History Friday: Ruby Murray!

A Plate of Biryani and I'm Yours

Rejoice! Rejoice! Yesterday the vital role of Sake Dean Mahomed in the life of Indians in Britain, culinary adventurism, and my expanding waistline was officially recognized by London's great and good yesterday:

Curry house founder is honoured
An Indian entrepreneur who opened one of the UK's first curry houses has been honoured with a green plaque.

In 1810 Sake Dean Mahomed established the Hindoostane Coffee House in George Street, central London. He is also reputed to have introduced therapeutic massage or "shampooing" to Britain and was the first Indian writer to be published in English.

The plaque, which celebrates the achievements of former Westminster residents, was unveiled on Thursday.

At the age of 11, Mahomed joined the East India Company Army and rose to the rank of captain. He fought in a number of campaigns until 1782 when he resigned from the army and two years later arrived in Britain. Staying in Ireland he wrote and published his book, The Travels of Dean Mahomet.

He later moved to Portman Square where he became an assistant to Sir Basil Cochrane at his vapour bath. This is where Mr Mahomed is said to have added an Indian treatment, champi (shampooing) or therapeutic massage, to Cochrane's bath which became very fashionable.

In 1810 he opened the Hindoostane Coffee House serving Hookha with real Chilm tobacco and Indian-style dishes. The premises is now a building called Carlton House. To many who are now part of the city's expansive curry house business, Mahomed was a pioneer. Although forced to declare bankruptcy in 1812, he created a concept that was to become something of a phenomenon 100 years later, said Vivek Singh, chef at the Cinnamon Club, a Westminster restaurant serving New Indian cuisine.

Mr Mahomed's plan had been to serve "Indianised" British food which would appeal to the Indian aristocracy in London as well as British people who had returned from India, Singh said. "The Indian aristocracy however would not come out to eat in the restaurant because they had chefs at home cooking more authentic food - it was just not a big enough draw to come out."

Sake Dean Mahomed was just ahead of his time: at the turn of the 21st century and anglo-indian creation called chicken tikka masala was voted the Britain's favorite dish in a nationwide poll. My little brother chose to go to university in Bradford due in part to the fact that it has more Indian restaurants per head of population than anywhere else in the UK. Indeed, one of the things I miss most living in rural Maine is the plethora of Indian restaurants that used to greet me wherever I went in England. Luckily, Mr. Patak now ships his sauces worldwide and a well thumbed copy of Cooking Like Mummyji lives on my kitchen bookshelf, so I'm not completely starved of my favorite foods. Should anyone be thinking "I should get that nice Weasel bloke a present" (for Christmas, or for not having returned any books lent to one in two years, or as a general payoff), this wouldn't be a bad place to shop.

Sake Dean Mahomed, I salute your vision and that of your successors, sir. A life without Indian food would be a grey and inspid one indeed.

The Church Of The Sub-Genius?

Norbert Saxton: A Pioneer In The Field Of Sitting On One's Arse Bitching About Grockles

High dudgeon in the English lowlands: Norfolk officials are reacting angrily to the omission of that fine county (indeed, almost all of East Anglia) from a map issued by VisitBritain celebrating the inventiveness and resourcefulness of the English. The "England's Genius Map" is intended to highlight English contributions the world of arts and science and to draw people to less visited areas of the country (although the concentration of "geniuses" around Cambridge won't do much to win the VisitBritain folks friends in that overcrowded city). My homeland of Norfolk and birthplace Suffolk however don't draw one mention, and this has pissed off the local rag.

From the Eastern Daily Press:
Genius may be hard to define, but according to Britain's tourist authority, Norfolk has not had any at all, and tourism chiefs in the region argue that Visit Britain is "missing a trick".

A new map, charting places to find out more about the country's most celebrated minds, makes no reference to some of the county's biggest names. Military genius Admiral Nelson is not on the list, and Charles Dickens' strong links with Yarmouth go without mention. The situation is no better in Suffolk, where Lowestoft-born composer Benjamin Britten is ignored, along with hovercraft inventor Sir Christopher Cockerell, who carried out extensive tests at Somerleyton.

Michael Nutt, destination development director for Visit Norwich, said he wanted to find out why the region had been left out. "I would have to say that I think they are missing a trick," he said. "If, on the map, East Anglia is a void, then I would like to find out why we got left out, and if it has missed us out, then it has not delivered, especially when you think that this means they have left out Admiral Nelson," added Mr Nutt.

Other Norfolk-born figures, such as vacuum cleaner inventor James Dyson and author Anna Sewell do not appear either.

The map was launched as part of World Tourism Day and includes thinkers, artists and inventors from William Shakespeare and Charles Darwin to Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Isaac Newton. Asa Morrisson, tourism development and marketing officer at Waveney District Council, said there were plenty of genius figures that could justify Visit Britain's attention.

"I think not including Admiral Nelson, especially in the bi-centenary year, is a mistake," he said "And we've got our fair share of people around here. I think they're missing a trick, really," he added.

Scott Dolling, tourism marketing manager for the East of England Tourist Authority said landscape artist John Constable would be an "automatic choice" for an English genius. "And if you ignore the eastern counties, it beggars belief," he added.

Kirsten Freeman, a spokeswoman for Visit Britain, said the firm planned to add more names and places to the map in the future. "We would have loved to put everything on there but we have not been able to," she said. "We plan to add more as we go along."

Many fine minds were born in Norfolk or have links with the county.

Perhaps the most famous is naval genius Admiral Lord Nelson, whose fleet defeated the French and Spanish navies at Trafalgar in 1805. He was born in Burnham Thorpe in 1758. Another of Norfolk's sons helped bring about an independent America. Philosopher Thomas Paine was born in Thetford in 1737 and championed old age pensions and maternity benefits. Charles Dickens, author of David Copperfield and Great Expectations, lived in Yarmouth during the 1840s. Science fiction author HG Wells, who wrote War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man, stayed in Hunstanton in the 1920s. Captain George Vancouver, who gave his name to the Canadian city of the same name, was born at King's Lynn in 1757. Howard Carter, grew up in Swaffham, and is famous for opening the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922. Inventor James Dyson, born in Norfolk in 1947, changed the world of housework when he produced the Dyson vacuum cleaner. Poet WH Auden went to Gresham School, near Holt, from 1920-1925. Anna Sewell, author of Black Beauty, was born in 1820 at Yarmouth and later lived in Old Catton, Norwich. Her story, the autobiography of a horse, is among the 10 best selling books in the English language. Finally, Arthur Ransome, author of the Swallows and Amazons books, visited Norfolk in the 1930s and was inspired by the Broads.

