normblog

Songs of love and heartbreak 59

It's been a while since I featured one of these, but I am prompted to return to the series by happening upon 'Misty' and, on checking to see whether I'd already included it, finding that I haven't. 'Misty' has to have a place in any 'songs of love' series, if only for the lines:

Walk my way
And a thousand violins begin to play

Only a thousand? How deliciously, preposterously over the top. Ahhh, but also how true when it is. So, here's the song, as sung by Ella, and Sinatra, and Julie London, and Johnny Mathis; and as played by Erroll Garner and Stan Getz. Sorry, no Nat King Cole; I couldn't find a link.

[The series is introduced and indexed here.]

Religion as pervasive as you care to make it

Religion is all-encompassing and it is everywhere. Or, at any rate, you can show that it is if you loosen up on what you regard as religion. You could do it like this. Cricket: haven't you heard of the hallowed turf of Lord's; or, for that matter, of the Mecca of cricket? Football: haven't you noticed the common rituals and chants among the supporters? And so on.

'What if the secularist dream - a true separation of church and state - is actually impossible?' Simon Critchley has a new book in which he apparently considers the question. I haven't read the book but if this is anything to go by, Critchley may be relying on 'Mecca of cricket'-type procedures.

Thus, for example, the US has 'a sacred text, the Constitution'. This would then mean that any founding document or set of rules that people took to be important would infuse whatever was founded by it or governed by them with the spirit of religion. Chess, anyone? Or consider the following:

The concept of original sin... "is not some outdated relic from the religious past," Critchley writes, but is alive in any system of authoritarian rule - even the supposedly godless ones - in that they operate from the premise that "there is something essentially defective in human nature which requires a corrective."

You might as well dump 'authoritarian' from 'system of authoritarian rule', since presupposed by every system of political rule, and by the rule of law itself, is that people will sometimes behave badly, aggress against one another etc if they are not constrained by norms of some kind. Via its kinship with the concept of original sin this simple empirical assumption about human beings, for which we have rather a lot of evidence, is turned here into something religiously inspired.

Again:

Even secularism itself, Critchley maintains, is a religious myth, based as it is on a belief in progress. "The very idea of progress, that the future will be better than the past - which is the basic premise of American life - is a translation of the Christian idea of providence," Critchley told me.

And yet there is another way of thinking about progress as a possibility, in which progress is not like Christian providence, just something to be striven for, like improvements where you can manage them.

For the time being I'll be sticking with the idea that there is a difference between secular democracy and theocratic rule.

They threaten you, therefore it's your fault

In Wednesday's Times, Anatole Kaletsky assembles the reasons, as he sees them, for the folly that would be involved if any country tried to destroy Iran's nuclear programme. Fair enough - there are some cogent reasons of this kind. But look here (£) at the last reason he gives, in talking specifically about the inadvisability of an attack by Israel on Iran:

Israel, with a population of only seven million, would proclaim by its actions that it considers the hundreds of millions of Muslims living around it as permanent and implacable military enemies. It is this attitude, far more than any nuclear programme, that poses the real "existential threat" to Israel's long-term survival.

Rich or what? It is not an Israeli leader who has spoken of wiping Iran from the map, but rather an Iranian leader of doing precisely that to Israel. And while Israel has never, ever, pronounced hundreds of millions of Muslims to be 'permanent and implacable military enemies', there are organizations on Israel's very borders that have pronounced their undying enmity for Israel. Yet, by a suave reversal Kaletsky decides a hostile attitude of Israel's poses the existential threat to its survival.

Perhaps Kaletsky might like to consider writing for the Guardian, where sentiments of that stripe are meat and drink.

That Australian

'Just one of those guys you know it would be impossible to stay mad with. Five minutes with him and it feels like you're old buddies...'

'On perhaps no Australian do so many people hold views as... [can you guess?]'

'[H]ow many cricketers have had a musical done about them?'

By now you probably know. All from a two-parter, 'Shane Warne's Never-Ending Glory', by Gideon Haigh - here and here. (Thanks: JN.)

Why apologizing can be right when you've done nothing wrong

I, my neighbour Zelda, and Wayne Dobbs Jr form a society for listening together to the music of Townes Van Zandt. We call it the Cambridge Townes Van Zandt Appreciation Society. In an open vote of all three CTVZAS members Wayne Dobbs Jr is elected president of the society for one year. As president Wayne takes a call in his first week in office from someone in Gonville and Caius College who wants to join, and he (Wayne) responds in a needlessly rude and insulting manner. A few days later he resigns the CTVZAS presidency and leaves the society, this for reasons unconnected with his rudeness, but on account of he's decided suddenly to return to New Zealand, where he was born.

After Wayne's departure, Zelda and I apologize to the person in Gonville and Caius who was treated so disobligingly by Wayne. We apologize on behalf of the CTVZAS, not wanting its reputation to be sullied by such misconduct, and feeling anyway that an apology was owed although neither Zelda nor I did anything wrong, personally, to the unfortunate member of Gonville and Caius.

