Worth a very careful read. From the NEW YORKER.
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
The military’s problem with the President’s Iran policy.
Issue of 2006-07-10Posted 2006-07-03
On May 31st, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced what appeared to be a major change in U.S. foreign policy. The Bush Administration, she said, would be willing to join Russia, China, and its European allies in direct talks with Iran about its nuclear program. There was a condition, however: the negotiations would not begin until, as the President put it in a June 19th speech at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, “the Iranian regime fully and verifiably suspends its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities.” Iran, which has insisted on its right to enrich uranium, was being asked to concede the main point of the negotiations before they started. The question was whether the Administration expected the Iranians to agree, or was laying the diplomatic groundwork for future military action. In his speech, Bush also talked about “freedom for the Iranian people,” and he added, “Iran’s leaders have a clear choice.” There was an unspoken threat: the U.S. Strategic Command, supported by the Air Force, has been drawing up plans, at the President’s direction, for a major bombing campaign in Iran.
Inside the Pentagon, senior commanders have increasingly challenged the President’s plans, according to active-duty and retired officers and officials. The generals and admirals have told the Administration that the bombing campaign will probably not succeed in destroying Iran’s nuclear program. They have also warned that an attack could lead to serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States.
A crucial issue in the military’s dissent, the officers said, is the fact that American and European intelligence agencies have not found specific evidence of clandestine activities or hidden facilities; the war planners are not sure what to hit. “The target array in Iran is huge, but it’s amorphous,” a high-ranking general told me. “The question we face is, When does innocent infrastructure evolve into something nefarious?” The high-ranking general added that the military’s experience in Iraq, where intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was deeply flawed, has affected its approach to Iran. “We built this big monster with Iraq, and there was nothing there. This is son of Iraq,” he said.
“There is a war about the war going on inside the building,” a Pentagon consultant said. “If we go, we have to find something.”
In President Bush’s June speech, he accused Iran of pursuing a secret weapons program along with its civilian nuclear-research program (which it is allowed, with limits, under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). The senior officers in the Pentagon do not dispute the President’s contention that Iran intends to eventually build a bomb, but they are frustrated by the intelligence gaps. A former senior intelligence official told me that people in the Pentagon were asking, “What’s the evidence? We’ve got a million tentacles out there, overt and covert, and these guys”—the Iranians—“have been working on this for eighteen years, and we have nothing? We’re coming up with jack shit.”
A senior military official told me, “Even if we knew where the Iranian enriched uranium was—and we don’t—we don’t know where world opinion would stand. The issue is whether it’s a clear and present danger. If you’re a military planner, you try to weigh options. What is the capability of the Iranian response, and the likelihood of a punitive response—like cutting off oil shipments? What would that cost us?” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his senior aides “really think they can do this on the cheap, and they underestimate the capability of the adversary,” he said.
In 1986, Congress authorized the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to act as the “principal military adviser” to the President. In this case, I was told, the current chairman, Marine General Peter Pace, has gone further in his advice to the White House by addressing the consequences of an attack on Iran. “Here’s the military telling the President what he can’t do politically”—raising concerns about rising oil prices, for example—the former senior intelligence official said. “The J.C.S. chairman going to the President with an economic argument—what’s going on here?” (General Pace and the White House declined to comment. The Defense Department responded to a detailed request for comment by saying that the Administration was “working diligently” on a diplomatic solution and that it could not comment on classified matters.)
A retired four-star general, who ran a major command, said, “The system is starting to sense the end of the road, and they don’t want to be condemned by history. They want to be able to say, ‘We stood up.’ ”
The military leadership is also raising tactical arguments against the proposal for bombing Iran, many of which are related to the consequences for Iraq. According to retired Army Major General William Nash, who was commanding general of the First Armored Division, served in Iraq and Bosnia, and worked for the United Nations in Kosovo, attacking Iran would heighten the risks to American and coalition forces inside Iraq. “What if one hundred thousand Iranian volunteers came across the border?” Nash asked. “If we bomb Iran, they cannot retaliate militarily by air—only on the ground or by sea, and only in Iraq or the Gulf. A military planner cannot discount that possibility, and he cannot make an ideological assumption that the Iranians wouldn’t do it. We’re not talking about victory or defeat—only about what damage Iran could do to our interests.” Nash, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said, “Their first possible response would be to send forces into Iraq. And, since the Iraqi Army has limited capacity, it means that the coalition forces would have to engage them.”
The Americans serving as advisers to the Iraqi police and military may be at special risk, Nash added, since an American bombing “would be seen not only as an attack on Shiites but as an attack on all Muslims. Throughout the Middle East, it would likely be seen as another example of American imperialism. It would probably cause the war to spread.”
In contrast, some conservatives are arguing that America’s position in Iraq would improve if Iran chose to retaliate there, according to a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon’s civilian leaders, because Iranian interference would divide the Shiites into pro- and anti-Iranian camps, and unify the Kurds and the Sunnis. The Iran hawks in the White House and the State Department, including Elliott Abrams and Michael Doran, both of whom are National Security Council advisers on the Middle East, also have an answer for those who believe that the bombing of Iran would put American soldiers in Iraq at risk, the consultant said. He described the counterargument this way: “Yes, there will be Americans under attack, but they are under attack now.”
Iran’s geography would also complicate an air war. The senior military official said that, when it came to air strikes, “this is not Iraq,” which is fairly flat, except in the northeast. “Much of Iran is akin to Afghanistan in terms of topography and flight mapping—a pretty tough target,” the military official said. Over rugged terrain, planes have to come in closer, and “Iran has a lot of mature air-defense systems and networks,” he said. “Global operations are always risky, and if we go down that road we have to be prepared to follow up with ground troops.”
The U.S. Navy has a separate set of concerns. Iran has more than seven hundred undeclared dock and port facilities along its Persian Gulf coast. The small ports, known as “invisible piers,” were constructed two decades ago by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to accommodate small private boats used for smuggling. (The Guards relied on smuggling to finance their activities and enrich themselves.) The ports, an Iran expert who advises the U.S. government told me, provide “the infrastructure to enable the Guards to go after American aircraft carriers with suicide water bombers”—small vessels loaded with high explosives. He said that the Iranians have conducted exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel linking the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea and then on to the Indian Ocean. The strait is regularly traversed by oil tankers, in which a thousand small Iranian boats simulated attacks on American ships. “That would be the hardest problem we’d face in the water: a thousand small targets weaving in and out among our ships.”
America’s allies in the Gulf also believe that an attack on Iran would endanger them, and many American military planners agree. “Iran can do a lot of things—all asymmetrical,” a Pentagon adviser on counter-insurgency told me. “They have agents all over the Gulf, and the ability to strike at will.” In May, according to a well-informed oil-industry expert, the Emir of Qatar made a private visit to Tehran to discuss security in the Gulf after the Iraq war. He sought some words of non-aggression from the Iranian leadership. Instead, the Iranians suggested that Qatar, which is the site of the regional headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, would be its first target in the event of an American attack. Qatar is a leading exporter of gas and currently operates several major offshore oil platforms, all of which would be extremely vulnerable. (Nasser bin Hamad M. al-Khalifa, Qatar’s ambassador to Washington, denied that any threats were issued during the Emir’s meetings in Tehran. He told me that it was “a very nice visit.”)
A retired American diplomat, who has experience in the Gulf, confirmed that the Qatari government is “very scared of what America will do” in Iran, and “scared to death” about what Iran would do in response. Iran’s message to the oil-producing Gulf states, the retired diplomat said, has been that it will respond, and “you are on the wrong side of history.”
In late April, the military leadership, headed by General Pace, achieved a major victory when the White House dropped its insistence that the plan for a bombing campaign include the possible use of a nuclear device to destroy Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. The huge complex includes large underground facilities built into seventy-five-foot-deep holes in the ground and designed to hold as many as fifty thousand centrifuges. “Bush and Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “And Pace stood up to them. Then the world came back: ‘O.K., the nuclear option is politically unacceptable.’ ” At the time, a number of retired officers, including two Army major generals who served in Iraq, Paul Eaton and Charles Swannack, Jr., had begun speaking out against the Administration’s handling of the Iraq war. This period is known to many in the Pentagon as “the April Revolution.”
“An event like this doesn’t get papered over very quickly,” the former official added. “The bad feelings over the nuclear option are still felt. The civilian hierarchy feels extraordinarily betrayed by the brass, and the brass feel they were tricked into it”—the nuclear planning—“by being asked to provide all options in the planning papers.”
Sam Gardiner, a military analyst who taught at the National War College before retiring from the Air Force as a colonel, said that Rumsfeld’s second-guessing and micromanagement were a fundamental problem. “Plans are more and more being directed and run by civilians from the Office of the Secretary of Defense,” Gardiner said. “It causes a lot of tensions. I’m hearing that the military is increasingly upset about not being taken seriously by Rumsfeld and his staff.”
Gardiner went on, “The consequence is that, for Iran and other missions, Rumsfeld will be pushed more and more in the direction of special operations, where he has direct authority and does not have to put up with the objections of the Chiefs.” Since taking office in 2001, Rumsfeld has been engaged in a running dispute with many senior commanders over his plans to transform the military, and his belief that future wars will be fought, and won, with airpower and Special Forces. That combination worked, at first, in Afghanistan, but the growing stalemate there, and in Iraq, has created a rift, especially inside the Army. The senior military official said, “The policymakers are in love with Special Ops—the guys on camels.”
The discord over Iran can, in part, be ascribed to Rumsfeld’s testy relationship with the generals. They see him as high-handed and unwilling to accept responsibility for what has gone wrong in Iraq. A former Bush Administration official described a recent meeting between Rumsfeld and four-star generals and admirals at a military commanders’ conference, on a base outside Washington, that, he was told, went badly. The commanders later told General Pace that “they didn’t come here to be lectured by the Defense Secretary. They wanted to tell Rumsfeld what their concerns were.” A few of the officers attended a subsequent meeting between Pace and Rumsfeld, and were unhappy, the former official said, when “Pace did not repeat any of their complaints. There was disappointment about Pace.” The retired four-star general also described the commanders’ conference as “very fractious.” He added, “We’ve got twenty-five hundred dead, people running all over the world doing stupid things, and officers outside the Beltway asking, ‘What the hell is going on?’ ”
Pace’s supporters say that he is in a difficult position, given Rumsfeld’s penchant for viewing generals who disagree with him as disloyal. “It’s a very narrow line between being responsive and effective and being outspoken and ineffective,” the former senior intelligence official said.
But Rumsfeld is not alone in the Administration where Iran is concerned; he is closely allied with Dick Cheney, and, the Pentagon consultant said, “the President generally defers to the Vice-President on all these issues,” such as dealing with the specifics of a bombing campaign if diplomacy fails. “He feels that Cheney has an informational advantage. Cheney is not a renegade. He represents the conventional wisdom in all of this. He appeals to the strategic-bombing lobby in the Air Force—who think that carpet bombing is the solution to all problems.”
Bombing may not work against Natanz, let alone against the rest of Iran’s nuclear program. The possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons gained support in the Administration because of the belief that it was the only way to insure the destruction of Natanz’s buried laboratories. When that option proved to be politically untenable (a nuclear warhead would, among other things, vent fatal radiation for miles), the Air Force came up with a new bombing plan, using advanced guidance systems to deliver a series of large bunker-busters—conventional bombs filled with high explosives—on the same target, in swift succession. The Air Force argued that the impact would generate sufficient concussive force to accomplish what a tactical nuclear warhead would achieve, but without provoking an outcry over what would be the first use of a nuclear weapon in a conflict since Nagasaki.
The new bombing concept has provoked controversy among Pentagon planners and outside experts. Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago who has taught at the Air Force’s School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, told me, “We always have a few new toys, new gimmicks, and rarely do these new tricks lead to a phenomenal breakthrough. The dilemma is that Natanz is a very large underground area, and even if the roof came down we won’t be able to get a good estimate of the bomb damage without people on the ground. We don’t even know where it goes underground, and we won’t have much confidence in assessing what we’ve actually done. Absent capturing an Iranian nuclear scientist and documents, it’s impossible to set back the program for sure.”
One complicating aspect of the multiple-hit tactic, the Pentagon consultant told me, is “the liquefaction problem”—the fact that the soil would lose its consistency owing to the enormous heat generated by the impact of the first bomb. “It will be like bombing water, with its currents and eddies. The bombs would likely be diverted.” Intelligence has also shown that for the past two years the Iranians have been shifting their most sensitive nuclear-related materials and production facilities, moving some into urban areas, in anticipation of a bombing raid.
“The Air Force is hawking it to the other services,” the former senior intelligence official said. “They’re all excited by it, but they’re being terribly criticized for it.” The main problem, he said, is that the other services do not believe the tactic will work. “The Navy says, ‘It’s not our plan.’ The Marines are against it—they know they’re going to be the guys on the ground if things go south.”
“It’s the bomber mentality,” the Pentagon consultant said. “The Air Force is saying, ‘We’ve got it covered, we can hit all the distributed targets.’ ” The Air Force arsenal includes a cluster bomb that can deploy scores of small bomblets with individual guidance systems to home in on specific targets. The weapons were deployed in Kosovo and during the early stages of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the Air Force is claiming that the same techniques can be used with larger bombs, allowing them to be targeted from twenty-five thousand feet against a multitude of widely dispersed targets. “The Chiefs all know that ‘shock and awe’ is dead on arrival,” the Pentagon consultant said. “All except the Air Force.”
“Rumsfeld and Cheney are the pushers on this—they don’t want to repeat the mistake of doing too little,” the government consultant with ties to Pentagon civilians told me. “The lesson they took from Iraq is that there should have been more troops on the ground”—an impossibility in Iran, because of the overextension of American forces in Iraq—“so the air war in Iran will be one of overwhelming force.”
Many of the Bush Administration’s supporters view the abrupt change in negotiating policy as a deft move that won public plaudits and obscured the fact that Washington had no other good options. “The United States has done what its international partners have asked it to do,” said Patrick Clawson, who is an expert on Iran and the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a conservative think tank. “The ball is now in their court—for both the Iranians and the Europeans.” Bush’s goal, Clawson said, was to assuage his allies, as well as Russia and China, whose votes, or abstentions, in the United Nations would be needed if the talks broke down and the U.S. decided to seek Security Council sanctions or a U.N. resolution that allowed for the use of force against Iran.
“If Iran refuses to re-start negotiations, it will also be difficult for Russia and China to reject a U.N. call for International Atomic Energy Agency inspections,” Clawson said. “And the longer we go without accelerated I.A.E.A. access, the more important the issue of Iran’s hidden facilities will become.” The drawback to the new American position, Clawson added, was that “the Iranians might take Bush’s agreeing to join the talks as a sign that their hard line has worked.”
Clawson acknowledged that intelligence on Iran’s nuclear-weapons progress was limited. “There was a time when we had reasonable confidence in what we knew,” he said. “We could say, ‘There’s less time than we think,’ or, ‘It’s going more slowly.’ Take your choice. Lack of information is a problem, but we know they’ve made rapid progress with their centrifuges.” (The most recent American intelligence estimate is that Iran could build a warhead sometime between 2010 and 2015.)
Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council aide for the Bush Administration, told me, “The only reason Bush and Cheney relented about talking to Iran was because they were within weeks of a diplomatic meltdown in the United Nations. Russia and China were going to stiff us”—that is, prevent the passage of a U.N. resolution. Leverett, a project director at the New America Foundation, added that the White House’s proposal, despite offering trade and economic incentives for Iran, has not “resolved any of the fundamental contradictions of U.S. policy.” The precondition for the talks, he said—an open-ended halt to all Iranian enrichment activity—“amounts to the President wanting a guarantee that they’ll surrender before he talks to them. Iran cannot accept long-term constraints on its fuel-cycle activity as part of a settlement without a security guarantee”—for example, some form of mutual non-aggression pact with the United States.
Leverett told me that, without a change in U.S. policy, the balance of power in the negotiations will shift to Russia. “Russia sees Iran as a beachhead against American interests in the Middle East, and they’re playing a very sophisticated game,” he said. “Russia is quite comfortable with Iran having nuclear fuel cycles that would be monitored, and they’ll support the Iranian position”—in part, because it gives them the opportunity to sell billions of dollars’ worth of nuclear fuel and materials to Tehran. “They believe they can manage their long- and short-term interests with Iran, and still manage the security interests,” Leverett said. China, which, like Russia, has veto power on the Security Council, was motivated in part by its growing need for oil, he said. “They don’t want punitive measures, such as sanctions, on energy producers, and they don’t want to see the U.S. take a unilateral stance on a state that matters to them.” But, he said, “they’re happy to let Russia take the lead in this.” (China, a major purchaser of Iranian oil, is negotiating a multibillion-dollar deal with Iran for the purchase of liquefied natural gas over a period of twenty-five years.) As for the Bush Administration, he added, “unless there’s a shift, it’s only a question of when its policy falls apart.”
