And what of Afghanistan?

[I wanted to write this as a letter to a newspaper on Salt Spring Island, but I couldn't find anyway to do so. Instead I posted it as comment to an article I found on the web site of the Salt Spring News (http://www.saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article &sid=14781&thold=0&mode=thread&order=0). It's pretty self-explanatory I think.]

So I am curious as to what the author might propose to solve these problems? At least, compared to many on today's self-described left, Bandow accepts post-9/11 American involvement in Afghanistan - though his describing of it as being "not an easy nation to conquer" while accurate is not really appropriate in this context since the majority of Afghans have no desire to be ruled by the Taliban and no country, especially the USA, has any desire to "conquer" it - but he here refuses to draw the seemingly necessary conclusion: Afghanistan needs more Western military support to enable it to free itself from the possibility of a resurgent Taliban.

While on Salt Spring Island this week, however, I found myself confronted by a poster while in Centennial Park in Ganges. Addressed to those concerned about Canadian involvement in Afghanistan, the poster consisted of a letter that purported to explain the situation. I wish I could quote from it exactly, but paraphrasing from memory will have to here suffice (those of you on S.S. can easily find the original I'm sure).

According to the anonymous author Canada has no business involving itself in Afghanistan. Afghanis have been fighting each other for centuries, that's just what they do, and us being there will only lead to inevitable attacks on Canadians at home and abroad by Taliban sympathizers so an immediate withdrawal of our troops is urgently called for. The author even quotes a high-level Taliban leader as having said that he was disappointed that troops from Canada and the U.K. were beginning to fight like those from the USA (whatever that means), but that if both were to remove their troops from the country immediately no harm would befall citizens from either country. Describing this as a "generous" offer, the poster's author urged that it should be accepted.

I have always loved the Gulf Islands ever since I first visited them while hitchhiking alone when I was 17 and am therefore saddened to see such rascist and reactionary sentiments expressed in a place that has always seemed to be such a model of progressive thinking in action. That Afghanistan has suffered years of war is unfortunately correct, but to label its people as being inherently warlike - barbarians essentially - is to engage in the most despicable of stereotyping. That what happens in Afghanistan is "of no concern to us" reveals the dangerous results of the unhinged cultural relativism that sadly plagues far too many and that stands in sharp contrast to the progressive left of the past. And that anyone could even think to consider offers made by the Taliban - that pinnacle of reactionary religious fascism under whose rule the majority of Afghanis lived for far too long: music being banned, women as virtual slaves, stonings and beheadings usual punishments for adultery and homosexuality, ancient statues of the Buddha destroyed for "idolatry" among other things - as being anything to consider seriously is truly frightening.

July 17 of this year marks the 70th anniversary of the revolt by Nationalist troops that began the Spanish Civil War that ended in 1939 with the Fall of Madrid and the beginning on Franco's fascist dictatorship. During this time over 40,000 mostly men, but some women, left their homes in countries around the world to fight, and often die, to help save the Republic and stem the rise of fascism. For them, and for the left traditionally, injustice anywhere meant injustice everywhere. For them, one should not hide behind national walls to say "it's none of my business" because people everywhere should be free to determine their own fate. Indeed for them, isolationism and lack of concern for those in other countries were the hallmarks of the very reactionary fascism that the progressive left was meant to oppose. How things have changed.

Is militarism a problem in the world? Most certainly. But one does not intelligently oppose the excessive spending and focus on military means by opposing any military actions whatsoever. It has always struck me as acutely ironic that the majority of whom are most concerned about American intrusions into Canadian sovereignty also seem to be the most against increased military spending; having the practical effect of leaving Canada ever more dependent on America for its defence. As to Afghanistan, this country needs Canada's help in many ways; one being fighting and killing those who wish to again subjugate it to a barbaric, tyrannical regime. There is sometimes no room for compromise, when to fight, kill and perhaps die is the unfortunate but necessary course to take. This is certainly the case with the Taliban as it was against fascism in Germany, Italy and Japan. We forget history at our own peril.

All about food

In this month's issue of Mother Jones magazine (and available online at http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/05/no_bar_code.html) is a very interesting article on an evangelical Christian organic farmer who lives and works in Pennsylvania - with a difference. The organic food industry has grown enormously over the last 10 years, but it's debatable how much of a good thing this atually is.

I’d heard a lot about the quality of the meat raised on [this] “beyond organic” farm, and was eager to sample some. Salatin and his family raise a half-dozen different species (grass-fed beef, chickens, pigs, turkeys, and rabbits) in an intricate rotation that has made his 550 hilly acres of pasture and woods in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley one of the most productive and sustainable small farms in America. But when I telephoned Joel to ask him to send me a broiler, he said he couldn’t do that. I figured he meant he wasn’t set up for shipping, so I offered to have an overnight delivery service come pick it up.

“No, I don’t think you understand. I don’t believe it’s sustainable—‘organic,’ if you will—to FedEx meat all around the country,” Joel told me. “I’m afraid if you want to try one of our chickens, you’re going to have to drive down here to pick it up.”

