President Xi Jinping

Written and read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

“The next time you do this lady, you’re going downtown.” He was big, beefy and, even from behind his counter desk, threatening, as he leaned forward into my space. Was it my space? The flight back to San Francisco had been full and fraught. Wearing my very nice Irish tweed suit (How I wish I could fit into it now) and my pearls, was usually enough to let me sail through customs and immigration when returning to the United States. Since 2000, I had been commuting back and forth to England taking care of my mother as best I could as Congestive Heart Failure quietly worked its way, taking its toll, through her body. She never complained about the distresses and frustrations and even fear it caused her through the three plus years of her illness. But this was 2003, two years after 9/11 and the ante had been upped. I was shaken as he slapped my green card and English passport down on the counter and passed them back to me. I hurried away from this glowering man in his booth before he had beckoned the next person standing in line forward for his scrutiny.

Soon after, I was safely back on the farm a close neighbor stopped by. I was still so shaken I told him, I was telling everyone, what had happened. And he replied,

“Bill’s sister works in Washington. Would you like me to ask him to ask her what is going on?”

“Yes please,” I replied. He left shortly and it was only two hours later that he phoned me back. The advice from Washington was:

“Have her do her paperwork now. It is only going to get worse”. I heeded her advice reluctantly and over the next two years finished the required paperwork and took my tests, before finally stepping into the Hall of Justice in San Fransisco to stand and swear. It was a sobering moment, not only for me and hundreds of others, but watching those young people in military uniforms finally reaping the rewards of their service.

NAS SIGONELLA (July 20, 2010) – Candidates for American citizenship representing eight countries, raise their right hand and recite the Oath of Allegiance during a citizenship ceremony held here July 20. Eleven candidates participated in the ceremony to become U.S. Citizens. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Erica R. Gardner/RELEASED).

Our daughter Beatrice took her work break to meet me and, over a sort of celebratory lunch, helped me fill in my voter registration papers. Now I could vote, and, as importantly, protest the death penalty outside of prisons without fear of deportation. I can count myself among the lucky ones, and privileged to be so. 22 years later ‘it’ has indeed proved to be so much worse than we could ever have imagined and those not so lucky, not so privileged, are living in fear while some are paying a terrible price with the regime in power as they make their bids for a better life and freedom for their families.

We have to dig deep into the news to follow the paths of the American government’s lawlessness, and when we do it is sickening beyond belief. We don’t really know where to turn. The world is boiling over with the gastric disturbances of climate change amid the constant eruptions of war and destruction.

A not so small incident happened this week as Ursula Von der Leyen’s plane to Bulgaria was left circling for an hour while the satellite navigation system system was jammed. “Nothing to do with us,’ said the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, “Your information is incorrect.” While Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general, said they are working night and day to make sure this does’t happen again, I’m not putting money on their being successful.

And so the wars’ effects spread, across continents, each one oozing out to the other, Europe, The Middle East, and beyond. When the American President isn’t pouting that he has not been invited to China, he is busy plotting what he is going to do with Gaza when it finally becomes available. But what is it? Gaza, The West Bank, Palestine? Well that rather depends who you are talking with. President Macron calls it all Palestine, other European leaders are set to agree while BiBi Netanyahu calls it Gaza and The West Bank trying to keep Palestine even more separate.The American President calls it Beach Site property.

Israel continues to bomb Gaza, targeting hospitals and journalists.

The Committee to protect journalists says that to date at least 189 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza in the most deadly conflict for journalists ever recorded. As we watch the nightly news, the lead anchor for that evening repeats, “Israel does not allow foreign media to film in Gaza and so this footage comes from, dot, dot, dot. “ Whoever can record it” Bolex cameras have given way to smart phones and the footage is shared across the world aired by which ever country chooses to show it.

