No Compromise 2: The Enemy Within

The Muslim Brotherhood refers to Israel as 'this criminal enemy'. Surrounded as they are by systems plotting their annihilation, it has been widely reported that the Israelis, some say true to form, recently tortured a Palestinian prisoner to death – according to a PA autopsy report. The Israelis are currently saying he died of a heart attack; meanwhile secular Jewish anti-establishment media are coming up with all kinds of fanciful tales such as Shin Bet killed him and made it look enough like a beating up so they could respond in force to the inevitable intifada which would follow - pleading poor Zionist victims as the US President arrived. What absolute nonsense. Another theory is that he was beaten by fellow Arab prisoners, which has historical precedent and may be some way toward the truth. President Obama had better be wearing his luckiest diplomatic socks for his much heralded arrival in Jerusalem in a month's time. I suspect he privately supports the Israeli secular Left, heedless of the fact that in terms of action on the ground they themselves are the enemy within. I further wonder if he's worked out that Arabs see pussyfooting and conciliation as a sign of weakness and the international community as well as the PA will be up in arms at the slightest suggestion that he is going to offer any moral support to the Zionist entity which will be hosting him. Additionally, the featherweight touch that his administration has so far used when dealing with the Brotherhood and most of the rest of them is quite simply both ineffective and inappropriate since it has given political cover to authoritarian regimes perhaps worse than the one they helped to depose, allowing mechanisms for repression to develop and strangle any attempt to birth viable and self-sustaining democracies.

As a postscript, it will be interesting to see if a visit to the Al Aqsa mosque is on his itinerary.

No Compromise 1: The Enemy Without

Hamas rules in Gaza. The PA rules in the West Bank. Both have the same ideological agenda but neither have the political finesse of The Muslim Brotherhood. When Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Cairo in April 2011, to show solidarity for what appeared at the time to be a fledgling democracy, or, better, to keep an American foot in the door, there was no MB in power, no anti-Morsi riots in Tahrir Square. All that came later. The MB  does a lot for the poor. It provides a degree of law and order. It also understands that Islamic power can only be consolidated by repression.  According to its founder, Hussain al-Banna, “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.”  Therefore, the Muslim Brotherhood opposes secular tendencies of Islamic nations and wants a return to the precepts of the Qu’ran. The Brotherhood firmly rejects all notions of Western influences, but seems quite happy to take Western money in the interests of furtherance of its own agenda. In the post Arab spring, particularly in Egypt, however, it doesn’t just need a coat of ideological paint to spruce up its image in the West and it doesn’t just need a new governing strategy. It needs to understand that its version of political Islam — which is resistant to women’s empowerment and religious and political pluralism — might be sustainable if you are Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, and you have huge reserves of oil to buy economic growth and give all the credit to Islam but if,  as in Egypt, for example,  your only natural resource is your people — men and women — you need to be as open to the world and modernity as possible to unleash all of their potential. At this time, the MB won't play this game and are playing true to form by attempting to consolidate power by all means, which in translation means the use of overwhelming  force.

"According to the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas, the head of the al-Quds Force, the elite force of the Revolutionary Guards of Iran, visited Egypt secretly some weeks ago. He had apparently been invited to demonstrate how to set up a special, elite unit - distinct from the army - faithful to President Morsi's regime. There have been reports in recent months that the MB was forming a special militia to protect the regime and tackle its opponents and that it was already operational. Reports in a number of Egyptian opposition media outlets claim that Hamas dispatched 7,000 militiamen from Gaza to Egypt to protect President Morsi. The Gulf newspaper Akhbar Al-Khaleej published what it described as "secret documents" proving that Hamas, with the financial backing of Qatar, had plans to send hundreds of militiamen to Egypt to help Morsi's regime."

Bottom line then looks like this.  Either the Muslim Brotherhood changes or it fails as a reasoned, sincere player in the region, going the way of all the rest of the ideologues — and the sooner it realises that the better. But the message is not being delivered forcefully enough. On the one hand, while the ‘Freedom and Justice’ party members – the political wing of the MB - can say publicly as recently as last month that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood will not recognise Israel “under any circumstance” without anyone bothering to ask whether negotiation is a possible strategy, any ‘talk’ is so much hot air. Such firebrand rhetoric is widely applauded in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria – and probably London as well. When asked whether it is a requirement for the government in Egypt to recognise Israel, the response was uncompromising: “This is not an option, whatever the circumstances, we do not recognise Israel at all. It’s an occupying criminal enemy.”  The interviewee further stressed that no Muslim Brotherhood members would ever meet with Israelis for negotiations. “I will not allow myself to sit down with criminals” was the flat response. One of the spiritual leaders in Egypt - Yusuf Al Qaradawi, who can muster media audiences in the millions, is a supporter and advocate of violence against Israel and a strong proponent of the belief that the Holocaust was a punishment upon the Jews for their corrupt practices.  How will Obama respond to that next month in Jerusalem?

