Rarely Seen

Name Ten, Andrew. Just Ten.

Andrew Bolt - who evidently can't be bothered learning about any art, or artist, whom he decides to denounce - has cranked out another fulmination against an artist who makes 'mock of a faith which guards him while he sleeps'. This time the object of Andy's outrage is Argentinian artist Leon Ferrari, whose 1965 sculpture la civilización occidental y cristiana (picture) is on display in the Sydney Biennale.

So far this year, Bolt has tied his knickers - and those of his fans - in a knot over the following artists who've dared to blaspheme against Christianity but haven't the guts to blaspheme against Islam:

• Alfred Hrdlicka whose 1984 etchings in tribute to Pier Paolo Passolini featured in a controversial retrospective exhibition in Vienna this year.
• Martin Kippenburger, who died in 1997 but not before he produced a 'self-portrait' depicting himself as a crucified, beer-drinking frog (in 1990).

If, as Bolt maintains, the art world is infested with moral cowards who will quite happily blaspheme against Christianity but not Islam - because that's too dangerous - he ought to be able to name ten, just ten - career artists who have produced and publicly displayed such works in the past year.

Failing that, a little research into the careers of the next artist he lines up for denunciation might spare him a little embarassment. Wikipedia's stub biography of his latest target includes this note:

Ferrari has also written articles for left-leaning newspaper Página 12. His work and his politics have brought him into some controversy and notoriety. He was forced into exile in São Paulo, Brazil from 1976 to 1991 following threats by the military dictatorships.

Headline of the Day

Iguanas witness cover-up

What I want to know is - who lagged on the iguanas? Will they come forward to give us their account of events?

Word of the Day: Scuppie

The News Limited web-site has reproduced this report, from the Townsville Bulletin on the rise of a new consumer demographic:

Standing for Socially Conscious Upwardly Mobile Persons, scuppies are the most influential consumer group of our time. Just like hippies, they care about society and the environment -- but, just like yuppies, they care about their quality of life and bank balance, too.

The term was coined by the self-confessed American scuppie Chuck Failla: "I'm a professional. I'm ambitious, I like nice things. I want security and a degree of wealth. But I don't like to go after those goals in anything other than a socially conscious way.''

This little news item has the makings of a very entertaining Anti-PC beat-up. For Andrew Bolt and his readers there's the joy of finding another group of PC hypocrites to denounce. For the rest of us there's the pleasure of watching Andrew and his readers completely miss the joke:

Apple Sauce for the Gander but Bread Sauce for the Goose

He's an old-fashioned sort of bloke with a knockabout sense of humour who's been sent for re-education to appease the politically correct; she's an ill-tempered harridan who should be kicked out of the Labor Party and out of Parliament.

A Bed-Time Prayer

Whitewash of the Week

The Extraordinary Rendition of Mamdouh Habib

Today, Chris Hammer of The Age reports:

THE United States sent Australian terror suspect Mamdouh Habib to be interrogated in Egypt in defiance of repeated pleas from Canberra not to do so, Australia's top spy has revealed.

ASIO director-general Paul O'Sullivan said the US was told several times that Australia opposed sending Mr Habib to another country for interrogation — a process known as rendition — after his arrest in Pakistan in 2001.

Mr O'Sullivan told a Senate hearing he believed Australia's concern at the time was that Mr Habib would be tortured, a fear later backed up by Mr Habib, who says he was brutally treated in Egypt.

Mr O'Sullivan made that revelation at the estimates hearing of the Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs. You can access the Hansard record of the committee proceedings here (PDF format) and here (Parlinfo web page).

According to Hammer's report:

Mr O'Sullivan said Australian officials in Pakistan formed the view on October 22, 2001, that Mr Habib might be "rendered" — transferred to a third country for interrogation — and conveyed concerns to Canberra.

A meeting in Canberra the next day — attended by then ASIO director-general Denis Richardson and senior representatives of the Federal Police and three government departments — decided that Australia would oppose his rendition.

This is a bit of a distortion of O'Sullivan's actual account of events, given in answers to questions from NSW Greens Senator, Kerry Nettle:

Senator NETTLE — I want to ask questions in relation to the rendition of Mamdouh Habib. I want to start with an answer that this committee received last week from the Attorney-General’s Department, which refers to a meeting that, we found out this morning, was on 23 October in 2001. In the answer from the Attorney-General’s Department it states that senior officials from ASIO, AFP, Foreign Affairs, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Attorney-General’s Department agreed that the Australian government could not agree to the transfer of Mr Habib. I want to start by asking you who represented ASIO at that meeting.

Mr O’Sullivan — Of course, I was not involved at that stage but, if I understand correctly, there was a meeting on another matter in Canberra. I do not know what that other matter was but at the end of it there was a pull-aside, to use an American expression, and Mr Richardson, my predecessor was the ASIO person at that meeting.

