poverty and weakness of the innocent. To deserve, to acquire, and to enjoy the respect and admiration of mankind, are the great objects of ambition and emulation.
Two different roads are presented to us, equally leading to the attainment of this so much desired object; the one, by the study of wisdom and the practice of virtue; the other, by the acquisition of wealth and greatness. Two different characters are presented to our emulation; the one, of proud ambition and ostentatious avidity. the other, of humble modesty and equitable justice.
Two different models, two different pictures, are held out to us, according to which we may fashion our own character and behavior; the one more gaudy and glittering in its coloring; the other more correct and more exquisitely beautiful in its outline: the one forcing itself upon the notice of every wandering eye; the other, attracting the attention of scarce anybody but the most studious and careful observer. They are the wise and the virtuous chiefly, a select, but a small party, who are the real and steady admirers of wisdom and virtue. The great mob of mankind are the admirers and worshippers, and, what may seem more extraordinary, most frequently the disinterested admirers and worshippers, of wealth and greatness.
The respect which we feel for wisdom and virtue is, no doubt, different from that which we conceive for wealth and greatness; and it requires no very nice discernment to distinguish the difference. But, notwithstanding this difference, those sentiments bear a very considerable resemblance to one another. In some particular features they are, no doubt, different, but, in the general air of the countenance, they seem to be so very nearly the same, that inattentive observers are very apt to mistake the one for the other.
Abilities will even sometimes prevail where the conduct is by no means correct. Either habitual imprudence, however, or injustice, or weakness, or profligacy, will always cloud, and sometimes depress altogether, the most splendid professional abilities. Men in the inferior and middling stations of life, besides, can never be great enough to be above the law, which must generally overawe them into some sort of respect for, at least, the more important rules of justice. The success of such people, too, almost always depends upon the favor and good opinion of their neighbors and equals; and without a tolerably regular conduct these can very seldom be obtained. The good old proverb, therefore, that honesty is the best policy, holds, in such situations, almost always perfectly true. In such situations, therefore, we may generally expect a considerable degree of virtue; and, fortunately for the good morals of society, these are the situations of by far the greater part of mankind.
It is from our disposition to admire, and consequently to imitate, the rich and the great, that they are enabled to set, or to lead what is called the fashion. Their dress is the fashionable dress; the language of their conversation, the fashionable style; their air and deportment, the fashionable behavior. Even their vices and follies are fashionable; and the greater part of men is proud to imitate and resemble them in the very qualities which dishonor and degrade them. Vain men often give themselves airs of a fashionable profligacy, which, in their hearts, they do not approve of, and of which, perhaps, they are really not guilty. They desire to be praised for what they themselves do not think praise-worthy, and are ashamed of unfashionable virtues which they sometimes practice in secret, and for which they have secretly some degree of real veneration. There are hypocrites of wealth and greatness, as well as of religion and virtue; and a vain man is as apt to pretend to be what he is not, in the one way, as a cunning man is in the other.
To attain to this envied situation, the candidates for fortune too frequently abandon the paths of virtue; for unhappily, the road which leads to the one and that which leads to the other, lie sometimes in very opposite directions. But the ambitious man flatters himself that, in the splendid situation to which he advances, he will have so many means of commanding the respect and admiration of mankind, and will be enabled to act with such superior propriety and grace, that the luster of his future conduct will entirely cover, or efface, the foulness of the steps by which he arrived at that elevation. In many governments the candidates for the highest stations are above the law; and, if they can attain the object of their ambition, they have no fear of being called to account for the means by which they acquired it. They often endeavor, therefore, not only by fraud and falsehood, the ordinary and vulgar arts of intrigue and cabal; but sometimes by the perpetration of the most enormous crimes, by murder and assassination, by rebellion and civil war, to supplant and destroy those who oppose or stand in the way of their greatness. They more frequently miscarry than succeed; and commonly gain nothing but the disgraceful punishment which is due to their crimes. But, though they should be so lucky as to attain that wished-for greatness, they are always most miserably disappointed in the happiness which they expect to enjoy in it.
(Adapted from The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith)

 

SENSE OF PROPRIETY

When we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure, and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies, as they see him do, and as they feel that they themselves must do if in his situation. Persons of delicate fibres and a weak constitution of body complain that in looking on the sores and ulcers which are exposed by beggars in the streets, they are apt to feel an itching or uneasy sensation in the correspondent part of their own bodies.
Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others. Grief and joy, for example, strongly expressed in the look and gestures of any one, at once affect the spectator with some degree of a like painful or agreeable emotion. A smiling face is, to every body that sees it, a cheerful object; as a sorrowful countenance, on the other hand, is a melancholy one.
The furious behaviour of an angry man is more likely to exasperate us against himself than against his enemies. As we are unacquainted with his provocation, we cannot bring his case home to ourselves, nor conceive any thing like the passions which it excites. But we plainly see what is the situation of those with whom he is angry, and to what violence they may be exposed from so enraged an adversary. We readily, therefore, sympathize with their fear or resentment, and are immediately disposed to take part against the man from whom they appear to be in so much danger.
What are the pangs of a mother, when she hears the moanings of her infant that during the agony of disease cannot express what it feels? In her idea of what it suffers, she joins, to its real helplessness, her own consciousness of that helplessness, and her own terrors for the unknown consequences of its disorder; and out of all these, forms, for her own sorrow, the most complete image of misery and distress. The infant, however, feels only the uneasiness of the present instant, which can never be great.
We sympathize even with the dead, and overlooking what is of real importance in their situation, that awful futurity which awaits them, we are chiefly affected by those circumstances which strike our senses, but can have no influence upon their happiness. It is miserable, we think, to be deprived of the light of the sun; to be shut out from life and conversation; to be laid in the cold grave, a prey to corruption and the reptiles of the earth; to be no more thought of in this world, but to be obliterated, in a little time, from the affections, and almost from the memory, of their dearest friends and relations.
Man, say they, conscious of his own weakness, and of the need which he has for the assistance of others, rejoices whenever he observes that they adopt his own passions, because he is then assured of that assistance; and grieves whenever he observes the contrary, because he is then assured of their opposition. But both the pleasure and the pain are always felt so instantaneously, and often upon such frivolous occasions, that it seems evident that neither of them can be derived from any such self-interested consideration. A man is mortified when, after having endeavoured to divert the company, he looks round and sees that nobody laughs at his jests but himself. On the contrary, the mirth of the company is highly agreeable to him, and he regards this correspondence of their sentiments with his own as the greatest applause.
When we have read a book or poem so often that we can no longer find any amusement in reading it by ourselves, we can still take pleasure in reading it to a companion. To him it has all the graces of novelty; we enter into the surprise and admiration which it naturally excites in him, but which it is no longer capable of exciting in us; we consider all the ideas which it presents rather in the light in which they appear to him, than in that in which they appear to ourselves, and we are amused by sympathy with his amusement which thus enlivens our own. On the contrary, we should be vexed if he did not seem to be entertained with it, and we could no longer take any pleasure in reading it to him. It is the same case here. The mirth of the company, no doubt, enlivens our own mirth, and their silence, no doubt, disappoints us.
The man who resents the injuries that have been done to me, and observes that I resent them precisely as he does, necessarily approves of my resentment. The man whose sympathy keeps time to my grief, cannot but admit the reasonableness of my sorrow. He who admires the same poem, or the same picture, and admires them exactly as I do, must surely allow the justness of my admiration. He who laughs at the same joke, and laughs along with me, cannot well deny the propriety of my laughter. On the contrary, the person who, upon these different occasions, either feels no such emotion as that which I feel, or feels none that bears any proportion to mine, cannot avoid disapproving my sentiments on account of their dissonance with his own. If my animosity goes beyond what the indignation of my friend can correspond to; if my grief exceeds what his most tender compassion can go along with; if my admiration is either too high or too low to tally with his own; if I laugh loud and heartily when he only smiles, or, on the contrary, only smile when he laughs loud and heartily; in all these cases, as soon as he comes from considering the object, to observe how I am affected by it, according as there is more or less disproportion between his sentiments and mine, I must incur a greater or less degree of his disapprobation: and upon all occasions his own sentiments are the standards and measures by which he judges of mine.
A stranger passes by us in the street with all the marks of the deepest affliction; and we are immediately told that he has just received the news of the death of his father. It is impossible that, in this case, we should not approve of his grief. Yet it may often happen, without any defect of humanity on our part, that, so far from entering into the violence of his sorrow, we should scarce conceive the first movements of concern upon his account. Both he and his father, perhaps, are entirely unknown to us, or we happen to be employed about other things, and do not take time to picture out in our imagination the different circumstances of distress which must occur to him. We have learned, however, from experience, that such a misfortune naturally excites such a degree of sorrow, and we know that if we took time to consider his situation, fully and in all its parts, we should, without doubt, most sincerely sympathize with him.
Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them.
Mankind, though naturally sympathetic, never conceive, for what has befallen another, that degree of passion which naturally animates the person principally concerned. That imaginary change of situation, upon which their sympathy is founded, is but momentary. The thought of their own safety, the thought that they themselves are not really the sufferers, continually intrudes itself upon them; and though it does not hinder them from conceiving a passion somewhat analogous to what is felt by the sufferer, hinders them from conceiving any thing that approaches to the same degree of violence. The person principally concerned is sensible of this, and at the same time passionately desires a more complete sympathy. He longs for that relief which nothing can afford him but the entire concord of the affections of the spectators with his own. To see the emotions of their hearts, in every respect, beat time to his own, in the violent and disagreeable passions, constitutes his sole consolation. But he can only hope to obtain this by lowering his passion to that pitch, in which the spectators are capable of going along with him. He must flatten, if I may be allowed to say so, the sharpness of its natural tone, in order to reduce it to harmony and concord with the emotions of those who are about him. What they feel, will, indeed, always be, in some respects, different from what he feels, and compassion can never be exactly the same with original sorrow; because the secret consciousness that the change of situations, from which the sympathetic sentiment arises, is but imaginary, not only lowers it in degree, but, in some measure, varies it in kind, and gives it a quite different modification. These two sentiments, however, may, it is evident, have such a correspondence with one another, as is sufficient for the harmony of society. Though they will never be unisons, they may be concords, and this is all that is wanted or required.
Society and conversation, therefore, are the most powerful remedies for restoring the mind to its tranquillity, if, at any time, it has unfortunately lost it; as well as the best preservatives of that equal and happy temper, which is so necessary to self-satisfaction and enjoyment. Men of retirement and speculation, who are apt to sit brooding at home over either grief or resentment, though they may often have more humanity, more generosity, and a nicer sense of honour, yet seldom possess that equality of temper which is so common among men of the world.
(Adapted from The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith (1759), Part I: Of the Propriety of Action Consisting of Three Sections, Section I: Of the Sense of Propriety)

A LAND IN FRAGMENTS

Part Two
(Part One was published on 09.03.2012)

