Beyond Rivalry

Deep Glamour's "What Your Jeans Say About You" (other than, "These are the only ones I could find that fit me ...") reports on a ground-breaking study in the Journal of Consumer Research that finds that our 'attachment' styles determine what jeans we wear:

"See, when you were but a wee babe in your mother's arms you honed one of two attachment styles, 'anxiety and avoidance,' the authors explain. Anxious people view themselves as positive or negative and avoidance people view others as positive or negative.

'Anxiously attached individuals are more influenced by "brand personalities," the idea that a brand possesses humanlike traits, such as sincerity or excitement. "Because of a low view of self, anxious individuals use brands to signal their ideal self-concept to future relationship partners and therefore focus more on the personality of the brand," the authors write.'

The study seems to look only at people whose styles are attachment-related anxiety and attachment-related avoidance. The study summary says nothing about the jeans preferences of people whose 'attachment style' isn't anxiety, i.e., those with a 'secure' style; how do they make these ultra-important decisions? I couldn't find a free version of the full-text article to learn more.

The reason I'm posting about it is that I take online surveys offered by several companies several times per week, and often these surveys ask me to describe a cereal, store, bank, insurance company, beauty product, or beverage in human terms, which stumps me every time. Can cereal be 'friendly,' 'angry,' or 'aloof'? How? I try to find the descriptors that could conceivably translate to a product, like 'reliable' or 'interesting,' and choose those just to tick one or two boxes from the 40 or so I'm presented with. (In most surveys, you have to tick at least one box per page or the survey gets stuck.) I've foten wondered what these human characteristics were doing in my survey. Now I see that the surveyors are apparently operating on the belief that people who like to take online surveys are 'anxiously attached individuals.' (Curious, I took an online attachment style quiz to see where I fall on this scale, which was squarely in the 'secure' quadrant. The other quadrants, defined by level of anxiety and avoidance, are called preoccupied, fearful-avoidant and dismissing.)

Paige Phelps at DG notes that the study seems seriously flawed in offering only two brands of jeans, Abercrombie & Fitch and Gap. Too true. And it's even more flawed because -- secure though I am, based on one self-administered online quiz -- I can become avoidant when anxious, and I wear only one flavour of Gap jeans, which I buy used on eBay or at Goodwill. I thought it was because they fit me best, having worn, over the years Lee, Levi, Style & Co., St. John's Bay, Covington (Sears), and lots of others whose names and humanlike qualities I can't recall. (They all seem 'blue' to me. :-)) But who knows. Maybe I think my jeans signal "secure, Christmas-loving, dog-empowered, tea-drinking, hopelessly pragmatic, mellow rationalist' to those who observe me.

PD James' latest Dalgliesh crime novel, The Private Patient (2008), is set largely in Devon at a manor house-cum-plastic surgery center. Central themes seem to include worthiness and what we deserve, revenge, redemption, forgiveness, the inability to forgive.

When the book opens, the reader is in the mind of the soon-to-be murder victim, Rhoda, and after her death, at various times we're privy to the thoughts and feelings of a number of other characters, including suspects and police. Rhoda turns out to be a rather single-minded and self-focused woman whose actions have been at least partially responsible for others' pain and harm, and by allowing us the victim's pov at the start, I think James aids our ability to sympathise with her.

Speaking of her family of origin, Rhoda recalls:

"Those outbursts of violence, the impotent rage, the shame, had done for them all. The important things had been unsayable. And looking into her mother's face, she asked herself how could she begin now? She thought her mother was right. It couldn't have been easy for her father to find that five-pound note week after week. It had come with a few words, sometimes in shaky handwriting: With love from Father. She had taken the money because she needed it and had thrown away the paper. With the casual cruelty of an adolescent, she had judged him unworthy to offer her his love, which she had always known was a more difficult gift than money. Perhaps the truth was that she hadn't been worthy to receive it."

Later, Dalgliesh, Kate and Benton are discussing the case over wine:

Benton says:

"People die because of who they are and what they are. Isn't that part of the evidence? I'd feel differently about the death of a child, a young person, the innocent."

Dalgliesh:

"Innocent? So you feel confident to make the distinction between the victims who deserve death and those who don't? ... Moral outrage is natural. Without it we're hardly human. But for a detective faced with the dead body of a child. the young, the innocent, making an arrest can become a personal campaign, and that's dangerous. It can corrupt judgment. Every victim deserves the same commitment."

