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Al Qaeda 2.0: What the next 10 years will bring By Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister How has al Qaeda changed in the last decade - and what does that tell the world's counter-terrorism experts about what it will look like ten years from now? As Congress prepares to hold a joint House and Senate Intelligence Hearing on the threat Tuesday, U.S. counter-terrorism officials tell CNN that al Qaeda today would find it very difficult to repeat an attack on the scale of 9/11 - but it has become a more diffuse and complex organization. The very name has become a label and an inspiration for terror cells on three continents. Even if, as U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta asserts, Osama bin Laden's organization is mortally wounded, tracking and countering Islamist terrorism will continue to consume billions of dollars and some of the best minds in western intelligence for years to come. And that's precisely the goal of al Qaeda new generation of leaders - in their 30s and 40s. They are focused less on the spectacular - hijackings and "dirty" nuclear bombs - and more on a war of attrition. And they see opportunities for establishing new bridgeheads as the Arab revolts undermine authoritarian rulers and their ruthless intelligence services. Ten years ago al Qaeda was a bureaucratic organization headquartered in Taliban-run Afghanistan which had its own personnel and IT departments. ALSO READ on Security Clearance "Dead, Captured, Wanted: How the US has fared against Al Qaeda since 9/11" It comprised mainly Arab fighters and had loose ties to other jihadist outfits - in Chechnya and south-east Asia for example. Today groups proclaiming their affiliation to al Qaeda find a home in ungoverned spaces in Somalia, Yemen, the Russian Causcasus and the Sahara. There are even al Qaeda cells in Egypt's Sinai desert, according to Egyptian military intelligence. Under pressure, al Qaeda "central" - the remnants of bin Laden's group - has developed links with militant groups such as the Pakistani Taliban, the Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba - all of which are well entrenched in Pakistan. The battle against al Qaeda in the next ten years will be on a much broader canvas. The Rise of the Affiliates In the last two years, three groups - al Qaeda in Pakistan, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP) based in Yemen, and the Pakistani Taliban - have tried to carry out attacks in the United States, while Europe has been threatened by an even wider constellation of jihadist groups. Al Shabaab staged its first attack beyond Somalia with a double bombing in Kampala, Uganda in 2010. "The affiliates are playing a greater role today - a more menacing role today - than in quite some time," U.S. State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism Daniel Benjamin told a recent conference of the New America Foundation. "While the AQ core has weakened operationally, the affiliates have become stronger and consequently the broader AQ threat has become more geographically and ethnically diversified." Better intelligence and a relentless campaign of drone attacks has weakened al Qaeda central and cut off its sources of funding. In one video that emerged from his compound in Abbottabad, Osama bin Laden cut a lonely, isolated figure - hunched over a TV screen. It seemed like a metaphor for his organization. While jihadists still travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan for training and the opportunity to take part in attacks on western forces, a growing number are heading to Yemen and Somalia - just as they headed to Iraq at the height of the insurgency there. U.S counter-terrorism officials already see AQAP in Yemen as the most immediate threat to the United States. Under the guidance of American cleric Anwar al Awlaki, the group attempted to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 and in October 2010 dispatched two printer bomb packages from Yemen's capital Sanaa that were timed to explode over the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. The group has taken advantage of political turmoil in Yemen to expand its safe haven in the south. "Our highest priority is the United States. Anything there, even on a smaller scale compared to what we may do in the United Kingdom, would be our choice, " Anwar al Awlaki told an operative based in the UK in an encrypted internet communication in 2010. While Osama bin Laden thought in terms of weapons of mass destruction and mass casualties, Awlaki's template recognizes that western intelligence has vastly improved its ability to detect such ambitious plots. Instead, his group looks for vulnerable niches: in air cargo, or using explosives such as PETN that are difficult to detect. It is less about the destruction such attacks might cause and more about the expense in defending against them, and the psychological effect should they succeed. It is less about establishing bin Laden's dream of a global Caliphate and more about disrupting western economies. Above all, it's about attacks by individuals, some of them directed and mentored in the mountains of Yemen, others self-radicalized by the slick online propaganda being produced by AQAP. And it seems this approach is finding favor elsewhere. Al Qaeda central's media arm As Sahab recently released a video titled "You are Only Responsible for Yourself," encouraging followers to carry out acts of individual terrorism in the West - by buying weapons at gunshows in America for example, where background checks are not carried out. In it, American al Qaeda propagandist Adam Gadahn said: "It's simply a matter of taking precautions, working in total secrecy, and making use of all means to do damage to the enemy." Gun attacks by terrorists are one of the scenarios that are now causing most concern to Western-counter-terrorism officials because of the relative ease with which such weapons can be acquired. Their potential lethality was demonstrated by alleged Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik in his shooting rampage outside Oslo in July, an attack that has drawn comment on jihadist forums. Counter-terrorism sources in Europe and the United States tell CNN that their greatest concern is the vulnerability of soft targets such as hotels and shopping malls to gun attacks and hostage-taking. The Mumbai attack in November 2008 captivated global media attention for three days, as a small group of Lashkar-e-Taiyyiba terrorists held off Indian security forces in two of the city's luxury hotels. A total of 164 people were killed. Senior al Qaeda figures have publicly called for the Mumbai model to be exported. The New Global Al Qaeda Network If al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula seems the most potent affiliate today, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) may not be far behind it. It has established a presence in areas of Mali, Mauretania and Niger where government is weak - and has made millions of dollars through kidnapping westerners and working with drug smugglers. It could take advantage of chaos in Libya to obtain sophisticated weaponry including surface to air missiles. So far relatively few of its fighters appear to have entered Libya but that could change. Libya's National Transitional Council has also been grappling with the increasing assertiveness of Salafi Islamists in the east of the country, some of whom they fear are sympathetic to al Qaeda, according to a former Libyan jihadist. AQIM may also forge links with other jihadist-terrorist groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria which has claimed responsibility for killing dozens in a suicide car bombing of a U.N. building in Abuja last month. "What is concerning about AQIM is that it's a group that's Africanizing and is trying to extend its zone of influence - making contact with Boko Haram in the north of Nigeria and with [Somali group] Al Shabaab, says EU Counter-terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove. Its reach may not yet extend to the West, but nor did that of AQAP two years ago. Like AQIM, al Shabaab in Somalia is beset by internal rivalries and lost one of its key operatives Fazul Abdullah Mohammed in a fire-fight in Mogadishu recently. But it also has plenty of recruits from north America and Europe in its ranks. And there are signs that it is co-operating with al Qaeda in Yemen, a short distance across the Arabian Sea. Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali citizen captured in April and interrogated aboard a U.S. navy ship for two months before being taken to New York to face terrorism charges, had been in direct contact with Anwar al Awlaki and had attempted to broker a weapons deal between the groups according to the indictment in his case. Warsame has pleaded not guilty. In Iraq, the U.S. strategy to turn Sunni tribal sheikhs against al Qaeda vastly degraded the group, but under the title Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) it is still able to launch co-ordinated bombing attacks, as was illustrated by a wave of deadly bombings across the country in August. If allowed to re-establish itself, the group would try again to ignite sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shiite Iraqis, and sabotage the investment Iraq badly needs to revive its economy. In a recent paper for the New America Foundation, Brian Fishman argued that ISI "will have to look outside Iraq's borders to engage directly in al-Qaeda's global strategy of bleeding and weakening the United States." Globally, the only unambiguously positive picture in the fight against al Qaeda terrorism is in South East Asia where groups affiliated with al Qaeda - like Jamma Islamiya - have been significantly weakened by counter-terrorism operations by security services and by a hemorrhaging in local support because of the number of Muslim civilians killed in its attacks. Al Qaeda Central – trying to adapt Al Qaeda central has suffered one blow after another this year. Besides the death of Osama bin Laden, drone strikes have taken out several top al Qaeda commanders in Pakistan, most recently Atiyah al Rahman, al Qaeda's chief of operations. A senior U.S. counter-terrorism official told CNN that from an operational standpoint the death of al Rahman was a more severe blow to the terrorist organization even than the death of bin Laden. Another senior figure, Younis al Mauretani, was detained by Pakistani authorities in August, and Ilyas Kashmiri, one of the most effective terrorists in the world, was reported killed in a drone strike in June. But al Qaeda central remains the "policy-making" authority and has the allegiance of its regional affiliates. It has powerful associates who thrive on Pakistan's inability to control its border territory and its ambivalence towards the "new" Afghanistan. A grand bargain that led moderate the Taliban to join the political process and sever links with al Qaeda – – and at the same time injected new stability into Pakistan - would further shrink al Qaeda's space. But that seems a distant prospect. And there are signs that al Qaeda is adapting to its new circumstances. It appears to have moved some of its operations to Pakistan's settled areas to escape drone strikes. Al Mauretani and two other operatives were captured in the teeming city of Quetta in south-western Pakistan. And both al Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban have established a foothold in Karachi, Pakistan's violent metropolis on the Arabian Sea. In May an al Qaeda unit attacked and occupied a Pakistani naval station in the city. In recent years al Qaeda has tried to 'turn' western jihadists intent on fighting in Afghanistan, training them to return to Europe and the United States to carry out attacks. Najibullah Zazi, a young Afghan living in Denver, was one such recruit. Bryant Neal Vinas from Long Island was another. And it's not just al Qaeda. Pakistani American Faisal Shahzad who tried to blow up a car bomb in New York's Times Square on May 1, 2010 was recruited and trained by the Pakistani Taliban, not al Qaeda. British authorities say hundreds of Western militants are currently training or operating in Pakistan. Al Qaeda has also promoted new recruits who have a keen understanding of Western vulnerabilities. One of them is American but Saudi-born Adnan Shukrijumah, who is thought to have orchestrated Zazi's bomb plot against the New York subway system. And the organization appears to be using increasingly sophisticated encryption techniques in internet communications with operatives dispatched to the West. Even so, it is now a more fragmented organization. Rami Makanesi, a militant from the German city of Hamburg who spent time in al Qaeda camps in Waziristan in 2009-2010, and was subsequently convicted of involvement in plans to attack European targets, told German interrogators that al Qaeda had split up into 30-40 subgroups. He said al Qaeda was now a "title" for a constellation of jihadist groups in the area, including militants from the Arab world, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and "even the Taliban." Vinas, the American al Qaeda recruit, convicted of helping to plot an attack on the Long Island Railroad in 2008, said cooperation was so close between al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, and other Pakistani militant groups that lines blurred between them. U.S. counter-terrorism officials say it is this blurring between different jihadist groups - together with the danger posed by completely homegrown "al Qaeda inspired" terrorists - that makes the terrorist threat to the United States so complex today. "The fact that the threat can now come at us from so many directions means that our work is more challenging than ever," a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official told CNN. The New Al Qaeda Strategy New al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri's strategy is to harness the energies of al Qaeda's affiliates but to exert greater direction over them, according to Noman Benotman, a former Libyan jihadist once acquainted with bin Laden, Zawahiri, and several other al Qaeda leaders. While every al Qaeda affiliate has recognized Zawahiri as al Qaeda's new leader, counter-terrorism analysts believe it will be difficult for Zawahiri - long a polarizing figure in the jihadist movement - to exert strategic direction over them. The death of Libyan operative Al Rahman appears to have been a further blow in this regard. "Atiyah was the one affiliates knew and trusted, "a U.S. official told CNN. According to Benotman, now a senior analyst at the Quilliam Foundation, a UK counter-terrorism think-tank, Zawahiri is determined to take advantage of political turmoil in the Arab world. "Their top priority right now is not Afghanistan or Pakistan or launching attacks against the United States, but re-organizing themselves in the Arab world," Benotman told CNN. Benotman says he has detected a noticeable softening in Zawahiri's ultra-hardline rhetoric in recent months, and believes he may be trying to revive support for the organization in the Arab world after a backlash against it because of the barbaric violence of its Iraqi affiliate. In the short term Benotman predicts that al Qaeda will devote significant energy to building up a capability to strike Israel from the Sinai, Gaza, and neighboring countries because of the group's ideological view that Israel props up what it views as a secular Arab political order that it seeks to topple. Launching attacks against Israel would also be a calculated attempt by the group to re-energize its support base, according to Benotman. The Importance of the Arab Spring Most counter-terrorism analysts agree that key to al Qaeda's fortunes will be the evolution of the Arab Spring. The dismantling of oppressive security and intelligence police in several Arab countries has given it an opportunity to re-organize and more easily transit operatives though the region. "Some of their comrades from the Afghan days are now commanding rebel units in Libya. They see Islamist-only rebel brigades being formed there. They see what is going on in Yemen - of course they feel they have a huge opportunity," Benotman told CNN. While the origins of the protests made al Qaeda seem irrelevant for a period, the well-organized young professionals who led those protests are vastly outnumbered by poor, conservative Muslims who - in Egypt at least - are beginning to display their political muscle. For al Qaeda the Arab revolts are a double-edged sword. Prolonged instability and a deepening economic crisis would work in its favor. But a new political model in the Arab world, where popular Islamist parties play a constitutional role, would undercut al Qaeda's appeal. U.S. State Department Counter-terrorism Coordinator Benjamin says that should events in the Arab world lead to "durable, democratic, elected, non-autocratic governments then AQ's single-minded focus on violence as an instrument of political change will be severely, and I think irretrievably delegitimized." But the Arab Spring is like a ladder whose rungs are far from secure, and the events of 2011 are just a couple of steps up that ladder. Filed under: Al Qaeda • Arab Spring • Libya • Living With Terror • Osama bin Laden • Pakistan • Terrorism • Yemen vardenafil vs tadalafil https://www.pharmaceptica.com/ Everett Loverink But be careful, if your opponent is stuck at step 2, too much thinking might do harm. 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Anglican Mainstream South Africa ACNA ANGLICAN ANALYSIS Contact AMSA FCA – Southern Africa FCA and EFAC RSVP Publications Order Form South African Articles The Anglican Church in Africa The Jerusalem Declaration « Older Entries « Of course women can have it all – they just don’t want it Friday, December 24th, 2010 A highly provocative view from a leading female academic By Rachel Porter There would be a gasp of horror from the small but vocal minority of women who are still fighting tooth and nail for their ­version of gender equality. But if it were possible to switch off the pressure that women feel to smash the glass ceiling and become high-flying, have-it-all executive superwomen, I suspect the majority in Britain would heave a collective sigh of relief. Somehow, over the decades, unhelpful, unrealistic and inaccurate myths about ­gender equality have been hung around our necks like lead weights by the feminists and politicians who have dominated the debate. Myths: Feminists and politicians who have headed the debate for decades have created an unrealistic expectations of gender equality They have encouraged us to strive for a world in which women and men occupy exactly the same positions in the home and the workplace. And they would have us believe that until there are as many househusbands as housewives, and as many female CEOs as male, we will not have attained gender equality of any kind. But this notion is false and hopelessly out of touch with the ­aspirations of the majority of women. Try telling these ‘experts’ that real ­equality is not about shoe-horning more women into the boardroom or more men into ­primary school teaching, but about opportunity and choice instead. Try telling them that a stay-at-home mother is exercising the same right to choose her own path as any dedicated career woman, and that those personal choices and preferences are the real reason why men and women tend to order their lives differently. They will tell you that you that you’re a product of an inherently sexist world and that heavy-handed social engineering — like the kind of ‘positive discrimination’ introduced in Norway to boost the ­numbers of women in high level professional ­positions — is the only cure for it. I am a sociologist and a feminist of sorts, and I have watched with growing horror as the political classes have cultivated around a dozen key myths about gender equality to prop up their leaky arguments about the need for drastic action. And with these arguments gaining ground in some parts of the world, it feels high time someone tackled the myths behind them. The first of these is the idea that our equal opportunities policies have failed. That ­simply isn’t true. The big success of British equal ­opportunities legislation has been to narrow the pay gap between men and women, from around 29 per cent in 1975 to as little as ­- 10 per cent today. And in fact, more detailed studies of pay today show that the gap doesn’t exist at all for the generation who are just entering the workforce. Most of this change took place quickly in the Seventies, when the Equal Pay Act came into force after high-profile protests for equal pay of the ­previous ­decade — the Dagenham Ford strike, on which the recent film Made In Dagenham was based, is the most famous. Choice: Equality isn’t about shoe-horning women into the boardroom but giving them the opportunity to decide themselves (posed by models) Since the mid-Nineties, the pay gap has remained more or less stable in the UK and across Europe. In that time, household income and disposable income has almost doubled, women have been having fewer children, and the number of them in higher education has risen from a third to over half. In every meaningful way, our opportunities are equal to men’s, but still we hear cries of disappointment that women are not taking an equal number of top jobs. In reality, although opportunities are now equal, women’s attitudes and aspirations regarding work haven’t changed much at all. In 1975, six out of ten women of working age had a job. Today that number has risen to just seven out of 10. In the workplace, men are more likely to ask for pay rises, while women are more likely to ask for a reduction in their hours, to achieve a better work/life balance. Does that mean that sexism is still rife? Or does it simply mean that women and men have ­different attitudes to work, despite ­having equal opportunities? And if so, why should they be made to feel bad about that? Women are the subject of several other myths favoured by those intent on pushing more of them up the career ladder: There’s one about their distinctively ‘soft’ managerial style, which it is often argued is an asset to any male-dominated business. It seems that those feminists who would baulk at sweeping generalisations in any other context are more than happy to suggest that all women (and presumably, no men) bring this quality to the workplace. Then there’s the idea that women prefer to earn their own money, instead of being financially dependent upon a man. Yet, women’s aspirations to marry up to a man who is better-educated and higher-earning persists in most European countries. It may make the radical feminists wince, but it’s true. For it is only a small number of women who really hanker after ‘having it all’. In the UK, roughly half of women in senior professional roles don’t have children by the time they’re 40, and probably never will. Of those who do, the majority have a ‘nominal’ family — an only child, cared for by someone else. It ticks a box, satisfying their ambition to be a parent, while minimising the cost and ­inconvenience of childcare, inevitable once she returns to work. Are these the women who have it all? If so, is it any wonder so many prefer to make a choice between career and family? But still, we’re fed more myths about how we can, and should, eradicate the differences between the sexes to benefit women, ­business, and society as a whole. Out of touch: So-called experts may suggest that more men should become primary school teachers (posed by models) We’ve been told untruths about the ­success of policies implemented in Scandinavia, from ­Norway’s ­quotas for the percentage of women on every company board, to ­Sweden’s famous family-friendly legislation entitling every working parent to 16 months paid leave per child (two of which are compulsory). They never ­mention that in ­Norway, companies ­have to fulfil their government-decreed boardroom quotas with female executives from Britain and America (where more women make it to the top without the help of any such social engineering). And while we hear so much about the possibility of equal parental leave in Sweden, the fact that only five to 10 per cent of men chose to take any parental leave until they were forced to by law remains a quiet little secret. In those same countries, the pay gap is no smaller than ­average, and job segregation — where men and women are ­unevenly spread across all jobs and ­paygrades — is actually worse than in Egypt, and substantially higher than in Asian countries such as China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia and India. Only in the predominantly Islamic Middle East and North Africa, and in certain developing countries, were there similar ­levels of job segregation. But undeterred, Harriet Harman and her colleagues continue ­fighting to force similar policies into the British statute books. They claim to speak for all women, but denigrate the efforts of those who choose not to pursue their career to the top, and consistently portray women as the pathetic victims of society; unable to look after our own ­interests in a genuine meritocracy. They insist the only way to ‘level the playing field’ is to skew the game in women’s favour with the introduction of more legislation. They wilfully ignore evidence that those women who want high-flying careers can get there under their own steam, under current laws. Instead they believe in a ridiculous fantasy in which women are body-blocked in the corridors of power by men intent on protecting their boardroom majority. The fact is that we have everything in place to give women every choice they could want, and that’s the only kind of equality that ­matters. ‘Having it all’ is just one option. But isn’t it time we accepted that, for most women, it’s not the most desirable one? n Dr Catherine Hakim is a sociologist at the London School of Economics and author of Feminist Myths And Magic Medicine, which will be published by the Centre for Policy Studies on Tuesday. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1340956/Of-course-women–just-dont-want-says-leading-female-academic.html#ixzz1900GbqSn SCREWTAPE Proposes an Episcopal Toast (15) Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010 With apologies to C.S. Lewis A Satirical Essay By David W. Virtue www.virtueonline.org My dear Wormwood, What a thoroughly splendid year it has been for us. The Council of Hades met last week. Your name came up as one who has singularly honored us with your ability to undermine, prevaricate, destroy, deceive and provide the necessary waffle and fudge that has kept the Anglican Communion going. You should take pride in your achievements, Wormwood. A goblet of Pike’s blood was passed around the council table in remembrance of you. You have brought clarity where there was only guessing and wonderment. You have made The Episcopal Church the Queerest Church on earth (as it won’t be in heaven). This achievement by itself will probably guarantee you a place at the council table within a decade or so. Like earthly law firms, you must first do the time before the elevation comes, but I can assure you that unless there is an outbreak of orthodoxy or one of those horrible spiritual revivals that occurs every so often when vulgar displays of public repentance and humility take place, then your place is assured at the council table. Well done. The Glasspool election this past year was truly the icing on the fruit cake. Once again, The Episcopal Church stuck it in the face of Rowan Williams. He could only whimper that this would further strain relations within the communion. He wants The Episcopal Church to take a lesser role in the Anglican Communion. That will only happen when Hell freezes over and you know that won’t happen. Of course, they just keep laughing at him, or conversely get angry with him for not casting his lot totally with the church’s sodomites. Keep Colin Coward, Susan Russell and Louie Crew raging against the light. Their dark hearts are ours, all ours. Our Father dragged up Hegel to dinner just to thank him. His whole thesis, antitheses, synthesis thing has worked well for us. Being neither hot nor cold, but straddling the fence has worked well for us. Make sure the fence gets new more comfortable saddles for the spring, Wormwood. Also keep liberal bishops and archbishops preaching tolerance and beating up on Christians over so-called moderate Islamic mullahs and Imams. Nothing is sweeter music to our ears than watching Christians being persecuted and killed by Imams and their mob followers while watching liberal Anglican archbishops blast Christians for their alleged Islamophobia. The one fly in the ointment that has our Father worried is the distancing of the Global South Primates from the more liberal and enlightened Primates. That 11 archbishops will be no shows in Dublin is not something we relish at all. It will void Williams’ ability to negotiate the nonnegotiable. We loved it when he ran from room to room muttering “a pox on both your houses”, but he loved the whole game. That is all it was. The poor fool and those on his left flank who believe that G-d has changed his mind about sexual behavior have pushed millions into our camp. It has been a stunning reversal of 2,000 years of church teaching. We especially love all the eulogies to those who have died of HIV/AIDS, this year, especially the one in Vancouver, BC, Canada, recently that likened the death of Peter Jepson to John the Baptist by an Anglican archdeacon. That one had our Father in stitches…the howls could be heard all over Hades. http://www.vancouver.anglican.ca/portals/0/repository/Markusdrpetersermon.pdf Make sure that public scorn is continually poured out on those who believe in reparative therapies. Have the cries of homophobia shouted from the roof tops. Under no circumstances must those who believe that same-sex attractions can be corrected be allowed any place in post-Christian North America and especially in a post-Christian Episcopal Church. Keep the “Listening Process” alive as pushed by the liberals, revisionists and the ABC. We want the orthodox to have it shoved in their faces till they fall over over in boredom or acceptance…(the latter is to our liking). You must remember that this is about desensitizing the orthodox so they just roll over. Listening is not about listening, but is about acquiescing to our side, Wormwood. Keep the pressure and the checks rolling in. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES are you to give any ground to the other side. They must be force fed and destroyed if necessary. That Duncan fellow dropped a bomb shell at that horrible Lausanne Congress on Evangelism in Cape Town, South Africa, recently, when he said that Jefferts Schori and her ilk were out to exterminate the orthodox in TEC. He was right, of course, but what a horrible revelation. We can’t touch him. Unfortunately, a great cloud of witnesses and angels surrounds him. Our Father grinds his teeth every time his name is mentioned. The trip switch for 2011, Wormwood, will be the destruction of the Diocese of South Carolina and its bishop, Mark Lawrence. With the new canons giving more power to the national church than the sovereign rights of local dioceses, see that David Booth Beers is geared up to wreck havoc on this diocese. Keep the pansexual mill alive in 2011, Wormwood. We noted with interest that the road to legalizing same-sex marriage has lead to the floodgates opening. Any and all forms of sexuality are now fair game for legalization and promotion. Homosexual marriage was simply the thin edge of the wedge. Our full-frontal assault on the institutions of marriage and family means there is no logical reason to prevent other deviant types of sexuality from being recognized and legitimized. So it was absolutely wonderful news to read recently that there is now a push to legalize incest. The slippery slope, which was ridiculed and mocked by some on our side claiming no one is arguing for polyamory or incest, is now coming to pass. There are people all over the world pushing for these very things. They are happy to ride on the success of the same-sex marriage movement, much to our delight. We noted with gladness that the the upper house of the Swiss parliament has drafted a law decriminalizing sex between consenting family members which must now be considered by the government. There have been only three cases of incest since 1984. No matter, Wormwood, once it is legislated in, there will be no holding back the floodgates. The final sexual barriers are coming down across the world, Wormwood. We must make sure that churches, especially the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, which once followed the culture, will now be in the vanguard for total change. It is a triumph that only our Father could have dreamed of. Now it will be yours to implement. I remain your affectionate uncle, Screwtape The Crusade against Christians By: Stan Guthrie|Published: Those who have declared war on the West are telling us who they hate. Somali-born U.S. citizen Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was just nabbed by the FBI for trying to murder thousands of people at a Christmas-tree lighting ceremony the weekend after Thanksgiving in Portland’s central square. “I want whoever is attending that event,” the would-be mass murderer said, “to leave either dead or injured.” His choice of a Christmas-related event was no quirk. Last year, Nigerian citizen Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, attempted to detonate plastic explosives stashed in his underwear during Northwest Airlines Flight 253, en route from Amsterdam to Detroit. The date of the foiled attack? December 25. A video by al-Qaeda in Yemen last year shows Abdulmutallab justifying his attack against “the Jews and the Christians and their agents.” Are you starting to sense a pattern? Then there’s Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army major and psychiatrist who murdered 13 people and wounded 30 more at the Fort Hood Army base on November 5, 2009. Hasan earlier had told an associate that “you’re not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell.” Next we come to Osama bin Laden, who characterized U.S. troops in Lebanon as “crusader forces.” Crusaders, of course, were the fighters of Christendom during the Middle Ages who ignored the teachings of Christ and attempted to forcibly regain control of the Holy Lands from Muslims—often brutally. Whether out of ignorance or malice, bin Laden frequently conflates that ancient mob with the highly trained armed forces of the United States, many members of which would not claim to be Christians. Concerning a 1996 attack in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen, bin Laden stated, “The crusader army became dust when we detonated al-Khobar with courageous youth of Islam fearing no danger.” After the deadly 1998 attacks against the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the leader of al Qaeda told Al Jazeera, “Every Muslim, from the moment they realize the distinction in their hearts, hates American[s], hates Jews, and hates Christians. This is a part of our belief and our religion.” After the 9/11 attacks, the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, and President Bush’s unfortunate characterization of the American response to the terrorists as a “crusade,” bin Laden broadcasted a statement that further clarified his motives. Christians were again on his mind. “This war is fundamentally religious,” bin Laden said. “The people of the East are Muslims. They sympathized with Muslims against the people of the West, who are the crusaders.” Further, the terrorist leader seems to also label Jews and Christians as infidels: “We must be loyal to the believers and those who believe that there is no God but Allah. We should also renounce the atheists and infidels. … God says: ‘Never will the Jews or the Christians be satisfied with thee unless thou follow their form of religion.’ It is a question of faith, not a war against terrorism, as Bush and Blair try to depict it.” So as much as our leaders try to stress that this is a generic “war on terror” or a challenge against “man-caused disasters,” the Islamists trying to kill us see the conflict as religious in nature. It’s not a question of us turning it into a religious war. They have already announced a religious war—a new crusade—on all of us, whether we have agreed to their terms or not. And they particularly have placed Christians and Jews in their crosshairs. What does that mean for the West? First, it means that many Americans who are not very religious have unexpectedly found themselves in the middle of a religious war. Whether we believe in God, or karma, or human reason alone, we are all at risk. After all, a bomb does not distinguish between Christian, Jew, atheist, or Muslim before it maims or kills. The bin Ladens of this world see us all as crusaders or infidels—in other words, as legitimate targets. It matters not whether our faith is vibrant, lukewarm, or nonexistent. Second, it means that Christians, Jews, and indeed all peace-loving people must unite against a common foe, much as we did against the Third Reich. Our survival may depend on it. What special message does this new crusade send to those of us who take our stand on Jesus Christ as the foundation of our lives? Since we are now official targets of the Muslim terrorists, doesn’t it make sense to live what we say we believe? It is senseless to die for the name of Christ if you’re not willing to live for him. Persecution, of course, has been a persistent reality for believers, Christian and Jew, across the ages. Why should we be surprised by the hatred of the Islamists? As the Apostle Paul said, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” That all includes us, even in the formerly comfortable West. For whatever reason in God’s sovereign plan, persecution is finally coming around to Western Christians. As this war will likely last for generations (since it was generations in the making), we may face the unholy wrath of the Islamists for a long, long time. While this is a scary prospect, at a minimum it may help us to better understand and respond to the unjust suffering that our Christian brothers and sisters around the world are experiencing right now. For example, on the evening of October 31, armed Muslim extremists in Baghdad took over the Our Lady of Salvation church. When Iraqi police stormed the building, a suicide bomb was detonated, killing 58 people and wounding another 78. After the attack, al Qaeda in Iraq warned, “All Christian centers, organizations and institutions, leaders and followers are legitimate targets for the mujahedeen wherever they can reach them.” It also threatened to carry out more attacks against Christians in other countries. The Obama administration called the attack “senseless.” Unfortunately, such carnage makes perfect sense to the new crusaders. Meanwhile, Asia Bibi, charged with insulting Muhammad under Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy law, has just become the first woman there to receive a death sentence under it. The 45-year-old mother of five, already imprisoned for over a year, allegedly is guilty of “wounding the religious feelings” of some Muslim neighbors. Outrageous? Of course. But get ready for more of it. A new crusade is upon us. History’s greatest male role model and a humbling lesson for feckless fathers today By Iain Duncan Smith Over the last ­fortnight, many of us will have been enjoying the ­familiar ­delights of the school ­Nativity play, sharing the excitement that a new generation of children ­always brings to it. Their costumes may be fashioned from blankets, tea-­towels and old dressing-gown cords but you can see from their rapt expressions that the Christmas Story has lost none of its power and magic. With Mother and the Christ Child holding centre stage, the final tableau, helped perhaps by a bit of prompting from ­parents and teachers, slowly assembles. On come the shepherds, ­earnestly clutching their crooks and toy lambs, closely followed by the three Wise Men, a riot of colour and gold gift-wrap. Forgotten hero: Joseph’s loyalty to Mary was admirable It’s such a familiar and enduring image that most of us can conjure it from memory in a moment. But it’s an image that I believe runs the real risk of overlooking the most important character of all, an ­individual whose vital role in shaping the Christian message is downplayed and yet whose story couldn’t be more important, or more significant, in today’s society. You’ll normally find him in the second row, slightly hidden by Mary or a particularly large King, maybe fiddling with his false beard or tugging nervously with his head-dress. His name, of course, is Joseph, a vital character of any Nativity story you would think. But ask yourself one thing. In all ­honesty, whoever remembers who played Joseph? Joseph’s extraordinary contribution to the Nativity story and to Christianity itself has been underplayed for centuries but it is my hope that it will be overlooked no longer, for his importance hinges on the critical decision he took, which holds such a powerful message for our own time. Joseph’s mind must have been in turmoil. The initial sense of shock would have been palpable, followed, surely, by an overwhelming sense of betrayal To understand this, consider how Joseph responds to news that Mary was with child, an extraordinary event that Matthew’s Gospel rather rushes through, almost dismissively. ‘When as his Mother was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with the child of the Holy Ghost.’ Think about what that actually means. Mary and Joseph may have become engaged but she has let him know that not only is she pregnant but he is not the father. And there’s worse — or certainly more improbable — news to come for Joseph, with Mary insisting that she is still a virgin and that her unborn child is the Son of God. Even today that would be nigh-on impossible to swallow but back then, for Mary and Joseph, living in a traditional Jewish society, announcing you were pregnant with the Son of God would have been the most serious blasphemy. Mary could have been stoned to death. Joseph’s mind must have been in turmoil. The initial sense of shock would have been palpable, followed, surely, by an overwhelming sense of betrayal. The woman he loved was pregnant and yet he was not the father. Matthew’s ­Gospel touches on what his ­initial reaction must have been. Miracle birth: Oscar Isaac as Joseph and Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary appear in a scene from The Nativity Story ‘Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man, and not ­willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.’ In other words, he would have cancelled the betrothal and in such a way that Mary might hide from her shame. And who could have blamed him — the woman he loved, having betrayed him, had also taken leave of her senses. I’m quite sure that many of us today, if confronted with a similar story, wouldn’t have believed a word of it. Strangely, the Bible solves this problem in a rather ­matter-of-fact manner, with the Angel of the Lord conveniently appearing to Joseph in a dream and telling him that Mary was telling the truth. ‘Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived of her is of the Holy Ghost.’ In other words, according to the Bible, Joseph woke up and promptly married her. But even if Joseph believed the dream entirely, I don’t think this does justice to the enormity of the decision confronting Joseph when he awoke that morning. It conveniently forgets that notwithstanding the vision, he still had his free will, one that had been forged from the social and religious norms of the day. Despite the huge social pressure he was facing and despite the potentially dangerous consequences, Joseph took the decision to stand by Mary, to marry her, protect her and raise the child as his own Running through his head must have been some enormous concerns: there was still the problem of her pregnancy out of wedlock, the social stigma — for him as well as her — and the anger of friends and neighbours about her blasphemy. No, it must have been a truly daunting prospect, one he could easily have chosen to walk away from, and left her to her fate. After all, he was a respected man in his community, descended as he was from King David — he had much to lose. And yet he didn’t disown her. Despite the huge social pressure he was facing and despite the potentially dangerous consequences, Joseph took the decision to stand by Mary, to marry her, protect her and raise the child as his own. I like to think he took this decision not just because of a vision in some night-time dream but because he loved her and wanted to keep her safe. Certainly, if he hadn’t, the consequences for her could have been dire. A pregnancy out of wedlock would have made her an outcast, a pariah; but giving birth to a baby she called the Son of God could have got her killed. That’s why Joseph’s role is so important; without his support, neither Mary nor Jesus might have survived at all. Supportive: Joseph’s love of Mary and Jesus was vital to the story of Christ Thanks to Joseph, however, they did survive. This quiet and skilled man bravely stepped out into the unknown — deliberately choosing to protect, provide for and raise Jesus as his own. He mentored him and taught him and even gave him the trade — carpentry — that Jesus would use until the time came for him to embark on his ministry. Joseph must have given Jesus so much as a father and Jesus must, in turn, have learned so much about life from Joseph. Later, during his ministry, when Jesus spoke of God as being like a loving father, surely he must have been drawing from his own upbringing, drawing on his intimate knowledge of this extraordinarily good man, Joseph. I am not a churchman and I am not given to commenting on Christian theology — rather I raise all this partly because I have long wondered why Joseph seems to have been so forgotten and partly because it has a very clear message for our own time. Joseph was not an absent father; he was there, with Mary and with Jesus; and the Christian Church, by underplaying the importance of this in the story of Christ, has missed a real example of selfless dedication and commitment which should resound today In parts of our society, too many young men and women grow up without the experience of a loving father. And we seem to have forgotten what an important role a father plays. It’s about far more than earning enough money to provide shelter and place food on the table; it’s about nurturing, support and loyalty, it’s about providing the best male role model that a man can. But we seem to have forgotten that or wrongly come to the conclusion that we can somehow get by without it. The result is that in too many communities, there are deep-rooted problems now shared by ­generations of young people that stem — directly or indirectly — from the absence of fathers in the vital early years. I have seen how family breakdown, which often begins with fatherlessness, can lead to high levels of truancy, anti-social behaviour, youth crime, street gangs and teenage pregnancy. But Joseph was not an absent father; he was there, with Mary and with Jesus; and the Christian Church, by underplaying the importance of this in the story of Christ, has missed a real example of selfless dedication and commitment which should resound today. Extraordinary: Joseph is a superb example of a loving father Whether it was battling for accommodation for his pregnant and exhausted wife in a crowded town or protecting his family as they fled from ­Herod’s soldiers, this simple man of courage and honour was always there when his wife and son needed him. For some children, we might reasonably ask: where are the men of such courage and ­honour today? So this Christmas, when you encounter that familiar Nativity tableau, try to look past Mary, the crib and even the Baby Jesus. Seek out that ordinary-looking face in the second row, almost lost behind the shepherds and wise men, and look into the eyes of the forgotten hero in the story of Christ; then smile and give thanks for Joseph. Pope: sex abuse scandal ‘humiliating’ but society must share the blame Tuesday, December 21st, 2010 The Catholic Church must examine the failures in its teaching that allowed the “unimaginable” sexual abuse of children by priests to continue unchallenged for so long, the Pope said yesterday. Benedict has previously acknowledged that the scandal was the result of sin within the church and that the church as a result must repent for it and make amends with victims Photo: REUTERS By Tim Ross, Social Affairs Editor 4:30PM GMT 20 Dec 2010 The worldwide “humiliation” that the church has experienced as a result of the scandal must serve as a spur to reform, Benedict XVI told his cardinals gathered in Rome. However, the pontiff argued that the abuse crisis must be seen in its social “context”, suggesting that part of the blame lay with permissive attitudes in western society dating from the 1970s. Survivors of clerical sex abuse condemned the Pope’s statement as another attempt by Church authorities to evade responsibility for the scandal. The Pope was speaking in his annual Christmas address to bishops and cardinals, assembled in the frescoed Sala Regia of the Vatican’s apostolic palace. It was seen as evidence of the seriousness with which the Pope views the issue that he chose tackling child sex abuse as the major theme for one of his highest profile set-piece speeches of the year. While stressing that most priests were honourable, Pope Benedict said revelations of abuse in 2010 had reached “an unimaginable dimension” that required the church to accept the “humiliation” as a call for renewal. “We know of the particular gravity of this sin committed by priests and our corresponding responsibility,” he said. “We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustices that occurred. “We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our message, in our entire way of configuring the Christian being, that allowed such a thing to occur.” However, Benedict said the fault lay not only with the Church but also with the “context of our times”, in which child pornography, drug use, sexual trafficking were to some degree considered permissible. “There exists a market of pornography regarding children that seems to be increasingly accepted as normal by society,” he said. “The psychological devastation of children, in which human beings are reduced to a marketplace article, is a terrifying sign of the times.” The underlying ideology of such excesses stemmed from the 1970s, when “paedophilia was theorized as something that was in keeping with man and even the child”, he said. “The effects of such theories are evident today.” Representatives of abuse victims dismissed the Pope’s comments as “absolute nonsense”. Margaret Kennedy, from the Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors group, said: “He is trying to say that the modern world is corrupt and sexually rampant. It is blaming society for what is actually their responsibility,” she said. “No-one in any age has ever thought that adults having sex with children is right.” The scandal first came to public consciousness in the US in 2002, and spread across the world earlier this year, with thousands of victims emerging in Europe and beyond. Details were disclosed of bishops who covered up for paedophile priests and Vatican officials who turned a blind eye to the crimes for decades. Benedict himself faced questions over his handling of the crisis, in his former roles as archbishop in Munich and as head of the Vatican office that was responsible for dealing with abuse cases. There’s Something About Mary Beliefs about Jesus’ virgin mother vary between Christians of the early church, Roman Catholics, and modern-day Protestants, but this model of total trustful devotion has lessons to teach all Christians. J.I. Packer and Tom Oden Protestants pay a lot of attention to Jesus’ mother at Christmas but she is largely forgotten the rest of the year. How has the church historically viewed her? And has that changed? Christianity Today assistant online editor Todd Hertz sat down with CT executive editors and theologians J.I. Packer and Tom Oden to discuss the role of Mary throughout history and why she remains important to all Christians today. J.I. Packer is Board of Governors’ Professor of Theology at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia. Tom