Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Layer 108 Three Wise Men, The End of an Era, and Moving On

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Three Wise Men

I think I have to take issue with at least one of Jackie Ashley’s conclusions in the Guardian yesterday. Her column was headed, “In terms of spreading values, Mitchell mattered most”.

This may be true insofar as Adrian Mitchell was not only far more prolific than his more famous contemporaries who also died recently - Pinter and Crick - and in terms of a creative output that was seen, heard and enjoyed by the masses, so to speak, but he was also a performer who loved connecting directly with audiences and giving his words and poetry the oomph that can only come from hearing its author declaim it aloud.

Mitchell was on the college and pub circuit back in the sixties, and I heard him many times, along with people like Paul Foot who could also bring laughter to any audience by speaking satirically and wittily about politics and current affairs. I loved these guys, who could both write and speak brilliantly, and do it with passion and humour. They had voices that told it like they really meant it, and indeed they did. As Ms Ashley says, we shan’t see their like again.

I loved the cleverness of these guys - the sense that they saw the big picture and could articulate what the rest of us saw and felt, and then some, and do it in a way that gave wings to our rage and our passion for change, for reshaping and ordering the world differently.

Jackie Ashley says we’ve had plenty of cleverness, but I’m not so sure. You can never have too much of real intelligence, real wisdom, real enlightenment. I don’t think we’ve had nearly enough of it. Cleverness in this sense should be a term of approbation. When Ian Dury said, “There ain’t half been some clever bastards”, he wasn’t being ironic - he appreciated genuine genius.

I know what she means, though. There are plenty of conservatives, for example, who have done well academically and can appear well-informed, on top of their subject and brilliantly analytical. But their world view is just plain wrong because it’s built on false premises. And they’re usually not capable of an original or creative thought.

I don’t know much about Bernard Crick, though I do have a copy of his biography of George Orwell. I’ve already admitted to not having read or seen enough of Pinter’s output. Even so, it’s clear that these guys were libertarians, humanitarians and socialists, even if they were in some ways remote and austere as far as the (wo)man in the street’s concerned, assuming (s)he’s even aware of them. It’s probably not fair to imply they were lacking in ‘heart’.

Ms Ashley is right, though, to point out that what the world needs is more ‘heart’- meaning, as far as I can see, more passion, more of the ability to wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve - meaning more courage to speak out openly for one’s values, for one’s core beliefs, to give vent to one’s disgust with the way things are when we see so much injustice, inequality, ignorance, violence and exploitation. We also have to be able to argue for our beliefs, and to do it engagingly, with wit and originality, in language that’s accessible and transparent. Currently our education system doesn’t equip young people to do any of this.

So yes, our Jackie, we do need more people who can spread the word, with passion, conviction and humour, about values and how to make a better world. But first we have to start producing such people, which means completely changing the way schools and colleges are organised, the way that learning takes place, and the way the curriculum is determined.

If we do that then we may not produce any more of those who are truly gifted, but we’ll at least enable more of our children to fulfil their potential to be self-confident, articulate human beings who know how to speak in their own genuine voices, with ideas that are truly their own and not the product of brainwashing that teaches them to accept the status quo through not giving them the language and the ideas to think critically about values, about politics and about life.

Interesting, by the way, that Mitchell, Crick and Pinter were born within three years of one another, 1929 - 31.

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The Schlock Doctrine Update

I learnt today from Seamus Milne’s column that Israel’s attack on Gaza, according to the country’s biggest-selling newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, was a “stroke of brilliance”. And why was this? Because “the element of surprise increased the number of people who were killed”.

And the daily Ma’ariv obviously agreed, saying “We left them in shock and awe”.

Milne reminds us that there has been no western denunciation of the slaughter that’s going on because such aerial destruction has been routinely carried out by the US and the UK in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The attitude is clearly that Hamas and the Palestinians of Gaza are themselves responsible for what’s been inflicted on them. Obviously they had it coming to them, on account of the fact that over the past seven years 14 Israelis have been killed by rockets fired from Gaza, with, as previously noted, just one of those deaths occurring during the past six months during the ‘ceasefire’.

During this period 5,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel using “some of the most advanced US-supplied armaments in the world”, according to Milne, who also points out that 45 Palestinians have died this year alone in the West Bank, killed by Israeli firepower in spite of no rockets whatsoever being fired by Palestinians from that area.

Once upon a time American governments would have got hold of the Israeli leadership, sat them down and said, “Listen guys, this bullying and killing is not going to get you anywhere. Either sit down with your enemies and work something out, find a two-state solution that you can settle for, even if it means giving back the West Bank land you’ve stolen, or else we’ll stop sending you weapons and shedloads of money and you can just deal with it on your own.”

Unfortunately that kind of aproach doesn't sit well with an American government that's notorious for an approach to international affairs that's based on bullying and killing.

Ever since the neo-conservatives have been in power in Washington - roughly from the onset of the Reagan era - a rational, reasonable and enlightened approach to Israel hasn’t happened for the simple reason that those power-crazed Bible-bashing boys and gals sincerely believe that the US has the right to be the world’s only superpower, and that it’s will can be enforced around the world down the barrel of a gun, if necessary, and that capitalism’s destiny is to erase from the planet all competing ideologies, including religions that are in competition, as it were, with the approved Judeo-Christian varieties that are dominant in the US. Any beliefs that are not derived from the Bible, in other words, have to be ignored, marginalised and bashed, very hard indeed whenever deemed 'fundamentalist'.

It’s suited the US hawks and neo-cons very nicely that similar nutters have been elected in Israel, on the very same ticket - that might is right, that their particular God is almighty, and that one’s will shall be done, thanks to Stealth aircraft, unmanned drones, satellite imaging, cruise missiles, Apache gunships, computer-guided weaponry, etc. Such people need a state of perpetual war to achieve their political ends, and also because perpetual war makes for very big profits for the manufacturers of arms, and indeed for the Haliburtons and Blackwaters and their shareholders, who service and support the war machine.

Obama has the somewhat difficult task, therefore, of sweeping aside the Shock Doctrine, and replacing it with more civilised approaches to problem-solving and crisis resolution. Hilary, bless her, whose husband managed to do fuck all to ditch the Shock Doctrine or curb the excesses of voracious disaster capitalism, will be the one doing the globetrotting on Obama’s behalf. It’s going to be interesting.

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White Cat Update

The cat is no more. It has ceased to be. It’s an ex-cat. It’s gone to meet its maker.

It passed away peacefully in its sleep. When I came down in the morning it was still in its basket by the radiator, still in the position it had been in for the previous 24 hours, but no longer breathing.

It’s the first time I’ve watched any warm-blooded creature dying. In truth, it was a good death. It happened exactly the same way my ex-wife described what had happened to our favourite cat, dear Booda, all those years ago. Loss of interest in eating, sleeping virtually all day and night, followed by drinking less and less, and then complete inability to move around, even to get up to go to the litter tray.

Today my daughter came round to see the cat one last time, took a photo of her motionless pure-white form, and shed some tears. She was no doubt thinking about all the times they’d played together, and slept together.

She was the only one who really had positive feelings for the pathetic, fearful, irritating little overbred brainless wretch. But that’s my daughter in a nutshell - tough as nails on the outside, and with a heart of gold and immense caring and concern for all creatures great and small, especially the weak and the helpless.
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