Must be said ...
I'm not back for good (maybe later), I just want to record my horror, as an AUT member, that it has backed the academic boycott on Israeli institutions.

Justice Served Cold
As is well known, the US has more than its fair share of serial murdered. This is particularly so on the West Coast, apparently, because of a large transient population and a developed free-way system which allows for the easy abduction and disposal of victims. If it owes anything to the deeper culture of the country, I'm not awatre of it. I'm not a 'true-life murderers nut'.

Having said that, I did chance across the story of 'BTK' a few years ago, and it really chilled me. I know that in blog world, one's level of visceral revulsion / glee in reaction to atrocity / triumph has to be carefully calibrated to pass the test of moral censors anxious to seek out closet pseudos or running dogs. In real life, I think that a personal frisson of terror and outrage is a much more arbitrary thing.

'BTK' - the chamless moniker stood for Bind, Torture, Kill - was the name used by a particular sadist in notes to authority claiming responsibility for horrific murders carried out since 1974. It was generally assumed that this was a criminal quite likely to escape justice forever, for his spree seemed to peter out in the late-1970s. He began posting his self-important missives again last year, however, and now his daughter has turned him in (police seem to have little doubt of his guilt).

For some reason, the story of this particular sicko angered and appalled me unlike few other stories, and it's relieving in an oddly personal way to see an opportunity for retribution now. I'm glad to see that he cannot be executed for the crime: may he have long to reflect upon his terrible crimes and the just wrath of civilised society.

Ford Lectures
I'm off to the last of the Ford Lectures, a long-running and prestigious series on British history at Oxford which, this year, is actually on Irish History (The first time since 1977 when F.S.L. Lyons delivered his brilliant and pessimistic 'Culture and Anarchy in Ireland'). This year it's Marianne Elliott, of the University of Liverpool, on religion and Ireland.

This is how Alfred Francis Pribram prefaced his 1929 Ford lectures on England and the International Policy of the European Great Powers, 1871-1914:

"The highest goal of intellectual endeavour--according to Lessing--is the striving for truth, as truth itself is beyond human attainment. In studying the books and documents at my disposal for the purpose of these lectures I constantly strove to keep this goal before my eyes. Yet, this is for no one more difficult than for the student of contemporary history. For he must always be tempted to incorporate into his work those ideas which appeal most to himself or to his hearers or readers. Science, however, is a stern mistress who will not condone the opinions of the day. He who, through weakness or for ulterior reasons, yields to this temptation, breaks faith with her. He who-- on the contrary--obeys her commandment must be prepared to face the consequences of pleasing no one."

Happy Birthday to Me!
It's also the anniversary of the French Revolution of 1848 [cheers Rob]:

"Posters, newspaper articles, and rumors, all circulating for many days before February 22, worked on the grievances and the simple curiosity of politically conscious Parisians. A sizable crowd gathered in the morning, despite bad weather, in the Place de la Madeleine. ...
On the following day, however, the crowds were larger. The weather was even worse than before, and it is no mean comment on the seriousness of the 1848 crowds that this was the first of the great revolutions in France to begin in the winter, when the common impulse was to stay at home and keep warm. The crowds also shifted ground; instead of gathering in the open streets of the new, wealthy section of Paris--the western quarters--they moved to the narrow streets of the center city, where troops could move less easily and barricades were more effective. The crowds were more aggressive as well. The day before they had shouted for reform and against Guizot; now they attacked Louis Philippe and his dynasty.

"... the crowds surged through Paris, accompanied by National Guard units. The police and troops were confused and demoralized, particularly because of the Guard's defection. In the evening the inevitable occurred: a crowd clashed with a detachment of troops on the Boulevard des Capucines. The troops panicked and fired into the mob, killing or wounding forty or fifty people. The crowds were enraged over this "massacre" and paraded the dead through the city during the night. Rumors spread that the government planned to slaughter the working class, and as in other great revolutions rumor here both expressed and strengthened class resentments. The workers were now in full revolt. During the night they tore up over a million paving stones and cut down more than 4000 trees; by morning Paris was crisscrossed by over 1500 barricades.

"Louis Philippe now tried to form a more liberal ministry, under Adolphe Thiers and Barrot. But Thiers was swept up by the crowds as he went to the Chamber of Deputies and was completely unnerved; he refused to take part in the parliamentary debates and scurried home. The crowds now insisted on more than a reform in the regime. The king tried to rally the army, but it proved impossible to communicate with some of the scattered garrisons, and many of the troops had already given their weapons to the insurgents. Louis Philippe decided to abdicate. He abandoned the royal palace in disguise, only minutes before the crowd attacked it, and was able to reach Le Havre and then England. His hope, which was taken up by Barrot and other moderates, was that his nine-year-old grandson, the Count of Paris, would be named king, with a liberal regent until the child came of age. Parliament enthusiastically accepted this scheme, but the deputies had no control over the situation. The crowds invaded the parliament building and dispersed the deputies. A radical minority of deputies remained, led by Lamartine, who proclaimed the republic and, amid great uproar, secured the approval of a provisional government. The revolution had won its first goals."

