Tortious Interference and the Caricature Case

One should not take liberties with the freedom of speech. Each right has its own set of duties. I have the right to drive from A to B. But however I must attend to others. It would be inhuman to drive from A to B and kill people in the course of the journey. So it is with writing and speaking. For example, I may wish to call Flemming Rose the editor responsible for the caricatures and a new book which have created so much tension in the world and deaths, an asshole. Of course this is offensive. I expect he might be hurt by that. If he is. Then surely that might signal to him that words do hurt. Of course they do. They can cause people even to commit suicide. Perhaps Rose is hardened to all of this, as he is a journalist, and daily at the receiving end of nasty comments. However, we also saw that when someone threatened to do physical injury to the leader of the Danish People's Party, even though it was in the form of an email, he was found culpable. There are numerous examples of where we must take care of what we say, other wise face criminal or civil action. Words and images do harm. I believe that the publication of the caricatures was calculated to do harm. It was offensive to the Moslems in Denmark, many of whom are disadvantaged. This is equivalent of making fun of the homeless or the disabled. While one has the right to do that - one also has special duties towards them. We are all mature now, and understand that when we make fun of someone, we must consider their status, and more importantly whether it will harm them personally. Those are duties. The laws of Denmark and the EU were exhausted in trying to find a means of preventing the publication, and compensation for the harm. There were serious problems with the laws of blasphemy - they were in the balance more harmful than good. Now, in the light of all the trouble which arose from the first publication of the caricatures, I would like to argue for an unlikely legal instrument for preventing further publication of Rose's book. It is tortious inference. Here we see the publishing house, and Rose, as tortfeasors, "who intentionally damage the business relations" with Moslem nations. During the height of the response to the first publication of the caricatures, Danish companies lost millions of kroner in revenue. This economic loss was made public, and it is argued that Rose and his publishing house, know that the publication of the latest book will surely damage the business relations. Even so, they went ahead, believing the right to publish is more important than the harm it causes, whether it be mental, physiological or in thise case economic. Now, if the companies who stand to lose money were to act, they could obtain an injunction to prevent further publication on the grounds that they might incurr severe economic losses if it were to go ahead. They could take it to the EU courts - who may be willing to support such a measure.

Poetry and the Petit-bourgeois

Pettiness and poetry. Handmaidens of the margins? Increasingly I find myself coming to the conclusion that poetry is really a form of Sunday pursuit. That it is like painting by numbers. Even those who willfully refuse to paint in the required places - will do so in a conventional way. Their revolt is like those who use cash instead of a credit card.

to trade in stereotypical train spotted fare paid for by grievous
harm to the body of literature which the bastards holday in,
(from "Thistle I" , 2010)

Then there is the stand-up - Wikicommons remix approach to writing that wishes to muck up the form and take no risks except maybe a bit of abuse to one's own person.

of the joke, your language conserved and preserved like a battered Mars bar,
to make funny with the expression, och jimmy, och, och, fuck, fuck, fuck
(from "Thistle I " 2010)

What is the end of all of it? Baying at the ATM machine? Often it is:

cobalt blue thoughts, arabesque fantasties
which rhyme with expensive wall tiles
and they end up with other polished
artifacts that meet the house styles
of arts council funded magazines
where the finished product reigns
(From "Tired of" 2010)

Is everything said? Do we now need poetry installations and swing our genitalia about publically - or is that old hat too? Who cares? Are the readers like those who collect kitsch glass horses and place them about their caravans looking across from Weston to Wales? Or do we

Delight in the swing, hazard the future
(from "The Swing" "2010)

Yes indeed.