This man was serious. He went on to explain that Polyface does not ship long distance, does not sell to supermarkets, and does not wholesale its food. All of the meat and eggs that Polyface produces is eaten within a few dozen miles or, at the most, half a day’s drive of the farm—within the farm’s “foodshed.” At first I assumed Joel’s motive for keeping his food chain so short was strictly environmental—to save on the prodigious quantities of fossil fuel Americans burn moving their food around the country and, increasingly today, the world. (The typical fruit or vegetable on an American’s plate travels some 1,500 miles to get there, and is frequently better traveled and more worldly than its eater.) But after taking Joel up on his offer to drive down to Swoope, Virginia, to pick up a chicken, I picked up a great deal more—about the renaissance of local food systems, and the values they support, values that go far beyond the ones a food buyer supports when he or she buys organic in the supermarket. It turns out that Joel Salatin, and the local food movement he’s become an influential part of, is out to save a whole lot more than energy.

The whole article is fascinating, but especially so in relation to the opinions of the well-known (to some anyways) ethicist Peter Singer. In an article/interview on Salon.com (at http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/05/08/singer/ and requires watching of a brief advertisement) Singer argues against the very ideas of local food that Joel Salatin and other usual advocates of organic food usually so cherish; based on his utilitarian ethical principles.


In your book you say that socially responsible folks in San Francisco would do better to buy their rice from Bangladesh than from local growers in California. Could you explain?
This is in reference to the local food movement, and the idea that you can save fossil fuels by not transporting food long distances. This is a widespread belief, and of course it has some basis. Other things being equal, if your food is grown locally, you will save on fossil fuels. But other things are often not equal. California rice is produced using artificial irrigation and fertilizer that involves energy use. Bangladeshi rice takes advantage of the natural flooding of the rivers and doesn't require artificial irrigation. It also doesn't involve as much synthetic fertilizer because the rivers wash down nutrients, so it's significantly less energy intensive to produce. Now, it's then shipped across the world, but shipping is an extremely fuel-efficient form of transport. You can ship something 10,000 miles for the same amount of fuel necessary to truck it 1,000 miles. So if you're getting your rice shipped to San Francisco from Bangladesh, fewer fossil fuels were used to get it there than if you bought it in California.

In the same vein, you argue that in the interests of alleviating world poverty, it's better to buy food from Kenya than to buy locally, even if the Kenyan farmer only gets 2 cents on the dollar.
My argument is that we should not necessarily buy locally, because if we do, we cut out the opportunity for the poorest countries to trade with us, and agriculture is one of the things they can do, and which can help them develop. The objection to this, which I quote from Brian Halweil, one of the leading advocates of the local movement, is that very little of the money actually gets back to the Kenyan farmer. But my calculations show that even if as little as 2 cents on the dollar gets back to the Kenyan farmer, that could make a bigger difference to the Kenyan grower than an entire dollar would to a local grower. It's the law of diminishing marginal utility. If you are only earning $300, 2 cents can make a bigger difference to you than a dollar can make to the person earning $30,000.

What to make of these conflicting viewpoints? For Salatin and other advocates of the importance of local food, its value is simply not reducible to a question of simply to whom the profit goes, as Singer does. This is, of course, the problem with utilitarian ethics; necessarily relying on quantification, and disregarding as meaningless that which cannot be so portrayed, to solve ethical dilemnas. The value of food as part of an active web of individual relationships based on sustainable agricultural practices becomes metaphysical mumbo-jumbo in comparison to the "fact" that poor countries in the world can grow food cheaper than rich countries. The utilitarian ethical calculus therefore demands that rich countries should import as much food as possible from poor countries, irrespective of their own agricultural capacities, as a way of alleviating poverty.

More later...

Worth a read

I would be remiss were I to not mention a topic of great discussion, primarily in Britain its land of origin: the so-called Euston Manisfesto.

First published in the British New Statesman (found online at http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/eustonmanifesto/2006/04/07/manifesto/) it also has its own web site where the text can be downloaded (http://eustonmanifesto.org/joomla/). It calls for today's Left to re-evaluate what it should stand for: forbearing reflexive anti-Israel and American sentiments, while proclaiming loudly deserved criticisms of these and any other countries; to offer unrelenting support to progressive forces around the world, even those who find themselves - like the Kurds in Iraq and the labour unions in Iran - on the same side as the USA to mention only a couple of things. A few quotes:

We defend liberal and pluralist democracies against all who make light of the differences between them and totalitarian and other tyrannical regimes. But these democracies have their own deficits and shortcomings. The battle for the development of more democratic institutions and procedures, for further empowering those without influence, without a voice or with few political resources, is a permanent part of the agenda of the Left.

The social and economic foundations on which the liberal democracies have developed are marked by deep inequalities of wealth and income and the survival of unmerited privilege. In turn, global inequalities are a scandal to the moral conscience of humankind. Millions live in terrible poverty. Week in, week out, tens of thousands of people - children in particular - die from preventable illnesses. Inequalities of wealth, both as between individuals and between countries, distribute life chances in an arbitrary way.

These things are a standing indictment against the international community. We on the Left, in keeping with our own traditions, fight for justice and a decent life for everyone. In keeping with those same traditions, we have also to fight against powerful forces of totalitarian-style tyranny that are on the march again. Both battles have to be fought simultaneously. One should not be sacrificed for the other.

We repudiate the way of thinking according to which the events of September 11 2001 were America’s deserved comeuppance, or ‘understandable’ in the light of legitimate grievances resulting from US foreign policy. What was done on that day was an act of mass murder, motivated by odious fundamentalist beliefs and redeemed by nothing whatsoever. No evasive formula can hide that.

