Well busy

Being well is great but it sure is time-consuming. When I was ill, I had all the time in the world (and no inclination to do anything with it). Now, I'm tied up with life again, there just aren't enough hours in the day.

I don't want much of an extension- an additional three or four hours would be enough. Yep, a 28 hour day would do it.

Three years later...

Ok, so I accidentally deleted my Movable Type installation (don't ask, it's a long story) and I'm back posting here at Blogspot.

Update
Erm..., intermittently. (But you knew that already. Right?)

I'm back

Can't believe I haven't posted for the last three months!

Mind you, it's not like I haven't been busy. Mac and I have been working to stitch the family back together and, having finally got my health back, I've been doing some consultancy work - as well as shopping, cooking, cleaning and looking after the boys.

Still, it's good to be back.

Cows with guns

One of the boys' favorite flash movies right now is "Cows with guns".

Chorus:-

We will fight for bovine freedom
And hold our large heads high.
We will run free with the buffalo
Or die!

Well, it makes a change from "The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny", I suppose.

Viewing prejudice

Bryan Appleyard, writing in the Sunday Times, explains why he's stopped watching BBC television news:-

The corporation is suffused with soft left and hard anti-American prejudices that seep into almost all the news coverage. By the time one gets to Newsnight and sees Gavin Esler treating any old hoodlum or crook with extravagant respect before turning to sneer at some decent American congressman, one can find oneself indulging in that awful, crazed habit of shouting at the TV.

Ancient wisdom

Yield and overcome;
Bend and be straight;
Empty and be full;
Wear out and be new;
Have little and gain;
Have much and be confused.

Lao Tzu

Euston calling

I haven't had time to comment on the Euston Manifesto and I don't really have time today to deal with it at any length, except to say that I regard it as a welcome development.

There is much in the Manifesto that I agree with wholeheartedly and little that I find even mildly contentious, so I ought really to say that not only do I welcome it but also that I broadly support it.

On a personal note, I was very happy to see that it included this rejection of anti-Americanism:-

6) Opposing anti-Americanism.We reject without qualification the anti-Americanism now infecting so much left-liberal (and some conservative) thinking. This is not a case of seeing the US as a model society. We are aware of its problems and failings. But these are shared in some degree with all of the developed world. The United States of America is a great country and nation. It is the home of a strong democracy with a noble tradition behind it and lasting constitutional and social achievements to its name. Its peoples have produced a vibrant culture that is the pleasure, the source-book and the envy of millions. That US foreign policy has often opposed progressive movements and governments and supported regressive and authoritarian ones does not justify generalized prejudice against either the country or its people.

I have noted before that, in certain circles, anti-Americanism has become a prerequisite for social inclusion. I am grateful that the authors of the Manifesto have chosen to publicly repudiate such bigotry.

Small Town Scribbles addresses the issue at length and traces the recent resurgence of anti-Americanism to 9/11 and its aftermath:-

Cast your mind back to the days that followed the September 11th attacks. At first people in the West, I believe, did really feel for America. It was an odd feeling. We are not used to pitying America. But it didn't last. Anti-Americanism was like a virus lying dormant. Very quickly a whole swathe of people came down with it. The press got it first. It started with a certain snideness, a suggestion that America was over-reacting to the attacks, that they were an overly sentimental nation. Sniffy op ed pieces appeared using minimalising terms such as America having got a "bloody nose," callous letters were printed moaning about the amount of coverage the attacks received, or dismissing three thousand deaths because at sometime somewhere else an even greater number were dying of something else.

Before you knew it the virus had mutated and was affecting others you'd have thought were immune to it. Everyday conversations were had about the possibilities of the attacks being a set-up to frame Osama Bin Laden, there was talk of America getting a taste of its own medicine or deserving nothing less than what it got. Whispers of Jewish conspiracies. Eyes rolling at any suggestion that there was a real enemy here. America soon became the bad guy again. Much relief.

And where was all of this coming from, this desperate need to demonise America? Was it coming from all those angry Muslims I keep reading about who apparently carry so much hatred for the country? Nope. Not from my experience. It came from white liberals.

And just to put things in perspective let's play it the other way around. Can you imagine any of the above happening in relation to any other country? Is the Guardian going to print a letter from someone moaning about the media marking the first anniversary of the London attacks in July this year? As it did about the marking of the first anniversary of the American terrorist attacks? Did any columnist call the Madrid attacks a "graze on Spain's knee"? Has anyone said yet the bombings in Bali are insignificant because more people died in the Tsunami?

Read it all.

Bad news

I just got a call from my sister to tell me my mother died last night. I won't be posting for a while.

Angry white voters

In Sunday's Telegraph, Margaret Hodge, employment minister and Labour MP for Barking, says 8 out of 10 white people in her constituency are threatening to vote for the British National Party in next month's local elections.

"They can't get a home for their children, they see black and ethnic minority communities moving in and they are angry," said Mrs Hodge, the employment minister. "When I knock on doors I say to people, 'are you tempted to vote BNP?' and many, many, many - eight out of 10 of the white families - say 'yes'. That's something we have never seen before, in all my years. Even when people voted BNP, they used to be ashamed to vote BNP. Now they are not." Mrs Hodge said the pace of ethnic change in her area had frightened people. "What has happened in Barking and Dagenham is the most rapid transformation of a community we have ever witnessed.

Margaret Hodge isn't the only one who's worried. Jon Cruddas, Dagenham's Labour MP, outlined the scale of the problem in the current issue of Renewal.

Many working class people feel disenfranchised by the Labour government: disproportionately they don’t vote; and many are developing a relationship with the BNP. It is possible that the BNP is on the verge of a political breakthrough. Over the last couple of years its support and membership has risen dramatically. It has 21 councillors, it polled 808,000 votes in the European elections and would have secured several MEPs and London Assembly members were it not for UKIP. At the last general election the BNP saved its deposit in 34 constituencies and has made inroads within some of Labour’s traditional working class communities. In London the BNP polled 4.9 per cent in the Assembly elections (Joseph Rowntree Trust, 2005). In seven wards in the Borough of Barking and Dagenham they polled over 20 per cent. Five council by-elections have taken place over the last 18 months – the BNP has won one and come second in the other four – with an average vote of 35 per cent. At the general election in the Barking constituency they collected 4,916 votes – 16.9 per cent; in Dagenham the figure was 2,870 votes – 9.3 per cent.

Those are worrying numbers and it's not just Labour MPs who should be concerned.

A failure of nerve

From Gilbert Murray's "Five Stages of Greek Religion"

Any one who turns from the great writers of classical Athens, say Sophocles or Aristotle, to those of the Christian era must be conscious of a great difference in tone. There is a change in the whole relation of the writer to the world about him. The new quality is not specifically Christian: it is just as marked in the Gnostics and Mithras worshippers as in the Gospels and the Apocalypse, in Julian and Plotinus as in Gregory and Jerome. It is hard to describe. It is a rise of asceticism, of mysticism, in a sense, of pessimism; a loss of self-confidence, of hope in this life and of faith in normal human effort; a despair of patient inquiry, a cry for infallible revelation; an indifference to the welfare of the state, a conversion of the soul to God. It is an atmosphere in which the aim of the good man is not so much to live justly, to help the society to which he belongs and enjoy the esteem of his fellow creatures; but rather, by means of a burning faith, by contempt for the world and its standards, by ecstasy, suffering, and martyrdom, to be granted pardon for his unspeakable unworthiness, his immeasurable sins. There is an intensifying of certain spiritual emotions; an increase of sensitiveness, a failure of nerve.

Something fishy

Underwater Times reports that scientists in Norway have dscovered a fish that can hold its breath under water. No, really.

The researchers have found that this extraordinary fish can change the structure of its gills to avoid becoming anoxic. In addition its blood has a much higher affinity for oxygen than any other vertebrate, and it makes tranquilizers and produces alcohol when oxygen supplies are limited. These mechanisms allow the fish to survive for days or even months without oxygen depending on the temperature, whilst still maintaining physical activity.

Alcohol and tranquilizers?!

View from Baghdad

Salam Pax sets out Iraq's conundrum:

To achieve a level of security that would allow the coalition forces to go home without leaving a big mess behind them we need money, this money will only come from oil exports and to achieve that level of oil production we need big foreign investment in the maintenance of oil fields but that investment won't come unless the security situation improves.

