'Nother Solent

Glen Hoddle does not deserve to be lumped in with Aragonés.

For the most part Simon Barnes in the Times writes well and fairly about the controversy over racist remarks by Luis Aragonés, head coach for the Spanish football team. Or rather the controversy in Britain and lack of controversy in Spain.

But there was one part of his article that I thought was unfair. I quote:

Glenn Hoddle was dismissed as England coach because he said things about the disabled that provoked a heart-felt reaction across the country. The head of the England football team just can’t go around saying things like that.

No, he can't. And that has the unfortunate consequence, particularly for those who oppose racism as Simon Barnes does, that until things change we can never have a Hindu coach for our football team. Hoddle's belief in reincarnation and that misfortune in this life is the result of bad behaviour in past lives may be unusual for a white Briton but is orthodox for thousands of Britons of the Hindu religion. I have no doubt that Hoddle's sacking had a chilling effect on Hindus striving for public eminence in all sorts of fields, not limited to sport.

Perhaps the greatest, the most heartfelt, of all questions is: "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Closely related to it is another question: "How can a good God allow such suffering?"

"There is no God," say the atheists, "and hence no reason why." For those who still hope, there have been two great religious answers; the Free Will of the Judeo-Christian religions (combined with the belief in a future state where "every tear shall be wiped away"), and the Law of Karma proposed by the Buddhists, Jains and Hindus.

It is not my answer. I do not believe in reincarnation. But it is a seriously considered answer with millenia of intellectual tradition behind it. This article by a Canadian Hindu defends the religion against the charge that it is anti-disabled.

The person with the disability is indeed entitled to ask the perennial question, "Why me?" And, for him or her, karma and reincarnation provides an answer: it is a result of your own past deeds. This serves two ends. First, it keeps the one disabled from concluding that we live in a Godless, capricious universe and are victims of a purposeless fate. Second, one can now look to the future, for the doctrine of karma does not end with the proposition that what happens to us is the result of what we have done. It equally advances the proposition that we create our future by how we act now. So, do not wallow in self-pity but strive for a better future, an endeavor in which all others should readily help.

The article also stresses that it is the duty of others to help the sick and disabled in order to help their own karma. C.S. Lewis quoted a Hindu text that said, "Children, old men, the poor, and the sick, should be considered as the lords of the atmosphere."

I wish more prominent British Hindus had spoken out about this at the time of Hoddle's exit - but I find it hard to blame them for their silence, given that it had just been demonstrated that people with their beliefs could be sacked for them to popular acclaim.

Kings and dictators can get satisfaction.

Scott Campbell, the Bunny, sent me this even more surprising story about Kim Jong Il from Der Spiegel. I have to say that the story included some tabloidish elements - the 2,000-strong "satisfaction team", for instance - that made me wonder whether I should take it with a pinch of salt.

Come to think of it, though, just what is it I find so unlikely? Although sources differ as to whether Khosrow Anüshirvan, the 'Immortal Soul' of Zoroastrian Persia, had a harem of 3,000 (as stated by this Islamic website) or a mere 1,200 (as stated in this article from, bizarre as it may seem, a collection of puportedly humorous articles from Pravda) no one contests that he had a vast harem. Nor is it doubted by historians that Ibrahim the Mad had two hundred and eighty women of his seraglio sewn into sacks and cast into the Bosphorus. There is no oddity or cruelty that has not at some time been practised by those of great power.

If he wants to, Kim Jong Il can have a harem greater than that of the greatest of the Sassanids - so he probably does. Whether it will truly ensure his longevity in the manner hoped for is another matter.

The story is

how predictably vicious, arbitrary and hated the rule of the Islamofascists was in Fallujah. That came from the Times, and I found it via Instapundit. The story around the story is that the Times Online has stopped charging overseas visitors, or so that Instapundit link tells me. (From here in the UK I see no difference.) Good news for bloggers. I wonder what led the Times to that decision.

Scrolling up a little on Instapundit I found reports that the Dear Leader cult in North Korea may be going wobbly. Wobble on, freak. I found this story about it in the Washington Post. Unhappy the country where so much is deduced from the taking down of a few official pictures.

Seconded.

Brian Micklethwait reviewed Sean Gabb's call for the abolition of state education before I got to it.

Since he's already excerpted the serious bit, let me call your attention to an entertaining and quotable throwaway line:

The politicians promise reform. But all reforms so far discussed can only make things worse. Labour promises more money and a restructuring of management - not only rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but also replacing the canvas with silk.

The Anglosphere Challenge is my Christmas present to myself.

Oh Sir Jeremy do not touch me!

You can finish the song yourselves, right? Blithering Bunny has a funny post about the villanous Jeremy Clarkson, deflowerer of virgin... ditches?

Unread me.

A reader writes:

Just a note relating to your post of the 15th and your throwaway remark about the "unread Italian of choice".

Amitai Etzioni was born Werner Falk in Koln, Germany in 1929.

Born a German, Amitai Etzioni took a Hebrew name - for reasons that will be obvious if you follow the link.

Those unwordly artists

, innocents abroad in this dog-eat-dog world of ours... Squander Two is sympathetic as ever.

Incidentally, the mad things that have happened to the order and timestamps of my posts since I foolishly tried to split a post into two are an artist's cry of anger against the patriarchy. But you knew that.

The riders of Rohan.

Many of you will have seen a now-famous post in which Harry of Harry's Place expresses his astonishment that an article by Rohan Jayasekera suggesting that Theo Van Gough had it coming should appear in Index on Censorship of all places. Time was when the Index on Censorship, along with Amnesty International and the National Council of Civil Liberties, as the latter two were called before this fashion for one-word names, were the pillars of liberalism. The old gods fall.