Do you think Norfolk people both idolize Horatio Nelson and love the phrase "missing a trick"?

Some of the names are a bit of a stretch- H.G. Wells? The man who made Woking in Surrey famous? Come on- he had a summer home in Norfolk. By that standard, half of the geniuses from North London could make the list. I am impressed to find out that James Dyson was born in Norfolk- too bad he outsourced his vacuum cleaner factory from Britain to Asia. I would argue for the inclusion of Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry but really- aside from the embarrassment of not having any names being glaringly obvious on the map due to our unique and eye-catching geographical location, East Anglians should throttle back before a list of famous Norfolk/Suffolk idiots starts doing the rounds.

We should rather revel in the fact that Norwich City FC has done the impossible and has signed elephant man Joseph Merrick to play up front with Darren Huckerby:

Iraq Week: Shi'ite Happens

Guerilla marketers try to raise public awarenes about the "Beards Gone Wild" video series

Its not every day I get to quote President Bush on this blog, but this is Iraq Week at WisdomWeasel so without much further ado, from March 5 of this year:

"Freedom is the birthright and deep desire of every human soul, and spreading freedom's blessings is the calling of our time. And when freedom and democracy take root in the Middle East, America and the world will be safer and more peaceful."

I think we can all agree that the first sentence is an outstanding sentiment, one indeed worth fighting and dying for. Fight with guns, fight with words, fight by refusing to give up your seat on a city bus because of your color- whatever your weapon of choice is, I think we all hope that if called upon we will fight for that ideal. The second sentence, eh, not so good. The first clause will undoubtedly come to pass in some parts of the middle east. As for the second clause, alas we have no evidence that this is true, and quite a few indicators that the opposite will be the case.

This is quite mind-bending stuff, not least for your humble correspondent, so lets revive the tried-and-tested Q&A format to try and bring some clarity to the issue.

Q. What the hell are you talking about? Iraq was a dictatorship- now they have had elections and are going to have a constitutional referendum. Surely that is the birth of a democracy?

A. I'm not disputing the democracy part- I'm disputing the "America and the world will be safer and more peaceful" part.

Q. Why is that?

A. As we all know, Iraq is an artificial construct, carved from the sands of the Ottoman empire based on a Cambridge educated British civil servant's concept of a long-lost Mesopotamia that ignored cultural and ethnic realities on the ground in order to both compensate an Arab Hasimite prince who helped out in the First World War and to ensure British hegemony in an area considered vital to interests in India and (whisper it) rich in that fossil fuel stuff for the Royal Navy's new oil fired warships. Fast forward a bit; Iraq has been a dictatorship for most of its existence, is flush with oil resources (if not oil wealth a la Kuwait: I seem to remember an invasion in 1990 about that*), and divided into ethnic and sectarian camps. What we are trying to do in effect is parachute a fully functioning democracy into a nation whose component parts are seething with pent up religious feeling, ethnic nationalism, fears of loss of privilege, and so on. Its like we decided to encourage national elections in Bosnia during the siege of Sarajevo.

Q. So Iraq shouldn't be encouraged to become a democracy?

A. I'm not suggesting that. I'm just saying that we had better be ready for the consequences should it come to pass.

Q. What consequences?

A. Worst case senario is civil war. Or rather, an escalation of the ongoing, undeclared, civil war (sidebar- the conflict in Iraq is war cubed; the coalition and the Iraqi government fighting the insurgents, sectarian attacks on the Shia by Sunni groups, and internicine fighting among the Shia groups. Three wars at once is amazingly screwed up in a country where major combat operations were declared over in 2003). Second worst is a country dominated by a religious Shia majority whose leadership has closer ties to Tehran than to Washington with a seething Sunni minority and a Kurdish population more interested in creating their own defacto country than in being a team player. Third worst is a vaguely functional democracy with constitutionally reserved powers for different ethnic groups serving as a cheap band aid over a festering wounded society. We have seen the last one before in the middle east- it was called Lebanon.

Q. Jesus- what a little ray of sunshine you are. Are you one of those racists who believe Arabs can't have democracy?

A. First- to call the population of Iraq "arabs" is about as sensible as calling the population of the United States "europeans". That aside, to allow a functioning democracy to develop you need a sense of national identity, and a population that rejects extemist answers. In Lebanon you didn't have the first- you had ethno-religious identification. In Algeria (the other predominantly Arab muslim country to try democracy) you didn't have the second, at least not in the eyes of the ruling FLN when they saw themselves losing the election to Islamists. In Iraq you have a perfect storm- a majority population who see themselves as Shia first, Iraqi second and who are trending towards a deeply religious state who as mentioned above would have more in common with their co-religionists in Iran than with any western concept of civil society.

Q. You keep banging on about the Shia- are Iraqis uniquely suceptible to the lure of sectarian government?

A. A look at the rise of the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland would tell you no (nor the influence or desires of the christian right in the United States). I think the reason Iraqi Shias are looking to the more radical Islamic parties like Muqtada al-Sadr's and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) is similar to the reason East Germany wound up with a communist government after 1945. One; Newton's Third Law of Motion as applied to politics- every action has an equal and opposite reaction. After decades of repression by Saddam and the Sunni minority, the end of Hussein's regime was bound to see the majority flock to those who promised the most extreme revision of the previous situation. Two; an influential foreign player with a carefully groomed leadership ready to go as soon as the old regime fell. For the Soviet Union, read Iran. Three: the presence of unreconciled Baathists and Sunni xenophobes running amok with guns sort of induces a collective protection mentality in the Shia. Fourth, those who oppose the extremists in their own midst risk having their families and themselves killed.

