NoolaBeulah

Blame

2008-10-22T17:15:00.000Z

Far be it from me to deny the immense social benefits of identifying and sacrificing a scapegoat or two, but at some point or other, we should also tell something approaching the truth.

[In the quotes below, VD Hanson is referring only to Americans; I would spread the net much wider.]

[S]o far no one seems willing to tell the American people the truth: It is not just “they,” but we, the people, who have recklessly borrowed to spend what we haven’t yet earned.

Take energy... Our energy challenges do not just concern independence, natural security, and global warming. They involve basic financial solvency, as well. Yet so far, none of our public officials have warned us that the energy crisis is largely a money matter: We’re borrowing too much to buy what we won’t or can’t produce at home.

Second, as a nation of debtors, we are renting money from Asia to buy its exports with our credit cards. Given our talents and natural wealth, we could easily consume more than others in the world and still balance the books. But Americans cannot charge all that we desire on unlimited credit.

Third, the government can only hand out more entitlements by borrowing even more to pay for them. Raising taxes on anyone in a recession is insane. But even crazier is cutting them further at a time of skyrocketing national debt without commensurate reductions in spending.

And then he asks this question:

So who will tell the people that we can’t raise — or reduce — taxes and that we can’t borrow for any more new programs until we first cut expenses and begin paying off the trillions we’ve already borrowed?

But there's another, bigger question of which that one is only a part. Which politician is going to tell us that we can't ALL have what we want; we can't ALL have endless choice; we can't ALL have the right to acquire and consume more than we produce?

Relativity

2008-10-15T20:53:00.004Z

The big chunk of black is space. The lemon-yellow is the sun. The disc resting on the black is Venus during the transit in 2004. Isn't that a pretty pattern? Just think.

Value systems

2008-09-29T17:04:00.002Z

A propos of discussions I have been having here and here, this tiny example of why it is difficult for any religion, or any authority, to take and maintain the premier position in the hierarchy of values, images, ideologies or anything else.

The image is from here. Though the collection has been made other reasons, it does demonstrate the randomness of the thousands of messages we receive every day.

Finally, now

2008-09-22T16:39:00.003Z

A new play by the American playwright Christopher Shinn called Now or Later is built around the conflict of self-expression and its consequences in a world where cartoons published in an unknown paper in Denmark lead to deaths all around the world.

Shinn’s play is set on the eve of a presidential election. The Democrats are on the point of victory when news breaks out, via political blogs, that the would-be new president’s homosexual son, John, has gone to a party dressed as the prophet Mohammed and his friend as the gay-baiting evangelist Pastor Bob.

As footage of the party circulates around the globe, sparking riots in the Muslim world, John is under immense pressure from presidential advisers to make a public apology. While John insists on the importance of free expression, and also that he was attending a private party, his friend Matt points out that he could be responsible for deaths around the world. Principle and pragmatism collide to fascinating effect. Staged in real-time, Now or Later carefully explores the anguish and arguments of this very contemporary concern.

Until now, the response of our brave engaged artists, fearless in their searing denunciations of America, Christians and other evil, though unreponsive, groups, has been to take the discretion out of valour, and then drop the valour. Shinn, a homosexual who benefitted from the rights battles of the Nineties, now sees discussion smothered by identity politics and the cult of the victim.

I think in many ways American campuses are a distorted and extreme way of dealing with problems in US culture. The left-wing ideology in these campuses doesn’t seem to be related to the way the world is. The antics on campus almost have a feeling of play acting, as it’s so divorced from people’s lives.

Amazingly, though he describes himself as a 'left-wing champion of free speech', he doesn't actually hate his homeland, which may explain why most of his plays are premiered here.

Everybody worships

2008-09-21T17:36:00.002Z

Came across this yesterday and thought it was very good. It's from a commencement speech to a graduating class at Kenyon College, Ohio. It's by David Foster Wallace, who died recently.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship - be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things - if they are where you tap real meaning in life - then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already - it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart - you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the "rat race" - the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water."

Who would have thought?

2008-03-12T23:49:00.001Z

Benjamin Skinner

There are more slaves in the world today than at any point in human history, and A Crime So Monstrous is their story, in full color. For four years, I traveled in over a dozen countries, talking to slaves, traffickers and liberators, going undercover when necessary in order to infiltrate slave trading networks.

The book is a record of evil. I witnessed the sale of human beings on four continents, once being offered a suicidal, mentally handicapped young woman as a sex slave in exchange for a used car.

But it is also a story of survival. A young man in Sudan escapes slavery in the Muslim north, finds Christ, and frees his mother and sisters. A Haitian girl is freed when two Americans of sterling conscience discover her domestic bondage in a suburban Miami home.

And it is a living history of quiet heroism. John Miller, a former Republican congressman appointed to be America's antislavery czar, zealously cajoled foreign governments—friends and foes alike—to bear their responsibility and free their slaves. At the same time, he battled State Department elites in an attempt to convince them that abolition mattered. Thanks to his efforts, the Bush Administration can boast of the most aggressive antislavery record since Lincoln.

Human rights, that Western imperialist notion.

Britishness day

2008-03-11T16:53:00.003Z

This is embarrassing.

I always thought that one of the prime qualities of whatever -ness we have in this country is that of not crowing about it. Those values that are most loudly stated are generally the ones least acted upon. My recommendations - Study history.
Don't denigrate our achievements; be inspired by them.
Don't apologise for the past; do better.

Two questions

2008-03-02T23:21:00.002Z

There's a lot I don't understand about what is happening in Gaza.

Firstly, what is Hamas's strategy? It is evident that they have been baiting Israel to react in this way for a long time. The attacks on Sderot and other towns have increased steadily over the last few months, but did not produce a substantial response until Thursday when Ashkelon was hit for the first time. Israel had to do something, and now they have, which is, I can only assume, what Hamas has been seeking. But what do they get from it?

Is it to make sure that Abbas can make no deal with the Israelis? That will certainly be the short-term effect, and has been achieved many times before, the more extreme always having the last word. Is that the idea?

Is it a media event? The rocket launchers fire from Gaza’s school buildings, rooftops, playgrounds and underground pits, using civilians and children as human shields. They make it so that civilians will certainly be killed, especially children, who make the best news photos. Is it to further degrade the reputation of Israel that they make martyrs of their children?

Or is it the start of a hot summer with conflagrations to the south and then to the north? 2006 all over again.

Secondly, what can Israel hope to achieve by large scale military incursions into Gaza? I can't see a feasible military target. Hamas have been preparing for this for some time and, short of a complete occupation, what useful political or military benefit can Israel hope to gain? It might slow the rocket launchers down, but they will start again very soon afterwards.

It's not that I have an alternative strategy. The Israeli government are damned if they do and damned if they don't. They're fighting an enemy with whom they cannot negotiate because any concession they make will merely provoke another demand. I don't know what they should have done or should do. Nonetheless, it is easy to predict what will happen here. There'll be the usual media storm, with world leaders pontificating from the moral heights before international pressure forces the IDF to cease operations, and get out, and so let the whole cycle start again.

Translation

2008-02-29T15:59:00.001Z

At the top of my Google News page a couple of hours ago was a BBC headline according to which the Israeli deputy defence minister, Matan Vilnai, had said that if the Palestianian rockets did not cease to fall, then Israel would bring them a 'holocaust'. You can imagine the reaction, if you haven't already seen it. I thought, how inept can you get?

Trouble is, he didn't say it. Reuters buggered up the translation. As translated, the quote went:

‘The more Qassam (rocket) fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger “shoah” because we will use all our might to defend ourselves'.

Melanie Phillips explains

Reuters translated the Hebrew word ‘shoah’ as ‘holocaust’. But ‘shoah’ merely means disaster. In Hebrew, the word ‘shoah’ is never used to mean ‘holocaust’ or ‘genocide’ because of the acute historical resonance. The word ‘Hashoah’ alone means ‘the Holocaust’ and ‘retzach am’ means ‘genocide’. The well-known Hebrew construction used by Vilnai used merely means ‘bringing disaster on themselves’.

The BBC has now (as of 14.58) changed both the translation and the article.

Government of the people

2008-02-27T21:10:00.002Z

An excellent post on Comment is free by Asim Siddiqui, who discusses some of the ideas in Who needs an Islamic State, by the Sudanese, Abdelwahab el-Affendi. That author asks the question

Why is it that Muslims can only be 'good Muslims' under a dictatorship? Surely submission to Islam must be voluntary and come from the heart, not [be] imposed by political force.

A question that the Catholic Church had to face, first answered one way and only recently changed its mind. Siddiqui ends his article by claiming that the 21st Century will see more attempts at Islamic government, more failures and recourse eventually made to Western political models, which he dares to call "universal".

I was reminded of the Catholic Church because its accession to political power occurred mostly through the absence of an alternative. Despite Constantine's adoption of Christianity in the early 4th Century, it was really only in the dreadful years after Rome's decline that the Church became the only true political centre of Western Europe. There was to be little else for several centuries to come.

Siddiqui doesn't mention the fact that Western political models have already been tried in much of the Middle East, and signally failed. The rise of political Islam is, in fact, a reaction to a previous costly failure to modernise. As in Western Europe after the fall of Rome, there seems to be no alternative. I agree with him that Islamic governance will not succeed either, at least as it is envisaged by its more militant adherents. Nonetheless, whatever form of government does manage to do the trick, I would guess that Islam, in one form or another, will have to play some part. Surrey on the Tigris is just not a realistic prospect.

I found this article via Harry's Place. The post there quotes a reply comment by Asim Siddiqui that is a splendid example of the sort of thinking necessary in times like this. A commenter has pointed out that

... the Prophet Muhammad was an 'Islamist'. After all, he was a statesman as well as a religious leader, he negotiated peace treaties and conducted wars. He established a state based on Islamic laws. Did he 'politicise Islam' or was Islam from the outset political?

Siddiqui's reply is a wonderful 'Yes, but ...'

Our Beloved Prophet was both a temporal political leader and a recipient of revelation. There were numerous occasions when he would be asked by his companions if an opinion he had was from revelation or from his own judgement - where it was the latter the companions would be free (and did) to challenge him and suggest alternatives. There were also occasions when 'political' decisions were made guided by revelation.

However, revelation ended with him. No subsequent leader can claim divine guidance or an insight into God's mind on any political decision they make. Hence, my point is that all leaders must be accountable to the people, not claim they are accountable to God (which in reality means accountability to no one and allows them to get away with murder, literally).
[My emphasis]

A model of damage limitation. Well, that may be a little cynical on my part, but, you see, I'm with the Grand Inquisitor (a bit): organised religion is a necessary protection against enthusiasts like Jesus and Mohammad. They promise too much; they demand too much.

In its peace

2008-02-24T23:10:00.002Z

One of the many surprises of recent years has been the unforeseen places where you find agreement. Never, only a year or two ago, would I have even thought of reading a book by the Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth; I barely knew that there was such a thing. Nonetheless, I have been reading Jonathan Sacks' The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society and finding it like fresh water after a desert trek.

It won me from the first line, a rather surprising one from a member of a group that has been , for most of its 4,000-year history, a minority, strangers in a strange land:

Multiculturalism has run its course.

I have not yet got to his solution, but his analysis of the problem is spot on. His basic point is that liberalism is a structure without content and that, socially, it is unsustainable. It has led, in recent decades under the banner of multiculturalism, to inward-looking, isolated groups that feel no loyalty to the host community, which is good for neither. Not that he wants melting pot assimilation; unthinkable for someone who calls himself "the acceptable face of fundamentalism". But he does want the centre to hold.

I've found this interview with two Times journalists, both of whom seem rather obtuse, on the hunt, perhaps, for a soundbite that he wouldn't deliver. They keep pushing him about faith schools, which he supports, but where he sees some problems. His own parents sent him to a Christian school because they

knew that I would be taught hard work, respect for authority, respect for the family, a certain basic set of ethical guidelines that were utterly congruent with their own.

He then goes on to say,

Today parents are very concerned about where their children will find those values – they do not find them in the wider culture.

It seems fairly clear to me that what he is saying is that faith schools themselves are not the problem; the problem is the emptiness outside, which pushes groups from other cultures to compensate though the faith schools, among other means. He contrasts the ambitions of his own parents and their like:

They [Early 20th-century Jewish schools] wanted their kids to be good Englishmen and women, that’s what my parents wanted for me. I think that today there is just too little content to that idea.

I cannot tell you what his solution is; I will when I get that far. But it perhaps adumbrated in a quote from Jeremiah, speaking to the Jewish exiles in Babylon.

Seek the peace and welfare of the city to which you have been exiled because in its prosperity you will find prosperity. In its peace, you will find peace.

Security

2008-02-22T23:15:00.001Z

My wife has made me watch this twice now, so I don't see why you shouldn't watch it, too.

Boris, our muse

2008-02-22T22:53:00.002Z

And they said the age of the political song was dead! How I wish I had a vote in London.

Who needs Barack Obama? I bet you his Ancient Greek really sucks. And his Latin is mediocre, at best.

Courtesy of Boriswatch.

