Change happens no matter what you want or do. Except, sometimes, it ... doesn't.
James Lileks (scroll down) on the impact of 9/11. The good news? We returned to our norm: cheerful industrious self-directed Americans who think in terms of fiscal quarters, not ancient grievances, and trust in Coke and Mickey to spread our message of tolerance and prosperity. The bad news? Same as the good. Or perhaps it’s the other way around.
In early October, 2000, France2 released some footage of events in Gaza that had been filmed and sent them by a Palestinian cameraman in their employ. The footage, which had been edited by France2's Middle East correspondent, Charles Enderlin, showed a Palestinian father, Jamal al Durah, and his young son, Muhammed, sheltering against a wall. It showed dust ballooning from the wall, the boy crumpling and curling into his father's arms, and dying. The Israelis had shot down an innocent child, one obviously unarmed and no threat to them or anybody else. World opinion expressed its outrage. Muhammed al Durah became a symbol of Israeli oppression, an icon of Palestinian and Islamic resistence that even rated a mention in the speeches of Mr bin Laden. The death of Muhammed al Durah at the hands of Israeli soldiers was a turning point in the Intifada, reinforced Yasser Arafat and was played and re-played on Al-Jazeera, on French television and all round the world. But did it happen?
There is some doubt. This video (almost 14 minutes long) gives a summary.
This six-year-old story is once again actuelle. As from the 14th of September, 2006, there will be a series of three trials of individual French citizens who used internet sites to publish criticism of France2’s coverage of the Muhammad al Durah affair. They will be charged under a 1881 law on press freedom that legislates against words that sully “the honor and consideration (reputation) of the individual or institution in question”. In this case, France2 and Charles Enderlin.
Richard Landes of Augean Stables will be covering the trials. He and others have a site entirely dedicated to the al Durah affair at Second Draft. There you can see a detailed and documented history of the iconic 59 seconds of news dynamite.
What the Pope's been saying in Munich. Full speech available here.
He quotes a dialogue carried on "perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. "
He continues. According to one article I read, when he came to the quote that has caused the fuss ("Show me just what Mohammed brought ..."), he said, "I quote." And then again, "I quote." Thus showing a certain love of life.In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".
Later on, he speaks about the 'faith' that Christianity shares, in a certain sense, with science. (This bit is me, not the Pope.) Just as science must take it as an article of faith that matter has a structure that is discoverable, amenable to the instruments at our disposal, so too "the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy". However, before he gets to this article of Christian faith, he has this to say with regard to the theme of violent conversion in the paragraph above.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.
That is pretty strong. I can understand why Muslim clerics have got mighty exercised about it, especially if it's true. That is what 'submission' is, the surrender of your will to that of another, no matter what that other will may impose. Even so far as the most unnatural act a living creature can commit (one always expressly forbidden by the Church): self-inflicted death.
I should add that most of the Pope's speech in actually aimed at us in the secular West and at our restriction of reason to the scientific method.
It ain't new, but then again, what is? Just came across this less recent example of the high standards that our major news media set themselves. The photo below was published on September 30, 2000. Read the caption carefully.
Unsurprisingly, the photo enraged public opinion against Israel and even made its way into a campaign against Coca-Cola and Israel's "killing of innocence". In fact (slippery concept), the bloodied face in the photo belonged an American Jewish boy called Tuvia Grossman who had just been beaten up by a gang of Palestinians. The cop was trying to protect him. Honest Reporting has the full story, and Tuvia Grossman's own account of the incident is here.
Kevin Michael Cosgrove speaks to 911 and the Fire Department from the 105th floor of number Two World Trade Center. You can listen to this at Michelle Malkin. Nothing Hollywood about it. No heroics. No poignant last words. Kevin Michael Cosgrove has about five minutes of life left and nothing he or anyone else can do will change that. He is confused and scared and can't understand why nobody's coming to rescue him and his colleagues. The 911 operator is marvellous. It's as if she knew there was no hope (but she can't have, right?) and has decided to stay with him just so that he can hear another voice right up to the end.9-11: What's the telephone number I can tell FD to push up? What's the telephone number you're calling from?
KC: I can barely see.