In plain terms, and contrary to the impression conveyed by The Age's report, there was no formally convened meeting between ASIO, the AFP and other departments about Mamdouh Habib's detention in Pakistan. It was discussed informally after 'a meeting on another matter'.

O'Sullivan's answers to further questions from Senator Nettle seem a little confused:

Senator NETTLE — The answer from the Attorney-General’s Department says that the senior officials from those various departments that I mentioned agreed that the Australian government could not agree to a transfer of Mr Habib to Egypt. Was there a request to transfer Mr Habib to Egypt?

Mr O’Sullivan — I believe no is the answer.

...

Senator NETTLE — The reason that I was asking Mr Keelty about this this morning was that he previously provided information to this committee that the AFP liaison officer in Islamabad was present at a meeting in Pakistan on 22 October, the day before, at which the transfer of Mr Habib to Egypt was discussed. So, I thought that when we were here this morning with the AFP, perhaps that pull-aside or discussion had been initiated by the AFP. At that point I was told that it was not the Australian Federal Police but ASIO. Can you tell me if that is correct?

Mr O’Sullivan — I am not sure exactly what the dynamics of the arrangement were, but I think you might be overformalising it when you talk about who convened or chaired it? It is clear that a meeting took place and it is clear that Mr Richardson was a central figure in that discussion. Whether he convened it in the sense that you are using that word, I am not sure, but there was a pull-aside at the end of a meeting on another matter and he was centrally involved with it for sure.

Once again, O'Sullivan reminds us that there was no formal, minuted discussion of Habib's possible transfer to Egypt - merely a 'pull-aside' involving interested parties from various departments.

Senator NETTLE — Was it information from ASIO that led to that discussion occurring?

Mr O’Sullivan — I do not think it was information from ASIO exclusively. I think there had been a meeting the previous day — if I have got the dates correct — in Pakistan, that you are referring to, and one of the things that happened at that meeting in Pakistan was a discussion of hypothetical possibilities. One of those possibilities was that Mr Habib could be transferred from Pakistan to Egypt. What happened then at the meeting of 23 October in Canberra was that the officials, including Mr Richardson, considered that issue and came to the conclusion that you have described — that is to say that the Australian government would not give assent to such a process of rendition, if that is what you want to describe it as.

Senator NETTLE — What did ASIO do after that meeting to ensure that the decision of that discussion was conveyed and to whom?

Mr O’Sullivan — Mr Richardson conveyed that information to the United States.

And there's the only basis for the assertion that the US defied Australia's wishes when they transferred Mamdouh Habib to Egypt. The current head of ASIO has told a Senate Estimates hearing that the former head of ASIO conveyed the decision of an informal discussion of Canberra bureaucrats to the United States - somehow.

An interesting question arises here: was then Prime Minister John Howard told about this decision? That depends:

Senator NETTLE — Did ASIO brief the Prime Minister about that discussion?

Mr O’Sullivan — I do not know what conversations Mr Richardson may have had privately, but the essence of the meeting was conveyed to senior people in Canberra, including all those who had a need to know. I do not have the list of people in front of me, but it was a piece of intelligence reporting that was distributed appropriately in Canberra.

Unfortunately, because the information was highly classified, O'Sullivan refused to discuss who was on the 'need to know' list. There's also the small matter of the difference between 'need to know' and 'want to know' and John Howard's preference for governing on the latter basis.

Senator NETTLE — Can I ask you what ASIO did, beyond conveying to the United States the decision of that meeting, to ensure that an Australian citizen was not transferred to Egypt?

Mr O’Sullivan — Essentially, the issue of the transfer and treatment of an Australian overseas is a matter for the department of foreign affairs. ASIO’s job is to make sure that that department has that information, and that is what happened in this case.

...

Senator NETTLE — This morning — again, it is other people’s descriptions of ASIO’s role — I asked the AFP and I asked Attorney-General’s Department what action they took to ensure that the decision of that pull-aside was implemented. Their indication was that they did not take action and it was ASIO’s responsibility. I want to make clear what ASIO did, apart from telling the Americans.

Mr O’Sullivan — As I said, the Director-General of ASIO informed the United States authorities that it was not the Australian government’s policy and position to engage in practices of rendition. (emphasis added)

Later, under further questioning from Senator Nettle, O'Sullivan identifies those 'United States authorities' as people at a senior level in the US State Department and the intelligence community. If what they were told was as wishy-washy as O'Sullivan says then no-one in any level of the US government was told, clearly and unambiguously, that Australia didn't want Mamdouh Habib sent to Egypt.

What a cock-up.

Feelthee Peektures on the Eentairnet - Animal Lovairs!

Corregio, Leda and the Swan, c1532

Peter Paul Rubens Leda with Swan, 1599

C. A. Holland, Leda and Swan, c1910

Political Compass - Special Bill Henson Controversy Version

And there I was, thinking I was finished with these.

