Newly-crowned Junior World Rally Champion Martin Prokop will drive the all-new Ford Fiesta S2000 next season in the first year of a long-term plan with Ford’s rally machinery. The 27-year-old Czech will tackle seven rounds of the new FIA WRC Cup and S-WRC, beginning with the opening rally in Sweden in February.

Prokop and co-driver Jan Tomanek plan to use next season as a platform from which to step up to the primary WRC in 2011.
Prokop’s Jipocar Racing team will prepare and maintain the Fiesta S2000 from its base in Jihlava, Czech Republic. There will be little time for Prokop to acclimatise himself to his new car as the team will receive the Fiesta S2000 just a couple of weeks before Rally Sweden (11 – 14 February).

“I decided to drive the Fiesta S2000 because it is a great, beautifully built car,” said Prokop. “I like the way Ford organises its WRC campaign, as well as the fact it knows how to present its successes and effectively support its customer teams.”

Prokop could become the first graduate of Ford’s recently-completed ladder of opportunity, designed to take talented young drivers from the sport’s grass roots to rallying’s top tier.
“Ford has a clear vision of helping young drivers to climb the rallying ladder. It will be possible to convert a Fiesta S2000 to a new specification WRC car for 2011, which is ideal for me. I want to go ever-further as a rally driver, therefore I find this possibility of a smooth transition to WRC very appealing,” he added.

“We are delighted to have the current Junior World Rally Champion in one of our cars,” said M-Sport managing director Malcolm Wilson, whose company developed the Fiesta S2000 and is Ford’s senior partner in international rallying.

“I’m pleased Martin has made the commitment to take the S2000 route in his career as it is the next step up from a J-WRC car. We’re looking forward to working with him and giving him as much technical support as possible. We have had great interest in the Fiesta S2000 already and the S-WRC is looking to be an exciting championship for all the drivers involved next year,” added Wilson.

Ford of Europe’s senior motorsport manager Gerard Quinn welcomed Prokop to Ford’s rally family. “I’m delighted that Martin has chosen a Fiesta S2000 for 2010. He has seen the opportunities available to talented young drivers via Ford’s ladder of opportunity and I look forward to seeing him as a front-running challenger in the S-WRC next season,” he said.

In addition to the S-WRC, Prokop and Tománek could tackle some rounds of the Czech Rally Championship in their Fiesta S2000. Under consideration are high-profile events like the Bohemia Rally and the Barum Rally.

Prokop isn’t shy in sharing his ambitions for the season. “It won’t be about collecting experience.We have driven enough world rallies to have higher ambitions. The crucial point for us is to learn quickly how to work with the new car. If we manage that, I’m sure we will be able to maintain our level from 2009 in S2000 next year. And this means fighting for the podium in each rally.” he said.

GPweek-lehteen MM-rallista kirjoittava, rallitoimittajien arvostetuin mies, Martin Holmes valitsi norjalaisen Petter Solbergin kauden 2009 suosikkikuskikseen.

Holmesin perustelut olivat yksinkertaiset: Solberg ei antanut periksi. Vuoden 2003 maailmanmestari jäi Subarun vetäydyttyä työttömäksi vuosi sitten, ja reilussa kuukaudessa Solberg oli rakentanut ympärilleen yksityistiimin, jonka turvin hän sijoittui lopulta MM-sarjan viidenneksi, vaikka kaksi osakilpailua jäivät ajamatta.

Holmesin Top 5 -listalla muut kuljettajat olivat – järjestyksessä: Kris Meeke, Dani Sordo, Martin Prokop ja Matthew Wilson.

GPweek-palkinnon rallikuljettajien sarjassa voitti puolestaan Mikko Hirvonen. Valinnan tekivät F1- ja MotoGP-kuljettajat. Lehti seuraa F1-, MotoGP- ja WRC-sarjoja ja kunkin sarjan tähtikuljettajan äänestävät kahden muun sarjan kuljettajat.

ich habe mal wieder was sensationelles im netz gefunden:

geschehen in der handball champions leauge. da stürzte doch der manager Gunnar Prokop kurz vor schluss beim konter der gegnerinnen aufs feld und foulte die angreifende dame.

das muss man sich mal auf der zunge zergehen lassen.

wenn man etwas recherchiert wird klar, der gute hat eh so seine probleme. aber ein klitzekleines stück verständnis bekommt sogar dieser vogel. zeigt er doch exemplarisch wieviel druck auf trainern/managern während eines solchen spiels liegt. soweit kann ich das durchaus auch aus meiner kleinen amateursicht nachvollziehen. das gewählte ventil geht allerdings gar nicht!

schade nur, dass es das video nicht mehr gibt…

Could you have an equally successful version with churails and djinns? Perhaps, but Grahame-Smith’s success is also because of the public fascination with zombies, vampires and werewolves. Werewolves come from the Old Norse vargulf, and were feared as actual threats several centuries ago. Zombies originated in Haiti, but the idea of revenants—the walking dead—was very much part of Old English folklore. Vampires, especially the Transylvanian kind, reached the peak of their popularity in the 18th century.

True zombies, vampires and werewolves have not been feared for at least two centuries. But their place in the popular imagination has been maintained by horror movies and novels as well as several generations of gamers. Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight series elevated the classic vampire love story to interspecies romance, with a werewolf vying for the hand of the beautiful Bella. (via Nilanjana S Roy: Zombies versus churails).

Why are Indians so bad at horror films …

Why does the largest film production culture, i.e. India not produce Jaws, Jurassic Park (animals as malevolent monsters; justifying the extermination of huge swathes of wild life, “good that we have exterminated them”). Where is the Indian Dracula or Frankenstein? In all its 25 major languages and more than 500 plus dialects, Indians don’t have a national ‘monster’ culture? The writer of this column writes, almost complainingly, how

But few have carried on the legacy of Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote some of the most chilling ghost stories of all time—Khudito Pashan (The Hungry Stones) being perhaps the best of them. It’s not for lack of talent—for instance, Tarun Tejpal and Ravi Shankar Etteth have both played around with the ghost story. Ravi Shankar wrote at least one classic, featuring a busload of highly unusual passengers in war-ravaged Kashmir. In 1914, a Mr S Mukerji compiled a set of Indian ghost stories

The Ramsay family tried keeping the ‘horror’ flag flying. But most of their ‘horror’ films finally turned out to be romantic comedies – with a token presence of the ‘horror’ element.

The Indic spread

Other Indian themes have crossed languages, geographies, cultures – and spread all over the world. Witness the spread of Ramayana or how Sanskrit defined most languages of the world. After more than 1000 years of aggression, the Desert Bloc has only half the world as its adherents – though they have 80% of the world’s geography. The Indic belief systems still accounts for half the world’s population.

Why indeed does India have a scarcity of ‘monsters’. Even Indian asuras are not really monsters or devils! This columnist speculates that

perhaps something of the belief that ghost stories are for the masses, not for the purveyors of high literature, has rubbed off on to our authors. That, given India’s rich heritage of dakinis, betaals, nishibhoots and other things that go bump in the night, is a sad mistake.

To understand this better, let us look at the world’s most fertile ground for ‘monsters’ …

Medieval – Renaissance Europe

16th century Europe – specifically, Spain and Portugal. The last of the Moors had been driven out of Spain. The Christian standard was flying high. The Papal Bull divided the Earth (for the Europeans) between Spain and Portugal. White Christian rulers of Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand, set historic standards in persecution and extortion. More than a million Jews were killed, crucified, burnt alive; their properties confiscated and distributed. Columbus returned to enslave the American Natives – and subsequently, work them to death.

New chapters in bloodshed were being written by conquistadors like Vasco Nunez De Balboa, Francisco Pizarro, Juan Ponce de Leon, Hernando de Soto, Hernando Cortez, et al. Not to forget the search for El Dorado led by, “above all, that prince of monsters Lope de Aquirre, colour the pages with the darkest hues of bloody emprise.” In South American memory, Francisco de Carvajal, the “demon of the Andes” remains alive. These real-life monsters set new standards in brutality, slavery and genocide.

