WritingHoarsely

Neda

2009-06-22T08:49:00.001-07:00

Neda

Eyes wide with sharp black pupils
saying „how about that?“ as they struggle
to locate the moment around the compass needle
of consciousness.

No point sharp enough for that,
no argument or plea counteracts the chilling fact
of the overriding bloody cataract
that streams across her face.

The eyes sink back, retreat,
convicted that there's a place to wait
while the force of death surmounts
them and the known is overwhelmed.

And still yet from this prone position
stunned pupils launch a question
of accutest sense and accusation,
why me, why her, why this?

Unionism Decayed

2008-05-31T12:22:00.001-07:00

The author of Unionism Decayed begins „If there is one thing in life worse than being a unionist, it is being a unionist that has consistently opposed the provisions of the Belfast Agreement/Good Friday Agreement“. The cards are firmly on the table, and remain there throughout a many-sided account of life largely outside but dipping into the mainstream of Northern Irish Unionist politics. I'm not sure if there isn't even a touch of black humour in this opening- from the author's perspective his unionist unionism has been firmly „beyond the pale“ of civilised opinion in the British Isles for many years now. The black humour is inescapable later on in his account, however.

Unionism Decayed is a book about politics, a serious-minded book that explores how politics sets the context for life, and how life interacts with politics. A lot of it deals with the detail of various agreements, but not in a history book way- rather to highlight how a power struggle has really been taking place and how these details act rather like the holds of a wrestling match forcing an opponent into submission.

This drama is not easy to capture, but the author does it with great concentration and occasionally
great grace:
„the fields of Drumcree now more closely resembled the fields of the Somme. Mud was everywhere and the scene was cast in the glow of a blood red setting sun. British soldiers stood there ready to do battle with those Orangemen who wished to parade in remembrance of British soldiers who perished at the Somme. IRA/Sinn Fein strategy was working out perfectly“. Shortly afterwards he quotes Gerry Adams himself talking of Drumcree saying „they are the type of scene changes that we have to focus in on, and develop, and exploit“

While not at all coming across as a conspiracist, David Vance keeps his ear to the ground- yet he has the discipline to point out that the above-mentioned quote came from a transcript obtained by Ireland's RTE state broadcaster.

Thus it goes with Unionism Decayed- a thematic account of events and political interventions highlighted and ruminated upon, which balances forthright comment with carefully supported instances.

Vance's perspective is that of an energised commoner- a reluctant politician with deep personal experience arising out of the so-called troubles. A man whose energies, experiences and intelligence propelled him just far enough to glimpse the webs of government in Westminster, and to také the pulse of his local political sphere. Like his political mentor, Robert Mcartney of the UK Unionists, whom Vance approvingly quotes calling Dr Paisley a „fifth rate Calvin“, Vance is prepared to have a dig at anyone whom he considers insincere or out of their depth. His view is more or less that politics is too serious to be left to the politicians- a view which, Vance recognises, the IRA/Sinn Fein have been great exponents of.

This in fact is the great strength of Unionism Decayed- its bypartisan critical spirit. Vance is an equal opportunities critic. It is a fierce and clever book which never shows off, but instead reserves its energies to condemn the contemptible. It is as unsparing in its description of the barbarity of so-called loyalist terrorism as it is of the nationalist type, and it makes some vital points- the most devastating, coming from such lively mind and active spirit, being that Unionists have lost.

I have but one nit to pick in Unionism Decayed- I had to look up a quote from Pope „Violence is a monster so frightful mien“ because the author had omitted the word „of“. Not all of us are as focussed on reality as David Vance, and a number of such rough edges did make me doubt slightly the author's grasp. In the end though I held no such doubts. Unionism Decayed is a valuable, timely book, that needed to be written and has been carried off powerfully well.

Poetry vs Reality on Iraq

2007-09-15T04:57:00.001-07:00

Poetry vs Reality

Hillary Clinton gave me one of the high points of my week.

In a strange kind of way.

It was when she accused General Petraeus (yes, he of "the surge") of requiring from the Senate and the American people the "suspension of disbelief". video here.

To give her her full due, what she may have meant by using that term is that Petraeus was spinning a kind of poetry- the poetry of noble aims and worthy sacrifice.

The term comes from the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, perhaps the least known of the main Romantic poets. To enjoy ~~the war~~ poetry you have to stop being critical, basically, according to Sam and Hill's theory.

It was, I thought, typical of the Senator for New York- this kind of pretentiousness combined with a plausible kind of false reasoning. It must have sounded good to her- educated and suggestive without saying someone is lying. After all, is poetry a lie? Is patriotism? Dulce et decorum est... etc.

Yet the pitch is exactly indicative of the falseness of the debate. It's the tendency to reduce all criticism to epic poetry- in this case playing to the stereotype of a poetry of patriotism.

It was a truly low intellectual blow.

A positive debate was impossible politically for the Democrats, but what would it have looked like? For a start, it wouldn't have used the poetry of loss and mourning- suggesting that the pain in Iraq is cyclical and doomed to repeat. This Democrat "poetry" has long meant that the antidote is seen to be sunny optimism. Everyone has cried out for Reagan, an optimist who never dealt with long lists of casualties except for the Beirut bombing- which he took as cue for an isolationist policy regarding the Middle East.

No a positive debate begins by saying America is good. US power is good and the aim of the policy should be to extend and preserve it through choosing the right course in Iraq. If that's sounds too positive, it's actually only the attitude of a healthy, happy individual to themselves. Self-mistrust is perhaps an essential ingredient for healthy people, but it is not helpful when making important decisions of destiny.

So my argument for Petraeus, for consideration by the US Senate, would be as follows.

We have faced many enemies in Iraq. Enemies hurt you. But that is a good reason not to be beaten, because a helpless, defeated person may be beaten mercilessly by a vicious opponent. What that means in this case is that, not the US directly, but the US' interests in the Middle East would be tortured by its opponents- we're talking about oil, Lebanon, Iraq, and Israel, to name a few. In addition, terrorists would be harboured, and have the luxury of many ports of call and numerous sugar daddies.

Additionally, backing out of Iraq would lead to an intensified conflict in Afghanistan and the Pakistani border lands. It would offer succour to the Sudanese regime. It might re-embolden Gadaffi in Libya.

Well, I've started negatively so that I can turn to the positives. What recent histoy has taught us in Iraq is that we can call the shots when we want. We are the hyperpower, we have the manpower to change the facts on the ground.

This is despite out enemies. Yet it is crucial to realise that we are faced with strong opponents with toxic political aims and zero moral restraint. Look at Al Qaeda in their bombing of Najaf. Look at Al Sadr in the behaviour of his forces, in the death squads of Baghdad.

The encouragement here is to be found in the fact that we have opponents with rationales. They want to achieve things for their own ends. Our goal should be to neutralise them. In fact, they want to get us out of Iraq, and probably create a division of Iraq between Syria and Iran.

The idle hands of the Islamic world can simply not get enough of conflict. They will happily play the game of Sunni/Shia until the time comes that they have a more satisfying target, like the West. While some would like to leave them to it, that tactic has been tried and history has moved on. After festering for generations, the Islamic world is healing the divides with a Frankensteinian tenderness as it scents alien blood, rather as a Tiger shark and a White shark might forget each other were a bleeding elephant to be dumped floundering in their aquarium.

Yes, US forces are a target in Iraq, but they are also capable, here and now, of inflicting massive and memorable defeats on those who would otherwise be left in a post-Saddam sectarian madhouse to ferment their fantasies against the West. To them, you see, it doesn't seem like a madhouse- they lived through their "splatter-movie" years under Saddam, after all.

It's important to recognise what's happened in Iraq- we've faced down the Baathists, faced down al Qaeda, drawn in the Sunni minority. Meanwhile we've antagonised the Shia and their sectarian ambitions are so far a little behind schedule. We now need to continue to antagonise the Shia, proving to the Sunnis that we will ensure order in Iraq where both groups can live peacefully. This means outmaneuvering the worst radicals within the Dawa-led Iraqi Govt itself. There are signs that, for instance, the security forces are welcoming an influx of Sunnis. This must continue, and make the Shia in Govt. know that they face an integrationist movement that will aggressively act to unite the factions. By next elections, the Sunni need to be fully engaged, and allied to the Kurds in the North. The radical Shia must be discredited, the Iranians sent many an unambiguous message.

