Does Being a Rubbish President Invalidate Democracy?

I haven’t smoked enough crack in my life to believe that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is a force for good in this world. Call me crazy, but I just can’t get down with that whole Jew/gay/woman/Christian/etc-oppressing vibe. And unlike the Brothers, I like the separation of religion and politics – I think it’s one of the great ideas of Western civilization.

How Condemned Men (and Women) Say Goodbye

Last week Texas put to death Kimberley McCarthy, the 500th inmate to die since the state resumed carrying out executions in 1982. And once that was done, a data entry clerk in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice participated in a local tradition – he (or she) entered McCarthy’s last words into a database containing all the final statements of those who have died by the state’s lethal needle.

Although I’ve lived in Texas for years, I didn’t know the database existed until this week. I spent some time reading it Tuesday afternoon, and the experience was as somber as you’d expect. In our culture we like to record the last words of the famous, but most people slip away without saying anything memorable. Since we rarely know when we’re going to die, very few of us get an opportunity to compose a final statement. It’s a privilege that belongs mainly to the condemned, one of the few they enjoy, and not one that I envy.

McCarthy’s last words had nothing to do with her crime, which was heinous - the murder of an old lady for money to buy crack. Rather, she

Edward Snowden and the Irony of Leaking

When I first heard that Edward Snowden, the National Security Leaker, was holed up in a capsule hotel in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo 2 airport, I allowed myself a dark chuckle. What a terrible place to land in on a flight to freedom!

Flying in and out of that airport in the 1990s and early 2000s was a grim enough experience. But to actually live in that post-apocalyptic scab pile, drowning in the murk, wading through the miasma of hostility, now that is a cruel and unusual punishment. Sheremetyevo 2 was so unwelcoming I always thought it must be intentional, a warning to visitors: “Yeah, this is Russia. We don’t care what you think. Get used to it.”

Istanbul and the Trouble with Opposition

What will future historians make of our age of mass protests? Since the stolen Iranian elections of 2009 the masses have revolted repeatedly in radically different countries with radically different results. Some governments have collapsed; others have been shaken; while still others have carried on regardless. It’s a bewildering time, akin to the era of revolutions that briefly turned Europe upside down in the mid-19th century.

Seeking to explain what’s going on in faraway places, journalists, analysts and politicians usually opt for simplistic narratives. We thus lump Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria together as they are (mainly) Muslim Arab nations where (some of) the people rose up against corrupt dictators.

The Curious Russian Afterlife of Steven Seagal

Long, long ago – for about 15 minutes – Steven Seagal was a big deal in Hollywood. His movie “Under Siege” made a lot of money. But that was pretty much it. Next came a string of big-budget flops followed by a lengthy and ongoing twilight spent in straight-to-video purgatory.

As for me, I don’t think I’ve ever made it all the way through a Seagal film. His stiff, tubby frame, extreme humorlessness and mystic posturing make it impossible for me to suspend disbelief. Here in the US he serves as a punch line, part of the flotsam and jetsam of trash culture. Steven Seagal – that’s the washed up ‘90s action movie guy who peddles an aftershave lotion named “Scent of Action,” right?

Right.

Indeed, Seagal has sunk so low that a few years ago he starred in an awful reality show named “Steven Seagal: Lawman,” which followed the bloated actor around Louisiana as he helped cops solve crimes. Seagal claimed to be some kind of reserve policeman. In one episode he drove a tank into the wall of a man’s home who was suspected of raising roosters for cockfighting. Soon afterward a member of Seagal’s SWAT team shot the fellow’s dog. A lawsuit ensued.

That wasn’t Seagal’s only bout of legal trouble in recent years. Shortly before the tank incident, he was accused of tricking female personal assistants into becoming his “sex slaves”,

Is it Time for a Ladder on Everest?

Once upon a time the world was full of wondrous mysteries and terrifying unknowns. Marco Polo could get away with claiming he had met dog-faced men on his travels because hardly anybody in Europe had ever been outside their home village. Now of course things are different; our planet is well mapped out, tourists are pretty much everywhere, and if you don’t have the money to visit exotic places you can always watch a travel show on TV.

Take Mt. Everest for instance. For millennia it was considered unconquerable, and then 60 years ago two chaps conquered it. Since then it’s been a free-for-all atop that formerly formidable peak. No, really – apparently so many people are scuttling up Everest that there are now traffic jams. According to The Guardian, 520 people have already been to the top this year, while on the 19th May 150 people reached the last 3,000 feet at more or less the same time, causing lengthy delays. Climbers were lining up for the summit as if they were waiting to buy stamps at the Post Office.

Since it’s now so congested at the top, the government of Nepal has come up with a brilliant idea: install a ladder at the trickiest bit to hurry the tourists along.

Naturally this is a controversial idea as some of the tourists think that this is cheating. But of course the tourists are already cheating. It’s not as if they run up the mountain in an anorak and a pair of ordinary shoes; on the contrary they bring masses of kit. The commercial exploitation of Everest has never been a case of man vs. nature but rather one of man + expensive technical gear vs. nature. Why not add a ladder?

Bad Cars and Porn Stars, or: A Few Words About Ladas

I first learned about the legendary Soviet Lada car in the mid-‘80s, when the cash-strapped USSR started exporting the notorious rust buckets to capitalist Europe in the hope of scraping together some hard currency. My friend Neil’s mum bought one, and since she worked as a teacher at my school, we all stared at this exotic vehicle in the car park. Cunningly, Neil told us it was a very special vehicle: a bit like a BMW, only better.

A few weeks later and Ladas had already become infamous for their rubbish quality, and were the butt of a thousand corny jokes from Saturday teatime TV comedians. But Neil escaped ridicule by being prepared well in advance with a gigantic lie. Clever boy; I wonder what he’s doing now… 

In fact, during this period lots of countries from the Eastern bloc were exporting bad cars to the UK. The Yugoslavian Yugo and Czechoslovakian Skoda had reputations similar to that of the Lada, whereas the Polish Polonez had such a low profile that you could buy it and not suffer instant ridicule. It was just as bad as the others, though: I knew a guy who bought one and it broke down all the time. The East German Trabant was a byword for the depths of Eastern European automobile awfulness; lots of lazy TV producers and travel writers still wheel them out for cheap laffs even to this day. I don’t think they were ever exported abroad, however – at least, not to Britain.

But with the demise of the Eastern bloc, bad Eastern European cars largely melted away from the popular consciousness. Some Germans bought Skoda and the Czech car became un-rubbish. Yugoslavia disintegrated, and that was it for the Yugo. The Polonez and Trabant went to the great scrap heap in the sky. As for the Lada…