9-11: You can barely see?
KC: 4-4-1... .
9-11: 4-4-1... .
KC: 2-6-2-3
9-11: That's on the 105th floor of the Northwest corner, right?
KC: Right.
9-11: At number Two World Trade Center?
KC: Right ... Lady, there's two of us in this office. We're not ready to die, but it's getting bad.
9-11: I understand, sir. We're trying to get all the apparatuses there. I am trying to let them know where you are. Stay on the line
KC: Oh, please hurry.
Fire Department: Let me talk to the caller please ... Let me talk to the caller. Where is he?
9-11: He's on the line.
FD: Let me talk to him ... Where is the fire, sir?
KC: Smoke really bad. 105 Two Tower.
FD: Alright. Sit tight. We'll get to you as soon as we can.
KC: They keep saying that, but the smoke's really bad now.
FD: That's all we can do now.
KC: What floor are you guys up to?
FD: We're getting there. We're getting there.
KC: Doesn't feel like it, man. I got young kids.
FD: I understand that, sir. We're on the way.
9-11: He's on the 105th floor in the Northwest corner.
KC: He hung up on me ... Hello, operator?
9-11: Yes?
KC: Come on, man.
9-11: We have everything we need, sir.
KC: I know you do, but doesn't seem like it ... You got lots of people up here.
9-11: I understand.
KC: I know you got a lot in the building, but we are on the top. Smoke raises, too. We are on the floor. We're in the window. I can barely breathe now. I can't see.
9-11: Okay, just try to hang in there. I'm going to stay with you.
KC: You can say that, you're in an air-conditioned building. What the hell happened?
9-11: Okay. I'm still here ... still trying ... The Fire Department is trying to get to you.
KC: Doesn't feel like it.
9-11: Okay, try to calm down so you can conserve your oxygen, okay? Try to ...
KC: Tell God to blow the wind from the West. It's really bad. It's black. It's arid. Does anyone else wanna chime in here? We're young men. We're not ready to die.
9-11: I understand.
KC: How the hell are you going to get my ass down? I need oxygen.
9-11: They're coming. They're getting you. They have a lot of apparatuses on the scene.
KC: It doesn't feel like it, lady. You get them in from all over. You get 'em in from Jersey. I don't give a shit. Ohio.
9-11: Okay, sir. What's your last name?
KC: Name's Cosgrove. I must have told you about a dozen times already. C.O.S.G.R.O.V.E. My wife thinks I'm alright. I called and said I was leaving the building and that I was fine and then -- bang ... Cherry. Doug Cherry. Doug Cherry's next to me. 105. Whose office? John Ostaru's office?
9-11: That's where he said? That's the office?
KC: We're in John Ostaru's office. O.S.T.A.R.U.
9-11: A.R.U.
KC: Right. That's the office we're in. There are three of us in here.
9-11: Ostaru. Hello?
KC: Hello. We're looking in ... We're overlooking the Financial Center. Three of us. Two broken windows. Oh God. Oh ... (The tower collapses.)
An extraordinary piece of writing by Martin Amis mostly about the irrationalism of the Jihadi and his ideology of death. Impossible to summarise (it is very long and enamoured of digression), but here is a paragraph about Sayyid Qutb (Osama bin Laden's favourite writer) and his formative sojourn in the United States in 1949.During his six months at the Colorado State College of Education (and thereafter in California), Sayyid's hungry disapproval found a variety of targets. American lawns (a distressing example of selfishness and atomism), American conversation ('money, movie stars and models of cars'), American jazz ('a type of music invented by Blacks to please their primitive tendencies - their desire for noise and their appetite for sexual arousal'), and, of course, American women: here another one pops up, telling Sayyid that sex is merely a physical function, untrammelled by morality. American places of worship he also detests (they are like cinemas or amusement arcades), but by now he is pining for Cairo, and for company, and he does something rash. Qutb joins a club - where an epiphany awaits him. 'The dance is inflamed by the notes of the gramophone,' he wrote; 'the dance-hall becomes a whirl of heels and thighs, arms enfold hips, lips and breasts meet, and the air is full of lust.' You'd think that the father of Islamism had exposed himself to an early version of Studio 54 or even Plato's Retreat. But no: the club he joined was run by the church, and what he is describing, here, is a chapel hop in Greeley, Colorado. And Greeley, Colorado, in 1949, was dry.
