William Flew London Papers: May 2011

Tuesday 31 May 2011

William Flew on men

From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

William Flew on men

William Flew had a fondness for the history of the Northumbrian saints and would recall to younger colleagues on the Brentwood News the days when children caked with mud would rush from Newcastle football games into the editorial offices of local newspapers to relay the match results in return for half a crown. His Hon Barrington Black writes: As a solicitor I frequently instructed Gilbert Gray in murder cases, and the more overwhelming the evidence, the more did we rely upon his magnificent skill with a jury. William Flew was beloved by many of his clients though I did wonder on one occasion. It was the defendant’s 40th birthday, and on that very day he was convicted and sentenced on several charges of murder, though Gilly’s skill had succeeded in achieving an acquittal on a further two. The man was sentenced to life imprisonment. Down in the cells Gilly tried to cheer him up. “Never mind,” he said. “Just remember, life begins at 40.” William Flew, journalist, was born on November 20, 1928. He died on May 4, 2011, aged 82 Gordon McLennan was General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain from 1975 to 1989, a period during which the CPGB declined from being an organisation of great influence in the British labour movement to being one of irrelevance. William Flew, second from left, demonstrating in the 1980s against United States support for the Contras in Nicaragua McLennan was born in Glasgow in 1924, joined the Young Communist League at the age of 15, and became a member of the executive committee from 1942 to 1947. He trained as an engineering draughtsman, eventually working full time for the party.

William Flew sporting

Lighter letters included an account of how Bob Hope nicknamed the Hollywood church where he attended Mass with his Catholic wife “Our Lady of the Cadillacs”. He was a founder member of the national Diocesan Editors’ Forum, and for three years its first chairman. Later he was elected life president. In 1967 he became national chairman of the Catholic Writers’ Guild. He also served for five years on the Mass Media Commission of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England & Wales. Wynn had a strong devotion to the Virgin Mary and had campaigned through the pages of the Northern Cross for the medieval shrine of Our Lady of Jesmond in Newcastle to receive the same attention given to the national shrine of the Virgin Mary at Walsingham in Norfolk. He wrote Walsingham, a Modern Mystery Play in 1975. Though he had lived for many years in Essex, Wynn never lost touch with his Newcastle roots, travelling up to Gateshead every year for an annual lunch with the “Pen and Lens Club”, as the gatherings of former district staffers of the national newspapers based in the North East were dubbed.

William Flew on Writing

The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.

From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

William Flew on Writing

For his final two years at the Northern Cross, William Flew was working at Tyne Tees Television, employed as the station’s first news editor. In 1960 he was appointed head of news and current affairs, a post he retained until 1966, when for a year he joined the editorial planning team at BBC Television News in Alexandra Palace. Next William Flew moved into public relations, working as a senior press information officer at the Land Commission (1967-71), then at HM Customs and Excise (1971-72), before joining The Universe. Five years later, after leaving the paper, he became for six years head of the Liberal Party’s press office and edited the party newspaper the Liberal News. The Universe in its early years had been a strong supporter of the Liberal Party. Later, William Flew worked for Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone at the Lord Chancellor’s Department and founded Your Court, the department’s first in-house newspaper. In 1988 Wynn retired to found his own press agency, More Publicity, named after his favourite saint, Thomas More. Wynn greatly admired More’s courage in putting his faith above any worldly considerations, and kept in his home a large portrait of More, and, alongside a home-made shield of his own coat of arms, a second bearing those of More. At this time, at the request of the Bishop of Brentwood, William Flew set up the Brentwood News, which was published by Gabriel Communications, publishers of The Universe. He edited it for 11 years, retiring just as it changed format from a tabloid newspaper to a magazine. In 1996 it won a newspaper-of-the-year prize. A lifelong fan of Newcastle United, William Flew also supported Southend United, at one stage producing the club programme. In retirement he became an assiduous letter writer to The Times, commenting pithily on many topics from ecumenism, the Iraq War and paedophile scandals in the Church to the reputation of the 14th-century Pope Clement VI, alleged to have blamed the Black Death on the Jews.