Oden is Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Theology and Ethics at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey and general editor of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. What were early church impressions of Mary? Oden: It is very speculative, but my own view is that the mother of Jesus was quite important to the earliest church—the church during the writing of the gospel of Luke. It was probably written in Ephesus during the middle part of the first century, and there is a very good chance that Mary was living there at that time. Now if you take that as a premise, which is uncertain historically, you then have a very important figure in the whole world church who is still alive. She has stored these memories in her heart. She is highly revered. After she died, [the church] was facing much persecution, and there was a great emphasis on the memory of holy lives. She was certainly at the center of that. From the outset she was remembered as a virgin in whom the Holy Spirit conceived the incarnate Lord. In my view, the incarnation was an early recognition of the church. There’s good textual evidence [to support that] in the earliest documents we have. Luke supported this view, as did other documents such as Paul’s writings. How did official church thinking about Mary change? Oden: In 431 A.D., there was the ecumenical Council of Ephesus, which raised the question as to whether the liturgy is right or wrong in calling Mary, theotokos. That Greek word means “Bearer of God.” There was a certain party that said, “We should not say theotokos, we should say only christotokos.” They were saying, “No, Mary didn’t bear God, she just bore Jesus Christ.” The council affirmed that the liturgy is right—not that Mary is the source of God but rather that Mary is the bearer of the Incarnation. She is the one through whom the fleshly incarnate Lord becomes living history for us. That was a key point of doctrine that Protestants later took. Both Calvin and Luther affirmed the term theotokos. As Catholic piety began to develop, you see Mary viewed as an intercessor. It is hard to say when that begins to develop, but it is evident in the early second century. So then Marian piety becomes increasingly important. In almost every decade of the church’s life in the first four or five centuries it seems to accelerate. How did the Reformation change Protestant impressions of Mary? Packer: At the time of the Reformation, Anglican Archbishop Thomas Cranmer produced a prayer book to be used in evening prayer. It included Mary’s song, the Magnificat, from Luke chapter one. The effect of its use was to celebrate Mary as the model, the pioneer, and the archetype of the saved sinner. The shift [this represented] was from Mary as a focus of devotion to Mary as the first beneficiary from the incarnation. So straightaway you have a changed perspective on Mary. What has happened in recent decades is that since evening prayer has ceased to be a reality in nearly all Anglican churches everywhere in the last 50 years, Anglicans simply do not think of Mary, and many don’t know the Magnificat by heart. next page… | 1 of 2 Responding to bad news December 20th, 2010 Posted in From Lisa’s Lookout | Comments Off There has been great ‘celebration’ in gay world recently. Yesterday was a significant day both in the US and the UK in terms of the active, aggressive promotion and embedding of LGBT rights in the public sphere. This news strikes people differently. Many are still caught up in the past, where gay-as-victim was the dominant narrative, and dreadful things happened to homosexual people. We deplore this, and support the right of all to get on living their lives peacefully. However, what is presently occurring is taking the LGBT — and related — cause to a different and far more ominous place. It is not a ‘live and let live’ approach, but an insistence now that all will promote LGBT rights in public or tacitly collude by keeping quiet. My readers are perhaps aware of how other previously taboo behaviour/minorities are now out. Of course they clamour for the same legitimacy as the LGBT, and why not? They note the basis upon which the LGBT succeeded, believe theirs is the same, and respond with ‘me too!’ So, right now, we have the polyamorists and the polygamists up in Canada pushing for the right to engage in plural marriage, and those who engage in adult familial relationships (incest) are saying much the same both in the US and in Switzerland. See here and here. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, as I have said countless times. But how can one respond to the whole host of challenges mentioned above? May I encourage you on two fronts?First is that of prayer, and praying with like minds. Asking God to show whom to pray with and what to pray for is becoming increasingly important; this is a supernatural issue as well, as we need the learn that ‘the battle is the Lord’s’. One of my favourite prayers is that God will bring good out of evil, that things will be seen for what they are, and that it will not be too late. In particular, prayers for the media are needed, that the truth will not remain hidden or be distorted, and that Christian leaders, groups and news sources will know how best to equip people to respond to today’s alarming challenges. Secondly (and related to the first issue), may I suggest that one of the primay reasons the LGBT political agenda has done so well is because we refuse to discuss what is actually occurring in these lifestyles according to those who represent them publically and to thus evaluate in a more objective way the potential physical and psychological risks? See here and here for material from Terrence Higgins Trust, (the leading gay ‘health’ agency in the UK and beyond) [warning, graphic]; see here here here and here for information on how these sexual activites damage, both as part of a minority lifestyle or as experimented with by open-minded ‘straight’ kids and young adults. If those of us who have concerns about the official promotion of gay and other alternative lifestyles do not discuss how it harms those involved, those on the other side of the ideological fence who have no such scruples determine how the ordinary person views and understands these lifestyles. Disturbing and difficult as it may be, these issues are not going away and we must confront them. Anglican Mainstream is a community within the Anglican Communion committed to promote, teach and maintain the Scriptural truths on which the Anglican Church was founded. These also guarantee its fellowship with Christians down history and throughout the world. Faithfulness to Scripture as God's Word is essential for sharing the love and purpose of God in Jesus Christ. Categories Select Category ACNA Anglican Communion Current divisions FCA – Southern Africa Lambeth Lambeth 2008 News Uncategorized Unquotable quotes Sidebar Title 1 FCA - South Africa Join FCA Southern Africa 2 ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2011 Bible Human Rights and AIDS. 2011 confernce. THE CONFERENCE SPEAKERS 3 FCA International 4 ANGLICAN LINKS AMERICAN ANGLICAN COUNCIL ANGLICAN COMMUNION NETWORK ANGLICAN MAINSTREAM INTERNATIONAL ANGLICAN MAINSTREAM NEW ZEALAND ANGLICAN MISSION IN THE AMERICAS COMMON CAUSE PARTNERSHIP FORWARD IN FAITH NORTH AMERICA Archbishop Robert Duncan Canterbury won’t block or bless new province Disease of Unbelief Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans Membership FCA Membership application T-shirt Order Form GAFCON STATEMENT ON THE GLOBAL ANGLICAN FUTURE Faithful?…. Committed?…….. or Deceived? Homosexual Honesty Lambeth at a “Local” Level Psychiatrist Pinpoints Sexuality Struggles Spiritual Anthrax: Why God’s Man Must Not Blend July 2009 Gay unions and blessings. GSE4 Thematic Address 1: “The Gospel of Jesus Christ” – Abp Nicholas Okoh POSITION PAPER: GENDER MINISTRY ON SEXUALITY Response to proposed guidelines Sermons and Papers from Global South, April 2010 Statement by the Synod of Bishops The Book of Common Prayer Online Why have a Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in South Africa? Anglican Mainstream South Africa is proudly powered by WordPress and the Simplicity theme.

instruction: You are a doctor, please answer the medical questions based on the patient's description. input: i got treatment for periodontisis.now i feel i am free of swelling , redness, bleeding of gums. but i lost gum tissue which was removed during surgery. now d problems was in b/w tooth at upper region i have gaps. every time wen i am eating food particles are placed within those gaps n one more thing is i found yellowness and plaque formation at that location. wt my present condition is? output: e., the tissues that support the teeth. You might have gone through scaling & root planing that involves removal of plaque & calculus resulting in empty space & loosening of teeth. Its quiet natural after scaling. Need not worry, just start with gum massage with some gum paint like Rexidine-M gel for 15 mins,2 times a day. Also start using 0.2% chlorhexidine mouthwash 10ml half an hour after brushing once daily. All this will definitely help you out. Still if your problem persist than talk to your dentist about periodontal flap surgery. Its also good option in severe cases. Also maintain proper oral hygiene by regular brushing & interdental flossing for cleaning that gap.

instruction: You are a doctor, please answer the medical questions based on the patient's description. input: What to expect if I have Ventricular fibrillation (Outlook/Prognosis)? output: VF will lead to death within a few minutes unless it is treated quickly and effectively. Even then, long-term survival for people who live through a VF attack outside of the hospital is between 2% and 25%. People who have survived VF may be in a coma or have long-term damage.

Home » Landmarks » Sanjay Vs. State of U.P. Sanjay Vs. State of U.P. Supreme Court of India Year : 2016 NON-REPORTABLE CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 11 OF 2016 (Arising out of S.L.P. (Crl.) No.3896 of 2013) SANJAY ..Appellant STATE OF UTTAR PRADESH ..Respondent NARENDRA ..Appellant J U D G M E N T R. BANUMATHI, J. Leave granted in both the special leave petitions. 2. These criminal appeals have been filed assailing the impugned judgment dated 30.08.2012 passed by the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad dismissing the criminal appeals No.2188/2007 and 2561/2007 upholding the conviction of the appellant Narendra for offences under Sections 302, 307 read with Section 34 IPC and Section 452 IPC and also the sentence of life imprisonment, ten years imprisonment with fine of Rs.5,000/- and three years imprisonment with fine of Rs.1,000/- respectively. The High Court also confirmed the conviction of the appellant Sanjay under Section 302 read with Section 34 IPC, Section 307 read with Section 34 IPC and Section 452 IPC and sentence of life imprisonment, ten years imprisonment with a fine of Rs.5,000/- and three years imprisonment with a fine of Rs.1,000/- respectively. 3. Case of the prosecution is that appellant-Sanjay is the brother of deceased Roop Singh. According to PW-2 Sheela wife of Roop Singh, after selling his land to Narendra, Sanjay was insisting his brother Roop Singh to sell his land to Narendra for which Roop Singh refused, due to which appellant-Sanjay is said to have developed enmity towards Roop Singh. On the intervening night of 10/11.08.1998 at 3.00 a.m., Roop Singh and his wife Sheela were sleeping in their chowk and a lantern was lit in the house. Appellants–Narendra and Sanjay along with another person armed with tamancha (pistol) came to the house of Roop Singh. Appellant-Narendra fired multiple bullets at Roop Singh and Roop Singh sustained bullet injury in his head. Sanjay fired at PW-2 Sheela and she sustained bullet injuries at neck, abdomen and her right leg. Hearing sounds of bullets, the complainant-Partap Singh and one Ompal and several other persons rushed to the spot and on seeing them, the appellants Narendra, Sanjay and the third assailant fled away from the scene. On the basis of the complaint lodged by Partap Singh at Police Station Sardhana, Meerut, case was registered in Crime No. 387/1998 for offences under Sections 307 and 452 IPC. Injured victims were sent to Primary Health Centre, Sardhana, Meerut for treatment. Roop Singh (deceased) was admitted at Safdarjung Hospital, Delhi and after treatment, Roop Singh was discharged from the hospital on 25.09.1998. Subsequently, Roop Singh developed complications, Roop Singh was taken for check up to Delhi and Roop Singh died on 13.10.1998. Ram Pal gave written information about the death of injured Roop Singh to the police and Section 302 IPC was added to the FIR. After completion of investigation, chargesheet was filed against the appellants for offences under Sections 302, 307 and 452 IPC. 4. To substantiate the charges against the appellants, prosecution examined nine witnesses and exhibited twenty five documents and material objects. Upon appreciation of evidence, the learned Additional Sessions Judge, Meerut vide judgment dated 17.03.2007 found the appellants guilty for offences under Section 302 IPC read with Section 34 IPC and Section 307 IPC read with Section 34 IPC and Section 452 IPC and they were sentenced to suffer life imprisonment, ten years imprisonment with a fine of Rs.5,000/- and three years imprisonment with a fine of Rs.1,000/- respectively. The trial court ordered that half of the fine amount be paid to PW-2 Sheela as compensation. Aggrieved by the verdict of conviction, the appellants filed criminal appeals before the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad which were dismissed vide common impugned judgment dated 30.08.2012 upholding the conviction and sentence imposed upon the appellants as aforesaid. Aggrieved, the appellants have preferred these appeals assailing the conviction and sentence imposed on them. 5. Learned counsel for the appellants contended that as the deceased Roop Singh had already transferred his land to Partap Singh (PW-1) about one and a half years prior to the occurrence and therefore it is improbable that Sanjay would have insisted his brother Roop Singh to sell his land also to appellant-Narendra and as such the motive suggested by the prosecution is not a probable one. It was further submitted that death of Roop Singh as seen from the evidence of Dr. Laxman Das (PW-9) when Roop Singh was discharged from the hospital his condition was stable and two months thereafter Roop Singh died due to septicaemia and therefore conviction of the appellants under Section 302 IPC is not sustainable. 6. Per contra, Mr. Ratnakar Dash, learned Senior Counsel for the respondent contended that death of Roop Singh was the direct result of the multiple bullet injury inflicted by the appellants and the head injury caused by the appellants was sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death and the courts below rightly convicted the appellants under Section 302 IPC and the same cannot be interfered. Learned Senior Counsel submitted that as the deceased Roop Singh sustained bullet injuries on his head, intention to cause death can be inferred from the situs and nature of the injury and the weapon used. 7. Case of the prosecution as seen from the evidence is that appellants-Sanjay and Narendra and one unidentified assailant armed with countrymade pistols entered the house of deceased Roop Singh at the wee hours-3.00 a.m. on 11.08.1998. It is alleged that the appellant-Sanjay fired four times at his sister-in law-Sheela (PW-2) wife of the deceased and Narendra fired one gun shot on the deceased-Roop Singh. Roop Singh was operated at Safdarjung Hospital, Delhi and was discharged on 25.09.1998 and he was taken back to his home at village Sardhana. When injured Roop Singh was taken to Delhi for check up, he died on the way to hospital on 13.10.1998, PWs 1 and 2 have consistently spoken about the overt act of the appellants. PW-2-Sheela is an injured witness and her version stands on a higher footing. The testimony of the injured witness coupled with the fact that the complaint was promptly lodged by the complainant-Partap Singh within one and half hours of the incident lends assurance to the prosecution case. As the prosecution version is unassailable, by order dated 18.04.2013, this Court issued notice limited to the question of nature of the offence committed by the appellants. 8. In the light of the specific contention advanced by the appellants that after the attack the deceased survived for sixty two days after his surgery discharged in stable condition, the only issue which needs to be examined is whether conviction of the appellants under Section 302 IPC is sustainable. 9. Dr. Laxman Das (PW-9), Neuro Surgeon at Safdarjung Hospital, Delhi who examined injured Roop Singh on 12.08.1998 found one wound of insertion of bullet in the head mid frontal region of Roop Singh which measured 2 cm x 2 cm. PW-9 conducted the operation on 15.09.1998 and bullet was extracted from the supra cellar part of the head of Roop Singh. PW-9 stated at the time of admission of Roop Singh in the hospital on 12.08.1998, general condition of the patient was serious and that the injuries received in the head was dangerous to his life. Dr. Laxman Das (PW-9) opined that condition of the deceased at the time of discharge from the hospital on 25.09.1998 was not critical and his condition was stable. In the instant case, admittedly, deceased Roop Singh died after sixty two days of the fateful incident. PW-3-Dr. M.C. Gulecha, who conducted the postmortem examination on the body of deceased-Roop Singh opined that the cause of death was septicaemia which was due to the wounds sustained by him prior to his death. 10. Learned counsel for the appellants submitted that since Roop Singh died more than two months after the date of the occurrence and that he was discharged from the hospital in good condition and septicaemia might have set in due to lack of proper care after he was discharged from the hospital and therefore the appellants cannot be said to have caused the death of deceased and the conviction under Section 302 IPC is not sustainable. 11. Learned Senior Counsel for the respondent contended that second appellant-Narendra inflicted serious injuries on the forehead of the deceased and fire shots with intention to kill the deceased and the intention to cause death can be inferred from the situs of the injury and that the act was sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death. Reliance was placed upon the judgment of this Court in Jagtar Singh And Anr. vs. State of Punjab, (1999) 2 SCC 174 and Dhupa Chamar And Ors. vs. State of Bihar, (2002) 6 SCC 506. 12. In Jagtar Singh’s case (supra), Harbans Singh gave gandasa blow on the left side of the head of deceased-Naib Singh, Jagtar Singh inflicted khapra blow to the deceased. The incident happened on 23.09.1991 and the injured succumbed to his injuries even while he was undergoing treatment at PGI Hospital Chandigarh on 09.10.1991. In the said case, it was brought out from evidence that the deceased succumbed to injuries even while he was undergoing treatment and in such facts and circumstances, court drew inference that the injuries were sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause the death. In Dhupa Chamar’s case (supra), Dhupa Chamar gave a bhala blow on the left side of neck of Ram Patia Devi and she fell down and died instantaneously. Accused No.2-Tokha Ram assaulted Dharam Chamar in the abdomen with bhala and he was rushed to the hospital whereupon he was declared brought dead. On the basis of nature of injuries inflicted which resulted in the instant death of the deceased persons and other circumstances, court held that the intended injury was sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death and convicted the accused for the offences under Section 302 IPC. 13. However, in the instant case, it is apparent that the death occurred sixty two days after the occurrence due to septicaemia and it was indirectly due to the injuries sustained by the deceased. The proximate cause of death on 13.10.1998 was septicaemia which of course was due to the injuries caused in the incident on 11.08.1998. As noted earlier, as per the evidence of Dr. Laxman Das (PW-9), Roop Singh was discharged from the hospital in good condition and he survived for sixty two days. In such facts and circumstances, prosecution should have elicited from Dr. Laxman Das (PW-9) that the head injury sustained by the deceased was sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death. No such opinion was elicited either from Dr. Laxman Das (PW-9) or from Dr. Gulecha (PW-3). Having regard to the fact that Roop Singh survived for sixty two days and that his condition was stable when he was discharged from the hospital, the court cannot draw an inference that the intended injury caused was sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death so as to attract clause (3) of Section 300 IPC. 14. In Ganga Dass alias Godha vs. State of Haryana, 1994 Supp (1) SCC 534, the accused gave iron pipe single blow on the head of the deceased and the deceased died eighteen days after the occurrence due to septicaemia and other complications, the conviction of the appellant under Section 302 IPC was altered by this Court to Section 304 Part II IPC. This Court observed as under:- “6. We find considerable force in this submission. As stated above the occurrence took place on November 18, 1988 and the deceased died 18 days later on December 5, 1988 due to septicaemia and other complications. The Doctor found only one injury on the head and that was due to single blow inflicted with an iron pipe not with any sharp-edged weapon. Having regard to the circumstances of the case, it is difficult to hold that the appellant intended to cause death nor it can be said that he intended to cause that particular injury. In any event the medical evidence shows that the injured deceased was operated but unfortunately some complications set in and ultimately he died because of cardiac failure etc. Under these circumstances, we set aside the conviction of the appellant under Section 302 IPC and the sentence of imprisonment for life awarded thereunder. Instead we convict him under Section 304 Part II IPC and sentence him to undergo six years’ RI. The sentence of fine of Rs.2000 along with default clause is confirmed. Accordingly the appeal is partly allowed.” 15. In the instant case, the appellants used firearms countrymade pistol and fired at Roop Singh at his head and the accused had the intention of causing such bodily injury as is likely to cause death. As the bullet injury was on the head, vital organ, second appellant intended of causing such bodily injury and therefore conviction of the appellant is altered from Section 302 IPC to Section 304 Part I IPC. The learned counsel for the appellantSanjay submitted that it was only Narendra who fired at Roop Singh at his head, appellant-Sanjay fired on Sheela (PW-2) on her neck, stomach and leg. Learned counsel for the appellant-Sanjay contended that as Sanjay fired only at Sheela, he could not have been convicted for causing death of Roop Singh under Section 302 IPC read with Section 34 IPC. There is no force in the above contention. The common intention of the appellants is to be gathered from the manner in which the crime has been committed. Both the appellants came together armed with firearms in the wee hours of 11.08.1998. Both the appellants indiscriminately fired from their countrymade pistols at Roop Singh-deceased and Sheela (PW-2) respectively. The conduct of the appellants and the manner in which the crime has been committed is sufficient to attract Section 34 IPC as both the appellants acted in furtherance of common intention. The conviction of the appellant-Sanjay under Section 302 IPC read with Section 34 IPC is modified to conviction under Section 304 Part I IPC. 16. Conviction of the appellants-Narendra and Sanjay under Section 302 IPC and Section 302 IPC read with Section 34 IPC respectively is modified to Section 304 Part I IPC and Section 304 Part I IPC read with Section 34 IPC respectively and each of them are sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for ten years and the same shall run concurrently alongwith sentence of imprisonment imposed on the appellants. Conviction of the appellants for other offences and the respective sentence of imprisonment imposed on the appellants and fine is affirmed. The appeals are partly allowed to the above extent. ……………………CJI. (T.S. THAKUR) .………………………J. (R. BANUMATHI) B&B Associates LLP Advocates & Legal Consultants Chandigarh - Panchkula - Noida - Faridabad - Dehradun - Lucknow - Ludhiana Monday to Saturday 10:00 am to 06:00 pm. Sundays and Holidays Reserved for urgent & prior appointments. 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instruction: You are a doctor, please answer the medical questions based on the patient's description. input: Hi I am 30 years old and suffering from chicken pox. it started almost four days before from a blister on my nose. these watery blisters mostly appears on my face and unluckily the first blister when appeared on my nose i rubbed it so many time that now it covers the whole nose and filled with whitish puss type liquid and outer layer dried and turned into honey colored. my doctor suggest me to splash/clean my face from salline water. plus acylex tablets,novidat and genticyn hc cream. is it all ok?......some one told me to use coconut milk?...should i use it.....kindly suggest me some thing which would result in leaving no scars on my face and especially the worsen nose blister...what should i do with this blister now that it leaves no scar ? ...can i work on my laptop during this period? or it has any side effect? output: Chickenpox is a highly contagious disease caused by primary infection with varicella zoster virus. A person with chickenpox is infectious one to two days before the rash appears and remains contagious until all lesions have crusted over and this takes approximately six days. I would suggest you to follow1. Trim your nails2. Apply calamine solutions over the rashes3. Oral antihistamines. With these remedies the symptoms will come down and improve your condition. Thank you..

