Arts: Cartooning: Blank Page Comics co-op online amuses, abuses, confuses ... maybe

Today, I stumbled onto the website of Blank Label Comics. I was fascinated by the the project of a handful of cartoonists / comic strippers. They've created a genuine work-community of independent artists; but not unqualifiedly so, now that they've developed a way of combining and exchanging skills with one another - just to keep the ensemble busy in their individual specialist artistic vocations. The artists and their serial works of comic strips available on line are: Kristofer Straub (Checkerboard Nightmare; Starshift Crisis); Brad J. Guigar (Courting Disaster; Greystone Inn); David Willis (It's Walky!; Shortpacked!); Paul Southworth (Krazy Larry; Ugly Hill); Steve Troop (Melonpool); Paul Taylor (Wapsi Square). Not being able to review the whole lot, and not willing to go phishing to come up with something that I could possibly denounce for immorality or some form of deviance, I decided to choose randomly one comic strip, and begin at its beginnings in the archive, and look at it / read it till I got a first sense of what the artist's vision is and what some of his skills are. I was delited with this sounding.

I selected the work of Brad J. Guigar, one of the group's diehards, and took the time to go back in his archives to the first daily strip of Feb 17 (Sundays are in color) and read there the usually 4-pane panel of the series Greystone Inn, in which Argus T. Gorgoyle, a sort of pudgy shmoo-like bat with, of course, wings; or bat-like shmoo with wingy obtrusions (but I've never seen him fly). We get to know this guy, this character. And it's true that Guigar delites in creating characters, all as different from one another as he can draw them and fill their talk-balloons with distinct imaginal mentalities to complement their looks. This all takes place on the set of the cartoon, a movie-like set of the Greystone Inn. The device of the set and movie-like accoutrements allows Guigar to keep increasing his cast of characters, and to have his Producer periodically interview a potential new one who's hustling for a job to keep working in the bis.

Thus, a zippy new character can do a lively walk-on and then promptly disappear....forever? Content, as well, is developed by this device. At first, in trying to find the direction of the strip or its internal niches, the variorum inside of and structuring the story-line, we're told tentatively at one point that the goal of this strip is or ought to become a comic soap-opera strip. But it's Gargoyle, the first character that we get to know, who wants less soap and more gags, one-liners and sightjokes - humour, in its most direct, visceral sense - so as to bring out the comic in the comic strip. This is a tension unresolved when abruptly a certain H. Ross Peroach approaches the Producer (there also is the Narrator, just a voice in a line box whose behavior constitutes an arcane reference to pomo litcrit's interminable discussions of "the narrator" in the Western literary tradition, implying there's something deeply faux and phoney about such a device). Several things are always going on at a given "time." Guigar's Narrator is a kind of voice-over without embodiment, just obtruding words, but very postmodernly this Narrator sometimes also addresses characters or replies to them "directly." Good fun!

Oh, did I mention that Mr Peroach is a cockroach who now remarks "Ever since NAFTA" (er, the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, USA, and Mexico) "all the good cockroach jobs have gone to Tijuana." At that point, the Producer appears with a long-armed .... it turns out to be a long-armed vacuum cleaner (Wed, April 12, 2000) which is used to suck up H. Ross into the vacuum bag. This effort at extermination does not quite work, too mechanical. The character is soon back in play. Peroach comments on the comics industry in presenting how his character meets the demand of an increasing interest burgeoning within the market; he (alone) can supply the demand of a now-discernible market niche. Pointing to his chart, Ross tells the Producer, "This is my popularity with males 18-31. And here's my marketability quotient for fiscal '99..." The Producer shows Peroach a map of the site, and points to the Exit. As Peroach trudges along on his walk of defeat, who shows up but Argus? (that's a rhetorical question mark only ... please don't email me on that one!).

The plot thickens, and by Friday, April 28, 2000, the Narrator summarizes for us the foregoing developments to date; we're told that MacKensie, the Producer, "has just confessed to Argus that the Syndicate has used the Gargoyle's hair samples and a scrap of his boxer shorts [collected by the Producer himself] to create a Franken-zombie to carry on if the star dies ..." The plot thickens again, slowly but ever more densely; and on Friday, June 2, 200 > the babe appears! Cindy-Kate. At that point, my duties called me away from Greystone Inn and the creativity of Brad J. Guigar.

I'll probably take some time again, later on, to work my way along the time-line of the daily 4-panes panels to see what happens after April 8, 2000, what becomes of Argus T. Gargoyle, the Producer MacKensie, Samantha (who I hardly mentioned) and Cindy-Kate ("syndicate" ... got it?). The moral temptation of the free comic-strip artist is to strip him/herself of his inmost daily creations, leaving telltale forensic traces of the artist's self for all the world to see/read; and in that process the greatest temptation is to succumb to the syndicate that keeps open the gate to his strip's daily syndication and access to a readership who can find him and fall in love with his/her work. There's a postmodernist or, at least, a late modernist revelation of the inner workings of the Business. The comic-strip biz is deconstructed gradually and lovingly. You mite enjoy following a fine artist in his very daily, very quotidian work. One thing I missed along the way was the dropping of the large Sunday panels in full color and with a larger space and several more panes than the weekday standard 4 panes in black and white line-drawings. Oh, well ... I've a very long way to go from Friday, June 2, the arrival of Cindy-Kate, to the most uptodate panel Tuesday, May 31, 2005. Brad J. Guigar's Greystone Inn is something like a novel, I'd say. It was Charles Dickens, was it?, who became a novelist by writing daily stories in a continuing series of installments that, when completed, composed a novel. And wasn't he rather looked down upon by the élite recognized novelists because Dickens actually earned his way and proved his creativity in the dailies. Guigar and his companions are doing that now digitally online thru their comic strip. - Owlb

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Arts: Direction: Glen Workshop, Santa Fe, NM, midsummer July 31-Aug 7, 2005

Spiritual Direction & Workshops in the Arts, originally uploaded by Anaximaximumphotographics.

Thanks for the Hat Tip from Image: Art, Faith, Mystery, a journal of religious humanism (not Christian commitment as such, o the strange uses of "humanism"!) in regard to the annual Glen Workshop which this year will feature: Carmelite Father, David Denny (Spiritual Direction); B. H. Fairchild (Poetry), Andrew Hudgins (Poetry), Paul Huston (Spiritual Writing), Paulene Hutton (Playwriting & Screenwriting), Barry Krames (Mixed Media), Laura Lasworth (Watercolor), Erin McGraw (Fiction), Barry Moser (Life Drawing), Over-the-Rhine (Musicians-in-Residence), Elmer Yazzie, presenting a seminar, "Native American Art and the Christian Tradition."

The annual event is co-sponsored by Christians in Visual Arts (CIVA) and Christians in Theatre Arts (CITA). I've performed plenty in theatres - with Desrosiers Dance Theatre Company; and, on my own initiative, in Monday Nites Poetry Theatre. To me, CITA's name has the feel of an all-too-academic provenance. Otherwise, the more embracing "Christians in Performing Arts" (CIPA, to keep the cymbolic cymmetry co-ing) would shurely have been embraced (don't you think)? - the idea that a lot of performance is out of the box for sometime now and into the streets, the pubs, the parks, the whatnot?. Whatever, do scroll down the right-hand margin to the live-links for these two organizations and click-up their online sites. - Owlb

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Politics: Canada: Quebec LeDevoir blurb translated but important article (b)locked

I couldn't resist passing this infobit on to English-reading reffing minds, regarding opinion in Québec's leading thawtful newspaper, Le Devoir, in the French langwij, of course. I fuss that almost all the best stuff in Le Devoir are locked, as on a mental reservation, even Quécois/e are divided into two groups, those who can pay, and those who have the intellect to follow D'e perenigerations but are on Disablity and constantly cashed strap, don't own a credit card for an Internet transaction, and are keenly disappointed. Besides that, I can't fit my library in my tiny monk-like cell, so all my volumes for helping translate difficult words and idioms québcois are not at hand. For these purposes, I do find myself trying to check upon on my guesses of verb cases, grammatical niceties, etc, by referrencing Systran, a mecho-digital translator who renditions of French text can at times be amazingly coherent. I always have to fix up the Systran translation by improving it to get good English diction. Still I'm limited to blurbs and snippets only, due to time available to work around the info lockout imposed by locking articles against unpaying but not uncaring readers.

Here's the D infobit for today: "In Québec, the liberals of Paul Martin lost the Integrity battle: but elsewhere in Canada, in particular in Ontario, they are far from being in rout. Admittedly, by distributing billions thru-out Canada, by also inviting Conservative Members of the House of Commons to cross the Chamber to the government side, they will hardly have regilded their ethics."

By the way, English-writing intellectuals in Canada have a tendency to carry over in the name of La belle province, the accent mark (l'accent aigu [´] in the word "le Québec," even when composing an English text. This is just a very small Christian courtesy toward the French langwij, the difference between the national-majority English and the national-minority French, but majority in la belle province. I note that by trying consistently to remember to spell "Québec" more in the proper French manner; while at the same time, in my case, I continue my experiments in the orthography of English itself.

Lately, I've been getting more and more daring in trying to reform-spell (respell, for short) all those words containing the fiercely obsolescent "ght" when it begins with an "i," according to my more owlbirdbet formula -"ite." But even this is not real owlbirdbet yet, In strict owlbirdbet orthography, there's a separate character/letter for "i" in "bit" as compared to the "i" in "bite." So the ending -"ite" would actually be spelled -"it, and with no final "e." As in "bit. Whereas, "infobit" uses the short "i" sound in "bit," or in "fit." But compare "fit" for what I use in the intermediate transition experiment's rendition of "fight," often giving you the transitional form, "fite".

