that old anglo-saxon instinct for fair play ...

THIS is the first flat-out stupid review of the Elkins and Anderson books. He sets the scene with a loving description of the mobile gallows, tries to spread the muck around evenly, trivialises the seriousness of the charges and then says some unpleasant things about Elkins' style. Best then closes with an appeal to incredulity, and not to his, but that of the colonial professional classes!
I've just got my copy of the Anderson book and I have to say it's just as good as promised. Gulag (the Elkins one) will be here soon.
The L.A. Times Review is here. Meisler is sympathetic and well-informed. These two paras should serve:

In "Histories of the Hanged," Anderson tells the full story of the rise of Mau Mau and the brutal British suppression that followed. He insists that "no one in authority" — from the prime minister in London to the district officers in Kenya — "could claim that they didn't know" about the British abuses, including torture and wanton killing of detainees. "Their reaction," he writes, " … was to deflect and deny, disparaging the accusers or making light of the accusations." Anderson's narrative — bolstered by realistic descriptions of life in Kenya and informed analysis of the causes of the Mau Mau insurrection — is ample, judicious and elegant.

Elkins' "Imperial Reckoning" complements Anderson's book. Although she includes an analysis of the causes and politics of the insurgency, she is more concerned with documenting the full extent of the British brutality. Writing with white heat, she details the unsavory story of summary executions, rapes, sodomy with bottles, castration, flogging with chains and rhino whips, attacks by dogs, humiliation by nakedness and a host of torture techniques including electric shock, near drowning and sleep deprivation. The detail is sometimes numbing but always vital. Her thorough documentation is necessary to prove her case that the British, while suppressing the Mau Mau, were guilty of "creating one of the most restrictive police states in the history of the empire and deploying unspeakable terror and violence."

One man he resist

SAINT of the day is Pope St. Fabian, , martyred c.250.

MAX HASTINGS' joint review of Caroline Elkins' and David Anderson's books is a festival of sophistries. Admire in particular the suggestio falsi accomplished by referring to Kenyatta's alleged views on female circumcision.

MENTALACROBATICS is back, and he has tales to tell. Here.

MLK day, so here's the Letter from Birmingham Jail in pdf. (Some of) the juicy bits:

... You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department...
It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrations. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends...

sunday randoms

SAINT of the day is Honoratus, 350 - 429. Archbishop of Arles and founder of Lerins Abbey in 400.

MAUMAU, I've mentioned the new Elkins book, which is out on the 26th. David Anderson's Histories of the Hanged is out at roughly the same time. There's a joint review in today's Observer, by Peter Preston:

'In the midst of the war, draconian anti-terrorist laws were introduced, suspending the human rights of subjects, imposing collective punishments, facilitating detention without trial, permitting the seizure of property of convicts and vastly extending the death penalty to a wide range of offences... the Kikuyu districts of Kenya became a police state in the very fullest sense of that term.'

EUTHANASIA, towards which the C of E desires to 'signal a new approach.' According to Canon Professor Robin Gill, an adviser to Rowan Williams:

'There is a very strong compassionate case for voluntary euthanasia,' Gill told The Observer . 'In certain cases, such as that which involved Diane Pretty [the woman who was terminally ill with motor neurone disease and who campaigned for the right to be helped to die], there is an overwhelming case for it.'

PRINCE HARRY; selections from various editorials here. Clearly the guy isn't terribly bright. But, in mitigation, he's young, it was in private and charity demands we assume non-fascist motives. Still, an apology in person would, I'm sure, be well-received.

Der Spiegel's online English site here has an entertaining take... [Via Abiola Lapite]


SCOUSERS get beat, again. Keane was absolutely immense, it's been some while since he ran a game so well.


VISIT the Gay-O-Meter. I'm on 26% ...

Ch-changes

SAINT of the day is Hilary of Poitiers, bishop and doctor of the Church.

YES, I noticed the template change too. New Year and all that. What do you think?

BERENIKE has been joined by Boeciana and Aelianus at exlaodicea. She's always been sharp and funny, and the new additions will keep up the standard.

GORDON Brown's tour diary is here!!