This reminded me of a comment I read recently, attributed to Gil Bailie:

"Anything one does to champion the cause of the victim creates new victims, so then you have a shift in the marker, and the moral boomerang comes back upon those who were trying to champion the cause of victims and therefore made victims and therefore became victimizers and therefore the whole thing begins to shift again."

I think Dalgliesh is saying the same thing, though the line seems to so fine and the task so daunting -- to hear the victim, to do what one can to stop the making of victims (including recognising oneself as complicit in the ways we are), without making the avenging of victims a campaign, a cause to champion, a justification for victimising others.

Finally, James nicely summarises the way that finding an appropriate scapegoat brings order and peace to a community. Dalgliesh is musing about how suspects feel about the police:

"At first he and his team are awaited and greeted with relief. Action would be taken, the case cleared up, the horror which was also an embarrassment would be salved, the innocent vindicated, the guilty -- probably a stranger whose fate could cause no distress -- would be arrested and dealt with. Law, reason and order would replace the contaminating disorder of murder. But there had been no arrest and no sign of one. It was still early days, but for the small company at the Manor there was no foreseeable end to his presence or to his questioning. He understood their growing resentment .... "

Later she alludes briefly to the psychology of suspicion:

"Murder was a contaminating crime, subtly changing relationships which, even if not close, had been easy and without strain .... It wasn't a question of active suspicion, more the spread of an atmosphere of unease, a growing awareness that other people, other minds, were unknowable."

Reading lots, between my inter-library loaned crime novels -- finished Tana French's The Likeness last week, am reading PD James' new Dalgleish novel, The Private Patient, now, and have Reginald Hill's The Price of Butcher's Meat to read afterwards -- and the arrival of the Wall Street Journal through the door slot almost every day, a little 6-month perk for having completed about 200 online surveys in the last few years ... I love the WSJ, its editorial board notwithstanding.

Here are a couple of recent gems from its pages:

***

Destructive Delusions: How therapists and 'victims' seized on the idea of repressed memory, leveling false charges and ruining lives, by Theodore Dalrymple, a book review of Dr. Paul McHugh's Try to Remember: Psychiatry's Clash Over Meaning, Memory, and Mind. Best lines:

"One of the most extraordinary outbreaks of popular delusion in recent years was that which attached to the possibility of 'recovered memory' of sexual and satanic childhood abuse, and to an illness it supposedly caused, Multiple Personality Disorder. No medieval peasant praying to a household god for the recovery of his pig could have been more credulous than scores of psychiatrists, hosts of therapists and thousands of willing victims."

"In Try to Remember, Dr. McHugh hints at the cultural context in which preposterous and vicious accusations against parents and others could be so easily believed by seemingly intelligent people, including courtroom judges. ... Freudianism alone could not have produced the necessary atmosphere; there must have been other forces at work as well. The sanctification of victims and victimhood comes to mind."

***

Japan's Latest Fashion Has Women Playing Princess for a Day

Japanese women in their 20s and 30s are dressing up as doe-eyed princesses, aiming "to look like sugarcoated, 21st-century versions of old-style European royalty. They idolize Marie Antoinette and Paris Hilton, for her baby-doll looks and princess lifestyle." They buy $1000-outfits (frilly dress, parasol, handbag, shoes) and work their straight hair so that it's curly with 'super-volume" to assuage a "longing for a happy-ending fairy tale," if you accept that bit of sociological analysis.

The women (aka 'girls') particularly idolise 24-yr-old Keiko Mizoe, sales clerk at one of the stores that sells the gowns, who calls those who sport the look "perfect, gorgeous and feminine."

A 16-yr-old who's buying the clothes online because the store seems too intimidating says:

"Their cuteness is beyond human. I'd like to be like them."

A 36-yr-old housewife felt "shy about her plump figure" so she lost 33 pounds and can now wear the tight-waisted dresses, on which she spends $2,000 or $3,000 a month. Her parents "send the couple food so they have more money for Ms. Yamamoto's shopping sprees.

'I figure it's OK as long as what I'm buying is pretty,' she says."

