I’m back

Our family week away ended up being a bit more than a week and posting turned out to be nonexistent rather than light.

I didn’t get a chance to go back to the internet cafe in Machynlleth, so I was restricted to using a slow dial-up connection. I can’t believe that I ever used to call anything I did with a dial-up “surfing”; it’s more like wading through mud.

We got back late Monday but I’ve been unable to access the internet until today; some problem with the local server, I think.

I’ve had plenty of other things to do. When I got back I discovered that one of my clients was due in court 2pm Tuesday to answer a civil suit. The problem was they’d dispensed with the services of their lawyers and were relying on me to file a defense. Tuesday morning I helped them prepare a statement and collate some supporting documentation, and we got the papers to court about an hour before the hearing.

Generally, I don’t like working this way. You get to surprise the opposition but you know the judge will give them a short adjournment to read the papers and then postpone the hearing for a couple of weeks. Which is exactly what happened, except we won a partial judgement in our favour and were awarded costs. Not bad, except we’re going to have to go through the whole rigmarole again in two weeks time.

Sometimes, when I look at what lawyers get paid, I think I should charge for this kind of thing, then I remember: I only work for people who can’t afford to pay me.

Word of mouse

I'm posting from an internet cafe in Machynlleth, a market town in rural mid-Wales.

I thought out here I'd be restricted to print media or at best a slow dial-up connection, which is the only reason I bought a copy of the Guardian newspaper this morning.

One story that caught my eye, and which also appears on-line, was the news that rock group Metallica were taking legal action against a Canadian band called Unfaith. Reportedly, the action was taken to prevent other musicians from using the E and F guitar chords.

Lars Ulrich, Metallica's drummer is quoted as saying:

We're not saying we own those two chords, individually - that would be ridiculous. We're just saying that in that specific order, people have grown to associate E, F with our music.

The story was, as the Guardian reports, a hoax and one that caught a lot of people out. It even fooled a few radio stations into playing Unfaith songs to protest Metallica's bevahiour.

The story is a fine example of successful viral marketing or "word of mouse", the impact of which seems to have taken the Canadian band by surprise. As one band member commented:

I'm just annoyed that this satire has done more for us in a day than three years of hard work and door-knocking ever did.

One thing I found a little surprising about the Guardian's report was that, in a story about viral marketing and the power of the internet, they didn't provide a link to an on-line example of the hoax or any of the reactions to it.

Maybe someone should tell the Guardian about linky goodness.

A week away

Mac, the boys and I are going away for a few days, so posting will be light and any e-mails will have to wait until we get back.

We’re going to go and spend the week with some friends in Wales. We’ve been promised some good weather and the boys are keen to get to the beach. If we can find some waves we’ll break out the boards and go play in the surf.

As well as time with friends and days at the beach, we’re hoping to check out some ancient forts and medieval castles. Wales is covered in them.

This time I’d like to see Caerleon, which was once home to Rome’s Second Augustan Legion. Second Son went there on a school trip last year and is keen to go again so he can show us around.

We’ll certainly be visiting Castell y Bere, built by Llewellyn the Great in his stand against the English in the thirteenth century. And we’ll be staying for a time in Machynlleth, once the seat of power of another champion of Welsh independence Owain Glyndwr. Shakespeare buffs will remember that Glyndwr puts in an appearance in the first part of Henry IV.

Anyway, I’ll check in regularly during the week and let you all know what a great time we’re having.

Anti-Americanism

In an essay published last month in Public Interest, James W Ceaser traces the origins of anti-Americanism in European thought and describes how it has evolved and spread to become a powerful and pervasive influence in world affairs.

Ceaser quotes Emmanuel Todd to show the view that many around the world now have of the United States.

A single threat to global instability weighs on the world today: America, which from a protector has become a predator.

And he quotes the French analyst Revel to show the power of anti-Americanism in Europe.

"If you remove anti-Americanism, nothing remains of French political thought today, either on the Left or on the Right." Revel might just as well have said the same thing about German political thought or the thought of almost any Western European country, where anti-Americanism reigns as the lingua franca of the intellectual class.

I could quote and garland it line by line. It’s a work of depth and acuity that offers the best description of anti-Americanism I have yet to read.

If, like those good people in Wisconsin, you are still a little confused about some of the reasons we were attacked that day then you should read it all.

