Dawn

Dawn

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

ISIS: Click here for a brilliant article on this gang of criminals. Incidentally, I read the other day that the twisted ideology of these people is still a form of Islam, albeit heretical to all other Muslims. But they're not apostates, so can't be killed for that. And there's no such thing as excommunication in Islam. All of which tends to stand in the way of condemnation from the global "Muslim community". Not that there really is one. Click here for a (pre ISIS) amusing take on the subject of Muslim sects. First sentence: "With all due respect to everyone involved, you can't throw a rock into a crowd of Muslims without hitting someone whom all the other Muslims consider a heretic".

THE (OVER) REACTION TO EVENTS IN PARIS: At the end of this post, there's a sensible article, for which I have to offer an HT to my friend, Dwight. Or was it Peter? From the NYT, I believe.


SPANISH CUSTOMER SERVICE: As this hasn't much improved in the 15 years I've lived here - from a low base - I sometimes wonder how the Spanish manage to achieve any exports. And what the economy would look like but for the totally dependent - and cost-free - sun. Perhaps we'll find out if global warming drives this ever further north and turns Spain into an extension of the Sahara desert. 


HOMEOPATHY: If, like me, you don't believe in this - except as a placebo - click here for a wonderful refutation of it. If you do believe in this nonsense, you might want to take your homeopathic blood pressure pill before reading it. Not that it'll do you any good. 


MISCELLANEOUS: 
  • This morning I invented Thai porridge. Out of ordinary milk, I decided to use coconut milk. I expected something delicious but it wasn't. So I've disinvented it. And, still without milk, will use water later this morning.
  • Occasionally, Spanish can be shorter than the English equivalent. So a Nobel prize winner becomes 'un nobel'. 
  • I've no real idea what Linkedin does but I spent a pleasant 15 minutes last night sending connection requests to every one of my friends already on it. But not to those to whom I was asked to send an invitation to join. Didn't want to be a nuisance to anyone. 
FINALLY . . . A STING IN THE TAIL: I duly rang Telefónica yesterday and they confirmed I'd been renting the handset for 15 years at 7 euros a month. Do the maths. And they confirmed that I had to take it to the same shop as I'd already taken the modem. Or, rather, I didn't - as I really had 2 options. In either case, I'd be fined €10 euros for going beyond 15 days after I'd ended the contract[!]. But, if I took it back to the shop, they'd charge me €10 in cash and take and keep the handset for themselves. Whereas, if I did nothing and just kept it, Telefónica would simply deduct €10 from my bank account. Welcome to Spain.

THE PARIS KILLINGS

One has to pity—a little—politicians obliged to react publicly to events such as those on November 13 in Paris. They can’t pass over them in silence: but what can they say that does not sound banal, hollow, and obvious? They can only get it wrong, not right. That does not excuse inexactitude and evasion, however.

French president François Hollande called the attacks cowardly, but if there was one thing the attackers were not (alas, if only they had been), it was cowardly. They were evil, their ideas were deeply stupid, and they were brutal: but a man who knows that he is going to die in committing an act, no matter how atrocious, is not a coward. With the accuracy of a drone, the president honed in on the one vice that the attackers did not manifest.

This establishes that bravery is not by itself a virtue, that in order for it to be a virtue it has to be exercised in pursuit of a worthwhile goal. To quote an eminent countryman of the president, Pascal:Travaillons, donc, à bien penser: voilà le principe de la morale.. Let us labor, then, to think clearly: that is the principle of morality.

President Obama was not much better. He made reference in his statement to “the values we all share.” Either he was using the word “we” in some coded fashion, in spite of having just referred to the whole of humanity, or he failed to notice that the attacks were the direct consequence of the obvious fact that we—that is to say the whole of humanity—do not share the same values. If we shared the same values, politics would be reduced to arguments about administration.

Politicians are not the only ones, however, to utter worse than clichés (which have at least the merit of being true): the Irish pop star turned guru, Bono, said that the events on November 13 were an attack on music. Mr. Bono might as well have said that this was an attack on restaurants, or even on Cambodian cuisine, or for that matter on football. Apparently, in his view, if only the French government outlawed music, the terrorists would achieve their ends and would therefore desist from future attacks.

On the night of the events, I followed the coverage in the Guardian, the British liberal newspaper whose website is one of the most popular of its type in the world. When the acknowledged toll of the attacks was still “only” 40, the paper published an article saying, en passant, that the vast majority of Muslims abhorred these attacks. I do not exclude the possibility that this is so, but we do not know, and can probably never know, that it is so: for if Queen Elizabeth I had “no desire to make windows into men’s souls,” we have no ability to do so, certainly on this question. But the Guardian wanted it to be so, and therefore, to its own satisfaction, it was.

This is a kind of magical thinking that persists in a supremely scientific age, and is dangerous because completely ineffective.

If ever there were a time to keep Pascal’s words in mind, this is it.

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