Blood & Treasure

department of we’re all chetniks now

In not altogether surprising news the head of the US National Endowment for Democracy comes out in solidarity with the perpetrators of an ethnic massacre.

welcome to heaven

Map over here. You can buy it over here, somewhere.

two American cynics

The Rodent recently noted in passing that Mark Twain’s long embargoed (by himself) autobiography is shortly to be published. And on the subject of great American cynics, The Nation strives to introduce Ambrose Bierce to a new generation. Strives a little too hard, in fact: 

The Devil's Dictionary goes on like this, and you can see the appeal. The definitions are short, the ideas easy to grasp, the humor reliably fierce. The Devil's Dictionary reads like a collection of great Twitter posts. 

 Having said that, I’m surprised someone hasn’t twittered it yet. 

Anyway, my favourite Mark Twain story – The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg - is available on the net here. As I understand it, the autobiography is written in the same spirit. 

And here’s Bierce’s Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Excerpt: 

The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good--a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.

all men are brothers, for a' that and a' that

Translation of the day: Chinese to Lallans. 

In thae days there wis a hermit hecht Chen Tuan bydin on the Wastlin Tap o Mount Glore: he wis a kennin an gracie sowl at bi glamourie cud guide the wind an wather. Ae day whan he wis striddlin his cuddie doun the brae ti the Gloresheddae Road he heard an outlan bodie sayin “Richt nou in the Eastren Capital Chai Shizong hes reteirit an Gaird-Marischal Zhao hes taen the throne”. 

It’s The Water Margin, of course. More here. I’ll leave the linguistic debate to others, but it’s kind of a good fit politically.

miserable little compromiser

So some MP’s are annoyed at attempts to bump up the vote for Nick Clegg’s miserable little compromise by staging the referendum on the same day as Scottish and Welsh elections (and think how desperate you must be for that to be your strategy to stuff the ballot box). 

Here at the house of B & T, opinions differ. I intend to let the miserable little compromise crawl off and die in a ditch without any participation from me. If the Tories want to fluff up their appendage in some way, they are perfectly entitled to do so. But there’s no need for me to waste my time on this project. This kind of division of the spoils nonsense needs to be kept in house, if anything does. 

Mrs T, however, is more or less in favour of AV, but would crawl over broken glass laced with cyanide right now to register opposition to any proposal put forward by Nick Clegg, possibly including a proposal to give her All the Money in the World, let alone this miserable little compromise he plans to waste everyone’s time with. I may just join her at that, what with that sly bit of gerrymandering over constituency sizes that he’s put in with his miserable little compromise. 

No moral here; just a datapoint from one household. Except that, the ishoos aside, this is at least partly a referendum on “how much of a wanker Nick Clegg is.”

one nation, under licensing

The Declaration of Independence licensing agreement: 

The Continental Congress does not warrant or assume responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of any information, text, graphics, links or other items contained within the DECLARATION. The Continental Congress makes no warranties respecting any harm that may be caused by the reading of the DECLARATION, whether by cannon shot, musket ball, bayonet, sword or other means of physical or emotional action. 

 Perhaps relatedly...

every country spies

Says the Colonel, re the Russian spy thing: 

Every country spies on every other country. That is the truth. It is the "game of nations," This is nothing to get excited about. We all do it. Governments need information. Governments try to hide information and so "Spying" is necessary. 

 So how many spies do we have in the US. And what are we spying on? Yeah, special relationship “the cousins”, intelligence sharing and all that. But surely that comprises an opportunity?

just and amicable feelings

Stephen Walt has Washington’s farewell address up for the July 4th weekend.  Excerpt:

In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. 

 What this reminds me of more than anything else are the eight principles of Chinese foreign policy, in turn based on Deng’s six observations: 

 ---Observe world events with a calm mind 

 ---Stand firmly 

 ---Confront difficulties with confidence 

 ---Keep a low profile 

 ---Never assume a leadership role 

 ---Take action 

I think maybe that the government in Delhi might dispute some of this – “South Tibet” indeed – and the keep a low profile but has gone into abeyance recently but, by and large that’s how the PRC has conducted itself abroad over the past thirty years. The heirs of Washington: who’d have thought it.

two arguments

There’s a fresh faced fellow who looks all of fourteen arguing over here that Obama should accept nothing less than the unconditional surrender of the Taliban, irrespective of what anyone else involved thinks. He doesn’t let us in on how this is to be accomplished, how he defines Taliban, or whether there is anyone within it with the authority to take a general surrender, or whether he’s thought through the fact that his favoured policy means extending all out make-the-rubble-bounce war across Afghanistan and into Pakistan. The point is that he thinks it would make Obama more popular at home: feel those Lincoln vibes.

