From: Dr. James Lyon [mailto:jlyon@crisisgroup.org]
Sent: 17 February 2006 17:50
To: Nicholas Whyte; Andrew Stroehlein; Nick Grono
Cc: Gareth Evans
Subject: The Lyonization of Serbia
Importance: High

Nicholas, Andrew, Nick,

During the last ten days of January and the first eleven days of February I experienced the most intensive and sweeping media attacks in the entire seven+ years I have been with ICG. The attacks reflected a well-orchestrated media campaign aimed at making me persona non grata. During this period there were on average two to three attacks on me in the print media per day, all of which were highly personal in nature, not to mention entirely false. Ooops, that isn’t quite accurate: one article did list my place of birth correctly. In addition to attacks on me personally, the articles also carried allegations that ICG was racketeering Balkan tycoons (Nicholas, exactly how did we get that donation from Trifun Kostovski anyway? J)

Some of the things the local media accused me of include but are not limited to the following:

1. that I ran a car smuggling ring;
2. that I am a drunkard;
3. that I regularly racketeer Serbia‘s oligarchs;
4. that I am a frequent guest of Dobrica Cosic;
5. that I have been fired by ICG;
6. that I own a glass factory;
7. that I smuggled cigarettes;
8. that I own three cafes;
9. that I photocopied the entire secret General Staff archive from the Military History Archive and put it on CD;
10. that I am a paid lobbyist for the Albanians;
11. that I tried to sell PINK television to Paramount studios;
12. that my wealth is counted in the millions;
13. that I privatized the following factories:

·         the Matroz paper factory in Serbia

·         the Oil refinery in Modrica (Bosnia

·         the tobacco factory in Sarajevo

Golly gee, you’d think that with my enormous wealth and influence someone from ICG would hit me up for a donation and put me on the board….

The attacks were instigated by the news weekly Evropa, which was recently purchased by Filip Zepter. Beginning with its 26 January edition, Evropa has had at least one negative article on me in each edition. All the stories essentially repeated the lie — first floated in Evropa — that ICG had fired me and that this was due to Zepter’s lawsuit. All the attacks were extremely libelous. In speaking with reporters and editors from other newspapers that also took part in the attack, several indicated to me that they had been put up to the mischief by Zepter in return for advertising.

Never being one to take things lying down, I fought back as best I could, and in the end it seems that Zepter ended up giving both me and ICG lots of free publicity. On Sunday, 5 February I was invited to be a guest on Serbia‘s most widely watched political talk show, B92’s Utisak Nedelje, opposite the deputy of the Radical Party, Aleksandar Vucic. On 8 February I was a guest on the widely watched BKTV talk show Klopka, along with Kosovo Serb leader Momcilo Trajkovic and former Kosovo Coordination Centre chief and current SDP party leader Nebojsa Covic. I heard later from the hosts that both Klopka and Utisak Nedelje had unusually high viewership for those programs. The Serbian government was so distressed by the uncensored and open discussion of Kosovo future status on Klopka that Slobodan Samardzic, one of Kostunica’s advisors on Kosovo, called the host and asked that the government be permitted to rebut my statements about Kosovo. (Should I mention that the tall leggy blond who hosts Klopka appeared au natural in the first issue of Serbian Playboy and that two days after the show she sent me her mobile phone number via SMS?).

In spite of the sudden deluge of negative print media, two articles stand out. At the end of the media campaign against me we got a very positive mention in the print media, when the daily tabloid PRESS carried a very flattering article about me and ICG’s activities. And the photo was even decent. Following this Serbia‘s highest circulation daily Blic ran a grumpy Op/Ed piece entitled “Lyonization” and in which the author called for a halt to the media campaign, claiming that Serbia had been “Lyonized,” and saying that “Lyonization” was worse than colonization. I suppose that if this were New York City I could probably make some money off of all this publicity, but here in Serbia…..

In any event the media frenzy about my alleged dismissal seems to have died down and my image and that of ICG have both been strengthened by the entire ordeal. I should mention that the proverbial guilty dog did bark, when Zepter gave a newspaper interview attacking me and claimed that I had been fired because of him.

One problem with politics in this part of the world is that if you take unpopular positions, then they attack you not on the strength of issues and arguments, but rather ad hominem. Given that all ICG’s positions are unpopular in Belgrade, from our stance on Kosovo to the Hague Tribunal to Montenegro‘s future status to Bosnia, it is a wonder they have let us remain here. The one testimony to our effectiveness is the fact that the international community has adopted nearly all our positions on these issues, which makes us even more unpopular.

Thanks for all your support in this latest media nonsense. The press release helped. It was greatly appreciated.

