Posts in February, 2010
When courts attack
February 26, 2010 4 comments
Lawfare is a new one on me: it does not mean the victuals consumed by barristers, but the attempt to destroy innocent countries through the use of what an unspeak.net correspondent calls “sinister legal instruments”. ((Thanks to Gavin.)) The term is mentioned by Rory McCarthy in the Guardian:
Israel’s approach has been to refuse all participation in the Goldstone inquiry – not even allowing the judge himself into Israel – and to see all the criticism and legal challenges that have followed as a new existential threat, something Netanyahu last week described as “lawfare”. In other words, legal challenges are now to be regarded as just as unconscionable as militant violence. It is what one Israeli thinktank, the Reut Institute, called the “de-legitimisation network”, which “operates in the international arena in order to negate Israel’s right to exist and includes individuals and organisations in the west, which are catalysed by the radical left”.
The characterisation of law as a weapon and its use as tantamount to physical aggression has two handy effects: first, it implies that you can just ignore the law; and secondly, it implies that actual war is not much worse than the legal type.
Apparently the term lawfare was coined in a 1975 paper by John Carlson and Neville Yeomans, when it meant something more benign, as the modern “state monopoly of lawmaking” is seen as “a replacement of swords with words”. More recent usages have, on the other hand, been made by parties irked by legal challenges that they cast as unwarranted interference: most notably, the US Administration of 2000–2008 and its helpers. A 2001 paper by one Colonel Charles J Dunlap [pdf] opens with a testy flurry of rhetorical questions:
Is warfare turning into lawfare? In other words, is international law undercutting the ability of the U.S. to conduct effective military interventions? Is it becoming a vehicle to exploit American values in ways that actually increase risks to civilians? In short, is law becoming more of the problem in modern war instead of part of the solution?
The answer, of course, was yes; and that was the official attitude to all complaints about the legality of US “operations” over the following years. (See also Scott Horton in Harper’s.)
Thus Netanyahu’s recent reference to the lawfare being waged against Israel falls into the category of complaints by the powerful that others want their power to be fettered by rules. (Lawfare is thus contemptuously considered a “strategy of the weak”.)
On the pleasing model of lawfare, we can invent a raft of other disruptive rhyming tactics. Borefare — sending a particularly tedious person to talk for hours to a president; Pawfare — training a team of large cats for offensive operations; and, most devastatingly of all, Gorefare — blasting Al Gore into enemy territory. Why stick to bombs when war by other means could be so much fun?
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Two sets to love
February 25, 2010 1 comment
World’s best tennis player Robert Dee is suing the Daily Telegraph for calling him the “world’s worst tennis pro”. Dee might indeed have lost “54 successive matches in international tournaments”, totalling “108 sets in a row”, but:
Dee argues that as he did not have a world ranking in 2008, he cannot have been deemed the world’s worst.
This is ingenious! According to Dee’s scheme, then, the player with the lowest world ranking is the worst player, and all the players who haven’t even managed to secure a world ranking must be better than him?
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A sea of troubles
February 24, 2010 21 comments
Rhetorical conflict over placenames is particularly difficult since all options are thought to have political implications and there is usually no name that everyone agrees is neutral. The Guardian reports:
From now on, the Iranian government has announced, any airline which refers to the waterway between Iran and Arab states as the Arabian Gulf rather than the Persian Gulf will be banned from its airspace. […] Iran says it is the Persian Gulf; the Arab states say it is Arab. Foreign language descriptions can offend either party if they use one name or the other, or decide to omit an adjective altogether.
So we can’t even say “the Gulf”? Drat! And the other alternative not mentioned here, Gulf of Iran, is obviously going to make some people even more unhappy. The UN, for its part, insists on Persian Gulf, along with the UK, though the US has recently begun to prefer Arabian Gulf. Frankly, it’s a mess. I hereby institute an unspeak.net competition™ for the best new name for this body of water that won’t offend a living soul. Any ideas?