Still coming

2008-02-22T17:02:00.004Z

Further developments in the onset of Spring. I had expected more daffodils to be out. Maybe the cold has kept them indoors. As you can see, there are some. Curiously, this photo was taken at the northern end of the park. There are many more here than at the southern end, which is where I took the previous one. Among that clump, there was only one out and it was hanging its head, as if in shame. It may be because the northern daffs are well-established while the southern ones were planted just last autumn.

Slack post

2008-02-20T22:31:00.002Z

Buried in work and so will play the slacker and just quote from the few articles I've read over the last day or three.

First (via Norm), a piece by Noel Pearson, who is himself a very interesting chap. In this article, called "All enemies aren't equal", he is making a distinction that really shouldn't have to be made, and he's doing it for the sake of the poor benighted for whom 'bin Laden, Bush - no diff'. An excerpt.

US Marine Corps major Michael Mori, who represented Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks, has been widely celebrated among progressives in Australia for his outstanding defence of important principles of justice.

But Mori is not a dissident, he is part of the system.

That system is guaranteed by the US, which provides to individuals subject to military prosecution fully funded and fully independent legal representation. Mori conducted an international legal campaign on behalf of his client -- which had a political dimension, a campaign against the actions of his own Government -- with complete immunity. Mori no doubt caused a lot of anger among military brass and politicians who would have loved to have shut him up; the genius of that system prevented this from happening.

One of Mori's colleagues, Charles Swift, successfully took the case of Osama bin Laden's bodyguard Salim Ahmed Hamdan to the US Supreme Court and caused significant political embarrassments and headaches for his Government.

What other nation guarantees a system of justice that is capable of holding to account the government of that nation on questions of international political significance?

Those who hold up Mori as a hero can't ignore that Mori's commander-in-chief, at the end of the day, is his country's President, the reviled George W. Bush.

And speaking of the much reviled one, Bob Geldof did. Only to praise him!

Mr. Geldof praised Mr. Bush for his work in delivering billions to fight disease and poverty in Africa, and blasted the U.S. press for ignoring the achievement.

Mr. Bush, said Mr. Geldof, "has done more than any other president so far."

"This is the triumph of American policy really," he said. "It was probably unexpected of the man. It was expected of the nation, but not of the man, but both rose to the occasion."

"What's in it for [Mr. Bush]? Absolutely nothing," Mr. Geldof said.

Mr. Geldof said that the president has failed "to articulate this to Americans" but said he is also "pissed off" at the press for their failure to report on this good news story.

Finally, after an Australian aboriginal defending liberal democracy, and a pop musician speaking up for Bush, The Economist rates conspiracy theories according to Google hits.

I'd never heard of the reptilian humanoids who secretly run the world. If I had the time, I'd go and look up exactly what they get for their efforts, but I think I'd rather hear it in a pub.

Frost attack

2008-02-17T18:19:00.005Z

I publish these photos in the full knowledge that I'll be frivolously wasting the time of anyone who unwisely spends his time on them. However, there may be a great lesson to be learned concerning chance, rarity and making the most of both.

The photo below shows a hedge on a nearby road. The white stuff is ice.

I should add that the temperature has not got much above zero for the last couple of days. In fact, we can't use our washing machine because the pipes are frozen (this bit is not part of the lesson, by the way, and is only here because I'm annoyed about it). I sense that you are afire with curiosity as to how this extraordinary phenomenon has come about. I do like to satisfy people's urges, so here you are.

On the road at this point, there is a manhole cover that has sunk slightly under the level of the road. Water has gathered, but melted due to the cars that pass over it. The cars splash the water onto the hedge, where it freezes and remains to amuse those with idle minds. (All right. To be precise, it does not freeze and remain with the purpose of amusing me; that is merely an effect, though I'm sure there's a metaphysical argument to be made ... No, let's leave it there, on the hedge, as it were.)

The lesson. First of all, chance. While I admit that the phenomenon in itself is a result of certain physical laws in operation (including the one about British workmanship on the roads), chance enters in the shape of my wife passing along that road at the right moment to see it and so be able to tell me about it.

Secondly, rarity. It's not often so cold here as to permit the above-mentioned physical laws to come into operation (though the one about British workmanship is a constant from which there seems no escape). Thus we hardly ever see such things. Thus they are special when they occur.

Thirdly, making the most of it. It is a little thing. But I enjoyed walking to the spot, trying to get a good photo, seeing the drivers that passed look at me as if I were an idiot, and finally writing this idiotic post. It has given pleasure and added something to the place in which I live.

There. That's it.

Natural abundance

2008-02-15T21:45:00.003Z

Nature indifferent? Not in the least; it's just got priorities.

Fifty years ago this week, Mackay, sugar cane metropolis of Australia, was hit was one of its worst floods ever. My mother, 9 months pregnant, moved to a house on higher stilts than ours, and my grandfather rowed a boat down the street to help my father stack the furniture high. The floodwaters came to within 2 inches of the floorboards, and then receded in time for my mother to walk across the sodden earth of her front garden with her firstborn.

And now, in the very same week 50 years later, her firstborn finds this photo of Mackay.

Once again, Nature showers her gifts with excess. She just hasn't realised that he has moved.

The beginning

2008-02-15T16:58:00.002Z

From James Forsyth in The Spectator.

Today is the 18th anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declaring a Fatwa on Salman Rushdie for writing the Satanic Verses. It was a wake up call to the coming challenge to the freedoms of a liberal society but one that we failed to heed.

The Rushdie affair demonstrated the spinelessness of the British political class in the face of Islamic extremism. The Crown Prosecution Service refused to prosecute those who openly called for Rushdie’s death. The Islamist Kalim Siddiqui amazingly got away with telling a public meeting, “I would like every Muslim to raise his hand in agreement with the death sentence on Salman Rushdie. Let the world see that every Muslim agrees that this man should be put away.”

Both Labour and Tory politicians embarrassed themselves and failed to grasp how essential it was to protect the right to free expression. The Labour deputy leader called for the paperback edition not to be published and some backbench Tories whinged about how much Rushdie’s protection cost. Indeed, Rushdie ended up being pressured into contributing to his own security costs. All in all, a shameful episode.

The first of many to come, all with the same message, "Try it on. We'll just fold and probably apologise as well".

Coming soon

2008-02-14T23:14:00.005Z

I realise there are more important things happening in the world, but then again, there always are. I'm ignoring them in order to tell you that the daffodils down at The Carrs (the ones that I, and some nameless others, planted in November) are not quite there yet. But they will be soon, and so will I. As you can see, they are ready to burst forth in all their sunny yellowness, completely unaware as they are of the good cheer that they spread.

These are the first daffodils in the Carrs, as far as I know, and they come courtesy of Macclesfield Borough Council. It is a great and good thing; all you need do is say that you want some daffs, or bluebells, or crocuses in your park, and they'll send a truck loaded down with potential spring gaiety and dump it right there in front of you. Not a penny changes hands. You need to shift your arse to plant them, but that's not asking too much, is it?

So, if a day or two, if my depleted stores of energy permit, I will sidle down to the park and be greatly rewarded. And I will share it with you, not because you deserve it (Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?), who does? - but because the pleasure is magnified in the sharing.

An entirely civilised law

2008-02-08T22:42:00.000Z

I have been a little puzzled over the fuss generated by Rowan Williams' ideas on Shari'a and British law. Now I'm no fan of the good Archbishop; I tend to find in his public pronouncements a degree of sanctimonious political correctness that makes me ill. And I'm as enraged as the next bloke when bearded men tell me what I cannot say, and threaten those that do say it. I might also add that Shari'a conjures very few, if any, positive images in my mind. However, in this case, I cannot for the life of me see what is so offensive.

According to this BBC article,

English law states that any third party can be agreed by two sides to arbitrate in a dispute [not involving criminal law].

This seems to me an entirely civilised law, and an example of its application is the existence of the Beth Din, the Jewish court which sits in North Finchley. There are also Catholic courts that fulfil a similar function. If two people agree to abide by the judgements of such courts, and no other law is broken, I cannot see the harm.

I took the trouble of reading Williams' speech (and was, against my will, impressed). He's only talking about "aspects of marital law, the regulation of financial transactions and authorised structures of mediation and conflict resolution". He is more than aware of Shari'a stellar reputation with the status of women and converts. And he seems to have a better understanding of liberal democracy than many of his accusers. It is not the 'imposition' of rights, but more a clearing of the obstacles to those rights, if they should be claimed. [Warning! Abstruseness aplenty.]

The rule of law is thus not the enshrining of priority for the universal/abstract dimension of social existence but the establishing of a space accessible to everyone in which it is possible to affirm and defend a commitment to human dignity as such, independent of membership in any specific human community or tradition, so that when specific communities or traditions are in danger of claiming finality for their own boundaries of practice and understanding, they are reminded that they have to come to terms with the actuality of human diversity - and that the only way of doing this is to acknowledge the category of 'human dignity as such' – a non-negotiable assumption that each agent (with his or her historical and social affiliations) could be expected to have a voice in the shaping of some common project for the well-being and order of a human group. It is not to claim that specific community understandings are 'superseded' by this universal principle, rather to claim that they all need to be undergirded by it. The rule of law is – and this may sound rather counterintuitive – a way of honouring what in the human constitution is not captured by any one form of corporate belonging or any particular history, even though the human constitution never exists without those other determinations.

I confess that Williams' style does not make me want to rush out and buy his Collected Sermons and Essays, but the point is a good one.

People are reacting to this in the same way that certain other people reacted to a few cartoons and a pope's lecture that they didn't understand. Well, not quite the same way; no-one's died yet. But it is still a fuss over nothing. Let's just allow an entirely civilised English law to be followed.

Karma

2008-02-06T00:52:00.000Z

I made a long-overdue return to the Portico Library today, had lunch and read an article in the BBC History Magazine. It was written by Michael Burleigh, the author of the just-published Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism. (The article does not appear to be available on their dreadful website.) It included this vignette, which is like a perfectly formed short story.

Like the Russian nihilists, 19th century anarchists were admired in avant-garde circles. After an anarchist had thrown a bomb onto the floor of the Chamber of Deputies in 1893, the French poet Laurent Teilhard asked, "What do the victims matter as long as the gesture is beautiful?' He may have revised his view after he was blinded in one eye when an anarchist hurled a bomb into his favourite restaurant.

Business as usual

2008-02-03T21:10:00.000Z

Every now and then, it is salutary for both mind and body to read an article like this one. It deals with the long-term, describes real issues and communicates a very simple message: calm down.

It dispels 3 myths about the decline of the US: that it is going to be taken over by a non-white, largely hispanic, majority, or by right-wing Christian fundamentalists and that, with the retirement of the baby-boomers its pension system is going to collapse.

To save you reading the whole lot, here is a quick summary. About the fear of a non-white majority.

[There is no] long-term danger of the US becoming permanently polarised between anglophones and Spanish speakers. Among second-generation Hispanics, roughly half speak no Spanish at all, while fewer than 10 per cent speak only Spanish. By the third and fourth generations, Hispanics in the US are almost completely anglophone.

The right-wing Christian fundamentalists are much abused and feared, unjustifiably, it would seem. The US is, in fact, becoming more secular.

[T]he number of North Americans who believe that the Bible is "the actual word of God" has fallen from 65 per cent in 1963 to just 27 per cent in 2001. At the same time, attitudes among Americans toward homosexuality, sex out of marriage and censorship are growing steadily more liberal.

One exception, a very interesting one.

Abortion is the major exception; younger Americans tend to be more opposed to abortion than their elders. Possibly this reflects the growing use of ultrasound by parents to view their offspring in the womb, a practice which may be inadvertently undermining the distinction that supporters of liberal abortion laws have tried to make between foetuses and babies.

Do you remember the rubbish about Bush believing he was told by God to invade Iraq? And the consequent panic that the US was going to end up like Iran? Bush is mild compared to such religious bigots as FDR.

Franklin D Roosevelt tended to use the phrases "western civilisation" and "Christian civilisation" interchangeably. At the 1941 Atlantic summit in Newfoundland, Roosevelt and Churchill joined the British and American sailors in singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers," "O God Our Help in Ages Past" and "Eternal Father Strong to Save." Bush and Blair may have prayed together but they never would have sung hymns together in public.

Even in the south, the use of the word 'christian' as an identifier has more to do with ethnic-style description along the lines of Italian-American or Chinese-American than religion per se.

Finally, there is the 'incoming' bomb of the baby-boomers and their pensions, which, supposedly, will send the US tax bill into freefall. Lind says that this worry is based on Government forecasts that rely on very low growth estimates of 1.7 per cent, a figure that has been exceeded in almost every year since 1996. At worst, government spending might have to rise by 2%, which would take its share of GDP to 32%. Compared to the European average of 47%, it is still remarkably slim.

Even the general economic picture looks good for the next century. Sure, China and India will be vastly more important than they have been, but even so, the North American (Mexico, US and Canada) share of global GDP will be almost a quarter, just as it was for the US alone 20 years ago.

