Ciao. Ci vediamo a presto.
Tuesday, 24 July 2007
No more blogging for a week or two...
There won't be much happening on this blog for a couple of weeks, starting tomorrow. We'll be quite near here:
Monday, 23 July 2007
Music, class and authenticity
I've just discovered the music of Pink Martini, via their latest album Hey Eugene! It's an engaging and eclectic mix of Latin, European, Middle Eastern and jazz styles, with lyrics in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Arabic and Japanese, and the tone veering from the poignantly beautiful to the knowingly kitsch.
Given this degree of musical and lyrical sophistication, it should come as no surprise that the band members are variously Harvard graduates and classically-trained musicians. But it's hard (especially for those of us of a certain age) to let go of the notion that good popular music can only be produced by socially-marginalised and self-taught amateurs. Last weekend I saw a performance by the London Breakbeat Orchestra who play thrillingly edgy electro-acoustic dance music - but turn out to be a bunch of music students. Current top band Arcade Fire include a number of 'proper' musicians in their ranks - and founder members Win Butler and Regine Chassage even met at an elite boarding school.
Perhaps the image of pop, rock and jazz as only emerging from 'the streets' has always been something of a myth. Back in the Seventies I remember someone writing in the New Musical Express to the effect that punk was ruined 'now that the grammar school boys have got hold of it.' This shocked me, as I was an ex-grammar school boy, as were most of the people I knew who were into punk, as well as a fair number of those who were actually in punk bands. Punk was always a grammar-school - and middle-class - phenomenon. As Julien Temple's recent film about Joe Strummer confirms, even some of punk's big names came from rather comfortable bourgeois backgrounds.
Of course, if you're a pop star, it's OK to admit to being middle-class, as long as you can concoct a story about rebelling against your background. Getting yourself expelled from school usually does the trick. Strummer's god-daughter and current diva Lily Allen attended a number of private schools, including Hill House in Knightsbridge and the progressive public school Bedales (at the same time as Kooks frontman Luke Pritchard) but (according to Wikipedia, anyway) 'was expelled from several of them for drinking, smoking and performing fellatio'. Thus is pop's myth of romantic authenticity preserved.
Given this degree of musical and lyrical sophistication, it should come as no surprise that the band members are variously Harvard graduates and classically-trained musicians. But it's hard (especially for those of us of a certain age) to let go of the notion that good popular music can only be produced by socially-marginalised and self-taught amateurs. Last weekend I saw a performance by the London Breakbeat Orchestra who play thrillingly edgy electro-acoustic dance music - but turn out to be a bunch of music students. Current top band Arcade Fire include a number of 'proper' musicians in their ranks - and founder members Win Butler and Regine Chassage even met at an elite boarding school.
Perhaps the image of pop, rock and jazz as only emerging from 'the streets' has always been something of a myth. Back in the Seventies I remember someone writing in the New Musical Express to the effect that punk was ruined 'now that the grammar school boys have got hold of it.' This shocked me, as I was an ex-grammar school boy, as were most of the people I knew who were into punk, as well as a fair number of those who were actually in punk bands. Punk was always a grammar-school - and middle-class - phenomenon. As Julien Temple's recent film about Joe Strummer confirms, even some of punk's big names came from rather comfortable bourgeois backgrounds.
Of course, if you're a pop star, it's OK to admit to being middle-class, as long as you can concoct a story about rebelling against your background. Getting yourself expelled from school usually does the trick. Strummer's god-daughter and current diva Lily Allen attended a number of private schools, including Hill House in Knightsbridge and the progressive public school Bedales (at the same time as Kooks frontman Luke Pritchard) but (according to Wikipedia, anyway) 'was expelled from several of them for drinking, smoking and performing fellatio'. Thus is pop's myth of romantic authenticity preserved.
Don't call me a dictator - or else!
How long are we going to allow a person - from any country in the world - to come to our own house to say there's a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?...It cannot be allowed - it is a question of national dignity.
That's Hugo Chavez, threatening to expel international officials who publicly criticise him. And just to make it clear he added: 'No foreigner can come here to attack us. Anyone who does must be removed from this country.'
