Oxfam book shops are great, even those in decline like the one in Lancaster is. And from Lancaster, over Easter weekend I picked up these two little pieces of chintzy, glittery, bejewelled gold. Unbelievably shitty and confused metaphor aside, what I should have simply said is 'I bought two nice books, and here they are':
Struwwelpeter
or
PRETTY STORIES AND FUNNY PICTURES
By Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann
An edition from 1996, but looking older, this bizarre children's book was originally published in German in 1845. It was written by a doctor who was concerned that all the kids books available were a bit two shit for his precious three-year old so, what with being a doctor and having so much free time on his hands, he wrote and illustrated his own kids book. It is a sort-of pisstake of cautionary tales, morals and fables, and includes such classic stories as the one about the hare who nicks a hunters specs and boomstick, the little thumbsucker who gets his thumbs snipped off with a massive pair of scissors, and the creepy Shock-headed Peter of the book's title. There is also the obligatory racist story about a "woolly-headed black-a-moor" being teased by three little twats called Edward, William, and Arthur. A gigantic wizard-looking chap decides to punish the three tiny knob-heads by dipping them in a massive inkpot. ...yeah? ...?
BIBLE ROAD
SIGNS OF FAITH IN THE
AMERICAN LANDSCAPE
PHOTOGRAPHS BY SAM FENTRESS
Photographs spelling out quite plainly the nuttiness of religious America. Up and down the endless highways, blacktops and desert-tracks are scattered signs reading:
Repent! Confess your sins. God will abundantly pardon. Read 1 Jon 1:9
Justice of the peace Jesus | Righteous Judge Jesus
don't let phony Christians KEEP YOU FROM JESUS CHRIST matt. 7:15-29
CHRIST SEEN ALIVE! Over 500 reports by Eyewitnesses
SOLD OUT FOR CHRIST MINISTRY † BLOOD COVERED (JESUS)
GI E SAT N A INCH & HE'LL B E THE RULER
LA GLORIE DE LA FEMME HAIR STYLIST "JESUS IS LORD"
God forgive me. I have sined. Give me he BLOOD of JESUS. Iamsorry. Please send, the HOLY ghost. Amen
Dios -Es- Amor
REPENT JESUS IS COMING IMMEDIATELY!
YAHWEH ELOHIM
God plus one is always a majority.
My copy also has the added bonus of a handwritten dedication "To Roger & Sue, with thanks for a terrific architecture party! July 2009". For me this raises some questions. What on earth is an architecture party, and could it possibly be as dull as it sounds? What happened between Roger & Sue and the person who gave the gift of this book, which meant that after only a couple of years this book ended up in the charity shop? God knows.
Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania senator who I've never heard of either, is apparently rising through the ranks of jostling homophobes clawing to be Republican candidate for the US Presidency. He is known for his considered, insightful and forward-thinking statements such as, "In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing." He thinks that people should not be allowed the right to privacy; to consensual relations with the partner of their choice; he appears to think homosexuality is equivalent to child rape and bestiality. Here he is expressing himself, over compensating for something, in an unedited interview with Associated Press.
Santorum wants to mess with the private lives of millions of people, delving into details that are absolutely none of his business, choosing to surround himself in the details of activities he claims to abhor. In 2003, back when Santorum was still senator, gay rights campaigner Dan Savage decided to mess with Santorum by launching a sort-of competition to give a crude definition to the word santorum. The winning definition was "Santorum 1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. 2. Senator Rick Santorum." A website was created declaring the meaning of the word, and it quickly shot to the top of Google's search ranking for the term santorum. It remains at the top, and must be quite a problem for the nasty homophobic Christian extremist and the nasty homophobic Christian extremists whose votes he lusts after.
I added my liberal, wishy-washy, limp-wristed, deviant-empowering, Satanic, dog-fucking two cents to the story mainly for the reason of being able to link to the definition of Santorum and thus contribute to its remaining at the top of Google search results. I think he deserves it, and it scares me that such extremists could seriously be considered for the Presidency of a modern country.