Feelthee Peektures of Cheeldren on the Eentairnet

From Bill Henson's Luminous project. Published by The Age, April 27, 2005.

Untitled 1992-93, Bill Henson. Published by The ABC in May 2005 and the Newcastle Regional Art Gallery. This photograph is included in the Gallery's touring exhibition Strange Cargo which is "supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government Program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of cultural material across Australia".

If you find Henson's work a little too dark and the nudity a bit too blatant, you might prefer the more discreet soft-focus approach of David Hamilton, whose photos, in poster form, graced the walls of many homes in the 1970s and 1980s. Who knows - they might still grace the walls of some of Henson's denouncers.

Update: for some seriously kinky action, you just can't beat the Old Masters:

Venus and Cupid, Lorenzo Lotto (1480 - 1556)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Cupid Chastised, Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582 - 1622)
Art Institute of Chicago

'Defending the Family' by Outing teh Sinful and teh Gay

Professor Alastair Nicholson, Former Chief Justice of the Family Court, has written to the federal Attorney General, Robert McClelland, advocating that the services of the Family Court be extended to gay couples:

On the eve of moves to end discrimination against gay couples across a range of federal laws, former Family Court chief justice Alastair Nicholson has written to federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland to urge a further shift in family law.

The reform would give gay couples access to the cheaper specialist court and its mediators — instead of being forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars to resolve disputes in the Supreme Court.

Under current laws, de facto heterosexual couples are also denied access to the Family Court. In the letter, obtained by The Age, Professor Nicholson argues the reform would ensure more cases are settled at mediation without trial. (Misha Schubert in The Age)

The Sydney Morning Herald carries a slightly different version of Schubert's report, obviously obtained from the same wire service that syndicated it to The National Rupert and other Murdoch organs:

Gay couples who are separating should be allowed access to the Family Court to settle property disputes, the court's former chief justice has urged.

In a letter to federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland, former Family Court chief justice Alastair Nicholson said Family Court protection should be extended beyond married couples, Fairfax newspapers reported on Thursday.

It seems safe to infer that Professor Nicholson isn't just calling for the extension of Family Court services to same sex couples - he wants the services extended to cover straight de facto relationships too.

Because Professor Nicholson isn't a journalist, but a former judge turned academic and hence not up to the task of producing lucid writing for the Age readership, because his proposals aren't particularly newsworthy in their own right but mostly because it's not enough to just report these things, you have to get a range of reactions for and against, Schubert has done the usual ring around, canvassing the opinions of Australian Coalition for Equality spokesman Rodney Croome, Australian Christian Lobby chief Jim Wallace and Gary Singer, the deputy Lord Mayor of Melbourne.

The reason Gary Singer was included in the ring around is that right now he's in the middle of a Supreme Court dispute after a break up with his gay partner. Apparently it's a 'high profile court battle' so now I shall have to dive into Google News to catch up on it - I've obviously been skipping some key pages of my morning paper over the past few weeks. Singer is in favour of Professor Nicholson's proposal:

"One of the problems with being under state law is that your file is open to the public so anyone can access your file and read the affidavits and material in your file," he said. "When people break up, they say nasty things about each other — that exposure doesn't happen to other people."

Whoops. I think I've just picked up a bit of a complicity problem there.

Jim Wallace, as you might expect, is against the extension of Family Court services to same-sex couples:

Australian Christian Lobby chief Jim Wallace said he had strong concerns about giving Family Court access to gay couples without children because it undermined the traditional model of family. But he said there was a case for gay couples with children to have access to the specialist court to ensure the best interests of the child were protected.

Somehow, by the time the syndicated version of Schubert's report hit The National Rupert Wallace's views had moderated a little:

But Australian Christian Lobby chief Jim Wallace said while giving Family Court access to gay couples without children undermined the traditional family model, those with children had a case for Family Court access to ensure the best interests of their children were protected.

It will be interesting to see whether Wallace moderates his position any further, or whether this was merely a temporary lapse and he'll go on to insist that far from having access to the Family Court, those who live in sinful unconsecrated unions and really sinful unions with members of their own sex will just have to go on taking their chances with washing their dirty laundry in the public forums of the Sate courts.

The Ultimate Political Compass

Heritage Bigotry

A three centuries old pulpit in the Catholic Church of Our Lady in Dendermonde has been getting a lot of blog-play over the last week, principally among the devout believers in the great war of civilisations theory of modern geopolitics.

The pulpit was sculpted in wood around 1685 by Mattheus van Beveren, a Flemish artist too obscure to warrant his own Wikipedia page, to celebrate the victory of the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire over the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Vienna on September 12, 1683. This victory was such a big deal for seventeenth century Catholicism that, in November 1683, Pope Innocent XI decreed that the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary should henceforth be celebrated either on the Sunday after the Nativity of Mary or September 12, the date of the Battle.

