Laydown liberalism

Cartoon by Martin Rowson

For Andrew Sullivan religion was at the heart of the Charlie Hebdo killing and that religion was Islam. He wrote:

"But Islam has nothing to do with this. There are just a few loonies who are suffering from false consciousness, and their real motivations are economic or personal or secular or just purely violent. You can believe that, if you want. Or you can pretend to believe it because it might be more pragmatic to do so. Or you can open your eyes. This is not to say that most Muslims support this kind of mass murder – and the global Muslim response was particularly encouraging. But it is to say that it is not a coincidence that so much terror and violence all over the world is currently being committed in the name of Islam. Some core parts of it are, quite simply, incompatible with post-Enlightenment thought and practice. And those parts have all the energy right now.

Is criticism of Islam islamophobic and racist?

On the racist question, Christopher Hitchens says no, and categorically so:

"You cannot be a racist by criticising the Islamic religion, by definition you cannot. There’s now a stupid term that’s trying to be imported into our culture, "islamophobia", as if to group it with racism in general. Nonsense. I won’t have it. I dislike Islam very much, just as I do all religions, and ive every tight to say that I think it’s an absurd and wicked belief."

Glenn Greenwald gives a slippery view to the contrary, saying that the label of racism for anti-muslim animus is a "rational view":

Politics is division by definition. Polarisation is what clarifies things.

Israel Shahak, Jewish critic of Israel and long friend of Christopher Hitchens

Sometimes you have to repeat it: politics is division by definition. You could forget it in the fog of media coverage pleading for unity and collaborative decision making. This is not what politics is about. George Eaton wrote in the News Statesman in 2010:

"In a culture where consensus and bipartisanship were viewed as unqualified goods, Hitchens stood out as a contrarian (a term that he perhaps unsurprisingly rejects) prepared to challenge the orthodoxies of both left and right."

Christopher Hitchens said during a 1993 panel discussion:

Art is theft, Ctd

By no means a copy or plagiarism, but the remixing of the visual idiom is interesting. Above is Ronald Searle and immediately below is Morten Morland.

Christopher Hitchens' regret - Not writing more to people

Christopher Hitchens by Martin Rowson

The combative and confrontational Christopher Hitchens died of cancer in 2011. In 2010 he spoke with Jeremy Paxman, reflecting on his past and politics. At the end he shared a regret: 

"In case you are watching this anybody, and you ever wonder whether to write to any one, always do, because you’d be surprised by much of difference it can make. Here’s a regret: I regret not doing it more often myself." 

Jack Kyle on Ian Paisley

Jack Kyle, rugby player and surgeon, born on February 10 1926. Aged 88 he passed away on November 28 2014.

[UPDATE - Read my essay on Jack Kyle and free speech in Northern Ireland published by Eamonn Mallie here]

We know him as the rugby great and for his work as a doctor. But Jack Kyle was also a man of letters and ideas. Throughout his life he shared comments on the Irish Question that were lucid, forceful and profound. 

On rugby in Ireland he said, "There was never any religious business about rugby. That was the wonderful thing about it." At more length, he said about Irish rugby:

"That was the wonderful thing about [Irish rugby, the absence of religion]. When the various unions were splitting up, the Irish Rugby Union said: “we play as one country”. Those of us from Ulster were very fortunate that happened. It was also a much greater honour for us to play for the whole country. I think it says a lot that during all the Troubles, never once did a southern side fail to come north or a northern side fail to go south."

Salman Rushdie - Avoid politeness, Ctd

Salman Rushdie by Ralph Steadman

In a conversation with Christopher Hitchens, Salman Rushdie said that respect proper means that you can take someone seriously and still disagree with them:

"One of the most mealy mouthed pieces of language that has developed to justify this kind of behaviour is a kind of reinvention of the meaning of the word "respect". It seemed to me when I was growing up that respect meant that you took people seriously. It didn’t mean that you never disagreed with them. To respect someone is to say we’ll take on what you have to say and if I don’t agree with it I will offer a counter argument. The idea that it would be disrespectful to someone in any way disagree from this system of belief is a new idea, is a new meaning of the term "respect" and it seems to me to have nothing to do with respect. And what it actually means is I am too afraid to do it. So what you have is cowardice masquerading as respect. And that’s become more and more common. It’s very clear in the case of the [Danish] cartoons."

