Obituaries, even in the Times, aren’t what they used to be:
Pole liked to recall with pride that he was the only one of her countless lovers — among them Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, Edmund Wilson and her own psychoanalyst — who had fully gratified Nin the first time she had slept with them.
Just the kind of tidbit one likes to know about the recently departed.
Among them her own psychoanalyst though. How very 20th Century.
Here, via Metafilter, are some of this year’s, um, crop of crop circles. The full-sized images are pretty amazing.
There’s something quite wonderful about crop circles. I love that the makers remain largely anonymous, and that people still refuse to believe that they’re man-made. I love the idea of blokes in pubs heading out and doing this stuff. I love it that the art world would never ever deign to comment on them. I love it that no one’s in it for the money. I can only hope that we don’t start getting books by the practioners revealing the secrets of their trade (yes I know we’ve had the odd TV program and article in a Sunday supplement, but as far as I’m aware nothing much beyond that).
I posted a while back on surrealism, and how to the English that sort of thing comes naturally: we don’t need to philosophise about it, and write manifestoes. Just so with crop circles. They’re quintessentially English. They embody what much art nowadays can only dream of: they’re creative, inspiring, mysterious, ephemeral, and exist totally beyond commercial interests. It’s possible – and I hesitate here, but it must nevertheless be said – that the makers never even went to Art School.
Update: looking at this site (with its amusing new age verbiage – “Karen has a background in psychology and counselling and has for many years brought a gentle, empathetic and introspective touch to researching the crop circles…. Her work seamlessly fuses sacred art, spirituality, psychology and philosophy”) I wouldn’t guarantee that all the crop circles linked to above are in fact from this year.
The Lord’s Resistance Army have announced a ceasefire:
The Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has announced a unilateral ceasefire, with immediate effect.
The rebel movement’s deputy leader Vincent Otti told the BBC he had ordered all field commanders to cease all hostilities against Uganda’s army.
Ugandan Interior Minister Ruhakana Rugunda said his government would wait to see what happened on the ground, in response to the announcement….
In a phone call to the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme, Mr Otti announced: “I, Lt Gen Vincent Otti, second in command of the LRA, by the order of Gen Joseph Kony, chairman of the LRA High Command, do hereby declare a unilateral cessation of hostilities.
“I order all our field commanders to, with immediate effect, cease all form of hostilities against the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UDPF) positions and others.
“I do hope that the government of Uganda shall reciprocate this gesture of goodwill so that the warring parties may finally find a bilateral agreement to provide a peaceful atmosphere for our people,” Mr Otti said.
I do hope that the government of Uganda shall reciprocate this gesture of goodwill… Strange locution. Presumably what he means is, he hopes that Ugandan President Museveni makes good on his offer of a full amnesty and protection for the LRA leaders if renounce violence.
It seems to me that this is all about the LRA leaders trying to save their skins. Which suggests that the decision by the International Criminal Court to indict them as war criminals has been vindicated.
From Der Spiegel:
Chinese authorities have closed the inverstigation into an attack against a critic of the government’s compensation program for people displaced by construction of the Three Gorges Dam that left the man paralyzed. Fu Xiancai was severely beaten by unknown assailants after giving a critical interview to a German public television broadcaster.
The family of farmer Fu Xiancai, paralyzed in an attack by thugs after he criticized the Chinese government, has little hope that the case will ever be properly investigated and that justice will be done….
On June 8, the local police chief, Wang Qiankui, had Fu brought in to the station and warned him against making any further contacts with the Western press.
As he was walking home from the station, Fu was attacked by thugs who beat him so brutally that he broke a cervical vertebra and is now paralyzed for life….
The local police now claim Fu broke his neck accidentally. “No injury has been found that was caused by anyone else,” said a brief police report published last week.
for reasons best known to themselves, merge much sooner than they need to. Why do they do that? Worried that they won’t be able to merge later on? You can always force your way in, unless you’re dealing with a complete loon who’ll refuse eye contact and stay one foot behind the car in front. The thing is, if you do merge early on, you’re inevitably going to see other cars whipping past you. If that bothers you, join them. How sad is it when drivers merge sooner than they need to, only to sit there fuming about how unfair it is when others don’t do the same?
Be daring. Don’t just sit there getting uptight.
The Women’s Asian Cup semi-final between China and North Korea in Australia last week didn’t, sadly, end on a fraternal note. The North Koreans thought they’d equalised in the last minute of the match, but the goal was ruled offside by the Australian lineswoman. The Koreans weren’t happy.
Nor were the authorities in Pyongyang, who are now demanding punishment for the referee and lineswoman. The Korean Central News Agency voices the feelings of the world proletariat in their struggle against Italo-Australian partial refereeing:
The world public strongly accused the Italian referee and an Australian lineswoman of their partial refereeing at the semi-final match between the DPRK and Chinese teams held on July 27 during the 15th Asian Women’s Football Championships. The match left the most undesirable blot in the history of the Asian women’s football matches due to the deliberate and undisguised partial refereeing.
The Pyongyang-based Sports Paper Tuesday in a commentary terms that partial refereeing an unjust act of obstructing the development of Asian women’s football and a wanton violation of the noble sports spirit.