It’s not clear whether the Administration will be able to keep the Europeans in accord with American policy if the talks break down. Morton Abramowitz, a former head of State Department intelligence, who was one of the founders of the International Crisis Group, said, “The world is different than it was three years ago, and while the Europeans want good relations with us, they will not go to war with Iran unless they know that an exhaustive negotiating effort was made by Bush. There’s just too much involved, like the price of oil. There will be great pressure put on the Europeans, but I don’t think they’ll roll over and support a war.”
The Europeans, like the generals at the Pentagon, are concerned about the quality of intelligence. A senior European intelligence official said that while “there was every reason to assume” that the Iranians were working on a bomb, there wasn’t enough evidence to exclude the possibility that they were bluffing, and hadn’t moved beyond a civilian research program. The intelligence official was not optimistic about the current negotiations. “It’s a mess, and I don’t see any possibility, at the moment, of solving the problem,” he said. “The only thing to do is contain it. The question is, What is the redline? Is it when you master the nuclear fuel cycle? Or is it just about building a bomb?” Every country had a different criterion, he said. One worry he had was that, in addition to its security concerns, the Bush Administration was driven by its interest in “democratizing” the region. “The United States is on a mission,” he said.
A European diplomat told me that his government would be willing to discuss Iran’s security concerns—a dialogue he said Iran offered Washington three years ago. The diplomat added that “no one wants to be faced with the alternative if the negotiations don’t succeed: either accept the bomb or bomb them. That’s why our goal is to keep the pressure on, and see what Iran’s answer will be.”
A second European diplomat, speaking of the Iranians, said, “Their tactic is going to be to stall and appear reasonable—to say, ‘Yes, but . . .’ We know what’s going on, and the timeline we’re under. The Iranians have repeatedly been in violation of I.A.E.A. safeguards and have given us years of coverup and deception. The international community does not want them to have a bomb, and if we let them continue to enrich that’s throwing in the towel—giving up before we talk.” The diplomat went on, “It would be a mistake to predict an inevitable failure of our strategy. Iran is a regime that is primarily concerned with its own survival, and if its existence is threatened it would do whatever it needed to do—including backing down.”
The Iranian regime’s calculations about its survival also depend on internal political factors. The nuclear program is popular with the Iranian people, including those—the young and the secular—who are most hostile to the religious leadership. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, has effectively used the program to rally the nation behind him, and against Washington. Ahmadinejad and the ruling clerics have said that they believe Bush’s goal is not to prevent them from building a bomb but to drive them out of office.
Several current and former officials I spoke to expressed doubt that President Bush would settle for a negotiated resolution of the nuclear crisis. A former high-level Pentagon civilian official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the government, said that Bush remains confident in his military decisions. The President and others in the Administration often invoke Winston Churchill, both privately and in public, as an example of a politician who, in his own time, was punished in the polls but was rewarded by history for rejecting appeasement. In one speech, Bush said, Churchill “seemed like a Texan to me. He wasn’t afraid of public-opinion polls. . . . He charged ahead, and the world is better for it.”
The Israelis have insisted for years that Iran has a clandestine program to build a bomb, and will do so as soon as it can. Israeli officials have emphasized that their “redline” is the moment Iran masters the nuclear fuel cycle, acquiring the technical ability to produce weapons-grade uranium. “Iran managed to surprise everyone in terms of the enrichment capability,” one diplomat familiar with the Israeli position told me, referring to Iran’s announcement, this spring, that it had successfully enriched uranium to the 3.6-per-cent level needed to fuel a nuclear-power reactor. The Israelis believe that Iran must be stopped as soon as possible, because, once it is able to enrich uranium for fuel, the next step—enriching it to the ninety-per-cent level needed for a nuclear bomb—is merely a mechanical process.
Israeli intelligence, however, has also failed to provide specific evidence about secret sites in Iran, according to current and former military and intelligence officials. In May, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited Washington and, addressing a joint session of Congress, said that Iran “stands on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons” that would pose “an existential threat” to Israel. Olmert noted that Ahmadinejad had questioned the reality of the Holocaust, and he added, “It is not Israel’s threat alone. It is a threat to all those committed to stability in the Middle East and to the well-being of the world at large.” But at a secret intelligence exchange that took place at the Pentagon during the visit, the Pentagon consultant said, “what the Israelis provided fell way short” of what would be needed to publicly justify preventive action.
The issue of what to do, and when, seems far from resolved inside the Israeli government. Martin Indyk, a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, who is now the director of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, told me, “Israel would like to see diplomacy succeed, but they’re worried that in the meantime Iran will cross a threshold of nuclear know-how—and they’re worried about an American military attack not working. They assume they’ll be struck first in retaliation by Iran.” Indyk added, “At the end of the day, the United States can live with Iranian, Pakistani, and Indian nuclear bombs—but for Israel there’s no Mutual Assured Destruction. If they have to live with an Iranian bomb, there will be a great deal of anxiety in Israel, and a lot of tension between Israel and Iran, and between Israel and the U.S.”
Iran has not, so far, officially answered President Bush’s proposal. But its initial response has been dismissive. In a June 22nd interview with the Guardian, Ali Larijani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, rejected Washington’s demand that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment before talks could begin. “If they want to put this prerequisite, why are we negotiating at all?” Larijani said. “We should put aside the sanctions and give up all this talk about regime change.” He characterized the American offer as a “sermon,” and insisted that Iran was not building a bomb. “We don’t want the bomb,” he said. Ahmadinejad has said that Iran would make a formal counterproposal by August 22nd, but last week Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader, declared, on state radio, “Negotiation with the United States has no benefits for us.”
Despite the tough rhetoric, Iran would be reluctant to reject a dialogue with the United States, according to Giandomenico Picco, who, as a representative of the United Nations, helped to negotiate the ceasefire that ended the Iran-Iraq War, in 1988. “If you engage a superpower, you feel you are a superpower,” Picco told me. “And now the haggling in the Persian bazaar begins. We are negotiating over a carpet”—the suspected weapons program—“that we’re not sure exists, and that we don’t want to exist. And if at the end there never was a carpet it’ll be the negotiation of the century.”
If the talks do break down, and the Administration decides on military action, the generals will, of course, follow their orders; the American military remains loyal to the concept of civilian control. But some officers have been pushing for what they call the “middle way,” which the Pentagon consultant described as “a mix of options that require a number of Special Forces teams and air cover to protect them to send into Iran to grab the evidence so the world will know what Iran is doing.” He added that, unlike Rumsfeld, he and others who support this approach were under no illusion that it could bring about regime change. The goal, he said, was to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the I.A.E.A., said in a speech this spring that his agency believed there was still time for diplomacy to achieve that goal. “We should have learned some lessons from Iraq,” ElBaradei, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, said. “We should have learned that we should be very careful about assessing our intelligence. . . . We should have learned that we should try to exhaust every possible diplomatic means to solve the problem before thinking of any other enforcement measures.”
He went on, “When you push a country into a corner, you are always giving the driver’s seat to the hard-liners. . . . If Iran were to move out of the nonproliferation regime altogether, if Iran were to develop a nuclear weapon program, we clearly will have a much, much more serious problem.”
About Me
- Xerxes
- New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
- Admire John McPhee, Bill Bryson, David Remnick, Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr and James Martin (and most open and curious minds)
10.7.06
Elite
Ah, the power of words! Elite defeat - The Boston Globe
Also today, I must salute the extraordinary tennis prowess of Roger Federer, who walked off with the Gentlemen's Singles Trophy at the end of the Fortnight.
Also, not to be soon forgotten, the Italian triumph in the World Cup. Tant pis that Zizou could not have controlled himself.
Also today, I must salute the extraordinary tennis prowess of Roger Federer, who walked off with the Gentlemen's Singles Trophy at the end of the Fortnight.
Also, not to be soon forgotten, the Italian triumph in the World Cup. Tant pis that Zizou could not have controlled himself.
8.7.06
JEFFERSON, 4 JULY
American children are not born understanding the principles of their country, and most American college students—if reports can be believed—are still largely unfamiliar with them when they graduate. So it is a useful tradition, as the Fourth of July comes around each year, to reflect again—and again—on the American political principles famously proclaimed on the original Independence Day, which, as many college graduates know, happened sometime in the past, possibly during summertime. Lest we seem to rest all our political expectations on the capacity of the next generation for self-government, let us admit that the grownups, as well, can benefit from an annual refresher.
As Thomas Jefferson said late in life, when explaining the genesis of the Declaration of Independence, the ideas expressed in it were "the common sense of the subject" in Revolutionary America. In drafting the Declaration, he had not meant to proclaim any "new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of," but merely to express "the American mind." The Declaration contains a stunning summation of the principles of free government; but it was only because the American people had already learned to understand and to embrace these principles that it was possible to establish an American republic. As the Declaration proclaims, the just powers of government are derived from "the consent of the governed." Only a people prepared to consent to a republic is capable of establishing one—or capable of keeping it, as Benjamin Franklin later reminded his fellow citizens. Are we still such a people? No one else can answer this question for us. It is up to this generation, as it has been up to each generation that preceded us and will be up to each generation that succeeds us, to demonstrate our capacity for self-government. This we do for our own sake and for the sake of the cause to which our country was dedicated on that Fourth of July long ago.
Through the Declaration of Independence and the long war that followed it, the American people "assume[d] among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle[d] them." The most famous passage of the Declaration explained to the world what Americans regarded as the principled foundations and purposes of their political independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government….
The self-evident truth "that all men are created equal" is the most fundamental and far-reaching principle affirmed in the Declaration. This is the central idea of the American political experiment from which all other ideas radiate. It is a philosophical idea about human nature, the natural relation of each human being to all others, and the place of all human beings in the natural or created universe. The revolutionary and founding generation of Americans expressed this idea of human equality in a variety of ways. The language of the Declaration of Independence is "that all men are created equal." To express the same idea, the Virginia Declaration of Rights (June 12, 1776) stated that "all men are by nature equally free and independent." The Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (March 2, 1780) stated that "All men are born free and equal."
All of these phrases are different ways of expressing a doctrine about the "state all men are naturally in," which the American colonists had learned in large part from the English philosopher John Locke. Locke had written, less than a century before the Declaration of Independence, that all men are naturally in
a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.
A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another: there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the Lord and Master of them all, should by any manifest declaration of his will set one above another, and confer on him by an evident and clear appointment an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.
To say that all men are by nature equal is to say that human beings are not naturally subordinated one to another: No man is by nature a master; no man is by nature a slave. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, in his last extant letter, written just the week before he died: "the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God." Human beings, then, are naturally free as they are naturally equal. It is from natural human equality and freedom that the founders derived the idea that government could only justly be founded on consent. Because human beings are not naturally subordinated to one another—that is, because they are equal and free—their consent must be obtained before any human being may rightfully exercise authority over them. It is the voluntary consent of the people that gives authority to government.
Government among free and equal men is formed, the American Founders would say, by "social compact." In the words of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780: "The body-politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals: It is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people…." The American body-politic is a social compact in which each citizen is pledged to the defense of all and all to the defense of each for the sake of the ends set forth in the American Declaration of Independence, through the means established in the United States Constitution. This is the political community begun when, in the last words of the Declaration of Independence, "for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge[d] to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."
Because they are equal and free by nature, human beings may not rightfully consent to just any government—to a form of tyranny, for example. In the idea of natural human equality and freedom is the recognition of human rationality and of the limits of human rationality. As Locke wrote, "we are born free as we are born rational." Because human beings are by nature rational beings, one man may not rightly rule over another as he may rightly rule over a non-rational being (like a dog or a horse). But also, because no man is all-knowing or all-good—that is, because human reason is limited and fallible and subject to human passions—one human being may never rightly subject himself to the unrestrained will or unlimited power of another. This is what James Madison meant when he wrote that "government... [is] the greatest of all reflections on human nature[.]"
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
Human nature or human equality—the fact that human beings are neither angels nor mindless brutes—gives rise to the idea of constitutional or limited government. This is a political constitution that conforms to the natural constitution of man. Because human beings are fallible and because their reason is subject sometimes to their passions, human government must be subject to law. Human beings would only reasonably consent to be ruled by laws made by another if that other agreed to be bound by the same laws. A nation "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" will—if circumstances permit—be under a "government of the people, by the people, for the people." In other words, the principle of equality gives rise most naturally to a democratic or republican form of government. James Madison expressed this idea in Federalist 39, where he considered whether the government proposed under the new constitution would be "strictly republican." "It is evident," he wrote,
that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution; or with that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.
This brings us votaries of freedom back to where we began. So let these suffice for our Fourth of July reflections this year, save one final thought. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thought it prudent recently, in the Wall Street Journal, to offer his fellow Americans the following sober reminders:
The years after our war of independence involved a good deal of chaos and confusion. There were uprisings such as Shays' Rebellion, with mobs attacking courthouses and government buildings. There was rampant inflation caused by the lack of a stable currency and the issue of competing paper monies by the various states. There were regional tensions between mercantile New England and the agrarian South. There was looting and crime and a lack of an organized police force. There were supporters of the former regime whose fate had to be determined. Our first effort at a governing charter—the Articles of Confederation—failed miserably, and it took eight years of contentious debate before we finally adopted our Constitution.
Even for the heroic Revolutionary generation of Americans, there was much to learn and much to overcome on the way to ensuring that free government would be good government. So let us gather again on Constitution Day, September 17, to continue the conversation. It will do us all good—young and old alike.
As Thomas Jefferson said late in life, when explaining the genesis of the Declaration of Independence, the ideas expressed in it were "the common sense of the subject" in Revolutionary America. In drafting the Declaration, he had not meant to proclaim any "new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of," but merely to express "the American mind." The Declaration contains a stunning summation of the principles of free government; but it was only because the American people had already learned to understand and to embrace these principles that it was possible to establish an American republic. As the Declaration proclaims, the just powers of government are derived from "the consent of the governed." Only a people prepared to consent to a republic is capable of establishing one—or capable of keeping it, as Benjamin Franklin later reminded his fellow citizens. Are we still such a people? No one else can answer this question for us. It is up to this generation, as it has been up to each generation that preceded us and will be up to each generation that succeeds us, to demonstrate our capacity for self-government. This we do for our own sake and for the sake of the cause to which our country was dedicated on that Fourth of July long ago.
Through the Declaration of Independence and the long war that followed it, the American people "assume[d] among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle[d] them." The most famous passage of the Declaration explained to the world what Americans regarded as the principled foundations and purposes of their political independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government….
The self-evident truth "that all men are created equal" is the most fundamental and far-reaching principle affirmed in the Declaration. This is the central idea of the American political experiment from which all other ideas radiate. It is a philosophical idea about human nature, the natural relation of each human being to all others, and the place of all human beings in the natural or created universe. The revolutionary and founding generation of Americans expressed this idea of human equality in a variety of ways. The language of the Declaration of Independence is "that all men are created equal." To express the same idea, the Virginia Declaration of Rights (June 12, 1776) stated that "all men are by nature equally free and independent." The Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (March 2, 1780) stated that "All men are born free and equal."
All of these phrases are different ways of expressing a doctrine about the "state all men are naturally in," which the American colonists had learned in large part from the English philosopher John Locke. Locke had written, less than a century before the Declaration of Independence, that all men are naturally in
a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.
A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another: there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the Lord and Master of them all, should by any manifest declaration of his will set one above another, and confer on him by an evident and clear appointment an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.
To say that all men are by nature equal is to say that human beings are not naturally subordinated one to another: No man is by nature a master; no man is by nature a slave. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, in his last extant letter, written just the week before he died: "the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God." Human beings, then, are naturally free as they are naturally equal. It is from natural human equality and freedom that the founders derived the idea that government could only justly be founded on consent. Because human beings are not naturally subordinated to one another—that is, because they are equal and free—their consent must be obtained before any human being may rightfully exercise authority over them. It is the voluntary consent of the people that gives authority to government.
