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The normblog profile 319: Point of No Return

The Point of No Return blog was set up about five years ago to spotlight the forgotten plight of a million Jews driven out of Arab and Muslim countries. Although born in the UK, blogger Bataween, a journalist and mother of four, took her moniker from a residential district of Baghdad, Iraq, where her parents used to live. Bataween (the district) used to be almost entirely Jewish, and where once there were 150,000 Jews in Iraq, there are now seven.

Why do you blog? > To understand the Middle East conflict, you have to understand the Jewish refugees, who outnumbered Palestinian refugees two to one. The struggle against Israel is simply part of the campaign by Arab nationalism and Islamism to finish off their minorities through marginalization and expulsion - by driving out the Jews of Israel from the last corner of the Middle East where they live in significant numbers.

What has been your best blogging experience? > Receiving sympathetic messages from Arabs who fondly recall their Jewish neighbours, Pakistanis who regret the loss of their Jewish community, and hearing from one of the last Jews of Lebanon.

What has been your worst blogging experience? > bX-59cppw error for two days.

What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > Back up your blog.

What are your favourite blogs? > Harry's Place, Solomonia and normblog.

Who are your intellectual heroes? > Natan Sharansky, Voltaire, Bernard Lewis, Jean-Paul Sartre, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

What are you reading at the moment? > La fin du judaïsme en terres d'Islam by Shmuel Trigano.

Who are your cultural heroes? >The Beatles, David Lean, Claudia Roden, Monty Python, Pierre Bonnard, Norman Foster.

What is the best novel you've ever read? > L'Etranger by Albert Camus, closely followed by Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier.

What is your favourite poem? > T.S. Eliot's 'The Love song of J.Alfred Prufrock'; and 'Verde que te quiero verde' by Federico Garcia Lorca.

What is your favourite movie? > The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie by Luis Bunuel. More recently, I loved The Yacoubian Building, which seems to encapsulate what's wrong with Arab society.

What is your favourite song? > 'Fool on the Hill' by Paul McCartney.

Who is your favourite composer? > Bach, Vaughan Williams, Ravel.

Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you've ever changed your mind? > I used to be excited by the concept of revolution to effect social change – but I now realize that equality will never work and liberty is far too important to be left to revolutionaries.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > 'Those who believe in absurdities commit atrocities.' (Voltaire)

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > The idea that the root cause of terrorism lies in legitimate grievances.

Can you name a work of non-fiction which has had a major and lasting influence on how you think about the world? > The Case for Democracy by Natan Sharansky. He is spot-on that it is essential to link human rights and the development of democratic institutions in the Arab world with peace in the Middle East.

Who are your political heroes? > Napoleon, Churchill, Sharansky.

What is your favourite piece of political wisdom? > 'Without truth, there can be no justice, and without justice, no reconciliation.' (Irwin Cotler)

If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > Reform of the education system.

What would you do with the UN? > Close it down, but first lock up Gaddafi, Chavez, Ahmadinejad, al-Bashir etc in a room and throw away the key.

What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > The Iranian nuclear threat.

Do you think the world (human civilization) has already passed its best point, or is that yet to come? > I'd like to think that the best is yet to come, but I fear we might not live to see it (see previous answer).

What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > Carpe diem!

Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone with radically different political views from your own? > No - we'd spend too much time arguing.

What do you consider the most important personal quality? > Integrity.

What personal fault do you most dislike? > Mendaciousness.

In what circumstances would you be willing to lie? > To save a life.

Do you have any prejudices you're willing to acknowledge? > I dislike hysterical sports commentaries (although my husband is besotted with football), opera, men who wear sandals with socks, and kids who never say 'thank you'.

What is your favourite proverb? > 'Mal nommer les choses, c'est ajouter au malheur du monde' (Not to call things by their correct names is to add to the troubles of the world) - Albert Camus.

[The normblog profile is a weekly Friday morning feature. A list of all the profiles to date, and the links to them, can be found here.]

Two rulings

Of Kuwait's Constitutional Court, that is:

Kuwait's highest court ruled Wednesday that women lawmakers are not obliged by law to wear the headscarf, a blow to Muslim fundamentalists who want to fully impose Islamic Sharia law in this small oil-rich state.

The Constitutional Court dismissed a case raised by a voter who claimed that two of four women elected to parliament in May - Rola Dashti and Aseel al-Awadhi - can not be members of the legislature because they don't comply with the Islamic dress code.

The other two elected lawmakers wear the headscarf known as hijab, and clothes that fully cover their arms and legs.

