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It is a habit of mine to read several books at the same time. I take up a book according to my mood, the available time, the subject, etc. These days I was/am reading John Berger’s Hold Everything Dear, José Saramago’s Memorial del convento and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. There are five or six other books I started in but that didn’t hold my attention. They’ll pop up later.

This small book (140 pages) took me longer than usual because it is so full of insight. It is a collection of small texts: not stories, not essays, nor columns. Dispatches, they are called, but dispatches to whom? Like messages in a bottle?

The texts are dated between 2001 and 2006 and they tackle such subjects as 9/11, Palestine, Katrina, the metro bombing in London. Berger meditates about the war in Iraq, about poems by Nazim Hikmet, about the many walls in the world, about the meaning of place, about the meaning of endurance.

He writes about what is important, important to ordinary people wherever they live. To live a life in dignity for instance. He is not someone who writes from behind his desk. He knows the Palestinian farmers he writes about. His insight is deep. I already read his novel To the wedding and at my bedside I’ve got Pig Earth. I still have to read his classic: About looking. This he can.

How is it I am still alive? I’ll tell you I’m alive because there’s a temporary shortage of death. This is said with a grin, which is on the far side of a longing for normalcy, for an ordinary life.

→ John Berger

The New York Times reports today that new rules have been decided for the interrogation techniques (read: torture) to be used by the CIA.

The White House said Friday that it had given the Central Intelligence Agency approval to resume its use of some severe interrogation methods for questioning terrorism suspects in secret prisons overseas.
With the new authority, administration officials said the C.I.A. could proceed with an interrogation program that had been in limbo since the Supreme Court ruled last year that all prisoners in American captivity be treated in accordance with Geneva Convention prohibitions against humiliating and degrading treatment.
A new executive order signed by President Bush does not authorize the full set of harsh interrogation methods used by the C.I.A. since the program began in 2002. But government officials said the rules would still allow some techniques more severe than those used in interrogations by military personnel in places like the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Several officials said the permitted techniques did not include some of the most controversial past techniques, among them “waterboarding,” which induces a feeling of drowning, and exposure to extremes of heat and cold.
The basic outcome had been expected, but it was preceded by months of intense disagreement within the administration about where to draw the line on C.I.A. interrogations. The new list of techniques has been approved by the Justice Department as not violating the Geneva strictures, a step that Congress insisted on last October when it passed the Military Commissions Act, which formally authorized the C.I.A. program.

Can you imagine these meetings? In a spacious room with a view on a green park, soothing image, an oval table, cherry, leather seats, water glasses, a coffee corner, several highly paid men (I hope there weren’t any women) wearing expensive costumes, white shirts, tasteful ties, discuss ‘interrogation techniques’ and… the meaning of words.

Earlier this year, State Department officials rejected a draft of the executive order because they believed that the language was too permissive and could open the Bush administration to challenges from American allies that the White House was legalizing methods that approach torture. Some Bush administration officials, including members of Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff, pushed for a more expansive interpretation of Geneva Convention language and for interrogation methods that the C.I.A. had not even requested. [italics mine]

Beware, professional linguists, yours is no longer an innocent profession.
I wonder what is the ‘value’ of information acquired in this way. One official said “nearly half of the source material used in the recent National Intelligence Estimate on the terrorism threat to the United States came from C.I.A. interrogations of detainees”. Based on this information government decisions are made, presumably the kind of decisions than engender new enemies.
This makes me think of a passage in Bruce Chatwin’s novel Utz:

‘They cannot hear us now,’ he said, standing on tiptoe. He put his mouth to my ear.
‘Are they listening?’
‘All the time!’ he sniggered. ‘There is a microphone in this wall. One in that wall. Another in the ceiling, and I know not where else. They listen, listen, listen to everything. But this everything is too much for them. So they hear nothing!’

Check this information on New York Times and Human Rights Watch.

El País avisa ahora en su sitio web:

El amor del escritor y su traductora
José Saramago y Pilar del Río se vuelven a casar en una ceremonia íntima celebrada en la localidad de Castril

El premio Nobel de Literatura José Saramago y su traductora al castellano, la periodista española Pilar del Río, se han vuelto a casar esta mañana por lo civil en una discreta e íntima ceremonia celebrada en Castril, localidad granadina de la que es natural Del Río. Saramago y Del Río se unieron hace casi 20 años en la casa que el escritor tiene en Lisboa pero nunca llegaron a registrar su matrimonio en España. Este pequeño “olvido” les ha dado la oportunidad de volver a darse el “sí, quiero”.
[...]
La ceremonia ha comenzado con un emotivo discurso de Mercedes de Pablo, periodista y amiga personal de Pilar del Río quien, en alusión a cómo se conoció la pareja, ha dicho que “se encontraron sin buscarse en las páginas de un libro -Memorial del Convento, de Saramago- Ella untó de saliva su dedo y, al pasar la última página, borró el punto y final”.