***

How a Drug Maker Tries to Outwit Generics describes how pharmaceutical company Cephalon, Inc. maximises profits on its drugs, in particular, its narcolepsy drugs Provigil and Nuvigil, and entices customers away from cheaper generics. The company, using an apparently common tactic of pharmaceutical companies, has been recently increasing the price of Provigil -- now $8.71 per tablet, 24% more than 8 months ago and 74% more than 4 years ago -- so that patients will have an economic incentive to switch over to Cephalon's new and longer-lasting narcolepsy drug, Nuvigil, which will be available next year at a lower cost -- and, critically, which won't be off patent until 11 years after Provigil will be:

"It works like this: Knowing that Provigil will face generic competition in 2012 as its patent nears expiration, Cephalon is planning to launch a longer-acting version of the drug called Nuvigil next year. To convert patients from Provigil or Nuvigil, Cephalon has suggested in investor presentations that it will price Nuvigil lower than the sharply increased price of Provigil. By the time the copycat versions of Provigil hit the market the company is banking that most Provigil users will have switched to the less-expensive Nuvigil, which is patent-protected until 2023."

One woman who takes Provigil off-label for Parkinson's stopped taking the drug when her cost went to $565 per month. Her insurer, like most, won't cover payment of an off-label use (a use not approved by the FDA).

The article later notes that "fully preventing tactics like Cephalon's would be difficult short of outright regulation of drug prices. Most other countries in the world control drug prices, but most U.S. regulators and legislators have opposed such moves."

***

In further drug-related news: Power of Suggestion: When Drug Labels Make You Sick by Melinda Beck looks at the effect of nocebos, which are the opposite of placebos: the power of suggestion that brings on illness:

"Research deliberately causing nocebos has been limited (after all, it's kind of cruel). But in one 1960s test, when hospital patients were given sugar water and told it would make them vomit, 80% of them did.  Studies have also shown that patients forewarned about possible side effects are more likely to encounter them."

Interestingly,

"the rare, serious side effects listed on drug package inserts -- say, toxic epidermal necrolysis, in which one's skin falls off in large sheets -- are less subject to nocebo effects."

It's harder to "suggest" one's skin to slough off than to evoke headache and fatigue by suggestion, and anyway, as is noted in the article, large percentages of the general population experience these vague symptoms regularly; in a 1968 study of healthy subjects not on medications, only 19% said they had no symptoms (such as headache, fatigue, dizziness) in the past 3 days. Also noted, that anxiety about illness can bring about common side-effect symptoms like nausea, diarrhea, dry mouth and rapid heart beat.

** Hours after I read this, I learned that the dear friend of a friend of mine is suffering from exactly this "rare, serious side effect" of toxic epidermal necrolysis, likely from anti-inflammatories she had been taking for a while.

Just finished The Likeness by Tana French, which follows on her evocative debut of last year, In the Woods, both set in Ireland. The Likeness would be a great readlike for Donna Tartt's The Secret History, with its focus on a closely knit group of college-aged students (grad-school-aged, in this case) who have secrets.

French's writing and emotional sensitivity are both superb.

The elements that most interested me are the thread of sacrifice woven throughout the book, French's evocation of sadness, and her portrayal of the settled, harmonious, familial, habitual, insidious, dysfunctional, oppressive, romanticised and idealised relationships and lifestyle among the five friends. I think that besides sacrifice, one of the major themes of the book is home: what constitutes home, family, the places we are free, the places we are held; and how some people sacrifice everything to create home, and some feel it a threat they have to run from, and some never find it, and some luck into it for a week, a year, a decade, a lifetime.

Sacrifice

"I don't tell people this, it's nobody's business, but the job is the nearest thing I've got to a religion. The detective's god is the truth, and you don't get much higher or much more ruthless than that. The sacrifice, at least in Murder and Undercover ... is anything or everything you've got, your time, your dreams, your marriage, your sanity, your life. Those are the oldest and most capricious gods of the lot, and if they accept you into their service they take not what you want to offer but what they choose." [Cassie]

"Look at the old wars, centuries ago: the king led his men into battle. That was what the ruler was: both on a practical level and on a mystical one, he was the one who stepped forward to lead his tribe, put his life at stake for them, became the sacrifice for their safety. If he refused to do that most crucial thing at that most crucial moment, they would have ripped him apart -- and rightly so: he would have shown himself to be an impostor, with no right to the throne. ... But now ... Can you see any modern president or prime minister on the front line, leading his men into the war he's started? And once that physical and mystical link is broken, once the ruler is no longer willing to be the sacrifice for his people, he becomes not a leader but a leech, forcing others to take his risks while he sits in safety and battens on their losses. War becomes a hideous abstraction, a game for bureaucrats to play on paper; soldiers and civilians become pawns, to be sacrificed by the thousands for reasons that have no roots in any reality." [Daniel]

