Dutch police use minors to spy for them

Oh Those Crazy Cloggies, Policing
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According to an article in De Pers, Dutch police intelligence services attempt to recruit minors to serve as informers. In at least some cases, this was even done without their parents knowing. A lawyer quoted in the article spoke of “stasi-like methods”, which sounds about right to me.

In the Netherlands only the socalled CIE or Criminal Intelligence Unit is allowed to use informers, with information gathered through their use not legal to use in criminal prosecutions, though some lawyers do complain that such information does end up in public prosecutor files and is hard to check up on. Rules about the use of minors are non-existent, so the situation seems rife for abuse. Certainly any such approach of a minor should be done with the permission of their parents. Sneaking around behind their backs is just wrong.

Poor old Henry Pym

Comix
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Hank bitchslapping Janet

Poor old Henry Pym. One of Marvel’s first superheroes and founder member of the Avengers, the poor guy has never had the starring power of his team mates Captain America, Iron Man or Thor. His solo series was relatively soon replaced by Hulk and Submariner stories and unlike other failed superheroes he only got one more shot at success which failed quickly too. So he remained a dependable secondstringer in the Avengers, as Antman, Giantman, Goliath and finally Yellowjacket, just another costume in a line up. And then Jim Shooter made him into a wife beater, when he bitch slapped his wife and superhero partner Janet van Dyne/the Wasp, as shown above.

Which actually wasn’t a bad storyline, as Shooter heaped abuse upon abuse on poor old Pym: losing his place on the Avengers, then getting a separation from Janet, getting manipulated into stealing adamantium from the US government by his old arch enemy Egghead, getting caught and sent to prison, then seeing bloody Tony Stark seduce his ex-wife… All in service of a good old “break the hero down, then build him up again” story, with Pym eventually triumphing over Egghead and winning back the respect of his old teammates and Janet. And there he remained, to be used as a supporting character by other writers later on, most notably by Steve Englehart, John Byrne and Roy Thomas in West Coast Avengers.

But all of that changed a decade or so ago, as a new generation of Avengers writers decided that this moment, was what should define Pym as a hero. I blame Kurt Busiek the most for that, as he set that whole trend in motion in his Avengers and Avengers Forever series, but every writer since seems to want to characterise Pym as the wifebeater. You see that sometimes in superhero comics, when either a new generation of creators reach back into their own fan past to redefine their old favourites into what they should be (like Byrne did with almost every title he’s ever worked on), or through some external impulse like a big budget movie blowing new life into an old villain (as happened with the Green Goblin, redefined as Spider-Man’s greatest enemy when surely Doc Ock fits that bill as well), that one particular moment or story is set to be the real version of a particular character no matter how much said character has evolved away from it.

Pym got the short end of the stick and ended up redefined as a wifebeating douchebag endlessly trying to make up for his mistake. Which annoys the fuck out of me because I always liked him, as Antman/Giantman but especially as Yellowjacket. Worse, I feel this continued harping on this one incident, something that was clearly part of the ongoing soap opera of The Avengers at the time and which had long since been resolved, sort of trivialises real life domestic abuse. It had just become a character quirk, something to distinguish him from others, and it needs to stop.

Back to work

posts interesting only to me
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Both the place I’m currently working at as the one that actually pays the bills were very understanding about the situation with Sandra and I could’ve taken more time off than I did, but I wasn’t looking forward to staring at the walls in my flat for another week. Last week I survived mainly on adrenaline and with the support of my family and friends (the sympathy I’ve gotten in comments, mails and posts like Michel’s was very welcome) and Saturday I collapsed. Nothing drastic, just that I woke up at my usual time, just in time to listen to Saturday Live and I didn’t know what to do with myself. Nothing I could read interested me, internet did not appeal and even the last refuge of the desperate, daytime television was no comfort. It was only a momentary glitch, but it confirmed what I already suspected. No matter how others grief, I needed routine, distraction and a chance to not think about it all…

Because there’s a heck of a lot of free time now to fill up. In the past two years life revolved around hospital visits and/or taking care of Sandra when she was home, with everything else pushed to the margins. That overwhelming focus is no longer needed now and all my usual distractions aren’t quite enough to fill that void. Work helps, to a certain extent. But I still need something more, something bigger than me to believe in — nothing scary and religious, but some sort of cause to work for or hobby to get deeply involved in, something that does more than just entertain me for a couple of hours. I need to get more political again.

First order of business: Resurrect Prog Gold.

Occupy Frank Miller

Comix, Numpties
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James Nicoll takes a sadistic pleasure in inflicting reactionary crybaby rants by once respected writers on his readers, so it’s no wonder I first Frank Miller’s grandpa Simpson’s rant about Occupy Wall Street there. It’s bad:

The “Occupy” movement, whether displaying itself on Wall Street or in the streets of Oakland (which has, with unspeakable cowardice, embraced it) is anything but an exercise of our blessed First Amendment. “Occupy” is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America.

The only thing missing there are the whores, whores whores.

We really shouldn’t be surprised at Miller’s sentiments. He’s not just another supposed liberal driven loony by the September 11 attacks, but somebody who has built his career on writing increasingly outlandish rightwing revenge fantasies. Daredevil, Elektra, Batman: Year One, Ronin, The Dark Knight Returns, 300: none of these are leftwing stories are they? Not that they weren’t good rightwing revenge fantasies, but they did sort of indicate a mind not welcoming to leftwing shenanigans like the Occupy movement.

Therefore, should this rant matter for your enjoyment of Frank Miller’s …unique… brand of comics? Of course not. You knew what you were getting with Miller before: to get outraged now is a bit too late. Apart from that, this Randy Milholand Something Positive strip has it covered.

Full of dicks

history
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These are the choices History Today gives you for for the most important historian of the last sixty years:

  • Anthony Beevor
  • Asa Briggs
  • Fernand Braudel
  • EH Carr
  • Richard J. Evans
  • Niall Ferguson
  • Eric Hobsbawm
  • Simon Schama
  • David Starkey
  • AJP Taylor
  • EP Thompson
  • Hugh Trevor-Roper

One does wonder if having a weewee is the first requisite for being an important historian… Could History Today readers really not think of any female historians with the same stature as Niall Ferguson? No Mary Beard or Rosamond McKitterick or Judith Herrin?

On the other hand, what Chris Williams said in the comments thread on this at B&T makes a lot of sense too:

I think that the best history is usually done at a level which tends not to impact on the consciousness of the general public: to understand the past we need 300 brilliant historians, no one of whom need stand head or shoulders above the others. We can’t do it with just 10 geniuses whom the public recognise.

So what elevates the ‘top ten’ over the other 290? Usually, sicking their necks out in some kind of synthesis – but alas! this tends to take them either to places best occupied by social scientists or philosophers, or to the Schamaverse. There are a lot of good female historians in the top 300 (I work, or have worked, with or for some of them), but very few if any in a notional top ten, perhaps because aside from the odd genius (EPT) you get there by proving that you are very clever rather than finding out new things about the past. And that’s why I would put AJPT in the ‘baddies’ column rather than the ‘goodies’.