WATERSTONE'S sacks blogging employee. Joe Gordon of the Wollamaloo Gazette was sacked, ostensibly for 'bringing the company into disrepute'. Crooked Timber has a very full set of comments. I admit to only a passing acquaintance with the facts, but it looks like a simple freedom of speech issue. I won't be going into a Waterstone's any time soon.

POO flavoured chocolate or chocolate-flavoured poo? A deep philosophical justification of the preference for chocolate-flavoured poo over poo-flavoured chocolate; or the price of being an essentialist. Here.

Sudan

WOULD it be awfully cynical to hope that Kenyan business will benefit now that the Sudan treaty has been signed?

NAUSEATINGLY, Gen. Sumbeiywo is the hero of the hour...

DAVID CHALMERS, probably the most important philosopher of mind now writing, has a new blog here.

BONO admits that the 'City of Blinding Lights' is New York.
Bad things first - some of the lyrics are just shocking - surely 'Freedom has a scent/ Like the top of a new born baby’s head' is the worst thing Bono's ever written. As usual, there is some truly horrible over- emoting, especially on Vertigo. Some of the riffs are recycled U2 standards, or sound like it. And the attempted grandness of the whole thing can be off-putting in itself, while magnifying the ridiculousness when things go wrong. In short, this album will not give those U2 fans who closed the Canon in 1991 reason to reopen it.

All that said, there simply is not a better band at 'making a joyful noise' - at expressing joy and hope - at celebrating. All that old U2 uplift is everywhere on this album, and it's all the more moving, as we know that its accompanied by midlife crises, parental departures and ongoing attempts to save the world. Songs? well, Crumbs from your table is truly beautiful, and it shows how effectively Bono has learnt the wisdom of restraint. Even Vertigo is so fun that you forget to be annoyed at yourself for enjoying the designated single. HTDAAB is also more unified than some of their previous work - the themes are more starkly evident. This will, or should, prevent (some of) the exegetical debates that tend to break out about lyrics. One of Bono's obiter dicta is that it's easy to make a good sad song, but the hardest thing in the world to create a good happy song. U2 have done the hardest thing in the world at least three times on How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

GORDON BROWN is in Kenya. Surreal, the sight of him planting a tree with Wangari Maathai.

in which we discover an american angel

NICHANOR , martyr and Deacon, is the saint of the day.

CAROLINE ELKINS' Imperial Reckoning:The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya is out in a couple of weeks in the UK and about the same time in the US. Read it! Reviews in the Sunday Times, the Times again, and in the Economist.

BEE now has her own blog here. Visit and see what mischief she's up to.

tsunami

St JOHN NEUMANN is not quite the Saint of the Day today, but his feast and my birthday coincide, so I'm remembering him today. Happy Epiphany all.

DEC: You can donate money towards tsunami relief here.

P.O.E: There has been a lot of talk about whether the tsunami(s) raised a version of the problem of evil for believers in an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God. Brian Weatherson's post at Crooked Timber, and at his own blog, is the best consideration of the issues I've seen yet.

UPDATE: You've really got to read 'The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience' here. Amongst other very interesting titbits:

In 1989 George Gallup Jr. and James Castelli published the results of a survey to determine which groups in the U.S. were least and most likely to object to having black neighbors—surely a good measure of racism. Catholics and nonevangelical Christians ranked least likely to object to black neighbors; 11 percent objected. Mainline Protestants came next at 16 percent. At 17 percent, Baptists and evangelicals were among the most likely groups to object to black neighbors, and 20 percent of Southern Baptists objected to black neighbors.

birthday

happy birthday to me!

Christmassy, me?

PETER CANISIUS [1521 -1597], teacher, doctor, catechist and spy, is the Saint of the day.

'CONTRARY to an oft repeated tale, however, the Summa Theologiae was not placed on the altar alongside the Bible during meetings of the Council' . [Haldane, J. Faithful Reason: Essays Catholic and Philosophical, p. 5]

BEST INTENTIONS - The story of Tanzania's people's national park... "One fisherman said in slow and emphatic tones: “The marine park is no good. It is going to kill us through hunger.”