James

Wow, Karamanlis sacked Molyviatis and replaced him with Dora Bakoyannis! And sacked Skandalakis as well and abolished his job! Crumbs, night of the long knives or what??? (Hmm, I hadn’t realised that Dora Bakoyannis is Mitsotakis’ daughter.) OK, nobody else cares about this.

Quote of the day (on quite a different topic) from who has discovered Irish-American teenage detective Liffey Rivers:

…just the thought that someone (even fictional people) could name their child after a river that smells like fish-scented poo makes me want to burst into tears.

And two more links: Lord Bonkers on the Lib Dem leadership contest, and Ballygobackwards (hat-tip to Jonathan Calder).

got the answer to my earlier quiz.

 19/6 is approximately √10: 10 * 6² = 360; 19² = 361
  9/2 is approximately √20: 20 * 2² = 80; 9² = 81
 11/2 is approximately √30: 30 * 2² = 120; 11² = 121
 19/3 is approximately √40: 40 * 3² = 360; 19² = 361
 99/14 is approximately √50: 50 * 14² = 9800; 99² = 9801
 31/4 is approximately √60: 60 * 4² = 960; 31² = 961
251/30 is approximately √70: 70 * 30² = 63000; 251² = 63001
161/18 is approximately √80: 80 * 18² = 25920; 161² = 25921

So the next in the sequence is 19/2:

 19/2 is approximately √90: 90 * 2² = 360; 19² = 361

points out, reasonably enough, that 9/1 is as good as 161/18 for the eighth fraction in the sequence.

Macedonia’s president was locked indoors for three hours this week after an eagle dropped dead in his backyard and vets wary of the spread of bird flu were brought in to disinfect the area.

Health authorities have confirmed the presence of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in northern Greece, which borders Macedonia, but Macedonia itself has yet to record a case.

Poor Branko!

Hi to Maria of Crooked Timber who I just had an excellent lunch with.

Right, back to work…

Iowans are losing interest in President Herbert Hoover. What a shame. But the staff at his memorial library are thinking about ways of sexing up the 31st president for the new generation:

One idea is a video game that allows children to help Hoover make tough choices, such as putting people back to work or feeding children… Hoover staff are also taking the 31st president’s story into the schools by dressing as historic figures and talking to classes.

Hmm, I wonder which historical figures? The mind slowly boggles.

There is a square named after him in Leuven, thanks to his humanitarian work in Belgium during the first world war.

New and cute!

less new but still cute!

I was talking to someone today who reckoned that Valentine’s Day is sheer commercial crassness, a rip-off that she is not prepared to participate in. (In the middle of the conversation her husband phoned to wish her a happy day.) For me and Anne, there is the minor fact that it was instrumental in our getting together. I’ve related part of this story before, but I left out the Valentine’s day bits. And since asked, and has elaborated on her less good Valentine’s days, I should mention the following hitherto concealed details:

My good friend Q and I had agreed that if neither of us had managed to score by Valentine’s Day 1990, we would go out for a consolatory dinner with each other. He had been sounding fairly optimistic, but called on the Monday to let me know that the girl he’d invited out for dinner on the Wednesday (V-Day itself) had backed out due to pressure of academic work, so our deal was still on.

Q and I had a jolly good Valentine’s day dinner. The waiter obviously thought that we were a gay couple and kept on winking at us; very sweet. On the way home we actually bumped into the girl who he had originally been supposed to have dinner with; she didn’t look very much under pressure of academic work, but did suddenly look extremely guilty when she spotted us.

A few days later I had the opportunity to raise the matter with the girl in question. “No,” she said, “I’m not really interested in him. You’d be a different matter.” The moment wasn’t quite right, as my ex-girlfriend, with who I had once been very much in lurve, was staying with her that evening; but I pursued matters the next day, to a happy conclusion. (And my ex-girlfriend eventually married Q.)

What is next in this sequence of fractions?

 19/6
  9/2
 11/2
 19/3
 99/14
 31/4
251/30
161/18

F astonished me yesterday, on our way to ‘s, by announcing: “On the planet Mercury, there is no day or night. Mercury always has the same side facing the Sun. This side is always light and hot, the other always dark and cold.”

I gently put him right, and further investigation revealed that he was quoting word for word from Marie Neurath’s Let’s Look at the Sky, passed on to us by his grandmother, who won it as a prize in a Farmer’s Weekly competeition, shortly after it was published in 1952. I am looking through the book now, to find out what other out-of-date information from over half a century ago is corrupting our child’s mind.

Having said that, he had in fact read somewhere else that Mercury’s year is 88 days and its rotation period is 59 days; he just hadn’t quite realised that this was inconsistent with the information from the first book, which is, of course, written in terms a six-year-old finds easier to understand, as well as being a better story, just wrong (as we have known since 1965).

