Those 4-years in a wardrobe blues…
From The Independent:
"A woman was arrested after her 14-year-son told authorities he'd spent the past four years locked in a wardrobe."
This is absolutely disgusting. I loathe tattle-tales.
8 million to 1
The population of Honduras is eight million. Last time I counted, Roman Polanski produced a single digit result.
There is martial law in Honduras at present, with the de facto government (which would be 'a regime' if Washington was doing the negative branding thing) ordering the closure of pro-Zelaya TV stations and government forces beating up journalists.
However, in a Swiss prison cell the real story is unfolding, it has a famous man, underage sex, drugs, a flight from justice, a selection of diplomats and outraged friends...
In some small or large way, it is the obsessive focus on individuals that permits sweeping actions that affect millions to somehow not be worthy objects of scrutiny. While an individual (or, an organism primed by modern society to conceive of themselves only as an individual) can look at Polanski and engage in some moral condemnation or some "Imagine if that was me" flight of fancy, it is harder to imagine being caught up in the forces of history these days, and, in fact, history has become something that only happens in modern society in some positive way, or not at all, while the poorer regions / geopolitical hotspots, are subjected to war, a process of history in the making.
It's as if, because change has become extremely limited at home, the only place to do anything radical is at the edge. Are the wars in far-off places actually the work of an unheralded avant-garde...
Vatican and morality
The Roman Catholic Church, an organisation whose clutches I thankfully escaped, have released a very interesting statement.
Firstly, they contend that sex abuse in the Catholic Church is somehow offset by the fact that it happens in other religions, too. That's right, something is not quite so evil if many people are also engaged in the same evil, and, likewise, it then becomes unfair to single out the Catholic Church as particularly evil, when, clearly, the church is no more evil than the other people who are evil and just don't receive as much publicity.
Or, alternatively, there is no such thing as evil, and this is simply what goes on, what has always gone on, and all those pagans were slaughtered and besmirched to no purpose.
Perhaps it's not evil at all, and the Catholic Church should instead contend that something so prevalent throughout the world's faiths is in fact a necessary consequence of organised religions (Zizek supports this idea, contending that the structure of the Catholic Church necessitates sexual contact between priests and young boys).
The Vatican further illuminates its evil by taking us back to Classical times and clarifying exactly what sort of sexual abuse takes place under its auspices (and they estimate that 'only' 1.5 - 5% of their clergy are sexually active, that's only 1 in 20, not bad, really, even in the worst case scenario. We could all operate employment agencies on that basis - "Oh, by the way, 1 in 20 of the people we supply are thieves/murderers/perverts, etc") Okay, the term the Vatican wants to move towards is:
Nor did The statement said that rather than paedophilia, it would "be more correct" to speak of ephebophilia, a homosexual attraction to adolescent males.
That's right, we are engaging in sex with adolescents, but please, have the decent to recognise our pursuits with the proper term.
From reading Mishima, I understand an ephebe was a man-boy, and those with a predilection for such morsels simply swapped out the man-boy when the man became a little too dominant. The idea being that they could enjoy sexual relations in an eternally innocent springtime of youth.
However, Classical Greece did not come with the stultifying morality of original sin and the mandatory vilification of homosexuality, and so the practice was not so drenched in hypocrisy. It was probably, as it still is, great fun. However, we see the difference here - that Classical Greece enjoyed the fact that something was permissible, and could be celebrated, whereas Catholics enjoy the damnation that comes with engaging in the forbidden, and the subsequent protestations of innocence, culminating in grudging acceptance of the truth coupled with vehement denials of having done wrong.
What would be best is if the church kept the gay part and lost the religious part, although I appreciate the camp nature of their mummery is part of the schtick. If the Boy Scout movement can do it and still prosper, what's to stop the Catholic Church? Sure, a different sort of person will congregate around their doors, but as the church itself makes clear, there's no shortage of would-be players for this, one of the oldest games in town.
And now, if you will excuse me, I must drop to my knees and atone.
Amen.
*A pop culture reference dedicated to Bros fans planetwide.
Dupes, forward march!
Wonderful news from The Guardian:
Young people inspired by patriotism or facing joblessness during the recession have contributed to a surge in the number of army recruits, according to a senior officer involved in recruitment.
Ministry of Defence figures show a 25% rise in the number of recruits this year, with more signing up than at any time since 2005. This is despite the increasingly bloody conflict in Afghanistan that has claimed 81 UK lives so far this year.