There are two photos of the pulpit on the internet, repeatedly copied from this post at The Brussels Journal which was published in April, 2006. The pulpit is supported by a sculpture of two angels trampling on a bearded man holding a book as if to protect it. According to Matthias Storm, author of the post:

The person subdued by the angels and having a Koran in his hands is generally thought to be Mohammed. The sculpture represents the triumph of Christianity over Islam.

The sculpture is as technically accomplished as van Beveren's statuette, Cupid on a Lion, currently in the collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Unlike Alfred Hrdlicka, whose 1984 tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini (a depiction of the Last Supper as a homosexual orgy), attracted conservative ire when it was included in a recent retrospective of his works in Vienna, van Beveren didn't 'bite the hand that saved him'. Commissioned to celebrate a triumph of Christianity over Islam, he celebrated a triumph of Christianity over Islam.

According to some, we need a lot more van Beverens, and a lot fewer Alfred Hrdlickas, in our troubled modern age. If we can't have more van Beverens, we can have the next best thing. Like The Brussels Journal ('the voice of conservatism in Europe') we can acknowledge our proud heritage of anti-Islamic art, by posting the really good stuff on the internet, bringing it into the global purview. Eventually we might get noticed by the denizens of that other civilisation who will be obliging enough to remind us of the superiority of our own civilisation by taking aggressive offence at the published pictures. This week, a mere two years after the original publication of the pulpit photos that finally happened:

Belgian police is protecting a 17th century pulpit in the Flemish town of Dendermonde. The pulpit in the Catholic church of Our Lady dates from 1685, two years after the battle of Vienna when the Christian armies of the Polish King John III Sobieski defeated the Turks poised to overrun Europe. The sculpted wooden pulpit, made by Mattheus van Beveren, depicts a man subdued by angels and represents the triumph of Christianity over Islam. The man is generally thought to be Mohammed. He is holding a book which is generally assumed to be the Koran.

Two years ago, on April 16, 2006, during the height of the Danish cartoon affair, this website published a photo of the pulpit to show that there is a long tradition of depicting Mohammed in European iconography. Last Friday the Turkish newspaper Yeniçag reprinted our picture on its front page with the caption “Stop this hideous insult.” Yeniçag demands that Belgium remove the pulpit. The paper writes that “We have had the crusades and now they are still trying to humiliate us. This is as bad as the Danish cartoons and Geert Wilders’s Fitna movie in the Netherlands. Even Pope Benedict does nothing to stop these humiliations.” (bold added)

The rationale for publishing the photos of the pulpit (in bold) wasn't stated in Matthias Storm's original post, nor was there any discussion of the Danish cartoon affair.

The result of Yenicag's complaint has been the revival of that "long tradition of depicting Mohammed in European iconography" with the pulpit photo turning up on various conservative web-sites, usually with an amusing caption - amusing, that is, to any non-muslim who doesn't quickly tire of of reading the same shiatsu joke repeatedly rephrased.

The proper response for a citizen of any of the countries comprising 'Western Civilisation' is obvious: we must denounce the staff and publishers of Yenicaq and the religion which inspired their demands, creating the need for police protection of the church housing the pulpit. The lads at The Brussels Journal must be lauded as heroic defenders of western values. The publication of the photos on the net must be defended as a legitimate exercise of the democratic right of free speech (which it is) rather than decried as a rather silly and obvious provocation (which it also is). The thought that Van Beveren's sculpture is merely a crude piece of 17th century political and religious propaganda which would be much improved by an infestation of art-loving woodworms is not to be entertained. Like the statues of Ecclesia and Sinagoga on the walls of Paris's Notre Dame it's a part of our Western heritage, to be cherished and defended.

As for the people at Yenicag and their co-religionists, they very obviously need to bring their thinking up to date, and recognise that while demeaning caricatures used to be part of some Christian iconography, us Westerners had that Enlightenment thing and now we're completely over that stuff - give or take the occasional relapse.

One Frightened Native Animal

Beguiled by Cruelty

How long will it be before 'Western Civilisation' once again accepts torture as a regrettable, but sometimes necessary, practice? Not long enough, when a discussion of torture leads even opponents of torture to start speculating about how it might be made acceptable.

According to commenter NPOV at Club Troppo:

I might accept that some type of torture could be (barely) ethically justifiable, whereby: a) the process was “humane” as possible - e.g. gradually increasing the dosage of a intravenously supplied drug that caused pain, with careful medical supervision to assure no risk of permanent damage or death, and no risk that the torturer stepped out of bounds b) there was a requirement of thoroughly determined “possession of knowledge” beforehand (in the same way we now determine guilt “beyond reasonable doubt” before jailing criminals) c) the method was determined to be a highly effective method of extracting life-saving information, when all other avenues had been exhausted I still wouldn’t vote in favour of such a proposal, but I wouldn’t strenously object to it either, as long the checks and balances were shown to be working.

