Mideast Dispatch Archive: March 2011 Archives

Egypt: The Hangover begins (& Egypt Air wipes Israel off the map)

March 30, 2011

* Cairo’s liberals tell a different story than Team Obama

* Tom Gross: With the West now preoccupied over Libya, not enough attention is being paid to countries that are more important to Western security interests, such as Egypt, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen.

* Christopher Hitchens: “As someone who has witnessed many stages of upheaval, whether in Eastern Europe, Asia, or South Africa, I am not sure that the brave Egyptians who thronged Tahrir Square have got the resources to break the chains of tyranny.”

* Bret Stephens: “From the hotel we walk toward Tahrir Square, site of the massive protests that last month brought down Hosni Mubarak. Much was made at the time of the care the demonstrators had taken to tidy up the square, but now it’s back to its usual shambolic state. Much was made, too, of how the protests were a secular triumph in which the Muslim Brotherhood was left to the sidelines. But that judgment now looks in need of major revision.”

* David Schenker: “More than a month after Mubarak was removed from power, Egypt’s jails are again filling up. But this time, it’s not the usual Islamist suspects behind bars. Instead, Egypt’s holding cells and court dockets are swelling with senior officials of the fallen Mubarak regime.”

* Barry Rubin: “Media like The New York Times are starting to admit they were completely wrong in their coverage of Egypt.”

***

This is a follow-up to other dispatches about Egypt earlier this year.

An Egyptian protestor with a national flag painted on his face last month

CONTENTS

1. Egypt Air wipes Israel off the map
2. Egyptian government proposes “opening a new page” with Iran
3. Has the Egyptian military sealed an unholy alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood?
4. Dead justices
5. Jeremy Bowen, Robert Fisk, and the Muslim Brotherhood
6. The largest non-Muslim group anywhere in the Middle East
7. Egypt pro-democracy protestors attacked with swords by plain clothes men
8. “What I don’t see at the revolution” (By Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair, April 2011)
9. “Egypt – The Hangover” (By Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, March 29, 2011)
10. “A purge too far?” (By David Schenker, Weekly Standard, April 4, 2011)
11. “Western media discover Egyptian revolution not so moderate” (By Barry Rubin, March 25, 2011)

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

EGYPT AIR WIPES ISRAEL OFF THE MAP

Egypt Air – which is a member of the Star Alliance group that includes Lufthansa and other major international airlines – has wiped Israel off the map, removing the Jewish state from its on-air and online maps.

The removal of Israel comes in spite of the fact that Egypt Air continues to fly to Tel Aviv.

Is the removal of Israel from the map of the state airline a sign of where Egypt could be headed?

Israel is also concerned by the continuing failure of the new government in Egypt to supply natural gas to Israel. Weeks after militants attacked a key pipeline in the Egyptian-controlled Sinai desert, the flow of natural gas to Israel had yet to be resumed. In Israel, industry officials and experts now admit that the shutdown wasn’t due to technical problems but the changing political environment in Egypt since Hosni Mubarak was forced out of power in February.

EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT PROPOSES “OPENING A NEW PAGE” WITH IRAN

Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil el-Arabi said this week that Egypt is ready to “open a new page” with the Islamic dictatorship in Iran. Egypt hasn’t had full diplomatic relations since the Iranian revolution of 1979 heralded in a Jihadist and terrorist-supporting regime.

Egyptian Foreign Minister el-Arabi made his remarks to the Egyptian state-run Middle East News Agency.

It seems that times have changed since former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat gave refuge to the deposed Iranian shah, Reza Pahlavi.

Many sections of the Western press, not wanting to “spoil the party” about the Egyptian revolution, have in general failed to highlight these and other developments which run counter to Western national interests. One news outlet that did report this is Bloomberg news.

HAS EGYPTIAN MILITARY SEALED AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE WITH THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD?

Two weeks ago – in spite of campaigning against it by Muhammad ElBaradei, the Nobel laureate, and Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League – more than three-quarters of Egyptian voters backed constitutional amendments which will facilitate the early election of a new parliament and president, thus giving the radical Muslim Brotherhood an advantage.

The Muslim Brotherhood is Egypt’s best-organized and largest political force, and its opponents say they will not have time to organize in anything like the same way as the Brotherhood prior to September’s elections.

As in the case of Hamas in Gaza, liberal and secular Egyptians fear that their country might hold one election, ushering in a government dominated by Islamic radicals, who will then never again hold a free and fair election, but instead will kill their opponents in the way that Hamas did.

During the vote for the constitutional amendments, the Muslim Brotherhood hung out banners saying a “yes” vote was a religious obligation, and distributed pamphlets warning that if people didn’t vote for it “the call to the prayer will not be heard any more like in the case of Switzerland, women will be banned from wearing the hijab like in the case of France and there will be laws that allow men to get married to men and women to get married to women.”

The Egyptian army seems set to form an unholy alliance with the Brotherhood, which will allow it to keep its corrupt money-making and often illicit activities in tact, rather than allowing secular-democrats who might curtail such activities, to come to power.

A Hamas rally in Gaza

A Hamas press conference

DEAD JUSTICES

As if to demonstrate how unreliable the ruling military council is in laying the foundation for free and fair elections, the military fulfilled its much-heralded promise for judicial oversight of the referendum two weeks ago (referred to in the above note) by including 47 dead justices and 52 justices no longer working in Egypt on its list of judicial monitors.

JEREMY BOWEN, ROBERT FISK, AND THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

Several leading commentators have dismissed the threatening ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. For example, at the height of Egyptian protests two months ago, the BBC’s Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen wrote: “Unlike the jihadis, the Muslim Brotherhood … is moderate and non-violent.”

(After I drew this to the attention of two senior BBC executives, Bowen’s article was amended on the BBC website to remove the word “moderate”.)

Others, such as Robert Fisk, the multi-award winning Middle East correspondent for The Independent wrote that “It was rubbish” to suggest that the Brotherhood might “take over Egypt.”

It remains to be seen whether the likes of Bowen and Fisk are right in their assessments.

THE LARGEST NON-MUSLIM GROUP ANYWHERE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Meanwhile Christians in Egypt continue to be harassed and in some cases killed. Even though Christians make up over 11% of Egypt’s 85 million population – and are the largest non-Muslim group anywhere in the Middle East – the Western media doesn’t seem very interested in highlighting their plight. Nor do Western human rights groups.

Earlier this month another church south of Cairo was burned to the ground.

EGYPT PRO-DEMOCRACY PROTESTORS ATTACKED WITH SWORDS BY PLAIN CLOTHES MEN

Earlier this month, men dressed in civilian clothing and armed with swords and petrol bombs attacked protesters demanding reform to the security services, injuring several of them. The men are assumed to be recruited, if not employed, by the government. It was the first time the tactic had been employed since President Mubarak was forced to hand power to the military. In the days before they were attacked, the protesters had broken into offices belonging to state security, seizing documents they say were being destroyed by officers to cover up human rights violations.

***

Below, I attach four articles on the situation in Egypt, by commentators Christopher Hitchens, Bret Stephens, David Schenker, and Barry Rubin. (All are longtime subscribers to this list.)

[All notes above by Tom Gross]

ARTICLES

“THIS WOULDN’T BE THE FIRST REVOLUTION IN HISTORY TO BE PARTIALLY ABORTED”

What I don’t see at the revolution
By Christopher Hitchens
Vanity Fair
April 2011

When anatomizing revolutions, it always pays to consult the whiskered old veterans. Those trying to master a new language, wrote Karl Marx about the turmoil in France in the 19th century, invariably begin haltingly, by translating it back into the familiar tongue they already know. And with his colleague Friedrich Engels he defined a revolution as the midwife by whom the new society is born from the body of the old.

Surveying the seismic-looking events in Tunis and Cairo in January and February of this year, various observers immediately began by comparing them to discrepant precedents. Was this the fall of the Arab world’s Berlin Wall? Or was it, perhaps, more like the “people power” movements in Asia in the mid-1980s? The example of Latin America, with its overdue but rapid escape from military rule in the past decades, was also mentioned. Those with longer memories had fond recollections of the bloodless “red carnation” revolution in Portugal, in 1974: a beautiful fiesta of democracy which also helped to inaugurate Spain’s emancipation from four decades in the shadow of General Franco.

I was a small-time eyewitness to those “bliss was it in that dawn” episodes, having been in Lisbon in 1974, South Korea in 1985, Czechoslovakia in 1988, Hungary and Romania in 1989, and Chile and Poland and Spain at various points along the transition. I also watched some of the early stages of the historic eruption in South Africa. And in Egypt, alas – except for the common factor of human spontaneity and irrepressible dignity, what Saul Bellow called the “universal eligibility to be noble” – I can’t find any parallels, models, or precedents at all. (Mubarak asked to be thought of as a “father,” and found that “his” people wanted to be orphans.) This really is a new language: the language of civil society, in which the Arab world is almost completely unlettered and unversed. Moreover, while the old body may be racked with pangs, and even attended by quite a few would-be midwives, it’s very difficult to find the pulse of the embryo.

In Eastern Europe by the end of the 1980s, one knew not only what the people wanted but also how they would get it. Not to diminish the grandeur of those revolutions, the citizens essentially desired to live in Western European conditions, of greater prosperity and greater liberty. It took one concerted shove to “the Wall” and they were living in Western Europe, or anyway Central Europe. The arms of the European Community and NATO were already more or less open, and everybody from East Berlin to Warsaw was already relatively literate and qualified, and I don’t remember even a fingernail being lost by way of casualties (except in Romania, where a real Caligula had to be dealt with). Men such as Václav Havel and Lech Walesa, furthermore, had already proved that they were ready to assume the responsibility of government. Voilà tout!

In Portugal in April 1974, before the liberals in the army turned on the oldest Fascist dictatorship in Europe and broke open all the literal and metaphorical prison gates, there had been only one legal party. On May Day of that year, the Socialist and Communist Parties were able to fill the streets of the capital city. Within days, a conservative and a liberal party had been announced, and within a very short time Portugal was, so to say, a “normal” European country. Those parties, with their very seasoned leaders, had been there all along. All that was required was for the brittle carapace of the ancien régime to be shattered. The same happened in Athens a few months later: before my delighted eyes the torturers and despots of the military junta went to jail and the veteran civilian politicians came home from exile, or emerged from prison, and by the end of the year had held an election, in which the supporters of the former system of dark glasses and steel helmets were allowed to run and got about 1 percent.

Perhaps the most stirring single event of South African history was the aesthetically perfect moment in February 1985 when his jailers came to Nelson Mandela and told him he was free to leave. And he loftily declined! He would quit the prison when he was ready, and when the whole country had been released, and not a moment before. At that instant, the morons who had confined him became slowly aware that he was already the president of the republic and had in fact been in moral command of the office for some considerable time. Nor was it just a matter of his charisma. A well-rooted and experienced non-racial party, the African National Congress, had for years been saying to the apartheid authorities, with complete confidence: When you are finished running this country into the ground, we are absolutely prepared to replace you. In utero, and well into its third trimester, the new South Africa already existed.

In the Philippines in 1986, the lizard-faced goon Ferdinand Marcos was deposed by massive civil disobedience following a fixed “snap election” and replaced by Corazon Aquino, the widow of a man – Benigno Aquino – who had been murdered for threatening to win the previous one. A short while before that, I went on a plane to South Korea with the forcibly exiled Kim Dae Jung, who had narrowly escaped assassination after coming in second in a rigged poll some time earlier. We were all arrested and roughed up at the airport, and one of the largest welcoming crowds I have ever seen was broken up by rubber bullets and tear gas (some things never change), but Kim Dae Jung was leader of the opposition within a few years, and was elected president not long after that.