Europe in the sixteenth century was “obsessed with questions of language, and especially so in Spain and its recently conquered American Empire“ (emphasis mine). This was driven by

what Marshal McLuhan called “the hypertrophy of the unconscious,” a phenomenon he associated with periods of revolution in media technology: the advent of print in the 16th century created a great need for sensational materials to be broadcast, and this need caused ideas that formerly had been only lurking in the dark recesses of men’s minds to come floating to the surface.

One of the great bestsellers of the 16th century was the Histoires prodigieuses of Pierre Boaistuau (Paris, 1560), a sort of Renaissance Ripley’s Believe-it-or-not containing marvelous tales on everything … Seventeen of the Histoires forty tales are about monsters, a fact that may explain why the book was republished anywhere from ten to twenty two times and translated into Dutch, Spanish and English. (from Popular culture in the Middle Ages By Josie P. Campbell).

Spanish literature of the Renaissance

From this hotbed of ferment, a representative of this period was Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681), the Spanish writer. Growing up in a Spain, a 100 years after the Conquistadors, benefiting from the twin advantages of fresh memory and hindsight - “a century of Janus, facing backward, towards the rise of the Spanish Empire … and forward, toward its decline.” His more than a 100 plays and writings represent 17th century Spain, significantly – and even Europe.

There is probably no word that is more characteristic of Calderon de la Barca’s art than monstruo, “monster.” Rare is the play in which the word does not appear several times … (from Celestina’s brood By Roberto González Echevarría).

Calderon’s play about Semiramis, the Assyrian Empire builder, showed her in a monster mode – her hybrid character the most masculine modes and the most feminine, a monster of destruction and creation”. And Calderon was not alone. The fertile growth of monsters gave birth to a new study – teratology, the study of monsters.

“Monster lore truly becomes “popular culture” only with the Renaissance … Fresh works on the subject of teratology are written by Italians, Germans, and Frenchmen. The foreruuner of the modern newspaper, the broadside were bought at street corners and at fairs by the barely literate masses. The great reformers Luther and Melanchthon used the broadside medium to popularize their propagandistic and anti-Catholic versions of two of the most famous monsters of the Renaissance, the Monk-calf of Freiburg and the Pope-ass of Rome. (from Popular culture in the Middle Ages By Josie P. Campbell).

Some of Calderon’s plays dealt with the proselytization of the Native Americans – like his play, La Aurora En Copacabana (Dawn in the Copacabana), described as a play about “the conquest and conversion of the Indians in Peru”

The success of the conquest, therefore, is attributed to (Christian) faith which is valued as mans greatest gift to the world … Thus (Christian) conquest becomes a form of colonisation with the purpose of imposing religion and culture on a land “que habitan inhumanos” (512) and is in need of redemption and education. Finally, the play tries to harmonise irreconcilable contradictions which lie at the bottom of colonial discourse. (texts in brackets and italics mine).

With this idea, must be seen something important. That is the important element of “the escape of the monster.” In the … Monster Theory, Joel Cohen has remarked that the monster always escapes. Now combine the three elements – the newly acquired colonies of America, the proselytization (or otheriwse, the genocide) and the escape of the monster. These were the ‘monsters’ of colonialism.

A very interesting play by Calderon was La vida es sueño (Life is a dream). It tells the story of Segismundo, the Prince Of Poland, who was destined to be a monster. To forestall the prophecy, Segismundo was imprisoned by his father from the time of his birth. In adulthood, released from prison to test the prediction, Segismundo fulfills the prophecy. As a analyst of Calderon’s work summarizes,

Affirming a “better reality,” Segismundo’s message speaks as well to all of Europe: the “new European man” is the real monster. (from The subject in question By C. Christopher Soufas).

200 years after Calderon, HG Wells, in the The Island of Doctor Moreau, foretold Joseph Menegle’s experiments rather well.

Onshore genocide – The Roma Gypsies

Apart from the Jewish persecution, less known is the the persecution of the Roma Gypsy, which continues till date. In Europe, kidnapping children was considered legal for most of 1500AD-1750AD. On one condition – you had to kidnap Roma Gypsy children! More than 25,000 children kidnapped. No problem. Everybody sleeps peacefully at night. Switzerland was doing this till 1973!

Roughly, between 1500 to 1750, it was legal in Europe to hunt human beings. Yes! Just like hunting for deer in India, or hunting buffalo in Africa or fox-hunting in Britain. Yes! You could hunt human beings. As long as the humans you hunted were Roma Gypsies. In Europe you could be hung to death if you committed the crime of being born – between 1500AD-1750AD! Born as a Roma Gypsy!

Europeans, in the their age of Enlightenment and Renaissance, (1500-1750) could just pick up human slaves – yes, own them like cattle and furniture, if you found one! As long as they were Roma Gypsies. Later you could also sell them for profit!

Ship owners and captains in Europe’s Golden age, (1500-1750) could arrange galley slaves for free. No wages, no salary. You just had to feed them. Use them, abuse them, flog them, kill them, drown them. You could do anything – as long as they were Roma Gypsies.

What set off the Roma Gypsy Genocide

In 1420, a 60 year old man, blind in one eye took charge – and took on the might of the Roman Church and Roman Emperors.

Jan Zizka.

Over the next 12 months, he became completely blind. In the next 15 years, Zizka (and other Czech generals) defeated, many times, the combined armies of Germany, The Roman Church and others. His military strategy was studied for the next 500 years. Thereafter, the myth of military might of the Church was broken forever.

Jan Zizka allied himself with the Taborites (the radical Hussite wing). Zizka made Tábor in Bohemia into an armored and mobile fortress – the Wagenburgs.

Interestingly, a 100 years after the Hussite Wars, the European persecution of the Roma Gypsies began in full earnest. And during WW2, the Vatican joined with the Nazi collaborators, the Ustashe,  to extort gold and the genocide against the Roma Gyspises.

Military success

Zizka ranks with the great military innovators of all time. Zizka’s army was made up of untrained peasants and burghers (townspeople). He did not have the time or resources to train these fighters in armament and tactics of the time. Instead they used weapons like iron-tipped pikes and flails, armored farm wagons, mounted with small, howitzer type cannons.

His armored wagons, led by the Taborites, in offensive movements, broke through the enemy lines, firing as they rolled, cutting superior forces into pieces. For defense, the wagons were arranged into a tight, impregnable barrier surrounding the foot soldiers – the Wagenburg (the wagon fort), as they came to be known. The wagons also served to transport his men. Zizka thus fully initiated modern tank warfare. Zizka’s experience under various commanders was useful. At the Battle of Tannenberg (1410), Zizka fought on the Polish side , in which the famed German Teutonic Knights were defeated.

Roma Gypsy Wagon Caravan

Coming back …

Who were the major users of the wagons in Europe then (and now?) Answer – The Roma Gypsies.

Who were the people who could pose spiritual and ecclesiastical questions to the Vatican? Answer – The Gypsies, with their Indian heritage, were not not new to spiritual dialectics (contests, discourse and debates). For instance, Mani, and his adherents, an Indic teacher of Buddhist thought, known to Christians as Manichean thought, were the nightmare for Christianity till the 15th century. When Mani called for overthrow of slavery, the Vatican at the Council of Gangra, re-affirmed its faith in slavery. European minds were occupied with the questions raised by the Hussite reformers.

Some think they (the Waldensians) had held them for centuries; some think they had learned them recently from the Taborites. If scholars insist on this latter view, we are forced back on the further question: Where did the Taborites get their advanced opinions? If the Taborites taught the Waldenses, who taught the Taborites?

Who were the people who could help the persecuted Waldensians, the Bogomils, the Cathars to escape persecution and spread out across the Europe? Answer – The Roma Gypsies – in their wagons. The same Gypsies, had earlier pioneered the Troubadour culture in the Provence Region, which provoked the Albigensian Crusade by the Vatican.