It may be that NPOV's intention here is sardonic - that the conditions under which NPOV is prepared to turn a blind eye are impossible to achieve. But that intention is by no means clear.

The first condition - or something like it - is attainable. The essential fatty acid arachidonic acid is a biochemical precursor of the prostaglandins which contribute to pain and inflammation. A subcutaneous injection of arachidonic acid would have an inflammatory effect on tissues, causing the sort of pain that is usually relieved with aspirin. A local injection of bradykinin would work even better. Historical experience shows that medical supervision for torture sessions would be forthcoming, one way or another.

The only question remaining is whether there is a risk of the torturer stepping out of bounds - but the door has already been opened too far. It would take very little force of argument from an advocate of the use of torture to open it all the way.

To argue against the use of torture in this way is wrong-headed. Once it has been allowed that torture - under proper supervision - is acceptable, the requirements of proper process will be satisfied, quite quickly, in the same way that they have been satisfied in the past; by defining punctilious protocols for establishing and recording interrogations under torture to provide the appearance of due process.

Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger's witchhunters' manual Malleus Maleficarum (MM) (1486) provides a good example of this under the heading 'Of the Third Kind of Sentence, to be Pronounced on one who is Defamed, and who is to be put to the Question':

THE Third method of bringing a process on behalf of the faith to a conclusive termination is when the person accused of heresy, after a careful consideration of the merits of the process in consultation with learned lawyers, is found to be inconsistent in his statements, or is found that there are sufficient grounds to warrant his exposure to the question and torture: so that if, after he has been thus questioned, he confesses nothing, he may be considered innocent. And this is when the prisoner has not been taken in heresy, nor has he been convicted by his own confession, or by the evidence of the facts, or by the legitimate production of witnesses, and there are no indications that he is under such a suspicion as to warrant his being made to abjure the heresy; but nevertheless he is inconsistent in his answers when interrogated. Or there may be other sufficient reasons for exposing him to torture. And in such a case the following procedure is to be observed.

The import of this passage is simple - once you have made up your mind to torture someone, for whatever you think good reason ('there may be other sufficient reasons for exposing him to torture') here is the proper procedure for recording the verdict - here's how you cover your bureaucratic arse.

The requirement that torture be found effective (NPOV's third requirement) is no impediment to the adoption of torture, Those who want to torture, or want torture used, will quite simply assume that it is effective, as did Kramer and Spenger. Accepting torture as a legitimate way to obtain information gives validity to testimony obtained under torture. This leads to a particularly vicious circle, where the 'truth' obtained through torture is used to justify the continued practice of torture:

[Here is] an instance which came within our own experience. For in the diocese of Constance, twenty-eight German miles from the town of Ratisbon ... a violent hailstorm destroyed all the fruit, crops and vineyards in a belt one mile wide, so that the vines hardly bore fruit for three years. This was brought to the notice of the Inquisition, since the people clamoured for an inquiry to be held ... it was ... that it was a case of witchcraft for us to consider; and among a large number of suspects, we particularly examined two women, one named Agnes, a bath-woman, and the other Anna von Mindelheim.

These two were taken and shut up separately in different prisons, neither of them knowing in the least what had happened to the other.

On the following day the bath-woman was very gently questioned ... and although she was undoubtedly well provided with that evil gift of silence which is the constant bane of judges, and at the first trial affirmed that she was innocent of any crime against man or woman; yet, in the Divine mercy that so great a crime should not pass unpunished, suddenly, when she had been freed from her chains, although it was in the torture chamber, she fully laid bare all the crimes which she had committed ... although there had been no witness to prove that she had abjured the Faith or performed coitus with an Incubus devil ... saying that for more than eighteen years she had given her body to an Incubus devil, with a complete abnegation of the Faith.

After this she was asked whether she knew anything about the hailstorm which we have mentioned, and answered that she did [and gave a detailed account of how she had caused the hailstorm]

... when on the next day the other witch had at first been exposed to the very gentlest questions, being suspended hardly clear of the ground by her thumbs, after she had been set quite free, she disclosed the whole matter without the slightest discrepancy from what the other had told ... Accordingly, on the third day they were burned.(MM, emphasis added)

How is it possible for two witnesses who have been separated to agree so much on the details of their crime? There are two common elements - the threat or use of torture and the inquisitors. The first alleged witch most likely told her interrogators what they wanted to hear. The second, after being 'exposed to the very gentlest questions, being suspended hardly clear of the ground by her thumbs' merely had to corroborate those details as they were put to her by her interrogators. This is how torturers obtain the evidence to support their claim that torture works.

