Author: Mick Hartley

I’ve been Fahrenheit 451’d by Steve at God Save the Queen, so let’s get it over with.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Short and to the point.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

A crush? Certainly not.

What are you currently reading?

Nature via Nurture by Matt Ridley

The last book you bought is:

The R.Crumb Handbook

The last book you read is:

God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism by Jonathan Kirsch

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

It’s at this point that my motivation starts to run out. Let’s see:

Essays in Zen Buddhism by D.T.Suzuki. (This book was the inspiration behind Robert Pirsig’s well-known Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: Pirsig owned a Suzuki bike at the time.)
Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass.
Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter – a book I never finished.
Don Quixote – a book I never started.
Proust – to light fires with.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

No one, because by now my motivation has definitely run out. The buck stops here.

With the rise of Iraq’s Shiites as the country’s dominant political force, the Sunnis have found themselves weakened politically. With this marginalisation in mind, Sunni clerics are now encouraging enlistment in the security forces:

Since the elections, the Sunnis appear to regret their boycott, which has only increased their political isolation. Indeed, the Sunnis are showing an increasing interest in rejoining the political process and in taking an active part in the drafting of a new constitution.

A dramatic manifestation of this shift in the Sunni position was the fatwa issued by 64 Sunni clerics legitimizing enlistment in the country’s growing security forces.

The fatwa called on Iraqis to join the ranks of the Iraqi military and police “if sincere intent is observed” and if the soldier/policeman “adheres to serving his religion, his country, and his nation, and does not support the occupier of his country.” […]

To date, one of the insurgents’ primary targets has been security personnel, most of whom are Shiites. The Sunni clerics’ encouragement of Sunnis to enlist will necessitate a change in the insurgents’ tactics, if not strategy.

A Dutch court yesterday acquitted Samir Azzouz of preparing a terrorist attack. Zacht Ei provides a list of items in Azzouz’ possession:

• Maps and/or pictures and/or drawings of several government buildings, including Parliament, nuclear power plant Borselle, the ministry of Defence, Schiphol Airport, Dutch Intelligence Agency (AIVD), Dutch Special Forces HQ
• Notes describing necessities which would be needed to carry out these (terrorist attacks, AD) crime/crimes
• Notes describing routes to these buildings and/or circumvention of the security facilities around these buildings.
• Document entitled ‘Advice for those who refrain from strife on the way to Allah’, encompassing an explanation of the call for Jihad and martyrhood
• A memorandum containing the address of a website, namely www.geocities.com/m_13dad, which contained a ‘Manual for preparation’ for the Jihadi ranks, illustrating the use of (amongst others) weapons and/or night vision goggles and/or silencers and/or the fabrication of such and/or guerrila warfare and/or military operations.
• A diary containing the address of a website, www.geocities.com/sluitjeaan (sluitjeaan is Dutch for ‘join up with us’, AD)
• Notes describing the chemical formula of RDX, an explosive compound
• Discs containing ‘video testaments’ which rally for the Jihad, the murder of Americans, Jews and non-Arabs
• Files explaing how a Muslim should enter the battlefield
• Two clip holders for automatic firearms
• A silencer for an automatic firearm
• One or more soldered electrical circuits
• A bulletproof vest
• Night vision goggles
• Ammonia
• Hydrochloric acid

Also, Azzouz had travelled to Chechnya before to join up with Islamic militants there. On top of that, the judges were presented with loads of phone taps in which Azzouz spouted Jihadi texts.

He was sentenced to three months in prison for illegally possessing a firearm.

-0357598-5076469″>Shakespeare Goes to Paris” in the Telegraph:

It may be argued with perfect seriousness that one of the reasons France had revolutions in 1789 and 1848 and Britain did not, is that they had Racine and we had Shakespeare. In London popular theatre provided a safety valve for popular opinion, whereas in Paris the drama of class confrontation was acted out on the streets with real blood.

My own contribution to this particular meme: in France they had artistic revolutions, like surrealism, overturning the old order but ending up, as with all revolutions, in merely substituting for the old a newer even less tolerant order. Not for nothing was Andre Breton known as the pope of surrealism, ejecting from the movement those like Dali who were insufficiently committed to the cause. The British on the other hand had no need for such revolutions, having a sense of humour instead.

Paglia is always good value, as a critic and a contrarian. After a relatively quiet period, for her, she’s back in the news with a new book, Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World’s Best Poems , reviewed here by Clive James, which she characterises as “part of my war against literary theory”. Bookslut have a great interview with her.

A club in Idaho tried to get round a prohibition on nudity unless it had “serious artistic merit” by distributing pencils and sketch pads to punters. The police weren’t buying it. (Via ArtsJournal)

“It’s actually pretty clear in the city ordinance that there are exemptions for dance and theater and artistic merits, but the law also clearly states that the exemption does not apply to adult businesses,” said police spokeswoman Lynn Hightower. “If it were an art studio and models were actually posing, that would be one thing. But these women weren’t posing, they were dancing.”

