HAWAII: Is sovereignty the wrong issue?

Posted earlier on The Polynesian Times:

As the poster above for today's meeting shows, the debate over Hawaiian sovereignty is hot. Last month, a draft constitution for Native Hawaiians was agreed - behind locked and guarded gates - by an organisation called Nai Upuni. Although they are supported financially by the State’s Office of Hawaiian Affairs, their claim to be representative of indigenous groups is vigorously opposed by another association called ʻAha Aloha ʻĀina(1). In response to a lawsuit and U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the proposed ratification vote has now been cancelled(2).

There are wrongs to be righted. The campaigning site Cultural Survival outlines some of the difficulties of the marginalised and exploited "first nation" Hawaiians(3). Many have had to move to mainland USA for a better life - there are some 90,000 in Las Vegas aka "the ninth island"(4). In their own ancestral lands, Native Hawaiians are now a minority - exactly how small, depends on how you define them; maybe 10% - 20% of residents. There is more than one reason for this: numbers of Native Hawaiians crashed after European contact in the late eighteenth century, as imported diseases swept through the population, but also there has been a large influx of Asians and Americans in modern times, especially since the illegal(5) annexation of the country by the US following a coup by sugar businessmen(6, 7, 8).

Even compensatory help for Native Hawaiians is limited, as Amy Sun explains: "In 1921, Congress passed the 'Hawaiian Homes Commission Act,' which [set aside merely] 3% of the total land for Native Hawaiians. [...] 'Native Hawaiian' is defined as a person who is at least 50% Native Hawaiian. So if you [have less than this proportion], you lose your right to homestead." Sun also notes that Native Hawaiians are over-represented among the State's homeless(9). The need for a collective voice is obvious.

But there could be as much danger as opportunity in seeking a separate kind of citizenship - the example of Native Americans is not heartening. Besides, as President of the Grassroots Institute Keli’i Akina commented, "This [constitutional exercise] represents a significant waste of funds that could have been better used on the projects that Hawaiians truly care about–like health care, job training, housing, and education."(10) In addition, sovereignty activists must surely be aware of the possibility of legal (or tactical) traps in constitutional processes - think of the 1959 Hawaii plebiscite, in which residents voted on whether to remain a territory or become a US State (11). Crucially, independence for Hawaiians was not on offer in 1959, and to have voted either of the two given choices could be taken as implicit abandonment of claims to national freedom. It's been argued that this subtle stratagem cuts across a UN Resolution made some years before, so perhaps international legal challenge is still possible(12).

Having said that, is it geopolitically realistic to expect the USA to relinquish its hold on the islands, especially at a time when China is forging closer links with one Pacific nation after another?

Irrespective of the machinations of empires, the status quo is not an option in the long term, for a far greater factor for change is involved: sustainability. This is a global issue, which impacts heavily on Hawaii. The State has a population of around 1.4 million; even without 50,000 military personnel and an average 200,000 tourists at any one time, there are well over a million permanent residents. Estimates of numbers in 1778 vary widely - between 200,000 and anything up to a million(13) - but whatever the actual figure, the lifestyle then was dramatically less resource-intensive per capita. How much longer can a large, high-burn civilisation last in Hawaii?

Take energy: despite having the third-lowest per capita energy use in the USA in 2013, Hawaii imported 91% of its needs in that year(14). The goal is to move to 100% renewable energy by 2045, but even now this is beginning to look like wishful thinking(15). Besides, the devices involved in renewable energy production imply a vast network of enterprises, just as with Adam Smith's 1776 example of pin manufacture(16)  - except that those modern enterprises also mostly consume non-animal/non-human energy. The foundation of the world's technological network is vulnerable.

Then there's food: again, 90% is imported and modern agriculture and food management is also highly energy-intensive(17).

How long have we got, to make changes for survival? "If the world continues to consume fossil fuels at 2006 rates, the reserves of oil, coal and gas will last a further 40, 200 and 70 years, respectively," said a survey in 2007(18). There's lots of ifs and buts in arriving at such an estimate, yet the message clearly is: not forever.

Does that 200 years of coal sound reassuring? Polynesians came to Hawaii at least 800 years ago. We need a perspective reaching beyond our own brief personal lifetimes. After all the desperate attempts at technical fixes, human societies will have to simplify their way of life and shrink their numbers. It is perhaps not too much to suggest that the successors of the tribes that today are oppressed, exploited, undermined, pitied, patronised and romanticised could one day simply be what is left of humanity, provided all is not consumed in some Rapa Nui-like madness. While addressing issues of social justice now, we must also plan for that great transition.

