Chris Bertram

Via the “Head Heeb”:http://headheeb.blogmosis.com/ , I see that “alt.muslim is hosting the Brass Crescent Awards”:http://altmuslim.com/brasscrescent.php for the best blogs by Muslims. There are also awards for the most insightful post and for blogs by non-Muslims that engage respecfully with Islam. “Juan Cole”:http://www.juancole.com/ , “Jonathan Edelstein”:http://headheeb.blogmosis.com/ , “Scott Martens”:http://fistfulofeuros.net/archives/000793.php and “Gary Farber”:http://amygdalagf.blogspot.com/ [previously accidentally omitted] all get nominated in various categories. An opportunity for us to explore the diversity of the Islamic blogosphere.

Today is the 25th anniversary of the German Green Party who, for better or worse, have made a lasting impression on European politics. Der Spiegel (in English) “compares the fortunes of Die Grünen with those of the British Greens”:http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,336637,00.html (founded earlier, but never really made an impression). Deutsche Welle “also has a 25-year retrospective”:http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1457301,00.html .

British bookselling chain Waterstone’s “have sacked employee Joe Gordon from one of their bookshops in Edinburgh”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/weblogs/story/0,14024,1388466,00.html . Gordon’s offence seems to have been remarks made on his blog, “The Woolamaloo Gazette”:http://www.woolamaloo.org.uk/. Charlie Stross, “who seems to know quite a lot about this case”:http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blosxom.cgi/2005/Jan/10#scandal-1 , reports that Gordon has been an enthusiastic and valuable promoter of science fiction over many years and that this looks like a really nasty attempt at corporate restraint of speech. Our campus bookshop is a Waterstone’s, but there are many alternatives nearby (and online). I shan’t be providing them with my reading lists or buying books there (despite enjoying a 10 per cent academic discount) until this case has been satisfactorily resolved. Others should do as they think fit.

A rather interesting paper by Richard Tuck at the OPT conference on Hobbes and Rousseau contained a longish quote from “De Cive”:http://www.constitution.org/th/decive10.htm (10.9) about the inconveniences of democracy. At the time it seemed to me to contain wise advice about the downsides of blogging, and on chasing it up, that view is reinforced:

bq. But perhaps for this very reason some will say, That a Popular State is much to be preferr’d before a Monarchicall; because that, where all men have a hand in publique businesses, there all have an opportunity to shew their wisedome, knowledge, and eloquence, in deliberating matters of the greatest difficulty and moment; which by reason of that desire of praise which is bred in humane nature, is to them who excell in such like faculties, and seeme to themselves to exceed others, the most delightfull of all things. But in a Monarchy, this same way to obtain praise, and honour, is shut up to the greatest part of Subjects; and what is a grievance, if this be none? Ile tell you: To see his opinion whom we scorne, preferr’d before ours; to have our wisedome undervalued before our own faces; by an uncertain tryall of a little vaine glory, to undergoe most certaine enmities (for this cannot be avoided, whether we have the better, or the worse); to hate, and to be hated, by reason of the disagreement of opinions; to lay open our secret Counsells, and advises to all, to no purpose, and without any benefit; to neglect the affaires of our own Family: These, I say, are grievances. But to be absent from a triall of wits, although those trialls are pleasant to the Eloquent, is not therefore a grievance to them, unlesse we will say, that it is a grievance to valiant men to be restrained from fighting, because they delight in it.

I’m just back from the Oxford Political Thought Conference, which was great fun. On my trip I managed to run into Chris Brooke of “The Virtual Stoa”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/blogger.html , Marc Mulholland of “Daily Moiders”:http://marcmulholland.tripod.com/histor/ and Sarah of “Just Another False Alarm”:http://rubberring.blogspot.com/ . I’ve met Chris before, but it was good to see the others as well and to compare blogospheric notes with Marc. Chris told me about “the fuss about the BBC’s broadcast”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4154071.stm of “Jerry Springer: The Opera”:http://www.jerryspringertheopera.com/jerry_opera.html . So of course I tuned in to this spendid ^TM production last night and greatly enjoyed such numbers as “Chick with a Dick” and “Mama Gimmee Smack on the A**hole”, before wowing to the Jerry in Hell special program complete with Jesus, God and the Virgin Mary. The microslice of the blogosphere that both hates the BBC _and_ was in a great lather of indignation over the British government’s incitement to religious hatred legislation (Melanie Phillips and co) is going to have a problem over this one. Here’s how I expect them to handle it: (a) they’ll argue that it exemplfies the double standards of a decadent culture (everyone is careful not to offend Muslims and Sikhs but Christians can be trashed with impunity) and (b) they’ll say that whilst _of course_ there should be no legal interference with speech, the BBC _is an exception_ , since, funded by licence-payers, it had an obligation not to transmit JSTO. Just my prediction, now let’s wait and see…

Nick Cohen has “a very good column in today’s Observer”:http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1382153,00.html about the way in which natural disasters play very differently depending on whether or not governments are genuinely responsive to their peoples via democratic institutions. There’s much to think about in what he writes. He rightly gives due credit to Amartya Sen for this key insight and excoriates Mao Zedong — who inexplicably still continues to be admired in some quarters — as the vicious Stalinist butcher that he was.

A happy new year to everyone! Time for those new year resolutions, then. Last year I resolved to learn German and, I’m astonished to say, made considerable progress. So my first resolution has to be to continue and get myself in a position where I can sustain a reasonably interesting conversation or read a short novel. Other than that, my main thoughts are of reading and writing. Thanks to reading Sebald I’ve got into my head the thought of working through Chateaubriand’s memoirs (we’ll see how that goes). And, of course, there’s the thought that every academic has, of writing more and better papers and getting them published in decent places. Before then, though, there’s that tax return to complete….

