-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.counterpunch.org/hpotter1.html
}}}>Begin
November 24, 2001
Harry Potter and Terror's Networks
By Alexander Cockburn
It won't be long, most likely, before Osama's body is on display and
an end written to his chapter in the unfinished saga of Empire v.
Terror. How appropriate that this last week millions of children here
in the US, (the most implacable critics of all), were watching Harry
Potter's battle with Quirrell and the arch villain Voldemort, the
traductive or etymological roots of whose name, "flight of death" or
alternately "death wish" have appropriately bin-Ladian echoes.
Voldemort murdered Harry's parents and how sharp a reverberation
Harry's battle with Voldemort must have with those children in the
New York area who lost a mother or a father on September 11; how
uncomforting headmaster Dumbledore's subsequent remark to Harry that
"to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."
One of the big scenes in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"
is the chess battle with the forces of darkness, where, as a knight,
Ron sacrifices himself to the white queen, in a scene crisply
described by J.K. Rowling: "She struck Ron hard across the head with
hr stone arm, and he crashed to the floor" Ron's sacrifice allows
Harry and Hermione to cross the board safely.
Chess comes out of Islam, originally invented in India somewhere in
the seventh century. Early Muslim writers often contrasted chess, a
game symbolising the exercise of free will and rationality, with
backgammon, emblem of the caprices of the dice and of fate. In the
bluff, lottery-loving West chess is iconically regarded as the
province of brainy villains. In this style bin Laden was billed as
Terror's grand master, with the world as his chess board.
In the death games played by adults children are always the pawns.
"We play poker, they play chess" used to be a favored phrase of
President Kennedy, the notion being that the Communist enemy in all
his Oriental cunning, had a strategy thoroughly conceived and
inherently rational: move would be countered by move, with
uncertainty and chance eliminated. We, on the other hand, play poker.
We gamble and bluff.
"Living chess" has always fascinated people, the notion of absolute
power in the disposition of men and women; also the idea that a wrong
move can cause death. During the Spanish Inquisition a Dominican
Inquisitor called Pedro Arbues ordered unfortunate victims of
persecution to stand in as figures in a game of living chess played
by two blind monks. Each time they captured a piece they condemned
someone to death. Chess is mostly used in films to indicate thought,
problems, villainy or Nemesis.
The Ayatollah Khomeini banned chess in Iran on the grounds that it
excessively fatigues the brain. In the Pali Dialogues of the Buddha,
from the fifth century before Christ, (as edited by Rhys Davies in
Sacred Books of the Buddha, 1899) the Buddha enumerates the trifles
that occupy the thoughts of the unconverted man.
"1. Games on boards with eight or ten rows or squares.
2.The same games played by imagining such boards in the air.
3. Keeping going over diagrams drawn on the ground, so that one
steps only where one ought to go.
4. Either removing the pieces of men from a heap with one's nail,
or putting them in a heap, in each case without shaking it. He who
shakes the heap loses.
5.Throwing a dice.
6. Hitting a short stick with a long one.
7. Dipping the hand with the long finger stretched out in lac or dye
or flour water and striking the wet hand on the ground or on a
wall, calling out 'What shall it be?' and showing the form
required, elephants, horses etc.
8 Games with balls.
9. Blowing thin toy pipes made with leaves.
10. Playing with toy plows.
11. Turning summersaults.
12. Playing with toy windmills made with leaves.
13. Playing with toy measures.
14 Playing with toy carts
15. Playing with toy bows.
16. Guessing at letters traced in the air or on a fellow's back.
17. Guessing a playfellow's thoughts.
18. Mimicking of deformities.
Guatama the recluse holds aloof from such games and recreations."
Contrary to the Buddha's views, kids played those games 2,500 years
ago and many of them today. There will always be the studious kid
with a chess board and the gambler and the group laughing at the
little boy with the gimp leg. In Harry Potter's season and this
weekend our thoughts here at CounterPunch are with all those children
around New York, around Kabul, the world over, who know all too well
terror and Voldemort's chill breath. CP
End<{{{
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