I'm a cartoonist, it's my job to create "brutal" and "bilious" cartoons

A self-portrait by Martin Rowson with a skewered Prime Minister, David Cameron

We artists live under a convention. We have a license to offend. A warrant and a commission to eviscerate people with a pen. Robert G. Ingersoll said:

"The instance we admit that a book is too sacred to be debated or even reasoned about, we are mental serfs."

Bernard Crickly on the Irish question and liberal prudery and squeamishness

Bernard Crick, biographer of Orwell and political advisor in the Northern Ireland Constitutional convention 1974.

Bernard Crick wrote 'In Defence of Politics', published in 1962, and in the chapter 'A Defence of Politics Against Nationalism', he wrote about Ireland:

"British imperialism only once seriously endangered the established domestic political institutions in the way that German imperialism strangled and frustrated the growth of German liberalism."

James Joyce on Fenianism (1907)

Doodles by Samuel Beckett, including a scribble of James Joyce

In 1907, aged 25, James Joyce wrote 'The Last Fenian'  and remarked upon the enduring struggle between violent and constitutional nationalism: 

"Anyone who studies the history of the Irish revolution during the nineteenth century finds himself faced with a double struggle — the struggle of the Irish nation against the English government, and the struggle, perhaps no less bitter, between the moderate patriots and the so-called party of physical force. This party under different names: ‘White Boys’, ‘Men of ‘98’, ‘United Irishmen’, ‘Invincibles’, ‘Fenians’, has always refused to be connected with either the English political parties or the Nationalist parliamentarians. They maintain (and in this assertion history fully supports them) that any concessions that have been granted to Ireland, England has granted unwillingly, and, as it is usually put, at the point of a bayonet."

"Tout Est Pardonné" - The Charlie Hebdo front cover and Christopher Hitchens on cartooning the prophet

In 2006 the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and the people of Denmark were subjected to a coordinated campaign of intimidation, sabotage and murder following the publication earlier in 2005 of the image of the prophet of Muhammed. Christopher Hitchens wrote in response, ‘The case for mocking religion’:

"There is a strong case for saying that the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and those who have reprinted its efforts out of solidarity, are affirming the right to criticize not merely Islam but religion in general."

The eloquence of Oscar Wilde

A cartoon of Oscar Wilde at the end of his visit to America in 1882, The Judge magazine.

[UPDATE - Martin Amis on the perfect paragraph rhetoric of Hitchens here and below]

Christopher Hitchens was a man of inimitable intellect and staggering, effortless eloquence. I've often pondered how he possessed such mastery and control of the language and rhetorical flair. I feel that James Joyce, speaking to Vanity Fair in Paris in 1922, gives a hint:

"All the great talkers have spoken in the language of Sterne, Swift, or the Restoration. Even Oscar Wilde. He studied the restoration through a microscope in the morning and repeated it through a telescope in the evening."

Harry Furniss - 'The Confessions of a Caricaturist' (1901)

Edward Carson by Irish cartoonist Harry Furniss.

Harry Furniss is an Irish-born cartoonist who worked in England and wrote an autobiography published in 1901, 'The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Illustrated'. He denied his Irishness:

"I was born in Ireland, in the town of Wexford, on March 26th, 1854. I do not, however, claim, to be an Irishman. My father was a typical Englishman, hailing from Yorkshire, and not in his appearance only, but in his tastes and sympathies, he was an unmistakable John Bull."

The irony of this can be found in the letters of George Bernard Shaw: "I am a traditional Irishman, my family came from Yorkshire." Harry also said:

"My family moved from Wexford to Dublin when I was ten. It is pleasant to know they left a good impression. In Miss Mary Banim’s account of Ireland I find the following reference to these aliens in Wexford, which I must allow my egotism to transcribe: “Many are the kindly memories that remain in Wexford of this warm-hearted, gifted family."