This brief tale is by way of explaining why Jeremy Paxman ought to think again if he really believes what he says in saying:

You should apologise for things that you have done, that you recognise that perhaps you shouldn't have done or regret. But apologising for things that your great, great, great, great-grandfather or grandmother did, seems to me a complete exercise in moral vacuousness.

I have argued for this before, but it bears repeating since the denial of it is so common: there are human collectivities as well as human individuals - families, clubs, societies, firms, trade unions, countries, nations, libraries, universities, parliaments, banks, reading groups, media organizations and churches. A single member of one of these collectivities can apologize for an act of the collective, as carried out by someone else, one of its officers or representatives or just plain members. There's no reason for presuming he or she should never do so; though it is, of course, a valid question whether an apology is due and would be sincere. But it can be unproblematically both.

Norms of intervention

The doctrine of humanitarian intervention is not the latest thing. It comes down through a long tradition in the literature of international law; it was discussed by Grotius in the 17th century and Vattel in the century following, among many other legal and political philosophers. In our own time the idea has once again been taken up, and has been formalized in the thesis of a 'Responsibility to Protect'. There is by now, consequently, a well-rehearsed set of central norms. This does not mean that there is nothing left to discuss, nor that further refinements - including improvements - in the light of experience might not be possible. However, it does mean that some of the key principles have a certain solidity to them. They are not to be lightly set aside in favour of something hastily thrown together.

In Sunday's Observer Peter Beaumont, writing about humanitarian intervention and taking as his point of departure a number of unobjectionable observations and understandably troubling concerns, reasons from these to a patently untenable conclusion. It is a conclusion which, taken seriously, would displace an existing norm of humanitarian intervention that is much better than it and indeed self-evidently so.

Peter notes the present state of affairs in Libya, marked by the existence of 'rival fiefdoms of competing militias', and with 'human rights abuses... rife'. This has, he says, 'proved once again the limitations of military intervention for regime-change in its various guises':

In Iraq, Afghanistan - in Kosovo to a lesser degree - and now Libya, what has been left after intervention has been a series of weak and corrupt fragile states, where violence is often commonplace and anything resembling real democracy utterly absent.

Peter does not, on this account, renounce the principle of humanitarian intervention. No, he reaffirms it - holding that it is difficult to counter its core moral principle. Worried nonetheless lest abuses after an intervention should turn out as grave as they were before it, he writes that intervention should be undertaken only as a last resort, that there should be 'a far higher threshold' for it, and that it must be 'backed by the promise of serious post-conflict engagement, costly and time-consuming as it is'.

I have no big quarrel with him on these points. That's not to say I agree with him on all of them. For my own part I think the threshold for humanitarian intervention should be lower (see section 2 here) than it is - but I accept that this is a difficult issue and there can be more than one conscientiously-held opinion about it. On post-conflict engagement, what Peter says is already amply covered in the relevant R2P documents (see section 5 here). However, for me the kicker in what he says is his 'real democracy' stipulation, already alluded to in the passage quoted above. Peter also writes:

if the notion of humanitarian intervention is not to be utterly discredited, there has to be a rigorous, realistic and practical understanding of what is required - not simply to remove abusive regimes, but to guarantee genuine freedoms, democracy and transparency in the post-conflict period.

So: not only real democracy but also genuine freedoms; and a willingness and capacity to guarantee both. No one ought to be against these things or to make little of them. They are of vital importance. That should go without saying here. I find it hard to believe, all the same, that Peter could have intended to lay down the guaranteeing of them as a condition of humanitarian military intervention. Whether or not it is what he intended, this is what is proposed by him if we take him at his word; and there is nothing in his column to discourage us from it as an inference from what he writes. Yet it is a manifest disimprovement on existing norms.

The latter underwrite intervention, for example, to avert genocide when it is imminent or to stop it if it has already begun; and likewise to prevent or put an end to a humanitarian crisis. Here is what the Report of the International Commission on R2P lays down on this score:

4.41 Military action can only be justified if it stands a reasonable chance of success, that is, halting or averting the atrocities or suffering that triggered the intervention in the first place. Military intervention is not justified if actual protection cannot be achieved, or if the consequences of embarking upon the intervention are likely to be worse than if there is no action at all. In particular, a military action for limited human protection purposes cannot be justified if in the process it triggers a larger conflict.

As can be seen, the legitimating condition for intervention is given as 'a reasonable chance of success', and this is followed up with the specification that the likely consequences of intervention must not be worse than if no intervention had taken place. This is a less restraining condition than the guaranteeing of genuine freedoms and real democracy - for the obvious reason that between either genocide or grave humanitarian crisis and the achievement of those desirable ends there are intermediate states of affairs that are not as good as freedom and democracy but still better than genocide or humanitarian crisis.

