Photoshop Phraud

Recently, and all over the globe, an epidemic of scandals has broken out concerning the horrible and hypocrite use of the Photoshop program to jazz things up and make people appear far more sexy and youthful than they are in their flesh and blood. I must say the indignation of the public is justified. The things you see are shocking! Society matrons who are far beyond their sell-by date are made to look like fillies straight out of the stud farm; top models are moulded and polished and liposucked the pixel way until they are beyond all recognition; and even politicians are being digitally enhanced so as to increase their potential to attract electoral attention (I mean… does anybody really think that hair on Mr Trump’s skull is real??)

Now, normally, Alfred B Mittington could not care less about such Vanitas Vanitatum of the under-aged world into which he was born far too early… But he draws the line, dear reader, there where these Digital Reprobates and Barefacebookies tamper with the respectable appearance of a dear old close personal friend of his, who cannot defend himself for being dead! How dare they! J’Accuse with a vengeance, and I will soon take legal action against the lads and lassies who dared to turn this picture of dear old Winston:

  

Into THIS shocking travesty of truth for the advertisements of a top hat manufacturer:

Shame, I say! Shame shame shame…!!!!

Ten selfies of the Invisible Man

Now that the holidays are over, it is time to share our snapshots with the rest of humanity. As I myself do not use them modern digital devices, and the tripod of the Camera Obscurae really becomes a little too heavy and clumsy to schlepp around at my age, I have asked a good old friend to provide me with his holiday pictures. And so I offer you today, dear reader, a unique peek into the Selfies of the Invisible Man, snapped during his recent World Tour.

In the Kheops Burial chamber, Giza

At the Victoria Falls

Before the Coliseum, Rome

Gibraltar

Père Lachaise, Paris

Taking coffee in Florence with his wife

In front of the Tree of Ténéré, Niger

At the Norwegian coast

Sitting on the Toros de Guisando, Avila, Spain

South Pole !!!!

It is Scylla and Charybdis for our time!

Dear reader, I cannot tell what the Greeks should vote in the coming Referendum. The choice between the Scylla and Charybdis of the Oxi and the Nai, the Yes or No, the sink or founder, is like asking them to chose between death by hanging or by electric chair. So Alfred B Mittingon refrains from taking a position, and from making predictions as to what will happen next Sunday.

What I do know, however, is that the Brussels Eurogues will use the outcome, whatever it is, to get rid of the Syriza government. They will use a No vote to the Austerity Deal as a convenient excuse to refuse any further dialogue with ‘an intransigent regime of upstart radicals’ (or words to that effect), and allow Greece to plunge into total chaos, which will lead to new elections; while a Yes vote implies that the Syriza government has lost its mandate to resist the Abominable Troika, and has no choice but to step down.

Soon after, through new elections or – preferably of course – by simple backroom horse trading, the previous government will return to power. A government led by Mr Samaras of Nea Demokratia, in combination with the good old PASOK and a few more spineless fringe parties; the same folk, that is, who plunged Greece into its present plight by their corruption, clientelism, cronyism and abuse of public funds. The same who lied through their teeth to have Greece join the Euro. The same who borrowed to their heart’s delight to buy votes and fill their party coffers. Europe will welcome them with open arms, because ‘they may be bastards, but they are OUR bastards’. They are our friends. They are our lackeys, who will do our bidding and follow orders.

And here is the true irony. As soon as this new obedient rogue regime has taken office, the Troika and the Brussels Nomenklatura will miraculously see the light, and grand the country a gigantic debt relief (to be shouldered by the European taxpayer) because they suddenly recognize that not in a thousand years a tiny country in the present state of depression can repay the entire burden of institutional debts (why do you think the ever cautious IMF yesterday hinted at precisely such a thing?) Thus, the friendly new cabinet of yesterday’s kleptocrats will be granted the very deal which would have made Mr Tsipras and Mr Varufakis gladly accept the ‘rescue’ program.

But it could not be done before, you see; because doing so would have given a lease on life to a rebellious regime which dared to stand up to EU Diktats. And that was unthinkable. For getting rid of the elected enemy has been the first priority of our Brussels Masters in what they passed off as negotiations ever since January. Syriza had to be crushed. And crushed they will be.