Not a single one of these pregnant conditions, or preconditions, exists in Egypt. Neither in exile nor in the country itself is there anybody who even faintly resembles a genuine opposition leader. With the partial exception of the obsessively cited Muslim Brotherhood, the vestigial political parties are emaciated hulks. The strongest single force in the state and the society – the army – is a bloated institution heavily invested in the status quo. As was once said of Prussia, Egypt is not a country that has an army, but an army that has a country. More depressing still, even if there existed a competent alternative government, it is near impossible to imagine what its program might be. The population of Egypt contains millions of poorly educated graduates who cannot find useful employment, and tens of millions of laborers and peasants whose life is a subsistence one. I shall never forget, on my first visit to Cairo, seeing “the City of the Dead”: that large population of the homeless and indigent which lives among the graves in one of the city’s sprawling cemeteries. For centuries, Egypt’s rulers have been able to depend on the sheer crushing weight of torpor and inertia to maintain “stability.” I am writing this in the first week of February, and I won’t be surprised if the machine – with or without Mubarak – is able to rely again on this dead hand while the exemplary courage and initiative of the citizens of Tahrir Square slowly ebb away.

Still, and for many of the same reasons, it is unlikely in the highest degree that the tremors will produce a ghastly negation: a Khomeini or a Mugabe who turns the initial revolution into a vicious counterrevolution. Egypt’s tenuous economy is hugely dependent on hospitality to Western tourists. Perhaps one in 10 Egyptians is a Christian. To the nation’s immediate south, in Sudan, millions of Africans have just voted to secede from a state that imposes Shari’a, and have taken most of the country’s oil fields along with them.

Even if the peace agreement with Israel is abrogated, Egypt will never be able to fight another war with the Jewish state, or not without guaranteeing catastrophe. No wonder the voice of the Muslim Brotherhood turned out to sound so tinny. Does it seriously expect to take on any of the problems I have just mentioned, with its feeble, simplistic slogan, “Islam Is the Solution”? The mullahs in Iran were able to hijack the 1979 revolution because in the Ayatollah Khomeini they had a figure of almost Lenin-like authority, and because (with the covert consent of the smirking Baptist Jimmy Carter) Saddam Hussein did them the immense favor of invading one of their western provinces and cementing a hysterical national unity. The mullahs also were, and remain, partly insulated from the consequences of their economic folly by the possession of huge reserves of oil, barely a drop of which is to be found in the vicinity of the Nile Delta.

As we sadly remember, the Ahmadinejad crew in Iran was also able to retain power in the face of popular (mainly urban) democratic insurrection. It, too, was ruthless in the use of force and able to rely on the passivity of a large and fairly pious rural population, itself dependent in turn on state subsidy. Heroism breaks its heart, and idealism its back, on the intransigence of the credulous and the mediocre, manipulated by the cynical and the corrupt.

The same day on which I write was to have been a “Day of Rage” in Damascus, but that was an abject fizzle which left the hereditary Assad government where it was, while having regained much of what it had lost in Lebanon after the wretchedly brief “Cedar Revolution” of 2005. In Yemen there are perhaps five separate and distinct causes of grievance, from a north-south split to a Shiite tribal rebellion to the increasingly sophisticated tactics of al-Qaeda’s local surrogate. This doesn’t mean that the Arab world is doomed indefinitely to remain immune from the sort of democratic wave that has washed other regions clean of despotism. Germinal seeds have surely been sown. But the shudder of conception is some considerable way off from the drama of birth, and this wouldn’t be the first revolution in history to be partially aborted.

CAIRO’S LIBERALS TELL A DIFFERENT STORY THAN TEAM OBAMA

Egypt – The Hangover
By Bret Stephens
The Wall Street Journal
March 29, 2011

Cairo -- Talk to top U.S. officials here about how things are going in Egypt, and the gist of the answer reminds me of what Apollo XI astronaut Michael Collins told Mission Control while sailing over the Sea of Tranquility: “Listen, babe, everything is going just swimmingly.”

Talk to secular Egyptians about what they make of that sanguine point of view, and they’ll tell you the Americans are on the far side of the moon.

Soon after my arrival here, I am met by an Egyptian friend – I’ll call him Mahmoud – who is Muslim by birth but decidedly secular by choice. He looks shaken. The cabbie who had brought him to the hotel where I’m staying had brandished a pistol he claimed to have stolen from a police officer. The cabbie said he had recently fired the gun in the air to save a young woman from being raped.

Mahmoud has his doubts about the truthfulness of the cabbie’s story. He also thinks that levels of street crime in Cairo are no worse than before the revolution, when incidents of hooliganism and looting spiked to Baghdad-like levels. But there’s something different, too. “People are much more scared than they used to be,” he says. “And it comes from the fact that there’s no police. People understand there’s potential for a minor incident to turn into a major massacre. If someone goes nuts, everyone will go nuts.”

From the hotel we walk toward Tahrir Square, site of the massive protests that last month brought down Hosni Mubarak. Much was made at the time of the care the demonstrators had taken to tidy up the square, but now it’s back to its usual shambolic state. Much was made, too, of how the protests were a secular triumph in which the Muslim Brotherhood was left to the sidelines. But that judgment now looks in need of major revision.

Mahmoud points to a building facing the square where, until a few weeks ago, a giant banner demanded “80 Million Noes” to a package of constitutional amendments meant to pave the way toward parliamentary and presidential elections in just a few months time. The banner had been placed there by the secular groups at the heart of the protests, which have good reason to fear early elections. Early elections will only benefit well-organized and politically disciplined groups like the Brotherhood and the remnants of Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, which is really the party of the Egyptian military.

In the event, the ayes had it with a whopping 77%, despite a fevered turnout effort by “No” voters. “The West seems to be convinced that the revolution was led by secular democratic forces,” says Mahmoud. “Now that myth is shattered. Which means that either the old order” – by which he means the military regime – “stays in power, or we’re headed for Islamist dominance.”

From Tahrir Square, we walk past the burnt-out shell of the municipal tax office to meet up with some of Mahmoud’s friends. George (another pseudonym) is a twenty-something Coptic Christian from a middle-class family. His parents, who run a small factory in upper Egypt, see no future for him in the country, and they want him to emigrate. “Canada or Australia?” he asks me. I tell him the weather is better Down Under, but that he might be better off staying put and fighting for a better future for his country. He looks at me doubtfully.

Egypt’s Copts, some 15% of the population and the largest non-Muslim group anywhere in the Middle East, have good reasons to be worried. Though the protestors at Tahrir made a show of interfaith solidarity, the sense of fellowship is quickly returning to the poisonous pre-Tahrir norm. Earlier this month a Coptic church south of Cairo was burned to the ground, apparently on account of an objectionable Coptic-Muslim romance. The episode would seem almost farcical if it weren’t so commonplace in Egypt, and if it didn’t so often have fatal results.

The threat to the Coptic community is also a reminder that beyond the Muslim Brotherhood there are Egypt’s still more extreme Salafis. “The issue is not that they have gotten stronger since the revolution,” Mahmoud explains. “It is that they are getting bolder. There is no counterbalance to their street dominance in certain poor neighborhoods. They’re not scared of the government. They’re not scared of being prosecuted.”

Ahmed, another friend of Mahmoud, stops by to say hello. A graphic designer, Ahmed got a coveted job at an ad agency two days before the protests began in Tahrir, was laid off just a few days later, and remains unemployed today. Though it’s now generally forgotten, the past seven years were economically good for Egypt thanks to the liberalizing program of former Prime Minister Ahmed Nafiz – a classic case, in hindsight, of revolutions being the product of rising expectations.

But now that’s in the past. Foreign investors are wary of Egypt, as are tourists, and the military junta currently ruling the state has embarked on a witch hunt against people who belonged to the “businessmen’s cabinet” that gave Egypt its fleeting years of growth but now serve as convenient bogeymen for a military eager to affirm its populist bona fides.

Later I return to the hotel to listen to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Ambassador Margaret Scobey deliver upbeat assessments about developments in the country. Who are you going to believe: Secular Egyptians themselves or the crew who, just a few weeks ago, was saying the Mubarak regime was in no danger of collapse?

A PURGE TOO FAR?

A purge too far?
By David Schenker
The Weekly Standard
April 4, 2011

During Egypt’s Papyrus Revolution, the state’s jails were emptied. Hundreds of convicts – Islamists and secularists alike – escaped and vanished. Still others were released by the doomed Mubarak regime to attack pro-democracy demonstrators in Tahrir Square. Some foreign terrorists in Egyptian custody even quit their cells and auto-repatriated to Gaza and Lebanon.

More than a month after longtime Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was removed from power, Egypt’s jails are again filling up. But this time, it’s not the usual Islamist suspects behind bars. Instead, Egypt’s holding cells and court dockets are swelling with senior officials of the fallen Mubarak regime.

Like post-Saddam Iraq circa 2003, Egypt is in the early stages of its own de-Baathification process, purging and prosecuting former Mubarak regime functionaries. Some members of the former regime, including Minister of the Interior Habib el-Adly and four of his deputies, have been indicted for killing protesters during the Tahrir Square demonstrations. To date, though, more than murder and torture, members of the Mubarak regime are being charged with financial corruption and illegal profiteering.

In addition to facing a murder rap, the once feared former interior minister is on trial for laundering money; the former tourism minister stands accused of embezzling government funds; executives responsible for Egypt’s gas industry – and the sweetheart export deal with Israel – are under investigation. The former speakers of Egypt’s upper and lower houses of parliament are likewise being scrutinized by the state’s central accounting office.

No doubt the arrests and trials of Mubarak functionaries will provide overdue catharsis for the vast majority of Egyptians who never enjoyed the trickle-down benefits of Egypt’s macroeconomic success. But carried too far, the cleansing could backfire on Egypt’s economy.

To date, the most consequential individuals targeted have been top figures from the “Government of Businessmen,” who drove (and benefitted from) Egypt’s remarkable economic growth from 2004-2011. Just this week, for example, Egypt’s attorney general said he would be issuing an arrest warrant for the former minister of finance, Yousef Boutros Ghali, for allegedly siphoning off millions of dollars from state coffers to illegally bankroll Mubarak regime propaganda activities. Most prominent of this group is Ahmed Ezz, the steel baron-monopolist long considered among Egypt’s most corrupted officials, currently incarcerated in Cairo. Should Ezz – a close associate of the ousted president’s son Gamal Mubarak – be convicted, the popular schadenfreude will be considerable.

But a warrant was also issued for the widely respected former minister of industry and trade, Rachid Mohamed Rachid, who is charged with assisting Ezz to illegally amass millions. Outside of Egypt, Rachid is viewed as a skilled and noncorrupt technocrat. Unlike Ezz, Rachid was spirited from the country prior to his arrest and remains on the lam in Dubai.

After 30 years of the corrupt and brutal Mubarak regime, emotions in Egypt are understandably running high. Resentment toward the ancien regime – and calls for vengeance – have spiked. Rachid may ultimately be found guilty of something, but at present, it appears to be more a case of guilt by association.

No one is debating the importance of repatriating stolen Egyptian assets and prosecuting former regime profiteers. The longer and deeper the purges run, however, the more difficult it will be to attract foreign direct investment and resume normal economic activity. Hard times lie ahead for Egypt, and the state can ill afford to excise all the skilled technocrats and entrepreneurs who profited under Mubarak.

During the revolution, the local stock market bottomed out and closed, foreign capital fled, and S&P downgraded its rating of Egyptian debt. Since Mubarak’s departure, the state has likewise been beset by dozens of strikes, slowing the resumption of economic growth. Worse, tourism, Egypt’s second largest source of revenue, a leading source of employment, and the oil that fuels the domestic economy, will likely not rebound for some time.

But that’s not all. Egypt is the world’s largest importer of wheat, and the daily Al Masry al Youm is reporting that food processing factories are running at only 60 percent of capacity in large part because foreign suppliers now insist on being paid in cash.

Simply stated, a deepening crisis of confidence in Egypt’s economy is brewing. The next government – liberal, Islamist, military, or a combination of the three – will be faced with deepening economic woes amidst euphoric public expectations. Macro-economic reform – the key accomplishment of the Mubarak regime – will likely be reversed as the state intervenes to alleviate poverty.

Despite anticipated rollbacks in economic reforms, the international community needs to provide urgent assistance. Renegotiating Egypt’s foreign debt and providing the state with an advance on the seized assets of Mubarak regime officials would be a good place to start.

For its part, to meet profound economic challenges at home, Cairo will need to assemble an economic brain trust, just as the former regime did in 2004. Not only will the new team have to be squeaky clean, it will also have to be up to the task, no mean feat in a state that the 2010 U.N. Human Development Report said turns out locally educated workers with degrees of “limited value.”