One might think about this from two other angles. First, I have not read much in the way of advice over the Arab Spring to the effect that the peoples in rebellion against repressive regimes should have held back from trying to overthrow them unless they could be sure of achieving genuine freedoms and real democracy. Second and more generally, it would seem to be a reasonable principle of practical action that if you can intervene in some ongoing evil with a good prospect of making a difference for the better, you should do so even if you might fall short of achieving the very best state of affairs that can be anticipated.

Peter's 'real democracy' condition for humanitarian military intervention is not morally defensible as a putative hurdle to be cleared before intervention to stop the worst atrocities may be contemplated.

Writer's choice 338: Frances Thomas

Frances Thomas has written many books for adults and children, including The Fall of Man and Finding Minerva. Her biography of Christina Rossetti has just been reissued by Virago. She lives in London and Wales. Here Frances writes about Annemarie Selinko's Désirée.

Frances Thomas on Désirée by Annemarie Selinko

Reading cushioned my childhood. Which was perfectly happy, but I was an only child, and this meant long stretches of time when it was just me and whatever there was to be found on the shelves in my room. Noel Streatfield, Elinor M. Brent Dyer, Rosemary Sutcliff, Geoffrey Trease, Pamela Brown, Kate Seredy, George Macdonald; in their various and different ways all these people and more kept me securely and blissfully floating in a world of imagination.

But there came a time when somehow these wonderful writers weren't quite working for me any more. I cancelled my subscriptions to School Friend and Girl, forsook my beloved junior library, and started to look, a little bemusedly, at what was on the shelves in the big serious library downstairs. And it wasn't easy; there were so many books, I didn't know where to start, and many of them, with their adult themes - I don't use this word in a sexual sense, though that was probably there too - seemed quite foreign to my interests and aspirations.

I guess that these days the transition stage is handled by fantasy: dystopian futures, vampires, ghosts, wild and weird fictions in which dauntless heroines stride through bleak and crumbling landscapes to find their happy or happy-ish endings. But that kind of book didn't exist when I was a teenager. Young Adult? Don't make me laugh - as long as you wore school uniform, you were a child. Nobody saw you as audience, or consumer, or person of interest.

What I turned to, in what would otherwise have been a bleak period for my reading, was historical fiction. Only those books seemed to offer the extended horizons, the new worlds that I craved, without the rocks and turbulences of adult books. I was a voyager on a rickety boat watching a beloved and familiar land fade into mists but also turning curiously to those further shores.

Like all the reading I'd ever done, they were a mixed batch, those books. Some, like Forever Amber, were racy (does anyone use that word any more? - in those days it seemed to mean dust jackets that showed a lot of cleavage). Some - Georgette Heyer - were romantic. Some - Jean Plaidy, I remember most particularly - brought historical women to fairly convincing life. Some were just marvellous novels: Mary Renault, who opened windows into mythology and the deep past; Robert Graves, whose Claudius books taught me more than dull school Latin ever managed to do.

But the other day, a buzzy conversation on a forum for children's writers that I belong to reminded me of this one - Désirée by Annemarie Selinko. This book tells the story of Désirée Clary, a silk merchant's daughter from Marseilles, whom the young Napoleon first loved and then jilted, and who then by one of those strange quirks of history went on to become Queen of Sweden through her marriage to Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte.

Annemarie, like her heroine, also lived through a time of historical turmoil. She was born in Vienna in 1914, and went on to marry a Danish diplomat. When war broke out, Annemarie and her husband were active in the Danish resistance, and later had to escape to Sweden on a fishing boat. Her sister Liselotte, to whom the book is dedicated, was not so lucky, and was murdered by the Nazis. It was while she was in Sweden that Annemarie became fascinated by the Bernadotte dynasty, who still rule the country, and their French origins. After years of research, she published Désirée in 1953. It was an immediate hit and went on to be made into a film staring Jean Simmons and Marlon Brando.

I think I came across it because of a newspaper article that described it as one of the best historical novels of all time. My copy, unfortunately, came with an inappropriate 'racy' cover, which led to my easily outraged grandmother thinking I was reading a book called Desire (and put my husband off reading it for years, despite my recommendation, until I found a copy with a more tasteful jacket).

The story starts with the young Désirée Eugenie Clary, at fourteen years old. Like everyone else in France in 1794, she lives in an atmosphere of danger and the constant threat of the guillotine. Désirée is brave and resourceful, and when her brother is unjustly arrested, she rushes off to the Deputy's office to try and bring about his release. She returns after a series of adventures, having met a young man with an interesting face and an unpronounceable name – something like Boonopat, she thinks. This is a tease on the part of the author; the Bonaparte she has met is Joseph, and it's not until he brings his younger brother, the shabby General along, that Désirée's interest is really engaged.

