Just a bit of fun.

How a man dies.

Robert A Heinlein is a writer I need to be more acquainted with. At least that's what I think after reading this from his address to the cadets at the U.S. Naval Academy of April 5th, 1973:

"I said that "Patriotism" is a way of saying "Women and children first." And that no one can force a man to feel this way. Instead he must embrace it freely. I want to tell about one such man. He wore no uniform and no one knows his name, or where he came from; all we know is what he did. In my home town sixty years ago when I was a child, my mother and father used to take me and my brothers and sisters out to Swope Park on Sunday afternoons. It was a wonderful place for kids, with picnic grounds and lakes and a zoo. But a railroad line cut straight through it.
One Sunday afternoon a young married couple were crossing these tracks. She apparently did not watch her step, for she managed to catch her foot in the frog of a switch to a siding and could not pull it free. Her husband stopped to help her.
But try as they might they could not get her foot loose. While they were working at it, a tramp showed up, walking the ties. He joined the husband in trying to pull the young woman's foot loose. No luck —
Out of sight around the curve a train whistled. Perhaps there would have been time to run and flag it down, perhaps not. In any case both men went right ahead trying to pull her free ... and the train hit them.
The wife was killed, the husband was mortally injured and died later, the tramp was killed — and testimony showed that neither man made the slightest effort to save himself.
The husband's behavior was heroic ... but what we expect of a husband toward his wife: his right, and his proud privilege, to die for his woman. But what of this nameless stranger? Up to the very last second he could have jumped clear. He did not. He was still trying to save this woman he had never seen before in his life, right up to the very instant the train killed him. And that's all we'll ever know about him.
This is how a man dies.
This is how a man ... lives"

Honest Norm

Norm clearly and rightly thinks it possible to have one view of the Iraq War without supposing that everyone who takes a different or opposite view must be mad, bad, or just plain wrong.

Some of those who supported the war subsequently came to think they had been mistaken in doing so. I was one of these people - because I had been mistaken in my expectations about the human costs of regime change in Iraq, and those costs had proven exorbitantly high. But in changing my mind I never lost sight of the potential costs if there had been no war or regime change, and it is this, among other things, that continues to separate me from the army of the self-blinding, self-righteous multitudes of the anti-war camp, people not only convinced that they were right to oppose the war, but incapable of recognizing that those who supported it might have had conscientious moral reasons for doing that.

The moral case for the Iraq War

After a lifetime of being anti-war the invasion of Iraq has been an education. Selective pacifism is rife on the left. Being anti-war is little more than a cover for anti-Americanism. So the moral case is too easily overlooked.

Fine analysis of the moral case for the invasion of Iraq by Nigel Biggar, regius professor of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Oxford, in today's Financial Times. He begins thus:

The surfeit of moral certainty among the commentators is suspect; the zealous clarity of their moral waters needs muddying.

The professor, in muddying those waters, does not shy away from the terrible death toll that followed the invasion. But he deals with it in a clear-minded way, asking how one can judge whether it is disproportionate. He gives short shrift to the issue of legality:

International law can be variously interpreted. However, even if we grant that the invasion was illegal, we still have to grapple with the fact that so was Nato’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo, which is now widely regarded as legitimate. The implication? That legality is not the final word.

The case comes to this:

The decisive issue in evaluating the Iraq invasion is not whether it was morally flawed or disproportionate or illegal, but whether it was really necessary to stop or prevent a sufficiently great evil.

He concludes that the certainty with which the antis answer that question is unjustified:

Maybe critics of the war view with equanimity what might have happened without the 2003 invasion, trusting that the secular rationality of Realpolitik would have prevented the rivalry between Iraq’s atrocious Saddam and Iran’s millenarian Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad from turning catastrophically nuclear. In this age of suicide bombers, however, such faith is hard to credit.

THanks to John Rentoul for this.

How long have I got?

When I was revising for my third year final exams at university I got depressed and then anxious and then desperate about time running out - so much to do - fewer and fewer days, hours, minutes to do it. In the end I was so preoccupied by the shortness of time I was unable to spend the dwindling amount left usefully preparing for the test which was looming. A Harley Street psychiatrist, Anne Darquier, more recently a subject in a book "Bad Faith" by Carmen Callil but then doing a stint as a student counsellor, helped restore me to working order.

I find myself today in a similar state. This time it's death that's the problem. Not that I have a date, nor a suspicion that it's near. Frankly I'm surprised to be still around in my sixty-seventh year, and my decline is neither obvious nor swift. But I am aware of it. The end-time. I can't go on for ever. It's going to happen. I just don't know when.

And, as with my student revision, it's beginning to get in the way of doing ordinary things in ordinary time. The scarcity of time is making it harder and harder to make best use of the diminishing amount at my disposal.

I used to pick up and sometimes buy a book thinking I'd either read it now or save it or keep it for future reference. But it's the future reference, or lack of it, that's squeezing life out of the present. So I don't buy the book or start to read it. And I'm so much less likely to start anything, do anything, go anywhere for the first time.

At best it's a warm feeling. I feel that what I have left is time to revisit books and places, renew old acquaintances and friendships, see and hear again familiar sights and sounds, appreciate once more and perhaps more deeply the people and things I have found most worthwhile in my long short span.

But at worst it can be enervating, emasculating, a vicious spiral of incapacity in which what remains of the day implodes and all that is left is night.

Hurry up Matron! Time for my medication.

Homo Rapiens

This is how John Gray describes the human species in 'Straw Dogs'. Sooner or later it, we, will become extinct. When it is gone the Earth will recover. Long after the last traces of the human animal have disappeared, many of the species it is bent on destroying will still be around, along with others that have yet to spring up. The Earth will forget mankind.

And the implication is clear. Good riddance!

The same spirit is to be found in the misanthropic utterances of Doug Stanhope:

"Want to save the environment? Then don't f*** in the front hole"

Shocking - but funny, and kinda logical.

The Heir of Blair

Weather - or not

I have just heard a weather forecaster on TV say that part of the reason for it being cooler is that the temperatures are lower.

Canon Peter Green

Recently attended a lecture about this Salford Anglican priest who was active there between and after the two world wars of the last century. Strong character. Despised gambling and drinking. Very demanding. Turned down academic and episcopal appointments. Castigated the clergy for their inexcusable laziness. A vegetarian because he thought it healthier. Favoured remarriage in church of 'innocent' spouse after divorce. Preferred life sentences to execution because they allowed more time for repentance. Was ahead of his time on women's ordination and lay ministry. A peacetime pacifist who yet thought that World War Two was the lesser of two evils. A reformer on such matters as euthanasia and assisted suicide. He read the bible, not as the revelation of God, but as the history of the revelation. He believed that the Fall took place in a state of pre-existence. He called it the fall of the world's soul - original sin.

One could not but respect and even admire his energy and passion. I'm not as sure that I would have loved and liked him. One example. He taught that prayers should be said kneeling, or they were useless. I thought of a contemporary of his, a priest who was my Rector at home, the Revd Father F. W. Osborn. I'll bet he never said prayers other than kneeling, even on the coldest, hardest floor. But he would never have condemned the more comfortable offerings most of us make as useless. What conceit.

I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.

When you come to a fork in the road - take it.

I think we have Mark Twain to thank for this helpful advice.

The real John Venables problem

Like many people I struggle with the apparent conflict between our needs to understand and yet to condemn the terrible killing of Jamie Bulger. But there is room here for a more considered view. Melanie Reid gives it.

The blood of the martyrs

Frank Skinner has found the secret of success - embrace religious victimhood.

How sad?

"Sadly there are large chunks of the world that I've never visited."

Francis Turner expresses this regret in his normblog profile. I wonder what he means by this. I wonder what he thinks he's missed - or that 'large chunks of the world' have missed on account of his not having been there?

A senior moment

I often wonder which is more needed for survival - the ability to remember - or the ability to forget? I like the notion that human memory has a will of its own.

"Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!"
John Irving

Just been thinking

We never know our parents. We never know our children. And we never know ourselves.