The founding supporters of this statement took different views on the military intervention in Iraq, both for and against. We recognize that it was possible reasonably to disagree about the justification for the intervention, the manner in which it was carried through, the planning (or lack of it) for the aftermath, and the prospects for the successful implementation of democratic change. We are, however, united in our view about the reactionary, semi-fascist and murderous character of the Baathist regime in Iraq, and we recognize its overthrow as a liberation of the Iraqi people. We are also united in the view that, since the day on which this occurred, the proper concern of genuine liberals and members of the Left should have been the battle to put in place in Iraq a democratic political order and to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, to create after decades of the most brutal oppression a life for Iraqis which those living in democratic countries take for granted - rather than picking through the rubble of the arguments over intervention.

What thinks you? I'll hopefully get around to writing my comment soon...

The BBC on Taiwan and China

"The Chinese may have been willing to overlook the foul-up as their National Anthem was introduced as that of "the Republic of China" - the other name for Taiwan - the part of China that has rebelled and broken away from the mainland and sought security from the United States." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4929066.stm)

This paragraph of Jonathan Beale's otherwise good story of the Falun Gong protester at the Washington D.C. meeting of Bush and Jintao deserves a correction. Anyone who has done even the most basic research into the history of the China-Taiwan dispute knows that Taiwan never "rebelled" or broke away from the mainland and to say so in this article is to regurgitate the Chinese government's own propaganda - something I would hope the BBC would have the decency to avoid. I'll here avoid pedantically recounting the real story behind Taiwan's separateness from the mainland as the information is easily accessible online - wikipedia.org being the most obvious - but it deserves a correction or the BBC will have become nothing but a tool of China's authoritarian ways. I can almost see it: next, in an article about Tibet, they'll be stating that PRC troops "liberated" it from "bourgeois oppression." Please...

Of these protests in France...

So only a few months after France saw out-of-control rioting comes mass protests by students and unions against a new labour law that would make it easier (horror of horrors!) for employers to fire new employees in the first two years - something that is now next to impossible. As someone from Canada where such a reality is so commonplace as to merit not the slightest mention were France not at present so worrisomely convulsed, it is hard to feel much sympathy for the protesters. France's economy is in desperate need of reform; that such a minor and obviously needed change as this could arouse such indignation reveals a great deal as what has gone wrong with this formerly great country.

A couple days ago in The Washington Post anyways, Claire Berlinski wrote a great op-ed piece about the situation deserving of a read. (Found in its entirety at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/24/AR2006032402401.html)

This is the second time in four months that France has been seized with violent protests. And in an important sense, these are counter-riots, since the goals of the privileged students conflict with those of the suburban rioters who took to the streets last November. The message of the suburban rioters: Things must change. The message of the students: Things must stay the same. In other words: Screw the immigrants.

The issue at stake is not, of course, the CPE, which in addition to being unknown in its effects would apply only to a two-year trial period, after which employees would still, effectively, be guaranteed jobs for life. The issue is fear of a real overhaul of France's economically stifling labor laws. While some of the suburban hoodlums have joined in these protests -- after all, a riot is a riot -- it is clear that unless this overhaul proceeds, the immigrants are doomed. If so, last year's violence will seem a lark compared with what is coming.

Curiously, however, no French politician will say this openly. They will not even say these obvious words: France is a representative democracy; if you don't like what your elected leaders are doing, you can vote against them. Some more words you will never hear in France: Students who continue to disrupt civil and academic life will be expelled. Strikers will be fired. We are calling in the troops.

Instead, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is nightly seen on television, earnestly proposing one compromise after the other, even as his supporters scuttle for cover. The powerful barons of the labor unions, on the other hand -- the puppet masters of that golden flock of imbeciles now on the streets -- can scarcely be bothered to give interviews. Compromise? Only when the law is repealed. By then, of course, compromise would be unnecessary. Instead of negotiations, they call for a general strike.

That's because France is still in the grip of precisely the political mentality that has prevailed here since the Middle Ages. As the protesters themselves cheerfully declare: It's the street that rules. Today's mobs, like their predecessors, are notable for their poor grasp of economic principles and their hostility to the free market. Only wardrobe distinguishes these demonstrations from those that led to the invasion of the national convention in 1795, when first the mob protested that commodity prices were too high; when the government responded with price controls, it protested with equal vigor that goods had disappeared and black market prices had risen. Similarly, the students on the streets today espouse economic views entirely unpolluted by reality. If the CPE is enacted, said one young woman, "You'll get a job knowing that you've got to do every single thing they ask you to do because otherwise you may get sacked."

Imagine that.