Matt and drawing Northern Ireland politics

A cartoon by Matt cartoons following the OTR letter scandal

He shared a funny anecdote on Northern Ireland:

"I do remember doing a cartoon about a republican jail break some years ago, and in it they were tunnelling out dressed as a snake. I can’t remember why. But anyway, The Telegraph’s legal team is famously ferocious about copyright. They usually let nothing drop. But when they got wind that the cartoon had been reprinted without permission in An Phoblacht, they thought, ‘actually, we’ll let this one go on this occasion’."

George Bernard Shaw on his Irishness, Edward Carson and Home Rule

George Bernard Shaw by Alick P.F. Ritchie

George Bernard Shaw is the venerated and revered Irish man of letters, and a protestant Irishman to the very narrow" of his bones at that. Like all Irish he proclaimed his Irishness but unlike the Irish, he also proclaimed his unIrish roots:

"I am a traditional Irishman, my family came from Yorkshire."

In sharing this Wildean aphorism, Shaw touches on a truth that many on the island can relate to, even if it's uncomfortable in doing so. Shaw also proclaimed his unionism as a protestant Irishman. In a letter to The Irish Statesman, January 10 1920, George Bernard Shaw said:

Unionism won

Cartoon by Ian Knox (@ianknoxcartoon), see more here.

Peter Taylor said:

"Who really did win the war? Viewed through the prism of the present, it’s clear that the British and the unionists won, because the Union is secure and the IRA is no more… I wouldn’t be surprised if at some stage in the long years ahead a United Ireland did emerge."

Sinn Fein's logophobia of "Northern Ireland"

Cartoon by Ian Knox

Martin McGuinness might be a chief administrator of a devolved province of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, but he can't seem to say the name of the place which he governs, opting instead for the term, "the North". Holywood man Paddy McEvoy wrote a letter to the Irish News about the increasing use of "the North":

"The term “North of Ireland”... has crept into common parlance in recent years. This now seems to be a generally accepted code for those who think they are staying on-side, striking a blow for freedom by refusing to say Northern Ireland, just as some on the non-conformist wing of politics refuse to say the “Republic of Ireland”, they prefer “Free State”, “26 counties” or “the South”."

Matt and how he works

Matt Pritchett explaining how he produced his first front page cartoon

Matt is a pocket cartoonist. Son of Oliver and grandson of V.S. Pritchett. Celebrated for his inimitable wit and bite delivered daily, without fail, in illustrated form. As a pocket cartoonist he is one among a "diminishing species" according to Andy Davey. Matt’s big break came on Thursday February 23 1988, the date he first appeared on the front cover of the Telegraph, as above. He explained it like this: 

"I did a cartoon of two people and the line ‘I hope I have a better Thursday than I did yesterday’, which sort of went with the general mood of crisis of the readers."

Stormont is a quango spending a budget

Cartoon by Ian Knox, see full gallery from this Hearts and Minds segment here.

[UPDATE - I've read and written that Stormont is a giant ATM, with no link between what is spent and accountability by the devolved regions for that spend]

Our pocket money parliament has no tax-raising powers. It's hasn't even the fiscal maturity of a county council which do have powers to levy and lift taxes. It's all spend and no tax. It's given a budget and then spends or allocates those monies. A parliament that can spend but cannot tax is not a parliament. Stormont is a giant quango. It's the inverted legislative reality of no-taxation with representation.

Northern Ireland is like a fiscal theme park where basic factual and legal realities are suspended. It has fiscal freedom and no responsibility. But without the power to tax it's hard to govern. Newton Emerson said: 

"Stormont is often mocked as a glorified country council but even councils raise most of their income through the rates, all the rates Stormont collects comes to just 5% of its income. So it's really more of a quango spending a budget."

Sinn Fein and the English Language

Cartoon by Ian Knox

When symmetry of scandal is met with an asymmetry of outrage, something is not right, and you have to say something. When an allegation is pointed at the church or an arm of the state, indignation is universally heaped on those named; yet when an allegation is pointed at the party, there is silence - indignation is selective and sectarian, falling along ideological lines.