With the Mubarak regime vanquished, it’s time for Egyptians to get to work on rebuilding their state, an undertaking that will require deploying all the human capital the state can muster. To ensure high standards of transparency in this process, those deemed corrupt at home must be weeded out. Weeding, though, is the proper metaphor. Amidst the enthusiasm to rid the state of the former regime, Egyptians will have to take care not to uproot also the productive parts of their economy.

“PLACES LIKE THE NEW YORK TIMES ARE STARTING TO ADMIT THEY WERE COMPLETELY WRONG”

Western Media Discover Egyptian Revolution Not So Moderate; Muslim Brotherhood is Powerful, Still Deny That It’s Radical
By Prof. Barry Rubin
RubinReports blog
March 25, 2011

It seems mere days ago that every reporter and expert on all television channels and newspapers was preaching that Egypt’s revolution was a great thing, run by Facebook-savvy liberals, inspired by President Barack Obama and “universal values.” Those silly, paranoid Israelis had nothing to worry about. Christians were backing the revolution and everyone was going to be brothers, but not Muslim Brothers because the Muslim Brotherhood was weak, moderate, opposed to violence, and full of great people.

Anyone who said anything different was screened out and vilified.

Now, with no soul-searching, apologies, or even examining what false assumptions misled them, places like the New York Times are starting to admit they were completely wrong.

You mean they helped foist a policy that is a disaster for U.S. interests and regional stability? You mean the result might well be new repressive regimes, heightened terrorism, wars on Israel, and discrediting the United States as reliable ally or enemy worth fearing?

Oh well, what are a few hundred thousand lives lost, a whole region destabilized, and entire countries taken over by anti-American radicals who sponsor terrorism, and a couple of wars, more or less?

So now the New York Times tells us such things as “religion has emerged as a powerful political force.” How do they cover their past mistakes? They erroneously add, “Following an uprising that was based on secular ideals.” They have discovered that a lot of army officers like the Muslim Brotherhood, which we knew about long before simply by watching how officers’ wives were transformed from imitators of European fashions to being swathed in pious Islamic garb.

The newspaper explains, “It is also clear that the young, educated secular activists who initially propelled the non-ideological revolution are no longer the driving political force – at least not at the moment.”

Note how they again cover their mistakes. First, the revolution is based on “secular ideals” but then it is “non-ideological.” The Facebook kids are out but perhaps only for the “moment,” meaning they might be back on top next week. But we warned from the start that this was ridiculous because there are no more than 100,000 Facebook kids and tens of millions of Brotherhood kids.

Last month the Brotherhood was weak and disorganized, now it is “the best organized and most extensive opposition movement in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was expected to have an edge in the contest for influence.”

“We are all worried,” said Amr Koura, 55, a television producer, reflecting the opinions of the secular minority. “The young people have no control of the revolution anymore. It was evident in the last few weeks when you saw a lot of bearded people taking charge. The youth are gone.”

Funny, I didn’t have any trouble finding plenty of people in Egypt worried during the revolution. Yet the Times and the other newspapers only wanted to quote people who said how great everything was, even as Christians sent out desperate messages about how scared they were.

Incidentally, the only person quoted as an expert in the article comes from the left-wing International Crisis Group, headed by an anti-American who hangs out with U.S. policymakers. The analyst tells us that the Muslim Brotherhood didn’t want the revolution, despite the fact that every action and statement of the group said the exact opposite.

Whether or not the Times reporters are “useful idiots,” they are certainly idiots. It isn’t just political slant but the violation of the most basic concepts of politics and logic. Consider this passage:

“This is not to say that the Brotherhood is intent on establishing an Islamic state. From the first days of the protests, Brotherhood leaders proclaimed their dedication to religious tolerance and a democratic and pluralist form of government. They said they would not offer a candidate
for president, that they would contest only a bit more than a third of the total seats in Parliament, and that Coptic Christians and women would be welcomed into the political party affiliated with the movement.

“None of that has changed, Mr. Erian, the spokesman, said in an interview. `We are keen to spread our ideas and our values,’ he said. `We are not keen for power.’”

Now, why is this nonsense? Simple:

First, political groups – especially revolutionary groups that want to impose ideological dictatorships – do not always speak the truth. They say what will benefit them. And the Brotherhood benefits by pretending to be moderate.

So statements about tolerance don’t show us where a movement is going: its ideology, record, and longer-term goals show us where it is going.

Second, seeking to create an Islamist state next Thursday does not have to be the Brotherhood’s aim. What all this material shows is merely that they see the process as longer-term and that the basis must be prepared.

It’s sort of like saying: The Communists aren’t intent on creating a Communist state. Oh no, they only want to spread their ideas and values! They say they are happy to work with capitalists and would be happy with thirty-three percent of the seats in parliament. And anyone who wants can join their party. So there isn’t any threat.

Reporters who write things like “Israeli authorities claim that the killing of its civilians are ‘terrorist attacks’” are quite willing to take the Muslim Brotherhood at its word. They never recount the fact that this was a Nazi ally whose words for decades have stressed virulent hatred of America, democracy, Christians, and Jews. They never explain that it is a pro-terrorist group that endorsed killing Americans in Iraq and only last October called for Jihad against the United States.

Why go on? It’s as if the most prized institutions of the Western world – universities and media – have forgotten their mission, lost track of their values, thrown away their principles, and dropped one hundred points in IQ. And when they are proven to be terribly wrong, they merely shift to a slightly different position.

This farce has gone beyond embarrassing through disgraceful and has ended up being both deadly and ridiculous.

References in the article above:

www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/world/middleeast/25egypt.html?_r=1&hp

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/egypt/index.html?inline=nyt-geo,

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/muslim_brotherhood_egypt/index.html?inline=nyt-org,

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/essam_a_sharaf/index.html?inline=nyt-per

www.youm7.com/News.asp?NewsID=362933

Elizabeth Taylor: “Trade me for Entebbe hostages” (& Those Israelis and their crazy terms!)

March 25, 2011

[Notes below by Tom Gross]

MEDIA SEEM UNINTERESTED IN SCOTTISH AND AMERICAN VICTIMS

The woman murdered in the bomb attack near Jerusalem’s central bus station on Wednesday was Mary Jean Gardner, 55, from Scotland. Gardner was in Israel as a tourist. She was heading to a restaurant to meet a friend, and happened to be passing the bus on foot when the bomb exploded.

Six Americans were among over 50 people injured in the bombing, a U.S. State Department official said yesterday. In spite of this, many American and British news media seem uninterested in highlighting who the victims were.

THOSE ISRAELIS AND THEIR CRAZY TERMS!

In addition, many media refused to use the word terror, or when they did use it, newspapers such as The Times of London put it in inverted quotes.

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, commented on the media reaction to the Jerusalem bus bomb as follows:

Those Israelis and their crazy terms! I mean, referring to a fatal bombing of civilians as a “terrorist attack”? Who are they kidding? Everyone knows that a fatal bombing of Israeli civilians should be referred to as a “teachable moment.” Or as a “venting of certain frustrations.” Or as “an understandable reaction to Jewish perfidy.” Or perhaps as “a very special episode of ‘Cheers.’” Anything but “a terrorist attack.” I suppose Reuters will mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11 by referring to the attacks as “an exercise in urban renewal.”

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: “TRADE ME FOR ENTEBBE HOSTAGES”

Several news reports yesterday and today have highlighted the fact that legendary American film star Elizabeth Taylor, who died two days ago, was outspoken in denouncing prejudice against homosexuals.

But the media has not, on the whole, mentioned that throughout her adult life Taylor also fiercely denounced prejudice and bias against Israel.

Among notable examples: in 1975, she co-organized a petition by prominent women against then-U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, condemning the U.N. General Assembly’s infamous Zionism-is-Racism resolution.

And in 1976, Taylor offered herself as a hostage when 104 hostages aboard an Air France plane were hijacked by PLO terrorists and held at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport.

Her strong support for Israel led Egypt to ban all her movies for many years.

***

I attach three articles and one letter below. The writers of these articles and the letter are all subscribers to this list, as are people mentioned in them, such as Aaron David Miller, the former American peace negotiator, Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator, and British commentator Melanie Phillips.

-- Tom Gross

ARTICLES

“AS A MOTHER, I AM SHOCKED AT THE BBC’S SILENCE”

A family slaughtered in Israel – doesn’t the BBC care?
The corporation’s coverage of murder in Israel reflects apparent bias against the state
By Louise Bagshawe
The Daily Telegraph
March 24, 2011

Who is Tamar Fogel? The chances are that you will have no idea. She is a 12-year-old girl who arrived home late on Friday, March 11, to discover her family had been slaughtered. Her parents had been stabbed to death; the throat of her 11-year-old brother, Yoav, had been slit. Her four-year-old brother, Elad, whose throat had also been cut, was still alive, with a faint pulse, but medics were unable to save him. Tamar’s sister, Hadas, three months old, had also been killed. Her head had been sawn off.

There were two other Fogel brothers sleeping in an adjacent room. When woken by their big sister trying to get into a locked house, Roi, aged six, let her in. After Tamar discovered the bodies, her screaming alerted their neighbour who rushed in to help and described finding two-year-old Yishai desperately shaking his parents’ blood-soaked corpses, trying to wake them up.

I found out about the barbaric attack not on BBC news, but via Twitter on Monday. I followed a link there to a piece by Mark Steyn entitled “Dead Jews is no news’. Horrified, I went to the BBC website to find out more. There I discovered only two stories: one a cursory description of the incident in Itamar, a West Bank settlement, and another focusing on Israel’s decision to build more settlements, which mentioned the killings in passing.

As the mother of three children, one the same age as little Elad, who had lain bleeding to death, I was stunned at the BBC’s seeming lack of care. All the most heart-wrenching details were omitted. The second story, suggesting that the construction announcement was an act of antagonism following the massacre, also omitted key facts and failed to mention the subsequent celebrations in Gaza, and the statement by a Hamas spokesman that “five dead Israelis is not enough to punish anybody”.

There were more details elsewhere on the net: the pain and hurt, for example, of the British Jewish community at the BBC’s apparent indifference to the fate of the Fogels. The more I read, the more the BBC’s broadcast silence amazed me. What if a settler had entered a Palestinian home and sawn off a baby’s head? Might we have heard about it then? On Twitter, I attacked the UK media in general, and the BBC in particular. I considered filing a complaint.

The next morning, the BBC’s public affairs team emailed me a response that amounted to a shrug. The story “featured prominently on our website”, they said. It was important to report on the settlements to put the murder in context, they said. In reply, I asked a series of questions: for how long did the massacre feature on TV news bulletins? On radio? On BBC News 24, with all that rolling airtime? Why were the Hamas reaction and Gaza celebrations not featured? And what about the omission of all the worst details?

It was only when I tweeted about their continued indifference that the BBC replied. Then they informed me that the Fogel story had not featured on television at all. Not even News 24. It was on Radio Four in the morning, but pulled from subsequent broadcasts. The coverage of Japan and Libya, they said, drowned it out. Would I like to make a complaint?

Do you know, I think I would. The BBC has long been accused of anti-Israeli bias. It even commissioned the Balen report into bias in its Middle Eastern coverage, and then went to court to prevent its findings being publicised. As a member of the select committee on culture, media and sport, I was at the confirmation hearing of Lord Patten of Barnes as chairman of the BBC Trust. I asked him about political neutrality. In reply, he said that he would give up his membership of a Palestinian aid organisation. Both I and another member asked about bias against Israel. Lord Patten denied any existed. What would he do if shown an example of it? He would ultimately take it to the BBC Trust, he said.

The day after Lord Patten uttered those words, the Fogel children were butchered to almost complete silence from the BBC.

I have asked the corporation to let me know why, if the story was “prominent on the website”, it was not deemed of sufficient merit to broadcast on television, and barely on radio. I have asked them to explain the inaccuracies and omissions in the reporting. And I have asked them what non-Japan, non-Libya stories made it to air, in preference. Twenty-four hours later, I have yet to receive a reply.