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't Jewish.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
-Pastor Martin Niemöller
I rarely have the time for these police brutality videos which are so often reposted on twitter; are so often blurry, lacking in context, or carefully chopped to make to police look like aggressors; are so often hyped up by anarchists, conspiracy theorists, and silly little fools as incontrovertible evidence of a global conspiracy. I hardly ever have an emotional response, as the videos and the comments by people who can't possibly be impartial or knowledgeable, provide no factual information with which to form an opinion.... But...
Today a video called 'Police pepper spraying and arresting students at UC [University of California] Davis' is doing the rounds, and to me this video stands out for many reasons. It still lacks a certain amount of context, but what happens in it is clear to see: an armoured police man stands before a row of students seated on the path of their university campus; he raises his arm displaying his weapon, a large can of pepper spray (or other similar chemical weapon), very much in the manner of a professional wrestler playing to the audience, armed with a 2x4 wrapped in barbed wire, standing over a prostrate opponent (I'm not joking, watch the video). He then walks up and down the line spraying downwards onto the faces and heads of the peacefully protesting students.
What then follows after a couple of minutes of confusion, (in which it appears a small number of arrests are made i.e. some people are dragged away), is one of the most inspiring and beautiful acts of peaceful rebellion I, or you, are ever likely to see. Somehow the students form a semi-circle around the police officers, I suppose they are kettling them whether by accident or design, chanting Shame on you, shame on you. The police begin a tentative retreat, furtive glances, some grasping tight their strangely-shaped guns of some description.
The chant then changes to Whose University? OUR University, Whose University? OUR University, and then a peaceful invite to the police: You can go, You can go, You can go which finally results in what appears to be the police moving off the university pathway and back onto a public highway, and cheers from the protesters. It is a wonderful, tear jerking moment; one that has to mean something and should be remembered.
It doesn't really answer any questions, but it does show that small-scale peaceful protest can have some affect, and should be repeated. It doesn't provide any evidence that the US is fascist or evil, and is still just a video of one nervous, vicious, or stupid cop doing something disgusting, while his colleagues panic and try to salvage the situation. Whoever called the police onto the university campus needs to face some consequences. The university should sue the police, especially if it was uni staff who called on the police. There should be severe laws against using chemical weapons on peaceful protesters (I can't believe I actually had to type those words in that order).
If ever there were proof needed that the US was not some evil, fascist all-controlling dystopia, it is the free and easy distribution of the evidence against this police officer's crime. The video disseminates across the globe easily, and we rightly judge this as an atrocity committed against individuals, and against us all. Just remember that the world has many genuine fascist dystopias, where the pepper spraying of some students would be a minor everyday occurrence; where genocide, rape as a tool of oppression, and disappearing are the big news, but where no evidence of this can spread because the citizens are subjects without freedom; where big news is no news.
We, the comfortable people of the West, see the policeman's crime as offensive, disgusting and wrong, and this is a sign of how far we have come; how advanced and free we are; not a sign of how oppressed we are.
I have no knowledge about the facts leading up to the events of the video, nor do I know anything about what happened and will happen afterwards. I know nothing about the events in the video, except for what I think I can see, and what I conclude based on my own observations and emotions. As much as I wish I was, I am not impartial, objective, or in any way able to offer useful information; and neither are you. This is a confusing mess. I have no idea how often things like this happen, but judging by the amount of cameras filming in the video, and the speed in which the video gets out, I suspect it doesn't happen very often. But that's all I can do: suspect, wonder and worry. And be proud of the reaction of the students; proud of the free society which allows this video out; upset that one human being could treat others like insects to be spray away as an unpleasant inconvenience.
Here's the video. Watch it in full. Form your own opinions (and remember that they are only opinions; just because you think something doesn't make it true. Only conclusive evidence can make something true). (I suppose my confusion lies there – in my instinctive disgust at the policeman's crime, yet my unwillingness to view the video as evidence of a global evil; a conclusion I expect a lot of people to reach; a conclusion I view as being the opposite of the truth. Anyway, it's time I shut up.) Here's the video:
