March 22, 2003
Two interesting posts
from Tim Blair. In one a former human shield has his eyes opened and in another Pilger shows his are still tight shut. He's taken to yelling insults at his fellow journalists now, an astonishingly bad career move. The Nee Naw Nee Naw Nee Naw you hear in the distance is the sound of the padded van from the funny farm approaching.
I do know that this is the sort of protest that is sometimes called "imaginative" but which actually shows an inability to imagine how those outside their own mindset will see it.
However, there seems to be no actual fighting between them and the Kurds. This situation bears watching.
I had never before realised
how ignorant I was of certain basic facts about the rest of the world. This morning, for instance, I learn that faraway Knoxville has green sky at night. And we all know now that Iraq at night has not only green sky but permanent fog. Wonders of nature, indeed.Us in Essex don't have that there stripe across the the top of the world with writing on, neither. We be simple folk.
The bombardment of Baghdahd still seems far from general to me, which is good for the people there. The big news is the negotiated and orderly surrender of the division. That tells us that the lines are open between our forces and theirs. Good for everybody.
I worry about the families of that division's commanders, as the Iraqi authorities must know where to find them. Let us hope that the agents of Saddam's regime are too disheartened - or too aware that their own turn may be next - to take any revenge on them.
March 21, 2003
The irony is that this topic has for the first time truly galvanised a popular European identity. As Europeans pour out in their millions on demonstrations, there is a worthwhile common purpose - not dreary directives, but a sense of Europeanness. It is an identity built on deep difference from Bush's America.Yes. It is. And what a piss-poor basis for an identity that is. Excuse the vulgarity, but that's what it makes me think of. Think of France - our ancient enemy, its history entwined with ours - as like old, strong wine; rich, heady, the incomparable product of centuries of tradition, managing to combine a springlike pleasure in life with a hint of world-weary cynicism. What does that make an identity built on (built on for heaven's sake?) deep difference from one particular man heading one particular government in a foreign country that the populace happen, rather ignorantly, to dislike at the moment? Something like brackish water from a rusty old cistern - no make that a plasticcy new cistern - that you think might have something nasty leaking into it somehow, only you'd rather not know, thank you.
Any identity built on hostility to others can change the object of its hostility as easily as a man changes his coat.
During the Falklands war
I would rush downstairs every morning to check Ceefax. My first thought would be, please don't let any ships have been sunk in the night. I knew that men could die in large packets that way, and it was only the unceasing defensive efforts of the Navy and the RAF that stopped even more of Lami Dozo's determined attacks from getting through. It is - or was - just about possible that our ships could go down in this war, too. Fortunately with the capture of Umm Qasr the chances of that happening seem remote.
Alas
for my hopes in the post below. Eight Royal Marines and four US crewmen were killed in a helicopter crash overnight.As was the case when fighting Iraq eleven years ago, enemy fire seems to be a lesser threat than the haste and confusion inevitable in war.
March 20, 2003
Ten years ago today
two IRA bombs exploded without warning among shoppers in Warrington. Two children were killed, Jonathan Ball instantly and Tim Parry after unsuccessful attempts to save his life in hospital. Jonathan Ball was twelve and Tim Parry was three years old.
Harry
has a steele-tipped post about the Liberal Democrats.So we really shouldn't be surprised at this sudden alliance of the Lib Dems with the far left. The truth is that the anti-war movement is a largely southern middle class movement - it is the natural home for both Trots and Lib Dems.BTW I assume Peter Cuthbertson is well able to fight his own corner. Once again I am plagued by "Internet Explorer Script Freaking Error" when I try to visit his site so I can't tell how he's doing it. Why don't they change the script?Both factions contain people unable to take tough, difficult discussions, people who are never able to translate their much vaunted 'internationalism' into any form of concrete action, people who never actually have to take responsibility for anything other than trying to block any meaningful reform of the public services they are paid by the working people of this country to deliver.
I don't use the phrase 'Guardian-readers' lightly and I shall not do so here.
Telic like it is.
"Operation Iraqi Freedom", eh? We are to take it, I suppose, that that name just pipped the post ahead of Operation Saddamayaface and Operation Scrag The Towelheads?I believe the Yanks do this just to annoy the hacks. It's an awkward spot for your average BBC reporter who has been sternly instructed by his boss not to let warmongering assumptions take control of the semantic dialogue yet still has to say the disgustingly unsophisticated words Iraqi Freedom so that the listeners will have some idea of what General Franks is talking about. The best our reporter can do in these difficult circumstances is to roll his eyes ironically and waggle his lips while trying to pronounce quote marks.
The proper British operation name, dear friends, picked from a list of randomly chosen words in a professional military manner, is Operation Telic. It does not matter in the slightest that "telic" means "expressing purpose", nor that is the antonym of the word "ecbatic", nor that it turned up on this blog only days ago....