Objectivity, impartiality and accuracy constitute a principle to be observed by all referees, the commentary notes, and goes on:
If any international referee is allowed to do anything in violation of this principle, this will cause very adverse consequences of impeding the progress of sports technique.
What the Italian referee and the Australian lineswoman did eloquently proves their sinister intention to make the DPRK team fail at any cost.
What should not be overlooked is the behavior of the Referees Committee of the championships.
The Australian lineswoman, talking to the committee, confessed that her declaration of offside was wrong. The committee, however, blamed the behaviors of Korean players. Had the referee and the lineswoman correctly refereed, the results of the match would have been different and the Korean players would not have lodged such protest.
Despite my lack of enthusiasm for his pots, I’ll admit that Grayson Perry in his weekly Times column is usually worth a read. This week he writes about A Thousand Faces – photographer Hal Satterthwaite’s 1000 portraits of people in Walthamstow:
Satterthwaite had the idea for his project when he returned home after working for two years in Sydney as a nurse. He was struck by how happy multicultural London felt after Australia, where he thought they had handled racial integration very badly. He wanted to portray and celebrate our world-class melting pot, the largely cheerful co-existence of all the different races and cultures. It is a mixture that makes our capital probably the most diverse place on earth.
For 14 months, twice a week for five hours, Satterthwaite would hang about in Walthamstow Town Square and accost passers-by, asking if he could take their portrait. He had a little trouble getting some Muslim women to participate, but he was usually able to strike a deal with them as they always wanted their children included, so he said that he would photograph their kids if they let him take their portrait as well.
This policy of including all groups paid off. When he checked the racial mix of his subjects he found that it tallied exactly with the official statistics, 54 per cent white, 22 per cent Asian, 21 per cent Afro-Caribbean, 3 per cent other. With funding from Awards for All he has printed the A4 portraits on Foam-X board. The result is to be displayed — as he always intended — in the location where they were taken, in the town square.
It’s a great website.
And didn’t Walthamstow used to be a National Front stronghold? It’s not all bad news out there.
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Not automatically face persecution? Well that’s alright then!
Would this possibly have anything to do with the ruling?
The Home Office has launched an investigation into claims that an immigration officer was helping asylum seekers remain in Britain for cash.
The official allegedly told an undercover journalist he charged up to £2,000 for helping people to get refugee status.
He also claimed he helped asylum seekers of other nationalities pretend they were Zimbabweans because the Home Office had a ban on deporting people to Zimbabwe, The Sun reported.
A grim tale from China (via ALDaily):
Since China’s illegal organ trade business has been internationally exposed, the United States Congress has held numerous hearings. The international society has requested that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) follow the “use of the dead or executed persons’ organs” statute announced in 1990. The statute stipulates that a criminal’s organs only be obtained if the person or his or her relatives gave permission, or if the corpse is unclaimed.
Due to fewer channels for obtaining human organs, the prices of organs have been high for long periods of time. Since the CCP has ordered the 6-10 Office, a branch specially established to persecute Falun Gong practitioners, to “kill Falun Gong practitioners and call it suicide” and “to ruin their reputation, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically,” the organs of Falun Gong practitioners who have been tortured to death have become a source of cheap merchandise for this black market.
Via Roger L Simon, this from Ynet News:
Is Hizbullah behind the tragic incident in the village of Qana that claimed the lives of some 60 people? While the Israeli army continues to investigate the circumstances leading to the building’s collapse, some in Lebanon do not hesitate to point the finger at the Shiite organization and claim it is to blame for the death of dozens.
The Lebanese website LIBANOSCOPIE, associated with Christian elements in the country and which openly supports the anti-Syrian movement called the “March 14 Forces,” reported that Hizbullah has masterminded a plan that would result in the killing of innocents in the Qana village, in a bid to foil Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s “Seven Points Plan”, which calls for deployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon and the disarming of Hizbullah.
“We have it from a credible source that Hizbullah, alarmed by Siniora’s plan, has concocted an incident that would help thwart the negotiations. Knowing full well that Israel will not hesitate to bombard civilian targets, Hizbullah gunmen placed a rocket launcher on the roof in Qana and brought disabled children inside, in a bid to provoke a response by the Israeli Air Force. In this way, they were planning to take advantage of the death of innocents and curtail the negotiation initiative,” the site stated.
The site’s editors also claimed that not only did Hizbullah stage the event, but that it also chose Qana for a specific reason: “They used Qana because the village had already turned into a symbol for massacring innocent civilians, and so they set up ‘Qana 2’.” Notably, the incident has indeed been dubbed “The second Qana massacre” by the Arab media.
And in the comments a link to this French site, where it’s pointed out that a disproportionate number of the children dragged from the collapsed building appear to be handicapped.
That’s on top of this:
There is an unexplained gap of about seven hours between the one Israeli air strike that hit the Qana building housing the civilians, which took place around 1 A.M. Sunday, and the first report that the building had collapsed, said the chief of staff of the Israel Air Force, Brigadier General Amir Eshel. Speaking at a press conference at the Kirya military complex in Tel Aviv last night, Eshel said that of three Israeli air strikes on Qana early Sunday, only the first strike hit the building in which the civilians were staying. The other two hit areas at least 400 meters away.