With no sense or awareness of inconsistency, people can simultaneously support scrutiny of others and stridently oppose scrutiny of oneself; people can simultaneously credit allegations made against another but outright discredit allegations made against oneself. Mary Lou McDonald said in 2009:

An American Democrat is a British Conservative

Via The Dish

Andrew Sullivan wrote in November 2014 that 'A British Tory Is An American Democrat':

"Here’s an indication of just how far to the right the American political discourse is, compared with Britain – the developed country most in tune with American neo-liberalism (above). That’s why David Cameron and Barack Obama have long had such an easy relationship. Either one could fit easily into the other’s cabinet. And maybe it does help explain why I still consider myself a conservative. I am, as a Brit."

Irish Americans looked and sounded like Orangemen



Cartoon of Bernadette Devlin by Aislin (Terry Mosher)

The words in title are the words of Bernadette Devlin, the youngest person ever to be elected to Westminster, and the figure in the cartoon. You can read her Maiden Speech in the Commons, April 22 1969, here. On her rise to the London parliament and prolific profile her face was seen around the world and she travelled widely, including to America. She was the figurehead of Ireland's discriminated-against and the disposed and had the sympathies of Irish-Americans. A hearing from Irish-America was as natural so as to breath, since animosity based on "England's historic wrongs" were closely and long held. As the Spectator wrote in 1882:

"The hatred of England is cultivated by the American branch of the Irish race “as a sort of religion,” we can well believe. The history of the last two or three years shows it to be so."

Five years post-Irisgate

Cartoon of Iris and Peter Robinson by Ian Knox

Five years after the Iris Robinson scandal it is worth looking back on what the Irish-descended, English born, American blogger Andrew Sullivan wrote about the scandal: 

"The fusion of religion and politics and the use of Biblical authority to strip other people of civil rights is not, of course, unique to America. In Northern Ireland, for example, sectarian conflict was accompanied by incredibly repressive attitudes toward sexual minorities and women. When I went on Ulster television for "Virtually Normal" in 1995, it was the first ever broadcast across Northern Ireland dealing specifically with the homosexual question. They invited ten openly gay people to be in the studio audience, and only three had the balls to show up. And so it is not that surprising that a leading politician in Ulster would respond to a brutal gay-bashing by criticizing the attack but adding that she nonetheless believed that homosexuality was an "abomination" and made her feel "sick" and "nauseous". She believed that sexual orientation could be cured by psychiatry. She argued that:

100 years of trying to explain the difference between good and bad IRA men

By Martyn Turner (here)

Mike Burke, a lecturer in Politics in Canada, wrote on Anthony McIntyre's blog, the Pensive Quill:

"How could the Irish state… both celebrate its insurrectionary origins and conduct a counter-insurgency campaign against the Provisional IRA, which claimed to be the direct lineal descendant of the insurrectionary impulse that had given birth to the state?"

This is the southern state’s current and constant dilemma.

"So take it down from the mast, Irish traitors,
/It’s the flag we Republicans claim.
It can never belong to Free Staters,
For you’ve brought on it nothing but shame. Then leave it to those who are willing/
To uphold it in war and in peace,
/To those men who intend to do killing
 Until England’s tyranny cease."

People always lament the present, Ctd

People always lament the present as marked by decay, decadence, degeneration and decline; exhalting the past as one of radiance, rigour and rectitude. Steven Pinker said:

"Every generation thinks that the younger generation is dissolute, lazy, ignorant, and illiterate."

Hiraeth is the adjective which describes a deep nostalgia for the past. It's described like this: "A homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past." A commenter on Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Dish, wrote:

George Orwell on Ireland

Cartoon of George Orwell by famous American political cartoonist, Pat Oliphant

George Orwell wrote that the execution of the Easter Rising leaders was "a crime and mistake". He believed that the dispute over Ulster was caused by "the expansionist racist nature of modern republicanism." In a review of Sean O'Casey's autobiography by George Orwell in the Observer, Orwell wrote in 1945:

"Why is it that the worst extremes of jingoism and racialism have to be tolerated when they come from an Irishman?"

Zadie Smith - Typing out the work of other writers



Zadie Smith said in a conversation with US cartoonist Chris Ware:

"I had the same feeling when I’m talking with other artists or writers who wrote a lot when they were teenagers and some how I didn’t do that at all. I maybe wrote about four stories throughout the whole of my adolescence and they were perfect copies, that’s what I did, I copied an Agatha Christie story or a PG Wodehouse story, sometimes to the extent of typing out the story itself and sometimes changing it one way or another but for some reason that was my main instinct… it’s reading that is the practice, it’s not writing. I was reading obsessively, all the time, forever, every day. And that’s where I think you learn to write. Not in the actual writing. The writing was an explosion of 18 years worth of reading all the time."


