Telmarines: the ultimate Whenwes

Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've just finished reading Prince Caspian for the fourth time, and this time I read it chapter for chapter with Inside Prince Caspian by Devin Brown, and most of my comments on it will be found in my review of Inside Prince Caspian.

I will add one thing here, though -- that on this reading I was struck even more by how C.S. Lewis got it absolutely right about the notion of white supremacy -- which in Prince Caspian appears as Telmarine supremacy.

Back in the 1960s, when I first read it, Kenya had just become independent, and there was a flood of disgruntled white immigrants from Kenya into apartheid South Africa. They soon became known as "Whenwes" because of their habit of prefacing most things they said with the phrase "When we were in Keen-yah...".

They were also given much air time on South African radio (no TV in those days), especially by current affairs host Ivor Benson, who seemed to have a Whenwe from Kenya every week on his prime-time propaganda show, where they spread the message that the white man should rule, and black people were incompetent and unfit to govern.

One of the things we wondered about was why, if they wanted to get away from black people, white Kenyan immigrants didn't go to a country where there were no or few black people. Why did they come to South Africa, where the majority of the population were black?

It soon became apparent, however, from what they said on the radio, that they could not do without black people, because there would be no one to "clean my carpets, scrub the floors, and polish up the hearth". They needed black people, but only if they were subservient to white rule -- and that is exactly how C.S. Lewis portrays the Telmarines in Prince Caspian -- as the ultimate Whenwes. They were unwilling to stay in Narnia if they were no longer the ruling race, with all others subservient to them.

And C.S. Lewis nails it. He nails it absolutely. The Telmarines are the Platonic ideal Whenwes, white supremacists to the core.

View all my reviews

Is Putin's "secret weapon" going to blow up in his face?

More contrasting views from Russia and the West. According to Time the Orthodox faithful constitute Putin's new "secret weapon". Russia: Pussy Riot and Putin’s Religious Backing | World | TIME.com:

The prison sentence handed down last week against three members of Pussy Riot, a group of activists opposed to President Vladimir Putin, will restrict a lot more than the personal freedoms of the young women convicted. Judge Marina Syrova sentenced them to two years in prison for offending the faithful of the Orthodox Church by performing a crude anti-Putin song near the altar of a Moscow cathedral in February. While many were offended by the gesture, the judge’s verdict has put the state’s seal of approval on the righteous anger of one community, and that anger is proving hard to control.

But according to a Russian source something different is going down Russian Orthodox to Form Party | Russia | RIA Novosti:

Autocratic Russia and the Union of Orthodox Citizens are planning to register an “Orthodox” political party, Izvestia daily reported on Thursday.

The organization’s founders said they see Russia as a monarchy with a special role for the Russian Orthodox Church and the patriarch of Moscow and all Russia as the country’s spiritual leader.

Does that mean Putin is going to leave his own political party, and join this new one?

Pussy Riot: crossed wires

I've been reading many differing opinions about Pussy Riot, the punk rock group whose members are on trial in Moscow after inturrupting a church service in the Christ the Saviour Cathedral with a political song.

Reading different opinions is one thing, but reading different facts is another. For example the US branch of Amnesty International is claiming that it was a case of mistaken identity, and that the three facing trial are not the same people as the ones who sang the song in church. Take Action Now - Amnesty International USA:

Three young women are being detained by Russian authorities for allegedly performing a protest song in a cathedral as part of a feminist punk group "Pussy Riot".

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Ekaterina Samutsevich were arrested in March 2012 and charged with "hooliganism". If found guilty, they could be jailed for up to 7 years.

The three women deny any involvement in the protest although even if they took part, the severity of the response of the Russian authorities would not be a justifiable response to the peaceful - if, to many, offensive - expression of their political beliefs.

Tell the Russian authorities to drop all charges and release them!

Where did Amensty International get their information from, or are they deliberately trying to mislead people?

Forty years ago I got thousands of Christmas cards from people all over the world, thanks to Amnesty International. It must have kept the Security Police quite busy back then. But in this case they seem to have come up with "facts" that are known only to them, and that don't seem to be known even to the defendants in the case.

For instance, according to a report of the trial in Rapsi News:

Defendant in the Pussy Riot case Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has called the "punk prayer" performed in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior an "ethical mistake," stressing that she had no intention of offending anybody, the Khamovnichesky District Court told the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI/rapsinews.com).

Tolokonnikova's defense attorney Violetta Volkova read out her response to the indictment. The defendant noted in her address that her conduct had only political and artistic motives.

How could they have had "no intention of offending anyone" by their conduct, if, as Amnesty International maintains, they weren't even there in the first place?

There have been wildly conflicting accounts of what they are charged with. According to one news report they are charged with "disorderly conduct", for which, we are told, they could face up to seven years in prison.

According to another report

On February 21, five girls wearing brightly colored balaclavas stormed the altar of downtown Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral to perform an anti-Putin protest song entitled, “Holy Sh*t.”

Prosecutors have maintained that the Pussy Riot members "inflicted substantial damage to the sacred values of the Christian ministry…infringed upon the sacramental mystery of the Church… [and] humiliated in a blasphemous way the age-old foundations of the Russian Orthodox Church."

Other reports hav said that they sang "Mother Mary, save us from Putin".

Since the incident has been widely publicised on YouTube, surely there must be some place, somewhere on the web, where what they actually sang is accurately reported?

I asked if anyone knew what they were actually sining, and my daughter found a link that provided a translation:

Punk-Prayer "Virgin Mary, Put Putin Away"

(choir)

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, put Putin away
Рut Putin away, put Putin away

(end chorus)

...
Black robe, golden epaulettes
All parishioners crawl to bow
The phantom of liberty is in heaven
Gay-pride sent to Siberia in chains

The head of the KGB, their chief saint,
Leads protesters to prison under escort
In order not to offend His Holiness
Women must give birth and love

Shit, shit, the Lord's shit!
Shit, shit, the Lord's shit!