This political strategy should have been happening in the first two years in Iraq. Instead the Shia were too elevated (an obvious and understandable danger which should have topped the list of political concerns among the post-invasion Coalition hierarchy), and now we are dealing with Sunnis with blood on their hands who should have been killed straightaway before they infected their brethren. Still the wheels have turned. The point of momentum is not far away. It may seem like poetry, but one last push ~~should would could~~ might do it. Or should we call that a "surge"?

Going to the dogs: Blair, Brown, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the BBC

2007-08-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

When you read an article from the BBC, the only way to be informed and not disappointed or mystified is to understand that there is a BBC "position" on the matter at hand that you have to know.

When reading an article about the military, you have to understand: the BBC is against both the British and US armies. The US is the worst. The BBC think that warfare is really unjustifiable for post-colonial western countries; it's ok for post colonial colonial countries- they have to let off steam and should not be interrupted unless the force involved wears blue helmets or unless it looks likely that the savagery involved in the conflict will ruin the cosy western liberal's peace of mind and ability to trust the UN to solve everything.

So that's the first tranche of assumptions out of the way. We could add a few more, such as that EU members infelicitous forays abroad will be mainly ignored- they mean well, and surely they will (suitably modestly) support the longed-for EU army that would put a spoke in the wheel of the Yankee dominance.

The BBC were against the Iraq war- post-Hutton and following revision of most people's view of the Iraq war, the BBC are unlikely to claim that it was otherwise.

Just browsing through the BBC's coverage of Basra, one is overwhelmed by the negativity. Yet the British losses in Basra have been fewer than 170. In an era when our army is so small, that is a number that may be felt, but it is pretty low over four years of deployment. We never got those reports of the engagement with the people of Basra. To be fair probably the army didn't imagine they would need to engage- they hold to the line that the media (BBC) have spun that the politicians promised that the Iraqis would be doing everything for themselves in no time.

It hasn't proved that way. Yet when you have a national broadcaster pulling so against the national interest (whatever your view of the war, to see our soldiers safe and our prestige enhanced would, I think, fall into the definition of the national interest), it is hardly surprising if negativity has tended to dominate our approach- whatever sterling guys are out there doing hard work.

Actually I don't trust the BBC's search archive- I feel sure there were some articles from generals saying we were "winning" in Basra, that basically things were going ok. There is no rhyme or reason to their archive- I wonder if they have guys organising it to show off the Beeb in the best possible light- ie. the best angle to protect and advance the Beeb's interests; they seemed to be able to spare time to edit wikipedia.

But I've known for a long time that the BBC's goal was a downbeat and bedraggled retreat from Basra. This is very important to the corporation, because its views concerning such interventionism are very deep-rooted indeed.

The major reason they turned against Tony Blair and started supporting Gordon Brown was that Blair had betrayed their trans-nationalist, UN-brokered, apologetic diplomacy. Blair did it for good reasons- he understood that the Right in the UK could only be beaten permanently by being outflanked on such issues as Iraq. It was a generational opportunity to put the Conservatives in a spin; and moreover, Blair knows that Conservatives can be right from time to time, even from his perspective, and that it's essential to understand when they are and to neutralise their effectiveness.

But I digress. Can I expect the BBC to be more positive about Afghanistan? I am not holding my breath- that too was interventionism, and highly dubious from a BBC point of view. When they are it is certainly only a provisional and impermanent state. The BBC have always been able to afford being doctrinaire, and never need interrupt this luxury for too long.

Brown, moreover, is a man far more after their own heart. In addition to toeing the party line when the party was extremely Leftist, Brown had his own ideas along similar lines. In contrast, Blair was more of a weather-vane (I'm going back to their roots in the 70's and 80's now).

So I think that in addition to getting us out of Iraq, Brown will want to get us out of Afghanistan.

Now then is a good time to declare that we are winning that war- build up the pubic belief and then quietly nip off. We'll see how that works in Iraq, and then... we'll see about Afghanistan. Part of the reason for demonising Tony Blair over Iraq was so that we could nip of asap claiming it was the Yanks' responsibility.

It will be the same in Afghanistan. "Stretched but winning" will morph into "we've done enough, given enough" etc. One can see that that's the strategy because we are not spending enough money to equip our forces; they are under-equipped.

Money is a basic factor here: when the Democrats were deciding how to go about pulling down the US involvement in Iraq, their thoughts turned to withholding money. That's been the British Leftist Government's strategy all the long. Tony Blair went into Iraq because he knew it was right for Britain- but also to beat the Tories. Even the Left could see that part of the argument- they just can't see why we have to fear islamofascism. Therefore you don't raise the proportion of national income spent on the military- it's a natural starvation policy. Even better, when you draw down from action like Iraq and Afghanistan, you can claim a peace dividend and cut back even further.

Best of all, now that the Tories' possible advantage is neutralised, now that an assertive strategy is suitably discredited, they can proceed with appeasement safe in the knowledge that the assertiveness of the Right has been drained.

It is indeed a bitter Sunday evening conspiracy post. I may add some extra links or make some edits later.

Watching Borat in Prague

2006-12-02T11:49:00.000-08:00

One of the interesting things about films is the way that our response can be affected by the circumstances in which we watch them. I don't mean whether there are noisy distractions or the tv is small or the cinema screen grand, but rather the awareness we have of the place of the film within our daily lives.

I watched Borat in a new cinema in a dormitory-like suburb of Prague. There were perhaps twenty-five or thirty people in the auditorium, who, like myself, had paid the knock-down price the cinema is offering to get its audience numbers up.

The new shopping centre in which the cinema is located is itself struggling- the dormitory dwellers don't know what to make of the idea of leisuring in their locale after decades of getting on the bus for all but basic needs.

It was into this tepid water that Borat rather embarrassingly plunged. It had me in full "what will my family think" mode- by which I mean that whenever a film seems starkly out of place it conjures those moments long-gone when family viewing as having a guest in the corner of the living room was replaced by the sensation of having an invader jabbering from a box in our personal space who would soon need ejecting by full force of button pressure.

Yet paradoxically Borat isn't the kind of film that would have got the automatic switch off in the house I grew up in. We didn't switch off clever programmes, only banal ones.

It's been funny seeing all the critics try to put their finger on what Borat's real targets are. Some take offense at the outrageous sexism, gay-bashing and Jew-hating nature of the language. Others hyperventilate over the people who are the butts of Cohen's pranks, characterising it as an assault on the American heartland by a Cambridge educated British Jew.

In places Borat is quite funny, yet the humour is much more obscure than it looks.

A semitic looking gangly rube heads into a stiff upper class dinner party and remarks favourably on the appearance of a guest's wife, while slighting his host's, and then after more and more outrageous behaviour orders a fat black prostitute using the host's phone. The reactions of the dinner party aren't stupid at any time. If Borat had cracked an out of character smile the penny would have dropped. Yet without this epiphany the action moves on to the inevitable arrival of the police car.

It's the clockwork-like nature of the drama (and Borat always creates drama), and the way the players in the drama are so smoothly and predictably wound up.

I laughed quite a bit at Borat. I even laughed when I was offended- for example when Borat, early on in the film, stands outside a highstreet window making obviously faked masturbatory motions to the dummys in the dressed window.

Somehow, amidst all this mahem of social etiquette eschewed, I was satisfied that an intelligent mind was behind it all.

What was the lesson? That question has been buzzing around me ever since I saw Borat. I wanted to dismiss the question as naive, but couldn't. It seems to me, upon consideration, just at this moment while writing, that Borat walked a line between satiricising savage youth and savaging undercooked maturity. Social norms are no certain guides to judgement and maturity, but savagery is not at all quaint.

A good message, if difficult.

V for Vendetta

2006-04-30T02:26:00.000-07:00

Bit of a film review. V for Vendetta.

Obviously behind the curve so to speak, as films don't open in far-flung parts of Prague until they're almost played out elsewhere. I make a point though of going to see films with a bit of bite about them. I don't like films generally all that much so at least with one you disagree with there's something to think about, and you keep up with the village idiots who make them.