The landmark ruling was the second recent breakthrough for Kuwaiti women.

Last week, the same court granted married women the right to obtain a passport without their husband's approval, saying the decades-old requirement was "unconstitutional" and "compromised their humanity."

Compromised their humanity - how well said.

The democratic theory of pure assertion

Does socialism have a future? Many think that question has been answered definitively in the negative. Others see the latest economic crisis as evidence that the question remains open, and many continue to hope that a more egalitarian form of justice is possible than anything so far delivered by capitalism. Whatever the case, you might think it a solid conclusion from the experience of the left in the 20th century that if socialism is to have a future worth fighting for, this would have to be a socialism that had thoroughly assimilated the norms and the practices of pluralist democracy, had understood the depths of the human disaster that authoritarian, non-democratic socialisms had led to.

All the more mystifying is it therefore that a man can be taken seriously as an intellectual of the left who speaks like Slavoj Žižek. Here he is, talking to Jonathan Derbyshire:

"... A large majority of the left doesn't question liberal democracy and capitalism as such. In the same way that when we were young we wanted socialism with a human face, what a large part of today's left want is capitalism with a human face."

It's precisely Žižek's readiness to question the "liberal democracy" to which he thinks many western leftists are prematurely reconciled that so unsettles his critics... He agrees when I suggest that he is not especially interested in the questions about the nature of legitimate political authority that concern most mainstream theorists. "Yes, legitimate power is not the topic I focus on. I don't despise democracy, but for me, although democracy, in the formal sense, is precious, it is not in itself a measure of ult­imate truth or authenticity. We shouldn't fetishise democracy - after all, you can have democratic elections where the majority votes for a rightist populist, and when it does, you have the right to treat the government as illegitimate. I don't think that this formal electoral procedure should be taken as equalling legitimacy."
.....
What implications does such an account have for the actual practice of politics? "I am a Leninist. Lenin wasn't afraid to dirty his hands. If you can get power, grab it. Do whatever is possible. This is why I support Obama. I think the battle he is fighting now over healthcare is extremely important, because it concerns the very core of the ruling ideology. The core of the campaign against Obama is freedom of choice. And the lesson, if he wins, is that freedom of choice is certainly something beautiful, but that it only works against a background of regulations, ethical presuppositions, economic conditions and so on. My position isn't that we should sit down and wait for some big revolution to come. We have to engage wherever we can. If Obama wins his battle over healthcare, if some kind of blow can be struck against the ideology of freedom of choice, it will have been a victory worth fighting for."

Where to begin? Being a critic of liberal democracy only carries any moral weight if you speak for a form of democracy that is superior to it. Otherwise, not being reconciled to it is just hot air or worse. In Žižek's case you can take your pick as to which of the two this is: he doesn't despise democracy, in fact it is precious to him; but one mustn't fetishize it, for there is another legitimacy than winning democratic elections; only he doesn't go into the detail of what this other legitimacy might be; unless we are to take grabbing power as the whole of it. Like a Leninist - a Leninist like... Obama. Such is the 'theory' that Žižek concludes here by saying is sacred.

Zimbabwean disunity

Manfred Nowak, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Torture, has been prevented from visiting Zimbabwe despite an invitation from Morgan Tsvangirai, the Zimbabwean prime minister. Regrettable in itself since it blocks Nowak's intended investigation into human rights abuses in that country, the move, as he says, also 'sheds a clear light as to where the real power [lies] in this unity government'.

Reader's digestion

As regards your dietary habits when you come across an author you like, Cornflower asks:

How about you? Do you devour all the work of a new find (an author or series) in one go, or will you acquire it in more of a piecemeal fashion, and return to taste again over the coming weeks and months?

My answer - I'm of the latter school of thought. For several reasons: I don't want to be reading just the one kind of thing over an extended period; it's easier to distinguish, in memory, between a writer's different books if you haven't consumed them all in a single lump; if I already have certain reading projects on the go (working my way through the novels of some other writer or writers) I don't want to abandon these projects to focus exclusively on the newly-found.

That said, I'd want to add that eating the books of a single author all in one go is a better option than eating cutlery.

Off the record

The Guardian reports:

A star that exploded 13 billion years ago has set a record for the most distant astronomical object yet observed.

Like me you'll be wondering when the star set this record. Not, surely, 13 billion years ago when it exploded, since back then it hadn't been observed - not by us anyway. So then, only lately, when it was observed? But it had long ago exploded; it was a star no more. How could it set a record? Maybe it's the observers who set the record.