Compassion

Is there no greater human virtue than compassion? Probably not, because empathy or fellow suffering is entailed in the act and thought of compassion. Maybe it has evolved from altruism that is hardwired in other animals, but it has emergent properties that are connected with higher cognitive processes and social networks - though of course those of a religious frame of mind and heart will declare it to be a product of spirituality. In religions it is "compassion: Christianity; Daya: Hinduism; Rahman : Judaism and Islam ; kuruna: Buddhism. It is universal. So why is it not practiced more? Why is it that when we see someone who believes differently, dresses differently, has a different skin colour, has different tastes, is just plain different - we feel disgust or hatred. Why do we hate the criminal? Why do we hate the terrorist? Must we hate them? Is that what it is to be a civilised Westerner or Easterner? To hate. I feel that it is too easy. We can all cut the legs off an insect. We can all pass comment and judgement on others. We can call them names, we can throw stones at them. It is all so easy. Everyone has the power to kill another person. But the hardest thing to do is to practice compassion - and you need not be religious to practice this - I am not. I think we can take baby steps - starting with tokens and gestures -when we comment on the internet - seek a pragmatic approach. When people fly off the handle and attack a person - tell them that you have compassion for the object of their fury - this does not mean you condone violence or hurt - it means that you can understand and feel for them - you need not forgive either - it is to say that if an illegal immigrant steals - you do not start on your high moral road - from a position of comfort and righteousness - but you must feel as they do. You must become like in the Stanislavsky method - that person - and then your perspective will change. This does not mean that you love or hate them - it is just that you move towards a greater appreciation of the complexity and difficulty of the human condition. It is not liberalism or communism. It is a humanist position - grounded in a social and cultural empathy. I have tried and failed numerous times. But I think that general direction is a good we should aim for - one that gives not salvation or rewards - only a restoration of our humanity.

Sheep

I was on the bus and thinking about black sheep. How that might be deemed politically incorrect today, but I wondered, as one does, about its origins. There is of course the nursery rhyme as well, which was about the only one I could remember, and actually enjoyed. The origins of this nursery rhyme and its variants are discussed here:



http://wapedia.mobi/en/Baa,_Baa,_Black_Sheep







I remember as a little boy in Weston-Super-Mare singing my heart out, and never realising the history behind it, nor of course the ubiquitous "Ring a Ring o' Roses". I then thought, and now I am proved wrong, that it was all to do with the 1665 Plague. But oh no, folklorists have corrected that origin:



http://wapedia.mobi/en/Ring_a_Ring_o%27_Roses







The thought of the sheep, got me thinking about just how much do I know about this ruminant. I do know now that there are 200 breeds, of these I am most familar with the Cheviot breed because this is found in Northumberland where I went to school, and the Merino. I saw Cheviots every day when I lived in Longhoughton, and moreover, despite being quite young, spent a great deal of my time chatting with a retired shepherd who used to use the stone wall near my parents' house as a resting post. He told me about the weather, the kinds of animals and birds you would see, etc. He struck me as an ideal figure - so much that when I did a career test to see what came up for ideal occupation - Bingo - shepherd. Of course the reality is anything but romantic. It is certainly not a job for me today. As I walked the hills once I heard about how sensitive the sheep were. How they were prone to heart attacks - and I can see why the Monty Python "Killer Sheep" sketch is so uproarishly funny:







http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode20.htm#7







What I saw of sheep, excepting the rams, were animals that were timid and flock minded. They would scarper if one stepped into their safety zone. Running up swifly the hills, with a sure-footedness that did not quite go with their shape. Now I also know that the domestic sheep bred from the Mouflon has undergone some incredible changes - I have seen paintings of sheep in the eighteenth century and they look bizarre. Actually, my memory has confused cattle with sheep, the sheep in Thomas Gainsborough's study can surely enter a flock today unnoticed:



http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode20.htm#7

Whereas the cow of the 18th century was bizarre:

http://austenonly.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/welch-cow117-correction.jpg



But the Merino with those short legs to prevent it from jumping over fences, now that is quite removed from the wild sheep.



We are all familiar with the Christian iconography and the image of Christ as a shepherd and the followers, as a flock. I again, love Psalm 23, because of the rhythm - I doubt if I paid attention to the message:



http://zemirotdatabase.org/view_song.php?id=28







For the Jews and Christians David and Jesus and other figures were seen as shepherds, and the people as a flock. What do flocks do? Well they follow rather blindly. They will follow a leader, and in sheep it is not the strongest one, but the one who reacts first. I am not so sure it is good metaphor of the prophet to people relationship. The Final Solution was based on flock mentality.



What also of the image of the people as sheep? Well, here Christ as the sacrificial lamb gives us a clue, because in earlier cultures, the sacrifices were human. The lot of sheep is not a very happy one.