I think the first thing one has to do with a film like V for Vendetta is to realise that it couldn't be more post modern than it is. Thus it is crude and stupidly ahistorical. Right from the off where we get a very short sequence flashing us back to the gunpowder plot we should realise that this is a film of gimmicks only: gimmick upon gimmick like modern shopping centres straining to convince you that there's some substantial world around you when in fact you're basically inside a glorified warehouse.

So, one is led to say, in this non-dramatic film of effects only- where dramatic effects are reduced to the same stature as the special effects- the message must be philosophical, and I think it is, and since the philosophy is tortured, you could call it a political film. There are subliminal messages galore, but I think we get a sense of the kind of world the Wachowski brothers would like to live in (draw up your top five liberal wishlist policies and you'll be close).

Its coherence can best be summed up by that beginning I mentioned: the sequence showing Guy Fawkes, which takes us from his failed plot to his hanging (even this I found a bit silly- I am sure he was hung, drawn and quartered, a bit more involved a spectacle and more interesting than what was depicted; they missed a trick, unless the dramatic aim was to manipulate rather than move the audience).

Anyway, the bottom line is that Guy Fawkes died in the service of an ideology, in opposition to the will of his countrymen, attempting to restore a religion that had excelled in corruption and despotism. The absolute monarchs of Europe could rely on the Pope to lend them support, the divine rights of kings were strengthened by this relationship. Guy Fawkes was an absolute enemy of freedom, as is usual for people whose aims involve directly killing large numbers of people.

Basically the film stands or falls on your acceptance that Guy Fawkes was a good man. I just don't, but if you do then all the nazi hints (and there are many), and the implausible way a historically democratic society becomes a genocidal dictatorship in a one or two bounds, becomes a lot more plausible. What irritated me, I think, about this link between Guy Fawkes and V was the implication that the 400 years of more or less representative Government which has followed the original 5th was essentially a footnote and irrelevant, despite the fact that modern democracy the world over owes something to the inspiration of Westminster.

The film works a lot in flashbacks, as is usual for a film without a proper plot, where revenge is being visited on all manner of people in a regime for the deceit and bloodshed by which they gained power, in so doing maiming V. We are introduced to V through an absurd dialogue he has with Keira Knightly where most of the words begin with the letter V. It's a ramped up Sesame Street approach which seems somehow appropriate.

It's the kind of film where you leave feeling the need to applaud the film makers not for achievement but for effort. What did they achieve though? Not much more than a kind of demagoguery consistent with support for terrorism.

It's a measure of modern film making that all the hurrahs are gained just by being able to say, there, we did it, 2 + 2 = 5, terrorism can have it's justifications, democracy can have its terrorism, blah blah, and we did it all in a Hollywood film! So nearragh neaarrgh. Pathetic.

The Anti-war Fallacy

2006-04-04T07:23:00.000-07:00

The anti-war fallacy

Time to attempt something more comprehensive as a follow up to my post on the latest revelations concerning the Iraq war, terrorism, and the London bombings.

I'd start by saying that I've become immune to the drip feed of titillating 'revelation' concerning intelligence reports about Iraq- whether about warnings that intelligence concerning WMD was patchy, or leaks revealing that the decision to go to war was predetermined, or that the war would increase the risk of terrorism to the UK.

Why? Am I just unable to entertain that I can be wrong about something? In denial?

Well, I'm not going to introspect just yet.

I think I've just stated the major themes that people imagine delegitimise the war in Iraq.

So let me deal with the potentially seismic issues, and in doing so I'll deal with the latest revelations which have drip-fed from the British press, and refer in general to those who seem to find them so worthwhile.

I'll start with the last first: that the war in Iraq increased the risk of terrorist attack to the UK.

Well, one thing I know: the war in Iraq vastly increased our expectation of an attack.

However it did not introduce the threat of terrorism to the UK. The sources of Islamic terrorist threat are obviously myriad at the present time: this article by Anthony Browne in the Times points out a timeline of terrorist attacks which stretches back decades and includes much of Europe in its reach.

What's interesting is that in each case there seems to be some 'justification' offered in terms of historic grievances. As he says about France, object of bomb attacks in the 90's, 'The first to confront its Islamic terrorist threat was France, home to EuropeÂs largest Muslim community, which faced a series of bomb attacks in Paris in the 1980s and 1990s. Most of FranceÂs five million Muslims are Arabs from its former colonies in North Africa, particularly Algeria. The attacks on Paris were seen as revenge both for the past colonisation of Algeria and for supporting the present military regime.'

The moral is that there can always be a justification, no matter what, when the tide of world affairs is with you. If the mood is fashionable post-colonialism, then the fashionable ideas of postcolonialism will be motivational.

As a matter of fact the attackers on July the 6th were Pakistani in origin. What had they personally to do with Iraq? Nothing. So they obviously had an attitude which latched violently onto things that were not personally connected to them. That attitude, concerning international solidarity, it is difficult not to associate with movements like communism and Islam. Wouldn't it be more realistic to assume that resentment over the British-led partition of India and the open sore of Kashmir could have become their cause du jour in the spirit of the times we live in, were Iraq not so much more prominent in the public mind and readily usable to lend moral weight to acts of evil? These Pakistani guys would know that the great majority would scarcely have heard of Kashmir (and resented the fact), so what would have been the point of pamphlets and meetings on that subject in such conditions?

To read the Iraq war as their motive is to ignore the basic motive of solidarity, which would latch onto any cause available, and realism, which would ignore the backwater issues in favour of the latest popular one: Iraq instead of Kashmir, that is.

I further believe that the level of awareness in the UK about the terrorist threat may have had two interesting consequences relevant to this issue. One may have been that instead of being the victim of a more ambitious attack a la Sept 11, Britain was the object of a carefully planned attack on a weak spot at a time of heightened awareness. Those directly affected may not accept it, but it could have been much worse. What exactly has prevented us from receiving a Sept 11th style attack? The mercy of Osama? I think not. More likely it was a tempering of ambition brought about by heightened public awareness and state measures.

But the level of awareness has certainly had the consequence of an natural connection being assumed between the bombings and Iraq. I am not disputing here that the July bombers knew a lot about and were fascinated by Iraq as a moral and religious issue. So am I. However I think that to say the threat would have been less grave without the Iraq war is a mistake.

It is possible that the sense of confrontation would have been lower. It is possible that these particular individuals would not have carried out the attack they did. It's also possible that the same individuals would have committed the same attack but with a different grievances to the fore. It's more likely, in my view, that another set of individuals motivated by relatively obscure (to us, as we see things now) cause would have developed a plot more barbarous and blatant, away from scrutiny, and carried that out successfully simply because it was not expected.

That's what happened on 9/11, after all.

I just want to dwell on that a moment. We often drift past it as a done-to-death issue. On Sept 11th terrorists tried to kill thousands in the WTC, and succeeded, and to kill as many as they could at the Pentagon, and were heading (in their fourth plane) towards Washington DC and the seat of US power when their only major failure occurred and the passengers on flight 93 helped crash the plane outside the terrorist's schedule. That was a decapitation strategy, of a sort- on an ideological rather than a practical level, though a practical demonstration was fundamental to it.

That's the scale of Al Qaeda's ambition, and the ambitions of all Islamists are attached to it really like a hydra.

Anyway, back to our seismic issues.

The allegation that the war was predetermined, that Blair/Bush adopted the threat of Saddam as an argument for war merely to satisfy a desire to remove Saddam is a curious one. The desire to get rid of Saddam was one that all leaders in the UK/US had shared since the early 90's. Clinton was keen, but wanted to go the covert route.

I think I'd simply refer to the immense nature of the events on Sept 11th. Some would say there's no link between Sept 11th and Iraq. I always said there needn't be; what you have to keep in mind is that Sept 11th was a statement of the world address from the Islamic world to the US.

Jut now I'm going to very blatantly segue from talking about the Islamic world to talking about the Arab one. That's mainly because all the Sept 11th terrorists were Arab, and because Arabs founded the Islamic religion. If you don't think that religion and nationalism mix, then you'll have to explain such ancient English war cries as 'for God and St George', plus the whole notion of patron saints, religio-nationalistic movements like the Hussites, Polish nationalism and, well, a host of others.