This isn't a problem. It's just a fact.

The problem is that we think we do.

Many of the world's difficulties stem from a single mistake. We think we know things when we don't.

The Secret Caretaker

I used to interview people - mainly teachers - for jobs. One of my own mentors in this role was the managing director of a large company who attended interviews for new staff. As the candidates arrived on the company premises he met them in the guise of the caretaker, key chain, overalls and all. He noted their attitude to him in what they perceived to be his lowly position, and compared it with their demeanour when introduced to him a second time in the boardroom.

I was once shown round a hospice by the chaplain. I had agreed to cover for him at holiday time. I noticed that whilst he couldn't wait to introduce me personally and politely to the consultant, medical and nursing staff on duty, he walked past the cleaners without so much as a greeting.

I'm particularly sensitive about this - probably because my dad was a caretaker. He took good care of me.

The wrong end of the stick

 Tim Worstall has a go at Geoffrey Lean for this piece of obvious wisdom:

Green technologies also seem to provide plenty of jobs. Exploiting renewables now employs 2.3 million people worldwide, more than the entire oil and gas industries, even though they contribute a small fraction of the amount of energy. They provide several times as much work per dollar invested than fossil fuels, with other green measures like recycling and saving energy proving even more job-intensive. 

 

Come on Tim:

"Imagine an economy of 100 people. 80 of them must labour to provide the food for all 100. This leaves only 20 to do the arts, the crafts, the medical care, lawyering, defence, banking and manufacturing. Over time we get better at that farming thing. We now need only 20 to produce the food for 100, we have perhaps 50 doing manufacturing and 30 doing the services. Times and technologies move on again and we need only 2 to feed us all, 12 to make things we can drop on our feet and 84 can run creches, tend the sick in the NHS, write Grand Theft Auto and appear on the X-Factor.

"Roughly speaking that is what has happened in the UK economy over the past couple of hundred years. We have become wealthier by reducing the amount of labour required to produce food and things and services meaning that we can produce more of all of them to share among us out of the labour we have available. We've even, over the same time span, gone from the majority of everyone's time being spent in labour to the minority of it.

"A useful shorthand for this process is "we've got richer".

Leaders' spouses

As questions are raised about whether Gordon Brown has a bit of a temper, Michael Skapinker in the FT suggests that:

"the signal service spouses can render is to tell leaders what no one else dares to.

"In June 1940, Clementine Churchill wrote a letter to her husband, tore it up and then wrote it again. Roy Jenkins, in his biography of Winston Churchill, described the letter as "terrifying", which it must have been – both for the writer and the recipient.

"My darling," Mrs Churchill began. "I hope you will forgive me if I tell you something that I feel you ought to know. One of the men in your entourage (a devoted friend) has been to me & told me that there is a danger of your being generally disliked by your colleagues & subordinates because of your rough sarcastic & overbearing manner. If an idea is suggested (say at a conference) you are supposed to be so contemptuous that presently no ideas – good or bad – will be forthcoming. I was astonished & upset because in all these years I have been accustomed to all those who have worked with & under you, loving you – I said this & I was told 'No doubt it's the strain'."

"My Darling Winston – I must confess I have noticed a deterioration in your manner; & you are not so kind as you used to be cannot bear that those who serve the Country & yourself should not love you as well as admire and respect you – Besides you won't get the best results by irascibility & rudeness."

"Please forgive your loving devoted & watchful Clemmie."

"You don't get that quality of advice from many management consultants."

Is it me?

Remember Churchill when you think of Iraq

 Daniel Finkelstein is on fine form today:

Whatever view you take of Mr Blair’s dossiers or George Bush’s politics, without a proper estimation of the possible consequences, as seen at the time, of not acting, the whole war is impossible to evaluate or understand.

A school I'd have been happy at

"If I were choosing a school for a child I should avoid any which imagined itself competent to do more than teach efficiently and provide a polite and civilized environment in which children were not exposed to physical or psychological attack from either the pupils or the teachers."
Celia Green

A Questionnaire I completed recently

1. What does it mean to be religious and/or spiritual? The kind of words that come to mind are - urgency, single-mindedness, intensity, integrity, moral courage, the individual, the exception, the outsider.

2. Would you describe yourself as religious and/or spiritual? I’m working on it.

3. How is religion and/or spirituality important in your life? Please comment on how it is or why it isn’t. Without something that I can identify as a religious purpose I can hardly see the point of living at all. This made the decision to have children of my own a tricky one. Fortunately my two adult daughters, as far as I can tell, do not share my squeamishness on this matter.

4. What is the contribution (if any) of religion and/or spirituality in dealing with questions of peace, justice and sustainability? When I started to think seriously about religion as a young adult it was under the guidance of a priest who was a pacifist (in wartime a conscientious objector). He lived a life of self-denial, offered his home to the homeless and brought the gospel to the poor. One of my early philosophical mentors was John MacMurray. He taught that all human thought is for the sake of action, and all action for the sake of friendship. This has made sense and informed my thinking at the deepest level all my life - friendship as a kind of end in itself, the Trinitarian God a kind of ideal community of friends (Friends?). I have come seriously to re-think my position on this. I am increasingly drawn to the view that the kind of this-worldly emphasis in modern theology has been a distraction and even a betrayal of those who have rightly sought in religion a way of transcending the limitations of human finiteness. I am so unused to thinking in this way I am almost embarrassed to be doing it, but this is where I am. I find myself asking for the first time whether this focus on human relationships, morality and politics  which has been the central concern of much modern theological writing is anything more than a distraction from, and defence against, the overwhelming and possibly intractable problem of existing at all, as we humans do, in a state of ignorance, uncertainty and powerlessness. This is a new direction in my thinking and as yet more than usually tentative.

5. Were your parents (or other carers) religious/spiritual and in what ways have they influenced the views you hold now? My parents introduced me to the reality of human existence, they brought me to birth - a happy event? Actually they were lovely people who just didn’t stand a chance. My mother was a tormented person who committed suicide (?). My father had troubling thoughts about life, death and human destiny. He railed (quietly) against the human predicament, especially that he had not been consulted on the two most important questions – whether he should be born and whether he should die. He was also one of the funniest and most entertaining people I have known. 

6. Have you ever been aware of or influenced by a presence or power, whether you call it God or not, which is different from your everyday self? If so, please briefly describe your experience. God is love – crucified – makes a kind of sense - also the absent and hidden God of R S Thomas’ poetry.

7. Does prayer have a place in your life? If not, please comment on why. If so, please describe when and how you pray and what for. I’m not sure whether my problem with prayer is how to do it or how to stop doing it. My apprehension of life and living things and sometimes even inanimate objects is mostly of a hypersensitive kind. Trying to connect everything to everything else and to God is my ongoing experience and practice of prayer. Liturgical worship and prayer have always meant a lot to me. I can lose myself in it. My parents were RC and took me and my sister as small children to Mass. I liked it.

8. Is the notion of God meaningful for you? Please comment on why or why not. God, Love, the Absolute, have been a vital part of my life-vocabulary.

9. What is your understanding of Jesus? A scary man who made quite unreasonable demands on his followers. A holy man, a lonely man, an individual. An inspired genius whose life, death and teaching brought into being the Christian Church, the cradle of much of what is best in western civilization.

10. Do you think Jesus was conceived by a virgin? Please comment on why or why not. Nothing that is important to me depends on this being literally true. In any case I consider virginity to be ludicrously over-rated.

11. Do you believe that Jesus was raised from the dead? Please comment on why (and in what sense you understand that) or why not. I have found the best way of understanding this is in terms of the Church as the risen body of Christ.

12. In what way is a religious outlook compatible (or not) with the idea that life on earth, including human life, has evolved? To be credible a religious view must be compatible with reality – all that exists – and the way that it exists and has come or might have come to exist. Actually we do not know much about the universe, its origins and what it is made of. There is very little, if anything, we can be certain of. A profound and radical skepticism about everything is probably the only rational option.

