Mine's a beef and onion, cheers.

For all of you who have been wondering who DID eat all the pies, the question has been answered. Alas, its my spiritual homeland of Norwich:

BBC NEWS | England | Pie chart solves terrace question

History Friday; Some Much Needed Trivia and Levity

A few weeks back I remarked that History Friday had become an unremitting procession of gloom, and that something was needed to lighten the mood. What followed was one week of goofy fun, followed by a return to the darker side of human nature. In order to make ammends, I humbly present this week's offering:

First up, one of the most joyous, deliriously silly moments from the history of British politics, as we celebrate the 14th anniversary of the resignation of Conservative minister David Mellor:
September 24, 1992: Mellor resigns over sex scandal
For those of you from other parts, youth on your side, or short memories, David Mellor was perhaps one of the most physically unprepossesing human beings to stalk the earth (and still is), who liked to pleasure the toes of his anorexic and vapid actress paramour. He did this while wearing a Chelsea FC replica football shirt. Proof indeed that then Prime Minister John Major's quest for a "classless society" had been realized.

On this day in Prophets Wandering the Desert news: an epoch making event as on this day in 622,
the prophet Muhammad completes his Hegira, or "flight," from Mecca to Medina to escape persecution. In Medina, Muhammad set about building the followers of his religion--Islam--into an organized community and Arabian power. The Hegira would later mark the beginning (year 1) of the Muslim calendar

In Amazing Geniuses Who Work in Felt and Ping Pong Balls news, Muppet creator Jim Henson is born on this day in Greenville, Mississippi.

Some lovely musical birthday people for you sweet, sweet souls:

Lets put on a show right here and celebrate Mickey Rooney (Joe Yule, Jr.) 1920. I've always suspected that under his cheery persona, Rooney shelters the heart of a foul mouthed letching lush, not unlike the Punch and Judy man from British TV show Hi-De-Hi.

Bow down! Weep! Leap with joy! For today gave the world the twin gifts of John Coltrane (1926) and Ray Charles (1930)

And the lesser gift of comedy middle initial soulster Ben E. King (1938)

As well as the frankly baffling Iberian sex god, Julio Iglesias (1943)

Adamaandaeva ata da applea in-a-gada-da-vida thanks to the interminable Ronald Bushy (Iron Butterfly) (1945)

Bruce Springsteen was also born today, in 1949: his birth would have been shorter but he kept popping back into the womb so that he could come out and do never-ending encores.

Ten years later, we also welcomed former Runaway and axe goddess Lita Ford, as well as George from Seinfeld (excellent) and many other failed starring vehicles (not so good) Jason Alexander.

Finally on this day in music, high on PCP and brandishing a shotgun, James Brown interrupts an insurance seminar next door to his business office in Augusta, Georgia and accuses the attendees of using his private restroom. The resulting 90-minute interstate pursuit ends only after police shoot out his truck tires. The Godfather of Soul ends up serving two years in prison.


Other Birthdays of note:

1896 F Scott Fitzgerald St Paul Minn, author (Great Gatsby)
1931 Anthony Newley actor/song writer/singer (Dr Doolittle)
1939 Manfred Werner Secretary General of NATO
1941 Linda Eastman McCartney NYC, Mrs Paul McCartney, rocker (Wings-Ram)


This is also
Banned Books Week a celebration of artistic freedom and a reminder of the constant need for vigilance against censorship.


And as we all know, it is also a great Baltic holiday! For today in ancient Latvia, the third day of Mikeli, was the only day of the year during which men proposed to their prospective wives.

Cat Stevens sparks US plane alert

BBC NEWS: Cat Stevens sparks US plane alert

And they diverted him to the emergency field of choice, lovely Bangor, Maine! It was the lead story on the news up here in the Pine Tree State, ayuh. Cat Stevens detained in Bangor (most people would prefer Guantanamo.)

We are so starved of entertainment options up here in the great North Woods that some among the Maineacs sort of hoped that his detention was a wacky stunt designed to kick off his return to touring. Instead he was deported, apparently for being a famous muslim who enjoys free speech. Oh well; I guess its back to being the diversion airport for drunken British tourists suffering air rage for Bangor International.

John Kerry Turns A Corner on Iraq

"Chief Donkey Calls Bush a Boneheaded Stubborn Ass- Official."

Yep, After months of trying to explain in mature, nuanced terms his votes on Iraq in the Senate, the other JFK from Massachusetts has decided to change the setting on his megaphone from Statesman Kerry to Candidate John and has come out swinging against the conduct of the Iraq war. As the marathon presidential race nears the sprint finish, John Kerry has finally stopped the fudge and is lashing himself to the mast for the duration of the storm.