In 2005, an Iraqi blogger who was arrested and tried for the crime of logging onto the blog Raed in the Middle posted an account of his experience in prison which includes the stories of other prisoners interrogated under torture:

Maysam And Nathom [were] two brothers, in their twenties, very poor, amazingly good looking, if there was an Arabic version of Hollywood, they would sure be Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

When I was in jail I cried twice, one of them was when Nathom came to the toilets from an interrogation session, and I was in the toilets at that time, and he started crying hard, he said that they beat him so much to the point that he had to say that his brother killed 300 people and stole many cars.

He came to the toilets while they started to torture his brother to make him confess of these crimes, I went back to the cell and cried for minutes, it was so unfair, so unfair.

That night we made jokes about it, and that since we all are supposed to be “terrorism experts” we knew that a sword can kill up to 50 people, so he must have used so many swords, or maybe he used chainsaw? How else would anyone kill 300 people with his own hands?

Yes, we made jokes about that, in prison, and when it’s such a silly situation, you learn to joke about it.
So the interrogator said: “so he killed 300 people?”
“yes sir” Nathom answered, and the interrogator writes the confession. “and he stole an Opel Car?”
“yes sir”
“a yellow one?”
“yes sir”
And then the interrogator put down the pen and said “you son of a b****, it has been more that two years since the war and I never saw one yellow Opel car”

(And it’s true, for some reason all Opels in Iraq are grey, some are black or blue but it’s rare, but no yellow ones!) All of that interrogation happened while Nathom is hanging upside down, and being hit at the same time. (emphasis added)

The pragmatists who would have us forget our 'squeamishness' about torture - our justified ethical repugnance at the idea of beating, electrocuting or waterboarding another human being until she is prepared to endorse any lies we want to tell about her and her friends and family - ignore this reality that has not changed from the fifteenth century to the present day.

Accommodating their arguments - even with ironic intent - is not the way to answer them. Beyond the ethical repugnancy of torture, there is a very sound political reason for citizens of a liberal democratic state to insist that the use of torture has no place. To allow torture is to open the way to a very different kind of state - the torture state.

A New Political Compass for Today...

iPillory

Get your brickbats and rotten vegies out and take a shot at Lynne Tziolas. Today you can either denounce her as a barbarian at Andy Bolt's place, or join a more nuanced, conformitarian mob at catallaxy.

Echo & Narcissus Redux - Time to Get Serious (Part I)

Having extended or translated our central nervous system into the electromagnetic technology , it is but a further stage to transfer our consciousness to the computer world as well. Then, at least, we shall be able to program consciousness in such wise that it cannot be numbed nor distracted by the Narcissus illusions of the entertainment world that beset mankind when he encounters himself extended in his own gimmickry.
(Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan 1964)

Everyone more or less knows the story of Narcissus - he was that legendary Greek nancy boy who fell in love with his own reflection. The infatuation was inflicted on him by the gods as a punishment for his egotistical ways.

Echo was a nymph who had the misfortune to fall in love with Narcissus, after she too had been visited with a spot of divine punishment. Infuriated either by Echo's insistence on always having the last word, or by her habit of completing other's sentences for them (the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive) Hera removed her voice, with the exception that she could only speak the last words of someone who had spoken before her.

In The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), McLuhan declares:

Until now a culture has been a mechanical fate for societies, the automatic interiorization of their own technologies.

Implicit in that "until now" is the belief, or hope, that in 1962 things might be arranged differently - that it might be possible to resist, or forestall the automatic interiorisation of the new media technologies that created McLuhan's "global village". Though the phrase has acquired warm fuzzy tree-hugging hippy connotations thanks to chronic misuse and misunderstanding, McLuhan didn't necessarily endorse its emergence. He merely described it. It's unlikely that he would have written either of the two passages I quoted if he wholeheartedly approved of the global village or the way consciousness would develop if we remained numbed and distracted by the Narcissus illusions of the entertainment world that beset us when we encounter ourselves extended in our own gimmickry. That form of progress leads ultimately to tribalism.

Here's take it or leave it proposition from me: the village, as we think of it, occupies an uneasy middle position between tribal society and, let us say, the civitas. Athens, in the time of Socrates was a civitas; in Homeric times it was something else. At its peak, the nation state is a civitas; in decline it relapses into feudal thuggery or something worse. Along both the upward path, and the downward path, you'll find the village - neither fully tribal nor fully civil (assuming either of these two extremes are attainable).

Over the past couple of weeks, while I've been reading McLuhan, I've found myself a little detached from this interwebs thing, much less of a participant in the ideological fun and much more of an observer. What I've often seen, and occasionally illustrated, is the playing out of global village scandals, such as the recent furore over Josef Fritzl and his long term imprisonment and repeated rape of his daughter Elisabeth.

