Author: old_wp_importer

The Arabs: A history

, by Eugene Rogan, has just been published in hardback. The various reviews present it as an important work, perhaps even as a successor to Hourani’s

History of the Arab Peoples

— respected, but now somewhat long in the tooth. Hourani was Rogan’s “mentor”, whatever that means, but the younger historian has concentrated mainly on media and historical circumstances, in contrast to Hourani’s excursions into “demography, trading patterns and literature“.

Sadly, the reviews in the Guardian and Telegraph concentrate on the Arabs’ contact and conflict with the West. I’m hoping this is just an artefact of the British newspaper industry, not of a narrow focus in the book itself.

BBC:

A giant straw goat – the traditional Scandinavian yuletide symbol – erected each Christmas in a Swedish town has been burned to the ground yet again.

Inspired by the Swiss minaret ban, a reasonably unpleasant German group is trying to force a pan-European referendum on banning minarets. Apparently

The Lisbon Treaty, which has now entered into force, contains a provision for referenda subsequent to the collection of one million signatures in favor of the measure in question. Just how such a process might work, however, has yet to be sufficiently established.

If that’s true, surely we’re about to be deluged in referendums? A million signatures on a European level is nothing. It’s the kind of number Greenpeace could collect without breaking a sweat, for instance, let alone any party organization.

I can’t find much trace of it in the Lisbon Treaty (but the treaty is massive, and I have no idea where to look). The closest is this delightfully vague and toothless provision:

Not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of

Member States may take the initiative of inviting the European Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties.

The procedures and conditions required for such a citizens’ initiative shall be determined in accordance with the first paragraph of Article 21 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. [article 8A.4]

Alexander Lukashenko has often been referred to as Europe’s last dictator. All of a sudden, though, he seems to be on a push to rapidly liberalize Belarus’ economy and turn it into a high-tech paradise. But is this socialist island really ready to attract Western investors?

[Spiegel]

This is really simple. Business isn’t the opposite of dictatorship; it’s something almost orthogonal to it. If one man’s whim completely changes the government of a country, then it’s a dictatorship. Obviously I’m glad his current passions encompass encouraging business rather than staging purges, but that doesn’t make Lukashenko any less a dictator.

In September, a German military cock-up killed 142 people. mostly civilians. Here is a lengthy article covering not just the details of the incident, but how politicians on all sides downplayed it in the run-up to the election, knowing how opposed the German public were to the war:

“Not a single politician or senior military official told the public the full truth. The subject was to be kept off the radar during Germany’s fall parliamentary election campaign, so as not to ruffle the feathers of an already skeptical electorate. Now the incident has been magnified to a far greater extent than would have been the case if those involved had decided to come clean with the public in the first place.”

Much as I love Germany’s political system of consensus and coalitions, it does tend to result in situations just like this — where the political class stand together against public opinion, and nobody has much incentive to rock the boat.

One one level, I know that mentioning French laws on the burqa is just playing into the UMPs tactics, which are basically a skilled case of legislative trolling. Ensure that what should be a non-issue stays constantly in the news, divert liberal energy into making a right-but-unpopular case, provide an way of expressing islamophobia under cover of women’s rights, keep the fear and distrust simmering.

Anyway, Libération has some more details on the form the law is likely to take. “

So as not to appear discriminatory

“, they write with justifiable snarkiness, the law will be against any covering of the entire face within a public space. Presumably they’ll spend the coming weeks assuring exceptions for skiiers, motorcyclists, beekeepers, and anyone else with a

non-religious reason to cover their face. [I guess they won’t do anything about balaclava-wearing anarchists, oddly enough;)]

Meanwhile laïcite is being played in the other direction, in reaction to the Swiss minaret ban. At least, it is providing the language in which to condemn a statement that “when there are more minarets than Cathedrals in France, it will no longer be France”.

Ah, the ever-flexible French obsession with laïcite — now showing its good side, as the language in which to condemn a statement that “when there are more minarets than Cathedrals in France, it will no longer be France”.

Enjoyably happy-angry things I’ve been reading, and failing to watch.

First, on RATM vs Cowell. K-Punk, my favourite over-the-top theoryhead londoner blogger, gives it the treatment you’d expect. But I prefer cannons_at_dawn, who has this to say:

I would love to see the seething boiling whirlpool of chips on the shoulder of the British public wash Rage Against the Machine to the top spot, there to earnestly quote Franz Fanon at their enemies until they give in, sobbing, and promise to buy Fair Trade

…

The collective impetus to make one’s voice heard in this particularly pointless arena is sadly unlikely to translate into participation in, say, next year’s general election. Or at least not unless some enterprising soul decides to exhume Screaming Lord Sutch.

What it will do, however, is demonstrate that there still exists a demographic which clings limpet-like to the hull of bloody-mindedness, prepared to momentarily stir themselves in the interests of nudging the seat of mainstream popularity with a heated toasting-fork

Earlier entries are also great fun. Including my new favourite description of the way the world ends: “

a cardigan-wearing Geography teacher farting in a human face forever

“.

Meanwhile, the Independent has a surprisingly good article rant about Copenhagen, by Joss Garman. I’d not previously heard of Garman (he’s young, and I’ve been abroad), but he seems to strike just the right balance of being furious without simply condeming mainstream politicians

en masse

.

And over in the day-job, we have another film out from VODO, free to download over bittorrent:

Boy meets girl — on OkCupid. Boy introduces girl to (fictitious) social filesharing site, The Lionshare. Girl digs site, but doesn’t dig boy. Boy mopes around the city, never thinking the Lionshare would be the thing that would lead her away from him.

The Lionshare is an important kind of film for all of us, because it’s the kind of film ‘anyone’ could have made — ‘anyone’, that is, who takes it seriously, writing dialogue (and in-jokes) prised straight from their own lives, the backdrop of their own homes for scenery, friends as actors and their own experiences as scenarios. These stories are ours, and this is the start of a new kind of cinema.

I confess I’ve not yet managed to watch it (still not in the right state of mind to settle down with a film :-)). On the whole, though, people seem to like it — and not

just

because it’s free. If you do watch it, I’d be interested to hear what you think about it.

*not my pun, but how could you not repeat that?

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I’ve been reading AS Byatt’s

Possesion

the last few weeks — lingering over it, because it’s a rich enough book to spend time over, and because I can’t think of anything else that could have the same effect. This passage (p.395) is a little at odds with the rest, but feeds into a big unspoken (and not terribly original) rant of mine on urban mythology — that mesh between Hobsbawm, Grant Morrison, Hogarth, Mike Davis, Erik Davis, and a whole lot more:

A spirit may speak to a peasant like Gode, because that is picturesque, she is surrounded by Romantic crags on the one hand and primitive enough huts and hearths on the other, and her house is lapped by real thick mortal dark. But if there are spirits, I do not see why they are not everywhere, or may not be presumed to be so. You could argue that their voices may well be muffled by solid brick walls and thick plush furnishings and house-proud antimacassars. But the mahogany-polishers and the drapers’ clerks are as much in need of salvation-as much desirous of assurance of an afterlife-as poets or peasants, in the last resort. When they were sure in their unthinking faiths-when the Church was a solid presence in their midst, the Spirit sat docile enough behind the altar rails and the Souls kept-on the whole-to the churchyard and the vicinity of their stones. But now they fear they may not be raised, that their lids may not be lifted, that heaven and hell were no more than faded drawings on a few old church walls, with wax angels and gruesome bogies-they ask, what is there?