13. In what way have the media articles or TV programmes celebrating the anniversary in 2009 of Charles Darwin influenced your view? As I think we know so little about what and how and why the world is then every bit of seemingly solid knowledge and more or less credible theory such as Darwin’s is to be welcomed. At the same time I regard as vain and disreputable the attempts made by some in the name of religion to equate nature ‘red in tooth and claw’ with the eternal purpose of a Great Designer.

14. What, if anything, should primary school children be taught about religion? I have never believed that Christianity is a simple faith and I doubt that there is such a thing. It is most likely to be understood and appreciated from a position of mature reflection that is only possible later in life. Those who wish to commend religious belief to children must be careful not to talk down to them.

15. What is your view of homosexuality? What is my view of heterosexuality? I think that all human beings have their own way of being close to and intimate with others. Among these are homosexuals – and heterosexuals.

16. Should churches offer blessings for same sex partnerships? Please comment on why or why not. Churches should bless all good, loving, life-affirming relationships.

17. Should abortion be available on demand? Please comment on why or why not. I have always been strongly in support of a woman’s right to choose how and when her pregnancy should end.

18. Should assisted suicide for those with terminal illness be made legal and available in the UK? Please comment on why or why not. Apart from the safeguards necessary to ensure that the person who chooses suicide has done so freely and without any form of coercion, my main concern here would be how to negate the power of the state to intervene by prescribing or refusing the medication chosen by the individual seeking to put an end to his life.

19. What do you think happens when we die? I don’t want to be stuffed. But seriously I can hardly make sense of the question. What I don’t see is why this is a religious question. A longing for ‘life after death’ is more likely to be selfish (more of me/more for me) than religious (more of God).

20. In what ways (if any) does your answer to question 19 influence how you live your life? If there is no ‘life after death’ I have no reward or punishment to look forward to or fear so I had better get on with making the most and the best of what life I have, practicing goodness for its own sake, and even loving God for nothing.

21. As you think about your life at the moment what gives you most fulfillment? I am not at all fulfilled. The nearest I get to that feeling is when a child we look after who is severely disabled falls asleep in my arms and I think to myself ‘If I’m good enough for Daniel, I’m good enough.’

22. Have you ever had to deal with a personal tragedy or crisis, and if so, who or what did you turn to for comfort. If not, who or what do you imagine turning to in those circumstances? As a priest I have been more used to being the one that others turn to. I am not that good at turning to others. The Psalms have helped.

23.  If you ever just want to feel a sense of calmness or soulfulness, what do you do? Where do you go? To the seaside.

24. What are some important morals or ethics that you try to live by in your daily life? For the sake of the planet I don’t eat meat and I don’t fly. Actually I don’t like flying and meat eating is unnecessary and probably unhealthy and nearly always involves avoidable cruelty and pain to innocent animals.

25. Do you think the world would be better off with more religion, or less? Religion is here to stay. Given the extent of extremism and fundamentalism more of the same would be a calamity. We need to raise our game.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Remember how we were told that Saddam Hussain had been supplied with weapons by the US and UK when it served our purpose to keep him in power, only later to discover that nearly all of the arms recovered after the war were from Russia and France? Well another myth has been exposed.

Call it the 'war for oil' fallacy.

According to Reuters the US oil majors were largely absent from an Iraqi auction of oil deals snapped up instead by Russian, Chinese and other firms.

The Oil Ministry on Saturday ended its second bidding round after awarding seven of the oilfields offered for development, adding to deals from a first auction in June that could together take Iraq up to a capacity to pump 12 million barrels per day.

[...]Russia's Lukoil on Saturday clinched a deal to develop Iraq's supergiant West Qurna Phase Two oilfield after having failed to convince Iraq to bypass the auction and revive an old Saddam Hussein-era deal for the field.

[...]Only one U.S. firm bid in the second round, and of the four fields bid on by U.S. firms in the first round, only Exxon Mobil won a major prize, leading a group to clinch a deal for the supergiant West Qurna Phase One field.

U.S.-based Occidental came away with a quarter stake in a consortium that won a contract for the giant Zubair field.

By contrast, Chinese state oil firms were involved in every first round bid and made a strong showing in the second.

[...]"We haven't really seen U.S. companies, and that is because of intense competition ... The issue is financial and technical and not at all political. This confirms Iraq can manage its oil policy and activities without politicization," said Thamir Ghadhban, a prime ministerial advisor and former oil minister.

As Robin Simcox reflects: "So while the US barely figured, Russia and China - both of who(m) voted against the war - are now both (as they have every right) making finanical gains from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. However such facts rarely do much to puncture the depressingly prevalent idea that Saddam was overthrown by the US and UK due to an insatiable thirst for oil and financial gain. This blatant misreading of the facts seem to be increasingly accepted wisdom, and it is hard to see what Blair can say at the inquiry to change this."

Is war possible?

According to Professor Philip Allott writing in today's Times:

Wars should be preceded and accompanied by intense public debate about all aspects - strategic, moral, political, social, economic, legal.

Has there ever been such a war? Could there ever be?

Big Questions

 At the end of Chapter 1 of Celia Green's book The Human Evasion are some fiercely searching questions I seem never seriously to have asked before:

"The questions which remain are these. Are people, in fact, matters of ultimate concern to other people? And still more, can they be sources of "ultimate solution" to them? If they are not, what psychological force is at work to ensure that these questions are so seldom asked? Why, if you ask a question about man and the universe, are you given an answer about "man in society"?

Iraq War Inquiry Derangement Syndrome

That's what Melanie Phillips calls it.

She concludes:

"we all know beyond a shadow of a doubt, Blair secretly committed Britain to an illegal war on which he lied to the British public – and unless the inquiry concludes as such, its members will be consigned along with him to the first circle of hell.

"Verdict first, evidence nowhere."

Valentine

The patron saint of making sad, lonely, ugly people feel like crap.

(My last quote "Chequered" was, I think, original i.e. I made it up. This one I definitely heard somewhere.)

Chequered

The best thing I can say about my chequered past is that it exactly matches my chequered present.

Sounds unfamiliar

Labour MP David Anderson speaking in the debate on the Queen's Speech:

"I hope that John Chilcot asks people such as Bayan Rahman to give evidence. I hope that he asks Hangar Khan, from the regional trade union movement, and Abdullah Muhsin, who was exiled in the 1980s and became the international representative of the trade union movement, to give evidence too. They will say clearly what Bayan has said to me: "Some people seem to have forgotten the brutal reality of his long years of repression. Saddam conducted a campaign of genocide against the Kurds. His forces used chemical weapons to kill men, women and children including 5,000 people who were killed in an attack on the city of Halabja in 1988. They murdered innocent people including thousands of boys and men from the Barzan area who disappeared in 1983," never to be seen again, "and whose mass graves are being found today."

"Saddam's forces also "razed 4,500 villages to the ground, destroying" the agricultural heartland of Iraq. The suffering in other parts of Iraq was the same. The key question that people ask me when I am over there is not "Why did you come here in 2003?" but "Why didn't you come here in 1983? We might have had a very different way of life."

Is Tony Blair narcissistic?

 . . .  a person who has been charged with acting as he did for reasons such as a desire to keep in with America, or to flatter George Bush, or because of oil, or of imperialism or colonialism or militarism, and who has also been charged with telling lies about his reasons for action, might quite legitimately say that he did what he believed was right - that is, he believed there to be morally compelling reasons for acting as he did, rather than the scurrilous reasons which are being attributed to him by others. There's nothing narcissistic about defending yourself against criticism. (Eve Garrard)

Chilcot Inquiry

As a corrective to the latest wave of anti-Blair hysteria please read John Rentoul's journal.

In particular you will learn that:

"in respect of this morning's front-page report in The Independent:

(a) It's not new;

(b) It fits at least one of several interlocking anti-war narratives;

(c) Nobody lied."

Read it and be demystified.

A Winter's Tale

It was dark. It was winter. But perhaps not too late.

A mother, no longer a young woman, had come to visit her son.