Prokop Coat Of Arms

And who was the King of the Taborites? Answer – An entire clan of leaders who called themselves as Prokop (The Shaven /Bald; The Little and The Great) were the military leaders of the Taborites.

The word and name Prokop have no meaning in any European language – except in Sanskrit, where it means vengeance, retribution, violent justice.

Mythology as History

Jan Hus initiated the Reformation in the Vatican Church. It was Jan Zizka who broke the back of Papal authority. On the back of these Czech successes, was laid the foundation of 95 Theses by Martin Luther in 1517. The British break (1533-34) with the Holy Roman Church happened due to favors by the Papal office to the Iberian Empires – in matters of trade and colonial expansion, and the impediments to divorce of Henry-VIII at the behest of the Spanish rulers.

Today, the Germans and the British are loath to be reminded about the Czech Church Reform initiatives and the defeats at the hands of the Poles and Czechs. Western historiography about the Enlightenment and Renaissance, in Britain, France and Germany, leading to the reformation is ‘mythology as history’.

Of course, the role of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Byzantine Empire in the entire Czech saga is also worth re-examining. Were the Hussite Wars, a proxy war waged by the Eastern Church against the Vatican?

Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr.Hyde

In the 19th century came the monster story was dubbed as Gothic – and this form of story-telling matured as a craft.

A significant array of Gothic writers emerged from Ireland (from Charles Maturin, Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker, and Oscar Wilde to the contemporary writer Patrick McGrath), in a colonial situation where a Protestant minority was the colonial occupier. (from Late Victorian Gothic tales By Roger Luckhurst)

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851), wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley started writing Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, at the age of 18, and completed it one year later. First published in London, anonymously, in 1818 by small London publishing house of Harding, Mavor & Jones – after previous rejections by bigger publishers like Charles Ollier (Percy Bysshe Shelley’s publisher), and John Murray (by Byron’s publisher). The writer’s name started appearing from the second edition of 1823 onwards. The interesting aspect, lost in popular usge, is that the monster is not named – and Frankenstein was the scientist, who brought the monster to life.

In 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson’s book, The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde was first published. This explored how ‘normal’ (Dr.Jekyll) human beings could become ‘evil’ (Mr.Hyde).

And in 1887, Bram Stoker, an Irish writer published his Dracula. The character of Dracula is based on Emperor Sigismund and his Order of the Dragon, who waged war against the Hussites – led by Jan Zizka. Infamous for his betrayal of Jan Hus, he sparked of the Hussite Wars, in which the Taborites (the Roma Gypsies) used wagons and gun powder for the first time in Europe. He founded a secret sect,  the “Dracul” called the Order of the Dragon.

Of course, these three are the most famous – but not the only ones. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1871 “Carmilla“, about a lesbian vampire was another monster book of its time. An associate of Mary Shelley, John Polidori created the character of the “The Vampyre” in 1819 – on which possibly Dracula was based.

Most significantly, in 1896, was HG Well’s The Island of Doctor Moreau, which presaged Joseph Mengele – when Joseph Mengele had not even started on his higher education. A good 50 years before Joseph Mengele’s experiments were discovered by a shocked world.

The wellspring of these works is H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau. In this 1896 novel, a vivisectionist attempts to transform animals into men until the misshapen creatures revert and kill him, the forces of nature overcoming man’s civilizing artifices. From The Boys From Brazil (Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele, alive and well and cloning Hitlers at a secret lab in the Brazilian Amazon) to Jurassic Park (Richard Attenborough alive and well and cloning velociraptors), Wells’ basic formula has become familiar: an island; a Frankensteinian experiment; a Faustian scientist; something gone terribly, terribly wrong. (from Requiem for the Mad Scientist By Arthur Allen, in Slate).

From the 1700-1800, while Spain was in decline, for about a 100 years, Western literary field did not see too much action on the monster front. The main action was in Haiti, where zombies, the ex-murderers, the living dead became a part of the voodoo cult.

The late Victorian era was one of the most expansive phases of the empire. Britain annexed some thirty-nine separate areas around the world between 1870-1900, in competition with newly aggressive America in the Pacific or the European powers in the so-called ‘Scramble for Africa’ after the continent was divided up at the Berlin conference of 1885. (from Late Victorian Gothic tales By Roger Luckhurst)

The last of the true great monster in popular culture came from the East. Soon after WW2, as tales of Japanese atrocities started coming out and as American atrocities in Vietnam started, Godzilla came out of Japan. But a different pressure head was building up, which gave rise to a new genre – detective fiction.

Euro-Pessimism

Between 1800-1950, Western powers killed (directly or otherwise) more than 50 million people in America (the Native Americans), Africa (the Native Africans), Asia (Indians, Chinese, Arabs). This led to a situation that every other person in the West had participated in murder or massacre – unlike the few Conquistadors. Western ambiguity towards Soviet Russia on one side, Hitler on the other was itself a concern. To that add, Gandhiji’s resolute opposition to colonialism and you have a inflammable moral situation.

The deluge of blood and murder caused moral anxiety and was a matter of ethical dilemma amongst common folks. The pressure valve for this was popular fiction. Identifying murderers became a form of proxy, vicarious entertainment for ordinary folks. Enter the super detectives, who pick out the murderer from a room full of ordinary people. Enter detectives like Auguste Dupin, of ‘The Purloined Letter‘ fame, who “investigates an apparently motiveless and unsolvable double murder in the Rue Morgue.”

Murder in Popular Image

The 'racist' imagery in Tintin.

A trend started by Edgar Allan Poe, whose first detective novel, Murders In Rue Morgue (1841) soon became an avalanche. Writers like Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple solving murders happening by the second), Georges Simenon (and his Inspector Maigret investigating brutal crimes), Ngaio Marsh (Roderick Alleyn), GK Chesterton (Father Brown), Raymond Chandler (Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe) dealt with murder. Alfred Hitchcock made horror thrillers in similar themes.

In 1887, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock series made its debut. Many of Conan Doyle’s characters came from the colonies. Many victims lived in isolated communities. Past (mis)deeds caught up. Crime, murder and malevolence hung in the air like thick smoke. Some of the stories addressed the colour prejudice. The status of England as a super-power was apparent. The intrigue and bloodshed in the India was palpable in stories like the The Sign of Four at the Pondicherry Lodge.

Tintin in Congo

Agatha Christie’s book, filmed as Ten Little Indians, based on the book, initially released (the book) in Britain as Ten Little Niggers (later renamed as Then There None) gives the game away. Agatha Christie probably unconsciously verbalized the White desire to ensure that there should be none of the Red Indians left to tell the tale. The overt racism in Herge’s ‘Tintin in Congo’ made the world sit-up and note the pervasiveness of racism in detective fiction.

Media and academia

Jerome Delamater, Ruth Prigozy, in an essay compilation, ‘Theory and Practice of Classic Detective Fiction’, observe that Jane Marple, along with Hercule “Poirot becomes an equal opportunity detective who really believes that anyone might commit murder”. Dismissing the jaundiced view of human nature,” the writers of this book, while commenting about the detective fiction genre, do not mention slavery at all – and mention colonialism and racism once each.

One writer, Franco Moretti did half the job in book Signs Taken for Wonders: On the Sociology of Literary Forms By Franco Moretti. He writes,

“The perfect crime – the nightmare of detective fiction – is the feature-less, deindividualized crime that anyone could have committed because at this point everyone is the same.” He further writes,“Yet, if we turn to Agatha Christie, the situation is reversed.Her hundred-odd books have only one message: the criminal can be anyone …”

In his entire book he does not use the words like slavery, racism, genocide, bigotry even once. The 19th century, which was based on Western bigotry, White racism, African slavery, and assorted genocides is unrecognised in Moretti’s books.

Running or hiding? Or it a case of feeling squeamish? Perhaps, a case of queasy stomach, Franco?

Another book, The Detective as Historian: History and Art in Historical Crime Fiction, by Ray Broadus Browne, Lawrence A. Kreiser does a better job. This book examines, the detective fiction genre, with some references to slavery and child prostitution.