Prisoners and Drink

In recent times, I’ve had occasion to spend time with people who drink – sometimes quite heavily  - and also people who gave up for an extended period before returning to their old drinking habits. It does people like me no harm to watch others' lives imperceptibly unravelling until they reach a place where the social stitching has disintegrated so badly that they no longer function properly. As an exercise in self-therapy, then, I found myself considering a few ideas that I hadn’t pursued for quite some time. Drinking is a game one plays with oneself, so a degree of understanding can be gained from a look at the mathematical theory of games. The ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ is, I think, the first example of co-operative game theory. Two men are arrested, but the police do not have enough information for a conviction. The police separate the two men, and offer both the same deal: if one testifies against his partner (defects/betrays), and the other remains silent (cooperates with/assists his partner), the betrayer goes free and the one that remains silent gets a one-year sentence. If both remain silent, both are sentenced to only one month in jail on a minor charge. If each 'rats out' the other, each receives a three-month sentence. Each prisoner must choose either to betray or remain silent; the decision of each is kept secret from his partner. What should they do? If it is assumed that each player is only concerned with lessening his own time in jail, the game becomes a non-zero sum game where the two players may either assist or betray the other. The sole concern of the prisoners seems to be increasing his own reward. The interesting symmetry of this problem is that the optimal decision for each is to betray the other, even though they would be better off if they both cooperated.

The normal game is shown below:

	Prisoner B stays silent (cooperates)	Prisoner B betrays (defects)
Prisoner A stays silent (cooperates)	Each serves 1 month	Prisoner A: 12 months Prisoner B: goes free
Prisoner A betrays (defects)	Prisoner B: 12 months Prisoner A: goes free	Each serves 3 months

Here, regardless of what the other decides, each prisoner gets a higher pay-off by betraying the other. For example, Prisoner A can (according to the payoffs above) state that no matter what prisoner B chooses, prisoner A is better off 'ratting him out' (defecting) than staying silent (cooperating). As a result, based on the payoffs above, prisoner A should logically betray him. The game is symmetric, so Prisoner B should act the same way. Since both rationally decide to defect, each receives a lower reward than if both were to stay quiet. Traditional game theory results in both players being worse off than if each chose to lessen the sentence of his accomplice at the cost of spending more time in jail himself.

The structure of the traditional Prisoners’ Dilemma can be analysed by removing its original prisoner setting. Suppose that the two players are represented by colours, red and blue, and that each player chooses to either "Cooperate" or "Defect".

If both players play "Cooperate" they both get the payoff A. If Blue plays "Defect" while Red plays "Cooperate" then Blue gets B while Red gets C. Symmetrically, if Blue plays "Cooperate" while Red plays "Defect" then Blue gets payoff C while Red gets payoff B. If both players play "Defect" they both get the payoff D.

In terms of general point values:

Canonical PD payoff matrix
	Cooperate	Defect
Cooperate	A, A	C, B
Defect	B, C	D, D

To be a prisoner's dilemma, the following must be true:

B > A > D > C

The fact that A>D implies that the "Both Cooperate" outcome is better than the "Both Defect" outcome, while B>A and D>C imply that "Defect" is the dominant strategy for both agents.

