normblog

Ale Brider

Looking through my CDs a few nights ago, I came across the Klezmer section. Not having listened to any of these for a while, I picked out a couple and played them. I love the song 'Ale Brider'. You can hear a bit of the tune of it here (track 16). I don't know if there's an authoritative version of the words (by Morris Winchevsky) anywhere on the Internet, but here's the first verse as given in the booklet with this album:

Un mir zaynen ale brider,
oy, oy, ale brider,
Un mir zingen freylekhe lider,
oy, oy, oy.
Un mir halten zikh in eynem,
oy, oy, zikh in eynem,
Azelkhes iz nito bay keynem,
oy, oy, oy!

The translation (which omits the 'oy, oy' lines):

We are all brothers
And sing happy songs
We stick together
Like nobody else does!

According to the accompanying notes, it's 'particularly associated with the Jewish labor movement' and 'one of the classics of the klezmer revival'. It bounces along and makes you feel good.

Spanish Bob

For those sufficiently obsessed and who can read Spanish, here's a site - discovered through a link in connection with my recent MOJO post - that's devoted to matters Dylan.

Writer's choice 26: Pamela Bone

Pamela Bone has been a columnist with The Age newspaper in Melbourne for 23 years. She has twice won the Melbourne Press Club Quill Award for best columnist, and has also been awarded the United Nations of Australia Media Peace Prize. She has four adult daughters with whom she argues vigorously. Pamela is the author of Up We Grew: Stories of Australian Childhoods. Below, she reviews Ian McEwan's Saturday.

Pamela Bone on Saturday by Ian McEwan

'I am Henry Perowne,' I told my daughter, with whom I had many arguments in the weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq. And because she is a fan of Ian McEwan, Henry Perowne was able to persuade her of what I could not: that there were consequences to be had in not invading as well as in invading that tragic, blighted country.

Henry Perowne, the central character in Ian McEwan's extraordinary novel Saturday, has the same arguments with his daughter that I had with mine. He is ambivalent about the coming invasion. But he realizes that whatever happens, innocent people are going to die. The cost of removing Saddam was war. The cost of no war was leaving him in place. Thinking people made a judgement about what was likely to be the lesser evil. Despite the present mess, who was right and who was wrong is still unknown.

At one point in the book Perowne's daughter Daisy asks in horror: 'Daddy, you're not for the war, are you?' He replies: 'You're right, it could be a disaster. But it could be the end of a disaster and the beginning of something better. It's all about outcomes, and no one knows what they'll be. That's why I can't imagine marching in the streets.'

Saturday is not, in my opinion, McEwan's best book - I think his previous book, Atonement, was better - but it is a very good book. And here's something for a reviewer to consider (though perhaps it applies more to non-fiction than fiction): how to resist the temptation to find a book a 'good' book if you agree with its arguments, a 'bad' book if you disagree? Yet even apart from my identification with the thoughts of the main character, Saturday is the best book I have read this year. The principal reason for this, without being too obsequious about it, is that any book written by Ian McEwan is likely to be the best book I read in any one year. Since many years ago having read the brilliant, devastating The Child in Time (no parent of young children should read this book!), I have looked forward to every new McEwan novel.

Saturday is so named because the action takes place in London on a particular Saturday, 15 February 2003. Henry Perowne, on his way to his regular Saturday morning game of squash, is watching the crowds gathering to protest against the forthcoming Iraq war, as they did in cities across Europe, America, Australia. It is said to be the biggest protest march ever held in London - up to two million people, by some estimates.

