RosieBell

Too much information

As everyone is saying, there was far too much news this year.   Arab and North African uprisings, News International downfall, dictators and currencies collapsing - the media was a sound surround of important and exciting news.

This picture handily combines two news items into one (29th April and 1st May):-

More of two for the price of one:-

Listen, it wasn't my idea to join the Euro

I predict riots if we close News of the World

To all you news consumers and news makers out there, Happy New Year.

Press TV

I haven't watched Press TV myself except for the odd clip but what I hear about it is that it is a propaganda channel run from Tehran, and that to appear on it you have to be highly uncritical of the Iranian government.  According to the journalist Dave Osler (comment 12):-

I am generally of the ‘bus company’ theory when it comes to media outlets. Who cares who runs the bus, so long as the route takes you where you want to go?

That is why I have in the past written for the Daily Express, and happily appear on rightwing TV and radio shows (Richard Littlejohn, Nick Ferrari etc) if they want a leftie on to spark debate.

If the media offers you a platform, take it, on the sole condition that you get your message across.

But the point is that Press TV doesn’t offer that kind of platform, It carefully selects Brit lefties that will say the sort of thing that complies with its editorial line. That sort of exposure isn’t worth having.

So it's no surprise that Press TV employs islamist and theocracy pimps like the well-known hijabbed sister-in-law Lauren Booth, Yvonne Ridley and, of course, George Galloway.

Radio 4 ran a programme about Press TV on Thursday evening, which is well worth listening to. 

I would have liked to have heard more about Press TV's audience.  I would guess that it would mostly be islamist sympathisers, and the kind of member of the far left who a few decades ago would have listened to Radio Moscow as their in-depth unbiassed news source.  For example, here's a thicko who comments at Shiraz Socialist  (comment 5):-

Many Marxists with decades long experience in the movement have contributed to press tv, which in content and form, beats the superficial news churned out by media that Hitchens whored himself to.

George Galloway was invited to appear on the programme but did not take this chance to defend his employer.  He's not usually shy about appearing on the BBC. However he might have been asked impertinent questions which is not the kind of thing his heroes eg Stalin, Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad, would have put up with for a minute.

I Fisk You a Merry Christmas

This is fisking for dummies, but it’s Christmas after all:-

Let's just hope God is merciful, Chris
By George Galloway

WELL, he kens noo. I hope that the deceased, unbelieving English man of letters Christopher Hitchens has discovered that God is not only great but merciful too.

[Now, when Christians say that kind of thing in pious tones, you know they are lying.   May all my enemies go to hell, Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel]

I had taken a self-denying ordinance over his demise at the weekend from osophageal cancer on the grounds that one should not speak ill of the recently dead and there would be nothing good to say about him considering the circumstances.

Two things forced me to shorten my purdah. The first was the way in which almost every one of the eulogies and profiles, in which I had declined to be represented on grounds of taste, nonetheless managed to attack me in the process of praising him.

[Oooh George – I've read loads of these, and y'know, you're not mentioned THAT much.  The American ones don't mention you at all.  But of course if your google alert says "George Galloway" – and I'm sure it does, not out of mere vanity though yours should never be underestimated, but for litigation opportunities - that's how it must seem to you.]

The second was the sight of his friend Tony Blair, his voice catching with emotion in the "death of Diana way", telling us what a great man he was.

This canonisation of the departed by some of the worst hypocrites operating in the English language must be halted before it slithers any further.

[Weel, I'd be very careful of the "h" word if I were you.]

Hitchens was the only-known case of a butterfly changing back into a slug.

He wrote like an angel but placed himself in the service of the devils.

He was a drink-soaked former Trotskyite popinjay, the Englishman in New York who discovered there were large bundles of right-wing dollars available for apostates like him. If they were prepared to betray their friends, their principles and sell the soul he didn't believe he had in the first place.

[And I'm sure your work for Iran's Press TV is done for a small pittance, barely enough to keep you in cigars.  Also the "popinjay" – which one is the dapper little chap and which one the untidy handsome guy out of you two?  And though it's the season for recycling, couldn't you have at least come up with some new insults?]

Easy. As Groucho Marx once put it: "These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others."

Thus, the man who once praised Saddam Hussein in adoration and opposed the first Gulf War when the Iraqi tyrant was still occupying Kuwait, was transformed into the main literary cheerleader for the second war.