Update:

On today's Slate.com is an article by Elizabeth Eaves entitled "March Malaise" about the protests. She discusses the law they're ostensibly protesting against, but also offers a interesting, if rather depressing, window into the mentality of the protesters. (http://www.slate.com/id/2138949/)

There appeared to be three kinds of demonstrators. Some, like the group dancing around a bongo drum at the Place de la République, or the dreadlocked kids swigging beer and smoking joints as they ambled through the Place de la Bastille, had apparently come for a big day out. Then there were the casseurs, troublemakers in from the suburbs, looking for opportunities for mayhem. The morning news had reported that police would be monitoring inbound trains to keep the casseurs out of the city center; this would presumably involve targeting black and Arab young men.
The third and largest group was comprised of people out for the cause—or causes. Members of ACT UP Paris marched with signs pointing out that "AIDS is still with us." A Marxist group sold Che Guevara T-shirts. And everywhere, on stickers, signs, and T-shirts, and shouted through bullhorns, the demonstrators declared themselves to be "contre la précarité!"
Against precariousness, instability, uncertainty. I'm trying for the kindest translation here, but even so, the sentiment is hard (for an Anglo-Saxon capitalist) to take seriously. Except, if more than a million French citizens take to the streets to demand that the government protect them from uncertainty, something must be seriously wrong, even if it's not the CPE.

On Music and Traditions

In the world of classical music (most notably with the piano) there is a long history of performance styles passed down from their innovators by teachers from their general codification in the 19th century. In the non-classical music world, on the other hand, there is an inherent resistance to such a tradition of styles as originality (or at least the pretense of) is of such primary importance. Yet as the innovators in these popular musical styles recede into the past it would be of great service to the musical community, and to the listening public in general, to not let their musical innovations disappear along with them.

One notable example, especially relevant to those who play the electric bass, is the playing of Phil Lesh, the bassist in the Grateful Dead who now performs mostly with his own group Phil and Friends. Though the Dead were (and still are by some) dismissed as an inconsequential group of 60’s “hippy” leftovers, the devotion of their so-called “Deadhead” followers was perhaps matched only by the originality of their sound; a large part of which had to do with Lesh’s unique approach to the bass guitar.

Eschewing the finger plucked, “playing the root” style of most electric bassists, Lesh crafted a distinctive, contrapuntal approach (usually always using a plectrum), that was of crucial importance to the development and delivery of the Dead’s sound. Whereas nearly all other popular music groups in the history of the genre have played their songs (as well as their set-lists and indeed entire concerts) as similarly as possible each time they performed, the Dead, influenced as they were by directions in modern jazz, self-consciously tried to never duplicate themselves: “to never play a song the same way twice” was their unofficial motto. Not only did individual songs find themselves being constantly re-invented, however, but their concerts as well. Planned set lists were avoided in favor of getting on stage and figuring things out as they went along, which often meant (and deliberately so) not the usual practice of individuated 3-5 minute songs, but rather long stretches of unbroken music involving improvised segues between their always already partially improvised songs. Lesh’s relation to this can best be understood through a brief digression into the specifics of his playing style, and how different it is from the vast majority of other electric bassists.

The traditional approach to playing the bass in popular music can perhaps best be understood as having a primarily vertical role. As all beginning bass players are usually—and, I agree, should be—taught, the function of the bass, as the lowest pitched instrument, is to define the harmony; meaning that all other notes played at the same time are related by the listener’s ear to the note played by the bass. Thus, a piano player playing an A minor chord (A, C, E) with his left-hand and soloing using an A natural minor scale with his right can find both the chord and the scale he is playing instantly re-defined as soon as a bass player plays an F note; causing the A minor chord to be heard instead as a F major seventh and the A natural minor scale (or Aeolian mode) to respectively become a F Lydian mode (the fourth modal inversion of a C major scale).

Lesh’s style, in contrast, is best understood as functioning much more in terms of the horizontal elements of music. Instead of focusing primarily on defining the vertical harmony by emphasizing the roots and fifths of chords, his playing acts very much like a bass lead guitar in melodic counterpoint to the higher melodic lines; whether sung or played instrumentally. Using thirds and sixths (all the notes of the chord/scale in fact) to a much greater degree than most bassists—often beginning a melodic pattern on a higher pitch and then working down to the chord fundamental—he is able to realize more melodic, and thereby contrapuntal, bass lines than are usually found in popular music.

The problem with this approach, and the justification for the traditional emphasis on roots and fifths, is that it leads to aural instability—harmonies lacking definitive grounding. As the Grateful Dead showed, however, this is not necessarily a bad thing.

As explained above, the Dead’s performances were uniquely characterized by long stretches of music (often lasting an hour or more) made up of alternating rehearsed (at least partially) and non-rehearsed (i.e. improvised) sections. A notable early example of this would be their second set performance from November 8, 1969 at the Fillmore West Auditorium in San Francisco (the entire concert has been officially released as Dick’s Picks 16). The set list (“>” indicating a musical segue) is: “Dark Star>The Other One>Dark Star>Uncle John’s Band Jam>Dark Star>Saint Stephen>The Eleven>Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)>The Main Ten>Caution (Do Not…)>Feedback>We Bid You Goodnight.” Notice the recurrence of the same song more than once. This is a common happening for the Dead that means not the same song played twice (or three times as “Dark Star” seems to be here so indicated), but rather different portions, verses or even just the tonal/modal and rhythmic qualities of a song being segued into (and eventually out of) as their temporary improvisational “space.”

