Author: Mick Hartley

Well worth a read – Hans Magnus Enzensberger looks at the radical loser, whose latest incarnation is the Islamist:

Solutions to the dilemma of the Arab world are of no interest to Islamism, which does not go beyond negation. Strictly speaking, it is a non-political movement, since it makes no negotiable demands. Put bluntly, it would like the majority of the planet’s inhabitants, all the unbelievers and apostates, to capitulate or be killed.

This burning desire cannot be fulfilled. The destructive energy of the radical losers is doubtless sufficient to kill thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and to cause lasting damage to the civilization on which they have declared war. One indication of the potential impact of a few dozen human bombs is the level of day-to-day controls that has come to be the norm….

The consequences for Arab societies…are fatal. For the most devastating long-term effects will be born not by the West, but by the religion in whose name the Islamists act. Not just refugees, asylum seekers and migrants will suffer as a result. Beyond any sense of justice, entire peoples will have to pay a huge price for the actions of their self-appointed representatives. The idea that their prospects, which are bad enough as it is, could be improved through terrorism is absurd. History offers no example of a regressive society that stifled its own productive potential being capable of survival in the long term.

The project of the radical loser, as currently seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, consists of organizing the suicide of an entire civilisation. But the likelihood of their succeeding in an unlimited generalization of their death cult is negligible.

Sometimes you can just go too far, and Clive Davis has, regrettably, crossed the line on this occasion: “almost everyone used to chuckle (and quite right too) at Donna Summer“.

Chuckle? Donna Summer? No one chuckled near me, or make no mistake I’d have……well, I’d have been very cross. I thought – still think – that she was wonderful. Great voice, great looks – sexy without needing to push it – two of the all-time disco classics in “I Feel Love” and “Hot Stuff”. I can’t stand idly by while the reputation of a great artist is sullied in this way….

From Gerard Baker in the Times:

The critics of the war were right to say three years ago that it represented the high-risk option. There’s no doubt, as they said at the time, that not invading would have been the safer option. But over time, repeatedly exercising the easy option rarely produces long-term stability. By repeatedly deferring difficult decisions, repeatedly seeking accommodations with an ever more unacceptable status quo, we make the ultimate crisis that much larger, its consequences that much more devastating. The fluid of all those easy decisions crusts eventually into a hard carapace that can only be cracked with explosive force.

We would be making the same understandable but lethal mistake now if we were to decide that, in the teeth of the difficulties in Iraq, we should take the easy option and get out of there as quickly as possible.

Tony Blair famously said after September 11, 2001, that the kaleidoscope of geopolitics had been shaken. An alternative way to put it might be to say that we have opened a kind of Pandora’s box in the Middle East.

We have, surely, unleashed a violent fury of terrorism and guerrilla war that has a broader reach than Iraq or even the Middle East. But we have also unleashed the great virtue that in time will conquer these vices — not hope this time, though we could use some of that, but freedom. It would be a tragic mistake to cut our losses now, long before we have ensured that the virtue triumphs over the vices.

crocodiles shed tears when they encounter food?
(3) Why did Britain discontinue weather reports during the WWII?
(4) Why is the air especially fresh after a summer thunderstorm?
(5) Why can’t sea water be consumed?
(6) Fill in the next number in the sequence: 2, 3, 13, 175, ?
(7) From 12:00 to 13:00, how many times are the hour hand and the minute hand at 90 degrees to each other?
(8) 50 people are doing lab exercises (in physics and chemistry). 40 people did the physics exercise right, 41 people did the chemistry exercise right and 4 people got both wrong. How many people got both right?
(9) Color blindness is a hereditary disease. But more men are observed to be color-blind than women. Why?
(10) To produce a certain decorative necklace, you need 25 pearls, 3 strings, one zipper and ten minutes of labor. You now have 4,880 pearls, 586 strings, 200 zippers and four workers. How many necklaces can you produce in 8 hours?

A strange mixture of general knowledge, logic and maths. I can’t resist questions like (8) – it takes me a few moments while my mind goes into a sort of spin – how on earth do I do that? – before I think, right, slow down, think logically – and then it comes (quite) easily and I think how stupid not to have set about it like that from the start. The number sequence, (6), I thought I had, but my sequence goes 2,3,13,178. A misprint?

Haven’t a clue about the crocodile. Connected to the gastric juices? [update: from a quick google around, the consensus appears to be that this is a myth]

That was in the morning. In the afternoon candidates had to write an essay entitled: “How does our government raise its ability to respond to suddenly happening public events.” To which the answers, With great difficulty, or, By pouring troops in and making sure the press only print what we want them to print, would presumably not be appreciated. Still, it’s an improvement on the correct answer for the previous generation: “”We firmly uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made and we unswervingly adhere to whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave.”

imbabwean authorities refused to acknowledge the crisis, they have abandoned the men, women and children they forcibly evicted from their homes.”
Today, hundreds of thousands of displaced Zimbabweans are living outdoors in disused fields or in the bush, in rudimentary shelters made from the debris of destroyed houses, or are squeezed into tiny rooms with family members who have agreed to shelter them. The government has done nothing to provide them with food, water, sanitation and health services.
President Robert Mugabe’s government has also failed to address the desperate situation of vulnerable groups that were particularly hit hard by the evictions. These groups include widows, orphans, households headed by women or children, and the chronically ill or elderly. Some children have developed malnutrition due to lack of food, while others have fallen ill with pneumonia after months of sleeping out in the open. Following their forced eviction, hundreds of people living with HIV/AIDS are no longer able to access life-saving treatment such as anti-retroviral medications or remedies for opportunistic infections.
The Zimbabwean authorities have engaged in a concerted effort to coerce those displaced by the evictions to leave the cities and move to the rural areas. In areas across the country, the national police have threatened, harassed or beaten the internally displaced, forcing them to relocate to rural areas where many have no homes or family and where social service provisions and economic opportunities are minimal. In addition, the government has tried to force relocation by denying assistance to those who choose to stay in the urban areas, and has used food packages as an incentive to compel families to move out of the cities.
In blatant disregard of its international obligations, the Zimbabwean government has denied international humanitarian agencies access to the majority of the internally displaced. The government has also deliberately obstructed the provision of international assistance and protection to these vulnerable people.
“Zimbabwe’s blocking of humanitarian assistance for its displaced population is unconscionable,” Takirambudde said. “Such actions threaten the very survival of these people.”

