Constructed categories

Hanne Blank, being interviewed in Salon about her book Straight, is talking about gender identity, but this discussion has a more general application:

[Interviewer] I’m quite attached to my identity as a gay man — and, to be honest, I would feel a little troubled having my category taken away from me.

See, that’s the thing, no one is going to take that away from you.  No one can take that away from you. The only thing they can take away from you is the illusion that this is not something that is constructed.  And that’s very, very different.  Just because something is constructed as a social category, doesn’t mean that it’s not enormously meaningful.  It doesn’t mean that we haven’t built a whole damn civilization on it. Doesn’t mean that we don’t live our daily lives on it, doesn’t mean that we don’t use it all the time every time we’re walking down the street.  This is real.  It’s stuff that has physical manifestations in the real world. But that does not mean that it is organic. 

[Interviewer] Or innate. 

Or inevitable. 

Festival time in Harbin

Some people have not got much winter this year, and some are even complaining about it.  But in Harbin, Manchuria, they've got the snow and ice they need for their annual festival.  Click on this pic to see these Chinese girls having fun, and go to the Big Picture to see lots more.

How one gained entree into the highest circles in 6th-century Europe

This year I returned to the early Middle Ages or late Antiquity to teach a fourth-year seminar on Gregory of Tours. Gregory was a sixth century bishop of what is now western France and who wrote a massive history of his times, the Histories, or more commonly the History of the Franks.  Gregory is a lot of fun to study because he is interested in lots of things and wrote with a great deal of personality (though how much of that personality is literary artefact is hard to say).


Gregory begins his history with this statement: "I wish first of all to explain my faith, so that whoever reads me may not doubt that I am a Catholic." This is followed by about two pages of a detailed creed or declaration of faith. Fair warning about his priorities, admittedly not very surprising from a bishop who is justifying his role as a teacher to his audience, which undoubtedly included his fellow bishops and would include in the future his successors in the church at Tours.  For some people, this declaration was an essential preamble to anything else Gregory might say.. Gregory was completely in sympathy with that point of view.


Yesterday, I was reading the letters of St. Radegund in preparation for a class discussion of this famous nun who lived at the same time Gregory did.    Radegund is a very interesting figure.  Born as a Thuringian princess, she was carted off to Gaul while still a child, after the Franks had destroyed most of her family. On reaching adulthood, she was married to King Lothar of the Franks, presumably to strengthen the Frankish claim to overlordship of Thuringia. Radegund and Lothar never got along very well, and eventually she insisted on becoming a nun and establishing a convent where she could live the ascetic life surrounded by other like minded women – and some women who were also high-ranking refugees from court life. Radegund became the foremost female religious figure in Frankish Gaul, but never completely lost her royal status.  One example of her working the system through her dual status was her acquisition of a piece or pieces of the True Cross from the Byzantine emperor. We can guess that if a random, distant nun had asked for such a fantastic gift, she would not have gotten it.  Her request would never have gotten to the Emperor.


We dod not have Radegund's request for a relic, we do have something that looks like a thank you letter that she set off to Emperor Justin (II) and Empress Sophia once she had it.  And a curious letter it is.  
Here's the beginning of her letter:


To the August Justin and Sophia 
The highest glory of the father, son, and nourishing spirit, 
one god to be adored in this trinity, 
majesty, triple person, simple substance, 
equal consort and coeval with itself, 
one force remaining the same, one power in three 
(which the father begetting , the spirit enables), 
indeed distinct in persons, joined in vigor, 
of one nature, equal in strength, light, throne, 
the trinity was always with him, ruling without time, 
lacking no use nor capable by seizing. 10 
Highest glory to you, creator of things and redeemer, 
who, just, gives Justin headship in the world. 
He claims, properly, the dominant fortress over kings, 
who pleases the heavenly king by serving. 
How deservedly he rules Rome and the Roman world 
who follows what the dogma says from the cathedra of Peter, 
what Paul sang far and wide, with one trumpet to thousands, 
to heathens and the senseless he poured out salt from his mouth, 
whose four-sided axle the wheel of his tongue circled, 
cold hearts are warm from the faith of his eloquence. 20 
Highest glory to you, creator of things and redeemer, 
who, just, gives Justin headship in the world. 
Strengthened, the disturbed faith of the church shines again 
and venerable law returns to its former place. 
Give back your vows to God, since the new purple holds whatever 
the council of Chalcedon established. 
Gaul sings this to your merits, Augustus, 
the Rhone, the Rhine, the Danube, the Elbe do. 
Beneath the western axle Galicia heard the deed, 
Biscayne brought it to the nearby Basques. 30 
The pious fable runs to the farthest people of the faith 
and the British land across the ocean is favorable. 
How well, lover, do you share the care with the lord! 
You make his causes yours, he makes yours his. 
Christ gives you the power, you give Christ the honor: 
he gives the summit, you give back the faith. 
There was nothing more on earth that he might give to be ruled, 
nor more that you could give back than nourishing faith is strong. 
Fathers sent into exile for the name of Christ 
then came back, with the diadem to you. 40 
Released from prison, residing in the former seat, 
hold you to be one general good. 
Curing so many sorrows of the confessors, 
you come as a healing to innumerable people. 


Presumably Radegund had in a previous communication established that she was the kind of person who was worthy of Imperial attention -- holy woman and influential Frankish queen.  But just in case Justin and  Sophia might have second thoughts, and be tempted to think that Radegund was only a barbarian they mistakenly had been overgenerous to, Radegund spends line after line of poetry buttering them up, showing that she is quite aware of current religious conflicts, is on the right side of them, and appreciates (weak word) Justin's role in establishing theological truth and restoring unjustly persecuted bishops to their sees.  The man is a universal hero and his wife is not far behind him.  