Perowne, a neurosurgeon, is prosperous, untroubled, intelligent rather than intellectual; a man who is as decent as any person who has the things most necessary to human happiness - meaningful work, loving relationships, sufficient material comfort - should be. He is a deliberately anti-literary figure, who as well as arguing vociferously with Daisy (an emerging poet) about Iraq, also argues with her about the ability of literature to cast light on the human condition. It is because of this march that Perowne, encased in his beautiful car listening to Schubert and content with the prospect of his day, has the apparently small accident that will lead to the book's dramatic final chapters. The scene 'has an air of innocence and English dottiness'. Perowne is struck by the 'celebratory nature' of the crowds, people holding banners saying 'Not in my name', secure in the knowledge of their own goodness. He later wonders why, among those two million idealists, there seemed to be 'not one banner, one fist or voice raised against Saddam'.

Perowne has treated an Iraqi professor who was a victim of Saddam Hussein's torture chambers. He cannot feel, 'as the marchers probably can, that they have an exclusive hold on moral discernment'. He imagines himself as Saddam, 'surveying the crowd with satisfaction from some Baghdad ministry balcony', telling himself that 'the good-hearted electorates of the Western democracies will never allow their governments to attack his country'.

The imaginary Saddam was, of course, wrong. The peace marchers didn't stop the war. What they probably succeeded in doing was making sure the war lacked the legitimacy of being backed by the United Nations.

Yet, as Perowne reflects, opinion in support of or opposition to the war could also be accidental. In his own case it was having known the Iraqi professor, seen his torture scars and listened to his stories, and because of him, having taken the trouble to find out as much as he could about the regime running Iraq - as many of the marchers didn't. (In my case, it was having talked to Iraqi women exiles who told me of the atrocities of the regime, including Saddam's orders that prostitutes - who were in some cases not even prostitutes but critics of the government - should be beheaded and their heads nailed to the doors of their houses as a lesson to others. And by a strong and long-held outrage that murdering, genocidal dictators nearly always simply get away with it.)

On that drive across town Perowne sees three black figures, women in the body and face-covering burqas, huddled together on a pavement.

He can't help his distaste, it's visceral. How dismal, that anyone should be obliged to walk around so entirely obliterated... And what would the relativists say, the cheerful pessimists from Daisy's college? That it's sacred, traditional, a stand against the fripperies of Western consumerism? But the men, the husbands... wear suits, or trainers and tracksuits, or baggy shorts and Rolexes, and are entirely charming and worldly and thoroughly educated in both traditions. Would they care to carry the folkloric torch, and stumble about in the dark at midday?

I have wondered this too, and why left-leaning women do not protest at such an oppression of women's rights (even if the women go along with their oppression). The reason, as Fay Weldon has said, is that today racism is seen as a much worse crime than sexism; and many people confuse criticism of religion - especially Islam - with racism. It has, of course, nothing to do with racism.

Saturday (Perowne may or may not reflect McEwan's own views) will not please many of McEwan's readers who, I am guessing, are likely to have been opposed to the invasion. For it is on the liberal, book-reading, intellectual, cultural-relativist left that opposition to the war was strongest. Here it was taken for granted that all good-thinking people would be anti-war.

The Irish writer John Banville, whose novel The Sea won this year's Booker Prize, made a graceless attack on Saturday in the New York Times, describing the Perowne character as boring and ridiculous and the book as a smug celebration of upper-middle-class values. From this we must conclude that Banville disagreed with the suggestion that there could have been a case for the removal of Saddam Hussein. Having read Banville's self-consciously well-written new novel, I am disappointed, though not surprised, that the Booker judges decided to give the prize to it.

Ian McEwan is a fine novelist not only for the effortless, lyrical quality of his writing and his mastery of detail, but because he is able to tease out complex ideas while keeping his readers' interests at heart, rather than setting out to demonstrate his own cleverness. And Saturday is a fine novel because at its centre is a good man: a privileged man, yes, but one who knows he is privileged, who is kind, who desires and believes in the possibility of the gradual and continued improvement of the human condition. It should have won the Booker; but then, the politics of the day were against it.

[A list of the pieces that have appeared to date in this series, with the links to them, is here.]

Legacy of Nuremberg?

