[Nettime-bold] (no subject)

["Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com>]

I was saddened to read the review below which was circulated in Undercurrents. It bemoans the failure of the British to respond 
to the 'events' of September 11th.

I think you'll find Lachlan Brown writing actively post 911
in Nettime and Nettime bold despite a five week spell in
an Immigration Canada detention centre from October 17 to 
November 25th 2001, an experience that, in part, prompted his 
'Some Notes on the Unmarked Grave of History from the Unmade Bed
of Culture' and his subsequent Intervention against bad practice 
in  scholarship and the internet industry carried out in the 
Association of Interent Researchers (W.O.P.C) List from January 
2002. 

I think you'll find that much time Lachlan was
spot on in his witness, reflection and analysis. Lachlan is
a white Brit who does cultural studies. The spirit of Orwell
etc. is very much alive and well, even if people don't wish 
to acknowledge it during these cynical days.

Lachlan also wrote to Undercurrents with material relevant to 
these themes. 

Much of the writing that went into these posts is being worked 
into a book publication.

The reaction began on 12 September 2001 in a post to several 
British colleagues who reacted meekly to the event: 'is there 
anything positive to come out of this?', wrote one.

'Well, history has made something of a spectacular comeback' 
wrote Lachlan.

Sometimes one is required, especially during general political 
failures, to do ones own publicity in these matters.


Best

Lachlan

  


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Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 12:47:50 +1000

John Pilger takes on Martin Amis
John Pilger
Monday 17th June 20


Martin Amis represents a problem: that some of the most acclaimed and
privileged writers in the English language fail to engage with the most
urgent issues of our time. By John Pilger On 1 June, the Guardian published
a long essay by Martin Amis, entitled "The voice of the lonely crowd".
It was about 11 September and the role of writers. What did Amis think
about on the momentous day? He thought he was "like Josephine, the opera-singing
mouse in the Kafka story: Sing? ´She can´t even squeak.´"

By that he meant, I guess, that he had nothing to say about "the conflicts
we now face or fear", as he put it. Why not? Where was the spirit of Orwell
and Greene? Where was a modest acknowledgement of history: a passing
reflection on the impact of rapacious great power on vulnerable societies,
which are the roots of the current "terrorism"?

Amis referred rightly to the "pitiable babble" of writers following 11
September. Most of the famous names were heard, their contributions ranging
from morose me-ism to an aggressive defence of America and its "modernity".
Not a single English writer commanding the celebrity that provides an
extraordinary public platform has written anything incisive and worthy
of our memory about the meaning and exploitation of 11 September - with
the exception, as ever, of Harold Pinter. Compare their "babble", and
their silence, with the work of the celebrated Palestinian poet Mahmoud
Darwish, the subject of a fine Guardian profile on 8 June by Maya Jaggi.
Darwish is the Arab world´s best selling poet; people´s poet may sound
trite, but he draws thousands to his readings, thrilling his audiences
with a lyricism that touches their lives and makes sense of power, injustice
and tragedy. In his latest poem, "State of Siege", a "martyr" says:

I love life
On earth, among the pines and the fig trees
But I can´t reach it, so I took aim
With the last thing that belonged to me.

Darwish´s manuscripts were trampled under foot by Israeli soldiers at the
cultural centre in Ramallah where he often works. I was in this building
last month, not long after the Israelis had left. They had defecated on
the floors, and smeared shit on the photocopiers, and pissed on books and
up the walls, and systematically destroyed manuscripts of plays and novels
and hard disks. As they left, they threw paint on a wall of children´s
drawings. "They wanted to give us a message that nobody´s immune -including
in
cultural life," says Darwish. "Palestinian people are in love with life.
If we give them hope - a political solution - they´ll stop killing themselves."

Perhaps it is unfair to compare a Darwish with an Amis. One is speaking
for the crimes against his people, after all. But Amis represents a wider
problem: that some of the most acclaimed and privileged writers writing
in the English language fail to engage with the most urgent issues of our
time. Who among the collectors of Booker and Whitbread Prizes speaks against
the crimes described by Darwish - the product of the longest military occupation
in the modern era? Who, since 11 September, has defended our language,
illuminating its abuse in the service of great power´s goals and hypocrisy?
Who has shown that our humane responses to 11 September
have been appropriated by the masters of terror themselves? -by Ariel Sharon
and his "good friend" George W Bush, who bombed to death at least 5,000
civilians in Afghanistan.

Consider Amis´s unexplained reference to the conflicts we must now "face
or fear". The Palestinians have been facing and fearing an occupation for
more than 35 years: an atrocious stalemate sponsored by every American
administration since that of Lyndon Johnson and reaffirmed this month by
Bush himself. Since 11 September, those who have been allowed to grind
English into a series of cliches propagating their "war on terrorism" have
also supplied the Israeli regime with 50 F-16 fighter-bombers, 102 Gatling
guns, 228 joint direct attack munitions (JDAMs) and 24 Blackhawk
helicopters. A batch of state-of-the art Apache helicopters is on the way.
You may have seen the Apache on the news, firing missiles at civilian
apartment blocks in occupied Palestine.

The other day, I spoke to a group of children in Gaza. They smiled, but
it was clear that their dreams, indeed their childhood, had been despatched
by Israel´s attacks on a people who, for the most part, have defended
themselves with slingshots. Among these children, almost certainly, are
those who will sacrifice, as Darwish wrote, "the last thing that belonged
to me". Who is his equivalent in the west, setting that wisdom against
our government´s part in the making of this terror? In the 1980s, Martin
Amis published a valuable collection of essays on the threat of nuclear
war. Today, India and Pakistan seriously threaten nuclear war, which is
not surprising, in a world dominated by threats since 11 September: a world
of either-you-are-with-us-or-against-us, of bomb now and talk later. What
does Amis or any English writer have to say about the great warrior against
terrorism in the White House, who says that "first strike" is now the
superpower´s policy and that America "must be ready to strike at a moment´s
notice in any dark corner of the world"? This includes the nuclear option,
Martin Amis, should you still be interested.

"After 11 September," wrote Amis in the Guardian, "writers faced
quantitative change, but not qualitative change . .They stood in eternal
opposition to the voice of the lonely crowd, which, with its yearning for
both power and effacement, is the most desolate sound you will ever hear."
Those who publish and promote such empty words, holding the robes of English
literature´s current emperors, have an urgent responsibility to hand the
space to others.

Our language should be reclaimed, its Orwellian vocabulary reversed, its
noble words such as "democracy" and "freedom" protected, and its power
redeployed against all fundamentalisms, especially our own. We need to
find and publish our own Mahmoud Darwish, our own Arundhati Roy, our own
Ahdaf Soueif, our own Eduardo Galeano, and quickly.

John Pilger´s latest book, The New Rulers of the World, is published by
Verso
 


Lachlan Brown
T(416) 826 6937
VM (416) 822 1123

                                       

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