THE BLUNKETT FILES - Prof. John Gardner's celebration of the wit and wisdom of our recently-departed Home Secretary. "It's only a shame (but not a surprise) that Blunkett was brought down by a trivial personal intervention in a visa application ('no favours but slightly quicker'), and not by his abhorrent policies on crime, immigration, and 'security'."
In this connection, here's the full text of the recent House of Lords ruling regarding the detention without trial of nine noncitizens.

Wangari Maathai

POSSIBLY the most important social security measure in all Kenya's history...

WANGARI Maathai's Nobel Prize lecture.

SO now you know:
"We can cease speculating about what Sherlock Holmes was up to between 1891 and 1894 ("A four-pipe poseur", December 4). In 1989 I was a guest of the Copenhagen Sherlockian Club. One of the members presented me with a pamphlet which incontrovertibly demonstrated that Holmes was, of course, working with Engels on Volume IV of Capital (Theories of Surplus Value). Unfortunately Engels died in 1894 and Holmes returned to Baker Street and his former occupation, leaving the work unfinished. Naturally, considering the class from which most of his clientele was drawn, Holmes himself kept quiet about this."

-Julian Rathbone,Thorney Hill, Dorset-

deep in essay-crisis land without a map

SIMON BLACKBURN on Heidegger.

SIMON BLACKBURN on Eco.

JERRY FODOR on Christopher Hughes on Kripke.

LEFT2RIGHT: Quite possibly the most impressive collection of (leftish) clever people on the web. [Appiah, Cohen, Velleman, Railton, MacMahan, Darwall, Lichtenberg]

STUART HAMPSHIRE on John Rawls.

NIMU's new website is here.

"Who you gonna' call?"

Oh you look so beautiful tonight/In the city of blinding lights
the new U2 album is here. And it's [heresy!] not quite as good as it should be. They just sound a little unfresh and a bit reaching for nostalgia, but hey, sub-tremendous U2 is others' brilliant. Reviews (and how) : Rolling Stone, Observer, Guardian (alexis petridis actually likes it), Christianity Today, the Onion, Metacritic, MTV and Atu2.

randomly, Bono's other job at DATA.

IRAQ,
or when philosophers strike back. Professor McMahan's lucid and convincing demolition of the moral case for the war in Iraq is here. [Via the Leiter report]. He also a much longer draft of a paper on Just War theory here.
Incidentally, John Haldane's new book, is out. It's a collection of essays, reviewed here and elsewhere. Should be well worth the effort.

PLAINTIFF,
to his horror, discovered that the house he had recently contracted to purchase was widely reputed to be possessed by poltergeists... [Via alexander]

Pretending

I seem to be one of very few people who think that pretending (in the imitative sense - to put it very loosely) poses a serious problem for the success of the private language argument. Cue much inexplicit argument with people who think I'm talking even more rubbish than usual. This one could run and run.

Here's a lucid piece by Paul Boghossian in the New Republic in 2001, on why pragmatism 'doesn't work in practice', to slightly misquote Sidney Morgenbesser.

UPDATE. a distressed liberal writes, Falluja pictures.

kilio cha haki

SAINT OF THE DAY is the Blessed John Duns Scotus [c.1265-1308], the 'subtle doctor' and the last of the three preeminent medieval philosopher/theologians.

TAX AMNESTY ends 31st December 2004. Calling all plutocrats, wannabe-plutocrats, Moi-era survivors, and all other holders of ill-gotten wealth, the Kenya Revenue Authority tax amnesty is still on.

KILIO CHA HAKI or, the Guardian discovers Kenyan hiphop:

.At night, when the rubbish is burnt, the smoke fills Dandora's streets like fog. "People in Dandora don't live," says rapper Githinji "G-Ronji" Gicharu. "They survive."

..Earlier this year, a 26-year-old Dutch woman called Nynke Nauta brought over some producers from Amsterdam and installed a makeshift studio in a two-bedroom apartment in the relatively salubrious slum of Umoja, using mattresses to sleep on at night and to soundproof the walls during the day. Thirty-eight rappers from across the Eastlands came by to record tracks, and the result is the album Kilio Cha Haki:
A Cry for Justice...