The Lundy Terror, Ctd

Modern unionism is a heterodoxy, not an orthodoxy. It is multi-, not mono-confessional. You can be a ruthless critic of a belief and still be an exponent of that belief. You can be a ruthless critic of unionism and still be a unionism. As the Orwell Method has shown, self-examination and self-interrogation of your beliefs strengthens the precepts and principles that form the basis of that belief.

Emaciate and asphyxiate the moderate with promiscuous lawlessness and naked intimidation

Cartoon by Ian Knox, you can buy prints of his work here

A threatening tweet. A bullet in the post. A firebomb through the window. This is the authoritarianism and censor of the jackboot. Citizens, critics and democrats censored by cudgel-wavers. This is the history of Northern Ireland. Emaciate and asphyxiate the moderate and eradicate reason and debate with the veto of violence.

If we have Columbus Day and Australia Day, why not Henry II Day?

Simon Carswell wrote in the Irish Times: "The arrival of Columbus in the New World led to centuries of exploitation, disease and genocide." For this fact four US states do not mark Columbus Day, instead celebrating Native American Day. President Andrew Jackson whose parents came from Carrickfergus led campaigns against the Creeks and Seminoles during his military career and signed the Indian Removal Act as President. Also in Australia, "Australia Day" celebrates Captain Cook’s arrival there in 1788. Some people now derisively call the holiday "Invasion Day".

The unmoored, uncertain life of the artist

The uncertainty and unpredictability in the life of the writer and artist is universal and perennial. Kurt Vonnegut wrote:

"In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me."

Roy Lichtenstein - Art is theft, Ctd

The famous Roy Lichtenstein 'Wham!' panel is the above image. The original by Irv Novick is below it.

Roy Lichtenstein is well known for the painting ‘Whaam!’. But less known is that the image was modelled upon an original panel drawing by comic book artist Irv Novick from the “Star Jockey” DC Comic story. Some say homage. I say plain old plagiarism.

Joseph Pulitzer on the proper role of journalism

Cartoon of Joseph Pulitzer cartoon. More here.

Joseph Pulitzer was a Hungarian-American Jewish reporter turned newspaper owner, who owned the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the New York World. Joseph Pulitzer introduced the techniques of "new journalism" to the newspapers he acquired in the 1880s. His legacy lives on most prominently through the annual Pulitzer Prize and in an awareness of what the real role of the journalist is. He said that the role of journalism and the fourth estate is:

"An institution that should always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty."

Joseph Pulitzer, May 10, 1883, quoted on the Times plaque. My previous post on the role of journalism here.

 

Artists are labourers to their unconscious



Scottish artist John Byrne with a self-portrait. More John Byrne self-portraits here.

[UPDATE - Zadie Smith said: "[My] writing was an explosion of 18 years worth of reading all the time."
Graham Linehan talked about "practical procrastination" and said: "Your subconscious is this huge glacial thing under water that’s just doing a lot of work when you don’t realise it."]

Agnes B said on Radio 4:

"When you are designer you are like a sponge you don’t know where ideas come from."

John Byrne said:

"I am the labourer to my unconscious."

Michael Longley said:

"The raw material of experience… needs to settle to an imaginative depth where it can be transformed and emerge as art."

Francis bacon said:

"There’s this deep sea which we call the unconscious which we know nothing about. I always hope the most wonderful images will emerge from it."

John Banville - Most artists live with other artists, whether physically or in their minds

Cartoon of John Banville, more here.

John Banville said:

"Most artists live with other artists, whether physically or in their minds."

