Author: Ophelia Benson

This is Jerry, so don’t blame OB for this post.

I’ve just returned from my protest against the awful anti-Israel, pro-Hizbullah march in London. Here are four pictures from the march.

Draw your own conclusions.

Interesting. Mediawatchwatch points out that Germaine Greer’s defense of her article on the Brick Lane ruckus slightly adjusts what she said in the first article. It’s right there for all to see…

July 24:

The community has the moral right to keep the film-makers out but they cannot then complain if somewhere else is used and presented to the world as Brick Lane.

August 5:

I have been accused of saying things I never said about Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane and the campaign to prevent its filming in the East End of London…Natasha Walter, writing on these pages, claims not to know what I could possibly mean by saying that the residents of Brick Lane have a “moral right” to refuse to cooperate with the people making the film of Monica Ali’s book.

Come on, GG – play fair.

The irony is, she has grounds for her defense: after all, she immediately goes on to say ‘There is only one remedy available if your reality is being recycled through a writer or a movie-maker, and that is to write your own novel or make your own film – and accept ostracism as your just desert.’ She could have just said that was her basic point; but massaging what she actually did say is an error.

So didja listen to JS on Little Atoms? It was pretty funny, in an absurd sort of way. He has some kind of bee in his bonnet that people who sign the Euston Manifesto think it is going to set off a mass progressive movement. It turned up in that HERO interview too. HERO asked ‘Ophelia, you are a signatory to the Euston Manifesto, and Butterflies and Wheels is an affiliated site. What are your expectations of the movement for a rational left, and how much do you feel that blogging and, more widely, the internet has contributed to the timing of this development?’ and he answered –

The Euston Manifesto will die a quick death. There is no chance for any kind of mass movement of the rational left, and blogging and the internet will have little effect outside the chattering classes. I think there is an interesting point here about wishful thinking, irrationalism, etc., which is that it has always been the case that the politically engaged – well, large numbers of them anyway – have very little sense of just how uninterested the mass of the population are in politics.

But notice – the HERO question doesn’t say anything about a mass movement – JS inserted that ‘mass’ himself, for no apparent reason. Of course I don’t bloody think the Euston Manifesto is going to set off a mass movement! I’m not insane, or delusional, or on Ecstasy. Just signing something isn’t such a huge colossal effort that making the effort implies a magical belief that it will change the universe. I signed the dang Euston Manifesto (despite disagreeing with parts of it, especially the part about the US as a great country – I think the US’s tragically broken political system makes it difficult to say that without instant qualification) for the same sort of reason I (and presumably JS) co-wrote WTM, and I have to point out, signing the EM was a great deal less work and took up far less time. If writing that book was worth doing (and I think JS thinks it was) then why wouldn’t siging a manifesto you mostly agree with be worth doing? Consider: the first takes some months, the second takes – what? five seconds?

I’ll have to give him a good sharp talking-to on the subject if I ever get the chance. But it made for some pretty funny listening – you could tell the hosts were starting to want to slap him. I know the feeling. snicker. There was also some nonsense about how people who disagree with religion (people like me, it seems, since he muttered something about me before launching that particular tirade) don’t understand about death and loss. Now really. Really. He would know, if he ever read the essays I write for TPM Online, that at least half of them are about nothing else; that I’m obsessed with the subject. I mean really.

Then there was the beginning where he said actually he’s not sure truth does matter – that was amusing too. (Mind you, in the sense he meant, nor do I, and I spent the first couple of pages of the book saying so. But ‘why truth matters in rational empirical inquiry’ would have been a not very catchy title, so we didn’t bother suggesting it.) Anyway, it was quite an entertaining interview.

And for dessert, some pleasant savagery from Hitchens; a relief from all that offendedness-frotting.

There’s a lot to dislike about Gibson. He is given to furious tirades against homosexuals of the sort that make one wonder if he has some kind of subliminal or “unaddressed” problem. His vulgar and nasty movies, which also feature this prejudice, are additionally replete with the cheapest caricatures of the English…He has told interviewers that his wife, the mother of his children, is going to hell because she subscribes to the wrong Christian sect…And it has been obvious for some time to the most meager intelligence that he is sick to his empty core with Jew-hatred.