If two players play prisoners' dilemma more than once in succession and they remember previous actions of their opponent and change their strategy accordingly, the game is called iterated prisoners' dilemma.  But, enough of all this. Addiction can be seen as a game and can be cast as an intertemporal psychodynamic (PD)  problem between the present and future selves of the addict. In this case, defecting means relapsing, and it is easy to see that not defecting both today and in the future is by far the best outcome, and that defecting both today and in the future is the worst outcome. The case where one abstains today but relapses in the future is clearly a bad outcome - in some sense the discipline and self-sacrifice involved in abstaining today have been "wasted" because the future relapse means that the addict is right back where he started and will have to start over (which is quite demoralising, and makes starting over more difficult). The final case, where one engages in the addictive behaviour today while abstaining "tomorrow" will be familiar to anyone who has struggled with an addiction. The problem here is that (as in other PDs) there is an obvious benefit to defecting "today", but tomorrow one will face the same PD, and the same obvious benefit will be present then, ultimately leading to an endless string of defections. One trick – or ’learned behaviour’ as my psych friends would put it, is to make a rule never to defect today – it can always be postponed until tomorrow. And, tomorrow never comes.

Love and Justice

"Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men. It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again".  If you'd like to see the clip, it's here. The positive vibe is by no means unanimous for the stellar film version of Victor Hugo’s iconic, sweeping novel about love, justice, revolution, revenge and forgiveness.

My father won a green, leather bound copy of "Les Misérables" as a school prize which stayed unread in his library until I discovered it in my early teens. The relentless, descriptive prose of the horrors and degradation of early nineteenth century Paris was endlessly fascinating, populated by gritty opportunists, grimily sore-encrusted, their hopeless eyes casting about in order to scratch a living from the hard, pitiless streets, contrasting with the young, bright-eyed idealists, ready to spill their blood on the barricades in the cause of revolution, captivated me for hours, curled up on a sofa. Hugo himself, a committed Republican, was a witness to the events of the July Rebellion of 1832, the last Republican stand in France's bloodstained revolutionary history, when students and radicals erected street barricades and exchanged gunfire with Government troops. Half of Paris had fallen to the mob and was completely cut off; Les Halles was briefly barricaded and impassable. It was interesting to notice echoes of the modern city appearing from time to time, as if by accident, and the final scene was clearly a reconstruction of the site now occupied by the vast and expanding shopping mall of Les Halles which , one day soon, might actually be finished.

Hugh Jackman can sing, for sure, but the A list cast members were selected mostly for their box-office draw, not because they could necessarily hold a tune, so some might suggest that it is singing for its Oscar supper, at which table it will assuredly get a seat or two. Claude-Michel Schönberg's score is not easy to sing well - especially live – there was a gritty, down-to-earth feel to the sung dialogue, which held up well with ambitious staging and effects. Russell Crowe was, unfortunately, miscast and wasn’t really able to drive his character forward since he was outclassed musically.  As the stoic, almost obsessive Javert, he did everyone a favour at the end by jumping off a bridge, but of all the well-known names, he didn’t really have the gravitas to carry off Jean Valjean’s relentless and pitiless pursuer. Some beautifully deft surprises – Cosette and  Marius provided some rare, tender moments - and Éponine as the sad, forgotten heroine transferred well from the stage, yet maintains her early beauty, unlike Hugo's description of her later. He describes her descent from a privileged childhood into " a pale, puny, meagre creature", with a hoarse voice like "a drunken galley slave's", having been "roughened by brandy and by liquors". She wears dirty and tattered clothing, consisting solely of a chemise and a skirt. She is missing a few teeth, is barefoot, has tangled hair, bony shoulders, heavy brooding drooping eyes, and a prematurely-aged face with only a trace of beauty lingering. She had “the form of an unripe young girl and the look of a corrupted old woman; fifty years joined with fifteen.”

Lovers of literature have already weaved their own imaginary tapestries - there is, after all, more than sufficient material - but lovers of musicals might not enjoy this; the hybridization of the musical stage and big screen action might send them screaming from the theatre, but if all they want is the singing they can go buy a different album. I saw an early showing on the Champs-Élysées in the company of four others in the theatre - the French are less than enamoured with revisionist historians and dislike their literary heroes being adulterated with crass commercialism - to escape from a punishingly freezing day and, shamelessly exploitative British weepie as it undoubtedly was, I loved it.

Cosmic Crossfire

Dawn  over Chelyabinsk, 15 February 2013

An asteroid the size of a city block passed inside the geosynchronous satellite orbit the other day, suffering significant gravitational deflection.