That's the way, or one way, that one established one's right to a place in the Big Time in sixth-century Christian Europe.  Radegund may have been a Thuringian or a Frank, she was determined to show that she was no hick. One wonders if the letter had the desired effect.


Image:  Radegund imagined by the illustrator of the Nuremberg Chronicle, 15th century.

Four Wordles (word clouds) based on my translation of Charny's Questions

Wordles or word clouds are graphic arrangements of words indicating by the size of each word how often it appears in a text.  How much can you read into that?  Well, at the least it may alert you to something you might otherwise overlook.

In all of these "Charny" and "asks" are among the largest terms.  That is because each of the 130 or so questions begins "Charny asks."

Jousting questions:

Proper size:
http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4699960/Charny%27s_Questions_on_Jousting

Tourney questions:

Proper size:

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4699970/Charny%27s_Questions_on_Tournaments

War questions:

Proper size:

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1287540/Charny%27s_Questions_on_War

All together:

Proper size:

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4699987/Charny%27s_Questions

Have fun!

Snow in Egypt

A YouTube video shows a significant amount of snow on the ground at Alexandria earlier this month:



But other videos brought up by the same search ("snow in Egypt") seem to show snow in Egypt in other recent years.

A Scandal in Belgravia

I just saw the first of this season's episodes of the BBC's Sherlock.  I think it continues to be an absolutely brilliant adaptation.   But then I really, really liked A Knight's Tale, and not just for the jousting.

Ian McKay speaks -- the annual Department of History Keynote Lecture, January 26

From Jamie Murton:

The History Department is very pleased to announce the visit to North Bay of one of the leading historians of Canada working today, Dr. Ian McKay of Queen’s University.  McKay’s recent book, Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People's Enlightenment in Canada won the 2008 John A. Macdonald prize from the Canadian Historical Association for best book of the year.  His article "The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History,” is remaking how historians understand the Canadian past.  He works on Canadian cultural history, working-class history, the history of Canadian socialism and the history of Nova Scotia.  

At Nipissing University McKay will deliver the History Department’s annual keynote lecture, “Warrior Nation: the Use and Abuse of History in Harper’s Canada,” on Thursday, Jan 26, at 7:30 pm in H106.  

As well, he will participate, along with our own Dr. Larry Patriquin, in a panel discussion “Unite the Left North Bay?  

A Community Conversation,” on Wednesday, Jan 25, at 8 pm at the WKP Kennedy Gallery, 150 Main St E, North Bay.

For more information e-mail Jamie Murton at jmurton@nipissingu.ca or Catherine Murton Stoehr at mstoehr@nipissingu.ca

After 35 years

It was about 35 years ago that I was introduced to the joys of chocolate croissants in Toronto.  I'm pretty sure they were sold in only a few places, like the P'tit Gourmet, a really neat delicatessen specializing in French food.

Finally, chocolate croissants have reached Bonfield, Ontario.  Not exactly a French-style croissant, more like a North American crescent roll.  But not bad.

And get this, city people.   It costs 75 CENTS.  The one cheap thing for sale on the entire planet.

Two pictures of Afghanistan, December 2011

From The Big Picture, two views of an undercapitalized society, a miller and a fuel scavenger.  I am heating with wood at the moment, but I have electric backup.  That picture reminds me of things I saw in India.

Click the pic for a better view.

It continues

Thanks to Arabist.net and AhramOnline.

Thoughts on revolution and politics from Egypt

Egyptians are in the middle of something very important, and so what they have to say is of particular interest.

Arabist.net has provided us with an English translation of an article by the liberal Egyptian academic Samer Soliman.  I include the following excerpt in hopes you will follow the link to the whole thing:

A critical stance in support of my colleagues in the Revolution

By Samer Soliman, al-Shurouk, 9 January 2012

The revolution’s one-year anniversary represents a chance for reassessment and self-criticism by all those who participated in it. From this standpoint, the criticism that I direct at the positions and ideas of some of my revolutionary colleagues is the criticism of a comrade and has no trace of superiority. Its aim is to improve the performance of reform and revolutionary currents and get past unnecessary divisions in order to achieve our shared goal: establishing a state based on freedom, social justice and human dignity. I have four criticisms for some of my colleagues.

First: Absolute hostility to parties and to organizing is a fatal mistake

Politics, by one definition, is the management and organization of shared and collective interests. You are responsible for managing the affairs of your own home. However, managing the affairs of the entire building is not your responsibility alone, but rather the responsibility of the union of landlords, tenants or the like. This is politics. Politics is nothing but a collective activity that aims to organize the affairs of the state and society. Consequently, whoever is hostile to organizing is unwittingly hostile to politics. If you refuse to organize yourself in a party or group, how can you engage in an activity that basically aims at organizing society and the state? If you accept being organized in small groups, but absolutely reject parties, then you are hostile to the politics that aims to run the state apparatus. As a result, you insist on marginalizing yourself on the pretext of keeping your “revolutionary purity” away from party maneuvering. Yes, politics does not depend on party organizations alone, but is also based on non-party organizations such as pressure groups. However, these pressure groups are not an alternative to parties. Environmental groups, for example, push through their demands to limit pollution by communicating with parties, and cooperating with them and offering them support to the extent that they adopt programs to protect the environment. Whoever decides to act through politics must be a member in an organization of some sort: a party that aims to reach power or participate in it; a pressure group that does not wield power directly but which exerts influence on it; a union that defends workers’ rights in a certain profession, etc. The important thing is that members of every type of organization cannot do without the other types, and that true change only comes through integration and forming alliances among different types of organization.