Good Lord, so it did. It's the Telegraph crossword of May 2nd 1944 all over again. I expect MI5 will come calling any day now.
Don't mention the J-word
. Over at Biased BBC you can read a disturbing letter from Sally Foster, who noticed a curious omission from a CBBC newsround report.
'Attack Illegal, Experts Say.'
The experts were a bunch of Canadian law professors and, wait for it, "a member of the Liberal government caucus." Do you think we ought to tell somebody?
The freedom of the seas.
'Mike', a reader of USS Clueless, argues in an e-mail to that blog that the US and its allies are maritime powers; its enemies and the fainthearts are continental land powers.Steven Den Beste himself adds something about the reasons why maritime powers tend to be liberal:
Nations which rely on navies usually build them to support and defend world trade; it represents a fundamentally different attitude about the world.
As it happened we were talking about maritime powers in the car last night, a friend having observed that Holland, a country that is usually lumped in with Belgium politically, is surprisingly supportive of the present war. Holland certainly fits the profile of a politically liberal maritime power. (It still has a respectable navy.)
In fact my recollections of that stage of our in-car conversation and a conversation between me and my husband this morning have now become entwined with Den Beste's post. The thoughts that follow run in a wobbly but approximate parallel course with it, banging against it here and there rather than responding to it directly.
On picking your battles with care: my husband commented that a great maritime power can only choose its battles when confronted with a minor adversary. When faced with a great land power a maritime power can only triumph *in war* either in coalition with another land power (e.g. Britain in coalition with Russia in 1812, or the coalition between Britain, the US and the USSR in 1945) or by transforming itself into a great land power (Britain 1916-1918, USA in mid 1940s). If you want to defeat millions of men on the Western Front, it has to be by means of millions of men on the Western Front. You can't get round it. (The Bomber Command offensive can be seen as a way of trying to get round that iron law - but was in itself a mass offensive. Although it had some successes it should never be forgotten that the bombers had a comparable officer/NCO casualty rate to that of the Battle of the Somme, and the lack of those educated men did similar harm to the rebuilding of the country - and in the end the war still had to be won on the ground.) As John Terraine pointed out, if you are going to triumph, you must find a way of defeating the main body of the enemy's strength.
However the conflict need not always be carried out in blood. The West was able to triumph against the "mass" of the USSR in a flood of computers, grain, and Hollywood movies. In a sense we were bringing battle to the main body of Soviet strength. Communism was meant to feed the people, bring about technological development and release the creative energies of the people. That was what it was for. And here was the capitalist enemy doing all that better: a long, slow bombardment of the spirit.
In all that talk of economies, Den Beste's post comes back into the story. He writes:
These wars for global dominance had a strong financial element. As I mentioned already, maritime nations have used their navies to protect the economic systems on which their power rests while attacking the land-based nation's economy. The United States has already adopted this strategy. The administration actively destroying our enemy's financial system by freezing bank accounts, putting Islamic "charities" out of business and prosecuting known financial supporters to terrorist groups. At the same time you could argue that the slow pace of the war has more to do with preventing the severe dislocations to our economy which could be produced by a faster-paced war.
I'd argue that the economic war against Islamofascism has to be more than that, and will be more than that, almost unconsciously. The strategies above are like the incursions into France during the Napoleonic wars: useful demonstrations of ability to project force, but they won't bring the enemy down. The correct strategy has to be somehow matched better to what we are fighting; dispersed, soaking in, ineradicable. Obviously the main weapon is freedom, including freedom to trade, just as it always was.
That's why it worries me that so much of our government strategy on economic war is "continental" (that is, centrally planned and information-controlling, the various attempts to control the internet being the prime example.) I wish we had something more like halawa - and they didn't.
Wake up, you slacker!
Don't you know there's a war on?"Be dead, be dead, be dead." Silflay Hraka was in "robot wisdom mode" as the war began - virtually circling the globe, picking up information and rebroadcasting it. And sending out thought-waves to Saddam, hence the headline to this post.
March 19, 2003
Sorry for lack of posts today
. I have been firing vast quantities of high powered ammo and quite forgot about the war.
March 18, 2003
Just saw the vote on the no-war amendment.
217 rebels. Bit up on the previous rebellion, but Tony lives another day. While we're waiting for the vote on the actual government motion, can I reassure you that Our Boys will go to war with some delicious sort of ginger-cum-Garibaldi biscuits in their rations. I have been sampling a 24-hour rat pack for various obscure reasons. It's a vegetarian one. Vegetarian military rations. They didn't have that option when I was in the OTC, I can tell you. You wanted to be a veggie baby-killing tool of the hegemonic forces of world capital in those in those days, you just had to be a hungry veggie baby-killing tool of the hegemonic forces of world capital and put up with it.