Some of the sf stories of yesteryear depended on Mercury’s supposed behaviour – the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction lists Clifford D. Simak’s “Masquerade” (1941), Isaac Asimov’s “Runaround” (1942), Lester Del Rey’s Battle on Mercury (1956), Asimov’s Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956), Mission to Mercury (1965) by Hugh Walters, Alan E. Nourse’s “Brightside Crossing” (1956) (of course), Larry Niven’s “The Coldest Place” (1964), and Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan (1959), not to mention Lionel Fanthorpe’s first published book, Menace from Mercury (1954); add to that, from Wikipedia, Asimov’s “The Dying Night” (1952), Arthur C. Clarke’s Islands in the Sky (1956) and Ray Cummings’ Tama of the Light Country and sequel Tama, Princess of Mercury (Wikipedia says 1966 but in fact first published in 1930-31).

That’s a dozen novels and short stories in the quarter century from 1940 to 1965 (not even counting the Cummings efforts). I have to say I can’t think of anything like that number of stories and novels set on the planet, published in the 40 years since we found out what its real rotation period is (David Brin’s Sundiver, Ckarke’s Rendezvous with RamaBlue Mars (1996) and, barring TV and film, that’s it). The old story may not have been true, but it was perhaps more beautiful.

(Hmm. Anyone remember Kinvig? Never mind.)

(PS – did you know that the entire Mariner 10 book is on-line thanks to NASA?)

Am now on Skype at work – nicholaswhyte – I expect I’ll mainly use this for work purposes but who knows?

A very pleasant afternoon spent on the other side of the country (nice to live in a small country) with , Mr and jr. (Thanks for your hospitality: I hope we have the chance to return it soon.)

The way back was not so pleasant. The snow wasn’t heavy but the traffic was barely moving on the motorway – it took literally two hours to get as far as Ghent, not quite 50 km. We moved to the old roads, fossilised remains of the earlier pre-motorway road network, and finally got to B’s respite care place about 9 o’clock rather than the 7 o’clock we had promised; and were home by quarter past ten, the last section proving particularly slippery. So it took the guts of five hours for a journey that should have taken about two.

Tired now. Bed.

I have to admit that I simply cut and pasted from Wikipedia’s article on the USSR State Motto, so you can find more there. The quick guide is as follows:

Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь! – Russian, of course.
Пролетарі всіх країн, єднайтеся! – Ukrainian – the letter ї is a giveaway.
Пралетарыі ўсіх краін, яднайцеся! – Belarusian – the letter ў is the clue here
Бутун дунё пролетарлари, бирлашингиз! – Uzbek. I wouldn’t have got this; most of the letters are fairly standard except for ё (which you do get in Russian, but this is obviously not a Slavic language).
Барлық елдердің пролетарлары, бірігіңдер! Kazakh. The letters ң and қ leap out here, but both are used in other Cyrillic Turkic scripts.
პროლეტარ ყველა ქვეყნისა, შეერთდით! – Georgian, obviously.
Бүтүн өлкәләрин пролетарлары, бирләшин! – this of course is now obsolete; Azeri is now written in the Latin rather than Cyrillic alphabet. I guess this would now be written “Bütün ölkələrin proletarları, birləşin!”
Visų šalių proletarai, vienykitės! – Lithuanian, as well knows. The ų and ė are characteristic.
Пролетарь дин тоате цэриле, униць-вэ! – causes some confusion for people who go through the letters and realise that it is actually Romanian in Cyrillic, or Moldavian as it used to be called. I was puzzling a bit over цэриле, and then realised that in Romanian it is probably ţerile which makes both the Cyrillic transcription and the derivation from Latin terræ more obvious.
Visu zemju proletārieši, savienojieties! – Latvian. The letter ā is a crucial one here.
Бардык өлкөлордүн пролетарлары, бириккиле! – Kyrgyz, though I have to admit I would only have been able to work out that it is one of the five Turkic languages. Wikipedia claims that ү is now only used in Kazakh but obviously that isn’t the case.
Пролетарҳои ҳамаи мамлакатҳо, як шавед! – Tajik, the only Persian language on the list. Also the only one with the letter ҳ.
Պրոլետարներ բոլոր երկրների, միացե’ք! – Armenian, obviously.
Әхли юртларың пролетарлары, бирлешиң! Kyrgyz. Note use of ң (like Kazakh) and ә (like old Azeri).
Kõigi maade proletaarlased, ühinege! – Estonian. õ is the crucial identifier.