21 comments
How late it was, how late
February 23, 2010 16 comments
Among psychologists, the term “mental retardation” is being replaced by “intellectual disability”. In the Washington Post, Christopher M. Fairman points out:
The term “mentally retarded” was itself introduced by the medical establishment in the 20th century to supplant other terms that had been deemed offensive. […] The irony is that the use of “mental retardation” and its variants was originally an attempt to convey greater dignity and respect than previous labels had. While the verb “retard” — meaning to delay or hinder — has roots in the 15th century, its use in reference to mental development didn’t occur until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when medical texts began to describe children with “retarded mental development,” “retarded children” and “mentally retarded patients.” By the 1960s, “mental retardation” became the preferred medical term, gradually replacing previous diagnostic standards such as “idiot,” “imbecile” and “moron” — terms that had come to carry pejorative connotations.
Intellectual disability, then, seems to be merely the latest on — well, it is not a euphemism treadmill (as per body bags → transfer tubes → human remains pouches), but rather an anti-dysphemism treadmill, or perhaps a sensitivity treadmill.
Nonetheless Fairman argues — correctly, in my view — against the banning of the word retard and its cognates. Someone who uses it lazily as an insult perhaps invites a righteous warm rain of contumely, but such boorish or unthinking use of language ought not to attract legal sanctions.
What of the practise of inventing new insults by adding different prefixes to –tard, such as freetard (one who thinks the creative works of others ought to be free for him), or Avatard (one who likes James Cameron’s latest movie too much)? Do such usages inevitably carry a taint of the insult that is now perceived in retard, or do they get a pass on the grounds of creativity and humour?
16 comments
Slogans fun
February 22, 2010 8 comments
The Labour Party has announced its election-campaign slogan: A Future Fair For All. We can assume this does not amount to a promise to every citizen of a Ferris Wheel and Waltzer to be delivered to their garden in the years following a Labour victory. Still, not everyone is happy with the slogan. Alex Massie, for example, complains of:
the now traditional absence of punctuation that further obscures the meaning
I assume he means that he would prefer to see the slogan punctuated with a forceful comma, like so: A Future, Fair For All. Though, as a matter of general principle, I very much agree that it is desirable to punctuate everything more heavily than is common, I’m not sure Massie’s suggestion (if it is indeed as I have guessed it to be) would enhance a meaning previously obscured; it would, though, certainly have an unfortunate side-effect. To promise A Future, Fair For All would be to imply that at least, with the Labour Party, there will actually be a future, whereas if you vote Tory, time itself will stop.
Massie also considers that the slogan has chosen arbitrarily to reverse the normal order of words:
Seriously, what’s wrong with A Fair Future For All?
Well, there’s nothing wrong with it; it’s just that it doesn’t mean quite the same thing. Massie’s version promises that everyone will share in a fair future (howsoever defined). The actual slogan, however, emphasizes that the future will be fair (howsoever defined) for everyone — ie, not just fair for some, as would be, or so the slogan charges implicitly, the programme of a Conservative government.
Not a trivial aspect of slogan-engineering — or slogangineering — meanwhile, is the matter of scansion, and it is the work of a few seconds’ speaking-aloud to determine that A Future Fair For All is a quintessentially English, fluidly skipping run of iambs (“To be or not to be”); while Massie’s suggested A Fair Future For All arrests the eye and tongue with the toe-stubbing combination of the iamb-trochee halt and the fact that here, the labiodental fricative must be repeated in the very next syllable (fair future), without the breathing space accorded by -ture in the original (fu -ture fair). The authentic slogan is thus easier to say, more rhythmically agreeable, and thus (or so I suppose) more memorable. Perhaps the at-first-surprising inversion in future fair has, moreover, the faintest tang of a literary sensibility, but I for one am not about to complain.
It is in the nature of political slogans, of course, that they leave enormous pragmatic and philosophical questions unanswered (how exactly will this future be fair?; how will this species of fairness be accomplished?; who, exactly, is all?), and tend rather to unspeak political complexity by appealing to the warm feelings engendered by studiedly vague appeals to what no one is against (future, fairness, all). Still, as slogans go, A Future Fair For All does not strike me as especially pernicious, unintelligible, or stupid.
8 comments
Moir’s the pity
February 19, 2010 9 comments
With an impressively heroic inventiveness as to the interpretation of its own rules, the Press Complaints Commission has decided that Jan Moir’s rant ((Previously in Jan Moir: Undertones; Sleazy.)) about the death of Stephen Gately did not breach its code on any of three points. Firstly, the fact that she said things that were patently not true did not – luckily! – count as the publication of “inaccurate information”:
It was clearly the columnist’s opinion that “healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again”. This was a general and rhetorical point, based on the view of the prevailing health of young men. It admittedly did not take into account the possibility of SADS or similar, but the Commission did not consider that it could be read to be an authoritative and exhaustive statement of medical fact.
