In the Medieval Middle, or an Academic Cult?

Some readers may have read the blog, In the Medieval Middle - http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/

The blog is co-written by a number of middle English faculty who have embraced a current dogma called Object Oriented Ontology (you can look that up on Wikipedia - members of the wider OOO group wrote the article.)

In short, the group proposes that the history of non-human objects/subjects (animals, rocks, etc) is as important as that of humans. It sees it self as non-humanistic, and sees humanism as a problem.

I am all for intellectual explorations, even those I disagree with. I did think their discussion of Activism and the Academy (of which I have a long and intimate knowledge) was deficient http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2012/05/activism-and-academy-forum.html. They posted some of my initial comments, but as soon as I tried to good deeper with the criticism, my comments were removed.

In a recent posting of the ideas of Facebook, I found a similar pattern. Ideas that challenge the non-humanist troika were simply removed.

This willingness of the non-humanists to delete posts they do not like is really worrying.

But apparently, trespassing on the specified turf of the little group focused on In the Medieval Middle is forbidden.

They are not open to criticism. Both on Facebook and on the blog they refuse to post my comments and yet pretend to some academic respectability?

My comments did not attack anyone: they attacked the ideas they propose. But they cannot deal with that.

This is a real problem.

We seem to have little cult, who all post repeated posts in support of each other, but who will not take criticism. They have created or cooperated with their own publishers (e.g. Punctum Books), and have a small number of journals which endlessly reiterate the same ideas.

I suggest that medievalists no longer take the In the Medieval Middle blog seriously. It is not about open discussion; it is about promulgating a distinct, and very rejectable world view.

David Bolen, d. 1995. RIP for World AIDS Day 2011

WORLD AIDS DAY - DAVID BOLEN R.I.P.

David Bolen was by far the closest person of the over sixty people I have known killed by this disease. Although I was close to David, in so far as anybody could be - for he was always a lonely man, I did not know he wrote poetry. He did, in fact he wrote a lot of of it, arranged in four specific collections. This is a poem, written by David, which we read at his memorial held in New York on December 15th 1995.

Poem for My Funeral
(written January 29, 1993)

by
David P. Bolen
Born May 3, 1964
Died November 25, 1995

Cover the lawn with gray ashes
No daisies to push up, not I
No worms to feed, not I
Cover the lawn with gray ashes
and the pebbles of tooth and bone
No mark have I left, no marker, not I
No property do I own
No plot, not I
So cover the lawn with my gray ashes
And the pebbles of my teeth and bones
No violets will this May rose grow, not I
And when the lawn is covered with my ashes of blue and gray
And the pebbles of my teeth and bones
Then pop the corks
And drink deeply of fine champagne
Think of me and be glad
That I was let to see the wonders of the world
The lawn, the sky, flowering trees
The beauty of nature
And of man made things

Upper Class Twit of the Year

YouTube
- Upper Class Twit of the Year

Julian Pepe - The Bravest Person in the world

BBC News - Uganda fear over gay death penalty plans

See the video attached to this BBC story.

This woman - Julian Pepe - must be the bravest person in the world. She is an openly Lesbian woman in Uganda and was prepared to speak about it on the BBC.

Who is to Blame in the Israel Palestine Debate

My friend Richard Landes takes one view -Augean Stables : News Media, Arab Honor-Shame, and Operation Cast Lead: The Failures of Cognitive Egocentrism

Richard it is entirely impossible to avoid the provocation and sheer bad faith showed by every Israeli government since 1987 on land transfers etc. These in my opinion have produced the actions which Israel is now reaping. To say that is not to justify Hamas actions, but say Israel is an unfair actor also.

In Northern Ireland before 1969 the UK sat back and allowed the landed Protestant elite along with a majority Protestant urban-work force (which excluded Catholic workers from decent jobs) to establish a Protestant state, which limited Catholic but not Protestant votes to householders only; gerrymandered any still possible seat with a Catholic majority; set up a almost exclusively Protestant police force; established segregated housing and had para-National organizations and newspapers which engaged in continual efforts designed to belittle and the Catholics. [For example efforts to ban Catholic symbols, but to aggressively assert Orange symbols, such as the July marches past Catholic churches.]

Did any of this justify the 1969 Catholic Civil Rights uprising, or the response of the IRA when the British troops sent it to Ulster fired on Catholic marchers? Yes to the Civil Rights marches but no to the terrorism. The IRA had no right to bomb the center of my home city (Manchester), shoot soldiers in British pubs, or set off bombs in Ireland. But the reaction by elements in the Catholic Community can be explained - Protestant Ulster and the larger United Kingdom truly reaped what they sowed. I see precise analogies to Israel and its treatment of Palestinians here.