The rest is quite literally history. We follow her through the years, we see her youthful enthusiasm and ebullience turn to unhappiness as her ruthless and charismatic lover leaves her for Josephine, but are relieved when she meets and marries the more suitable Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. Through her viewpoint, we watch as Napoleon becomes more and more powerful and megalomaniac, ennobling himself and the members of his large and unruly family, among whom is now numbered Désirée's sister Julie, married to Joseph. The family acquire more and more weird and wonderful titles, and at the centre of everything, Napoleon broods like a malignant and pitiless spider. But later, Jean-Baptiste, who has impressed the Swedes in the course of a campaign against them, finds himself invited to succeed their aged king Charles XIII and revitalize a dynasty, which has become increasingly inbred and feeble. Désirée's life takes another quite unexpected turn.

Skimming through the reviews on Amazon.com, I was interested to find that most of them were either written by teenagers or by people who had first read this book as teenagers. Désirée is a sympathetic and engaging character (though for today's taste she can be a little irritatingly naïve: Selinko wrote in an age where it wasn't good for a woman to appear too clever), and though there's a lot of quite difficult history to take in, your attention is engaged. And Napoleon is one of those figures that you both love and hate - his dangerous charm is well conveyed.

In spite of the romantic and light-hearted beginning, this isn't an easy read. Selinko doesn't shirk from describing the horrors of war, as the increasingly power-mad Napoleon drags his ruined army through the snows of Moscow, and later on subjects the remnant to the cannons of Waterloo. Men die and are horribly mutilated; the glorious and glamorous Empire collapses in blood and squalor. Because we watch it all through Désirée's eyes, we understand the human cost of all this in a way that a history book wouldn't convey.

The conclusion of the book isn't entirely satisfactory, though. After Jean-Baptiste has been chosen as the Swedish regent in 1810, Désirée travels to Stockholm with him and Oscar, her beloved only son. The formality and protocol of the Swedish court are too much for her, and she returns to Paris, where she stays until 1822. This reflects historical reality, but it doesn't seem to be in keeping with the warm-hearted and loving heroine that we've grown used to. I remember that at this point I felt faintly uncomfortable as a young reader; things weren't working out quite as I expected. There was another 'true' story hidden uncomfortably beneath the fiction, and from time to time I was aware of it bubbling through the story's surface.

The book ends with Désirée's eventual return to Sweden, and her coronation, but in real life her final days there seem to have been lonely and unhappy; she never learned Swedish and became increasingly eccentric, driving round and round the night-time city in her carriage. Selinko has taken some liberties with historical truth to make her heroine more attractive to us; perhaps rather more than is justified. But probably I wouldn't have enjoyed that 'real' story, the empty marriage, the eccentricities; and this book started me on a lifetime's fascination with its real hero, the charismatic Corsican boy who became emperor. And re-reading it now, after a gap of many years, I found I enjoyed it just as much as when I was young.

[All the pieces that have appeared in this series, with the links to them, are listed in the index here.]

Going travelling

I'm setting out for Israel tomorrow, to visit my everloving Mom and other family. Things are likely to be quieter than usual here during the coming week, though I might put up the odd post if circumstances permit and I find something I want to write about. Normal service will resume late next week.

Secularism and the limits of tolerance

I find myself in general sympathy with this piece by Julian Baggini on secularism and religion. Just because I am, I will register here two slightly pedantic reservations. Before doing so, let me endorse what I see as Julian's central point:

Secularism, in the political sense, is not a comprehensive project to sweep religion out of public life altogether... Rather it is - or should be - a beautifully simple way of bringing people of all faiths and none together, not a means of pitting them against each other.

It all goes back to how we understand the core secularist principle of neutrality in the public square. Neutrality means just that: neither standing for or against religion or any other comprehensive world-view.

It is insisting on the social space for freedom of belief, with no particular religion, nor the disavowal of religion, able to claim a special privilege from political authority.

My first reservation concerns Julian's thesis, which he derives from John Rawls, that in the public sphere, 'we are obliged to talk to each other in terms we can share and understand, not in ways that are tied to our specific "comprehensive doctrines"'. I don't think there is any such obligation, if 'obligation' is construed at all strictly. We are free to bring whatever reasons we choose into public debate, and if someone chooses to argue in terms highly specific to their own world-view, then so be it. They might not get very far in persuading others, but they can draw their own conclusions from that, or not draw them, as the case may be. When Julian goes on to say that 'What we all need to do is provide reasons that have some purchase for other people in their capacity as fellow citizens, whatever their world-views', he is setting out something other than an obligation. And when he says 'we can't expect these [our specific metaphysical beliefs] to carry any weight with others', I would reply, we can expect whatever we want to expect; what we can't legitimately do is demand that others be swayed by our reasons, of whatever kind.

