We all remember the end of last year for the dismal outcome, at Copenhagen, for concerted international action to deal with the world’s problems. Just a few weeks before, however, another meeting took place. In November last year, the International Encounter of Left Parties met in Caracas. At that meeting, Hugo Chávez, in typically theatrical style, declared that it was time ‘to convene the Fifth International, and I dare to make the call, which I think is a necessity’.
What would a Fifth International look like? More of the same Trotskyist rhetoric, or something new and radical that, while rejecting the neoliberal consensus, does not tie itself up in dogma, recognising that all theory is contingent – that nineteenth-century critiques of capital, however brilliant for their time, are not the be-all and end-all?
My first post on Overland’s blog
February 24th, 2010 § 0
Bite
January 1st, 2010 § 0
The girl with the black eyes was walking through the bush, barefoot as usual, because she loved the feel of the soft earth between her toes, when she was bitten by a snake.
My short story ‘Bite’ is part of the most recent of Five Fishes online journal’s ‘friday buckets’ of poetry and flash fiction, published the first Friday of each month. This one’s the first of the decade.
Lévi-Strauss RIP
November 6th, 2009 § 0
The father of structuralism, Claude Lévi-Strauss, has died a few weeks before reaching his 101st birthday.
Dans une époque pressée, confuse, massivement portée à la veulerie et au simplisme, l’homme passait fréquemment pour distant. Tous ceux qui eurent la chance de l’approcher peu ou prou savent combien cet esprit universel, profondément attaché à la dignité de tous peuples, savait être proche, amical, fidèle et chaleureux, surtout si l’on avait su tenir le coup sous son regard, le plus acéré qui fût. Hautain? Non. Seulement exigeant, suprêmement intelligent, et peu enclin au mensonge. Cela fait évidemment beaucoup de défauts, surtout si l’on est en outre l’auteur d’une des oeuvres majeures du XXe siècle. Dans la cacophonie de l’heure, une partition exemplaire. Et l’élégance altière, à côté du solfège, d’un musicien de l’esprit.
(From his obituary in Le Monde.)
Meeting the Colonel
September 16th, 2009 § 0
‘This is not England, Mr Rahman,’ said Sajid firmly. ‘The people here are not educated. We do our best to improve things, but we face a mountain of ignorance and a swamp of superstition. They are confused. They don’t know what they want. This is a fine city, but its people are still mountain folk at heart. They will believe any claptrap their tribal elders tell them; and the elders are stuck in the past. There are power hungry mullahs too who want to cause trouble. That’s why there has been so much strife over the last two years. No, Mr Rahman, you will not learn anything from the poor muddle-headed people out there.’ He gestured beyond the high fences, barbed and electrified, that cut the palace off from the rest of the city. ‘Now, you have a very important meeting. I mustn’t keep you.’
My story ‘Meeting the Colonel’ will be published in March as part of this year’s Sketch, an annual collection of fiction, poetry, art and digital design.
Why Republicans are bashing the NHS
August 16th, 2009 § 0
Once people have had a taste of a proper public healthcare system, they won’t give it up. It’s a one-way street. In the UK, which is in general more closely aligned to the politics of the US (a neoliberal consensus on the centre right) than the mainstream of Europe, the NHS is the one public service on which the political classes dare not ravage with market fundamentalism…
[ the rest of this post is at Liberal Conspiracy ]
The evil ideology of Star Trek
May 11th, 2009 § 0
Never mind the Federation’s code of non-interference or whatever it’s called. The fact is that the Federation starships zoom around the galaxy armed to teeth. Of course the enemy fires on them first; that’s the standard justification for militarism, an external threat that must be defeated. This is not unusual in Hollywood, but something like Star Trek, that has at least pretensions to belonging to the canon of speculative fiction, it is not unreasonable to hold it to a higher standard. Kirk’s father drives his starship into the enemy: he ends his life as a suicide bomber. You can’t get much more militaristic than that.
[ the rest of this post is on my tech blog ]
The Left faces a predicament at election time
May 8th, 2009 § 0
On a strictly deontological basis, none of them deserve our vote. But this is the real world, and we have to make decisions based on the best outcome possible…
[ the rest of this post is at Liberal Conspiracy ]
Scrivener: unobtrusive brilliance
May 4th, 2009 § 0
What a fine piece of software is Scrivener. You can write any number of scraps of text, organise them as you see fit, re-order them, combine them in ad hoc ways, and take “snapshots” (named versions) of a manuscript. The full-screen mode is brilliant for clearing away the clutter and concentrating on your work:
It gets out of the way, and lets you concentrate on the text. Thoroughly recommended.
Salam jobsworth
March 12th, 2009 § 0
There is something seriously wrong-headed about the sentiments expressed in today’s Guardian by Salam Pax, Baghdad blogger and darling of the Western liberal media, regarding the shoe thrown at Bush by Muntazer al-Zaidi. His arguments about the responsibilities of a journalist vis-a-vis the feelings of a private citizen are those of a jobsworth, and utterly inadequate in the face of the transparent criminality, imperial arrogance and naked evil exhibited by the political and military face of the United States over the last six years, from Bush down.
“He was there, while many others were not, to ask the questions we needed answered.”
Sure; but he was also there, while I was not, to throw shoes, express the contempt and outrage of the vast majority of humanity against this despicable man. What good is it to pose questions that will not be answered? What are these burning questions in any case?
“He should have asked president Bush how he feels about having tens of thousands killed and millions displaced as a direct result of his actions.”
What does it matter how Bush feels? He may feel regret; more likely he feels justified. It is a pointless and trivial exercise. Likewise Pax’s wish for Bush to “say sorry, just once”. Do we expect Radovan Karadžić to “say sorry” – to tell us how he feels? No. It is to put the criminal on a pedestal he does not deserve to inquire after his feelings. We expect him to face justice, to live behind bars in dishonour and ignominy for the rest of his life, where he cannot cause further mischief – this justice is not retribution (revenge is impossible for thousands of deaths, since a single person can only be killed once) but it demonstrates that we do not permit mass murderers and thugs to go unpunished–that we do not tolerate these acts.
It is all very well to preach journalistic pieties; but when the politician in question has flouted all norms and morality himself, the press conference itself becomes a kind of exercise in or demonstration of his legitimacy. Muntazer al-Zaidi’s shoe, however much of a stunt, deconstructed this sham with far greater eloquence than all Salam Pax’s lukewarm platitudes about journalistic integrity.
The end of the hornéd phonograph
December 16th, 2008 § 0
Let’s not pretend it is a God-given right to digitally encode music and profit from its distribution. It was simply an accident of technology and economics. Mass production, in the days of vinyl, was well out of reach of the general public. Scarcity was therefore a given; of course people want to buy records, so demand was there: thus the record industry flourished. The humble cassette tape was a warning that this scenario would not last forever; file sharing on a large scale is upending the game…
[ the rest of this post is on my music blog ]