Fortitude

will be necessary to get through these next four years. All the same, this election has cured me of my pro-Americanism. How this nation that seemed to stand as a constant reminder of the power of hope has allowed itself to act in this fearful way is difficult to understand. Anyway, as churchill said, Americans always do the right thing in the end, so here's hoping.

ST MARTIN DE PORRES. Yesterday, but that hasn't stopped me from being thankful and remembering him today.

Continium42 and the experientialist are now on board with the whole blogging thing. Pay them a visit while you're here ...

Je pas ne parle pas français

ALL SAINT'S DAY, well not quite here in Montreal, but it certainly is over there.

MONTREAL is awesome - autumn, or fall as I'm learning to call it, is far more colourful here than in the grey(!) havens. Also, policemen speaking French is just disorienting - it sounds far too pleasant for them.

Necessary Existence for anything you like

TERESA of Avila is the saint of the day.

This Noreena Hertz article in the Observer a little while ago whose point [that there are some debts that are so clearly illegitimate or unpayable, that countries should never be asked to honour them.] is made pithily.

A new taxonomy of philosophical positions.

An argument for the necessary existence of absolutely anything at all that exists. [at Prof. Timothy Williamson's website.]

Wangari Maathai

is the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2004. Richly deserved.

randoms

AGNES TAKEA is the saint of the day. One of many Japanese martyred at a time of great persecution [c. 1620]. A consequence of this maltreatment was the persistence of the faith in highly unusual forms, such as the Kakure Kirishtan.

THE LEITER REPORT is temporarily in the very capable hands of Bejamin Hellie and Jessica Wilson, whose other blog is always a pleasure to read, if only for its quite unblog-like meatiness. They've already put together three substantial posts, and more will follow. I'm especially pleased that they picked up on this [emphasis mine]:

In Africa, Bush did best in Nigeria where 33 percent of respondents said they preferred him versus 27 percent who opted for Kerry. But in five other African countries, Kerry emerged as the clear favourite, including Kenya (58-25 percent), Ghana (48-24 percent), Tanzania (44-30 percent), South Africa (43-29 percent), and Zimbabwe (28-6 percent)

QUASSIM CASSAM, newly hired Professor of Philosophy at University College London, author of Self and World, and Self-Knowledge [both OUP] is Kenyan!- well, OK, Kenyan-born, but who's counting?

NO WMD, none whatsoever, nyet, nada, nothing, zip, zilch. Just in case anyone still cares. The Iraq Survey Group which was authorised by both the American and British governments to assess the state of Saddam Hussein's weaponry is due to report next week, after an exhaustive scouring of various sites in Iraq. The Guardian claims that the report will conclude that Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of WMD. One can only hope that this is not being leaked now to deflate the shock of the Group's findings when finally published.

THE PHILOSOPHERS' CARNIVAL is not quite up-and-running yet [as far as I can tell, anyway], but promises to be awesome once it is. Have a look. More philosophical weblogs here [a whole bunch of them, in fact], courtesy of Prof. Chalmers.

UPDATE

COLIN POWELL finally uses the G-word of events in Sudan, in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee following a report by investigators from the State Department . President Bush has also characterised the events as such in a statement issued yesterday.
The Independent gives over its entire front page to the story [though this is not evident from the online version], CBS News has a reasonable take, the NYT, the Times, the Guardian and even the Telegraph, all have reports.
The Sudanese government's response according to the Telegraph's report: "Sudan's foreign minister, Ahmed Hassan al-Zubeir, denounced the US move. He said the crisis was a "an internal tribal problem".

[Beer voucher to Passion of the Present, which continues to be the most useful source of news for this unfortunate business]

ARCHBISHOP OSCAR ROMERO's assassination was one of San Salvador's and the Latin American Church's direst moments in recent history. However, it seems a retired Salvadoran Air Force captain has been found liable as an "aider, abettor and co-conspirator" in the murder of the Archbishop by a Fresno [California] federal court Judge. As is customary, very large amounts of money have been awarded in damages.

[Beer voucher to ExLaodicea, always sharp, always fun.]

more darfur ...

in which I discover that there has been no official recognition in the Arab press that Darfur is a genocide.