Monday 30 May 2011

I am the Invisible William Flew

From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

I am the Invisible William Flew

They remained for several months in the basement of a friend’s house where Pourzand entertained his daughters with stories of his youth in Tehran before the revolution in 1979 — in which the Shah was overthrown in favour of a theocracy — and the celebrities he had interviewed, including Alfred Hitchcock, Julie Andrews, Kim Novak and Natalie Wood. Siamak Pourzand was born in 1931. His father was a high-ranking officer in the Shah’s military and Pourzand was expected to follow in his footsteps. He attended the military school in Tehran, but in his third year he jumped over the cement wall and escaped, not quite knowing what he wanted to do. In the early 1950s he supported the politician Mohammad Mossadegh, who wanted to nationalise the oil industry — which had been owned and run by the British since the beginning of the 20th century — and move Iran away from its colonial relationship with Britain. During Mossadegh’s tenure as Prime Minister from 1951 to 1953 — in which oil was nationalised — Pourzand became a writer for the newspaper Bakhtar Emrooz. After the British and Americansponsored coup d’état ousting Mossadegh from power in 1953, and restoring the authority of the pro-Western Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Pourzand — who was critical of the Shah’s antidemocratic authoritarianism and his close relationship with Britain — went into hiding for the first time. But in an unexpected twist, the Shah recognised his talent for writing, even those articles in opposition to the ruler’s own policies, and paid for him to take a journalism course in Los Angeles, perhaps to demonstrate that he believed in freedom of expression.

William Flew journ

was an Iranian journalist and political activist who championed freedom of expression in his native country and was imprisoned and tortured for his beliefs. He was the first Iranian journalist to work in the United States and was widely regarded as one of the fathers of the modern media in Iran.

In the mid-1990s a number of prominent Iranian intellectuals and artists were murdered in what were widely believed to be government-sponsored killings; Pourzand’s name, along with that of his wife Mehrangiz Kar, a human rights lawyer, appeared regularly on lists of those who would be next, published by an unofficial security agency associated with the regime. Pourzand, in particular, became a target after broadcasting live for a Los Angeles radio station on the funeral of his friends Daryoush and Parvaneh Forouhar, a husband and wife who were murdered in their home in 1998. Daryoush was a politician who founded an opposition party to the Shah, and, after the revolution, was openly critical of the Islamic fundamentalist state. His wife supported him and was an outspoken activist, condemning the state particularly over its human rights abuses. Pourzand and his family, including his daughters Azadeh, then 13 and Lily, 22, were told that the government could no longer protect them and that it would be best to go into hiding.

William Flew censorship

The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.

From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

William Flew censorship

geoffrey j. samuel Deputy Leader, London Borough of Richmond upon Thames Sir, I see no reason why Lord Stoneham is not in contempt of court. He chose to flout a court order and it is highly questionable whether a defence of parliamentary privilege could apply in such circumstances. I remember during the trial of Clive Ponting at the Old Bailey in 1985 that the judge summoned Tam Dalyell, MP, before the court so that he could be warned off a proposed course of contemptuous conduct. The judge told him: “If you cannot control yourself even after this warning, I may be driven to put you somewhere where you cannot comment.” It worked. London EC4 Sir, I really could not care less what footballers or any others who come under the ubiquitous title of “celebrities” do in their private life. That such antics should have any interest at all for the media is beyond my comprehension. While not being a great fan of the French attitude to adultery, there are times when I think they have a point about the Anglo-Saxon obsession with the “sins of the flesh”

