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[ by Charles Cameron — on the assignment of archetypal roles to members of the British Royal Family ]
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For those having trouble distinguishing the Dajjal from the Antichrist, I thought I’d post two screen-caps from a video of the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, one of whom is identified as the Dajjal:

together with the cover of a book identifying the Antichrist — by his coat of arms — as Prince Charles:

In true conspiracist connect-the-dots fashion, then, the Antichrist is the Dajjal’s father.

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Dajjals, Antichrists, Messiahs and Mahdis all function as Rorschach blots on which people project their hopes and fears, associating celebrities and leaders they despise and admire with archetypal instances of the final evil and the final savior.

By now, we should surely have figured out that this tells us more about those making the attributions than it does about the supposed, dreaded or hoped for end of days…

[ by Charles Cameron — on a brief random walk through YouTube, an ambulation for a sedentary soul — nothing serious, I promise ]
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Back when I was a wee lad at Oxford there was another wee lad, also of a poetic disposition, named Heathcote Williams. For some reason, the other evening I stumbled on a clip of Heathcote performing the role of a psychiatrist in a movie I haven’t seen, but will probably keep an eye out for.

Here’s that (somewhat ob)scene:

Well, I’m the nomadic type, and my eye somehow strayed from there to this:

Okay? I get the sense I’m on a roll here, Salma Hayek is compellingly beautiful, and so I compulsively gamble away a few more minutes of my precious time, and find… You’ll forgive me, I hope, and see this clip through to the end, because in its own light-hearted way it’s about miracles.

And as you know, I have theological interests:

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So that was my evening’s delectation a couple of days ago, delivered here today for yours.

If, however, you are willing to take a grander leap into anti-monarchical, pro-poetic, anti-theological polemic, you might take a look at Heathcote’s fiery account of Shelley, his volatile predecessor at Oxford, in seven parts beginning on YouTube here: Shelley at Oxford.

Heathcote takes the liberty of speaking his mind, and consequently several of my own sacred cows get scorched to steak along the way — you have been warned.

[ by Charles Cameron — update to follow ]
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I’m sorry to have to inflict this on you, but I have yet to see an accurate transcript of the Woolwich attacker’s televised explanation published.

So far, we have two transcripts, both found in a piece by Max Fisher in the Washington Post. The first goes like this:

We swear by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reasons we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth. We apologise that women had to see this today but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government. They don’t care about you.

Then there’s an update to Fisher’s piece, which say the WP’s Anthony Faiola “listened to the ITV video very carefully and came away with a different quote than the one circulating in British media … Here’s the quote as heard by Faiola”:

There are many, many ayah throughout the Koran [referring to religious verses] that says we must fight them as they fight us, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologize that women had to witness this today but in our land women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you.

That’s definitely an improvement, and yet…

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I must apologize for the fact that I cannot read or write Arabic, and therefore no doubt mix up different transliteration schemes at times like this — but I think this is one off those cases where a little religious knowledge helps ones ability to make out what’s being said by someone offering religious justification for their acts. The clip begins in mid-sentence with a clear reference to a Sura from the Quran — Sura 9, at-Taubah, The Repentance — and then continues with a reference to ayat , the plural of ayah, the term for a Qur’anic verse.

Here’s what I hear:

… Sura at-Taubah — many, many ayat throughout the Koran that, we must fight them as they fight us, an eye for eye and a tooth for a tooth. We, I apologize that women had to witness this today, but in our lands, our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you.

The other notable divergence between my text and Faiola’s is that I hear “our lands” where he hears “our land”. But listen to the video — without the ITV reporter’s voice over obscuring part of the text — on this Guardian page.

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It is worth noting that Sura 9 is the only sura in the Quran which does not begin with the Bismillah, “In the Name of God”.

One commentator, referencing Ali ibn Abi Talib, notes:

It should also be mentioned that this surah does not start with ‘Bismillah’ as do all other surahs in the Qur’an, because ‘Bismillah’ is an assurance of protection and mercy and as per report of Ali (RAA) this surah was revealed with a sword in its hand, and thus could not have the assurance of peace and mercy for the disbelievers.

This presumably ties in with the fact that this is the sura which contains the “verse of the sword” — Sura 9.5, given here in the Arberry version:

Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way; God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate.