Government among free and equal men is formed, the American Founders would say, by "social compact." In the words of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780: "The body-politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals: It is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people…." The American body-politic is a social compact in which each citizen is pledged to the defense of all and all to the defense of each for the sake of the ends set forth in the American Declaration of Independence, through the means established in the United States Constitution. This is the political community begun when, in the last words of the Declaration of Independence, "for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge[d] to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."
Because they are equal and free by nature, human beings may not rightfully consent to just any government—to a form of tyranny, for example. In the idea of natural human equality and freedom is the recognition of human rationality and of the limits of human rationality. As Locke wrote, "we are born free as we are born rational." Because human beings are by nature rational beings, one man may not rightly rule over another as he may rightly rule over a non-rational being (like a dog or a horse). But also, because no man is all-knowing or all-good—that is, because human reason is limited and fallible and subject to human passions—one human being may never rightly subject himself to the unrestrained will or unlimited power of another. This is what James Madison meant when he wrote that "government... [is] the greatest of all reflections on human nature[.]"
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
Human nature or human equality—the fact that human beings are neither angels nor mindless brutes—gives rise to the idea of constitutional or limited government. This is a political constitution that conforms to the natural constitution of man. Because human beings are fallible and because their reason is subject sometimes to their passions, human government must be subject to law. Human beings would only reasonably consent to be ruled by laws made by another if that other agreed to be bound by the same laws. A nation "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" will—if circumstances permit—be under a "government of the people, by the people, for the people." In other words, the principle of equality gives rise most naturally to a democratic or republican form of government. James Madison expressed this idea in Federalist 39, where he considered whether the government proposed under the new constitution would be "strictly republican." "It is evident," he wrote,
that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution; or with that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.
This brings us votaries of freedom back to where we began. So let these suffice for our Fourth of July reflections this year, save one final thought. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thought it prudent recently, in the Wall Street Journal, to offer his fellow Americans the following sober reminders:
The years after our war of independence involved a good deal of chaos and confusion. There were uprisings such as Shays' Rebellion, with mobs attacking courthouses and government buildings. There was rampant inflation caused by the lack of a stable currency and the issue of competing paper monies by the various states. There were regional tensions between mercantile New England and the agrarian South. There was looting and crime and a lack of an organized police force. There were supporters of the former regime whose fate had to be determined. Our first effort at a governing charter—the Articles of Confederation—failed miserably, and it took eight years of contentious debate before we finally adopted our Constitution.
Even for the heroic Revolutionary generation of Americans, there was much to learn and much to overcome on the way to ensuring that free government would be good government. So let us gather again on Constitution Day, September 17, to continue the conversation. It will do us all good—young and old alike.
PROPHETS & HONOR
Will anyone please help me understand this?
"Prophets are not without honour, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house."
"Prophets are not without honour, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house."
CAN"T MAKE IT TO ASPEN?
Now, why is it that they didn't ask me to brainstorm? Aspen's not so bad this time of year. (Note to Walter Isaacson -- I'm generally available for this sort of confab, so, pencil me in, for future reference)
At last week's Brainstorm conference, organized by FORTUNE Magazine and the Aspen Institute, a profusion of voices from many fields spoke up on a surprising range of subjects, all under the rubric of our theme "Life in a Connected World."
Here are some highlights:
Senator John McCain, in the closing talk: "I think we need to stop arguing whether it's happening - climate change is real, and we need to begin to start figuring out how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
Venture Capitalist Vinod Khosla on an energy panel offered Shell (Charts) CEO Jeroen van der Veer a deal wherein companies he is investing in would supply Shell with plant-derived ethanol which it could sell at a price of $1.99 a gallon and still make a good profit.
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in a session on global affairs and religion: "The United States needs to have a moral foreign policy. Now that's a little different than a moralistic foreign policy, where we're telling everyone else what they should believe."
Martin Sorrell, CEO of ad giant WPP (Charts), challenged Marissa Mayer, who heads the search business at Google (Charts), saying he fears the search giant is encroaching upon more and more of his business, especially its fastest-growing piece - media buying and planning.
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius said there were still signs that fundamentalism was not triumphing in the Middle East, noting that on a recent trip the hot tickets in Beirut were The Vagina Monologues and an upcoming 50 Cent concert.
World Bank executive Paulo Gomes said Africa is moving ahead faster than most realize. "GDP is growing 5 percent, and inflation generally is below 10 percent," he explained, adding "Ten years ago there were 16 active conflicts, and now we have four."
I enumerate this diverse list of fascinating moments to illustrate what makes Brainstorm different - its range of ideas. We take the most thoughtful (and powerful) people we know from a wide variety of fields and put them together for two days to see what happens.
Since I'm director of the conference, it's no surprise that tech issues were frequently on the surface. The Connected World theme was meant to suggest that issues relating to tech and the Internet affect just about every sphere of business and society these days.
Many of the world's top tech venture capitalists and entrepreneurs were in the audience. Newly-appointed Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie of Microsoft (Charts) told me at a cocktail party how excited he is about his enormously-demanding job. He actually sees the mammoth task of transforming Microsoft for the Internet age as fun.
At one point I mentioned to eBay (Charts) founder Pierre Omidyar that I was not sure we had to have legislation to guarantee network neutrality - the notion that Internet businesses should not have to pay to insure they get their content to customers.
As we walked to lunch, Omidyar explained that eBay's concern has a lot to do with the next generation of Internet routers now coming on the market from Cisco (Charts) and others.
These new routers - through which all the electronic bits that make up the Internet must pass - increasingly will have the capability of detecting exactly where those bits originated and what kind of content they are carrying - video, audio, text, instant message, etc.
Omidyar says eBay worries that this capability may be very tempting for service providers at all levels of the Internet food chain to use to discriminate between content - from local ISPs to long-distance backbone carriers. It's a technical change, in eBay's view, which necessitates this regulatory change.
Brainstormers heard from a panoply of speakers that ranged from former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to Home Depot (Charts) CEO Bob Nardelli to Human Rights Watch Executive Director Ken Roth. Then there were the members of the Japanese parliament, President Antonio Saca of El Salvador, ousted Dutch Parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and several journalists from China.
To assure the conference itself stayed connected, of course we included a variety of bloggers. They ranged from Arianna Huffington to Asian expert Rebecca MacKinnon to citizen journalist Dan Gillmor to venture capitalists including Steve Jurvetson, Joi Ito, and Fred Wilson.
Also blogging were Google's Head of Special Initiatives Chris Sacca, Wiki software entrepreneur Ross Mayfield of Socialtext, conference expert Gary Bolles of Conferenza, and Diego Rodriguez of design firm IDEO. You can also go to Flickr and see photos taken at Brainstorm by Jurvetson, Mayfield, Esther Dyson, and others.
Fortune's writers also posted our own extensive notes on our own blog where you can still join in the Brainstorm conversation by posting your own comment.
At last week's Brainstorm conference, organized by FORTUNE Magazine and the Aspen Institute, a profusion of voices from many fields spoke up on a surprising range of subjects, all under the rubric of our theme "Life in a Connected World."
Here are some highlights:
Senator John McCain, in the closing talk: "I think we need to stop arguing whether it's happening - climate change is real, and we need to begin to start figuring out how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
Venture Capitalist Vinod Khosla on an energy panel offered Shell (Charts) CEO Jeroen van der Veer a deal wherein companies he is investing in would supply Shell with plant-derived ethanol which it could sell at a price of $1.99 a gallon and still make a good profit.
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in a session on global affairs and religion: "The United States needs to have a moral foreign policy. Now that's a little different than a moralistic foreign policy, where we're telling everyone else what they should believe."
Martin Sorrell, CEO of ad giant WPP (Charts), challenged Marissa Mayer, who heads the search business at Google (Charts), saying he fears the search giant is encroaching upon more and more of his business, especially its fastest-growing piece - media buying and planning.
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius said there were still signs that fundamentalism was not triumphing in the Middle East, noting that on a recent trip the hot tickets in Beirut were The Vagina Monologues and an upcoming 50 Cent concert.
World Bank executive Paulo Gomes said Africa is moving ahead faster than most realize. "GDP is growing 5 percent, and inflation generally is below 10 percent," he explained, adding "Ten years ago there were 16 active conflicts, and now we have four."
I enumerate this diverse list of fascinating moments to illustrate what makes Brainstorm different - its range of ideas. We take the most thoughtful (and powerful) people we know from a wide variety of fields and put them together for two days to see what happens.
Since I'm director of the conference, it's no surprise that tech issues were frequently on the surface. The Connected World theme was meant to suggest that issues relating to tech and the Internet affect just about every sphere of business and society these days.
Many of the world's top tech venture capitalists and entrepreneurs were in the audience. Newly-appointed Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie of Microsoft (Charts) told me at a cocktail party how excited he is about his enormously-demanding job. He actually sees the mammoth task of transforming Microsoft for the Internet age as fun.
At one point I mentioned to eBay (Charts) founder Pierre Omidyar that I was not sure we had to have legislation to guarantee network neutrality - the notion that Internet businesses should not have to pay to insure they get their content to customers.
As we walked to lunch, Omidyar explained that eBay's concern has a lot to do with the next generation of Internet routers now coming on the market from Cisco (Charts) and others.
These new routers - through which all the electronic bits that make up the Internet must pass - increasingly will have the capability of detecting exactly where those bits originated and what kind of content they are carrying - video, audio, text, instant message, etc.
Omidyar says eBay worries that this capability may be very tempting for service providers at all levels of the Internet food chain to use to discriminate between content - from local ISPs to long-distance backbone carriers. It's a technical change, in eBay's view, which necessitates this regulatory change.
Brainstormers heard from a panoply of speakers that ranged from former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to Home Depot (Charts) CEO Bob Nardelli to Human Rights Watch Executive Director Ken Roth. Then there were the members of the Japanese parliament, President Antonio Saca of El Salvador, ousted Dutch Parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and several journalists from China.
To assure the conference itself stayed connected, of course we included a variety of bloggers. They ranged from Arianna Huffington to Asian expert Rebecca MacKinnon to citizen journalist Dan Gillmor to venture capitalists including Steve Jurvetson, Joi Ito, and Fred Wilson.
Also blogging were Google's Head of Special Initiatives Chris Sacca, Wiki software entrepreneur Ross Mayfield of Socialtext, conference expert Gary Bolles of Conferenza, and Diego Rodriguez of design firm IDEO. You can also go to Flickr and see photos taken at Brainstorm by Jurvetson, Mayfield, Esther Dyson, and others.
Fortune's writers also posted our own extensive notes on our own blog where you can still join in the Brainstorm conversation by posting your own comment.
PIANO FOR LUNCH
In an airy room inside Renzo Piano’s studio in the Marais district of Paris, a table is laden with delicious Italian antipasti and a bottle of Nuits St Georges. I have arrived a few minutes early, but my guest, who has overturned convention and decided to play host, makes his jaunty entrance soon afterwards. “Trust me,” says the slogan on his grey T-shirt, “I’m an architect.” Piano laughs heartily. “I wore it specially for the occasion.”
We sit down to our meal. I had insisted that the rules of this feature meant I had to take Piano out to lunch at his favourite restaurant, but he says he rarely eats out, and this was far more typical of his working life: a high-class takeaway in a specially created space in the studio. We are surrounded by activity, but also insulated from it. The sunlight streams through the glass roof, yet it is not too hot. The space is perfect; so is the food. The delivery, he says, is from Lenotre, the prestigious Parisian caterers. “Jambon de Parme. They know where to find the best quality.”
Piano, Genoese by birth, determinedly internationalist by vocation, lives just a few minutes way, in the incomparably elegant Place des Vosges. A brisk walk in the opposite direction takes him straight into another architectural universe: to the Pompidou Centre, the thrilling cultural landmark he co-designed with Richard Rogers in the 1970s. Nowhere is the appeal of Paris more keenly felt than in these few vibrant, eclectic blocks of extraordinary architecture and social ferment.
The Pompidou Centre was an iconoclastic achievement (”an act of rebellion - we were young bad boys,” says Piano) but, at 68, his style has inevitably softened, and is much in demand. Current projects include a new office tower for The New York Times Company, London Bridge Tower (known as the “shard of glass”) on the south bank of the Thames, and numerous museum expansions. He has just completed a well received renovation of the Morgan Library in New York, and past triumphs include a football stadium in Bari, Italy, and the Kansai airport terminal near Osaka, Japan.
I ask him how he manages to balance such a diverse portfolio, and he says the number of jobs he undertakes is circumscribed by the size of his practice: about 100 people, “which is enough - I can know the names of everybody”. That level of intimacy is essential, he says. “I am not a manager, I am an architect. I spend my time sketching.”
His sketches, and the buildings to which they lead, are highly regarded, though not always unanimously. Piano has just visited London where he gave a lecture in Southwark Cathedral on, among other things, London Bridge Tower, which at 1,016ft will be the second tallest building in Europe. (Moscow’s Federation Tower, already under way, will reach 1,115ft.) “It was my first ever sermon. The dean there is a great guy. He said he was very happy about the tower, but doesn’t like the title ‘shard of glass’ - he prefers ‘spire’. He said that a shard was something people cut their hands on, and I agree.”
I say that a lot of people think that a mega-skyscraper is the last thing that London’s skyline needs.
He understands the opposition to urban towers. “Typically, they are aggressive, arrogant, black, they go up like that - paf! They have a bad reputation and they deserve it. They are full of that desire to tell everybody: ‘I am stronger than you.’ They are about money and power. But that is only part of the story. When I think of towers I also think of San Gimignano, of the history of the church. That desire to go up, to breathe fresh air, to disappear into the sky, that is also a very spiritual thing. It is not a bad idea to go up in dense cities. Why not? As long as you stay away from bad rhetoric and bad symbols.” London’s new spire will be ecologically sound, use public transportation, and light - “like this”, he holds up a glass of water, “not like this”, pointing to our dark bottle of wine.
Were the attacks of September 11 not a hubristic moment for that type of architecture? Does he find it easy to continue to design upwards?
“September 11 was a terrible moment. It was human madness. But as an architect you cannot even think of giving a technical answer to an event like that. You cannot ask: ‘What can we do in the event of a terrorist attack?’ The only technical answer is caverns. They are the only safe place. And then you have the end of the city, and of civilisation. Citta comes from civilta,” he explains, dipping into his native language. “The city is the place of civilisation.”
Piano was in New York during the attacks, and the very next day he had a meeting to discuss The New York Times Company tower. “Of course we talked about how we could make the building safer, and we decided it was important not to turn it into a citadel or a fortress, but to make it as transparent and open as we possibly could.”
With the Morgan Library, he did the opposite of scraping the sky, digging through 50ft of rock to create new spaces for book conservation. “It was a practical solution. Ask any child where the best place to hide books is, and it is deep in the ground. The decision was taken before September 11. It was not fear. It is also conceptually good: something that has to be saved for eternity, inside these vaults that are impossible to pierce.”
How does he balance those elements of architecture, the practical and the conceptual? Is he initially attracted by ideas or by structural challenges?
“It is a mess,” he replies with disarming frankness. “It is the usual mess that exists at the beginning of everything. It is always a mess, and so it should be. Architecture is a material activity because you have to provide solid, durable shelter for people. But it is among the most spiritual of the arts, because it changes the world, changes lives. It is about beautiful things. And without a kind of Utopian vision, you cannot even try to be an architect, because it becomes academic and formal. It is like you writing because you like the sound of the words, rather than for their content.”
I noticed on a quick tour of his studio some designs for a building near Le Corbusier’s Church of Notre-Dame-du-Haut in Ronchamp. He says this is a brand new project that no one has written about yet, to design some nuns’ quarters. “I was approached about a year ago to design a reception building for the church, but we said no, which is what we normally do. They came back a few months later and said they wanted somewhere for 12 nuns to live, in the forest near the church.
“That sounded more interesting. We said yes but I didn’t know where to start. We travelled there with six or seven students, and designed the building on the site, with hammers and rope. Like the great Indian architects. We started in the morning and finished in the evening. I was very cold but happy.” He draws a picture of the church and forest on a napkin.
So the reception building had not appealed, but as soon as something more profound suggested itself, he said yes? “You got it.” He completes the napkin drawing with his green pen, signs it, dedicates it to me and hands it over with an air of satisfaction. “The first idea was too pragmatic. It was about making toilets. It wasn’t really about making the forest breathe.”
I say that when I first visited the Pompidou Centre in 1979, it felt radical, not just for its remarkable inside-out look, but also for the way it worked: to design a place of culture as somewhere just to meet and hang out seemed outrageously bohemian at the time, whereas now it is commonplace.