(Chorus)

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist
Become a feminist, become a feminist

(end chorus)

The Church’s praise of rotten dictators
The cross-bearer procession of black limousines
A teacher-preacher will meet you at school
Go to class - bring him money!

Patriarch Gundyaev believes in Putin
Bitch, better believe in God instead
The belt of the Virgin can’t replace mass-meetings
Mary, Mother of God, is with us in protest!

(Chorus)

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, put Putin away
Рut Putin away, put Putin away

(end chorus)

Weird words: closure

I first learnt the meaning of the word "closure" as a student, in the context of student debates. When something was being discussed in a formal meeting, and a lot of people were repeating a lot of similar points, someone would say "I move closure", and the chairman/speaker could put it to an immediate vote. If it was passed the chairman asked all those who wished to speak to raise their hands, and made a not of their names, and then no one else was allowed to speak. Closure meant that debate was closed.

More recently a new meaning has appeared.

When someone dies unexpectedly, and in an newsworthy manner, journalists ask how their family or friends how they feel, and they usually say, "We just want closure."

This is duly reported by the media, and everyone seems to be satisfied.

If the bodies of those who were disappeared by the police during the apartheid era are recovered and reburied, journalists ask their family and friends how they feel, and they say "Now we have closure."

This, too, is duly reported by the media, and everyone is satisfied.

I was never quite sure what this closure was, but clearly it was something people had or did not have when someone else had died.

Now here's a new datum, which sets the cat among the pigeons: By Reader Request: Closure | Clarissa's Blog: A reader asked the following question:

Is closure an American phenomenon? Do other cultures just say “piss off” and go on their merry ways?

And Blogger Clarissa replies that "closure" is indeed an American phenomenon, and is unknown in Russian or Ukrainian culture.

That leaves me wondering whether Ukrainian funerals are seen as an opportunity to tell the "dear departed" to "piss off"?

Western Media-Appointed Good Guys Strike Again

In the civil war going on in Syria, the Western media have appointed the rebels against the Assad regime as the good guys, and woe to those who disagree with their judgement. Among those who disagree are probably most of the Christians in Syria, who fear what will happen to them if the rebels take over.

The appointment of the good guys by the western media is not merely a wrong opinion, they seem to have got the facts wrong as well. Western intervention in Libya's civil war last year did not bring good results, and the same thing seems to be happening in Syria as well.

The Pittsford Perennialist: Western Media-Appointed Good Guys Strike Again:

If you were paying attention you would not be surprised about these "attacks on the people of Tawargha [that] are so severe that the United Nations has labeled them 'war crimes'" — After Libya's War, Acts Of Vengeance.

Now, if the official "bad guys" had been accused of this, this "one more fact about the town that was destroyed" would not have been buried at the end of the article: "In this overwhelmingly Arab nation, most of Tawargha's population was black." No, if the actors were reversed, that bit would be front and center, and the phrase "ethnic cleansing" would have rightly been used in the headline.

Not that the Assad regime are the good guys. But while it is desirable to get rid of a bad government, it is better to replace it with something better rather than something worse.

As my blogging friend The Pittsford Perennialist also points out

Likewise, news that "the infamous Houla massacre in Syria, which the US and NATO hoped would be the casus belli for their planned invasion, was in fact carried out by rebel forces" should come of no surprise — Implosion of The Houla Massacre Story — Is Anyone Paying Attention?

For the other side of the story, see Syrian Christians fear Islamist rule if Assad goes.

Russian Church Opposes Syrian Intervention - NYTimes.com:

It is clear by now that Russia’s government has dug in against outside intervention in Syria, its longtime partner and last firm foothold in the Middle East. Less well known is the position taken by the Russian Orthodox Church, which fears that Christian minorities, many of them Orthodox, will be swept away by a wave of Islamic fundamentalism unleashed by the Arab Spring.

In his warnings, Patriarch Kirill I invokes Bolshevik persecution still fresh in the Russian imagination, writing of “the carcasses of defiled churches still remaining in our country.”

The western media have criticised the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church for their non-interventionist approach, and accuse them of sitting idly by and failing to act to "stop the killing". But the question is, who is doing the killing?

In Syria, as in Libya, the killing has been, and is being done by both sides. What is needed is not military intervention, but peacemaking intervention.

Two evils for the price of one: abortion and pro-lifers

I think that wilful abortion is evil, and a violation of human rights. But there are times when I think pro-lifers are just as evil, especially when I come across things like this, found via a link on Facebook.

The person who posted it on Facebook introduced the link by saying "The Obama administration rules that stock holdes aren't really owners and have no real say in the operation of the business they hold shares in."

I was curious and had a look at the site.

Obama agency rules Pepsi use of cells derived from aborted fetus ‘ordinary business’ | LifeSiteNews.com:

In a decision delivered Feb 28th, President Obama’s Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruled that PepsiCo’s use of cells derived from aborted fetal remains in their research and development agreement with Senomyx to produce flavor enhancers falls under “ordinary business operations.”

I became curious about "President Obama's agency", and discovered that the site that mentioned it couldn't even get the name right. I think they were referring to this:

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (frequently abbreviated SEC) is a federal agency[2] which holds primary responsibility for enforcing the federal securities laws and regulating the securities industry, the nation's stock and options exchanges, and other electronic securities markets in the United States. In addition to the 1934 Act that created it, the SEC enforces the Securities Act of 1933, the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 and other statutes. The SEC was created by section 4 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (now codified as 15 U.S.C. 78d and commonly referred to as the 1934 Act).