She had not seen him for twenty years. On Christmas Day 1989 he walked out on her in anger and never came back. She had not seen him since. Nor had she met his son, her own grandson, now ten years old. She had tried to communicate by letters and cards and presents at Christmas, but they had all passed without acknowledgement.

She rang the bell. The door was opened. Before her now stood a man in early middle-age she did not at once recognise. Their eyes met.

"Hi!", she said wistfully, then paused, and allowed the level of hope in her to rise.

"Go away!" he sneered.

There was nothing to add. And nothing to fight for. An end of sorts.

Without pity.

When you think of it

If all the questions that could be asked about life, the universe and everything were actually asked, the answer to nearly all of them would be:

NOBODY KNOWS!

At least that's what I think.

'I still can't see that I was wrong'

So says Fern Britton in a Times interview on the subject of staying schtum about her gastric band.

Later in the same piece she is asked about her own interviews with Tony Blair and in particular whether he admitted to feeling guilt about Iraq? She continues:

“I said, ‘What about those parents whose children have lost their lives, and will not shake your hand because you have blood on them? That must be painful?” And he said, much more painful to them — they’ve lost a child — and all of that. So I said, ‘But you are the person they will always hold responsible,’ and he said, ‘Yes, yes.’ But he still believes he was right.”

No one ever admits they are wrong, I observe. “No,” she says, “it would be interesting if they did.”

Gastric band? Iraq? How do you admit you're wrong if you believe you're right?

Which War?

Gnotalex, a Canadian blogger, has a go at what he calls this global-warming farce and in so doing makes the much maligned 'War on Terror' sound a more rational option.

"To declare war on '... the 15th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, and the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. It is present in all known lifeforms, and in the human body carbon is the second most abundant element by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen. This abundance, together with the unique diversity of organic compounds and their unusual polymer-forming ability at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth, make this element the chemical basis of all known life. (Wikipedia)' is beyond parody; only a greedy, preening dolt (c'mon down, Al Gore!) could possibly believe it. The Canadian Government should boycott the upcoming Copenhagen conference and dare Gaia to do her worst."

Funnily enough

This young man was interviewed on the telly. He was said to be autistic.

He told us that he loves words; he's really good at learning languages; he just doesn't like talking to people.

He reminded me of the Yorkshireman who was asked by a visitor to the working-men's club whether the comedian was any good. He is if you like laughing, was his reply.

Whose side are they on?

An extraordinary and unintended comment on the ethic of public service was made today by a spokesman for the British police service. After a flood in Cockermouth, Cumbria, a police officer had been reported missing. Shortly afterwards a man's body was found washed up by the river. Although the corpse had not yet been identified the spokesman stated that they, the police, were 'pessimistic'.

They obviously feared that he might be one of theirs and not just an ordinary . . .

On choosing one's parents carefully

My mother was a troubled and tormented person, but she was not a deep thinker. She just found living life on the sort of terms that were available to her tremendously difficult.

My father by contrast was an incredibly resourceful man who would keep smiling through the worst that the world could do to him. He was the best kind of trickster. He did however entertain deep and troubling thoughts about human existence as such. He protested, philosophically, against what he saw as the supreme injustice that we human beings are not consulted about the two most important decisions affecting our lives: whether we are born, and whether we die.

A special man.

Cathedral Communion

I left the chapel where the service had taken place. As I waited for the celebrant whom I had arranged to meet for a chat afterwards, my attention was drawn to a board on which were posted prayer requests. At the top was a card inscribed with a message to David (my name). It said 'Please take care. All my love to you always. From your Mum.' I felt warm. As if it were for me. I reached for an empty card and scribbled a reciprocal solicitation: 'Mum, all my love to you too. From David'.

Later that week I found myself recalling that although my father loved and was loving to me he had some difficulty understanding me. It was mother who really knew me though she did not always behave lovingly towards me.

The same evening we attended a performance of Ibsen's Ghosts. There Oswald Alving is asked by his mother whether he loves her. He replies rather, 'I know you'. I caught my breath.

Communion in more than one kind.

Goodbye cruel world

The wonderful Caitlin Moran perfectly captures the gracious quality of internet communication:

" . . . cyberspace has such a gentle civility to it as a method of communication that it makes all other alternative look like acts of borderline war. Telephones, for instance. My God, but as the days go by, they seem more and more brutal. How did we ever start using them in the first place?

"When you call someone, essentially you suddenly materialise in their life, screaming, “ME ME! ME ME! IT’S ME! TALK TO ME!” The telephone was first invented at a time when you could readily purchase cocaine in any chemist. I think we can draw our own conclusions. Using one is an act of superlative self-confidence — the kind of thing only contestants on The Apprentice would do; or, maybe, Bono."

Hath not a Jew eyes . . . ?

Susan Hill getting it right again about anti-Semitism, women priests, and so much else:

"I was reading some twitter by the Archbishop of Canterbury about climate change and other nonsense, and it struck me forcibly that the man is forever dodging the real and vital issues. Why do he and his fellow Bishops and all his clergy, never speak out loud and clear, reminding their congregations that Christians and Jews are merely separate branches of a tree with a common trunk, common roots and telling them that all forms of anti-Semitism are wrong ? Wrong, sinful, wicked, evil – use whatever word you like to get the message home. It matters but I sometimes wonder if they even realise how much anti-Semitism there is out there. They’d rather waffle on about women priests. And talking of which, Paul appointed quite a few women to active positions of authority in the churches he founded in a number of different countries so the next time an Anglican clergyman who is anti-the ordination of women starts, ask him about Prisca and Aquila, to name but two. Paul had more sense than the lot of them put together."

Lest We Forget

The British Soldier - Poppy Appeal

The average British soldier is 19 years old…..he is a short haired, well built lad who, under normal circumstances is considered by society as half man, half boy. Not yet dry behind the ears and just old enough to buy a round of drinks but old enough to die for his country – and for you. He’s not particularly keen on hard work but he’d rather be grafting in Afghanistan than unemployed in the UK . He recently left comprehensive school where he was probably an average student, played some form of sport, drove a ten year old rust bucket, and knew a girl that either broke up with him when he left, or swore to be waiting when he returns home. He moves easily to rock and roll or hip-hop or to the rattle of a 7.62mm machine gun.


He is about a stone lighter than when he left home because he is working or fighting from dawn to dusk and well beyond. He has trouble spelling, so letter writing is a pain for him, but he can strip a rifle in 25 seconds and reassemble it in the dark. He can recite every detail of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either effectively if he has to. He digs trenches and latrines without the aid of machines and can apply first aid like a professional paramedic. He can march until he is told to stop, or stay dead still until he is told to move.


He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation but he is not without a rebellious spirit or a sense of personal dignity. He is confidently self-sufficient. He has two sets of uniform with him: he washes one and wears the other. He keeps his water bottle full and his feet dry. He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never forgets to clean his rifle. He can cook his own meals, mend his own clothes and fix his own hurts. If you are thirsty, he'll share his water with you; if you are hungry, his food is your food. He'll even share his life-saving ammunition with you in the heat of a firefight if you run low.

He has learned to use his hands like weapons and regards his weapon as an extension of his own hands. He can save your life or he can take it, because that is his job - it's what a soldier does. He often works twice as long and hard as a civilian, draw half the pay and have nowhere to spend it, and can still find black ironic humour in it all. There's an old saying in the British Army: 'If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have joined!'


He has seen more suffering and death than he should have in his short lifetime. He has wept in public and in private, for friends who have fallen in combat and he is unashamed to show it or admit it. He feels every bugle note of the 'Last Post' or 'Sunset' vibrate through his body while standing rigidly to attention. He's not afraid to 'Bollock' anyone who shows disrespect when the Regimental Colours are on display or the National Anthem is played; yet in an odd twist, he would defend anyone's right to be an individual. Just as with generations of young people before him, he is paying the price for our freedom. Clean shaven and baby faced he may be, but be prepared to defend yourself if you treat him like a kid.
He is the latest in a long thin line of British Fighting Men that have kept this country free for hundreds of years. He asks for nothing from us except our respect, friendship and understanding. We may not like what he does, but sometimes he doesn't like it either - he just has it to do.. Remember him always, for he has earned our respect and admiration with his blood.

