Internet porn

I realise that it is now nearly a month since I posted an actual original post, rather than an archive post or a guest post, here - partly because of wasting time on pointless squabbles in the comment threads, partly because of too much going on in my work and private life to have the time. Meanwhile, I have accumulated a huge number of links in my bookmarks, and I am pasting them here. Some of them are nearly a month old, so may not seem so timely now, but I think remain worth your time.

Hitchens
The Hitch on Chomsky's follies and (very moving, highly recommended) on unspoken truths. Noga's thoughts: The voiceless lion roars still.... Listen: Antony Hegarty sings the beautiful "If it be your will".

Clear vision in a murky age
Rahila Gupta: Feminism and the soul of secularism (ESSF) [h/t Ent.]

Genocide, liberal interventionism, etc
Fred Halliday: Solidarity - trails, perils, choices. Kellie Strom: realism deficit 1 & 2. The Fat Man: Useless idiots. From the Spectator archive: Pol Pot and Chardonnay, Michael Sheridan, 21 September 1996. Richard Abernathy: Vietnam today. James Warner on Tolstoy versus Dostoevsky on humanitarian intervention.

Costume drama
Two divergent views on Peter Kosminsky's The Promise: The Portsmouth Socialist Party and Howard JacobsonMore links and the Wikipedia article dissected by Modernity. And Noga on more Jews in costume on British TV.

The racist scum floating on the top of the anti-Zionist swamp
Modernity on Alison Weir of If Americans Knew and on the Occupied Palestine website; Rebecca on Gilad Atzmon and his American supporters; James Besser on Move over AIPAC.

Blue Labour
Labour Partisan: wrong kind of nostalgia. And Flying Rodent states the obvious about the white working class.

Free speech and authoritarianism
BenSix on the royal wedding arrests and other instances of the policing of dissent in GB2011, and on the conviction of Lars Hedegaard for anti-Muslim comments.

Local matters in an age of austerity
Brockley Central on the fate of Lewisham libraries. Me, when I hear the words "social enterprise" I reach for my gun.

The Arab spring
Long live Egypt: voices and songs from the revolution, a positive spin from Michelle Chen - and the depressing news from a country where the military junta is tightening its grip and Islamism and communalism are rising. Depressing news and a need for solidarity too from Tunisia. Plus: Unbelievable it should take this long for the Guardian's Simon Tisdall to say Syria's Assad has gone too far. Also: keep up with the comment at OpenDemocracy, news from LabourStart, and keep following the Guardian timeline and Twitter map.

In Europa
Angels can tell the difference: Marko on the nationalisms of the Adriatic. A Banality of Evil?: Noga on Arendt, Eichmann and evil. Les Back & Alex Rhys-TaylorAsh Amin and Albena Azmanova on the uses of xenophobia. Daniel Z, who should know, Re-examining the 1970s Munich Olympic Village as "one of the best Urban Spaces in the World?"

The fall of the Heygate
Transpontine: See it come down

White leftist idiocy when it comes to the Middle East
Carl Packman on what Stop the War were thinking about Osama bin Laden. Jamie Glazov on How Vittorio Arrigoni Went to Gaza Hoping to Die. Barbarossa on the left's silence at the rapes of Palestinian solidarity activists. And from the Hitchens archive: how The Nation does not tire of jihad.

Bob's beats
History is Made at Night: Dance before the police come in. Two pieces of Jew-ish kitsch: Waldeck - Bei mir bist du schön and The Barry Sisters - Ay Ay HoraJunoon - Yar Mein Nachoogi (a brave rocker from Pakistan, via the wonderful Bertram). Via Waterloo, one of the most lyrically interesting bands around, the Indelicates: America, I Am Koresh, Our Daughters will never be free, Jerusalem, and more. Plus: Mayday music, Easter music, carnation revolution music, Passover music.

Elsewheres
Poummm, variousness, more variousness, and Stuart rounds up the democratic left.

Hummod Alkhuder: Egypt prayers


The Indelicates: America


Leonard Cohen and the Webb Sisters: If it be your will

Comments

skidmarx said…
Hitch:This form of 9/11 denial doesn't trouble to conceal an unstated but self-evident premise, which is that the United States richly deserved the assault on its citizens and its civil society.
No wonder Chomsky thinks it's not worth dealing with his distortions.
skidmarx said…
Too much else to individually deal with, though Mod on Alison Weir plays "The Game of Links" in an unconvincing way, though he's better on OccPal. And on wikipedia/Kosminsky the debate on HP was balanced by Nick Cooper pointing out that when there was far more positive than negative coverage of The Promise it's not unreasonable that the wikipedia page reflect this, and it is zkharya who comes off looking like the tendentious one.