How was this explained away

As the monsters increased, both in real life and literature, rationalizations were required. A person no less than Immanuel Kant, was pressed into service to deconstruct the ‘monster’, re-invent it and give it a positive spin.

The monster taken up by Kant in an aesthetic sense to refer to those things that exceed representation considers that the monstrous describes an entity whose life force is greater than the matter in which in which it is contained. Thus rather than something that malfunctions during the course of its production, monstrosity is associated during romanticism with “over-exuberant living matter” that extends itself beyond its natural borders in order to affect a much wider sphere. ((from The subject in question By C. Christopher Soufas).

In the twentieth century, Kant’s hypothesis finds an echo when Lord Randolph William Churchill, the ‘Bulldog’ declared

“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race has come in and taken their place. (from Minorities, peoples, and self-determination By Nazila Ghanea-Hercock, Nazila Ghanea, Alexandra Xanthaki, Patrick Thornberry)

In another instance, Churchill wrote how ‘superior’ Arabs, imposed on the ‘inferior’ negroes.

The stronger race imposed its customs and language on the negroes. The vigour of their blood sensibly altered the facial appearance … (from The River War By Winston Churchill).

The Mystery of the Dying Detective

After de-colonisation, as mass murder went underground, the detective-murder mystery books genre faded. This category was replaced by a new theme – the axis of Corporation-Government-International Conspiracy.

The new category of popular fiction are represented by Ian Fleming, Arthur Hailey, Frederick Forsyth, Irving Wallace, Robert Ludlum, Graham Greene, John Le Carre, et al. More and more contrived, each conspiracy theory writer has been ‘inspired’ by real life incidents.

While Ludlum’s international-conspiracy-plot-CIA-FBI-KGB series have worn thin, the spookiness of Le Carre’s Absolute Friends and Constant Gardner still work as novels representing the West.

Western Twins – Anxiety and Paranoia

To develop this understanding further, there are two classes of films that I wish to draw attention to.

Malignant Nature

Jaws (the shark that eats humans), Jurassic Park (mad scientists, conspiring technicians let loose man eating dinos) Gremlins and Poltergiest (things that go bump in the night). This paranoid fear of nature (and natural laws) seems to be a result of the subterranean knowledge of the way in which ecological damage and pollution is happening. These films produced /directed by Steven Spielberg (who is incomparable because as Time Magazine says, “No one else has put together a more popular body of work”)

Vindictive Humans

The other is the thinly disguised hate and prejudice films against the poor and the victimised. ‘Aliens’ needs just one small change for the films idea to become clear. Instead of LV-426, Nostromo the space ship, receives a distress call from some country in South America or Africa (or India, if you prefer). The meaning is clear when you see the movie while conscious of the fact that alien is is the word the US Government uses for people from other countries.

As for the Indian churails …

Coming to India, a writer notes how

Francesca Orsini identifies the detective  novel as one of the genres that ‘was brought into India ‘ready-made’ without the intellectual and historical substratus that had generated it in Europe’ This total lack of any indigenous roots, one could argue, makes detective  fiction a colonial imposition, and its adoption by Indian writers, clearly a case of copy-cat reproduction wherein ‘black-pens’ write ‘white-texts’ that have no identity of their own. (from Postcolonial postmortems – crime fiction from a transcultural perspective By Christine Matzke, Susanne Muehleisen, page 88).

How very true!

Ms.Christine and Susanne, you have hit the nail right in the centre of head! Your aim is truer than you imagine. Whatta shot! Though I dont know if you have hit the nail deep enough – deep into the heart of the darkness, which gave rise to these genres of Western ‘literature’.

The Indian churail (or pisach or djinni) faces similar problems as the Scandinavian myling or the Er Gui of China: they don’t translate well outside of their culture.

India may have had local incidents, where an oppressive zamindar may have created a market for horror stories and monsters – but without genocide, slavery and massacres to fall back on, popular imagination simply does not have the fodder to create ghouls and monsters.

And that is reason for Indian churails being rare – not lack of literary ability in Indians.

Strafjuristen, die nördlich der Mainlinie etwas auf sich halten, irritiert schon traditionell vieles von dem, was südlich dieser Linie, zumal in Bayern, an staatlichem Zwang und Eingriff für normal oder jedenfalls geboten gehalten wird. So wundert es sie kaum, wenn die Postillen seit ein paar Tagen melden, Clemens Prokop, der Präsident des Deutschen Leichtathletik-Verbandes (DLV), fordere “erneut ein härteres Vorgehen gehen Dopingsünder”.

«Die Nationale Antidoping-Agentur NADA müsste so etwas wie eine Doping-Polizei mit staatlicher Kompetenz werden», sagte der 52-jährige DLV-Chef in einem Interview der «Mittelbayerischen Zeitung» in Regensburg. Prokop, der 2006 am Entwurf der bayerischen Justizministerin Beate Merk (CSU) für ein schärferes Anti-Doping-Gesetz maßgeblich beteiligt war, sprach sich dafür aus, Dopingkontrollbehörden mit hoheitlichem Charakter auszustatten.

Bemerkenswert, wenn der DLV-Chef, im Hauptberuf Amtsgerichtsdirektor im bayerischen Kelheim, grundlegende rechtstaatliche Dinge über Bord werfen will.,  so es gegen Doping geht, etwa  dass grundsätzlich Durchsuchungen nur durch einen Richter   angeordnet werden können. Gleichwohl wünscht er sich eine NADA-Dopingpolizei, denn:

«Sie könnte – banal gesagt – auf dem Sportplatz auch einmal in die Tasche eines Trainer schauen, was dieser denn so bei sich trägt.» 

Möglicherweise ist es ja eher ungewöhnlich, dass Trainer auf dem Sportplatz Spritzbesteck und Dopingtralala in ihrer Tasche dabei haben. Könnt’ ich mir jedenfalls vorstellen. Und dann gibt es da außerdem noch diese unpraktischen rechtsstaatlichen Regeln, die so gar nicht den Grundsatz “Der Zweck heiligt die Mittel” akzeptieren. Bestimmte Vorschläge sollte man besser zu Ende denken, bevor man sie ausplappert.

(Foto: Johannes Wortmann, pixelio) 

Within the past week, Disney announced official plans for High School Musical 4.  HSM4 was initially announced around April of 2008 with very few details in tow.  Finally, Disney decided to release some interesting tidbits about the fourth installment.

Unfortunately, as most people guessed, the principal cast from the original trilogy will not return.  At least that appears to be the case.  This includes Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Corbin Bleu, Lucas Grabeel, and Monique Coleman.  Smart money says that Olesya Rulin (Kelsi Nielson), Chris Warren Jr. (Zeke Baylor), Kaycee Stroh (Martha Cox), and Ryne Sanborn (Jason Cross) won’t be back either.  No word on Bart Johnson as Coach Bolton or Alyson Reed as Ms. Darbus but I could see them returning.  It’s all but confirmed that Jemma McKenzie-Brown, Matt Prokop, and Justin Martin (as Tiara Gold, Jimmie Zara, and Donny Dion, respectively) will return and serve as the new main cast.

I’ll see the fourth one, of course, but who knows if I’ll enjoy it.  Part of what made the original trilogy so good was the original cast, most of whom I enjoyed.  I see potential with some of the new cast but the jury is out on whether or not they can carry a series.  Hopefully some of the original cast make some small but crucial cameos, it might give it more credibility.

High School Musical 4 is slated for a 2010 release on the Disney Channel.

Follow me on Twitter @Kyle_McQueen

Kilka kadrów z Tarnowskiego Teatru im. Ludwika Solskiego. Mała Scena, autor: Marcin Skóra, reżyseria: Andrzej Prokop, aktorzy: Anna Lenczewska, Przemysław Sejmicki, Mariusz Szaforz, Robert Żurek oraz Ola Skóra. Dziś za godzinę Światowa Prapremiera..

Z Onetu:

Idealne piersi – czyli jakie?