Martin Amis said the same thing of writers. Speaking in 2000, he said that reading and writing is about communion, not communication:

"It was Christopher Hitchens that introduced me to Saul Bellow as a reader. Look at Homboldt’s Gift he told me with a serious inclination of the head on the staircase of the New Statesman in 1977. I looked instead at the victim and after very few pages I felt a recognition threading itself through me whose form of words, more solemn than exhilarated, went approximately as follows: Here is a writer I will have to read all of. Everything else followed from this and it remains the basis of the connection. I see Bellow perhaps twice a year, and we call and we write, but that accounts for only a fraction of the time I spend in his company. He is on the shelves, on the desk, he is all over the house, and always in the mood to talk, that’s what writing is: not communication but a means of communion. And here are the other writers that swirl around you like friends, patient and intimate, sleeplessly accessible over centuries. This is the definition of literature."

The anti-Columbus movement, Ctd

Michael Ramirez cartoon of Paul Krugman, arch-opponent of Niall Ferguson

The self-described classic Scottish enlightenment liberal, Niall Ferguson said:

"I think it’s hard to make the case, which implicitly the left makes, that somehow the world would have been better off if the Europeans had stayed home. It certainly doesn’t work for north America, that’s for sure. I mean, I’m sure the Apache and the Navajo had all sorts of admirable traits. In the absence of literacy we don’t know what they were because they didn’t write them down. We do know they killed a hell of a lot of bison. But had they been left to their own devices, I don’t think we’d have anything remotely resembling the civilisation we’ve had in north America."

He also talks about the moral simplification urge here. Christopher Hitchens discussed the progresses versus retrogresses of imperialism. He looked at the Marxian analysis which saw British imperialism as ending the "Millennial stagnation and isolation of India." And said, "if you have to be colonised, don’t be colonised by the Belgians."

Christopher Hitchens in response to Noam Chomsky who is charged by Hitchens of saying that America was not a good idea. Hitchens also notes the change of name from Jefferson elementary to Sequoia.

Christopher Hitchens on militant Islam's "Imperial nostalgia as well as imperialism". George Orwell said:

"Instead of taking the mechanically anti-British attitude which is usual on the Left, it is better to consider what the world would really be like if the English-speaking culture perished. For it is childish to suppose that the other English-speaking countries, even the U.S.A., will be unaffected if Britain is conquered."

You can read Niall Fergsuon with some thoughts on what Britain did for Ireland here and Roy Foster on the positive aspects of Britain in Ireland here. My previous posts in this series here and here.

Paper versus digital reading

On the left is Barton Creeth reading a book. On the right, Jason Ashford is reading his phone. In the middle is me drawing. On the weekend of Setpember 26-28 I and a few friends took a trip to Bushmills and some took the chance for a digital detox - to "deassimilate from the cyber hive", as Ray Mears put it.

Charles Bremner (@CharlesBremner) wrote in the Times that "Permanent digital connection is bane of modern life". The Guardian reported that "Germany ponders ground-breaking law to combat work-related stress". The Spectator wrote:

The Backfire Effect

The Backfire Effect or Identity-Protective Cognition is when people hold onto their personal and tribal narrative even when it is wrong and unfounded. The antidote to this kind of egregious thinking and groupthink is the Orwell Method. But first, a little more on the Backfire Effect.

Maria Popova is well known for writing, "Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind." This is a painful process, made all the harder by the "Backfire Effect" as Maria Popova explained, changing the mind is a problem many grapple with, however it is hard. Because on one hand:

"The awareness that personal growth means transcending our smaller selves as we reach for a more dimensional, intelligent, and enlightened understanding of the world."

And on the other hand:

"The excruciating growing pains of evolving or completely abandoning our former, more inferior beliefs as we integrate new knowledge and insight into our comprehension of how life works. That discomfort, in fact, can be so intolerable that we often go to great lengths to disguise or deny our changing beliefs by paying less attention to information that contradicts our present convictions and more to that which confirms them."

Christopher Hitchens on the Falklands War

A cartoon by Ralph Steadman of Margaret Thatcher being haunted by the ARA General Belgrano

The cartoon is by Ralph Steadman of Margaret Thatcher being haunted by the ARA General Belgrano, an Argentine cruiser leaving the British Declared Exclusion Zone that was ordered to be sunk under her instructions.

