Monthly Archives: February 2024

Arts, Books, History, Science

Book Review: Our Moon

LITERARY REVIEW

ACCORDING to astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the moon is mostly composed of greyish dust that smells of extinguished pyrotechnics which makes your eyes water.

Hardly an attractive environment, but we shouldn’t be fooled by first impressions. Were it not for the Moon, there would be no planet Earth. Or to be more precise, we wouldn’t even exist.

In exact and poetic prose, science writer and journalist Rebecca Boyle explains how many millennia ago – the timescale is still approximate – just how the Moon was formed from the same cosmic debris that made our world. Due to its gravitational impact, the Moon was responsible for pulling early fish-like creatures out of the Earth’s oceans and on to the shore.

It was from these that every creeping, crawling thing that inhabits our planet, including ourselves, developed. It is enough to give most of us nightmares.

The Moon is also Earth’s timekeeper. It continues to give us not only our days, but our months, seasons, and years. You may have thought that the Sun was in charge but, as the author explains, it is the pull of the Moon’s gravity on the Earth that holds our planet in place.

Without the Moon stabilising our tilt, at 23.4 degrees, we would wobble wildly and erratically, dramatically affecting our seasons and climate. In such a scenario, our planet would move from no tilt (meaning no seasons) to a large tilt (extreme weather and even ice ages). It is thanks to the Moon that the Earth remains a place that is more or less habitable – at least for now.

Prehistoric people weren’t aware of what went on in outer space, but they had worked out that the lunar cycle – the length of time it takes for the Moon to circle the Earth – governed not only their days but the seasons, too.

One of the most exciting passages in Rebecca Boyle’s book concerns the fairly recent discovery of 10,000-year-old pits dug near Crathes Castle, Aberdeenshire, in Scotland.

They are a sort of inverted or upside-down version of Stonehenge (but 5,000 years older), a Mesolithic lunar timepiece that allowed hunter-gatherers to work out which week in any year the salmon would be leaping in the River Dee, or when red deer might trot over the horizon.

And that’s not forgetting the influence on the regular arrival of new Mesolithic babies to be nurtured into a new generation of hunter-gatherers. Though more research needs to be done, it also looks that where there was not much natural daylight in communities in Northern Scotland, women tended to begin their menstrual cycles at the Full Moon.

This meant that they were most fertile at the New Moon, that dark time of the month when early man was less likely to be out hunting and gathering, and more likely to be at home making Stone Age love.

For those interested in testing this phenomenon, it just so happens that yesterday was a New Moon. Even now, in our age of electric light pollution, there is some evidence to suggest that women are still more likely to begin their monthly cycle at the Full Moon.

Boyle also investigates the old story about the links between the full moon and madness – the so-called “lunatic” effect. It turns out there is something in it: a 1990s survey reported that 81 per cent of mental health practitioners have observed a direct correlation between odd behaviour and certain times of the month.

At the very least, many of us find it hard to sleep when there is a full moon, which may well result in the kind of risky behaviour – driving too fast, drinking too much, yelling at annoying strangers – that lands many of us in A & E.

There is also emerging evidence that aneurysms are more likely to pop at either the Full or new Moon, thanks to the fact that it is at these points in its 29-day cycle that the Moon is most closely aligned with the Sun, which means that it exerts its strongest gravitational pull.

Given the extraordinary power that the Moon has on our everyday experience here on Earth, it is no wonder that earlier civilisations treated it not as a “withered, sun-seared peach pit”, to quote one early Apollo astronaut who orbited without landing, but as nothing less than a full-blown deity.

Particularly fascinating is the tale of Enheduanna, the Bronze Age high priestess, who used hymns to the Moon gods to bind the city-states of Sumeria into the world’s first empire.

There have been many books written about the Moon, but Rebecca Boyle’s feels especially timely. As the geo-political balance of our world shifts, the “space race” is being re-run with new players including Japan and India. This time around, however, the aim is not so much patriotic flag planting on the lunar surface, but economic advantage.

The Moon’s soil contains oxygen, silicon, aluminium, and iron, all of which can be refined into valuable things such as fuel, building materials and, ironically, solar panels.

Whichever nation manages to extract and exploit these first, will hold the balance of power in what is shaping up to be the next Cold War.

– Our Moon: A Human History by Rebecca Boyle is published by Sceptre, 336pp

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Britain, China, Government, History, Iran, Middle East, Military, Politics, Russia, United States, Yemen

Probing for weaknesses in the West’s defences

MIDDLE EAST

Intro: Drone strikes are probing for weaknesses in the West’s defences. Russia and China will be watching on with alacrity

COLONIAL history is no longer taught to young British Army officers at Sandhurst. And most American military planners and strategists might never have heard of the desperate battle to save an outpost called Rorke’s Drift in the Zulu Empire.

That Victorian battle was fought in 1879. But, along with the 1964 movie Zulu that was based on it, both have a crucial lesson for Allied forces now facing Islamist militias in flashpoints across the Middle East.

On screen, the Zulu chief sends a wave of warriors on a suicidal assault on the British outpost at Rorke’s Drift. Men are sent into battle armed with assegais or traditional spears but are met with a fierce resistance and gunned down by volleys of rapid rifle fire.

The African losses were heavy. Yet they weren’t trying to win this first assault: they were probing for weak points in the British defences, scoping out what weapons they had and how they used them.

There are strong parallels today with the situation in the Middle East.

The Iranian-backed drone attack on US army outpost Tower 22 in the Syrian desert – in which three marines were killed and 40 suffered horrific injuries – has echoes of long-forgotten colonial conflicts which helped to lay the gunpowder trail to the First World War, just as we could conceivably face another world war now.