And now we even have brave young women putting themselves in harm's way, doing their part in this tradition of going to war when our nation's politicians call on us to do so.

. . . say a prayer for our troops in the trouble spots of the world.

No Quick Fix

The following words of Dorothy Rowe should be set alongside the fashionable support for cognitive behavioral therapy in the British NHS.

" . . . in therapy the presenting problem is never the real problem. In mental distress the real problem always arises from some kind of threat or insult to the sense of being a person. This can be hard to uncover, and difficult to ameliorate. It is never amenable to a quick fix."

Pedigree Chum

A new book by New Zealand authors Robert and Brenda Vale urges pet owners to "Eat the dog", since the carbon footprint of a year's dog-food is too awful to contemplate.

Dog-lovers desert RSPCA over 'inhumane' killings

This from The Times:

"The dogs, which had been kept indoors for several weeks and were said to be aggressive and in poor condition, were killed with a captive bolt gun of the kind used in abattoirs to stun livestock before slaughter. The use of captive bolt guns is deemed “inhumane” and “unacceptable” for the destruction of dogs by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA)."

Why do we owe dogs a more humane killing than livestock? Humane killing for all I say. Better still - no avoidable killing at all! We don't need to eat meat.

What happened to global warming?

This is the perhaps surprising headline of a report by Paul Hudson, Climate correspondent at the BBC.

Average temperatures have not increased for over a decade

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

Staring stupidly

The revelation (to me) by Penny Smith on Countdown that 'gove' is an old English verb which means 'to stare stupidly' might at least moderate the childish fun that one Michael GOVE, Shadow Children's Minister, and his colleagues have been having at the expense of Gove's opposite number in government, Ed BALLS.

I doubt it though. An election is pending. Not a time for grown-ups.

Celia again

"There is an interesting possibility that Christ was not only not paranoid, but that he was not sane at all."

A question never answered

It's become a doctrine increasingly felt as a fact that the Blair/Bush war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein was immoral and illegal.

What I wait in vain to hear is what the war's opponents would do if Saddam was still in power, and what would they say to the loved ones of those, already thousands before he was stopped, he would still be free to persecute, torture and kill.

Medical Mafia

"Medical goods and services are immorally controlled by a monopolised profession which transfers the right of decision from the patient to the doctor."

Starting from here we could have a much more exciting criique of the British NHS.

Section 28

A few weeks ago I wrote to the British MP William Hague, lately Shadow Foreign Secretary. When he was Leader of the Opposition in Parliament I well remember the fun he had at Labour's (and Tony Blair's) expense in relation to the proposed repeal of Section 28 of the Local Government Act. This had been introduced by the Conservatives in 1988. Among other things it prohibited local councils from distributing any material, whether plays, leaflets, books, etc, that portrayed gay relationships as anything other than abnormal. Young William clearly thought that such a stand would be electorally popular.

More recently David Cameron, the present Tory leader and likely next Prime Minister has adopted a new approach. On Section 28 he now says "we (the Tories) got it wrong. I hope you can forgive us."

I wished to know from Mr Hague whether he is at one with his party leader in the fulness of this apology, and, if so, to seek a fuller account of the nature of the mistake he had made?

I have written again, repeating my request. I am still awaiting a reply.

Beware Philosophy

Thai teacher caught on cellphone beating pupil

BANGKOK - A Thai teacher faces prosecution after cellphone footage showed him beating a pupil and slamming the boy's head into a whiteboard for forgetting his textbook, officials and reports said Tuesday.
The video, shown on local television stations, showed the male teacher at a privately-run Thai-Chinese secondary school in Bangkok grabbing the 12-year-old by his throat and hitting him around the head several times.

I have a question. What if the abuse was witnessed by other members of staff who had failed to follow procedures and report the assault they had seen? Would they too face disciplinary action? If so this is one clear advantage of cellphones.

Fair play

And just in case you are tempted to blame modern commercialism for the decline in standards of sportsmanship, The Times letters page contains this apt reference:

" . . . in book five of The Aeneid, during a running race, Virgil writes that Nisus “rose from the slime and threw himself in the path of Salius and knocked him head over heels” in order to allow his dear friend Euryalus to win. Even 2,000 years ago they were not averse to a bit of cheating in sport."

No pain, please!

Matthew Taylor finds in a new opinion poll evidence that voters still don't accept that they have to share in the pain.

How about this for a judgement on this Christian country of ours:

Ours is a society in which millions volunteer, donate to charities or adhere to religious or secular creeds advocating selflessness, but the message of our poll is inescapable; when it comes to addressing the fiscal crisis what matters to people is not fairness, or the best interests of the country, but simple self-interest. . . . our elected representatives feel compelled to tell us we can have our cake, eat it and walk out without paying.

Being bored

From a recent interview:

Ian Hislop: I remember being told by my teenagers that Church was boring and thinking, good it's meant to be boring. You need a lot more boring in your life and in the middle of it, you'll find something.

Rowan Williams: I have to confess that has been in the past one of my regular confirmation sermons. Get used to it. It's not always going to be fun. Life isn't always going to be fun and there's something to be said for sitting things out...”

It put me in mind of R S Thomas' The Moon in Lleyn where he addresses those who stand in empty churches to proclaim that religion is over:

But a voice sounds
in my ear: Why so fast,
mortal? These very seas
are baptized. The parish
has a saint's name time cannot
unfrock. In cities that
have outgrown their promise people
are becoming pilgrims
again, if not to this place,
then to the recreation of it
in their own spirits. You must remain
kneeling. Even as this moon
making its way through the earth's
cumbersome shadow, prayer, too,
has its phases.

Prey for me

The weekend Times led with the awful story of the kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard. She was abducted, imprisoned and raped.

In the same issue Simon Barnes was extolling the the ugliness, cruelty and the beauty of nature. Let us celebrate cruelty, he writes, as we do ugliness, with a full heart.

I am not inclined to intervene to protect garden birds from predatory sparrowhawks, though one creature being destroyed and consumed by another in full view is a harrowing sight. For myself I choose to lead as un-predatory a life as possible. I disapprove of slaughterhouses and eschew their produce. I am happiest following the vegan way but I sometimes lapse into a woolly, even fishy, vegetarianism. A rational basis for my position I find in Peter Singer's 'Animal Liberation'.

My problem is with the use of the word 'cruelty' to describe both what was done to Jaycee and what sparrowhawks do in the wild to their prey. Surely sparrowhawks are neither cruel nor kind. These are human attributes. Nature may indeed be red in tooth and claw, but sparrowhawks, being predators, are just - predatory.

Being looked after

A woman I know in her seventies seems to be 'losing her marbles'. It may pass but, if it doesn't, she could well end up being 'looked after' by members of her family. Not the worst outcome you may think. They will be good and kind to her. But they will patronize her. They will not listen to her and take her seriously. They will edit what she says to fit in with their own understanding and priorities. They will tell her what she is feeling - and why. They are all good people - but they never really listen.

How sad.

ORTHODOXY

Going through some old scribblings of mine today I found these words which I was glad to be reminded of:

Orthodoxy is based on a fallacy - that we can all agree - and a judgement - that we should.

It suddenly dawned on me

The one who inspires me is not one who is in a minority - but one who stands alone - the true individual.

Celia Green again

Anyone who can write this stuff is worth a closer look:

The question is whether anyone has ever been, in any serious way, not sane.

My best candidates are Nietzsche and Christ. It may be objected that their ideas cannot possibly be of interest, since one went mad and the other was crucified. However, I think we should not hold this against them.

They may have felt a trifle isolated.

It can't be long now

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

- George Eliot

Christianity and Sadism

There may be something in this:

I have long had a theory that the popularity of Christianity has always depended on its appeal to the sadism of its adherents. The exceptional should be crucified, saith Society; and somehow everyone suspects (in spite of all arguments to the contrary) that if there is a God, he may be exceptional in some way. So the figure of Christ crucified becomes the figure of the dangerous exceptional alien—suitably defeated. 'Only a suffering God can help', said Bonhoeffer, licking his lips.