Traditional societies are not relics of the past: they are our ultimate future.
________________________________________
(1) http://ahaalohaaina.com/
(2) http://bigstory.ap.org/article/f438807567d4430299fb2e864bfe5a2e/native-hawaiian-group-wont-hold-vote-ratify-constitution
(3) https://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/tourism-and-the-prostitution-of-hawaiian-culture
(4) http://www.mauinews.com/page/blogs.detail/display/5308/Las-Vegas-and-Why-90-000-Former-Hawai-i-Residents-Live-There.html
(5) See this interview with Professor Williamson Chang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIOh5KMqXfA
(6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii#Population
(7) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Hawaiians#Demographics
(8) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1887_Constitution_of_the_Kingdom_of_Hawaii
(9) http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/01/myths-about-native-hawaiians/
(10) http://new.grassrootinstitute.org/2016/03/breaking-news-grassroot-institute-questions-nai-aupunis-avoidance-of-the-democratic-process/
(11) Remaining a territory could have been worse: only this week, American Samoans - who are ruled by, yet not citizens of the US - have asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether they should be granted birthright citizenship: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-samoa-comment-ef8cca54-eab0-11e5-a9ce-681055c7a05f-20160315-story.html
(12) "One of the many obligations as stated in U.N. Resolution 742 in 1953 declares that one of the 'factors indicative of the attainment of independence or of other separate systems of self-government,' is 'freedom of choosing on the basis of the right of self-determination of peoples between several possibilities including independence.' - http://statehoodhawaii.org/2009/05/12/the-statehood-plebiscite/
(13) https://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10524/482/1/JL28007.pdf
(14) http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=HI
(15) http://www.civilbeat.com/2016/03/is-hawaii-hampering-efforts-to-reach-renewable-energy-goal/
(16) http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/Pages/current/smith.aspx
(17) http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/06/29/hawaii-local-food
(18) S. Shafiee & E. Topal, "An overview of fossil fuel reserve depletion time", University of Queensland - www.iaee.org/en/publications/proceedingsabstractdoc.aspx?id=1092 

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A dull genus

Those derided Victorians, who looked upon every man as a potential husband, certainly extracted every ounce of interest from a dull genus.

Ethel Lina White - Some Must Watch (1933 - later filmed as The Spiral Staircase)

An interesting article from Quillette about a study which suggests society's view of males has soured.

“Depressing Study Finds Gender Stereotypes Haven’t Changed Since the 1980s,”proclaimed the New York magazine website the other day. The women’s site Bustle echoed the gloomy view: “Gender Stereotypes Just As Prevalent in 2016 As In The 1980s, New Study Finds, So Maybe Things Aren’t As Great As We’d Like To Believe.”

Yet a closer look at the study in question shows a far more complicated picture. While some beliefs about male and female traits and roles have indeed changed little since a similar survey in 1983, there has been a marked shift toward egalitarian attitudes on some important issues. There also seems to have been a marked shift toward more negative perceptions of men — which is arguably depressing, but probably not in the way the study’s authors and most of the commentators would like you to think...

Could stereotyping sometimes cause powerful women to be seen as kinder and more altruistic than powerful men? Recent research, such as the work of political scientists Deborah Jordan Brooks, Jennifer Lawless and Danny Hayes, suggests that today gender is more an asset than an obstacle for female politicians.

Yes, it’s likely that women who are perceived as too hard and cold are sometimes penalized because of societal expectations of female “niceness.” But surely, there are also times when the tendency to stereotype men as less understanding, warm, and capable of providing emotional support can result in unfairness to men. And some of that stereotyping is likely due not to patriarchy or lack of feminist progress, but do the direction feminism has taken in the last thirty years.

To my mind this has been going on for a very long time - certainly well before the eighties and particularly in popular entertainment. Remember The Likely Lads, a comedy about two idiot young men first broadcast in 1964? Or how about Laurel and Hardy?

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Osborne threatens Yorkshire with "Mancgatte"

George Osborne today unveiled his proposal to end Yorkshire's troublesome obsession with regional independence, by the construction of a huge road tunnel intended to "rub their noses in diversity."

Ostensibly designed to cut journey times between Yorkshire and the northwestern counties, the true objective of the massive project is to affirm the Chancellor's commitment to "ever-closer union" between the Roses.

The exact route is yet to be finally determined, but one aspect is already decided: "To save time, we shall be building a vast migrant camp at the same time as the Tunnel," said a spokesman for Number 11.

Opposing the plan, the leader of the United Keighley Independence Party commented, "The Chancellor is weaponising Lancastrians in order to wring financial concessions from wealthy Yorkshiremen. This is our last chance to stop the madness." In an apparent attempt to delay planning permission indefinitely, a UKIP party worker was caught this week planting Great Crested Newts in ponds and ditches across the area where digging is due to start.

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Duvets and daggers

In the Mail this week, a story about a man who kicked his lady in the stomach in a row about duvet-hogging. Initially he denied intent, "saying he put his leg up as she walked towards him."