Cosmopolitan values and national identity

Matt Yglesias writes:

Readers will know that I'm not a big fan of nationalism and I am a big fan of trans-national projects like the European Union and the United Nations. And it's even true that I really kind of hope that hundreds of years from now there won't be national states at all, instead we'll all be lumped in with the Vulcans and the Andorians in a United Federation of Planets and off we'll go. But there's clearly no [prospect] for the abolition of the nation-state in the short-term. And the Jewish people's claim to a nation-state is just as strong as the Finnish or Dutch or Thai claim. Or, for that matter, as the Palestinian claim. By far the best way to secure a just resolution of those conflicting claims is through a two-state solution - an independent Palestine, and a democratic Jewish Israel.

I completely grasp the pull of radical cosmopolitan values, but I think people who think that the area west of the Jordan River would be a great place to try implementing them in the short-term are being a bit crazy. It's not even clear that Belgium or Canada will be able to survive as bi-national entities.

Me, I'm not so sure about the withering of national states, cosmopolitan values notwithstanding. Those values don't require the levelling out of national plurality and diversity, only mutual respect across (non-harmful) differences. But I do agree with Matt that Israel-Palestine is not at present the optimal place in which to project the end of nationhood. Since both major national groups there have strong historical reasons for asserting their identity, it's hard to see why anyone would think of the area in this role - except if she had (let us just call it) a cavalier attitude to one or both of the national identities concerned.

Refusing that reflection

It's a commonplace wisdom, one often associated with the treatment of children, that if you let people know you expect the worst of them, the worst is what you're likely to get, and so it's better to show more confidence in their character and their moral sense than to expect the worst. Yet how often do we read, from those waxing 'realistic' about the nature of human beings, that everyone is so flawed as to be no better than a killer? Here is Slavenka Drakulić, writing about the trial of Radovan Karadzic:

We like to believe that poets and academics – that is, educated people – are too fine, too noble, to commit horrible crimes, crimes against humanity. But it has been proven thousands of times that educated people have no higher moral standards than ordinary people. There is no mystique in their mutation: every human being has the potential for acting in good or bad ways, even if we fondly prefer to distance ourselves from that insight by labelling people like Karadzic or Plavsic "monsters".

In reality, such people are only our own reflection in a mirror.

I don't know who it is that likes to believe educated people are too good to commit horrible crimes, but they should stop believing it; the counter-evidence is overwhelming. On the other hand, not everyone should accept that a monster (and without scare-quotes) like Karadzic is their own 'reflection in a mirror'. In advance of practical confirmation, it is a calumny upon them. I've noted and opposed this cynical theme several times before here. One has to wonder why it's so popular. If human beings are capable of both good and evil, then why the decision in advance that they will all succumb to evil when circumstances turn difficult? It is true that anyone might do that, and so the advice to be on one's guard against crossing the line is sound. But it isn't true that everyone will; therefore the cynical counsel is wrong. It is also counterproductive, adding to the volume of those influences that encourage people to behave badly when it is hard to behave well. What we see in the mirror, in this sense, is somewhat up to us.

Aside from chess

Is it possible for someone to be extremely intelligent and creative in a certain field and at the same time, in other respects, to be simple minded?

The question is Martin Gardner's and his answer is yes. In support of the answer he writes about Bobby Fischer - a man who took his exceptional talent and threw it away. (Via.)

Writer's choice 230: John Siddique

John Siddique is the author of The Prize and Poems from a Northern Soul, editor of Transparency, and co-author of Four Fathers. His children's book, Don't Wear it on Your Head, was shortlisted for the CLPE Poetry Award. His most recent book is Recital - An Almanac. John gives readings, and mentors and teaches creative writing around the world. He has lately written a series of poems looking at migration in Manchester for Lancaster University, and he was this year's British Council Writer in Residence at California State University, Los Angeles. Here he writes about James Joyce's Ulysses.

John Siddique on Ulysses by James Joyce

I've come to my local library in Hebden Bridge to look at the library copy of James Joyce's Ulysses, which is often referred to as the greatest novel ever written. It is perhaps the most significant book I've ever read. It was the book that showed me the true potential of the written word as a vehicle for human experience, back in the days before I started writing. I have it in mind to write this piece describing to you the wear and tear of the old library copy, and repeating some of the notes written in pencil in its margins as an historical document. I think about the date stamps and the many hands that have held this book, which is at heart a simple story of love, marriage and a betrayal, and about ignorance and how the characters find that love endures under all the ideas and layers they live their lives through.