And that's not going to happen anytime soon.

On a personal note

(I need to get something off my chest. So excuse me while a share a personal narrative.)

My sister, Trish, still lives in the house we mostly grew up in. It’s been the family home since 1922: my grandparents moved in a few months after it was built. My mother was brought up there and, when my parents separated, she brought us to England to live with Nanny and Granpa.

Six years ago, Trish was rummaging through some old papers when she came across a bundle of letters my father had written after we’d left the States. She was shocked when she found them, distraught when she read them and shattered by the truths they pointed to.

Trish and I have since learnt that a lot of the things we’d been told when we were growing up simply weren’t true. In particular, I learnt that I’d been lied to every time I’d asked “Where’s Daddy?” and “Why isn’t Daddy here?” I can remember asking those questions a lot after we came to England. But no one ever told me the truth. And the lies they told weren’t comforting fibs.

“Where’s Daddy?” - “Nobody knows.”
“Why isn’t he here?” – “Ask him that.”
“Why isn’t Daddy here?” - “What! Do you think he cares about you?”

And the big lie, the one that wrapped up all the others in a tight conspiracy, is the lie about how we came to be in England in the first place. No one ever told us the truth about that. We had to find it out for ourselves. And when we did, it broke us.

Does it matter what happened over forty years ago? It does when you’ve been lied to about it your whole life. It matters very much: because trust matters, because respect matters and because truth matters. And, most importantly, because I was taught that those things matter by people who lied to me for years.

The truth is my sister and I were abducted.

How do you come to terms with something like that? I really don’t know. But I'm fed up of suffering in silence.

Legal redress

Right, that's it! The next person who shouts "Yankee go home" at me is going to be in serious trouble.

Modern Britain

The BBC reports that police in Greater Manchester are prosecuting a 10 year-old boy for racist remarks he is alleged to have made in the playground.

Climate of opinion

Philip Stott takes a look at the scientific consensus on apocalytpic climate change that obtained in the 1970s. Remember "global cooling": the idea that a new Ice Age was on the way?

'Global cooling' and 'global warming' represent classic examples of how Barthesian myths, and potentially dangerous grand narratives, gain ascendancy, depending on the political priorities of the age, always, of course, aided and abetted by an uncritical media and apocalyptic journalism of the type espoused by The Independent.

Read the whole thing.

Shakespeare trouble

Bristol theatre company "Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory" is in severe financial difficulties following poor ticket sales for its recent production of Titus Andronicus.

According to Andrew Hilton, the company's artistic director, SATTF is facing bankruptcy and will be unable to complete the current run of Love's Labours Lost unless audience numbers improve. In the meantime, the company has launched a public appeal for donations in an attempt to stave off collapse.

In an interview with the BBC, Hilton seemed surprised that the company had failed to attract an audience for Titus Andronicus.

"Theatre is such a fickle business, but it's hard to know what has happened.

I suppose we've become something of a local institution, and so rather than people coming to see both plays in a season as they did when we were a 'novelty', they are picking one or the other.

What we hope to make people understand is that we are not a tap they can turn on and off - either they want us here or they don't, and if they want us here, then they have to attend.

We don't get public funding, so there is no-one else around to pick up the bill - there is no margin for error."

With all due respect to Andrew Hilton, who is a talented and imaginative director, I don't think it's surprising that nobody was really interested in seeing Titus Andronicus. It's not one of Shakespeare's better known plays (this was its first Bristol production since 1978), it's not easily accessible to modern audiences and (compared to Shakespeare's other works) it's just not that good a play. In other words, finding an audience for Titus Andronicus was always going to be a difficult proposition.

So why, when there was "no margin for error", did SATTF decide to bet the company's future on a revival of Titus Andronicus?

I don't know, but I'd guess that Hilton's view of SATTF as a "local institution" might have something to do with it. This idea of theatre as "institution" tends to foster a mentality that derides the need for audience research, marketing and promotion. For the theatre-as-institution crowd, such things are largely unnecessary - "stage it and they will come" they say, adding (sotto voce) "if they know what's good for them".

To my mind, what Andrew Hilton (and others at SATTF) need to understand is that audiences "are not a tap they can turn on and off" - if they want an audience, they need to be prepared to entertain. Titus Andronicus was a turn off.

I hope SATTF can get back on track - they've done some excellent work in the past and I'm looking forward to seeing their production of "Love's Labours Lost". But it sounds like I better hurry.

If it's Tuesday...

... this must be Portland.

Michael Totten is back from his travels.

Illegal aliens

Gene at Harry’s Place contributes to the debate in the US over illegal immigration – specifically what to do with the estimated 11-12 million illegals that have already found their way in.

On a practical level, there is no way to deport every illegal immigrant and hermetically seal the 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

Agreed.

No matter how they came to the US, law-abiding and employed immigrants should have the chance to become American citizens.

Nice idea in principle - but in practice, it risks making illegal immigration a valid route to citizenship. Some kind of amnesty makes a lot more sense than mass deportation (both practically and morally) but it doesn’t solve the problem.

Of course in the sort of world for which those of us on the Left ought to be striving, the huge gap between rich and poor countries which is the main cause of immigration would not exist. But that world may be some distance in the future.

And, in the meantime?

Do illegal immigrants depress the wages of US workers at the low end of the economic scale? Probably. They are of course easier to exploit because, for obvious reasons, it's harder for them to complain about being denied the minimum wage (as pathetically low as that is), overtime pay, etc. Giving them legal status would at least compel employers to meet minimum federal and state standards on wages and hours.

Illegal immigrants are indeed easier to exploit, but simply giving them "legal" status won't put an end to illegal and exploitative employment practices.

If the US had been able to effectively “compel employers to meet minimum federal and state standards” the problem wouldn’t have arisen in the first place. Given the failure to enforce existing labor regulations, it seems fanciful to assume that a change in legislation will necessarily have the effect of improving workers’ conditions generally.

The effect of an amnesty for undocumented workers and the offer of a route to citizenship will put those workers who benefit from it in the same competitive position as the rest of the US labor force. In other words, it will still be profitable for businesses to employ people who are willing to work illegally.

The US has porous borders and a poor record of enforcing employment laws in the sectors that employ migrant workers. An amnesty (involving a guest worker program and a path to citizenship) may be the right thing to do, but it won’t stop illegal immigration and it won’t stop the use of cheap, illegal labor.

Fruit cakes and loonies

ITN News reports:-

David Cameron has lashed out at the UK Independence Party (Ukip) labelling them "fruit cakes, loonies and closet racists".

Ukip leaders immediately demanded Mr Cameron issue a full apology after the remarks were made during a live radio phone-in, saying they did not mind being branded "fruit cakes and loonies" but rejected being called racists.

Erm..., ok.

Agitpop

Glenn Reynolds at commentisfree links to this pop video of "The Right Brothers" performing "Bush Was Right".

Somehow, I don't think it'll catch on.

Space juice

From ABC News:

Astronomers say they have spotted a cloud of alcohol in deep space that measures 463 billion kilometres across, a finding that could shed light on how giant stars are formed from primordial gas.

The God question

In my experience, when people ask if you believe in God, what they really want to know is whether or not you believe in the same god they do. Of course, if it's an atheist asking the question, they're probably just setting you up - if you say "yes", they'll take it as an invitation to tell you how ignorant you are.

So, by and large, I don't take the question seriously - I really can't see the sense in it - though I appreciate some people do.

Sam Harris (author of “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”) clearly does take the question seriously. And, in "An Atheist Manifesto" he sets out his stall.

One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the 21st century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns--about ethics, spiritual experience and the inevitability of human suffering--in ways that are not flagrantly irrational. Nothing stands in the way of this project more than the respect we accord religious faith. Incompatible religious doctrines have balkanized our world into separate moral communities--Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc.--and these divisions have become a continuous source of human conflict. Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past.

So, what's the solution? For Harris, it seems, the answer lies in some grand public inquisition:-

[T]he 260 million Americans (87% of the population) who claim to never doubt the existence of God should be obliged to present evidence for his existence and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day.

If this is meant to be a serious suggestion then I'm wrong to call it blustering rhetoric, but the idea of putting God on trial for Human Rights abuse is neither original nor realistic, and it seems unnecessarily confrontational. But far be it from me to get in the way when Harris is in full swing.

Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is--and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.

To which I would add: Only a certain type of atheist imagines that it's helpful to liken religious believers to deluded narcissists, sectarian bigots and brainwashed morons. In other words, the Atheist Manifesto does little to advance the dialogue that Harris believes is so desparately important. His Manifesto is a confused diatribe that holds religion to be the root of all evil in the world - this is "obvious" to Harris, which is presumably why he makes no attempt to substantiate the charge. Instead, he simply raises Atheism aloft as the one, true way.

Atheism is nothing more than a commitment to the most basic standard of intellectual honesty: One’s convictions should be proportional to one’s evidence. Pretending to be certain when one isn’t--indeed, pretending to be certain about propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable--is both an intellectual and a moral failing. Only the atheist has realized this. The atheist is simply a person who has perceived the lies of religion and refused to make them his own.

So, according to Harris, atheists are right and everyone else is an intellectual and moral failure. And he's saying religions are divisive!? Yeesh! I hate to think what he'd make of Grapefruitism.

(Hat tip: Ophelia Benson at Notes and Comments)

Rocket torpedo

Zoe Brain has the lowdown on that new "super torpedo" the Iranians have been showing off recently. Apparently, it's a version of the Russian Shkvall underwater rocket - an ingenious device, to be sure, but not one that greatly increases the threat to US naval forces in the area.

A modest proposal

In her opinion piece in today's Times, Caitlin Moran sets forth her ideas on gender issues and abortion in India.

Moran believes that sexism is the result of women being undervalued by society. She also believes that "market forces can be the resolution of many cultural problems". Combining these two untethered thoughts, she proceeds to claim that sexism can be combatted by limiting the supply of women. In India, she suggests, the answer lies in greatly increasing the number of abortions.

Sex-selection abortions — illegal, and often dangerous — are still a massive fact of Indian culture. Because of the dowry tradition, a baby girl is viewed as an economic burden. Additionally, her economic worth is lost after marriage, as she then becomes part of her husband’s family.

Campaigners claim that the first step towards raising the status of women in India will be the eradication of sex-selection abortion, which the Indian Medical Association estimates might run as high as five million terminations a year.

Personally, I disagree. I think the best way to raise the status of women in India would be to legalise sex-selection abortion, and allow as many of them as are requested.

Is she serious?

Thankless tasks

Yesterday, the Times published a letter from a number of academics in support of Frank Ellis the suspended Leeds university lecturer.

Sunny at Pickled Politics took a look at the backgrounds of those involved - he didn't come away with a good impression: "I knew that arguing for his freedom of speech would put me on the side of racists, but it doesn’t matter."

He's right - it doesn't matter, but it is irksome.

Ratting and reratting

Talking of Fools' Day jokes, neo-neocon almost had me with this one:-

Yes, it's official: neo-neocon is returning to her roots and becoming a liberal Democrat once more. I'm not sure what to rename the blog: perhaps "neo-exneocon?"

But I'm not going to worry about nomenclature at this point. In fact, I'm not going to worry about anything. I'm going to stick my head in the sand and put my fingers in my ears (although that might be difficult to do simultaneously) and I will Whistle a Happy Tune, as long as I don't get sand in my mouth.

Thankfullly, normal sevice has now been resumed.

National Service

When I first came across this story on Saturday, I thought it was a Fools' Day joke - sadly, not.

David Lammy (Labour MP and Minister for Culture) wants to reintroduce some form of compulsory national service for Britain's youth.

[W]e need to focus on youth, broadening the attachments that young people can form through exposure to a more diverse range of experiences and encounters. This is partly about education, but there are also many opportunities beyond the school gates.

For example, we should seize the emerging cross-party consensus to create a national service scheme for young people, building a new institution to provide fulfilling, customised experiences for every young person.

Is Lammy just bigging up one of his pet ideas or is there really a growing consensus on this?

Weekend reading

Kenan Malik: multiculturalism and the road to terror.

Amartya Sen: Why religious identity isn't destiny.

Susan Blackmore: Waking from the Meme Dream.

Ralph Ellis: Imagery of the self and narcissism.

Amazon meander

Several months ago, I ordered a copy of "Voice and the Actor" from Amazon UK. A few weeks later, I got an e-mail from Amazon telling me my order had been delayed and I should expect delivery to take 4-6 weeks. Several weeks after that, I got another e-mail telling me there'd been a further delay - delivery would take another 4-6 weeks.

At that point, I mailed Amazon to tell them the only reason I wasn't cancelling my order was because I wanted to see just how bad their service levels could get. (I was real polite, too). A while after, they mailed to say they'd cancelled my order.

Last time I looked, Amazon.co.uk were still offering the book for sale: "usually dispatched within 24 hours". I guess they just didn't want my custom.

Today, I found a copy of "Voice and the Actor" in a local charity shop. It cost me £1. Of course, I had to ask. "Oh, yes," she said, "we've had that one on the shelf a good while now. Months, I expect."

Parody's Place

Harry's had the decorators in.

The politics of terror

At commentisfree: Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyeh sets out Hamas' position on Israel: "A just peace or no peace".

No plan will ever work without a guarantee, in exchange for an end to hostilities by both sides, of a total Israeli withdrawal from all the land occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem; the release of all our prisoners; the removal of all settlers from all settlements; and recognition of the right of all refugees to return

If Israel refuses to accept these terms then, Haniyeh warns, Hamas will continue its struggle using "all available means" - unless Israel capitulates, there will be no end to terror.

For those who think the Palestinians can be deflected from this course by Western pressure and further negotiations:-

The message from Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to the world powers is this: talk to us no more about recognising Israel's "right to exist" or ending resistance until you obtain a commitment from the Israelis to withdraw from our land and recognise our rights.

Haniyeh notes that Hamas was freely elected and now legitimately represents the Palestinian people:-

If we are boycotted in spite of this democratic choice - as we have been by the US and some of its allies - we will persist, and our friends have pledged to fill the gap. We have confidence in the peoples of the world, record numbers of whom identify with our struggle. This is a good time for peace-making - if the world wants peace.

So, if the world wants peace from Hamas and their allies around the world, the Israelis must be made to surrender their state. The only alternative the terrorists have to offer is endless war.

Some choice, huh!

The dating game

PooterGeek returns today to the subject of British dating rituals - or rather, non-dating rituals, since he’s talking about women who agree to dates and then don’t turn up. He also points out (for those who may not have realized) that his original post on the subject wasn’t a heartfelt plea: “It was cynical, ironic, chippy, mocking, self-mocking. Almost everything I write here is. I wasn’t looking for a date”.

It seems some people thought he was. I wonder if I might have inadvertently encouraged that impression by my attempt at humour in this post. (Yes, I know, it’s not half as funny as the stuff PooterGeek writes. What can I say? I’m doing my best with a bad brain.)

In any case, Damian is making a serious point, and one that (regardless of any misunderstanding) has obviously touched a nerve with a lot of people.

That yoga thing

For a few years in my twenties, I devoted myself to the practice of zazen and yoga - I recently mentioned it in my Normblog profile. But I've only just realized that someone reading that might get the idea that being "devoted to yoga" involved me spending a lot of time contorted in bizarre postures.

No. When I said "the practice of yoga", I wasn't talking about physical exercise. I know some people dedicate themselves to practicing physical yoga: they teach yoga classes, write books about it and talk up the benefits. But that's not at all the same thing as being "devoted to the practice of yoga".

When people in the West think of yoga, they mostly think of hatha yoga, specifically the asanas (postures). Diligently practicing the asanas might promote good health and emotional well-being, but that's not really the point.

In the West, hatha yoga has been taken out of context and commodified. Isolated from the body of knowledge that gives it sense and purpose, it becomes nothing more than ritual exercise.

And that's not something I've ever been devoted to.

On human rights

"You cannot defend humanity without defending its right to speak and express itself." Maryam Namazie

Religious refugee

From the Independent:

Italy is considering granting asylum to Abdul Rahman, the Afghan man who was released from jail yesterday in Kabul, where he had faced the death penalty for converting to Christianity.

He was staying in a safe house last night after prosecutors dropped the case against him under intense international pressure. But Mr Rahman will have to flee the country for his own safety, after several leading Muslim clerics called on Afghans to kill him.

No sign of Global Civility there, then.

