Author: Mick Hartley

s – which are what utopia won’t be like? Um….sounds to me like Jameson has been reading too many Philip Dick novels. They can get to you that way.

Can reading science fiction, I asked, help us decide between various utopian alternatives – urban vs. pastoral, statist vs. anarchistic? No, replied Jameson, insisting there are ”utopian elements” in each of these. What science fiction does afford us, he said, ”is not a synthesis of these elements but a process where the imagination begins to question itself, to move back and forth among the possibilities.”

Well yes, science fiction can liberate the imagination, and I always thought there was something significant in the fact that, for me and I’m sure for many others, science fiction gave way at the end of the Seventies, along with the arrival of Thatcher and Reagan, with a switch to thrillers as the preferred form of popular literature. Some sort of dream had died, and we had to deal with a harsh reality. So I’m not unsympathetic to the idea of the imagination questioning things – but times have changed, and I’m not sure that a return to the science fiction of the Sixties and Seventies, frankly, has much to offer. Certainly much of the left recently appears to have run out of ideas: it’s the neo-cons who’ve proposed that parts of the world, like Iraq or Afghanistan, might conceivably become democracies, against the appalled opposition of a left that can only find consolation in the – all too frequent – setbacks. But it’s not utopian to hope that democracy can spread, and it’s certainly not more utopian visions that the left needs now.

Ah the brave world of the theatre, where playwrights and directors insist loudly on their mission to speak truth to power; to expose the hypocrisies of our time with relentless courage and steely determination, unbowed by the pressures and threats from church or state….

It was the surprise hit of the autumn season, selling out for its entire run and inspiring rave reviews. But now the producers of Tamburlaine the Great have come under fire for censoring Christopher Marlowe’s 1580s masterpiece to avoid upsetting Muslims.

Audiences at the Barbican in London did not see the Koran being burnt, as Marlowe intended, because David Farr, who directed and adapted the classic play, feared that it would inflame passions in the light of the London bombings.

Simon Reade, artistic director of the Bristol Old Vic, said that if they had not altered the original it “would have unnecessarily raised the hackles of a significant proportion of one of the world’s great religions”.

The burning of the Koran was “smoothed over”, he said, so that it became just the destruction of “a load of books” relating to any culture or religion. That made it more powerful, they claimed.

Members of the audience also reported that key references to Muhammad had been dropped, particularly in the passage where Tamburlaine says that he is “not worthy to be worshipped”. In the original Marlowe writes that Muhammad “remains in hell”.

From Brussels Journal, news of a competition for the worst Belgian ever, in the left-wing monthly Deng:

Marc Dutroux, the convicted Belgian pervert who abducted children and locked them up in dungeons where he raped and murdered them, is second with 20%. The third “worst Belgian ever” (11.4%) is the country’s former king, Leopold II, who in the late 19th and early 20th century decimated the population of his personal Congo colony, killing an estimated 10 million people.

And first place? Step forward Filip Dewinter, a member of the Flemish regional parliament and one of the leaders of the Flemish-secessionist Vlaams Belang, the largest party in Belgium. His crime? He’s a self-confessed Islamophobe.

When asked whether he espoused xenophobia [in an interview with New York magazine Jewish Week], Dewinter replied:

“Xenophobia” is not the word I would use. If it absolutely must be a “phobia” let it be “islamophobia”. Yes, we’re afraid of Islam. The islamisation of Europe is a frightening thing. Even distinguished Jewish scholars as Bat Ye’or and Bernard Lewis warned for this. If this historical process continues, the Jews will be the first victims. Europe will become as dangerous for them as Egypt or Algeria.

Deng has a portrait of Dewinter on the cover of its December issue:

“Owing to our disgusting cover Deng will be sold at half the usual price this month,” Deng editor Dany Ilegems says. The editor says he is proud of Deng’s readers for having chosen Dewinter: “Dutroux has raped and murdered children, but according to the court, unlike Dewinter, he is an ‘isolated’ pervert.”