“It didn’t change people’s approach to culture, but it became a symbol of that change. It was a symptom rather than a cause. We were good sensors of the moment.” He is pleased that it provoked curiosity in people. “That’s where it all starts, when you are young, maybe not used to culture. Curiosity. Instead of smoking hashish, you have a great experience in looking at a painting by Rothko. I have nothing against hashish. But it is more constructive to like a painting, no?”
He says he is much in demand among American cities to redesign their cultural institutions. “They want something European, a more subtle, more humanistic approach. They want to rethink the relationship between public and private space, between the building and the street. We are masters of that [in Europe]. At least we are not too bad. Sometimes we forget.”
He shows me some of his projects in Dallas, Houston and Atlanta, and reaffirms his faith in the potential of the modern city. “The city is a place of exchange, where people’s experiences merge, where differences can disappear. This can only happen in a civilised place, it does not happen in the country.”
Over perfectly made espressos, I ask Piano where he stands in the debate about modernism. He says he understands the “Prince Charles analysis” but can never share his conclusions because modernity represented the “honest challenge of belonging in our own time”. He met that challenge head-on with the Pompidou Centre. “People say it was a triumph of technology - no. It was a parody, part of the game, to say - ‘Welcome, come in, this building is for you.’
“Of course I was in hiding for many years before it was accepted. Now everybody is proud of it.” The lesson is loud and clear: trust him, he’s an architect.
Renzo Piano’s studio, Paris
2 x Italian antipasti (takeaway from Lenotre, Paris)
2 x fruit salad
1 x bottle Nuits St Georges
2 x espresso
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
We sit down to our meal. I had insisted that the rules of this feature meant I had to take Piano out to lunch at his favourite restaurant, but he says he rarely eats out, and this was far more typical of his working life: a high-class takeaway in a specially created space in the studio. We are surrounded by activity, but also insulated from it. The sunlight streams through the glass roof, yet it is not too hot. The space is perfect; so is the food. The delivery, he says, is from Lenotre, the prestigious Parisian caterers. “Jambon de Parme. They know where to find the best quality.”
Piano, Genoese by birth, determinedly internationalist by vocation, lives just a few minutes way, in the incomparably elegant Place des Vosges. A brisk walk in the opposite direction takes him straight into another architectural universe: to the Pompidou Centre, the thrilling cultural landmark he co-designed with Richard Rogers in the 1970s. Nowhere is the appeal of Paris more keenly felt than in these few vibrant, eclectic blocks of extraordinary architecture and social ferment.
The Pompidou Centre was an iconoclastic achievement (”an act of rebellion - we were young bad boys,” says Piano) but, at 68, his style has inevitably softened, and is much in demand. Current projects include a new office tower for The New York Times Company, London Bridge Tower (known as the “shard of glass”) on the south bank of the Thames, and numerous museum expansions. He has just completed a well received renovation of the Morgan Library in New York, and past triumphs include a football stadium in Bari, Italy, and the Kansai airport terminal near Osaka, Japan.
I ask him how he manages to balance such a diverse portfolio, and he says the number of jobs he undertakes is circumscribed by the size of his practice: about 100 people, “which is enough - I can know the names of everybody”. That level of intimacy is essential, he says. “I am not a manager, I am an architect. I spend my time sketching.”
His sketches, and the buildings to which they lead, are highly regarded, though not always unanimously. Piano has just visited London where he gave a lecture in Southwark Cathedral on, among other things, London Bridge Tower, which at 1,016ft will be the second tallest building in Europe. (Moscow’s Federation Tower, already under way, will reach 1,115ft.) “It was my first ever sermon. The dean there is a great guy. He said he was very happy about the tower, but doesn’t like the title ‘shard of glass’ - he prefers ‘spire’. He said that a shard was something people cut their hands on, and I agree.”
I say that a lot of people think that a mega-skyscraper is the last thing that London’s skyline needs.
He understands the opposition to urban towers. “Typically, they are aggressive, arrogant, black, they go up like that - paf! They have a bad reputation and they deserve it. They are full of that desire to tell everybody: ‘I am stronger than you.’ They are about money and power. But that is only part of the story. When I think of towers I also think of San Gimignano, of the history of the church. That desire to go up, to breathe fresh air, to disappear into the sky, that is also a very spiritual thing. It is not a bad idea to go up in dense cities. Why not? As long as you stay away from bad rhetoric and bad symbols.” London’s new spire will be ecologically sound, use public transportation, and light - “like this”, he holds up a glass of water, “not like this”, pointing to our dark bottle of wine.
Were the attacks of September 11 not a hubristic moment for that type of architecture? Does he find it easy to continue to design upwards?
“September 11 was a terrible moment. It was human madness. But as an architect you cannot even think of giving a technical answer to an event like that. You cannot ask: ‘What can we do in the event of a terrorist attack?’ The only technical answer is caverns. They are the only safe place. And then you have the end of the city, and of civilisation. Citta comes from civilta,” he explains, dipping into his native language. “The city is the place of civilisation.”
Piano was in New York during the attacks, and the very next day he had a meeting to discuss The New York Times Company tower. “Of course we talked about how we could make the building safer, and we decided it was important not to turn it into a citadel or a fortress, but to make it as transparent and open as we possibly could.”
With the Morgan Library, he did the opposite of scraping the sky, digging through 50ft of rock to create new spaces for book conservation. “It was a practical solution. Ask any child where the best place to hide books is, and it is deep in the ground. The decision was taken before September 11. It was not fear. It is also conceptually good: something that has to be saved for eternity, inside these vaults that are impossible to pierce.”
How does he balance those elements of architecture, the practical and the conceptual? Is he initially attracted by ideas or by structural challenges?
“It is a mess,” he replies with disarming frankness. “It is the usual mess that exists at the beginning of everything. It is always a mess, and so it should be. Architecture is a material activity because you have to provide solid, durable shelter for people. But it is among the most spiritual of the arts, because it changes the world, changes lives. It is about beautiful things. And without a kind of Utopian vision, you cannot even try to be an architect, because it becomes academic and formal. It is like you writing because you like the sound of the words, rather than for their content.”
I noticed on a quick tour of his studio some designs for a building near Le Corbusier’s Church of Notre-Dame-du-Haut in Ronchamp. He says this is a brand new project that no one has written about yet, to design some nuns’ quarters. “I was approached about a year ago to design a reception building for the church, but we said no, which is what we normally do. They came back a few months later and said they wanted somewhere for 12 nuns to live, in the forest near the church.
“That sounded more interesting. We said yes but I didn’t know where to start. We travelled there with six or seven students, and designed the building on the site, with hammers and rope. Like the great Indian architects. We started in the morning and finished in the evening. I was very cold but happy.” He draws a picture of the church and forest on a napkin.
So the reception building had not appealed, but as soon as something more profound suggested itself, he said yes? “You got it.” He completes the napkin drawing with his green pen, signs it, dedicates it to me and hands it over with an air of satisfaction. “The first idea was too pragmatic. It was about making toilets. It wasn’t really about making the forest breathe.”
I say that when I first visited the Pompidou Centre in 1979, it felt radical, not just for its remarkable inside-out look, but also for the way it worked: to design a place of culture as somewhere just to meet and hang out seemed outrageously bohemian at the time, whereas now it is commonplace.
“It didn’t change people’s approach to culture, but it became a symbol of that change. It was a symptom rather than a cause. We were good sensors of the moment.” He is pleased that it provoked curiosity in people. “That’s where it all starts, when you are young, maybe not used to culture. Curiosity. Instead of smoking hashish, you have a great experience in looking at a painting by Rothko. I have nothing against hashish. But it is more constructive to like a painting, no?”
He says he is much in demand among American cities to redesign their cultural institutions. “They want something European, a more subtle, more humanistic approach. They want to rethink the relationship between public and private space, between the building and the street. We are masters of that [in Europe]. At least we are not too bad. Sometimes we forget.”
He shows me some of his projects in Dallas, Houston and Atlanta, and reaffirms his faith in the potential of the modern city. “The city is a place of exchange, where people’s experiences merge, where differences can disappear. This can only happen in a civilised place, it does not happen in the country.”
Over perfectly made espressos, I ask Piano where he stands in the debate about modernism. He says he understands the “Prince Charles analysis” but can never share his conclusions because modernity represented the “honest challenge of belonging in our own time”. He met that challenge head-on with the Pompidou Centre. “People say it was a triumph of technology - no. It was a parody, part of the game, to say - ‘Welcome, come in, this building is for you.’
“Of course I was in hiding for many years before it was accepted. Now everybody is proud of it.” The lesson is loud and clear: trust him, he’s an architect.
Renzo Piano’s studio, Paris
2 x Italian antipasti (takeaway from Lenotre, Paris)
2 x fruit salad
1 x bottle Nuits St Georges
2 x espresso
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
SPORT
A summer of sport? Unbeatable
By Rahul Jacob
A colleague who often looks as if he might have stepped off a plane from Krypton after a Friday morning session with his tennis coach seemed downcast recently. He had asked her what to do if your opponent was directing a barrage of looping topspin forehands at your backhand. Her answer had been inconclusive. I knew instantly it was not his backhand that he was worried about, but Roger Federer's. The question, just days before the Swiss maestro lost in the French Open final to Rafael Nadal, had been the talking point of a clay-court season this year that few tennis fans will forget.
For those of us who are obsessive about sport, it sometimes feels as if our summers are defined by them, never more so than this summer perhaps, but I have said that almost every other summer. I remember little of what happened to me in the summer of 1978 other than the fact that a chubby Czech named Martina Navratilova finally conquered her demons and won Wimbledon. This week, more than a decade after I had seen her "retire" at the US Open, I was similarly moved watching the 49-year-old swarm all over the net as she and her partner Liezel Huber trounced the top seeds.
When I left India to go to graduate school in the US in the mid-80s, I became perhaps the only person to have left one country for another largely because I wanted to see John McEnroe play tennis.
A few years later, after I spotted his elegant mother with her page-boy cut white hair and father, the very image of a New York lawyer, arriving at the stadium court of the US Open to sit nearby, I had to be physically restrained by a friend from giving them a standing ovation.
If I were not convinced that to be so obsessed with sport is itself therapeutic, I would seek therapy. All the fuss about how this has been a patchy World Cup misses the point. It really is not always about the winning and losing or even the quality of the football on display, but the sense of community football inspires from one end of the world to the other. "32 Nations, One Religion" screamed a billboard in Bangalore I saw recently. And what does one make of the outburst by a Chinese TV commentator after a very controversial penalty was awarded to Italy in its match with Australia. "The victory belongs . . . to everyone who loves Italian soccer! (Coach) Hiddink . . . lost all his courage faced with Italian history and traditions," the commentator screamed.
The crucial words, I think, are "the victory belongs to everyone", because it is in countries whose players are not serious contenders for the World Cup or Wimbledon that the passion these sports evoke is a cause for wonder. To paraphrase the main character in Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, I hate nations - and nationalism in sports. In its most extreme form, it prompts racist slurs, as when the Spaniards played the French, or the kind of hyper-analysis bordering on hysteria of every dribble of the English team.
If sport can make global citizens of us, it is also probably true that the family that plays together stays together. Years ago, my elder brother said he was in a hurry to get married partly because he wanted to be able to play squash with his children as our father did, an unusual twist on the biological clock. A South African acquaintance said he missed his father most on Sunday evenings because that was when they caught up on the week's sport, which seemed a poignant articulation of the impoverishment of our lives brought on by the death of a parent.
There is often a prelapsarian nostalgia with which many of us regard the sportsmen of the 70s and 80s - the subject of a recent book, Ali, Pelé, Lillee and Me - but I have rediscovered that innocent pleasure in sport in the past couple of years at Wimbledon. The All England Club, starting with the similarly unfailing courtesy of its elderly stewards, precisely recalls a Sunday service at Westminster Abbey, the meticulously trained ballboys and ballgirls the older siblings of the schoolboy choristers. This year, the new Ralph Lauren uniforms of its linesmen seemed a Gatsby variant on dressing in your Sunday best. Last Friday, I ended up staying on Centre Court till 9 pm, when it really has the intimacy of a club.
No summer's days are as heaven-sent as those in England, or so it seems on Centre Court. Then there is the classical artistry of Federer, which seems to flow during the fortnight. He still lags behind Navratilova, Laver, Borg and Sampras in the rollcall of the very great, but never was a champion more to this particular manor born. Watching him has been likened to watching Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel, but that seems, well, like watching paint dry.
Last year, the British player John Lloyd wondered aloud on BBC if Federer was entirely human. On the evidence so far, I'm not sure. The courts and balls are playing slower, which will help his remaining opponents, and he might have a bad day, but that's in the nature of sport. Federer on a perfect sunny day at Wimbledon? It's best described as watching Michelangelo's David dressed in tennis whites, with the feet of Baryshnikov, the flair for geometry of the ancient Greeks, the hands of McEnroe, all under the direction of Mozart. Like those majestic later piano concertos, every stroke seems preordained, unhurried, perfect.
rahul.jacob@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
(THE) CHURCHES, WOMEN, GAYS...
I find it damned ironic that christians are so docile in accepting rankly un-christian stricture and attitude emmanating from their leaders. And so...
Why God wouldn't object to gay bishops
CC: Vatican: General Delivery
Mary Wakefield
The sun was already high over Church Hill in Hertfordshire at 10.30 on Thursday morning as I followed Christina Rees through the garden, up to her front door. Tiny, red-gold chickens the size of tennis balls sped across the lawn and peacocks dragged their heavy tails through the flower beds.
"I had scrambled peacock eggs for breakfast," said Christina, over her shoulder, as she stepped inside. "I need all the primal peacock energy I can get, to do battle with the bishops!"
Peacock power must be pretty potent stuff. Christina is American by birth, but a member of our General Synod, and chairwoman of Women and the Church (Watch), which struggles to free the Church of England from patriarchal prejudice.
And within an hour, turbo-charged by egg power, she'd explained the Anglican Communion to me, unravelled all its competing theologies, and made it appear suddenly quite clear that despite his recent nod in the direction of the conservatives, the Archbishop of Canterbury will eventually have to go with the liberal flow, to follow in the wake of America and embrace not just women bishops, but actively gay clergy as well.
I sat opposite Christina in silence, listening and learning. Before our chat I had imagined the two warring factions of the worldwide Anglican Church to be evenly matched.
The liberals had been cheered up by the ordination of the squid-enthusiast and aviator, Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori in the USA; the conservatives had taken heart from Rowan Williams's recent suggestion that all Anglican Churches sign up to a Bible-based "covenant". They would be neck and neck, I imagined, during the debate about women bishops at this week's General Synod.
Christina knew better. She picked up a cat from between her sandals, and said: "You want to know what the headlines will be on July 10?" Yes please. "They'll all say the same thing: 'C of E votes for women bishops!' So hooray! It'll be a wonderful day and a step towards redressing the great mistakes that were made in the first few centuries of the Christian Church."
What mistakes? Christina looked surprised. "The suppression of women, of course. The early Christians were so keen to separate themselves from Goddess worship that they began to treat women as inferior. It was something Jesus himself never, ever intended." So Jesus would have wanted women bishops? "Absolutely." And actively gay bishops like Gene Robinson, would he have minded them? "No, not if they were in a faithful relationship, of course not."
For Christina Rees and Bishop Jefferts Schori, perhaps for Rowan Williams, the ordination of women into the episcopacy and the ordination of gay priests are connected in a very basic way. At the heart of the matter is the liberal Anglican idea of who God is and what He wants from us.
Our Creator doesn't intervene much, according to them, He is not a worrier or much of a judge. He doesn't mind which prayer book we use, or who officiates in church because all he cares about is love - and it is the same with His Son.
Jesus's defining feature, His divine feature, was and is His unconditional love, they say. His gender is irrelevant, as is His sexuality - both as arbitrary and unimportant as His hair colour or what clothes He wore. To be Christ-like then, to stand in for Him as a priest, it doesn't matter if you're boy, girl, gay or straight - all you need is love.
"Our duty as Christians is just to respond to the infinite love of God, and to stop endlessly dictating who's out and who's in," said Christina.
"Come on! God is Spirit! So how do we know how He wants to be worshipped? We don't." The sun, now dead ahead, shone in through the skylight, picking out pieces of coloured glass, pebbles, seashells arranged on shelves. So after women bishops in the C of E, you think openly gay clergy is next?
"Let's get real," said Christina. "Look how many of them there are already. It's just not official yet."