Acting time

One of the set books on my acting course is John Barton's "Playing Shakespeare" - originally a series of televised workshops he did with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

In one chapter, where he's talking about the dangers of being too earnest with the text (Shakespeare's words are to be "searched and savoured" not solemnified) he perfectly illustrates his point by having two actors play out the following scene taken from the Cambridge Footlights of 1981. (In the original Footlights skit, Stepehn Fry played the Director, Hugh Laurie the Actor.)

DIRECTOR: All right let’s start at the beginning shall we?
ACTOR: Right, yeh.
DIRECTOR: What’s the word, what’s the word, I wonder, that Shakespeare decides to begin his sentence with here?
ACTOR: Er, ‘Time’ is the first word.
DIRECTOR: Time, Time.
ACTOR: Yep.
DIRECTOR: And how does Shakespeare decide to spell it, Hugh?
ACTOR: T-I-M-E.
DIRECTOR: T-I?
ACTOR: M.
DIRECTOR: M-E.
ACTOR: Yep.
DIRECTOR: And what sort of spelling of the word is that?
ACTOR: Well, it’s the ordinary spelling.
DIRECTOR: It’s the ordinary spelling, isn’t it? It’s the conventional spelling. So why, out of all the spellings he could have chosen, did Shakespeare choose that one, do you think?
ACTOR: Well, um, because it gives us time in an ordinary sense.
DIRECTOR: Exactly, well done, good boy. Because it gives us time in an ordinary, conventional sense.
ACTOR: Oh, right.
DIRECTOR: So, Shakespeare has given us time in a conventional sense. But he’s given us something else, Hugh. Have a look at the typography. What do you spy?
ACTOR: Oh, it’s got a capital T.
DIRECTOR: Shakespeare’s T is very much upper case there, Hugh, isn’t it? Why?
ACTOR: Cos it’s the first word in the sentence?
DIRECTOR: Well I think that’s partly it. But I think there’s another reason too. Shakespeare has given us time in a conventional sense – and time in an abstract sense.
ACTOR: Right, yes.
DIRECTOR: All right? Think your voice can convey that, Hugh?
ACTOR: I hope so.
DIRECTOR: I hope so too. All right. Give it a go.
ACTOR: Just the one word?
DIRECTOR: Just the one word for the moment.
ACTOR: Yep.
(He howls the word)
DIRECTOR: Hugh, Hugh, Hugh, Hugh. Where do we gather from?
ACTOR: Oh, the buttocks.
DIRECTOR: Always the buttocks. Gather from the buttocks. Thank you.
ACTOR: Time!
DIRECTOR: What went wrong there, Hugh?
ACTOR: Um, I don’t know. I got a bit lost in the middle actually.

Academic freedom

Following the suspension of Frank Ellis from his job as a lecturer at Leeds University for allegedly propagating racist views, I can't help wondering whether those friends of education who sought his removal might now move on to expose and condemn the divergent views expressed by other members of the faculty.

In any case, the message to academics is clear: Be careful what you say - it might cost you your job.

We're all doomed

Mad Bun is deconstructing reality, again. And this time, not even Norm can save us!

Spiked on speech

Brendan O'Neill at Spiked (yes, I know, it's Living Marxism in drag) has some thoughts on last Saturday's March for Free Expression.

An extract:

Saturday's rally reminded me of the dangers of defining free speech legalistically. Some seemed to see freedom of speech as something that the authorities must protect and promote, when to my mind freedom of speech means the authorities butting out of our conversations and correspondence, and all of us having the right to say, write, think and hear what we want without state intervention. At one stage Tatchell called on Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair to protect people from the 'intimidation' of religious fundamentalists. Five minutes later the organisers announced, to loud boos, that a protester's placard had been confiscated by the cops because it reproduced one of those silly Danish cartoons. But perhaps the police were simply protecting Muslims from the 'intimidation' of their secular critics? If you give the police an inch of moral authority on the free speech issue, they will take a mile of liberties. That's the cops for you.

Indeed it is and, true to form, the police have now summonsed the lone protester who displayed the cartoons.

What do I think of free speech in Europe? It would be a nice idea.

Smoking in public

In today's Times, David Aaronovitch has some difficulty asesssing the nature of smokers' rights.

There was a ten-second period when I thought about resenting this ban on behalf of the smokers who currently exist, and in memory of the smoker in me who was overcome (after a decade of titanic struggle) 13 years ago. What I couldn’t do, however, was to construct an objection on the basis of political philosophy. In other words, I couldn’t proceed from a generalised concept of the relationship between the individual and society in order to solve the question: “Should people be allowed to smoke in public places?”

Normblog offers a helping hand: "preventing people from smoking anywhere in public, even if they could do so harmlessly vis-à-vis others, is paternalistic and illiberal."
Indeed it is.

A date for Damian

This blog wholeheartedly endorses the efforts made by Kerron Cross to find a date for PooterGeek's Damian Counsell. (The background to Damian's plight can be found here.)

There are, at present, no plans for either a petition or a demonstration in support of Damian. Nevertheless, those of you wishing to "do your bit" for the campaign (women in particular) might like to consider writing a letter of support using the following form of words (or some variation thereof).

Dear (name of single female friend),

Did you know Damian Counsell is single? No, I couldn't believe it either, but he is! And he's not only single - he's very, very eligible: intelligent, well-educated, highly amusing and solvent.

You said you were looking for Mr Right, well I've found him for you! Seriously, you really should contact him: e-mail him, leave a comment on his blog, anything - just get in touch. But you better be quick - he's gone public with this and you don't want to get left behind (again). Let's face it, none of us is getting any younger.

I tell you, if I wasn't in a relationship right now, I'd be straight in there.

Yours etc

Thank you in anticipation of your support.

Nonmutual respect

In discussing aspects of Anthony Appiah's "Ethics of Identity", Ophelia Benson quotes Martha Nussbaum's views on mutual respect in a pluralistic society:

I agree with Rawls such respect requires (in the public sphere at least) not showing up the claims of religion as damaging, and not adopting a public conception of truth and objectivity according to which such claims are false.

Ophelia Benson doesn't agree, such a position necessarily involves "surrender to the theocrats, who have no truck with 'delicate regard' for other people's religious much less non-religious doctrines".

She's right, of course. Attempting to accommodate myriad superstitions in the public space involves abandoning rational concepts like truth and objectivity in favor of the wilful acceptance of ignorance and religious bigotry.

"Global Civility"? No, thank you.

Indigenous rights

The Manchester Anthropology Working Papers series was established in 2004 with the aim of bringing current perspectives in Social Anthropology to the attention of a wider audience. The series is intended to promote discussion and debate, and features a mix of seminar papers, lectures by visiting scholars and the informal presentation of current research.

Of particular note is John Gledhill's - "Beyond Speaking Truth to Power: Anthropological entanglements with multicultural and indigenous politics" (pdf) which looks at the problematic role of anthropologists in representing the claims of indigenous movements.

[T]hese problems have been exacerbated by the fact that specific types of “pluralism” have now become integral to the redefined state projects of the neo-liberal era, and are, in a closely integrated way, also frequently integral to the strategies of political and economic forces that have far from “progressive” social agendas. We need to ask how far greater “pluralism" relates to both conscious tactics of “fragmentation” of popular movements and how far “fragmentation” is a bottom up response to changing socio-economic conditions that need to remain at the centre of our analyses.

The paper is part of an ongoing discussion on minority rights and the use of the term "indigenous", and includes a brief summary of Adam Kuper's critique of the indigenous rights movement.

Sunday roundabout

Marie Phillips is the subject of this week's Normblog profile.

The Religious Policeman gives his views on yesterday's March for Free Expression.

Tim Worstall posts Britblog Roundup #58.

Shuggy looks at blog-stalkers: if you have the word 'watch' at the end of your blog's title, you really "should consider the possibility that you've lost your goddam mind."

James Lileks gets one up on the video store guy and it's payback time for Captain Kirk in this week's podcast from the Diner.

And finally,

At Language Log, a budding linguist offers an innovative solution to the person/people problem.

Whatshisname

(This is the second in an occasional series. The first post can be found here.)

Is it juggling week or something? I've recently seen a lot of links to Chris Bliss' juggling finale and PooterGeek pointed out this parody by champion juggler Jason Garfield. All of which got me wondering: whatever happened to Wack and Zane?

