About Mrs Tilton

Mrs T is on hiatus from AFOE. A running-dog lackey of the bourgeoisie, Mrs Tilton is (ahem) 39+. Irish, but has lived in Germany for many years. Co-director of the Max-Planck-Institut für hiberno-schwäbische Genmischung. Liberal in the proper sense (not libertarian or leftist.) Writes The 6th International.

Paul Johnson: carried away as with a flood

Posted on January 18, 2005 by Mrs Tilton

The catastrophic tsunami in the Indian Ocean gave many of us reason to crack open the dictionary and reacquaint ourselves with the term ‘theodicy’. Crooked Timber‘s Brian Weatherson, for example, saw in the catastrophe an opportunity to discuss the ‘problem of evil’ (i.e., given the manifest existence of evil in the world, is it not correct to say that God, if he exist, may be all-good, or all-powerful, but in any event cannot be both?).

Now that is is a very proper thing for a philosopher to discuss. As for me, though, I have never found the problem of evil very interesting, as it seems to presume that God plays a much more direct role in the day-to-day running of the world than I think he does.

But this is not the place to explore my unorthodox religious views. I wish instead to consider the religious views of Paul Johnson, which are presumably much more orthodox than my own and are at any rate, I think, far more offensive. For Johnson regards the tsunami from the perspective of classical theodicy, and concludes that it was a Good Thing.

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Yanukovych appeal fails

Posted on December 30, 2004 by Mrs Tilton

Ukraine’s Central Election Commission has rejected Viktor Yanukovych’s appeal against the result of the re-vote in its entirety, reports AP. Yanukovych is now expected to appeal to the Supreme Court.

His campaign manager stated: “We … call on our supporters, which are 15 million, not to split the state, to observe the law and not to recognize Yushchenko as a legitimate president.” He’s right on the first two points.

Turkey and the EU: Poles apart?

Posted on December 28, 2004 by Mrs Tilton

Like most numbers of the Spectator, the festive, XL-sized holiday edition is marred by the presence of Mark Steyn. But don’t let that put you off, there’s some good stuff there as well. And one of the better bits is an essay by Prof. Norman Stone on Turkey (Potential EU Accession of) (reg. req.).

For the most part Stone paints a picture of the old Ottoman Empire as something much less uniformly Islamic than some think. You should already be aware, of course, that what would later (in truncated form) become Turkey was a multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious state, but if you weren’t, Stone gives you a quick background. (By the time it fell apart, the Ottoman Empire had become the ‘Sick Man of Europe’; but for centuries it was a success.) What you might not have known, though, was that the orthodox Christians of the Ottoman realms were only too happy to be part of a nominally Islamic polity. The orthodox patriarchs and the Muslim sultans saw in the latinate West a common foe. Indeed my own suspicion is that the Greeks felt a keener enmity than the Turks. The sultan, understandably, might well have seen the theological differences between orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism as obscure and uninteresting (how many of us in the post-Christian lands of the west are aware of, let alone take much interest in, the distinctions between the theravada and mahayana strains of Buddhism?) To the bishops of the orthodox world, though, the sultan served (whether he cared about this or not) as a bulwark against the centralising domination of their brother-bishop at Rome.

But what set Stone off was a recent article in Die Zeit by Prof. Hans-Ulrich Wehler. The title of Wehler’s article, which formed part of the contra side in a Zeit-sponsored debate on Turkish accession to the EU, has some unfortunate historical echoes: “Das T?rkenproblem“.
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More on crime and (lenient) punishment

Posted on December 23, 2004 by Mrs Tilton

If you are interested in the issues raised by the case of Wolfgang Daschner (discussed in two earlier posts), you might wish to acquaint yourself with the similar case of Alexander Holmes.

I mentioned this case in comments to the earlier of those two posts. I also mentioned that you really ought to read it. Happily, you can now do so even if you are reading afoe on your PDA and have foolishly left your leather-bound volumes of the Federal Cases at home. You’ll find the report of United States v. Holmes on the website of the State University of New York at Buffalo. The University deserves a hat-tip for making this report easily available to anybody with an internet connection. It is one of the most fascinating court reports ever written, and unlike most is also a cracking read. (And, unlike more modern reports, it records the arguments of counsel as well as the opinion of the court.)

At first blush, Holmes’s story doesn’t seem similar to Daschner’s at all. The crime for which Holmes was tried was far graver than Daschner’s. And, crucially, Holmes was not an agent of the state. Holmes’s story tells us nothing about whether torture may be justified and, if so, under what circumstances. But Holmes illustrates, even more dramatically than does Daschner, the problem faced by the state when a good man is driven to a terrible deed by overwhelming circumstances entirely beyond his control.
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A major media event

Posted on December 22, 2004 by Mrs Tilton

Slate announces that its parent, Microsoft, has sold the pioneering online magazine (where afoe‘s own Scott MacMillan’s byline appears from time to time) to the Washington Post. I haven’t seen Slate‘s figures, but it’s just possible that Microsoft might not need to show its financial statements pro forma for the divestiture.

