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The picture's owned by the Queen. An earlier owner - Rudolf II - found certain details so unacceptable he had them altered, so it looked as if the soldiers were poking over sacks of plundered goods instead of swaddled babies. Little faces were painted over, replaced by snow, sacks, poultry, animals and cheese. Massacre of the Innocents was renamed Sack of a Village. Even now, if you didn't know the painting's proper title, it seems like a lively village scene, sibling to that favourite Hunters in the Snow. Isn't the daily life of villagers a theme of the elder Breughel's? But something's happening, and even after the original was restored some of the worst things remain left to the imagination, in this masterpiece of evil's detailed banality (Ruben's treatment is quite the opposite).In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. Matthew 2:18
Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
O sisters too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we do sing
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Herod, the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight,
All children young to slay.
That woe is me, poor Child for Thee!
And ever mourn and sigh,
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
This genius of the extraordinary in the ordinary painted The Fall of Icarus in which the tragic hero's leg sticks, almost comically, from a sea shading from mazarine to spinach green, as the world gets on with its business.
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Dave and Trish and family on Corfu have arranged by phone and email to have their Christmas lunch at our house on Democracy Street. Trish shared the news that G. in Ipsos is very ill and has returned to hospital in England; that CJ's Bar is closing and re-opening as Sally's, and that between them they've pumped out rainwater that rose above Summer Song's cabin sole (an idea of how it rains in Corfu). Here I've put up and decorated the Christmas tree, hung mistletoe over the porch; a wreath on our front door.
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| Παραμονή Χριστουγέννων στολίζαμε το δέντρο |
A great gift that came to me from the ill-judged invasion of Iraq has been my friendship with Dhiaa (see: in the Forest of Dean with my Japanese students), who having come here as a refugee with the help of CARA, has been studying matters that have become increasingly fascinating - the post-invasion politics of his country and, looking further back to the political thought and practice of Mohammed Baquir al-Sadr executed by Saddam in 1980, founder of the Dawa Party, and the Sadrists, who are now, conditionally willing to participate in government though regarding US presence in their country as an 'occupation'.
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| Ph.D. candidate; intellectual involved in the redefinition of Shi’i practice and political thought through reading and work with Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr - murdered by Saddam - Dhiaa explores the socio-activism of the Sadrist movement; argues it constituted a paradigm shift in modern political Shi’ism. |
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In the Ano Korakiana Kafenion on Christmas eve - Παραμονή Χριστουγένων:
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In Birmingham's Corporation Street I saw a member of the Police Firearms Unit getting Christmas presents. I was reminded that we are at war, albeit some version of what's called assymetric, while there are others having a go at each other with guns and knives amid the shopping.
- That's the thing, people tend to have an image of British police as unarmed policing with the assistance and consent of the public, truthfully that's all a carefully stage managed image dating back to Peelthe idea of an unarmed consent based police service, who were no threat to the public, unlike the much feared French model of agents provocateurs and “spys”the reality is that from day one British police have been armed, and in fact there was something of a struggle to get officers to give up the cutlasses they carried along side single shot pistolseven until relatively modern times (WW2) officers on night duties could request to carry a pistol, WW2 brought about proto-ARVs roving patrols with officers carrying rifles to stop spy's and saboteursgoing into the 50's plans were made that in the event of the cold war turning hot, mobile fighting columns of officers with rifles and sub-machine guns were planned, then of course with the terrorist threat from the 70's onward you had ARVsso whilst that a somewhat shortened history of the subject it does go to show how the police have always had access to armsAs for the 1995 survey well if memory serves that was carried out by ACPO so well not to be unkind but they got the results they paid for
- 'they'd have a job thats a safariland (I suspect the 6004 SLS) which has a locking system for the sidearm'
But if he's 'out of service' and there's no-one watching his back...Your absolutely right about the stage management, I shot with MET officers in the 80's who did normal beat work whilst being armed with a revolver in a high-ride under their woolypully (Brixton so not so surprising). The ACPO LTD and Federation are effectively both organs of the Home Office anyway. - Yes but, no but....the underlying principles of institutions from marriage to democracy are stage-managed. Someone - Oscar Wilde? - described marriage as a very public confession of a strictly private intention. Churchill - and others - said democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. A lot of people including me and a lot of police (my daughter is one) approve and even cherish the principle of unarmed police. I don't deny the experiences and insights above, but I recall that at university we were supposed to be in by midnight or be locked out, but it was made known early in undergrad life that a convenient space between the spikes on one of the college walls was in disrepair...to repeat Churchill 'the English seldom draw a line without blurring it." The line between hypocrisy (rightly exposed) and the convenient ambiguity surrounding the principle of an unarmed police force fighting crime with the support of the community, tapers to the thinnest yarn. But it's a thread I'd choose to hang by.
My first wife, American, replied, when long ago I commented patronisingly on gun wearing US police "Yeah! That's because our bad guys are a lot worse than your bad guys." Hm. What do you think?
The 'code red' cross-examination in 'A Few Good Men' captures, encapsulates and dramatises the issue on a larger stage.
In 1995 a survey of more than 73,000 officers up to the rank of chief inspector in England and Wales revealed that officers want greater protection, including access to body armour, while facing increasing threats on their lives, but 79% of rank-and-file officers said they were opposed to being routinely armed.