[Peter N. Stearns, 1848: The Revolutionary Tide in Europe (1974)]

Ah, them were the days!

On Nick Cohen
A couple of things about Nick Cohen's article condemning Ken Livingstone for meeting with Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (whose repellent views itemised by Cohen are, I'd imagine, likely to echoed by a quite a number of Iraq's incoming governing coalition).

First is his championing of the phrase "pseudo-left" which not only has connotations of tedious witch-hunting but rather arrogantly ascribes to the 'true left' all that is virtuous and benign. (True 'leftish' policies, he says, are "tolerance and social justice at home"; I'd like to see the manifesto condemning such un-tethered abstractions. The point is, tolerate what?, how is social justice defined?)

Second is his comment that "You find this pattern time and again. The dominant voices in the rich world's left are consistently on the wrong side. You have to go back to the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939 to find a similar accommodation with the dictatorial right."

It annoys me to see this pact as trotted out as the defining sin of the (pseudo)left. I suspect a little-Englanderism here. The worst sin of communism was leaving poor Britain in the lurch. (Second, `God that Failed'; third, knocking off intellectuals in the Great Terror; a rather poor fourth, slaughtering peasants).

Whilst I'd hardly celebrate the pact for its virtuous idealism, it always struck me as an understandable if cynical diplomatic manoeuvre. Poland (foolishly, even if one can appreciate their point of view) refused the Soviets transit across its territory in the event of war, rendering the Soviet offensive military strategy void. France and Britain showed no enthusiasm for putting serious pressure on Poland, and were not impressive in their offers of military contribution to a war. The Soviets had been prepared to commit 120 divisions to the field (out of 300). The French promised a creditable 110 divisions. Britain offered - get this - 16. Though only 4 were ready to fight. And only 2 of these would be fielded immediately. (It might be added that Britain's naval agreement with Hitler long pre-dated the pact, it was signed in 1935 and by it Britain violated the Versailles settlement).

The pact put many communists in an awkward situation, and delivered a number up to the Gestapo. But it was no more an 'accommodation' with right-wing dictatorship than western appeasement. Of course, Stalin eyed-up with a certain delight the prospect of extending left-wing dictatorship, but he simultaneously expected and prepared for a war with Hitler within four or five years. Only the miserable collapse of France and Britain dashed his plans for building a defensive perimeter through Poland.

It might also be added that communism 'accommodated' dictatorship, even if not 'of the right', in 1917.

A much better parallel for Cohen would have been the left's accommodation with dictatorships - left, right and pure bonkers - in the period of de-colonisation. Scuttling the Empire was never conditional on liberal-democratic successor regimes, even if many assuaged their conscience with insincere declarations of confidence in this regard. This parallel, however, would have served Cohen's rhetoric ill, as it keys into a left tradition of hostility to imperial governance which, I presume, he holds to still. Much easier to call up the Dunkirk spirit once more, and cast the net for pseudo-lefts.

Revelations?
Scott Ritter seems to have blown the gaff on two Seymour Hersch exclusives (here):

1. The US will bomb Iran in June.

2. The US cooked the Iraqi election results to reduce the United Iraqi Alliance share of the vote from 56% to 48%.

Well, we'll see I suppose.

Hunter S. Thompson
It's sad to see that Hunter S. Tompson, pioneer of 'Gonzo Journalism', has died (by his own hand, it seems). I'm no fan of the journalism of attachment, and think even that columnists have proliferated unheathily in our press, with shock and awe opinion merchants pre-digesting and packaging the news for smugly assured market-niche audiences. Thompson's approach, however, rejected this self-serving tribalism in favour of a kind of Brechtian invitation to disbelieve his witness. It could be jarring, but it was certainly stirring. Here he defines 'Gonzo':

"True Gonzo reporting needs the talents of a master journalist, the eye of an artist/photographer and the heavy balls of an actor,because the writer must be a participant in the scene, while he's writing it. Probably the closest analogy to the ideal would be a film director/producer who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least a main character."

And elsewhere, "I'm not a reporter. I'm a writer."

No more, unfortunately.

Very Good News
Israel is abadoning its shameful policy of demolishing the homes of militants, an unacceptable form of collective punishment (as also practised by the Black and Tans in the Irish War of Independence, and, indeed, by the IRA). It justifies this on military grounds after "an army panel's assessment that the practice does not deter attacks and should be stopped. ... The committee found that house demolitions generally inflame hatred [you think? Ed], citing only 20 cases in which the threat of demolition deterred potential attackers or pushed their families to turn them in. Militant groups compensate families of attackers and help them rebuild, which weakens any possible deterrent effect."