Map story of Palestinian nationhood
From washingtonsblog.com

The opinion makers are polarized according their political bias, and rarely change their ideas because of facts. They assemble facts to suit opinions. Depending on whom you read, the latest disaster is the fault of the Jews, the Moslems, and the infidels, the Arabs or the United States. If we believe the pundits, the latest crisis, whatever it is, has inevitably proven both that the anti-Zionist Noam Chomsky and the pro-Zionist Charles Krauthammer were absolutely right in their analyses. The Gush-Shalom movement, the Yesha Council, United Rabbis for Greater Israel, Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, all claims that they knew and warned of the impending disaster and all of their contradictory analyses and solutions could have averted it if adopted in time. Likewise the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), CAIR and the Arab League can explain exactly how they predicted what would happen, and how it came about because nobody listened to them.
You may get reinforcement for your ideas from such summaries. You may get “talking points” that will allow you to become part of the great parade of demonstrations and counter-demonstrations that substitute for thinking and dialog in the region. In this way, you can impress your friends and dialog partners with pseudo-facts or one line quotes from Gandhi or Herzl or Haj Amin El Husseini or Osama Bin Laden and win arguments: “The Jews became a nation in 1312 BC – there is no such thing as a Palestinian People” or Jabotinsky said that we have to broom all the Arabs out of Palestine.” It may impress people, but it is probably not a way to find the truth. It is not a way to solve the problem. It is a way to become part of the problem, a soldier in the armies of hate and disinformation.
Two State Partition Solution – The British first partitioned Palestine in 1922, cutting off Transjordan from the Palestine mandate of the League of Nations, along with the announcement by Winston Churchill that the Mandate called for a Jewish home in Palestine, but not necessarily in all of Palestine. The Peel and Woodhead commissions of 1937 and 1938 recommended a further partition, into a tiny Jewish state and much larger Arab state. The Arabs rejected this solution and the British abandoned it. The UN called for the establishment of two states in UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which became the basis for the establishment of Israel. The Arab countries opposed Resolution 181, and were also not enthusiastic about creating a Palestinian state, preferring to divide the territory of Palestine between them.
(mideastweb.org)
While Jewish immigration to Palestine in the 1920’s caused little alarm, the situation escalated markedly with the rise of Nazi persecution in Europe. Large numbers of European Jews flocked to Palestine, inflaming nationalist passions among all Arabs, who feared the creation of a Jewish state in which they would be the losers. Palestinian resistance erupted into a full-scale revolt which lasted from 1936-39. This revolt, which in some respects resembled the intifada of the late 1980s, was the first major outbreak of Palestinian-Zionist hostilities.
Although the strict terms imposed on Transjordan since 1921 prevented Emir Abdullah from establishing official contacts with Palestinian Arabs under the British mandate, he nonetheless gave refuge to Palestinian leaders and political activists. He constantly warned the British against earmarking Arab lands for a Jewish national home and allowing increased Jewish immigration to Palestine. He also intervened at various levels on behalf of the Palestinians, while warning of impending disaster should a diplomatic solution to the problem not be found. His predictions fell on deaf ears, but came true nonetheless.
As the Jewish population in Palestine increased sharply during the 1930s, fighting between Jews and Arabs increased also. Both sides blamed the British, who failed miserably in their attempts to reach a settlement acceptable to all. The conflict was muted by the onset of World War II, during which both sides cooperated with the British. Transjordan’s Arab Legion also joined the side of the Allies, helping the British and the Free French drive the Vichy forces from Syria.
The crisis of Palestine reached a boiling point in the years immediately after the war. With international sympathy firmly behind the Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, Zionist leaders pressured the British to admit thousands of displaced Jews. At the same time, underground Jewish groups such as the Irgun and the renegade Stern Gang initiated a campaign of terrorism against the British. Washing its hands of the whole imbroglio, Britain declared in February 1947 that its mandate over Palestine would end on May 14, 1948. The matter was then addressed by the United Nations, which, after rejecting various plans, voted for the partition of Palestine in November 1947. The plan called for the partition of Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, with al-Quds (Jerusalem) to be placed under UN trusteeship. More than half the territory, including the valuable coastal strip, had been allotted to the Jews, who only owned about 6% of the land. The Arabs were shocked, and conflict was inevitable.
On May 14, 1948, the British terminated their mandate over Palestine, and the Jews immediately proclaimed the independence of the state of Israel. The Soviet Union was the first country to recognize Israel, followed promptly by the United States. The tragedy of Palestine was born.
(kinghussein.gov.jo)
There isn’t any single Israeli view; rather, there are many different Israeli views, which differ widely in their content:
Most Israelis see the predominant Palestinian views of the peace process that do not recognize Israel’s right to exist, and indicate, in their opinion, that the only real long-term Arab goal is the complete destruction of the Jewish state.
Jews hold that Zionism is not colonialism, since it does not wish to enslave any other peoples or lands, or to exploit them. Zionism is limited solely to allowing Jewish people to have a state in one small area. To the objection that the Palestinians were being exploited simply by the Israelis living on what used to be their land, Israelis reply that the Palestinians were, up until recently, on a path to their independence from Israel, a path from which, as most Israelis now feel, the Palestinians diverted by starting a war against them.
At stake is the very existence of the state of Israel. Israelis regard many of the Arab criticisms against the state of Israel as threats to the state’s existence, and point out that against the multitude and power of the Arab states, there is only one Jewish state, which, as they feel, should behave vigilantly, and in particular never give up if bullied.
There isn’t any single Palestinian view; rather, there are many different Palestinian views, which differ widely in their content:
Palestinians feel that the Jewish state of Israel was established under conditions that were deeply unfair to them. Some do not oppose a Jewish state as such, and all Palestinians feel that it should not be established at the expense of another people. They argue that after World War II, the world allowed a state for Jewish people in Palestine to be made without much concern for the existing Arab population.
They further support the statement made by Count Bernadotte concerning the right of return of refugees: “It would be an offense against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes, while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine” (UN Doc Al 648, 1948). Count Folke Bernadotte was subsequently assassinated by the Stern gang, widely considered to be a terrorist organization.
Palestinians claim that they have International law on their side. To take a few examples, UN General Assembly Resolution 194 calls for Palestinian refugees to be allowed to return. UN Security Council Resolution 242 calls for Israel to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories. The Fourth Geneva convention forbids an occupying power to settle seized territory. General Assembly Resolution 446 has declared that the Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal. However, there are doubts as to whether the return of refugees is compatible with the continuous existence of the state of Israel, and the preservation of a “just and lasting peace” in the region.
Palestinians point out that Israel continued to expand the settlement community in the occupied Palestinian territories throughout the Oslo peace process — Palestinians claim this was done to make any meaningful Palestinian state impossible. The settlements are off limits to Palestinians, while any Jew in the whole world can at any time choose to settle there. In 2000 at Camp David the Palestinians were offered an independent state composed of most of Gaza and the West Bank. Led by Arafat, the Palestinians rejected this offer, claimed that this state would be a “Bantustan” (a state divided in many pieces or fragmanted states) and walked out of the negotiations. The Israeli proposal was rejected. President Clinton and the Israelis asked the Palestinians to offer a counter-proposal, but Arafat refused and went back to the West Bank. Later, further negotiations did take place, but they were terminated by the Israeli side as Israeli government policy held that it was futile to negotiate while actually under fire.
In 2002 Saudi Arabia offered a peace plan in the New York Times, as if it were its own original idea, the UN’s resolutions which call for withdrawal from the territories in addition for full recognition of Israel by the whole Arab world. This proposal was backed by the entire Arab world. The Israeli government was not prepared to discuss this proposal.
Many Arabs deny that historical grounds can justify the existence of a Jewish nation today. They hold that events that happened thousands of years ago do not justify evicting the Palestinians from what they see as their homeland.
Some Arabs maintain that there is nothing wrong with Jewish immigration into Palestine, in itself, any more than there is with Jewish immigration into any other part of the world. But most of the Jews arriving in Palestine did so with the intention of taking it over and establishing a Jewish majority state. Most Arabs maintain that Israel’s settlement policy is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and constitutes a crime against international law. On their view, Israel, because of its expansion of settlements, has the lion’s share of responsibility for the failure of the peace process.
(encyclopedia.kids.net.au)
There is an old saying: “No one can unscramble scrambled eggs.” That cliche is true. And in no circumstance is the application of that quip more apropos than in the current Middle East conflagration.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a “scrambled” mess that has a meager possibility of resolution in the foreseeable future. The blood-thirsty Palestinians, with their Muslim background, would like to see all of the people of the state of Israel gone —preferably dead! The Israelis equally long to see the infidel Palestinians banished to some remote desert —at least somewhere out of their “sacred” territory. But both want the same real estate, and thus far each has been unwilling to work seriously for a peaceable coexistence. And definitely this is a situation where it takes two to tango, yet both have been doing the war dance!
It does not require a “Solomon” to see that if these hostile parties do not attempt to find a workable, side-by-side plan for neighborliness, like Eugene Field’s “gingham dog and calico cat,” they will consume one another eventually.
Just who does own the deed to the land over which these feuding peoples are willing to shed so much blood? That’s like asking who owns Texas — the “Texicans” or the Mexicans? It once belonged to the latter, you know. Who has the title rights to the vast western region of our nation? The Apaches, the Comanches, the Sioux, the Utes —or the U.S. government? Need we rehearse who took what from whom? The tragic point is: history cannot be undone. Men must learn to live together in peace, and, to some extent, accept the long-standing status quo, if there is to be tranquility and prosperity in their lives. Complicating this issue is the belief, entertained by Israel, that she has a “divine right” to the territory east of the Mediterranean.
(The Middle East Conflict by Wayne Jackson at christiancourier.com)
“Palestine became a predominately Arab and Islamic country by the end of the seventh century. Almost immediately thereafter its boundaries and its characteristics — including its name in Arabic, Filastin — became known to the entire Islamic world, as much for its fertility and beauty as for its religious significance…In 1516, Palestine became a province of the Ottoman Empire, but this made it no less fertile, no less Arab or Islamic…Sixty percent of the population was in agriculture; the balance was divided between townspeople and a relatively small nomadic group. All these people believed themselves to belong in a land called Palestine, despite their feelings that they were also members of a large Arab nation…Despite the steady arrival in Palestine of Jewish colonists after 1882, it is important to realize that not until the few weeks immediately preceding the establishment of Israel in the spring of 1948 was there ever anything other than a huge Arab majority. For example, the Jewish population in 1931 was 174,606 against a total of 1,033,314.
In 1948, at the moment that Israel declared itself a state, it legally owned a little more than 6 percent of the land of Palestine…After 1940, when the mandatory authority restricted Jewish land ownership to specific zones inside Palestine, there continued to be illegal buying (and selling) within the 65 percent of the total area restricted to Arabs.
Thus when the partition plan was announced in 1947 it included land held illegally by Jews, which was incorporated as a fait accompli inside the borders of the Jewish state. And after Israel announced its statehood, an impressive series of laws legally assimilated huge tracts of Arab land (whose proprietors had become refugees, and were pronounced ‘absentee landlords’ in order to expropriate their lands and prevent their return under any circumstances).
Joseph Weitz was the director of the Jewish National Land Fund…On December 19, 1940, he wrote: ‘It must be clear that there is no room for both peoples in this country…The Zionist enterprise so far…has been fine and good in its own time, and could do with ‘land buying’ — but this will not bring about the State of Israel; that must come all at once, in the manner of a Salvation (this is the secret of the Messianic idea); and there is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, to transfer them all; except maybe for Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem, we must not leave a single village, not a single tribe’…There were literally hundreds of such statements made by Zionists.” Edward Said, “The Question of Palestine.”
“Before the end of the mandate and, therefore before any possible intervention by Arab states, the Jews, taking advantage of their superior military preparation and organization, had occupied…most of the Arab cities in Palestine before May 15, 1948. Tiberias was occupied on April 19, 1948, Haifa on April 22, Jaffa on April 28, the Arab quarters in the New City of Jerusalem on April 30, Beisan on May 8, Safad on May 10 and Acre on May 14, 1948…In contrast, the Palestine Arabs did not seize any of the territories reserved for the Jewish state under the partition resolution.” British author, Henry Cattan, “Palestine, The Arabs and Israel.”
(The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict by Jews for Justice in the Middle East at ifamericansknew.org)
For about 40 years, there has been an international consensus that Israel must stop colonizing territory outside its 1967 borders. The consensus has been blocked by the United States, in isolation from the international community (much like the USA’s isolated, strong support for South African Apartheid). Every year there is a UN vote on the issue, and every year it goes about 165 to 2, the world against the US and Israel. This continues under Obama. All human rights groups support the consensus, as does Hamas, the Arab League, Iran, the Organization of the Islamic Conference… Virtually everyone, except the US and Israel.
To get a quick visual understanding of the difference between Gaza and Israel, take a look at the images of people and cities being wantonly pummeled by Israeli terrorism when you search the word “Gaza“, and the images of opulence, wealth and luxury that come up when you search “Tel Aviv“.
(washingtonsblog.com)
It is not expansion of the huge settlement and infrastructure program (including the separation wall) that is the issue, but rather its very existence—all of it illegal, as determined by the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice, and recognized as such by virtually the entire world apart from Israel and the United States since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who downgraded “illegal” to “an obstacle to peace.”
(On Israel-Palestine and BDS, Noam Chomsky, July 2, 2014 at thenation.com – This article appeared in the July 21-28, 2014 edition of The Nation)
So you’ve heard about the sufferings endured by Palestinians at the hands of Israelis. You’ve seen pictures of Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombs, read about targeted killings, learned about the West Bank separation barrier and checkpoints, and heard of the hardships, discriminations and humiliations daily endured by the Palestinian people. You’ve seen the UN and other international organizations repeatedly issue sharp criticisms of Israel for its actions. You’ve learned of the Palestinian exile, and of their decades-long struggle for the land.
Any decent, justice-seeking person who hears of such suffering would, and should, act to stop it, correct it, and make it known. But what is the best way to stop Palestinian suffering? What if its true roots are more complex than they are often made to appear? What if many of these sufferings turned out to be ultimately self-inflicted – what then? How best to end them?
(arabisraeliconflict.info)
Following Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs’ declaration “Palestinian Authority doesn’t exist,” the relationship between the State of Palestine and Israel is deteriorating rapidly. Historical moments cannot be analyzed by the rules applied to regular ones. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas cannot consider the aftermath of Palestine having been recognized as a state by the UN as a moment in which he can continue things as usual. For a similar reason, Yasser Arafat couldn’t sign the agreement proposed in Camp David in the year 2000. At such moments, future implications must be carefully considered.
The favorite argument of the Hebrew media regarding the Israeli negotiations with Palestine is that the failure of the 2000 Camp David Summit between US President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat proves that a comprehensive peace agreement is not possible. Barak offered what to Westerners looked like a good deal. In several stages, Palestinians were to achieve sovereignty on over 92% of the West Bank and Gaza while Israel would have dismantled over 60 settlements. Israel was to keep Kiryat Arba (adjacent to the holy city of Hebron), a road connecting Jerusalem with the Dead Sea, and parts of Jerusalem’s metropolitan area. Yet, all these were secondary to the central issue: the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Israeli negotiators proposed that the Palestinians be granted administration, but not sovereignty, over the Muslim and Christian Quarters of the Old City, with the Jewish and Armenian Quarters remaining in Israeli hands. Mahmoud Abbas, at that time Arafat’s chief negotiator answered, “All of East Jerusalem should be returned to Palestinian sovereignty. The Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall should be placed under Israeli authority, not Israeli sovereignty. An open city and cooperation on municipal services.” This issue could not be solved; the last serious negotiation between Israel and Palestine ended with no results.
(roitov.com)

Here is a letter Letter That Albert Einstein Sent to the New York Times
1948, protesting the Visit of Menachem Begin:

Letters to the Editor
New York Times
December 4, 1948

TO THE EDITORS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES:

Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.
The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughoutthe world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin’s political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents.
Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin’s behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement. The public avowals of Begin’s party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.
A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April 9 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants ? 240men, women, and children – and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin. The Deir Yassin incident exemplifies the character and actions of the Freedom Party.
Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. In their stead they have proposed corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model. During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and wide-spread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute.
The people of the Freedom Party have had no part in the constructive achievements in Palestine. They have reclaimed no land, built no settlements, and only detracted from the Jewish defense activity. Their much-publicized immigration endeavors were minute, and devoted mainly to bringing in Fascist compatriots.
The discrepancies between the bold claims now being made by Begin and his party, and their record of past performance in Palestine bear the imprint of no ordinary political party. This is the unmistakable stamp of a Fascist party for whom terrorism (against Jews, Arabs, and British alike), and misrepresentation are means, and a “Leader State” is the goal.
In the light of the foregoing considerations, it is imperative that the truth about Mr. Begin and his movement be made known in this country. It is all the more tragic that the top leadership of American Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin’s efforts, or even to expose to its own constituents the dangers to Israel from support to Begin.
The undersigned therefore take this means of publicly presenting a few salient facts concerning Begin and his party; and of urging all concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism.
(rense.com)
There are, of course, a number of different ways to look at the current round of the Middle East Peace talks, possibly the longest continuous entertainment spectacular on the planet since Johnny Carson retired after 30 seasons on The Tonight Show. One might well wonder why it has been so difficult to create a Palestinian State of some kind, a development that would seem to be in nearly everyone’s interest and which would also impact on many related issues, to include international terrorism, instability in Lebanon and Syria, Iran, and even Arab democracy. The reason is, of course, simple, involving Israeli unwillingness to permit such a state to come into existence coupled with the United States role as an enabler of Israel. So the peace process spins on and on.
(Palestine’s Quislings: A Hand in the Till Not on the Tiller, Philip Giraldi, Published on AntiWar.com, January 9, 2014 at ifamericansknew.org)
The Palestinian people have already been carved up into a multitude of constituencies. There are the Palestinians under occupation, those living as second-class citizens of Israel, those allowed to remain “residents” of Jerusalem, and those dispersed to camps across the Middle East. Even within these groups, there are a host of sub-identities: refugees and non-refugees; refugees included as citizens in their host state and those excluded; occupied Palestinians living under the control of the Palestinian Authority and those under Israel’s military government; and so on.
(Can the Arab World be Turned into Gaza’s Jailers? Divide and Rule, Israeli-StyleJonathan Cook
CounterPunch, June 26, 2007 at ifamericansknew.org)
The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has added another milepost with Israel’s initiation of Operation Pillar of Defense. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is retaliation for rocket attacks launched by Hamas against Israel. Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has said those rocket attacks were designed as a retaliation for the continued occupation and blockade of Gaza by Israel, which does not recognize Hamas as a legitimate government of the Palestinian territory.
This cycle — one side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict retaliating for actions by the other side, which were retaliations for previous actions — is a familiar and dispiriting one for neutral observers to watch. A look at just the recent history of the conflict makes clear that both sides in the conflict have taken offensive actions — in both senses of the word — and that both have legitimate grievances against the other. Unfortunately, that means both sides have reason to mistrust the other, and both sides can persuade themselves that they are the aggrieved party in the conflict.
(The Neverending Israeli/Palestinian Conflict Explained by Jeff Fecke, November 30, 2012, at care2.com)
Every form of traditional and cyber media is saturated with debate and commentary. Characteristically, it is vehemently polarized, full of more empty talking points than verifiable facts, and virtually always spinning around unproductive tangential issues: who started it, whose weapons are less immoral, who is a terrorist and who isn’t, which incendiary statement is the vilest, who deserves what, who has right to what, ad infinitum.
(The Simple Issue Missing From Debate Over Gaza: The Legitimacy of Palestinian Resistance By Brian K. Barber at AlterNet)
Who started this so-called ‘conflict’?
It is not a “conflict.” It’s an invasion, an occupation and a massacre.
We have Israel the 4th most powerful military force in the world with the most technologically sophisticated weapons provided by the U.S. and the entire military might of the entire western world behind this Zionist enclave and then we have a defenseless people with sticks and stones and AK-47′s and unguided rockets without explosive heads, the Palestinians trying to fight for survival and we call this “a conflict”? This is how absurd it is. It’s completely unjustified.
The United States, this bully gangster country does everything in its power to weaken and undermine and threaten any country in the Middle East that tries to help the Palestinians, eg: Iraq, Iran, Syria. The Arab “governments” that care nothing for the Palestinians are the ones that are fully supported by the United States and propped up, eg: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia.
The United Nations Security Council did not even ratify the partition plan. It is a myth that the United Nations put an approval stamp on this.
This is equivalent to somebody breaking into your home and demanding that you leave because they say that thousands of years ago their ancestors lived here. It’s as bizarre as that
(People use deceptive language to whitewash the true nature of the so-called Israel-Palestine “conflict.” by Brandon Martinez at veteransnewsnow.com)

Smoke and fire from the explosion of an Israeli strike rise over Gaza City on July 22, 2014
AP Photo/Hatem Moussa at theatlantic.com

An explosion during an Israeli strike in the northern Gaza Strip early in the morning of July 26, 2014
Reuters/Ronen Zvulun at theatlantic.com

Smoke and fire from the explosion of an Israeli strike rise over Gaza City on July 29, 2014
AP Photo/Hatem Moussa at theatlantic.com

Mahmoud Abbas, in his capacity as chairman of the PLO, has twice petitioned the UN to accept Palestine as a member state. In September 2011 he approached the Security Council and asked for full membership for Palestine. The petition did not receive the nine required votes. In any case, the United States would have vetoed the petition, preventing it from being passed on to the General Assembly for a vote. On November 29, 2012, the sixty-fifth anniversary of UN General Assembly Resolution 181 partitioning Palestine, Abbas asked the General Assembly to accept Palestine as a non-member observer state, the same status enjoyed by the Vatican (and Switzerland before it joined the UN). This request was overwhelmingly approved with 138 votes in favor and 9 against, with 41 abstentions. The no votes came from Israel, the United States, Canada, the Czech Republic, Panama, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau.
The vote had no effect on the ground. Israel continues to occupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It did, however, open the possibility that Palestine could approach the International Criminal Court to pursue Israeli officials for crimes committed in the course of the occupation.
International opinion is nearly unanimous that a two-state solution, including a sovereign Palestinian state, is the best if not only way forward in the century-old conflict over historical Palestine. Yet there is no visible movement toward achieving this outcome.
One reason is the seismic rightward shift in Israeli Jewish opinion, which since the outbreak of the second intifada holds that no peace is possible with the Palestinians. Rather than “conflict resolution,” many feel, Israel should pursue a policy of “conflict management.” Partly to cater to such opinion, and partly to please the powerful settler lobby, recent Israeli governments have been unwilling to negotiate in good faith. Settlements grow apace.
A second reason is the split between Abbas and Hamas in the Palestinian body politic. Their dispute over strategy—negotiations versus resistance—divides ordinary Palestinians as well. Meanwhile, Palestinian citizens of Israel and refugees in neighboring Arab countries are adamant that a comprehensive peace must include them. There are increasingly pressing questions about the viability of the two-state vision and even the utility of international law for delivering a minimally just “solution” to the question of Palestine.
Still a third reason is the lack of political will in Washington, where the Obama administration (for the time being, at least) retains stewardship of the “peace process.” In the spring of 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry began traveling frequently to the Middle East in an effort to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations aimed at a two-state solution. He succeeded in doing so, and at the time of writing maintains a brave face in public about the possibility of success. There is no indication, however, that a peace agreement is on the horizon.
In January 2014 President Obama himself told the New Yorker that he estimated the chances of a successful conclusion to negotiations to be “less than 50–50.” In our judgment, the odds are much lower.
(Primer on Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict at merip.org)

MAN’S INABILITY TO SIT STILL IN A ROOM

The common man, after all the ages, is still very common. He is ignorant, reckless, unjust, selfish, easily misled. All public affairs bear the stamp of his weakness. Especially is this shown in the prevalence of destructive strife. The boasted progress of civilization is dissolved in the barbarism of war. Whether glory or conquest or commercial greed is war’s purpose, the ultimate result of war is death. Its essential feature is the slaughter of the young, the brave, the ambitious, and the hopeful, leaving the weak, the sickly, and the discouraged to perpetuate the race. Thus all militant, nations become decadent ones. Thus the glory of Rome, her conquests and her splendor of achievement, left the Romans at home not the sons of the Romans, but of the slaves, scullions, the idlers and camp-followers whom the years of Roman glory could not use and did not destroy. War blasts and withers all that is worthy in the works of man.
When we look at human nature in detail we find more of animal than of angel, and the “veracity of thought and action,” which is the choicest gift of Science, is lost in the happy-go-lucky movement of the human mob. “To see things as they really are” is the purpose of the philosophy of Pessimism in the hands of its worthiest exponents. But we know what is, and those alone, even were such knowledge possible, is not to know the truth. To the philosophy of Pessimism, the child is a mere human larva, weak, perverse, disagreeable, the heir of mortality, with all manner of “defects of doubt and taints of blood,” gathered in the long experience of its wretched parentage.
According to Schopenhauer, we move across the stage of life stung by appetite and goaded by desire, in pain unceasing, the sole respite from pain, the instant in which desire is lost in satisfaction. To do away with desire is to destroy pain, but it also destroys existence. Desire is lost where the “mouth is stopped with dust,” and with death only comes relief from pain.
(Adapted from Project Gutenberg’s The Philosophy of Despair, by David Starr Jordan)
Take a cursory glance at the news headlines for any random day, and it’s not hard to develop a pessimistic attitude towards your fellow man. The endless reports of thieves, bombers, murderers, bigots, racists, and bullies is enough to make you lose all hope humans are capable of one day living in complete peace and harmony. Are we genetically predisposed towards “evil” behaviors like selfishness, violence, and cruelty? Or, is it an unfortunate side effect of our society? Not even those who make a living studying human behavior (psychologists, anthropologists, etc.) can come to a consensus on our inherent nature.
There were an astounding 237 wars between 1900 and today, starting with the Boxer Rebellion and continuing to the war in Afghanistan.
After watching any of the military training documentaries on the Discovery Channel, it indeed appears like some men were born for battle. They absolutely thrive under the high-pressure, aggression-filled environment of war. Not to mention, they really, really like their weapons. It makes you wonder what these men would do if there was no need to fight—could they even survive a desk job.
In some ways we aren’t much different than the ancient Romans with their gladiator games and fascination with blood and gore. For instance, prime time TV is full of shoot em’ up cop shows and gruesome crime scenes, most news agencies stick with the ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ philosophy, and one of the most violent sports in existence, mixed martial arts fighting, has been dubbed the fastest growing sport in the world. Without a doubt, we have a definite attraction to violence.
While most of the research regarding violence in entertainment has to do with how viewing it affects our behavior, perhaps the bigger question is why we like watching it in the first place? Maybe we’re drawn to it as a way to vicariously live out our savage instincts, or possibly we’re not so much attracted to the violence as we are the excitement. Some scientists argue our humdrum, civilized lives lack sensation and the thrill of conflict and danger provides a type of escape. The only problem with that theory is it doesn’t explain why native people also have ritual violence—unless it breaks up the monotony of their days too.
Towards the end of his life, Freud became largely disenchanted with the human species and considered us one of the worst types of animals. Granted, a lot of his feelings were based on the tumultuous time period in which he lived, as he witnessed World War I and died just as another major war, World War II, was getting started. In his 1930 book, Civilizations and its Discontents, he wrote “…men are not gentle creatures, who want to be loved, who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness.”
Hundreds of years before Freud, philosopher Thomas Hobbes had a similarly pessimistic view of humanity and famously wrote that the life of man in his natural state is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Essentially, he believed all men were equally capable of killing, and when two people want the same thing the inevitable outcome is war. In his mind, government and civil society were the only ways to curb the brutishness, yet he admitted even governments and the elite were full of corruption.
So, if we ignore Freud and Hobbes for the moment and assume other thinkers are correct, like Jean Jacques Rousseau who thought humans were naturally good or John Locke who believed we all started as a blank slate. Then it makes sense to presume babies—people who have been influenced the least by the world—would lean towards goodness or neutrality. But, is that really the case? It’s difficult to say because, if you’ve spent any time with a toddler, you know at one point in the day he might be smashing his brother on the head with a wooden block and then five minutes later he’s generously offering you the soggy portion of his half-eaten cookie. Also, we have to teach them how to behave in a socially acceptable manner (i.e. don’t hit, bite, steal, and always, always share). If humans are naturally good, why do we have to spend so much time teaching children how to behave?
The simple fact that we have any type of government suggests we believe society would spiral into absolute mayhem if there wasn’t someone making and enforcing laws. Essentially, we have very little trust in our fellow man to not kill or steal from us, so we willingly give up many of our own personal freedoms for the sake of protection. This in itself is pretty strong evidence that we believe a large portion of people isn’t innately good.
But would pandemonium actually ensue if we abolished government and lived in an anarchist state? It’s hard to say since hardly any major anarchist groups have existed throughout history—and perhaps that’s proof enough they don’t work. Even most hunter gatherer and tribal people, like the Australian Aborigines, rely on a group of elders to guide their community.
(10 Reasons Humans Are Naturally Evil, S. Grant May 23, 2013 at listverse.com)
Now there are definitely degrees of evil. Some degree of evil is all around us. We notice some degree of evil almost every day. This does not mean that we (or anyone) must retreat and become a hermit — in order to extinguish all evil from our lives. That choice would be sub-optimal. There are too many folks who have some evil in them, but still harbor some good, for us to write them off wholesale — upon their first evil act. The things to watch out for are a person who militantly avoids introspection or any questioning of their motives, while simultaneously offering up others as sacrificial animals. The key is consistency. Truly evil folk are completely consistent in their behavior. They are almost predictable.
The easiest historical example of evil might be Adolf Hitler who, through militant evasion, irrationally held that the Aryan race was superior and entitled, while holding down the Jews as the scapegoat for any and all of society’s ills. Dealing with evil is unavoidable; dealing well with evil is something we ought to learn how to do well. It has been said that the only thing that evil “listens to” is brute force or coercion — that all attempts at persuasion with “the evil” are doomed a priori. Rand herself said that compromise with evil was, itself, evil.
(Human Evil: The Only Kind There Is, Human Evil: The Only Kind There Is by Ed Thompson at rebirthofreason.com)
We prefer to think great evil is limited to a few depraved individuals, but that’s not true. Large populations commit heinous crimes.
In the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1989, the number of people killed for political reasons or who died in prisons or camps ranges from 20 to 26 million. These staggering numbers include the 6 million Ukrainian citizens whom the Soviets forced to die of starvation in 1932-1933.
No mercy was shown the starving peasants. During the famine, detachments of workers and activists were marshaled in the countryside to take every last bit of produce or grain. Activists and officials went through peasant homes with rods, pushing them into walls and ceilings, seeking hidden stores of food or grain; yards were dug up or poked with rods in the search; and dogs were brought in to sniff out food…. Baked bread was taken. All reserves and the seed grain needed for planting were seized. The peasants were left with nothing. To isolate the victims, the Ukrainian borders were sealed off to block the importation of food. The peasants simply starved slowly to death throughout the Ukraine.
One party official wrote, “The most terrifying sights were the little children with skeleton limbs dangling from balloon-like abdomens. Starvation had wiped every trace of youth from their faces, turning them into tortured gargoyles; only in their eyes still lingered the reminder of childhood. Everywhere we found men and women lying prone, their faces and bellies bloated, their eyes utterly expressionless.”
Was this inhuman? No. Humans did this.
Under the Chinese communists a conservative estimate is that 26 to 30 million “counterrevolutionaries” were killed or died in the prison system. Of course, a statistic doesn’t capture the horror. Consider the words of Mao Tse Tung who boasted in a 1958 speech to the communist party, “What’s so unusual about Emperor Shih Huang of the Chin Dynasty? He had buried alive 460 scholars only, but we have buried alive 46,000 scholars.” Burying people alive must be a metaphor! But further research proved that burying people alive was a common method of execution.
Within a few weeks beginning in December of 1937, the Japanese army raped, tortured, and murdered over 300,000 Chinese in the city of Nanking. The Rape of Nanking should be remembered not only for the number of people slaughtered but for the cruel manner in which many met their deaths. Chinese men were used for bayonet practice and in decapitation contests. An estimated 20,000–80,000 Chinese women were raped. Many soldiers went beyond rape to disembowel women, slice off their breasts, nail them alive to walls. Fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and sons their mothers, as other family members watched. Not only did live burials, castration, the carving of organs, and the roasting of people become routine, but more diabolical tortures were practiced, such as hanging people by their tongues on iron hooks or burying people to their waists and watching them get torn apart by German shepherds. So sickening was the spectacle that even the Nazis in the city were horrified, one proclaiming the massacre to be the work of “bestial machinery.”
The Rape of Nanking, as it is called, was front-page news across the world, yet most of the world did nothing to stop it and Japan officially denies it today. But humans did it.
(We Don’t Take Human Evil Seriously so We Don’t Understand Why We Suffer, Clay Jones at clayjones.net)