Wzbudzają mnóstwo emocji. Dla jednych są dumą, dla innych – źródłem kompleksów. Jakie piersi są piękne i czy istnieją idealne?

Piersi to najbardziej widoczny atrybut kobiecości. My same uważamy je za doskonały wabik na mężczyzn. To dlatego już od czasu dojrzewania dbamy o nie, pielęgnujemy kremami, modelujemy ćwiczeniami, eksponujemy w pięknej, korygującej niedoskonałości bieliźnie i w wydekoltowanych strojach. I choć biustem ekscytują się głównie mężczyźni, to kobietom spędza on sen z powiek. Jak pokazują badania, tylko co dziesiąta z nas jest zadowolona ze swoich piersi. Co nam się w nich nie podoba? Przede wszystkim rozmiar. Bo jak zwykle chcemy dokładnie tego, czego nie mamy. Panie hojnie obdarzone przez naturę patrzą na wychudzone modelki i marzą o miseczce B albo nawet A. Peszy je wzrok mężczyzn, który zatrzymuje się właśnie na tych wdziękach. Z kolei kobiety z mniejszymi piersiami zwykle wstydzą się ich, krępują się rozebrać na plaży, założyć obcisłą sukienkę, bo uważają się za mniej kobiece, mniej seksowne i mniej ponętne. Często więc ukrywają biust pod… stanikami wypchanymi gąbką. Większość z nas ma też zastrzeżenia do kształtu piersi. Wciąż drżymy o to, czy wygląd naszych odpowiada kanonom mody. Bo może powinny być bardziej okrągłe, sterczące lub mieć małe, dziewczęce brodawki. No i dręczymy się myśleniem, czy nasze piersi nie są zbyt obwisłe i czy nie rozchodzą się na boki.

Co w nich takiego jest?
Zdaniem psychologów biust wywołuje tyle emocji, ponieważ większość pań uważa, że wyłącznie on określa naszą seksualną atrakcyjność. A panowie, choć nie przeczą, że podnieca ich widok biustu, w rankingu najatrakcyjniejszych kobiecych części ciała stawiają go daleko za innymi, dopiero na… piątym miejscu! Okazuje się, że bardziej zwracają uwagę na twarz, pośladki, a nawet talię i nogi. Dla nas jednak piersi stoją w rankingu o wiele wyżej. Duma ze swojego biustu dodaje nam pewności siebie i poczucia atrakcyjności. Często porównujemy swoje kształty z innymi kobietami i o wiele częściej niż mężczyźni krytykujemy je. Jesteśmy specjalistkami od wynajdywania najdrobniejszych defektów w ich kształcie, wielkości czy kondycji skóry. A panowie? No cóż, oni nie widzą tych niedoskonałości dopóki… same im o nich nie powiemy.

Idealne, czyli… moje!
Przyszedł czas, by przestać się zastanawiać, ile naszym piersiom brakuje do ideału. Spór o to, czy panowie wolą małe, duże czy jeszcze jakieś inne piersi jest już rozstrzygnięty! Z badań wynika, że najbardziej lubią takie, z których zadowolona jest ich właścicielka! Mitem jest więc powszechne uwielbienie dla silikonowych balonów. Mężczyźni faktycznie podziwiają biust, ale ten naturalny, zadbany, w dobrze dobranej bieliźnie (najlepiej białej albo czarnej, rzadko w cielistej). Dla większości z nich rozmiar miseczki ma drugo-, albo nawet trzeciorzędne znaczenie. Dlatego od dziś koniec z bezsensowną licytacją, które piersi są lepsze, pora pokochać swoje, bo właśnie te są naprawdę najpiękniejsze i idealne. A co wtedy, kiedy partner zachwyca się twoim biustem, a ty wciąż nie jesteś z niego zadowolona? Zobacz, jak można poprawić jego kształt i prezencję. Oprócz operacji plastycznych istnieje wiele mniej inwazyjnych sposobów. Dobierz odpowiednią bieliznę, codziennie wmasowuj w piersi krem ujędrniający, balsam nawilżający i ćwicz. Pływanie i codzienna gimnastyka potrafią zdziałać cuda.
Spraw, by piersi były twoim atutem

* Stanik:
- gdy są za duże: na fiszbinach i stabilnych, elastycznych ramiączkach dobrze podtrzymujących piersi
- gdy są za małe: najlepszy będzie push-up albo przynajmniej usztywniany

* Dekolt:
- gdy sa za duże: w literę V, portfelowy – zmniejsza i świetnie prezentuje dom
- gdy są za małe: w łódkę, ale też dobrze będziesz wyglądać w golfie

* Tkanina/deseń:
- gdy są za duże: naturalna, najlepiej matowa; w deseniu postaw na bluzki gładkie albo w pionowe pasy
- gdy są za małe: lśniąca; deseń: kwiaty, krata, wzory geometryczne, falbanki, marszczenia, cekiny

* Kolor:- gdy są za duże: raczej ciemny, nieco przygaszony; dobrze będziesz wyglądać np. w czerni, brązie, szarości
- gdy są za małe: najlepsze dla ciebie będą wszystkie jasne i jaskrawe kolory

* Biżuteria:
- gdy są za duże: długie łańcuszki z delikatnym wisiorkiem, drobne korale
- gdy są za małe: krótkie, duże korale, naszyjniki do wysokości biustu

Biust w każdym rozmiarze może być piękny

Marcin Prokop, prezenter TVN
Powiem szczerze, że piersi nie są dla mnie numerem jeden wśród atrybutów kobiety. Większą uwagę zwracam na pupę. Ale na piersi też nie jestem obojętny. Oczywiście na te w wersji naturalnej. Silikonowe implanty są odpychające. Zwłaszcza u pań już nie pierwszej młodości. Wygląda to po prostu niesmacznie. Po co więc faszerować się silikonem? Przecież to normalne, że w pewnym wieku wszyscy tracimy trochę na urodzie.

Robert Moskwa, aktor
Nie mam obsesji na punkcie piersi, co nie znaczy, że jak rozmawiam z kobietą, która ma bluzkę z dużym dekoltem, to wzrok mi nie ucieknie właśnie w to miejsce. Uważam, że piękno biustu nie zależy od jego rozmiaru, ale od tego, czy jest w pełni akceptowany przez właścicielkę. Taka pewna siebie kobieta doskonale go prezentuje i facetowi do głowy nawet nie przyjdzie, żeby myśleć o jakichkolwiek defektach.

Anna Maruszeczko, prezenterka TVN Style
Jeszcze jakiś czas temu nie doceniałam piersi, nie uważałam ich za specjalny atut kobiecości. Zauważyłam jednak, że są dużym wabikiem na mężczyzn. A panie, które są zadowolone z biustu, są też ogólnie pewne siebie, lepiej się poruszają. Dlatego dbam o piersi. Ćwiczę, pielęgnuję je kosmetykami i zwracam uwagę na dobór bielizny.

Marzena Rogalska, prezenterka TVN Style
Zawsze uważałam, że mam fajny biust, a wcale nie jest zbyt duży. Kiedyś myślałam, że mógłby być trochę większy, ale w końcu pokochałam taki, jaki jest. Na operację plastyczną nigdy bym się nie odważyła, bo bardzo boję się bólu. Nie potępiam jednak kobiet, które mimo iż mogłyby być naturalnie piękne, z własnej woli idą pod nóż.
Monika Sobień

The Great Unease

Global consumer optimism surveys routinely show anxiety, unease, dread in Europe and USA. This sense of unease should be absent considering the prosperity levels, the best health-care systems, a welfare state, guaranteed unemployment benefits, their technology, their currency and their democracy.

The Indians and Chinese routinely are more optimistic – which should not happen considering the low income levels. Fancy theory apart, to my mind, it is the ’sword fatigue’ in response to constant exposure by Western Governments (to which they are exposed) which causes this low optimism.