It’s not difficult to see parallels between the persecution of intellectuals under Communism with the plight of reformist, secular, and moderate intellectuals in the Arab world today. At MEMRI there’s a round-up of some recent cases:

Egyptian judge and author Muhammad Sa’id Al-‘Ashmawi has been subject to Islamist threats since 1979. The reason for this was his interpretation of Koranic verses according to their historical context, which was perceived by Islamists as undermining their religious validity for all places and times. In January 1980, the Egyptian authorities assigned him a police escort.

In March, 2004, following a speech he delivered in the U.S. on moderation and reform in Islam and in Egypt, the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior cancelled his police protection…..

In March 2005, Dr. Ahmad Al-Baghdadi, a reformist author who teaches political science at Kuwait University, published a public request for political asylum in a Western country, after a Kuwaiti court condemned him to a one-year prison sentence, commuted to three years on probation and bail of 2,000 dinars ($6,800). In response to the court’s decision, he also announced that he would stop writing in the Kuwaiti press.

Al-Baghdadi was sued by three Islamists who accused him of contempt for Islam after he wrote, in a June 2004 article in a Kuwaiti paper, that he would prefer his son to study music rather than the Koran…..

In March 2005, Dr. Ahmad Al-Baghdadi, a reformist author who teaches political science at Kuwait University, published a public request for political asylum in a Western country, after a Kuwaiti court condemned him to a one-year prison sentence, commuted to three years on probation and bail of 2,000 dinars ($6,800). In response to the court’s decision, he also announced that he would stop writing in the Kuwaiti press.

Al-Baghdadi was sued by three Islamists who accused him of contempt for Islam after he wrote, in a June 2004 article in a Kuwaiti paper, that he would prefer his son to study music rather than the Koran.

From Metapsychology, a review of “Way Beyond Freud: Postmodern Psychoanalysis Observed” (via).

The analytic relation is being more and more conceptualized as an intersubjective system of mutual influence. All knowledge in the psychoanalytic situation is contingent upon the experience of the actual moment, and the perspective of the analyst can be no more accurate than the perspective of his patient. A key tenet of postmodernism is that both internal and external reality are social constructions, reflecting (among other things) an individual’s cultural background, his language and his past and present experience. In the empirical setting, postmodernism has led to a resurgence of constructivist research and an emphasis on cultural relativism in any discourse. In clinical setting, postmodernism has led to greater focus on narrative truth and skepticism regarding the relevance of objective research methods to all important psychological and psychopathological issues.

This raises a number of questions – among which might be, Does this rubbish actually mean anything? – but I’m curious as to why, if “the perspective of the analyst can be no more accurate than the perspective of his patient“, people should be expected to pay thousands of pounds in fees. I mean, what’s the point of psychoanalysis if the analyst has no more clue than the patient? It’s not much of a selling point, is it?

And I like that bit about “postmodernism has led to greater…skepticism regarding the relevance of objective research methods“. I can believe it. I think in that sentence we find a clue as to what exactly the attractions of postmodernism might be for psychoanalysis.

-old, secondary school educated man from the south-eastern city of Batman as saying. “If my wife is unfaithful to me, I will either kill her, or if she has a brother, an older brother, I will tell him: ‘You kill her.’”

At his London gig last night, according to Bill Pagel’s site, Dylan opened with Link Wray’s Rumble. Oddly, in the two reviews given, one doesn’t mention the fact, while the other merely notes that the gig started off to the “raunchy sounds of the old Link Wray tune The Rumble”, but elaborates no further, being lost in the sheer wonder of his Bobness’s presence.

What they miss out on – the reason for this – is that Link Wray has just died, aged 76.