In all the polarisation around Thatcher and controvery about the Falklands War, Christopher Hitchens brings some clarity. He held that line that he could not agree more with Thatcher and her position on the Falklands War. Hitchens shared his position on the Falklands War in a conversation with Salman Rushdie, where he said:

"Brutal, bilious" cartooning

Cartoon by HM Bateman

In his canonical article, 'The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved', Hunter S. Thompson wrote about Ralph Steadman and his drawing habit. A habit whose product was "brutal" and "bilious" cartoons. Thompson explained:

"[A problem with Ralph Steadman] was his habit of sketching people he met in the various social situations I dragged him into—then giving them the sketches. The results were always unfortunate. I warned him several times about letting the subjects see his foul renderings, but for some perverse reason he kept doing it. Consequently, he was regarded with fear and loathing by nearly everyone who’d seen or even heard about his work. He couldn’t understand it. "It’s sort of a joke," he kept saying. "Why, in England it’s quite normal. People don’t take offense. They understand that I’m just putting them on a bit." "Fuck England," I said. "This is Middle America. These people regard
what you’re doing to them as a brutal, bilious insult. Look what
 happened last night. I thought my brother was going to tear your head
off.” Steadman shook his head sadly. “But I liked him. He struck me as a very decent, straightforward sort.” “Look, Ralph,” I said. “Let’s not kid ourselves. That was a very
 horrible drawing you gave him. It was the face of a monster. It got on
his nerves very badly.” I shrugged. “Why in hell do you think we left
the restaurant so fast?"

Thompson said the "the people there thought that an ugly drawing of somebody is an insult." Ralph Steadman said that "Hunter S. Thompson always used to call my work ‘filthy scribblings’!" Steadman also said: 

"Hunter S. Thompson… took me [to the Pendennis Club in Kentucky] and I started drawing the people there. It’s a funny thing, but the people there thought that an ugly drawing of somebody is an insult, like tantamount to smacking someone in the face."

Fintan O'Toole - Ireland's parallel monarchy

Fintan O’Toole wrote in ‘Enough is Enough: How to Build A New Republic’ (page 28) about Ireland's 'parallel monarchy’ of the Church:

"Having shrugged off one culture of deference to titled nobles, the new state embraced another. The elected representatives of the people always kneeled before a bishop and kissed his ring. The fact that the bishop was addressed as ‘My Lord’ and lived in a house that was always called a ‘palace’ did not seem to cause any great discomfort to Irish people who would have been enraged by any sugges- tion that Ireland should honour an aristocracy. Indeed, Mary Kenny has argued persuasively that the Church occupied the place where the monarchy had been: ‘even the ardent Republicans would find a vehicle for the pomp and ceremony that every society either derives from tradition or reinvents – the Holy Roman Catholic Church would soon fill the vacuum left by the departed pageantry of His Majesty.’7 She points out that the Eucharistic Congress of 1932, which was the Irish state’s first great public ceremonial, ‘followed in almost every detail the format used for royal visits and royal events in Ireland… Not coincidentally, words and phrases previously applied to the monarchy were at- tached to the papacy: “allegiance”, “loyalty”, and “kingship” (of Christ).’ The ‘parallel monarchy’ of the Church preserved all the habits of awe, obedience and humility that might have been thrown off in a genuinely democratic revolution."

In an article in the Irish Times, 'Why do we allow a foreign state to appoint the patrons of our primary schools?' Fintan O’Toole wrote:

"Why do we allow a foreign state to appoint the patrons of our primary schools? If some weird vestige of colonial times decreed that the British monarch would appoint the ultimate legal controllers of almost 3,200 primary schools in our so-called republic, we would be literally up in arms. Why should we tolerate the weird vestige of an equally colonial mentality that allows a monarch in Rome to do just that?"

The "Troubles" is a term for the conflict that began in 1916, ended with an ambiguous armistice in 1998 and rumbles on to this day

Cartoon of David Trimble and Gerry Adams by Steve Bell

[UPDATE - "Unfortunately, the "terrible beauty" they [Pearse and Connolly] spawned is even now to be seen in action in the blazing streets of Belfast" wrote John Banville]

Philip Bobbitt said that "Long War" is a term for the conflict that began in 1914 and concluded in 1990. Christopher Hitchens said the identical, that the global conflict that began in August 1914 did not conclusively end until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union.

