Life on Queen Street

You know what would make this all worthwhile?

If they voted John Baird Speaker of the House.

Best Egyptian Protest Signs.

I also have thoughts that it's too late to type up right now on how Mubarak used the Muslim Brotherhood as a bogeyman for Western governments while embracing the most dangerous thing about them - their Islamist rhetoric - to give popular legitimacy to his dictatorship within Egypt (the House of Saud does (did?) the same thing by funding the international Wahhabist movement).

UCSB prof Paul Amar argues persuasively in an essay reprinted on Al Jaz English that Mubarak had appropriated the moral-cultural conservatism of the Muslim Brotherhood while subsuming them into Egypt's financial elite:

Brothers were allowed to enter parliament as independent candidates and have been allowed to participate in the recent economic boom. The senior Brothers now own major cell phone companies and real estate developments - and have been absorbed into the NDP machine and upper-middle class establishment for years. Second, the government wholly appropriated the Brotherhood's moral discourse.

For the past ten or fifteen years Mubarak’s police-state has stirred moral panics and waved the banner of Islam, attacking single working women, homosexuals, devil-worshipping internet users, trash-recycling pig farmers, rent-control squatters - as well as Bahai, Christian and Shia minorities. In its morality crusades, the Mubarak government burned books, harassed women, and excommunicated college professors. Thus, we can say that Egypt has already experienced rule by an extremely narrow Islamist state – Mubarak's. Egyptians tried out that kind of regime. And they hated it.

In recent years, as described in the work of Saba Mahmood and Asef Bayat, people have grown disgusted by Mubarak's politicisation of Islam. Egyptians began to reclaim Islam as a project of personal self-governance, ethical piety, and social solidarity. This trend explicitly rejects the political orientation of Islam and explicitly separates itself both from Brotherhood activities and Mubarak's morality crusades.

Against this backdrop, the future role of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt looks quite different than presented in American media - more Roman Catholic Church in Communist Poland than Ayatollahs-in-waiting. It's hard to make any informed judgement as I have neither on-the-ground experience nor any Arabic but I think it does raise a question of whether the Muslim Brotherhood were not a driving force behind the protests (which seems to be a near universal conclusion among commentators) less because they were canny than because the protests were in-part a rejection of politicized Islam, much as the West once upheld the separation of church and state as a sine qua non of a liberal democracy.

I feel, but can't really articulate why, that the focus on MB is, not misplaced, but misfocused. What I do know is that 30 years of Mubarak's rule, including a near decade as a soldier in the "War of Terror," no more halted the rise of Islamism in Egypt than the blockade of Gaza has eliminated support for Hamas. Quite the opposite - by supporting dictators and the demonstrably illegal actions of our allies in the name of a specious "stability," we have, like the God of Exodus, succeeded only in hardening their hearts against us.

More on that later, perhaps....

I am quite irrationally irked that the "Determining When to Compare Someone to Hitler" chart posted to my flist (h/t voleuse) is polemical and not, in fact, an actual examination of when it's appropriate to compare someone to Hitler. Not that it's reasonable to expect someone who regards socialized healthcare as Nazism on the march (and srsly WTF?!) to appreciate the fallacy of reductio ad Hitlerum but pouring snark on stupid seems equally ineffective.

Well, cleolinda is not amused.

Apparently The Other Boleyn Girl is very bad indeed.

I'm not shocked - anyone who would cast Scarlett Johanssen and Natalie Portman as sisters obviously has a very tentative grip on reality as it is experienced by the rest of world. Ditto anyone who looks at Tudor history and thinks "what this needs? MORE DRAMA!"

No. Just, no.

Oh, Shekhar:

Stop filming in Cathedrals - have you ever looked at Hampton Court palace? It's full of sumptuous, oak-paneled rooms with fireplaces and mullioned windows not cavernous limestone grottoes. Elizabeth reigned in the 16th century, not the sixth.

Sir Francis Walsingham never had a brother. Elizabeth was in her 50s in the 1580s, far past the time anyone thought of marrying her to anyone.

Fotheringay Castle was a castle of Norman design in the middle of England. Eileen Donan Castle is on Loch Duich in the west of Scotland and was largely rebuilt in the early 20th century after being destroyed in 1719 by the Royal Navy.

Sir Walter Raleigh was not present at the destruction of the Spanish Armada.

Anthony Babington was discovered by Walsingham* and never came within shouting, let along shooting, distance of Elizabeth.

Mary Stuart was no more interested in being directly responsible for the assassination of an anointed prince than her cousin was in executing one.

Moreover, the relentless one-sided portrayal of Catholics as murderous religious fanatics and the lionization of Elizabeth as the epitome of reason and morality is both bad history and vile bigotry. A film that portrayed any other minority - much less those invoked in the film's heavy-handed 'religious extremism is bad' allegory - in such a relentlessly negative light would be pilloried in the press. However, if Roman Catholicism can survive Elizabeth's reign, it can certainly survive a bad movie on the subject.