"Regardless of what advertising campaigns may tell us, we can't have it all. Sacrifice is not an option, or an anachronism; it's a fact of life. We all cut off our own limbs to burn on some altar. The crucial thing is to choose an altar that's worth it and a limb you can accept losing. To go consenting to the sacrifice." [Daniel]

"[J]ust like Daniel, I've always known there was a price to pay. What Daniel didn't know, or didn't mention, is what I said right at the beginning: the price is a wildfire shape-changing thing, and you're not always the one who chooses, you're not always allowed to know in advance, what it's going to be." [Cassie]

Near the end [spoiler alert], Cassie considers mercy, which you can also look at in terms of what people are willing to sacrifice, including themselves:

"There's so little mercy in this world. Lexie sliced straight through everyone who got between her and the door, people she had laughed with, worked with, lain down with. Daniel, who loved her like his blood, sat beside her and watched her die, sooner than allow a siege on his spellbound castle. Frank took me by the shoulders and steered me straight into something he knew could eat me alive. Whitethorn House let me into its secret chambers and healed my wounds, and in exchange I set my careful charges and blew it to smithereens. Rob, my partner, my shieldmate, my closest friend, ripped me out of his life and threw me away because he wanted me to sleep with him, and I did it. And when we had all finished clawing chunks off each other, Sam, who had every right to give me the finger and walk away for good, stayed because I held out my hand and asked him to."

There's also some philosophising about content and discontent, with language about 'the sacred' and 'exterminated at all costs':

Abby says:

"our entire society's based on discontent: people wanting more and more and more, being constantly dissatisfied with their homes, their bodies, their decor, their clothes, everything. Taking it for granted that that's the whole point of life, never to be satisfied. If you're perfectly happy with what you've got -- specifically if what you've got isn't even all that spectacular -- then you're dangerous. You're breaking all the rules, you're undermining the sacred economy, you're challenging every assumption that society's built on."

Daniel takes it up:

"I think you've got something there. ... Not jealousy, after all: fear. It's a fascinating state of affairs. Throughout history -- even a hundred years ago, even fifty -- it was discontent that was considered the threat to society, the defiance of natural law, that danger that had to be exterminated at all costs. Now it's contentment. What a strange reversal."

The Friends

"On weekends they worked on the house; occasionally, if the weather was good, they took a picnic somewhere. Even their free time involved stuff like Rafe playing piano and Daniel reading Dante out loud and Abby restoring an eighteenth-century embroidered footstool. They didn't own a TV, never mind a computer ....  They were like spies from another planet who had got their research wrong and wound up reading Edith Wharton and watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie."

"They were very tactile, all of them. We never touched in college, but at home, someone was always touching someone: Daniel's hand on Abby's head as he passed behind her chair, Rafe's arm on Justin's shoulder as they examined some spare-room discovery together, Abby lying back in the swing seat across my lap and Justin's, Rafe's ankles crossed over mine as we read by the fire. ... I was on full alert for any kind of sexual vibe ... and that wasn't what I was picking up. It was stranger and more powerful than that: they didn't have boundaries, not among themselves, not the way most people do. ... [A]s far as I could tell, everything, except thank God underwear, belonged to all of them. The guys pulled clothes out of the airing cupboard at random, anything that would fit; I never did figure out which tops were Lexie's and which ones were Abby's. They ripped sheets of paper out of each other's notepads, ate toast off the nearest plate, took sips out of whatever glass was handy."

This is what I am always looking for, and idealised as it is, I have sometimes lucked into it.

Sadness

"I was a wrecked thing smeared over with dark finger marks and stuck with shards of nightmare, and I had no right there anymore. I moved through my lost life like a ghost, trying not to touch anything with my bleeding hands, and dreamed of learning to sail in a warm place, Bermuda or Bondi, and telling people sweet soft lies about my past."

"We did something good. I thought that meant no damage could come of it. It's occured to me since that I may be a lot dumber than I look. ... If I learned one thing ... it's that innocence isn't enough. ... I didn't even try to explain to him what I was seeing, the fine spreading web through which we had all tugged one another to this place, the multiple innocences that make up guilt."