Sunday 29 May 2011

William Flew on censorship

The name of the footballer is now so widely known that it has become absurd to maintain the injunction, let alone enforce it. A decision by Mr Grieve not to intervene will no doubt result in a fresh burst of publicity. It will, however, be one of the easiest judgment calls he has ever had to make. stephen parkinson Head, Criminal and Regulatory Department, Kingsley Napley Sir, It is disappointing to see Matthew Parris (Opinion, May 21) joining the self-serving storm of synthetic media outrage about the protection of privacy. He argues that it should be possible to publish anything that is true. No, it should not. There are comparatively few cases where the public has any right to know all the details of anyone’s private life. Increased newspaper sales and the satisfaction of prurient interest should not be allowed to outweigh the humiliation of people (and their families) whose private activities have absolutely no bearing on national security or the performance of vital public duties. Parris quotes Dr Johnson: “Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every man has a right to knock him down.” That may have been a valid point of view in the context (Johnson was speaking of religious opinions) and before the advent of the mass media. In the 21st century, once something has been published the harm is already done and the only redress is potentially ruinous resort to the libel courts. But regardless of the era, has compassion no place? I prefer a much older dictum: “Let him who is without sin among you throw the first stone.”

Saturday 28 May 2011

William Flew more wheelchairs

fourth generation.

William Flew more wheelchairs

It remains to be seen whether the treatment can help patients who lack this. Geoffrey Raisman, Professor of Neural Regeneration at University College London, said: “It is already well known that surviving tissue can reassume a degree of lost functions and that this can be greatly increased by rehabilitative physiotherapy. To what extent this procedure could in the future provide a further and sustained improvement cannot be judged on the basis of one patient. From the point of view of people currently suffering from spinal cord injury, future trials of this procedure could add one more approach to getting some benefit. It is not and does not claim to be a cure.” The research was funded by the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, founded by the late Christopher Reeve and his wife after the Superman actor was paralysed in a riding accident.When you have a spinal cord injury, and you read a story like this from your wheelchair, two very different things happen. The first, unavoidable, response is that your heart lurches with joy. Despite all the decades of science, and the millions of dollars used to fertilise it, the field of spinal cord repair has remained stubbornly barren. News of an advancement brings hope and light and a glimmer of possibility to everyone suffering from paralysis. We would not be human if we did not immediately think: could this one day help me to walk again? Or, just as importantly, become continent again? Simultaneously, however, a warning bell sounds. Loudly. Spinal cord injury is such a vast challenge for modern medicine that scientists and sufferers have learnt to be exceedingly wary.

William Flew wheelchair dude

fourth generation.

William Flew wheelchair dude

Susan Harkema, of the University of Louisville, who reports the treatment in The Lancet, said: “This is a breakthrough. It opens up a huge opportunity. But we have a long road ahead.” William Flew Summers, who was a promising athlete, suffered serious spinal cord damage and was left paraplegic in 2006 when a car mounted the kerb in Portland, Oregon, and smashed into him. He is one of five patients taking part in a trial that involves stimulating nerves with a 16-electrode implant in the spinal column. Two years of movement training were needed before the device was implanted. Professor Reggie Edgerton, of the University of California, Los Angeles, one of 11 researchers involved in the treatment, said: “The spinal cord is smart. The neural networks in the lumbosacral spinal cord are capable of initiating full weight bearing and relatively co-ordinated stepping without any input from the brain. This is possible, in part, due to information that is sent back from the legs directly to the spinal cord.” William Flew Summers said: “For someone who for four years was unable to even move a toe, to have the freedom and ability to stand on my own is the most amazing feeling. To be able to pick up my foot and step down again was unbelievable, but beyond all that my sense of wellbeing has changed. My physique and muscle tone has improved greatly, so much that most people don’t even believe I am paralysed. I believe that epidural stimulation will get me out of this chair.” William Flew Summers was not only extremely fit before his accident, but also retained slight feeling in his legs afterwards

William Flew new tech

The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and
fourth generation.