Tras darse el “sí quiero” -que en este caso fue un ”claro que quiero” mutuo-, Pilar del Río entregó expresamente su ramo de novia al alcalde. “Para que te cases pronto”, le dijo, tras lo cual abandonaron el Ayuntamiento bajo una lluvia de arroz y vítores de “vivan los novios”.

José Saramago y Pilar del Río suscribieron hoy, de este modo, una novelesca historia de amor que comenzó en 1986 cuando la periodista compró en Sevilla un ejemplar de Memorial del Convento y quedó impresionada por la fuerza y el coraje de Blimunda, el personaje femenino protagonista.

Del Río, que trabajaba en el centro territorial de TVE en Andalucía, viajó a Lisboa para entrevistar a Saramago. Dos años después se casaron, y ahora viven en Lanzarote, donde Pilar trabaja de comentarista en un programa de radio bajo el nombre de Blimunda.

¡Felicidades, Pilar y José! Suena a maravillas.

You know the feeling. You are seeing how inspector Morse knows by intuition that Mister X killed Lady Z. Alas, after 24 hours of questioning he has to let the killer go because he can’t prove what he knows really happened. You feel so sorry for… inspector Morse. Why can’t he detain this man somewhat longer? He’s always right in the end, isn’t he?

This really must be a frustration for policemen. Certainly so when the criminals they are chasing are terrorists, working outside every known frame. Not killing someone for money or jealousy, but killing innocents for ideas…
This frustration, working within the limits of law, while criminals can work outside the limits of law (that’s why they are criminals, isn’t it?) must be unbearable sometimes. So, every now and then someone comes up with this bright idea: why can’t we change the law?

Today The Observer (see its title page here) reports this again.

One of Britain’s most senior police officers has demanded a return to a form of internment, with the power to lock up terror suspects indefinitely without charge.
The proposal, put forward by the head of the Association of Police Chief Officers (Acpo) and supported by Scotland Yard, is highly controversial. An earlier plan to extend the amount of time suspects can be held without charge to 90 days led to Tony Blair’s first Commons defeat as Prime Minister. Eventually, the government was forced to compromise on 28 days, a period which Gordon Brown has already said he wants to extend.[...]
Ken Jones, the president of Acpo, told The Observer that in some cases there was a need to hold terrorist suspects without charge for ‘as long as it takes’. He said such hardline measures were the only way to counter the complex, global nature of terrorist cells planning further attacks in Britain and that civil liberty arguments were untenable in light of the evolving terror threat.

So, a new Guantanamo? I wonder where they’d put it, the Isle of Man?

The proposal has provoked anger among civil rights groups. ‘It is coming to the point when we have to ask serious questions about the role of Acpo in a constitutional democracy,’ said Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty. ‘We elect politicians to determine legislation and we expect chief constables to uphold the rule of law, not campaign for internment.’ Internment was last used in Britain during the Gulf war against Iraqis suspected of links to Saddam Hussein’s army. It has also been used against terrorist suspects in Northern Ireland and Germans during the Second World War.

I just read Pat Barker’s Life Class in which she describes this hysteria in the First World War.

No, Mr Jones, if you have to ask something of the politicians at all, ask them to withdraw UK troops from Iraq, ask them to abide UN resolutions (also those regarding Israel for instance), ask them not to lie any more, ask them to respect the rights of minorities, etc. And eventually your main worry will be how to encourage inspector Morse… to work within the boundaries of the law.

With her latest novel, Life Class, Pat Barker returns to the First World War period. I loved her Regeneration Trilogy very much, certainly The Ghost Road.
I loved Double Vision somewhat less. The theme seemed somewhat contrived, although I always love her way of writing and certainly the way she makes her characters live.

