Just back from Accra and just about to set off for Berlin. I am very rude about the partiality of the Guardian’s focus on occasions, but they deserve congratulations for getting it spot-on with this article explaining Cameron and Hague’s sudden activism on Somalia.
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The thing is that while I don’t subscribe to Flashman’s rather condescending description of 19th Century Russians and I don’t think things are the same as they were then, official violence involving people beaten in public by the cops is still clearly not that uncommon. I even saw it myself on a short trip to Russia while sitting in one of Yuri Luzhkov’s Russkoye Bistros at Moscow station. A man who looked (possibly) homeless and walking on a crutch was suddenly thrust into the doorway by some uniformed thug who set about punching him a few times in the face before throwing him dismissively into the restaurant. A woman who I assume to be his wife came running in to help him to his feet and escort him through the back door of the restaurant while the other customers looked on sneeringly at the ragged couple and even gave them a few kicks themselves.
Komodo: Another name to watch is Michael Weiss, the (New York, Jewish, rabid) journalist who writes most of its op-eds…
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I’ve had some correspondence with Mr Weiss myself. He’s quite young still, and idealistic. I also know one of his ex-friends who was in the same journalism class as he was but took a diametrically opposed view to Mr Weiss and turned them into somewhat bitter enemies.
Far from me to smudge the name of ‘the’ Flashman, angry, never knew much of his wisdom, thanks.
Nevermind: Far from me to smudge the name of ‘the’ Flashman, angry, never knew much of his wisdom, thanks.
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Ha ha! No problem. Good books and well worth a read. Certainly the first, fourth and fifth books are pretty relevant to the kind of stuff we talk about today. The author was a bit of a reactionary, very un-PC kind of guy, but he was shaking his head at the stupidity of British foreign policy under Blair and seemed to find it incredulous that after everything we know that anyone in any position of authority would think it a good idea (to go to war in Afghanistan or Iraq). Just idiocy, in his opinion. And he’s right.
George Macdonald Fraser (Flashman author) wouldn’t have ackonwledged the phrase ‘PC’, I fancy.
Nevermind: seriously, sorry that I got you wrong.
I think you’ll find the Flashman books (all but two of them) predate Blair, angrysoba. His truths are eternal truths….
I think you’ll find the Flashman books (all but two of them) predate Blair, angrysoba. His truths are eternal truths….
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I’m well aware of the vintage of the Flashman books and the original Flashman appeared more than a century before them. I didn’t mean to imply that the books were written to take issue with Tony Blair although the explanatory note to the last one (2005) clearly makes a barbed reference to the UK government. When talking to Christopher Hitchens, he was even more explicit. Something that the Hitchens clearly didn’t like as he shows in this rather absurd “obituary” for Fraser:
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In 1969, when Flashy first stepped onto the page (or should I say back onto the page where Thomas Hughes had left him?), it would have been well-nigh impossible to imagine that British soldiers would be again in action in the historic battle-honor territories of Afghanistan and Mesopotamia. But now that they were back, George MacDonald Fraser was not in the least bit delighted: “Tony Blair is not just the worst prime minister we’ve ever had, but by far the worst prime minister we’ve ever had. It makes my blood boil to think of the British soldiers who’ve died for that little liar.”
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I’ve no idea why Hitchens is surprised that Fraser was “not in the least bit delighted”. There’s a really strange possibility that he believed Fraser believed in the nobility of Flashman’s campaigns. I would think that surely Hitchens can’t be that tone deaf and yet this is also an odd sentence: Just as many people more than half-believe that Sherlock Holmes was a real person, so Fraser used to get letters from people offering to put him in touch with distant Flashman descendants. In the explantory note to Flashman in the Great Game, “G.F.C” says that since the publication of the first four books he’d been getting letters from one man claiming to be an illegitimate descendent of Flashman and one who said his grandfather had lent Flashman “fifty dollars and a horse” adding that neither was returned. I assumed they were jokes.
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http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/579jmzky.asp?page=1
technicolour: George Macdonald Fraser (Flashman author) wouldn’t have ackonwledged the phrase ‘PC’, I fancy.
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It seems he acknowledged its existence and he detested it. He also hated it that people who actually liked his books would have to make excuses and mumble about it not being very PC ‘n’ all but… Just like I did (and do).
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-506219/The-testament-Flashmans-creator-How-Britain-destroyed-itself.html
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By the way, I’ve just been Googling around a bit and discovered that this “Flashman” label for Cameron has become quite common. When did this start?
Angrysoba: yes, just added a note on the top thread about one of our greatest anti-heroes. Is it really common? How disturbing, even if you don’t know the books. Then it just sounds admiring & serfy. It’s probably being spread by Central Office…
Marcus Dysch of the JC should have this article framed as he continues his attacks on Jenny Tonge both on his Twitter and on the JC.
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http://electronicintifada.net/content/us-sent-600000-tear-gas-canisters-israel-says-new-report/11043?utm_source=EI+readers&utm_campaign=3afcd60a40-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email
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/…..US weapons provided to Israel at taxpayer expense make the US complicit in Israel’s human rights abuses of Palestinians living under Israel’s 44-year military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip and defeat US foreign policy objectives of halting Israeli settlement expansion, ending Israeli military occupation and establishing a just and lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace,” Ruebner added.
Between the years 2000 and 2009, the US transferred “more than 670 million weapons, rounds of ammunition and related equipment,” according to the report.
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Violating US law
During the same period, “Israel killed at least 2,969 unarmed Palestinians, including 1,128 children, often with US weapons in violation of the Foreign Assistance Act and Arms Export Control Act.”
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