(It was in a Viennese hotel some years ago that we first came across a double bed with two single duvets; I hadn't realised it was a crime prevention measure.)

The principle of criminal intent was established by the Elizabethan jurist Edward Coke as one of the two elements necessary to prove guilt.

Which brings me to an old story about a case supposedly heard in Cardiff Crown Court. A man had stabbed someone to death in a pub, and his defence was that he had held out the knife in a warning but self-protective gesture, and the other fellow had walked into it.

The judge leaned forward and asked, "What would you have done if he hadn't walked forward?"

The defendant replied "I'd have done that, wouldn't I?", miming a powerful jab with the blade.

One imagines the Rumpole-like scene in the cells below afterwards, the barrister saying, "What you have to understand, Taff, and you'll have plenty of time to muse on this, is..."


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Quote of the day

Peter Hitchens: I’d dispute the use of the word ‘libertarian’. No liberation is taking place. [...] All the enslavements of modern society, which offers nothing but work and money as we dwell in hutches amid an undifferentiated landscape of concrete, plastic and neon, are presented to their victims as liberation. Amidst all this, that is why drugs and drink may come to look like liberation too. 

http://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-laura-perrins-interview-peter-hitchens-on-why-it-is-time-to-emigrate/


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Child labour in the Potteries

Sometimes even old cups and saucers have a slice of social history to relate. The above cup and saucer dates from round about 1840 and although unmarked is typical of wares made by the Hilditch and Hopwood pottery at Longton. It was made in part by child labour.

In Scriven's Report on Child Labour in the pottery industry in 1840, Richard Moreton – then aged 9 and working at Hilditch and Hopwood reported.

‘I am a figure maker for William Moreton [Richard’s father], I work by the piece and can make 40 dozen (480) small figures a day: I get 1d for ten dozen, that is about two shillings [10 pence] a week.’

So little Richard Moreton did not work for Hilditch and Hopwood, but for his father William who subcontracted figure making to his 9 year old son.

The 'figures' little Richard made in such vast quantities may have been something like the lilac coloured sprig mouldings on the above cup and saucer. The sprig mouldings were made from soft coloured clay rather like Plasticine. Richard would press them out of the clay using moulds, carefully remove them, then either he or someone else would stick them to the cup or saucer with liquid clay before firing.

These are not high class items of bone china; they were intended for middle class markets to be brought out the china cabinet for genteel afternoon tea parties.

Also from Scriven's report

employments of families

13) The processes being such as to admit of the employment of whole families father, mother, and some two, three, or more children - their united earnings are sometimes £3. or £4. per week: but, proverbially improvident, and adopting the adage,- "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof", they squander the proceeds of their labour in gaudy dress, or at the skittle-ground and ale-house; so that, when overtaken by illness or other casualty, and thrown for a few days out of work, they resort to their masters for a loan, or to the parish workhouse for relief.

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Tahiti: new biohazard laboratory opened

Friday, 4 March 2016: Tahiti News announces the opening of a new high-biosafety laboratory at the Malardé Institute in Pape'ete.(1)

This is to help deal with the increased risk of infectious diseases that have spread to and from the Pacific region, such as Chikungunya (2), Zika (3) - which was first discovered in Uganda in 1947 (4), dengue (5), H1N1 influenza (6).

An earlier article from FranceTV (7) explains that highly dangerous diseases need to be handled in very safe facilities, which up till now did not exist in French Polynesia. Previously samples would have had to be sent to other laboratories abroad, which cost precious time.

The new lab on Tahiti is equipped to NSB3 containment standard. This is not the highest category - level 4 is for very high risk pathogens such Ebola, Lassa, Marburg etc and "other agents with unknown risks of pathogenicity and transmission" (8).

The top biosafety rating includes germ warfare research facilities such as the UK's Porton Down, listed on Wikipedia (9). One obvious reason why the "space suit" level 4 isn't appropriate for Tahiti is the risk of destructive tropical storms like the Category 5 Cyclone Winston that crashed into Fiji last month, killing 43 people (10).

French Polynesia is 2,100 miles further east but is still not immune: in 2010 Cyclone Oli hit Tahiti with gusts up to 120 mph (11), and in 1997 Cyclone Osea wrecked 95% of the infrastructure of Maupiti, 200 miles NW of the main island (12). So we needn't worry about an Andromeda Strain-type (13) accidental plague weapon release: it's not that kind of operation.
___________________________________