In Life Class she seems back on more familiar ground. But this novel is certainly not a repetition of the Regeneration themes. She shows how some art students, male and female, struggle to find their own artistic language and at the same time some equilibrium in their relationships. And then the war starts, with its devastating effects, even for those who don’t want to be involved. There seems no escaping from the general hysteria.
In a way this novel is much more actual than for instance Double Vision. Because it shows that after almost 100 years people didn’t change that much, technology did, but the way human beings react to each other certainly did not. Nor the unbelievably simple political tricks to create hatred for the enemy. The invisible enemy within. The terrorist. Bush’s really bad people.

And then this question: what is art’s place in all this? Should only the horrors of the front line be painted? Or are landscapes still done? Can one still write a love poem while innocent young people die every day in Baghdad?

Zoals graaf Almásy in The English Patient van Michael Ondaatje reisde Kapuscinski de wereld rond met als metgezel de historieën van Herodotus.
Blijkbaar kreeg hij zijn eerste editie als jonge journalist van een welwillende hoofdredacteur toen hij voor het eerst voor een Poolse krant naar het buitenland werd gezonden.
Een vreemde uitrusting voor een jonge man die vanuit het communistische Polen, zonder één woord Engels te kennen, naar Indië werd gezonden. Maar blijkbaar heeft het boek, waarin hij steeds opnieuw kon lezen, hem geholpen zijn ware journalistieke aard te vinden. De nieuwsgierigheid, het steeds maar opnieuw vragen, het afwegen van de geloofwaardigheid van diverse bronnen, waren al aanwezig bij Herodotos en nu bij elke degelijke journalist.

Voor mij was vooral die bijna kinderlijke verwondering van Kapuscinski verfrissend. Zijn oog voor het menselijke detail, zowel in de teksten van Herodotos als in de wereld van nu, markeren hem als een biezonder mens. Soms doet hij me wat denken aan dat naïeve van Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in zijn Terre des hommes. Ik denk dat ik op zoek ga naar één van zijn romans (bv over de Shah van Iran). Maar tegelijk stimuleert dit boek me om eindelijk Het verslag van mijn onderzoek van Herodotos zelf vast te nemen en te lezen.

→ Ryszard Kapuscinski

De manera convincente Savater habla sobre el anhelo de la gente por una vida después de la muerte. El autor intenta demostrar que la vida consciente de la muerte y sin el consuelo de la vida eterna es mucho más rico.

Un pasaje clave sobre lo sagrado:

Nadie conoce a un humano en cuanto humano si sólo lo conoce como humano, si no se reconoce humanamente en él: lo que sella ese pacto de mutuo reconocimiento es lo sagrado. Lo que nos constituye como humanos es reconocer junto a otros humanos algo que representa y manifiesta lo que el destino mortal significa desde dentro para cada uno de nosotros, aunque sea algo terreno que nos acompaña y participa como nosotros de la naturaleza del mundo. Precisamente lo que caracteriza a lo sagrado es estar de manera plena en el mundo sin poder ser reconocido como meramente natural. Lo cual no lo condena a figurar en la cabalgata fingidora de la superstición y el ocultismo…
Sin embargo, en ella es donde suele figurar. En el mundo plenamente desacralizado de la tecnociencia, lo sagrado en cualquiera de sus formas queda relegado al casposo e infecundo escenario del Vaticano, el vudú, las proclamas especialmente sanguinarias de Mahoma y fórmulas semejantes de nigromancia. Lo malo es que tal degradante afiliación nos obliga a los racionalistas no ya a desconocer lo sagrado ahora sino que también nos imposibilita para reconocerlo nunca jamás. Y en el mundo de la universal disponibilidad y de lo calculable como sola fuente de valores, desconocer cualquier forma de sagrado es renunciar a conocernos también a nosotros mismos desde dentro, lo cual nunca puede conseguirse satisfactoriamente sólo mediante la más objetiva doctrina explicativa a partir de la evolución y el egoísmo de los genes.
El concepto mismo de humanidad, que no es claro está meramente descriptivo sino también valorativo, ideal, pierde pie y pierde peso argumental en cuanto la noción de «sagrado» pasa a la esfera de lo optativo. Es el reconocimiento de lo sagrado lo que nos define como humanos: a diferencia de lo que cree cierto «naturalismo» ingenuo, lo sagrado no es preocupación y exigencia de los dioses sino preocupación y exigencia de los humanos. Ahí reside el punto simbólico en que los instintos sociales, el mimetismo y las recomendaciones higiénicas se convierten en moral. Y también por ello el reverso aciago de lo sagrado, el sacrilegio, nos resulta éticamente imprescindible como idea-límite.