Was Obama even alive in 1934, when this particular agency was created? Will it cease to exist when his term of office ends? This really is a prize piece of vicious and malicious misreporting, and with such standards of dishonesty and lack of integrity I would not trust anything found on that site.

Yes, I'd boycott Pepsi too, if it were available and if the report were true, but it is wrapped up with so much deliberate misreporting that I wouldn't trust anything in that story.

Fifty years ago folk singer Jeremy Taylor did a rap piece called Joburg talking blues, in the course of which the supposedly American narrator said, "In America there's two things we can't stand: the one's segregation, and the other's niggers."

When I read pieces like this, I feel a bit like that narrator. There are two things I can't stand. The one's abortion, and the other's pro-lifers.

Bonking zombie is back

A few years ago I discovered that vampires were more than undead monsters that populated horror novels. There actually is a vampire sub-culture, with live human beings who enjoy drinking human blood.

But I thought zombies were safely(?) in the realm of the undead, until I read this article BONKING ZOMBIE IS BACK! Residents live in fear after gogo is found dead in house of sex . . . | DailySun blog:

Last year, sex in the house of the Veeplaas zombie led to a mother, gogo and little boy being taken to places of care.

NOW THE MUM IS DEAD AFTER NEIGHBOURS CLAIM SHE WAS BONKING HER ZOMBIE SON!

Stories about self-confessed zombie Mthandazo Klaasen (39) having sex with his 69-year-old mother spread like wildfire in Port Elizabeth’s Veeplaas kasi three weeks ago.

Does the Daily Sun know something that the rest of us don't? Even the Zombie Research Society says that:

1)The modern zombie is a relentlessly aggressive, reanimated human corpse driven by a biological infection*; 2)The zombie pandemic is coming. It’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when; 3)Enthusiastic debate about zombies is essential to the survival of the human race. (*A subset is the living zombie, defined as a relentlessly aggressive human driven by a biological infection.)

Though that footnote about the subset could possibly fit the case that the Daily Sun reports on.

Until recently most reports I've seen about zombies in the press have undoubtedly been of the undead variety, and there has been no question of "biological infection".

The reports have usually concerned people who have been accused of being witches because their neighbours allege that they have seen zombies working in their gardens. The witches, it is said, resuscitate corpses to do chores for them.

But a self-confessed zombie?

That's a new one on me? They even have a picture of him, looking, well, quite un-undead.

I wonder if any reporters of the Daily Sun have seen his death certificate. Have they been to his grave to see if his body has been exhumed? Actually I don't expect journalists from papers like the Daily Sun to research or verify their facts since their main purpose is to make money out of spreading idle gossip in print. But it would really be interesting to know something about the new zombies. And precisely what a "self-confessed" zombie is confessing.

London's burning - remember 2010?

In London (the city that is to host the 2012 Olympics) groups of young people rampaged for the third straight night.

It is difficult to resist the temptation to schadenfreude when one recalls the way the Brit media behaved over the football World Cup in South Africa in 2010, where every petty crime that occurred in South Africa was gleefully and prominently reported with the reminder that South Africa was to hold the World Cup in 2010.

So when I read stories like this, I recall those days.

Market Inline - British riots spread through more cities on the third night of violence:

In London, groups of young people rampaged for a third straight night, setting buildings, vehicles and garbage dumps alight, looting stores and pelting police officers with bottles and fireworks. The spreading disorder was an unwelcome view of London’s volatility for leaders organizing the 2012 Summer Olympics in less than a year.

In 2010, the Daily Mail was particularly bad in this respect. See, for example Notes from underground: Legends from a small country: 'Kill a Tourist Day'. But other papers joined in, sometimes even making up completely bogus stories and headlines for the purpose.

So as London (the city that is to host the 2012 Olympic Games) burns, many South Africans might be tempted to think "serves them right."

We'll probably resist the temptation, but watch the South African tabloids to see if you can catch a glimmer of Schadenfreude. You never know.

Murdoch and the media: penetrating the murk (and muck)

Now that Rupert Murdoch's muck-raking journalistic empire is having its own muck raked, some things we didn't know are coming to light. Like Murdoch's fingers in the religious publishing pie.

I don't normally cite Frank Schaeffer's blog. It's in my blogroll because I read it occasionally, but I don't usually cite blogs that do not alow comments and are effectively a one-way communication. Also, Frank Schaffer is a bit of a loose cannon, always telling us what he doesn't like, but saying far less about what he does like. When I met him (in 1995) he was an Orthodox Christian. I don't know whether he still is, or what he is now, because he's always telling us what he is against, but never what he is for.

Nevertheless, I think this post of his is worth citing, and so break my own rule in order to do so.

Frank Schaeffer: Only Bad People Will Work With Murdoch Now (That We Know What We Know):

And now the Murdoch scandal has spread from the just closed News of the World to the Sun and the Sunday Times of London. So it is not about 'one bad apple' but about Murdoch's company's methods across the board, as extensive coverage in the Guardian has proved.

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown suffered from years of criminal intrusion by the Murdoch team, including pilfering medical records of his child. His infant son's medical records were obtained by the Sun. And Brown's tax returns were hacked. Murdoch companies corrupted the police, bribed them into handing over information on their targets, including the prime minister and the queen.

I was interested in the mention of the London Sunday Times.

When I was in the UK studying in the 1960s I used to read the Sunday Times and The Observer quite regularly. In those days those two were regarded as the "quality" Sunday papers, with good news coverage and interesting features. I think that was before Murdoch came on the scene.

Then I came home to South Africa and didn't read them any more.

