Juan P. Lewis, P for pedantic

Instead of writing my second year review, I spent the whole day Cifing on ETA’s last bombing and Euskal Herria. It was the most pleasant Cif thread I’ve ever taken part into. I did most of the talking (blogging actually), which ranged from the mediaeval history of Spain to Basque linguistics and my own experience as a member of Ezker Batua (the Basque section of the Spanish United Left). Everybody commended my insight, my wisdom and my English. It was all very touching and brought a bit of sense to my langweiliges Leben here in Bielefeld. But it was Cif, and there’s always a cretin that has to spoil it. A guy started calling me names like pedantic rambling buffoon. It was late in the evening, when sadness sets in, and at the beginning it really pissed me off and got me down. I just wanted to tell him to fuck off, but I risked being moderated in a thread that I’d made mine without trolling and that had lifted my spirit. So I decided to act intelligently and fight back with a pinch of wit.

“What can I do?”, said I “I’m socially awkward and act in a very buffoonesque way in front of other people. Cif gives me the benefit of anonymity. It also gives me the chance to be pedantic and to write in English without the horrible constraints of academic deadlines. It’s called procrastination, of which I’m a certified trained professional. I like collecting useless pieces of information and sharing them with people. It’s my only claim to fame, and the only way I can interact. I know it makes inferior minds feel threatened by the intellectual superiority of my poor self, but I don’t do it with evil intentions.”

So, just in case it happens again, I will now apologize in advance for every time my vast knowledge and eloquence hurt anybody’s sophomoric sensibilities.

Blowing yourself up for the cause

 

Once again, I made the mistake of joining another Cif blog on the conflict that has cursed the land of Canaan. Something that utterly depresses me is how often pro-Palestinian commentators show so little regard for the life of the people they claim to stand for, as when they resort to all sort of intellectual contortions in order to “understand” suicide bombing.   

suicide bombing did not suddenly appear out of a vacuum – it is a desperate act – an almost inevitable consequence – of decades of misery, murder, theft and oppression

claimed one poster.

I’m sorry, but I yet have to be convinced of its inevitability. If that was the case, then you would have to explain why other desperate oppressed peoples don’t go for it. The Palestinians themselves didn’t do it when Israel occupied a territory twice as large as Israel itself, and when they were bombing the shit out of Lebanon.

I do recognise that Israeli brutality against the Palestinians is the context in which Palestinian violence operates. But why suicide bombings? There are many other ways to resist oppression which do not use your own people as cannon fodder and are not aimed at targeting civilians.

Suicide bombings have been chosen as a tactic by a bunch of fanatics who’ve convinced their ranks and files they’ll go to Heaven if they do it, but who won’t do it themselves (but for one exception). Those twisted minds deserve only my contempt. Telling your own people to blow themselves up for the cause shows that you don’t care about the lives of your grass roots. As a weapon, it’s useless. It doesn’t undermine your enemy’s military capacities and it’s not very efficient as a demoraliser of your enemy’s civil population.

Some Palestinian leaders encourage it in their bid to appear more radical in their fight, more loyal to the cause and more true to al-Qur’an. It has much more to do with gaining power within the internal Palestinian struggle than with steaming anger off; and it’s been a disaster for the Palestinian camp. 

Palestinians fought against the occupation for a long time without resorting to suicide bombings. Then was a time when they wore fatigues and talked about socialism and pan-Arabism. Then, the Berlin Wall came down and the whole conflict was highjacked by idiots on both sides who think their name is Emmanu’el.

Horny bastards

Ben Goldacre is a genius. He was born in 1974, which would be enough to regard him as an extremely bright man, but that’s not the only reason. His weekly column Bad Science, where he combines wit and scientific rigour like no other, will grant him a place among many other benefactors of humanity. This time he’s taken the Daily Torygraph to task. In their unceasing moral crusade against Gin lane and the sexual emancipation of women, Britain’s right-minded people’s highbrow pulp published an article claiming that science showed that “women who dress provocatively are more likely to be raped”. It only took Ben a telephone call to show how the whole report was a mishmash of badly reported unfinished postgrad research, twisted evidence, half truths and blatant lies. Sadly, no matter what pains he takes to get the record straight, it seems that people will not listen; and many of the responses to his column were just the confirmation of our own caveman’s prejudices. Take this chap, for example. He’s a regular on Cif and Ben’s columns, he leans quite to the left and he tends to show a good deal of compassion in what he writes. Nonetheless, he reckoned that,

if women wear clothes which show their sexuality, men are more likely to rape them, if rape is in their minds anyway

I can’t see how he came to that conclusion. If rape is in someone’s mind, why would he give a hoot about his female victim’s attire? Tired of that old canard, I gave it a go and put forth my own theory on not dressing modestly.