So is Rowan Williams thinking along these lines too? Christina just smiled. And maybe she's right.
It is true that in my part of London, a nice lady priest and her girlfriend run their parish side by side, and in the next-door church, a gay priest and his partner do the same. If their spiritual leader thought they were making the Creator cross, surely he'd have put his foot down by now. It is also true that for all the talk of a "covenant", there is no mention of its content yet, which would take painful years to negotiate.
Why then, if the Church of England is so intrinsically liberal, did the Archbishop bother with the idea of drawing up rules at all? "Perhaps he's just playing for time," said Christina. "He's got to avoid schism and stop calls for the Episcopal Church to be cut off. And after all, sooner or later, the Spirit will move even the hardest hearts."
Why God wouldn't object to gay bishops
CC: Vatican: General Delivery
Mary Wakefield
The sun was already high over Church Hill in Hertfordshire at 10.30 on Thursday morning as I followed Christina Rees through the garden, up to her front door. Tiny, red-gold chickens the size of tennis balls sped across the lawn and peacocks dragged their heavy tails through the flower beds.
"I had scrambled peacock eggs for breakfast," said Christina, over her shoulder, as she stepped inside. "I need all the primal peacock energy I can get, to do battle with the bishops!"
Peacock power must be pretty potent stuff. Christina is American by birth, but a member of our General Synod, and chairwoman of Women and the Church (Watch), which struggles to free the Church of England from patriarchal prejudice.
And within an hour, turbo-charged by egg power, she'd explained the Anglican Communion to me, unravelled all its competing theologies, and made it appear suddenly quite clear that despite his recent nod in the direction of the conservatives, the Archbishop of Canterbury will eventually have to go with the liberal flow, to follow in the wake of America and embrace not just women bishops, but actively gay clergy as well.
I sat opposite Christina in silence, listening and learning. Before our chat I had imagined the two warring factions of the worldwide Anglican Church to be evenly matched.
The liberals had been cheered up by the ordination of the squid-enthusiast and aviator, Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori in the USA; the conservatives had taken heart from Rowan Williams's recent suggestion that all Anglican Churches sign up to a Bible-based "covenant". They would be neck and neck, I imagined, during the debate about women bishops at this week's General Synod.
Christina knew better. She picked up a cat from between her sandals, and said: "You want to know what the headlines will be on July 10?" Yes please. "They'll all say the same thing: 'C of E votes for women bishops!' So hooray! It'll be a wonderful day and a step towards redressing the great mistakes that were made in the first few centuries of the Christian Church."
What mistakes? Christina looked surprised. "The suppression of women, of course. The early Christians were so keen to separate themselves from Goddess worship that they began to treat women as inferior. It was something Jesus himself never, ever intended." So Jesus would have wanted women bishops? "Absolutely." And actively gay bishops like Gene Robinson, would he have minded them? "No, not if they were in a faithful relationship, of course not."
For Christina Rees and Bishop Jefferts Schori, perhaps for Rowan Williams, the ordination of women into the episcopacy and the ordination of gay priests are connected in a very basic way. At the heart of the matter is the liberal Anglican idea of who God is and what He wants from us.
Our Creator doesn't intervene much, according to them, He is not a worrier or much of a judge. He doesn't mind which prayer book we use, or who officiates in church because all he cares about is love - and it is the same with His Son.
Jesus's defining feature, His divine feature, was and is His unconditional love, they say. His gender is irrelevant, as is His sexuality - both as arbitrary and unimportant as His hair colour or what clothes He wore. To be Christ-like then, to stand in for Him as a priest, it doesn't matter if you're boy, girl, gay or straight - all you need is love.
"Our duty as Christians is just to respond to the infinite love of God, and to stop endlessly dictating who's out and who's in," said Christina.
"Come on! God is Spirit! So how do we know how He wants to be worshipped? We don't." The sun, now dead ahead, shone in through the skylight, picking out pieces of coloured glass, pebbles, seashells arranged on shelves. So after women bishops in the C of E, you think openly gay clergy is next?
"Let's get real," said Christina. "Look how many of them there are already. It's just not official yet."
So is Rowan Williams thinking along these lines too? Christina just smiled. And maybe she's right.
It is true that in my part of London, a nice lady priest and her girlfriend run their parish side by side, and in the next-door church, a gay priest and his partner do the same. If their spiritual leader thought they were making the Creator cross, surely he'd have put his foot down by now. It is also true that for all the talk of a "covenant", there is no mention of its content yet, which would take painful years to negotiate.
Why then, if the Church of England is so intrinsically liberal, did the Archbishop bother with the idea of drawing up rules at all? "Perhaps he's just playing for time," said Christina. "He's got to avoid schism and stop calls for the Episcopal Church to be cut off. And after all, sooner or later, the Spirit will move even the hardest hearts."
BUT HOW LONG MUST WE WAIT?
7.7.06
7/7 TERROR in LONDON
It is interesting to note that most British do not view themselves 'at war' after the events of last July. Rather they view themselves as participants in international relations. Telegraph News Suicide bomber's video won't frighten us, say July 7 families
6.7.06
CLASSICS MADE ACCESSABLE
This has been a magnificent accomplishment of the Harvard Libraries. Little Big Books: the red and green guides to the wisdom of the ancient world.
A Loeb Classical Library Reader Harvard, 240 pp., $9.95
THEY DO CATCH THE EYE, those handsome, pint-sized green and red books keeping their own elite company in the more recondite or otherwise up-market bookstores.
Their simple covers don't flash, though they fairly sing--sotto voce--their authority. They may look quaint, but these midget volumes have become the missals of the bookish classes. Generations have known them as "the Loebs," though they belong to what is properly called the Loeb Classical Library, and, within the English-speaking world, they are deemed an essential accouterment to the life of the mind. For within them we can find, in all their antiquated Greek and Latin glory, those exquisite feats of the ancient Greeks and Romans in poetry, drama, philosophy, and history--not to mention architecture, agriculture, geography, engineering, mathematics, botany, zoology, and even horsemanship and hunting.
Although they don't strike us as the stuff of bestsellers, their ubiquity surprises. One finds them equipping almost every public and institutional library in the land, as well as residing in not a few household libraries amassed by those with yearnings for intellectual nourishment of the genuine kind. They look far more erudite than a set of Penguins. They certify seriousness. Employing the royal "we" in a way only she could do, Virginia Woolf, a creditable amateur classicist herself, who once called Greek "the perfect language," said, "We shall never be independent of our Loeb." And she meant it.
The source of the Loeb Library's cachet may be shrouded from us in a trifling age, but that of their popularity isn't hard to discover: Along with the original Greek and Latin texts printed on the left-hand page as each book opens--texts, to say the least, of circumscribed value to most people--on the right-hand side we find crisp, unembellished English translations. The Loebs are the world's classiest crib, a trot for grownups. They are classics with a safety net. Here was an excellent innovation for those who have mentally mislaid the mastery of the classical languages they gained in schooldays. Here was also a perfect device for those who never learned them, and they make a somewhat larger crowd these days.
Despite the sense many of us have that the Loeb Classical Library has always been there, it has in fact existed for only just under a hundred years. The series was founded in 1911 by James Loeb, a gentleman of parts who was both a classicist and a successful businessman, and his goal was straightforwardly democratic in spirit: To make the finest, most consequential literature of the classical Greeks and Romans accessible, if not to the huddled masses exactly, then certainly to the hundreds of thousands of an emerging educated class whose schooling had not embraced the old classical curriculum when they opted for the applied sciences or an earlier form of Humanities Lite.
Loeb and the founding editors, the formidable classical scholars and teachers T.E. Page and W.H.D. Rouse, believed that this group sported as much need as any for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful--and, in the new age dawning of mechanical wonders, perhaps more.
That this grand inheritance might be conferred without forbidding labor, the new requisite for the educated man and woman was to be not a classical education (with all its numbing rigors and extravagant demands) but a curious, reasonably informed mind aspiring to know much more. The Loeb Classical Library wasn't only for them, as scholars were also to benefit from clean texts tricky to come by; but it served the nonprofessional aspirants best.
Matthew Arnold once wrote that the "power of the Latin classic is in character, that of the Greek is in beauty," which makes a tall order for translators of either language. Yet the scholars commissioned by the Loeb's editors for almost a century have produced splendid renderings of the best from each language that all readers of English can understand. Which is not to say that the language used in all volumes matches our own. The translations are inevitably unequal, not only because translators differ in skill, but also because some texts have neither been retranslated nor the editions revised.
The Loebs have their shortcomings. They lean towards the literal, which is why some translations of lyric poetry--poetry once defined as that which cannot be translated--are less than pleasing. They're also products of their time, which is why, depending on the date of publication, Plato can come off at times sounding like nothing so much as an Edwardian gentleman in tweeds, with Malacca cane and pince-nez ("But surely, my good sir . . . "). As they inevitably do, these translations have taken on the complexions of the eras from which they arose: The phrases, the idioms, and most certainly the reticences. But on the whole, the bargain has been sound.
The Loebs may err from time to time on the side of dull directness, but overseers of the series have always aimed for simplicity, precision, accuracy, and comprehensibility, and with minimal annotation. For all this, readers have been the richer.
From the publication of the first volume of the series in 1912 (the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius) the Loeb Library, which never published in any particular order of works, has always catered more to those unable or too unpracticed to read Greek: 322 of the current collection are greens (Greek), while only 177 are reds (Latin). The Top Ten Loeb Bestsellers are predictable: Homer (three volumes), Virgil (two volumes), Ovid, Hesiod, Caesar, Aristotle, and the All-Time Number One, the Plato volume containing the dialogues Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, and the Phaedrus.
Not surprisingly, these volumes hew closely to those texts most often assigned in schools and universities.
When surveyed as a whole, the Loeb Classical Library does make an arrestingly imposing set of books, so much so that the Harvard University Press has broadcast some fun facts worthy of Trivial Pursuit. The Loebs take up precisely 43 feet of shelf space, weigh 372 pounds, and were anyone ever inspired to do this, he could stack the volumes vertically end-to-end to build a column of 276 feet, the height of each tower of the Brooklyn Bridge.
With statistics on offer like these, we know we're about to observe something big. Out to celebrate the release of the 500th volume (the Roman rhetorician Quintilian's Lesser Declamations I, expertly translated and edited by the distinguished classical scholar D.R. Shackleton Bailey), Harvard has also issued this Loeb Classical Library Reader, an appropriately diminutive collection of excerpts of the greatest hits from the series.
You might call practically anything published in the Loeb Classical Library one of the world's greatest hits, but this anthology provides a leisurely flat-rock skip across the wide, roistering seas of ancient experience. Nevertheless, while the current general editor, Jeffrey Henderson, claims that selecting passages for the Reader "occasioned no little debate" among those charged with the choosing, the result satisfies.
All choices, each strikingly brief, make eminent sense. Although few seem especially predestined for the collection, we might be astonished if some had been left out. Anything by Homer meets the gold standard, and the choices are legion, but the editors settle here on the episode of Odysseus escaping from the Cyclops's cave. Antigone's struggle of conscience to defy the state that she might give proper burial rites to her brother still speaks down the centuries through the play of Sophocles. And within the pages of the Phaedo, Socrates bids farewell on the eve of his execution. Aeneas relates the fall of Troy to Dido in the Aeneid.
Not all the predictable selections are poetic or dramatic. All those who were made to read Xenophon in Greek class would recall that bit from the Anabasis where he joined the army of 10,000 mercenaries crouching before Babylon. The works of Herodotus, exploring as they did the cultural differences among ethnic groups and nation-states, take on timely urgency as he describes the triggers of war between the Greeks and the Persians. Thucydides, in his astringently dispassionate history, recounts how Nicias, the Athenian general, sought to turn his countrymen away from the foolhardiness of invading Sicily. And Plutarch, fascinated with the intersection of history and character, describes the nobility of Brutus. All of these short passages are monuments both to history and literature.
The Reader is nicely seasoned, though, with a few extracts whose selection few would have foreseen, and these make for wide-eyed perusal. The Jewish historian Josephus expands on Herod's palace at Masada. We find the Hymn to Demeter of Callimachus, Aristophanes, some Lucian, a spot of Terence, a dab of Propertius, the Elder and Younger Pliny, and (most surprising to me) a segment of the Astronomica of Manilius. The collection is topped off with a whimsical letter of St. Jerome, who muses on the pleasures of the bucolic life and their foreshadowings of Heaven.
These byway pieces most of us never read in school, and they remind us that more always waits to be discovered. And raising the curtain on the slightest portions of these treasures may be this anthology's greatest virtue. Wide gulfs still separate us from the ancients whenever we try to match their thoughts too cozily to ours. The persistent proximity of the eye to the original languages alongside their English renditions encourages all readers, whether scholars or laymen, to exercise humility, to beware of those blithe conclusions about what Homer or Virgil, Plato or Cicero, Herodotus or Tacitus, really meant--cocky declarations that always emerge most effortlessly from those who have never learned a speck of Greek or Latin, or even glanced over to see what they look like.
Tracy Lee Simmons, director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College, is the author of Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin.
© Copyright 2006, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
A Loeb Classical Library Reader Harvard, 240 pp., $9.95
THEY DO CATCH THE EYE, those handsome, pint-sized green and red books keeping their own elite company in the more recondite or otherwise up-market bookstores.
Their simple covers don't flash, though they fairly sing--sotto voce--their authority. They may look quaint, but these midget volumes have become the missals of the bookish classes. Generations have known them as "the Loebs," though they belong to what is properly called the Loeb Classical Library, and, within the English-speaking world, they are deemed an essential accouterment to the life of the mind. For within them we can find, in all their antiquated Greek and Latin glory, those exquisite feats of the ancient Greeks and Romans in poetry, drama, philosophy, and history--not to mention architecture, agriculture, geography, engineering, mathematics, botany, zoology, and even horsemanship and hunting.
Although they don't strike us as the stuff of bestsellers, their ubiquity surprises. One finds them equipping almost every public and institutional library in the land, as well as residing in not a few household libraries amassed by those with yearnings for intellectual nourishment of the genuine kind. They look far more erudite than a set of Penguins. They certify seriousness. Employing the royal "we" in a way only she could do, Virginia Woolf, a creditable amateur classicist herself, who once called Greek "the perfect language," said, "We shall never be independent of our Loeb." And she meant it.
The source of the Loeb Library's cachet may be shrouded from us in a trifling age, but that of their popularity isn't hard to discover: Along with the original Greek and Latin texts printed on the left-hand page as each book opens--texts, to say the least, of circumscribed value to most people--on the right-hand side we find crisp, unembellished English translations. The Loebs are the world's classiest crib, a trot for grownups. They are classics with a safety net. Here was an excellent innovation for those who have mentally mislaid the mastery of the classical languages they gained in schooldays. Here was also a perfect device for those who never learned them, and they make a somewhat larger crowd these days.
Despite the sense many of us have that the Loeb Classical Library has always been there, it has in fact existed for only just under a hundred years. The series was founded in 1911 by James Loeb, a gentleman of parts who was both a classicist and a successful businessman, and his goal was straightforwardly democratic in spirit: To make the finest, most consequential literature of the classical Greeks and Romans accessible, if not to the huddled masses exactly, then certainly to the hundreds of thousands of an emerging educated class whose schooling had not embraced the old classical curriculum when they opted for the applied sciences or an earlier form of Humanities Lite.
Loeb and the founding editors, the formidable classical scholars and teachers T.E. Page and W.H.D. Rouse, believed that this group sported as much need as any for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful--and, in the new age dawning of mechanical wonders, perhaps more.
That this grand inheritance might be conferred without forbidding labor, the new requisite for the educated man and woman was to be not a classical education (with all its numbing rigors and extravagant demands) but a curious, reasonably informed mind aspiring to know much more. The Loeb Classical Library wasn't only for them, as scholars were also to benefit from clean texts tricky to come by; but it served the nonprofessional aspirants best.
Matthew Arnold once wrote that the "power of the Latin classic is in character, that of the Greek is in beauty," which makes a tall order for translators of either language. Yet the scholars commissioned by the Loeb's editors for almost a century have produced splendid renderings of the best from each language that all readers of English can understand. Which is not to say that the language used in all volumes matches our own. The translations are inevitably unequal, not only because translators differ in skill, but also because some texts have neither been retranslated nor the editions revised.