The UN response is also criticised:

U.N. agencies involved in humanitarian response in Zimbabwe have been reluctant to confront the government over its blatant disregard of the human rights of the displaced and to protest the continued obstruction of humanitarian assistance, claiming that quiet representation would be more effective for achieving its operations.

As some of us start to wonder quite what’s going on with all this Bestmania, RWB points – without comment – to this review of Dylan’s recent concert in Dublin:

I’m pretty sure that the performance of “Forever young” at this show was Dylan’s personal tribute to Belfast-born football star George Best, who died the day before aged 59.

Having spent the last few days in London and in Ireland where this story has received blanket coverage, Dylan cant have failed to notice what a huge impact it’s had.

The inclusion at an Irish show of this song, of all choices, plus the fact that it was (to my knowledge) the only time this year where he has returned to play a second encore, seems more than a coincidence, even
though Dylan himself didnt mention anything about it.

One ’60’s icon paying tribute to another. An unforgettable moment

.

Well, there is the line, “May your feet always be swift.” And “May your hands always be busy” is quite appropriate too, come to think of it.

Andrei Lankov, who posts regularly at North Korea Zone, records his impressions of a recent trip to North Korea – his first since the mid-Eighties:

My first impression was that Pyongyang was frozen in time, remaining unchanged from the mid-1980s. Very few new buildings, all very moderate in size and design, have appeared over those two decades. Pyongyang still reminds me of a relatively poor Soviet provincial city of the 1970s and presents a striking contrast with booming Beijing, let alone Seoul….

The gap between privileged Pyongyang and countryside is wide. This was clear from a short countryside trip even though our destination was the city of Kaesong, a semi-privileged location. We traveled about a 100 kilometers on a relatively good highway that connects the two major cities, but encountered no more than two dozen vehicles. A couple of decades ago one could see mechanization in the fields, but now all work is done manually.

However, the impression that Pyongyang is “unchanged and unchangeable” is completely wrong. The material environment has not changed much, but the spirit is very different from what it was in 1985.

The most remarkable aspect was the relative freedom with which North Koreans talked to foreigners, particularly about their great interest in everything that happens outside the state borders. This does not necessarily mean that my North Korean interlocutors rushed to say something critical about the authorities – on the contrary, from time to time most of them murmured the ritual phrases about superhuman wisdom and omniscience of the commander-in-chief.

However, back in the 1980s no North Korean dared talk to a foreigner for more than a few minutes, and under no circumstances could the topics stray from the weather and, sometimes, the greatness of the leader. My impression of North Korea in 1984-85 when I lived there was that of a country where not everybody supported the government, but where everyone was scared to death to say otherwise. It would be an overstatement to say that nowadays the fear has gone, but it has certainly waned.

A nice warm welcome, from the Metafilter “So you want to become a new member…” page:

Due to the bursting size of the community, its use of resources, and the cost of running the servers, all new users have a one-time $5 charge, to help defray these costs. Keep in mind this is a donation towards the server, and not a purchase. If you sign up an account to pimp your product, act like an ass, or generally just do things that break the guidelines you will be booted and there will be no refunded donations.

Still want in? Go ahead and sign up for an account here. At the end of the process you’ll be directed towards Paypal, and upon your return, you should be able to login and post away.

Well, since you put it like that, no, I don’t want in. All I wanted to do was point out that someone who just posted about the forthcoming trial of Orhan Pamuk, mentions “the killing of 30,000 Armenians and Kurds”. Should be “the killing of 30,000 Kurds and One Million Armenians”. Trivial I know, but there you go.

Nicholas Kristof on the continuing genocide in Darfur (via DTPW):

There are widespread reports that the janjaweed, the government-backed Arab marauders who have been slaughtering members of several African tribes, sometimes find it convenient not to kill or expel every last African but to leave a few alive to grow vegetables and run markets. So they let some live in exchange for protection money or slave labor.

One Western aid worker in Darfur told me that she had visited an area controlled by janjaweed. In public, everyone insisted – meekly and fearfully – that everything was fine.

Then she spoke privately to two sisters, both of the Fur tribe. They said that the local Fur were being enslaved by the janjaweed, forced to work in the fields and even to pay protection money every month just to be allowed to live. The two sisters said that they were forced to cook for the janjaweed troops and to accept being raped by them.

Finally, they said, their terrified father had summoned the courage to beg the janjaweed commander to let his daughters go. That’s when the commander beheaded the father in front of his daughters.

“They told me they just wanted to die,” the aid worker remembered in frustration. “They’re living like slaves, in complete and utter fear. And we can’t do anything about it.”

eceived] in exchange for misleading public opinion concerning the crimes perpetrated by Saddam against his people.

“In this article, I call on the Iraqi government to open the file on the Oil-for-Food scandal and file criminal indictments with international courts against those who benefited [from the oil vouchers] and those who stretched out their hands and took those vouchers from Saddam.

“May the first [to be indicted] be George Galloway…”