Celia Green

News to me

"Shortage of homes for sale expected to push up prices by end of the year

But the bad news is they could fall again next year"


This was a headline in today's Times newspaper.

How has the concept of news been so corrupted that the word is now used to describe things that haven't happened and may never happen? News bulletins are occupied by predictions. Yesterday's news is about tomorrow.

Explaining Evil

Thanks to Norm for this:

Over at Mick Hartley's invaluable site, we are directed to a report by Adam Hochschild on the Congo that details some of the nightmarish horrors which have been inflicted on the helpless inhabitants of that unhappy country. Hochschild asks, among other things, how it can be that some of the warm and friendly and helpful people that he met there were also rapists, torturers, and murderers; and he offers an answer:

What turns such people into rapists, sadists, killers? Greed, fear, demagogic leaders and their claim that such violence is necessary for self-defense, seeing everyone around you doing the same thing - and the fact that the rest of the world pays tragically little attention to one of the great humanitarian catastrophes of our time.

No doubt all these things are true; such factors do contribute to the enactment of evil. But there's an explanatory gap between the causal factors cited (greed, fear, and the rest) and the horror of what's done. How does greed – the desire to get more and more good things for oneself – or fear – the worry that one may be harmed – lead a warm and friendly and helpful person to eviscerate and dismember a man, force his wife to collect up the scattered body parts, and rape her on top of them? How is it supposed to work, this claim that the sight of other people acting out our worst nightmares turns ordinary men into monsters ready to do such things themselves? The causes on offer seem too ordinary, too everyday, too small, to adequately account for the barely believable enormities to which they lead. This excess, this overflowing of atrocity, this leap from mundane cause to inventively hideous effect, is what's in need of explanation - an explanation which by and large we entirely lack. (Eve Garrard)

New Every Morning

A reflection on the nature of reality:

"The comedian Steven Wright tells this joke deadpan:

“I woke up one day and everything in the apartment had been stolen and replaced with an exact replica.

I said to my roommate, ‘Can you believe this? Everything in the apartment has been stolen and replaced with an exact replica.’

He said, ‘Do I know you?’ ”

A de-bap, a doo-bop, a wa-wa-waah

News today that you'll soon be able to baptise the kids and marry your partner in the Church of England without even juggling different orders of service. But what if one of the kids has second thoughts later on. Here's Norm on de-baptism.

"Here's an item about atheists who are going through de-baptism ceremonies as a way of marking the renunciation of their former faith. Notwithstanding the emphasis placed by those involved on the lighthearted and satirical nature of what they're doing, it does rather look like they're testifying to the power of the original they're purporting to send up while undoing it, if they feel the need actually to go through a ceremony of reversal. You lost or renounced your faith? I mean, you really did? Then, it has no power and you can just walk away from it without more ado. But if you need a ceremony...

"Of course, like everyone else, atheists are allowed rituals. But given what we atheists don't believe, it would be better if would-be atheist rituals didn't mirror religious ones. Why, you could go for a walk and mull things over."

The decline of violence

Stephen Pinker shows how our ancestors were far more violent than we are today. Given the stunning lack of regard for human life in the Bible, a history of socially sanctioned mutilation and torture, one-on-one murder, and casualties of war, all the evidence is that we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth.

The future is Pinker indeed!

Preaching and Practice

Desmond Tutu is always on the side of the angels but, as Norm points out, his logic can get a bit muddled.

"Here's a view:

The West should in general, he warns, beware of preaching about corrupt African dictators. "You could say the same about Europe. You get a Churchill and then there's a long wait... What gives me a great deal of hope for Africa is looking at the history of Europe. Very recently you had two world wars, you had the Holocaust, you had dictatorships in Spain, Portugal and Greece. There was a time when Italy was changing governments like you change pairs of socks. There was the Soviet Union, Stalin's gulags. You forget that you really made a mess of things. It was a Western country that was the first and only country to use weapons of mass destruction. [Africa] is not on a level with Western people.

"I can be nice and say there's hope for us. When I'm a little angry I say 'For goodness sake you need a fairly large dose of modesty. You ought to be hiding your heads for the things you have actually done'."

That's Desmond Tutu speaking. Still, what he says is wrong. And that it is, is shown by the fact that he's the one who's saying it. Nobody will gauge his criticisms of non-African countries by reference to the appalling record of apartheid, because as an opponent of apartheid Tutu was not responsible for it. But, equally, individual Westerners aren't responsible for the Holocaust, or dictatorships in Spain, Portugal and Greece, and they - or, at least, many of them - have the right to condemn African dictators. This isn't about non-Africans preaching to Africans; it's about democrats, anywhere, speaking their minds, speaking critically, about governments that deny the fundamental rights of the people they govern."

Teleology

After years of so-called retirement I still don't know what my life (what's left of it) is for, but I think I know what it's not for.

Similarly, I don't quite know what I want to do with the rest of my life, but I have a better idea of what I don't want to do.

Education

This morning my wife asked me the meaning of 'heuristic'.
I told her to find out for herself.

Christianity and Respectability

Cheese Crumbs

From the infamous Kinsey Report:

Cheese crumbs spread before a pair of copulating rats will distract the female but not the male.

Daniel

This is Daniel.

Hilary and I have the joy and privilege of looking after him. His main home is with his mum and dad, two disabled brothers and three able sisters. As respite for his main family Daniel spends part of every week, and most or all of some weeks with us. The arrangement is supervised, monitored and supported by our local Children's Services department. It's called Shared Care.

Daniel has lissencephaly (lissencephaly, we say, we shall say this only once.) His brain is smooth when it shouldn't be. A smooth brain can lead to a jerky life. In Daniel's case jerky episodes can turn into prolonged epileptic fits. Daniel can neither walk nor talk, though he can get about and make very meaningful sounds and gestures.

We think of Daniel as ours - but not ours.

We didn't choose him. He was given to us. We were vetted and selected - but we didn't select him.

We don't know how long we've got him for - or how long he's got - or how long we've got.

He'll never be able to repay us - or disappoint us. Our pleasure and rewards are of the simplest kind.

Every moment matters - is all there is.

Wherever Daniel goes he takes a very big cushion (bigger than him) and a Sky TV remote control - and that's when he's travelling light.

His rule for life is: If you want the full attention of someone, sit on his head.

The Pianist

Went to a performance last night of The Pianist, based on the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman.

Part of it was the story of a man who kept an orphanage for Jewish children in the Warsaw ghetto. When they were transported to their deaths in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, he insisted on going with them to protect them as much as he could, even though this meant he would have to die too.

I thought of Daniel and the others we care for. I felt, as if praying, that unless I am that man in relation to them, my life has no meaning.

You-just-did-ness

Does anyone know if there's a word for this?

Like when someone says, 'Words can't express how grateful I am.' They just did.

or

When someone says, 'I'm no good at expressing myself.' And again they just have expressed themselves - perfectly.

Gentleman Bob

This from Norm:

He is commonly regarded as one of Africa's most ruthless tyrants, unleashing persecution and violence on anyone who dares challenge his iron rule.

So it came as a surprise to Zimbabwe's main opposition when they discovered that President Robert Mugabe has the manners of a Victorian English gentleman.

Why it should be regarded as a matter of surprise, let alone comment, is beyond me. We already know this, OK - people can be charming and also brutal, cultured and cruel. We know it, big time. After a day in the death camps presiding over the most revolting cruelties, men crossed the wire to be with their families - 'decent' men at home, who loved their children, refined men who listened to Bach and Beethoven.

The thing with Mugabe was never, like, 'Oh, how uncouth he is, what a boor; he swears in company, he belches at the table'. Politically, he's a criminal, that's all.

Shared Faith

Late-term Abortion

This painful matter is back in the news. Kira Cochrane reminds us what it is really about.