[Ah, well you would know about "adoration" of Saddam Hussein, not to mention his rapist offspring.]

And he was still blowing the weapons of mass destruction trumpet long after its tinny notes were discredited.

The man who once championed the Palestinian cause became a little echo for Benjamin Netanyahu, denouncing the 10 Turkish dead on the ship Mavi Marmara as "Hamas-sympathisers" who got what they asked for.

[Do you mean that they DIDN'T sympathise with Hamas?  I'm shocked.  And – get your little head around this – it's possible to champion the Palestinian cause and not become a pimp for what Hitchens would call "gaunt fascists with an Islamic face".]

Sure his ditties were witty, his parsing precise and, if you like your men drunk, slurred and slobbering, he could be charming no doubt.

[You really know you were outclassed on all fronts – "ditties were witty", "parsing precise" – is that your way of showing you can do that writing thing as well?]

But when you're slobbering in support of the re-election of George W Bush for his catastrophic second term, or backing Bush's handling of the clean-up operation after Hurricane Katrina (where he was the only man in the country other than Bush who thought the Federal Emergency Agency was doing a "heck of a job") and you have written the script for the most disastrous massacre since Vietnam, I'm afraid literary pretence must be put in its proper place. Down the lavatory.

Hitchens and I shared the ring in an epic "Grapple in the Apple" back in 2005 in Manhattan.

Thousands of people queued around the block for ringside seats paying top dollar for the privilege. You can watch it on YouTube or wait for the DVD, with commentary and my updates, which I will produce shortly.

[My dear, plug your work in the visual media as you will, your most popular appearance on YouTube will continue to be pretending to be a cat in a red leotard.]

Ultimately, the real reason for the ­tear-stained eulogies from the British media commentariat for the late Mr Hitchens is that, by and large, the writers and editors are weeping for themselves.

They share his guilt over the Iraq War and deep inside they know it.

But all the salty tears in the world will not out that damned spot. The next reason is class.

Hitchens was a toff, a Lord. And the English-speaking world, it seems, still likes to love a Lord.

[Admiration undeservedly won, nothing to do with talent of course.  And congratulations for about the best example of resentful envy and self-promotion incompetently disguising itself as principled opposition I've seen in a long while.]

Irreplaceable

Well, there's nothing much I can say.  Everyone, from close friends to fans to enemies are talking about this event which we knew was imminent.  I came home Thursday evening after a works night out full of red wine and good food , turned on the radio and there it was, the news that the writer Christopher Hitchens had died.  The tributes are pouring in, the reminiscences, the summings ups, the paying off of old scores. The famous, the obscure, the mandarin and the meanest of spirits are all having their say. I've read a few of their pieces and liked David Frum's best of all for its warmth and this final paragraph from Jacob Weisberg. 

Here's what I learned from Christopher Hitchens in the 25 years I knew him. Don't let anyone else do your thinking for you. Follow your principles to the end. Don't flinch from the truth. Repeat until the last ounce of strength drains from your body.

Though cut short by today's standards, Hitchens had a full life - full of combativeness, friends, drink, cigarettes, reading, politicking, travel, lecturing and most of all writing.  However hangovered he was Hitchens would write.  Even in his last days with his veins running morphine and tubes stuck in him at every point, he would be carried from his bed to a chair to continue writing.  

The world does seem drabber and emptier. This is a definite diminishment. The brilliance, the wit, the love of language are gone.  Even those who loathed him for political reasons would have liked to have had him on their side. 

I've tried to find some fitting words from the poets eg W H Auden's lament for the death of Yeats. 

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day . .

 . ..  .

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

There's another tribute to an English writer, as untidy and as argumentative and as loved by his friends as Hitchens was.  

"He has made a chasm, which not only nothing can fill up, but which nothing has a tendency to fill up. -Johnson is dead.- Let us go to the next best: There is nobody; -no man can be said to put you in mind of Johnson."

If there is a next best, please send me his or her name. 

Dreich Sunday

They have done up the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which Carl and I visited on Sunday afternoon, a good outing for a dreich December day. I'd say the refurbishment has been a great success.  The building is neo-Gothic red sandstone. It has enjoyable Victorian touches like the stairwell with murals of historical scenes e.g. St Margaret landing at Queensferry. These they have kept but they have moved the cafe, which was small, into one of the former galleries and the big arches let in a lot of light on the cafe goers. Good scones as well.