I’d imagine it’s extremely rare for Dylan to move outside his own back catalogue, but it’s kind of appropriate for someone who draws their inspiration from the folk music of America in all its forms that he should have done this. Rumble almost counts as a folk tune, with its raw primal simplicity. It’s the greatest rock instrumental ever, a sort of ur-heavy metal – or ur-punk maybe. Forget Elvis, or Little Richard: if you really wanted proof that this here rock’n’roll music spelled nothing but trouble for the decent folk of America, just put on Rumble, and turn up the volume. It’s so menacing it’s scary. And this was back in 1958. And, to make it somehow even more perfect as a classic piece of Americana, the guy was a Shawnee Indian. As this site puts it, he’s the “the missing link in the history of rock guitar” between the blues and rock, a true hero of American music”. Or, from this Amazon review, “the first man to demonstrate that an electric guitar, in the right hands, could be made to sound like a weapon.” Trust Bob to pay homage.

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It was the United States that disrupted this version of a perfect world by pursuing its imperial ambitions–the United States, therefore, that merited a genuine rage, whether in regard to the Korean War (which sparked massive protests in Paris), or fifteen years later in regard to the Vietnam War, or another fifteen years later in regard to Ronald Reagan’s arms race against the Soviets. Then communism, having turned out to be the actual example of odious imperialism, collapsed, and a certain kind of left-wing hope evaporated. Even so, a new vision of world peace emerged, and once again the United States loomed as the principle threat.

The perfect society, this time, was pictured as the rueful progeny of Europe’s failures of the past–a new international system that arose out of the recognition that Europe needed to come to grips with its own disasters. In this new and modern idea, modesty reigned as the highest of virtues, and a peaceful and prosperous world was pictured as on the brink of emerging, if only everyone would accept the new spirit of ruefulness. And yet, the United States demurred once again, and, after September 11, went about behaving as if global perfection were not at hand, and things ought to be shaken up, and tyrants overthrown.

And so, like the woman whose human qualities mark her as the enemy of amorous bliss, and like the Jew who is imagined as the betrayer of one version after another of the perfect state of grace, the Americans come to be seen as the people who keep destroying the perfect world of peace that would otherwise prevail–the peaceful world that communism claimed for itself long ago, and that, in the post-communist era, is claimed by the rueful opponents of all communist-like projects to re-make the world. And hatred pours down–a hatred in the name of love for a perfect and peaceful world that is actually a hatred for the human condition. A hatred of the imperfect self. Or so argues André Glucksmann.

One Free Korea has a long and detailed post on the desperate situation in North Korea:

This week there is much news of the developments in North Korea’s food situation, all of it very grave. The U.N.’s World Food Program has now begun to shut down the factories it uses to produce its food aid for North Korea. More experts are expressing their doubts that North Korea can feed its population without the food aid it rejects, and refugees continue to flee from what they describe as famine conditions in their homeland.

It is clear that food is not in greater supply than in previous years, that the cutoff of food aid will exacerbate that problem, and that without the rise of world outrage, North Korea will have no incentive to change its policies that have thus far prevented food from reaching the hungry. If the food were to begin flowing today, it would not arrive in time to save many. The world is on notice. The U.N. dereliction of its duty will not easily be forgiven.

ame education, so that the next generation of children will all be true Muslims who know that they are Muslims and know who their enemies are. This child will now introduce herself. She’s the daughter of a sister in Islam, Hueida, and of the artist Wagdi Al-Arabi. Her name is Basmallah, and I will ask her too.

Peace be upon you.

Basmallah: Allah’s mercy and blessings upon you.

Amer: What’s your name?

Basmallah: Basmallah.

Amer: How old are you, Basmallah?

Basmallah: Three and a half.

Amer: Are you a Muslim?

Basmallah: Yes.

Amer: Basmallah, do you know the Jews?

Basmallah: Yes

Amer: Do you like them?

Basmallah: No.

Amer: Why don’t you like them?

Basmallah: Because.

Amer: Because they are what?

Basmallah: They are apes and pigs.

Amer: Because they are apes and pigs. Who said that about them?

Basmallah: Our God.

Amer: Where did he say that about them?

Basmallah: In the Koran.

[…]

Amer: Basmallah, Allah be praised. May our God bless her. No one could wish for a more devout girl. May God bless her and her parents. The next generation of children must be true Muslims, Allah willing. We must educate them while they are still children to be true Muslims.