By this measure, if I were to write “smoking makes you live for ever and looking at David Cameron gives you rickets” in the Guardian, it would be taken as a general and rhetorical point, and by no means an authoritative and exhaustive statement of medical fact – so there would be nothing inaccurate about it at all. It would, by a simple process of elimination, be accurate, even though it was completely barking nonsense. Good! The Commission continues:
Equally, the Commission was fully aware of the widespread objection to the reference to Mr Gately’s death as not being “natural”. This was undoubtedly a highly provocative claim which was open to interpretation, and many people had considered this to be distasteful and inaccurate. It was a claim, nonetheless, that could not be established as accurate or otherwise. The article had set out the official cause of death so it was clear that this was a broad opinion rather than a factual statement.
Um, but it was exactly the coroner’s report of the official cause of death (“natural”) which enabled everyone to establish that Moir’s claim (“nothing natural”) was inaccurate. The only reason why it would remain impossible to establish it “as accurate or otherwise” would be if one had reason to believe the coroner was wrong or lying. Is that what the Commission is trying to say?
Secondly, the fact that Moir’s vicious screed was published the day before Gately’s funeral did not — luckily! – mean that the publication was not “handled sensitively at a time of grief” or that it failed to show “due regard” to “the position of the family members”, because, er, Moir is a columnist and Gately was famous, and – oh, look over there, press freedom!
On balance, the Commission felt that it should not deny the columnist the freedom to express her opinions in the way she had.
Sure! Next! Oh, thirdly, the fact that Moir’s article was saturated in gay-hating bile did not – luckily! – mean that she had made “prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s sexual orientation”, because, and I kid you not:
The columnist had not used pejorative synonyms for the word “homosexual” at any point.
So as long as you don’t call someone, say, “a faggot”, it is impossible to be homophobic? Yes!
There was a distinction between critical innuendo – which, though perhaps distasteful, was permissible in a free society – and discriminatory description of individuals.
Excellent. So, as long as you don’t use a “pejorative synonym for the word ‘homosexual'”, then expressing horror at the ooze of a gay man’s lifestyle which seeped out for all to see (or, indeed, afterwards insisting that it was sleazy of him to die), does not count as “prejudicial or pejorative reference to [his] sexual orientation” but merely critical innuendo. Result!
What do you think of self-regulation, readers?
9 comments
Short-boy’s complaint
February 18, 2010 26 comments
Martin Amis, who believes that to be “funny” is the height of literary endeavour, last week wrote a testily humourless response to the review of his new book in the TLS, explaining that he wasn’t trying to be funny when he wrote, for instance: “Sexual intercourse had come a long way” (fnarr, fnarr). I think that everyone — you, me, Amis and the reviewer – can agree at least that the result isn’t funny?
What initially made me excited about this letter, though, was that Amis begins it by referring to “my last novel”, upon which the hope blossomed in me that he was announcing his retirement from fiction in order to spend more time informing us that his Nobel-winning betters have no talent, that old people smell, that we must pass judgment on ethnicities, or that his more interesting rivals have fat arses. But no! I forlornly concluded that Amis was merely using last in the sense most recent, rather than to indicate the culmination and terminus of his oeuvre. This ambiguity is one of the things that are, or at least used to be, drummed into the heads of arts subeditors, who are or were instructed for this reason to avoid using last to mean most recent when referring to artists’ latest works, but no doubt the Brobdingnagian funny-talent of Mr Amis meant this as a deliberate tease to his detractors.
Have you read The Pregnant Widow, readers?
26 comments
Moving swiftly on
February 17, 2010 1 comment
After the first civilian deaths of “Operation Togetherness” (aka Moshtarak) in Afghanistan, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup said:
Our aim is to protect the population. You don’t protect them by killing them. So of course it was a serious setback. It was a matter of grave concern to all of us and I think General McChrystal has expressed that concern very forthrightly and he has been apologising to the locals that are involved. But it’s not a setback from which one can’t recover.
Unless, I suppose, one is one of those people who were blown up?
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