THE SHADOWS

The Shadows story began when a young singer named Cliff Richard walked into a London “Coffee House” in search of a backing group, and came out with four young men, who in those days called themselves “The Drifters”, and as Cliff developed into one of the World’s top attractions, so the Group rose to fame with him.
In September 1959, owing to confusion between themselves and an American group also called “The Drifters”, the boys elected to change their name to “The Shadows”. Soon they were acclaimed as Stars in their own right and they have released a series of records that have become hits around the World.
(discogs.com)
The Shadows, with singer Cliff Richard, dominated the British popular music scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the five years before The Beatles. Although they lost ground in the late sixties, the band enjoyed a second spell of success and interest from the late seventies until the present day.
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
The Shadows released ‘Move It’ in 1958 which made its way to number two in the British charts. Their first number one chart topping track, ‘Apache’, written by composer Jerry Lordan, was released in July, 1960 and spent twenty-one weeks at the top of the British music charts. The Shadows have enjoyed 34 hits on their own and another 33 through their involvement with Cliff Richard. The Shadows have the distinction of being the only artists to have an album, EP, and a single at the number one position on the charts simultaneously.
The rhythm guitar player, Bruce Welch, was born Bruce Cripps on November 2, 1941 in Bognor Regis, in the South West of England. Welch was an excellent rhythm guitarist and was involved in producing.
The drummer, Brian Bennett, was born in London, England on February 9, 1940.
Bennett was a drummer with Marty Wilde’s Wildcats and Krew Kats before replacing Tony Meehan in The Shadows in October 1961. Bennett’s son, Warren, plays keyboard and has been doing musical arrangements for Hank Marvin’s recent recordings.
Bass guitarists for The Shadows included Jet Harris (who gave the band its name), John Rostill (1942 – 1973), and Brian ‘Liquorice’ Locking.
The lead guitar player of the Shadows (formerly the Drifters), Hank B Marvin, was born Brian Robson Rank on October 28, 1941 in Newcastle, England. Rankin’s name was changed by Deed Poll in the 1950s to Hank Brian Marvin.
Marvin has been the unique sound of The Shadows since the group was first formed in 1958, and was one of the first people in England to use a Fender Statocaster. Marvin has been an inspiration to many musicians, but he says he really doesn’t understand why: “I would never have thought that I’d have any kind of influence on these people. Oh, maybe with Jimmy Page to a degree, but with people like Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, I would have thought their early influences would have been much more obscure– the kind of blues people that they pattern their playing on. But it’s all very flattering, really.” In 1986 Hank Marvin and his family moved to the suburbs of Perth, Australia and has worked on a solo career of his own releasing the award winning albums, Into The Light and Heartbeat.
(fleetwoodmac.neTt)INSTRUMENTALS HITS BY THE SHADOWS:
Tracks 1958-1959

1.		Jean Dorothy (Chesternuts)
2.		Jet Black (Harris)
3.		Feelin’ Fine (Samwell)
4.		Driftin’ (Marvin)
5.		Don’t Be A Fool (With Love) (Chester)
6.		Chinchilla (Starr/Wolf)
7.		Saturday Dance (Chester/Martin)
8.		Lonesome Fella (Chester)
9.		Be Bop A Lula (live) (Vincent/Davis)
10.		Jet Black (live) (Jet Harris)
11.		Driftin’ (live) (Marvin)

Tracks 1960

1.		Apache (Lordan)
2.		Quatermaster’s Stores (Trad. arr. Shepherd)
3.		Man Of Mystery (Carr)
4.		The Stranger (Crompton/Jones)
5.		Bongo Blues (Paramor)

The Shadows 1961

1.		Shadoogie (Marvin/Welch/Harris/Meehan)
2.		Blue Star (Young/Heyman)
3.		Nivram (Welch/Marvin/Harris)
4.		Baby My Heart (Curtis)
5.		See You In My Drums (Meehan)
6.		All My Sorrows (Guard/Shane/Reynolds)
7.		Stand Up And Say That! (Marvin)
8.		Gonzales (McGlynn)
9.		Find Me A Golden Street (Petty)
10.		Theme From A Filleted Place (Marvin/Welch/Harris)
11.		That’s My Desire (Krease/Loveday)
12.		My Resistance Is Low (Carmichael)
13.		Sleepwalk (Farina/Farina/Farina/Wolf)
14.		Big Boy (Welch/Marvin)

Tracks 1961

1. Mustang (Lordan) 2. Theme From Shane (Young/Mack David) 3. Shotgun (Allen) 4. Theme From Giant (Webster/Tiomkin) 5. Back Home (Goff/Harris/Welch/Marvin) 6. 36-24-36 (Welch/Marvin/Harris/Meehan) 7. F.B.I. (Gormley) 8. Wonderful Land (Lordan) 9. Kon-Tiki (Carr) 10. Midnight (Marvin/Welch) 11. The Frightened City (Paramor)

12. Witch Doctor (Paramor) 13. Shazam (live) (Eddy/Hazlewood) 14. Guitar Boogie (live) (Smith) 15. Sleepwalk (live) (Farina/Farina/Farina/Wolf) 16. F.B.I (live) (Gormley) 17. Gonzales (mono LP version) (McGlynn) 18. Wonderful Land (no strings) (Lordan) 19. Wonderful Land (alt.) (Lordan) 20. F.B.I. (stereo version) (Gormley) 21. F.B.I. (USA version) (Gormley)

Out of The shadows 1962

1.		The Rumble (Isaacs)
2.		The Bandit (Carr-Kennedy-Nascimmio)
3.		Cosy (Shuman-Garson)
4.		1861 (Marvin-Welch-Bennett)
5.		Perfidia (Dominguez)
6.		Little ‘B’ (Bennett)
7.		Bo Diddley (McDaniels)
8.		South Of The Border (Kennedy-Carr)
9.		Spring Is Nearly Here (Bennett-Welch)
10.		Are They All Like You? (Gate)
11.		Tales Of A Raggy Tramline (Harris-Bennett)
12.		Some Are Lonely (Cliff Richard)
13.		Kinda Cool (Marvin-Welch)

Tracks 1962

1. Theme From The Boys (Bennett/Welch/Marvin) 2. The Girls (Welch/Marvin) 3. Sweet Dreams (McGuffie) 4. The Boys (Bennett/Welch/Marvin) 5. Dance On (V. Murtagh/E. Murtagh/Adams/Stellman) 6. All Day (Welch/Marvin/Harris/Meehan) 7. The Breeze And I (Lecuona/Stillman) 8. What A Lovely Tune (Welch/Marvin/Bennett) 9. Peace Pipe (Paramor) 10. Stars Fell On Stockton (Welch/Marvin/Bennett)

11. The Savage (Paramor) 12. South Of The Border (Kennedy/Carr) 13. Some Are Lonely (french version) 14. Perfidia (alternative version) 15. What A Lovely Tune (unissued stereo version) 16. Theme From ‘The Boys’ (un-dubbed version) 17. Guitar Tango (un-dubbed version) 18. All Day (alternative version) 19. Atlantis (un-dubbed version) 20. It’s Been A Blue Day (alternative un-dubbed version)

Tracks 1963

1.		Atlantis (Lordan)
2.		I Want You To Want Me (Lordan/Marvin)
3.		Foot Tapper (Album Version) (Marvin/Welch)
4.		Round And Round (Marvin/Welch/Bennett)
5.		Les Girls (Welch/Marvin/Bennett)
6.		It’s Been A Blue Day (Bennett)
7.		Las Tres Carabelas (Three Galleons) (Alguero Jr.)
8.		Adios Muchachos (Pablo The Dreamer) (Sanders)
9.		Valencia (Padilla)
10.		Granada (Lara)
11.		Geronimo (Hank Marvin)
12.		Shazam (Eddy/Hazlewood)
13.		Shindig (Marvin/Welch)
14.		Razzmataz (Alt. version) (Marvin/Rostill/Bennett)

11.		The Savage (Paramor)
12.		South Of The Border (Kennedy/Carr)
13.		Some Are Lonely (french version)
14.		Perfidia (alternative version)
15.		What A Lovely Tune (unissued stereo version)
16.		Theme From ‘The Boys’ (un-dubbed version)
17.		Guitar Tango (un-dubbed version)
18.		All Day (alternative version)
19.		Atlantis (un-dubbed version)
20.		It’s Been A Blue Day (alternative un-dubbed version)

Dance with The Shadows 1964

1.		Chattanooga Choo-Choo (Warren)
2.		Blue Shadows (Marvin-Welch-Bennett-Locking)
3.		Fandango (Perkins-Bradford)
4.		Tonight (from ‘West Side Story’) (Bernstein)
5.		That’s The Way It Goes (Welch-Marvin)
6.		Big ‘B’ (Bennett)
7.		In The Mood (Garland-Razaf)
8.		Lonely Bull (El Solo Toro) (Lake)
9.		Dakota (Braden)
10.		French Dressing (Tiomkin)
11.		The High And The Mighty (Marvin-Welch)
12.		Don’t It Make You Feel Good (Marvin-Welch)
13.		Zambesi (Carstens-De Waal)
14.		Temptation (Brown-Freed)

Tracks 1964

1.		Rhythm And Greens (Welch/Marvin/Bennett/Rostill)
2.		Ranka Chank (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
3.		Main Theme (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
4.		The Drum Number (Welch/Marvin/Bennett/Rostill)
5.		The Lute Number (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
6.		Genie With The Light Brown Lamp (Welch/Marvin/Bennett/Rostill)
7.		Little Princess (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
8.		Me Oh My (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
9.		Friends (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
10.		Theme For Young Lovers (Welch)
11.		Walkin’ (Welch/Marvin/Bennett)
12.		It’s A Man’s World (Addey/Smith)
13.		The Rise And Fall Of Flingel Bunt (Welch/Marvin/Rostill/Bennett)
14.		The Miracle (Carr/Paramor)
15.		This Hammer (Arr. Locking/Welch/Bennett/Marvin)
16.		In The Mood (no rhythm guitar) (Garland/Razaf)

The Sound of The Shadows 1965

1.		Brazil (Barroso)
2.		The Lost City (Ballard)
3.		A Little Bitty Tear (Cochrane)
4.		Blue Sky, Blue Sea, Blue Me (Rostill-Welch)
5.		Bossa Roo (Rostill-Welch)
6.		Five Hundred Miles (West)
7.		Cotton Pickin’ (Ford)
8.		Deep Purple (De Rose)
9.		Santa Ana (Lordan)
10.		The Windjammer (Rostill)
11.		Dean’s Theme (Marvin-Rostill)
12.		Breakthru’ (Taggart)
13.		Let It Be Me (Becaud-Curtis-Delanoe)
14.		National Provincial Samba (Welch-Rostill)

Tracks 1965

1.		Alice In Sunderland (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
2.		Stingray (Claus Ogerman)
3.		I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Artur (Rostill)
4.		The War Lord (Moross)
5.		My Grandfather’s Clock (Arr. Welch/Marvin/Bennett/Rostill)
6.		Mary Anne (Jerry Lordan)
7.		Don’t Make My Baby Blue (B. Mann/C. Weil)
8.		Chu-Chi (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
9.		Girl From Ipanema (Jobim/Gimbel/De Marques)
10.		Nothing, Folks (Marvin/Welch/Rostill/Bennett)
11.		John’s Rocker (Rostill)
12.		Don’t Stop Now (Alt. version) (Bennett)
13.		Benno-San (Alt. Version)

Shadow Music 1966

1.		I Only Want To Be With You (Marvin-Welch-Rostill-Bennett)
2.		Fourth Street (Bennett)
3.		Magic Doll (Marvin-Welch-Rostill-Bennett)
4.		Stay Around (Arnold-Martin-Morrow)
5.		Maid Marion’s Theme (Marvin-Welch-Rostill-Bennett)
6.		Benno-San (Bennett)
7.		Don’t Stop Now (Bennett)
8.		In The Past (Cahill)
9.		Fly Me To The Moon (Howard)
10.		Now That You’re Gone (Hill-Whitworth-Meehan)
11.		One Way To Love (Arnold-Martin-Morrow)
12.		Razzmataz (Marvin-Rostill-Bennett)
13.		A Sigh (Un Sospero) (Liszt, arr. Parramor)
14.		March To Drina (Binicki-Stahl)