Who? Ok, they weren't nationally famous or anything, just a couple of guys I used to know from way back when - jugglers from the Bristol comedy scene in the '80s, from Viv Stanshall's time at the Old Profanity Showboat.

They used to put on variety reviews there - an eclectic mix of comedy, performance and outright insanity. They even roped me in for one show: I refused point blank to be the compaire but I did agree to do a short set. I was billed as "Tall Slim American Poet" - I kind of liked that.

So, whatever happened to Wack and Zane? I knew that one of them had gone off to become a teacher (not sure if that was Zane or Wack). Yesterday evening, I found the other one - the American one - online.

Last time I saw Gary Parker, he was playing Piers in the first series of Chef!



That was over ten years ago. And it looks like he's still doing ok: he has his own IMDB page and recent writing credits include As if and Totally Frank. He's a talented guy.

Me? I'm still trying to make the transition from performance poet to dramatic actor. Given another twenty years, who knows what might happen!?

The wild rover

Oxblog's Patrick Belton is in Karachi, and doing rather well.

My new hosts, taken by my fetching shalwar kameez and resulting instant Pakistani credibility, have quite kindly opened their rolodex to me, with result I will now scurry off and talk with a large number of military men and journalists. I now somehow know people in Pakistan. I love my life.

Given that, one hopes my entire spotty journalistic career doesn't take the form of an extended suicide note.

Indeed. As Sergeant Esterhaus used to say: Hey, let's be careful out there.

Today in London

The BBC reports that the March for Free Expression passed off without a hitch, despite concerns from some quarters that the demonstration would be hijacked by racist extremists.

That never seemed a likely scenario, but the hysterical clamour against the march (the Islamic Human Rights Commission called it "a provocation to 1.6 billion Muslims") led to organizer Peter Risdon asking people not to display posters of the Mohammed cartoons.

This was too much for some, particularly those who had joined the campaign to show solidarity not only with Denmark but also perhaps with Jyllands-Posten. Whatever other motives may have been in play, I suspect a number of people who initially supported the march did so because they were disappointed that none of the British press had republished the cartoons. For them, the whole point of the demonstration was to display the contentious images - they weren't bothered if people were going to be offended by it.

I'm strongly in favor of freedom of expression and I would have liked to have been in London today. I supported the campaign as a mark of solidarity with Denmark and because I believe the rise of political Islam is a threat to freedom. But (as I've said before) I'm not interested in waving posters featuring drawings of Mohammed. At best, the cartoons are a distraction; at worst, they are a dangerously divisive issue.

Peter Risdon's eleventh-hour conversion to this point of view is to be welcomed. But, given the context of the campaign, it's hardly surprising that some of his erstwhile supporters regard it as a betrayal of principle.

UPDATE
Perry de Havilland at Samizdata has photos of the rally.

Against totalitarianism

From Alan Johnson's Camus' Catch: How democracies can defeat Totalitarian Political Islam featured in the March issue of Democratiya.

The fact is we are not engaged in a 'war on terror', any more than World War Two was a 'war on blitzkrieg'. We are engaged in a conflict with Totalitarian Political Islam and our enemy uses not only terror but also 'popular' riot, electoral politics, and ideological warfare. The rhetoric of a 'war on terror' gets us thinking about security solutions. Good, security is important. But we need, above all, a political analysis of a political movement in order to develop a political response.

Read the whole thing.

Australian graffiti

Banksy has a comment piece in today's Guardian on the removal of Melbourne's street art as the city cleaned itself up to host the Commonwealth Games.

Melbourne is the proud capital of street painting with stencils. Its large, colonial-era walls and labyrinth of back alleys drip with graffiti that is more diverse and original than any other city in the world. Well, that was until a few weeks ago, when preparations for the Commonwealth games brought a tidal wave of grey paint, obliterating years of unique and vibrant culture overnight.

This may seem like no great tragedy to readers of the Daily Mail, but Melbourne's graffiti scene is a key factor in its status as the continent's hothouse of creativity and wilful individualism.

If you live in Melbourne, you can check out the street art in your neighborhood here.

Who says everything has to be gray?

Random quote

The idea that Americans are stupid is a piece of racial condescension of which Europeans are often guilty.

David Hare

Random picture

Hizb who?

Scott at the Daily Ablution reviews press coverage of the Shabina Begum case, highlighting the involvement of radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

It seems a number of newspapers have mentioned HuT's role in the dispute but the Guardian has never reported on the connection. That does seem strange, particularly since (as Scott points out) Dilpazier Aslam, the Guardian reporter who covered the court case, was himself a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir.

But who knows? Maybe Aslam never mentioned HuT's involvement because he didn't want to compromise his integrity as a member of that organization.

Integrity? No, that's not the right word.

Consider and discuss

"Most blogs have nothing to say." Oliver Kamm.

In the name of God

Abdul Rahman is to be put on trial for his life in Afghanistan, charged with denying Islam. The evidence against him is his self-professed conversion to Christianity. He has refused to renounce his faith even though he faces the death penalty.

The Times interviewed the judge who will be trying the case:

"The Attorney General is emphasising he should be hung. It is a crime to convert to Christianity from Islam. He is teasing and insulating his family by converting," Judge Alhaj Ansarullah Mawlawy Zada, who will be trying his case, told The Times.

"He was a Muslim for 25 years more than he has been a Christian. We will request him to become a Muslim again. In your country two women can marry I think that is very strange. In this country we have the perfect constitution, it is Islamic law and it is illegal to be a Christian and it should be punished," said the judge.

If Judge Zada, who is head of the Primary Court, passes the death penalty under Afghan law, Mr Rahman still has two avenues of appeal, the Provincial Court and the Supreme Court. The death penalty then has to be ratified by President Hamid Karzai.

To demand that someone be put to death for their beliefs is simply and self-evidently evil. The outcome of this grotesque prosecution is not (as the Times report goes on to suggest) a test of religious freedom in Afghanistan. The country failed that test when Abdul Rahman was arrested for his "crime".

The Lobby

I turned to the essay by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt: "The Israel Lobby" with some interest and high hopes. For some reason, I imagined it was going to be an insider's view of the hardball tactics employed by Washington's lobbyists. It isn't.

It starts to stink from the opening paragraph (and it doesn't get any better).

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?

Gee, I don't know, why is that?

The explanation is the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby.

You mean the Jews, right?

We use ‘the Lobby’ as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. This is not meant to suggest that ‘the Lobby’ is a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on certain issues.

Yeah, I get all that, but you're talking about the Jews, right?

Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby, because Israel is not a salient issue for many of them.

See, I told you it was the Jews! "Not all" of them but most of them.

In a 2004 survey, for example, roughly 36 per cent of American Jews said they were either ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ emotionally attached to Israel.

But the rest of them, according to Walt and Mearsheimer, are all part of "the Lobby". Get it? Traitors the lot of them, conspiring together to compromise US security in the service of Israeli interests. Well, who'd have thunk it!?

Come to think of it - isn't this just a cheap rip-off of "The Protocols"?

Lee Smith (guest posting at Michael Totten's blog) finds it hard to believe that Walt and Mearsheimer were sober when they wrote this nonsense - I think he's being far too charitable.

More informed comment here and here.

Guilt by association

Alan Johnson of Democratiya has pulled out of the "March for Free Expression" and Maryam Namazie has received a letter from the Alliance for Workers' Liberty calling for her not to speak at the demonstration because it would mean sharing a platform with the Freedom Association.

As Scribbles notes, it's all getting rather tangled. But what is to be done.?

Liberty and religion

From the conclusion to Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus:

I have thus shown:-

That it is impossible to deprive men of the liberty of saying what they think.

That such liberty can be conceded to every man without injury to the rights and authority of the sovereign power, and that every man may retain it without injury to such rights, provided that he does not presume upon it to the extent of introducing any new rights into the state, or acting in any way contrary, to the existing laws.

That every man may enjoy this liberty without detriment to the public peace, and that no inconveniences arise there from which cannot easily be checked.

That every man may enjoy it without injury to his allegiance.

That laws dealing with speculative problems are entirely useless.

Lastly, that not only may such liberty be granted without prejudice to the public peace, to loyalty, and to the rights of rulers, but that it is even necessary, for their preservation. For when people try to take it away, and bring to trial, not only the acts which alone are capable of offending, but also the opinions of mankind, they only succeed in surrounding their victims with an appearance of martyrdom, and raise feelings of pity and revenge rather than of terror.