I've been reading in recent weeks about the so-called Bali Bombers, three men -- two brothers (commonly called Amrozi and Mukhlas) and an Imam/computer technician -- who were tried and found to be instrumental in the killing of 202 people -- most of whom were foreign nationals, including 88 Australians -- -- at nightclubs in a tourist area on the Indonesian island of Bali [in green] in 2002, to protest the US-led invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. (Bali is overwhelmingly Hindu, however.) Another 209 people were injured. (More at Wikipedia)

For their roles in the crime, their execution, which may occur by this weekend has now occured, will be by ritualised firing squad on another Indonesian island, off Java, the spot (or perhaps three separate spots) in the woods already decked out with chairs and crosses, after five years of legal appeals that apparently the bombers themselves had no interest in, as they have said throughout that they are ready and happy to die as martyrs, preferrably by beheading, in the Islamic way. They admit the crime and show no remorse but have apologised for killing Indonesian Muslims during the attacks.

Meanwhile, their family and other supporters are surging towards the moment of execution, burial, funerals, and partying, using the funeral as "an occasion 'to celebrate the victory of Islam.'" Graves have already been dug for the two brothers. A goat will be slaughtered. It will be an occasion for rallying.

As usual, it's the mimesis -- the accusative gesture, the heightening drama, the religious rituals and the prohibitions, the sacrificial centre that offers meaning and a feeling of unanimity amidst grief -- that interests me, and the predictable forms it takes, particularly as death comes very near:

The bombers are hailed by supporters as, variously, victorious martyrs, victims of an unfair system, and heroes whose deaths will spin off more heroes.

• Family members have said it's unfair for the Bali Bombers to be killed before the Bali Nine heroin smugglers, who "should be executed first because their drugs could have killed more people."
• The bombers issued a statement in October: "'Principally we are ready to die but if the executions go ahead it is wrong. If we are executed there will be new Mukhlases, new Imam Samudras and new Amrozis and they will take revenge,' they said."
• They have also written "an open letter encouraging their supporters to retaliate after they are executed," naming some specific officials whom they believe should be killed.
• The brother of two of the Bali bombers supports his brothers' right to kill "half-naked people [the people in the nightclubs] ... for the perceived insult. ... 'That's what [my brothers] believe. Whatever it is, it is against Islam and must be fought, whatever the form, whatever the action.'" Their mother concurred: "'I feel that killing infidels isn't a mistake because they don't pray.'"
  

The site of the execution has become rather sacred-seeming in the media, and both speech and acts related to the deaths are shot through with religious language and appeals.

• Religion is obvious at the site(s): There are crosses there, religious officials have met with the men and will accompany the bombers to their place of execution (as will lawyers and a doctor).
• There are rituals: the setting up of the execution site(s) in a particular way, the health check-ups for those who are about to die, families delivering a last meal of favoured goodies and other gifts. All the elements are in place, including autopsy table, helicopters and body carrier baskets, and the fourteen members of the execution squad, and a 'rehearsal' of the execution is planned for today.
  
• There are mythologies and compelling stories galore, from everyone's point of view, and they all say the same thing: we are victims and someone else is to blame for the violence. We are justified. There are rumours among supporters of the bombers that the U.S. CIA was behind the most destructive of the three bombs that exploded that October night. They see the attacks as "'a conspiracy between America, Australia and the Jews.'" There are all kinds of theories concerning the nefarious meaning of the multiple delays in carrying out the executions.
  

The supporters are gearing up for a show of grief, celebration, and unanimity on behalf of religion and its martyrs.

• Jemaah Islamiyah, a local network of "mostly Afghan trained militants" that is believed to be behind the Bali bombings, will be at the funerals in force and have threatened to kill in revenge for the executions. The founder of that group, Abu Bakar Bashir, plans to attend both funerals; he says that "Muslims would be angry if the men are executed but what he is most scared of is 'if God is angry.' 'If Muslims are angry,' he said, 'it will be only words. But if God is, it will be real problem.'"
  
• The U.S. and Australian embassies in Jakarta received bomb threats by text message earlier this week. Australia has raised its terror alert and launched travel warnings in anticipation of violence after the executions are made known.
  
• Some Indonesians are donating their land for the bombers' burial ground, to create a Jihadi cemetery; a blogger living in Jakarta notes: "'It is almost comical in a sense the competition that is being generated with regards to signing up the families of the soon to be dead killers to a burial spot.'"