Our enemies, the Houthis in Yemen attacking shipping in the Red Sea and Hezbollah guerrillas backed by Iran, are testing the West’s resolve and how we might fight back.

After several days of dithering, America “hit back” with B1 bombers and cruise missile attacks, blasting dusty and largely empty militia bases in the desert.

Since then, the world has witnessed a joint operation by the United States and the UK, which struck 36 targets across 13 locations in Yemen. They were backed by Australia, Bahrain, Denmark, Canada, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.

The Ministry of Defence was at pains in recent days to emphasise that RAF strikes on Houthi targets were not intended as “an escalation”, rather a mission “to protect innocent lives and preserve freedom of navigation.”

The US Air Force’s high-tech weaponry have killed some 37 militants, but Washington has said they have no intention of striking Iran itself. The Americans have repeatedly stressed they do not want a war with Tehran.

These statements, however, signal to the Yemeni militias and their proxy backers that the West does not have the stomach for war and does not want to risk the lives of our own forces.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office insists, too, that: “We need to send the strongest possible signal to Iran that what they’re doing through their proxies is unacceptable. [They] will ultimately be held accountable for what they do.”

Precision strikes that do nothing but destroy a few temporary bases are not “the strongest possible signal”. Nor is the killing of a handful of Houthi rebels who treat death as martyrdom. Put simply, they are regarded by their puppet-masters in Tehran as expendable.

The Tower 22 bombing was carried out by the terrorist militia group Kataeb Hezbollah. This faction is not actually banned in the UK, and its supporters have been able to march down on Whitehall chanting anti-West slogans. Britain is trying to play an international role, but this demonstrates the ineffectiveness of even policing our own streets.

If the Americans are oblivious to the lessons of Rorke’s Drift, they should at least remember Vietnam. At the height of that gruelling war, US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara gave an interview explaining that his policy was to inflict enough deaths and damage on the North Vietnamese to make their Communist leaders back off from fighting the US Army.

President Ho Chi Minh listened to that in such disbelief that he asked for the tape to be replayed. Afterwards, he laughed. McNamara was revealing, he said, that lives mattered – to the Americans! All that mattered to North Vietnam’s fanatics was victory. No price or sacrifice was too high.

Ho Chi Minh’s strategic assessment was right. Far more of his soldiers and untold numbers of civilians were killed. But it was America that gave up paying the price of war. Today President Joe Biden dares not being drawn into an escalating Middle East conflict, particularly with an election due this year. Democrats won’t stand for it. The British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, faces the same stark truth.

Britain herself is no position to wage war against Iran or anyone else. Our military inadequacy is reflected in the fiasco of our two aircraft carriers: HMS Prince of Wales is being rapidly prepared to be seaworthy after repairs to a crippled propeller shaft. The ship is needed to deputise for its £3.5billion sister ship, HMS Queen Elizabeth II, which is currently out of commission because of another propeller shaft breakdown.

Russia and China are watching closely as Iran, and her proxies, test the West on their behalf. For Putin and Xi Jinping, this has become a spectator sport, as they look for signs that we have failed these tests. Instead of responding to the Tower 22 attacks with real military might, we have staged pin-prick reprisals, designed to demonstrate Western technological superiority. But our timid hesitancy has done nothing to frighten our global rivals.

The battle of Rorke’s Drift was won because we were prepared to fight with a ferocity that equalled the attacks of our numerous enemies. Now we no longer have the ships, the men, or the resolve to do so. Our foes must be laughing.

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Britain, Government, Immigration, Politics

Why the contempt for common-sense on migration?

BRITAIN

IN Britain, it has been obvious for decades that this country’s humane and civilised rules on giving asylum to refugees have been grotesquely misused.

Laws designed and crafted to provide safety for persecuted individuals have been exploited by migrants seeking a better life in the UK. Yet, a large part of Britain’s privileged elite refuse to see this.

Not merely do they pretend to think that these migrants are all genuine refugees, and to heap bitter scorn on anyone who argues otherwise, but many of these privileged people keenly engage charities, protests, court cases, and other activities, frustrating any attempt to apply the law.

No doubt many of them are driven by noble motives. It is 170 years since Charles Dickens mocked his character Mrs Jellyby, in Bleak House, for exerting herself very much more about a distant tribe in Africa than in looking after her immediate family.

Let’s be clear. There is nothing wrong with compassion for the poor and for those who suffer in the world. But it should not become an excuse for failing in compassion and endearment to those living closer by.

The arrival in Britain of large numbers of people of whom we know very little has, of course, mostly troubled the poor and weak, who tend to live in the areas where migrants settle. For the more affluent, it is different. Large-scale migration has enabled the metropolitan middle class – for the first time in two generations – to employ domestic servants, though they do not call them that.

Many metropolitan liberals did not like Britain very much as it used to be. They prefer the multicultural nation which is replacing it. But this is only one side of the matter.

The BBC’s partiality, for one, is a point in case. A senior figure at the corporation has again and again given evidence in appeals against the deportation of Somali citizens. In several of the cases, the men being defended had severe and worrying criminal pasts.

Then there was the recent incident in which an “asylum seeker” stands accused of hurling corrosive fluid into the faces of a woman and her children.

The signs are that many well-off liberal minded persons living in ivory towers simply do not get it.

For centuries, those nations lucky enough to have secure physical borders have been careful who they allowed in. Many migrants do bring great benefits such as providing a wealth of talent in key areas. But some bring harm. A society which does not protect itself against this danger is irresponsible and weak and might in the end help to destroy itself. Just as a nation which neglected its defences might do.

The extraordinary revelations of the New Labour functionary Andrew Neather, that the Blair government had “a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the UK Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural”, provided the onset for this unholy mess the country now finds itself in. Contempt for the common-sense view of migration is endemic in Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.

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