I would prefer a one-state solution in the area as I think states should recognize all their citizens equally. Clearly that is not desired by almost anyone there (there are too many hatreds), so a just two-state solution is the one which good people need to work for. I oppose efforts by Hamas to oppose this, and regret the collapse of Fatah. I oppose all violence by such groups. But I also think Israeli efforts to usurp West Bank land is the primary driver of the efforts of the resistance.

Israel has had the upper hand since 1967. It has been, under all parties in government, consistent in attempting to grab more and more parts of the West Bank.

It is true it has a free press, a court system, and a vital internal debate. But that internal debate is very narrow, and seems to have become much darker due to the growth of Haredi politics, religious Zionism, and the peculiarly selfish politics of the Russian immigrants.

Of course Hmas firing rockets at Sderot was wrong; of course the use of suicide bombers was wrong; but the seething violence of Palestinian politics is above all a reaction to Israeli oppression.

From my view it is Israel that is the *defining* actor and other countries and the USA need to pressure it to act better.

[Most typos corrected, I hope.]

Trafigura. Law firm Carter-Ruck. Private Eye. Toxic waste. Twitter.

Rick Warren - Letter to the Pastors of Uganda

Let's give Rick Warren credit here.

He is an evangelical US preacher. He has spoke out against the Ugandan bill as strongly as he can.

Unreservedly - Good on Rick Warren!!

Why can't Rowan Williams and Benedict XVI speak out?

Some commentators have been slightly reserved about supporting Warren.

I simply felt a flood of grace. I am usually anti-Protestant but here in the UK we have been discussing whether the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams *should* make a statement because of fear of seeming imperialist.

It is shameful for Catholics that noone has even suggested that Benedict XVI would intervene.

Rick Warren has, I think, single handedly won a victory for both freedom and grace on this subject.

Climate Change

Climate change it is not a big issue for me (I don't have any kids after all), and I have been quite open to the idea there might be a random climate fluctuation, something to do with sunspot activity (which seems asynchronous over record observation, although that must be too short an era to mean anything).

But here in the UK all parties seemed to accept there was a problem, including Mrs Thatcher and the current Tory leadership. (Not true of Tory bloggers btw.)

So my main issue concern was when it became a huge *political issue* on the right, seemingly to defend aspects of the oil industry.

As far as I am concerned, this effort to stop human CO2 emissions should be seen as a *prudential choice*. [I realise I have not always such choices in my own life, ahem.] Also, quite apart from climate change, I have as long as I can recall been aware of and opposed to environmental pollution. I would oppose pollution even if humans were not causing climate change.]

OTOH, although I am no abstinent, I have never really prioritised material consumption. [And I have never suspected such of other well intentioned people either.]

I believe we need a spiritually richer world in which more and more humans can realise a divine intellectual/artistic/spiritual potential than I do in ever escalating material satisfactions.

The Art of Consultation

Iain Dale's Diary: Book of the Day: The Art of Consultation

Consultations as they stand are a sham.

Here in Manchester the local HIV services group - GHT - last year hosted a "consultation" with the local PCT about whether HIV patients would be forced to go through local GPs.

While some African patients liked the idea, virtually all the British gay men (who have different issues of course) opposed it. Apart from anything else, HIV is in fact sufficiently rare that the average GP (mine for example) has no real understanding.

After the event it became clear it was all a stitch up. The PCT went ahead with the policy in any case. [I gather the same thing happened in London - where you simply could not get any non-HIV meds (but still necessary) from a clinic but had to reveal your situation to a GP.]

Plus the PCT announced on posters in clinics that they had consulted with GHT.

The f**kers knew exactly what they were doing to begin with. It was all about cost shifting in the NHS and nothing to do with those consulted. Or even end costs.

[After all, if people avoid HIV treatment for years because they won't go to a GP, they will get ill, but it will not count in any "rational" cost assessment.]

Now, I am a big fan of state-provided services. But that does not mean we should not allow the nasty state employees in the NHS and elsewhere any lee-way.

They all seem to act like shits.

Saving Uganda's Gays

Everyone needs to try to raise the alarm over the Uganda effort to enact the death penalty for homosexuality. See The Guardian

Life imprisonment is the minimum punishment for anyone convicted of having gay sex, under an anti-homosexuality bill currently before Uganda's parliament. If the accused person is HIV positive or a serial offender, or a "person of authority" over the other partner, or if the "victim" is under 18, a conviction will result in the death penalty.

Members of the public are obliged to report any homosexual activity to police with 24 hours or risk up to three years in jail – a scenario that human rights campaigners say will result in a witchhunt. Ugandans breaking the new law abroad will be subject to extradition requests.

Ruth Gledhill has just posted in The Times

This gay blogger from Uganda's post today is just heart rending.