So far, not a peep out of "Sunni Triangle Veterans for Truth", although I dare say its coming once Karl Rove gets it organized. Kerry should ignore the inevitable attacks on his patriotism, principles, and competence and stick to his guns. The polls show that the United States divided on whether or not invading Iraq was a smart move. The visibly conflicted John McCain (what has the White House got on that guy?) conceded that the situation in Iraq is worse than it was a year ago on Hardball tonight. Kerry has a chance to seize control of the direction of this race and highlight the cronyism and incompetence of the Bush administration in their execution of this misguided, mismanaged war.

Kerry should be shouting about the war. He should be asking where those WMDs are. He should be challenging the conceit that we are safer than we were before the invasion. He should be questioning the political calculations that are handing more and more military duties to private contractors; that are delaying efforts to solve the conundrums of Najaf and Fallujah; and that are still compelling members of the administration to hint at or outright lie about links between Saddam and Al Qadea. He should be incandescent with rage over insinuations about a vote for him equaling a vote for bin Laden.

Any objective reading of the situation in Iraq (and by extension the war on terror) by anyone with half a brain will show that the current situation has made the world more dangerous, America more isolated, and is leading Iraq down the road to being a failed state. And quite what it has to do with the war on terror is anyone's guess.

Still, if you need more than a layman's take, check out the views from the BBC show From Our Own Correspondent and Independent correspondent Robert Fisk

History Friday: The End of Easy Assumptions

I was 9 years old in 1982, hardly of an age to take much interest in the goings on in the middle east. However 7 years later I found myself on a London bound bus, heading home for school vacation, and in posession of Robert Fisk's Pity The Nation, an account of the Lebanese Civil War and subsequent Israeli invasion. His disection of the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps by Lebanese Christian Phalagist militias had the same effect on me as a punch in the face. Under the gaze of an Israeli invasion force, lead by current Israeli Prime Minister and then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, the fascist Phalangists went on a 24 hour rampage of slaughter, putting Palestinian women and children to the sword as a reprisal for the killing of the Christian Lebanese President-elect, Bashir Gemayel.After the Phalangists had finished their killing, the Israeli Army rolled in heavy armor, the only modern tanks in the region, to "secure" the area.

Much has been written about the failure of the Israelis to intervene and stop the massacres. Much more has been written about the level of Israeli complicity in the killing. Fisk's book sparked a desire in me to find out more about the region, a desire that informed much of my university career, and also sowed the seeds of doubt about my easily held and simplistic opinions regarding Israel. I have a well-documented distaste for conspiracy theories, but I couldn't shake the feeling, in 1989 as now, that Israel was somehow complicit in the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

This was a earth shaking revelation for me. As a child of the west growing up in the latter stages of the Cold War, Israel to me was the brave island of democracy in a sea of medieval or pro-Soviet despotism; living proof that goodness arose from tragedy; the heroes of Entebbe; and the victims of a racist conspiracy that stretched from the War of 1948 to the killings at the Munich Olympics. Now I learned that one of my paragons was deeply flawed, no matter how deeply they were involved in the mundane actualities of indiscriminate brutality.

I know it was starry-eyed and infantile of my teenage self to regard Israel as seperate and above the intrigues and squalor of other countries; to expect the unique persecution of the Jewish people to inform the Jewish homeland with a sense of idealistic fairness to all. Still, when those scales fell from my eyes with the reading of Fisk's account of the slaughter in Beirut in September 17 1982, I felt that I had been betrayed.

It is not Israel's job to seek the moral highground alone, any more than it is the job of any nation surrounded by hostile neighbors. It is however the job of Israel's friends to protect this unique nation by not only offering military and economic assistance but also by pointing out its failings and chastising and punishing horrendous behavior. Double standards are what are getting our young men and women killed; our politicians have no greater responsibility than to protect them from the poisonous fruit of election driven bias.

September 17th 1982: More than 1,000 people are feared to have been killed during a 24-hour rampage by Lebanese militia in West Beirut

Battling Amir Khan Unites Britain

I was just recently back in England for a brief vacation and a various-meats-in-pastry eating marathon. In between bites of my sausage rolls and cornish pasties, I happened to catch a fair chunk of the BBC’s Olympic coverage from Athens. Between the failure of top prospect Paula Radcliffe, the surprise of Kelly Holmes’ middle distance double, and the sudden national interest in such obscure pastimes as yingling sailing whenever the prospect of a medal reared its head Team GB seemed to be following the same script that has provided predictable fodder for millions of Brits since the birth of the modern games. However as the games ran their course one story began to build momentum and a plotline that seemed to defy easy stereotyping.

This year Britain only managed to find one amateur boxer up to Olympic standards across all the weight divisions, sending a wafer thin, gangly lightweight to represent the islands long tradition of pugilism. Although considered a hot prospect, the scrapper was only 17 and was almost denied permission to compete due to his age. And by the way, he happened to be a Muslim of Pakistani parentage from Bolton, a town in the economically depressed and ethnically confrontational northwest. Amir Khan found himself carrying the expectations of a nation on his shoulders. He toted the burden well.