The article on rapes of Palestinian activists contained the line "A series of articles in the left-wing pro-Palestinian Ha’aretz ". Hard to take seriously.
skidmarx said…
That Jamie Glazov piece is really offensive. I'm surprised his friend could restrain themselves to say just this:
"Vik was a terrific human being who believed in passive resistance not violence. It is a reflection of the ideology of the Jewish state that your site celebrates his tragic, painful death. Look at yourselves and the hate in your souls you are showing. And know that we see your evil as we see the Palestinian people’s dignity and honour. Your time is nearly up in power, may God forgive the evil you have done and continue to do. My friend stayed human. You have not."
skidmarx said…
The Marko piece is a bit of a joy to read. I recently asked a Bosnian friend if he thought there had been a genocide in Srebrenica(as you do); his response was to consciously quote the ICTY definition that Marko presumably helped draft.
Rebecca said…
Skid - did you check the Haaretz articles? There actually was a series of them! You might not take them seriously, but they do exist.
bensix said…
Thanks for the links. I believe the first goes to Flying Rodent, though, which might be to the benefit of your readers...
bob said…
Thanks Ben. Changed.
skidmarx said…
@Rebecca - when Haaretz is considered Israel's most influential daily newspaper, and its readership includes Israel's intelligentsia and its political and economic elites, the idea that it is pro-Palestinian says more about the extreme right-wing politics of the author[a contention supported by the wall-to-wall Islamophobia of the comments box, Bob, you might to check that out if your concerned 'bout your linkin'] than it encourages taking anything Barbarossa says seriously.There aren't any links to Ha'aretz that I can see, a google search did turn up a number of links, though I guess it wasn't a story like this you were thinking of:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/palestinian-cleared-of-rape-charges-the-police-treated-us-like-dogs-1.353289
skidmarx said…
Your article on Atzmon is though to the point.

and BenSix, yes, we've given the world football, the f-word, and turning regicide into a popular sport.
[If Flying Rodent or others of his ilk wish to support the Christopher Brookmyre line that the Scots invented "fitba" I might or might not argue given whether I had a more pressing engagement with angels, pinheads]
skidmarx said…
Here is a discussion on Chomsky that moves from the sublime to the ridiculous:
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/05/very-briefly-on-chomsky

I'm quite impressed with the winner of "The Donalde Bingo".
Carl said…
I'm glad you've put up if it be your will by Leonard Cohen - I wanted to listen to that after reading the Hitch on losing his voice.
levi9909 said…
I've just looked at Hitchens's article and it could give disingenuousness a bad name. He should have quit while he was ahead in pointing out that more has emerged on responsibility for 9/11 since April 2002 but he then tries to make out that suggesting that the evidence has yet to be tested forensically leads to or even equates to saying that people other than bin Laden or al Qaida carried out 9/11. His comments on Michael Moore are completely bogus but the point he makes that stands out to me is this:

"Ten years ago, apparently sharing the consensus that 9/11 was indeed the work of al-Qaida, he wrote that it was no worse an atrocity than President Clinton's earlier use of cruise missiles against Sudan in retaliation for the bomb attacks on the centers of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam."

I can't forget how Hitchens himself responded to 9/11 in its immediate aftermath:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/13/september11.usa23

"George Bush has taken to describing the mass murder in New York and Washington DC as "not just an act of terrorism but an act of war". This strongly implies that he knows who is responsible; an assumption for which he doesn't care to make known the evidence. Instant opinion polls show the same cognitive dissonance at the mass level. Most people, when asked if they agree with the president about the "war" proposition, reply in the affirmative. But in follow-up questions, they counsel extreme caution about retaliation "until all the facts are in". This means, in ordinary words, that they have not the least idea whether they are at war or not.....

Osama bin Laden had pretty good name-recognition among American news consumers even before Tuesday's trauma. He's already survived a cruise-missile attack ordered by President Clinton in 1999 (in the same cycle of attacks that destroyed a Sudanese aspirin factory in the supposed guise of a nerve-gas facility)".

Ah the old Hitchens. That may be the last post by (or for) the old Hitchens.

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