I'm sure that there are plenty of people outside the wholly wired world - where the Fritzl scandal is playing out - who have never heard of Josef and Elisabeth Fritzl, and are neither the better nor the worse for it. Their personal welfare and their stature within their communities is left unaffected by it. Inside the wholly wired world - in the dream world of them Telstra Big Pond homes - things are different. The story of Josef and Elisabeth Fritzl is news and news demands a response. In fact, it demands several responses.

The first response, dictated by the sensational nature of the story, is a public emotional one. The ambit of that response is limited by common decency which prescribes empathic sorrow and pity for Elisabeth Fritzl, outrage on her behalf and disgust at the monstrosity of Josef Fritzl's actions. As a global villager you may be as extroverted as you wish in expressing these emotions - indeed you must be as extroverted as you can since common decency is all that the village retains of extroverted, empathic tribal life. While your material welfare is clearly unaffected by the events in Austria, you might lose standing within your community (at home, at the office, in your personal sector of the WWW) if your emotional responses are found deficient - indecent.

It's worth noting, at this point, that you're not under any social obligation to respond to this story, a brief item that appeared on page 13 of The Age on Wednesday April 30th, next to half a page on the "Solid Austrian burgher [who] led a double life", including photos and graphics depiciting the inside of "the house of horror":

Jersey
Child Abuse Arrest

LONDON. Police have arrested a 68-year-old man as part of an investigation of allegations of abuse at a former children's home on the English Channel island of Jersey.

The man was answering questions about a number of rapes and indecent assaults, according to Jersey police investigating alleged abuse over decades at the Haut la Gaurenne site.

About 100 former residents have alleged physical and sexual abuse over three decades from the 1960s. (hat tip to Zeppo Bakunin)

Below the Fritzl article, and the "In Brief" column beside it - where the Jersey report appears - there's a half-page advertisement for the Commonwealth Bank, which declares "Our Personal Relationship Banking Specialists in Melbourne are here to help" - a reminder that the real business of The Age, like any newspaper, is attention broking; that what gives the Fritzl story value as news is, in part, it's capacity to draw your attention to a half-page advertisement promoting the services of a bank. Should more details of the Jersey case become available, it might be promoted from filler and supplant the Fritzl story in the role of attention grabber for paid advertising space. (The ad's placement, by the way, is by no means bizarre - the bottom of the page is the first place your eyes would turn if your repugnance for the Fritzl story turned you off reading the latest instalment.)

Part 2 later this week, or early next week. Right now I'm feeling a bit shagged out with this topic.

Wonderful, Cosy, Feel-Good, NATURAL Chemicals

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Louise Hall is a "Health Reporter". According to The Age, she's just Louise Hall. I guess "Lazy Hack from Sydney" doesn't look too good as a by-line when you're syndicating crap written by an interstate colleague. But let's not turn this into a Melbourne vs Sydney, Age vs SMH thing - The Age has one or two notably lazy hacks of its own, like this humourless humourist.

With the help of promotional material from Galen Naturopathic, Hall reports a surprising discovery:

FEELING blue? Mung beans, lobster, turkey, asparagus, sunflower seeds, cottage cheese, pineapple, tofu, spinach and bananas could lift your spirits.

It's easy to see how tucking into a lobster bisque or a turkey sandwich might make you feel better if you're feeling a bit glum - eating tasty food is a pleasant activity. The mung beans and tofu are a bit of an odd inclusion but there are people out there who like both - sometimes on the perverse basis that there's something virtuous about eating bland food to preserve the buff temple of your personal narcissism - so once again, the intrinsic pleasure of eating stuff you like might be the reason you'd experience a lift in spirits. According to Galen Naturopathic, via Hall, you'd be wrong to take such a naive view:

A diet high in tryptophan — an amino acid converted by the body into the feel-good chemical serotonin — can improve mood and wellbeing, a pediatrician and natural health expert, Caroline Longmore, said.

When and where did Longmore say this? Probably in a press release, such as this, where Longmore is described as "a French ex-paediatrician who has run Galen Naturopathic Centre in Richmond upon Thames for the past five years". Or in a spam e-mail to the world's Health Reporters.

The body cannot produce tryptophan so unless we get enough through diet, we may suffer a deficiency, leading to low serotonin levels, which is associated with mood disorders, anxiety, cravings and irritable bowel syndrome.

"Following a diet which contains foods rich in naturally occurring serotonin will improve your mood, leaving you energised and in a state of harmony and wellbeing," Dr Longmore said...

So Dr Longmore - a former paediatrician turned naturopath, proprietor of a naturopathy clinic named after the ancient Greek physician who is credited with holding back western medicine for more than a millenium - is spruiking a fad diet with Hall's eager assistance.

Right up to that last paragraph, neither Longmore nor Hall had put a foot too far wrong on the basic science too. Tryptophan is an essential amino acid which we have to get through diet - it's one of several such amino acids. And it is the biochemical precursor to the "feel-good chemical serotonin". It's just the spin that Longmore - through Hall - puts on those scientific facts that's a bit off.