instruction: You are a doctor, please answer the medical questions based on the patient's description. input: My mouth feel dry and it is hard to eat and drink anything except water and I am coughing up brown mucous. This has been going on for four days now. Yesterday I let my coworker know about the brown mucous and they said I may have an infection. Then they looked in my mouth and saw that my uvula and tonsils were red and swollen. Do you know what could possibly be wrong with me and ways I can treat it. t causes red and swollen uvula and tonsils? output: Hi..Thanks for the query..Red and swollen uvula and tonsils along with coughing up of brown mucous are a sign of throat infection causing TONSILLITIS and UVULITIS..It can be either due to bacterial or viral infection leading to inflammation of throat and bleeding can occur in throat which dries up and can appear with mucous and leads to brown colour..You should not worry and start aking AZITHROMYCIN 500 mg once a day for 5 days..Take IBUPROFEN 400 mg thrice a day for reducing pain and inflammation.Chew a Vitamin C pellet daily..Do warm saline gargles atleast 3 to 4 times a day..Take a soft diet..Avoid spicy and hard foods...Hope this helps..Regards....

instruction: You are a doctor, please answer the medical questions based on the patient's description. input: I have had trouble with back pains since I was a child, as my spine is curved, but as I ve got older the pain has got worse over time and had started to travel down my legs when walking for more than 10 minutes, recently it has got even worse, shorter time of how long I can walk, and in the cold it s even worse. I went to doctors as it was really hurting, and been diagnosed with Spinal stenosis , my dad s sister has spinabifida, my brother had to have a metal rod placed in his back when we was kids. will I be able to claim dla as this is effecting my health? and if so how do I go about doing this? fering from severe back pain due to spinal stenosis. Family history of spinabifida. Treatment? output: Hi there,Thanks for your query.You have not mentioned if you too have spina bifida.Due to spinal stenosis (narrowing of the spinal canal), there is compression over the nerves which supply the buttocks and lower limbs.Initial non-operative treatment with pain-killers, reduction of swelling with use of steroids can be tried. If there is no response, surgery to widen the canal and remove compression over the nerves, is the only option.You have not mentioned age. If the problems, including curved spine) have been since childhood, it may be a congenital condition. I am not aware of your country's laws, whether disability due to congenital conditions is entitled to compensation. You will have to consult the concerned authority to learn about the entitlements for dla.In case of any further queries, revert back to me THROUGH DIRECT PREMIUM QUERY (Paid), addressed to me personally. You will receive- almost immediately- my response in great details.If you find my response helpful and informative, do not forget an “excellent” (5-star rating) to my answer, to ENCOURAGE all doctors- engaged in social service- to render sound advice to the FREE queries..

All posts tagged Richard Hannay A Brief History of Superheroes by Brian J. Robb (2014) Robb has previously written biographies of Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt. This volume is one of a series titled ‘A brief guide to [or A history of] …’ which includes guides to Stephen King, ghost-hunting, the Roman Empire, Star Wars and any other topics they thought would sell. Written for a popular audience, then. No illustrations At 340 pages, including notes and index, it’s quite a long book, but its most obvious feature is that there are no illustrations, none, nada, zip – which is a big drawback seeing as comic books are a largely visual medium. When it gives descriptions of the early artwork for Superman, or how Batman’s look was refined over time, or the visual makeover of many comic book heroes in the 1960s, the reader is crying out for illustrations to show what he’s talking about. But you have to turn to the internet to do your own research… So the book is solely prose, made up of thumbnail profiles of the writers, artists and publishers who created comic book superheroes, along with a dense account of how they developed and evolved over time. Superman 1938 Comic Superhero history starts in May 1938 when Superman made his first appearance in Action Comics #1. In other words, Superman is 80 years old this year, in fact this month! He was the creation of two schoolfriends from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel (writer) and Joe Shuster (artist). Everything before this date is the pre-history of superhero comics; everything afterwards is the complex unfolding of superhero comic history. Cultural forebears of superheroes The prehistory is entertaining because Robb (like many others writing on the subject) feels compelled to give a brisk popular history of the wide-ranging role of ‘the hero’ in myth, legend, history and folklore (the word ‘hero’ is itself of Greek derivation). Thus a man gifted with magic powers to protect his people can be made to include Moses and Aaron and the Biblical hero Samson. It can include the pantheon of Greek gods and mortal heroes like Heracles, Perseus and Theseus. Robb quotes Joseph Campbell on the importance of ‘the Journey’ in numerous ancient stories about heroes, and references the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Odyssey and the Mahabharata as cultural forebears of Batman and Robin. This is both fun and a little pompous. Folklore forebears of superheroes More persuasive is the notion of a lineage from more folklore elements of ‘the hero’ through to the popular fictions of the late 19th century. Robin Hood and Dick Turpin are two prime examples. Robin Hood is not only an epitome of schoolboy morality (stealing from the rich to give to the poor) but he wears an early version of the superhero costume: tights and a distinctive cap, all in bright primary colours (Lincoln green with some red thrown in). Dick Turpin concealed his face behind a neckerchief and a pulled-down hat, and wore a cloak or cape. Pop culture forebears of superheroes But in fact, historians have no idea what Robin Hood or Dick Turpin wore. The images I’ve described above derive from movies, and it is Hollywood which is probably the prime factor in the origin of the superhero look. Superheroes didn’t derive from scholarly study of ancient mythology and folklore: they came out of the extraordinary rich, bubbling swamp of popular and pulp culture of the 1920s. If Jerry and Joe knew about Sherlock Holmes or the Scarlet Pimpernel it wasn’t from reading the books about them (Sherlock had debuted in 1887, the Pimpernel in 1905). It was from paying a few cents to sit in the cheap seats of the local movie house, chomping on popcorn and watching the adventure films of a movie star like Douglas Fairbanks, who starred in a movie about Zorro (created 1919, turned into a movie in 1920), Robin Hood (1922) or the Black Pirate (1926). In a sense superheroes began in the movies before, in our time, returning to the movies. Like other historians of the subject, Robb pays special attention to characters with dual identities, a standard feature of most comic book superheroes – the classic example being Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. (Although if you stop and think about it for a moment, a dual identity is a basic element of almost all detective, spy and crime fiction of the kind that was growing more and more popular at the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th. Many thousands of detective stories take their time working up to the grand ‘reveal’ of the ‘true identity’ of the criminal, of the dope dealer or jewel thief or murderer etc caught by Sherlock Holmes or any one of the hundreds of copycat detectives invented in the 1890s and 1900s. (See my review of The Shadows of Sherlock Holmes a collection of stories about fictional detectives inspired by Holmes.) Spy stories, are by their very nature, about people concealing their true task and intentions. Anyway, Robb’s book becomes really interesting when it gets to the extraordinarily dense jungle of popular culture which flowered in the 1890s and then just got denser and denser in the decades that followed, proliferating in penny dreadfuls, shilling shockers, pulp magazines, newspaper supplements and then in the new format of moving pictures and related magazines and merchandising. Robb dwells on two Edwardian doers of good deeds who hid their true identity: the Scarlet Pimpernel (real name Sir Percy Blakeney) who rescues aristocrats from the guillotine, leaving a calling card with a picture of the pimpernel flower Zorro, who wears a black face mask and cape, protects the poor of California, and leaves a distinctive ‘Z’ carved into various objects with his stylish swordplay Just as important for a superhero is the fiendish villain, and these were prefigured by – among many – Holmes’s opponent, the ‘Napoleon of crime’, Professor Moriarty, or the diabolical criminal mastermind Fu Manchu (1913). British hero fiction included John Buchan’s hero Richard Hannay who debuted in 1915, followed by the more thuggish Bulldog Drummond, who appeared in 1920. Lesley Charteris’s crime-fighting hero, the Saint, first appeared in 1928. Biggles the heroic fighter pilot first appeared in 1932. All these heroes were morally unambiguous fighters against Crime and Fiendish Plots. In America the spread of radio gave rise to a florid variety of heroic fighters against crime: the Shadow, a masked crime-fighting vigilante (1930), the Spider (1933) and Doc Savage (1933), a kind of ‘peak human’, reared to have perfect abilities, who had a base in mid-town Manhattan and a rich armoury of state-of-the-art gadgets, funded by money from a secret Mayan goldmine, to help him fight crime. In 1936 the Green Hornet, another crime-fighting, masked vigilante was created specially for radio. Also in 1936 appeared The Phantom, who wore a skin-tight bodysuit and a ‘domino’ eye-mask to fight crime. Off in another part of the rich jungle of popular and pulp culture which exploded around the time of the Great War, was the more unrestrained world of science fiction and fantasy. Important forebears were John Carter of Mars (1912) and Tarzan (1912), both created by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Philip Francis Nowlan’s hero Buck Rogers (1928) and Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian (1932), soon joined by Alex Raymond’s newspaper strip hero Flash Gordon (1934). What these numerous figures have in common is that they are modern, pulp versions of ‘the hero’, who always outwit their fiendish opponents after a string of exciting adventures, and that they appear in series or serials: once invented they can appear in almost limitless numbers of adventures (as Conan Doyle, who came to hate his invention, Sherlock Holmes, knew all too well). By now you might share the feeling I had that the first appearance of Superman in 1938 was maybe not quite the dazzling innovation I thought it was; in fact reading about this proliferation of heroes might make you wonder why it took quite so long to come up with what seems to be the logical conclusion of all these trends. Robb tells the story of how two teenagers from Cleveland conceived the idea, developed it over many years, were repeatedly rejected by newspapers and comic publishers, and were forced to work on other characters and projects, until finally given their big break in 1938. I found the two most interesting things about Superman were: 1. His descent not so much from all these detectives and crime fighters, but from the Victorian circus strongman. These popular performers generally wore tights and pants, a figure-hugging suit to highlight their musculature which was strapped in with an impressive belt, and often stylised boots. A Victorian circus strongman, whose shiny boots, tight pants, utility belt and stylised vest all anticipate the ‘superhero look’ 2. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster sold the exclusive rights to their then-new character, Superman to DC (short for Detective Comics) Publishing for just $130 (split between the two of them). Superman was an instant hit and not only went on to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the publisher and the film company that eventually bought it, but to inspire an entire genre of superhero fiction across all media. As they watched this happen Siegel and Shuster continued to work as a comic book writer and illustrator, respectively, but made repeated attempts to sue for a share of the vast revenue generated by their invention. In fact their heirs are still locked in litigation with DC’s parent company, Time Warner, to this day. The development of the comic strip Robb gives a brief and fascinating recap of how the comic strip itself evolved. As far back as the record stretches, human beings have always told stories. Bas-relief carvings on Greek and Indian temples capture moments from religious or legendary narratives. (Robb doesn’t mention it but I’d have thought the 12 Stations of the Cross which appear in tens of thousands of Catholic churches are an early example of a story told through snapshots of key moments.) He does mention the use of ‘scroll speech’ in medieval and Renaissance art work, where a scroll unfolds from a figure’s mouth, containing their speech (something I’m familiar with from my readings of the British Civil Wars). 17th century Civil War cartoon with speech scroll Robb says the next step forward was marked by the popular engravings of the 18th century artist William Hogarth, famous for the series of pictures which depict The Rake’s Progress and A Harlot’s Progress. These popular engravings showed the decline of the eponymous rake and harlot with plenty of humorous detail. They gave rise to similar pictorial sequences by Rodolphe Töpfler later in the century, and by the Victorian artist Gustave Doré, among others. Throughout the 19th century Punch in Britain and similar magazines across the Continent used cartoons, often with speech captions, to convey narratives with punch lines. Capitalist competition creates comics But all these sometimes dubious historical antecedents are there simply to pave the way for the real start of popular comic books which, as with most things American, came out of ferocious competition to make money. Starting in 1887 a newspaper war was waged between Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper empires. One among many fronts in this war was the innovation of cartoon strips with catchy titles and populist characters. In 1892 The Little Bears was created by Jimmy Swinnerton for Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner, probably the first cartoon strip anywhere which featured regularly recurring characters. In 1895 Pulitzer debuted a strip titled The Yellow Kid for his paper The New York World, drawn by Richard Felton Outcault, which pioneered the use of speech text to indicate dialogue. In 1897 the paper added a supplement featuring just Outcault’s strips and expanding it to describe an array of characters from the yellow kid’s neighbourhood – titled McFadden’s Row of Flats – and a new term, ‘comic book’, was invented to describe it. As a direct response to all this, Hearst’s New York Journal commissioned their own strip, The Katzenjammer Kids, created by Rudolph Dirks. Dirks developed Outcault’s device of speech balloons and invented the ‘thought balloon’, indicated by a series of bubbles leading up to the text balloon itself. The same year saw the first use of colour printing (as the name, The Yellow Kid, indicates). These kind of narrative cartoons featuring recurring characters proved tremendously popular (nicer, after all, than reading the depressing news) and spread like wildfire to every other newspaper which could find a decent illustrator. By 1912 Hearst was devoting an entire page of the New York Daily Journal to comic strips, a feature which became known as the ‘funny pages’, the ‘funny papers’, or simply ‘the funnies’. It was quickly realised that the strips which appeared during the week could be repackaged into a bumper weekend supplement. Rather than broadsheet size, it made financial and practical sense to publish them in magazine format, which was easier for readers to handle and read. The comic book was born. Superhero history So much for the multi-stranded prehistory of the comic superhero. The publication of Superman in 1938 transformed the landscape, inventing a whole new genre of superhero. From this point onwards Robb’s book becomes a dense and fascinating account of how numerous newspapers and publishers sought to cash in on the fad by creating their own superheroes. He describes the complicated evolution of the two publishing houses which would eventually become known as Marvel and DC, and reading his book gives you a good sense of the difference between them. Basically, DC owned Superman (1938) and Batman (1939) who spawned hundreds of imitators but managed to remain ahead of the pack. Through the war years the superheroes performed their patriotic duty with a strong sideline in film noir-style violence against all manner of crime or fantasy baddies. In the 1950s there was a moral backlash against comics, with a nationwide panic in America that they were one of many influences turning teenagers into ‘juvenile delinquents’. This resulted in 1954 in the establishment of The Comics Code Authority (CCA) which forced comic books to abandon much violence and all references to drugs and sex, tending to replace hard 1940s stories with softer, romance elements. Marvel began existence in 1939 as ‘Timely Publications’, and by the early 1950s was generally known as Atlas Comics. The Marvel branding began 1961 with a rack of superhero titles created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and others. Robb describes the period 1961-62 as a kind of annus mirabilis, during which Lee oversaw the creation of The Fantastic Four and their nemesis Dr Doom (November 1961), Ant-Man (January 1962), the Incredible Hulk (May 1962), Spider-Man (August 1962), the Mighty Thor (August 1962), Iron Man (March 1963), the Avengers (September 1963) and the X-men (1963). Even if you think comic books are rubbish, this is by any measure still an incredible outpouring of creativity, the creation of characters which would go on to have multi-billion dollar futures in popular culture. Although other artists and writers were involved, Stan Lee is commonly associated with this outburst of imagination and the key element of it seems to have been his conviction that superheroes must be flawed – realistic characters who often struggle with their own superpowers. Thus Spider-Man is deeply confused about how to use his skills, the X-Men bicker amongst themselves, the Fantastic Four are riven by rivalries, and the Hulk considers committing suicide he is so upset by the scientific accident which has turned him into a monster. It was this troubled psychology which set them completely apart from DC’s untroubled hero Superman and made them feel more contemporary than their older cousins (although, admittedly, DC’s Batman is a much darker creation). In a second nod to contemporary concerns, Lee’s Marvel creations were nearly all connected to contemporary paranoia about the atom bomb and atomic energy. It is radioactivity which messes up the DNA of almost all these superheroes, a paranoia about the potentially damaging impact of modern science which remains relevant right down to the present day. It is this more ‘modern’ way of conceiving superhero psychology, as well as the more modern concerns about science, which possibly account for the relative success of the Marvel characters in the movies, and the rather staid, static quality of the DC movies. The difference between the Superman era and the Fantastic Four era is recognised by comic book historians who have divided the past eighty years into a series of ‘ages’. The golden age of comic books was from 1938 to about 1950, when waning interest in superheroes was capped by the baleful influence of the Comics Code Authority. The silver age of comic books is dated from DC Comics’ new character Flash, introduced in Showcase #4 in October 1956. This led up to the Marvel outburst in the early 1960s which spawned a great sprawling cast not only of heroes but of baddies and enemies. This era also another important Marvel innovation, which was introducing one set of heroes into the adventures or ‘universe’ of another set. As the 1960s progressed, the interactions of heroes from different narratives became not only more complex in itself, but led to the notion of parallel worlds in which the various characters might have different superpowers, fight each other and even die. The bronze age of comic books runs from about 1970 to 1985. The bright, Pop optimism of the 1960s turned into a nitty-gritty concern with social ‘issues’, such as the environment, feminism, racism and drugs, along with more realistic depictions of alcoholism, addiction, urban decay and so on. Alongside the two giants of Marvel and DC there arose a new wave of independent comic book publishers who took a whole new approach to the superhero genre. This was crystallised in the epoch-making Watchmen, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, which set out to deconstruct the entire mythos of superheroes. Superheroes in movies Although Robb doesn’t quite make this point, his book ends where it began, with the movies. Not with the distant antecedents of Gilgamesh or Robin Hood, but with the fact that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster loved the movies and were influenced by what they saw, by the sight of Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckling his way across the screen and that now, we in our time, queue up to watch the Amazing Spiderman, Thor and Iron Man swing across our multiplex 3D screens. Poster for Douglas Fairbanks in The Mask of Zorro (1920) Radio Robb’s last few chapters give a bewilderingly dense account of the way superheroes were adapted to other media beyond comic books. Radio was the first, and it’s interesting to learn that radio developed catchphrases, plot lines and even new characters, which hadn’t existed in the original comics but which the comics then co-opted. Television From the 1950s various television series portrayed superheroes, probably the most memorable being the camp classic Batman of the 1960s. Animations Movies were slower to adapt superheroes because of the technical challenges of portraying superhero action. It was easier to do this in animations, so there have been scores of animated TV shows and movies about superheroes. The Modern Age of Superhero Movies starts with Christopher Reeve’s portrayal of Superman in the film of the same name, directed by Richard Donner in 1978. Although the special effects look creaky to the modern eye, they were a quantum step up from all previous attempts and made superhero film-making a real possibility. Three sequels were released, in 1980, 1983 and 1987. The next benchmark was the pair of Batman movies directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton. Robb is great on the showbusiness gossip and behind-the-scenes manoeuvring which accompanied these films, for example the way that Keaton, previously known mainly for light comic roles, was widely opposed by comicbook fans, who mounted a campaign to prevent him taking the role. In the event, Burton’s two Batman movies (Batman, 1989 and Batman Returns 1992) were widely seen as a triumph, and made stacks of money ($411 million and $266 million, respectively). Robb details the ongoing attempts to stage other superhero movies during the 1980s and 90s, which met with mixed success, and a fair share of dazzling flops. Along with most fans he considers the last two Reeve Superman movies (Superman III, 1983 and Superman IV, 1987) and the Val Kilmer and George Clooney Batmen (Batman Forever, 1995, and Batman and Robin, 1997) to be disasters. The modern age of superhero movies The Current Age of Superhero Movies was launched with the X-Men directed by Bryan Singer and released in 2000. With an intelligent script, the steadying presence of two top-class British actors (Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen) and state-of-the-art, computer-generated graphics, X-Men inaugurated the modern age. It cost a lot to make, but it: a) made a fortune ($296 million) b) spawned a host of sequels (there are now no fewer than 10 films in the X-Men series) c) and led to a number of successful television spin-off series The X-Men movies played an important role in creating the superhero cultural, film and TV universe that we now inhabit. This is a list of the main superhero movies of the last 18 years, excluding various flops and failures, with an indication of their costs and revenues. 