Attached to this article is an editorial from the conservative magazine “Commentary”, whose normal tone is one of despair at a disintegrating society. However, here it is more one of puzzled optimism thanks to the relative decline over the last decade of the following 'social pathologies': violent and property crime, teenage drug use, divorce, welfare and abortion. In some, the change is dramatic.

Patriotism, bad

2008-02-02T15:03:00.000Z

[Riri is displeased, a completely unacceptable situation. I have not performed. Therefore, I make a (doubtlessly inadequate) attempt to do so.]

Evidently, the government has proposed lessons in patriotism. The Institute of Education has responded, with a report drawn up by teachers in London's secondary schools.

A lesson in patriotism does sound like an extremely silly idea, like a lesson in love. Classic 'centralised' thinking. There is social disintegration; bon!, let's have lessons telling people they need to integrate. But, of course, it doesn't work like that.

Not that these teachers think that patriotism is a good thing, in any case. As the writer points out, it's their reasons for rejecting these lessons that are significant (and entirely predicatable).

Are countries really appropriate objects of love? Since all national histories are at best morally ambiguous, it's an open question whether citizens should love their countries.

There is much to say about this old nugget. Notice that it's a moral question. As if the primary function of a country was to be good. It isn't. The primary function of any group is to survive, and then to do its best for its members. Whether that's how things should be is another question. However, it's not a matter of choice - that's how things are.

Notice also that it is a decision, the result of rational reflection. I will give loyalty, or love, to this group called my country insofar as it measures up to my idea of what is good. Which, of course, it doesn't, won't and can't. Because, more than likely, the idea of what is good is premised on the non-existence of countries, nationalisms, classes, etc and probably on some notion of complete equality of means and ends, as well.

But can such 'decisions' be made rationally? Does that not ignore all that you have been given from the moment of your conception up until the moment when you 'decide'? (Or is all that nothing more than your rights, what was owed you for being born?) Do you also decide at a certain point on the worthiness of your parents? Do they merit your love and loyalty? Are they good enough?

Now the revolutionary mind has never had problems with all this stuff - it, like the rest of tradition and the accumulation of historical experience, would be swept away by the Brave New World to come and loyalty would then be given to 'humanity', who would look nothing like the bloke next door. He is the product of the unworthy history that should only be taught as a warning. Unfortunately, the Brave New World to come isn't coming, but no matter, let's just keep on as before, denigrating what has been achieved to glorify instead ... what exactly?

Name dropping

2008-01-28T21:53:00.000Z

I'm going to compound my neglect of blogging with this post. Which has no other purpose than to say that I know someone who has read Das Capital (abridged, but hey!), Mao's Little Red Book, Che's Diaries and Qaddafi's Green Book. Not content with that, he is now reading Ruhnama, or the "Book of the Spirit", dedicated to "Allah, the most Exalted TURKMEN", by the erstwhile Turkmenbashi the Great, Saparmurat Niyazov. [Yes, the man whose gold-leaf covered statue rotates to face the sun and who renamed the month of January after himself (only in Turkmenistan, thankfully, because we wouldn't know how to pronounce it, would we?). ]

But to return to the premise of this post, which was a boast. Yes, I know this very personable and knowledgeable man who has nevertheless passed hours of his time reading some of the most irrelevant literature ever written - and he has survived, as far as I can tell, undamaged. Read about it.

The Lives of Others

2008-01-25T23:29:00.000Z

I watched The Lives of Others last night. It's good.

I appreciated the fact that there is no great discussion of ideological issues (nothing of any import is ever determined by such discussions), that the characters are loyal or disloyal to the state for reasons that come directly out of their 'lived-in' lives. The writer betrays because of friendship and a sort of remorse that the system constructed to end the waste of lives depicted in his plays should itself waste lives so nonchalantly. The seasoned Stasi interrogator who observes the writer and is seduced and brought down by a life lived well with love and friendship, the very things his life, so correct, so sound, lacks entirely.

I liked as well the means chosen by the writer to expose the GDR: statistics, or rather, the selective lack of them. In a system obsessed by the 'scientific' justification of its policies through statistics about every facet of human life, the decision of stop gathering the figures on suicide in 1977 is the tiny confession that something essential has failed.

The Stasi interrogator, and lecturer in interrogation, is the fulcrum of the film. He is upright, like Cincinnatus in To Kill a Mockingbird. He believed in Socialism and so worked diligently for its endurance. When he stops believing, he acts accordingly. He ends up as a postman. But in a rather awkward and sentimental coda of 3 parts, he is recognised as 'a good man', and the viewer is able to leave the film feeling comforted.

I came across this quote by CS Lewis yesterday. The Lives of Others is a perfect illustration of it.

The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint … but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.

Great Moments (again)

2008-01-24T22:36:00.000Z

I posted a couple of verses from this poem a while back. Last night I read it again and it made me feel so good that I thought I'd get up a couple more.

When I go to the markets, I look at the nectarines
and work my jaws at the sight of the plump cherries,
the oozing figs, the plums fallen
from the tree of life, a sin no doubt,
being so tempting and all. And I ask the price
and haggle over it and finally knock it down,
but the game is over, I pay double and it's still not much,
and the salesgirl turns her astonished eyes on me,
is it not happiness that is germinating there?

Opening a window; feeling the cool air;
walking down a road that smells of honeysuckle;
drinking with a friend; chattering or, better yet, keeping still;
feeling that we feel what other men feel;
seeing ourselves through eyes that see us as innocent,
isn't this happiness, and the hell with death?
Beaten, betrayed, seeing almost cynically
that they can do no more to me, that I'm still alive,
isn't this happiness, that is not for sale?

from Great Moments, Gabriel Celaya
Translated by Robert Mezey

Good thoughts

2008-01-23T22:32:00.000Z

I just came across this at Harry's Place.

Becta, the government's educational technology agency, has refused to consider a book called "Three Little Cowboy Builders" because they had "concerns about the Asian community and the use of pigs raises cultural issues" and because they "could not recommend this product to the Muslim community".

The important thing to notice about the BBC article cited there is that no Muslim voice is heard crying out for defense against the cultural imperialism and aggression of books that include pigs. Nor, among the many more or less silly things that Muslims have protested against, have I ever heard of any upset over the depiction of pigs cooked, raw or on all four trotters. This has all been decided by yet another government committee full, undoubtedly, of people who have completed several Diversity Training courses and are therefore qualified to impose a complete homogeneity of opinion all the time quivering in empathetic self-righteousness.

Which, unfortunately, is only going to be reinforced by what is happening across the Atlantic in a former dominion. A little while ago, the magazine Macleans published an excerpt from Mark Steyn's America Alone. Now he is being hauled before an especially Canadian quango called the Human Rights Commission because he has offended Islam. Similarly, Ezra Levant, once publisher of the Western Standard, may be about to suffer a similar fate because he published the Danish cartoons in that magazine.

I am sure you can imagine what Steyn and Levant have to say about such commissions per se (if you can't, go here, here or here), but they are not the only ones.

Alan Borovoy, general counsel to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the chap who helped found these commissions in the 1960s and ‘70s, was equally appalled. Writing in the Calgary Herald, he said “during the years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create such commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech”.

There's a great video going the rounds that features Levant's first meeting with the HRC. Among the many great points made by him is the obvious one that nothing of any import can be said that is not offensive to someone. Free speech cannot be regulated according to the sensibilities of the thin-skinned. Well, it couldn't. But now we have Human Rights Commissions, or BECTA, or any other well-intentioned organisation set up by the government to make people think good thoughts. The Catholic Church couldn't do it; Stalin couldn't do it. Do we have to?

The Führer's welfare state

2008-01-19T22:09:00.000Z

I watched the German film Sophie Scholl last night. I recommend it highly. It is a 'plain' film; nothing flashy or clever, but with a story like that, the main task must be to tell it and to allow the character to be revealed. This it does.

Just one brief observation on the side. Both Sophie Scholl and her brother, Hans, were university students. This was important for both the Gestapo investigator, Robert Mohr, and the judge, Roland Freisler, who condemned them to death. for them, not only were they traitors to the cause of German supremacy, but they were privileged ingrates. The Führer's social policies, the German welfare state, had made it possible for them to have this education. The state had paid; they owed it their loyalty.

It is not an argument used in this welfare state, at least not in this form. There are versions of it in discussions about the NHS. Since the state is paying for your health care, does it not have the right to forbid or strongly discourage certain behaviour that may result in illness and therefore cost to the state? It is difficult to argue with it. The state pays; you have in some sense surrendered your power, or right, to make certain decisions since they necessarily involve the state in their consequences.

I am not seeking to draw any conclusion here. I merely note the connection because it makes me think.

The Scoundrel's Plea

2008-01-14T22:17:00.000Z

Two little poems by Al-Ma'arri.

They say Time is soon to die
that the days are short of breath.
They lie.

I came across this in Amin Maalouf's Balthasar's Odyssey.

The Scoundrel's Plea
Make not, when you work a deed of shame,
The scoundrel's plea, "My forbears did the same".

This, with many others, is here.

Thanks to Hazar.

The strain of civilization

2008-01-13T22:42:00.000Z

A mate just sent me this quote from Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies.

...that great spiritual revolution, the invention of critical discussion, and, in consequence, of thought that was free from magical obsessions. At the same time we find the first symptoms of a new uneasiness. The strain of civilization was beginning to be felt.

This strain, this uneasiness, is a consequence of the breakdown of the closed society. It is still felt even in our day, especially in times of social change. It is the strain created by the effort which life in an open and partially abstract society continually demands from us - by the endeavour to be rational, to forgo at least some of our emotional social needs, to look after ourselves, and to accept responsibilities. We must, I believe, bear this strain as the price to be paid for every increase in knowledge, in reasonableness, in co-operation and in mutual help, and consequently in our chances of survival, and in the size of the population. It is the price we have to pay for being human.

The Visitor

2008-01-12T21:52:00.000Z

Until about a year ago, we got our TV and Internet via a set-top box. Then, for various reasons, we got fed up with the BBC and decided that television was a luxury we could well do without. So out went the set-top box (the modem, of course, stayed). There is still a TV set in the house, but only connected to a DVD-player and (may whatever being sits upon us in judgement forgive me) an X-Box for Sons Nos 2 and 3.

It follows that we didn't pay the TV Licence when it became due. It necessarily follows that there was a sharp exchange of emails between my wife and the agency that collects the licence money. Nonetheless, the sharpness didn't bite as I had expected it to. The matter seemed to have ended with an email last week saying that they had understood our position and would adjust their records accordingly. End of story.

No. Another email today repeating what had been said in the previous, but adding this paragraph.

In due course one of our Visiting Officers will call on you and confirm the situation. Once confirmed, we will update our records accordingly. This will protect your address from mailing, for a longer period than would normally be set at an address, as it has been confirmed that a set is not in use.

What could they possibly mean by "confirm the situation", I wonder. My wife has replied.

What precisely do you mean by a Visiting Officer 'calling' on me? I assume I'm under no obligation to prove a negative unless you have evidence to the contrary - if it were otherwise there would be a queue at my door. In addition to not having a TV that can receive signals, for example, I also don't:
1) harbour known terrorists
2) cultivate illegal drugs
3) solicit sex for financial gain
... but I'm not expecting a Visiting Officer to pop by and check that I'm telling the truth.

Is this a doorstep call or will this Officer assume they will be invited in?

We await the visit.

It's got to be a conspiracy

2008-01-12T18:53:00.000Z

Damian Thompson, the writer of this article and of a blog called Holy Smoke at The Telegraph, is publishing a book called, and about, Counterknowledge. It's basically about conspiracy theories; I'm not sure why he needs a new name for them. He included creationism, so it may be the way they dress themselves up in the rags of science to strut their stuff.

He quotes Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic magazine, to this effect.

The mistaken belief that a handful of unexplained anomalies can undermine a well-established theory lies at the heart of all conspiratorial thinking, as well as creationism, Holocaust denial and the various crank theories of physics.

Shermer is pointing to the widespread misconception that science 'tells it how it is'. People don't seem to be able to grasp, or accept, that science is, first of all, a method and that its theories are just that: theories, the best ones available to explain the evidence. A scientific theory is never definitive, just as anomalies are only unexplained so far. Science is always a work in progress; the anomaly doesn't necessarily disprove anything.

This is obviously not enough. People need and want conspiracies not least for the comfort that they bring. If the multinationals, the CIA, the Jews are controlling everything, at least someone is - far better that than the chaos which seems the only alternative. In addition, there is the added benefit of an excuse for our own failure - I, or we, can't get ahead because the multinationals, the CIA, the Jews (add for taste) are holding me, or us, back.

It doesn't stop there. Conspiracy theories also single out a clear group of Baddies, just like in the movies. This is the sort of economy of means that the mind always seeks, for the simple reason that it makes the world more comprehensible. As a habit of mind, it is both lazy and a sign of the our (natural) unwillingness to accept the role of chance in all things. It is just unacceptable that often there is no clear answer to the question, why? Conspiracy theories provide it, and, as well, a name to apply to that other great question, who's to blame?