I’m not sure Hitch has a very high opinion of Gibson.

At the time when The Passion of the Christ was being released, many nervous evangelical Christians tried to get the more horrifying bits of anti-Semitic incitement toned down…Many conservative Jews, from David Horowitz to Rabbi Daniel Lapin, stuck up for Gibson as a man who defended family values against secular nihilism.

And why not, I’d like to know? Aren’t family values worth a little anti-Semitism among friends? Sure they are.

It was even proudly announced that Gibson’s next big project would be about the Holocaust. Whether Gibson tries this last catch-penny profanity or not, it is time to lower the boom on him…But this should not be yet another spectacle of the “offensive” and the “inappropriate,” swiftly succeeded by rehab and repentance and perhaps – who knows? – a joint press conference with Elie Wiesel. Gibson did not “misspeak”…No, he spoke his “mind,” and in case anyone wants to burble about political correctness, it should be added that he spoke this way because of his religion, not just his warped personality.

Take that, sugar tits.

And then there’s the tragic clash of world views (or Weltanschauungen as we call them in old Stuttgart) between the Gay Police Association and ‘Christians’ i.e. some Christians.

An advert placed by the Gay Police Association (GPA) that claimed a 74 per cent rise in homophobic incidents due to religious belief has caused widespread offence among Christians…The GPA advert has also prompted a police investigation. The Metropolitan Police says the inquiry “centres on whether the advert constitutes a faith crime”.

A – what? A what crime? A faith what? I know about the religious hatred bill and all, but so do you guys now have something called a ‘faith crime’ that the police investigate? Seriously? For real? Isn’t that just a little…alarming? Isn’t that like Rowan Atkinson’s and Salman Rushdie’s worst nightmare come true true true? Are you all sure you’ve panicked enough?

“The suggestion is that if you get rid of faith, you get rid of homophobic attacks,” believes the Reverend George Hargreaves, leader of the Christian Party, who also sits on a number of Metropolitan Police committees and steering groups. “I believe this whole matter has left us with evidence that the Gay Police Association is Christianaphobic, and I therefore think an investigation is the right course of action. I also believe that the chairman of the Gay Police Association, Paul Cahill, should resign.”

Other than that, of course, the Rev George is as liberal and broad-minded a fella as you’d want to meet – all he wants is for the police to investigate ‘Christianophobia’ and for somebody to resign (as chairman? as cop? he doesn’t say). Modesty itself.

The Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship (LCF) is among the faith-based organisations that are questioning the rise in incidents that the advert refers to…”The incidents need not be criminal offences and may be lawful expressions of opinion, such as an opinion that adoption by gay couples constitutes a risk to the welfare of children.”

Uh…or such as that the Bible fosters homophobia – that kind of expression of opinion. So if yours isn’t theirs isn’t, and if theirs is yours is. You don’t get to make it that yours isn’t but theirs is. Nuh uh.

Cahill says the purpose of the advert was not to cause offence, but to raise awareness…Among other people who were offended by the advert was Dr John Dubbey of Norwich, who believes proof is required to back up the GPA’s statistics.

Come on, Cahill, you know nobody cares what the intent is; if offence occurs, then it is offence, and people are offended, and intent to raise awareness is entirely beside the point. It’s a faith crime to offend people. Like Dr John Dubbey of Norwich. Dr John Dubbey of Norwich is offended – along with other people. People were offended, Cahill, don’t you understand? Offended! They were offended! And there you are swanning around talking about awareness. You should not only resign, you should go on a pilgrimage to someplace nasty and rub dirt on your head.

Meanwhile, J Hale of Sutton says: “We were horrified when we saw a copy of the advert. It does not take into consideration my human rights to religious freedom and to freedom of conscience as a Christian. It is an affront to what I believe in to see the mockery behind the portrayal of the Holy Bible and, presumably, the blood of Jesus Christ, and the words that accompany it.”

