God Save the Queen

Mea maxima culpa

Blogging has been nonexistent here for the last couple of weeks - partly due to Easter (this link is late but hopefully apt), but partly due to laziness. What can I say?

Recent reading:

• this interesting article on anti-religious arrogance at TCS. It sums up a lot that I've wanted to say for a while, only far more eloquently and precisely than I could manage.
• this from Norm on Zimbabwe - hoping for the best and fearing the worst.
• this from Jason van Steenwyk on the Schiavo case: "An ethical system which allows starvation and dehydration over a period of weeks to someone who is presumed lucid enough to warrant a morphine drip to take the edge off of pain but prohibits a quick and merciful end is a seriously deficient moral code... If you're going to kill, then at least have the guts to kill." Amen. Rogelio Maynulet was much more merciful than this Florida law, and is being tried for it. Funny old world, isn't it? 

 

'...a dutiful and peaceful boy who liked to ride his bicycle'

Usually that kind of quote introduces stories about axe murdering maniacs. Not this time: quite the opposite.

Fortunately

Like most people I deal with the abortion question by not thinking about it as far as possible. Fortunately Rowan Williams has thought about it.

"For a large majority of Christians — not only Roman Catholics, and including this writer — it is impossible to regard abortion as anything other than the deliberate termination of a human life. Whatever other issues enter into the often anguished decisions concerning particular cases, they want this dimension to be taken seriously.

Equally, though, for a large majority of Christians this is a view which they know they have to persuade others about, and recognise is not taken for granted in our society. The idea that raising the issues here is the first step towards a theocratic tyranny or a capitulation to some neanderthal Christian right is alarmist nonsense."

Well said, beardie, as much for the second paragraph as for the first.

Terrible indeed

A glorious piece of defiance from Taipei. (Via Ed.)

I've been having second thoughts about my reaction here to the news that the UK was surrendering to the Quai d'Orsay on the question of arms exports to China. My problem is that I know perfectly well that the Tories would probably be no more resolute were they in office. Maybe it was an over-reaction to pompously withdraw my endorsement.

But I don't know. It's still six weeks or so to the election: plenty of time for the Government to do something else immoral and alienating. This sort of thing, for instance, on which Eric et al. continue to fight the good fight.

Felix again

Last night to Queen Elizabeth Hall for an evening with Felix (Johann and Wolfgang were there too). The String Symphony No.10 was another new discovery. The Piano Concerto No.2 wasn't, since I used to have a copy, but foolishly gave it away. It didn't sound right on an eighteenth-century piano, not enough bass. Mendelssohn has a certain Enlightenment elegance, but for all that, he came after Beethoven. Even Felix growls sometimes.

Monday ruminations

- Norm's composers poll is up, as if you didn't know. The top three are no surprise. Tchaikovsky was one of my five on the strength of the Fifth Symphony, which I put on as soon as I got home this evening - ah, here's the final theme just starting as I listen: marvellous.

- In this post just after the US elections I suggested that the electoral tide in the US would turn not because the Democrats would win friends but because the Republicans would lose them. Joe Gandelman's article about recent events concerning Tom Delay (and what a perfect name that would be for a Humphrey Appleby type character) illustrates the kind of thing I meant.

- Very good essay by James Hamilton on the decline and fall of the American left. He says it all, basically. One particularly revealing quote from the article he critiques:

" Women's traditional roles, whether in the family or in the larger world, gave way before the intense scrutiny and protest of the feminist movement, while men looked on in bewilderment and anger."

Rubin sidesteps the fact that it wasn't just men who got bewildered and angry over the collapse of the traditional family. At least as many women were upset by that. The problem with the left isn't that it lies (not often, anyway) but that it doesn't allow itself to ask certain questions - a problem that both Rubin and Hamilton mention. (Ever get the feeling we've been here before?)

- Part of my occasional series of Larkinolatry: this interesting article from 1976.

- And I love this quote:

"If the world was run by women there would be no wars. A hell of a lot of assassinations but no wars."

- Meanwhile, it's a glorious day in Lebanon.

Up with skool!

You loved the books.

(Yes, you did. If you didn't, I don't even wanna know you.)

Now love the website.

(Via Laban.)

More of that shaming American brutality

Mark Steyn is of course a brilliant writer. Anyone who cares about the English language, even his honest opponents, would acknowledge that. Just read this lot, for instance. (Over in New Europe, Tomas Kohl is a fan too - via Ed.) One quibble: ever since 2001 he's been gleefully reminding us fans of his about the endless po-faced discussion of the Brutal Afghan Winter (TM) which was supposedly going to cause mass death if the bombing didn't stop to allow those nice Taliban humanitarians the chance to oversee the efficient distribution of aid. He generally remarks on the sunniness of the weather in Afghan cities to illustrate his point.

It's a fair point but limited, because most Afghans live in the countryside, not the cities. And out in the sticks the Afghan winter can be fairly brutal. Fortunately these guys, and a few of their friends, are on the case.

Not smart

A few voices have tried to make something of the claim by Rolf Ekeus that he was offered a bribe by Tariq Aziz. It's almost certainly true, but it doesn't justify any triumphal commenting by us babykilling types. We aren't told in this story, for instance, when the bribe was offered - if it was in 1997, when Ekeus was coming to the end of his time as inspector, it doesn't necessarily mean anything in relation to the issue of Iraq having WMD in 2002-03.

My guess - nothing more than that - is that the Desert Fox air raids of 1998 wrecked what was left of the Iraqi WMD programmes, already pretty much ruined by air attacks in 1991 and the UNSCOM work of the next few years. But there was no way we could get 100% assurance about that, and given Saddam's record and the example of 9/11, nothing less than 100% would do.

Straight talk at the UN?!

It's moments like this that make even twisted and cynical old reactionaries believe that there might be a point in life for a suitably reformed United Nations (ignore the usual Americaphobe/ Anglophobe Guardianish boilerplate in the article):

"Mr Annan appealed to the world's political, religious, and civic leaders to state unequivocally that "terrorism is unacceptable under any circumstances and in any culture".

Rounding on the argument that oppressed people had a right to resist occupation, he said this could not include the right to deliberately kill or maim civilians."

It's really come to something when for the UN to say something so elementary is a brave thing to do.

(Via Norm.)

UPDATE: On a related theme, following an election in Meath, Richard Delevan (via Winds of Change) provides us with a quote containing Nasty Euphemism of the Week:

"Sinn Fein desperately needed to show that they could maintain their support. They've done that, and more. McGuinness confidently predicted to RTE that after the Westminster elections the peace process would pick up again with new enthusiasm."

The peace process... new enthusiasm... Feel like taking a shower?

UPDATE 2: an interesting article on the shifting priorities at the UN. Prediction: if the UN were to get serious, as might be starting to happen, about terrorism, human rights, corruption etc. etc., it will have no better friend than the USA, Republicans and Democrats alike.