Busy today, but here’s a repost of Laurie Hill’s short film about customer requests at the Hulton Photo Archive. 

See also: Misremembered.

ABC’s Middle East correspondent Anne Barker visits Jerusalem and feels the presence of the numinous: 

Orthodox Jews are angry at the local council’s decision to open a municipal car park on Saturdays – or Shabbat, the day of rest for Jews. It’s a day when Jews are not supposed to do anything resembling work, which can include something as simple as flicking a switch, turning on a light or driving.

Some of you may recall this story involving strict observance of the Sabbath and some bothersome stair lights. The combination of self-inflicted debilitation and cosmic vanity is not without comic potential. What follows, though, isn’t quite so funny.

I was mindful I would need to dress conservatively and keep out of harm’s way. But I made my mistake when I parked the car and started walking towards the protest, not fully sure which street was which. By the time I realised I’d come up the wrong street it was too late.

I suddenly found myself in the thick of the protest – in the midst of hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews in their long coats and sable-fur hats… As the protest became noisier and the crowd began yelling, I took my recorder and microphone out of my bag to record the sound. Suddenly the crowd turned on me, screaming in my face. Dozens of angry men began spitting on me. I found myself herded against a brick wall as they kept on spitting – on my face, my hair, my clothes, my arms. It was like rain, coming at me from all directions – hitting my recorder, my bag, my shoes, even my glasses. Big gobs of spit landed on me like heavy raindrops. I could even smell it as it fell on my face. Somewhere behind me – I didn’t see him – a man on a stairway either kicked me in the head or knocked something heavy against me. […]

I was later told it was because using a tape-recorder is itself a desecration of the Shabbat even though I’m not Jewish and don’t observe the Sabbath.

When people take it upon themselves to be aggressively offended on behalf of some hypothetical deity, this is rarely a good sign. (You’d think any deities that exist could take care of themselves, such being the nature of deity. And if these hypothetical beings have egos to bruise and a need for vicarious payback then I fear we’re all in trouble.) Electing oneself as a Local Agent of the Lord can easily lead to some fundamental confusion and a sense of grandiose entitlement: “His will is my will, therefore my will is His.” And when the alleged cosmic grievance extends to car parking and tape recorders, I think we can safely assume we’re in the presence not of the numinous but of mortal psychodrama. Being drunk on Jehovah’s breath is, if nothing else, a wonderful license to indulge those vindictive inclinations.

Via B&W.

Despite that local spot of bother, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad still finds time to share his thoughts on more elevated matters. Press TV, the state-sponsored purveyor of “24/7 truth,” quotes approvingly:

In the democracy of the West, the exalted values and the people are ignored, [whereas] the aspiration and origins of the Islamic Revolution are different from those of other revolutions. Because, in the Islamic Republic that rose from the revolution, the object is the realization of Divine aspirations and the commands of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and, consequently, the perfection of humanity.

Those with the stomach for it can witness the ongoing perfecting of humanity here, here and here. Apparently, the process is more stick than carrot. 

Michael Totten has links, clips and coverage. See also Breitbart and Azarmehr.

Oliver Kamm on the inversions of being “progressive”:

Notions once considered reactionary, even extreme, have insinuated themselves into the mainstream of right-thinking (that is, left-thinking) social idealism. When you encountered someone of professed left-of-centre opinions, you used to be able to draw broad but important, and generally reliable, inferences about what these entailed. They included, at a minimum, commitments to secularism, freedom of expression, individual liberty against collective authority, women’s rights, homosexual equality and the combating of xenophobia. Times have changed. Now these stances are unusual, even heterodox. […]

When, last year, suicide bombers attacked the Danish Embassy in Pakistan, killing six people and wounding more than 20, a Danish journalist writing for The Guardian commented that the attack was “of course, indefensible, but it raises questions about the wisdom of the much-debated cartoons and Danish reactions to Muslim wrath.”

(For more on the Guardian journalist in question and his “of course, but” manoeuvre, see, for instance, this.)

The “of course, but” formulation is worse than a dreary cliché. It indicates a liberalism evacuated of content. Those who prize social unity and order will tend to believe that people’s deepest feelings and beliefs should be accorded respect. But respect for ideas is never an entitlement. It depends on their intellectual resilience in public debate. No free society can treat people’s deepest beliefs as sacrosanct. They are fair game for hostile and derisive criticism. That is how knowledge advances. […]

No one has a right to the protection of feelings. If politics concerns itself with mental states, there is no limit to how far legislation can intrude on people’s lives. The task of progressive politics is to protect liberty, not least by attacking the accumulation of bad ideas. Yet to many on the Left, the individual, inquiring mind is of far less importance than the representation of designated groups.