Return of the Rat

The weather's getting warmer and it's made us inattentive! At least that's the official excuse we'll give.

Gilbert Achcar has voiced his recent thoughts on the longer history/effectiveness of the 'surge' in US troops in Iraq over the last eighteen months. Achcar not only locates a great deal of support for the surge in the Baker-Hamilton report, but finds that the US's greatest success has not been a reduction in violence, but a classic colonial power play that has torn the fabric of Iraqi Sunni society.

Franklin Lamb offers a street-level report from West Beirut, currently under Hezbollah and Amal control. What the next move might be for Lebanon's deeply besieged government is unclear; what is clear is the necessity of Hezbollah's involvement in any dialogue meant to bring an end to the crisis of leadership in Lebanon.

Over at Supervalent Thought, her very own 'research blog,' the University of Chicago's Lauren Berlant is putting up some really interesting short pieces on love, queerness, detachment, and (in)fidelity to the political in America. A recent two-parter--"Other People's Optimism" and "Looking For Mr. (W)Right)--laments the unbridled cynicism and fear of the political as evidenced by the 'noise' surrounding the 2008 Elections.

Bill Keller and Co. continue to sell an unpopular war, but with some heart; plus Eagleton and Amis Revisited

Today's lead article in the New York Times is not, we must stress, a whitewash. It does, of course, give Iraq War apologists something to point to and say: "See, we told you it would take time, but we've really been doing the right thing all along." But as Voices in the Wilderness's Jeff Guntzel points out in two different places, such stories, while desperately important, usually end up telling only half of the story.

In a crucial piece for the Guardian, Ronan Bennett has added to the scarce debate surrounding the row between University of Manchester's own Terry Eagleton and its recent appointment, Martin Amis. In it, he takes to task those in the British media who have trivialized the indirect exchange between Eagleton and Amis, presenting it as merely a "spat" between two well-known figures with incommensurable politics, rather than as a troublesome reflection of issues surrounding race, immigration, religion, and terrorism in the UK. Bennett laments the fact that Amis seems to have gotten off the hook regarding his thoroughly racist remarks and subsequently inadequate and deeply suspect attempts at explaining himself. We're still with Terry on this one, and Bennett does us the service of explaining exactly why we ought to be.

Well-Made World 13

EUROPE

• No Empires to Albania: Uh, what the fuck?
• Tony Blair, apparently thirsting for (positive) relevance, has lashed out against political reporting in the British media--and by the Independent in particular--for undermining Britons' confidence in their country and their government. Simon Kelner, editor of the Independent, responds, feeling honored at his paper's having been singled out, and even sees Blair's attack as confirming the veracity of the Independent's anti-Iraq war stance.

NEAR EAST

• Flailing around for bedfellows among an Iraqi population it has done everything under the sun to fragment and destroy, the US is giving arms support to Sunni groups for the purpose of fighting their former Shiite allies, who are now accused of representing Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
• Kevin Zeese picks up where Dennis Kucinich left off on the floor of Congress a week or so back, and updates us on the state of the Iraqi "hydrocarbon law," a privitization law that the United States is desperately clinging to as the "benchmark" by which the puppet government must prove itself. Iraqi oil laborers are on strike and are under constant threat from the Iraqi Army and the Maliki government for "sabotaging the [Iraqi] economy."
• Meanwhile, the Iraqi Parliament has recently passed a resolution calling for an end to the American occupation. Today's New York Times, furthermore reports a closed-door meeting between William Fallon, head of CENTCOM, and Nuri al-Maliki, during which Fallon stresses the need for "public progress" on security in Iraq, and where does the pressure start? With the oil distribution law.
• Loose sends us this piece by Patrick Seale, which reminds us that, in recent weeks, George Bush and Robert Gates have stated that the US aim is an "enduring presence" in Iraq--they cite the post-WWII South Korean and Japanese models, though we all know Bush has never read anything resembling a history book in his life--and also that, of the 110 bases built by the US following the invasion, 14 of these are slated to become permanent bases (including the 100-acre compound on the banks of the Tigris--see Well-Made World 6).
  
  LATIN AMERICA

• Richard Gott, the preeminent journalist of Latin America, writes on Hugo Chavez's recent refusal to renew the charter of RCTV, producers of "colonial" television and proponents of the short-lived, CIA-backed coup against Chavez in 2002. See The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, dir. Kim Bartley & Donnacha O'Briain.

U.S.

• In yet more distressing news for academic freedom in America, Norman Finkelstein has been denied tenure in the political science department at DePaul university in Chicago, even after his departmental colleagues voted 9-3 in favor of tenure. This would usually be the place for some No Empires-style vitriol directed against Alan Fucking Dershowitz, who wielded massive outside pressure against Finkelstein, but we're too disgusted to continue.

well-made world #2

• "Blair makes his unwilling exit against a backdrop of car-bombs and mass carnage in Iraq, with hundreds of thousands left dead or maimed from his policies, and London a prime target for terrorist attack." tariq ali on "bush's zombie," tony blair.
• haaretz's indomitable amira hass on biometric "smart cards" for palestinians.
• the latest on the abduction of bbc reporter alan johnston, who no empires respects as the pre-eminent western journalist working in gaza at the time of his kidnapping.
• electronic iraq on the destruction of the tigris, now a "graveyard of bodies"
• today in the bronx at about 2:30pm, no empires noticed road blockages--duly enforced by NYPD trucks and vans--between 161 st and 158 st on river avenue, directly under the 4 train, outside of yankee stadium. see this article about the singing of "god bless america" at the stadium during the seventh inning. no empires does not approve.
• no empires loves bernie williams.

LATE EDIT(S):
Taking its place alongside Dreams of a Nation, curated by Columbia's Hamid Dabashi--and developed concurrently with a volume of the same name printed by Verso and featuring essays by Michel Khleifi, Bashir Abu-Manneh, Ella Shohat, Joseph Massad, and Dabashi--is the Emily Jacir-curated Palestinian Revolution Cinema. Review at the Electronic Intifada.

and thanks to john loose once again,
more on blair by tariq ali.