Brian (formerly of London) writes:

Canada's Human Rights apparatus is at it again! We talk this week to Guy Earle, who committed the unpardonable sin of having a go at some hecklers at a show in Vancouver.

They were lesbians, and it turns out the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal has decreed lesbians are permanently out of season and probably a doubly protected species (they're Gay and Women!), so now Guy Earle is in the same boat as Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant.

Read more about his impending legal fight at his website. If you're in Toronto on the 19th, do be sure to support Guy Earle's fight with the anti-free-speech bureaucracy by going along to the Comics for Freedom Rally at The Comedy Bar which is at 945B Floor West.

John Clarke in The Times:

The woes of the giant American mortgage group Fannie Mae should throw some welcome light on a record of the same name which briefly grazed the US top 40 in 1959. Written by, and sung in hoarse tones but with great gusto by the blues singer and harmonica player Buster Brown, the lyrics seem quite prescient:

Well, I want somebody
Tell me what’s wrong with me
I want somebody
Tell me what’s wrong with me
No, I ain’t in trouble
I’m in so much misery

[…]

Now, in more straitened times, with the title having more resonance than ever, the song is available as a ringtone at www.stlyrics.com and can be heard in full on The Golden Age of American Rock ‘n’ Roll Vol. 9 (Ace).

No wonder Fannie Mae was miserable. Buster Brown grew tired of waiting and cheated on her with Fannie Wood.

People who think well don't always write well, but those who think badly generally write badly. They may use fancy words, but if they lack moral clarity, they will generally lack verbal clarity. Seumas Milne, Guardian columnist and Islam-apologist, illustrates this perfectly. In yesterday's Guardian, he argued that those speakers who pulled out of IslamExpo are "craven and small-minded":

US academic specialists like John Esposito, John Voll and Robert Leiken have debated political Islam with the likes of Tariq Ramadan and Rached al-Ghannouchi, who played a crucial role in reconciling mainstream Islamism with democratic principles in the 1990s.

It is difficult to know what any of this means. Are Esposito and Ramadan supposed to be on different sides? Both are practitioners of taqiyya, whitewashers of Islam. And what is "mainstream Islamism"? I thought "Islamism" was the "extreme Islam" which we are constantly invited to contrast with a "moderate Islam" practiced by the "overwhelming" but overwhelmingly silent majority of Muslims. The only way "Islamism" can be reconciled with "democratic principles" is if the number of Muslims grows large enough to out-vote the Infidels. I cannot imagine Tariq Ramadan saying this openly, so what's to debate?

Milne grows more opaque as the article progresses. He describes Ed Husain as an "extreme anti-Islamist campaigner". What can this possibly mean? If "Islamism" is "extremism", how can a campaign against it be extreme? Would moderate opposition to suicide bombing and stoning be more acceptable?

Some IslamExpo speakers pulled out in support of Harry's Place, target of a libel suit by a supporter of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Milne takes the side of Hamas, "winner of the Palestinian elections" - they were elected, you see, so that makes them all right - and the Muslim Brotherhood, "the largest political movement in the Arab world". Size is everything, then?

Reader Alan has drawn by attention to a meeting organised by Policy Exchange to be held today:

Policy Exchange takes great pleasure in inviting you to a lunchtime seminar entitled “Libel Tourism - Does UK Law Need Reform?”. This event will begin at 12.45 on Tuesday 15 July 2008 in Policy Exchange’s headquarters at 10 Storey's Gate London SW1P 3AY. 

The subject of libel tourism has begun to attract considerable attention abroad: the New York State Legislature voted unanimously to pass the Libel Terrorism Protection Act in April 2008. 

The impetus for this move came directly from the English court judgement in favour of Khalid Salim bin Mahfouz, who sued Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld for defamatory statements in her book Funding Evil, How Terrorism is Financed – and How to Stop it, about his alleged involvement in the funding of terrorism, allegations which Mr. Bin Mahfouz vehemently denied. Although Dr. Ehrenfeld lived and worked in the United States, the English court awarded damages and costs to the claimant and granted an injunction prohibiting the book from being published in England. 