Medieval – Renaissance Europe

16th century Europe – specifically, Spain and Portugal. The last of the Moors had been driven out of Spain. The Christian standard was flying high. The Papal Bull divided the Earth (for the Europeans) between Spain and Portugal. White Christian rulers of Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand, set historic standards in persecution and extortion. More than a million Jews were killed, crucified, burnt alive; their properties confiscated and distributed. Columbus returned to enslave the American Natives – and subsequently, work them to death.

New chapters in bloodshed were being written by conquistadors like Vasco Nunez De Balboa, Francisco Pizarro, Juan Ponce de Leon, Hernando de Soto, Hernando Cortez, et al. Not to forget the search for El Dorado led by, “above all, that prince of monsters Lope de Aquirre, colour the pages with the darkest hues of bloody emprise.” In South American memory, Francisco de Carvajal, the “demon of the Andes” remains alive. These real-life monsters set new standards in brutality, slavery and genocide.

Europe in the sixteenth century was “obsessed with questions of language, and especially so in Spain and its recently conquered American Empire“ (emphasis mine). This was driven by

what Marshal McLuhan called “the hypertrophy of the unconscious,” a phenomenon he associated with periods of revolution in media technology: the advent of print in the 16th century created a great need for sensational materials to be broadcast, and this need caused ideas that formerly had been only lurking in the dark recesses of men’s minds to come floating to the surface.

One of the great bestsellers of the 16th century was the Histoires prodigieuses of Pierre Boaistuau (Paris, 1560), a sort of Renaissance Ripley’s Believe-it-or-not containing marvelous tales on everything … Seventeen of the Histoires forty tales are about monsters, a fact that may explain why the book was republished anywhere from ten to twenty two times and translated into Dutch, Spanish and English. (from Popular culture in the Middle Ages By Josie P. Campbell).

Spanish literature of the Renaissance

From this hotbed of ferment, a representative of this period was Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681), the Spanish writer. Growing up in a Spain, a 100 years after the Conquistadors, benefiting from the twin advantages of fresh memory and hindsight - “a century of Janus, facing backward, towards the rise of the Spanish Empire … and forward, toward its decline.” His more than a 100 plays and writings represent significantly, 17th century Spain – and even Europe.

There is probably no word that is more characteristic of Calderon de la Barca’s art than monstruo, “monster.” Rare is the play in which the word does not appear several times … (from Celestina’s brood By Roberto González Echevarría).

Calderon’s play about Semiramis, the Assyrian Empire builder, showed her in a monster mode – her hybrid character the most masculine modes and the most feminine, a monster of destruction and creation”. And Calderon was not alone. The fertile growth of monsters gave birth to a new study – teratology, the study of monsters.

“Monster lore truly becomes “popular culture” only with the Renaissance … Fresh works on the subject of teratology are written by Italians, Germans, and Frenchmen. The foreruuner of the modern newspaper, the broadside were bought at street corners and at fairs by the barely literate masses. The great reformers Luther and Melanchthon used the broadside medium to popularize their propagandistic and anti-Catholic versions of two of the most famous monsters of the Renaissance, the Monk-calf of Freiburg and the Pope-ass of Rome. (from Popular culture in the Middle Ages By Josie P. Campbell).

Some of Calderon’s plays dealt with the proselytization of the Native Americans – like his play, La Aurora En Copacabana (Dawn in the Copacabana), described as a play about “the conquest and conversion of the Indians in Peru”

The success of the conquest, therefore, is attributed to (Christian) faith which is valued as mans greatest gift to the world … Thus (Christian) conquest becomes a form of colonisation with the purpose of imposing religion and culture on a land “que habitan inhumanos” (512) and is in need of redemption and education. Finally, the play tries to harmonise irreconcilable contradictions which lie at the bottom of colonial discourse. (texts in brackets and italics mine).

With this idea, must be seen something important. That is the important element of “the escape of the monster.” In the … Monster Theory, Joel Cohen has remarked that the monster always escapes. Now combine the three elements – the newly acquired colonies of America, the proselytization (or otheriwse, the genocide) and the escape of the monster. These were the ‘monsters’ of colonialism.

A very interesting play by Calderon was La vida es sueño (Life is a dream). It tells the story of Segismundo, the Prince Of Poland, who was destined to be a monster. To forestall the prophecy, Segismundo was imprisoned by his father from the time of his birth. In adulthood, released from prison to test the prediction, Segismundo fulfills the prophecy. As a analyst of Calderon’s work summarizes,

Affirming a “better reality,” Segismundo’s message speaks as well to all of Europe: the “new European man” is the real monster. (from The subject in question By C. Christopher Soufas).

200 years after Calderon, HG Wells, in the The Island of Doctor Moreau, foretold Joseph Menegle’s experiments rather well.

Onshore genocide – The Roma Gypsies

Apart from the Jewish persecution, less known is the the persecution of the Roma Gypsy, which continues till date. In Europe, kidnapping children was considered legal for most of 1500AD-1750AD. On one condition – you had to kidnap Roma Gypsy children! More than 25,000 children kidnapped. No problem. Everybody sleeps peacefully at night. Switzerland was doing this till 1973!

Roughly, between 1500 to 1750, it was legal in Europe to hunt human beings. Yes! Just like hunting for deer in India, or hunting buffalo in Africa or fox-hunting in Britain. Yes! You could hunt human beings. As long as the humans you hunted were Roma Gypsies. In Europe you could be hung to death if you committed the crime of being born – between 1500AD-1750AD! Born as a Roma Gypsy!

Europeans, in the their age of Enlightenment and Renaissance, (1500-1750) could just pick up human slaves – yes, own them like cattle and furniture, if you found one! As long as they were Roma Gypsies. Later you could also sell them for profit!

Ship owners and captains in Europe’s Golden age, (1500-1750) could arrange galley slaves for free. No wages, no salary. You just had to feed them. Use them, abuse them, flog them, kill them, drown them. You could do anything – as long as they were Roma Gypsies.

What set off the Roma Gypsy Genocide

In 1420, a 60 year old man, blind in one eye took charge – and took on the might of the Roman Church and Roman Emperors.

Jan Zizka.

Over the next 12 months, he became completely blind. In the next 15 years, Zizka (and other Czech generals) defeated, many times, the combined armies of Germany, The Roman Church and others. His military strategy was studied for the next 500 years. Thereafter, the myth of military might of the Church was broken forever.

Jan Zizka allied himself with the Taborites (the radical Hussite wing). Zizka made Tábor in Bohemia into an armored and mobile fortress – the Wagenburgs.

Interestingly, a 100 years after the Hussite Wars, the European persecution of the Roma Gypsies began in full earnest. And during WW2, the Vatican joined with the Nazi collaborators, the Ustashe,  to extort gold and the genocide against the Roma Gyspises.

Military success

Zizka ranks with the great military innovators of all time. Zizka’s army was made up of untrained peasants and burghers (townspeople). He did not have the time or resources to train these fighters in armament and tactics of the time. Instead they used weapons like iron-tipped pikes and flails, armored farm wagons, mounted with small, howitzer type cannons.

Roma Gypsy Wagon Caravan

His armored wagons, led by the Taborites, in offensive movements, broke through the enemy lines, firing as they rolled, cutting superior forces into pieces. For defense, the wagons were arranged into a tight, impregnable barrier surrounding the foot soldiers – the Wagenburg (the wagon fort), as they came to be known. The wagons also served to transport his men. Zizka thus fully initiated modern tank warfare. Zizka’s experience under various commanders was useful. At the Battle of Tannenberg (1410), Zizka fought on the Polish side , in which the famed German Teutonic Knights were defeated.

Coming back …

Who were the major users of the wagons in Europe then (and now?) Answer – The Roma Gypsies.

Who were the people who could pose spiritual and ecclesiastical questions to the Vatican? Answer – The Gypsies, with their Indian heritage, were not not new to spiritual dialectics (contests, discourse and debates). For instance, Mani, and his adherents, an Indic teacher of Buddhist thought, known to Christians as Manichean thought, were the nightmare for Christianity till the 15th century. When Mani called for overthrow of slavery, the Vatican at the Council of Gangra, re-affirmed its faith in slavery. European minds were occupied with the questions raised by the Hussite reformers.