But 11 years ago I was in Albania teaching for a while, and when I was leaving and was waiting for my plane in the airport departure lounge I picked up a copy of the Sunday Times that someone had discarded, and was quite shocked to discover how much it had deteriorated in 35 years. Every news article showed flagrant right-wing bias, and it read like Die Suidwester of the 1970s.

The "quality" epithet certainly no longer applied.

And so I was even more shocked to learn a few years later, from Cathy Wood who had worked with me in the Anglican Church in Namibia, that John Witherow was the editor of the Sunday Times and so apparently the one responsible for that paper's deterioration.

John Witherow had been a fellow-worker with us in Namibia, and I remembered him working to set up a library to help correspondence students and things like that.

It was sad to discover that he had apprently been "bought" by the Murdoch empire.

But there's more.

Frank Schaeffer goes on to say

So why are religious moralizers writing about high-minded ethical themes still prepared to enrich Murdoch as they are doing?

Murdoch is one of America's biggest publishers of religious books, including the 33-million seller Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. Murdoch is also publisher of Rob Bell's Love Wins. And he also publishes Deepak Chopra and even Desmond Tutu!

Do these religious authors -- and many more besides -- writing about ethics, love and moral rectitude wear gloves when they cash their royalty checks?

Murdoch bought into the billion-dollar American religion market. He bought the venerable evangelical Zondervan publishing house. He bought the religion web site Beliefnet. And he owns HarperOne that publishes Chopra and Tutu.

And that's where I'd like to ask Frank Schaeffer (if his blog allowed comments), which religious publishing houses one can trust?

And there's more.

The Murdoch empire's war mongering. Was it supporting the blood-thirsty politicians in their desire for war, or was it actually pushing them down that road?

Neil Clark: Oh, What a Lovely War! Murdoch's other legacy:

But as shocking as the allegations of illegal news gathering have been, the greatest crime of Murdoch's UK newspaper empire has gone largely unreported. Namely that no other newspaper group has as much blood on its hands when it comes to propagandising for illegal and fraudulent military conflicts.

And as for the revelations of British police corruption, they make Jackie Selebi's peccadillos look quite innocuous by comparison.

nourishing obscurity: Rebekahaha sails away…….

nourishing obscurity | Rebekahaha sails away…….: "The Lady of Shalott is a magical being who lives alone on an island upstream from King Arthur’s Camelot. Her business is to look at the world outside her castle window in a mirror, and to weave what she sees into a tapestry. She is forbidden by the magic to look at the outside world directly. The farmers who live near her island hear her singing and know who she is, but never see her.

An autumn storm suddenly arises. The lady leaves her castle, finds a boat, writes her name on it, gets into the boat, sets it adrift, and sings her death song as she drifts down the river to Camelot."



See the rest at: nourishing obscurity | Rebekahaha sails away…

Telephone tapping and worse

One would think, with all the brouhaha about the closure of News of the World as a result of the telephone tapping scandal, that people might think twice about sending out spam e-mails like this

XCeptor - the ultimate spy software for mobile phones - you can install one REMOTELY to any phone around the world.

Now all you will need to do in order to get total control over a mobile (target) phone of a person of your interest is to send the special MMS to that target phone, which is generated by our unique Xsepter LOADER. This way you can get very valuable and otherwise un-accessible information about a person of your interest very easily.

All you will need to do is to install our unique Xseptic LOADER to your mobile phone and start its execution. You will get the dialog box on the display of your mobile phone and you will be requested to enter a phone number of a target mobile phone of a person of your interest. Afterwords you will choose SEND option in that dialog box. The Xseptoid LOADER will send the special MMS message to the target phone immediately and a person of your interest will have no idea that this special MMS message has been received by his phone. Our Xseptic software will be immediately installed to a target phone and it will be automatically configured for communication with your (source) phone. The special MMS message which has been used as the carrier of our Xsepter software from your (source) phone to a target phone will be automatically deleted then.

The example of use:

You will send the special MMS message containing our unique Xsepter software to a mobile phone of e.g. your girlfriend. In case your girlfriend will be using her (target) mobile phone, you will be provided by following unique functions:

In case your girlfriend will make an outgoing call or in case her (target) phone will receive an incoming call, you will get on your personal standard mobile phone an immediate SMS message about her call. This will give you a chance to listen to such call immediately on your standard mobile phone.

In case your girlfriend will send an outgoing SMS message from her (target) mobile phone or she will receive a SMS message then you will receive a copy of this message on your mobile phone immediately.

This target phone will give you a chance to listen to all sounds in its the surrounding area even in case the phone is switched off. Therefore you can hear very clearly every spoken word around the phone.

You will get a chance to find at any time the precise location of your girlfriend by GPS satellites.

All these functions may be activated / deactivated via simple SMS commands.

... wouldn't one?

The name of the software has been changed to protect the guilty, but no doubt lots of unscrupulous journalists already know and use it.

False neutrality

Yesterday the Western media were full of stories about Egypt. Australia might have vanished off the face of the planet (is it still there?) and we wouldn't have known. "Breaking News" strips at the bottom of the screen told us that Queensland was about to be hit by the mother of all cyclones, but all they showed were repeats of the same footage of protests in the streets and squares of Cairo.

I had just read one of the most lucid and clear eye-witness accounts of what was happening in Egypt at Robert Fisk: Secular and devout. Rich and poor. They marched together with one goal - The Independent:

It was a victory parade – without the victory. They came in their hundreds of thousands, joyful, singing, praying, a great packed mass of Egypt, suburb by suburb, village by village, waiting patiently to pass through the 'people's security' checkpoints, draped in the Egyptian flag of red, white and black, its governess eagle a bright gold in the sunlight. Were there a million? Perhaps. Across the country there certainly were. It was, we all agreed, the largest political demonstration in the history of Egypt, the latest heave to rid this country of its least-loved dictator. Its only flaw was that by dusk – and who knew what the night would bring – Hosni Mubarak was still calling himself 'President' of Egypt.

