normblog

Deprivation

I don't know if you experienced this during the course of today. I did.

Google's search service has been hit by technical problems, with users unable to access search results.

For a period on Saturday, all search results were flagged as potentially harmful, with users warned that the site "may harm your computer".

How quickly we come to rely on things that until recently didn't even exist. I thought, 'Oh no. Without Google how will I cope?' Then everything returned to normal. Phew!

Bill Frindall 1939-2009

The Bearded Wonder has been given out - a bad piece of umpiring if ever there was one. He has died of Legionnaire's disease at the age of 69. Born on the first day of the famous 'Timeless Test' in 1939, Frindall joined the BBC in 1966, the year that Gary Sobers was strutting his stuff across the cricket grounds of England, and he worked on Test Match Special from then on. Before the advent of Cricinfo, no serious student of the game could afford to be without Frindall's Wisden Book of Test Cricket. There are notices of his death here and here.

Hamas as seen from Europe

Wednesday's Irish Times carries an informative piece by Rory Miller on the evolution of relations between the European Union and Hamas. Pivotal to the deterioration in these, Miller says, was Hamas's violent overthrow of Fatah in Gaza in June 2007. (Thanks: TC.)

Further to that and further to the question I raised here, Hamas sympathizers from afar who like to emphasize the organization's democratic credentials might like to think about the allegations of torture and reprisal killings, aka summary executions, currently being made against it. We know that torture is objectionable when practised at Guantanamo. Is that because it's torture, or only because of who's doing it?

Formerly - and still

Hey, I've missed one of those presidential references to the struggle formerly known as 'the war on terror' - and, in fact, sometimes still known as 'the war on terror'. Because that is what the prez sez. Speaking to state department employees just over a week ago, he says 'war on terror'. Here:

We are confronted by extraordinary, complex and interconnected global challenges: the war on terror, sectarian division, and the spread of deadly technology. We did not ask for the burden that history has asked us to bear, but Americans will bear it. We must bear it.

This brings the FKATWOT count to 7, since as FKATWOT adjudicator I rule that the struggle formerly known as 'the war on terror' can remain what it is even if it is sometimes still known as 'the war on terror' - on the simple grounds that it was formerly known as 'the war on terror' whatever we now choose to call it. The prez evidently likes to mix things up a bit, to vary his usage, and why not?

I owe the discovery of this particular presidential reference to a CiF blogger who proves yet once more that you can expel a lot of hot air in trying to dream up reasons why 'the war on terror' is a bad, bad phrase:

[D]efining our fight against al-Qaida and its like-minded network of jihadists as a war on terror gives legitimacy to a fanatical fringe in political Islam...

For that's what you do when you declare war on something: you give legitimacy to it. War on germs? Legitimizes germs. War on crime? Oh, legitimizes, legitimizes - it almost brings those darn criminals within the law. Remember the war against fascism? That really put Hitler and Mussolini on the map of lovable legitimate folk.

Naked as nature intended but Mill opposed

'How would one feel if one was to go walking in nature and suddenly came across a group of naked people?' Personally, I wouldn't feel too bothered. However:

[T]he Swiss authorities are trying to fend off hordes of German ramblers dressed in nothing more than a rucksack and walking boots.

Now, come on, people. More than two years ago, and in connection with a similar story, I left you with a question. Have I been bombarded with answers to it? I have not.

So I'll put it to you a second time. Mill says that 'the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others'. I think that's a good principle. But Mill makes an exception for offences against public decency, which I take it are deemed to be offensive without - or at least arguably without - being provably harmful to others. I, too, think there should be a category of offences against public decency, though I'm not sure that walking naked 'in nature' needs to be one of them. But is there a way of justifying this exception to Mill's harm principle that doesn't let in (too many) other exceptions? You have two and a half more years. But I'm expecting to hear from you.

Power play

Samantha Power is back, with a senior foreign policy position in the Obama White House. This despite having referred to Hillary Clinton, during the campaign for the democratic nomination, as 'a monster'. It just goes to show you. No, not that 'monster' insults will always help you along in life; but that reconciliation is sometimes possible:

[Power] was rehabilitated after the election when she made a gesture to apologize to Clinton and was included in the transition teams for both the State Department and the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

At the time, an official close to the transition said Power's "gesture to bury the hatchet" with Clinton had been well-received.

231 million per cent

Zimbabwe's acting finance minister Patrick Chinamasa has announced that henceforth Zimbabweans may transact business in foreign currencies. Acting finance minister pretty well gets it right, I'd say. Mugabe and his cronies should take the next logical step. After downgrading the national currency, they should do the same with the 'acting' government, and let somebody else have a go.

US boycott move

There's an attempt amongst US academics to mount an academic boycott of Israel. I wonder if they'll be able to match the ahievements of their UK counterparts. They match them, in any case, in the way their consciences function:

"As educators of conscience, we have been unable to stand by and watch in silence Israel's indiscriminate assault on the Gaza Strip and its educational institutions," the U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel stated in its inaugural press release last Thursday.

They only 'watch in silence' as things go not entirely well elsewhere on the planet. Responding to Haaretz, David Lloyd of the University of Southern California wrote that...

... to the best of his knowledge, all supporters of the anti-Israel boycott were also opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Asked if logic wouldn't dictate that he and his colleagues boycott themselves, he responded, "Self-boycott is a difficult concept to realize. But speaking for myself, I would have supported and honored such a boycott had it been proposed by my colleagues overseas."

