TO ALEPPO! MAN THE SIEVES!

Her husband's to  Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger: 

But in a sieve I'll thither sail,

And, like a rat without a tail,

I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do.

Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;

That this foul deed shall smell above the earth

With carrion men, groaning for burial. 

The great mastiffs of war slaver on the borders of Syria, watching their lapdogs and would-be lapdogs among the state forces and the rebels gnaw at the citizens of Syria to devastating effect.

That a proxy East-West post-Cold War conflict between ailing superpowers – The USA and Russia, with new-power China growling in the wings – has been under-way for years, in latent form, is confirmed by the horrific violence now manifest across Syria and in particular in the ancient city

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RZequeV0AY&feature=related

of Aleppo (36 degrees North, 37 degrees East).

The threat of the use of chemical weapons by state forces against any invading army indicates that the mongrels of war inside the state will not give up the meaty bone too easily.

Such a threat should not worry US/NATO/EU/Western Power allies who are currently considering their options.

Military planners have a responsibility to prepare for intervention options in Syria for their political masters in case this conflict chooses them.

The Western Allies hold huge quantities of biological and chemical weapons. As do Russia and China. Would anyone bet against stores of them being held in battlefield-readiness, alongside other Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), somewhere inside Turkey? And other stores inside the former USSR, on the banks of the Black or Caspian Seas, perhaps near Tbilisi (41 degrees North, 44 degrees East) or Baku (40 degrees North, 49 degrees East)?

Up to the point of Assad's collapse, we are most likely to see a continuation or intensification of the under-the-radar options of financial support, arming and advising the rebels, clandestine operations and perhaps cyber warfare from the west.

So in Aleppo, the images of the acclaimed Syrian poet, Adonis, cry havoc:

They found people in bags:

              a person                                        without a head 

             a person                                         without hands, or tongue

              a person                                        choked to death

              and the rest had no shapes and no names.

                             —Are you mad? Please

                                                      don’t write about these things.

Write. 

Damn dogs and rats, with and without tails. Damn the sieves that carry their armaments and their witchcraft of war.

Write.

Macbeth, Julius Caesar: Stage-plays; William Shakespeare

The Irish News: newspaper; Belfast; UK 'may enter Syria conflict';  page 23;  25.7.2012;

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/243414

READING CRIME NOVELS BY ELMORE LEONARD

Reviewers describe them as 'hot' and/or 'cool'. The dialogue is 'stunning' and 'all-found.' The plots induce 'page-turning.' No reviewer describes the crime novels of  Elmore Leonard as moral.

Why the reluctance to view the work in this way?

Certainly the majority of characters are deeply immoral. Even the 'good guys' are bad, often performing gross acts of brutality and violence, frequently random, sometimes as retribution or revenge.

Can narratives of such immoral behaviour constitute a work of literature that is moral? What is 'good' and where is it to be found in Elmore Leonard's exceptional body of work as a writer of crime fiction since the early nineteen sixties?

The world of his novels is that of American ethnic minorities and other marginalised people. Socially low-class Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, 'white thrash' and hicks are embroiled in scams, robberies, murders and other crimes. The occasional Mafia figure appears, usually the victim of a killing.

And yet, many of the scenes of absurdity or violence are set in contexts of great gravity.

The opening chapters of Pagan Babies illuminate the actuality of genocide in Rwanda in a way that a shelf-full of UN reports fails to do, before morphing into a scam-romp of many twists. 

Killshot reveals the depth of alienation experienced by a mixed race Native American French Canadian assassin, criss-crossing the north American border between Canada and the USA, that goes to heart of the multi-racial experience on that continent. 

In Mr. Majestyk a small-time melon-grower refuses to bow to power and corruption. From his efforts, a love story blooms for him and a labour organiser, fuelling a thrilling car-chase and a violent dénouement.

The reader suggests that these, among many other thorough-going morality tales in Elmore Leonard's crime novels, are not viewed as moral literature because Elmore Leonard offers no lessons. He describes rather than prescribes. His books have the impact of Power Point (re)presentations rather than instructions. They offer pleasure, not diktats or commandments. They are felicitous, rather than didactic.

And exist as literature in a violent world where the concepts of peace researcher Johan Galtung apply.

'Cultural violence' refers to aspects of culture that can be used to justify or legitimize direct or structural violence, and may be exemplified by religion and ideology, language and art, empirical science and formal science. Cultural violence makes direct and structural violence look or feel 'right', or at least not wrong, according to Galtung. The study of cultural violence highlights the way in which the act of direct violence and the fact of structural violence are legitimized and thus made acceptable in society. 

Acts of direct violence in Elmore Leonard's crime novels reinforce the immorality of cultural and structural violence in the world in which they occur. Thus, the novels are deeply moral.

The reader agrees that the novels are also entertaining, vivacious, hilarious, outrageous, vicious, violent, wonderfully wrought and written, and both 'hot' and 'cool' at the same time.

As the crime novels excite pleasure in the reader, is reading them an immoral act? Even if the reader perceives the novels themselves as deeply moral?

www.elmoreleonard.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence

SUGAR BREAD

A white woman in a black swimsuit gazes from a Paris (48 degrees North, 2 degrees East) kiosk display. The same image is on a billboard. A text above the woman's head reads Pain du Sucre, which translates to English as Sugar Bread.

Her lightly bronzed limps, her curvaceous buttocks, her delicately prominent mons veneris, the sweeping arabesque of her spine, her generously pert breasts, the half-turn of her head, all render her alluring.

On a barge, berthed by the Pont St. Michel, three white men, one with a camera, run a photo-shoot. Three women – all black – work the photo shoot. The two models dress, apply make-up and preen. One wears black underwear covered by a diaphanous black body slip. She laughs and covers her mouth with her hand. The production assistant blows bubbles that the light breeze wafts away. The men remain louche, seemingly above it all.

A bateau parisien, crowded with tourists, who take photographs and wave, cruises through the central channel of the Seine. An open-topped tour bus passes along the road above the river. Young travellers on board holler and gesture, jeer and laugh.

The evening sun dabs gold on the river, as Monet might.

A point will come, therefore, when the effort to expand or to maintain the volume of the industrial circulation will drive the effective bank rate to a level, which is, in all circumstances, deterrent to new investment relative to saving. At this point the slump sets in.

The woman on the kiosk gazes on the scene and on us.

Sucre? Pain?

What is she selling? What are we buying?

We are such  stuff as dreams are made on

The Collected Writings:A Treatise on Money: book; J.M. Keynes; Macmillan;1971

Tempest: stageplay; William Shakepeare; 1611