My second point is addressed to the tenor of Julian's last two paragraphs, in which he asks of us secularists that we be more relaxed towards religion, not acting as its enemy. It's a plea for a more tolerant attitude than some militant atheists today display. Though (once again) I know what motivates his saying what he does, and share his feelings about a certain kind of relentless discourse of hostility towards religious belief and religious practice, I also think the plea for tolerance in this matter ought to be bounded by clear limits. There are believers who, in the name of religion, act to silence, harm and sometimes indeed kill others, and there is, unfortunately, a lot of this sort of thing about. No secularist is obliged to adopt a relaxed attitude towards it. On the contrary, in defence of freedom of belief, they should be intolerant of it. Secularism, just like genuine liberalism, does not entail tolerance of the appeal to religion to justify intolerant, cruel or murderous ends.

Israel and Iran: why worry?

Benny Morris thinks the choice is now clear and stark: 'Either Iran, led by fanatical, brutal and millenarian leaders, will get the bomb, or it will be prevented from doing so by military assault on its nuclear installations, by America or Israel. If the Americans, who have the capability to do a thorough job, don't do it - and they don't seem to have the stomach for it after Iraq and Afghanistan - then the Israelis, with their more limited capabilities, will have to.'

And (Morris again): 'If the Iranian nuclear project is not halted now by conventional means, there will be, by miscalculation, Iranian assault or Israeli preemption, a nuclear war in the Middle East.'

Trudi Rubin, for her part, spells out several reasons 'why Americans should be worried about a possible spring strike on Tehran'.

In the FT, Tobias Buck sees the Israeli prime minister's tendency to caution as in the scales with the existential threat he perceives to Israel's existence if Iran should acquire nuclear weapons.

And Anshel Pfeffer looks at some issues affecting the possible timing of an Israeli strike.

If you aren't worried about this yet, don't worry; I'm worrying enough in your place.

Update: Here's a somewhat different view from Barry Rubin. (Thanks: JK.)

Writer's choice 337: Linda Sargent

Linda Sargent is a writer who works as a publisher's reader and as a freelance reminiscence advisor. She has published short stories and articles and her first novel, Paper Wings, appeared in 2010; she is also the author of Words and Wings, a training guide to creative reminiscence work, available as a free download from her website. Below, Linda discusses Mem Fox's Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge.

Linda Sargent on Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox

Perhaps I should have chosen Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby after all; surely there's more fodder, more literary class, more of it. Plus: I taught it to a bunch of A level students 30 years ago and so have a usefully annotated copy in my own (unusually) tiny hand-writing, telling me what I can say, and still with strong echoes of the passion I felt for it then, and still do. Ah, too easy, though.

Instead, it has to be Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, written by Mem Fox and illustrated by Julie Vivas, and never out of print since it was first published in 1984; not bad going for a picture book about a small boy who helps an old lady retrieve, at least momentarily, some of her lost memories. The premise could result in something saccharine and sentimental, a touch patronizing, even.

It doesn't, isn't.

The book came, as with so many, in the form of a gift from a friend and colleague when we were working together on various reminiscence projects back in the 1990s. She reckoned, correctly, that it caught exactly what we were trying to do at the time with some older people and their carers; using objects to help trigger often deeply buried or lost memories. Tricky territory always, but this story shows, to my mind, more effectively than so many manuals ever could, the empathetic and tender caring that ought to be at the heart of any such exploration and why it works so well when training others in this field.

Wilfrid lived next door to an old people's home and knew all the people who lived there. Now that would be wonderful in itself, but it looks as if this story is set in Australia, so maybe things are different there, or perhaps it's a wishful ideal. Not only did he know them, he also knew what they were best at: 'Mrs. Jordan who plays the organ... Mr. Hosking who told him scary stories... Mr. Tippet who was crazy about cricket...' and so on. He especially liked Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper because she had a big name like him and he told her all his secrets. Then one day he heard his parents call her a 'poor old thing' because she had lost her memory. Of course he wanted to know - truly know - what a memory could be. His father's 'something you remember' just wasn't enough and, if you think about it, would never be enough on its own to make a story, or a person's life.

So Wilfrid asked his friends next door and they came up with the kind of list he and most readers would recognize; 'something warm... something from long ago... something that makes you laugh... something that makes you cry... something as precious as gold...' And off he set to find such things from his own house: 'seashells, a comical puppet on a string, his grandfather's medal, a freshly laid egg, his football'. He took them to Miss Nancy and she started to remember some of the times from her childhood - and here Julie Vivas's softly rich pinks, ochre, blues and greens, and the apparently simple transition from old lady to a little girl, effortlessly seem to animate the text, bringing the past into the present as Wilfrid shared his objects with Miss Nancy and she shared her memories and secrets with him.

The process is not always charming and straightforward, as is unflinchingly shown here when Miss Nancy remembered her brother '... who had gone to the war and never returned...'; but what the book does is to show with both colour and clarity how stories work, where they come from in the truthful essence of our past, how losing them is dangerous (or manufacturing them, as with poor Gatsby, potentially corrosive and deadly). Wilfrid and Gatsby share a kind of innocence. Wilfrid's, though, comes from a sense of wanting to share and to help his friend; Gatsby's objects (those shirts!) are lures which prove to be ultimately hollow and destructive.