But it never was, was it? And you wonder if Mr Lloyd thinks to wonder why. (Thanks: SdeW.)

The normblog profile 280: Leila Segal

Leila Segal was born in London and trained as a barrister. Between 1999 and 2006 she spent time in Cuba, where she started writing short stories. She edits the journal Education Law Update, and works on community art projects, using writing and photography to give marginalized groups a voice. Leila worked on Change the Picture with sex workers in London's East End; and leads the Jaffa Photography Project, with Jewish and Palestinian teenagers in Israel. She blogs at The Other Side.

Why do you blog? > To write and be read. It's an incentive to produce fresh work, responding to the world around you. Knowing you have an audience is a great motivator - it's what writers long for. You develop a voice in tandem with your readers. I love the dialogue.

What has been your best blogging experience? > Having people I've never met email me from across the world.

Who are your intellectual heroes? > My father - he's incredibly clever, but also very patient, and explains things.

What are you reading at the moment? > Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation by Eyal Weizman, and The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard.

Who are your political heroes? > My teacher Dinorah in Havana, and the people of Palestine and Israel who continue to work for a just peace against all the odds.

Who are your cultural heroes? > Short story writers Raymond Carver and Jane Bowles; brave, brutal playwright Sarah Kane; Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said.

What is the best novel you've ever read? > Thérèse Desqueyroux by François Mauriac. It's a resistance tale. I studied it at school, and have never forgotten the horror of Thérèse's slow refusal and decline.

What is your favourite poem? > 'For Jane' by Charles Bukowski.

What is your favourite movie? > Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep - set in LA ghetto Watts, in the '70s. Quiet, beautiful and incredibly moving.

What is your favourite song? > 'A Change is Gonna Come', as sung by Otis Redding.

Who is your favourite composer? > Shostakovitch, if I can take it, or Bach.

Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you've ever changed your mind? > I used to think that in a society that bought and exploited women's bodies, sex work got women their due. Now I think that the physical and emotional cost is too high. Society has to change - it's not for women to adapt.

Can you name a work of non-fiction which has had a major and lasting influence on how you think about the world? > The Writer's Voice, by Al Alvarez. He taught me that writing comes from presence on the page. It's a visceral, not intellectual, act.

What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > Our innate desire to destroy that which makes us afraid.

What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > Work with what you've got.

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? > Yes - what people profess is seldom what they are.

What do you consider the most important personal quality? > Compassion.

What personal fault do you most dislike? > Arrogance.

In what circumstances would you be willing to lie? > To get a parcel delivered in a window smaller than 'between 9am and 5pm'.

What commonly enjoyed activities do you regard as a waste of time? > Trying to persuade others they're wrong; the use of force.

If you were to relive your life to this point, is there anything you'd do differently? > I'd get things into perspective.

What would you call your autobiography? > You May Wish To Be Here (Bruce Nauman).

What would your ideal holiday be? > Antarctica, surfing with the penguins.

What do you like doing in your spare time? > Wandering about, chatting to strangers, drinking coffee.

What is your most treasured possession? > My notebook.

If you had to change your first name, what would you change it to? > Sonia. It's got a kind of exotic Russian spy feel to it, and it's beautiful.

What would be your ideal choice of alternative profession or job? > Sailor.

Who is your favourite comedian or humorist? > Jack Dee.

If you could have one (more or less realistic) wish come true, what would you wish for? > To be cured of insomnia. I am insanely jealous of people who lie down at night, close their eyes and sink into a peaceful sleep until morning comes.

How, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money? > I'd do everything pretty much the same - it would just be a lot easier.

[The normblog profile is a weekly Friday morning feature. A list of all the profiles to date, and the links to them, can be found here.]

Not so past, Mr Cohen

There may sometimes be reasons why breaches of the law should not be punished. But if these are serious breaches (and assuming that the law in question is just); if they involve violating fundamental human rights; if the violations come within the category of crimes against humanity - then the reasons for non-prosecution need to be good and powerful ones. The argument put forward in this column by Richard Cohen from the Washington Post does not contain any reason of that sort. It concerns those who have been responsible for carrying out or enabling torture and is based on the conceit that the past is another country - that past being... well, the last seven years. Cohen says:

[W]e have to be respectful of those who were in that Sept. 11 frame of mind, who thought they were saving lives - and maybe were - and who, in any case, were doing what the nation and its leaders wanted.

Again:

We were the ones, remember, who just wanted to be kept safe. So, it is important, as well as fair, not to punish those who did what we wanted done - back when we lived, scared to death, in a place called the Past.

I would take issue with the claim that the relevant 'we' here - 'the nation' - wanted torture. There will have been plenty of Americans who did not want torture carried out by those acting on their behalf. But, want or not want, torture is illegal under all civilized law, and the United States is a signatory of the UN Convention Against Torture. There is an elementary difference, understood by everyone, between those who actually break a law and others who do not, but who may have all kinds of attitudes to those who do, including, some of them, attitudes of approval and support. An attitude of support for criminal misdemeanours may mean that those holding it are morally guilty; but moral responsibility isn't the same thing as legal guilt, which is only borne by those breaking the law and their direct accomplices. If you were to apply Cohen's argument to people who carry out acts of terror, they could doubtless cite bodies of opinion that were favourable to them.