Round after round, bout after bout, the boy wonder scythed through the competition. In the final Khan came within 3 minutes of snatching the gold despite his youth and inexperience. Like his hero Muhammad Ali, he floated around the ring making his diminutive opponents look like lumbering super-heavyweights. His skinny arms threw punches that made his challengers convulse like they were being defibrillated. For two weeks he punched his way towards glory capturing the British Isles in a web of excitement that willed him onwards.

After every match, the cameras would pan up into the auditorium for a lingering look at the Khan family celebrations. Time after time Amir’s dad, uncles, and brothers would leap about deliriously cheering and shouting. More than once the Greek police had to ask them to calm down. The Khan family celebrations brought to mind the scenes inside the cricket grounds of the world whenever Pakistan scores a victory. This time however the Pakistani men were waving British flags and singing “God Save the Queen.”

It is a sad comment on the standard roles assigned by the press and society to British Muslims from the Indian subcontinent that the Khan family celebrations attracted such astonished attention. According to the British media, Muslims are supposed to be the cuckoos in the nest; a lock-step fifth column of Al Qadea sympathizers just waiting for the right fatwa from the Finsbury Park mosque to rise up and slaughter everyone in their beds. What seems to have escaped most journalists notice is that to be a British Muslim is not ultimately too different to being a British Hindu, a British Jew, or a British Christian. Each person is a mass of identities, some complimentary, some conflicting. The whirl of these identities, multiplied by however many millions of people cohabit a certain chunk of real estate, is what creates the centrifugal force that becomes society. Nothing so ill-becomes a nation than to assign clunky stereotypes to various segments of its population based on the desire to propagate a lazy shorthand of identity.

To my mind, Amir Khan’s dad has done a better job assimilating into British culture that I have settling into an American mindset. He at least wholeheartedly and emotionally cheered on his adopted country in international athletic competition. I’m afraid that I still root for England over the United States when it comes to sports. Famously, about 15 years ago the British politician Norman Tebbit met with a fair degree of approval when he suggested that the way to gauge the fealty of an immigrant was to apply the “cricket test”; namely if an incomer rooted for England over his home country he was acceptable. Norman, if your methodology were to be extended to the USA, I fail the test. I love living in the states, but I can’t bring myself to have anything more than a passing interest in the fate of the various Team USAs. Still, I’m not perceived of as a threat to society, despite my marked ambivalence towards US success on the playing field and pronounced despair regarding much of America’s dealings with the rest of the world. Maybe that’s because I’m white and Christian and therefore would have to manifest extreme anti-social tendencies before I was considered “the enemy within.” British (and American) Muslims face exactly the opposite; they have to prove beyond any unreasonable doubt that they wholeheartedly embrace some mythical orthodoxy in order just to live their lives free of official and media harassment.

WASPs and other Europeans must stop believing that they have the monopoly on mature thought. Just as it is possible for a white liberal to both support the troops and abhor the conduct of the war, it is equally possible for a south Asian Muslim to enjoy the freedoms of the west while disapproving of its clumsy meddling in the mid-east. The essence of intelligence is to be able to hold two conflicting thoughts in the brain at the same time and seek to reconcile them. Until we as a society stop viewing the other as some sort of monolithic hive-mind and instead recognize that there are 6 billion individuals of divergent mind on this planet we are destined to remain stuck in the morass of misunderstanding and violence we currently wallow in.

Air Pollution (and Deception) at Ground Zero

As President Bush and his cohorts try to run on the fact that they happened to be in office when a massive intelligence and law enforcement failure resulted in the attacks of 9/11, those of you swayed by his misappropriation of tragedy, his swaddling himself in the flag, and his wrong headed policies afterward probably would applaud this news and won't sign the petition from the Sierra Club:

Air Pollution (and Deception) at Ground Zero

There you have it; Bush is so dogmatic and extreme he even extends his "kill 'em all, drill 'em all" environmental policies to downtown Manhattan.

History Friday: Another Pulse Racer for the Pre-Teen Boy

Alongside space hardware (discussed a few weeks ago) as a young lad I also had a healthy interest in the Land-speed Record. I never cared much for cars (still don't) but the bizzare looking rocket ships of Malcom and Donald Campbell, Richard Noble, and so on were and are amazing. Even in static display at the Beaulieu car museum the land-speed cars still looked as if they were ripping throught the heat haze on the Bonneville Salt Flats. So here is the story of one of Malcom Campbell's most famous runs, which took place today in 1935:

Campbell exceeds 300mph

Also of course, in 1939 Britain and France declare war on Germany