Of course, among the problems in such a transition is that -"ite" already is something of a semantic marker as well, not just an orthographic indicator. In the ending, especially when its optional for a given expression, -"ite" largely tends to signify a meaning of "lesser" in some sense or other, a diminutive. If I said "carpenter." you'd know ruffly what I meant, but if I said "carpenterite" or "carpentite," you mite (semantic alert!) tend to think of a carpenter who was just beginning to learn the skills which the name implies at the outset. Could I make it more accessible by re-constructing "carpentite" (in pure owlbirdbet "carpentit" which spelling would perhaps evoke a titillating sense of gender marker, but not necessarily). French, on the other hand, spells "charpentier," if I'm not mistaken; and easily adds a gender marker in "charpentière," if I recall correctly. And note the addition of the grave accent (l'accent grave).

Anyway, the Liberal government leaders are always trying to diminish both the Conservatives and the members of the Bloc Québecois which is now for many years a fully-legit Federal Party (click the blue headline to this blog entry for info on the Bloq, in English). Now, in the last few weeks's we have seen Prime Minister Paul Martin once again wave temptations in the faces of Parliament memembers of other parties, implying they have some great people within them; and on the other hand in election campaigns and meantime in the House of Commons, Martin constantly inflates the force of these two parties as wholly negative ones, monstrous entitites that represent the threat of national collapse if ever either one or both in coalition come into power. It's time to speak clearly on the Martin Strategy of Demonising his opposition which at its best undermines the necessary practice of civility in the Commons. More than that, it's time to speak clearly regarding the strategy of demonizing the Bloc Québecois as some kind of strange fly-by-nite non-community of political opinion, when in fact BQ political life includes an astute discourse of political reflection and philosophy. To be sure, the Bloc is a separatist party; they want a "sovereign" Québec." I've lived with this reality thru its many permutations for over 30 years. I don't agree with this priority policy of the Bloc, but it's perfectly normal in Canada. The party elects numerous Members of Parliament, and has done so for some time. On that one issue, why can't we all agree to disagree - until such a time as the separatists should perhaps, perhaps not gain the proper electoral backing within the Québec Assembly (not the Federal House of Commons), when the clear majority of Quebeckers / les Québecois/es mite vote for the provincial Parti Québecois (not the federal party, Bloq Québecois) in sufficient numbers to create certifiably the appropriate path to that province's separation from the Canadian federation, and what its terms would be, necessarily negotiated. Short of that, as long as so many Bloqistes sit in the Fed Parliament (tho none in the Senate, as far as I know, since that would necessitate a deserter arising from among the Liberal Senators, but really it's about time that happened, in the lite of the Abscam scandal.

I don't see Tory thinkers and the bloggers among them, debating the history of Conservitive and Bloq interaction, nor the possible terms of a formal Conservative/Bloq coalition in the House of Commons -- while, in the meantime, the two parties would campaign against each other, riding by riding (like Congressional districts) to see if a three-way vote split in any given riding/s in Québec would result in 3 or 4 Conservative wins, with Liberals coming in third in those ridings. Why? Because neither the Bloq Québecois nor the Liberals represent that francophone element in the Québec electorate that wants to prioritize the traditional values and definition of marriage, and the Consistent Ethic of Life tawt by the Roman Catholic Church, in Québec and elsewhere. This, make no doubt about it, remains the priority political stance of many Québecois, not the issue of separation. As to the RC's stance which many in Québec want to vote effectiveily for, I disagree strongly with some of that denomination's teechings under the system of that set of doctrines when urged as policy in terms of absolutes. But, shurely from the standpoint of the principle of public justice in the way the present electoral system demonizes, papably smothers and unjustly silences constituencies in an anti-plural voting and party system, demonizes the Bloq and the social-conservative Conservatives thereby to prevent a truer plurality of political visions from coming to expression, as better it mite were the Tories and Bloq able to campaign aggressively but politely in Québec on policy differences other than separatism. To the effect that a few seats mite be taken by the Conservatives, while the Bloq gets its majority of seats in the bellicose province where the Libs are most likely going down to defeat -- if not now, then in the dead of Winter 2006. The Lib gambit of demonizing the Bloq as "only-separatist" and of no other value to those it represents on the Federal level and certainly of no other value cross-Canada, this gambit of fear-mongering must be overcome. The Bloq will not destroy Canada, it may or may not assist a Québec separation which may or may not happen ever. We can't let the Martinites control the framework of debate in its entirety, thru its deep philosophical commitment to mendacity -- separatophobia, westophobia, and I think christianophobia deeply hidden in the Libs prevention of crucial issues of hi soshul significanss frum cumin' ta' 'spreshun politically in Canada. - Owlb

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Guest Article: Politcs: USA & China: John Kosumi's proposal for a new US Policy on China

Clearing one's head for US foreign-policy debate on

China
Steps toward getting tough & lowering the boom on China, in a nuanced way

by John Kusumi
Thanks!, John, for permission to republish your article on refWrite - Owlb

I want to thank the group of Congressmen, reported to include Reps. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Walter Jones (R-NC), Peter DeFazio (D-OR), and Pete Visclosky, (D-IN), for introducing a measure in Congress to remove China's PNTR* trade status designation. The move, on Feb. 9, came two weeks after Shengde Lian and I called for the removal of PNTR, in a joint op-ed released Jan. 27. Lian is a Tiananmen Square student leader, and Executive Director of the Free China Movement, while I am the founder and Director emeritus of the China Support Network--Americans boosting Chinese democracy since 1989--the year of Tiananmen's massacre.

*PNTR = Preferred Nation Trade Rating - Owlb

I also want to thank and praise Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and his colleagues for their action in the Senate to apply a tariff to Chinese goods, intended to compensate for currency manipulation, an unfair trade practice on the part of China.

Efforts to get tough with China are breaking out all over, at least in the US. (We regret that Europe is backsliding, moving to lift the EU arms embargo against China -- a move that swims against the "get tough" current. The Free China Movement and CSN have also opposed that move in action elsewhere.) It is refreshing that U.S. leaders, on a bipartisan basis, are coming 'round to alarm about China, if belatedly to those of us who have long sounded the alarm about China.

Congressmen and the Free China Movement arrive at this issue from different angles; Congressmen are driven here by the matter of jobs in their districts, the economic ill effects of China trade (outsourcing, trade deficits, and more), and with an interest to fix the U.S. economy. The Free China Movement is here with the intent to secure freedom, democracy, and human rights for its homeland -- liberation and regime change are the objectives it seeks. The reasons to be here are different for the respective groups, but the latter concerns actually comport with the Bush doctrine, which seems to add a seamlessness to the situation.

The China Support Network and I have long advocated a prohibitive "tyranny tariff," and I have stood my ground on saying that "free trade is for the free world." Global free trade is flawed in two respects. It encourages trade deficits, and it is tantamount to a vast largess of "welfare for tyrants." I believe that all free world nations should tariff all tyranny nations with which they run trade deficits -- and conversely, they should not tariff if they are running a surplus with, e.g., China.

The preceding paragraph is a simple, clear-cut vision that would add teeth to the Bush doctrine. However, it need not happen all at once. In fact, at this time I want to break the action into baby steps, and suggest that we should move through them incrementally, in a step-wise manner. For example, removal of PNTR is one step, and a tariff is another step, and not all tariffs are created equal. There are three possible justifications for a tariff on Chinese goods, and tariffs may exist in two sizes: compensatory, and prohibitive.

The first step, of removing PNTR, is long overdue. PNTR violated the Clinton campaign promise of trade (MFN* renewal) linked to progress on human rights in China. The Free China Movement still wants the original Clinton campaign promise. That vision was appealing in its day, and dissidents appeared in support of Clinton at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. Removal of PNTR is the first step, welcomed by freedom lovers.

*MFN = Most Favoured Nation status

A tariff is another beast, likely welcomed by U.S. workers who have been 'outsourced' and seen their jobs move to China. To move in this direction represents an actual fix to the U.S. economy. If the real worry is jobs, trade deficits, outsourcing, and the like, then the second step of a tariff becomes necessary. Let's consider the three justifications to tariff Chinese goods.

Currency manipulation is economic dirty pool. Senator Schumer has picked up on this and suggested a 27.5% compensatory tariff.

Slave labor is economic dirty pool. Somebody ought to pick up on this and suggest another compensatory tariff that would be additive with the first mentioned rate. Note that, as House members announced their action to revoke PNTR, the suggestion was floated of a 45% tariff.

Global free trade is flawed. Somebody ought to pick up on this, object to welfare for tyrants, and suggest a prohibitive tyranny tariff. (CSN might suggest 450%.)

The China debate is where everyone can pick their favorite justification(s) and tariff rate. However, my article suggests a gradual approach, because the choice does not exist in a vacuum. If we simply went for the smaller, compensatory tariffs, then we would be handing China tariffs with reasons attached. These could be effective to fix unfair trade practices within the WTO* model. The WTO model is ultimately flawed (and ultimately, I stand with the anti-globalization cause), but we could delay its demise and keep it on the table for some period of time.

*WTO = World Trade Organization - Owlb

Why keep a flawed model? Because there is peace in the Taiwan Strait. A full outbreak of Cold War with China could also lead to an outbreak of Hot War over Taiwan. Right now, the WTO model may be keeping the peace, because China has something to lose in the event that it crosses the Taiwan Strait. In Beijing, the entire removal of America trade could change the calculus about war and peace.

For now, let's leave Beijing with "something to lose" in any contemplated move against Taiwan. This is why I call for gradualism, and an incremental, step-wise approach in lowering the boom and "getting tough" with China. The Free China Movement has no objection to MFN renewal, with human rights conditions attached. (This was the Clinton promise that was never delivered.) And, no one can object to specifically focused and targeted compensatory tariffs that relate to unfair trade practices -- intended to level the playing field, in the face of economic dirty pool. Senator Schumer has a virtuous, upright, and honorable proposal, as do the House members on PNTR. The China Support Network will offer to be helpful and to assist in any way with securing the passage of these measures.