Tracks 1966

1.		Late Night Set (Rostill/Welch/Bennett)
2.		I Met A Girl (Marvin)
3.		Lady Penelope (Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
4.		Thunderbirds Theme (Gray)
5.		Zero ‘X’ Theme (Gray)
6.		Finders Keepers (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
7.		My Way (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
8.		Paella (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
9.		Fiesta (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
10.		My Way (vocal) (Marvin/Welch)
11.		Spanish Song (from Finders Keepers movie)
12.		Scotch On The Socks (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
13.		A Place In The Sun (Paetrina/Lordan)
14.		Will You Be There (Marvin/Welch)
15.		The Dreams I Dream (Marvin)
16.		Finders Keepers – My Way – Fiesta – Paella (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
17.		Zero X Theme (stereo remix) (Gray)
18.		Thunderbirds Theme (stereo remix) (Gray)
19.		Scotch On The Socks (stereo remix) (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)

From Hank, Bruce, Brian and John 1967

1.		Snap Crackle & How’s Your Dad (Welch/Bennett)
2.		Evening Glow (Kasakawa/Nakamura)
3.		A Thing Of Beauty (Harper)
4.		Naughty Nippon Nights (Gouldman)
5.		The Wild Roses (Ichikawa)
6.		San Francisco (Philips)
7.		The Letter (Carson)
8.		The Tokaido Line (Welch/Marvin/Rostill/Bennett)
9.		Holy Cow (Toussaint/Allen)
10.		Alentejo (Vince)
11.		Last Train To Clarksville (Boyce/Hart)
12.		Let Me Take You There (Bennett/Rostill)
13.		The Day I Met Marie (Marvin)
14.		A Better Man Than I (Marvin)

Jigsaw 1967

1.		Jigsaw (Welch/Marvin/Rostill/Bennett)
2.		Tennessee Waltz (Stewart/King)
3.		Prelude In E Major (Welch/Marvin/Rostill/Bennett)
4.		Cathys Clown (D. Everly/P. Everly)
5.		Stardust (Carmichael)
6.		Semi Detached Suburban Mr. James (Carter/Stephens)
7.		Trains And Boats And Planes (Bacharach/David)
8.		Friday On My Mind (Young/Vanda)
9.		Winchester Cathedral (Stephens)
10.		Waiting For Rosie (Rostill)
11.		Chelsea Boot (Peter Vince)
12.		Maria Elena (Barcelata)
13.		With A Hmm-Hmm On My Knee (Cliff Richard)
14.		Green Eyes (Menendez)

Tracks 1967

1.		Omoide No Nagisa (Torizuka/Kase)
2.		Kimi To Itsummademo (Kosaku Dan)
3.		Londonderry Air (Arr. Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
4.		Gin Iro No Michi (Miyagawa)
5.		Autumn (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
6.		The Flyder And The Spy (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
7.		Bombay Duck (T. Honda)
8.		Leave My Woman Alone (Ray Charles)
9.		Running Out Of The World (Bogliun/Black)
10.		Somewhere (Bernstein)
11.		Tennessee Waltz (Alt. version) (Stewart/King)
12.		Chicago (live BBC show)

Established 1958

1.		Voyage To The Bottom Of The Bath (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
2.		Poem (Bennett)
3.		The Average Life Of A Daily Man (Marvin)
4.		Banana Man (Marvin/Bennett/Welch/Rostill)
5.		The Magical Mrs. Clamps (Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill)
6.		Here I Go Again Loving You (Marvin/Welch)
7.		Maggie’s Samba

Tracks 1968-1969

1.		Dear Old Mrs. Bell (Bryant)
2.		Trying To Forget The One You Love (Marvin)
3.		Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (R. M. Sherman/R. B. Sherman)
4.		I Can’t Forget (Korpar/Persiljeva/Black)
5.		Maroc 7 (Ferris)
6.		Tomorrow’s Cancelled (Marvin/Bennett)
7.		Slaughter On Tenth Avenue (Richard Rogers)
8.		Slaughter On 10th Avenue (w/orchestra) (Richard Rogers)

Shades of Rock 1970

1.		Proud Mary (Fogerty)
2.		My Babe (Johnson)
3.		Lucille (Collins/Penniman)
4.		Johnny B. Goode (Berry)
5.		Paperback Writer (Lennon/McCartney)
6.		(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (Jagger/Richard)
7.		Bony Moronie (Williams)
8.		Get Back (Lennon/McCartney)
9.		Something (Harrison)
10.		River Deep Mountain High (Spector/Greenwich/Barry)
11.		Memphis (Berry)
12.		What I’d Say (Charles)

Rockin’ with Curly Leads 1973

1.		Pinball Wizard/See Me Feel Me (P. Townsend)
2.		Years Away (Farrar)
3.		Humbucker (Farrar/Bennett/Marvin/Welch)
4.		Deep Roots (Farrar/Bennett/Marvin/Welch)
5.		Jungle Jam (Farrar/Bennett/Marvin/Welch)
6.		Gracie (Farrar)
7.		Good Vibrations (B. Wilson/M. Love)
8.		Turn Around And Touch Me (Farrar/Bennett/Marvin/Welch)
9.		Wide Mouthed Frog (Farrar/Bennett/Marvin/Welch)
10.		Rockin’ With Curly Leads (Farrar/Bennett/Marvin/Welch)
11.		Gutbucket (Farrar/Bennett/Marvin/Welch)
12.		Jumpin’ Jack Input (Farrar/Bennett/Marvin/Welch)

Live at The Paris Olympia 1975

1.		Shazam (L.Hazlewood/D. Eddy)
2.		Man Of Mystery (M. Carr)
3.		Lady Of The Morning (Marvin/Welch/Harris/Farrar)
4.		Shadoogie (Marvin/Welch/Harris/Meehan)
5.		Guitar Tango (Maine/Liferman)
6.		Faithful (Marvin/Welch/Farrar)
7.		Tiny Robin (Farrar/Best)
8.		Honourable Puff-Puff (Marvin/Richmond)
9.		Sleepwalk (Farina/Farina/Farina)
10.		Marmaduke (Tarney/Spencer/Mervyn)
11.		Foot Tapper (Marvin/Welch)
12.		Apache (Lordan)
13.		The Rise And Fall Of Flingel Bunt (Marvin/Welch/Rostill/Bennett)
14.		Dance On (Murtagh/Murtagh/Adams)
15.		Lonesome Mole (Marvin/Welch)
16.		Nivram (Marvin/Welch/Harris)
17.		Turn Around And Touch Me (Marvin/Welch/Farrar/Bennett)
18.		Music Makes My Day (Farrar)
19.		The Frightened City (N. Paramor)
20.		Little ‘B’ (Bennett)
21.		Lucille/Rip It Up/Blue Suede Shoes (Collins/Penniman Blackwell/Marascalco Perkins)
22.		Somewhere (Leonard Bernstein)
23.		Let Me Be The One (Curtis)
24.		Wonderful Land (Lordan)
25.		F.B.I. (Gormley)

Specs Appeal 1975

1.		God Only Knows (Wilson/Asher)
2.		Cool Clear Air (Fletcher/Flett)
3.		Rose, Rose (Welch/Rostill)
4.		This House Runs On Sunshine (Bennett/Redway)
5.		Colorado Songbird (Bennett)
6.		No No Nina (Farrar/Best)
7.		Honourable Puff-Puff (Marvin/Farrar/Welch/Bennett/Richmond)
8.		Don’t Throw It All Away (Benson/Mindell)
9.		Spider Juice (Marvin)
10.		Let Me Be The One (Curtiss)
11.		Like Strangers (Welch/Bennett)
12.		Stand Up Like A Man (Findon/Myers)

Tasty 1977

1.		Cricket Bat Boogie (Welch/Marvin/Bennett)
2.		Return To The Alamo (Welch/Marvin/Bennett)
3.		Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (E. John/B. Taupin)
4.		Another Night (Welch/Marvin/Bennett/Tarney)
5.		Honky Tonk Woman (Jagger/Richards)
6.		Montezuma’s Revenge (Welch/Marvin/Bennett)
7.		Walk Don’t Run (Smith)
8.		Superstar (Russell/Bramlett)
9.		Bermuda Triangle (Welch/Marvin/Bennett)
10.		The Most Beautiful Girl (Sherrill/Wilson/Burke)
11.		Creole Nights (Welch/Marvin/Bennett)

Reunion Concert 1978

1.		Shadoogie (Marvin/Welch/Harris/Meehan)
2.		Atlantis (Lordan)
3.		Nivram (Welch/Marvin/Harris)
4.		Apache (Lordan)

Tracks 1975-1979

1.		Run Billy Run (Curtis)
2.		No No Nina (instrumental) (Farrar/Best)
3.		God Only Knows (remixed) (Wilson/Asher)
4.		It’ll Be Me Babe (Farrar/Marvin)
5.		Love De Luxe (Shapiro)
6.		Sweet Saturday Night (Marvin/Welch/Bennett)
7.		Riders In The Sky (S. Jones)
8.		Don’t Cry For Me Argentina (Rice/Lloyd Webber)
9.		Don’t Cry For Me Argentina (full studio version)

1980-1982

1.		1980 Black Is Black (Wadey/Hayes/Granger)
2.		1980 Fender Bender (Welch/Bennett/Marvin)
3.		1980 Rusk (Marvin/Welch/Bennett)
4.		1982 The Shady Lady (Welch/Marvin/Bennett)

Live at Abbey Road 1982

1.		The Third Man (Karas)
2.		Thing-Me-Jig (Welch/Marvin/Bennett)
3.		Runaway (Shannon/Crook)
4.		All I Have To Do Is Dream (Bryant)
5.		It Doesn’t Matter Any More (Anka)
6.		Johnny ‘B’ Goode (Berry)
7.		Over In A Flash (Marvin/Jones/Bennett/Hall)
8.		Summer Love ’59 (Welch/Marvin/Bennett)
9.		Oh, Boy! (West/Petty/Tilghman)
10.		Crying In The Rain (Greenfield/King)
11.		Arty’s Party (Welch/Marvin/Bennett)

Moonlight Shadows 1986

1. Every Breath You Take 2. Hello 3. The Power Of Love 4. Hey Jude 5. Against All Odds 6. Memory 7. Dancing In The Dark 8. Whiter Shade of Pale

9. Moonlight Shadow 10. Three Tmes A Lady 11. Sailing 12. I Just Called To Say I Love Yo 13. I Know Him So Well 14. Nights In White Satin 15. Imagine/Woman 16. Walk Of Life

Reflection 1990

1. Eye Of The Tiger 2. Crockett’s Theme (from ‘Miami Vice’) 3. Right Here Waiting 4. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic 5. Sealed With A Kiss 6. Uptown Girl 7. Strawberry Fields Forever 8. Riders In The Sky ’90

9. Flashdance … What A Feeling 10. Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart 11. Love Changes Everything 12. Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now 13. Bilitis 14. You’ll Never Walk Alone 15. Shadowmix 16. Always On My Mind

Themes and Dreams 1991

1. Crockett’s Theme 2. Up To Where We Belong 3. Take My Breath Away 4. Theme from The Deerhunter 5. Walking In The Air 6. If You Leave Me Now 7. One Day I’ll Fly Away 8. Africa

9. Every Breath You Take 10. Memory 11. Nights in White Satin 12. Candle in the Wind 13. You Win Again 14. Sailing 15. Just The Way You Are 16. Moonlight Shadow

Dream Time 1994

1.		Imagine/Woman
2.		Three Times A Lady
3.		Just The Way You Are
4.		If You Leave Me Now
5.		Up Where We Belong
6.		Misty
7.		Carless Whisper
8.		I Guess Thats Why They Call It The Blues
9.		I Just Called To Say I Love You
10.		Always On My Mind
11.		Sealed With A Kiss
12.		The Snowman
13.		Going Home
14.		Skye Boat Song

The Shadows at Abbey Road 1997

1. Wonderful Land (unissued versi 2. Witch Doctor (The Savage) (uni 3. What A Lovely Tune (unissued s 4. The Boys – Theme (un-dubbed ve 5. Guitar Tango (un-dubbed versio 6. All Day (unissued alternate ve 7. Atlantis (un-dubbed version) 8. It’s Been A Blue Day (unissued 9. Razzmataz (unissued alternativ 10. Nothing, Folks (unissued instr

11. John’s Rocker (unissued versio 12. Zero X Theme (stereo re-mix) 13. Thunderbirds Theme (stere re-m 14. Scotch On The Rocks (stereo re 15. Slaughter On 10th Avenue 16. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (uniss 17. No No Nina unissued instrument 18. Don’t Cry For Me Argentina (un 19. God ONly Knows (unissued re-mi

The Final Tour Live 2004

1. Intro – Apache Medley / Riders In The Sky 2. The Frightened City 3. Theme For Young Lovers 4. Peace Pipe 5. The Savage 6. Let Me Be The One 7. The Stranger / Kon Tiki 8. Going Home (Theme from Local Hero) 9. Dance On 10. Nivram 11. Lady Of The Morning 12. My Home Town 13. Guitar Tango 14. Geronimo 15. Sleepwalk 16. 36-24-36 17. Shazam 18. Don’t Cry For Me Argentina 19. Equinox V 20. Mountains Of The Moon

21. Shadoogie 22. Gonzales 23. Don’t Make My Baby Blue 24. The Rise And Fall Of Flingle Bunt 25. Atlantis 26. Shindig 27. Man Of Mystery 28. Foot Tapper 29. Please Don’t Tease 30. In The Country 31. I Could Easily Fall 32. The Day I Met Marie 33. Gee Whiz It’s You 34. Summer Holiday 35. Bachelor Boy 36. Little B 37. Theme From The Deerhunter 38. Wonderful Land 39. FBI 40. Apache

Alternative Special Edition

1. Granada 2. Brazil 3. The High And The Mighty 4. Memory (From ‘Cats’) 5. I Just Called To Say I Love You 6. Perfidia 7. Every Breath You Take 8. Green Eyes

9. You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me 10. Telstar 11. Stardust 12. All I Ask of You 13. Whiter Shade Of Pale 14. Adios Muchachos 15. Just the way you are 16. Maria Elena

