Mutatis mutandis, Iraq
Interesting quote from Slavoj Žižek:
Today we can see that the paradox of the bombing of Yugoslavia is not the one that Western pacifists have been complaining about – that NATO set off the very ethnic cleansing that it was supposed to be preventing. No, the ideology of victimization is the real problem: it’s perfectly fine to help the helpless Albanians against the Serbian monsters, but under no circumstances must they be permitted to throw off this helplessness, to get a hold on themselves as a sovereign and independent political subject – a subject that doesn’t need the kindly shelter of NATO’s “protectorate.â€? No, they have to stay victims. The strategy of NATO is thus perverse in the precise Freudian sense of the word: The other will stay protected so long as it remains the victim.
He amplified on this when I saw him speak in Oxford recently – of which more soon.
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The subtle beauty of the alphabet
Harry Belafonte’s ‘From a logical point of view’ is followed on my MP3 playlist by Holly Valance’s ‘Kiss Kiss’. Who would think merely sorting by artist could produce such wonders?
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William Morris
It is necessary to point out that there are some Socialists who do not think that the problem of the organisation of life and necessary labour can be dealt with by a huge national centralisation, working by a kind of magic for which no one feels himself responsible; that on the contrary it will be necessary for the unit of administration to be small enough for every citizen to feel himself responsible for its details, and be interested in them; that individual men cannot shuffle off the business of life on to the shoulders of an abstraction called the State, but must deal with it in conscious association with each other.
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Analyses from the horses’ mouths
Influential people seem to be agreeing with me about the Hutton inquiry. Rod Liddle attacks Hutton’s ludicrously narrow terms of reference, while Andrew Gilligan stands up for himself, making the important, but apparently easily forgotton point, that he was right.
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Pop eating itself, again
Why is Kylie recreating the video for ‘Everybody Hurts’ for her new single? How bizarre.
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Too fucking right
This guy tells it like it is. As does this chap (via whom I found the first link). Raises an interesting question, too: just how much do Bush and Blair have to be revealed as liars, just how fucked up does it have to get in Iraq, before the people who supported the invasion will admit they were fucking wrong?
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Radio 1 is on a roll
Following the Tim Westwood constipation bombshell, they’ve just brought on a criminal psychologist to give his expert opinion on cannibalistic murderers: “I think it is usually a result of some sort of psychological disturbance.�
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“We like to keep things moving, baby�
Tim Westwood was just on the radio, explaining why he likes to eat high-fibre breakfast cereals. I know he likes to keep it real, but that’s too much information.
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I don’t have anything close to an analysis here
But the Hutton report, and its fallout, is utterly disgraceful, right? Not the report itself (I haven’t read it, although I do remember that, during the evidence collecting stage, plenty of damning facts against the government came out which have now been conveniently forgotten), but the BBC’s response. An unreserved apology to anyone they might have offended? Two resignations? Blair, of course, witters on about his respect for BBC independence, but I don’t see how this can fail to have a massive chilling effect on BBC news reporting.
A post on Crooked Timber offers some analysis I’m missing.
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