This is a former colony, with a UK system (sort of), and homosexuality
there is illegal to begin with because of our imperial legacy.

What can we do?

We need to pressure Uganda's government.

One Third of Uganda's budget comes from foreign aid. This may change in the future, but it is the case now and will be for a a number of years. Meanwhile oil companies are beginning to locate and exploit oil there.

The UK gay movement needs to gear up for this now.

But in Britain we should all be able to unite in protest on this. Labour, Liberal Demoocrat, Tory, SNP, PC, UKIP - all officially oppose this kind of hatred.

LabourList is the most public forum I, at least, can access.

This issue must come into focus now, and the UK must act.

Tory Class Warfare Again

Iain Dale's Diary: What About the Planet?

As preparations mount for the Copenhagen summit, which will be attended by more than 15,000 delegates and diplomats, The Independent reports that up to 30,000 environmental activists will be going along for ride too. The hypocrisy is astonishing. [sticks tongue in cheek] Do they not care about the planet? Do they not think about their carbon footprint? Clearly not. And they have the cheek to lecture the rest of us about how we should cut down on the number of flights we take.

Iain's posts seem to be getting more and more obtuse.

Quite apart from the fact that at any conference, people nearby (i.e. via train) can attend in greater numbers, he willfully misstates the matter in terms of individual events.

The size of the earth's atmosphere is affected by human activity, but any single human activity is more or less irrelevant.

I do realise this may be a hard concept to grasp.

But let me put it another way.

One single Tory MP or PPC avoiding tax is more or less irrelevant to the government's tax take. But the entire tax avoidance efforts of the Tory class is most certainly relevant.

What I find interesting is that, as they sniff a Tory victory (but let's think 1992, 1992, 1992), the ur-colours of the Tories are showing themselves.

Both in the comments of lower middle class Tory oiks like Iain Dale, and in actions of the core-Tory rich you are a running dog for, Toryism is not about politics at all.

It is about preserving the privileges of the already rich and wealthy.

James Merrill - A Different Person

BOMB Magazine: James Merrill by Thomas Bolt

I've been reading James Merrill's memoir A Different Person.

It includes accounts of his relationship with his Jacksonville parents, his early life on West 11th St, New York city, his homosexual life in the early 1950s while on an extended trip to Europe (made possible by his trust fund, since his dad was founder of Merill Lynch), his first encounter with Byzantine mosaics at Ravenna, and his encounters with and thoughts about people as diverse as Alice B Toklas and Greek soldiers. He died of AIDS in 1995.

The book is absolutely fascinating, completely snobbish, intellectually arrogant and orientalist as well. I am finding it absorbing.

But the photograph attached to this article is also very disturbing. In one sense he looks very young for a sixty five year old, but in other ways the ravages of AIDS are scary. His skin is not only wrinkled but bumped with, I think, molluscum contagiosum - one of the more minor but still disfiguring illnesses of the early version of AIDS.

What is most contradictory of all about the man is that he wrote some of the greatest American poetry, with the single biggest block of it being dictated to him from 1953 onwards via the Ouija board.

Save the Church of England

Ruth Gledhill - Times Online - WBLG: Protest at prelates shun attack on lesbian woman bishop

*We* (and I say "we" because if the ABoC created a pastorate for us Romans who, while not giving up on Rome in the eschaton, are looking for a place where we can pray, say our Aves, and not be expected to vote Tory, we would jump) have rejoiced in the new Stockholm bishop.

Could you find a better Christian?

So here is the question, Rowan (who I am sure reads Ruth's blog), how is this open loving Swedish Church trying to bear witness in a basically materialistic society not like us? Why does the CoE leadership think it has to dance to the tune of semi-literate evangelical churches in Africa (especially in Uganda) which are currently calling for the death penalty for being gay?

Let these nogoodnick-churches go. They can enjoy communion with a bunch of rich right-wing US Episcopalians who would not share a toilet with them.

But do not let them destroy an Church IN England based on true love of God, true Biblical Theology, a Much better ecclesiology than Romanism, and the true intuitions of of our not so bad civilisations best parts.

Ruth Supports Lesbian Bishops

Ruth Gledhill - Times Online - WBLG: Protest at prelates shun attack on lesbian woman bishop

Ruth is the purest of the pure, and manifestly both a nice and a good person (perhaps a specifically English characteristic).

Her story here is great.

OK I Want the Mass in Latin and I Want it Now

Anything to avoid this:

YouTube
- Liturgical Abuse: Puppets (WCCTA 2008)

The Law That Shames Uganda

Iain Dale's Diary: The Law That Shames Uganda

The anti-homosexual laws now being pushed in countries like Uganda are not something that just happens because they are backward societies.