-----------------------------

John Kusumi, former teenage candidate for U.S. President, served as Director emeritus of the China Support Network (CSN) until March 10, 2005. This article was originally written February 19, 2005. It was held for public release while China debate has been building up to a head. It is more timely being released now, on May 23, 2005.


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Introducing a new staff member: Owlbie Scowlbie joins refWrite staff - "We need a few more hoots!," says Owlb

In our effort to bring you a better refWrite, we have engaged the ministratoins of an an intern to serve totemically as our VIM (Very Important Mascot). We hope Owlbie Scowlbie will be joining us online soon. - The editorial committee - Owlb, Politicarp, and Anaximaximum.


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Art: Stories & Novels: Flannery O'Conner and the Christ-Haunted South

A book announcement will have to do in lieu of a book review (which hopefully won't end up in the loo, either the book or the review). My live-link above will take you to an Amazon.com webpage, and put you in touch with a fine writer on a grand figure of American letters. I'm talkin' 'bout a new work of litcrit that at last fathoms the depths, I'm told, of that great Southern lady who gained a reputation as a foremost American novelist and, thematically obsessed as she was with matters of faith, our foremost Catholic novelist, our own Graham Greene. The writing of her stories and novels took place during the years 1948 to 1964, leaving off just when the Civil Rights Act was passed by Congress and signed into law. But it seems that O'Conner was much closer to the her rural Protestant neighbors in Georgia and thereabouts, than ever the Liberal literary crowd in academia let on to us. She wasn't so much a Catholic writer in combat with her surroundings, as she was an intimate and grace-conscious co-pilgrim with those of the Fundamentalist culture that palpiated thru Southern life in its broadest sweep of, yes, sin and grace. That is, if Ralph C. Wood, in his latest book, Flannery O'Connery and the Christ-Haunted South (Eerdmans), has it basically correct about her, and the previous school of O'Conner interpretation of Robert Brinkmeyer, Sura P. Rath, Mary Neff Shaw and that cohort have it too much slanted, using O'Conner's neighborly Catholicism as a foil aganst the Fundamentalism the litcrits neither liked nor understood. And still fail to do so.

There are 6 pages of Chapter One online, and 4 pages double-columned of an Index of Names and Subjects, to give you a taste of the hitorical, literary, and theological scope of Wood's approach to his task and his subject situated in her own times.

Wood had already gained a reputation for work at the interface between Chrstian faith and literary art--The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle Earth (pbk 2003); The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists (pbk 1991); Ivan Karamazov's mistake.(on freedom, Legend of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov) : An article from: First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life (HTML Digital - December 1, 2002); Contending for the Faith: The Church's Engagement With Culture (Interpreting Christian Texts and Traditions Series, #1, pbk - May 1, 2003); Love's Sacred Order: The Four Loves Revisited. (Review essay: C. S. Lewis and the Ordering of Our Loves). (book review) : An article from: Christianity and Literature [HTML Digital - September 22, 2001); American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction. (Books In Review: evangelicalism, with and without reformation).(Review) : An article from: First ... A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life (HTML Digital - October 1, 2001); and to top of the list, Flannery O'Connor: a Life.(Book Review) : An article from: Journal of Southern History (HTML Digital - February 1, 2004). So there, Robert C. Wood oughta' be able ta' keep ya' stocked fer readin' all thru the dog days a' summah. But if your really into Lady Flannery but need some variety to contrast intriguingly with Wood, I'd recommend Flannery O'Conner's Religious Imagination: A World with Everything Off Balance (Paulist Press, 2001) which emphasizes O'Conner's Catholicism in step with the "great Catholic minds of her time," over-absorbing her into just what one would expect from Paulist Press, a book authored by, of course, George A. Kilcourse, Jr. - Owlb

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War: Remembrance: Memorial Day, 2005 Anno Domini: for those who died and those alive 1st Platoon, C 1/37 Armor, US Army

1st Platoon, C 1/37 Armor, originally uploaded by Anaximaximumphotographics.

Early on the morning of Sunday, May 29, after a nite on my iMac and the Internet, I came by accident upon this Argghhh!!! website you can reach by clicking the title above. As I read thru the text on the site and viewed the images, I felt overwhelmed with the meaning of memorializing the soldiers who died to advance freedom from genocidal dictators like Saddam Hussein, and to secure a democratic system for all in other lands that America's leadership decides must be fawt for now. Thank you, Tony Cerri, father of Sarah Cerri Cowherd and father-in-law of Leonard Cowherd, for composing your webpage for the Cerri and Cowherd families. God bless you all! and all who gave and are giving in America's current war. Lest we forget; may we never forget. From all of us at refWrite - Owlb, Politicarp, and Anaximaximum.

Politics & Religion: Canada: Christian activists win Fed Tory noms from Atlantic to Pacific

Gloria Galloway, headlined somewhat hysterically by Friday's Globe and Mail, reported that the Conservative Party of Canada has seen its nomination assemblies in various ridings (like Congressional Districts in the USA) choosing a new breed of candidates to run under that party's banner in the upcoming Federal Election. Upcoming? It seems a bit early, yes? What seems sure is that the Prime Minister will call a national vote for a new Federal Parliament and government, just as soon as Judge Gomery publishes his report on Adscam, expected sometime in deep Winter 2006. Unless somehow, the opposition parties bring the PM down earlier, or he brings down himself because some political development seems sufficiently exploitable by him in the shorter run. But, in any case, Tory riding associations are alreadey holding nominations to prepare for a long and heated campaign that will turn to some extent on the Adscam Scandals that Gomery is investigating, but also in doing so are advancing the trend of more and more self-identified Christian candidates winning Conservative noms, to run flaunting their personal Christian political ID and seeking to advance certain specific policy views they consider more Christian than what prevails now in the party, the parliament, the country, and the nation (les nations) as a whole. That fact of religiously-principled politicla identity itself has become an issue, according to Galloway and G&M's hysterical headline writer.

But organizers say many more [Chrstian-political candidates] will be on the ballot during the next federal election, a feat achieved by persuading parishioners, particularly new Canadians, to join the party and vote for recommended candidates. ¶ Some Conservatives argue that the selection of a large number of candidates from the religious right is an unfortunate turn for a party that was accused in last year's election campaign of harbouring a socially conservative "hidden agenda." "The difficulty, from a party perspective, is that it begins to hijack the other agendas that parties have," said Ross Haynes, who lost the Conservative nomination in the riding of Halifax to one of three "Christian, pro-family people" recommended by a minister at a religious rally this spring in Kentville, N.S.

And it turns out, that not only the Tories are finding strong new interest among Christians, but some candidates in the Liberal Party are also coming from the same source (but there the Party Leader can refuse to confirm the candidate of any given Liberal riding association, whereas Stephen Harper of the Tories is prohibited by Tory rules from doing so). The Liberals can be depended upon to polarize the election over religion; he's already created the climate for doing so with his proposed legistlation to change the traditional definition of marriage; so really the lame-duck Prime Minister has nothing to complain-about in the face of current trends. - Owlb

Arthur Cockfield writing in The Toronto Star against Tory social conservatism

Politics: Canada: Following Canada govt's huge Adscam scandal? Just click this live-link title!

AntiCorruption.ca offers a mind-blowing chart of the so-called "Sponsorship Program" conducted by the Liberals under former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and apparently implicating his Treasurer, the present Prime Minister Paul Martin. Follow the Money (if you can) and get an idea of exactly what Judge Gomery's Commission is trying to trace before the Liberals find a way of blocking his investigations, in the courts, of course. Don't expect the Judge's report to see the lite of day until sometime deep in the Winter 2006. - Owlb

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Politics: US/UN: John Bolton, President Bush's nominee for UN Ambassador ready & fit

John Bolton, originally uploaded by Anaximaximumphotographics.

The hi drama of Bush appointments has been resisted by recalcitrant leftwing Senators, and their obstruction will continue into next week, as long as they can possibly drag things out.

Meanwhile, the ringleaders of the Dems No-voters have been turned down by Prez Bush in refusing their efforts to blackmail classified documents (emails and such) composed by Ambassador Bolton. The President insisted that delivery of these materials to the leaders of the two parties on the Senate subcommittee on Intelligence was sufficient, and they haven't put out a general alarm calling upon the whole Senate to see these. So be it. - Owlb
Bush won't give whole Senate classified docs

semiotics: digital artpoem: Picture at the Well

Picture at the Well, originally uploaded by Anaximaximumphotographics.

This little poem of semiotic overlay of a prefab image (courtesy of ImageWell) and a bubble device with the option of inserting text (ImageWell again) brawt up as a .tiff pix, and then the insertion of my own text (closely relevant to image but producing a characterizing and semantic load to intensify unity) results in a semiotic poem of image in relation to text with semantic overload (poiesis):then the digi-art semiotic whole is converted using Graphic Converter to a .jpg format, uploaded to Flickr then finally from there re-uploaded to my Blogger blog refWrite. That's the technique used to craft up the found artistic intention of the poem, using and experimenting with the techniques to find the poem itself by this very means. It poses the puzzle of my meaning to the viewer / reader. And I shouldn't go further in trying to translate it, as that would alter its meaning and make it imagery/text itself stale. - Owlb

Missiology: MidEast Iraq: Report from Christians on the Frontlines after Foreign Missions Influx then Exflux

An agency that supports indigenous missions in difficult places around the world, and which reports on conditions in many countries where Christian missionary work is seriously blocked or totally surpressed, sends this report in its most recent email newsletter:

A Christian ministry leader of Muslim background who has traveled in Iraq four times in the last year told Christian Aid, "Despite everything, the churches in Iraq are growing." The news comes as a surprise amid reports of a virtual Christian exodus from the country. Muslim extremists have attacked churches and threatened, kidnapped or murdered Christians, driving thousands of Iraqi believers into neighboring countries for safety.