How stupid, or deluded, does a politician have to be not to notice the inbuilt contradiction here? I wonder how apologists for the Venezuelan leader, such as Richard Gott and Tariq Ali, will explain this latest authoritarian outburst?
Update
There's more on this from Gene over at Harry's Place and from Daniel Duquenal here. And I see Jura Watchmaker at Drink Soaked Trots has borrowed my rather neat post title (I posted at 07.51, s/he at 13.21).
That's Hugo Chavez, threatening to expel international officials who publicly criticise him. And just to make it clear he added: 'No foreigner can come here to attack us. Anyone who does must be removed from this country.'
How stupid, or deluded, does a politician have to be not to notice the inbuilt contradiction here? I wonder how apologists for the Venezuelan leader, such as Richard Gott and Tariq Ali, will explain this latest authoritarian outburst?
Update
There's more on this from Gene over at Harry's Place and from Daniel Duquenal here. And I see Jura Watchmaker at Drink Soaked Trots has borrowed my rather neat post title (I posted at 07.51, s/he at 13.21).
Sunday, 22 July 2007
Religion cannot demand 'respect'
Karen Armstrong is concerned about the west's apparent inability to 'tolerate Islam'. Although she begins her article in yesterday's Guardian with some light criticism of Muslims who fail to support freedom of expression, she only gets into her stride when she turns to the 'double standards' of western liberals, starting with those responsible for the Danish cartoons:
But equally the cartoonists and their publishers, who seemed impervious to Muslim sensibilities, failed to live up to their own liberal values, since the principle of free speech implies respect for the opinions of others. Islamophobia should be as unacceptable as any other form of prejudice.
One wonders in what sense the cartoonists failed to live up to 'liberal values', of which free speech is surely the most important. (On the other hand those who opposed, often violently, the publication of the cartoons were certainly deficient in their understanding of those values.) The second half of Armstrong's sentence enlightens us, since she appears to understand free speech as implying 'respect' for other people's opinions. As Norm says:
No, it doesn't. Otherwise I should have to respect the opinion that suicide bombing directed against civilian bus and train passengers is sometimes justified, and the opinion that torture is an acceptable practice in a civilized country. I don't.
Armstrong is perhaps referring to the way in which free speech laws are often hedged around with prohibitions on speech that encourages hatred or violence: in which case, once again, it was the protestors against the cartoons who were guilty of this infringement. Notice too, how in Armstrong's formulation 'respect' is by implication a one-way street: society has to respect the opinions of religious groups, however outlandish, but there is no mention of a reciprocal duty on the part of religious groups to respect liberal values, such as freedom of expression.
Armstrong's next move is to declare those responsible for the cartoons guilty of 'Islamophobia', without any supporting evidence. Assuming for the moment that the term has some intellectual coherence, and can be taken to mean a general hostility to a particular religion: does a humorous portrayal of Mohammed justify this drastic labelling? Only if Ray Allen, the makers of Father Ted, and the team behind The Life of Brian are to be accused of 'Christianophobia' - rather than the satire that is part-and-parcel of an open, liberal culture.
But is hostility to a set of ideas really on a par with 'any other form of prejudice', such as racism or sexism? Of course not. Otherwise we could label Armstrong, along with Madeleine Bunting and others of their ilk, 'secularophobes', and call for their regular Guardian columns, with their talk of 'Enlightenment fundamentalists' and 'aggressive secularists', to be banned so as not to offend (say) members of the National Secular Society.
Armstrong's next step is to create the impression that 'Islamophobia' is widespread and increasing, by generalising from a single recent incident:
When 255,000 members of the so-called "Christian community" signed a petition to prevent the building of a large mosque in Abbey Mills, east London, they sent a grim message to the Muslim world: western freedom of worship did not, apparently, apply to Islam.
Despite their apparent numbers, a petition by a bunch of bigoted Christians doesn't equate to a national climate of intolerance. I certainly have no time for this campaign, but isn't there at least a possibility that it wasn't hostile to Islam as such, but perhaps to the size of this particular mosque, or its proposed location, or even the sect behind the proposal (see my last post for more on this)? Does this single, local protest really send such a 'grim message', cancelling out the unrivalled freedom of belief and worship that Muslims and other religious groups enjoy in Britain (compared with, say, the daily threats to Christians in majority-Muslim countries such as Iraq, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia)?