Dusk on the street – Auntie (The BBC) is tucked safely behind the church

On Tuesday we found ourselves at the entrance to the BBC headquarters in London. It has been twenty years since I first popped in to watch an interview. Yellow-jacketed security personnell man the paths winding between the barriers which go up and down and are moved around as rumours cross the courtyards to other waiting press and protesters who are always present. We have an appointment and are let in, then directed to more security. It’s a tight ship or a giant warhorse depending on your focus for the day. Eventually wearing our guest passes – clearly visible please – we pass through more guarded glass doors and look down on the huge buzzing news room below. Though brightly lit, it is somewhat spooky, the below aspect of it, as if a design relic of old wartime bunkers. Now instead of long tables with maps there are rows of computer hubs catching news from around the world, some of it coming from those phones that are held up in Gaza, in Kiev, in Afghanistan, but rarely the Sudan or even Haiti. No photographs are allowed here either and the security remains visible as we make our way through the warren of lifts and corridors and messy drink alcoves that look like they belong on a train until we reach a recording suite. There is enough gear to make a community-radio head swoon except that I understand that though they have the equipment, the personnel and money, community radio has a greater freedom.

Two guests, one host, one producer, one engeneer. Be still my lustful heart.

It’s a straight forward forty-five minutes of book talk for Walter, another guest and the host before heading to the bar for drinks. Fully back from the Covid year, the space is loud, raucous and liquid and the cider is not bad. The men and women crews gathered here are grateful to do the good work that they can.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping stand together

I watch the evening news with a slightly different take, looking for what is chosen and what is not. Russia keeps on bombing Ukraine. There are no talks of peace in any of these war zones. A new world order gathers for a military parade in Beijing as Xi Jinping hosts China’s largest-ever military parade, with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, standing and almost smiling in a show of defiance to the West. The American President and other Western and European leaders were not in attendance.

Though notably absent from our newscasts for the last few days, the American president immediately posted a petulant response, an embarrassment to even some of his supporters. As speculation abounds a diagnosis of Chronic Venous Insufficiency has been given. Similar in presentation and outcome as varicose veins, he may find them as useful today as a little bone spur was 60 years ago.

This has been A. Letter From A. Broad. written and read for you by Muriel Murch.

As always supported by https://www.murchstudio.com

Written and Read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side.

Last week we took the train from London’s Victoria Station to Hove. Brighton and Hove that is, Hove tagging along beside its more famous big sister Brighton, never quite able to keep up. Which is why we were to spend the night in a cheaper seaside hotel in Hove rather than Brighton, and though the hotel boasted of a five-star breakfast, it remained Hove as the shingle beach stretches all along the Essex county coast line. It’s been a bitter marriage. Hove remains the smaller sister, its houses on the roads to the seaside crammed side by side with no breathing room between them.

After the last war, every few houses became a boarding house, helping widows and poor relations hold onto their homes. Such was the lot of my Uncle Geoff and Aunt Gertrude, Geoff having retired as a Canadian Mountie and failed as a real estate developer returning from Canada. There was possibly not a lot of interest in development for the wilds of Alberta in the early 1950’s. I was sent to stay with Uncle Geoff and Aunt Gertrude in what I now see as an attempt to revert the family estate back to me, the only offspring of six children. I failed at that, but learnt to swim in the King Alfred seawater baths at Hove. I also learnt about hunger for the first time in my life, Geoff and Gertrude’s Canadian life style didn’t include three meals a day. Another spinster aunt, Edith, lived close by, and her house was even more dismal than Geoff and Gertrude’s. Looking back I realize that my father was the only one of those six children to make it out of Canterbury and into a more successful life. No wonder Geoff and Gertrude were not going to hand back the small-as-it-was Slater Estate.