The article continues with sections on the following points:

Second: Revolution does not mean toppling the regime immediately, and revolution is not opposed to reformThird: The older generation is the wrong enemyFourth: Construction cannot wait for demolition to be complete, and the economy cannot wait for the revolution to be complete

It just breathes common sense.

Intellectual goodies on the Internet -- two sets of economics posts

Will McLean has a wide and serious interest in late medieval society, especially that of 14th and 15th century England.  Currently he is interested in how English noble households worked, and is investigating them through their preserved account books.  A number of people I know, and perhaps more readers whom I don't know, may find his explorations worth reading.  This looks like a good place to start; from there you might follow the "Economics" tag, backward and forward.

The very validity of the academic tradition(s) of economic thought is being debated, by economists most of all.  If at this point you are curious about what university students are actually being taught in introductory economics classes, then you might want to wander over to Brad DeLong's blog and follow the "Econ 1" postings starting, say, here.  Brad DeLong (who teaches at Berkeley) is a prominent controversialist and critic of much of what has happened in the United States in the last 10 years, so he is not a  neutral voice.  He has a lot to say on a lot of subjects, and if you follow him you will be exposed to a lot of material, including the arguments of people he disagrees with.  Some of this will be economic arguments that I find rather opaque, but others will be of wider relevance.

Image:  loafing -- and working -- around the old manse.

Catamarca province, Argentina

Just one of the amazing landscapes that the Dakar Rally, an extreme-conditions vehicle competition, went through.  This from the Big Picture, natch, and you should click on it to get a better look.

Europe?

Over at the New York Times blog site, Frank Jacobs has a long article on "Where is Europe?"

This nifty map is the least of it:

Bhaktapur, Nepal in the monsoon.

Thanks to Anuar Patjane, the Big Picture, and the National Geographic Society.

One estimate of the cost of the War with Iran

By Orrin Schwab via Gary Sick:

If there is near unanimity in the Congress to go to war with Iran I say lets go. Lets do it!  They are the duly elected representatives of the people of the United States and they have determined that war with Iran is in the best interests of the country.  We should initiate hostilities as soon as practicable.

Here are some parameters to consider for our war:

1. Iran is 1.6 million square kilometers and has approximately 80 million
    inhabitants (77-78 million plus).

2. That makes Iran four times the area of Iraq and three times the
    population of Iraq.

3. The Iraq War was completed very quickly, and very easily. But the
    occupation, i.e. the reduction of resistance lasted ten years and has
    produced a relatively weak state.

4.  In order to do things right this time, we need sufficient ground
    forces to secure a mountainous multiethnic country with more than two
    thousand years of national history. We may be welcomed as liberators
    but coalition forces ultimately met with armed resistance from
    numerous  groups many of whom practiced deadly suicide attacks.

5. We need a long term occupational force for Iran.  I think an effective
    occupation of 80 million people spread over 1.6 million square
    kilometers should require well over 1 million well trained troops for
    at least 5 years maybe 10 years if things go badly.

6. The only way we can provide this level of forces is through a return to
    the Draft. The Selective Service system needs to activated
    immediately.
    All military reserves needed to be recalled to active duty while we
    begin the process of training millions of young male and female
    draftees for service in Iran.  A five year occupation should require,
    ballpark, 5 million draftees.  Of course, we have the manpower.
    According to the CIA, the U.S. has 120 million males and females
    between the ages of 18 and 49 who are fit for military service.

7. The direct financial cost of the war should be a multiple of the Iraq
    War which was 800 billion from 2003 through 2011.  The cost of
    deploying troops to Afghanistan averages about one million dollars per
    troop.  If we plan on 1 million troops for five years that would mean
    5 trillion in direct costs financed by the U.S. Treasury through
    2016-2017 and then undetermined costs thereafter.

8. The economic benefits of this exercise in military Keynesian economics
    should be huge. Unemployment should disappear.  War related
    manufacturing should be a virtual renaissance for domestic industry.
    The financing of the war will significantly increase the public debt, anathema to     Republicans, but they are spoilsports. They reject military Keynesianism, which worked wonders for Japan and Germany in the 1930s and 1940s as well as the United States and the Soviet Union.

9. No whining about casualties. The U.S. could sustain hundreds of
    thousands or more total casualties, including deaths from combat,
    disabling wounds, and huge numbers of psychiatric losses related to
    combat and the effect of concussive injuries to the brain.

Source.

Canada has a warship sailing to the Middle East right now to fight terrorism, so this is us, too.

Endeavor over Ponte Vedra, Florida

Thanks to James Vernacotola, the Big Picture, and the National Geographic Society.  Click to see it larger.

Today's date on the Mayan calendar

More here.

From The Big Picture and the National Geographic Photo Contest, 2011

Kent Shiraishi captures the first snow at a nature spot in Hokkaido, Japan.  Don't forget to click to see a bigger version.  As usual, the bigger picture is much more impressive.

Michael Jackson is not dead

Not if Electric Guest has anything to say about it.

Louis Farrakhan and Ron Paul

An amazing column at the Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates.   Read the whole thing. These excerpts may tell you why you should:

As I often do on this blog, I'd like journey back to the Crack era--the late 80s and early 90s--when the general sense was that the black youth of America had lost their minds.... What we wanted was a great messenger who would talk to us, instead of talking to white people. You see, whatever our anger, we were American (though we would have said different) and believed in our talent to reinvent ourselves and compete with the world.

The need was real. And the man who best perceived that need--Louis Farrakhan--preached bigotry, and headed a church with a history of violence, and patriarchal and homophobic views. We knew this. Some of us even endorsed it. A few of us debated about it. But, ultimately we didn't care. Farrakhan--and his cadre of clean disciplined black men and modest, chaste black women--spoke to our deep, and inward, sense that we were committing a kind of slow suicide, that--as the rappers put it--we were self-destructing. 

