Blogosaurus

Jimmy Campbell

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 17:46:00 -0400

Jimmy Campbell (1944-2007) was one of the best songwriters of the 1960s. He wrote baroque pop songs, subtle, nuanced, ambitious and with timeless, plangent melodies - nowadays and for several decades, a completely lost art. He was from Liverpool. This artist's work cries out to be compiled on a double-CD. Perfect songs! Check out this link:http://www.myspace.com/jimmycampbell1

Karadzic - miraculous chameleon

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:24:00 -0400

So, we have the contemporary miracle of no-one in the whole of Serbia/ Serbain Bosnia knowing where Radovan Karadzic was, all this time? D'you buy it? Just as no-one in South Africa now admits to having supported apartheid. And no-one in WWII France was ever a Nazi. Yes, of course. Perhaps Bush and Blair could get jobs as a belly-dancers in downtown Tel Aviv and no-one will be able to tell the difference. Now there's a thought.

House of Saddam

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:33:00 -0400

Tonight, I watched the first, hour-long, episode of the four-part BBC dramatisation of the rule of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In terms of dramatic tension and characterisation, I found it a lacklustre production, filled with the usual nonsensical superficialities - rather like an American TV movie from the late 1970s about Arabs. It smacked of design by a committee of script editors. There was far too much 'telling' and a sure sign of narrative bankruptcy, cheap name recognition - and here I paraphrase this dialogue only very slightly: "Oh look, there goes Tariq Aziz, and he's a Christian". Or Saddam H's mother: "My son, you must make the family strong". And much more in that vein. At which point, as a writer I was on the point of screaming. For a viewer, this incessantly puerile dialogue and narrative becomes almost the metaphysical corollary of a session of 'enhanced interrogation technique'. It was deeply patronising of its audience on almost every level. It worked neither as a portrayal of the psyche of the dictator nor as a straight political drama. It was just poor quality, low-brow docu-drama.

In particular, there was absolutely no depiction of the instrumentality of the West in the Iraq-Iran War (which no-one now seems to remember - another act of historical amnesia - at the time was actually known as 'The Gulf War'), in the supply of chemical and conventional weapons to the Hussein regime and the support rendered to this CIA asset-aka-butcher in every other conceivable manner - why wasn't Donald Rumsfeld dramatised visiting Iraq and shaking blood-soaked hands with 'The Great Leader'?

The BBC has made a propaganda piece aimed primarily at retrospective justification of the destruction of a nation, the deaths of two million people. History has been airbrushed out - in the same way in which the feature film, 'The Kite Runner' censored by omission the absolutely central roles played by the USA and UK in the destruction of Afghanistan. The film-makers should be ashamed of themselves, but because they are imperialists, they will never harbour such sentiments. The irony is that there is a scene in the movie in which the making of a war propaganda film in Iraq is depicted, while this production itself is little more than only slightly more sophisticated - and therefore much more dangerous - state propaganda.

Pentangle

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:55:00 -0400

Went to the Pentangle concert last week, part of their national tour celebrating the 40th anniversary of their formation. Pentangle was a superlative British folk-jazz-blues-raag group of 1967-73. The concert was superb, every one of these five musicians is transcendent and together... John Renbourn played guitar with geometric precision and a passion so contained it was as though his body had become a part of the instrument. He played sitar, too, while Bert Jansch handled banjo and several guitars and made it all look so easy - of course, it is incredibly complex. Danny Thompson and Terry Cox were on top groovy form as the prime jazzmen they are and Jacqui McShea's thousand year-old voice soared towards an invisible, yet tangible, emptiness.

Same Difference

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:34:00 -0400

Letter to the New Statesman, 20/4/08

Dear Editor,

I read Rachel Aspden's excellent article ('Written
in the Sand', NS, 17/4/08), on the deformations, vicissitudes and
inequalities of the Arab literary world and its glitzy, elitist
accolades, with great interest. As the proverbial, 'acclaimed,
award-winning, ground-breaking' novelist whose work has appeared in
national newspapers, been taught at universities and been translated
into foreign tongues, l feel it incumbent upon me to disabuse readers
of the cosy notion that the English book world likewise is not in bed
with - and indeed, a product of - class, corporate, metropolitan and
ethnic power. I'm surprised actually that I am even capable of writing
these lines, since I am Muslim, male, middle-aged, of Pakistani origin,
live 400 miles from London and didn't go to private school or Oxbridge
- and as I've just come off a 17-hour shift at my "second job". Why
shouldn't the Gulf emulate England and revel in the grandiosity of its
very own incestuous complacencies? At least in the Arab world, there are no illusions.