Like many of us, I consider the BBC to be a national treasure. I am not a BBC basher; I have never before complained. I do not support nor do I condone the Israeli settlement building. But none of that matters. This is a story about three children and their parents, slain with incredible cruelty, and its effect on the peace process. As a mother, I am shocked at the silence. As a politician, I am dismayed at the apparent bias and indifference. Yes, I will be filing a complaint – about a story I never heard. I hope Daily Telegraph readers will join me.

***

Tom Gross adds: for more please see: As Israelis have their throats slit, can anyone explain this BBC headline?

BRITISH UNDERSTATEMENT IS A WONDERFUL THING

The Threat to a British Liberty
By Robin Shepherd
March 18, 2011

British understatement is a wonderful thing. Here is how Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator, introduced a posting on the magazine’s website (see link above) last weekend: “It’s a funny old world,” he said, “I have now been contacted by two journalists informing me that Bedfordshire Police are investigating The Spectator”. The reason? Because a group called, wait for it, “Muslims4UK” took exception to a piece by Melanie Phillips on her Spectator blog in which she referred to the Arabs who had murdered five members of a Jewish family in Itamar the week before as “savages”.

The story was reported in the media, but if you’d blinked you’d have missed it, and the slant of the reporting was that Israel was at least as much to blame for the killings – due to settlement policy – as the killers themselves. Melanie’s column was a typically robust effort to point out the moral depravity of news outlets such as the Guardian, the New York Times, CNN and the BBC who, if the situation had been reversed – if five Arabs including a three month old baby had been knifed to death in their beds in a lethal racist attack by Jewish “settlers”, for example – would have given it saturation coverage.

So not so much a “funny old world” as a “brave new world”: a prominent British columnist does what prominent British columnists are supposed to do – she attempts to shift the terms of the debate back on to a more rational and principled footing – and the net result is that the police have been called in, with the Guardian newspaper cheerleading on the sidelines, because she has offended Muslim sensitivities.

As Nelson summed it up, the train of events went like this:

www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6796298/the-threat-to-a-british-liberty.thtml

“1) Inayat Bunglawala, chair of Muslims4UK, gets angry about what he reads on Melanie’s blog.
2) Complains to the PCC [The Press Complaints Commission].
3) Complains to the police.
4) Phones up The Guardian and says “The PCC are investigating The Spectator!! Story!! Police too!!
5) The Guardian duly writes it all up, on its website.
6) The Independent follows up The Guardian.
7) An inverted pyramid of piffle is thus constructed.”

It isn’t yet clear on what grounds the investigation is being conducted, but you can bet your boots that it is the following paragraph from Melanie’s piece that they are salivating over:

“So to the New York Times, it’s not the Arab massacre of a Jewish family which has jeopardised ‘peace prospects’ – because the Israelis will quite rightly never trust any agreement with such savages – but instead Israeli policy on building more homes, on land to which it is legally and morally entitled, which is responsible instead for making peace elusive. Twisted, and sick”.

An “Arab massacre”? What all of them? “such savages”? So all Arabs are “savages”? Oh, come off it. It is quite clear that she is referring to the “savages” who slaughtered a family in their beds, and it is “such savages” and those who incite them with whom peace cannot be made. It is also clear that in this instance the thrust of the argument is against the New York Times, itself being used as a proxy for the liberal left media in the West, and not the killers as such.

And it is precisely because the multi-culturalist assumptions underpinning the western liberal left media lead consistently to a downplaying or sanitisation of crimes, however appalling, committed by non-white, third-world perpetrators designated as “victims” that Melanie Phillips employs such strong language to jolt western readers out of their dogmatic slumbers. Again, that’s what columnists are supposed to do, and in any other situation this affair would have passed off without notice.

But, as Nelson makes clear, changes are afoot in modern Britain that threaten to rip apart the fabric of one of the world’s most developed free societies: “Freedom of expression is under attack in Britain, from our notorious libel laws to this new phenomenon of police forces being asked to investigate what people put on their blogs,” he said.

And as we know from cases involving Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and others across the continent, all of this is starting to look like a depressingly common feature of the new European politics. To those who value freedom, merely sitting on one’s hands is no longer an option. We all hang together, or we all hang separately, as Benjamin Franklin is said to have averred at the signing of the American Declaration of Independence.

ISRAEL ASKS ZUCKERBERG TO REMOVE FACEBOOK PAGE ENCOURAGING TERROR AGAINST ISRAEL

March 23, 2011

From: MK Yuli Yoel Edelstein
Israel’s Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs

To: Mr. Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook Founder and CEO

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,

During these past few days a Facebook page entitled “Third Palestinian Intifada” has been garnering attention on the web by calling for a third intifada against the State of Israel to begin on May 15th, 2011.

On this Facebook page there are posted many remarks and movie clips which call for the killing of Israelis and Jews and the “liberating” of Jerusalem and of Palestine through acts of violence.

It is important to note that this page’s inflammatory calls are supported by over 230,000 “friends” at the time of the writing of this letter.

As Facebook’s CEO and founder you are obviously aware of the site’s great potential to rally the masses around good causes, and we are all thankful for that. However, such potential comes hand in hand with the ability to cause great harm such as in the case of the wild incitement displayed on the above-mentioned page.

I turn to you with the request that you order the immediate removal of this Facebook page. I write to you not only in my capacity as Israel’s Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs who is charged with monitoring and combating anti-Semitism, but as someone who believes in the values of free speech, and knows that there is a difference between freedom of expression and incitement.

I am sure that you too hold fast to these values and would prefer that all of the pages on your site operate according to them.

Sincerely,

MK Yuli Edelstein
Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs
Jerusalem

IN THE GREAT MIDDLE EAST WHODUNIT, THE VERDICT IS IN: THE JEWS ARE INNOCENT

The death of an illusion
By Rich Lowry
The New York Post
March 18, 2011

In the great Middle East whodunit, the verdict is in: The Jews are innocent. They aren’t responsible for the violence, extremism, backwardness, discontent or predatory government of their Arab neighbors.

The past few months should have finally shattered the persistent illusion that the Israeli-Palestinian question determines all in the Middle East. In an essay in Foreign Policy magazine titled “The False Religion of Mideast Peace,” former diplomat Aaron David Miller recounts the conventional wisdom running back through the Cold War: “An unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict would trigger ruinous war, increase Soviet influence, weaken Arab moderates, strengthen Arab radicals, jeopardize access to Middle East oil, and generally undermine U.S. influence from Rabat to Karachi.”

Behind these assumptions has long stood a deeply simplistic understanding of the Arabs. Professional naif Jimmy Carter insists, “There is no doubt: The heart and mind of every Muslim is affected by whether or not the Israeli-Palestinian issue is dealt with fairly.” This is reductive to the point of insult. Carter thinks that Muslims have no interior lives of their own, but are all defined by a foreign-policy dispute that is unlikely to affect most of them directly in the least. He mistakes real people for participants in an endless Council on Foreign Relations seminar.

The Israeli-Palestinian issue certainly has great emotional charge, and most Arabs would prefer a world blissfully free of the Zionist entity. But the Israelis can’t be blamed – though cynical Arab governments certainly try – for unemployment and repression in Arab countries. Monumental events in recent decades – the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq War and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait – were driven by internal Muslim confessional, ideological and geo-political differences. Israel has nothing to do with the Sunnis hating the Shia, or the Saudis hating the Iranians, or everyone hating Moammar Gadhafi.

Adam Garfinkle muses in his book “Jewcentricity”: “Imagine, if you can, that one day Israelis decided to pack their bags and move away, giving the country to the Palestinians with a check for sixty years’ rent. Would the Arabs suddenly stop competing among themselves, and would America and the Arab world suddenly fall in love with each other?”

Yet the pull of the illusion is so powerful that even those who don’t profess to believe in it, like George W. Bush, eventually get sucked in. Barack Obama came into office ready to deploy his charm and fulfill the millennial promise of the peace process once and for all. He couldn’t even get the Palestinians to sit down to negotiate with the Israelis, in an unintended “reset” to the situation decades ago.

According to the illusion, the region should have exploded in rage at Jewish perfidy and American ineffectualness. It exploded for altogether different reasons. We witnessed revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt without a hint of upset at the Israeli settlements or America’s continued failure as a broker of peace. We’ve seen the Arab League petition the United States – whose sole function is supposed to be monitoring Israeli housing developments and paving the way for a Palestinian state – to undertake a military operation against another (recently suspended) member of the Arab League, Libya.

It’d be easier if the key to the Middle East really were sitting around a negotiating table with a couple of bottles of Evian, poring over a map adjudicating a dispute so familiar that people have built diplomatic, academic and journalistic careers on it. The current terrain of the Middle East as it exists – not as we assume it should be – is hellishly disorienting by comparison: What to do when an ally invades another ally to knock around protesters in violation of our values? When a tin-pot dictator thumbs his nose at us and the rest of West and crushes his opponents with alacrity despite our earnest protestations? When popular uprisings threaten our allies more than our enemies?

It makes the old peace process seem alluringly comfortable and manageable. No, the illusion will never die.

Remembering John Gross: “Friendship flooded the RIBA”

ARTICLES

“A VERY CLASSY AFFAIR”

Big Turn Out for Gross
By Michael Coveney
What’s on Stage magazine
March 18, 2011

www.whatsonstage.com/blog/theatre/london/E8831300439211/Big+Turn+Out+for+Gross.html

The memorial for the former Sunday Telegraph critic John “Box Office” Gross at the Royal Institute of British Architects, RIBA, in Portland Place yesterday evening was a very classy affair, with Robert Lloyd singing Schubert, Claire Tomalin reading Auden and Barry Humphries reciting Stevie Smith.

The programme for the event had been chosen by Gross himself, his son Tom revealed, and Humphries, for one, was stumped, well stymied.

After spouting Smith’s four brief lines on the death of a German philosopher, he said that he’d give a box of Black Magic to anyone who could explain it to him. He glanced down at the front row, where sat Tomalin, Anthony Thwaite, Martin Amis and Christopher Ricks. Answer came there none.

Humphries then said that the critics had, quite rightly, given his last London show at the Haymarket, bad reviews. “Every critic gave me a stinker. John, too, gave me a stinker. But in a nice way.”

Above: Barry Humphries, best known for his role as Dame Edna

A few actors joined the throng: Angharad Rees, Louise Gold (his niece), Peter Eyre, Nickolas Grace, joined by opera singer Jill Gomez and theatre critics Susannah Clapp, Georgina Brown, Charles Spencer, Patrick Carnegy, Robert Butler and Benedict Nightingale.

But theatre was a relatively small part of the Gross product: “the best read man in London” was a supreme man of letters on every serious publication going, including the Times Literary Supplement, which he edited.

This eminence was noted in speeches by Lord Weidenfeld and David Pryce-Jones, and in the presence of Antonia Fraser, Blake Morrison, Philip French, Victoria Glendinning (who read from a wonderful poem by Swinburne, “The Garden of Prosperine”) and two of Gross’s successors as TLS editor, Ferdinand Mount and Peter Stothard. It was right and fitting that the champagne reception was hosted by News International.

Amis languidly evoked Gross’s diffidence and discretion and said that he’d never, before working with him on the New Statesman, encountered someone in whom brain power and self-effacement were so simultaneously apparent. He represented, he said, a pocket of discernment in the city, and gave some hilarious examples of his coaxing brilliance as an editor.

“Everything I write,” concluded Amis, “I send by John’s desk. I still do, and I always will.”

Other recordings Gross had ordered up were Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love”; Kathleen Ferrier singing “The Keel Row”; “Oft in the Stilly Night” sung by the peerless Irish tenor Count John McCormack; and “Shenandoah” sung by Paul Robeson.

The absolute highlight, though, may have been Christopher Ricks reading a Robert Frost poem, “Provide, Provide” and giving a short masterclass in comic tone, gravity and phrasing all at once:

“No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard,
Or keeps the end from being hard.

Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!”

John Gross had provided all right, but the friendship that flooded the RIBA had cost him nothing; everyone there just dug him in spades.

MEMORIAL SERVICE: JOHN GROSS

Published in The Times (of London)
March 19, 2011

www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/courtsocial/article2951909.ece

A memorial meeting for the life of John Gross, writer and editor, was held on Thursday, March 17, at the RIBA, Portland Place, London.

