Author: Mick Hartley

New Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks out:

“”We want art that is on the offensive. Art on the offensive exalts and defends the noble principles, and attacks principles that are corrupt, vulgar, ungodly, and inhuman.

“Art reaches perfection when it portrays the best life and best death. After all, art tells you how to live. That is the essence of art. Is there art that is more beautiful, more divine, and more eternal than the art of martyrdom? A nation with martyrdom knows no captivity. Those who wish to undermine this principle undermine the foundations of our independence and national security. They undermine the foundation of our eternity.

“The message of the [Islamic] Revolution is global, and is not restricted to a specific place or time. It is a human message, and it will move forward.

“Have no doubt… Allah willing, Islam will conquer what? It will conquer all the mountain tops of the world.”

eater than the first. The fictional men who turn against their fellow Britons draw their ire from their experience of Western society, not from their isolation from it.

“Reveals exactly why this terrorism was home-grown”…“draw their ire from their experience of Western society”. And that’s it? I’m not sure quite what her claim is here, but it seems like another variation on that old theme: somewhere, somehow, it just has to be our fault. If it’s not Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Palestine – none of which would seem to be sufficient to drive the passionate hatred that inspires British-born men to massacre their fellow citizens – then maybe it’s the all-pervasive racism and general nastiness that supposedly characterises life in contemporary Britain. After all, it’s a portrait of Britain that we’ve all been made all too familiar with. But even that doesn’t explain it if we’re to believe the truth of Hanif Kureishi’s story – and it certainly ties in with what we know about those attracted to jihadism, like Hassan Butt, who have all the opportunities available to young well-educated people in this country. No, now it seems that we’re too nice, too accommodating. We believe in nothing – well, apart from tolerance, freedom, the whole enlightenment package, but, you know, that doesn’t really count.

Too tolerant, too intolerant: it’s so difficult to get the balance just right.

g>: Why suicide bombing?
Butt: There is a difference between suicide and martyrdom. Suicide is about unhappiness, depression. That’s not what these people are. These people have an urge to be with Allah, to be with the Prophet, live among him, to be close to him. They are happy before committing these actions. They are probably at the highest level any human being can be before doing this. They are the most peaceful and content. There is a complete and utter difference between martyrdom operations and suicide operations: with the former, you want to do it not because you are fed up, but because you are happy to enter the next step of life, which is the afterlife. With the latter, you are completely and utterly fed up with life.

The highest level any human being can be…..moments before blowing to pieces other human beings…men, women, children….in a mass of blood, agony, limbs, screams, terror…

isit to Tehran.

Ahmadinejad believes that Syria has lost much of its value as a glacis for Iran. With Syria out of Lebanon, Iran itself could become the major foreign influence in the country.

Shiites, accounting for 40 per cent of the population, represent the largest community in Lebanon and provide the Islamic Republic with the strongest domestic base any foreign power would need in that country.

At the same time the overthrow of Saddam Hussain means that Iran no longer needs Syria to counter-balance Iraq within Arab regional politics.

So….

Under Bashar Al Assad , Syria, once a bride that everyone courted despite her obvious ugliness, has been transformed into a widow that everyone shuns.

It is hard to see where Al Assad’s Baathist regime could go from here, except out.

Just watched some of Dispatches on Supermarket Secrets – “what price are we paying for the homogenised, cheap and convenient food that supermarkets specialise in?” It didn’t say anything much we didn’t know, but its shots of battery chickens made me think…

In a sense, a chicken’s genetic code provides a recipe for producing chicken breasts, chicken thighs, etc., ie the stuff we want from chickens, and what makes us keep millions of the poor little buggers in sheds for all of their short miserable lives. We’re in the process of unravelling genetic codes and how they work. Is it reasonable to think that we might be able to produce these breasts and thighs directly, as it were? That is, without bothering with the actual chicken?

What’s missing of course – the other essential ingredient in the recipe – is the nurture: the actual growth and development of the chicken. So look at it another way: what if we could breed a chicken without any higher mental functions whatsoever, with just enough neural activity to get it to eat and sleep and keep itself healthy? Do away with any social stuff, all the sex, the ability to search for food, find a mate, bring up young ones: basically a completely brainless chicken just capable of breathing and eating. Wouldn’t even need feathers. So… if we get to that stage and farm these zombie chicks, is that a moral advance, because the chickens can’t really be said to suffer and we can roast our chickens with an easy conscience (and cheaply), or a moral outrage, because we’ve tampered with life and created monsters?