9/11 was the culmination of historical processes in which Saddam had been a key factor. Perhaps that seems vague, but that's what the big picture sometimes looks like. Try to see Saddam from an Arab nationalist perspective for a moment: he was the standard bearer of anti-Americanism among them, and a bulwark of resistance to American involvement in their affairs. Don't forget to exclude Iran for a moment too: it's Persian. Entertain the idea that Arab nationalism has always had a quasi-religious quality. Factor in the geographical positioning of Iraq and its oil in considering the influence of Saddam. Bear in mind that the US dealt with the most direct nestbed of Islamofascism, in Afghanistan, almost immediately, proving that practical matters were prioritised at least to that extent.

It's not so unreasonable to have attacked Saddam in the light of these things.

Let me introduce here a tiny reference to Saddam's anti-US rhetoric. Look how Saddam celebrated his birthday in 2002. A play whose starting point was the rape of an Iraqi woman by US troops at the start of the 1990 Gulf War. As an aside to an aside, I'd point out the similarity between this motif and the one chosen by British MP George Galloway to rouse his Middle Eastern hosts on a trip recently:

'The foreigners are doing to your daughters as they will. The daughters are crying for help, and the Arab world is silent. And some of them are collaborating with the rape of these two beautiful Arab daughters.'

Naturally, trying to analyse religion and race is a difficult and complex thing, but it must be true that in Al Qaeda and all its many associates we were dealing with a transnational movement for whom Saddam was a kind of cover, a father figure, a useful distraction, a sugar daddy, even a hero of sorts. Just because he was only partially any of these things doesn't mean that the sum of his parts was not extremely toxic. A similar profile might have identified Al Capone as linchpin in the bootlegging movement during US prohibition.

By now we know that there were proven contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda. There are undisputed documents which show that meetings took place.

Google will not help too much in finding out the veracity of this; the press is not much help. Hubris knows no urgency and no need for clarity. Additionally, no one owes it to you to make it clear. The way I explain it though is to see Saddam as an Arab Mr Big. Nothing much happens on Saddam's patch unless Saddam knows about it. On the other hand, criminals know one when they see one, so they gravitate to him, and he encourages it because it enhances his prestige (think of Ansar al Islam and others). Not being the managerial type they aren't exactly under his thumb and he isn't in charge of them, but the relationship works for both on an informal basis.

That's the basic way to look at Saddam, and that's why he had to go in the post 9/11 context.

Thirdly and finally, the thin evidence about WMD.

I think increasingly this is being seen as an irrelevance by those who are looking forward rather than back. Over the last few years we've had revelations about the role of Pakistan in proliferating nuclear technology. On the other hand, Col. Gaddaffi has realised that possessing weapon technology is no longer a unique advantage for a country like his. It's better for him and his progeny, he reasons, to exist under a western umbrella with some western imports, than to rely on an increasingly tenuous WMD advantage over other nations, which is a diminishing source of prestige within his own country.

What I am trying to say is that the threat of WMD did not depend on Iraq efforts, just as the threat of a grounded battleship doesn't depend on its weaponisation but on the rising tide of the water around it. It may sound like a get out, but I'll come to that shortly. The fact is we live amid a world more and more awash with weaponry, and the key issue is the intentions and the goodwill, or lack of it, of its possessors.

It may sound silly, but ask yourself how Saddam felt about us, about how Saddam said he felt about us, about what Saddam represented in terms of intentions in relation to us.

Now to explain why this would be a get out argument if Tony Blair used it, but not if I do.

Put simply, I think that the politicians knew about the threats posed by Islamic terrorism and by rogue states- separately and in tandem- throughout the nineties if not before. Partly out of lazines, partly from hubris, but mainly from an inability to think of the ambitious scale of antipathy among the world's westernising Islamic denizens, they failed to make the issue one of public concern.

They pursued Iraq through the limited aegis of the UN, allowed part of the UN's Security Council to form close relationships with Saddam, reassured the public Iraq could be dealt with through the usual channels, and effected no real change to the dynamics of Saddam's regime.

During that period, the twin tides of Islamism and weaponisation were rising around them.

Tony Blair, in his leadership, had underestimated the climate so badly that he was forced to rely on a technical argument to justify that apparent volte face.

Finally I come to the subject of ongoing revelations of the governmental contortions Tony Blair's approach to politics nationally and internationally have led to- I mean the Government reports that have to cater to the confused and angry people who bought Blairism as a serious phenomenon, as well as the leaks which newspapers hunger for to bolster their flagging readership with fashionable anti-Blair, anti-war rhetoric.

These have to be seen in their context I believe. It's not rational to say on the one hand that the Government misled us into war with Iraq but can be trusted to tell the truth about its errors. They are not naughty boys who see the errors of their ways, but adults covering their immediate political futures. It's easier for them to accept narrow technical misjudgements than to admit their whole approach was flawed. It would make the difference between having a scapegoat or two (eg. Blair himself)and cleaning out the augean stables.

There are also scores to be settled within the intelligence community, but I think that the priority among them must be to secure their future and the standing they have in the political establishment.

I think that people who dwell on the 'officialness' of pronouncements, or the 'high level' of the leaks, are just really emphasising that they never thought deeply enough about the political activities behind the war with Iraq in the first place, and are continuing in that tendency now.

2005-12-29T12:08:00.000-08:00

Ever since I came to the Czech republic 16 or so months ago, I've had an intermittently recurring thought: that it would be great if one day I can recite the first few words of Good King Wenceslas (well, those that I can remember), and get to the line where the snow is described as 'thick and crisp and even', and look around me and say, 'yes, as in times of yore, so it is now'.

Well, you've guessed already that that day has come- today- and thankfully I recalled this little whimsy, which gave me great satisfaction. I love snow- the thicker the better. I love that sense that the old life is being obliterated and that somehow an older one, but a purer one, is being imposed upon it Why older? I suppose because transfiguration of this type is timeless, unlike ordinary landscape alterations. It always seems to be one of the greatest architectural wonders when the contours of the world are reconfigured in a kind of wild rococco white, smooth and billowing, airy and light while blanketing and cosying the land. It gives a kind of relief which darkness, though able to hide a person, and render society somnolent, never can. There's the hush, too, of course; and the purity, and the feeling that we're surrounded by a benign sea frozen in waves across the land. The typical paradisical thoughts which made it hard for me (an 'ed', after all), not to sympathise with Edmund in enjoying the company of the White Witch in Narnia.

So, despite the fact that my damn Prague internet providers are behaving like the prosecuters in Kafka's The Trial, with me as K, I am still moderately mellow- thanks to the snow (however, being cleverer than Kafka, my prosecutors er, providers, leave me unsure whether I am not in fact K in The Castle) Thanks, snow, for mellowing my harsh. Or 'snih', or whatever they damn well change it to for the case I've just used.

Of course the vandals (or are they huns?) are out there already, spraying their salt somewhat impotently and driving their big cars in convoys up and down our street to pack down the snow for some reason. Why can't they just walk, like me? Or take the bus, as I eventually do, or the tube, which I finally reach. Why can't they, in short, just be me. That would solve a lot of problems. I am a great self-hater though.

In Cracow- relevant today

2005-08-17T07:50:00.000-07:00

In Cracow, Poland, you can find the burial places of the medieval kings of Poland- dating from the 14th century until the end of the monarchy over two hundred years ago.

You can also find what was formerly one of the most important Jewish centres in what was one of the most popular nations for the diaspora at the beginning of the 20th century- Kazimierz.

All of this is just 70 km from Auschwitz-Birkenau, known in Polish as Oswiecim, where around a million European Jews died, as well as about 5oo ooo others, many of those Poles (many of whom died in the first years of WW2). I undertook a journey there on a sunny Sunday, and it was a very physical and - (can I coin a word from factual and practical?) - 'factical' experience. I went without food and water from ten in the morning until five in the afternoon (the train journey out, and the tour, were actually physically discomforting as a result, but I didn't feel much like consuming anything despite that), and this enhanced the physical reality of seeing with one's own eyes the puff-light piles of hair, the twisted heaps of shoes, the piles of distressed spectacle frames etc. It seemed to me, reflecting on it, that when doubting the sincerity of feelings about the Holocaust then to method act a small fragment of hardship was a good way to enter fractionally into some of the terrors that the place contained.

