To the People of Baghdad Vilayet:

In the name of my King, and in the name of the peoples over whom he rules, I address you as follows:-

Our military operations have as their object the defeat of the enemy, and the driving of him from these territories. In order to complete this task, I am charged with absolute and supreme control of all regions in which British troops operate; but

our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. Since the days of Halaka your city and your lands have been subject to the tyranny of strangers, your palaces have fallen into ruins, your gardens have sunk in desolation, and your forefathers and yourselves have groaned in bondage. Your sons have been carried off to wars not of your seeking, your wealth has been stripped from you by unjust men and squandered in distant places.

Since the days of Midhat, the Turks have talked of reforms, yet do not the ruins and wastes of today testify the vanity of those promises?

It is the wish not only of my King and his peoples, but it is also the wish of the great nations with whom he is in alliance, that you should prosper even as in the past, when your lands were fertile, when your ancestors gave to the world literature, science, and art, and when Baghdad city was one of the wonders of the world.

Between your people and the dominions of my King there has been a close bond of interest. For 200 years have the merchants of Baghdad and Great Britain traded together in mutual profit and friendship. On the other hand, the Germans and the Turks, who have despoiled you and yours, have for 20 years made Baghdad a centre of power from which to assail the power of the British and the Allies of the British in Persia and Arabia. Therefore the British Government cannot remain indifferent as to what takes place in your country now or in the future, for in duty to the interests of the British people and their Allies, the British Government cannot risk that being done in Baghdad again which has been done by the Turks and Germans during the war.

But you people of Baghdad, whose commercial prosperity and whose safety from oppression and invasion must ever be a matter of the closest concern to the British Government, are not to understand that it is the wish of the British Government to impose upon you alien institutions. It is the hope of the British Government that the aspirations of your philosophers and writers shall be realised and that once again the people of Baghdad shall flourish, enjoying their wealth and substance under institutions which are in consonance with their sacred laws and their racial ideals. In Hedjaz the Arabs have expelled the Turks and Germans who oppressed them and proclaimed the Sherif Hussein as their King, and his Lordship rules in independence and freedom, and is the ally of the nations who are fighting against the power of Turkey and Germany; so indeed are the noble Arabs, the Lords of Koweyt, Nejd, and Asir.

Many noble Arabs have perished in the cause of Arab freedom, at the hands of those alien rulers, the Turks, who oppressed them. It is the determination of the Government of Great Britain and the great Powers allied to Great Britain that these noble Arabs shall not have suffered in vain. It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth, and that it shall bind itself together to this end in unity and concord.

O people of Baghdad remember that for 26 generations you have suffered under strange tyrants who have ever endeavoured to set on Arab house against another in order that they might profit by your dissensions. This policy is abhorrent to Great Britain and her Allies, for there can be neither peace nor prosperity where there is enmity and misgovernment. Therefore I am commanded to invite you, through your nobles and elders and representatives, to participate in the management of your civil affairs in collaboration with the political representatives of Great Britain who accompany the British Army, so that you may be united with your kinsmen in North, East, South, and West in realising the aspirations of your race.

 ”Ah, well, what you cannot correct you can at least insult,” is a Barry Hannah quote. Also a strategy that I seem to have, if not accidentally than at least unconsciously, taken to heart.

Not so interesting morning-after moment: Having already woken up, drank gatorade, taken several advil and a shower, I summoned my will (by which I mean ate a banana) and dismissed my omnipresent anxiety —yellow squiggles and zig-zags mostly—as hangover-induced and baseless. Then I threw up. Soon but not soon enough I was back in bed, dividing my attention between the ceiling (the plaster is really uneven where I patched the hole from the failed pull-up bar) and turning, one more time, through my memories of Last Night. It was then that I realized: one, I was presently in the middle of Sunday morning, not Saturday; and two, the night before I actually did say something atrocious—insensitive, uncalled for, and spot-on.