Deleted post

2008-01-07T21:21:00.000Z

I have deleted the post that stood here because of the way a commenter from Muslims Against Sharia spoke to another commenter.

I have nothing against the purpose of the website Muslims Against Sharia; I am a non-Muslim against Sharia. And I disagree on many things with the woman at whom the comment was addressed. However, I respect her. She and I are able to disagree without insulting one another; her comments show intelligence, thought and wit. I do not respect people who at the slightest provocation resort to the language of violence, and sexual violence, at that. It is just this sort of reaction that has so often embarassed other Muslims in recent years and if Muslims Against Sharia want to change that, maybe they should first change the way they approach those who think a little differently.

Death never is [fair]

2008-01-06T01:18:00.000Z

Have a look at the very moving final post of Major Andrew Olmsted, a post saved until he was no longer able to put it up. He was killed in Iraq on the 4th of January. He quotes Plato, Team America and Babylon 5, and writes a great farewell.

(via PJM)

Man Finally Put In Charge Of Struggling Feminist Movement

2008-01-04T23:47:00.000Z

[Forgive me, but I just wanted to reprint that. It's from Riri's favourite: The Onion.]

Religion Within Reason

2008-01-03T23:40:00.000Z

I would recommend this article only for those with a taste for some of the more intricate arcana of religious debate. Normally, my tolerance here is extremely limited, but the issue here thrust itself into our hearts, minds and/or faces in late 2006. It concerns the address given in Regensburg by Pope Benedict concerning the relative status in modern life of Faith and Reason. Most of his remarks were actually addressed to the West and to what he sees as our overly rigid division between the two which thus weakens both.

However, most of the attention went to his characterisation of Islam, or rather, to his quotation of the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus. The point he was making was the different status Reason has in the two religions. He said,

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

The Pope was, in fact, calling for dialogue on this, and other issues. Dialogue was not the initial reaction he got. However, later, some more sensible people (138 of them, to be precise) wrote the Pope an open letter called "A Common Word between Us and You", which began a correspondence, which will lead to a meeting this spring between the Pope and a delegation from among the writers of the Muslim open letter.

In any case, the article I am steering towards, "Religion Within Reason" by Mark Gould, discusses both the Pope's position and the response contained in the Muslim open letter. I won't try to summarise it; it's way too complex. However, it's worth the effort in order to understand the gap between a religion that has absorbed the Enlightenment and one that hasn't.

The undiscover'd country

2008-01-01T23:14:00.000Z

On Radio 4's Home Planet today, there was a discussion of the new interest in space exploration and in voyages to the moon and to Mars. All of which was interesting. But it finished with one of the guests (I'm not sure which) saying something to the effect of, "But personally, I think that, instead of spending billions of dollars going to Mars, we should sort out planet Earth first."

This is an old canard; it has accompanied the space program from the start. I dislike it for many reasons. Without wishing to quibble over language, but the very idea of "sorting out planet Earth" is a totalitarian illusion. It will never happen, and all action aimed at such grand heights is doomed, not only to failure, but to sow much misery in its wake.

Implicit in this view is also the childish notion that environmental change, or poverty, are 'problems' that are capable of a 'solution', and that spending billions of dollars of them will bring about that solution. I can see no reason to believe that such a solution either exists, or even can exist.

Also implicit (usually) is the assumption that government action is the answer. They stop spending money on space travel and switch it over to the environment or social programs. My use of the word 'totalitarian' above points to just this idea - more government in all parts of our lives making us all live better, and solving the problems of climate change and/or poverty.

But I dislike it most for what it refuses to do - to boldly go where no man has gone before. I dislike for its renunciation of adventure, of discovery, of confrontation with the greatest existential challenge we have: our relation to the unimaginable vastness of which we are such an insignificant part. Whether the world is sorted or not, the lure of that undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller has yet returned will only grow stronger. If we fail even to set foot there, it will be through cowardice and lack of nerve. To be melodramatic, the idea that we should not leave the nest until it is all spick and span strikes me as like wanting to snuggle up warm and close to the womb forever, a sort of death wish.

New Year fun

2007-12-31T23:03:00.000Z

A little bit of joy to end 2007.

A few days ago, 40 Jews got out of Iran and made it to Israel. This was not in the script for the Leader that wants to bomb the Zionists into oblivion, but is on the best of terms with his fellow nationals who happen to share the same unfortunate birthright as the above-mentioned, to-be-annihilated Zionists.

So a state organ, PressTV, published an article denouncing the heinous lie that Jews had fled Iran, and to demonstrate the love that the state of Iran feels for its resident Jews, accompanied it with this photograph.

It may be that they were just trying to highlight the lawlessness of the Web, but they did not acknowledge the authorship of the photo. Its source was The People's Cube ("We do the thinking for you"); specifically, an article published in 2005 entitled "Israel Dismantles; World's Problems End". Amazingly, the article was of a satirical bent, and (this is important) the image was photoshopped. Unbelievably, the original placard did not express undying love of the Jews, but the determination to have a nuclear program (with, possibly, the consequences for the Jews that the Beloved Leader has had occasion to mention).

The photo was replaced after 2 days. To read the whole story, including links to screenshots of the original article, go here.

Imprecise benevolence

2007-12-31T21:39:00.000Z

I'm just going to quote this without comment. It is an excellent commentary on, among other things, the speech codes and worse in American universities. It's Roger Kimball at PJM.

Political correctness tends to breed the sort of unaccountability that Stephen warns against. At its center is a union of abstract benevolence, which takes mankind as a whole for its object, with rigid moralism. It is a toxic, misery-producing brew.

The Australian philosopher David Stove got to the heart of the problem when he pointed out that it is precisely this combination of universal benevolence fired by uncompromising moralism that underwrites the cult of political correctness. “Either element on its own,” Stove observed,
is almost always comparatively harmless. A person who is convinced that he has a moral obligation to be benevolent, but who in fact ranks morality below fame (say), or ease; or again, a person who puts morality first, but is also convinced that the supreme moral obligation is, not to be benevolent, but to be holy (say), or wise, or creative: either of these people might turn out to be a scourge of his fellow humans, though in most cases he will not. But even at the worst, the misery which such a person causes will fall incomparably short of the misery caused by Lenin, or Stalin, or Mao, or Ho-Chi-Minh, or Kim-Il-Sung, or Pol Pot, or Castro: persons convinced both of the supremacy of benevolence among moral obligations, and of the supremacy of morality among all things. It is this combination which is infallibly and enormously destructive of human happiness.
...the result is not paradise but a campaign to legislate virtue, to curtail eccentricity, to smother individuality, to barter truth for the current moral or political enthusiasm. For centuries, political philosophers have understood that the lust for equality is the enemy of freedom. That species of benevolence underwrote the tragedy of Communist tyranny. The rise of political correctness has redistributed that lust over a new roster of issues: not the proletariat, but the environment, not the struggling masses, but “reproductive freedom,” gay rights, the welfare state, the Third World, diversity training, and an end to racism and xenophobia.

Paradigm shift

2007-12-31T21:09:00.000Z

I feel the Earth move.

Playing with toy weapons helps the development of young boys.

It's not the NRA, or even some grouse-hunting wacko back home from the range; it's your Labour Government. Just to prove it: the source of this wisdom is a document called Confident, Capable and Creative: Supporting Boys' Achievements, which is issued by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Now who else would make up names like that?

Of course, paradigm shifts can have unpredictable effects even on the heads of those who initiate them. Witness the following from the above-mentioned report:

"Creating situations so that boys' interests in these forms of play can be fostered through healthy and safe risk-taking will enhance every aspect of their learning and development."

Yes, safe risk-taking.

And then when it comes to your prospective audience, well, entrenched interests just dig those trenches deeper.

But Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "The real problem with weapons is that they symbolise aggression."

No, Steve. They don't symbolise aggression; they are aggression. That's the point. (Heh!)

(via Instapundit)

An overlapping consensus

2007-12-30T22:34:00.000Z

This article by Andrew F. March in the Carnegie Council's Ethics & International Affairs magazine deals with one of the great issues of our time: religions within a liberal political system; more specifically, Islam within Western societies. The main focus of the article is Tariq Ramadan's To Be a European Muslim. However, in a long prelude, he sets out the terms of the debate, and it is this I would like to concentrate on.

The first term is political liberalism. While it is necessarily true that most westerners have little understanding of Islam, it is regrettably just as true that many seem to have as little understanding of their own political system. Political liberalism is not an ideology; ie it is not a systematic account of Truth, Meaning, God or Nature. It is agnostic on these questions; or rather, they are none of its business. March puts it like this: Political liberalism

is purely a doctrine of social and political cooperation. It seeks to elaborate the most reasonable public conception of justice and citizenship for free and equal persons, given the existence of disagreement on the ultimate meaning of life and the epistemological foundation for discovering it.

Furthermore, in a liberal society

public institutions do not give a philosophical or religious account of how liberal tolerance and neutrality fit into a grand theory of truth, the good, or the meaning of life. The claims of political liberalism are meant to be "free-standing"— that is, not derived from any single doctrine or religion, which might alienate those who do not endorse it. This strategy is, of course, designed to increase social unity: religious and cultural conflicts can be avoided or mitigated by limiting governmental power to what can be justified to all reasonable citizens.

This view of the state is, obviously, completely at variance with that of those Muslims for whom it commits the blasphemy of denying the unity of everything in the Oneness of God. In the same way, it is rejected by extreme versions of the Left (for whom the state should be the unitary expression of the revolutionary will of the people) and the Right (for whom it should embody the ethnic and/or cultural spirit of the same people).

The claims of the Left and the Right are no longer of any relevance. The question facing us now in Western countries is the relationship between the liberal state (if, that is, we still have one) and the Muslims who are our fellow citizens.

March is putting forward as a desirable end-state what he calls an "overlapping consensus".

Perhaps a Christian (following John Locke) believes that only sincere and uncoerced belief can help a believer achieve salvation. She reasons from this that state power used to punish citizens for thought or behavior incompatible with salvation is futile and, hence, religiously unsanctioned. She therefore endorses liberal political institutions, while at the same time affirming the truth of Christianity. When she relates liberal institutions to her deepest commitments and beliefs in this way, she has what Rawls has referred to as a "full justification" for those institutions, which the institutions themselves studiously avoid providing. When there exist many doctrines in a society (for example, various religions and secular philosophies) that all happen to provide their own unique full justifications for endorsing, on principled grounds, liberal terms of social cooperation, such a society enjoys what is knows as an "overlapping consensus."

With this in mind, he then sets out what he sees as the minimum and the maximum that the liberal state can demand of Muslims:

that Islamic conceptions of morality can only be cultivated and encouraged within Muslim families and communities through noncoercive means;

that the public sphere in non-Muslim liberal democracies cannot be expected to accommodate all Islamic religious sensibilities by limiting freedom of expression;

that grievances with public authorities be redressed politically and with a long-term commitment to democratic political institutions;

that non-Muslim fellow citizens are recognized as eligible for bonds of political and social solidarity and that relations with them are regarded as relationships of justice (rather than contingent accommodation);

that Muslims can recognize the diversity and ethical pluralism of liberal societies as a permanent feature and not something to be ultimately overcome by a future Muslim majority;

that, whatever legitimate solidarity Muslims feel for the global community of Muslims, non-Muslim states of citizenship enjoy immunity from violence.

I like very much his account of the theory of the liberal political system, though I wonder if we are straying further and further from it; that is, if because of our fear, we are trying to invest too much meaning in the system, turning it into an ideology therefore making more defined, but less flexible.

[I have not described March's view of Ramadan. Read the whole article. Apologies, but this post is already too long.]

[Groan]

2007-12-29T22:23:00.000Z

FIRE's Spotlight on Speech Codes 2007 (a pdf) is out. It does not make for pleasant reading. It is not so much that it lists herds of stories like the infamous University of Delaware one from earlier this year, but the fact that the use of coercive speech codes has become universal and that even relatively benign codes against threats and intimidation are abused by the colleges.

For example, a student at Valdosta State University (VSU) was protesting, on environmental grounds, the construction of two new carparks on campus. He posted on Facebook a page about the issue and included photos of

Zaccari [the college president], a parking deck, a bulldozer excavating trees, a flattened globe marked by a tire tread, automobile exhaust, a gas mask, an asthma inhaler, a public bus underneath the “not allowed” symbol, United States currency, and a photocopy of the Climate Change Statement of the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment.

Shortly thereafter, Barnes found a notice of administrative withdrawal under his door, informing him that his actions constituted “a specific threat to [Zaccari’s] safety and a general threat to the safety of the campus.”

Similarly, colleges abuse the laws on incitement and harassment. The first, instead of indicating the effect of words on those who agree with them, becomes that on those who do not agree.