Q. But can't the American lead coalition bang heads and get everyone around the table?

A. The American lead coalition can't even leave their firebases without getting their convoys attacked. Big dog politics then dictates that the American coalition then has to punish the ungrateful natives- hence tanks crashing through prisons, and the flattening of Falujah, Tal Afar, etc. Also, any hint of a solution imposed from outside has as much chance of being successful as a Craig Hansen breaking ball.

Q. Alright smart ass, what do you suggest?

A. Build a big wall around Iraq? Its beyond me. There are a million more variables to consider on this subject, but its begining to fry my brain. If any of this has struck a chord with you check out the following links for more information. And ask any questions you like- I have left so much out of this post that the comments section might be a useful forum for ironing out inconsistencies or confusion.

Who Are The Insurgents? (BBC)

The Iraqi Draft Constiution- Is It Flawed? (BBC)

Professor Juan Cole- One of The Most Interesting American Thinkers on the Middle East.

(*If you follow that link you'll read about Saddam's attempt to aquire krytron triggers for nukes, an operation that was in part broken up by British Customs agents. We had a mock krytron trigger used in the customs sting on the tank of the downstairs toilet at my parents' home, as my mother was part of the HM Customs Solictors Office prosecution team that took on that case (and the Arms-to-Iraq case that lead to the Scott Inquiry).

This Just In: Pope Not Catholic

For those of you who found your way over here courtesy of Listmaker's kind endorsement of this week's Iraq postings, please be assured that I am working on a couple more long and esoteric posts on that troubled country. But to quote our President, "Its hard work".

In the iterim, indulge me in this: President Bush Urges Use of Energy Saving Modes of Transportation
Speaking from the US Department of Energy in Washington, D.C., Bush stated, "We can all pitch in by being better conservers of energy. I mean, people just need to recognize that the storms have caused disruption and that if they're able to maybe not drive when they -- on a trip that's not essential, that would helpful . . . We can curtail nonessential travel." He continued, "We can encourage employees to carpool or use mass transit."

I don't know; Dick Cheney goes to hospital for just a couple of days and the President does something as darn fool as find out just how bad the gas consumption of American vehicles is.

Scooter, take a memo: next time I have an aneurysm, remind me to upgrade the firewalls on the White House computers before I go to hospital. I want the only site he can access to be the Hummer H3 sales page".

A Site To Make Simon Schama Weep With Joy

A man recreating the 1455 1st Battle of St Albans who has apparently forgotten to make eye holes in his helmet

And not just Schama but British history geeks like the new look Walter Mondale and myself also blubber with snotty excitement. Break out the man-made fabrics and over-excited gesticulation at vague humps of dirt in open fields, its the UK Battlefields Resource Centre!

I spent more family holidays as a child than would be allowed these days under EU regulations peering through mist and flocks of sheep at ill-defined ridge lines, trenches, defilades and so on. All the while I was trying to conjure up mental images of eagle standards and plumed helmets, sabre and cannon, barbed wire and shell hole, searchlight and aircraft noise from the north at Hadrian's Wall through Picardy, Flanders, Normandy, the Teutoburger wald, and the Mohne Dam to the south and the mole at Valetta harbour.

I wonder if the UK Battlefields Resource Centre exists in physical space, and if they would let me move in?

What They Should Have on Brooklyn's 5th Avenue Perhaps?

Listmaker draws our attention today to yet another chapter in the struggle between high finance and low art with the brief and witty post linked to above. Might I be so bold as to suggest that concerned members of the Coffee Flats illuminati band together and hire Banksy? Maybe he could recreate some of his work on the Israeli security fence:

Iraq Week: The Shifting Sands of Reality Don't Hide WMD....

...But alas they do seem to have swallowed up Saddam's weapons makers. A fascinating and frightening article in this month's Mother Jones talks about how Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program might not have existed at the time of the American/British/Australian/Fijian invasion, but the scientists that had worked on it certainly did. And now they, and their deadly knowledge, are almost all missing. As the article's author Kurt Pitzer puts it:

They were Iraq's only real WMDs. The U.S. refused to secure them. Now Saddam's nuclear and bioweapons scientists are dispersed and more dangerous than ever.

It's not as if the (Bush) administration hasn't talked about the danger posed by Saddam's WMD scientists. Whether Iraq had actual weapons or just 'capabilities" didn't matter, it has long argued: even capabilities could leak out to terrorist groups... Nobody knows how many Iraqi scientists may have been lured over the borders into Iran, Syria, or beyond. Nobody knows because nobody is keeping tabs. But several observers agree that so little attantion is being paid to Iraq's scientists, the war may have actually increased the chances of nuclear capabilities proliferating beyond the country's borders. Between its unemployed scientists and the disapperance of large amounts of WMD-related materials from former weapons sites, Iraq now poses a nightmare scenario, according to Ray McGovern, who spent 27 years analyzing intelligence for the CIA. McGovern says "Before we invaded, there was no evidence that Iraq had any plan or incentive to proliferate. They didn't even have a current plan to develop WMD. They just hadn't been doing it. Now, my God, we have a magnet attracting all manner of foreign jihadists to a place where WMD expertise is suddenly unprotected. It just boggles the mind."

The exact number of scientists and technicians who worked on Saddam's WMD programs is unkown but it is estimated to be in the thousands. To date, only one (Mahdi Obeidi) has been brought safely to the United States. Indeed, Obeidi tried to surrender to the military, intelligence agencies, and even journalists only to have the US government ignore him until the Army, acting independently of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, and the state department, smashed in his front door and arrested him. Given that at least twelve other well known scientists who had surrendered had been imprisoned without charge (one was beaten to death in jail) Obeidi was understandably concerned, and after the CIA took him away from the Army's clutches he was able to give an interview to CNN and through visibilty buy himself some protection. Not long after interrogating Obeidi, the CIA posted detailed excerpts of documents and schematics Obeidi had handed over and bragged about the imformation he had given them on the agency's website. To quote Pitzer, "Buried for 12 years, some of Saddam's hoard of nuclear knowledge got out because of the US government, not in spite of it."