This growing phenomenon of “libel tourism”, where non-English citizens travel to England in order to press libel charges on US citizens whose work is protected under US law – shows the willingness of courts in this country to extend libel laws well beyond the boundaries of England. This has been seen by many as a great threat to the right of free speech in the West.

Policy Exchange has therefore gathered a leading group of experts on this subject to discuss “libel tourism” .

Speakers include Anthony Julius of Mischon de Reya, the firm of solicitors acting for Harry's Place.

Unfortunately I cannot attend, but Helen from EU Referendum, a friend of Rachel Ehrenfeld, is going and will report back.

"You must move in the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centers… until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria… like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete, and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it… You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey… Until that time, any step taken would be too early - like breaking an egg without waiting the full 40 days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all - in confidence… trusting your loyalty and sensitivity to secrecy. I know that when you leave here - [just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and feelings expressed here."

  - Fethullah Güllen  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNi3Z3qZ7Z4&mode=related&search.

 

 "The philosophy of our service is that we open a house somewhere and, with the patience of a spider, we lay our web, to wait for people to get caught in the web; and we teach those who do. We don't lay the web to eat or consume them, but to show them the way to their resurrection, to blow life into their dead bodies and souls, to give them a life."

   - Fethullah Güllen  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tbnGnzdmgU&mode=related&search.

Roger Scruton writes perceptively in Axess (hat tip: Arts & Letters):

...The evangelical atheists are subliminally aware that their abdication in the face of science does not make the universe more intelligible, nor does it provide an alternative answer to our metaphysical enquiries. It simply brings enquiry to a stop. And the religious person will feel that this stop is premature: that reason has more questions to ask, and perhaps more answers to obtain, than the atheists will allow us. So who, in this subliminal contest, is the truly reasonable one? The atheists beg the question in their own favour, by assuming that science has all the answers. But science can have all the answers only if it has all the questions; and that assumption is false. There are questions addressed to reason which are not addressed to science, since they are not asking for a causal explanation.

One of these is the question of consciousness. This strange universe of black holes and time warps, of event horizons and non-localities, somehow becomes conscious of itself. And it becomes conscious of itself in us. This fact conditions the very structure of science. The rejection of Newton’s absolute space, the adoption of the space-time continuum, the quantum equations – all these are premised on the truth that scientific laws are instruments for predicting one set of observations from another. The universe that science describes is constrained at every point by observation. According to quantum theory, some of its most basic features become determinate only at the moment of observation. The great tapestry of waves and particles, of fields and forces, of matter and energy, is pinned down only at the edges, where events are crystallised in the observing mind.

Consciousness is more familiar to us than any other feature of our world, since it is the route by which anything at all becomes familiar. But this is what makes consciousness so hard to pinpoint. Look for it wherever you like, you encounter only its objects – a face, a dream, a memory, a colour, a pain, a melody, a problem, but nowhere the consciousness that shines on them. Trying to grasp it is like trying to observe your own observing, as though you were to look with your own eyes at your own eyes without using a mirror. Not surprisingly, therefore, the thought of consciousness gives rise to peculiar metaphysical anxieties, which we try to allay with images of the soul, the mind, the self, the ‘subject of consciousness’, the inner entity that thinks and sees and feels and which is the real me inside. But these traditional ‘solutions’ merely duplicate the problem. We cast no light on the consciousness of a human being simply by re-describing it as the consciousness of some inner homunculus – be it a soul, a mind or a self. On the contrary, by placing that homunculus in some private, inaccessible and possibly immaterial realm, we merely compound the mystery.

It is this mystery which brings people back to religion....

Organisers of the Beijing Olympics are concerned about China’s image. Not its human rights record, but something much more important: lip-gloss. From The Times:

Umbrellas are in but crossbows, banners and nudity are out, while babies are frowned upon and lip-gloss will be limited.

Organisers of the Beijing Olympics released their “Spectators' House Rules” today together with the launch of a “Good Habit for a Good Games” campaign — the latest step in a bid to ensure that the event proceeds without anything that could embarrass its Chinese hosts.

[…]

Those breaching the rules, which also ban gambling, sit-ins, demonstrations, drunkenness and streaking, would be dealt with according to the level of their transgressions.