That’s the fifteen official languages of the USSR’s republics, all now independent states. The bonus two were languages spoken in autonomous parts of the Russian Federation:

Kaikkien maiden proletaarit, liittykää yhteen! – Finnish, as spoken in Karelia
Барлык илләрнең пролетарийлары, берләшегез! – yet another Turkic language, in this case Tatar. Barlıq illärneñ proletariları, berläşegez!

Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь!
Пролетарі всіх країн, єднайтеся!
Пралетарыі ўсіх краін, яднайцеся!
Бутун дунё пролетарлари, бирлашингиз!
Барлық елдердің пролетарлары, бірігіңдер!
პროლეტარ ყველა ქვეყნისა, შეერთდით!
Бүтүн өлкәләрин пролетарлары, бирләшин!
Visų šalių proletarai, vienykitės!
Пролетарь дин тоате цэриле, униць-вэ!
Visu zemju proletārieši, savienojieties!
Бардык өлкөлордүн пролетарлары, бириккиле!
Пролетарҳои ҳамаи мамлакатҳо, як шавед!
Պրոլետարներ բոլոր երկրների, միացե’ք!
Әхли юртларың пролетарлары, бирлешиң!
Kõigi maade proletaarlased, ühinege!

So, how many of those can you identify? (or even read?)
And a bonus two:

Kaikkien maiden proletaarit, liittykää yhteen!
Барлык илләрнең пролетарийлары, берләшегез!

5) A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

I was complaining a few days ago about authors who make you work hard to read their fiction, and how I expect to be adequately rewarded. With A Clockwork Orange I do feel adequately rewarded. It’s a very short novel about the violence of youth, based a little I guess on the famous battles between mods and rockers of the 1960s. But Burgess manages to lift it into the realm of the universal by two straightforward but brilliantly executed gimmicks.

The first of these, of course, is the nadsat used by Alex and his friends. Rather than use contemporary teenage slang, Burgess invented his own. My Russian is pretty vestigial but sufficient to get through most of the book without worrying too much – in particular I think he’s managed to catch a few genuine Russian nuances and insert them subversively into English, like chelloveck, which basically means “chap”, from человек. Another good bit of wordcrafting is tolchock, which is originally толчок, the Russian noun for “shove”, but in Burgess becomes either a sustained push or a sudden blow, as when Alex and friends are disposing of a stolen car in the canal: “we got out and, the brakes off, all four tolchocked it to the edge of the filthy water that was like treacle mixed with human hole products, then one good horrorshow tolchock and in she went.” I’ve heard people in Ireland used the word “feck” as a verb with similar meaning. And horrorshow (ie хорошо) for “good” is a lovely riff on “wicked”. (There were a lot of other nice touches; I’ll just mention oddy-knocky for одинокий, “lonesome”.)

The second is his choice of classical music as Alex’s personal fixation. Actually I rather get the impression that Alex is unusual even among his peers in his preference. The two girls he lures home are much more into “pathetic pop-discs”, and he doesn’t listen to music with his friends. (No mention of going to actual live musical performances at all – though there are “worldcasts” where everyone gets to watch the same entertainment around the world, closer to Edward Bellamy than Bob Geldof I think.) However, the fact that the music Alex listens to is (mostly) already known by the general reader helps us to get through the barrier created by the language, and his description of why he likes Beethoven’s Ninth is something anyone else who likes it can relate to.

After all that, the book itself? Plot is easy to summarise: Alex is a very nasty and violent boy; he is imprisoned and subjected to mind control which removes his ability to do evil; after public protest the process is reversed; but he finds that he is growing up anyway. The use of nadsat slang actually makes the descriptions of violence in the early part of the book more bearable than it would be if graphically expressed in standard English. The violence of youth is, of course, universal. Just this morning I read this, via :

I finally realized that the giant puddles of water in the sand court were actually covered with giant sheets of ice that were starting to break up. I lifted a five foot piece of it up by one edge and said, “Wow, cool.” I continued on walking around, and when I came back by this area later, there were two ten-year-old boys looking at the same big sheet of ice and saying, “Whoa, cool! It’s a big’un!” Then they took rocks and hurled it at the big piece to break it up, and stomped on it, and other such things that boys like to do. I know it’s what I would have done if I were 25 years younger and were with a buddy.

Libertarians may jump with glee on the sinister role of the State in all this, the brutal millicents/милиции, but I think the involvement of the State is almost incidental; Burgess’ point is about redemption, and that it must come from within, cannot be imposed from outside. In the last chapter Alex realises this for himself, bumping into his old friend Pete who is now married, and reflecting that “I am not young, not no longer, oh no. Alex like groweth up, yes.” According to Blake Morrison in the introduction of my Penguin edition, the last chapter was actually deleted from the first American version of the book as the publishers felt it was too upbeat (!). Bizarre.