The trial of Saddam Hussein has resumed today in Baghdad. In this connection I was struck by some observations made last week by Marcel Berlins. He was lamenting what he sees as the 'disintegrated' legacy of the Nuremberg trials, and comparing them with the proceedings against Milosevic and Saddam - to the disadvantage of these more recent processes. Although the problems Berlins details with the latter are undeniable, I found his remarks rather narrowly focused.

First, he commends the Nuremberg example - 'for all the complaints at the time of "victors' justice"'. I would reckon it more than likely that, had the coalition nations in Iraq been directly responsible for the tribunal trying Saddam, this would not have been well received by the international body of anti-war opinion. Even as it is, you will find that negative reception reported in passing in the New York Times piece linked above - the reason being that the Iraqi court was 'originally founded by an American occupation decree'. It may be noted, also, that some of the defendants at Nuremberg were sentenced to hang.

Second, Berlins writes the following:

If Nuremberg has a true heir, it's the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague, which has yet to stage a trial. It is checking out atrocities in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo...

OK, so he is evidently keeping his attention fixed on the matter in hand, namely, the quality of the judicial processes being compared, as he assesses them. Still, I have to say that this judgement of his does rather put me in mind of the famous remark...

Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?

Yet to stage a trial; and checking out atrocities. Meanwhile, in Sudan, one of the sites of these atrocities, a genocide has been, and is still, in progress. But, you know, the relevant judicial process is better.

In Iraq, on the other hand, a mass murdering tyrant is under lock and key and his (imperfect) trial is under way. His regime, too, is gone. The Nuremberg trials only proceeded once the Nazi regime had been defeated. And at what a cost!

One can sometimes form the impression that the only good wars against fascism and tyranny are past wars - and this whatever their 'blemishes'.

Editorial misjudgement

Here's something that will no doubt be cited as evidence of 'Zionist' control of the British media. Some of you may remember this little episode from just over a year ago. The BBC's complaints procedures have caught up with it:

BBC governors [have] upheld a complaint of bias against Radio 4 reporter Barbara Plett for a description of her tearful response to dying Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's final departure from the West Bank. The corporation's head of editorial complaints originally cleared the controversial edition of From Our Own Correspondent of breaching BBC impartiality guidelines, but the governors' programme complaints committee yesterday overturned the decision.

During the programme, broadcast in October last year, Plett described covering Arafat's illness and airlift by helicopter from his home in Ramallah to a French hospital as "a real grind". She added: "Yet when the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose from his ruined compound, I started to cry... without warning".
.....
The complaint considered by the committee claimed this "tearful eulogy" would not be matched by a BBC report extolling Ariel Sharon. Despite initially issuing a statement in support of Plett, the BBC director of news Helen Boaden later apologised for what she described as "an editorial misjudgment".

Chalk that one up for the Beeb.

Convergences

Here's a report of a recent visit to Damascus:

The notorious Louisiana-based white supremacist leader, David Duke, has visited Syria last week, where he delivered an anti-Semitic speech attacking 'Zionists occupying New York' and the State of Israel. The speech was carried by Syrian state television.
.....
Duke, who was once a "grand wizard" of the Klu Klux Klan, addressed a cheering crowd waving Syrian flags, saying: "I come from the peace-loving people in America to the peace-loving people of Syria."

"It is only in America and around the world, it is only the Zionists who want war rather than peace," Duke said in a speech which seemed to illustrate the convergence of white supremacist ideology with the rhetoric of radical voices in the Arab world.

"It hurts my heart to tell you that part of my country is occupied by Zionists, just as part of your country, the Golan Heights, is occupied by Zionists. The Zionists occupy most of the American media and now control much of American government," he added.

Duke said that "it is not just the West Bank of Palestine, it is not just the Golan Heights that are occupied by the Zionists, but Washington D.C., and New York, and London, and many other capitals in the world."

If the report notes one convergence, let me point to another. Who else says things like 'The Zionists occupy most of the American media and now control much of American government'? Why, this man. I remind you of a post of mine from last week. Observe:

I was re-elected despite all the efforts made by the British government, the Zionist movement and the newspapers and news media which are controlled by Zionism.