Mr Tom Gross, son, bade welcome and Lord Weidenfeld, Mr David Pryce Jones and Mr Martin Amis gave addresses.

Mr Edward Mirzoeff read Tennyson’s poem Tears, Idle Tears, Ms Claire Tomalin read the poem Who’s Who by W. H. Auden; Mr Anthony Thwaite read the poem The Voice by Thomas Hardy; Sir Christopher Ricks read the poem Provide, Provide by Robert Frost; Mr Barry Humphries read the poem On the Death of a German Philosopher by Stevie Smith; Ms Susanna Gross, daughter, read Wants by Philip Larkin; Mr Eric Ormsby read the poem The Divine Image by William Blake and the Hon Victoria Glendinning read the poem The Garden of Proserpine by Swinburne.

During the meeting Mr Robert Lloyd introduced his performance of Frühlingstraum from Die Winterreise before a recording of it was played. Other recordings played were of Ella Fitzgerald singing What Is This Thing Called Love?; Kathleen Ferrier singing The Keel Row; John McCormack singing Oft In the Stilly Night; Ira Pilgrim singing Der Rebbe Elimelech (in Yiddish), and Paul Robeson singing Shenandoah.

Among those present were: Mr Anthony Gross; Mr and Mrs Esmond Gross; Ms Judith Grinshpon; Mr John Preston; Mr and Mrs Victor Tunkel; Sir Geoffrey and Lady Miriam Owen.

Lady Baring; Lord Donoughue; Lady Duff Gordon; Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon; Lady Antonia Fraser; Lord and Lady Gowrie; Sir Ronald and Lady Harwood; Lady Hastings; Sir Jeremy Isaacs; Lord and Lady Norwich; Lord Kalms; the Hon Dominic Lawson; Lady Leach of Fairford; Lady Lever; Lady Amabel Lindsay; the Hon David McAlpine and the Hon Mrs Angharad McAlpine; Lord and Lady Moser; Sir V.S. and Lady Naipaul; Marquis and Marchioness of Normanby; the Earl of Northesk; Lady Jane Rayne; Sir Piers Rodgers; Viscount Runciman of Doxford; the Hon William Shawcross and the Hon Olga Polizzi; Lord Stevenson of Coddenham; Lord Thomas; Lady Weidenfeld; Baroness Whitaker; Lord Young of Graffham; Count Adam Zamoyski.

Mr Mark Amory; Ms Judy Astor; Ms Caroline Backhouse; Mr Anthony Bailey; Ms Laura Barlow; Mr Andrew Barrow; Ms Elizabeth Beckman; Mr Philip Beckman; Mr Matthew Bell; Mr Len Blavatnik; Ms Leslie Bonham-Carter; Ms Janet de Botton; Mr Craig Brown; Ms Georgina Brown; Mr Alan Brownjohn; Ms Katherine Bucknell; Mr Claus von Bülow; Mr Robert Butler; Mr John Byrne; Mr David Campbell; Mr Francis Carnwarth; Ms Anne Carr; Mr John Casey; Professor Robert Cassen; Ms Hélène Celier; Mr Ned Chaillet; Mr Alexander Chancellor; Ms Melissa Chassay; Mr Tchaik Chassay; Ms Monica Chong; Ms Susannah Clapp; Mr and Mrs Alan Cohen; Ms Leonora Collins; Mr Matthew Conrad; Mr Charles Corman (with apologies from Lord and Lady Heseltine); Mr Michael Coveney; Mr Anthony Daniels; Mr and Mrs James Delingpole; Ms Jemima Dimbleby; Professor Martin Dodsworth; Ms Ruth Dudley Edwards; Mr Christopher Edwards; Ms Harriet Evans; Mr Peter Eyre; Ms Catherine Fairweather; Mr Nicholas Faith; Mr Hubert Faure; Ms Aisling Foster; Ms Celina Fox; Ms Sheila Fox; Ms Rebecca Fraser; Ms Virginia Fraser; Ms Jill Frayn; Mr and Mrs Philip French; Mr and Mrs Bamber Gascoigne; Mr Dean Godson; Ms Louise Gold; Ms Judith Goldman; Ms Jill Gomez; Mr Nickolas Grace; Mr and Mrs Philip Graham; Ms Victoria Gray; Mr Simon Griffith; Ms Louise Guinness; Ms Vivienne Guinness; Ms Sheila Hale; Mr James Harding (The Times); Ms Connie Harman; Mrs Linda Heathcoat-Amory; Professor Victor Hoffbrand; Mr James Hughes-Onslow; Mrs Barry Humphries; Mr Robin Hyman; Ms Sue Hyman; Mr Edmund Ions; Mr Gerald Jacobs; Mr David Jenkins; Mr Daniel Johnson (Standpoint); Mrs Paul Johnson; Mr J Kasmin; Mr Richard Kershaw; Ms Mary Killen; Mr Roger Kimball; Mr Jeremy King; Mr David Kynaston; Ms Dolly Langham; Mr Raphael Langham; Ms Susan Lasdun; Dr Antony Laurent; Ms Isabelle Laurent; Ms Barbara Lauriat; Mr Paul Levy; Mr Jeremy Lewis; Ms Linda Lloyd; Mr Robert Lloyd; Mr Peter Loose; Ms Susan Lourenco; Ms Judith Luna; Mr Paul Luna; Ms Louisa McCarthy; Mr Maurice McCarthy; Mr Jim McCue; Mr Martin McKeand; Mr James MacManus (on behalf of Rupert Murdoch); Ms Marion Maitlis; Ms Jessica Mann; Ms Minette Marrin; Mr Stoddard Martin; Ms Jane Martineau; Mr Douglas Matthews; Mrs Derwent May; Ms Diana Melly; Mr and Mrs Neil Mendoza; Professor Kenneth Minogue; Ms Vivien Minto; Ms Judith Mirzoeff; Ms Liora Modiano; Mr Michael Modiano; Ms Michelle Montague; Mr and Mrs Charles Moore; Professor and Mrs J Mordaunt Crook; Mr Blake Morrison; Mr Martin Myers; Ms Nicole Myers; Mr Benedict Nightingale; Mr Geoff Noble; Mr Jay Nordlinger; Mr Jeremy O’Grady; Mr Ben Okri; Mrs Eric Ormsby; Mr John O’Sullivan; Mr Kevin O’Sullivan; Mr and Mrs Gabriel Pearson; Mr Neil Pearson; Mr James Penrose; Mr and Mrs Stanley Price; Mrs David Pryce-Jones; Mr Antony Quinn; Ms Doris Rau; Mr and Mrs Piers Paul Read; Mr John Ryle; Mr Kamran Sadeghi; Mr John Saumarez Smith; Mr Martin Scurr; Mr Simon Sebag-Montefiore; Ms Karen Segal; Mr Mark Shanker; Mr Simon Shaw; Ms Alexandra Shulman; Mr Crispin Simon; Mr Charles Spencer (The Telegraph); Mr Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson; Professor Norman Stone; Sir Peter Stothard (Times Literary Supplement); Mrs Jennifer Strang; Mr Galen Strawson; Mr John Sturrock; Ms Susan Swift; Ms Vivienne Taylor; Mr Gregory Taylor; Ms Gina Thomas; Mr Michael Thomas; Ms Emily Thomas; Mr George Thwaites; Mr and Mrs William Topley; Ms Kate Trevelyan Kee; Mr Ed Victor; Ms Valerie Wade; Ms Mary Waldegrave; Ms Marilyn Warnick; Ms Frances Welch; Ms Teresa Wells; Mr Geoffrey Wheatcroft; Mr and Mrs Donald Winch; Professor Blair Worden; Ms Ann Wroe; Mr Francis Wyndham; Mr and Mrs Irving Yass; Mr Toby Young; Mr Michael Zilkha, and many other friends and former colleagues.

“BRAIN POWER COMBINED WITH SELF-EFFACEMENT”

Bidding John Gross hail and farewell
Evening Standard: Londoners Diary
March 18, 2011

http://londonersdiary.standard.co.uk/2011/03/bidding-john-gross-hail-and-farewell-.html

Martin Amis (pictured above), Lord Weidenfeld, Claire Tomalin and Barry Humphries paid tribute to John Gross, former editor of the Times Literary Supplement, at a memorial meeting at RIBA last night.

Amis told how they met in the Seventies when he was a trainee sub-editor at the TLS and Gross was literary editor of the New Statesman. “I had never come across such brain power combined with self-effacement,” said the novelist, explaining how Gross came to join the TLS.

“John didn’t like the atmosphere of Left-wing activism led by James Fenton and Christopher Hitchens so we used to meet in obscure pubs with no New Statesman writers.”

Publisher George Weidenfeld described Gross as a compassionate observer of human frailty, a good shepherd of literary talent and a grand master of high gossip.

Recalling Gross’s parties at the Basil Street Hotel, he said: “Let’s hope the parties will go on in a celestial place.”

Barry Humphries read a poem by Stevie Smith, On the Death of a German Philosopher, which he didn’t understand:

He wrote the I and the It
He wrote the It and the Me
He died at Marienbad
And now we are all at sea.

“I admire Stevie Smith as much as anyone,” said Humphries. “Anyone who can explain that poem will win a box of Black Magic.”

“JOHN WAS A DEEPLY CIVILISED AND COMPASSIONATE OBSERVER OF HUMAN FRAILTY”

A tribute to John Gross
By George Weidenfeld (pictured below)
Remarks delivered on March 17, 2011

It is fitting and moving that it was David Pryce-Jones, the next speaker, who introduced me to John Gross about half a century ago. He predicted that we would be instant friends. He was right: John became an indispensable road companion – as indeed has been the incomparable Miriam.

It was with stunned disbelief that I heard of his passing, although of course knowing about his protracted illness. His running commentaries on the telephone or as joint onlooker at events, his self-ironising descriptions of individuals and milieus, classifying characters, relationships, events with a side-glance at literary or historical models, were unique. John was a deeply civilised and compassionate observer of human frailty, a good-humoured sceptic who never forgot but almost always forgave. Trollope and Proust stood in good stead for conjuring up manners and morals of our times, but so did literal quotations from Casablanca, a Cole Porter lyric, or sociologically interesting television series such as The Brothers, or most recently Mad Men.

I am proud to have been the publisher of his masterly Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters. Grateful, too, for his help as editorial adviser and good shepherd of literary talent.

However what bound us together I think more than anything else was our common Jewish background. John’s and my family hailed only a generation away from the Jewish world of east central and eastern Europe. His childhood was spent in the London of pre-Second World War, the years of the dictators and mine in the post-Hapsburg/World War 1 years in Vienna. He was brought up on English nursery rhymes and I on German Heldensagen, but we both believed from our earliest days in the Zionist redemption, and shared to the end the love of Israel.

John was not only an omnivorous reader and trenchant critic, he was the grand master of high gossip. Essentially British and yet wholly cosmopolitan, his friends on both sides of the Atlantic, in the most diverse circles and generations, remember him for the apt phrase, the telling code-word for a literary hostess, an overly-correct and modish scribe or a to him obnoxious political commentator. In fact the last of such damming labels referred to a group of current commentators in Britain’s press and television who constantly and predictably hammered against causes dear to our hearts. He called them the Catalinas, drawn from the masterful opening of Cicero’s speech against that Roman conspirator: “How long, O Catalina, will you abuse our patience?”

At our last meeting in his flat, he talked to us, to Annabelle and me, with warmth and pride about Tom and Susanna, delighting that they had more than lived up to his hopes for them.

For years, just about this time of year, John used to invite many of his friends to his jour fixe at the Basil Street Hotel. Those parties were exceptionally enjoyable rendezvous of friends across milieus and generations, with John as the gentle, sure-footed host. The hotel is long gone and there will never again be such occasions, but perhaps some of us inveterate agnostics may look with envy at those who believe these parties will go on in a celestial setting.

“LE TOUT LONDON WAS THERE”

London Journal, Part I
By Jay Nordlinger
The National Review
March 22, 2011

www.nationalreview.com/articles/262662/london-journal-part-i-jay-nordlinger

As you may remember, John Gross, the remarkable man of letters, died in January. There was an outpouring of appreciation for him all over. He struck a chord in a great many of us. He was sparkling, erudite, kind, and lovable. Well-nigh unique.