Three dancers were given misdemeanor citations Monday but were not arrested.

After Bill Rammell on North Korea (below), Jack Straw on Darfur:

Britain yesterday accused other members of the United Nations Security Council of turning a blind eye to the atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan.

In a strongly worded statement, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said they had put commercial or political interests above their commitments under the UN charter.

Mr Straw did not name the countries he had in mind, but China, France and Russia have all faced accusations from human rights groups and charities operating in Sudan that they have blocked efforts to halt the killing in a conflict that has so far claimed at least 300,000 lives.

“There are still members of the so-called international community, members of the Security Council and others, who are turning a blind eye from clear atrocities which have taken place in Darfur,” Mr Straw said.

lockquote>Mr Rammell said that during his visit to North Korea last year, he was able to engage in debate with the leadership regarding the country’s human rights record.

“They were at least admitting the existence of punishment through labour camps,” he said.

But he said that “since then, there’s been no further progress”.

“If anything the situation has got worse.”

“North Korea probably has the worst human rights record of anywhere in the world,” he said.

But Mr Rammell denied that this undermined the UK government’s policy of engagement with North Korea.

“Just because you’re talking to someone doesn’t mean you’re losing your critical faculties,” he said.

Rammell was speaking at a briefing to highlight the suffering of two former North Korean political prisoners:

Kim Young-soon, 67, said North Korea was “a place that should disappear from the earth”.

She estimated that six or seven out of every 100 people died in Yodok Political Prison Camp Number 15 in one year.

She herself spent eight years at the camp.

Kim Tae-jin, 49, suffered various tortures in the same prison, including being beaten with burning wood and being forced to sit on burning quicklime.

“I realised pain can be more dreadful than death,” he said.

Mr Kim said lack of food at the camp was a continual ordeal.

“One meal consists of a handful of corn kernels and they mix it with some edible tree leaves and they add some salt.” He said he caught and ate rats, snakes and frogs to supplement his rations.

Mr Kim left the camp in 1992, but Stuart Windsor, a director at Christian Solidarity Worldwide which has documented the suffering of North Korean political prisoners, said inmates were believed to be living under similar conditions today.

“As far as we can ascertain… the conditions have not changed at all. All the interviews we’ve done [with people] who’ve recently come out of the prisons suggest the conditions… are the same.”

This great post at Metafilter looks at Dickens’ visit to New York in 1842, when he tired of polite New York society and went slumming, heading to the notorious Five Points area, where he came across the dancing of William Henry Lane, aka Master Juba, “a man of whose dancing a number of historians say is where tap dance began… The dance he did was known as Pattin’ Juba and the first time it’s rhythm–which we think of as the Bo Diddley beat–was used on a sound recording was in 1952, when Red Saunders and his Orchestra, with Dolores Hawkins and and the Hambone Kids recorded Hambone.” Some say the Charleston can be traced back to Pattin’ Juba.

Here’s Dickens, from American Notes:

What will we please to call for? A dance? It shall be done directly, sir: ‘a regular break-down’ . . . Five or six couples come upon the floor, marshaled by a lively young negro, who is the wit of the assembly, and the greatest dancer known…. [T]he sport begins to languish, when suddenly the lively hero dashes in to the rescue. Instantly the fiddler grins, and goes at it tooth and nail; there is new energy in the tambourine; new laughter in the dancers; new smiles in the landlady; new confidence in the landlord; new brightness in the very candles. Single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and cross-cut; snapping his fingers, rolling his eyes, turning in his knees, presenting the backs of his legs in front, spinning about on his toes and heels like nothing but the man’s fingers on the tambourine. Dancing with two left legs, two right legs, two wooded legs, two wire legs, two spring legs–all sorts of legs and no legs–what is this to him? And in what walk of life, or dance of life does man ever get such stimulating applause as thunders about him, when, having danced his partner off her feet, and himself too, he finishes by leaping gloriously on the bar-counter, and calling for something to drink, with the chuckle of a million of counterfeit Jim Crows, in one inimitable sound!

The “counterfeit Jim Crows” are blackface minstrels, at that time the leading form of American popular culture. The New York Herald was outraged at the vulgarity of what Dickens described.

Master Juba appeared at Vauxhall Gardens, and died in London while still in his twenties.

This is getting increasingly bizarre. The fossil bones of Homo Floresiensis, which were spirited away by maverick Indonesian anthropologist Teuku Jacob and have only recently been returned to the Australian team that discovered them, were apparently irreparably damaged during the time they were in Jacob’s care (via The Panda’s Thumb):

The damage to the bones of this diminutive being — named Homo floresiensis and nicknamed hobbit by scientists — is so extensive that it will limit scholarly research on the species, say members of the Indonesian Center for Archaeology-based discovery team.

Considered the most important discovery in human origins in five decades, the remains are marred by broken jaws and smashed bones.

“The equivalent in the world of art would be somebody slashing the Mona Lisa and then trying to fix it with chewing gum,” says paleontologist Tim White of the University of California-Berkeley, who was not on the discovery team.