If you think about it, an attractive girl wearing high-heels, tight clothes and a cleavage that shows the white of her boobs is likely to attract the attention of many men. They will “compete” against each other, cancelling out their chances of “success” and unabling each other to pull the girl. The girl will be in control of the situation, which will boost up her confidence and leave the guys looking out like horny idiots who are not ripe enough for her. If the boys are drunk, they’ll act so pathetically that their chances of hooking up with her would be minus ten. If you’re a bloke, you know I’m right. We’ve all been there and we’ve all made fools of ourselves more often than desirable when we were young, randy and unexperienced (some of us not that young).

Contrary to what the moral brigade thinks, dressing up provocatively can be seen as a protective weapon, rather than as an invitation to rape. In fact, it seems that dressing modestly can work as an invitation to harassment in some occasions. According to Khalil Al-Anani, writing at the Egyptian Daily News, 

(Egyptian) Women today are merely combating sexual harassment on the streets, which has increased despite the fact that more women don the veil…. A report by the Egyptian Center for Womens rights revealed that 84 percent of women in Egypt are subjected to sexual harassment, 70 percent of which at least are veiled

Of course, this is all speculation, but so is the theory that states that “she was dressing like a slut, she brought it upon herself”. This is just blame the victim, which is akin to moral bankruptcy. There has never been any proved correlation between not dressing modestly and soaring rape statistics. And I hope we blokes pull ourselves together and stop insulting our own intelligence.

Reverend Monbiot takes on Charlie users

Monbiot has just got it wrong again and wrote a piece of puritan cant lambasting cocaine snorters for their immoral consumer habits. I don’t do drugs, but for some Scotch once in a while and the puff I very occasionally give to my pipe. I also have to say that I find most drug users boring. The war on drugs is something that really interests me and I know I am a chatter-box, and yet I can’t see the point of talking hours and hours about the last substance that got you high. But that’s my shot. The problem with our failed policies on drugs is how entangled they’re with the unhealthy rigid moral code of the Pilgrims and their ilk. I couldn’t resist and shot at one of George’s most idiotic comments.

Drug production should remain illegal, possession and use should be decriminalised (…) Every year cocaine causes some 20,000 deaths in Colombia and displaces several hundred thousand people from their homes. Children are blown up by landmines; indigenous people are enslaved; villagers are tortured and killed; rainforests are razed

That’s why production has to be legalized as well, George. All the problems you talk about happen where the drug is produced, not where it is consumed. In the latter, it has filled our jails up, raised violent crime and more often than not, corrupted the police. The stupid idea that drugs are bad for you is what has to be challenged. All drugs like cocaine, heroine and morphine can be used as pain killers. Marijuana can be used to treat nausea. They can also be used as recreation drugs, such as tobacco or alcohol are. The problem is abuse and addiction, not use. Legalize production and you’ll create huge revenues for local peasants, while giving a severe blow to the mafias that control the illegal traffic. Legalize consumption and tax it, and the NHS will be able to give every person in the country first class service.

Will addiction disappear? I don’t think so, and it even may go up, but it’s all the by-products of prohibition what is destroying our social fabric, not addiction. You can even be an addict and get your degree and have a career. My dad got his BA and PhD taking huge doses of amphetamines during exams. Then he stopped and never got addicted to them, but he could study 12 hours a day. He could buy them at the chemist’s. He didn’t need to mug an old lady to get money for his pills and the bribe for the police.

The law of the land

Inayat Bunglawala wrote an article on Cif supporting “the work shari’ah councils do” in Britain. His main argument to defend that jump back to the seventh century was that… 

The supremacy of English law has always been acknowledged by Beth Din courts that have existed and operated for decades in the UK. Never has the authority of English law been questioned in relation to the arbitration offered by the Jewish courts

If English law is what calls the tune, why do you need parallel courts (Beth Din or Shari’ah councils), then? Equal justice under law. That’s the principle upon which society has escaped from feudalism. In my view, the decisions of any of such courts have as much legal value as my Monopoly currency.

The portable Indian

 

I’ve just commented on a Cif article by Janet Soskice. She’s the reader in philosophical theology at the University of Cambridge and was talking about how she found God in the shower (I’m not kidding). As it is usual with those threads, it hit the hundred comments very quickly and, as it always happens, most of them were just tripe. There was one, however, that caught my attention, even though I’m still not sure whether it was for its being either yet another example of our contempt for Asian people or a sign of Western gullibility. A (I presume) girl whose monicker was bruceybaby wrote,

As Osho says: “In the Western tradition there’s the known and the unknown. One day the unknown will become known. In the Eastern tradition, there’s the known, the unknown and the unknowable”

What can I say? Osho was talking through his back side. It’s not as if skepticism and rationality are all Western and mysticism and credulity Eastern. In fact both exist everywhere, and more than anywhere else, in India. Osho knew that most Western “seekers” didn’t know that and had a romanticised idea about India’s spirituality… and he was bright enough to squeeze them a good buck.