(1)  http://www.tahitinews.co/inauguration-dun-laboratoire-de-haute-securite-biologique/
(2) http://www.cdc.gov/chikungunya/geo/ - very widespread globally
(3) http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/ - also spreading via  mosquito in Samoa and Tonga, for example
(4) https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/03/03/zika-connection-microcephaly-guillain-barre-hard-prove/
(5) http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2016/infectious-diseases-related-to-travel/dengue - throughout S E Asia and the western Pacific
(6) http://www.gleamviz.org/2009/09/ - spread around the world by air travel in months
(7) http://la1ere.francetvinfo.fr/polynesie/tahiti/installation-d-un-laboratoire-de-haute-securite-biologique-l-institut-malarde-197064.html - dateline 9 Oct 2014, updated 25 Feb 2016
(8) http://www.labmanager.com/lab-health-and-safety/2010/12/biosafety-levels-1-2-3-4?fw1pk=2#.VtrtvX2LSt9
(9) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#Biosafety_level_4
(10) http://fijione.tv/43-dead-after-tc-winston/
(11) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Oli#Tahiti_2
(13) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain

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Ancient Rome and modern Liberty

A connected set of stories from Roman history shows that freedom means nothing without economic independence and civil rights.

Professor Mary Beard's “SPQR”[i] takes as its starting-point the failed Catiline Conspiracy in 63 B.C. Cicero, then one of the two Consuls, ordered the immediate execution without trial of a group of co-conspirators, and was hailed as Father of the Fatherland for saving the city from bloody revolution.

But this action helped him to his own downfall. On his last day in office, two of his rivals prevented him from giving the customary valedictory speech on the grounds that he himself had not allowed the accused Catalinarians to speak before condemning them. Some years later (58 B.C.) the Roman people voted to exile anyone who executed without trial and Cicero left Rome ahead of another vote specifically naming him.

When he came back, he found that his house had been razed to the ground and a temple to Liberty meaningfully set up in its place, blocking a rebuild:

“By building and consecrating the temple on the former house of then-exiled Cicero, Clodius ensured that the land was legally uninhabitable. Upon his return, Cicero successfully argued that the consecration was invalid and thus managed to reclaim the land and destroy the temple.”[ii]

The politics then was as murky as now: Cicero had accused Clodius of being involved in the conspiracy, even though the latter had sided with him during the crisis; and a thirty-something Julius Caesar had suggested the unusual step of imprisoning the suspected rebels instead of killing them - was this a matter of legal principle, or a ploy to keep alive secret allies? 

Cicero died in 43 B.C. at the behest of someone else he came to oppose, Mark Antony, and his head and hands were set up in the Forum as another visual political statement. 

 But when and why was “Libertas” made a goddess?

Her first temple in Rome was built long before, in 238 B.C.[iii] – not the “Iuppiter Libertas”[iv] of which the Emperor Augustus boasted[v], but instead (it is said[vi]) by Tiberius Gracchus. The “tiny”[vii] edifice stood somewhere on the Aventine Hill by the River Tiber, perhaps next to the temple of Juno Queen (and near those of Flora, Ceres and the Moon)[viii], as shown in the images below (please ignore the yellow indicator on the latter):

Temple of Juno (large); Temple of Libertas said to be nearby

Image: http://www.maquettes-historiques.net/page18aa7.html

Map, showing temples in the neighbourhood

http://www.rome.wiebekoo.nl/ROMA%20ANTICA/Muren%20van%20Rome/images/portaTrigemina02.jpg

Roman coin, said to be of "Jupiter and Libertas" - possibly not the first temple
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/356699232963738814/

This building, too, had a point. Tiberius Gracchus had given Italian agricultural labourers rights to land and hence an entitlement to military service. He was hated by the rich land owners, who saw the reforms as a threat to their wealth and power and as undermining their use of slave labour on their estates. On the other hand he was understandably very popular with the plebs, and the Liberty temple nailed his colours to the mast.

He, too, was killed:

“The senate failed in an attempt to bar him from standing again, but a group of enraged senators, led by his hostile cousin Scipio Nasica, charged into an election rally of Tiberius', broke it up and, alas, clubbed him to death.”(ix)

Perhaps “enraged” is not the right word here: it sounds like a sort of mitigation on the grounds of passion. A better term should be found for the coldly organised violence of plutocrats.

Professor Beard says that Rome’s history is relevant to us today, and surely it is. A powerful elite outsourcing work to cheaper labour , depriving their fellow citizens of access to the means of production and so eating away at their personal independence; the leader of the moment using public panic to ride roughshod over the due process of law; belated calls for the former “saviour of the nation” to be held to account, but coming from political enemies who may have their own shadowy agendas; show-democracy giving way to a succession of tyrants.

“Nihil sub sole novum”: there is nothing new under the sun. 

CODA: 

There is another resemblance between Catiline and Tiberius Gracchus: both enlisted the support of peasant farmers:

"Promoting his policy of debt relief, Catiline initially also rallied many of the poor to his banner along with a large portion of Sulla’s veterans. Debt had never been greater than in 63 BC since the previous decades of war had led to an era of economic downturn across the Italian countryside. Numerous plebeian farmers lost their farms and were forced to move to the city, where they swelled the numbers of the urban poor. Sulla's veterans were in bad economic straits as well. Desiring to regain their fortunes, they were prepared to march to war under the banner of the "next" Sulla. Thus, many of the plebs eagerly flocked to Catiline and supported him in the hope of the absolution of their debts."