The Loebs have their shortcomings. They lean towards the literal, which is why some translations of lyric poetry--poetry once defined as that which cannot be translated--are less than pleasing. They're also products of their time, which is why, depending on the date of publication, Plato can come off at times sounding like nothing so much as an Edwardian gentleman in tweeds, with Malacca cane and pince-nez ("But surely, my good sir . . . "). As they inevitably do, these translations have taken on the complexions of the eras from which they arose: The phrases, the idioms, and most certainly the reticences. But on the whole, the bargain has been sound.
The Loebs may err from time to time on the side of dull directness, but overseers of the series have always aimed for simplicity, precision, accuracy, and comprehensibility, and with minimal annotation. For all this, readers have been the richer.
From the publication of the first volume of the series in 1912 (the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius) the Loeb Library, which never published in any particular order of works, has always catered more to those unable or too unpracticed to read Greek: 322 of the current collection are greens (Greek), while only 177 are reds (Latin). The Top Ten Loeb Bestsellers are predictable: Homer (three volumes), Virgil (two volumes), Ovid, Hesiod, Caesar, Aristotle, and the All-Time Number One, the Plato volume containing the dialogues Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, and the Phaedrus.
Not surprisingly, these volumes hew closely to those texts most often assigned in schools and universities.
When surveyed as a whole, the Loeb Classical Library does make an arrestingly imposing set of books, so much so that the Harvard University Press has broadcast some fun facts worthy of Trivial Pursuit. The Loebs take up precisely 43 feet of shelf space, weigh 372 pounds, and were anyone ever inspired to do this, he could stack the volumes vertically end-to-end to build a column of 276 feet, the height of each tower of the Brooklyn Bridge.
With statistics on offer like these, we know we're about to observe something big. Out to celebrate the release of the 500th volume (the Roman rhetorician Quintilian's Lesser Declamations I, expertly translated and edited by the distinguished classical scholar D.R. Shackleton Bailey), Harvard has also issued this Loeb Classical Library Reader, an appropriately diminutive collection of excerpts of the greatest hits from the series.
You might call practically anything published in the Loeb Classical Library one of the world's greatest hits, but this anthology provides a leisurely flat-rock skip across the wide, roistering seas of ancient experience. Nevertheless, while the current general editor, Jeffrey Henderson, claims that selecting passages for the Reader "occasioned no little debate" among those charged with the choosing, the result satisfies.
All choices, each strikingly brief, make eminent sense. Although few seem especially predestined for the collection, we might be astonished if some had been left out. Anything by Homer meets the gold standard, and the choices are legion, but the editors settle here on the episode of Odysseus escaping from the Cyclops's cave. Antigone's struggle of conscience to defy the state that she might give proper burial rites to her brother still speaks down the centuries through the play of Sophocles. And within the pages of the Phaedo, Socrates bids farewell on the eve of his execution. Aeneas relates the fall of Troy to Dido in the Aeneid.
Not all the predictable selections are poetic or dramatic. All those who were made to read Xenophon in Greek class would recall that bit from the Anabasis where he joined the army of 10,000 mercenaries crouching before Babylon. The works of Herodotus, exploring as they did the cultural differences among ethnic groups and nation-states, take on timely urgency as he describes the triggers of war between the Greeks and the Persians. Thucydides, in his astringently dispassionate history, recounts how Nicias, the Athenian general, sought to turn his countrymen away from the foolhardiness of invading Sicily. And Plutarch, fascinated with the intersection of history and character, describes the nobility of Brutus. All of these short passages are monuments both to history and literature.
The Reader is nicely seasoned, though, with a few extracts whose selection few would have foreseen, and these make for wide-eyed perusal. The Jewish historian Josephus expands on Herod's palace at Masada. We find the Hymn to Demeter of Callimachus, Aristophanes, some Lucian, a spot of Terence, a dab of Propertius, the Elder and Younger Pliny, and (most surprising to me) a segment of the Astronomica of Manilius. The collection is topped off with a whimsical letter of St. Jerome, who muses on the pleasures of the bucolic life and their foreshadowings of Heaven.
These byway pieces most of us never read in school, and they remind us that more always waits to be discovered. And raising the curtain on the slightest portions of these treasures may be this anthology's greatest virtue. Wide gulfs still separate us from the ancients whenever we try to match their thoughts too cozily to ours. The persistent proximity of the eye to the original languages alongside their English renditions encourages all readers, whether scholars or laymen, to exercise humility, to beware of those blithe conclusions about what Homer or Virgil, Plato or Cicero, Herodotus or Tacitus, really meant--cocky declarations that always emerge most effortlessly from those who have never learned a speck of Greek or Latin, or even glanced over to see what they look like.
Tracy Lee Simmons, director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College, is the author of Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin.
© Copyright 2006, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
1.7.06
4 JULY
Fourth of July Facts and Fictions
Can Americans imagine celebrating their independence on July 2 instead of July 4? Or marking their nation's birth with National Horsefly Day? And what about that secret message on the back of the Declaration of Independence in the Nicolas Cage movie National Treasure? Does it really exist?
The history and folklore of Independence Day reveal surprising facts and great stories of triumph and struggle, as well as situations with more than a bit of humour. As Americans celebrate with barbecues, fireworks, and even beach parties, Encyclopædia Britannica reminds us of a time when Americans celebrated Independence Day with different rituals--such as mock funerals! What's that all about? Read on.
Why did John Adams predict that July 2, not July 4, would go down in history as U.S. Independence Day?
Why did John Hancock sign his name so large on the Declaration of Independence?
Should Independence Day be renamed National Horsefly Day?
Is there really a hidden message on the back of the Declaration of Independence as portrayed in the movie National Treasure?
Why were mock funerals so popular during the early celebrations of Independence Day?
Didn't the original draft of the Declaration include a condemnation of slavery?
What's the special tie between Independence Day and the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams?
1) Why did John Adams predict that July 2, not July 4, would go down in history as U.S. Independence Day?
The Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia actually voted on and approved independence from Great Britain on July 2, 1776, which is why John Adams proclaimed, in a letter to his wife, "The Second Day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable...in the History of America." Adams, of course, was wrong. The day celebrated as U.S. Independence Day is July 4, when the Continental Congress met and approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence.
2) Why did John Hancock sign his name so large on the Declaration of Independence?
Legend has it that, when Hancock signed his name to the Declaration in his very bold script, he proclaimed something to the effect of "There, I guess King George will be able to read that!" The truth is that Hancock often signed his name in this extravagant manner, and, as president of the Continental Congress, it seemed fitting for his signature to be featured prominently in the middle of the top row beneath the document. Also, contrary to the impression given by John Trumbull's famous painting about the Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence, the chamber was nearly empty when Hancock affixed his name to the draft of the Declaration approved on July 4 and sent that evening to a printer, John Dunlap, who then produced the famous "Dunlap Broadsides" announcing the Declaration. (Twenty-five copies of the broadside are known to exist.) In fact, Hancock was the only person to sign (and thereby authenticate) the final draft of the Declaration that day, and the only person to witness the event, Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, never claimed to have heard Hancock say anything while signing the document; it was not until an August 2 meeting that most of the delegates signed an official copy of the Declaration "fairly engrossed on parchment." (This is the version, with 56 signatures, on display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.) Hancock's flashy signature, nonetheless, has become a national treasure in its own right: his name has become a synonym for one's signature, and the boldness of his script is a symbolic reminder as well as reflection of the boldness of America's act of defiance in declaring independence from the mighty British Empire.
3) Should Independence Day be renamed National Horsefly Day?
Over the years some observers, such as Thomas Ayres in That's Not in My American History Book: A Compilation of Little-Known Events and Forgotten Heroes (2004), have made this tongue-in-cheek suggestion because of the role played by some nasty horseflies that had invaded Independence Hall during the debate over the wording of the Declaration of Independence. The flies were apparently so annoying that, to escape their bites and the sweltering heat in the room, the delegates perhaps hastened their vote to approve the Declaration. Jefferson was reportedly fond of telling this story about these pesky but politically important pests, and the humorous nature of the situation--with dignified statesmen, in wigs and stockings, mopping their brows and swatting at flies as they made history that momentous July 4--was portrayed in the award-winning musical 1776 (1969).
4) Is there really a hidden message on the back of the Declaration of Independence as portrayed in the movie National Treasure?
Yes and no. The 2004 movie starring Nicolas Cage suggests that on the back of the Declaration of Independence is a secret treasure map with clues to the location of a lavish treasure hidden from the British by the American Founding Fathers. In truth, there is something written on the back of the document, but it's not a coded message that's part of a treasure map: it's a simple phrase, on the bottom of the document, written upside down, that says, "Original Declaration of Independence dated 4th July 1776." While no one knows who wrote it, it's known that the large parchment document was frequently rolled up for storage as it was moved from one hiding place to another during the Revolutionary War and later moved from capital to capital until settling in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. So it's likely that the notation was simply a label identifying the rolled document.
5) Why were mock funerals so popular during the early celebrations of Independence Day?
In the early stages of the American Revolution, when the colonists still considered themselves loyal English citizens, patriots protested primarily against the English Parliament, which passed laws they hated, and not against the king, whom they viewed as the defender of English liberties. But by July 1776 it was the king who had become the focus of colonial anger and who was called a "tyrant" by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. This is why, during the early days after the Declaration of Independence, towns celebrated the American break with England by holding mock funerals for the king. His symbolic death signified an end to tyranny and the rebirth of liberty.
6) Didn't the original draft of the Declaration include a condemnation of slavery?
Yes. When Congress received Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence, the delegates actually spent little time on his opening paragraphs, which today are the most famous parts of the document. Instead, they debated and revised the last sections of Jefferson's draft, deleting--most significantly--a condemnation of the British people and a denunciation of the African slave trade. The latter section was dropped because it offended Southern slave owners and New England merchants involved with the slave trade. It was generally felt that a unanimous vote in favour of the Declaration was critical to the American cause and that such a vote might be impossible without dropping these sections.
7) What's the special tie between Independence Day and the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams?
Adams and Jefferson were the ultimate "odd couple," united in their desire for American independence but divided on virtually every other issue. In fact, Jefferson even went so far as to pay a journalist to libel Adams, and, after Jefferson defeated Adams in the election of 1800, the two men didn't speak to one another for nearly a decade. They renewed contact with one another in 1812, began a fascinating correspondence, and, then, in one of the great ironies of history, died on the same day--July, 4, 1826, on the 50th anniversary of the event that defined their lives and the life of their young country. Jefferson's last words were, "Is it the Fourth?" while John Adams on his deathbed proclaimed, "Thomas Jefferson still lives." Adams, as when he predicted that July 2 would be celebrated as America's Independence Day, was wrong again, for Jefferson had died a few hours earlier. But in a symbolic sense, Adams was correct--Jefferson, in his seminal contributions to American history as well as his complex legacy, lives on today.
© Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.
Can Americans imagine celebrating their independence on July 2 instead of July 4? Or marking their nation's birth with National Horsefly Day? And what about that secret message on the back of the Declaration of Independence in the Nicolas Cage movie National Treasure? Does it really exist?
The history and folklore of Independence Day reveal surprising facts and great stories of triumph and struggle, as well as situations with more than a bit of humour. As Americans celebrate with barbecues, fireworks, and even beach parties, Encyclopædia Britannica reminds us of a time when Americans celebrated Independence Day with different rituals--such as mock funerals! What's that all about? Read on.
Why did John Adams predict that July 2, not July 4, would go down in history as U.S. Independence Day?
Why did John Hancock sign his name so large on the Declaration of Independence?
Should Independence Day be renamed National Horsefly Day?
Is there really a hidden message on the back of the Declaration of Independence as portrayed in the movie National Treasure?
Why were mock funerals so popular during the early celebrations of Independence Day?
Didn't the original draft of the Declaration include a condemnation of slavery?
What's the special tie between Independence Day and the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams?
1) Why did John Adams predict that July 2, not July 4, would go down in history as U.S. Independence Day?
The Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia actually voted on and approved independence from Great Britain on July 2, 1776, which is why John Adams proclaimed, in a letter to his wife, "The Second Day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable...in the History of America." Adams, of course, was wrong. The day celebrated as U.S. Independence Day is July 4, when the Continental Congress met and approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence.
2) Why did John Hancock sign his name so large on the Declaration of Independence?
Legend has it that, when Hancock signed his name to the Declaration in his very bold script, he proclaimed something to the effect of "There, I guess King George will be able to read that!" The truth is that Hancock often signed his name in this extravagant manner, and, as president of the Continental Congress, it seemed fitting for his signature to be featured prominently in the middle of the top row beneath the document. Also, contrary to the impression given by John Trumbull's famous painting about the Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence, the chamber was nearly empty when Hancock affixed his name to the draft of the Declaration approved on July 4 and sent that evening to a printer, John Dunlap, who then produced the famous "Dunlap Broadsides" announcing the Declaration. (Twenty-five copies of the broadside are known to exist.) In fact, Hancock was the only person to sign (and thereby authenticate) the final draft of the Declaration that day, and the only person to witness the event, Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, never claimed to have heard Hancock say anything while signing the document; it was not until an August 2 meeting that most of the delegates signed an official copy of the Declaration "fairly engrossed on parchment." (This is the version, with 56 signatures, on display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.) Hancock's flashy signature, nonetheless, has become a national treasure in its own right: his name has become a synonym for one's signature, and the boldness of his script is a symbolic reminder as well as reflection of the boldness of America's act of defiance in declaring independence from the mighty British Empire.
3) Should Independence Day be renamed National Horsefly Day?
Over the years some observers, such as Thomas Ayres in That's Not in My American History Book: A Compilation of Little-Known Events and Forgotten Heroes (2004), have made this tongue-in-cheek suggestion because of the role played by some nasty horseflies that had invaded Independence Hall during the debate over the wording of the Declaration of Independence. The flies were apparently so annoying that, to escape their bites and the sweltering heat in the room, the delegates perhaps hastened their vote to approve the Declaration. Jefferson was reportedly fond of telling this story about these pesky but politically important pests, and the humorous nature of the situation--with dignified statesmen, in wigs and stockings, mopping their brows and swatting at flies as they made history that momentous July 4--was portrayed in the award-winning musical 1776 (1969).
4) Is there really a hidden message on the back of the Declaration of Independence as portrayed in the movie National Treasure?
Yes and no. The 2004 movie starring Nicolas Cage suggests that on the back of the Declaration of Independence is a secret treasure map with clues to the location of a lavish treasure hidden from the British by the American Founding Fathers. In truth, there is something written on the back of the document, but it's not a coded message that's part of a treasure map: it's a simple phrase, on the bottom of the document, written upside down, that says, "Original Declaration of Independence dated 4th July 1776." While no one knows who wrote it, it's known that the large parchment document was frequently rolled up for storage as it was moved from one hiding place to another during the Revolutionary War and later moved from capital to capital until settling in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. So it's likely that the notation was simply a label identifying the rolled document.
5) Why were mock funerals so popular during the early celebrations of Independence Day?
In the early stages of the American Revolution, when the colonists still considered themselves loyal English citizens, patriots protested primarily against the English Parliament, which passed laws they hated, and not against the king, whom they viewed as the defender of English liberties. But by July 1776 it was the king who had become the focus of colonial anger and who was called a "tyrant" by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. This is why, during the early days after the Declaration of Independence, towns celebrated the American break with England by holding mock funerals for the king. His symbolic death signified an end to tyranny and the rebirth of liberty.
6) Didn't the original draft of the Declaration include a condemnation of slavery?
Yes. When Congress received Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence, the delegates actually spent little time on his opening paragraphs, which today are the most famous parts of the document. Instead, they debated and revised the last sections of Jefferson's draft, deleting--most significantly--a condemnation of the British people and a denunciation of the African slave trade. The latter section was dropped because it offended Southern slave owners and New England merchants involved with the slave trade. It was generally felt that a unanimous vote in favour of the Declaration was critical to the American cause and that such a vote might be impossible without dropping these sections.
7) What's the special tie between Independence Day and the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams?
Adams and Jefferson were the ultimate "odd couple," united in their desire for American independence but divided on virtually every other issue. In fact, Jefferson even went so far as to pay a journalist to libel Adams, and, after Jefferson defeated Adams in the election of 1800, the two men didn't speak to one another for nearly a decade. They renewed contact with one another in 1812, began a fascinating correspondence, and, then, in one of the great ironies of history, died on the same day--July, 4, 1826, on the 50th anniversary of the event that defined their lives and the life of their young country. Jefferson's last words were, "Is it the Fourth?" while John Adams on his deathbed proclaimed, "Thomas Jefferson still lives." Adams, as when he predicted that July 2 would be celebrated as America's Independence Day, was wrong again, for Jefferson had died a few hours earlier. But in a symbolic sense, Adams was correct--Jefferson, in his seminal contributions to American history as well as his complex legacy, lives on today.
© Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.
TIME ON HER SIDE
CHECK OUT IRMA THOMAS, HERE ON NPR. TIME IS TRULY ON HER SIDE. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5526014
CELEBRATE!
Enjoy Independence Day.Read the Declaration of Independence, aloud if possible. It remains an astonishingly fresh document.
I shall have a nice hot dog, a little red wine and marvel at the fireworks.
GLYNDBOURNE
Gentle man of Glyndebourne
By Andrew Clark
Published FT
There are sheep grazing in the fields but no black-tied City types discussing opera in the foyer. It is too early for Pimm's or pashminas. The picnic lawns are deserted; all you can hear is the sound of silence. Glyndebourne, the summer opera festival, has stopped for lunch. Out-of-hours this quintessentially English haven in the Sussex Downs presents a stark contrast to its exclusive public image.
The very quietness of the rural setting inspires the work ethic, and eating arrangements at Nether Wallop - staff canteen by day with plastic table-covers, £38-a-head restaurant for opera-goers by night - are prudent and democratic.
No one looks up when Vladimir Jurowski saunters across the room to join me at a table in the far corner. The pony-tail, the informal black attire and mildly exotic central Asian physiognomy are familiar to staff at the privately run opera house founded in 1934 by the wealthy opera buff John Christie and his soprano wife, Audrey Mildmay.
But Jurowski has made the music world sit up and take notice ever since he burst on to the international scene with a Covent Garden debut 10 years ago. Born in Moscow to a family of Jewish musicians who emigrated in 1990 to Germany, Jurowski, now 34, is that rare musical beast - a young conductor with nothing to prove. Thanks to his cocktail of Slavonic spirit, Yiddish dedication and Teutonic intellect, he inspires confidence in older musicians without having to try. He has also become the darling of London's critics, who find his Beethoven and Tchaikovsky interpretations more interesting than those of conductors twice his age.
As music director at Glyndebourne since 2002, Jurowski holds what is widely regarded as one of the best jobs in opera. Two months ago he was chosen as the next principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which plays in the Glyndebourne pit every summer and gives concerts at home and abroad in winter. By catching Jurowski early in his career, both organisations are pinning their fortunes to his coat-tails.
Today he is officially off-duty, but there are no free days for a music director at the height of the season. Jurowski has just come from a meeting of the education department, the least-acknowledged but most progressive part of the Glyndebourne operation. After lunch - he eats at Nether Wallop every working day, usually with members of his cast - he will return to his rented home in nearby Lewes, but not to relax. He needs to study the score of Prokofiev's little-known comic opera Betrothal in a Monastery, a new production of which he is to conduct later this month.
These are the unseen, less glamorous fixtures in a conductor's life. So is diet. As we head for the salad buffet, I am on the point of asking Jurowski what he really thinks of the Glyndebourne ritual when I note he is choosing all the healthy things - beans, lettuce, asparagus, broccoli, chicken legs - without the roast potatoes I am piling on to my plate. He explains that as a student of yoga and eastern philosophy he avoids red meat, fatty foods and most dairy products.
"I found that the more pressure I faced in the process of music- making, the worse my body reacted. I needed an overhaul, and it has had a huge effect. My hearing has changed - I am now more sensitive to over- and undertones - and I have more natural tranquility. I haven't necessarily become a better conductor but it helped me develop certain skills I needed."
Such as? Jurowski says conductors are exposed to all sorts of energies, not necessarily positive, that are given out through music and received back from players and audiences. "You have to learn how to deal with them, and block the negative energies. Appreciating other people is important, and it helps if you are at peace with yourself. Often our dissatisfaction with ourselves is the result of bad nutrition. We become... " He hesitates, looking for the right word while pouring us both a glass of tap water, " human beings. For some it helps to work out in a gym or go for a long walk. I prefer yoga. It's not so much a routine, more an endless process of self-discovery. It helps your memory, your concentration and endurance. Standing for three or four hours in a performance has become incomparably easier."
And easier still at Glyndebourne? Jurowski says most opera houses work like railway stations, with singers constantly coming and going. "There's no personal involvement on the side of management or artists. That's why I have reduced my opera engagements elsewhere. Glyndebourne is a wonderful exception to the rules, but you have to learn to distinguish between the glamorous, extravagant surface and the substance. It's a misconception to think of Glyndebourne as a posh place where the ruling classes indulge in their snobbery. That may have been true at one time, but not now. There's a deep affection for the art of opera, paired with extraordinary know-how and very good instincts. The tour [taking Glyndebourne productions to regional English cities every autumn] is genuinely popular, and far more important to me than the black tie and Champagne."
That may be, but I put it to Jurowski that Glyndebourne itself is an anachronism, a throwback to an age when a rich landowner could indulge his love of opera by getting people to dress up and pay for the privilege of sharing it. "No, Glyndebourne is an idealistic concept made real. Where else do you encounter an opera house in the middle of fields and sheep? I wish there were more such bizarre inventions."
Yes, but this "bizarre invention" could only have happened in England, I suggest. Jurowski smiles. "The island mentality is part of the charm of England: its bizarre view of the world is dictated by geography and climate, weather being an indispensable ingredient in the English world-view. But I still see the UK as an integrated part of European culture. If you look at the past, you see figures such as Henry Wood and Benjamin Britten consciously connecting their British roots with French, German and Russian influences. And more recently Britain has been enriched by the sheer number of representatives of foreign cultures living and working here. They have changed the face of British culture to the outside world, and its self-perception. There is no going back to Edwardian times. We stand on the shoulders of previous generations, their achievements and failures."
Pudding? "If you spend every day here, it gets on your waistline. I went off my diet after the first night of Fledermaus, and it affected my energy level. I need to be in work mode." While I dither over strawberries, lemon tart or chocolate mousse, finally compromising with a portion of each, Jurowski takes our dirty plates to the trolley and chats to some singers who have drifted in for a bite.
Jurowski's tone of voice is as gentle and measured as his eating habits, which makes me wonder how he gets such tingling results from the orchestras he conducts. It's time to tackle him on another anachronism - the idea that one man should call the tune for 80 musicians, many of them more experienced than he. Most of the great 20th- century conductors were dictators. How does it work today?
"I see my role more as a spiritus rector. What makes the difference is the passion you bring to the music, and your ability to transmit your taste and vision and views first to the musicians and then the audience. But like any leader, a conductor should be able to be led as well as be the leader. It's a natural law. If you only represent your masculine side, you inevitably cut your own source of life. It's to do with the ying and yang, the masculine and feminine, day and night, sun and moon. Leadership is traditionally associated with the masculine role, but as this is being rethought in society today it's good to come back to some old truths. Tao te king [ancient Chinese scripture] is one of the best books ever written, because this is where the role of any human being - especially a leader, moral or political - is defined. It states that only the one who accepts and uses his own weaknesses can be strong. Only the one who is as fluid and soft as water can overcome difficulty. In other words, you need to be extremely sensitive and flexible to be a successful conductor."
As I take this in, I notice that Nether Wallop is suddenly deserted. The Glyndebourne press officer is standing in front of us, asking if we're "all right", but neither of us is ready to leave. It's time to wind down with some small talk about Prokofiev's Betrothal: is a comic opera easier to conduct than a serious one? "All comedies are difficult. The difficulty is the simplicity of the language and the fact that the words are the leading component in the music. The conductor's job is to make this comedy-machine follow its own laws and necessities without being audibly interpreted. The perfect conductor for any comedy is the one you don't notice."
I make the first move to go. Lunching with Jurowski has been a bit like conversing with a guru - a calming, thought-provoking experience in which short-term preoccupations dissolve in the face of long-term vision. As we rejoin the quiet country air, city life seems very, very distant.
Nether Wallop, Glyndebourne
2 x chicken salad
1 x selection of strawberries, lemon tart and chocolate mousse
1 x jug of tap water
Total: £8.30
By Andrew Clark
Published FT
There are sheep grazing in the fields but no black-tied City types discussing opera in the foyer. It is too early for Pimm's or pashminas. The picnic lawns are deserted; all you can hear is the sound of silence. Glyndebourne, the summer opera festival, has stopped for lunch. Out-of-hours this quintessentially English haven in the Sussex Downs presents a stark contrast to its exclusive public image.
The very quietness of the rural setting inspires the work ethic, and eating arrangements at Nether Wallop - staff canteen by day with plastic table-covers, £38-a-head restaurant for opera-goers by night - are prudent and democratic.
No one looks up when Vladimir Jurowski saunters across the room to join me at a table in the far corner. The pony-tail, the informal black attire and mildly exotic central Asian physiognomy are familiar to staff at the privately run opera house founded in 1934 by the wealthy opera buff John Christie and his soprano wife, Audrey Mildmay.
But Jurowski has made the music world sit up and take notice ever since he burst on to the international scene with a Covent Garden debut 10 years ago. Born in Moscow to a family of Jewish musicians who emigrated in 1990 to Germany, Jurowski, now 34, is that rare musical beast - a young conductor with nothing to prove. Thanks to his cocktail of Slavonic spirit, Yiddish dedication and Teutonic intellect, he inspires confidence in older musicians without having to try. He has also become the darling of London's critics, who find his Beethoven and Tchaikovsky interpretations more interesting than those of conductors twice his age.
As music director at Glyndebourne since 2002, Jurowski holds what is widely regarded as one of the best jobs in opera. Two months ago he was chosen as the next principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which plays in the Glyndebourne pit every summer and gives concerts at home and abroad in winter. By catching Jurowski early in his career, both organisations are pinning their fortunes to his coat-tails.
Today he is officially off-duty, but there are no free days for a music director at the height of the season. Jurowski has just come from a meeting of the education department, the least-acknowledged but most progressive part of the Glyndebourne operation. After lunch - he eats at Nether Wallop every working day, usually with members of his cast - he will return to his rented home in nearby Lewes, but not to relax. He needs to study the score of Prokofiev's little-known comic opera Betrothal in a Monastery, a new production of which he is to conduct later this month.
These are the unseen, less glamorous fixtures in a conductor's life. So is diet. As we head for the salad buffet, I am on the point of asking Jurowski what he really thinks of the Glyndebourne ritual when I note he is choosing all the healthy things - beans, lettuce, asparagus, broccoli, chicken legs - without the roast potatoes I am piling on to my plate. He explains that as a student of yoga and eastern philosophy he avoids red meat, fatty foods and most dairy products.
"I found that the more pressure I faced in the process of music- making, the worse my body reacted. I needed an overhaul, and it has had a huge effect. My hearing has changed - I am now more sensitive to over- and undertones - and I have more natural tranquility. I haven't necessarily become a better conductor but it helped me develop certain skills I needed."
Such as? Jurowski says conductors are exposed to all sorts of energies, not necessarily positive, that are given out through music and received back from players and audiences. "You have to learn how to deal with them, and block the negative energies. Appreciating other people is important, and it helps if you are at peace with yourself. Often our dissatisfaction with ourselves is the result of bad nutrition. We become... " He hesitates, looking for the right word while pouring us both a glass of tap water, " human beings. For some it helps to work out in a gym or go for a long walk. I prefer yoga. It's not so much a routine, more an endless process of self-discovery. It helps your memory, your concentration and endurance. Standing for three or four hours in a performance has become incomparably easier."
And easier still at Glyndebourne? Jurowski says most opera houses work like railway stations, with singers constantly coming and going. "There's no personal involvement on the side of management or artists. That's why I have reduced my opera engagements elsewhere. Glyndebourne is a wonderful exception to the rules, but you have to learn to distinguish between the glamorous, extravagant surface and the substance. It's a misconception to think of Glyndebourne as a posh place where the ruling classes indulge in their snobbery. That may have been true at one time, but not now. There's a deep affection for the art of opera, paired with extraordinary know-how and very good instincts. The tour [taking Glyndebourne productions to regional English cities every autumn] is genuinely popular, and far more important to me than the black tie and Champagne."
That may be, but I put it to Jurowski that Glyndebourne itself is an anachronism, a throwback to an age when a rich landowner could indulge his love of opera by getting people to dress up and pay for the privilege of sharing it. "No, Glyndebourne is an idealistic concept made real. Where else do you encounter an opera house in the middle of fields and sheep? I wish there were more such bizarre inventions."
Yes, but this "bizarre invention" could only have happened in England, I suggest. Jurowski smiles. "The island mentality is part of the charm of England: its bizarre view of the world is dictated by geography and climate, weather being an indispensable ingredient in the English world-view. But I still see the UK as an integrated part of European culture. If you look at the past, you see figures such as Henry Wood and Benjamin Britten consciously connecting their British roots with French, German and Russian influences. And more recently Britain has been enriched by the sheer number of representatives of foreign cultures living and working here. They have changed the face of British culture to the outside world, and its self-perception. There is no going back to Edwardian times. We stand on the shoulders of previous generations, their achievements and failures."
Pudding? "If you spend every day here, it gets on your waistline. I went off my diet after the first night of Fledermaus, and it affected my energy level. I need to be in work mode." While I dither over strawberries, lemon tart or chocolate mousse, finally compromising with a portion of each, Jurowski takes our dirty plates to the trolley and chats to some singers who have drifted in for a bite.
Jurowski's tone of voice is as gentle and measured as his eating habits, which makes me wonder how he gets such tingling results from the orchestras he conducts. It's time to tackle him on another anachronism - the idea that one man should call the tune for 80 musicians, many of them more experienced than he. Most of the great 20th- century conductors were dictators. How does it work today?
"I see my role more as a spiritus rector. What makes the difference is the passion you bring to the music, and your ability to transmit your taste and vision and views first to the musicians and then the audience. But like any leader, a conductor should be able to be led as well as be the leader. It's a natural law. If you only represent your masculine side, you inevitably cut your own source of life. It's to do with the ying and yang, the masculine and feminine, day and night, sun and moon. Leadership is traditionally associated with the masculine role, but as this is being rethought in society today it's good to come back to some old truths. Tao te king [ancient Chinese scripture] is one of the best books ever written, because this is where the role of any human being - especially a leader, moral or political - is defined. It states that only the one who accepts and uses his own weaknesses can be strong. Only the one who is as fluid and soft as water can overcome difficulty. In other words, you need to be extremely sensitive and flexible to be a successful conductor."
As I take this in, I notice that Nether Wallop is suddenly deserted. The Glyndebourne press officer is standing in front of us, asking if we're "all right", but neither of us is ready to leave. It's time to wind down with some small talk about Prokofiev's Betrothal: is a comic opera easier to conduct than a serious one? "All comedies are difficult. The difficulty is the simplicity of the language and the fact that the words are the leading component in the music. The conductor's job is to make this comedy-machine follow its own laws and necessities without being audibly interpreted. The perfect conductor for any comedy is the one you don't notice."
I make the first move to go. Lunching with Jurowski has been a bit like conversing with a guru - a calming, thought-provoking experience in which short-term preoccupations dissolve in the face of long-term vision. As we rejoin the quiet country air, city life seems very, very distant.