A perfect illustration of the abuse of the “incitement to violence” doctrine comes from San Francisco State University (SFSU). In 2006, the SFSU College Republicans faced an allegation of “attempts to incite violence and create a hostile environment” after holding an anti-terrorism rally at which participants stepped on pieces of paper they had painted to resemble Hamas and Hezbollah flags. The University’s logic behind the charge was not that the students were advocating violence or lawless behavior on the part of those who agreed with them. Rather, their basis for the charge was that offended students might be moved to violence.
[Emphasis mine]

An example (one of several) of the abuse of the harrassment laws:

At the University of Iowa, sexual harassment “occurs when somebody says or does something sexually related that you don’t want them to say or do, regardless of who it is.” Examples include people “talking about their sexual experiences” or “[t]elling sexual jokes, innuendoes, and stories, or comments (about your clothes or body, or someone else’s.)”
[Emphasis mine]

The report finds that 75% of the colleges covered in the report are in violation of the First Amendment. Aside from the mind-numbing, Soviet-style conformity these practices are seeking to enforce, there is (and this is worse) the sheer joylessness of it all.

At The Ohio State University, students in the residence halls are instructed: “Do not joke about differences related to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, ability, socioeconomic background, etc.”

La Défense or Notre Dame

2007-12-29T21:34:00.000Z

I've just ordered from my pusher, Amazon, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America and Politics without God. It was written a couple of years ago by George Weigel, an American Catholic, biographer of John-Paul II, and Founding President of the James Madison Foundation.

My defense of liberal democracy is basically a utilitarian one: it works better. Weigel thinks this is uninspiring and inadequate. Struck by the debate over whether the preamble to the European constitution should mention Christiantity, by the blank modernism of the Great Arch of La Défense, by the demographic suicide that Europe seems committed to, he has written this book to argue that liberal democracy needs God in order to survive.

There's a talk by Weigel and a short Q&A about the book here. It includes the following.

Can a political community established in an act of historical amnesia defend itself by giving an account of its commitments and its aspirations? Can a political community deliberately founded on principled skepticism about the human capacity to know the truth of anything give an account of its commitments to human rights, democracy, the rule of law, civility, and tolerance, beyond the very thin account that it works better, it's a less sloppy way to conduct public affairs, and things move more easily if we are all good to each other?

Christmas Day Heron

2007-12-25T21:18:00.000Z

This oak, dead for as long as I can remember, is a favourite perch for seagulls. On a dull day, they stand out and always draw my eye. As they did today. But if you look carefully at the centre of the photograph, there is a bigger body, unmoved as the gulls flee at my approach.

A heron. The first I've seen here. It stretched its neck once (I was too slow with the camera), but for the rest did not move from its single-legged stance, hunched down against the cold.

Time can stop

2007-12-24T23:15:00.000Z

God, or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this
That what the heart has understood
Can verify in the body's peace
God, or whatever means the Good.
Louis MacNeice - Meeting Point

Merry Christmas to you all. I hope you have someone to share it with.

Escape

2007-12-23T22:06:00.000Z

21 years after the first occasion, my wife and I managed to get away for 24 hours yesterday. Our bolt-hole was a tiny village on the western edge of the Yorkshire Dales called Austwick; more precisely, just over the single-lane, hump-back bridge that are the 'town gates', a hotel called the Austwick Traddock.

A view through the fog of the 18th Century house that is now the hotel. The yew tree is probably the same age. Note the little staircase to the right of the house - 4 or 5 steps up to a landing, and then nothing. On Saturday evening, into this courtyard, about 50 people came a-wassailing, then repaired inside to recover from the winter chills. On the way back, we emerged from the fog momentarily to see this.

Pendle Hill, famous for its witches and for George Fox, who had a vision of a Christian Commonwealth on its top.

As we travelled, we came near a very great hill, called Pendle Hill, and I was moved of the Lord to go up to the top of it; which I did with difficulty, it was so very steep and high. When I was come to the top, I saw the sea bordering upon Lancashire. From the top of this hill the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered.

According to Wikipedia, the name Pendle Hill, is actually 3 words in 3 languages, Cumbric pen and Old English hyll, both of which mean the same as the Modern English word, hill.

Relay

2007-12-21T23:22:00.000Z

I will not attempt to make any excuses for my current lack of commitment to blogging. However, I can still read so I'll just provide links to a few things that I've enjoyed this evening.

A review of Thinking Politically by Michael Walzer. It's interesting because it (the review, but also Walzer) addresses one of the central problems for those of the (non-silly) Left today: how to reconcile support for a liberal society and a belief in socialism and cultural relativism. Some might say it can't be done (I would), but Walzer is not one of them.

Iraq is Not a Model, by one of Michael Totten's readers. This is an anti-war piece with a refreshingly concrete focus. I think, within its own terms, it is very good, but it ignores too many factors in the bigger picture. Nevertheless, it makes some good points.

Michael Yon in Blighty for the homecoming of the 4 Rifles. Very sentimental. I loved it.

Norman Geras reviews The Meaning of Life by Terry Eagleton. Norman Geras is one of the cleverest men about, with that real cleverness that combines high-minded learning with two feet on the solid ground. He's generous and clear-eyed, and almost anything he writes is worth reading. This is no exception.

From the same magazine, Dissent, an essay by Mitchell Cohen on Anti-Semitism and the Left that Doesn’t Learn. It's about the difference, in certain minds, between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, and the width of a razor.

Finally, Riri has come closest to making me produce recently. I'm not in good form, but she is.

Stay smelling

2007-12-20T22:35:00.000Z

The words of David Hicks, an Australian who converted to Islam, went to Afghanistan, got caught by the Americans and thrown into Guantánamo, had people in Australia marching for his release, was tried and admitted guilt, and is now in prison in Australia.

Dear family I spent around three months in a muslim military training camp in the mountains.I learnt about weapons such as ballistic missiles, surface to surface and shoulder fired missiles, anti aircraft and anti-tank rockets, rapid fire heavy and light machine guns, pistols, AK47s, mines and explosives. After three months everybody leaves capable and war-ready being able to use all of these weapons capably and responsibly.

Real jihad is possible just like before in the Prophets day where martyrs die with a smile on their faces and their bodies stay smelling of beautiful perfume for weeks after death.

One reward I get in being martyred I get to take ten members of my family to heaven who were destined for hell

But first I also must be martyred. We are all going to die one day so why not be martyred?

As a post script: If I do get martyred that is what I want. If Dad rings and says that, you know that your son is dead, say congratulations. Allah will help just let him know that you are happy about it.

The only true Muslims are those fighting.

The Jews have complete financial and media control

The Jesuits used to say, "Give me a child at 7, and he is mine forever." They could have had David Hicks at 14, 21 or 31 and achieved the same dominion. It's almost touching to read what idiocies he has managed to believe. Evidently, he gave up on Islam in Guantánamo (for which most Muslims must be truly grateful). Can't wait to see what he picks up next.

Update
I should have known.

Welcome home

2007-12-11T22:30:00.000Z

This has cheered me up immensely. The 4 Rifles paraded in Salisbury and lots of people to cheer them home. Michael Yon has the photos. That man does get around.

Activist poker

2007-12-10T21:25:00.000Z

Maclean’s magazine in Canada is being sued by the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) over an excerpt from Mark Steyn' America Alone. According to the CIC,

the article is "flagrantly Islamophobic" and implies Muslims are involved in a global conspiracy to take over Western societies.

I have read the book. The point of most of it is that there's no need for conspiracies; demographics will do the job. I do recall Steyn claiming that both the childless Europeans and the childful Muslims were bringing about a crisis, but not that they were 'conspiring' to do so. It takes true conspiracy theorists to see one there.

Anyway, there's this interesting paragraph in Stanley Kurtz' post at The Corner.

Maclean’s published a total of 27 letters over two issues in response to Steyn’s piece–more responses than any Maclean’s cover story received over the past year. Yet when the law students demanded a longer response, Maclean’s was willing to consider it. The students then insisted that Maclean’s run a five-page article, written by an author of their choice, with no editing by the magazine. They also demanded that the reply to Steyn be a cover story, with art controlled by them, rather than the magazine. At this point, Editor-in-Chief Kenneth Whyte showed them the door, saying he would rather let Maclean’s go bankrupt than permit someone outside of operations dictate the magazine’s content.

What is striking there is the excalation. At every positive response, demand more. When they say 'no', accuse them of racism or some such. And even if the case fails, how many more will be frightened into silence?

[Thanks, Ninme]

Is killing God serious?

2007-12-10T17:41:00.000Z

Frank Furedi thinks that the controversy over The Golden Compass is yet another example of the infantalism that has infected public discourse in matters that were 'private' until not so long ago. With regard to the state of public debate, I can only agree. However, I don't think that he is right about The Golden Compass.

He quotes Pullman as saying that the Dark Materials trilogy is ‘about killing God’, but doesn't find this credible.

An atheist takes the view that there is simply no divine being or beings. In Pullman’s books, there is more than a hint of a divine presence. God exists, but He has an undistinguished and undignified role to play in the text. This is a God that is not worthy of praise. It is almost as if the author is pulled towards a mirror-image depiction of divine authority. Pullman’s critique of theological authority offers a hollowed-out version of the Word. His is a vision of a religion without any redeemable features.

Furedi is correct in pointing out that God is explicitly present in these books. According to Pullman's 'theology', the being addressed as God is not the creator, but merely one among many angels - an alpha-angel, so to speak, who took on sceptre and crown, gave himself out to be the Creator, and generally played up in the absence of an incredibly negligent Supreme Being.

I think this is merely an indication of Pullman's failure in his real, and very serious purpose - to undermine monotheistic religion through the genre of fantasy. Remember that the great practitioners of this form, the authors Pullman rails against, created and moulded this genre for quite the opposite reasons. From George MacDonald, arguably the first, though to Tolkein and Lewis, the intention was to depict a world soaked in God. The characters live and grow, fight and win in battles that are spiritual and whose outcomes are more or less those of Christian in Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come.

This is implicit in the form of most fantasy novels in that the actions of one character will affect the whole created world. In Pullman's trilogy, for example, it is through Lyra that the Fall brought about by Eve will be reversed. Lyra will redeem the Flesh so long oppressed by the evil (male) forces of Adamic religions. But to suppose that this can happen is to presuppose a meaningful universe, ie a universe unified and made meaningful by the existence of a Creator, one moreover more than a little interested in his creation.

Pullman doesn't want this. He has Lyra's mentor (ex-nun, physicist) assert the non-existence of the being that makes Lyra's whole story meaningful. This is the thrust of so much of the authorial interference that makes the third book a litle tedious. And when Lyra announces the republic of Heaven in the last line of the book, there is no hint at all that God might even be given an honorary post of life senator.

Nonetheless, the whole structure of Pullman's universe is built on the existence of a being that gives that universe meaning. I haven't read a huge number of fantasy books, but I've never read one that wasn't structured in the same way. If you want to kill God, fantasy is not the genre or place to do it - He goes down, so does your fantasy.

So I think that Pullman is serious in wanting to 'kill God' and that it is something about which believers are justified in saying their bit. I also think that Pullman's artistic vision is far superior to his politico-religious vision and that the second is fatally undermined by his own work.

[Saw the film yesterday with No. 2 Son. Will write soon.]

A servant of all Iraqis

2007-12-04T14:12:00.000Z

Dinocrat quotes this news from the Kuwaiti news agency.

Leading Shiite cleric in Iraq Ali Sistani Tuesday banned the killing of Iraqis, particularly the Sunnis, and urged the Shiites to protect their brother Sunnis. Sistani bans the Iraqi blood in general the blood of Sunnis in particular.

His announcement came during a meeting with a delegation from Sunni clerics from southern and northern Iraq. The clerics are visiting Najaf to participate in the first national conference for Ulemaa of Shiites and Sunnis.

Sistani called on the Shiites to protect their Sunni brothers, according to Sheikh Khaled Al-Mulla, head of the authority of Ulemaa of Southern Iraq, noting that the Fatwa of Sistani would have positive impacts nationwide.

“I am a servant of all Iraqis, there is no difference between a Sunni, a Shiite or a Kurd or a Christian,” Al-Mulla quoted Sistani as saying during the meeting. Sistani warned the Sunni clerics from the plans of the enemies to plant seeds of discord among the Iraqis. The visiting delegation voiced relief for the meeting and said they backed Sistani’s stance.

He wonders why it hasn't received much attention. So do I.

Men of Valor, Parts II & III

2007-12-03T21:47:00.000Z

I haven't been keeping up. Part II of Michael Yon's Men of Valor makes a very positive analysis of the British effort in Basra (more positive than most we are going to hear in the near future) and then describes a battle and some true heroics, especially from the mechanics.
A couple of well-turned phrases.

The place is like a toilet used as an oven.

There is a clear battlefield conversion from ink to blood to ink to blood.

The centre piece of Part III is an account of the largest attack on the British since 2003, and yet was only the first of a month of attacks on a small Coordination Center. It includes this:

As for recognition at home, the British soldiers say that it rarely happens, but they did tell me about one lady who gives them great moral support. They say she writes a handwritten letter to every wounded soldier in 4 Rifles. She writes a handwritten letter to every family of a soldier who is lost. She writes letters to the battalion often.

The lady is the Duchess of Cornwall.

If you haven't already read them, it's worth the time.