Throughout the late 80s and early 90s, Farrakhan's beguiled young African-Americans. At the height of his powers, Farrakhan convened a national meeting of black men on the Mall. (Forgive my vagueness. The number is beside the point. It was a grip of dudes.) The expectation, among some media, was for violence. What they got instead was a love-in. I was there. I know how to describe the feeling of walking from my apartment at 14th and Euclid, down 16th street, and seeing black women, of all ages, come out on the street and cheer. I can't explain the historical and personal force of that. It defied everything they said we were, and, during the Crack Era, so much of what we come to believe.

I think about that moment and I get warm--and then I think about Farrakhan and I go cold. The limitations of the man who'd orchestrated one of the great moments of my life were evident as soon as he took the stage and offered a bizarre treatise on numerology. The limitations became even more apparent in the coming months, as Farrakhan used the prominence he'd gained to launch a world tour in which he was feted by Sani Abacha and the slave-traders of the Sudan.

During Farrakhan's heights in the 80s and 90s, national commenters generally looked on in horror. They simply could not understand how an obvious bigot could capture the imagination of so many people....what the pundits never got was that Farrakhan promised something more--improvement, minus the need to beg from white people. Farrakhan promised improvement through self-reliance--an old tradition stretching back to our very dawn. To our minds, the political leaders of black America had fled the field. 

I've thought a lot about Farrakhan, recently, watching Ron Paul's backers twist themselves in knots to defend what they have now euphemistically label as "baggage." I don't think it makes much sense to try to rebut the charges here. No minds will changed. 

Still let us remember that we are faced with a candidate who published racism under his name, defended that publication when it was convenient, and blamed it on ghost-writers when it wasn't, whose is at home with Lost-Causers, and whose take on the Civil Rights Act is at home with segregationists. Ostensibly this is all coincidence, or if it isn't, it should be excused because Ron Paul is a lone voice speaking on the important issues that plague our nation.

I have heard this reasoning before. 

... as sure as the followers of Farrakhan deserved more than UFOs, anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories, those of us who oppose the drug-war, who oppose the Patriot Act deserve better than Ron Paul 

It is not enough to simply proffer Paul as a protest candidate.One must fully imagine the import of a Paul presidency.How, precisely, would Paul end the drug war? What, exactly, would he do about the Middle East? How, specifically,would the world look for women under a Ron Paul presidency? 

And then the dispatches must be honestly grappled with: It must be argued that a man who could not manage a newsletter, should be promoted to managing a nuclear arsenal. Failing that, it must be asserted that a man who once claimed that black people were knowingly injecting white people with HIV, who fund-raised by predicting a race-war, who handsomely profited from it all, should lead the free world. If that line falls too, we are forced to confess that  Ron Paul regularly summoned up the specters of racism for his own politically gain, and thus stands convicted of moral cowardice.

Let us stipulate that all politicians compromise. But the mayhem and death which attended the talents of Thomas Watson and George Wallace, renders their design into a school of sorcery all its own. In that light, it is fair to ask that if Ron Paul was willing to sacrifice black people to garner the support of the bigoted mob, who, and what, else might he sacrifice? 

...

The fervency for Ron Paul is rooted in the long-held hope of a reedemer, of one who will rise up and cut through the dishonest pablum of horse-races and sloganeering and speak to the people. It is a species of saviorism which hopes to deliver a prophet upon the people, who will be better than the people themselves. 

But every man is a prophet, until he faces a Congress.

Le Saint Suaire et la collégiale de Lirey (Aube) by Alain Hourseau

A forthcoming book on Charny, his family and the Shroud of Turin. If your French is weak, Google Translate works pretty well on this description.

http://alain.hourseau.free.fr/livre-7.html

More from Phil Paine on intelligent protest

More from Phil on the limitations of current forms of activism.  An excerpt:

Protests within a func­tion­ing democ­racy are fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent from  [the fall of the Soviet Union, the Arab Spring]. The pro­tes­tors face no sig­nif­i­cant dan­ger. This is not to say that we should turn a blind eye to cops vio­lat­ing civil rights, strong-arming peace­ful demon­stra­tors, or the kind of trea­so­nous fraud per­pe­trated by the author­i­ties that occurred dur­ing the G-20 sum­mit in Toronto. All those respon­si­ble for these crimes against my coun­try should be pun­ished severely for them, though I know that they never will be. But there is a world of dif­fer­ence between a brief stay in a local lock-up and a court appear­ance, and fac­ing a fir­ing squad or ten years dig­ging rocks with your bare hands in a mine. Pro­test­ers in Canada do not face dan­ger great enough to clas­sify their actions as exam­ples of great courage. I’m not imply­ing that they shouldn’t engage in protest. Protest is urgently needed. But it is not help­ful or hon­est to mis­rep­re­sent its nature. 

What moti­vates real protest in a democ­racy is not phys­i­cal courage, but civic virtue....This is why I do not feel any glad­ness when pro­fes­sional pseudo-revolutionaries, con­ven­tional ide­o­log­i­cal “anar­chists” or “rad­i­cals” par­tic­i­pate in such protests, or attempt to take them over. They are there pre­cisely to val­i­date the “good guy” image of the author­i­ties, and to tor­pedo the moral legit­i­macy of the protest. They per­form exactly the same debas­ing func­tion that Islamic Fun­da­men­tal­ist groups have done for the Arab Spring. 