Debt, recession, discontent among the lower orders, populist politicians, reactionary fat-cats backed by the Establishment, calls for debt relief... Very modern.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Catilinarian_conspiracy

---

[i] “SPQR: A history of Ancient Rome”, Profile Books (2016)

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertas

[iii] http://www.britannica.com/topic/Libertas-Roman-religion

[iv] http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/_Texts/PLATOP*/Jupiter_Libertas.html

[v] http://www.loebclassics.com/view/augustus-res_gestae/1924/pb_LCL152.375.xml

[vi] See note [ii]

[vii] http://www.maquettes-historiques.net/P18A.html

[viii] http://www.rome.wiebekoo.nl/ROMA%20ANTICA/Muren%20van%20Rome/images/portaTrigemina02.jpg

[ix] http://www.roman-empire.net/republic/tib-gracchus.html

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Railway News

JD writes:

Have you heard of the EU's Fourth Railway Package? 

http://www.euractiv.com/section/transport/news/eu-ministers-agree-on-injecting-competition-into-domestic-rail-service/

If you search Google News for "EU's Fourth Railway Package" the first item on the list is from The Morning Star - 

In the 20 years since John Major privatised our industry — a privatisation, incidentally, which even Margaret Thatcher described as “a privatisation too far” — we have seen rolling stock get older, trains get more crowded and fares go through the roof. We now have the highest fares in Western Europe, because of privatisation.

But the European Commission is determined to impose this flawed model on the rest of Europe. And, if it succeeds, it will prevent us from ever bringing the railways back into public ownership.

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-4ae9-Well-vote-to-leave-to-save-Britains-rail#.VtjMGUBv63Y

It is one of the reasons why the rail union ASLEF is backing Brexit.

I know from experience that Germany, France and Spain have very good and very cheap State run rail services.The EU wants to privatise all of Europe's railways. Well, why not. It has worked so well in the UK :)

As our pragmatically minded American cousins are fond of saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" 

The EU leaders are insane, but we knew that anyway! :)


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Justice for the Chagos Islanders

Pic source: Google

Guardian newspaper, 1 Feb 2016

Daily Mirror, 27 Feb 2016

Craig Murray, 1 March 2016

Wikipedia on the dirty "green" trick to keep the ousted islanders off their homeland:

"WikiLeaks cablegate disclosure (2010)

"According to Wikileaks CableGate documents,^[26] the UK proposed in 2009 that the BIOT become a "marine reserve". The summary paragraph of the referenced diplomatic cable follows:

"HMG would like to establish a marine park or reserve providing comprehensive environmental protection to the reefs and waters of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), a senior Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) official informed Polcouns on May 12. The official insisted that the establishment of a marine park—the world's largest—would in no way impinge on USG use of the BIOT, including Diego Garcia, for military purposes. He agreed that the UK and U.S. should carefully negotiate the details of the marine reserve to assure that U.S. interests were safeguarded and the strategic value of BIOT was upheld. He said that the BIOT's former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve."^[27]"

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Orwell's "Keep The Aspidistra Flying"

I've just finished it. It's very real, and you're wrung by the wretchedness of the lower-middle-class challenge to cling on to respectability by one's fingernails, and the hero's equally desperate attempt to hold to his socialist principles and manly independence. He wants, as my friend said, to be a Renaissance man, without enjoying the Renaissance man's income; and when his contradictions are broken by Life - literally, as his girlfriend has fallen pregnant - it comes as a relief: "He was thirty and he had grey in his hair, yet he had a queer feeling that he had only just grown up."

A Guardian review from 2003 says: "Orwell refused to allow either Keep the Aspidistra Flying or his first novel, the considerably weaker A Clergyman's Daughter, to be reprinted in his lifetime. His dislike of his early novels arose from his incredibly strong sense that he would always be a literary failure, which enabled him to empathise so strongly with his creations like Comstock."

That haunting self-distrust and obstinacy; was it like that for J K Rowling, fighting her dementors while writing her novel in the Elephant House tea shop?

"If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’"

- said Kipling, to whom Orwell the Empire-hater was nevertheless fair, for disillusioned though he was, Orwell always remained decent - that virtue sneered at by social superiors, the powerful and the politically subversive. Not for him the outright moral criminality of Donleavy's postwar Ginger Man.

Nor ironic, Genet-boosting existentialist, he; surely he would have resigned rather than step into the shoes of a deported Jewish professor, which is what Sartre did; and he really did shoot at Fascists, rather than fantasize about it in a philosophical-fiction tetralogy.