Terrorists get off

2007-12-02T22:14:00.000Z

From an interview with Frank Furedi, talking about the ideas in his new book, Invitation to Terror: The Expanding Empire of the Unknown.

I think that what we have today is a very formless, diffuse anger, which lashes out at certain symbols of modernity and the West, or against what these individuals think of as the Empire. And I certainly think it is a problem when this phenomenon is redefined as something with a coherent ideology, or when it is called ‘totalitarian’ and various other names. This endows the networks with a coherence that they otherwise lack. But what is interesting is that their incoherent rage is matched by an equally incoherent response from Western governments. You’ve got this kind of symmetry of confusion in the war on terror.

Today’s terrorist networks simply lack the intellectual resources to offer any coherent alternative. And therefore they opportunistically draw on all sorts of resources. They’re just as likely to draw on some anti-consumerist manifesto or anything else that represents some kind of alternative to the onward march of a modern, technologically advanced society, as they are to draw from the Koran. So in a perverse kind of way, although they often have Islamic convictions, their worldview is fuelled by ideals that are much more to do with a backward-looking anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist, anti-modernist imagination; an outlook that says: ‘Stop the world I want to get off.’

There's a lot of good stuff here and I could have chosen several other passages, among which, the feebleness of our elites and the lack of 'greater meaning' in our society. It's worth a read.

Resident Evil Revisited

2007-12-02T00:32:00.000Z

John Derbyshire demonstrates the precipitous decline in our august educational establishments with two quotes.

[University training] is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant. —John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, 1852

Citizens capable of contributing to the development of a sustainable society must first develop empathy. This empathy will be developed through an advanced awareness of oppression and inequity that exists at a local and national level. Students will become aware of inequities, examine why these inequities exist, understand the concept of institutionalized privilege, and recognize systematized oppression (e.g. individual, institutional, and societal). Students will also examine forms of oppression related to specific social identities (e.g. race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, SES, religion, and age) and will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems that support this oppression. By having this knowledge, students can then learn how to change these systems and other systems which impact equity of resources. —University of Delaware, Residence Life: Competencies: Narritive [sic] 2, 2007

You may remember the affair of the evil Resident Assistants of Delaware University. Derbyshire has more, including extracts from the RA training manual. Read it all.

Borders or existence?

2007-11-28T23:18:00.000Z

Bernard Lewis is not optimistic about the prospects for some sort of settlement at Annopolis. Is it a question of borders, or a question of existence?

A good example of how this problem affects negotiation is the much-discussed refugee question. During the fighting in 1947-1948, about three-fourths of a million Arabs fled or were driven (both are true in different places) from Israel and found refuge in the neighboring Arab countries. In the same period and after, a slightly greater number of Jews fled or were driven from Arab countries, first from the Arab-controlled part of mandatory Palestine (where not a single Jew was permitted to remain), then from the Arab countries where they and their ancestors had lived for centuries, or in some places for millennia. Most Jewish refugees found their way to Israel.

What happened was thus, in effect, an exchange of populations not unlike that which took place in the Indian subcontinent in the previous year, when British India was split into India and Pakistan. Millions of refugees fled or were driven both ways -- Hindus and others from Pakistan to India, Muslims from India to Pakistan. Another example was Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, when the Soviets annexed a large piece of eastern Poland and compensated the Poles with a slice of eastern Germany. This too led to a massive refugee movement -- Poles fled or were driven from the Soviet Union into Poland, Germans fled or were driven from Poland into Germany.

The Poles and the Germans, the Hindus and the Muslims, the Jewish refugees from Arab lands, all were resettled in their new homes and accorded the normal rights of citizenship. More remarkably, this was done without international aid. The one exception was the Palestinian Arabs in neighboring Arab countries.

The government of Jordan granted Palestinian Arabs a form of citizenship, but kept them in refugee camps. In the other Arab countries, they were and remained stateless aliens without rights or opportunities, maintained by U.N. funding. Paradoxically, if a Palestinian fled to Britain or America, he was eligible for naturalization after five years, and his locally-born children were citizens by birth. If he went to Syria, Lebanon or Iraq, he and his descendants remained stateless, now entering the fourth or fifth generation.

The reason for this has been stated by various Arab spokesmen. It is the need to preserve the Palestinians as a separate entity until the time when they will return and reclaim the whole of Palestine; that is to say, all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel. The demand for the "return" of the refugees, in other words, means the destruction of Israel. This is highly unlikely to be approved by any Israeli government.

Inequality - Adjusted for time and place

2007-11-26T21:18:00.000Z

Branko Milanovic, Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson, economists from the World Bank have been doing some comparative studies of inequalities of wealth. They have found

... that income distribution within a modern society is much the same as income distribution in imperial Rome, or England and Wales at the time of the glorious revolution. It’s not that there is no variation at all, but that modern societies are as different from each other as from ancient societies.

For example, imperial Rome’s income distribution looks like that of the modern US; China in 1880, like Sweden today, was rather equal; England in 1688 was more unequal than imperial Rome, but modern Brazil is worse still.

This is unexpected, not least because modern societies have the potential to be far more unequal than anything the Romans could have dreamed of. That’s because the richer a society is, the more unequal it could be without its working class starving to death. Prehistoric societies were, by necessity, fairly equal: there wasn’t enough societal wealth to make anybody very rich.

Modern Tanzania seems more equal than modern America, but Milanovic and his colleagues point out that it is as unequal as it could possibly be without mass starvation. The Democratic Republic of Congo is about as unequal as the US, but that is far more than the country can stand – hence the enormous loss of life through war, malnutrition and disease.

Bad to less bad

2007-11-24T22:48:00.000Z

General Petreaus on the slow haul.

Over time, it all just accumulates. This is not a light switch. You don't go from bad to good. You go from bad to less bad. And then you revert again. Progress accumulates over time. You can build on momentum as it is established. As shops get back into business … and some services … .
It all just accumulates slowly, but surely if you can keep building on the momentum that you've achieved, and that's what we've tried to do, obviously.

I used to try to convince people that learning a language was like that (except for the bit about the shops and services). The hardest thing to accept that, at a certain point you can't avoid, you are 'Bad' and that the next step is not 'Good', but 'less bad', as the General says.

Sad day

2007-11-24T12:06:00.000Z

John Howard is out. A return to gesture politics.

Clever man

2007-11-22T23:44:00.000Z

Newsweek reluctantly sees progress in Baghdad. The journalist sound positively chipper. The American military will not be drawn.

Victory, he [Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr] suggested, "is within sight, but not yet within reach."

Men of Valour

2007-11-22T23:15:00.000Z

Michael Yon embedded with British forces in May this year and saw quite a bit of action. He came away with an admiration for the British forces that may seem a little eccentric now that they are themselves embedded in an enclave at the airport. But it shouldn't. It is becoming increasingly clear that they were grossly undermanned by as much as two or three times in addition to being subject to Brown's political games and the gesture politics of a new Prime Minister.

Anyway, as always, Yon's piece is well worth the read. It is the first in a series of, he says, "about VIII".

Where are the WMD (this time)?

2007-11-21T18:00:00.000Z

Do you remember the warehouses of Iraqi documents that the Pentagon released on to the Web because they couldn't be bothered examining them? They disappeared after a bit, and little has been heard since. Well, a man called John Loftus, who is the head of the non-governmental International Intelligence Summit has done the donkey work and released a report at the weekend.

The gist of the new evidence is this: Roughly one-quarter of Saddam's WMD was destroyed under UN pressure during the early to mid 1990s. Saddam sold approximately another quarter of his weapons stockpile to his Arab neighbors during the mid-to-late-1990's. The Russians insisted on removing another quarter in the last few months before the war. The last remaining WMD, the contents of Saddam's nuclear weapons labs, were still inside Iraq on the day when the coalition forces arrived in 2003. His nuclear weapons equipment was hidden in enormous underwater warehouses beneath the Euphrates River. Saddam's entire nuclear inventory was later stolen from these warehouses right out from under the Americans' noses.

I'm not one to hunt down and rejoice in instances of American incompetence, but if this is true, then the consequences could extend over a huge area and a long time. This writer links the dispersal to the Syrians' nuclear program and the Israeli raid in September. Not even that is confirmed, but the location and possible use of other Iraqi material is even less confirmed and does not stimulate happy thoughts. I'd be a touch worried.

Debate - Ali and Hussein

2007-11-21T17:36:00.000Z

Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ed Hussein debated yesterday evening in London about the way forward for Muslims, first in Europe and then elsewhere. Their positions are, by now, well known. Ali thinks the problem is not the reading of Islam, but the religion itself, which she sees as intrinsically totalitarian. Hussein maintains that it is only by going deep into the traditions of Muslim toleration that adherents can find a way to live within both their faith and the modern world.

I admire Ali's courage and believe that her choice of total rejection must be available to Muslims without their being threatened with a grisly end. However, even from my position of ignorance about Islam, I can see a huge weakness in her argument. It's totally impractical. Islam, whether her reading of it is correct or not, is hardly going to disappear; it means too much to too many people. In addition, there is a growing number of Muslims (Ed Hussein among them) who are both devout and as comfortable as anyone else in today's world, and who are willing to condemn absolutely the tactics and theology of the Jihadis.

However, the proof that Ed Hussein's stance can become less exceptional is needed both in Europe and in, most particularly, in Muslim countries. But in both places, the more fundamentalist positions not only get more air-time (which may be unfair, but does reflect the degree of concern / fear felt by non-Muslims), but seem to be far more attractive to many young people. They've got the allure of the radical, the righteous and the pure that Communism used to have. They're sexier. That's a potent combination.

Boris Boris Boris

2007-11-19T23:04:00.000Z

Support Boris Johnson, the most entertaining man in the country. Make him No. 1. The quality is ineluctable.

The MOTTO

2007-11-19T22:50:00.000Z

Go and vote for the British national motto. Especially if you're not British (foreigners do these things so much better). I was torn between "No motto please, we're British" (despite the dreadful punctuation) and "We apologise for the inconvenience". I went for the latter because it harks back to a time when the working classes weren't allowed out of the country to demonstrate to everyone else how badly we bring up our children and the middle classes knew the social value of embarrassment.

BTW, my choice is coming fourth with 11.4%. The other one is first with 21%.

[I must admit that the motto in one of the comments, "None of the Above", would have tempted me if it had been in the (or any) shortlist.]

Us and them

2007-11-18T22:58:00.001Z

Roger Kimball says it for me in his diatribe against multiculturalism. The quote below is a nice little multicultural freak show.

The philosopher Martha Nussbaum warns that “patriotic pride” is “morally dangerous” while University of Penn PresidentAmy Gutmann [n.b., thanks to the reader who corrected me on this: see below] reveals that she finds it “repugnant” for American students to learn that they are “above all, citizens of the United States” instead of partisans of her preferred abstraction, “democratic humanism.” New York University’s Richard Sennett denounces “the evil of a shared national identity” and concludes that the erosion of national sovereignty is “basically a positive thing.” Cecilia O’Leary of American University identifies American patriotism as a right-wing, militaristic, male, white, Anglo, and repressive force, while Peter Spiro of Temple University says it “is increasingly difficult to use the word ‘we’ in the context of international affairs.”

Technorati tags: Multiculturalism

Waste 6 minutes

2007-11-16T21:55:00.000Z

I would like to share with you two videos I came across today that prove that Microsoft is evil. Or not.

The first is Steve Steve Ballmer selling Windows 1.

The second is a rap. About the upgrade to MS DOS 5. It's 5 minutes long, but you won't regret it. Well, maybe you will.

Good news

2007-11-16T21:50:00.000Z

This photo is one of many in Michael Yon's latest dispatch from Baghdad. It must be one of the happiest he's ever done. The priest is Most Reverend Shlemon Warduni and he is celebrating mass in St John’s Church, until recently abandoned.

A couple of the captions.

LTC Michael told me today that when al Qaeda came to Dora, they began harassing Christians first, charging them “rent.” It was the local Muslims, according to LTC Michael, who first came to him for help to protect the Christians in his area. That’s right. LTC Michael told me more than once that the Muslims reached out to him to protect the Christians from al Qaeda...Most of the Christians are gone now; having fled to Syria, Jordan or Northern Iraq.

This next is the most moving one. We can start talking about success in Iraq when the 1 (2?) million refugees start coming back.

The Muslims in this neighborhood worry that other people will take the homes of their Christian neighbors, and that the Christians will never come back. And so they came to St John’s today in force, and they showed their faces, and they said, “Come back to Iraq. Come home.” They wanted the cameras to catch it. They wanted to spread the word: Come home. Muslims keep telling me to get it on the news. “Tell the Christians to come home to their country Iraq.”

Al-Dura - raw, but edited

2007-11-16T00:29:00.001Z

The raw footage just got shorter. 27 minutes down to 18 and it still doesn't add up. But Charles Enderlin turned up, and that's a first.