In a context like this, Lesh’s melodically-horizontal—yes contrapuntal—bass playing fits perfectly. Indeed it would be hard to imagine the Dead’s musical explorations developing as they did with a more conventional bassist. Though the bass in popular music lacks the inherent “star” quality of the lead instruments (usually vocals and lead guitar) it is arguably of more crucial importance in determining the overall “sound” of an ensemble due to its functionally structural role: helping to define both the rhythmic and harmonic basis (no pun intended) of a song . The harmonic instability due to Lesh’s more horizontal style is then precisely what gives the Dead’s music its sense of momentum, of directionality that is so integral to their extended playing approach. Paradoxically, the other interestingly unique aspect of his playing is his sometimes playing of chords—something most bassists avoid because of the bass’s low pitch and its difficulty when not using a plectrum. (For an excellent example, see the officially released Dick’s Picks 12, first disc, track 7, from approximately 1:06 to 2:23.)

Alright, you might be saying, but why is this important for other bass players with their own styles and methods? The answer is that the more conventional vertical style of bass playing, while highly effective in some contexts, presumes an end result—music with stable, “grounded” harmonies—that should by no means be accepted as necessary or even always desirable. In fact, I would argue, the emphasis on the importance of stable harmonies and the subsequent necessity of therefore playing “vertically” reveals a musical mindset that is characterized by its own kind of stability—utter predictability. For other than musical groups influenced by the Dead (the now defunct Phish, String Cheese Incident and Widespread Panic among others) and those now involving former members of the Dead (Ratdog with Bob Weir and the previously mentioned Phil & Friends), live popular music is for the most part now typified by a total avoidance of risk-taking.

That most performers want to do the best they can each and every performance is an obvious truism. Yet in the past unrepeatable human action, with its inevitable foibles and imperfections, guaranteed that not only would every performance not be perfect, but that indeed sometimes they might fail altogether. In the case of music, the “perfections” that are made possible with all-digital (therefore totally manipulable) recording software such as Pro Tools, and (for live performances) real-time pitch correction effects — the TC Electronics “Intonator” being one of the most popular— (among other things) as part of already completely choreographed shows, however, reveals a performance reality defined by its mechanization and necessary elimination of as much subjective initiative as possible.

The political or broader sociological significance of this should not be hard to see. Art is, I would argue, by definition an expression of human subjectivity; a placing of an order, or at least understanding, around an expression or physical state. For our civilization to have therefore realized an artistic (at least as defined functionally) performance reality that is so fundamentally at odds with this essence of art should be of at least some concern to intelligent people.

An instrumental performance practice that helps counteract this mind-numbing predictability should therefore not be taken lightly, or easily forgotten. And though I think it important to try to develop one’s own “voice” on an instrument, this should not be taken as an emphatic, self-justifying quest for originality. Though it does sometimes happen, the vast majority of legitimate musical (and more broadly artistic) performances have, in fact, nothing, original about them. If originality is supposed to be the criterion of art then few things would indeed so qualify. It is rather the exemplification of a certain skill that is generally sought in artistic performances. When true originality does occur, it is by incremental evolutions—syntheses of what has come before—rather than the supposed inspiration of a lone tormented genius—an overall nefarious idea, still sadly with us, due to the continuing influence of Romanticism, especially in the popular music world, and its veneration of Beethoven’s famous “Heiligenstadt Testament” that was written by him in 1802 at the outset of the hearing loss that would eventually render him completely deaf.

I am by no means here arguing that Lesh’s style should be slavishly imitated by other bassists. Whether anyone could ever, in fact, realize a convincing copy of his playing is itself perhaps doubtful. Yet, that should not discourage musicians, bass players in particular, from learning what they can from one who has made such an original, and so far more or less unique, contribution to the performance practice of an instrument less than sixty years old; as well as to seriously consider what kind of extra-musical political and social effects their performances might have on themselves and on those who listen and watch.

On Liberalism

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

"The Second Coming" by W.B. Yeats



Recently The New Republic published a response by Leon Wieseltier to an article by Stanley Fish that appeared in The New York Times Opinion pages concerning the global protests over the publication of the cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Both deserve to be read as exhibitits in the debate over liberalism vs fundamentalisms of all sorts. First the Fish article:

(Found in its entirety at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/opinion/12fish.html?ei=5090&en=8c94e41b68113a9a&ex=1297400400&partner=rss&pagewanted=all)

The first tenet of the liberal religion is that everything (at least in the realm of expression and ideas) is to be permitted, but nothing is to be taken seriously. This is managed by the familiar distinction — implied in the First Amendment's religion clause — between the public and private spheres. It is in the private sphere — the personal spaces of the heart, the home and the house of worship — that one's religious views are allowed full sway and dictate behavior...

Strongly held faiths are exhibits in liberalism's museum; we appreciate them, and we congratulate ourselves for affording them a space, but should one of them ask of us more than we are prepared to give — ask for deference rather than mere respect — it will be met with the barrage of platitudinous arguments that for the last week have filled the pages of every newspaper in the country.
One of those arguments goes this way: It is hypocritical for Muslims to protest cartoons caricaturing Muhammad when cartoons vilifying the symbols of Christianity and Judaism are found everywhere in the media of many Arab countries. After all, what's the difference? The difference is that those who draw and publish such cartoons in Arab countries believe in their content; they believe that Jews and Christians follow false religions and are proper objects of hatred and obloquy.
But I would bet that the editors who have run the cartoons do not believe that Muslims are evil infidels who must either be converted or vanquished. They do not publish the offending cartoons in an effort to further some religious or political vision; they do it gratuitously, almost accidentally. Concerned only to stand up for an abstract principle — free speech — they seize on whatever content happens to come their way and use it as an example of what the principle should be protecting. The fact that for others the content may be life itself is beside their point.
This is itself a morality — the morality of a withdrawal from morality in any strong, insistent form. It is certainly different from the morality of those for whom the Danish cartoons are blasphemy and monstrously evil. And the difference, I think, is to the credit of the Muslim protesters and to the discredit of the liberal editors.