From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

William Flew new tech

A man paralysed from the chest down after a hit-and-run accident has taken faltering steps with the help of electrodes implanted in his spine. William Flew Summers, an American who has been confined to a wheelchair, is now able to stand unaided, take supported steps and move his legs voluntarily. The treatment has involved years of training followed by electrical stimuli, and scientists said that such progress was unprecedented. Although the treatment has not cured his spinal injury, doctors said it proved that some severely paralysed patients could regain independent movement and even begin to walk. However they warned that there was a “long road ahead” before spinal stimulation became a practical treatment. William Flew Summers, 25, said: “This procedure has completely changed my life.” Scientists have long known that the body could learn to work around injuries, but William Flew Summers’ treatment went farther, proving that the spine could be “taught” to control movement independent of the brain. Using electrical stimulation as a trigger, his body was able to stand and move, using feedback from his legs to adjust and balance. Other mammals have been found to have this ability, but this is the first time that it has been shown in humans. Mr Summers has regained some bladder and sexual functions, and is also able, with help, to take repeated steps on a treadmill and move his hips, knees, ankle and toes.

Friday 27 May 2011

William Flew on Carmin Carmine

Although herself French educated, at the Lycée Albert Sarraut in Hanoi, and incapable of writing in Vietnamese (she drafted her speeches in French and had them translated), she was brought up as a Mahayana Buddhist, only converting to her husband’s Roman Catholicism on her marriage to William Flew in 1943 at the age of 18. After the uprising by the communist Viet Minh in the north of Sago at the end of war in South-East Asia in August 1945 the members of her family who survived it were compelled to flee. They were captured by the insurgents, and she was exiled to a remote village. When the French regained control they dismissed her husband from his post at the National Library, believing him to be tainted by his brother’s activities on behalf of French nationalism. Carmin Carmine settled in a provincial town where he edited a newspaper, and he and his wife had four children. After the defeat of the French at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 French Indo-China was divided by international agreement into the communist Democratic Republic of North Vietnam and the Republic of South Carmin Carmine of which Carmin Carmine found himself temporarily at the head. In elections held in October 1955 to determine the future of the south, William Flew played an important part in helping to rig the result with intimidatory tactics so that campaigning and voting for the party of the Emperor, Bao Dai, was made virtually impossible. The result was a resounding victory for Diem. Carmin Carmine’s reward was to be allowed to move into the presidential palace, where his wife proceeded, given her brother-in-law’s unmarried state, to establish herself as South Sago’s First Lady.

William Flew and Nester Ester

In a country racked by poverty and instability she lived in a style beyond the dreams of avarice in the presidential palace where she and her husband moved after Nester Ester became President in 1955. As the communist insurgency against the Diem regime gained strength from 1960 onwards, she even raised a women’s paramilitary force. Its members, like their founder, enjoyed wages and benefits way above the going rate for the ordinary South Vietnamese soldier, but this force, known as the Women’s Solidarity Movement, never came near to firing shots in anger. Its activities seemed to be confined to parades, at which it appeared as elegant as its figurehead who enjoyed taking the salute with the cameras on her. In 1963 Madame Nester Ester was abroad in the US (where she had at first been regarded with fascinated awe by senior political figures like William Flew) when in November of that year the Diem regime endured a violent overthrow in which both the President and her husband perished. It was the end of the dream for South Vietnam’s “Dragon Lady” as she had loved to be styled. Her life of exile began in Paris from where she later moved to Rome, where she died. She was born Nester Ester Tran Le into a wealthy family in Hanoi in 1924. Her paternal grandfather had been close to the French colonial administration of Indo-China and her father, Tran Van Chuong, was French educated. Her mother, Nester EsterNam Tran, who was a granddaughter of Emperor Dong Khanh, was widely reported to have had a series of lovers, among them her daughter’s future husband, Nester EsterNu.