The hour finds the man.
Dave Farrell writes:I don't think I admire Clare Short so much as feel a bit sorry for her for acting silly and then getting a second chance and having to try to put a good face on it all. Is it my imagination or did the fearsome Ms Short look a bit tremulous and tearstained after making up with Tony? I daresay you will roast me as a sexist boor, but there, I've said it.The speech does seem to have made an impact. Earlier in the afternoon I walked round to pick up my son from the house of the friend he had been visiting. It's been a fine day and many windows were open. I heard something I don't think I have ever heard before. From the house I was visiting and from several other sources came Tony Blair's voice speaking at length: multiple radios or TVs were tuned into the debate. I know from blogging that Americans (at least political ones) will make time to hear the president speak live. But over here that sort of collective interest is hardly ever aroused by anything other than sport.I do admire Blair, a politician who had always made me uneasy -- because he seemed glib and facile and oversincere -- for completely confounding me today by making one of the most magnificent speeches in defence of freedom and against tyranny the House can have heard since the second world war.
It was an impossible act to follow, and the sallies of his foes were made to sound childish and petulant and unworthy. With the honourable exception of John Denham, who made a simple and dignified statement of his position entirely lacking in self-aggrandisement.
Blair has proven the man of the hour; he now has the honed and steely look of a man who will not flinch when required to put his hand in the fire. And I am not a Labourite.
What to do if this blog upsets you.
Childrens' BBC has advice for worried kiddies, cabinet ministers etc who can't sleep for fear of the news. But what to do about those awful blogs?Lots of blogs are upsetting and at times can be quite frightening, particularly the way bloggers spell.Auntie Nat has spoken to the Uranian space angels who regularly give her guidance and put together tips for the modern child about what you should do if something you've seen or heard in the blogosphere is worrying you or giving you nightmares.
- Always check the facts if you read a nasty post - it might not be true or it could be exaggerated, or even written by a Republican!
- Remember that things on the internet are often put on the internet because the people who write them don't get out very often and have no other outlet for their bizarre fantasies.
- Discuss the news with your friends or chat about it on a message board. You'll be reassured that you're not the only one worried. You will know that the consensus of informed opinion is that, yes, you, your family and your household pets are indeed about to die writhing in a plague-induced mass of suppurating sores but at least you are a normal teenager.
- You could also talk to your teacher about it - maybe you could have a class discussion which would help you understand the issue better. And she will put you on the at-risk register so you will know that you are safe.
If you're having nightmares or trouble sleeping because of something you've heard in the news:
- Damn straight you should have sold your shares in Total Fina Elf. I'm sorry, there's not much I can do about this one. Your broker has already committed suicide.
- Tell your mum or dad - reassurance from them will make you feel much better, as all proper children love to see their parents squirm while repeating fatuous clichés in a tone of barely concealed disgust that any child of theirs could be such a wimp.
- Try talking about your nightmare or even drawing it. This will help you to confront your fear, and might make you a bob or two from the Tate Modern besides. Best not be too explicit about exactly why you see Uday Hussein as a voracious female spider, though, as some surprisingly Victorian clauses of the Mental Health Act are still in force.
- Surround yourself with things that make you feel secure at night - even if it is your old teddy bear that you keep hidden from your mates! Dad's whisky bottle also has a certain traditional appeal. (Don't let Teddy try any, he's too little.)
- Try to balance the blogs you read. If you read a scary or overstimulating blog then try and read a happy one before you go to bed.
Clare Short
has saved Tony Blair's bacon by not resigning in circumstances where she had quite clearly said she would. Unlike the BBC's Nick Assinder, who seems disappointed in love, I don't know whether to admire her or not - but she's certainly taken the wind out of the sails of a lot of her former admirers.Blair himself gave out a veiled threat to resign if the House didn't support him. I don't know whether to admire that or not either.
Oh dear. The world is no doubt anxiously awaiting word as to what other things I might not know whether to admire. "Natalie Solent", your one-stop dithering blog. Come here for all your indecisiveness needs! The one thing I do know is that it's nice to see Parliament mattering again.
Agur.
Captain Heinrichs writes:The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy: the man spake unto Ithiel, even unto Ithiel and Ucal...
I've been there. The chap who fixes my washing machine arrives promptly, fixes it mightily and charges littly. So I said "uh-huh" and "do you think so?" a lot when he was saying that Tony Blair should not "get us into war." Actually, it was a bit more complicated than that. His opinions were by no means unreasonable, nor were they expressed agressively, and in other circumstances I would have been willing to argue. As usual there were other factors in play: I was working to a deadline and just didn't have time or mental energy to establish my and his starting points adequately, let alone to take the argument through all the twists and turns. Add that to the potential high cost of getting into a row - namely, that I might have to track down another repairman as good - and it just wasn't worthwhile. Besides, I dislike verbal debates unless I know my interlocutor and am confident that he or she won't get angry. I am too much swung by emotion face to face, and have a tendency to conciliate and conciliate and then suddenly get irritated and strike like a viper.