I would like to have directed you to read Mr Jayasekera's piece yourself to check out whether you think my description of it is accurate. However the link within Harry's post now takes you to a page of responses rather than the original article, and the search function of the Index website keeps timing out.

Mr Jayasekera is equivocally repentant. He admits that he had no basis for saying that the working relationship between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo Van Gogh was exploitative other than his own bubblethink inability to believe that an immigrant could possibly make an informed, independent decision to support Pim Fortuyn's party.

I do though regret making presumptions about Ayann Hirsi Ali. It did seem like a faintly exploitative relationship to me. To me something seems not right about her association with a political party with policies that are so inimical to her fellow Somalis in the Netherlands, as well as to so many others. But in speaking for her for the purposes of my own argument, I think I was treating her no more fairly than van Gogh did.

He might have added, but didn't, that his assumption that she was traumatised by her rejection of Islam was equally presumptuous. Judging from this interview she dropped it with little regret - what bothered her was not her apostasy but the danger it involves.

Although I would rather the link still took you to the original article, the responses are worth reading in themselves. One of the commenters, Brian Murphy, said:

Theo Van Gogh did not die of natural causes: he was murdered, but you know this, and yet you describe his brutal murder as 'a marvellous piece of theatre'. As the author of this marvellous theatre, the Islamofascists will no doubt wish to repeat their performance on other artists, whose views they dislike.

It is dangerous to criticise Islamic extremism

even for those at the centres of power. Even for Socialists. Mimount Bousakla, a female, socialist Belgian senator of Moroccan origin has gone into hiding. Already in hiding is a female Dutch politician of Somali Muslim origin who is now a critic of Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. (Her first name is also sometimes spelt Ayan or Ayann.) She helped Theo Van Gogh make the film Submission. They got him, now they hope to get her too.

Pang pang you're dead.

I am having two pangs of conscience. Pang #1 is about yesterday's post. Do I actually know Hazel Blears has not read Ignazio Silone? I do not. Pang #2 had been forgotten but was revitalised by Boris Johnson's latest troubles. Last month I posted this and, in passing, linked to a tongue-in-cheek Boris fan site that featured a picture of him looking like a twit. But the fact is that if you photograph anyone enough some of the pictures will show him or her looking like a twit. Normal human speech involves silly face-shapes, normal human movement involves momentarily inelegant postures, and normal human life involves wearing scraggy sweatshirts sometimes. When a celeb goes out of favour with Wotcher magazine, photos of him or her looking pasty-faced and rat-haired while buying milk can always be found. Another point to bear in mind is that even if Boris Johnson looks like a twit for a higher percentage of the time than Pierce Brosnan, for instance, that is not his fault. Or even a fault. (Adultery, on the other hand, is both a fault and his.)

It is a sign of the increasing childishness of the British public that it will only vote for a handsome, married parent as Prime Minister. I hope the tendency does not spread to mere ministers. Only a generation ago the fact that Edward Heath is a bachelor and no oil-painting did not stop him gaining the favour of a less superficial electorate. As things turned out, that was a pity. Heath became a bad, duplicitous prime minister and a positively vampiric ex-prime minister - but his appearance and childlessness had nothing to do with it.

Third blah.

There's an angry letter in the Guardian about policing in the Isle of Wight:

So Hazel Blears wants to take policing to a "third phase" (Report, November 9). What exactly were phases one and two? We particularly liked the idea that local people should know local officers' names, "their emails, how to contact them". We don't have local police officers out here in the real world. Nearly all our local police stations have been taken away, as have the police officers who used to live in the community.

We have a handful of police personnel patrolling the Isle of Wight at night, who are routinely unavailable to deal with juvenile crime, and we suspect they haven't a lot of time to tend to the relationship "between the citizen and the local service".

We even have to telephone Winchester for non-emergency contact with the police. The government's jargon may mean something to them, but it's cuts little ice with people who have seen seven years of drift, "targets", and institutionalised non-achievement.

Hazel Blears, in case you are wondering, is a Home Office minister. According to the Guardian report of November 9 referred to in the letter, she "is an unusual sort of politician. She talks, unabashedly, about promoting traditional working-class values such as decency and respect, quotes the Italian socialist Ignazio Silone, and says the future of politics is local." Exactly the usual sort of politican, then. The only deviation from cliché is going for Silone as Unread Italian of Choice when the Front Bench opt for Amitai Etzioni*.

Ms Blears also says that the third phase of police reform is "about reinvention; about connecting public services to local people. We need to change the nature of the encounter and the relationship between the citizen and the local service".

Back to something that works?

The hope behind all this talk of phases is that reality will be too embarassed to diverge from the orderly and inevitable progression of the numerical series. Edward Heath, I recall, had an incomes policy that came in Phases I, II and III. It came unstuck at III.

This post is depressing me. Allow me to turn to a time-honoured means of cheering oneself up: the discovery and announcement of an entirely new law of nature. Are you ready? Here it is:Third Grandiose Whatevers are always unsatisfactory. The Third Whatever either is or wants to be the Second Whatever, but feels it necessary to pretend it isn't or doesn't. Third Way. Third World. Third Programme. See what I mean?

I am aware that the last paragraph has almost no connection to what went before other than mention of the word "Third". I just felt that humanity had already waited too long.

*A reader later pointed out to me that Etzioni is not in fact Italian.