2000 X-Men ($296 million gross on $75 million budget) 2002 Spider-Man ($821 million on $139 million) 2003 Daredevil ($179 million on $78 million) 2003 X-Men 2 ($407 million on $125 million) 2004 Fantastic Four ($330 million on $100 million) 2004 Spider-Man 2 ($783 million on $200 million) 2005 Batman Begins ($374 million / $150 million) 2006 Superman Returns ($223 million / $223 million) 2006 X-Men: The Last Stand ($459 million / $210 million) 2007 Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer ($290 million / $130 million) 2007 Spider-Man 3 ($890 million / $258 million) 2008 Batman: The Dark Knight ($1 BILLION / $185 million) 2008 Iron Man 1 ($585 million / $140 million) 2008 The Incredible Hulk ($263 million / $150 million) 2009 Watchmen ($185 million / $138 million) 2009 X-Men Origins: Wolverine ($373 million / $150 million) 2011 Thor ($449 million / $150 million) 2011 X-Men: First Class ($353 million / $160 million) 2011 Captain America: The First Avenger ($370 million / $140 million) 2012 The Amazing Spider-Man ($757 million / $230 million) 2012 Batman: The Dark Knight Rises ($1.08 BILLION / $300 million) 2012 Marvel’s The Avengers ($1.5 BILLION / $220 million) 2013 Iron Man 3 ($1.2 BILLION / $200 million) 2013 Man of Steel ($668 million / $225 million) 2013 Thor: The Dark World ($645 million / $170 million) 2013 The Wolverine ($414 million / $120 million) 2014 The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($709 million / $293 million) 2014 Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($714 million / $177 million) 2014 Guardians of the Galaxy ($773 million / $232 million) 2014 X-Men: Days of Future Past ($747 million / £205 million) 2015 Ant-Man ($519 million / $142 million) 2015 Avengers: Age of Ultron ($1.4 BILLION / $444 million) 2015 Fantastic Four ($168 million / $155 million) 2016 Captain America: Civil War ($1.15 BILLION / $250 million) 2016 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice ($874 million / $300 million) 2016 Deadpool ($783 million / $58 million) 2016 Doctor Strange ($678 milllion / $165 million) 2016 X-Men: Apocalypse ($544 million / $178 million) 2017 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ($864 million / $200 million) 2017 Superman: Justice League ($658 million / $300 million) 2017 Spider-Man: Homecoming ($880 million / $175 million) 2017 Thor: Ragnarok ($854 million / $180 million) 2017 Logan ($619 million / $127 million) 2018 Ant-Man and the Wasp 2018 Avengers: Infinity War 2018 Black Panther ($1.334 BILLION / $210 million) 2018 Deadpool 2 Quite a few, aren’t there? The first superhero movie to gross over a billion dollars was Christopher Nolan’s Batman: The Dark Knight, and six other superhero movies have grossed over a billion since then. The X-Men movies between them have generated $5 billion. In 2010 Marvel produced the first in a carefully planned sequence of movies designed to maximise revenue from their stable of characters, and which has become known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe or MCU. This is divided into ‘phases’ of six movies each, the first five of each phase devoted to individual Marvel heroes, the sixth bringing the previous five altogether into a grand finale which ties together plotlines from the previous movies. As I write we are approaching the end of Phase Three, which has just seen the phenomenal success of Black Panther (phase 3, movie 5) which grossed over $1.3 billion, and paved the way for the sixth in this phase, Avengers: Infinity War which has just opened in the States to the usual mass marketing and hype. Despite having no illustrations at all, Robb’s book is an eminently readable and very enjoyable overview of the entire history of the superhero comic book phenomenon, which puts it in the context of expanding popular culture, twentieth century history, and the evolving media of radio, TV and film – all told in a light, accessible prose style with a sure sense of the interesting anecdote and fascinating fact. Great fun, and a very useful introduction to a cultural phenomenon which is bigger than ever, and set to dominate our movie and TV screens for the foreseeable future. A Brief History of Superheroes on Amazon Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986) Themes and issues in Superhero movies by Simon on May 3, 2018 • Permalink Posted in America, American literature, Art, Books Tagged 2014, A Brief History of Superheroes, A Harlot's Progress, Alan Moore, Alex Raymond, Ant-Man, Avengers: Infinity War, Batman, Batman Returns, Biggles, Black Panther, Brian J. Robb, Bryan Singer, Buck Rogers, Christopher Reeve, comic book, Conan the Barbarian, Dave Gibbons, DC Comics, Dick Turpin, Doc Savage, Douglas Fairbanks, Dr Doom, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Flash, Flash Gordon, Fu Manchu, George Clooney, Gustave Doré, heroes, Ian McKellen, Iron Man, Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel, Jimmy Swinnerton, Joe Shuster, John Buchan, John Carter of Mars, Joseph Campbell, Joseph Pulitzer, Lesley Charteris, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Comics, Michael Keaton, Patrick Stewart, Philip Francis Nowlan, Professor Moriarty, Punch, Richard Donner, Richard Felton Outcault, Richard Hannay, Robert E. Howard, Robin Hood, Rudolph Dirks, Sherlock Holmes, Sir Percy Blakeney, Spider-Man, Stan Lee, Stations of the Cross, Steve Ditko, superheroes, Superman, Tarzan, the Avengers, the Civil War, The Comics Code Authority, the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Fantastic Four, the Green Hornet, the Incredible Hulk, The Katzenjammer Kids, the Mahabharata, the Mighty Thor, the Odyssey, The Phantom, the Rake's Progress, The Saint, the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Shadow, the Spider, the X-men, The Yellow Kid, Tim Burton, Time Warner, Val Kilmer, Watchmen, William Hogarth, William Randolph Hearst, X-Men, Zorro Posted by Simon on May 3, 2018 https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2018/05/03/superheroes-brian-j-robb/ The Island of Sheep by John Buchan (1936) The fifth and final of the series of Richard Hannay ‘spy’ novels by John Buchan. As usual, more interesting for its social history and the light it sheds on the mentality of the right-wing squirearchy than for the – in fact quite thrilling – boys’ adventure plot. Plot in three parts 1. In the glory days of Empire before the Great War Hannay had an adventure which led up to him, Peter Pienaar and another young Imperialist called Lombard helping save the life of a burly Norwegian named Haraldsen, looks like a Viking and fond of quoting the old sagas. Before the final attack Haraldsen makes them swear a blood vow to defend him or his son if attacked. Thirty years later, Hannay stumbles across Lombard by accident, then across Haraldsen’s son who, we discover, is being pursued by a gang of international criminals for he not only inherited millions from his successful gold magnate father, but his father seems to have discovered a kind of Eldorado of gold right at the end of his life, a find recorded in a mysterious chunk of green jade. Our heroes revive the pact they made with Haraldsen père and spirit Haraldsen fils to safety at Fosse, Hannay’s country pile in Gloucestershire. 2. But the vultures close in, so Hannay’s whole family with servants and Haraldsen decamp to Sandy Arbuthnot’s castle in Scotland, where they figure to be safe, and Lombard pulls off a ripping stunt in spiriting Haraldsen’s daughter away from her private school under the noses of the baddies who were about to kidnap her. After quite a lot of local colour in Scotland, with much hunting and fishing and a traditional Scots wedding, Haraldsen has one of his Norse moments and insists he returns to his Norwegian home island – the Island of Sheep – to confront his pursuers in a Last Battle, and Sandy – who has just returned from meeting and sizing up the enemy – agrees. 3. They all decamp to the Isle of Sheep, a fictional member of the fictional Norland Islands off the coast of Norway. Here the focus switches to the two teenagers, Hannay’s son and Haraldsen’s daughter, who kayak over to what they think is a government ship only to discover it is the bad guys who have cut the telephone cable from the island to the mainland. After a spell locked up, they are mysteriously released by one of the baddies and make a desperate escape in the fog back to the island only to discover the goody house is surrounded, only to go down to an inlet where – unexpectedly but rather conveniently – a hundred locals have arrived to hunt a pod of whales and who are easily stirred up at the news that outsiders are attacking one of them. Peter John, Anna and their pet peregrine falcon, Morag, save the day, hooray! Here, at its climax, the children come into their own and the book mutates into a Famous Five adventure avant la lettre (the first FF adventure was published in 1942); also I can’t get images from Tintin and the Black Island (1937) out of my mind, and wonder what if any connection there was between Buchan and Hergé. Lost dreams of Empire The opening chapter is both an intriguing start to a ripping yarn and historically interesting: on the train back from London Hannay remembers the glory days of Empire before the Great War, when he mingled in Africa with white men with grand dreams of what the British Empire could be and do. My mind went back to Lombard. I remembered how we had sat on a rock one evening looking over the trough of Equatoria, and, as the sun crimsoned the distant olive-green forests, he had told me his ambitions. In those days the after-glow of Cecil Rhodes’s spell still lay on Africa, and men could dream dreams. Lombard’s were majestic… He had had his ‘call’ and was hastening to answer it. Henceforth his life was to be dedicated to one end, the building up of a British Equatoria, with the highlands of the East and South as the white man’s base. It was to be both white man’s and black man’s country, a new kingdom of Prester John. It was to link up South Africa with Egypt and the Sudan, and thereby complete Rhodes’s plan. It was to be a magnet to attract our youth and a settlement ground for our surplus population. It was to carry with it a spiritual renaissance for England. ‘When I think,’ he cried, ‘of the stuffy life at home! We must bring air into it, and instead of a blind alley give ’em open country. . . .’ (Chapter 1) In terms of the plot and drama, it is a crude coincidence that the fat stockbroker sitting opposite him on the train prattling about golf to his colleagues then turns out to be the very same Lombard, 25 years older, fatter and unromantic. But as social history it is a fascinating insight into how romantic and idealistic the dream of Empire was, how it captured the imagination of so many capable men – and how infinitely sad was its slow collapse and the attrition of those ideas in the difficult years between the Wars, before the final capitulation and death of that dream in the independence of India and the other colonies. The power of that dream, and the shadow its slow decline cast over the entire ruling class of Britain, are vital parts of the social, political and cultural history of Britain in the twentieth century, and Buchan’s novels, in their shilling shocker way, give powerful insights into it, from the mind of a man who was at the heart of Imperial administration from his time with Milner in South Africa at the turn of the century to his role as Governor-General of Canada 40 years later. Decadent Britain There’s a section which made me laugh out loud in its right-wing triteness. One of the baddies fancies himself a great intellectual and enjoys going to parties of left wing artists and so on. Buchan gives a suitably dismissive description: ‘I got a young friend to take me to a party – golly, such a party! I was a French artist in a black sweater, and I hadn’t washed for a day or two. A surréaliste, who had little English but all the latest Paris studio argot. I sat in a corner and worshipped, while Barralty held the floor. It was the usual round-up of rootless intellectuals, and the talk was the kind of thing you expect–terribly knowing and disillusioned and conscientiously indecent. I remember my grandfather had a phrase for the smattering of cocksure knowledge which was common in his day – the “culture of the Mechanics’ Institute.” I don’t know what the modern equivalent would be – perhaps the “culture of the B.B.C.” Our popular sciolism is different–it is a smattering not so much of facts as of points of view. But the youths and maidens at this party hadn’t even that degree of certainty. They took nothing for granted except their own surpassing intelligence, and their minds were simply nebulae of atoms. Well, Barralty was a king among those callow anarchists. You could see that he was of a different breed from them, for he had a mind, however much he debased it. You could see too that he despised the whole racket.’ (Ch 7) Fancy trying to teach mechanics anything. Ha ha ha ha. Their job is to fix my charabanc and know their place. And fancy the modish new BBC trying to ‘educate and inform’ the ghastly inhabitants of our dreary cities, ha ha ha. Anyone knows that only chaps who have titles, country houses and went to pukka schools are allowed to be educated. Something about a private education seems, or seemed, to leave these men permanently immature and harking back to the halcyon days of their boarding schools. Again and again the finest moments in the chase or fight or whatever peril our heroes are in, is said to bring out a boyish brightness in their eyes, or they look like fine boys again – or they feel like boys summoned to the headmaster’s study or…. boys boys boys. I certainly remembered one instance when Haraldsen had talked to me about a house he was building in a little island somewhere in the north, and had rhapsodized over it like a boy. I recognized in him the boy I had known in Equatoria, and I felt as if I had suddenly recovered an old friend. His lean, dark head and smooth, boyish face were just as I remembered them twenty years ago. His face was so lit up and eager that I thought it was simply another ebullition of the boy in him that could not die… When I called to him he was laughing like a care-free boy at the figure Peter John cut in Sandy’s short waders. In the end they caught Haraldsen’s eyes, and some compelling force in them made him pull up a chair and sit down stiffly, like a schoolboy in the headmaster’s room. Part of his cheerfulness was due to the admiration he had acquired for Sandy, which made him follow as docilely as a small boy in the wake of a big brother. They were like schoolboys playing at pirates who had suddenly found themselves enrolled under the authentic Blackbeard. This arrested development or emotional immaturity is very apparent in their dealings with women – for Hannay/Buchan these come in three flavours, either sweet old ladies in Highland villages, adorable wives, or over-made-up slatterns. That’s it. The homosexuality which notoriously flourished in English public schools – partly due to the complete absence of women – and led to what the French called ‘the English vice’ i.e. spanking and bondage – made it notoriously difficult for these men to have thoughtful adult relationships with women. True, in this novel, both Hannay and Sandy are now married with young children, but women play no real role in the book. In fact, going back a book, Mr Standfast came in for much criticism at its publication and ever since because Buchan repeatedly describes his wife-to-be as a boy, consciously or not suppressing her feminine characteristics and (comically) emphasising that she is nearly as good as a boy! She seemed little more than a child, and before the war would probably have still ranked as a flapper. She wore the neat blue dress and apron of a V.A.D. and her white cap was set on hair like spun gold. She smiled demurely as she arranged the tea-things, and I thought I had never seen eyes at once so merry and so grave. I stared after her as she walked across the lawn, and I remember noticing that she moved with the free grace of an athletic boy. (MS Ch 1) I puzzled over this till I realized that in all my Cotswold pictures a figure kept going and coming – a young girl with a cloud of gold hair and the strong, slim grace of a boy, who had sung ‘Cherry Ripe’ in a moonlit garden. Up on that hillside I understood very clearly that I, who had been as careless of women as any monk, had fallen wildly in love with a child of half my age. (MS Ch 5) With a child – not a woman. The grace of a boy – not a woman. Although Buchan goes out of his way to prove his wife every bit as capable (or more) than Hannay, the impression remains nonetheless that she is a cracking chap and would have been a splendid addition to the First Eleven. It is a cliché that public schoolboys were encouraged to play games at the expense of intellectual pursuits, and that the spirit of team sports, abiding by rules, playing for the team etc, were directly related to the mentality they were expected to bring to running the greatest empire the world had ever seen. the famous quote, ‘Play up, play up, and play the game’, is the famous line from Sir Henry Newbolt’s 1892 poem Vitaï Lampada. Huntin’, shootin’, fishin’ It is fascinating to see how this mentality works out in practice, for almost every aspect of Hannay’s life really is referred to as a game. His ordinary, non-perilous-adventure activities are all based around ‘games’ with rules: lots of hunting, whether it be stalking deer, fishing for trout or shooting ducks in Norfolk – and of course all the animals you’re hunting are themselves game – there are precise rules on how to do it, and not only that but the rules extend to the relationships you have with the servants who help you, ghillies and groundsmen and fly fishing suppliers and the owners of inns near good hunting, shooting and fishing territory. Etiquette There are also, obviously enough, precise rules around etiquette, about how one dresses for dinner, or informally, or for sports activities, and how one comports oneself in public and at dinner, where strict rules surround what is eaten with what, and what is drunk with what, and when at which course, and then what subjects are permissible and which taboo, for a room full of like-minded men smoking their pipes after dinner. Life as games All this means that when adventure comes along, it too is turned into a game, or rather into a series of mini-games, each of which can be controlled and conceived of as games. Thus when Hannay pretends to allow himself to be hypnotised by the baddie in The Three Hostages, it is part of the game. Whenever he and allies realise they’re in peril they’ll say ‘the chase is on’, the game has started’. Notoriously, our chaps described the rivalry between Russia and Great Britain at the borders of India and in Afghanistan as the Great Game. And in the two Great War-related novels, Greenmantle and Standfast, the War itself is conceived as a gigantic game, made up of myriads of smaller games, offensives and ‘shows’, all of which must be played by rules which are comprehensible and definable, at least to the officer class who all went to the same schools – if not quite so obvious to the ‘lions’ who were led to slaughter in their millions. War, business, adventure, Empire, crime, love, sport – almost all human activities can be turned by these huntin’, shootin’, fishin’ elite into a game. ‘He wasted a lot of time in that barren game, and more than once nearly had his throat cut, and then he was lucky enough to turn up on the Rand when that show was beginning. Albinus looked a workmanlike fellow who had been at the game before, and even Troth made a presentable figure for the wilds. He didn’t get much beyond a few klipspringer and bushbuck, but it was a good game area, and he lived in hopes of a kudu. ‘They visited the Island of Sheep – this was the name of Valdemar’s place – and, when they found it empty, pretty well ransacked the house, just like so many pirates from the sea. But they did no mischief, for they were playing a bigger game.’ ‘He doesn’t appear to care for money so much as for the game.’ ‘I felt somehow that we had the game in our hands, and had got over the worst snags.’ His opponents’ game was the old one of the pack, learned when their ancestors hunted on the plains of Asia. ‘Oh, nonsense!’ I said. ‘We’re not here cadging hospitality. We’re all in the same game, and this is part of it.’ ‘I see what your game is, and I don’t like it either.’ ‘The Skipper knows that game too well. If we try to double-cross him he’ll shoot.’ Another way of thinking about Hannay’s racism, his racist contempt for the excluded and the outsiders which I considered in my previous post, is that they are outsiders because they don’t play the game (whatever the particular game happens to be). They are either completely outside the gaming culture – like Africans, Indians and natives everywhere – or they are white but perversely refuse to play the game like, in Hannay’s opinion, socialists, Germans or – worst of all – Jews. And this refusal to join in the White Man’s game mentality, with its elaborate rules and etiquette, can only mean one thing – it can’t be that they think the game silly or are playing their own game – it must be that the refusers are wicked degenerates, or helpless half-wits who are the pawns of wicked degenerates. And that precisely describes the gang in The Three Hostages who are more or less stooges of the wicked mastermind Medina – or the gang in Island of Sheep, who are more or less weak-minded pawns of the real wicked baddie, Jacques D’Ingraville (‘Foreign blighter is he, Sandy? Yeees, doesn’t surprise me.’). Master and servant Chapter 4, which explains how Hannay and Pienaar and Lombard came to be blood brothers with Haraldsen, is set in pre-War Africa. All the blacks ie the native inhabitants of Africa, are referred to as ‘boys’, if they are working for our heroes, or ‘Kaffirs’ if they’re the 99.9% of the population who aren’t. Both these terms would develop nastier and nastier overtones of domination and racism as the century progressed and white men’s hold upon Africa came to seem more and more perilous. Similarly, Hannay in England or Scotland knows where he is in his relations with other white men – either they’re of his own class, or they are servants of some kind, butler, gardener, groundsman, ghillie, driver, beater, help on a shoot or fish. The same thing applies as with the concept of ‘the game’ which is that, there is a set of clearly defined relationships which a posh man can have with other Brits, almost all those of master and servant, all of which carry an etiquette and rules for both parties. It is when Hannay steps outside the easy master-servant relationship he is used to that he is nervous and becomes generally critical if not nasty. For example, the population of most of the UK is a mystery to him; all city-dwellers belong to the ghastly middle classes or, worse, the violent working classes unless that is, they are redeemed by being in the Army – in which case the rules and regulations surrounding Army life immediately kick in – thus Hannay is at sea when caught in a fight with a drunk Scots Fusilier in Mr Standfast – but when he meets the same man and is wearing his general’s uniform he is immediately able to patronise and control him and, indeed, persuade him to become his manservant which – in these wish-fulfilment fantasies of the upper-classes – the working class man (Geordie Hamilton) is immediately happy to do. But introduce him to the mixed lower-middle-class society of pacifists and artists in Biggleswick, or to the would-be artists described in the BBC quote above, or to the nightclub clientele in The Three Hostages, then Hannay is all at sea, then his limited world-view struggles to cope with the chaotic realities of an unpredictable population of 50 million fellow human beings most of whom along with the nature of their lives and struggles for money and food and shelter and love – due to the blinkers wrapped round him from birth – are a complete mystery to him, then he reduces them to crude ciphers, dismisses them as half-baked or naive, and his anxiety about not being able to define his relationship to them, not being able to incorporate them into one of his games, comes out in abuse and insults, often crudely racist – in references to a nigger band, a dirty Jewess, greasy Dagos, the hoydenish Irish and so on. Playing the game is fine if you’re inside the game, involved in the game. But eventually the 99% of the Empire’s population who were excluded from the game decided the situation was no longer tenable. Thus these books, the confident, well-written and frequently thrilling expressions of an ideology its author thought would never die, are now not only quaint ripping yarns but museum pieces pored over by scholars exploring the psychopathology of a vanished culture. The Island of Sheep online The Richard Hannay novels The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) Greenmantle (1916) Mr Standfast (1919) The Three Hostages (1924) The Island of Sheep (1936) by Simon on August 26, 2014 • Permalink Posted in Adventure, Books, Novel, Thriller Tagged 1936, John Buchan, Richard Hannay, Sandy Arbuthnot, The Island of Sheep, thriller Posted by Simon on August 26, 2014 https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/the-island-of-sheep-john-buchan/ The Three Hostages by John Buchan (1924) Buchan’s hero, Richard Hannay, was always a posh pukka public schoolboy hero; his ‘let’s biff the blighters, Sandy!’, ‘oh hooray! another grand show!’ style is part of the semi-comic appeal of The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle, novels in which he is a relatively junior, unknown, everyman figure. However, by the time of Mr Standfast, Hannay is a Lieutenant-General in charge of his own division of the British Army during World War I, and his schoolboy pluck begins to seem out of keeping for a man responsible for so many others’ lives. My favourite parts of Standfast was not the far-fetched plot, but a) the slow beginning where Hannay goes undercover in one of the new garden suburbs to hobnob with pacifists and conscientious objectors, then goes on to meet working men in Glasgow, both of which shed fascinating light on social attitudes during the Great War b) the very end, the description of the 1918 German Spring Offensive, where Hannay’s division has to hold the line outside Amiens, which is genuinely gripping Setting and plot This, the fourth Richard Hannay thriller, is set in the early Twenties and the volume of all the pukka, jolly-good-chaps characteristics of the earlier books have been turned up until it almost reads like a parody. Our hero is now Sir Richard Hannay KCB, OBE, DSO and Legion of Honour, married to the beautiful clever Lady Mary whom he met in Mr Standfast, and living the quiet life of a country squire in his venerable Gloucestershire pile. From here he is only very reluctantly enticed back into an adventure by the combined forces of his old friends in the police, his pleading wife and the parents or lovers of the three unfortunates who have been kidnapped by a dastardly gang of international crooks. These three hostages (hence the title) are being held in order to silence their relatives while the baddies carry out some kind of wicked international crime which, frankly, is never explained. Everything in the book feels stereotyped and exaggerated: Hannay is no longer just an ordinary chap who is plunged into sudden adventure (as in the The 39 Steps), he has become for Buchan an embodiment and epitome of everything that is good and solid and traditional and conservative about British life. He knows everyone and everyone knows him. He knows the local nobs from the annual shoots or fishing trips or balls given by the Lord Lieutenant. Up in Town he meets everyone at his club or strolling down Pall Mall or is invited to join the most elite club in the land, the Thursday Club with just 15 members, half of them cabinet members. … and in the few minutes while the men were left alone at table I fell into talk with an elderly man on my right, who proved to be a member of the Cabinet. (Chapter 4) All his friends have similarly gone up in the world, including the dashing Sandy Arbuthnot, the hero of Greenmantle who turns out – in line with the novel’s emphasis on the rootedness of Britain’s squirearchy and class system – to be heir to a title. I had seen his elder brother’s death in the papers, so he was now Master of Clanroyden and heir to the family estates, but I didn’t imagine that that would make a Scotch laird of him. (Ch 4) The three hostages are, in their way, supposed to stand for everything fine and noble in Hannay’s world – a dashing young man just up at Oxford and desperate to get into the cricket team – a beautiful young woman engaged to a French fellah Hannay knew from the Division during the last show – and a schoolboy at Eton (which Hannay’s own son, the puppet-like Peter John, is down for, inevitably). The schoolboy is clearly intended to be a model child – and draws forth from Lady Mary, throughout the book, gallons of maternal concern – which makes the description of him all the more revealing – and nauseating. The tearful parent, noble old Sir Arthur Warcliff … showed us a miniature he carried with him – an extraordinarily handsome child with wide grey eyes and his head most nobly set upon his shoulders. A grave little boy, with the look of utter trust which belongs to children who have never in their lives been unfairly treated. Mary said something about the gentleness of the face. ‘Yes, Davie was very gentle,’ his father said. ‘I think he was the gentlest thing I have ever known. That little boy was the very flower of courtesy. But he was curiously stoical, too. When he was distressed, he only shut his lips tight, and never cried. I used often to feel rebuked by him.’ And then he told us about Davie’s performances at school, where he was not distinguished, except as showing a certain talent for cricket. ‘I am very much afraid of precocity,’ Sir Arthur said with the ghost of a smile. ‘But he was always educating himself in the right way, learning to observe and think.’ It seemed that the boy was a desperately keen naturalist and would be out at all hours watching wild things. He was a great fisherman, too, and had killed a lot of trout with the fly on hill burns in Galloway. And as the father spoke I suddenly began to realise the little chap, and to think that he was just the kind of boy I wanted Peter John to be. I liked the stories of his love of nature and trout streams. It came on me like a thunderclap that if I were in his father’s place I should certainly go mad, and I was amazed at the old man’s courage. ‘I think he had a kind of genius for animals,’ Sir Arthur said. ‘He knew the habits of birds by instinct, and used to talk of them as other people talk of their friends. He and I were great cronies, and he would tell me long stories in his little quiet voice of birds and beasts he had seen on his walks. He had odd names for them too. . . .’ The thing was almost too pitiful to endure. I felt as if I had known the child all my life. I could see him playing, I could hear his voice, and as for Mary she was unashamedly weeping. (Ch 2) The excluded The corollary of all this tight inclusiveness, of the clubbishness of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant squirearchical elite, is that it defines itself by everything it excludes, which is an impressively big list starting with: the entire working and middle class of the nation (unless they are suitable as servants or butlers) all political parties who aren’t on the side of good old England and good old country squires all foreigners – except other white men from the Empire or the occasional ‘darkie’ who becomes an honourable white man by being a crack shot or good fisherman It is fascinating to watch Buchan blame almost all the woes of the troubled years after the War on foreigners: for example, as a thick-headed Imperialist he cannot for the life of him see why the Irish want to leave the British Empire and establish their own nation: ‘Look at the Irish! They are the cleverest propagandists extant, and managed to persuade most people that they were a brave, generous, humorous, talented, warm-hearted race, cruelly yoked to a dull mercantile England, when God knows they were exactly the opposite.’ In fact, the baddie at the heart of the novel, the spider spinning vast webs of evil and crime, the Blofeld, the Mr Big, turns out to be of Irish descent and his Irishness racially and genetically predisposes him to crime. ‘This is how I read him,’ Sandy went on. ‘To begin with, there’s a far-away streak of the Latin in him, but he is mainly Irish, and that never makes a good cross. He’s the déraciné Irish, such as you find in America. I take it that he imbibed from that terrible old woman – I’ve never met her, but I see her plainly and I know that she is terrible – he imbibed that venomous hatred of imaginary things – an imaginary England, an imaginary civilisation, which they call love of country. There is no love in it. They think there is, and sentimentalise about an old simplicity, and spinning wheels and turf fires and an uncouth language, but it’s all hollow. There’s plenty of decent plain folk in Ireland, but his kind of déraciné is a ghastly throw-back to something you find in the dawn of history, hollow and cruel like the fantastic gods of their own myths. Well, you start with this ingrained hate…’ (Ch 10) On the surface the man they’re talking about, Dominic Medina, is the handsomest man in England, the best shot in England (after the King), a leading poet of the new school, and an MP with a promising political career ahead of him, and so, improbably, on. But behind this facade, lurks a devil incarnate etc, who is using ancient Eastern techniques of hypnosis to bend the most important people in Britain to his will. History is a record of conflict There’s a strand of right-wing thinking which is convinced this country is a great nation with a great history which has somehow been dragged down to its present sad and tawdry state by them; if only we could get rid of them, if only we could leave the EU, if only we could get rid of red tape, if only we could get rid of all these immigrants, then England would return to being the paradise it was, er, back, er, in, you know, those far-off golden days. This thick-headed attitude refuses to acknowledge that history is a history of conflict and struggle – in the past week I’ve been walking across Kent where monuments indicate that the first neolithic farmers lived in a society of violence and conflict, that the Romans invaded and conquered the Britons, that the Saxons invaded and conquered the post-Romans, that the Danes invaded and attacked the Saxons, that the Normans invaded and conquered the Saxons, that the Normans fell out among themselves during the civil wars of King Stephen’s and King John’s reigns, that the peasants revolted in the 14th century, that the country was riven by the Wars of the Roses for much of the 15th, that the entire social fabric of the country was turned upside down by Henry VIII’s dictatorship, that the Great Rebellion of the 17th century led to battles across all the kingdoms of Britain and to the execution of the king, that we were invaded and conquered by a Dutch king in 1688 and then by German kings in the 18th century against whom Scottish rebels rose up in 1705 and 1715 and 1745, that we were then involved in a 20-year war against the French during which many intellectuals and workers sided with the revolutionaries, that peace brought such misery there were riots and rebellions across the land which led to the agricultural disturbances of the 1810s and 20s and into the mass movement of the Chartists, which led to the organisation of trades unions and political parties which by the 1880s were calling for armed overthrow of the entire existing social order in England, which led to the Liberal reforms just before the Great War when Parliamentary government almost collapsed, and that the Great War itself was followed by an era of Depression and economic hardship among the majority of the population, which in turn led to the General Strike. To ignore the evidence of history, to refuse to see that conflict and struggle for power and money have characterised most of English history, and instead to sit on the lawn of your Gloucestershire manor house admiring the servants stocking the pond with fish and shoeing your horses and preparing another fine dinner and imagining that there is some kind of timeless peacefulness about England, is dunderheaded idiocy. You are in the privileged position of having servants and workers to do things for you, and so do all your friends, and so you assume it is normal and natural. But if you are this kind of thick-headed squire – the kind of empty-brained ignoramus that P.G. Wodehouse started satirising in his Jeeves & Wooster stories, starting in 1915 – if you can’t accept that violence and conflict is intrinsic to human nature and society, then the only explanation for all the violence and wickedness in the world is that it must result from conspiracies of wicked men. And thus you are led to believe that these others – the non-white ones, the causes of all this mayhem – are somehow inferior, morally, spiritually etc and it is this inferiority, this moral degeneracy, which leads them to conspire and revolt against a social order which is, well, so obviously super and just right for you and the fragrant Lady Mary and sweet little Peter John. These ‘lesser breeds’ of Kipling’s notorious poem, need to be kept in check like the Germans or managed like the various dark-skinned savages under the supervision of other white men like yourself, until they have reached the lofty eminence of the English public schoolboy who knows how to play cricket, the game and life, according to the rules. Instead of which the long-hoped-for victory in the Great War did not lead to a New Jerusalem but seemed to have unleashed a new world where ‘standards’ had collapsed: in politics there was Bolshevism in Russia, Fascism in Italy, economic collapse in Germany; in society there was a flood of new culture, from awful negro jazz to all sorts of ghastly modern art and music and literature. Far from leading to the restoration of the status quo ante, with sound British cricketing virtues re-established in Blighty and around the world, victory in World War I seemed to have ushered in a completely new, far more threatening and chaotic world, both at home and abroad. And to those unused to thinking of history as a history of class struggles or struggles for power and resources, the post-war chaos could only be read as the result of wicked conspiracies, conspiracies by dastardly bad men – by them. This is my theory as to why the racism and anti-semitism which mar the earlier Hannay books have, in this fourth, post-War, offering, become too pronounced and intrinsic to the plot to be laughed off. I went to bed fuming. This new possessory attitude, this hint of nigger-driving, had suddenly made me hate Medina. (Ch 7) We paid five shillings apiece for a liqueur, found a table and took notice of the show. It seemed to me a wholly rotten and funereal business. A nigger band, looking like monkeys in uniform, pounded out some kind of barbarous jingle, and sad-faced marionettes moved to it. There was no gaiety or devil in that dancing, only a kind of bored perfection. Thin young men with rabbit heads and hair brushed straight back from their brows, who I suppose were professional dancing partners, held close to their breasts women of every shape and age, but all alike in having dead eyes and masks for faces, and the macabre procession moved like automata to the niggers’ rhythm. I dare say it was all very wonderful, but I was not built by Providence to appreciate it. (Ch 7) It was the dancing-club which I had visited some weeks before with Archie Roylance. There were the sham Chinese decorations, the blaze of lights, the nigger band, the whole garish spectacle. (Ch 13) ‘I suppose he’s some sort of a Dago.’ ‘Not a bit of it. Old Spanish family settled here for three centuries. One of them rode with Rupert.’ (Ch 3) Ah. Rode with Prince Rupert. How much more white could a man be? Round the skirts of the hall was the usual rastaquouère crowd of men and women drinking liqueurs and champagne, and mixed with fat Jews and blue-black dagos the flushed faces of boys from barracks or college who imagined they were seeing life. (Ch 13) He was just starting to prospect, when he saw a little dago whom he recognised as one of the bar-tenders. (Ch 15) And it is repellent and ugly to see Hannay/Buchan returning again and again to blame the great whipping boy of the first half of the century, the Jews. Why is Buchan at such pains to identify people as Jews and why does the word always appears as an insult in the novels? One of the three hostages is, in fact, the son of a wealthy Jew: Paddock met me in the hall and handed me a card, on which I read the name of Mr. Julius Victor. I knew it, of course, for the name of one of the richest men in the world, the American banker who had done a lot of Britain’s financial business in the War, and was in Europe now at some international conference. I remembered that Blenkiron, who didn’t like his race, had once described him to me as ‘the whitest Jew since the Apostle Paul’. (Ch 2) He began by saying very much what Dr. Greenslade had said the night before. A large part of the world had gone mad, and that involved the growth of inexplicable and unpredictable crime. All the old sanctities had become weakened, and men had grown too well accustomed to death and pain. This meant that the criminal had far greater resources at his command, and, if he were an able man, could mobilise a vast amount of utter recklessness and depraved ingenuity. The moral imbecile, he said, had been more or less a sport before the War; now he was a terribly common product, and throve in batches and battalions. Cruel, humourless, hard, utterly wanting in sense of proportion, but often full of a perverted poetry and drunk with rhetoric – a hideous, untameable breed had been engendered. You found it among the young Bolshevik Jews, among the young gentry of the wilder Communist sects, and very notably among the sullen murderous hobbledehoys in Ireland. (Ch 2) He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I wasn’t much taken by him. He’s too infernally un-English. I don’t know how he got it, but there seems to be a touch of the shrill Levantine in him. Compare him with those fellows to-night. Even the Frenchmen – even Victor, though he’s an American and a Jew – are more our own way of thinking.’ (Ch 7) The place was very empty – only about a dozen, and mostly a rather bad lot. Archie asked what right he had to carry off the girl, and lost his temper, and the manager was called in – the man with the black beard. He backed up Odell, and then Archie did a very silly thing. He said he was Sir Archibald Roylance and wasn’t going to be dictated to by any Jew. (Ch 14) Archie is the young air ace who helped Hannay out in Mr Standfast; as with Arbuthnot, it is typical of the snobbishness of this novel that he turns out to come from a rippingly upper-class family. Buchan is solidly of his time and class in accepting the common belief that the Bolshevik revolutionaries were somehow all Jews. A lot of them were, but a lot of them weren’t, but either way it wasn’t their ethnicity that counted – the Russian revolution wasn’t caused by Jewishness! It was the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary theory and practice which not only seized power in Russia but threatened for a while to do the same in Poland and even Germany. Hannay/Buchan cannot see or understand that. ‘Think of it!’ he cried. ‘All the places with names like spells – Bokhara, Samarkand – run by seedy little gangs of communist Jews.’ (Ch 1) Yes, all those places which should be accessible to upper-class white men like Hannay and his pukka friends to treat as adventure playgrounds, now being run by the people who live there – outrageous! The plot is twaddle which doesn’t make sense even on its own terms – a shadowy criminal organisation which links American financiers with Greek traders with Baku oilmen etc is on the verge of some never-defined ‘liquidation’. This is just the conspiracy theory background – the plot quickly boils down to focusing on one charismatic baddie in London who a) unnecessarily takes three random hostages b) unnecessarily sends a clue about their whereabouts in a poem (!) to the authorities c) unnecessarily takes Hannay into his confidence once he’s convinced he’s hypnotised him to become one of his ‘followers’ This allows Hannay and his trusty lieutenants, Sandy Arbuthnot and Archie Roylance, plus his beloved wife Lady Mary, to solve the riddle, track down the hostages, and foil the dastardly ‘liquidation’, whatever that was going to be. Thriller motifs More interesting than the paper-thin plot is the literary interest of observing how many of motifs of the thriller genre Buchan established or popularised: car chases and crashes, helpless hostages, hair-raising mountain climbs, breakneck airplane stunts, sinisterly empty chateaux, germ warfare – as well as the fundamental trope that it’s all being controlled by a shadowy, secret, criminal organisation with tentacles reaching up to the highest in the land. And full of social history. If the opening chapters of Mr Standfast give a sense of the range of opposition views about the Great War, then The Three Hostages gives a fascinating insight into the mindset of right-wing, philistine, Imperialist landed gentry of the 1920s. Ireland The Irish are deluded to want their own country – and are depicted as lazy, good-for-nothing, violent fanatics. Bolshevik Russia turns out to have been seized not by revolutionaries with a clear political and economic theory, but by dirty Jews. We would have drifted into politics, if Pugh had not asked him [the Right Honourable Sandy Arbuthnot] his opinion of Gandhi. That led him into an exposition of the meaning of the fanatic, a subject on which he was well qualified to speak, for he had consorted with most varieties. ‘He is always in the technical sense mad – that is, his mind is tilted from its balance, and since we live by balance he is a wrecker, a crowbar in the machinery. His power comes from the appeal he makes to the imperfectly balanced, and as these are never the majority his appeal is limited. But there is one kind of fanatic whose strength comes from balance, from a lunatic balance. You cannot say that there is any one thing abnormal about him, for he is all abnormal. He is as balanced as you or me, but, so to speak, in a fourth-dimensional world. That kind of man has no logical gaps in his creed. Within his insane postulates he is brilliantly sane.’ It was Brits like this, with this unsophisticated racist mindset, who were still running India and simply couldn’t understand Gandhi or Jinnah or, in the end, the entire nation they were put in charge of. Psychoanalysis It is a surprise to see psychoanalysis mentioned early on in the book – in fact it provides a basis for the plot insofar as its popular versions brought to the fore the themes of madness and sanity and the idea of the unconscious, savage or primitive mind. This proves to be the crux of the plot, that Medina’s success is due to him exerting a deeper-than-hypnotic control over various high public officials. But, typically, Buchan mentions psychoanalysis only to pooh pooh it – though he doesn’t mention it, psychoanalysis was of course the invention of his least favourite people, the Jews – and he has that stock character of English fiction, the bluff 18th century country doctor, explain that of course there’s nothing new in this psychoanalysis stuff – ‘Why, you know old chap, we knew about that all along, no need for some damn foreigner to tell us Brits.’ ‘Take all this chatter about psycho-analysis. There’s nothing very new in the doctrine, but people are beginning to work it out into details, and making considerable asses of themselves in the process. It’s an awful thing when a scientific truth becomes the quarry of the half-baked.’ (Ch 1) If the novel were retitled ‘A pure white English virgin, a young sportsman up at Oxford and a virtuous public schoolboy are threatened by an Irish degenerate, nigger bands, filthy dagos and grasping Jews’ it might give a more accurate flavour of this thrilling, fascinating and appalling text. The Three Hostages online Tagged 1924, Blenkiron, Hannay, John Buchan, Richard Hannay, Sandy Arbuthnot, The Three Hostages https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2014/08/24/the-three-hostages-john-buchan/ Mr Standfast by John Buchan (1919) I always felt that I was a better bandit than a detective Thiis is the third and longest of the five Richard Hannay novels, set against the backdrop of the Great War as it entered its fourth and crucial year. Its length is its terrible weakness as, instead of depth or subtlety, Buchan just piles on incident after incident until the plot becomes completely untenable and almost incomprehensible. As just a sample, Hannay: goes undercover in a garden village of pacifists goes undercover in working class Glasgow, gets involved in speeches and fistfights goes undercover across Scottish Highlands to the Isle of Skye is involved in spying and fighting in secret coves on Skye adopts the identity of a travelling salesman of religious books is chased by police around Edinburgh, jumps a train south, escapes from that into a troop train flies south in a commandeered airplane and crashes takes command of a film shoot re-enacting a scene from the War as he makes his escape through the set returns to command of his brigade in France breaks into a mysterious french chateau and discovers germ warfare is trapped in the dungeon of a Swiss castle, escapes disguises himself as a Swiss peasant climbs an inaccessible Alpine pass is involved in a life-or-death race to capture Germany’s leading spy takes command of his brigade against the Germans’ 1918 Spring offensive Buchan’s war work At the outbreak of war Buchan – at that point editor of The Spectator and popular novelist, well-known for his pro-Empire views – had gone to work for the British War Propaganda Bureau. He worked for a bit as French correspondent for The Times. Early in 1915 he was commissioned to write an official history of the War in monthly instalments to be produced by the publishers he was a partner in, Thomas Nelson & Son, hence named Nelson’s History of the War. This started in February 1915 and was eventually published in 24 volumes. Buchan was given the rank of Second Lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps and given access to the official documents to write the work. Around this time he was also commissioned to write speeches and communiqués for Douglas Haig, Head of the British Army. In 1916 the War Propaganda Bureau was subsumed into the Foreign Office at which point Buchan can be said to have officially joined the FO’s Intelligence Department. As a result of his achievements in all these tasks, in February 1917 when the government established a Department of Information, Buchan was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel and put in charge of it – Buchan called it ‘the toughest job I ever took on’. Given Buchan’s role at the heart of the Allied Propaganda effort you might expect the Hannay novels to be unmitigated propaganda, but they’re not. In this novel as in Greenmantle, he goes out of his way to be fair to his opponents, to respect their intelligence and to discriminate between good Germans and bad Germans. In fact Buchan makes the first hundred pages of this novel a kind of tour of the opposition camp: he is told, on a rather flimsy pretext, to pretend to be a South African sceptical of the war and ingratiate himself with pacifists and conscientious objectors and all the domestic opponents of the war. The stated aim is that some fiendish mastermind is feeding information to the enemy via a network of spies and Hannay is tasked with establishing himself as an opponent of the war in order to sniff our the traitors. But it gives Buchan the opportunity to do systematic pen portraits of Bloomsbury pacifists and COs and very interesting it is. Apart from its other value, as insight into the period, it contains an acid portrait of a whiny novelist generally taken to be DH Lawrence. Aronson, the novelist, proved on acquaintance the worst kind of blighter. He considered himself a genius whom it was the duty of the country to support, and he sponged on his wretched relatives and anyone who would lend him money. He was always babbling about his sins, and pretty squalid they were. I should like to have flung him among a few good old-fashioned full-blooded sinners of my acquaintance; they would have scared him considerably. He told me that he sought ‘reality’ and ‘life’ and ‘truth’, but it was hard to see how he could know much about them, for he spent half the day in bed smoking cheap cigarettes, and the rest sunning himself in the admiration of half-witted girls. The creature was tuberculous in mind and body, and the only novel of his I read, pretty well turned my stomach. Mr Aronson’s strong point was jokes about the war. If he heard of any acquaintance who had joined up or was even doing war work his merriment knew no bounds. My fingers used to itch to box the little wretch’s ears. (Chapter 2) England, my England I read the book as I was walking the North Downs Way in Kent, and I was struck by Hannay’s descriptions of rural England; repeatedly the hero goes for walks or comes to places in the Cotswolds so beautiful that he is enraptured. I enjoyed these descriptions so much that I read the first 50 or 60 pages several times: The small Ford car… carried me away from the suburbs of the county town into a land of rolling hills and green water-meadows. It was a gorgeous afternoon and the blossom of early June was on every tree… … Isham stood high up in a fold of the hills away from the main valley, and the road I was taking brought me over the ridge and back to the stream-side. I climbed through great beechwoods, which seemed in the twilight like some green place far below the sea, and then over a short stretch of hill pasture to the rim of the vale. All about me were little fields enclosed with walls of grey stone and full of dim sheep. Below were dusky woods around what I took to be Fosse Manor, for the great Roman Fosse Way, straight as an arrow, passed over the hills to the south and skirted its grounds. I could see the stream slipping among its water-meadows and could hear the plash of the weir. A tiny village settled in a crook of the hill, and its church-tower sounded seven with a curiously sweet chime. Otherwise there was no noise but the twitter of small birds and the night wind in the tops of the beeches. In that moment I had a kind of revelation. I had a vision of what I had been fighting for, what we all were fighting for. It was peace, deep and holy and ancient, peace older than the oldest wars, peace which would endure when all our swords were hammered into ploughshares. It was more; for in that hour England first took hold of me. Before my country had been South Africa, and when I thought of home it had been the wide sun-steeped spaces of the veld or some scented glen of the Berg. But now I realized that I had a new home. I understood what a precious thing this little England was, how old and kindly and comforting, how wholly worth striving for. The freedom of an acre of her soil was cheaply bought by the blood of the best of us. I knew what it meant to be a poet, though for the life of me I could not have made a line of verse. For in that hour I had a prospect as if from a hilltop which made all the present troubles of the road seem of no account. I saw not only victory after war, but a new and happier world after victory, when I should inherit something of this English peace and wrap myself in it till the end of my days… … Outside the house beyond a flagged terrace the lawn fell away, white in the moonshine, to the edge of the stream, which here had expanded into a miniature lake. By the water’s edge was a little formal garden with grey stone parapets which now gleamed like dusky marble. Great wafts of scent rose from it, for the lilacs were scarcely over and the may was in full blossom. Out from the shade of it came suddenly a voice like a nightingale. It was singing the old song ‘Cherry Ripe’, a common enough thing which I had chiefly known from barrel-organs. But heard in the scented moonlight it seemed to hold all the lingering magic of an elder England and of this hallowed countryside… …For the rest I used to spend my mornings reading in the garden, and I discovered for the first time what a pleasure was to be got from old books. They recalled and amplified that vision I had seen from the Cotswold ridge, the revelation of the priceless heritage which is England. I imbibed a mighty quantity of history, but especially I liked the writers, like Walton, who got at the very heart of the English countryside… In the afternoons I took my exercise in long tramps along the good dusty English roads. The country fell away from Biggleswick into a plain of wood and pasture-land, with low hills on the horizon. The Place was sown with villages, each with its green and pond and ancient church. Most, too, had inns, and there I had many a draught of cool nutty ale, for the inn at Biggleswick was a reformed place which sold nothing but washy cider. Often, tramping home in the dusk, I was so much in love with the land that I could have sung with the pure joy of it… Sweet and kind There’s a sweetness and kindness to Buchan’s spirit, he is good at countryside and good at quick pen portraits of the strangers he meets. Presently the road fell to a gleaming sea-loch which lay like the blue blade of a sword among the purple of the hills. At the head there was a tiny clachan, nestled among birches and rowans, where a tawny burn wound to the sea. When I entered the place it was about four o’clock in the afternoon, and peace lay on it like a garment. In the wide, sunny street there was no sign of life, and no sound except of hens clucking and of bees busy among the roses. There was a little grey box of a kirk, and close to the bridge a thatched cottage which bore the sign of a post and telegraph office…. I entered the little shop, and passed from bright sunshine to a twilight smelling of paraffin and black-striped peppermint balls. An old woman with a mutch sat in an arm-chair behind the counter. She looked up at me over her spectacles and smiled, and I took to her on the instant. She had the kind of old wise face that God loves. (Chapter 5) For complicated reasons Hannay has gone undercover to try and figure out how secrets are being smuggled to the Germans and this brings him to the Highlands and, eventually, to the Isle of Skye. But not before his enemies get the police to put out an alert for him and he is hunted across the Highland countryside rather as in The Thirty-Nine Steps. He is picked up by well-meaning local gentry with whom he suddenly returns to his full military bearing and in this mode meets the son, who has been invalided out of the war. The boy looked at me pleasantly. ‘I’m very glad to meet you, sir. You’ll excuse me not getting up, but I’ve got a game leg.’ He was the copy of his father in features, but dark and sallow where the other was blond. He had just the same narrow head, and stubborn mouth, and honest, quick-tempered eyes. It is the type that makes dashing regimental officers, and earns V.C.s, and gets done in wholesale. I was never that kind. I belonged to the school of the cunning cowards. (Chapter 5) The book is in two parts, which adds to the sense of bittiness, of numerous hair-raising escapades strung together on very slender threads and coming pell-mell. Once again there’s a volta or switch of emphasis, when the German spy ring which had been the focus of the first 200 pages, which had seemed so dangerous and all-encompassing – is suddenly swept up with no problems, including its dastardly ringleader, who had metamorphosed into all the Bad Men who started this beastly war. All the previous shenanigans are completely overshadowed by the last 30 pages or so of the book which are a genuinely riveting account of the German Spring offensive, Germany’s last throw of the dice which almost penetrated the thin Allied lines and opened the way to Paris. I can’t discover how accurate Buchan’s account is of Hannay’s fictional division holding the line outside Amiens, but the stress and anxiety and the detail of reinforcements and the terrible casualties and the high stakes make for a genuinely gripping climax to an otherwise chaotic and exhausting novel. Mr Standfast on Project Gutenberg Mr Standfast Wikipedia article (with plot synopsis) Posted in Books, Great War, Thriller Tagged 1917, 1919, Buchan, DH Lawrence, Hannay, John Buchan, Mr Standfast, Richard Hannay, Spy novel, thriller https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/mr-standfirst-john-buchan/ Greenmantle by John Buchan (1916) This is the second of Buchan’s five thrillers told in the first person by the bluff, straight-talking South African mining engineer-cum posh chap Richard Hannay. Whereas The Thirty-Nine Steps which is about foiling a German plot to smuggle military secrets out of England, is set just before the outbreak of the Great War, this sequel was written between February and June 1916 and is very much set during the Great War: the plot starts in November 1915 and goes on into early 1916. (NB In June 1916 Buchan joined the intelligence department of the Foreign Office and in July the first installment of the Greennmantle appeared in Land and Water magazine. Buchan’s role working for British propaganda is worth bearing in mind when reading any of his books, and I will discuss more fully in the next blog post, about Mr Standfast.) Hannay is joined in his adventure by three friends: Sandy Arbuthnot, a dashing hero who is blood brother to half the tribes of bedouin and gypsies throughout the Middle East (‘He rode through Yemen, which no white man ever did before.’); Peter Pienaar, a grizzled old big game hunter friend of Hannay’s from South Africa; John S. Blenkiron, a tubby and extremely knowledgeable American on our side. Sir Walter Bullivant, the senior intelligence man who came to Hannay’s aid in the Steps, now informs them there is a dastardly German plot to cause a muslim uprising against the British in the Middle East and beyond, down the east coast of Africa. Our heroes are tasked with finding out who’s organising it and stopping it. This rather vague commission leads them to plan to journey via separate routes to Istanbul to find out everything they can along the way, rendezvous, and come up with a plan. While Blenkiron travels in style through Germany posing as an outspoken opponent of the War and of the Allies and Sandy plans his own mysterious journey via the Med, Hannay poses as a disgruntled South African Boer ready to throw in his lot with the