Anyway, a fascinating, horrible and well-constructed book.

Failed to save the day’s work in the right folder. All lost.

On my way out of a reception in Brussels last night, I bumped into one of Catherine Stihler’s people, and asked her (I thought) in jocular vein if she was planning to move back to Scotland with her boss, or stay here and find a new boss after the by-election. She looked evasive and muttered something I didn’t catch. Now I know why. Well done folks!

I didn’t see Question Time last night, but note the following reactions:

Three who think Simon Hughes won:
Nick Barlow (backing Huhne): “Simon won on points from Chris, with Ming third”
(backing Campbell): “I scored it a narrow victory for Simon Hughes, maybe 8/10 for him, 7.5 for Ming and 7 for Chris Huhne”
: “I’d say Hughes edged it overall”

Three who think Campbell did best or joint best:
Peter Black AM (backing Hughes): “Campbell and Hughes performed well. Huhne’s inexperience counted against him.”
Will Howell (backing Huhne): “Campbell and Huhne were well matched, with Hughes further behind.”
Alan Beddow (backing Huhne): thinks Campbell did best and the other two about equal

And one differently nuanced view:
: “All three LibDem leadership candidates are shite”

Looks to me like it won’t have changed anything much – maybe pulled up Simon Hughes’ first prefs a bit but not enough to save him from third place.

Well, the ballot papers arived today along with the candidates’ election literature. Pretty much as I expected, in fact: Campbell’s two pages full of achievements and endorsements, Hughes’ looking like a Focus leaflet including gruesome pics of supporters and opinion poll graphs of dubious validity, but Huhne’s relatively sparse, only two photos (both of him) and lots of actual policy content. It didn’t change either my view that I myself am voting for Huhne or my view that Campbell is likely to win. Tonight’s Question Time will probably be crucial, but it’s on too late for me to watch.

Three superb essays on the three candidates have appeared today on Alex Wilcock’s new blog. Those of you who don’t know Alex, author of the seminal article How Doctor Who Made Me A Liberal, ought to start reading him at . If you don’t have time or inclination for that, let me at least recommend his posts on Menȝies Campbell, Simon Hughes, and Chris Huhne, eloquent presentations of a deeply committed but also deeply perturbed activist who has jolly good reasons for not voting for any of the three candidates. I have to say that his qualms about Simon Hughes are much better argued than about either of the other two, and I leave it there.

His main argument about Campbell is that he may (there is no evidence) have been involved in a Machiavellian scheme to oust Charles Kennedy; since I’m in the clear minority of party members who think that getting rid of Charles was a Good Thing, this doesn’t bother me. More important is his report of Campbell’s attitude to internal party policy-making, and his telling invocation of Star Trek.

His main argument about Huhne is that he is too boringly interested in policy, though Alex disarmingly admits an obsession with precisely the same policy points. Huhne has reinvented himself a couple of times in the past, and I have some confidence that he is not too old a dog to be taught new tricks of self-presentation. He will make a good leader; though as I said above, I don’t think it will be this time round, despite my personal support.

I just discovered that Oliver Postgate, creator of the Clangers, is the grandson of George Lansbury, leader of the Labour Party from 1932 to 1935.

All is explained.

As done by YouGov, here. Huhne 38%, Campbell 34%, Hughes 28% – so within the margin of error as between Huhne and Campbell.

I have to say my gut feeling right now is that Campbell will probably win it. Will be interesting to see the ballot paper and election literature (living abroad, I haven’t received it yet, unlike members in the UK).

In Jerusalem, a CNN journalist heard about a very old Jewish man who had been going to the Western Wall to pray, twice a day, everyday, for a long, long time. So she went to check it out.

“How do you feel after doing this for 60 years?”

“Like I’m talking to a fucking wall.”

..from , here.

Finally got around to reading the various thought-provoking pieces linked to by here.

Myself, I read sf primarily for escapism. I have an intellectually demanding day-time job dealing with horrible things happening in the world. I want a hobby that takes me out of myself a bit and isn’t too demanding. If a writer produces material that is a bit more difficult, or requires a bit more concentration, to appreciate it, then I want to be additionally rewarded; I am normally reading to relax at the end of the day when my energy levels are low. That makes me a bit more unforgiving of experimental literary techniques than perhaps I should be.

I write about sf because I feel compelled to do so. It’s not so much because of the community aspects of fandom (though they are increasingly important to me) but because it’s a way of turning my hobby into easily quantifiable projects: this year’s nominees, previous years’ winners, all the joint Hugo and Nebula winners (that last a long-term project which I have been working on for five and a half years now). I also have found that since I resolved to write up every book I read (whether sf or not) on this blog, I have been reading in a more profound way, with at the back of my mind the thought that I must find something to say about what I have read once I finish.