I did a note about him in Impromptus (last but certainly not least item here). And I would like to print, below, the editorial paragraph that appeared in The National Review. It may be helpful to those who are learning of this writer for the first time:

“John Gross was the most civilized man you could have known. He had superb manners, and was versed in literature, theater, art, history, and virtually everything else. He was once called ‘the best-read man in Britain,’ no less. But there was nothing stuffy or pompous about him. He was perpetually generous and amusing. He was born in London’s East End in 1935. He became a famous man of letters, both in Britain and in America. He held a number of important positions. For example, he was the editor of The Times Literary Supplement. And senior book editor of the New York Times. He compiled many Oxford anthologies, the last of which came out only last year: a book of literary parodies. He was a trustee of London’s National Portrait Gallery, a judge of the Booker Prize. People regarded him as a conservative, and he was, in a way. But this was mainly not a political matter. It was a matter of high standards in art, letters, and life. It was a matter of sticking up for the Judeo-Christian civilization. John Gross has died at 75. The last of a breed? Maybe not, but there are precious few specimens left.”

In London last week, there was a memorial service for him. He did not want it called a “service”; he wanted it called a “meeting” — a memorial meeting. Actually, he didn’t want it at all. But I think he acceded to the wishes of his family. And he specified what he wanted at the “meeting”: a few addresses, and a selection of poems and music (mainly songs).

Le tout London was there — certainly le tout Londres litéraire. David Pryce-Jones once wrote, in an article about a row between Salman Rushdie and V. S. Naipaul (a dear friend of David’s), “Literary London is a small town.” I will give you a taste of how the program went.

John’s son Tom led it off, welcoming everybody. Then Lord Weidenfeld spoke. He said that David had introduced him to John more than 50 years ago. Next at the podium — or a podium, because there were two, one on either side of the stage — was Robert Lloyd, the distinguished British bass. I was surprised to hear he was 70, or past 70: He said that John had attended his 70th-birthday party. Lloyd is damn well preserved — and still performing.

He did not sing on this occasion, but introduced a recording — a recording of his own, as was only right. This was Schubert’s song cycle Die Winterreise, from which we heard one song. In Lloyd’s voice is a special glow. I have remarked on it many times, in reviews over the years.

The first of the poems was “Tears, Idle Tears,” by Tennyson. In due course, we heard poems by Auden, Hardy, Frost, others. John Gross had memorized reams of poetry, along with other literature.

An Ella Fitzgerald recording of “What Is This Thing Called Love?” was played. I thought of what Liza Minnelli said, when asked who was the best singer. “You mean, besides Ella?” Many years ago, a radio host had fun with “What Is This Thing Called Love?” — with the title, I mean. He said you could place a comma almost anywhere: “What Is This Thing Called, Love?” “What, Is This Thing Called Love?” “What Is This Thing, Called Love?”

Ella Fitzgerald

Naturally, John wanted P-J to speak, and he was — again, naturally — top-notch. He knew John well, and did not shrink from saying that he, John, took part in the “culture wars.” John was subtle, polite, and “noncontroversial,” and he was loved by people of varying political stripes. But he took part in those wars all the same — on the side of culture, of course, real culture. David’s address was a version of a piece he wrote for The New Criterion, found here.

The voice of voices — Kathleen Ferrier’s — was heard. She was singing “The Keel Row.” My oh my, did John love British culture, along with other people’s cultures. We also heard John McCormack in “Oft in the Stilly Night,” not to be confused with “In the Still of the Night” (which is a Cole Porter song, like “What Is This Thing Called Love?”). In Impromptus recently, I told the famous story about McCormack and Caruso, meeting for the first time. One or the other says, “It’s an honor to meet the world’s greatest tenor.” The other says, “I was just about to say the same thing.”

Barry Humphries — famous for his character Dame Edna — was a screech. He read Stevie Smith’s little poem “On the Death of a German Philosopher.” He said he had no idea what it meant (that made at least two of us). And he recalled that he was once in a terrible show, “excoriated” by every critic. John wrote a “stinker” of a review, along with everyone else. But he did it “in a nice way.” That was definitely John Gross.

John was not religious, so far as I know, but he sure as hell was not de-Judaized, and neither was this memorial service. We heard an old Yiddish song — a novelty — called “Der Rebbe Elimelech.” I later learned that someone in the audience wept on hearing this — because, he explained, people had sung this in the camps, as they went to the gas chambers.

Martin Amis gave the last of the three addresses (after Weidenfeld and P-J). He spoke of John’s extraordinary combination of “brainpower” and “self-effacement.” John’s daughter, Susanna, read a poem: “Wants,” by Philip Larkin. Later we had a little tribute to America, or nod to America: “Shenandoah,” sung by Paul Robeson.

A final poem, “The Garden of Proserpine” by Swinburne, was read by Victoria Glendinning. Then we all filed out to a recording of Mozart’s String Quintet in B flat.

In another room, there was a “drinks reception” (characteristic British phrase). (“I’m going to see Jenny at a drinks party next week.”) I said to Robert Lloyd, “It was good to hear that Lloyd glow. I don’t know how it got there — I don’t know what you do — but it’s there.” Lloyd did not demur or protest or say, “Aw, shucks.” He said, “I don’t know how it got there either. It’s just a gift. Has always been there.”

I loved that.

I chatted with Charles Moore, that star of the Telegraph and The Spectator — that star of conservative journalism generally. I said that he had made me read an article about banking. Ordinarily, I would not read an article about banking. I would turn the page, or click on something else, fairly quickly. But I will read an article about anything, if written by Charles Moore. (I once said the same about Bill Buckley, after he had written a piece about cigars.)

Moore has long been engaged in writing the authorized biography of Margaret Thatcher. It will be multivolume, I suspect. And I have every reason to believe it will be a great biography: the “literary event of the season,” for the likes of us (or of several seasons).

In his address, David P-J remarked that John (Gross) had not been invited to appear on the BBC — had not been invited for 25 years or something like that. John himself mentioned this to David. I’m sure he wasn’t complaining; I’m sure he was just sort of perplexed.

A good many of Britain’s treasures are not invited on the BBC — treasures who are conservative or conservative-leaning. This is indeed perplexing. The BBC is a goliath with multiple outlets, and chat pretty much 24/7. Paid for by the taxpayers, it is supposed to be politically balanced and neutral. What a crock. Some of the best conservatives are excluded perpetually.

A network that doesn’t have David Pryce-Jones talking about Libya is a network with its head up its arse.

How could you find a better conversationalist — a better guest — than John Gross? Freakishly knowledgeable, wide-ranging, amusing, sympathetic. Churchill once said that being with Franklin Roosevelt was like opening a bottle of champagne. John was like that: perfect for the BBC.

Stupid, stupid BBC.

And stupid, stupid honors system: or stupid, stupid people who run the honors system. By “honors” I mean Sir This, Sir That, Lord This, Lord That. After the service, or meeting, Roger Kimball hosted a wonderful dinner at the Athenaeum. “To John,” went the toast. The diners included some of your favorite writers: John O’Sullivan, Anthony Daniels (a.k.a. Theodore Dalrymple), and so on. We were saying that John ought to have been Sir John. And that Robert Conquest should definitely, definitely be Sir Robert (or “Sir Bob”). That P-J should be Sir David. That Paul Johnson should be Sir Paul. Etc., etc.

Name a left-wing horror show — such as Eric Hobsbawm — and he has an honor. Can’t Britain give honors to people who actually like the country, and wish it well? Can’t the country give honors to people who like Britain more than they do Stalin? (I have a strong suspicion that Hobsbawm favors Stalin — whose mass murdering he has defended.)

“HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN SIR JOHN”

London Journal, Part II
By Jay Nordlinger
The National Review
March 23, 2011

www.nationalreview.com/articles/262763/london-journal-part-ii-jay-nordlinger

Yesterday, I had an account of the memorial service for John Gross, the late literary critic, and all-around intellectual star.

www.nationalreview.com/articles/262763/london-journal-part-ii-jay-nordlinger?page=2

At John Gross’s memorial service, Martin Amis explained how John had taught him not to begin consecutive paragraphs with the same word. There’s no hard-and-fast rule. But “good writers don’t,” John told Amis, as reported by the latter. And Amis has never done it again.

I used to think the same — but don’t anymore. I think you should begin a paragraph with the natural word. And if that word is the same one that began the previous paragraph, so be it. Basically, I think you should always, in all circumstances, write the natural word. Worry about repetition will drive you to the funny farm — will prevent you from writing at all.

That said, I’m loath to begin three consecutive paragraphs with the same word! (That’s in real writing, I mean. In breezy lil’ web columns, all bets are off.)

You may remember something I said about John shortly after he died (here). More than once, he said to me, “It’s amazing how you can write about concerts and not keep using the word ‘perform’ or ‘performance.’ You have so many ways of saying those things.” While writing my “New York Chronicle” for the February New Criterion, I was conscious of using the words “perform” and “performance” a lot — more than usual. I was going to e-mail John to tell him so. It was in that period that we learned of his death.

I’m sure I’ll never overuse “perform” and its cousins without thinking of him!

***

There is another piece by Jay Nordlinger in The National Review here:

www.nationalreview.com/corner/262753/honor-honor-jay-nordlinger

“THE LAST OF A LINE”

The Age of Amnesia
By Daniel Johnson
Editorial
Standpoint magazine
April 2011

http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/3832/full

With the death of John Gross in January, there departed from this world the last of a line. At the outset of his career, he had written the obituary in advance: The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters. Now the species seemed finally to be extinct. On a bleak January morning, a relatively small gathering of family and friends said their farewells at Golders Green crematorium. Last month a broad cross section of London and New York literati gave the great critic his final review at a memorial celebration at the Royal Institute of British Architects. The transatlantic flavour of the occasion was underlined by the fact that it was hosted by News International, a token of the esteem in which John’s long service as editor of the Times Literary Supplement and independent director of The Times was held by Rupert Murdoch himself.

The works that John Gross had chosen gave an inkling of his frame of reference. There was poetry by Tennyson, Auden, Hardy, Frost, Larkin, Blake and Swinburne; the readers included Barry Humphries, Claire Tomalin, Victoria Glendinning, Eric Ormsby, Anthony Thwaite and Christopher Ricks. The recorded music was no less richly varied: Robert Lloyd sang a song from Schubert’s Winterreise, Ella Fitzgerald sang Cole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love”, Kathleen Ferrier sang “The Keel Row”, John McCormack sang “Oft In The Stilly Night”, Ira Pilgrim sang “Der Rebbe Elimelech” in Yiddish, and Paul Robeson sang “Shenandoah”. Though this selection represented only an infinitesimal smattering of Gross’s vast and eclectic erudition, it was enough to conjure up his presence.

So too did the addresses by Lord Weidenfeld, David Pryce-Jones and Martin Amis. The latter told one or two stories against himself, explaining what a good TLS editor Gross had been: correcting him for beginning successive paragraphs with the same word (“careful writers don’t do it; careless writers do”), or telling him that he could not possibly mean to describe his subject (The Picture of Dorian Gray) as “scatological”. “How about eschatological?” Amis replied. “Not that either,” said Gross. “Then what do I mean?” “Mythopoeic?” “Ah, that’s exactly what I mean!” Barry Humphries read Stevie Smith’s “On the Death of a German Philosopher” with due solemnity, then brought the house down by adding: “Can anyone here tell me what it means?” The assembled lords, ladies and laureates were reminded of their mortality by Robert Frost: “Too many fall from great and good/For you to doubt the likelihood.” Copious quantities of champagne were not enough to drown our sorrow at the loss, not only of a great man, but of the intellectual life that he lived and that future generations may live no more.

The heirs of Western civilisation had gathered together to honour the last man of letters. It was a unique gesture. But was it futile? They could not resurrect a vanished way of life. What kind of civilisation, then, do we have? And is it worth living and dying for? Books are still written and some are read, even if most are gathering dust as readers migrate to instant forms of cultural gratification. Music and drama are still performed; art is still exhibited. History, philosophy, science and religion are still debated; universities are more universal than ever. Humanity is flourishing and so are the humanities. At least, so we are assured by, for example, David Willetts, the universities minister, who told the British Academy last month: “Quite simply, the humanities and social sciences are essential to a civilised country.” Do we care any longer, though, about whether Britain is a civilised country? If so, how do we know?