I leave you with a dark and gloomy thought: when all is said and done and the bottom line is reached, Mr Tsipras has been doing the Brussels Beurocracy the greatest imaginable favour an adversary ever bestowed on his foe. It was obvious from the start, and got clearer by the day, that the Greek debt situation was going to implode and lead to Grexit if not worse. Now, however, the Junckers and the Dijsselbloems, the Merkels and the Schläubes, the Tusks, the Schulzes, the Draghis and all the other heartless Eurogues can blame the denouement, not on the rotten structure of their Eurozone, but on the evil doings of a handful of communist radicals.

I hear a sigh of relief from the banks of the Spree, the Seine and the Senne. I hear the flexing of monstrous muscles in preparation of the next move…

Brace yourselves, ye Europeans! Very soon Scylla and Charybdis will be coming for you as well!

Golden Quotebook: Charles Colson on the Family Jewels

The tangle, the defiance, the challenge and the reckless gamble by all involved in the coming Greek referendum, immediately brought to my mind a somewhat rough, but certainly utterly honest observation by Charles “Chuck” Wendell Colson.

Mr Colson used to be a special assistant to President Richard Nixon back in the 70s, and in that capacity performed a number of rather disreputable tasks, among other things (the more amusing ones you can read up on here) the organisation of the Watergate burglary that ultimately brought the Nixon administration down. For this and many other transgressions he served a prison term, after which – to his credit – he saw the Light, found the Lord and did his best to make up for his many sins as a preacher and a conscientious Christian.

Chuck Colson was, if anything, a ruthless Realpolitker (it was said by one who did not even dislike him all that much, that he was ‘The Evil Genius of an Evil Administration’, who wouldn’t think twice about walking over his own grandmother if this were necessary to win a re-election…), and he believed that the way to political popularity often involved a certain dose of pressure. Or, as he himself put it in far more flowery terms than my own:

Once you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow…!

This, dear reader, is of course what today the Brussels Nomenklatura firmly believes about the Greek populace. Let them sweat! Let them starve! Let them panic and make them bleed! Never give in an inch, and then they will learn to love us!

They may well be right, for bullying often works wonders. But anybody who – like myself - has ever read a history book about the roughly 2,500 years of Greek history, say from the Battle of Thermopylae through the Ottoman Empire to the Greek War of Independence and the German Occupation, surely will share my doubts… Yes, the Greeks may be a little bad and a little mad, but you cannot beat them when it comes to pride and dignity.

Next Sunday will tell…

Obituary of the Undead and the Immortal

A sad week this is, dear reader. Two fine men passed away in the last few days.

The first is Sir Christopher Lee, who for my generation will always be the first, the foremost and the ultimate Dracula to fill the silver screen with his glittering performance. A man of taste and sophistication, with a splendid war record and a host of exquisite roles to his name, Lee defied the Grim Reaper for many decades on end. He lived to 93, no less! Which is a bit of an irony, since – as a highly educated man with an extensive knowledge of the classics – he must have known Menander’s famous dictum: ‘Those whom the gods love, die young.’ His solution out of this tangle was ingenious: as the Undead Count from Transylvania, he simply died a thousands deaths in twenty vampire movies, only to resuscitate again for any next performance. What a glorious manner to prove a Greek playwright wrong!

The other lamentable loss this week is Ornette Coleman, the controversial, ever innovative saxophone player who took Free Jazz to a whole new level. I only had the pleasure of seeing him perform in public once, at a jazz festival in Groningen (the utmost north of the Netherlands) back in 1980, where three feet away from me, he performed a feat I have never witnessed since: playing uninterruptedly for nearly ten minutes by the technique of circular breathing (i.e. the performer fills his cheeks with air like a chipmunk hoarding nuts; then uses that air to continue playing while he fills his lungs with fresh air through his nose; and repeating that process again so that the stream of music is never interrupted for a single moment while taking breath). It was magnificent. It was close to divine. And it reminded me that for the ancient Egyptians, as for the ancient Jews, air and breath equalled soul and life. A man who is physically capable of pulling off such a feat, certainly deserves his undying fame and immortality.

RIP both of you fine fellows!