Yet according to this mission leader, whose name is withheld for security reasons, Christians who are staying are seeing their churches grow. He believes the sudden influx and subsequent withdrawal of many foreign missionary agencies following the toppling of Saddam Hussein contributed to this growth. "I have never seen so many foreign groups coming into one place [after Saddam Hussein's government was overthrown]," he says. "But, as soon as things started to get difficult, many of them pulled out, leaving only the Iraqi Christians to do the work."

Iraqi believers have stepped up efforts to spread the gospel to their countrymen even though some of them are in grave danger from insurgents fighting in the name of Islam. Through his visits with families in Iraq, the native mission leader learned of a disturbing tactic being used by insurgents to maintain their ranks: fighters have been going house to house in certain areas, demanding a child from each family. Those who refuse are threatened with death; those who go with the insurgents are "trained" for several months for suicide bombing missions.

"Though many Iraqis were glad to be rid of Saddam and glad for the Americans' help, they live in such fear because of these things," he said.

In this atmosphere, Iraqi believers know that the need for Christ's gospel of peace is stronger than ever, and they are determined to spread it.

This force of native Iraqi missionaries, the mission leader says, points to a change that ought to take place in missions across the board. "Churches in America need to change their ideas about missions," the leader declared. "They need to trust the natives' vision to reach their own people and get behind them with support."

Please lend prayer support to Iraqi Christians courageously spreading the gospel in an extremely volatile situation. For more information, write insider at christianaid dot org and put MI-619 444-WMN on the subject line.

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If you email or clickup the Christian Aid website, you may want to ask for their Report on the South African Land Crisis, and the difficulties of a just solution (white farmers have been murdered off systematically by certain forces, for instance); Christain Aid has its Report available on PDF.

Cut-&-paste URL for Christain Aid USA website: http://www.christianaid.org/home.asp

Politics: USA/UN: FiliBLUSTERing UN Ambassador Reprise & Update of earlier refWrite entries.

Update, May 27: Demcrats dashed the good feelings of the up-and-down vote agreement, without filibusterations, by refusing to proceed with such in regard to the Bolton nomination to the UN Ambassadorship. Delaying once more they have pushed the vote to next week, presumably not longer.

May 26: The Democrats, having given up on blustering filibust of Priscilla Owen, newly confirmed after four years of being put on filibluster hold by Democrat Senators, are now renewing their promise to talk to death the nomination of John Bolton to become US's UN Ambassador. All the trumped up and hypostasized charges they've dredged up so far, just haven't worked as the Republicans have dismantled them for the meanspirited and fear-mongering canards that they were. Now, the Dems and Republican Sen George Voinovich want to go fishing further in certain documents, much of which they've already seen. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, and Sen. Joseph Biden are leading the filithreatening charge, according to Stephen Dinan in today's Washington Times. Dodd and Biden, both on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

are seeking e-mails and other documents that would answer whether Mr. Bolton tried to influence intelligence analysts who were working on congressional testimony about Syria's weapons programs. ¶ "Did Bolton attempt to badger or change the views of intelligence officers relating to whether or not Syria had WMD at a critical juncture when you all were writing, and we were asking, is Syria next?" Mr. Biden told reporters. ¶ Mr. Biden also wants to have access to unredacted versions of 10 intercepted foreign communications that name Americans, since Mr. Bolton sought the identities of the Americans named, and the Democrats say it could have been part of an attempt to bully intelligence analysts. ¶ Mr. Biden said the administration has not provided any other reason for refusing to turn over the administration other than to say it's not relevant to the investigation. ¶ Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican, forwarded the requests to the administration as a matter of courtesy, according to a spokesman, but Senate Republicans and the White House said enough information has already been given. ¶ "We've provided the Senate with the information they need to do their job," said Erin Healy, a White House spokeswoman. "John Bolton testified [before the Foreign Relations Committee] for more than eight hours, responded in writing to many additional questions, and the State Department has worked to provide the Senate with many additional documents as well." ¶ The intelligence intercepts already were provided to the top Republican and Democrat on the intelligence committee, though with the names redacted. ¶ Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the redacted documents show no indication of anything untoward, and that he didn't think the unredacted documents would show anything more.

I've no idea whether or not the Dems have the strength to filibuster this nomination to death. The policy that won the day for Priscilla Owen was one that applied only to nominees for offices as justices (judgeships); ambassadors were not covered. But Sen. Majority Leader, Bill Frist, seems to regard his policy of a straight-up-down vote after thoro debate on each nominee for whatever office, is sufficient and that what he calls "the constiutional option" just described simply must prevail, or he will move forthwith to have the Senate Rules changed. Will we see filibuster or flibluster? And how long will the debate on Bolton drag on?

May 25: Today the Bolton debate has started, quick on the heels of the Senate's confirmation of Justice Priscilla Owens, held up for four years. The Republican Party leadership in the USA said all the cloud of gnats adduced as arguments against John R. Bolton as Ambassador to the UN, had been exhausted and did not stand. The AP's Ann Gearan put it this way, "Exhaustive investigations turned up nothing to disqualify John R. Bolton from becoming U.N. ambassador, and he should be quickly given the post," Richard Lugar (Republican of Indian and chair of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee) "said Wednesday as the Senate opened debate on the long-delayed nomination."
Bolton debate starts

May 23 [?]: Speaking of rightwing views on Bolton, here's one that will motivate many of those predisposed to chortling at France's diplomatic didos, when one is not simply annoyed with Chirac et al. WND's headline for this one by analyst Dr Jack Wheeler, "Bolton to shake France's cage - Bush nominee will seek ouster of Paris from Security Council." Actually, what is envisioned is the creation of one seat on the Security Council for the European Union, while maintaining a separate seat for Britain and expanding to a few other seats with no veto. But all this is speculative murk, if only because France presently has vero-power. And Japan's bid to become a member of the SC, with or without the veto, is sure to be thwarted by Communist China, already a Permanent Member which also has the veto.

May 21: Back on April 19, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, by which the whole Senate fulfills its duty to the President by advising and consenting to his conduct of foreign relations, including consent to the appointment of ambassadors to represent the government the President leads, a number of these "ladies and gentlemen" decided to go another merry-go-round on the nomination by George W. Bush of John R. Bolton as US Ambassador to the UN. I won't describe the merry-go-round to which the committee devolved, delaying again its decision-making process, and setting the avid committee staff members under the behest of the Democratice faction of the committee. to dig up as much dirt against the nominee as possible.

Three weeks elapsed in which this cadre looked everywhere for some scrap of valid evidence to back up the earlier tantrums of its behesters - Boxer, Kennedy, and Schumer in particular. Red-faced, they came up empty-handed and evidence-less.

So, on May 12, the redoubtable leftwing daily the Washington Post (affectionately known to its readership as WaPo), surprisingly published an editorial, that declared, "The committee ought to give Mr. Bolton a vote today. Ours would be an unethusiastic deference-to-the-president yes." Paroxysms of shock circled out to less-responsible deep sectors of the Left. The editorial continued with an observation that in the circumstances was most astute, "What emerges from the interviews conducted by committee staffers [out to get the nominee trashed] is how intensely policy-driven, as opposed to personal, were most of Mr. Bolton's clashes in the State Department, during President Bush's first term, under Secretary of State Colin L. Powell."

A certain Lawrence B. Wilkerson from within the Powell-led State Department issued lengthy whines against the President's nominee, but when being interviewed a week before the WaPo editorial, gee-willikers, the fellow "was unable to provide any fresh examples of misbehavior [such as the committee's left research-cadre craved] by Mr. Bolton. Instead he complained about policy differences: Mr. Bolton was too eager to sanction Chinese companies that violated the nonproliferation regime, thereby making diplomacy more difficult. He was too zealous in carrying out his mission to persuade other countries to exempt U.S. soldiers from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. When Mr. Bolton delivered a speech vilifying North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, "Rich was very angry" -- that would be former deputy secretary Richard L. Armitage -- but, Mr. Wilkerson acknowledged, he was angry because the [Bolton] speech had been cleared by the assistant secretary for Asia, a Powell ally." Need it be said that Wilkerson was Powell's chief of staff?

After WaPo honestly outlines why its editors and the Left generally fears the Bush policy in regard to the UN, as would be administered by a man who understands it and has the fortitude to develop it daily in the General Assembly, the Secuirty Council, and among his own staff; WaPo's editorialists conclude, "The nominee is intelligent and qualified; we still see no compelling reason to deny the president his choice."

Undoubtedly, however, others on the monomaniacal Left will have since found what to them are "compelling reasons," as they act and think more from compulsions in this generation than from well-thawt policy standards that engage the times creatively. They seem as a lot to have no interest in reforming the UN. That's the biggest problem. They want pragmatists committed in advance to accrediting every crazy gambit put forward by a restive rogue régime on any of the UN's commissions. Unless the UN is reformed, it will not last. Bush is committed to making a persistent and systematic effort to rescue the UN from itself (its packs of factions and deal-makers, many of them hoping to line their own pockets as the Oil-for-Food Program has shown).

Of course, there's little chance that Bolton will be consented by the Senate. And the implicit advice will be: find us someone else to trash.

In the meantime, those on the far Right, like the organizers behind MoveAmericaForward.com which duns for advertizing funds to raise the question of UN irresponsiblity in the most vivid way possible, may have some tipping influence on whether Bolton's candidacy for the ambassadorship goes thru. But, MAF still will not own Bolton, as they would try to suggest were he to wiggle thru the Senate Dem's blockade, reinforced by a few tepid Republican Senators. The MAF folk may applaud some of Bolton's moves were he to get into the office for which the Prez has nominated him; but the MAFies are just as likely to whack Bolton with words akin to the verb "betray." MAF may end up equally disappointed with the Presiden'ts UN policy as brawt into action by his nominee Bolton, should the diplomat get the Senate's nod after all.