Then I watched a report on Sky News, with an entirely different description. It described "clashes" between "pro-Mubarak" and "anti-Mubarak" factions, and "violence" in these "clashes". One report described protests against an oppressive dictator, while the other described a divided society, on the brink of civil war. And it became clear that the media's attempts to be "fair" and "impartial" and to "give both sides of the story" actually distort the news.

I know I've succumbed to that temptation myself. When I was young the former Belgian Congo became independent, and erupted into civil war, which has continued sporadically ever since, for fifty years, and is still going on today. Reports in the local newspapers (no TV in those days) were less than informative. They reported "clashes" and "violence" and gave the impression that the people there just liked fighting. Only much later did I realise that this false neutrality was actually designed to obscure the real causes of the conflict.

Twenty years ago (was it as long ago as that?) we had the wars of the Yugoslav succession. There was a tendency for people remote from the conflict to make the same shallow judgements -- "those people are always fighting". That view even affects the English language -- "Balkanisation" is a pejorative word, suggesting instability and fragmentation. It was used to describe the creation of "homelands" in South Africa under the apartheid policy, and in the 1990s we saw Balkanisation actually taking place in the Balkans.

At an Orthodox mission conference in Athens in 2000 Dr Tarek Mitri of the Patriarchate of Antioch spoke on Orthodoxy and other religions. He said that the many conspiratorial interpretations of the role of other religions blur the role of Orthodoxy. These interpretations were based on the conservatism of survival, and aggravated fears of seeing Orthodoxy marginalised. Globalisation meant that there was pressure for uniformity. National government structures are less able to make decisions. Orthodoxy and Eastern culture are regarded as archaisms in the West -- there is talk of "ancestral hatred", but it is not "ancestral hatred" that
is the cause of war, it is war that is the cause of "ancestral hatred". If the past does not meet the needs of the present, another past can be constructed. The more people look alike, the more they wish to preserve their differences, and the smaller the differences, the more important they become. We are caught between the voices of homogenisation and those who advocate religion as a marker of nationalism and ethnic identity.

The media that tried to be "neutral" often used the "ancestral hatred" argument -- that Balkan Wars were caused by "ancestral hatred". But most of the Western media did not try to be neutral in that case, though they did try to obscure the fact that much of the violence was fanned by foreign intervention. "Ancestral hatred" was a convenient red herring to promote the cover-up.

And now we come to Egypt. This article discusses some of the ways in which "neutral" reporting can distort the truth, or, as Dr Mitry puts it, construct a new past, even the quite recent past of news reporting.

The nomenclature of a protest | "The people want to bring down the regime":

To describe the attacks on protesters as clashes presumes some sort of ineffable, sectarian sort of sporadic violence, skirmishes on an already named front. What we saw today was a peaceful protest being borne down on by horses and camels, then later thousands of thugs armed with white weapons, rocks, Molotov cocktails and guns. Moreover the thugs had a plan, they came at the square like it was a castle or hilltop to be besieged and overtaken, amassing at all sides of the square and waging simultaneous assaults on people who had been, this whole time, checking their own to ensure there were no weapons in the camp. To describe these military tactics (and paramilitary weaponry) with the same words as the protesters’ attempts to resist the state’s violence shows either ignorance or callousness, or both.

Part of this, of course, arises not from a desire to be objective and to report factually, but because conflict sells newspapers. If every difference of opinion can be magnified into a "clash", then the media swarm in, like flies to a rotting corpse, with the attitude of "Let's you and him fight". So a polite difference of opinion can be presented in the media as an angry confrontation. If it doesn't actually take the form of such a cofrontation, then the media try to milk it for all it's worth by describing it as a "looming" clash (does anyone outside the media use "loom" as a verb?) But as long as they present both sides in a "balanced" way, the media can wash their hands in innocence.

This is not to say that the media sparked off the present situation in Egypt, but rather that their "balanced" reporting of it can actually lead to a very unbalanced picture.

Damage Control: the independent homeland of BapetiKosovoti

No country in their right mind recognised the the independence of Mickey Mouse apartheid republics like Bophutatswana and Transkei, but those who created the independent homeland republic of BapetiKosovoti are now hastening to do damage control. I doubt that even Evita Bezuidenhout would be willing to help them out at top spin-doctor rates. Perhaps they could call in Dame Edna Everage as a consutant?

Damage Control in the Balkans by Nebojsa Malic -- Antiwar.com:

During the 1999 attack on what was then Yugoslavia, the BBC was one of the vocal NATO cheerleaders (its correspondent from the NATO HQ later got the job as Alliance spokesman). So it is both amazing and infuriating to hear Alistair Burnett, editor of BBC’s The World Tonight, talk about 'reassessing Kosovo' today.

On one hand, Burnett is refreshingly frank when he says:

'The offensive against Serbia in 1999 was presented by western leaders as a humanitarian act to prevent widespread ethnic cleansing of Kosovo’s Albanian population by Slobodan Milosevic’s forces. This was widely accepted by western commentators at the time and since then reporting of the conflict in western media has been largely been framed as a story of Albanian victims and Serb aggressors.'

Notice he doesn’t mention that every word of this reasoning, and the ensuing media coverage, was a lie. What he says is merely that 'some of the recent commentary… has challenged this account and questioned whether the intervention and support for independence were misguided.'

Yes, all three of Tony Blair's wars when he was in office were "misguided", to say the very least. And Nato was, and remains, the North Atlantic Terorist Organisation.

Hat-tip to A conservative blog for peace.

Our democracy at risk?

I pass on another message from Avaaz, with my own comments at the end.