The claim that "following a diet which contains foods rich in naturally occurring serotonin will improve your mood, leaving you energised and in a state of harmony and wellbeing," cranks the spin up by quite a few revs. Longmore's implied argument is that eating more tryptophan will lead to more serotonin synthesis and since we know that low levels of serotonin in certain parts of the human brain are associated with major (or clinical) depression it follows that eating lots of lobsters is going to be just as good for you as those nasty, big Pharma produced SSRIs. Not too long after the spin comes the outright bullshit:

In her e-book, The Serotonin Secret, Dr Longmore claims the best way to get optimum tryptophan levels is through a carefully devised eating plan.

She rates dozens of foods for their levels of tryptophan. Written with an Australian-trained medical scientist and naturopath, Katrin Hempel, the book has 50 recipes designed to solve serotonin imbalance without drugs. The concept works on the same principle as selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, such as the popular antidepressant Prozac.

No it bloody well doesn't. The concept works - to gull people into buying copies of Longmore and Hempel's book - by misrepresenting science. To explain this, I'll have to take a short detour into some basic concepts of modern pharmacology.

First up, pharmacology doesn't interest itself in the origin of drugs. Morphine is a narcotic analgesic derived from opium poppies. Pethidine is a synthetic narcotic analgesic introduced into use in 1939. The two drugs are classed as narcotic analgesics because they produce the same effects - narcosis and pain relief. They've also been found to work on the same receptors in the nervous system.

A basic assumption of pharmacology - one which I doubt has been discarded in the few decades since I studied the subject at university - is that drugs (however defined) achieve their effects by either imitating the action of chemicals that naturally occur in the body (such as hormones and neurotransmitters) or by interfering with natural responses - at the cellular level - to those naturally occuring chemicals. This occurs because the drug binds to one of those receptor things, and either triggers a response, or hangs around doing nothing, like those boofheads who always plant themselves in doorways at parties.

SSRIs - Serotonin Specific Reuptake Inhibitors - are like the aforesaid boofheads. They block molecular "doorways" that take serotonin back into nerve cells after its release. The result is that the serotonin hangs around the synapse (the microscopic gap between one brain cell and another), long enough to have its "feel good" effect. But let's remember that it's only in the brain, and very specific sites within the brain where we want this happening. SSRIs are used in the treatment of clinical depression because they're very good at hitting that site. And because they've been tested and shown to work in clinical trials.

Raising your tryptophan intake because a former paediatrician tells you that it will lead to an increase in "feel-good" serotonin is a very different proposition. There's no evidence that it will work and quite a few reasons to think that it won't.

Making serotonin isn't the only use your body has for tryptophan. As an essential amino acid, tryptophan is also used in protein synthesis. So there's no guarantee that the extra tryptophan will get converted into "feel-good" serotonin. Neither is there any guarantee that extra serotonin production will happen in the brain - serotonin plays other roles in the body. It's present in blood platelets - when platelets bind to wounds to stop bleading, serotonin is released into blood vessels and constricts them.

At most, it might work, and if your tryptophan enriched diet includes a lot of those lobsters, turkeys, pineapples and bananas, you'll definitely have reason to feel good. You might even feel clever about boosting your serotonin levels, but you'd be fooling yourself; harmlessly, if your problem is merely "the blues" and you need a bit of a pick-me-up, not so harmlessly if the problem is more severe.

Hall finishes with a bit of token balance (there's more token balance earlier in the piece):

Britain's Food and Mood Project recommends eating chicken, sardines, turkey, salmon, fresh tuna, nuts and seeds to boost serotonin levels. But Associate Professor Michael Baigent, clinical adviser to the BeyondBlue anti-depression organisation, said there was only low-level evidence to suggest tryptophans had a medical effect.

Statistics show that in any 12 months, almost 17% of adult Australians have a mental disorder, with anxiety, depression and bipolar the most common.

In February, a major international review of clinical trials of new generation drugs, including Prozac and Aropax, found they were no more effective than a placebo, or sugar tablet, for most people with depression. (My emphasis there, to ensure you didn't miss the token balance)

That last paragraph isn't included in the SMH's version of the article - it most likely refers to the paper by Irving Kirsch et al where the conclusions were consciously spun by the paper's author to suggest a conclusion that was in fact refuted by the study's own data and data analysis.

Hall's article is a gift to Galen Naturopathic and to Australia's cray fishers, turkey farmers and growers of pineapples and bananas. But those 17% of Adult Australians with "mental disorders" have nothing to thank her for. Especially those who'll be hearing from friends and family that they need tostop wasting their time with the pills and get a bit more crayfish in their diet.

Scenes from iCadia

Echo & Narcissus