Foyer and frieze

Before the renovations the ground floor contained miles of Stuarts. God, how I got sick of seeing acres of satin dresses on the female Stuarts like Queen Anne.  I can just about take them up to James VI (James I of England) and Charles I and II but when after that every Stuart is still  regarded as Scots, descending through to the white-wigged Hanoverians, even though between Charles II and George IV none of the British monarchs visited Scotland. The Stuarts have now been shoved into a gallery at the top floor, and instead you have a bright space of Hot Scots with photographs of actors and comedians like Amando Ianucci and David Tennant.  Though I suppose that is dumbing down, I'd far rather look at a picture of Robert Carlyle than another Stuart any day.

(Re dumbing down, there are touch screens, interactivity and the rest of it, but not too many nor overly gimmicky and these do make it pleasanter to bring children, for whom there are various activities.)

Among the Hot Scots was Jack Vettriano, the highly popular painter whose paintings look as if he has copied them from 1930s pulp fiction covers.  Vettriano is always complaining how the art establishment won't take him seriously and put him in the classy exhibitions.  He's finally got a spot with a self-portrait called Weight which I thought rather good - at least it caught the tackiness of the furniture of the flimsy high varnish veneered type.  (I've been looking for furniture recently and have seen slabs of toffee-shiny chests of drawers and bedside tables in second-hand and charity shops.)

Weight by Jake Vettriano

Another striking picture was that of John Byrne by David Eustace. Carl, who is an artist, said something about the texture of the picture, which was ink-jet printed.  My own ink jet printer could not produce that kind of detail but he assured me such printers do exist. 

Ed Byrne by David Eustace

We then got a thrill riding in the big glass lift to the next floor where there were various exhibitions eg paintings of naval battles of the First World War.  A section was given to famous modern Scots with a small space for poets. including the group portrait called Pub Poets, a gathering of poets of the twentieth century Scots Renaissance,  MacDiarmid, Macaig and the rest.  But no picture of Edwin Muir.  I'd like to say he's the most considerable Scots poet of the twentieth century, however to do that I'd have to read MacDiarmid, Macaig and the rest of them for comparison, which I don't want to do at present. He was a very good poet and his portrait should be somewhere.  His wife Willa Muir, was represented. She translated Kafka and was an important literary figure in her day, but does anyone read her works now?

Among the modern distinguished scientists was this nightmarish portrait of oncologists by Ken Currie.

Another gallery is a scholar's library of glass fronted bookcases on two levels and in some of the cases are phrenology samples and life and death masks. Voltaire's life mask is there, and it looks as witty and clever as a mask can.  On the other end of the scale are murderers like Burke and Hare, mad people, imbeciles and idiots and also a mask labelled "a cunning woman", whose expression was perfectly ordinary and pleasant.  It whiffed of pseudo-science ultimately leading to race theory and eugenics.  

The photography section had an exhibition called Romantic Camera: Scottish Photography & the Modern World - some good individual photographs but I could not really get the hang of the theme.  This part was crowded. I think the average gallery goer prefers photographs to paintings. 

The next floor up contained the more familiar collection -  Allan Ramsay portraits, Hume, Scott, Burns as well as the Stuarts - rearranged.  I'll come back and see them properly one day but after a quick skim we were both ready for a drink.  We were full of enthusiasm for the  gallery's makeover, and people I overheard were exclaiming what a good job had been done.  I suppose we had seen a half dozen objects that will stick - the John Byrne portrait, the Currie oncologists and the creepy masks, for instance - but it was the whole experience in itself that we found a pleasure to the point of exhilaration. The National Portrait Gallery will be the favourite winter outing for the Edinburgh bourgeoisie as the Botanic Gardens is for spring, summer and autumn. They really do themselves very well. 

Decline and fall

I've always thought the saying “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” was self-eivdently stupid, both physically and emotionally. I can't imagine a crowd of amputees,  paraplegics and others crippled from nearly fatal accidents chanting it in a chorus.  As for the realms of feeling, the bad things that batter you can toughen you or weaken you or leave you pretty much as you were.  There are no rules there and no consistency.  Now Hitchens is finding out the hard way that this maxim come from bravado rather than experience, truthfully reported.

