'Nother Solent

Norman Geras

sees days of the week as having colours. So do many of his readers. I don't, not particularly. But the number seven is green.

A billion lives saved.

(Salil Singh's article found via Instapundit.) Very few of us will have the skills or be situated in history in such a way that we can do as Norman Borlaug did. But, by God, this has been a life well-lived.

And you thought prosecutions for blasphemy were a thing of the past.

Though the pictures are pretty, as a Christian, I probably would not care for the new book by Gerhard Haderer, an Austrian cartoonist. He depicts Christ as a "binge-drinking friend of Jimi Hendrix and naked surfer high on cannabis." What daring iconoclasm! In 1905, maybe. In 2005, apart from six nonagerian nuns living in enclosed orders and a few hobby-protesters, nobody gives a monkeys.

Yesterday if anyone had made the slightest suggestion that the furore that results from writing such a book qualified a man to be regarded as some sort of martyr for free speech, I'd have retorted that the "furore" had probably been budgeted for to the last euro by the publishers. "Regrettably, Herr Haderer, the market for Christian outrage is not what it was, and we cannot agree to your suggested advance." Or I'd have suggested that if he wants to play martyr he could try it with the Muslims, who are more likely to enter into the spirit of the game.

But by the holy bowels of Jimi Hendrix, the poor little poseur really is in danger of arrest. And do you know why? Because of the European arrest warrant, that's why. An Austrian cartoonist and writer faces extradition to Greece (Greece: why does that not surprise me?) for something he wrote in Austria. I assume that Austria has no law, or dead-letter law, against blasphemy. So he wrote something that was legal in Austria but not in Greece, and now he faces extradition to Greece. He did not even know his wretched book had been published in Greece.

I found this via Public Interest. Peter Briffa points out that when this law was introduced much was said by its sponsors about extraditing foreign criminals to Britain... and very little about the extradition of British people to foreign countries for "crimes" that might well not be crimes at all in Britain.

Perhaps some legally knowledgeable reader can tell me if there is anything at all to stop this happening to, for instance, a British Samizdata contributor, if the authorities in some foreign capital should take a dislike to something he or she had written.

I'm going to cross-post this there.

Merry Muslims, Congenial Christians and Jovial Jews.

It's the end of a long day so here's a quick non-date-specific thought from the pile I keep in my frontal lobe for just such an emergency.

My son gets Horrible Histories magazine. This publication is tasteless, vulgar and of variable accuracy - and when my son asked me (he was aged eight) "Who is your favourite Hapsburg?" I knew that the money for the subscription had been well spent.

The title of nearly every issue has been alliterative, sometimes painfully so. 'Orrible Ottomans, Vile Victorians, you get the idea. Not all the adjectives are uncomplimentary; your civilisation may rate an "Ingenious" or an "Awesome" if required by the demands of mild political correctness or a shortage of adjectives with the required initial letter.

The Youth of Britain must like what they see. (Free putty eyeballs were provided with an early issue, I forget why.) Recently, just as the planned run of sixty issues was coming to its end, the publishers announced that they would publish twenty more due to popular demand. Which is nice, because it gives them twenty more chances to Pull It Off Somehow. Pull What Off Somehow? you ask (in a polite sense, I trust.) Well, they've dealt with some pretty thorny issues in a reasonably tasteful way. Er, not tasteful, exactly; very much the contrary, but acceptable within the genre. The HH writers do get the tone right, switching at just the right moment from ghoulish relish to little touches of actual pity when considering the victims of some gruesome punishment or plague. The width of coverage has also been admirable, for a kids' magazine. The writers have touched on everything from the fall of the statues on Easter Island to the horrible childhood of Ivan the Terrible. However one vast chunk of history has been left out...

I can sympathise. I really can. How does a magazine like this deal with the founders of the world's Judeo-Christian religions? The crimes and oddities of their successors, no problem. The Inquisition had a double page spread. And Buddhism and Hinduism were sketched out in the India issue: the less personalised and politicised nature of these religions makes it easier. But when it comes to the stupendously historically important stories of Moses, or Abraham, or Mohammed, or Jesus... so far, nada. As there are only two episodes of the original print run left to go, I assume they were originally planning to fold up their tents and steal away without dealing with it all.

It's hard to blame them. My stomach is turning over at the potential for offence, outrage and potential prosecution if and when the proposed religious hatred law comes in, and it's not even my hot potato.