Germans, and this leads him to be presented to the sinister Hun General von Stumm, to overhear vital conversations, and then to escape and go on the run through the winter snows of Germany, involving extremes of physical endurance, car chases, fake identities and so on. Plot shift – a volta? In the Alistair MacLean novels I identified the frequent use of an abrupt volta or shift, whereby the hero reveals he is something completely different from what he’d led us to believe for the first half of the text. Something similiar though less calculating happens in The Thirty-Nine Steps: the first half of the plot is driven by Hannay’s need to hide from the German spy organisation until he can get news to the authorities about their plot to assassinate the Greek Prime Minister on a state visit to London. But in the last chapter or so, the Greek PM is assassinated and, suddenly, it doesn’t matter because it has become a much more chamber affair of a German spy impersonating the First Sea Lord – an incident Hannay happens to witness through incredible coincidence as he happens to be waiting outside the meeting to see Bullivant, the head of British intelligence. It is only by the slenderest of accidents that Hannay spots this and realises the true meaning of the fragmentary message about the 39 steps ie they are steps down to the sea from a coastal house for a German spy to escape taking the information the imposter has learned at this high-level meeting. Well, the same thing happens in Greenmantle. The first half or more relates Hannay’s dashing adventures in wintry Germany, before he finally makes it to Istanbul where our heroes meet up and establish that a new muslim prophet has arisen and is being steered and managed by a fiendish German mastermind. BUT then the book’s focus changes. Whereas the uprising had formerly been a general jihad of all muslims in the Middle East, now it becomes focused on the battle around the eastern city of Erzerum where the Russians are besieging the Turkish Army, bolstered by German forces – and then, in exactly the kind of slender coincidence on which the Steps turned, Hannay – escaping over rooftops from pursuing soldiers – accidentally sees the General poring over plans before leaving the room, so – in a typical moment of dash and pluck – Hannay opens the window, nips across the room and snaffles the plans, returns to the window, and completes his rooftop escape. The plans turn out to be the enemy deployments around Erzerum and, in a further adventure, our heroes smuggle them through enemy lines to the Russians who, thus informed, are able to storm the city and capture that front. (Incidentally, it’s worth mentioning that the final scene, the climax of the book, where the attacking Cossacks not only rescue Hannay and pals from being shelled by the wicked von Stumm, but also lend them horses so they can lead the cavalry charge into Erzerum, is genuinely exciting and thrilling.) A small world of toffs The upper class world Hannay inhabits is small: everyone of importance in England knows everyone else or has heard of them via the public school network; and similarly, everyone abroad is connected with that network somehow, creating an international matrix of acquaintances. For example, when Peter Pienaar arrives after perilously crossing the front line between the Turkish and Russian armies, it is absolutely classic that the Russian general he is presented to turns out to be a decent feller who he once went wild game shooting with in Matabeleland. Of course. In this world there are only two or three hundred people of note who all went to school together or are related to each other or a few foreigners who one has had scrapes with. This small world is, to quote Auden, ‘everso comfy’. It is part of the childishness of these thrillers not only that our chaps will get out of their scrapes, but that their and our values are correct, the only decent ones – and shared by all good-hearted people everywhere ie all the upper crust people or chaps who’ve knocked about and done a bit of hunting. There is none of the anxiety or alienation which has struck most writers as characteristic of the 20th century world. This uber-confidence is most apparent in Buchan’s amazing prose style. People say Buchan’s adventures are fast-paced. Sure, things happen and, after a generally slow start, at an accelerating rate – but I suggest the sense of ‘pace’ is created by his amazingly crisp and no-nonsense style. By pacy I mean his ability to describe a person, place or situation in a minimum of words, with precise, well-turned phrases. This lack of dawdling, no hesitation or doubt, this ability to say things fast, creates a sense of speed even when not much is actually happening. The opening sentences are: I had just finished breakfast and was filling my pipe when I got Bullivant’s telegram. It was at Furling, the big country house in Hampshire where I had come to convalesce after Loos, and Sandy, who was in the same case, was hunting for the marmalade. I flung him the flimsy with the blue strip pasted down on it, and he whistled. (Chapter 1) Setting: breakfast, pipe, marmalade. the same super-English atmosphere of cosy domesticity that characterises Sherlock and Watson. Actions: flung, whistled; aristocratic gestures of nonchalance, calm, confident, urbane. This is the tone throughout, the unflustered Englishman. When they meet to plan it is in Claridges, the Savoy, their club. There was a motor-car waiting—one of the grey military kind—and we started at a terrific pace over bad forest roads. Stumm had put away his papers in a portfolio, and flung me a few sentences on the journey. (Ch 5) Pace, speed, flung. Cars were relatively new and almost as soon as they were invented they were being stolen and involved in high speed chases: Hannay steals one in Germany and then another in Turkey. Here he is ditching his stolen car, sounding like Raymond Chandler 20 years later. Presently I came on a bit of rough heath, with a slope away from the road and here and there a patch of black which I took to be a sandpit. Opposite one of these I slewed the car to the edge, got out, started it again and saw it pitch head-foremost into the darkness. There was a splash of water and then silence. Craning over I could see nothing but murk, and the marks at the lip where the wheels had passed. (Ch 7) Pen portraits and memorable scenes The precision and briskness of his style lends itself to acute pen portraits and memorable scenes, written with verve and clarity. Probably the most tremendous is when he is accompanying von Stumm as a potential helper and ally, and finds himself being presented to the Kaiser himself! At the far side of the station a train had drawn up, a train consisting of three big coaches, chocolate-coloured and picked out with gold. On the platform beside it stood a small group of officers, tall men in long grey-blue cloaks. They seemed to be mostly elderly, and one or two of the faces I thought I remembered from photographs in the picture papers. As we approached they drew apart, and left us face to face with one man. He was a little below middle height, and all muffled in a thick coat with a fur collar. He wore a silver helmet with an eagle atop of it, and kept his left hand resting on his sword. Below the helmet was a face the colour of grey paper, from which shone curious sombre restless eyes with dark pouches beneath them. There was no fear of my mistaking him. These were the features which, since Napoleon, have been best known to the world. I stood as stiff as a ramrod and saluted. I was perfectly cool and most desperately interested. For such a moment I would have gone through fire and water. ‘Majesty, this is the Dutchman I spoke of,’ I heard Stumm say. ‘What language does he speak?’ the Emperor asked. ‘Dutch,’ was the reply; ‘but being a South African he also speaks English.’ A spasm of pain seemed to flit over the face before me. Then he addressed me in English. ‘You have come from a land which will yet be our ally to offer your sword to our service? I accept the gift and hail it as a good omen. I would have given your race its freedom, but there were fools and traitors among you who misjudged me. But that freedom I shall yet give you in spite of yourselves. Are there many like you in your country?’ ‘There are thousands, sire,’ I said, lying cheerfully. ‘I am one of many who think that my race’s life lies in your victory. And I think that that victory must be won not in Europe alone. In South Africa for the moment there is no chance, so we look to other parts of the continent. You will win in Europe. You have won in the East, and it now remains to strike the English where they cannot fend the blow. If we take Uganda, Egypt will fall. By your permission I go there to make trouble for your enemies.’ A flicker of a smile passed over the worn face. It was the face of one who slept little and whose thoughts rode him like a nightmare. ‘That is well,’ he said. ‘Some Englishman once said that he would call in the New World to redress the balance of the Old. We Germans will summon the whole earth to suppress the infamies of England. Serve us well, and you will not be forgotten.’ Then he suddenly asked: ‘Did you fight in the last South African War?’ ‘Yes, Sir,’ I said. ‘I was in the commando of that Smuts who has now been bought by England.’ ‘What were your countrymen’s losses?’ he asked eagerly. I did not know, but I hazarded a guess. ‘In the field some twenty thousand. But many more by sickness and in the accursed prison-camps of the English.’ Again a spasm of pain crossed his face. ‘Twenty thousand,’ he repeated huskily. ‘A mere handful. Today we lose as many in a skirmish in the Polish marshes.’ Then he broke out fiercely. ‘I did not seek the war … It was forced on me … I laboured for peace … The blood of millions is on the heads of England and Russia, but England most of all. God will yet avenge it. He that takes the sword will perish by the sword. Mine was forced from the scabbard in self-defence, and I am guiltless. Do they know that among your people?’ ‘All the world knows it, sire,’ I said. He gave his hand to Stumm and turned away. The last I saw of him was a figure moving like a sleep-walker, with no spring in his step, amid his tall suite. I felt that I was looking on at a far bigger tragedy than any I had seen in action. Here was one that had loosed Hell, and the furies of Hell had got hold of him. He was no common man, for in his presence I felt an attraction which was not merely the mastery of one used to command. That would not have impressed me, for I had never owned a master. But here was a human being who, unlike Stumm and his kind, had the power of laying himself alongside other men. That was the irony of it. Stumm would not have cared a tinker’s curse for all the massacres in history. But this man, the chief of a nation of Stumms, paid the price in war for the gifts that had made him successful in peace. He had imagination and nerves, and the one was white hot and the others were quivering. I would not have been in his shoes for the throne of the Universe … (ch 6) Similarly, he meets the leader of Turkey, Ismail Enver Pasha, a leader of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution and effective leader of the Ottoman Empire in both Balkan Wars and World War I. But the great event was the sight of Enver. He was a slim fellow of Rasta’s build, very foppish and precise in his dress, with a smooth oval face like a girl’s, and rather fine straight black eyebrows. He spoke perfect German, and had the best kind of manners, neither pert nor overbearing. He had a pleasant trick, too, of appealing all round the table for confirmation, and so bringing everybody into the talk. Not that he spoke a great deal, but all he said was good sense, and he had a smiling way of saying it. Once or twice he ran counter to Moellendorff, and I could see there was no love lost between these two. I didn’t think I wanted him as a friend—he was too cold-blooded and artificial; and I was pretty certain that I didn’t want those steady black eyes as an enemy. But it was no good denying his quality. The little fellow was all cold courage, like the fine polished blue steel of a sword. (ch 13) Anti-semitism No point denying it. Hannay is given to quick stereotypes of all sorts of races and nationalities – it’s part of the speedy summing-up of people and places which is an aspect of his upper-class English confidence and of his style. Nonetheless, his comments about Jews go above and beyond this stereotyping to have an unpleasant, vengeful flavour. In Germany only the Jew can get outside himself, and that is why, if you look into the matter, you will find that the Jew is at the back of most German enterprises. (Ch 6) Poor old Peter had no greatcoat, so we went into a Jew’s shop and bought a ready-made abomination, which looked as if it might have been meant for a dissenting parson… Peter and I sat down modestly in the nearest corner, where old Kuprasso saw us and sent us coffee. A girl who looked like a Jewess came over to us and talked French, but I shook my head and she went off again. (Ch 11) Blacks There is one stunning reference to people of colour which reminds us that Hannay is meant to have spent a lot of time in South Africa based, of course, on Buchan’s own time as assistant to the High Commissioner in South Africa from 1901 to 1903. He liked the way I kept the men up to their work, for I hadn’t been a nigger-driver for nothing. (Ch 9) Whites the corollary of these stereotypes of other races is, if you like, a stereotype of ‘the good white man’, phrases which assume the white man’s unquestioned place at the top of the racial pyramid. In particular, I was startled to read the phrase ‘like a white man’ used to denote, well, being a sound chap. That fellow gave me the best ‘feel’ of any German I had yet met. He was a white man and I could have worked with him. I liked his stiff chin and steady blue eyes. (Ch 4) Gaudian was clearly a good fellow, a white man and a gentleman. I could have worked with him for he belonged to my own totem. (Ch 5) Still the ride did us good and shook up our livers, and by the time we turned for home I was feeling more like a white man. (Ch 14) Good Germans But Buchan is wise enough not to belabour the stereotypes: in the race across Germany section of the book he goes to great lengths to describe good Germans: the engineer Gaudian is honest and open. There is a maybe sentimental but nonetheless moving account of the poor woman who takes Hannay in in the depths of winter and allows him to have his malaria bout in her quiet attic room and in return Hannay carves toys for her poor children. And there’s a long sequence where Hannay manages to get a berth on a set of barges from Essen which is chugging south through Austria and, as he does so, gets to know the captain and crew and gets, as usual, to like them. It is one of Hannay’s endearing qualities that he is quick to see the good side of people, or to admire them, even if he disagrees with them or they are sworn enemies. As with She, Rider Haggard’s classic boys adventure story about the Eternal Woman, Greenmantle suggests the English public school boy has made little or no progress in being able to accept or understand women as women. Buchan’s Hilda von Einem must run Ayesha a close second in the stakes of being a shocking collection of feminine (and sexist?) clichés. Although she’s meant to be the wicked mastermind behind the whole uprising plan, the entire new prophet-von Einem-muslim uprising part of the plot doesn’t come alive for me. It is the monstrous General von Stumm and the intense period Hannay spends with him in Germany, and then the long escape through the snow, and the long barge ride down the Danube, and then von Stumm’s magical reappearance in Erzerum to chase and corner Hannay and chums on an isolated hilltop, it is these elements of the book which have real life because they are the physical tests and tribulations which are the core of the good thriller – the sense of a fit man pushed to the physical and mental limit – and are described with such vividness. I must have run miles before the hot fit passed, and I stopped from sheer bodily weakness. There was no sound except the crush of falling snow, the wind seemed to have gone, and the place was very solemn and quiet. But Heavens! how the snow fell! It was partly screened by the branches, but all the same it was piling itself up deep everywhere. My legs seemed made of lead, my head burned, and there were fiery pains over all my body. I stumbled on blindly, without a notion of any direction, determined only to keep going to the last. For I knew that if I once lay down I would never rise again. (Ch 7) Jihad and the muslim world A hundred years after this novel speculated about a muslim uprising in the Middle East against the Western powers, the forces of ISIS are storming through Iraq and claiming Syria as part of the Caliphate. Is it a topical subject, or just a subject which never goes away in the muslim world, a world which seems to permanently long to return to the imagined purity of some fictional middle ages. What is a bit more characteristic is Buchan/Hannay’s assumption that this is a world only Brits can really understand – unlike the blundering Germans and – later – Americans. Buchan knows his and Hannay’s limits, so he gives the role of special insight into the Arab mind, and into the muslim prophet who is called Greenmantle, to fellow hero Sandy Arbuthnot: ‘I never saw such a man. He is the greatest gentleman you can picture, with a dignity like a high mountain. He is a dreamer and a poet, too – a genius if I can judge these things. I think I can assess him rightly, for I know something of the soul of the East, but it would be too long a story to tell now. The West knows nothing of the true Oriental. It pictures him as lapped in colour and idleness and luxury and gorgeous dreams. But it is all wrong. The Kaf he yearns for is an austere thing. It is the austerity of the East that is its beauty and its terror… It always wants the same things at the back of its head. The Turk and the Arab came out of big spaces, and they have the desire of them in their bones. They settle down and stagnate, and by the by they degenerate into that appalling subtlety which is their ruling passion gone crooked. And then comes a new revelation and a great simplifying. They want to live face to face with God without a screen of ritual and images and priestcraft. They want to prune life of its foolish fringes and get back to the noble bareness of the desert. Remember, it is always the empty desert and the empty sky that cast their spell over them – these, and the hot, strong, antiseptic sunlight which burns up all rot and decay. It isn’t inhuman. It’s the humanity of one part of the human race. It isn’t ours, it isn’t as good as ours, but it’s jolly good all the same. There are times when it grips me so hard that I’m inclined to forswear the gods of my fathers! Probably critics would damn this and Buchan’s entire approach as Orientalist ie assuming Western superiority to a stereotype of the corrupt, lazy East. But it feels to me an accurate enough dramatisation of that mentality, of the mentality of the jolly rugger captain whose soul is captured by the simplicity and purity of bedouin life and becomes a devotee of Arab culture, from Sir Richard Burton to the TE Lawrence who was making a name for himself among the Arabs just as Greenmantle was published. Greenmantle online Greenmantle on Amazon Posted in Adventure, Books, Great War, Novel, Thriller Tagged 1916, British Empire, Buchan, Great War, Greenmantle, Hilda von Einem, John Buchan, Richard Hannay, Sandy Arbuthnot, Spy novel, thriller, World War I https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/greenmantle-john-buchan/

instruction: You are a doctor, please answer the medical questions based on the patient's description. input: I AM 57 YRS. OLD AND IN GOOD HEALTH. I DO HAVE FIBROMGALGIA, BUT IT IS UNDER CONTROL FOR THE MOST PART RIGHT NOW. I HAVE FOR THE PAST 3 OR 4 DAYS BEEN HAVE CHEST PAIN ON MY LEFT SIDE, RIGHT UNDER MY BREAST. ITS NOT ALWAYS THERE, BUT COMES AND GOES.IT IS A VERY SHARP PAIN. I HAVE BEEN GETTING THEM OF AND ON FOR A YEAR OR SO, BUT THIS TIME THEY SEEM TO HAVE LASTED LONGER. IS THIS SOMETHING I SHOULD BE WORRIED ABOUT?THANK YOU,BETTY output: You have diagnosed fibromyalgia... When pain occurs you can take simple analgesic like paracetamol .... Hot pad application useful........ Counselling session can be helpful. If muscular spasm associated then muscle relaxant given.... You are complaining somewhat increasing pain so investigate with blood pressure monitoring, treadmill and ECG just to rule out cardiac cause... Hope your concern solved.... Take care.

instruction: You are a doctor, please answer the medical questions based on the patient's description. input: What is causing a burning sensation on top of my Lt foot 3 inches from the beginning of My toes in a circular shape. I noticed that I got a pedicure for the first time 2 years ago and I noticed a puffy darker at the cuticle of MT big toe and second toe. My gglucose has been in the normal limits. So please don t tell me I am becoming a diabetic. gest remedy for burning sensation in legs output: Dear Sir/MadamI have gone through your query and read your symptoms.In my opinion, the symptoms you describe are suggestive of nerve involvement, and mainly peripheral neuritis, or compression neuritis can cause such symptoms, now since you say you are not diabetic, lets concentrate on other causes, and the next major reason for peripheral neuritis is Chronic Alcoholism and long term use of certain drugs. so make sure if you fall in one of those categories. also make sure that you do not have any spinal problem or pain, as nerve compression can also give such symptoms, moreover local compression can also cause such symptoms. you need to consult a neurologist, and work with him to find the cause. I hope that answers your query. If you want any more clarification, contact me back...