More than 1,800 homes have been detroyed since the '67 war.

Anyway, fair play to Israel - it's a very important step.

Funny
This weekend Victoria and I visited distant London to celebrate Dave Fowler's 27th birthday. I bought him Francis Wheen's 'How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World', Vick got him a CD of sound effects (creaky door, ghosts going 'whoo!', a screaming women, eight kinds of laughter, etc) and one of those pipes with a retractable plunger that allows you to make cheeky sounding wolf whistles.

Because we are cultured, we also 'took in a show'. This was Richard Herring's 'The Twelve Tasks of Hercules Terrace'. Herring was a student at my college, St Catherine's (before I was there, I should add), so obviously his life ever since has appeared vacant and anti-climactic. Being in show-business and knowing lots of funny people is a sad come-down after studying Modern History at Oxford. Truly, the tears of a clown. Thus his show is about depression and how to deal with it. (In reality, he went a bit bonkers after a relationship ended. This, indeed, is what happens to even the most stoic of us, so the show is for almost everyone out there, I should think.)

The show is very funny indeed. Herring decided to emulate the real-life figure of Hercules and his very true and non-mythical labours. Herring's labours were really quite mental - for example, trying to kill the Loch Ness Monster, stealing Germaine Greer's bra, parachuting, running a marathon, rowing and - this deserves a show of its own - dating fifty ladies in fifty days (no men, the Bin Laden-esque homophobe). He also spotted in consecutive order the numbers 1 - 999 on vehicle plates, the most pointlessly arduous endeavour you can imagine.

In a top-notch performance Herring led us though his maze of spinning border line insanity. It was very, very comic. Although he has an excellent line in self-deprecation, his bonkers quest story ends up being strangely affirming. The moral seems to be, go with your mentalness if you can do so in a positive and self-consciously heroic spirit. There was an old fashioned Smilesian virtue to the whole thing. The show preyed on my mind afterwards and now makes me want to buckle down with my own tasks of book writing etc. Mind you, I'm writing this instead.

How did he do in his labours? Did he ever reach 999 in his number-plates? (Half way through, he asked me whether I thought he would succeed in this task; I was in the front row. Though I knew the true answer, I cunningly lied, just as I do in tutorials). Did he get Germaine Greer's bra? You'll have to go see him to find out. It's very well worth it (you also get a free programme which is full of jokes not in the performance - so there's value for money). I enjoyed it a lot, though when he advised his audience at the end to pinch the underwear of prominent academics I had a nervous moment, until I remembered that I am not prominent.

Richard Herring through his labours has, I've no doubt, stored up treasures in heaven. But he'd probably like a taste of honey in the here and now, so I recommend you rush down to the Riverside studies before the run ends. You won't regret it.

P.S. - Locals might like to know that Richard Herring will be doing a stand-up set at the Bullingdon (162 Cowley Road), Oxford on March 2nd at 9pm. Doors open at 8pm, show at 9pm. And furthermore, 'Silky hosting plus the brilliant Sarah Kendall', if that means anything to you.

Afghanistan Report
Another report from Paul Greening, UN worker in Afghanistan:

It looks like the drought is over. Afghanistan is experiencing the heaviest snow fall for about 25 years. Still snowing as I write this. This means the underground water will be replenished and rivers will be full come the spring thaw. Some of the poor are dieing due to the cold and Kabul is not exactly geared up for heavy roads so minor roads
consist of compacted snow. During the day the snow melts and fills the cracks of mud roofs and then freezes so damaging the roof and causing leaks. I have plenty of personal experience of this. Also it is affecting some of my projects because if retaining walls or bridges are not finished soon then the spring floods will wash them away.

Officials are still naively talking of April or May combined Parliamentary, district and provincial elections. No chance. Likely to be at the end of the year. Preparations are far behind those of the simpler presidential elections late last year and donors will not cough up the money for them soon. Deciding the district boundaries will be fun; contentious from an ethnic and political point of view. We have the cabinet. Some compromises were made. Definitely no war lords we were told but Ismail Khan from Heart is in the cabinet.

General Dostum has survived an assassination attempt. Not many would miss him but it would leave a lot of leaderless commanders fighting each other to fill the vacuum. At least now one only has to deal with one
man.

Talking of Dostum, Kam Air which he owns crashed the other day killing all 104 on board. No reasons given yet but there is speculation that it needed to go to Peshawar in Pakistan to land but did not have enough
fuel or the Russian pilots had used vodka to keep themselves warm.

At work I am having difficulty with a school we are building which I have been told is unsafe but there is a lot of political pressure to build the third floor. Think I might have to put my job on the line
concerning this.