Forget the celebrity gunge and political tittle-tattle which clogs this morning’s newspapers and read something beautiful instead — Seamus Heaney’s wonderful 1995 Nobel Lecture, Crediting Poetry.

When I first encountered the name of the city of Stockholm, I little thought that I would ever visit it, never mind end up being welcomed to it as a guest of the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Foundation. At the time I am thinking of, such an outcome was not just beyond expectation: it was simply beyond conception. In the nineteen forties, when I was the eldest child of an ever-growing family in rural Co. Derry, we crowded together in the three rooms of a traditional thatched farmstead and lived a kind of den-life which was more or less emotionally and intellectually proofed against the outside world. It was an intimate, physical, creaturely existence in which the night sounds of the horse in the stable beyond one bedroom wall mingled with the sounds of adult conversation from the kitchen beyond the other. We took in everything that was going on, of course – rain in the trees, mice on the ceiling, a steam train rumbling along the railway line one field back from the house – but we took it in as if we were in the doze of hibernation. Ahistorical, pre-sexual, in suspension between the archaic and the modern, we were as susceptible and impressionable as the drinking water that stood in a bucket in our scullery: every time a passing train made the earth shake, the surface of that water used to ripple delicately, concentrically, and in utter silence…

As a child, Heaney was fascinated — as I was — by the radio.

I also got used to hearing short bursts of foreign languages as the dial hand swept round from BBC to Radio Eireann, from the intonations of London to those of Dublin, and even though I did not understand what was being said in those first encounters with the gutturals and sibilants of European speech, I had already begun a journey into the wideness of the world beyond. This in turn became a journey into the wideness of language, a journey where each point of arrival – whether in one’s poetry or one’s life turned out to be a stepping stone rather than a destination, and it is that journey which has brought me now to this honoured spot. And yet the platform here feels more like a space station than a stepping stone, so that is why, for once in my life, I am permitting myself the luxury of walking on air.

The lecture is full of vivid imagery which reminds one of the special skills poets have. Here, for example, is Heaney on what we want (need?) from poetry.

Yet there are times when a deeper need enters, when we want the poem to be not only pleasurably right but compellingly wise, not only a surprising variation played upon the world, but a re-tuning of the world itself. We want the surprise to be transitive like the impatient thump which unexpectedly restores the picture to the television set, or the electric shock which sets the fibrillating heart back to its proper rhythm. We want what the woman wanted in the prison queue in Leningrad, standing there blue with cold and whispering for fear, enduring the terror of Stalin’s regime and asking the poet Anna Akhmatova if she could describe it all, if her art could be equal to it.

It’s a wonderful lecture. Even better when you listen to it. (Needs RealAudio player.)

The diversification of British universities continues apace. First there was Oxbridge, plus Durham and a couple of ancient institutions in Scotland. Then there were the dissenting academies like UCL in London, and the “redbrick” (municipal) universities. Then there were the “plateglass” universities established after the Robbins Report in the 1960s. Then came Polytechnics (which have mostly morphed into universities). Now comes an entirely new classification — the “rackety” universities, described by Lord Carlisle, the government’s independent reviewer of terror legislation, in evidence to the Commons home affairs committee yesterday. Discoursing on the threat posed by radical imams to impressionable young British muslims, he said (according to the Guardian):

If you talk particularly to young female students in the larger, more rackety universities, there is a degree of concern expressed about some societies where women are excluded and where there might be radicalisation.

Two questions: (a) what, if anything, does this mean? (b) What are the criteria by which anxious parents would be able to rank an institution on the rackety scale?

Terrific piece by philosopher Onora O’Neill in today’s Guardian…

Yet even committed liberals don’t seriously think that rights to free speech are unlimited or unconditional, although they seem to be unsure about which limits should be set. They are often torn between an aspiration to justify free speech as minimal and uncontroversial, and a contrary belief that free speech matters because it is not minimal but powerful. This double vision is well reflected in contemporary tendencies to construe freedom of speech as freedom of expression. Freedom of expression sounds so harmless: merely a matter of expressing oneself, seemingly no more than an aspect of individual privacy. Yet most speech acts are not merely expressive. They are intended to communicate, and may affect, even harm others. The nursery jingle “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me” is palpably false.