The astute Michel de Montaigne observes: 'It seems that the soul loses itself in itself when shaken and disturbed unless given something to grasp onto; and so we must always provide it with an object to butt up against and to act upon.'

The story of Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge illuminates this most powerfully, using just a few words and pictures to great and enduring effect. It's a book I have passed on to many people over the years since it first came into my hands.

[All the pieces that have appeared in this series, with the links to them, are listed in the index here.]

Short epoch?

Opposition and protest can be a long haul, and one should therefore never discount the possibility of a seeming failure here and now contributing, a way down the line, to something necessary and worthwhile. The Occupy movement spoke for a lot of people who object to grotesque levels of social inequality and of individual remuneration in the upper reaches of banking, high finance and elsewhere. Yet this report by the Guardian's Peter Walker casts a sharp light back on some of the exorbitant claims that were initially made by Occupy and its more breathless sympathizers:

During a heady few weeks late last year, camps were springing up around the UK, and Occupy was the country's fastest-growing political movement. A few months on - beset by obstacles including court cases, an influx of the long-term homeless and vulnerable and the sheer cold – the phenomenon, at least in its tent-based form, seems to be almost over.

On Monday, London protesters will hear whether their high court application to appeal against the decision to evict them has been successful – but many other camps have already melted away.
.....
It is a similar story worldwide.
.....
It reignited in September when Occupy Wall Street – a major inspiration for London – took over New York's Zuccotti Park with its soon-ubiquitous "We are the 99%" slogan. Police broke up that camp two months later, and the remaining US outposts are reducing in number all the time. Over the past week or so police have moved into Miami, Austin and Washington, while Occupy Pittsburgh disbanded voluntarily after an eviction order.

Not yet, then, the beginning of a new epoch or harbinger of a totally different civilization. One of the things potential supporters of progressive change in a mature democracy look for, unless they're part of the verkrappt section of the left, is a sign of political seriousness, since the potential costs of a delusional politics are by now well known.

Boycott merchants

It's not a new story, is it?

Israel, uniquely among nations, suffers from being turned into a synecdoche - of the part being taken for the whole. The other theater companies involved in the Globe's program - whether from China, Zimbabwe or the United States - are simply not subject to the same scrutiny of their nation's politics. No one would think of boycotting the English theater because Britain had been involved in the bloody occupation of two countries in recent memory. That would be absurd. Yet it is not absurd when it comes to Israel.

No, it's a story that may seem a bit dull by now. What perhaps gives it a novel twist this time is that it arises from boycott initiatives centred on a production of the The Merchant of Venice at the Globe in London, and fears of consequent disruption; the production is to be in Hebrew and by Israel's Habima Theatre, as part of this year's Cultural Olympiad.

(Just to be completely clear: by posting that NYT link I do not endorse anything that may be implied by the writer's bracketing of the US and Britain together with China and Zimbabwe.)

Farewell Leicester Square

How time does carry them away. Novelists of an earlier generation, I mean. Until maybe a year ago I'd never even heard of Betty Miller (and I'm guessing that not very many readers of contemporary fiction have). But then a book of hers appeared on our shelves, thanks to WotN's devotion to Persephone Books, of which I, too, am now a committed follower, and I recently took it down and gave it a try.

Written in 1935, though not published till 1941, Fairwell Leicester Square's overt central theme is English anti-Semitism in the period in which it is set, particularized through the story of the marriage between Alec Berman, who is Jewish, and a non-Jewish Englishwoman, Catherine Nicolls. Though in one or two places the central theme may speak a bit too obtrusively through Miller's main characters, by and large the book avoids the dangers of agenda-driven fiction, to treat a difficult subject with understanding and literary skill. But the strengths of the book, beyond this, lie in its subtlety of perception in handling the minutiae of personal relationships and the common experience of daily life. There are a couple of passages, for example, on the experience of ageing which would be impressive from a writer of much more mature years but are especially striking written by someone at the age, as Miller then was, of 25. She deserves to be more widely known.

The book contains an informative introduction, from which I learned that Betty Miller wrote several other novels (see here for a forthcoming new edition). I shall try to get hold of them. And once again, good on ya, Persephone.

Ray of light in Burma

Here's a fairly upbeat column from Australia on what's happening in Burma:

Five thousand kilometres to our north, a country that is home to nearly 60 million people, an army of 400,000 men and south-east Asia's second-largest land mass, is moving quickly out of the brutal darkness of dictatorship towards political and economic liberalisation.

Just how fast and how far the process of reform in Burma will go is very much an open question. There is, however, little doubt recent developments are positive, significant and with far-reaching consequences.

Consider this: since President Thein Sein assumed office last March, his government has granted amnesty to more than 6000 prisoners, including journalists, monks and political opponents; censorship of the media has been relaxed; labour laws enabling the right to strike and the right to form a union have been passed; peace deals with warring ethnic groups have been reached; and a date for byelections in which Aung San Suu Kyi will participate has been set.