Does this make me a critic? I don’t know. I don’t come to anything as a neutral reader; as well as not liking difficult writing, I am easily bored by military sf and have a distaste for horror, and am easily pleased by tales of time-travel and alternate history.

As for the cases in point: Yes, the two sets of critiques of Strange Horizons reviews to which objects are indeed plain silly. The Ian McHugh review is in my view a good, interesting piece of writing which clearly identifies the reviewer’s prejudices. I found fascinating his conclusion that the best stories in the book all share “a distinctive and unselfconscious ‘Australianness’ in their telling, that’s hard to put your finger on but that seems lacking in those covered above. And all but one have an unmistakeably Australian sense of place, either explicitly or through the physical particulars of their settings.” I have been struggling occasionally to identify genuine rather than confected examples of Irishness in the genre, and am rather cheered by McHugh’s conclusion that good sf by Australian writers does end up feeling more Australian than bad sf by Australian writers. It’s sufficiently interesting for me that I will buy the book, if I ever see it on sale, to see if I share his analysis.

As for Dan Hartland – well, I had heard of Naomi Mitchison, but then I am the sort of person who puts footnotes about Saki and Thomas Pynchon into papers on contemporary Balkan politics. It was a slightly silly remark in an otherwise good review.

I read through Bone Women and the various consequent on-line discussions. I didn’t much like the story. It did make me work harder than I want to, and there was no real sfnal element (yeah, yeah, the bits about the giant and Picasso, but there is no reason for us to believe the narrator in either case); on the latter basis I share the puzzlement of those who ask what exactly it was doing in Strange Horizons, but on the former I’m happy enough to accept that it simply isn’t to my tastes, and to be surprised that when others say so it provokes extraordinary reaction from people old enough to know better.

And I’m going to keep on writing reviews, for no better reason than that I feel compelled to do so; and no doubt sometimes I will upset people, and more usually I won’t.

Missed this at the time:
BBC interview
NASA podcast

, given your interest, I guess you already knew about this?

4) First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong, by James R. Hansen

Biographies are always fascinating, and when they are good they are very very good. Since I started bookblogging I have tremendously enjoyed works on J.R.R. Tolkien by Tom Shippey and John Garth, and on and/or by Saki, Judith Merrill, Kurban Said and most of all Samuel Pepys. (I notice looking at that list that the biographies I’ve tended to enjoy have been of writers – even though Pepys was best known in his time as a government official and amateur scientist, it is his secret writing for which he is remembered today. I’ve tended to be less enthusiastic about biographies of statesmen – John Adams, William Huskisson, early Roman Emperors – or scientists – Richard of Wallingford.

This biography of Neil Armstrong is not quite in the top rank, but it is exhaustive and generally satisfying. Most particularly, I think the author manages to answer pretty completely how it came to be that this particular man was the first man to set foot on the moon. He describes at justifiable length several key moments from Armstrong’s career as a combat pilot in the Korean War, as a test pilot of rocket planes, and as an astronaut when he managed to save himself (and his expensive equipment, and whoever else was in it) from potentially fatal disaster by quick but deeply analytical thinking and solving the problem. Perhaps other astronauts had similar records of dealing with such situations before they came to the space program; but Armstrong happened to be the man in charge when his spacecraft, Gemini VIII, suddenly developed serious problems while out of radio contact with the ground, and he brought it home early but safely, which must have helped with his selection to command NASA’s highest-profile mission ever.

Buzz Aldrin, Armstrong’s pilot on the lunar mission, comes off badly here. The work-focused Armstrong simply didn’t care who would be first off the ladder and onto the lunar surface; Aldrin, perhaps his own worst enemy, pretty much ensured that it would not be him by insistently raising the question at an early stage, especially when his politically well-connected relatives got involved. Aldrin then omitted to take any decent photographs of Armstrong actually on the moon – all the classic shots are of Buzz, taken by Neil (including the one I sometimes use as an icon). I felt that the biographer was a bit unfair to Aldrin, who was by far the best academically qualified astronaut (he had just finished a Ph D on guidance techniques for manned orbital rendezvous) and had an even better combat record than Armstrong’s; once the decision was made, he appears to have managed his disappointment perfectly well, and Hansen’s rather mean-spirited suspicion that the lack of photographs of Armstrong on the moon was Aldrin’s subtle revenge is wholly unsupported by the evidence he provides. The real hero of that particular story, as I suspect with many others in the space program, is Deke Slayton, the head of the astronauts office at NASA, and I would have liked to hear more about him.

