Skyfall-ing in

The most spectacular and the most impossible to nod off Bond film ever.  In the process, perhaps, the film with the world's worst driving!

'Skyfall' underlines the status quo, so that the next generation is brought up 'right'.  It passes on our society's established values, attitudes and beliefs, over recent centuries, that are not the most worthy - of getting our way by coercion, force and, astonishingly, the slaughter of the innocents (this latter is not in the Bond films).

I think the films reinforce our Western predilection for such things that has been at the heart of too much European life for centuries of going out to conquer and dominate other countries.  All this, even after the Europeans' world wars that finally brought them up short to unite in peace between themselves.  Such a pity that the European's non-violence between themselves did not spread to leaving other countries well alone, too.

We had twenty children killed in Connecticut a few days ago;
twenty thousand children in our 13 years War of Terrorism;
even, many more than that, in the War on Communism in SE Asia between 1945 and 1975.
The Bond films nurture our Western ways for such things, to ensure they are passed on to the next and succeeding generations.  The general media message is: enemies are essential but, making and keeping friends with those who do things differently from us - other cultures, religious beliefs, political systems and traditions - is not so essential.

The film glorifies and promotes behaviour that we are not meant to indulge in - from speeding over roof tops breaking every imaginable speed limit, even sending old ladies flying on pedestrian crossings, to blowing up a beautiful old and isolated Scottish mansion.  It also continues the silent, imperceptible, so easily absorbed indoctrination of us all that we have very dangerous enemies of the State and that attack, aggression and violence is the only way - to get them before they get us.  Therefore, we cannot possibly abandon our love affair with guns and grenades, rifles and bombs - even when the sky falls in on the New England families of the latest killings.  We are subconsciously inculcated with this drivel via entertainment, of which fifty years of Bond is the most popular.

 It is totally incomprehensible for us that our invading, attacking and occupying of other countries might make them so ungrateful that they turn into our enemies and try and hit back.  Indeed, quite outrageous for them wanting to harm us.  We can't have them defending their lands and resources from us.  Or, of letting them be so un-Christian (or un-Muslim) as to show revenge on us.

Never mind - "Man is God's greatest work."  (Sister Wendy Beckett on Desert Island Discs 16.12.2012.)  She could not possibly have meant the nation's greatest role model.  Could she?  What does Sister Wendy make of 007?

Uncomfortable home truths?

APHORISMS galore:

It is widely considered, it is universal, orthodox thinking, that we can go on expanding our numbers and activities on a planet that is not expanding.

We are living infinitely on a finite planet.

We are living unnaturally on a natural planet.

We are living for economic growth and population growth.

We are living beyond our means, our limits and our boundaries.

We have a live it up today and to hell with tomorrow mentality.

We are living today to come a cropper tomorrow!

What we take today, we don't have tomorrow.

We are liquidising our assets; living off capital as if its income.

Expansion economics from a diminishing capital resource base!

Economic growth is ecological retraction as the chickens eventually come home to roost.

Wealth creation is actually poverty creation.

There's no material gain without pain - eventually!

What goes up must come down - never ending wealth from economic and population growth must be living in cloud cuckoo land.  It must, eventually, lead to economic bust and population crash.

What takes an age for us, goes in the twinkling of an eye in the geological time scale of the earth.

Never before has the poor planet seen such an unnatural explosion of greenhouse gases, as the lot of us burn up the fossil fuels in 300 years that the earth took 300 million years to form.  Thus, the Lady must be right with this:

"We are embarked on a massive experiment with the very life support systems of the earth itself."  Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher (the most honourable thing she ever said!)

The Wild, White, Western Powers!

The West's world wars, after centuries of the European countries dominating everyone else, was the (not so grand) climax of centuries of warfare by and between these Christian, white, European nations.  The 2nd World War was the zenith, the high point (actually, of course, nadir or low point) of centuries of discrimination, persecution and hatred of the Jews, not by Muslims but by the Christian, white, European nations.

Questions for author and speaker, Kevin who was much taken by our victory in the battle of El Alamein as what prevented the Nazis from invading occupying what was then Palestine:-
From Christ's temptations, how would you conclude was His teaching on dominating other countries? From the Sermon on the Mount, how would you conclude was His teaching on warfare?

For President George Bush Jnr, the prophet Mohammed's teaching was "good and peaceful". What a pity that the President's actions, for all the many years after the 7 October 2001 when he launched his War of Terrorism, was the exact opposite of being "good and peaceful".

The exact opposite of "good and peaceful" was the hallmark of the first half of the 20th century and the second half was not much better - thanks to a string of American Presidents and European Prime Ministers, voted in by us!  A century of bloodshed and of white inspired conflicts.  It saw our wars (directly armed or in direct engagement), continuing on (almost immediately from 1945) in SE Asia and the Middle East.  It also very nearly saw a nuclear exchange between the two white, super powers over missiles both had installed - first, the Americans in Turkey on the Russian's doorstep and then, the Russians followed in Cuba on America's doorstep.