There’s the known, there’s the unknown, and there’s the urge to know what is yet unknown. Pre-assuming the unknowable for any mysterious reason is just surrendering curiosity. It’s intellectually stultifying and I refuse to do that. I’m glad Eve decided to let herself be tempted to know by the serpent….

Slim Taliban

In a recent Cif article by Barbara Ellen, a cretin posted a comment, which is another example of the new puritanism by which the conservative right of this island is currently undermining, yet again, the universal character of the most democratic institution of Britain, the NHS.  

“Obese people can continue to eat themselves into an early grave, but I fail to see why my tax money should help pay for their treatment. It only takes discipline to eat less, eat healthy, and exercise. Push away from the telly and video games, get active, and take control of your life.”

This comment is so full of rancid puritanism, lack of understanding of human metabolism and right-wing cretinism that I can’t even be bothered to comment.

Millions of tax money are spent every year treating sport-related injuries. Working out is a choice. I think the government should tell those who hurt themselves in the pursuit of a “healthier life” to live up to their choices and feel the pain.

Foreign languages and secondary school students

Hey, hey, hey,

I’ve been in a writing mood for a week, not my dissertation though, and this morning I sent this letter to the Guardian, challenging an article by Peter Wilby, the former New Statesman’s editor, about foreign language teaching and secondary school students. Believe or not, he answered me. It might sound snobbish, but I’ve got the Cheshire’s cat grin on my face now!

Anyway, you can find his article on CiF, one of The Grauniad’s blogs. It’s free.

Hope you enjoy it, I loved writing it… and I found that writing in English is getting easier everyday. Debbi, you were right, coming to this country was the right decision.

See you around,

Juan

————–

Dear Mr Wilby,

Let me tell you that when I started reading your article, I thought  ”yeah, here we go, another angry young-old man that confuses a  stance for poor education with being a lefty.” (I’m a lefty myself,  but I think that fighting for a good quality education is one of  the pillars of socialism). Fortunately, when I read it through, I  saw that you’ve got a good point. I’ve been teaching English and Spanish (my mother tongue) in Argentina and Spain and I can tell  you what a difference it’ll make if you start teaching foreign languages at the lowest stage possible. Very few 35-year-old  Spaniards speak English, a good number of 30-year-olds do, and an outstanding number of Spanish youngsters sit the CPE every year. This giant leap in the language standards of “los españoles” was  achieved after it became a state policy to teach English at school  from the age of 4. Starting later, as you say, tend to lead to catastrophic results, putting children off learning anything.

Nonetheless, I don’t agree with you on regarding teenagers as hopeless cases. It might be a big challenge to entice them to learn about a language that they might probably never use (if they travel to a foreign country, people will talk to them in English). That  said, it doesn’t mean that there’s no way of showing them the advantages of learning. That’s basically what teaching is about. It’s true that schools can’t bring the solution to every social  problem, but there’s a lot they can do for the unprivileged. At least that’s what happened in my country, Argentina, where immigrants were the great supporters of state schools, as they knew an education would help them to go up the social ladder. Time proved them right, and four out of the last five presidents were sons of immigrants.

Society has also a big role to play here. Learning is a strenuous job, even if it can be fun, but so it’s sport and nobody says that children shouldn’t play football because they’ll get tired. The  teaching of foreign languages in Britain needs advocates, people who consciously work to make a foreign language a must. Why not  considering bilingual signs in museums. Why not advocating for more foreign films in British cinemas and TV? Why not making Erasmus compulsory for all university students and setting up the funding to guarantee it? (I know, this will be a privilege of the upper-middle echelons who go to university, but if teenagers knew from the start that learning a language is a university requisite, it might help a lot). Why not taking advantage of the massive number of Hindi and Urdu speakers this country has? Hindustani could  easily become Britain’s second language… but someone has to  fight for it. There’s an awful lot of experiences of language teaching out there Britons can learn from. And the fact that the English are English and therefore genetically unable to learn any non-Anglo-lingo, as many people I’ve come across in this country seem to think, is sheer rubbish. I know some Britons who speak at least one foreign language quite decently, and none of them are Eton, Downside or Rugby old boys/girls.

Un saludo cordial,

Juan Lewis

—————-

Thank you for your interesting comments and I’m glad that I didn’t  fit into your expectation of an “angry young-old man”! I don’t regard  teenagers as hopeless cases at all (well, not all of them). However, I do think that the foundations of enthusiasm for language learning  in the teens has to be laid at the primary stage. I entirely agree that we don’t do enough with Asian languages in schools, though of  course it would cause a political storm if we did. (I think I had a  few sentences about this in my piece, but I think they were cut for  reasons of space.)

Peter Wilby