Um – who’s J Hale of Sutton, and who cares what it says, and why? And who’s ‘we’? And where did J Hale say all this, and to whom, and when, and why? And why is the Indy collecting what it says? Besides – Sutton – I ask you. Who cares what people in Sutton think?

Okay a great tidal wave of opinion, by which I mean one person, has demanded a post on the contribution of high theory to the Israeli military. I never resist surges of opinion; I splash about in them like a happy little child playing in the surf. By which I mean, that is quite an intriguing piece, isn’t it.

The Israeli Defence Forces have been heavily influenced by contemporary philosophy, highlighting the fact that there is considerable overlap among theoretical texts deemed essential by military academies and architectural schools.

Oh, that fact. Well, one can see that both military academies and architectural schools have a genuine and keen interest in the subject of buildings – but one can also see that it’s a fundamentally different kind of interest. One is up the other is down; one is together the other is fissile; one is assemblative the other is disassemblative; one knits the other unknits; one constructs the other – okay you get it. But anyway it appears that there is more to all this than the theoretical and practical differences between piling bricks on top of one another and knocking them all to the ground.

…the reading lists of contemporary military institutions include works from around 1968 (with a special emphasis on the writings of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Guy Debord), as well as more contemporary writings on urbanism, psychology, cybernetics, post-colonial and post-Structuralist theory. If, as some writers claim, the space for criticality has withered away in late 20th-century capitalist culture, it seems now to have found a place to flourish in the military.

Oh dear – has the space for criticality withered away? The way the state was supposed to but didn’t so much? I didn’t know that. Here I’ve been dancing around in my little space for criticality (as well as nagicality and mockicality and derisionicality) in blissful ignorance, unaware of the walls creeping ever closer. But that’s how it goes, innit – late coughcough capitalist culture makes the space for criticality wither away the way it always does, the pesky thing, but happily the military comes along and saves it and gives it a place (or a space) to flourish. That must be ironic. Or do I mean de-centered.

Kokhavi, commander of the Paratrooper Brigade…said…’We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors. This is because the enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps.’

The hermeneutics of alleys and doors and windows. Cool.

Kokhavi’s intention in the battle was to enter the city in order to kill members of the Palestinian resistance and then get out. The horrific frankness of these objectives, as recounted to me by Shimon Naveh, Kokhavi’s instructor, is part of a general Israeli policy that seeks to disrupt Palestinian resistance on political as well as military levels through targeted assassinations from both air and ground.

Uh…yeah. And this came as a surprise to you? You’re taken aback by this horrific frankness? Uh…what did you think the objectives were then? To enter the city in order to teach members of the Palestinian resistance how to embroider? Are you sure you have a firm grasp of what words like ‘military’ and ‘battle’ and ‘weapon’ mean?

In a lecture Naveh showed a diagram resembling a ‘square of opposition’ that plots a set of logical relationships between certain propositions referring to military and guerrilla operations. Labelled with phrases such as ‘Difference and Repetition – The Dialectics of Structuring and Structure’, ‘Formless Rival Entities’, ‘Fractal Manoeuvre’, ‘Velocity vs. Rhythms’, ‘The Wahabi War Machine’, ‘Postmodern Anarchists’ and ‘Nomadic Terrorists’, they often reference the work of Deleuze and Guattari.

Way cool. That’s what I call a rich, well-rounded life – combining warfare with referencing the work of Deleuze and Guattari. Doncha think? It’s kind of like Socrates fighting at Potidaea, or those Renaissance men who wrote poetry with one hand and stabbed cardinals in the back with the other. Exciting and erudite both at the same time.

I asked Naveh why Deleuze and Guattari were so popular with the Israeli military. He replied that ‘several of the concepts in A Thousand Plateaux became instrumental for us…allowing us to explain contemporary situations in a way that we could not have otherwise. It problematized our own paradigms.’

I love the smell of problematized paradigms in the morning.

That’s not even halfway down the page – there’s a lot more. Read it all.