Thus Armstrong creates a straw man of pervasive intolerance towards Islam out of a few cartoons and localised inter-religious tensions, and in so doing attempts to fuel a spurious sense of victimhood. In her final paragraph, she couples this with an implied threat:
Gallup found there was as yet no blind hatred of the west in Muslim countries; only 8% of respondents condoned the 9/11 atrocities. But this could change if the extremists persuade the young that the west is bent on the destruction of their religion. When Gallup asked what the west could do to improve relations, most Muslims replied unhesitatingly that western countries must show greater respect for Islam, placing this ahead of economic aid and non-interference in their domestic affairs. Our inability to tolerate Islam not only contradicts our western values; it could also become a major security risk.
Even Armstrong has to concede that the opinion polls undermine her argument, but it doesn't prevent her from doing her bit to fan the flames of fundamentalist rage against the west. Notice the menace in the demand that 'western countries must show greater respect for Islam'. The mention of a 'major security risk' in the last sentence makes it clear what she's talking about here.
As others have pointed out, the problem with trying to appease outraged fundamentalists is that they never run out of things to be angry about. Withdraw from Iraq, create a Palestinian homeland, introduce laws that give believers the right not to be 'offended', and they will find something else about which to feel aggrieved - our gay rights legislation, perhaps, or women's equality, or (as the recent failed bombings in London demonstrated) the way we allow people to enjoy themselves on a Friday night.
Of course religious beliefs should be tolerated (and the best guarantor of that tolerance is the secular constitutions of western liberal democracies), but demands for 'respect' from those who themselves show little tolerance for liberal values should be met not with submission but with vigorous argument.
But equally the cartoonists and their publishers, who seemed impervious to Muslim sensibilities, failed to live up to their own liberal values, since the principle of free speech implies respect for the opinions of others. Islamophobia should be as unacceptable as any other form of prejudice.
One wonders in what sense the cartoonists failed to live up to 'liberal values', of which free speech is surely the most important. (On the other hand those who opposed, often violently, the publication of the cartoons were certainly deficient in their understanding of those values.) The second half of Armstrong's sentence enlightens us, since she appears to understand free speech as implying 'respect' for other people's opinions. As Norm says:
No, it doesn't. Otherwise I should have to respect the opinion that suicide bombing directed against civilian bus and train passengers is sometimes justified, and the opinion that torture is an acceptable practice in a civilized country. I don't.
Armstrong is perhaps referring to the way in which free speech laws are often hedged around with prohibitions on speech that encourages hatred or violence: in which case, once again, it was the protestors against the cartoons who were guilty of this infringement. Notice too, how in Armstrong's formulation 'respect' is by implication a one-way street: society has to respect the opinions of religious groups, however outlandish, but there is no mention of a reciprocal duty on the part of religious groups to respect liberal values, such as freedom of expression.
Armstrong's next move is to declare those responsible for the cartoons guilty of 'Islamophobia', without any supporting evidence. Assuming for the moment that the term has some intellectual coherence, and can be taken to mean a general hostility to a particular religion: does a humorous portrayal of Mohammed justify this drastic labelling? Only if Ray Allen, the makers of Father Ted, and the team behind The Life of Brian are to be accused of 'Christianophobia' - rather than the satire that is part-and-parcel of an open, liberal culture.
But is hostility to a set of ideas really on a par with 'any other form of prejudice', such as racism or sexism? Of course not. Otherwise we could label Armstrong, along with Madeleine Bunting and others of their ilk, 'secularophobes', and call for their regular Guardian columns, with their talk of 'Enlightenment fundamentalists' and 'aggressive secularists', to be banned so as not to offend (say) members of the National Secular Society.
Armstrong's next step is to create the impression that 'Islamophobia' is widespread and increasing, by generalising from a single recent incident:
When 255,000 members of the so-called "Christian community" signed a petition to prevent the building of a large mosque in Abbey Mills, east London, they sent a grim message to the Muslim world: western freedom of worship did not, apparently, apply to Islam.