In his book-length poem, The Age of Anxiety, W.H. Auden tried to capture the zeitgeist of his era. Well, we long ago entered a different period: the age of amnesia. It is an age in which everything is stored, but nothing is remembered. It is not only the men and women of letters who are passing away. It is also the men and women who would once have read their books and magazines. Is amnesia an improvement on anxiety?

In a grim mood, Larkin wrote “Wants”, which begins: “Beyond all this, the wish to be alone”, and concludes: “Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs.” We have all been through such dark times. But does Larkin’s line apply to our civilisation as a whole? No, not if Standpoint can help it. The age of amnesia has lasted long enough. It is time to usher in the age of remembrance, the remembrance of things past. It is time to recall what we have lost and to make sure that our children are not deprived of the civilisation that our ancestors fought to preserve. As Clive James says in his great critique of our age, Cultural Amnesia, “There never was a time like now to be a lover of the arts[...]One can plausibly aspire to seeing, hearing and reading everything that matters.” Indeed one can – but how many do so? Intellectual ambition should be valued, not despised. That is why the example that John Gross leaves us is so precious. Polymaths of the world, unite: you have nothing to lose but your modesty.

“A PRIZE TO ANYONE WHO CAN PROVE OTHERWISE”

In a class of his own
By Matthew Bell
The Independent on Sunday (diary)
March 20, 2011

www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/matthew-bell-the-iiosi-diary-200311-2246973.html

Martin Amis has revealed he never begins two consecutive paragraphs with the same word, after being rebuked for doing so by a favourite former editor.

The author of Experience disclosed this stylistic obsession in a tribute to the late John Gross at a memorial service on Thursday.

Gross was an eminent critic and writer, once described as “the best-read man in Britain”. He had an astonishing memory. Amis recalled how Gross, when literary editor of the New Statesman, sent back one of Amis’s reviews to question his use of the same word to open two successive paragraphs. “I remember thinking, ‘Can you not do that?’,” said Amis. “In any case, I’ve never done it again.” A prize to anyone who can prove otherwise.

“HE WAS THE BEST OF FUN”

A toast to John Gross
By Ruth Dudley Edwards (a leading Anglo-Irish writer)
March 19, 2011

http://ruthdudleyedwards.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/a-toast-to-john-gross/

I was at John Gross’s memorial meeting on Thursday. He had read everything worth reading – aided by having a photographic memory so he didn’t need to reread – and he also read that which was not worth reading, adored good gossip, was utterly self-effacting and the best of fun. He was one of those people I made friends with rather too late, but I’m grateful for what I got and enjoyed every moment of our dinners. There are too few people who can relate to Wittgenstein and Katie Price.

JOHN GROSS AS THE LITERARY JEEVES TO AMIS’S BERTIE WOOSTER

The Spectator’s Notes
By Charles Moore
The Spectator
March 26, 2011

[Extracts from this week’s column]

www.spectator.co.uk/politics/all/6809063/part_3/the-spectators-notes.thtml

Another of Garland’s claims to fame is that, through the Barry Mackenzie strip in Private Eye, which he and Barry Humphries invented in the 1960s, Edna Everage first reached a wider audience. She had not, at that time, been honoured, and was not a housewife-superstar. She was plain Mrs Everage (the name being the Australian pronunciation of ‘average’), and her only raison d’etre was that she was Barry Mackenzie’s aunt. But perhaps it is fitting that, in the age of female emancipation, her fame eventually outstripped even that of her creators.

Barry Humphries attended the memorial meeting for John Gross at the RIBA last week. Very beautifully, he read out, ‘On the Death of a German philosopher’ by Stevie Smith, which is only four lines long. Then he paused and said, ‘I love Stevie Smith, but I haven’t the slightest idea what that poem means.’

I may have written before that memorial meetings are much better, for celebrating the life of people who were not religious, than memorial services. They contain fewer dissonances, and none of the manner of religion which is so irritating without its matter. So it proved at the meeting for John. There was nothing but secular music, poetry (no prose), and tributes.

Martin Amis gave one of these last. He wanted to illustrate John’s verbal refinement, tact and quickness. When he was a young reviewer, he said, he submitted an article to John Gross (then literary editor of the New Statesman), which ended by saying that The Picture of Dorian Gray was more ‘scatological’ than people realised. ‘I don’t think you mean “scatological”,’ said John. ‘Oh, do I mean “eschatological”?’ said Amis. ‘No, I don’t think you do,’ said John. ‘What do I mean then?’ asked Amis. ‘Perhaps you mean “mythopoeic”,’ said John. ‘Yes, that’s exactly want I mean,’ said Amis. The idea of John Gross as the literary Jeeves to Amis’s Bertie Wooster was very pleasing.

THE PROGRAM FOR JOHN GROSS’S MEMORIAL MEETING

A celebration of the life of
John Gross, 12th March 1935 – 10th January 2011
In words and music
Thursday 17th March 2011

***

Welcome – Tom Gross

***

Address – Lord Weidenfeld

***

Robert Lloyd introduces
Fruehlingstraum from Die Winterreise
by Franz Schubert
Sung by Robert Lloyd, piano Julius Drake.

***

Tears, Idle Tears by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Read by Edward Mirzoeff (filling in for Jonathan Cecil who was unwell)

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

***

Who’s Who by W.H. Auden
Read by Claire Tomalin

A shilling life will give you all the facts:
How Father beat him, how he ran away,
What were the struggles of his youth, what acts
Made him the greatest figure of his day;
Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,
Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea;
Some of the last researchers even write
Love made him weep his pints like you and me.

With all his honours on, he sighed for one
Who, say astonished critics, lived at home;
Did little jobs about the house with skill
And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still
Or potter round the garden; answered some
Of his long marvellous letters but kept none.

***

What Is This Thing Called Love by Cole Porter
Sung by Ella Fitzgerald

***

Address – David Pryce Jones

***

The Keel Row
Sung by Kathleen Ferrier

***

The Voice by Thomas Hardy
Read by Anthony Thwaite

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.

***

Oft In the Stilly Night
Sung by John McCormack

***

Provide, Provide by Robert Frost
Read by Christopher Ricks

The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag,
Was once the beauty Abishag,

The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood.

Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late,
Make up your mind to die in state.

Make the whole stock exchange your own!
If need be occupy a throne,
Where nobody can call you crone.

Some have relied on what they knew;
Others on simply being true.
What worked for them might work for you.

No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard,
Or keeps the end from being hard.

Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!

***

On The Death of a German Philosopher
by Stevie Smith
Read by Barry Humphries

He wrote the I and the It
He wrote the It and the Me
He died at Marienbad
And now we are all at sea.

***

Der Rebbe Elimelech
(A Yiddish song about a Rabbi who has one too many at a party)
Sung by Ira Pilgrim

***

Address – Martin Amis

***

Wants by Philip Larkin
Read by Susanna Gross

Beyond all this, the wish to be alone
However the sky grows dark with invitation cards
However we follow the printed directions of sex
However the family is photographed under the flagstaff
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.

Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs:
Despite the artful tensions of the calendar,
The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites
The costly aversion of the eyes from death -
Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs.

***

The Divine Image by William Blake
Read by Eric Ormsby

To Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love
Is God, our Father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love
Is man, His child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity and Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk or Jew;
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.

***

Shenandoah
Sung by Paul Robeson

***

The Garden of Prosperine (Four of the last five stanzas)
by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Read by Victoria Glendinning

She waits for each and other,
She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother,
The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and follow
Where summer song rings hollow
And flowers are put to scorn.

There go the loves that wither,
The old loves with wearier wings;
And all dead years draw thither,
And all disastrous things;
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
Wild leaves that winds have taken,
Red strays of ruined springs.

We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
Today will die tomorrow;
Time stoops to no man’s lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

***

While people are leaving the hall
Mozart’s String Quintet in B flat, K 174

***

John Gross’s family would like to thank Times
Newspapers (UK) for their generosity in helping
to host this event.

[All notes below by Tom Gross]

VIDEO OF “OPEN-MINDED REFORMER” SAIF GADDAFI CALLING ON PRO-DEMOCRACY DEMONSTRATORS TO BE SHOT

Here is a new clip of Saif Gaddafi, gun in hand, calling on his militias to use their weapons to shoot the regime’s pro-democracy opponents:

The crowd is chanting in Arabic:

* “For Allah, Muammar and Libya.”

* “You despicable Aljazeera, we want no one other than Muammar.”

* “The people only want Muammar the Colonel.”

***

Saif is the son of President Gaddafi, who, as noted in the previous dispatch, naïve journalists at leading Western media organizations have praised as a moderate in recent months. Among them:

* CNN’s Becky Anderson said Saif is an “open advocate of democracy”
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1005/26/ctw.01.html

* The New York Times’ Landon Thomas Jr wrote that Saif is a “symbol of [Libya’s] hopes for reform and openness.” www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/world/middleeast/01libya.htm

* The Financial Times’ Heba Saleh wrote Saif is “reform-minded… a defender of liberty.”
www.ft.com/cms/s/a6af1a42-4e28-11df-b48d-00144feab49a.html

***

Yesterday, Western intelligence said Gaddafi may now be prepared to use chemical weapons against his own people (in much the same way as Saddam Hussein did in the past in order to restore “calm” in northern Iraq).

Gaddafi with leading Western journalists

FINALLY, SOME OF GADDAFI’S WESTERN COLLABORATORS RESIGN

Finally, some of Gaddafi’s Western “useful idiots” have resigned. Attached below are statements by two of them. But why did they work with a terrorist psychopath who tortured dissidents to death, in the first place?

Why did almost the entire world media ignore the excesses of Arab dictatorships until recently, ferociously attacking instead the Middle East’s only democracy, Israel?

Why in a secret ballot at the UN General Assembly last year, did no less than 155 countries, representing 80 percent of UN members, decided Libya would be a superb choice and voted it on to the UN Human Rights Council. Why did websites like this one express concern when this happened but large media organizations such as the BBC didn’t?

Why was a representative of Libyan dictator Gaddafi appointed to chair the Durban II Main Committee in 2009? (Please see the video in item 2 here when she silences the Palestinian medical intern who, together with five Bulgarian nurses, was tortured by Libya in order to confess to trumped up charges of spreading the AIDS virus in Libya.)

STATEMENT BY NOBEL PRIZE WINNER SIR RICHARD ROBERTS

Sir Richard Roberts resigns from the Board of the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation.

February 24th, 2011

As a member of the international governing board of the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, I am appalled by the violence currently being perpetrated on demonstrators in Libya. In particular, I am very disappointed to learn that Dr. Saif El-Islam, the Honorary Chairman of the Board, has stated publicly that he endorses the violent response to these protests. This is contrary to both his previous statements and activities within the Foundation. In light of current events I can no longer serve on the Board and resign immediately.

I would urge everyone in Libya, especially the friends and colleagues that I have made over the past few years, to abandon the violence that is currently sweeping the country and to settle their disputes in the amicable manner that has been previously promoted by the Foundation.

Richard J. Roberts

***

Tom Gross adds:

Sir Richard J. Roberts won the 1993 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine

www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1993/roberts-autobio.html

Gaddafi has been murdering people and torturing political prisoners throughout Sir Richard’s tenure at the Gaddafi Foundation.

STATEMENT BY RESPECTED ACADEMIC AND AUTHOR BENJAMIN BARBER

The distinguished political theorist Benjamin Barber was also allowed to get away with associating himself with the Gaddafi family:

www.benjaminbarber.com/Benjamin%20Barber%20Qaddafi%20Foundation%20Press%20Release%202-22-11.pdf

LSE HEAD: TAKING MONEY FROM GADDAFI WAS OK BECAUSE SOROS WAS A JEW

In the previous dispatch, I criticized the London School of Economics (LSE) – a school to which many of “the global leaders of tomorrow attend,” according to its marketing material – for its shameless taking of money from Colonel Gaddafi. Several British media have followed up on this story since then.