Within a demo­c­ra­tic polity, one finds protests occur­ring all the time, pre­cisely because a free soci­ety should be open to them, and should encour­age them. But such protests dif­fer greatly in their qual­ity. Some protests tell us lit­tle more than that some­body is angry about some­thing. Since another, equally large or influ­en­tial group may be equally angry about an oppo­site state of affairs, this sel­dom has any influ­ence on either opin­ion or pol­icy. More sophis­ti­cated protest aims at influ­enc­ing pub­lic opin­ion, by 1) mak­ing clear what is wrong about some pub­lic pol­icy; 2) putting for­ward a dif­fer­ent, pre­sum­ably bet­ter pol­icy; and 3) con­vinc­ing a broad pub­lic of the wis­dom of act­ing to this end. In a democ­racy, effec­tive protest should merely be the ini­tial step in a process cul­mi­nat­ing in real polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion and action. This action must, to be gen­uinely effec­tive, trans­late into peo­ple mark­ing x’s on bal­lots in the end. If it is merely a rit­ual, an amuse­ment, or a way of blow­ing off steam, it is not progressive.

Read the rest. 

Pictures of Iraq from the Big Picture

Another excellent photo collection from the Boston.com site.

Image:  Ihab Najam, an unemployed security guard pessimistic about the future.

Shocker

Shock 1:  The Globe and  Mail leads off the new year (on its mobile site at least) with an op-ed on There's no way out but a new politics of fairness.
Shock 2:  It's written by Michael Ignatieff.
Shock 3:  It makes sense.

Another good Globe piece from the estimable John Allemang on the revolutions ?to come?

Reflections on 2011

Brian Ulrich reflects and analyzes developments in the Arab countries over at Brian's Coffeehouse.  This particularly caught my attention:

One framework we have seen the past year is that "the nation," meaning the people, is rising up against internal oppressors so as to establish a new government on its own behalf. One question now is how the "nations" will be defined, or what identities will be on people's minds as they act politically. In Iraq, probably moreso than under Saddam Hussein, loyalty to a community of Sunnis, Shi'ites, or Kurds competes with that to Iraq as a whole. Those "Arab Spring" countries with religious differences will face the question of deciding if those differences preclude national unity. This issue might be most explosive in Syria, but for the moment, it is also a subject for discussion in Egypt, where salafis see Christians not as equal citizens, but as a subject population under Muslim rule.

More good stuff here.

More from Moscow

From msnbc.com:

For many protesters, the animosity goes way beyond Putin the candidate. Vasily's father, Fyodor, now 50, says he watched in shock as the Soviet Union fell 20 years ago, then in horror as Russia passed, rudderless, through a decade of economic collapse and war. And then came Putin. Stability. Prosperity. "All over the country there was a scream of joy when we got rid of this alcoholic, Yeltsin. We finally saw a man who was sane, who was physically fit, and he wasn't reading from his notes," recalled the older Gnuchev.

His son Vasily says he was too young to remember the bad old days of democratic Russia. But he prospered under Putin, and always felt free. And that's the real problem. The Putin regime's reportedly widespread electoral fraud pulled the rug from under a whole generation who believed in their leader, who believed in Putinism. "Now we see that everything is a lie," Vasily explained. "The Kremlin just stole our votes  -- it's just incompatible with the picture of the world we grew up in."

It's that humiliation -- indeed, violation -- mixed with anger that seems to drive many Russian, middle-class protesters into the streets -- even when the elements are conspiring against them -- and will keep the pressure on Putin, with promises of more protests to come. But what if this "people power" movement really blossoms, only to be thwarted yet again, not in a free and fair election come March, but by another brazen, Putin-led ploy to retain power?

As in Cairo, so in Moscow

From today's Globe and Mail, a report of an activist named Navalny speaking at a huge anti-Putin rally:

“We have enough people here to take the Kremlin,” he shouted to the crowd. “But we are peaceful people and we won't do that — yet. But if these crooks and thieves keep cheating us, we will take what is ours.”

Crushing the revolution--but at what price?

From Arabist.net, an essay by an Egyptian novelist, who argues that the Army's efforts to preserve its position in the Egyptian state is destroying the Egyptian state.

Goodbye to Military Rule

By Ezzedine Choukri-Fishere, al-Tahrir, 20 December 2011

...

What the Military Council has not realized is that the explosion in January was the outcome of a blockage in the regime’s arteries, and not just Mubarak’s. What the Military Council has not understood is that the state’s solid structure – the security regime – is the real problem, and not Mubarak.

If the Military Council realized this, they would strive to change the political equation for society to enter the state as a partner. If they realized this, they would have reached an understanding with civilians in February over a joint form of rule that would close the curtain on the past and protect the independence of the military establishment in the future. It seems, however, that they haven’t realized this, they didn’t believe it when they were told, and they didn’t listen.

Instead of this, they listen to the ones staging a coup against the revolution, who portrayed to them that violence, terrorizing the people, and control of the state media would put an end to mass support for the revolution and to the revolutionary forces themselves, one after the other.

What is the result of this? The result is that these coup-makers are tearing down with their own hands the structure they’re trying to protect. They’re sullying the image of the army in the eyes of society and are placing it in the same category as the Interior Ministry cronies involved in murder, torture and abuse. The result is that these coup-makers are provoking the people’s ire and resentment against the army. In the past, these feelings of outrage, resentment, and fear would lead to submissiveness and surrender. Now, however, they will motivate society to gain control of the army, open up its files, hold it accountable, and to do other things the coup-makers were trying to prevent.

Coup-makers go home. You’re bringing down the structure on top of all of our heads.

I'd say this same dynamic applies to more than just Egypt.

Ron Paul, dishonest segregationist creep

When you are trying to get into a meditative state and all you can think of is how contemptible Ron Paul is, it is time to LET IT OUT!