Got that? The protesters--because of their deeply held beliefs that bring them to burn down embassies, Christian churches and offer money to those who would kill the cartoonists who drew the pictures as well as those who published them--should be respected more than those liberals who defend the right to free speech, because they, as opposed to the "wishy-washy liberals," really believe in their religion and prove it by their aggressive actions. Fish is, for those who don't know, what some might still call (though it's SOOO cliche...) a post-modernist for whom there is no truth, only "discourses" within "relations of power." Rejecting liberalism as but a bourgeois ideology, POMO has had a long love affair with violence as Michel Foucault, one of its founding fathers, revealed in his, at least initial, exuberantly positive reactions to the Iranian Revolution (discussed very well in an article in The Boston Globe found online at http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/06/12/the_philosopher_and_the_ayatollah/?page=1) even though as a homosexual it meant that his life would have been at risk had he been an Iranian citizen.

Though those of a POMO persuasion and those on the Left have some common ground in their critique of capitalism and of established positions of power, POMO's lack of belief in any truth often leaves it susceptible to a dangerous fascination with those who are full of a "passionate intensity" though of the most violent and reactionary kinds. So it was with Foucault and Khomeini, and so it is again with Fish and the anti-cartoon protesters. Wieseltier responds:


Forgive my tardiness, but last month The New York Times published an article that compared liberals unfavorably to fundamentalist mobs. The piece appeared on the paper's fun op-ed page, on the occasion of the "cartoon riots" that were provoked by the publication in a conservative Danish newspaper of scornful images of the Prophet--no, that's not accurate. The riots were provoked by Muslim politicians and diplomats for whom the Western blasphemy was an Allah-sent opportunity to divert the attention of various Muslim societies from what ails them. What would modern Arab satrapies do without medieval Muslim masses? A bloodletting, then, followed by brandy and cigars; and the robed zealots in the streets are glad to do the work of the suited cynics in the private planes. Scores of people died in the cartoon riots. It was not the cartoons that killed them; it was their conviction that violence is a variety of cultural criticism. The intensity of their feeling about their faith was all that they (and in their view, anybody else) needed to know in the world.

And there in the Times was Stanley Fish, extolling them precisely for this. How contrarian. Fish is the author of a book called The Trouble With Principle--now there's a danger!--and has made a handsome career as a cheap button-pusher; he is one of those intellectuals who prefers any kind of radicalism to any kind of liberalism. (The flourishing of such intellectuals is itself a great tribute to liberalism.) In this particular prank, the kind of radicalism that Fish preferred was the Islamist kind. He lauded the "strong, insistent form" in which the rioters maintained their convictions. They believed that there are ideas "worth fighting over to the death." This, he declared, "is to the credit of the Muslim protesters and to the discredit of the liberal editors." Liberals, by contrast, believe only in such "abstract" principles as free speech, which makes them contemptibly indifferent to "the content of what is expressed." He adduced as his example of this timidity the culture editor of the Danish newspaper, for whom what seemed to matter was not the substance of what his paper said but its right to say it. In the liberal "religion of letting it all hang out," Fish sneered, "everything (at least in the realm of expression and ideas)
is to be permitted, but nothing is to be taken seriously."

This is an ancient slander against liberalism. "I'm liberal," declares a character in one of Frost's poems, and explains: "I mean so altruistically moral / I never take my own side in a quarrel." That is a benign version of the complaint that liberalism is invertebrate, purely procedural, lacking in fervent beliefs about what is true and what is false, what is good and what is evil. There were malign versions as well. Fish's exhilaration at the vitality of the crowd, his contempt for the restraints of reason, his discovery of personal integrity in physical violence--in another time, these were the ejaculations of fascists. Fish's piece has that ni droite, ni gauche quality. It put me in mind of some rhapsodic pages in Among The Thugs, Bill Buford's report on his arousal by the violence of English soccer hooligans: "Violence is one of the most intensely lived experiences and, for those capable of giving themselves over to it, is one of the most intense pleasures.... What was it like for me? An experience of absolute completeness," and "being in a crowd in an act of violence ... [n]othingness is what you find there ... [n]othingness in its beauty, its simplicity, its nihilistic purity," and similar garbage. One is supposed to admire the honesty of such confessions, I suppose. But why should the drama of the confession matter more than the substance of the confession?

It is certainly true, as Fish worries, that a liberal order exasperates certain types of "strongly held faiths." The believers in an open society always have some adjusting to do. Yet not all strongly held faiths are alike. Often the aforesaid adjustments are made, for the sake of principle or social peace. And a faith held so strongly that it acknowledges no legitimacy to other strongly held faiths, so that it seeks to suppress or to destroy them--surely such faiths must not be allowed to hide their depredation behind our toleration. They deserve all the exasperation that we can visit upon them. Moreover, not all strongly held faiths are held for reasons worthy of respect. (I mean intellectual respect. About political respect, there must be no doubt; but political respect is not a promise of intellectual respect.) Usually they are just the unexamined promptings of tribe and tradition. But then Fish is not exercised by the intellectual quality of the bellicose dogmatisms that he wishes upon us. Quite the contrary. What excites Fish about fervent belief is the fervor, not the belief.