Huang Keying, deputy director of the spectator services division at the Beijing Organising Committee, said: “Different cases will be handled by different departments following relevant rules or laws. We have specially trained staff who will communicate with spectators.”

Lip-gloss, fountain pens and sunscreen will be allowed but only in small quantities. Animals, other than guide dogs, are prohibited. Parents will be encouraged not to bring babies. And the “f-word”, commonly heard on the streets of Beijing, will be most definitely forbidden.

The f-word? Does the Chinese f-word begin with F, like our f-word? I couldn’t let this question go unanswered, obviously, and I am sure readers would like to know. So I googled “f*ck in different languages”, without the asterisk, and came across a webpage called F*ck in Different Languages, again without the asterisk. Languages include Hebrew, Armenian and Korean. Go on, take a look. You know you want to.

The Cantonese is “tui lay”, which is more of a t-word than an f-word. I’m not sure how accurate this is, since the site thinks a French cow is a “cache”. I like the Afrikaans – “fok jou” – and the Greek, which is “malaka wanker gamisou”.

Not long ago my young nephew proclaimed triumphantly that he knew the c-word. I was relieved when he whispered in my ear that it was “crap”, and didn’t disabuse him of this lesser evil.

Here, not for the first time, is one of my favorite public intellectuals displaying his characteristic thought processes. I can't tell from the clip if he's being a public intellectual while in public or  if he's doing it, for the nonce, in private. Nor can I be sure if his intellect -- so helpful if you are going to be an "intellectual" -- is the result of one of those "public-private partnerships" that we hear so think-tankingly much about, possibly between different parts of his brain.

Anyway, here he is, poor forked man, doomed to be a thinking reed:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gl-7fbIrpQ

Martina Navratilova is a great tennis player. Nine-times Wimbledon singles champion, winner of 18 Grand Slam singles titles, 31 Grand Slam women’s doubles titles and 10 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles, she was, and still is, a great tennis player. But there her greatness ends. She shouldn’t complain, as she has more than her fair share. After all, you’d never get a great novelist and lepidopterist playing a decent game of tennis.

Martina as tennis star is impressive; Martina as political analyst, less so:

“The most absurd part of my escape from the unjust system [Communism] is that I have exchanged one system that suppresses free opinion for another. The Republicans in the US manipulate public opinion and sweep controversial issues under the table. It’s depressing. Decisions in America are based solely on the question of how much money will come out of it and not on the questions of how much health, morals or environment suffer as a result.”

Now Martina has turned her hand – forehand and backhand – to art. From The Spectator:

The pictures, which range in price from £1,500 to £126,000, are Jackson Pollock-like splatters of paint on canvas, which on closer inspection turn out to be the marks made by tennis balls at speed. As the guests begin sipping their pre-match aperitifs, the artist herself arrives in a silver Mercedes, drives straight across the lawn and pulls up as close as she can to the clubhouse.

[…]

Nowadays she says she is just as happy hitting paint-coloured balls on to canvases, in a technique she calls ‘tennising’, as playing tennis itself. Some of the balls are carefully aimed, some are bounced up and down on the spot, pre-serve style, to make an intense pattern. Some are whacked randomly to create ‘more esoteric pieces’.

Ms Navratilova says that making the paintings is her expression of what it feels like to play tennis. ‘It’s that moment of suspense, when you hit the ball and it lands and you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. You let it go and trust that it’s going to turn out all right and so it is here.

‘It’s my expression of what tennis is to me, the beauty of it. People have always had their interpretation of what I am on the tennis court, this is my interpretation. The result is dynamic because it took energy to create it.’

In other art news, Mme Sarkozy, AKA Carla Bruni, has made an album, Comme si de rien n’était. Pete Paphides reviews it for The Times:

Carla Bruni is not afraid to make the necessary leaps of anti-logic that mark out the lyrical maverick. And so we find ourselves some way into the French first lady’s third album where a sparse, folky meditation called The Antelope reveals itself. “The future is unclear,” explains Bruni, “And the past is troublesome/Me I’m at one with the present/Like the panther and the elephant.” If you were casting around for a creature that was truly at one with the present tense you would probably opt for a goldfish — but let’s not get too bogged down with nitpicking.