Orwell kept steering by his star. He remained authentic.


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Never a shortage of torturers

Tom Pride (a pseudonym) runs a satirical political blog titled "Pride's Purge", headed by this woodcut:

- which presumably indicates what he'd like to do the liars who rule us.

I was morbidly intrigued by the illustration. Was it some sixteenth century atrocity practised on a hapless South American tribesman? Was it one of those dreadful mediaeval European executions using molten lead?

No, not quite so bad as that. Image-matcher Tineye found me the whole picture:

(source: Wikimedia)

It's a waterboarding interrogation. But the eternal basics are there: the ruffian coolly willing to do dreadful things, the "potent, grave and reverend signiors" quietly instructing and recording, indicating by their weighty demeanour that this is a sad but necessary proceeding. Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

It comes from a book, Praxis rerum criminalium (1554) by the Dutch lawyer Joos de Damhouder, "which he almost entirely plagiarised from an unpublished text by Filips Wielant and from other works." Joos himself is pictured as sober-solemn:

Joos de Damhouder (Pic source)

But here's the man whose work he plagiarised - Filips Wielant, a fellow Dutchman (and fellow lawyer) born in the previous century, and whose own book was published only posthumously in 1558, four years after de Damhouder's:

Filips Vielant (Pic source)

- a petulant, sadistic face if you ask me. Look at that mouth and those eyes. Perhaps in the century that intervened, eminent personages learned the value of portraits as propaganda, for this one reveals too much.

There is no shortage of such people, or of the villains prepared to serve them. There's always some excuse for torture, and a crowd that can easily be provoked into saying you can wire him up for me, haw-haw, damn towelhead.

“And yet our personal experience and the study of history make it abundantly clear that the means whereby we try to achieve something are at least as important as the end we wish to attain. Indeed they are even more important. For the means employed inevitably determine the nature of the result achieved; whereas, however good the end aimed at may be, its goodness is powerless to counteract the effects of the bad means we use to reach it.”  - Aldous Huxley, "Ends and Means" (1937).

William Blake: "A Divine Image" (pic source)

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Drawing profit from circumstances

source

Indifferent and passionate, he gave himself rein and drew back constantly, impelled by conflicting instincts, yielding to all, and then obeying, in the end, his own shrewd man-about-town judgment, whose weather-vane logic consisted in following the wind and drawing profit from circumstances without taking the trouble to originate them.

Guy de Maupassant - Yvette (1884)

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Just perfect

William Blake: Eve tempted by the serpent (1799-1800)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

"... of [Blake's poems] ... Wordsworth said after reading a number—they were the 'Songs of Innocence and Experience showing the two opposite sides of the human soul'—'There is no doubt this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott!' "

- Henry Crabb Robinson.

I stood in front of this painting for a long time. 

The perfection of woman, the unreproducible brilliance of the blue (tempera on copper).



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Why Boris Johnson may never be Prime Minister

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A new mode of ignorance

Why is it that when you twist things out of their natural order, when you become a little sophisticated and want more than you ever did before, the risk is relatively greater? So easy to become rotten. A tree never gets that way because it is a tree.

Sherwood Anderson – Dark Laughter (1925)

As age pulls back the social veils it becomes ever more difficult to admire - what? More difficult to admire anything.

I can’t tell if it is the internet or age-induced cynicism but I think much of it is the internet shining its pitiless light on people in the public arena who simply should not be there. People with nothing to offer but their vanity and a grim determination to claw their way up what is now a forest of greasy poles.

Ignorant pundits, political apologists, talentless celebrities, venal politicians, professional liars, grievance mongers, deranged activists, serial exaggerators, insane feminists, male feminists, social justice warriors, eco warriors, gender pundits, race baiters, celebrity celebrities, religious maniacs, atheist maniacs, sports pundits, poverty pundits, fashion gurus, doom mongers, economic fantasists, junk scientists, junk artists, pseuds of every description, bent councillors, sinecure seekers, dodgy charities, fake radicals and all the unlovely crew we would be far, far better off without.

So little to admire, so much to scorn. Was it always like this or has the digital revolution exposed just how bad it is?

Two trends seem to be emerging. Firstly the obvious one – the public arena is far bigger than it was only a few decades ago. More TV channels, more video on demand, more digital voices and many more ways to get a narrative across. As a result the public arena is more diverse with lower barriers to entry. Anyone may hit the right note and propel themselves into the digital arena, especially with professional assistance.

The second trend is paradoxical but it may be real and it is this. In an important sense people are becoming better informed and at the same time more ignorant. The public arena has become so vast and clamorous that many people seem to miss what might once have been called the narrow path of virtue. It may have been narrow but it imposed a kind of sanity we no longer have.