If all that is meaningless to you, go to Nidra Poller's article at PJM or Richard Landes' piece at Augean Stables

[“Charles is above all proud. If you want him to admit error, you’re asking him to put a bullet to his head and pull the trigger. Forget it. He would sooner die that admit error, and Arlette Chabot will defend him, not because he’s right, but because he’s her employee and her organization’s reputation is at stake. If France2 loses this case every journalist will have to fear having his work questioned.”]

or Melanie Phillips at The Spectator.

Technorati tags: Al-Durah

Appropriate humility

2007-11-15T11:55:00.001Z

I don't know a whole lot about Pakistan or its politics. However, even though I think we should generally support people who demonstrate for representation and an independent judiciary and against military rule, I can't quite see Pakistan solely in those terms. I think we should be careful what we wish for.

So does Mark Steyn, who rightly reminds us that "Pakistan is both a nuclear power and a nation that cannot enforce sovereignty over significant chunks of its territory. Large tracts are run by the Taliban." Nuclear + Taliban. The use of the word "humility" in the first sentence below is entirely "appropriate".

It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate when offering advice to Islamabad. Gen. Musharraf is — as George S. Kaufman remarked when the Germans invaded Russia — shooting without a script. But that's because he presides over a country that defies the neatness of scripted narratives. In the days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, President Bush told the world you're either with us or against us. Gen. Musharraf said he was with us, which was jolly decent of him considering that 99.9999 percent of his people are against us. In the teeth of that glum reality, he has ridden a difficult tightrope with some skill.
As John Negroponte, U.S. deputy secretary of state, put it, aside from America, "No country has done more in terms of inflicting damage and punishment on the Taliban and al-Qaeda since September 11" — which, given the proportion of Pakistanis that loathe America and actively supports the Taliban and al Qaeda, is not unimpressive.

Game over

2007-11-14T23:21:00.000Z

The French unions have lost this one. How do I know? Because I've heard no-one mention "pension rights"; instead, everyone says, "pension privileges". Even on the BBC 6 o'clock News, the three Parisians they interviewed all used the same word. What happens to privileges? Come the revolution, ...

Wonderful

2007-11-14T23:19:00.000Z

Music of the loaves

2007-11-12T21:33:00.001Z

Music of the spheres. The light music of Irish whiskey. Music of the loaves? Doesn't ring out, does it? What about if I said it was a code in a painting by Leonardo da Vinci? You'd believe me even less, wouldn't you?

But this one actually sounds possible. The symbolism works.

Pala first saw that by drawing the five lines of a musical staff across the painting, the loaves of bread on the table as well as the hands of Jesus and the Apostles could each represent a musical note.
This fit the relation in Christian symbolism between the bread, representing the body of Christ, and the hands, which are used to bless the food, he said. But the notes made no sense musically until Pala realized that the score had to be read from right to left, following Leonardo's particular writing style.

He even found a time signature, though I wonder about this historically.

His first attempt at deciphering the musical clues failed. But then he noticed the apostles grouped in threes -- giving him the idea the piece should be played in 3/4-time...

I don't quite see how he can get the relative values of the notes. Nevertheless, this is good one. And it doesn't stop there.

The musician also claims to have discovered a chalice and Hebrew writings hidden in the 15th century masterpiece.

Others' vices

2007-11-11T22:41:00.000Z

From a review of Ibn Warraq's Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism. Said's thinking, which has destroyed departments of Middle Eastern Studies throughout the world by turning scholars into activists (which means they do both things badly - as do journalists who propogate Pallywood fictions), is finally coming under consistent attack. The latest is this book by Ibn Warraq, the review of which includes the quote below.

Warraq then turns to Said’s misrepresentation of the West as a xenophobic culture, fearful of the “Other” and cultural difference. Warraq explodes this canard by identifying what he calls the “three golden threads” woven through Western culture since the time of the Greeks: rationalism, universalism, and self-criticism. As Warraq argues, Western intellectual curiosity has driven an interest in other cultures and peoples and created a magnificent edifice of scholarship formalizing that interest. The Western notion of a universal human nature reinforced this intellectual openness to other cultures. And self-criticism has been the engine of the West’s improvement, leading to the rejection of traditional practices that were unjust or inefficient, as Warraq shows with his discussion of the British Empire’s war on slavery. In fact, the West’s most trenchant critics, Said included, have always been Westerners.

It is the absence of these golden threads, Warraq believes, not Western crimes abetted by “Orientalism,” that accounts for the backwardness and stagnation of the Muslim Middle East—a region that with few exceptions lacks interest in other peoples, adheres unthinkingly to fossilized traditions, and is unable to look critically at its failures. These characteristics have fostered a paranoid cult of victimhood that blames the West for the failures of Middle Eastern regimes. Said’s work encourages such thinking: “In cultures already immune to self-criticism,” Warraq writes, “Said helped Muslims and particularly Arabs, perfect their already well-developed sense of self-pity.”

To which should be added:

Warraq, however, is honest enough to accept that his three golden threads have a tendency to degenerate into dangerous weaknesses. Rationalism becomes scientism, universalism becomes a flabby tolerance that disguises a lack of conviction, and self-criticism becomes an irrational self-hatred. Add multiculturalism’s sentimental adulation of a non-Western “Other,” superior to the money-grubbing Westerner, and the self-loathing West has essentially validated the jihadists’ reasons for wanting to destroy it.

And now we lie in Flanders fields

2007-11-11T22:20:00.000Z

Al-Dura exposed?

2007-11-10T23:17:00.001Z

This Thursday, November 14, the France2 al-Dura rushes will be shown in open court. Richard Landes, who has done so much to bring this case to public attention, writes here about the journalistic issues highlighted by the case. It is understandable that the Palestinians view news as just another front in their war. What is more disturbing is that Western journalists should co-operate in telling the 'higher truth' at the expense of every other. There's a thesis there on the ramifications of moral relativism and the oppressor-oppressed paradigm that is still taught in our universities. Together they amount to moral squalor.

Shia awakening

2007-11-09T23:08:00.001Z

This is good. This is very good.

The reporter on the 6 o'clock news was almost incredulous. This ain't like it was s'possed to be.

Back to source

2007-11-09T22:49:00.001Z

SBSP. Now that's is the sort of thing that's needed.

Snuffed it

2007-11-08T22:57:00.001Z

I really had wondered how Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials could be put on the screen by an American studio. Just to tell the story with any sort of faithfulness is to mount an attack on organised religion. In addition, the moment, the climax prepared for over 1,000 pages is a sexual awakening. Anti-God plus adolescent sexuality in a children's story. No. I couldn't imagine they would take the risk.

So, guess what the big offering is this Christmas. Chistmas. Pullman must be chewing his pencils to pulp. According to this article at the Atlantic, he is right to. They've done exactly what you'd expect them to. Just one example. Instead of the Magisterium, a sort of Calvinistic Catholic Church, we're to have "a fascistic, totalitarian dictatorship, Russian/KGB/SS" ... thing. Pullman must be chewing doorhandles.

It's not as if I even like Pullman's 'theology'. It's like something from a 1930s Fabian - you know, if everyone could just behave like English middle class gentlemen, with a bit of socialism thrown in, then everyone would be a damn sight better off. The great final battle in which the oppressive forces of Old Heaven are defeated and feeble old God snuffs it stikes me just as Milton's battle does - ridiculous. And the last two lines are just embarrassing.

"And then what?" said her daimon sleepily. "Build what?"
"The republic of heaven," said Lyra.

I mean, hasn't he heard? Done that. Been there. Neither a republic nor heaven.

All that apart, these three books make up one of the greatest imaginative creations in English literature. His fantasy worlds, his characters, his plotting, his landscapes, his melding of the old and the new, the fantastic and realism, metaphysics and physics, all of this I find easily superior to Tolkein. Not, I repeat, his philosphy, but his craft. Unfortunately, the one is necessary to the other. That story, without the rebellion against God, will be engaging if well done; it will not be thrilling. It will be a fun Christmas extravaganza, not an enthralling, elemental experience of a reality authentically different. Such a shame.

Technorati tags: Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials, Hollywood

Thanks and praise.

2007-11-08T00:11:00.000Z

Now that's not something you see every day. Baghdadis putting a cross back on a church - St John's, to be precise. Michael Yon sent the photo to Glenn Reynolds with a few quotes from the men involved. Choked me up, it did. Go and read it.

MORE FEAR, BARREL-LOADS OF IT

2007-11-07T22:30:00.001Z

I’d compile a list, but I’m too worn out by the tremors in my limbs and my wildly beating heart.

However, if terrorism, Eurabia, global warming, demographic decline, life-style induced cancer, diet-induced cancer, [add at will], have not burrowed deep down into your congenitally perverse optimism, then here’s another one: THE OIL IS RUNNING OUT!!!!

It’s no good telling yourself you’ve heard it all before (how many times?). That doesn’t count. This time it’s REALLY RUNNING OUT. It’s all in a movie called A Crude Awakening (is that syntactically reminiscence of another call to alarm?), which is here to tell you that THE OIL IS RUNNING OUT!!!

[Except it isn’t. Derek Brower explains.]

Secret Speech

2007-11-06T21:39:00.000Z

Victor Grayevsky has died.

No, I'd never heard of him either. Michael Ledeen wants him to be "the man of the century", which is maybe a bit of an over-reaction to the death of a 'middleman'. Mind you, the process he 'middled' was that of obtaining and relaying to the world the text of Khrushchev’s Secret Speech, the one that revealed to the incredulous ears of the oppressive bourgeois world the joy of the new life under Stalin. He was also a double agent and won the Lenin Medal.

So hardly an uneventful life. But man of the century? Wasn't that Stalin?

M'aidez!

2007-11-06T21:14:00.000Z

The chart traces the path of GDP and Foreign Aid in the Palestinian Authority since the Oslo Accords. Would it be too daring to assume that the pink and blue lines will continue to diverge? A GDP does not a country make. But it sure is difficult to have one without.

This article claims that the Peace Dividend (if it is ever paid) will be of far more benefit to the Palestinians than to Israel. This one looks more closely at the GDP/Aid question, and includes this quote:

The assessments of none other than George Abed, a Palestinian and senior IMF economist, and of James Prince, a consultant to the Palestinian Investment Fund, offer an important summary of the phenomenon of increased aid correlating with economic deterioration. Abed recognized the futility of providing donor aid, asserting that it was counterproductive. What was needed, he said, was investment. This view was echoed in Prince's conclusion that, "many of the donor programs have not only been ineffective, they have harmed the economy." ( "Expert says Palestinians don't need financial aid," San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 5, 2005).

Altruism - The ant and the officer

2007-11-06T16:55:00.001Z

Roger Scruton thinks that the modern concept of altruism is possible only by warping the meaning of the word so that it denotes the opposite of what it used to. The causes of this are what he calls "the gospel of selfishness" (as expressed by Ayn Rand) and "the biological theory of 'altruism', defined as an act whereby one organism benefits another at a cost to itself", but only as another, more 'elevated' act of selfishness, or enlightened self-interest.

To illustrate the latter:

On this definition the lioness who dies in defense of her cubs is altruistic. So too is the soldier ant marching by instinct against the fire encroaching on the ant-heap, or the bat distributing its booty around the nest. Geneticists have worried about how to reconcile "altruism" with the theory of the selfish gene; but the rest of us ought to worry rather more about the use of this term to run so many disparate phenomena together. Is it really the case that the officer who throws himself onto a live grenade in defense of his men is obeying the same biological imperative as the soldier ant who marches to his death in the fire? And if so, is there anything really praiseworthy about the officer's action?

I would agree that there needs to be a way of distinguishing the officer's action from that of the ant. It is interesting that in Marxism, and related creeds, the human qualities of greed and selfishness would become non-existent in the post-revolutionary order. 'Altruism' would become systemic. According to such thinking, the act of the officer would be a case of false consciousness - a mode of thinking imposed in order to shore up the existing unjust system. Selfishness in the pre-revolutionary world was seen as a measure or a proof of the injustice of the system or else as a reaction (more or less justified depending on who was in power) to it. Thus the actors had greater agency than the ant, but not much. They could choose to be victims of the system or to overthrow it. But for the most part, they were, in the end, merely products of it.

Scruton is going back to a vision of the individual that is still fighting its corner, but has been under threat for 2 centuries. It is one that acknowledges the greater good, but whose measure is either God or an elevated idea of duty. In this vision, true altruism (selflessness) is an ideal to be sought after, and it is not natural, but acquired; it is cultural. Looking for it in nature, in order to justify it, is a waste of time. It is about a society inculcating/imposing ideals. But to inculcate them, it first has to have them. And to have these ideals, it needs a framework of individual responsibility and something approaching honour as well as the assumption of a reality higher than the Self.

One of the great challenges of the secular world is to be able to assert such a reality without denying its residents responsibility for their actions, to uuphold ideals without them being contradictory and/or murderous, and to encourage altruism without emptying it of all meaning.

Technorati tags: Morality

Relatively new

2007-11-05T21:37:00.001Z

Mark Steyn quotes the famous first line of Allan Bloom's The Closing Of The American Mind,

There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.

and ends his lament with

What Allan Bloom observed in his students can now be found in the teachers.