A little later on, he comments on the philosophy of the above-mentioned international traveller.The emptiness, the mere iteration, at the heart of his philosophy is steadily colonised by a vast entanglement of bitternesses; and here, too, we detect the presence of that peculiarly Islamist triumvirate (codified early on by Christopher Hitchens) of self-righteousness, self-pity, and self-hatred - the self-righteousness dating from the seventh century, the self-pity from the 13th (when the 'last' Caliph was kicked to death in Baghdad by the Mongol warlord Hulagu), and the self-hatred from the 20th. And most astounding of all, in Qutb, is the level of self-awareness, which is less than zero.
There's a lot more, including a marvellous verse from Philip Larkin.
The 'this' in the first sentence refers to the identification in the parts of the Left with Islamism.All of this is – at least to those with historical awareness, sceptical political intelligence, or merely a long memory - disturbing. This is because its effect is to reinforce one of the most pernicious and inaccurate of all political claims, and one made not by the left but by the imperialist right. It is also one that underlies the US-declared “war on terror” and the policies that have resulted from 9/11: namely, that Islamism is a movement aimed against “the west”.
From 'The Left and the Jihad' by Fred Halliday.
This claim is a classic example of how a half-truth can be more dangerous than an outright lie. For while it is true that Islamism in its diverse political and violent guises is indeed opposed to the US, to remain there omits a deeper, crucial point: that, long before the Muslim Brotherhood, the jihadis and other Islamic militants were attacking “imperialism”, they were attacking and killing the left - and acting across Asia and Africa as the accomplices of the west.
Does this argument remind you of others? For example, the 'deeper, crucial point' that Al-Qaeda, when it was fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, was financed by the CIA? Or 'deeper, crucial point' that Saddam was armed by the US when he was slaughtering Iranians? Oh, the unfathomable hypocrisy of the perfidious Yankees!
It is a simple point: times change. As do people, political systems, economies and enemies. For how long was France the Great Enemy of Britain? 500 years? Did anyone point to the hypocrisy of fighting by their side during WWI? Halliday goes on to list the occasions on which the Islamists were 'used' to fight the Left (there have been a good number)and to conclude that the "modern embodiments of this left have no need of the 'false consciousness' that drives so many so-called leftists into the arms of jihadis". This he counts as "disturbing", but does not seek to explain why it is happening. It may be that he suspects the truth: that the Left is now nothing more than a cracked sounding brass that may deafen but will never again ring.
An attitude born of a successful political system. Charles Moore in The Telegraph speaking (well) of Tony Blair. No political party should ever be anyone's life. Its value is only instrumental – that it can mobilise enough people, ideas, money and interests to run things that need running and get things done that need doing.
And further, I just came across this. For the essence of totalitarianism is contained in the great helmsman's injunction to "put politics in command". This is not just Communist Chinese baby talk. What it means is this: that you are to take over every institution, whatever it may be, and empty out everything which distinguishes it from other institutions, and turn it into yet another loudspeaker for repeating "the general line". Destroy the specific institutional fabric of -- a university, a trade union, a sporting body, a church -- and give them all the same institutional content, viz. a political one. Contrapositively, the essence of resistance to this process by liberal-democrats must consist in trying to maintain the specific institutional integrity of different institutions.
-- David Stove, "Santamaria and the Philosophers", Honi Soit, 43 (32), 29 October 1970, p 11
I meant no insult to the people of Papua New Guinea, who I'm sure lead lives of blameless bourgeois domesticity in common with the rest of us.
Boris Johnson's official apology for implying that cannibalism is still praticed in Papua-New Guinea. Long may he offend.
My remarks were inspired by a Time Life book I have which does indeed show relatively recent photos of Papua New Guinean tribes engaged in warfare, and I'm fairly certain that cannibalism was involved.
I'd be happy to show the book to the high commissioner but I'm of course also very happy to take up her kind invite and add Papua Guinea to my global itinerary of apology.