Bigotry as lever of war

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:18:00 -0400

Letter to The Independent, 3/6/08

Sir,

Reading Bruce Anderson's regular Monday column can sometimes be refreshing because of his relatively independent conservative viewpoint. However, he ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself for writing what was an unreasoned and bigoted diatribe ('We are destroying the very values which could save us in our battle against Islam', Independent, Monday 2/6/08). From his use of phrases like, "the average Muslim", his generic conflation of 'Islam' with extremism and his references to Mark Steyn's irrational and propagandistic work on the subject, it seems that like Martin Amis (whose book, 'The Second Plane', I reviewed for this newspaper on 1/2/08), Anderson has become infatuated with an ahistorical blood-and-soil philosophy. References to barbarians and the Roman Empire, the Frankish leader, Charles Martel and the Ottoman sieges of Vienna represent an attempt to generate fear and peddle the myths of perpetual war, absolute evil and fifth columnists, all of which have been resilient and violent millenial obessions of ruling structures in especially Western Europe, which have contributed towards a definition of Europe and which resulted ultimately in the Holocaust. The pre-eminent target has shifted for now, from Jews to Muslims, but really, one could be forgiven for mistaking Anderson's vicious fire and brimstone for the strident work of that obscure, failed novelist, Dr Paul Joseph Goebbels. It is, perhaps, no coincidence that the piece was penned following a visit to what seems to have been a rather intense and paranoid conference in Vienna. Really, much of the current geopolitical woe - including the rise of Islamism - is a direct or indirect result of the greed, fanatacism and machinations of hegemonic political and corporate elites in the West over the past couple of centuries and specifically during the post-War decades. Given the precarious economic, military and political situation, rather than yet more rabid polemic aimed at feeding an already overheated war machine, we urgently require lucid thinking. What Bruce Anderson and those of his ilk need is a well-polished, Viennese looking-glass.

Disinformation in the Press

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:13:00 -0400

Letter to The Herald 14/6/08

Sir,

I was disappointed, though hardly surprised, to read Struan Stevenson's article ('The West Stands in the Way of a Democratic Iran', The Herald, Friday 13th June), which consisted of ninety-nine-per-cent disinfomation and one per cent ink and is clearly part of the information war in the ongoing attempt in our wonderful polyarchy to manufacture consent for UK participation in a US attack on the sovereign state of Iran.

Truth is, the biggest terrorists - bringers of mass violent death in pursuance of ideology - in the world today are the corporate-military regimes in power in the USA and UK. Stevenson's 'evidence' demonstrates double standards on multiple fronts and flies in the face of that repeatedly presented by official bodies such as the IAEA and even the combined intelligence services of the USA (our knowledge of this latter is partly a consequence of the internal power struggle taking place between different factions of the ruling elite in the US with regards to optimum strategies for the ongoing colonial conquest and 'Balkanisation' of the Middle East and it appears that there may be a similar dynamic currently occuring in parts of the UK establishment). His piece suggests that like all the other eager puppets in history, Stevenson is following the well-used black ops maxim of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels (and incidentally, also of the SIS, of which the
brand new Chairman of Stevenson's Conservative Party in Scotland was until recently allegedly a Station Chief), namely, that the bigger the lie, the more likely people are to believe it. The 'democracy' which Stevenson and his ilk would bring to Iran would be the glorious edifice we see today in Iraq - an ocean of blood, a mountain of skulls and a disaster for everyone except Big God, Big Guns and Big Money.

David Davis

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:18:00 -0400

Methinks there is something rather odd about Shadow Home Secretary David Davis's reaction to the 42-day detention-without-charge result in the House of Commons. Did he have some inkling that he was about to be reshuffled? Is this some attempt to wrong-foot Cameron's circle? I suspect this has more to do with internal Conservative Party pre-election power-shuffling than anything related to the issue itself. Yet, still, it is odd. Why would someone in such a senior position, who could have expected to be in government senior cabinet in around 2-3 years' time, scupper his career in such a bizarre manner? After all, the best position to have fought the Bill surely would have been as Shadow Home Secretary, no? If it were an imminent skeletons-in-the-closet thing, one would have thought he would simply have resigned 'to spend more time with his family'. So what on earth is going on? Meanwhile, this stupid and dangerous bill will be passed into law, with a few amendments after having been tossed back a couple of times by the Lords. Does the Security State have something on all senior Labour politicians, that when they get into government, they behave in this manner, as propagandists for La Strategia della Tensione? Or were they all, always sleepers for the corporate War machine?

War on Iran

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:39:00 -0400

I have a terrible sense of inevitability about a US attack on Iran. It's clearly what the Bush administration (not to mention Israel) has wanted for ages and I think they'll go for it - they will try to create a precedent, as the UK tried to do with the gunboat episode, before the end of their term in office - this will also ensure victory for John McCain in the forthcoming presidential elections. What they've done to Iraq is unforgiveable and we must never forget that fact or let it slip away.

Check out this article by Paul Craig Roberts, a one-time member of the Reagan administration:http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03312008.html

I do not agree with theocracy of any kind. However, if a single grain of Iranian soil or a single hair on the head of one Iranian child is so much as ruffled by an F-16 craft, an Abrams tank or the boot of a "bullet-headed, Saxon mother's son", I and a billion others will declare that:
"Ich bin ein Tehrani!"

You heard it here first.

Mighty Baby/ The Action

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:35:00 -0400

Ever heard of Mighty Baby, or The Action? Check out these two websites:

http://www.renderingislam.com/alwhiteman.htm

http://www.actionmightybaby.co.uk/