Diamonds

1. Diamonds 2. Image – Woman 3. Theme From Missing 4. You Resque Me 5. Hats Of To Wally 6. Nut Rocker 7. Guardian Angel 8. Up Where We Belong

9. This Ole House 10. Africa 11. Arty’s Party 12. Can’t Play Your Game 13. The Old Romantics 14. Our Albert 15. Cowboy Cafe 16. We Don’t Talk Anymore

Play the Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice 1997

1. A Whole New World 2. The Phantom Of The Opera 3. Memory 4. Tell Me On A Sunday 5. I Know Him So Well 6. Starlight Express Suite 7. I’d Be Surprisingly Good For You 8. Don’t Cry For Me Argentina

9. Can You Feel The Love Tonight 10. Love Changes Everything 11. Oh What A Circus 12. The Music Of The Night 13. Take That Look Of Your Face 14. All I Ask Of You 15. Another Suitcase In Another Hall 16. One Night In Bangkok – Variations

The First 40 Years

1. Apache 2. The rise and fall of Flingel Bunt 3. Man of mystery 4. Moonlight shadow 5. The theme from the deerhunter 6. The savage 7. Guitar tango 8. The boys 9. Wonderful land 10. Geronimo 11. Memory 12. Genie with the light brown lam 13. Every breath you take

14. The frightened city 15. Kon-tiki 16. Walking in the air 17. Atlantis 18. Shindig 19. The lady in red 20. Dance on 21. Don’t cry for me argentina 22. The stranger 23. Theme for young lovers 24. Foot tapper 25. Fbi 26. Rider in the sky

(Freddie’s Home Page at jukebox.au.nu)

LINKS TO THE SHADOWS CLUBS:

ShadowMusic Club Perth, Australia

Dave Dixon’s Shadows Archive, UK

The Sydney Shadows Club, Australia

John Dyhouse: The Shadows as Songwriters

Sydney Shadows Music

Gillian Gatland’s Shads Vids, UK

Toronto Shadows Club, Canada

Malcolm Campbell’s Site, UK

The Danish Shadows Club, Denmark

Tony Clout’s TAB Site, UK

Official Cliff & Shadows Fan Club, France

The Shadows Tribute Band – Atlantis (Munich)

Fans des Shadows, France

Fiesta-Red – The “Heidelberg Shadows”

Shadowmaniacs, France

Fred Bos’ Shadows Site, Holland

Cliff & The Shadows Club, Germany

International Cliff Richard Movement, Holland

Shadows Music Convention, Germany

The Shadows Appreciation Club of Ireland

Cliff & The Shadows Club, Holland

The Shadows, Japan

Shadows Club, Ireland

John Campbell’s Penumbra, New Zealand

Cliff & The Shadows Club, Italy

Gunnar Angelsen’s Shadows Site, Norway

Italian Shadows Community

Jan Arne Flatby’s Site, Norway

Shadows Players Club of Japan

Goran’s Backing Tracks, Sweden

The Shadows Club Of South Africa

The Marvingers Web Site, Sweden

Shadows Club, Sweden

The Blacksun Web Site, Sweden

The Swiss Shadows Club, Switzerland

Chai’s Thai Twang, Thailand

Chai’s Shadows Club Asia, Thailand

Past Masters Music

Berkshire Shadows Forum

60+Guitarband

The Danish Shads

Amanda’s Meazzi echoes site

The Twylight Shadows

Phil Mcgarrick’s Web Site

Leo’s Den Music and Backing Tracks

(shadowmusic.bdme.co.uk)

BAND MEMBERS:
Hank Marvin – lead guitar (1958–1968, 1973–1990, 2004–present)
Bruce Welch – rhythm guitar (1958–1968, 1973–1990, 2004–present)
Mark Griffiths – bass (1989–1990, 2004–present)
Brian Bennett – drums (1961–1968, 1977–1990, 2004–present)
Warren Bennett – keyboards (2004–present)
(torontoshadowsclub.ca)

ON THE ART OF POETRY

Tragedy is essentially an imitation not of persons but of action and life, of happiness and misery. All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of activity, not a quality. Character gives us qualities, but it is in our actions—what we do—that we are happy or the reverse.
A tragedy is impossible without action, but there may be one without Character. The tragedies of most of the moderns are characterless—a defect common among poets of all kinds. From what we have said it will be seen that the poet’s function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen, i.e. what is possible as being probable or necessary. The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other verse. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
Tragedy, however, is an imitation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents arousing pity and fear. Such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly and at the same time in consequence of one another; there is more of the marvelous in them then than if they happened of themselves or by mere chance. Even matters of chance seem most marvelous if there is an appearance of design as it were in them.
A tragedy has the following parts – Prologue, Episode, Exode, and a choral portion. We assume that, for the finest form of Tragedy, the Plot must be not simple but complex; and further, that it must imitate actions arousing pity and fear, since that is the distinctive function of this kind of imitation. It follows, therefore, that there are three forms of Plot to be avoided:
1. A good man must not be seen passing from happiness to misery, or
2. A bad man from misery to happiness. The first situation is not fear-inspiring or piteous, but simply odious to us. The second is the most untragic that can be; it has no one of the requisites of Tragedy; it does not appeal either to the human feeling in us, or to our pity, or to our fears. Nor, on the other hand, should
3. An extremely bad man be seen falling from happiness into misery. Such a story may arouse the human feeling in us, but it will not move us to either pity or fear; pity is occasioned by undeserved misfortune, and fear by that of one like ourselves; so that there will be nothing either piteous or fear-inspiring in the situation. There remains, then, the intermediate kind of personage, a man not pre-eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not by vice and depravity but by some error of judgment, of the number of those in the enjoyment of great reputation and prosperity.
The perfect Plot, accordingly, must have a single, and not (as some tell us) a double issue; the change in the hero’s fortunes must be not from misery to happiness, but on the contrary from happiness to misery; and the cause of it must lie not in any depravity, but in some great error on his part; the man himself being either such as we have described, or better, not worse, than that.
The tragic pleasure is that of pity and fear, and the poet has to produce it by a work of imitation; it is clear, therefore, that the causes should be included in the incidents of his story. Let us see, then, what kinds of incident strike one as horrible, or rather as piteous. In a deed of this description the parties must necessarily be either friends, or enemies, or indifferent to one another.
Now when enemy does it on enemy, there is nothing to move us to pity either in his doing or in his meditating the deed, except so far as the actual pain of the sufferer is concerned; and the same is true when the parties are indifferent to one another. Whenever the tragic deed, however, is done within the family—when murder or the like is done or meditated by brother on brother, by son on father, by mother on son, or son on mother—these are the situations the poet should seek after. In the Characters there are four points to aim at:
First and foremost, that they shall be good. There will be an element of character in the play, if (as has been observed) what a personage says or does reveals a certain moral purpose; and a good element of character, if the purpose so revealed is good. Such goodness is possible in every type of personage, even in a woman or a slave, though the one is perhaps an inferior, and the other a wholly worthless being.
The second point is to make them appropriate. The Character before us may be, say, manly; but it is not appropriate in a female Character to be manly, or clever.
The third is to make them like the reality, which is not the same as their being good and appropriate, in our sense of the term. The fourth is to make them consistent and the same throughout; even if inconsistency be part of the man before one for imitation as presenting that form of character, he should still be consistently inconsistent.
The right thing, however, is in the Characters just as in the incidents of the play to endeavor always after the necessary or the probable; so that whenever such-and-such a personage says or does such-and-such a thing, it shall be the probable or necessary outcome of his character; and whenever this incident follows on that, it shall be either the necessary or the probable consequence of it.
As Tragedy is an imitation of personages better than the ordinary man, we in our way should follow the example of good portrait-painters, who reproduce the distinctive features of a man, and at the same time, without losing the likeness, make him handsomer than he is. The poet in like manner, in portraying men quick or slow to anger, or with similar infirmities of character, must know how to represent them as such, and at the same time as good men. When he is constructing his Plots, and engaged on the Diction in which they are worked out, the poet should remember:
1. To put the actual scenes as far as possible before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the vividness of an eye-witness as it were, he will devise what is appropriate, and be least likely to overlook incongruities.
2. As far as may be, too, the poet should even act his story with the very gestures of his personages. Given the same natural qualifications, he who feels the emotions to be described will be the most convincing; distress and anger, for instance, are portrayed most truthfully by one who is feeling them at the moment. Hence it is that poetry demands a man with special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him; the former can easily assume the required mood, and the latter may be actually beside himself with emotion.
3. His story, again, whether already made or of his own making, he should first simplify and reduce to a universal form, before proceeding to lengthen it out by the insertion of episodes. This done, the next thing, after the proper names have been fixed as a basis for the story, is to work in episodes or accessory incidents. One must mind, however, that the episodes are appropriate. In plays, then, the episodes are short; in epic poetry they serve to lengthen out the poem.
4. There is a further point to be borne in mind. Every tragedy is in part Complication and in part Denouement; the incidents before the opening scene, and often certain also of those within the play, forming the Complication; and the rest the Denouement. Complication means all from the beginning of the story to the point just before the change in the hero’s fortunes; by Denouement, all from the beginning of the change to the end.
5. There are four distinct species of Tragedy—that being the number of the constituents also that has been mentioned: first, the complex Tragedy, which is all Peripety and Discovery; second, the Tragedy of suffering, third, the Tragedy of character. The fourth constituent is that of ‘Spectacle’, and in all plays with the scene laid in the nether world. The poet’s aim, then, should be to combine every element of interest, if possible, or else the more important and the major part of them. This is now especially necessary owing to the unfair criticism to which the poet is subjected in these days. Just because there have been poets before him strong in the several species of tragedy, the critics now expect the one man to surpass that which was the strong point of each one of his predecessors.
6. One should also remember what has been said more than once, and not write a tragedy on an epic body of incident (i.e. one with a plurality of stories in it), by attempting to dramatize.
The above having been discussed, it remains to consider the Diction and Thought. As for the Thought, we may assume what is said of it in our Art of Rhetoric, as it belongs more properly to that department of inquiry. The Thought of the personages is shown in everything to be effected by their language—in every effort to prove or disprove, to arouse emotion (pity, fear, anger, and the like), or to maximize or minimize things. It is clear, also, that their mental procedure must be on the same lines in their actions likewise, whenever they wish them to arouse pity or horror, or have a look of importance or probability. The only difference is that with the act the impression has to be made without explanation; whereas with the spoken word it has to be produced by the speaker, and result from his language. What, indeed, would be the good of the speaker, if things appeared in the required light even apart from anything he says?
As for the poetry which merely narrates, or imitates by means of versified language (without action), it is evident that it has several points in common with Tragedy:
1. The construction of its stories should clearly be like that in a drama; they should be based on a single action, one that is a complete whole in itself, with a beginning, middle, and end, so as to enable the work to produce its own proper pleasure with all the organic unity of a living creature. Nor should one suppose that there is anything like them in our usual histories. A history has to deal not with one action, but with one period and all that happened in that to one or more persons, however disconnected the several events may have been. Just as two events may take place at the same time, without converging to the same end, so too of two consecutive events one may sometimes come after the other with no one end as their common issue. Nevertheless most of our epic poets, one may say, ignore the distinction.
2. Besides this, Epic poetry must divide into the same species as Tragedy; it must be simple or complex, a story of character or one of suffering.
There is, however, a difference in the Epic as compared with Tragedy, in its length, and in its meter:
1. As to its length, the limit already suggested will suffice: it must be possible for the beginning and end of the work to be taken in one view—a condition which will be fulfilled if the poem be shorter than the old epics, and about as long as the series of tragedies offered for one hearing. For the extension of its length epic poetry has a special advantage, of which it makes large use. In a play one cannot represent an action with a number of parts going on simultaneously; one is limited to the part on the stage and connected with the actors. Whereas in epic poetry the narrative form makes it possible for one to describe a number of simultaneous incidents; and these, if germane to the subject, increase the body of the poem. This then is a gain to the Epic, tending to give it grandeur, and also variety of interest and room for episodes of diverse kinds. Uniformity of incident by the satiety it soon creates is apt to ruin tragedies on the stage.
2. As for its meter, the heroic has been assigned it from experience; were any one to attempt a narrative poem in some one, or in several, of the other meters, the incongruity of the thing would be apparent. The heroic; in fact is the gravest and weightiest of meters—which is what makes it more tolerant than the rest of strange words and metaphors, that also being a point in which the narrative form of poetry goes beyond all others. The iambic and trochaic, on the other hand, are meters of movement, the one representing that of life and action, the other that of the dance. Still more unnatural would it appear, it one were to write an epic in a medley of meters, as Chaeremon did. Hence it is that no one has ever written a long story in any but heroic verse; nature herself, as we have said, teaches us to select the meter appropriate to such a story.
The marvelous is certainly required in Tragedy. The Epic, however, affords more opening for the improbable, the chief factor in the marvelous, because in it the agents are not visibly before one. The marvelous, however, is a cause of pleasure, as is shown by the fact that we all tell a story with additions, in the belief that we are doing our hearers a pleasure.
A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility. The story should never be made up of improbable incidents; there should be nothing of the sort in it. If, however, such incidents are unavoidable, they should be outside the piece.
As regards Problems and their Solutions, one may see the number and nature of the assumptions on which they proceed by viewing the matter in the following way:
1. The poet being an imitator just like the painter or other maker of likenesses, he must necessarily in all instances represent things in one or other of three aspects, either as they were or are, or as they are said or thought to be or to have been, or as they ought to be.
2. All this he does in language, with an admixture; it may be, of strange words and metaphors, as also of the various modified forms of words, since the use of these is conceded in poetry.
3. It is to be remembered, too, that there is not the same kind of correctness in poetry as in politics, or indeed any other art. There is, however, within the limits of poetry itself a possibility of two kinds of error, the one directly, the other only accidentally connected with the art. If the poet meant to describe the thing correctly, and failed through lack of power of expression, his art itself is at fault. But if it was through his having meant to describe it in some incorrect way (e.g. to make the horse in movement have both right legs thrown forward) that the technical error (one in a matter of, say, medicine or some other special science), or impossibilities of whatever kind they may be, have got into his description, his error in that case is not in the essentials of the poetic art. These, therefore, must be the premises of the Solutions in answer to the criticisms involved in the Problems.
Speaking generally, one has to justify:
1. The Impossible by reference to the requirements of poetry, or to the better, or to opinion. For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility; and if men such as Zeuxis depicted be impossible, the answer is that it is better they should be like that, as the artist ought to improve on his model.
2. The Improbable one has to justify either by showing it to be in accordance with opinion, or by urging that at times it is not improbable; for there is a probability of things happening also against probability.
3. The contradictions found in the poet’s language one should first test as one does an opponent’s confutation in a dialectical argument, so as to see whether he means the same thing, in the same relation, and in the same sense, before admitting that he has contradicted either something he has said himself or what a man of sound sense assumes as true. But there is no possible apology for improbability of Plot or depravity of character, when they are not necessary and no use is made of them.
The objections, then, of critics start with faults of five kinds: the allegation is always that something in either:
1. Impossible
2. Improbable
3. Corrupting
4. Contradictory
5. Against technical correctness
The answers to these objections must be sought under one or other of the above-mentioned heads.
(Adapted from The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poetics, by Aristotle)