At this juncture it would be as well to remind our readers that the rumours of afoe‘s impending acquisition by Rupert Murdoch are just that, rumours. All the same, we take comfort from Mr Murdoch’s long-standing policy of respecting his journals’ editorial independence and treating his employees decently. Coming soon: ‘The French-Democratic-Islamofascist Conspiracy to Deprive New Europe of Christmas — An afoe Special Report‘.

Torture does not pay

Posted on December 20, 2004 by Mrs Tilton

As you consider the ongoing saga of US treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere, spare a thought for Wolfgang Daschner. As I wrote in an earlier post, Daschner, Frankfurt’s former deputy police commissioner, faced trial for threatening one Magnus G?fgen with torture. G?fgen had kidnapped young Jakob von Metzler, and the police were trying desperately to find the boy. What they didn’t know at the time was that G?fgen had murdered him very shortly after the abduction and disposed of his body in a lake.

Daschner struck me as a model of the “well-meaning torturer”. He couldn’t have known that Metzler was already dead, and was frantic to find him. But when G?fgen kept shtum, Daschner decided to use torture as an ultima ratio. Well, he didn’t actually use it; but he threatened it, and that was enough both to make G?fgen talk and to make Daschner face criminal charges. In my earlier post, I had said that, if the court found Daschner guilty,

he should be punished. I would hope that the court, in meting out a punishment, would take into account the inhumanly impossible position Daschner found himself in (and the Criminal Code does allow for significantly milder penalties for criminal coercion than a three-year prison term)…. But I cannot accept that his deed be dismissed … because he was acting in good faith and sought to achieve a desirable result.

As the S?ddeutsche reports (in German, alas), the State Court in Frankfurt has now found Daschner guilty. His punishment, though, is mild indeed.
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Rock & Roll Rabbis

Posted on December 13, 2004 by Mrs Tilton

Strolling back home from the Christmas Market last night, we noticed bouncy pop music and an enthusiastic crowd in front of the Old Opera House. As we came closer, we could see the musicians, jamming on electric guitar and synthesiser. As rockers, they were (you will pardon the expression, given what follows) a little unorthodox. Oh, the beards would have gone down well back in the hippy days, and the black clothes were pure goth. But those snappy fedoras?
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Ukraine elections invalid?

Posted on November 27, 2004 by Mrs Tilton

According to a ‘news alert’ headline at the New York Times from four minutes ago (08.14 EST), Ukraine’s parliament has declared the election results invalid.

Nothing more at the NYT site (registration generally required, but you should be able to see the front page without it); it’s just the headline. Updates to follow as available.

Update (14.35 CET): Reuters reports that what the parliament has done is vote no confidence in the Central Election Commission, which a ‘large majority’ declared ‘had failed to fulfil its duties under Ukraine’s constitution and laws’.

Update (14.44 CET): Parliament’s resolution went a bit farther than that, actually, according to a brief Reuters report on the NYT site (reg. req.): it also expressly declared that the election was ‘invalid, subject to many irregularities and failed to reflect voters’ intentions.’

Update (15.39 CET): Well, maybe the election results are invalid. According to AP, parliament’s resolution will have legal force only if it receives President Kuchma’s assent. There’s a wild card still to be played, then. [Post title augmented to reflect uncertainty, though with hope the question mark may soon come back off.]

Wir sind doch amusiert

Posted on November 24, 2004 by Mrs Tilton

Living in Germany as I do, I often find that I have hard things to say about the Germans. (Germans should see this not as evidence of their special faultiness but of my misanthropy. Were I living in Tahiti, I would doubtless have a lot of hard things to say about the Tahitians, who I understand from the paintings of M. Gauguin to be a happy, friendly and good-looking lot.) So why don’t I preface this by pointing out some of the nice things about Germans. They have contributed immensely to the world’s wealth of science, literature and philosophy. Everybody concedes that they make good cars and beer. The food is better than you might think it is.

But with the best will in the wortld, Germans are not funny, are they? We’ve all heard the German attempt at The World’s Funniest Joke — ‘der ver zwei peanuts valking down der Strasse, and von vas assaulted … peanut‘ — and even that needed Englishmen to be thought up.

Not a barrel of laughs, then, the Germans. Most of you have probably never seen German comedy, and you are the lucky ones. Those of you familiar with teutonic jesting will have had to suffer through Otto Waalkes, Dieter Hallervorden, Gottschalk & Kr?ger and similar highlights.

But wait. There is a narrow but rich seam of gold running through the dross. Germans might not often be funny, but when they are on song they can hold their own with the best. Here then, in the interest of fostering cross-cultural understanding, are some suggestions for those of you who can read and understand German.