David Duke and the MP for RESPECT, an organization of the British left. (Hat tip: S.)

Big bird

Chris D takes a shot at the birthday game and comes up with a story I might have been expected to be familiar with but wasn't.

See also Brownie on 'Victorians' of Scots ancestry.

Kind of a humanist

If you're a humanist and want to know what kind of humanist you are, here's where to go. If you now want to know what kind of a humanist I (allegedly) am, I'm the same kind as Shuggy is. Like Shuggy, I have my reservations about the whole deal: I've never had any particular regard for George Bernard Shaw, and I can see the point of abstract principles. One or two other things there, however, yes. Brando among them - his Terry Malloy is for ever.

Continuing the fight for Iraq

Tony Parkinson in The Age:

What the peace-making efforts in Bosnia and Kosovo should have taught us is that the reconstruction of nations fractured by ethnic and sectarian divides is not about overnight miracles. Progress is patchy, with as many setbacks as advances, until local actors commit to the principles of a rules-based society.
.....
In his recent book, Not Quite the Diplomat, former European external affairs commissioner Chris Patten puts starkly the importance of success, especially in Bosnia-Herzegovina: "If it were to break apart, the fall-out for the whole region would be catastrophic."

Almost exactly the same words could just as easily describe the challenge in Iraq, as well as the implications of failing to meet that challenge.

Yet the debate over Iraq tends not to be infused with the same levels of patience and understanding - of realism and honesty - that governs international attitudes towards the former Yugoslavia. Funny that.

Christopher Hitchens at Slate:

[T]here are two absolutely crucial things that made me a supporter of regime change before Bush, and that will keep me that way whether he fights a competent war or not.

The first of these is the face, and the voice, of Iraqi and Kurdish democrats and secularists. Not only are these people looking at death every day, from the hysterical campaign of murder and sabotage that Baathists and Bin Ladenists mount every day, but they also have to fight a war within the war, against clerical factions and eager foreign-based forces from Turkey or Iran or Syria or Saudi Arabia. On this, it is not possible to be morally or politically neutral. And, on this, much of the time at least, American force is exerted on the right side. It is the only force in the region, indeed, that places its bet on the victory and the values of the Iraqis who stand in line to vote. How appalling it would be, at just the moment when "the Arab street" (another dispelled figment that its amen corner should disown) has begun to turn against al-Qaida and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, if those voters should detect an American impulse to fold or "withdraw." A sense of history is more important than an eye to opinion polls or approval ratings.
.....
A globe-spanning war, declared and prosecuted against all Americans, all apostates, all Christians, all secularists, all Jews, all Hindus, and most Shiites, is not to be fought by first ceding Iraq and then seeing what happens "over the horizon."

Sarah Baxter in The Sunday Times:

Bruce Willis, the Hollywood star, is to make a pro-war film in which American soldiers will be depicted as brave fighters for freedom and democracy.
.....
Willis said it would be wrong for Americans to give up on Iraq just as progress is being made. "The Iraqi people want to live in a world where they can move from their homes to the market and not have to fear being killed," he said. "I mean, doesn't everybody want that?"

Thomas Fraser country

The 35-seater plane shakes through savage winds as we approach the Shetland Isles. Below, the sea breaks against granite cliffs. It seems incredible that this elemental landscape of rock and icy water could have spawned a singer of the gentle country music more commonly associated with the still heat of the American desert.

Yet 70 years ago, a lobster fisherman called Thomas Fraser began picking up American Forces Radio on the wireless in his croft on the Isle of Burra. With a month's wages he bought a guitar and began playing what today's critics are now calling "some of the greatest American music you will hear".

I've posted about Thomas Fraser once before, but this new piece about him and his music is of interest.

The albums: Long Gone Lonesome Blues; You and My Old Guitar; Treasure Untold.

Some other Fraser links.