Context is important to the way we listen to pop music. And, replete with a passable version of Bob Dylan’s You Belong to Me, Comme si de rien n’était may be the best album ever made by the wife of a head of state. Even if the only other contender in the field hadn’t been the 1989 record that Imelda Marcos made of her husband’s favourite love songs, the album would still hold its own.

James Bowman of the New Criterion is incredibly impressed by this example of “British understatement”. It would be better if he were not.

How long will it take the Organization of the Islamic Conference to run interference on this? New Duranty:

PARIS — The prosecutor at the International Criminal Court formally requested an arrest warrant on Monday for Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the past five years of bloodshed in the Darfur region of his country.

The prosecutor’s pursuit of Mr. Bashir introduced new volatility to the already chaotic situation in Darfur. While some diplomats and analysts worried that the move would undermine efforts to negotiate peace and provide aid to the millions displaced by violence, others said it offered new leverage to pressure the Sudanese government to end the conflict in Darfur.

Bracing for reprisals, United Nations peacekeepers and aid workers stepped up security in Darfur and pulled out all but the most essential civilians. Sudan promised not to vent its outrage on them, but said it would unleash a “diplomatic war” to try to scuttle the case.

It was the first time the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court had brought genocide charges against anyone. It was also the first time the prosecutor had brought charges against a sitting head of state since the court opened its doors in 2002. Two other presidents, Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Charles Taylor of Liberia, were charged by other international war crimes courts, also while they were in office.

Darfur has been a shifting, many-sided conflict, with rebels fighting rebels, government-backed Arab militias killing civilians and one another, freelance bandits attacking aid workers and atrocities committed by all the armed groups.

In announcing the request, the prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said Mr. Bashir had “masterminded and implemented” a plan to destroy three main ethnic groups in Darfur, the Fur, the Masalit and the Zaghawa. Using government soldiers and Arab militias, the president “purposefully targeted civilians” belonging to these groups, killing 35,000 people “outright” in attacks on towns and villages, he said.

“His motives were largely political,” the prosecutor said. “His alibi was a ‘counterinsurgency.’ His intent was genocide.” ...

Not a gun or a grenade, not a souped-up Bondmobile, not an arch-villain with his island retreat and a bevy of bezonian bodyguards or blondes, in view. Nor any avatars of Pussy Galore. Not a word, in fact, is exchanged between the spy Shtirlitz and his wife. Each learns only that the other is alive, and well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ghMgTkVpJI

"It is this mystery which brings people back to religion...." [from this article]

Actually isn't it just the same old "silence of infinite spaces" and le pari de Pascal, and stupefaction over the fact of mortality, and an advanced case of the "heart has its reasons that reason does not know" which Scruton slyly changes into "reason has its reasons which science does not know" ?

Granted, the aggressive atheists get on everyone's nerves, and should -- just look at Hitchens, just look at Dawkins -- but why throw the baby, if that baby is a quiet, non-aggressive, bemused, resigned-to-religion atheistic baby, with the cutest little dimples and smile -- out with the bathwater of the humorless, unwise professional atheists?  What's next? Raising Madalyn Murray O'Hare from the dead so that she can be paraded as a "typical atheist" when many or most atheists are an altogether different matter, and wear their atheism lightly, and are perfectly at ease with the mystery -- plain or goddam -- of things.

And it is not true that atheists go around saying, or thinking, that "science has all the answers." That's a caricature; I can't imagine any intelligent scientist ever saying, or thinking, such a thing. However, a straw man might do so, and a straw man is what Scruton helpfully supplies to his own argument, a straw man to be played, naturally,  by Ray Bolger, regretting the things he might have done or still might do, "if I only had a brain."  

Maybe it really is the mystery....or maybe it's the Japanese cigarettes.

Roger Scruton, whose work I generally like, writes:

We cast no light on the consciousness of a human being simply by re-describing it as the consciousness of some inner homunculus – be it a soul, a mind or a self. On the contrary, by placing that homunculus in some private, inaccessible and possibly immaterial realm, we merely compound the mystery.

"Some private, inaccessible and possibly immaterial realm" where the sun don't shine? A soul is about right.

More on the word "homunculus", its rhymes and its ramifications here.