News of Bhutto's assassination reached us today in cold and rainy Providence, Rhode Island. Along with any number of analysts, we can't say we were surprised, yet shock and dismay still register highly. For now, we turn to the quick-moving Tariq Ali, who brings us this report in the Guardian.
As Tariq remarks, Bhutto's behavior both in and out of power are cause for sustained criticism, but this remains a deeply troublesome turn of events.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Holiday Round-up
Above: one of Beatty's finest moments.
Isn't this part of year just the fucking worst?
Perry Anderson has contributed to the November/December issue of New Left Review, offering "jottings" on the myriad "deep structural changes in the world economy and in international affairs" that we've seen and lived through since September, 2001. Anderson, with a scope that is all-encompassing, humbly offers his article as mere conjecture, unsystematic analysis that begs further investigation; yet, this is as good a place as any to start poring over our recent and collective nightmares.
Finally, after Ismail Haniya's comments last week in which he expressed willingness to negotiate a temporary cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the NYT reports that Ehud Olmert has refused to enter into any such negotiations. Taking center-stage in the article, however, is the recent Israeli move to submit a budget approval for almost 750 apartments in the illegal settlements of Har Homa and Maale Adumin. Even darling Condi, it seems, isn't so into this recent development, coming as it does just days before the second meeting between Israeli and Palestinian officials since the Annapolis conference...
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Holiday Post from No Empires
After a week of domestic and transatlantic travel, birthdays, library visits, and illness, No Ehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifmpires is back with an interview with Terry Eagleton (thanks to our good friend John), right in time for the holiday season. Here, Eagleton discusses the role of religion, his feud with his ever-repugnant colleague Martin Amis, and "leftist arrogance."
Monday, December 10, 2007
No Empires and New York Magazine
Fitting for the soft-liberal and thoroughly contradictory, uncritical politics of New York's youngish chattering inhabitants (who, tellingly, only seem to read the magazine's restaurant section, anyway), New York Magazine has printed a one-page hatchet job concerning NE hero Norman Finkelstein, who is currently trying to rebuild his career following a recent character assassination campaign (led, of course, by Alan Fucking Dershowitz), which cost him his job at Chicago's DePaul University. Ben Harris's 'article' about Finkelstein (which artfully manages to evade ANY FUCKING ENGAGEMENT WHATSOEVER with Finkelstein's work), is entitled 'Beached' (referring to Finkelstein's recent move to his deceased father's apartment in Coney Island), and sub-titled 'The Coney Island exile of a scholar who would be Noam Chomsky, but isn't.' Your guess is as good as ours as to what the fuck this phrase means. But let's move beyond pithy linguistic arguments; there's (barely) enough here that warrants a more polemic response.
Harris, at best a thoroughly shitty writer, does nothing to mask his contempt of what he blatantly considers to be the pathetic nature of Finkelstein's (personal, political, academic) life at present:
His days are now spent in solitary scholarly pursuits; his bookshelves buckle under the weight of tomes by Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky. Notes of support from his students sit on a piano; there’s a photo of him and Noam Chomsky (“my closest friend”) bare-chested on the beach at Cape Cod.
Apparently, for Harris, Finkelstein's students are woefully misguided, yet serve the purpose of consoling Finkelstein following the Dershowitz-orchestrated come-uppance he so obviously deserved. And Noam Chomsky? Harris takes Finkelstein for a deluded fool--if you two are so close, where's your buddy Noam now?
We're surprised we've taken up this much space dealing with Harris's diarrheal diatribe. Read it, or don't. Judging by his own journalistic standards, dealing with primary sources is probably not too high on Harris's to-do list.
Ben Harris: fuck you.
Harris, at best a thoroughly shitty writer, does nothing to mask his contempt of what he blatantly considers to be the pathetic nature of Finkelstein's (personal, political, academic) life at present:
His days are now spent in solitary scholarly pursuits; his bookshelves buckle under the weight of tomes by Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky. Notes of support from his students sit on a piano; there’s a photo of him and Noam Chomsky (“my closest friend”) bare-chested on the beach at Cape Cod.
Apparently, for Harris, Finkelstein's students are woefully misguided, yet serve the purpose of consoling Finkelstein following the Dershowitz-orchestrated come-uppance he so obviously deserved. And Noam Chomsky? Harris takes Finkelstein for a deluded fool--if you two are so close, where's your buddy Noam now?
We're surprised we've taken up this much space dealing with Harris's diarrheal diatribe. Read it, or don't. Judging by his own journalistic standards, dealing with primary sources is probably not too high on Harris's to-do list.
Ben Harris: fuck you.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Well-Made World 28
A mishmash for today's update.
First, we turn to yesterday's referendum in Venezuela, which ended in defeat for Hugo Chavez and his plan for advancing Venezuela along the path to a 'socialist' state. Tariq Ali, calling attention to the unprecedentedly low turnout among voters, proposes--while citing analysts of Venezuelan politics--that Chavez's main mistake was to rush the referendum process, which gave the Venezuelan populace little time to take in its implications, while also giving his critics, both in Latin America and Washington, that his rule is an authoritarian one. Ali, ever hopeful, says that this is not, by any stretch, Chavez's downfall.
We turn now to the recent "peace conference" in Annapolis, which Azmi Bishara has termed "Madrid redux"--an analogy all too depressing in its accuracy. Bishara is far too coherent and attentive to detail for us to venture any quick summation of his article, so we must turn you, with no undue urgency, over to him.
And, finally, it is being reported that, in fact, Iran began bowing to international pressure as early as 2003 by ending its project to develop a nuclear arsenal. That, though, is not stopping French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner from sticking to the militaristic line vis-a-vis Iran that he's encouraged since being brought into the fold of Nicolas Sarkozy's government, or from Stephen Hadley saying that pressure must still be kept on Iran to not, er, misbehave. Hypocrisy, while suffering a slight setback, still rules the day!
First, we turn to yesterday's referendum in Venezuela, which ended in defeat for Hugo Chavez and his plan for advancing Venezuela along the path to a 'socialist' state. Tariq Ali, calling attention to the unprecedentedly low turnout among voters, proposes--while citing analysts of Venezuelan politics--that Chavez's main mistake was to rush the referendum process, which gave the Venezuelan populace little time to take in its implications, while also giving his critics, both in Latin America and Washington, that his rule is an authoritarian one. Ali, ever hopeful, says that this is not, by any stretch, Chavez's downfall.
We turn now to the recent "peace conference" in Annapolis, which Azmi Bishara has termed "Madrid redux"--an analogy all too depressing in its accuracy. Bishara is far too coherent and attentive to detail for us to venture any quick summation of his article, so we must turn you, with no undue urgency, over to him.
And, finally, it is being reported that, in fact, Iran began bowing to international pressure as early as 2003 by ending its project to develop a nuclear arsenal. That, though, is not stopping French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner from sticking to the militaristic line vis-a-vis Iran that he's encouraged since being brought into the fold of Nicolas Sarkozy's government, or from Stephen Hadley saying that pressure must still be kept on Iran to not, er, misbehave. Hypocrisy, while suffering a slight setback, still rules the day!
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Has Moz gone the way of Martin Amis?
Stephen Patrick Morrissey--of late, an exile to Rome--has sparked no small furor in the English music press with a recent interview given to the New Musical Express. In the interview, predictably titled 'Bigmouth Strikes Again', Morrissey (who has recently decided to sue the NME) makes some, um, racially insensitive (to put it lightly)comments about immigration policy in the UK. Here is his interviewer, Tim Jonze, weighs in on the fiasco.
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