Some think they (the Waldensians) had held them for centuries; some think they had learned them recently from the Taborites. If scholars insist on this latter view, we are forced back on the further question: Where did the Taborites get their advanced opinions? If the Taborites taught the Waldenses, who taught the Taborites?

Who were the people who could help the persecuted Waldensians, the Bogomils, the Cathars to escape persecution and spread out across the Europe? Answer – The Roma Gypsies – in their wagons. The same Gypsies, had earlier pioneered the Troubadour culture in the Provence Region, which provoked the Albigensian Crusade by the Vatican.

Prokop Coat Of Arms

And who was the King of the Taborites? Answer – An entire clan of leaders who called themselves as Prokop (The Shaven /Bald; The Little and The Great) were the military leaders of the Taborites.

The word and name Prokop have no meaning in any European language – except in Sanskrit, where it means vengeance, retribution, violent justice.

Mythology as History

Jan Hus initiated the Reformation in the Vatican Church. It was Jan Zizka who broke the back of Papal authority. On the back of these Czech successes, was laid the foundation of 95 Theses by Martin Luther in 1517. The British break (1533-34) with the Holy Roman Church happened due to favors by the Papal office to the Iberian Empires – in matters of trade and colonial expansion, and the impediments to divorce of Henry-VIII at the behest of the Spanish rulers.

Today, the Germans and the British are loath to be reminded about the Czech Church Reform initiatives and the defeats at the hands of the Poles and Czechs. Western historiography about the Enlightenment and Renaissance, in Britain, France and Germany, leading to the reformation is ‘mythology as history’.

Of course, the role of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Byzantine Empire in the entire Czech saga is also worth re-examining. Were the Hussite Wars, a proxy war waged by the Eastern Church against the Vatican?

Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr.Hyde

In the 19th century came the monster story was dubbed as Gothic – and this form of story-telling matured as a craft.

A significant array of Gothic writers emerged from Ireland (from Charles Maturin, Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker, and Oscar Wilde to the contemporary writer Patrick McGrath), in a colonial situation where a Protestant minority was the colonial occupier. (from Late Victorian Gothic tales By Roger Luckhurst)

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851), wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley started writing Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, at the age of 18, and completed it one year later. First published in London, anonymously, in 1818 by small London publishing house of Harding, Mavor & Jones – after previous rejections by bigger publishers like Charles Ollier (Percy Bysshe Shelley’s publisher), and John Murray (by Byron’s publisher). The writer’s name started appearing from the second edition of 1823 onwards. The interesting aspect, lost in popular usge, is that the monster is not named – and Frankenstein was the scientist, who brought the monster to life.

In 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson’s book, The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde was first published. This explored how ‘normal’ (Dr.Jekyll) human beings could become ‘evil’ (Mr.Hyde).

And in 1887, Bram Stoker, an Irish writer published his Dracula. The character of Dracula is based on Emperor Sigismund and his Order of the Dragon, who waged war against the Hussites – led by Jan Zizka. Infamous for his betrayal of Jan Hus, he sparked of the Hussite Wars, in which the Taborites (the Roma Gypsies) used wagons and gun powder for the first time in Europe. He founded a secret sect,  the “Dracul” called the Order of the Dragon.

Of course, these three are the most famous – but not the only ones. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1871 “Carmilla“, about a lesbian vampire was another monster book of its time. An associate of Mary Shelley, John Polidori created the character of the “The Vampyre” in 1819 – on which possibly Dracula was based.

Most significantly, in 1896, was HG Well’s The Island of Doctor Moreau, which presaged Joseph Mengele – when Joseph Mengele had not even started on his higher education. A good 50 years before Joseph Mengele’s experiments were discovered by a shocked world.

The wellspring of these works is H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau. In this 1896 novel, a vivisectionist attempts to transform animals into men until the misshapen creatures revert and kill him, the forces of nature overcoming man’s civilizing artifices. From The Boys From Brazil (Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele, alive and well and cloning Hitlers at a secret lab in the Brazilian Amazon) to Jurassic Park (Richard Attenborough alive and well and cloning velociraptors), Wells’ basic formula has become familiar: an island; a Frankensteinian experiment; a Faustian scientist; something gone terribly, terribly wrong. (from Requiem for the Mad Scientist By Arthur Allen, in Slate).

From the 1700-1800, while Spain was in decline, for about a 100 years, Western literary field did not see too much action on the monster front. The main action was in Haiti, where zombies, the ex-murderers, the living dead became a part of the voodoo cult.

The late Victorian era was one of the most expansive phases of the empire. Britain annexed some thirty-nine separate areas around the world between 1870-1900, in competition with newly aggressive America in the Pacific or the European powers in the so-called ‘Scramble for Africa’ after the continent was divided up at the Berlin conference of 1885. (from Late Victorian Gothic tales By Roger Luckhurst)

The last of the true great monster in popular culture came from the East. Soon after WW2, as tales of Japanese atrocities started coming out and as American atrocities in Vietnam started, Godzilla came out of Japan. But a different pressure head was building up, which gave rise to a new genre – detective fiction.

Euro-Pessimism

Between 1800-1950, Western powers killed (directly or otherwise) more than 50 million people in America (the Native Americans), Africa (the Native Africans and Afro-Americans), Asia (Indians, Chinese, Arabs). This led to a situation that every other person in the West had participated in murder or massacre. Western ambiguity towards Soviet Russia on one side, Hitler on the other – and to that add, Gandhiji’s resolute opposition to colonialism – and you have a inflammable situation.

The deluge of blood and murder caused moral anxiety and was a matter of ethical dilemma amongst common folks. The pressure valve for this was popular fiction. Identifying murderers became a form of proxy, vicarious entertainment for ordinary folks. Enter the super detectives, who pick out the murderer from a room full of ordinary people. Enter detectives like Auguste Dupin, of ‘The Purloined Letter‘ fame, who “investigates an apparently motiveless and unsolvable double murder in the Rue Morgue.”

Murder in Popular Image

A trend started by Edgar Allan Poe, whose first detective novel, Murders In Rue Morgue (1841) soon became an avalanche. Writers like Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple solving murders happening by the second), Georges Simenon (and his Inspector Maigret investigating brutal crimes), Ngaio Marsh (Roderick Alleyn), GK Chesterton (Father Brown), Raymond Chandler (Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe) dealt with murder. Alfred Hitchcock made horror thrillers in similar themes.

Agatha Christie’s book filmed as Ten Little Indians, based on the book, initially released (the book) in Britain as Ten Little Niggers (later renamed as Then There None) gives the game away. Agatha Christie probably pre-saged the White desire to ensure that there should be none of the Native Americans left to tell the tale. The overt racism in Herge’s ‘Tintin in Congo’ made the world sit-up and note the pervasiveness of racism in detective fiction.

Jerome Delamater, Ruth Prigozy, in an essay compilation, ‘Theory and Practice of Classic Detective Fiction’, observe that Jane Marple, along with Hercule “Poirot becomes an equal opportunity detective who really believes that anyone might commit murder”. Dismissing the jaundiced view of human nature,” the writers of this book, while commenting about the detective fiction genre, do not mention slavery at all – and mention colonialism and racism once each.

The Mystery of the Dying Detective

After de-colonisation, as mass murder went underground, the detective-murder mystery books genre faded. This category was replaced by a new theme – the axis of corporation-government international conspiracies.

Conspiracy Theory – Full Steam Ahead

The new category of popular fiction are represented by Ian Fleming, Arthur Hailey, Frederick Forsyth, Irving Wallace, Robert Ludlum, Graham Greene, John Le Carre, et al. More and more contrived, each conspiracy theory writer has been ‘inspired’ by real life incidents.

While Ludlum’s international-conspiracy-plot-CIA-FBI-KGB series have worn thin, the spookiness of Le Carre’s Absolute Friends and Constant Gardner still work as novels representing the West.

Western Twins – Anxiety and Paranoia

To develop this understanding further, there are two classes of films that I wish to draw attention to.