That is a frenetic pace by any standards, not least those of a country where human rights violations, rigged elections and state cronyism have resulted in its isolation from much of the world since the military took over in 1962.

Recognising these changes, the international community is responding. The European Union and Australia have removed some of their sanctions, the US is restoring full diplomatic relations and foreign [dignitaries] are treading a path to the Burmese capital, Naypyidaw.

My own lack of knowledge about Burma restrains me from offering any comment of my own. But I can pass on the reactions of a friend who does know; they are as follows.

The piece may be a bit starry-eyed, but is along the right lines. On a recent visit to Yangon he [my informant] was struck by the optimism among his friends. There was some worry that it might all go wrong, but there has long been fear in Burmese politics; the hope now slowly spreading is palpable and new. For a visitor the biggest change is that the country is festooned with images of Aung San Suu Kyi, which were illegal until a few months ago.

Blogging instead of scholarship?

I can't believe anyone thinks this is a question worth debating; it's so obviously one where it's not either-or but both-and. There appear to be people, including Cathy N. Davidson, a professor of English at Duke University, who think that blogposts can replace the term paper, essay, or whatever you want to call it, in the educational process. According to this piece in the New York Times, the discussion concerns students at both high-school and university level. I've got nothing against the notion (I couldn't have, could I?) that there might be advantages in the blogpost form and blogging medium for exploring ideas, making them available more easily and widely, learning to be brief when one needs to, saying things in a more informal and colloquial way.

On the other hand, to dispense with longer pieces of work, backed up by a more formal apparatus of footnote references, bibliography and so forth, is to forgo the teaching of important disciplines of research and argument. At the most basic level, an education that didn't convey to students that there are matters which can't be settled quickly, but require patience, the gathering of evidence, careful reading and deliberation, and the setting out of reasons at some length, would be an education that was seriously remiss. There's nothing wrong with using, and adapting to, new media of expression and communication; but the idea that genuine learning can all be accommodated within short and speedy forms is a surrender and not an improvement. Not all high-school and university students go on to the world of scholarship; but they ought to have a taste of what it's about.

On the origins of opposition to liberal interventionism

Jonathan Freedland is arguing that military intervention isn't always wrong. He's arguing it apropos Syria. Even though he isn't calling for immediate military action to stop the killing there, he allows that it could have to come to that. His column is prompted by surprise at the fact that the Stop the War Coalition is demonstrating not to protest at 'the truly shocking slaughter' being perpetrated by the Assad regime, but rather against the possibility of US intervention in Syria or Iran.

It is needless for me to say here that I agree with Jonathan that military intervention isn't always wrong. But, though I do agree about that, I disagree with his explanation for this demo directed against US intervention. Here is what Jonathan says:

There's a one-word explanation for how anti-war activists find themselves more exercised by the prospect of intervention to stop murderous violence than by the murderous violence itself. That word is Iraq. The 2003 invasion of Iraq has tainted for a generation the idea once known as "liberal interventionism".

There will be some sector of anti-war opinion that has been made wary about liberal interventionism by the war in Iraq. But so far as that segment of it explicitly picked out by him in this piece - that is to say, activists in and around the Stop the War Coalition - Jonathan starts the clock at the wrong time. The forces of the 'anti-war' left oppose all wars led or joined by America; they were doing so long before the Iraq war in 2003. They opposed intervention in 1991 to evict Saddam's armies from Kuwait, just to pick out one relevant example. It's anti-imperialism that always does the work for them, and slaughter of civilians by oppressive regimes is one of those facts of the world to be endured without ever contemplating Western military intervention anywhere. It's hard to imagine an exception to this generalization arising - unless the US, Britain or some other Western power were to intervene against Israel.

All the same, despite the disagreement, I'm glad to see Jonathan now defending the principle of liberal interventionism. In September 2009 he reported on the view, on both the left and the right at the Labour Party conference, that 'Blair's doctrine of "liberal interventionism"... should be dumped in the nearest skip', its practice having proved disastrous. True, he didn't actually endorse this view, but he registered no misgiving about it either.

The normblog profile 404: Harry Langford

Harry Langford is a 20-year-old blogger who comes from Birmingham. He is currently reading law at undergraduate level and has a particular interest in human rights, public law and aspects of international law. Harry has aspirations to become a barrister. He is a Labour Party activist and has worked as a Parliamentary Intern to a Labour MP. He blogs at What's Next?

Why do you blog? > I tweet quite a lot (@harrylangford), but there came a point where I realized that I was going to need more than 140 characters to offer anything other than a very simplistic opinion. It gives me an outlet to speak directly to people who are interested in the same issues as I am and have discussions on those topics, which I enjoy.

What has been your best blogging experience? > So far? Setting up my new blog and getting a good reaction to it – particularly when I posted something that really sparked debate.