The almost simultaneous - and unexpected - arrival of a much smaller piece of space debris - a trifling seventeen metres across - would therefore have given no particular cause for concern except that this ten ton pebble scored a direct hit, and almost touched down. The big one which missed flew in from the south, the much smaller object came in at dawn from the east. Travelling at 64,000km/h, it punched through the atmosphere then fireballed across the Urals, giving the citizenry of Chelyabinsk a day to remember, with over a thousand casualties and buildings damaged by the thermal shockwave of the object breaking up and being virtually incinerated by the security blanket of the atmosphere. This was the largest impact in over a century, twenty times the impact power of Hiroshima. The much larger so-called Tunguska event in 1908 flattened vast tracts of Siberian wilderness and nobody important went to have a look until ten years later.

Such events always give me the what-ifs. These events are not uncommon. What if our ancestors, looking into night skies untroubled by light pollution, once in a while, saw a fireball falling to earth. It would have sent them fleeing, terror-stricken, to the shelter of their caves. Perhaps they believed that they had inadvertently angered a malevolent and vengeful deity who was announcing his intention for retribution. What if the meteors had been reversed and the bigger one had struck? In all probability, the damage would not have come close to what Hollywood describes as an 'extinction event'. Yet, we are at the mercy of random gravitational deflections and with all the statistical posturing and estimates of damage limitation, we are as ill-prepared psychologically now as we were during the Stone Age. Understanding the reasons for our destruction avails us little in the face of its reality. In the movie 'Deep Impact' which describes the possibility of such a scenario, I have often reflected on how people's behaviour might change in the face of certain annihilation. On the one hand, there would be the rapists, looters and pillagers, all moral restraint swept aside. On the other, there would be those who are able to reach inside of themselves for their personal Zen, perhaps experiencing almost mystic, revelatory clarity, as Ludwig Wittgenstein apparently did, sitting in the middle of a First World War battlefield, shells raining down, writing his ideas in a notebook.

 'Deep Impact' 1998. Hope survives.

There are over nine thousand known candidates for near-earth impact. One day, we or our descendants might not escape. But, perhaps, not today. Our species likes the idea of continuity, and the thought of its disruption by an inconsiderate visitation from a stray cosmic pebble or the Angel of Death is uncomfortable. 

Runners and Riders

Everyone’s in with a shout and it’s a wide-open field in the Benedict XVI Memorial Stakes. After the present incumbent being pulled up in the final furlong, a number of strong contenders are jockeying for position in the dash for the line. I’m grateful to Paddy Power, the Irish bookmakers, for providing the latest on runners and riders. 

Neck and neck at 7/2 are the Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson and Italian Archbishop Angelo Scola, heavily favoured last time out in 2005. Turkson screened a video making alarmist predictions on the rise of Islam which has been viewed by over thirteen million people since it was uploaded in 2009. So, full marks to him for showing a bit of muscular Christianity. Scola outpunches his opponent theologically, Peter T is no match for the double doctorates in the armoury of the Italian. Rocky Marciano meets Muhammad Ali.

Other contenders in hot pursuit are the affable Marc Ouellet of Canada at 4/1 and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the camerlengo or caretaker in the interim between resignation and election, at 6/1. Ouellet is the President of the Pontifical Commission for South America – a burgeoning harvest but a dreadfully tedious job - while Bertone was a sharp critic of Dan Brown’s book ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and, incidentally, despite being a clear front-runner, is getting on a bit now so he might well run out of puff as the race hots up.

Whoever wins gets a new name – an additional incentive to do well, perhaps. Paddy Power is offering odds called a ‘St Malachy and Nostradamus Double’ of 16/1 on heavily-favoured Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze’s election plus the papal name ‘Peter’. This might be a bit of a break with tradition, there having been only one ‘Peter’, who was quite a well-known fisherman before taking on the job of Vicar of Christ.  

In 1140, after a prophetic vision, St Malachy of Armagh is said to have produced a list of popes from his own lifetime until the end of the world. Some sources suggest that the final entry in his list is a chap called ‘Peter the Roman’, hence Paddy Power’s generous odds, I suppose. Did God signal His intention to have a wee flutter, I wonder?

Smart money might even prefer a hedge on Bono at 1000/1. Or, even me. I was baptised an Anglican, but in the flurry of paperwork, you never know, they might not even notice. I thought perhaps if elected, I might take the name 'Brian'. Brian the First has a nice ring to it, I think. I might be quite good at blessing the multitudes in the Square and decent accommodation in Rome is so very expensive these days.