I think they are aware of the problem. The little timeline that comes with each issue seems to go out of its way to include events from the Bible, Torah and Koran.

But, despite their pivotal contribution to world history, and the availability of alliterative adjectives beginning with I, H or J, the Jews haven't even had an issue to themselves yet. (The Holocaust has been covered in the WWII issue. Some very careful writing there.) Nor have the early Muslim conquests been covered.

I shall watch the next twenty issues with interest.

A guest of their Lordships

. Lord Ahmed invited "Israel Shamir" to speak in the House of Lords. Now perhaps, as Stephen Pollard charitably speculates he just made a terrible mistake and didn't check out the material put out by Shamir, or whatever he calls himself now, on his website. But I dunno. You don't have to have delved particularly deep in the waters where extreme left and extreme right meet to know that Shamir is a raving Jew-hater and a believer in the blood libel: an anti-semite with the first name "Israel" kind of sticks in the mind on first hearing.

What I find interesting is that this speech (comparatively mild for Shamir; just check out the other quotes Stephen Pollard gives, or Shamir's own website) was given a month ago.

A month ago. I hadn't heard about it, had you?

Sam Nujoma stepped down

as president of Namibia the other day. This editorial from the Kenyan newspaper The Nation points out that presidents stepping down is much more common in Africa than it was a few years ago.

Maybe that is what is so remarkable - that it is becoming routine for African heads of state to bow out gracefully after serving out their terms or losing elections.

Not too long ago, most of Africa was under dictators - military or civilian - and no president relinquished power except through death or through a bloody military coup - often itself causing many deaths, imprisonments or exile.

President Nujoma's voluntary exit - after 15 years in power since the country gained independence - and the installation of his democratically elected successor, President Hifikepunye Pohamba, may demonstrate that democracy is becoming firmly entrenched in Africa.

Kenya is one of the countries that have successfully negotiated democratic transitions, as have numerous other countries in southern, eastern, western and northern Africa.

Let it spread. Because it's true, as the article later complains, that when we think of Africa we think of Darfur - and despair.

What Brings Us Together As Europeans.

Tim Worstall's Britblog roundup led me to one of the funniest fiskings I have ever read. A pro-Europe article by Tim Garton-Ash of the Guardian was, as Dr Johnson recommended be done with cucumbers, "well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing."

Thank you, BTW, to whoever it was that nominated a recent post of mine to the roundup.

Same person or not?

Bjørn Stærk has been following the career of Mullah Krekar, a refugee living in Norway and much feted by Norweigan progressives, for several years now. He may or may not be a past or current leader of the terrorist organisation Ansar al-Islam. Trevor Stanley spotted a picture that looked awfully like the respectable Mullah Krekar in a magazine article about information discovered on the drive of an Al-Qaeda computer after the fall of the Taliban. Is the central picture of the same man as in the two framing pictures or not?

The question is not rhetorical. To me the space between the Al-Qaeda man's eyes looks wider than the space between Krekar's. But that could be the lighting.

Also check out the post below, in which Mr Stærk takes on a major Norweigian newspaper and gets a fine display of evasiveness and deliberate missing of the point in return.

Oh, boy. Also also check out this post in which he takes on a blogger, Bernhard of 'Moon of Alabama', who posted a genuine-looking fake news story, which he admits to be fake, admits could mislead, and of which he says:

If people are mislead by this it's fine with me. Maybe they will ask their government who pays for these aids. That should be helpful to find out who has the moral responsibility for the disinformation terror campaign.

The story has been pre-emptively defined as "satire" despite an entirely naturalistic presentation. There is a lot of tittering about how poor foreign Bjørn does not get American humour; good ol' Bernhard is always doing this sort of thing and all his friends are in on the joke. Bernhard and his defenders don't see it as a problem that people casually finding the story via Google would be misled, as has, in fact happened: the story is circulating in Norweigian left wing circles. That, to them, is a feature not a bug. For instance blogger Norvegia disseminated the story as fact and when informed that it was not fact promptly and conscientiously amended his post... by adding a question mark to the title.

The "it's fake but accurate" defenses offered in the comments by Bernhard and his supporters such as Norvegia are far more damning to them than any attack could ever be.

Though, since I'm here, Bjørn Stærk's English spelling is better than Bernhard's.