The Peace Statue that marks the entrance to Brighton

We taxied to the hotel, that looked no different from the houses along the road, and were greeted by a sweet young European woman who looked no different from all the European hotel staff who arrived at Victoria Station in the 1950’s, looking to better their lives and those of their families back home. The outline of the old house is still visible as we climbed the stairs to the top floor. All done over and with the necessary wifi connections. A quick change, back downstairs, to the next taxi and through the rush hour traffic along the coastal roadside, passing the Peace Statue into Brighton. A supper moment meeting the co-guests of this event, Victor and Wendy Armstrong – fellow film makers, English – who made their home and livelihood in Los Angeles. Victor being the world’s most prolific stunt double. His career is as legendary as Walter’s and this evening’s event is an interesting twinning of production action and post production manipulation of that action.

But supper has to be quick, we are on location with a gig after all and we walk our way from the restaurant to Horatio’s Bar and ‘The Space’ on Brighton Palace Pier. Dusk has arrived and day trippers were leaving the pier as film buffs are arriving, bustling in, ordering a drink or two and settling into the chairs arched around The Space. It is late by the time the last fans leave and we walk back along the pier, with the waves lapping underneath drowning out the sound of the cars heading back to ‘Hove Actually’.

The morning gets us down to the 5 star breakfast which was probably the most appalling breakfast I have ever been faced with. And it must have been appalling for those poor European girls to prepare, never mind serve. Even the coffee – we won’t discuss the coffee. So we walked to the beach, the shingle stones as large and unforgiving as they were to my 10-year-old feet. The sun was shining, the beach huts all still closed up and only a few brave souls were at the water’s edge. The cold and the currents take no prisoners here in Sussex.

We took the train back to London, where the cottage was waiting for us, and the pigeons were impatient for feeding. Fred, I think it is Fred, has been doing a dance, turning in circles in one of the flower pots to attract Freda, who is not that impressed with this swirling dervish courtier. The parrots are having better luck, a pair cozying up to the feeder together. They give us pleasure, these birds as we watch their antics in relief to those we see having in the United fractured States of America. But are cracks slowly beginning to be visible as the axes of untrained gardeners slash into the undergrowth of Government? There are checks occurring, the latest being that while the Pope honored King Charles and Queen Camila with an audience, he guided JC Vance into the learned hands of Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. “There was an exchange of opinions on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners,” said the statement reported in The Guardian. Whereas the parameters of Islam follow the concentric expansion of interests that little by little extends to other persons and groups. The Christian one – as in this Easter Message – read for the Pope –

“I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear which only leads to isolation from others, but rather to use the resources available to help the needy, to fight hunger and to encourage initiatives that promote development. These are the ‘weapons’ of peace: weapons that build the future, instead of sowing seeds of death!”

No matter which religion one follows, none include the concept of ‘Proizvol’ a Russian word that means the arbitrary abuse of power, the effect of which is a feeling that anything can happen to anyone at any time and that there is no accountability. Russia has this word for it, I wonder, do we?

Vance has to go to India, fast on the heels of China’s president Xi Jinping, who manages with a smile and charm to show Beijing having a steady hand on the tiller of commerce. But the Indian farmers, who outnumber any of those in North America, could rumble into Mumbai powering their concern and displeasure at Usha Vance bringing this American husband to her homeland. They are not convinced that he has come in the spirit of cooperation.

Vice President JD Vance has been tripping about and often tripping on unforeseen obstacles such as other countries opinions of his ‘America First’ Foreign Policy. It just doesn’t occur to him, or other members of this US government that going around the world shouting “America First” is – to put it politely – very rude. It’s also not polite to so brashly criticize your hosts defense spending or saying, while in Greenland, “We have to have Greenland.” Over this Easter Weekend it was touch and go if the ailing Pontiff would in fact grant Vance and audience, but finally – as it would – kindness and good manners prevailed and JD and his wife were allowed into the presence of the Pope. It was brief, Vance’s Motorcade idled in the Vatican grounds for a mere 17 minutes as JD nipped in and out it, appearing to listen, before patting the ailing Pope on the arm. They were give chocolate for the children and sent on their way.

As Vance boards his plane flying into India he will have heard of the Pope’s death. Will he, can he, reflect on his ‘America First’ attitude maybe being one more endurance that the Pope shouldered before putting down his burden ?