I could rant and rage about this for eons, and to little effect other than to raise my blood pressure and not move the serious work of securing this dangerous and terrible knowledge forward one inch. So instead, let me return to Pitzer's article and former CIA case officer Robert Baer for an eloquent and chilling conclusion:

"The proliferation risk is higher than it was before, and a chaotic situation means this technology is going to spread," says Baer, who spent 21 years as a CIA case officer in the Middle East. If the administration had been serious about neutralizing Saddam's weapons program, he says, "the troops would have been securing equipment at weapons sites as they invaded, and they would have been looking for scientists... It tells you that this war had nothing to do with WMD."

Next up in this Iraq Week series: If we didn't go to war to get serious about WMD, the secondary reason given was to spread freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. What do we do then when the Iraqi concept of freedom and democracy is antethical to our stated goal of regional stability?

Not To Make Light Of Rita, But...

Rescuers comb wetlands after Rita.
People who defied orders to evacuate from the Cajun swamps of south-west Louisiana are being sought by rescue teams in the wake of Hurricane Rita....

Haven't these people seen Southern Comfort?

Iraq Week: Turning Point In Basra?

After listening to the exhilarating Hitchens vs. Galloway debate and reading and rereading Jamie Apes recently I've decided that this coming week I'm going to spend some time looking at various aspects of the war in Iraq. Of course, I am not a policy maker, a intelligence officer, an academic, or an expert per se on the minutae of Iraq but I hope to offer the perspective of a mildly informed interested observer. Take that caveat as you will. On to the first issue: this week's tinderbox in Basra.

Basra: Imperial Deja Vu?

There always seems to a point in British military operations in what is now euphemistically called by the Americans "operations other than war" when one ill-considered act of violence serves to undo months or years of hard (if not always effective) work in the arena of trying to avoid confrontation and build civil institutions. History shows us that the British have not always had more than superficial success in building inclusive and indigenous engines of civic involvement, but that is a subject for another time. What is pertinent here is that the British have long believed that if you provide the framework for civil institutions the locals will bally well do the right thing and form a jolly splendid police force, local government, and so on. Ah, god bless short term amnesia in Whitehall. And god damn the itchy trigger fingers of the British high command.

For those who have been riding a wave of supposed British tactical superiority in regards to the American operations in the Sunni north (always a more tricky proposition given that this was Saddam's patronage heartland: imagine a miltary presence trying to install Ted Kennedy as governor of Texas and you get the picture) this week's violence in Basra was a rude awakening. It should not have been.

Post war or quasi-peacetime governmental control of civilian areas by British military authorities have invariably involved one defining event that has turned a fearful or apathetic general population into a seething mass of resentment and opposition (1945 Germany is a notable exception, and mostly because total war meant that destruction, hunger, demoralization, and draconian laws supported by the British at home left the Germans in no position to argue. And a bloody good thing too, frigging Nazis). I'll leave analysis of the British occupation and this week's events to a later date (and better pundits) but let me flesh out this post with some previous examples:

1773: Lexington, Massachusetts. British troops fire on American militia. Many of those that previously considered England the motherland now saw her as the blood enemy.

1919: Amritsar, India: The shootings of peaceful protesters and then the humiliation of civilians under martial law saw British general Reginald Dyer hand Gandhi the tools he needed to ultimately drive the British out of India.

1972: Londonderry, Ulster: Paratroopers fire on a peaceful crowd of catholic civil rights marchers, killing 13. The British conceit of their troops being honest brokers in the conflict between Ulster's two christian sects evaporated in the eyes of the catholics and many at home, leading to an explosion of IRA miltiary action that continued for decades. Peace still hangs in the balance.

The situation in Basra too hangs in the balance. One thing is certain however; trust- always weak- is now badly damaged between the locals and the British, and berets will be replaced with helmets for a long time to come. We may not recall the British occupation of Iraq after the First World War, but the Iraqi folk memory surely does (no less than America recalls the Revolutionary War) in in the minds of the people of Basra province we are beining to emulate our grandfathers and the previous occupation. For a people with a long memory the leap from bashing in jail walls with APCs (no matter who turns out to be in the right) to aerial bombardment by Hawker Hind biplanes in the 1920s is not too great a one to make. The British military has a small window to fix this disaster. Alas, given the holes in their previous policy and the complacent smugness that has blinkered actions so far, it is doubtful that the nettle will be siezed with sufficient alacrity.

Meet Our New Agricultural Story Editor....

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present our new occasional story tipster, contributor, and Agricultural Story Editor, "Weasel's Little Bruva". He's the little blond one: you can see why we called him Bam bam as a kid.

History Friday on a Wednesday: Rockall "Joins" The Commonwealth

"Ok chaps, we want you to go and camp on a desolate rock in order to periodically establish British sovereignty. No different than being posted to the Falklands, except no penguin shit and no uppity locals."

Oh September 21st! A day of great rejoicing throughout the United Kingdom, with street parties, bunting, and parades! For it was on this day in 1955 that Rockall was siezed by order of the Queen! Admittedly, not an event on the scale of the Louisiana Purchase, or even the embarrassing aquisition of an empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, but its the best we could manage in the fifties:

"1955: Britain claims Rockall
Britain has annexed a rocky islet 300 miles (483km) west of Scotland to stop the Soviets spying on missile tests, the Admiralty has announced. The UK formally claimed uninhabited Rockall, which is just 70ft (21m) high, on 18 September at 1016 GMT.

Two Royal Marines and a civilian naturalist, led by Royal Navy officer First Lieutenant Commander Desmond Scott, raised a Union flag on the island and cemented a plaque into the rock. The islet is within reach of the planned guided missile range in the Hebrides and the British government feared foreign spies could use it as an observation post.

Queen Elizabeth authorised the annexation on 14 September.

Her orders stated: "On arrival at Rockall you will effect a landing and hoist the Union flag on whatever spot appears most suitable or practicable and you will then take possession of the island on our behalf." (the rest...)"