Not only are the supporters building momentum, so is the media. I set up a news alert for "Bali Bombers" last week. It brings about 20-25 news stories per day into my email box, more than any other news alert I've ever had. And nothing is happening -- except the pre-death rituals, anticipation and intimations, and the post-death fears, anticipation and predictions -- and the precise recording of the process of momentum-building as mimetic.

I admit to feeling fascinated, not by these three bombers and what they've done, in particular, nor by their deaths whenever they occur, but by the process as it unfolds so clearly, so ordinarily though it's writ large, so (seemingly) unconsciously through all the conscious strategising.

To quote Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942): "It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." Three people, yes, and yet, how alike we seem, how much the same the system seems to operate everywhere: how ready to grieve, to unify, to remove conflictual elements, to blame and accuse someone else, to seek revenge, to feel we are victims, to ritualise, to sacralise, to mythologise, to invoke a higher authority to support our views, to want our side to win, to join in the violence and to feel good knowing we're right.

Update 14 Nov: This article in The Age today hits most of the elements of the scapegoat mechanism: unification of splinter groups through shared anger, grief and a sense of being the victims of others -- the outsider 'others' become the enemies, displacing animosity among  warring splinter groups; the compelling story that can be told to enroll new converts; the 'sacrifice' and the glorification of the 'self-sacrificing' victims; and, the understanding in modern times that violence in the name of religion masks "economic, political and social disaffection."

I'm re-reading James Alison's Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatalogical Imagination. Alison speaks of the importance of the Resurrection as a subversion of our human story (which is framed by death) -- and not as the abolition of the human story -- and as "including that which is capable of being rescued and transformed: the human story of violence and victimization," and he calls to mind the English mystic Julian of Norwich in this context:

"Julian of Norwich ... affirms that in heaven our sins will be not shame, but glory to us. This seems to me to be the authentically Catholic intuition. I try to make sense of it in terms of the transvestite prostitutes whom I knew in Brazil when they were in the final phrase of their struggle with AIDS. I hope to know them again in heaven, not so transmogrified that their personal life story has been, in each case, abolished, but rather so utterly alive that their fake beauty, arduously cultivated, their sad personal stories of envy, violence, frustration in love, and their illness have become trophies which are not sources of shame, but which add to their beauty and joy."

And oh, that we would live more often in heaven now.

It's been six weeks since I last blogged about mob violence. I've been away most of that time, but no matter where we go or what we're doing, collective violence continues in many forms. Below are some of the latest incidents reported as mob violence or mob justice. (And here's why I'm doing it.)

August to the present (also December 2007, and in 1999): Violence against Christians continues in Orissa, on India's east coast, since the 23 Aug. assassination of a Hindu swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and four of his followers: "Though Maoist insurgents took credit for the killing, Hindu extremists blamed Christians. They mounted mob attacks on churches, as well as homes and villages populated by Christians.  More than 100 people reportedly have been beaten, hacked or burned to death since the mob violence began. It is estimated tens of thousands of Christians have fled their homes, many remaining in seclusion in forests and others in relief camps with police guards. ... Christians reportedly make up about 2.4 percent of the state's 36.7 million people." A BBC news report mentions the religious rivalry of the region: "Hindu groups have long accused Christian priests of bribing poor tribes and low-caste Hindus to convert to Christianity. Christians say lower-caste Hindus convert willingly to escape the Hindu caste system." More at Orissa Burning, at Legacy Matters, and in the NY Times.

12 Oct. 2008, Andhra Pradesh, India: "Even before Friday's communal fire could be doused, six members of a family, including three children, were burnt alive after their tile-roofed house was engulfed in a mysterious fire in a village near here in the strife-torn Adilabad district in the early hours of Sunday." Relatives allege "that Mahboob Khan's family members were killed and later burnt to death by pouring kerosene on them." The incident is under investigation.

Previously, 12km away in Bhainsa town, "three people were killed when a Durga idol immersion procession was passing by a mosque, where Friday prayers were being offered. Two of the three killed ... were from the minority community and they were stabbed to death. Twenty-five people had been injured too."  Andhra Pradesh home minister K Jana Reddy appealed for calm and "he urged people to stay away from rumour mongers."

8 Oct. 2008, Dhule, Mumbai, India: "The communal riots that erupted in Dhule on Sunday afternoon have claimed six lives so far. Eight others were injured in the riots which broke out after two groups clashed over the tearing of posters. ... Eighty-six were injured in mob violence." The area is about 75% Hindu and 25% Muslim. "Residents said that 10-15 houses were set ablaze near the Juna Devpur Eintbhatti area and the wall of Agna mosque was demolished by the rioters. ... 'The police became mute spectators as rioters pelted stones and put property on fire. They could not be controlled.'"