Nether Wallop, Glyndebourne
2 x chicken salad
1 x selection of strawberries, lemon tart and chocolate mousse
1 x jug of tap water
Total: £8.30
Michael Jackson
A very insightful review by Andrew O'Hagan of Margo Jackson's new book about the rather cruel phenomona of Michael Jackson. A sad read on a pitiful persona.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n13/ohag01_.html
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n13/ohag01_.html
BARD LEADS
Bush, Sarkozy and Blair have much to learn from Shakespeare's heroes, writes Chris Smith
It is a simple, but often overlooked, fact that organisations - whether they be companies, governments, charities, schools, hospitals, armies, or orchestras - need to be well led if they are to be effective. Developing and improving the quality of that leadership is something the business world has been seeking to do for a while; the public sector, and even the world of culture, are now following suit. Some 2,000 books are published each year on "leadership", but perhaps we don't need to look much further than the lessons we can learn from our greatest writer and dramatist: William Shakespeare. There is something for all styles of leader in the plays. Ulysses, in his famed speech in Troilus and Cressida, gives a great evocation of the importance of order and "degree" in the governance of human affairs: "O! when degree is shaked,/ Which is the ladder to all high designs,/The enterprise is sick." It is one of the most fervent pleas ever written for everything keeping its proper place; he paints a hellish vision of what happens if all this is abandoned and anarchy is let loose: Then everything includes itself in power,Power into will, will into appetite;And appetite, an universal wolf,So doubly seconded with will and power,Must make perforce an universal prey,And last eat up himself. This view of leadership fits well with the "charismatic" US business-school model popular in the 1970s and 1980s, which emphasised strength, power deriving from the top, clear hierarchies, and leaders who knew where they were going and expected everyone else to follow. Ulysses could have quoted from it extensively in an effort to keep the "universal wolf" at bay. But Shakespeare gives us other leaders, too: the Duke in Measure for Measure, withdrawing from leadership in order to test those left behind; Prospero, conjuring with his island and its inhabitants; Brutus and Hamlet, both torn by inner conflict and a desperate wish to do the right thing; and Malcolm, in Macbeth - a leader who knows himself, has determination, understands others, and is prepared to act. Indeed, the role played by Malcolm at the end of Macbeth, and by Cassio at the end of Othello and Fortinbras at the close of Hamlet, is one of restoring peace, justice and rightfulness through good leadership. There is even Lear, the very antithesis of leadership, who gives up his authority and descends rapidly into agony because of the way others use and abuse him. Here, there is no Fortinbras or Malcolm to provide a neat resolution. Yet a perceptive critic once wrote that the catharsis that exists at the end of King Lear is not that we know Cordelia has triumphed over her sisters, good over evil - because she has not. The catharsis is that we know it is better to have been Cordelia than to have been her sisters. This is the finest insight Shakespeare has to offer us: self-knowledge and self-understanding are the essential starting points for understanding the world and for daring to lead it. Most contemporary writers and thinkers on leadership have come to a similar simple conclusion: you must know and understand yourself; and you must build relationships with those around you. Good leaders now don't seek necessarily to lead from the top, but from the heart of an organisation. The emphasis is on collaboration and relationship, rather than on strength. It is a lesson that can be applied at the boardroom table in a major commercial enterprise, to the team running a small voluntary organisation, to the staff room of a school, or, indeed, to those sitting round the cabinet table in Downing Street. A determination to be seen to be "strong" at all times is not necessarily the best way of running a company or a country. Yet politicians are frequently tempted to do just this, be they George Bush looking at Iraq, or Nicolas Sarkozy talking about rioters in France, or Tony Blair wading into battle over the Human Rights Act. Real strength comes with consensus-building. Crucially, it is a lesson Shakespeare applies to his greatest "leaderly" character. Through three plays - the two parts of Henry IV, and Henry V - Prince Hal (later King Henry) grows and develops and acquires experience, knowledge and understanding. Henry V tells us, entirely unironically, how the king goes from tent to tent, visiting all his soldiers on the eve of battle, giving them encouragement, "and calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen". There's a good model of team-building here. (John Reid, please note.) It is a lesson that would have been completely foreign to most business teachers, students and practitioners 20 years ago. It would have baffled Ulysses, because its rela tionship to orderly systems and hierarchies is counter-intuitive. It would, however, find ready resonance in most well-led enterprises today.
Chris Smith will speak on "Shakespeare and Leadership" at the RSC Café Bar, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 2 July. For more details call: 01789 403 492
LOVE & THE BEATLES
The first review of Cirque du Soleil's £75 million extravaganza set to the songs of the Beatles. Charles Spencer reviews Love at Mirage Hotel, Las Vegas
Everything that was bold and beautiful, fresh and funny, sad and just plain silly about the Beatles comes together in this ravishing and almost indecently spectacular show. It's what old hippies call a head-trip, a constant 90-minute rush of dazzling sights and sounds.
Overpoweringly moving: Cirque du Soleil's Love
But for those of us who grew up with the Beatles - and the first record I ever bought was She Loves You, aged eight, in 1963 - this latest piece from Cirque du Soleil is also overpoweringly moving. For it achieves the apparently impossible, allowing you to hear the Beatles with fresh ears. At times you seem to be listening to the music of your childhood and youth as if for the first time.
This is partly a matter of technology, partly the genius of the Beatles' now octogenarian producer, George Martin, and his son, Giles. Working from the original master tapes, they have sensitively and imaginatively tweaked, remixed, and juxtaposed the music. Song blends into song, with echoes of other songs in the background. Somehow that ecstatic opening chord of A Hard Day's Night merges into the hard-rocking Get Back, while the eastern drone of Within You, Without You is accompanied by the drums from Tomorrow Never Knows.
And the sound is like a dream come true. Every seat in the 2,000-capacity, in-the-round auditorium has six speakers fitted into the head-rest. But the music also comes at you from all over the theatre. As a result you seem to be sitting right in the middle of the most fabulous pop music ever created. Even those who caught the Beatles in concert, or sat in on recording sessions, will never have heard the songs with such freshness and fidelity as this. The music seems new-minted, and even hits you'd played to death acquire new life.
Cirque du Soleil has spent some $130 million (£75 million) on the show, with two thirds of that astronomical budget going on the custom-built theatre - there are no plans to put the show on anywhere but Vegas. And I'm happy to report that they have curtailed some of their more tiresome tendencies.
After years of grumbling about the hideously unfunny clowns, what a delight it is to report that the company has finally given the blighters a rest. And whereas most of the Cirque shows we've seen in England combine spectacular climaxes with long barren stretches when nothing much happens, here the eye as well as the ear is constantly dazzled and diverted.
There are trippy animations on huge screens as well as thrilling aerial acrobatics and the most spectacularly daring trampoline and roller skate acts you'll ever see. There are also passages of tremendous beauty, like the moment when the auditorium is filled with hundreds of blue and white lights and a trapeze artist suddenly swoops through the air to the ecstatic sounds of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. This was one of several sequences, brilliantly marrying sight and sound, when my eyes filled with tears.
The two Martins have also put together sound collages of the Beatles' youthful studio banter that seem terribly poignant now that two are dead and the survivors in their sixties, and the show's deviser and director, Dominic Champagne, doesn't shirk the darker side of the Beatles. It's made crystal clear that drugs played a big part in the creation of their later music, and the death of John Lennon's mother Julia, which contributed so much to the raw pain that lurks in his greatest songs, is staged in a manner that is both spectacular and deeply affecting.
But what the show, in which characters like Sergeant Pepper, Eleanor Rigby and Lady Madonna haunt the stage, captures most magically is the optimism and generosity that the Beatles represented. And when the production ends, inevitably, with All You Need is Love, this hackneyed song suddenly feels like a passionate protest against the bellicosity that currently grips the US administration.
The freakiest moment of all, though, comes as you stumble wide-eyed and full of joy from the show, only to find yourself in the permanent twilight of the casino, with gamblers joylessly feeding the slot machines like the living dead. All you need is cash…
Everything that was bold and beautiful, fresh and funny, sad and just plain silly about the Beatles comes together in this ravishing and almost indecently spectacular show. It's what old hippies call a head-trip, a constant 90-minute rush of dazzling sights and sounds.
Overpoweringly moving: Cirque du Soleil's Love
But for those of us who grew up with the Beatles - and the first record I ever bought was She Loves You, aged eight, in 1963 - this latest piece from Cirque du Soleil is also overpoweringly moving. For it achieves the apparently impossible, allowing you to hear the Beatles with fresh ears. At times you seem to be listening to the music of your childhood and youth as if for the first time.
This is partly a matter of technology, partly the genius of the Beatles' now octogenarian producer, George Martin, and his son, Giles. Working from the original master tapes, they have sensitively and imaginatively tweaked, remixed, and juxtaposed the music. Song blends into song, with echoes of other songs in the background. Somehow that ecstatic opening chord of A Hard Day's Night merges into the hard-rocking Get Back, while the eastern drone of Within You, Without You is accompanied by the drums from Tomorrow Never Knows.
And the sound is like a dream come true. Every seat in the 2,000-capacity, in-the-round auditorium has six speakers fitted into the head-rest. But the music also comes at you from all over the theatre. As a result you seem to be sitting right in the middle of the most fabulous pop music ever created. Even those who caught the Beatles in concert, or sat in on recording sessions, will never have heard the songs with such freshness and fidelity as this. The music seems new-minted, and even hits you'd played to death acquire new life.
Cirque du Soleil has spent some $130 million (£75 million) on the show, with two thirds of that astronomical budget going on the custom-built theatre - there are no plans to put the show on anywhere but Vegas. And I'm happy to report that they have curtailed some of their more tiresome tendencies.
After years of grumbling about the hideously unfunny clowns, what a delight it is to report that the company has finally given the blighters a rest. And whereas most of the Cirque shows we've seen in England combine spectacular climaxes with long barren stretches when nothing much happens, here the eye as well as the ear is constantly dazzled and diverted.
There are trippy animations on huge screens as well as thrilling aerial acrobatics and the most spectacularly daring trampoline and roller skate acts you'll ever see. There are also passages of tremendous beauty, like the moment when the auditorium is filled with hundreds of blue and white lights and a trapeze artist suddenly swoops through the air to the ecstatic sounds of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. This was one of several sequences, brilliantly marrying sight and sound, when my eyes filled with tears.
The two Martins have also put together sound collages of the Beatles' youthful studio banter that seem terribly poignant now that two are dead and the survivors in their sixties, and the show's deviser and director, Dominic Champagne, doesn't shirk the darker side of the Beatles. It's made crystal clear that drugs played a big part in the creation of their later music, and the death of John Lennon's mother Julia, which contributed so much to the raw pain that lurks in his greatest songs, is staged in a manner that is both spectacular and deeply affecting.
But what the show, in which characters like Sergeant Pepper, Eleanor Rigby and Lady Madonna haunt the stage, captures most magically is the optimism and generosity that the Beatles represented. And when the production ends, inevitably, with All You Need is Love, this hackneyed song suddenly feels like a passionate protest against the bellicosity that currently grips the US administration.
The freakiest moment of all, though, comes as you stumble wide-eyed and full of joy from the show, only to find yourself in the permanent twilight of the casino, with gamblers joylessly feeding the slot machines like the living dead. All you need is cash…
ONE JULY
Half a year has gone.
Ah, but we have the World Cup, the (now dope-decimated) Tour de France and Wimbledon to entertain us. And of course we have the Fourth of July to give us pause to celebrate or at least think.
But the US economy gives us real pause. Somewhere between the firing in 2002 of President Bush's first Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, and the Senate confirmation this week of his third Treasury chief, Henry Paulson, the administration changed its tune on budget deficits. In the early days, the line was, essentially, that deficits don't matter. Mr. O'Neill's ouster was due in part to his gall in suggesting otherwise. Now, officials dutifully declaim that deficits matter, but that Bush-era shortfalls are "within historical norms."
Mr. Paulson apparently shares that view, having offered it repeatedly when asked about budget deficits during his confirmation hearing. That's a disappointment. It takes a narrow view of history to imply that the Bush-era deficits are "normal."
As a share of the economy, the Bush-era deficits have averaged 2.7 percent. That's the second worst record of any administration in the past 60 years, surpassed only by the deficits from the tenures of President Reagan and the first President Bush, which each averaged 4.3 percent. (Five years into the Clinton era, deficits averaged 1.2 percent of the economy, dropping to a mere 0.1 percent by the time Mr. Bush took over.) To imply that the current budget gap is comfortably within historical norms because it's not as bad as the worst deficits in modern memory is, to put it politely, a stretch.
Besides, size isn't everything when it comes to assessing the danger in budget deficits. Timing is also crucial.
The Reagan-era deficits occurred decades before the retirement of the baby boomers, when the post-World War II generation was in its peak earning — and taxpaying — years. The Bush deficits are uniquely alarming in that they're occurring on the eve of the baby boomers' retirement, leaving little time to recoup before the government has to meet large Medicare and Social Security obligations.
On top of that, and well outside the historical norm, is President Bush's insistence on continued tax cutting, despite the ongoing deficits and despite the fact that the economy has long since recovered from the last recession. From the end of World War II through the 1970's, various administrations hammered away at the nation's debt, reducing the burden from the wartime level of over 100 percent of the economy to about 25 percent. That effort was largely abandoned in the 1980's. But even Mr. Reagan backtracked on his budget-busting tax cuts of 1981 by raising taxes in 1982 and 1984. In 1990, a bipartisan deficit-reduction agreement raised taxes and cut spending, followed by another budget-tightening package passed by Democrats in 1993. In contrast, the Bush years have been marked by nonstop tax cutting, deepening debt, the abandonment of budget rules and increased spending, paid for by borrowing.
And not just any borrowing. The Bush-era deficits are also alarming in the extent to which they are foreign financed. Since 2001, 73 percent of new government borrowing has been from abroad. In total, 43 percent of the United States' publicly held debt of $4.8 trillion is in foreign hands, compared with only 14 percent at the peak of the Reagan deficits in 1983 and 30 percent in 2001. Debt owed to bankers in Beijing, Tokyo and elsewhere could destabilize the dollar and from there, drive up interest rates and prices.
If Mr. Paulson and other administration officials were to say that today's deficits were dangerous, it would logically follow to recommend scaling back the Bush tax cuts. By implying that the deficits are not so worrisome, they can continue to insist that spending cuts alone could fix the problem, even though that would mean deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare — something they are not willing to advocate explicitly. One can only hope that in discussions with his new boss, Mr. Paulson has more to say about the budget deficit than he let on during his confirmation hearing.
Ah, but we have the World Cup, the (now dope-decimated) Tour de France and Wimbledon to entertain us. And of course we have the Fourth of July to give us pause to celebrate or at least think.
But the US economy gives us real pause. Somewhere between the firing in 2002 of President Bush's first Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, and the Senate confirmation this week of his third Treasury chief, Henry Paulson, the administration changed its tune on budget deficits. In the early days, the line was, essentially, that deficits don't matter. Mr. O'Neill's ouster was due in part to his gall in suggesting otherwise. Now, officials dutifully declaim that deficits matter, but that Bush-era shortfalls are "within historical norms."
Mr. Paulson apparently shares that view, having offered it repeatedly when asked about budget deficits during his confirmation hearing. That's a disappointment. It takes a narrow view of history to imply that the Bush-era deficits are "normal."
As a share of the economy, the Bush-era deficits have averaged 2.7 percent. That's the second worst record of any administration in the past 60 years, surpassed only by the deficits from the tenures of President Reagan and the first President Bush, which each averaged 4.3 percent. (Five years into the Clinton era, deficits averaged 1.2 percent of the economy, dropping to a mere 0.1 percent by the time Mr. Bush took over.) To imply that the current budget gap is comfortably within historical norms because it's not as bad as the worst deficits in modern memory is, to put it politely, a stretch.
Besides, size isn't everything when it comes to assessing the danger in budget deficits. Timing is also crucial.
The Reagan-era deficits occurred decades before the retirement of the baby boomers, when the post-World War II generation was in its peak earning — and taxpaying — years. The Bush deficits are uniquely alarming in that they're occurring on the eve of the baby boomers' retirement, leaving little time to recoup before the government has to meet large Medicare and Social Security obligations.
On top of that, and well outside the historical norm, is President Bush's insistence on continued tax cutting, despite the ongoing deficits and despite the fact that the economy has long since recovered from the last recession. From the end of World War II through the 1970's, various administrations hammered away at the nation's debt, reducing the burden from the wartime level of over 100 percent of the economy to about 25 percent. That effort was largely abandoned in the 1980's. But even Mr. Reagan backtracked on his budget-busting tax cuts of 1981 by raising taxes in 1982 and 1984. In 1990, a bipartisan deficit-reduction agreement raised taxes and cut spending, followed by another budget-tightening package passed by Democrats in 1993. In contrast, the Bush years have been marked by nonstop tax cutting, deepening debt, the abandonment of budget rules and increased spending, paid for by borrowing.
And not just any borrowing. The Bush-era deficits are also alarming in the extent to which they are foreign financed. Since 2001, 73 percent of new government borrowing has been from abroad. In total, 43 percent of the United States' publicly held debt of $4.8 trillion is in foreign hands, compared with only 14 percent at the peak of the Reagan deficits in 1983 and 30 percent in 2001. Debt owed to bankers in Beijing, Tokyo and elsewhere could destabilize the dollar and from there, drive up interest rates and prices.
If Mr. Paulson and other administration officials were to say that today's deficits were dangerous, it would logically follow to recommend scaling back the Bush tax cuts. By implying that the deficits are not so worrisome, they can continue to insist that spending cuts alone could fix the problem, even though that would mean deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare — something they are not willing to advocate explicitly. One can only hope that in discussions with his new boss, Mr. Paulson has more to say about the budget deficit than he let on during his confirmation hearing.
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