normblog

Pamela

She had a quiet, slightly tremulous voice and a genuinely modest, self-effacing demeanour. Underneath that gentle exterior, however, was a woman of passionate conviction.

From Jane Sullivan's obituary for Pamela Bone in tomorrow's Age. And these are the closing lines from Pamela's book Bad Hair Days:

[T]hat is about all I can say to you too. Don't put it off. Allow yourself to be happy. This, now, is it. This is life. Love it, now.

I say this to you too. Don't give up on people, ever. People, and this life, are the only guaranteed things we have.

Some time ago I read a piece of advice for people who have incurable cancer. It seemed at once very simple and very profound. It said: 'yes, you are going to die, but until you do, you are alive'.

So that's what I'm doing. Being alive.

Jews with and without understanding

They're Jews and they're not gonna be celebrating Israel's 60th birthday. Oh, they find it understandable that others are celebrating - understandable 'in the context of centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust'. Which, you might think, would mean they can understand it. But by the end of their letter, all of five paragraphs later, you could be forgiven for the impression that they no longer do find it understandable why others should want to celebrate. For they, you see, cannot celebrate. This is not surprising given that the intervening paragraphs tell you only one kind of thing about Israel - in which the centuries of persecution no longer figure, in which Israel has no achievements to its credit, and in which the country has never faced any threat from anyone, and its citizens have never been subject to hostility, including of a lethal kind. These are Jews who at once understand and do not. Jews with mics. You might prefer to read about these Jews with bikes (click on 'continue without registering').

Gordimer explains an elementary point

Further to this post, Nadine Gordimer has confirmed that she will be visiting Israel to attend a writers' festival in Jerusalem, despite the pressure that's been put on her to withdraw:

My solidarity with our struggle against apartheid [she is reported as saying] surely can leave no doubt in the minds of my comrades and others concerned that I do not support the present (Israeli) government of their country and deplore many of its actions.
.....
The purpose (of my visit), conditions on which I have agreed to participate, are for writers to discuss their responsibilities to their art, their communities, their countries and the world we share.

That one can visit a country without condoning the actions of its government, and even (would you believe?) in order to oppose these, is a principle well understood by those urging her not to go, at least in relation to countries other than Israel. (Thanks: AL.)

The age of permanent football

I don't remember when I was last so tense for so long at a game of football. Probably there's no last time that I was. After Paul Scholes's magnificent goal in the 14th minute (and here), Barcelona's passing was - as in the first leg - so impressive and so relentless you felt they had to score. The last few minutes of the game were agonizing. The crowd at Old Trafford were on their feet willing the team on, not to concede the goal that would have sunk us. Morris said that he'd aged a few years, and I agreed with him: I'd aged a few years.

Louise Taylor has an unusual angle on these events. She finds an unlikely historical connection between Fergie and United, on the one hand, and Moscow, on the other - via the figure of Leon Trotsky. Mind you, unless she's got mixed up with her sentence construction, she seems to be anticipating an ice pick for United in the final on May 21st.

Silent assassin

Malcolm Marshall would have been 50 this month. From an appreciation by Pat Symes:

Marshall liked Geoff Boycott, admiring his technical correctness and his bravery. Whenever they played against each other, a curious ritual was enacted. As Boycott walked out to bat and Marshall prepared to bowl the first ball, Marshall would say: "You hookin' today, Boycs?" To which Boycott would reply: "Not today, Maco." Marshall would then bowl him a bouncer, Boycott would sway away from it, they would smile at each other and the match would begin.

(Thanks: IH.)

Colluding with torture

If MI5 officers were questioning people in Pakistan who had been undergoing prolonged bouts of interrogation, including torture, at the hands of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, then the claim that they (MI5) had 'no reason to know' the ISI might have been torturing them does indeed beggar belief. Intelligence services are known to get things wrong, of course, but that they could be unaware of Pakistan's record in the (mis)treatment of detainees isn't credible. No more credible is it that the MI5 officers would be unable to recognize when someone brought to them for questioning had already undergone many days of mistreatment. That they were turning a blind eye looks a lot more probable.