Nevertheless, it offends me to see my co-religionists slandered. While the Spanish Court's reputation for fanatical orthodoxy is well-earned, for her part, Elizabeth was not neutral on the question of religion. Elizabeth was a devout Protestant all her life, following in the tradition of both her mother Anne and younger brother Edward VI. Although Elizabeth was officially reconciled with the Roman Church during the reign of her sister, her conversion was not considered sincere even at the time. As Mary Stuart was to Elizabeth, so Elizabeth was to Mary Tudor - a focal point for plots aimed at placing a person of the "correct" faith on the throne. Had Mary produced a living heir in 1554, it is likely a similar pretence would have been found for Elizabeth's execution to remove a point of dynastic controversy.

Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1558 and her first significant act of government was to establish a Protestant Church in England. In 1559, the Act of Supremacy named Elizabeth "Supreme Governor" of the English Church. Anyone who held or wished to hold a public or ecclesiastical office (which at this time still included, IIRC, anyone teaching or wishing to attend a state school or university) was required to swear an oath affirming the Act an effective bar to Catholic participation. The Act of Supremacy also made it an offence punishable by execution (on a third conviction) to uphold the doctrine of Papal supremacy.

Its sister act, the Act of Uniformity (also 1559), established the Book of Common Prayer as the official text of the new Church. Attendance at Anglican prayer services on Sundays and Holy Days was made mandatory. Failure to attend was a 12d fine per offence (between $50-80 in today's funds). The Mass, the centre of Catholic worship, was prohibited. Attendance at Mass was punishable with a fine of 100 marks per offence ($80,000 or £66 when a servant's wages were £2-5 per annum); the penalty for saying mass or arranging to have it said was death.

In 1563, after guaranteeing a religious majority in Parliament by appointing Protestant ecclesiastics to fill England's vacant bishoprics, Elizabeth passed the Thirty-Nine Articles. These articles form the core of Anglican belief and repudiate both the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation and the sacraments of Reconciliation, Confirmation, Matrimony (weirdly), Ordination and Last Rites (Extreme Unction). In 1571, adherence to the Thirty-Nine Articles was made mandatory, a statute that remained in effect until the end of the 18th Century.

Although it appears that Elizabeth prevented the Protestant faction within her court from the violent persecution of Catholic recusants in the first 10 years of her reign, it remains that within a year of her ascension, faithful Catholics were barred from public life and the public demonstration of their faith (including possession of Rosaries, Catholic icons and prayer books) was outlawed. Nor does Elizabeth's initial toleration of private Catholic devotion exculpate her for the bloody persecution that followed.

Tradition, begun in the Protestant hagiography and English propaganda of the 16th and early 17th centuries, that raises "Good (Protestant, English) Queen Bess" above "Bloody (Spanish, Catholic) Mary" ignores that "during the reign of Elizabeth there existed in England a persecution for religion as sharp and as effective as any that had gone before it." Whereas the newly-formed Anglican Church exhalted the memory of the 270-300 Marian martyrs executed** for heresy during the reign of Mary Tudor, for hundreds of years, English historians characterized the Catholics executed under Elizabeth as "traitors", beginning with the 600 Catholics executed following the Rising of the Northern Earls in 1569. Along with the 120-40 priests executed under Elizabeth, all were all convicted of treason against the crown, by which reckoning they were not executed on religious but political grounds.

But by 1571, it was treason to call the Queen a heretic or a schismatic and treason to defend Papal Supremacy. In 1581 - the period directly covered in Elizabeth: The Golden Age - converting someone or being converted to Catholicism was also treasonous, as was giving or receiving the sacrament of Reconciliation (which would have included the Last Rites), and the penalty for not attending the state church was raised to £20 ($24,000). In 1585, it was treason for a priest or a Jesuit to be found in the country. By the mid-1570s, Elizabeth was no longer preventing the arrest and detention of Catholics under the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity or for failing to adhere to the Thirty-Nine Articles. At least another 60 Catholic laymen and women were executed for the treasonous practice of their Catholic faith under Elizabeth's reign. One 19th century commentator estimates at least another 130 died in judicial custody.

In both cases, the executed only represent the most unfortunate, not the nameless thousands harassesd, impoverished, voluntarily and involuntarily exiled, dispossessed, imprisoned and/or submitted to judicial torture for the crime of believing the wrong thing at the wrong time. While Elizabeth's personal beliefs may have been moderate compared to factions within her court, her government was decidedly not. By the 1580s, the state-sponsored persecution of Roman Catholics was vigorously promoted throughout England. This persecution would continue throughout the remainder of her life.

Nor was Elizabeth's reign a shining paean to freedom and reason: Elizabeth's government ran a violent and unforgiving secret police under her Secretary of State Walsingham and employed zealous public censors that suppressed public dissent throughout her reign. The movie contains but one reference to the proxy war waged on Spanish shipping by royally sanctioned privateers like Sir Francis Drake and none at all to his sack of Lisbon and Cadiz in 1585. There is also no mention of Elizabeth's meddling in the Spanish Netherlands, nor the English army under Robert Dudley, Earl of Leceister, sent there to support the protestant rebels that same year.