This MAF outfit in particular is led by people who have a far different agenda for the US than that of President Bush; they love to bad-mouth, as I have come to know by monitoring the radiocasts on the Internet by one of the ringleaders. But that's neither here nor there. I just hope the TV ads they are sponsoring are accurate and fair in their critique of an institution that just isn't all its cracked-up to be, and can't be; while it could be a whole lot less self-aggrandizing and helpful in the world. Everyday the UN does something somewhere in the world that is good and bettering for this or that zone; but everyday somewhere among its its agencies, agents and leadership and armed forces are doing something execrable as well (like the persistent pattern of rape by the UN forces in the Congo).

The UN needs an inner reformation, a reorientation to plausible and realistic goals, an attitude that doesn't assume to tell member states with heavy responsiblities in the world what to do about problems they are already dealing with (as in the case of the enormously-salaried Danish head of the Humanitarian Aid Commission who spouted off presumptively during the fund-raising for Tsunami Relief, trying to put the other enormously-salaried UN bureaucrats at the hub of everything, all with a certain air of entitlement, to say next to nothing about hubris). - Owlb

The earlier entries have been deleted as of today

Arts: Poetry "The Waste Land," great early poem by T. S. Eliot now super-annotated as noted in The New Criterion

For those esoteric lit buffs who would enjoy a thoro annotation (not directly a commentary, not directly a literary critique, mind you) of one of Modernist poetry's greatest achievements in the English lanuage, I find myself delited to be able to pass on to you a note on the work of Lawrence Rainey's new scholarly edition of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, a long poem published often nowadays as a free standing book in itself––together "with Eliot's Contemporary Prose." I take that to mean TSE's prose written around the time of composition of the long poem cited. The title of Rainey's work, unremarkably, now: The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contempory Prose. Not directly and not directly, as said, but still in the value of the achieved content, still it is a remarkable work of litcrit broadly construed, on a great poem broadly admired despite its difficulty, written in a broadly modernist vein with its very own Eliot-composed annotations! So what do we call Rainey's? Meta-annotations? Supplementary annotations? And as to the poem itself, it is also modernist not just as to technique, but also as to worldview, since this poem was composed before Eliot's conversion Christian faith and his taking up the post of warden in a hi-Anglocatholic church in Lodon. It's a work of literary art in the modernist secular humanist vein as the Christain philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd would define "humanist" technically, in terms of the Nature/Freedom dualism of ultimate Western values since the Enlightenment, a worldview hegemonic in our culture, but not totally determinative everywhere in everything cultural. The poet of The Waste Land became also the Christian poet of the Four Quartets (also often published a free-standing book of the four inter-related poems).

I found reference to the Rainey work on Eliot and his poem in The New Criterion, in an item by Adam Kirsch, entitled "Travels in the Waste Land." NC supplies an excerpt from Kirsch's review, but darng! that I can't find the whole litcrit piece from which the Kirsch excerpt is presented. Maybe you'll have better luck at the NC website for their April 2005 edition online. Meantime, here's the excerpt, as a kind of teaser, to be sure:

Here is a book of 260 pages built on a poem of 433 lines—a text-to-commentary ratio appropriate to the Bible or the Greek classics. More than any previous editor, Rainey provides the reader with every resource that might help explain the genesis and significance of the poem. He offers a chronology of its composition, from Eliot’s first passing reference to “a poem that I have in mind,” in November 1919, through its simultaneous publication in The Criterion and The Dial in October 1922. He offers notes on the verse and notes on the notes, including full English quotations of the sources Eliot alludes to or leaves untranslated.

There are many less esoteric articles, essays, and items in NC, with which one may be buffed, buffetted, or buffoonerated to one's hearts content in literary niceties, with critical overcasts reflective of Eliot's call for "discrimination" in the appreciation of works of art. A call which I thawt I found expostulated in a review by Douglas Murray of an IRA drama around the deeply traumatic events of Bloody Sunday sometime back, in Northern Ireland (see my attempt to understand Murray in my May 15, 2005 entry in reWrite, "Arts: Brit critic castigates pro-IRA drama for 'complacent liberals'." I think both NC and Eliot would have recognized the finely-nuanced line of argumentation there, in regard to the art/morals interface in a would-be work of drama as a true artform and literary-artistic genre. - Owlb

Link

Science: Space Exploration: The border between Earth's Solar System and the awesome beyond called Intestellar Space

This morning in the wee hours way before dawn, I learned that there's a boundary zone interfacing between the planetary system of old Sol and that awesome otherness of the farflung Stars, er, at least of the galaxy of the Milky Way in which old Sol makes its home. That star-spangled otherness, at the center of which Aristotle thawt there sat (sort of) the Unmoved Mover to which the orbiting Stars were attracted but which they could never reach no matter how attracted, is everything of what we call Outer Space.

Well, you get my idea. I learned that Voyager I had achievewd a distance of 8.7 million miles from the sun and had just now "entered the heliosheath, a region beyond termination shock -- the critical boundary that marks the transition from the solar system into interstellar space." Heliosheath. That's the core concept, the term for the core concept that dawned in the pre-dawn darkness of my learning this infobit. Apparently, according to the CNN report, the sun emits a constant "solar wind," and at the very edge of interstellar space the wind gives out. "At the termination shock boundary, the solar wind dissipates and begins to give way to the interstellar medium -- the gases that float in the void between stars." I guess it's the sudden absence of the wind that constitutes the "termination shock."

Voyager I is expected to continue on, in the slower but denser medium of interstellar physical reality - until 2020, when radio contact will be lost, but apparently the space probe will just keep going until pulled into some magnetic attractor that burns it up, or .... - Owlb

Link

Politics: USA: Judge Priscilla Owens confirmed by Senate at end of protracted conflict

After four years in nomination limbo, a Texas Supreme Court justice Priscilla Owens, black female and conservative philosophically was named by a 55-43 vote in the 100-member Senate, to become seated on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is headquartered in New Orleans, Louisana and holds jurisdiction over that state, Texas, and Mississippi. During the four years of waiting, President Bush consistently maintained his nomination of the Texan whom he had known for many years with deep appreciation. And just as persistently, the Leftwing battered this jurist with all sorts of distortions of her record, because of ideological resentment. Sen. Charles Schumer was the lead attacker who misrepresented the judge's record due to her penchant for a strict construction of the law as enacted. Owens was not among those who enjoyed judicial re-write of statues and codes, which brawt her into dissonance in regard to certain dominant opinions among her colleagues who think the poor should always win a case against a corporation, no matter what the legislature has written. But Owens equally stuck to the letter, spirit, and intent of law - even against the mitey in cases where they were on the wrong end of what justice demanded of a strict constructionist approach. - Owlb

Update May 26, 1:30 PM EST: In today's Washington Times (WaT), the real reason for the intensity of opposition to Justice Priscilla Owens, who won handily once the filidbuster tactic of the Democrats was defeated by the constitutional option of Sen Majority Leader, Bill Frist, the real reason comes to lite: Owens nomination by President Bush was resisted due to the Dem Sens applying the abortion litmus test. These guys/gals wanted Owens, who is a black female of conservative juridical philosophy, defeated; they wanted her defeated because she is not an all-out pro-abortionist. Charles Hurt reports in WaT:

"Priscilla Owen has voted against a woman's right to choose in every abortion-related opinion," said <Eleanor Smeal, president of Feminist Majority Foundation. ¶ "In particular, liberals oppose Justice Owen for declining in several cases to allow juveniles to bypass the Texas law requiring that minors notify their parents before undergoing an abortion."

Priscilla Owen's confirmation to the 5th Circuit Court's panel of justices was held up for four years because of this reason, apparently unmentioned in the Senate, or at least were it mentioned in all its vigor, yet not forcely brawt to the attention of the public by the news media. We almost lost a good judge in an important court - covering Federal matters in Missisippi, Louisiana, and Texas where abortion issues take a very different cast than in New York City and New England where even the self-identified Catholic politicos (and perhaps judges) have no other thawt in their head than an absolute rite of every women to choose to end a life in the womb under each and every possible circumstance. There's something horribly unnuanced in the jurisprudence for which Smeal and her Senate ally, Charles Schumer (Dem, NY), who kept this reason for his nonconfirmation vote quite hidden. There was no deference to the fact that millions of American women think his and her position are unconscionable. - Owlb

Link

Sports: USA: Lacrosse popularity surprises, contends with baseball for ratings

As hi school athletes slip into their straps this spring, that's in the Greater Philadelphia area at least, they're as much likely to be dressing up for lacrosse as for baseball. In lacrosse, the costume is much more extraterrestrial, and total-helmetted, and (I would hope, from seeing it on TV in the land from which it hails) much more thoroly padded. In baseball, you can get hurt; but in lacrosse you are likely to get whammoed in most games. Still, in and around Philly and in more and more locales around the USA, lacrosse's popularity increases in popularity by leaps and bounds, especially in the hi-school jock demographic mentioned. And as a spectator sport, its rapidly growing fanship seems to have something to do with the attraction of slammo blasto video games. But for the players, What is the attraction, compared to baseball with which it shares the season? Surely, it has its roots in the same increase of participation in extreme sports, both in real life and on TV reality shows. As fewer and fewer young male adults can even meet a military recruiter in their hi schools, colleges, and universities, where large activist groups disdain any form of respect for the warrior motivated by patriotism at arms, it would seem the most hily libidic of these guys are looking around for a way of doing what they're seeing in the videosports and on TV. Lacrosse appeals to an instinctive drive toward physical risk, tho channelled, like other such powerful drives that find some form of social acceptance, into the rules and goals of a very demainding sport. Baseball appeals to something else, where its rules and manner of scoring points renders it "the gentleman's sport."


