Rosie Wench's Cottage

Individual perception is real. You and I could stand side by side on a hill, looking down into the exact same valley.

What is down there is real, solid and objective.

But you and I will both notice different things.

It's like witnesses to the same event. They watched the same thing happen. But they will give differing accounts, according with what they noticed, when they noticed it etc.

I will respect your perception of a thing, as just that, 'your perception'. This is how You yourself view this thing. I do not have to see it the same way.

If another person's beliefs not only strike us as 'untrue', but also show evidence of doing harm.

The Arab slave trade was much larger and older than the Transatlantic slave trade but the bigotry of low expectations dictates that the Middle East faces no accountability for its sins, argues Joshua Abeles on Facebook:

Monument to slaves in Zanzibar

The West, and especially Israel, are routinely judged by double, if not utopian, standards, while the Middle East, among others, faces none. A lazy moral and intellectual asymmetry almost certaily driven by the bigotry of low expectations.

The Trans-Saharan slave trade was comparable to if not worse than the Transatlantic. 15-18 million Black Africans over 1,300+ years. Transit deaths were exceptionally high. Castration mortality–by the millions–may have been as high as 75%+. All of which helps explain why relatively few descendants of Black Africans exist in the Middle East today. And even now, many Black Arabs are casually referred to as “slave.” There is in fact a neighborhood in Gaza called “al-Abeed” which literally translates to “slave” in Arabic. Crazy right? I also once believed white people invented racism–and slavery.

As many as 1.5 million white Europeans were taken as slaves–the cause of America’s first war in 1801, the Barbary War. Islam conquered the Middle East, North Africa, and much of Europe through forced conversion, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and Dhimmitude. India probably suffered the worst conquest and genocide in human history and was largely ruled by Muslim rulers for over 600 years. Will Durant (of ‘the Story of Philosophy’ fame) estimated as many as 80 million deaths. Yet accusations of imperialism or colonialism are largely only reserved for the west–particularly from our friends on the left. A conversation about responsibility or reparations would be almost laughable, let alone any basic acknowledgment.

Meanwhile, Israel–a nation smaller than New Jersey and the Middle East’s only liberal democracy–is treated as the embodiment of Western sin. No one discusses reparations for the roughly one million Jews robbed and ethnically cleansed from every Arab country after 1948, most of whom fled to Israel. Nor for the twenty million Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities displaced or killed across the region. In 1900, Christians and other minorities made up 20-25% of the population. Today that number is 4-5%.

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Because that's the entire point. Slavery has always been a human failing, a human crime.

None of us should be pointing fingers at each other.

It's textbook 'Let him who is without sin cast the first stone'.

Go back in history and we find slavery with traders, buyers and slaves coming from many different cultures and races.

Our islands are green, damp, cool and warm.

Up here in Northern England, up in Scotland and across in Ireland, especially, it rains a lot. We grumble about it, because that's just us, but we take it in our stride, business as usual.

We can cope when it goes cold, cos we're Hobbits at heart. We can wrap up in cosy knitwear etc, hot drinks, a good book, family and friends by the fire.

Donald and The Duck

A Welsh version - Taffy and The Duck

Part XV from the mural series of the Quest for the Holy Grail

by Edwin Austin Abbey

Back to the Future was released on 3 July 1985.

Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis began working on the script in 1980 and began pitching the idea the fall of that year. By April 1981 they had finished a second draft of the script, which was rejected more than 40 times (multiple times by the same studios). Dejected, Zemeckis agreed to direct Romancing the Stone (1984), whose box office success gave Zemeckis enough clout to direct Back to the Future.

Michael J. Fox was the first choice for the role of Marty McFly, but Fox was under contract with NBC for the series Family Ties, who did not want Fox absent from filming. Eric Stoltz was cast and filming began in November 1984. Zemeckis was unhappy with Stoltz's performance (Stoltz is said to have told him that he was not a comedian and didn't understand why he was cast) but needed to find a replacement before he could fire him. NBC had never told Fox about the offer for the film, and when he was informed, he accepted without even reading the script. Stoltz was fired in January 1985 and all his scenes had to be reshot with Fox, costing 34 days in production and an estimated $4 million. Fox shuttled between the Family Ties set and Back to the Future, often filming both on the same day.

Originally intended for a May release, the film was initially pushed to June, before a July date was set.

Blake, Parry, Elgar.

Believe it,or not, I can still play this on the piano, and organ... despite the huge spread of fingers required for the opening chord!