Ron Paul seems to be this generation's Eugene McCarthy, a politician brave enough to oppose American imperialism and denounce its destructive effects, who has attracted a deal of support from young people, and who otherwise has a rather eccentric record. The American political system has niches for politicians with unusual views, and sometimes they rise out of obscurity and have a real effect.

Ron Paul is giving libertarianism (so called) a much higher profile than it has ever had. I say so-called libertarianism because Paul's brand seems to be focused entirely on assuring, through decentralization of political power, that those who have won wealth and privilege by fair means or foul, get to keep their goodies. Is that libertarianism? If so you can keep it.

Actually, there are more objectionable parts of Ron Paul's program. For instance, "liberty" doesn't reach as far as women controlling their own bodies. It seems to me that there is a religious agenda lurking behind the libertarian facade. Liberty doesn't include the First Amendment ("no establishment of religion")?

But the one that gets me where I live is Paul's opposition to the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. It mightily offends me to hear the dishonest segregationist arguments of my youth recycled in the 2010s.

Dishonest? Paul and his son and his other supporters present their opposition to racial equality in the public sphere as a simple matter of preserving freedom of association. In fact segregation in the south was a prime example of the historic winners using state power, economic domination and terror to secure the continuation of privilege won by force of arms. And calling the result liberty. Or "states' rights."

Segregation was not a matter of individual choice, it was a policy designed and enforced by the enfranchised at the expense of the disenfranchised. To talk about segregation without acknowledging that is deeply dishonest. When (apparently) young people talk about this issue in abstract terms, I think they may have been suckered. But I don't give Ron Paul the benefit of that doubt.

Tournaments on TV -- and YouTube

Here's a 2008 BBC Timewatch episode on William Marshal and the 12th century melee tournament. It is good, they talked to the right experts and took the cameras to Interesting and relevant locations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0LamXQ39EQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Matthew Gabriele's book reviewed in The Medieval Review

Gabriele, Matthew. An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne,
the Franks, and Jerusalem before the First Crusade. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011. Pp. xii,  202. $90.00. ISBN: 9780199591442.

 Reviewed by Thomas F. X. Noble
     University of Notre Dame
     tnoble@nd.edu


"Charlemania" has been a growing industry in recent years and Matthew
Gabriele now takes a significant place on the shop floor.  His brief
and readable book demonstrates how, especially in the eleventh
century, a Frankish "Golden Age" was constructed, and with what
consequences.  There is a line in Flannery O'Connor about the danger
of parking your buggy on the track when the Dixie Special is coming
down the line.  Gabriele is the buggy and Anne Latowsky's forthcoming
book is the Dixie Special.  Nevertheless, I do not think the buggy was
flattened by the train.  I really like this book and learned a lot
from it.  Occasionally its prose is over the top and, in many
instances, it is more colloquial than some traditionalists find
congenial.  The argument and research are critical, thorough, and
sound.

Gabriele's method is basically aggregative.  He continually puts
layers of evidence on top of each other until they add up to a
cohesive, coherent picture.  In the first chapter "The Birth of a
Frankish Golden Age" gives away the story and the remaining chapters
flesh it out.  Gabriele shows, following other good scholars, that in
the ninth and tenth centuries, Charlemagne was not always visible and
was often contentious when he did emerge.  Yet a deep tradition was
implanted.  Then he, and with him his age, became a figure of prime
interest, a holy figure, and the ruler of an empire that stretched
from Iceland to Jerusalem.  Demonstrating these points alone would
have been original and important but what sets this book apart is its
careful explanation of how and why this happened and why it matters.
Specialists in vernacular literature know perfectly well that
Charlemagne exploded in the twelfth century.  Robert Folz famously
showed that the liturgical Charlemagne took flight in the same period,
only to soar ever higher in later times.  Anne Latowsky, who
ironically teaches in a French department, is going to reveal the
continuing power of the Latin tradition.  What we have lacked is the
essential background.

Interest in Charlemagne appears in various settings.  For example, 68
of 97 forgeries of Charlemagne's charters come from religious houses
that sought to claim him as their founder.  No other ruler even comes
close as a "source" of legitimacy.  But historical writers added to
the dossier, beginning with Benedict of St. Andrea who, around 970,
was the first to attribute to Charlemagne a journey to Jerusalem.
Materials dating from the late eleventh century and stemming from
Charroux also have this fictitious journey.  Around 1080 the
Descriptio Qualiter also has the story and adds a visit to
Constantinople where Charlemagne received relics and acknowledgment.
Crusade narratives sometimes said that armies followed Charlemagne's
path to the East.  These sources seem to have drawn on a common fund
of tradition;  they are not demonstrably dependent on one another.
Little by little Charlemagne was portrayed as the preeminent earthly
power.  Why?

Drawing on late antique and biblical resources, the Carolingians had
defined their realm as a Davidic kingdom based on Old Testament models
with Aachen as a new Jerusalem (it was a new Rome too, but that is not
Gabriele's theme).  In the post-Carolingian world, Jerusalem assumed
growing prominence.  More churches emulated Jerusalem's churches,
especially the Anastasis.  The liturgy increasingly drew on themes
pertaining to Jerusalem.  Relics of the passion proliferated.  This
constant and rising emphasis on an imaginary Jerusalem made the
tangible city more important, more desirable.  The eleventh century
witnessed a dramatic increase in pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  In 1026
Richard of St.-Vannes led perhaps 700 people to the East and then both
the number and size of pilgrimages expanded sharply.  As many as
12,000 people left Germany for the Holy Land in 1064-65.