Uprightness and good faith are thus corrupted, flatterers and traitors are encouraged, and sectarians triumph, inasmuch as concessions have been made to their animosity, and they have gained the state sanction for the doctrines of which they are the interpreters.

Hence they arrogate to themselves the state authority and rights, and do not scruple to assert that they have been directly chosen by God, and that their laws are Divine, whereas the laws of the state are human, and should therefore yield obedience to the laws of God - in other words, to their own laws.

Everyone must see that this is not a state of affairs conducive to public welfare.

Wherefore, as we have shown […] the safest way for a state is to lay down the rule that religion is comprised solely in the exercise of charity and justice, and that the rights of rulers in sacred, no less than in secular matters, should merely have to do with actions, but that every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks.

Reading Marx

Norm Geras gives 10 reasons for reading Karl Marx - they're all good ones.

[Oops! Almost forget - obligatory disclaimer for the folks back home: I am not now, nor have I ever been..., etc etc.]

On choosing allies

Judy at Adloyada raises a number of issues relating to the March for Free Expression in London this coming Saturday. She believes that supporting the demonstration is problematic, partly because of the agendas of some of the people and organizations involved.

She is right to raise the issue - I share much of Judy’s unease at the involvement of the Freedom Association. And I too am concerned to avoid taking part in a xenophobic or provocative event. But I am also worried that, in giving voice to concerns about people’s underlying motivations, our suspicions may warrant us to find grave fault with little justification.

In her post, Judy describes Peter Risdon, one of the event’s instigators, as “a hard line English right wing nationalist, with a blanket anti-Muslim stance”. To underline this impression (gleaned from reading his blog), she makes a couple of contentions.

Firstly, that “he quotes extensively from Al-Ghurabaa, as if they were typical of Muslim opinion.”

It is clear that Peter doesn’t believe Islam to be a Good Thing (but he does distinguish between the faith and its followers) and he is implacably opposed to Islamic fundamentalism. He certainly focuses on the outpourings of Al-Ghurabaa – condemning their ranting and raving is central to the purpose of his blog – but I couldn’t find any basis for Judy’s assertion that these are presented “as if they were typical of Muslim opinion”. Quite the opposite in fact: he focuses on them because they are extremists, not because he believes they represent majority Muslim opinion.

Secondly, Judy notes: “He also quotes very extensively from what he acknowledges are the emphatically racist views of the young Winston Churchill of the 1890s on the subject of Islam, and the supposed mentality and potential of Arabs and Africans.”

Yes, in one post, he did quote the young Winston. That post was in response to quotations from Churchill by Al-Ghurabaa and Thabo Mbeki - Peter responded in kind, and was highly critical of Churchill's views on race. Context isn’t everything but it seems important here.

It is particularly important since Judy seems to me to be implying that Peter Risdon is not only a racist, he is also devious and dishonest:

Disingenuously, he states that he deplores the racism from which he quotes at such great length, whilst praising what he sees as Churchill's insights into the nature of Islam”

Implicit accusations of this sort, supported by selective references, may serve some purpose, but they don't really clarify the issues. I don’t know Peter Risdon except through his involvement in this campaign. It may be that in other contexts he has made his views apparent on a whole range of subjects. But from reading his blog, I don’t get the idea that he’s a racist - or even, for that matter, "a hardline right wing English nationalist".

Of course, that may just be indicative of some deficiency on my part. In which case, I imagine I’ll be trampled in the rush to judgement.

Duck on a pond

DeskDuck: "the only duck swimming about on a pond sort of thing you'll ever need".

Three years on

Amid a flurry of mea culpas from various people over their support for the invasion of Iraq (most notably from Johann Hari), Armed Liberal at Winds of Change says it for me:

Knowing everything I know today, I would have made the same decision three years ago - to support the invasion.

If you think I was wrong, fine. If you think I've got blood on my hands as a result of my support for the war, fine. But, if you supported the invasion three years ago and have now turned against it because the aftermath has been a bloody mess, don't try and tell me I'm the one who was naive.

Britblog Roundup

Tim Worstall has the latest Britblog Roundup, including Jackie Danicki's take on Oliver Kamm's Times column about blogging - she really didn't like it at all. Tim thinks the column may have been an example of Kamm's "very very dry wit" - if so, it was too dry for me.

Also via the Roundup: Mind the Gap reports on an anti-rape campaign desperately in need of some awareness. And it looks like Judy at Adloyada had some people fooled (at least momentarily) with news of Seamus Milne's departure from the Guardian - still, it's something to look forward to.

Grant in Israel

Via Harry's Place: Linda Grant in the Guardian explaining to a young Israeli that many Europeans don't accept a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"You should explain to them about how Israel was created by the UN, two countries, one Arab, one Jewish. It's all in black and white."

Yes, well, I went on, there's the view that the UN had no right to do that against the will of Palestinians, it was a mistake that needs to corrected. I could see now, that it was as if I was telling him that there were people who thought that the earth was flat or the moon made of green cheese. "But what about the Balfour Declaration?" That was an example of perfidious Albion, I went on.

"Okay, so Israel is not going to exist, where are you going to send us next? My family have been here eight generations, by the way." You don't have to go anywhere, I said. You and the Palestinians stay right here in one big country. There was a silence, as this sank in. I felt I was announcing the imminent cancellation of the solar system. "Right," he said, "so now we're all dead."

Blatantly. But, for some reason, a lot of Europeans don't seem at all troubled by the prospect of such a final solution.

Carter on Israel

In today's Guardian, Jimmy Carter is once again building castles in the sky: withdraw from the occupied territories and all will be well.

There is little doubt that accommodation with Palestinians can bring full Arab recognition of Israel and its right to live in peace. Any rejectionist policies of Hamas or any terrorist group will be overcome by an Arab commitment to restrain further violence and to promote the wellbeing of the Palestinian people.

An Arab commitment to restrain further violence would be very welcome but it's just not going to happen. Nevertheless, Carter sets out what such a commitment would involve.

1. Israel's right to exist - and to live in peace - must be recognised and accepted by Palestinians and all other neighbours.

2. The killing of innocent people by suicide bombs or other acts of violence cannot be condoned.

3. Palestinians must live in peace and dignity, and permanent Israeli settlements on their land are a major obstacle to this goal.

Carter claims grounds for optimism here, though it's difficult to see why. The Palestinians are now led by an organization whose constitution denies Israel's right to exist; most Palestinians (and many of their supporters) regard suicide bombing as a legitimate tactic - Israeli civilians are not regarded as innocent people, suicide bombers are treated as martyrs; and the mere presence of Jews in the "Holy Land" (Carter's term not mine) is viewed as an affront to Palestinian dignity. Withdrawal will do nothing to change any of that.

Carter thinks that having achieved power, Hamas will be content to consolidate its political gains: "It will be a tragedy if it promotes or condones terrorism." Indeed it will be. Unfortunately, further tragedy seems unavoidable irrespective of Israeli actions - and to my mind, their safest course now lies in retreating behind the security barrier and mirroring the Hamas policy of non-engagement.

It's depressing, though entirely predictable, to find Jimmy Carter criticizing Israel for rejecting Bush's "road map to peace" when the Palestinians themselves declined to implement its provisions. As I said a while ago:

[A]ttempting to implement the road map has done little other than embolden those organizations working hardest for a Palestinian state. That would be fine, if it wasn’t for the fact that those groups are not democratic political parties, they are terrorist organizations with an agenda that goes far beyond the two-state solution.

I can see no basis for Carter's belief that Hamas in power will abandon both its methods and its ultimate objective, yet this assumption has become the conventional wisdom in certain circles - and that's a tragedy in itself.

An ocean in the making

From the English edition of Der Spiegel:

Normally new rivers, seas and mountains are born in slow motion. The Afar Triangle near the Horn of Africa is another story. A new ocean is forming there with staggering speed -- at least by geological standards. Africa will eventually lose its horn.

It seems the African and Arabian tectonic plates are moving apart at a rate of about a centimeter a year. As they do so, the ground between them is sinking, opening up vast crevices - and I do mean vast (it's worth clicking the link just for the photos).

Geology in action.

Dog business

PooterGeek is talking shit. No, really, he is.

