normblog

He will survive

I will survive
I will survive

Not this one, however. No, a slightly different version. The second is to the first as this is to this, except for being worth watching.

[And see the follow-up post.]

CEDAW

CEDAW is the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. It has been ratified by 185 countries. It is rather an anomaly that one of the countries that hasn't yet ratified it is the US, putting it in company with Iran and Sudan - this despite its participation in the drafting of the convention. Tanya Doriss explains why CEDAW hasn't yet been ratified by the US and why it should be.

Optimists for Zimbabwe

Who? Returning white farmers, confident that Mugabe's days are numbered.

John Worswick, of the lobby group Justice for Agriculture, said the returning farmers believed that within a year or two the country would turn around and return to conditions conducive for agricultural production.

One of them, after looking at his old farm:

Two weeks ago I went out to see it. It's an absolute wreck. It's the closest I've come to crying for some time. The barns, the roofs, the sheds, everything had been stripped. It will cost an untold figure to put that right and make it productive again.

(Thanks: SP.)

Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007)

The great film director has died at the age of 89. What I will remember him for: Fanny and Alexander. A trailer here. Another notice here.

Thatcher's team

These letters to the Guardian give a reminder of the time, not that long ago, when the BBC acted as propaganda arm of the government of the day. Towards which we paid our licence fee. The idea of BBC bias stopped surprising me back then, and it surprises me now that it can still be of any surprise.

Short short story II/37

Different Ways (by Sarah Douglas)

Mother's Day at the seafood place had been his idea. So they've gathered, three of them, so far, at E---. His mother, the shrink, who is seated across from him, is absently rattling her bracelets, and looking around for his brother. Oh, but there he is, being led to the table by the maitre'd. She sees this, and her bracelets go silent.

She smiles. She extends a hand to his brother, whose hair is floppy and wet from rain, whose rumpled suit is soaked through, and who is explaining that as the youngest partner in the firm, he has to deal with pestering clients whose problems keep him late.

'They stick me with the worst ones, Mom, the worst ones,' he says.

Between himself and his mother is the oldest partner in the firm, whose chin rests in the cup he's made from his creviced hands, whose eyes have not risen from the table's recently arrived centerpiece, Sea Urchin, Four Different Ways, a gleaming silver platter on which is arranged a quartet of orange blobs. None of them has touched it.

His mother leans in to his brother's moist ear. 'It looks terrible,' he hears her whisper.

He himself turns to his father, whose gaze has not wavered from the urchins. He thinks what to say.

'By my calculations,' he begins, 'I've spent more time inside her than you have.'

'Sure,' the man mutters. 'Maybe. But haven't I had more fun? I have had more fun.'

[The second short short story series is announced and explained here.]

More US unions anti-boycott activity

Further to the statement of US union leaders against boycotting Israel, here's an item on the possible knock-on effects of the US initiative on an upcoming election in the international service workers union, Public Services International.

OneVoice

Palestinians and Israelis speaking in favour of a two-state solution for their nations. Blogolob has the information and the video about OneVoice.

Nobody defends the Spanish Inquisition

On the contrary, it seems that some do. I didn't know that, but should probably have assumed it, since however bad a reputation something may have there is usually someone to speak up for it. Anyway, this piece by Toby Green talks of people who feel the Spanish Inquisition has been 'scapegoated', and discusses political and religious 'influences' upon it.

Souls in a primal landscape

Good news if it's really so: the Western is making a comeback. It has always been one of my favourite movie genres. Speculation over the reasons for its decline often points to the idea that the Western traded on a clear division between right and wrong, good guys and bad guys, whereas this clarity is not so easily available to us now. We are more used to moral ambiguity. It's a theme that's picked up in the article.

But I don't think it can be the whole or even the main story. Moral ambiguity, naturally, has its place. But there are enough situations where moral choices are not all that ambiguous, and enough contexts in which people appear to get aesthetic and moral satisfaction from the fictional representation of a just struggle, a battle between good and evil. Above all, there is no reason intrinsic to the genre why complexity, just like simplicity, can't be accommodated within it.

One writer is quoted in the article as referring to '[t]he primal, universal power of the landscape and the way it strips away everything but the truth of men's souls'. This seems to me to capture part of the power of the Western: it's the dramatic presentation of human relationship against a spare, and often harsh, backdrop. And if someone wants to say here, 'What about the truth of women's souls?' I can see no reason why the Western wouldn't be able to encompass it.