Hope and Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens is a very clever man.

He is an iconoclast and, in some quarters, the hero of the age. He is, as others have described him, a proponent of the dialectic as an agent of social progress and an unyielding critic of the politics of mediocrity.

He is undoubtedly a writer of rare skill.

And yet, I rarely ever read him. His words are too heavily spiced with cynicism for my taste and he makes his cleverness too apparent. But it is only when he offers definitive comment on matters of no real interest to him, like Bob Hope, that I think I see him clearly for what he is.

He reminds me of a cheap huckster, devoid of ideals and empathy, selling wisecracks and fine words to anyone who’s fool enough to listen.

Bob Hope deserved better.

The Passion

There's a report in the New York Times today about Mel Gibson’s new movie “The Passion”.

Mel Gibson is trying to build an audience and a defense for his project by screening it for evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics, right-wing pundits, Republicans, a few Jewish commentators and Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah.

Controversy over Gibson’s latest project was first excited when a copy of the script was leaked to a group of Bible scholars. The group voiced concern that the portrayal of Jews in the movie could unintentionally incite anti-Semitic violence.

Gibson has dismissed the criticism saying that it’s based on an early version of the script. However, the controversy has continued and these pre-screenings to key audiences are designed to mobilize support for the movie ahead of its release.

Of course the screenings have also been a real treat for some of Gibson’s biggest fans. Reverend Ted Haggard, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said

Mel Gibson is the Michelangelo of this generation

So, if the ceiling in the National Cathedral ever needs painting, we know who to call.

Codswallop

It’s a word my grandmother used to use.

I was reminded of it when I read that a group of people in Wisconsin are “convinced that American racism played a role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.”

Organizers say the connection to terrorism is simple: If Americans were more tolerant of racial and ethnic minorities, we would not evoke hostility abroad and would not have been attacked Sept. 11, 2001, by Islamic extremists from the Middle East.

That’s codswallop.

Tuning Spork at Blather Review has a link to the story and a “newsflash for the dimbulbs”.

Fisk for free

Back and to the left is a left-wing Dutch blog that regularly carries links to anti-American stories in the world’s press.

Yesterday I found a link there to a story about Al-Jazeera by Robert Fisk. Normally you have to pay to read Fisk on-line, so I was surprised to find that the link led to what looks like Fisk’s article from Wednesday’s Independent.

I assume that either the Independent provides free access to Fisk's articles in rich text format or it’s been reproduced with the Independent’s permission.

Here’s the introduction to the article in the Independent.

A day after Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary, claimed that the Arabic Al-Jazeera television channel was "inciting violence" and "endangering the lives of American troops" in Iraq, the station's Baghdad bureau chief has written a scathing reply

The reproduced article is here. It’s classic Fisk but a couple of lines really stand out.

Mr Wolfowitz, a right-wing ideologue, is one of the cabal that pushed the US into war

The US proconsul in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said he would shut newspapers or television stations guilty of "incitement to violence" - without explaining what this phrase means.

If anyone knows what the words “incitement”, “violence” and “to” mean, would you please let Fisk know.

Song and dance

Yahoo News reports that a representative of Australia's Aborigines was in London yesterday seeking the return of the remains of more than 450 Aborigines acquired by the British Museum in the nineteenth century.

Unwilling to deal personally with British bureaucracy, Major Sumner appeared on the steps of the Natural History Museum and summoned his ancestors to enter the building and persuade the museum’s management to return the remains.

Sumner, wearing a head-dress of shells and feathers, a scarlet loincloth and daubed in the earthy red and white of his southern Australian clan, lit a pile of leaves and danced around it calling to the four points of the compass.

"I am summoning the ancestors to go into the building and change the minds of the people inside so they will give back our dead," he told Reuters on Thursday.

The museum has consistently refused to return the collection.

Sumner, and fellow Aborigine Bob Weatherall from the Foundation for Aboriginal and Island Research Action, are clearly unhappy with the museum’s stance. Weatherall commented that it was wrong that in the twenty-first century the museum was still using its collection of human remains for research.

Weatherall’s criticism has struck a chord, and many are now calling for the museum to update its image, abandon its commitment to scientific research and “get with the loincloth and feathers thing.”

The ancestors of the museum’s management were yesterday unavailable for comment.