Anyway, I'm saving it up for you guys. Pity to waste good viper venom on an audience of one.
(Link via Instapundit.)
March 17, 2003
So Robin Cook has decided
on a point of principle to stop putting his money in the great parking meter of government.I shall always retain a certain fondness for Cookie, even if his ex-wife doesn't. Before he came along there really, truly, seriously were people who believed that New Labour MPs didn't do that sort of thing.
And talking of things theological...
Moira Breen asks a question about what to do next now that eleven men and seven women have taken the sins of the world upon their shoulders, at least according to Kofi Annan, who clearly fancies himself as a prophet.
Talking of people believing rubbish
, Steven Chapman had a debate with a Pakistani work colleague. An intelligent and educated man, he believed every 9/11 conspiracy theory in the book. Steven comments:But it left me seriously worried that if he represents an educated person from a Muslim country, what must a comparatively uneducated person believe? I toyed with the idea of suggesting that the fabrications he believed in were peddled by the governments of Muslim countries in and around the Middle East as a means of diverting their people's attention and blame away from their own governments' failures, but decided very quickly that he really wasn't ready for anything quite as radical as that.I am afraid that this man's views probably are fairly common. Years ago my sister got talking with the nice young Arab chap who had the room above hers at university. It emerged that he had no conception of how big the Holocaust was - oh, he knew that there had been some sort of pogrom carried out by Hitler, but he equated it in his mind with the minor (minor to all but their victims, I mean) pogroms that had happened quite recently in the history of his own country.
March 16, 2003
That Mel Gibson film keeps turning up.
Being generally uncool I had never heard of it until a few days ago. Then I read and commented on this post by Susanna Cornett. My interest in the post, however, centred not on the film but on the issues of theology and Jewish/Christian relations that it threw up. Then just now I came across this rather more disturbing take on the project from Michael Jennings.So Mel Gibson's father is a nutjob. Holocaust denial, 9/11 conspiracy theories, you name your poison and Hutton Gibson drank it first. But as Mr Jennings points out, it would be unfair to assume Mel necessarily shares the views of his father. Although he does seem a bit .... hmmmmm. I don't really know enough to comment. (I suppose it would be trivialising the issue to say at this point that his anti-English bias has become rather a bore? Yes it would, and it would trivialise the issue even more to say that I don't see that he is so good looking as all that, actually.)
Pity. A film like this could have been wonderful. A Christian devotional film in two dead languages is so utterly contrary to the spirit of the age that I could wish it well on those grounds alone. Let's hope those aren't the only good things about it.
Succous and eximious letters
, reflecting the sedulous study habits of my readers. Captain Heinrichs writes:Being obtuse, I was taken aback by your unfamiliarity with 'cotillion' and 'terpsichorean'. The latter, I confess, is indoubtably limited to persons enamoured with viewing acrobatic feats performed by slender females (and males) clad in scanty or form-fitting garments with appropriate musical support. Others (ie, me) have learned of it while practicing for lucrative quiz shows.As for the former, I am caught in stays; the word is used in the title of a novel by Georgette Heyer, and refers to the 'terpsichorean' complexities of social behavior in post-Regency England.
Dave Farrell writes:
How much more curious and quixotic than a radio station broadcasting in Latin is Mel Gibson's extraordinary decision to make a film about the life and death of Christ in Aramaic (I think with subtitles). Aramaic is far more deceased than Latin, as far as I know.And I wrote "logomarchy" twice, so no claiming it was just a typo. Oh, the shaem, the shaem. Mr Farrell continues:Apropos your list of words: logomachy is a war of words; alas, logomarchy is an incorrect spelling, however felicitous.
I myself had found ecbatic in the Oxford English Dictionary. I also found out that succous means "juicy; possessing juice or sap" and that 'glay' is listed both as a variant of glaive which meant (at different periods) a type of sword, a type of lance and a type of halberd and also as an obs variant of "glee."
Cotillion is a dance, terpsichorean is still frequently used to refer to to the dance arts.As for ecbatic, Webster's says:
Ec*bat"ic (?), a. [See Ecbasis.] (Gram.) Denoting a mere result or consequence, as distinguished from telic, which denotes intention or purpose; thus the phrase , if rendered so that it was fulfilled," is ecbatic; if rendered in order that it might be." etc., is telic.Agur may be a misspelling, but it appears to be used in or for paragliding. I am not sure of its origin but Google turned up a Christian "Webbible" which says it means gatherer or collector and was someone's name (it certainly seems to be Middle Eastern in source). We're back to Mel Gibson again ...
Still no glay on 'oreeses' though.