Despite their apparent numbers, a petition by a bunch of bigoted Christians doesn't equate to a national climate of intolerance. I certainly have no time for this campaign, but isn't there at least a possibility that it wasn't hostile to Islam as such, but perhaps to the size of this particular mosque, or its proposed location, or even the sect behind the proposal (see my last post for more on this)? Does this single, local protest really send such a 'grim message', cancelling out the unrivalled freedom of belief and worship that Muslims and other religious groups enjoy in Britain (compared with, say, the daily threats to Christians in majority-Muslim countries such as Iraq, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia)?
Thus Armstrong creates a straw man of pervasive intolerance towards Islam out of a few cartoons and localised inter-religious tensions, and in so doing attempts to fuel a spurious sense of victimhood. In her final paragraph, she couples this with an implied threat:
Gallup found there was as yet no blind hatred of the west in Muslim countries; only 8% of respondents condoned the 9/11 atrocities. But this could change if the extremists persuade the young that the west is bent on the destruction of their religion. When Gallup asked what the west could do to improve relations, most Muslims replied unhesitatingly that western countries must show greater respect for Islam, placing this ahead of economic aid and non-interference in their domestic affairs. Our inability to tolerate Islam not only contradicts our western values; it could also become a major security risk.
Even Armstrong has to concede that the opinion polls undermine her argument, but it doesn't prevent her from doing her bit to fan the flames of fundamentalist rage against the west. Notice the menace in the demand that 'western countries must show greater respect for Islam'. The mention of a 'major security risk' in the last sentence makes it clear what she's talking about here.
As others have pointed out, the problem with trying to appease outraged fundamentalists is that they never run out of things to be angry about. Withdraw from Iraq, create a Palestinian homeland, introduce laws that give believers the right not to be 'offended', and they will find something else about which to feel aggrieved - our gay rights legislation, perhaps, or women's equality, or (as the recent failed bombings in London demonstrated) the way we allow people to enjoy themselves on a Friday night.
Of course religious beliefs should be tolerated (and the best guarantor of that tolerance is the secular constitutions of western liberal democracies), but demands for 'respect' from those who themselves show little tolerance for liberal values should be met not with submission but with vigorous argument.
Thursday, 19 July 2007
Two instances of ignoring the obvious
Today's Guardian G2 section has a short piece by Emine Saner on plans by the Tablighi Jamaat sect to build a 'Mega-Mosque' in East London. Saner focuses on the campaign against the mosque by right-wing Christians, and ends by quoting a spokesperson for the project who claims: 'This is a group of people who have decent intentions, no record of any problems and are living and contributing to the community'.
On the face of it, an open-and-shut case of religious bigotry against a peace-loving community. What Saner's report overlooks is the widespread suspicion that Tablighi Jamaat is not quite what it seems. According to Ziauddin Sardar, the movement 'is now seen as the common link between several Muslims alleged to be involved in plans to blow up transatlantic airliners.' He adds:
Conventionally, the Tablighis are seen as an unchanging, conservative, benign, global network of simple preachers. This, I think, is a serious mistake. Organisations do not remain static. Simply because Tablighi Jamaat has followed exactly the same course for decades, no one thinks it can change. It has. Drastically...the Tablighis are not as harmless as most Muslims seem to think. The world has changed; and the Tablighi Jamaat has changed with it... We need to look at the Tablighis much more critically and see just what they are teaching our youth.
By making the prejudices of right-wing Christians the focus of the article, Saner adroitly avoids mentioning these awkward facts. There's another example of ignoring the obvious in a separate article in today's G2, in which Seumas Milne continues his deluded campaign to identify 'good' Islamists, in this wide-eyed encounter with Iraqi 'insurgents'. Milne naively parrots his informants' claims to be good democrats with only the interests of their fellow-Iraqis at heart, completely fails to mention their murderous tactics and is gullibly unquestioning about their plans for the future of the country. Does he really believe that an alliance that includes Iraqi Hamas and Ansar al-Sunna, which even he admits is 'an armed Islamist group with a ferocious reputation', is committed to anything resembling a tolerant, multi-party democracy?