Postscript. Even as I write, the odds have shortened on Ouellet at 7/2. Race looks wide open, still. Richard Dawkins is a rank outsider at 666/1.
All of the above is, of course, amusing, fanciful and mildly entertaining, a testament to the fact that for the most part, Rome can do its incense-swinging, bowing and scraping with no help from me. However, the appointment of the anti-Semitic Cardinal Rodrigues Maradiana of Honduras would not, for me at least, be a first choice.

Bosom of the Church

If this is how you behave after half a bottle of Chablis, I'm not going to take you out for lunch again

Well.  Who'd 'a thought it. Not in six hundred years has a Supreme Pontiff declined to die in harness like a worn out cart-horse. Instead he’s going to totter off to a nicely refurbished closed monastery for a bit to get his head together. And so very unexpectedly. Apparently, the august cardinal body which heard his pronouncement were 'flabbergasted'. I doubt there's a Latin word for that. After all the really bad press over priests interfering inappropriately with the young, plonking remarks about condoms and AIDS, eight ladies belonging to a feminist organisation and wearing long coats slipped into Notre Dame today to have their own little celebration that HH was gonna henceforth be known as Joe again. I was going to make a bad joke about Prince here, but perhaps I won't. On removing their coats, it was noticed by more than one observant supplicant that they were bare-breasted, their bosoms decorated with a number of slogans, written in quite large letters. They rang a couple of bells - the newly minted ones getting ready for erection (do pardon the pun) - near the altar, presumably to draw attention to themselves, then began to chant some quite un-Catholic opinions, in particular about HH's attitude to gays and so forth. All frightfully inappropriate, of course, but I can't help wishing that I had been there to see it.

Sightless from Kansas

The golden rule is – never buy unseen. Guitars, of course. The perceived wisdom is to go to a dozen music shops, get to know each guy at the desk and ask to play everything he’s got that costs more than four thousand.  This usually gets his attention, but it’s a short-term policy, especially if you’re wearing scuffed Levis and a donkey jacket with three days’ growth of beard suggesting you can barely afford the price of a pack of cigarettes and just need somewhere to shelter from the rain. I made a policy of buying a couple of picks at each shop I went in to, just to establish a little bona fides, which means I’m drowning in an avalanche of plastic.

Against all my instincts and better judgement, I have to confess therefore that I’ve done just that. As well as trawling the rue du Douai endlessly looking for the Voice of God, I found a music shop in Lawrence, Kansas having an impressive pedigree of names and instruments. 

Lawrence is a hell of a way from, well, almost anywhere, really. Kansas landscapes are endlessly rolling and dead-straight roads make you feel like you have to play John Denver in the car. Not a first-choice place to look. I made a tentative enquiry and discovered that Americans take their guitars seriously. The instrument photography was accurate and unretouched, the staff knew what they were talking about and seemed willing and patient enough to deal fairly with an overseas customer with anxiety problems.

Stuart Mossman (1942 - 1999) was an American guitar maker. He built over 6,000 guitars from 1968 to 1984 that were played by several professional guitarists, including John Denver and Eric Clapton. Far smaller than Martin's high volume output and now, Bob Taylor's,  Mossman's work has become the stuff of legend and he’s widely regarded as the foundation for today's generations of luthiers who build guitars from fine tone woods. About thirty-five years ago, a guy I knew came into the music store where I and other young and mostly incompetent hopefuls used to hang out periodically with One of His which he had bought after a visit to a place called Walnut Valley, which I had never heard of. The sound it made literally left me breathless and I made a promise to myself that one of these days I was going to get my hands on one.

The shop not only had one, but at a price which wasn’t stratospheric. I argued with myself, writing twitchy emails to the patient people in the store about everything I could think of. They must have thought that they had Woody Allen as a prospective buyer. Yet, an inner voice was quietly reassuring. A man who makes a fine musical instrument puts a part of his soul into it. Mossman didn’t just make axes for dudes to pick at marshmallow parties – he left something of himself embedded in the heavy flatpicker bracing, the rock-solid neck (Mossman’s neck guy was a banjo player so the neck is fast and responsive) the spruce top and East Indian rosewood back and sides.  At that time, customers were able to order a specific type of voicing for their guitars described in the catalogue as "overbalanced bass, overbalanced treble, or balanced bass and treble. Such refinements were only available from a master luthier - I’m still figuring out what kind I’ve got.

One rather neat touch is that everyone who has a hand in the instrument initials the label and dependent on production rate can be as few as six or as many as twelve initials. SLM himself signed mine (73-274) also EH – Ed Holick – the Stradivarius of the operation. 