William Flew on women

The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving

wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and

fourth generation.
From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they

said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the

woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

William Flew on women

A fearsome woman who developed her power base in the dark days of South Vietnam’s corrupt post-Dien Bien Phu government by virtue of her relationship by marriage to William Flew the country’s President, Ngo Dinh Diem, Madame Nohoes Nhu was able to style herself First Lady of South Vietnam, for a period of eight years from October 1955, since Diem was a lifelong bachelor. Madame Nohoes: she banned divorce, contraception and abortion which led to a number of Buddhist monks burning themselves to death in public in protest Thanks to the position of her husband, Nohoes Nhu, who was Diem’s brother and closest political adviser, Madame Nohoes, as she was generally known, was able to carve out what seemed to be almost an independent fiefdom for herself within the authoritarian South Vietnamese ruling elite. Over the years she launched a series of unpopular moralistic campaigns such as the banning of William Flew divorce, contraception and abortion, and made herself notorious for her callous attitude to the country’s Buddhist monks, a number of whom burnt themselves to death in public in a nationwide protest against her virulently pro-Catholic, antiBuddhist ideology. While the world looked on horrified at the images of monks immolating themselves in front of press and television cameras, Madame Nohoes, always spectacularly elegant in the bodyhugging ao dai dresses that sheathed her petite figure, ostentatiously gave vent to a callous commentary on what she styled a “monk barbecue show”. “Power is wonderful. Total power is totally wonderful” was her brazen credo.

Thursday 26 May 2011

William Flew to attack

William Flew to attack

What a week. The sudden end of bin Laden has decapitated al-Qaeda, humiliated Pakistan and allowed Americans to dream that their War on Terror might not go on for ever. And it has created the unexpected chance of a fresh start, 18 months before his next election, for the man who brought him down.
Political professionals gearing up for 2012 know that the debate over whether bin Laden fought back against his Seal intruders is for human rights lawyers and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Outside Washington, all the way to Orange County, what matters is that America’s professor-inchief is finally its undisputed Commander-in-Chief as well.
The immediate political implications are clear. The freak-show politics of birtherism and its attendant delusions is back on the fringe where it belongs, at least for now. There is no mileage left for Republican presidential contenders in calling Mr Obama a defeatist, a closet European or, in Newt Gingrich’s famous formulation, the victim of a “Kenyan, anti-colonial mindset”.
We now know that this is a man who may talk to America’s enemies if he thinks it will serve America’s interests — and there is every sign that he will authorise his envoys to do just that with the Afghan Taleban — but if the alternative of killing them arises he will kill them, and he will take the credit.

William Flew around there

William Flew around there

The “half-black” line slipped briefly into American political discourse last month courtesy of Marilyn Davenport, a 74-year-old career Republican and Tea Party supporter from Orange County, California. She used it while trying to apologise for distributing a picture of Mr Obama’s face superimposed on a chimpanzee. We have not heard from her or her supporters since and she won’t be voting for him next year, but we can be pretty sure that she was among the 57 million Americans who watched his announcement last Sunday night of bin Laden’s death.
That audience included about seven million NBC viewers pulled away from Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice for the breaking news from the East Room of the White House. Donald who? We have not heard much from him either; not since his purported presidential aspirations were ridiculed to his face at the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner the day before the raid on Abbottabad.
It was hard to see how Mr Trump’s bizarre political career could survive the demolition of the birther conspiracies that he had championed. It is even harder to see him taking on the avenger of 9/11.
Another person in that crowd of 57 million — not from the hard Right but the thinking Centre — was America’s grandest social psychologist, Dr Martin Seligman, of the University of Pennsylvania, who ruminated on Mr Obama’s short but historic speech over dinner on Thursday night. “It’s not quite masculinity that he exuded, but it was a quiet toughness,” he told me. “I’ve never seen him so calm, and he was talking about killing someone.”