But, forget the Nazis if you can for a moment- the Communists contributed substantially to a massive collapse in the numbers of 3 million Polish Jews, mainly through persecution leading to emigration, to the point where today estimates of their numbers are, at the more optimistic end, around the several dozens of thousands mark (counting the very many people who are unwilling to allow their Jewish identity to be known.)

So how many did I see in Cracow, in the winding streets of Kazimierz, in amongst the showers and warm sunshine? Probably very few if any, considering that the pre-war population estimated at 60,000 has been considerably more than decimated. Maybe the man in the Noah's Ark bookshop on Miodowa street wasn't even Jewish, though, er, he looked it. According to what seems the reliable source linked above, the known Jewish population may currently stand at around the 150 mark. Yes, that's One-Five-Oh.

Yet Cracow is not an unhappy place. One reason is that the Poles generally were not responsible for the massacre of their valuable-in-every-sense Jewish population, and actually most of Cracow's jews did not got to Oswiecim but to Belzec near the Ukraine. Even the period of communism seems, on casual examination at any rate, difficult to categorise as having had a Polish nationalist movement of real potency, though it sanctioned anti-semitism at times (not that the two are synonymous, but nationalism under communism is an equation difficult to compute without anti-semitism, at least in Europe). One support for that assertion would be the large number of Jews who took a part in at least the early decades of the communist regime- until 1968 when things changed a lot for them- seen as liberating them from the old world view which had culminated in the Shoah.

In Kazimierz you can find the best restaurants in Cracow, as well as some very lively looking clubs. In many areas well kept, it's also, perhaps understandably, home to some stylish dereliction- but the Jewishness is alive somehow in this vibrant cultural life. From synagogue(s) to ritual bathhouse, even to the well-kept graveyards, there seem to be no empty touristic shells, whatever use is made of them. There are many signs in Hebrew- and local Polish students of Jewish Studies at Jugiellonian University have courses to help them with the difficult Hebrew language. There's also one of the few authentic (ie. featuring real live Jews!) European festivals of Jewish culture, held biennially in Kazimierz.

The Jewish area is found on the Southern side of the city (a city of around 700,000 people- map), just outside the extensive old town. Most of the old town (excepting at least the part adjacent to the Jewish area) is surrounded by a 'moat' of greenery and footpaths. It's not a place to walk, but to stroll lazily there gives one a perfect introduction to the style and scale of it. Any time one cares it's easy to dive into the network of streets comprising many ancient but well-kept buildings. A foray into them confirms the sense that often they go back several centuries at least- Cracow was saved for our modern taste for tourism, from our modern taste for destruction, by the Swedish empire's decision to relocate the capital closer to home, in Warsaw, in 1609. Today there's a plethora of cafes- both cheap internet and ordinary ones- and boutiques in these streets.

One also can't forget the main Town Square, which I saw under a variety of conditions but which seemed truly magical at dusk when the smoke from some fast food stalls was drifting around in the moist-still air beneath a rain-filled sky. The medieval quality then was stunning, something I haven't felt elsewhere in central Europe- rivalled in my experience only by the much less grand but nonetheless delightful sensations of York in the UK.

Still, having said all that, Poland's lack of Jews today seems crushing in the light of its rich history of association with the Jewish nation, and Cracow, though perhaps aided by the film Schindler's List which popularised one of its interesting old boys, is only an obscure current in the tide of history as it relates to the future of the Jews. This overall tide still doesn't seem to be washing away the cruel high tidewater mark of European oppression and malevolence towards the Jews with something far more tolerant and respectful, but instead allowing that high-tide mark to become, largely through ignorance and indifference, all Islamo-scummy. I would say Cracow is clearly an exception to that rule, though a faint one- a fact which allows its beauty to be enjoyed without guilt that we are walking over the bones of victims to do so.

(main source- apart from internet- 'Poland and the Jews' by Stanislaw Krajewski, Austeria 2005.)

The end of history?

2005-08-02T03:44:00.000-07:00

It really is all encapsulated by something that Mark Steyn has been pointing out again and again: the tendency to think we've reached the end of history; that things cannot change beyond a certain span of what is conceivable.

It's a place where psychology and philosophy mix and mingle with sociology, economics and science. In other words, contrary to all appearances of banality and shallowness, modern society is an interesting place in which to find oneself.

It's also a place where we've been before, though perhaps not every society has been there- and not every society is there now. It seems undeniable that more countries are there now than have ever been there before, though I wouldn't want to make an exhaustive list; while anyway in the future it's almost certain the current record for numerousness will be broken. Certainly Britain has been there before, and though we're there again we are not quite the innocents that we were the first time.

Where was the place we have been before? I wouldn't want to say it too precipitately, because although it's a place we've been before the significance of it has changed- you might say the map reference is the same but the lie of the land has shifted due to nature and man in combination.

Ok, well, to end the suspense, the name of the place is summertime, 1914.

Why that particular time? Perhaps Larkin expressed it best in his poem MCMXIV :

Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word- the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting just a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.

I want to focus on the three middle lines, the lines I highlight. This is not literary criticism, but it might help to visualise the then and now parallel tracks.

When Larkin talks about 'innocence', it's clear (especially when you know something about Larkin) he means a combination of sexual and societal innocence. The idea he outlines which died in the war that followed was that fidelity to the twin concepts of marriage and social responsibility created some kind of concept of sustainability, or even eternity.

The central features of life have moved on; Larkin was right that marriage and social responsibility - and religion- in Britain would never be the same after the Somme.

It needs to be said, however, that what changed was not so fundamental as to abolish the idea of marriage and the idea of social responsibility; what had changed was society's trust, or faith, or worshipful posture, towards these words and their manifestations. Thus marriage survived, and so did a notion of social responsibility, but the emphasis on an individual and personal commitment to them went- especially the desire to retain the standards of such commitments across all the units that then comprised society. After all, the War made, actually forced, people to see that forced loyalty, assumed loyalty, resulted in stupidity of different kinds among all kinds of people, from the high to the low ranking in society. To put it in the war context, from the donkeys to the lions simple loyalty to abstractions guaranteed bestial outcomes eventually.

And that may be the nearest thing you'll find to a generalisation that works- although anyone reading it had better beware that it too is one of those abstraction thingys which we can't rely on without dehumanising ourselves.

But where does it link to today's society? Haven't we very little in fact to do with these abstractions of marriage and social responsibility, having developed 'open' relationships and created state apparata to deal with the social responsibility end? Well, it's precisely the settled nature of these resolutions that mirrors the error of the past. It's always a mistake to think you've got human relationships 'fixed' in some way that can't be improved on- especially if your idea of improvement is, in the face of criticism, more of the same.

Thus, at one extreme, preachers in the noughties no doubt said that what was needed for society's ills was the comittment of ordinary men and women to loyally improving the condition of the social fabric, and greater fidelity to institutions like marriage. Today the status quo junkies, in between their dessert and their coffee and occasional cigar, would be saying that we need to be more flexible about our view of relationships and invest more in social welfare. Though utterly irrational, failing to link at all with the evidence around them, this passes as sophisticated thought- as did the preacher's noughty waffle. Both exemplify futility, like blowing at rain clouds in an attempt to halt the rain.

To draw such a simple parallel will not do however. We also need to look at the underlying power-politics which indicate, contrary to our deepest wishes, that we've arrived, after so much travelling, at a place where we've been before.

Recently we've had several votes in which Europe's mistrust of itself at the level of nation-states has reared its head even against the people who claim that Europe can't be trusted- that is, the politicians for whom the end of national histories, subsumed within an EU which is almost above and beyond what was once considered history, is the goal.

In this almost reflexive distrust of our leaders we can see a good reflection of the close to reflexive trust that Europe's leaders enjoyed prior to 1914 amongst the overwhelming mass of society- and of course, given the nature of reflection, we can mean that literally apparent is a near doppelganger along antonymical lines. Those who would trust their politicians, not out of blindness but out of a sense of urgency (the origin of which I will address), are a small minority, with views largely unarticulated and unheard- as were indeed those who distrusted their politicians with a fervour before 1914.

I suppose that here is the place to insert a waiver to this argument- that among the people of Europe trust in their leaders was far from uniform before the First World War. It was apparently most striking in Britain, and also partly in Germany. Today cynicism reigns, but to differing degrees across Europe. It's most subconscious and hampering in Eastern, former Communist Europe, while cynicism is most robust in Britain- half the time appearing to be quite a jovial arrangement.

[ Insert: here I stopped writing, on July 02 2005. I rapidly forgot this wordy piece, despite a lot of enthusiasm about it during writing. Then, on July 7th 2005, something quite momentous happened when 58 people were killed by a series of terrorist-jihadi bombs on the London underground. This tragedy was followed by a lot of panic in London, all the while we heard reassuring noises from the authorities. As I write, on the 24th of July 2005, the media are just absorbing the impact of a brutal killing by nervous policemen of an innocent Brazilian whom they had under surveillance at the Stockton underground station. This came in the wake of a series of apparent follow-up attacks which failed to detonate their intended explosions. It also occurred just before a series of terrorist bombs exploded in Egypt at a tourist resort there, killing 80+ people including several Britons. This terror put into perspective the above argument.

There is no doubt that the European dimension of our troubles will be a factor as we try to deal with the Islamic terrorist assault, and the challenge of their ideology. Although it may be one of the causes of our weakness and lack of understanding, it is merely a crutch which we have joined other Europeans in leaning on. We will have to kick it away, grimace through the pain, and stand upright, before we can confront the threats against us.]

Now, to go back a little, to Larkin, we can see that there are two salient features of those three highlighted lines. One is that the changes happened 'without a word'. No doubt there were lots of words, far too many perhaps, said in the pulpits and written in the newspapers at the time, but none of them addressed the deeper issues, for instance the validity of the struggles between the great powers; the reality of the struggles of the great powers, or the social order which underpinned them. Yes, there was a discussion among a certain group of radicals, but they were intellectuals and bohemians. Really those discussions needed to have been part of mainstream discussion at the time- much modified and cleansed of the rabid, millenarian quality, but nonetheless part of ordinary discussion. Failure to do that meant that the old order was philosophically attentuated and brittle enough to collapse, or nearly so, during the stresses of a stupid and inflated conflict.

The parallel to that which I see today is the uncontested virtues of statism, protectionism, and political correctness. This nexus of correctnesses is every bit as attentuating socially and economically as the shibboleths of deference and social immobility were to the mindset of pre-1914 Britain.

Moving to the 'men leaving the gardens tidy', one can see the automata of social and economic conformity. The sixties represented the culmination of the processes put into train by the first world war, which was why the latter period fascinated Larkin, being also the time just before his birth. The cry in the sixties was for individualism; that you should make your mark in your individual way without attending to the moraes of society. Unfortunately the requirement of freedom seems to be that we make money, and the 1980's showed the realisation that the 60's dream needed hard work and long hours. Thus a new breed of hard working high maintainance man came into being, and the orthodoxy of that grew dramatically until the consumer's demands seemed to be paramount. Today's men would leave their dependants with some nice possessions, but, after the package holdays and the fast food and the videos and gadgets and portable computers, rather than the mealtime conversations, the picnics and the church fetes, above all without any real need to recall their former guardians at all- unencumbered by memory, unencumbered by guilt. The space left by the average man today would take no time to fill at all. Today's men consume and leave little behind. They are throughly historically biodegradable- not even a garden to keep as it'd all be under decking or concrete.

So one can see that Larkin's poignant line about leaving things tidy is a poignant now as it was then.

Finally I need to return to the concept of urgency- something that basically went beyond Larkin's lugubrious and morbidly intellectual ken. When I wrote about it before, I meant that there were people who felt that the storm clouds were gathering, and tried to buck the trends to create a more robust response that might avert disaster. Certainly this was true for people from many quarters before 1914, though undoubtedly they were overcome by the enormity of the conflict that ensued. I mean people who tried to address the social gaps, who attempted to criticise the social order, who didn't trust the politicians automatically but attempted to engage their minds in responding individually and vitally to changing circumstances- without hopping onto the nihilistic bandwagon of the communists. It's of course true that they failed to prevent the carnage of the Somme and the other battles which have forever disfigured the body politic that emerged from that time. They also failed to stop the advance of the nihilistic communistic mindset which viewed all social distinctions as a social ill. But perhaps they stopped us losing the war and secured a space of time, and maybe helped turn later intellectuals away from the nihilism just enough to gain a ground out victory over communism. Perhaps they made all the difference, though it's difficult to know- but when you think about it, between the communists and the aristocracy something squeezed through, and it was a functioning, unbroken democracy, with attendant prosperity.

This optimistic note leads me to suppose that, since, though it's difficult to see clearly, the many dissenters of 1914 (no, not conscienscious objectors, though I don't disparage them)- those who organised themselves and fought through the war period successfully, and endorsed democracy throughout the 20s and 30s and beyond- did enjoy real success. Is it possible the smaller number of dissenters against the consensus hatred of British values might be successful today?

In these times there have been a number in British society who have been trying to support their social model, however difficult and fraught that might be, in the face of those who, relentlessly or complacently, assume that what is wrong with the world outside us must be a fault of the way we have dealt with and are seeing the world. The simplistic assumption that our social model determines all the evils of the world is one that's very difficult to oppose, but there are people who are trying to, even from the ranks of politicians and journalists.
One thing I think is for sure- if they do so it will be a clear victory, and not a muddy one, for the clarity of the opponent, and his determination, is such that his defeat would be crystal clear, and represent the end of a militant analysis of society stretching back to Marx. The maths is difficult, but the nature of the challenge means that even one dissenter, raising his voice with clarity against the angry waves, could, with a word, turn the tide of nihilism whose victory was the essence of Larkin's despair.

Africa: a difficult man-child

2005-07-04T10:34:00.000-07:00

The BBC is at its worst at the moment and there's not a lot to say. All we're getting is the BBC notion of what the news is- the politically inspired clap-trap of Live 8 and various supportive articles- like this environmental cartoon... er, animation. This isn't really news at all; just a philosophy to deal with the news they can't face up to either practically or morally. If they put correspondents in harm's way and reported every semi-genocidal act committed in the dark continent, then that would be news- or exciting, anyway. And I do mean exciting. In Africa they have bandits, rustlers, turf wars, kidnapping, forced marriages, polygamy, magic, and all sorts of other ways of having fun.

And that's the problem, really. It's fun to be an African of a traditional sort. Mostly for men, it's true, but women may appropriate the right to saunter around a lot with breasts dangling as they play earth mothers (remember the sexiness of the Beatles' song Lady Madonna? It's like that, continent-wide. It's not all bad.) Plus you don't have to bathe a lot, and you can go to the loo wherever takes your fancy, or dutifully wave your ass over a gaping hole above a cavern of faeces. This is the BBC's picture of an African woman's life- educated by the BBC World Service, naturally.

It's not that people actually find fulfilment (ie., it's not good, it's tragic etc.- and despite the etc. I genuinely feel it and desperately would like to see change) from treating their exotic environment like some dangerous playground for adults, but that actually no real alternative is offered that doesn't involve some absurd play-acting the victim (which only the worst sort do very well). They're not victims; just without compelling alternatives.

Of course it's unacceptable that people, and especially their children, live in poverty- but the only realistic assistance would be to abandon subsidies- which is most unlikely to happen, though it must for any sanity to enter things. Beyond that VSO is a good idea, if you're prepared to accept that what you have to offer, being (unless you can demonstrate otherwise) generally technical and practical, is rather boring and you're nothing special in a continent of exotica.

Media mayhem; Pandemonites.

2005-06-25T03:55:00.000-07:00

To accompany this post, at my other place, this passage from Milton's Paradise Lost, the end of book one. What's interesting here is the merriness of a group of demons who, though in straightened circumstances, celebrate disorder in their own narrow contruction. They are compared to fairies making music. It captures something about the world media today, rejoicing in the business of mayhem where it anoints their judgement. (read more here)

At Pandæmonium, the high capital
Of Satan and his peers. Their summons called
From every band and squarèd regiment
By place or choice the worthiest: they anon
With hundreds and with thousands trooping came 760
Attended. All access was thronged; the gates
And porches wide, but chief the spacious hall
(Though like a covered field, where champions bold
Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan’s chair
Defied the best of Panim chivalry 765
To mortal combat, or career with lance),
Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air,
Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees
In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive 770
In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothèd plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubbed with balm, expatiate, and confer
Their state-affairs: so thick the aerie crowd 775
Swarmed and were straitened; till, the signal given,
Behold a wonder! They but now who seemed
In bigness to surpass Earth’s giant sons,
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room
Throng numberless—like that pygmean race 780
Beyond the Indian mount; or faery elves,
Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth 785
Wheels her pale course: they, on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocond music charm his ear;
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.
Thus incorporeal Spirits to smallest forms
Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large, 790
Though without number still, amidst the hall
Of that infernal court. But far within,
And in their own dimensions like themselves,
The great Seraphic Lords and Cherubim
In close recess and secret conclave sat, 795
A thousand demi-gods on golden seats,
Frequent and full. After short silence then,
And summons read, the great consult began.

More about War

2004-08-10T09:20:00.000-07:00

I've found myself torn for a long time on the War on terror. I would think few people- apart from dug-in (or is that drugged-in?) anti-war types- haven't.

The question is really who we are fighting.

Although some people have rightly disparaged the idea of fighting terrorism as a legal matter, there is a terribly big world which opens up when you think of what a wider context means. 'Jihad', taken seriously, means a war of civilisations. We know Osama and co. take that seriously (though we don't really know what 'and co.' means), so all that is required for major conflict is for us to take it seriously.

It's not that simple, and on the other hand it's not the majorly sophisticated cultural problem that some would have us think it is. I actually think (and don't laugh) there's an interesting comparison between Bin Ladin and our own dear Robin Hood.

Let's (as Roger Simon says) review.

Bin Ladin was rich; so was Robin Hood. Not only that, but rich in societies where many were not rich. Both became poor by standing up to powerful interests which many of their class would have accomodated (bear in mind that in both cases there is a degree of fantasy and myth involved). Both Bin Ladin and Robin Hood came to repesent the struggles of a racial group- the Arabs in Bin Ladin's case; the Anglo-Saxons against the (oppressive sort of) Normans in Robin Hood's- and drew a band of hardened followers around them, retreating to inhospitable areas where they could elude capture.

That's a good number of similarities. Now, let's look at the situation facing the US and the Normans when dealing respectively with Bin Ladin and Robin Hood.

What both Bin ladin and Robin Hood have done is melt into sympathetic populations. The same question faced the Normans as faces the US and allies- just how sympathetic are the populations? Even more significant, how sympathetic are the local authorities and the national authorities (in Robin Hood's case there was always the fear that those sympathetic to King Richard would organise an uprising).

The solution for the Normans and the Sheriff of Nottingham in particular, should have been simple: stop terrorising the people; stop taxing them to the bone; don't, as Alan Rickman amusingly did in the Hollywood version, try and 'cancel Christmas'. The trouble is of course that the US doesn't tax the people in these lands either indirectly or directly. They don't (or didn't) have any direct power to change cultural institutions in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. The Bin Ladin myth is much more fantastical than the myth of Robin Hood. Bin ladin exists without any good reason; Robin Hood (likely) didn't exist yet there were very good reasons why he should have.

Having said that, however, the fact is that the US (upon which we Brits depend for so much), as the world's economic powerhouse, has been perceived unfavourably in the Arab and wider Islamic world. The tacit and active support that Bin ladin has received is drawn from the resevoir of blame, not for the actions of the US, which have been negligible, but for the state of Islamic people outside the glow of US economic and cultural warmth. Bin ladin's blame of US actions is really just placing a recognisable face on what is more an ideological or spiritual (in a sick way) message.

It is tempting to many to see the fault lying in the global inequality of capitalism. Many people say under their breath that if capitalism had not triumphed these problems would not have arisen. Unfortunately the real reason is beyond our direct control, and beyond the control of any system we could have devised for ourselves apart from the assistance of the rest of the world.

Religion, not poverty, is the real cause. Religion explains for the people how the poverty exists- explains for all levela of society. The most pernicious analysis though comes from the top, from the bin Ladins of the Arab world.

To take one example: the Koran forbids usury, the lending of money for interest. Now, obviously, this mechanism, as crude as it is, has been the underpinning factor in western industrialisation. It has created the relentless aspiration towards social development which creates the demand for all the oil that Bin Ladin accuses us of stealing. To a true utopian, placing a high price on that commodity and scrambling for it in a short period of time, creates an inequality with which the mechanisms of a society without full capitalist equipment cannot cope. Hence, we are the cause of their problems.

If you add that kind of analysis to the traditional one of Western colonialism, and say that the power structures put in place by the European powers are now the foundation of the US' economic dominance (which would be highly debatable- if debate were possible in Islamic countries), and you have the crude underpinnings of a modern interpretation of Islam's Koran-inspired insecurity and persecution complex, its need to have military expression, and its conviction that it will finally overcome.

Thus, the analysis ought to be that we need to change the mediation process between our economies and cultures, and theirs. At the same time the priority has to be to confront some of the poisonous emanations from that cultural understanding which sees us as the enemies. Sounds rather like regime change and pre-emption, doesn't it?

Ok, so it was right to pursue such a policy. That's a relief. The real challenge though is whether we can provide a better mediation than the relentless stereotyping and inaccurate logic of groups and people like the Taliban and Saddam. That's bearing in mind that the mediators like Saddam never existed in a vacuum- far from it- and many of them remain. Furthermore there are many in our cultures who have and are promulgating the analysis which blames our dark-hearted capitalism for all the world's problems. Finally, those two countries were not the only ones in need of reform, and we still have to contend with others.

There's really something quite daunting here. Islam declares effectively that the unbeliever has to prove himself to be good; he is guilty until proven innocent. That's the challenge bin Ladin, in full hysterical cultural charge, has set for the US: prove that you're good or we'll blow you up. This is effectively impossible when the 1st principle of Islam is that you're an enemy until you demonstrate your submission to God (whose representative on Earth was Muhammed, whose devoted follower is bin Ladin).

Bin Ladin gave us a set of inaccurate and unrealistic propositions to define our failings, because anything more sophisticated would have pointed the finger back at you-know-who - the Arab ruling class from which bin Ladin has been spawned. So it's a bomb with a code that's been scrambled. The only chance is to cut off some of the wires that made its construction. The only way this can be done is with understanding, skill, and the brute force of the wire cutters.

My final point, the aspirational one, is this: the people of Iraq and the Middle East broadly don't deserve to be the pawns in the strategic game of rich-boy turned outlaw Usama bin Ladin, or any of his clones. They need careful consideration- which may sometimes involve serious decisive action to destroy the irresponsible and the schemers. There needs to be no oxygen for the many idiot hotbloods of the Islamic youth to breathe- and yet we must not assume that the idiot hotbloods are stupid; they are just suicidally feckless. To put it crudely, we are not the Sheriff of Nottingham and Osama is no Robin Hood- but we must not be crude if we're going to win the war on terror before the terror becomes more real than the war. This is a myth we have to unpick- and meanwhile many bombs are ticking.

Dogs Rising From The Manger

2004-06-24T08:15:00.000-07:00

(This is something I wrote well over a year ago, which a number of people have enjoyed. No doubt some of it was not well informed, but other parts still stand up even though knowing what I know now it would be written a little differently.)

Thick smoke swirled in the dark chamber but no one flinched. This was a place to revel in the strangeness of difference- people willingly sacrificing comfort for the thrill of atmosphere. You couldn't see from one side of the room to the other; who was talking in another part of the chamber only inferred by familiarity with the sound of a voice, if you possessed it. Several Hookahs were currently in use- no cigarettes or spliffs- but the air was as full of talk as it was of smoke. None of these men regarded this as a strange setting although throughout the world it would have been a curiosity. Here with common hallmarks -long beards and assorted hats- they felt strong enough to set a new norm, and their warmth and friendliness arose from this matrix of commonality. Talk was animated and supplemented by hand gestures, while the presence of a thick document by the side of each group seemed to fill them with the pride of amateur scholars, an unassailable trinity of book, beard and amity.