On the face of it, an open-and-shut case of religious bigotry against a peace-loving community. What Saner's report overlooks is the widespread suspicion that Tablighi Jamaat is not quite what it seems. According to Ziauddin Sardar, the movement 'is now seen as the common link between several Muslims alleged to be involved in plans to blow up transatlantic airliners.' He adds:
Conventionally, the Tablighis are seen as an unchanging, conservative, benign, global network of simple preachers. This, I think, is a serious mistake. Organisations do not remain static. Simply because Tablighi Jamaat has followed exactly the same course for decades, no one thinks it can change. It has. Drastically...the Tablighis are not as harmless as most Muslims seem to think. The world has changed; and the Tablighi Jamaat has changed with it... We need to look at the Tablighis much more critically and see just what they are teaching our youth.
By making the prejudices of right-wing Christians the focus of the article, Saner adroitly avoids mentioning these awkward facts. There's another example of ignoring the obvious in a separate article in today's G2, in which Seumas Milne continues his deluded campaign to identify 'good' Islamists, in this wide-eyed encounter with Iraqi 'insurgents'. Milne naively parrots his informants' claims to be good democrats with only the interests of their fellow-Iraqis at heart, completely fails to mention their murderous tactics and is gullibly unquestioning about their plans for the future of the country. Does he really believe that an alliance that includes Iraqi Hamas and Ansar al-Sunna, which even he admits is 'an armed Islamist group with a ferocious reputation', is committed to anything resembling a tolerant, multi-party democracy?
Wednesday, 18 July 2007
Obama and Giuliani in dance-off for presidency
You read it here first. In this post I predicted that, after the success of Obama Girl and Hot 4 Hill, we'd soon see the Republicans climbing on the unofficial promotional video bandwagon. Well, now they have: or rather Barely Political, the outfit behind Obama Girl, have anticipated the primary results with a 'debate' between Obama Girl and Giuliani Girl. Much of this political dance-off seems to have been filmed outside the glass cube of the Apple Store on 5th Avenue. When we were there recently, all we got to see was the CBS breakfast show being filmed. Anyway, enjoy:
(via Snarksmith)
(via Snarksmith)
Monday, 16 July 2007
A call for renewed pride in liberalism
I'm always happy to give people a second chance. So I'm prepared to forgive Theo Hobson this piece last year with its crude caricature of 'secular fundamentalism' on the basis of his thoughtful article on Hizb ut-Tahrir in this week's Tablet (subscription required). Hobson describes his experience of attending some 'roundtable discussions' organised by the group, where he grew uneasy with the obsession (encouraged by some non-Muslims present) with blaming everything on British foreign policy and with seeking victim-status for the Muslim community. His experience of encountering the radical conservatism of fundamentalist Islam forces Hobson to reaffirm his belief in the values of secular liberalism, but leaves him wondering 'whether Islamic extremism was exacerbated by the wavering conviction of liberals.' Aware that in the face of Islamism's vision of 'grand organic unity', secular liberalism can seem like a weak alternative, Hobson ends with an appeal for a renewed pride in liberal principles, which he believes should be supported by religious believers like himself:
Maybe we need to renew liberalism as a positive social vision: of shared freedom forming the basis of the best possible form of society.
Liberalism is not just the least worst thing: it is the best thing. If we are religious, maybe we need to renew the idea that liberalism is a sacred good, a gift from God. For surely there is divine worth in a system that defends the young woman forced into an arranged marriage, for example, saving her from patriarchal tyranny. Ought we not to have pride in this?
After the apologies for fundamentalism by erstwhile liberal religious commentators like Madeleine Bunting, Karen Armstrong et al, this restatement of liberal Christianity is a healthy sign and ought to be welcomed by believers and unbelievers alike.
Maybe we need to renew liberalism as a positive social vision: of shared freedom forming the basis of the best possible form of society.
Liberalism is not just the least worst thing: it is the best thing. If we are religious, maybe we need to renew the idea that liberalism is a sacred good, a gift from God. For surely there is divine worth in a system that defends the young woman forced into an arranged marriage, for example, saving her from patriarchal tyranny. Ought we not to have pride in this?
After the apologies for fundamentalism by erstwhile liberal religious commentators like Madeleine Bunting, Karen Armstrong et al, this restatement of liberal Christianity is a healthy sign and ought to be welcomed by believers and unbelievers alike.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)