Hitchen is dwindling.  The cancer, and its treatment, are assaulting him violently.  Swallowing is torture, and he's losing the use of his fingers so he is in fear of being unable to write.  However he can still put the words together and bear witness to the state of himself. 

I do remember lying there and looking down at my naked torso, which was covered almost from throat to navel by a vivid red radiation rash. This was the product of a month-long bombardment with protons which had burned away all of the cancer in my clavicular and paratracheal nodes, as well as the original tumor in the esophagus. . . . . To say that the rash hurt would be pointless. The struggle is to convey the way that it hurt on the inside. I lay for days on end, trying in vain to postpone the moment when I would have to swallow. Every time I did swallow, a hellish tide of pain would flow up my throat, culminating in what felt like a mule kick in the small of my back. I wondered if things looked as red and inflamed within as they did without. And then I had an unprompted rogue thought: If I had been told about all this in advance, would I have opted for the treatment? There were several moments as I bucked and writhed and gasped and cursed when I seriously doubted it.
. . .

I am typing this having just had an injection to try to reduce the pain in my arms, hands, and fingers. The chief side effect of this pain is numbness in the extremities, filling me with the not irrational fear that I shall lose the ability to write. Without that ability, I feel sure in advance, my “will to live” would be hugely attenuated. I often grandly say that writing is not just my living and my livelihood but my very life, and it’s true. Almost like the threatened loss of my voice, which is currently being alleviated by some temporary injections into my vocal folds, I feel my personality and identity dissolving as I contemplate dead hands and the loss of the transmission belts that connect me to writing and thinking.

These are progressive weaknesses that in a more “normal” life might have taken decades to catch up with me. But, as with the normal life, one finds that every passing day represents more and more relentlessly subtracted from less and less. In other words, the process both etiolates you and moves you nearer toward death. How could it be otherwise?

He quotes John Betjeman's poem Five O'Clock Shadow, with its vision of the modern unsupernatural hell that most of us will go through one day:-

This is the time of day when we in the Men's ward
Think "one more surge of the pain and I give up the fight."
When he who struggles for breath can struggle less strongly:
This is the time of day which is worse than night.

A haze of thunder hangs on the hospital rose-beds,
A doctors' foursome out of the links is played,
Safe in her sitting-room Sister is putting her feet up:
This is the time of day when we feel betrayed.

Below the windows, loads of loving relations
Rev in the car park, changing gear at the bend,
Making for home and a nice big tea and the telly:
"Well, we've done what we can. It can't be long till the end."

This is the time of day when the weight of bedclothes
Is harder to bear than a sharp incision of steel.
The endless anonymous croak of a cheap transistor
Intensifies the lonely terror I feel.

Ethnic cleansing

There's only a short time left to hear this programme, The Last Jews of Iraq,  a story of ethnic cleansing, very moving and frightening.  It's presented by Alan Yentob, the BBC grandee and himself the son of Iraqi Jews. 

The Jewish population of Iraq  had existed by the waters of Babylon since 597BC and in 1917 made up one third of the population of Baghdad.   

They had their golden years in the 1920s and 1930s, living a comfortable and integrated life among their Arab neighbours.   When the state of Iraq was created, they regarded themselves as both Iraqis and Jews. 

In 1936 Hitler's Mein Kampf was translated into Arabic and published in Baghdad.   Ideological hatreds began to arise and with growing Zionism in the Middle East Jews began to be regarded as aliens and were  attacked in the streets.



Mein Kampf - the Arab translation on sale in Syria

In June 1941, a Nazi sympathiser, General Rashid Ali al-Kailani seized power in a military coup.   A plan to exterminate the Jewish population of Iraq was formed.  The mayor of Baghdad (a Muslim) intervened, General Rashid Ali fled the city, but there was a 2 day pogrom.  180 Jews were killed.

After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, 98% of the Iraqi Jews left.  Those who remained behind lived under suspicion and official persecution, culminating in public hangings which the government celebrated with a national holiday. 

Any of these stories - Bosnia,  Rwanda, the Sunni-Shi-ite conflict in Iraq - will tell how different communities who had co-existed well enough turned into hostile tribes.  Suddenly your fellow citizens in all their different shadings become one kind of person or another - the person who denounces, pursues, even murders or the person who shelters and protect. 

In 1947 there were 118,000 Jews in Baghdad.  There are now only seven left.