The James Bond, keep those commies from spying on our spectacularly crap missiles, imperative has of course now faded, but like the tradition bound/resource hungry odd little hobbits we Brits are, we still claim Rockall as our own, even going so far as to occasionally send idiots out to live on it to prove its a viable part of the British Isles. The last reference I found to one of these missions was in 1985 (shows what an impact it had on me at the time: I was firmly convinced the government still sent people to hang out there). Maybe I should cure myself of my mild Rockall obsession by emulating this guy.

Happy Rockall Day, one and all: the roast puffin is on me! Man, its amazing the crap that governments come up with when they have time on their hands, isn't it?

Nobody Is Above The Law; Some Are Above Civics

From my daily soup of forwards and newsletters:

"Early Friday morning in Austin, Texas, the 21-year-old son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush -- and the nephew of President George W. Bush -- was arrested on charges of public intoxication and resisting arrest. According to the Austin American-Statesman, John Ellis Bush was taken to the Travis County Jail, where he was released on his own recognizance.

On Saturday night in western Iraq, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. soldier on patrol. According to the Associated Press, the soldier was taken to a U.S. military hospital, where he died of his wounds.

-- Tim Grieve (Salon)"

As the man says, we are a nation at war. And when Perry Ellis makes BDUs and Sperry makes combat boots I'm sure we'll see the kids of the powerful pitch right in, even though Iraq is a dry mission.

I Date Nick Swisher's Girlfriend

Nick Swisher tries to lure County Mouse away by displaying his genitalia.

Sunday proved that I have the power to curse sports teams by my mere presence. An early start by Country Mouse, her mom and mom's S.O. Les, and myself to get down from Maine to Fenway for the 2.05pm start of the 2005 Red Sox pilgrimage. Great seats (right field box 1A, Row H- just along from the Pesky Pole), the woman who sang the national anthem a couple of rows away (proving again how good the seats were for face value sc****d tickets- they'd never stick her in a crap spot, would they?), a nun in full regalia plus Sox hat two rows to my left, and Trot "Pigpen" Nixon scratching his balls and looking bored mere yards away at the top of every inning.

Despite my attempt to make nice with pitcher Matt Clement earlier in the week, the Sox stank it up big time, with the Athletics caning him for 7 in 1 1/3 innings and the fabled bats of beantown failing to come alive to make the game interesting, let alone competitive. In short order Clement, Ramirez, Damon, Ortiz, Mueller, and Varitek found more fun things to do with their Sunday (like spitting sunflower seed shells at their cleats in the dugout) while Francona essentially said "screw this" and let the kids out to play. Other than Kevin "Downs" Youkilis screwing up his finger in the seventh, the young 'uns and recent arrivals from Pawtucket held their own. By the time the game ended, Francona had substituted six of his eight position players (including third base twice, with the injury to Youkilis) which on the bright side meant that we in the traveling rubes section got to see lots of players for our money (we don't get to Boston often- nowhere to park our sled dogs). All things being equal however, the only event to draw a big cheer was the Toronto 6 Yankees 5 final going up on the monster.

With the game going to hell in a handbasket and my between-innings search for Kevin Millar and Gabe Kapler themed souvenirs proving fruitless I was left to enjoying the crowd. Among the highlights were the dad who obviously hated his 6 year old son ("No! That's not how you eat a hot dog!") seated just behind me; the grandmother two seats along who called the game to herself for the full nine; and the drunk heckler guys a row back.

Everytime Nixon came out to stand post in right they begged him for Manny's autograph and had a Statler and Waldorf conversation with themselves about whether Nixon ever spoke to fans or just to God. The saved their real bile however for Athletics' right fielder Nick Swisher.

"Swishaah! Jose Canseco called buddy, he waaaants his numbaaah baack!" was their opening gambit and they hardly let up all game. Having been forged in the crucible of the standing section of an English football stadium, it didn't bother me; it wasn't Dennis Leary quality insulting, but it was mildly amusing for the most part. Country Mouse however wasn't impressed- not for prudish reasons but rather because the heckling was so lame. Midway through the fourth, as Waldorf was explaining that Swisher's mother had no gag reflex, CM whipped around and told him to can it.

Being the oblivious soul that I am, I thought it was the crazy old lady who was telling them off and continued to believe that until the seventh until CM said "Hah! They are talking about me."

"What?" Sayeth I, engrossed by the plague of flying ants that had emerged from the floodlights above.

"Those Massholes who have been yelling all game- one of them went to yell something and decided against it, saying 'Swisher's girfriend will get mad'" CM explained.

I have found this inexplicably hilarious ever since, and thus have been calling CM 'Swisher's girlfriend' at every opportunity. Not since that guy called Listmaker "Hanley Ramirez's prom date" and Youthlarge "Craig Hansen's swim buddy" at the Sea Dogs game earlier this summer have I giggled as much in a ballpark. And of course I am making the last part up. Being Maine, nobody spoke to us at the Sea Dogs game, even to insult us.

Why?

I typed the phrase "M1 motorway+Watford Gap" into google while trying to answer a question I had for myself about whether said service station was in the county of Leicestershire or Northamptonshire (don't ask) and not too far into the search results I wound up with this:

Urinal.net

Although I should be careful- last time I mentioned urine on this blog it accidentally caused these pages to become a Consumer Reports peer-to-peer information clearing house on the effectiveness of stain removers.

On Names.

According to various press reports Britney Spears' choice of "Preston" as the name of her son is causing no end of mirth in England, where Preston is of course a post-industrial wreck of a town in the northern county of Lancashire (its also the birthplace of current England cricket hero Andrew "Freddy" Flintoff, so it can't be all grim). Britney and Kevin had intended to name their child "London" in honor of the place they first met so one has to wonder what act or event made Preston even more significant?

Of course like always my British compatriots are having a wonderful time politely sneering at those funny foreigners (fair enough, this particular pair are rather crap, but its not the kids fault, eh?) while simultaneously ignoring their own rich history of stupid names. To whit, from the BBC:

"New research released by the Cornwall Record Office (CRO) shows that centuries before celebrity couples began to indulge in outrageous nomenclature the Cornish were already raising plenty of eyebrows at the baptismal font.