THE MAJESTY OF CALMNESS

Nature keeps her books admirably; she puts down every item, she closes all accounts finally, but she does not always balance them at the end of the month. To the man who is calm, revenge is so far beneath him that he cannot reach it, even by stooping. When injured, he does not retaliate; he wraps around him the royal robes of Calmness, and he goes quietly on his way.
When the tongue of malice and slander, the persecution of inferiority, tempts you for just a moment to retaliate, when for an instant you forget yourself so far as to hunger for revenge, be calm. When the grey heron is pursued by its enemy, the eagle, it does not run to escape; it remains calm, takes a dignified stand, and waits quietly, facing the enemy unmoved. With the terrific force with which the eagle makes its attack, the boasted king of birds is often impaled and run through on the quiet, lance-like bill of the heron. The means that man takes to kill another’s character becomes suicide of his own.
The most subtle of all temptations is the seeming success of the wicked. It requires moral courage to see, without flinching, material prosperity coming to men who are dishonest; to see politicians rise into prominence, power and wealth by trickery and corruption; to see virtue in rags and vice in velvets; to see ignorance at a premium, and knowledge at a discount. To the man who is really calm these puzzles of life do not appeal. He is living his life as best he can; he is not worrying about the problems of justice, whose solution must be left to Omniscience to solve.
In the race for wealth men often sacrifice time, energy, health, home, happiness and honor, everything that money cannot buy, the very things that money can never bring back. Hurry is a phantom of paradoxes. Hurry always pays the highest price for everything, and, usually the goods are not delivered.
Business men, in their desire to provide for the future happiness of their family, often sacrifice the present happiness of wife and children on the altar of Hurry. They forget that their place in the home should be something greater than being merely “the man that pays the bills;” they expect consideration and thoughtfulness that they are not giving.
We hear too much of a wife’s duties to a husband and too little of the other side of the question. “The wife,” they tell us, “should meet her husband with a smile and a kiss, should tactfully watch his moods and be ever sweetness and sunshine.” Why this continual swinging of the censer of devotion to the man of business? Why should a woman have to look up with timid glance at the face of her husband, to “size up his mood”? Has not her day, too, been one of care, and responsibility, and watchfulness? Has not mother-love been working over perplexing problems and worries of home and of the training of the children that wifely love may make her seek to solve in secret? Is man, then, the weaker sex that he must be pampered and treated as tenderly as a boil trying to keep from contact with the world? In their hurry to attain some ambition, to gratify the dream of a life, men often throw honor, truth, and generosity to the winds.
Politicians dare to stand by and see a city poisoned with foul water until they “see where they come in” on a water-works appropriation. If it be necessary to poison an army, that, too, is but an incident in the hurry for wealth.
Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or for evil, the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what a man really is, not what he pretends to be. Every man, by his mere living, is radiating sympathy, or sorrow, or morbidness, or cynicism, or happiness, or hope, or any of a hundred other qualities.
Life is a state of constant radiation and absorption; to exist is to radiate; to exist is to be the recipient of radiations. There are men and women whose presence seems to radiate sunshine, cheer and optimism. You feel calmed and rested and restored in a moment to a new and stronger faith in humanity. There are others who focus in an instant all your latent distrust, morbidness and rebellion against life. Without knowing why, you chafe and fret in their presence. You lose your bearings on life and its problems. Your moral compass is disturbed and unsatisfactory. It is made untrue in an instant, as the magnetic needle of a ship is deflected when it passes near great mountains of iron ore.
There are men who float down the stream of life like icebergs, cold, reserved, unapproachable and self-contained. In their presence you involuntarily draw your wraps closer around you, as you wonder who left the door open. These refrigerated human beings have a most depressing influence on all those who fall under the spell of their radiated chilliness. But there are other natures, warm, helpful, genial, who are like the Gulf Stream, following their own course, flowing undaunted and undismayed in the ocean of colder waters. Their presence brings warmth and life and the glow of sunshine, the joyous, stimulating breath of spring.
There are men who are like malarious swamps, poisonous, depressing and weakening by their very presence. They make heavy, oppressive and gloomy the atmosphere of their own homes; the sound of the children’s play is stilled, the ripples of laughter are frozen by their presence. They go through life as if each day was a new big funeral, and they were always chief mourners.
There are other men who seem like the ocean; they are constantly bracing, stimulating, giving new draughts of tonic life and strength by their very presence.
There are men who are insincere in heart, and that insincerity is radiated by their presence. They have a wondrous interest in your welfare, when they need you. They put on a “property” smile so suddenly, when it serves their purpose, that it seems the smile must be connected with some electric button concealed in their clothes. Their voice has a simulated cordiality that long training may have made almost natural. But they never play their part absolutely true, the mask will slip down sometimes; their cleverness cannot teach their eyes the look of sterling honesty; they may deceive some people, but they cannot deceive all. There is a subtle power of revelation which makes us say: “Well, I cannot explain how it is, but I know that man is not honest.”
Man cannot escape for one moment from this radiation of his character, this constantly weakening or strengthening of others. He cannot evade the responsibility by saying it is an unconscious influence. He can select the qualities that he will permit to be radiated. He can cultivate sweetness, calmness, trust, generosity, truth, justice, loyalty, nobility, make them vitally active in his character, and by these qualities he will constantly affect the world.
Man is the only animal that can be really happy. To the rest of the creation belong only weak imitations of the understudies. Happiness represents a peaceful attunement of a life with a standard of living. It can never be made by the individual, by himself, for himself. It is one of the incidental by-products of an unselfish life. No man can make his own happiness the one object of his life and attain it, any more than he can jump on the far end of his shadow. If you would hit the bull’s-eye of happiness on the target of life, aim above it. Place other things higher than your own happiness and it will surely come to you.
You can buy pleasure, you can acquire content, you can become satisfied, but Nature never put real happiness on the bargain-counter. It is the undetachable accompaniment of true living. It is calm and peaceful; it never lives in an atmosphere of worry or of hopeless struggle.
(Adapted from Project Gutenberg’s The Majesty of Calmness, by William George Jordan)

SUPERFICIAL LIFE

Is there a deeper kind of life than the one you are currently living? Is there more to life than acquiring all the material things you could possibly get your hands on?
The truth is, when things are going well in our lives, we don’t give it any thought. We seldom stop to think about life’s meaning when things are great.
Society has taught us to live in a world of fantasy; therefore, we find ourselves living in a superficial world without any substance and without any love for ourselves and others.
If you only find happiness by having instead of being, you may want to look at your life and consider shifting your focus. Instead of focusing on finding fulfillment through external things, try to focus on the happiness that comes from within.
Feeling the need to accumulate things in life in order to feel loved and satisfied will only leave you craving for more, because when the excitement wears off, you will likely find yourself empty and dissatisfied. It’s like being thirsty and drinking only soda or coffee to quench your thirst. Nothing can quench your thirst better than water. You cannot rely on soda or other liquids to do an adequate job, because you will always be thirsty.
(Dr Alex ledgister at dralexledgister.com)
Superficial means being fairly shallow in character and attitude. It means focusing on the surface reality and not what lies beneath. It means that there is not much substance. It means that you are only concerned with seeing the obvious without exploring any underlying issues and circumstances. It means that you are only appearing to be real, but you are not truly being real.
(Jedha Dening at EzineArticles.com)
CB contributed the following poem at associatedcontent.com (a poem to emphasize that there is more to a person than just looks):
“I write this because like many of you, I too am tired of reading messages from strangers talking about my looks, Oh you look good? Can we be friends?’- Both from men and women. LOL. To those strangers – I am privileged that you feel so and thank you for those compliments. But when I get these messages, all I think is – You don’t even know me! I just wished people stopped being superficial.”

THE BEGINNING…..
O’ Stop being Superficial
Stop being so Tri-vial.
Just because I look so hot
Does not mean I have no brains
Just because I’m NO model
Does not mean you can call me names

I may be blond and dumb
I may be blond and wise
How do you really know?
That I won’t take you by surprise?

I may not look too exquisite
I may not be a model
I may still be the sweetest person
You encounter in this life

O’ Stop being Superficial
Stop being so Tri-vial
Learn to see beyond the layer
Only then will you be smarter
I hope when you look at me
A wonderful human is what you see

Most of us have at least heard the saying “It’s not what’s in the outside that matters, but what’s in the inside is what matters“, at least once in our life. This saying may be true, but our society has made us believe that the outside matters a lot.
Many girls read magazines and see that beautiful air brushed models, they want to become that dream girl…that doesn’t exist, and some will take drastic measures…to become that size zero girl, even if it means becoming anorexic.
Our media is full of beautiful, size zero girls, but they fail to realize that most regular teenage girls don’t look like that. In our society the first impression is what matters. They judge us by our exterior, forcing some young girls to feel self-conscience about them.
Girl self-esteem is one of the easiest things to break, they are already judging themselves too harshly, and the media doesn’t help them at all, seeing perfect models, only makes them wish they looked like that. We have to emphasize to teenage girls that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes; you don’t have to be a size zero to be beautiful. Beauty comes from within, but the media and our society don’t help the cause, they are creating the “perfect girl” that doesn’t exist. Now days, we are judged too harshly on just our physical appearance. Some people don’t even take our personality in consideration, which is sad and unfortunate. We cannot stop the media from putting out airbrushed pictures of perfect models, but we can stop being so influenced by them, and realizing that we are beautiful in our own way.
(princess6 at teenink.com)
Are you surrounded by shallow people? Are you in an intimate relationship with a superficial individual? You like that person, but the superficial nature of that person is a barrier to any genuine relationship. This situation is a case where actions speak louder than words. Why is this case? Well, you see them saying the right words and attempting to do the right things. However, sooner or later, their superficial disposition comes out, and you can’t believe they are that way. If you were honest with yourself, you knew that person was pretty hollow in the beginning, but you didn’t want to accept it. Let’s analyze this situation closer.
First, there are no physical characteristics that can identify a superficial person. Clearly, shallow people come in all shapes and sizes. They have varying backgrounds. They live in every community. However, these people all have a common characteristic; they are externally-driven.
In the frantic pace of modern living, many people are in the pursuit of the wrong possessions. The media bombards us with the notion that “We deserve it all.” When this philosophy is believed, it creates a generation of inwardly focused people. We become a “Me” generation. Because this person feels he is entitled to be happy, he focuses on what can make him happy now. Obviously, it is far easier to pursuit things (money, power, right clique, etc.) in terms of happiness because they are tangible to the eyes. However, this short path is not a road to fortune but perhaps a highway to destruction. If you are in relationships with outward-focused people, you can be assured that your intimacy will lack depth. Your relationship may feel like the real thing but over time the truth usually will reveal itself.
Sadly, some people do not have this deepness of character. They exist on the shallow end of the spectrum; they rarely make serious relationships. Why is this factor the case? These people are more concerned with what’s on the outside of an individual than what is on the inside.
(Daryl Green at articleslash.net)
Human personality is like an onion. It consists of multiple layers that become denser as you go deeper within. Manners are a thin veneer on the surface, a set of formalized patterns of action and response demanded of each of us by the society we live in, regardless of how we actually feel inside, which is often very different from the outward manners we exhibit.
Though manners are superficial, perfect conduct even at this level is extremely difficult. We may exhibit good manners on important occasions or with important people, but few are capable of maintaining perfect conduct all the waking hours with close friends, intimate family members, work colleagues, casual acquaintances, servants, etc. The world worships appearances and gives utmost value to good manners, even when they conceal the very opposite inner disposition. Self-restraint, soft speech, humble considerate behavior towards all, thoughtful gestures are extremely difficult to maintain as unvarying conduct. One who is a perfect master of good manners can by virtue of that endowment alone secure international fame and recognition.
Manners are on the surface. Behavior is on the depth of the surface. Whereas manners reflect conduct that the world expects or demands of us, behavior is conduct expressive of our inner attitudes and beliefs. What the society demands as manners develops into genuine behavior in the individual. Friendly manners may disguise inner anger or anguish because society frowns on their expression, whereas cheerful, warm behavior expresses genuine happy, positive attitudes towards oneself and others.
(Garry Jacobs at mssresearch.org)

A ‘PROUD CONTEMPT OF OTHERS’