Is this the start of the long-awaited Andy Warhol backlash? (Insert obligatory 15-minutes-of-fame joke here). From Paul Morrissey, who ran the Factory:

“He was a disabled man who was autistic, and dyslexic to a degree that he couldn’t read one word… He was frightened and timid, had no artistic instincts, and no interest in anything other than making money. Someone once asked me: ‘What did it mean to be Andy’s manager?’ I said: ‘I had to think of things that he might do, I had to do them, and then I had to pretend that he was involved!’ ”

“no artistic instincts, and no interest in anything other than making money.” Truly the father of the modern art scene.

oof that the London suicide bombers were Muslims and accused the Prime Minister of being a liar.

Dr Naseem claimed that CCTV images of the suspects could have been of innocent passers-by. He said: “They could simply have been innocent passengers. There are thousands of youths passing by. How do you know it is them?”

He continued: “Tony Blair has told lies about going to war with Iraq and in a court of law if a witness has lied he ceases to be a reliable witness. So we can’t give our blind trust to this Government.

“I am sad the impression has been given that that Muslims are to be targeted in this War against Terror. Why do you not have an open mind about this?”

Update: I see david t at Harry’s Place has already posted on Dr Naseem.

Helping to make the world a better place:

An advertisement in an Iranian publication has called for people to come forward for “martyrdom operations” against the enemies of Islam.

It is published by an institute managed by one of Iran’s most conservative and radical clerics, Ayatollah Masbah Yazdi, who has declared his support for Iran’s new President, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

The advertisement calls for men and women to enlist with the “Martyrdom Lovers’ Headquarters”.

It says the idea is to achieve “all-out readiness” against the enemies of Islam – and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Those who are picked will be specially trained for their missions in different divisions in every province.

To apply, all that is needed are photographs, a form and a copy of a birth certificate.

They’ll provide the death certificate.

(Via Solomonia)

Not a good time for water artists. In Devon:

A thirsty thief is being blamed for downing a bottle of water, valued at £42,500, at a literary festival.

The two-litre clear plastic bottle containing melted ice from the Antarctic was devised to highlight global warming by artist Wayne Hill.

But the warm weather is thought to have got the better of someone who snatched it at the Ways with Words festival at Dartington Hall in south Devon.

American-born Mr Hill said the bottle was clearly a work of art.

He said: “It looked like an ordinary bottle of water. But it was on a plinth, labelled, described and in the programme of the whole festival.”

The piece, entitled Weapon of Mass Destruction, vanished half way through the festival. Mr Hill fears the bottle was taken and then drunk.

“It was there and then it was gone,” he said.

Well, that’s life. The economics has me puzzled though:

Its value was worked out by the artist from the damage worldwide of the entire ice sheet melting – he estimates between £6 trillion and £9 trillion – and the relative amount of damage from two litres of water.

The value is in the ice; damage happens when it melts. So the real value is -£42,500. The thief saved him money…

Well, it makes as much sense as his calculation.

Meanwhile, in South London:

A water company has given notice to a work of art which has already shed enough water to sprinkle half the lawns in Surrey.

The artist disconsolately conceded yesterday that his installation, The Running Tap, has probably run its course after pouring an estimated 800,000 litres (1.4m pints) down the drain during one of the worst droughts in the south-east in decades.

“Well that’s it, isn’t it?” Mark McGowan said miserably after a formal notice from Thames Water that if he does not turn the tap off, it will cut off the water to the entire gallery. “One way or another, I reckon it will be gone by Thursday….

He turned on the cold water tap, running into a sink in the kitchen space of the small artist-run House gallery in Camberwell, south-east London, on June 28.

He intended to leave it running for a year – to highlight, he insists, the way people waste water….

McGowan – whose previous creations include walking backwards for 11 miles with a turkey on his head, to draw attention to the problem of obesity – has never earned more than £400 from his art.

log/2005/07/blairs_blind_sp.html”>end to faith schools, but it’s not Christians, or Jews, or Hindus, or Scientologists, who are blowing people up in tube trains.