They exist at all because of the hangover of Victorian legislation created during the period of British rule. The is a very large overlap between where these laws exist and the British Imperial legacy. There is much less of a problem in, for example, former French colonies (homosexual acts ceased to be illegal with the enaction of the code Napoleon).

Second, countries like Ugana have diverse local populations within which homosexuality had a whole series of different social meanings.

But, is in many of these countries a type of no-nothing evangelical Christianity, push originally by British missionaries, now dominates local cultures, and it is this above all which backs up local homophobia, and in this case is actively trying to get the laws passed.

What can we do?

Not much, but we can at least accept our historic part in the situation and give gay and lesbian Ugandans asylum here.

Turkey in Europe

Michael Heaver's Blog: Is Turkish EU membership now dead in the water?

I don't really get the objection to Turkey joining, apart from German racism.

Greece supports it, and so do all our major parties.

I agree with some "hold" on Turkish free movement of labour util we have more equal economies, but I see no reason Turks are to be considered lower than the Dutch, Greeks, Italians, Latvians or Romanians (etc).

The territory of Turkey is integral to all European history, and the Ottoman Empire, as the precursor to Ottoman Turkey was a central part of the European power system in the 18th and 19th century.

Plus, Turks are often nice people and have really great food.

Against DNA Databases

The influence of DNA in crime prevention is underestimated - we must stand up for the DNA database | LabourList.org

I find this among the most disturbing articles I have ever read on LabourList.

Government is a function of out lives as people and communities. We do not exist as functions of government.

From the perspective of this contributor there is no conceivable reason why the entire population should not be DNA tested, and totalitarian control imposed.

Here is why that should not happen. Government can be a force for good, but often oppressive people (elected or appointed) gain access to state and/or police power. Those people often (on any fair reading of history) act a forces of oppression.

While we need to advocate for the use of government as a force for good, we need to be aware that government can be oppressive.

Mr. Zarb-Cousin wants to turn us all into a sort of URL for the government to control.

That's dreadful.

It's much better to preserve freedom, even if some crimes go unpunished.

Goverment Paid Child Care and a Guaranteed Minimum Income

A good day for parents, for Labour and for Gordon - LabourList.org

The Sunday Times is reporting today that Gordon Brown has decided to change his mind on withdrawing the relief on childcare tax vouchers.

In this case I thought the government's original position that this was not a good targetted use of money made sense.

But what has become clear is that state benefit programs which benefit the middle class as well as the working class (e.g. tThe NHS, child benefit, old age pensions) are virtually untouchable whereas benefit programs which only target the poor (e.g. jobseeker's allowance, housing benefit, income support/ESA) are subject to continual massive hostility from a right-wing driven effort to libel the "undeserving poor."

This echoes experience in the US where non-means tested programmes such as Medicare and Social Security are untouchable, but programmes to help the poor are repeatedly attacked.

I think the solution to this is to moved to a Guaranteed Minimum Income, distributed by the state to all (regardless of wealth). Such a programme would cost a lot in taxes, but since the selfish middle class would get it as well, it would be able to ensure a real safety net for the poor.

Hate Speech Laws: Not a Good Thing

Paul Waugh | Blogs | Evening Standard

Straw U-turn on gay hatred/free speech bill

Chris Smith won't be happy.

Last night, the former Cabinet minister (and first MP to come out), predicted that there could be more homophobic attacks as a result of the Government defeat on its plans to criminalise 'gay hatred'.
Former Tory Home Secretary Lord Waddington managed to insert an amendment insisting that free speech would be a defence against any such crime - effectively a wrecking amendment.

In the most effective Parliamentary ambush for years, Waddington knew that with one day of the final Parliamentary session today, the Government ran the risk of losing the entire Coroners and Justice Bill if the Lords dug in.

Labour MPs thought they would overturn the Lords defeat today, but now Jack Straw has waved the white flag.
Of course, the Government have tried to slip this out as quietly as possible. A Ministry of Justice spokesman said they were “very disappointed” that the Lords had voted for the free speech amendment.
“It is with considerable disappointment, therefore, that the Government has agreed not to remove the ‘freedom of expression’ section".

Comedians and Christian campaigners, who have lobbied hard against the clause, will see it differently. As will Chris Smith.

I'm not at all sure that Jack Straw has done anything wrong. I accept, but with some unwillingness, the concept of "hate crime", but I think free speech should be protected above all. [Indeed, I would incorporate all of American First Amendment jurisprudence into UK and European law if I could.]

At the moment gay people are pretty well accepted by the establishment, but that could change at a moment. History is very far from a predictable progress to ever greater liberation.

At some stage, gay people, like others, will value an established culture of free speech much more than any transient an largely unenforceable hate crime law.