James M writes:

Our government insists that “Standards in English and maths are at their highest levels ever … “. This is persistently contradicted by the universities that receive the students.

The reason the government believes that the standards are high is that it sets the standards. That they are set so low is the real problem.

Quite.

Fantastic piece by Neal Acherson on OpenDemocracy.Net about the Islamic cartoon fiasco. Made me feel ashamed that I hadn’t dug below the synthetic outrage of British media coverage. Excerpt:

The most curious thing about the affair is why the fuse burned so slowly. It was on 30 September 2005, more than four months ago, that Jyllands-Posten in Copenhagen published the cartoons of Mohammed (heavily unfunny, but extremely rude). The newspaper was barging into an already running story, about the reluctance of Danish illustrators to contribute to a life of Mohammed for children. Jyllands-Posten is a rightwing paper, in tune with the present Danish government in its resentment of Muslim immigrants, and it meant to make trouble. There followed some small demonstrations, and several death threats to the cartoonists.

None the less, the trouble could have been contained. The fatal element was the insistence of the prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, on posturing as a friend of liberty who knew how to stand up to repressive aliens. He brushed the protests from Danish Muslims aside. He then refused to receive the ambassadors of Islamic nations, who were demanding the prosecution of the newspaper. They reported back to their own publics on “Danish intransigence”…

From today’s New York Times…

United States military authorities have taken tougher measures to force-feed detainees engaged in hunger strikes at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after concluding that some were determined to commit suicide to protest their indefinite confinement, military officials have said.

In recent weeks, the officials said, guards have begun strapping recalcitrant detainees into “restraint chairs,” sometimes for hours a day, to feed them through tubes and prevent them from deliberately vomiting afterward. Detainees who refuse to eat have also been placed in isolation for extended periods in what the officials said was an effort to keep them from being encouraged by other hunger strikers.

The measures appear to have had dramatic effects. The chief military spokesman at Guantánamo, Lt. Col. Jeremy M. Martin, said yesterday that the number of detainees on hunger strike had dropped to 4 from 84 at the end of December.

Some officials said the new actions reflected concern at Guantánamo and the Pentagon that the protests were becoming difficult to control and that the death of one or more prisoners could intensify international criticism of the detention center. Colonel Martin said force-feeding was carried out “in a humane and compassionate manner” and only when necessary to keep the prisoners alive. H e said in a statement that “a restraint system to aid detainee feeding” was being used but refused to answer questions about the restraint chairs.

Just been browsing the web site of the supplier of these ingenious conveniences. It’s like a “padded cell on wheels”, apparently.

Designed by Sheriff Tom Hogan of the Crawford County Sheriff’s Dept, Denison, Iowa. After years of dealing with combative prisoners and ineffective restraining methods, Sheriff Hogan developed this innovative solution: the Emergency Restraint Chair®.

Safely restrains a combative or self–destructive person. Does not restrict normal breathing, secures individual without injury. Allows for safe prisoner transport by a single officer to court or hospital. Reduces your liability from combative–related incidents. Reduces the need for additional personnel. Reduces your transport costs.

A mere $1500 per chair in quantities of five or more. Order online. Don’t all rush.

Meanwhile, trust those spoilsports over at Amnesty International to rain on the parade.

As the use of the restraint chair proliferates in detention facilities nationwide, Amnesty International is concerned that inadequate training and supervision of detention officers in their use has caused unnecessary pain, injury and even death.

Since the beginning of 2000, at least four inmates have died in the USA after being subdued in a restraint chair — a metal framed chair in which prisoners are immobilized in four-point restraints securing both arms and legs, with a strap across the chest. Three prisoners died within the space of three months. These cases are the latest in a disturbing line of restraint chair related deaths that have occurred in US prisons and jails nationwide… There are also numerous reports of prisoners being subjected to verbal, physical or mental abuse while in restraint chairs.

The first President Bush loved to quote Woody Allen’s saying that half of life is just showing up. Last night, the current President Bush demonstrated the wisdom in those words. He delivered a pedestrian State of the Union speech, and he’ll likely get a brief bounce in the polls just for showing up at an annual ritual designed to make any president look presidential. But by next week, nobody will remember what he said….

David Kusnet, writing in The New Republic. I think he’s wrong. Everyone will remember Dubya saying “America is addicted to oil”. I never thought I’d hear him say something like that.