Yesterday, The Times of London interviewed the director of the LSE, Sir Howard Davies. He told The Times that it was ok for the LSE to accept £1.5m from Gaddafi, and for half the academic board of the LSE Middle East Centre to support mounting an academic boycott of Israel, because “The biggest donor to the School in the past year is George Soros, who of course is of Jewish origin. We operate, I believe, a very balanced view.”

Sir Howard previously gave the Bank of England “consultancy advice” about Libya and advised the British Foreign Office on how to expand bilateral trade between London and Tripoli.

Sir Howard seemed unconcerned that a female British police officer on a London street had been murdered in broad daylight by a Libyan sniper from inside the Libyan embassy in London; or that the U.S. had designated Libya as a state supporter of terrorism as long ago as 1979.

In recent years, The LSE has been at the forefront of stirring up hatred among students towards the state of Israel through a long series of hostile activities and lectures.

For example, recently Professor Martha Mundy of the LSE, an anthropologist, and co-chair the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine, hosted a lecture for students at which Abdel Bari Atwan, a journalist and regular ‘expert guest” on the BBC, told LSE students that “If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight.”

The LSE also named its lecture theatre after Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, the late dictator of the UAE. This was even after Harvard University had closed down its own Sheikh Zayed center in 2003 after it published a book propagating the lies of Holocaust deniers David Irving and Roger Garoudy, and hosted academics such as Mohammed Ahmad Hussain of Cairo University, who said Jews invented the Holocaust, and Saudi Professor Umayma Jalahma, who declared that “the Jewish people must obtain human blood so that their clerics can prepare for holiday pastries.” The Zayed Center also released a press statement that declared “The Zionists are the ones who killed the Jews of Europe.”

(For more please see: www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000269.html)

GADDAFI OWNS 7.5% OF LEADING ITALIAN SOCCER TEAM JUVENTUS

Gaddafi is the second largest shareholder in Juventus, the record 27-time Italian national soccer champion. Juventus has also twice won the European Cup, the continent’s top club competition. More here from Bloomberg News.

Other leading European soccer clubs Barcelona and Manchester City have also taken millions from Middle East despots, and Arsenal have named their stadium after the United Arab Emirates.

ISRAELI SONG BECOMES ACCIDENTAL THEME TUNE OF LIBYAN REBELS

An Israeli-produced YouTube clip has gone viral amongst Libyan rebels in the past few days and has now been watched almost two million times throughout the Middle East.

Opponents of Colonel Gaddafi in the Arab world who posted the video on their websites were apparently unaware that the video, a combination of Gaddafi’s speech and the hip-hop song “Hey Baby,” was created by an Israeli musician living in Tel Aviv, Noy Alooshe. Noy is a member of the techno band “Hovevey Zion” (The Lovers of Zion).

His clip shows Gaddafi’s speech last week on a balcony in Tripoli, and uses auto-tune to turn his words into an American rap song. In the chorus, the Libyan dictator “sings” that he will clean Libya “inch by inch, house by house, room by room, alley by alley.” (Alooshe called his song “Zenga, Zenga” – a play on the word “alley” in Arabic.)

One version of the song features bikini-clad women shaking their hips in time to the music. Alooshe removed the bikini from another version he posted on YouTube after being requested to do so by devout Muslims.

Arab YouTube viewers have now discovered Alooshe is Israeli, having unearthed his Facebook profile. This in turn has sparked a heated debate in Arabic among the talkback comments on YouTube about whether it is permissible to enjoy humor from an Israeli.

SPOOF VIDEO: GADDAFI WITH BORAT’S VOICE

Warning: It is rather crude, but I attach it as an example of the way Gaddafi is being mocked in the Arab world.

NOW GADDAFI IS A JEW?

According to this report by The Associated Press, protestors in Libya have been employing the slogan “Gaddafi, you Jew” as a way of spurring on the crowds.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110226/ap_on_re_af/af_libya_51

Armed pro-Gadhafi gangs roll in Libyan capital
By Maggie Michael and Ben Hubbard
The Associated Press
Saturday, Feb 26, 2011

TRIPOLI, Libya – The embattled Libyan regime passed out guns to civilian supporters, set up checkpoints Saturday and sent armed patrols roving the terrorized capital to try to maintain control of Moammar Gadhafi’s stronghold and quash dissent as rebels consolidate control elsewhere in the North African nation.

Residents of its eastern Tajoura district spread concrete blocks, large rocks and even chopped-down palm trees as makeshift barricades to prevent the SUVs filled with young men wielding automatic weapons from entering their neighborhood – a hotspot of previous protests.

With tensions running high in Tripoli, scores of people in the neighborhood turned out at a funeral for a 44-year-old man killed in clashes with pro-regime forces. Anwar Algadi was killed Friday, with the cause of death listed as “a live bullet to the head,” according to his brother, Mohammed.

Armed men in green armbands, along with uniformed security forces check those trying to enter the district, where graffiti that says “Gadhafi, you Jew,” “Down to the dog,” and “Tajoura is free” was scrawled on walls.

Outside the capital, rebels held a long swath of about half of Libya’s 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) Mediterranean coastline where most of the population lives, and even captured a brigadier general and a soldier Saturday as the Libyan army tried to retake an air base east of Tripoli. The state-run news agency also said the opposition held an air defense commander and several other officers.

On Friday, pro-Gadhafi militiamen – including snipers – fired on protesters trying to mount the first significant anti-government marches in days in Tripoli.

Gadhafi, speaking from the ramparts of a historic Tripoli fort, told supporters to prepare to defend the nation as he faced the biggest challenge to his 42-year rule.

“At the suitable time, we will open the arms depot so all Libyans and tribes become armed, so that Libya becomes red with fire,” Gadhafi said.

The international community toughened its response to the bloodshed, while Americans and other foreigners were evacuated from the chaos roiling the North African nation.

The U.N. Security Council began deliberations to consider an arms embargo against the Libyan government and a travel ban and asset freeze against Gadhafi, his relatives and key members of his government. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said some estimates indicate more than 1,000 people have been killed in less than two weeks since the protests broke out in Libya.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order Friday freezing assets held by Gadhafi and four of his children in the United States. The Treasury Department said the sanctions against Gadhafi, three of his sons and a daughter also apply to the Libyan government.

In Tripoli, most residents stayed in their homes Saturday, terrified of bands of armed men at checkpoints and patrolling the city.

A 40-year-old business owner said he had seen Gadhafi supporters enter one of the regime’s Revolutionary Committee headquarters Saturday and leave with arms. He said the regime is offering a car and money to any supporters bringing three people with them to join the effort.

“Someone from the old revolutionary committees will go with them so they’ll be four,” the witness said when reached by telephone from Cairo. “They’ll arm them to drive around the city and terrorize people.”

Other residents reported seeing trucks full of civilians with automatic rifles patrolling their neighborhoods. Many were young, even teenagers, and wore green arm bands or cloths on their heads to show their affiliation to the regime, residents said. All spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Tripoli, home to about a third of Libya’s population of 6 million, is the center of the eroding territory that Gadhafi still controls.

Even in the Gadhafi-held pocket of northwestern Libya around Tripoli, several cities have also fallen to the rebellion. Militiamen and pro-Gadhafi troops were repelled when they launched attacks trying to take back opposition-held territory in Zawiya and Misrata in fighting that killed at least 30 people.

Gadhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, told foreign journalists invited by the government to Tripoli that there were no casualties in Tripoli and that the capital was “calm.”

“Everything is peaceful,” he said. “Peace is coming back to our country.”

He said the regime wants negotiations with the opposition and said there were “two minor problems” in Misrata and Zawiya. There, he said, “we are dealing with terrorist people,” hut he hoped to reach a peaceful settlement with them.

Most shops in Tripoli were closed and long lines formed at bakeries as people ventured out for supplies.

In the Souq al-Jomaa neighborhood, piles of ashes stood in front of a burned-out police station. Graffiti on the walls read, “Down, down with Gadhafi.” Elsewhere, shattered glass and rocks littered the streets.

A law school graduate walking to his house in the Fashloum area said he had seen many people killed by snipers in recent days.

“People are panicked, they are terrified. Few leave their houses. When it gets dark, you can’t walk in the streets because anybody who walks is subject to be shot to death,” he said.

He said Gadhafi’s use of force against protesters had turned him against the regime.

“We Libyans cannot hear that there were other Libyans killed and remain silent,” he said. “Now everything he says is a lie.”

In Tripoli’s Green Square, where state television has shown crowds of Gadhafi supporters in recent days, armed security men in blue uniforms were stationed around the plaza. Pro-Gadhafi billboards and posters were everywhere. A burned restaurant was the only sign of the unrest.

Supporters in about 50 cars covered with Gadhafi posters drove slowly around the square, waving green flags from the windows and honking horns. A camera crew filmed the procession.

Taxi driver Nasser Mohammed was among those who had a picture of Gadhafi and a green flag on his car.

“Have you heard the speech last night?” he asked. “It was great. Libyans don’t want anyone but Gadhafi. He gave us loans.”

Mohammed, 25, said each family will receive 500 Libyan dinars (about $400) after the start of the protests, plus the equivalent of about $100 credit for phone service. State TV said the distribution will take place starting Sunday.

Gadhafi loyalists manned a street barricade, turning away motorists trying to enter. After turning around, the drivers were then stopped at another checkpoint, manned by armed men in uniform, who searched cars and checked IDs of drivers and passengers.

In Misrata, a resident said the opposition was still in control of the city, which was calm Saturday, with many shops open and a local committee running civic affairs.

But the opposition only held parts of the sprawling Misrata Air Base after Friday’s attack by Gadhafi supporters, he added.

The troops used tanks against the rebels at the base and succeeded in retaking part of it in battles with residents and army units who had joined the uprising against Gadhafi, said a doctor and a resident wounded in the battle on the edge of opposition-held Misrata, Libya’s third-largest city, about 120 miles (200 kilometers) from the capital. The doctor said 25 people were killed in fighting at the base since Thursday.

The resident said pro-Gadhafi troops captured several members of the opposition Friday and now the two sides are talking about a possible swap since the opposition also captured a soldier and a brigadier general. Libyan state TV confirmed that an army Brig. Gen. Abu Bakr Ali was captured, although it said he was “kidnapped by terrorist gangs.” The state-run news agency JANA also said regime opponents held the commander of the air defense’s 2nd Division and several other officers.

State-run TV reported that the website of the JANA news agency was hacked.

The opposition also held complete control of Sabratha, a town west of Tripoli famed for nearby ancient Roman ruins, with no police or any security forces associated with the Gadhafi regime, said Khalid Ahmed, a resident. He added that tribes were trying to organize a march on Tripoli, although a checkpoint outside the capital would stop anyone from entering.

“All of Libya is together,” Ahmed said. “We are not far from toppling the regime.”

Thousands of evacuees from Libya reached ports Saturday across the Mediterranean, with many more still trying to flee the North African nation by sea, air or land.

More than 2,800 Chinese workers landed in Heraklion on the Greek island of Crete aboard a Greek ship Saturday, while another 2,200 Chinese arrived in Valletta, the capital of Malta, on a ship from the eastern Libyan port of Benghazi.

Thousands of expatriates streamed out of Libya at the bustling Tunisian border, most of them Egyptians and Tunisians.

More than 20,000 have arrived since early this week, said Heinke Veit of the European Union Humanitarian Aid group. Food, water and medical help is available, as are facilities to contact their families.

Egypt: The Hangover begins (& Egypt Air wipes Israel off the map)

March 30, 2011

Elizabeth Taylor: “Trade me for Entebbe hostages” (& Those Israelis and their crazy terms!)

March 25, 2011

Remembering John Gross: “Friendship flooded the RIBA”

“Steve and Tyler were hit, and Anthony was headbutted”

March 24, 2011

As Israelis have their throats slit, can anyone explain this BBC headline?

March 14, 2011

Departing NPR Exec laments “Jewish control of newspapers” (& Vogue out of fashion)

March 09, 2011

Will the West let Gaddafi slaughter his way back to power?

March 07, 2011

Israeli song becomes accidental theme tune of Libyan rebels

March 01, 2011