One can only imagine the kind of ribbing the likes of Philadelphia Bunnyface, Charity Chilly and Faithful Cock had to endure...." (read the rest....)

I imagine Faithful Cock's father once knew a particularly monogamous rooster.

This Is Not A Baseball Blog 6

Off to Fenway this weekend for the last game of the four day visit of the Oakland Athletics (oh Dennis Eckersley, will you be torn on NESN Extra Innings?). Ah, to be in Beantown now that fall draws near, repeatedly belting out "Tessie" (to the annoyance of Country Mouse who hears quite enough of my singing on a daily basis), watching Clement prove Baumer and me wrong, and becoming far too engrossed in "the hunt for Red October" than is healthy in a 32 year old man. Boston's tenth man can't be wrong.

While on the subject of baseball, my brother writes with news that his local non-league football team Shepshed Dynamo has managed to do what the Devil Rays singularly have failed to do this week; they have beaten the Yankees:

"An article in the Loughborough Echo highlighted the international fame achieved by one of Charnwood's sporting teams. In a recent list of the top 20 images of worldwide locations looked up by users of Google Shepshed Dynamo's "stadium" came 17th ahead of the Taj Mahal and more importantly Yankee Stadium. The Echo were most impressed until they got a letter from the Dynamo's chairman and it turns out it is no more than the web equivalent of looking up rude words in the dictionary as the club house is on Butt Hole Lane."

With the interest in English towns named after naughty or giggly bits on the rise online, perhaps my long held dream of improving the fortunes of both Sir Mix-a-Lot and rural Cambridgeshire by producing follow up to Baby Got Back called Six Mile Bottom might have legs after all.

This Is Not A Supreme Court Blog

I Can't Be The Only One To Make This Connection:

Judge John G. Roberts


Sam Neill as Damien in Omen III: The Final Conflict

In Deference to Boss Hogg...

From McBabs, sister of RPS and a long time pal:


Sky News is the British sister to Fox News Channel. They obviously aren't getting their talking points through on the batfax.

Battle of Britain Day This Week

Growing up British (and on Royal Air Force bases surrounded by reminders of the attempt by Hitler to destroy the UK's air defences as a prelude to a Nazi invasion) the national legend that grew out of 15th September 1940 has persisted in my bones despite my deeply held internationalism and skeptical attitude to patriotism anywhere outside of a sports arena. However despite whatever intelleftual misgivings about Churchill and class and 1940s Britain I might have at my most lofty and esoteric moments, frankly from a leftist-progressive viewpoint the achievement of the Royal Air Force in pushing back the forces of fascism has to be seen as one of the greatest moments of the 20th Century. As much as I love the sentiment, Woodie Guthrie's guitar didn't kill fascists as it proclaimed: .303 cal machine guns* mounted four to a wing did. George Orwell sums the paradox up nicely in "The Lion and the Unicorn", written in 1941.

So caveats aside, for those of you interested in learning out the 15th September or Battle of Britain in general, click the above links.

And for the truly dweebish, here's the sound of a Rolls Royce Merlin engine, the powerplant in both the Spitfire (pictured above) and Hurricane fighters that patrolled the skies of Britain.

(*In order to forestall the professional umbrage of my father, I acknowledge that the Spit picture at the top of this post shows a later mark armed with 20mm cannons. I'm sure if prodded he'll tell me exactly which mark. This after all is the man who complained to curators at London's Science Museum that they had the wrong model propeller on a 1917 Sopwith Camel. This is one of the reasons I love and admire him).

In Film News...

...Leni Riefenstahl's documentary on the life of Mother Theresa is released:

Say what you like- she made the lepers run on time

Non Prophet Organization?

On top of all the other mismanagement and crass ineptitude displayed by the federal government and FEMA in particular, highlighting Pat Robertson's dubious charity Operation Blessing might not have prolonged the suffering of the people of the Gulf coast but it certainly makes one marvel at just how ideologically driven Mr. Bush's evangelical conservative adminstration is.

In their latest financial filing Operation Blessing shows that it gives over $800,000 in donated money to Mr Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network (the forum that Robertson uses to call for assasinations, condemn Americans afflicted by 9/11 as deserving of God's wrath, and reflect that Katrina was good for christians as it might lessen scrutiny of sumpreme court nominee John Roberts) and that the charity was involved in activities that involved soliciting donations for victims of the Rawandan genocide and then using the funds to charter aircraft to move supplies and product for a diamond mine in Zaire owned by Mr Robertson. Despite this, the politically appointed staff at the top of FEMA (whose jobs depend on Mr. Bush's largesse) listed Operation Blessing as second only to the Red Cross on a list of recognized charities for those wishing to help out the survivors of Katrina. The full story by Juan Gonzales of the New York Daily News can be found here.

While Robertson and his ilk revel in accusing the secular rationalists of this world of indulging in "moral relativism", it strikes me as relativist in the extreme to solicit money for one purpose and spend it for another while reasoning that as all your activities reflect the will of your god, all are deserving of a share of donations (even if the public are too blinded by false idols to see your selflessness for what it is). How ironic that the fountainhead of Mr. Robertson's protestantism, Martin Luther, was railing against just this sort of equvication of faith with commerce when he broke with the catholic church. What are Jesus fish, scale models of Judge Roy Moore's "Ten Commandments" monument, and WWJD wrist bands if they are not modern versions of the idulgences and relics sold my corrupt monks of Luther's era? Pace, buying supposed moral superiority by giving to a "faith based" charity rather than to a no-nonsense do-the-job secular organization marks you out as no more than a vainglorious egotist at odds with the teaching you supposedly follow.

Robertson's shady outfit aside, the evangelical bent of some of the relief operations is distasteful to me. While I appreciate the aspects of christianity that call for charity I see more parallels with the actions of the moonies than Jesus in the compulsion to foist religious beliefs on people at their lowest ebb. Give the food, but don't demand prayer in return, lest you turn from a dove to a vulture. Orwell wrote of this in his book "Down and Out in Paris and London", the idea that the poor are undeserving unless they display willingness to have someone else impose their religion on them.