That's a beautiful opening phrase, patriotism or facing joblessness. Of course, there may also be the patriotic prospective jobless, who accept that the economic strife is no barrier to love of country and the notion of serving honorably at the pleasure of Her Majesty.
These dupes know that they are off to serve in two illegal wars of occupation, but they simply don't care. I wish them well and a speedy return, be it in one piece or several, alive or alas, as fallen heroes, set only to join the ranks of Dead Tommies.
Blind spot
The irony of Israel, owner of an entirely secret nuclear capacity, developed outside of all relevant international treaties, not subject to inspection, and never having even conceded that they possess them, pointing to Iran's similarly secret program (allegedly...)
And, of course, British intelligence, the self-same that cribbed an Iraq dossier from a teenager's homework assignment, has been instrumental in bringing this to light.
The last thing the world needs is a strengthened Israeli position in the Middle East, as if this country is not causing enough problems already with its arrogance and non-stop military aggression and expansion. They've certainly claimed a fair amount of Lebensraum since their inception.
World alienation and a double pregnancy
The Times goes for the satellite photograph to highlight the nuclear threat posed by Iran, rather than an image of a warhead (while the mushroom cloud stock photo waits in the wings).
Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition refers to this:
"The fact that the shrinkage of the earth was the consequence of the invention of the airplane, that is, of leaving the surface of the earth altogether, is like a symbol for the general phenomenon that any descrease of terrestrial distance can be won only at the price of putting a decisive distance between man and earth, of alienating man from his immediate earthly surroundings."
Clearly, the satellite photograph is the current limit of a visual representation of mankind's world alienation. Similarly, being able to view the world as one, is something that encourages, for a moment, the reader/viewer of The Times to participate in a mode of seeing that dissolves the physical distance between the UK and Iran*, and reaffirms the truth that "Men now live in an earth-wide continuous whole where even the notion of distance, still inherent in the most perfectly unbroken contiguity of parts, has yielded before the onslaught of speed. Speed has conquered space..." (Arendt again).
This satellite photo, paired with the phrase 'Spectre of nuclear confrontation with Iran' is a clear confrontation with the world where Leader's Wives are celebrated, or where the citizen 'goes about their own business'. It's a reminder that there is effectively no such thing as 'your private life', that you stand on a tiny piece of the global battlefield, comforted by the fiction that there is some magical domain that lies beyond the reach of intelligence agencies, military planners, nation-states, and the capacity for global conflict. There is nowhere to go, the Earth forms a physical limit to freedom of movement.
Meanwhile, for those who can't face it, there's news of a rare double pregnancy...
*This image of the globe is also used to advance the notion of kinship with all mankind. It depends on one's opinion of the neighbours, I suppose.
Some things don’t change
Obama has a bunch of right-wing nuts running around agitating for a revolution.
Here's some right-wing nuttery from 1996 after Clinton's re-election:
"In November 1996—the month Clinton crushed Bob Dole and won reelection—the main organ of the theoconservative movement, Richard Neuhaus’s journal First Things, published a “symposium” titled “The End of Democracy?” which bluntly questioned “whether we have reached or are reaching the point where conscientious citizens can no longer give moral assent to the existing regime.”19 A series of essays raised the prospect of a major confrontation between the church and the “regime,” at times seeming to predict a civil-war scenario or Christian insurrection against the government, exploring possibilities “ranging from noncompliance to resistance to civil disobedience to morally justified revolution.”
- quoted from Jeremy Scahill - Blackwater
Every defeat is a defeat for what is self-evidently right.
"The mark of a basic shit is that he has to be right. ..." William S. Burroughs
Keep drilling
The Guardian establishes a new benchmark for triviality in the broadsheets with this:
Leader's Wives (get it? how amusing)
I don't know. The dissonance of the constant refrains over how dangerous the world is, mixed in with the celebrations of the courtly life of our glorious leaders, the glamorous occasions, the shining jewels, the fabulous couture... it wouldn't appear from these photos as if Every Dead Tommy is uppermost in their thoughts...
Every Dead Tommy
A multitude of reactions to this are possible.
http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/flash/soldiers/tol_soldiers_flash_gallery.html
200+ heroic dupes of the ruling classes who made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve a status quo that is counter to their interests.
That might be one reaction.
Henin returns
Hooray. First chocolates, now Justine Henin, my favourite women's tennis pro, is coming out of retirement.