(I did wonder why Aldrin’s role was designated as “lunar module pilot”. Armstrong actually did all the flying, which was fair enough given that he had had a hand in the first proposal for a lunar lander design even before he became an astronaut, and had spent more time than any of his colleagues designing and testing the actual lander. Aldrin was clearly kept pretty busy by his various duties – so busy that he forgot to take the pictures whose absence so troubles Hansen – but his precise job description is never explained.)

Armstrong comes across as a very reserved and self-contained person, not in fact well-prepared or well-suited for celebrity, although able to rise to the occasion when it was demanded of him. Hansen explores the character of his evangelical Christian mother to quite an extent; we hear almost nothing about his father, a financial officer in the Ohio state administration. His reserve was clearly a source of much frustration to his first wife (who gets a very sympathetic treatment from Hansen), and one senses that as a couple they never made time to work through a succession of tragedies – the death of their two-year-old daughter from a brain tumour in 1961, just at the moment when Armstrong was deciding whether or not to become an astronaut; a house fire in 1964, which destroyed many of their personal possessions and from which they were rescued by their neighbour, fellow astronaut Ed White; and a succession of deaths among Armstrong’s professional colleagues over the next couple of years, culminating with the loss of White and two others in the January 1967 Apollo 1 launchpad fire. Armstrong’s response was to lose himself in his work, and the fact that he continued to do so even after leaving NASA to become an engineering professor in his native Ohio was obviously crucial to the breakdown of the marriage in 1991. He has since remarried and the book finishes with a nice anecdote of a visit to family friends whose five-year-old daughter suddenly realises that the visitor has the same name as the first man on the moon.

Hansen does a lot to explode the many myths about Armstrong, usually using Armstrong’s own laconic comments to the effect that he does not remember doing or saying “anything like that”. One or two, however, which seem too good to be true are none the less fully supported by the record. It is true, for instance, that he got his pilot’s license as early as possible, a couple of weeks after his sixteenth birthday, but on the ground he was a terrible driver. It is also true that his parents appeared on a TV show called “I’ve Got A Secret” in September 1962, and their “secret” was that their son had just been named as an astronaut that day; and that the presenter asked how they felt about the prospects that he would be the first man to land on the moon. It is true that after a near-fatal accident when he had to eject from the prototype lunar module in 1968 he just went back to his office and got on with his paperwork. It is also true that the only flight he ever took with the legendary Chuck Yeager ended in an embarrassing crash, and each blamed the other for the accident – one senses that in Yeager’s world, it was usually other fools who screwed up and never him, while Armstrong’s disagreement with Yeager’s account is, strikingly, the closest he comes to direct criticism of anyone in the book.

There’s a lot in this book, as the above comments make clear. There’s also a lot that isn’t. There’s very little about the general political background for the space program; we learn that the first seven astronauts, and many of the second nine including Armstrong, all came from small-town America, but I’d have liked more about how that came to be; at the other end of the story, we hear about Armstrong’s testimony to Congress in support of continued funding for the space program, but learn almost nothing about why Congress chose not to do it. On the other hand, in some cases there is too much; I must say I skimmed some of the blow-by-blow of the Korean War (itself insufficiently contextualised) and early rocketplane tests. There’s a baffling error in a crucial passage on the Korean War, where the relevant year is incorrectly given several times as 1951 rather than 1952.

But all in all, I felt satisfied that this book had answered the question of how and why it was Armstrong, rather than anyone else, who ended up as the first man on the moon. If I want to read about the wider meaning of his mission and of space exploration, I will have to look somewhere else. And I will.

In brief:

Monday
Landed at Pristina airport.
Met coordinator of the independence negotiation team.
Met prime minister
Dinner with Veton Surroi, who gave me his new book.

Tuesday
Met Speaker of the Assembly
Met probable next President of Kosovo
Visited President Rugova’s grave, to pay our respects

Left for Macedonia: foolishly took the icy twisting track over the hills to avoid the recent landslide, though guided by Polish and Lithuanian troops

Met with Mayor of Skopje for late lunch, with my boss having also arrived
Met with leader of the 2001 uprising
Met with US ambassador
Dinner with President Crvenkovski
Midnight drink with my former assistant

Wednesday
Breakfast with EU Special Representative
My boss gave a speech to the youth wing of the main opposition party
Met with Deputy Prime Minister in charge of European integration
Final lunch with Mayor of Skopje again
Boss returned to Brussels; I drove back north to Kosovo, taking the more sensible route (though it does take you past souvenirs of the 2001 war)

Got to Pristina in time for a meeting with someone who is not currently allowed to engage in public political activities, so we talked about mutual friends and topics of common interest

Met with UN Secretary General’s Special Representative
Dinner party with i) EU Special Representative, ii) government minister widely tipped as next leader of main government party (leadership currently vacant after death of Rugova) and iii) main opposition party’s leading intellectual. The restaurant offered us squid in strawberry sauce. We were almost all sufficiently intrigued to try it. It was OK.
Went back to my colleague’s house to watch the recording of Kosovo’s main political talk-show from earlier in the evening. His girlfriend is the presenter.