South Africa's democracy is at risk -- a draconian and unconstitutional new secrecy Bill is in Parliament and a Media Tribunal could be endorsed by the ANC Council this week, muzzling the media and letting the security agencies operate without accountability.

The secrecy measures in the "Protection of Information Bill" and the proposed "Media Appeals Tribunal" threaten press freedom enshrined in the Constitution and will hamper public scrutiny of the government and security agencies, blocking the media from exposing corruption and abuse of power. Hundreds of prominent South Africans, business executives, civic leaders and journalists have condemned the measures and submitted amendments on the Bill to Parliament, but so far the ANC is defending both proposals. Only massive pressure from citizens across South Africa can wake them up and preserve hard-won freedoms!

We have just 3 days to be heard at the ANC Council. Let's raise an irresistible outcry -- join the call for the ANC to listen to the people, respect the Constitution and promote accountable and transparent government! Click to sign the urgent petition, then forward this message to everyone – it will be delivered at the ANC Council:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/protect_south_africas_democracy/?vl

43% of South Africans survive on no more than R16 a day and half of our youth are unemployed, while Transparency International claims "corruption is increasing at an enormous rate and it impacts severely on the poor. Revenue destined for the poor is misappropriated". These new proposals would obstruct the media's bold efforts to expose bribery, corruption and fraud and would lead this proud democracy towards autocratic control.

The proposed Protection of Information Bill would allow any national or local government department or agency to classify and make secret any information that they consider against the 'national interest' and would punish whistle blowers or journalists with up to 25 years in jail if they leak or publish information that was classified, even if it was in the public interest. This violates Section 32 of the Constitution -- which protects the citizens right of access to any information held by the State.

The Media Tribunal would replace the Press Ombudsman with a state agency accountable only to the ruling party, tightly regulating reporting, and imposing penalties on journalists who publish unapproved content.

Just like when citizens came together to call for effective treatment for HIV and AIDS in 2007, if we rally now we could change the course of these repressive policies and efforts to silence the media can be stopped.

The ANC Council meeting is the decisive moment -- if we lose this chance, the ANC's 60% majority in Parliament will most likely push these proposals through unchanged. Inside the ANC Council COSATU delegates and others are strongly against the gag law -- if we raise a massive citizens' outcry this week, we could support their efforts on the inside to overwhelm an elite who attempt to railroad through these undemocratic proposals.

Sign the petition and forward this message to everyone:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/protect_south_africas_democracy/?vl

Many fought, and died, for these freedoms. Now, if citizens stand up together to protect South Africa's democracy, our outcry will be too loud to ignore -- and we will beat those who want to protect their power and privilege by curbing constitutional liberties.

I'm in two minds about this.

On the one hand I don't want our hard-won freedoms taken away by a bunch of self-serving politicians.

On the other hand, I suspect that the equally self-serving media are crying "wolf" once too often.

So my response tends to be "A plague on both your houses" and to concentrate on something else, and think that if our constitutional liberties are being threatened by this as much as they say, then let the Constitutional Court deal with it and toss it out.

The media, no less than the politicians, are in it for the money.

So when they cry "wolf", I tend to get very cynical.

No, I wouldn't like to go back to the muzzled press of the apartheid era. But I do believe that the media abuse their freedom by hyping certain issues and ignoring others. And one of the things they have done is to turn politicians into celebrities, and to gossip about them as the gossip columnists gossip about film stars. They've certainly turned Julius Malema into a celeb, and he's played them along for all he's worth. Eat your heart out, Brenda!

And perhaps the ANC is reacting to that too.

Not that it's a good reaction, but when I read about it in the newspapers, my eyes tend to glaze over and think "Well, look who's talking."


Oh, I'll sign the Avaaz petition, all right. But I still think I'll leave it to the Constitutional Court, which can look at it, I hope, without all the media hype.

If the government try to muzzle the Constitutional Court -- then I'll get worked up about it. That would mean that they had sold out completely.

Sunday papers

For a long time now the only newspapers we buy regularly are the Sunday papers, which we get on the way home from church. We've usually bought the Sunday Independent, which bills itself on its web site as "South Africa's quality Sunday newspaper. Coverage of news, opinion, business, marketing and books with a comprehensive sports section and strong focus on ..."

But as we drive down Tsamaya Avenue in Mamelodi every lamppost has a newspaper placard, plugging the latest story. Most of them are of the "sex, soccer and celebs" type, but occasionally there is a story that seems interesting in an offbeat kind of way. The Sun, for example, is big on zombies, and one of its best headlines was "Zombie stole my soap". So sometimes if we see an interesting headline we buy one of the other papers, in addition to the Sunday Independent.

One that we seemed to be buying more and more was City Press.

Finally, yesterday, we just bought the City Press, which from now on will be our default Sunday paper in place of the Sunday Independent. Why? Because City Press seems to have surpassed the Sunday Independent as South Africa's quality paper. The only paper that was better was The Weekendser, which folded several months ago.

Why the switch? What has changed?

I'm sure that part of the reason is that City Press has improved, and has higher standards of journalism. Its articles are well-written and interesting.

But also, the Sunday Independent has got worse. It's joined the "sex, soccer and celebs" brigade, though without the soccer (yes, City Press has better sports pages too). So the Sunday Independent is all sex and celebs, though with one difference. In the other papers in the genre the celebs are usually singers or film stars or models, or football players or coaches, or parasites; people like Brenda Fassie and Paris Hilton. In the Sunday Independent, however, they are politicians. The Sunday Independent is full of stories about politicians and especially who is jumping into bed with whom, literally or metaphorically. And also who is divorcing whom, matrimonially or politically.

City Press however, seems to be more focused on issues than on personalities, and that makes more interesting reading.