Let human beings handle human problems brought on by the force of nature and human neglect and mismangement. Leave the spirituality where it belongs- as a sideshow attraction fortune telling tent or in the hands of teenagers getting freaked out by the cheap tricks of a ouija board.

Bah

I hate Curt Schilling just a little less after this

On A Lighter (But Deadly Serious) Note...

Marmite makes you a better wickie than Vegimite does

It is already morning in England- 3:39am to be precise. This means it is Thursday, the opening day of the final Ashes Test against Australia. England only needs a draw to regain the Ashes for the first time since 1987.

Suffice to say, I won't be straying far from my internet radio at work the next few days, and am praying for rain this weekend so I can hole up in front of the computer. It is time to channel the spirit of Beefy and my personal favorite, David "The Gentleman" Gower.

Crack on lads- pads on, last one out of the pavillion has to sniff Flintock's box.

Down the shaft they shouted "Larwood!"
Short and stocky from the cage,
Strode a man to bowl for England,
In a dim remembered age.
Muscles tempered at the coal-face,
Body primed and all aglow,
Eager for the fields of battle;
Ghostly fields of long ago.

Diamond-hard from hewing 'diamonds',
Fame that grew round half the world;
From modest starts on local pitches
Headline banners were unfurled.
Larwood, Voce spearhead battalions,
Of sporting pitmen down the years;
Hard-fought contests, deeds of glory;
Memories shine on through time's tears.

From 'A Carnival Crown and a Roasted Ox" by Mark Ashfield

I believe Harold Larwood actually decapitated at least five unpleasant kangaroo humping, Tooey's swilling, Dame Edna emulating, corks from hats hanging, finding Paul Hogan funny-ating, cultural-cringing, pretending-they-are-kiwis-when-they-finally reach-London, Croc-hunting gallahs in his day. Vengance is mine, sayeth the MCC.

God, I hope we win after that.

The Blame Game

In recent days it has apparently been Republican talking point number one: "We must not play the blame game". I have heard that sentence coming from the President, cabinet officers, Trent Lott, and following a brief loss of the TV remote out of the mouth of Bill O'Reilly on Fox News (good to see that even though FEMA can't get MREs into New Orleans the RNC can get memos to Roger Ailes). Too bad they haven't been taking extending that sentiment to the poor saps they dithered about helping.

Local and national authorities made huge play out of the breakdown in law and order that supposedly followed the flooding in New Orleans- widespread looting for food and supplies (undisputed), widespread looting for consumer goods (well, I saw the same footage of a woman carrying three pairs of sneakers about 80 times on CNN but does that count as widespread?), and rape, murder and robbery in the supposed safe havens of the Superdome and Convention Centre.

The only trouble with the last examples is that while they were widely reported both directly by journalists and by hearsay reports from survivors, police investigating the allegations have yet to unearth any evidence they happened.

From England's Guardian newspaper via Can't Stop The Bleeding:
"There were two babies who had their throats slit. The seven-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in the Superdome. And the corpses laid out amid the excrement in the convention centre.

In a week filled with dreadful scenes of desperation and anger from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina some stories stood out. But as time goes on many remain unsubstantiated and may yet prove to be apocryphal. New Orleans police have been unable to confirm the tale of the raped child, or indeed any of the reports of rapes, in the Superdome and convention centre. New Orleans police chief Eddie Compass said last night: “We don’t have any substantiated rapes. We will investigate if the individuals come forward.”

And while many claim they happened, no witnesses, survivors or survivors’ relatives have come forward. Nor has the source for the story of the murdered babies, or indeed their bodies, been found. And while the floor of the convention centre toilets were indeed covered in excrement, the Guardian found no corpses.

Reports of the complete degradation and violent criminals running rampant in the Superdome suggested a crisis that both hastened the relief effort and demonised those who were stranded. By the end of last week the media in Baton Rouge reported that evacuees from New Orleans were carjacking and that guns and knives were being seized in local shelters where riots were erupting.

The local mayor responded accordingly. “We do not want to inherit the looting and all the other foolishness that went on in New Orleans,” Kip Holden was told the Baton Rouge Advocate. “We do not want to inherit that breed that seeks to prey on other people.”

The trouble, wrote Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune is that “scarcely any of it was true - the police confiscated a single knife from a refugee in one Baton Rouge shelter". “There were no riots in Baton Rouge. There were no armed hordes.”"

We must not play the blame game indeed. I dare say that there were crimes, violent crimes even, committed during the week that President Nero fiddled while New Orleans drowned. New Orleans has never been a particularly crime-free place, after all- I have a reproduction of an 1890s tin sign on my downstairs bathroom door that says "Beware pickpockets and loose women in this area: New Orleans Police"- but usually standards of government (if not reporting, alas) demand that one waits for confirmation of fact before speaking, especially if ill-informed comment could exacebate a crisis.

And while on the subject of societal collapse, Paul Reynolds of the BBC does a masterful job analysing governmental breakdowns here. Now that is an example of fair and balanced reporting.

Geraldo Rivera To The Rescue

What is the difference between the War in Iraq and Katrina? While the authorities wrung their hands about looting in both, in Iraq they at least had a plan and thousands of troops for securing the oil supplies. But that is not the subject of this post.

A Sunday night on the couch, Country Mouse at work at the cinema she runs (scaring the blue hairs of Camden, Maine with The Aristocrats) and me on the couch with remote in hand. I've been away working in Bar Harbor all weekend and so I haven't caught up with the Hurricane Katrina latest.

On CNN, Larry King seems intent on undoing all the good work his network had begun in taking their faltering steps towards a return to real journalism by interviewing pop psychologist Dr. Phil who has set up camp at the Houston Astrodome among the refugees. Along with trailing his vulgar special featuring "tearful family reunions" coming Wednesday, Dr. Phil is advising hurricane survivors to take life "one step at a time"; presumably they should also apologize to friends and family for the hurt their refugee status has caused. Twelve-stepping our way to better levees, people! Larry King is promising a discussion with Dr. Phil as to why some people stayed in New Orleans as the storm approached (because some are crazy, some are paranoid about their property, some pooh-pooh warnings, and because the vast majority are fucking poor and without cars, Larry- Kanye West established this in a convoluted way on Saturday night) so I decide I can't take any more of this drivel and begin to randomly surf.