I can't find Ulysses on the fiction shelf; perhaps it is with the classics. Looking around, I see there is a big Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath section, lots of 'How To' and 'For Dummies' books, a very surprising section on rock music, and an efficient selection of the classics: Shakespeare, Dickens, The Brontës, Plato and Homer - but no Joyce. Asking at the counter I'm told there is a copy in Halifax seven miles away, but it is not on public display.

I head to the bookshop to see when they last sold a copy. We are very lucky in Hebden; a lot of people here are readers, and we have a fab local independent bookshop that will go the extra distance to find things for you. Simon behind the counter tells me they last sold a Ulysses in August, and before that in May the previous year. According to the computer log they sell on average one copy a year.

Ulysses suffers from a difficult reputation. It is supposed to be a very tricky book to read, full of Greek references, stream of consciousness modernism and Irish politics. Several friends I've spoken to about it tried to read it when they were in their late teens as a rite of passage, but they got only so far and then ran out of steam. Some other people I chatted to had read it and love it as I do, read it later on in their late 20s or beyond - after they had loved and lost, and betrayed, or been betrayed. It seems that Joyce may have written a book that wasn't necessarily for young people.

I've never been very much into watching television. Books and libraries kept me sane and gave me space whilst I was growing up, and I developed the habit of reading the complete works of writers I discovered and liked. Joyce's Dubliners was given to me as a present at some point, and I loved his story 'The Dead' - the way the story moved out into the universe at the end as the snow fell and we pondered what real love was. I also read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and was really blown away by the bits where he sees things from the baby's point of view, using the cutesy way a parent speaks to a small child to give the child's perspective. When I then came to Ulysses I realized that what others referred to as stream of consciousness, which sounds like unchained ideas running around stupidly all over the place, was nothing of the sort. Joyce had found a way of transmitting the images and thought patterns and feelings of each of his characters in a very real and accurate way. When you let go and flow along with the book and the truth of his people's lives, you actually get inside their skins. Joyce wasn't satisfied with telling you the simple tale of Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly from the outside. He wanted his reader to live through their eyes, to know what it was like to have not slept together for 11 years since their only child died, how it is to know your wife is having sex with someone more handsome than you, whilst you sit in a bar hoping the music won't stop playing so you don't think of them together in your house. Joyce wants us to live through their routines and their pleasures and the idiot things into which they narrowcast their lives. He wants to show us how one day can change it all. That day for Joyce is June 16 1904, the day when Leopold meets a young bright man and is renewed by his mind and energy. The day when Molly, after cuckolding Leopold with mister virile, thinks through her life and finds her husband is the yes in her life. In Joyce's real life it was the day he first met his wife to be, Nora.

Ulysses is a book to be swept away by, and which leaves one more in touch with humanity and the reality of being human for having read it. No, it's not an easy book. Not because it's too clever, but because it is so real; perhaps that is why it is out of fashion right now. If someone tried to write such a book today, it would have to refer to its own technique just to make sure the reader knew how clever the author was; Ulysses doesn't do that. If you want to puzzle out all of Joyce's cleverness and references you can certainly do that, but if you do you'll be missing out on so much. Joyce in his naughtiness has given the reader who wants to analyse everything a world so large they can be lost in there forever, and he's given the less assuming reader perhaps the most accurate rendering of human lives ever set down in literature.

For me there is not a single day that I don't feel this book inside myself, as if it were someone I'd once loved in a very different time in my life. It is almost as if when reading it the people I met there became part of my life, as much as any friend or member of my family. I'm reminded of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, where each person takes on and becomes a book, but it's more than a recitation of a text, it is flesh, blood and breathing. There aren't too many things I've come across that have entwined themselves in such a way into my life - a handful of people and some books, films and music: Ford Maddox Ford's The Good Soldier, Led Zeppelin's Presence album, a French movie called Un coeur en hiver, Pablo Neruda's The Captain's Verses. Along with the people I love and have loved these things are great blessings in my life. Ulysses is a book that has moved beyond type and paper and story, but perhaps it is too much to tell you all this. I should just say it's a really good book, and the secret to reading it is to keep an Irish accent in your mind for the voices when you are reading it. I should tell you that the plot was pinched a while back and made into a film, which you might have seen, called American Beauty. If you liked that, just wait until you read the real thing.

[All the pieces that have appeared in this series, with the links to them, are listed in the index here.]