Today Zhao Shiying, writer, and secretary general of the Independent Chinese Pen Center in China (IPCC), was released after being detained for two weeks. Zhao Shying has been an outspoken advocate for the release of Liu Xiaobo, another Chinese author, and the IPCC’s president who, in case you missed it, this past Christmas Day was incarcerated for “inciting subversion of state power.” Among the works Liu Xiaobo was being censured for was Charter 08, a public call for increased democratization and protection of human rights in the People’s Republic of China. Per the Pen American Center, “Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison for seven sentences from five articles he posted on the Internet and two sentences from Charter 08—a total of 224 Chinese characters.” Offending sentences at bottom.*

See Perry Anderson’s bigger-picture piece, Sinomania, in the latest LRB for context on the changing face of China (hate to say it but the pest parts come toward the end, around ¶ 13)

Meanwhile, at home modest home, the Menifee Union School District in California’s Riverside County recently banned Webster’s 10th Dictionary for defining “oral sex”. (via Jacket Copy)

Last but maybe best, in the previous NYRB, Wyatt Mason on reading Celine’s anti-semitic so-called pamphlets—so-called so-called because two of the three works in question are as long as novels (longer than The Great Gatsby, Mason notes). Here Mason examines not just Celine’s work and legacy but also the politics of what gets kept in-print and the purpose of free speech. (The “pamphlets” are currently out-of-print due to the wishes of Celine’s widow but French anti-defamation laws may keep them that way). [redacted]

*The Censured Sentences of Liu Xiaobo

“Since the Communist Party of China (CPC) took power, generations of CPC dictators have cared most about their own power and least about human life,” from Further Questions about Child Slavery in China’s Kilns (2007).

“The official patriotism advocated by the CPC dictatorship is a fallacious system of ‘substituting the party for the country.’ The essence of this patriotism is to demand that the people love the dictatorship, the one-party rule, and the dictators. It usurps patriotism in order to inflict disasters on the nation and calamities on the people,” from The CPC’s Dictatorial Patriotism (2005).

“Thus, all of the tricks used by the CPC are stop-gap measures for the dictators to preserve the last phase of their power and will not be able to support for long this dictatorial edifice that is already showing countless cracks,” from The Many Aspects of CPC Dictatorship.

“Changing the Regime by Changing Society,” from Changing the Regime by Changing Society (2006).

“For the emergence of a free China, placing hope in the ruler of a ‘New Deal’ is an idea far worse than placing hope in the continuous expansion of the ‘new force’ among the people,” from Can it be that the Chinese People Deserve Only Party-Led Democracy? (2006).

[Nothing was actually quoted from the article] from The Negative Effects of the Rise of Dictatorship on World Democratization (2006).

“One-party monopolization of ruling privileges should be abolished…”; and “…to establish China’s federal republic under the structure of democracy and constitutionalism.” from Charter 08 (2008).

• NYT Mag Editor Paul Tough recently took a buyout to do more writing. A quick google search will turn up Tough’s more prominent feature-length work (e.g. “The Black White Supremacist”), but A Man Named Me has always liked this easily overlooked piece On Sorting Jokes, from Tough’s short-lived but well-loved liminal venture Open Letters. It’s a fitting essay for an editor.
• Writer-editor Gordon Lish on sorting sadnesses, from a few years prior.
• A Man Named Me recently visited Open Letters’ site to track down a passing encomium of Paul Maiszewski’s, on behalf of Willaim Gaddis’ J.R. (in this letter), a recommendation which turned out to be less emphatic than A Man Named Me remembered. On route however Maliszewski’s review of Alexander Theroux’s 2007 novel Laura Warholic turned up, in which he says: “Not since William Gaddis’s The Recognitions has a novel addressed the fallen present with such anger, love, and eloquence.”
• Maliszewksi has an interview with William Gass in the new Vice Fiction Issue, which also contains three amazing Robert Walser stories translated by Damion Searls. (The Italian Novella: It will break your heart and destroy your love and leave you wanting more!)
• Searls, as it happens, is the recipient of A Man Named Me’s Footnote of the Year Award – 2009. From his Believer essay about how he wrote a certain one of his books (; or The Whale): “There is a tradition of [writing with chance methods or deterministic procedures] in American Writing, which grew out of the midcentury confluence of second-generation modernism with the popularization of Zen. A good place to start exploring it is in the works of Jackson Mac Low, Joan Retallack, and Kenneth Goldsmith.”
• Open letter to Searls: Don’t leave us hanging man! You should write that article. If you don’t know where to publish it, A Man Named Me has a couple of suggestions that may or may not be helpful.