In 1975, it was bought by a local flatpicker who was placed at the Walnut Valley Festival with it and he signed the top. Turns out he became the Secretary of State for Kansas. I think I’ll leave it, having no idea whether the politician's signature will either drop its value by a thousand bucks or the reverse. The guitar was professionally set up and restored in 2009 and when I change the light strings with which it travelled and warm up the table a little bit, it’ll be loud enough to annoy the neighbours. On a reflective note, the instrument is old, well-used and I think has been well-loved. It's unadorned with abalone or mother of pearl, which I appreciate - must be something to do with a dour Nonconformist upbringing. The spruce top doesn't have dead-straight grain lines. There's some tiny crazing on the rosewood at the back and somebody has carefully repaired a couple of small cracks - almost inevitable for something as old as this. In other words, it's a little bit flawed. Just like its new owner, which pleases me. Perfection is both impossible to attain and, more importantly, impossible to maintain. I'm comfortable with that.

Backpacking in the Sanctuary

When I lived in Kuwait, I was avowedly nothing more than a visitor and over two years ago I wrote about ACP here. Now I live here, I've been wondering if my status has changed. The American Church in Paris is a wonderful building, overlooking the Seine on the Quai d’Orsay and has been their home since 1931. It is the first American Church established outside the USA and the fellowship has been in existence since 1814, the year Bonaparte abdicated and the British were marching on Paris and pulling out troops to fight in the  Americas. The first sanctuary wasn’t built until the year of the Indian Mutiny, but I’m using the word ‘church’ in the sense of ‘ekklesia’ not exclusively ‘kuriakon’. There’s a multiplicity of services, events and organizations which cater to every shade of Anglophone Christian sensibility, with the Creed as the loose index of unification, together with Twelve Step programs, Kung Fu, guest lectures, bilingual nurseries and much more.

The ‘eleven o’clock’ is relatively formal, with robed choir and clergy and music more reminiscent of a low-church cathedral, both in style and ability. The ‘one-thirty’ is contemporary, which has a band leading the worship but threads of the same formality remain. Pastoral leadership for both is scholarly and, for the most part, uncontentious, exactly as one might expect from a polished, well-oiled operation which isn’t planning to offend anyone. As my father might have said: the ministry is ‘sound’.  I’ve been to both, don’t really belong to either, and am no nearer making any kind of decision about whether or not to become more involved, or make it my home, much as the flying buttress in me would seek to stand outside and listen. There seems to be a transience, a wayfaring streak about many of the attendees and because I’m one of them, I have trouble hearing the heartbeat of the place. The coffee after church is for me a time for looking around, occasionally someone will strike up a conversation, but there isn’t a sense of shared purpose where all know each other well and feel comfortable including the sojourner like me. I have never felt that I was staying long enough to take off my backpack – at least – just yet.

I am, I think, both condemned and blessed to feel reasonably comfortable as an outsider. Condemned because I cannot experience the depth of fellowship plus attendant risk, that ‘belonging’ confers, and blessed because I have liberty to choose, to pick and mix from the smorgasbord on offer.  Either is strangely unsatisfactory. I’m usually glad I went, even if I never get to speak to anyone, but having been part of much closer knit organizations in the past, I have to confess to missing it. Sometimes, I get the impression that parts of the Church are asleep or, perhaps, imitating those who are awake, warmly cocooned in a cultural security blanket. Not dead, exactly, not even having trouble breathing, just nodding along within a broad comfort zone, giving to good causes – even attendance being a good cause - without the emotional involvement in them. Expert renditions of  Reuben Morgan, Saint-Saëns or Mozart are doubtless praiseworthy but unless the hearers can respond to the deep call of God in worship, which reaches out to and includes those who are less decorative or suitable, the effort expended is narcissistic and shallow. 

