'Guest Post' by Copernicus (follow up to 17th December entry)

Revealing article on the wonderful world of the art heist in the Guardian arts pages yesterday detailing the tale of intrigue behind the Tate's recovery of two paintings by Turner: 'Shade and Darkness', and, 'Light and Colour'.

The works in question had somehow made their way into mafia hands, and the 'honourable friends' wanted £3.1 million to facilitate their return.

The Tate paid the money, drawing it from the £24m insurance payouts for the paintings. The gallery had bought back from the insurers, for £8m, the ownership of the works in the case of their discovery.

Hmmnn, pretty far-sighted of the gallery to realise the paintings wouldn't fall into private ownership and disappear forever onto the wall of a Bond villain's study or, ahem, be melted down for scrap; that they would, in fact, be eminently recoverable.

On the question of what happened to the three million small ones, these lines appear -

The gallery, at the time, strenuously denied that the money had been used for ransom. Instead [Tate director] Sir Nicholas [Serota] said it was used to obtain 'information'.

splutter…

Asked to define ransom yesterday, Sandy Nairne, now director of the National Portrait Gallery but formerly in charge of the recovery operation, said: "If I stole something from you and said I will burn it unless you pay me money then that is a ransom demand. For the Turners it was an arrangement approved by the German and British authorities." The defining characteristic of a ransom, he said, was the element of threat - absent in this case.

Ahhh, well, that clears that up then. Oxford uses the slightly less rococco definition -

ransom: noun, a sum of money demanded or paid for the release of a captive.

Anyway, isn't the threat not to give back the paintings?

This 'Orwellian' stuff reminds one slightly of the US redefinition of 'torture' in the War on Terr-ORE so that the 'Man' can engage in what he used to call 'torture' while not engaging in what he now calls 'torture', i.e. causing lasting physical incapacity or death. Well, I suppose pulling someone's finger nails out might not cause lasting incapacity or death but one might find it a little tortuous.

Waterboarding, of course, is a relatively pleasant experience. It is unclear whether running one's nails over a blackboard continues to be a permissible method of confession extraction. While the US government has rowed back slightly on the whole torture thing, however, it seems that information obtained under torture may well be admissable. If that doesn't legitimise the practice, I'm a monkey's uncle.

Meanwhile over at "Gitmo" (as UK lawyer Clive Smith notes in this eye-opening New Statesman article) hitting prisoners has been redefined as "mild non-injurious contact" and attempted suicide, of which there was formerly a great deal, is now called "self-injurious behaviour".

Beatings and attempted suicides are way down at Guantanamo Bay.