For this reason, it is Fish's geeky paean to people who are happy to hurt other people, his anti-liberal envy of muscles, that is perfectly contentless. He recommends the radicalism of the Islamist protesters, but he does not care whether there is no God but Allah or whether Mohammed is His Prophet. The philosophy means nothing to him. He wants only the action. He mocks liberals as editors, but he is himself just a spectator. And he is demanding his thrills. He is living vicariously through the absolutism of others. Those are not the jollies of a democrat.
Liberals are not editors, even if some editors are liberals. And fairness is not lifelessness. And free speech is the beginning of a liberal order, not the end. And rights are not the enemies of passions, and passions are not most stirringly represented by violations of rights. Where does Fish--not to put too fine a point on it, but in this respect he resembles some of our most virulent enemies--get the idea that liberals cannot fight? From the Democrats, perhaps; but that is liberalism's problem, not liberalism's fate. Anyway, Fish is not seeking political satisfaction, he is seeking emotional satisfaction in politics. And the history of emotionally satisfying politics is often a tale of crimes and abuses. The refusal to burn a book or a flag or a person, the renunciation of brutality in political expression, is not a sign of infirmity of purpose. Not at all. I wish to assure Fish, by example perhaps, that liberals can be--in the name of Kant, in the name of Jefferson, in the name of Mill--assholes. (Found at http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060320&s=diarist032006)

Winston on the Iron Curtain

(To the melody of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band")

Well it was sixty years ago today/That Winston Churchill he began to say/Joseph Stalin was going out of style/And he's never going to raise a smile/So may I introduce to you/The act you've known for all these years/The Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri!


Well it was actually sixty years ago yesterday that Churchill made his famous speech that gave a name to the Soviet Union's swallowing up of Eastern and Central Europe and that dominated global politics for the next four decades. On the BBC International News website, Willian Horsley has a great article discussing it in its original context of post-war 1946 and for today (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4776444.stm)

It was a heroic but troubled time. The world was in turmoil after the most terrible conflict in human history.
On 5 March 1946 Churchill was no longer the UK's prime minister but he still enjoyed a giant reputation around the world.
So US President Harry Truman himself travelled 1,000 miles to Fulton, Missouri, to hear Churchill give a speech after receiving an honorary degree at Westminster College there.
It would become one of the most famous speeches of the century.
Churchill had been mocked in Britain in the 1930s for warning of the menace of war from Nazi Germany, but had been proved right in the end. Now he was about to do it again.
After expressing his admiration for the valiant Russian people and "my wartime comrade, Marshall Stalin", he spoke the words which came to define the oppression, fear and confrontation of the Cold War era:
"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent.
"Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia - all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow."
It was vintage Churchill - grave, eloquent and ruthlessly honest.
It was a plea to America, already the world's greatest superpower, to acknowledge the harsh reality about Stalin - that on his orders the Russians were in the process of imposing totalitarian rule by communist governments in all the countries under their military control.
America had long been reluctant to accept this conclusion. But by the following year President Truman had decided on a policy of containment of Soviet power.
In 1948 any remaining doubts were removed by the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia and the Berlin Blockade, when the Russians tried but failed to starve West Berlin into submission.

Churchill was indeed prescient of the two great totalitarian dangers of the 20th century: Nazism in the lead-up to World War II from Hitler's accession to power in 1933 and Stalinist Communism's - and what survived of it even after Stalin's death in 1953 and Krushchev's 1956 famous "Cult of Personality" speech - engorgement of so many countries in Europe after the war. Though George W. Bush sometimes pretends to such insight, the paucity of his historical understanding, combined with rhetorical skills of the most insufferable kind and a now-proven fundamental lack of seriousness when dealing with issues of global importance make a politician - no statesmen - of Churchill's calibre that much more missed today. If only there was someone in the USA, still the world's superpower whether anyone likes it or not, who had even a glimmer of Churchill's character I would feel much more hopeful about the future of this world.

About those cartoons...

The insanity over the cartoon drawings of the prophet Muhammad, originally published in a Danish newspaper, show no sign of abating though god-only-knows how many words have been so far spent debating the issue. A few points to make my viewpoint clear:

To say, as has been repeated ad nauseum since this controversy began, that freedom of speech is not the freedom to offend or insult is completely, totally and maddeningly wrong. It gets things, in fact, completely backwards. Freedom of speech does not exist without the freedom to insult and offend. It seems almost too obvious to have to point out, but to tolerate only those opinions and expressions that you agree with is to make the right to freedom of speech completely meaningless. There is, and there should not be, any right to not be offended in a democratic country. Yes, there are restrictions on the right to free speech in many free countries (in my own, Canada, it is "subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society"), but hardly can this case be an example of a justifiable restriction. Holocaust denial and blatant anti-Semitism are the most common examples of limitations on free speech, but the difference between those cases and the publication of these cartoons should be obvious enough even though I am admitedly not even completely comfortable with those justifications. In the case of anti-Semitic (meaning, of course, anti-Jewish, though somewhat of a misnomer since Arabs are as semitic as Jews) or other rascist material, the offence is not directed at the beliefs of someone, but rather at their unchangeable identity.