Kamm on blogs

Clive Davis sounds as surprised as I was at Oliver Kamm's take on blogs in his recent column for the Times. After noting that blogs effectively "provide a vehicle for instant comment and opinion", Kamm goes on to point out that:

These are not a new form of journalism, but new packaging for a venerable part of a newspaper. Even the best blogs are parasitic on what their practitioners contemptuously call the “mainstream media”. Without a story to comment on or an editorial to rubbish, they would have nothing to say.

Well, perhaps. But aren't the comment and opinion pieces found in newspapers parasitic in exactly the same way? And I'm not at all sure that references to the "mainstream media" are neccesarily contemptuous, rather than simply descriptive.

I'm generally in favor of puncturing bubbles, (and some of the claims that have been made regarding the importance of blogging are clearly self-serving hype) but as Clive Davis notes "its effect on the media in the US is beyond argument".

I expect the same will happen in the UK, eventually. But, in Kamm's defense, we're presently a long way from that.

Wha gwaan?

For reasons I'm not going to go into right now, I have recently been researching South Western Caribbean Creole (also known as Jamaican patois).

Quite a few people I know are British-Jamaican. They all speak standard English when it's required of them but, in informal settings, a mixture of English and patois is the norm - unless someone gets heated about something and then it's full-on patois. I can usually follow most of it. I even use bits of patois myself on occasion, but only with people who know me well - its use in other situations can be problematic.

Anyway, I've been researching the spelling of Jamaican patois, which is no easy task since, unlike a number of French influenced creoles, there is no standardized spelling of SWCC. There have been attempts at standardization, but since Jamaican patois exists largely as a spoken language (most speakers read and write standard English) standardization isn't really a critical issue.

I won't bore you with alternate spellings of various creole words, except to say that the main argument seems to be over the use of "a" or "aa" in such words as "raas" and "gwaan". But something I came across in my wanderings does, I think, deserve to be shared.

In the 1990s, HUD (the US Department of Housing and Urban Development) issued a leaflet to tenants advising them of their rights, some 1,500 of those leaflets were printed in Jamaican patois.

Here's an extract:

"Yuh as a rezedent, ave di rights ahn di rispansibilities to elp mek yuh HUD-asisted owzing ah behta owme fi yuh ahn yuh fambily. Dis is a brochure distributed to yuh cawze Hud ah provide some fawm ahf asistance aur subsidy fi di whole apawtment buildin. As ah pawt ahfits dedication fi maintain di bes pawsible living enviornment fi all rezedents, yuh HUD field affice encourage ahn suppowts . . ."

As far as I'm concerned, such a rendering is a fundamentally misguided (and extremely patronizing) attempt at effective communication. But make up your own mind, you can find the full story here.

Bruce Lee interview

Via Winds of Change: Wizbang Pop! has a video of the Piere Burton Show from 1971 featuring Burton's interview with Bruce Lee.

A couple of weeks ago, I caught the tail end of the interview on cable TV - I was kicking myself for not catching the start of it.

Highly recommended.

Mardi Gras in Iraq

More photos of highly decorated soldiers are available at Lainey's Photo Website. (Thank to Dean Esmay for the link).

Den Beste's Matrix

I enjoyed the first Matrix movie but I found the rest of the trilogy disappointing, and more than a little bizarre. But now, having reading Steven Den Beste's take on it all (Too Many Words about "The Matrix" Trilogy), it's somehow beginning to make sense.

Not perfect sense, admitedly, but certainly more sense than I got from the movies.

Death and God and kids

My three children growing up, each in their turn has asked me about death. I haven't been able to tell them much - the way I see it, it's like falling asleep, except you never wake up. And, when my time comes, I'll be looking forward to a long rest.

Funny, but it was the same with all three of the boys: after they'd asked the Death question, the God question would follow a couple of days later. I figure it took about 48 hours for them to absorb my answer and reason that the only way to perpetuate themselves ad infinitum would be by way of some cosmic saviour.

With the God question, I always tried to give them a measure of hope: I've told them that God (in the sense of the creator and sustainer of all things) is a grapefruit; more specifically, the invisible giant grapefruit in our attic. They regard this notion as completely nonsensical. But seeing as how the only argument they have consistently advanced against it is that my choice of deity seems entirely arbitrary, I imagine they get the point.

The Big Fella was talking about it last week. He has a running discussion going with one of his Christian friends. When I asked the basis of his friend's belief, the Big Fella reckoned it was down to his parents: "He was brought up to believe in God: I grew up in a family of atheists."

"A family of atheists" - that makes me laugh. I've never told my children I was an atheist, but it seems they just won't accept grapefruit - which is probably a good thing.

Prosecuting religion

From Agora (via BBBC): A German group calling itself the BVB (Bundesverband der Bürgerbewegungen) is asking prosecutors in a number of German states to take action against the sale of the Koran, which it says violates the German penal code and is incompatible with the German constitution.

The BVB’s indictment includes 200 verses drawn from the Koran, including this rendering of Sura 98:6:

“The unbelievers among the People of the Book (Jews and Christians): They are the vilest of all creatures.”

The group cite this as being in violation of Paragraph 166 of the German Penal Code, which provides for the punishment (by fine or imprisonment for up to three years) of those who publicly insult, or who distribute material intended to insult, people’s beliefs (Weltanschauung) in a way that is likely to disturb the peace.

I imagine the German constitution guarantees freedom of belief, so I can’t believe we’re about to see the Koran banned in Germany. And I certainly don’t think its continued sale is likely to lead to a breach of the peace.

Though, obviously, if people took the Koran literally, absolutely believing it be the word of God, and used it to define their entire lives then it’s possible that, reading that particular Sura, they might come to think that all Jews and Christians were vile. But even given all that, it’s still a long way from being a disturbance of the peace.

To my mind, attacking the Koran in this way is not an attempt to defend the German constitution, it’s an attempt to limit freedom of expression - Islamic fundamentalism is not its only foe.

Michael Michaels

Via Melanie Phillips: The BBC's Newsnight program recently revealed that Britian supplied 10mg of plutonium to Israel in the mid 1960s. It also made some serious allegations against a former British civil servant.

The following is an extract from a transcript (the link to the video is here, under "Britain's nuclear link to Israel revealed").

Newsnight also reveals the crucial role played by the civil servant who, for fourteen years, was Britain's representative on the International Atomic Energy Agency (the IAEA), the body which regulates nuclear proliferation.

Michael Michaels was Jewish, a keen supporter of the state of Israel (indeed his middle name was actually Israel). And, when, he retired, the Israeli government found him a job in London for two years.

What was Michaels' "crucial role"? He wrote a letter in support of Israel's request; the Foreign Office opposed the deal. This letter and the fact that Michaels was Jewish are enough for the BBC to question his loyalty.

Peter Kelly [a retired defense intelligence analyst] believes Michael Michaels acted out of sympathy for Israel.

BBC: "Do you think there was a certain element perhaps of dual loyalties there? That although he was...?"

Peter Kelly: "Yes. Yes, I think one could say that."

The implication, I take it, is that Michael Michaels was some sort of Israeli double-agent, a traitor to British interests. Is this really the case? Or are the BBC simply playing "Spot the Jew"?

The morning after

Ok, so I've been wallowing in self-pity. In my defense: it's a healthier response than mute depression - though only slightly less debilitating.

Anyway, on with the show.

What it is

Nobody loves you when you're down and out,
Nobody sees you when you're on cloud nine.
Everybody's hustlin' for a buck and a dime,
I'll scratch your back and you knife mine.

Nobody loves you when you're old and grey,
Nobody needs you when you're upside down.
Everybody's hollerin' 'bout their own birthday,
Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground.

What it is, what it is,
All I can tell you is it's all show biz.
All I can tell you is it's all show biz.

Wafa Sultan

Via Normblog: An excerpt from a February interview on Al-Jazeera with Arab-American psychologist Wafa Sultan (transcript here).

The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.

You can watch a clip from the interview at MEMRI (scroll down to clip #1050) and I recommend you do: Wafa Sultan speaks with passion and conviction, and (it has to be said) with little regard for her own personal safety.

A weekend away

I'm off away this weekend with No 1 Son. He's going to keep me company on the long drive north up the M6.



Back Sunday.

Visual contact

In an attempt to liven up the blog a little, I decided to put a recent photo of myself in the sidebar. Let me know if it detracts from the tone.