Adam and Steve

I was a teacher for a long time. The Socratic principle of inviting students to consider a scenario, provide them with few facts , solutions or explanations, instead eliciting these by questioning encourages a response from them which actively allows them to learn. There is a significant difference between expecting a teacher to explain something and requiring them to promote it. Teachers are expected to explain the world as it is in a way which is appropriate to the age, stage and level of understanding of pupils. This includes explaining some things of which they do not necessarily approve, such as divorce, abortion and, perhaps, same sex marriage. Teachers also are supposed to have ‘pedagogical superiority’, in other words, they know what the words mean. I no longer now know what the word ‘marriage’ actually means, thus am no longer competent to teach about it. Same-sex marriage is not legal in the United Kingdom, at least until tomorrow and marriage laws vary in the four countries of the United Kingdom, most holding that there is a legal impediment to marriage if both parties are of the same sex. Since 2005, same-sex couples are allowed to enter into civil partnerships, a separate union which provides the legal consequences of marriage but perceived as being inferior in status. In 2006, the High Court rejected a legal bid by a British lesbian couple who had married in Canada to have their union recognised as a marriage in the UK and not as a civil partnership, the Government seeking a large sum in costs which a punitive High Court ordered them to pay.

Baroness Warsi,  Minister for Faith has broken ranks on the issue of  the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill and asks, as I do, how will we ensure that the legislation will protect religious freedom and what legal protection will churches and other places of worship be afforded from challenges if they refuse to undertake same-sex marriage? The new Archbishop of Canterbury is to make a speech in which he is widely tipped to resist the legislation on behalf of the Church of England, indeed, in defence of Canon Law. Catholics and Methodists feel likewise, whereas liberal Judaism and Quakers are in support. Muslims are, of course, strongly opposed.

I have three questions. First, is it just? The answer is, of course, yes, but civil partnerships are equally so. Second, is it consistent with the proposition that marriage is a God-given institution generationally held to be between a man and a woman one of whose purposes is to provide a genetic causeway and stable role modeling? Clearly, no, and it is interesting to note that heterosexual marriages can be annulled on the basis of non-consummation, whereas homosexual marriages will not. Third, will the benefits of such legislation have long-term effects on the way society views the everyday business of living together as most still wish to do, in some form or another. This is the imponderable. Will a change in the law have a deep and visceral ripple effect on our morality and consequent future behaviour in the way we view ourselves and the way other nations perceive us? I think it will. And the consequences will not be felt for some time, by which time this little piece of legislation enacted at the beginning of 2013 may well have been buried under an avalanche of challenge and obfuscation. Feelings are running high in both camps. I, as a male of a particular age, not quite an ‘old fogey’ but moving inexorably in that direction, am toeing my own party line in that the issue has to some extent become generational. I think this also has to do with the fact that older people, perhaps more conscious of their own mortality, are more ‘religious’ in the old-fashioned sense and additionally resent the fact that the usual consultative process has been disgracefully steamrollered as the voices for change become more strident. The Prime Minister perhaps might imagine that he is ‘being just’. I doubt it, however, as all politicans are, he is a gambler who has staked a lot on a weak hand and thinks he knows ‘when to hold-em’  in the hope that he will survive the inevitable loss of votes in Middle England that his support of the Bill will cost him. I can’t help hoping he will lose.

Lincoln Unvarnished

Lincoln. Had to go and see it. Has Spielberg produced a trudging monochrome of a history lesson, as ponderous as the great seated statue of the hero, or an epic - his best work since 'Schindler's List'?  Four months of political chicanery – Lincoln was, after all, first and foremost a prairie lawyer - is mostly set behind closed doors – we see some daylight around the White House and a few grey, sodden battle scenes. It’s wordy, authentic and sometimes cruel; the manner and articulation of Civil War political debate is alien and brash and mirrors the youth of the democracy which it created. The President is determined, much to the displeasure of his advisers, to get the House to pass the 13^th Amendment. The problem is – how to get the votes, who to influence. If you prefer visual stimulation to verbal pyrotechnics, Django Unchained will perhaps be more to your taste, but if you want to see visionary performances, not just from the phenomenal Daniel Day-Lewis who plays Lincoln with the indelible, translucent power of an actor who wears the role almost viscerally and feels it down to the nerve endings, but a masterful performance from Tommy Lee Jones who as the Republican abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens brings the acidity of a scorpion  to the floor of the House.

Historians will argue over authenticity, but detail was meticulous, especially the White House interior where Lincoln’s office was recreated accurately and where the 16^th president interacts authentically with his wife Mary (he calls her Molly) whose emotional spikes contrast beautifully with Lincoln’s faraway expressions, long, thoughtful pauses and touching scenes with his youngest son Tad who, it would seem, has the President’s ear at any time. The outcome is beyond doubt, but the suspense builds brick by brick as inward moral battles are fought. It’s beautifully restrained, daring, totally American and probably the best of the year so far.