Many of those who have late-term abortions are the most vulnerable: teenagers who didn't realise that they were pregnant until five months' gestation; women with learning disabilities; those using methadone in drug rehabilitation programmes, which puts a halt to your periods. Women like the one I read of recently, whose partner started beating her up when she became pregnant, and who feared she would never be able to escape him if she had his baby. (In more than 30% of domestic violence cases, the abuse started during pregnancy.) Women who have suffered a severely traumatic episode - the death of a partner, or a child, for instance - who fear that the stress might affect foetal development. The BPAS has just published a 28-day audit of late-term abortion requests, to be distributed to MPs. The stories include that of a woman with two small daughters from a previous marriage, who had an unplanned pregnancy with her current partner, which he urged her to continue. She then found out that he was abusing her daughters. As Ann Furedi of BPAS says, the stories "provide a really stark contrast to the abstract, philosophical and rather sterile discussion about viability and not viability. What this does is to take it woman by woman. The challenge that we're putting to MPs is to look at this and think about it - what makes you think that the lives of these women would have been better if they'd had to continue their pregnancy? We're talking about women who, by their own admission, are saying, 'I cannot cope with having this child'."

Child abuse report

Speechless and in tears - after watching this.

http://www.gavinsblog.com/2009/05/26/child-abuse-report/

More Double Standards?

Melanie Phillips draws our attention to the suffering of civilians under Sri Lankan bombardment. "Hospitals have been repeatedly shelled. Thousands of civilians have been trapped and unknown numbers have died. The BBC says more than 70,000 people have been killed in this conflict, while the United Nations says it thinks 265,000 people have been displaced."

"Sure, there are some protests. But where are the calls by academics or trade unions to boycott Sri Lanka? Where are the denunciations of Sri Lankan ‘atrocities’ by the bishops and archbishops of the Church of England? Where are the passionate and emotive TV documentaries about the plight of the Tamils, the one-sided grillings of the Sri Lankans on the Today programme, the front page splashes and multi-part newspaper features on the Sri Lankans’ supposed breaches of international law, the NGOs’ appeals for humanitarian aid for the besieged Tamils, the attempts by human rights lawyers to prosecute Sri Lanka’s military for ‘war crimes’? No, all these things are reserved instead for Israel, which has demonstrably gone out of its way to avoid civilian casualties as far as humanly possible and yet upon whose imagined crimes against humanity the western intelligentsia – which has barely bestirred itself over the Tamils -- obsessively dwells."

At Further Expense

The British people have been scapegoating Parliament because of members on the fiddle. Now MPs are piling all the blame on their Speaker.

As Oscar Wilde opined, 'Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.' We don't like MPs. We don't understand or appreciate what they do, or benefit from it ourselves in any immediate or obvious way.

We have a problem here but it's not about lying and cheating, because we all do that, especially when we can get away with it.

A letter in yesterday's Times proposed a moral audit of the whole nation. Must have been a Rabbi.

At Enormous Expense

I seem to be one of the few people who sees the current outcry against Members of Parliament as just another case of what Thomas Macauley termed the ridiculous sight of 'the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality'.

The proposition that these particular culprits are untypical of the rest of our society at work and play is the most nauseating nonsense. How many of us, for instance, would turn down an offer of workmanship done well, efficiently, cheaply, quickly, paid for cash-in-hand, no questions asked, at known expense to the public purse through non-declaration and thus non-payment of Income Tax and, probably, VAT? This is cheating - just as much as wrongly claiming state benefits. But I do not know anyone who hasn't done it and wouldn't do it - even my friend who happens to be a retired police officer.

Who wouldn't, in claiming expenses from an employer or estimating expenses to set against their earnings for tax purposes, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, generously if permitted?

Church spokesmen, unable to resist, have of course jumped on the bandwagon of moral condemnation. Like most others they have forgotten how easily and unhealthily we project our shortcomings onto others and make scapegoats of easily definable groups. Worst of all they have forgotten their own scriptures which warn against human greed, against casting stones at other sinners, against moral sadism in all its forms.

Let's hope that there are not individuals and groups with malicious intent waiting in the wings to exploit for their own nefarious ends our collective, sanctimonious indignation.

From Harry's Place

Surely the BNP hopes to gain votes from people who are very keen to “support our troops”.

Well, I support the troops. People like Lance Corporal Johnson Beharry, for example.

Grenada-born L/Cpl Beharry was honoured in 2005 after twice saving lives under enemy fire. He became the Army’s most high-profile war hero when he received the VC for “repeated extreme gallantry and unquestioned valour” for the two rescues in May and June 2004 “despite a harrowing weight of incoming fire”.

He was at the head of a five-vehicle convoy when it came under attack in the town of al-Amarah on 1 May 2004. He guided the column through a mile of enemy ground to drop off wounded comrades at great risk to his own safety, his citation said.

Weeks later, his vehicle was hit by an rocket-propelled grenade round. Despite receiving horrific head injuries, he drove out of the ambush and again saved his crew.

The BNP is unimpressed.

The BNP, led by Nick Griffin, called Johnson Beharry “an immigrant” and claimed his heroics, which saved the lives of 30 fellow soldiers, were simply “routine”.

On its website the far-right political party states that Lance Corporal Beharry only received Britain’s top military honour because of “positive discrimination by the PC-mad government”.

It comes just days after the party held an Armed Forces Awareness Day to try to portray themselves as “the only party that supports our troops”.

Whatever their views on wars and politics, in March many people were horrified by the hateful Islamist protest against soldiers in Luton.

This racist belittling of bravery by BNP scum is no better than that.

Anyone who really does support British troops should never vote for the BNP.

Blog or Twitter?

Not sure which way to go.

Quite like short, not necessarily grammatical, notes with hyperlinks.

Went to a lecture Thursday night at Manchester Cathedral. Michael Schmidt, Professor of Poetry. Not the best lecture so far. I was left feeling not very clever, certainly not as clever as the speaker, and afterwards not much wiser. Especially horrified by the way he praised Rowan Williams' initiative on Sharia Law, one of the few things I think he has, as Abp of C, got catastrophically wrong.

Disturbing account in the Church Times of how serious religious violence in Nigeria is being ignored. Might cause the Abp to have second thoughts.

Carol Ann Duffy's appointment as Poet Laureate has been widely welcomed. In the past her lesbian stance might have prevented it, but, as she says, “I think we’ve all grown up a lot over the past ten years. Sexuality is now celebrated. It is a lovely, ordinary, normal thing.”

There's probably a philosophical label for this but I'm struck by how much trouble we make for ourselves by using nouns rather than verbs. Two have just occurred to me - depressive and failure. To be either a depressive or a failure is to be stuck in or with something, something you have to be cured of or delivered from. To be depressed sometimes, or to fail, is part of being human and of itself no big deal. I think, for example, the political left have wrongly judged that failing makes you a failure, and diminishes your worth as an individual, something you must be protected from, by state intervention if necessary. Is this the "all must have prizes" philosophy?

War by any other name

Joe Queenan lampoons some recent examples of newspeak.

The Obama administration has come under intense criticism for replacing the term "war on terror" with the emaciated euphemism "overseas contingency operations," and for referring to individual acts of terror as "man-caused disasters."

This semi-official attempt to disassociate the administration from the fierce rhetoric favored by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney has enraged Americans on both the right and left. Many feel that such vaporous bureaucratese is a self-emasculating action that plunges us into an Orwellian world where words have no emotional connection with the horrors they purport to describe.

Yet, if the intention of the Obama administration is to tone down the confrontational rhetoric being used by our enemies, the effort is already reaping results. This week, in a pronounced shift from its usual theatrical style, the Taliban announced that it will no longer refer to its favorite method of murder as "beheadings," but will henceforth employ the expression "cephalic attrition." "Flayings" -- a barbarously exotic style of execution that has been popular in this part of the world since before the time of Alexander -- will now be described as "unsolicited epidermal reconfigurations." In a similar vein, lopping off captives' arms will now be referred to as "appendage furloughing," while public floggings of teenaged girls will from here on out be spoken of as "metajudicial interfacing."