Lacrosse History
Monthly Lacrosse Stats and News

Art: Iconography Soterios Panailidis, a master maker of rivetting images - but is it art?

I got an email from a list to which I subscribe. It proclaimed a father's delite in his daughter's Christian intellectual development and gave us all the route to her quite beautiful and thawtful website. There I also found a URL that took me to the True Fresco site; and, of course, I surfed the waves of curiosities breaking in as fresh webpages, finally dropping me off at a title on Byzantine Iconography. I was not prepared for the stimulating text, but even more so suprpised with my own delite upon viewing what the artist had there for his visitors regarding his faith and his artworks, goregeously accessible to my beauty-starved eyes.

Soeterios Panailidis has a brief essay at True Fresco that is accompanied by digitalized images of a selectoin of his iconography. The text raises the question about the whole Byzantine tradition of iconography - is it art or not? - Owlb

Panailidis - English & Greek site

War: Iraq Terrorists The Sunni Jordanian leading the slawter of Shi'ites in Iraq has been wounded

Abu Musab Zarqawi, the leader of the mass murders in Iraq, is said by his aide to have been definitely wounded when cawt in the crossfire of US Marines in a recent campaign to wipe out terrorist nests. Ellen Knickmeyer and Saad Sarhan report in the Washington Post today:

The U.S. military has said several Zarqawi associates have been captured in recent months, including a driver caught in February in western Iraq. The military described the incident as the closest it had come to apprehending Zarqawi, who escaped on foot but left behind his laptop computer and tens of thousands of dollars in cash.

Tho a Zarqawi aide says his chief is being treated by doctors, further word comes that a committee has been named to choose a successor. The committee includes three Saudis and one Iraqi - we are led to believe by Z's aide, Abu Karrar, who continues adeptly to use the Al Quaeda in Iraq group's media-manipulative expertise. The whole story may be a ruse to result in a story where Z survives and returns to action a hero to his Sunni following, mostly Wahhabist sectarians of the Al Quaeda stripe, except for their rabid anti-Shi'ite supertwist.

Were Zarqawi to croak, it could mean the reduction of his cabal's power, in part because he had ferociously insisted that the killing of innocents and noncombatants was a good practice, and wiping out members of the Shi'ite majority was an especially delicious prospect no matter how low a rank in society, no matter how female, and no matter how young. This degree of demonic terrorist ideology is now being questioned by many co-religionists of the Sunni 20% of Iraq, who of late have been regretting their boycott of the recent democratic national elections and lamenting the fact that they don't figure largely on the committee constructed to write Iraq's new constitution by August 15. "The extent of autonomy for regions such as the [Sunni majority] Kurdish-dominated north and the role of Islamic law in determining Iraqui statues," says the WaPo report. - Owlb

Link

Sports: Baseball: Phillies launch baseball season with 5 wins out of 7 games

The 2005 baseball season is looking really great for a Phillies fan like myself. Besides the 5 wins out of 7 games played, a good-go streak to be sure, there's that impressive win yesterday due in good part to the pitching of Cory Lidle (on whom the Phillies "bestowed a 2-year, $6.3 million contract extension after last season, despite the myriads of Naysayers"). Lidle opened lots of negative eyes yesterday when he had "a 99-pitch complete game over Baltimore," holding "the American League's best hitting team to six hits" in the Phillies 7-2 win in Baltimore's own Oriole Park at Camden Yards. So far this season, Lidle is "4-3 with a 3.75 earned run average," according to the Philadelphia Daily News sportswriter, Paul Hagen.

Also watch lead-off hitter, shortstop Jimmy Rollins. Lead-off hitting allows things to start well just by getting the player on first base. Then the second hitter has a chance to drive his predecessor forward, and even if the first guy gets bonked out between first and second, it keeps things busy for the opposing team's basemen, the shortstop, and the pitcher. So, at minimum, if there's any run at all, with someone again on first, your team has a similar chance to where you started. But, if your second hitter does better than a mere 1-base run, then you get a man each on second and third; with a 3-base run, a you get a man into homeplate and one onto third base. That's the math of the strategy of picking very wisely your lead-off hitter and I follow Hagen in saying these stats for Rollins warrant our keeping him in view when the game starts: "Over the last two seasons, the Phillies are 69-37 (.651) when he scores at least one run, and [only!] 33-58 (.363) when he doesn't."
Go figure!

Oh yeah, I've got some affinity for the Toronto Blue Jays too!- Owlb

Tonite & next 6 games: any momentum?

Science: Classics: Eureka! Archimedes texts being decoded by special X-rays and experts in ancient scripts

A collector bawt at auction a palimpsest with a painting superimposed on an older document inscribed onto goathide - for 2 million dollars. A palimpsest? Yes, as mentioned, is an old scroll or book where the pages are made of fine leather. Onto the scroll / book, there were inscribed in ink a text. That's the meaning of scroll or book for much of the ancient Western world (altho papyrus was another medium, a scroll or book made of reed fibres). A palimpsest is an inscribed text that has been layered over with another inscribed text, and in the case at hand, a painting as well. In 1998, the anonymous collector loaned out his mysterious acquisition to the Walter Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, donating additinal funds to see what would come up from the obviously older bottom layer of text.

The whole story told from the hypothesized beginning is that Archimedes, a Greek-speaking Sicilian scientist, wrote the originals (which we don't have in this case) and they or copies thereof hung around for a long time, until they were copied for the first or more times onto the goathide book we have today of some 174 pages of Archimedes' text.

Scholars believe the treatise was copied by a scribe in the 10th century from Archimedes' original Greek scrolls, written in the third century B.C.

It was erased about 200 years later by a monk who reused the parchment for a prayer book, creating a twice-used parchment book known as a "palimpsest." In the 12th century, parchment -- scraped and dried animal skins -- was rare and costly, and Archimedes' works were in less demand. {Not accurate to say "orginal" here; we can't possibly know that what the scribe used was the actual "autographa" written by the hand of Archimedes himself or by an amanuensis to whom he dictated his thawts.]

In any case, to enhance the prayer book, a painting was added, much like a cover illustration for a book today.

Also contrary to the impression given by the Associated Press, Newsday, and other reports regarding the value of the amazing scientific processes brawt to bear on the palimpsest, the Archimedes text cannot be read by the chemical and X-ray techniques themselves. It takes experts in classical Greek to interpret the brush strokes of the individual letters of the Greek alphabet to decide just what any one letter and letter-combinations (word) means And apparently, the prayerbook text on top of Greek is Latin.

Another error occurs in the statement Newsday attributes to Dr William Noel of the Palimpsest Project at the Walter Art Museum. Where Noel says, "It's the only one that contains diagrams that may bear any resemblance to the diagrams Archimedes himself drew in the sand in Syracuse 2000 years ago," the truth is that Archimedes lived about two hundred fifty years earlier than that (287 BC - 212 BC) - not around the time of Jesus. Noel is off by 10%, a terrible error of magnitude for dating Archimedes stunning scientific achievement, now known to be more stunning than ever.

What's important is that we have now "the only copy of the treatise Method of Mechanical Theorems, outlining the experimental procedures that helped the scientist think thru his math theories and formulate them more precisely. and "also the only source" we have so far "in the original Greek" language used by Archimedes - but not the original Greek autographa, an assumption impossible to make on the evidence at hand and highly improbable - for the treatise On Floating Bodies, in which Archimedes deals with the physics of flotation and gravity," according to the Associated Press report by Alex Dominquez, in Newsday online. - Owlb



Science Daily

Politics: Mideast: Sen Gordon Smith states the US policy situation clearly and leanly

A Republican Senator, speaking at the World Economic Forum (the outfit the sponsors the Davos, Switzerland assemblies for the glitterati and politicians who loke to be seen with them), but this time in Southern Shuneh, Jordan, made clear that American policy is n-o-t even-handed in regard to Israel and Palestine. Israel and the US have an ethical bond of inter-state friendship, I would add to Sen Gord Smith's remark. I agree with the Republican from Oregon that American policy is and should be, in the words of AP's reporter Mariam Fam, "security for Israel first and justice for Palestinians 'if possible.' "

Smith's other reported major points was simply that Arab countries have a pattern of neglect of their own horrendous internal strife, injustice, exploitation, and corruption. I make an exception of Iraq, for obvious reasons, tho the internal strife there is the most greivous of all, due to the failure of the Sunni minority to work creatively and positively with their distinctly minority situation, now that Saddam Hussein has been disengaged from his compulsive practice of genocide. In Iraq, Kurdish Sunnis on the other hand have been for some time functioning creatively and positively with their minority situation, and have found elbow room to contribute alongside the Shi'ite huge majority to make mutual contributions to the larger Federal democratic society.

Aside from Iraq, we don't see Arab countries doing much to move along to greater democracy, and social peace. Every Arab-dominated society has miinorities which are oppressed, according to the Muslims of Darfur who made a study to point out how the case of Black people there in Muslim Sudan is no different than anywhere else among members of the Organization of Arab States. In OAS countries the prevailing panArabist ideology's greatest internal contradiction from land to land is Muslim-against-Muslim racism.

Now, this generalization has some siginificant ameliorating conditions - for instance, Saudi Arabia just had (all-male) elections; and Kuwait just passed a law to enfranchise women for the first time. But, from the Berbers in North Africa to the Shi'ites Saudi Arabia and the Sunnis in Syria: the Mideast has a whole lot of countries whose first task is internal repair of decency, and creative development of democracy. Egypt, the Arab state of greatest population which the US has supported with billions annually has an extremely long way to go in getting past dictatorship, without allowing rabid extremists hidden within the Moslem Brotherhood to sweek into power with a vengence.