The Carolingians uncoupled empire from Rome which opened up real and
imagined possibilities for assigning Charlemagne rule over all kinds
of lands and peoples.  The imaginary and expanded Carolingian Empire
came to be seen as a kind of imperial Christendom with roots in an
historic past but relevance in a fraught present.  Prophetic texts
said that at the end of time a Frankish king would lay down his
scepter on the Mount of Olives and thereby bring Roman and Christian
imperium to an end.  So an "empire of memory" lived on and one of its
key dimensions was that a Frankish ruler would defend Christendom from
its enemies right to the end.  In complex ways Antichrist, pilgrimage,
Charlemagne, and a Christomimetic emperor entered a coherent
narrative: "Charlemagne's militant, Frankish, Christian empire
prefigured the Last Emperor's;  and in the eleventh century, past and
future began to converge" (128).

Talking about Charlemagne was, thus, a way of unlocking a glorious
past that mattered in new ways in the present, particularly as that
past was seen as a militant one.  Gabriele has much to say about the
coalescence of a European identity built on a constantly shifting
Frankish one.  He demonstrates the importance for historians to be
attentive to many kinds of sources.  To be sure, he is alert to the
potential relevance of his findings for the First CrusaSde.  But he is
wise enough not to claim that he has explained that phenomenon.  Urban
II, Gabriele notes, never mentioned Charlemagne.  But Urban's words
were sounded, and resonated, in a world with a thick web of
associations which Gabriele disentangles beautifully.

In addition to his, let us say, empirical findings, Gabriele has
another agenda that will give the attentive reader a lot to think
about.  He quotes (66) Keith Michael Baker--a distinguished historian
of modern France--who said that "[h]istory is memory contested;
memory is history controlled and fixed."  I might have wished that
Gabriele's approach to this fascinating, original, and important
exposition of the theme was a little less allusive, or implicit, but I
think he is absolutely correct to place emphasis on how, with specific
reference to Charlemagne, history and memory were manipulated,
adjusted, intertwined, and differentiated.

Here is a suggestion: take Gabriele's book, Amy Remensnyder's
Remembering Kings Past (1995), Jay Rubenstein's Armies of
God (2011), and Anne Latowsky's forthcoming (2012) book and teach
a terrific seminar.

The History of White People, by Nell Irvin Painter

I am in the middle of this very interesting book. You might expect that the book would have a lot to say about the history of dividing black from white. But there is much more about American theorizing about the differences between the various "European" races, and about which were superior or inferior. I was not completely unaware of the disapprobation of "native" (white) Americans for poor, Catholic Irish immigrants (among them some of my ancestors), but I was taken aback by the amount of energy during the 19th century into proving that the "Celtic" race was at the bottom of the stack, and a menace.

And there's this note on page 107:

Rhode Island delayed ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution until 1870, because legislators feared that it might enfranchise members of the Celtic race. Black men had been able to vote there since 1840.

6th century names that start with G

Gallomagnus, Galswinth, Garachar, Gararic, Garivald, Germanus, Godigisel, Godomar, Gogo, Goiswinth, Grindio, Grippo, Gundegisel, Gunthar.

Not to mention Gregory.

In other letters, let's not forget Chramn, Chundo, and Chuppa.

Muhlberger covers the war in Iraq, 2006-2011

The war in Iraq is over, at least the American part.  Who knows what turmoil, even civil wars may follow?  But almost all the American forces are gone.

This is practically a non-story in the American and international media. [Or so I thought.  See the first comment below.] Therefore I am posting a link to blog posts labelled "Iraq," which gives you access to the corpus of the renown foreign correspondent, Steve Muhlberger.

I am quite aware that the war began in 2003; that was before I started to blog. I freely admit that the closest I got to Iraq was when I flew over Turkey and Iran on my way to New Delhi in 2005.  Some of the posts with Iraq have nothing to do with the just-past war.  The very best stuff was from the Iraqi staff of Inside Iraq.  But I thought somebody should reflect back on the war, and since I am the person I have the most influence over, I am doing it myself.

Apologies for the inevitable broken links.  I am particularly sorry that so many pictures have disappeared.

My brief summing up:  this is what you got instead of Mars.  Mars, in fact, would have been cheaper.

A delicious passage from Gregory of Tours -- or rather translator Lewis Thorpe

Here's the Latin from Histories (or The History of the Franks) 7.2:

 Quibus discedentibus, coniuncti Dunenses cum reliquis Carnotenis, de vestigio subsecuntur, simile sorte eos adficientes, qua ipsi adfecti fuerant, nihil in domibus vel extra domus vel de domibus relinquentes. 

Thorpe's English:

[Raiders from Chateaudun wreaking reprisals on attackers from Blois and Orleans] meted out to them the same treatment which they themselves had received:  they left nothing inside the houses and nothing outside the houses, and they knocked the houses down.

With apologies to the long-ago victims of this violent episode, that's pretty amazing.


Image: the same action, same country, somewhat later.

The literary art of writing final examinations

On Monday I gave a final exam in my Crusade and Jihad course.   It required the students to write two short essays, which I had told the students in advance.

Chatting  with the students before the exam began, I was apprised of a curious fact:  a prof in another department, a prof also fond of requiring essay questions on finals, expected those essays to have titles and complained bitterly when they were not provided.  I was flabbergasted.  I had never had a student title a final exam essay.   Though I did of course get several from the students in this week's exam.

Question:  If you are a prof, do you expect or get titles on exam essays?  If you have written essays on exams, have you felt inspired to put titles on them?

Do math answers ever get titles, I wonder...

Image:  Sweating over the perfect title while studying for the big exam...

What is it about Toronto, anyway?

Or Ontario? Or Canada?

Phil  Paine recently wrote an essay on the theme, "Nobody [today] is likely to laud Toronto as the exemplar of anything."