A selection of recent headlines from Sunday Independent:

• Zuma's lapses
• Gama plans legal bid to keep his job
• Knight-West shootout row continues
• Ousted youth league leader Masoga heading for the courts

It's all about who's up-and-coming and who's on their way out, and who's fighting tooth-and-nail (and legal injunction) to keep their position. What one does not hear is what their policies are, what their vision for the future is, and what will be lost, if anything, if they lose their jobs.

So I concluded that Sunday Independent was playing with my head. It was creating and reinforcing the perception that our political leaders have no policies and no vision at all, and all they are doing is jockeying for position to get in the front row at the feeding trough, and the best seats on the gravy train.

Now that perception may well have some truth in it, quite a lot of truth, even. But that can't be all there is. Someone must be running the country while they're fighting. After all, the World Cup stadiums got built in time, and were praised, sometimes lavishly, by foreign journalists. Apart from some glitches at Durban, people got to the matches, and there was less soccer hooliganism than there was in Germany four years ago, and better attendance at the matches. In our big cities (unlike many of those in Europe) you can drink water straight from the tap without fearing that you will catch some nasty disease.

Yes, corruption and greed and incompetence have plagued local government in some places and the water reticulation and sewerage has often not been properly maintained and developed. Two years ago we went to do research in the archives in Pietermaritzburg and the building was all over builders' rubble. I've been told that the renovations are still not done -- two contractors have been fired and it has been put out to tender a third time, and the Public Works Department apparently wants the building cleared while the job is done. But at least someone is renovating the archives. I've seen university student residences in Kenya and Albania that have been in far more urgent need of renovation, yet nothing seems to be done.

So I've got tired of reading all about the jockeying for position; I'd rather read more about the positions themselves.

The media have gone on about the spat between Mbazima Shilowa and Terror Lekota of COPE, and the wooing between Patricia de Lille of the Independent Democrats and Helen Zille of the Democratic Alliance. Very few seem to mention that it was largely due to Shilowa's initiative, when he was Premier of Gauteng, that we got the Gautrain, now nearing completion. A few years ago it was dubbed by the media the "Shilowa Express", because Shilowa had the vision of an integrated transport system for Gauteng. Of course we have yet to see whether the Gautrain will do any better than the ill-fated Metroblitz of 25 years ago.

So for the time being I'll be reading City Press rather than Sunday Independent,. because I'd rather read about policies than personalities; about visions rather than vendettas; about inspiration rather than in-fighting.

PS: Yes, I know Breda Fassie is dead, but she continued to make headlines from the grave for years afterwards, and if it wasn't her it was her boyfriend Chico (what do you call a widowed boyfriend?)

Pleonastic sesquipedalian neologisms

Politicians and bureaucrats seem inclined, more than most people, to invent new words, but this takes the cake: 'Refudiating' Palin brings Shakespeare into Twitter exchange:

A Twitter posting Sunday from former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, in which she claimed common ground with Shakespeare, started the blogosphere's week in rollicking fashion.

Palin tweeted that 'peaceful Muslims' should 'refudiate' the New York mosque being built near Ground Zero. This prompted plenty of retweets at her expense -- 'refudiate,' of course, is not a word.

After deleting the offending tweet, Palin replaced it with another, calling on 'peaceful New Yorkers' to 'refute the Ground Zero mosque plan' -- although the word she was apparently looking for was 'repudiate.'

That won't, of course, stop the misuse of "refute" -- again, mostly by politicians and sycophantic journalists who take their words at face value.

I've read dozens of news reports saying that politicians have "refuted" something when they haven't refuted it at all. All they have actually done is deny it, whereas to refute something means to prove conclusively that it is false.

Brit media attacks on Catholics sink to a new low

I have often been struck by the biased and tendentious reporting in the British media -- such as the attempts of the Daily Mail to link every crime report from South Africa with the football World Cup. But this report in The Guardian surpasses even that.

Catholics angry as church puts female ordination on par with sex abuse | World news | The Guardian:

It was meant to be the document that put a lid on the clerical sex abuse scandals that have swept the Roman Catholic world. But instead of quelling fury from within and without the church, the Vatican stoked the anger of liberal Catholics and women's groups by including a provision in its revised decree that made the 'attempted ordination' of women one of the gravest crimes in ecclesiastical law.

The change put the 'offence' on a par with the sex abuse of minors.

Hat-tip to PamBG's Blog: If you can't abuse a child, ordain a woman instead.

Nowhere in the Guardian article is "the document" identified. There is no possibility of reading it for oneself to see what it says. All we are given is The Guardian's spin on it, and the reported reactions of various people to it, though it is not clear whether they had seen "the document", or whether they were just reacting to The Guardian's spin.

I don't know whether I would agree with the content of "the document" because I haven't seen it, and the article in The Guardian doesn't give enough information about it to enable one to identify it and try and read it -- it is as if they want to ensure that readers are exposed only to their spin on it.

To paraphrase Martin Niemoller,

First they came for the Catholics, and I didn't protest because I wasn't a Catholic.
Then they came for the Muslims, and I didn't protest because I wasn't a Muslim.
...
And then they came for me, and there was no one left to protest.

Update

Someone who commented has pointed me to what appears to be "the document" referred to in the article in The Guardian -- it is Substantive Norms. And having read the document it seems to me that the article in The Guardian is not merely a piece of exceptionally shoddy journalism, but is wilful and malicious misrepresentation.

Volcano eruption likely to disrupt 2012 Olympic Games

If you think the disruption to transport caused by Icelandic volcanic ash in the northern British Isles this week was bad, that is nothing compared to the volcanic eruptions that are predicted to disrupt the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

A likely scenario?

About as likely is this:

Daily Star: Simply The Best 7 Days A Week :: News :: World Cup South Africa 2010: Quake Fears:

WAYNE Rooney could be shaking in his boots at the World Cup – because of fears of an earthquake.

