Sicko, China Mieville…

So, my relationship to the world continues to be one that doesn’t seem to involve much blogging, or much writing, these days. Still, I thought I would check in after watching Michael Moore’s very very good movie, Sicko. I actually thought it was superb. Funny, rich, important, heart-rending.

I also recently read China Mieville’s novel, “Iron Council”. I heard of China Mieville from an interview in “New Politics”, one of the editors of which is my friend Stephen Shalom. I heard Mieville was a leftist activist and also a fantasy author. Since I am a fantasy fan (my favourite author in the genre is Guy Gavriel Kay) and a leftist myself, I thought I would give China Mieville a try. I’m thorough when it comes to authors – if I like one, I will try to read all the main books they’ve written, and I’ll try to read them in the order they were written. In China’s case I started with Perdido Street Station, then went to The Scar, and then Iron Council. I find him very creative, brilliant even, and his setting of New Crobuzon and Bas Lag to be gritty and to accomplish his goals of trying to invert Tolkien, not be sentimental, not rely on cliched rural or feudal settings, have complex politics and economics. The trouble with China is he leaves you feeling sick and totally burned out. The endings are always extraordinarily bleak. I couldn’t help but wonder what it says about the world that a leftist can’t even imagine things working out well in a fantasy novel (let alone science fiction or speculative fiction). Not that it’s on China or anyone else to make everything work out. China should write what he likes, and he does so brilliantly. But why doesn’t the other kind of fantasy novel exist, even if China wouldn’t write it? Would no one believe such a novel, I wonder?

From the Nazis at BBC

Khaled Mishal of Hamas in the foreground, and a Nazi swastika in the background. Click on the story and you won’t see anything Nazi. That’s because there’s nothing to do with the Nazis, other than the desire by the BBC and so many others to link the travails of the starving, besieged, imprisoned, tortured, slaughtered Palestinians with the genocidal Nazi regime, the better to continue starving, besieging, imprisoning, and torturing them. To do so subliminally, through disgusting and crude photos like this one, might or might not be what one expects of the BBC. Certainly I will expect much less of them in future. As sick as it is to have this picture on my blog, I want readers to see what the BBC is peddling on its website today. One hopes they are forced to take it down, but it should be here so they can’t erase the memory of what they’ve done. Did some British skinhead Nazi working at BBC just want to put a swastika on the website, and think he could get away with it if he put it behind an Arab?

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Back from the road

Why I was gone for most of June. First I was at the Z Media Institute, which was a really great experience this year, one I was very proud to be part of and which was really rejuvenating. I taught on International Solidarity, Middle East Politics, and Race/Culture Vision (polyculturalism). But I also got to hear Ezequiel Adamovsky on politics and ethics, who I always find to be very original, and Cynthia Peters, who is working on very original and interesting things in the “kinship sphere”, Marie Trigona on video production. Some classes I couldn’t go to because of scheduling classes included Brian Dominick on the media and on youth liberation, Jessica Azulay and Chris Spannos on media and parecon in practice, Mandisi Majavu on Africa, and others. Rosa Clemente on hip hop activism was extraordinary. And there are staples, like Mike Albert and Noam Chomsky, who I never tire of. I was sad to have missed Chip Berlet altogether, as I always look forward to talking to him and getting his opinion on what’s going on in the world and on the Right.

After that was a work-related trip, and then trying to catch up. And catch up. I suppose you know.

Lots to say on the Middle East, but let’s start with what’s going on outside the Middle East about it. Finkelstein denied tenure. Well, I guess he only has four solid books in his field and a stellar teaching record. I am not sure, but I suspect there are people with less achievements that got tenure. Finkelstein does what he does out of courage and integrity, and he knew the risks, and he has a sense of proportion about it all. It’s still preposterous, though. Makes me want to buy extra copies of his books, all of which I have. I’m actually really looking forward to his new memoir, having read excerpts from it on his website.

The other non-Middle East Middle East situation is UNISON, the British union, endorsing the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

Cindy Sheehan

Since I haven’t really followed her work over the past few years, I was a bit annoyed when I heard she had “quit”. Who is she to “quit”, and to do so so publicly, I wondered? War, empire, are filthy, despicable, genocidal affairs. Opposing them is not like a job that one can “quit”, is it? Opposing them, in my view, doesn’t even mean one is deserving of special praise. But then I read her exit note, and found it some of the best and most refreshing reading I have seen in some time.

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Pet Panacea of India’s Ruling Classes

by Badri Raina
first published May 22, 2007

India’s ruling think gurus are forever on the lookout for a smart panacea for what they perceive the country’s ills. In arguing for a two-party political system, the idea seems to be to subdue the proliferation of organic discontent among the lower orders of the polity by imposing a mechanical structural arrangement from the top.

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Pakistan in the region

http://www.zcommunications.org/pakistan-in-the-region-by-zia-mian

Zia Mian directs the Project on Peace and Security in South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs, Princeton University. He is a writer and filmmaker on South Asia and nuclear issues. Previous interviews are here:

February 2004
February 2003

I caught up with him by phone on April 27, 2007 – just as the current crisis was beginning.

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Irreversible Damage: conservatives in power

People think of bloggers as astute observers of the press. I think if you read this blog carefully you realize that I, unfortunately, am not. I read a few foreign papers and get a fair amount of material from email, because of my work at ZNet. And on the other side, I don’t have the stomach to pay constant attention to the North American mainstream media. When I do try to read it in detail, it is often a very painful experience (the most recent and painful experience being the foray into Mitch Potter’s writing).

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