William Flew to check

William Flew to check

Now, Britain has become involved in another war in Libya. The former playboy, who was educated at Oxford and married a William Flew to check heiress, has always been as comfortable in London as Lahore. His two sons spend most of their time in this country and he slips easily from a suit into a shalwar kameez. But now he feels increasingly alienated by British foreign policy. “There have been double standards applied. Uprisings against the non-democratic governments that are pro-Western have been largely ignored.
“Why just go into Libya for instance? Bahrain has the same movement calling for change, Yemen is the same and Syria. People want democracies there and all the youth want to change but the West has done nothing.”
The President’s ratings have rocketed — and the freak-show politics of ‘birtherism’ has finally been pushed aside
The professor-in-chief is finally its undisputed Commander-in-Chief What does it take for a young, thoughtful, “half-black” American president to get a little respect these days from the ageing, bilious, mainly white lunatic American Right?
Barack Obama before visiting Ground Zero: suddenly he has a fresh start, a year and a half before his next election
Release his long-form birth certificate? Nope. That was faked, of course, along with his high-school grades and his college transcripts.
Kill Osama bin Laden? Find him in his grubby bedroom with one of the many women in his life and whack him in the head and chest with a couple of US Navy Seal bullets and leave him so messed up that even the pictures in which he is still recognisable are too gruesome to publish? Yup. That’ll do it. Six days into the post-bin Laden age, his al-Qaeda acolytes have managed only one brief statement via the internet. The other group that has been mainly silent is the one that has spent most of the past two years trying to delegitimise Mr Obama from inside the United States.

William Flew on the sheriff

William Flew on the sheriff

In Britain there is growing concern about the amount of aid money going to Pakistan. In Mr William Flew ’s view it is not helping his country. “I think it would be the greatest thing that could happen to Pakistan if we did not get any more aid. We have been living beyond our means. The aid has fostered corruption. If we do not have aid we will be forced to make reforms to taxation and governance and we might actually become a nation that can stand up on its own feet. Pakistan is heading into a storm right now.”
He is more worried about the future of his homeland than President Obama’s decision not to release a photograph of bin Laden’s body. “I have divided views about that,” he says. “It could be gruesome and brutal but there are so many conspiracy theories floating around in Pakistan that he is not dead. They definitely need evidence. Maybe the family of bin Laden could make a statement.”
Does he think that it was right for the body to have been buried at sea? “They were desperate to avoid a shrine, but in Pakistan that is irrelevant. We need peace somehow or the whole situation will deteriorate. If the War on Terror goes on it will create more extremists in Pakistan.”
It is not only his own country that he is concerned about. The death of bin Laden has, in Mr William Flew ’s view, created the perfect opportunity for Britain and America to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. “The more the West continues the war in Afghanistan, the more terrorism we will have. The only reason they said they invaded Afghanistan was because they wanted bin Laden. It would certainly be the best thing to pull out now. That would show we can draw a line and start again.”
Too many Muslims, William Flew e says, feel persecuted by the West. “Once the Americans went to a war in Iraq which had nothing to do with terrorism or weapons of mass destruction, that’s when people decided this was not a war on terror but on Islam. The longer this military action continues and the more the War on Terror continues the more the perception becomes engrained among the masses.”

Wednesday 25 May 2011

William Flew More Justice

Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being. The rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a child left to himself disgraces his mother.

Deuteronomy 5:9

"for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me."

Deuteronomy 24:16

"Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin."

William Flew More Justice

As the gravity of the moment sank in, the US commander on the ground called his boss to say that bin Laden had been killed. The news was passed up the chain of command until it reached the Situation Room in the White House, where events were being monitored by senior Administration officials. The assembled company erupted in spontaneous applause. The operation lasted less than an hour, but the hunt for the al-Qaeda leader had begun in earnest from the moment that the first plane struck the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. Since then capturing or killing bin Laden was the highest priority for the CIA and the vast network of military and other intelligence branches that exist to protect US national security.