My argument is that the Troubles should be a term for the conflict that began in 1916 and quasi-concluded in 1998 with an ambiguous armistice, embedded a little further in 2005 but continues to this day with an uneasy truce.

He's a quick overview of history.

Live Drawing at @MurphysButchers on @theLisburnRoad

Following a wonderfully enjoyable day of Live Drawing at Arcadia Deli on the last Saturday of August 2014, I did a day of Drawing at Murphy's Butchers on the Lisburn Road on Saturday October 4.

Murphy's was another very enjoyable day, drawing people of all ages and backgrounds. From drawing a little boy who had just finished a morning of mini-rugby at Belfast Harlequins, to drawing Ulster Rugby players Stephen Ferris and Robbie Diack. Please have a look and explore all the drawings and videos from the day.

See the pictures below to see all my work from the day of drawing in Murphy's Butchers. See all my Vine freeze-frame videos here. Also be sure to look and read about my Conference and Seminar Drawing here.

Colin Bateman (@ColinBateman) - The Two Williams, King Billy and a "washed-up drunk"

My cartoon scribble of Colin Bateman

Colin Bateman wrote in 2006:

"I’ve come up with a story called The Two Williams, which features King Billy (that’s King William to you) on the eve of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 accidentally changing places with his modern equivalent — a washed-up drunk whose only job in life is to lead the Orange parade every 12th of July."

Michael Bloomberg (@mikebloomberg) - Don't Major in Intolerance

Following the Brandeis University-Ayaan Hirsi Ali controversy of 2014, when Brandeis revoked an invitation it had offered to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak and receive an honorary degree at the university's commencement ceremonies. In response to this action aagainst the Somali-born feminist and political essayist and others, Michael Bloomberg spoke out against this trend of liberal intolerance. Michael Bloomberg said in his Harvard Commencement speech 2014 entitled, 'Don't Major in Intolerance':

America's perception management of Europe

Cartoon of Barack Obama by Morten Morland

Glenn Greenwald wrote in October 2012:

"It is almost certainly the case that an Obama-led attack on Iran would generate far more public support than a Romney-led attack, because most Democrats will almost certainly cheer for the former while pretending to be horrified by the latter, will while Republicans would support both (that's the dynamic that made the very same "counter-terrorism" policies that were so divisive in the Bush years become wildly popular once Obama embraced them)."

My work with Michael Deane

The Daily Draw: featuring @MichaelDeane61 as promised. pic.twitter.com/MQ6EVIgTtF
— Brian John Spencer (@brianjohnspencr) March 2, 2013

[UPDATE - also read this post here]

It all began with a chance tweet and a simple cartoon as explained here in my 'The Artist's Journey' series, and in even more detail my journey is described here. That original cartoon, created on a wet March Saturday afternoon after rugby coaching and before going into town to sit in Waterstones all day, was then used in the Michael Deane signature wine, 'Chez Deano', which you can see below.

Vivisected Northern Ireland - Hugh Muir, be Intolerant of intolerance

I've written before about the vanity of small differences and the vivisection of Northern Ireland and the baleful effects of these egregious habits. In the face of such deleterious habits, I have called upon the need for civil intolerance. We can also learn from a parralel experience. In response to the flying of a jihadist-style flag in a London housing estate Hugh Muir wrote in the Guardian that we must resist those who would Balkanise public space. He wrote:

Colm Tóibín on his daily routine and the cult of Law School

Colm Tóibín's explained his daily routine to the Irish Times: 


"Breakfast? No! None of that eating rubbish. You get down with an empty stomach. So you create this system of rewards – if you do this, you can have that. Otherwise you’d never get any work done… I take an hour off and work for an hour. And I work until late, six days a week. The other general rule is, no lunch with anybody. That’s an awful waste of time. And I would never drink in the day. Ever."

Shane Smith - The media and establishment is inherently conservative

In 1993 Christopher Hitchens said, "there is one party - that is a beltway party, a Washington party, a permanent party, the party of those in power and most of those in the leadership of the Washington equipe of which the press are members of it and proud of it and lucky and afraid of the possibility of falling out of favour." Shane Smith also speaks critically of the US politico-media establishment. He said: