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After a nudge from CC and Bob, here are some songs that I have been been listening to lately which remind me of Spring.
“List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.”
I bent the rules a bit but I hope you enjoy the tunes.
In the cases where I could not locate a full version of the song, I provided a link to a short sample to give you a taste of the flavor. I’d upload the files directly from my library but this WordPress template does not allow me to do that.
(alphabetical order)
1. The Detroit Experiment: “Space Odyssey”
A remake of trumpeter Marcus Belgrave’s classic horny jam. In addition to Belgrave (a veteran of Detroit’s Tribe record collective), saxophonist Bennie Maupin, pianist Geri Allen and violinist Regina Carter also appear on the cd. Carl Craig, better known for Detroit techno, produced this record.
2. George Duke: “Psychocomatic Dung”
70s jazz-funk soundscapes before he got too smoothed out. From the “Faces in Reflection” featuring Duke on various keyboards, bassist John Heard and Leon Ndugu Chancler on drums. The song is carried along by a thumping bass line, triple-time breakbeats, and Duke’s speedy fingers. Out of sight.
Very short sample here. More samples from the album here.
3. Jacob’s Optical Stairway: “Fragments of a Lost Language.”
Marc Mac and Dego of 4Hero fame. This is their first album (yes, I bought it on wax when it came out). Reminds me of warm weather, outdoor parties, bbqs, good times. I still can’t get enough of it.
4. Kool and the Gang: “Chocolate Buttermilk”
A classic funk jam. If you are only familiar with their disco hits, this might surprise you. It’s the shiznit. Do the kids say that anymore?
5. Lord Finesse: “Bad Mutha”.
One of my all-time favorite MCs and producers.
Very down to earth cool dude in person too.
Diggin’ In the Crates (DITC) Represent.
6. Malo: “Nena”
70s Latin-soul-rock-funk.
Sounds like NYC Latin funk? This is Los Angeles, Cali. Chicano soul. They had one big hit, “Suavecito.”
7. Jay Rodriguez: “Sunday Kind of Love”
The line-up is Rodriguez (saxophone and flute), Chucho Valdés (piano), Ratzo B. Harris (bass), Victor Jones (drums). No Chucho on this track.
8. Chucho Valdés: “Con Poco Coco.” From the Bele Bele en la Habana cd. Listen to all the samples while you are there. Bonus: Here’s a vid. for “Son. No. 1″.
MORE:
Al Green has also been in the mix lately but I couldn’t pick one song. My wife and I are seeing Mr. Green with Dianne Reeves at Carnegie Hall next month.
[I was linked in an article by Judith Apter Klinghoffer at the History News Network (HNN). I have no idea if she reads this blog regularly or if she simply came across a link coincidentally. In either case, it made my day.]
Here we go again. 8 bombs exploded in a crowded ancient city populated by Hindus and Muslims during the height of shopping and praying hours. 80 men, women and children are confirmed dead. 150 were wounded. The hospitals are overflowing with the injured, their loved ones and blood donors. “Since both communities were targeted, it is clearly an attack on India,” an eyewitness said. Replace Hindus with Jews. Jaipur with Haifa and it all seems so very familiar. Both cities are also known for their beauty.
Familiar is also the immediate reason for the terrorist attack. Later this month the Indian foreign minister is about to embark on a visit to Pakistan as part of the ongoing peace process between the two nuclear armed neighbors. In India, as in Israel, Islamists opposed to the process, demonstrate their displeasure by murdering innocent civilians.
President Bush’s visit to the Middle East has already been preceded by Hezbollah muscle flexing in Lebanon and rockets from Gaza killing a 70 year old woman only a couple of days ago. I am sure the Israeli security forces are holding their breath as past experience does not offer much consolation. As I am writing I get the dreaded news - Missile hits Ashkelon Mall: Babies, children among wounded.
The world may more familiar with Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad or the Al Aktza brigade, but there is little difference between them and the terrorist groups operating in India. Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) was founded in 1992. It is a Talibanlike group inspired by Bin Laden headquartered in Bangladesh but with links to Pakistan. It is held responsible for terrorist attacks in Ajmer and Hydrabad.
[read it all]
The recent edition of The New Criterion has a special section concerning education. I’ve only had a chance to read Paquette’s article but all of them look interesting:
Introduction: What was a liberal education?
An introduction to our special issue on education.
———————————–
On the sadness of higher education
On comparing the university life then with now.
———————————–
The world we have lost: a parable on the academy
On the Alexander Hamilton Center affair at Hamilton College.
———————————–
On the value of classical learning.
———————————–
On the battle between learning for the sake of learning and learning for utility.
———————————–
The age of educational romanticism
On requiring every child to be above average.
I woke up this morning to news of another spate of terrorist bombings in India, this time in Jaipur. News reports are coming in as I type. Seven blasts were reported with bombs detonated at Tripolia Bazar, the Hindu Hanuman temple, Johari Bazar, Manas Chowk, Badi Choupal and Choti Choupal in the old walled part of the city.
At this point, 75 people are dead. The death toll is expected to rise as more hospitals disclose casualties. Rohit Singh, the spokesman for Rajasthan state, has encouraged calm.
The NYT reports:
Mr. Singh, speaking by telephone from Jaipur, said it was too early to say who was responsible, but that the attack appeared to be intended to incited religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims. Similar terror attacks on religious sites in recent years have not succeeded in setting off sectarian violence. The Hindu holy city of Varanasi was struck by a pair of bombings in March, 2006, killing 14, and a blast killed two worshippers in one of the holiest Muslim shrines in Ajmer, also in Rajasthan, last September.
At this point no organization has claimed responsibility but the attack comes two days after another terrorist attack in Kashmir. However, The Hindu newspaper claims the:
Banned Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islamia (HuJI), operating from Bangladesh, is believed to be behind the serial blasts that rocked the tourist city of Jaipur…Though baffled by the attack as Jaipur was not on the terror radar, sources said the tell-tale signs of the blasts indicate HuJI’s hand. The blasts showed that HuJI, which is being mainly run from Bangladesh, has managed to establish cells in Rajasthan and that the outfit was responsible for previous major terror attacks including the New Year eve attack on CRPF camp in Rampur and serial blasts in three other places in Uttar Pradesh.
Read more:
The left academic scene is rife with interdisciplinary silliness these days. It started in the heyday of the New Left with “(insert favorite minority group here) Studies,” expanded to include “Women’s Studies,” “LGBT Studies” and “Peace Studies.” From Negations, I learn of the “Resistance Studies” journal emanating from the University of Göteborg (Sweden).
In the editors’ words, “Due to the multifaceted reality of social relations (understood in the widest of senses), there can be no a priori rules of method confined to disciplinary boundaries.” Not only is this a misguided effort but the editors can’t even manage to get the facts right.
C. Kullenberg and J. Lehne write:
On the 15th of February 2003 millions of people around the world hit the streets in a manifestation against the war in Iraq. The protest was coordinated from ‘below’, by grass-root movements displaying their ability to form transnational networks. But how could the protest evolve like this in the first place?
Well, it helps to tell the truth. In the United States, these protests were organized by communist sects like ANSWER. I would never claim or even imply that most of the participants were members of ANSWER but the funding and logistics (busses, etc.) was clearly coming from this unsavory group. But I realize its not good PR to say, “we are all useful idiots and fellow travelers,” so you need to wrap it up in some hip new social movements jargon.
Tim Gough (Kinston College), a contributing author to the journal notes, “There is an apparently paradoxical nature to resistance. Resistance is resistance against something, towards which it appears inimical. This resisted thing, however, requires such resistance in order to define itself and keep itself safe.” Deep, man. Real deep.
But my favorite was Jeffrey Shantz’ “Anarchist Futures in the Present” in which he profers “autonomous zones” as building blocs of a future libertarian communist society. Are you kidding me, man? This is what passes for intelligent discourse in the academy these days and it’s quite sad, really.
Don’t believe me? Visit the Resistance Studies blog.
I finally finished grading all my papers and submitting final grades this afternoon. It takes a while when you require your students to write, rather than assigning multiple-choice exams. As always, there is at least one student who questions why they did not do as well as they thought they should. In most cases the answer is obvious, a failure to do the work at a college level.
Unfortunately, some of my students are unable to write a cohesive paragraph of sentence, let alone identify an author’s thesis or the evidence an author uses to support her thesis. I wonder how these students were even accepted. Have standards declined that much?
I am not a product of elite education. I attended public schools, community college and state college. It took me longer than four years to receive my B.A. and I worked (part-time or full-time) to support myself during my graduate studies. But throughout my higher education there was a requirement that students be able to communicate in standard written English. What happened?
Part of this is due to the societal expectation that every individual should attend college. There is also the fact that jobs which did not require college degrees in the past do require them today. There is an excellent article by “Professor X” (”In the Basement of the Ivory Tower”) in the June Atlantic (not available online yet) which addressed many of the issues I deal with on a daily basis. Here is a bit:
There seems, as is often the case in colleges, to be a huge gulf between academia and reality. No one is thinking about the larger implications, let alone the morality, of admitting so many students to classes they cannot possibly pass. The colleges and the students and I are bobbing up and down in a great wave of societal forces–social optimism on a large scale, the sense of college as both a universal right and a need, financial necessity on the part of the colleges and the students alike, the desire to maintain high academic standards while admitting marginal students–that have coalesced into a mini-tsunami of difficulty.
I’ll post a link to the article when it is available.
I hope to write something when I can get away from grading papers. In the meantime have a look at these articles and posts:
The Contentious Centrist, “Ahmadinejad Congratulates Israel on Her 60th Birthday.”
CK at Jewlicious, “Israel at 60 Celebrations in Jerusalem.”
Shlomo Avineri in Haartez, “The real Nakhba.”
Oliver Kamm, “Israel’s anniversary.”
Efraim Karsh in Commentary, “1948, Israel and the Palestinians—the True Story.”
Eamond Mcdonagh in the Buenos Aires Herald, “A Postcolonial State” (h/t Norm and A.L.)
Zalman Shoval in The Washington Times, “Israel Celebrates 60 Years.”
S.O. Muffin at Harry’s Place, “The Family Secret.” (h/t to A.L. again)
I’ve blogged about Your Black Muslim Bakery, Inc. (YBMB) in the past. YBMB was raided by the Oakland Police Department after a bakery employee confessed to murdering Chauncey Bailey, a journalist investigating the bakery for a variety of crimes. Bailey’s murder gave rise to the Chauncey Bailey Project.
The research of these investigative journalists has helped to reopen a 1986 Oakland homicide and a 1968 double-homicide case 350 miles down the coast in Santa Barbara. What is the Santa Barbara connection? It turns out that YBMB founder Yusuf Bey ran a bakery and mosque in Santa Barbara in the 1960s with his brother (then known as Billy X Stephens) and the victims were associated with both. This is at least the seventh murder that the Chauncey Bailey Project has connected to YBMB.
Read More:
Christopher Hitchens at Slate
I should be grading final papers but an old friend let me know about the idiot-proof and highly addicting file-sharing program, Limewire. When he first informed me about it I was less than enthralled. I’m no Luddite but I have never downloaded anything from I-Tunes and still purchase CDs from time to time. Downloading music is something my students do, not an old timer like me.
But once I started I was hooked. Now I can’t pull myself away. I’ve downloaded everything from old-school 1980s hip-hop (from BDP to Ultramagnetic MCs), U.S. hardcore tunes (Agnostic Front, Bad Brains, Black Flag, JFA, Minor Threat, etc.), British metal (Motorhead, Tank), loads of jazz and even some classical. The program works for sharing other files besides music but I have not experimented with that yet. I’ve only begun to download.
UPDATE: Roland (But I am a Liberal!) suggested Soulseek as an alternative to Limewire in the comments below. The downloads are much faster and the available material is much more diverse. Cheers, Roland!
May 1 is International Workers Day. I know I knock the radical left a lot on this blog but I am a firm supporter of unions, here in the United States and across the world. A labor movement that is organized internationally can have a dramatic impact on political (even military) events, as evidenced by the recent refusal of South African dock workers to unload a shipment of Chinese arms bound for Zimbabwe:
A Chinese ship carrying arms destined for Zimbabwe was last night forced to turn back after South African unions refused to unload it, claiming that to do so would be “grossly irresponsible”, South African media reported.
The reversal is a humiliation for President Mbeki, who had said that the Government was powerless to stop the shipment of three million rounds of AK47 ammunition, 1,500 rocket-propelled grenades and more than 3,000 mortar rounds and mortar tubes to President Mugabe’s armed forces.
It was not clear last night where the ship was now destined, or whether it was trying to deliver the arms by a different route. The retreat, if confirmed, would represent a victory for human rights activists, who had filed a legal petition to block the transfer of the goods, and also for the 300,000-strong South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union, who had said that the arms would worsen the political crisis in Zimbabwe.
“Our members employed at Durban container terminal will not unload this cargo, neither will any of our members in the truck-driving sector move this cargo by road,” Randall Howard, a union spokesman, said.
“South Africa cannot be seen to be facilitating the flow of weapons into Zimbabwe at a time where there is a political dispute and a volatile situation between Zanu (PF) and the MDC [Movement for Democratic Change],” he said.
This is a powerful and positive story that won’t be receiving much coverage in the U.S. and it should. There are also tragic stories that should be receiving more coverage. Here is one.
Two workplace fires in Casablanca, Morocco, killed over 60 workers. The fires occurred in a textile factory and mattress factory. Casablanca’s governor, Mohamed Kabbaj, claims the number of casualties was high due to overcrowding and the presence of flammable materials. However, reports from the scene are reminiscent of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire including locked exits to prevent workers from escaping. The head of Casablanca’s civil protection unit, Mustapha Taouil, stated:
“We have information that the factory was closed, locking in the employees, which turned some of them into victims,” Taouil told Associated Press Television News. His report echoed accusations by some factory workers who said the owners had locked the doors, apparently to prevent the fire from spreading and save their merchandise.
Read more at Global Voices.
Read about the history of International Workers Day here (OK besides the last three paragraphs).
It’s that time of the semester…the end. That means loads of final papers to grade and less time for the blog. I hope to be done with all of that by May 9 and then have more time to write. I also am trying to convince someone to contribute a guest post on the American labor movement (nudge, nudge) in the next few days (weeks?).
Nobody that I tagged has responded. But Ben Neill added me to his blogroll, which was nice. Bob has a post on the books people are reading here.
Sociologist Charles Tilly passed away today (April 29, 2008). He was a mentor to and influence on a number of my professors. I’ll be writing an obit shorty. In the meantime, here is some information on the man and his work from his faculty bio at the Columbia University website:
Charles Tilly is Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science, Columbia University. His work focuses on large-scale social change and its relationship to contentious politics, especially in Europe since 1500. His most recently published books are The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Contention and Democracy in Europe, 1650-2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2004), Social Movements, 1768-2004 (Paradigm Press, 2004), Economic and Political Contention in Comparative Perspective (Paradigm Press, co-authored and co-edited with Maria Kousis, 2005), Trust and Rule (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834 (Paradigm Press, 2005, revised paperback edition of 1995 book), and Identities, Boundaries, and Social Ties (once again Paradigm Press, 2005).
He has recently completed Why? (Princeton University Press, forthcoming), the Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis (co-edited and co-authored with Robert Goodin, Oxford University Press, forthcoming), and Regimes and Repertoires (publisher pending). He is co-authoring (with Sidney Tarrow) Contentious Politics (under contract with Paradigm Press) and co-authoring (with John Coatsworth, Juan Cole, Michael Hanagan, Peter Perdue, and Louise A. Tilly) Politics, Exchange, and Social Life in World History (Wadsworth/Thomson). He is helping run the Russian Academy of Sciences – (U.S.) National Academy of Sciences joint project on conflict in multi-ethnic polities.
Charles Tilly’s writings on methodology are found here: http://professor-murmann.info/index.php/weblog/tilly
You enjoyed the last one so here are some more.
“Breathe” performed live at the Barbican, 2007. Much different tempo than the last vid.
Here’s a studio vid. for “Reel Life (Evolution II).” It takes a while to get going but it’s a nice ride..
“All that you Give” feat. Fontella Bass.
In a previous life (1990s) I studied the political-economy of development with an emphasis in the Indian subcontinent, in particular India and Nepal. I traveled to India in 1993 when the market was first opening to Foreign Direct Investment. Like the rest of my cohort I was extremely skeptical of “globalization” or capitalism in general. One book that had an impact on me at this time was Seldon and Walton’s, Free Markets and Food Riots: The Politics of Global Adjustment. The basic thesis is as follows:
In numerous countries in the global South, from the Middle East to Latin America, shock treatment in the form of structural adjustment, privatization, and so on established the conditions for “IMF Riots.” In the Middle East alone, major austerity protests occurred in Algeria (1987, 1988, 1990); Egypt (1977, 1986, 1987, 1989); Jordan (1989); Lebanon (1987); and Turkey (1978-1979, 1980, 1990). Sedden and Walton argue these outbursts were analogous to the “bread riots” in eighteenth-century Europe and “part of the process of international economic and political restructuring” that swept the globe from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Countries that pursued a more moderate course of economic liberalization (e.g. Mexico) experienced less unrest.
There were food riots in over thirty countries last week but the economic forces at play in 2007 are not the same as those in the 1990s. The reasons given for the current food crisis include:
1) Increasing oil prices. Oil is critical for agricultural production whether as gas in tractors or as a primary component of pesticides, etc.
2) Drought/Climate change. For example, Australia, a major wheat producer, has been experiencing drought for a decade.
3) Demand for biofuel. The NY Sun reports, an estimated 30% of America’s corn crop is now used for fuel instead of food.
4) The booming economies of India and China. Both countries are consuming more energy than in the past. And an increasing middle-class in both countries means that their food consumption patterns are changing. They want to eat more animal protein, especially in China. Today, China purchases 2/3 of Brazil’s soybean crop to feed animals.
Given that so many factors are contributing to these high food prices, what can be done to remedy the situation? The first thing Western nations can do is assist in situations of food emergency. We also need to cut subsidies to agribusiness. The United States and Western Europe should be ashamed that we tell poor countries to open their markets and cut subsidies (Haiti imports 90% of its food) while providing massive aid to our ADM and other mega-producers.
Meanwhile, back here in the U.S. Costco and other retailers are rationing the amounts of rice, flour and cooking oil they are selling to customers. Foreigners and immigrants are buying large quantities of grain and other foodstuffs to ship back home to their relatives in Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. The dollar is weak and is buying less food overseas these days so they are asking for direct shipments of food instead. Yet as my wife pointed out to me, a lot of these packages will likely not make it to the families and loved ones they are intended to reach as the civil services in many of these countries (including the postal service) are rife with graft and other forms of corruption.
Read More:
AP: UN food agency needs hundreds of millions of hungy
Commodity Online: Food crisis is a silent tsunami
Foreign Policy: Seven Questions, the Silent Tsunami
The Hindu: UN food agency warms of eroding capacity
Seattle PI: A food disaster is brewing
Washington Post: U.S. Scrambles to Address International Food Crisis
I’m not much for these tag games, but I like the Contentious Centrist so I will comply and shut up…
Here are my tasks:
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.
I’m tagging Elder of Ziyon, the Kvetcher, Modernity Blog, Ben Neill, and Sultan Knish.
Not sure if they will all respond but what the hay.
The nearest book to me is George Nash’s, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America: Since 1945. It’s the last required book in my course on twentieth century American history. The class also read Lizabeth Cohen’s Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 and Van Gosse’s Movements of the New Left, 1950-1975: A Brief History with Documents, among other things.
Here is the quote:
The leaders of the new conservatism are not now, nor will they be, identified with the American business community. They are clearly identified with natural law philosophy and revealed religion. The seat of the new conservatism is not a hereditary aristocracy which America lacks, but the Churches and theological faculties which are playing an ever more important role in American life.
This is from conservative historian Stephen Tonsor of the University of Michigan, who was vigorously rebutting Schlesinger’s persistent attempts to link conservatism with the business class in the U.S. This quote is from 1955.
[Image courtesy of Zombietime.]
I haven’t found the time to post a response to what Bob, Marko and the Drink Soaked Trots for War have been writing the past week or so. I’ve found the discussion stimulating aside from the occasional juvenile outbursts. I certainly find the West vs. Anti-West perspective to have some utility, especially vis-à-vis the current anti-totalitarian struggle we are facing.
The generic left-right divide does not actually capture the complexity of people’s politics in the U.S. these days. For example, an individual may be considered “conservative” on foreign policy issues and “liberal” on domestic issues. Plus, when you actually start to examine positions on specific issues things get more muddled. I’ve known many working-class individuals who are very “liberal” when it comes to wages, health care, and pensions but very “conservative” when it comes to the environment or matters of concern to the lgbt community.
Why this is the case is an interesting question to ponder. IMHO most Americans have similar ambiguities in their political identities. I suspect that part of it is we don’t have a long history of political parties tied to specific political ideologies like democratic socialism, communism, etc. in the United States. The parties espousing these sorts of ideas were all relatively short-lived, especially compared to those of Europe. This continuous institutional history goes a long way in explaining differences in worldview between American and European workers.
I think the entire issue of reality, cognition, and perception gets overlooked in these discussions and debates. It’s my contention, and I realize it’s a strong claim, that most people involved in radical politics in the United States are not involved for reasons that many would consider political. Instead, involvement in these groups and organizations provides a sense of belonging and identity.
Most of the actions that take place under the rubric of “radical politics” in the U.S. has very little actual political content, at least in relation to domestic or foreign policy. As Kevin Harris has argued, many people who join these marginal political groups are participating in a self-delusional political fantasy:
My first encounter with this particular kind of fantasy occurred when I was in college in the late sixties. A friend of mine and I got into a heated argument. Although we were both opposed to the Vietnam War, we discovered that we differed considerably on what counted as permissible forms of anti-war protest. To me the point of such protest was simple — to turn people against the war. Hence anything that was counterproductive to this purpose was politically irresponsible and should be severely censured. My friend thought otherwise; in fact, he was planning to join what by all accounts was to be a massively disruptive demonstration in Washington, and which in fact became one.
My friend did not disagree with me as to the likely counterproductive effects of such a demonstration. Instead, he argued that this simply did not matter. His answer was that even if it was counterproductive, even if it turned people against war protesters, indeed even if it made them more likely to support the continuation of the war, he would still participate in the demonstration and he would do so for one simple reason — because it was, in his words, good for his soul.
What I saw as a political act was not, for my friend, any such thing. It was not aimed at altering the minds of other people or persuading them to act differently. Its whole point was what it did for him.
And what it did for him was to provide him with a fantasy — a fantasy, namely, of taking part in the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. By participating in a violent anti-war demonstration, he was in no sense aiming at coercing conformity with his view — for that would still have been a political objective.
Instead, he took his part in order to confirm his ideological fantasy of marching on the right side of history, of feeling himself among the elect few who stood with the angels of historical inevitability. Thus, when he lay down in front of hapless commuters on the bridges over the Potomac, he had no interest in changing the minds of these commuters, no concern over whether they became angry at the protesters or not.
They were there merely as props, as so many supernumeraries in his private psychodrama. The protest for him was not politics, but theater; and the significance of his role lay not in the political ends his actions might achieve, but rather in their symbolic value as ritual. In short, he was acting out a fantasy.
…
For want of a better term, call the phenomenon in question a fantasy ideology — by which I mean, political and ideological symbols and tropes used not for political purposes, but entirely for the benefit of furthering a specific personal or collective fantasy. It is, to be frank, something like “Dungeons and Dragons” carried out not with the trappings of medieval romances — old castles and maidens in distress — but entirely in terms of ideological symbols and emblems. The difference between them is that one is an innocent pastime while the other has proven to be one of the most terrible scourges to afflict the human race.
I’ve found that most people on the radical left (whether “authoritarian” or “libertarian”) subscribe to various forms of fantasy ideologies. For them, politics is about validating their own personal political beliefs (like being “anti-state”) rather than accomplishing anything political. That’s not to say that the libertarian left holds uninteresting political beliefs. But let’s be honest, how many of these black-hooded youths actually thinks “the state” is going to collapse anytime soon?
I used to consider myself an anarchist. Anarchism was–key word being was–a thriving political movement in the mid to late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because it had a strong foundation in working-class communities. Today it is mostly a fad for middle-class college students, like socialism in general. This, not government repression, explains the movement’s weakness. These ideologies lack any sort of appeal amongst the classes they were once associated with. Historian Ron Radosh refers to this as the “leftover left”.
Marko articulates similar thoughts when he writes:
It may be true, philosophically speaking, that anarchists who support autonomous communes are fundamentally different from statist socialists who support a centrally planned economy, but given the unlikelihood that the ideals of either will ever be realised, I do not consider it particularly worthwhile to discuss such differences. What matters is where one stands on concrete issues relating to struggles that are actually taking place…
And this is the key point: real, meaningful change is possible under the existing liberal-democratic order, whereas there is no reason to believe that this order can be overthrown and replaced by something radically different and better. If I have ‘made my peace’ with the existing order, it is not because I think the existing order is perfect, but because it is an existing order that can be improved, whereas the radical-left alternatives do not offer any realistic prospect for successful progressive change.
That’s the clincher. As I’ve written elsewhere, utopian political programs lead to dystopian outcomes. Reform is necessary in any society or system of government, economics, jurisprudence, and so forth. But revolution, at least as dreamed by the radical left in the U.S., is a fantasy.
The Cinematic Orchestra played last night. My wife and I had the opportunity to check them out last September at Webster Hall and it was a great show so I knew we’d want to check them again when they came back to town. Last night’s show was at the Jazz Standard which is a really nice club. The setting is much more intimate than Webster Hall and you can actually sit down at a table instead of standing the entire set. In our case the table was front and center less than a half a foot from the stage.
We arrived for the second set (9:30) and it was short but sweet. Some of the songs I remember are “Flite,” “All that You Give,” “Evolution,” “To Build a Home,” and “Breathe.” Everyone was great but drummer Luke Flowers and guitarist Stuart McCallum were the standouts that night. Here is a vid for “Flite”
I know it’s ancient history in the time frame of American politics but I intended to write a few words regarding Obama’s recent jab at working-class Pennsylvanians. As informative as it is to deconstruct the content of Obama’s comment, just as illustrative is the response from conservatives and liberals. In particular which part of his comment they choose to latch on to. On this issue, I find myself in the former category.
Here is Obama’s comment in its entirety:
You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
As is probably clear to most people, there are two interrelated claims being made here. One is that international trade and immigration, “globalization” in the current verbiage, has cost people their jobs and economic security. As a result, they are bitter. The second is Americans believe in God and own guns because they are bitter. Obama’s millionaire donor audience in San Francisco may be unable to make the distinction but most Americans can.
As I recently opined on Sultan Knish’s blog, gun owners and believers make up a majority of voters in the United States. The United States regularly rates as among the most religious of the Western, capitalist states. There are more guns than cars in this country.
People are religious because they believe, not because they are “bitter.” People own guns because it is a Constitutional right and an expression of our liberty and freedom. Heck, some of us simply enjoy shooting guns. But Obama had to pander to San Francisco’s liberal millionaire elite and express opinions that were openly disdainful of the majority of Americans.
Some conservatives seem convinced that comments like these and Obama’s affiliation with individuals like Rev. Wright indicate he is some sort of closet radical. But I find Obama to be a condescending snob, more along the lines of a limousine liberal than a subscriber to the ideologies of the leftover left. He knows how to “speak to a crowd” because he tells the crowd what they want to hear.
People are starting to see through Obama but the conclusions they are drawing are dramatically different. Many conservatives think Obama identifies with the perverse goals and values of organizations like the Nation of Islam or the Weatherman but he constructed these connections for political reasons. The man was a community organizer with ACORN for all of what, six months? He had no connection to “the community” so he proceeded to hook up with the Nation of Islam, Reverend Wright, and all the rest of the gate-keepers and power brokers in Chicago. In short, Obama may be less the revolutionary that conservatives fear and more along the lines of the opportunist, poverty pimp, that conservatives loathe.
All this relates, in a peripheral way, to the arguments raised by Thomas Frank in What’s the Matter with Kansas? Like many elitist liberals, Frank contends working class conservative voters are duped into supporting social-conservative politicians who act against the economic self-interest of the working class by cutting taxes on the rich, for example. However, when confronted with the reality that people in liberal enclaves routinely vote on social issues (gay marriage, abortion, etc.) and act against their economic self-interest (electing liberal politicians who will raise their taxes) critics like Frank are silent. Why is that?
ADDED: Michael Weiss at the New Criterion makes some similar points, albeit in a much more erudite fashion.
[The Marx brothers as the Four Sons. By Dick Codor, USA, 1981.]
Pesach is the story of liberation from slavery and a return to the land of Israel. All very positive things and a cause of celebration. But an important element of Pesach is the reality of Amalek—the first foe to attack the people of Israel after they had come out of Egypt as a free nation. Amalek is twice designated in the Pentateuch (Ex. xvii. 14-16, Deut. xxv. 19) as the one against whom war should be waged until his memory be blotted out forever (Y’Mach Schmo Vezichro). For some rabbis Amalek is an actual human or humans, for others Amalek represents an idea (like anti-Semitism). What Jewish history shows is in every age we face a new Amalek.
And on a lighter note, here is an interesting gallery of images depicting The Four Sons from various Haggadot:
I especially enjoy the images from the Chicago Haggadah (1879), Istvan Zador’s (Budapest, 1924) and I can’t leave out Dick Codor’s variation with the four Marx brothers as the Four Sons (1981). Tzvi Livni’s socialist Zionist images (Israel, 1955) suffer from a problem common to much “political” art. The political content takes precedent over the quality of the drawing, painting, sculpture, etc. Nevertheless, I found much affinity with the message especially regarding anti-Zionism and ignorance of Israel’s history.
But contrast this to the imagery of Arthur Szyk (Poland, 1939). Here is a political artist who is truly a master of his art. More on Szyk here and here. The second URL from the New York Sun is an article about the limited reissue of The Szyk Haggadah. Szyk was a very interesting individual, an activist for African American civil rights and a supporter of the Revisionist Zionist movement. An image of the Four Sons from Szyk’s Haggadah is found at the bottom of this post.
Here is a bit on the Four Sons:
The Torah refers to four sons: One wise, one wicked, one simple and one who does not know how to ask a question.
What does the wise son say?
“What are the testimonials, statutes and laws Hashem our G-d commanded you?”
You should tell him about the laws of Pesach, that one may eat no dessert after eating the Pesach offering.
What does the wicked son say? “What does this drudgery mean to you?
“To you and not to him. Since he excludes himself from the community, he has denied a basic principle of Judaism. You should blunt his teeth by saying to him: “It is for the sake of this that Hashem did for me when I left Egypt. For me and not for him. If he was there he would not have been redeemed.”
What does the simple son say? “What’s this?” You should say to him “With a strong hand Hashem took me out of Egypt, from the house of servitude.”
And the one who does not know how to ask, you start for him, as the Torah says: “And you should tell your son on that day, saying ‘It is for the sake of this that Hashem did for me when I left Egypt.’”
The passage of the four sons raises many questions:
The wise and wicked sons seem to be opposites, but then why isn’t the wise son called ‘the good son?’
Is the simple son the opposite of the one who does not know how to ask? If so, how are they opposites?
The simple son’s question - “What’s this?” - is as simple as can be. Who, then, is the son who does not even know how to ask? A little baby?
The wicked son is told: “It is because of this that Hashem did ‘for me’ when I went out of Egypt - for me and not for him - had he been there he would not have been redeemed.” Why is the wicked son answered in third person?
The verse used to answer the wicked son is the same verse used to answer the one who does not know how to ask. Why?
The sons divide into two pairs - the wise and the simple on one side, and the wicked and the one who does not know how to ask on the other.
The simple son wants to learn. He looks up to the wise son and emulates him. When he hears the wise son asking questions, he also wants to ask. His question ‘What’s this?’ lacks the sophistication of the wise son’s question, but it reflects the same sincere desire to learn and understand.
The one who does not know how to ask admires the wicked son. He desires to show the same ironic contempt for the Torah, but unlike the wicked son he lacks the requisite cleverness. Not trusting himself to attack as effectively as his mentor, he remains silent.
The wicked son’s ‘question’ is merely rhetorical - it deserves no response at all. Yet, the one who does not know how to ask is sitting at the table listening to the wicked son’s remarks. He’s in danger of being influenced. Therefore, our response to the wicked son is to say to the one who doesn’t even know how to ask: “Don’t be influenced by his smug cynicism. Had he been in Egypt, he would not have been redeemed. He is cutting himself off from the eternity of the Jewish people.”
This difference in approach is described in the book of Proverbs (26:4,5): “Do not answer the fool according to his foolishness, lest you become equal to him. Answer the fool according to his foolishness, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” This seems like a contradiction: Should we answer the fool or not?
The answer is that there are two types of fools. One type of fool already ‘knows’ everything. For him, discussion is merely an opportunity to show off his ’superior’ knowledge. There is no point in answering him, because he will never admit a fault. On the contrary, our attempts to educate him will meet with ridicule. As he rejects our insights one after another, the fruitlessness of our efforts makes us appear foolish.
But there is another type of fool: One aware of his limitations. His views are wrong and foolish, but he’s not completely closed to instruction. If we open the lines of communication we can have an impact on him. If we don’t reach out to him, he’ll eventually start to think: “I’ve held these views for so long, and no one has ever contradicted me - so, I must be right!”
There is a profound message here for our times. We are all confronted with people who scoff at the Torah. We often have to decide if and how to respond. The book of Proverbs teaches us that our primary responsibility is to improve the critic by our response. If that is impossible, then responding is a waste of time. But if it is possible, then we must not wait for his initiation. We must reach out to him and start the dialogue.
Notice, however, that the wicked son is at the Seder! We do not exclude him or reject him personally. Only discussion is avoided, since discussion has no point. The inclusion of the wicked son at the Seder expresses our conviction that no Jew is ever irretrievably lost. We hope our stern response will shake his proud self-confidence to the point where real discussion becomes possible.
“Who is wise? He who learns from every person (Pirkei Avos 4:1).” Indeed, the classical title for a Torah scholar is ‘Talmid Chacham‘ - a wise student.
What is the idea behind this definition? In order to learn from others, one needs two crucial insights. First, “I am lacking. There is much that I do not know.” And second, “Others possess the knowledge which I need.”
Now we can appreciate why the Haggadah juxtaposes the wise and the wicked sons. The central failure in the wicked son is his closed-mindedness. The heart of his evil is the supreme foolishness to think that his understanding is perfect. Thus he is the diametrical opposite of the wise son who is completely open to the instruction of others.
Have a great Pesach!
More Pesach Posts (added as I find them):
Jimmy Carter is in the Middle East allegedly on a mission of world peace. According to the Carter Center website:
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter will lead a study mission to Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan April 13-21, 2008, as part of the Carter Center’s ongoing effort to support peace, democracy, and human rights in the region…“ This is a study mission, and our purpose is not to negotiate, but to support and provide momentum for current efforts to secure peace in the Middle East,” said President Carter
Study mission? The trip would more accurately be described as a terror tour. Consider who Carter is meeting with, high-level officials of Hamas. Hamas, as evidenced by their actions, has no interest in peace. Hamas, as evidenced by their charter, is dedicated to murdering Jews and the destruction of Israel.
While in Cairo, the former president met with former Hamas deputy prime minister Nasser Eddin Shaer. He also gave a speech at the American University decrying IDF actions in Gaza as a “crime” and “atrocity” and an “abomination.” Less than 24 hours later, Hamas terrorists shot and killed 3 Israeli soldiers. Carter is scheduled to meet Hamas leader Khaled Mashel in Damascus on Friday. Mashel is believed responsible for organizing the kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Schalit and has expressed that terrorism is the basis of Palestinian politics and the identity of the Palestinian people. Carter is also scheduled to meet with Syrian president Bashar al-Asad.
Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and other officials have reportedly refused to meet with Carter. Good for them. They should have refused Carter entry into the country. Hamas is at war with Israel and Carter is clearly more than sympathetic to the Hamas “narrative.” Israel should refuse entry to other self-serving activists like Carter whose ideal of peace in the region means Israeli capitulation and endless concessions to terrorists. Failing to take an enemy at their word is worse than hubris, it’s suicidal.
Here in the United States, some politicians are coming up with creative ways to punish Carter for his political activities. The appropriately named CARTER Act (Coordinated American Response to Extreme Radicals Act) seeks to remove funding for the Carter Center. The Center has received $19 million in federal funding since 2001. The Democracy Project notes, this “$19 million pales beside the tens of millions that have flowed to the Carter Center from MidEast sources.” Agreed. But why our tax dollars are supporting an organization engaging in activities in opposition to American foreign policy goals is baffling. The New York Sun reports, Rep. Joseph Knollenberg (R, MI) introduced the bill and has found support to be “overwhelming in the first 24 hours since he introduced it.” However,
The chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees American policy towards the Middle East, Gary Ackerman, a Democrat of New York, yesterday said he thought the CARTER Act was “rather silly,” and “reactionary.” At the same time, Mr. Ackerman, who wrote a letter with the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard Berman, a Democrat of California, urging Mr. Carter not to visit Mr. Meshaal, had harsh words for Mr. Carter.
“The man is entitled his idiotic, moronic, nonsensical, anti-commonsensical, foolish opinions. And all that being said, he is still entitled to have them. I don’t think we should be cutting off funding for any ex presidents to do things. We didn’t cut off Richard Nixon,” he said. Mr. Ackerman added that if Mr. Carter came to his home for the Passover Seder, he would ask him to read the part of the simple son, the boy who does not know enough to even ask a question about the story of the Jewish exodus from ancient Egypt.
…
One issue for Democrats will be whether Mr. Carter will speak at the national convention in Denver scheduled for August. The editor-in-chief of the New Republic, Martin Peretz, this week urged Democrats not to let the ex-president speak. “If the Democrats want to win Florida in November they should try to keep him in Plains or send him on another voyage to Darfur where his syrupy cynicism is also well-understood,” he wrote.
Read More:
Boker tov, Boulder! “Carter Doesn’t Quit.”
But I am a Liberal! “Some ‘Wisdom’ from Jimmy Carter.”
The Contentious Centrist, “Carter and the hypocrites.”
Democracy Project, “CARTER Act in Congress to Cut Off Carter Center Funding”
Robert Maginni at Human Events, “Hamas’ Useful Idiot”
Eric Trajer at Contentions, “Islamic Jihad: We Refused Carter’s Request for a Meeting.” Trajer’s “Carter’s Historic Relationship with Hamas” is also worth reading.
Jacob Laksin, at FrontPage, “Carter’s Terror Tour“.
Solomonia urges readers to Support the CARTER Act.
The CARTER Act is H.R. 5816. Want to see it pass? Contact your representative and let your voice be heard and counted.
Dismissed by the chattering classes and intelligentsia as more evidence of the idiocy of American conservatives, it now seems the conservatives may have been correct. Israeli and American officials are set to release a joint report claiming Saddam Hussein managed to scuttle Iraq’s remaining WMDs out of the country and into Syria. This was reported by AFP and other media outlets in 2004 and again in 2006. These WMDs were reportedly the target of Israel’s air strike in Syria last fall (Sep 2007). The Jpost reports:
An upcoming joint US-Israel report on the September 6 IAF strike on a Syrian facility will claim that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein transferred weapons of mass destruction to the country, Channel 2 stated Monday.
Furthermore, according to a report leaked to the TV channel, Syria has arrested 10 intelligence officials following the assassination of Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh.
I do not have much time to blog this week. Work and other responsibilities have me away from the computer. But I should have posts on national politics (Obama’s comments about religion, guns and bitterness), labor issues (the internecine war between SEIU and CNA), and international politics (Carter’s useful idiocy in the Middle East). Stay tuned!
[H/t The Henry Jackson Society]
By Robin Simcox, 14th April 2008
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. The United Nations Human Rights Council is in danger of losing all credibility. The recent appointments of Jean Ziegler and Richard Falk are especially worrying.
2. Human rights abuses are happening all over the world, yet there is an unfortunate obsession with Israeli actions, which is the only country the UNHRC has directed resolutions against.
3. 2009 will see Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Jordan and Russia on the UNHRC. This fact alone shows that the UNHRC is no better than the UN High Commission of Human Rights, the organisation it succeeded.
4. With Britain taking its place on the council this year, we have a chance to redress the balance, highlight human rights abuses by some of the worst offenders, and push for reform. Only by doing this is there a chance for the UNHRC to regain any credibility.
When explaining the reluctance of the United States to support replacing the UN High Commission of Human Rights with the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), then ambassador to the UN John Bolton said “[w]e want a butterfly. We don’t intend to put lipstick on a caterpillar and call it a success.” In hindsight, Bolton was being too optimistic. Recent events have shown that those who helped put the UNHRC in place were actually fresh out of Rimmel.
[read it all here]
[Arun Gandhi making the mandatory "Apartheid Wall" visit. Notice the "peace scarf" in full effect...]
Back in January, M.K. “Arun” Gandhi—the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi—was criticized for writing an anti-Semitic screed in the “On Faith” section of the Washington Post’s website. The article, “Jewish Identity Can’t Depend on Violence,” resulted in Gandhi’s resignation as president as the M.K. Gandhi Center for Nonviolence at the University of Rochester. Here are some choice quotes:
Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the holocaust experience — a German burden that the Jews have not been able to shed. It is a very good example of a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends…
The Jewish identity in the future appears bleak. Any nation that remains anchored to the past is unable to move ahead and, especially a nation that believes its survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs…
Apparently, in the modern world, so determined to live by the bomb, this is an alien concept. You don’t befriend anyone, you dominate them. We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity.
It’s difficult for a Jewish person (unless you’re a self-loather or the Norman Finkelstein variety) to read these words and not assume they were written by someone completely ignorant of Jewish history, identity, and geopolitical realities faced by the state of Israel.
In the minds of the “peace activists” like Mr. Gandhi, Israelis are expected to turn the other cheek while rockets are launched on a daily basis. Gandhi is aware what the military response of his country of origin, India, would be if attacked by neighboring Pakistan. It would be swift and far from “proportionate,” I guarantee you that.
Plus, Gandhi is clearly out of touch with what’s happening in Israel. The popularity and trust in politicians may be at all-time low but Israel’s economy is a leader in high-technology, communications, and medicine. In terms of social and political rights, especially for women, Israel is unrivaled in the region. Perhaps most importantly, Israel is a place where Jews can live as a majority. For a people who have spent millennia as a persecuted minority this is no small matter.
Now I read that Gandhi is returning to Rochester for a discussion on “How People of Differing Faiths and Across Differing Cultures Can Discuss Issues with Potential for Misunderstanding and Hurt.” How someone can write those sort of hateful and uniformed comments and then be invited to discuss cross-cultural understanding says a lot about the university system in the United States.
The conversations regarding “Tom Paines abroad but Edmund Burkes at Home” at Marko’s, Bob’s, and elsewhere have been generally stimulating, with some exceptions. I plan on posting something soon, perhaps from a more Burkean angle, in the next week or so.
In the meantime…added Z-Word (check out “Jewish Anti-Zionism Unraveled: Questioning Anti-Semitism Part I”) to my blogroll.
I was also deleting some old links on the left side of the page. Most of them are either defunct or have not been updated for an extremely extended period of time. I thought the website for the centrist, secular (some would say anti-religious), market-oriented, Shinui party in Israel would fall into the former category. The party fell apart back in 2006 and the link has been dead for months.
But when I clicked on it this morning they have a nice looking new site. Have a look (all in Hebrew). I’m not sure if they are running any candidates but it is an encouraging sign. Yair Lapid saw the resurgence of Shinui coming. You can read his March op-ed in Y-Net here. In other Israel and housekeeping related news, Kadima Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is upset about the Supreme Court ruling on hametz (unleavened bread) sales during Pesach.
[H/t to Pajamas Media]
Roger L. Simon has a couple of posts on a troubling anti-Semitic outburst by Reverend Eric Lee, president of the Los Angeles branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The SCLC was started by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bayard Rustin, among others. The event was held on April 4 (the fortieth anniversary of King’s assassination) and organized by Kappa Alpha Psi, a predominately African-American fraternity. Kappa Alpha Psi was giving its Tom Bradley Award to an Israeli-American activist, Daphna Ziman. Ziman, who received the award for her work as chairperson and founder of Children Uniting Nations.
After Ziman received her award, Reverend Lee began his keynote address. Simon reports:
[A]fter praising Malcolm X, he started staring directly at Ziman, according to an email she sent.
Ziman’s email states “[Lee] started talking about the African American children who are suffering because of the Jews that have featured them as rapists and murderers. He spoke of a Jewish Rabbi, and then corrected himself to say ‘What other kind of Rabbis are there, but Jews.’ He told how this Rabbi came to him to say that he would like to bring the AA [African-American] community and the Jewish community together. ‘NO, NO, NO!!!!’ he shouted into the crowd, ‘we are not going to come together. The Jews have made money on us in the music business and we are the entertainers, and they are economically enslaving us.’”
Lee later apologized for the outburst. Here is a bit:
In a very small part of my presentation, I referenced a meeting I had with Rabbi’s and other community leaders. A Rabbi stated in that meeting that the close relationship between the African American and Jewish communities had been disconnected after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. I further referenced in my speech that my response to the Rabbi was that the Black Power Movement emerged after the assassination of Dr. King and it was a direct response to the negative characterizations of African Americans through the silver screen, TV and the music industry, industries that are influenced by many in the Jewish community. I then stated to the Rabbis that the Black Power Movement was our effort to define for ourselves our own identity rather than be defined by anyone else. I then indicated in my presentation that I told the Rabbis’ that before a genuine coalition could be rebuilt between our communities, there would have to be dialogue and efforts made to deal with the negative characterizations of African Americans.”
More of the same sad but predictable “blame the Jews” rhetoric from a so-called “progressive” black preacher. Not only that, the reverend is being historically dishonest. As he must be well aware, Stokely Carmichael gave his “Black Power” speech in 1966 and there were plenty of militant leaders who were critical of King’s willingness to work with white, Jewish and other allies across the color line, particularly in the labor movement, well before King’s assassination. Malcolm X comes to mind here. Turns out Reverend Lee is also a fellow-traveler of International ANSWER, CAIR, and Cynthia McKinney. No surprise there. McKinney’s father blamed the J-E-W-S for her his election defeat in 2006 2002.
You can email SCLC president and CEO, Charles Steele, Jr at:
president@sclcnational.org
Let him know what you think about someone who supposedly is acting in the tradition of Reverend King behaving in this manner. Will it do any good? I don’t know. But if you don’t stand up, who will?
[H/t to Contentious Centrist, CAMERA on Campus, and the New York Sun ]
Just when you thought the personnel at the United Nations could not get worse, Eli Lake writes, “a new Human Rights Council official assigned to monitor Israel is calling for an official commission to study the role neoconservatives may have played in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.” Apparently it is not enough to claim that the “neoconservatives” led us into war in Iraq (as opposed to the actions of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, or the decisions of President Bush), now some liberal leftists feel the need join the 9-11 “truth” bandwagon.
The NY Sun article continues:
Mr. Falk’s selection to the post of rapporteur has already prompted the government of Israel formally to request that Mr. Falk is not sent to the country. The Israeli press has reported that he may even be barred from entering the country…One reason the Israelis are concerned about his appointment is that Mr. Falk has compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs to the Nazi treatment of Jews in the holocaust.
In a review of the factually deprived documentary, “Occupation 101,” CAMERA on Campus (Vol. 18, No. 1. Spring 2008 ) reports:
Richard Falk, who makes appearances throughout the film, is an emeritus professor at Princeton University with a long record of backing the wrong causes. In February [16] 1979, he published a piece in the New York Times titled “Trusting Khomeini,” extolling Ayatollah Khomeini, and ridiculing the notion that the Ayatollah was a religious reactionary.
I had a difficult time finding a copy of the article on the web. It is referenced in quite a few places but there are no links to the text. You can read Falk’s NYT article here but you’ll need a subscription.
[H/t Labourstart]
The International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran reports:
April 6, 2008- According to the Committee in Defense of Mahmoud Salehi, Mahmoud Salehi, a well known and one of the most courageous labour leaders in Iran, was finally released today, Sunday, April 6, 2008 at 3:00 PM from the City of Sanandaj‘s central prison, where he had finished one-year jail term for his labour activities on March 23, 2008 but the authorities had refused to release him until today.
Congratulation and many thanks to all labour, progressive and human rights’ organizations and activists who have supported Salehi and called for his freedom and that of other jailed labour activists.
[Political Diagram by Marko Attila Hoare. Click for larger, legible, viewing.]
Thanks to Contentious Centrist and Bob for pointing me to this Ignoblus post which is commenting on a post by Marko Attila Hoare. To summarize, Hoare provided a diagram of contemporary political alignments (above). These alignments have less to do with left versus right (a dated but not entirely irrelevant paradigm) then pro-Western versus anti-Western.
Hoare writes:
The triumph of the centrist political model has led to one section of the Left and one section of the Right breaking away from their respective comrades and joining up in opposition to this model: this ultimately takes the form of a Red-Brown coalition. Conversely, a second section of the Left and a second section of the Right have likewise broken away from the first sections and come together in support of extending this model globally. This, then, is the principal ideological division in global politics today: pro-Western vs anti-Western; globalist vs anti-globalist; the democratic centre vs the Red-Brown coalition.
…
The essence of the division is that the pro-Westerners support the extension of the liberal-democratic order across the globe, through the politics of human rights, promotion of democracy, universal values and interventionism (not necessarily always military). The anti-Westerners oppose the liberal-democratic model, at least as a universal model; they admire or support movements or regimes that stand in opposition to the Western alliance or to Western values - all of which uphold religious fundamentalism or nativist nationalism, sometimes combined with a ’socialist’ veneer, as an alternative to liberal democracy.
Ignoblus’ post focuses on cultural codes and anti-Zionism. is on to something in connecting anti-Western sentiment and anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism is a huge part of the contemporary radical left’s political identity, But this anti-Zionism should be examined within the context of a broader “anti-imperialism.” Hoare advocated a similar perspective in his review of Buruma and Margalit’s Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies for Democratiya. Here is an excerpt:
In simplest terms, ‘imperialism’ can be defined as a state’s pursuit of empire or the expansion of its power, through acquiring territory from, or power over, other states or peoples. No reasonable person would not oppose this, but ‘anti-imperialism’ today means something other than opposition to imperialism. ‘Imperialism’, in the eyes of the average ‘anti-imperialist’, is coterminous with ‘the West’, i.e. with the US and its West European and Israeli allies. As such, it is used to refer to the bloc of states that dominates the world today, and there is undoubtedly something emotionally appealing to the individual ‘radical’ in apparently fighting that which is all-powerful. As an eighteen-year old Trotskyist and ‘anti-imperialist’ at the time of the 1991 Gulf War, I can testify to the empowering sense of self-righteousness I felt as I demonstrated against the US and its allies, in the course of which my views became increasingly extreme: I fervently believed that the US-led intervention was by far a greater evil than Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait; that it would be a blessing for humanity if the US and its allies were defeated; that such a defeat would trigger revolutionary outbreaks across the Middle East and even in the West.
[read it all here]
I agree that it useful to analyze contemporary conlficts as between the forces supporting economic and political liberalization and those opposed to this opening. However, like Ignoblus, I am rather uncomfortable being lumped in with president George W. Bush. My political opponents on the radical left have often reduced my nuanced centrist position to that of neo-conservatism but there is no need for Hoare to fall into the same trap. After all, part of the appeal of the Euston Manifesto among self-described leftists was it provided an opportunity to be robustly anti-totalitarian (i.e. “decent”) without being right-wing or conservative. Hoare also ignores the existence of ultra-leftists, anarchists, and other self-styled revolutionaries who advocate a third perspective that is classically “anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist” while also critical of Jihadist terrorism. I’m refering here to Three Way Fight, World War 4 Report, etc.
All in all, I find much affinity with what Hoare is writing on these issues and this diagram is a good first attempt at describin