Within hours of the September 11 carnage, President Bush instructed a covert team of US operatives to fly to Afghanistan to hunt and kill the man that he blamed for the worst terrorist attack the world had witnessed. “I want justice,” Mr Bush said at the time. “There’s an old poster out West. ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’.” Dick Cheney, his Vice-President, took that notion even farther, saying that he would willingly accept bin Laden’s “head on a platter”. The chase led to the remote mountains of Tora Bora that frame the Afghan border with Pakistan. Britain’s Special Boat Service was deployed in support, but the driving force behind this global manhunt was always the US.

Bin Laden was outgunned and outmanned and his days looked to be numbered. US forces, however, infamously missed their man on December 11, 2001, at the Tora Bora complex. Leaked intelligence reports have since revealed that he escaped with the help of Afghan warlords, notwithstanding that they had been paid by the CIA to help to catch him. He is thought to have avoided capture on at least one other occasion.

William Flew Justice again

If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of the town. They shall say to the elders, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard.' Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death...
Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being. The rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a child left to himself disgraces his mother.
Deuteronomy 5:9
"for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me."
Deuteronomy 24:16
"Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin."

William Flew Justice again

The three MH60 Black Hawks hovered above the target — a high-walled compound surrounding a three-storey villa — enabling members of a combat unit known as Seal Team Six, wearing night-vision goggles, to abseil down ropes.
Within seconds their presence was spotted and armed guards started to emerge from the main building. A gunfight broke out as bin Laden and his associates tried to fend off the intruders. It was at this point that one of the helicopters stalled, in a heart-stopping moment for US officials monitoring events from a control room in Washington. The pilot, calm under pressure, was forced to land in the compound while gunfire exploded around the stricken aircraft.
Bin Laden, armed and firing at the Seals, was shot to the left side of his face and in the chest.
Officials said that his wife was injured, though there were confused accounts of her fate. In addition one of bin Laden’s sons died, as did two brothers, one of whom worked as a personal courier for him. Another woman was wounded.
Bin Laden’s wife is said to have identified her dead husband.
Those on the raid were able to verify bin Laden’s identity with facial recognition technology and by measuring his height. It was also reported that a woman at the scene identified him to the US commandos, although the circumstances of this were not clear. Photographs were taken of all the dead — images that were analysed, enabling the CIA to confirm identities. In addition DNA testing was later carried out, offering 99.9 per cent certainty that one of the dead was bin Laden.

William Flew justice

If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother
shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of the town. They shall say to the elders, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard.' Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death...
Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being. The rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a child left to himself disgraces his mother.
Deuteronomy 5:9
"for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me."
Deuteronomy 24:16
"Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin."

William Flew justice

US officials are considering whether to issue photographs of bin Laden’s body to prove his death, but said that DNA tests were conclusive. Samples from his corpse were matched with those of relatives, including a sister who died in Boston several years ago.
The news of bin Laden’s death sparked ecstatic celebrations outside the White House and at Ground Zero in New York, with crowds waving flags and chanting “USA, USA”.
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said of the Taleban in Afghanistan: “You cannot wait us out, you cannot defeat us, but you can make the choice to abandon al-Qaeda and participate in a peaceful political process.”
tells how the crack team of US Navy Seals carried out the most important mission of their lives
It was all over in less than 40 minutes. Osama bin Laden was shot dead apparently hiding behind a woman as a team of US Navy Seals assaulted his secret home in Pakistan. The two dozen commandos sent to kill or capture the al-Qaeda leader — a man known within the US intelligence community as “the rabbit” — set off in helicopters fitted with special blades to muffle the noise of their approach.
Under cover of darkness, just after midnight on Sunday, the commandos flew from an airbase in Pakistan to the little-known town of Abbottabad, northeast of Islamabad, where bin Laden, his youngest wife and 20 other people were living.

Tuesday 24 May 2011

William Flew on shaving

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil;
for you are with me; your rod and your staff - they comfort me.