The Palestinian Aiuthority which, under President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, has barely won a return to the truce in Gaza, where Hamas has been shelling Israeli settlements again, nevertheless have tolerated the publication on its webstie the hatemongering anti-Semitic screed, Protocols of the Elders of Zion. According to WorldNetDaily,

An official Palestinian Authority information website directly affiliated with President Mahmoud Abbas has published on its Arabic language section a copy of the ''Protocols of the Elders of Zion,'' a classic anti-Semitic forgery, while the English section does not contain the work, WND has learned.

Abbas recently had been credited by the U.S. and Israel for fighting anti-Israel incitement.

Al-Nakba.com, the official Internet website of the Palestinian State Information Service, SIS, published an Arabic translation to the ''Protocols,'' a notorious forgery authorized by the anti-Semetic Czarist police in early 20th-Century Russia that purports to be minutes of a meeting of top Jewish leaders plotting world domination.

So, at this point, Abbas and Quereia seem to be rather duplicitous. Nevertheless, deomocratic gains have been made in Palestine, since the death of Yasser Arafat, and Hamas and Hesbollah are formidable foes to the PA's Fatah leadership. Still, the PAers of whatever party have a long way to go before they make evident any strong possiblity to answer Sen Smith's "if possible." If and when, then I would advocate that the US gradually reduce its financial allocations to Israel, and increase allocations to Palestine. Palestinians, increasing in democratic practices and civil rights in relation to their own régime and terrorist factions, should be helped to develop the economic infrastructure for the young men (and women) who otherwise have a tiny chance of remunerative work, in comparison with the population of Israel which has been helped to develop by multiplied billions from the US government over the last 50 years. And let's see the world's millionaires of Palestinian origin start giving to and investing in the emerging Palestinian state's agricultural, industrial, and commercial infrastructure.

But, in any case, the USA and Israel have a special bond, again a longtime inter-state ethical relation. This bond does not rest either on the Holocaust of which the US is not a guilty party, nor on Christian Zionism which is an ideology of only some Christians among whom I am not one, nor on a Jewish-athiest or Judaicist Zionism, tho there are many varieties of such Zionisms among Americans. The US government as a heritage of a 50-year inter-state ethical bond with Israel, and that will stand when the US turns to increase its support of a Palestine that cleans up its own house "if possible." Thankyou, Senator Gord Smith, Republican, Oregon. - Owlb

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Personalia: Good existential writing by Christian translator for Truth & Reconciliation in South Africa

A guy named Gideon Strauss who grew up in a white Afrikaner family and church in South Africa, during Apartheid times, but who as a teenager moved away from those roots, first as a pacifist who performed civic alternative service, and then as a would-be challenger of the regime, tells in chaste discourse the story of his journey. It includes a number of years as a translator for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission made famous by Anglican Archbishop Tutu - until Gideon reached his burnout point; and then, at a loss, he emigrated. Here's his story. I recommend it. The lengthy piece includes some powerful images in ink jet print and mixed media by Scott Kolbo. These I strongly recommend also. - Owlb




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Politics: Canada: Opportunism Awards go this time round to politicos Stronach, Layton, Martin

A blogger who I admire, Gideon Strauss, just published a comment on a Canadian parliamentary member who yesterday crossed the floor from sitting with the Tories composing the "official Opposition," to arrive in the ranks of the governing minority party, the Liberals. The member in question, whose finesse of opportunism, Gideon notes, not only brawt her into the Liberal ranks but also elevated her to the rank of Minister of the Crown in charge of the Human Resources and Skills Development porfolio. Minister Belinda Stronach is a rookie poltician and heiress to the Stronach fortune, built on her billionaire father's Magna Corporation.

One commentator on Gideon's note, David Koyzis, himself noted that in contrast to Stronach's opportunism, a member of the Liberals' now unofficial coalition partner, the New Democratic Party, had given us a counter-example to Stronach's blatant action. The NDP's former leader, Ed Broadbent had made an extra effort at civility, seeing how a Parliament member of another party was ill and would not be on hand for the actual vote on the Budget. Broadbent announced that he would not voite, thereby evening out both parties chances on passage of the Budget and the Layton Amendment thereto.

But, as I wrote in my own comment on Gideon's note today (of which this is an expanded re-write), that doesn't remove the opportunism of the current NDP leader, Jack Layton, who was going to do all he could to bring down the Liberal minority government by rejecting its Feb 5 budget, for which prior to recent developments the Tories and Bloc Québecois were both announcing support.

Meanwhile the Tories and especially the Bloc Q were chafing with outrage over the Adscam revelations which continued daily, and the situation gets worse for Martin daily as slowly the existence of a crime-tainted parallel funding operation working in the Lib's favour emerges with implications far beyond a scam of a handful of bureaucrats and advertizers united to deprive Quebeckers of a clean vote in referenda past. But that latter point is most intensely repulsive to people who want a separate self-determined Québec state with some form of sovereignty. Nor should we forget either that the scammers mentioned made their own fortunes in "le scandal des commandites" (Adscam). Back to the Feb 5 budget.

Layton who saw his moment of opportunity clearly, realized that, with an extremely close-shave vote-count looming, the government needed the NDP to keep the Libs in power. What should the NDP demand in return? Layton drew up a Spend-and-Buy budget for Martin with a price tage of $4.5 billion, in full contradiction of the Feb 5 Budget that had been placed on the agenda some months back and which the PM and his Finance Minister had championed up to that point in the Adscam crisis. Consequently, together the Layton-Martin coalition amended Feb 5, so that now the Tories and presumably the Bloquistes will vote for the unamended version in a first poll of Parliament, and then reject the Layton-dictated Spend-and-Buy second budget - which will be voted upon as an amendment to the first, changing the 2005 Budget's character utterly - which I tend to think will pass by a hair's breadth. Jack has to get credit for his crack at it!

Belinda's move is perhaps the most personally dramatic opportunist gambit of recent times in Parliament, but it is just one of several opportunist moves by members and leaders in Parliament at the moment. In regard to the larger picture, I think that, for sheer craft and leverage of otherwise dubious assets at the precise moment, Layton deserves credit for outmanoeuvering everyone else, aside perhaps from the Prime Minister himself.

In keeping the Libs in power, both the Martinites in the Liberal Party and Layton also get their combined chance to keep the third reading of the proposed legislation regarding yet another matter on track. and their expected favourable vote on course toward detraditionalizing the legal definition of marriage, which of course, the Bloc will also support. Of the three parties that will vote to detraditionalize, only the Bloc will have a fully free vote on this measure, while Martin insists the members of his large Cabinet must vote with the government or face severe party discipline; and, worst of the lot, the NDP is allowing no dissent of any of its members. I don't see Broadbent speaking out against this unprincipled stance of his authoritarian party on a matter which should be one of conscience and not one of party discipline, since it deals with the legal definitions and dispositions of matters of personal intimacy and the form of their recognition or non-recognition by the Canadian State (the Courts have already imposed detraditionalization in 5 jurisdictions, and the Supreme Court of Canada is stacked in favour of detraditionalization, but the latter wisely and again opportunistically sent the matter back to Parliament which had, in typically Liberal fashion, evaded the issue in a display of craven uxoriousness over many years).

That brings us then to Martin's opportunism amidst the continuing Adscam revelations and the new edge in that matter which oversahdows all else in this round of minority government, a matter that now exposes itself as frawt with forensic traces of a crime-edged parallel funding operation for the Liberal Party as a regular practice extending back to the pre-Martin Liberal governement of Jean Chrétien at least. On top of that, the date that Martin had selected for facing up to the Adscam revelations, was one that would result in months of delay. He strenuously campaigned for delaying until the current Adscam investigation is completed in December of this year. But, now it's clear also, there will be no final report from Judge Gomery's Commission in December 2005. It's clear now that Martin will get his breathing space into 2006, and who knows?, perhaps into a completed term of 5-years wheedling and misdeedling. At the moment, were there an election in a month's time, the Bloc stands to deprive the Liberals of any Parliamentary seats in Québec. Martin loses no chance to demonize the Bloc, since they are "separatists"; nor any chance to demonize the Tories, since they are "extremists from the West." He will have little ammo left to berate the NDP as "socialists" once they've kept his minority government in office, perhaps for a full term. Speak of Teflon .... Marteflon?

So, Martin comes off as Top Scorer. Layton is Most Valuable Player. And Her Wealthiness Stronach gets credit for her Personal Best, her crossing the floor of Parliament in a party-switch which may perhaps be the one distinguishing feature of her political career, unless she can actually clean up the Ministry of Human Resources and Skills Development before the Auditor General makes another damning sweep into its inner recesses as happened during the reign there of Jane Nixon, former PM Chrétien's fall girl in that case of Liberal scandal. - Yours, Owlb


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Arts: Brit critic castigates pro-IRA drama for "complacent liberals"

Douglas Murray writes bestsellers in Britain, where his most recent will appear this summer under the title Neoconservatism. He's also a freelance journalist. Presumably in this capacity, he attended the huge inquiry of the British Government into one of the most dread events since the IRA took to bombing consumers in department stores like Harrod's. The event was this time however a massacre in which were killed 13 civilians, and the wounded amounted to another 13. That event has justly earned its appellationm Bloody Sunday, with apparently no competition. The event has in its latter day begotten not only this massive inquiry, but also a set of theatrics composed of thespian scenes called a "drama."

Murray attended the inquiries portrayed, not only on Star days when real-live terrorists like Martin McGuinness were summoned, but also on the days in 2003 when the press corps (with whom Murray commiserates) couldn't stand the complexity of issues, viewpoints, and technicalities involved in the British military's confrontation with the terrorists and their supporters, including the infamous Bernadette Devlin, in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, January 30, 1972. The Bloody Sunday Inquiry was set up by Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1998, a hearing which lasted a year, and Murray was there even when the press corps dwindled to three.