I’d been meaning to write a brief end-of-year post about books I’ve read recently. I’ll do it now and pledge (like Henry and John) that any Amazon Associates fees I get if any of you are moved to buy any of them (or anything else after clicking on the links) will go to tsunami disaster relief. Full post below the fold.

[click to continue…]

I’ve just been watching the news of the terrible disaster unfolding in the Indian Ocean region. Thousands upon thousands dead, and reports still coming in. One expert on the BBC just spoke about the displacement of millions of cubic kilometres of water. How powerful, unpredictable and savage nature can be. An awful day.

With it being Christmas, the Guardian has again published “the world’s more difficult quiz”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1379479,00.html as given to the pupils of King William’s College. A first scan leaves me with a single-figure score, but I bet Kieran would do much better….

UPDATE: Mark D. Lew has posted “an annotated list of answers”:http://home.earthlink.net/~markdlew/quiz/ (179/180).

Sad to see that Renata Tebaldi, Callas’s great rival, has died. There are obituaries in the “Telegraph”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=IYO1MB2KZYRIFQFIQMFCM54AVCBQYJVC?view=DETAILS&grid=&targetRule=10&xml=/news/2004/12/20/db2001.xml&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=34657 , “Times”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1409754,00.html , “Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1377152,00.html , and “New York Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/20/arts/music/20teba.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1103528264-yzh0VzGm7Zeeqrq6JRtFdg , the NYT also links to a slideshow and some audio content. Listening to her singing (and Callas’s for that matter) has an instantly soothing effect on me, it seems as if all the world has become still. A marvellous singer.

UPDATE: Anna in Cairo, in comments below, mentions “this post by Arthur Silber”:http://coldfury.com/reason/index.php?p=23 at The Light of Reason.

We all got worked up about the British governmen’t proposed law on incitement to religious hatred. But it isn’t the only thing going on in the world of free speech and censorship. Last night “hundreds of Sikhs in Birmingham protested outside a theatre”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/4107437.stm (and a few tried to storm the building) that was staging a play depicting scened of sexual abuse inside a Sikh temple. And the United States “has added Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV station”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4106595.stm to its list of terrorist organizations on the grounds that its broadcasts incite violence. Al-Manar has also been taken off the air in France. “Reports of the French decision”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1373845,00.html give some detail both of Al-Manar’s offensive content and of the grounds of French action:

bq. A guest on a live discussion programme said there were Zionist attempts to spread Aids and other diseases to Arabs. On December 2, the station accused Israel of “an unprecedented campaign” to stop it revealing to European viewers “the crimes against humanity perpetrated by Israel”.

bq. The French broadcasting authority, CSA, said in a letter to al-Manar that Israel had never been held responsible for crimes against humanity by an international judicial body. Al-Manar’s words, it said, could constitute an incitement to hatred or violence on grounds of religion or nationality.

[Note: I’m leaving comments open, but discussion should focus on how these cases bear on principles governing hate speech. I’ll delete any comments which veer off into generalised comment on Israel-Palestine etc.]

From Lord Hoffmann’s remarks in “the judgement by the House of Lords”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/16_12_04_detainees.pdf (PDF, 102 pages) that the British government “is wrong to detain foreign terrorist suspects indefinitely without trial”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4100481.stm :

bq. This is a nation which has been tested in adversity, which has survived physical destruction and catastrophic loss of life. I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation. Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt that we shall survive Al-Qaeda. The Spanish people have not said that what happened in Madrid, hideous crime as it was, threatened the life of their nation. Their legendary pride would not allow it. Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community….

bq. [S]uch a power in any form is not compatible with our constitution. The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory.

A few months ago I expressed interest in seeing Edgar Reitz’s series Heimat again. It was finally released on DVD (in the UK) in mid-November and I was lucky enough to get the 6-disc set as a birthday present this year. It is nineteen years since I first watched it, and just watched the final, eleventh, episode of the 925 minute epic last night. It didn’t disappoint me at all. From the first scenes, when Paul Simon, returning from the 1914–18 war, walks back into the village of Schabbach, I was entranced. Many of the characters, often played by people who had never acted before and never would again, have a quite wonderful presence. Nearly everything is understated and done in an apparently matter-of-fact manner. Yet Reitz manages to reveal continuities of character over very vast stretches of time, as well as having the characters whom one is drawn to admire in one period of their lives turn into ogres in others. Of course, the Nazi period dominates the central part of the series and Reitz is very good at showing a range of reactions to it: Katharina, the matriarch, is the most hostile, after she witnesses the arrest of her communist nephew, and she is willing to confront the odious and evil Wilfried, the local SS-man. In between are characters like Eduard, a somewhat naive man who is pushed by his ambitious wife, the ex-prostitute Lucie, into becoming the Nazi mayor. The constant threads are Maria, born in 1900 whose life we trace from early adulthood to her inheritance of the matriarch role, to her death, and Glasich, the narrator and village drunk, always there with comment, but never doing much. And Paul is always there as a presence or as an absence….

I don’t want to spoil the experience by giving more plot details here. I think it one of the most wonderful filmic meditations on love, time, ageing, family, tyranny, kindness, place, restlessness, forgiveness, memory, …. Everyone should watch Heimat, several times.

Available on “a region 2 DVD in the UK”:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000284A56/junius-21 , in a rather nice set with accompanying book. North Americans will have to get a multi-region player and a TV capable of displaying PAL, or wait. The “complete script”:http://www.erfilm.de/h1/frame.html is available online (in German).