1 Oct. 2008, Kemaman, Terengganu, Malaysia: "A group of men beat to death a suspected motorcycle thief on Saturday in what appeared to be mob justice. The 30-year-old man was attacked by a group of 20 to 30 men. ... The suspected thief, from Dungun, had prior convictions and was also believed to have been a drug addict." Four men, aged between 30 and 40, are being held for murder.

30 Sept. 2008, Norwich City Centre, East Anglia, UK: "Three men have been arrested over the murder of a millionaire banker who tried to save a homeless Lithuanian man being assaulted by a mob." Frank McGarahan, 45, died from head injuries suffered when intervening to help: "[A]s Mr McGarahan shouted at the gang of ten men to stop, they turned on him. In the fracas, he suffered a serious head injury."

27 Sept. 2008, Meetiyagoda, Sri Lanka: "In a tragic incident, a six-year-old boy was burnt to death in his sleep when an angry mob set fire to a house in Meetiyagoda on Thursday night following a dispute with his parents. ... Police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekara told the Daily Mirror the parents and the victim had gone to attend a wedding in the Bataduwa area on Thursday evening. In the night the father had come home along with the child and gone back to the wedding after the child went to sleep.  He had got involved in a brawl there, reportedly after consuming liquor. The brawl had taken serious proportions forcing him to flee the area and hide in the jungle. The angry group had stormed his house and set fire to it unaware of the presence of the sleeping child. The house which was made out of wattle and daub was swiftly gutted by fire."

26 Sept. 2008, Delhi, India: "Lalit Choudhary, 47, died on Monday of head wounds after being attacked by a mob at the Graziano Transmissioni car parts factory in Delhi. He'd been attempting to resolve a long-standing dispute with workers who had demanded better pay and permanent contracts, and some of whom had been sacked for their trouble.  However, a meeting with former employees turned seriously nasty and 'the unemployed men began vandalising the machinery, turning on Choudhary when he tried to reason with them'. ...  Around 125 dismissed workers armed with iron rods barged into the factory and went on rampage. When Lalit tried to pacify them, they assaulted him with rods." More at The Register.

7 Sept. 2008, Paris, France: From the Jerusalem Post: "Three counselors from the Bnei Akiva youth movement were attacked not far from the organization's central branch in Paris on Saturday afternoon. The boys, aged between 17 and 18, had just finished the minha prayer when they were attacked by a group of Muslims. ... [T]he youths were initially approached by a group of three Muslim/African immigrants who began to throw chestnuts in their direction. When one of the counselors asked them why they were being attacked, the assailants began shouting anti-Semitic remarks. Ten to 12 attackers wearing brass knuckles joined the original three and beat the three Jews until police arrived." The victims sustained a broken nose, broken jaw, and lacerations.

6 Sept. 2008, Birmingham, England, UK: "A father died after being slashed across the face and then repeatedly stabbed on his own doorstep by a mob in front of his teenage son.  Odd job man Jeff Parry, 44, was left dying in a pool of blood after the frenzied attack. Neighbours in Bromford, Birmingham, yesterday claimed he had been a victim of mob justice -- targeted after being accused of stealing a handbag. They said he answered the door to a group of men who lashed out, cut his face and stabbed him seven times." (That's the entire article.) So far, three boys/men have been charged, one 16 years old.

28 Aug. 2008, Nabbingo, Uganda, Africa: "The Police in Nabbingo, Wakiso district, battled with residents after they pounced on two suspected chicken thieves and killed one of them. Sadala Kiwanuka, a carpenter of Kawempe, was killed, while his colleague Bulana of Bwaise was rescued by the Police from the mob and taken to Mulago Hospital. ... An eyewitness said one of the residents saw the suspects trying to load the stolen chicken on their bicycle and made an alarm, which brought residents out. ... Police commander Alison Agaba said "had the Police not got there in time, the mob would have set the suspects on fire."