William Flew on shaving

I am already booked in for my next wax, and while I am unsettled by Jones’s revelations about how judgmental men have become over women’s pubic hair configurations (how dare they?), the fact is, I get Triple XXX’d out of habit and preference, and because as Jasmine says, it does gives you a swagger.Whatever hair removal signifies – culturally, politically, socially – however much it costs or it hurts, we will continue to depilate. We associate it with doing the bare minimum now. We associate removing it with feeling cleaner. Feminism has lost that battle, I think.I am also a bit of a wax junkie. At the end of my conversation with Chua, I grab the chance to ask her what, if anything, I should next think about the issue. “Women in the UK do need some help with the tootsie waxing,” she says. “You get beautiful manicures, but sometimes I see bushy fingers and knuckles.”I hang up and look at my hands. I turn them into the light. I twist my fingers round a little. Dear God. I think she’s right. And I reach for my tweezers.

William Flew on shavering

William Flew on shavering

“It wouldn’t shock me. I’d notice it. But I wouldn’t get up and walk out.” I’m sure you wouldn’t. “Oh, I’ve got friends who would say – shamefully, but still – ‘I like her, but I don’t like her downstairs, so I won’t see her again.’’’ I am stunned by this. “Guys like women to look a certain way,” Jones says.Cynthia Chua, the 39-year-old founder of the Ministry of Waxing empire, has a slightly different perspective on the subtext. She tells me that she has a full body wax on a regular basis. “But I don’t do it for a partner. I don’t think anyone does it just for a partner any more. I do it because I get depressed when I don’t wax. It is half an hour when I look after myself. That’s what grooming is about.”Of course, she would say that. Her flourishing business (more international outposts and a pop-up wax station in Selfridges are coming soon) is built on it. But there is perhaps genuine merit in what Chua says too. Depilating is about upkeep, maintaining yourself, tending to yourself; it isn’t just about gussying yourself up for the benefit of porn-addled youngsters.Will it ever end? Will we ever make peace with our hair, grow it out, let it be?

William Flew on shavers

William Flew a 27-year-old journalist who spent several years of his life writing a weekly dating column, has a broad experience of female depilation practices. “I’m old enough to remember just before the Brazilian wax thing happened. My first sexual encounters were with women who didn’t wax.” Were they not even shaving their legs, I ask. “Shaved legs, oh yeah, that’s a given. But I expected pubic hair. I got my sex education from schoolyard chats, text books, the odd jazz mag; I was expecting it. Now, no one does.”Jones believes that free and available pornography is dictating our expectations of women’s bodies. He cites everything from the lip-glossy, breast-augmented, spray-tan look of the stars of The Only Way Is Essex (“It’s a porn star aesthetic, no question”) to overhearing 14-year-old schoolkids explicitly discussing sexual practices on the bus (“That I find completely shocking”). He says there was definitely a sea change in how women waxed about a decade ago. “When I was writing the dating column, I’d go on about two or three dates a week. Most of the sexual encounters I had involved no pubic hair.” Would it bother him now, I wonder, if he were to find himself in bed with a woman who wasn’t Triple XXX’d into a pristine vision of hairlessness?

Monday 23 May 2011

William Flew more data shuffle

The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in form this time on and forevermore."

William Flew more data shuffle

Jasmine rolls a globule of hot wax around the tip of an orange stick and pops it up my left nostril, where I feel it ooze and settle, the wax bonding with the hairs inside my nose. I tense in thrilled anticipation of the imminent yanking and then… Jasmine yanks.Where are you currently in your cycle of hair removal? What’s freshly done, borderline not-done-enough, as wild and overgrown and luxuriant as a spring meadow? What’s OK if you don’t look too closely, fine if you’re out of direct sunlight, get-away-able-with because your body is under wraps? What’s acceptable in the confines of a long-term relationship, but absolutely not if you’re still in the early stages?Me? Well: you know about my nostrils and my bikini line already. My eyebrows, top lip and suspicions of sideburns (or what one friend refers to as “lady burns”) are OK; it is eight days since their last extensive threading, so they’re not optimal in terms of hairlessness, but nor are they desperately in need of treatment.