The best way to deal with an arrogant person is to understand why he is being arrogant. This may sound odd, but the truth is, as soon as you know the reason behind his arrogance you will pity him.
Arrogant people think that they are always right, they think that they know the best answers to all life problems and they think that they are better than most of the ordinary people. Arrogance is no more than a shield that covers inner emptiness and sometimes an inferiority complex.
(Dealing With Arrogant People, Written by M.Farouk Radwan, MSc. at 2knowmyself.com)
Those to whom much has been given sometimes suffer from arrogance; or rather the people around them suffer. Arrogance is doubly a pity, because the talents of the arrogant serve primarily themselves. The arrogant assumes his views and opinions are The Truth. In arrogance, natural confidence goes sadly awry. Rather than the self-assurance born of knowing his own strengths and limitations, arrogance admits no limits. The arrogant brooks no weakness in himself and may even secretly rejoice to find flaws in others. But imperfections are inherent in being human, so the arrogant, like everyone else, always has feet of clay, however well hidden they may be. Fearing exposure, haughtiness forms a hard shell masking inner emptiness.
(Inner Frontier at innerfrontier.org)
Arrogance is a defense mechanism used by the subconscious mind in order to prevent further criticism. If someone had a terrible childhood and if he was hurt by others he may develop arrogance in order to prevent further criticism from hurting him, the trick usually works, because if someone criticized him he can simply devalue him and assume that he is worthless.
Arrogant behavior can be a result of feeling neglected. If someone felt that he is not getting all the attention he deserves, he may unconsciously become arrogant just to attract some of the lost attention.
Arrogant people are single minded, they either think that they are superior to others or inferior to them. This arrogant person who is intimidating you feels inferior to someone else because this is how his mind works, this arrogance may be nothing more than a way to cover this feelings of inferiority he experiences when dealing with someone else.
(Dealing With Arrogant People, Written by M.Farouk Radwan, MSc. at 2knowmyself.com)
Be arrogant if you wish. Look down on others and treat them poorly, if you wish. But realize that if you do so, you’re only allowing your own inner weaknesses to shine through, and you’re not fooling anyone. Not the people around you, who hold you in disdain, not God who made you and loves you and knows all about you, and not yourself.
And for those who must deal with arrogance on a regular basis, please keep in mind that arrogant people treat you poorly only because they’re needier than you, and they haven’t yet admitted to themselves that they are needy. They need and deserve your compassion, not your anger.
(livinglifefully.com)
They stride among us. Their eyes wary, their armor buckled, their words pre-sharpened. They hold themselves superior. They are haughty, imperious, and disdainful. There is one notion they hold dear: They are better than you.
“Arrogance,” Webster tells us, is “that species of pride which extols the worth or importance of one’s self to an undue degree.” This is not healthy self esteem. This is not brimming confidence. This is a “proud contempt of others.”
People build their arrogance from different foundations. Some start with money, others with intellect, education, lineage, job status, good looks, and athleticism. Some allow their arrogance to sprout from even the most obscure hobbies or traits. Arrogance can be based on real qualities or possessions: a genius IQ, a staggering bank account. It can just as easily be based on illusion: a ‘brilliant’ strategist who gleans every last idea from others, a ‘millionaire’ who owns nothing more than a generous line of credit.
Many people bristle at arrogance, quickly asserting themselves or rejecting the speaker. Others must suffer quietly as the arrogant person is in a position of power. Some take a person’s arrogance as a signal of importance. “She must be somebody to act like that.” Fans can be willing to excuse the arrogance of someone whose achievements or skills they admire. “When you play the horn like he does, you’re allowed to be a jerk.”
(Human Solutions Humaines at wilsonbanwell.com)
There are three kinds of arrogance. There is the most surface sort of arrogance that seeks to justify sin. Often this will take the form of saying to ourselves, “But no one was hurt.”
If the sin is against another, this arrogance blames the other, or a third party. We see this in the seven year old boy who isn’t watching where he is going, and rams into a wall and loudly proclaims, “I didn’t do it!”
The third form of arrogance is the most interior. It deposits itself just a few layers from our soul when we first commit any act of arrogance. This arrogance afflicts the entirety of humanity – all who has not sought it out in themselves and cut it out, and have remained watchful for its return. This is an arrogance that deceives us into thinking we know best. It is held up and supported by pride. It is this arrogance that makes us an easy mark for any temptation that may present itself to us.
(On Sin, Arrogance, and Peeling an Onion, By Steven Clark at ancient-future.net)
Some people become arrogant because they are afraid of losing their power. They are in good standing right now and they don’t want to come down. Arrogance gives them a certain distance. These powerful people can find that arrogant behavior gives them an air of invulnerability, renders them slightly untouchable. “Others may be less likely to challenge me if what I have seems out of reach.” It is easier for powerful people to cast an arrogant eye on others. They do, after all, have some tangible ‘evidence’ of their positions. Psychologists Steven Spencer and Susan Fiske find that people in positions of power tend to stereotype more. This is because they often don’t consider personal, distinguishing details about others and they need to defend their decisions.
(Human Solutions Humaines at wilsonbanwell.com)
“Arrogance” looks awfully much the same. The person is aware of his skills and talents in an area and assumes leadership in that area. The only difference is that those around him or her are bothered by it. For some reason, that control feels pushy and out of place. The observer is inclined to think, “Who does he think he is?” There seems to be a divide between the individual’s self-assessment and that of onlookers.
That runs us right into the next question: Who’s responsible for that — the person or the spectators? After all, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, wouldn’t that also be true for another person’s talents and management? Perhaps, when there is a difference of opinions, the arrogance lies not with the person in charge but with the viewers. Perhaps it is the viewers who have misplaced arrogance rather than the presumptive leader. How are we to tell?
Here’s one clue: A person who knows his (or her) strengths, also knows his weaknesses. You’ll frequently find a person who is proud and takes leadership roles in one domain, deferring to others in different domains of activity. The arrogant person won’t do that. The arrogant person seems to know everything about everything and won’t give up a stronghold on anything. Thus, in judging who the arrogant person really is, ask yourself: Which one of these two people thinks he or she knows everything about everything? Which one has all the answers on all subjects? That’s one clue.
(Which Is It: Pride or Arrogance? By Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn at jewishworldreview.com)

THE MAN WHO GAVE CHE TO THE WORLD

Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, better known as Alberto Korda or simply Korda (September 14, 1928 in Havana, Cuba – May 25, 2001 in Paris, France) was a Cuban photographer, remembered for his famous image Guerrillero Heroico of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.
The relationship between Fidel Castro and Korda could not be defined by one label or title. For Castro, Korda was more than an official photographer, a friend or personal photographer. They never discussed the salary or the title, their relationship wasn’t boss and worker. Thus, Korda was very relaxed, and interested in everything and everyone. Every photo he took was a symbol of the revolution, instead of a documentary of the events of the revolution. The Cuban Revolution was the turning point in Korda’s career. His career plans were completely changed with the success of the revolutionaries. In 1959 the newly established newspaper offered the largest space for photographers to display their photographs, and Korda became part of the revolutionary cause. Korda Says, “Nearing 30, I was heading toward a frivolous life when an exceptional event transformed my life: The Cuban Revolution. It was at this time that I took this photo of a little girl, who was clutching a piece of wood for a doll. I came to understand that it was worth dedicating my work to a revolution which aimed to remove these inequalities.” He got caught up in the ideals of the revolution and began photographing its leaders.
(en.wikipedia.org)
The revolution turned Alberto Korda’s career in a completely different direction. Korda said he “fell in love with the Revolution and its heroes”. He photographed Fidel Castro’s entrance into Havana in January 1959, with Camillo Cienfuegos, another notable Cuban revolutionary, by his side. Although Korda was not a photojournalist then, he took this picture to ‘Revolucion’, the newspaper of the Cuban revolutionaries, which published it. Four months later, ‘Revolucion’ asked Korda to accompany Fidel on his first trip abroad after the revolution, to Venezuela. Commenting on his relationship with Fidel, Korda said it was “distant at first, but I was very happy to photograph what I loved — and still love — the Revolution and Fidel”.
(Seeing with the heart, V. SRIDHAR, Frontline at hinduonnet.com)
As Revolution photographer Korda always worked at his own photographic tempo. He wasn’t pushed by the press or by any other requests. Where ever the revolution took Castro Korda followed. One of Korda’s most recognizable images was of Castro’s visit to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. in April 1959. Castro’s travels took Korda all around Cuba, overseas, and the Soviet Union. In 1963, photos of Fidel and Nikita Khrushchev, taken by Korda, illustrated the differences in both men that were evident in their respective politics.
(en.wikipedia.org)
In 1969 Fidel went back to the Sierra Maestra, the remote mountain region, where the revolutionary army began its attacks on the army of the Fulgencio Batista regime. Korda’s style was to move to the front of whatever group Fidel was leading in order to get the shots he wanted. When Korda comes back to his home, his daughter couldn’t recognize him. His hair and beard were long and hadn’t showered for months. Korda took many pictures for the newspaper and called the series “Fidel Returns to the Sierra.” Fidel always liked Korda’s photos and never stopped him when he attempted to take his picture. He worked freely without thinking about political consequences, in order to get what he wanted in his photos.
(en.wikipedia.org)

Che guevera
(Ernesto Guevara)
Guerrillero Heroico
Taken by Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960
The La Coubre memorial service
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Che Guevara stepped onto the podium and scanned the crowd. Korda snapped two quick shots, including the legendary one of the revolutionary with his beret, gazing like a prophet into the distance. Korda recognised its greatness and kept the photo tacked to his wall for seven years, until an Italian journalist saw it.
(news.bbc.co.uk)
It is this photograph that adorns student bedsits across the world. The famed black and white portrait of Ernesto “Che” Guevara perfectly captured his intense stare and brooding good looks, helping establish his myth.
The fact that the photograph, taken with a Leica camera on 4 March 1960 at a political rally in Havana attended by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, came to international prominence owes as much to luck as Korda’s skill. “It was not planned, it was intuitive,” said Korda, who worked for the ‘Revolucion’ newspaper. He told one interviewer that Guevara had shown such an intense gaze that he had been briefly taken aback and only managed to fire off two quick shots, one vertical, one horizontal.
It was at the same rally that Cuban leader Fidel Castro delivered his famous “Homeland or Death” slogan in front of thousands of people. But the photograph of Guevara, which Korda later called “Heroic Guerrilla”, did not make the next day’s paper and only emerged after Guevara’s death in Bolivia seven years later.
(Row rages over iconic image of Che Guevara, Jamie Doward, The Observer, Sunday 7 March 2010 at guardian.co.uk)
No other image — apart from the one of Marilyn Monroe standing at a subway grid — has been reproduced as many times in history. That photograph of Che, with his long hair flowing from underneath his beret with a star affixed to it, his eyes gazing into the distance, can be found on posters, subway walls and countless consumer articles such as T-shirts, mugs, key chains, wallets and cigarette lighters all over the world. It also adorns walls across Cuba where Che is loved for the part he played in the cause of the revolution. However, the man who took that photograph, Alberto Diaz Gutierrez, known to the world as Alberto Korda, never made anything for himself from the image he gave the world.
Wherever Korda went, at photographic exhibitions or while talking to youth about photography, he would invariably be asked about that famous image of Che and how he created it. This is how he described it to Pacifica: “This photograph is not the product of knowledge or technique. It was really coincidence, pure luck.” Korda was one among the 20 to 30 photographers below the grandstand that day and Che made a brief appearance at the front of the stage, for barely a minute. Korda managed to take just two shots of Che – one horizontal and one vertical. He rejected the vertical shot because a head covered Che’s shoulder; he cropped the horizontal shot and gave it to ‘Revolucion’. French writers Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were among those present at the memorial service for 136 people killed in an explosion that destroyed a vessel loaded with weapons for the Cuban government. Ironically, ‘Revolucion’ did not use Korda’s pictures of Che; it carried his other pictures, of Castro and Sartre and Beauvoir. The Che pictures remained forgotten until after his death in Bolivia.
(Seeing with the heart, V. SRIDHAR, Frontline at hinduonnet.com)
The picture was still hanging on the wall in 1967, by now tobacco-tinted though, when a man knocked on the door. The person did not present himself, but handed over a letter of introduction from a high-ranking member of the Cuban administration. The letter asked Korda to help this person in his search for a good Che picture. Korda pointed at the wall saying: “This is my best Che picture”. The visitor agreed and asked for 2 copies of the print. Korda told him to return the next day, which he did. When asked the price of the prints, Korda replied, that since the visitor was a friend of the revolution, he didn’t have to pay.
What Korda didn’t know, was that the visitor was the famous Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Well known in Europe for smuggling the “Dr. Zivago” manuscript out of The Soviet Union. Feltrinelli came to Cuba directly from Bolivia, where he had been negotiating the release of Regis Debray. Having learnt from Debray, that Che Guevara was the guerrilla-leader in Bolivia and that the end might be near, Feltrinelli saw a business opportunity in the possible assassination of Che.
(Michael Harder Photography 2001 at pix.dk)
The corpse of Che Guevara was hardly cold in Bolivia, before you could buy big posters, all around the world, with the Korda-image of Che. Copyright Feltrinelli it said, down in the corner. In half a year, Feltrinelli sold 2,000,000 posters. Later on the image has been transformed, transplanted, transmitted and transfigured all over the world.
Korda never received a penny. For one reason only – Cuba had not signed the Berne Convention. Fidel Castro described the protection of intellectual property as imperialistic “bullshit”.
(Michael Harder Photography 2001 at pix.dk)
By 1969 Korda had quit covering politics, turning instead to underwater photography. Now semiretired, he supports himself with freelance advertising jobs and by selling photos of Castro and Che for $500 apiece.
When not at work, the four-time divorce and father of five nurtures his other great passion: women. He and his 21-year-old companion, Zaeli Miranda, share a modest two-bedroom apartment with her sister and a friend in Havana’s Miramar district. “He’s friendly and loving,” Miranda says of Korda. “I’ll ask him to take out the garbage, and he does it happily.”
Korda, took the photo when Che was 31, yet never tried to protect his copyright. That is, until Smirnoff appropriated the image for a 1998-99 U.K. vodka ad campaign. “Hundreds of companies used my photo, but none have been as offensive,” says Korda, 72. “Che wasn’t a drinking man. He was a revolutionary killed defending his ideals.” Outraged, the Havana-based photographer slapped a lawsuit on a London advertising firm and a photo agency for trivializing Che’s image. A hearing was set. The ad agency, Lowe Lintas, denies “infringement of any copyright or moral rights.”
Korda says no matter how his lawsuit turns out, his lifestyle won’t change, and any proceeds will buy medicine for Cuban children. “I don’t care about money. I like being a poor man,” he says. “I went after Smirnoff because of their degenerate ad. It’s the principle of the thing.”
(The Way of Che By Joanne Fowler, September 25, 2000 at storage.people.com)