25 Aug 2008, Orissa, India: In part of the ongoing Hindu-Christian violence, a 29-year-old Catholic nun was raped "by a member of a Hindu mob in Kandhamal district. ... She also alleged that she was paraded naked through the streets." Another article indicates that she was gang-raped by members of a mob of 40 men; so far 8 men have been arrested in the case. With her when she was taken was pastor Father Thomas Chellan, whom the mob beat with irons and tried to kill by dousing him with petrol. See The Hindu for more info from Chellan's pov.

25 Aug. 2008, Soweto, South Africa: "The victim of two suspected robbers, who had reportedly been terrorising the community, feels the culprits deserved to die.  She said this after the two robbers got a fatal dose of mob justice in Lenasia South at the weekend when residents accosted them. 'The men have been stealing from the community for a long time now and they finally got what they deserved,' said Amelia Miya, 53. ... 'When I got to the street there were many people assaulting the robber with sjamboks and kicking him.' ... 'The other robber was caught a few streets away and beaten to death on the scene. It turns out that he was carrying a toy gun.'"

21 Aug 2008, Subang Jaya, Malaysia: Six men, all in their 20s, are believed to have killed Mohd Farid Sarader Ali, 24, who was alleged to have snatched the handbag of a VIP's wife. He was beaten up about a week later by the VIP's son and his friends, after they tracked him through his motorcycle registration; he fell into a coma and died three days later in hospital. Mohd Farid, an oddjobs worker, "had several previous records for snatch thefts." His mother said, "'Even if he did snatch the Datin's handbag, he doesn't deserve to die.'" Another man said that he and others "'followed the VIP son's car to the place but could not do anything as some 25 men bashed him up in front of the Datin.'"

"Many who burnt heretics in the ordinary way of their business were otherwise excellent people."

-- G. M. Trevelyan, 'Bias in History'

Love this, from Rowan Williams via Inhabitatio Dei:

"To believe in Jesus' God, the God of unconditional accessibility and even-handed compassion, to believe in an anarchic mercy that ignores order, rank and merit, is to accept that our projects and patterns are the mark of failure, of illusion, of the infantile belief that we can dictate truth and reality. Because it is menacing and painful to be confronted with the knowledge that our constructions of controlled sense are liable to be empty self-serving, we readily turn to violence against the bearers of such knowledge: in Johannine terms, we have decided that we want to stay blind when the light is there before us, claiming we can see perfectly well."  --  Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge (1990)

Deep Glamour has a provocative post about the relationships among glamour, heroism, martyrdom, desire, violence, and terror.

It begins by quoting author Salman Rushdie, who, when asked about the causes of terrorism, suggested: "a misconceived sense of mission," a 'herd mentality,' the desire to become 'a historic figure,' an attraction to violence, and -- shocking the interviewer -- glamour. ... 'The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is simply blowing himself up pointlessly and taking other peoples lives.'"

Blogger Virginia Postrel continues:

"To someone who thinks 'glamour' means movie stars and designer dresses, the idea that terrorism is glamorous sounds bizarre. But Rushdie is wise to the deeper meaning of glamour, as a form of magic and persuasion. Glamour is in the audience's eyes, and the phenomenon long preceded Hollywood. ... Glamour can sell religious devotion or military glory as surely as it can pitch lipstick or island vacations. All promise a way to transcend our everyday circumstances, to experience more and become better than ordinary life allows.  All invite us to imagine escape and transformation. ... Glamour appeals to our desires, whatever they may be."

Glamour, in other words, has something in common with the sacred, as Alison talks about it in his Nov. 2001 essay "Contemplation in a world of violence: Girard, Merton, Tolle":

"[T]he old sacred worked its magic: we found ourselves being sucked in to a sacred center, one where a meaningless act had created a vacuum of meaning, and we found ourselves giving meaning to it. ... In short, there had appeared, suddenly, a holy day. Not what we mean by a holiday, a day of rest, but an older form of holiday, a being sucked out of our ordinary lives in order to participate in a sacred and sacrificial centre so kindly set up for us by the meaningless suicides. ... Quickly people were saying things like 'to think that we used to spend our lives engaged in gossip about celebrities' and politicians' sexual peccadillos. Now we have been summoned into thinking about the things that really matter.'  ... What I want to suggest is that most of us fell for it, at some level. We were tempted to be secretly glad of a chance for a huge outbreak of meaning to transform our humdrum lives, to feel we belonged to something bigger, more important, with hints of nobility and solidarity."

Postrel ends her post by asking, on September 11, "How do we puncture the glamour of Jihadi terrorism?" She answers with: "The first step is recognizing that such glamour exists."