The question of religion aside, Elizabeth had done more than her share to provoke a war with Spain. If England could be saved from Protestantism, Philip was all for it, but his greater concern was to remove a meddlesome thorn from his side both in Europe and the New World.

Elizabeth had many admirable qualities. She was ferociously intelligent, well-educated, devout, shrewd, cautious, a brilliant politician, a great patron of the arts, an excellent judge of political talent. She was also personally capricious, paranoid, a poor military strategist, vain, unforgiving, and as Queen, a tyrant who "regularly tortured and murdered political opponents, who encouraged the systematic pillaging of foreigners’ property, who persecuted minorities, whose totalitarian regime suppressed all dissent, whose spies kept the populace in a constant state of terror, and whose armies drove thousands into famine."

The fact is, much the same could be said of Elizabeth's fellow princes. Some, like Henri Bourbon, were better. A few were worse. Religion and politics rode together and cut a bloody swathe across the whole of Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. From the moment Luther nailed his 95 theses to his door and for the next two hundred years, tit for tat religious warfare and persecution was commonplace. To characterize one side as more just or more reasonable or more guiltless than the other is either to misunderstand or to misconstrue the events that shaped the Modern Age. But no where is any of this to be seen in Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

That's not taking licence with history, that's expunging it.



*Who proceeded to more of less manipulate Babington into an act of treason that implicated Mary Stuart as a means of securing her execution.

**I don't know if all the Marian martyrs were burned at the stake. Although this was the statutory judicial punishment for a convicted heretic, I don't know if the "Marian Martyrs" includes individuals like Lady Jane Grey or Wyatt (of the rebellion that got her killed) who were executed for political as well as religious reasons.

Johnathan David Farley sticks it to the man.

Farley wrote and article in 2002 called "Why 'They' Hate America in 'Britain'" about the long-standing anti-Americanism among Britain's liberal classes. Might I submit, as a non-American and now a North American ex-pat myself, that authorizing shit like this while banging on about how Iraqis are thanking God for their freedom might have something to do with it.

Speaking of, every day it grows more and more apparent that George W. Bush and reality are no longer on speaking terms.

Maybe Janis said it best when she sang "freedom's just another word for nothing let to lose": the latest from Riverbend is not the kind of freedom I'd be thankful for.

Meanwhile, school shootings go global (it's official, there's now been a school shooting for each month I've been away from home).

In happier news, J. Lo and the Fug Girls can always be counted on to horrify and amuse in equal measure.

As I type this on my beloved Mac Powerbook, Salon has posted proof that buying Apple is cheaper than buying a PC, which is pretty much what I've been saying all along. The article mostly looks at resale value rather than what sold me on a Mac when I went looking for my first new computer all of my own - more bang for my buck in terms of audio/visual/Internet capacity and a robust operating system less susceptible to viruses and other nasty crap. Macs rule.

Eric Lindros may be one of the most bittersweet examples of athletic promise undercut by the business of pro sports but I'd have to say his career on the ice just doesn't merit the Hall of Fame.

Makes LoQ go SQUEEE.

Seriously, y'all, girlfriend needs to get herself some decent medieval icons...

This weekend, I moved, I finished Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire, finally got a good night's sleep, had a long bath and traumatized my cat.

Have to go back to the apartment and clean it tonight, and then hopefully I will be free and done.

Meanwhile, I still feel completely exhausted. When is this going away?

I'm watching Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl because, well, it seemed the thing, what with the rum and all.

Some interesting info here about the plot of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman, which indicates that virture could be its own reward in the POTC universe after all.

No doubt all involved (behind the scenes, anyway) intended to resolve such questions with the fourth movie.

I must say, I rather respect the complete lack of attention paid to historical detail in the POTC 'verse - the films are fully aware that they are fantasy and proceed with gleeful disregard for the constraints, concerns or details of history*. An approach I find much preferable to the simple carelessness of excrescence like The Tudors (which ever causes to rise in me a desire to rend the writers, producers and directors with my teeth).

That said, should you ever embark on a double-bill of Master and Commander and Pirates of the Caribbean, be sure to watch Pirates of the Caribbean first - the ship scenes do suffer in comparison to those shot on the actual ocean using an actual sailing ship.

*Bonus points are awarded to the props department for using the correct pre-1801 version of the Union Jack.

Turns out Prince Harry will not deploy to Iraq with his troop after all.

There are a number of things wrong with how this whole situation was handled from an operational standpoint. Regardless, I can't help feeling that this latest reversal is an insult to every serving British man and woman in Iraq - a clear indication that when it comes to Tony Blair's crusade, some lives are just more important than others.

And that's not even getting into the question of what this means for the monarchy.