Fictional Reality

Zero Dark Thirty  (twelve thirty am – a night operation) was about ten years condensed into a hundred and fifty minutes. Politics are stripped down and similarly absent is any personal life for the single-minded heroine who toils at the bottom-feeding end of dirty CIA activities  and who almost represents the essence of life; everything else is preparation and waiting for that one big moment.

It opens with over a minute of black screen accompanied by a soundtrack collage of emergency phone calls from people trapped in the Twin Towers. Cut to two years later, when a captured nephew of Osama bin Laden undergoes a prolonged series of brutal CIA interrogations that involve beatings, waterboarding, being bound with a dog collar and ropes and getting locked in a small wooden box. It's not the cosiest way to invite the viewer to get involved. The hunt for bin Laden was an enormously frustrating endeavour that cost vast sums of money, manpower and strategic thinking and couldn't be brought  to a successful close for nearly a decade, despite the fact that he was holed up a stone’s throw from the Pakistani equivalent of West Point. The tall man who had engineered the deaths of close to four thousand people in that one iconic attack alone became a phantom, protected by forbidding geography, loyal followers and an already legendary aura. But, as BHO so succinctly put it – ‘we got him’. He was caught because it was impossible for him to totally isolate himself. Even if he never showed his face, made a phone call, sent an email, he was enslaved; he had to rely on trusted couriers.

We all remember where we were on 9/11.  I was in my office – a colleague called me over to the computer screen as the second plane hit. I recall that it occurred to me at the time how much better special effects were getting – like many, I suppose – my first reaction was one of disbelief – this was surely a movie set.

The events of 9/11 led to a fundamental change in how intelligence organisations perceived their role in the common war against terrorism, especially true in the U.S. and Europe. Since then, intelligence ties among the various organisations have gradually improved, as has the transfer of information among them. As a direct result, terrorist suspects have been located and identified in their home countries, and terrorist organisations in the early stages of formation have been exposed and thwarted. Rapid transfer of suspected terrorists' details made possible their detention and interrogation, while terrorist attacks which had already been planned have been avoided and thwarted, saving thousands of lives in Israel and elsewhere. And yet, even now, over a decade later – how much do we really understand about the mentality which has such a cavalier disrespect for human life? Books and pamphlets came out in abundance, dissecting the myth of al-Qaeda and its many-headed children. I lived in the Middle East, surrounded by mosques, where imams had their sermons broadcast from powerful speakers so residents who preferred to stay in bed that Friday still got the message. Even with my very limited knowledge of Arabic, it was clear that there was passion in the preaching so it should come as no surprise that extremist preachers find a congregation, disaffected and ripe for jihadist enlistment. The recent operation in Algeria - described by the one-eyed leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar as ‘blessed’ was carried out by forty Islamist fighters, including several Westerners. It was filmed before the standoff ended in a bloodbath last Saturday and the militant leader, who lost an eye while fighting in Algeria, demanded that France withdraw its troops from Mali as the price of any negotiation. 

I think firstly that is this – the idea that ‘land’ and ‘Islam’ have some degree of equivalence  - that is at the core of their thinking. Anywhere the Muslim sets his foot is claimed for Allah, the poll tax or jizya is to be levied on the infidel inhabitants and the blessings and mercy of Shari'a are to be applied. Secondly, the Algerian Special Forces were inevitably blamed for over-zealous action by Western media who persistently fail to understand that the militant or suicidal jihadist mindset perceives negotiation as weak and  they have the right to trample on people too decadent or spineless to defend the principles they believe in. The Western media carried horror stories of the extremists’ occupation in Mali - random arrests for offences as trivial as playing local music, medieval punishments including public amputations, lashing women considered underdressed and so on. It was only a matter of time before the sheer scale and savagery of these excesses demanded a response from someone – huzza to the French for shouldering their ex-colonial responsibilities and flushing out the terrorists. But this did not come without a price in the West, most particularly in London which has long been regarded as a safer haven than most for exploitation of the notoriously liberal British laws concerning freedom of expression. I’m not easily outraged, I have to say, but the spectacle of about 60 British Muslims actually being allowed to come out with the appalling rhetoric shown in this video without being arrested for public disorder offences almost beggars belief. I found eight minutes' worth almost more than I could stand.