 On the other hand, Dan Hardie has an interview, conducted before the election, in Total Politics with former Guardsman and current Tory MP Adam Holloway, who argues that the generals are lying about how successfully the war is going, that most of the people the British army are fighting are locals rather than main force Taliban, and that the war is in part a proxy conflict between India and Pakistan. Resolution of this needs pressure on both sides across a range of related issues, notably Kashmir. 

I’m sure there are all sorts of arguments to be made against this latter proposition, but overall I’m glad that it’s the second line of argument which is currently getting the government’s ear, or at least competing aggressively for it.

rebirth of Europe

I started Friday thinking it was a bit of a shame that the Dutch would probably go out at the quarter finals. Yet first they beat Brazil, and now this. 

And to think there was some cretin on the box a week or go saying that England were sure to win because very few German players could even get into the England side. 

It would still be kind of funny if Uruguay ended up winning though.

Sinosphere Friday: happy birthday, communist party of China

It’s the CPC’s 89th Birthday! 

The 89th birthday of the Communist Party of China (CPC) falls on Thursday, July 1. After having partaken in activities to study and put into practice the Scientific Outlook on Development, more than 3.7 million grassroots Party organizations and some 7.7 million Party members have turned increasingly more vigorous and are seething with enthusiasm for creativity. 

On the other hand, telling people you are a cadre can be dangerous. 

This week also saw the 160th anniversary of the Opium War. Jeremiah Jenne considers the legacy. 

It began with a die-off of pig frogs. 

 

 25-year-old cross-dressing fan of Argentine manager Diego Maradona poses with a bilingual proposal outside a stadium in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. Before security guards drove him away, the man, who said his name is "Caogle" (a Chinese search engine) said he was a graduate of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and was wearing a bra to symbolize the China soccer team. "A shemale is sort of a symbol of today's China soccer team. They would like to shoot, but are rather powerless," he said. 

 How do corrupt officials become poets? 

 Urumqi under visual lockdown.

 Readings on Chinese labour activism.

  What’s this all about? 

China was Zambia second-largest trade partner, consuming 11% of Zambian exports (interestingly enough, Switzerland was Zambia's largest trade partner, taking a full 48%). 

 And lastly, thoughts on a Chinese education: 

If you’re going through hell, as Winston Churchill said, keep going.

Mr Perkins explains

Mr. Perkins had just returned from a liquor-soaked golf weekend with colleagues in June of last year when he sat down in front of his laptop at his home east of London and started to place bets on Brent crude futures, according to a report by the Financial Services Authority. He continued to drink and place bets through the night, and by the morning of June 30, Mr. Perkins had placed more than $520 million worth of trades, at one point pushing the price of oil to $73.05, an eight-month high. The trades by Mr. Perkins were the main reason the price gained about $1.65 a barrel in just over two hours in the middle of the night, according to the report. 

“Mr. Perkins’s explanation for his trading on 29 and 30 June is that he was drunk,” the F.S.A. said. “He claims to have limited recollection of events on Monday and claims to have been in an alcohol-induced blackout at the time he traded.” 

When the government says we have to crash the economy to earn the respect and good opinion of the markets, they mean people like Mr Perkins, amongst others.

what happens to world cup losers?

NMA on the case again. Interesting how many national stereotypes translate directly... The North Korean team were last spotted in a barbecue joint in Beijing, btw. So they’re not for the coal mines yet.

when this Starbuck's closes

Jenny Turner in the LRB has an entertaining whirl through the history of the RCP and its various successors, tracing the group from its origins as a Trotskyist sect to its current incarnation as a cult of common sense and corporate sponsorship hoover, via its ultimately productive flirtation with atrocity denial.

In the 1980s, RCP members were often dishy and well turned-out, in that DMs and MA1 jacket, ambient-fury-of-the-Thatcher-era street-fighting way. This, I’m sorry to say, had a lot to do with why I used to buy their paper and once went to a meeting of their women’s chapter in Edinburgh, at which we were told that condoms were Thatcherite and we ought to celebrate scientific achievement by going on the Pill. The meeting was horrendous, bossy and full of buzzwords, run by people pretending they didn’t know each other. These days, IoI bods look like delegates at a Unison conference, or the seekers who gather at Landmark seminars and the Alpha Course. The ones who make the speeches are mostly white and in their thirties and forties (the volunteers on the cameras and boom-mikes are younger and more diverse). They’re more relaxed than they used to be, less aggressive and overtly controlling, but they still have a habit of sitting on panels together, pretending they don’t already know each other, and they still dominate meetings with tedious, well-rehearsed spontaneous interventions. This is one of the things that made the Battle of Ideas so deadly boring, and one reason so many people call the IoI ‘a weird cult’. 