This is how sheep were killed in the old days:



http://www.leafpile.com/TravelLog/Romania/Farming/Slaughter/Sheep/Sheep.htm

On the Precipice

I do not really know why I like this title, but I suppose, firstly I suffer from vertigo, and being on the edge of a precipice would quite frankly scare the living daylights out me. I also like the sound of precipice, it is one of my "Desert Island" favourite sounding words. There is also a connection with another word I like, sublime. The two of course are connected in art. The lonely figure on the edge - oh how Romantic! The painting above "The Bard" (1814) by the English painter, John Martin (1789-1854) and the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) for example "The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" (1818), capture quite nicely the feeling of being on a precipice. It puts oneself in perspective with regard to the big picture of Nature or God. I think the metaphor of being on the precipice, suggests to me, a change of such enormity, that one might be changed forever. Do we stand on the precipice today? Perhaps so, the very Nature that we have worshipped for thousands of years, is slipping away from us. Maybe there is no Nature today, only Artifice? If so, why do we let one animal rip into another, when we know that the latter is rare or beloved, should we not intervene? Is it a form of negligence when a documentary maker leaves a cheetah cub to be consumed by a hyena? Or should we continue with the pretence and let Nature take its course? What about, staying with the media, the possibility that we cannot act outside the Media, and that its interests direct our lives, and run our governments? Why would the President of the United States eat fastfood with the President of Russia, except for the pressure of a popularist driven Media? Are we on the precipice of not existing in our right, except as an avatar of the Media?

Then there is Art. I love art. Now where is the art in Art?

Impolite Conversation

The title of this essay, was suggested by Aldous Huxley's "Polite Conversation" in On the Margin, Chatto & Windus, 1948 (orig. 1923). His essay was really a review piece, but it got me thinking about the nature of conversation. Jonathan Swift did a wonderful satirical work based on all the cliches used in his period., A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (1738) - a fun book indeed. If I think of the current dialogues, well they rarely aim towards the polite, most are "in your face" snipes or snarls. We converse like curs. "Fuck you!" "Yeah, fuck you." "What's up?" "Nothing." "You." "Nah." Where is the sense of decorum? We think it can take a hike, because the civilizing process of Norbert Elias was after all but a colonial endeavour, to enslave and divide. The handshake is derived from primates greeting each other by sniffing their butts and fondling their genitalia. What is there to be polite for? Far better to tell the other party how you feel in a direct and equalitarian manner. So if the serotonin levels are ascendent, then one lets loose an oral fart. If you stitch, if you can indeed stitch gas together, these snarls and snipes, what do they constitute? Well often, if they do run for more than a stack of monosyllables, the Anthony Burgessian grunts, then they form extended Q &A. "Did you see the match?" "Didya see the youtube?" "Didya" Invariably, the response will be "Yeah" or "Nah". "It was wicked". Perhaps, to bring Aldous Huxley back again, the youtube of Lady Gaga gagaing was to his coenobites, an example of the fornicatio . Not that they didn't hump each other, to double negativize, or have lewd thoughts about others whilst in their state of acedia. It is also to be noted that this terseness has something to do with the noise factor. You know the Étienne Lombard effect: it is when in a pub one person talking to another has to compensate for the environmental noise level, and talk louder. The fellow interlocuter follows suit, until both parties are screeching. Although we have the possibility to filter and focus on one conversation (the cocktail party effect), we often end up shouting monosyllables. Under the influence, these monosyllables become slurred. "Deeeeeeedyaaash?"Can be translated as "Did you?" With all these factors, plus a score of neurohormones kicking in or passing out, there is scope for aggression as a consequence of a simple misunderstanding. Since, conversation comprises of 90 percent nonverbal language - a prolonged gaze at someone's partner, can land the viewer with a punch in the face - or worse. "Whaddyafinkyafakkindoingmate?" Indeed. At this point you might say in your defence, that fornicatio was not on your mind and that you are celibate as a paperweight. "Youtryyinbefannyyafakkinkunt?" It does not work. You are left to do a Bruce Lee. Run. You can get into these little contretemps by trying to break the ice at a bus stop. Your opening gambit, the one preferred by the Brits, might be. "Nice day today isn't it?" "You gay or something?" Or "We have had a load a rain these past weeks." "What does that have to with me mate?" Or "The precipitation levels are a mark above normal?" "You foreign, ain't you?" A conversation about the World Cup or football is very dangerous, and to be avoided at all costs, unless you recognise the scarf or T-shirt and you can converse on the topic for more than two minutes.

The E-Book Revolution

The E-book revolution would be furthered if every college and university student was issued with an e-book that contained the set text books and compendiums for the relevant degrees. The E-book would be paid for over a period of the degree.