As I alight on Fox News Channel the phone rings- it is Country Mouse calling to chat. I hit mute and talk movie theatre politics with the missus, all the while watching the TV with one eye. At Large with Geraldo Rivera is on. The show at this point appears to be comprised of video shot earlier in the day (I have the sound down so essentially in Geraldo in mime form) and Geraldo is knocking on a door in New Orleans. The door is opened by an elderly black woman. Geraldo helps her down her front steps into relatively shallow water. A little further down the street, Geraldo hails a National Guard patrol and hands the woman over to them. The video now jumps to a dry-looking neighborhood baseball diamond and as the camera pans up we see a S-61 Sea King coming in to land. At this point Country Mouse rings off and I unmute the TV but the only noise is the sound of the helicopter. Again, the image jumps and we see the Guardsmen loading the now horizontal woman onto the aircraft as the loadmaster supports her head. The camera pans back and we are greeted with the piece de resistance: a grinning Geraldo Rivera holding the woman's ankles.

The nightmare that was Hurricane Katrina might pass from this woman's every waking moment- looking down the length of her recumbent torso and seeing that grinning loon with his moustache akimbo might drive her to alcoholism. Still, if that should come to pass, she could always pop by the Astrodome and visit Dr. Phil.

NEWSBREAK- It is now 11:04pm, Sunday. Country Mouse is home and is yelling from the couch "He's saving more people!" I check, its true. Geraldo is onto another senior citizen and is helping her (and her dog) to safety. From what I have been able to gather from the excited babble coming out of his mouth, he's taking requests at FoxNews.com for people to save. So if you have a relative somewhere on the Gulf Coast, log on and make a compelling case...

Wish Fulfilment Dept.

A few days ago Youthlarge commented on an earlier post that she "would like to see a picture of bald bowles" (Bowles being the host of the Random Doubts of Walter Mondale, and one of my oldest chums). Youthlarge, your wish is my command:



And just to be fair here's one of your husband:


And finally one of me:

CNN- An Apology

Earlier this week I berated CNN and the other networks for their shoddy reporting as Hurricane Katrina hit. In recent days the mainstream media has begun to make up for years of lapdog service to politicians by berating the great and the good for their tardy response to the crisis. Indeed, even Anderson Cooper on CNN is coming across like Peter Finch in Network. This is to be applauded and encouraged. Especially when he blew up at Senator Trent Lott tonight. The only question I would have asked in his stead is where did Lott get off commandeering a National Guard helicopter to go and inspect the ruins of his mansion while people still need rescuing (I feel bad for Lott, losing his house and seeing his state devastated but he was asking for it the way he patonized America in his responses to Anderson's questions). But I digress.

CNN, NPR, ABC et al- don't make me lose this tentative new-found respect for you.

Post Industrial Maine

I had no idea these things were lurking 100 yards from my door
I don't normally care for the local papers in my part of Maine. I think it is a factor of age; I spent 8 years intimately involved in the politics and personalities of Mount Desert Island by virtue of my work in local government then broadcasting, my relationship with MDI local acceptance gatekeeper Country Mouse, and the cheek-by-jowl nature of life on a Maine island (even one the size of MDI). I was so involved in reporting, satirizing, or yelling about often nasty controversies that when we moved 80 miles south to Camden I took the conscious decision not to take any more notice than necessary in the local politics. It's exhausting and in the end alas, some variation on the same bastard gets to run the shop. Local papers are full of council fights and infuriating business deals; I have no desire to get worked up to the point of scarfing Rolaids all the time over the politics of this town.

I used to take four local newspapers; I now don't regularly buy a single one (I read the thrice-weekly at work but only to see if my press releases made it in). I'll read the Boston Globe for world news and sports (sorry Baumer), Jim Baumer at Write for You for Maine updates (see, I made it up to you), and various websites and blogs for other ephemera. However, when one of the local rags not only does a half-decent job (as opposed to their usual breathless and error-ridden copy) but reports on a story that is happening about 100 yards from my house, I'll admit to sitting up and paying attention.

Camden, Maine is now a rather chintzy bastion of the yachting rich but up to about 30 years ago the town that portrayed Peyton Place was as famous for its woollen mills that provided everything from blankets to batting for paper mill rollers. Over the decades of course the woollen mills have been converted into multi-use buildings filled with boutiques, here today gone tomorrow credit card companies, restaurants, and other reminders of our tertiary economy. Apparently the last holdout for the old industrial ways was the mill down the street from me, which converted from mill to tannery to ruin during the last 20 years.

A couple of weeks ago the inevitable demolition began. The building has essentially been off the tax rolls for a while and there was no prospect of any form of manufacturing concern taking the place on, so now the shabby green wreck across the way will be replaced with condos for white flight yuppies from Massachusetts, companies that offer "solutions" rather than products, or some other prestige project that will have absolutely no relevance to my blue collar neighbors and me. No chance of a neighborhood pub, barbers, and junk shop occupying three storefronts on the ground floor I suppose.

But back to the main point of this post: Village Soup reporter Holly Anderson has written a really interesting article on the guts of the old mill/tannery and its demolition here:
Tannery Demolition Begins

I don't bemoan the end of the old, polluting industries that used to scar Maine (who would want a tannery on their block?) but I do despair for this state as jobs that allowed a person to hold their head high are being replaced with service industry jobs (mostly in tourism) where your success hinges on how well you can bear the inconsiderate behavior of tourists. I'll watch the tannery slowly disappear and wait with a degree of trepedation to see what rises in its place.

OH Lord. He's Back.

Back, back long ago when we were fab. Breakfast at the pub.
St Albans, England. March 1996.

Welcome home to my old chum Mr. B after an extended English vacation courtesy of Uncle Sam. And he (like me) is a legal immigrant. Crivens!

The aftermath of Mr. B and Mr. W's celebration of Mr. B's 18th birthday, chez Weasel. That's Mr. B in the garish shorts.