It must be remembered that for Hitler and the Nazis (and those who continue to propagate views similar to theirs to this day), "Jewishness" had nothing to do with believing in Judaism, but was a racial signifier that could not be escaped by simply converting to Christianity. To even have a sole jewish grandparent meant one was "tainted" and was considered enough justification to end up in the gas chambers, though this managed to be avoided by many of those with mixed ancestry. To be a Muslim, however, is not an unchangeable identity (even though according to the Koran, and many Muslims today, the punishment for apostasy from Islam is death), but a religious set of beliefs that deserves no special respect as compared to any other set of beliefs. To back down in the face of the violent intimidation that has so far been propagated is to give up on this such important right.


Here is Charles Krauthammer's take with which I couldn't agree more:

As much of the Islamic world erupts in a studied frenzy over the Danish Muhammad cartoons, there are voices of reason being heard on both sides. Some Islamic leaders and organizations, while endorsing the demonstrators' sense of grievance and sharing their outrage, speak out against using violence as a vehicle of expression. Their Western counterparts -- intellectuals, including most of the major newspapers in the United States -- are similarly balanced: While, of course, endorsing the principle of free expression, they criticize the Danish newspaper for abusing that right by publishing offensive cartoons, and they declare themselves opposed, in the name of religious sensitivity, to doing the same.

God save us from the voices of reason.

What passes for moderation in the Islamic community -- "I share your rage but don't torch that embassy" -- is nothing of the sort. It is simply a cynical way to endorse the goals of the mob without endorsing its means. It is fraudulent because, while pretending to uphold the principle of religious sensitivity, it is interested only in this instance of religious insensitivity.
Have any of these "moderates" ever protested the grotesque caricatures of Christians and, most especially, Jews that are broadcast throughout the Middle East on a daily basis? The sermons on Palestinian TV that refer to Jews as the sons of pigs and monkeys? The Syrian prime-time TV series that shows rabbis slaughtering a gentile boy to ritually consume his blood? The 41-part (!) series on Egyptian TV based on that anti-Semitic czarist forgery (and inspiration of the Nazis), "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," showing the Jews to be engaged in a century-old conspiracy to control the world?

...

There is a "sensitivity" argument for not having published the cartoons in the first place, back in September when they first appeared in that Danish newspaper. But it is not September. It is February. The cartoons have been published, and the newspaper, the publishers and Denmark itself have come under savage attack. After multiple arsons, devastating boycotts, and threats to cut off hands and heads, the issue is no longer news value, i.e., whether a newspaper needs to publish them to inform the audience about what is going on. The issue now is solidarity.
The mob is trying to dictate to Western newspapers, indeed Western governments, what is a legitimate subject for discussion and caricature. The cartoons do not begin to approach the artistic level of Salman Rushdie's prose, but that's not the point. The point is who decides what can be said and what can be drawn within the precincts of what we quaintly think of as the free world.

The mob has turned this into a test case for freedom of speech in the West. The German, French and Italian newspapers that republished these cartoons did so not to inform but to defy -- to declare that they will not be intimidated by the mob.

Read the whole thing at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/09/AR2006020901434.html

And they expect us to believe them?

So what must surely be some of the dumbest words to ever come out of an Attorney General of the United-States were in fact uttered this last Monday. The present holder of that position, Alberto Gonzales, was testifying before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Commitee concerning the Bush Administration's use of the NSA (National Secutriy Agency) domestically to spy on Americans electronic communication without a warrant. This despite the explicit criminalizing of such activity by a 1978 law, entitled the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, that established a secret court to review, and give warrants for, any such activity. FISA, as it is commonly known, was enacted in response to revelations of judicially unchecked government wiretapping of citizens during the Nixon Administration. The rules by which authorities could get a warrant for a wiretap were made easier in the PATRIOT Act passed after 9/11, but any electronic surveillance still required approval by the court.

Though the Bush Administration has repeatedly endorsed the changes made to FISA since 2001 and never challenged the law's constitutionality till they were caught breaking it, it now claims that they are not legally required to even follow the law because of the "War on Terror" going on - Bush's inherent executive authority supposedly overriding Congressional statute. This is a completely specious argument as anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the philosophy behind the U.S. Constitution should know; this being, the division of powers between the three branches of government - Executive, Judicial and Legislative. For any of these branches to claim exclusive authority concerning the rights of American citizens is obviously unconstitutional.

Yet Gonzales was on Capitol Hill to defend what is completely undefensible and is undoubtedly, in my mind, and impeachable offence. The following remark was the stupidest thing he said, but the everything was said was shameful for someone who is supposed to be the USA's highest law enforcement official. His slavish obediance is in sharp contrast to the actions of Elliot Richardson who as Attorney General in 1973 was ordered by Nixon to fire Archibald Cox, the Special Prosecutor appointed by Richardson who was investigating the 1972 Watergate burglary. Richardson resigned rather than obey orders that went against his understanding of law and justice, and his promise to Congress to not interfere with Cox's investigation. This kind of courage is sadly in short supply in Washington D.C. today, but must be found if Bush's abuses of power are to be stopped and the USA's democracy to be preserved.

Key Gonzales quote (via Crooks and Liars): President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale.

The mind staggers at the stupidity...

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/02/06.html#a7043