The hearings have ended; the final report is not yet published. But the play is a howling, snickering, laffing success of mindless insouciance. But you must read Murray's analysis of this entertainment for "complacent liberals" whose grannies weren't shredded in Harrod's and whose fathers, brothers, husbands and lovers weren't among the "668 British soldiers killed during the troubles." For these deaths, "only 81 people have ever been prosecuted – all now released." But the play goes on, and after its successful trials will have a long run in the future to provide a sector of the Brit public with the delicacies of "the threatre of moral corruption," according to Murray. - Owlb


The Troubles

Politics: UN: Clinton & other UN SecurityCouncil members 'fundamental mistake' in setting up Oil-for-Food program for Saddam

According to Sen Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan) the Clinton Administration made a "fundamental mistake" in establishing the Oil-for-Food program when it allowed Iraq dictator and genocidist Saddam Hussein to parlay the distribution of oil contracts, and "allocations" of huge amounts of barrels of oil by vouchers he could issue to anyone he wanted to reward or buy, Washington Times tells us.

The two biggest politicians bawt by the Saddam's bestowal of vouchers went to a rightwing French cabinent minister and very close ally of French Prez, Jacques Chirac, Charles Pasqua; and to George Galloway, a Labour member of the British for a constituency in Glasgow, Scotland, and the most tireless and vociferous of Tony Blair's leading Britain into the War for Iraq's Liberation from Hussein. Pasqua is now a member of the French Senate. His genocide vouchers were squirreled thru a front company in Switzerland. Galloway was re-elected to Parliament after quitting the Labour Party, and presumably running as an independent in the May 5 election. Galloway won because he gained court judgments against the British Telegraph and the Christian Science Monitor for stories they ran that were apparently forgeries circulated by the named's friends. However, the new evidence that lead to the current revelations come from "findings being released today, [by] the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs permanent subcommittee on investigations ...." They charge that "former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua and British Member of Parliament George Galloway each received the right to market more than 10 million barrels of cut-rate oil from dictator Saddam's Oil Ministry between 1999 and 2003," reports WT's David R. Sands.

UPDATE: Washington Times reporter David R. Sands reports that both Pasqua and Galloway have emphatically denied receiving any kind of negotiable vouchers from Saddam Hussein's scheme to subvert the UN's Oil-for-Food program. George Galloway (Ind MP, Glasgow, UK Parliament) has just announced he's flying to Washington DC from London to tell the US Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs permanent subcommittee on investigations that he's innocent of all charges.


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Politics: Canada: Prime Minister Paul Martin regarded as Canada's most dishonest political leader by 63 % polled

According to the most recent poll nationwide, sponsored by CTV and The Globe and Mail, taken on the telephone by The Strategy Counsel between May 2-8 (before yesterday's vote in the House of Commons), Martin has slid to the bottom of the pile.

CTV reports the details online:

The sponsorship scandal and negative commentary over Martin's recent efforts to strike deals to keep his party in power seems to have eaten away at his once-vaunted credibility. ¶ When asked to name which of the leaders is the most dishonest:

• 63 per cent of Canadians picked Martin;
• 20 per cent chose Harper;
• 5 per cent of respondents said NDP Leader Jack Layton; and
• 3 per cent named Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe.

The picture gets even bleaker for Martin: 61 per cent of Canadians say they believe he would lie if it would help him politically; 54 per cent call him hypocritical; while 47 percent say he's indecisive. ¶ "Paul Martin is looking like a caricature of a stereotypical politician -- a person who is prepared to lie, a person who is prepared to bribe people with their own money," Allan Gregg, chairman of The Strategic Counsel, told CTV News.

In the poll, it was the Adscam revelations at the Gomery Commission hearings where Liberals and their agents increasingly undermined their own chief, and Martin's shelving the budget of February 5 (which was supported by the Conservatives) to sign on instead a week ago to the New Democratic Party's budget, in exchange for the votes in the Commons needed to keep himself in power.

Dancing about desperately to avoid an outfront confidence vote, except on the NDP budget, Martin denied the opposition its usual days to set the agenda and thereby these days bring forward a Confidence on Adscam and the Gomery revelations, so the Opposition leader Stephen Harper had to attach a no-confidence clause to a committee referral motion on another matter. The vote was one in which the Government with its NDP allies and two independents (and two members missing) received 150, while the Conservatives and the separatist Bloc Québecois received 153.

The Liberals had lost!

But they marched out their Caucus whip and their strategists and their legal experts and every gun they could fire, including those members of the press who dote on them (especially in alliance with the NDP) - marched them all out to say the vote was on a procedural matter, so did not have the dignity or import of a Vote of Non-Confidence, which would obligate the Government to resign and go to the polls. One headline characterized this whole process as a Liberal attempt to "ignore" the non-confidence motion, but the whole ignoring ring protests too much. Martin, of course, realizes his stay in office this round has the slimmest of chances, but he clings to them, while yet readying himself and his party for the possiblity of losing the budget vote. He would prefer to lose on that issue rather than on the revelations of his role in the Adscam scam, now before the Gomery Commission.

The Tories (as the Conservatives are nicknamed) have declared, in the words their House Leader Jay Hill, "We believe that Parliament is finished."

One prospect daunts analysts. Martin could call for a vote on the budget and win. Or, he could call for a vote on the budget and somehow lose, in which case he could go to the polls and come out with another leading minority vote that would put him back in power until December when the full Report of the Gomery Commission is expected. If the Gomery Commission doesn't give Martin a clean bill of health, which seems hi-ly unlikely, then Martin is committed to resigning. And in that case, Canadians would be back at the polls for the third round.

Martin should resign now. He's failed.

Tory says Libs offered him ambassadorship to prop up Martin's government

Holocaust: Remembrance Yom HaShoah 2005 - Jews remember, Neo-Nazis react

Thursday, May 5, was the annual observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day. "Jews across the globe Thursday observed Yom HaShoah, the day commemorating the deaths of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust during World War II." Many outside the Jewish community commemorate or otherwise take note of the day, and its significance for Jewish, for European, and for world history. The level of decimation, amounting to genocide, has its macabre cousins in other lands as well, but the story of the European Jews set upon by Hitler and his minions, pushed out of view by the continent's majority of Humanists and Christians alike, has been told so far and so wide, that continued denial becomes more and more difficult. It would seem. One would like to think.

This year in Israel, as each year, a siren brawt the citizenry to standstill in silence, while the nation's political leader, Ariel Sharon made a trip to Poland where he delivered a solemn address at the site of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, a unique kind of concentration constructed by the Nazis to destroy the bodily evidence of the death of the destruction of Jews by gassing and burning. Hence the idea of burnt sacrifice that hovers about the concept of Holocaust; but in its main meaning now this was no voluntary offering in the ancient Temple of an animal substitute, the proverbial sacrificial lamb. Instead, this Holocaust burnt up a human population in their generations according to a Nazi design and apparatus built for genocide. CNN reports on the speech of Israel's Prime Minister, the text of which is now on the official website of Sharon's office:

Accompanied by a delegation that included Holocaust survivors, [Sharon] described them as 'men and women who survived persecution, torture, mental and physical degradation; true heroes who experienced the death marches, the deportations and searches, who survived ghettos, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, valleys of death, and concentration and death camps whose monstrous names are carved in blood in the history of our people.' ¶ 'Do not forget how millions of Jews were marched to their deaths while the world stood silent; how thousands of Jews floundered in stormy waters searching in vain for sanctuary while the world stood silent; how the borders were closed and how the Jews were herded again behind barbed-wire fences -- into detention camps in Cyprus.' ¶ He added: "I am certain that all my colleagues -- world leaders -- remember how the world stood by in silence. Do not let them forget -- remember the silence of the world."

Of course, there is no disconnecting the aspirations of most Jews for the Israeili State from the politics of Israel's survival surrounded by a huge majority of Arab peoples, including those who want to return to their abandoned homes and gardens. But this year the current-political dimension of Holocaust Remembrance also brawt another pheonomenon into the overall picture in Israel. The memorial to the Righteous Gentiles who hid Jews from the Gestapo and helped in other life-saving ways, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, was marred with graffitti accusing Sharon of being himself a Nazi, equating him with Adolf Hitler. This kind of use of Sharon's name has been stock-in-trade for certain of the settlers who face removal this year from Gaza and West Bank settlements.

In another development, the commemorations in the last few days in Germany, were confronted with a planned March by several hundred neo-Nazis on the 60th Anniversary of Germany's surrender to the Allies. Pre-empting those plans, many thousands of Berliners and Germans from all over the country conducted a vigil stretching from the distant west of the city to its centre at the Brandenburg Gate, thru which the Nazis had applied to march tne next day, on their way past the national memorail to the Holocaust. The courts did not permit that symbolic move, but the Nazis under the name of the National Democratic Party were permitted to march, while far-left groups prepared to put their own stamp on the stream of events by means of violent interference with the NDP march. According to Erik Kirschenbaum, reporting for Reuters, Berlin's Mayor took a strong position:

"We want to stand up to these incorrigible people who even today are denying what happened under the Nazi rule," said Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit at the start of two days of "festival for democracy" events around the Brandenburg Gate. ¶ "May 8, 1945 was a day of liberation for Berlin, Germany and Europe from Nazi dictatorship," he added. "This date has a lasting meaning for history -- never again terror, war and genocide. We must remain vigilant." ¶ On Sunday, President Horst Koehler will speak to a special assembly of both houses of parliament in a solemn address of remembrance for the Nazis' victims. It will also be broadcast on giant screens at the Brandenburg Gate a few hundred meters away.

Even the commenoration of so greivous a historical period of desolation, the Second World War, including its epitomizing process of extermination of a people the Jews in the Holocaust, and of the Gypsies (Roma people) and numerous other communities and leaderships and ordinary people, does not prevent the infusion of current discontents into a mass psychic delusion such as neo-Nazism into a political party like the National Democrats (NDP) today.

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