Take off the sunglasses? No way! I blog anonymously, remember.

Tough questions

Last night, I was Science Dad, fielding bedtime questions from the boys. Spud wanted to know how life got started and the Big Fella asked what happened before the Big Bang.

In both cases, I gave them a simple and easy answer: "We don't know."

But I also gave Spud a run down of potential explanations for life on Earth. And I walked the Big Fella through Hawking's ideas on the nature of space-time close to the singularity.

Too heavy for such young minds? I don't think so - I couldn't answer their questions but at least I was able to point their curiosity in the right direction. If they're interested, they'll look for the answers themselves.

I hope one day they will. They may not find the answers they're looking for, but that's not what really matters: simply looking is enough.

Isaac's journey

Following a link from Joe Katzman at Winds of Change, I've been reading a series of posts by the pseudonymous Isaac Schrödinger, a Canadian student who was born in Pakistan but spent most of his childhood in Saudi Arabia.

The posts chart "Isaac's" journey from his childhood in Saudi Arabia and times in Pakistan, through to his arrival in Canada and his rejection of Islam. It's a fascinating series, well written and worth reading.

One passage from the opening post in the series, about his time at a Pakistani school in Saudi Arabia, stood out for me.

Finally, the teacher had had enough. He got up. The entire class went silent. He went over to the student and started slapping him. The student covered his face. The teacher started to slap and punch him on the neck and the back with each hit more forceful than the last. The kid sitting next to the student got up from the desk and stepped away. The teacher kept on brutally beating the student. The student started crying and fell to the ground within the desk. The teacher grabbed the front of the desk with his left hand and the back with his right. He then started to kick the bawling student. He kicked him for about 20 seconds. He then went to his desk while swearing. No-one said a word.

I saw exactly the same thing happen in my school when I was 13 or 14. No one complained - we were all too terrified to say anything - and nothing ever happened to the teacher. Of course, it wasn't a Muslim school in Saudi Arabia, it was a Catholic school in England. But the presumption was the same - the teachers (Irish Christian Brothers in my case) had an absolute and unchallenged right to beat the children in their care.

The only difference is the congregation of Christian Brothers in Ireland have apologized for the years of sexual and other abuse inflicted on the children in its institutions, at least in Ireland - as far as I'm aware, the Brothers have made no apology for their behaviour in England, or indeed anywhere else. And it's easy to doubt the sincerity of the limited apology that has been offered, since the Order continues to harbor its miscreants.

I wasn't badly beaten or abused at school (though the threat seemed ever present) and nor were the vast majority of my fellow students. Nevertheless, we were educated in an atmosphere where the random brutality of our teachers was an accepted part of school life.

If I'm making a wider point than simply noting a similarity between "Isaac's" life and my own, then it's this: when reading people's accounts of the fear, ignorance and injustice they've experienced in foreign cultures, we shouldn't imagine that such things never happen here. They do, it's just that a lot of people would rather not talk about it.

The New Threat

In an essay at the New Republic, Daniel Goldhagen (author of "Hitler's Willing Executioners") warns of the dangers posed by the radical politics of Islamic fundamentalism.

The figure who most formidably exemplifies contemporary political Islam is not Osama bin Laden. It is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, with whom Hamas forms a tag-team of interlocking support. (Iran has just announced that it will help fund the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority.) Ahmadinejad's by-now-notorious Holocaust denial was no act of a rash militant. More than being merely anti-Semitic, it was a symbolic political gauntlet, a declaration to the West that he, Iran, and political Islam seek to overturn what is understood to be truth, who is owed moral respect, and who will determine the contours of acceptable politics. It should have been no surprise that Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial came as warp to the woof of his Hitlerian exhortation that Israel should be "wiped off the map" and his confrontation with the West over restarting nuclear production.
This rhetoric of mass murder, though shocking to Western publics and political Islam's more naïve apologists, is entirely consistent with the genocidal rhetoric and proto-genocidal violence already long practiced by political Islam's vanguard--especially Hamas and Iranian-controlled Hezbollah--euphemistically known as "suicide-bombing."

Read it all (registration required).

Homeland security

From the Kalamazoo Gazette:

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A charge of inducing panic through a bomb scare has been dropped against a Three Rivers man who had a sticker with the band name This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb on his bicycle.

Terry Johnson, the band's bass player, said fans often have their bikes impounded but it's rare for the streets to be cordoned off, the bomb squad called in and the bike destroyed as happened in Ohio.

UPDATE
Mark Kozak at the Daily Vidette has the whole sorry story. The T-shirt campaign is here.

Only repent

There's been a lot of coverage of Julie Nicholson's decision to step down from her post as vicar of a Bristol church because she feels unable to forgive the people who murdered her daughter in the London bomb attacks.

"It's very difficult for me to stand behind an altar and celebrate the Eucharist Communion and lead people in words of peace and reconciliation and forgiveness when I feel very far from that myself... so for the time being, for the moment, that wound in me is having to heal."

I feel for Julie Nicholson in her grief and wish her well in coping with her tragic bereavement. My eldest son was in London and on his way to Kings Cross that same July morning - I can only begin to imagine the depth of her grief as a parent by setting it against the relief I felt when I learnt my own child was safe.

But it's not Nicholson's grief I want to focus on, it's her concept of forgiveness: when it is demanded of us and what it involves.

Sometimes I think the idea of forgiveness gets confused, at least in Christian minds, with such exhortations as "turn the other cheek" and "judge not lest ye be judged". To my way of thinking, forgiving someone is only meaningful when they acknowledge the hurt and suffering they have caused and seek forgiveness for their actions. The idea that one might forgive those who have neither acknowledged nor repented their crimes is meaningless to me - and yet, it seems, this is the type of forgiveness that modern Church doctrine requires.

In such a conception, "forgiving" is no longer a social act between two people involving repentance and acceptance, it becomes the private virtue of "forgiveness": a means for Christians to demonstrate their special state of grace. It's a modern conceit and not something you'll find in the Gospels, which repeatedly stress the need of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Forgiving the unrepentant is not a Christian virtue, it's a sin against society.

Politically confused

I just found this page at Kinja.com that's got me down as being conservative, or at least that's how they've labelled the blog. Doesn't sound right to me.

But then I hear Norm Geras is a recent convert to neoconservatism, so now I don't know what to think.

Popular prejudice

More from Gary Younge’s column in Monday’s Guardian. Not to harp on, but sometimes I wonder whether he’s being deliberately naïve or if it’s just that he's lived a sheltered life.

There was a time when such words as "darkie", "paki", "puff", "spastic" and "coloured" were common currency. We have abandoned them for the same reason we no longer burn witches at the stake or stick orphaned children in the poor house. We have moved on. That's not political correctness but social and political progress. Not imposed by liberal diktat, but established by civic consensus.

In my experience, the British haven’t, as a whole, abandoned such words, though thankfully they are heard far less frequently. It’s certainly true that such words are never used in polite society, but I do sometimes wonder if that’s simply because the English middle classes have become wary of revealing their prejudices.

Perhaps I’m being unfair, but I don’t think society has “moved on” quite as much as Gary Younge thinks it has.

Those Danes

In Monday's Guardian, Gary Younge touches briefly on the Mohammed cartoons issue, which he cites as an example of bigotry.

Take the Danish cartoons. They were first printed in a country that supports the war in Iraq, where the far-right Danish People's party receives 13% of the vote and where, according to the Danish Institute for Human Rights, racially motivated crimes doubled between 2004 and 2005.

He uses this example to illustrate his main point, which is that "those who choose Goliath's corner cannot then claim underdog status once David gets out his slingshot."

Now, it seems to me, those Danish cartoonists who live in fear of their lives because of the things they drew might reasonably be accorded the status of underdog. But Younge wants to deny them that status because of Denmark's support for Iraq, the electoral performance of the Danish People's party and a rise in racially motivated crime.

In other contexts, I've heard Younge argue strenuously against this type of guilt by association, but these days it seems if you're a Dane, you're a bigot - and presumably, in Younge's view, a fitting target for David's slingshot. The fact that the "Davids" in this instance are religious extremists with murderous intent seems not to enter into his thinking at all.

UPDATE
Via PooterGeek: I learn that Shuggy also has a thing or two to say about Younge's column.