 I bumped into a business traveller, recently, from the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh.  After discussing Andhra, he asked me, perplexed, why the urban infrastructure in Toronto was so backward.  I could only be embarrassed.  How could I tell him that there were no Hubbards, Harrises, or Hastingses around, and if there were, they would never be permitted to do anything. 

 He concludes by pointing directly at Toronto's mayor.  And he's quite right to do so.  Except...

He actually won the election (though by making assertions and promises that he must have known were untrue).  No one claims that the vote was rigged.  Nor is he the first of his kind.

This short-circuits the obvious question, which is where do the creepy leaders we all too  often get stuck with come from? and replaces it with the question, where do the people who elect them come from?  Canada has  many virtues, some large, some small, but it also has within its collective soul a big lump of small-minded, uncharitable hatefulness.  Don't believe in a collective Canadian soul?  You may be right.  Then where do all the people come from who do not value the Canadian virtues that I so admire?  The people who, for a small instance,  use the comment section of Globe and Mail to unendingly complain that Pierre Trudeau wrecked the country?  I am not an admirer of Trudeau, actually, but this is ludicrous.  The whole nearly 40 years I've lived in this country, it's been wrecked?  What are the values held by such people?  What process produces them?

Anyway, Phil's essay reminds us that we can do better, and have.  Take a look.

Image:  No one would build this today.

A great site for historical pictures of Toronto

Here's the link, and a couple of samples.  Thanks to Andrew.

Yonge Street in the 70s:

Chorley Park, an official residence of the Lieutenant Governor, 1910s:

Iceland's president explains -- democracy was on the line

 
In the financial crisis of 2008-, Iceland refused to saddle its citizenry with huge debts incurred by private banks, despite tremendous pressure from European governments and institutions.  Today the president of Iceland described the danger to democracy at that time on CBC Radio's Sunday Edition.

Have a listen and learn:

• How 15 demonstrators stood between police protecting the PM's office and rock-throwing protesters, preventing who knows what.
• How when all of Iceland's allies turned their backs on Iceland, or made terrible threats against it, only China (!) was willing to discuss aid and support
• How "Gordon Brown [UK PM] will be remembered in Iceland when he has been forgotten in Britain."

You will have to listen to, or skip over, some other material at the beginning of  the segment.

Image:  One of Iceland's other minor problems during the same period.

It's not cannon law, people

It's more like this...

Best cover on an early medieval book that I can recall...

...goes to this beauty:

As someone who studies formal combats, I should probably have a look at a book called Morality and Masculinity in the Carolingian Empire. Don't you think?

Update:  Another candidate in the same category:

End of term anxiety? and historical movies

Today was the last class meeting this term for my course on the History of Islamic Civilization.  It was the due date for a term paper, too.  So many students had asked for one or two day extensions that I rather expected a very low attendance and very few papers handed in.  (I actually don't mind giving extensions, not when I've heard credible reports from numerous students that they are swamped at end of term.)

Imagine my surprise when the vast majority showed up with essays in hand!  Was it just end of term anxiety that made them think they needed those extensions?

The class did me the courtesy of watching one of my favorite movies, The Man Who Would Be King (1975), which I used in place of a lecture on "the West's advantage," i.e. what factors led to European dominance of the globe by the 19th century.  The movie doesn't really have much profound to say about that subject, but it has its virtues, besides being fun.  First, it portrays the confidence (arrogance?) that Westerners eventually enjoyed, and implies the lack of confidence that might inflict the people on the other side of the confrontation.  Second, after lots of discussion of the rise and fall of Middle Eastern and Central Asian empires in the course of the term, the class got to see a dramatic, schematic depiction of  the rise of one tiny empire.

I have a short list of movies in my head which I think of as "history as it really works" or "what you won't learn from your classes or textbooks."  These are not necessarily realistic historical movies -- prominent on the list is The Life of Brian -- but they do cut through the crap, or at least provide an opening for a laugh of recognition of some truth or other.  The Man Who Would Be King could easily encourage  more mythological thinking as anything else.  It's a movie about Freemasonry, for goodness sake.  But for its tracing of the rise and fall of "Uta the Terrible," and for the figure of Billy Fish, it makes my list of movies that have something to say about history.

Nestar Russell speaks on the Milgram experiments and the Holocaust, Dec. 9, 2 pm

Mixed feelings about this

Comments welcome.

My characterization of Pope Innocent III

He was determined to rally Christendom to discipline the whole disobedient world.

Hard times in Attawapiskat and the government blame game

In some peculiar way, I think of Attawapiskat,  a First Nations reserve, as a neighboring community, even though it is a fly in community way up on James Bay, and I can drive to Toronto or Ottawa  easily on reasonably good roads.  Why? Because we share the same regional CBC radio service, and for 20 years I have been hearing weather forecasts for Attawapiskat.

Currently, a lot of people are hearing about Attawapiskat and it is all bad news. People are living in shacks and tents – this is up at James Bay mind you– and the sewage situation is in a state of collapse. The band government has had to work very hard to attract the attention of senior levels of government and the general public, and now that they have, they are being blamed for bad management and wasting the money that the government gives them.

When I said the government "gives" them money, you have to remember that what the First Nations "give" in return is – Canada.  People are always saying that we non-natives "give" money to natives, but you seldom hear people talking about the money senior levels of government "give" to Toronto or the Township of Bonfield, even though those "gifts" are a very significant part of the budget of both municipalities.

Our Prime Minister wants us to believe that this is all to be blamed on native mismanagement. If you want a better understanding of the roots of the problem I recommend this blog entry.  Or you could just look at the band documents. Apparently the Prime Minister has not bothered yet.

Quoting well--another useful guide

From the same website that tried to save you from glaring usage errors, some guidance on the use of quotations.