The nearest equivalent to such a place would have been one of the all male London clubs where matters of the empire used to be decided, where to be included meant a vista of unbroken power opened up in an extremely pleasant, well fed, well watered and well heeled environment. But those were the pleasures of the flesh, not that the members, who were often religious to some degree, had considered them that way as they had talked of one third of the world like a magnanimously shared fiefdom. These bearded men knew themselves to be different to that example, and delighted in it. These dark surroundings and swirling smoke were symbolic of a mysterious empire, the wisdom of a kingdom without boundaries- yet with a heartland, and these men would die for it and for each other when necessary. No wonder they were happy. In the recesses of the room were wooden frames like hat stands, although in this case slung on the hooks were well-oiled AK47 rifles, several to each hook.

An empire is as strong and as big as the length of the effectual reach of those who run it. Discuss. It could have been an examination question but in fact it was one thread among the many that they pulled out in their groups. If the Americans could not defend their interests in Somalia, then they were not an empire there- ha! It was still a matter for smiling and joking, as well as serious thought that a group of Muslim tribal warlords, Africans for that matter, could have seen off the trained US troops- ha ha! Even funnier was the American tendency to make films celebrating their mistakes, to feed to what surely must be their docile chattel of a people. The opportunity of travel had really opened their eyes to the weakness of empires that had dominated them simply because they had been ignorant of their true nature (this was a view they reveled in). Of course the Somalis had got away with their rebelliousness because they were too much trouble to swat for the gains on offer, but the propaganda victory had had almost a mini-Vietnam effect. The Somalis had demonstrated their savage and jealous territorial nature, the like of which no westerner outside arguably the Balkans (and the Balkans would argue- ha!) could ever show. Then the cowering Americans had been sitting dumbstruck in front of CNN wondering if there really was something genetically different about some parts of the world that they would be foolish, even morally wrong, to interfere with.

Thus the chatter meandered as it attempted to interpret the meandering flow of history, which to them had shown signs recently that it must flow back in their direction. They had had spectacular success, and were recruiting lots more potential martyrs. The roll-call of their achievements was impressive, seen from a certain perspective. The Pakistani members, of which there were many, had laughingly likened them to the British cricketing tradition of Gentlemen versus players, where the Gentlemen's victory is achieved without the sacrifice of form and etiquette. The victories gained by the Islamists over the Americans had been a spectacular demonstration of the hollowness of the Western way of life. Defeat for the Americans would be followed not by the genuine mourning of relatives but by interviews on chat shows, by 'evenings with the stars' ostensibly to compensate the relatives with money but ultimately to further the careers of the stars themselves as they developed their 'profile' by an act of charity that would be remembered long after the individual victims had been forgotten. All this meanwhile achieved by the weapons offered up by that society itself, not weapons of mass destruction except those that could be developed by a few clever men working in tandem: the mass destruction opportunities in fact afforded by the west's own beloved money spinning systems.

Oh yes they were having fun all right. This was really living. The discussion they were enjoying now and the warrior's lifestyle that implacable enmity to the USA entailed had a thrill about it that could not be got from working in markets or on the land. All the men there had known active fighting and had slept on mountainsides exposed to the elements. Their brown skins were marked with hardening induced by the night frosts and daytime scorching suns. Their gazes were intense from straining to pick out danger or anticipate the future as soldiers need to, to anticipate possibilities good and ill. Meantime there was no one with a large belly amongst them, no-one who was not grateful for a meal and a rewarder of generosity on an individual level. There was a coolness and a cleanness about those involved in this Jihad; the equivalent of the Americans who while cursing Osama Bin Laden would be planning their latest trip to the Rockies to hunt, shoot and fish. Just like the young man learning from the grandeur of the mountains to humble himself and to serve the greater causes in life than himself, so these young men had been learning all their life from a kind of exposure greater than any father-son trip to the Rockies could experience. They had felt true loneliness as profound as the morning silence that reigned in the Afghan hills, as profound as the stillness of a mountain lake. In a real sense they were orphans, in many cases literally so, banding together against an abandoning yet overbearing, smiling yet hopelessly vain absent father. And this abandoning father was the Infidel, the great Satan, obviously.

Of course this was just a social gathering, but it was the social centrepiece of their lives. It had the intensity of a poem by contrast to the prolixity of prose. Nothing here was wasted, nothing was less than sense enlightening or nutritious. The smoke that they smoked was heady and spicy, a musky bitter flavour to it that had to be endured initially to be enjoyed later. The drinks that they drank were also inhospitable, like the mountain conditions from which they had come to this place, except in an opposite way, hot and thick like the atmosphere of an impenetrable jungle. They too were laced with spices, and contained creams and coconuts, ground almonds and nuts, the juice of dates and other fruit, and were termed teas though they were nearest to being a grown-up version of the milkshakes that were conquering the globe under the Trojan horse cover of Macdonalds. They were drinks to be sipped and savored, drinks that made one compare the richness of conversation to the richness of the drink, and mend the former to match the latter. Not made in the likeness of milkshakes I suppose, more the original and pristine version of something that had been attempted elsewhere in a debased form.

There were so many topics of conversation, or rather those that there were like a rich and deep soil on which any kind of crop could thrive. Meditations were undertaken very widely among them, and passages from the Koran could be used to support these, on the justice of the war against America for example, and the injustices that were perpetrated against the Islamic world. At one point in the discussion a man stood up from the cross legged position he had been in and thumbed pages of the Koran to indicate he had a contribution to make. His legs were a little shaky after so long sitting and his fingers ran excitedly over the pages, as a person desperate to unburden himself of something on his heart, a passion to expunge, or perhaps the cynical might say a crowd to impress. He spoke in a musical, deep voice quite unlike his thin frame, and the Arabic tumbled from his lips in a curious way as if he were not actually talking to anyone, even himself, but as if he were declaiming to the mountains. There were murmurs of approval like a backing accompaniment as he spoke: 'Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight against you, but do not transgress limits: for Allah loveth not transgressors. And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from wherever they have turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward for those who suppress faith'. On completion of this there was a large prolonged murmur of assent, one rising and falling note which no-one wanted to end. Distinguishable words included Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Afghanistan, that seemed to belong to this choral discussion of tumult and oppression.

This was the way they liked purposefulness to arise. It was their idea of planning a life's work. They knew how suchlike things happened in the west; how you get paid well and you buy a house, get married and start a family, in that order or in a variation of it, it hardly seemed to matter. They knew the routine of education and self-esteem wrapped up in the cultural achievements of the past that created the lazy ways, the land garrisoned by consumers who would defend the dominance that allowed self indulgence. They knew that there this was how decisions got made, once such people hopped greedily into the board room and from there to the legislative chambers of their countries, and back again, and that the technology of the west was being developed to facilitate and justify those decisions. They also knew men in their own countries who made decisions that way. Well this was their answer, their way of making decisions, based on what they felt was the rising tide of what they couldn’t express but felt to be a collaborative moral discussion. To them it made democracy appear enfeebled, the wanderings of a manipulated and gullible electorate (they had words for these), not so much an ideal as a tool of self-aggrandizing politicians. If anyone cared about this it was they, the so-called terrorists, not the populations of the west who suffered it like dupes.

Yet here they were away from it all, hidden like a nest of chicks in a cave far from satellite or any other observation. A group with eyes so fiercely focused on an enemy, yet so carefully concealed from it that it would easily be possible to forget the implacability of the hatred and imagine that things had calmed down and that some kind of peace might prevail. Before long one or two of this gang who were unknown to the western powers might find their way once again into their enemy's welcoming capital cities, to plot a new reminder of ongoing enmity. There was no hope that reason would prevail, but rather the fear that it would proceed along two alien and mutually hostile tracks. When the meeting broke up at around four in the morning all felt fortified to return to their various degrees of hardship, their minds and hearts hardened like a clenched fist inside them. There was no hope at this time of disunity ruining their conviction. They were prepared for and satisfied by conflict of all kinds, and thus ready to maintain the uprising by matching hubris with hatred.

What This Is About

2004-06-24T08:04:00.000-07:00

It's a place to put longer sections of writing, creative or factual, and possibly the odd poem. It's a secondary site to my main site 'Talking Hoarsely' where the emphasis is on a running commentary. When the waters of commentary run deeper and overspill what I can realistically post there, I'll put it here. Alternately, when I've written something more whimsical or creative, it could come here.

Don't expect any of these pieces to link up thematically, to be of equal quality (good or bad), or to remain permanently. They're here because they're here because I am.

I am contactable, however.

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