This second trend makes for a peculiar world where people are at the same time both less and more naive than their forebears. They are both less conservative and more conservative as they become less aware of what is worth conserving but more susceptible to wildly exaggerated risks spewed at them from the digital arena.

The digital revolution asks more of us. More time, more effort spent checking sources, a more circumspect and sceptical attitude to information and authorities. Unfortunately many of us do not do the spadework, including many members of the elite. Perhaps most of them.

The net result feels like an explosion of ignorance. Not the ignorance of the past where people were simply uninformed, but a new mode of ignorance where we fail to be adequately sceptical and selective as a brave new world busily wires up our minds.

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Don't be busy

General Slim's day in wartime Burma, fighting the Japanese, "the most formidable fighting insect in history":

6:30            get up
7:00            look at overnight messages
7.30 - 8.00   breakfast with air commanders and principal staff officers
8.30            attend joint air and land intelligence conference
                  other business
Lunch, talking shop with colleagues
                  more office business, then...
3.00            leave office
                  read a novel for an hour
                  tea
                  go for a walk in the cooler air, accompanied by a member of staff
7.30 - 9.30  dinner, then mess bar for a drink and talk
9.30            last visit to ops room
10.00          bed

"I had seen too many of my colleagues crack under the immense strain of command in the field not to realize that, if I were to continue, I must have ample leisure in which to think, and unbroken sleep. Generals would do well to remember that, even in war, 'the wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure.' Generals who are terribly busy all day and half the night, who fuss round, posting platoons and writing march tables, wear out not only their subordinates but themselves. Nor have they, when the real emergency comes, the reserve of vigour that will then enable them, for days if necessary, to do with little rest or sleep."

Field Marshal Viscount Slim, "Defeat Into Victory", Pan Books (1999 edn.), pp.222-223


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The legacy of the Moors in Europe

(Picture source)

By "JD":

Most people will be aware of the Moorish influence on Spain because of the 700 years during which Spain was known as Al Andalus. Their architecture is self-evident and the Moors introduced new methods of large-scale irrigation thus expanding horticultural fertility - in the Spanish language most of the words for irrigation, drainage etc are Arabic.

Under the Umayyad caliphate (929–1031), Córdoba became perhaps the greatest intellectual centre of Europe, with celebrated libraries and schools. Not just in Córdoba but also in Toledo and other centres where arts and sciences flourished. All were part of the so-called Islamic golden age in which Jews, Muslims and Christians lived and worked and studied in relative harmony. When I first visited Toledo nearly 40 years ago what surprised me almost immediately was that the road signs were written in Hebrew as well as Spanish.

There are a number of scholars who contend that the Islamic Golden Age is a myth but that is to miss the point. The golden age was not a direct product of Islam any more than the Italian renaissance was a direct product of Christianity. Just a brief glance at the paintings of Botticelli for example would dispel that notion. Any so-called golden age in any period of history will flourish when the warrior class (the psychopaths) have a respite from the perpetual insanity of their desire for power and control.

The fact remains that in Al Andalus there was a flourishing of arts and sciences. And I have seen for myself in the bibliotecas of Madrid, Toledo and El Escorial astonishing collections of books and manuscripts in Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Spanish as well as Syriac and Farsi (Persian) A lot of material came from the middle east via the Moors and these were copied and translated in the aforementioned libraries and schools.

The Moorish influence extended beyond Spain into France and Germany in ways that have been forgotten or overlooked.

We are all familiar with the myths and legends about the quest for the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail first appears in a written text in Chrétien de Troyes's Old French verse romance, the Conte del Graal ('Story of the Grail'), or Perceval, of c.1180. Several other writers over the following 50 years wrote their own versions of the Grail (or Graal) These stories are based on old Celtic and Arthurian legends and what they share is that the Grail itself is a cup or chalice. In Celtic myth this drinking vessel or 'cors' is said to satisfy the needs of all those who drank from it. This was Christanised to become the cup used at the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples.

But there is one version of the Grail legend that is different. In Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzifal, the Grail is identified as a stone, it is called "lapsit exillis" and this stone had magical powers: "Such powers does the stone confer on mortal men that their flesh and bones are soon made young again. This stone is called The Gral." Wolfram indicates in his writings that the source of his story came from Kyot of Dolet in Aragon. Kyot is a Germanic version of Guy which is the dimiutive form of Guillaume or Guilliem. Dolet is usually interpreted as being Toledo but is more likely to be Tudela which is a city in Navarra in northern Spain. At that time Navarra was part of the Kingdom of Aragon. Living and working in Tudela during this period was a scholar called William of Tudela who was the author of the Chanson de la Croisade Albigeoise or Song of the Albigensian Crusade, an epic poem in Occitan giving a contemporary account of the crusade against the Cathars. This would indicate that he was a Cathar living in Spain. Working as a scholar in the Bishopric of Tarazona which was a centre for the translation of Arabic lore brought from the Middle East, William of Tudela produced a translation of a work by Thābit ibn Qurra who was a Harranian living in Baghdad. This document is undoubtedly the source of Wolfram's Parzifal because Thābit is named within the story of Parzifal. He is described as a philosopher who "fathomed abstruse arts" and when Wolfram has cause to list the planets he gives them their Arabic names.