If not exactly a thing of wonder, they are truly a thing of some sort. 

Ms Turner also references John Sullivan’s magnificent When This Pub Closes. And I blogged about my own encounters with the RCP very early on.

down on the farm

Back in the day, cultural troupes used to tour Chinese villages staging revolutionary operas or traditional local folk dances and similar performances.

 Them times ain’t no more.

at the Shanghai Expo

A discovery process. Who a cross section of the Chinese middle class is interested in: 

The next day, we again entered the Expo around 11 am. In the Europe and America Squares, the pavilions with lines longer than 4 hours included Germany, France, Sweden, Finland, US, and Canada. So they couldn't be our cup of tea. Other countries, such as Spain, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Hungary, Russia, England, Italy etc. each had lines about 40-minute long. 

 British Fail, by the way. 

Denmark's national treasure Mermaid was smaller and darker than I thought, but their freshly baked cookies were worthy of the name. The England Pavilion's contour had been enjoying media praise, and its look indeed was dreamily beautiful, but who could have guessed inside the pavilion there was nothing to see? When those who suffered backache from the long standing in line about to hurl angry words, wait a second, a clown wearing fake teeth and life buoy was grinning cheekily, ready to take a photo with you! 

What‘s that all about? Clowns aren’t mentioned in the programme.

glimpse of the future of work

If you have an easily customizable letter or brochure on your hard drive or a fair to middling address list, or just a minor trick you can turn like a metronome, you could possibly make a few quid off this. It’s classic recession economics, too: de-merge your life and isolate aspects of it that can be identified as assets. 

Can’t think of a damn thing, personally speaking. But that simply reflects my superior integrity. Via.

the vast balls began to cool

OK. Let’s have a sad little solitary pub quiz. Who’s the author of the classic described below: 

Its thesis is that the earth has, for millennia, been controlled by alien forces who have had a hand in everything from the Maya to the Miners’ Strike; in its magisterial sweep the book takes in the Spanish Inquisition, the rise of Hitler, the Kennedy assassination, Glastonbury, the Second Coming, cigarettes stubbed out on the eyeballs (twice), various scenes of sexual mutilation, the projected collapse of the EEC in 1989 and the Sino-Russian war of 1992. 

Extract: 

‘Before the Beginning, there was an emptiness, an abyss of space, an infinite void where only the darkness seemed tangible. Then came the Light and the orbiting giants filled the vacuum. The vast balls began to cool...’ 

There’s a clue there if you imagine this being spoken (which means, probably, if you’re over 35, and if you’re British) Also, before he got his proper job, the author ran away to Paris, where on his own account he played piano in a brothel. 

Give up? Answer here. Extract from here.

infiltrating think tanks

FBI agents arrested 10 people on charges that they spent years in the United States as spies for Russia, taking on fake identities and trying to ferret out intelligence about U.S. policy and secrets by making connections to think tanks and government officials, the Justice Department said Monday. 

Isn’t this the category error known in Hollywood as “fucking the writer?” Via.

it's all about ME! (and jihad)

So al-Qaeda have launched an English language magazine called Inspire: 

The banner ad, over the caption “Soon,” features a slide show touting the magazine’s first issue: “A SPECIAL GIFT TO THE ISLAMIC NATION.” 

Because you’re worth it, Islamic nation. 

“The first magazine issued by Al-Qa’idah in the English language.” “INSPIRE… and inspire the believers.’” “An exclusive interview with Shayk Abu Basir [a top aide to Osama bin Laden] and with Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki as a guest writer.” 

The model seems less radical, underground publication and more in house corporate communications for team AQ, with a bit of women’s magazine ‘pamper yourself’ ethos thrown in. 

 The table of contents teases an interview with the leader of AQAP who promises to "answer various questions pertaining to the jihad in the Arabian Peninsula." It includes a feature about how to "make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom." 

Special people write for you! And practical tips from the experts! Chemistry and narcissism:  a bit reminiscent of something you’d pick up at point of sale in Boots or Holland and Barrett. Marc Ambinder says it might be an info op by unnamed intelligence services designed to get us to point and laugh. I dunno. Maybe Chris Morris is involved somewhere down the line. 

Elsewhere, a fatwa has been issued against the world cup.