Yet I have noticed a difference recently in at least one place. No. 3 son started this September at the local high school, where we've had children for 10 years. This time at the Year 7 Parents' Evening, the Head spoke in tones that I hadn't heard since my childhood. It was about developing responsibility in the kids, yes, but it was mostly about the responsibility of the adults. Who are expected to be adults; ie aware of the right way to do things and determined to show their kids. There was little of the wishy-washy multi-culti stuff. Is this a sign that the Adult is on the way back? That there are school ma'ams again?

Technorati tags: Morality, Adults and children

Factor in boredom

2007-11-04T23:23:00.001Z

Simon Heffer in Australia, which, in case you haven't heard, is about to have an election whose universally forecast result is that the incumbent PM, John Howard, will be thrown out so that Labour's Kevin Rudd can take his place.

Yet for an Englishman – or anyone else – coming here now, the place is humbling.
We really do see a people who have never had it so good.
Indeed, it is hard to name a nation in history that has ever had it so good as the Australians are having it now.
This is a happy country: happy not just because of its opulence, its climate and its beauty, but because it is, to use a ghastly politician's phrase, largely at ease with itself.

It's good. It's never been better. Therefore, they are going to change government. Right!?

I think people underestimate greatly the importance in politics, and in much else, of boredom. People, especially media people, just get sick and tired of the same faces and, because things are basically OK, whimsically decide to change those faces for other faces, no matter what those other faces say or may do. Then, if things go badly, people, even media people, get serious again, and look at reality and experience and even listen to what the faces are saying.

Unreconstructed humanity. Richly deserving to be wiped out by Global Warming (or by the people who preach it).

Technorati tags: Australia, Politics

BBC catching up

2007-11-04T22:09:00.001Z

David Kilcullen is interviewed by Frank Gardner about Iraq and Afghanistan. It's on the Analysis programme. It's basically what you will have heard and read in other places, but it's good to see the BBC slowly coming up to date.

He tries to inject some realism into the timescale expectations, explains what "winning hearts and minds" actually means, why "information ops" have to come first, why the use of the word "war" is misguided and puts warning marks on (surprise!) Pakistan, Bangladesh, and ...Europe.

Technorati tags: Iraq, Counter Insurgency

How dare he!

2007-11-03T22:07:00.001Z

God doesn’t exist — the bastard!

I just came across this line of Samuel Beckett's, which, in its assertion of non-existence and existence in the same breath, reminds me of the Jewish joke I posted a while back.

Resident evil

2007-11-03T21:04:00.001Z

There are times I think that there is a organisation entirely devoted to making up stories to appeal to my deepest prejudices. I generally work on the assumption that whatever I believe to be true is necessarily limited and subject to my own inadequacies. Then I hear stories like this.

The University of Delaware runs a special programme for its 7,000 resident students. It hires Resident Assistants (RAs) to conduct seminars and one-to-one sessions with new arrivals. This in itself, I think, is not unusual. What is unusual (I hope) are the intended outcomes of these sessions (called "treatments"): correct views on politics, race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism.

For example, define 'racist'

A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.

Or, 'non-racist'?

A non-term. The term was created by whites to deny responsibility for systemic racism.

Questions that the RAs put in the one-to-one treatment.

1. When were you first made aware of your race?
2. When did you discover your sexual identity?
4. When was a time when you confronted someone regarding
an issue of diversity? What was the confrontation about?
If haven’t [sic], why not?
5. When was a time you felt oppressed? Who was oppressing
you? How did you feel?

What should the students get from their treatment?

B. Students will recognize that systemic oppression exists in our society.
C. Students will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems of oppression.

Link this with the definition of racism, and the conclusion is clear: dismantle the whole system (except tenure).

What happens in a treatment session?

In one activity we were required to agree or disagree with a statement, when asked if we could abstain or be neutral, our RA promptly said that she would not proceed with the activity until everyone had taken a side...everyone was forced to take a side they might have disagreed with and everyone at some point was forced to justify their choosing of the side they did, and I say forced because refusing to justify oneself was not acceptable.

Obviously a case of unacceptable indifference.

After a campaign by FIRE, the President of the University of Delaware has cancelled the programme. Why are we becoming more and more like the Evil Empire we defeated in 1989?

Technorati tags: Academia, Political Correctness

Police work

2007-11-02T22:15:00.001Z

Google Earth against the baddies.

LTC Frank told me the other day that his best weapon system is his cell phone. Calls come to him (through his interpreter) every day and into the night, with information from locals about the whereabouts of wanted JAM members. Many local people are clearly fed up with the violence. Some even send e-mails with Google Earth maps showing exactly where suspects are, and they are doing it in real time.
We'll be sitting there in the TOC (tactical operations center or HQ) and an e-mail comes in and it's literally a map (or a photo of one) with detailed descriptions of wanted men and/or caches. And the information is turning out to be true. I have never seen anything like this before,
It's becoming almost bizarre how specific the informants are becoming. Informants have called up saying they are with bad guys right now and giving their location. Our guys show up and arrest everyone. Hours later, the U.S. soldiers let the informants go. JAM and AQI are getting slammed in many areas because local people are sick of the violence and local people trust Americans to help them end it.

Michael Yon in the New York Post.

Technorati tags: Iraq, Winning and losing

A hundred schools of thought

2007-11-02T02:04:00.001Z

A lovely paragraph from Clive James.

Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.
Mao Zedong, April 1956, as quoted by Philip Short in Mao, p 455
The pretty rubric looks so harmless even today, now that we have some idea of what it cost. Halfway between a poem and a slogan, it is a small thought that would fit on a big T-shirt. It doesn't even sound wrong. Mao designed it to sound right. For the trick to work, thousands of people had to believe that the words meant what they said, even though the Party, within long memory, had never rewarded a contentious voice with anything except torture and death. Anyway, the suckers fell for it. The flowers bloomed, the schools of thought contended, and Mao's executioners went to work. The slogan had the same function as the Constitution of the Soviet Union, which Aleksandr Zinoviev tellingly defined as a document published in order to find out who agreed with it, so that they could be dealt with.

Something so fragile

2007-11-01T00:39:00.001Z

How short life must be, if something so fragile can last a lifetime.
Franz Kafka

I read the quote without context and thought that the word "something" referred to life. Quiet explosion in the head.

It actually refers to a young woman's body. But I'm going to keep my mistaken idea. It's not true to the intention of the author, but it's true all the same.

I read it in Clive James' Cultural Amnesia, a resuscitation of real humanism.

Another sort of cartoon war

2007-10-27T23:16:00.001Z

Excellent cartoons about terrorism from the Arab press.

Thanks again, Ninme.

The people in the photo

2007-10-27T23:12:00.001Z

Wonderful, moving story from WW2.

Thanks, Ninme.

PC and Gaia

2007-10-27T21:38:00.001Z

Reviews of a couple of interesting books, once again from Spiked.

The first is Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case by Stuart Taylor Jr and KC Johnson. The title says it all.

And, of course, we all learn from our mistakes.

The second looks at Earthy Realism: The Meaning of Gaia, a collection of pieces on that other pillar of modern righteousness: environmentalism. It includes this wonderful tip:

Lie on your back on the ground outside in as peaceful a place as you can find, in the forest perhaps, or by the roaring sea…. Feel her [Earth’s] great continents, her mountain ranges, her oceans... Let yourself be “Gaia’ed” by the great round sentience of our living world. Deeply experience what it feels like to meld with the great wild body of our animate Earth...

To think how much time and blood the Church spent on suppressing pantheism, of what benefits we've had from said suppression. Any view that is based on a state of (initial or final) harmony is not only perverse; it's downright dangerous.

[Apologies for my watery contributions to the blogosphere; work and studies dominate.]

Using British libel laws

2007-10-27T21:04:00.001Z

Five books you can't buy at Waterstones.

Unknown Soldiers: How Terrorism Transformed the Modern World by Matthew Carr - published by Profile Books in August 2006; withdrawn from sale and pulped following legal action in January 2007.
Alms for Jihad: Charities and Terrorism in the Islamic World by J Millard Burr and Robert O Collins - published by Cambridge University Press in April 2006; withdrawn from sale and pulped in August 2007
Reaping the Whirlwind: The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan by Michael Griffin - published by Pluto Press in 2001 and 2003; withdrawn and all unsold copies destroyed in March 2004.
Forbidden Truth by Jean-Charles Brisard, Guillaume Dasquié and Lucy Rounds - never formally published in Britain; withdrawn from all British outlets, including internet bookshops, in 2006.
Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It by Rachel Ehrenfeld, published by Bonus Books in America in 2003 - never formally published in the UK, yet it became the subject of a libel suit here after 23 copies were bought by Britons via internet bookshops, and is now not available at all in the UK.

Spiked asked the authors of five books on terrorism, all of which have been withdrawn because of libel action by one Saudi man, to describe what we cannot now read.

Keeping pace

2007-10-26T22:36:00.001Z

How to change without changing: keep it quiet.

Between an oil refinery and the sea, the monarch is building from scratch a graduate research institution that will have one of the 10 largest endowments in the world, worth more than $10 billion.
Its planners say men and women will study side by side in an enclave walled off from the rest of Saudi society, the country’s notorious religious police will be barred and all religious and ethnic groups will be welcome in a push for academic freedom and international collaboration sure to test the kingdom’s cultural and religious limits.
This undertaking is directly at odds with the kingdom’s religious establishment, which severely limits women’s rights and rejects coeducation and robust liberal inquiry as unthinkable...
The king has broken taboos, declaring that the Arabs have fallen critically behind much of the modern world in intellectual achievement and that his country depends too much on oil and not enough on creating wealth through innovation.
“There is a deep knowledge gap separating the Arab and Islamic nations from the process and progress of contemporary global civilization,” said Abdallah S. Jumah, the chief executive of Saudi Aramco. “We are no longer keeping pace with the advances of our era.”

That last is a bit of an understatement. I remain convinced that as long as "the Arab and Islamic nations" are not contributing anything the rest of us consider useful, then they will suffer, and they will share their suffering with us.

Technorati tags: Islam, Modern Life, Science

Don't be clever

2007-10-25T23:20:00.001Z

This is precious.

The children of Che Guevara, the revolutionary pin-up, had been invited to Tehran University to commemorate the 40th anniversary of their father’s death and celebrate the growing solidarity between “the left and revolutionary Islam” at a conference partly paid for by Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president.
There were fraternal greetings and smiles all round as America’s “earth-devouring ambitions” were denounced. But then one of the speakers, Hajj Saeed Qassemi, the co-ordinator of the Association of Volunteers for Suicide-Martyrdom (who presumably remains selflessly alive for the cause), revealed that Che was a “truly religious man who believed in God and hated communism and the Soviet Union”.
Che’s daughter Aleida wondered if something might have been lost in translation. “My father never mentioned God,” she said, to the consternation of the audience. “He never met God.” During the commotion, Aleida and her brother were led swiftly out of the hall and escorted back to their hotel. “By the end of the day, the two Guevaras had become non-persons. The state-controlled media suddenly forgot their existence,” the Iranian writer Amir Taheri noted.
After their departure, Qassemi went on to claim that Fidel Castro, the “supreme guide” of Guevara, was also a man of God. “The Soviet Union is gone,” he affirmed. “The leadership of the downtrodden has passed to our Islamic republic. Those who wish to destroy America must understand the reality and not be clever with words.”

Remember that. Don't be clever with words. Or anything else.

Technorati tags: The Left, Anti-Americanism

Terminology

2007-10-23T17:55:00.001Z

Christopher Hitchens thinks that the term 'Islamofascist' is a good one; ie it is truly descriptive of the phenomenon it refers to.

The most obvious points of comparison would be these: Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind. ("Death to the intellect! Long live death!" as Gen. Francisco Franco's sidekick Gonzalo Queipo de Llano so pithily phrased it.) Both are hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons), and both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined "humiliations" and thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia (interestingly, also, with its milder cousin, anti-Freemason paranoia). Both are inclined to leader worship and to the exclusive stress on the power of one great book. Both have a strong commitment to sexual repression—especially to the repression of any sexual "deviance"—and to its counterparts the subordination of the female and contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence; both burn books and destroy museums and treasures.

I think there's another reason to allow the term. That is, it is a reaction to the liberal tradition that stems from the Enlightenment. Just as Communism was a sort of Enlightenment Fascism and Nazism (and Fascism itself, though to a lesser degree) an anti-Enlightenment extremism, so the thought and action covered by the term Islamofascism is a radical reaction to the world created the forces of economic and political liberalism.

It is important that we remember that. It is the product of weakness and cultural failure; it does not even present any putative alternative, which is a where it differs from Communism and Fascism. It is an expression of incapacity, one that will help neither its practitioners nor those they claim to represent.

Technorati tags: Islamofascism, Enlightenment

Michael Yon 'expands'

2007-10-22T21:05:00.001Z

The lone reporter is going corporate. Well, not quite. Michael Yon is arranging to have his pieces syndicated for free, is redesigning the site and translating his work into 16 other languages. The why and the wherefore are here.

Technorati tags: Iraq, Media