Thursday
Visit to Dečani Monastery, heavily guarded by Italian soldiers (not in photograph). Long drive across Kosovo’s central plain to the point where the Montenegro mountains loom over it.

Met with Father Sava Janjić, well-known “cyber-monk”. The monastery is completely isolated from the nearby town, to the point that the locals keep taking the roadsigns to it down. Father Sava argues, with some justice, that the monks had opposed the Milošević regime but are still being made to pay for its mistakes, despite having given shelter to Albanian refugees in the 1999 conflict. A very difficult situation, often forgotten in easy talk of ethnic reconciliation in Pristina.

Drove to airport. Airport covered in fog. All flights cancelled.

Back to Pristina.
Swiftly scheduled meeting with leader of largest opposition party.
Early night.

Friday
Swiftly arranged visit to northern Kosovo city of Mitrovica, divided between Serbs an Albanians.
Met UN official in “charge” of area.
Met hard-line Serb leader
Met moderate Serb leader

Stopped on way back to look at site of 1389 Battle of Kosovo

Guarded by soldiers from two countries which managed an amicable divorce:

Plane home took off late, but at least it took off. They had to hold my connecting flight in Budapest for me and my luggage only got back this morning. But a good trip.

Last time I did a trip to Macedonia and Kosovo I took most of my pictures in Macedonia. This time the balance is different. Will do a proper narrative post later, but meantime here is the gallery. (F wants his go on the computer.)

3) EU’ve got mail! by Graham Watson MEP, ed. Sarah Kent

A terrible title, but quite a fun little collection of Graham’s weekly emails to constituents in the south-west of England, giving an insight into the life of an MEP (sanitised for public consupmtion of course). Occasionally he mentions events in Brussels which I remember seeing him or even talking to him at, which is personally interesting. His observations on Silvio Berlusconi and Cyprus are particularly trenchant, and there is an interesting account of how one Liberal MEP got nobbled by industrial interests to the point where the rest of them effectively disowned his proposed legislation. Towards the 2004 elections he is writing longer and more EU-focused messages; predicts that the Liberal group of MEPs may increase from 52 to as many as 85 or 95 (in fact they now have over 100) and that the European Parliament will not give the new European Commission an easy ride in the second half of 2004 (as indeed they did not). Would be a fun little text for any international or European studies student.

2) Ghosts of Albion: Accursed, by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden

For review elsewhere. Not bad.

I’ve been resisting this, but have succumbed…

Four Jobs You’ve Had In Your Life
1. Archaeology site “volunteer”.
2. Researcher for the Alliance Party delegation at the Northern Ireland peace talks.
3. Administrator of a book prize (part-time). Ironically my father won it, posthumously.
4. Conference gopher.

Four Movies You Could Watch Over And Over
1. An American in Paris
2. The Wall
3. Return of the King
4. Life of Brian

Four Places You’ve Lived
1. Belfast
2. Banja Luka, Bosnia
3. Belgium
4. Wassenaar

Four TV Shows You Love To Watch
1. Doctor Who
2. Buffy
3. Mastermind
4. University Challenge

Four Places You’ve Been On Holiday/Vacation
1. Cyprus
2. Croatia
3. Ireland (Loughbrickland, Co Down)
4. The Hoge Veluwe

Four Of Your Favorite Foods
1. Anything Georgian
2. Anything Indian
3. Asparagus lightly fried in butter
4. Oysters

Four Places You’d Rather Be
1. Right now? Home.
2. Washington DC
3. London (but for less than 24 hours)
4. Loughbrickland

Four Albums You Can’t Live Without
(These answers are not quite in the spirit of the question)
1. Sibelius, pretty much anything – esp Kullervo Symphony and Swan of Tuonela
2. Dire Straits – I like almost all of their output but especially Telegraph Road
3. Les Miserables
4. Carmina Burana

Four Vehicles You’ve Owned
1. The Skoda Estelle we bought just after we got married
2. The Ford Fiesta a friend gave us after the Skoda broke down irretrievably
3. The Skoda Favorit we bought when the Fiesta broke down after a week
4. The Ford Sierra we bought after it proved unfeasible to import the Skoda into Belgium