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I do not believe it serves justice, let alone mercy, for us to leap to the conclusion — rush to the judgment — that “Islam” is a monolithic entity, all of whose members are by definition disposed to violence.

I do think it is important, once again, for us to understand that the speech here is religious speech.

Putting it very mildly, and with deep sadness in my heart, today’s event in Woolwich was barbaric.

[ by Charles Cameron — from Paradise Regained: Overcoming Terrorism in Star Trek Into Darkness ]
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Matt Ford, guest-blogging at Grand Blog Tarkin [includes spoilers] asks:

How many young Americans learned Arabic and Pashto or studied counterterrorism and international relations because nineteen men flew three planes into a building and one into the ground, killing thousands?

Great question!

And how many in the UK after 9/11? — and after 7/7?

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Also worth reading [and also includes spoilers]:

Amy Davidson, Is “Star Trek into Darkness” a drone allegory?

America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century – why America’s Best Days are Yet to Come by James C. Bennett and Michael Lotus

I am confident that this deeply researched and thoughtfully argued book  is going to make a big political splash, especially in conservative circles – and has already garnered a strong endorsement from Michael Barone, Jonah Goldberg, John O’Sullivan and this review from  Glenn Reynolds in USA Today :

Future’s so bright we have to wear shades: Column 

….But serious as these problems are, they’re all short-term things. So while at the moment a lot of our political leaders may be wearing sunglasses so as not to be recognized, there’s a pretty good argument that, over the longer time, our future’s so bright that we have to wear shades.

That’s the thesis of a new book, America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity In The 21st Century.The book’s authors, James Bennett and Michael Lotus, argue that things seem rough because we’re in a period of transition, like those after the Civil War and during the New Deal era. Such transitions are necessarily bumpy, but once they’re navigated the country comes back stronger than ever.

America 1.0, in their analysis, was the America of small farmers, Yankee ingenuity, and almost nonexistent national government that prevailed for the first hundred years or so of our nation’s existence. The hallmarks were self-reliance, localism, and free markets.

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, people were getting unhappy. The country was in its fastest-ever period of economic growth, but the wealth was unevenly distributed and the economy was volatile. This led to calls for what became America 2.0: an America based on centralization, technocratic/bureaucratic oversight, and economies of scale. This took off in the Depression and hit its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, when people saw Big Government and Big Corporations as promising safety and stability. You didn’t have to be afraid: There were Top Men on the job, and there were Big Institutions like the FHA, General Motors, and Social Security to serve as shock absorbers against the vicissitudes of fate.

It worked for a while. But in time, the Top Men looked more like those bureaucrats at the end of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and the Big Institutions . . . well, they’re mostly bankrupt, or close to it. “Bigger is better” doesn’t seem so true anymore.

To me, the leitmotif for the current decade is supplied by Stein’s Law, coined by economist Herb Stein: “Something that can’t go on forever, won’t.” There are a lot of things that can’t go on forever, and, soon enough, they won’t. Chief among them are too-big-to-fail businesses and too-big-to-succeed government.

But as Bennett and Lotus note, the problems of America 2.0 are all soluble, and, in what they call America 3.0, they will be solved. The solutions will be as different from America 2.0 as America 2.0 was from America 1.0. We’ll see a focus on smaller government, nimbler organization, and living within our means — because, frankly, we’ll have no choice. Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. If America 2.0 was a fit for the world of giant steel mills and monolithic corporations, America 3.0 will be fit for the world of consumer choice and Internet speed.

Every so often, a “political” book comes around that has the potential to be a “game changer” in public debate. Bennett and Lotus have not limited themselves to describing or diagnosing America’s ills – instead, they present solutions in a historical framework that stresses the continuity and adaptive resilience of the American idea. If America”s “City on a Hill” today looks too much like post-industrial Detroit they point to the coming renewal; if the Hand of the State is heavy and it’s Eye lately is dangerously creepy, they point to a reinvigorated private sector and robust civil society; if the future for the young looks bleak,  Bennett and Lotus explain why this generation and the next will conquer the world.

Bennett and Lotus bring to the table something Americans have not heard nearly enough from the Right – a positive vision of an American future that works for everyone and a strategy to make it happen.

But don’t take my word for it.

The authors will be guests Tuesday evening on Lou Dobb’s Tonight and you can hear them firsthand and find out why they believe “America’s best days are yet to come“