Around the same time as these Grail stories there emerged in SW France the phenomenon of the Troubadors. They appeared as if from nowhere but did they really have roots in France or elsewhere? The word does not come from the French 'trouvère' which is what everyone thinks. It comes from the North African tradition of 'Tarab' which was and still is a form of musical story telling. Add the word 'Tarab' to the Spanish language suffix of -ador and you get Tarabador, a person who sings/plays Tarab so the word 'tarabador' is much closer linguistically than 'trouvère'.

The popular image of Troubadors is of the love-struck romantic singing of his unrequited love for an unattanable maiden. But Tarab is sung by both males and females. Here is a song by the Syrian singer Assala Nasri which is a response to a declaration of love by an unwanted suitor:-


The influence of this Moorish music continues into the 20th and 21st cebturies. You may recall that Robert Plant and Jimmy Page (of Led Zeppelin) made a journey to the Atlas Mountains in search of further musical inspiration.

Another modern day troubador is the Canadian Loreena McKennit who, like Wolfram, has drawn inspiration from Celtic and Arabic sources. Here she is singing, appropriately enough, in the Alhambra in Granada -


==========
References-
Umayyad caliphate in Spain
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/sumay/hd_sumay.htm

Quest for the Holy the Grail
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/mythical/grail.html

William of Tudela
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Tudela

Tudela
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tudela,_Navarre

Thābit ibn Qurra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C4%81bit_ibn_Qurra

The Hermetic Sources and Structure of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival by David R. Fideler -
http://www.bythewaybooks.com/pages/books/9380/david-fideler-arthur-versluis-kathleen-raine-joscelyn-godwin/alexandria-the-journal-of-western-cosmological-traditions-1

Idries Shah
http://idriesshahfoundation.org/books/the-way-of-the-sufi/

The Troubadors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubadour#Etymology_of_name


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Noble, terrible, piteous

Burma, 23 January 1945: like the Saxons of Maldon, the Japanese embrace their doom...

"On the day that Monywa was taken, other troops of the 20th Division, pressing on, reached the Irrawaddy at Myinmu. Near here, a few days later, there was a fight with a large Japanese party attempting to withdraw over the river. Resisting stubbornly, the enemy had been almost annihilated, when the last survivors, in full equipment and with closed ranks, under the astonished eyes of our men, marched steadily into the river and drowned."

Field Marshal Viscount Slim, "Defeat Into Victory", Pan Books (1999 edn.), p.418
(This incident also mentioned here: http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=192)

As John Masters - another Forgotten Army participant - said, if only we worked at peace half as hard as we do at war.


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Is Cameron a bungler?

From the Independent we hear news of Cameron's latest attempt at EU fear mongering.

The world would be a more dangerous place if Britain voted to leave the European Union, David Cameron has claimed, as he travelled to Germany in a final effort to enlist the backing of Angela Merkel for his renegotiation demands.

In a speech in Hamburg, Mr Cameron said it was “vital to keep Britain in a reformed EU” to face down “dangerous and murderous ideologies” and stand up for democracy and the rule of law.

I'm sure Cameron does not expect to convince any informed person with this. That is not the aim - he is merely trying to sow the seeds of nebulous fear among wavering voters. 

Feeble stuff which raises an obvious question. Why has Cameron apparently bungled the referendum issue by promising EU concessions he must have known he couldn’t deliver? To get anywhere he would have had to make it quite clear that he was in favour of the UK leaving the EU. Otherwise he would always be negotiating with the EU from a position of weakness and he must have known that.

In which case he either bungled his tactics or he chose to negotiate from a position of weakness. Whatever one thinks of Cameron, he is probably too smart to have bungled the tactics of his referendum promise. One has to assume he knew what was on the cards because it isn’t rocket science. So he chose to negotiate from a position of weakness. He did not expect or want significant concessions from the EU because he has adopted the political persona of a sound European.

The whole thing just keeps on looping back to this obvious explanation. Cameron is gambling on winning the referendum for staying in the EU, thereby landing himself a prominent EU job with his political star very much in the ascendant.

Alternatively he may have other career possibilities in mind and is more interested in the global stage. Either way his strategy seems sound. Better to take the referendum risk and brand himself as a shining political success than end up as a tired and ageing PM looking for something else to do.

His game is not even as duplicitous as it sounds if he believes we have no real choice but to stay in the EU. He is merely putting the issue to rest and moving on.

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