What has been your worst blogging experience? > Writing a blog post of thousands of words which I then read back to myself; it didn't flow logically and I had to scrap it. That was quite disheartening.

What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > Keep at it. Your writing will improve and it will become more worthwhile.

Who are your intellectual heroes? > Anthony Crosland, Tony Blair, Anthony Giddens and Peter Gould.

What are you reading at the moment? > The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli.

Who are your cultural heroes? > Aaron Sorkin. The West Wing and Studio 60 are sublime examples of what TV drama should be.

What is your favourite poem? > 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud' by William Wordsworth.

What is your favourite song? > 'Viva la Vida' by Coldplay.

Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you've ever changed your mind? > The whole issue of human rights when I discovered the principle of positive liberty.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > Social democracy.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > Religious fundamentalism of all varieties.

Can you name a work of non-fiction which has had a major and lasting influence on how you think about the world? > Marx's Capital. The first book to really get me thinking.

Who are your political heroes? > Winston Churchill and Tony Blair.

If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > Complete the New Labour project. Truly devolve power and responsibility into the hands of normal people, thus protecting public services from the hands of central government.

What would you do with the UN? > Substantially reform it, particularly the veto system (which I would scrap in its current form). Change the voting to a qualified majority system.

What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > Right now, the financial crisis. How it will be resolved is yet to be determined, and I think that it will radically alter the power balance in the world away from the traditional global powers.

Do you think the world (human civilization) has already passed its best point, or is that yet to come? > When you study history, it seems that mankind almost always thinks the best is in the past. History shows us that that is never true and that human civilization has the ability to find and achieve a new pinnacle of development.

What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > Have no regrets, and do everything that you want to do.

Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone with radically different political views from your own? > Possibly, but there would probably be an awful lot of argument.

What do you consider the most important personal quality? > Politeness. If people are polite to each other then it makes life much easier.

What personal fault do you most dislike? > People who have an unduly high opinion of themselves.

What is your favourite proverb? > 'Practice makes perfect'.

What, if anything, do you worry about? > The future. As I have grown older it seems to become more uncertain.

Where would you most like to live (other than where you do)? > San Francisco.

What do you like doing in your spare time? > Reading, watching ice hockey, and listening to music.

What is your most treasured possession? > A collection of leather-bound books that I have inherited.

Who is your favourite comedian or humorist? > Jonathan Lynn and Anthony Jay for writing Yes, Minister.

Which English Premiership football team do you support? > Aston Villa.

How, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money? > I probably wouldn't radically change my life. I would still want to work, and I would like to think that I would use the money to make a positive difference in the world.

If you could have any three guests, past or present, to dinner who would they be? > Blair, Thatcher and Churchill.

[A list of all the normblog profiles to date, and the links to them, can be found here.]

Stumbling over politics and morality

Chris isn't sure whether politics should be about morality. He isn't sure for four reasons: morality is weak against power; policies are often morally ambiguous; morality can distract us from structural explanantions of people's conduct; and issues of morality are disputed. All of these things are true - and yet politics cannot bypass being about morality, among other things.

This is demonstrated by the two points Chris immediately goes on to make. (1) 'The left should appeal more to efficiency.' But efficiency for what? Efficiency only dictates that you adopt the least costly, speediest etc, means to certain ends; however, unless you have a way of deciding on those ends, efficiency becomes an empty watchword. Moral considerations are pertinent to choosing ends. Otherwise we might just be picking them out of a hat - as in the most efficient way of robbing people, destroying buildings and so forth. (2) Chris then recommends, as an alternative to both managerialism and moralism, the 'third possibility' Marxism. Well, Marxism may be distinct from 'moralism' in some meanings of this latter term. But Marxism embodies a clear ethical standpoint: it holds capitalism to be unjust because it is based on exploitation; and that very notion, Marxian exploitation, cannot be defined and elaborated except by making reference to certain moral expectations about who should get what and who shouldn't.

Assad's crimes

From Human Rights Watch:

The Syrian government should immediately stop its shelling of residential neighborhoods in the city of Homs, Human Rights Watch said today. Since February 3, 2012, the attacks have killed more than 300 persons in the city, according to Syrian monitoring groups, and wounded hundreds [of] others, including women and children. No adequate medical assistance is available to the victims due to a blockade of the city by government forces and fear of arrest if treated at government-controlled hospitals, Human Rights Watch said.

Here - where you can also watch the short video featuring Anna Neistat: 'We concluded that these crimes constitute crimes against humanity: they were widespread, and they were perpetrated as part of government policy.'

There are pictures here and here.

From a discussion by Professor Chris Brown:

To return to the key question, where do we go from here? When the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty brought out their report on the Responsibility to Protect they anticipated the possibility of a Security Council veto in circumstances where there was a 'conscious-shocking situation crying out for action'[,] arguing that although action bypassing the Security Council would be fraught with difficulty it might still be the least-worst option. Is such action justified in this case?