Malignant Nature

Jaws (the shark that eats humans), Jurassic Park (mad scientists, conspiring technicians let loose man eating dinos) Gremlins and Poltergiest (things that go bump in the night). This paranoid fear of nature (and natural laws) seems to be a result of the subterranean knowledge of the way in which ecological damage and pollution is happening. These films produced /directed by Steven Spielberg (who is incomparable because as Time Magazine says, “No one else has put together a more popular body of work”)

Vindictive Humans

The other is the thinly disguised hate and prejudice films against the poor and the victimised. ‘Aliens’ needs just one small change for the films idea to become clear. Instead of LV-426, Nostromo the space ship, receives a distress call from some country in South America or Africa (or India, if you prefer). The meaning is clear when you see the movie while conscious of the fact that alien is is the word the US Government uses for people from other countries.

What Does This Mean

A US commentator Robert Putnam says that

“… We don’t trust each other as much as we used to. Trust in other people has fallen from 58 percent in 1960 to 35 percent in the mid-1990s. Our less trusting atmosphere has led us to recoil from civic life and social ties. We belong to fewer voluntary organizations, vote less often, volunteer less, and give a smaller share of our gross national product to charity (Putnam, 1995a, 1995b; Knack, 1992; 1986; Uslaner, 1993, 96-97). People who trust others are more likely to participate in almost all of these activities, so the decline in trust is strongly linked to the fall in civic engagement (Putnam, 1995a; Brehm and Rahn, 1997; Uslaner, 1997) …”

Elephants in the room

Most critics and commentators write about the phenomenon of detective fiction devoid of context – and the detective fiction as entertainment only.

One writer, Franco Moretti did half the job in book Signs Taken for Wonders: On the Sociology of Literary Forms By Franco Moretti. He writes,

“The perfect crime – the nightmare of detective fiction – is the feature-less, deindividualized crime that anyone could have committed because at this point everyone is the same.” He further writes,“Yet, if we turn to Agatha Christie, the situation is reversed.Her hundred-odd books have only one message: the criminal can be anyone …”

In his entire book he does not use the words like slavery, racism, genocide, bigotry even once. The 19th century, which was based on Western bigotry, White racism, Black slavery, and assorted genocides is unrecognised in Moretti’s books.

Running or hiding? Or it a case of feeling squeamish? Perhaps, a case of queasy stomach, Franco?

Another book, The Detective as Historian: History and Art in Historical Crime Fiction, by Ray Broadus Browne, Lawrence A. Kreiser does a better job. This book examines, the detective fiction genre, with some references to slavery and child prostitution.

How was this explained away

As the monsters increased, both in real life and literature, rationalizations were required. A person no less than Immanuel Kant, was pressed into service to deconstruct the ‘monster’, re-invent it and give it a positive spin.

The monster taken up by Kant in an aesthetic sense to refer to those things that exceed representation considers that the monstrous describes an entity whose life force is greater than the matter in which in which it is contained. Thus rather than something that malfunctions during the course of its production, monstrosity is associated during romanticism with “over-exuberant living matter” that extends itself beyond its natural borders in order to affect a much wider sphere. ((from The subject in question By C. Christopher Soufas).

In the twentieth century, Kant’s hypothesis finds an echo when Lord Randolph William Churchill, the ‘Bulldog’ declared

“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race has come in and taken their place. (from Minorities, peoples, and self-determination By Nazila Ghanea-Hercock, Nazila Ghanea, Alexandra Xanthaki, Patrick Thornberry)

In another instance, Churchill wrote how ’superior’ Arabs, imposed on the ‘inferior’ negroes.

The stronger race imposed its customs and language on the negroes. The vigour of their blood sensibly altered the facial appearance … (from The River War By Winston Churchill).

Bevor der Eisberg schmilzt, rammt er noch schnell ein ganz großes Schiff. Aktuelles Beispiel: Der ehemalige Kripo-Chef Herwig Haidinger in der Rolle des Eisklotzes und das Schiff wird gespielt vom Vertrauen in die Exekutive und die Politik. 

Bis vor wenigen Tagen kannte man diesen Typen gar nicht. Fahles Gesicht, unscheinbares Auftreten, aber doch eine scheinbar große Rolle in unserem Land. Als er den Mund öffnet, plötzlich gespanntes Lauschen. Er packt aus. Jeden Tag kommen mehr und mehr Vorwürfe zum Vorschein, die den Otto Normalwähler einfach nur mehr den Kopf schütteln lassen. Hatte man doch bis dahin immer noch irgendwie den Glauben, auf einer Insel der Seeligen zu wohnen.

Zehn Jahre nach dem Verschwinden und zwei Jahre nach dem Wiederauftauchen von Natascha Kampusch erfährt man, dass schon wenige Wochen bzw. Monate nach dem Verschwinden Wolfgang Prikopil zum Verdächtigenkreis gehörte, aber nach einer Ermittlungsfehler nicht weiter observiert wurde. Als der Skandal 2006, kurz vor der Wahl, öffentlich werden sollte, wurde Haidinger von der damaligen Innenministerin Liese Prokop zurückgehalten. Man wolle ja keine Affäre aus dem ganzen machen. Frau Kampusch zeigte sich im erneuten Interview mit Herrn Feurstein erneut souveran und gefasst, was einen ob der immensen Menge an neuen (heftigen) Details ein kleines bisschen überrascht.

Schließlich sprach Haidinger auch über die Bawag-Affäre. Das einzige richtige Wahlkampfthema der ÖVP, mit dem man die Sozialdemokraten attackieren konnte, sollte sich nun zu einer anderen Affäre entwickeln. Denn die Polizei musste im Auftrag des damaligen Innenministeriums Akten, die gegen die SPÖ sprachen, über den Umweg der ÖVP, zum Untersuchungsausschuss schaffen.

Vorwürfe könnte man jetzt viele machen. Zum Beispiel “politischer Missbrauch der Ermittlungen” im Kriminalfall BAWAG, “die politisch motivierte Unterlassung der Untersuchung von Ermittlungspannen” im Fall Kampusch und auch noch das “mutwillige Veranlassen strafrechtlicher Ermittlungen gegen politisch nicht opportune Rechtsanwälte” (Quelle: diepresse.com). So werden nach dem Bawag-Prozess in den nächsten Jahren noch einige wichtige Gerichtsverfahren folgen. Und doch wird es maximal nur zu Verurteilungen kommen.

Zurück bleibt der Vertrauensbruch zur Polizei. Wenn sie sowieso nur alle Marionetten der Regierung sind, verlieren sie mehr und mehr an Glaubwürdigkeit. Vom “Freund und Helfer” werden sie zum Spielball der Politik. Wahrscheinlich muss dann die Regierung wieder eine Expertengruppe einsetzen, um das Image der Exekutive wieder aufzupolieren. Steuergelder hat man ja genug. Und die Politik? Eine ÖVP, die Fehler nicht eingestehen kann, und anfangs sich fast um Kopf und Kragen geredet hat. Eine ÖVP, die ihre Macht ausnützt um Gegner zu degradieren. Eine SPÖ, die zwar am liebsten einen Untersuchungsausschuss haben möchte, aber sich irgendwie nicht wirklich traut. Eine SPÖ, die noch viel mehr Marionette der ÖVP zu sein scheint, als es die Polizei jemals war.

Und dann sieht man die Zeit im Bild und liest die Tageszeitung und fragt sich: Haben wirklich 3,2 Millionen Österreicherinnen und Österreicher eine solche Politik gewählt? Das Traurige aber ist, dass die Regierung jetzt wohl nicht auseinanderbrechen wird. So hoch würden die Verluste für beide Parteien sein. Lieber weiterstreiten, die Menschen verunsichern und den Glauben in eine Demokratie verschwinden lassen. Und sich einschließen, im Nationalrat oder der Sandkiste, denn da, ja da … ist alles noch wie eine Insel. Eine Insel der Heiligen. Ähm. Der Scheinheiligen.