A scientist on Blackburn

Email from Henry aka TheBigHenry:

Simon Blackburn's position on 'The myth of the scientist' that:

This claims that there is an expertise, science, and that people who are good at it deserve a lot of attention. This is almost wholly false. There is no such thing as a scientist... There are only biologists, chemists, physicists, mathematicians and so on. These may be very bright people, but the moment one of them steps a millimetre or two outside their special area of expertise, they are no better than the rest of us.

... is absolutely false.

Before my 16-plus years as a nuclear physicist, specializing in the development and application of Monte Carlo simulation techniques for the solution of grand challenge problems concerning nuclear power and weapons at Los Alamos National Laboratory, I spent five years at Cornell, six more at Columbia, followed by 15 years at my first scientific position beyond my doctorate. In that more than quarter century I studied applied mathematics, numerical analysis, computer applications, Monte Carlo simulation techniques, chemistry (both qualitative and quantitative analysis), and more physics and engineering disciplines than you can shake a stick at. At Cornell I became an engineer, specializing first in chemistry and subsequently in physics. At Columbia I became a nuclear scientist, specializing in nuclear engineering and nuclear physics, as well as computer simulation techniques. At my first job I considered myself a numerical scientist specializing in Monte Carlo simulation techniques, both development and application, and finally at Los Alamos I became an applied and theoretical nuclear physicist. I make the bold claim that I am more knowledgeable in mathematics, chemistry, engineering, computer systems, in addition to physics than the average non-scientist. And based on my personal non-scientific reading, I am pretty sure I can hold my own in some fields beyond my special fields of expertise. And I strongly believe that most people who consider themselves to be scientists can make similar claims.

In all my years of study, which continues to the present, what I learned best of all was how to learn.

Is international law different in southern Africa?

Writing from Johannesburg, Hopewell Radebe presents a case for the Southern African Development Community threatening Robert Mugabe with the use of military force, in order to 'reduce the likelihood that [he] will proceed with the coup-by-stealth that appears to be under way'. Not for a moment do I think this is likely to happen. But there are some interesting elements in the case Radebe presents. He speaks of there being a legal right to launch military action in Zimbabwe:

Such action would be... in line with the African Union (AU) charter, which was amended in 2003 to permit military intervention in countries facing "a serious threat to legitimate order".

This move was also reinforced at subregional level in 2004, when the SADC Protocol on Politics, Defence and Security legalised intervention in cases of "a threat to the legitimate authority of the government (such as a military coup)".

That does raise the question which I've used to head the post. As Radebe goes on to say, the right of intervention in Zimbabwe would come 'not only from humanitarian concerns, but from Mugabe's illegal seizure of power'. And he cites some African precedents. But an illegal coup is not in itself the same as a humanitarian crisis (justifying humanitarian intervention); and nor is it authorization by the UN Security Council. From the same article:

"Legal government intervention" is an African innovation: an international law response to the cycle of coups and counter-coups that has plagued African states for decades. Both in treaties and in practice, African states have subtly shifted away from their traditional fixation on sovereignty, and begun to assert the right to intervene to prevent unconstitutional changes of government.

So, is this subtle shift away from sovereignty recognized by international lawyers? If so, is it applicable outside Africa? It's the first time I've come across the idea of an African innovation in this matter. (Thanks: KS.)

Wright bombast

Jesus said, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic, divisive principles.

That's the Reverend Jeremiah Wright speaking yesterday in Washington. Biblical or not, his interpretation is based on a rather flexible interpretation of the signifier 'you' - so that it has different referents within the same sentence. The whole point about terrorism, in its accurate meaning, is that the 'you' who has it 'coming back' to them is a different 'you' from those who were doing terrorism on other people, if indeed they were doing that. This flexibility of interpretation involves treating those who were in the Twin Towers on 9/11, or who were blown up on the London Underground on 7/7, as if they were culpable for some previous act of terrorism, which is, in general, false. Not only is Wright rather selective in what he takes from the Bible, since somewhere in it there will be an injunction against killing the innocent, he himself is innocent of the understanding that guilt is not acquired simply through community membership, much less by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Feet first

'Shoes are bad.' I'd better tell the Linda.