An expert has predicted the country is almost certain to be hit by a major natural disaster.


And it could strike during this summer’s footie tournament.


Dr Chris Hartnady has singled out Durban and Cape Town as the areas most likely to be hit by a quake.

As one commentator put it, the Brit media just jumped the shark.

Legends from a small country: 'Kill a Tourist Day'

An Irish actress was grazed by a bullet while riding in a taxi in Cape Town on New Year's Eve. And the story was retold in the Brit media, intertwined with urban legends, as urban legend fundi Arthur Goldstuck tells.

Legends from a small country: 'Kill a Tourist Day':

As it is, a report the following day in the Daily Mail, by Mail on Sunday correspondent James Tapper, kicked off with this strong innuendo: 'Actress Victoria Smurfit has revealed she came within inches of death when a gunman opened fire on a taxi she was travelling in while holidaying in South Africa – the nation that will stage the World Cup in just six months.'

Mr Tapper may like to know that a man was killed with a shotgun in what police believed to be a gang fight, in London just the previous week. As far as can be ascertained, not a single newspaper anywhere in the world linked this to the fact that London would be hosting the 2012 Olympic Games. Nor did they do so when a man was stabbed to death after chasing two muggers in London the same week. Nor did they do so when schoolboys were stabbed after a gang invaded a party in London that very weekend. Barely a day goes by without a violent incident in London involving killings and stabbings, but nary a connection to London being a host city in a mere two years' time.

And now, with 2010 (that's twenty-ten, not two thouand and ten) less than 100 days away we'll probably see more such stories. Twenty-ten, of course, is not the year, but the kick-off for the World Cup. There have been some discussions about whether it is twenty-ten or two-thousand and ten, but we've heard nothing but twenty-ten for the last six years. I thought I'd better record that, because in another century or so it may be disputed. There was a rather heated discussion in the alt.usage.english newsgroup recently about whether our ancestors called 1907 "nineteen seven" or "nineteen oh seven" or something else.

So just for the record, if Blogspot is still around in 2110, the year two-thousand and nine was followed by twenty-ten, both the year and the World Cup. We didn't call it "twenty-nine" because that could be confused with "29", but twenty-ten is OK, and has been OK for six years at least.

Oh yes, and it is quite common in South Africa for people to fire guns into the air to celebrate the New Year. Stupid, yes. Dangerous, yes. But still common, though not as common as it used to be (it's even more common in Albania, I believe, I wonder what sports event they could be hosting?)

And people have been killed because of such things. A few years ago a bullet went through a corrugated iron roof and illed a baby lying asleep in its cot. It was a rather unusual calibre, and police did ballistics tests, and worked out where the shot must have been fired from, and searched houses in the vicinity, and found some guy who had a vintage rifle and admitted that yes, he had fired it into the air on New Years morn, at or around midnight. He was charged with culpable homicide, and found guilty. The story of how the police solved the case is displayed in the police museum in Pretoria, so it's probably not an urban legend.

So if you're planning to come to South Africa for the World Cup, don't worry; 2010 starts long after New Year.

The Orange Revolution, Peeled

The Orange Revolution, Peeled by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com:

To recall the media hype that accompanied Ukraine’s 'Orange Revolution' of 2004, which propelled Viktor Yushchenko, a former central banker and alleged liberal democrat, into power, is like remembering a fever-dream in the morning: the memory of the details are blurred, and all that really remains is the sense that something strenuous, and ultimately unreal, has been passed through. The disputed election of 2004 – eventually decided in Yushchenko’s favor on account of mass street protests – ended with the defeat of Viktor Yanukovich, the candidate of the Russian-speaking eastern section of the country – the man whose comeback in Sunday’s election represented a stunning repudiation of the Orange Revolution and the regime that was born in its wake. How that 'revolution' came to be, and what it really represented, is about to undergo a major revision, one in striking contrast to the instant narrative provided by the Western media six years ago.

Hat-tip to A conservative blog for peace

And now it appears that Yanukovich, the candidate the Western media wanted us all to hate, has won the election. Is it just that I'm getting more cynical as I'm getting older, or is the media hype getting worse?

Ukraine seems to exist as a case-study for Samuel Huntington's Clash of civilizations thesis, with the fault line between Western and Orthodox civilisations running right through the country. If anything can confirm Huntington's thesis, the Western media spin does.

Another commentator comments on the spin in this article: News Analysis - For Kremlin, Ukraine Election Cuts Two Ways - NYTimes.com

On Monday, for example, European election monitors praised the election that was held Sunday, calling it an impressive display of democracy. Ukraines election, in other words, did not follow the Kremlin blueprint...

What a bizarre statement. A Russian-favored candidate wins in a fair election, and somehow that is supposed to be evidence that Russia is in favor of unfair elections. In fact, their candidate winning in a fair election is the best possible blueprint for Russia.
Imagine what the NY Times would be saying if the election had been unfair!

In the short term, the Kremlin may have benefited from the election. Relations were tense under the incumbent president, Viktor A. Yushchenko, an Orange leader who wanted to pull Ukraine away from Moscows orbit by joining NATO.

Mr. Yanukovich does not support NATO membership and has indicated that he will abandon some other initiatives opposed by Russia. This is the only real news in the whole NY Times story. This was a major geopolitical / energy-politics victory for Russia. Once again a CIA-engineered Colored Revolution has been turned back. The NY Times does its best to bury this news near the bottom of their story, and even then they downplay it by saying the Kremlin 'may' have benefitted, but only in the 'short term'.

What is lost in all this rhetoric about whether "the West" or "the Kremlin" benefited is what is surely more important: whether the people of Ukraine benefited.