There's more.

On the Telly

I've just heard Ben Miller on ITV's Moving Wallpaper refer to someone as a 'misanthropic sociopath with entitlement issues'. Whatever this is, it isn't 'dumbing down'.

Not at peace

Sometimes I think I'm an introvert. But, if so, why are there so many people I want to shout at and shake at the same time?

Shoe thrower's sentence reduced

Gene brings news of justice tempered by mercy.

The journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush in Baghdad in the presence of Prime Minister al-Maliki last December has had his sentence cut from three years to one.

This is in contrast to what would have happened to him if he had thrown his shoes in the presence of Saddam Hussein while he was in power. In that case, the only things cut would have been his head and possibly other body parts.

I'm no expert on what is appropriate punishment but, as Gene says, it's a far more lenient sentence than he would have got in any other Arab country.

Solitude

“Solitude greeting solitude, that's what community is all about. Community is not the place where we are no longer alone but the place where we respect, protect, and reverently greet one another's aloneness. When we allow our aloneness to lead us into solitude, our solitude will enable us to rejoice in the solitude of others. Our solitude roots us in our own hearts. Instead of making us yearn for company that will offer us immediate satisfaction, solitude makes us claim our centre and empowers us to call others to claim theirs. Our various solitudes are like strong, straight pillars that hold up the roof of our communal house. Thus, solitude always strengthens community.”
Henri Nouwen

Sometimes it's hard to be a woman

timesonline reports from a region of Pakistan where the brutal Taleban have taken control:

In return for peace the Taleban can administer the region, run Sharia courts, ban women from marketplaces, outlaw music shops and stop girls older than 13 going to school.

Israel's crime

If you are beginning to feel "that Jews who are worried about anti-Jewish discrimination are really mendacious liars seeking to pull the wool over honest Gentile eyes" then please pay attention to this appeal by Eve Garrard.

Religion, theo-politics and race

Paul Sikander at Butterflies & Wheels has cautionary things to say about a phobia that is sweeping the world.

‘Islamophobia’ is a constructed model designed to protect Islam and Islamic politics from criticism. It has little or nothing to do with protecting individual Muslims from discrimination.

Until the late 1990’s, ethnic minorities in this country were conceived of as being susceptible to discrimination on the basis of immutable human factors. That you are black or Asian is a fact that cannot be altered, and you could face discrimination in British society because of it, prejudice sometimes subtle, sometimes violent and visceral. And so, civil and political society sought to counter this by privileging the dignity of the individual in the face of racism. If a Muslim, a Hindu, or a Sikh was to be called a ‘Paki’ it was not because of the religion they actively or nominally belonged to. If a West Indian was called a ‘nigger’ it was not because of any cultural or religious formulation or criticism they were facing. Anti-Semitism when it was expressed, the earlier racism of Europe, that had been present before the post war migration of black and Asian people to the UK, was simultaneously a similar and different mode of prejudice. But crucially, anti-Semitism when expressed and countered was not about defending the theology of Judaism.

The construction of the concept of ‘Islamophobia’ began in the aftermath of the Rushdie affair. The impetus for it was to stigmatise an entire range of individuals and opinions, from those who took issue with religious precepts of Islam, to those who questioned certain values of the religion, certain cultural practices recurrent inside the sub-culture of some British Muslim groups, all the way through to those who critically analysed Islamist politics.

For the first time, ‘racism’ was not considered to be the active discrimination against individuals because of their ethnic background. Now, ‘racism’ was asserted to be anything that remotely offended the sensibilities of religious Muslims, including those from within the Muslim community who dissented from a certain line on any range of issues.

What a victory. To weld together the protection of religion and theo-politics with the whole idea of racism. To no longer privilege the dignity of the individual against racial prejudice, but to privilege the ‘dignity’ of the religion of Islam, and the politics of Islamism, and providing them with an immunity — the righteous immunity of protection from ‘victimisation’.

Save the children from whom?

Norm sums up why people like me have stopped supporting what once were our favourite charities, and Comic Relief to boot.

Save the Children opposed the Iraq war, so doing what too many humanitarian NGOs have been doing lately, namely, adopting partisan positions on difficult and divisive political issues, thereby going beyond their stated and legitimate purposes, and turning away some of their longtime supporters. Save the Children favoured leaving the children of Iraq to the continued attentions of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The first and biggest lie

Brett at HP on a major casualty in the "war on terror".

According to a StWC press release: “Anti-war groups from across the world will meet to oppose any further expasion (sic) of NATO and demand an end to the occupation of Afghanistan.” Another rally will feature “leading speakers from the peace movement.”

That these are “anti-war” groups and that these speakers are from “the peace movement” is the first and biggest lie in what I know will be a flood of many more.

These are NOT “anti-war” campaigners. They are not pacifists. They are not conscientious objectors. They are certainly not against all wars. They are not against the use of armed force. And, perhaps most importantly, they are not even against all sides in current conflicts.

. . . the people invited to speak for the “Stop the War Coalition” are only against the use of military force if it is Western military force.

. . . this same sorry lot have no idea what do do about the theocratic fascists, the Taliban. As their malignant influence spreads into neighbouring Pakistan, as more women are forced into burkas, as more teachers are murdered and schools burned down because they educate girls, as the flirtatious are stoned to death and secularists murdered in their wake, what does the StWC recommend? Of course - western forces pull out of Afghanistan and leave them to it.

It is a position so ludicrous, so reckless and senseless, that the only way to make sense of it is to accept that it is in the interests of the enemies of democracy. Or peace.

There's no best species on earth award

That's what Pam Mason says in today's Guardian, and in so doing she grasps a beautiful truth:

Human achievements only matter to, and improve the lives of, other humans. There's no Best Species On Earth award which we win every year, like the US winning the World Series.

Who, apart from us, says we're so special? God? Darwin? A select committee of chimpanzees and dolphins? Yes, we have more abstract knowledge than we had 1000, 100, even five years ago, but it means absolutely nothing to anyone but us. Our achievements please us alone, and when we become extinct (most likely by our own hands) our vanishing will actually improve life for other species, provided we haven't wiped them out too.

Edward O Wilson was making a similar point:
“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”

It's a fabrication that Britain doesn't make things any more

The truth that dares not speak its name. From timesonline:

Manufacturing output accounts for a larger share of GDP in the UK (13 per cent) than it does in France (12 per cent) or the United States (12 per cent).

More equal than others

This, from Harry's Place, is more none-too-subtle evidence of a double standard.

. . . have a read of these extracts from a Socialist Worker article from 2005, and see if you can guess which stateless and oppressed nation it describes:

This is a country occupied by a murderous foreign power for decades. A country split apart by a 1,600 mile series of fortified walls backed by soldiers, heavy weaponry and millions of landmines.

A country with 160,000 people living in refugee camps and yearning to return to their homeland.

It is a country where young and old have declared an intifada against their rulers — and where hundreds of UN resolutions which call for justice have been contemptuously ignored.

Still not guessed yet? The language may be familiar but the target might surprise you.

Look here for the answer.

The conclusion: Jews behaving in a certain way, bad: Arabs doing the same, erm well, you don’t understand, you’ve got to see it in context…ah, can I phone a friend? etc etc

An ancient prejudice

An article by Howard Jacobson on anti-Semitism is always worth reading, especially when it includes lines like this:

A life spent singing anti-Zionist carols in the company of Ken Livingstone and George Galloway is its own punishment.

Amazing Grace

Can't resist posting this passage from Kathleen Norris' book Amazing Grace. It reminds me of warmer feelings I once had for religious practices.

Not long ago I heard a novice speak of a nun with Alzheimer's in her community, who every day insists on being placed in her wheelchair at the entrance to the monastery's nursing home wing so that she can greet everyone who comes. "She is no longer certain what she is welcoming people to," the younger woman explained, "but hospitality is so deeply ingrained in her that it has become her whole life." Better an old fool welcoming people at the door with her whole heart and soul, Benedict might agree, than a distracted, cold, or officious monk or nun with faculties intact.